Blog To Great

Meebo Expands IM Support

     BLOG TIPS - Meebo, the provider of a Web-based messaging and chat service, announced recently that it's added support for the instant messaging (IM) platforms on MySpace and Facebook. The company's platform already supports interoperability between AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger and ICQ.  Read all about the Meebo announcement. If you're using MySpace and/or Facebook to promote your blogging efforts, this is great news that will help you communicate with your readers allowing better interaction !!

MOG Ad Network Changes Terms, Slows Payments

     Blog News - Back in August, MOG step up shop as a premiere music blog ad network and discovery platform.  Back then,  CEO David Hyman called it a “Federated Media for music sites” Called MOG Music Network or MMN, it lets independent music bloggers syndicate content to Mog.com and customize ads that appear on their blogs, helping bloggers generate revenues greater than what they’d get from ad networks like Google AdSense.  Now, we hear that MMN is behind in their payments to member bloggers and that they’re changed their payment terms significantly. This is the e-mail he/she received from MOG:

Greetings MMN affiliates,

MMN is now 275 strong. We’re really thrilled with the fantastic response we’re receiving from advertisers. Examples of advertisers MMN has featured in the last 60 days include SanDisk, Electronic Arts, and Sony Pictures. Our sales pipeline for 2009 is massive as a result of the enthusiastic reception to MMN among the biggest brand marketers in the world. They recognize MMN as more valuable, and with a cooler audience, than MySpace, Facebook, Imeem, and others. These marketers get that the tastemakers and influencers live on your sites.

Some of the proof is already in the pudding. MMN has averaged over $5.50 CPM in the last 60 days with 50%+ sell through rates, outpacing many other ad networks.

While demand for advertising on MMN continues to be strong, we are seeing a distinct slowdown in advertiser-issued payments. Regrettably, MOG doesn’t have the luxury of paying out affiliates before advertiser payments are collected. This means that we have to push back our payment terms to 120 days, starting with October 2008 earnings onward.

I ask that you be patient with us as we work to collect your earnings. We’re dealing with cream of the crop advertisers who, I assure you, will pay out.

Thanks for your understanding,

Andrei Marinescu
Director, Business Development | MOG

Bebo Looks to Grow its Social Network With a USA Push

     BLOG TIPS - Seven months after being purchased up by Time Warner, UK's  Bebo, the online social network, "officially" kicked off on Wednesday its push in the USA with the release of it's "Social Inbox".  It combines email, social networking and media recommendations in a single interface.  The new Bebo tool aggregates feeds and updates from services such as Twitter, Flickr, Del.icio.us, YouTube and AIM, among others and allows users to check their email from Gmail, Yahoo Mail and AOL Mail.  Plus, more than 100 million users of AOL and its AIM instant messenge service (IM) can now log directly into Bebo with their current screen names.  This release is said to be the first in a series of Bebo announcements, which currently is the No. 3 social network trailing behind Facebook and MySpace.  As we always have said, with the ebb and flow of the social network world, explore all appropriate networks for your blog.  You never know which one may shrink, grow, be sold or close !!!

Google SearchWiki; the End of PageRanks ??

     BLOG TIPS - As you're likely aware, Google's SearchWiki was activated a few weeks back.  It permits anyone to edit & comment on search results at Google.  Before it launched, there was much discussion of the dangers of bloggers voting up their blogs and removing their competitors listings.  But, know that voting up your blogs in the early period is red flag to Google that says “I’m a SEO and these are my blogs I’m promoting”.  Go take a look at the SearchWiki notes for some competitive keywords to see what some have done.    Google is getting a lot of data from this and they'll be using it in the future.  If you doubt Googles' ability to use data like this, you haven’t noticed how effective Google Local has been in ranking restaurants, clubs, etc based on how good they are rather than how many links they have.    So, what will happen when Google allows readers to give star ratings to ecommerce sites and blogs in the search results? The bigger brands with the best customer service and reach will to win, blogs with high quality information and loyal readers will win too.  We may see this as a more accurate list of quality blogs and sites!

PageRank was to be the ultimate fair method of rankings blogs and sites.  And it was until operators began buying links.  This defeated the true intent of PageRanks.  It was a great model to let Google determine which sites people were voting for.  Google can now ask users to vote on blogs and sites instead of relying on links (that are sometimes questionable). The major downside with PageRank is that only a small % of people actually have websites and are therefore able to influence search results for their own purposes.  We'll see where this takes us and how soon Google will make ranking changes with a new system.  In the meantime, we don't recommend doing anything improper to influence your blog or to harm other bloggers.

If you've used SearchWiki, we'd like to hear your thoughts on it.   Comment below...

Google Adsense Video Tips to Help Your Blog

     BLOG TIPS -  The blogosphere is full of tips and tricks on how you can make money online with a blog. it seems that new programs are offered every day (and as many seem to shut down)  Google Adsense continues to remain one of the simplest and the most popular blog monetizing programs available.  To help you get the most benefit, take a look at the three-part video series below that shows Google’s top tips for increasing your AdSense earnings.

1. Bigger is better ! -

You heard it from the source, Google suggests the following ads units are the best for publishers

• 300×250 medium rectangle
• 728×90 leaderboard
• 160×600 skyscraper

2. Make it look the best it can-

When you create your AdSense ads, you should also keep these tips in mind:

• Use colors that blend well with, or complement your blog’s colors. Design the ads to be a natural part of your site.
• Use lighter colors for borders or,  no border at all.
• Rotate ad colors, designs and location occasionally on your blog
• Save sets of frequently-used colors as a palette.

