And to bring a little culture to this blog…

August 1st, 2006 by Chris

I just launched a new site, Balthasar Gracian’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom. It is just a newsletter site, and I mention it here for two reasons. One of which is because this work, written 400 years ago, is often used like Sun Tzu’s Art of War, as a guide for modern day business. Since most of the readers of this blog have their own business I figured it is something many of you would be interested in.

It also illustrates a website publishing concept of building off of existing sites or finding new applications for content. My literature site was my first successful for-profit website, so I’ve had it a long time now (started work on it in 1999). I have spun many sites off of it though. The first was a mythology site that takes content from one of the books on my literature site and packages it in a different way by indexing it by myth rather than original chapter. I should also add some user comment functionality to the myth site if I ever get around to it. I also have another newsletter site, Shakespeare’s Sonnet-a-Day that was run as part of my literature site for years before being spun off. The content for this site is entirely available on my literature site, but here its in a newsletter form with rss feeds and is updated every other day automatically. When I noticed the personal poetry section of my forum growing I launched The Poetry Post which is still growing and not meant to make money but by tying it in with my existing forum it had a large built in userbase upon launch.

I have plans for more spinoffs, specifically most of the books that are delimited into short content sections like The Art of Worldly Wisdom or Shakespeare’s Sonnets, I plan on turning into newsletter sites. All with content I already publish, just offered in a different way. These sites are relatively easy to make, are cheap to host, and really just run off 3 or 4 files, but they attract incoming links and let me build a large list of email subscribers that can be marketed to.

The point of all this is that when you want to expand your business, look at your existing sites first. Chances are you can think of a spinoff of some sort and you might even already have content to power it. Of course I’m not advocating making duplicate sites with the same content, but I think I’ve shown that you can use the same content and turn it into very different sites.

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

A Publisher’s Guide to Contextual PPC Ad Optimization

July 29th, 2006 by Chris

I’ve just published my long worked-on article on optimizating Adsense, YPN, & similar ads. It is one of the longest articles I’ve ever written and easily the longest I’ve ever read on the topic.

Read it, and if you like it please link to it or recommend it to others.

A Publisher’s Guide to Contextual PPC Ad Optimization

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

When Will Ad Networks Learn?

July 29th, 2006 by Chris

One of the things that makes Adsense successful is that they do not include traffic requirements. One of the reasons Adsense has been such a boon to publishers is that it allows them to profit off of sites that are too small to get into other ad networks.

Small sites are not necessarily bad, just small. The fact is not every niche can support a large amount of traffic. Your site can be good, one of the best in your niche, but if your niche is so small or so specialized you might not ever get enough traffic to gain entrance into some of the better ad networks.

Take Tribal Fusion for instance, I got this email from them on Friday:

Dear Christopher,

We contacted you recently about falling below our required amount of 2,000 unique users per day. This requirement is in place to ensure that we can continue to command the highest possible CPMs for our publishers.

Unfortunately, we haven’t seen the necessary increase in traffic and are forced to give notice that we have (or will shortly) retire Wilderness Survival from the Tribal Fusion Marketplace. At that time, the ad tags for Wilderness Survival will no longer serve any paid advertisements from Tribal Fusion. To prevent broken ads from appearing, please remove Tribal Fusion’s ad code from the Wilderness Survival website and/or from your ad serving system immediately.

We value the content of Wilderness Survival, and would love to work with you again if you are able to generate and/or allocate increased levels of unique users.

Best regards,
Tribal Fusion Publisher Support

My survival website is the #1 website in it’s niche. It has been #1 on every search engine for “wilderness survival” for 5 years. It has been #1 for “survival” on Google for 3 years. It has had numerous national media mentions. Yet, despite all of this, it only gets around 1900 uniques a day. When I signed it up with Tribal Fusion they only required 1000 uniques per day, so it fit then, but they raised their requirements. Additionally its not like I’m using Tribal Fusion for defaults, they’re #1 in my chain.

I of course sent them an email back explaining all of this, and explaining of course my position in the publisher industry, in fact I know at least a few of their employees know I’m influential. In anycase I hope they reconsider, but the fact that they would even send me that email shows that ad networks simply have not learned how to cater to smaller niches.

