If you’re going to be upgrading and want a little tour of the new features check out Aaron Brazell’s great post 10 Things You Need to Know about WordPress 2.7 which will run you through some of the new features, design and usability.
Tags: Blog Platforms, blog tools, wordpressGranted, Leonardo Da Vinci probably didn’t want anyone messing around with his mojo, but there isn’t any doubt that for the majority of us, two minds are definitely better than one. It’s just simple math. We, instead of I, means more goals accomplished, and broader breath for every idea.
Saying the Internet’s big is a Rushmore of understatement. Our computers are planets, the Internet a galaxy. Viewed from afar, there are a billion points of light, but swimming in the middle of it all, it is easy to feel alone among the black. Finding a comfortable orbit isn’t immediate, but if you stick with blogging, it is an eventuality.
Blogopolis bursts with neighborhood upon neighborhood, brimming with amazing people. Some we meet while a guest at their blogs, while reading their words and observe perspective. Some we meet below the belt of our own blog, bantering among the comments. Others send us an email; a more private venue to foster a friendship.
The main thing to remember is patience. As in life, true friendship cannot be forced. Be honest about who you are and what you offer, and the right buddy will find you.
Stay tuned to ProBlogger’s RSS feed because tomorrow Eric and Sean follow this post up with some tips on HOW to find a blogging buddy.
My analysis was stimulated by a question from a reader who in response to last week’s two posts examining the place of Digg and Social Bookmarkingin a bloggers priorities asked me:
What role does Social Bookmarking traffic play in your blog?
I decided to dig into the metrics on DPS and find out the answer… or at least that is what I started out doing…..
As I began to analyze the stats I realized that DPS has four main referrers of traffic - each are quite different from the others and yet each are very important. What follows in this post is me thinking out loud on each source of traffic and what it means to my blog.
Lets start by looking at the big picture of the traffic coming into DPS. For the purpose of this post I’ll go back to the start of 2007 with my analysis (the time I started using Google Analytics) and I will only be looking at traffic coming into the DPS blog (ie this doesn’t include data on the forums).
Here’s a snapshot of all traffic coming into the DPS blog since 1 January 2007 (click to enlarge all images in this post).
You can see over the last 22 months that the DPS blog has had steady growth. There have been 11.5 million visitors, around 25 million page views and they stay on the site around two and a half minutes per visit.
At 1 January the average daily visitor numbers were around 4,000-5,000 visitors. At present they average around 23,000-25,000.
Looking specifically at the main sources of traffic to the blog - there are four that are responsible for a little under 70% of all of the above traffic:
The next highest referrers are significantly lower in how much traffic they bring in and include Yahoo, many other blogs (big and small) and Delicious.
As you can see - Google is a fairly important factor in my blog. Add other search traffic from Yahoo, MSN, AOL and search traffic is responsible for around 30% of the overall traffic.
If I was to categorize all of the social bookmarking traffic (Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Reddit, Popurls etc it accounts for around 24% of overall traffic (a little higher than ‘direct’).
OK - so this information is mildly interesting (to me at least) but when I dig down a little further and do some analysis of each type of traffic I find it more illuminating.
Since last week we were talking about Digg, lets start with that.
Here’s how Digg traffic to the DPS blog has looked over the last 22 months.
Straight away we can see the nature of Digg traffic. It is either there or it isn’t. The spikes can be fairly significant (in most cases they range from 10,000 to 30,000 visitors) but between them the traffic from Digg rarely gets over 100 visitors a day.
Lets look at a few other stats on Digg visitors over this period:
So in comparison to overall averages Digg users are fairly fleeting (although note as fleeting as I hear some people saying).
One other thing worth saying about Digg visitors. I’ve heard a lot of people say that they don’t ‘convert’ to regular readers. So lets have a look at my newsletter signups for the latest ‘Digg Event’ on DPS (that last spike on the chart).
As you’ll see there was a definite increase in subscriber numbers on the day of my last Digg event (Nov 13th). Of course that day had 14,000 visitors from Digg to the site and subscriber numbers were only up around 150 subscribers - so Digg users don’t become loyal readers in huge numbers - but some of them do convert. I’d suspect that RSS subscribers would increase by a similar sort of rate after a Digg event.
I’ve noticed similar sorts of increases in subscriber numbers on other ‘Digg events’. They don’t convert massively but I always do pick up extra readers each time - the stats on the site tend to look like this chart taken from my post - How to Build a ‘Digg Culture’ on your Blog:
This is actually one of the biggest benefits of social bookmarking traffic for me. While the actual spike in traffic is nice - the real benefit comes from those readers you’re able to convert to regular readers. 100 extra readers adds up to thousands of page views over a year.
One more stat on ‘conversion to loyalty’:
Over the last few months I’ve had a test running on Google Analtyics that analyzes how many visitors ‘convert’ to subscribers. I’ve set up a ‘Goal’ on Google Analytics that is triggered as achieved when people reach the thank you page for my newsletter subscription (meaning when they convert to verified subscribers).
Digg Users get to this page 0.48% of the time. This is in comparison to an average of 2.24% for the overall site.
Do Digg Users Click Ads?
One of the great things about Google Analytics now is that you can track AdSense earnings if you link your AdSense and Analytics accounts (they’re still rolling this feature for some).
While AdSense TOS prohibits sharing of too much information on earnings I’ll share some vague stats with you on how different readers ‘convert’ with ads.
So the common perception that Digg users don’t click ads is backed up - to a point. Some of them do click and when you consider that you can get 30,000 of them visiting your site in a day this can add up.
Keep in mind that Digg traffic can be useful for monetizing a site in other ways - particularly when you’re making money on a CPM basis where you’re paid per page view.
StumbleUpon actually sends me more traffic than Digg does over time. Here’s how the traffic from SU looks over the last 22 months.
Here we see that the nature of Stumble Upon traffic is actually quite different from Digg. While both are ‘bookmarking’ sites they are really quite different. When a post gets popular on StumbleUpon the traffic it generates is spread out over days (and even weeks and months). There’s often no single day when you get masses of traffic but rather it’s more of a slow burner (I’ve written more about this in a post titled Why StumbleUpon Sends More Traffic than Digg).
