6 figure blogging 5

Six Figure Blogging

Six Figure Blogging Class 5
Transcript
Time Warner/Weblogs, Inc. Buyout
Andy: Darren, have we done the class since the big AOL Time Warner
news, the big AOL Web Blog buy out?

Darren: No. I think that happened this week

Andy: Yes, that was the big news. I don’t know if anybody has heard but
AOL bought the Weblogs, Inc. blog network for how much Darren? Was it
twenty million?

Darren: The rumor is about twenty-five million. Which I think is not bad
for a two year old company.

Andy: Not at all. I think they were saying that they have about eighty
blogs but really thirty of them are live.

Darren: That is right and there was one or two that weren’t included in
that deal that is because, it came out yesterday [that those blogs posted]
lots of rumors on them and AOL didn’t want to get sued.

Andy: Right, with all the liability. I am curious to see how this is all
shakes out because I want to see what kind of deals the writers are going
to get.

Darren: Yes, I think there are no promises at this stage. I saw an email
saying that they are not promising any extra payments at this stage but
they are changing their conditions of copy write so the bloggers can keep
the copyright to what they write

Andy: That is surprising.

© 2005 Andy Wibbels and Darren Rowse. All Rights Reserved. 141
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Darren: Yes, they can use it in any way that is not online, I think. So they
can write books out of their content or do speaking tours or that kind of
stuff so there are some increased conditions to that regard and there was
allusions to that fact that there would be more money in the network but
haven’t given any specifics to my knowledge yet on that.

Andy: I am so surprised that a large company like AOL would give up
content rights. That really surprises me.

Darren: Yes. I guess AOL is an online company so they just want to [have
the] online rights to it.

Andy: Maybe that is how they can justify not paying people as much
because they say, “You own your content.”

Darren: Yes, exactly.

Google Launches RSS Reader
Andy: The other big blogging news was that Google launched an RSS
reader which you can look at reader.Google.com. I just posted a flash
demo on how to do it over at andywibbels.com. It is in the notes for
tonight and Yahoo just launched a podcast search engine over at
podcast.yahoo.com. So there has been a lot of activity. Darren, there was
some other big money buy out thing. What was that?

Verisign Buys Weblogs.com
Darren: Yes, VeriSign bought out weblogs.com which was a pinging
service.

Andy: Right so if you guys have ever heard of weblogs.com, which is a
pinging service which is a clearing house for updated weblogs all over the
place. That got bought by Verisign who was owned by Dave Winer, right?

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Darren: That is right. It was a multimillion dollar deal. I can’t remember
the exact figures. I think it might have been five or something.

Andy: It is wild because that is really just a pinging server. I mean, yes, it
has a lot of traffic but it is pretty much a one-trick-pony type site.

Darren: That is right.

Andy: I am fascinated to see in a year what we are talking about in
regards to all these buyouts they just have the capacity to.

Darren: That is right. I guess it just goes to show how a simple idea can
actually work out for massive results in an incredibly short time with
blogging.

Andy: Yes, so now they are all saying that this is the blogging bubble. It is
the internet bubble 2.0 and the usual rumor-mongering and the hate-
mongering and gossip is awash over the blogosphere. It is always fun to
tune into that because people get really protective of themselves.

Introduction to Metrics
Andy: Today we really want to get down to brass tacks about metrics and
traffic and writing content. I really love the metrics side of things because
it is something you can hold on to, you can analyze it, you can play with it
if you are obsessed with numbers. You can be a total Microsoft Excel dork
and sit there and run charts and figure out where everything is coming
from. Metrics are really what is going to get you certain about the results
that your blog is getting.

Darren: That is right. I was just thinking this morning, I used to work in
a supermarket and we used to do this thing where we’d follow customers
around and we’d make a little map of where they went in the store, what
shelves they were looking at, what products they compared with other

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products, and those sorts of thing. Then we did an exit poll of them at the
end. That information was then used in the design of that supermarket.

Really I guess what we are talking about today is that type of thing where
we are looking at who our readers are, where they are coming in, and
where they’re looking, what they are doing, and how they leave. In the
same regard, I guess, we actually can use that information to design our
sites and I guess increase the profitability of what we are doing.

Andy: Yes, if you want to read about that behavior study, there is a really
good book out called WhyWe Buy. It is a guy who is an anthropologist
that actually hires people to follow customers in malls, restaurants, and
shops. They do this whole study. It is a fascinating book and he also does
some work online. He just published a new book about people’s attraction
to malls. I forgot the guy’s name but his one book is called Why We Buy.

Traffic as a Stream
Andy: When I think of traffic, I’d like to think of a stream. It is important
to analyze each visitor and where each individual could be going, might be
going, and what they might be looking for. You can get a lot more
information if you think about your traffic as a stream.

You are standing next to a stream and you want to dip your blog in there.
You want to get as much water as possible. Think about when you are at
the ocean and you are trying to catch guppies. You have your half-liter
bottle; you’ve cut it in half and it’s empty. You catch some fish and they
always swim out of the water as you are scooping it up. It is the idea where
you want to get this flow.

I think of this big pipeline. I want to divert it from the internet on to my
blog. Then I want to get those clicks to people on to my site. Every click
tells you something about what that person’s looking for. I really didn’t

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start thinking about traffic like that until a couple of years ago where I was
really trying to read up on how people think of website traffic.

Every click tells you either a person has found something they are looking
for, they got interested in something, they gave up and left, or they got
diverted into a different topic, or they clicked on an ad. Every single click
can tell you a little bit more about what person is doing and what they are
looking for.

It is important to think of traffic as this overall stream that you can
analyze but every once in a while, you can get in there and root around
and see what an individual user is doing.

Darren: That is right. The other thing that I love about metrics and the
statistical packages that we are going to talk about today is that you can
analyze things quite often on a click-by-click basis and on an individual
user basis. When you pull those statistics together, you actually begin to
see some real emerging trends on your blog.

