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Archives for July 2007

Analyzing the Digg Effect to Write Better Articles

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Last week, Performancing’s article entitled 10 Articles All Bloggers Should Read (at least once) got over 1,000 Diggs and made it onto the front page for almost an entire day. For those of you who happened to be around, a bunch of us had some geeky fun monitoring the Digg in real time.

But that’s not where the real value of a Digg lies. The real value lies in two effects: 1) Establishment of authority and 2) Backlinks.

I didn’t realize I was filling such a big need at the time of writing it, but my meta-article on blogging seems to have become an overnight, authoritative resource for new bloggers. From a preliminary investigation, the article is already getting linked to from the far ends of the blogosphere.

So what can we learn from this example of the Digg Effect? I see a clear lesson. The lesson is this: fill a real need and people will eat it up. Think about how many new bloggers are starting each day. Think about all the blog owners hiring new bloggers each day. Well, I did think about these things because it was starting to drag on my daily responsibilities. Having to constantly summarize the basics of blogging and provide tips for improving headlines was detracting from my more important work in SEO. So I put a list together for myself to fill a need. Then I realized that there are probably others with the same need. Turns out there were lots of them.

With all the junk information floating around the internet, many people have grown weary from the search for good information. Since Google doesn’t give people the information they really want anymore, one of the fundamental tasks for the blogger is to organize and serve good information. This makes you an authority.

Put together useful lists of resource articles for a broad audience and you’ll soon find that your site is becoming an authority. When people recognize it as an authority, you are going to acquire some killer backlinks.

So here’s what I learned from the Performancing Digg: not all Diggs are created equal. I’ve gotten on the front page before and only acquired 7 or 8 backlinks and no residual traffic. But if you make something that a large number of people really need, a timeless resource, it only takes a little nudging;-) and your article is an overnight authority (with lots of residual benefit).

July 2007 Performancing Experiment: A Statistical Analysis of Cost/Benefit for StumbleUpon Submissions

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Experiment: Submit every new Performancing article to StumbleUpon by at least 5 people during a 2 week period and evaluate the traffic benefit (will you help?).

You can track the experiment by monitoring pMetrics statistics for Performancing.

Having run Nudger.org in Alpha for a few months, it has become increasingly clear to me that human tendency is to pursue the simplest solution with the biggest perceived payoff. My goal here is to change your mind about the biggest perceived payoff in social voting, and to change your promotion behaviors (just like I’m starting to change my own).

When bloggers are choosing whether to submit to Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon or Netscape, and they only have one choice, they almost universally go for Reddit.

I want to change this tendency because I am confident that it is the wrong approach. Normal Reddit traffic is borderline useless, except to artificially boost up your stats and maybe get an adrenaline rush. Reddit traffic doesn’t convert nearly as well as search traffic, and hardly any better than Digg (which is notorious for having poor ad conversion).

One hypothesis is that, all things being equal, there is a measurably better cost/benefit reward ratio for a steady dose of Stumble/Netscape then a steady dose of Reddit/Digg. Yet, I also believe that SEOs everywhere, including myself, are inclined to go with the Reddit/Digg combo or maybe just the Reddit solitaire. Why? Well, in the case of Digg it is so damn popular. In the case of Reddit, it is so damn easy (and I mean easy…)

The problem, as I see it, is that the simplicity of Reddit can become addictive and often provides no lasting effect. If you have an average blog you are probably getting somewhere between 75 and 400 visitors per day. Reddit can singlehandedly double or triple your traffic in any given day. But this traffic is largely junk traffic.

Netscape has the benefit of building strong, deep links over time. Some of my blogs have long-term PR 4 or 5 links straight from the Netscape domain. Many articles get short-term PR 6 and 7 link love. While you won’t drive much traffic from Netscape, you will help drive SERPs over the long haul. Netscape should be part of anybody’s long term link building strategy

Stumble traffic, in contrast to Reddit, is very focused and converts quite well. Sure, the initial submission is more time consuming, but then it’s all “thumbs-up” from there. Plus, I’ve found that a single Stumble can send thousands of visitors to your site. No need to get on the front page or anything. Just get a few people to “thumbs up” your article, and you’ll have sticky readers with an interest in your site topic flow right for high conversion rates.

