Entries Tagged 'Blogging' ↓

For years, the free standard that webmasters and bloggers used to judge website/blog popularity was Alexa, but there are some alternatives that you should consider, sites that are beating Alexa at its own game.

I’ve never considered Alexa to be that accurate in its rankings, due to its flawed methodology:  “Alexa’s traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users and data collected from other, diverse sources over a rolling 3 month period”.  What this means is that Alexa’s traffic estimates and rankings are primarily determined by users that have installed their toolbar.  Toolbars are a dime a dozen, many are considered spyware, and the only one worth a damn and that I would actually install is the Google toolbar.  While many thousands have probably installed the Alexa toolbar, it’s hardly a way to measure anything since it represents such a small sample of traffic data, and is not a good indicator of typical internet browsing behavior.

Two alternatives to Alexa are Quantcast and Compete.  I’ve found that Compete seems to have a much more accurate estimate than Alexa and Quantcast, plus it allows you to compare your site/blog with competition.  The compare feature is both a blessing and a curse.

As you can see from the numbers below and Internweb.com’s actual numbers, Alexa is not accurate at all.  Alexa’s founders sold their company at the height of the internet boom to Amazon.com in 1999 for 250 million in Amazon stock.   Wow.

• Alexa has Internweb.com ranked 439,457 and doesn’t estimate uniques.
• Quantcast has Internweb.com ranked 300,351, with uniques estimated at 3,879 per month.
• Compete has Internweb.com ranked 125,735 with uniques estimated at 14,000 per month.

Since I have Google Analytics installed on all my sites and blogs (and you should, too!), the actual uniques in January 2009 for Internweb were 28,801, which is substantially more than the estimates of any these popularity checkers.

The conclusion is to use Compete for you popularity (ego) checks.

This post is way overdue, but the good news is that I set an all time high for revenue in October.

First up, a quick update on Paid Internships, the autoblogging site I set up a few months back that is populated by an RSS feed from Internweb.com. This site is on an upward trend as you can see from the numbers below:

Paid Internships: October 2008

• 4,229 page impressions
• 255 clicks
• $11.98 eCPM (amount each page impression is worth)
• $50.66 revenue

Now onto the individual advertising networks I am using across my blogs and sites:

AdSense for October: $700.21

AdSense continues to really kick ass for me, setting an all-time high for revenue, a 30% increase over last month. The horizontal AdSense link ads are truly the best option for click performance.

ValueClick for October: $15.02
Pretty weak, but given that I only display their ads on a few interior pages on Internweb.com, what can I expect?

AdBrite for October: $.19
I am going to have to drop AdBrite, it seems. One nice feature they have is that you can set a minimum price threshold and if it isn’t met, you can paste in different ad code to be shown instead. In my case the code is AdSense and it is always being displayed over AdBrite.

Burst for October: $4.21

Amazon for October: $ 5.22

The grand total for October 2008 is: $724.85.

Revenue was down in November.  First, here’s the Paid Internships (my autoblogging site) update:

Paid Internships: November 2008

• 5,456 page impressions
• 315 clicks
• $10.21 eCPM (amount each page impression is worth)
• $55.68 revenue

AdSense for October: Down to $582.70 from $700.21

After hitting an all-time high in October, the economy finally caught up with AdSense, at least on my sites.   My revenue dropped quite a bit.  Granted, the traffic on Internweb dipped too; not as many students searching for internships in the late fall.  It will pick up in late winter.

ValueClick for October: Down to $9.83 from $15.02

Again, down a lot from October. ValueClick’s most successful ads for me are interstitials, full-page ads that appear after a link is clicked.  Interstitial have a “click to continue” link to get to the content the user originally clicked on.   In November 1,596 of them were displayed, and were clicked on 117 times for a nice CTR of 7.33%.  By comparison, the standard 468×60 banner was displayed 13,552 times and only got 16 clicks — .22% CTR — which is horrible.  I guess that means interstitial, while annoying, do work…

AdBrite for October: Up to $.27 from $.19

Note, that is CENTS not dollars.  I am barely displaying any AdBrite ads at all (690 ad views).  In December I changed that, adding a similar AdBrite ad just below my AdSense 160×600 skyscraper on Internweb.com.  We will see how it goes.

Burst for October: Down to $.15 from $4.21

Worthless revenue on few clicks on few ad impressions.  I will need to revamp site designs to be able to fit in more Burst ads, but they don’t really deserve it.

