Getting paid to blog

This How to Make Money Blogging with Paid Blogging Networks is incredible. I had no idea that this was such a big industry and idea. No wonder everyone is blogging and trying to get their share of the $$$s. And no wonder google is trying to track and eliminate all of the paid links from affecting their rankings. I wonder if Google might just eliminate counting links from blogs?

Still think the writing course for bloggers is the best idea that I've heard in awhile.




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Human Nature Seen from blogging

I'm taking a writing course focused on blogging. I just did a round of the 8 students in the class and it's really interesting. The class is pretty much a random sampling of some group of Americans (actually, it's all women except for me). Five of them deal with body issues (if you include sports, size, and fertility as one category). They all deal with family in one way or another. And they are all extraordinarily well-written and interesting. Here's how the blogs breakdown.

Athletic Themed -
Black Belt Mama
BlackBelt at 50 -
Family in Shape

Family Issues
Everyday BBW - including size & dating
The Daily Grind - A caffeinated SAHM who homeschools
She-Parent - She'll give you something to cry about
Topsy-Techie - Family homeschooling with a technical bent
The Renovators -includes house renovation & fertililty issues

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Social Media Networking Integration with this Blog!

Ft Lauderdale, FL February 18th, 2008 - For Immediate Release - I finally got some help and got some of the social media stuff tightly integrated in my blogs. For instance, in this post, you will see at the bottom, you can just click on these links and help share this story with others and bookmark it for yourself.

Now I grant you, this is not much of a post. But have you seen my recent series over at the blog on homeschool curriculum? My recent series is great! At least I think so - Take a look

History Today - Kosova's War of Independence or Serbia's Civil War...you decide.
Textbooks & Education
Why did we adopt the constitution? Part 2
Why did we adopt the constitution?
Homeschooling and the internet



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Technorati - 'Claim a Blog"

All week, whenever I try to add some blogs to my account, I get the same error message. Is it them or is my account or blog messed up?

Blog Status - How to Compare

In our course on blogging (primarily a writing course but which teaches writing with audience-participation as an integral part of it), we are looking to give guidance to our students on how to "rate" a blog. Obviously, writing cannot be simply rated. But status can.

How can a newbie quickly and simply compare the status of blogs? Our current answers (all of which are fallible...we're looking for ideas)

1. Check the google page rank. Sites with zero are probably inferior to those with a 3.
2. Technorati. Three numbers: Authority, Rank, and blog citations. I have a little karate blog that I have listed there and it has an authority of 3, a rank of 2.2 millionth, and 4 blog citations. Pretty weak but I've changed it's name and URL a few times and so far, it hasn't really settled out.
3. Other approaches?

Based on this, I guess I'll claim this blog in technorati. But each time I've tried to do that, I've run into technology problems on the technorati site.

Reader & subscriber status. These are essentially useless as each site has it's own system.
Number of posts. Not easily counted, not clear that it shows anything other than number of posts.

PS - the reason to want to compare blogs is that as bloggers start, they should expect to find their best response rate when they correspond (comment, trackback etc) with bloggers of similiar stature. Or at least, expect to get snubbed by the big boys when your blog is still getting started. Unless you have something really interesting to say and you say it really well. In my experience, your judgement on these issues grows with your rank. Although there is room for cause/effect questions.

Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

You catch more flies with honey than vinegar

My Dad used to tell me that You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

It's an old lesson but one that we all need to learn over and over again. And then get reminded of.

Darren, over at ProBlogger, just relearned this in an incident where he was protesting some adsense changes. First he ranted and got nowhere. Then, he regrouped and went at it again trying to use humor to make his points. Bingo.

Deciding on Social Media

I have not yet made strategic decisions on which blog roll groups and other social media to work with.

Technorati seems to be the big boy on the block.
Digg it too.

A few that I'm looking at since bloggers that I'm working with like:

MyBlogLog (and this post includes it's validation code) Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification
BlogHer
BlogCatalog

And I use Feedburner although it's a different animal (provides feeds and analytics, no community or rating)

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In filling out the paperwork, I've also written an updated About me:

I have an online kids education business so I needed to learn to spell S-E-0 as well as understand a landing page, analytics, and what is Web 2.0. I find that it's not a chore or a bore. Oline marketing is fun and not that complicated. I'd say it could be mastered by an average level 7th grader. Come learn with me.