So my hypothesis is this: Reddit has the least payoff of all the major social voting sites, but that it’s also the one solution that most people use. Instead of using Reddit, I think that a wiser use of your time is to go after topic-targeted traffic with StumbleUpon. It doesn’t hurt to do both, but avoid the temptation of using Reddit for all your social voting needs.

7 Steps to launching a Great Blog

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In the ‘Ask Your Blogging Questions Here’ thread, franky asks:

How do you really start a new (niche) blog? Many times the ’10 articles’ and ‘establish yourself as an authority’ is managed, but what pace to set during the first period?

There are two established strategies to successfully launch your blog – the big bang model or the bootstrapping model – and these differ in terms of resources available to the blog owner.

The Big Bang Approach

If you have any one of these two:

  • a lot of money
  • plenty of good contacts in the industry

This is the ideal way to go. You can write a lot of quality content in advance (around 30-50 articles), and around launch time either spend big or network big and get the word out as quickly and as widely as possible.

Lots of good content + a lot of eyeballs generally translates into a good, successful launch, but there are two factors that you have to cater for.

One, make sure you’re working in a profitable niche.

Two, make sure you have a ‘phase 2’ – a plan for what to do and how to manage your blog after the launch. It won’t be possible to maintain the same blogging rhythm as during launch, and you’ll have to find a solution that scales and not just eats up your time.

Bootstrapping Approach

Best if you don’t have much time or money. Simply start blogging, putting out 1-2 articles per day and posting them on your blog. Promote your blog but at this stage focus on the key activities – attracting attention of the top blogs, writing linkbait, getting links from trusted sources, etc.

The key here is to focus on what you can do with the resources available to you – so if you’re the only blogger and you can’t churn out 5 articles a day, don’t go down that road, it’s not sustainable or scalable. If you can’t spend 4 hours a day promoting your blog, ruthlessly eliminate all but the most important of promotion activities and spend just 1 hour.

Cut down using the 80/20 rule and focus on what’s really important – quality content, picking a good niche and promoting through the right channels.

A 7-Step Checklist to Launching A New Blog

This checklist is based on the strategies I used to launch my own blog, Soccerlens (see the DBT face off here).

  1. Provide resources that can be linked to, downloaded, read, discussed, etc. Do this at the start, and if possible prepare them in advance.

  2. Get initial links from high-PR, high-trust blogs such as Performancing and ProBlogger by participating in blogging contests and writing articles about your own blogging experiences. I’d add Marketing Pilgrim, Blog Herald and Daily Blog Tips to the list while Chris Garrett and Mark Ghosh do roundups as well. There are probably more that I’m missing – bottom-line, pro blogging sites are a good source of links.

    Think of all the people who’ve removed ‘no-follow’ from their blogs’ comments!

  3. Establish and settle into a blogging rhythm as quickly as possible. Don’t fret about writing 20 articles in advance – just start writing them one by and one and put them on your blog.

  4. Apply to be editor in Dmoz and BOTW Blog Directory for your niche’s category. If you’re accepted, build up those sections and add your site too 🙂 JoeAnt accepts applications automatically, so consider signing up there as well.

  5. Make a list of the top bloggers in your niche and collect as much info as you can about them. Read their blogs daily and understand what type of stories interest them and what they link to. Then for each author, tie in their interest in a couple of your articles and ping them the URLs (without asking for anything in return). Your goal is to get them to be regular readers, links will come by themselves.

  6. Remove all obstacles that prevent your readers from subscribing to your feed, from commenting on your blog, from sharing it with others, from linking to it and from finding things on your blog. This means not asking for ‘registration’ before commenting, showing your RSS feed (and email subscription box) above the fold, a prominent search box, a clear listing of site categories, social bookmarking icons (done subtly they look really good), etc.

  7. Have fun and be yourself – without these two things, your best work will come across as ‘forced’ and ‘unnatural’. If your readers don’t see your passion in your writing, how are they going to respond? In kind, by not getting excited about what you’re writing and drifting away.

    Thanks Liz for teaching me this.

  8. Bonus Tip: I used the thought of beating my competition as motivation to work harder. Fretting about stats isn’t an ideal habit but if it helps you make your blog better then it does have some value.

