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Archives for September 2007

Porn 2.0: Is the porn industry missing out on Web 2.0?

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I was listening to NPR this weekend and out of the blue there was an interview with the Sex editor of Wired Magazine. She was talking about Web 2.0 and the porn industry.

The gist of the interview was this: historically, sex and porn have been technology drivers. But for some reason, the porn industry seems to be lagging in Web 2.0 options.

The first premise is obviously true. Nobody with half a brain seriously thinks that the internet and broadband would have developed as quickly as they did were it not for porn demand.

But you can go back even further. Porn was a major driving force behind VHS and home movies (privacy and secrecy) – guys didn’t have to go out of their homes to get a porn fix.

The fact is that porn has driven technological advance. I say that without a moral judgment. It’s just a fact.

So why might porn be lacking in Web 2.0? Well, a few answers were given:

1. The porn industry has historically relied on static, easily produced, non-changing content that is passively consumed.
2. There are major legal issues with giving users full control over content development (age restrictions, etc.) Policing content is notoriously hard to do.
3. Web 2.0 would decentralize and potentially destabilize a multi-billion dollar industry
4. Porn has historically been a “fleecing of the lambs” industry that caters to basic instincts and doesn’t need complexities

What would Web 2.0 porn look like?

It would include mashups, user provided soundtracks, user created content, social voting to highlight the best content, etc. All of this takes power of delivery away from the money makers and holds them accountable to the product they are producing. That, and the legal issues, are the main repressive forces that are causing the lag.

List Your Ten Favorite Blogs

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Today I realized that I don’t read enough blogs. In fact, I hardly read any blogs. That’s pretty bad for someone who blogs about blogging. Haha.

So what I need is for you to tell me what your 10 favorite blogs are. Not the ones that you promote. Not the ones that you write. Not the ones that you’re *supposed* to like. I’m looking for 10 really freakin’ good blogs that I should start reading yesterday.

Let me know in the comments section so I can update my feed reader. Hopefully we can point each other in the direction of some good, non-spammy stuff.

How Do You Pay Your Bloggers?

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A growing trend of consolidation in Blogging and in the online world in general has seen many blogs and bloggers join blog networks in a bid to leverage pooled resources (brand promotion, advertising rates, design / programming / promotion help, etc).

Whether you’re starting your own blogging network or just hiring bloggers for your blog, there is one question that always leads to a lot of questions and debate:

How do you compensate the bloggers?

There are 5 different methods of compensating bloggers – let’s look at each of them briefly:

  1. Blogging for Free

    Whether it is out of passion for the subject, love for the blog or because the blogger wants to build their own profile (see yesterday’s post on guest blogging), free content is the cheapest but also tough to manage. Bloggers are rarely consistent if their only compensation is ‘satisfaction’ of writing, and quite often quality control weeds out 90% of submissions.

    It may be a smart idea to have bloggers kick off for free if there is already a ‘main blogger’ running the show, but apart from sporadic submissions you cannot rely on free submissions except in a few niches (and then there’s the issue of quality).

  2. Pay Per Post

    $5 / post or $10 / post rates are quite common in blog network circles, and there’s the added advantage of attracting a LOT of bloggers who can work on your blog part time and write as much or as little as they need to.

    Personally I’m not a fan of this approach – blogging is a continuous experience, not something that should be broken up in terms of per-post payments. It seems to work for some networks, but out of the 5 options mentioned here this is the one least likely to produce good long-term results. You are better off hiring a blogger and pay them $100 for 20 posts per month than to have 20 different people write 20 posts for $5 each.

  3. Profit Sharing

    It’s a popular way to motivate bloggers to get involved in the success of a blog. This usually works by either giving the blogger a share of the profits (50%-80% from what I’ve seen) or by giving them 100% profits from one revenue stream and reserving another for themselves.

    One strategy I’ve used on some blogs is to give bloggers 100% of AdSense revenue but to reserve ad slots in the sidebar above the fold for the network. In the long run, when the combined power of the network (let’s say 2-3 mil PageViews / month) is big enough to command high CPM rates, then those ad slots will earn the network plenty.

  4. Contract / Salary

    Another popular method is to pay the blogger a monthly fee (ranges from $100 to $1000+) in return for a minimum number of posts per month. It’s an expensive but ‘safe’ choice, because you get in people who are committed to doing a minimum amount of work each month and while the blog may now earn much in the beginning this approach in popular niches can allow you to make a lot of profits while keeping bloggers happy.

