Written on June 2nd, surf Active Apparel website active apparel zone.at 09:06 am by Darren Rowse
Exponential Growth in Blogging - Getting Through the Early Days
Stuart has posted about receiving his first AdSense payment at Your Money 2 Keep which reminds me a lot of my early days in this game.
The thing I like about Stuart’s attitude is that despite the fact that in month 1 he only earned $1.51 he’s stuck at it.
Many bloggers experimenting with making money from their blogs don’t get past a few weeks into their venture without getting frustrated and throwing it in.
Lets look at Start’s earnings graph:
While it’s pretty small you can see that he’s getting between 40% and 150% growth each month (guesstimate).
While the numbers are quite small to start with it significantly increases when you stick at it.
Extend this graph out another 7 months with similar monthly growth (lets say at the lower end of 40% growth a month) and he’ll be earning around the $1500 mark per month. Make it 70% growth per month for the next 7 months and he’ll be over $5000 per month.
I’m not wanting to hype this or set anyone’s expectations up for that kind of money as a guarantee but when you ask most full time bloggers about their earnings over time you get a very similar graph with very low numbers at first but exponential growth.
Here’s my own graph of AdSense earnings in the first 18 or so months.
I talked about this graph and exponential growth in previous posts here and here.
The take home lesson is to work hard and to stick at it in the early days. Don’t focus so much upon the total numbers but the percentage changes from month to month.
A lot of people set $ figure goals ($100 a day, $1000 a month etc) for their blogs but I prefer to set myself goals of % of growth over time. Neither is right or wrong - but sometimes I think looking at trends can be more motivating and less depressing than looking at total earnings - especially in the early days.
Not everyone will hit this type of exponential growth in their earnings of course - for whatever reason some blogs just don’t take off - but if the beginnings of your graph are slow but steady increases be inspired about the potential growth that could be ahead of you if you keep working hard.
Written on June 2nd, surf Active Apparel website active apparel zone.at 04:06 am by Darren Rowse
Free Blog Poll Tools
Following on from my last two posts on blog polls….
There are a number of poll providers who have systems available for blogs.
I personally use the Democracy plugin for WordPress (AJAX based) these days and don’t have any problems with it.
Other poll systems that you might like to try (I can’t really vouch for any of them) include:
- Blog Polls.com
- Vizu
- Free Blog Poll
- Blog Poll
- Blog Flux Polls
- WP Polls (another WP plugin)
If you’ve had experience with any of these or other blog poll tools feel free to leave your comments and recommendations below.
PS: I’ve added these blog poll tools to the blog tools page.
Written on June 2nd, surf Active Apparel website active apparel zone.at 12:06 am by Darren Rowse
9 Techniques for Using Polls Effectively on a Blog
In my last post on blog polls we explored why using polls on a blog can be a great technique for building interactivity and ownership on a blog but today I want to give a few practical tips on how to use them (or at least how I use them):
- Keep Polls Relevant - Blog Polls are most effective when they ask a question that is relevant to you blog’s topic. I recently saw one blogger polling their readership on their favourite meal. This would have been a good topic for a food blog - but it was actually being conducted on a blog about a completely different topic. Keep in mind that everything you do on your blog can either add to or take away from your blog’s worth to your readers. Polls that actually communicate something relevant are much more likely to add to your blog.
- Don’t use Polls just for the sake of it - connected to keeping polls relevant is that you probably shouldn’t come up with a poll just for the sake of having one. If you can’t think of a good question that adds something just don’t have a poll. I used to feel the need for a weekly poll but put them on hold for a while over the last month or so simply because I was struggling to keep up with questions to ask and was a little bogged down of the admin of them (it does take some work to run polls, especially if you do ‘results posts’ - see below).
- Position them Prominently - I’ve talked extensively here at enternetusers about how a key to effective conversion of advertising on a blog is where the ad is positioned. If it’s in a good spot you can significantly increase the amount of people who click it. The same is true for getting people to participate in your poll. Position your poll high on the page and in a spot where you think people will naturally see it and you’ll increase your chances of a result.
- Think ahead about options you give - Don’t just slap a poll up on your blog without thinking through the options you’ll give your respondents to vote upon. I’ve been guilty of messing up in this area myself from time to time - it can actually ruin your poll and make the results quite worthless if you’re not careful. Consider all of the options that your readers might vote upon and try to cover every base possible (within reason) in your options. Well defined questions with a set number of possible answers tend to work best. Open ended questions are generally not well suited for polls (note: some poll tools will allow your readers to add their own options as answers. While this increases the sense of participation for readers it can also be abused and can make your poll very very messy).
- Beware of inActive polls - While polls can demonstrate that your blog is alive (see last post) they can also highlight the fact that it is quite dead. If your traffic levels are quite low and no one actually participates in your poll you it can be a little embarrassing.
