Internet Babel

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

Okay, I’m exhausted. The final winner for the last giveaway in this competition IS…

tom{at}technogumption{dot}com

Which I believe is Tom Beaton from… Technogumption.com

So, congrats to Tom. I’ve sent you an email also Tom, informing you how to get your free review and 1 month of free advertising

PS. I did say I would announce the winner at midnight. So… 59 minutes late, sorry about that. 

Thanks to all that have subscribed so far and continue to stay subscribed!

I think you need to experiment and continue to experiment regularly with your blog. Your ads, ad networks, placement, just try different things continuously.

Try and improve your blog everyday. Look at successful blogs and think ‘what do they have that I don’t’ emulate things to a degree but ultimately try and create your own unique brand.

Posts / Content

You can always improve your posts. I’m sure if you’ve owned a blog for a while and have over 100 posts on it – you have looked back on now and then and been surprised and how rubbish you think an old post looks!?

I have done this a few times. Make sure you always experiment with your posts to constantly provide fresh content, fresh views, advice and standpoints.

Use bigger images, smaller images, bigger headings, color texts. Be provocative, leave questions unanswered. Try what you can to increase reader interaction and constantly try to improve your grammar and most of all. Presentation. Make things easy on the eye.

Subscriptions

This is for me, the most fickle aspect of a blog. Changing one thing can increase subscriptions a lot. Always experiment with where you place your subscription options, how you present them, how visible they are etc.

Generally, the more visible they are the better. You want people to know

• Here is my RSS subscription
• Here is my Email subscription

Which brings me to my next point. Make sure you always offer an email subscription option! whilst most don’t like email updates, well most bloggers. Due to obvious reasons. It’s still another option for people who may like it and can do nothing but expand your subscriptions.

RSS makes it so easy to flick through blogs in seconds and it’s so convenient and neat. I love RSS and would never subscribe via email personally. Don’t see much point. But still, make sure it’s there and people can see it.

Advertising / Revenue

Very subjective topic. If you’re absolute only purpose of a blog is to make money. I don’t think you will get very far. You need an undertone, something which makes your blog great. Whether that be simply an amazing logo, so be it. Overall though, great content, obviously.

But if you are trying to grow a blog or even static website based purely on re-written or purely ripped content, surrounded by Adsense blocks… give up now!

What you should be doing is writing pure original content. That’s right – from scratch. It’s good to get inspiration but make sure you don’t copy people, develop your own train of thought on a subject instead of borrowing somebody else’s.

That being said, this will then provide you with a good surrounding for ads. People don’t mind ads nearly as much if the content is good. Just look at John Chow – he has said a lot of time his blog doesn’t look like it’s full of ads, well… John, hate to break it to you but it does. A lot but we don’t care because your content is great!

Make sure you follow in John’s footsteps if you need a stepping stone example. Great content surrounded by targeted advertising = revenue.

Traffic

Why put this one last? because it is the most important silly!

Traffic to your blog or any website is the foundation for EVERYTHING. No matter how crappy your content may be, how spammy your ads may look, everything escalates with traffic.

With crappy content surrounded by ads but A TON of traffic. The bad content ironically becomes a good thing. People will want to get out of there and if your traffic isn’t savvy to these things, they will click ads. All the time. Which equals? big revenue!

But. I wouldn’t want this. I’d much rather try and build a quality content source with highly relevant ads. Advertising then becomes less of a hindrance and more of an alternative source for the user. If they don’t like what you’re saying and are going to leave anyway… you may as well get payed for it.

Big Traffic Equals

1. A lot of people viewing what you say and do!
2. A lot of potential buzz!
3. A lot of potential revenue!

It’s just all about how you utilize these qualities that decides how much money you make and how successful your blog becomes.

Final Thoughts

There is obviously other criterea also important to your blog such as; Design, Backlinks, Impact etc.

But I have sort of covered all those a lot in previous posts and things like backlinks and impact can be easily related back to traffic so in some areas it’s not worth expanding. Because I’ll go on forever… maybe another time…

Remember above all though. Neve be satisfied *Never be satisfied

1. Advertise on Already Popular Blogs.

An advertising spot on a popular or authoritative blog within your niche can help gain targeted awareness of your brand/blog as well as giving you an obvious boost in traffic. Direct advertising isn’t always that effective unless it’s clever marketing or the site or blog that you’re advertising on is… huge. So try and make ads that move away from generic stereotype and cliche so that they will stand out from others and catch the eye.

2. Write Outstanding Content

The most effective way to get return traffic is obviously, by writing great content. Getting traffic to your blog is half the battle, the main goal should be to get people coming back to your blog over and over again. Trying to get more subscribers should be the no.1 aim for your blog. Making money with it should be secondary, because without a readership, there is no one to market to. You can afford to lose some readers with advertising if you have a static and stable readership, but if you have average or poor content and your blog is covered in Adsense ads… you will just get visitors coming and going like clockwork and will gain no stability. Write to the best of your ability to avoid this.

3. Brand Your Blog

Branding your blog helps establish you much more as an authority or at least a more trustworthy source. It gives you and your blog an identity to associate with. An image. A visual representation of what you want to communicate with your blog, or at least a class logo to catch the eye! brand your blog with a professional image or representation to help establish it more seriously in the blogesphere and to separate yourself from generic blogs.