What I’d suggest is that people do go into the micro and do look at
individual behavior of blog readers but take steps back as well and look at
those overarching trends which can reveal some incredible information
and open up real opportunities for you as well.

What is Your Site’s Most Valuable Click?
Andy: The stuff I wanted to add to is the idea of what is your site’s most
valuable click? If somebody goes to your site and clicks on something,
what gets you the most bang for the buck? What is the highest paying best
converting link to an ad? To an affiliate commission? It could be to your
own newsletter or an existing product. Do you put those valuable clicks in
the hot spots of your templates so that each click not only tells you about
the user but can also be an opportunity for income?

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Darren: That is right. That would make a good basis for your field work
this week is asking the question, “What am I trying to get people to click
on? What is that most valuable click?”

For instance, on Problogger, my most valuable click isn’t my AdSense ads.
They are not a big of a deal for me. What I want people to do on
Problogger is one of three things. I want them to sign up for my RSS feed;
I want them to subscribe to my newsletter, and I’d like them to click on
my affiliate links because I know the affiliate links on that page are much
better converting when it comes to income than AdSense ads.

That is my priority for Problogger which is very different from say the
digital camera one where I am much more interested in people clicking on
Chitika ads or AdSense ads because I know that they convert pretty well
on that particular site.

So each blog you have, it is really important to have that in the back of
your mind is, “What am I trying to direct people to? How am I trying to
divert this stream into ways that 1) Helps the readers that are coming into
my site because we want to be creating useful but that 2) that it is helpful
to me in my goals?”

Basic Vocabulary
Andy: Right. Just to do a quick vocabulary, when we talk about
conversion rate, we are talking about what percentage of visits to a
particular page result in clicking on an ad or an affiliate link.

If you say, for example, that my newsletter sign up page usually has about
twenty to twenty-five percent conversion, which means of the people that
land on the sign up page, at least a fourth of them make the trip to the
success page that says, “Thanks for signing up for the newsletter.” Then, I
am also able to tell how many of those people then go to download the
excerpt from my book.
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So the conversion rate is meaning how many of these random readers are
you converting either into a newsletter or a sales pipeline or out to a
product or an ad or an affiliate product.

Darren: That is right. Really for me, it is all about positioning. I think
one of the key positions on your blog to put these things that you want
people to do is at the end of posts. We talked last week about how the top
left hand corner of the heat map and that can be quite optimal to put
something like, “Subscribe for my newsletter for tips like this.” Or
“Subscribe to my RSS feed for more information like this.” Add those
points in your blog where things end whether it be a post or whether it be
a stream of thought that you got going on or whether it be that they just
signed up for something and then they are greeted with an empty page.

You want to be thinking about those dead spots, those spots where people
are stopping and looking for something else to do is to actually be
positioning those sorts of next step activities.

Andy: Right, very good idea. Along with that, if you are going to think of
your clicks in a really cold marketing business school sense, you really
want ideally, a site visitor to click on an ad or a product or often to a
newsletter or go somewhere else on this site that if you are getting into
cold hard marketing terms, you want them to either click out to something
that gives me something or stay on the site until you do.

Use a Flowchart to Map Traffic Patterns
Darren: That is right. I think it is really worthwhile, I haven’t put them in
the notes, but it is worthwhile actually to be making a flowchart up of
what you think a typical reader does on your site. Track them where they
are coming in from and what will they do when they are on my site and
actually begin to develop your idea flow of what would you like them to do

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that can actually give you some steps along the way of actually designing
this flow through in a way that converts for you.

Observe Test Users
Andy: Also if you want to drive yourself crazy, have somebody that
doesn’t know your site and watch them use it. There are a few things more
awaking than watching non-savvy internet users use a website.

So if you ever want to blow your own mind, I use to do interface testing
with an old job. Watch people use your site. You will be amazed at what
they click on, what they skip over, and what they see as important versus
what you or your designer think is important.

Darren: It is one of the funniest things you can ever do is doing that but
it is really useful.

Andy: If you have non-techie parents, get them to use your site because
you will learn so much about where their eyes fall, what they perceive as
something that is free or something that is useful. It will totally blow your
mind. I am telling you; it is really fascinating.

Darren: It is quite depressing too.

Andy: It is quite depressing. If you want a good book on usability, check
out, Don’t Make Me Think. It is a book on web usability. It is really great
reading, very approachable. David Krug, I think is the guy’s name. I
believe if you go to dontmakemethink.com it will tell you what is going on.
That is again outside of the blog realm but knowing some web usability
can often help you understand why things aren’t working on your design.

Traffic and Measuring
Andy: So we covered traffic and measuring and why we measure and how
we measure but now we want to get to really the how and the metrics and

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the measures. What you want to start to notice is where people are coming
from? What is the referring link? How did they get there? Who is sending
you the most traffic? What domain names send you the most traffic?
Where are they going? Once they get to your blog, what do they do next?
Do they stay on the blog, go somewhere else, do they check the archives,
do they run a search, and do they go out to something that interests them?
What were they looking for?

If an incoming user or reader is coming from Google or Yahoo or MSN,
you can usually see what search keywords they were looking for. You can
start to understand what keywords you have to a particular fancy for in
the search engines.

I remember when they had the tsunami, I posted some tsunami pictures
on one of my personal blogs and I was on the second page of tsunami pics
results. I was getting a ton of hits a day.

Darren: You are the expert on this stuff mate. I am really looking
forward to hearing how you actually do it. What tools do you use in your
tracking? I use Site Meter; that is the main thing I use. What do you
recommend?

Andy: I am using a pretty advanced tool that I am not sure if I totally like
it yet or not called Mach5. It actually downloads the traffic blogs from
your web host.

Darren: Ok, so that is a server based thing.

Andy: It runs from Windows. It is a Windows application that goes and
grabs your logs and then it analyses them. Sometimes, I think it may be
too much analysis. I think if you can get where they are coming from and
where they were going and if you got TypePad, your stats packages in
TypePad also tells you what people are looking for.

