Internet Babel

Looks as though Google may be rolling out their latest changes now, so keep a look out for how your site is being indexed, and how quickly. Caffeine seems to be aimed at stripping out spam sites from search results, but it is also showing some changes in indexing/SERPS re ‘old’ Google.

See more here: http://www.seoibiza.com/blog/2009/08/19/google-caffeine-observations/

Well, the on-off affair between Microsoft and Yahoo is back on again as the companies announce a partnership arrangement aimed at improving their share of the search market.

The result will see Yahoo using Microsoft’s Bing search engine technology in conjunction with Yahoo’s ad network.

I don’t see this an an attempt to try and take Google on head-on. I think we will  find that the pair have joined forces to adopt a different tactic, aimed at gradually eroding Google’s market share.

The recent introduction of more specialised and ‘niche’ search tools, such as Wolfram Alpha is leading to a slight distillation of the search market, where certain groups of people will perform their searches on specialised tools rather than using the ‘default’ tool (Google).

I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft and Yahoo attempt to target Bing (or variations/extensions of it) at specific niche audiences, in the hope that they can chip away chunks of the search market from Google. I don’t think a full-frontal attack on Google will work anytime soon, but by being nimbler and focussing on specific markets it may be possible for them to make decent inroads into Google’s customer base.

Recent figures show that the 2008 online advertising spend in the US showed an increase of over 10% on 2007, despite the Financial Crisis that was beginning to take hold in the latter part of the year.

2008 US revenue (MOT Worldwide, just the US) came to a record $23.4 billion, surpassing 2007’s record of $21.2 billion by 10.6 percent.

The figures indicate a continuing shift from traditional to online modes of advertising, and a realisation that online provides a more targeted and measurable approach, which can be important when every advertsing dollar needs to be accounted for.

Search related advertising kept its position as the main player, accounting for almost half of the total spend, with an almost 20% increase over 2007. ‘Direct’ advertsing is also growing.

The largest vertical markets were, as in 2007, retail, financial services, computing and automotive.

The full article can be read  here:
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/03/30/online-ad-revenue-up-106
Some points that arise from this article:

• Given that Search showed such a healthy increase in spend, this didn’t seem to be reflected in Adsense publisher’s incomes. This is anecdotal evidence of course, and there are always some publishers/sites who can show good growth but from looking around on the forums it certainly seems that the increase didn’t generally make it through to Adsense publishers’s wallets.
• It could well be that the increased spend was spread more thinly over the ever increasing amount of Web Real Estate, or inventory. More sites, more advertsing spots, more spend but distributed across an ever increasing pool of publishers.
• If that is the case, then will there be a ’saturation point’ where the amount of available Web Inventory becomes just too big? Will the growth in advertising outstrip the growth in available traffic, and returns start to flatten out naturally?
• If the online spend is being spread ever thinner, that only goes to highlight the importance of providing something different, regular site reviews, updates & changes (unlike this site recently – haha) and effective SEO to make a site stand out.
• Is it going to be better to run loads of sites to try and catch some of that thinly spread advertsing spend, or concentrate on a few key names that you can really push – and sell off the rest of your stable?
• Publishers should look more and more into ‘direct’ advertising (something that IM/MMO Bloggers in particular do anyway). Advertisers like PR and content, and the knowledge that traffic will be targetted, so activley pursue direct advertsing/sponsorship opportunities for all your sites.
• Only park domains when you have to. Parking can be good as a holding option, but you’re getting an even smaller slice of that spend when you do it. Review your parked domains, pick the best potential ones (through keyword analysis, seacrh temrs, parking stats etc) and stick a minsite on them, with a combination of static and RSS/Video type feeds. Throw Adsense, Adbrite or whatever floats your boat on there – you’ll see an increase over parking revenue, the chance of gaining some PR and backlinks, a growth in organic/search traffic – and open up the potential for adding direct advertising or selling the developed site on at a profit.

Just some thoughts.

Nice to be back

Well – Darrin emailed me with a question, wanting to know what to do with 3 domains he owns. I thought this was a good opportunity for me to give him a few quick ideas, and also for anyone out there in Babel-Land to make any other suggestions.

