Internet Panaromic Observer's Digest *(IPOD)* 网络全观者文摘

Friday, June 16, 2006

大马人如何合法地从Paypal和Clickbank拿钱出来

如果你是大马人(马来西亚人),想要在网上卖属于自己的资讯产品(infoproduct)比如说电子书,往往我们会遇到一个很头痛的问题:外国公司不信任马来西亚人的诚信度,因为信用卡欺诈事件( Freud Case)太多……

这导致作为马来西亚人,我们要收款很不方便。


Paypal虽然可以用来收钱,但是却不能够在马来西亚银行提款兑现的,你知道吗?

Clickbank是世界上最大的电子书(ebook)交易平台,但是却不接受大马人的申请你知道吗?


而clickbank最方便的地方在于,它能够帮你卖电子书,并且计算你的联属营销伙伴(Affiliate Partner)得到多少佣金,自动计算并且发放那笔钱给你这个作者,和给他这个伙伴,而不用你操心!

没了Paypal和Clickbank,大马人的网上交易多有不便,要提款、撤资十分麻烦!

现在好了,前几天有个大马人写了一本电子书,指导马来西亚人如何从Paypal,遵循合法的管道拿钱出来!并且,如何用合法的手段,巧妙地加入Clickbank!电子书发行的第一天我就马上买下了,因为紫雨在找这方面的资讯已经很久了。

如果你想要进行网上交易,并且成为"资讯创业家"(Infopreneur),我想这本电子书可能会好像适合我一样,也适合你!

有兴趣的人可以找我购买,我会卖得比原价更低,给你折扣,如果你是我博客的读者的话。

电子书下载地址(在我的GP论坛):http://www.googlepenang.com/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=2936

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Thursday, June 08, 2006

赞助软件,从自己开始

上一次捐赠给两位wordpress的plugin软件作者之后,紫雨今天又捐赠给一个wordpress的plugin软件作者,表达我对他的敬意与谢意:Subsriber Only 的作者,Edwards。凑巧的是:他的博客用的风格主题跟我的是同一个:大世纪(Tarski)

你捐赠过给任何一个软件作者吗?如果没有,请把你的赏识用少少钱表达出来,他们会感受到用户们的肯定,他们会很兴奋,你会给他们继续开发软件的更大的原动力……

(转载自网上创业教战手册

Sunday, May 28, 2006

如何开始网上创业?一个无法给出一个答案的问题!

这几天开始沉淀自己,在设计网上创业教战手册的架构,要涵盖什么、不涵盖什么,呈现的次序、流程。

这时候有一个很有趣的现象:我发现到,当我想要尝试解答"如何开始网上创业",或者"网上创业要从哪里开始"这问题的时候,我无法单纯的给出一个答案。这种情形就好象是,我以前读中学的时候,有时候数学的某个解法,会得出 三个可能的答案,而三个同时都是对的一样。

我在上次的播客曾经提到这种"无法给出唯一解"的为难,有兴趣的人可以去下载来收听:播客3:网上创业要从哪里开始?

于是我联想到,一个好的老师,她最重要要做的是,引导学生自己思考,给出属于自己的答案,而不是用某个特定的标准答案来"喂养",要学生接受"问题只有一个答案"的信念。

是的,什么问题都好,要给出属于自己的答案,因为活着的目的不是复制别人的历史,而是创造自己的荣耀。我不是慷慨激昂的说,我是冷静清醒地说。

我们真的应该走出一条属于自己的路来,而不只是重复别人的!

创业,我们不只是要赚到钱,我们也要赚到探索未知的骄傲,开创未有的荣耀

那我们的人生将会是无憾的。

如何开始网上创业?站在不同起点的人期待不同的答案。


第一种境界"方法":人们希望听到的是,具体的"做法"是什么,他们希望自己能够直接跳到行动去

第二种境界"兵法":人们希望听到的是,运筹的"策略"是什么,他们希望能够以更少得更多

第三种境界"心法":人们希望听到的是,眼界的"盲点"是什么,他们希望能够突破瓶颈,走出死循环


处在第一种境界的人,你回答第二种境界或第三种境界的答案,他无法得到受用。反之亦然。

既然我无法给出一种答案,所以我只好分开,个别针对这三种人设计不同层次的教程。如此,人们则可以根据自己的需要,决定自己需要进修的是哪个部分。

超出或低于你所处的境界的,你都很难得到受用。

在学习方面,没有什么比"受用"更重要!因为惟其受用,你才能"学以致用"

(转载自:网上创业教战手册

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Thursday, May 04, 2006

Skypecast-web conferencing support up to 100 people

Web Conferencing Tools News and Reviews / Skypecast - a new way to do Web Conferences

Skypecast - a new way to do Web Conferences


Skype has been a great tool to do small Web Conferences of 5-10 people. Today it got better. Together with the upgrade to it's flagship service Skype today has announced a preview new moderated Skypecast Web Conferencing service.