It’s ok to start slow and build things up, but it’s important not to lose momentum once you’ve built it up – nothing is worse than taking your site to the top and then getting lazy and allowing it to fall back down in rankings, earnings and readership.

Also Read:

Starting a Professional Blog – Choosing a Niche
Starting a Professional Blog – Qualifying your Niche
Blogging Mistakes – Launching on an Empty Shell
How To: Launch A New Blog The Easy Way
Planning A New Blog Venture
10 Business Models for Bloggers
10 Key Ingredients of A Great Blog
Positioning Your Blog
10 Step Plan To A Profitable Blog

If you have any questions related to search marketing, blog promotion, WordPress or blogging in general, ask me here.

Blue Laptop Theme

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Blue Laptop theme for WordPress preview imageWe think that variations on a great theme can make another great theme. For that reason, we are excited to announce the release of The Blue Laptop Theme for WordPress, cousin of The Dark Laptop Theme.

Blue Laptop is the daytime version of Dark Laptop. Filled with about six different shades of blue, the theme has a calm, soothing effect on its readers. Just like Dark Laptop, this theme is chock-full of stylistic curves and design elements that you haven’t seen in any other theme before. Straight out of the box we believe that the Dark Laptop and Blue Laptop themes are among the most professional and original looking free WordPress themes ever available. If you’re looking to distinguish yourself from the crowd, without spending a penny on theme design, these are the themes to use.

Blue Laptop is the perfect theme for any topic in entertainment, technology, literature, or even professionals in counseling or law.

Download the Blue Laptop Theme or Click here for a live preview

Update: Blue Laptop has been updated for compatibility with WordPress 2.7 and up. Download the latest version here.

Visit the Performancing forum for the Blue Laptop theme support.

What Makes a WordPress Theme Great?

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In the last hour or so I’ve been scribbling notes for what would make an ideal WordPress theme. It occured to me that any successful theme would have to meet 2 main objectives: proper structure, and focus towards a particular audience.

By structure I’m talking about the basic building blocks of themes (or even websites):

  • Code must validate – adherence to web standards

  • Cross-browser compatibility

  • Should follow basic usability guidelines / requirements

  • Uses modular, easy-to-customise code

  • A focused channel for theme support and upgrades

  • Follows WordPress coding standards

A website will be limited by the imperfections in its foundation – so if you’re building a theme that will be as popular as Cutline or K2 (or even more popular), then you must lay the proper foundations.

The second condition is focus – and knowing which audience you are designing the theme for.

Designing a general-purpose theme is hard than one focused towards a specific audience. It’s easier to plan the layout of a theme for a photoblog or a car blog than it is to plan the layout of a theme that could be used in a thousand different ways. You have to allow for the design to be immensely flexible and at the same time include the basic elements that would be needed by and be useful to everyone who takes your theme for a spin.

For the sake of discussion, let’s work on building a general-purpose theme.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of different decisions to make when doing a layout of a theme. Most of these though, are personal preferences, using the 80/20 principle and focusing on the core factors, I ended up with the following list:

  • Banner + horizontal menu at the top

    Personally I’m not happy with restricting a theme to this option but the thing is, this setup works well for a majority of blogs

  • Multiple options for columns

    Instead of restricting the theme to a single column pattern (2 column right-sidebar), I think it’s a better idea to go Semiologic’s way and build a system in which the blog owner can easily change the number and alignment of columns through the WP Admin area

  • Extended footer

    the 2 or 3 column footers seen on several WP themes are an excellent means of organising information – while the theme may appear bottom-heavy if there’s no banner at the top or if there’s not enough content in one post, the multi-column footer technique can work well and should be used.

  • Advertising

    Some basic concerns when building a theme with advertising in mind – 3-column versions of the theme should have a content area wide enough to show the 300px AdSense block / 468px AdSense banner, and the 2-column versions should have a sidebar that’s at least 270 px wide to accomodate 2 columns of graphical ads

  • Navigation / above the fold elements

    A reader lands on a random page of your website – how does he orient himself and what does he do there? Another reader lands on your blog’s main page – how do you provide them direction through your blog and how can they, in a few seconds, find all the key areas / functions of your blog?

