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| Do You Sell Text Links on Your Blog? [POLL] Posted: 28 Oct 2008 07:05 AM PDT Do You Sell Text Links on Your Blog? Warning - Before answering this question in comments you might want to consider doing so anonymously and without a link to your blog - particularly if your answer is YES. It could hurt you to identify yourself if you say yes publicly. It is time for another poll here at ProBlogger - this one on the topic of selling text links. A year or so back selling text links was the #1 income source for many bloggers. The practice was common and all done out in the open. Advertisers wanted to buy text links from blogs and websites that had been around for a while and had established decent page rank in Google. They were doing this to increase their own search engine authority. Bloggers saw the practice as relatively easy money - payments were recurring on a monthly basis and with services like TextLinkAds that emerged there was very little work in finding advertisers or collecting payments. However the Text Link Ad selling industry came crashing down (to some extent) late in 2007 when Google took the step of penalizing many websites and blogs (some quite high profile ones) for the practice of selling text links. They see selling of text links as people trying to game or manipulate their ranking system and if they find people doing it - issue penalties which can hurt your search engine ranking. As a result of this action many bloggers stopped selling text links. I had personally stopped selling them before Googles action (although was hit with a page rank penalty for a few days before Google corrected it). The practice of selling text links continues today - however it’s done a lot less publicly than previously. Services still exist to arrange the buying and selling of links but it seems that it has gone much more underground with many deals being done directly between advertisers and bloggers and with advertisers less interested in site wide text links and more interested in buying them within content on individual pages. While many bloggers have stopped doing it - quite a few continue to sell them either not aware of the risks or willing to take the risk for the income it provides. The point of this poll is to find out just how many bloggers still sell text links. As I mentioned above - if you want to comment on this poll below and you do sell text links you might want to do it anonymously or with a pseudonym as it wouldn’t be hard for Google to hit you with a penalty. Voting yes in the poll without commenting is anonymous however. So it’s over to you - here’s the poll (it’s also in my sidebar): Do You Sell Text Links on Your Blog I’m looking forward to seeing the results on this one! Tags: Advertising, google, poll, SEO, Text Link Ads, Text links |
| Reflections on 48 Hours of Inviting Readers to Comment ‘Spam’ My Blog Posted: 27 Oct 2008 01:04 PM PDT OK - so I didn’t ask people to comment ’spam’ my blog - I asked them to ‘pitch’ us with their blog. Here’s what I learned from the experience…. On the spur of the moment over the weekend I decided to run a little experiment here on ProBlogger where I invited readers to leave a comment giving an ‘elevator pitch’ for their blog. The experiment ran for 48 hours (it is now closed) and in that time over 1400 bloggers participated - so many that at times it slowed loading that page to a crawl for many. I’m amazed by the response and wanted to make a few comments/reflections about this experiment: Twitter is AmazingI put the success for this project largely down to Twitter. As I posted my invitation on ProBlogger I also Tweeted an invitation for my Twitter followers to get in early and pitch their blog. This tweet was retweeted time and time again by readers. I didn’t expect this wildfire of tweets (in fact people retweeted the retweets of others) and lost count at the number of people who ’sneezed’ my post throughout the Twittersphere. When we hit the 1000 submissions mark I tweeted about it and again the tweet was retweeted many times. An hour before closing it I tweeted and again it was retweeted many times over. I’ve experienced things going viral online before but this one was explosive. Over 1000 of the submissions came in the first 20 hours - not bad for a weekend. I Should Have Planned More - But I’m Glad I Didn’tIf I’d put more thought into planning this project I would probably have done it a lot differently. I wouldn’t have done it on a weekend, I probably would have thought strategically about how to spread it wider, I possibly would have put up a prize for participants, I would have put aside time over the 48 hours to spend extra time moderating comments etc. I didn’t do any of that and in many ways I’m glad that I didn’t. The thing I loved about this was that it just happened. From the time the idea came to the time I posted it took about 15 minutes (if that). I put hardly any time into it (although there was a lot of comment moderation to do) and it was a rewarding experience. The Benefits of the ProjectSomeone asked me via email today how much traffic the project drove to ProBlogger. The reality is that this weekends traffic has not been significantly different to any other weekend. Traffic wasn’t the point here. The ‘point’ (if there was one) is that I wanted to give readers of this blog an opportunity to put themselves out there and connect with each other. That might sound a little selfless but at the time of doing it that was ‘the point’. There have of course been benefits to me from doing it - the main one of which is that there’s been a nice ‘buzz’ about the experiment and a feeling of ‘community’ and/or participation. I never promised anyone masses of traffic from participating (in fact I said it was likely not to drive traffic) but people have been reflecting back to me that they feel ‘involved’ and that they felt like they were apart of something. I guess people don’t want to just ‘read’ or consume information on blogs - they want to participate. The other benefit from the project to me was the impact upon my Twitter profile. I had 500 new followers over the weekend - largely from all the Retweets I’d guess. What a Varied and Rich Community the