Not exactly.  One common mistake made by noob bloggers looking to start monetizing their sites is getting over excited by how easy it is to put up ads.

9 time out of 10, the new blogger joins every ad network they find and starts putting up one skyscraper after another.  Before you know it, there’s 8 ads on a single page from 4 different ad networks.

It’s a flashy, animated, blinking, weight loss, acai berry drinking good time all right.

Unfortunately, that means they’ve made one of the critical mistakes in blog business.  They took their eyes off the ball.

Content is your #1 priority.  Your users come first.

Don’t get me wrong, it is really exciting.  Here’s all these companies that want to hand you money just for putting their ads on your website.  Who wouldn’t get excited.  That’s why I can’t believe everyone isn’t blogging.

However, focusing all your time and attention on stuffing every available inch of your site with ads is a proven way to drive away the traffic you have worked so hard to attain.

When users feel like they are being bombarded with advertisements, they are going to get distracted from your content.  Eventually, they will lose interest.

Another problem that is often overlooked is the page load time of your site.  If you have a lot of different ad networks running on your blog, you have to make sure that they are not causing any page load delays.

Remember that each time your website is loaded by a user, a number of call outs to the ad network server are happening.  Each call out can ad loadtime and overall page weight to your site.

You can pretty easily spot these issues when you visit a poorly optimized blog.  The body content will load almost immediately.  Then it might be another second or two of delay before the right sidebars finally load.  Or perhaps only part of the sidebar loads followed a couple seconds later by the rest of it.

Page load time is a great way to drive away even more users.  The longer someone has to wait to surf around your site, the less likely they become to ever do it again.

When you are first starting out, try to resist temptation and just go with one ad network.  You can always switch or add more later.  From there, just pick 2-3 ad units and leave it at that.

There is the IAB standard pack that includes:  729×90 Leaderboard, 160×600 Skyscraper, and a 300×250 Square.  Just go with those and you will have all of the basic IAB standard sizes covered.

To sum it up, design by committee is the killer groundbreaking ideas.  Period.

Sure, some great products and/or services have come out of committees, but think how much better they could have been.  Think about how many amazing ideas have been smashed to bits in the board room.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Too many cooks in the kitchen?

Maybe.  More often, it is too many cooks that think they are gourmet chefs when in reality they don’t even know how to make a turkey sandwich.

Without fail, the design by committee process quickly devolves into a contest of who can sounds smarter.

Unfortunately, in this troubled economy, people feel an urgency to justify their employment.  All to often, it is the people that are just mediocre at their jobs that realize they need to quickly step up and appear to be valuable.  They know that the boss is looking to cut back on expenses, so they need to appear as involved as possible.

For every 1 smart, talented team member, there’s usually about 9 mediocre teammates.  They’re really the C students of the group.  However, they’ve gotten to where they are because they can talk a good game.  They were the popular kids in school.  But when it comes to actually putting together a good idea or working on a project as a team, all the talking and “ideas” get you no where.

Out numbered.

The talented person gets overrun by the other 9 all the time.

I’ve saw this happening more and more in 2009, especially in the advertising world.  The video (above) is not that far off the mark.  There are too many brand advisors getting in the away of the real message.

On my team, I’m lucky enough to have a group of guys that don’t need to be the center of attention.   They have great attitudes, value the best idea even if it isn’t their own, and don’t care who get’s the credit. It really is a blessing.

Smaller can be better.

Design by committee has defined the way BlogCraving chooses to do business.  We’ve focused on smaller niche publishers in order to avoid the larger bureaucratic companies. Instead, we focus on assembling a very small group of key decision makers committed to getting the project done right.

There are a lot of niche publishers out there.  However, they tend to be smaller one or two person teams that have very little (if any) technical expertise.  Often, they are excellent writers and publishers, but they have no idea what it takes to bring their site to the next level.  At BlogCraving, we help them understand the technical and design elements that will help transform their hobby site into a real business.