  • Make it fully customizable

    I’d prefer a theme that can be completely customised and turned inside-out using the same building blocks

  • Static home page

    What is the main purpose of your blog’s front page? What is the main purpose of any category archives page on your blog? Chances are, the two answers are different, so why would you keep your front page looking the same as a category’s archives? A static front page helps you plan and implement a proper landing page for prospects and direct readers to different sections of your blog

Questions

  • What color scheme should be used?
  • Which plugins should have built-in support?
  • What changes would you make to the structure discussed above?

Comments are welcome – let me know what you guys think.

Before You Begin Blogging: A few things to take care of before that first post

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When people send me mail at About Weblogs the majority has to do with how to start a blog, specifically the first steps to take. Not necessarily how to write a blog, but the steps one needs to take before one begins. Everyone has different advice on how to prepare, but here’s what I tell those who ask.

1. Choose your niche. What do you want to blog about? Whether you want to turn people on to the joys of asparagus farming or start yet another blog about blogging, you have to talk about something. Make sure you know enough about your chosen topic, however. If you’re spouting off fluff your readers will know; find something you’re good at and talk about it.

2. Visit lots of other blogs. Don’t just visit blogs in your niche; check out as many popular blogs as you can. What is it about them that appeals to you, and what don’t you like? What do they do to encourage community? There’s a reason popular blogs are popular, study them and learn why. Get ideas for your own blogs.

3. Choose a blog platform. I’m going to receive a lot of flack for this, but I always recommend Blogger for beginners. Stop laughing for a second and hear me out, because there are good reasons for this.

  • Blogger is a really simple platform. Registration is easy and so posting. If you’re technically challenged like me, it’s a good place to start.
  • Blogger is free. Sure you can host your blog on your own domain but what if it’s a flop or you find you really weren’t as interested in it as you thought you were? At least with a free blogging platform your only loss is that of time.<.li>
  • You can monetize Blogger. WordPress.com is a great free platform for beginners, but the difference is that you can’t place Adsense or other ads on a WordPress blog. You can monetize to your heart’s content with Blogger.
  • If you find you love blogging and it’s working out for you, it’s not difficult to switch to WordPress.

Still, even though Blogger is my platform of choice for beginners, don’t just take my word for it. Research the different platforms and choose the one you feel works best for your needs and level of expertise. If you feel confident enough to purchase your own domain and host a WordPress blog, that would be my first choice.

Writing a blog is easy. It’s all those steps you need to take to ensure a blog’s success that make it more of a challenge.

The new pMetrics Dashboard

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The new pMetrics Dashboard is designed to quickly and efficiently show you the traffic data that you care about. It is full of live refresh fun (many thanks to the jQuery JavaScript library), and includes the ability to drag and drop the modules to wherever you want on the screen. They’ll stay there forever until you move them again.

The screenshot above shows a number of modules from the Dashboard. Take the ‘Links’ one for example. It shows your top 5 incoming links by default, but also allows you to view outgoing links and top incoming domains simply by clicking the appropriate link. Only that module is updated when you click items, making the dashboard very fast and efficient at getting the data you want.

Trend data from the previous period is shown on the right for each item, in green if your trend is good, or red if it’s bad. If you are viewing a single day, the previous period is the day before. If you are viewing a date range, for example the last 14 days, then the previous period is the 14 days before that.

You can hover your mouse over the trend to see a tooltip that defines the previous period for you and gives you the value. Clicking on the trend is where things get a lot more interesting, though. The module will instantly refresh and show you trend data for just that one item, either from the last 14 days if you are viewing single days, or the last 10 periods if you are viewing a date range. Screenshot

In development is the ability to pick and choose only the modules you want, and choose how much data is shown within each individual module. We’ll also be adding a Google Maps module. However, these features will be for premium accounts only! Detailed trend data (when you click the trend link) will also become premium only, but is available to everyone right now.

Overall, it’s a lot of fun, especially the trend data. Ideas from the new Dashboard will be implemented into the rest of the site over the coming weeks, so the whole site will work like this rather than just the dashboard.

Please help us spread the word by blogging about this! We think the new interface is really cool and we want everyone to know about it. 🙂

Have fun!

How To: Put The Right Price On Your Blog

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How do you put a price on a blog?

The free valuation tools commonly available suck – you cannot place a value on your blog by counting links and PageRank and at the same time not considering actual revenues, site traffic and a dozen other factors that are relevant to blog valuation.