The service will allow the groups of up to 100 persons to do a live Web Conferences through their Skype client software. These Skypecast Web Conferences will be moderated events where various communities can meet and discuss their shared interests.

A person hosting the event will have to schedule a Skypecast Web Conference on Skype site and announce it to interested participants. Members of the community then will be able to register and participate in the live Web Conference. The host will become a Web Conference moderator who is able pass "virtual microphone" to participants, mute, eject or encourage conversations.

Skype Cast Web Conferences are free events and any Skype user can create one. All you have to do is login into Skypecast service with your Skype ID, describe what the Skypecast is about and schedule it. It then gives any registered Skype user possibility to join Web Conference. All you need to do is send out invitations, announce on your website or forum or just wait for Skype users to find your Web Conference though Skypecast directory.

Skypecast Web Conferencing service currently is being tested with Six Apart, creator of popular Movable Type and Type Pad blogging service/software and there are about 50 Skypecasts available at the moment at skypecasts.skype.com.


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Sunday, April 30, 2006

Podcasting Market Update - By Feedburner

Burning Questions - The Official FeedBurner Weblog: Expanding Universe: Podcasting Market Update

Expanding Universe: Podcasting Market Update

Podcasting - fad or changing media landscape? (Disclaimer: the Web 2.0 police require the use of "changing media landscape" and/or "mash-up" in all communications). As discussion about the growth of podcasting percolates in the industry, we thought it was a good time to release some statistics from the point of view of the world's largest manager of podcast feeds (ahem, over here, that's us). After just 18 months since enclosures started finding their way onto iPods everywhere, podcasting has already made a significant impact on the creation and consumption of content worldwide. Consider:

  1. FeedBurner alone manages more podcasts than there are radio stations worldwide (yep, we looked it up)
  2. Podcasting is outpacing the speed of adoption of the last "most successful consumer product launch in history" (more on that in a minute)
  3. Podcast directories are growing, and driving activity back to podcasters' originating Web sites. As we saw with text feeds, distribution begins as a mechanism to drive traffic back to the originating source and then evolves to become its own consumption medium

First, The Bigger Picture
At the time of this update, more than 168,000 publishers (bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers) call FeedBurner home. This translates to over a quarter of a million feeds under FeedBurner management, and over 60 million feed requests a day by an aggregate subscriber base in excess of 11 million. FeedBurner's global market stats continue to paint a picture of steady growth across all flavors of feeds - text, audio and video. Podcast feeds (those that contain a media enclosure) represent just under 20% of all FeedBurner feeds and this percentage is consistent with the more than 1,000 new feeds created every day at feedburner.com.

More Podcasts Than Radio Stations Worldwide
FeedBurner recently surpassed a major milestone of 44,000 podcast feeds under management which, according to the CIA World Factbook, exceeds the total number of radio stations worldwide. Since our last update on the topic, the creation of podcast feeds has averaged 15% growth month over month. You can get a sense for this growth by reviewing the chart below. Or, if you prefer a more active audio/visual experience, check out Feedstorm. Or, you can ignore both and just trust us.

People Are Tuning In
Podcast listenership may have a long way to go before catching up to the U.S. radio audience, but while radio audience is declining, podcast circulation is consistently growing nearly 20% per month. Today, there are more than 1.6 million aggregate subscribers to FeedBurner-managed podcasts, and this number has more than doubled in the past six months. Since we recently started tracking podcast downloads within feeds, we've also seen the ratio of downloads to subscribers average 2:1, suggesting a significant secondary market for podcast listenership beyond just the feed's subscribers. (For more on this, see "Uncommon Uses" below.)

