By jdroth

I like to write. I enjoy keeping my web sites, and Get Rich Slowly is foremost among these. To maintain so many sites requires a certain level of discipline. Over the past few months I’ve observed a set of behaviors — in myself and in others — behaviors that are counterproductive to blogging. These include:

1. Checking stats compulsively. Is it really important to know how many people have come to your site in the fifteen minutes since you last checked? Yes, you’ve made $5 via Adsense today. So what? The most important thing you can do is to stop obsessing over site statistics and start creating content.
2. Checking others’ stats compulsively. Worse than checking your own stats is checking your competition’s stats. Yes, The Mega Money Blog has more hits than you today. Yes, the Kingdom of Personal Finance got linked from Time Magazine. So what? If you spent more time writing and less time fretting, you’d have your day in the sun, too.
3. Posting for the sake of posting. Don’t have anything to say? Then don’t say anything.
4. Wandering off-topic. If you run a personal blog, then anything goes. But if your topic is subject-specific, you run into danger when you wander off-topic. Your readers come for information about a very specific subject, and unless you’re a terrificly witty writer, they’re not interested in your thoughts on sports, politics, or modern dance. Stay focused.
5. Over-monetizing. I recently met with a man who runs a huge internet site, an internet site with which you are probably familiar. He makes a lot of money from the web. He gave me some advice on site design. “One thing I like about your site already,” he told me, “is that it doesn’t seem desperate.” He explained that many sites, especially personal finance sites, are so heavily and obviously monetized that it’s a turn-off, both for himself and for others. “I don’t mind if you try to make a buck,” he said, “but don’t beat me over the head with it.” His site that’s generating so much money for him? The ads are minimal. And there’s even an easy way to view the site ad-free. Ramit Sethi has the most successful personal finance blog by nearly every measure. It has no ads. Zero. Nada. Zilch. And yet he’s able to make money off it anyhow. For Ramit the blog is the ad, and he’s the product.
6. Layout that sucks. To some extent, you’re bound by the limits of your blogging software and by your design skill. Even so, there’s a lot of room to tinker. While you develop your design, think like a reader. What’s most important to the average person visiting your site? If you’ve made it difficult to find your search box, your archives, or your subscription information, then you’re shooting yourself in the foot. Just last night I visited five sites looking for info on a book I was reviewing. The search box for each site was buried so that I had to hunt for it. This is dumb. I know you want revenue, but you’re going to get more revenue by having more readers, and you’re going to get more readers if you make the ads subservient to the stuff the readers want. Your site should be easy-to-read and easy-to-use. (And it should look good on all platforms. Whether you like Macs or not, many influential internet folks use them, and if your site looks like crap in Safari, you’re alienating important people.)
7. Fussing with search-engine optimization. Do you know the best way to get search engine traffic? Get linked from other sites. Do you know the best way to get linked from other sites? Write content that people want to share with others, content that makes people go, “Wow. I’m glad I found that.” That’s only SEO trick you need to know.
8. Forgetting to sharpen the saw. Take a break. You can’t do this 24/7/365. Your readers have lives. So do you. Take time off to spend with your family and friends, to read books, to see movies, to walk through your neighborhood. Developing a successful site is a long-term project. It’s not going to happen overnight. Remember to seek renewal away from the computer.
9. Losing your voice. I believe one of the things that helped me become successful with Get Rich Slowly is that I was completely unaware that there was a personal finance blogging community at the start. I hadn’t yet discovered the echo chamber. Sure there are things that will get passed around any blogging community — they’re just too good to pass up. But it’s a bad sign when everything you post is a reaction to something somebody else has written. Be yourself. Write with your own voice.
10. Writing too much. There’s only so much information a reader can digest. If you post too often, you risk losing readers rather than gaining them. How much is too much? It’s tough to say. It depends on the site and the types of articles. Lifehacker and Boing Boing can post 25 items a day because most of the content is summary in nature. They’re mostly aggregation sites. Users can choose to follow the bits that look interesting. Steve Pavlina only posts a few times a week. His articles are much longer than those at most blogs, and to post more often would overwhelm his readers. I think that Darren Rowse at Problogger has a good balance. He posts two or three articles of moderate length each day. If you’re posting five or six long items each day, you’re posting too much.

