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| Chitika’s Response to CPM Ads Concerns Posted: 02 May 2008 01:57 AM CDT Ryan Travis from Chitika was kind enough to respond to some of the concerns mentioned in my previous post (and it’s comments) about their CPM ads:
I’ve already seen a few improvements in the CPM ads. It seems that they have a system in place to weed out the lower quality flashing ringtone ads. I’m hoping it’ll continue to improve to the point where we’ll start seeing brand ads that will not only earn more but ‘fit’ more on most blogs. |
| TheFreeAdForum - I have nothing to do with this Spamming Link Exchange Program Posted: 01 May 2008 09:44 PM CDT Just a short note to let readers know that in the last 24 hours many bloggers who link to ProBlogger were the target of a spammer who used the ProBlogger name to attempt to get you to do a link exchange with his forum. I want to make it clear that I have no affiliation with ‘Matt’ from thefreeadforum.com who is behind this spam link exchange and would encourage you not to take him up on his offer of linking to his site in return for ads on his forum. I’d suggest that exchanging links with him is going to get you nothing more than a penalty from Google. |
| Skribit - Find Out What Your Readers Want You to Write About Posted: 01 May 2008 08:51 PM CDT The idea is that it’s a tool for gathering and prioritizing the topics that readers (ie YOU) want a blogger (ie ME) to write about on a blog. You’ll see over on the sidebar that there’s already some topics. One suggestion is to write about ‘Why are you using Skribit’ which was asked by the team at Skribit by default. I’m now answering that question and can then link it to this post. There are a couple of other questions already added by my Twitter Followers. The idea now is that YOU the readers can add your topics/questions and then vote up the ones that others have added to help me work out which are the main ones that you want addressed. While I’ve been testing it all of 5 minutes I love the concept behind this tool as it gives bloggers great feedback on what’s on the mind of their readers and the readers control to prioritize their needs. I’d love to see readers start to add their questions so we can test it out! update: seems that when you link an answer as being answered it disappears from the list. Not sure where the links appear. |
| Posted: 01 May 2008 02:55 PM CDT This month I’m asking What is the Biggest Source of Traffic to Your Blog in our sidebar poll. I’m finding the results so far interesting. It’s still early to draw too many conclusions although Google is a clear winner so far with 49% of the vote (in comparison to all other search engines with just 1%). A number of readers have asked me to answer the question for myself - so I thought I’d do for both ProBlogger and Digital Photography School here in a post. Following is the breakdown according to Google Analytics of the Top 10 Traffic Sources - including the percentages of total traffic. You can see a few obvious similarities between the two with Google an obvious winner again (although the mix is different in terms of percentages). Top Traffic Sources to ProBlogger:1. google / organic - 42.89% Top Traffic Sources to DPS:1. google / organic - 30.54% Don’t forget to vote in the poll and feel free to breakdown your response further in the Poll Announcement Post. |
| A Remedy for Blogger Inferiority Complex Posted: 01 May 2008 09:02 AM CDT Yesterday I wrote about the problem of blogger inferiority complex and how often as bloggers we can limit our potential by defining ourselves negatively. Today I want to get a little more constructive and suggest a remedy for this common problem. In doing so I want to help those of us who struggle with a negative self view to make a mind-shift in our thinking. How do you become more positive in the way that you think about yourself and your blog? Today I want to suggest two starting points in tackling this problem. Tomorrow I’ll wrap up this mini-series with a third. 1. Identify What You Have:
When I was in my late teens and early 20’s I spent a lot of time worrying about what I didn’t have and comparing myself to others. As I look back on the way that I lived my life at this time I realized that the motivation for many of the things that I did was that I wanted to be like someone else. The result was a complete mess. I ended up spending so much of my time aspiring to be or have something that those around me were or had that I stopped being Darren. The realization that I came to was that defining myself by what I didn’t have or by what someone else was wasn’t working. What I did find that worked however was defining myself by who actually was and starting with what I already had. I went through a process with a small group of friends of rediscovering myself, learning what my strengths were, identifying my passions, reflecting upon the experiences that I had had and looking at what I’d learned. I found that as I began to focus more upon these positive things that I became more positive. As bloggers I think that many of us need to make this same mind-shift and focus less upon what we don’t have and more upon what we do - and then to build from there. Are You Focusing More Upon What You’re Not than What You Are as a Blogger? Firstly, let me say that you’re not alone. Secondly let me suggest a series of questions that you might like to set aside some time to reflect upon to help you rediscover who you are as a blogger: 1. What has Worked On Your Blog? - Sometimes the key to your success is something that you’ve already done that had a spark of energy to it but which still needs a little more work. Look back over the blog posts that you’ve written and identify those that ‘worked’. It might be those that got linked to by another blog or two, it might be a post that got a few extra comments or it could be something that you enjoyed more than other posts even if no one else noticed. Once you’ve identified some of these posts ask yourself why they worked. Is there a common theme or some identifiable lessons that you can learn that you might emulate again? 