I have niche sites that are so small that they can’t even muster 1000 page views a day, and yet with contextual ad networks they pull in eCPMs in the $50 range. It is extremely high quality traffic in a very profitable niche and yet I doubt any traditional ad network would touch it.

Now sure, traffic requirements do make sense. A general audience site with small amounts of traffic isn’t going to be worth the effort of administrating it’s placement in your network. However quality should be the ultimate barometer of whether or not a site is included, otherwise ad networks will not be able to serve certain niches at all because no site in the niche can meet their requirements.

Posted in: Ad Networks by: Chris | 2 Comments »

Who is Dev Tej Kohli ?

July 27th, 2006 by Chris

On multiple forums I’ve had a new user named “Dev Tej Kohli” register in the past week and post a very simple thread:

Hi-this is Dev Tej Kohli

I am new to this forum.

Thnx for accepting my registration .

In doing some research. I found that he has registered at tens of thousands of vbulletin forums this same way.

There isn’t any commercial aspect to his messages as of yet, but it is possible the second phase of his attack is to edit his posts or profile to include a link.

What is most alarming is that he has apparently devised a very efficient automated method of defeating vbulletin’s CAPTCHA and email confirmation features. This series of posts could merely be a proof of concept before launching a full scale spam attack.

My recommendations to forum owners would be to ban this individual if or when he registers, ban his IP address, and be on the look out for similar activity as it may be a prelude to spam. I also hope that perhaps the new vBulletin 3.6 fixes this or that the vBulletin team are atleast aware that thier verification procedures have been compromised and can release a patch without too much delay.

Posted in: Website Management by: Chris | 2 Comments »

Amazon Sense? Amazon Omakase?

July 25th, 2006 by Chris

When I was blogging for SitePoint I broke the news about “Amazon Sense” or rather Amazon wanting to compete with Adsense with a similar program, it got like a billion trackbacks and I really wish I had broke the news here instead. I had been contacted about joining a beta program for testing ads which would be run similar to Adsense and include ads from Amazon.com, but also eventually third parties. I had to decline this beta because one of their requirements was that you could not use it and Adsense at the same time.

Well Amazon recently launched a new link format for their associates program called “Omakase” which is apparently the Japanese word for “Entrust.”

These ads seem to be what Amazon was talking about, though I cannot know for sure since I was not in their beta. However as far as I can tell they are just Amazon product ads, no third party ads, yet. The ads also differ from the typical Adsense implementation in that they include an image for every link.

This program is still marked as being in beta but I believe that all associates should have access if they login to their account.

The most interesting thing for these ads that I can tell is that Amazon doesn’t just target them to your site, they also target them to your visitors. For instance I was recently shopping on Amazon for red Kitchenaid nonstick frying pans. Every Omakase ad I’ve so far viewed has been advertising those products.

Amazon.com has the worlds best customer database as far as product recommendations go, you go there and they let you know things you might be interested in and when you’ve bought so many things on Amazon like I have (hundreds easy), the recommendations get pretty good. So I’ll basically see such recommendations in these ads wherever I view them at and that has got to increase conversions.

It is so hard to target ads effectively. You can base ads on your content, but people aren’t always interested buying items related your content. With this Amazon program, assuming they’re an Amazon customer, they can be shown ads for products that they’ve shopped for before. That kind of desire targeting, from an ad network, is unheard of.

Maybe, maybe, Google could eventually compete with that if their Google Buy service takes off and they can obtain a large amount of customer data. However privacy advocates might not like all that tracking.

This is really a coup for Amazon.com, to know what someone is interested in, to know what type of products, specifically or in general, that someone buys. No other ad network can really do that.

I cannot speak for performance yet, on these ads, but I imagine they’ll perform excellently, and of course, if your visitors are not Amazon customers, they will see ads targeted to your content.

Of course, being in beta, this program does not have all the kinks worked out yet. Content based targeting is questionable, such as with YPN in the beginning. As well the format options for the links aren’t as flexible as Google or YPN. For instance most serious publishers know that to get the most effective CTR you want to blend in your ad by removing the border. Well Amazon keeps their large logo on the left for banners and the top for skyscrapers. You can turn this logo off, but instead of replacing with a simple “Ads by Amazon” text, they keep a long skinny border with that text in instead. So there is no way to effectively remove the border on anymore than 3 sides.

As far as I know, Amazon has not placed any limit on the number of units per page, so unlike Google’s 3 or Yahoo’s 4, you could conceivably use as many units as you want, which is good if you have very content rich pages with many ad locations.

I am also not entirely sure if it would be permissible to use these ads with Adsense or YPN ads. Amazon does not have any rules against it apparently, and as for YPN’s & Adsense’s rules, I’m not sure they apply since these are typical Amazon product links that in appearance look the same as those that have been used for years. If one day Amazon starts doing the third-party ads and ends up more like Adsense, then it’d be clear, but now I’m not entirely sure.

If you’re an Amazon associate, go check them out. Also check out any Amazon easy-links or Amazon Recommends links you already use, as I’ve noticed some of them now serving Omakase like content. If you’re not yet an Amazon associate you can check them out here.

Posted in: Affiliate Programs by: Chris | 3 Comments »

Update on the NOODP Meta Tag

July 14th, 2006 by Chris

As I first reported here MSN launched a new meta tag for webmasters who did not want ODP (DMOZ.org) directory data to overwrite their normal abstract in the search results.

Yesterday Google announced they would now support this tag as well, for both DMOZ titles & descriptions.

Forum Discussion

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

DigitalPoint Co-op Ad Network adds Rel=”Nofollow”

July 14th, 2006 by Chris

As reported here DigitalPoint’s Co-op adnetwork has added the option for users to nofollow their link. The rel=”nofollow” link attribute was released by search engines to allow webmasters to indicate links that the search engines should not trust. Basically if you didn’t want to get banned or penalized for false link schemes you were to use this attribute on such links, as well as links from user submissions (signatures, comments) that you could not control.

I may have to update my review on the co-op ad network to reflect this change as I initially voiced concern over the potential of a backlash against member sites. However I wonder if this change is too late as I have been hearing rumors lately of sites within the network losing rankings drastically and if Google or another engine already has their targets set on this network, will they hold their fire once they hear of this change, if they hear of this change, or is the bullet already in the air?

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

Forum Upgraded

July 12th, 2006 by Chris

Just a little announcement. The forum has officially been upgraded to VB 3.5.4.

Also, I’m currently looking for a reliable PHP programmer if you are one or know one. One of the biggest headaches I have when outsourcing work is the slow pace of that work being completed. It doesn’t seem to matter about the size of the business either, I’ve single people just disappear and I’ve had big businesses lead me on for months and then stop returning my phonecalls.

So, when I find a good reliable php programmer who actually gets work done right, and on schedule, I tend to offer all my work to that person as long as they’re willing to take it.

Posted in: General by: Chris | No Comments »

The PageRank Possibilities of an In-House Affiliate Program

July 4th, 2006 by Chris

If you run your own affiliate program there is an amazing potential you are missing out on. Tracking free affiliate URLs.

This is not a new concept, one I remember first hearing in 2001. However it isn’t commonly discussed and so many of you might not have thought of this before. I used to give this advice to people who sought help starting affiliate programs on SitePoint, but those posts were few and far between and not everyone would remember them.

So, the thing is, if you can setup your affiliate program so that you use a referrer check to do the tracking rather than tracking in the URL you will receive a multitude of benefits from doing this.

Obviously, one benefit is that search engines will have no idea that that is an affiliate link and they will give you credit for it as an incoming link. Imagine if you got PageRank for all the sites linking to you as part of your affiliate program?

Another benefit is that the link does not look at all like an affiliate link, so your affiliates will be able to better hide the commerciality of their site and the link will not turn off users who, for whatever reason, dislike clicking on affiliate links.

Finally, if your affiliates run forums, or anything with user submitted content, then they do not need any special code to make sure that all links from their site to yours get credited in your affiliate program. This makes your program extremely attractive to many webmasters.

I rarely run into programs doing this though, I’m not sure why. Of course you still need to provide tracking links for emails or PPC advertising, and you cannot do this if you use a network like CJ or Linkshare, but still many places out there run in house programs and they do not do this.

