Mar 03 2008
Hunter, fisherman, and outdoors-man extraordinaire Jake had over 70 outdoors-related articles that he wants to publish into a book. He researched his options and is leaning towards AuthorHouse because:
…they will help market the book by putting it in their store, as well as selling through Amazon and Barnes and Nobel bookstores.
Oct 14 2007
The best web stats software on the market today is Google Analytics. Why? Because it’s good, doesn’t reside on your server, doesn’t require a licensing agreement, and it’s free!
That’s right, free.
And to help you get started with Google Analytics, they have posted several instructional videos on YouTube.com to help you understand conversions, the role of conversions on non-ecommerce sites, bounce-rates, advanced techniques, and much more.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFK3zedxSEQ[/youtube]
Sep 11 2007
The new study showing the value of video ads on quality content sites, finding that consumers are more likely to act on ads they see on media sites, versus portals or user-generated content (UGC) sites, according to Online Publisher’s Association. Over one-third of consumers on magazine (38%), newspaper (37%), and online-only news (35%) sites say they have searched for more information after watching a video ad, while about one-quarter did so after watching an ad on a portal (27%) or UGC (24%) site. About one-quarter of consumers on magazine (29%) and online-only news (26%) sites went into a store to check out a product after viewing a video ad, while only 17% on portal sites and 14% on UGC sites did so. About one-in-five consumers on local broadcast TV (21%), national broadcast TV (19%) and cable TV (19%) sites requested more information after viewing a video ad, while only 16% on portal and 14% on UGC sites did so. 
Overall, 80% of all video viewers have watched a video ad online, and 52% have taken some sort of action, whether it’s checking out a website (31%), searching for more info (22%), going into a store (15%), or making a purchase (16%). The importance of environment was reinforced by concept testing video ads. The study found that if a consumer has a positive attitude toward an advertised brand, and likes the video content that the ad appeared within, brand consideration jumps 61%. If the consumer’s initial attitude toward the brand is neutral or even negative, brand consideration still rises 21% if they like the adjacent video content.
Aug 10 2007
The sun shines a little brighter today.
Today I relaunched my local portal website www.atFishers.com on the new multi-user blog platform WordPress Mu. After over 8 months of tinkering, testing, loading and unloading, and tweaking….I’ve finally launched the future of what I think will be many online communities.
For those of you who have attended my workshops or classes on Internet marketing, you know that I always recommend BlogSpot.com (owned by Google) to newbie bloggers. Why? Because it is easy, much easier to set up and work in than any other blog platform.
However, my follow-up comment to this endorsement is always “when you get ready, you’ll want to move to WordPress.org.” Why? Because it is awesome!
WordPress is an open source blog platform with a legion of dedicated developers creating all types of extra add-ons (or widgets) to give your blog some awesome functionality. If you don’t have a hosting provider (which if you don’t know what that is, you probably don’t have one) they will host your weblog for you for free on WordPress.com. Every free hosting service comes with a catch, except this one. The only downside of having WordPress.com host your blog is that you can’t put outside code, banner ads, or AdSense ads on your blog.
I stumbled across WordPress.com late last year while doing some research for my book in progress. I then graduated on to WordPress.org, the open source development community for WordPress where you can download the software for free and they will even help you install it (at no charge by the way). I started hosting a few WordPress blogs, including this one, and then started learning the php code underneath WordPress. Believe me, I’m no programmer. Just four years ago I was figuring out FrontPage which is essentially the Microsoft Word of web design.
But then, on a cold January morning earlier this year, while looking for yet another cool plug-in for my TomBritt.com blog, I found the multi-user version of WordPress: WordPress Mu. Being a local portal person with now a few months of WordPress experience under my belt, I downloaded and installed this multi-user blog system on my host and just fell in love with it.
After 8 months, I’ve finally moved just about every local website that I had built in FrontPage over to this new blog network I’m calling the Geist Blogs Network. The benefits are huge:
And the list goes on. I encourage you to check out the Geist Blogs Network. I’ll be launching a similar online community for authors within the month. Stay tuned!
May 29 2007
In my previous life (dot com days), I used to fly all over the world and talk on the topic of convergence. My thesis was simple: eventually all data, video, phone calls, audio, video would be delivered via an Internet protocol (IP) based platform. I always talked about this convergence from the device-side of things; television, handheld devices, set top boxes. Now that the dot com bubble has poppped and broadband adoption is now over 65% in the United States, convergence is happening right before our eyes in the media industry.
With this in mind, I’d like to propose that the ‘big bang’ of convergence has been YouTube.com. Yes, this free online video hosting service purchased by Google last year is democratizing the last of the media frontiers: television.
