Monetization Makeover: PSPFanBoy

Welcome to the 1st edition of Monetization Makover. In this series, I’m going to review the monetization of different blogs, in terms of both strategy and ad placement, and make suggestions for improving profits.

Today’s lucky blog: PSP Fanboy, freshly launched by Weblogs, Inc.. Let’s begin by ripping it apart, shall we?

Actually, before we even rip it apart, I want everyone to take a long, hard look at the Adsense heat map. The heat map shows which ad placements receive the highest CTR, from dark orange (highest) to white (lowest).

Again: take a long, hard look. This heat map is your best friend if you’re trying to make money off of ads on your blog.

After reviewing the heat map, we know what works well: anything on the left sidebar, anything immediately below the top-level navigation bar, anything within the content/middle, and anything below the content/above the footer. We also know what doesn’t work well: anything on the right sidebar, anything above the top-level navigation bar, and anything below the footer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at PSP Fanboy.

PSP Fanboy: How They Did It

PSP Fanboy was recently launched by Weblogs, Inc.. The blog covers the PlayStation Portable gaming system, which obviously has a huge audience. Since the site covers such a high-interest topic, and is part of a high-traffic, high-profile, highly-linked network, I’m sure the site received gobs of traffic since day one.

PSP Fanboy’s layout is in the normal WIN style: content on the left with two sidebars on the right, and a leaderboard on top. Juxtapose this layout with the Adsense heat map you just looked at. Do you see anything wrong?

As you can tell from my red markings, I’m not convinced that the blog is very well monetized.

• Critique #1: The Leaderboard OK, I’m just gonna say it. Leaderboards suck. It really is that simple. I’ve never seen a leaderboard perform well on a site, relative to alternative units that could be used (exception: when it’s above the footer). Furthermore, a la the heat map, banner units above the horizontal navigation (NEWS/REVIEWS/CHEATS/WALKTHROUGHS) are doomed to low CTR (blame banner blindness).
• Critique #2: Skyscraper in right sidebar Again, we know from the heat map that the right sidebar is not the place to put ad units (unless, of course, you’re selling ads on a CPM basis and don’t mind shafting your advertisers). One caveat here: this placement isn’t as bad as a “standard” right sidebar placement, where the skyscraper is by itself – the fact that the sky is wedged in between the content and the menu will draw some extra eyeballs and clicks. Still, skyscrapers will almost always perform best on the left sidebar (again, blame banner blindness; people are just to used to seeing it on the right).
• Critique #3: Video game boxart not an affiliate link Aside: I’ve heard various people sound off about how affiliate links in blog posts are “iffy”, or that you should always disclose that something is an affiliate link. I’ll say this once: RUBBISH. Anyone who cares about that sort of thing is smart enough to know that it’s an affiliate link anyway. (Of course, a different matter is, if you give falsely positive reviews to products to get more affiliate sales – but that’s a content issue. If you give out false info, smart readers will quit reading. Back to my point: affiliate links in blog posts are here to stay, get used to it.) Anyway, I don’t know about you guys, but when I see boxart for a movie, I expect it to be linked to that movie’s page on either IMDB.com or Amazon.com. In fact, if it does not link to either of those, I even get annoyed (it’s just an extra step I have to go to, Control+C the movie title, Control+V into the search box, then Enter… c’mon, I don’t have time for this!) Well the same thing applies to video games. They’re talking about Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories– what if I want to find out more about it, read reviews, or God forbid even buy this game they’re blogging about? Give me a link to the Amazon.com page, dag nabbit! And while you’re improving the post’s usability, if you have a noggin, insert your affiliate id, too! Bonus: Monetization via affiliate links means that Adsense doesn’t have you completely by the… you know. Using affiliate links diversifies your revenue stream, which is always a good thing.
• Other critiques A few non-intrusive ad unit additions would have been an ad unit in the content (between, say, the 2nd and 3rd posts), as well as a unit above the footer (when users scroll to the bottom of the page, it’s sort of link they’re thinking, OK, I’ve read the page, what now? And at that point they tend to be click-happy, so why not have them click on something that pays you?) Neither of those units would ruin the user experience or look of the site, and they would each get a decent CTR in and of themselves.

