Website Publisher Blog | Website Promotion, Generating Revenue, Website Management - Part 13 » Website Publisher Blog » Website Promotion, Generating Revenue, Website Management

Get it in Writing

January 15th, 2007 by Chris

One of the happiest days for a website publisher is when a buyout offer comes. Even if you do not accept it, even if it is far lower than what you would sell the site for, it is nice to know that others do value your site. However, before answering any purchase proposal, ask for it in writing.

The reasons for getting it in writing are many. If you do end up accepting it you will have a document showing the original offer if they try to renegotiate. However, this post is not meant to be a primer on purchase negotiations.

Rather, it is good to keep proof of what you have been offered for your business.

If you ever need a third party to value your business, perhaps for a credit or loan application, for instance if you were to open a business line of credit, then having a document showing a value for one of your websites or your business as a whole is a very good thing. I wish I had done this as I recently opened a business line of credit and trying to get these stuffy bankers to appropriately value my business was a huge pain. I had been offered $250k for one of my sites in the past, which was just barely over 12 months earnings at the time so I turned it down, but still, that small amount would have made a big difference to the bankers.

Also, you must think of your family. Often it is discussed in forums about what would happen if you died. You’re probably a one man business, or at the very least, you’re the only man (or woman) in your business that knows how to keep everything running. Many website publishers leave files of instructions on how to keep the business running, or how to dismantle and sell it. With a document such as described above you’re leaving your family a ready made buyer to contact about the purchase of your sites. It will make it that much easier for them if you are not around anymore.

Finally, if the day comes when you do sell your business, having prior offers that you can easily prove could help you negotiate a more favorable price. You may even contact the past bidders and try to get them to bid against the new one.

So next time someone emails or phones you about buying your business, ask for their offer in writing before giving an answer. You don’t need to justify your request, it isn’t that odd and they’ll merely assume you want to be legally thorough. Plus, if they balk, they probably were just jerking you around anyways.

Posted in: Business Management, Website Management by: Chris | 1 Comment »

About Advertising Cycles

January 13th, 2007 by Chris

This comes up all the time, it gets to a certain time of year and multiple people start posting about how they’re suddenly earning less, and a few of them may incorrectly theorize about the cause of their woes. If this coincidence happened at a place like WebMythWorld it might grow into some sort of “January 1st” penalty we all must worry about. However, at most places the new website publishers are just given a quick lesson in ad cycles. Said quick lesson begins below.

Small advertisers may start and stop advertising on a whim, but larger companies work within monthly, quarterly, and yearly budgets. Some companies do not end their fiscal year on December 31st, but rather at a different time during the year, so if you rely specifically on a single advertiser you may not notice the same trends. However, most business stick to the standard calendar.

Also, advertising networks and agencies posses neither Superman’s speed nor his strength. When campaigns end they do not have the resources to instantly replace them.

So while campaigns may start randomly all throughout a cycle, they all typically end on the same day.

The end result of this are drops in earnings. It will happen at the end of a month, it will happen at the end of the quarter, it will happen at the end of the year. Considering early January is the end of all 3 it would be one of the worst advertising times of the year, were it not for the fact that people are indoors a lot at that time, and there are all the end of the year retail clearances going on.

These drops aren’t necessarily traffic drops, but rather they are CPM or eCPM drops as a result to there being less advertisers out there for the time being.

So, when you experience these drops, do not fret, do not panic, they are normal, they happen to everyone, and they happen every year.

Posted in: Ad Networks by: Chris | 1 Comment »

Don’t buy the Snake Oil

January 5th, 2007 by Chris

There is something that has been bouncing around inside my head for awhile now, it involves an issue that makes me uncomfortable. I thought I would take this opportunity to get it off of my chest, and to hopefully shed some light on this issue so that all may benefit.

In many ways marketing can be evil, especially when it involves dishonesty, and I am going to talk about one of the more evil forms of marketing, I call it “delayed spam” but there may be a different term.

The most ready example is a forum poster, real or robot, whom posts informative if prepackaged posts without any hint of self promotion included. Only later the posts are edited and a signature is added to fly under the radar of moderators.

However, a far more insidious example of the same sort of thing is a combination of personal self-promotion and artificial reputation generation. In this case someone is working towards selling themselves as a brand or product. Either to boost book, consulting, or other sales involved with their name. The goal with this tactic is to avoid the look of late night infomercials and instead of talking up your success and selling your service or product in the same breath, you space things out so that people are less likely to be skeptical about what you claim as you build your reputation.

