Skip links

Performancing

Main navigation

jeffc

Adjix Founder Responds To Criticism

by

After publishing my review of Adjix, the service which pays users to shorten URLs, I received a bit of a backlash from Performancing readers. According to a few commenter’s, by writing a review of Adjix, I was promoting spamming and scamming. Taking your feedback to heart, I took the criticisms of the service and emailed them to Joe Moreno, the Founder of Adjix hoping he would respond. He did, and this is what he had to say.

As you know, we just launched Adjix this past Tuesday and it’s received a ton of attention. We’re still adding features and I’m hoping that the blogging community will give us a chance to act on their feedback. We have alternative solutions in the works. The more choices our Adjix users have the happier they will be.

Claim number 1 – On every level this is wrong, wrong, wrong. The only people who will make any money at this are the scammers and spammers who don’t give a flying rats about losing credibility and readers. The rest will rightly avoid it like the plague.

First, let me say that we’ll shut down any spammer’s links. Everyone hates spam and we intend to freeze any spammer’s accounts. Our tag line is Short Links. Tiny Ads. Big Payoff. The payoff isn’t just monetary. Part of the payoff is the detailed click-thru information our users get.

We’ve seen comments like this:
http://twitter.com/bloodandmilk/statuses/894380293

It could be just as hard to get rich off of Adjix as it is to get rich off of Adsense, etc. In this day and age, information is power. I use Adjix in e-mail and blogs so I know how many clicks my links have received. Maybe this type of information is what the blogging community has been waiting for and Adjix is in a position to deliver it.

Also, one thing people tend to overlook is the fact that, if a person finds an interesting article and posts it to Digg, both Digg and the author’s website generate revenue off of our “crowd sourcing”. There is nothing wrong with this since we all have bills to pay for bandwidth, hosting, developers, etc and Digg adds value (adding value is key). If an Adjix linked article was submitted to Digg, the Digg community would see the number of clicks on their link.

Claim number 2 – What Adjix are doing is not creating a redirect to the original page. They are creating a new page on their server. Watch the URL, it never changes. If you view the source, what you will see is a page that contains some basic html and a frame set containing a url the brings in the original site into the Adjix page.

Yes, this is true. We’d like to know if there’s an alternative way to do this???

Regarding TInyURL – my hat’s off to Gilby – he’s the inventor of shortening links.

If your user chooses to bookmark a page on the site, they are bookmarking the Adjix page, so if they bookmark anything other than the home page of the site they wanted to visit, what they will get when they click on that bookmark is the Adjix page displaying the home page of the original site. Which will firstly confuse them and then no doubt annoy them as they have to find that great article again they wanted to re-read.

This is a great point. Thanks to Kim A for pointing that out on your blog. We’d love to hear some suggestions from the developer community on alternatives. Additionally, we’re discussing some alternatives, too.

Claim number 3 – The Adjix faqs state that

/The key advantage of Adjix ads is that they are displayed, at the
top of each Web page, until the page is reloaded./

. Absolute rubbish – click on an Adjix page and reload it – the ad stays where it is, because it is hard-coded into the page.

Not only are you destroying the usability of the bookmarks, because the page uses old fashioned frames you are making it impossible for those using assistive technologies to get any information from the page, apart from the ad that is.

Your claim is noted and we misspoke when we stated this on our website. I assure you that we had no intention to deceive.

We’ve clarified this point with the following:
The key advantage of Adjix ads is that they are displayed, at the top of each Web page, until a new URL is entered in your browser.

In the end, the Adjix user community will drive us based on their feedback. Again, let me say that I’m amazed at the attention Adjix has received. We know we’ve fired a shot that’s gotten people’s attention and now we’re going to refine it. The more people we please the better Adjix will be.

So there you have it. Straight from the horses mouth. I really don’t believe that Adjix has ill intentions. However, now that the founder has cleared some of the confusion, I’ll allow you to make up your own mind.

Monetization Through Twitter

by

Many people still believe that using Twitter is a waste of time. Perhaps those notions will change now that a company has come along offering to pay you for using their service to shrink URLs. Introducing Adjix. Adjix is a brand new company that is both an ad network and a service which pays people who shrink their URLs through their site. Adjix calls people who shrink their urls, linkers. Adjix places ads at the top of each page where a URL has been shortened without altering the original content. This is yet another opportunity for those of you who would like to advertise to the twitter audience as you can launch ad campaigns through the service.