PSP Fanboy: How I’d do it

Based on my criticisms, I’ve made a mockup of how I would do things differently (yes, I know, you don’t have to tell me, my Photoshop skills are just sick).

N.B., my suggestions are starting points. Every blog is different, and will have a specific configuration that performs best for it. To reach that point, it’s often best to start with what you think should work, and keep revising (testing, testing, testing for each ad configuration). But a good starting point is often the Adsense heat map, and I stand by my recommendations: they may not be the optimal configuration, but I’d wager they’re pretty darn good.

1. Skyscraper on left sidebar The ol’ sky on left sidebar is, by far, my favorite Adsense placement. It usually has extremely high CTR, and you don’t have to annoy users with Adsense inside the posts, either. (Note that the CTR on this thing could go much higher still if we gave the unit a white background and blended the colors into the content a bit more – but with the black background, it looks pretty sharp, and at some point we have to remember to make a site look good!)
2. Ad unit between posts This unit must be blended with no border (i.e., white background). Since I am lazy and didn’t bother to merge two screenshots to show what’s below the fold, I had to insert this between the first and second post, but it would also work well between the second and third post.
3. Boxart becomes affiliate link This one’s self-explanatory. I might also put a text link at the end of posts which discuss specific games, that says something like “Click here to get more info on this game at Amazon.com” (example: like what I do at my VoIP phones blog , except a bit more understated).
4. Not pictured: leaderboard ABOVE footer I know I said leaderboards suck (and I meant it), but one place where they generally rock is ABOVE the footer. Non-obtrusive, decent CTR (see the heat map), way below the fold so it doesn’t ruin your design, etc.

If these guys ever redesign their templates and reposition their ad units, they’d do well to ask themselves WWAHD (What Would Andy Hagans Do?)

That wraps up Monetization Makeover, Part 1. I welcome your comments.

Selling Your Expertise

Some bloggers have an aversion to advertising so the instant-gratification of Adsense and Chitika are not available to them. If you have an audience and expertise though there are other avenues available.

If you have been following the advice on Performancing you are bound to have a killer successful blog. Ok, maybe not right away, but you will, heh. Keep at it and your audience will grow. Once you have created a blog with a decent level of traffic you have an opportunity to earn income from it. Some bloggers turn away from this topic thinking it is all about advertising but it needn’t be.

There is more to Professional Blogging than advertising

At a certain point in your blogs life one of two things will ordinarily happen. One, you will start getting seen as a bit of an authority on your subject matter and two, you will be asked questions. This is an opportunity for you.

While you are growing your reputation and people are looking to you for advice you might well be presented with opportunities out of the blue. First will be small opportunities but the opportunities tend to snowball.

Two things bloggers need to do are research and write. Both of these things are valuable on their own. Do these things well and your blog will grow and with it your reputation. I fully expect bloggers to become real celebrities before long!

Initially if your writing gets noticed you might be asked to write for other blogs, websites and magazines. You can make a healthy living freelance writing, just remember not to neglect your own blog. This can be a great deal all round as many publications will allow you to have an “about the author” box which obviously would mention your blog!

Leave your desk for a bit and get paid for it

With a popular blog and your writing doing the rounds you might get approached to do speaking. If you are interested in this area try and start out with local user groups before doing the 10,000 seater conferences. It helps for both the nerves and the resume. There are also speaking and after dinner clubs where you can learn the craft if you are really serious. Again you can mention your blog. Say to the audience “I only have so much time so for more info visit www…”.

