Friday, January 4th, 2008
A few minutes ago when I logged into my Bidvertiser and was surprised to see that they are now offering the option to include ads in your RSS feeds. Great idea I thought and quickly signed up. After all more income sources is more income sources, right? Here’s what I figured out so far.
- A little hokey, maybe…
- You can’t embed the ads into an existing feed publisher such as Feed Burner. By no means am I an expert but that seems like being able to do that would be a given. Especially considering that Bidvertiser doesn’t use content relational advertising.
- But all is not lost
- The setup took me all of two minutes. In the end I only need to copy and paste a few lines to move my RSS feeds from Feed Burner to Bidvertiser. I’ve not made the change yet, but I’ll give it a try tomorrow. It doesn’t look like I’ll lose anything by moving the feed. Besides I’m not actually moving the feed, more like forwarding it through the Bidvertiser system but it still seems to originate on the blog, move through Feed Burner and then get handed off to Bidvertiser.
- Getting started
- If you don’t have a Bidvertiser account already signup for one here. Once that’s done log into your publisher account and look for the link that says Public Beta - BidVertiser ads for your RSS/ATOM feeds. Click here to start!. Click the link and go! If you already have an account skip the signup (obviously) and get to work!
Has anyone else tried this out? Any feedback? I’m going to give it a chance since Feed Burner can’t seem to get their act together and monetize their feeds. At least not so it works right.
I’d like to remind everyone to please sign up for my email rss feed. Once I reach 500 subscriptions I will randomly choose a member of the 500 signups and send that person $50.00! Tell your friends, tell your family, tell everyone about their chance to win $50.00! Hell, you don’t even need to link back to an article, or write an article. Just need to be one of the 500 subscribers. Contest will run until there is a winner. So tell everyone because until we reach 500 subscribers no one has any chance to get that $50.00!
Posted in Making Money | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, December 25th, 2007
First and foremost let me wish each and everyone of you a very merry Christmas. I hope and pray you are all enjoying the day with family and friends and that the true reason we even have this day to celebrate is not lost on you.
With the greetings and salutations out of the way let’s get down to business. I wanted to talk a little bit about what makes a good linkbait and what doesn’t. I figured I’d talk about it in terms that make sense to me. Hunting and fishing. Hopefully it’ll make sense to you as well.
- What is linkbait?
- Linkbait is the ability to goad another website into linking to something you’ve put on your website. No doubt someone could come up with a much more technical explanation, but I think that captures the essense of what a linkbait is well enough for my purposes. Also it isn’t required that it be a website. For instance you could goad the local radio show into mentioning your website. Linkbait comes in all shapes and sizes.
- Why should I try linkbaiting?
- Primarily for traffic and recognition, but there’s also an element of good clean fun to it. It is a challenge to get someone to link to your site. And the more popular they are the hard it will be to get them to link to you. Mainly for the fact that they are getting linkbait tossed in front of their faces all the time. But if you get them to take the bait you’ll enjoy the rewards of increased traffic, sales, recognition, or whatever else it happens to be you are trying to accomplish.
Finally without disregarding what I said before you should try linkbaiting for the challenge. It’s not easy. Even the most carefully crafted linkbait schemes can backfire or utterly fail. At best they won’t get noticed and at best they’ll be noticed and not appreciated as you intended them to be.
- How do I linkbait? (or How do I hunt?)
- The only limit you have when it comes to how is your imagination. Literally. Of course skill and finances may or may not play a part in it depending on what you are trying to do. I find the following method one of the best for linkbaiting.
- Select a target
- The most important thing isn’t the bait itself, but the person(s) you want to bait. Consider your options carefully and what each potential baiting target can offer you if you pull it off succesfully. Take into account how much work you’ll need to put into the bait and how much of a return you’ll get on your investment.
Think of it as Bull Elk hunt. The yearling bulls and even two year olds are relatively easy to take compared to their wiser elder brothers. They also yield much less meat than the older elk. Then there are the “elderly” elk that it’s pointless to even go after. Aside from a nice rack they don’t give you anything other than tough, bad tasting meat. In other words go after a linkbait opportunity that will give you a decent amount of “meat” but won’t leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth.
- Observe your target
- Not every fish will rise to the same exact bait, but every fish has a favorite bait they’ll rise to time and time again. If you go fly fishing you might fish a stretch of river dry using hand-tied caddisflies but twenty feet from that spot another school of fish won’t touch a caddisfly. Such is the way with people. What attracts the attention of one will repel another. Take the time to observe what works and what doesn’t. How crappy would it be to spend 2 weeks developing the perfect linkbait only to discover that your “fish” simply isn’t interested in?
