WebSiteForensics.com » Blogging

So You Want To Build A Website?

Mark MacKinnon — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 03:48:22 +0000

Seriously, forget about it. No really, don’t even bother. As today’s web evolves, you’re better off creating your own one or two page site with a blogging platform with links to relevant social media where you’ll do most of your work anyway. Most important of all, provide useful and basic information that can be easily accessed with a mobile device !

Be to the point. Nobody cares about splash screens, flash intros, portfolios or any other useless drivel beyond the basics : Who, What, When, Where, How and WHY!
People perform searches on the go. They now spend more time searching with a mobile device than on destop computers.
People want to know WHERE you are. If you’re not on Google Maps, you don’t really exist.
People want to know WHAT you do. Be social. Facebook for instance is the best way to get people to know you and trust your services.
Get involved with niche web 2.0 services relevant to your industry.
Forget twitter. It’s basically for politicians, celebrities and news.

The Kitchen Sink

Mark MacKinnon — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 05:46:57 +0000

This post will contain some of our latest finds that don’t merit a full article. Some of these links and articles are wonderful resources.

Breaking News
Wordpress links
- Why you should never search for “Free Wordpress Themes” on Google : malicious code everywere?
- Predictions for Wordpress in 2011
- Turning Wordpress into a Forum : bbPress
- Anatomy of a Wordpress Theme
- How I Decreased My WordPress Page Load Time by 5 Seconds
More Web Design Stuff
- Should you work for free – a funny flowchart
- 14 Rules for Faster-Loading Web Sites
Apple stuff
Web 2.0
- The spectacular decline of 2.0 sites
- A Web 2.0 Suicide Machine or how to erase your 2.0 footprint

DoNotLink.com

Mark MacKinnon — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 06:07:24 +0000

When you create a link to a website this always strengthens its position in search engines. This means that a bad review of a website, or the link to a malicious website makes it more popular. If you’re using social media and you are discussing or alerting others about a website that promotes scams or other questionable business and you link to that site, search engines will, despite your best wishes, improve the offending site’s rank.

With donotlink.com, you can link to sites without giving them any Google juice. Donotlink.com uses three different ways to block search engines from crawling a link including a shortened url. Donotlink.com also has a great sense of humour – See above image!

On a lighter note: the top ten Internet rules and laws

Mark MacKinnon — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 05:00:50 +0000

Godwin’s Law – Comparing something to Hitler or the Nazis is inevitable in any online discussion.
Poe’s Law – Without a blatant display of humour, it is impossible to make a parody of fundamentalism that someone won’t take as real.
Rule 34 – If it exists there IS porn of it.
Skitt’s Law – Any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself. Also the likelihood of an error in a post is directly proportional to the embarrassment it will cause the poster.
Cohen’s Law – Whoever resorts to the argument “whoever resorts to the argument that… has automatically lost the debate” has automatically lost the debate.
Pommer’s Law – A person’s mind can be changed by reading information on the internet. The nature of this change will be: From having no opinion to having a wrong opinion.
The Law of Exclamation – The more exclamation points used in an email (or other posting), the more likely it is a complete lie. This is also true for excessive capital letters.
Scopie’s Law – In any discussion involving science or medicine, citing Whale.to as a credible source loses you the argument immediately …and gets you laughed out of the room.
Danth’s Law – If you have to insist that you’ve won an Internet argument, you’ve probably lost badly.
Grey’s Law – Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice

Did we hear ENCORE?

Shaker’s Law – Those who announce their imminent departure from an Internet discussion forum almost never actually leave.
Timecube Law – The longer the page, the more insane the author.
Skarka’s Law – No matter how vile or indefensible something is, someone will post something positive or in defense of it.

How Many Dead Blogs On Your Windshield?

Mark MacKinnon — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:50:47 +0000

The web is now littered with dead blogs. According to the New York Post, there were 200,000 abandoned blogs … in 2007. According to Richard Jalichandra of Technorati, the number of abandoned blogs is anywhere from 7 to 10 million in 2009.

Why do people abandon their blogs? Why do they start them in the first place? Too many have bought into the rags to riches stories of self-employed bloggers or have run out of topics, energy or desire to update. Now that reality has hit home, these dead blogs litter the web like dead leaves in November.

Read more about dead blogs: New York Times – Times Daily – New York Times – Blogging Experiment…

Monetizing Your Blog

Mark MacKinnon — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 03:29:33 +0000

We remember the web when the only source of income was direct sales and domain squatting… Today, there are many options available for those who wish to monetize their sites without driving away readers. The important first step for any blogger is to test every monetization service out there and find out what works best for your sites. Don’t assume because something is great for someone else’s blog that is the case for all blogs! One note of caution: read the terms of service as some monetization services are not compatible with competitors.

Recursive Affiliate Income systems: Affiliate marketing is excellent because you sell something and you don’t have to deliver any product or provide customer service. No inventory, no packaging, no shipping. With commissions as high as 75% you can run an online business that never produces anything, all on the back of affiliate marketing. The down side is anyone can do this and the field is getting very crowded.

Direct Ad Sales: we call this fixed sponsors. It’s a fantastic way to monetize a blog, but you have to know your metrics and be able to pitch your site. There are no middlemen to take profits and you can maximize the return on investment of your advertising inventory.

Lately direct text links have become more popular, but it really doesn’t matter what the format is, it’s all about providing value to sponsors. In our experience we’ve usually had a small handful of sponsors who remain regulars and buy on a repeat basis. If you don’t have one already, the first step for attracting sponsors is to set up an “advertise with us” page.

Text-Link-Ads is a very well known text link broker that connects advertisers with publishers who are paid to place text links on their site. The Text-Link-Ads service acts as the middleman, taking a cut of the revenue in exchange for sourcing the sponsors for you.

From a blogger’s perspective this is a low-maintenance monetization method. You install the plug-in, if you are a WordPress blogger, add a line of code to your theme template for where you want the text links to appear and then sit back and let Text-Link-Ads do the work. It’s been a proven income source for me now for many months, and while it’s not a massive return, a consistent $500-$700 a month is nice to have.

For smaller bloggers Text-Link-Ads is still an option, just don’t expect to earn a significant return or sell all your ad inventory until you increase your traffic and pagerank.

Affiliate income remains on our list but the difference with recursive affiliate income is that this time we’re talking about products that pay out once, each time you make a sale. The money isn’t quite as dependable as recursive programs since you need to keep selling in order to generate revenue, however some products have large payouts and just one sale can make it worth while. Programs like commission junction are classic affiliate income providers.

Another other good seller is a specific type of products, things people in our industry eventually buy. Most industries have a book or a service you can’t do without (such as web hosting) and if you review these products and mention them now and then you usually can sell a few on a regular basis.

Paid reviews: a great way to start earning from blogging. In previous months paid reviews has been a consistent income source, but it requires constant output from us to generate income. Since you have to write the review to get paid it’s far from the kind of passive or near-passive income sources we prefer.

Google AdSense has never been a favorite monetization strategy for anyone. It forces you to focus on increasing pageviews and thus AdSense displays in order to earn more, which is a labour intensive strategy. Payments are low and unless you blog in certain product categories even high traffic sites earn little.

There are many other options, including ad brokering services like Chitika, BlogAds, AdBrite, AdVolcano and Blogkits. Some of these we’ve briefly tested but did not like their systems. Again, these options might be fantastic for one person’s blog but you won’t know until you try.

Good luck !