You’ll see that StumbleUpon traffic has actually grown significantly over time. What I put this down to is that as I’ve written more and more posts on my blog there have been more entry points for SU traffic. While traffic grows and then falls off to particular posts on SU if you have multiple posts generating traffic you can actually see it build to significant numbers (like they were in the period of June/July this year where I had about 6-7 posts doing very well in SU simultaneously).
Lets look at a couple of other metrics on the SU traffic:
So StumbleUpon traffic is a little more sticky than Digg traffic. They view more pages and stick around longer.
Do StumbleUpon users signup for the newsletter and become loyal? My stats show that 0.51% of them have reached the thank you page on my newsletter subscription process. Slightly higher than Digg users but a lot lower than overall site averages.
Do StumbleUpon users click ads?
Interestingly StumbleUpon users seem to click on ads less than Digg users with the limited amount of stats that I have on this. The CPM that I’m seeing with SU users is very similar to that for Digg users but the CTR was about a third of Digg users (and about a tenth of overall site averages).
My number one traffic source on DPS is that from search engines. Google takes the lions share of this but I’ve added in the others into this analysis (interestingly Yahoo has been on the increase of late). Here’s how the search engine traffic has grown over the last 22 months.
Again - a very different shaped chart to the others. The two spikes in traffic are both to do with search traffic increasing for terms around ‘fireworks photography’ at around 4th July - but other than that it’s very steady growth with little weekly spikes and troughs in traffic but not much else to note.
This traffic has gone up over time for a couple of main reasons:
1. I’ve been adding content - the more pages you have the more entry points that search engines can send people to
2. The sites authority has grown over time - the longer you’re around the more links you have pointing at your blog and the more authoritative search engines begin to give you.
Lets look at a couple of other stats from Search Engine Traffic:
Interestingly Google readers view 2.51 pages and spend 3 minutes and 16 seconds while Yahoo readers view over 3 pages and spend over 4 minutes on the site.
In terms of ‘conversion’ via the newsletter - 2.72% of search engine visitors have made it to the thank you page (again it’s better for Yahoo than Google). This is better than the site average making search traffic more sticky than social media traffic.
Do Search Engine Readers Click Ads?
The common perception is that search engine referrals are more profitable when it comes to CPC advertising programs like AdSense. My stats back this up.
I’m seeing the CPM of my search traffic as about 10% higher than the site average and CTR up by about 10% also. Interestingly I’m seeing Yahoo traffic as about 30% higher than Google.
The last category of traffic that I want to analyze is what Google Analytics classifies as ‘direct’ traffic. This traffic includes those coming in from desktop RSS subscribers, newsletters, browser bookmarks, type in traffic etc. Here’s how this traffic has looked over the last 22 months.
Again we see a fairly steady growth in this area. The weekly spikes coincide with when I’ve sent out newsletters. The bigger spikes mainly coincide with when we’ve run competitions in our newsletters.
The reason for the growth in this traffic is largely that I’ve worked very hard on building a newsletter list for this blog (particularly over the last year).
Lets look at some more stats on this direct traffic:
Both of these stats are higher than the site average but lower than search engine traffic. However considering that many of these visitors come to the site on a weekly basis and view hundreds of pages a year these averages are pretty good.
In terms of ‘goal conversion’ (or getting these people to my thank you page of the newsletter signup - they convert at 2.08%. This is slightly under the site average but considering many of them have already signed up - it’s pretty good.
Do Direct Referrals Click Ads?
This one interested me because I suspected that these highly loyal readers would become pretty blind to AdSense ads over time. However they are bang on average for the site with both CTR and CPM performance almost exactly on the site average.
I know this post has been rather long and so I will keep my concluding thoughts brief (I considered posting this as a series of posts but hope it’s more helpful seeing everything side by side).
All traffic has its place and serves different purposes.
One of the main things that strikes me about this exercise is that while some people write off different types of traffic - that together they come together in fairly significant ways.
For example - Digg traffic may not be that sticky or profitable - however as I think back to the early days of DPS it was the early series of Digg spikes that helped to get the blog going.
Even going back before January 2007 (before the charts above) DPS was on the front page of Digg quite a few times. Each time this happened the site step ups in loyal readers to the blog. This helped it grow even though at the time the site wasn’t generating much search traffic.
Overtime search has been increasingly important to the site in finding new visitors. The Digg spikes are handy and still draw people in that have not seen us before but in many ways they’ve served their purpose for the site and now our Google and Yahoo authority has kicked in we’re starting to see more benefits from there.
As I look forward I see both ’search’ and ‘direct’ traffic as taking over even more from social bookmarking traffic. If things continue to grow as they are search and direct traffic will out number even the biggest spikes that the site might get from Digg.
This doesn’t mean I’ll not value the bookmarking traffic - but it’ll play less of a roll.
Social Bookmarking as an SEO tool
One last unproven idea that has been lingering in my mind lately is the importance of social bookmarking as an SEO strategy. I’m not sure how much of an impact it has had on the growth of search traffic on DPS but surely all of the links to DPS from Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Reddit and other social bookmarking sites have had an impact upon the site’s search authority.
Even posts that don’t get to the front page of Digg that are bookmarked there must at least be getting some search engine juice from the bookmark.
More than that - getting on the front page of Digg or going popular on Delicious often has the flow on effect of being linked to by a lot of other blogs and websites that watch these pages. For example my last appearance on the popular page on Delicious stimulated at least 30 or so links from other blogs. Again - each link is adding to the search engine authority of the blog.
Tags: Blog Promotion, Case Study, digg, google analytics, Search Engine Optimization, search engine traffic, SEO, social media, StumbleUponIn a nutshell it is a direct banner selling serivce. As a result you can charge as much as you want for an ad slot and you can move away from the 2cent clicks on Adsense and start charging more. I am not affiliated with the service in any way before any one starts asking. I just like the service so much I thought it deserved more attention than it is currently getting.
Setting up BuySellAds
Using the BuySellAds system is really easy. The program is currently in beta so you may have to wait a couple of days before they accept you, but they accept most sites. Once as you are in, you have to enter your website details. The system works by adding your site and then adding advert zones to that website. Then you sell those ads for profit!
To set up a website you have to add your website URL and name. As well as this you also have to enter a description. Each site goes into a big pool where other people can find your site in the directory. As a result you may want to spend a small amount of time writing a good description. Include some statistics, what your site is about make it interesting for the advertiser. An advertiser will want a website where they are going to get good returns you want to try and fulfill that role so they keep coming back month after month. The final section of the website setup is to add some tags these are used when someone searches your site. Once as you have entered all of your details you are done and ready to add some ad zones.
