ALL BLOGGERZ ARE BROTHERZ!!

WWW or no-WWW?

2008-11-24T07:16:00.000-08:00

Whenever you create a website or a blog it usually can be accessed either through “http://www.domain.com” or “http://domain.com”. While this feature might appear useful at a first sight (since people can type whatever version they prefer) over the long run it will harm your search engine ranking.

The problem arises because Google and other search engines view the two versions as two distinct sites, even if they have the exact same content (technically, in fact, the “www” denotes a subdomain that could point to different content).

Search engine ranking is based, among other things, on the number of incoming links to your site. If you keep the two versions available some people will link to “http://www.domain.com” while other people will link to the “http://domain.com”, basically splitting your backlink count.

Having two different versions might damage you in popular lists and social bookmarking sites as well. The picture on the right was extracted from Populicious, a site that lists the most popular sites on Delicious. If you take a look you will notice that Digg is listed both at the 7th and 10th position. This happens because the list treats “http://www.digg.com” and “http://digg.com” as two different sites. Shoud only one version be available the combined number would place Digg on the first position of the list.

How do you solve the problem for your blog? The easiest way is to set up a “301 Permanent Redirect” from the “no-www” version to the one with “www”, or vice-versa. Once the redirect is in place every time a visitor types http://domain.com he will automatically be redirected to the “www” version.

By the way, if you are wondering whether you should go with or without “www”, it does not matter. The important thing is that you pick one and stick with it.

Update: Check out the article “How to setup a 301 Redirect“

Domain name search

2008-11-24T07:14:00.000-08:00

One of the best things you can do to improve your blog is buy your own domain. Free blog platforms like Blogger are fine to get a first contact with the blogosphere, but as soon as you decide that you will invest time in your blog I highly recommend that you buy a domain.

Once you decide to buy a domain you will need to search for domains that are not registered yet, but where exactly should you go? Below I will list 3 useful services for someone looking for domain names.

Who.is: you type the domain name and the server will check the availability with most of the extensions (.com, .net, .org, .biz, .us, .tv and so on). The advantage of this service is that, if the domain is already registered, it will also display the details of the registration (date, registrant, company, etc.).

Instant Domain Search: this site checks the availability of .com, .net and .org domains only. The advantage is that it reports the results in real time. As you type the domain you will see whether it is free or not, letter by letter.

Domains Bot: if you are having trouble finding a suitable domain this service will certainly help you. All you need to do is type one or more keywords and it will generate hundreds of suggestions.

200 Prefixes and Suffixes for Domain Names

2008-11-24T07:12:00.000-08:00

If you ever tried to register some domain names you probably know how difficult it is to find something that has not been registered yet. You start with an idea for a cool website (excitement), then you narrow down a couple of keywords (more excitement) and suddenly “Damn! Who the heck registered that already!” (anger)…

One of the most effective ways to find a free domain name that is relevant to your site is to grab a keyword and add prefixes or suffixes to it, until you find something unique. Suppose you want to launch a blog about marketing, all you have to do is pick the word marketing and start adding prefixes like “emarketing.com”, “promarketing.com”, “polimarketing.com” or suffixes like “marketingspot.com”, “marketingvox.com” or “marketingpulse.com”.

Below you will find more than 200 prefixes and suffixes, so just grab your keyword and run through the list, sooner or later you will find some unique combination that no one has registered yet. Good luck!

Update: If you like this list, consider purchasing my book “Killer Domains.” It has an even bigger list with over 400 prefixes ans suffixes, and many tools and techniques to find good domain names.

Classic suffixes:

house
central
point
home
place
garden
site
spot
park
dome
bay
web
net
cave
base
heaven
portal
world
camp
network
county
street
city
alley
depot
valley

Other suffixes:

now
resources
tools
source
review
system
book
guide
talk
data
vision
load
box
focus
beat
voice
share
cafe
nexus
zone
sight
link
lab
insight
vine
board
flow
signs
network
wire
cast
ville
nation
egg
cove
news
today
future
fun
watch
story
fever
coast
side
road
heat
bite
insider
club
connect

Classic prefixes:

the
my
i
me
we
you
e
top
pro
best
super
ultra
all
cyber
simply
free
1st

Other prefixes:

meta
re
metro
urban
head
hit
front
techno
ever
rush
think
solo
radio
vip

Adjectives that can be used as prefixes:

hot
smart
cool
hot
fast
fresh
sleek
first
daily
best
sharp
light
classic
fast
great
quick

Latin prefixes:

ubi (when)
bis (twice)
ad (to, towards)
ambi (both)
inter (between)
liber (free)
mono (single)
poli (many)
tele (distant)
omni (all)
exo (outside)
extra (addition)
hyper (over)
hypo (under)
intro (within)
proto (first)
intra (within)
micro (little)
macro (large)
multi (many)
neo (new)
iso (equal)
mono (one)

Latin words that can be used both as prefix and suffix:

io (I in Italian)
virtus (virtue)
ego (me)
vox (voice)
ex (out of)
ideo (idea)
novo (renew)
novus (novelty)
pax (peace)
rex (king)
velox (fast)
verus (true)
vivo (alive)
nova (new)

Multipliers prefixes:

pico
nano
micro
milli
kilo
mega
giga
tera
peta

Scientific prefixes:

aero
cosmo
deca
eco
geo
hex
oxy
uni
poly

Words that work both as prefix and suffix:

media
direct
access
ez
easy
info
interactive
biz
buzz
bit
byte
up
tech
on
out
auto
pulse
x
venture
trend
life
retro
secret

Tell Google your Preferred Domain

2008-11-24T07:09:00.000-08:00

Sometime ago I wrote an article titled “WWW or no-WWW“ where I explained that most sites can be accessed either through “http://www.domain.com” or “http://domain.com”. Leaving both domain versions working is not optimal because it might split your backlink count and consequently damage your search engine rankings.

Apart from setting a “301 Redirect” you can also use a Google featured called Webmaster Tools to inform Google about what domain version you prefer. This will make sure that Google handles the backlink count correctly and also that the right version will be displayed on search results.

Here is a quote from Google’s help center:

The preferred domain is the one that you would liked used to index your site’s pages (sometimes this is referred to as the canonical domain). Links may point to your site using both the www and non-www versions of the URL (for instance, http://www.example.com and http://example.com). The preferred domain is the version that you want used for your site in the search results. Once you tell us your preferred domain name, it may help us determine PageRank for your site more accurately.

Via: John Chow

12 Rules for Choosing Domain Names

2008-11-24T07:06:00.000-08:00

SEOmoz has has a great list of rules to follow when coming up with domain names, check it out:

Brainstorm 5 Top Keywords
Make the Domain Unique
Only Choose Dot-Com Available Domains
Make it Easy to Type
Make it Easy to Remember
Keep the Name as Short as Possible
Create and Fulfill Expectations
Avoid Copyright Infringement
Set Yourself Apart with a Brand
Reject Hyphens and Numbers
Don’t Follow the Latest Trends
Use an Ajax Domain Selection Tool

Most of those rules are straight forward, but you can read a complete description of them here.

Domain Tasting

2008-11-24T07:05:00.000-08:00

Domain tasting refers to the practice of registering up several domain names to test whether they receive type-in traffic and then dropping the domains that do not. This is possible because most domain registrars offer a 5 days refunding period.

This practice should not affect the general public, but lately people are reporting that some domain search data is being sold to domain tasting companies. In other words, when you search for a certain domain someone might be collecting that information and selling it, possibly making you lose that domain.

The DailyDomainer has an interesting article titled “Who is monitoring your domain searches?“, outlining how domain tasting work and how one could protect himself against it. There are three simple tips to avoid losing a precious domain to tasters:

Delay the search for domains until you are ready to purchase them
If one of your searched domains gets registered by a domain taster you should wait 5 days and check for availability again (make sure to not visit the domain during that period)
If you are in doubt about several domains buy them all, choose and then drop the ones that you will not use

Blog names and domain extensions

2008-11-24T07:01:00.000-08:00

Sometime ago I wrote the article “How to Choose a Blog Name“ where I described three simple rules that you should follow when naming your blog. On the third rule I argued that a blog name should be equal to the domain name or else you will lose readers along the way.

When people come to your blog through a search engine or through a link on another blog they will read the blog name and go straight to the content. Should those people want to return to your blog after a certain time they will just type the blog name followed by a .com, and if they do not find the blog there it is probable that they will just forget about it and move on.

Apart from making the blog name match the domain name, however, you should also pay attention to the domain extension. As I mentioned before most people are used to .com domains, whenever they need to type something they will always try first the .com. Not everyone has a .com domain for their blog, though. A simple solution to avoid losing readers if you have a .net or .org extension, for instance, is to add the extension to your blog name or logo.

If you have the domain “techblog.com” you should name your blog “Tech Blog”. If on the other hand you have “techblog.net” or “techblog.tv” you should name your blog or design your logo as “TechBlog.net” and “TechBlog.tv” respectively. This simple tweak will ensure that readers will remember the extension of your domain if they decide to revisit the blog in the future.

How to monetize domain names

2008-11-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

Domain names are the real estate of the Internet, and domainers make money from buying, parking and selling them. Even if you are not trying to make a living from domain names it is always a good idea to know how they work. You might want to start another blog in the future and thus having a small portfolio of good domains could turn out to be useful.

Aviva published an extensive article titled “How to Get Started as a Domainer” describing domain buying strategies, best practices, how to monetize domains and so on. Below you will find some takeaways from the article:

If you are trying to make money with domains look for keyword typos (e.g. Mortgeges.com)
Consider using automated domain research tools like AjaxWhois.com
If you are holding domains for long periods make sure to activate the auto renew
Avoid numbers and hyphens on domain names
Be careful with domain pinchers (people that register domains using information from whois services) and thieves
In order to monetize your domains you can either park them or redirect them to a single traffic collector site running your own PPC ads

Keep your domain names at a registrar

2008-11-24T06:57:00.000-08:00

Most web hosting plans offer a free domain name registration for new users. People usually take advantage of that feature since it enables them to save some money while keeping both the domain name and the hosting plan with the same company, which should make the site management more efficient.

Well, that is not quite true. In fact it is just the opposite, having your domain name registered with your hosting company might be a really bad idea. Over the years it is very likely that you will need or want to change your web host, you might find a more interesting plan somewhere else or you might need to switch to a dedicated server due to increasing traffic. If your hosting company is also managing your domain name they might give you a headache before performing the required changes on the nameservers (i.e. making the domain point to the new host).

The solution for this problem is to keep all your domains names registered with a reliable registrar (GoDaddy and eNom are good ones) while having a separated company to take care of the web hosting. Apart from avoiding trouble with nameserver changes and domain transfers this method will also be more efficient to manage your portfolio of domain names.

How Expired Domains Work

2008-11-24T06:51:00.000-08:00

In the early days of the Internet when a domain name expired it was already available for other people to register it. Nowadays the process is more complex; the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) created what is called “Grace Period” to protect the registrants.

The Daily Domainer blog has an interesting article titled “Expired – But Not Gone” describing the process in detail. Basically once a domain expires it enters into the “Auto Renew Grace Period”. This period usually lasts 30 days and the owner of the domain is able to renew anytime during that time frame. Should the owner fail to renew the domain it will enter into the Redemption period.

The registrar becomes the owner of the domain on this period, and it will try to sell the domain through auctions or retain it in the case it generates PPC revenues. Finally if the domain is not sold through an auction and if it is also not generating revenues the registrar will release it.

Promotion By Using domorepromo.com

2008-11-24T06:45:00.000-08:00

One of the best SEO Marketing is get a lot of high quality of backlink. Nowadays, it is getting to hard to get an original backlink that provide by someone else. There is so much of SEO and SEM campaign services provider at this time. One that I use rapidly is classified ads submitter from DoMorePromo.

This site allows us to submit our site URL into much of classified ads provider at one time. The step is so easy to operate. We just have to post our ads title, URL link, Description and e-mail. This submitter was free, but now it cost some prize. However we can use this service for free by some promotional way.

The result is quite good, even for a new domain. I got so much backlink in a short time. Start uses this backlink submitter before the end of April and gets free 10 credits to use. SEO is important for your site or blog. Do not waste your money to grab some of it. Signup to DoMorePromo.com service now.

Renew Your Domain for Longer Periods

2008-11-24T06:40:00.000-08:00

Recently I renewed the domain DailyBlogTips.com for 5 years. It did cost me $50, and it was the first time I renewed a domain for longer than 1 year. Why did I do that?

I had heard many comments around the SEO sphere mentioning that Google and other search engines were monitoring the expiration date of domains in order to evaluate the legitimacy of the websites. Then, a couple of days ago, I came across the following quotation from a patent that Google filled some years ago:

Certain signals may be used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains. For example, domains can be renewed up to a period of 10 years. Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith.

That alone should make people think twice about renewing important domains for just 1 year. If you then consider that you will probably keep these domains for many years anyway, and that a longer renewal will also keep away the risk of losing your domains upon the expiration date, well, you realize that you probably should do it.

As with most SEO aspects, no one has a definite answer regarding how Google is treating the matter. Other than an upfront money payment, however, renewing your domain for longer periods does not have any negative sides, while it might have positive ones, so I guess it is worth it!

How to Find Short Domain Names

2008-11-24T06:31:00.000-08:00

When I saw the domain name of Kevin Rose’s newest venture, Pownce.com, I thought that maybe I should buy some short albeit weird domains myself.

Anyway, after researching a bit I managed to find two interesting tools for that purpose. The first one is dyyo.com, a search engine that will help you find 4 letter domain names.

Some time ago I even started looking for 2 and 3 letter domain names, only to discover that they were all gone… so 4 letter is as short as you can go.

According to the tool there are approximately 28,000 4 letter domain names still available. Most of them are unpronounceable words like bqhj.com or pqhn.com, and that is where the tool comes handy. You can specify letters for each position, so just stick some vowels in there, hoping to come up with something useful.

The second tool is 5letter.com, and as you probably guessed it can be used to find 5 letter domain names. Here you create a fragment and specify if the domain name should begin with that frament, end with it, or merely contain it.

For example, if I specify domains to begin with the fragment “po” I get the following names:

pozzr.com
pobie.com
pokoz.com
podrr.com

Promotion Guides

2008-11-24T06:27:00.000-08:00

No .com? Add the Domain Extension to Your Name and Logo

2008-11-24T06:16:00.000-08:00

We all know that .com domains are the best option, but it is also difficult to find good ones that have not been registered yet. The alternative is to register a .net or .org domain.

There are many popular blogs that are not hosted on .com domains, so if that is your case do not get discouraged. One thing that you should do, however, is to add your domain extension into the name and logo of your site.

The logic is quite simple. Suppose your domain is “coolwebsite.net”, but the name and the logo of the site both display only “CoolWebsite”. A visitor coming from another blog or from a search engine will pay attention to the name and logo, while neglecting the URL. Should that visitor want to visit your site the day after, it is likely that he will just open his browser and type “coolwebsite.com”, and if your site is not there he will just go somewhere else.

If your logo displays “CoolWebsite.net”, on the other hand, there is a higher chance that the user will recall the domain extension. If you do not own a .com domain, therefore, you should attach your extension to your name and incorporate it into your brand.

Want some practical examples? Check the three headers below, they come from popular blogs using this technique:

The 7 Characteristics of Good Domain Names

2008-11-24T06:11:00.000-08:00

Domain names are the real estate of the Internet. Just as a good location is vital for a bricks and mortar business, a good domain name will be the corner stone of your website’s success. But how to identify them? Below you will find the 7 characteristics of good domain names.

1. They are short

Good domain names are short. It is not a coincidence that all the three-letter and four-letter .com domains are already gone, and that the five-letter ones are going fast as well.

There is no definite number of characters that you should aim for, just remember that the shorter the better. If you really need some guidance, try to go below 10 characters, and never exceed 20.

As for the number of words, one-word domains are gold, two-word ones are good, three-word domains are average, and above that it is usually a bad idea.

Example: Quotes.com is a superb domain and probably worth millions of dollars. ProQuotes.com is a good two-word domain worth thousands of dollars. ProQuotesNow.com is an average domain and could be used for a website. YourProQuotesNow.com is plain worthless.

2. They are easy to remember

Many Internet users do not use bookmarks. They just memorize the domains of their favorite websites and type them whenever they wan to visit one. Guess what, if your domain is complex and not easy to remember you will lose these visitors along the way.

Example: Brcwr.com is a short domain name, but is not easy to remember at all, so it would be a bad idea to use it for your website (unless the initials represent the name of the website or a memorable message).

3. They are easy to spell

The last thing you want is visitors misspelling your domain and ending up somewhere else.

Avoid unusual foreign words, words that have complex pronunciation, strange combinations of letters and anything else that might cause someone to misspell your address.

Example: CappuccinoBar.com might be problematic for English speaking visitors. Cappuccino is an Italian word, and not everyone is aware where the doubles are placed.

4. They have a .com extension

Organizations might prefer to register a .org domain, and companies targeting very specific geographical regions might want to register a local domain (e.g. .it, .co.uk, .cn and so on). Apart from these cases, however, a .com domain is always the best way to go. This extension is the most popular around the around, and it is already stuck in people’s mind.

Visitors coming to your site via search engines or organic links will pay attention mostly to the name and not to the URL. The next time they want to visit your site it is very likely that they will just type its name followed by a .com. Guess what, if you are not there when they hit enter they will just go somewhere else.

Example: Darren Rowse created his popular blog on Problogger.net. Despite having a strong brand, some visitors were still going to Problogger.com. After a couple of years Darren decided to buy the .com version for $5,000 and redirect it to his site, so that no more visitors would leak.

5. They are descriptive

Many visitors will come to your site through the search engines and via direct links on other websites. That is, they will come if the domain that they will see will be appealing.

Having a descriptive domain name will give visitors an idea of what your site is about even before they enter it. If related keywords are present in the domain it might also help your search engine rankings.

Example: You would be able to guess what TelevisionGuides.com is about even before visiting it right?

Put it in another way. Suppose you are searching for a movie review. You make a quick search in Google. The first result comes from MikesLair.com. The second result comes from MoviesCentral.com. Which one would you rather click?

6. Or brandable

A brandable domain will have a nice pronunciation, an interesting combination of letters or simply an appealing visual effect. Sometimes they will not be descriptive, but they can be equally efficient.

Brandable domains will make your visitors associate the name with your website and its content. (Notice that brandable domains can be descriptive at the same time, but that is not always the case.)

Example: Kotaku.com is one of the most popular gaming blogs on the Internet. The domain is not descriptive at all, but the brand is so strong that gamers immediately recognize it across the web.

7. They don’t contain hyphens or numbers

Domain names containing hyphens and numbers are cheaper for a reason. They suffer the same problem of domains not using a .com extension or with complex spelling.

Consider Tech-World.com. The names that will stick in people’s mind are “tech” and “world.” Many visitors will just forget the hyphen along the way. Eventually they will try to access your site by typing TechWorld.com, in vain.

Numbers, on the other hand, will confuse people with the spelling. Suppose you registered Tech5.com. Visitors might mix it with TechFive.com, if they manage to remember the number in the first place!

Example: Coolest-Gadgets.com is an extremely popular gadget blog, with over 70,000 RSS subscribers. With such a huge readership you get people often typing the domain directly on the address bar. Needless to say that many of them would just forget to add the hyphen. The owner of the site bought CoolestGadgets.com afterwards to fix the problem.

Final remark

Do not get discouraged if your current domain doesn’t have all these characteristics; or if you can’t find one that does. These are just factors that you should consider when evaluating domain names.

There are plenty of examples of popular websites with domain names that lack in one or two points covered on the list. Just make sure that your domain has most of the characteristics and you should be fine.

Update: If you are looking for a domain names ebook, check out “Killer Domains.” It has all the tools and techniques that I use to find great and available domain names.

Domain Tasting is Taking a Hit from Google

2008-11-24T06:06:00.000-08:00

The DomainTools blog is reporting that Google will be changing its Adsense policy related to domain names. Basically they will prohibit the use of Adsense on domain names that are less than five days old.

This will probably affect many companies that used to taste domains on a large scale. Right now you can register a domain and delete it within five days at no cost. Registrar and other companies, therefore, used to register millions of domain names purely for the sake of “tasting” them. They would then put Adsense on the domains, make a good money for the initial five days, keep the domains that were generating decent traffic and delete all the rest.

