EeeBlogger: a new focus, new writing, a new style

Posted on by InvestorBlogger

After years of blogging at my old address, I’ve decided that it’s time for a change. In the five months since I created the Blogging Travails sub-blog at InvestorBlogger Dot Com, I’ve come to realize that it’s been really coming on strong as a blog in its own right.

Having a much more focused blog has helped me to concentrate my writing on blogging, making money online, and marketing. As such, I am setting up a whole new blog at this address:

Welcome to my new blog EeeBlogger Dot Com, where I will attempt to take on these three might topics more fully, as well as much more.

The Network

It’s apparent to me that I’m now firmly in front of a large network of sites that range from Education to Photography to Finance.

While my relationship with each of these sites/blogs is quite different, in fact some of them are customer blogs, it’s fascinating that since establishing my first website I’ve gone onto create over 18 different sites (including this one).

Many of the sites are now using WordPress in its latest incarnation (2.6.5) and the installs are a pleasure to use. Unfortunately, there’s no automated way to set up the standard defaults that I suggested earlier in 30 Install Tips. But at the very least updating plugins and removing unnecessary ones has become much easier than ever.

EeeBlogger Dot Com

InvestorBlogger made several mistakes that impacted its performance over the past few years; one of which was an irregular posting schedule – sometimes I’d post 4 a day; sometimes none for weeks; I got caught short by the Google RankSpank in November of 2007 with a pagerank that has stagnated there despite an ever increasing depth and range of backlinks; InvestorBlogger also had an unclear niche that encompassed too many different kinds of topics, making it difficult to retain readers and keep up visit times – it was only after setting up the sub-blogs, I saw that my more focused approach resulted in much better retention rates, visitor satisfaction, and quality of clickthroughs.

Posting Schedule and Content

The posting schedule is going to be quite simple. One long and detailed post each week, posted on Tuesday around lunchtime. The topics are included as above, but the author will feel free to explore related (and sometimes unrelated) issues as well. I will consider adding more posts later, but don’t expect anything yet. Once a week on Tuesday pm. That’s it. The archives are all from the blogging Travails blog and are posted here (and there) to provide you with a backdrop to my current situation.

Whither Google?

I’m glad to see that Google is now also suffering for its own hubris, it’s no accident that Google’s stock reach its heighest point just shortly before the Rank Spank. In recent months, some easing of Google’s position has taken place; but Google really damaged itself as a reputable source of information… one that it has not recovered from. In fact, John Chow’s omission from Google’s index for searches for his own name highlights the ongoing partisanship that Google displays.

I will however be following a different path with EeeBlogger and its siblings than before. I have not kowtowed to Google on InvestorBlogger, but I would like to explore a different path to making money online than the one I pursued at InvestorBlogger Dot Com.

AdSense, PayPerPost and TLA

Of Adsense

It’s unlikely at this time that I will be using Adsense on this blog simply because I’m winding down my account. Once my account is inactive, I’ll be selectively adding AdSense to make sure that my AdSense doesn’t get such poor click throughs or pricing. In fact, I’ve been getting many false positives that I never see a dime for, my click through has been very poor over the course of my account (0.5% in total), and the CPC has been a little over 25c per click. But I know that the number of clicks is vastly undercounted. I’m hoping that more selective use of Adsense on my sites might help me avoid being smartpriced. My first indications of more selective use have helped to increase AdSense returns, though.

PayPerPost

In the same breath as PayPerPost, I’ll be including SocialSpark. In fact, I’m planning to publish a review of these Paid Posting Sites next Monday (Stay Tuned!). I’m not planning to use any paid blogging on this site at all. The rates and availability of such posts are just not worth it any more. And the hypocrisy of many of the main actors in the blogging scene is just frightful. PayPerPost drops blogs that don’t meet its strict requirements (despite those requirements resulting in poor or no-PR), refuses to allow no-follow on its primary site as a default, and promises (but fails to deliver) that it will overhaul their PR ranked system in PPP. That was more than 16 months ago. Todate, nothing has changed. SocialSpark started out as a promising alternative, but I now only use it as a convenient way to maintain objective stats for my blogs. I haven’t had a successful deal in several months. The posting schedule on this blog would make it irrelevant for PPP as I’d have to post at least every three and a half days – and that’s not going to happen!