Once as your site is submitted into BuySellAds, the service will automatically gather details about your Alexa and Compete rank, as well as Google Page and Technorati Rank, Del.Icio.us Bookmarks and Yahoo Inbound links. Theses are the type os statistic your would normally give an advertiser, BSA automatically pull all this information for you. One less thing you have to worry about.
Once as you have set up your site. You have to add a zone. This is an area on the page where the adverts will reside. Zones are customizable. You can have has many individual adverts in a zone as you want. In the zone section setup there is a couple of areas which you can customize. For example you add a description and a location. The most important area if the price. BSA take a 25% cut of what ever the advert price is. For example if you charge $100 an ad, BSA will take $25 and you will keep the rest. This cost covers hosting of the adverts, website and all the other bits and bobs associated with the service. You can set the number of banners in total and the number of banners show at one time. (E.G you can have 6 slots, but only show 1 on a page load). As a result you have to think quite closely how much you think advertisers are willing to spend.
If you have a high paying advert slot but an advertisers advert is only shown once in four page loads, this could put advertiser off. Picking a good price point can be a completely different post in itself. Once as a zone is setup data will be gathered from the Javascript you insert in your website, the most important factor is page views, on your listing page an up to date monthly view for that adblock is displayed. Most advertisers will want to see how many views there ads will get, as a result this is displayed for them and is very useful. The listings page can actually take over from a page you would normally create on your blog, it has that much useful information.
Once as you have set everything up you will end up with a listing page. Mine, for example, looks like this, you can search through the directory and see all of the available listing if you want more inspiration. It has information about my website at the top, and the advert units at the bottom. A buyer can now come along purchase an advert, as long as the Javascript code is on my page, the advert will appear immediately without having to ever speak to me. The money will be deposited into my account and everything will be good to go. You are slowly on your way to a big payout. I would also like to point out that adverts will also be set to renew, so advertisers can automatically get the same slot each month, giving you a nice stable income and removing the need for advertisers to keep having to setup and advert slot.
Payments are paid when ever you want, as long as you have earnt some money. Since this service is still in beta you have to email the support staff to send your check or PayPal, automatic payout is coming in an update. Although I usually get paid a couple of days after I have emailed them. You can have as many adverts as you want. If you have 3 or 4 ads at $50 you can easily earn $150, way more than I was with Adsense. As your site gets more popular you can charge more for a slot, giving you control of exactly how much you want to make a month.
Getting advertisers
The one problem with BSA, from a webmasters point of view, is that adverts will not automatically appear. Unlike Adsense, you have to go out and get advertisers directly. They don’t come from a big pool of people. This can be quite hard for anybody that doesn’t have a high traffic site, but it can be done. This is the method I used originally to build up a small base of advertisers.
The first step is to make sure that you have set up your adverts and they are being displayed on your website. They will appear as a grey “Advertise Here” box. This “Advertise Here” box has become quite iconic since I always know that it is from BSA. As it grows in popularity I expect these boxes to appear all over the web. You can,if you want, customize the placement and colour of these images with a bit of CSS to match the theme of my site.
The next step is to make sure the price of your ad is right. Too high and advertisers won’t pay. Too low and you may be giving yourself a cheap deal, as well as this an advertiser may not pay because the price point is too cheap and it won’t be a worthwhile investment (you can never win). I find it is best to start slightly lower than you are worth, get advertiser to bite and then increase the price over the months.
At this point, you have setup your site and have a well priced advert. You now need to write your sales letter. I find if you email a couple of potential advertisers that meet your niche you can get them to advertise although your results may different, just don’t spam everyone since this will really annoy people. Your email needs to be short, too long and people get switched off. It must clearly explain what your site is about, what you are offering and how to buy an advert. You can then link directly to your listing pages on BuySellAds. For example I would include an email along the following lines. Change it as you see fit, make it unique and interesting. Explain what you do and what BuySellAds is (since it is quite a new service that a lot of people may not know about).
“Dear X
My name is James and I run X. I am emailing you to see if you would be willing to advertise on my site. I offer X and I think this would be valuable to your product/service because of Y.
My site currently gets XYZ over a month
If you are interested and advert slot costs $XX and it runs for a month, this appears, here, here and here. If you are interested please visit my listing page on BuySellAds (URL), they offer the hosting for your advert. They handle everything and you can have your advertisement up in no time at all.
If you want more information just ask. Thanks
James”
The final step is to email your letter. You need to find companies and products that meet you niche. There is no point in emailing a dog center if you sell fish. I generally look at Adsense adverts, as well as advertiser on a similar niche to myself. Send them off the email and hope they are interested. Nearly all my advertisers I have found this way.
Conclusion
To conclude. BuySellAds is great in my opinion. You can set up an advert block which will automatically serve your adverts. It makes selling adverts much easiler. There is no need for them to email you. Its always a surprise when a new advertiser has bought advert in the night. It takes the hassle out of selling advert and enables you to write great content. Personally all the load of trying to manage when adverts are running and payment options is taken off my shoulders and given to someone else. I don’t mind spending 25% of my earnings. At my currently level its worth while, if you were earning thousands it may be a different story.
One last note this type of service is also great for would be advertisers. Although this post has been focused on selling adverts, buy ads is also really easy if you want to buy adverts. All of the payment processing and set up of the advert is done for you. You advert is automatically displayed and it automatically run. The pool of advertisers is also getting bigger meaning that there should be someone relating to your nice already on the service.
Like I say to my readers, try this program out. It doesn’t cost you anything to run. It does take a little time to get going, but once as you build a reputation and have a couple of advertisers on your site, your earnings can increase I have seen great results with this program and so may yourself.
Tags: Advertising, BuySellAdsI followed this year’s U.S. presidential election pretty closely on T.V. and also volunteered for one of the candidates. Over I time I began to notice some parallels between running a successful campaign and a successful blog.
I don’t plan to ever run for president - but I would like to have a more successful blog. I would also like to share what I learned and hope that it will be helpful to other bloggers.
Image by BohPhoto
Both of the presidential candidates and their running mates had a story. John McCain was a P.O.W., Sarah Palin, a hockey mom. Joe Biden was from Scranton, Pennsylvania and stuttered as kid. Barack Obama’s story is that he is the “son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas”.