There is of course nothing wrong with selling yourself as a brand, while I do not try to do it personally I’m sure that much of the traffic that comes to this site has to do with my reputation.

However, the problem comes from dishonesty. Often the reputation manufacturing will be done via forums and the individual will attempt to be helpful but usually what happens is he or she ends up merely talking up their own success. Either through outright lying, or perhaps by purposely making such an error as reporting gross revenue as net income.

I’ve even seen where the individual may be either hiring others, or masquerading as multiple people, to provide encouragement and praise to himself.

Often the person will not disclose details about their business, which makes it harder for you to catch them in a lie, but even if they do disclose details such as which websites they run that doesn’t mean they are disclosing all information or that they are telling the truth.

Then, down the line, once a positive reputation is built, comes the time to do the selling and soliciting, making it all pay off.

The problem with all this of course is that if people are tricked into believing a false reputation they may put more weight into what an individual says or does that is warranted. Then also a dishonest person will naturally lie more than an honest one, and so people who engage in this activity, even if their book/advice/consulting is great, cannot be trusted. I’ve personally discovered that a fairly popular blogger, one many of you read I’m sure, blatantly lied about a product he recommended to get a favorable deal. I’m not going to point any fingers here, I did not post this to bad mouth any one individual.

The point of this blog post is two fold. Firstly I felt that someone needed to shine a light on this topic and point out that what I described above is a marketing tactic, one that we all should be aware off. Additionally I worry about my own reputation in that I do not want to be associated or thought of in the same group as people who may be doing this. So I wanted to reassure readers that I don’t lie in my blog or anywhere else about my success, and additionally I do not plan to sell you anything.

There is a common phrase: “Those who cannot do, teach.” This site is very much about teaching others, however it is a very small part of my website publishing business because mostly I’m a doer, not a teacher. This is why I’ve never seriously promoted this site and why I’m content to allow it to grow at a natural pace. I may write a book one day, but I never want to make my living through consulting of any sort.

If anything, I usually underestimate my success because the problem of copycats has grown to be so bad. Likewise, I’m more than happy to report when I’ve failed as well, since I’m not trying to build a reputation to market a product. I believe honesty, even brutal honesty, is the best policy.

So, be skeptical out there, and don’t buy the snake oil. You should take everything you read on the Internet with a grain of salt and do not part with your money until you are sure what you are buying. Remember, the Internet may be a new medium, but all the same old scams work. It might be a friendly persona on a forum now though, rather than a guy with a big smile, worn shoes, and an expensive rental car in a hotel lobby, but the scam is the same.

Posted in: General by: Chris | 2 Comments »

Site-Wide Links

January 4th, 2007 by Chris

Site Wide Links

For whatever reason I’ve noticed a lot of forum discussion recently on site wide links, cross linking multiple sites together, and or links from the same IP address. All of which are fairly overlapping issues.

So I thought, why not blog about it?

I also thought I would share a golden rule of link building.

It is better to have 1 incoming link from 1000 different sites than to have 1000 incoming links from a single site.

That is the concept you must understand. Having diversity in your incoming link sources is good because there is less chance of any major shifts disrupting your SERP positioning. Diversity equals stability.

Additionally, Google likely (though no one knows to what degree or by what factor) devalues some site-wide links. For instance many websites have footer links that exist on every page. This may, depending on topic and number of links, raise a red flag and indicate to Google to have your site checked for spam. Additionally the links may be devalued in a way as Google may see it as an artificial linking scheme. PageRank is still passed, and with that PageRank you can gain an indirect benefit by laundering it through your incoming links (in fact, you’ll still get raw PR even through nofollow links), however the actual direct benefit to the page with the incoming links is what you’ll see lessened.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that for website publishers with multiple unrelated sites I recommend a hub and spoke linking methodology as a way to legitimately share PageRank between your sites. I only recommend straight site to site links when they are very closely related in topic.

As for IP addresses of links, Matt Cutts recently tackled this in a blog post that was part of a series of myth busters. While his post does leave room for interpretation I take it to mean that while IP address does matter when Google is doing spam checks, there is no direct discounting of link value if the links are on the same or a similar IP address. Also, my own experience bears this out. Most of my sites end up on the same or similar IP address and I’ve never noticed any loss of link value because of it.