Audience size runs the gamut. Some podcasts have a very large audience, like NPR's On The Media from WNYC, New York Public Radio, with more than 16,000 loyal subscribers (and as many as 40,000 who download media right from the Web site). Others are more personal podcasts created to keep friends and family up to date. While iTunes is the clear favorite for podcast subscribers, a healthy 43% of the market listens (or watches) their favorite podcasts using other applications. That said, the two most significant jumps in podcast circulation in the past 18 months can both be tied to iTunes: In July, when iTunes 4.9 launched with podcasting support, and the end of last year, when millions of people unwrapped an iPod (Apple sold 14 million iPods in Q4 last year).

Success, As Defined by History
Another promising indicator of the success of podcasting is its comparison to another media technology shift that received a lot of hype in its early days: The DVD. Back in 2000, the DVD format, just 3 years old at the time, was declared the most successful product launch in consumer electronics history, outselling the VCR five to one. Using these statistics as a benchmark, in less than two years, the number of podcasts available online is tenfold that of DVD titles in nearly half the time. In fact, at the 18-month mark for DVDs, there were fewer than 3,000 DVD titles available, and an install base of under 1.5m.

Is it fair to compare podcasting to the DVD? After all, DVD production is an expensive technology, developed to aid in the distribution of movies. Podcasts can be about anything, created by anyone, and can cost next to nothing to produce. But that's part of the point: Advances in technology, the wide availability of audio creation tools, ease of podcast configuration and distribution using services like SmartCast, aided by a passionate group of content creators have helped to fuel this growth. With the media landscape shifting from a centrally managed business to one in which anyone can be a content producer, podcasting demonstrates just how far we've come in a short five years.

One DVD Site Makes the Transition to New Media
Geoff Kleinman is in perhaps the best position to observe this transition. As DVDs and DVD players were first gaining traction in the market, Geoff launched DVD Talk, an online resource to help people decide what to watch on DVD. The site includes detailed reviews, columns and DVD Talk Radio, a weekly podcast with periodic interviews with Academy Award winning directors, comedians and other entertainment-related folk. Today, as a default feed on MyYahoo!, there are more than 67,000 subscribers to the DVD Talk feed, a number that is quickly gaining on the 90,000 subscribers to the online magazine's weekly email newsletter. DVD Talk is averaging about 15 million page views per month and the DVD Talk Radio podcast reaches over 1,500 listeners per week.

Uncommon Uses
Looking beyond simple subscriber numbers, FeedBurner's StandardStats service reveals "Uncommon Uses," which are often surprising details about podcast consumption that have been completely overlooked in the podcast adoption discussion. A growing number of sites are resyndicating podcast feed content, going far beyond what we traditionally think of as a subscriber. For DVD Talk Radio, this insight reveals a number of podcast directories generating a sizable amount of traffic on behalf of the DVD Talk feed (see here and here for two examples). One directory alone generated over 6,000 views of DVD Talk Radio episodes, and the directories are averaging a click-through rate back to the DVD Talk Radio Web site of .8%.

Is this the industry norm? Not yet. (That's why we call them uncommon uses.) But it illustrates how the viral nature of distributed media can significantly expand a potential market - and as the number of popular podcasts hosted through FeedBurner continues to increase, it's a pattern that is often repeated.

Podcast Content to Suit a Range of Interests
As you might expect, FeedBurner's 47,000+ podcasts cover every possible subject. In addition to the legion of vibrant independent podcasters, mainstream sites like Newsweek On Air, Sound Opinions, the world's only broadcast rock and roll talk show and Australia's multilingual broadcaster SBS Corporation are also leveraging the magic of FeedBurner's SmartCast service to optimize their content for distribution far and wide (and when we say "the magic of FeedBurner's SmartCast service", we mean magic not as in "how did they do that" but as in "oooooh, pretty", you know, like fireworks). Accident Hash, a Boston-based show hosted by C.C. Chapman strives to give a voice to independent artists around the globe. And even traditional marketers are diving in, uncovering creative ways to promote their feeds and drive subscribers to new audio content. For example, Castrol SYNTEC recently launched a series of podcasts to give listeners insights on racing, cars & music, and of course, motor oil! Keeping with the automotive theme, Matt Borland - the pit crew chief for the No. 12 Alltel Dodge racing team - uses a weekly podcast to connect with fans by providing exclusive insider recaps of each NASCAR Cup Series race, commentary on NASCAR's hot topics, emerging trends in the sport and a preview of the upcoming races.

Finding and subscribing to podcasts is getting easier too. More and more directories are aggregating and categorizing podcast feeds. Several directories including PodNova and Podfeed offer FeedBurner-specific ranking based on those podcasters who have made their subscriber statistics public. (FeedBurner podcasters can make sure they are listed by activating the Awareness API within the "Publicize" tab).