  5. Profit Sharing + Salary

    This hybrid model is perhaps the most popular that I’ve seen after the contract model. Basically, you pay the blogger a fixed monthly salary plus give them a share of the site profits. This gets you the best of both worlds – giving the blogging financial security AND giving them an incentive to contribute to the blog’s success.

I’m interested in hearing about how you pay your bloggers. Do you use the hybrid approach or pay a fixed amount each month?

From a financial point of view you need some capital to start a blog network and paying salaries can rapidly become the single biggest drain on your resources. If you’re starting out, using the profit-sharing approach (where you give them 100% of one revenue stream and take out ad space in the sidebar, like I’ve done) could be a decent way to go forward and motivate bloggers to grow.

What’s important to remember is that while not everyone blogs for money, money IS a driving force for most people and if someone feels that they are not getting what they deserve for their efforts, then there will be disagreements between them and you and eventually you will lose them. The takeaway is to ensure that a) bloggers know what the benefits are and b) those benefits should make the cost of moving away from the network quite heavy.

Or at least you should get your bloggers to think that way.

Also Read: Chris Garrett on Blog Network Payment Strategies – he does an excellent job of discussing the pros and cons attached with each of the options mentioned above.

pMetrics API version 2 is released

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I am happy to announce the release of version 2 of the pMetrics API.

It has a unique URL from the old version to ensure that existing applications continue to function as expected. There are a few changes that are not backwards compatible, although these changes are very minor and should not take more than a few minutes to implement within existing applications. Juicy details are available in the API documentation, but here’s a brief run down of what’s new:

* new “actions-list” data type, includes ability to filter by session_id
* relative date formats (“5 days ago”, “last 10 days”, “last month”, etc)
* a limit of “all” for every data type
* shorter cache times
* more consistent naming schemes for both data types and data values
* null values excluded by default (saves memory and bandwidth, can be disabled)
* new “total time” data type
* some new parameters: session_id, null_values, app
* CSV output (this was supported before, but undocumented)
* and more…

The API is now officially out of “beta” status. When it was first released many months ago, it was stated that there would be some restrictions for non-Pro users at a later date. (Pro is our upper tier premium package). These restrictions have changed to be much more relaxed, but please note that the following restrictions are now in effect for all non-Pro users:

* Limited to 100 results per request
* Limited to “today” and “yesterday”
* 30 minute cache times

An important note to developers: The “Base API URL” is no longer provided or supported. This is to ensure that you are always in control of which version of the API is being used with your application, since the API version is encoded within the URL. More information about this is in the docs.

5 Reasons To Start Guest Blogging Today

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I’ve been thinking a lot about blog promotion in the last couple of days and one strategy that I’ve always seen being under-used is guest blogging.

There’s no downside to it – unless your blog is #1 in its niche, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t take time out from fussing over your own blog and write a killer article for another blog.

What guest blogging can do for you (and your blog):

  • You get several deep links (if you link back to your own articles) back to your blog which from a high-ranking blog can pay off in the long run).

  • A good article will inevitably gain your blog new readers and increase your RSS subs (so be prepared to follow up with more good articles on your own blog.

  • If you’re looking for consulting work / paid blogging gigs, guest blogging is an excellent way to position yourself as an authority.

  • Builds a good relationship with fellow bloggers, something you’re going to need if you want them to notice you and link to you.

  • Reaching new audiences keeps us on our toes to keep our blogging at a high level of quality, and guest blogging itself pushes us to write better than our comfort zone would allow us to.

Ultimately it all boils down to quality writing and giving people what they want, but if you’re looking for ways to improve your blog’s profile guest blogging (like having an article published in an offline publication) is a reliable, effective method to apply.

Usually we hold back from guest blogging either because we’re lazy (Ryan) or because we’re hung up on our own egos to go anywhere else and write. In some cases the later can be a good thing in a person who is talented and motivated enough to build a #1 blog, but usually it’s a case of limiting your blog promotion options and being too pig-headed to take advantage of what’s on offer.

Deb, Chris and Liz are just 3 excellent examples of using guest blogging to build their own profile – and it’s not a surprise that these 3 are some of the more successful bloggers that I know.

So…where are you guest blogging next?

Also read: Matt’s thoughts on guest blogging.

Don’t Neglect Your Comments

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I toiuched on this briefly at About Weblogs the other day, but thought I’d expand a bit here since beginning bloggers are always looking for ideas.