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If you get a Google link in TypePad in your stats package or in the traffic
area, you can click on that and that will tell you what terms people were
looking for. You can actually see the search page that person saw and see
where you fall on it because often it won’t be the first result.

I’ve gotten good clicks out of being fifth position if the topic is strong
enough.

Darren: I find that the traffic services that cost, I don’t know what that
actually costs, that they are actually really great. You can get most of that
information from Site Meter or a free package as well so if you are wanting
to start out small. The downside of Site Meter is that it tracks down your
last one hundred size of your site. It can give you good information or not.
I find myself logging into Site Meter just everyday. I have a folder on
Firefox which opens every Site Meter on all my blogs in a click and I can
scan through them and just get a feel on what is going on in my blogs just
in a couple of minutes.

One of the most helpful steps on Site Meter that I use is just the last hour
steps. It tells you how many people have been on your site in the last hour.
For me this is vitally important because if you get a big link up from a
particular site. Last week I got a link from Slashdot. I knew about that
within a few minutes of that link coming in just by looking at, “I had a
thousand visitor in the last hour. Something unusual is happening there.”

To know that information is so powerful because it means that you can go
to the page that they are coming in on and actually begin to mold that
page, that post into something that not only helps them, the reader but
actually helps you as well.

I went into that post and I added an affiliate link. I mentioned my RSS
feed, my newsletter and the conversion was great. If I hadn’t been tracking

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those results up to the minute almost, I would have lost the power of
thirty or forty thousand people in a few hours coming into my site.

It really is vital information. It doesn’t have to cost you anything.

Andy: Right and along with what stats can tell you, it can also tell you
where pages aren’t being found. Some stats packages will tell you where
are the broken links on your site. You may have a broken link that you
either move something and it is getting a tone of hits but nobody is able to
get to that resource because you moved it. You could do a forwarding page
or do some other server magic that then harness that traffic to the old link
to where it should be going.

Along with knowing where people are coming from, where they are going,
and what they are looking for, you can also start to track things by IP
address which tell you the geographic location of where that person is in
the world which you can also tell you perhaps what languages you might
try offering your blog in.

I know Darren, we talked about yesterday that Engadget has the gadget
blog in multiple languages right?

Darren: Yes, They’ve got at least two or three languages now. I know the
Gawker News network is going into a lot of European languages at the
moment and I suspect that that is because they noticed that a lot of
visitors coming in from those countries and they want to provide
information that will tap into that market where things are happening for
them already.

Andy: It is also really cool where you can run that report and see that you
are being read all over the world. Besides all the, “Yes, we are making
money, “ it is really cool that you are able to reach out and be read by
people all over the world.

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Darren: That is right. It is essential if you are going to be running private
advertising on your site. I just signed a deal with Ricoh to put some ads on
my site. It is Ricoh Australia that wants to put the ads on and the first
question they asked was, “How many Australian visitors do you have to
your site?”

Unless you are tracking that information, you are pulling figures out of
nowhere. It is all any evidence but to be able to say, “Here is my stat
package. Here are how many Australian visitors are coming in.”

They’ll be able to make an informed decision and it is quite attractive to
advertisers. It is not just the only information but if you want to go into
advertising route, it is essential to be able to have those stats.

A lot of them want demographic stats as well which don’t come from stat
packages. It is very hard to tell where they are male or female coming in or
what age they are. So another thing you might want to consider is running
a survey occasionally just to put a finger on the pulse of your blog of who
is reading it because that information is very attractive to advertisers as
well.

Andy: Along with where people are, it is also useful to know how they are
coming into the sight and what page they are coming on and when they
are leaving. Often, people don’t come to your site through the front page.

Darren: That is right. I was looking at my digital camera one this
morning and I am just looking at it now. Out of the last one hundred
visitors to my site only thirteen hit the front page. So eighty-seven percent
of my visitors are coming in through a back door somewhere. It is really
useful to know which back door that is.

I know just looking at it that about ten percent are coming in by one
particular page on my site on a particular digital camera that is rumored
to be coming out in the next month or so.
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That is valuable information for me as I begin to think about one, what is
on that page already and what opportunities are there on that page? Two,
should I be writing more information on that particular camera at the
moment because that is hot at the moment?

Andy: Right and or should you adjust the ads on that page to maximize
the traffic you are receiving too.

Darren: Yes, for sure. It might be worth for me putting in another
Chitika ad on that.

Andy: Just have that whole page be one Chitika ad!

Along with where people are going and when they are exiting the site, if
there is someplace where people always exit the site, either you are
probably linking to a really good resource or it is a really boring page.

Darren: That is right. One of the interesting thing about knowing where
people are going, in MyBlogLog stats that we kept talking about give you
this is that you actually know what other sites are really benefiting from
you at the moment which is good for pulling in favors later.

I was talking to someone the other day and I said to him, “You know, I
noticed I’ve sent you three to four hundred hits over the last twenty-four
hours.” They were amazed that I knew that. There is a relationship. I am
not going to manipulate them for that information but it is really good to
know who is benefiting from my site and how that might come back for
me later on. It is really interesting.

The other thing I noticed this morning on my digital camera one is that
the statistics of where people are entering the site and where people are
leaving the site from actually are very similar. So I know that thirteen
percent are hitting my site on the front page and thirteen percent are
leaving my site from the front page.

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Obviously I need to do some work there on retaining visitors because they
are coming in and they are leaving from the same page which could be
good if they are all clicking on ads but it could be that they are not finding
the information that they want. Again, that information is really useful to
have.

Andy: It’s also good to know what times of the day and or days of the
week your site gets more traffic. I was surprised that I get a lot more
traffic on Mondays than other days of the week. I was suspecting it would
be Tuesday or Wednesday because I would think people go to work on
Monday and they spend all day going through emails; maybe that is just
me. What you can start to find out is what days you get the most traffic so
you should have your most featured content début on that particular day.