First Walk, Then Run
While all of this rapid adoption is exciting, it's clear that we are still in the early stages of podcast's emergence as a sustainable medium. As the audience continues to grow - and the past 18 months are a reasonable basis for some predictions - we expect to see more hockey-stick-like charts and continued fragmentation in the consumption of the content. In the new world, media is transformed from a "hits" business, in which there are very few content producers with millions of readers/listeners/viewers and no other participants, to a long tail of millions of content producers with reader/listener/viewer numbers ranging anywhere between zero and millions. Podcasting appears to be set to follow this pattern.

Though we're certain all of our podcasters do it for love, we know that many will want to find ways to make money from their hard work. For them, we have good news. Later this year, we will be expanding the FeedBurner Ad Network to include advertising opportunities for rich media feed publishers, with specific programs that will embrace this growing medium and provide it with the tools to integrate podcasting into publishers' digital media strategies for audience measurement and monetization.

Before the end of the year, FeedBurner will likely manage well over 100,000 podcasts representing upwards of 5 million subscribers. The more feeds that run through FeedBurner, the more visibility we have into the shifting dynamics of content consumption, and the more insight we'll give publishers about their content. In the meantime, while the audience continues to grow, podcasters will continue to require tools that make the management, measurement, mashing up and delivery of their content even easier. Having now satisfied the Web 2.0 police (we wedged "mash-up" in there at the last minute), we'll now get back to delivering the podcasts.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Blogging for Beginners: ProBlogger Blog Tips

Blogging for Beginners: ProBlogger Blog Tips

Blogging for Beginners

Blogging BasicsWelcome to my Blogging for Beginners Series.

Over the next weeks I will be presenting an introduction to blogging that will help PreBloggers and NewBloggers unpack some of the basics of blogging.

The series is based largely upon the questions I regularly receive from newer bloggers.

By no means do I want to come across as the all knowing expert in this series - I’m very aware of my own limitations as a blogger and strongly believe that it is only collectively as a group that we really know anything. As a result I’d encourage everyone (beginners or old hands) to see each post in this series as an invitation to share what you know on the topics we cover. As we all contribute what we know I’m confident that we’ll all learn and create a useful resource for bloggers starting out.

By the way - if you enjoy these posts and want to keep in touch with ProBlogger subscribe to our weekly email update and/or track us by our RSS feed.

Blogging for Beginners - The Posts So Far

Introductory Posts

Blog Design

Writing Content

Making Money from Blogs

Blog Networks

Other Beginner Topics

A few readers have approached me to ask if they can submit posts to this series. At this point I’m going to say no - but towards the end of the series I’ll reconsider this when we see what topics we’ve not yet covered.

The series will probably go for 2 weeks with at least one post per day with each listed below on this post (so bookmark this page). Between ‘beginner’ posts will be the normal array of ProBlogging posts. If you’re not a beginner and don’t want to contribute to the back to basics conversations I hope you’ll find that there is plenty of other things to keep you interested.

The series that follows is a combination of types of posts that includes:

  • New Posts on topics I’ve not written about before
  • New Posts on topics I have written about before
  • Re-Posts - older posts that I still feel are relevant for new bloggers
  • Guest Posts from other bloggers who know more about a particular topic than I do.
  • Open Mike Discussions (I’m not sure which topics to do these on yet, but am pretty sure there will be a number of them)

Blogging for Beginners: ProBlogger Blog Tips

Blogging for Beginners: ProBlogger Blog Tips

Blogging for Beginners

Blogging BasicsWelcome to my Blogging for Beginners Series.

Over the next weeks I will be presenting an introduction to blogging that will help PreBloggers and NewBloggers unpack some of the basics of blogging.

The series is based largely upon the questions I regularly receive from newer bloggers.

By no means do I want to come across as the all knowing expert in this series - I’m very aware of my own limitations as a blogger and strongly believe that it is only collectively as a group that we really know anything. As a result I’d encourage everyone (beginners or old hands) to see each post in this series as an invitation to share what you know on the topics we cover. As we all contribute what we know I’m confident that we’ll all learn and create a useful resource for bloggers starting out.

By the way - if you enjoy these posts and want to keep in touch with ProBlogger subscribe to our weekly email update and/or track us by our RSS feed.

