Dec 13

Quick tip: Enable your Feedburner email subscriptions

Blogs, Mind over Pixels, Noobs, Web 2.0 Cutesy Bullshit 5 Comments

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Here is a quick tip I discovered recently, give the option of email subscriptions to your readers.

I became aware of email subscriptions while being on IM, linking to my blog, and getting a reply: “Nice blog! WTF no email subscription?”

Yeah, embarrasing I know, but hey, I never said I am a good blogger!

So, in order to expand your reach at subscribers on your blog, and to avoid embarassment, enable the option on Feedburner. You are signed up on Feedburner, right? No? Go burn your feed right now! FFS.

Click on your feed name, click “Publicize” (yeah, that word seems wrong to me as well, but it is spelled correctly, I checked). Then on the services column click “email subscriptions” and the enable button at the bottom. That is it, you are done. Couldn’t be easier, yet easily neglected because the default is “off”. Now a link shows up if you click the rss button, that says something like “Get Glowleaf delivered by email“.

It’s free, its easy, and it’s dumb not to provide that option to your readers.

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written by Glowleaf \\ tags: , ,

Dec 03

Be the leader of your tribe

Cybertowns, Doodling, Internet Marketing, Mind over Pixels, Social abuse, Web 2.0 Cutesy Bullshit 1 Comment

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I recently became involved in community building, and I must tell you, it is hard work. The time it takes to gather that group of people, to give them focus, to coordinate their efforts into a common goal, it is all hard and takes enormous amounts of time.

But the payoff is worth it. A post on Traffick discusses Seth Godin’s Tribes, but I am not talking about that specifically. Please note the part where it says:

Take Avinash Kaushik’s common-sense exhortation that “aggregate” is never the name of your website visitor. If you get bogged down in aggregate statistics, you might be overwhelmed with just how many loosely-engaged, “valueless” clickthroughs come to your website every week. Yes, but why not make an exercise out of ignoring the 80% of people who aren’t connecting with you and zero in on just the 20% of those who do? Study their characteristics. Build and grow with them. (And it’s easier than ever to study them. This week, using Google Analytics’ custom segment features, I hand-built a segment called “engaged quintile,” for the 20% of website visitors on a client’s site that stayed a long time and viewed many pages. By definition, guess what the “bounce rate” was for that segment? Yes, it was 0%! It’s heartening and inspiring when you look at life through that lens.)

When I analyzed this blog a while ago, I did the exact same thing. Note where I said, nevermind the “hit and run” visitors, look at the loyal 20-25%.

This table shows us something interesting. While 75% of the visitors barely skim the site (maybe its the big fat smileys on top that deter them, but who cares…) we have a loyal percentage of ~20% who are definately reading the posts, and when we factor in the repeat visits from the other tables, we see that they do so often.

Please note how I completely ignored the bouncers, and focused on my loyal readers right from the start. Someone might say, what, you cut out 80% of the visitors! Are you crazy?

Well, yes, I am, and apparently I am also right. Why? Because we don’t give a shit about the “hit and run’s”. I have an internet marketing blog, that does not care to appeal to everyone. Those that actually like it, stick around long time, because they recognize the real value in this. Those are the guys I want, not the visitors from random sources. A skim through the keywords that brought in traffic for me shows these irrelevant ones:

  • “what is the best seo tool”, I should redirect these guys to either a dickroll or a 7$ ebook…
  • sensational.com affiliate, no I am not. Nothing to see here, move along.
  • avatar james cameron torrent, WTF?
  • boobs that we can see, do boobs come out in the invisible version now?
  • wholesale glowsticks, just proves my point.

No, I don’t need those visitors. But the more visitors you have, the better, right?