Darren: Yes, I know on my blog that usually Tuesdays or Wednesdays
are the highest days. You’ll noticed on my other blogs that Tuesdays and
Wednesdays are the days I’ll make announcements so if any are an
importance to me, they are the days where I’ll feature new affiliate
programs that I got coming in. There is no point of putting them on a
Saturday when my stats drop in half. It is great information to have.

Andy: Finally, how much time is being spent on your site? Like Darren
was saying, if you got thirteen percent of the people getting to the front
page and many of those don’t stick around, if he knows how long they
stayed on the page, he is able to see if they theoretically read something,
did they go, “I didn’t like the site,” and then they are gone within a few
seconds. That again can tell you more information about who is reading
the page and how long they are taking and spending time on it. Depending
on how the content is on the page, if they are perusing it or watching a
demo or listening to something, it can tell you more information.

Darren: I find that most people don’t spend time on pages for very long.
We’ll talk a little bit later on that in writing content. You need to write
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with that in mind so don’t get too depressed if people are staying in your
site for forty seconds. That doesn’t sound like much but actually that is not
bad for a lot of sites.

The other thing I would say is don’t worry too much about comparing that
stat with another site because each site will have its own purpose and its
own rhythm.

Forty seconds can be fantastic if at the end of that forty seconds they are
clicking on the link that you want them to click on. Again six minutes
might be great for some sites but they might not be getting any
conversions on that. Again, it is not just about lengths of stay but it is
about what your goal is ultimately.

Traffic Tools
Andy: Right. Now I want to get into some of the tools that we use to track
all this stuff.

Technorati and BlogPulse

The first two that I really enjoy using are Technorati and BlogPulse which
we’ve talked about before. They are places to finds blogs on a certain topic
or a certain keyword or a certain niche.

I use Technorati and BlogPulse because they have watchlists where I am
able to see where I am being linked to in the blogosphere usually within
an hour or so of it happening. So if you want to, you can sign up over at
Technocrati. You’ll have to create a user account and assign your blog and
go through a little process as well as BlogPulse You can take any URL
anywhere and type into BlogPulse and see where that is being linked to in
the blogosphere and how many links it is getting. It will even give you a
trend chart to show you over the past two weeks or four weeks where the
traffic has been spiking and where the interest is.

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Darren: Yes, I use to use them quite a bit but for some reason, I dropped
off. I don’t know if I am getting too busy but it is great information to
have. Does it cost anything to use the search or the watch list?

Andy: No, I think with Technorati, I think you can have up to three watch
lists and the BlogPulse is free right now as well. I know that the BlogPulse
company, they do that Intelliseek product where it is really mega stats for
large corporations. The BlogPulse thing is all free right now.

Darren: Great. I may have to get back into them.

Andy: You can also subscribe to a feed of these updates for your blog. In
my aggregator, I’ve got an Andy Technorati feed so I can see whenever
somebody links to my site I get pop-ups that says, “Hey this is here.” So
they link to me where they are going. If I know them I can say, “Thanks
for sending me traffic.” I can leave a comment on that particular post and
say, “Thanks so much for talking about what I am talking about.” It is
another way to see where you are being talked about and where you are
being mentioned.

Darren: Yes, that is very useful information to know that because for me,
blogging is really about the relationships not only with your readers but
with the source of your readers as well. To know that is quite a powerful
thing.

MyBlogLog

Andy: The next part we want to talk about is MyBlogLog which I just
signed up for it yesterday. It is pretty darn cool. It is what Darren has been
talking about where it tracks not just incoming traffic but outgoing links.
It can tell you where people are coming from but also where they are
going.

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I am able to see that I’ve had in the past day, I’ve had about twelve people
come through my thank you page and my newsletter. I am able to see
where those subscribers are coming from. I can see what links they are
coming from and what links they are going to. If they are adding my feed
to their site, I can see that as well.

Again, it is another way to really start to slice and dice where all this stuff
is coming from. MyBlogLog is twenty-five bucks per year, I think per blog,
Darren?

Darren: Yes, it is per blog which could get a bit expensive if you are
running multiple blogs but I think it is definitely worth that information
just from where they are going point of view alone. The incoming traffic
that it tracks, you can get in any stats package but there is only a few
around that track where people are going.

Like I’ve said, I think last week or the week before, it actually puts the
finger on not only what links are popular but that gives you the power
then to analyze what wording in those links seems to be working. So if
you’ve got a link that is always popular and it says, “Free beer,” you might
have some insight into the fact that your readers are into free beer and the
wording I guess of that is really powerful.

I think, Ellie, in the ecampus, yesterday I mentioned that she has been
using that MyBlogLog and she has realized that most of the outgoing links
are images or image links. She’s noticed that the image ones are much
more powerful than the text ones which I think is a great analyses to have.
Obviously she is going to be using a lot of image links to her affiliate
program in the future because they convert so much better.

You wouldn’t know that without tracking your outgoing links.

Andy: Again, that is all available at mybloglog.com. Once you register,
you can do a free trial but once you are registered, you get a little piece of
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JavaScript that you add to your templates and that sends a little shout-out
to the MyBlogLog server every time there is a page visit or a link clicked
on a page.

Mint

A similar tool is called the Mint. It is at haveamint.com. This also tracks
both incoming and outgoing stats and it is thirty bucks per site. I think
William has been using that tool?

Darren: Yes, I don’t know if William is on the call but he said he would
post something on the ecampus about his experiences. He was raving
about it. The thing I love about Have a Mint is that it is just beautifully
designed.

Andy: Yes, it is nice.

Darren: Yes, it is worth thirty dollars for that alone but it is great.

SiteMeter, Hitbox, StatCounter and AWStats

Andy: Other tools to look at are Site Meter. Again, these are normal
things where you get a little piece of code, you put it on your blog, and it
loads a little bitty image that sends out a hit and tracks that particular hit.

