Tag Archives: advertising

On Notebooks and Scratchpads

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Some organization/productivity tips.

When I’m working in my office, I’m sitting in front of a computer all day. Although I have three different tools for taking notes on my computer while I’m working, I always turn to pen and paper when I need to make a note. And I recently realized that that isn’t a bad thing after all.

Sure, you can use software to jot down notes as you need to, but there’s really no substitute for a notebook or scratchpad. I have both, although I prefer the notebook.

It’s usually a spiral bound notebook, the kind with page perforations so you can cleanly rip off a sheet. I keep it open on my desk to the “current” page, which is the page I last used for jotting down a note. I try hard to start a new page each time I have a series of related notes to jot down, but I don’t always succeed. Sometimes, I simply forget.

Recently, I used up all the pages in my notebook and haven’t replaced it. So I’m using a scratchpad. I make the scratch pads out of the galley pages for my Quicken books. Really. Here’s how it works. I write my Quicken book and submit it electronically as Word files. I get back edited Word files, accept or reject changes, and send them back. Then the book goes to layout. The publisher prints the galley pages and sends them to me. I mark up the pages that have problems and send them back to the publisher. Since there’s no reason to send back pages without problems — after all, why pay to ship more than you have to? — I save them. I bring them to Kwikprint here in Wickenburg and they cut them into 1/4 or 1/2 size sheets and pad them up with about 200 pages per pad with the blank side facing up. Throughout the year, I use the scratch pads in my office and house to jot down notes.

What kinds of things do I jot down? Well, one look at the notebook will reveal all. Here’s my current scratchpad (1/4 page size) by page:

  1. The phone number for the local museum (highly recommended), along with the user ID, password, and domain address for a recently created MySQL file.
  2. A list of the template files I plan to create for my series of articles about creating a WordPress Theme from scratch. (The same list appears in the first article of the series.)
  3. My ScratchpadMeasurements of content, sidebar, and page sizes, in pixels, for the WordPress theme I’m designing from scratch and writing about in the article series (see image).
  4. Another page of the same thing but with a different layout and different measurements.
  5. A list of hexadecimal codes corresponding to the colors I plan to use in the WordPress theme I’m creating.
  6. Dates for the beta and Gold Master releases of a software program I’m not allowed to talk about.
  7. Domain names for a few adventure travel sites I checked out for possible advertising of Flying M Air excursions. (They all suck.) Also the phrases Whirly Girls, instrument rating, and Part 136 jotted down during a conversation with a fellow pilot this afternoon.

What’s not listed here are the pages I don’t need anymore, the ones I’ve torn out and discarded. (Don’t worry; I have a recycle box under my desk.) That’s the beauty of notebooks and scratchpads. You can write down the information you need when you get it and discard the pages when you’re done with them. Or file the pages if you think you’ll need them in the future.

Getting Things DoneI’ve been trying hard lately to get and stay organized. I have been reading Getting Things Done by David Allen and it’s been helping. Although I think he goes to far — no, I do not need a label maker to properly file or label things — he has a lot of good ideas. And although he recommends blank, unlined paper — like the kind in your copy machine — I prefer lined notebook paper for notes I want to keep. What I like best about the notebooks is that the pages stay bound together until I’m ready to discard or file them. No loose paper scattered all over my desk, waiting for me to do something with it.

So although I still rely on iCal to keep track of appointments and schedule items, I don’t use any computer-based tool for jotting down notes. All notes are in my notebook or scratchpad (or both), where I can note things wherever I am, without having to open a program or document and use a keyboard.

After all, it only takes one hand to write with a pen.

Google, Adsense, and Splogging

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Reports of cancelled accounts while sploggers earn money by scraping honest bloggers’ content is troubling.

Jim Mitchell lost his AdSense account and Google won’t tell him why. He’s bitter about it. But what makes him more bitter is that he’s discovered that sploggers with AdSense accounts have been using his content to earn revenue.

From Is Google AdSense Really Fair? on JimMitchell.org:

Today, I found four different sites that have scraped my content to use as their own with AdSense ads on the page. This, according to the Google AdSense Terms of Service, is a huge violation. I promptly reported the abuse with hopes the sploggers who lifted my content get their income generating plug pulled pronto.

One of the commenters to Jim’s post claims his AdSense account was also cancelled for no reason.

Now I’ve had no trouble with Google or AdSense and hope I never do. My earnings are meager, but they do cover the cost of hosting, which is my primary goal for including AdSense ads on this site. (That’s one of the reasons I don’t plaster the site with advertising like so many other bloggers do.)