Wrong. A visitor is a liability, unless he “converts”. At the time of conversion, he turns from a liability into an asset. Until that time, he only wastes bandwidth. A conversion in my eyes can be a lot of things, here are some:

The visitor converts when:

  1. He clicks an ad
  2. He buys a product
  3. He downloads an info product
  4. He registers and becomes an active member
  5. He posts a useful comment
  6. He becomes a loyal reader
  7. He subscribes to RSS or email updates
  8. He blogs about something I said
  9. He links to one of my pages
  10. He recommends my content to others through other media like word of mouth or msn link sharing or whatever
  11. He completes a poll/survey
  12. He builds brand awareness (this one is for big time guys, you just need to grasp it, not use it)

Note that not all of the above points can be directly tracked, but most can. We can track 1,2,3,4,5,7,11. Indirectly, we can track 6,8,9. Please note that I did not include “click the digg button” on purpose.

Do you see now why I wrote in my analysis, screw the others, the 20% is the one that matters? That 20% represents any and all of the above list. That is why I care more about time spent on site, repeat visits, frequency of visit, and RSS readers. And while, yes, chaos theory does prove that the visitor who came in looking for “boobs that we can see” could be a 16 year old computer geek, who will jerk off on boobsurfer, wipe himself, take note of the Wickedfire banner, click it, have a revelation the likes of “omg I can make monies on the interwebs”, spend 200+ hours reading and posting stupid questions and get dickrolled an average of 5 times (actual statistical data), and then rise up in 2 years  as the next internet marketing genius to become rich, powerful and famous, nevertheless, I HIGHLY DOUBT IT.

Another reason why social bookmarking traffic sucks big time is this.  Do a tracking experiment, and see how many visitors with social site referrers slide into any of the spots above. Very few usually. And while you may see RSS subscriber numbers going up, it will deflate as fast as it came. Most of the time, social traffic is a big waste of time and effort.

In summary, focus on your loyal readers, on the active members of your community, on those people that are real assets to you. It takes hard work and lots of time, but the rewards are huge. Focus on what matters, and create a little part of the world that is your own little tribe. It is the apotheosis of being an alpha male.

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written by Glowleaf \\ tags: , ,

Nov 07

Testing out the waters, the Pikachu way

Doodling, Feed the Spiders, Fishbait, Heavy construction, Inorganic agriculture, Internet Marketing, Milking horny guys, Mind over Pixels, Moniez, Noobs, RGBhat, Social abuse, Techniques, Web 2.0 Cutesy Bullshit, WebWriMo challenge No Comments

All affiliates, at least the advanced ones, test out many micro niches at any given time. If I, for example were to consider the pokemon niche, I would do some keyword research, and come up with a good keyword list, that includes both competitive and untapped keywords.

Then, I would buy a few domains, preferrably with those keywords in them. Pokemon have lots of products, so I would go the tangible product way, setting up 10-20 Mcjiffy ebay stores. If one of the domains got some traffic, I would switch it to ppc ads just to get an idea of the bids, as well as the advertised websites.

I would also set up around 10 splogs, to test out the keyword list. And a picture gallery, as well as a video gallery filled with youtubes.

I would social bookmark all of those sites, and see which social bookmarking site performs better for the niche.

After a timeframe that gives me significant statistical data, I would print out every bit of info I had gathered, lay them all out on a table, and start brainstorming on possible utilization avenues.

Maybe the video blog performed well? Maybe I got 2 keywords that brought in lots of traffic, something like “pokemon teddy bear”? Maybe the niche needs more boobs? Or less boobs?

Simple questions really. Then I would use my experience to see what I could make on each category, with which engine, and which tools.

I have made for example, a successful anime pic gallery in the past. I used the Gallery2 engine. I already have a folder with the engine, templates and useful plugins. Cool, that is one project on the list.

I have also made a successful anime adwords campaign in the past, with deceptive ad copy. Kids are much easier to deceive… Great, that means I can do the same and get lots of cheap traffic.

Where to send it though… Hmm. I scour the CPA networks, and find 2 lead offers related to pokemon or kids. Cool. So the second project has the title “Adwords campaign, with deceitful ad copy sending traffic to a thin pokemon site, filled with the CPA I found”.