This practice is part of the reason why you probably have a hard time finding free domain names. Without the financial incentive, though, it is likely that many domain tasters will need to revise their strategy.

The new policy from Google alone will not solve the problem — since registrars might keep tasting domains purely to see the ones that generate high traffic — but it sure represents a move in the right direction.

Now we just need to hope that the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) will take notice and act to stop this practice altogether, possibly by adding a fee to the tasted domains that are deleted within the grace period.

Update: If you are looking for a domain names ebook, check out “Killer Domains.” It has all the tools and techniques that I use to find great and available domain names.

Tough Times for GoDaddy

2008-11-24T05:56:00.000-08:00

GoDaddy is the registrar of several of my domain names. While I do think that their web hosting is crap, so far they have performed well as a registrar.

That being said, it looks like other people are not having the same luck with their services lately. Yesterday Mashable covered the story of a website that was suspended by GoDaddy due to “suspicious activity.”

Browsing around the web I also came across a website called NoDaddy, which is dedicated to report horror stories from users that got damaged by the company. Here is a quote from the homepage:

GoDaddy suspends accounts without due cause. They often even levy an arbitrary “fines” and hold your domain name ransom until you pay it. GoDaddy stores your credit card number when you make a purchase, allowing them to levy “fines” without your consent (example1, example2, example3).

For example, when Nick Berlette exposed a serious security hole in the website of DynaDot.Com, they apparently responded by persuading GoDaddy to shut down his blog rather than fixing their pathetic security [agiorlando.com]. GoDaddy of course complied immediately, and sent him this shutdown notice. Note that GoDaddy used the ransom approach here, saying he had two options: Pay a “$199 non-refundable reactivation fee” and GD will put his web site back up, or “if you choose to transfer the berlettefx.com domain name to another registrar, we first require that you pay a $75 administration fee … to cover the costs of responding to or “cleaning up” the situation caused by your web site.

Well, if nothing else I will be more careful from now on. GoDaddy should do its homework though, having such a bad publicity circulating around must cost big bucks, especially on the age of blogs and social media (NoDaddy was on the Delicious front page today indeed).

What registrar do you use? Have you had any problems with it in the past?

Update: If you are looking for a domain names ebook, check out “Killer Domains.” It has all the tools and techniques that I use to find great and available domain names.

Is It Just Me or Most Web 2.0 Domain Names Suck?

2008-11-24T05:49:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I was browsing around TechCrunch when I came across some articles that were listing web startups that would be participating on a Demo event.

The idea about getting startups grouped together to demonstrate what they products or services can do is pretty interesting, but that was not what caught my attention. Instead, I could not help but think about how bad some of these domain names were. Here are a few examples:

Webmynd.com (browsing history tracker)
Insoshi.com (social network platform)
Omnisio (video sharing)
Wundrbar (improved search)
Qrimp.com (web apps)
Gwt-ext.com (widget library)
Twitxr.com (picture sharing)
Yokld.com (local business finder)

I mean, Wundrbar.com? Gwt-ext.com? For real?

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that all my websites have awesome domain names. Even DailyBlogTips is a pretty average one; it is long and has 3 words. There is one big difference though: when I started these sites I had no clue of where I was going, and my startup budget was $10.

These companies, on the other hand, are trying to revolutionize their segments; to provide some innovative service that will become popular on the Internet. Usually they also have thousands of dollars backing them up (sometimes even millions of dollars…).

When I come across some of these names I get the impression that the company sent its secretary to ajaxwhois.com and told her to play around until she came out with a “cool” domain that was still available.

The takeaway message is: if you are going to launch a web startup, make sure to devote some of your time and money into finding or purchasing a good domain name. You will be stuck with it for the rest of the life of the company, after all.

Update: If you are looking for a domain names ebook, check out “Killer Domains.” It has all the tools and techniques that I use to find great and available domain names.

Entire Web Listing

2008-11-24T05:42:00.000-08:00

Entire Web Listing is a global directory which offers you world class services across the competitive world to highlight the information of your business by who are extremely specialized in the area. This would let your company to simplify its business operations and offer extra momentum of rising in your own business area. By the method of engaging vendors, your company will be able to reach up to date information systems which add new scale to its business. You will be able to offer more accurate information to your clients and keep them pleased by making them involved and involved in your business.

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Did You Buy YourName.com Already?

2008-11-24T05:38:00.000-08:00

All right let’s put this straight: if you read Daily Blog Tips regularly, there are good chances that one day you will become a web celebrity. If that is the case, you should register YourName.com before someone else does.

Now jokes apart, even if you just blog for hobby, I think it would be a wise idea to secure YourName.com. You never know what might happen in the future, what direction your career might take and so on, and for $9, registering your name on the Internet should definitely be worth it.

Take for example my situation. Right now I have no time whatsoever to start another project, even a small personal blog one. I am pretty sure that in the future I will want to share my personal opinions on different issues though, and perhaps even blog about topics like productivity or personal development. For that purpose I bought DanielScocco.com a while ago, and will just park it until I get the time or will to develop something on it.

Depending on your professional field, you could also use a website as a resume, and YourName.com is definitely the right domain for such a site.

Finally, owning YourName.com also reduces the chances of someone googling your name and finding the website of someone else. Google ergo sum is what they say. So what are you waiting for?

.sex, .dbt, .crap: Coming to a Domain Near Your Soon

2008-11-24T05:31:00.000-08:00

So now it is official. I was hoping the ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) would have enough common sense to discard this proposed regulation, but they approved it yesterday.

Basically it allows any person or company willing to spend $100,000 and with enough infrastructure to become a registrar, to create any domain extension it likes. That is right, ANY DOMAIN EXTENSION will now be possible.

Some examples I am sure people are already rallying to get include .sex, .porn, .orgy, .girls, .casino, .poker and so on. You get the idea.

Honestly I think this will be a huge mess, and the only motivator for ICANN to approve it was probably the money that they will be able to make thanks to the ~~porno~~ domain name industry and from companies wanting to secure their own extension.

Over at TechCult we started an initiative to fund TechCult.Shuttlecock .

Should Your Website Have a Static or Shared IP Address?

2008-11-24T05:22:00.000-08:00

Do you think it is better to have a shared or fixed IP address?

I confess that I didn’t know the answer right out of my head, so I went to research a bit. What I knew was that a shared IP is what you get most of the times when you sign for a shared hosting plan, and that usually you can get a static (also called fixed or dedicated) IP for a domain adding a couple of bucks to the monthly deal.

Under a shared IP address structure all the sites inside a server will have the same IP, say 212.90.80.130. Once a browser requests a page from a site inside that IP, the server will check what domain is being requested, and it will serve the correct page.

Under a static IP address structure, your site will have a unique IP that identifies it, even if it is hosted on a server with more sites.

Through my research I discovered that there is a small debate among SEOs about the influence of having a static IP address upon the search rankings of a website. Some people claim that it could actually help the rankings, but the majority agree that the sole fact of having a shared of a static IP address should not make any different at all in front of Google or other search engines.

I tend to go with the flow here, and I doubt that having a static IP per se would improve your search rankings.

There are cases where a shared IP could hurt your site though. Suppose one of the websites sharing your IP gets flagged for adult or spam content, or suffers some other strong penalty that extends to the whope IP address. Your website would inevitably suffer the consequences as well.

This is a rare situation, but it could happen.

If your website is growing fast or making a good amount of money, therefore, I think it could be a good idea to grab a dedicated IP. Just in case, as they say. I have booked one for Daily Blog Tips already.

On Domain Names, Size and Quality DOES Matter!

2008-11-24T05:19:00.000-08:00

What kind of impact will a domain name have on the success of the website hosted there? There are basically two schools of thought around the web.

a) “The domain is not a big deal” school: those people argue that while a good domain can help on the success of a website, it is not an important factor, because people are increasingly using browser bookmarks and subscription tools like RSS feeds, removing the need for them to remember the name of the website that they want to visit.

b) “The domain is vital” school: those people argue that despite bookmarks and RSS feeds, domains still play a very important role on the success of the websites built upon them. A good domain, therefore, can be the difference between a successful site and a flop.

Before proceeding with my analysis, however, I think it is important to define what a “good domain name” is. Summing it up, a good domain:

is short
is easy to remember
is easy to spell
is descriptive or brandable
does not contain hyphens and numbers
has a .com extension

You can read more about that on the article The 7 Characteristics of Good Domain Names.

I belong to the “domains are vital” school of thought, and I will tell you why, both with words and with numbers that I gathered on a small research.

Bear in mind that whenever I mention “domain name” throughout this article, I am also referring to the name of the website itself. In the majority of the cases those are the same after all, and for marketing purposes they should always be.

Everything Starts with the Domain

The biggest flaw on the argument of people that don’t think that domains play an important role on the success of websites lies on the assumption that web surfers will bookmark or subscribe to a given website right after visiting it.

That is not the case. Most people need to come across a website several times before making the decision to bookmark it or to subscribe to its service.

On the first visit they will come to that site via a link on another website or on a search engine. The domain name, however, will play an important role on the subsequent visits. If it is short, easy to remember and easy to spell, a visitor will not have a problem going back to that site in the future. If the domain is very long, hard to remember and hard to spell, however, there are great chances that the visitor will end up somewhere else, and will probably never return.

Now I am not talking exclusively about users that will remember your domain and type it directly in their browser URL bar after a couple of days. If your domain is long, difficult to spell or contains dashers and numbers, there is a possibility that the user will completely forget about it. After two or three days he won’t even remember that your site exists. A short and catchy domain, on the other hand, will stick on the mind of the visitor. Even if he will not be able to type that, Google is there to help him find your website again.

Another point to take into consideration is that connection between the domain name and the brand of a website. When you have dozens, if not hundreds of websites competing for the same niche, the brand factor will be determinant. If you then realize that the brand of any website is heavily anchored to its domain name, you can see how important domains become.

The Domains of the Top 250 Websites in the World

I know that numbers and facts speak louder than words, so instead of extending my prose I will back up my claims with a small research that I did. Basically I gathered the top 250 most popular websites in the world (according to Alexa) and counted how many characters and words their domains had. I also checked if they had a .com or another extension (e.g., .net, .org, .info and so on). Notice that sites with a foreign extension were excluded from the list for the sake of simplicity.

The results were pretty interesting. First of all, the average number of characters on the domain names was 7,15. The graph below presents the number of characters on the y-axis, and all the 250 domains on the x-axis. The red line is the average (the statistical mean).

Other interesting findings include:

Over 177 out of 250 domains had 8 characters or fewer. That is more than 70% of them
The average number of words was 1,58
The most common domain name (statistical mode) had 7 characters and 2 words
86,2% of the domains had a .com extension
only 11 out of the 250 domains (4,4%) contained a number
only 3 out of the 250 domains (1,2%) contained a dash

The Domains of the Last 250 Front Page Stories on Digg

One could say that the list with the 250 most popular sites in the world could be biased due to the presence service portals like search engines, email services, social networks and upload sites. I don’t think that the bias would be significant, but in order to remove the doubts I also profiled the domains of the last 250 websites that reached the front page of Digg. Those are mostly content websites, so they should complement the initial findings.

The numbers here point into the same direction. The average number of characters on those domain names was 8,47. Slightly higher than on the previous case, but still a small number. The graph below illustrates that.

The average number of words on the domains is 1,67, which is very similar to the number found on the previous case. Other interesting findings include:

89,6% of the domain names had a .com extension
146 out of the 250 domains (58,4%) had 8 or fewer characters
only 4 out of the 250 domains (1,6%) contained a dash
the most common domain (statistical mode) had again 7 characters and 2 words (e.g. youtube.com)

Oh But I know A Website That Is Popular And…

At this point I am pretty sure that some of you are thinking “Oh but I know a website that pretty popular and has a really long and confusing domain name.”

Well, you just found an exception to the rule.

It is like when you discuss smoking and health problems. Even if the statistics say that smoking will reduce your life expectancy by 20 years, there is always someone that has an uncle or a grand father that smoked his whole life and yet lived to the age of 100 years.

Your uncle or grand father represents the exception, and in no way it diminishes the validity of the statistical findings. The same applies to the statistics we showed above, even if you know a popular website with a really long and weird domain.

Conclusion: The Law of Domain Names

Based on that evidence, here is the conclusion (or the law of domain names):

All other things being equal (e.g., marketing budget, content quality, design, affiliation with larger websites and so on), a website with a good domain name will always outperform a competitor with a bad or average domain name.

Does this means that if you have a long or hard to remember domain you are doomed to fail? Not at all. But if you have a competitor on your niche that has a better domain, you will need to produce better content, offer a better service, or spend more money in promotion to compensate for that.

Poll: Do You Trust More .net or .org Domains?

2008-11-24T05:13:00.000-08:00

We all know that a .com extension is always the best way to go for a commercial or content website. Educational institutions might prefer .edu, and some people targeting a specific country might prefer a local extension like .co.uk, but on all other cases .com is king.

Unfortunately, finding a good and available .com domain these days is a tough task, and often times people need to settle for a .net or .org. Usually, in fact, only the .com version of their wanted domain will be taken, while both the .net and .org will be still available. In those situations, do you think the person should go with a .net or with a .org?

Notice that I am not asking what is your personal preference, but if you trust more a .net or a .org domain?

Suppose you were searching in google for “video games.” There are only two results: videogames.net and videogames.org. Which one would you click if you could check only one of them?

Have your say in our poll! (RSS and email subscribers might need to visit the website to see the poll)

Poll Results: 55% of Bloggers Prefer .org over .net Domains

2008-11-24T05:07:00.000-08:00

Last Monday I launched a poll asking our readers if they trusted more .org or .net domains. If you ever searched for domain names you probably know that the .com extension, albeit being the best one, is most of the times taken already. People therefore are left with two main options: a .net or a .org version of their wanted domain.

Which one should you pick, however, if you want to maximize the number of people that will trust your website? According to our poll, a .org is slightly more trusted than a .net extension. The result was 55% against 45%.

The total number of voters was 217, where119 voted for the .org extension and 98 for the .net.

The final result was more balanced than what I would have expected initially. At some point during the poll the .org extension had almost 70% of the voting preferences in fact, but .net made a come back on the last couple of days.

Some readers commented that each extension serves for a different purpose, and that people should respect that. When the web was conceived, it is true, people wanted .com domains to be used by commercial websites, .net by networks, .org by organizations and so on.

The problem is that over the time they stopped monitoring and restricting who were able to purchase the domains with those extensions, so even a 15-year-old boy in Sri Lanka could pretend to be an organization and buy a .org domain….

In my opinion, the practice of using a specific domain extension depending on your whether you a commercial entity or a network or an organization has been completely eroded, and does not make much sense anymore.

To complicate things even more, ICANN recently also approved the creation or any type of extension whatsoever, like .sex, .microsoft or .shit.

So my rule of thumb remains: always go with a .com!

If you really can’t find a free .com that you like, go with a .org, as our readers suggested.

Blogging Strategy: Introduction

2008-11-22T22:28:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago I was thinking: “There are web designers who blog and give great advice about how to design a website. There are programmers who can certainly help people to fix codes or to implement scripts. I am no professional designer or programmer, but there must be something valuable that I can share coming from my own background.”

What is my background you might ask? In 2005 I received a degree in International Economics with a minor in Business Strategy, and I have also worked for a large multinational company inside the Marketing and Business Development department.

After reflecting upon the mentioned question I realized that blogging could borrow many principles from management and business strategy. A blog, after all, can be perfectly compared to a business entity. It has managers (authors), inputs (ideas and information), outputs (posts and articles), clients (readers), competitors (bloggers or other websites on the same niche), partners (blog networks, friends), performance indicators (traffic, RSS subscribers, incoming links) and so on.

Considering all those similarities I decided to write a series of posts called”Blogging Strategy”, with the objective of applying some important business strategy concepts to blogging. Whether your goal is to make a living from blogging or simply to share your ideas, there is no reason why you should not do it strategically!

Blogging Strategy: Mission Statement

2008-11-22T22:27:00.002-08:00

The starting point of every strategy is a mission statement and a vision about what you want to accomplish. One could argue that the objective of every company is to make profits, but profits and revenues are a performance metric rather than a mission.

A mission statement should be a clear and succinct representation of the overall purpose of an organization. Such statement motivates the founders and creates meaning around the code idea. Ford’s mission was to bring an automobile into every household while Google’s mission is to organize the worldwide information.

Why do a blog needs a mission statement? First and foremost because it will guide the author’s actions. Practically speaking it will help the author to define what he should write about, what he should not write about, where he should look for information, what kind of promotion techniques he should use and so forth.

Notice that most successful blogs have a very clear mission statement, even if not expressed in such terms:

Problogger.net - “Helping bloggers earn money”
StevePavlina.com - “Personal Development for Smart People”
SEOmoz.org - “Making website owners rank better on search engines”
TechCrunch.com - “Obsessively profiling Web 2.0 companies”

Secondly having a clear vision about where you want to arrive will help you set reasonable goals and it will also facilitate to define “how” you will arrive there. As Seneca, the Roman philosopher, once said: “When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.“

Blogging Strategy: Goals

2008-11-22T22:27:00.001-08:00

It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of setting goals, both personally and professionally. Goals help organizations and individuals to focus their energy and to define priorities. Secondly goals also monitor the performance of certain activities, making it possible to revise and adapt the overall strategy along the way.

On the previous post of this series (read here) we talked about the mission statement and the vision. Apart from the vision, which can be seen as the ultimate goal, any company or project will also need smaller goals to guide the day to day decisions.

Suppose you have a blog about weight-loss. Your vision is to become the most popular weight-loss blog on the entire Internet. That is the ultimate goal, but you know that you will not achieve it overnight therefore you will need medium-term and short-term goals. The medium-term goal could be to hit the mark of 5000 RSS subscriber within 2 years, while the short-term goal could be to increase the blog traffic by 20% every month.

Once you have a set of goals in place it will be much easier to coordinate your actions, for example in order to achieve the short-term goal of increasing traffic by 20% every month you could commit yourself to comment on 5 new blogs every day.

Bear in mind, however, that you should follow some guidelines when setting goals, such as:

Goals must be measurable: Your goal for this year could be “I want to improve my blog in 2007 and make it very popular”. That is for sure a nice goal, but how are you going to know whether you accomplished it or not by the end of the year? Goals must be measurable so that you can track performance and be sure about whether you are hitting them or not. Use numbers, percentages, time frames and so on.

Goals should be realistic: If you are just starting out with a blog it would be really cool to to setup a goal like the following “Within six months I want to be receiving 10,000 unique visitors daily and generating $5,000 in Adsense revenues”. It would be cool but useless. Goals must be realistic and achievable, otherwise they will discourage rather than motivate you. Do not worry about stretching it a little bit, just make sure that you are not overshooting.

Goals must be consistent: You must not only believe that you will be able to achieve the goals, but you must also believe that they are important in your life and that they are not conflicting with other values. If you have a full-time job and a family to care it would make little sense to set a goal like “to blog at least 6 hours daily”.

As a blogger there are several parameters that you can use to set goals, including:

traffic
RSS subscribers
number of comments per post/week
number of pages viewed by each visitor
Alexa rank
Technorati rank
revenues generated
search engine rank positions
popularity on social bookmarking sites (i.e. Digg)
popularity on online communities (i.e. MyBlogLog)

Finally, make sure that you record your goals, either on paper on by publishing them on your blog. The mere act of recording the goals will reinforce them on your head and motivate you to start acting immediately.

Blogging Strategy: SWOT Analysis

2008-11-22T22:24:00.001-08:00

The Art of War is one of the oldest and most famous studies about strategy. It was written by Sun Tzu, a Chinese general, and below you will find one of the most important points on the book:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Having a clear understanding of both internal and external factors is essential for a successful strategy, be it military strategy, business strategy or blogging strategy. The SWOT analysis is a simple yet effective tool for understanding those factors. It will highlight the Strengths and Weaknesses (internal) as well as the Opportunities and Threats (external) for a certain company or project.

Strengths: the first step when performing the SWOT analysis is to define your strengths. If you are not sure about those, just ask yourself some questions, including: “What makes my blog unique?”, “What compliments have it received from readers?”, “What articles were linked from other bloggers and why?”.