To be honest – there’s no perfect formula for blog valuation. What I can do is share the factors that I consider important (these may change depending on specific cases or on the buyer’s goals) and discuss one way of calculating the value of a blog. Feel free to jump in and share your own views here.

Valuation Factors to Consider

Niche Potential

Used to evaluate if a blog is making less or more than the average in that niche for a blog with that amount of traffic. If a blog is under-monetized then it gives the buyer leverage in the buying process. On the other hand, if the blog owner knows that his blog is under-monetized he can then focus on attracting advertisers and adding different revenue streams to his blog prior to putting it up for sale. Fatten the cow, so to speak.

If a blog is in a highly profitable niche this will have some impact on blog valuation, but this is only in relation to whether the site under-monetized or not.

Expenses

What does it cost to run the blog? Hosting, blogger time, promotion, administration – take everything into account.

Revenue Analysis

How much is that site earning?

How much did it earn in the last 6 months (month-by-month breakdown)? Take the average and that is a more realistic revenue estimate for the blog.

What are the major revenue sources? If it’s just one, it’s a risky proposition and the buyer invariably has an advantage in negotiations. On the other hand, if you have 3-4 or more sources of revenue and they all earn reasonably well, you have a very business and the price invariably goes up.

Traffic Sources

Does the blog have high search engine rankings?

How many feed subscribers?

Is there a mailing list / newsletter?

Is the comments section active or passive, and is there any value in the discussion (or are people just saying ‘this sucks’ and ‘that rocks’)?

Does the blog get mentioned regularly on other websites? Does this bring in traffic?

Premium

What is the site design worth?

What would the domain name alone be worth (think of branding, established reputation, etc)?

What is the content worth, if anything (search engine rankings and traffic matter here)?

Social Reputation

Some niches are more easily polarised than others (for example: pop culture and sports) and it’s easier to offend segments of the audience through them.

Is the blog recognised in its niche as a leading blog? Do fellow niche bloggers read the blog (a big, big positive)? Does the blog enjoy a negative reputation for past actions?

Anything positive is just bonus, but if the blog has a negative reputation it may become difficult to make it grow beyond a certain point.

On the flip side, how big a brand is this blog in its niche? Does it have media recognition? Is it recognised in non-niche circles as the leading blog in its niche (as Danny’s SearchEngineLand is)?

Blog Branding

Is the blog attached to the personal brand of the lead blogger or is it all about the content?

TechCrunch and MarketingPilgrim are two examples of blogs that were built on the personal reputation of their lead bloggers but have successfully moved away from personal branding and towards building the blog as a standalone brand.

If the blog relies strongly on the main blogger to relate to the community, it becomes difficult for new owners to run it with the same amount of success and as a result the price can go down.

How Do You Value a Blog

What are we going to do with these factors? I use a simplified valuation formula that works like this:

Blog Value = Premium + ((Monthly Revenue – Monthly Costs) x Multiplier)

The Premium is established based on the value of the content, site age, design, established rankings, community, etc. Revenue – Costs is a straightforward calculation.

The key difference where people have issues is the multiplier.

As Andy Hagans has discussed here, there’s a wide discrepancy between offline businesses and online blogs – whereas blogs often go for 1x or 2x their yearly profit, real-world businesses often go for 10x on yearly profit (plus premium).

The challenge here is to build defensible traffic, to have multiple monetization methods, to build a great brand, to have an active community and to make your blog indispensible to your niche.

The better you are at all of the above, the higher you can push that multiplier.

If your blog gets traffic exclusively from Yahoo, only earns from AdSense and is unknown outside your niche, it’s not going to get more than a 1x multiplier.

On the other hand, if your blog is the ProBlogger of its niche, you could name your asking price and easily charge a 5x or 10x multiplier.

A Few Problems

The problem with establishing a Premium and a Multiplier is that these decisions are subjective and as such the valuations of two experiences domainers will almost always differ. Because of this it’s always a good idea to have 2-3 people independently value a blog – whether you’re selling yours or looking to buy one.

Putting a price on your blog (and developing a blog exit strategy) is always a good idea no matter at what stage you are with your blog.

Have you valued your blog? If so, please share your methodology and what factors you considered most important.