2. What do you know about? - A great way to answer this one is to think about the questions that people ask you and seek advice from you on. What knowledge and expertise have you gathered in your life so far? 3. What things do you love to talk about? - What topic do your conversations always turn to? Not sure? Ask a close friend what they think your ‘pet topic’ is. What do conversations keep coming back to you no matter how hard they try to change the topic? These topics are obviously things that you have some passion for - perhaps they are what you should be blogging about. 4. What formative experiences have you had? - Often the things that make us most interesting are the things we’ve done in our past. The places you’ve been, the jobs you’ve had, the study that you’ve done, the people that you’ve met etc. Don’t just think about the positive experiences but some of the hard ones too because sometimes it’s through the most painful times of life that we discover purpose and learn lessons that shape our future. 5. Who do you know? - Don’t focus upon the bloggers you don’t know - start with those you do. What have you studied formally? What have you read about? What have you gathered knowledge on in your work, recreation, friendship groups? 6. What readers do you have? - it’s easy to focus upon the thousands of readers that you don’t have, but what about those that you do? Even if you only have 3 and one of them is your Mother - you’ve got people logging into your blog every day to read what you have to say! Not only that, they each have a network of relationships that they could potentially tell about your blog. 7. What problems do you have? What problems have you overcome? - one of the most powerful things that you can do as a blogger is to help people solve problems. The problems that you are best equipped to solve are those that you have had (or have) that you’re overcoming for yourself. 8. What have you achieved? - achievements are not everything but they can certainly be helpful when you’re blogging because you can draw upon them or the lessons you learned in them in your writing. Don’t just focus on the big achievements either - sometimes the small things we’ve done are most important. 9. What sets you apart? - sometimes we focus upon our differences as negatives - but how could they be used for your own good? We operate in a medium where there are millions of others competing for attention - being different is good. It might be how you look, it might be how you live your life, it could be where you live or some other aspect of your life that you’ve been getting down on yourself about. How can you ‘flip it’ to your advantage? 10. What type of personality do you have? - you are wired a certain way - so identify how that is and learn to work to it’s strengths. If you’re a quiet, introverted and reflective person, let your blogging reflect this with posts that are a little more reflective and thoughtful. If you’re loud, brash and opinionated - go with that too! If you can make people laugh - do that in your blogging! Don’t try to be someone that you’re not - start with who you are. 11. What Resources do you have? - what do you have at your disposal that you can use in your blogging? I started out blogging on a 10 year old PC that crashed after 30 minutes of running and dial-up internet connection… and that’s a lot more than many bloggers have. I know bloggers who would answer this question with the answer that they have a membership in a local library that gives them 30 minutes internet connection every weekday. Rather than looking at what you don’t have in terms of tools and resources - start with what you do have and build from there. It might be a computer, internet connection, video or digital camera, a MP3 recorder… or it could be friendship with people who do. Identifying some of the things that you DO have can be an uplifting experience. While we might be naturally drawn to answer the above questions with negativity - force yourself to look at the positives for a little bit and make a list of what you have. But it doesn’t end there….
2. Build upon what you have
Identifying what you do have is a very worthwhile exercise - but it’s not enough if you want to grow to your potential. The key to the lives of many successful people that I’ve met is that they take what they do have (as meager as that may be) and turn it into something worthwhile by building it.
For me as a blogger is was like this: I started out with:
I took that muddled collection of things and began to blog about digital cameras. I made a lot of mistakes but I became more and more determined to take what I did have and to build upon it. As a result things began to grow. The Story Continues - But First…. Some HomeworkAs I said above - tomorrow I’m going to finish this series with one more tip for overcoming Blogger Inferiority Complex. I was going to include it in this post but I think that before getting to the last suggestion it’d be well worth pondering the first two steps. While you wait for the last part in the series take a little time out today to work through them - particularly the series of 11 questions that I suggested and pondering how you can build on them. I’d love to hear what you discover! |
Thanks to an email from Matt (no url supplied) I’m playing around with a new little widget on my sidebar here at ProBlogger called 
There’s nothing wrong with aspiring to be something that you’re not, learn something that you don’t know or achieve something that you’ve not achieved before - however sometimes when we’re focusing upon what we don’t have we lose sight of the very thing that could be the key to us going to the next level - what we do have.
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