Written on December 31st, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 02:12 am by Darren Rowse
What is Your Blog’s Elevator Pitch?
Des from Business and Blogging was asked a couple of weeks ago to describe his blog in 10 words or less. His description was:
“How blogs work, or don’t, to support business goals.”
I guess mine would be my catch cry - ‘helping bloggers earn money’.
I think it’s a good exercise to do, particularly at this time of year when everyone is so focussed upon refocusing for the year ahead. In a sense this is the elevator pitch for your blog and can be useful both in getting the purpose of your blog clear in your own mind but also in promoting it and sharing it’s vision with others.
How would you describe yours in 10 words or less?
Written on December 30th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 01:12 am by Darren Rowse
How to Get Multiple Amazon Associates Tracking IDs (channels)
Have you ever wanted to be able to track your Amazon Associate program’s performance with channels (like you can with AdSense and Chitika)?
I’ve heard a number of publishers complaining about this and even a few saying that they have multiple Amazon Associate accounts for this purpose.
It seems that Amazon actually do have the capability to allow for this type of tracking without having to have multiple accounts (which incidentally isn’t a great idea as it decreases the numbers of sales credited to your account which in term means your % earnings goes down under the tiered system).
Gene writes that all you need to do to be able to track your individual Amazon Associates campaigns is to ask for it by emailing them at associates@amazon.com and telling them:
1. Your main Associates ID.
2. “I would like to receive XXX Associates tracking id’s to track multiple campaigns I am planning to run.”That’s it. XXX can be any number up to 1,500. You will receive an email within 24 hours with your tracking id’s.
Tracking id’s will look very much like your Associates ID but a bit different. If your Associates ID is “MyWebSite-20″, then your tracking id’s look something like “MyWeb1-20″ through “MyWeb1500-20″.
You will then be able to use your tracking id’s in the same place as you would use your Associates ID.
Pretty cool isn’t it! I wish I’d known this earlier.
Read Gene’s full post at How to Track Multiple Amazon Associates Campaigns
Written on December 29th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 02:12 pm by Darren Rowse
Text Link Ads now available for Blogger Blogs
For those of you wanting to give Text Link Ads (aff) a go that are not on WordPress - you might be interested to know that they yesterday announced that they are compatible with Blogger Blogs.
I hope you enjoy Text Link Ads for Blogger!
Written on December 29th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 10:12 am by Darren Rowse
Performancing and PayPerPost Sale Update
As a followup to our post yesterday on the PayPerPost buying Performancing story - it seems that I was right in saying that the sale (or intended sale as it’s still yet to be finalized) was only for part of Performancing. Nick explains it in his post Performancing and PayPerPost which outlines that it is only their metrics and classifieds (exhange) that they’ve sold and that they are hanging onto (and will be re-branding) their firefox plugin and partners program. More details are also available at PPP’s press release. There’s no word on the purchase price.
update: what does concern me a little is that as a blogger who is a user of Performancing’s metrics program that all the details of my blog now are going to be transferred to PPP. While this is a fairly normal and standard operating procedure with any sale I can’t say that I’m overly happy with a company like PPP who in my opinion have caused so much controversy and who have been accused of some less than transparent and ethical behavior having access to my blog’s statistics.
While the metrics package is a useful one I think it might be time for me to find another one.
Written on December 29th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 01:12 am by Darren Rowse
Microsoft Under Fire Over Laptop Giveaways to Bloggers
While i spent the day in the sun at the cricket watching Australia totally decimate England a storm has been brewing in the blogosphere over Microsoft giving away Ferrari Acer laptops loaded with Vista to bloggers to review - and if they want, to keep.
Interestingly - I received an email from Microsoft a week or two back asking me if I’d be interested in participating.
This was the approach:
I’d love to send you a loaded Ferrari 1000 courtesy of Windows Vista and AMD. Are you interested?
This would be a review machine, so I’d love to hear your opinion on the machine and OS. Full disclosure, while I hope you will tell others about your experience with the pc, you don’t have to. Also, you are welcome to send the machine back to us after you are done playing with it, or you can give it away to your community, or you can keep it. Just let me know your opinion on Windows Vista and what you plan to do with it when the time comes.