Darrin has three domains, NO money and wants to try and make a go of things. So, I asked for the three domain names and below you’ll find my ‘off the top of me head’ sugestions as to what he could do with them. Bear in mind that he’s pretty new to Website development but wants to learn.

Domain 1: AffiliatedBlog [dot] com:

OK, as far as i’m concerned this is an easy one. It’s not a bad domain name – you could sell it for a few bucks of course, but the best course of action is to actually develop an Affiliate/PPC/MMO related Blog on it. Learn the Blogging trade, add some good content to it and maybe sell it on as a developed Blog after a few months, you’ll get a far better return than just selling the domain. 

It doesn’t have to cost you a packet, use one of the free hosting companies out there (but make sure it’s an ad-free one). I use 000Webhost for some of my static sites that I play with, I’m sure they’d be fine for Blog hosting as well but there’s a heap of free hosters out there.

Find a decent free theme/template and place your Google Adsense and Analytics code on the Blog. Register at BlogPremiere and DigitalPoint, give away a few sidebar ad slots, do some link exchanging and then use the Blog to learn Content development and SEO/SEM techniques. 

Domain 2: KnookAndCranny [dot] com:

This is the weakest of the three. it’s a decent sounding name but the spelling is wrong for most people (“knook and cranny” returns 1,060 Google results, “Nook and cranny” returns 535,000 so that’s bit of a no-contest).

I don’t think it’s worth parking, as that only gives results when you’ve got a type-in name, a typo or something with residual traffic. The domain itself has little value, particularly as it’s regged at Melbourne IT/Yahoo and last time I checked they didn’t do a free push.

Develop it, put a humour, video or news site on there – or perhaps use a free classified script such as Noah’s to get a service going for people clearing houses, trying to get that ‘hard to find’ item etc. again, use a free hoster. Then flip it once it’s got a bit of history.

Domain 3: GambleGive [dot] com:

I could see this doing VERY nicely but it would need some custom development. I think some kind of site where people could gamble/play games online but give a portion of the proceeds to charities would be a great thing, with a heap of potential for being picked up by Social Networking sites and possibly Merchants who you could tie up deals with.

You would probably need to partner up with someone who could help you develop the concept, and it wouldn’t be an instant earner but I reckon the idea’s got legs.

So – all in all I don’t think there are any instant money-makers in these particular domains, but I’d say:

• put something cheap and quick on KnookandCranny and try to flip it
• Build a Blog on AffiliatedBlog, learn some development/SEO techniques and sell it later (if you need some quick cash, sell the domain on DigitalPoint or NamePros)
• Find a partner to develop the GambleGive concept with

Like I said, these are my initial thoughts on the list. I may come up with some others, but I’d also like anyone reading this to shout out if they have ideas and suggestions to help Darrin out.

Cheers
Dave

A few months back, Google announced that they would be releasing a product that would allow easy integration of Social Networking features within websites and Blogs.

As of 4th December the Beta release of FriendConnect has been unveiled – and Google are accepting signups (to go on a wait-List i believe) for a phased roll out of the product.

What is FriendConnect?

Using OpenID, FriendConnect will allow you to add a range of social interactivity tools onto your website, in just the same way that you ad Adsense or analytics code. This will allow people to sign-up as Members of your site, post messages, reviews and ratings plus expected features such as sharing of apps, videos and pictures. 

Benefits and How-To:

Members wil also be able to invite others to join, so the potential for spreading the word about your site is obvious. There may also be tools to allow easy communication between Friend Connect and other social apps such as Facebook and Hi5.

As with other Google tools, you will need to sign up under your Google account and apply to join the program, but after that it seems that adding the Social features to your site really will be just the same as adsense – i.e. generating and pasting the required code into your site/template.

FriendConnect will of course be competing against a number of established players, but I’d be very surprised if they don’t grab a large chunk of the market with this – and they will almost certainly be adding a host of media and application type features into it.

It certainly opens up new possiblilities for smaller sites and new developers who would like to integrate social/membership type features into their sites.