The details of the stories don’t really matter. What matters is how they /framed/ their story - their story had to be everyone else’s story - a story people could relate to.
John McCain was a guy who loved his country and was willing to do whatever it took to defend it - just like many Americans have done or would be willing to do. Sarah Palin, a mom with many of the same concerns of other American moms across the country. Joe Biden had many obstacles growing up - but overcame them and is still a down to earth guy that people could relate to. Obama?s story is a little more complicated - most of us don?t have fathers from another country, etc. But as he said - his story could only happen in America and that while ?we may have different stories we hold common hopes?.
He even had a flyer that said: ?His story is our story - an American story.?
It’s the same way with blogging. You need a story (I?m still working on this myself) - it has to be uniquely about you, but it still has to be something your readers and potential readers can relate to. It has to somehow be their story too.
An example is Wendy Piersall - her story is about “one little mom who wanted to start a blog as a hobby” and now has grown to 14 bloggers that are “willing to do what it takes to make a great living while also living a great a life.”
Many people can relate to her story - struggling with finding a successful career path and juggling that with raising kids.
Each of the candidates did a good job of telling their story and framing it so other people could understand and relate to it. That isn’t enough to win an election, just as it’s not enough by itself to make a blog successful. But it’s a good start for letting people know who you are so you can begin building relationships with them.
Once you share your story on your blog you give your readers a chance to share in a part of your life - your struggles and successes can be theirs too. And once you build those relationships, the resulting community that forms can share their struggles and successes with you also!
Obama had a huge number of people volunteering for him - millions - literally millions across the country. The volunteers created a grassroots effort that helped to get the word out about him being a great candidate for president. They helped to recruit even more volunteers and convinced even more people to vote for him.
Together the paid workers, the volunteers and other supporters created a huge and powerful community. Huge communities of enthusiastic followers attract even more people.
He not only had an offline community ? but an online community as well.
His website had groups you could join based on geography, political issues and many different interests or hobbies. You could find groups in your own local area or based anywhere in the world. You could add people as friends or search for old friends. You could have a blog at his site. You could find out about offline events through his site. In short - his site brought people together to promote a common goal.
Communities are created by lots of individual relationships between many different people with similar interests. In Obama?s case, his community?s common interest was in him and in helping him win the election.
Blogs are similar. You need to create a community of readers.
One expert on building blogging communities is Liz Strauss who specializes in relationship blogging. She is great at creating a blogging environment that makes people feel welcome and encourages them to participate. As she says on her blog: “You’re only a stranger once”.
This is very vital to making a blog successful - identify a common interest of your readers, invite them in and let them participate in the conversation.
Another thing I noticed when I was volunteering - I was always welcomed by the other volunteers and paid people. They always appreciated any effort you made, so matter how small. Liz does this too - whenever you stop by her Tuesday Open Comments Night - you always feel appreciated.
Probably the most important thing to remember about blogging is this:
Establishing and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships is a big part of why Obama won the election - and is also why the top bloggers are so successful!
It was difficult to keep from checking all the polls everyday for this election. Some days it looked good, but you could never feel too confident. The next day things could change. And you never know until the actual day of the election how it will turn out.
Obama even warned his supporters about getting too confident and that he still needed them working for him on Election Day - and every day leading up to it.
With blogging it’s easy to get caught up with checking your subscriber numbers, your Page Rank, Technorati rankings, etc. But in the end, those numbers don’t mean that much.
Subscribers can unsubscribe just as fast as or faster than they subscribed in the first place. And many subscribers don’t actually read all the blogs they subscribe to. Page Rank doesn’t contribute as much to the Google algorithm as it once did, etc.
There’s nothing wrong with checking these numbers and being aware of them (what blogger wouldn’t want to be able to display FeedBurner numbers like those of Darren Rowse: over 66,000 subscribers!) - but what really matters is real people - not numbers.
Who are your readers? What are they looking for? Are you meeting their needs?
To build the community I wrote about in Part II - ask yourself: “Am I making my visitors feel welcome? Have I created an environment that encourages them to participate?”
Always, always keep working to improve your blog. Don’t let yourself get too confident or complacent. Work on your content. Tweak your design. Reach out to and build relationships with other bloggers. Keep your current readers engaged. Always look for opportunities to attract new readers to your blog.
But do take a break now and then! I realized after a while that I needed to take a break from watching all the polls and election coverage on T.V. It’s too overwhelming after a while. It’s good to walk away a bit and get some perspective.
It’s the same with blogging. Sometimes you have to take a break for a little while. Do something else. Read a book or talk to people offline. It can help to get you recharged - before you completely burn out - and to come up with new and creative ideas to write about!
Everyone has an opinion and has the right to express it, in politics and in everything else in life. When I was out doing door to door canvassing I was quite often surprised by some of the responses I got. Some supportive, some not and some just way out there about issues you never would have thought about that would leave me scratching my head in disbelief.
Sometimes I would come up to a house and think I had a pretty good guess at which candidate they were supporting and be completely wrong. Sometimes I would guess right.
On a blog if you want to create a community you should let people express their opinions in your comments sections even when you don?t agree with them. Of course if the comment is threatening or filled with hate speech you should moderate it. But as long as the person is polite, differing opinions can be enlightening and stimulate more conversation and are sometimes quite entertaining!
If the conversation gets too negative - try to turn it around and make it into a positive. When people booed as Obama mentioned McCain at a rally he told people not to boo - just vote.
On the other side of things - you the blogger, are expressing your opinion whenever you write a post.
Both politicians and bloggers need to really believe in themselves and the ideas they are promoting. If not, people will see through what you are saying and it will be more difficult to be successful.
If fact if you aren’t getting much of a response with your blog it may be that you are not being opinionated enough. According to Kelly McCausey guest posting at Remarkablogger:
Some rules she included for being opinionated apply well to both politicians and bloggers:
Accept that you will alienate someone.
Step up and justify your opinions.
Expect and respect opposing opinions.
I’m pretty shy and am surprised at myself that I was brave enough to knock on the doors of total strangers and express my opinion in favor of Obama. Yes, some people were rude - but I kept knocking anyway. And yes, I had Obama signs stolen from my yard three times - but I kept putting more out there anyway. And yes some people will disagree with what you write on your blog - but keep writing anyway!