Account Creation:

Creating an account on Adjix is simple. All you need is an email address and a password. You’ll also need to provide your first and last names. Once that is done, your account is created immediately. Once your account is created, you’ll gain access to edit your profile, the ability to shrink links and also to view your link statistics. As for shortening a URL, the practice is simple.

While shrinking your URL, there is one more option you can configure to go along side the link and that is, selecting the category of advertisements to display. This provides you the option to make the ad more relevant to the link. More on this later. Once you shorten your URL, there are two different ones from which you can share. There is the short url which looks like this: http://adjix.com/s8 and then there is the Ultra Short URL which looks like this: http://ad.vu/s8

Using Your Domain Name With Adjix:
Adjix does provide a way for you use your own domain name in conjunction with the links provided by Ajix. You can either configure your DNS settings to point to partner.adjix.com to allow home grown links or you can fake it by adding anything you want before the adjix.com URL. For example, http://blabla.ad.vu/s8. Considering this aspect of monetization may catch on, many Twitter users who don’t want to see advertising may bypass clicking on links which contain ad.vu or adjix text within them. So, using the complicated DNS route may be the way to go to really increase your success rate. If you are interested in going down this route, be sure to read the DNS instructions that Adjix provides.

All About Monetization:

Earning money for using the service:
Linkers earn $0.10/1000 unique link views (10 cents CPM per unique link impressions) and $0.20 for each valid, unique, click-through. In other words, Linkers receive $0.0001/link impression and $0.20/ad click-through.

How much does it cost to advertise on their network:
Advertisers can place ads for $0.35 per 1000 ad impressions (35 cents CPM for ad impressions) and $0.75 per valid click-through. Additionally, advertisers can review ad reports to detect click-fraud. Advertisers can create their ad campaigns for free and when they’re ready to go live they can just ad funds into their account. At any time they can turn ad campaigns on and off to test what works best.

Account Payouts:
Adjix states that at the end of the month, any Linkers with an account balance greater than $25 are mailed a check approximately 45 days later. This 45 day period gives advertisers an opportunity to review their ad campaigns for click-fraud.

Considering the earning amounts, it would take 25,000 straight unique views to earn $25.00. It would take 12,500 straight unique click-throughs to earn $25.00. Those figures make it seem to me like it would take an awful long time to receive that first paycheck, sort of like the situation with Google AdSense. However, maybe you’ll be one of the lucky ones who’s Twitter list will provide a good combination of both unique views and actual click-throughs.

Link Report:

Adjix provides a detailed link report which is initiated with the first shortened URL. The report includes information such as the link creation timestamp, the shortened url, the original url, which type of ad, and total amount of hits. You can also view at a glance what your earnings are.

When going into detail for a specific link, you can view the hit timestamp, IP address of the clicker, hos name, whether it was an impression or a click through and if it was a Valid (payable) hit.

Conclusion:

Overall, this is the first time I’ve heard of a company that has provided an opportunity for users of Twitter to make money simply by shrinking their URL’s. This task has typically been accomplished by using TinyURL, or URL Snippet but if you add on the ability to make a little coin while providing the same shrinking services that Tiny URL has provided, it may be enough to get people to jump on board. I’ve taken a look at how the ads are displayed and they don’t appear to be too intrusive into the browsing experience. The ads remind me of one line Google AdSense ads which rotate. I didn’t notice the ads at first because the Ad Block Plus FireFox extension ended up blocking them from the ad.vu web address.

As for the approach that Ajix takes, I find it to be better suited than having to deal with popups or some annoying flash ads. Will you become rich by using this service? Most likely not. The only people I can see making a decent income using a service like Adjix are the Robert Scoble’s and the Leo Laporte’s but those people are already making a decent amount of income without the need to place Adjix shrunken URL’s in front of their audience.

Performancing Experiment:

Considering this is a new way to monetize through using Twitter, I’d like you to participate in an experiment. I will be using this service until the middle of September and if you’re interested, I’d for you to do the same. Come back to Performancing during this time as I’ll report on my findings after using the service for a few weeks. I’d also like for you to post on your blog your findings and send us a link to your report in the comments.

Monetize Your Archives With WhyDoWork Adsense Plugin

by

Currently within the hive, there is an ongoing conversation taking place with regards to the must have WordPress plugins. Although everyone seems to have a different answer to this question, a number of Hive members are using a plugin called WhyDoWork. I decided to give it a try myself to figured out why it is, people are using it.

