Over the last couple of days I have been looking at ways to improve my website. I know posting more often helps – and I am working to a routine on that front. Other areas included a new theme, removing a lot of the unnecessary clutter on the sidebar and perhaps creating a monthly newsletter.

The one are I have absolutely no experience with and feel somewhat helpless at times is in building a mailing list. Everywhere I look I see the words “the money is in the list”. Well hang the money, I just want a loyal group of readers who would be happy to receive a newsletter each month. Building the list is the only thing that has stopped me to date and being such a novice, the last thing I want is see my money going down a big hole with no return.

To cut a long story short – I went searching for list building advice and everything led back to Aweber. That’s fine, I checked out their site and everything ’sounds’ good. The problem is, it is a monthly subscription. Now this blog doesn’t make $1 month so spending $19 (I know it’s not a lot, it’s just the principle) is not an investment – it’s an expense that needs to be considered.

So – now to the affiliate marketing angle. As a buyer, not seller, I often wonder what price a product would sell for if it didn’t rely on affiliate marketing. For Aweber, they pay 30% or a little over $5 per sign-up. Being a cheap-skate, I would rather pay the $14 each month instead of the $19. Small dollars I know. However I was looking at a different program over the weekend that cost $70 per month. It had a 50% affiliate payout.

To my mind, that means I am paying an extra $35 each month over the true worth of the program (if the owner is happy to accept $35 each month then that is its true worth). Like I said, it all adds up. suddenly you’re paying $2oo per month when it could be as low as $100 if there were no affiliates.

It’s just my little rant for the week. I understand that sellers need affiliates to spread the message and that affiliates need the income to survive. Now here is a question for everyone involved in affiliate marketing.

Can I register as an affiliate marketer – clear my cookies, then buy through my own link?  As least then I get the affiliate selling fee (effectively a discount).  Your suggestions would help?

photo credit: ChrisLB

They are fairly rare – honest politicians that is. In fact there have been no reported sightings for decades now and there is a fear they may be extinct. With this fear in mind, researches are now planning a world wide hunt for the creatures.

If found, they are planning a capture and breeding program with the aim of eventually releasing them back into the wild. The biggest problem so far is that no female honest politician has ever been seen. Researchers are hoping to capture at least one or two borderline honest females to get the breeding program underway.

Researchers are hoping that citizens around the world will help in this program by reporting any sightings of said honest politician. Sightings will be investigated and if confirmed, a capture team will be sent in to do their work. Honest politicians are reported to be fierce fighters who will resort to dishonest tactics in an attempt to evade capture.

If you come across an honest politician – do not approach. We do not want them converting to dishonesty to hide their true nature. Document your sighting and report it as soon as possible  – and take a photo – you may be witnessing the last honest politician on earth.

photo credit: Mattman4698

I cut my online teeth with Geocities many many moons ago. So far back I can hardly remember what I actually did. I know it was a frustrating experience and finally abandoned what I was doing – and the internet for a while too.

I won’t say I have fond memories of Geocities, but I know a great many who will and I am sure they will saddened to hear that Yahoo! has finally pulled the plug.

For those who don’t know, Geocities was one of the first and one of the most successful free web hosting sites on the internet. Successful for a long while anyway.  With the prevalence of free blog hosts such as WordPress and Blogger and the availability of cheap hosting, Geocities days have been numbered for quite a while.

One wonders where the internet may go in the future. I can’t see blogger ever being ’shut down’. But will it ever go to a paid only state? It is always a possibility. What about WordPress – will that stay as a free hosting site – or will they fully monetize as well.

I don’t think those options are on the cards at the moment – but you never know what the future holds. I do know one thing – if you’re serious about blogging, or building a web site, you need to buy hosting and host it all yourself. Free hosting is always going to be filled with uncertainty.

I have to wonder how green the Greens are when it comes to politics. And I don’t mean green as in novice – I mean green as in environmental. We have a situation now in Australia where the Government wants to go down a particular path in an effort to reduce green house gases with the big focus world wide on carbon reduction.

Rightly or wrongly, the Federal government wants to introduce a system of carbon credits and carbon trading. The long term aim is reduce the amount of carbon produced.

The opposition groups in the Australian upper house have rejected the legislation and are now proposing changes – basically rewriting the legislation before it comes back into parliament.