- Announce new polls - If a lot of your readership follows your blog via RSS they will never know you’ve started a new poll unless you post about it. Write a short post defining the question and highlighting your poll and you’ll get it off to a much better start.
- Provide a medium for Discussing the Poll - One of the techniques I use these days when running a poll is to include a link to the announcement post where people can give feedback on the poll results and even share comments on why they answered like they did.
- Write a ‘results’ post - In addition to writing an announcement post I like to always include a ‘results’ post. Once again this lets RSS readers know what they might otherwise have missed about the results but also is a great place to take you poll to the next level in terms of producing a post (or posts) on what you found. In these posts I give some key stats, generally try to graph the results of the poll and highlight the key findings. Bloggers love these posts and quite often link up to them.
- Don’t let the poll go on too long - Define how long the poll will run up front and announce that when you start the poll. I would recommend that 1 week is generally long enough for a poll (and perhaps 5 days is better). This gives regular readers a chance to see it and vote and for them to come back a few times in the days that follow to see how the results are. I find that the majority of votes are cast in the first 48 hours and that new responses after that only trickle in.
In my last post in this mini series on Blog Polls I’ll suggest a few blog poll tools that people might like to use.
Written on June 1st, surf Active Apparel website active apparel zone.at 04:06 pm by Darren Rowse
gnoos Launches
Fellow Aussie entrepreneurs Ben Barren and Michael Leone have today unveiled and officially launched gnoos - a local (and global) search tool that aggregates the most current Aussie blogs.
I’ve been playing around with it during it’s beta test and it produces some great results. I’m looking forward to seeing it continue to grow and develop and to see what else they come up with.
Read more about it in today’s Age (and Sydney Morning Herald).
PS: Ask.com have launched their new blog search today also.
Written on June 1st, surf Active Apparel website active apparel zone.at 12:06 pm by Darren Rowse
Tools for Tracking Search Engine Serps
Leon Kilat has a post that those of you wanting to find a way to keep a track of your Google Search Results Rankings (SERPS) might like to check out. It reviews the Sitening Serp tracker. I use a similar service at Digital Point called Keyword and Back Link Tracker which does a similar thing - although it does take some work as you have to go in each day/week to run it. Actually now that I think about it - I don’t use the tool much at all these days. I’m unsure why - perhaps its because I’m too busy or perhaps SEO has become less of an issue for me.
Written on June 1st, surf Active Apparel website active apparel zone.at 10:06 am by Darren Rowse
Inside AdSense: Payments information may be delayed
Also on the AdSense blog today is something I’ve been expecting for a few days after emails from a number of readers who have told me about problems with their AdSense payments this month. It’s amazing how nervous people get when there is the hint of a problem with payments (I know the feeling). AdSense expects to have the issues resolved by the end of the week.
They write on the blog:
“This month we experienced a posting delay that might keep some payment information from appearing in your account immediately. While all payments have been sent out as usual, the ‘Payment…’ line might take some extra time to show up on the Payment History page of your account under the My Account tab.
Additionally, if you recently signed up to receive payments by Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), or added a new bank account for EFT deposits, it may take a few extra days after you’ve received your test deposit before you can verify your bank account.”
Written on June 1st, surf Active Apparel website active apparel zone.at 10:06 am by Darren Rowse
AdSense API beta
AdSense have announced their API beta program today over at their blog.
They are only accepting publishers ‘whose sites receive a minimum of 100,000 daily page views’. I’m a little unclear if this means that the publisher’s total page views need to be over 100,000 or whether each site they want to use the API on have to have over 100,000 page views.
Full details here.
Written on June 1st, surf Active Apparel website active apparel zone.at 08:06 am by Darren Rowse
Adsense Sparklines
Information aesthetics has a cool little charting facility that is tracking a blogs daily word count, unique visitors, AdSense earnings and the OS that people are viewing the blog in.
They say it fits within the AdSense TOS but you need to ask permission from them to use it first.
It’s quite interesting to see the top three charts side by side. While unique visitors doesn’t go up and down too much there is some correlation between daily word count (posting frequency related) and AdSense earnings. There’s also probably some significant correlation between the day of the week and earnings also.
I guess the question a blogger would want to ask themselves before using sparklines is why they want to post the information on their blog. I don’t have a problem with those that do but I’m not sure it’d fit within my own blogging goals at this point. It’s definitely got a ‘cool factor’ though that I’m sure many will love.
Thanks to Jeremy for the email tip off.
Written on June 1st, surf Active Apparel website active apparel zone.at 03:06 am by Darren Rowse
Blog Polls - Add Interactivity to Your Blog
One tool that many bloggers use to add a level of interactivity to their blogs is to use Polls. You’ll see at the time of writing this post that I currently have a simple poll running asking readers to tell me what gender they are but previously I’ve run a variety of different ones ranging from asking about the blog platforms that readers use, to asking about their opinion on how I should improve this blog (ie I asked if I should move to full RSS feeds or stay with excerpts), to asking about their blog earnings.