I saw that Adsense performed poorly, so I decide to leave it out of the deal.

Then I do some different kind of thinking. I have never done it before, but I know that avatar sites work well. Why not niche avatar sites then? That is my 3rd new project. Will need some research, checking out the other sites, and finding the script for the job. I will also think about bundling the avatars on torrents and uploading them, putting the site info in the torrent file. The latter is a technique that I know it works.

This process, gives me:

  • A keyword list to focus on.
  • Keyword rich domains to play with.
  • Indexed domains to play with.
  • Domains with relevant traffic.
  • 2 tried and tested methods to make money.
  • A brand new project to keep me from falling asleep from boredom.
  • About a month’s worth of data to extrapolate information.
  • Worthless sites, that can be splogged for linkjuice poured into the performing ones.

Cool. We have work to do. Pika?

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written by Glowleaf \\ tags: , , , , , ,

Nov 03

PhpFox, an out of the box social network

Cybertowns, Doodling, Heavy construction, Mind over Pixels, Social abuse, Web 2.0 Cutesy Bullshit, WebWriMo challenge 8 Comments

EDIT: I have written a short post on how to make an xml sitemap for phpfox here.

I have gotten a lot of experience lately using PhpFox, so I will continue my earlier post on PhpFox SEO, and do a full review.

  • As I said already, the default installation sucks for SEO, but the pages get easily indexed. You have to keep in mind that the engine is huge, the empty installation is 2500 files alone.
  • RSS feeds are not validated, and cannot be feedburned. They do work on readers though.
  • Sitemaps are text based, and cannot be submitted to Google Webmaster Tools.
  • Meta descriptions are all duplicate…
  • Internal url structure gives you this ugly thing: http://www.simeioseis.gr/blog/view/id_2/title_/

But, if we ignore the SEO issues (honestly I had no trouble ranking the site), we are left with a very powerful tool.

The built in features are amazing.

  • Video module allows you to embed, share, rate, feature videos, and lets members comment on the video page.
  • Gallery can automatically watermark, slideshow, rate, comment and show thumbnails for browsing.
  • Events mod allows you to set up happenings related to your niche, festivals etc.
  • Forum despite being too empty featured, it works fine. I will elaborate on that on the next PhpFox post.
  • Blogs are crap.
  • Polls are fun.
  • Classifieds is useful for any community.
  • Pm system simply works.
  • Groups can keep subniches busy for a long time.
  • Integrated social buttons are a great feature. If only they were more easily manageable…
  • And there are a million other mods, most paid, to expand its features.

As I was saying, for a newbie webmaster it is a great solution. As soon as you install it, you have a powerful mini myspace in your hands, with many more features than you really need.

I honestly prefer it when compared to Joomla community builder, or any other social script for that matter… You can get most features to work just the way you want them using the mods, and the script itself has more features than you can think of, to keep your members busy and happy.

On a different note, I have noticed a lack of information on social webmasters online. I googled for hours trying to find the info I needed, and I found only bits of segmented information on fora.

I will try to gather up as much as I can in these posts, with a focus on Phpfox, because the script simply works.

Monetizing your community is not always easy. PhpFox was initially built to host dating communities with paypal subscription, the features are wired in and enabled by default. One way is subscription based, but I was always a freebie fan. Monetize with ads.

PhpFox has 5 ad spots by default, a top right small banner, a wide skyscraper, a large leaderboard footer, a large box for the homepage and profile pages, and a rather useless logout large box.

I found out that PhpFox generates A LOT of pageviews. No, I mean A LOT. A TON. On my community, the total visitor count up to now is 5k, and the pageviews are 340k. That is a lot.

Make sure to get either the footer banner or the header, a cpm ad to utilize the pageviews. I use Adbrite, but there are other networks as well. I mention those banner spots, because they can be seen in every page.

As for the rather useless logout banner, a pathetic attempt at “exit traffic monetization”, I suggest that you do not put an ad, and rather put in a banner for a site you own that is of general interest. Seems to work better. It will get few views anyway.

