Archive for October, 2007
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
It’s quite easy to forget these days that not everyone is on the same time zone as you. Just because it’s the middle of the day for you, it doesn’t mean that everyone is up and voting on Digg.
Take as example this story that I posted about an hour ago and submitted it to Sphinn soon after. If you take a look at what Alexa has to say about the country that sends the biggest number of visitors to Sphinn, you’ll see that the US has about 55% of traffic. Anyone cares to guess what time it was in the US when I submitted my story? 1PM in my country and probably around 5AM in US. Now, by the time the americans will start waking up, my story will slip from the upcoming page and its chances of hitting the front page are reduced considerably. Granted, it may just as well be too weak to make it in the first place, but now I’ll probably never know.
Same goes for stories submitted to Digg, Reddit or any other social media site where there is a 24 hour window to get enough votes for the front page.
But this doesn’t apply just to social media. It’s the same case with online auctions. If you open an auction on DigitalPoint or a thread where you offer your services, you got a better shot if it’s not 4AM in the US. If you start an auction that ends in 48 hours and it starts at 4AM, then it will end at the same hour, and there will be less people online that would bid.
Of course, this can also be to your advantage if you’re the one trying to buy something. Bidding in an auction that ends when there is less activity on the site should improve your chances of getting it at a cheaper price.
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Monday, October 22nd, 2007
If you want to see who is considered an authority by Google for certain keywords, you don’t have to look very far. All you have to do is do a search for those keywords, and you’ll see them right there, on the front page.
If you manage to get links from those sites, they will probably give you a very healthy boost for those keywords. From some of them, getting links is easy. From others it would require either money or some clever work.
Types of sites and how you can get links from them
1. Forums
If they rank for that keyword with the front page, then probably creating a user and using the link in the signature and for the personal website link would be enough.
If they rank with a thread, then you need to post a reply there. The problem comes when the thread is old and there are no recent replies in it. Posting in an old thread might get you banned, but if you post something relevant and say that you got there with the help of the search engines and you want some clarifications, you might survive the post. A good idea might be not to use a signature right from the beginning. Instead, wait for the thread to slip back to the back pages, then put your link in the signature and ping the page where your reply shows up on pingomatic.com or pingoat.com. It’s a bit evil, so it’s up to you if you do it or not.
2. Blogs
This should be easy. You got a couple of options here, all normal link building techniques.
Guest Posting - If you can do a guest post, the link to your blog will be there. If they accept guest posts that is.
Buying text links - You can contact the blog owner and see if he’s willing to sell you a text link. If you can, try to get a bulk price, and pay in advance for 1 year or so.
Sending an email - Just a simple email, letting him know what your best articles are. If they’re interested, they might link to you, and again, you gain a link from a site that has authority for that keyword.
3. Mini Sites
If it’s a mini site (just a few pages), it depends on what kind.
If it’s a company - you can try offering them a free logo or a redesign in exchange for a footer link.
For other sites:
- you can try contacting the owner and buying a link
- you can buy the mini site if the owner agrees to sell it. If you can buy it with $50 and it’s already on the 1st/2nd page in Google, then with a bit of work you can take it to the top. If it makes you $2-3/day then you got your money back in just one month. That, plus it’s a permanent authority link to your main site with your chosen keywords. Better then renting a link.
- wait for them to expire if they’re not updated and try to grab the domain when it drops
4. Full Sites
These are a bit of a problem. If they’re selling sponsor links or banner ads, then you’re in luck. If not, or if the links are out of your price range, then it depends on the type of site. If they have a forum attached, then it’s easy getting a link. Maybe they have places where people can comment or leave a product review, though it would probably be with nofollow attached. Another option is leaving a testimonial for their product if they sell anything, and you might get lucky.
Again, you have the option of offering a free logo/site redesign in exchange for a footer link.
5. Massive sites: Wikipedia, About.com, etc
Tough. On About.com I think you can buy advertisement or text links. On Wikipedia I don’t know any way of getting a link without nofollow.
Final words
There is a difference between getting links from high PR pages to boost your PR and getting links to rank for a certain keyword. It’s not the same thing.
If you want to rank for a keyword then get relevant links, from sites or page that are already considered an authority (they’re in top 10/20 in the search engines for that keyword). You can also look for related terms and get links from sites that rank for those as well. Just don’t go buying PR 5 links from car blogs and expect you’ll rank better for "making money online".
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Sunday, October 21st, 2007
Probably the number one advice given when it comes to increasing revenue from Adsense is to blend the ads into the content. In most cases, blending is the best thing to do, but that’s not always the case.