Hitbox.com and StatCounter.com and these all operate the same way. You
sign up and you get a little piece of code, you add to your blog, and you
can then check the reports.

Darren: Yes, they are free. You get what you pay for so you won’t be
getting any of the really detailed analysis that Andy was talking about at
the start. I find them good. I also use the AWStats which I think you’ve got
listed down there which is a server based one and that gives a lot more
detailed information. It is almost so overwhelming that I don’t use it on a
daily basis as much as I use the Site Meter.
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Andy: Yes, AWStats is really for large corporate intranets. It is so much, it
really is too much data. It is a really amazing tool but it can give you so
much analysis.

Something to keep in mind is that when you first get your sites up, it is
normal to check your stats every fifteen minute. It’s ok. We’ve all done
that when we first put our site where you just check it constantly and you
are going to lose your mind.

Darren: I don’t know what you are talking about!

Andy: Right. Not me, not here. It is very easy to get seduced by tracking
your traffic all the times. Maybe make it a day of the week that I am going
to check things hourly once a day but I am going to do a more thorough
analysis for a half hour maybe once a week and say, “This Friday
afternoon, traffic analysis” and write down here is where the stats are
coming from, here is where it is going, here is what my comment search
terms are and stuff like that.Your stats can drive you crazy if you let it take
over your life and it certainly can.

Darren: That is right. I tend to do it at the end of each month is the time
where I’ll spend a couple of hours to really going through really solid
analysis. That is when I’ll get out the big package and track from month to
month. I got a bit of a notebook where I keep all my results. I just look at
what is happening between months and months. It is great to have that
big picture analysis too.

Traffic Plugins

Andy: Along with that AWStats tool, there are also plug-ins available
depending on what blog tool you are using and what blog platform,
WordPress, Movable Type both have plug-ins. I think that Textpattern
does. I think that most server based blogs have some interface into a tool

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like AWStats or they have their own states program that it can be graphed
into the blog.

Darren: Yes, I’ve just started using the WordPress ShortStats plug-in.
That is quite good at looking at a glace at what is happening at your site. It
is great. I think it does count the robot visits as unique visits though so
you just need to be aware some of them have a bit of quirks where there
might be some inaccuracies. If you are just comparing it over time, it is a
great tool.

Andy: Yes, another thing to talk about is not just tracking your hits from
your site but you can also use a tool called FeedBurner. This not only takes
your site’s feed and converts it into different feed formats but it can also
tells you the circulation of how many people are checking your feed with
your aggregators, how the traffic is working, and what your click-throughs
are so you can see where the popular headlines. It is exiting to go out into
the FeedBurner and see that you’ve got a couple hundreds of subscribers. I
know Darren, you’ve got a couple of thousand for Problogger.

Darren: Yes, I think there are eleven hundred and the thing I love about
this is that they do tell you which headlines work. We are going to talk
about titles and how important they are later. I was just looking at my
Problogger ones and I know that the most popular headlines on my site
over the last month, I think it is, is “Nick becomes a five figure blogger.” I
know the next one after that is, “The million dollar home page,” and the
one after that is, “Another six figure blogger goes public.”

So I know the ones where I mentioned money get a lot of click-throughs.
So that is useful information to know when I think about my next post.
Should I include some reference towards money? That actually seems to
work so track those things over time and you’ll see some really interesting
patterns.

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Andy: Along with all these stats remember that with most of the affiliate
programs like Google AdSense all have their own reporting systems as
well. It is easy to get buried into all this data but just take the time to go
through it once a week, once a month and pour some coffee or put on a
good movie and root around and see where the traffic is happening and
what is going on.

Darren: Just very really briefly, I know we are over half way in this call
but with the AdSense stats, I’d really recommend setting up channels to
track different ad units on your blog. The way I do it on each of my blog
there is multiple AdSense ads and each one of those ads or each one of
those units have a channel assigned to it.

There are some tutorials on this in the AdSense help pages if you want to
look at them. For instance, it tells me that the ads on the top left hand side
bar doesn’t perform as well as the one on the top left hand side bar. So
those sorts of information. They’ll tell you which units are making money,
which ones are getting high click-through rates, which ones has the
highest cost per thousand impressions, and all those sorts of figures. It is
really useful information.

Again, you can get really bogged down in it and I would recommend you
don’t. But use that especially when you are making changes to your site.
Never make a change to your site unless you are tracking it first otherwise
there is no point in doing that.

I think I mentioned a few weeks ago, I have a change log. I always write
down the changes that I make and then I have something to look back on
as I notice changes in my statistics whether they be traffic changes or
earning changes. It is really important to track those things.

Andy: You also want to talk about what is a good click-through ratio.

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Darren: Right. This is the question I get asked more than anything else.
I’ll start by saying that you can’t talk about exact figures and I am not
going to do that here even though it is a closed forum.

There are so many variables. It is very difficult to compare from one site to
another. I know, even looking at my twenty blogs that the click-through
rate can vary so astronomically depending on what the topic is, depending
upon the relevancy of the ads that Google is serving, depending on the
positioning and the design of the ads, and depending upon the day of the
week.

I noticed that on week days, my click-through rate is lower than on
weekends. More people click on my ads as a percentage on weekends even
though the statistics are lower in terms of how many people are visiting.
Obviously people on the weekends have a bit more time on their hands to
follow ad links.

It can vary depending upon whether your readers are web surfing or not.
On Problogger, for instance, a lot of people just don’t even see those ads
because they know what they are and they are not interested. Whereas
other sites that don’t have as many web surf users, they click on them all.
It can vary depending upon where the traffic is coming from. So search
engine traffic tends to bring in more click-throughs than the loyal readers
for instance or people coming in from other sites. All of these are factors
that can increase and decrease your click-through rate and also your
earnings per thousand impressions.

Having said that, probably a normal click-through rate from what I’ve
seen in other people’s stats, not what they tell me what they earn or
anything, is probably around the two to five percent range. I saw someone
yesterday who had twenty-five percent click-through rate.