Think of what desktop publishing did to the book industry. I was working at a typesetting company back in the late 1980’s when they bought their first Apple computer. Within three years, Weimer Typesetting was purchased by a local printer in Indianapolis for about $3.1 million and a few years later, the name was basically worthless. Desktop publishing lowered the barrier for average Joes to design, layout, and publish their own print publications. Fifteen years later, print on demand took this industry to the next level of democratization by allowing people to print one copy of their books at a time. Publishers were no longer the gatekeepers to the books that people bought. Bookstores were no longer the destination for book sales, Amazon.com took buyers online with a broader selection of books.
Second, look at what the Internet did to the radio industry. Remember back in 1995 when Real Networks introduced the Real Audio Player and Broadcast.com (later acquired by Yahoo!) took most radio stations online? People were now able to listen to their favorite broadcast radio shows from all over the world on their PCs. Fast forward to today, now that 67% of America is dialed in with broadband and Apple has sold over 100 million iPods, people are coming out of the woodwork producing podcasts (or Internet radio shows). People like the ability to listen to what they want, when they want. The radio industry has been democratized as well.
Lastly, look at the television industry. Traditionally, it takes a lot of money and an FCC license to produce and ‘publish’ a television show. Local broadcast stations and cable networks have been giving up ground to satellite television for years. Again, people like more channels, more choice, and thanks to Tivo and new set top boxes watch it when they want. But up until YouTube.com, average Joe had no way to easily and effectively distribute video. Today, YouTube.com allows anyone to create video content, push it online, and host it for the world to search and see. This my friends is the last frontier that needed to be conquered before true convergence happens. Network television no longer is the gatekeeper of video content, and televisions are no longer the ‘last 10 feet’ of convergence: iPods, cell phones, and hand held devices are the ‘last 3 feet’ of convergence.
So what does this all mean? It means that people like me can provide a multi-media, multi-platform source of news and entertainment with nothing more than a laptop, video camera, and Internet connectivity. And guess what? That’s exactly what I’m doing.
With atGeist.com, we’re providing:
We can provide the full spectrum of media in a local market, thanks in large part to YouTube.com. Video was the last frontier to be conquered, now it is up to the devices and transparent software to streamline the delivery and consumption of all medias. The lock that newspapers, book publishers, radio stations, and television stations have had on media delivery has been obliterated by the Internet.
Apr 29 2007
An article by Template Monster entitled “You are Being Lied About Reciprocal Links” cites some research by WebSideStory saying:
Exchanging links has been an important part of generating traffic since the concept of Internet marketing was first established, but at least 90% of people looking to trade links don’t understand the real benefits and, therefore, fail to make the most of them.
The vast majority of web site owners think that exchanging links is only helpful because it can boost their rankings in search engines such as Google.com. They are however, useful for this purpose since the number of links back to a site is figured into ranking calculations. But according to WebSideStory’s StatMarket Web site optimization service, search engines account for only little more than 13% of an average web site’s traffic.
I would agree that most website/blog owners don’t understand how to build “good” link programs vs. “a” link program. For example, if you are blogging on the topic of home improvement to help build a platform for your “How to Roof a House” book, adding a link to your blog to your local library, your best friend Bubba’s fishing blog, and vacation pics on Flikr.com won’t really help your cause. Likewise, if you buddy Bubba links to you and calls the link “My Buddy’s Blog”, it won’t help either.
When search engines evaluate links, they weigh in a lot of other factors besides the gross number of links. For starters, they look at the relevancy of your links. If we use the same example, a link to Home Depot’s “Top 10 Roofer Mistakes” articles, Louisiana Pacific’s dealer locator site, or link to the publisher of “How to Roof a House” these links are seen as relevant to your blog.
Another thing to consider is links “to” your blog. This is very important as they create in-bound traffic and tell search engines you are more relevant than blogs with fewer links. Search engines assume that a blog/website with a lot of links is more important than a blog/website with fewer links. Bubba’s link to you won’t hurt you, but then again it won’t really help you that much either. Now if Home Depot links back to you, that will definitely be a homerun in your link building program.
You also need to look at establishing links from websites or blogs that have more traffic and visibility than yourself. Bubba is a nice guy, but unless he is a famous guy or has a cult online following, his low traffic will tell the search engines he’s a virtual “nobody”. Home Depot is a “somebody” and can help you with your rankings. To find out how you can tell, read my Handy Little Browser Plug In for Authors post.