I don’t want to make it sound like I’m perfect and that I have all of these problems licked. I don’t. In fact, each of item is on the list because I’ve struggled with it in the past. The top three are perpetual thorns in my side. They keep me from getting things done.

In short, the best way to build a successful blog is to actually write. Everything else is secondary.

By nickel

Just a quick note to talk a bit about the power of writing a ‘Welcome’ post when you receive a big link. This morning, FiveCentNickel was featured in the NY Times (along with a number of other sites). Jim from pfBlueprint actually tipped me off to it last night shortly after the article went live.

As soon as I realized what was happening, I quickly threw together a post welcoming NY Times readers to my site, giving them a tiny bit of background, and inviting them to subscribe to my writings via RSS or e-mail, complete with links to help make it happen. I even slapped in an e-mail subscription signup form to make it extra easy. The end result? It’s too early to tell with regard to traditional RSS subscribers (FeedBurner updates daily, and it takes a little while for things to settle out). However, I’ve already seen a nice jump in e-mail subscribers.

Of course, it’s hard to say how much of this was due to the ‘Welcome’ post — after all, people could have subscribed via e-mail using one of the existing buttons, or by visiting my subscriptions page. What I can say is this: the number of people signing up this morning is pretty disproportionate to the amount of additional traffic that I’ve received. Thus, it seems pretty clear to me that this one simple post has helped me to convert the additional pass-through traffic into (hopefully) regular readers.

The great thing about welcome posts of this sort is that you really only have to put one together once… You can then largely recycle the text for your next big mention.

By Flexo

The month of January was a little slow for Consumerism Commentary. While there are a few hours left if I want to write some more entries, as of right now I have written 58 blog entries this month. This is on level with December, but down from almost every other month in 2006. My assumption would have been for practically level traffic based on editorial volume. Also, without any mentions in mainstream press, I would have expected no boosts.

Yet, my traffic page views in January almost reached 100,000 according to SiteMeter. I haven’t done a scientific review of any kind, but it looks like traffic from Google search referrals has increased significantly. Visitors are also leaving more comments on each post and staying on the site longer.

I’ll talk about revenue in a later post, but January was an exceptional month, at least for Consumerism Commentary. Other sites, like this blog and GuruWatch, need more attention.

By nickel

A couple of weeks ago I switched to full-text RSS feeds on both FiveCentNickel and Raising4Boys (details here and here). Now that a bit of time has passed, I thought I’d write a bit about what has happened so far…

First, RSS subscribership is up a bit on both sites. That being said, it’s hard to say if this is just natural growth (perhaps accompanied by a small initial bump from the announcement) or if things are actually accelarating.

Second, site traffic is growing, as well. Here again, it’s hard to say if that’s natural growth. On FiveCentNickel in particular, the biggest driver of traffic growth appears to has been an increase in search referrals.

Third, I have no idea if scraping has become an increasing problem, because I haven’t really checked. I was getting scraped before, and I’m sure that I’m still getting scraped.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, all the readers that I’ve heard from seem quite happy with the change.

By Flexo

At the beginning of the year, I lamented about the decline of my AdSense income towards the end of 2006. January has turned out to be a better month for me in this respect, but I’d like to see the trend over a few months before I declare the blog advertising bubble burst.

Total internet income is up this month and should blow past income from my day job. I’ll have more about that on Consumerism Commentary while I’ll write about the specifics of the source of that income here.

By nickel

I’ve recently been debating the merits of partial vs. full-text RSS feeds on fivecentnickel.com and raising4boys.com. Truth be told, I much prefer full-text feeds when it comes to keeping track of sites, but I’ve actually been offering partial-text feeds on my own sites. The main reason for this is that it drives me nuts when people steal my content and re-publish it as their own, and a full-text RSS feed makes for an attractive target.