Even if there is devaluing, I’ve never heard of a penalty for honest (non-spam) cross site linking. So there is no harm in doing it.
So there you have it. Don’t worry about IP address too much (unless you’re doing black hat things and don’t want the black hat site associated with the legit sites). It is better to have links from as many unique places as possible, but that doesn’t mean that many links from a single source is anything to scoff at. Also, remember how important the context of your links are, number and weight of links will not matter if the context is not related to your site’s topic.

Posted in: Search Engine Optimization by: Chris | 4 Comments »

Why I’d Rather Pay

January 3rd, 2007 by Chris

I was reflecting the other day about how very happy I am to pay for software.

I was doing my taxes and so all my expenses were right in front of me and it reinforced how I can write off software purchases, but my like for commercial software goes beyond that.

You see, you must look at the actual cost of a piece of software, not just the purchase price. With vBulletin for instance you’re paying $160 for a license and $30 a year for upgrades if you want them. However, Jelsoft, the publisher of vBulletin, is a fairly successful company. They have the resources to continue making vBulletin indefinitely. This means you will never be stuck with outdated software and be unable to upgrade it and have to pay for costly custom work to convert it or upgrade it.

Now, what got me thinking about this is I recently installed a few commercial plugins on a few of my vBulletin forums. One was vblogetin, a blog plugin that allows users to create their own blogs and ultimately provide them with an almost MySpace-like environment (or so is the plan). The software is still very new, only exiting beta in November, but I gladly paid for it (you can see it in action here). Now, anyone who visits vbulletin.org knows there are numerous free blog plugins, however because they are free they are typically left unsupported at some point. For instance, the most popular one in the past, vbJournal, still does not (to my knowledge anyways) support the most recent vBulletin versions. The author hasn’t upgraded it. So those with vbJournal installed cannot upgrade, or cannot keep their blogs if they do upgrade, or have to do some custom fixing to get them compatible (time is money).

Now, this doesn’t necessarily apply to larger companies. Linux is technically free, but plenty of companies, such as Red Hat or IBM, make money off of it and support it. MySQL is also technically free, but they still have their methods of making money off of it as well.

I’m not thinking though of software in that realm, I’m thinking more of the bits of scripts that web publishers buy or download to run their websites. I would much rather used scripts I pay for rather than scripts I get for free, simply because there is nothing more expensive then having out of date software you cannot upgrade.

Posted in: Website Management by: Chris | 4 Comments »

A Review of Booksurge

December 20th, 2006 by Chris

On my plate of ways to further monetize my literature site has been plans to publish actual books. In one case I’m having a writer work on original content for a book that is encyclopedic in scope. In the other cases I’m publishing in book format the same work I publish in digital format.

For my first go at it I decided to make a pocket reading book of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. The reason is that Shakespeare is one of the most popular authors on my site, and I also run a sonnet newsletter with a whole bunch of subscribers to market to.

Since I have modest photoshop & PDF skills I did all my own formatting and supplied Booksurge with ready to print files based off their specifications. This meant my cost was only $99.

Since BookSurge is owned by Amazon the book will be included in Amazon’s catalogue. Additionally it’ll be included in the catalogues of many other online stores and be able to be bought by brick & mortar booksellers as well. Booksurge will print all orders on demand. The royalties vary, but in general I will receive 25% of the retail price of $13.95. This isn’t big bucks to be sure, and I’m not really counting on sales from all the various distribution channels. Rather, I plan to drive all my own sales through my sites.

Like with Cafepress, I can ask Booksurge to raise the price, however I do not get what it is raised to in additional royalties (like you would with a cafepress product) rather I still just get 25%.

Of course, when it is on Amazon, I can link to it as an affiliate link and get 30-35% overall.

So, I signed up with Booksurge on Dec 11th, and there was some back and forth with the files, but they were finalized on the 15th and today I received a copy of my book in the mail. It looks great. It is a trade paperback, though buyers have the option of a hardcover edition which will cost a little more.

All told, I’m very pleased with my $99 purchase. I think I’ll be able to sell a few hundred to a thousand of these just by marketing it to my own viewers, so it’ll be profitable. Plus, making your own books is fun.

You can see the book on Amazon here.

So, if any of you have content you think would work as a book, consider giving BookSurge a try.

