Sat, 19 Jul 2008
Networking
Blog Search
Blog Categories
Blog Readers
Blog Roll
Monetize Your Website
John Reese just launched his new blog syndication site called BlogRush. It works like a traffic exchange service. You display related blog posts of other blogs on your blog X times and your blog posts will get displayed on other people’s blogs X times too. There is a ratio of how many impressions you get in return for displaying the BlogRush widget. This depends on the number of people you refer to BlogRush. The basic level is 1:1 and you will get better ratios like 1:2 as you progress.
It is important to understand that impressions does not equals to traffic. An impression like most banner ad systems, is simply the instance an ad is displayed in front of a person. Whether the person feels compelled to click through to your web site depends on a lot of other factors.
I am testing BlogRush right now and I hope it makes a substantial difference in my blog traffic.
Tagged As: blog-syndication, blogrush, john-reese, traffic-exchange
Categories: Blogging | No Comments »
DealDotCom is like a discount web site for internet marketing related products. There is an internet marketing product on sale everyday and it lasts for only 24 hours. If you miss it, you won’t get another chance.
Product creators may submit their products to be sold on DealDotCom. The best thing about DealDotCom is their 2-tier affiliate program. According to their official documentation, you get paid 35% of DealDotCom’s profit for every item that they buy. If someone you referred to DealDotCom refers someone else, you get paid 15% of DealDotCom’s profit every time they buy something for the rest of your life.
Tagged As: dealdotcom, Internet Marketing
Categories: Internet Marketing | No Comments »
I recently signed up for AuctionAds to test if it will earn more money than Google AdSense for one of my sites. So far my results have not been good due to the fact the AuctionAds keyword rotation system seems to be broken.
AuctionAds is not a contextual advertising network. You have to specify the keywords into the system to get relevant ads displayed on your web site. Google AdSense on the other hand tries to automatically detect your web site’s theme and display relevant ads at their own discretion. AuctionAds allows you to set the keywords, minimum/maximum bid price, negative keywords and a couple of matching options.
According to AuctionAds’ keyword document:
One powerful feature you can use is result refinement using a “,”. Say for example you have a web site with baseball cards. You automatically insert the players name from the page into the ads, but not every player may have auctions with their name listed. You could however specify: “derek jeter rookie card, derek jeter, baseball”. The engine will try to find Derek Jeter rookie cards, and if all else fails will show simply “baseball” ads.
If you simply want to return all of several different keywords, use “;” a semicolon. Specify: “hdtv;xbox 360;video games” to return ads for hdtv OR xbox 360 OR video games.
Please keep in mind that there IS a delay between updating keywords on your code and seeing changes on your site. In the mean time the most popular items on eBay will display.
The Comma Parameter
Let’s say I want to display Barbie dolls and Transformers toys on my web site. I am not a girl so I don’t like Barbie dolls and I want Transformers toys to be displayed as my first priority. I would enter the code “transformers, barbie” into AuctionAds.
What this does is it tells AuctionAds to display as many Transformers toy ads until it cannot find any more before showing any Barbie doll ads. The problem with this approach is if there are loads of Transformers ads on eBay, you may never get a chance to display Barbie doll ads on your site.
I have tested the comma syntax in AuctionAds and the returned ads are correct and they work on my web site too.
The Colon Parameter
This is where I have problems with AuctionAds. I am not the only person in this world complaining about it. Since May 2007, some people have posted in this AuctionAds blog post about this problem.
The colon parameter is supposed to be a “OR” operator code for your keywords. For example if I wanted to display iPods and Creative MP3 players on my site randomly, I would use the code “ipod; creative mp3 player”.
However, this code does not seem to work. I received a lot of garbage results instead of the iPod and Creative MP3 player results I was expecting. I understand that there is a delay in the ads but after leaving my ads for over a day, I am still getting nonsense ads on my site. This is so frustrating.
Tagged As: AuctionAds, auctionads-colon, auctionads-comma, auctionads-keyword-rotation
Categories: Advertising Revenue | No Comments »
I tested hundreds of article directories back in the day when I fell for the hype of the effectiveness of article submitters. My belief back then was if I had more links pointing back to my web site, the better my site would rank. I was expecting an avalanche of traffic to come to my web sites but I was disappointed when the traffic was so pathetic.