Example of blogging strengths:

expertise around a certain topic
web designing skills
creativity or innovative ideas
a network of influential people

Weaknesses: once identified the strengths you will list the weaknesses of your blog. Weaknesses can emerge from problems that you faced over the past, for instance if you messed your blog database and lost some data your programming skills could be considered a weakness. Alternatively you can also think about competencies or areas that could be improved.

Example of blogging weaknesses:

lack of technical knowledge (i.e. html, PHP, databases)
lack of blogging knowledge (i.e. pings, trackbacks)
poor writing skills
poor online marketing skills

Opportunities: after analysing the internal factors you will need to tap the external environment, which comprehends other bloggers, websites, readers and pretty much everything that is not under your control. Opportunities usually emerge from changes, therefore you need to pay attention to what could possibly change in the near future and how your blog could benefit from that.

Examples of blogging opportunities:

joining a blog network
joining an advertising network
creating a new meme
exploiting a new niche
leveraging a new service

Threats: the final step on the SWOT analysis is the evaluation of possible threats. The threats can appear either from external changes or from internal weaknesses that have not been protected.

Examples of blogging threats:

technical problems (i.e. server downtime, loss of data)
your topic becomes obsolete
SEO problems (i.e. Google drops your blog)
lack of time to blog

The SWOT analysis will give you a clear understanding of the internal and external factors affecting your blog. Once the evaluation is performed you will be able to focus on your strengths, improve the weaknesses, benefit from external opportunities and protect yourself from possible threats.

Blogging Strategy: Online Marketing Mix

2008-11-22T22:23:00.000-08:00

The Marketing Mix is one of the most famous marketing concepts, it refers to the elements of the marketing strategy which are designed to meet the needs of the customers and to support a company’s product or service offering.

Traditionally the Marketing Mix has been represented by four “Ps”: Product, Price, Promotion and Place. In simple words, the product must suit the customer’s needs, the pricing structure must be in line with the company objectives, the promotion techniques used must be efficient for the target market and the distribution channels must ensure that the product will be available on the right places.

One could use those four “Ps” to perform a marketing analysis of manufacturing and production businesses, but in order to apply them to online entities like websites or blogs we must redefine the four concepts. Below you will find the four “Ps” of the Online Marketing Mix.

From Product to Purpose: instead of a suitable product website owners and bloggers must have a clear purpose. This purpose will help you to define what you should and what you should not do with your blog. Secondly it will also make clear for your readers what they should expect from the blog, explicating what is the value that they will get out of reading it. Online success comes from understanding one simple rule: “it is not about you (author), it is about them (readers)”.

From Promotion to Persuasion: innovative media such as blogs, wikis and social networks are changing the flow of information on our society. Until some years ago companies had almost complete control of the promotion factor. Today, however, customers and users control half of the equation. They are able to rate products, express their opinion and recommend stuff to their friends or online communities. As a blogger you need to persuade (in a positive way) your readers, making them want to share your ideas and recommend your information to their friends.

Form Place to Presence: the term place has lost its meaning on the new economy. Today you are able to create a company and offer your services worldwide without leaving your room, as long as you have an Internet connection. Instead of place bloggers should focus on the presence. In simple words, where are people looking for information? What are the different ways that they could use to discover your blog and your content? Examples include online portals, article directories, forums, social networks, other blogs, advertising placements, online communities and so on.

From Price to Personalization: most of the services and information online are free, meaning that the price element is inadequate. Before paying attention to monetization options, in fact, bloggers and webmasters should focus on the personalization issue. The Web 2.0 phenomenon is growing fast because it shifts the power to the users. People want to be able to read their news on the most appropriate device, they want to personalize their home page, to tag their content, to share their favorite videos. And what is more important, they want to do all that on a smooth way. Make sure that your blog reflects that trend. Practically speaking make sure that you offer RSS feeds, email subscription, comment subscription. Secondly make it easy for people to comment, to contact you, send personalized emails and so on.

Blogging Strategy: Outsourcing

2008-11-22T22:22:00.001-08:00

Outsourcing involves delegating some operations to an external entity, which is usually specialized in managing that operation. Outsourcing emerged on the business world as a method to focus a company’s energy and resources on some core-activities, where most of the value is created, while delegating non-core activities to external suppliers that can execute those operations more efficiently and with reduced costs.

Blogs can be perfectly compared to business entities, and from such analogy we understand that not all blogging tasks are core-activities. Sometime ago I wrote the article “10 Requisites for Professional Bloggers” where I outlined 10 factors that contribute to the success of a blogger. While I believe that every blogger should at least have a basic knowledge of those areas it is not necessary to master all of them. Some people will inevitably have better writing skills while others will have more technical expertise.

Before considering to outsource some of your blog activities you need to carry an objective evaluation about your blogging skills, and identify where the value is being created on your blog. A certain person might be an outstanding marketer but an average writer. In that case most of the value on the blog will be created from the marketing activities and not from the content itself, meaning that this person should consider outsourcing the writing part to a more competent writer.

Alternatively someone might have brilliant writing abilities but no web design skills whatsoever. This person could try to design the blog template by himself, but the result would a poorly designed blog and a lot of time wasted on the process.

If you are not sure about your core-activities or where value is being created on your blog you need to ask yourself the following question: “Why readers come to my blog? What makes my blog different from the other 50 million out there?”. Below you will find a list of activities that could possibly be outsourced:

Web Design: this is the easiest activity to outsource given the vast pool of talented designers across the Internet. If you are looking for a professional design you should get in touch with a design studio (The Blog Studio, a sponsor of this blog, is a top notch resource when it comes to blog designing). Alternative you can check Sitepoint’s contest section, where people can create a contest for a particular job. After the job is posted designers will submit their entries and the contest holder will pick the best one.

Content: sometimes a blogger might want to increase the posting frequency of his blog without having to dedicate more hours to it, and the solution is to hire co-writers. Secondly, even if the blogger writes well he could have stronger marketing or entrepreneurial competencies. In that case he should probably focus his energy on creating and promoting new blogs while outsourcing the writing part for people that is specialized on doing that. A good place to find talented bloggers is the ProBlogger Job Board.

Blog maintenance: keeping a small blog up and running is no challenging task. As soon as your blog starts to grow, however, the problems will emerge. They will range from server issues to spam, backup and security concerns and so on. If you lack the time or expertise to deal with the technical side you should consider hiring someone to host your blog and take care of the maintenance. The Digital Point forum has an active market place for those services.

Online marketing: content is surely king, but without proper promotion and search engine optimization even great content might get lost on the Internet. Mastering the basics of SEO and online marketing is not a difficult task, but if you are looking for tangible results you should consider getting some professional help. There are plenty of SEO firms and individual experts across the Internet, and you can also turn to established players like Pronet Advertising or SEOMoz.

Blogging Strategy: Competitive Advantage

2008-11-22T22:15:00.000-08:00

Competitive advantage is a very famous concept of business strategy and management, and it refers to the situation where a company is able to generate returns above the industry average. Returns can me measured in terms of shareholder value, profits, revenues and so on.

If we apply the concept of competitive advantage to blogging we could argue that a certain blog has competitive advantage if it is able to receive more attention than other blogs on the same niche. Noticed that I used the term attention and not traffic because traffic is not the only measure we can use to evaluate a blog’s success. Apart from raw traffic the popularity of a blog could be measure by the number of loyal readers (subscribers), by the number of incoming links and so on.

Now that we have defined competitive advantage we should ask ourselves where it comes from. In the business world competitive advantage emerges from a firm’s ability to differentiate itself or to produce goods and services with reduced costs. What about in the blogging world? Below you will find some sources of blogging competitive advantage:

Exclusive or quick information: many blogs have a competitive advantaged rooted on the ability to provide exclusive news or information. Sometimes the information is not exclusive per se but it is provided before other sources can access it. Examples includes news and technology related blogs, political blogs and gadget blogs.

Original and quality content: the ability to produce original and quality content on a consistent basis is certainly a competitive advantage. Blogs that just replicate ideas or that write about what everybody else is writing will not perform well compared to blogs that create and innovate. You know what they say, content is king.

Resources: there are many resources the can affect the popularity of a blog. Financial resources can help the promotion of the blog. Human resources (i.e. many writers) can increase the quantity and quality of posts. Full time bloggers can dedicate more time to interact with other bloggers, establish relationships and so on.

Brand and reputation: whether you like it or not brand and reputation play a big role on most commercial activities, and blogging is no exception. People are more likely to believe what is reported on CNN just like bloggers are more likely to link to something that was written on Boing Boing.

Those are some examples of competitive advantage in blogging, but there are many others. The important thing is that you identify what competitive advantage your blog has, or which one you want to develop. Once you you that clear you will be able to focus your energy and to defend yourself from imitators.

Put the Big Rocks First

2008-11-22T22:12:00.000-08:00

Stephen Covey is one of my favorite authors. In the book “First Things First” he describes a story that one of his associates experienced on a seminar. In the middle of the lecture the presenter pulled out a wide-mouth jar and placed it on the table, aside to some fist-sized rocks.

After filling the jar to the top with rocks he asked, “Is the jar full?”

People could see that no more rocks would fit, so they replied, “Yes!”

“Not so fast,” he cautioned. He then got some gravel from under the table and added it to the jar, filling the spaces between the rocks. Again, he asked, “Is the jar full?”

This time the students replied “Probably not.”

The presenter then reached a bucket of sand below the table, and dumped it on the jar, filling the spaces between the rocks and the gravel. Once again he asked “Is the jar full?”

“No!”, the students shouted.

Finally, he grabbed a pitcher of water and filled the jar completely, asking to the public what they could learn from that illustration.

One of the participants answered, “If you work at it, you can always fit more into your life.”

“No,” said the presenter. “The point is, if you don’t put the big rocks in first. . . would you ever have gotten any of them in?”

This little story can be applied to all apects of your life, including blogging. Blogging is composed of many activities, like promoting your blog, participating in online forums, writing quality articles, networking with other bloggers, reading RSS feeds, exchanging emails and so on.

The question then becomes: out of all these activities, what are the big rocks? More importantly, are you making sure that they are going first into the jar?

Coherence. Do you have it?

2008-11-22T22:10:00.000-08:00

Coherence is a logical and consistent connection between the parts of a whole. For instance, if when you write the words, sentences and ideas fit well together, your writing is coherent.

Coherence is walking the talk, practicing what you preach. Right, you say, but what does it have to do with blogging?

Well, coherence is a vital part of any endeavor in life, and blogging is no exception. Being coherent will help you build credibility, which is very important for any successful blog. Secondly, it will also ensure that you get your priorities straight.

Pragmatically speaking, here are some examples of lack of coherence on a blog:

You have serious blogging plans, but you decide to go with Blogger instead of buying your own domain name
You say you care for your readers, but you rarely answer to comments or e-mails
Growing the traffic and popularity of your blog is your main objective, but there are annoying advertisings all over the place
You say you are committed to your blog, but you don’t have a fixed posting frequency

What about you, are you coherent with your blog?

Blogging is a Continuous Learning Exercise

2008-11-22T22:08:00.000-08:00

I’ve always been of the belief that a college degree tells little about what you know in comparison to what it tells about what you can learn. I got my degree in an IT related field, so this is especially true for myself, as the IT world is constantly changing. Anything I learn today will probably be useless in a few short years. The point is to learn to learn.

Blogging works exactly the same way. I believe this to be true regardless of your end goal. If you’re trying to make money, this is abundantly clear. There’s always more money to be made. If you’re teaching on a subject, you are constantly looking for/formulating new information to share. Even if you’re just spouting off useless (albeit entertaining) rants, you’re continuously improving your writing and storytelling so people don’t get bored of you.

This is one of the reasons that bloggers burn out. They forget this. They think they have an unlimited amount of content just waiting to burst from their brain. They get comfortable. Then they start to run out of juice.

Sure, at times it seems that some bloggers just have it. They are experts in their fields and will simply feed us with invaluable content forever. It’s not true. Pay attention. Most of those bloggers are discussing new ideas, upcoming topics. They pull on life experiences (unavoidable learning) and allow them to demonstrate a point. Even Steve Pavlina would run out of content eventually without constant learning. Though, I have a theory that he’s a robot… but that’s for another day.

Don’t get comfortable

It applies everywhere:

Think you’re the best at your sport? Stop practicing. See what happens.
You’ve mastered PHP to the greatest possible extent? Don’t bother learning anything new. Someone said that about BASIC, I’m sure.
You’ve proven that your recipe for a great TV show is flawless? Did you watch the last season of 24?

The point is apparent. Don’t think you’ve succeeded. There are plateaus, but there are no peaks. Always be learning from your experiences. See what posts work for your readers. Which get the best response? Which are completely ignored? Which bring in the most Google traffic, or get the most Adsense clicks? Don’t settle or your blog will end up with so many others in Internet limbo.
What happens when someone thinks they’ve hit the peak? They quickly begin sliding down the other side.

Results Only Blogging Environment

2008-11-22T22:05:00.000-08:00

Sometime last year Best Buy received a lot of buzz for changing their work policy to what they called ROWE: Results Only Work Environment. Instead of requiring certain hours from their employees throughout the week, their success was measured by their results.

Besides the fact that the next generation of working adults is (probably) going to demand exactly this philosophy (or even a more extreme version), this is the mindset that bloggers should have.

Switch out the words Best Buy employees with bloggers and you’ll see what I mean:

In practical terms, ROWE lets Best Buy employees get up and leave in the middle of the workday to attend a matinee or Little League game. Workers pulling into the company’s headquarters at 2 p.m. aren’t considered late. Nor are those pulling out at 2 p.m. seen as leaving early. There are no schedules. No mandatory meetings. In short, work is no longer a place where you go, but something you do. As long as the work gets done and get’s done well, it’s okay to take conference calls while you hunt, collaborate from your lakeside cabin, or log on after dinner so you can spend the afternoon with your kid. – JDBliss

Are you enjoying a ROBE (Results Only Blogging Environment) or are you under the impression that you need to spend lots of time hunched in front of a screen to have any sort of effect?

Use the following exercise to try and determine where the results are coming from in your blogging life, and where nothing but work is coming from:

Log your time. Keep track of what you do, throughout your blogging time. If you spend half your time writing and the other half commenting on other blogs, write that down. If you spend a lot of time redesigning your blog or using social bookmarking sites, write that down.
Keep track of achievements. When was the last time something great happened with your blog? Why did that happen?
Cross reference. Check your log with your list of achievements. Which things that you did had direct impact on the achievements you saw?
Rank according to impact. Now you should be able to form a list of the most beneficial things you’ve done at your blog to see good results. Using this you can prioritize your time and, if needed, cut out certain aspects which only add to your work and not to your results.

You would be surprised how effective this sort of self evaluation can be. I went through this process myself (analyzing only a few months worth of blogging efforts, across both personal and professional blogs) and ended up with the following list of priorities. I’ve found that by doing these things I’ve seen the most impact across all of my blogs:

Writing solid, informative, and creative content.
Offering information that wasn’t available elsewhere (conference notes, for example).
Reviewing content or creations by others (WordPress themes, plugins, and tutorials, for example).
Contributing as a guest blogger.
Responding to comments on my own blogs.
Commenting on other blogs, especially to take part in a conversation.

And this is only a beginning list. I suggest keeping track of all milestones, as you accomplish them, and regularly taking a look at what is bringing in the best results for your efforts. A results only blogger will be much happier than a hard working blogger, if only for the amount of time that will inevitably be saved.

Grow Your Goals, Compound Your Success

2008-11-22T22:02:00.000-08:00

Professional bloggers often recommend setting and achieving goals for your blog. For example, you might set out to increase your readership by 5% per month or your profits by 10% per year. The best of these are difficult but attainable, challenging you to put forth extra effort without killing you in the process. If you stick to your goal in the long run and achieve it with consistency, however, your effort will pay off much more than you might expect. Consider the following examples:

Example One: You have a small blog with a modest following of 30 subscribers. Your goal is to increase your readership by 10% every month. If you achieve this goal consistently, you’ll have more than 100 subscribers in just over a year and over 500 subscribers in two-and-a-half years.

Example Two: You have a moderately successful blog that sees about 5,000 unique visitors per month. Your goal is to increase traffic by 5% every month. If you can manage this, you’ll reach 6,000 visitors per month after only four months and almost 9,000 visitors per month after a year.

Example Three: Your blog earns you an average of $40 per month in advertising revenue. Your goal is to increase your earnings by 5% every quarter. If you succeed at this, your blog will generate about $50 per month after one year, about $60 per month after two years, and more than $70 per month after three. In that time, your blog will end up earning over $500 more than if your revenue had remained the same.

Obviously, 500 subscribers is a far cry from 30, and getting 4,000 more visitors per month after only a year is huge. The secret is to keep raising the bar. For instance, to achieve the first example, you would need three new subscribers a month in the first two months, four new subscribers a month for the next three months,… all the way up to 48 new subscribers in the 30th month.

Percentile goals like this illustrate a key point: As your blog grows, so too should your goals. Nearly 50 new subscribers in one month may seem like a lot, but going from 475 to 523 makes the leap seem smaller. After all, compared to how many you’ve already got, 48 more is difficult but not out of the question.

In the end, only you can decide how to set your goals. The important thing is to define your metric of success, set a goal to improve it, and stick with that goal for the long haul. If you can accomplish it month in and month out, your blog will see the sort of growth demonstrated here.

Don’t Worry About Sharing Ideas

2008-11-22T22:01:00.000-08:00

Ever had an Eureka moment where a brilliant idea suddenly popped into your head? What about when you first discovered that little trick that would help you a lot? Your first reaction on these moments was probably something like: “Man, I’d better keep this secret now, else someone will steal it.”

While this might appear intuitive, locking ideas down is rarely the best thing to do. This mistake comes from the value that people tend to place on ideas. Sure, on the information age ideas are more important than ever. The value, though, is not coming from an idea per se, but rather from the execution and implementation of such idea.

By sharing ideas you will be able to collect other people’s feedback, possibly honing your own assumptions. You will also be helping other people (directly or indirectly), and they will be more likely to return the favor.

There are exceptions for this rule (I don’t want a reader blaming me later when he shares freely a break-through invention instead of patenting it…), but most of the times sharing an idea will only benefit you.

As Howard Aiken used to say: “don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”

Developing Your Blogging Identity

2008-11-22T21:57:00.000-08:00

As a blogger one of the most important things you will need to do is develop your own unique personality. In most cases this is something that will develop over time as you learn and continue to build an audience. Subscribers will read because they can connect with you. Depending on the topic of your blog, readers may be able to get similar information from any number of bloggers, but they choose you because of the identity that you have developed.

Having a distinct identity will enable you to stand out even in a crowded and saturated market. Visitors will remember you because you are different from all of the other bloggers out there. Essentially, developing your blogging identity involves branding yourself to your readers and visitors.

The benefits of your blogging identity are:

Loyal readers. They will get to know you better and relate to you.
Separation from other bloggers. Your identity is what will make you unique.
Allows you to cover common topics in an uncommon way. Not every post you write has to be on an original subject when you have your own approach. Even on topics that are widely covered you will be able to present information in a different way.
Brand yourself. Your identity will allow you to brand yourself so that your readers will immediately associate certain characteristics with you and your blog.
People will actually read your posts. Most people tend to scan when they’re reading online, but people will want to read what you have to say.

So, now that we’ve looked at some of the benefits of developing your blogging identity, you may be wondering how you can find your own identity. Here are a few tips:

Be patient. If you are new to blogging your identity will probably not be developed over night. You’ll need to learn what works for you and what draws the response that you desire.
Think about what makes you different. Especially if you are in a saturated market, you will need to stand out somehow. You may already have some experience or characteristic that makes you different. If you do, work to develop it and make it clear to your readers.
What do others say about you? You may already have an identity without even realizing it. Read what other bloggers have to say about you and see if there is a common theme. Sometimes it’s hard to look at yourself objectively, so use the words of others to help you out.
What advantages do you have? You may have some type of advantage over other bloggers in your niche that you can use to create your identity. Do you have superior writing skills, design experience that will help you to create a great looking blog, a strong network of contacts?
How can you emphasize these advantages and differences? Your advantages are great, but to create an effective identity you’ll need to make readers aware of what sets you apart. John Chow is a great example of this. He has extensive experience making money online, and he makes that clear to visitors as soon as they arrive at his blog. Now they’ll know that John is the go-to guy for information about making money online.
How will your target market respond to a certain identity? It’s possible that you could create an identity that wouldn’t work very well with your target market. Think about your audience (or you future audience) and try to anticipate how they would respond to a particular identity.
Remember your goals. Make sure it fits. Don’t create an identity that will hinder your long-term goals. What is it that you want from your blog? Your identity should help you achieve those goals, not prevent you from achieving them.