The publisher gets to keep doing what they do best: publish.  Blogcraving takes care of the technical details.

Since the publisher usually consists of an owner or a very small team, there’s very little “committee” to deal with.  The publisher knows that they want, and we make it happen.  As long as the publisher trusts our expertise, everything works out perfectly.

I’ve actually turned down business from site owners that are unwilling to trust our expertise.  I become very invested in the clients we support…probably more so than I should.  I want to see the site succeed and grow almost as much as the site owner.  Because of that, we refuse to work with folks that are too stubborn to act in the best interest of the site’s long term growth.

For example, you can’t expect to run a top notch site with 150,000 daily pageview on a $4.95/month hosting plan.  The hosts are not reliable enough, technical support sucks, and there will be downtime when you need to be online most.  Publishers refuse to make the investment in proper infrastructure even though it will pay for itself ten fold.

You also cant litter your homepage with 23 ad units plus paid contextual links and popups.  I know you think one ad is great, so two must be better, but it doesn’t always work that way.

Sharp images are great, but they can’t all be 400kb.

Google Image Search is fun, but you can’t just steal photos from other sites.

You get the idea.

I know it can be hard for publishers to trust a company like ours to have their best interest in mind.  That’s why we offer certain money back guarantees and performance based payment options.

I advise anyone looking for technical help, a web designer, or consultant to really grill the company on what exactly they are guarantee.  Make sure you have them put it in writing.

Don’t be afraid to shop around either.  Ask other publishers who they use.  80% of BlogCraving’s business is referral based.  People love to recommend people who do great work.

Any great leader will tell you that their secret had nothing to do with themselves.  Instead, their success was built on the backs of the teams they assembled.  The businesses that are going to do well in the long run are the ones that filled with customer oriented people at every level of the business.

Take a look at companies that are absolutely crushing it right now:

You may have heard of Zappos!

They’re the leading online shoe retailer in the world, but their primary focus isn’t selling shoes.  They are a customer service company.  The shoes are almost a secondary focus (they aren’t really…but you get the point).  Zappos is probably one of the best retailers you’ll ever deal with.  I buy as many of my shoes as I can through them, and it isn’t because of the price.  Actually, they often are not the cheapest!

However, I know I’m going to be happy with my experience (not necessarily my purchase).  First of all, the shipping is free no matter what you buy.  And once you become a regular customer, you get even faster shipping.  When the shoes show up, you might hate them.  No problem!  Slap the free shipping label back on the box and send them back.  Zappos even pays for that shipping.  And don’t worry about having to ship it back within 14 days.  You’ve got a YEAR to change your mind.

As if that weren’t cool enough, you should try calling them on the phone.  I was speechless when an actual human being answered the phone.  They’ll help you out with whatever you need.  I was buying a sneaker that they regularly carry, however they just so happened to be out of my size at the moment.   On the site, I couldn’t figure out if they carried the half-size I wanted even when they are in stock.

Turns out, they don’t carry the half sizes for that shoe, but the manufacturer does make them.  The woman on the phone actually did a search and found them on Sports Authority’s website.  She then emailed me the link…to the competitor’s website.

In the case of Zappos, they didn’t let a huge committee of shoe or retail experts come in and tell them how they should run their business.  There was a great idea: great customer service.  The next step (and every step afterward) focused 100% on achieving that goal.

Fitbit is another interesting company

I’ve had my eye on them for a while.  Fitbit is a snazzy little pedometer that wirelessly uploads activity data about you up to a suite of free online fitness tools.  The device is like a little clip that you wear on your waistband all day and on a wristband when you go to sleep.  It tracks how much you walk, exercise, etc.  Then it charts out all of your activities as a motivational tool for keeping fit.  That’s a very brief overview of it…you should check it out.