From personal experience I can attest to the fact that it is VERY crappy when this happens. What makes it really bad is the fact that for the most part the only person I have to blame is myself. If I had only spent a little time looking at linkbaits others had tried and failed with I would have saved myself a lot of hassle. It’s the same with fishing. You talk to the other fishermen and ask what bait they’re using and if they’re having any luck. When it comes to linkbaiting you don’t need to ask you just need to pay attention.
- Make it the best shot you are capable of
- This is where we differ from hunting and fishing. Animals are dumb. Very dumb. They’ll let you shoot at them again and again and again before they’ll wander off. People won’t give you that opportunity. Make the first shot count by not only making it good, but also making it obvious that you were the one who did it. If you don’t make it clear who did it then there is no point as they won’t have anything to “link” to.
- Reap the harvest
- Assuming you’ve done what you needed to do you’ll soon be reaping the rewards of a well placed, nicely timed linkbait. Enjoy yourself for a while. Have some fun, say “hi” to your new fans and friends. A tradition in some hunting camps is to eat the heart and liver of the animal. It’s a celebratory time to commemoratore your accomplishments. Well in this case DO NOT eat the heart and liver of your linkbait target, but do celebrate! At least for a short while as your new found supply of internet “go-go juice” won’t last forever and you’ll need to find another target. Which brings us to the final point.
- Save some for leaner times
- Do not use all of your linkbait tricks all at once. Don’t try over and over and over again to target the same person. If they aren’t taking the bait wait a while and switch tactics. Hunting for a linkbait opportunity takes patience and practice. Eventually you’ll figure out the right bait for the right people. In the meanwhile you’d not drop scatter bombs on a deer to kill it so why do it with linkbait opportunities. In simpler terms don’t just throw stuff until something sticks.
- What if I fail?
- That just means you’re normal like the rest of the world who has ever tried linkbaiting. Everyone has failed at one point or another. If you fail figure out why you failed (wrong bait, bad timing, wrong target, etc) and move on and don’t fail the next time. I wish I had more sage advise to offer, but honestly that’s what you do. Press on and learn from your mistakes.
I hope that helps you with your endeavor to figure out a linkbait that works well for you. If anyone has any outstanding linkbaits they’ve pulled off in recent memory I’m sure we’d all like to hear about them. And before we go let’s review real quick.
- Select a target
- Observe your target
- Make the best shot your are capable of
- Reap the harvest
- Save some for leaner times
Posted in Blogging | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, December 19th, 2007
“Sometimes they come back” Do you remember that infamous Stephen King short story from the Night Shift compilation? Well this article has nothing whatsoever to do with that story, but the title is fitting so I thought I would open with it. Anyhow onto what we’re here to discuss, breathing new life into old blog posts.
- Why you would want to resurrect old articles
- There are any number of reasons you might want to bring old articles into the forefront again. Some of them might include:
- The topic has become “newsworthy” to the major media and you’d like to capitalize
- You pushed the article before you had the “proper” audience to receive it well
- You’ve had an influx of new readers who will benefit from reading it
- It would rank well on a newly discovered social bookmarking site which would grow your audience
- It has begun generating discussion in your archives
- You’re in a slump and not producing much new content
As you can tell there is no shortage of reasons why you’d want to resuse your old articles.
- How to do it
- The best way I’ve found to get old articles off the ground a second time around is using social bookmarking sites. By that I mean submitting the articles to sites they haven’t been submitted too yet. Put it out there in front of fresh eyes. They’ll pass it along to their friends and family (if it is worth their while).
Another tactic I’ve used to good effect is to link the old article to my comments on other blogs. Instead of being taken to a front page the person is taken to a specific article. This alone will usually get a few eyes new eyes on the article. It’s really effective because you can target your audience. For instance on a blog talking about the stock market I might highlight an article I’ve written about floor trading. On the other hand on a blog about camping I can link it to an article about arctic expeditions. You get the idea.
- What to look out for
- Don’t just throw the article out there and hope people will come. At some point they will and you won’t like it. Unless you’ve taken time to put everything in order. Get into your favorite editor and give the article a through thrashing.
- Spelling and grammar - Yep these still matter. Double check that you’re original posting didn’t have these errors.