3. Position is key-

According to Google, the following positions should have the highest conversation rate-

• Above the fold of a page (the section of the page a user can see without scrolling)
• At the end of an article
• Aligned with content

     “So remember, position your ads above the fold and where users are more likely to see them,” says Google.

Don’t just take their words for it, give it a try. All the best Adsense tips in the world won't do you and your blog any good if you're unable to drive traffic to yourlog.  So, always continue to work on building traffic before you start monetizing your blog.   And don't worry, you want earn tons of money on your first attempt. Your monetizing strategy, as with all your blogging efforts,  should be one of ‘trial and error’. With time and new techniques, the above tips should help to improve your Adsense earnings potential.

Overall, place your ads units as visible as possible without harming the experience of your readers.  You've likely been on blogs or sites that have ads as the primary focus, NOT an good thing to encourage return readers.  And, don't forget to use channels to keep track of the best performing unit.

Don't feel you're looking into one ad network.  Feel free to test other networks and ad programs.  A mix of several might be best for your blog.

BLOG BASICS - Know Your Blog's Traffic

   Blog Tips -  You hear a variety of terms in a discussion and calculation of blog traffic. You'll often see statics in terms of daily and monthly unique visitors; some will provides you with more; Pageviews, Hits, etc.   I'm sure you've heard of bloggers who say their blog has had XXX  hits a month. What does that really mean; how big is XXX hits?  Are they claiming they have XXX people visiting their blog in a month?  To help, below is a quick explanation of the common terms, for new bloggers and for anyone unsure of what is meant.

Hits

    Measuring blog traffic by hits also shows a higher number. A hit is as request and is the total number of files loaded when a single blog page is requested from the web server. How are hits calculated?  Think of it this way, a single web page with 20 images is loaded, that’s 20 hits for your blog!  The blog page has 10 photos, that’s another 10 hits.  When you add up the CSS files, Javascript files and all the external files, each time a web page is loaded, it can easily build up more than 50 hits. If you clear cache, reload the page, another 50+ hits again.   Therefore, hits are not used to to determine a blog’s traffic as the info is not really representative of actually activity.

Pageviews

     Pageview is the number of how many times a page is viewed.  When a visitor lands on your main page, that is one pageview.  When that visitor clicks to your About Us page, that’s another pageview. By dividing total pageviews with the number of total unique visitors, you can get a better idea how many pageviews each visitor has generated.  This number helps you determine how long readers are hanging around on your blog, and how "sticky" it is.

Impressions  

Impression is basically a marketing term, and used in increments of of 1000.  It shows you how many times a element (image, text, video) is on a web page. If an ad network pays you $3/CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions), it means you get paid $3 when the banner appears 1000 times to viewers on your blog page.

Visits / Unique Visitors

     Visits are the number of unique visitors to your blog/site.   It's the number of different people (different IPs) that visit your blog page in any given period.  The number of visits, or unique visitors is the essential number that you are concerned with.  That # reflects the true traffic of a blog or site. All your efforts to promote and market your blog are to increase this number.

How to be increase the traffic is an ongoing process, and with different techniques BtG will help you.

Digg is NOT for Sale (for Now at Least)

     Blog Tips- The chief executive at Digg, Jay Adelson recently told Business Week that the company is NOT for sale.  Digg's now focusing on increasing revenue with new features that will come out over the next several months in an effort to keep people on the site (and hopefully be profitable within a year). But we know, everything has a price, so time will tell.   See interview here.   We're looking forward to the new stuff.  In the meantime, this doesn't impact bloggers and the importance of social networking for you and your blog.  StumbleUpon and Digg are good tools, but don't rely on them (and other networks) solely for blog traffic.  Yes, build a good, reliable network, but continue to build your own steady readerships with good content and other efforts.

Tips on Increasing Blog Page Rank

     Blog Tips- The biggest search engine, Google ranks websites & blogs by relevance via Pagerank.  Knowing your Pagerank is very important because it allows you keep track of your search engine optimization work and it helps you rank higher in the google index.   Pagerank measures how many websites link to your site.  More important than the quantity of the websites is the qualityof the blogs/websites that link to your site/blog.  So, the higher their pagerank, the better your rank will be. Keep this in mind as you network with other bloggers.

Submitting to quality search engine directories (google, yahoo, msn, aol, etc) and directories(dmoz.org) is a necessity, but also submit your blog to portals specific to your blog's niche and to regional websites (specific to your country, state and city).  Some websites will try to sell you higher placement in their directory, but I don't believe it's necessary.   Also, remember that links to your website without reciprocal links from your site are measured higher than if you link back. Called organic links.

Pownce Acquired by Six Apart

     Blog News- Pownce, a microblogging and file-sharing service that was created by Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, announced on Monday (12/1/08) that it was acquired by Six Apart, the developer of blogging tools including Vox, Movable Type and Typepad, for an undisclosed sum.   Pownce also announced that it will end its services for good on December 15.  "We're bittersweet about shutting down the service but we believe we'll come back with something much better in 2009," the Pownce team wrote in a blog post.   Six Apart has said that Pownce's employees will be joining Six Apart, while Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka will act as advisers.   Six Apart's Vox service is very similar to what Pownce offers; both compete with Twitter in the microblogging arena.