Archive for March, 2008
Monday · Popularity: 56% · stars
Here are my top 10 stars of last week. For those who are new to reading this blog, this is a post I normally do on a weekly basis that I haven’t done in a while so I thought I would bring it back this week. Each week as I go through my rss reader I start several articles for future reading. I try to make this list a quick recap of the previous week’s posts from various sources around the Internet. Not always blog posts, but most of the time they are articles written by other bloggers.
I have approximately 700 feeds that I go through each week, and as always, there were some excellent articles written last week. Below you will find a few that stood out to me.
Top 10 Stars of the week of Mar 24 to Mar 31
via Blogging Experiment by Max Davis on 3/28/08
Hey there, this is Max Davis. I’m sure you’ve heard by now that Ben has sold his amazing website and many of you are interested to see what is going to happen next.
via Andy Beard - Niche Marketing by Andy Beard on 2/18/08
There is nothing wrong with having strong, even biased opinion about a product or service, as long as you provide a basis for that
via Vandelay Website Design by Vandelay Design on 3/26/08
Earlier this week I posted a group interview with several established and successful designers. One of the questions that was asked to each participant was “What do you feel are the most important skills
via Blogging Tips by kelbycarr on 3/25/08
If you have a blog, odds are good you’d like to bring in a few bucks. There are actually several options for doing this, but not all will work
via Freelance Folder by Ram Karthik on 3/27/08
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with writing only on a handful of topics, but what if a client asks you to write on a topic you know nothing (or very little) about? Can you afford to turn down work?
via Technosailor by Aaron Brazell on 3/18/08
WordPress is about to release version 2.5 into the wild (It just hit Release Candidate yesterday so the release date, though officially
via Freelance Folder by Keith Johnson on 3/30/08
As a Technical Writer, I have had to interview hundreds of computer professionals to better understand the technology that I would be documenting. Programmers, Quality Assurance, Implementation,
via Blogging Tips by John Leschinski on 3/29/08
As I was redesigning my own site I debated what resolution to use. More and more sites are optimized for screens at 1024×768, and the WC3 reports 80% of users have monitors that big or bigger. Even my…
via ProBlogger Blog Tips by Darren Rowse on 3/29/08
“Hi Darren, I’ve got a website at www._____.com which I’ve had for a few years and not really done much with. I’ve heard that blogs are a good way of building traffic and making money, should I change it to a blog?”
via Technosailor by Aaron Brazell on 3/18/08
WordPress is about to release version 2.5 into the wild (It just hit Release Candidate yesterday so the release date, though officially not known, is coming soon). If you’ve been using WordPress.com or have peeked at the demo site you will know the biggest change coming to WordPress with this release.
Friday · Popularity: 46% · blogging tips
Are you generally a user of the system or are you an active participator in the process? Using a pingback can have several benefits for you as the one who uses the link, but it also benefits the person or company you are linking to when Google comes around to index all the relevant pages.
What is a Pingback, Trackback, or Permalink?
For most of us that are not total code junkies I thought it might be good to a have a little background information first. All three of these terms are similar in nature and do similar tasks, with slight variations.
Pingback
What exactly is a pingback? A pingback is method of linking back to an article or post you read on another blog, from within the article you are writing. I will have more on this below. An example of this would be linking to article related to this article that someone else wrote, like this: Linking To Differing Opinion, by Andy Beard. The link I just posted is considered to Andy as a pingback to his original article.
From this blog, to Andy’s, which then comes back to this blog.
Trackback
A trackback is very similar but generally is used as a url location to link back to an article you have written, some times from an article you are writing back to another article of your own. An example of this might be a link to a previous article on my own blog. This is one I wrote last year on how to improve customer service, and the trackback would be here: Steps to Improve Customer Service by Answering Email
From this blog, to another article within this blog, which then links to this article.
Permalink
A permalink is the actual permanant url location of the article in question. For example, the permalink for the same article I wrote last year as mentioned above would have this permanent url http://scott.islandzephyr.com/2007/11/02/improve-customer-service-sales/ , usually a very long address that no one wants to post in full, but it works well using an anchor tag.
All of these terms can be used in conjunction with each other as one of three forms of linkbacks. All of which should be used in effectively marketing your blog or website, but be careful how you use them, they are also the tools of spammers when used incorrectly.
What Does a Pingback Actually Do?
A “ping” comes from when you would reach out to another IP address by sending a small bit of information, and in return, you would receive a small bit of information, then you would know that you actually reached the IP address in question. So, when you write an article or blog post and mention another article, and link to it, it will send out a small bit of information saying you did so, and give you a small bit in return.
It is generally quite acceptable to other bloggers or website owners to post back to an article that they have written. It is not generally acceptable to copy what they have written and just repost it on your site, even if you do give the author credit. Some of the reason for this is that they don’t get any benefit from you repeating their information, where a pingback to their site does.
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Thursday · Popularity: 65% · valuation
This question comes up quite a bit, but when you are talking about individuals businesses or blogs, not a corporation, the simple answer is, probably not as much as you think. Certainly not as much as you have put into it.