Blogging for Beginners - The Posts So Far

Introductory Posts

Blog Design

Writing Content

Making Money from Blogs

Blog Networks

Other Beginner Topics

A few readers have approached me to ask if they can submit posts to this series. At this point I’m going to say no - but towards the end of the series I’ll reconsider this when we see what topics we’ve not yet covered.

The series will probably go for 2 weeks with at least one post per day with each listed below on this post (so bookmark this page). Between ‘beginner’ posts will be the normal array of ProBlogging posts. If you’re not a beginner and don’t want to contribute to the back to basics conversations I hope you’ll find that there is plenty of other things to keep you interested.

The series that follows is a combination of types of posts that includes:

  • New Posts on topics I’ve not written about before
  • New Posts on topics I have written about before
  • Re-Posts - older posts that I still feel are relevant for new bloggers
  • Guest Posts from other bloggers who know more about a particular topic than I do.
  • Open Mike Discussions (I’m not sure which topics to do these on yet, but am pretty sure there will be a number of them)

WSJ.com - Can Bloggers Make Money?

WSJ.com - Can Bloggers Make Money?

Can Bloggers Make Money?
April 19, 2006

[nowides]

Blogs have a lot of buzz, but there's still considerable debate about whether that can translate into profits.

While many blogs remain little more than amateur diaries, several bloggers have tried to parlay their online ramblings into branded businesses. One, Jason Calacanis, co-founded Weblogs Inc., a network of blogging sites that was acquired last year by AOL. Mr. Calacanis has been an outspoken proponent of blogs as business vehicles, arguing that quality content can drive enough traffic to attract advertisers.

But longtime Internet entrepreneur Alan Meckler is skeptical. Mr. Meckler, who is chief executive of Jupitermedia Inc., believes that some blogs may achieve a measure of success, but doubts most blogs will be able to generate meaningful profits.

The two agreed to debate the issue for the Online Journal, and their email exchange is below.

[Alan Meckler]

Alan Meckler writes: Jason, few people if any will ever make money from writing a blog. One way to make money is to create a "blog network" as you did with your Weblogs Inc., which was sold to AOL a while back. This idea can work, but blogs in such networks are cherry-picked by skilled business people such as yourself. Therefore most blogs are not commercially viable.

[Jason Calacanis]

Jason Calacanis writes: Alan, you are correct that the best model for making money from blogs is by "curating" and grouping them like we did at Weblogs. Engadget, Autoblog, and Joystiq have become the largest blogs in their verticals because we've packaged, marketed and sold them better than any one individual blogger ever could.

THE PARTICIPANTS
Alan Meckler, a longtime Internet entrepreneur, is chief executive of Jupitermedia Corp., an Internet media research and marketing firm he acquired in 2002. The company recently sold its research arm to focus more on running its collection of Web sites aimed at technology professionals (including internet.com) and selling online images. Prior to running Jupiter, Mr. Meckler owned a series of Internet businesses, including Mecklermedia, which he sold to Penton Media Inc. in 1998 for $274 million. Mr. Meckler frequently comments on the Internet industry through his blog at weblogs.jupitermedia.com/meckler.
Jason Calacanis is CEO of Weblogs Inc., a blog network Mr. Calacanis co-founded in 2003 that includes the popular technology site Engadget. His company was bought by AOL in 2005 (terms weren't disclosed, though a person familiar with the deal put the price at around $25 million). Before Weblogs, Mr. Calacanis was founder and editor of the magazine Silicon Alley Reporter, which folded in 2001. He then launched and sold VentureReporter, which has since been acquired by Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal and Online Journal. Mr. Calacanis maintains a blog at calacanis.com.

Now we've taken that to the next level and are offering our blogs along with AOL's massive reach. Major advertisers that are doing seven- and eight-figure advertising deals with AOL can now add a couple of blogs to their marketing program in the same buy. We call this our "reach and niche" program and we're hitting the ball out of the park with it. As we all know marketers are looking for efficiency.

When it comes to individual bloggers they have many choices now that include blogging for a network or going solo. Many bloggers are in fact making money with the automated advertising tools that never existed when I started publishing in the 1990s -- let alone when you started publishing in the 1980s. :)

Today you can start a blog, build an audience, and give the advertising slots to AdBrite or Google AdSense. With three or four ad slots you're gonna do a $3 to $10 RPM (revenue per 1,000 pages viewed) with these automated tools on average. So, if you can do 500,000 pages a month -- which isn't easy -- you can make $1,500 to $5,000 a month. That's today and without a sales person. That number will go up over time and some folks might even be able to hire a dedicated sales person at some point. Solo blogging is starting to pay rates similar to the smaller media outlets (think local newspaper or a small magazine). Walt Mossberg might not be running out the door to start a blog, but it's only a matter of time in my mind.