Anyway, I bring it up because I just got mine in the mail less than a week ago.  My unit was ordered last spring and just got here.  The company is a brand new startup that launched at TechCrunch50 two years ago.  They had some production delays.  Instead of keeping it secret, the CEO started the Fitbit blog to keep all of their excited pre-order customers in the loop about everything having to do with the manufacture of the Fitbit.  I found myself checking it regularly and feeling like I was part of the adventure.

Back to this week…   My Fibit finally came!  Sadly, there must have been a slight defect with mine because it had issues fitting on the charger.  It may have been damaged in shipping.  However, I had purchased a second one for my wife as well.  Her’s is in perfect shape.

So I posted a note in the Fitbit community forum about how my unit does not fit tight enough on the charger.  Honestly, I was looking for advice from other Fitbit owners to see if this was just an issue I was having.

Within 20 minutes of posting, the CEO of Fitbit responded and said to send him an email about the issue.  He said he would send me a new Fitbit via Fedex immediately.  No other questions asked!  In a couple days, my replacement Fitbit will be here.  What else could I possibly ask for?

And you better believe that I’m now going to be telling everyone I know about how cool my Fitbit is and how great the customer service is.  I have no doubt that Fitbit will sell a couple extra units because of my recommendation, and I’m happy to give it.

And then there’s the Grand Poobah

The Grand Poobah of customer service, @garyvee.  Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library already gets a ton of web press about his amazing online business prowess, so I will not exhaust you with all his details.  Here’s just the highlights…

Gary’s WineLibary.com is now a $70 million a year business.  He now brings down major bank as a major brand consultant and public speaker.  He’s been on every network talkshow and business show on television.  He’s creeping up on 1 million Twitter followers.  He just released his first book (Crush It) which is part of a multi-book deal with is publisher.  Oh, and he still manages to do a 20-30 minute video blog…daily.

The guy is busy.

Yet, he manages to reply to almost every email he receives, answers hundreds of direct tweets a day, and is a Facebook animal.  His philosophy banks on the rule that if a customer took the time to write him, he had better find the time to respond.  It doesn’t matter if it is a compliment, complaint, or the same wine pairing question he’s already answered 300 times this week.

It doesn’t matter what you’re “product” actually is.  Maybe it is a blog you write, an item you manufacture, or a service you provide.  You’re ability to care and respond to your customers/haters/readers/evangelists/strangers/etc that makes the difference.

The bottom line is this:  care about people first and the dollars will follow.

So what do you do? Outsource it.

Here’s the Top 5 Outsourcing Sites you never knew about.

Click here to view the embedded video.

1. Elance.com.  Need a logo? Need to update that old website? Need a ghost writer for your website? Need a professional press release written? Need a print designer? The Elance Work System provides a standardized way to post jobs and receive proposals, hire, manage, and pay for results, and also enables collaboration, tracking progress and providing feedback.
2. RedBeacon.com.  Need 1,300 purple cupcakes with your logo on them. Need them tomorrow morning? Either put on your apron or click on over to RedBeacon.com. They will put you in touch with local service providers waiting to handle your specialty project, even on short notice. Post your job (or crisis), then sit back and wait for qualified service providers in your area to upload their quotes.
3. Mechanical Turk. You may not know it, but Amazon.com does more than sell books. They also own Mechanical Turk, the undisputed leader in Human Intelligence Task outsourcing. Did you just get back from that huge trade show in Vegas? Are those 4,325 business cards in your briefcase haunting you? Have the workers at Mechanical Turk input them into dynamic spreadsheet for a penny per card. That’s right, there’s a guy out there somewhere that would gladly take your penny, and Mechanical Turk will find them for you.
4. Rentacoder.com. One of the biggest barriers keeping small business owners from leveraging the Internet is knowing how to build a website. Why should you have to know how to build a site when there are thousands of freelancers out there that can do it for you? Rent yourself a coder. Rent-a-coder.com is a website for hiring website, software, and application developers. Post you job, put funds in the Rent-a-coder escrow account, and watch your website or app get built.
5. oDesk.com. Oftentimes there just are not enough hours in the day. Sometimes you wish you could just hire a small group of temporary workers to help you get through the day to day, but who wants to use an old-fashioned temp agency? Let oDesk.com help you put together a team of workers. Whether you are looking for new talent or already have a remote team, oDesk offers a complete solution for working online.

