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How To Define Acronyms Within Your Content

As I was reading a post written by Lorelle over at the BlogHerald discussing how to help readers keep up with your blog, I came across a tip which I thought I would illustrate here as well. It has to do with defining acronyms within your post in case your readers don’t understand the lingo of your niche.

I’ve been wondering for quite awhile now if there was a way to illustrate what an acronym means without having to place the definition next to the word. I’ve seen many people comment that they become annoyed when an acronym is used and right next to it, is the full sized set of terms. Thanks to Lorelle’s post, I came across the <acronym> tag. When you use the acronym tag, the definition appears as a tooltip when a user hovers their mouse cursor over the word. Place your mouse cursor over the word HTML and see what happens.

The use of the tag is as follows:
<acronym title=”HyperText Markup Language”>HTML</acronym>

You can even add a CSS class to your themes Stylesheet so that each time you use the tag in your content, it has a unique look. To add the class to your stylesheet, copy and paste the following code into your CSS file and style it to your hearts content.

acronym { border-bottom: 1px dotted black; }

For more information and a bonus CSS class that spells out acronyms when users print your web pages from Opera or FireFox, read this article, Defining acronyms on DiveIntoAccessibility.

Weekly Link Dump Two

My FeedReader always provides me a wealth of content that I can’t consume on a daily basis but within that content lies a myriad of tips and tricks by many, many different blogs out on the net. Here are a few articles which I noticed in my travels.

Add Breadcrumbs to your WordPress Blog – BloggingTips reviews a plugin which adds breadcrumbs to your WordPress theme.

Podcasters Wanted: Will Work for Show Promotion? – Blogger And Podcaster magazine are offering up the opportunity for readers to help create the podcast edition of the site. Those who are selected will receive the chance to plug their own show or service and will obtain a 1/4 page ad in the magazine.

7 Certain Ways to Crucify Your Content – Shilpan Patel of Success Soul provides seven ways to help steer your content from an immediate negative vibe while also providing techniques from which to improve your writing.

Are You TrustWorthy – CopyBlogger goes over the importance of being trustworthy with your readers.

ProBlogger Headline Writing Contest – Darren Rowse is at it again and this time, his group writing project centers around creating a killer post title. Up for grabs is an identity logo created by David Airey. Sweet prize!

Proof positive that you should not post negative things about your coworkers on a blog.

5 Ways to Imitate the 10 Most Popular Blogs – Easton does a good job covering five things which the top 10 blogs all seem to have in common.

Writing With Emotion

During a bit of downtime this past weekend, I thought about the various articles I have written over the course of two years. Some have been total successes while others have been failures. However, when I began to piece together some of the best stuff I have ever written, I noticed a commonality between them all.

What each post I had written as a huge success had in common was the fact that it was written with emotion. Generally, these types of blog posts are those which sit inside of my head, tumbling around waiting for the right time to flow into the post editor. These posts will take days or even weeks before they reach the point where I can hit the publish button. Each time I have written a post based purely off of emotions, the words have flowed together as if it was meant to be. Sentence structure becomes a natural instinct, thoughts, opinions, everything seems to be in the right place at the right time.

However, using your emotions for a source of writing is not always a good thing. You must be able to control them and not allow them to control your ability of rational thinking. There are those times when we say or do things that we didn’t mean to but did so anyways because of the emotional state of mind. The best thing you can do after writing a post such as this is to take a step back, regroup your thoughts and then finish it off. The last thing you want to do is publish a post which showcases a loss of rational thinking due to emotions.

On every blog about blogging, or book about blogging, you’ll find a phrase which is the cornerstone of the practice. Blog about something you are passionate about. After realizing that the best blog posts I have ever published were those which dealt with something I was passionate about, I can whole heartedly say that this strategy works.

What has the performance been like for those articles in which you have poured your heart and soul into? Are they your best works or has another strategy worked out better?

Adjix Founder Responds To Criticism

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

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.

The Blogosphere’s Impact on Academic Studies and Writings

School

Authors, professors, entrepreneurs, experts, and journalists use blogs these days to communicate with the world. However, have you ever imagined a blog being an origination of academic research? Never before have I considered this a possibility, but now I believe differently.

Blogs & Information

Blogs have brought about a huge increase in information. Blogs are also being written by people of all professions. Even news organizations utilize them as methods to better communicate with their audiences. So, why shouldn’t blogs be a legitimate source for journalistic and academic material? Just because a blog isn’t necessarily held to the same standards as a book or a magazine article, doesn’t mean that a blog isn’t a place where original, reliable, and factual information can spawn from.

Information Is Information

If a student quotes plenty of financial facts from a get-rich-quick book, a professor should be fairly concerned of the source. This proves that books can be unreliable. This proves that any source can be unreliable, and that means that any source could potentially be reliable as well. In other words, information is information. It shouldn’t matter what the format/media is.

We are right in the middle of an information revolution. Professors and school teachers who treat blogs as a naturally unreliable source of information are teaching the wrong idea. A student should be able to source a particular point from various sources, and blogs should be allowed. It won’t be too long before blogs are looked upon as more reliable than news organizations—then again, some people already see it that way.

Tell us what you think about blogs in the classroom. Do you believe that blogs should be allowed to be cited by students? Do you think that blogs will make more of an impact in academic writing?

[Image Credit: “School’s out for Summer!“—Conspirator | CC]

Monetize Your Archives With WhyDoWork Adsense Plugin

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?

Skip links

Blog

Account Creation:

All About Monetization:

Link Report:

Conclusion:

Performancing Experiment:

Blogs & Information

Information Is Information

Conclusion:

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