[Alan Meckler]

Alan Meckler writes: Jason, good stuff as usual for one so sharp and original! But look at the number you have in your reply --- 500,000 per month (page views) is virtually unattainable for 99.999% of all bloggers.

My blog only gets about 300,000 per month -- so with your model I might make enough money per month to buy a candy bar. And I have the advantage of getting promotion through the Internet.com home page as well as many links to other bloggers.

Your concepts are good, but once again only for a selected few.

[Jason Calacanis]

Jason Calacanis writes: With 300,000 pages in the B2B [business to business] space you could RPM at $15-$50. That's $4,500 to $15,000 a month, or around $50,000 to $180,000 a year. You make $242,000 a year according to Yahoo Finance -- the candy bar gap is closing!

SHARE YOUR VIEW
[Reply All icon]
Can the buzz generated by blogs translate into profits? Join a discussion.

However, you are correct that the majority of folks are not going to make a living from blogs, but that's because they choose not to try, not because they couldn't. If folks focus in on a niche and own it there is a good chance they could make half a living from blogging.

The online advertising market is going to grow to $18.9 billion in 2010 according to some company called Jupiter Research I found on Google. :-)

That means we are going to add $1.5 billion a year in advertising to the Internet. That money needs to go somewhere and I think blogs and citizens media could take 10%-20% of that. Right now the homepages of the big three are sold out at very high rates (Yahoo, AOL, and MSN). There is a major inventory problem on the Internet and the reason that Google has done so well is that they are spreading that money out over hundreds of thousands of sites which carry Google AdSense.

The fact is that the "long tail" of sites is largely unmonetized. Over the next five to 10 years, Google AdSense, Weblogs Inc., Yahoo Publisher Network, AOL's white-labeled version of AdSense, and Microsoft's "AdSense killer" will enable the monetization of a lot of those smaller sites.

Look at MySpace, they are the number two site on the Internet but they are making $13 million a month. They probably have the lowest RPM in the history of the Internet! That means they have a lot of growth ahead of them. Of course, the fact is they moved instant messaging to the Web (talk about back to the future!), which is largely responsible for their page growth. If you took the number of IMs on AIM and [Yahoo Messenger] and put them on the Web, they would be the number one and two sites on the Internet tomorrow... So, I'm not that impressed, frankly.

In fact, I think based on this email conversation we're gonna start a repping business for smaller blogs.

[Alan Meckler]

Alan Meckler writes: Jason, compelling data and information once again! Perhaps I should sell Jupitermedia and become a full-time blogger? With you repping me my life would be much easier!

But getting back to earth -- the monthly revenue sum for my blog would be within a Weblogs Inc. type environment? Again making it the non-typical blog. In fact in a small way your data makes me an "elite" blogger.

Take MySpace -- I read yesterday in the N.Y. Times that they have 50 million in the community. Every member can launch a blog with little or no difficulty. Blog growth is and will be huge. But again, while a very select few of the blogs will make significant money, most will never be worth anything because their information is worthless and therefore they will garner few monthly page views.

Blogs are fun for someone who wants a pulpit and does not care about making money. Blogs are really the "diaries" of yesteryear. Social historians of the future will have a field day mining blogs for nuggets of the mores of present day civilization. But in terms of making money from blogs, I doubt they will be anything more than an interesting subset of Internet ad revenue.

P.S. Interesting to note that my spell checker does not recognize "blog."

[Jason Calacanis]

Jason Calacanis writes: OK, I think we've reached entrepreneurial stasis on this one: The majority will not make a living off blogging, some will. Time will tell how big the some market is, hundreds or hundreds of thousands. I'm going with the latter.

[Alan Meckler]

Alan Meckler writes: Blogs are really diaries or microcosms of what is happening in millions of ways in daily life -- ranging from special interests to business specialties to whatever. Obviously there is money to be made with blogs, but very, very few will bring in more than a few hundred dollars per year.

Jason created a great business model in aggregating blogs. But here again the opportunities to replicate this model will be few and far between -- the reason being that such a model requires at least one or two anchor blogs that will be attractive to advertisers. Much like great magazine empires that offer magazine networks only a few of the magazines are big winners -- these big winners help support the weaker magazines -- same with blogs.

