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The Truth About Seth Godin and Indirect Benefits of Blogging

November 22, 07 //
5

Seth Godin on the Indirect Benefits of BloggingWhen I first took an interest in internet and marketing as a whole, people kept referring me to the blog of this guy who had posted a strange image of himself (look to the left), saying that it was a must read, because he offered great advice on the niche. That guy was of course Seth Godin.

If you are not familiar with it, I suggest that you subscribe right now, because this guy certainly knows what he is talking about. He is also the master of sticking to the point, and providing value, even with posts no longer than a single paragraph or two. Read the blog, and you will understand what I mean.

Yesterday Seth posted another short post, where he answered a question from one of his readers who asked why he doen’t monetize his blog. This was his response (full post):

Not only can’t I imagine charging for my blog, I’m practically in debt to the people who read it. I ought to pay them, not the other way around.

Certainly a noble response from a humbled person, and while it is true that his blog would most likely be non-existant had it not been for his readers, certainly there must be some incentive for Seth to keep his blog alive? After all the blog is ranked as the 16th most popular blog of them all over at Technorati.

And yes, Seth most certainly has plenty of incentives to keep posting and promoting his blog, but seeing how he doesn’t monetize it directly, it is safe to say that he is more concerned about the Indirect Benefits of Blogging, which is also sometimes referred to as the Non-Monetary Benefits of Blogging.

You see, Seth Godin is actually the author of several successful books, a renowned speaker, and on top of that founder of a online service called Squidoo. By continuously updating his blog and demonstrating his knowledge with his posts, he is reaching out to new people, and proving the worth of his other products. I know I for one learned about him for the first time through his blog, and as a result of it I have also ordered a couple of his books.

I am also willing to bet my bread and butter for the next year on the fact that I am by no means unique in this, and that Seth has sold hundreds if not thousands of copies of his books as an direct result of his blogging ventures. Are you still convinced Seth blogs because of the goodness in his heart?

Please don’t misunderstand what I am trying to point out here. There is nothing wrong with this approach, and blogging because of the indirect benefits is something that many bloggers out there should consider, especially those who brand themselves with their own names. In the long run, it can probably mean much more beneficial results than what you can harvest from a few AdSense and WidgetBucks ads on your blog.

Another great example of this is Nate Whitehill, who has even pointed out this himself at several occasions over at his own blog. Nate started blogging, and used his blog as a tool for branding himself, and when the time was right, he launched his latest project Unique Blog Designs. Needless to say it became an instant success, partly due to the work Nate had already done to promote himself and his brand through his personal blog.

There are many bloggers out there who spend too much time obsessiong over PPC clicks and the easy dollars they can generate, who could benefit from considering the potential indirect benefits their blogging ventures can give them. To help you get started, I will give you a quick guide to how you can maximize and control the indirect benefits of own blog:

  • Who are you? A big part of blogging is showing people who you are. If you make a conscious decision about who you are, and how you present yourself through your blog, people are more likely to gain a perception of you that matches how you see yourself.
  • What do you know? If you to be famous, or at least somewhat known for something, you need to identify what you know, and demonstrate that you know more than most people about a certain field. Just like Seth does with his blog and the field of marketing.
  • What do you want? Do you have anything you want to achieve by blogging? If you know what you want, it will certainly increase your chances of getting it. Are you blogging because you want to sell your books like Seth, or are you an aspiring web designer like Nate who wants to sell his work? Find out what you want, and show everybody why you should get it.

Those are the three most important things to think about if you want to directly influence the indirect benefits of your blogging efforts. It isn’t hard, it doesn’t take a whole lot of starting capital, all you really need is dedication and persistence, and your blog can get you the things you crave the most!

RealRank – A Stillborn Idea from Izea

November 17, 07 //
11

Izea LogoYesterday sparks light up the web when the guys over at Izea, PayPerPost’s parent company, announced that they would be introducing a new metric to gauge the importance and popularity of any given website called RealRank.

This is obviously a response to Google’s PageRank punishment of those who have been found selling paid post, which incidentally Izea’s core services revolve around. While it is easy to understand the reasoning behind introducing this type of feature in an attempt to step away from relying on Google’s PageRank system, this is not the way to go, and I will be more than happy to explain to you why that is the case.

First, let’s take a look at what this ranking system will be based on. The following is quoted directly from Izea’s announcement of the system:

70% weighted towards visitors per day
20% weighted towards amount of ACTIVE inbound links per day
10% weighted towards pageviews per day

It is, just as they state themselves, a relatively simple formula. Now before we jump to any conclusions, it is imperative that we consider the reasoning behind introducing this system. As it is meant to be a direct competitor to Google PageRank, and considering that the core services of Izea, as mentioned before, revolves around advertising, some obvious conclusions can be drawn.