Some people will never agree with you - on politics or what you blog about, but that’s ok - don’t let it stop you or slow you down!
Tags: , blog tips, blogging, blogging tips, Obama, Presidential Election
There are plenty of ways to succeed online, and plenty of advice for making it happen. But what?s the one thing that every successful entrepreneur can fall back on?
If I had to reduce my recipe for success to just three ingredients, this is what those three would be:
And if I had to give up two of those, I?d keep collaboration.
That may come as a shock, given the subject matter of this blog. But it?s true.
The thing is, even if I couldn?t write my way out of McDonald?s bag sopping with Big Mac grease, I could still make money. My knowledge of partnering strategies (joint ventures, strategic alliances, project collaboration) guarantees the ability to put together a deal that has all the necessary talent and assets to make a project happen.
And even if I were dead broke, I could do it without spending a dime, all while making everyone involved better off. Including me, of course.
Now, I?m not saying this because I?m some special hot shot. Even though I practiced business law and saw first hand that the real rich in the room were the business people who made the deals (not the lawyers who wrote them up), it still took me 5 years to apply partnering strategies in an entrepreneurial way.
(And if you think being an attorney gave me an unfair advantage, think again. Lawyers are trained to be adversarial, and that?s the kiss of death to smart deal making. I had to get over that and readjust my mindset).
The truth is, there were at least two times pre-Copyblogger that smart partnering kept me in the game and allowed me to take things higher (the real truth is they saved my butt). That?s a big part of the back story to the instant success (yeah right) of Copyblogger.
Fast forward to today, and I?m still at it.
As a business, Copyblogger is successful not because of page views, but because of what it promotes. And what it promotes is made possible through collaboration with two exceptionally talented partners?Chris Pearson (DIY Themes) and Tony Clark (Teaching Sells). I?ve got other things in the works with Sonia Simone, Mark McGuinness, and Jon Morrow, three other exceptionally talented people.
In short, you can?t do it alone. And who wants to?
As I?ve said before, I started Copyblogger to demonstrate what I could do as a way to attract partners and do other projects. There was no need for Copyblogger to become some so-called ?A-list? blog to accomplish that, but I guess I got carried away.
What you?ll find much more interesting is the partnering strategies I used before anyone knew who I was. And I?ll share those stories and examples with you next week.
But up next in this Partnering Profits series, Copyblogger Associate Editor Jon Morrow shares why partnering strategies may provide a smarter route to success than your current path. Jon also has a background in offline joint ventures, as an organizer of high-dollar real estate investment groups. He?s ported his effective tactics online, and that makes him a guy you need to listen to.
See you next week, and have a good weekend.
About the Author: Brian Clark is the founding editor of Copyblogger, and co-founder of DIY Themes and Lateral Action. Get more from Brian on Twitter.
PS: Mac users can check out 14 Essential Mac OS X Applications for Bloggers that Darren wrote a while ago.
Mozilla Firefox is the king of all browsers. Limitlessly extendable, fast, and lightweight. If you’re still using any other browser (even Google Chrome), then switch to Firefox immediately, it’ll boost your productivity ? guaranteed. There are many Firefox plugins, these two posts give the essential ones for bloggers:
2. MemoKeys
Stop wasting time typing the same thing repeatedly. MemoKeys saves you time by letting you call up commonly used text with keystroke combos. This is very handy is you get a lot of email, comment on blogs a lot, or have a default email/comment template.
All you Microsoft haters might say otherwise, but you need Power Point, Excel, and Word if you want to make it big as a blogger. Office 2007 is easy to use and has beautiful default templates.
If you don’t want to pony up for Office 07 then the open-source OpenOffice is a nice alternative.
4. SnagIt
SnagIt is the best screen-capturing program out there. Using SnagIt, you can take screenshots of menus, windows, specific regions, and more. The more-than-capable editing program that comes with SnagIt is also a godsend for productivity seekers and Photoshop phobics like me.
5. WordWeb
WordWeb is a free powerful dictionary and thesaurus program. It’s mainly an offline dictionary tool with about 150,000 words in its database, although it also allows you to look into online reference sites such as Wikipedia. WordWeb’s a feature rich dictionary & thesaurus tool and a must have for bloggers who write their own content.digsby-logo
6. Digsby
Digsby is an all-in-one IM/social networking client. It supports most of the IM protocols out there, like Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ, and AIM. It even supports Facebook chat! It features tabbed conversation window, allows you to manage your email, and stay up-to-date with everything that’s happening on your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn accounts. As its makers say: Digsby = IM + Email + Social Networking.
Link Popularity Check checks how many links you have according to Google, Yahoo!, MSN and a bunch of others.
8. RoboForm
RoboForm is the tool to have for bloggers. It cuts out the time you spend filling various forms online, it remembers all your passwords, and it even features a random password generator for the security freaks among us. The price? Only $29.95. Use the discount code GOOG1 to get $6 off.
I’ve yet to come across another app that is better or on the same level as RoboForm. If you don’t have it, you don’t value your time.rss-bandit
9. RSS Bandit
RSS Bandit is a desktop RSS reader that syncs directly with Google Reader. The best feature is has is that it allows you to download your feeds (including images) for you to view offline. Very useful for travelers and those who hate web based RSS readers.
10. Camtasia Studio
Camtasia Studio is the ultimate screen-recording program for PCs. With the latest version, you can create HD quality professional-looking videos. It can produce your videos in many formats such as iPod, Flash, Quick Time, Windows Media, AVI etc.
A full-featured desktop blogging application, Writer allows you to add images, videos, maps, tables, and much more. Overall, it’s a much better alternative to your blogging software’s inbuilt editor.
12. AdesClrPicker
This little known color picker has recently gone free. It’s fast to load, easy-to-use, and captures colors in HTML, RGB, C++, VB, and Delphi color codes. You can capture color codes anywhere on the screen. What more could you want?
13. Yahoo! Widgets
Yahoo! Widgets adds small widget apps to your desktop. Aside from being glitzy, it can be useful if you choose the right widgets. Here are a few widgets that bloggers should get:
14. Twhirl
Of course, how could I forget Twirl? A must-have app for twitterers to twitter their tweets.
15. PeaZip 
PeaZip is a beautiful but fast archiving utility that supports most of the compression formats out there. It’s recommended for bloggers who download and sample a lot of files. Alternatives are WinRAR and 7Zip.