If your niche is appropriate then you will also get noticed for paid gigs. These could be small jobs which fit in perfectly with a blogging lifestyle or big jobs where the blog becomes the sideline. Designers might start with producing blog templates, programmers might get template scripting contracts. Your own blog is your portfolio and biggest advertising tool.

Think about it …

While I fully expect opportunities to come along to you, if they don’t appear you can go after them yourself and make them happen. Put yourself about and network.

Once you stop thinking of traffic as “hits” and start thinking about the numbers as being real people who are interested in what you have to say a world of opportunity will open up. You just need an open mind.

The Performancing Firefox Extension is Coming

As some of you may know, there is much more to Performancing than just kick-ass posts on professional blogging, monetization and design. For the most part, we’re just not at that part of the PPWD™ (Performancing Plan for World Domination) yet. But, we are very close to releasing one small but significant part of the plan. A firefox extension that will turn your blogging upside down, in a very, very good way.

Ooooh the Suspense!

No, I’m not going to give the game away just yet. We’re about a week and a half to two weeks away from release, and I’m really posting this as a bit of a “wanted ad”. We’re looking for a KICK ASS UI DESIGNER to help us get the app polished, usable and beautiful.

It’s quite a job, so we’re really looking for the best. I did try the good folks over at 37Signals but they tell me they don’t take on client work any longer, so I could really use a hand with referals, suggestions, or pitches for the gig.

If you think you can help in some way, please email nick@performancing.com

And trust me, I’ve just seen the first GUI mockups and it’s fantistic!

Blog Stats Software Reviews – MeasureMap

Despite not even being officially released yet, MeasureMap from AdaptivePath has been building buzz for a little while. I was lucky enough to get an invitation to check the product out. Here are some initial thoughts …

Signup

I can’t be sure the signup process I saw was what the final version will be. I can’t say that for any of it really. What I experienced was very easy though. Unlike the other packages in these reviews, MeasureMap does care what blogging system you are using. The choices are limited and right now there is only support for Blogger, MovableType, Typepad, Typo and WordPress. This is because there are three different scripts you need to place in your footer, post and comments templates. If you have a different blog system then you will need to follow the instructions in the help and work it out for yourself. I feel confident they will sort this out so it is as painless as possible.

As my blogs were not officially supported I set up a new Wordpress blog to test this system. Following the Wordpress instructions was very straightforward so I believe you will have no problems either.

Appearance

You might think it a little unfair comparing a preview version of a system against the mature software in these reviews. Thing is MeasureMap doesn’t feel like a product that is under development. While the stats are a little lagged and the display is a little buggy in explorer, it seems pretty complete.

Design is straight out of the Web 2.0 branding guidelines. It’s all curvy boxes, big text, flash and AJAX. It does look lovely.

This product is the first I have seen that properly caters to the blogger in terms of what you see, ease of use and appropriateness for purpose. Unlike the generic webmaster or advertiser oriented services, MeasureMap is very much just a bloggers tool.

Reports

One look at the homepage dashboard and you can gather what you need to know about visitors, links, comments and posts, clicking around allows you to delve further into the detail. A little bit of blurb explains how many of each metric you have had and how this number compares to your averages. You can set the timeframe or just look at today.

After the other statistics packages you might be forgiven for thinking this looks lightweight, and I suppose it is in some ways, but there isn’t anything missing that most bloggers would be upset about.

Apparently they are working on tracking RSS feeds, custom events and search engine traffic. I am also very interested to hear plans for a public API..

Fees and Service Levels

Right now MeasureMap just says it is free, I don’t know if there will be further service levels or what the restrictions will be. With Google Analytics being free the pressure will be on to have a free service or at least to justify any costs so I imagine it will stay free.

Summary

Initial impressions are very favourable. Any criticisms I have I can pretty much say are probably down to the service still being worked on. In terms of depth, Google has this beat, no question. Having said that, many bloggers will be put off by Googles complexity. This is where MeasureMap shines, the package is squarely aimed at bloggers and AdaptivePath are all about user experience which does show. Because of this MeasureMap comes tops.