One of my favorite things to watch is Buy it Now prices on eBay and personal items people put up for sale, like their car or motorcycle. I have this GREAT thing, I paid $5,000 for it, used it for 5 years, it is in perfect, brand new condition and here it is for sale for $5,500, great deal. What we deem as precious and important to us, really only has a value of what someone else is willing to pay.
I am going to examine this question in a series of posts since it can be quite a long subject. In this post I will look at a few variables in determining value to your business, asset, blog, online property, or other digital assets and what it might be worth if you want to sell it.
Value is Determined by Someone Else
As I mentioned above, the value of something is not really determined by you at all. How much something is worth depends on how much someone else is willing to pay for it. If you think something is worth $5,000 and someone else is willing to pay $10,000, then it is worth $10k, and of course the opposite is also true.
A good example of this is the current fire sale of blogs. At first, the money making seo blogs were said to be worth bundles. Then as a few were sold off, the value of each was shown, to be what someone else was willing to pay for it. There were, and are, several metrics that bloggers decided each blog was worth and gave it value, but most went by a price per subscriber of about $15.
All of this came to mind when I read, A Difficult Decision - BloggingExperiment.com For Sale, a nice blog which I have read for some time. All of sudden the for sale sign went out. It was up for auction, but has since been sold for an undisclosed amount, but the seller / owner (Ben) was looking for “5 figures”, which is about in line with the price per subscriber listed above. That would make the sale about $13,500 (that is according to the calculation above, I have no knowledge of what it actually sold for).
If we just stay with the guesstimate above as an example, Ben was doing a year long experiment, which he was 265 days into, when he decided to sell his blog. Since he sold it, I would assume he got a price he was willing to accept. If it was my guess above, that comes to about $51/day, or about $6/hour if you go on an 8 hour day, or approximately $18,000/year. But, it is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it, and sometimes that is better than what we know it is worth.
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Friday · Popularity: 100% · blogging tips
This questions is asked all the time. How do I get traffic to my blog? How do I get publicity for my blog?
The best answers are not always the ones people like to hear, but are still quite accurate… there is no real quick and easy way to get a million people to go to your blog (other than being on the news), it takes a lot of work.
Since this question comes up quite frequently I thought I would share a few items that are on the top of my list for helping out your blog traffic. This is by no means a complete list, but a good start for a new blog.
How to Get Good Publicity for Your Blog
The best way to get publicity for your blog is a have a really good blog. That sounds obvious but I have found that in an overall general sense, that is the best way.
- Content is still king, and I believe that is still true. Know who your readers are and write to them. If it is a business content blog don’t post articles about your vacation.
- Comments. The next best thing is to comment on other blogs. Don’t spam other blogs, but start reading related articles and post thoughtful comments on their blog. Get your rss reader full of feeds from other blogs, read them, comment on them, and as you do people will visit your blog as well.
- Interact with your readers. You can do this in many different ways, for example, if someone comments on your blog with a question, answer it.
- Tip Jars. Don’t overpower your readers with ads or tip jars. A blog overloaded with ads and flashing banners is a turn off to most readers and even if you have very well written content they will probably not stay long. Ads are fine, just have them integrated as part of the website design and try not to overpower the reader.
- SEO. Get your blog setup in an seo friendly manner so the search engines will pick up your posts. This can be somewhat of a myth, but there are many good ways to make your blog seo friendly where Google and Yahoo will more likely pickup your posts.
- Post. Post well written articles, and often. If you can’t post as often as you think your readers will expect, hire a content writer familiar with your genre that can competently express your views.
- Advertise. Advertise on other blogs that have a lot of traffic in your same genre. Many times this can be an inexpensive way to gain traffic. What you are really going for here are subscribers, and visibility on other blogs is a good thing. You don’t always have to use a paid advertising company either. MyBlogLog and Technorati are great ways to showcase your blog to others.
- Be professional. This should probably be on the top of the list. You want a professional looking blog, clean design, easy to navigate, but speak, respond, write, and act like a professional.
- Ping other articles. When you write an article, back it up with credit to work cited, and make sure you link to the blog you are citing. When you do this, it will automatically “ping” the other blog, or notify the other blog you have mentioned them. You are going for eventually getting other blogs to quote your articles. This is GREAT for the search engines. Google and Yahoo will bring your rankings up as more people talk about your blog/article, so start talking about others and you will see the same in return.
- Run a contest. This is one of the more controversial manners in which to gain traffic but also one of the most effective. You need to research this and be careful with it, but it is a great way to drive traffic to your site. Don’t do some cheesy contest where you give away a free one month of something worth $5.00, it isn’t worth anyone’s time. Give away an iPod or something. You can get a Nano now for about $200. Call it an advertising expense and do a post saying you are giving away an iPod on this date. In order to enter the contest you have to write a post on your (the readers) blog about your blog or the contest or something. Even just having your readers write a post that has a link to your blog is fantastic for traffic. Any time any blog posts a link to your blog its gold. This is probably the best method to gain traffic although some wouldn’t use this tactic.
As I said, this is by no means a complete list but some of the items on the top of my list. Coming up, I have several articles that will explain in greater details the points above, and how to implement those points in an efficient manner. What are your favorite ways to increase your blog traffic?