Andy: My god.

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Darren: Which is just amazing. I wouldn’t recommend their design or
anything like that. I actually think that they are breaking the rules to get
that rate. Again, it can vary quite a bit. So that two to five, I’ve got blogs
that do better than that; I’ve got blogs that do much worse from that as
well. It is not too great to compare between blogs but really use the click-
through rate, use the cost per thousand, earnings per thousand and
impression figure to track things overtime. That is where those stats are
more useful.

Earnings per thousand impressions normal. It is even harder to estimate.
Normal is probably anything between ten cents per thousand impressions
to thirty or forty dollars per thousand of impressions. I’ve seen quite a few
blogs anywhere in that. It really depends upon the click values. If your ads
are worth two cents, your earnings per thousand might not be much. If
your ads are worth thirty dollars, as they can be, you are going to have
pretty high there so it is very hard to estimate that particular figure. Again,
it is better to track it over time.

Andy: Again, let me just reiterate it: Don’t just track your site but track
yourself. Go buy a notebook right now and just keep a track of what
changes you make so when you get a big traffic surge, you can figure out
why it happened and what is going on.

Let’s go ahead and open up for questions before we dwell in the second
half of the call. We covered a lot.

Maryam: Andy?

Andy: Yes, go ahead.

Maryam: This is Maryam, I just want to let you know that I am
completely behind. I am here as I suspect many of us are but this is a lot of
information as you said.

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Andy: It really is, yes.

Maryam: And good information too and I am getting so much out of this
class you wouldn’t believe. But gee-whiz, I am at least a week behind in all
the research so keep your websites coming though. This is filling up my
empty time at sitting with my laptop at Starbucks.

Andy: Yes, our goal is to take over your entire week. Hopefully we will
give you enough content that there will never be a need to think of
anything else besides this ever again!

Darren: I was talking to someone during the week, who is on the call and
they were saying that they are listing to the calls three or four times over
the following weeks and just keeping on going through it. I think we are
going to make these calls available for you for a long time. I encourage you
to keep going into them if you are feeling overwhelmed.

Andy: Yes, I’ll even listen to calls where, I’ll sit here and listen to it and
watch the thing move across the screen on the player or I’ll clean the
house while I’m listening to it. Put it on the background. You’ll never
know what is going to sink in while you are not really paying full attention.
So remember that the calls are going to be out here for you to listen to.
The transcripts are trickling in. I know that there has been some delays on
that but this stuff is going to be out there for you to explore later on.

But if there are no other questions, Darren.

Audri: Actually, I have a comment. This is Audri.


Audri: I just wanted to suggest to people if they do continuous testing of
what they are doing because you can really improve your results. When I
was watch, say over the last year of how our results have changed just by
doing little tests and tracking them in the notebook. Everything that
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you’ve been saying, you can like every three or six or so months double
your results. It can be incredibly powerful. You can increase your every
single aspect of it. You can be increasing your click-through rates and so it
just takes your earnings go up and up even with the same traffic. I am a
very big promoter of testing and I just wanted to let people know that you
can really be having enormously effective changes just by slowing
improving it every week, every month and you’ll just see unbelievable
changes.

Andy: Great point. Thank you so much.

Participant: Yes, Andy, I’ve got a quick question about Technorati. Can
you hear me?


Participant: Somebody told me that if we put tags at the end of a post,
Technorati tags, they work like keywords. But they look like they are not
there for a real purpose. Have you ever used them?

Andy: I use them on my personal blog and my professional one. I don’t
get a huge amount of traffic from my tags with Technorati or with
BlogPulse that also uses tags but I know some bloggers do. Darren do you
use tags?

Darren: Yes, I’ve used them from time to time and I have noticed when I
do use them that it does bring some traffic. So I’d give them a go. Some
people are now not using categories at all on there blogs and are just using
tags which is interesting. I probably wouldn’t give up on my categories. I
thing Technorati tracks your categories as a tags as well. I am not a big
user of them but I again know some people who do very well out of using
them. So it is probably worth a try just to see whether the tags that you
would use are actually tags the people actually would be using as well.

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John: Hey, Darren, this is John from Scared Monkeys, we are finding
that some of the newer sites we are starting that by using tags will
generate a bit of traffic especially from Technorati which will get you on
the map. It is a pretty good idea if you have a new blog and you don’t have
much Google queues or moving up in the Yahoo yet to really try because
you can move up quickly in Technorati.

Andy: And if people have no idea what we are talking about, tags are
more of a free form way to organize content. So instead of having
categories, I might have a post that is about this course and I’ll tag it with
the words blogs or blogging or AdSense. Those tags, if you go to
Technorati.com and click on tags, you’ll see what the top tags are being
tracked. It is like categorizing but there is no categorization system. It is
whatever people think a piece of content should be kept tagged as, they
are going to be tag it as. It is called a folksonomy, which is a really stupid
term for it. It is the ideal that the people can tag things in a more free form
manner. It is like walking into a library without the dewy decimal system.
People just have thrown books in whatever bookcase they think they
should go in. Instead of doing the dewy decimal system, of whatever the
system is with the index cards.

Darren: Yes, I think tags will get bigger and bigger is my prediction. I
know Google on their latest blog search that their reader allows you to tag
things. If Google is getting into it, it is going to be big. So it is probably
worth getting into it.

Andy: Right so let’s plow ahead because we are trying to pack the content
in and we can always spill over to next week too.

Now we want to talk about getting content. Content really is the life blood
of your blog. The traffic, I guess is the oxygen.

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So the traffic is the oxygen, your content is the life blood of the blog. You
can use tools called news aggregators that can tag the latest updates of any
website or blog or news source or pretty much any news sources and roll
that up into a customized newspaper and the technology is called
Aggregation. If you have heard of RSS, that is what we are talking about
here.