Blog Stats Software Reviews – Google Analytics

In this web stats service review I’ll be looking at Google Analytics. Having the Google name alone will be a significant draw, but knowing Google’s bias towards tools for advertising how appropriate is the package for bloggers?

Google Analytics used to be called Urchin. When Google bought Urchin many predicted the move to offer the system under the Google brand, some even predicted it would be free to Adwords users. Quite a few pundits (and stats software vendors!) were shocked when it was announced to be free to all.

Despite being free there is a lot of depth to this software. Before the buy out, Urchin was moving up the food chain towards the medium-large-huge company market and had attempted to be perceived as an “enterprise” option. Now Google is pitching this software to the lowest end, the individual blogger and webmaster. It will be interesting to see how well the feature set sits with the more modest and specific needs of the sub-million page view a day crowd!

Signup

For most people part of the signup process will already have been done. To use Google Analytics you need a Google Account, the ubiquitous central login for Google services (can anyone say “Microsoft Passport”?). Unfortunately many will be disappointed as right now they are restricting signups.

Luckily for me (and this review) I managed to get in early!

The signup process is pretty straightforward. For each blog or site you want to track you need to set up a separate “website profile”. As with all the other services in these reviews, there is some JavaScript to paste into your templates to track visitor activity.

Unlike the others so far you also have the ability to track custom events called “goals”. While this is geared at Ecommerce sites or those with conversion aims other than advertising clicks, with a bit of tweaking these goals can be used to use Google Analytics to track your Adsense clicks! It is a bit fiddly, you might want to rope in some help if the instructions look too geeky, but even so how good is that?

Appearance

While looking serious and corporate, it does look good. The design works and the colour palette is good for repeat viewing and squinting at figures. Out of the reviews so far GA is the best designed I would say.

Where GA falls down is on making things easy for the beginner in terms of terminology and usability. Using phrases like “marketing optimization” is not helpful for people who might well be having their first experience of web stats. Also I would have said the obvious way to navigate to the various sub reports would have been through clicking the big-assed graphics on the “executive overview” (stats homepage/dashboard to you and I). Instead of the obvious “mash the keypad” approach you have to click the fiddly little menu items on the far left of your screen.

Fees and Service Levels

If you are attracting under 5 million page views a month or are an adwords customer you get the service free. That’s most of us then. If you do get more than the page view limit open up an adwords account and spend a few pennies on some ads. It will still be cheaper than the competition!

So far customer service and uptime has been pretty darned appalling. From the squeals of the blogosphere I reckon they should have delayed the launch somewhat. Hopefully though things will improve on the infrastructure front, if anyone can afford decent technology it ought to be Google. On customer service don’t hold your breath, if they can’t look after adwords customers paying thousands do you think they will look after bloggers using freebies?

Reports

Reports are as you would expect, comprehensive. This used to be a profitable product remember so it couldn’t really have been otherwise. The depth of reporting is up there with some pretty serious corporate tracking solutions. This can actually make it look daunting though. None of the others in the reviews can match this feature set.

There is everything here from visitors, page views, session length and return visitors all the way down to your visitors bandwidth and screen resolutions.

A poor point for users with unfriendly “querystring” type URLs (eg. myblog.com?post=1) is the URLs are the predominant way of organising the content reports. You have to drill down to “Content by titles” to get a meaningful idea of most popular posts. This would not be a problem for those using Apache-based blogs with friendly URL schemes though.

You can also add user access if you want someone else to be able to view your stats – neat. The user access feature paired with the ability to track multiple blogs from one account could be interesting to blog network “overlords”.

Summary

I am sad for SiteMeter and StatCounter. This product in many peoples eyes will make them obsolete. The big advantage the others have over this product is ease of use, they are not overburdened with lots of stuff a blogger does not need right away. Some bloggers will not want the “Evil Google” to have their data either.