SEO Blogs & Info

I'm trying to upgrade my reading. I've spent too much time with the nonsense on a bunch of forums that I've been reading. I'm trying to spend more quality time on my SEO reading. Here's my new batch:

1. Matt Cutts Blog. Google controls all and knows all, Matt shows that they are they are a benign force for good. What a great face for google. And I bet he tells our story inside pretty well too.

2. SEOmoz blog. One of the best. Not the most fun. Some interesting riffs. No research. sigh.

3. Funny British SEO lasses. Its weird how much more fun it is to read when they have a little attitude and great looks. Plus, I love the accents.

4. I'm following the marketing experiments webinars and emails (actually, Kris is). Very educationally done. I heard them talk a few years ago and it was a formative experience for me.

Thats maybe enough for this year....

Ad Serving Software - Google, yahoo, & poor MSN

The Microsoft attempt to buy Yahoo amazes me. I think it's a hail mary desperation play which is unlikely to succeed. Can Microsoft really think that this is their best chance for a winning strategy? Apparently yes. I'm stunned.

The heart of google's economics today is that advertisers pay google for clicks on small text ads to be placed in an appropriate context (next to search results, on web pages, next to emails etc). It's real simple and has fueled the growth of the best company of our era. Google rules, they are number one. They are expanding in many directions with incredible technology and vision. And behind, there's the adwords/adsense (and double click) technology. The haiku like text ad.

Yahoo has failed to implement a successful system for this mechanism. The yahoo systems stink. I've tried to use them (the real old one, the newer ones) and I can report first hand, they stink. Microsoft has a system that we use too. It's not that big a deal in our business so I haven't really noticed whether it's any good. Could Microsoft think that their system is so good that they are looking for new places to place ads so they think they can make yahoo alot more profitable?

If that was true, why wouldn't they buy a bunch of portals and websites? They could buy the bellsouth portal, the att portal, about.com, and many many others and save themselves billions. So it can't be that simple.

Does Microsoft want the yahoo search technology? The yahoo portal? Since most of what yahoo has, microsoft also has, I see integration problems going on for a long time. Yahoo mail vs hotmail? MSN search vs Yahoo search? MSN homepage vs Yahoo portal? I can't imagine a worse job than being involved in those integration issues. I wouldn't like doing the policy work or the implementation. Awful boring work in which years of people's effort has to be trashed on the alter of economies of scale and reduction of redundancies... Microsoft must know all this and know that these organizations, built around brilliant engineers who like to DO, are not going to fin the next few years to be much fun. Will many of them quit? Of course. Unfortunately, it'll be the best ones who move on. Microsoft must know this. This isn't like integrating airlines where you end up with more routes or retailers where you have more stores or manufacturing where you have more products. This is technology and online brands

Here's my bottom line. Microsoft is betting the farm. They aren't buying some cool technology, they aren't buying into a new industry (cell phones, databases, publishing,). They're buying their number 2 competitor which is going to be a apinful integration. They must be doing it since they feel that they are going to be slaughtered in their homefield and this was their best chance to stay near the top. I'm amazed

Traffic sources - Question of the day

A .Do you get most of your traffic from:

1. Search engines?
2. Natural links or mentions on other sites?
3. Paid advertising on other sites?
4. Return visitors?
5. Directories or blog groups or other intermediaries?
6. Emails sent to lists other than your own opt-in?
7. Advertisements in media other than online?

B. Do you get more traffic to your:

1. Website
2. Blog
3. Myspace or facebook account
4. (if you're using it) your ebay or amazon shop

C. Do you have a different method for communicating with visitors depending on whether they are on your blog, myspace page, or website?

Please share and position yourself so that I can help draw conclusions. thanks

Learning to Optmize Search Engine Terms - Using Power Words

When learning to optimize our Vocabulary Games site for search engines we have found that some terms are much more powerful than others. "Power Words" for instance seems to be an important term which isn't immediately obvious when delving into the world of Vocabulary, but makes sense once you know about it!

We've found that we're not gaining any traffic on terms like Vocabulary Software, although it is a powerful concept in Googleland. Is it important to know what we aren't as much as it is to know what we are? We don't rank on the term "fruit baskets" either. What does this tell us? Hmmmm

Free Web tools - new & old

Sadly, my favorite seo tool is not longer free. The Cool-CEO tool is now part of a subscription service. So I'm collecting some new free tools. For domain info such as DNS numbers, traceroute, ping, lookup, whois, and even email validation (what is that? Does it do SPF lookups (spam policy framework lookups?)

http://network-tools.com/

Education on Educational Forums

Wow, Turbine on V7 forum really knows his stuff. I've been looking for some advice on forums so I emailed him this.

1. I've been trying to tightly link some blogs and forums. My idea is that articles would go into the blog but the discussion could be in a forum. Have you seen any good examples of how to do this? I'm thinking that web home school or homeschool online could be used to stimulate discussion.

2. Along the same lines, I have a newsletter which invites feedback with a link to a thread starting with the same topic in my forum. This has some success. Specifically, the thread gets huge numbers of views but I don't seem to have found topics that alot of people want to comment on. My most successful is: "Why did you start homeschooling"

3. Take a look at my forum. One of it's purposes is SEO (not the links on the bottom). Other is to show that we have a vibrant community and a third if for member support. Does it look like it's well-implemented? Any obvious ideas for my homeschooling forum?

4. I had some people develop a site for me using joomla. We launched this month. Along with my long list of other complaints is that the forum uses Fireboard. Any experience in that area? Spelling forum.

Margo Foster - the lesson

Margo Foster taught me something. No, I'm not thinking about self defense and how reckless or courageous or tough I want to be. I already know where I stand on that spectrum (want to hear me crow like rooster? Cackle like a hen? Did you know that I believe not in kung fu but ning fast. As in RunNing Fast).

I blogged about Margo Foster of Lighthouse Points adventure on my karate blog since she trained in the same system that I did and her story was remarkable.

I just looked at my traffic pattern for that blog and her story produced traffic. In fact my traffic doubled. Now, is it traffic that is likely to convert into regular readers? Is my blog interesting enough to retain readers? I'm trying.

And I'm taking a writing course on blogging to take me down the right path.

Use the Right Tool for the Right Job

My dad always would say: "Use the right tool for the right job". It would drive him nuts when he caught me using a screw driver to dig a small hole in the wood - "Use a chisel". Or sometimes when I'd use the wrench to hit something instead of getting up and getting a hammer. I particularly remember his delight in taking out a pair of 18" clamps to hold some glued parts together until they dried properly. My instinct would have been to hold the parts until my hands grew tired and hope that was long enough for it to stick (it rarely was).

So, I was thinking of Dad in yesterdays product planning meeting. It turns out that in my tiny company, we are trying to use the right tool for each job:

Moodle - We are using this LMS (learning management system) to put up our own science courses with text, flash, multiple choice questions, student records, etc
phpbb - We have a homeschool parents forum built around this simple effective tool.
Blogger - This blog and my karate blog are built around blogger. Easy to get started with and with some add-ons (feedburner & HaloScan for trackbacks), it's more than adequate.
Wordpress - I was convinced by a number of people that wordpress would be great for a web home schooling blog since it was better for SEO & multi-authors. The jury is still out on this.
Joomla - This content management system - CMS - was chosen as the best way to handle the administration on the coolest spelling website ever that we've now built. At the moment, frankly, we think we really goofed on the choice. The implementation has been painful requiring more rework than development and at the end, the user interface is less than elegant. sigh. Should we rebuild?
Drupple - We want a full featured community for our students which is private and has all sorts of moderating capabilities. I keep asking why we can't use joomla or moodle or a php forum or some blog extensions. The answer seems to be that if we did, it would stink. Sigh.
Typepad pro - Next week, we launch our first course teaching blogging as literature. The first blogging course focused on storytelling. We need to be able to have a group of blogs under one private account and some group discussion capabilities. Our "writing sensei" selected Typepad Pro for the blogging and we're using Google Groups for the discussions.

We are also looking at a few live webinar technologies and surprise, none of our current technologies seem to have that integrated within them either....Three names that have popped up are Wimba, Centra, & Elluminate. Why not Microsoft Meeting?

Of course, our main sites are in .net or flash or php with lots of untemplated html, some javascript and java, and includes and iframes.....One part of our system (a part that we don't control) still uses Microsoft Agent (long sigh).

My point: There was a reason that my dad was great around the house....his collection of tools, his organization, and his determination to do things right. And we're trying to put together great systems. So many specific jobs, many technologies. Soldier on...