Why use Polls?
Polls can bring life to a blog in a number of ways:
- Discussion starters - The thing I love about polls is the discussion that they often start. I’ll write some techniques for encouraging discussion around a poll later but if you craft a question in the right way people will want to talk about their own (and others) answers.
- Poll Results can lead to incoming links - I quite often notice that on the day I announce the results to a poll (and sometimes while it’s underway) that I find other bloggers linking up to my blog with posts of their own on the results. Bloggers love statistics and studies and will continue the discussion happening around your poll on your blog on their own blogs also.
- Research for your writing - The current question around blogger gender is testing a theory that I have. I can see already that there is at least one post exploring the theme of gender and enternetuserss that will come out of what the poll has already found. Some poll questions don’t lend themselves to such posts but the results of others can be rich with starting points for you to explore in future posts.
- Increases reader participation - If you’re trying to increase the interactivity of your blog or want to give your readers a sense of ownership over it a series of polls can be a very effective technique. I know that when I take part in a poll on other people’s blogs that it means that I’ve given a little something of myself or my opinion to that blog. It might not be much but it can be enough to make me return later or leave a comment - both steps towards becoming a regular and loyal reader.
- They demonstrate your blog is alive - I find that the percentage of people who leave a comment on a blog is generally quite small in comparison to total readers. A lot of people lurk around a blog and like to be anonymous (for a variety of reasons). A poll will normally get a much higher participation rate and as a result can be a truer reflection to other readers of how many people are reading along. People like to feel that they are a part of something larger than themselves and a poll that shows that they are by the number of other responses can do this.
- Polls can Help Shape your blog - Polls can also be great for helping you to determine which direction to take your blog in. A prime example of this for me was when I asked people to vote on if I should move to full RSS feeds. Interestingly when I asked for comments on this question in a general post I had a fairly high percentage of respondents tell me that I shouldn’t make the move. The comment thread got a little dominated by this perspective. However when I did the poll I found that most people DID want me to move to full feeds. The comments on the poll backed this up as people felt freer to share their opinion because they knew they were not alone. Getting a vote on what you should do with your blog can be quite effective - but you had better be willing to take the results seriously and follow through on them.
- Increases visits from RSS - The day I start a new poll on enternetusers I generally notice an increase in the number of readers coming to the site from my RSS feed. If you run a poll in your sidebar there is no way for RSS readers to either cast their vote or see the results without actually visiting your blog in person.
Tomorrow I’ll share some tips on HOW to use polls on a blog and will then suggest some blog poll tools to try.
Written on June 1st, surf Active Apparel website active apparel zone.at 12:06 am by Aaron Brazell
WordPress Plugin: Timecapsule
This post was contributed by Aaron Brazell, a regular enternetusers contributor.
Update: A new version of the plugin has been uploaded.
I accidentally published this early and had to pull it back because it wasn’t ready-for-live yet. RSS subscribers, you got a sneak peek early but I wasn’t ready. Now we’re ready. :-)
Last week I passed my two year birthday as a blogger. Much fun and joyfulness were had by at least three readers. Such milestones tend to make me think about where I’ve come as a blogger and where I’m going. Though I have not always produced wonderfully excellent content, it’s really beneficial to highlight where I’ve been… especially as the really early stuff begins to fade away.
Finding a way to highlight older content adds a new dimension to your blog. Typically, a blog is single dimensional - that is, it is read from top down and unless some creative means are put in place to connect other aspects of your blog, readers may never experience them. Since I hate content to disappear into archive purgatory, I put a feature on my blog a few months ago called “The Timecapsule”.
I don’t know how it is in other parts of the world, but in the United States, folks looking to preserve historical moments and memories, will encase a “time capsule” in the cornerstone of a building when the ground is first broke for building. It’s the symbolic memorializing of “that which once was” which preserves memories for future generations.
As with memories buried inside a building cornerstone, a timecapsule on a blog can reveal to readers “that which once was” and can serve as a wonderful reminder of where you have come as a blogger.
I’ve taken the feature from Technosailor and wrapped it into a single WordPress plugin simply called Timecapsule - of course, notoriously, the first enternetusers plugin release. :) This plugin was built on WordPress 2.x, but I don’t see any reason why it would not work on earlier versions of WordPress. I just haven’t tested it.
Instructions are really simple:
- Download (link fixed) and extract the plugin.
- Upload timecapsule.php to your plugins folder.
- Login to wp-admin and activate.
- Configuration can be made in the Time Capsule submenu under the Manage tab.
- Drop
<?php timecapsule(); ?>where you want to display the timecapsule.
Changelog
2006-06-01
- Initial Release (1.0.1)
2006-06-01
- Bugfix release (1.0.2)
- Fixed Bug with Number of posts displaying incorrectly
- Added ability to customize ‘no posts’ message
- Added ability to turn off ‘no posts’ message
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