Don’t neglect the comments

I think many newbies tend to neglect comments. They write articles rather than disucssion-stimulating and engaging blog posts. That isn’t to say you should be upset if you don’t have any comments at first, but you should write with the intention of stimulating discussion among the members of your community. This will serve several purposes:

1. It will keep them coming back for more – I have a very active community at Freelance Writing Jobs. Each post provokes some interesting discussions. Some of these posts are weeks old. Many of my readers subscribe to the comments, while others check back often to see if new comments have been posted.

2. It will give you new material – I get about 75% of my blog ideas from the comments. Commenters like to go off on tangents or ask questions. A post with over 50 comments can spawn about 10 great ideas for future posts. Thanks to my commenters, I never run out of things to talk about.

3. It makes your blog look more attractive to others – Say you’re invited to two different parties. At the first one, no on shows up. The second one is absolutely rocking. Which one would you rather visit? That’s the way it is with blogs. Though readers are encouraged to visit as many blogs as they want, the truth is they don’t have that kind of time. Most will choose the one with a lively discussing ensuing over a blog with no comments at all.

Getting your readers to comment

So how do you get your readers to comment? Here are a few things that worked for me:

Ask a question in your title – Ask a question and someone is sure to answer.

Discuss a controversial topic – Controversy always provokes a response, though you should be prepared for some rude or insulting comments too.

Just ask – Ask for comments. Tell your readers you value their opinions and are interested in their thoughts.

Create a list post List posts are great comment-getters! Lots of people will respond to tell you how much they appreciate your list, and also add items they feel you left off.

Have a contest – Right now, on FWJ, I’m giving away a $50 gift certificate to my top commenter at the end of October. There are a few competitive commenters for sure, but even the people who don’t stand a chance are chiming in.

After revamping FWJ, I made community my top priority and nowhere is this more apparent than in the comments. In fact, I have many new readers as a result of those comments! All of the activity spawned a wonderful chain of events, I have new material, lots of blogs are linking to me and my traffic is souring. Don’t neglect your comments, you may be pleasantly surprised at what happens next.

Are You Using QuantCast?

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QuantCast is an ‘open internet ratings service’, useful for both advertisers and publishers. Advertisers can find reports on the audiences of millions of web sites while publishers can ensure their sites are represented accurately by adding the QuantCast tracking code on their websites.

It’s a free service, and their are several aspects of their reporting that I think makes the service quite useful especially if you want to sell advertising on your website.

For example, take a look at the data QuantCast has for Soccerlens.com. It’s not a lot of information – Alexa does a much better job of telling you where the traffic is coming from (see the Soccerlens.com data) – however for ‘quantified websites (sites that add the tracking code), it’s a far more accurate representation of the audience than what Alexa offers.

Comparing to my own stats, QuantCast is fairly accurate for tracking unique visitors and the percentage of US audience.

What about you guys? Are you using QuantCast on your blogs? Do you use QC as part of your profiling process when researching blogs to buy ads from / get links from?

If You’re Stuck for Blogging Ideas, Write the (Killer) Headline first

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When faced with blogger’s block, the only way to beat it is to buckle down, force yourself to write and push through the rough patches (actions produce motivation). However when you run out of ideas (or if your ideas aren’t clear enough), then here’s an effective technique to focus your mind and let your blog post write itself.

Simply put, craft your killer headline first. Simply writing any ordinary headline won’t cut it – you need to dig deep, hit the headline swipe files and spend time creating a gem of a headline.

How this helps bloggers:

  • Forces you to focus on the main idea behind your post, which in turn helps the internal monologue run clearer.

  • Guides you towards the type of post you can / should write. If the headline is designed to create a discussion, then you can write a conversational post. On the other hand, a list headline can help you focus on creating a list and perhaps fleshing it out to create cool linkbait.

  • Allows you to get off a good start – a great headline with an average article will do better than a great article with an average headline in terms of social media. You might think it’s unfair but that’s how our minds work especially in an attention-starved economy. The headline is king, and everything else leads from there.

  • If you find the basic idea not interesting enough, you’ll be able to stop there and not waste time writing a long post only to find out later that it doesn’t get a good response from readers.

  • You may end up with several headlines, leading to several concrete post ideas instead of a jumbled up bunch in your head.

The next time you’re stuck for ideas, try this approach – write the headline first, and shape the article accordingly. If it works for sales copywriting (where success is measured in hard numbers), it works for blogging as well.

Further reading:

101 Great Posting Ideas That Will Make Your Blog Sizzle
Posting Tactics for a Well Rounded Blog
10 Killer Post Ideas