Online Money Making Millions: ProBlogger

Friday, April 11, 2008

ProBlogger - Latest Posts

Posted: 10 Apr 2008 09:29 PM CDT

Do you have a spare 10 minutes and want a thought provoking read on blogging?

Download The Zen of Blogging (pdf). It’s a free ebook by Hunter Nuttall - not your typical ebook about blogging but a simple guide with plenty of areas of blogging to chew over. Oh, and it can be read in 10 minutes!

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Exploring Shopzilla [Interview]

Posted: 10 Apr 2008 01:59 PM CDT

In February I posted a first impression review of the Shopzilla Publisher Program.

This CPC (cost per click) ad unit is similar to those used successfully by many with the Chitika program. There’s one live in action at the bottom of this post.

I’ve been getting some good feedback from quite a few ProBlogger readers who have tried the program and am consistently getting good results with them so I approached Shopzilla’s Senior Vice President of Operations and Business Development, David Weinrot, for an interview about the program. He kindly agreed. Here’s our chat about Shopzilla.

Can you describe Shopzilla to us in a few sentences?

Shopzilla.com, which operates both the Shopzilla.com and BizRate.com websites, is consistently ranked (by comScore) as the number 1 or 2 most visited comparison shopping site in the US. In addition, Shopzilla operates comparison shopping websites in the UK, France and Germany under the same brand names. Our comparison shopper features enable online buyers to compare prices on millions of different product offers from thousands of retailers. The comparison pricing information is complemented with detailed customer ratings of online retailers, which help buyers identify vendors with high reliability scores along dimensions that are important to them.

Shopzilla, Inc. is wholly owned by the E.W. Scripps Company.

Why did you start the Shopzilla Publisher Program?

Recognizing that the Internet allows all manner of content developers to publish their content and achieve broad market reach, Shopzilla introduced the Publisher Program as a way for those publishers to complement their content with our vast inventory of monetized product listings. In other words, we believe there is a market need to make our "where to buy" listings available to shoppers at any point of presence in their buying & purchase flow.

What does Shopzilla offer that other ad networks don’t that makes it attractive to bloggers?

One of the Publisher Program's most distinguishing features relative to ad networks is that it is a "direct program" and is thus likely to result in higher monetization yields for publishers. Many of the popular ad networks actually utilize the Shopzilla Publisher Program as an underlying source of content for their own ad programs. As a result, publishers that use alternate ad programs generate only a portion of what they would otherwise generate if they used Shopzilla Publisher Program for the same set of monetized product listings.

Other meaningful features include the program's link and ad building flexibility. In addition to having access to customizable, standard display ad units, publishers can create custom text links that point to any page on Shopzilla.com, and subsequently integrate them into editorial content. Most ad network programs do not offer the flexibility to link to specific and precisely targeted pages on the advertiser site nor do they enable publishers to tailor the ads in a way that make them most relevant to the page content.

We also think bloggers will appreciate our newly launched referral program, which allows participants in our publisher program to earn $25 for each account that they refer to the Shopzilla Publisher Program.

Do you accept all publishers into your program? If not - why not and how do you make decisions on who is accepted?

Shopzilla does not accept all publishers. Every application is manually accepted into the program by our dedicated Account Management team, led by Rex Roberts and Talia Drake, who you will find are incredibly accessibly and highly responsive to publisher support inquiries. While we do not disclose our approval guidelines, though we typically accept all bona fide US sites and select international sites that tailor to a US shopping market, subject them meeting our decency guidelines.

Do you have any restrictions on the location of publishers or on international traffic?

We do not have any specific restriction on where a publisher is domiciled. However, as previously mentioned, we approve sites that are tailored to the US market.

You’ve obviously seen a lot of publishers using your program - what type of publishers are doing best with it in terms of topics?