You can also throw up a quick McJiffy eBay store at another domain, and link to it from your forum, products within the niche of course. Put it up on a sticky, link it, and forget about it. Might work, might not, who cares.

A fantastic feature of PhpFox is that every module allows the users to add content.  That is great, because those few who contribute to the community, will contribute a lot, and the engine lets them do that in many ways. My members already created groups, quizzes, uploaded videos and started threads for introduction and site features discussion.

A serious lack is the forum module. It works fine, but is too basic. Vbulletin has upped the standards so much, that any other forum engine seems like it came from 1996. The best way to fix this is to install Lightweight, a forum mod that does the job. It has many useless features, ironically making it less of a lightweight, but it works, and keeps the ball rolling with ease.

I also worked on a sister site, a music concert related site with a friend. There, we wanted to utilize the events mod, and thankfully found the Aitoc advanced events mod, which pimps out the events module. Actually, it simply replaces it, you install the new and disable the old. The module adds images to your events, adds recurring events functionality, removes the requirement for “address” so you can schedule online events.

A google maps box shows below the event page, showing the address, which is amazingly recognizable automatically! It allows the members to opt in for event change notifications, and also invite not only their friends but any other member to the event.

The point here is that you can use Phpfox for almost any social site you can possibly think of. The blogging platform kinda sucks though… Increased features on blogging would really make this engine a must.

Well, this is my PhpFox review, after having created a community with it. I will post soon some technical issues with Phpfox, as well as some modification information that I think some people will find useful.

Popularity: 36% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: , , , , ,

Oct 15

Multiplying like rabbits

Cybertowns, Doodling, Fire and Forget, Heavy construction, Inorganic agriculture, Mind over Pixels, RGBhat, Social abuse, Web 2.0 Cutesy Bullshit No Comments

Communities are the ultimate blackhat

Let me say that again:

Communities are the ultimate blackhat

What does blackhat mean?

Mainly automation, and content generation, all while exploiting a bug or two.

What do communities give you?

Content generation, niche spread, news discussion, and automation.

The only thing that is missing from a community to become a blackhat tool, are the exploits. Having a community on a niche, means that you automatically have, buyers, sellers, news topic discussion, content, and the member’s sites to link to you, all in the same niche.

Where am I going with this?

  • Do you need more visitors? Tell your members, or better yet train them, to social bookmark the content that is uploaded on the community.
  • Do you need incoming links? Tell your members, or better yet train them, to ask for links, to put the link in their sigs on the fora they frequent, or if they have sites, link to the community.
  • Do you need buyers? Use the mailing list!
  • Do you need content? Have a contest!
  • Do you need more members? Tell them to invite their friends.

If you take the time, to build and grow even a small community on a niche, you are alone no more. You can simply ask for something, or at least provide an incentive, monetary or simply e-peen, and the members will make it happen. This does not mean that you should lay on your ass and wait for results, but if you are creative, and focus the community’s attention to what you want, you will wake up the next day and find it right there.

You can work to generate one great piece of linkbait for example, or you can work harder, to create a tool and a platform for creative people to generate linkbait all day for years.

You think linkbait is hard? Ok, stick with content then. A content driven community dishes out more content than what you could ever generate yourself, without outsourcing the load.

I am amazed by the results of my newest project. 30 members, just 30, have already uploaded content, sparked up the forum, created 2 groups in hi5 and facebook, created 2 groups in my site, created a banner that they have on their sig in fora, linked to the site from their blogs, blogged about the community, started a buzz in various relevant fora, and invited 3 members.

Before you say that 30 members is nothing, bear in mind that the community is nichy niche. It is about a particular thing, on a small country, in a non english language. The maximum members available in the whole country are around 3000. So I am at a 1% coverage.

You can do the same. Work on gathering the critical mass for a community to thrive, and you are in for more mouths than you can feed.

Think bunnies. Think orgies.

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written by Glowleaf \\ tags: , ,

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