If you are willing to put up with the unfriendly cluttered market-ese menus then this is a top product and the one to beat.

In Text Ads – Can IntelliTXT Make Good in the Blogosphere?

News that Vibrantmedia has received $25 million in fresh funding has renewed interest in their form of advertising. Why does IntelliTxt cause so much heated debate?

Bloggers are often keenly interested in another revenue stream. We are especially interested if this revenue stream can play alongside our existing advertising rather than replace it. It seems to me you could quite happily use IntelliTxt along with Adsense and Chitika. The question is, will IntelliTXT be good for bloggers?

If you are new to IntelliTxt the way it works is quite different from what we have grown used to. Rather than the advertising appear in the blog borders and fringes of our content, the way IntelliTxt works is to analyse your copy and replace certain words with JavaScript links. These links are then given rollover tooltip like popup layers which show the advert and a link through to the advertiser. They are kind of like adsense ads that appear in the copy when rolled over. You can see a demo here.

I have to believe this is an opportunity for bloggers so we do need to take a good look at this. There is no doubt in my mind that next year we will see more and more of this appearing on blogs we visit.

Amy Valenzuela is quoted on Threadwatch as saying

Vibrant Media has never proclaimed that IntelliTXT ads are the best fit for blogs, currently blogs represent less than 5% of network.

You could take this to mean that they are not interested in bloggers. Personally, I take this to mean the blog market is an untapped resource that, newly invigorated with $25 mill, they will be going after with gusto. This could be extra cash in your pocket.

So what’s the problem?

If you were to run IntelliTxt on your blog any one of the words or phrases in your post could become an advert providing it wasn’t already a link. This merging of content and advertising is where the debate begins. Where does the content end and where does the advertising begin? Many complained about Forbes using this type of advertising. Opponents say this crosses the line.

I don’t see a problem with it personally. The links are quite obviously visibly NOT normal hyperlinks. I’m not even sure the claims that people are deceived has any weight when the self same people are formatting adsense so it looks like navigation or content.

What do you guys think?

Would you be willing to give it a try with your audience or would you not touch it with a ten foot pole and a bottle of bleach?

Professional Blog Hosting Explained

We can easily get caught up in the planning stages of professional blogging but it’s time to get practical. Once you have chosen and qualified your niche, planned your chosen blog monetization strategy and invented a great blog name, next job is to find your blog a home!

What you need

You absolutely need your own domain name and to be able to earn money which means adding advertising and stats code at the very least.

You need excellent uptime and customer support, whenever the site is slow or unavailable you are losing money. The hosting solution also needs to be able to cope with a sudden influx of visitors, for example if you get slashdotted. There have been many cases where what should have been a joyous event, something to take a blogger to the next level, instead turned out a disaster. Usually their ISP pulled the plug and slapped them with grotesque bandwidth charges.

For your blog to be entirely your own and completely unique you will need to be able to edit the code and add modules. While many might disagree, here at Performancing we believe you really do need to have complete control over your blog to make it the very best it can be.

Beginner Option

While we would definitely encourage you to go with your own hosting, initially it may be enough for you that you can have your own domain and tweak templates to include advertising. Hey, it’s your blog. Even Andy uses this route and (other than a hiccup earlier) is quite happy with it.

The blog service with the most control seems to be TypePad Pro account which gives you unlimited weblogs and full HTML editing.

At $14.95 a month though you really ought to consider your own hosting arrangement, read on and you will see it sounds harder than it really is.

Hosting difficult? Too geeky?

It doesn’t have to be difficult and you do not necessarily need to bring in your pet geek right away. If you take a look at your choice of blogging software website there will be a section pointing you to hosts who either give you easy wizards (such as those hosts incorporating the Fanstastico system) to set up the blogging package for you or will help you do it. Many are offering all in one packages that include registering a domain name, setting up email and installing your blog, you just need a credit card.