If you’re stuck, take a look at some of your favorite blogs (preferably single-author blogs). What is it about the blogger that makes you keep coming back? Is it something about their writing style, their approach to covering the topic, the way they connect with their readers? Don’t attempt to copy from another blogger, but rather use your observations as ideas to help you find your own identity.

Here are 3 examples of bloggers that I find to have unique identities:

Tad Chef of SEO 2.0 - Visit his blog and you’ll never forget him. It starts with a nice, big sombrero, but Tad also writes with a style and personality that is all his own. He covers topics like SEO and social media with more enthusiasm and less boredom than most other bloggers. Tad is a frequent user of StumbleUpon and he has also helped to develop his identity by using the picture from his blog as his SU avatar.

Adnan of Blogtrepreneur - Blogtrepreneur is the blog of a teenage entrepreneur. Adnan provides information on a variety of topics related to entrepreneurship, which is a fairly common topic online. What’s not so common is to find someone who is still a teenager and actually qualified to write on the subject. Adnan doesn’t make a huge issue of his age, but most of his readers are well aware of it, and it certainly helps him to stand out.

Maki of DoshDosh - Maki writes in the highly competitive field of making money online. He is able to stand out by providing very unique and in-depth articles that provide true quality to readers. Maki uses his knowledge, experience, and writing ability to create articles that others simply can’t match. His readers see him as a trustworthy source of invaluable information. He also helps to set himself apart from others by using anime in every blog post.

Where are you in the process of developing your identity? What has helped you along the way and how have you been able to shape your readers’ opinions and impressions of you?

Put Honesty and Integrity Above Everything Else

2008-11-22T21:56:00.001-08:00

A couple of days ago I was reading The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman, and I came across a very interesting passage:

When individuals are empowered to inform themselves on all these new ways, it is enormously flattening, but also enormously frightening. Why? Because people will be able to drill down for information about you and me that used to be either impossible or very difficult to locate. (…) You never know anymore what kind of electronic footprints your are leaving in databases that you assume are private and will now, or soon will be, searchable.

After reading it I realized that the message is particularly important to web workers. It is not rare to find bloggers, website owners and online marketers trying to make money or become popular online using controversial - let alone unethical - techniques.

Just think about sploggers and content thieves, spammers, scammers, shady affiliate marketers and so on. Sure they might be earning some money on the short run, but at what cost? One slip and you will ruin your reputation for good. And there are no erasers on the Internet.

Here is what Thomas Friedman concluded:

Live your life honestly, because whatever you do, whatever mistakes you make, will be searchable one day.

So the next time a “smart” idea comes into your mind, think twice. Honesty and integrity should come above everything else.

What’s Your Long-Term Blogging Strategy?

2008-11-22T21:53:00.000-08:00

Unless you have a staff of full-time writers, a professional designer, an existing audience you can leverage and money to pour into promotions, the process of becoming popular rarely happens overnight. Or in a matter of months.

In fact, most of the world’s most popular blogs plugged away in relative obscurity for several years before they made it big.

It seems that an essential aspect of becoming an A-list blogger is to write well over a long period of time. You might be writing well now, but what’s your long-term strategy? How well are you preparing yourself for the long-haul?

In this post, I want to share nine tips you can use to prepare your blog for long-term success. The tips focus around three key areas: inspiration, motivation and focus.

Inspiration

1. Write for a target audience. Confining yourself within set topics can be a one-way road to burn-out. You’ll get to a point where your range of topics doesn’t inspire you, or when you feel you’ve done a particular topic to death.

A question I often get is: how can I broaden my scope without losing some readers along the way? The key is to write for people, not topics. Work out who your target audience is and write posts that fulfill their needs. The range of ways you can do this will always be limitless. It’s hard not to be inspired when you’re writing with a target audience in mind.
2. Make regular deposits to your idea bank. Remaining inspired over the long-term is essential to any long-term blogging strategy. Once you know what you want to write, it’s simply a matter of doing the work: of sitting down to write it. If you don’t have ideas, however, there’s nothing to help you start.

The key to dealing with this problem is to come up with many more post ideas than you need. It means you’ll have the creative work done for you in those inevitable periods where you’re feeling uncreative.

Motivation

3. Engage with readers. De-personalizing your readership can be one of the key causes of dwindling enthusiasm for blogging. When you start to think of the people who read your blog as a set of fluctuating numbers that either go up or down each day, you’ll stop caring about them.

Each single digit in your feed count and each single digit in your traffic reports is a person who’s taken time out of their day to read what you write. Take the time to interact with them, get to know them and help them out. Be active in your comments and respond to every email you get. The rewards you get through personally connecting with readers vastly outweigh the cost in time.

4. Set long-term goals. Long-term goals and long-term blogging go hand in hand. Set goals that are too modest and you’ll grow complacent as soon as you achieve them. Set goals that are too far out of reach and you’ll question whether it’s worth trying at all.

The best approach to take is to stagger your goals. Think of your aspirations like a ladder: put your dream at the top, and work backwards down to a very modest goal (get 50 more subscribers, for example). The next step might be a hundred subscribers, then five-hundred, and so on. You get the satisfaction of completing goals and the motivation to strive for those that are further out of reach.

5. Make money. If blogging helps your finances then that’s another motivation to stick with it. If you’re not monetizing your blog, why not give it a shot? If you’re monetizing and it’s not working, try something different. Get some freelance work, write and sell an eBook, or try to raise money for a cause you’re passionate about. Turning a hobby into a money-maker can do wonders for your enthusiasm.

6. Reverse engineer your actions. If you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve, you’ll never know what you should be traveling towards. Defining your overall goals will allow you to reverse engineer your blogging.

For example: If you want to make a full-time income online, every action you do should be oriented towards that goal. If you want to get 1,000 subscribers, you should focus mainly on increasing your subscriber base. Once you know where you want to end up, it becomes much easier to map out the route you need to take if you want to get there.

7. Keep track of milestones. Your milestones sheet should be something you look to all the time. When your subscriber count reaches 100, or 500, or 1,000, write it down. When an A-lister comments on one of your posts, write it down. When a popular blog links to you, write it down.

Assembling all your best achievements into a blog timeline will help you feel enthusiastic on days when the mere thought of blogging is getting you down.

Focus

8. Work out a sustainable rhythm. If you feel like the time you spend writing posts is negatively impacting on other aspects of your life, it’s time to slow down. Blogging at an unsustainable pace will make you want to stop all-together. Believe me — nothing cripples your blog more than an unexplained hiatus.

Consistency is key. Set your posting rhythm at whatever feels comfortable — even if it’s just once a week. You’ll write better posts and approach blogging as a hobby rather than a chore.

9. Build a safety net. It’s inevitable: there will be days, or weeks, when you don’t even want to look at your blog. It’s important that you prepare for those times. Once you’ve neglected your blog for long enough, it can be tempting to abandon it all-together. You need to build a safety net to avoid this outcome.

A safety net is a reserve of at least one week’s worth of posts. You can dip into this safety net whenever you’re feeling uninspired, or bored, or going away. All it takes to build an effective safety net is to write one extra post a week for one month. It’s simple to build, priceless once you’ve built it. A safety net can also help prepare you for a blogging emergency.

What’s your long-term blogging strategy?

The Challenges of Multi-Author Blogs

2008-11-22T21:52:00.000-08:00

There are a growing number of multi-author blogs being launched, and many blogs that once featured only a single author are changing to include more writers. Many of you probably read a number of multi-author blogs, including Daily Blog Tips, Freelance Switch, Performancing, and others. Some of you probably own or write for a multi-author blog as well.

If you are considering starting your own, or changing a single-author blog to include other writers, there are some challenges that you should be aware of. While I do not own any multi-author blogs, I do write for a few on a regular basis, and I’ve written for even more on a one-time basis. Here are some of the challenges that are evident from my experience.

1. Quality - The quality of a multi-author blog can be more difficult to maintain due to the different skill levels of writers, as well as varying levels of experience and reputation. When you are maintaining a blog for yourself in which you are the only writer, you are in complete control of the quality. When other writers are added to the mix the quality can either increase or decrease. While quality can be a challenge, it also presents a great opportunity for blogs that can meet the challenge head on. Adding top-notch writers is a surefire way to improve the quality of any blog.

2. Identity and Branding - Blog readers choose to subscribe or come back to the favorite blogs on a regular basis in large part because of the identity that a particular blog has established. In many cases this involves the personality and approach to blogging of an individual. This can be more difficult with multiple writers. Readers will not get the same consistent approach that they would get from a single blogger, and it can make it more difficult for readers to connect with the writers.

3. Possible Duplication of Topics - When you are writing for your own blog it’s much easier to remember what you have written about in past blog posts and what topics are yet to be adequately covered. Of course blog readers do not want to see the same information presented over and over again, and this can be a challenge when several writers are contributing. The more writers there are, the harder it is to keep track of what has already been published. This can be helped if there is an editor or one person in charge of what gets published and what doesn’t, but this isn’t always possible or optimal.

4. Coordination of Schedules - Multi-author blogs rely on receiving contributions from a number of different people who all have different schedules and different times that work best for them to write. It can sometimes be a challenge to coordinate this so that there are not 10 posts on one day and none the next. Some blogs choose to set up a consistent schedule that assigns each writer a specific day (or days) to publish. One of the blogs that I regularly write for uses this type of arrangement and it really works well.

5. Lack of Ownership - When you are running your own blog it is much easier, in my opinion, to stay motivated. No one else is ultimately responsible for your success and no one else will reap the rewards like you will. When there are multiple writers involved there is sometimes a lack of ownership in the responsibility to grow the blog and achieve goals. By this I mean that many writers may not give 100% effort like they would if they owned the blog themselves.

From my experience the best way to overcome this challenge is to pay writers. Each time I write an article that I’m being paid for I have a certain quality standard for my work. In addition, I’m more motivated to promote the article, if possible, so that the blog owner who is paying me will be satisfied with the results and keep me on staff. When you are not being paid you should still be motivated to give your best, but there is a certain level of ownership and accountability that comes along with being paid.

6. Maintaining Focus - With several different writers publishing articles on a different basis, it’s easy for each writer to head in a different direction. In order to keep the blog tightly focused, there will probably need to be some effort to point writers in a particular direction. While it is good to be able to present different opinions and different points of view, each writer needs to be aware of what direction the blog is heading and how it is going to get there.

7. Finding Good Writers - Another challenge to consider is finding the writers in the first place. This is especially a big hurdle if you do not plan to pay writers, or if the pay is very low. Those opportunities that pay well are obviously much easier to fill. In order to find writers you may need to publish the opportunity on the blog, reach out to your existing contacts, approach potential writers directly, or post opportunities in forums and job boards.

8. Internal Linking - This is one that many people don’t think about, but from my experience it is one of the hardest parts about writing for a multi-author blog. When you are writing for your own blog it is pretty easy to make an effort to link to older posts throughout your new articles. However, this becomes very difficult when you are not as familiar with the existing content of the blog you are writing for. Internal links are important for making the posts more user-friendly as well as for SEO purposes, so it is a good idea to include internal links whenever possible.

9. Handling Payments - If you are the blog owner and you are paying writers you will need a good method of keeping track of who is owed and what has been paid. Different bloggers handle this differently, but regardless of how you accomplish the task you will need good organization.

10. Not Overpaying - Of course you do not want to pay writers more than they are worth. If you are paying out more than the blog is bringing in you will need to look at the situation and determine what needs to be changed. Some bloggers are willing to do this in the short-term in order to build a more valuable asset and increase long-term profits. Others aim to always cover their costs and hopefully still be able to turn a profit.

Why Use Multiple Authors?

If you are considering owning or writing for a multi-author blog you should be aware of the potential challenges and have a plan to overcome them. Despite the challenges that we have looked at here, multi-author blogs still bring great opportunities. In fact, many of the challenges above can be turned into strengths if they are properly handled. Having a variety of different writers can help to give the blog a more balanced presentation. Additionally, each writer will have their own strengths and weaknesses. If the team is able to come together to emphasize the strengths of each, the result will be much better than any one person could accomplish individually. And there is always the obvious benefit that multiple authors produce much more content than one person is capable of.

What is Your Experience?

Have you ever owned or written for a multi-author blog? If so, what were you experiences? If not, would you consider doing so, why or why not?

Do You Think Big?

2008-11-22T21:48:00.000-08:00

This is a guest post by Alan Johnson, be sure to check out his $1,000 contest over at TheRatingBlog.com.

What are your plans for the future? Where do you picture yourself a couple of years from now? What are your goals? Many people make the mistake of not thinking big and, in the end, such an attitude will get them nowhere. For example, some might give “I want to be a blogger” as an answer to the first question, or “I don’t know, I guess I see myself as being a fairly good blogger”.

You don’t know? A “fairly good” blogger? Why don’t you want to become “the best blogger” around? Most online entrepreneurs settle for far less than their true potential, and that is simply a shame. In other words, they do a lousy job of answering the question.

Striving to become the best at what you’re doing is the way to go, and thinking otherwise simply proves that you have low confidence in yourself. “But being the best would mean that I make millions,” you might say. So what? Are millionaires and billionaires robots? Of course not, they are human beings, just like everyone else. There are countless success stories of webmasters who have become millionaires and guess what, all of their websites have started out with one visitor, just like yours.

Why would you think that you are not capable of achieving such results? You can’t expect to be successful if you start out with the wrong attitude, it simply wouldn’t make sense. If you just want to become a “fairly good blogger” then that’s exactly what you’ll become, and you won’t like it. Never be afraid to set high goals, even if they may seem out of reach at a certain point.

That doesn’t mean that attitude alone will help you achieve those goals, not by a long shot. But setting high goals is a great starting point, a solid foundation upon which you can build. Of course, you will not be able to reach your goals overnight; expecting immediate results is another mistake you need to steer clear of. Divide everything into smaller and more manageable goals, take it one step at a time.

Is your long-term goal making a million dollars a month as an online entrepreneur? No problem, but it won’t happen right away. In order to earn 1 million dollars each month, you must first cross the $1k, $10k and $100k monthly milestone; it’s only natural that things work out this way. Why would you make the mistake of settling for $10k monthly, for example, if you know that you have the potential of making so much more?

Do you think big? Do you believe in yourself and in your potential as an online entrepreneur? Don’t let yourself get discouraged by the long journey you have ahead of you. Believe in yourself and you will enjoy every minute of it since, in the end, being successful never comes from reaching a destination; it’s all about knowing that you’re on the right track; it’s always about the journey in itself.

Hold Tight, It Will Only Get Easier

2008-11-22T21:46:00.000-08:00

Most bloggers that get discouraged and decide to abandon their blogs tend to do so on the first three to six months. Sometimes the traffic is not growing as fast as they would like. Other times they are not happy with the money that they are making.

Personally I think that quitting after such a short period is a mistake.

There are two situations where quitting would be a smart move. One is when the blogger consciously decided to try out a new niche. In that case he must have some previous experience with blogs and websites, and he should know what numbers to expect and how to evaluate if this new blog has potential or not.

The other case refers to blogs that get stuck. If after six months you are still struggling to receive a couple hundred unique visitors daily then you probably are doing something wrong. Under this scenario you should probably stop to rethink your strategies (niche selection, content creation and promotion strategies) and try again.

On all other cases, however, the best idea is probably to hold tight and keep working hard until your blog or website achieves some critical mass. It does not matter how small or big your traffic is, as long as it is growing month after month you are on the right track.

The first three to six months are the hardest, and after that period you will notice that things will flow more smoothly, for several reasons.

First of all your content will achieve a bigger audience, improving the chances of receiving backlinks and traffic. Suppose two blogs, one with 200 daily unique visitors and the other with 2,000 daily unique visitors, publish the exact same article. The second one will have much higher chances of receiving backlinks, because more people will be exposed to its content.

This means that as your audience grow you will be able to spend less time promoting your content and more time actually producing it and making sure that it has quality.

Secondly, the credibility of your website will grow with the time, both for human visitors and search engines. Suppose again that two blogs, one that has been online for 1 year and has a Google PageRank of 5 and the other that has been online for 1 month and has a Google PageRank of 1, publish the exact same article. Even if we disregard the backlinks that each article will receive, the page of the first blog will appear first in the search results because that domain has more trust in the eyes of search engines.

These are just two examples of how allowing your blog to grow and mature will benefit you. The are several others: over the time it will be easier to monetize it, to get favors and support from your readers, to create a network of contacts, to receive freebies and so on.

If you are considering to quit, therefore, my advice is to hold tight a little longer, and then take that decision.

Do You Really Need to go to the University?

2008-11-22T21:40:00.000-08:00

If you want to work on the Internet or to be an entrepreneur, I really don’t think you need to.

I always tell my friends that if I had the mind that I have today (in terms of knowing what I want to do, and what knowledge and tools I need to do that) five years ago, I would not have enrolled myself in the university.

At the time I had no clue where I was going, however, so getting a degree seemed like the smartest choice. Everyone else was doing it, after all!

I studied International Economics because it was a pretty eclectic degree, and it would allow me to work on virtually any business segment. Then 18 months ago I started working on the Internet with my own websites and with other entrepreneurial projects, and I guess I have being using 5% of what I learned in the university, if that.

Now the main argument of the university proponents is that apart from the knowledge itself, which you might or might not use later on, passing all those years studying will teach you how to gather, analyze and present information. It will give you a framework, upon which you will build on.

That is true, the university will give you that, but I don’t think that a person that starts working straight out of high school would lose that. He would also learn how to gather, analyze and present information, and he would also gain a framework, but those would come from real working experience rather than from theoretical classes and lectures.

I honestly think that if I had spent the same years that I did in the university working with my own projects and trying to make a living online, I would have learned much more (and that knowledge would have been practical rather than theoretical).

Again, this is valid only for certain classes of professionals. If you want to be a doctor or a civil engineer there is no alternative to going to the university and learning what you need to there.

Another downside of universities is that they focus on giving you knowledge, rather than making you develop competencies and attitudes. The latter two are immensely more important for your professional success.

I wrote about this sometime ago, on an article titled Knowledge, Competencies and Attitudes). Summing it up: Knowledge is practical information gained through learning, experience or association (e.g., second degree equations). Competencies, on the other hand, refer to the ability to perform specific tasks (e.g., the ability to communicate effectively). Attitudes involve how people react to certain situations and how they behave in general (e.g., whether you are proactive, arrogant, if you get along with people and so on).

Here is an example that I used to illustrate why competencies and attitudes are more important than knowledge:

Consider two different men, John and Mark, working for a financial services company. Both of them are eager to succeed so that they spend lots of time trying to grow professionally.

John uses his time gaining as much knowledge as possible: he studies balance sheets, financial reports, accounting practices and the like. He even takes related courses on the local university.

Mark, on the other hand, gets only the knowledge that is necessary to carry out his job. Other than that, he uses his time to improve his writing skills, his ability to solve problems, his ability to understand and empathize with other people and so on.

Should the financial services sector enter a downturn some day forcing both men to find another job, who do you think will have a harder time? Yeah, I am sure you have guessed it.

As you can see I am not arguing that you don’t need to go to the university because you will learn everything working. You will still need to study and go through the pain of learning and improving yourself. The only difference is that if you do this on your own you will be able to focus on the competencies and attitudes that you know you need to develop.

The knowledge that a university will give you is available for everyone, anywhere in the world. Sure, there is a difference between knowledge and information. but with the right motivation and some help from other people even a kid in Sri Lanka can absorb the information available online and transform it into knowledge.

So what should your strategy be? Focus on developing the right attitudes and competencies, and grab the necessary knowledge as you go.

Is There a Career in Blogging?

