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Written on February 24th, surf zone.at 04:02 am by Darren Rowse

Blog Building Blocks Series

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 0 comments

In the emerging fiasco that is the incompatibilities between Bloglines and Feedburner for some blogger’s feeds I hadn’t noticed that Aaron from has started a useful series of posts titled Blog Building Blocks which is going through some of the basics of making your blog look good using HTML and CSS. It’ll be a series worth following if the first few entries are anything to go by.

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Written on February 24th, surf zone.at 04:02 am by Darren Rowse

enternetusers Chat Session - Next Thursday Morning

enternetusers Site News 19 comments

The response to yesterday’s question about whether people would be interested in a enternetusers Chat session via Campfire was positive so I think we’ll give it a go next week.

I need to tie down a time but I think I’ll make it early on a Thursday morning (maybe around 8.30 am) Melbourne time which will make it about 4.30pm on Wednesday in New York and if my calculations are correct about 9.30pm on Wednesday in London (hopefully you can calculate your own time from that). I’ll confirm it as we get closer - but pencil it in your diary.

It’ll be nice to ‘meet’ some of you in a different medium!

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Written on February 24th, surf zone.at 12:02 am by Darren Rowse

How to Start a Blog Partnership

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 17 comments

If I had to write a list of ‘10 things I love about blogging’ (now there’s a post) - high on the list would be that blogging has opened up some great relationships for me.

While this largely happens on a blogger to reader level - in the last year or so a few of these relationships have progressed to the point where I’ve actually entered into partnerships on certain projects with other bloggers. Most prominent of these is b5media, a collaboration with Jeremy, Shai and Duncan at a partnership level. Similarly SixFigureBlogging has been a working partnership with Andy.

I’ve been particularly fortunate with these partnerships - they have (to this point) been fun, easy going and productive with no real personality issues (unless they are not telling me something). This is all the more odd because I’m yet to meet any of these partners!

I’m a big believer in collaboration as bloggers (or blogging in formation) but have written very little about how to make the decision of who to work with.

While there are definate benefits of working with other bloggers - there can also be real risks, especially when you’re considering working with people you’ve never met! I’m aware of a couple of pretty tragic situations where blogging partnerships have gone sour and the consequences were not pretty. So how should one make the decision?

Here are 10 questions that I’d be pondering before entering into working too deeply with any other bloggers:

1. How long have they been blogging? - While I don’t want to be a blog snob and say that only long term bloggers have potential as partners - I would say that longevity in blogging is a good indicator. Most blog partnerships will be long term and I’d want to see some evidence of the person having stuck to something (even if it’s not blogging related) long term before. There are many people that blow in and out of blogging with lofty ideas - but many of them just don’t have stick-ability. Longevity of blogging should also bring a few web smarts with it which will be handy.

2. What have they done before? How has it gone? - Similarly, take a look at their previous and current projects and ask yourself if it’s the type of work that you’d be satisfied with. Do they have an attention to detail? Do they have talent? Can they communicate well? What skills do they have?

3. Are they consistent? - The more I think about this one the more vital I think it is. People have a way of being on their best behavior when they need to - but over time their true colors generally shine through. If they have a blog, surf through their archives and see what they’ve written previously. Of course all of us probably have something in our archives that we wrote on a bad hair day - but over time have they been consistent not only with the frequency of their writing (which can say something about their commitment levels) but also in the tone and focus of their writing?

4. Do they follow through on what they say? - ‘I’m Going too ((insert idea here))… ‘. I wish I had a dollar for every time someone pitched me an idea by telling me what they are ‘going to do’ in the future. It’s easy to make claims about what you will do - but perhaps a better indicator of whether someone is worth working with is to see what they are actually doing about their dreams. I’ve been pitched a few ideas in the past few months by bloggers who I’ve suspected thought up the idea minutes before IM’ing me. My usual response is to send them away to do a bit more work on the idea, or to go start it and then to come talk to me. In doing this I find out who is a ‘gunna do it’ type person and who is a ‘did it’ type person. Big dreams are great - but they don’t just eventuate without work.

