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Archives for April 2008

What’s Going On In Hive This Week?

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So what’s going on in Performancing’s Hive this week? Let’s take a look at some of the topics discussed:

  • How to easily get 10x more comments
  • 7 Principles of Internal Linkbuilding
  • How to dominate a niche
  • The “library” method for maximizing old blog content
  • 5 Steps for your Business to Make More Money
  • Chris Garrett provides answers to “What’s your biggest blogging challenge?”

Plus …

  • We gave away over $250 in cash and prizes
  • Chris Garrett has released a free eBook called “Planning Successful Blogs – Hive Special Report”
  • Jesse Nachtigal from Cigar Jack has released a free eBook called “Building Authority for Your Niche”

As you can see, Hive is an amazing community full of useful information and I encourage you to sign up and join the fun.

Unintended Consequences: When Google Punishes Something Good

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Correct me if I’m wrong on this, but I’m relatively sure that I’ve identified a patterned mistake that Google’s algorithm makes.

Here’s how it goes:

  • You write a really interesting article and it makes the front page of Digg
  • Your article is provocative enough to draw a steady stream of comments for the good part of 1 week
  • You gain dozens if not hundreds of solid, editorial backlinks to your article from reputable sites
  • A week after publishing, your article disappears from Google’s index, while many of the articles referencing yours remain

So I’ve noticed that with my last five articles to make the front page of Digg (i.e. a pattern), the article disappears from Google’s index completely, even on an exact search for the article title:

http://www.google.com/search?q=The+Ten+Worst+Job+Interview+Questions+Ever

The interesting thing to note is that on such a search, 70-100% of the first 10 SERP results return articles that reference the original. In such a case, you’d think that Google would clearly know the source of the article.

But apparently some penalty filter gets applied. Now, you might think that it’s a duplicate content penalty. But hear me out, I don’t think so.

Here’s my theory:

I think that Google will often put a penalty on a web-page that changes it’s content too much. In the example I used above, the source article received over 300 comments. In other words, the content changed drastically from when Google first indexed the article to when Google subsequently indexed the article multiple times in response to the 100’s of backlinks that the article received.

So my theory is basically that too many comments, which, in human terms, is almost always a good sign, can actually hurt your site from an algorithmic perspective (both in terms of content dilution and content transformation).

Google’s algorithm balances a number of factors, and if backlinks were the only indicator, then articles that get widespread attention, hundreds of backlinks and front page Digg recognition would clearly be at the top of any exact-match title search.

Since a large volume of comments is normally a sign of vitality (unless you’re getting spammed), Google needs to find a way to reward such vitality rather than punish. Unfortunately, despite claims of a looming “true AI” algorithms still make critical mistakes and punish good online phenomena.

Suggestion: Create an html tag that publishers can use to identify *primary* content and another tag to identify *secondary* content. This way, the transformation of content that the comments section naturally produces can be differentiated from the content that originally drew such a reaction in the first place.

Performancing On The Way To Surpassing 10,000 Subscribers!

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Although I only recently joined Performancing, I have taken great interest in the site. That is why I want to help Performancing be successful. There would be no better way to do that than helping this site to achieve consistent growth. Well, Performancing has been doing just that for the past year. As a matter of fact, Performancing has been gaining roughly over 400 subscribers per month over the past 12 months. I am a statistics freak, so this these numbers just make me excited.

As a result, Performancing will exceed 10,000 subscribers very soon. This news is great because it means that—along with the Performancing staff keeping our jobs and satisfying the sponsors—we can continue to create amazing content for more new, amateur, and professional bloggers, just like you, that have taken the time to read what we fellow bloggers have to offer. This blog is for bloggers by bloggers, and I am confident that we will be doing even greater things as the 2008 year progresses.

How to Name-Drop Celebrities Into Your Blogging and Get Away With It

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Celebrity name-dropping into blog posts is an art-form. Brian Clark/ Copyblogger did it with his posts about Jim Morrison and Robert Johnson, and Michael Gray/ Gray Wolf does it all the time. I’m sure lots of others bloggers have, and you can do it too. People generally love to hear something about celebrities in various niches, especially if you have something to say about their favorites. If you have a good understanding of pop culture, and can write about it confidently, why not inject it into your blogging? I see no harm in it. Unless it’s just not your style, or you can’t think of ways to make the name-dropping relevant. Of course, understand that Brian and Michael didn’t just name-drop; they made their posts about the celebrities, then drew relationships between news/life events of the celebrities and their own blogs’ topic. There was purpose there.

Without the purpose, you’re really just name-dropping and your readers might want to lynch you. How can you be like Brian and Michael and show off your knowledge of pop culture to win friends and influence people? Well, if you have a sports or entertainment blog, it should be fairly easy to name-drop. However, when you’re talking about general entertainment figures, it’s easy to draw relationships about marketing personal brands. If you are a fan of any celebrity, you are so probably because you enjoy their personal “brand”.

For example, if I were to pick two bands that have endurance in the marketplace, I’d pick Kiss and The Rolling Stones. They both have a large following and have been around a long time. The former markets themselves to the hilt, thanks to lead singer/bassist Gene Simmons. Heck, they even sell Kiss coffins! The Rolling Stones don’t really market themselves per se, but despite most (all?) of the members being grandpas, they still seem to live the rock and roll lifestyle. At least as far as we known. Same sort of thing goes for Gene Simmons. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the exploits of the Wonder Twins (Jagger + Richards) might be marketing enough to keep the band going until they’re great-grandfathers. (Heaven forbid!)

The only exception of serious Rolling Stones marketing might be when Microsoft and Apple both paid big money to use a song apiece in their marketing computer operating system campaigns in the 90s. So not really Stones marketing, per se. The Stones have been around so long they don’t really need much marketing to sell their product. (Kiss probably doesn’t either, but that doesn’t stop them from marketing.) In fact, even if the new Martin Scorsese documentary about the Stones – Shine a Light – doesn’t going gangbusters in the box office, diehard fans will buy a copy of the DVD when it comes out. And there will probably special bonus editions at higher price points. And if I’m not mistaken, they’re on a new tour, or about to be. (Or it could be just rumors.) That should net them many millions, simply because of their brand – even if Jagger no longer has anyhere near the Jumpin’ Jack Flash energy he used to have on stage.

Easy, peasy – if your blog is about marketing, you’re all set to name-drop. If you’re writing about something else, you’ll have to learn to draw conclusions between two seemingly unrelated topics. Where do you start? Why with Copyblogger and Gray Wolf, of course. There are probably other bloggers doing something similar, but for me, Brian and Michael stand out the most. They are the masters to learn from.

Performancing Stream of Consciousness – Thur Apr 10, 2008

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Linky love for Thursday Apr 10, 2008:

  1. David Peralty has some excellent advice about when to call it quits on a specific blog. I’m going to apply his excellent advice on a whole whack of my sites, as part of a Spring Cleaning. (The principle is based on the concept of “sunk costs”, where you DON’T spend good money after bad, and just cut out and count your losses.) I’ve already dumped about 50-60 keyword-rich domains (no sites) the other day because none of my colleagues seemed to want them. (Not many bloggers really understand the value of keyword domains, and I gave up trying to give them away.) Now I’m scrapping about 10 PR1-3 domains, mostly in the tech niche, simply because I’m trying to focus my effort in 2-3 niches maximum. So if anyone wants these sites (domain and content), let me know here in the comments and I’ll list them in followup post, where I’ll ask your intentions. My time is limited, so I will only push domains to GoDaddy accounts. (Don’t ask me to do otherwise because I won’t.) You’ll have to come up with your own hosting. My preference is to give the sites to one or more someones who will actually do somethihg with them, and preferably a new blogger who wants a bit of a leg up. But if you’re not into the tech niche, don’t bother. (I do have a few non-tech sites I’ll list as well.) And these are not castoffs – I simply don’t have the time. Most of the sites have potential if you’re dedicated.
  2. Someone recently posted a comment here on Perf asking about what video hosting sites there are. StartYourTube goes one better than that and allows you to create your own YouTube-like site, with 100% control of ads and revenue. You get a subdomain off the main site and have social networking features to rely on. [via 901am] The site claims you can set up your own video sharing site in 2 minutes, for free, and that you don’t have to be concerned with coding or APIs. Over 10,000 tubes have been created, and they have a “popular” page. Now where did I put my video camera?
  3. Darren Rowse points out lessons to be learned in case you’re thinking of posting harmful April Fool’s jokes next year.
  4. Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips has decided to jumpstart interest in RSS by launching May 1st RSS Awareness Day. Good luck, Daniel. After about a year of being an RSS evangelist at MarketingStudies.net, to supplement Rok Hrastnik’s RSS Diary, I kind of gave up on RSS ever being mainstream. Now, I simply look at RSS as a behind-the-scenes tool. If it gains more exposure than that, due to Daniel’s “holiday”, fantastic. At the least, if more of the general Internet public gaining an understanding of functionality and not necessarily file format, then that’s even better.
  5. Fake bloggers beware: the UK is about to criminalize certain online strategies. [via Chris Garrett]

Can Other Bloggers Get Book Deals?

