Blog Professional

In my news reader this morning I read an article by Erick Sass regarding ex Gawker editor, Elizabeth Spiers (login required). Spiers is ramping up the blog network, Dead Horse.  The article states:

Dead Horse plans to hire freelancers to produce the content–a point of difference from Fashionista, which has a full-time editor, Faran Krentcil. Dead Horse also plans a companion e-newsletter from the site.

Although the new site will target a larger audience than Dead Horse’s three inaugural sites, Spiers said it was aimed at the mostly upscale urban consumers who are interested in organic lifestyle products.

Spiers also is planning to roll out additional sites, including one specifically for women. One domain name registered by Dead Horse, SanctiMommy.com, suggests plans for some kind of maternity site. Still officially nameless, these sites don’t even have speculative launch dates. But, she said, the build-out is part of a long-term business plan. "Ideally, the Dead Horse network will be diversified," she said, "which makes it more sustainable in the event of a downturn in any single category."

If you are planning to hire on as a professional blogger and freelance for Dead Horse Media, you better get in line, it looks like this one will be taking off soon.  You can find the contact info on the about page.

Tags: Elizabeth Spiers, Dead Horse Media, Gawker, DealBreaker.com, professional blogging, hiring bloggers

Getting noticed in your niche or in your expertise can be difficult.  There are over 60 million blogs out there today and getting your voice heard among the noise can be a difficult thing to accomplish.  One of the things that has worked for me as a no lose tool is making many comments on lots of blog posts.  This is a must if you want to get your blog noticed by the influential people in your niche. 

If you have been around in your niche long enough, you will know who the people are that get the most traffic to their blog and the people that seem to have all of the commenters and all of the traffic.  If you are in the niche of blogs about something not real popular it won’t be hard to find those who stand out in the crowd.  If the niche you are trying to enter is a blog about gadgets or photography or some other very popular niche, it may not be as easy to pick out the influencers.  Technorati can help with finding the top bloggers within a certain area and could be used for that purpose.

Now that you have found the top dogs in your niche. It’s time to hang out and see what they do and what they say.  Why are they an influential A-list blogger?  What expertise are they providing?  As you get a sense of their blogging and their blog personality, it’s time to become part of the group.  It’s time to leave a comment.

I’m not talking about the comment that says "Good point", and then moves on to the next article.  I mean to actually engage in what the writer has stated or at least lend some of your own wisdom to their ideas.  This in turn will get their attention.  I can’t think of a single blogger that I have talked to that does not like getting comments on their written articles.  They love the feedback.  Even the top A-listers within the most popular niches enjoy reading the comments.  Many of them will respond to a comment right away if what you have said is at all lending to their ideas or creating more need for conversation within their thoughts.  Your comments can be a calling card to get you noticed.  Commenting on blog sites is almost as important as having one of the top dogs in your niche send a link to your site.  Commenting begins a relationship with the blogger and over time, they come to rely on your thoughts.  Before long, although not overnight, you become expected to provide your thoughts, and people will be more than happy to come to your own blog to get your wisdom first hand.  Now the hard part occurs, having good content there at your blog when they do arrive.

Tags: Blog Comments, Blog Content, A-List Blogs, Blog Networking

It seems that the people at Performancing have decided to end the Performancing Partners advertising network.  I’m not sure of the reasons behind the decision to close down that operation, but with Nick Wilson leaving and Chris Garrett taking over at the helm, it could be that the ship is headed in a different direction.  I also know that with being a small operation and not having the proper funding, models like these are destined for hard times.  I can speculate that Chris is making some hard decisions based on the needs of Perfromancing and his ability to meet those needs.  Perhaps with the proper help, Performancing Partners would not have to end its run, but instead could be turned over to a company more apt to be able to handle the tough task of sales and other time consuming endeavors.  I would love to see someone come in and continue to offer the many professional bloggers at Performancing the same service.

Tags: Performancing, Nick Wilson, Chris Garrett, Ad Networks, Blogvertising

Jennifer Slegg has posted about the updated terms of service for using Google Adsense on blogs, and this has many professional bloggers scrambling to make sure their blogs are in compliance with the new rules.  Google updated a number of key areas and Jen has a good compilation with analysis.

It appears that Google will be cracking down on the use of advertisements that uses their style to make the use of multiple ad networks seamless.  After all Google holds the lion share in the marketplace, and they want to keep it that way.  As Jen stated:

"I can completely understand why Google is doing this, they are the leader in this space (and the leader by a very significant amount) and most publishers will stick with AdSense and ensure they are in compliance. I don’t think this is something that YPN or Microsoft ContentAds (when they launch) would have been able to pull off first. But this decision could impact them significantly, because most publishers will use their highest CTR color scheme on AdSense, and use the "different" one on YPN or other ad network."

The war for the use of consumer generated content is one to the death and Google has always wanted to be the leader in this regard.  It will be interesting to see how other ad networks respond to the new rules set forth by Google and how they will try to capture the market share Google seems to want all on its own.  As long as it continues to be the leader in the arena they can just about right their own ticket when making the rules of how to use their ads.  If they begin to slip in performance and payouts to bloggers, they may need to soften their policies but for the moment they are the ad provider with their boot on the necks of all professional bloggers relying on Adsense for their incomes.