They have previously used PageRank as a factor when pricing advertisements from any site participating in PayPerPost, and such it is reasonable to believe that Izea RealRank will aim to replace it. The first and most obvious flaw that surfaces is that it does not say anything about the value of an ad at a certain site. The reason PageRank became a powerful metric in the first place, is because it says something about how much authority Google attributes a given site, and therefore indirectly how much authority a link from that certain site will to the site at the other end of that link.

Naturally the RealRank will not give any indication of what benefits you can expect from advertising at a certain website or blog in terms of search engine rankings. Right about now you are probably ready to shout out that this new metric will still give us a good overview of the popularity of a website or blog, and that is certainly a fair point.

Unfortunately however, it is in this case moot. First and foremost because it will simply be too easy to manipulate the numbers. Anyone with $10 to spend per day can simply pay someone to do some social media manipulation which will artificially increase the number of unique visitors per day well into the thousands. Not to mention the possibilites of the numerous amount of traffic exchange programs out there, which will do the same for no cost at all.

The worst part of it all? Nobody can be accused of cheating the system here, because a rank that relies severely on unique visitors is subjected to these fundamental flaws, and that is why RealRank should not and hopefully will not be used by advertisers when shopping for adspace. If the future proves otherwise however, I can assure you that traffic and link exchange programs will get a swift and grand ressurection. Ultimately this would lead to a lot of people making much more money from their websites than they should be, and advertisers throwing their money into black holes of no return.

What is the solution then, you might ask? Well, judging from a post by Andy Beard regarding Izea’s new advertising platform Social Spark, they might actually be heading in the right direction already. Andy explains that this new platform will display current statistics such as CTR (Click Through Rates) for the site or blog to those considering investing in ads at that given site.

This is obviously what buying advertisements should be based on, because when someone wants to buy an ad, they do not do it out of generosity and because they feel a blogger deserves to afford an extra Happy Meal that day. No, they do it because they want to spend money to make more money, and click through rates and conversion rates are what gives a good indication of whether or not this is a likely outcome or not when they buy an ad.

Believe it or not, advertising at a blog with 500 dedicated readers per day can be ten times worth the money compared to advertising at a blog with 5,000 daily readers who do not notice the ads at all. And that is why we need a system that reflects the conversions, rather than another one which is really just based on artifically inflated fluff.

How to: Move your blog to a new host

November 9, 07 //
0

Move to a new hostAre you tired of your host because of too much downtime and slow loading times, but one of the many who have not made the switch to the greener grass on the other side because you are afraid of the technical difficulties of moving your blog?

If that is the case, then this quick guide is just what you need. It will show you how you can easily move your blog to a new host with just a few relatively simple steps, and it even includes a short illustrational video which highlights the steps.

The first thing you should do is to make sure that your new host has the required specifications to host a blog. In particular you want to be sure that your host supports MySQL databases, and that you will be given access to phpMyAdmin, which is the interface you will use to export the contents of your database from your old host, and import it to the one you create at your new host.

Step 1: Copy all the files of your blog from your old to your new host.

You will obviously want to include all the files of your blog at your old host. As you can see in the video, the easiest way of doing this is to simply log in to your account through FTP, and directly download all the files to your computer. Once you have successfully downloaded all files, you simply connect to your new host and upload the same files. No need to tamper with any of the files or the directory structure, just upload them just as you downloaded them.

Step 2: Create a new database at your new host.

Now that all the files are in place, the only thing that remains is to get the database ported over to your new host. What you can do is open your wp-config.php file (if you are using WordPress) and see the specifications of your old database. The easiest thing is to simply duplicate the details, and create an identical database and database-user at your new host.

This is not always possible however, because your database name and username might be given a different prefix at your new host. If that is the case, then you need to modify the information in your config file. If you do this, don’t forget to re-upload your config file and overwrite the old one, which should already be in place at your new host after completing the first step.

Step 3: Export your database from your old host.

This is often the most confusing step for those who have no experience with phpMyAdmin, the interface you use to manage your databases. Don’t be afraid however, as shown in the video, you simply login to phpMyAdmin at your old host, select your database, and go straight to the Export tab.

Once there, hit select all in the left menu, and just scroll down to the bottom. Here you will give the export of your database a new, and choose if you want to have it compressed. For no specific reason at all, I like to compress it in a tar.gz format, but it makes no practical difference whether you choose no compression, zip or gz – When importing the database, which is the next step, phpMyAdmin will automatically detect the compression and decompress it.

Step 4: Import your database at your new host.

When you’ve successfully downloaded the contents of your old database, just login to phpMyAdmin at your new host, pick the correct database and go straight to Import. Here you will be prompted to select the file with the contents of your database, which is of course stored locally at your computer. Just pick this file, and don’t worry with the other settings. Execute the import, and you will then get a short message telling you that the import has been successful.