I was a little surprised by the email but my immediate thought was:
- as a Mac user I was immediately skeptical about anything with Microsoft in/on it. I was however curious about Vista as I’ve heard so much about it. As a Mac user I’d have no way to review it however without a PC.
- the thought of a free laptop was a little tempting
- the idea of giving it away appealed more than keeping it - I know of a few charity groups that could definitely use it and/or the idea of giving it as a prize to a reader was tempting
- I was a little intrigued about this approach and wondered what would happen in the wider blogosphere when the story broke, bloggers getting laptops worth thousands of dollars to keep if they wanted just to review their operating system. My initial reaction was that this would not be greeted with unamimous support and that the combination of it being Microsoft doing the giveaways and that bloggers were able to not disclose if they wised would be controversial
After some consideration and chatting to a few other bloggers I decided that I’d accept the machine under the proviso that I do post a disclaimer about anything that I write about it or the operating system, that I’d write an honest review (I did tell the Microsoft rep that I’m not a techie type and not to expect anything too tech focused) and that I would give the laptop away after reviewing it (probably to a charity).
To this point I’m yet to receive the Ferrari 1000 but today I did get an email from Microsoft saying that they did not want me to keep the machine. Now my only two options are to send it back or to give it away. They wrote:
As you write your review I just wanted to emphasize that this is a review pc. I strongly recommend you disclose that we sent you this machine for review, and I hope you give your honest opinions. Just to make sure there is no misunderstanding of our intentions I’m going to ask that you either give the pc away or send it back when you no longer need it for product reviews. Since you are a Mac user, I’m assuming you don’t have a Windows Vista pc. Feel free to hold onto this loaner as long as you need a Windows computer for reviews.
Obviously the controversy of today has led them to revise their offer to bloggers to keep the machines. It’s probably a wise move and something that they should have put into place from the start.
Written on December 28th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 07:12 pm by Darren Rowse
PayPerPost buys Performancing (or part of it)
Techcrunch is reporting that PayPerPost is buying Performancing and will make the announcement today sometime.
They say that the reason for the purchase is to give PPP access to Performancing’s 28,000 users.
I will be interested to read the official announcements later today as I’d heard previously that a sale was imminent but that it wouldn’t include the full Performancing portfolio of services (ie they have their advertising service, their firefox service, their blog and their metrics package. Time will tell which parts were included in the sale.
Written on December 27th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 07:12 pm by Darren Rowse
How to Build a ‘Digg Culture’ on your Blog
How do you build a ‘Digg Culture’ and get repeatedly on the front page of Digg over time?
In this post I’ll share 10 ways that top bloggers do it.
Last week on a post that Tony wrote about Digg Fraud one of those who left a comment wrote:
“I think it’s been pretty much proven that any traffic a site gets from digg is fleeting and doesn’t translate into long-term traffic.”
Many don’t believe that getting on Digg is worth much because the traffic is so fleeting however I think there is much more value for smart publishers than just the initial burst of traffic.
Such benefits to getting on the front page of Digg include:
1. Fresh RSS subscribers
Every time I get dugg I notice a leap in my RSS subscriber count. The first few times a site gets on Digg this is often bigger than subsequent diggings (after a few times I guess those who are interested in your topic will have already been subscribed) but there is a noticeable bump in subscribers each time.
2. Newsletter subscribers
Similarly newsletter subscribers (if you have one) will generally get a bump when you’re dugg. I generally add a link to subscribe to my newsletter on any post that gets on digg to leverage the traffic in this way. In this way (and with RSS subscribers) you are not only getting that first wave of traffic but are building ongoing waves of traffic each time you post or send a newsletter.
3. Secondary link ups
Digg has a ‘blog this’ feature and while it’s not used by every Digger it is used. I find that each time I’m dugg that there is a secondary wave of incoming links to your post via this feature but also other diggers blogging about you. I also find that when featured prominently on digg that you quite often get linked to on other social bookmarking sites (delicious, reddit etc) and get further waves of traffic and incoming links from their users. The secondary link ups don’t generally send a lot of traffic (although on occasion they can be from larger sites) but have the added benefit of helping the site’s Search Engine ranking (Google Juice) which over time helps build a site’s traffic.