It is not clear when and how they will police their terms of service and the new rule changes.  With sweeping changes made to the rules of use and the number of blogs using their service, it may take an army to keep up with the reported abuse as well as their own surfing as they walk their beat and determine if professional bloggers have complied with the changes.

Tags: Jennifer Slegg, JenSense, Google Adsense, Google, Yahoo, Advertising Networks, YPN, Blog Revenue, Professional Bloggers

Ever played tag? Well, I've been tagged - virtually - by 2 friends within 2 weeks of each other - Ian Lee and Kristie T.

Game rules: Once you're tagged, you have to blog about 5 things that few people know about you.

So here's the 411 on Sherman Hu:

1. "Game, Set and Match! When I was a teen, I played junior competitive tennis and was ranked 14 in British Columbia. Then I moved on to coaching kids. For a short time, I also ran my own racket stringing business.

2. "You go, girl!" In college, I showed up one Halloween dressed as 'RuPaul', and no one recognized me. I had the whole getup, make up and walk all down pat - imagine that - a Chinese RuPaul

3. "Let's rumble!" In high school, I played Bernardo, the leader of The Sharks in West Side Story. I enjoyed learning to speak with a Spanish accent, dancing and stage-fighting.

4. "I'm gonna get you!" In 1991, I had a small part in a TV series - Street Justice - as 'John Hieu', a Vietnamese gang member, who was yelling at Carl Weathers as John was cuffed and hauled off by cops. (Can you say typecasted?) As a result, you can find me at IMDB.

5. "I do" When I was 21, I met the love of my life, Sarah. We met, dated, got engaged, and were married over a 9 month period. Now, 11 years later, we're still very much in love, and have two wonderful children.

Tag, you're it!

Laura Childs
Liz Tomey
Ann Griffiths
Michael Campbell
David Bullock
Dave Taylor
Suzanne Falter-Barns
Ken McCarthy

I have many feeds that come to me whenever a company is looking to hire a blogger for a position.  One such feed I was able to glean before tossing was a position open in Dell’s Commercial Business Group.  It made me chuckle wondering if Jeff Jarvis, who would be perfect for the job, is intending to send them a resume for the position.  I think not.

Tags: Jeff Jarvis, Dell, Professional Bloggers

Web Metrics Guru, Marshall Sponder, points us to a Washington post article by Sara Goo that discusses the monetization of blogs and earning money blogging. Of interest is a take by Technorati CEO David Sifry:

“What we’re seeing is still a significant growth in both the number of people who are creating blogs as well as the number of people who make blogs a part of their regular media consumption,” said David L. Sifry, chief executive of Technorati. “There’s a perception that this is some elite group [of bloggers] and there’s no way I could break into it, it’s too late. That’s absolutely untrue.”

Data on the top moneymaking bloggers are difficult to find. According to Sifry, several hundred bloggers earn enough to make it their full-time job. He said about 10,000 bloggers are earning money as a secondary source of income and about 100,000 others, such as authors and speakers, use their blogs as marketing tools to generate income indirectly.

I’m not sure of Goo’s numbers on this, and I’m not sure David Sifry has really delved into the way blogs are being used as a money making device. I think that Sifry’s remarks are a bit off as it relates to those doing it for a full time job. I would say that he may be looking at those numbers purely from an American point of view. I can think of quite a few people writing blogs as their only source of income and doing quite well here in the states, but how about those countries where “making a living” is a very small amount of money?

Those numbers to me really don’t add up in my mind, but of course, math has never been my strong suit. 60 million blogs and only a tiny fraction of the total are making money? Google Adsense probably has 10% of that total signed up and using advertising on their blogs right now. I might guess that Google only sends out about 10,000 checks a month to the bloggers and that may be his number. Since Google only sends checks when users have reached a certain threshold of money earned, it may be many months that bloggers use the system but never see revenue. The other very small fraction are using blogs for marketing tools? This can only really mean one thing in my mind, and that is that Sifry and Technorati are tracking millions of splogs!

Tags: Marshall Sponder, David Sifry, Technorati, Sara Goo, Monetizing Blogs, Blog Revenue, Google Ads, Google, splogs, Blog Marketing

Chris Anderson, author of the Long Tail, has posted his take on the recap posted by Guy Kawasaki of his first full year of blogging. His conclusion, if I read between the lines correctly, Mr. Kawasaki is not the best professional blogger. On the other hand, if I also read between the lines of Guy’s comment to the post he may be a decent business man or perhaps just an avid hockey fan.

If Guy had hung his sign and said, “Hello world I am a professional blogger”, he would be having a going out of business sale. Apparently, his goal is not to make his fortune betting on the best of CPM models. This of course may change after joining the Federated Media group. I bet dollars to doughnuts he will look back on what could have been in 2006 and wonder why he didn’t have experts monetizing his blog sooner.

Tags: Chris Anderson, Guy Kawasaki, professional blogger, Federated Media, blog revenue

Remember this phrase?

Remember Doc from "Back to the Future" saying it to Marty McFly (played by Michael J. Fox)? Doc appears in the fusion-powered and hover-converted DeLorean car, and says to Marty…

"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads."

For those who don't (who doesn't know B.T.T.F?), it's an 80's American science fiction/comedy film about a young man named Marty McFly who accidentally travels into the past and jeopardizes his own future existence.

Imagine traveling back in time, knowing what you know today, and fixing some things, relationships, decisions, and actions.

(...)
Read the rest of "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads." (1,107 words)