Step 5: Update the your domain’s DNS settings.

This is the final step of the move. We have already moved the blog to your new host, and all that remains is to update the DNS (Domain Name Servers) of your domain. This is done from your control panel at your domain registrar, and not at your old host. Unless of course you registered your domain at your old host.

Once you have updated the DNS, it will take some time before your domain is actually pointing to your new host. It can take as much as up to 48-72 hours for the changes to propagate, but normally it takes no more than 24 hours.

Finally, I have included a short video documenting and showcasing the steps as I recently moved my own blog to a new host. If you have any questions regarding the procedure, don’t hesitate to ask through the comments!

Illustration icon by FastIcon

5 Successfully Executed Viral Marketing Campaigns

November 5, 07 //
18

Viral marketing, or buzz marketing if you prefer, is by no means a new thing within the marketing scene. Ever since people became employed as marketing experts, they have been tilting their heads each and every way in order to come up with new and creative ways to get people to talk about the products they are promoting.

With the exponential growth of the Internet in the past decade and a half however, the fundamentals of communication have changed radically, and the way marketing campaigns can influence customers to spread the word about various products has all of a sudden become easier to influence and predict. Because of this, the number of viral marketing campaigns has increased substantially the past few years.

The goal of viral marketing campaigns is to utilize a creative approach in order to get people to talk about (and promote) your product, and often people will not even be fully aware of what specific product they are talking about. This article examines some of the most successful viral marketing campaigns in the past few years, and as we will see there are no ends to what lengths marketers will go to in terms of creativity in order to get people to talk about a product.

1. Coca-Cola Zero (soft drink)

Coca-Cola Zero

In the spring of 2007 posters proclaiming that “Zero is More” and that “Zero will give you life as it should be” started to appear all over Northern Europe. These posters also contained a date, April 1st, and a link to a cryptic website hosted at zeroismore.xx (xx being the corresponding TLD of the countries the posters appeared in).

People began to wonder, and more importantly talk about what revolution it was that would be taking place, and all over the Internet you would find discussions pertaining to the meaning of “Zero“. Of course when people realized that it was simply a new flavor from Coca-Cola, they might have been a little disappointed. The guys behind the campaign however were most certainly pleased with the amount of buzz that was generated. As an example of how successful the campaign was, I can mention that at one point during the summer they were not able to meet the demands because they were short-supplied with the trademarked black bottle caps the Zero bottles feature.

2. Batman – The Dark Night (movie)

Batman

The movie might not be screening for another eight months, but the early marketing efforts Warner Bros have made to promote it already stands as a bright and shining example of just how effective a viral marketing campaign can be, even within a limited budget.

Starting out with only a simple teaser page featuring the image above, fans were ecstatic when they proceeded by clicking the image and found themselves redirected to a page that featured a District Attorney Election promotional poster for a known character from the Batman Universe named Harvey Dent. This page again sent us to the real trick of the campaign (a site which is no longer active), another promotional poster, only this one defaced and seemingly mockin Harvey Dent. This page would also let users interact with the campaign by entering the email address which would give them a code that would reveal a few pixels of an image hidden “under” the defaced campaign poster.

Of course people immediately spread the word in order to get the full image revealed, and within hours the page instantly became popular on various forms of social media, and generated a lot of interest from online publications including blogs and newspapers. Naturally it didn’t take more than a few hours before the entire image was exposed, and it contained a somewhat creepy rendering of Heath Ledger portraying The Joker, which is another character in the Batman Universe.

3. I Love Bees – Halo 2 (video game)

I Love Bees

The I Love Bees campaign which was launched with the initial marketing efforts of the video game Halo 2 is arguably one of the most intricate and detailed viral marketing campaigns to date. Structured as an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) the whole campaign gave no obvious mentions of any game.

It started when the first Halo 2 trailers quickly flashed a link to ILoveBees.com, a site about beekeeping that had apparently been hacked and taken over by someone who couldn’t be identified. The author, known as Dana, after finding that her site had been hacked, then created a blog asking people for help in order to get her website back.

The campaign generated a lot of attention, both from existing Halo fans, as well as new ones that were intrigued by the I Love Bees ARG. It was concluded when the players of the game were invited to a “Training Exercise“, which of course was simply a chance for those following the I Love Bees game to play Halo 2 before it was released. Participants were also given a DVD which among other things included a personal thank you message from one of the fictional characters created for the ARG.

4. Radiohead – In Rainbows (music)

Radiohead - In Rainbows

After dropping hints about a new record even though they weren’t attached to a record label, Radiohead shocked the entire music industry when they in the beginning of October this year announced that they were giving away their album for free through their website. While downloading the album, fans were given the option to donate any sum they felt appropriate.