Take the case of a site that has children as an audience. In this case ads that stand out, with brightly colored backgrounds, have a much higher CTR then the standard ads that look like text.
Another case, that I haven’t tested yet, is showing ads to webmasters. I don’t care how well the ads are blended, most webmasters will spot them a mile away. In the last twelve months, I was fooled only once by an ad as far as I can remember, and it was a video ad, when they first showed up.
Which makes me wonder. What ads are better to show if you have as readers advanced webmasters? Blended ads that most will ignore anyway, or ads that stand out and are well targeted and interesting to them? You know what ads I find myself clicking? Image ads that say something that interests me. Not text ads, not well blended ads, but images, exactly the thing I’m not using on any of my sites. So, to me it seems that if you have as readers people that make money online and know everything about blending and Adsense, the best thing is to make it an image, and to make it visible.
But, since I only use Adsense here as a placeholder for direct ads, and I don’t use any large sizes on this blog, I can’t really test this theory. If anyone has any experience with areas where blending produces worst results then making them obvious, please let me know in the comments and I’ll update this post.
The best tip might be to blend in 9 cases out of 10, but people also say that you should experiment to see what works best with your audience and design.
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Saturday, October 20th, 2007
This is the second blog review given in the Shylock Contest.
Just as its title suggests, Gizmo’s and Gadgets is a gadget blog, aimed at technology lovers. It’s a relatively new blog, with just three months under its belt, but it can grow considerably if the owner knows how to capitalize on this huge market.
I’ve talked with the owner of the blog, and since my readers aren’t necessarily his audience, I’m going to combine the review with my opinions on what he could do to make a difference in the gadgets niche, a pretty saturated market.
First of all, the content
He’s got the right idea when it comes to what people are looking for, two good examples being Google Phone Rumors Not True and Microsoft’s "Falcon" Xbox 360 Rumors. He knows what people are looking for, and it shows that he can cater to that market.
Two of the blog’s categories got my attention more then others: Strange Gizmo’s and Gadgets and Gizmo’s and Gadgets for Fashion. With so many blogs talking about gadgets, I feel like the blog would have a better chance of success if he would pick a niche of their own. A focus on one of the two categories I’ve mentioned above, might give this blog that uniqueness that could make him big in the long run. Or, just as well, he could be focused on GSP Navigators, like the HTMS Provia A1 Review or a blog on LCD monitors like the post on Lenovo’s L220x 22-Inch Monitor.
In this saturated market I’d say you need a niche to succeed. Becoming an authority when you have giants like Engadget or Gizmodo around is tough. You can’t compete with them at the number of posts per day, and your best chance would be to be the first to break stories, simply writing linkbait or picking just a niche in the gadget and electronics market (like just LCD’s, sport gadgets, video cards, etc).
How you can break stories when it comes to gadgets
If you can be the first to blog about a new gadget from time to time, you have a better chance at getting to the front page of Digg. You can also mail other gadget bloggers and let them know about the story you just broke, and if it’s an interesting gadget you’ll probably be credited as the source.
If you want to be the first to write about a gadget, then you have to subscribe to the RSS feeds of the gadget stores and to their newsletters. Some of them don’t have feeds, so in this case you bookmark the New Products page of all these stores in a special folder and once or twice a day you do a right click and then Open all in tabs, to see if there are any new gadgets announced.
Here are a couple of gadget stores that you can follow for new products:
There are plenty of other stores you can follow, and you can also subscribe to press releases from Sony, Apple or other big electronic companies.
If there are new gadgets in the shops, do a quick check on Google or Digg to see if it’s indeed a new product on the market, or if others are already selling and it’s an old story.
If you just rewrite news from other blogs it’s a bit tough to get subscribers.
One other thing that I would recommend, is becoming an affiliate for the shops that you’re following. Whenever they have a new product, use your affiliate link when you talk about it.
If you can’t break the news first, then see what blogs do that, and subscribe to them. For that, just follow the blogs that are quoted as sources by the big guys. See what sources Engadget, Gizmodo or Coolest-Gadgets.com use. At least you’ll be one of the first to write about it.
Write linkbait
Don’t limit yourself just to reporting of new gadgets. Subscribe to CopyBlogger.com and learn how to write titles and copy that will make people click the link to your story.
Here are a few examples of linkbait that I can think off right now. I’m sure you can come up with something better if you spend some time brainstorming.
- 5 Gadgets That Paris Hilton Could’ve Used in Prison (security gadgets?)
- Want to be a better parent then Britney Spears? These gadgets can help!
- 7 Gadgets That Increase Your Chances Of Getting Mugged (gadgets that people dream of - IPhone?)