5. What do others say about them? - I read The Wisdom of Crowds (aff) a few months back and think there is definitely some applications/illustrations of the main point of the book in the blogosphere - this is one of them. You can often get a good picture of what someone is like by seeing what others think. You can do this directly by approaching their previous partners, or other bloggers who know them, or simply by Googling them to find what comes out in the SE. Of course you’ll want to respect privacy and not get too stalker-like - but at least on some level see what other people have experienced of the person you’re considering working with.

6. What are their skills? - I’m very aware of the areas that I am lacking in as a blogger and seem to seek out and connect with those who have these skills. It makes sense to collaborate with people who will complement your strengths and weaknesses rather than people who duplicate them.

7. Do they have time? - Entrepreneurial blogging types are notorious for coming up with many more ideas than they have time to carry out. Ask a prospective partner what else they are working on and how much time it takes. I’m saying this because I’m too busy myself and I ask it of myself before each new project (as a result I’ve not launched new things for a while).

8. Do you have a relationship with them already? - This is probably the ultimate question that I ask. It’s not that I don’t think strangers might be good to work with - it’s just that I’d rather a partnership to grow out of relationship. If someone pitches me an idea out of the blue I almost always say no simply because I want to know something of the character of the person before making that type of commitment. On the few times that I haven’t said no I’ve only moved forward very slowly (more on this below).

9. Do you know others who know them? - There is something very powerful about networks of people who are interconnected. I’d much rather work with someone who has connections with others that I know simply because I feel there is a little more accountability in those type of relationships because of the wider community of relationships that we have. I know that if Andy does something bad by me in our partnership that it will have potential repercussions for him because we have other mutual friends in the wider blogosphere (and it goes both ways). If these mutual relationships did not exist the accountability levels might be lowered.

10. What does your Gut say? - I’m a big believer in following your instincts and intuition. I’ve had a few occasions in the last year where all the above questions seemed to line up with very positive answers. Logic said that things should have worked out - however something inside me had warning bells ringing. On each occasion I let the opportunity pass. Listen to your heart (isn’t that a song?).

Two final pieces of Advice:

Get Verbal - While I like the written word for communication (IM or email) there is something about actually speaking (verbally) with a person that adds a new dimension to a relationship. I’ve seen this on many occasions - you really get to see (or hear) a different side of a person when you do it. Even better is face to face meetings in real life.

Take it slow - Good partnerships grow out of relationships and good relationships take time.

While I know it’s tempting to rush into business with people when you first meet them, this can be a recipe for disaster. I’d advise that if you do want to move ahead with a partnership that you break it down into smaller parts or projects and take them one at a time.

Start with a small one to see how you both go, to see how you get along and to learn how to work with one another. Then as you finish the smaller things you might want to ramp it up and take on some bigger things together. Out of this process comes trust, respect, communication skills and an understanding of how you work together - all things that will lead to a fruitful partnership in the future.

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Written on February 23rd, surf zone.at 06:02 pm by Darren Rowse

Google Introduces Web Page Creator

Pro Blogging News 21 comments

Google have just launched it’s Page Creator - a free system that lets anyone with a Google ID to create a webpage quickly with a WYSIWYG technology.

Users get 100 megabytes of storage space to make their page. Here’s a screen cap of the sign in page (click to enlarge):

I can’t get much past this page yet and am getting an array of Error messages. As with most Google launches I guess this is getting ALOT of traffic to it.

I wonder how long before they allow adding of AdSense to pages - and also how long til Spammers start using them for their purposes.

Found via Google Introduces Web Page Creator

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Written on February 23rd, surf zone.at 04:02 pm by Darren Rowse

How Are Bloggers Different To Journalists? Have your say:

Pro Blogging News 28 comments

On Sunday I’m on an informal panel that has the brief to discuss the following question, which I thought I might as well open up here for some discussion. Here’s the session brief:

In the US right now some of the most influential technology writers are not journalists, they’re bloggers. This session will look at how bloggers are different to journalists, what rules they play by and will look forward to how blogging threatens to change both the media and the public relations industries.