Text Link Ads

TLA has had the most successful program that I’ve been involved in, out of these three. The money has come in consistently for months and been increasing until the latest downturn in the market. I’m not sure where it will go from here, but I’ve been very surprised at the success of the TLA program since I started using it in October 2006. Be warned: TLA can seriously impact your PR ranking, if Google catches you. I’m not currently enrolled in TLA for this site at all, and it remains to be seen whether this site will be a suitable candidate for TLA. I’ve had several sites enrolled but only one site managed to become a regular candidate for advertisers. The others were a total flop. It’s unlikely that I will bother.

Recommendations – Text Link Ads is one of my most successful income streams for one of my blogs. Only one! Remember that.

A different blog: A different focus

For those blogs in the network, I’ve noted how each has developed and grown in its own direction. Some sites are hosted as clients sites, some are personal blogs, some make money from paid blogging, some make money from TLA, some make money from advertisers, some don’t make any money. Some attract large but loose audiences, some narrow and motivated readers.

Each blog seems to be different in its audience, and that is the most interesting aspect. I didn’t intend to set up so many different sites or monetize in so many disparate ways: but somehow this is turning into a strength. Strength in variety.

News on a different front – Google Friends Connect

And just in: I’ve been whitelisted to use Google Friends Connect so here goes. I’ll focus on just using this blog alone.

Nine Tips for Getting Started with Google AdWords: Steve Sutherland’s Suggestions

Posted on by InvestorBlogger

AdWords is quite a learning curve, but Google breaks it down nicely into chunks with the Starter Edition. When I wrote and told my friend, Steve from AgentsChat, he immediately offered some great advice. In his email, he wrote 9 useful tips to get me started.

I’d like to share them with you.

Nine Tips for Getting Started with AdWords

Great. I have a great book on the subject called Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords – I can lend it to you next time I see you if you want.

Things to remember -

1. Look into ‘Exact Match’ and ‘Phrase match’ options (heaps of info if your Google for ‘Adwords matching options’ etc) – you may be throwing away money on using the default ‘broad match’ if you are not careful with it.

2. Google automatically give you Pay Per click ads on their search results pages and the content network (Adsense on sites – Contextual network I think they call it now). Some people prefer to turn off the content network and just focus on the search results – you can test both. You can even target specific sites with the content network if you want.

3. Look into the ‘insert keywords’ option – you can set it so that if the user types in ‘investing’ then that word will show up in your heading or ad – when the word shows up it will be in bold and thus get more attention and more clicks – more clicks = cheaper bid prices.

4. The other factor for bid prices is ‘quality score’ (should be no problem for your home-page) – to get the best quality your keywords should be in your ad, and on your landing page.

5. Grouping keywords into tight Adgroups gives more flexibility to meet quality score – don’t just do one big Adgroup as the ads you write won’t be relevant to all the keywords.

6. Go through your Analytics account to get an idea of terms that people used to find you – you can then target these terms in your keywords.

7. Investing keywords will be expensive so you could take quite a different approach and choose other keywords that are cheap (Taiwan blog, is one idea)

8. Your ad structure looks good – many recommend the pattern

Catchy heading (with keyword)
Stress a benefit (possibly with keyword)
Call to action (possibly with keyword)
URL

9. Run two ads together – the one with better CTR will be cheaper so go with that then test another if you have time.

Hope that helps. this turned into a rather long email – you can turn it into a blog post if you like.

Steve

Unfortunately, I’ve not had great results yet, but I’m still working on the early stages. It’s not difficult to get started. I did have one problem with an affiliate page that I wanted to market because Google Adwords TOS didn’t permit my initial efforts, so I’m still struggling with the affiliate side of the effort.

Blogging News: Updates on InvestorBlogger Dot Com

Posted on by InvestorBlogger

My, how things change? Last November, I was railing against Google and telling people to diversity their services… Now I’m finding that things have changed again…

A Quick Recap: Switching to WordPress MU

I’ve reset some of my categories as sub-blogs (or ‘channels’) on the InvestorBlogger Domain. I found that there were basically three or four types of reader, and so I wasn’t gaining much traction with any of my target groups. Hence, each channel is now its own ‘blog’.