Posted in: Generating Revenue by: Chris | 24 Comments »

Another Two Excellent Google Blog Posts

December 18th, 2006 by Chris

There was another excellent post at Google Webmaster Central today that tells all about duplicate content. It is so uncommon to get such straightforward information from Google that this is definitely worth a read.

Additionally they answer the question about what TLD to use when targeting a specific country for search, I always intuitively thought what they say was correct, but without a solid source I was never sure.

Then, over at the Adsense blog, they finally put out a clear statement with regards to image ads and other tricky Adsense optimizations. Guess I’ll have to tweak my article a little bit.

Posted in: Ad Networks, Search Engine Optimization by: Chris | 6 Comments »

Google Talks about Link Building

December 15th, 2006 by Chris

No sooner had I posted my last post then I caught this blog post at Google Webmaster Central. Basically they go into slight depth as to what kinds of links you should be getting and how you should be getting them. I mention it only in that it echoes what myself and others here at Website Publisher have been saying for awhile. Of course too it encourages a more fundamentalist SEO approach, as I talk about in this article I just rewrote.

Posted in: Search Engine Optimization by: Chris | 3 Comments »

SEO Article Updates

December 15th, 2006 by Chris

As part of my process of redesigning & rewriting this site I’ve updated two SEO articles today, and since updated articles don’t get front page billing I thought I’d mention them here.

The first is Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals and is set to be the main launching point for all my other SEO articles. Most of the information is basic and shouldn’t be new to any readers of this blog, but the first page does deal with a new concept, or atleast one I haven’t written about previously, a fundamentalist SEO philosophy.

The second is All About Link Popularity & PageRank which was simply updated to fix things that have changed since I wrote it back almost 4 years ago. For instance I was repeatedly mentioning AltaVista as another major engine. It is weird to think of how much as changed in such a short time. Back then the big 4 were Google, Altavista, Inktomi, and AlltheWeb. Yahoo didn’t have their own index yet, and bought 3 of those to make it. MSN didn’t have their own index. Teoma (Ask.com) was a glint in his daddy’s eye. In retrospect 4 years seems like a short time, but so much has happened.

Posted in: General, Search Engine Optimization by: Chris | 1 Comment »

Paid Blog Posts

December 9th, 2006 by Chris

Andrew at WebPublishingBlog has come out strongly against Pay for Post services, so have many others in this industry. I’m not one of them.

One thing Rush Limbaugh does with his endorsements on his radio show is only accept sponsors that he actually recommends. He’ll find a product he likes, and go and ask them to sponsor.

Likewise, with these services, if they got large and had a huge library what would be wrong with getting paid to write something you’d write anyways? For instance Andrew’s post immediately prior to the one linked above is more or less a recommendation for that Elite Retreat, something myself and others think is hokey. If Elite Retreat was an advertiser with these services, Andrew could have gotten paid to write what he was going to write anyways.

As such I do not see using them as being wrong or selling out, certainly I do not see them as being the death of blogs. Rather the more important issue to discuss is that each blogger individual will have to decide if they are going to lie to their readers. You can get paid for posts and not be lying, you can get paid for posts and lie through your teeth. I see no problems with getting paid to write a post if you agree with what you’re writing, it is no different than writing a product review and including an affiliate link.

Lets be honest here, affiliate programs and advertising are not new, and bloggers or other content providers have long used them to monetize their sites. If a blogger finds a lucrative affiliate program, such as maybe a web host that pays $100 per account signup, and then recommends that host, even if they do not use that host, then they are being dishonest, and they are doing it all without the help of a Pay for Post company.

What about those that are not paying for a good review, just a review? How is this any different than reviewers for practically every thing out there that gets reviewed getting freebies? Car reviewers get free cars for a week, book reviewers get free books, game reviewers get free games, hardware reviewers get free hardware. It isn’t money exactly, but those freebies certainly have value. I’ve accepted free services, software, or preferential treatment to write reviews here and on SitePoint. I know Andrew has too, even if he doesn’t realize it. People have buttered him up for blog mentions.

The issue here is not about being paid to post, it is about honesty. Bloggers and writers in general can get paid to write something and still write honestly, they are not mutually exclusive. So it isn’t automatically bad to use one of these services, rather it is bad to be dishonest in your writing.

I do not have a problem with these services, and I may use them myself, but one thing I will never do is write dishonestly, including recommending a product I do not like or even worse, haven’t even used.

Posted in: General, Generating Revenue, Website Management by: Chris | No Comments »