The last piece of the puzzle that most link builders forget to plan for is the name of the link to your blog. If the name of the link to your blog reinforces the keyphrases or words you are trying to be found under in the search engines, this will help your search rankings for those phrases. (Give me an example, Tom!) Okay, let’s take our example of the “How to Roof a House” book blog that we have been using. Ideally, anyone searching for “roof repair”, “how to roof a house”, or “roof house” will find this blog in the organic or free listings on Google. The common words are “roof” and “house” in all three phrases. So, if the link to your blog had the words “roof” and “house” in them, it would greatly help your link program and search engine ranking. Home Depot would put a link on their website to “Tom Britt’s How to Roof Your House Blog” or “Roof Your House Book”, these words reinforce your own blog’s metadata and it helps you build more traffic. With this in mind, go back to Bubba and tell him to put “Roof Your House Book” on his blog and at least get this working for you.
Apr 24 2007
Believe it or not, blogging turned 10 years old this month according to Guardian Unlimited. “After a quiet start they revolutionised the web; now one is born every second,” the writer Bobby Johnson cited.
“Check this out. Amazing!” It took just a brief sentence, and after those four words a revolution followed.
The first entry on Scripting News effectively ushered in the first blog 10 years ago. In the intervening years these online diaries have been touted as the future of media, labelled “pathetic drivel”, and caused court cases, prison sentences and international incidents. But love them or loathe them, bloggers around the world have ensured incredible growth for the medium. Latest figures indicate an estimated 70m blogs in existence, with around 1.5m posts being written every day.
Read the whole story and see a timeline
Apr 21 2007
A lot of you understand how to add Google AdSense ads to your blog or website and make money from clicks you generate to their AdWords partners. If you are using Blogger, Typepad, or Wordpress, this is pretty easy to do with either a widget or click of a button.
Where bloggers and website owners sometimes miss a golden opportunity is through paid affiliate programs. Similar to AdSense, affiliate marketers pay you either a percentage of the sale or per click to advertise their products or services on your website. Perhaps the largest and easiest to use (in my opinion) is Commission Junction (www.cj.com). Signing up as a “publisher” is free and allows you to peruse their thousands of affiliate programs that they manage and sign-up for those that would be most relevant to your website or blog. Each affiliate lists their company information, what they will pay you, and you can view the creative banners and ads that you can choose from to place on your site. Commission Junction also tracks your performance for each campaign you subscribe to and manages the payments to you as well.
As a general rule, I don’t recommend affiliate programs like this or even Amazon’s affiliate program because they generally only pay if someone purchases a product, subscription, or service as a direct result of your click. I would much rather make $.25-$2.50 per click than 10% of a purchase. How many times have you:
Affiliate programs do provide one service for you that AdSense ads won’t: build a hallo of brands that reinforce yours. Associating yourself (almost said ‘affiliating’) with brands like Wal-Mart, Amazon, GoDaddy, or eBay can sometimes bring an air of validity to your otherwise struggling blog. Casual users of your website will never know you aren’t making any money on those ads, they will think that they are paying you to be there. In some ways, they are, but it might take 1 million clicks to get that 10% of the $6.95 book off of Amazon.
Apr 09 2007
Corporations and publicists alike are hiring bloggers by the truckload to create in-bound traffic, buzz, and positive PR for their brands. If you are looking to make a little extra money by writing for various blogs, each requiring different backgrounds of expertise, visit the ProBlogger Job Board. You can search through job postings for bloggers, video bloggers, and podcasters from every type of online business imaginable. Why not establish yourself as an industry expert and get paid for it?
Apr 08 2007
Finally, an online promotion company geared at authors. RazorPages.com is a San Francisco-based blog-based portal designed to help independent authors (isn’t that everyone?) promote themselves, their books, and their e-books online.
Founded by Bill and Dan Guillory, RazorPages.com understands both the trials of being noticed in a self-published world but they also understand the power of the Internet in helping you overcome this challenge. Their online community of author blogs is a great way to network like-minded and like-genred books, complimenting each authors’ page with podcasts and video trailers hosted by YouTube.com. I’m sure they charge a little extra for podcast or video production, but those costs are not outlined on their website.
RazorPages.com seems to be doing pay-per-click and other organic search programs to gain traffic to the author webpages and genre pages. They seem to be doing their part to promote their collective customers in the search engines, complimenting the traffic that each individual author sends to their own webpage.
In addition to online promotion, they provide a shopping cart for online book and e-book sales. Surprisingly, they only take a 10% commission on sales which is far less than the likes of Amazon.com (35%) or your local bricks and mortar bookstore (45%). You can still sell books through your own website or out of your trunk, but with a 10% commission just look at RazorPages as a supplemental sales channel.
They produced this short 2:00 video clip on YouTube.com which I thought was a great overview of why an independent author should sign-up with them.
If you are struggling with online PR, blogging, or podcasting and need some help, join RazorPages and leverage their online community. They are fairly new and don’t have years of track history, but with the Internet moving as fast as it is, this could be a blessing that they are not bound to the traditional book promotion paradigms still being preached at several writers conferences and groups.
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