But I do have a serious problem with sploggers, especially if they’re using AdSense or other advertising programs to earn money by illegally using the content written by other bloggers.

I know my content is scraped. Every once in a while, I’ll get a pingback from a sloppy splogger that directs me to his site. The site is full of scraped content and not much else. Most of the ones I’ve seen seem to be link farms for some other purpose. I don’t know enough about this stuff to understand why my content is being scraped when there doesn’t appear to be ads on the site my content is appearing on. (Perhaps someone reading this can explain or include a link to a good explanation.) But if these sloppy sploggers are stealing content in a way that can be easily traced, how many other sploggers are stealing content in a way that can’t be easily traced?

And do they all have Google AdSense accounts?

Which brings up a good question: how does Google determine who qualifies for an AdSense account? Is there a human who actually looks at the sites? I seriously doubt that. So that makes me wonder how effective their software is at determining whether a site is legitimate — full of fresh, legally obtained content — or a ripoff of other bloggers’ hard work.

And that also brings up the question of the effectiveness of an Adwords account. I was using Adwords for Flying M Air in an effort to sell my multi-day excursions. While I’m no Adwords expert, I think I had it set up well. I know I was paying for a ton of hits. But I also know that my phone didn’t ring. While this might mean that people don’t want the service I’m offering — chances are, they get sticker shock out when they see the price — it also might mean that the clicks aren’t being made by serious customers — or even by humans.

But it also means that my Adwords payments might be going to sploggers who have built sites to draw in visitors who then click on my link. I probably wouldn’t mind so much if they were buying — one sale would pay my Adwords bill for a year — but they’re not. So I could be paying, through my Adwords account, for sploggers to steal content from honest bloggers, some of whom, according to Jim Mitchell, have had their AdSense accounts yanked for reasons never explained.

I guess what I want to know is this:

  • Why does Google cancel the AdSense accounts for certain bloggers who claim they have done nothing wrong, then refuse to explain why they were cancelled?
  • How does Google ensure that AdSense accounts are given only to legitimate sites — and not to sploggers or other copyright violators?
  • How can Google Adwords customers be assured that their ads are appearing on legitimate sites and are being clicked by humans who are genuinely interested in the products or services advertised?

I hope Jim gets his AdSense account back. And I hope that other bloggers do their best to report feed scraping and splogging activities to Google or other ad sourcers whenever it’s found.

Three Things to Consider when Blogging for Business

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Some thoughts.

A while back, I was interviewed by a local newspaper reporter about my blog. Being the newspaper’s “business advocate,” he was most concerned about blogging for business.

That’s actually a good topic of discussion for anyone who blogs and operates a business. (That includes me, since I actually own and operate two active businesses: my writing “business” and Flying M Air.) So I thought I’d share some of my thoughts about blogging for business here.

Purposeful Content

One of the first things to think about when blogging for business is content. You have a few options:

  • Publish content that has nothing to do with your products, services, or industry. I’m not sure why you’d want to do this in a pure business blog. (I do it here, but that’s because this blog wasn’t created to support my business.) It could provide enough interesting content to attract visitors and some of those visitors might develop an interest in your products or services. But if you propound opinions — especially political opinions — that are unfavorable to some visitors, you could actually damage your company’s reputation and lose potential (or worse yet, existing) customers. I think Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy.com committed this sin; I recall reading a bunch of mailing list messages urging other readers to boycott GoDaddy.com because of something Parsons had said in his blog. (I decided to boycott the list instead and dropped my subscription.)
  • Publish content of interest to your customers that isn’t directly related to your products or services. This is something I do with this blog. My customers (the folks who buy my books) are obviously interested in topics my books cover. But what of related topics my books don’t cover? When I write an article about blogging for business, the article may appeal to some of the folks who have bought my WordPress book, since that book covers blogging software. But it goes beyond the scope of that book to offer additional helpful information. (At least that’s the goal.) It also appeals to bloggers using other blogging platforms that I haven’t written about or don’t even know about. Those people are not going to buy my WordPress book. When you publish content like this, it makes your blog a place for people to get valuable information. These people may be customers or future customers. Or they might be people who will recommend your site to potential future customers.
  • Publish support content for your customers. This is probably the best and most useful thing you can do with a blog — provided your Web site doesn’t already have support information in an easier to reference or search place. Some good examples include the blogs for FeedBurner, Tumblr, and Google advertisers. I do this on my blog by publishing clarifications and corrections to my books in the various Book Support categories and answering reader questions in Q & A.
  • Publish pure marketing content. I’m talking about information about new products, special offers, and links to product reviews. This is obvious business stuff and I do it on both of my business-related sites. Here, I’m sure to mention when a new book has hit bookstore shelves or if one of my Informit articles is published. On Flying M Air’s Web site, I have a What’s New category where I list new tours and excursions as they are released and a Special Offers/Be Spontaneous! category where I release information about limited-time offers. But in all honesty, although Flying M Air’s Web site is blog-based, I don’t really consider it a blog. You can find better examples of this on many business-related blogs, including the ones listed in the previous bullet point.