One blog: Many Channels

From the outside, it’s nearly impossible to tell that this is the case. I haven’t changed the theme unduly, or the plugins or the widgets. But as you click through the ‘blog’ you’ll find that each blog is beginning to take on its own ‘personality’. At the moment, I’m binding each blog together because there is strength in the shared roots: so the theme, the footer and header, and much of the sidebars are the same.

But as time goes on, more differences will start to emerge. One example: advertisements are mostly for financial products, so these will no longer be shown to users on the ‘blogging’ area. Other sidebar details will change, too. Eventually, I may break up the site into real blogs (either because they can stand on their own or they are pulling in VERY different directions). Since the switch in early August, there hasn’t been enough time to assess the impact on traffic any more than casually but early indications are showing an increase in traffic, page views, unique page views, longer times on the site, and a modestly decreased bounce rate.

The changes that I’ve made are currently difficult to make in standard WordPress installs, though there are several multi-blog plugins for WordPress that would achieve much of what I did here. I eventually decided to opt for a standard MU install, and expected a tough struggle. To tell you the truth, some things are troublesome, but I was able to solve nearly ALL my initial problems.

If you have a largeish blog, with weak traffic numbers, splitting your blog the way I have could be the way to salvage your traffic, create a new impetus and improve your own blogging. The route I chose with WordPress MU isn’t the only possible route to go: two or three WordPress installs would be perfectly manageable as well, a multi-blog with WordPress Standard could work, or choosing another multi-blog system like B2 evolution would allow the same privileges. One word of caution: don’t split your blog into too many parts, I initially thought I would have five channels, but it was just too much to administer at the beginning. But the great advantage of a multi-blog set up: you can easily expand past your initial setup!

Sidebar Changes

I’ve been experimenting with ways to make InvestorBlogger stickier for some time now, and the sidebar features a number of small changes: YouTube Video, a Featurific flash gallery that shows some recent stories, and a Tag Cloud. The tag cloud itself necessitated typing tags for each of the posts, so for new posts and posts ‘moved’ to the new blogs, I’ve taken extra steps to tag everything.

google stats august

SEO, Traffic and Google

Other changes include maximizing the impact of each article: I’m now adding SEO to each article, as well as the blog itself, through selective choices in the keywords. The plugin that I’m using is ALL-In-One SEO that allows each post to have its own post title, keywords and description in the meta details. Adding tags to the article itself is also helping. There’s no big effect on traffic yet, but it can’t but help traffic.

AdWords for Google

I’ve also been experimenting with AdWords, too, to see if I can draw extra traffic to InvestorBlogger. I do have several products that are free that I’d like to promote. It’s quite exciting, a little expensive, and frustrating to get CTR rates that are as low as mine. The best I’ve achieved so far is about 0.7%. I’m going to keep plugging away at the CTR to see if I can’t raise the bar. Steve has loaned me a wonderful book on how to use AdWords.

Adsense from Google

It seems that InvestorBlogger is no longer smart priced… How? Well, I’ve made three significant changes to the way Adsense is displayed on my blogs… I’ll be posting that soon, but for observant users, you will already notice the changes! But CTR rates and earnings are showing positive growth for the first time in ages, and they seem pretty stable at the moment, too. Sometimes less is more.

Et Cetera…

There are a whole bunch of other changes, too, in the header, footer and elsewhere. At the moment, I’m sticking with this theme, and tweaking as much as possible. I decided in the meantime to create some essential pages, like a privacy policy, comment policy, rewrite my disclaimer and add a few other important pages. If my plans really come to fruition, much of this work will be the solid foundation from which I will expand InvestorBlogger.

And finally, it seems the changes are beginning to pay off, even though my posting rate is now less than before. InvestorBlogger is now #9 on the top 10 finance sites on IzeaRanks! Wow! That’s incredible. It’s a minor honor! I’d like to be number 1, but I don’t see how that’s possible just yet. I would need to increase my pages by nearly 5 times! It could be done… but things are not ready yet!

Newsbytes: Blog Announcement, WordPress Problems, Money Manager Ex, and Goog Stock Price

Posted on by InvestorBlogger

Well, this Tuesday’s newbytes brings updates on the latest ongoings on InvestorBlogger dot com.