What do you think?

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Written on February 23rd, surf zone.at 03:02 pm by Darren Rowse

The latest Full vs Partial Feed Debate

RSS 49 comments

Lots of debate today over the good old ‘full feed vs partial feed’ question. Robert Scoble responds to a post by Duncan Riley who accuses Steve Rubel of ‘not getting it’. Kent Newsome say’s that Steve ‘Does Get it’ and Nick Wilson agrees with Robert.

Every other blogger and his dog seems to have gotten in on the debate in the comments of all the above blogs and there’s a whole heap of chest beating (politely done in most cases) going on.

A few readers have asked what I think and you know what?

I’m confused.

I see good arguments all round.

My thoughts are these (and be warned they are are not overly logical and will contradict one another).

1. I ultimately blog because I want to communicate something and I want people to read my content. As a result I think full feeds are great as they put all my content into anyone’s hands who wants itI’m sick and tired of finding others publishing my feeds in full - quite often with no attribution to me as an author and quite often with no link back. Partial feeds solve this problem - at least ‘partially’.
2. I’ll be honest and admit that part of me likes the idea of people actually coming to my blogs to read what I have to say. While I agree with Robert that this might not be very forward thinking it is an egotistically driven desire I have I guess. I get over it and ultimately it doesn’t matter - but it must impact my decision on some level.
3. I personally prefer to read partial feeds. I follow hundreds of blogs daily and full feeds are quite overwhelming. Whereas Robert only subscribes to blogs with full feeds if I’m given the choice I’ll subscribe to a partiaone
4. My experience of RSS advertising is that it does not convert. I’m sure it’ll improve but to this point it doesn’t sm to.
5. Some argue that partial feeds help the bottom line as that you get more people to look at your blog. I guess this is true but quite honestly it’s not something I think much about. I guess some must be making the decision for partial feeds based on this thinking but it’s not been a big motivation for me.
6. On most of my blogs the majority of readers don’t use RSS at present so it doesn’t really matter what type of feeds I run on some levels.
7. Having said this I tend to agree with Robert’s in that I’ve long suspected the those readers who do follow my blogs via RSS are key readers in that they often either have blogs or are journalists. This makes them key readers in the sense that they have the power to link up and se traffic.
8. On the question of making money from blogs (which is part of the argument) I wonder whether the decision for full or partial feeds might also depend partly upon whether you’re trying to make money directly or indirectly from your blog. If it’s indirectly then perhaps full feeds are better because you want as many people to read your content as possible to help build your profile. If it’s a direct think then maybe partial feeds are better (especially if it’s advertising conversion that y’re after).
9. As I said on Robert’s blog in comments, ultimately ‘if your content is good enough and you give people a reason to read your blog - they will…. I find this is the case on my blog with some readers who tell me that I am the only partial feed they follow.’

My own decision to this point has been to go with partial feeds on every blog I own.

Having said this - in the past few weeks I’ve been seriously considering saying ’stuff it’ to those who continually steal my content and moving enternetusers to full feeds mainly for the reasons outlined in points 7 and 8.

enternetusers is never going to set the world alight in terms of generating massive advertising income (although it has improved quite a bit of late). Rather it’s about the indirect methods I talked about a few posts back. Perhaps it’s time to test full feeds.

Having said that - I know that quite a few of my posts are LONG and I worry that full feeds might overwhelm readers and do more damage than good.

So - I’ll throw it open for some discussion and put up a ‘poll of the week’ for you to vote on. I’ll test whatever is the final winner for a month or two and then make an ultimate decision.

Should enternetusers have Partial or Full Feeds?

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Written on February 23rd, surf zone.at 07:02 am by Darren Rowse

Can a Blogger Live off Donations?

Pro Blogging News 11 comments

Jason Kottke reflects on the year that he asked his readers to support him through donations in a post titled Oh, what a year. His three week fund drive earned $39,900 from 1450 donations.