16. The Journal
Keeping a diary/journaling can help you improve as a blogger. Now, not many of us are so keen on opening a notebook every now and then to write in, so if you’re such a person then The Journal is for you. It supports separate volumes, inserting images, tables and the like, and you can even password-protect your diary.
For more on why you should keep a blog diary, check out Darren’s post:
What Do You Use?
I’m sure that I’m just scratching the surface here. I’d love to hear from other PC using bloggers ? what applications are you using?
You can catch Ruchir Chawdhry at TechVivo where he blogs about gadgets, software, online tools, windows tips & tricks etc that you can use to become more productive & better your life. Click here to subscribe to TechVivo.
Tags: , AdesCirPicker, blog tools, Camtasia Studio, Digsby, firefox, Link Popularity Check, Memokeys, Microsoft Office 2007, PeaZip, RoboForm, RSS Bandit, Snagit, The Journal, tools, Twhirl, Windows Live Writer, Yahoo Widgets
You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed, and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes.
No, this is not going to be a post about what kind of bloggers Morpheus, Trinity and The Architect would be. That would be cute, but not terribly useful.
But I will use Neo, Agent Smith, Spoon Boy and Persephone as symbols of a different type of matrix. A matrix that allows you to see things for what they really are and become more effective.
I’m talking about the kind of communication matrix you build when you work with a pricy consulting firm. It’s abstract, but when you sit down to fill in the abstractions, you’ll find that this “30,000 foot view” helps keep you on track. It shows you exactly where to focus your attention to get the best payoff from the time and work you put into content marketing.
Before you can build your own matrix, you need to know two things: what you’re good at and what’s important to your customers. The best way to find both sets of answers is to ask your best current customers. Use an online survey, or just watch blog and forum comments coming from the people who are your biggest fans today. (Triple bonus points if those individuals currently buy something from you.)
Your matrix has four quadrants. Everything you do with your blog and your business goes into one of these sectors. To make them easy to remember, and to shamelessly exploit a pop culture reference, I’ve given each quadrant a name from the Matrix movies.
Neo items are things you do well and that are important to your customers. (Not things that are important to you.)
The Neo sector is where you’ll find most of the material for your content marketing. Spend most of your time talking about what you do well and what matters to your readers.
Do not, however, thump your chest and brag about how wonderful you are.
Instead, tell stories that show how you’ve helped your readers with what matters most to them. Take deep dives to explore benefits that are especially relevant to your content community. Create case studies for each type of customer you serve, and show specifically how your product or service benefits those customers.
In case you’re wondering, yes, you’re going to repeat yourself. That’s fine; strategic repetition will help your message sink in. About 80% of your content marketing should touch on the Neo quadrant.
Agent Smith items are things you don’t do very well, and that matter to your customers.
What you do communicates much more than what you say. When you’re confronting Agent Smith, you have to communicate by taking action.
In other words, fix the problem.
If you have a great product but your fulfillment house can’t manage to get it shipped to your customers, that has to be fixed before you can move forward. If your t-shirts look great but the color bleeds in the wash, make it right before you try to sell any more.
Know when communication is not your problem. Never, ever try to “spin” your way out of an Agent Smith problem.
Don’t pretend you don’t have Agent Smith issues. Everyone has Agent Smith issues. Be transparent, address them frankly, but most important, get them corrected.
Spoon Boy items are things you do well, but that don’t actually matter very much to customers.
There are some things you’re really good at. They might even be essential to running your business well. Maybe your Web site loads amazingly quickly and your shopping cart is state of the art. Maybe your business model offers terrific profit margins. Maybe your manufacturing process is the coolest thing since the invention of the assembly line.
Customers don’t care. They might notice if it’s awful, but mostly it’s not on their radar.
If you talk about Spoon Boy items at all, don’t make your communication too visible. It’s fine to put information out for customers who want to know more, but don’t waste prime real estate. The people who care will dig to find it, and no one else needs to be distracted by it.
The Persephone quadrant covers things you don’t do well, and that are not that important.
Surprisingly, Persephone can actually make herself very useful to you. You have three options with items in the Persephone sector: you can use them as confessional material, you can fix them, or you can quit doing them.
Persephone items make excellent “confessions” to build trust. Nothing creates better rapport than confessing to a fault that your customers don’t care about. For example, if your ebook formatting looks like a third-grader did it, address that right up front. Make fun of yourself a little, and “warn” customers that you’re not going to win any design awards. You get points for not being a self-congratulatory blowhard and you cut criticism off at the pass.
If you feel like it and it isn’t too hard, you can also correct Persephone items to show you’re working on yourself. Again, this shows modesty and a willingness to admit you’re far from perfect. These are very likeable qualities, and likeability is always a plus in content marketing.
Just make sure Agent Smith has been dealt with first. Nothing is more aggravating than a company that fixes trivialities and leaves the major rage-inducers untouched. (Hello, telecom industry.)
Finally, look over your Persephone quadrant every once in awhile to see if there are tasks you should just quit doing altogether, either because you outsource them or because they don’t need to be done at all.
This matrix is almost completely useless in the abstract. But it’s insanely useful when you actually fill in the blanks.
This is a lousy time to try and make money in a blue pill fantasy land. You need to learn to see your business as it really is. Get real about your marketing, your business, your content and your customers.
Identify what you’re good at and what you aren’t, and what’s important and what isn’t. Until you know those four things, you won’t be able to shape your content marketing to get the greatest possible benefit–for yourself and your readers.
About the Author: Sonia Simone is an Associate Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.
This question (or variations of it) hit my inbox 3 times in 24 hours from different people so I thought I’d tackle it as a post instead of individual replies.
Let me start by saying that this problem can be frustrating. You see your RSS subscriber number growing by your actual visitor numbers remain steady - as do your comment numbers. It can actually feel like you’re wasting your time - I remember myself feeling kinda like this guy when I first noticed this happening to me:
Image by Sybren Stüvel
However all is not lost.
There are a number of points that I’d like to make in responding to this question about RSS subscribers not visiting a blog. I hope that they give those facing this problem a little hope, encouragement and also a few ways forward.
I had one blogger recently tell me that he’d removed the option to subscribe to his blog via RSS from his blog because he didn’t want to ‘give away’ his content. He wanted people who read his content to ‘pay’ him by visiting his blog (and earning him money from his advertising) and he saw RSS subscribers as ‘freeloaders’.