But first some recent stories that you may have missed:

New blog or Two: MakingREALMoneyBlog is the new home for the Carnival of Making Real Money. It will be hosted on a WordPress install with all the usual plugins, that I like to use: BlogRoll Page, All-in-One SEO Pack, Feed Footer, XML Sitemaps, Lighter Admin Drop Menus, obsocialbookmarker, PXS Mailform, SRG Archives, Spam Karma II, and Related Posts. Plus one or two others that I haven’t activated yet. But…

BUGGY WordPress: … some new installs of WordPress are BU G G Y… Yep, the visual editor bar refuses to show up at all on some of my newer sites… Here’s a glimpse, I’m still trying to find out what is causing the problem, but it wasted a lot of time last night, so I’ll be using the code version for most posting until I can find the cause. I will also use BlogDesk.

wonky wordpress

Where did the WordPress Icons go…? It seems nobody knows. There are as many reasons and solutions as there are angels on the head of a pin. I can’t figure out what’s wrong at all. So I moved the whole domain from the original user to another that was okay, and hosted a WordPress blog without these problems. And voila! It worked… so here goes… Problem finally solved. Now I’ve just got to move ALL those plugins. The technical explanation is: I think the original ‘user’ was jinxed somehow: I had problems setting up WordPress, with faulty permissions, etc.. so I’m just glad that it works now.

Money Manager Ex: Here’s an interesting and open-source alternative to MS Money or Quicken: it’s called Money Manager Ex.

It seems to offer a lot of flexibility, features and charts. It may not be the level of MS Money, but then I never cared for that, it should allow users to begin or learn how to use a Money Managing Program. I have installed it on my PC at home, and I’m wondering about whether it can be used for a USB Key as well. Anything to make my life a little easier!

Clearing out Google: I’ve now removed the nice little screenshow from Picasa from the blog. It was quite an attractive element and added some visual punch, but I moved all the pictures to Flickr as part of my campaign against Google. I’m about to add a Flickr plugin soon, once I find one. Any suggestions?

Out of the nine original Google services I identified as using, I have already dropped three from InvestorBlogger: Picasa, Reader (except for the marketing of this blog!), and Adsense. I’m working on YouTube as a User, and still have to download seven of my nine movies. I definitely prefer to host the movies on my own websites, esp. as YouTube is a PR hole, it sucks links and users and never returns them.

Adsense: is it becoming Add-non-Sense

And last but not least, John Chow writes in his recent post about Google’s raft of changes to its Adsense program:

My gut feeling tells me that Google revenues are down and that they’re doing everything possible to post a good quarterly report, even if that means taking it from the affiliates who help them build their business.

This could be true for a number of reasons: the screws are much tighter on revenue and payouts to affiliates; Google is a PUBLIC company now and needs to march to Wall Street’s beat; the US economy is entering a Recession for many reasons (Oil, housing, inflation, interest rates, jobs, …); AND Google has been trampling on the very webmasters that made it is what it is today.

GOOG: Going down – Can you spell F A S T?

In the last six months, they have lost a ton of goodwill among webmasters for Adsense, PR, affiliates, etc., not to mention publishers, newspapers, mobile phone providers, writers, advertisers… I wouldn’t be buying Google stock at these prices. The stock is due for a huge fall even though it is down more than 20% from its highs just a few months ago. Hope you dumped your stock in the run up in early November.

Guest Bloggers? Interested? SIGN UP!

I’ve decided to open this blog to guest posting… so if you’d like to post something, drop by, register and write away. I can’t promise I’ll publish it, but if it’s a good fit, I will!

And last, apologies for not posting yesterday afternoon as usual, but I was exhausted in the evening…

Going to War Against Google’s Hubris: Three Actions You Can Take Today!

Posted on by InvestorBlogger

The backlash against Google’s Tyranny is growing, and even after two months, there is still a lot of anger and frustration at Google’s actions over “no_follow” and the recent downgrades of blogs. In fact, the recent actions, actions that Google has taken against many websites for problems that are more to do with their own inabilities as a Search Engine to manage their results, have led many bloggers to see Google’s oft quoted mantra “Do No Evil” in a whole new light.

As many of you know, the crew at Google felt it appropriate to snip away at InvestorBlogger’s PR rank until it went from 4 to 0, all the while ignoring blatant violations of the same TOS by well-known websites who were quietly called by Google and advised of the situation. Such hubris is evidenced by Google’s eagerness to snatch vast tracts of the world of media from Internet, Video, Books, Radio, Newspapers and much much more.

There is an increasing backlash among bloggers regarding Google’s behavior towards webmasters , as it is no longer telling bloggers how to blog, but also what to blog…

With Google’s increasing ownership and development of new websites (Gmail, Google Docs, Picasa, etc.), it is getting more and more difficult to extricate yourself from their grasp. But I’m here to tell you: it can be done. And it’s not that difficult.

Step One: Take Stock of the Services You Use.

Find out what services you readily and regularly use. For this, you may need to observe and record a daily log of what you regularly use. Or you can find out which Google sites are saved in your favorites. Once I took stock of my usage, I was surprised at the number, range, and depth of the services I use:

Gmail – I use this on a daily basis and have several different accounts with them. Fortunately, mail can easily be accessed and downloaded via POP mail or via IMAP. With large amounts of data, though, you may need to use an account with a larger mailbox than many services have.
Google News – Again this is something that I use often, and along with Google Image Search and Google Search, I find that I use these almost several times a day. There are alternatives to each of the services.
Google Docs – This nascent service is gradually gaining in complexity and at this time there are few equivalent offerings available. So simply cut the usage as much as you can, so you are not particularly dependent on the service.
Picasa and the web albums – Picasa, like most of the products in Google Docs, is the result of an acquisition by Google. The software is generally quite easy to use, well-integrated with their Web Albums, but can be used independently.
Reader – for RSS feeds, this service offers you the ability to log and subscribe to feeds for blogs, and other websites with RSS feeds. It is generally quite powerful, but it is far from unique.
YouTube – recently took the crown from Google Video as their primary video offering. There are a number of issues that using YouTube has that I’ve found make it difficult to use YouTube for hosting my own video: lack of control for placement of videos on other websites (you can block websites, but you can’t choose); uploading issues that frequently happen; and video unavailability (perhaps due to apparent TOS problems) in which videos are removed without notice.

For those of you who seek to create websites and blogs and monetize, the trio of sites including Adsense, Analytics and Webmaster Tools are websites that you may choose to eliminate.

Adsense: I’ve already blogged quite a lot about the problems of Adsense (including dropping clickthrus, click fraud, banned accounts, etc.), but the biggest issue seem to center on the primary issues: to get revenue from visitors, they have to CLICK AWAY from your site; Adsense Ads generally are really ugly; you’re displaying ads for websites for FREE if users don’t click; and, worst of all, the amount of clicks that get discounted for a variety of reasons is turning into an avalaunche (I can’t tell you how many it is because I’m still using Adsense, but it’s far more than you’d think).
Analytics: I have enjoyed Analytics for a couple of years, because of the depth of information that is available, and the conservative nature of the counting system that is used. I tend to favor using a conservative method consistently so that I can measure ‘real’ growth, rather than some of the less accurate metrics available using Alexa, SiteStats, etc.
Webmaster Tools: I’m still puzzling exactly what this set of tools is for, as it seems a way for Google to make their Search Engine at least appear transparent. Unfortunately, the stats and tools are quite limited. About the only thing I valued it for was the sitemap function. Other than that, I just don’t get it. It returns a lot of false positives, incorrect links, and other problems that are non-existent.

Step Two: Prioritize the Services You Need/Dump Those You Don’t.

Once you have compiled your list, you’ll be able to see what you can do by prioritizing what services you can leave immediately, what you can slowly wind down, and what services you are still relying on. Separating the services into these three categories is a good way to triage your use of Google.

For example, I found out that YouTube videos for my business can be just as effectively hosted on my own website as on YouTube. I don’t particularly want tons of people to see these videos as they were intended for a very targeted audience only. Hence, I’m now downloading the videos, saving them, converting them to FLVs and then replacing them in my website. Since I only have a dozen or so, this task can be accomplished quickly.