We offer you the piece of mind that you general technical site needs will be handled by a professional that knows 1) WordPress, and 2) the celeb blog biz.

Each month, you’ll receive the piece of mind that things like upgrades, server bugs, code errors, etc can be quickly addressed. And again, it doesn’t cost you any money out of pocket…ever.

Our service agreement is paid for by simply placing an ad unit on your website. This ad unit does not conflict with any other ads you currently have on your site. iCast sells those ads to cover the cost of our services for you.  Therefore, your technical needs are completely paid for at no cost to you.

Here’s an example of a recent case where BlogCraving came in handy for one of our clients.

The client installed a new plugin that turned out to have some malicious scripts in it. The plugin caused a significant error in the database itself.

Unfortunately, the client’s host backed up the site every 24 hours. However, the client did not notice the problem until 3 days after the fact. So all of the backups had been tainted with the bad code in the database.

We were able to manually go into the database and clean up the errors by hand. We had the site back up and running 100% within 3 hours. The client was on the brink of losing 2 years worth of posts!

We also handle the more simple, but annoying tasks like system upgrades, general maintenance, SEO, etc.  You can choose to spend your monthly maintenance time any way you choose.

And when the time comes for bigger projects, we offer preferred hourly rates for construction of new content and design.

We would love to make your site one of the newest members of the BlogCraving family. Cancel any time.

iCast.me
Kiss.me
la.me
allof.me

And so on.

With Apple’s MobileMe product (www.me.com) just hitting the market, perhaps the “.me” domain craze will also start to take off.  You could get pretty creative with them.

They are about $20 a year with a 2 year minimum registration.  You can get them from sites like GoDaddy.  The best ones will go fast!

Very ironic for a conference about free, open distribution of information to the masses.

As a result, you have to show a hard press ID in order to record anything.  And you better believe that the ushers are hardcore about enforcing the rules.  They seem to love:

- Keeping you from jumping over the rows in front of you or behind you.
- Putting your feet on anything
- Bringing bottles of water in the room
- Blocking rows with computer bags or power cords

Funny but sad at the same time.

Through sites such as qik.com and mogulus.com, users can stream video live to the world.  They also capture this live video and turn it around into ondemand video content after the live event is over.  So you can go back and watch the recording.

The real groundbreaker is the live video comes straight off your cellphone.  A live streaming video gets pumped wirelessly up into the cloud and back down onto these sites.

So you could be sitting in your company board meeting, pull out your cell phone, and stream the meeting to your offices around the world in real time. 

Click Start…do your song and dance…then click stop.  It’s that easy.

It can take the concept of live blogging to a whole new level.

Right now, the streaming tech is available on certain Nokia phones and some other models.  The good news is that Qik is releasing an iPhone version of their system very soon (if they haven’t already).  I’d imagine it will be out with the AppStore.

Thanks to technology, there’s virtually no cost involved with getting people together, to exchange information, and act in support or opposition of a particular common interest.

Increasingly, media is not just a source of information.   It is a source of coordinating action.  New media makes the process easier.

Clay  Shirky’s Site

Well, there’s a new (or just new to me) player in the space called Linkfluence.net.  Their algorithms organise the data in even more interesting ways based on link popularity.

For example, the system can determine if you are a liberal or conservative blogger based on the types of sites that link to you, and the types of sites that you link out to. Then, that data is compiled into spheres of influces and networks.

You can then run simulations to see what kind of “splash” certain blogs make when they publish content.  For example, the more influential bloggers have their content spread over the blogosphere like a virus within moments of publication. 

Less influential sites make a very little splash, and it can all be visualized on the system. 

Definitely worth checking out.