If you don’t consider content first, you might find yourself in a situation where you don’t know what to publish. One of my publishers went through this exercise with its blog. It turned the blog over to a single person who had a single focus of interest. The resulting entries appealed only to a small group of visitors and did a pretty good job of alienating others, including me. The project has since been turned over to someone else and the content is more well-rounded.

Writing Style

One of the things I don’t like about some blogs is the writing style used by some bloggers. (Fortunately, I don’t see much of this because I seldom visit a blog more than once if I don’t like the way it’s written.) Some people write as if their company’s legal department is looking over their shoulder. Or their fifth grade English teacher. Or their boss. Or their teenage son.

A blog’s writing style should set the tone for the entire blog. Here are some examples of what I mean:

  • Authoritative. You’re the expert and your words prove it. But be careful with this one. If you make a solid, authoritative statement and it’s wrong, your blog’s comments will fill with corrections — some of them worded in a very nasty way. And if people rely on what you tell them and have problems, you’ll wish your legal department was looking over your shoulder as you were writing.
  • Friendly and helpful. This is my preferred approach. I try to write as if I’m talking to a friend, offering suggestions, advice, assistance. You might not know all the answers, but here’s what you know — or are pretty sure about. Is the information helpful? If so, great! If not, well, keep checking in; you might find something more helpful in the future.
  • Hip, cool, groovy. (Am I dating myself here or are those words back in the current vocabulary?) You’re part of the “in crowd” and you know your readers are, too. You use current slang and make reference to people, places, or things in popular culture. Grammar isn’t important, spelling goes with the current trend. If you want to appeal to others who communicate this way — especially young people who are influenced by current fads — this is the way to go. But be aware that it’s likely to alienate everyone else (including me).

These are just some examples. The best thing to do is come up with a tone that’s comfortable to you. If you pick the wrong tone, your readers will probably know it. And they’ll wonder what else is fake about your blog’s content.

Branding

Another thing to consider is the presentation of your company’s blog. Everyone in business these days knows how important branding is. While you might think it’s okay to throw a blog up on wordpress.com or blogspot.com, formatting limitations are likely to make it impossible to give your blog the same branding elements as your Web site. If this is important to you, you’ll need to take the time and effort (or hire someone else to take the time and effort) to set up a fully customizable blog that can include your company logo, colors, fonts, and images.

In my world, Flying M Air is a perfect example. When I had my company’s brochure redesigned by a real designer (imagine that!) nearly a year ago, I decided to use the color scheme, shapes, designs, and existing logo as branding elements that I’d use on my Web site, business cards, and other presentation and marketing materials. That meant rebuilding the site from the ground up — which turned out to be a bit of a challenge, given that I wanted to use WordPress as my publishing platform. (WordPress is heavily reliant on CSS and I know just enough about CSS to be dangerous. I documented the task in a 7-part series on this site, if you’re interested in reading about my experience.) The resulting site supports my “brand” and is clearly identifiable as “official” Flying M Air material.

Conclusion

These are just a few things to think about when setting up a blog for your business. I’m sure if you brainstorm a bit, you can come up with more. (After all, I’m no expert!)

And brainstoming is probably a good idea if you’re getting ready to launch a business blog project. Get everyone who will be part of the blogging team involved. Talk it over together. Come up with a plan.

Just remember that every plan should be flexible, allowing for change as change is needed.

Got some advice to share? Use the Comments link.

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Using Google AdSense Channels

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Article now available on Informit.com.

My latest Informit.com article, “Using Google AdSense Channels” is now online.

From the article’s intro (written by editors, not me):

Google’s AdSense program is a very popular advertising option for blogs and web sites because it’s easy to use and can generate revenue with minimal effort. Maria Langer explains how to use the Channels features in AdSense to track which of your ads are earning the most revenue.