Without question, the most successful sites in our publisher program are those that produce editorial content around specific product categories. Niche and specialty retailers are consistently the highest yielding participants of our program; these publishers can command effective CPMs of up to $45. Sites that cover GPS, Digital Cameras, Televisions, MP3 Players, Fashion & Apparel, and Fitness & Athletics all seem to enjoy good success with our program. In addition, at the far end of the integration spectrum, there are content producers who utilize Shopzilla's commercial API to build full-featured, stand-alone comparison shopping sites and shopping mash-ups. It's really exciting to see what the publishing community is doing with our openly available content. Examples include ShoppingBounce.com who have built a comparison shopping mash-up as well as yourminis.com, which utilizes our API to publish facebook, typepad, and google widgets/gadgets.

What are the most successful publishers in your program doing well that makes them top earners (ie any practical tips that you have)

If I had to pin this down to two points, it would be: contextual relevance and deep integration. This doesn't mean publishers have to use the API to accomplish this level of integration, but it certainly helps.

What plans do you have for the future of Shopzilla Publisher Program?

We've got big plans! We intend to launch this program to our international sites as well as release various reporting enhancements.

Here’s an example of a Shopzilla Ad

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Jokes on Blogs - Proceed With Caution

Posted: 10 Apr 2008 08:15 AM CDT

We all like a joke on 1 April (and it can even be good for your blog) but some good advice to remember when playing such ‘pranks’ is that jokes that impact others should seriously be considered.

My mum used to say - ‘it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt’ and ‘the problem with practical jokes is that some people don’t know when to stop’. Wise words mum.

On April Fools day this year a post was written on another blog that declared that I’d gone bankrupt and had never earned more than $1000 a month from blogging. I’m not going to link to it because I’d rather not have the post rank well for my name - you’ll understand why after reading on.

The post was a joke. It was in a series of posts by the blogger that were jokes. Another in the series was that Shoemoney was arrested for riding a bike while drunk.

OK - so the jokes amused some and when I first saw the one about me I didn’t really think twice about it assuming that people would work out that it was posted on 1 April (update: it was posted on 31 March) and have a giggle and then move on.

That was until I started getting emails from people about the post.

Some of the emails were people pointing out the joke because they thought it was funny. Most of these had found it either on Digg or Sphinn where the the post had been submitted.
Some of the emails were from people unsure if it was a joke or not
Some of the emails were from people who believed it to be true (I got six of these). One of these was from someone who I pay each month to do some writing for me on DPS who was concerned about getting paid and another was from someone that I’m in business with. These were the emails that concerned me the most.

Today I got an email telling me that a page on Wikipedia about me now had the information that I was bankrupt and had never earned more than $1000 a month. Firstly I was surprised anyone even looked at that page on Wikipedia… but then I quickly edited the page and stated my reason for doing so.

OK - so here’s some thoughts on this mini-saga.

Firstly - I’m not posting this to single out the person who played the joke. I don’t think it was done with any malicious intent and I don’t really want this post to be about him or the incident itself (in fact he today changed the post to make it very obvious that it’s a joke, something I appreciate) - but rather I hope it’s lesson is one that informs others as they think about how they blog.

Secondly - my advice when it comes to April Fools day posts (or playing any sort of jokes on readers) is to consider the ramifications of your post - particularly when you use another person (or their name) in your joke. While it might be blatantly obvious to you and 99% of your readers that you’re not serious - you will fool someone. Perhaps they just read the title, perhaps the skim the post and don’t see the clues or perhaps they just believe it without question. As a result I tend to only play jokes that use my own name or reputation - or would advise that if you’re going to involve someone else that you might want to check with them first.

Thirdly - consider the legal ramifications of your post. When you post untrue information online about another person that damages their reputation or that leads to them to suffer financially my understanding of the law is that you put yourself in a position where that person can take legal action against you. Luckily in this case it seems that I’ve managed to contain any damage that may have been done - however as a comment on this post says, if I’d been in the middle of a deal that someone pulled out of as a result of this then I (or someone much less forgiving than me) could have had reason to explore their legal position. I’m sure some of our legally trained readers will be able to give us good advice on this.

Once again - this isn’t about the post itself but rather I post it (hesitantly) as a warning for a few things to consider the next time you consider pranking your readers. By all means have fun with your blog - just be careful.