Archive for 'Blogging'
Blogged - A Better Blog Directory
Posted on 25. Feb, 2008 by admin.
There sure isn’t a shortage of blog directories around. In fact it was only a little over a year ago when a great rush of directories opened up when the “make money online” blogging craze hit.
These overnight directories were marketed as a place to gain extra traffic and exposure to your blog - yet they were usually horribly designed and were not much benefit for to those actually looking to find blogs. In fact, I don’t believe there really is a good place to find blogs if you are a non-blogger.
But the newly launched Blogged.com seems a little different for a number of vital reasons. Number one, its not an offshoot of a bigger service or product. Therefore the directory is front and center and doesn’t require a myriad of clicks to get into. And secondly, the whole service is focused towards finding better blogs (emphasis of finding).
When I get back from my holiday I will sure will be signing up!
Continue Reading
7 Funky Ways to Monetize a Blog
Posted on 17. Feb, 2008 by admin.
I know what you’re thinking - another post about how to monetize a blog. Whats New! Well i got together with co-contributer John Davis to come up with some creative ways to monetize a blog without selling your soul to PayPerPost or filling your blog full of ads. In fact - where going against the trend and reccommending a completely different approach.
How many blogs a chocked full of advertising, affiliate banners, text ads, sponsored posts and adsense! Aren’t there any better and more attractive ways to monetize a blog? Here are some different (funky) ways to monetize a blog:
Background Advertising
Turn your entire background into an advertisement! CollegeHumor and Perez Hilton use this method all the time and it works really well. Funnily enough it isn’ that “in your face” and is often done extremely tastefully. And yes there is an ad network dedicated to just this type of advertising - AdCamo.
404 Goldmine
Whats wrong with chucking up a few affiliate links on a 404 page. Usually a 404 page, just tells users they are looking for something that isn’t there - so why not tell them that as well as telling them about a great new affiliate product! This is unobtrusive and making good use of otherwise wasted pageviews and space.
IndieKarma
Ok so this hasn’t taken off - but if it does you can thank me. With IndieKarma you install a little widget on your website and other IK users can choose to donate, say, $0.01 everytime the visit your blog. Doesn’t sound like much but imagine if just 50% of your readers paid you everytime they visited your blog. IndieKarma is still young so they giving away $1 to the first 5000 users who register. IK = a great way to say thanks for good content and earn $$$
Spin Off Products
Don’t just promote someone elses products through affiliate links, make your own! Lots of bloggers have created there own ebooks, software, reports, membership sites etc. Loyal readers equal customers more often then not. Take a look at the not yet complete 10DollarScripts being built by my business partner John Davis that will one day be an extension of the blog.
Rent Out Your Blog
Don’t want to sell you beloved blog that you have spent the last 12 months building up? Well rent it out. Sure its a daunting thought - letting someone else have control of your blog. But don’t worry, like any good landlord you should set some clear terms. ie. number of posts, don’t mess with the links, design etc. This is perfect for holidays! If you’re going on a break, instead of finding guest posters just find a tenant.
Build a Jobs Board
This one is for the bigger blogs. Adding a jobs board is a real simple way to monetize a blog. And thanks to Job-a-matic, a point and click board creator used by many big blogging brands, you can create one in minutes.
Give Your Content A Voice
Odiogo will turn your blog posts into high quality audio files with ads! Therefore you earn $$$ every time someone listens to your blog. Not only will you expand your blogs reach you will be profiting from the move as well.
Remember this weeks contest - best comment wins $10 cash via PayPal. Just make a comment on this post or any future or past posts before the 22nd of February to be in the running. Find out more here.
Continue Reading
Links: Some Great Marketing Posts
Posted on 16. Feb, 2008 by admin.
Here are some recent articles that have caught my eye:
Entrecard Traffic. Disliked By Advertisers? - I think think this could be true. As a fairly heavy advertiser, I sometimes skip over blogs with Entrecard. Should I be doing this?
Using Clusty For Blog Content and Research- Nice little post on a different kind of search engine.
The Secret to Successful Blog Promotion - A really long post on some successful blog promotion techniques
Continue Reading
MyBlogLog on A Slow And Steady Decline
Posted on 12. Feb, 2008 by admin.
It wasn’t that long ago when MyBlogLog widgets seemed to be appearing on blogs all over the internet, and it was rare to find a popular blog without it. But looking across the blogosphere now finding the widget is becoming a rarity.
Less and less people are using MyBlogLog and data from Compete.com clearly confirms this - they are on a slow and steady decline with a massive 40%+ drop in visits over the past year.
So what is responsible for the decline of MBL? I believe there are a number of factors including these:
- Blindness - I don’t even notice the recent readers widget anymore - it seems to just blend into the page and I pay no attention to it. Therefore, its unlikely that I am going to click it let alone interact with the widget.
- Widget Clean Up - Recnetly there seemed to be a blogger revolution to clean up the masses of widgets bloggers would habitually install for no good reason.
- Server Issues - MyBlogLog experienced many server and reliability issues. Some bloggers even had to remove the widget temporarily to even access there blogs and many bloggers experienced slow loading pages.
- Yahoo - When Yahoo decided to integrate the Yahoo ID with MBL, they also decided to introduce a lot of bugs. Personally, I had great troubles trying to connect my Yahoo ID with MyBlogLog and this was my breaking point.
- Common Sense - Although all the above points probably caused the decline of MyBlogLog, I believe that common sense was the major contributing factor - bloggers, like myself realized there was no true value in the widget.