2008-11-22T21:36:00.000-08:00

Many bloggers get started with high hopes for getting rid of their full-time job and earning a living from their blog. While it’s certainly possible, a very small percentage of bloggers get to this point. For those who have been able to achieve pro blogger status, consistency and long-term focus is the key. A pro blogger didn’t reach that status by giving up when there were a few months of slow growth or because they got tired of the pressure to always be producing new content.

If you are hoping to take your blog to a level that will financially support you and your family, what do you need to realize and what should you be focusing on?

Treat it Like a Business

I think a lot of bloggers expect to get financial results that they would get from any other type of business, but yet they approach their blog as a hobby. If you want to be able to blog full-time you must respect it as a legitimate business like any other.

If your blog is a business you will schedule your other activities around your work, not the other way around. Of course blogging part-time until you can reach this level will bring its own unique time constraints and challenges, but you should always schedule plenty of time to work on your blog. Don’t just simply work on it when you have spare time and hope for big results.

Businesses are willing to invest in order to improve profitability. Bloggers obviously need to be willing to invest their time, but being willing to also invest some money can really improve your results. Many bloggers are always looking for the free options and not even open-minded to spending a little bit of money in order to be able to make even more money. If you are making money from your blog, dedicate some of that income to be reinvested back into your blog. Maybe you’ll spend it on advertising, or maybe on a new blog theme. There are any number of things you can do to improve your blog if you are will to reinvest some of your income.

Develop Multiple Sources of Income

Many bloggers fall into the trap of assuming that all of their income will be generated by selling ads. While advertising can be a great source of income, you should never rely on that alone. You’ll need to have an incredibly popular blog to ever earn a full-time income solely on advertising. Additionally, reliance on one form of income is less stable than if you have multiple sources.

If you’re currently only producing income through ads, look for some affiliate programs that you can promote on your blog. If you’re able to find the right affiliate products you can not only increase your income, but you can also help your readers by introducing them to some great products.

In addition to ads and affiliate programs, you may be able to make some money by selling premium content or by selling your own products. A great example of premium content can be found at PSDTuts, a Photoshop tutorial blog. They offer a premium subscription for $9 a month that gives subscribers the files that are used in the tutorials plus some exclusive content that is not available to all subscribers.

How Many Blogs Do You Need to Own?

Most bloggers that make a full-time income online have more than just one blog. For example, Daniel has a network that includes Daily Writing Tips and Daily Bits in addition to Daily Blog Tips. While having more blogs obviously involves more work, it also opens up the opportunity to make more money and it provides a bit more stability as you are not putting all of your eggs in one basket.

It’s my opinion that you should focus on building one strong blog before adding others, but that is really just a matter of opinion. I think that having one popular blog will make it easier for you to launch other successful blogs, especially if they are covering similar topics.

An Alternate Possibility

Freelance blogging can also provide plenty of opportunities to make money with blogs. I kind of fell into freelance blogging without really trying, but I have found it to be a great source of income and exposure. There are an increasing number of blogs out there that are hiring writers, so opportunities are waiting to be found.

While I enjoy freelance blogging, I don’t necessarily think it is a great long-term approach to pro blogging. Long-term you are better off being the one that owns the blog, but I have found freelancing to be a great way to make money while growing a blog of your own.

What You Will Need to Become a Pro Blogger

Dedication - Having a career as a blogger is work, and it requires being dedicated to success. There will always be struggles and temptations to give up along the way, but those who are cut out for pro blogging will push through those obstacles.

Some Time - Developing a money-making blog doesn’t happen overnight. Most bloggers aren’t in a position where they can quit their full-time job and just replace their income with their blog. If you’re willing to take some time and make progress with consistent work, pro blogging is a possibility.

A Strong Network - Every successful blogger has surrounded themselves with a strong network of other bloggers. Be involved with others in your niche and make an effort to develop some solid friendships with others.

The Ability to Develop Content and Market a Blog - Pro bloggers aren’t always the best writers out there, but they all have found ways to create content that draws attention and a response from readers. Additionally, being able to market that content is equally important.

The Ability to Run a Business - A money-making blog is very much a real and legitimate business. Several major blogs are really more like a business than a blog (example, TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb). If your business skills are lacking, this is an area that you may want to develop.

What’s Your Experience?

Are you a blogger that hopes to earn a full-time income? Do you currently? What have you found to be important to making money with a blog?

Treating Your Blog as a Business: 8 Aspects to Consider

2008-11-22T21:31:00.000-08:00

Last week I wrote a post Is There a Career in Blogging? that examined the possibility of earning a full-time income with a blog (or a network of blogs). One of the keys that were mentioned for running a profitable blog was to treat the blog as a business, not as a hobby. This is probably a pretty obvious statement for those of us that are looking to make money online, but what is really involved? How can you put this into practice? Here are some of the elements that I feel are critical for treating a blog as a legitimate business.

1. Goals

Any traditional business will have goals that are set for a specific period of time, usually monthly, quarterly, and annually. Blogging should really be no different. If you hope to make a full-time income, or even a solid part-time income, you really should have specific goals of revenue that you need to produce. It seems obvious, but I think many of us don’t take goals as seriously as other types of businesses.

In order for your goals to be effective, they should be time-sensitive (meaning they end at a particular date), measurable, and attainable, although not too easily attainable. I think many of the bloggers who actually do set goals get a little caught up in the excitement and set their goals a bit too high right off the bat. As a result, many of them get disappointed and discouraged and quickly assume that blogging is not the way for them to make money online.

2. Accountability

Along with goals comes accountability. As an employee of a business you can be held accountable if you fail to meet the goals that are established for you. This, of course, can mean anything from a loss of a bonus all the way down to being fired. Too many bloggers initially set goals and then never follow up with tracking them or holding themselves accountable. Of course, I’m not suggesting that you fire yourself if you don’t achieve your goals. Rather, I believe that we could all benefit by taking ownership and being willing to honestly evaluate how our performance is living up to expectations.

3. Priority

Almost all of us are willing to get up each morning and go to work all day for someone else in order to make a living. If we are willing to do this for an employer, shouldn’t we make it a priority to put an effort into our own business? Although most bloggers are doing so part-time, as a business it should take priority over some other things in our life (of course this is a decision that each of us will have to make according to what is best for us). If blogging is not on your list of priorities, it’s probably not a real business and your chances of making money are slim.

4. Scheduling

If making money with a blog is a priority, we should dedicate specific time for it. Blogging becomes much more difficult when it only gets your attention when nothing else of interest is going on. Make an effort to decide how much time you are willing and able to dedicate to blogging each week and create a basic schedule that will help you to get that time in throughout the week. It doesn’t have to be something that you follow exactly each week, but get in the habit of seeing your time as being occupied by your efforts of building your blogging business.

5. Time Management

Now that you’ve scheduled some time to work, it can be helpful to track exactly how much of your time is being spent on what efforts. Try using a tool like Toggl (it’s free) or a more advanced tool like Harvest to see where your time is being spent. Most of us waste a lot more time than we realize and these tools can help to increase our efficiency.

6. Spending

Businesses are willing to spend money in order to make money. Bloggers, however, are usually looking only for the free options. I’m not suggesting that you go out and spend loads of money to build and market your blog, but keep an open mind to products and services that can streamline your efforts and increase your productivity.

7. Bookkeeping

If your blog is a business to you, it’s important to keep good records of your income and expenses. As a business, your expenses will most likely be tax deductible (check with a tax professional in your country), so you will obviously want accurate records. Tracking your income can also be helpful for monitoring your progress towards goals and for confidence and moral boosts.

You can use a number of different tools for this purpose, including a spreadsheet program like Excel. If you’re making decent money with your blog and you want a more sophisticated solution, there are several online programs, including Xero. For most bloggers a simple spreadsheet system will do.

8. Outsourcing

Many successful bloggers have found outsourcing to be an effective way to manage multiple projects. Daniel obviously runs several blogs, and I doubt that would be possible for him without outsourcing some of the work to others. He is certainly not alone. Hiring writers can be a good choice if your blog is producing enough money to cover the expenses. It’s not the right move for everyone, and definitely not for all stages of bloggers, but be willing to consider outsourcing as an option to improve your business’s profits.

What Are Your Thoughts?

What other aspects do you think are important to include here?

Customer Support is Key

2008-11-22T21:30:00.000-08:00

This should be a no-brainer, I know. Unfortunately it is not. It is incredible the amount of large and reputable companies out there that have poor customer support.

A couple of weeks ago I was purchasing a domain name via a renowned company. I made the payment (it was over $1,000), received confirmation of the payment, and then I was left waiting for the transfer process to begin. I started the transaction on Saturday, so I knew that perhaps they would not be working on the weekend (although they should; this is the Internet!).

Monday and Tuesday passed, and still I had not heard back from them. At this point you can imagine that I was starting to feel uneasy. Not because I was fearing they would fail to deliver the domain, but because I really needed to have control over it as soon as possible to start building the website.

I then wrote an email to the manager that was responsible for my transaction, asking if he had any updates. Sometimes you don’t even expect that they fix the problem immediately, but you want to know what they are doing to solve it, what information and previsions they have and so on. That was my case.

I would be happy as long as he promptly emailed me back saying: “We’re working on it, it should require another day or two.”

But that did not happen. He just replied to my email on the next day, after 30 hours or so.

I mean, are you kidding me? One of the largest domain dealers on the Internet takes 30 hours to reply to a customer’s email?

Needless to say that I was pretty unhappy with the overall experience, and I will think twice before purchasing another domain with them.

Now, remember that this point applies to virtually any company or business entity, including your websites, freelance business or blog. Your readers are your customers, after all. Take 30 hours to answer to their comments or emails and I am sure that they will think twice before coming back.

Embracing the Status of Part-Time Blogger: 5 Practical Tips

2008-11-22T21:20:00.000-08:00

I’m sure you read a lot about pro blogging and what it takes to earn a full-time income from your blog. This is a common topic among active bloggers and there are plenty of great articles that cover various aspects of the subject. With the huge amount of focus that is given to becoming a pro blogger, I think that becoming a successful and profitable part-time blogger is often overlooked. Earning a reasonable amount of money on a part-time basis is actually more desirable than most people realize.

The Benefits of Part-Time Blogging:

Stability - As a part-time blogger you can still have the stability of a secure full-time income from another job. There’s no need to quit your day job and jump in right away in order to be successful (although some have done it). As a part-time blogger you have the luxury of earning some money and building your business without the risk that would come along with going full-time right away.

Less Pressure - As a part-time blogger with the stability of a full-time income, you won’t have the pressure to produce or to earn large sums of money from your blog. If you’re able to live off of your full-time income, the blog income is really just extra. If you have a down month when you don’t make as much as you would have hoped, it’s not that big of a deal.

Nice Supplementary Income - Although you don’t have the pressure to produce an income from your blog that can support your lifestyle, you do have the opportunity to earn a very good income from a blog part-time. In my opinion, one of the best reasons to blog part-time is that with a consistent and focused effort you can build an income that continues to grow, even with just a part-time effort. Yes, most blogs will max out at some point on just part-time efforts, but it is typical that most dedicated part-time bloggers find their income increasing. At some point this supplementary income may be enough to consider giving up the day job and becoming a pro blogger, or you may choose to just continue part-time and enjoy the extra income.

Allows for Re-Investment - Blogging to make money is a business like any other. Part of being in business is willingness to spend money and invest in the business. Most bloggers are hesitant to spend any money at all and are always looking for free options. While being careful with your money is a positive attribute, having a willingness to re-invest some or all of your blogging income will give you a better chance of making more in the long run. Part-time bloggers have a much greater ability to re-invest their earnings because in most cases they don’t rely on that income for necessary living expenses.

Pro blogging isn’t for everyone, yet that’s not what you might be led to believe based on the amount of information that is written on the subject. It’s completely possible and achievable to dedicate part-time hours to a blog and build a decent income, and one that should continue to grow with time. If you’re a part-time blogger, which 99% of us are, why not embrace your status and recognize the benefits and opportunities that are involved.

Some Tips for Part-Time Bloggers:

1. Have a Plan - Especially for part-time bloggers, having direction is critical. Do you want to eventually earn a full-time income from your blog? Are you happy just to earn a part-time income? Of course your plan can change over time, but it is important to have a plan of where you want to go with your blog and what you need to do to get there.

2. Use a Schedule - With fewer hours available to spend on your blog, you’ll need to be as efficient as possible. In order to achieve maximum efficiency you will need to schedule your time to assure that you’re working on things that will produce results, rather than just wasting time surfing.

3. Don’t Spread Yourself too Thin - Many of us face the challenge of directing our efforts in the right areas. You probably have ideas for several new blogs you’d like to start or other online methods of making money. Avoid the temptation to take on too much at one time. You’ll have better results, especially with limited time, by focusing your efforts and building a successful blog before adding anything new. Be realistic with yourself about what you can handle and what you simply don’t have time for.

4. Approach Part-Time Blogging as Asset Building - Having a part-time job isn’t always fun. Many times there are other things you would rather do with your free time away from your full-time job. Part-time blogging is really all about building an asset. We’ve seen from the blogs that have been sold in the past that part-time blogging truly is asset building. Whether you want to eventually sell the blog or keep it, the blog is still an asset to you. When you look at your blogging efforts as asset building you’ll see more of the long-term benefits and payoffs and you’ll focus less on the hours that you’re losing for other activities.

5. Re-Evaluate Your Goals from Time-to-Time - Most likely when you first started your blog you had some goals that were slightly different than they are now. That’s a natural occurrence. As you learn about what’s involved with running a profitable blog and about the opportunities that exist, you may change your mind in some way about the direction that you want to take. It’s a good idea to occasionally sit down and evaluate why you are dedicating your time to blogging and where you are hoping to go with it. If your motivation has changed, don’t be afraid to make changes in your approach.

What Are Your Thoughts?

Are you a part-time blogger? How do you see the opportunity for earning a part-time income and where do you hope to go in the future?

10 Things to Consider Before Starting a 2nd Blog

2008-11-18T04:28:00.000-08:00

Most bloggers at some point face the decision of launching a new blog or just focusing on their existing blog(s). Whether you currently have one blog or ten blogs, adding another is something that should be given careful consideration. Typically, bloggers choose to branch out for one of the following reasons:

Income Potential – Sometimes a blog’s income gets stagnate and in order to increase the amount of revenue from blogging activities, the blogger will choose to launch an additional blog.

Variety – By launching a new blog that focuses on different topics, you can get some variety in your work that may be very much appreciated.

Lack of Results – Sometimes a new blog is launched simply because the existing one isn’t producing the results that the blogger was hoping for. The new blog is then an attempt to reach the goals by starting off in a new direction.

Something New – Burnout is a very real issue for most bloggers. Launching a new blog can bring some added excitement and enthusiasm that may otherwise be lacking.

Although it’s very common for bloggers to launch a new project, it can have serious effects on the productivity and profitability of all of the other projects that you have going on. Before you jump into something that requires a significant commitment, take the time to make sure that the timing is right for you. Here are ten factors that you should consider before launching a new blog.

1. Time

How much available time do you have to work on another blog? Most bloggers do so on a part-time basis, and if you are adding one more blog to manage and maintain, it could have a significant impact on your schedule. I think most of us tend to get excited when we have an idea that we think will work, and that excitement sometimes prevents us from rationalizing about what is really involved. Be honest with yourself. Do you have enough time for a new blog? Don’t just consider the time it takes to write posts. You’ll also have to respond to comments and emails, as well as market the blog. If you are giving up one of your current blogs in order to free up more time, this may not be an issue.

2 – How will it affect your other blog?

If your new blog takes part of your time and your focus, what impact will that have on your other blogs and online projects? If you have other profitable sites, be sure that you won’t be making too big of a sacrifice.

3 – What will take priority?

One of the things you will find is that when you have multiple blogs going at the same time, it’s natural for certain priorities to form. You may not intend for it to happen, but something will be more important and will demand more of your time. The more you throw into the mix, the more this will affect your priorities. Try to anticipate how your new blog will affect you in this way and think about your order of priorities.

4 – Profit potential

Most bloggers attempt to make money from their efforts in some way. Maybe you are selling ads on your blog, or maybe you are using the blog to promote your services. Regardless of your approach, you need to consider the new blog’s profit potential before you start devoting too much time working on it.

5 – Can you transfer readers?

One of the huge advantages to starting a 2nd (or 3rd, 4th, etc.) blog is that you will already have an established audience and you should also have a strong network of other bloggers. These are serious advantages over bloggers who are just getting started with their first blog. If your new blog will cover topics that are similar to your existing blogs you may be able to transfer some of your readers to the new blog by promoting it on your other blog(s). This is probably the best way to quickly build up your subscriber base.

6 – Can you transfer advertisers?

If you sell ads on your blog, you may have an advantage by starting a 2nd blog. Managing advertisers can take time and effort, and if you are able to sell ad spots on multiple blogs to the same advertisers, it could be a nice time-saver. If your blogs target similar audiences, many of your subscribers may be interested in marketing to both.

7 – Is the niche saturated?

I’m not one to say that you shouldn’t enter a competitive niche. However, I do think you should understand what you are getting yourself into, and you should be prepared for the level of competition. Take time to do some research on other blogs in the niche and see what you can learn.

8 – What is your exit strategy?

When you start a new blog it’s always a good idea to think about where you want to go with it long-term. In today’s online environment, that may mean preparing to sell the blog. If this is the case you’ll want to consider what you can do to increase the value of the blog while you have it.

9 – Can you outsource?

The more blog you are running, the more likely it is that you will want to outsource some of the work. Many bloggers now are turning to freelance bloggers to produce some or all of the content. Others are even hiring editors to handle more of the day-to-day operations. This is something that you may want to consider if you expect the blog to be profitable and you have a very limited amount of time available.

10 – Will you run out of ideas?

Running a blog require a lot of interest and knowledge (or at least a willingness to learn) on the subject at hand. How much do you have to say about the particular topic? If it’s not an area that you have a strong interest in, the chances are higher that you’ll have a difficult time finding things to write about.

What’s Your Experience?

How many blogs you own? What challenges does this present to you? If you were planning to start a new blog, what would be the most significant factors for you?

Twitter Less, Blog More!

2008-11-18T04:20:00.000-08:00

Given the religious following that Twitter is gaining these days, I am sure that this will be a polemic topic.

Still here it goes: Twitter less and blog more!.

Now let me draw my argument.

I do think that Twitter is a very useful online application, for several purposes. It allows people that work from home or alone in front of a computer all day to socialize. It allows bloggers and website owners to interact with their readers on another level. It should even allow one to make new friends and to get in touch with people that would be unreachable otherwise.

The problem I am seeing lately, though, is that many people are giving Twitter priority even when they have something interesting, useful or funny to say; or when they have some resources to share. In those situations, I think it would be a better idea to develop your thoughts and ideas a bit further, and post it on your blog instead.

Why? Because your blog is your property. It should be the single most important location for you on the Internet. It should be the place where people go to when they think about you. Your blog, not Twitter (unless you only Twitter obviously).

Even if you don’t like to think in abstract terms, there are material reasons to opt to blog something instead of Twittering it. In the long run every backlink and every visitor count. Guess what, every time you Twitter instead of blogging something interesting you are risking to lose visitors and backlinks.

This very post illustrates the case. My initial though was to Twitter about this. Since we have the limit of 140 characters over there, it would be something like “Hey guys, have you ever thought that perhaps instead of Twittering you should be blogging?”

Instead of doing that, though, I decided to develop my thoughts further and create a post with it.

Now think about two people starting today on the online world. One adopts the strategy I am describing here. The other goes religiously with Twitter, blogging once in a while. After one year, I suspect that the former would have a popular blog, while the latter would have a popular Twitter account.

Which one would you rather have?

Managing Your Reputation Online

2008-11-18T04:17:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday I published an article titled Having an Opinion: The Secret Sauce for a Popular Blog. Today I want to talk about the other side of that coin.

As we discussed in that previous article, expressing one’s opinion clearly and strongly can be the secret to generating a lot of buzz and traffic. As you also know, on the Internet pretty much anyone can setup a website and publish his own content in a matter of minutes.

Put together those two ingredients and the result could be someone doing a lot of damage to your online reputation. In order words, the easier for people to express their opinions and to share those with a large number of people, the higher the important of managing your reputation online, and this point is valid for pretty much anyone using the web, from business entities to bloggers and individuals.

