What's your craving?
The transactional cost of gathering a group of people together has gotten very low thanks to the Internet and mobile phones.
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.
Wow. One of the coolest concepts in blog tracking I have seen in a while. If you are really a big time blog geek, you’ve probably seen “maps” of the blogosphere before. They usually look like big and small dots on a page connected by lines. The big ones look like hairballs.
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.
We’ll be at the 2008 Personal Democracy Forum Conference in New York City? What’s the PdF? Read more here.
So why are we blogging about the PdF Conference? Well, it is probably the largest gathering of political and technology bloggers on the east coast. The best of the bests are here.
So we will be posting what we’ve learned from a process perspective (no politics). There’s lots of cool technology here, and the world’s best bloggers using it. So bear with us through out little two day mini-series.
We generally try to focus our advice towards beginner bloggers, but this one is for the more “seasoned” blogger.
Know what you’re worth!
There comes a point where your site is in limbo. You’ve risen to the top of the pack in your category. Or maybe you deserve to be on one of those “The Best ____ Blogs You’ve Never Heard Of.” However, you’re not quite making thousands of dollars a year.
So you’d like to keep blazing the trail, but you need some serious, professional services to get you there. Then again, you’re not exactly raking in the dough.
So what do you do? Barter.
Your site has pretty good traffic, right. Heck, it has great traffic and is growing every day!
See if your potential service providers will accept a barter arrangement. They provide certain technical services for you in exchange for advertising space on your blog. That way, no cash ever has to exchange hands.
In our case, iCast Limited takes on the occasional barter deal. We serve advertisements that we sell to other companies and serve them on our network of bartered sites. So we make money all year long off the ads, and our clients get reliable, professional technical services.
Everybody is happy, and you didn’t have to break the bank!
One of the issues that always arises when your site starts to take off is managing ad inventory. With WordPress, managing ad placement is fairly simple. You just create a widget, drop in your code, place the widget, and you’re done.
But what if you need to change it often? Or, what if you have sold your own clients and want to traffic your own ads?
Well, you are in need of an ad management system. There are some basic ones (in the form of plugins) available through WordPress, but they are not terribly sophisticated.
Until Google opens its new ad management system up to the public, I recommend using OpenX (formerly known as phpadsnew) to serve your ads. It’s a free system you can download and install on your own server. I also recommend putting it on it’s own box if you plan on serving a lot of ads, or you site gets a lot of traffic. The system itself is pretty resource intensive.
OpenX will allow you to traffic all of your ads including Google Adsense ads and other ad networks like Commission Junction, Azoogle, ClickBooth, etc.
You can then set impression levels, goals, and weights for all your campaigns. This makes it especially valuable when evaluating new ads or campaigns. [Read more...]
Did you notice little arrows on your site’s Google Adsense ads? That’s because Google just launched that new function that allows users to scroll or page through ads within the widget.
Personally, the little arrows look like code errors to me. I thought I had left an extra < > or something somewhere in the code. But then I realized it was within the widget itself, so it had to come from Google.
So, if you are near any Google ads while you read this post, give it a whirl and see what the ads look like. Apparently the goal is to have people scroll through them for more relevant advertising.
I’m not really sure how many people actually want to scroll through text ads for fun, but you never know.
It depends.
No. If you are writing a blog for your business or with a journalistic style, then generally: NO. Go ahead and put your name on there and take the credit you deserve. Since you’re writing this blog to build your business and attract new customers, you want to tell everyone under the sun.
OR
Yes. Do not put your real name on anything! If you don’t fit the profile above, it is probably better to leave your name off the blog. No one really needs to know who you really are. In the long term, your life will end up easier.
Also, don’t tell anyone you know about your blog including friends, family, co-workers, clients, employers, etc. The nice thing about a blog is the ability to speak your mind freely. If all of a sudden, your mom and your boss start reading your blog, you might run into some issues.
They might get pissed at you over something you wrote, or you are naturally going to hold back because you know they are watching.
You also would have to keep your politics to yourself if your name were out in the open. If you ever go out to get a new job, and your blog pops up in a background search (and it surely will), your political views might go against your proposed employer’s.
So if you are going to blog, just keep it under wraps when it comes to your personal life. Everything will work out much better this way in the long run. And you’ll enjoy the complete freedom to publish anything you want without fear of personal retribution.
There was an excellent article up on the NY Times Personal Tech section about blogging. The headline really caught my eye, “So You Want to Be a Blogging Star…”
It starts right off with the story of billionaire Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Chairman of HDNet. Cuban writes his own blog, blogmaverick.com. He’s probably one of the busiest businessmen you’ll ever meet, yet he still has time to write his blog.
So what’s the big deal with a billionaire writing a blog? Can’t everyone have a hobby? Well, Cuban’s blog is ranked among the top 1,000 blogs in the world. Considering that there are tens of millions of blogs on the web, that’s a huge accomplishment.
Funny enough, he actually has an active discussion going on right now about blogging. Apparently, bloggers in the Mav’s locker room is becoming a big deal. I kind of disagree with his position though. (See my response below)
Another point I think should be highlighted in the in the article is where they mention participating in the blogging community. This is extremely important. Once you get your blog off the ground, even if is only a few posts old, get out there! Start participating in the community. Write comments on other blogs. Link to other blogs too. [Read more...]