Power Option

While you can have your own domain and select from a choice of templates on a free or “premium” service from the blog companies these will not give you 100% control. Finding an ISP and setting up the software exactly how you want it is the only way to have a blog that is completely how you want it.

• You are in control – this is the most important reason to go with your own hosting agreement. You choose a host that is right for you with a price and SLA you can live with knowing full well that if it doesn’t work out you can switch within 24-48hours.
• You can switch software – with a bit of redirection your visitors and webbots do not need to know which software you are using so it might be a hassle but you can change your mind about what software you run.
• Upgrades happen when you want them to – if you want to run the latest beta it’s up to you, you haven’t got to wait for everyone else to be happy to upgrade.
• Complete customisation opportunity – as you can see from Performancing, if you have the skills on hand why should you stick with a generic install when you can have it exactly how you want it?
• As many blogs and bloggers as you like – many blog host packages restrict you to how many blogs or user accounts you can have or charge a lot for unlimited. With your own hosting you can have as many as will fit your space allocation which usually runs unto hundreds of megabytes even at the lower end.
• As robust as you can afford – if your blog empire really kicks off simply upgrade to a better SLA, better backups or even webfarm hosting.
• Add non-blog additions you might not just want a blog, you might want to have all the features of a big web community such as subscription area, ecommerce, forum, gallery etc
• Whatever webstats you choose – many blog packages don’t have any webstats, with your own hosting you get your own log files and included stats, plus the flexibility to use whatever you like.
• You get to choose geography – for some search engines the geographical location of your hosting can determine if you rank in a local search engine. Also you might want to have your tech support in your own time zone for quicker response.
• No tie-in to one provider – once your blog becomes popular on a fully managed blog host they have you by the nuts. They can put up prices, close down, change the software .. and there won’t be anything you can do about it.
• Attacks – with your own hosting you can usually ask or control the banning of IP addresses to prevent denial of service or spamming attacks

How to choose

Looking around the blog software vendors sites will give you some early ideas but don’t just select the first on the list then go. Ask around. Personal recommendations will always be best, after that ask on the forums.

You can’t really trust testimonials and even forum responses might be more motivated by potential affiliate income than good advice. Get many recommendations before you go with an option and see if there is a trial period available. Within the trial period make sure you get everything working and you use the technical support. Even if the hosting is in a different country you need to get a quick response to any problems, just imagine your site is down, do you want to wait 48 hours? Also make sure they explain things clearly and politely.

Be wary of hosts who offer unlimited bandwidth. This could mean that any one user of their service could slow down everyone else. I would rather be capped at a good generous level or throttled knowing everyone else was but your mileage may vary.

Summary

Hosting can often cause arguments (what is new, heh) but I hope I have given you some things to think about when next selecting where to host your blog.

How did you choose your blog host and are you happy with your choice?

A Look at Shopping Blogs

The idea of Shopping Blogs facinates me. I’ve not tried it, but have been thinking more and more that I’d like to these last couple of months, so I was pleased to see that David Galbraith had found this list I could check out over a nice cup of coffee this morning. There’s a free sub required to the list link, but lucky for you dear reader, Im going to link them out here and talk a bit about each one.

The idea of a shopping blog, a blog on a theme, featuring products you can buy, as opposed to a product blog, where you’d typically write about one or a small group of products, is interesting. Interesting in that I’m just not sure how viable the model is, but I suspect if the blog is highly targeted, it could be very worthwhile.

You’d expect the main form of monetization to be affiliate links, but that isn’t true in all cases. Let’s run through this short list one by one and take a closer look.

Shopping Blog
I can’t say im particularly impressed with this first one. It appears to be fairly general, and to monetize through fairly standard banners rather than direct affiliate links to products it posts on. With 1464 bloglines subs though, you’d think it would be at around 3000 RSS subscribers so I could be way out there in my assesment.

Im going to guess that im not though, I can’t imagine this one making much money.