Search Engine Optimization for Blogs ~ ISEdb.COM

Search Engine Optimization for Blogs ~ ISEdb.COM

Whether it’s a corporate blog, a news-type blog, or even a personal blog, optimizing your blog for the search engines is a must. There are some simple changes that you can make to WordPress and Moveable Type that will make your blog more search engine friendly and make the search engines beg for more (more post and content, that is!).

Optimizing a blog is just like optimizing any other website. The content and pages (posts) must be unique, they must be search engine friendly, and it needs links from other websites. If it’s a new blog, then you first need to make sure the blog software you’re using is set up so that it takes advantage of all of the possible optimization features. Then, announce it to the world, work on getting some links to it, and start making posts.

WordPress Optimization

If you’re using WordPress for your blog software, it’s important to make sure that your site is search engine friendly, meaning that it can easily be spidered by the search engine spiders. Just like optimizing a website, it’s important to have good title tags and meta tags. Keep in mind that blog software usually uses the title of your post as the title tag, so include keywords in your titles as much as possible.

It’s important to set up your blog’s software so that the URLs don’t contain a lot of variables. Instead, use URLs that include the post title or post name in them. For example, if you’re using WordPress you’ll need to set the permalinks so that it uses %postname% in the URL. You can also set up a specific category for the post archives, and you might consider using a keyword that’s related to your blog instead of the default, which is typically the word “archive”.

Fintan Darragh of www.dech.co.uk has a great blog post called “Ultimate WordPress SEO Tips”. Mr. Darragh talks about permalink optimization and says, “The goal: stick more keywords up into the URL and remove the faff which nobody uses, to make the URL search engine and people attractive. Having keywords in your URL is an absolute must, especially when it’s as easy as WordPress makes it.” He also goes on to talk about getting rid of useless tags like the month, day, and year, as well as one important detail: whatever you do stick with the site structure you choose-otherwise you might end up with a lot of useless links to your site. Other tips that Mr. Darragh mentions are optimizing your page titles and your post titles--and installing a few plugins that are useful such as the “Related Posts Plugin” and the “Technorati Tag Generator”.

There are several other places where you can get specific tips about setting up WordPress in a search engine friendly manner, including:

One of the best tutorials out there is one called “DYI Search Engine Optimization” by Lorelle VanFossen. Specifically, Lorelle (lorelle.WordPress.com) has some great tips, including how to optimize your code, develop strong intrasite links, write with strong keyword usage, use categories and tags, and how to use ping services. Lorelle says that “the goal is to help search engine crawlers move through your website collecting information to be stored in the search engine’s database. The key to your blog’s data making it successfully into a search engine’s database is to:

  1. Make sure there are no road blocks in the path of a search engine crawler.
  2. Make sure the crawler can move through your blog, examining all your web pages.
  3. Provide adequate keywords and key phrases which clearly help categorize your content.
  4. Provide clearly labeled tags and categories recognized by tagging service crawlers and many search engines today.
  5. Take advantage of pinging services.”

There are several WordPress Plugins available that will help you take advantage of internal linking (like the Related Posts Plugin) which will link to other posts in your blog that are on the same topic. Other plugins that might be helpful are plugins that automatically generate a Google Sitemap file as well as plugins that help you categorize the site such as the WordPress Subdomain Plugin.

Movable Type Optimization

If you’re using Movable Type for your blog software, then it’s also important to make sure that your site is search engine friendly and can be spidered by the search engine spiders. Just like optimizing a website, it’s important to have good title tags and meta tags. Keep in mind that blog software usually uses the title of your post as the title tag, so include keywords in your titles as much as possible.

Miles Evans says that “Movable Type is optimized quite well out of the box, but there are a few quick tricks to easily providing the spiders with some dynamic content.”He goes on to say that you need to optimize your template. “For my main home page and category index pages I hardcode most of my meta data. Your meta tags will be at the top of the template within the tag. You can get fancy on your index pages but I cannot really see why. Optimize these two templates by hand for whatever keywords you are targeting site wide.” Mr. Evans also has another article titled, “Best Movable Type Plugins” that talks about his favorite plugins that help him get great search engine rankings. His favorite Movable Type Plugins for SEO

Search Engine Optimisation refers to the process of optimising a Web site so that it appears prominently in search engine results for specific keywords. Search Engine Optimisation may involve modifying the markup of a site to make it more Search Engine Friendly, which is free, or it may involve paying search engines or directories for inclusion. Some Search Engine Optimisation techniques are frowned upon because they involve trying to \'mislead\' the search engines into believing your site is more relevant to a search term than it really is.'); return false">SEO
are Dashify, MTPaginate, MT Blogroll, MT InlineEditor, MT-Textile, BigPAPI, as well as Ajaxify (a set of plugins that adds several ajax/javascript widgets into the Movable Type interface), CheckLinks, FormatList v1.0, and Better File Uploader for uploading files.