- Layout change - If your theme has changed since you original posted the article you might find things are “off” in the article. Take some time and fix them.
- Advertising - If you have advertising make sure it is up to date so you can capitalize on it
- Position - We all change out minds on things from time to time. Be sure the article accurately reflects your position.
Do you ever “resurrect” old articles in order to try and capitalize on them a second, third, or even fourth time around?
Posted in Blogging | 5 Comments »
Monday, December 10th, 2007
I’m not one to complain. By that I mean I’m not one to complain when things are going my way, but sometimes I just have to pipe up when I shouldn’t. This is one of those instances where I should probably keep my mouth shut and just enjoy the benefits that I am reaping. I feel however I will do more of a service by saying something.
I’m not sure how to say this to everyone so I’ll just blurt it out. Blogging Zoom is broken!(I think…). Ok so clearly I’m not 100% positive that it is broken, but I’ll tell you why I’m pretty confident it is. You can be the judge of if I am right or wrong. Before I begin laying my case out let me make it clear I am not an expert in the things of social bookmarking. No, I am simply a casual user.
- Too many zooms allowed
- From what I can tell there are unlimited zooms allowed in a 24 hour time period. I know because in the early days of BZ I tested the system. Not so much tested as “abused” it by zooming anything and everything. Literally.
Why did I do such a thing? Because I could. Because there is no incentive to conserve my zooms for those posts which truly deserve it. Meaning I could zoom through the “Upcoming Posts” without giving it a moments thought.
- No reason to read (or at least view) the articles
- I’m not a website expert, but somehow this seems like a reasonable feature to add. Make it so a person has to at least open the page they are giving a zoom to before the zoom will count. Again this goes back to just mass zooming for no reason aside from “because I can”
- Too many of my posts have gone “hot”
- This is the part where I should keep my mouth shut…
Notice I’ve submitted 34 posts (at the time of writing this article) and 34 of them have gone “hot”? I like to think I can write a decent article, but I’m batting 1000 (perfect for you non-baseball types) which seems a bit, um… far fetched to me. Am I the only one experiencing this phenomenon?
So you must be wondering why I’d complain about something like this? Because:
I needed a topicI want to sabbotage BZCourt and Vic (the creators of BZ) pissed me off- I like Blogging Zoom but believe these issues dilute its true potential
That’s right my complaint is all about number 4! Does anyone else share my concerns regarding Blogging Zoom in regards to this issue I have raised?
But what solutions can I offer? Like I said I’m just a “lay person” when it comes to things like this, but it seems to me if you…
- Limit the amount of zooms from a particular user
- Require the actual page being zoomed to be opened (if that is even possible)
it would help take care of too many posts going hot when/if they don’t deserve to.
Posted in Blogging | 28 Comments »
Sunday, November 25th, 2007
Two American cosmologists (
Lawrence Krauss and James Dent)are suggesting that
simply by observing the universe around us we are hastening it towards an untimely demise. Don’t laugh so quick.
Quantum theory has long maintained this concept of
interference by observation.
Essentially what this theory says is that by observing something we reset the decay clock and cause things to begin decaying more rapidly. By discovering dark matter and learning how to “see” it we have reset the universes decay clock and have likely caused it to decay more quickly. I can’t help but wonder if maybe that has been the fate of some blogs?
- Abandonded blogs number in the hundreds of thousands
- Spend a few minutes looking and you’ll come across literally thousands of blogs that have been drafted into mothball and do nothing but sit around. The vast majority of these blogs failed after only 2 or 3 months of activity and observation. Naturally a blog is slightly smaller than the universe so it doesn’t take nearly the number of viewing occurences to cause the blog to decay.
- Abandonded blogs have an abundance of “dark matter”
- Actually they have an over abundance of it. Even while occupied and active they had too much dark matter. And people like you and I would try to read the blog, try to find a shining light somewhere in it. The only thing we ever managed to find was this dark matter and by our simple act of observation we caused the blog to decay and die. We’re only two people, you and I, but think about the implications of millions of people observing these blogs!
Fear not gentle reader! If you’re in a predicament similar to what I described there are a few things you can do that will potentially help you reverse this decay that has set into your blog.
A blog may not be dying because someone read it, or maybe that’s EXACTLY why that blog has failed… Just something to think about. Is your blog ready for readers or is the observable content an unncessary risk?
Posted in Blogging | 5 Comments »