4. A Digging Culture Emerges
If you are able to convert your incoming readers from Digg into regular readers you then have a unique opportunity to get repeat appearances on Digg again. I’ve found that with each appearance on digg that I seem to gather more and more readers to my site who will naturally submit my posts to Digg in future. I can’t quite put my finger on it but I guess the type of reader that is now subscribing to the blogs is now familiar with Digg and is even Actively looking for things to bookmark. Once you develop this type of ‘culture’ the cycle outlined above can continue.
The Impact of Digg Culture over time:
Once this ‘digg culture’ kicks in a site can experience a series of ‘diggings’ which on each occasion will see the site receive a sudden and short burst of traffic followed by a return to lower traffic that is actually higher than pre-digg levels.
The actual traffic from digg is a nice (but short lived) thing - but the real benefit of being dugg regularly is the increase in traffic from loyal readers (RSS, bookmarks and newsletters) as well as the SEO benefits of new incoming links.
I’ve attempted to graph this below (this is not from any actual site’s traffic but is typical of a blog that enjoys the benefits of ‘digg culture’:
While each blog is different (and the graph won’t apply to everyone) I’ve witnessed this ‘digg effect’ on a number of blogs now.
Can you Encourage a Digg Culture on Your Blog?
So how does one build a ‘Digg Culture’ on their blog? I’m sure this is a question that many of us would like ‘the answer’ to.
I’m afraid I don’t have a definitive answer and while many articles have been written on how to be successful on Digg I’m not sure anyone has really got it completely worked out because it can be a reasonably unpredictable and whimsical beast.
Having said that - here are 10 tips that come to mind on how to build a ‘digg culture’ on your blog. They come both from my own experience of having my blogs regularly featured on Digg but also by watching what other successful sites do.
- Style of Writing - while many hundreds of pages get to the top of the digg pile every week and there is quite a variation in their style - many of them do tend to have similarities. They are often lists and are usually easily digestible pieces that appeal to a skeptical yet reasonably knowledgeable audience. I don’ t know their demographics but I suspect it’s largely a young male audience so your writing needs to be appeal to them. I find ‘how to’ posts tend to do well on Digg, as do posts that break news or that are irreverent to some sort of institution.
- Topic of Writing - Digg has recently broadened the topics that it covers, however it’s roots are technology based and I find that blogs that have a technology focus tend to have a higher chance of being dugg repeatedly than blogs that are on other topics. This may change with time.
- Become a Digg User - perhaps one of the most powerful tips I can give you is to actually use Digg yourself. Become a part of the community, be an Active Digger (not just of your own sites), watch what stories make it big, analyze their style and topic, make connections with other diggers. Don’t do all this just to manipulate the system but because in doing it you could well learn a thing or two about building a successful site, have some fun and meet some cool people.
- Get on other Key Sites/Blogs - One way to get highly Dugg is to be featured on other sites with a Digg Culture. For example blogs like Life Hacker routinely have the sites that they link to get flow on diggings. Similarly, other social bookmarking sites like delicious and reddit often bring i a type of traffic which will then also digg your posts. Ultimately the more people that see your post the higher chance of it being bookmarked - however there are certain sites that can send traffic that are more likely to do so.
- Drive Traffic to Diggable Posts - a few weeks ago I noticed an interesting trend on one of my blogs statistics. It seemed that every Friday (or at least every second one) I was getting on the front page of Digg with one of my posts. This was strange to me as I had not purposely tried to get any of those posts featured in that way but almost as regularly as clockwork they were. Why was this? The answer lay in my weekly email newsletter which I sent, you guessed it, every Friday morning to thousands of readers. While I hadn’t mentioned Digg in those newsletters and had not asked readers to do it - the fact that I sent thousands of readers to a freshly written post all at the same time meant that a certain percentage of them Dugg it (partly because the Digg Culture was already in effect as I’d previously been at the top of Digg on that blog). It struck me that I was onto a good thing so I began to release my more ‘diggable posts’ on Fridays instead of randomly and let my newsletter continue to do its work.