Nicholas Carvan has a great article about Movable Type optimization called “Optimizing your Movable Type blog for Google”. In it he talks about PageRank (and how it relates to your internal linking on your blog), having keywords in your URL (which is important for all blog optimization) and blogrolling. He defines the term blogrolling very well, saying, “Blogrolling: Inbound links are gold, but in Google's eyes, not all links are equal. In particular, Google isn't wild about links contained within JavaScript - apparently they can index them, but that doesn't mean they always want to.”

Once you’ve set up and configured your blog’s software, it’s important to make sure that you leave it alone-if you change your page URLs then any links that you’ve received from other bloggers may not be valid anymore. If you need to change your site’s structure (perhaps you’ve been blogging already and wish to use the tips from this article to optimize your blog), then you might want to take a look at the Objection Redirection WordPress Plugin if you’re using WordPress. The Objection Redirection Plugin gives you a simple interface to redirect users (and search engine bots) to the proper page, especially if you’ve changed your site’s structure.

Start Blogging

The best thing you can do is to start blogging. Go ahead and post to your heart’s content and write, write, write about your topic. The more content you can provide the better-and it seems as if adding content on a regular basis really helps, as well. Feel free to link out to other blog posts that are related to the topic you’re writing about. For example, before you publish a post, go on over to your favorite blog search engine and find another recent post on the same subject-and link to the post. Linking out to other bloggers will get their attention, and hopefully they’ll end up linking to you as well. If other bloggers have trackbacks turned on then their blog will link back to your post.Some trackbacks are moderated, so it might take some time before your link shows up on the other blog. And some bloggers have trackbacks turned off, so a link back to your site might take some manual intervention.

Categorize your posts as much as possible, and feel free to add categories as you blog-it will help the internal linking structure of your site, and help the search engines and users find on-topic posts.

Promoting Your Blog

Whenever you make a post in your blog, your blog software will attempt to ping certain sites to let them know that you just updated your blog. There are many blog ping services out there, including Ping-O-Matic and Pingoat. Your blog software can be configured to ping sites automatically, and I’ve posted a list for WordPress of ping services on by blog.

If your blog is new or you would like to get some more links, you can submit your blog to blog directories as well as other sites that will list your blog (don’t forget to submit to DMOZ.org, Yahoo! Directory, and the Best of the Web Blog Directory). About.com has a great article about promoting a blog and even Biz Stone has great tutorial about promoting your blog. Lastly, don’t forget to turn on your blog’s RSS feed. And if you’re looking to promote your RSS feed, try searching your favorite search engine for “promote rss” to find a lot of good tutorials.

Promoting your blog is just like promoting a website-you need good spiderable content, links to your content, and you need to set up your blog software to take advantage of all the great features. There are also plugins that will help make blogging easier for all of us.



Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Pheedo Ads for WordPress Feeds

Weblog Tools Collection � Pheedo Ads for WordPress Feeds:

— Mark

Pheedo Ads for Wordpress Feeds: Pheedo has been in beta on Pheedo Ads for WordPress feeds for the past 2 months and they are officially launching this week. Now WordPress publishers can simply cut-and-paste Pheedo’s ad code snippet and they will gain both analytics and ad revenue from their RSS feeds. This enables you to launch in minutes while maintaining your existing feed URL. Pheedo’s advertisers include Microsoft, Nikon, HP, PriceGrabber, PRWeb, Snagit and many more. Their ads are category based and you decide the number of ads that you want to publish with your feeds and their ad network works on a revenue share basis. Pheedo also works well with Feedburner and other RSS analytic tools.

You can visit Pheedo’s signup page to start serving ads on your feeds.

[EDIT] Only for US TaxID holders (citizens etc.) at this time. Thanks Brendan in comments.
[EDIT] Actually, Pheedo does work with many non-US publishers. Please email contact@pheedo.com for activation.
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