Written on June 14th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 09:06 am by Darren Rowse
AdSense ‘Site Diagnostics’ Disappearance - Official Explanation
Last week I posted that a number of AdSense publishers noticed a new feature in their AdSense reports called Site Diagnostics’.
This feature highlighted pages that AdSense was having problems running ads on and gave a reason for the problem.
Within a few hours of my post on it the ’site diagnostics’ tab disappeared from AdSense publisher’s reports pages and it has not been seen since. Also disappearing was the help pages associated with this new feature (there was one here). There was no official explanation given on the appearance or disappearance of site diagnostics so I shot an email over to one of the AdSense team asking for one. Here’s what they replied:
Hi Darren,
Since the feature you’ve noticed was part of a temporary test, we’ve removed it from publishers’ accounts.
To obtain similar functionality, however, we encourage publishers to sign up for Google Sitemaps, which will provide reporting details on a site’s crawl status, common words that are linked to the site’s pages, and the top search queries on Google that are driving traffic to that website.
For more information, please visit www.google.com/trysitemaps.
As you know, we’re always working on new features for AdSense. I’d encourage you to keep an eye on the AdSense blog, where we’ll release details on new features as they become available. You can find the blog at http://adsense.blogspot.com.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
Written on June 14th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 12:06 am by Darren Rowse
My Blogging ‘A List’
Do you have a Blog A List?
There’s a lot of talk about ‘A-lists’ in blogging circles from time to time and I generally don’t get into the discussions about what makes a blogger an A-lister or not or how a blog makes it into any such list.
To me these discussions are pretty pointless and are often filled with egos and/or tall poppy bashing.
Having said this - I do have my own ‘A-list’.
My A-list is a folder in my Bloglines account that is the first thing on my computer that I look at when I wake up in the morning and the last thing that I look at before I hit the sack (and I check it throughout the day constantly).
It is filled with around 20 RSS feeds that I consider to be essential reading across the main niches that I follow. They are RSS feeds of blogs that I know will contain any breaking news in those niches.
As a result if I log into Bloglines and see that there are unread items in my A-List I know that it’s fairly likely that important news is breaking that I need to be aware of.
My reason for having this A-List is that my Bloglines account currently has over 600 feeds that it tracks each day. Some of those feeds have many items per day and it’s not uncommon for me to have thousands of unread items at any given time which means that important stories that are breaking can remain hidden for hours (if not days).
An A-List helps me cut through the clutter and keep my finger on the pulse.
So what are the characteristics of MY A-Listers (please note - I’m not writing about the characteristics of good bloggers, just the blogs that are in my A-List folder)?
- They post regularly - but not too regularly - I want the important news from these bloggers and that’s it. While I subscribe to bloggers who write more commentary type blogs my A-Listers are more newsy type blogs.
- They have a long term demonstrated ability to be on top of the news and even break stories - these bloggers have an uncanny knack of having posts up within hours of a story breaking - no matter what time of the day or what day of the week it is.
- They stick to their niche - they know what they blog about and they stick to it. I know when they post that it’s something worth reading.
As I say - I do have other blogs and feeds that I value highly and that I prioritize but they generally write opinion pieces, tips posts and other less time specific and newsy posts which don’t matter if I get to them quickly after they are written or not.
Of course I expect to be asked about who is on my A-List?
I’m not actually going to reveal that information - partly because the feeds in that folder are specific in topic to my own interests and niches and won’t be really that useful to anyone unless they happen to have the same eclectic mix of interests I have. The other reason is that while I call it my ‘A-List’ that it’s not really a list of blogs that I think are better than others. They just happen to be useful to me in reporting the news in those niches.
Do you have an A-List (whether you call it that or not)? What other ways do you get hot or breaking stories in your niche?
Written on June 13th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 12:06 pm by Darren Rowse
Prominent Bloggers Leverage Blog Profiles
I’ve been watching the news buzzing around the blogosphere of Robert Scoble leaving Microsoft to go to PodTech with fascination for the last few days. I’m not fascinated by it really for the news itself (although it’ll be interesting to see how Robert approaches the new roll and whether it pays off for PodTech) but am intrigued by a couple of other things:
Firstly the speed and that the news got out at and the vast numbers of posts that were written about it was quite amazing to watch. I mean in reality this is a story of a guy changing jobs and yet it was one of the biggest stories going around the blogosphere for a number of days in a row. Check out the ‘top searches on Technorati today - Robert is only out done by the largest sporting event in the world.