Amazon for October: Up to $5.74 from $5.22

You’d think selling DVDs and books related to a movie on a site that is movie-related would work.  Well, it doesn’t.

The grand total for November 2008 is $ 598.69, which is the first drop in monthly revenue I have had in 2008.

Inspired by the fact that Failpix gets no comments posted on individual the HILARIOUS pictures it contains, I found a good list of 10 Ways to Increase Comment Numbers on Your Blog.

1. Invite Comments – I notice that when I specifically invite comments that people leave them in higher numbers than when I don’t. To some degree this confuses me as most of my readers know that they can leave comments on any post – but I guess inviting a comment triggers a response to some extent. Also keep in mind that new readers that are unfamiliar with blogging don’t always know about comments or how to use them – invitations to participate in well laid out and easy to use comments systems are good for helping them participate.

2. Ask Questions – Including specific questions in posts definitely helps get higher numbers of comments. I find that when I include questions in my headings that it is a particularly effective way of getting a response from readers as you set a question in their mind from the first moments of your post.

3. Be Open Ended – If you say everything there is to say on a topic you’re less likely to get others adding their opinions because you’ll have covered what they might have added. While you don’t want to purposely leave too many things unsaid there is an art to writing open ended posts that leaves room for your readers to be experts also.

4. Interact with comments left – If you’re not willing to use your own comments section why would your readers? If someone leaves a comment interact with them. This gets harder as your blog grows but it’s particularly important in the early days of your blog as it shows your readers that their comments are valued, it creates a culture of interactivity and gives the impression to other readers that your comments section is an active place that you as the blogger value. As the activity in your comments section grows you may find you need to be slightly less active in it as readers will start to take over on answering questions and creating community – however don’t completely ignore your comment threads.

5. Set Boundaries – I noticed that shortly after I set the rules for my comments section (with a comments policy) that my comment numbers jumped up a little. I’m not sure if it was just a coincidence or whether readers responded to knowing what was and wasn’t acceptable. It’s just a theory but I think a well managed and moderated comments section that is free of spam and that deals with well with people stepping out of line is an attractive thing to readers. I personally don’t mind people expressing different opinions to one another in comments but when I sense things are getting a little out of hand and too personal I often step in to attempt to bring some order to the situation (I rarely delete non spam comments). I find that people have responded to this and that comment threads generally stay constructive as a result.

6. Be humble- I find that readers respond very well to posts that show your own weaknesses, failings and the gaps in your own knowledge rather than those posts where you come across as knowing everything there is to know on a topic. People are attracted to humility and are more likely to respond to it than a post written in a tone of someone who might harshly respond to their comments.

7. Be gracious – Related to humility is grace. There are times where you as the blogger will get something wrong in your posts. It might be spelling or grammar, it could be the crux of your argument or some other aspect of your blogging. When a someone leaves a comment that shows your failing it’s very easy to respond harshly in a defensive manner. We’ve all seen the flaming that can ensue. While it’s not easy – a graceful approach to comments where you admit where you are wrong and others is right can bring out the lurkers and make them feel a little safer in leaving comments.

8. Be controversial? – I put a question mark after this one because it doesn’t always work (and I personally avoid it as much as I can these days) – but there’s nothing like controversy to get people commenting on your blog. Of course with controversy comes other consequences – one of which is the risk of putting off less vocal members of your readership.

9. ‘Reward’ Comments – There are many ways of acknowledging and ‘rewarding’ good comments that range from simply including a ‘good comment’ remark through to highlighting them in other posts that you write. Drawing attention to your readers who use comments well affirms them but also draws attention of other readers to good use of your comments section.

10. Make it Easy to Comment – I leave a lot of comments on a lot of blogs each week – but there is one situation where I rarely leave a comment – even if the post deserves it – blogs that require me to login before making a comment. Maybe I’m lazy (actually there’s no maybe about it) or maybe there’s something inside me that worries about giving out my personal details – but when I see a comments section that requires registration I almost always (95% or more of the time) leave the blog without leaving the comment that I want to make. While I totally understand the temptation to require registration for comments (combatting spam in most cases) something inside me resists participating in such comments sections. Registration is a hurdle you put in front of your readers that some will be willing to leap but that others will balk at (the same is often said about other comments section requirements that go beyond the basics). Keep your comments section as simple and as easy to use as possible.

Original post: ProBlogger