Here’s a handy little video about Google Friend Connect (from CampFire one):

Of course, Facebook have also launched a Friend Connect tool so let battle commence

See more at: http://www.google.com/friendconnect

Here’s a nice little idea for maybe getting a different audience to come to your Blog or Website.

Plenty of News and Newspaper Websites have areas where you can comment on news, but there are a few that actually let you have your own Blog as well.

For example, the Telegraph and the Independent (both are respected and big readership UK Newspapers) have Blog areas where you can sign up and create your own Blog area.

Of course, you can’t carry adverts on there, but you can put your URL in your Profile.

More importantly, you can Post (and comment on other readers’ Blogs) about a massively wide range of subjects – and that means that you can incorporate links back to your desired Website/Post as part of that content.

Off the top of my head I can see a number of good things about this:

• It’s another avenue for you to post content and to drive people to your site
• It exposes you to a new and diverse readership – a large proportion of whom are interested in current affairs, technology, politics, finance etc but perhaps wouldn’t normally fall in your ‘target’ audience
• You get some neat backlinks, most likely from a site with some good authority
• With the telegraph, you get a neat little ‘my.telegraph.co.uk/yourname’ URL for your Blog The independent service is offered via LiveJournal 
• It is of course free
• You can post about your selected subject matter, outside of the strict confines of your own Blog, and direct any links back to specific landing pages/posts
• As Newspapers have a fairly loyal readership, I would guess that by signing up for Blogs at a number of Newspaper sites, you would not be getting too much overlap in your audience 

I haven’t really seen anyone talk about this much before, although the Blogs themselves are very popular with the Newspaper online readership. I seriously think these Blogs have some potential to open your material up to a new audience and to drive some trafic your way. 

The Telegraph Blog area can be found here:
http://www.my.telegraph.co.uk/

The Independent Blog area is here:
http://www.livejournal.com/integration/independent/learnmore.bml

There are almost certainly others out there, but these are the two I wanted to highlight for the purposes of this post. I think it’s worth a try.

Thanks
Dave

Time for a new approach for Internet Babel.

Look across the ‘mid-range’ MMO/IM Bloggers (and even the ‘top’ Bloggers, as I’ve mentioned before) and you see a lot of the same stuff – the latest affiliate schemes, our ’success’ stories, competitions, so-called ‘black-hat’ rubbish and paid reviews.

IB has been as guilty of that in the past as anyone,and now is as good a time as any to give it a revamp – the Blog currently has a ‘tired’ theme that needs a re-skin, and it’s missing a couple of plugins that I consider important.

The Blog itself (like most in this niche) lacks the interactivity and value-added things that a really useful site needs – and no, comments (even threaded ones) on their own aren’t enough.

I have a full-time freelance occupation developing sites and systems for people – Blogging is a sideline and my goal is to make enough from my own sites that I don’t have to work too hard for other people. I suspect many of you are in a similar situation (or at least aim to be).

So, I’m experimenting with a number of approaches to developing my current domain and site portfolio:

• via domain/site flipping
• by taking advantage of quick-hits on hot niche areas
• by developing a wide range of content-rich sites that I can SEO into a money-earning position
• by creating new scripts and software that people will want to use (or buy)

Nothing too ground-breaking there, but by reading about my little successes AND failures in these endeavours people reading this Blog might just pick up some practical tips and save some time in achieving their own goals.

To that end Internet Babel will expand to address what I hope people really want - namely:

• straight to the point tips and news about SEO, content, development and flipping
• a Forum, to introduce much more of a community aspect, and to be able to cover other topics in more detail (coding questions and tips, template/plugin discussions etc) without cluttering up the Blog 
• Classifieds/Directory areas to make it a genuine ‘resource’ site
• updates on ‘real’ projects and experiments that might give some pointers
• useful downloads

The blog will of course remain but I want to make Internet Babel more than that. If you don’t want to come along for the ride, that’s fine – but I hope you hang on in there and see what we can make of it together.