- Make it easy to Digg your work - I know that some people hate the recently common practice of putting social bookmarking icons at the end of posts but they can at times be the difference between getting your post on the front page of Digg or not. I choose not to use them but if I do see one of my posts rising in the number of Diggs that they have I will generally add a text link at the end of my posts pointing to the Digg page that readers might like to visit in order to bookmark it. This means that not every post on my blogs has a digg button - but those that someone has bookmarked often get enough extra diggs to get on the front page.
- Titles and first lines are Important - I find that in most cases that I’ve had a post I’ve written submitted to Digg that the person who submits it uses my title (or at least something close to it). In many cases they also use the first line or two of my post as the description. As a result it is important to hone your title writing skills and to think carefully about how you start your posts. Posts that make it to the Digg front page are punchy, informative and draw readers in to read more.
- Digg Your Own Stories - With Caution - I quite often get asked whether I submit my own posts to Digg. To be honest, in my early days I did, but I found I had a much higher rate of getting to the front page when someone else did it naturally, so I stopped. My attitude is that getting into Digg is something that I want to happen naturally but that once it’s in and climbing the ‘upcoming stories’ ranks that digging my own story is something that I’ll do on posts that I think are worthy of digging. I’ll also pass the digg page link onto a few friends on occasion to help it on it’s way - however this is not something I engage in heavily because I’m much more interested in organic results for my blogs these days. Also don’t aim to get on the front page of Digg every day (or even every week). I’ve found that some digg users actually become suspicious of sites that get Dugg too much - moderation is the key.
- Celebrate Diggings…. Subtly - If you get on the front page of Digg I think it can be worthwhile to subtly mention it on your blog and/or thank your readers for it. Don’t go over the top with it (or your readers will think you’re boasting or obsessed) but to mention it reinforces that you’re a diggable blog which may trigger other stories that you write to be dugg. Subtlety is the key though - don’t be obsessive or cheesy about it.
- Quality Content - Ultimately Digg users (like most web users) like quality, useful and unique content. They get frustrated with second rate writing, lots of mistakes, recycled stories and sub standard site design. If you work hard on building a quality website you’ll substantially increase the chances of building a Diggable blog. Once again - don’t be obsessive about it. Build your blog up to be a site that people enjoy and want to come back to and let your Digg culture grow in it’s own time.
Digg This Here - I had to follow my own advice! :-)
Written on December 24th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 01:12 am by Darren Rowse
Five Things you May Not Know about this little enternetusers
Well the five things meme has circulated backwards and forwards through the blogosphere and I thought I’d escaped it as it does seem to be whimpering out - however Chris Garrett posted today that I was the only slack one in his list of tagees not to respond which alerted me to the fact that I had in fact been tagged. Doh!
Ok - so let me see what I can come up with.
Five things not commonly known about me:
- I used to be a goth (you know - black everything, hair, nail polish, lipstick….).
- I’ve done quite a variation of jobs over the past decade including - office furniture buyer and sales, youth work, in-flight catering kitchen work, laborer, warehousing, tour manager for a band, stationary sales, minister/church planter… blogger.
- I started my first business when I was 11 - selling pictures of Brooke Shields from my mothers magazines to my male classmates to stick on their books. I started my second business at 13, selling pens, paper, folders and other stationary to my classmates out of the spare locker next to mine. Bother operations were eventually shut down by teachers - but not before making me some nice coin (well nice for a kid).
- I used to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day.
- When studying my Bachelor of Business in Marketing I failed Business Statistics 101 three times before passing it on my fourth attempt.
Ok - so who to tag with this? Is there any blogger out there that hasn’t done it yet? Leave a comment and I’ll tag the first 5.
Tag Update
Here are my ‘tags’ to the first five who asked - Josh, Alan, Rich, Vincent and Tim.
Go to it Fellas!
Written on December 23rd, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 01:12 am by Darren Rowse
From the enternetusers Christmas Party
Well today’s the last working day before Christmas here and while a lot of my friends are out at office parties this work at home single person business guy is kicking back having my own little enternetusers office party.
I’m toying with the idea of photocopying my bum and/or making a move on the boss - but all in all it’s one of the tamer office parties I’ve been to.
