Advertising

You probably get these a lot of times. Some posts a valid comment, with well-thought out and substantial paragraphs. But when you check the author name and link, it’s a link to a commercial site, using keywords meant for search optimization. Some of these get caught by the spam filter, but some are approved. You tell yourself there’s no worry, because you use rel=nofollow anyway. But if your comment policy (if you have one) prohibits outright advertisements, your readers might start to wonder.

You probably get two to three paragraphs with good arguments, but signed as “buy used cars” or “bank loans” or whatnot. With a blog as big as Performancing, this can become a big headache.

What do you do with valid comments that have commercial links? You can either:

1. Remove the URL, leaving out the name;
2. Unpublish or delete the entire comment; or,
3. Leave it be, making sure you have rel=nofollow turned on.

Deleting the entire comment is probably the easiest option, since it just involves one click. Editing out the URL is a bit more complicated, since it involves editing the comment and manually setting the URL field blank. Perhaps there should be an option or plugin on blogging platforms to nuke the URL field in one click, but leaving the contents intact.

And then there’s the question of your threshold for commercial links. What exactly does constitute a commercial link that you’d rather delete? What if the link were relevant to the post you made? For instance, if you post about viruses and malware, and someone from a known antivirus company posts a valid tip, with a link back to his site, what do you do?

Again, dealing with a couple of these would probably be easy, but if you are faced with dozens or hundreds per day, it can get tedious, and you want something automated. Most anti-spam plugins are either a go or no go, meaning you can get them to publish or kill a comment depending on certain characteristics. I’d like to see something like publish the comment but not the link.

Of course, you can just hide the contents of the URL field, but that would not be fair to valid comment posters and readers interested in checking out commenters’ sites.

What’s your general rule on these kind of comments?

Since the launch of WPTavern.com, I’ve received numerous offers from companies asking if I would like to join a higher tiered part of their affiliate program which offers higher than average payouts when compared to a normal affiliate. I’ve always had a problem with affiliate advertising in that, I don’t think you should advertise just for the sake of advertising. I’d much rather someone paid me directly for display advertising rather than placing an ad on my site, hoping people click through and then hoping even more that they make a purchase.

However, where affiliate advertising makes complete sense is when you advertise for a product or service you have used and can stand by. This enables you to have that trust factor, stand by your claims for the product/service and chances are, you’ll probably have an easier time convincing people to purchase through you.

So how do you handle affiliate advertising on your site? Do you advertise for anyone/everyone or only those things you can vouch for?

With everything that takes place on the web, keeping track of trends can be a tough process. Although Google provides a Trend search of their own, TrendPedia looks to have its place in the trend search market. The front page of TrendPedia showcases the hottest trends from the previous month as well as popular trends from the previous week.

At the top of the site, you are provided three text fields which will add combine all three trend searches into a comparable graph chart. In my test drive, I compared MovableType, WordPress, and LiveJournal.

For whatever reason, I could not get any trend results for MovableType. For LiveJournal and WordPress, the chart showcases WordPress in the lead with 68% of articles around WordPress with 32% dedicated to LiveJournal. Search results for each trend are shown in their own tab at the bottom of the site and consists mostly of blog posts. This means you can use TrendPedia to get a grasp on blogs staying abreast of the latest trends.

I think Google Trends has a nicer interface and a cleaner way of presenting the information but I find TrendPedia cool because of the mentions of blog post in the search results. At any rate, it’s nice to have more than one site in this market.

After receiving my first direct display advertising sale, I can understand how something like this can be addicting. Back on an earlier episode of WordPress Weekly which is a podcast focused entirely on the WordPress project, I put the call out on Twitter that not much had happened during that week so the show might not be as interesting. I received a few reply messages, one of which came from ThemeAtlas.com letting me know they just launched their site and that we should talk about that. Well, we did.

Working on my WordPress Tavern project this past week, I finally implemented my advertising system which is based on the OIO Publisher plugin for WordPress. After setting up my display advertising zones, I sent out an announcement on Twitter letting people know that advertising opportunities were now in place on the site. As it turns out, ThemeAtlas stopped by and purchased a 468X60 banner spot on the top of my site.

I feel as though Twitter really helped propel me to my first ad sale. I think by putting the call out to my followers and letting them know about the opportunity, with the inclusion that a message like that goes out to the Twitter public timeline aided in the sale which netted me $32.00 that day. So while there is a large following that poo poos the service, Twitter is only as great as you enable it to be and so far, it’s been wonderful to me.

There’s a thought piece on Seth’s blog – its a rather short exercise on choosing your profile photo for a social network such as Facebook. Whether you agree or disagree with what seems to be a trivial pursuit of credibility, he speaks truth in the overall scheme of marketing.

What I’m trying to say is that before we dive into the deep (“duc in altum!”), have we determined how far we’re willing to go? There are two kinds of bloggers — those who blog for the sake of keeping a journal, and those who are in it to market themselves in some form as a means to building a business. The latter brings in a greater sense of responsibility in keeping a certain demeanor online. Should this brand that we’re developing for ourselves emanate in Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube? How far are we willing to share of our personal lives? Will we put photos of family on Facebook, or will we keep our profile as a professional brand. How personal should our Tweets be? Do we add everyone on Facebook to increase our “net worth” or do we limit it to actual people that we know?

Of course, you have the outliers — those that can manage to merge their online work and personal life together so well, their personal life becomes part of the brand.

Something to think about: it’s how much we are willing to sacrifice that may determine how far we’re willing to go with branding ourselves online.

Twitter has taken on a life of its own. in the early days, their was no way to respond to other people until users came up with the idea to use the @ symbol to designate a reply. Now adays, the sharing of information on Twitter has created what is known as a Retweet. This is when someone republishes a message someone else wrote and is used as a means of sharing useful information. Depending on who picks up the message and retweets it, the information can be viewed by thousands of people.

This is where a site like TweetMeme comes into play. Tweetmeme contains a listing of the hottest stories on twitter based on the number of times they have been retweeted. The site features an area for the top tweets, sponsored tweets, a mobile version of the site but perhaps most importantly, an easy way to place a Retweet button on your website with every article to make sharing that content easier.

If you couldn’t tell by now, the whole thing works much in the same was as Digg with a few notable exceptions. First, there are no comments for the stories on the Tweetmeme website. There is also no way to bury a story because if it’s not popular, it won’t show up on the front page anyways. There are no categories so the front page has a higher chance of maintaining a diverse round of stories. The democracy of getting stories to the top is still there but for now, there is not a large majority of people dictating what makes it to the top and what doesn’t.

Overall, if you’re a Twitter user or looking at another way to get traffic to your blog, adding this Tweetmeme button is a 5 minute or less step that could equal major benefits if the right people pick up on your story. Besides, having the Tweetmeme button on your site is a good way to see how many times people have retweeted your blog post.