The Greens are the political group that have me befuddled the most. We have had ten years of climate denial in Australia. The former Howard government basically denies there was a climate problem. Even I have doubts so I can understand their position somewhat.

We have gone from a position of denial to a position of nothing is better than making a start. At least, that seems to be the view of the Greens. Now my thinking would oppose that. Making a start would get people thinking, talking and acting to make some changes in their lives.

I can understand the Greens want more controls put in place. However, as I stated, a start is a start. Instead, the people of Australia along with businesses both small and large are all being left in limbo not knowing when change will happen, what that change will be, and how much that change will cost us in terms of jobs and our weekly expenses.

What is the biggest fear faced by humans – the fear of change. I don’t agree fully with the legislation either but I do know one thing – once we make a start we can then think about any fine tuning that needs to be done. The Greens? They seem to be more about political grandstanding than actually doing anything constructive about the environment.

There is no set a rules when it comes to blogging. Good thing too since I would probably break them all. However, there are some issues that need addressing at some point by most bloggers. One of those is whether or not to monetize their site. At some stage they may even wonder if they could make a living from it.

If this is you – and you have plans to make a living from your blog, or blogs or online – then is there one golden rule that you HAVE to remember if you are going to be successful. What is it?

To all intents and purposes – you are running a business! Why is this so important? If you continue to treat your activities as a hobby, you will never take that extra step to making a serious income from your activities.

Once you accept the fact that you are running a business, it opens a whole new world of requirements. Most new businesses fail within the first 12 months. Can you survive the first 12 months making little money, or at best breaking even? If you’re running a business, chances are you will need to spend money to make money. Are you prepared both financially and mentally to invest your own money?

If you treat your online activities as a business, it becomes easier to justify the time required. If you are still treating it as a hobby, chances are you will let distractions take you away from what you need to achieve each day.

Do you really want to make a living from the various streams available online? If the answer is yes then start to think and act like a small business owner because that is what you are – and that is what you need to be to succeed.

photo credit: Mexicanwave

The world economy is a strange animal sometimes. We have just experienced one of the worst – yet on of the quickest – recessions in many decades. I wonder if former treasurer Paul Keating would label this the recession we had to have. He would probably be right too.

Just over 12 months ago the Aussie dollar was trading in the 75-80 US cents range. Nine months ago it was trading in the 65-70 cents range. In fact, it managed to get down to 63 cents at one stage.

During that period, US$630-US$700 would equate to A$1000. Today the exchange rate is over 90 US cents. This means I now have to earn over US$900 to receive that A$1000. So, to all intents and purposes, I am losing money as the economy recovers.

What makes it a little harder to swallow is that as I work a little harder and increase my earnings, my actual take home in Australian dollars is going down. It is an interesting phenomenon and you have to take the good with the bad – ride the hard times and enjoy the good – and work harder and harder.

Has anyone else found that their income is actually dropping because of the economic recovery – even though they are earning more?

photo credit: Unhindered by Talent

The FTC has finally published its guidelines for disclosures for blog posts and articles that endorse products in exchange for a reward. Compared to what was being discussed several months ago, this appears to be a very watered down document to the point of being almost useless. At the time I did write that most bloggers would not be affected by the FTC.

One of the first things to clarify for all bloggers around the world is that these guidelines only cover those in United States – if you are outside the US then read on with interest – but feel free to continue writing as you do now. At least bloggers outside the US won’t be classified as criminals.

What about those in the States? Who does it cover?

endorsements by consumers, experts, organizations, and celebrities

I think everyone knows that when a celebrity stands up to promote something the chances are they have been paid. That aside, what is covered?

advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case

Okay, so bloggers that write posts or articles promoting a product and making claims must comply with the FTC Act. Principally:

the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement.

What do you need to do:

bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service

So lets weed through the crap and see what has actually been said. The first thing that strikes me is that only posts that make claims which are not based on personal experience are covered. If you can honestly claim to be writing from experience – it appears the act does not cover your posts – even if you are paid to write them.

The second point of interest for those who do “paid for post” type articles – as long as you don’t make any false claims then you do not have to comply with the Act. If you write a general article that links back to a site – that’s fine.

It all boils down to truth in advertising. If you are making claims that you cannot justify from experience then you need to make a disclosure of some description – interestingly, the guidelines make no mention of what type of disclosure is required.