Not convinced this is important? Suppose you have just published an ebook or released a web service. After a couple of days one client gets really upset about the quality offered, and decides to write a chaotic review about it. Should some people link to his review, there is a great chance that his post will show up in the first page of Google for the name of your ebook or service, and now the damage is done. Potential clients that end up reading that bad review will stay clear from purchasing your product.

OK, how do I manage my online reputation though?

So how do you manage your online reputation? The most obvious way is to search on Google for your name, website name or product name frequently, making sure that nothing undesired is showing up there. You could also use online tools like Google Alerts to automate this process.

Sometime ago I also came across a related article from Andy Beal on Mashable titled “Ten Tactics That Could Save Your Online Reputation. Here are the final two points, which I think are particularly important:

9. Ostriches are not great role-models

If you find yourself facing a stampede of angry bloggers, with the mission of calling you out on your company’s foul, sticking your head in the sand does not make them go away. You might initially convince yourself that the problem will simply disappear and besides, what harm can a blogger do anyway? In all likelihood your denial will buy you just a day or two before your scandal makes it to the inbox of a New York Times journalist. Game over.

Instead, the moment you see any reputation attack you should take action. It might only need a comment from you in the blogger’s comments section, or it might require your own blog post or video, announcing what steps you’re taking to resolve the issue. The key is to respond quickly, address the situation, apologize if needed, and prevent it becoming the lead story in the evening news.

10. Three words to remember

I’ve written thousands of words on the topic of building a great online reputation, but I’ve managed to condense everything down to just three words for you to remember: sincerity, transparency, and consistency.

Sincerity means wanting to hear from your customers and the desire to truly provide a positive experience with your company. Transparency involves tearing down the walls of corporate rhetoric and PR spin–the more you share with your customers the more you’ll win their trust. Consistency is a vital component for any reputation management efforts. Your customers will forgive your isolated failure, but if you’re not consistently living-up to your brand promise, they’ll find a company that does.

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know how important I think it is to be honest and 100% transparent, both online and offline.

Andy is also the author of Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online. If your business is highly connected with the web it could be a good idea to read it (it is on my wish list on Amazon already). By the way this is not an affiliate link, I am recommending the book because I actually know the quality of Andy’s work.

Do Not Fear Failing or Doing New Things

2008-11-18T04:09:00.000-08:00

I just came across an interesting interview with Google’s founder Larry page. The interview is about how to change the world. Sounds challenging huh? This guy actually did it, so he has credit to talk about it.

When asked about how to get more people actually thinking about and working on things that might end up changing the world, he answered:

There are a number of barriers in place. Let me give an example. In our first founders’ letter in 2004, we talked about the risk profile with respect to doing new innovations. We said we would do some things that would have only a 10% chance of making $1 billion over the long term. But we don’t put many people on those things; 90% work on everything else. So that’s not a big risk. And if you look at where many of our new features come from, it’s from these riskier investments.

Even when we started Google, we thought, “Oh, we might fail,” and we almost didn’t do it. The reason we started is that Stanford said, “You guys can come back and finish your Ph.D.s if you don’t succeed.” Probably that one decision caused Google to be created. It’s not clear we would have done it otherwise. We had all this internal risk we had just invented. It’s not that we were going to starve or not get jobs or not have a good life or whatever, but you have this fear of failing and of doing something new, which is very natural. In order to do stuff that matters, you need to overcome that.

This advice is good for pretty much anything you decide to carry on in your life. Blogging and online ventures are no exception. If you want to succeed on the web, you will need to let your fear of failure go away, and to try new and innovative things.

Star Trek Blogging: The Klingon Way

2008-11-18T04:04:00.000-08:00

Image by Eli from PhotoshopStar

In the world of Star Trek, Klingons are known as a warrior people, formidable in battle, fierce in their passions, and concerned with honor above all. But the life of a Klingon has lessons for humans, even for that sedentary class known as bloggers. Here are three proverbs that can help you learn to blog the Klingon way.

Act and you shall have dinner. Think and you shall be dinner.

Because so much of Klingon life is centered around battle and the hunt, the ability to act quickly and decisively is highly prized. When your opponent is swinging a bat’leth at you, there isn’t any time to contemplate the best course of action. You need to act instinctively to avoid a painful death.

In blogging too, taking action can be much more important than thinking things through. One of my most popular posts was just written up quickly and when I did allow myself to think about whether I should publish it, I hesitated wondering whether my readers would like it or not. Fortunately I decided to act instead of overthinking it.

Four thousand throats may be cut in one night by a running man.

This proverb also emphasizes speed, but even more importantly, it warns against underestimating someone’s abilities, whether that is you or someone else. If a warrior can cut a single person’s throat, then the only obstacle to cutting four thousand is how quickly he can repeat this act. The warrior who can not only cut throats, but do it quickly, is the warrior capable of achieving greatness.

In blogging as well, the limiting factor for most blogs is how quickly and strongly they pursue their goals. Often they underestimate themselves, thinking that they can only do so much in a given period of time. That’s true enough, but if you perfect your technique by eliminating distractions and systematically pursuing your goals, gaining a few thousand subscribers might not be so impossible after all.

Mere life is not a victory, mere death is not a defeat.

To a Klingon, it isn’t enough to merely live. One must also live well. This means fighting great battles, going on great hunts, serving the Empire well, and finally dying a glorious death knowing that you have passionately pursued the things you want most.

Then too, it isn’t enough to merely blog. One must also blog well. This means writing great articles, posting great comments, supporting your blogger friends, and when the time is right, retiring your blog honorably knowing that you pursued blogging passionately.

Qapla’!*

* Success!

Joshua Clanton is a freelance web designer who blogs about design, productivity, and creativity. He’s also quickly approaching his long-term goal of watching every Star Trek episode ever made.

Open Discussion: Does a Degree Improve Your Chances of Succeeding Online?

2008-11-18T04:02:00.000-08:00

Let’s kick start this week with an open discussion. Do you think that a college degree will improve the chances of someone succeeding online?

Now, I do know that having a degree is not necessary. This is beyond discussion, since you have plenty of examples of people that made it big on and off the web, and had no degree whatsoever.

My question is if having a degree will improve your chances, as opposed to getting started on the Web right after high school.

Suppose you have two men with the same intellectual capabilities and skills. The first one goes to college to obtain a degree, while the second one starts working full time on the web right after high school. After 4 years the first one will also start working full time on the web, but with an academic background.

After 10 years, which of the two men will be more successful?

Honestly I think that the second one will. I think that four years spent with direct and real work experience will prepare someone much better than four years spent studying economics, business, marketing or whatever.

There are people that claim otherwise though. They defend that a degree, regardless of the knowledge that you will get and which might or might not prove useful in the future, will give you methods for thinking, solving problems and researching information.

My counter argument to that is that direct work experience will also provide you with those tools and frameworks for thinking and solving problems, just in a different way.

I asked a some friends of mine who are pretty successful online, and here is what they answered:

Lee Dodd (has an online forums empire estimated at $15 million):

No high school diploma. I did go to college early at 16 years old but dropped out after a year and went to work, good old pizza delivery.

Zac Johnson (affiliate marketer):

I started making money online while I was 15 and still in high school. I went to a local community college for a semester to check it out, but it really wasn’t that beneficial and I was already busy with my existing business. I actually ended up speaking at a few of my college classes for the semester I went. To answer your question, no I don’t think it’s necessary, but it is very rare to find people successfully make a living off online marketing.

Frank Feingold (has a hosting company)

I think a degree adds credibility (and therefore possibly success) if there is a degree / certification. For example if you discuss real estate on-line it would help to be a licensed realtor. In other areas there are no degrees / certifications so experience is more important.

Cory Miller (web designer)

Here’s my thoughts: Not necessarily. I think having a college degree in general helps open doors and provides you with a base of learning.

But so many of us doing work online are self-taught. We’re voracious, life-long readers. We eat blogs and dead trees to improve our knowledge.

Trent Hamm (blogger)

A degree helps only in the sense that it provides them domain knowledge. For example, if you’re a history blogger, a degree in history would help you.

I think a college degree benefits anyone if it forces them to think. But I think many people skate by with some short-term memorization. If that’s all you get out of it, and you’re not entering a field where that piece of paper is part of the cost of admission, then college doesn’t help.

Suppose you had a son and he wants to work with the Internet. He is already building sites, blogs and what not. Would you tell him to go to the university anyway, or would you tell him to start working full time on the Web?

Ratio Analysis for Bloggers 1: Subscriber Conversion Ratio

2008-11-18T03:57:00.001-08:00

I have a degree in Internal Economics, but the course aimed to be very broad, so we ended up having lessons on finance and business administration as well. I was not a fan of the finance classes, but I remember that one topic interested me a lot: financial ratios.

Financial ratios are basically a quick system to examine the financial conditions of a business or project. They express the relation of one factor to some other. I am sure you are familiar with the ROI (Return on Investment) ratio, which basically illustrates the relation of the money you will gain on a project, relative to the amount you had previously invested.

Sometimes the ratio per se has no meaning, but it becomes immensely useful when you are able to compare different ratios of the same company over time, or when you need to compare two different companies or projects.

At this point you might be asking yourself: are you changing the topic of this blog to Finance 101 or what?

Not at all. In the past I had already mentioned that blogs can be seen as business entities. They have managers (authors), inputs (ideas and information), outputs (posts and articles), clients (readers), competitors (bloggers or other websites on the same niche), partners (blog networks, friends), performance indicators (traffic, RSS subscribers, incoming links) and so on.

The idea that came to my mind, therefore, was to apply ratio analysis to blogs. The objective is to create a set of tools that bloggers can use to examine the performance of their own blogs, or to compare different blogs. Below you will find the first ratio of the series.

Subscriber Conversion Ratio (SCR)

Gaining RSS and email subscribers is a priority for any blogger. Those readers are the most loyal ones, and they represent a guaranteed audience and source of traffic for your blog.

Now most blogs will gain subscribers from their articles and posts. That is: someone comes to your site from a search engine or from an organic link, reads one or more of your posts, like it, and decide to subscribe to stay updated with future content. Sure some blogs will have competitions and prizes for boosting those numbers, but that is the exception and not the rule.

If that is the case, one analysis that we can make is how well your articles and design are working towards the goal of gaining new RSS or email subscribers.

Notice that I said “how well your articles and design” because both of those factors will contribute to the conversion rate. You need to have both quality and engaging content, and a design that supports your goals. A blog that has outstanding content but where the RSS icon is hidden at the footer will have a low conversion rate. Similarly, a blog with several big RSS icons all over the place might not convert at all if the quality of the content is poor.

Back to the central question, you can examine how well you are converting visitors into subscribers with the Subscriber Conversion Ratio (SCR), which is simply the total number of subscribers that you have (as reported by Feedburner, for example) divided by the total number of posts on your blog.

Applying the numbers

Let’s apply the ratio to some real cases now.

DailyBlogTips.com has 13855 subscribers as of today, and 822 posts. The SCR therefore is 13855 divided by 822, which is equal to 16,9. On average, therefore, every post that I wrote here brought in 16,9 new subscribers.

DailyWritingTips.com has 10976 subscribers and 460 posts. The SCR there is 23,9. As you can see on Daily Writing Tips every new post brought in more subscribers than on Daily Blog Tips.

DailyBits.com has 1122 subscribers and 196 posts. The SCR is very low at 5,7.

There are 5 main factors that will affect the SCR:

1. Quality of the content: the higher the quality of the content, the higher the SCR should be. Several parameters will affect the quality though, including the writing skills of the author, the originality of its ideas, the value of the information for the readers and so on.
2. Design: the design of the blog will also affect the SCR. The overall look will help to get first time visitors interested. The right positioning of RSS icons and email subscription forms will then affect the conversion rate of visitors into subscribers.
3. Niche. The niche of the blog will strongly affect its SCR as well. Blogs on tech-savvy niches will tend to have a higher SCR than blogs on other niches.
4. Growth phase. Blogs that are new or starting to grow might present a lower SCR than established ones. That is because most successful blogs or websites present an exponential growth pattern. There is a tipping point where the traffic and subscriber levels suddenly jump out of the normal line.
5. Content format: blogs that publish small and frequent posts will obviously have a lower SCR when compared to blogs that publish longer, how-to like articles.

Considering that all my three sites have the same design, therefore, I would attribute the low SCR of DailyBits.com to the quality of the content and to the content format. Its audience is as tech-savvy as on the other bloggers, so that should not be influencing either. Sure we have good content over there, but it is not as focused and as consistent as on the other two sites, and the posts tend to be shorter and news based.

Conclusion

While there are different factors that will affect the SCR, I think you could still use it to examine your blog’s performance. Compare the SCR of your blog with those on the same niche. If the number you get is significantly lower, perhaps you should work on the design, on the content format or try to improve the overall quality of your articles.

Suppose you have 4 different blogs, and you want to focus on one. The SCR could be a factor used to decide which one you should focus on.

Over to the readers

It is difficult to estimate what is a good SCR and what is a bad. We would need to have more data points, so if you want to help this out please share your SCR and niche on the comments below.

Do you think this could be effective to comparing blogs on the same niche?

Ratio Analysis for Bloggers 1: Subscriber Conversion Ratio

2008-11-18T03:57:00.000-08:00

At this point you might be asking yourself: are you changing the topic of this blog to Finance 101 or what?

Subscriber Conversion Ratio (SCR)

Gaining RSS and email subscribers is a priority for any blogger. Those readers are the most loyal ones, and they represent a guaranteed audience and source of traffic for your blog.

If that is the case, one analysis that we can make is how well your articles and design are working towards the goal of gaining new RSS or email subscribers.

Applying the numbers

Let’s apply the ratio to some real cases now.

DailyWritingTips.com has 10976 subscribers and 460 posts. The SCR there is 23,9. As you can see on Daily Writing Tips every new post brought in more subscribers than on Daily Blog Tips.

DailyBits.com has 1122 subscribers and 196 posts. The SCR is very low at 5,7.

There are 5 main factors that will affect the SCR:

Conclusion

Suppose you have 4 different blogs, and you want to focus on one. The SCR could be a factor used to decide which one you should focus on.

Over to the readers

It is difficult to estimate what is a good SCR and what is a bad. We would need to have more data points, so if you want to help this out please share your SCR and niche on the comments below.

Do you think this could be effective to comparing blogs on the same niche?

When Is The Best Time To Start A New Blog?

2008-11-18T03:55:00.000-08:00

Recently, while browsing through MyBlogLog and other sites, I’ve seen a lot of people with multiple blogs, usually more than two. There is really no problem with having more than one blog, but I always ask myself that if someone has more than one blog, than it must mean their first blog is doing very well. Wrong!

And that’s where I see a problem, at least in my opinion. When checking the stats on those multiple blogs, I found that in most cases all of the blogs were doing poorly to relatively OK, but nothing more. So, instead of having one poorly performing blog, many people have several poorly performing blogs.

It is hard enough maintaining one blog, let alone 2, 3, 4 or more at once. My opinion is that until your first blog reaches a certain level or status, you should hold off on creating a second blog. If you put all your resources into writing great content, building traffic, and building a large reader base for one blog, it will be much easier to create a second or third blog, but the first one has to be there as kind of a mandatory stepping stone.

So how can you gauge the “level” or “status” of a blog and know when it’s the right time to start a new one? Well, I don’t think it’s possible to have any clear cut formula for figuring something like that out, but from my own experience there are a few general guidelines I personally measure myself up against before thinking about starting a new blog.

1. Traffic – Again, there is no particular number that can be thrown out and used for all blogs, but there are some ways to think about traffic. For example, is your site mostly getting traffic from social media sites or from organic search results? My personal view is that you should judge whether to branch out based on your organic search results as social media can be very inconsistent.

If you’re looking at traffic numbers, you should analyze your current traffic to that of the top blogs in your niche. For Online Tech Tips, I might compare myself against Digital Inspiration, HowToGeek.com, Ghacks.net, MakeUseOf.com, etc. All of these sites are very well established and well respected tech blogs.

My favorite place to see traffic levels and compare my site to others is Google Trends, which can give you very very close estimates of daily unique visitors for websites:

Personally, if I feel I am within 10% of the top blogs in my niche, I might decide to go ahead and start another site. Of course, there are blogs like LifeHacker.com that blow away everyone in the graph above, but you don’t have to compare yourself to the top 1 or 2 sites as they are exceptions that are extremely difficult to ever reach.

My point is that if I am not matching other sites in my current niche, why the heck am I going to start a new site? There are still many aspects that need to be improved.

2. Financial Aspects – Another factor that you can consider in making a decision about starting a new blog is to look at your financials. How much money are you making from your site? Do you know how much the other guys are making? Sometimes asking them is the best way to learn and to determine whether you are doing things correctly or not. Are your earnings increasing every month or decreasing?

A lot of people will say that they want to reach the $100 a day mark in AdSense and that is their goal. So reaching that number might be a sign to start a new site. For others, it could be $200 a day. Again, my view is that you should ask other bloggers in your niche what they earn on a monthly or yearly basis and compare that with your own numbers.

3. Community – Even if you don’t have a ton of organic traffic, you might have a large reader base that can serve as a good measure of when to start a new site. Some sites like TechCrunch or Engadget don’t even really need search engine traffic to do well because they have a huge number of RSS readers.

For tech blogs that I compare myself too, a reasonable number to shoot for would be 25,000 to 40,000. I’m nowhere near that right now, so should I really be starting another site? Maybe my content is not as appealing or engaging as other tech sites? If I reach those numbers, I would feel confident that my site has the quality of a tog blog in that niche.

4. Ranking – There are a lot of services out there these days that rank sites. Technorati, Alexa, Compete, QuantCast, and Wikio are just a few that come to mind. Again, it’s good to compare your rankings with those of others in your niche.

Getting your blog into the Top 1K or 5K in Technorati might signify that your site has now reached a status where it can be given a little less attention so that you can focus on a new site.

5. Limitations/Restrictions - One last factor that came into my mind was the fact that it might be a good idea to start a new blog if you have certain limitations with your current site. For example, if you feel limited by running your site on Blogger or Wordpress.com. You may also have a site with a ban, or other sort of problems related to the domain name and so on.

I would agree that there are some circumstances where it might be better to start a new blog, especially if you are writing about a topic that you are not really passionate about.

However, if you write about something you know well or that you really enjoy and you are not competing well with other sites in your niche, it would be well worth continuing to work on the current blog than trying to start up a new one and becoming even more frustrated and time-consumed. A strong first blog will carry along other blogs much better than a weak blog.

Over to the readers

What are your thoughts on when the best time is to start a new blog? Also, if you are decided to starting a new one, check the article 12 Tips To Grow the Subscriber Base on Your Second Blog.

Aseem Kishore is the lead blogger for Online-Tech-Tips, a technology blog covering a wide variety of topics including how-to tips, software reviews, and the latest tech news.

Ratio Analysis For Bloggers 2: Comments per Post Ratio

2008-11-18T03:52:00.000-08:00

On the first part of this series we talked about the Subscriber Conversion Ratio (and also about the usefulness of ratios for several types of analysis, check it out if you want some basic information on that).

On this post we are going to cover the Comments per Post Ratio.

Why Are Comments Important?

First things first, why should a blogger even care about the number of comments on his blog? There are several reasons for it.

The comments themselves might become a valuable part of your content, and a reason why readers visit your blog. Commentators will often expand your thoughts, complement specific topics and offer another point of view, enriching your articles.

Secondly, the comments section of a blog is the corner stone of the community around it. That is where readers will interact both with the author and with other readers. And as you probably know, the more active and engaged the community on your blog, the higher its popularity.

Finally, first time visitors and potential advertisers might judge the success of your blog based on the average number of comments that it receives. Suppose an advertiser wants to buy a banner ad, and he needs to decide between two blogs on the same topic and with a similar number of RSS subscribers. The first blog, however, gets on average 30 comments per post, while the second gets only 5. Which blog do you think will be chosen?

Comments per Post Ratio

Now that you know the importance of comments, let’s talk about the Comments per Post Ratio (CPR). This is a very simple number, which can be obtained by dividing the total number of comments on your blog by the total number of posts published.

Most blogging platforms display this information on the control panel or on the dashboard. Suppose you have 100 comments and 50 posts published. In this case your CPR would be 2.

Applying the Numbers

In order to give you more concrete examples I will calculate the CPR on my 3 “Daily” blogs.