- 25 T-Shirts for Atheist Geeks
- One Simple Gadget That Could’ve Kept Paris Hilton Out Of Prison, If She Had One (presenting a gadget that doesn’t allow the car to be started if it detects alcohol from the driver. I think there is one)
Use Social Media
Digg.com, Reddit.com, StumbleUpon and any other social media site that has sections for electronics or gadgets, can be used to boost your subscribers. Some may bring tens of thousands of visitors, others just a few dozen if you hit the home page, but they’re potential subscribers, so work on getting them to the RSS feed.
However, if you want to have an acceptable chance of getting to the front page, you will need to network. Contact other bloggers, ask for their IM id, talk with them and when you have a good story let them know about it, either for a quick vote on a social media site, for a stumble or they might simply write about your article. Pick a niche social media site that has an audience of geeks and build a strong profile there. Don’t submit just your own stories, become a regular user of the sites you intend to focus on.
The domain
First of all, the domain is not great. Those two hyphens make it pretty hard for someone to remember it. If you really plan to work on this blog in the long term, and you don’t have extraordinary amounts of search engine traffic right now, I’d recommend buying another domain without hyphens, and doing a 301 redirect from the old one, to transfer all the link juice. You might experience a drop in search engine traffic for a month or so, but from what others have said, it should pick up after that.
Conclusion
If you want to make it in the gadget niche, you really have to find a unique angle that will speed your growth and has a good potential in the long term. You have to sit down and rethink your strategy when it comes to that blog. New domain, new focus, new style of writing articles, linkbait, outside-the-box promotion, guest posts. You also need to be able to write content on a regular basis in the long term.
And this is for most of the bloggers trying to make money online in a saturated niche. Be unique or don’t waste your time. I’m not trying to make a living in the making money online business. The biggest blogger in this niche has 34k subscribers. The biggest blog in the gadgets/technology niche has over 1 million. Compare and see if it’s worth starting a blog in the making money online niche, if your goal is to live of that blog.
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Friday, October 19th, 2007
Since I’ve been using it for some time now, I thought a small review of WidgetBucks was in order.
The good
I’m not sure I can disclose the click value, but from what I’ve seen so far, they’re decent. In the technology/electronics/gadgets blog where I use them they can compare with Adsense at medium click value.
They give you $25 to start with, and the payment is done at $50. Nice offer, and I like that they pay through PayPal.
And that’s about it with the good parts.
The bad
You can either choose a specific category of products that you want shown, or you can use the MerchSense option, which should give you ads that match your content. The problem is, they do have a limited number of options, so they can serve matching ads only if you have articles on the categories of products that they serve. For example, an article about speakers got laptop ads. If you have a blog that talks about one of their categories, you have a better chance of getting clicks.
The MerchSense option that matches ads to your content isn’t very fast. While Adsense starts serving relevant ads instantly, WidgetBucks can take up to 24 hours to spider your site, and serves only digital camera ads in the meantime.
It takes 3-4 seconds for me to load and hangs the page for half a second when the widget starts loading. With the attention span that Internet users usually have, 3-4 seconds of waiting for a widget to load is huge. To make matters worse, the widgets don’t load until you’re on top of them. This might help WidgetBucks with the bandwidth consumed (can’t think of any other reason), but it means that if I put 3 widgets on the front page, visitors will scroll down and get over the ads by the time they finish loading.
They put hidden links in your page and their TOS says you’re not allowed to remove them. Yeah, that’s right, check the source code of your pages and you’ll see this nice code of a link that visitors can’t see, served along with the widget:
<a href="http://www.widgetbucks.com" target="_blank"> WidgetBucks - Trend Watch - WidgetBucks.com</a>
WidgetBucks was launched on October 1st if I’m not mistaken, and in just 19 days they got 275,000 backlinks to the front page, according to Yahoo. Somehow I doubt those links come just from bloggers that wrote about them. Sorry, but if they want links from my sites, it’ll cost them a hell of a lot more then what I’m earning with them.
The CTR is absolutely horrible. I’m using a 468×60 WidgetBucks at the beginning of articles, and a 336×280 Adsense at the end of articles on that technology site. Still, despite the above the fold position, WidgetBucks manages to get a CTR 5 times smaller then Adsense. It might improve with a bigger widget size, but I’m not prepared to give a 336×280 space above the fold to a widget that takes 4 seconds to load.
Conclusion
They’re off my sites for now. I might give them another try if they do something about the loading time of the widget, if they get a wider variety of products and they increase somehow the CTR of the ads.
Unless you have a blog about a specific category of products that they offer, I’d say don’t bother.
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