My second interest in the story is that Robert’s story is a great example of a blogger with opportunities opening up as a result of his blog. I often draw the distinction between bloggers who make money directly from their blogs and bloggers who make money because of their blogs but have found it much harder to find prominent examples of the second type than the first. This is a prime example of someone who over time has built a profile to the point where he’s an attrActive target for an upcoming start up. The publicity that the story of Robert swapping jobs is probably worth what ever PodTech are paying him alone (let alone whatever he’ll do when he actually goes over to them).
Another Example
Speaking of bloggers making money BECAUSE of their blogs - another blogger looks like he’s doing similar things. Valleywag has broken a story today of Om Malik from GigaOm pulling back on his position at Business 2.0 from being a ’senior writer’ to a ‘contributing editor’. The reason is that he’s apparently received funding to take GigaOm to the next level and make it a business in and of itself.
Om runs ads on his blog at present (and therefore is making money from his blog) but I suspect that the business he’ll develop will take him into the second category of bloggers also. It’ll be an interesting development to watch.
Update: Om has posted about the news on his blog now and explains his reasons so it’s all official.
Written on June 13th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 11:06 am by Darren Rowse
BloggerKit.com
I had an email yesterday from the developers of BloggerKit.com - a nice looking system that helps you to integrate Amazon affiliate ads into your blog in a semi automatic way.
The system allows you to trigger relevant ads by simply adding a tag to the end of your blog posts that includes a product name. This tag triggers the relevant ads.
The system has some pros and cons associated with it:
Pros
- you get paid directly from Amazon for any earnings
- The ads are able to be configured to match your blog’s design (in terms of colours and sizes)
- The ads have product images in them (this will draw the eye and increase CTR)
- The set up of the ads is reasonably quick
- They are allowable with systems like AdSense as they are not automatically contextual (ie you trigger the ads)
Cons
- As payment for the service you allow Blogger Kits to run their affiliate ads in 15% of the products your blog shows (not a massive amount (less than some similar services I’ve seen), but it’s worth remembering there is a cost involved).
- It seems that the tags you insert into your posts actually appear to your readers. Check out the example blog they have here and you’ll see at the bottom of each post that there is a tag ‘bk_keywords:…’ They write on their site that you can make them invisible by making them the same color as your background. This rings a few warning bells for me as I know search engines look for invisible text and penalize it if they think it’s trying to scam the system (which this is not - but I’d worry a little about it).
- Remember you get paid a commission with Amazon IF a sale is made and you are not getting paid for a click through. Publishers should consider this when deciding whether to run these type of affiliate programs or whether to run other CPC ads (AdSense, Chitika etc). Depending upon the products you’re writing about they can convert better or worse than other ads. I find that text ads to Amazon work quite well but haven’t had much luck with image ones (but it’s worth a try).
For those bloggers who heavily use Amazon on their blogs this will probably be a useful service. I’m not going to use it on my blogs at this point but would be interested to hear from others who do to see how it goes.
Written on June 12th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 10:06 am by Darren Rowse
enternetusers Paternity Leave Plans
A few people have asked me what I’ll be doing with enternetusers in the days and weeks after the birth of Mini-Rowse.
It seems that every time I go on holiday or take time off I do something different with my blog (here’s 7 things I’ve done with my blogs while on a vacation) and this time will see me try something a little different again.
I’ve decided to do a number of things this time around:
- Aaron Brazell from will continue to do some posts in my absence. He’ll probably write a few more than his normal one post per week column.
- One Question Interviews - yesterday I sent emails out to a number of fairly high profile bloggers asking them to participate in a ‘one question interview’. I won’t reveal the question at this point but it’s one that allows them to answer with anything between a one liner and a more comprehensive post. So far I’ve had a number of great responses from bloggers that I admire. I’ll be posting these responses throughout the week or two after Mini’s been born.
- Guest Posts - I’ve also got a couple of other one off guest posts lined up from regular readers. One has come from a comment that a reader left that I thought should be elevated to the main blog and another is something a reader submitted especially.
- Miscellaneous Posts - there will be a few other miscellaneous posts scattered among the interviews and Aaron’s posts. Some I’ll do as advance posts, others I’ll write as normal between all the baby things that I’ll be doing. My own contributions to enternetusers will be a little lighter than normal but I’ll still be here.
Hopefully between all of these posts enternetusers will continue to be a place of learning and inspiration until I can get back into the saddle again full time (I’m planning this period to go for around 2 weeks). When it starts I’m still not sure - if all goes according to plan it will be in the last few days of June but it could also kick in any day now.