Blogosphere IsThe thing that has struck (and even moved) me most this weekend is just what an amazing variety of blogs there are. As I read through segments of the list I found myself shaking my head and shouting out to my wife “hey there’s a blog about ……(insert obscure topic here).” If nothing else this project has inspired me about blogging again. There are some truly creative and remarkable bloggers on in the list of submissions and I would highly recommend you set aside some time today to surf through as many of them as you can. Link to those you find, spread the word of the hidden gems that you discover, subscribe to their feeds, connect with one another and be inspired by the creativity hidden in the list. The real benefits of this experiment happen now. Elevator PitchesLastly - this project taught me a thing or two about ‘elevator pitches’. I’m not going to write too much about this here as I feel a post on the topic ‘brewing’ but I’ve heard from a number of bloggers who participated that they found the exercise of refining what their blog is about into 140 characters (although some thought it was 140 words) a very rewarding thing. For those of you who missed the project I’d encourage you to think about how you would have described and pitched your blog in 140 characters - it could be a useful exercise (more on this later). My Favorite PitchesI said in my initial post that I’d post a few of my favorite ‘pitches’. At the time I thought there might be a few hundred to wade through not over 1400! I’m going to include a few of those that caught my eye here - but I feel that in doing so I’m doing an injustice to many others who have done a great job also. I would love it if you’d surf the list and highlight your own favorites either in comments below or even on your own blog (if it’s relevant). Here are 10 (listed in no particular order) that caught my eye over the weekend (for one reason or another):
As I say - these are just 10 of those that for one reason or another caught my attention. There’s 1400 others in the list - which caught your eye most? Tags: , comments, twitter |
| How To Build a Successful Email Newsletter Posted: 27 Oct 2008 07:01 AM PDT
Today I want to finish this informal mini-series on newsletters off with some tips for actually writing a newsletter. How to Write an Email NewsletterLet me say up front that much of what I write below could equally be applied to ‘how to write a successful blog’ (or in fact could be applied to many mediums of communication). 1. Define Your Goals for the NewsletterThis is perhaps the most important thing that I’ll say in this post because virtually everything else flows from this. What do you want to achieve with this email newsletter? Is it about:
When you subscribe to a few different bloggers newsletters it becomes quite evident that different bloggers are taking quite different approaches. For example Chris Brogan’s newsletter is much more about providing his subscribers with lots of new original content (it is well worth subscribing to if you’re into social media and building online communities). He explores a theme each week. On the other hand my photography newsletter is more about highlighting key articles and discussions on my blog and forums from the last week. The reason our newsletters are so different is that we have different goals. My main goal is simply to drive traffic back to my blog. I find that many of my readers are not using RSS (quite a few do but there is a sizable proportion of them that have never heard of it) and so my newsletter is a way of hooking these readers into ’subscribing’ and reminding them to check out fresh content each week. Chris on the other hand seems to be using his newsletter to give his most committed readers something extra. This builds and reinforces his brand, builds community and gives those of us who subscribe a feeling of being on the inside of what he’s thinking (scary as that might sound). So work hard on defining what you want to achieve with your newsletter. It can have numerous goals (for example I use mine to drive affiliate sales from time to time and to build a sense of community) but keep your primary goal as the main focus. 2. Communicate What Your Newsletter is About to Potential SubscribersI subscribed to a newsletter a couple of weeks ago because on the subscription page it said that it gave weekly unique, insider tips from the blogger. However in two weeks I’ve had 6 emails and they’ve all been affiliate promotions (with no insider ‘tips’). There’s nothing wrong with promoting affiliate products in a newsletter but if you promote it as having original content - provide it. If your newsletter is going to be largely updates form your blog and a way for readers to stay in touch with that don’t hide that fact. It is better to get fewer subscribers who are expecting what you’ll deliver than having people subscribe to find out that you’ve tricked them into joining your list. 3. Establish a Voice and Have ConsistencyThere are no real ‘rules’ when it comes to how to write a newsletter. In the same way that you can write in almost any ‘voice’ on a blog you can write in almost any style in a newsletter. I personally try to keep my newsletter ‘voice’ pretty similar to my blog (personal, as though I’m speaking to someone) and I find this effective (it means that those who enjoy your blog will enjoy your newsletter). My main advice with developing your voice in a newsletter is not to chop and change it too much. As with a blog - readers come to expect a certain type of communication from you and so when you change things up a lot it can take away from what you might have already built up in terms of connection with readers. This doesn’t mean you can experiment and/or evolve your voice over time but it does mean that you should try to have some sort of consistency in what you present to readers. This extends to the design and flow of your newsletter also. I try to stick to the one format over time and find that readers enjoy this consistent approach. A Comment about ‘Hype’ - One important tip to note when it comes to thinking about your ‘voice’ is to avoid the ‘hyped up’ style that has been used for years by a lot of internet marketers. I’m sure a small number