If you receive a product to review, do what I do. Only review it on the understanding that it will be an honest review and not a review created to make the product look good. Most businesses that supply products for review agree. I have had only one refusal – but then, I have only had five or six requests to date.

Compared to what was being talked about earlier this year – the FTC was full of bluff and bluster and the final document is pretty weak. Mind you, if you do run foul of their guidelines – there is a hefty $16,000 fine lined up for both publishers and advertisers.

This was not a review paid for by the FTC – unfortunately – I would have made it sound better if it was

As my online life gets busier and busier my time gets absorbed in the million and one things that are going on at once. I occurs to me I need a blogging timetable. Not a timetable of posting, but a timetable of activities.

Does anyone use a timetable to manage their time online? By timetable I am referring to a schedule of events. For example, on a Sunday you would prepare a newsletter, send it out on a Monday, manage your subscriber list on a Tuesday, filter Akismet on a Wednesday, update plugins and other maintenance issues on a Thursday, deal with advertising/affiliates on a Friday, review everything on a Saturday ready to start all over again on the Sunday.

Doe sit help? Is it easy to stick to or do you get side tracked away from your timetable easily? I already schedule certain activities on a daily basis. For example, I write in the mornings, review in the afternoons and research/socialize in the evenings.

At the moment I do everything else on an adhoc basis. If my Akismet comments look to be getting full – I go an empty them. If I notice a plugin requires an update, I go and update it. If I am reading a post and it mentions a good plugin – I will go and look at it. It’s all very adhoc and time consuming.

How do you manage your blogging time? Do you have a timetable? Do you use any time management software? I would be very interested to hear your views – feel free to comment.

Bounce rates are one area of search engine optimization that I have difficulty coming to terms with. If you write a darn good post that visitors find interesting  should be good for your site. However, if, after reading your post they move on to other things and DON’T click a link on your site – they are said to have bounced so up goes your bounce rate.

On the other hand, if my post is only so-so and the visitor clicks a link to another page hoping to get better info, they haven’t bounced so my bounce rate goes down.

There are other things that affect bounce rates. Hands up those that have marked their links to open in a new window? I used to as well. It seems if a link opens in a new window it doesn’t count as a click so, even though they are reading other content on your site, your bounce rate will go up. From what I can gather, it also includes external links – they have to open in the same tab to count as a non-bounce.

The higher your bounce rate, the lower your sites authority. If I have that all wrong, please feel free to correct me.

To move on – how do you then reduce your bounce rate? There are several methods. The most obvious that I see frequently is my using the READ MORE option in a post.  If you can write a great introduction then it can work well.

Another option that I particularly like is to break good posts into two distinct sections – this is great for list posts. The first section is a sales pitch in a way. You are looking to convince your reader to click through to another section. 

The second part, the meat if you like, is not published as a post but as a page. The end result is two pieces of content for the price of one. A static page that you can link to on a regular basis – it isn’t affected by categories or archives and is easier to find and edit should it need updating. In the mean time, you have encouraged your visitor to click through to a page thus reducing your bounce rate.

WordPress has ‘pages’. Have you ever thought of using them for Pillar Posts – or do you just use them for About Me pages? They can be quite versatile and with careful use, add a lot of value to your site.

photo credit: spettacolopuro

If you are the kind of person that frets and stresses over stolen content – don’t. At least, don’t worry if you’re wearing protection. What sort of protection – easy, an internal link or a link to your home page. I noticed that my post – The Politics Of Iran – Why I Don’t Care – was rather heavily scrapped – Now I have link protection, I am not too worried.

It’s very rare for scraped content to outrank the original. If it does, make a spam complaint to Google and that should fix that problem. If it doesn’t outrank you – why worry. In fact, if you include links to your own content, a scraped copy may just add to the number of inbound links you have. Sure, they are not quality links, but use decent anchor text in your links and it will at least help to boost your pages for that keyword.

Even Matt Cutts from Google agrees with this sentiment:

Here are two tips that may help.

• Place a link to your own content in the first paragraph – there are many scrapers that only take the first one or two paragraphs.

• Grap a plugin that puts a resource box at the foot of every post -  DDAdSig is one – check WordPress for more.

Now, to all those scrapers out there – please feel free to scrape my content – you may just make my day!