Mighty Goods
Hmmm.. Now im just getting depressed. MG is a straight up affiliate site, with a little adsense thrown in for good measure. It has a couple hundred subscribers, but really, is dull as dishwater. It may well make more money that the previous one though, depite it’s content appearing to be the manufacturer/merchants own descriptions of the products it lists.

Slave to Target
Well, what can one say? That URL is the first hint that this is a washout, and when you look closer, as the name suggests, it’s just a straight forward Target affiliate site. Ok, I’m just not finding anything to inspire me yet…

Crib Candy
Hold everything! Just when you thought it was all doom and gloom, somes this little gem. It appears that one person at least, “gets it”. Clearly aimed at the Digerati, or at least hoping for a ton of links from the (just check out the tagging etc), this one is actually interesting. It’s got a stack load of novelty, weird and obscure products on offer, the kind of things that really are “impulse buys” and despite having only a miniscule subscriber base does offer at least one ray of hope. I’ve seen this linked before, and although im not inclined to subscribe myself, i think the idea has legs.

Oddly, monetization seems to be a concept lost to this site almost entirely.

Hunt and Gather
The idea looks kind of cool at first glance, a shopping blog for “cool things for guys”, even though it’s been done a million and one times by regular ecom sites, but the monetization is poor at best. A few coupons and a bit of adsense, wtf? Unsurprisingly, this one has few subscribers.

Uncrate
Wow! The first thing that strikes me is the cool url, then i look at the page and what do I see? A great looking blog focused on cool stuff for guys again, but presented well, and written well. It’s well monetized, with all the products being linked with an affiliate id and has a small but healthy subscriber base weighing in at just over 400. Im not surprised, and in fact, have just added them to my RSS.

Great job on that one, it deserves to succeed.

Now Smell This
Despite very few subscribers, this blog, all about perfume, has some good comment action going on, so you’d assume it’s popular among it’s non-tech-savvy audience nonetheless. The monetization appears to be poor, relying on Adsense and direct sponsorship, but then i could be mistaken, perfume can be pretty expensive! I like this one, i like it a lot. It’s more of a traditional blog, linking out to it’s peers and conversing on it’s chosen subject, if the monetization were better, i’d call it a winner for sure.

Wrapping Up

WIth a couple of notable exceptions, there’s not a whole lot to inspire here, but the point was to discuss the viability of the shopping blog, and from those 2 or 3 that are well executed I’m inclined to think that the concept of shopping blog is a good one.

Do any of you guys do this? If so, let us know your experience, and tell us about your site (only if it’s a real shopping blog though please).

Blog Myths Part 1: PageRank

Very few things in the blogosphere are as misunderstood as Google PageRank. Everyone and their mate’s mum likes to run their mouth on the subject… whereas about 9 out of 10 of them are rather clueless, I’d like to run through some of the misinformation out there, lest you miss out on one of your most powerful allies in the blogging game–Google juice.

A couple of things before we begin

1. When I say PageRank I do not mean “how Google ranks pages”, but specifically the patented linking algorithm that Google used to revolutionize web search about 5 years ago.
2. PageRank is often abbreviated as “PR” (which is somewhat confusing, since public relations is also abbreviated as such)
3. How it works: PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” The scale goes from 0 to 10, with 10 being most important, and 0s and 1s making up most of the web. The homepages of many blogs (that have been promoted a bit) are in the PR4 to PR6 range, if you need a frame of reference.

A bit of history

For the last few years, many webmasters have been crazy for this PageRank. Some have even used automated programs to swap links with thousands of other sites, thus manipulating their PageRank. Others also used programs to insert links into blogs’ comments or trackbacks (thus earning a nasty reputation). And still others did nothing but swap links with a few relevant sites, and write content that naturally attracted inbound links (and PageRank).

The first two types used to game Google pretty well, but those tactics have lost much of their effect in Google lately. Wherease the last type–those that swap links with a few relevant sites, and write content that naturally attracted inbound links–are still humming along and receiving the bulk of the Google referrals out there. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone: the folks at Google are pretty darn smart, and they have engineered better and better algorithms to combat this type of stuff.