Daily Bits has 1,107 total comments and 208 published posts. The CPR is 5,3
Daily Writing Tips has 4,688 total comments and 486 published posts. The CPR is 9,6
Daily Blog Tips has 24,931 total comments and 861 published posts. The CPR is 28,9

As you can see there is a good spread on the numbers. Daily Bits gets on average 5,3 comments per post, while Daily Blog Tips gets 28,9.

What factors might be influencing this ratio? Here are some:

1. Posting Frequency. A blog that posts once a week will tend to have a higher number of comments post than a blog that posts daily. The reason is connected to the amount of time that each post will have on top of the homepage (where they receive more visibility and therefore more comments).

2. Topic. The topic of the blog will also influence the Comments per Post Ratio. technology blogs tend to get a smaller number of comments than make money online blogs, for example.

3. Traffic. The higher the traffic, the higher the number of comments per post. That is why many advertisers consider this number as well.

4. Writing style and type of posts. Writers that manage to engage their audience will inevitably receive more comments per post. Additionally, bloggers that know how to get their readers involved can significantly boost the discussion on the comments section.

Conclusion

This ratio can be practically used when you make comparisons with a blog that is in your niche and has a similar level of traffic. If your Comments per Post Ratio is significantly lower than that of another blog, you are doing something wrong.

There are several methods and tactics that you could use to boost the number of comments on your blog (without getting more traffic, changing the topic or the posting frequency), including:

Asking questions to your readers at the end of posts
Running polls
Writing about personal experiences and encourage readers to share theirs
Writing about polemic issues
Giving prizes to people that leave comments
Rewarding your most active commenters with a link

What is the Comments per Post Ration on your blog? Do you think you should try to improve it?

Perfectionism is Bad For You

2008-11-18T03:50:00.000-08:00

I used to be a perfectionist, and it damaged me in more than one way. Over the years I have recognized this problem, and I am almost getting over it. But one step back, what is perfectionism? Quoting Wikipedia:

Perfectionism, in psychology, is a belief that perfection can and should be attained. In its pathological form, perfectionism is a belief that work or output that is anything less than perfect is unacceptable. At such levels, this is considered an unhealthy belief, and psychologists typically refer to such individuals as maladaptive perfectionists.

When you behave with perfectionism, you basically want to make things perfect, or not make them at all. Why is this bad for you? Because more often than not you will get blocked and paralyzed if you try to make things perfect. Even if you manage to make them perfect at one point, it might be too late to reap the rewards from it.

Practically speaking, how can perfectionism affect you badly on the Internet? In several ways, here are some examples:

You might never launch that website you had planned just because you can’t seem to find the perfect structure for it
You might spend too much time tweaking your design because you want to make it perfect, and on the mean while you neglect the content part which is far more important
You might never publish that big article just because you can’t seem to make it perfect and ready to be published
You might end up never trying that money making idea because it is not perfect and could not work out

You get the idea. Striving for excellence is a good thing, but you should realize that this will come along the way and from constant trial and error and adaptions. If you always try to get it perfected right from the beginning, you will get blocked and paralyzed.

In other words: Start with anything that is good enough, and improve it from there.

Too Much Effort and No Progress? Something Is Wrong There

2008-11-18T03:41:00.000-08:00

My dad always tell me this. If you are putting too much effort into a specific task, while not making good progress, there is something wrong there.

This is true for all endeavors in life, from the most basic to the most complex ones. Suppose you are trying to cut a piece of wood with a hand saw. Despite putting all your strength on it, however, you are not making good progress. Well, there is something wrong there. You are probably not handling the saw the right way, or you are not approaching the wood with the right angle.

Upon facing a similar situation, some people would keep going carelessly, until all their energy is drained and they are overwhelmed by the task and just give up. Other people, however, stop and try to figure out what is wrong.

Needless to say that the second option is always the best one.

Now this principle also applies to the Internet and to blogging. I often times see people putting a lot of effort on their blogs or websites, but even after one year they are only getting a couple hundred of unique visitors daily.

Sure, creating a popular website is hard, but it is easy at the same time. What I mean is, you should not expect to be receiving 10,000 daily unique visitors after 6 months, but 1,000 is completely feasible.

The message I want to pass is the following: If you are working very hard on your website, but apparently are not making any real progress, there must be something wrong there (e.g., on the domain name, on your promotion strategies, on your content, or on all of them).

No matter what you do, you can’t make your website go over 200 daily unique visitors or 200 RSS subscribers? Something is wrong there.

If you are in that situation, the best thing you can do is to stop and think. Take a look around, see what other people are doing, investigate what is working from them, read e-books, study, and re-think your strategy.

Sometimes this will involve shifting the focus of your site, other times it will require you to completely dump it and start a new one. It is not easy, but it might be necessary.

Monster Ancol The Indonesian Monster

2008-11-17T07:07:00.000-08:00

Beredarnya video monster air di Pantai Ancol, Jakarta Utara, membuat sejumlah warga resah. Mereka minta kepada pengelola Ancol untuk segera mengambil tindakan dan tidak perlu menunggu jatuhnya korban dari kalangan pengunjung Ancol.

Sejumlah pengunjung Pantai Bende, Ancol, mengaku belum melihat video ”Monster Ancol” yang beredar di internet. Meski demikian, menurut mereka, bila makhluk pemangsa daging itu benar-benar ada, pengelola Ancol harus segera mengambil tindakan. ”Kalau betul makhluk itu ada, pihak Ancol harus cepat bertindak supaya kita enggak waswas,” ungkap Sandy (34), pengunjung Pantai Bende.

Warga Kelapa Gading itu menambahkan, sekecil apa pun informasi tentang hal-hal yang bisa menggangu kenyamanan pengunjung Ancol, pengelola tempat wisata harus mengambil sikap. ”Jangan menunggu ada insiden,” ujarnya.

Pengunjung Ancol lainnya, Ny Imelda (29), juga mengaku khawatir tentang monster rakus tersebut. Warga Cempaka Putih, Jakarta Pusat, ini mengharapkan pengelola Ancol segera bertindak untuk menyelidiki kabar tersebut. ”Jangan anggap enteng,” katanya.

Dalam beberapa hari terakhir, di internet beredar video ”Monster Ancol”. Video berdurasi sekitar tiga menit itu memperlihatkan adegan seseorang melempar bangkai ikan ke air. Beberapa saat kemudian, ratusan binatang sebesar lebah madu menggerogoti bangkai ikan itu dengan rakus dan menyisakan durinya saja.

Dari percakapan yang melatari video tersebut, salah seorang di antaranya mengatakan bahwa binatang pemangsa bangkai ikan itu adalah kutu air. Binatang tersebut sangat peka terhadap bau daging dan darah.

Munculnya video ”Monster Ancol” telah diketahui PT Pembangunan Jaya Ancol, pengelola Ancol. Sofia Cakti, Corporate Communication Manager, mengatakan, pihaknya belum bisa memastikan apakah binatang pemakan daging yang ada di video di internet tersebut benar-benar ada atau tidak.

Hingga kemarin, sejak video itu beredar, pengelola Ancol senantiasa mengumpulkan informasi dari para nelayan dan awak perahu wisata di Pantai Ancol. Selain itu, para nelayan dan awak perahu wisata juga tidak menemukan hal-hal yang aneh di perairan Ancol. ”Mereka yang gemar memancing di Ancol ataupun petugas kebersihan di Pantai Ancol juga heran dengan kabar itu,” ujar Sofia, kemarin.

Pengelola Ancol, ujar Sofia, secara rutin melakukan pemeriksaan air laut. Bahkan, pada musim hujan pemeriksaan bisa sampai empat kali dalam sehari. ”Pemeriksaan itu meliputi pemeriksaan warna air, salinitas, PH, amonia, ataupun nitrite. Pemeriksaan dilakukan dua kali dalam satu hari,” katanya.

(This News Taken From kompas.com)

Untuk lebih lengkapnya Download aja Rekaman Video Amatir Monster Ancol!!

Promotion Guides

2008-11-16T05:30:00.000-08:00

Use forums to promote your blog

A very simple yet effective way to promote your blog is through the use of online forums. The first thing to do is to find a couple of forums related to the topic of your blog and register up. Big-Boards.com is an excellent resource to find large forums. Currently they track almost 2000 of the largest online boards on the Internet.

Once you pick a couple of forums and register up you will need to customize your profile. Most of the boards allow the user to create a signature, make sure you use it to place a link to your blog with a small description of what users will find there.

Now you are set, just engage in the discussions and contribute with useful information, so that people will want to check out your signature link.

Promotion Your Blog/Site Now!! Click Here for more promotions Tutorials!!

25 Lessons Learned from Failure

2008-11-16T03:20:00.000-08:00

If you want to succeed, you got fail. And fail a lot!

Sounds counter-intuitive huh? But is one of the most important business concepts.

If you don’t fail, you are not stretching out of your comfort zone. You are not taking risks. You are not learning things along the way.

There is an interesting article on this topic on the blog Untructured Ventures, titled How to Fail: 25 Secrets Learned through Failure. Here is the first lesson:

1. Dither, dither, dither; plan, plan, plan.
Instead: Fail fast. Fire, aim, repeat.

Time is the most valuable asset a person has, and yet it’s the easiest and most common thing wasted. Speed breeds momentum and passion, motivation and a bias for action. Learning through experience is far more valuable than learning through planning, prototyping or researching as nothing is more direct, meaningful and visceral than seeing how something works (or doesn’t).

What is the second-most important asset? Passion. People only have so much passion, intellect and interest to devote to ideas without seeing results, without seeing the fruit of their labour. Give people the chance to succeed and the opportunity to learn without drowning them in the process. Few things are more demotivating than working on a project for an extensive amount of time just to see it canceled shortly before it would have seen the light of day.

Check out the full article for the other 24, it is a nice reading.

Making Money Online and Trust

2008-11-12T20:39:00.000-08:00

Trust plays a very important role for people wanting to make money online. Simply put, readers who trust you will be more likely to purchase products you recommend, buy your eBook, take your reviews seriously, click your links or hire you for some other service.

Fortunately, there are a number of methods available to help establish yourself as trustworthy, and in doing so, increase your earnings.

Trust is particularly important on the web because there is such a lack of it. In the face-to-face world we make purchases from established brands, mediated by (hopefully) knowledgeable and competent salespeople. We can clearly and transparently observe transactions being made. We can also return or exchange products we buy that fail to meet our needs.

Most of these things are lost on the web, and as bloggers, we will rarely have the chance to even meet those we hope to buy from us, either directly or indirectly.

Here are some methods you can use to counterbalance this initial lack of trust.

Being objective

The risk when writing things like paid reviews is that readers will immediately assume your views will be biased toward the product. It seems logical that a company would only pay for a review if it could safely assume the result would create a favorable impression of their brand.

If your review sounds like an advertisement, however, you will lose the element of trust that might have encouraged readers to investigate the product. It seems counter-intuitive, but writing a glowing review may indirectly decrease sales.

This does not mean you should take the opposite tack and trash the product (unless it’s well and truly deserving). Instead, try to temper the positive points in your review by including some possible draw-backs, or by explaining why the product or service might not be suitable for certain types of people.

Not only does this make your review seem more trustworthy and objective, but it can help insure you against disgruntled buyers. Those who do read your overwhelmingly positive review and buy the product, only to find that it is not at all suited to them, will direct their anger against the person who recommended it to them in the first place: you.

Being honest about affiliates

A good rule of thumb is to let your readers know when you have the potential to profit from a link. Readers might not appreciate being profited from without their consent, particularly if their initial level of trust is low.

I have seen some bloggers insert (aff link) in brackets after the link to let readers know they’re linking to an affiliate. This is not the method I would choose. It tells readers you will make a profit from anything purchased, but it does not explain on what terms. My main criticism, however, would be that only a small percentage of web users are familiar with affiliate marketing schemes. Many readers will not understand what you mean by aff link.

Another option would be to include a disclaimer at the beginning or end of your post, linking to a page explaining how and why affiliate links are used. For example:

This post contains affiliate links for the product _____. To learn more about how and why affiliate links are used on this site, or how they help to support the blog, feel free to browse my Disclosure Policy (link).

You do have one, right?

Disclose

It’s not necessary to have a special page for your disclosures, but it might be a good idea. Another method could be to add a disclosure policy to your About page, or if the idea of a policy seems too formal, simply create a page explaining how your blog supports itself. You can link to this from any post you use affiliate links and explain to readers that:

you only link to products and services you truly recommend
you stand to make a few dollars from each item sold
this money helps you keep the blog afloat

Loyal readers who learn that buying products through links on your blog will help you keep blogging may actually be more likely to click affiliate links once they know this information, simply as a way of saying thanks for what you do.

Tell readers how they can support you

‘Support This Site’ links generally lead to a donation page, but what if your site doesn’t accept donations? It really can’t hurt to create a page explaining how readers can support your site through its existing monetization strategies.

On this page you could explain how interacting with advertisements or purchasing products you’ve recommended generates revenue to help you pay domain name and hosting costs and keep the blog afloat. You could even explain how specific actions will benefit you (for example, “I could receive up to a dollar from Google if you download and install Firefox via the link below.”)

Be sure to make yourself familiar with the rules and requirements of each monetization strategy you use before constructing such a page. It is against AdSense terms of service, for example, to encourage visitors to click on AdSense ads.

Explaining the part visitors play in keeping your blog afloat makes clear your motivations for monetizing and provides an opportunity for you to be honest about where the money goes. This can only help to build reader trust.

Over to you

What methods do you use to demonstrate you are a trustworthy blogger?
How transparent are you about monetizing your blog?
As a reader, what determines your trust in a blogger?

28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website

2008-11-12T20:36:00.000-08:00

There are several lists with “ways to make money with a website” on the Internet, but none of them seem to be complete. That is why I decided to create this one. If you know a method that is not listed below, just let us know and we’ll update it.

Notice that ways to make money with a website are different from ways to make more money from it. Methods to increase your traffic or click-through rate will help you make more money, but they do not represent a method of making money per se.

For example, one could suggest that blending AdSense ads with the content is a way to make money from a website. In reality it’s not; it’s just a way to make more money by improving your ad click-through rate. The real monetization method behind it is a PPC ad network.

The list is divided into direct and indirect methods, and examples and links are provided for each point. Enjoy!

Direct Methods

1. PPC Advertising Networks

Google AdSense is the most popular option under this category, but there are also others. Basically you need to sign up with the network and paste some code snippets on your website. The network will then serve contextual ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click.

The profitability of PPC advertising depends on the general traffic levels of the website and, most importantly, on the click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). The CTR depends on the design of the website. Ads placed abode the fold or blended with content, for instance, tend to get higher CTRs. The CPC, on the other hand, depends on the nice of the website. Mortgages, financial products and college education are examples of profitable niches (clicks worth a couple of dollars are not rare), while tech-related topics tend to receive a smaller CPC (sometimes as low as a couple of cents per click).

The source of the traffic can also affect the overall CTR rate. Organic traffic (the one that comes from search engines) tends to perform well because these visitors were already looking for something, and they tend to click on ads more often. Social media traffic, on the other hand, presents terribly low CTRs because these visitors are tech-savvy and they just ignore ads.

List of popular CPC advertising networks:

2. CPM Advertising Networks

CPM advertising networks behave pretty much as PPC networks, except that you get paid according to the number of impressions (i.e., page views) that the ads displayed on your site will generate. CPM stands for Cost per Mille, and it refers to the cost for 1,000 impressions.

A blog that generates 100,000 page views monthly displaying an advertising banner with a $1 CPM, therefore, will earn $100 monthly.

CPM rates vary with the network, the position of the ad and the format. The better the network, the higher the CPM rate (because they have access to more advertisers). The closer you put the ad to the top of the page, the higher the CPM. The bigger the format (in terms of pixels), the higher the CPM.

You can get as low as $0,10 and as high as $10 per 1,000 impressions (more in some special cases). CPM advertising tends to work well on websites with a high page views per visitor ratio (e.g., online forums, magazines and so on).

List of popular CPM advertising networks:

3. Direct Banner Advertising

Selling your own advertising space is one of the most lucrative monetization methods. First and foremost because it enables you to cut out the middleman commissions and to determine your own rates. The most popular banner formats on the web are the 728×90 leaderboard, the 120×600 skyscraper, the 300×250 rectangle and the 125×125 button.

The downside of direct banner advertising is that you need to have a big audience to get qualified advertisers, and you will need to spend time managing the sales process, the banners and the payments.

Related links:

4. Text Link Ads

After Google declared that sites selling text links without the nofollow tag would be penalized, this monetization method became less popular.

Many website owners are still using text links to monetize their sites, though, some using the nofollow tag and some not.

The advantage of this method is that it is not intrusive. One can sell text links directly through his website or use specialized networks like Text-Link-Ads and Text-Link-Brokers to automate the process.

Text link marketplaces and networks:

5. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a very popular practice on the Internet. Under this system you have a merchant that is willing to let other people (the affiliates) sell directly or indirectly its products and services, in exchange for a commission. Sometimes this type of advertising is also called CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead) based.

Affiliates can send potential customers to the merchant using several tools, from banners to text links and product reviews.

In order to find suitable affiliate programs you can turn to individual companies and publishers like Dreamhost and SEOBook, or join affiliate marketplaces and networks.

List of popular affiliate marketplaces and networks:

6. Monetization Widgets

The latest trend on the web are widgets that let you monetize your website. Examples include Widgetbucks and SmartLinks. Some of these services operate under a PPC scheme, others behave like text link ads, others yet leverage affiliate links.

Their main differentiator, however, is the fact that they work as web widgets, making it easier for the user to plug and play the service on its website.

List of companies that provide monetization widgets:

7. Sponsored Reviews

PayPerPost pioneered this model, with much controversy on the beginning (related to the fact that they did not require disclosure on paid posts). Soon other companies followed, most notably Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe, refining the process and expanding the paid blogging model.

Joining one of these sponsored reviews marketplaces will give you the opportunity to write sponsored posts on a wide range of topics. Not all bloggers are willing to get paid to write about a specific product or website (because it might compromise the editorial credibility), but the ones who do are making good money out of it.

If your blog has a big audience you could also offer sponsored reviews directly, cutting off the commissions of the middleman.

List of sponsored reviews and paid blogging networks:

8. RSS Feed Ads

With the quick adoption of the RSS technology by millions of Internet users, website owners are starting to find ways to monetize this new content distribution channel.

Feedburber already has its own publisher network, and you can sign-up to start displaying CPM based advertising on your feed footer. Bidvertiser recently introduced a RSS feed ad option as well, with a PPC scheme.

Finally, some blogs are also opting to sell banners or sponsored messages on their feed directly. John Chow and Marketing Pilgrim are two examples.

Related links:

9. Sponsors for Single Columns or Events

If you website has specific columns or events (e.g., a weekly podcast, an interview series, a monthly survey, a special project) you could find companies to sponsor them individually.

This method increases the monetization options for website owner, while giving advertisers the possibility to target a more specific audience and with a reduced commitment.

Mashable illustrates the case well. They have several advertising options on the site, including the possibility to sponsor specific columns and articles, including the “Daily Poll” and the “Web 2.0 Invites.”

Problogger also runs group writing projects occasionally, and before proceeding he publicly announce the project asking for sponsors.

10.Premium Content

Some websites and blogs give away part of their content for free, and charge for access to the premium content and exclusive tools.

SEOMoz is a good example. They have a very popular blog that gives advice and information on wide range of SEO related topics. On top of that visitors can decide to become premium members. It costs $48 monthly and it grants them access to guides, tools and other exclusive material.

11. Private Forums

While the Internet is populated with free forums, there is also the possibility to create a private one where members need to pay a single or recurring fee to join.

SEO Blackhat charges $100 monthly from its members, and they have thousands of them. Obviously in order to charge such a price for a forum membership you need to provide real value for the members (e.g., secret techniques, tools, and so on).

Performancing also launched a private forum recently, focused on the networking aspect. It is called The Hive, and the monthly cost is $10.

These are just two examples. There are many possibilities to create a private and profitable forum, you just need to find an appealing angle that will make it worth for the members.

List of popular forum software:

12. Job Boards

All the popular blogs are trying to leverage job boards to make some extra income. Guy Kawasaki, ReadWriteWeb, Problogger… you name it.