Is he going to do it again?

‘I’m not going to be asking for contributions again. Part of it has to do with the reasons outlined at the bottom of this post. I haven’t grown traffic enough or developed a sufficient cult of personality to make the subscription model a sustainable one for kottke.org…those things just aren’t interesting to me.’

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Written on February 23rd, surf zone.at 02:02 am by Darren Rowse

How Much Money Can a Blog Earn?

Blogging for Dollars 43 comments

“If my blog has ((insert daily number of impressions or page views of your blog here)) how much should it be earning?”

This is one of the more common questions I get asked by bloggers just starting out with making money from their blogs.

On one level it’s a valid question to ask - after all if you’re going to put time and energy into building something it’d be great to know up front what rewards might be awaiting you.

On another level - it’s an almost impossible question to answer because there are so many factors to take into consideration.

As I look across the blogs that I am involved with (around 100 in number if you count b5media’s 80+ blogs) there is a massive variation in the earnings that blogs are pulling in. It is very difficult to make sense of it as it not just a matter of traffic levels.

For example - As I write this I’m looking at the earnings for January of three blogs that I have some involvement with (I don’t get into what specific blogs earn so don’t ask) and here’s what I see:

Blog A: For the month this blog had a total of around 20,000 page views from about half that number of visitors (ie they viewed 2 pages each. The Total earnings of this blog (all from contextual advertising) was $790.91 (USD).

Blog B: This blog had just over 40,000 page views over the month, this time from about 13,000 visitors. It’s total earnings from contextual advertising (same amount of ad units per pages as the other) was $99.08 (USD). it also earned around $35 from an affiliate program.

Blog C: Our last example is a blog that had around 160,000 page views over the month from around 80,000 visitors. It earned $515.12 from contextual ads and somewhere in the vicinity of $2,500 from affiliate programs.

Factors to Contribute to a Blog’s Earnings…

It’s pretty obvious from those figures that there is no ‘normal’ earnings based upon traffic alone. Many factors are obviously at play. Let me unpack a few:

1. Traffic Levels: While the above examples show that traffic is not the only factor at play in determining the earning capacity of a blog - it is a significant one. Whether you’re earning money from your blog directly or indirectly you are almost always going to increase your earning potential by increasing your readership.

2. Source of Traffic: Of course all not all traffic is equal when it comes to earning an income online. As I mentioned in this earlier post, blog traffic largely comes from a three sources - Loyal Readers (including RSS), Search Engines and Referral Traffic (from other sites).

Each type of traffic will have a different impact upon your earning potential depending upon your earning strategies. Lets look at each in turn:

• Loyal Readers - loyal readers are a wonderful thing to have on a blog because they can add a sense of community and participation. In terms of income generation they are often good if you’re attempting to earn income from your blog via indirect methods. In my experience of picking up consulting and speaking work and even in developing products for sale - most the the opportunities have only come from established relationships that I’ve managed to build with readers.

  Loyal Readers have also been known to respond to affiliate programs as a result of the trust and relationship that you might have built up with them over time. The longer term and more loyal your reader is the more weight your recommendation is likely to carry. Of course you won’t keep readers loyal for long if your recommendations are not on the money so be careful with that.

  On the downside - loyal readers are generally not good for advertising in most forms. When a reader sees your blog every day Ad-blindness tends to kick in pretty quickly unless you’re pretty creative with your ads they often go unseen.

  RSS readers are particularly difficult to monetize with ads on your blog as so many of them rarely see your blog if you publish full feeds rather than excerpts.

• Search Engine Readers - readers coming to your blog after searching for a keyword you have used are a very different type of reader to the ‘loyal variety’ when it comes to what they respond to. Anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that visitors from SE’s quite often only stay on sites fleetingly. The typical SE users is in search of specific information and if they find it quickly they might stay for a little while but if they don’t they are likely to click on link to something else that might be a better source of information or hit their back button to return to the search engine.

