Archive for: bloggers
Yesterday I was having a great conversation with Marshall Kirkpatrick (Vice President of Content Development at RWW, not sure what that means) about how to get your blog noticed in the current environment. The discussion started with me posing the basic question “how can I get my blog noticed because we seem to be producing very good content but not getting the rewards”?
It was first mentioned that Problogger is the best source for this information on the web, however I have been reading his site for many years now and most of the content seems to be getting a little reproduced. Additionally, Problogger talks a lot about social media and how to use it to your advantage, but these days everyone has been reading those articles for year and most bloggers use StumbleUpon, Digg, Mixx, Buzz and other very proficiently. If most bloggers are using these tools to their advantage then you still have the same issues, how to stand out from the crowd?
I know that here in Europe a blog that has been on the rise lately is TheNextWeb, but I know these guys have been writing that blog for several years now and they also have one of the best technology conference on the mainland of Europe. Therefore if I want to improve my readership it is a little difficult to just start a conference, or is it worth adding some add-ons to the site such as job board, marketplace or others?
Content is also a major player in this issues, cause most good bloggers say that content is king. However, I think that content is king when you are either a small blog or a large blog, but definitely in the middle content isnt king and it is all about promotion and push.
This is main problem with web 2.0, noise! Currently, there is just simply so much noise in most niche’s, so why instead of writing individual sites and keeping a little revenue, maybe the plan should be to join forces with other blogs and create a larger blog and take a smaller slice of a much larger pie.
I propose this question to you, “how can I get my site to stand out from the rest, especially considering we produce amazing content that is much better than the majority of our competitors”?
Technorati Media has finally launched their Engage (advertising marketplace product) live. Previously this new tool was in Alpha stage and only certain people could use the product. This all happened because Technorati purchased AdEngage.
Since purchasing AdEngage and launching Technorati Media I think Technorati has really lost sight of what their core business model is!
Technorati was a blog search engine that doesnt currently have really market share and presence and their product offering seems to be going down hill by the day. To compensate for this they purchased AdEngage and launched Technorati Media, which is just an ad network.
Looking at the current results from this ad network which has been in operation for several months, seem to be very poor. They are selling advertising for blogs such as The Inquisitr and Profy. The results seem to be as follows, for CPM advertising they are offering a decent CPM rate in between $1.00 – $2.00, but ads are currently only for the USA market and even then their fill rates arent 100%. For all other countries they suggest to use Google Adsense, which is fine, but unless you have a huge amount of USA traffic then this isnt really worth the effort, because what you make on USA revenues you lose on Google revenues elsewhere. In terms of selling sponsorships they also seem to be terrible, with The Inquisitr having 2 125×125 ad slots in the sidebar in which they havent even been able to sell 1 for a few months.
This is all about Technorati realising they dont have a search engine product that is any good, so they are looking for additional revenues streams which will help them eventually sell the company. Is that the way it is or am I wrong?
I got a very interesting email yesterday from Izea, announcing the winners of their Bloggers Choice Awards for 2008.
The usual sites were in the mix with the best Geek blog being taken out by BoingBoing yet again.
I think that these blog awards are so predictable and mundain, as they dont really prove anything or even give awards for that matter.
The surprising result was that Perez Hilton got the worst blog
of all time award. Don’t get me wrong PerezHilton doesn’t have the best blog in the world, but what he has built around it is amazing. That blog has built up and entire empire for him and he has to be one of the most visible bloggers in the world, probably leading the way for many other bloggers to take the jump into mass media. PerezHilton.com is definitely not the worst blog of all time!
Crenk has been rated as one of the UK’s premier sites for technology and media news. Ranking 23rd of all UK sites, and having a world wide prescence online, it takes people truly connected to the pulse of the industry to keep this site alive.
Currently the site is looking at expanding it’s current writing staff in order to diversify and establish more timely posts in this current boom in the media business. With social networks taking hold at a global level, mobile apps becoming the wave of the future on all major mobile platforms, start-ups making their mark at high level conferences like TechCrunch 50, it’s almost impossible to capture the scope of the industry what what we have.
So this is YOUR chance to come on board and help Crenk out. Not only do you join a team of experienced writers, but you also have the chance to have your articles seen by a large audience. Come share your analysis, your insight, and open up conversation with our readers and let’s take Crenk to another level!
For more information please email info@crenk.com and let us you’re interested.
Photo Credit this is your brain on lithium
Over at the Spinning Around blog, James has a great list he is keeping up-to-date of the top UK Marketing weblogs. The list is based upon the AdAge Power 150 and I have attached his most up-to-date list from the 1st May.
If you feel that you should be included, you can get in touch with Ad Age here, who will sort you out. As soon as you’re in, I’ll pick you up in this filleting of the AA chart.
I really looking forward to seeing if James make a nice badge for the sites on the list. I would be sure to place it on Crenk.com. Also, im a little surprised that James doesnt promote the list a little more on his site, because it is a big draw point to the site.
I also just wanted to point out that I came across another great blog that is not UK based, but i thought was worth a mention, DailyWritingTips. There currently is a post that is rising on digg, 44 resume writing tips.
Chris Garret over at the Blog Herald had a very interesting post this morning. The post was about him listing the feeds that he actually reads in his feed readers. The majority on the list were actually what people are classing as A-listers. A-listers are the blogs that are very well known and are actually authorities in their field.
Chris always gets accused of propping up the A-list, but I think in this case there is something wrong with the lower level bloggers. In Australia we call it “tall poppy syndrome”, which means that the people at a lower level slag off the top people in their field, just because they are at the top and getting attention, and this definitely seems to be the case this time.
The blogs that are currently on the A-list have had to work very hard for a very long period of time to get to where they are today. Weblogs like Techcrunch and Read/Write Web have been going for a minimum for 3 years, and they have been very consistent over that entire period to get where they are.
This is a message to all bloggers who have just started and already want to be authorities in their field, please stop accusing people of favouritism and just get off your ass and work really hard to get somewhere. If you work hard enough over a year or more, im sure you will reap the rewards!
Over the last few weeks there has been a surge of blog sales at various prices, but will your blog be next and what will your site actually be worth.
We have seen the Bloggy Network sell off their most popular blogs to Splashpress Media (Bloggy now to focus on Blogflux), Blogging Fingers sold for $6000, Ryan Shamus sold for $2500, OneMansGoal sold for $8500, NxE sold for $8200 and Shylock Blogging for $4000.
These sites have had a great mixture of statistics with relevance to visitors, pageviews, subscribers and blog life. At present because of this a lot of bloggers are trying to work out how these blogs have be evaluated, with mixed views. 45n5 divides subscribers by the sale amount and then average the amounts per subscriber, thus averaging about $30 per subscriber. This $30 per subscriber seems to be a great amount to judge if you should place advertising on your site for the little income in the short term compared to the value you will have from subscribers in the long term.
If you site currently has 100 subscribers and has been making $200 per month ad revenue, but your subscriber growth has been slow. Wouldnt it be a better idea to remove the ads if your goals are set beyond 6 months so that you can allow subscriber numbers to grow at its full potential. There is no point monetizing your blog as much as possible in the early days unless you are looking for an income or getting ready to sell.
Additionally, how come there isnt a place online that specifically provides auction space for blogs that are trying to sell?
The nice people over at Xfep.com have purchased the Problogger page on the Million Dollar Wiki and dedicated it to Pro Bloggers. I think this is a pretty cool project and hopefully i might even get added to the list. If you want to get added to the list make sure you contact them!
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