Needless to say that in order to create an active and profitable job board you need first to have a blog focused on a specific niche, and a decent amount traffic.

The advantage of this method is that it is passive. Once you have the structure in place, the job listings will come naturally, and you can charge anywhere from $10 up to $100 for each.

List of popular job board software:

13. Marketplaces

Sitepoint is the online marketplace by excellence. Some websites and blogs, however, are trying to replicate that model on a smaller scale.

Depending on your niche, a market place that allows your visitors to buy, sell and trade products could work well. Over the time you could start charging a small fee for new product listings.

The problem with this method is that there are no standard software on the web, so you would need to hire a coder to get a marketplace integrated into your website.

You can see an example of a marketplaces being used on EasyWordpress and on Mashable.

14. Paid Surveys and Polls

There are services that will pay you money to run a small survey or poll on your website. The most popular one is called Vizu Answers.

Basically you need to sign up with them, and select the kind of polls that you want to run your site. Most of these services operate under a CPM model.

15. Selling or Renting Internal Pages

Million Dollar Wiki made this concept popular, but it was being used on the web for a long time around (check Pagerank10.co.uk for instance).

These websites sell for a single fee or rent for a recurring fee internal pages on their domain. Usually they have either high Pagerak or high traffic, so that people purchasing a page will be able to benefit in some way.

Implementing this method on a small blog would be difficult, but the concept is interesting and could be explored further.

16. Highlighted Posts from Sponsors

Techmeme probably pioneered this idea, but somehow it has not spread to other websites. The tech news aggregator displays editorial posts on the left column, and on the sidebar they have a section titled “Techmeme Sponsor Posts.”

On that section posts from the blog of the advertisers get highlighted, sending qualified traffic their way. Considering that the monthly cost for one spot is $5000 and that they have around 6 sponsors at any given time, it must be working well.

17. Donations

Placing a “Donate” link or button on a website can be an efficient way to earn money, especially if your blog is on a niche where readers learn and gain value from your content.

Personal development and productivity blogs, for instance, tend to perform well with donation based systems (one good example being Steve Pavlina).

A small variation of this method appeared sometime ago with the Buy Me a Beer plugin. This WordPress plugin enables you to insert a customized message at the bottom of each article, asking the readers to chip in for a beer or coffee.

18. In-text Adverting

In-text adverting networks like Kontera and Vibrant Media will place sponsored links inside your text. These links come with a double underline to differentiate them from normal links, and once the user rolls the mouse over the link the advertising will pop. Should the user click on it the site owner will make some money.

Some people make good money with this method, but others refrain from using it due to its intrusiveness. It is also interesting to note that very few mainstream websites have experimented with in-text advertising.

19. Pop-ups and Pop-unders

Pop-ups are a common yet annoying form of advertising on the Internet. If you are just trying to make a much money as possible from your website, you could experiment with them.

If you are trying to grow the traffic and generate loyal visitors, however, you probably should stay away from them. Just consider the hundreds of pop-up blockers out there: there is a reason why they are so popular.

Ad networks that use pop-ups:

20. Audio Ads

Also called PPP (Pay Per Play), this advertising method was introduce by Net Audio Ads. the concept is pretty simple: play a small audio advertising (usually 5 seconds) every time a visitor enters into your website. The user should not be able to stop it, creating a 100% conversion rate based on unique visitors.

The company is still rolling tests, but some users are reporting to get from a $4 to a $6 CPM. Regardless of the pay rate, though, this is a very intrusive form of advertising, so think twice before using it.

21. Selling the Website

Selling your website could be your last resource, but it has the potential to generate a big sum of money in a short period of time.

Market places on online forums like DigitalPoint and Sitepoint are always active with website buyers and sellers. Keep in mind that they most used parameter to determine the value of a website is the monthly revenue that it generates, multiplied by a certain number (the multiplier can be anything from 5 to 30, depending on the expectations of the seller, on the quality of the site, on the niche and other factors).

Some people also make money trading and flipping websites. They either create them from scratch or buy existing ones, and after some revamping they sell them for a profit.

Related links:

Indirect Methods

22. Selling an Ebook

Perhaps one of the oldest money making strategies on the web, using a website to promote a related ebook is a very efficient way to generate revenue.

You could either structure the website around the book itself, like SEOBook.com, or launch the ebook based on the success of the website, like FreelanceSwitch did we the book How to be a Rockstar Freelancer.

Related links:

23. Selling a Hardcover Book

Many authors and journalists leverage their blogs or websites to sell copies of hardcover books. Examples include Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell.

While most of these people were already renowned authors before they created their website, one could also follow the other way around. Lorelle VanFossen did exactly that with her Blogging Tips book. First she built her authority on the subject via her blog, and afterwards she published the book.

List of self publishing and publishing services:

24. Selling Templates or WordPress Themes

As more and more people decide to get an online presence, website templates and WordPress themes become hotter and hotter.

On this segment you have mainstream websites like TemplateMonster, as well as individual designers who decide to promote and sell their work independently.

Brian Gardner and Unique Blog Designs are two examples of websites that make money with the sales of premium and custom WordPress themes.

25. Offering Consulting and Related Services

Depending on your niche, you could make money by offering consulting and related services. If you are also the author of your blog, the articles and information that you will share will build your profile and possibly certify your expertise on that niche, making it easier to gain customers.

Chris Garrett used a similar strategy. First he created a highly influential blog on the blogging and new media niche, and afterwards he started offering consulting services to clients with related problems and needs.

26. Creating an Email List or Newsletter

Email lists and newsletters represent one of the most powerful marketing and money making tools on the Internet. They offer incredible conversion rates, and the possibility to call people to action in a very efficient way.

Creating a big list is a difficult task though, so if you have a popular website you could leverage it to increase the number of subscribers on your list.

Yaro Starak is a famous Internet marketer, and if you visit his blog you will notice that right on top he has a section encouraging visitors to subscribe to his email newsletter. Yaro generates five figures in revenues each month from his email newsletters, proving that this method works.

List of software to manage email newsletters:

27. Mentoring programs

People are willing to pay for someone or something that will teach them and give them knowledge (as opposed to mere information). Education is one of the biggest industries in the world, and the online landscape behaves in a similar way.

Creating a mentoring program related to the niche of your website could be very profitable if you manage to structure and promote it adequately. There is a wide range of media and tools that you can use to deliver the information, from text articles to audio and video lessons.

Brian Clark leveraged the success of Copyblogger to launch a mentoring program teaching people how to build membership and how to sell content online. The program is titled Teaching Sells, and it costs $97 monthly. Sounds expensive, but they have over 1,000 members.

28. Creating a conference around the website

If your website takes off and becomes an authority on its niche, you could create a conference around it. Depending on the size of your audience, the event could attract thousands of people, and you could make money directly from conference passes and sponsors.

Search Engine Land, for instance, created a series of conferences that visit several cities on the United States and on other countries as well. The conferences are called Search Marketing Expo, and the tickets and passes cost thousands of dollars.

Tomorrow's Insurance Products Are Being Developed Today

2008-11-12T07:50:00.000-08:00

Hurricanes, Capital, Agents and Technology Feed the Product Process

Looking for a new market? Most people in the industry are, including those who get paid to come up with new insurance products.

According to these product idea experts, what ends up in insurers' and agents' portfolios as new products could be shaped by the recent hurricanes, the latest technology, feedback from agents and customers, the availability of capital, the actions of competitors and changes in laws.

Developing new markets
Lexington Insurance Company, a member company of American International Group, has carved its place in the property/casualty marketplace as new product maker. It even boasts in its tag line: "market leadership powered by the spirit of innovation."

"There are constantly 'new markets' developing," said Tracey Sharis, director of product development at Lexington Insurance. "Whether they're billion dollar insurance lines or whether they're items that become endorsements to your traditional coverages--it's just a question of the magnitude of that coverage."

Sharis said that Lexington identifies new market opportunities by evaluating four main four main areas.

First, she said the company must pay attention to needs of their insureds and their brokers. "Listening to what their new and emerging needs might be" is important, she said.

Second, understanding the trends in the world marketplace and what the insurance implications of those trends might be. She said Lexington consults with strategic thinkers, or futurists, to identify trends both demographically and geographically.

A third way new products are developed stems from changes in legislation or the regulatory environment.

The fourth way Lexington identifies new market opportunities is by zeroing in on market needs that follow catastrophes.

"The best example of that would be post 9/11 when the marketplace as a whole pulled back from providing terrorism insurance in general," she said. "AIG responded very quickly with insurance that satisfied the heightened awareness of our customers to that exposure."

Changes for the future
Joe Harrington, director of corporate communication, of Wheaton, Ill.-based American Association of Insurance Services, said there are three things happening today in the industry that will likely affect all insurance product development in the future.

"One is the new public scrutiny of property insurance in the wake of hurricane Katrina, and the hurricanes that followed," Harrington said. "Particularly public officials at the state level are asking whether certain excluded perils of residential policies should be covered and in essence spread across the country, the risk and premium."

Harrington noted that if a national catastrophe plan comes to fruition, it could result in far reaching changes across the industry, although "it's far from clear that it would."

Also, the state of Florida recently enacted a law seeking a common residential property policy. "One of the issues is wind versus water damage and that could have a profound impact on writing of property damage nationwide," Harrington said.

Another issue that Harrington said might have an impact on the future of product development is the use of catastrophe models and the scrutiny surrounding them today.

"With the four hurricanes last year, plus the natural disasters this year, insurers and reinsurers that have used catastrophe modeling to gauge their exposures have had an opportunity to see where they worked and where they came up short," he said. "The use of cat models is an indication that the industry recognizes that it needs to go beyond historic loss data to calculate certain exposures." He added that the recent mega-catastrophes mark the beginning of a more "permanent fine tuning" of modeling tools.

Another product development trend Harrington observed in 2005 is the market shift to risk specific underwriting as opposed to class specific underwriting.

"There's no question that now with the use of data mining, in what's called predictive analytics, insurers and those that serve them are looking to identify characteristics of individual risks and underwriting them using automated tools rather than relying solely on categorizations," he said.

Harrington added that it's certainly not the end of class underwriting. "But the ability to assess individual risk characteristics through automated means is going to profoundly change how insurers see their markets," he noted.

Taken From: http://www.insurancejournal.com

7 SEO Tips From The Owner of TNX.net

2008-11-12T05:21:00.000-08:00

Having many traffics is all webmaster dream! And one of the biggest traffics source is of course search engine. How we can get a high position on search engine result pages? How we can be the number 1 on our chosen keywords? Here are 7 tips written by the owner of TNX.net

Hope we can learn somethings here.

Every one of us wants to rank high in Google. You must focus on backlink building to have good SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages). But backlink building has to be done with great care - not to get penalized.

Here are some simple tips which will definitely help:

Don’t buy (or sell) sitewide links for SERPS. Buy links from individual pages!
Links from individual pages are far more effective when speaking of improving serps, not PR. They are more natural and organic. Sitewide links can easily be filtered.
Selling sitewide links also means loosing lots of money - if your site has 1000 of PR2-3 pages, you could earn hundreds of $$$ a month just from selling ONE outbound link per page, compared to some $20-30 for selling a sitewide link (now, when it has become possible). What do you think?
Don’t look for high PR links only - start your campaign for a new site with PR 0-1 and slowly move up each week as you see your rankings improve.
Control link placement speed. Remember of “Too many links at once” Google filter.
Control the number of outbound links on your pages and on pages where you place your links, avoid link-farms, links to gambling, pills, etc.
A link from a relevant website is excellent, but a link from a quality site of other niche or other language can also boost your ranking - so don’t ignore such links.
Make links look natural. Use different link anchors, promote not only your main page, but your deep pages too.
Don’t do reciprocal link exchange.

Using this simple technique, our site (tnx.net) has received an excellent rank in Google in just 1 month for HIGHLY competitive keywords, such as “text link ads”, “text links”, “buy text links”, “sell text links” etc. If you are interested, I can tell how we did it.
Do you want to test this technique and get the same results? Just remember, that your site’s ranking depends on your efforts and skills, it doesn’t depend on your site’s PR etc. (see our PR if you don’t believe it).

(Taken From: http://www.jackbook.com/seo-tips/7-seo-tips-from-the-owner-of-tnxnet)

Want To Know More About SEO?? Find Articles at Here!!

Promotion Guide

2008-11-12T05:15:00.000-08:00

Use forums to promote your blog

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2008-11-12T05:06:00.000-08:00

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30 Traffic Generation Tips

2008-11-12T04:47:00.000-08:00

Now, without further delay, the 30 Traffic Generation Tips:

1. Sridhar Katakam
Keep track of blogs and leave comments on them. A good way to keep the conversation going is to install a MyBlogLog widget and visit the blog of people visiting your site.

2. Ian Delaney
Nothing creates long-term traffic more than value. Consider writing posts with resources or explaining how things work. Useful things get linked to and they get onto del.icio.us, which is far better long-term than a digg front page.

3. Scott Townsend
Inform search engines and aggregators like Technorati (using the ping functionality) when your blog is updated, this should ensure maximum traffic coming from those sources. (check the List of Ping Services)

4. Kyle
Simplify. Pay attention to complex issues in your field of work. It may be a big long publication that is hard to wade through or a concept that is hard to grasp. Reference it and make a shorter “for dummies” version with your own lessons learned and relevant tips. When doing this, I have been surprised to find that the simplified post will appear before the more complex version in search results. Perhaps this is why it results in increased traffic; people looking for more help or clarification on the subject will land on your blog.

5. Grant Gerver
Try to be polemic. I write obsessively about all-things political from the left-wing perspective in the form of humorous, sarcastic one-liners.

6. Daniel
A simple tip that will probably boost your page views: install a translator plugin. I decided to use a paid plugin for this, but if I am not wrong there are some free ones as well. The translation is not very good, as you can imagine, but it helps to attract readers that are not fluent in English.

7. Rory
Submit articles to blog carnivals (http://blogcarnival.com) that are related to your niche. Your article almost always gets posted, and it must generate a handful of visitors, at least.

8. Ramen Junkie
Newsgroups. I always see a spike when I post a review to a newsgroup.

9. Eric Atkins
Create a new design for your website. Not only will it be more attractive to your regular readers, but you can submit it to some CSS gallery showcase sites that feature great designs. This will give you exposure on those sites while generating a lot of traffic and backlinks from those types of sites.

10. Megan Taylor
Participate in conversations on related blogs. Start conversations on your own blog. Don’t just post about a story and leave it at that, engage your audience, ask questions and call to action.

11. Guido
Comment on blogs, write useful content and make good friends on forums.

12. Brian Auer
You must be active to generate traffic. I post comments on other blogs that are related to mine, and I post my site link in my signature at the forums. Spread the word about your blog and it will certainly attract readers.

13. Shankar Ganesh
Just browse around MyBlogLog.com and you will surely get visitors to your blog. Also try to join as many communities as possible that are related to your topic.

14. Andrew Timberlake
A great tip for generating traffic is off-line by including your url in all your off-line liturature from business cards, letterheads, pamphlets, adverts through in-store signage if applicable. I even have our website on my vehicle.

15. Cory OBrien
Read lots of other blogs. Leave trackbacks. Make sure your blog is optimized for search engines. Leverage social bookmarking sites like digg (both for new ideas and for traffic).

16. Jester
Leave comments on other blogs. If you’re already reading them, it takes
just a couple of seconds to leave a message agreeing or disagreeing
with the author, you get to leave a link to your site, and you will almost
ALWAYS get traffic from your comments.

17. Goerge Manty
Post 3-5 times a day. Use ping services like pingomatic or set up wordpress to ping some of the ping services. Engage your readers. Put up polls, ask them questions, give them quizes, free tools, etc. Make them want to come back and tell their friends about you.

18. Engtech
Community. It’s one word but it is the most important one when it comes to blogging. The only “blog metric” that makes sense is the vibrant community of readers it has. Building a community around your blog will bring you increased traffic, but how do you start? The boilerplate response to building traffic is always “SEO, social networking sites, and commenting on blogs” but it can be simplified to “be part of a community”. The easiest way to seed your blog is with an already existing community. But the only way to do that is to be part of the community yourself.

19. Chris
Squidoo Lenses are a good way to generate traffic. By using a lense,
you can generate your own custom “community” of webpages, including some
of the more popular pages in your “neighborhood.” Including your own
webpage in such a list is a good way of generating traffic.

20. Splork
I’ve had good success writing articles and submitting them to EzineArticles. Articles that have been written from well-researched keyword phrases and accepted by EzineArticles tend to rank very high in Google for that search term. Placing anchor text in the footer of those articles so the reader can visit my relevant website has always increased my site traffic.

21. Jen Gordon
I came upon some unexpected traffic when my blog popped up on some css design portals like www.cssmania.com and www.webcreme.com. If you can put some time into the concept behind and design for your blog, I’d recommend submitting your site to a design portal not only for
additional traffic but to build an additional community around your site.

22. Kat
I’ve recently gotten involved with several “MySpace-like” community sites that focus on my target audience. I share my thoughts in their forums, post intros to my real blog on their system blog and I’ve even created a group for my specific niche. It’s been very, very successful for me.

23. Inspirationbit
Well, obviously everyone knows that social bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, etc. bring lots of traffic. But I’m now submitting some of my articles to blogg-buzz.com (a digg like site for bloggers), and I always get not a bad traffic from there.

24. Mark Alves
Participate in Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers where you can demonstrate your expertise, get associated with relevant keywords and put your URL out there.

25. Tillerman
Be the first to write a post about the ‘Top Ten Blogs’ in your niche. The post will rank highly in any general search for blogs in your niche and other bloggers in your niche write about the post and link to it.

26. Nick
Participating in forums is a great way to get loyal readers. Either link baiting people in your signature or posting great advice and tips will give you high quality traffic, which will result in return visitors.

27. Brandon Wood
A simple trick I’ve used to increase traffic to my blog is participate in group writing projects. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now.

28. Alan Thomas
Don’t forget your archives. I just posted a roundup of all interviews I did over the past seven months. One of them generated a new link and a big traffic spike from a group of users that look like they will be loyal readers now.

29. KWiz
Write something controversial. I don’t think it’s good to write something controversial just for the purpose of getting traffic necessarily (especially if it’s only for that purpose and you’re being disingenuous), but it works.

30. Dennis Coughlin
Find the best blogs on your niche and contact the authors. Introduce yourself and send a link of your blog. This might help them to discover your blog, read it and possibly link to it.

What Is A Blog?

2008-11-12T04:44:00.001-08:00

It is 2008; do we still need to ask ourselves what a blog is? I think so, and for two reasons. First of all we still have many misconceptions about blogging floating around the web. Pretty much every week I get at least one email from someone asking if I believe blogging has a future. My answer is always “as long as the Internet has a future, blogs do too.” You will see why I answer that below.

You also have countless articles being published every week where the author suggests that blogs are obsolete, and that the next big thing is micro blogging, or lifestreaming or something else. Again I don’t agree with any of those predicted trends.

The second reason for trying to define what a blog is in 2008 (many people have already done that in the past after all) is because blogging is a social phenomenon. As such, it is constantly evolving, and what was true two years ago might not be anymore.

Blogs Aren’t Necessarily Personal

The main misconception regarding the definition of blogs comes from people that associate blogs with their content. More specifically from people that associate blogs with the content from one particular type of blog: personal blogs.

In other words, those people think that blogs are online diaries where people share their opinions, ramblings and personal events.

Wrong!

That is just one of the things that you could do with a blog.

Today blogs are being used for all sorts of purposes. You have companies that use blogs to communicate and interact with customers and other stake holders. Newspapers that incorporated blogs to their main website to offer a new channel for their writers. Individuals that created a blog to share with the world their expertise on specific topics. And so on.

Separate The Content

If you separate the content from the website, it becomes much easier to work with the definitions.

Consider a person that wants to publish a Questions & Answers column online. She could use several types of websites for that purpose.

She could create an online forum, for example, where each thread would be an answer to a specific question. She could create a static HTML website and publish all the questions and answers on a single page. She could create a wiki where users would be able to edit the questions and answers directly. Finally, she could also create a blog where each post would contain a question and its answer.

As you can see, the content is not attached to the website. The picture below illustrates that (note that only four types of websites were used, but there are many more).

(Taken From: www.dailyblogtips.com)