First off – a decent theme to replace this tired old thing – what’s the best one out there at the moment? (preferably free, cos I’m a miserable git – but I do like the look of the ‘Ultimate’ Theme)

Just found this nice post on Doug Scott’s new (renamed) Blog

Affiliate Program Myths

Worth a read.

It’s a commonly accepted ‘rule’ that many Blogs fail within 3 months of starting up. There may be a number of reasons or factors behind each individual case, but I think a common trait of a lot of failed and failing bloggers is pandering to their readers.

A lot of bloggers write what they think people want to hear as opposed to writing what they actually think themselves.

If you take a look at some of the most successful bloggers, there’s one thing that stands out: They all have a ‘loud’ opinion…most do, at least. We are not just reporters of news or reflectors of the current trends – if you want that you might as well just populate your Blog with RSS feeds and never write at all.

Without the injection of your own personal opinion, you’re just another guy aimlessly tapping keys to the tune of a miscellaneous audience. You have to set yourself apart by writing content that defines itself through your personality, your experience and your beliefs.

By doing this you gain a readership that is like-minded, loyal and attentive (or at least you generate some debate with those that hold other opinions, which is just as good) – as opposed to just writing to an interweb of faceless blobs.

If you just write about what’s happening with no real thought or personal insight then you’ll become nothing more than an alternative news outlet, we really don’t need anymore of those. I have a million news feeds I can choose from – I (and others out there) want personal insight, experience, opinions and originality. I don’t want to be spoon fed but I do want to be inspired to try new things.

It’s tempting to pander now and then as it will gain you some immediate readership, but as you prostitute yourself more and more, the readership will diversify and broaden. We’ve all seen Blogs that were initially focussed on a clear topic drift off into trivia and chit-chat. This will leave you with a completely random readership that will most likely be unreliable, just scouring the Web randomly, rather than specifically coming to read your content.

With Internet Babel I have specific goals in mind, and those revolve around giving people the tools and ideas to make them think for themselves.

I care about trying to give people useful information and seeing them do something with it, and that’s why I want to extend Internet Babel to become more of an interactive community, via a Forum, WIKI or some other means.

You may have other goals for your Blog/Site but the main point is to know what you want to say, and stick to that goal – and don’t get distracted from it in a rush to get cheap visitor stats or diversify your audience.

Cheers

This is NOT a paid post.

It’s about a site i came across that looks like a novel approach to Discount Code/Coupon sites. These are a hot area, and one I’ve written about before - and they are particularly relevant in the current economic climate, but many people find that it’s difficult to get a decent Coupon site going. It can be difficult to locate good Coupons and keep the current ones on your site – and it can be a pain managing a lot of affiliate accounts.

Doug and the guys at ASAP have come up with Promotions.co.uk - a service that will let you run a Coupon site or have Coupon sections on your Content site with two big advantages: they do most of the leg work for you and, more importantly, you can get to keep most, if not all, all of the revenue

The service is still in development at the moment, and the final product will be refined as a result of feedback, but to me it looks like a fantastic idea. I haven’t got the time to be maintaining a hundred affiliate accounts or constantly looking for good and current offers that match my content – so this could just offer a solution for me, and for many of you.

Various benefits include (paraphrased from the Promotions.co.uk site):

• Your own discount code website or subdomain or our discount codes on your site, similar to adsense. Site can be built, or you can use a CMS to manage a coupon site, or you can add some code to your site for displaying coupons
• They collect and control all the codes on your behalf.
• You can add your own exclusive codes if you have any.
• They ensure that as many merchant’s discount codes as possible are live in the system, without you having to request them from a network or a merchant.
• All you have to do is drive traffic to your site(s). You can do this any way you wish and if you want to add unique content to your discount site then you can.
• If you have a content site you can add their code to each page and the discount codes for merchant with that product will display show. Hence protecting content/information sites from losing sales to voucher code sites.

Doug is a top bloke (check out the interview with him if you haven’t already), his ideas are usually spot-on and ASAP have great contacts with big players in the industry, so my guess is that this will be a winner.

You’ve got nothing to lose so hop on over to Promotions.co.uk and check it out for yourself.