Why do you think MyBlogLog is on a slow and steady path to destruction? Will they survive? Will Microsoft kill off this service with the looming acquisition?
Continue Reading
Park Your Domains with Wordpress
Posted on 10. Feb, 2008 by admin.
I own lots of domains. Many are parked using special software that puts up an adsense focused page on the domain, in anticipation for either sale of the domain or development. Using the parking tools I do are probably way over the top for the majority of users and can also be quite pricey. So if you’re about to launch a blog, but not quite up to the launch bit then I have a great theme for you - LaunchPad
LaunchPad is an absolutely awesome Wordpress theme that you can use to park your blog domain in style. Its simple, elegant and looks perfect!
But not only will this theme make your parked domain shine, it adds some really cool functionality - namely an email updates subscription box and a big RSS button. So you can grab some subscribers before your blog even launches. Cool huh!
I am about to launch (or relaunch) a blog I acquired a while back and I got to try out this theme in all its glory. Check it out at NameOp.com
Take a look and tell me what you think
Continue Reading
Helium Spat on Me!
Posted on 09. Feb, 2008 by admin.
I was asked to review Helium along time ago when I was working for Tap Media. Helium claims to be a community of publishers that pays its writers.
When I originally did the review, I registered at Helium and wrote 4 relatively short articles. They were nothing special but they were written for mass appeal (the more people who view your articles the more you get paid). And then I forgot about Helium.
Only today did I stumble across the site again, and I was tempted to login and see if the promise of real $$’s were there. I didn’t have any high expectations but….$0.40! Come on!
It feels as though Helium has stolen my content and tossed some loose change at my feet.
So my advice to all you budding freelance writers, stay away from the lure of Helium and its false promises. There are plenty of better places to put your content (even sell it) and make a lot more then a mere $0.40 in 6+ months.
Continue Reading
ScratchBack Could be the Solution
Posted on 08. Feb, 2008 by admin.
Who was hit by the Google Bomb? I’m talking about the bomb Google dropped a while ago that dropped the PR of many blogs and sites, that were sellings text links. Basically this was Google punishing the internet for trying to game their system.
I thought I would leave it a month or two and see how things panned out. I predicted that services like Text Link Ads would try and change to focus more on traffic rather than PR, but everything still looks as per.
So many bloggers, fearing another inevitable Google bomb, have stopped selling links through TLA. In fact, I have heard a lot less press about TLA and am only receiving more and more emails basically begging me to continue advertising (well maybe not begging).
Enter ScratchBack. This horribly designed site offers a more traffic orientated model for text links, which seems to be a hit among bloggers. And yes ScratchBack needs to hire a fricken designer, how a website gets away with such a disgusting design is a mystery.
But can ScratchBack actually compete or replace the revenue a blogger will lose if they stop using TLA all together - maybe, maybe not. Once again, I think this concept will work really well with the top 1% of blogs and fail on most of the others. I might be wrong, let me know.
I lost PR on two of my previous blogs (I managed to sell them just in time) and I certainly won’t be using TLA as a publisher again - further more, I doubt I will risk advertising with them either.
Continue Reading
Free Theme: Blue Lily
Posted on 04. Feb, 2008 by admin.
Just came across a great free wordpress theme from BlogohBlog.com
Entitled Blue Lily, this theme features 3 columns and is widget ready. It sports a funky web 2.0 design and is also xhtml validated!
Of course its free and available from this page
P.S - make sure you also check out the other themes on this site as they are all of great quality.
Continue Reading
Blogitive is Dead!
Posted on 01. Jan, 2008 by admin.
Blogitive, a service similar to PayPerPost which offers you the opportunity to get paid for writing sponsored posts looks dead!
The concept of Blogitive was heavily geared towards SEO and the majority of opportunities available seemed both spammy and of low quality. It was impossible to match an opportunity with your blogs theme (that is unless you wrote about Gold Bullion investment!). However they made payouts on a regular basis and it was a super simple way to monetize a blog that noboddy read.
However, it now looks as though the service is dying and I expect it won’t be too long until it fades into nothing. The sites blogs hasn’t been updated since may and the internal news system hasn’t been updated since November. Furthermore, it seems like they have stopped approving new blogs. I submitted a test blog to the site and it has remained “pending” for weeks now. And it also looks like the offers have dried up with only one available.
Continue Reading
New Years is a Time for a Blogging Makeover
Posted on 01. Jan, 2008 by admin.
Here are some quick tasks for the New Year:
New Design
Its amazing just how fast a design can get old! If yours is looking a little on the tired side, you could benefit from a new design. But even just a logo change or swapping some colors could have a dramatic effect.
New Blogroll
I strongly believe a blogroll should be made up of a combination of blogs you read and sites you own. I hate seeing a blog just with paid text links! These blogs lack character and are even being selfish. Giving a link back to your fav reads is the least you can do for all the great content that blogger is producing. So with that said, its now time to update your blogroll wih your current fav reads.
New Backlinks
Hit the New Year running (marketing wise) with some new backlinks. Every blog could benefit with a boost in traffic and Seach Engine rankings and lots of new backlinks will give you this New Years boost. I like to use a combination of blogs and directories to place links on. Sure this may cost a little but its worth it.
New Features
New Years is the time for launching new features! Something as small as installing a new plugin on your blog could create an air of excitement. I’m planning on installing lots of new plugins and will follow it up with a summary post.
New Clean Look
Get rid of all those annoying widgets, badges and affiliate ads. They aren’t making you money/traffic (you have had the entire year to discover that) so bin em! They are only creating clutter and gathering dust.