Other services like Google News can be replaced immediately without any problem for me. But some services will just have to wait, while I figure out how to extricate myself from dependence on them. Gmail is a good example of that. While I don’t particularly like the new versions of Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail, and the spam filters on my own websites email system aren’t particularly good, it looks like Gmail is here to stay for a while!

So this list of resources resulted in my own decisions

Immediately: Google News, Search and Image Search; Webmaster Tools;
Gradually: Adsense; Analytics; Picasa and WebAlbums, YouTube; and
With Difficulty: Gmail and Docs.

Step Three: Finding Quality Equivalents to Google Services .

Once you have created your action list and prioritized what is needed or not, it’s time to get your hands dirty. But remember, like all drug addicts, you will need to withdraw slowly from your dependence on Google. Few of us could go cold Turkey. If you can, then you’re lucky.

Many of the services have exact or inexact equivalents that can suffice: Gmail can be replaced by Yahoo! Mail; Picasa by Flickr; Google Search by Ask.com or Yahoo! Search; Adsense by Yahoo! Publishers, or any of a variety of alternatives; YouTube by Revver or MySpace Video ; etc..

Once success story is that I’ve already switched away from Google Reader to BlogLines by exporting my OPML file in Reader, then reimporting the result to BlogLines. It worked quickly and effetively, though the different environment takes some getting used to. This for me was a timely switch because in fact there was an uproar about Google sharing your public or shared stories with others in Google Talk.

I’m already about to remove my videos, pictures, Adsense in the next few weeks or months. But it’s going to take time to extricate myself from the Google Web. I know I can do it. But in some places, I may just choose to find another way to get back at Google instead: I have installed an AdBlocker, and while I don’t particularly use it at the moment, I can see for those services where ads are shown (such as Gmail), I could happily turn it on, simply to deny Google the opportunity to make any money from me. After all, since they’ve taken hundreds of dollars out of my pocket and others like me, I can do the same thing, too.

Final Thoughts

At the moment, I can’t think of any other tools that I really use Google for. But since this is an exercise in freeing oneself slowly from Google’s grip, it’s wise to look through the list and find the services that you really need the least or that have strong equivalents.

It’s also wise to be more cautious in the future, lest by our collective actions we create another Frankenstein monster, cobbled together by the stitching of the web, and left to run amok until we collectively realize and treat the madness that allowed it to be created in the first place.

Do you know of any good equivalents to Google Services I have NOT mentioned so far? Please comment them. Let me know what you think about the situation!

Disclaimer: There are no links in this post to any Google Services. But this blog still utilizes several services, including Adsense, Webmaster Tools, Analytics… I’m working to get rid of them in stage 2.

Adsense: How to cancel your account, and get your money back…

Posted on by InvestorBlogger

Many bloggers are so disillusioned with the changes in PR ranking and the changes in Adsense. To recap briefly, Google has felled many kinds of blogs PR rankings and Adsense changes are meaning that (in the short term) income is likely to go down even further. Many bloggers are now planning a boycott of Google, including me.

The TOS of many agreements allow the agreements to be cancelled by both parties without cause (I presume that means you cancel without having to provide a reason). In other words, I believe you can write them, and cancel the agreement, remove the ads and receive all monies owed to you at the time provided that the amount is greater than $10. I’d be happy to be corrected if that were not the case. So, don’t just blow that amount and don’t let Google keep it… YouÃ‚Â really can ask Google to close your Adsense account and remit your earnings. It’s in their TOS. According to their TOS, they will send you the earnings.

Quote:
In the event the Agreement is terminated, Google shall pay Your earned balance to You within approximately ninety (90) days after the end of the calendar month in which the Agreement is terminated by You (following Google’s receipt of Your written request, including by email, to terminate the Agreement) or by Google. In no event, however, shall Google make payments for any earned balance less than $10.

Also, if you have written Google to cancel your contract, let me know the results. Were you successful or not? Share your experience.

I’d be in less of a hurry to throw in the towel with Google, though. My own plan is to keep Adsense until it gets to $100 (which wouldn’t have been that long without Google messing the formats!).Ã‚Â So yes, I know, my Adsense is still there, but that’s not for much longer! …