We’ve got links to aggregators on to your blog lines which is at Bloglines.
Google Reader, which I just made a demo for that this morning so you can
check that out which is a flash demo walk through. We’ve got a list of
other aggregators and those can either be loaded on to your own
computer. It is like having a private research assistance. You can sleep at
night, get up in the morning and have content on your blog’s topics from
all sources from all over the world. You can have a group of feeds for a
certain category in your blog. So it is really a great way to have this
reservoir of content that you can turn to when you start writing posts for
the day or for the week.

Darren: Bloglines has changed my life. I know it is probably not the most
technical news aggregator out there or it doesn’t have the best features but
the fact that I can logged in from any computer in the world and see what
is being written on any topic that I am chasing. I’ve got a folder for digital
cameras; I’ve got a folder for blogging. I’ve got a folder for virtually every
blog I have. These contents are ready to go.

Of course I’ll give credit to the places where I’ve got the content but they
are inspiration for, like I wake up in the morning and I’m tracking four
hundred posts. So I know today, I’ve got two thousand possible things I
can write about today. So it takes care of, “What am I going to write about
today,” out of the equation. It is just fantastic. I am constantly on Blog
Line. I am one of their biggest fans, I’d say.

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Everyone’s got their own news aggregators. I really recommend you find
one that suits your system.

Andy: A long with the aggregators, there are of course, the online news
sources like Google News, Yahoo’s News, there is a site called Topix, that
again can track different keywords and different stories and different
categories. PR News Wire is a press release service so you can type in your
particular niche once a week and see what press releases are coming
across their wires as well as their virtual press office.

Darren: That is right and those two last ones can actually subscribe to as
emails so I get emails sent to me every day which has new camera releases
and those sorts of things. They are great. I think with Google News, Yahoo
News, and Topix, you can subscribe to by RSS as well.

Andy: Right.

Darren: So you can search for keywords. The only downside of doing it in
all three is that you’ll see the same articles again and again and again and
you’ll clutter your box. So you might just want to pick one of those unless
you are really are desperate for news on an item.

Andy: Again, Technorati, Feedster, BlogPulse, the usual suspects on
searches can help you keep a constant flow of content coming in. Google
has their Google Alert service. They launched their blog search.

There is digg.com, which is a share a book marking site.

Have you heard of del.icio.us? It is like del.icio.us as well.

PubSub.com is another site that you can track different keywords and
ideas.

So don’t just think of subscribing to your niche, but people in your niche,
brand names, products, events, ideas, and concepts.
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Don’t forget that you can go by phrase. So if you want digital cameras but
you don’t want Sony, you can put quotes around it here and put this
symbol over here and you can get only articles with digital cameras
without Sony in them.

There are so much information and we really have the tools to harness it,
to have this constant flow so we have a traffic flow, and we also have
information flow coming in.

Darren: It is really important not to overwhelm yourself with this.

Andy: And it is so easy to.

Darren: I am tracking four hundred feeds and if I’ve miss two days, I can
log on there and feel quite overwhelmed and feel quite depressed by the
whole thing.

It is probably worth having some system of priorities. I know if I go away
for a week, I just come home and click and I’ll go and read certain folders
just because I know it is just too much to get through them all.

Just work out the system for you. I’d be interested to hear what other
people use in terms of news feeds and those sorts of things as well. Maybe,
we haven’t got time now but maybe if you can leave suggestions on the
ecampus. It would be great to see what other people’s work flows are like.

Maryam: Darren, this is Maryam. I wanted to say along the line of
Bloglines. I just got onto Bloglines but I have been using Yahoo! and I’ve
just today, starting using Gmail, well Google, Google’s which is a link out
of my Gmail account. If you have a Gmail account, look for the link. I have
to echo what you just said in that it is completely transformed my life in
the sense of I was paying on the average of about two hundred dollars a
month to a research assistant that I’ve now more than halved so it is a

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money saver for us. If you are in any business that requires constant
research and I am, it is just awesome.

Darren: I remember, when I first started blogging, it would take me
hours and hours to find the content that I want and I’d book mark all the
sites that I wanted. You had to surf them all individually. Now, I can in
five minutes, have all the information that I need for a full day’s posting. It
is great.

Maryam: Thank you for putting this up because I think it is like, if I can
say a single one thing that I’ve got out of the system, it is worth the price
of admission has been the aggregation stuff and again, for Andy, thanks.

Andy: Sure. Remember just because we can know everything that is on
the internet with these tools it doesn’t mean you are suppose to. So again,
watch for that overwhelm. I know I’ll sit here and star at the walls rather
than check my aggregator if I’ve been gone for a couple of days because I
just don’t want to face all that information.

Along with all the online sources, there are of course newspapers,
magazines, tv, check out shows and newspapers and magazines in your
topic. Go buy a magazine that has nothing to do with your niche and see
what can you apply. I could go buy a copy of Soldier of Fortune and what
is that going to tell me about internet marketing? Go buy Dog Fancy and
see how that fits in with digital cameras.

Go a little crazy and see what pops up because you never know what is
going to wake up your creativity.

Darren: It is so true. Just take that notebook that you’ve got everywhere
with you because ideas come in all kinds of places.

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Writing Quality Content
Andy: Darren, we’ve got five minutes. Do you want to do the writing
quality of content for your blog of stuff?

Darren: Ok, I’ll race through it.

Andy: We don’t have to race through. We can come back to it next week.

Darren: We’ll see how far we’ll get. I’ve got a list there of sixteen things
and really a lot of them are simple and not rocket science. I just think it is
worth reemphasizing, even those who have been blogging for years need a
wake up call every now and again in the way you actually think about the
style that we write it.

Find Your Own Voice

Darren: I’ve written there that I think each blog needs to find it’s own
voice and rhythm and style and readership. Really these sixteen points,
take them in mind, but find your own style. I know bloggers who break
every one of these and do really well. It is about finding what works for
you.

