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| AdSense Announce Video Units for Australian and Japanese Publishers Posted: 05 Jun 2008 10:36 PM CDT If you live in Australia or Japan you’ll want to check out the AdSense blog today because they’ve just announced that Video Units are now available to you as a publisher. They also mention that you ‘may’ be able to now become a YouTube partner and make money off your own videos (what ‘may’ means I’m about to find out as I’ve just applied). What are video units?
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| Posted: 05 Jun 2008 06:44 PM CDT At first I only intended to grab my names (problogger and darrenrowse) and use them as placeholders but I’m now starting to find it a really interesting medium. It takes the Twitter experience to the next level with threaded comments, cliques/groups (yet to explore these) and all kinds of other features. It’s a little quirky and it takes a while to get used to the way updates are displayed (it’s all on a sideways scrolling timeline) but it’s definitely got some potential. Anyway - if you have time in your life for another social media site - check out Plurk. At the least it could be worth reserving your name/s in case it does get popular and you want to use it at some point in the future. PS - if you’re a ‘Plurker’ tell us what you think about it in comments below. What do you like about it, what don’t you like about it and how would you describe it? |
| When Guest Posts Become Too Self Centered Posted: 05 Jun 2008 02:51 PM CDT I’ve written numerous posts over the last year about how I think that submitting guest posts to other blogs is a great way to promote yourself and to grow the readership of your own blog - however I’ve also noticed a trend in guest posts that could actually hurt you as a guest poster (and as a blogger publishing guest posts on your blog). The trend that I see is guest posts that seem to have the main objective of finding new readers, driving traffic and self promotion. This might seem a little odd - in my first paragraph I said that guest posts are a good way of promoting your blog - but in my second paragraph I say that it’s not good to self promote in your post! Let me explain. My experience of guest posting both as someone who has written a few and someone who has published quite a few is that constant self linking in guests posts doesn’t pay off. My approach is that my primary concern in writing a guest post is to provide readers with value (and thereby provide the blog that I’m posting on value also). My experience is that if you do this even the smallest mention of your blog with a link in the ‘byline’ will drive the traffic that you need. However if your post is all about you and drops links quite obviously in the hope of getting traffic then you actually run the risk of alienating readers and the blogger that you’re pitching the post to. I’ve seen this a few times lately on my own blogs where readers gave feedback to me that they felt authors are grandstanding a little too much - this doesn’t do anyone any good. When is self linking OK in a guest post? As a blogger assessing guest posts my approach is to allow them when they are relevant and add value to the post. I have no problem with someone linking to an example of what they’re talking about on their own blog (or someone else’s for that matter) however if the relevancy is tenuous I either ask the blogger if they’re willing to remove it or reject the submission. I link prominently in my guest posts to the guest’s blog (in the first paragraph and sometimes the footer as well) links strewn through the post as well don’t do it for me unless they are highly relevant. If you do want to sell yourself in a guest post I’d much rather someone write a suggested byline with a little more information about themselves than have them include extraneous information and links in the post itself. What do you think? Do you self link in guest posts? If so - how far is going too far for you? Further Reading: How to be a Good Guest Blogger |
| Twitter is a Complete Waste of Time! Posted: 05 Jun 2008 09:08 AM CDT
My response is simple - yes it is. Twitter is a waste of time…. unless you use it in a way that isn't.
I would argue that there's never been a type of communication invented that can't be used in a way that is a waste of time. The key is the way you use it.Twitter can be beneficial to bloggers in many ways (I've written 9 ways that Twitter benefits me here) but the key is to work out how you want it to benefit you and to go about using the tool (and it's nothing more than a tool) in a way that takes you a step closer to it paying off in those ways. If you're just on Twitter because everyone else is and you're using it in an unfocused way then you're unlikely to see it as anything more than a waste of time. I would also add that I don't think Twitter is ever going to be something that everyone should use. The way people talk about Twitter (or any other type of social media tool) sometimes reminds me of how people used to talk about Blogging. Four or Five years ago I heard people speaking about blogging as though it's the answer to every problem that a company or individual might have with their online presence. It was claimed that blogging could do almost everything and fix any issue you faced. The truth is that blogging can be great but it's not right for every situation. The same is true for Twitter. It takes a certain type of personality to click with Twitter and it will only ever meet some of your needs and even then, only if you’re smart about it. If not, it could well be a waste of time! A Question to Ask about Your Use of Any MediumWhen looking at Twitter, or any medium for that matter, the question to ponder early on is ‘what are my goals?’ Once you have them nailed down you then have a framework to begin to think about how you’ll use it and how you measure whether it’s a worthwhile medium to use. So what are your goals for Twitter? |
Just a very quick post to let readers know that I’m playing with 
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