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
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Spotlight: Mikes Money Making Mission
Posted on 14. Feb, 2008 by admin.
In this weeks blog spotlight, I am going to shine the light on one of the very first Money Making Blogs that I ever came across. “Mikes Money Making Mission” is just that - a mission to make money online using free blogs. Oh and by the way, unlike the majority of money making blogs, this one does make money!
Thats right, mike is using free blogs. So theres no hosting, domain or bandwidth fees so whatever he makes will most likely go straight into his pocket.
Lots of the content on MMMM could be classified as run of the mill (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing) but there is still a great deal of original posts with some great concepts. I really liked Mike’s post about Satellite Blogs, which I though was a really neat concept and one which i’m sure I will use in the future.
But what I really think made this blog were the weekly profit updates. Sure every blog at the time was doing it, but I really enjoyed reading these posts as they even influenced my income strategy at times. But now it seems Mike has canned this concept and think its a real blow to the blog.
Check it out and tell me what you think.
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.
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Contest: Best Comment Wins!
Posted on 13. Feb, 2008 by admin.
The best comment wins $10 cash via PayPal.
This is the first in what will be a weekly contest offering a cool prize each and every week. This time its $10 cash via PayPal. All you have to do is post a comment on any of the posts on this blog. Next week (22nd February) we will choose the best comment and award the prize. Make sure you leave a valid email address when you comment so we can get back to you if you win.
Stay tuned for more weekly contests!
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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?
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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
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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.
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Freebie: 10 Gambling PLR Articles
Posted on 08. Feb, 2008 by admin.
The first of hopefully many weekly freebies - here are 10 Gambling PLR (Private Label Rights) articles. Do what you want with them!
I use PLR articles on domains in my portfolio which are currently just being parked. Mixed with Adsense, some clever design and the right domain these can be very profitable.
Stay tuned for more!
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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.
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RankScale - Plug your Site
Posted on 07. Feb, 2008 by admin.
When the Prologue Wordpress theme was released, I jumped into action and decided to build a web app for online marketers to share their resources. The site is built using Wordpress and the Prologue theme.
It only took me a couple of hours to complete and I think it turned out alright, although i’m planning to do a bit of coding work to make the entire site more user friendly.
So head on over to RankScale and start plugging your resources!
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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.