This article should be of special interest to bloggers and traditional Web site webmasters who try to raise revenue using the Google AdSense products.

There are two other Informit articles in the pipeline. Keep checking in; I’ll let you know when they’re released. Or check my Informit.com books and articles page for yourself to see what’s new.

Earning Money with Your Blog

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Without trashing it up.

Before I dive into this topic, I want to make it clear that I really hate the way some Web sites and blogs are so covered with advertising that it appears that the only reason the site/blog exists is to get visitors to click advertising links and earn money for the site/blog owner. You know what sites I’m talking about. It’s pretty obvious when advertisements take up more space in your browser window than the actual content you came to read.

(I’m actually involved with one of these sites. It’s a long story that’s still evolving. I’ll tell you more about it in a future article here. But my failure to provide the URL in this note should give you the idea that I’m not very proud of it.)

All that said, if you publish a Web site or blog and you’re not doing anything to monetize it, you’re leaving money on the table. And that point really hit home when I read that one of the bloggers I follow makes over $15,000 a month from Adsense revenue alone. Sheesh.

It seems that I need to walk a fine line between keeping my site free of advertisements (100% content per page, no revenue) and trashing it up with all the affiliate program and other advertisements I can get my hands on (25-50% content per page, some revenue).

After all, this site’s goal is not to make money. Sure, one goal is to promote my books and other work and support readers so they buy more books. And to attract new readers who buy books. There’s money there. But my other goals are to sound out about the things on my mind and take notes I can consult in the future about the things I do and see.

But can you imagine how much time I could spend doing, seeing, and blogging if my site brought in $15K/month?

(To be fair, you must consider the costs associated with maintaining such a site. If only 1% of a site’s visitors react to an advertisement by clicking on it — and that’s probably a high estimate — imagine how many visitors you need to crank up $15K of Adsense earnings. We’re talking thousands of page hits an hour. Those visitors eat up bandwidth at an alarming rate. Bandwidth costs money. So a bunch of that revenue is probably eaten up by hosting costs.)

One of the things that drives me is my own feeling towards advertising-heavy sites. I find them distasteful and I avoid them. That makes me think that if I filled my site with ads, people might use that as an excuse to stay away. Less visitors should mean less revenue, right?


Well, last week I started integrating Adsense ads into my sites. I’m trying to do it tastefully, with ads in various positions, depending on the site and the type of page. You may have noticed them. For the most part, they’re near the bottom of pages — which is not the recommended location to get clicks. wickenburg-az.com has a link unit across the top of the page, right beneath the header image. It’s color coordinated, so it fits in. There are text links at the bottom of single pages (that’s a page with a single article and all of its comments) on this site, and other text links in the sidebar for the Home and Category pages. wickenburg-az.com has a few image ads, which really concern me — some of them can be really tacky, with flashing graphics and obnoxious images. (I’m personally offended by some of the graphics in dating ads, like the ones you might see on Slate.com. They’re using women to sell sex.)

I also set up Adsense channels, which is another topic I need to write about here. They help me see where the revenue is coming from when I look at Adsense reports. Sure enough, my revenue stream took a big jump when I added the ads.

LinkShare Referral PrgToday, I set up LinkShare, an affiliate program that enables me to display all kinds of ads. Unlike Adsense, however, people have to buy something after clicking the link to earn me money. The percentages are higher, but what are the chances of someone actually clicking and buying?

With LinkShare, you choose the companies you want to represent and apply. I chose a bunch that I thought would interest my blog’s visitors. A bunch automatically accepted me. One declined me, but when I questioned them, they said it was an error and they approved me. Another declined me because I have no dedicated shopping areas on my site. In other words, they want sites with lots of ads. I’m waiting for a bunch of others.

Then I set up the WordPress Ad Rotator plugin to display a single 125×125 pixel “button” near the bottom of the Sidebar on all pages of this site. I had to manually copy and paste the code for every single ad I wanted to use. It took a long time and the task was boring and tedious. But it does display the clickable ads.

I could get fancy and set up the rotations based on categories, but I’m keeping it simple right now. I just want to see if this actually does earn revenue.

So that’s where I stand right now: ads from Adsense and LinkShare.

I’ll report on my progress when I start getting some reports from LinkShare. I’ll also put together that Adsense Channels article one of these days. I think it’s a great tool for seeing which pages and types of ads work best.