  This makes them almost the opposite of loyal readers in terms of indirect income earning methods. It’s very difficult to build your profile if people are one off 10 second readers (unless you’re good at making them come back).

  When it comes to more direct income earning methods SE traffic is traditionally more responsive as they tend to be more aware of your ads (if they are well placed and designed) and they are Actively looking for information and things to click on that might give them the info they are searching for. This is especially true for contextual advertising like AdSense which can show ads on your site that are triggered not only by what your content is about but on what people came to your blog searching for in Google (or so some people believe).

  In terms of affiliate links - SE traffic is less likely to click them as a result of your profile but could be open to them more just because they are there. They can be hit and miss depending upon your topic

• Referral Traffic - It is difficult to make generalizations about this category of traffic because it depends a lot on the type of site that is linking to you and the way in which they do it.

  For example the last two times I’ve been linked to from Slashdot brought incredibly different results in terms of the money earned from the traffic. On one occasion there was barely any discernible difference in my AdSense earnings despite having 10 times the traffic I normally would get in a day. On the next link up earnings increased proportionally with the increase in traffic (it was and probably still is my best earning day ever). I can only really put this down to the difference in tone of the linking post at Slashdot and the type of post that I’d written (which in the later case probably triggered more relevant ads).

  In general, traffic from larger sites like Digg and Slashdot don’t convert too well with advertising and affiliate programs. There is an opportunity however for capturing these first time readers and converting them into loyal ones which as we’ve said above is good for indirect income earning down the track.

4. Income Stream:The actual method you use to monetize your blog impacts the amount you might earn. This is pretty obvious so I won’t go on about it too much but it’s worth saying here as it’s a definite factor in mix when looking at other factors.

5. Topic: In the three blogs that I mention above I would say the major difference in their earning capacity was their topic.

• Blog A has a pretty specialized topic that not many would be too interested in (hence it’s lower traffic). On the other side of things it has well paying ads in YPN on a per click basis and triggers ads that are very relevant to the topic. As a result despite it’s low traffic it earns quite well.
• Blog B has a very popular topic but there are very few advertisers interested in buying ads with those keywords in contextual ad systems. As a result it’s Click Through Rate (CTR) is very low and click values are low also. It’s also yet to generate enough traffic to make much from impression based ads (although there is potential here - it’s a reasonably newish blog). As a result while it has more traffic than Blog A it’s earning considerably less.
• Blog C is again on a popular topic which doesn’t convert brilliantly in contextual ads in terms of CTR and ad value. It does have a reasonable reputation in it’s niche and affiliate recommendations are responded to well by readers (and they have a good value per sale also which doesn’t hurt).

Why Topic Matters

• Contextual Ads - Different topics and keywords within topics will trigger different ads in contextual ad programs and as a result will earn different levels ‘per click’ (I write about finding high paying ads in AdSense here).
• Affiliate Programs - Similarly, different topics will open up different levels of earnings when it comes to affiliate programs. For example a blog about books that uses the Amazon program is only ever likely to make small commissions per sale as the average book might only be worth $20 and the commission with Amazon is generally in the 5-8% range. On the other hand I know of publishers in the financial website game who use affiliate programs that can pay out at $100 per sale.
• Indirect Methods - Obviously different opportunities (with different income earning potential) arise for bloggers with a profile in different niches. For example a blogger known for his movie review blog might not have much demand for consulting work but could find a way to syndicate his blog to magazines or newspapers. A blogger with a good profile in the PR industry might not get picked up as a writer in magazines but could land himself a well paying job or some consulting work.