Instead of submitting to hundreds of article directories, I only submit to about 9 article directories for my article marketing (bum marketing) campaigns. This saves me a lot of time, money and prevents my articles from competing against one another for rankings in the search engines.
My Top Article Directories by Alexa Rank
I ranked my list of article directories by Alexa traffic stats and this is the order of the article directories. I know there are article directories with better Alexa rankings than some of the ones listed above but these are my “approved list” of article directories.
I grouped my articles directories into a list of article directories worth submitting to and another list I consider worthless in terms of getting traffic.
My Condemned List of Article Directories
I compiled my findings with my tracking links at the end of each article’s signature. I usually use a tracking link to keep track of the number of people who clicked on my affiliate links of my articles. I also monitor the number of visitors coming from the articles directories. The condemned list above generated very little visitors and almost zero sales for me.
What About Squidoo?
I put Squidoo in my condemned list too because it has never managed to outrank my articles in my top list above. Seems like article directories like Buzzle, EzineArticles etc still outperform Squidoo for my articles. Maybe I am not using Squidoo correctly but I don’t really care since I have a bunch of article directories working brilliantly for me.
My Personal Favourite Article Directories
If I only had time to submit to one article directory, it would be Buzzle.com. Buzzle.com does not allow crappy writers into their directory. They take about a month before approving writers. Your articles will have to go through a strict reviewing process too. I personally get a lot of traffic and sales from them.
The remaining 5 article directories did give me some traffic and sales but not as much as the top 4 I mentioned above. If you do not have the time to submit to 9 article directories, simply submit to at least the 4 article directories above.
My Final Thoughts
Mass article submitters are a waste of time and money. I used to use Article Post Robot and it really does automatically submit to article directories unlike the other article submitting software. However, it takes a very long time for you to register at all the article directories and enter the login details into the software.
With the popularity of article rewriting software like Content Composer, many people falsely believe that they can spin hundreds of unique articles and submit them to hundreds of article directories again. I personally use Content Composer and I find that the greater the number of articles you try to generate, the more the generated articles will look like one another. Just because you can technically generate hundreds of copies of 1 article, doesn’t mean you should.
The biggest flaw of these article spinning software in my opinion is the inability to generate unique article titles! The less articles you generate, the easier it would be for you to brainstorm unique article titles to use with your articles. Since I submit to 9 or less article directories, by rewriting 1 article into 9 articles, I do not need to spend more than 15 minutes to create these unique article titles.
Free Article Directory Excel Spreadsheet Download
I organize my article directories in an Excel spreadsheet with additional information on each article directory. Download my article directory list and update it to suit your needs. Maybe some of the article directories I condemned could work out great for you or the ones I claim to be the best could be useless for you. The bottom line is you need to test them for yourself to decide which ones work for you.
Tagged As: Article Marketing, article-post-robot, article-rewriter, article-spinner, article-submitter, bum-marketing, content-composer, top-article-directories
Categories: Article Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | 6 Comments »
Building on where I left off in my previous post on SEO: Quality Over Quantity, I found a good post at SEOmoz on the value of submitting to directories, link building and “nofollow links”. They interviewed Google.com’s head of Google’s Webspam team, Matt Cutts, to find out more about Google’s attitude towards some SEO issues. I would pay extra attention to Matt’s reply to the following question:
What is Google’s position on the value of generic web directories that market to webmasters as a way to boost link strength, PageRank and relevance? Would you largely agree or disagree with my assertions about the value of generic web directories on the subject?
SEOmoz also has a post titled “The Wisdom and Folly of Directory Link Building“. You’ll get tips on what to look out for when selecting a directory to submit your site to. The good ones are usually very difficult to get in and they almost always require you to pay them a substantial amount of money to get reviewed with no guarantee that your link will be added. What’s worse, they might not even refund you your money if they reject your site!
Tagged As: directories, link-building, matt-cutts, nofollow-links, seo
Categories: Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »