PureBlogging

Good morning! Anybody else see Hellboy II over the weekend? I was sorely disappointed — I was hoping for something vastly better than the first movie, but got something only marginally better. Oh well — I’m still looking forward to this weekend’s double-whammy of The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia.

And speaking of Batman…

Warren Ellis has called for an end to linkblogs. Maybe the whole Boing Boing vs Violet Blue thing soured him — I know it soured me. Meanwhile, Quark Soup makes some pretty reasonable complaints about blogs in general (h/t Gerry Canavan). Remember: There’s no niche too small. As blogs become more and more localized, will we stop caring about the generalists and focusing more on the experts?

The Writers’ Bag offers a cool tutorial on speed writing. As someone who keeps a moleskine handy at all times, I think I’m going to try this, since my brain often works much faster than my hands.

MetaFilter reminds us that Terry Rossio, half of the screenwriting team that brought you Captain Jack Sparrow, is blogging again. The blog itself seems to indicate that the table of contents was last updated in Fall of ‘07, but hey, a goldmine is a goldmine.

“Trust and credibility are worth more than a fast buck,” say the Men With Pens. It’s a lesson many of us could stand to keep learning. Not me, of course. I am a paragon of virtue.

The adorable manga girls at Dosh Dosh remind us to contextualize the information we share. Also at Dosh Dosh: You’re not just a writer, you’re the editor in chief.

Originality and creativity are sorely lacking in most blogs. You can try all the blogging tips and tricks you want, but nothing is going to help you with two problems:

• The whole concept of your blog is one of the same old cookie cutter niches everyone else is doing
• Your content is nearly the same as anyone else’s content in your niche

Once you’ve seen enough pathetic internet marketing wanna-be blogs, anything original is like a refreshing splash of cold water to the face!

I have spent the past several months collecting blogs for this article. I was on a mission to find blogs that were startlingly original in concept, content, and design. I didn’t always get all three at once, but I found some fantastic blogs that are superb examples. Observe, study, and learn from them. The bar has been raised pretty high since blogging first started. Rethink your entire approach and concept of blogging. It might be time for a little creative destruction for your blog. Maybe it’s seriously time to kill your blog and start over.

I offer the following three blogs as inspiration…

PingMag MAKE

PingMag MAKE is an offshoot of PingMag, a Japanese culture magazine. The design of this blog is fresh, techno, and clean. There is a Google Maps mashup embedded that shows the locations in Japan of the people whom the articles are about. Each article is about a small company or single person in pursuit of a highly skilled an artistic craft. In some cases, the craft has a technological bent, but often the “technology” is indistinguishable from the “art” of what they’re doing.

This really is an amazing blog. The concept is profoundly original in a world of same-old me-too blogs. Its niche could hardly seem more ultra-specialized, and yet it appeals to anyone who appreciates craft or Japanese culture… and that’s a fairly big audience.

The Worst SEO Blog Ever!

The Worst SEO Blog Ever! is in fact one of the funniest blogs I’ve read in a long time. I have no idea who its author is, but I can tell he or she does know SEO. Now, how many SEO blogs are there out there? Too many of ‘em to ever have the slightest hope of ranking for the term SEO. Not ever. No seriously, not EVER. And maybe this one doesn’t either, but that’s not the point.

The use of the Kubrick theme cracks me up. That’s what a “bad” blog would do, right? What really stands out about this blog, and what really makes it break the mold, is the combination of intentionally bad design with exceptionally witty and sarcastic writing. Basically, it’s freakin’ hilarious. Strangely enough, while your side is splitting from laughter, you may learn a thing or two about SEO in a back-handed fashion. This is an example of how a unique angle on the content and design of a blog produces something remarkable and original.

Knuckle Tattoos

Knuckle Tattoos mostly written by Nathan Black rates high on the originality meter. The blog is about “Collecting pictures of knuckle tattoos and the stories behind them.” At first glance, this would seem to be far too over-speicalized. How could anyone sustain a blog about just knuckle tattoos?

Here’s the beauty part: It’s not really about the tattoos as much as it about the people who bear them and their stories. There’s enough general interest in tattoos to bring an audience, and everyone loves when people tell their stories in their own words. The whole premise of the blog is pretty cool: Nathan goes around collecting the stories of people with knuckle tattoos and taking their pictures. You can submit your own picture/story.

This is only the beginning of the creative destruction

Next week, I’m going to have another three remarkable blogs that will drive you to destroy your blog in the name of excellence! Be sure to subscribe to PureBlogging so you don’t miss it!

I mentioned last week that I’m a fan (and a user) of MetaFilter, the community website. MetaFilter predates the entire concept of “Web 2.0,” but manages to maintain all the things we like best about large communities on the web, while avoiding the possibility of a bunch of crappy Ron Paul posts or questionably relevant links to stories about how some programmer is really upset about… well, whatever it is programmers get upset about.

We can all learn a lot from looking at the things MeFi does right:

A Negligible Membership Fee. MetaFilter charges a one-time, five-dollar fee to join.   The fee was implemented in 2004 as a result of overwhelming membership requests. It’s a brilliant idea; Five bucks isn’t much, but it is enough to ward off trolls, and to encourage people to join only if they really want to. The hassle of dealing with PayPal is by itself enough to keep out the riff-raff.

Compartmentalization. One of the big no-nos on MetaFilter is self-linking; the strict policy against it can get you banned if you try. But founder Matt Haughey appreciated his users’ need for a forum for their own projects, so he created MetaFilter Projects, where self-linking is not just encouraged, but pretty much necessary. It’s yet another in a list of sub-pages designed to relieve the front page of non-essential posts and too-specific minutae, along with Ask MetaFilter (sort of a community advice column) and MetaTalk (for discussion of MeFi itself… a sort of MetaFilter Meta).

Design. MeFi’s design is so distinctive that its members often only refer to it as “The Blue.” (They also call AskMeFi “The Green” and, occasionally, MetaTalk “The Grey.”) There’s nothing striking about MetaFilter’s design, but with its cool blue concept and serifless font, it’s definitely memorable.

Self-Policing. Because the blog is subtitled “The Best of the Web,” and early users fostered a community based on quality, courtesy and a strong adherence to that subtitle, MetaFilter has a powerful reputation for self-policing. A system of tagging and “favoriting” posts allows users to both alert mods to bad posts and reward good ones.

Quality Posts. All of the above factors result in a series of immersive, readable posts every day. It’s not like Reddit or Mixx or Digg or Stumbleupon; at MetaFilter, the users strive to contextualize their posts, often providing multiple links to related material, so that each post is like a reading list on some specific topic. And even when the posts are just single links to things like YouTube videos (ahem), they’re still pretty good.

Are you using Project Wonderful to earn income on your blog?  I recently started using it on my restaurant blog, and I’ve had some mixed results, but it has the potential to bring in a steady stream of income for your blog.  For those of you with newer blogs, or are just getting started monetizing your blog, it may be a very nice alternative to consider.  It is easy to set up, and you can start earning money right away. 

One of the things I like about Project Wonderful is that you can create ad boxes and advertising campaigns for multiple sites from a single account.  You won’t have to create a separate account for each of your blogs.  That really simplifies things.

Once you sign up and create your profile, you will be able to create an ad box for your site.  Once the box is created you will be able to place it anywhere on your site, so you will want to think through the placement and what size will work best before you create the box.  The ad box setup gives you a lot of options for size, number of ads displayed in each box, the way the ads are displayed.  You can set it up as a square, banner, or skyscraper. 

One thing you will want to pay attention to is setting the minimum bid.  You can set a minimum of $0.00 or higher.  The good part about setting your minimum to $0.00 is that you will get ads on your site right away.  Without ads displayed, there will be a “Your Ad Here” box displayed, which doesn’t speak well of your ability to deliver for advertisers.  On the other hand, a zero-bid allows other sites to advertise on your site for free.

One caution about creating your ad box: Once your ad box goes live, and there are ads placed in it, you will not be able to make changes to the size, configuration, or minimum bid amounts.  If you want to make changes you will have to create a new ad box and replace your existing box. 

Project Wonderful displays ads on a highest bidder basis.  Whoever bids the most will have their ad displayed on your site.  The bid placed is how much they will pay to have their ad displayed for one day.

Let’s assume you have an ad box that allows to ads to be displayed, with a minimum bid of $0.00.  Buyer #1 places a bid with a minimum bid of $0.00 and a maximum bid of $0.02.  Because they are the only bidder they will pay $0.00 (the minimum).  Buyer #2 places a bid with a minimum of $0.01 and a max of $0.02.  Their ad is displayed at $0.01, and Buyer #1 is still displayed at $0.00.  Buyer #3 then places a bid with a minimum bid of $0.02 and a max bid of $0.05.  The ads on your site would now display Buyer #1 at $0.02 (which was the Buyer #2 max bid), and Buyer #3 at $0.02. 

If those bid numbers look low, well, they are.  But it is a good indication of what to expect if your blog doesn’t have much traffic.  I have seen more popular sites that are charging more than $5 per day for each ad displayed, but you need to be able to deliver traffic for that much money.  Even the Project Wonderful homepage is only getting $0.80 per ad.

When a buyer is considering whether to place an ad on your site they will have access to Project Wonderful’s traffic stats for your site.  When you place the ad widget on your site, PW will be able to track your traffic count.  They will display that count over the past 30-days for any potential advertiser.  If that traffic count is low, the amount they are willing to bid is low 

For Bloggers that are just getting started, this means earnings of a few cents per day, but as your traffic count grows, so will your earnings.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with Project Wonderful.  What has worked (or not worked) for you?  Please share your comments so we can all benefit for our shared wisdom.

Just over a month ago, I recorded my disappointment with Blogrush. Lots of people shared my view, and some of them recommended a new traffic building site, Entrecard. I didnt wait and signed up the same day, posting a review on another site after only three days of use. Now that I’ve been using it for longer and the honeymoon is over, it’s time for a possibly more balanced review.

An Internet Business Card

Entrecard says it’s an internet business card. When you sign up, you create a 125×125 ad for your site or blog. (Whatever you do, don’t use the default ones, because they are NOT pretty!) Just as you do when you visit an office, you can leave your card at other sites thanks to a handy Entrecard widget. There are several versions of this widget depending on how much sidebar space you want to give up.

Racking Up Credits

Dropping the card on other sites gains you Entrecard credits, which you can use to buy display space on their widgets for 24 hours. You also gain Entrecard credits when people drop cards on your site, or when they buy ads from you. The cost of the ad space reflects the number of cards dropped on your site in the last five days, multiplied by two. Entrecard credits can also be used to buy other blog related products and services through the shop.

Site Features

The dashboard is the hub of your Entrecard operation. The main page shows recent card droppers on your site, ads you have bought and sold, and statistics about ad views, card drops and more. You can see more detail on these on the statistics tab.

There’s also a campaign tab, which is where you can find blogs listed by category, blogs with low wait times for advertising, popular blogs for advertising and more. To advertise, just click on the advertise tab and then click again to confirm the sale. Ad money is debited from your account immediately. When an ad is bought on your widget, you get the money after the ad has been displayed.

Using Entrecard

Entrecard is simple to use and seems to do exactly what it promises. The time consuming part is dropping cards, because if you go through the dashboard it’s a two step process. First you find the Entrecard entry, then you click on the URL of the blog. Then there’s a third click for the card drop.

However, you can speed up this process. One method I have used is to create a bookmark group labelled Entrecard which includes most of the Entrecard enabled sites I visit. That takes one click away. There’s also a site called Sitehoppin, which loads Entrecard enabled sites within a frame, once you select the right tag. This site attracted a lot of negative comments from Entrecard forum posters, but you may find it useful.

Niggles

The only problem I have had with Entrecard is that sometimes its automatic widget scanner thinks my widget is gone. That means that people can’t advertise on my blog. Usually, that problem is solved quickly, but sometimes it takes a couple of hours.

The Big Question: Traffic Building

What everyone wants to know is whether Entrecard really delivers site traffic. In my experience, it does. In the last 10 days of December, I got 490 new visitors. I’ve had even more so far this month. Some of those surfed by and never came back, but at least a few of them became new readers and subscribers, which is good news for me.

Entrecard is also good for indirect traffic building. I have discovered a lot of new blogs in my niche, and my comments on those blogs have brought new visitors and readers to my blog.

Tips

Entrecard is visual, so if you have a good card, people will stop and look. It’s worth spending a moment to get the right design for your card. Also, the higher you place your widget, the more drops and ads you are likely to receive.

Drop and you will be dropped on. The more you drop, the more drops you receive. The more drops you receive, the more you get for ads on your widget. The more credits you have, the more ads you can buy on popular blogs and the more visibility you can gain for your own.

Participate in the forums, leave recommendations for blogs you like and take a moment to send messages to some of the bloggers you’ve met. A small networking effort will make your Entrecard experience even richer.

So that’s my story and those are my tips. I know there are a lot of Entrecard users here, so what tips can you share and how have you found Entrecard?

I love trying out new stuff on my blog, especially when it promises to put my posts in front of new readers, so when I heard about BlogRush, I joined the rush to sign up. It made sense, because they have a ten tier referral system, which means the earlier you sign up, the more chance you have of using it well. So I added my blog to BlogRush (despite the horridly ugly widget), stuck some code on my blog and waited for the traffic to rush in.

Trickling Traffic

It didn’t. In fact, it was more of a trickle. Of course, BlogRush experienced some growing pains. So much so, that for weeks you couldn’t get up to date stats about your traffic and referrals. At the end of that period they unveiled BlogRush version 2, and it was quite different. Lots of charts, graphs and statistics, which looked great, but couldn’t hide the fact that in spite of large circulation figures, the actual number of new readers for my blog was very low.

There’s an interesting chart that tracks the buzz of your last 12 posts, but I’m not sure how it works, because their version of buzz doesn’t match up with my Clicky, Analytics, Feedburner or AideRSS stats.

Was It Me? I Don’t Think So

Under normal circumstances, you might think that there was something wrong with my content, but that’s not the case. In fact, I have published some of my best and most commented posts during the BlogRush period. I have had unlooked for accolades from other bloggers and my feed subscribers have more than doubled, so I don’t think that it’s my blog that’s at fault.

One of the issues I have found is that in my niche - writing - the blogs cover all kinds of topics. Although Blogrush has since added sub niches, choosing the most appropriate one for my blog results in even less traffic. Perhaps that’s because few people have bothered to use the sub niches.

The Referral System

The system works something like this (I’m mathematically challenged so forgive me if it doesn’t make complete sense):

• you sign up people through direct referrals (I have 29 or so of those) and you get credits to be shown on their blog on a 1:1 ratio.
• they sign up people and you get shown on their blogs on a 1:1 ratio
• it keeps on like that down to ten levels, with the viewing ratio moving to 1:4 and then 1:8. This week I made it to level 5.

I’m sure this works well for people whose traffic numbers in the tens of thousands, but then they probably don’t need BlogRush anyway. Those of us who are trying to build up traffic for newish blogs would probably like to see a bit more action, such as the type of traffic you get from BloggingZoom. I’ve still got the widget on my blog, but I’m not sure how much longer it will be there.

What’s your experience been?