of people still get away with this but I find that most users of the web these days are quite suspicious of this style. Use your newsletter to build relationships and speak to people in a personal way and you’ll build a list that will stick with you (and trust you) over the long haul. 4. Build ValueIn the same way that people will not stay subscribed to your blogs RSS feed if it doesn’t provide value to them in some way - people won’t stay subscribed to your newsletter if it isn’t meeting a need that they have. This ‘value’ and meeting of ‘needs’ can take on many forms. It could be writing original content, giving insider information that you don’t publish on the blog, could be pointing out tools or resources and can even be simply pointing out ‘what’s hot’ on your blog. The key is to watch how users interact with the different parts of your newsletter (see what I write about ‘tracking results’ below) and listening to their feedback. When you do this you’ll soon see what they find useful and what they don’t. An Important Note about Uniqueness of Content From Your Blog - I see some bloggers say that rehashing what is on your blog in your newsletter is not a good strategy. They argue that if it’s not new and unique content in your newsletter that readers won’t subscribe. While I think this applies in some circumstances it has not always been my experience. My biggest newsletter (my photography one) has 45,000+ subscribers and 90% of it is simply pointing readers to new posts on the blog and forum. Again - this comes down to knowing your blog’s goals. Even rehashing your blog’s content can be ‘useful’ for some readers who don’t have any other way to subscribe to that blog! 5. Scannable ContentIt is important to have scannable content in almost every online medium including blogging - but when it comes to email I find it even more important. If you’re using HTML emails you can do this with color, images, bolding, italics, lists, headings etc - but if you’re using Plain text emails you need to get a little more creative. Consider using symbols and characters, CAPS for headings, line breaks etc to draw the eye down the page. Again - track different techniques and layouts to see what works best. 6. Track ResultsDepending upon the newsletter tool that you use to publish your emails you should have access to be able to track how people are engaging with your newsletter. Aweber (the tool I use) gives a large variety of stats but so do many other quality newsletter tools. Some tools give more advanced reports than others but most will at least allow you to track how many people open your newsletters (this can help you to experiment with subject lines) and what links are being clicked on by how many people in your posts. Paying attention to what links get clicked is a fascinating and productive thing to do. It not only helps you to work out how to write an effective newsletter (and how to improve it) but it gives you incredible insight into what topics your readers are interested in reading more about and what types of language they respond to. I look forward to analyzing these stats each week and have many times written followup posts on topics that I see a lot of people clicking on in my newsletter. 7. Subject Lines and Opening Lines MatterWhen it comes to blogging the most important words that you’ll write are your blog’s title (they can mean the differences between your post being read or not). When it comes to your email newsletter your subject line really acts as your ‘title’. I’m still working on what subject lines work best. I find that some readers seem to respond best when the subject line is the same each week (they look for the email each week and like consistency) while others become blind to the same thing each week. I’d be interested in your thoughts on which is best. Another thing to note is that what you put at the top of your newsletter will almost always get higher ‘conversion’ than what you put at the bottom. The links you have in your opening paragraph will get clicked more, the affiliate campaigns that you have at the top will convert better, the content that you have first will get read more. It’s the same concept as placing content ‘above the fold’ on a web page - what’s up top gets the most eyeballs! 8. Use a Reliable Newsletter ServiceThis is a lesson I learned the hard way. In my early days of newsletters I used a free newsletter service called Zookoda. I’m not sure how it performs these days while it worked well at the start it slowly deteriorated in terms of how reliable it was. Emails wouldn’t go out on time and the newsletters that were getting through to those who had subscribed was fewer and fewer every week. Switching to Aweber saw drastic improvements in how many of my emails were being delivered (and I mean drastic). The ‘cost’ of using a free service may not have been monetary (well not directly) - but it was significant because it meant that I was missing out of connecting with thousands of readers each week. 9. Use Double Opt in Newsletter ServicesIt is very important to only ever start a newsletter that uses Double Opt in techniques to gather subscribers (ie the person needs to subscribe and then confirm that subscription from an email to them). You can do your brand terrible damage by adding people to your newsletter list without permission or by buying lists of email addresses. Having double opt in systems does decrease your actual subscriber numbers and causes some headaches - but it is important. Similarly - give people a way to opt out of your newsletter and use a service that includes your postal address in the newsletter. These things are the law in many parts of the world and if you don’t adhere to them you run the risk of not only hurting your reputation with potential readers but suffering the consequences of breaking the law. 3 Bonus Newsletter Tips from Chris BroganI used Chris Brogan’s newsletter as an example above so thought I’d drop him a note to see what tips he’d give for budding newsletter developers. Here’s what he replied with:
If you have a newsletter/s - what tips would you add? Tags: , Aweber, Blog Promotion, blog tools, Email, Email Newsletters, newsletters |
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