1. Post Titles

Darren: Titles, I was talking to someone yesterday and I was saying what
is the one tip you would give someone on how to get into the search
engines. I think titles to your posts and titles to your pages are so
important. They are important in terms of search engine ranking so a little
box that come to visit your site to look at how to rank it, one of the first
thing they look at is the title of that page.

You need to think about what are the words you are using on that page.
Are those words that people will search for on the internet for? If they are
not and are some cryptic thing that alludes to something that just
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intrigues someone, that might help with some of your loyal readers but
that won’t help in the search engines. You need to think about the
keywords that you are putting into your site.

Andy: I think that it is so important. I have to interrupt real quick. I use
to write really clever titles for my posts and that means nothing to a search
engine. When you can go obvious, I’d choose obvious over clever
whenever I can.

If you are making a pun, Google does not know puns, so be obvious at all
times.

Darren: Also consider that your title is one of the few bits of information
that someone will see on a search engine when they go searching for
something. Whatever is in your title is selling your site to them. It is vital
important. The same thing is true in your RSS. The people who subscribe
to your blog, your title is what they’ll scan through all the entries and it is
your titles that is what’s going to set your entry apart from everyone else’s
entry.

I am tracking four hundred different blogs from each four or five posts a
day. I’ve got to scan through thousands of entries there. It is only the
titles, really, that are going to grab my attention.

The titles are important for your loyal readers too. Those who bookmark
your site and log in regularly, even they scan pages. People don’t read in
detail things; they’ll look for titles; they’ll look for things in bold.

Your titles are really important. I encourage people to include keywords,
be as descriptive as you can in your title and keep it simple. Short titles
seem to work better. Grab people’s attention, make it interesting and
intriguing so all those things you want to try and put into your titles.

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It is worth giving it a minute or two to think about the title before you
actually press publish. It is very important.

2. Get to the Point

Darren: Number two is get to the point. People, and we mentioned it
before, people stay on blogs for less than a minute on average. That is
what some of the research I’ve seen. So you’ve got to get their attention
and quickly communicate your message to them in a way that doesn’t bore
them.

Andy: Yes, I want to mention that you put your conclusion first. I should
read the headline and then read first sentence and it should tell me exactly
what you are getting to and then I can read and decide if I want to read
the whole thing or not.

Darren: That is right. People have incredibly short attention spans
online, in life in general, but online and I think it is getting shorter so get
to the point.

3. Don’t Be Too Brief

Darren: Number three, don’t be too short though. You can get to the
point so quickly that it is all over before it started.

You want to aim for about two hundred words, three hundred words if you
want to rank in search engines. They don’t like the one sentence posts that
much. At least have some content. You’ll also get into trouble with
AdSense if your page is just a page full of ads with just a sentence on
them. You need some substantial content there to actually work with
AdSense and search engines.

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4. Make it Scannable

Darren: Number four is make it scannable. This plugs into the short
attention span of people. I saw some statistics the other day. I think
sixteen percent of people read websites word for word. Sixteen percent so
keep that in mind. What are people reading when they go to websites?
They are looking for headings, they are looking for lists. I wrote a post the
other day on eight reasons why lists are good for getting traffic. It is a list
post and it is really a powerful way of writing.

Think about the formatting of your posts. So use bold, capitals, italics,
underlining, other texts, and anything along those lines that will grab
people’s attention. Use heading and subheadings. Start with your main
point and as Andy said, use pictures. Pictures draw your eyes down the
page and break up your page. Use borders and blog quotes. If you look on
Problogger, you’ll see I’ve got little yellow blocks around the quotes that
I’ve used. They draw people’s eyes. Use white space around things so
break up your posts and put space around it. That helps people to draw
their eyes to whatever is inside that white space.

I’ll leave it at that for that point. I think we’ll going to have to continue this
page next week.

Participant: You were talking about a minute ago but throughout the
course, you keep mentioning a website called Engadget. How do you spell
that?

Darren: E-n-g-a-d-g-e-t dot-com.

Participant: That is a very popular website?

Darren: On gadgets.

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Andy: It is like tech toy stuff. It is one of the top blogs. It is about techy
toys and palm pilots, cell phones, and things that require charges and
batteries.

Everybody have a fantastic week.

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Six Figure Blogging Call 5 Worksheets
Evaluating Traffic Patterns and Productivity
Evaluation Criteria Blog 1: Blog 2: Blog 3:

My Goals:
What do I want visitors to do when they visit
my blog?

What are visitors actually doing when they visit
my blog?

What is my most valuable click in terms of
affiliate revenue? Where have I physically
positioned that “click” on my blog?

Where is my traffic (readers) coming from?

What is my most common entry page for
traffic?

What is their IP address / Geographic location?

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Evaluation Criteria Blog 1: Blog 2: Blog 3:

How much time do they spend on my blog?

What day of the week and what time of the day
do I receive the most traffic?

Where is my traffic (readers) going? Where are
they going when the leave the blog either
through a link or other means?

What is my most common exit page for traffic?

What is my conversion rate? What percentage
of visits to the blog result in a click on an ad or
affiliate link?

Best Resources for Blog Content
Your content is what draws readers to your blog. It’s not always easy or even best to write all original content. In
order to keep up with the latest in your niche, draw upon other resources. There are many different possibilities
when it comes to finding good, quality content. Identify some resources – and even other blogs – which can provide
you with great information for your readers. If you’re pulling your information from various blogs, you’ll want to
obtain a news aggregator like Bloglines in order to track this information more easily. Make sure to consider online
as well as offline resources. When you are looking for information keep these things in mind as they relate to your

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particular niche: keywords, people, brands, products, events, ideas, and concepts. All of these things can be written
about on your blog.

□ I have signed up for a news aggregator (like Bloglines or Google Reader)

Content Resources Blog 1: Blog 2: Blog 3:

My Niche Topic

Resources I can Track for Content for My Blog

News Services, Blogs

Websites

Books

Newspapers

Magazines

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Television programs

Other

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