4. Be Provocative

Now when I say be provocative. I don’t necessarily mean bad mouth people or be over controversial to provoke arguments. Although that is one way! but what I mean is. Leave room for discussion. Provoke your readers into wanting to comment and input their own opinions by a) not covering every single aspect in a post and b) actually giving an opinion. If you don’t input an actual opinion, your posts become static and non-provocative. If people don’t have anything to question or disagree with then your just another blog pumping out bland viewpoints with no real input or opinion. Give YOUR viewpoint on things to provoke other people to give theirs.

5. Submit Your Best Work to Social News Sites

Social news sites like Digg can help generate huge traffic to your blog if a post goes big. It’s not the easiest thing to get big on Digg anymore because of the absolute flood of people submitting such a vast range of things all the time. It’s hard to provide something fresh. Something that hasn’t been done a thousand times over. Especially in a niche like Internet marketing, with pop culture and gaming it’s not so hard. It’s just about being the first to break a good story. Submissions about Half Life 3 get huge because people can’t wait for it so they salvage any info they can on it. But to come back to Internet marketing, so much has been repeatedly said on the same shit; over and over. It’s hard to provide something interesting enough to get dugg by the masses. But none the less, submit any of your good stuff. Because you never know!

6. Email Your Best Work to Other Bloggers

I had never really done email marketing before this blog. I did quite a big push not too long ago which I also posted about. I think email marketing can be really effective if done right, you need to market to the right people and be persistent but I think it can pay off. Don’t be annoying about it by emailing bloggers every day or week with your work but you could try a realistic email marketing schedule of once a month. Just contact some top bloggers or authoritative bloggers in your niche every now and then. As long as your emails aren’t spammy or demanding then I don’t see why they would mind. I don’t mind it if I receive articles from people. As long as it’s decent content, it’s no harm. So set aside some time, get some contacts rounded up and start some email marketing for your blog!

7. Have an Eye Catching Design

There are so many boring and generic blogs around using the same free templates or standard layouts. Having an eye catching design separates you, aesthetically at least, from these blogs. Blogs that stand out, get readers. Blogs that stand out, get comments. Blogs that stand out… make money. Help your blog stand out by getting a professional design. You can either:

- Get a free template and edit it to suit your style.
- Pay a designer to create a unique one from scratch.
- Design your own template, from scratch.

Either way, you should aim at having a blog design that people look at and think “I would like this on my blog” it’s designs like that which increase revenue and return traffic. It also adds a lot to the perception of your professionalism.

8. Use Images in Your Posts

A very well known mini-booster in traffic. But it can be a bigger booster if tapped into correctly. Putting images in your posts works on two levels to bring you traffic and to keep traffic interested in your posts. Firstly it helps the generic appeal of your posts, images that catch the eye will invoke a reaction from a reader, giving them the opportunity to read on. Original art is the best, if you can design; you should create some nice images of your own to make your posts even more unique. Secondly, images will bring traffic from image searches if tagged and optimized. Try and use images whenever you can to enhance your posts.

9. Interview Well Known Bloggers

By interviewing well known bloggers, you give your readers a peak into the mind of a successful blogger. In effect: giving them a peak into the secret of success. Getting well known bloggers to do an interview for your blog isn’t always the easiest task, but can be done. Just approach them, no matter how big; they are only human. They’re not celebrities or scholars, they just have a popular blog! it’s nothing to be afraid of. Don’t be afraid of rejection because it will happen, in more areas than not. But just approach whoever you want to get honestly and abruptly and ask them. So far for Internet Babel I have interviewed: Shoemoney, John Chow and John Cow. How did I get them? I asked. And the Shoemoney and John Chow interviews provided a nice little surge of traffic at the time.

10. Be Fresh

Posting non-stop opinion and news on popular topics is almost a surefire way to gain traction, in terms of the content. But sometimes it can pay to be a bit more unique and creative. Constantly writing about topics people are always talking about, on a broad level probably will bring you consistent traffic, but sooner or later your blog will become a second rate news filter. There are already huge news sites where people can check news and what not, as well as Google News. Now if you’re giving an individual perspective on some news, I think that’s fine. But always remember to be creative with what you post, look at other blogs and do things that they aren’t. Be fresh and creative and reap the rewards.

11. Find a Niche and Stick to it

Some bloggers can diverse a bit too much sometimes. If your blog is about sewing… write about sewing and hammer the niche to death! however tedious you may tend to think non-stop on-topic blogging may come to some. That’s what you should be aiming for! an absolute authority blog, by slowly slipping into other topics with your niche blog, you end up spreading yourself thin. Slowly becoming confused about what you really want your blog to say or be about. If you have a niche blog, hammer it. Stick it out and you will begin to love writing about that defined topic more and more, it’ll become a writing obsession. But a good one!

12. Post Regularly

Obviously, posing regularly is the backdrop to great content. The content needs to be great but posting regularly is a feat within itself. After a while, due to lack of results – most bloggers just give up. Thus their blog slowly but surely dies. Make sure you post regularly to stop this from happening to your blog! even if you feel writers block is present, try and get something of some relevance out. Rack your brains to come out with more content because content wins but regular content rules.

13. Don’t Post too Much

As a sort of ironic contradiction to the above point, posting too much I think can also have a negative effect. Try and post regularly but not so much as to the point of overloading your readers with so much information that they don’t have time to read it. I have trouble keeping up with some popular blogs posting 2, 3, 4 times a day. I’d say 4 a day should be a realistic limit, anything above that and I think people will just get sick of plowing through it all. Provide your great content in doses not overdoses.