WhyDoWork is a WordPress plugin which ties into your Adsense account that enables you to display more ads for older articles. This plugin contains a plethora of options allowing up to ten different ad codes which can be configured to use AdSense codes, YPN, CPM banners, buttons or what have you. You can also configure when the ads show, how they show up, as well as block ads from showing up on certain pages or articles. This means you can display little to no advertising on articles that are new and after a week or more, you can start displaying ads on those posts which will be viewed by search engine traffic.

Different positions you can display advertising:

Top – Inserts the ad between the title and the content

Top Left and Top Right – Inserts the ad in the top part of the content.

Middle – Inserts the code in the middle of the post, between two paragraphs. Middle means here that it sees how many paragraphs there are in a post, then divides it by two and inserts the ad there. For example, in a 12 paragraph story, it will insert it after the 6th paragraph. You need at least 2 paragraphs in a post for the middle positions to display.

Middle Left and Middle Right – Inserts the code in the middle of the post, surrounded by text. It actually inserts it in the top part of the second half of the post, so it might seem closer to the bottom.

Bottom – Inserts the code below the content

Random – Cycles the selected code among the positions that are not occupied by other ads. In order for the random setting not to use a position assigned to a fixed ad, you will need to insert the random one to the last setting in use.

Conclusion:

It seems like many people are using this plugin on their blog as a way to monetize their archive. However, I want to know if you are using this plugin? If so, has it been successful for you in terms of increasing the amount you make from advertising?

Perfcast Date Change

by

A few days ago, I mentioned that Perfcast was coming back. In that post, I said our first episode would air on Wednesday, August 27th. This date has changed to Thursday, August 28th. This is to accommodate my schedule as well as Davids. Be sure to tune in live next week for our first live episode.

If you would like to be on the show either as a special guest co-host or as an interviewee, don’t hesitate to get in contact with me via email. jeffro at jeffro2pt0 dot com.

What I Learned At The Social Media Bootcamp

by

The topic for todays social media bootcamp was: The Secrets Of Digg Success. Till this day, I have yet to appear on the Digg frontpage. The closest I have been to the front page of Digg is an article which received 35 or so digs. In todays bootcamp, I learned that it is not just a matter of catering to the Digg crowd but that there is much more involved in a successful Digg post.

Apparently, human psychology has a lot to do with many of the posts that are successful on Digg. There are two points which Ryan brought up during the bootcamp which I thought were points to keep in mind.

1) It’s not just about quality content on Digg. It’s about quality content that fits the average Digg user’s sensibilities

2) It’s not just about quality content on Digg. It’s about quality content promoted by a variety of somewhat independent networks.

Andrew then brought up an excellent question. What makes up the average Digg user? According to members who attended the bootcamp, the typical Digg user is someone who love technology, is an early adopter, enjoys sticking it to the man, and contains at least a higher than average intelligence level. Although that last point could be argued based on the comments published on Digg articles. With the psychological profile in mind, you can then write content which pushes those buttons.

Other topics we discussed included the use of digg buttons, the placement of the share bar where social media buttons are displayed (top or bottom of the post), types of content which always seems to be a hit on Digg, techniques on getting articles dugg and, combination of social media (digg, reddit, SU, all at once).

If you couldn’t attended the bootcamp, you can view the entire transcript within the hive. Be sure to stay tuned for the next social media bootcamp. Rumors are, that the next event may focus on Yahoo! Buzz.

What’s All This Buzz About

by

That Buzz you hear is not coming from The Hive but instead, is the sound of Yahoo! Buzz opening up to the public. Yahoo! Buzz is a social news site like Digg where users can vote or in this case, Buzz items. Yahoo determines which topics people are searching for on their search engine and then they showcase the most popular stories within those topics on the buzz page where users can vote up or down.

The way in which Yahoo! Buzz used to work is that, you needed to be a select publisher in order to submit your articles to the Buzz voting system. With Buzz now open to the public, anyone can submit a story. However, the question that remains to be answered is, will links that show up on Buzz or even on the Yahoo.com front page be selected democratically by the votes of Buzz users? According to Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb, they don’t believe they will.

At the time of this writing, the Buzz front page showcased 5 out of 15 articles on the Top Buzz list which were stories that were produced on Yahoo powered sites. As Marshall points out, there has been no evidence which links highly voted stories on Buzz to their actual display on the front page. Unlike Digg, Buzz appears to have editorial control over what is displayed on the front page which may be one of the reasons behind the sites success. Just about everyone I’ve talked to agrees that having editorial control on a social news voting site not only cuts down on spam, but also slims down the chance of gaming the system which is still readily apparent on Digg.

With Buzz now open to the public, those of you who use WordPress can install a plugin called WPBuzz which will add a BuzzThis! button to your posts. The plugin was created by Travis Johnson. Installation instructions can be found for the plugin here.