My response to him was that I’d rather have a subscriber who rarely visits my actual blog than a one off visitors who never returns because they have no way of keeping in touch.
While a subscriber might not actually visit your blog they are a powerful connection to have. My reasons for this will hopefully become evident in the points that follow.
RSS subscribers are opting in to receive your content. When they hit ’subscribe’ they are putting themselves inside your sphere of influence and are asking you to teach, inspire and communicate with them.
Each time you hit publish on a post and a subscriber sees something that you’ve written you have the potential to deepen the relationship, trust and influence that you have with your subscriber. While this might not have an immediate pay off in terms of advertising revenue - it can have a long term ‘pay off’.
RSS is used by a smallish percentage of the population (around 11% at latest reports).
While the percentage may be smallish - I have a suspicion that they are a reasonably tech savvy and influential bunch of people. I’m guessing here - but I suspect that those who use RSS are also likely to have blogs themselves, they’re more likely to be into social networking, messaging and bookmarking tools.
This makes RSS readers a potentially very influential audience - capable of spreading news of your posts and blog throughout the web very quickly.
When I started blogging one of the main indicators that I looked at when measuring the success of my blog was traffic. If I had a day with lots of visitors I was happier than if I did not have anyone visit my blog.
While traffic is still important to me - I’ve noticed lately that I’m checking my visitor stats less than I used to. These days I’m increasingly interested in ‘influence’.
I don’t mind so much if someone reads my content on my blog, in an RSS reader or in some other tool - what matters to me is that people are reading it, that in doing so they interact with me, that they are drawn into some sort of ‘relationship’ or ‘community’ around the content.
My reason for this is that I’m finding that while traffic can be monetized directly - influence is actually a more powerful (and potentially profitable) thing. Let me explain more in my next point.
More and more bloggers are discovering that while direct income earners like advertising are great - that there’s also incredible potential for bloggers to earn an income through other more indirect income sources. Making money ‘because’ of a blog rather than directly ‘from’ a blog is possible in may ways including consulting, writing books, running training and workshops, selling products, landing other paid writing gigs, speaking at conferences etc.
The more people that you have some kind of influence with the increased chances of being able to monetize that influence in one of these indirect methods.
A subscriber might not be visiting your blog each day but if you provide great content on a daily basis to them you can bet that the day they decide that they need to hire a consultant on your topic that they’ll come knocking on your door.
Indirect income is not the only possibility for RSS. There is also RSS advertising - this industry is still in its infancy and while isn’t hugely profitable using tools like AdSense I’m hearing bloggers reporting that it’s a growing income source for them.
The other great opportunity for income from RSS subscribers is affiliate programs. This taps into point #5 above - when you have ‘influence’ or trust established with readers an affiliate program can be very profitable.
Just because someone subscribes to your blog does not mean that they’ll never visit it. In fact RSS subscribers can be among your most regular visitors to your blog if you draw them into actually visiting it.
I won’t go into a lot of techniques for this in this post but using techniques like asking questions, running polls, interlinking posts, writing ‘best of’ lists and more techniques can draw subscribers into visiting your blog on a daily basis.
Read more detailed tips on getting RSS readers visiting your blog.
Tags: , Blog Promotion, RSS, RSS Subscribers, Visitor Numbers
Back in May, I launched the first ever @copyblogger Twitter Writing Contest. People seemed to have a lot of fun participating and reading the hundreds of submitted entries, so I?ve been looking forward to doing another one.
If you missed the first one, the Los Angeles Times did a nice write-up of the event. In a nutshell, contestants had to tell a story in exactly 140 characters, which is the maximum allowed for any tweet on Twitter.
This time we?re doing something a bit different.
As you might have gleaned from the headline, this time we?re going to write Twitter haiku. There?s already a healthy group of people who tweet clever little haiku poems on Twitter due to the constrained size, so it seems a natural for Twitter Writing Contest 2.
If your memory is a little rusty on what haiku is, here?s a refresher:
Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry. It consists of 17 syllables broken up into three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively.
Here are two quick examples found on Twitter Search with the tag #haiku:
Been up way too long / Need about a week’s more sleep / Might not be enough
The furnace is fixed / breath invisible again / how much is the bill?
~ @badboc
Got it? Obviously, the more clever, comedic, or compelling your haiku, the better your chances of winning.
Like this one found on t-shirts:
Haikus are easy / But sometimes they don’t make sense / Refrigerator
Now on to the good stuff.
We had some really great prizes last time, but we?re kicking it up a notch. Here are the prizes for first, second, third places.
First Prize ? A MacBook Air, the world?s thinnest laptop, courtesy of DIY Themes and the Thesis Theme for WordPress.
Second Prize ? Free access to Product Launch Formula 2.1+, the highly regarded online training program (tuition $1,997), courtesy of Jeff Walker. (If you purchase PLF when it opens–and likely sells out–today, you will receive a full refund as winner).
Third Prize ? Free access to the new-and-improved Teaching Sells online training program (re-launching in January 2009 for $997), courtesy of Teaching Sells.
Rules, rules, rules? you can?t avoid them. And to be eligible to win, these are the ones you?ve got to follow:
1. You must have a Twitter account. Open one for free to participate.
2. Please tweet your submission (one per account) in English with the following format:
Phrase one (5 syllables) / phrase two (7 syllables) / phrase three (5 syllables)
3. After you?ve tweeted, you must cut and paste the poem itself into the comments of this post, along with the direct URL to the tweet (to get the tweet URL, you click on the tweet time stamp, i.e. ?3:32 PM Nov 12th? or ?about 12 hours ago?). Make sure the email address you use for the comment is valid so we can contact you as a winner (email addresses are never used for any other purpose).
4. I know it?s unnecessary with this crowd, but? original submissions only! It?s quite easy to search Twitter or Google to see if your inspiration amounts to plagiarism. Don?t do it please. 
5. Submissions will be accepted in the comments of this post until Midnight Eastern Standard Time, Sunday, November 16, 2008.
I?ll be answering questions and giving any necessary updates on Twitter, so make sure to follow @copyblogger. I?m looking forward to seeing what you all come up with!
About the Author: Brian Clark is the founding editor of Copyblogger, and co-founder of DIY Themes and Lateral Action. Get more from Brian on Twitter.