Of course, the only real reason that scrapers exist is to make money, typically via Google’s Adsense contextual advertising program. It thus seems that reporting scraper sites to the Adsense team for content theft would be an effective way of getting rid of them. After all, if a scraper gets kicked out of Adsense, the easy money will dry up, and hopefully they’ll just go away. While this sounds great in theory, it’s not all that easy in practice.

Exhibit A: The text of an e-mail that I received from Google when I tried to report content theft by a scraper site (emphasis added).

Thank you for your note. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the text of which can be found at the U.S. Copyright Office website: http://www.copyright.gov/) and other applicable intellectual property laws. In this case, this means that if we receive proper notice of infringement, we will forward that notice to the responsible web site publisher.

To file a notice of infringement with us, you must provide a written communication (by fax or regular mail, not by email) that sets forth the items specified below. Please note that pursuant to that Act, you may be liable to the alleged infringer for damages (including costs and attorneys’ fees) if you materially misrepresent that you own an item when you in fact do not. Accordingly, if you are not sure whether you have the right to request removal from our service, we suggest that you first contact an attorney.

To expedite our ability to process your request, please use the following format (including section numbers):

1. Identify in sufficient detail the copyrighted work that you believe has been infringed upon. For example, “The copyrighted work at issue is the text that appears on http://www.legal.com/legal_page.html.”

2. Identify the material that you claim is infringing upon the copyrighted work listed in item #1 above. You must identify each page that allegedly contains infringing material by providing its URL.

3. Provide information reasonably sufficient to permit Google to contact you (email address is preferred).

4. Include the following statement: “I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above on the allegedly infringing web pages is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.”

5. Include the following statement: “I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.”

6. Sign the paper.

7. Send the written communication to the following address:

Google, Inc.
Attn: AdSense Support, DMCA complaints
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View CA 94043

OR Fax to:

(650) 618-8507, Attn: AdSense Support, DMCA complaints

Regards,
The Google AdSense Team

Yep, that’s right. You need to identify each page that (allegedly) contains material that is infringing on your copyrighted content, put it on paper, swear (in writing) that you’re not lying, sign the paper, and then either mail or fax it to Google. And then wait. I realize that this is likely designed (at least in part) to stop people from lodging false complaints against their competition, but still… There’s really no way for this to be a feasible strategy over the long term — who has that kind of time on their hands?

By Flexo

Today, BoingBoing and Consumerist linked to an article I wrote last night and posted this morning, Do I Need to Report This Income? Part 1. So far, the server is holding up and not buckling underneath the medium wave of traffic.

It’s almost a shame. Tomorrow’s Part 2 is much better.

By Flexo

AdSense is becoming a smaller percentage of my website income. The following chart includes the LinkWorth (red) and Text Link Ads (green) portions, which have been steadily growing since they’ve been implemented. Most Text Link Ads advertisers are locked into low rates, so the only chance to improve income from that service is by adding websites.

LinkWorth is more flexible, but it may be some time before I can raise my rates again. While customers are buying ads on Consumerism Commentary, they have not purchased ads on any of the other sites I have listed.

There are other categories of income that aren’t included in this chart, including direct advertising sales, affiliates, and subscriptions.

By Flexo

My below average AdSense income I mentioned last month is indicative of a lowering trend for me. As I’ve spread my AdSense account across new websites, the total amount has been slightly decreasing since the peak in August.

Other advertising services have outpaced AdSense at this point. I’ll look at my 2006 income from Text Link Ads and LinkWorth in another post.

By Flexo

My AdSense statistics have been well below average the last few days, despite above average traffic. If this trend continues, December will be the fourth month in a row to see a decline from the previous month. I wonder if more blogs are competing for the same advertisers.

If the number of publishers in this particular niche increase while the amount of advertising remains constant, payments may continue thinning out.

The latest decrease may be due to my removing the competitive filter but I’ll wait another week to see how this progresses.