6. Age of Blog: - a good wine matures with age - as do many profitable blogs (and most profitable businesses for that matter). There are many reasons why this is the case and while some blogs do seem to rise from nowhere to dominate the blogosphere - most do not. Here’s a few reasons why blogs tend to get better with age:

• Quantity of content - I find myself saying this to new bloggers repeatedly but don’t expect to get a lot of traffic to your blog until you have a substantial level of content in your archives. Of course quality of content is vital, but at least at some level numbers of posts do count and unless you’re going sell your soul and to get into splogging quantities of content take time. I’ve written more on this here and here (series).
• Search Engine Optimization - While some SEO experts claim they can have you at the top of Search Engines quickly (and some can), sustaining high rankings through legitimate (white hat) methods means building a site over time. Climbing the rankings in SE’s is the result of many things including good content (lots of it) that gets links from others - both things that take time.
• Reputation - Building an online profile and presence takes time n the same way that it takes time in real life. People look for consistency in your blogging overtime and will want to see that you not only talk the talk but walk the walk. As you do this you’ll find your readership grows.
• Active - Connected with a good reputation comes networking opportunities. Two years ago if I had wanted to start a new blogging project with someone else I would have had little chance of convincing anyone to join me - but since that time I’ve worked hard at my relationships with fellow bloggers (and other online and offline contacts) to the point now where my problem is becoming too many opportunities to collaborate.
• Web Smarts - I shudder when I look back at my first blogging efforts and how naive, ill-informed and poorly run they were. I have a long way to go when it comes to learning about the web, blogs, design, writing etc - but over time my own skills and knowledge in these areas have grown. You can read all the books, blogs and articles you want on blogging (and I’d encourage you to do so) - but so much of what you can learn about blogging for money has to come from on the job experience - which again only comes with time.

7. Time Invested: Lastly I’ll add that the time a blogger is willing and able to invest into their blog is a factor worth considering. I’m fortunate enough to have been able to work myself into a position where I can blog full time. This didn’t just happen overnight (I attempted to describe the process here) but as I was able to put more time into it the rewards increased. This is a bit of a catch 22 situation of course (the more you earn the more time you can put in and the more time you put in the more you can earn) but it’s a principle I’ve discovered that is worth adding into the mix.

So How Much Can a Blog Earn?

I’ve been avoiding the question for over 2000 words now and I’m not about to put a definitive answer on it except to say that every blog is different and the evidence that I’ve seen from interacting with thousands of bloggers and their blogs over the past year is that bloggers are earning anything between nothing at all and millions of dollars. The upper end of the spectrum is of course rare and those earning very little are in the majority, but bloggers earning decent income is becoming increasingly common. Here’s a couple of recent enternetusers polls that might illustrate how the spectrum is spread in their earnings of AdSense and Chitika.

I’ll finish with this:

Probably the best way to find out what you can earn from a particular blog is to start that blog and test the waters.

Give yourself a time limit of a few months to get a feel for the topic and see how it goes. While it’s important to realize that a few months is not really enough - it is enough to get an understanding for whether it’s a topic you feel you can sustain, what the click values and CTR might be in contextual ads and even to get a feel for what type of readers you’ll attract. If the signs are good - invest more time into it - if they are not, consider trying something else.

That’s my 2 (or 2000) cents worth on the topic of how much blogs can earn. What’s yours?

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Written on February 23rd, surf zone.at 12:02 am by Darren Rowse

AdSense Referrals Extends Referrals Time Limit to 180 Days

Adsense 7 comments

A month ago we reported that Adsense had silently changed the rules with their referral program making it so that anyone you refer to the program had to earn $100 in their first 90 days in the program for you to get your $100 commission.

Tom from Blogging Tom has just emailed me to say that he’s had confirmation from AdSense via email that this 90 day period has been extended to 180 days.

There is no change on the AdSense site in their policies yet as far as I can see - but the change makes sense as 90 days was quite a short period for most first time AdSense users.

Tom’s written about it on his blog at AdSense Referrals neu 180 Tage gültig (German).

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Written on February 22nd, surf zone.at 07:02 pm by Darren Rowse

Blog Auction In Progress - Unmatched Style

Blogging for Dollars 11 comments

Another blog is up for auction at SitePoint Forums - this time the blog is Unmatched Style and the bids are at $12,500 so far. It’s a blog with $500 - $900 monthly revenue and 850,000 monthly page views.

I’ll be interested to see how high the bidding goes.

found via Blog Herald

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