One place that does do this is Best of the Web a web directory like DMOZ/Yahoo. I discovered that when signing up for their affiliate program. For them this is an excellent benefit because they do not have a search engine partnership as far as I know, so the main benefit in paying for submission to their directory is the value of the link you are getting, and so they really need high PageRank, which they get from all their affiliates. That link just above here doesn’t look at all like an affiliate link, but if you clicked it and bought a listing I would get credit.

Referral tracking is the ultimate invisible way to run an affiliate program, there are a few pieces of obtuse software that for some idiotic reason block referral information with the browser, but not nearly as many as block third party cookies or affiliate links. If I ran an in-house program this is exactly what I would do.

Posted in: Affiliate Programs by: Chris | 12 Comments »

Evolution of a Niche

July 2nd, 2006 by Chris

In 2003 when I started this site I noticed a distinct lack of websites catering to website publishers. This was pre-Adsense, advertising rates were just starting to climb back up from their lows, and the industry wasn’t nearly as widely publicized as it is now.

However things changed. Now you’re always seeing stores in the mainstream press about independent publishers making money online, and of course there are the big stories about operations starting very small and making it huge and being bought for obscene amounts of money (see MySpace).

The result of all this extra attention is that I am not the only one in this niche anymore, the me-toos have come. In the last few weeks no less than 4 forums have been launched competing with this site. The owners of two of these forums are throwing large amounts of money, and if you ask me some pretty wild claims, around trying to entice people to join.

Another interesting tidbit of information, a couple months ago Developer’s Shed offered to buy this site. So they too must see this as a niche worth exploring.

The growth of these new forums has been phenomenal, money certainly acts as a nice carrot. So why don’t I follow suite and bribe people to come invigorate my forum?

Well, I don’t think that bribing is necessarily the best method of enticing people to a business forum. If your goal with a business forum is to attract successful business people then you’re really not striving towards that goal by offering prizes that are most attractive to the least successful. Lets face it, people who are capable of making their own money do not need yours.

I also think that rapid growth, especially in a new forum, isn’t necessarily a good thing. I feel that forums have personalities, like people. Also like people I feel that it is the early life of a forum that shapes it’s personality. If the early life of your forum is a bunch of juvenile space rangers who walk around with rulers dropping their pants erm… opening their checkbooks at a moment’s notice to measure who is the winner of some inane contest. Well, I think that is going to permanently shape the atmosphere and personality of your forum.

Website Publisher has never been a meant as a very profitable enterprise. I like to make money off it sure, but I don’t need to. I created it because I needed a place to dump a bunch of content I had already written for a book that was not going to be published. I hope that one day it is successful and I can see off my other sites (for millions of course) and just have this one, but for the time being I am fine with letting it grow slowly, and hoping that that slow growth will be a more solid foundation for the future.

I do like the people (mostly) who are now competing with me, and I’m not ashamed to say I’m threatened by their new sites. Any competitor can be a threat, especially if they are putting so many resources into competing with you.
So, they have inspired me in a way to fight back and defend my niche, but I won’t be using the same weapons they use. I will not be hosting a contest with this site, although I do think contests can work for some sites, just not when you’re trying to attract a certain type of person who is the least likely type to join your contest. I’ll also not be offering any guarantees about people who read my material here making X amount per month, the only guarantee I can offer is that you won’t make anything if you don’t work hard at it.

Rather, what I plan on doing is just to write more content, specifically revamp my guide and add some new in depth parts to it. Basically I plan on writing the book I was supposed to write for SitePoint and publish it here instead. No marketing hype, no bold claims, just down to earth practical content that I try to make as useful as possible.

If in the end these other forums blow past me in readership, and with the bribes being offered they probably well, I won’t mind. The beautiful thing about the Internet is that you do not need to be #1 to be successful. There is plenty of money in #2, and if I have to content myself with 2nd (or 3rd, or 4th) place I will be glad, so long as I maintain the type of community I want to run.

So I post this to my members, to let them know that despite competition I do not plan to change the atmosphere of this site.

To Jon and Lee and Tyler and the other people, I wish you good luck.

Posted in: General by: Chris | 10 Comments »

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