You will probably be surprised to read that I agree with a lot of what Josh said in his post earlier in the week. Josh’s points probably resonate with the experience that most of you have had. However, does that mean that Digg ( or other social news sites) is worthless as a marketing platform?
The answer to that depends on what your goals are.
The problem with most people is their approach to social news is shortsighted. Social news sites are a long-term investment not a day trade.
Josh is right, building a following requires time and patience, and why should a social news site be any different? You have to actively participate on the site and network with other users (both of which are incredibly time consuming) before you can truly understand a community and they can appreciate what you have to offer. And even if you do make the investment, there is no guarantee of success on the site, and why should there be?
Social media marketing is not for everyone and won’t work for everyone. Before you take the plunge and invest your time and energy into any site (for marketing purposes), whether it be Digg or one of its competitors, take a moment to understand the site, the demographics of the site’s community, and the community’s preferences (My Little Pony would hardly work on Digg, but on StumbleUpon maybe). Communities are always evolving and what works today may not work tomorrow. Darren is a great example of this.
ProBlogger used to do really well on Digg but for some reason it doesn’t anymore. At the same time, however, Digital Photography School still performs really well. Why? Because Digg users are no longer interested in blogs that blog about blogging or making money from blogging, but have in the past months become infatuated with digital photography.
The web is a crowded place and filled with people fighting hard against information overload (and mostly losing). In this kind of an environment, an environment where people are doing their best to filter out useless information (noise), social news sites function as filters that help separate the wheat from the chaff the definition of both varies community to community).
But even then, every social news site is different. If you don’t like the Digg community, or they don’t like your content, try Reddit, StumbleUpon, Propeller, Mixx, the list goes on. The problem is not with social news or one particular site, the composition of these sites is natural self-selection of likeminded people.
Traditional social news sites like Digg, Reddit, and Propeller serve as newspapers. They are designed to have all sorts of content, some. Some of it will be tabloid material (for the stupid people) and some of it will be smart (for the rest of the crowd). These sites (Digg) aren’t necessarily for distraction only, though they certainly do a good job of that.
Ultimately, Josh is absolutely right when he tells the “ProBlogger” audience to not use “Digg”. What I would recommend instead is Sphinn.
However, for the average blogger, especially news, politics, entertainment, science, and offbeat bloggers, Digg and all its sister sites are a great avenues for a lot of exposure, of which some definitely sticks and can lead to great long-term growth. When people target all the wrong communities where their content is not desired, that’s when people get frustrated. It’s just a matter of taking the time to understand the community that best fits your needs and where your content will be best served and spending time on that community.
Tags: , Blog Promotion, digg, Muhammad Saleem, Reddit, social bookmarking, SphinnIf you have a multi-author WordPress blog then you’ll want to check out a great post at Hongkiat - 35 Tips Tricks To Manage and Handle Multi-Author Blogs.
The post is packed full of useful tools and plugins that will help make the task of managing more than one author on a blog a lot easier - enjoy.
Tags: Blogging Tools, Editing, Multi Author Blogs, Plugins, wordpress
One of the tips that is often given by bloggers is that you should use some sort of service or plugin that shows related posts on your blog. Not only does this give readers something else to look at, it provides another way to make your blog sticky.
This will help to decrease bounce rates and increase average visitor browsing times. However, what if you took the idea of related posts on your own blog and extended it out to those who used a particular service across the web? That is the idea behind Sphere. In this post Jeff Chandler reviews Sphere to see how it works.
Sphere was founded in 2005 by four individuals and is based in San Francisco. Martin Remy; Steve Nieker; Tony Conrad; and Toni Schneider. If the name of that last person sounds familiar to you, it’s because he is also the CEO of Automattic, the folks who bring you WordPress.com. What was originally a search engine for blogs has turned into a site that makes connections across a wide variety of content.
There are two ways in which to use Sphere. The first is by submitting your blog to the Sphere network. The second is to use the Sphere widget. Once your blog url is approved and added into the Sphere network, links to your blog posts will be distributed throughout the Sphere userbase. It does take some time before your blog URL is either approved or disapproved but until you receive that notice, you can use the Sphere Related Content Widget.
As with the site submission process, you’ll have to pony up some information to Sphere before you can actually use the widget. Pay special attention to the Blog Content selection box as this will determine the type of related posts that are displayed within the widget. If you are using a self hosted version of WordPress, you’ll be able to use the Sphere Related Content plugin. Once you have that plugin installed and activated, you’ll need to configure it.
This plugin currently supports the following content display types:
At some point in the future, more specific content types will be available to choose from. However, for most people, Classic should be just fine. Once the plugin is configured, you should see a small Sphere icon with the text “Sphere: Related Content” appear below each blog post.
Clicking this link will open up the related content widget which displays five posts from other bloggers talking about the same subject, two related videos, and two to three related articles from across the Sphere network.
When testing out the service on my own blog, I discovered that for the most part, the bloggers talking about the same topic were generally more related than the related articles section. The related videos were hit and miss. Overall, not a bad experience and I’ve found myself clicking on a few of the related articles myself. Personally, I’d like to see the option of configuring the widget to display a certain number of related posts on the blog page rather than having to click on the widget. In a later revision of this plugin that can be configured to display a specific category of posts will be a welcomed addition.
Using a related post service such as Sphere has its benefits. For starters, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, TechCrunch, All Things D and Real Clear Politics that generate over 1 billion monthly article page-views are already on board. If a link to your blog post appears within the widget or related post area on any of these sites, you are sure to benefit from the follow through traffic. Although from browsing around CNN, I did see a good mixture of related blog post links. However, the tech category appeared to be dominated by the big name blogs/sites such as TechCrunch, CNET, and Zdnet.
In the end, just being part of the service, displaying your widget, and allowing Sphere to use your content to showcase related articles is a simple way to increase exposure as well as traffic levels for your own blog.
Here is what I’d like to know from you. First, do you use Sphere or a related service? Pardon the pun. Also, have you been able to measure any amount of success from having your articles display on the various widgets within the Sphere network? Last but not least, have you ever had a blog post show up in the widget on a site like TechCrunch or CNN?
This Review of Sphere was written by Jeff Chandler who is currently a writer for Performancing, BloggerTalks and is the host of two podcasts, WordPress Weekly and Perfcast.
Tags: posts, related, service, sphere, traffic