Will you be ditching Digg in favor of Buzz? What are your thoughts on Buzz becoming a Digg killer? What do you think is the recipe for success when it comes to appearing on the front page of Buzz?

Monetization Tips And Strategies

by

Katy over at I’m Blogging That has published a great article that goes in depth on choosing a monetization strategy. Her post covers various monetization strategies such as banner advertising, choosing an ad service, ad placement, and much more. Of particular interest to me was Katy’s thoughts on pricing.

Everyone that comes to you for banner advertising will do so for different reasons. Because of this, there should be some things you take into consideration when choosing how to price out your banner advertising spots.

  • How many banners will you have in one area?
  • Will banners be rotating?
  • Will you be using the no follow attribute on links?
  • Do you have traffic that will click on banners/links?
  • What is your PageRank?
  • What is your Alexa Rank?

It’s only my opinion that the more banners you have in one area, the less you charge for them. If you choose to rotate banners in a single position, the charge should be even less.

I’ll be trying to monetize my own site in the not to distant future and Katy’s article serves as a good primer into the realm of monetization. Other articles related to this topic on Performancing include:

How to create Intelligent Blog Ads

How to create Intelligent Blog Ads – Part 2

How To Squeeze More Income Out Of Your Blog

Supplement your blogging income with e-reports

Blogs.com – The Blog Directory For Popular Bloggers

by

Six Apart, the creators of the publishing tool MoveableType have recently relaunched their domain, Blogs.com. Blogs.com is labeled by Six Apart as "The Best In Blogs". Asides from having a killer domain name, especially in this day in age, Blogs.com serves as a human edited blog directory with one large post a day dedicated to the hot topic of discussion. The directory contains around 1,200 different blogs from which to search for content.

You may remember when I reported on Rojo, a free RSS and Atom Feed reader went belly up, only to be replaced by something else in the future. That ‘something else‘ is Blogs.com. Rojo was acquired by Six Apart in 2006 and much of the team as well as their ideas for Rojo have been implemented into the site.

Right now, Blogs.com contains a directory filled with blogging celebrities such as Marc Andreessen and Chris Anderson. In my opinion, the bloggers who don’t make much noise won’t see much benefit from being listed within the Blogs.com directory, at least not yet. Anil Dash claims that:

celebrity Top Ten lists let some of the best-known bloggers on the web guide us through the sites that influence them, helping dig up some undiscovered gems you might have missed.

That may be true, but in all honesty, the big boys and girls in the blogosphere all seem to follow each other in their feed readers so I’m not sure how helpful it will be to publish top ten lists from these people. A better alternative would be to publish top 10 lists from those bloggers who never appear on the radar. This would really give visitors a chance to check out some gems. Thankfully, Six Apart plans on rapidly introducing new blogs into the index and even provides bloggers an opportunity to submit their site to them. I’ve already taken them up on their offer and if you blog, I encourage you to do the same by filling out their simple submission form.

As a side note, if you are looking for ideas on top 10 posts, Blogs.com has an entire section on their site for recent top ten lists.

Blogs.com is no Technorati and they don’t rely on any algorithms to determine which content is highlighted on the front page of the site. However, how can you display hidden gems in the blogosphere without looking like you are irrelevant. There always seems to be a group of stories which make the rounds from one blog to the next, if Blogs.com doesn’t publish blog posts highlighting these stories, why will anyone care about the directory in the first place?

Last but not least, there appears to be a few bugs circulating their MovableType Pro installation. As I was searching for more blog posts on the topic of Web 2.0, I received this error:

Overall, I think Blogs.com is just another place for popular bloggers to become even more popular while lesser known bloggers are thrown into the rubble. Considering Six Apart plans on adding new blogs into the directory, I hope this becomes less of an issue and provides lesser known bloggers the chance to appear on the podium. I like the idea that the directory is human edited by a staff of people which will cut down on just about any spam. As for discovering gems and getting the best out of blogs, I think bloggers who know how to use RSS/FeedReaders do a good job of this on their own. With algorithms on Technorati, POPurls, and other popular data aggregation points, why bother with a hand edited directory in the first place? Are these algorithms not doing a good enough job in presenting the webs best content?

It will be interesting to see where the directory stands six months from now. I’ll be interested in the total amount of blogs within the directory as well as the different categories covered. If you have given Blogs.com a look through, please leave a comment and let me know what you thought. Do you think being accepted into this directory will gain you much in the way of traffic?