With that in mind, let’s tackle a few…

PageRank Myths

• PageRank is the ‘trump card’ for ranking in Google. Many people think a PR6 site will always outrank a PR4 site. This simply isn’t true currently (if indeed it ever was). Actually sites that rank highly in present-day Google tend to have links from trusted sites (there’s some debate about what ‘trusted’ actually means — but, for instance, a link from Engadget or the New York Times would be ‘trusted’)
• Linking out to other blogs will ‘leak’ PageRank. There is a tiny grain of truth in this one (no time to explain it right now), but, practically speaking, linking out will almost always help, not hurt, a site’s ranking in Google (provided it is linking out to relevant pages)
• The Google Toolbar list’s a site’s current PageRank. In fact, the values shown by the Google toolbar are almost always 1-4 months out of date.

One other myth, which doesn’t directly relate to PageRank but which many people believe, is that Google’s “link:http://www.mysite.com” command returns all of the backlinks that Google knowns about. In fact, the results returned are a random sampling and Google knowns about many more backlinks than it shows.

That’s it for now, kiddies–this “SEO” stuff will fry your mind if you spend too much time on it!

Viral Blog Marketing via DIGG & Delicious

We’ve talked about what the Digg Effect does to your site. Of course, many of you may be wondering how to get DUGG in the first place!

Now before I go any further, let me state for the record that there is a not-so-fine line between promoting the cream of your writing crop and bookmark spamming. One can give you some nice traffic and links, while the other could potentially cause you to lose all credibility.

So, the bottom line is: DO NOT SPAM THESE SITES. IT WILL ONLY BITE YOU IN THE BUTT.

OK, glad we got that out of the way. Back to Delicious and DIGG. The lovely thing about these two sites is that they are viral: not only do they send nice direct traffic, but the people who browse them often maintain blogs themselves–thus giving you many secondary link opportunities. Let me rephrase that: The readers at these sites may be even more valuable than your ‘regular’ readers, since they have the power to link to you, and thus send exponentially more ‘regular’ readers (via direct clickthroughs from their links, and the extra Google juice those links give you).

To get a post highly bookmarked at Delicious or highly DUGG at DIGG, it needs some momentum (i.e., several users need to bookmark it). But before several users can bookmark it, someone needs to seed it (i.e., be the first to bookmark it). The seeding is where you come in.

When you make that exceptionally killer post–you know, the one where you have the sensational exclusive, or the highly detailed 10 step how-to instructions that aren’t online elsewhere–you may have something Delicious or DIGG-worthy on your hands. This is the time where you may want to seed the post yourself, and see where others take it (the most likely scenario is that they ignore it). But if it actually is unique, quality and buzzworthy (and if you have a bit of luck), many other users may bookmark it, thus promoting the story, sending your blog a lot of direct traffic, and sending you a lot of secondary links (and thus traffic and Google juice).

Some tips on promoting your blog via DIGG & Delicious

There’s a good way to go about this, a bad way to go about this, and various terrible ways to go about this, so I suggest you sign up and experiment for a bit before doing anything drastic. Some other tips:

• Don’t only bookmark your own blog posts. Otherwise, people will look at your user history and see you’ve only joined to promote one blog! Spam City USA. If you’re going to use the communities to promote your blog, give back as well–bookmark other blog posts you think are worthy.
• Only bookmark your REALLY good stuff. The fact of the matter is, most blog posts are not Delicious or DIGG-worthy. Resist the urge, or, again, you’ll be called out as a spammer.
• If your stuff doesn’t gain momentum, don’t get discouraged–think about why. Write something even more compelling next month (not tomorrow), and try again.
• Write a compelling title. These things live in die by the title. Which one sounds better to you–Random blogging tips or The Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging? Well guess which one got DUGG and Delicious-top-posted…