On my other blogs - some of my other blogs will be taken over by guest bloggers, others I’ll continue to write (at a lower frequency) and a few will probably lay dormant over the week or two that I take off.
Written on June 12th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 08:06 am by Darren Rowse
Digg to Widen Topic Coverage
I’ve been wondering when this would happen but it seems that Digg is soon to widen it’s topic coverage from just technology related bookmarking to other arenas:
‘Digg, the collaborative tech news site, will soon branch out beyond geekdom. At a Web 2.0 panel at the eBay Developers Conference today, President Kevin Rose said that in the next month or so, the popular site–where people vote on stories submitted by others, with the highest vote-getters moving to the top of the front page–will add coverage of world news, entertainment, politics, and more. Major redesign is in the works.’
I can just hear bloggers everywhere licking their lips with glee (is that possible?) at the news of one of the biggest senders of traffic opening up in their niches!
Found via Steve
Written on June 11th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 06:06 pm by Darren Rowse
Register as a enternetusers User to Smooth out Commenting Issues
Over the past few weeks I’ve had emails from a number of enternetusers readers who have had problems commenting here at enternetusers. Perhaps my spam filter (Akismet) is blocking a few comments that it shouldn’t.
One way around this is to register as a user of enternetusers here. If you do so and remain logged in you shouldn’t have any problems commenting and your comments shouldn’t need to go through the moderation process either (which some of your comments currently go through - this should speed up that process).
If you’re having no problems commenting you don’t need to register (feel free to do so if you wish to do so though).
If you register you can be assured your details will be kept private.
Written on June 11th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 10:06 am by Darren Rowse
More on Blog Design Pricing
Peter Flaschner has written his own piece on Blog Design Pricing (link removed as it was dead) in response to one Chris Pearson wrote last week. In his post Peter looks at some of the factors he considers when setting his prices and concludes:
‘Pricing is tricky. There’s no real science to it, and no standard estimating process to follow. When considering a range of estimates, be aware of the range of deliverables, the additional services included, the experience of the individual or team, and the supply and demand of the moment.’
Written on June 10th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 10:06 am by Darren Rowse
enternetusers’s Baby Photos leaked to the internet
Meg at Celebrity Makeovers has an incredible scoop - she’s published the first pictures of my new baby boy!
This is quite incredibly as he’s yet to be born but paparazzi these days will go to any lengths!
Here’s Mini-Rowse himself:
Very amusing Meg!
Just a quick baby update for the many of you who have been asking.
He’s actually due in the last week of June. He and ‘V’ are doing well.
In terms of actual photos of ‘mini’ - I’ve decided not to sell them to Getty Images but will auction the rights to them in the comments of this post. What am I bid?
update: ok, I really need to make it clear when I’m joking. Having just received an email bid for $2000 USD for the photos and another telling me that I’m a bad father for doing so - I think I need to make it clear that I’m not serious about selling my child’s photos. This whole post was written in an attempt at humor friends - nothing more, nothing less.
Written on June 10th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 12:06 am by Darren Rowse
No-one links to the linkers
Andrew Garrett has written a very insightful post at on a discovery he’s made about blogging that I think we all need to learn (and many of us relearn) - No-one links to the linkers. He tells a little of his own previous style of blogging - linking to another blog/site, adding a few of his own comments and hitting publish. He then goes on to make a few pertinent (I always wanted to use that word in a post) observations:
‘No-one links to linkers.
By deluding myself that being a human news filter I was adding value, I was avoiding doing ‘real’ writing. Sure, I was writing a bit here and there. but not enough to be a draw card.
A few link-based posts here and there are fine - once you have an audience. Link aggregation on a particular subject - that’s also valuable. Once you have an audience.
First, get an audience.
Audiences are like governments - you get the one you deserve. I haven’t yet deserved an audience.’
Andrew then goes on to share what he’s going to do about it.
I think the realizations that Andrew are having are excellent. While there are some successful blogs out there that are predominantly link blogs they generally add value to the content they link to and/or do it on the back of having built an audience around some other factor (sometimes good original content, sometimes they have a name or previous expertise that draws the audience, sometimes it’s their quirky, snarky and/or intelligent commentary on the links that they link to….)
Setting yourself apart from the millions of other blogs out there means you need some sort of unique selling proposition - linking to the same stuff everyone else does is just not going to do it for you.
I’m not anti link blogs - but I think bloggers (especially new ones) need to have realistic expectations about what they can achieve with them. If you’re going to be a link blogger make sure you either mix in some truly original posts, link in a unique way that is an attraction in itself or be able to find the most wonderful mind-blowing collection of links ever known to humankind!
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