A month later, we can already state that this is one of the most effective marketing moves in the history of music. Even within two weeks, they had “sold” over 1.2 million albums, and on average each buyer had paid $8. That is almost $9.6 million in gross, all from a marketing campaign without any middle men, and practically no budget at all. What can we learn from Radiohead here? Think different, be radical, and people will take notice. Especially if you are already one of the most popular bands in the world.

Could Radiohead have earned more money from their album by releasing it the traditional way? Probably, I honestly don’t know what they earn these days from direct CD sales. The fact is however that most large bands earn the really big money through concert tours and merchandising, and I can assure you that Radiohead have, with this unexpected move, gained a lot of attention, trust and goodwill that can not be bought for money, and their alternative income streams will most certainly reflect that.

5. Hotmail (email service)

Hotmail

One of the first marketing efforts that took full advantage of the networking powers of the Internet was Hotmail, which I’m sure everyone reading this will already know about. In December 1996 they had 500,000 registered users, and less than a year later they had over 12,000,000 users! How did they accomplish such a feat? Apart from being one of the first and most accessible free email clients online, a single stroke a genius went a long way. Each email sent from a Hotmail account included a small, subtle ad for Hotmail, and as your user-base continues to grow into the millions, this means that you get all the free ads you will ever need to succeed.

As 1998 rolled by, it was announced that software giant Microsoft had acquired Hotmail for hundreds of millions of dollars, and even though it has been challenged numerous times since then, the service still stands today as one of the world wide web’s most popular free email services. Over twelve years later, that is no small feat in the fast-paced world of the Internet, and it goes to show just how effective and powerful viral marketing can be.

TNX.net – Another way to make money online

November 2, 07 //
0

TNXAs I’ve been putting some work into this blog recently, and hope to keep that up, the results have come accordingly in terms of visitors. Because of this, I have been looking at ways I can monetize the blog (argh, yes, I do hope that it can eventually help me get my daily bread and butter), and one of the programs I’ve looked at is TNX (*) (pronounced “thanks”).

I haven’t had too much experience with the service just yet, but my initial impressions are that compared to the competing services out there which all want a piece of the advertising money we manage to bring in from our blogs, TNX has what it takes to stand out.

They present themselves as an ad-broker that combines the benefits of contextual advertising and direct text link sales, and that is quite accurate. They way it works is that instead of buying a certain text link for a certain fee, advertisers first buy points, and then use these points to purchase text links. As opposed to what we’ve gotten used to however, links aren’t purchased on a site-to-site basis, but when buying links you rather specify requirements within certain metrics (Category of site, Yahoo Backlinks and PageRank) and you then specify how many points your are willing to use.

For instance, if I want to buy links within the Business category from sites with 5,000 to 50,0000 registered backlinks in Yahoo and a PageRank of 4, I will get four text links if I spend 30,000 points, or about $38 USD. In comparison, if I just switch the PR requirement to 0, I will all of a sudden get around 2,400 text links for the same price! Right now they are even giving you a chance to get free text link ads if you list your name and TNX ID only by listing your TNX ID in a thread over at DigitalPoint.

For publishers the program is equally simple to work with. All you have to do is place a snippet of code in your footer, and you’re good to go as soon as your site is reviewed and approved. The requirements are simple enough to meet, all a site needs to qualify is to be indexed in Google.

When advertisers start buying your links from your site, your account will be credited with points, which you then can “sell” back to TNX in return for money. What’s interesting is that points are not set to a fixed value, but rather the value of the points increases as the service gains more popularity. This essentially means that you as a publisher can sign up early, earn points, and wait a while with cashing them in, and earn additional money from the inflation. According to TNX, the value of points grows with at least 2% per week.

Of course, you can do your part in making sure that the network grows and your hard earned points become more valuable by utilizing their affiliate program. This one should be a darling for people out there who have an extended network of contacts, because the terms of the program are great. When you refer a new webmaster to TNX, you will get 13.3% of all the credits that person earns with TNX, not for the next six months, not for the next year, but for as long as that person continues to earn points with TNX!

All in all, TNX looks like a real gem. At the moment they suffer a bit from a disorganized website, which initially makes it somewhat hard to get a firm graps of how things are connected and work, but I’m sure they’ll get that fixed up eventually. It will also be interesting to see how they will fare after the recent hit by Google towards blogs and websites that sell text links.

I will of course keep you updated on my experiences with TNX, and whether or not I can actually earn any money from the program, and once I start up any new ventures, I will most certainly be trying out their advertising program. In the near future, I will also be reviewing other programs I’ve tested, and see how the fare in comparison to TNX, so be sure to keep coming back, and you can even subscribe to my RSS feed to make sure you never miss an update!

(*) Referral link – I will earn money if you sign up through my referral links.

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