Perhaps next year a few Melbourne ProBlogging types should get together for drinks and a face to face party.
What’s happening at enternetusers over the Holidays?
A few readers have asked whether this blog will take a break over the holiday period so I thought I should share my plans.
Between now and the start of the New Year I’ll continue to blog here at enternetusers (although it will be lighter than normal). I’ll cover any breaking news and have a few posts already written that I’ll post at some point - but I figure a few light days with the family are probably what I need at the moment after a pretty heavy year.
Then in the second week of January we’re heading down the coast for a few days break and I’ve arranged for a special guest blogger to take my place for the week. Tony Hung from Deep Jive Interests is going to to take over the blog that week which I’m really looking forward to as Tony has become one of my daily reads in the last month or two.
I’m also looking forward to the break as I’m feeling very tired at the moment after such a huge year.
My other blogs will similarly be light posting for the coming week. A Digital Photography School I’ve just posted a Christmas Photography Tips post and will take a week off.
Speaking of that blog - I’m going to post a case study update of it in the coming week as a few readers have been asking how it’s been going and there have been a few interesting developments I’m looking forward to sharing.
Christmas Wishes
While I’ll probably post between now and Christmas I thought I’d take this opportunity to wish you all a happy time over the coming week or so.
Those of you that are able to get away for a few days - I hope you have safe travels. Those of you who are working through - I hope you can find a little time to relax and enjoy the season with someone special.
Thank you to everyone for another great year of blogging. While there have been challenges this year it’s been one that has been full of wonderful experiences and moments. I don’t say it enough, but I do value your readership and support.
The community at enternetusers has been very rich. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve received encouraging emails and comments from readers on days when it all seemed to get too much - you spur me on to keep blogging and finding new ways to improve what I do and for that I thank you all.
I hope the next couple of weeks is a fun and relaxing time for everyone!
Written on December 22nd, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 09:12 pm by Darren Rowse
Group Writing Project Winners
Now that the final submissions are all in for the Reviews and Predictions Group Writing Project it’s time to announce the prizes from our wonderful and generous sponsors who in total gave $2500 USD in gifts as incentives to participate.
The following 10 winners were selected randomly (using a random number generator) to win the prizes. Congratulations to each of them and better luck next time to the 282 participants who didn’t come away with a prize this time around.
While there’s no formal judging in this project to determine a winner the true judging now happens from you the reader of these posts as you surf through the list of participants searching for your favorite to link up to. Post your top 10 and share some link love.
Thanks for everyone who participated.
Here are the 10 winners.
- Terry wins the 30GB iPod Video for their post Top 10 Ugliest Sneakers of 2006. This was donated by Poker on a Mac.
- Daniel wins $100 and a book from Dave from Ask Dave Taylor Tech Support and The Intuitive Life Business Blog for his post 101 Blog Tips I learned in 2006.
- Nic wins a web hosting package worth $240 for the post Top 10 “Crzy” Tech Gifts. This was donated by Thrive Web Marketing.
- Rob wins a $100 Amazon voucher from DeveloperCube for his post Looking Ahead in Homebrewing.
- Greg wins two free passes (worth $349 each) to eMoms at Home coaching course in January for his post Ooh, baby, baby it’s a wired world — but what is going to change in residential real estate in the next 12 months? Almost nothing... (which should get a bonus prize for the longest title name).
- Todd wins the Nintendo Wii for his post Top 8 YouTube Videos of 2006. This was kindly donated by 451 Press.
- Sarina wins $100 cash or $500 in advertising credit from bloglinkr for her post Six Moments that Changed My Foodie Life in 2006.
- Tiago wins $100 cash from The Blogging Times for their post A Blogosfera Brasileira de 2006.
- Roberta wins a $100 gift card from giftcertificates.com for her post Why We’ll Fork Over $15.00 to Hear Britney’s New CD in 2007. This was donated by Rob Schaumer.
- Nancy wins $100 cash for her post Baby Name Stock Market: My Picks for 2006. This was donated by Information for Her Australia for Australian Women.
Winners have been notified via the email addresses that they submitted with their entries and sponsors will be in touch with them shortly.
Thanks again everyone.
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