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Last week there was a NY Times article about a blogger, Christian Lander, and his book deal – $300,000 for the rights to a book related to his blog, Stuff White People Like (which is hosted on WordPress.com, for those keeping track). But let’s be very clear, this does not mean loads of other bloggers will get book deals. Sure, several have, as Darren Rowse pointed out. I’m by no means trying to dissuade budding authors out there, but there are a number of factors you have to keep in mind if you are planning to try for a book deal:

  1. You have to come up with a concept that a publisher will want.
  2. These days, you often have to show the publisher the potential, possibly to the point of showing your own market research.
  3. It helps to have a popular blog, especially something quirky and potentially controversial, or about a currently hot topic.
  4. You have to have the wherewithal of getting the book completed. Take it from me, writing a book is nowhere nearly as glamorous as you might think. It is really hard work. You might find it takes a lot more time to get it right, and that not everyone around you is supportive.
  5. Most writers DO NOT get $300,000 for their book. Most writers get a $2000-5000 advance on future royalties – and usually only if you negotiate. That advance is often never earned back – something that’s hard to do when the publisher only prints 3,000 copies.
  6. There are only a handful of Stephen Kings and J.K. Rowlings, and profit from their book sales subsidizes the unknowns – whether for fiction or non-fiction. It’s a game of numbers – one big win pays for all the flops, and sometimes the wins are created through hype, just as in the movie industry.
  7. When big book chains came into existence, they started demanding 40% discounts on books – a cost that got passed on to writers, not so much publishers. In other words, it’s much harder these days to make a living as an author than it was before about 1990 (approximately around the time when book chain stores started mushrooming in North America.)
  8. Publishing is mostly commerce. Your book will probably end up in the discount bin, and a lot sooner than you might think.

Now all that said, if you have an idea for a book and a market for it, find a suitable publisher. Use one of those market listings books that catalog publisher contact info to find an editor’s name. Send the editor (by name) a query of no more than a paragraph or three. If they respond asking for more info, they’ll probably want a one page summary and possibly a sample table of contents (if applicable). How you respond will show them how much thought you’ve put into the book as well as how it will be received – or whether you’re just a fame-seeker.

It can be done, and you don’t necessarily have to have a blog, but it really helps – especially if it’s a popular site.

Performancing Stream of Consciousness – Wed Apr 9, 2008

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Interesting links for Wednesday Apr 9, 2008:

  1. ScribeFire blog post editor, which is already incredible for streamlining blogging efforts, will have a great new feature: tabbed editing. That means that if you’re like me and tend to work on multiple posts simultaneously, ScribeFire will be an even greater productivity booster. There’s a preview release, before a general release. They’re looking for feedback before making tabbed editing available as an official feature.
  2. Jason Schuller at WP Elements has just released two slick WordPress themes, VideoFlick and Video Elements. VideoFlick is a video gallery theme similar to that used on Jason’s TrailerFlick site, where the home page shows movie posters. It has a number layout and color customization options, and is available under “donationware” terms, requiring a minimum US$5.00 donation. The Video Elements theme was once called the WPE Video Gallery Theme. It’s great for when you want to present both video and text. This theme costs $25.00, and future upgrades will be free. There are links to live demos for both themes on Jason’s site.
  3. Themelab has released The Transmission, also a WP theme. [via BlogPerfume] This free theme has eight different colors to choose from, and the design integrates the flickrRSS theme. There’s also space for a featured post, including an image.
  4. Is this weird or what? Yahoo! is going to present Google AdSense ads beside their search results [via SEOBook]. I wonder how this is going to sync with a takeover of Yahoo! by Microsoft.
  5. To have financial success as a freelancer, it’s important to separate want vs need purchases. But sometimes wants are also needs, or can be justified that way. Check out Skellie’s 12 guilt-free purchases for home offices. Gadgets tend to be one of my regular guilt purchases – when I had money – and one way to justify gadget purchases is to make sure they’re good for work tools.
  6. With a number of bloggers recently landing book deals, there might be an interest for others to do the same. WEBook is a new website that offers tools for eBook writing. This includes being able to offer sampler pages, embedding the PDF file into your feed, selling to readers, and so on. NorthxEast has a detailed explanation of how the WEBook site works.
  7. Zoe Marlowe writes about various online image editing tools over at Devlounge, including Adobe Photoshop Express, Picnik, FlauntR, and Kuler.
  8. With bloggers and freelancers sometimes on the go, using publicly available Wi-Fi is sometimes a necessity. Samuel Dean over at Web Worker Daily offers a few tips for keeping public Wi-Fi sessions secure.
  9. If you want to make the switch from a full-time salaried job to a self-employed web worker, have a look at Mike Gunderloy’s tips for funding your web work dream. Also keep an eye out at FreelanceSwitch for my article on a short savings guide for freelancers (which will be published sometime this week or early next).
  10. Graphic Push gives a scathing assessment of a new “crowdsourcing” site, 99Designs. The site apparently expects that designers will submit their designs for clients to consider, and if they “win”, they’ll get paid. I haven’t visited 99Designs to get a clearer picture, but if what Graphic Push is saying is true, then this is very bad news. Designers, like bloggers, will be working hard and getting nothing in return. Consider: if 10 designers submit their design and only 1 can “win” the job, what hope is there – especially if lots of clients decide they want to pursue this model of non-payment? Blogging hasn’t gone this way – not yet.