Netizen: Blog

Showing posts with label Blog. Show all posts

Thursday, September 02, 2010

A New Floor Of 1,000 Page Hits

Last month my tech blog - Netizen - suffered because I was primarily focused on blogging for Reshma 2010 at my Barackface blog. (Reshma Saujani) I have only 20 posts at this blog in August as compared to almost 60 each for the two months before that. On the other hand I have 110 posts at my Barackface blog for August. That might be my best month at any blog ever. In a way I feel very good about that output. On the other hand I consider myself someone wanting to make a full time income as a blogger while blogging not being my primary thing to do.

I hate it when people call me a writer or a journalist. As far as my political blogs go - I got two - my work can more appropriately be described as digital activism. The work is political. You are trying to impact, you are trying to contribute. You are trying to move and shake things.

My best day at this blog has been 3,000 page hits. By now I think a floor of 1,000 page hits for a day is no big deal. It can be done. I worked extra hard yesterday and already things are picking up.

I want the floor at this blog to be 3,000 page hits. I want the ceiling to become the new floor. A few weeks of work might bring that about.

1,000 is a very good number for a day. That is about 10% of what Fred Wilson's blog does.

What Just Happened? 3,000 Page Hits

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Social, Gaming, Email

Nielsen Wire: What Americans Do Online: Social Media And Games Dominate Activity Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase) ... Americans spend a third their online time (36 percent) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging. ..... “Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the web, 40 percent of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities – social networking, playing games and emailing .... Online games overtook personal email to become the second most heavily used activity behind social networks

I like how blogs have been included in the top category of social. I am not surprised. That speaks to my experience. I have said time and again at this blog that Blogger continues to be my social media platform of choice.

The big news is search is no longer king. That begs the question, will social as we know it still be king in 2015? I doubt that. These titles are not known to last. There is always another hit movie. Social will stay big, but at some point it is going to recede into the background like search. Search used to be king. Who is the next king? You have to ask. (This Is Not Happening: King Dennis)

Or maybe search was never king, it was email. Email is social. If the next king will also be in the social space, that has to confirm our suspicions that the internet is primarily a communication tool. The internet is one big telephone. The internet is one big telephone more than one big library. But the trick is to be able to blur that line and claim it is one big telephone.

November 2005: Email, Search, News

Google keeps trying and keeps failing at social. Social is not in Google's DNA. But info is. Where Google could really shine is at social search. Give me a ridiculously good blog search engine. Give me ridiculously good Twitter search results. Google could do well in social, if it brought search to the table. Google's challenge is to blur the line between the telephone and the library and make claim the internet is one big library. That is tough to do.

Monday, July 26, 2010

This Blog's Design Inspired By Google, Craig's List

A netizen is not some kind of a king, but an average person. I put much thought into the name of this blog. I am a citizen of the Internet, and I hope you are too.

I have used a mainstream platform - Google's Blogger - that anyone can use. I have used a domain name that does not smack of exclusivity. Blogger gives it to you for free.

I have tinkered with the blog's design a lot over the months and years to finally come up with what I have come up with. I have got rid of many elements to make the blog load fast for the readers. Speed is a fundamental element.

I like the blank, white background. When I sit down to compose a blog post that makes me feel like I am facing a blank canvass and I am about to paint something beautiful. I would not want the blog to look snazzy and inaccessible.

The colors are for the most part default. The only color I changed was for the post titles. The default was weird orange. I changed that to pitch black.

New York Times, Time magazine and this blog all use the same font: Georgia. That is no small detail.

The header is a good one. It introduces me to the world, to the reader. It makes the blog stand out, I hope. When you pick from the popular design templates, you are not offering something unique to you.

As for snazzy design, I have saved that for my BlogRoll.

I am fond of linking. You might have noticed that. But then I am also fond of sharing pictures and video clips. If you are only interested in what I have to say, usually you get to skip the other parts of the blog. They are almost organized like sections, often, the image at the top, the links at the bottom.

Redesigning My Blog

Friday, July 16, 2010

Reclaiming My Twitter Account

Image via Wikipedia

I have decided to reclaim my Twitter account. What I mean by that is I am no longer going to be feeding TechCrunch, Mashable, CNet, BusinessWeek and Time into my Twitter stream like I have been doing for over a year now. They have had their free rides. Now I have a blog that intends to compete with them. I am going to link plenty to them on a near daily basis. But now the feeds into my Twitter stream are going to be only from my blogs. Most of the fed tweets will be from this blog itself because this is the most active of my blogs.

I did that feed thing because when I was desperately trying to accumulate followers on Twitter, I figured I could not fail in my attempt to create a great Twitter stream if I fed from some of my favorite blogs, news sites to visit, my favorite magazines.

That worked for a while. It no longer works for me now that I am toying with the idea of pro blogging in a serious way.

A spike in blog traffic can boost your self esteem. It has boosted mine. Now TechCrunch, Mashable, CNet, BusinessWeek, and Time come across as crutches, possibly even competitors. Why am I giving them all that free traffic again?

TwitterFeed tells me the newest feed from CNet into my Twitter stream has 700 clicks. Those clicks could be mine. Those could be clicks for my blog.

Hello people, the free lunch is over.

I never really did the RSS thing, and I tried Google Reader but I did not become a regular. I was using Twitter for all that. But no more. Now I create my own news feeds in the form of daily blog posts that link to many news items from many different sources.

A 4 AM Traffic Peak, Mostly From Canada
Traffic: Canada Top Country, 2 AM Peak
What Just Happened? 3,000 Page Hits

A 4 AM Traffic Peak, Mostly From Canada

Internal development of Canada's internal bord...

Image via Wikipedia

How do you explain this? I think people in Canada sleep less. Or this is traffic from the northern parts of Canada where the sun is around many more hours of the day. Or parts where the sun never sets in summer.

Hello there. Thanks for dropping by.

The page hits for today stand at 1200, which used to be the previous peak for the longest time. And the day is still young. Looks to me like this blog's traffic is about to take off, enough that I can do this full time, if not right away then perhaps in a few months, or maybe even right away.

Blogging full time would be the best thing I could do for my startup that I expect to launch in about 15 months after I get my green card. Blogging full time would allow me to read all I want to read, to network feverishly in the New York tech ecosystem. I would explore the landscape for my startup through my blog.

If I have 1200 page hits for the day, and the top page for the day is getting only 80 of that, and that page is not a new page, but from a week back, that means I am doing well with the search engines. Traffic from search is the best kind. Otherwise sometimes you get a spike in traffic because some big shot blogger linked to you, and then all that traffic has evaporated in a day.

Search engine traffic is the good kind. It is more stable. Although Google can always tweak the algorithms and make you go away. But then that tweaking can go the other way as well. You could see another spike, spike upon spike.

If I were to treat this blog like a full time business, what would I do?

I like the blog's name: Netizen. It is a solo operation.

Every day I would put out a page of links to all the top stories from all the top tech blogs and from top news sites. A top story is what I determine a top story is. I would be making no attempt to be objective.

And I would write a few blog posts every day on topics of interest to me.

I would go to and blog about many of the key tech events in town. The two top tech events in town are:

NY Tech MeetUp
Digital Dumbo

I would watch and share videos from the top tech events anywhere and everywhere. You do that enough and you realize watching those videos is often better than showing up for many of those events. You can't show up for all of them anyways. And if you are going to every event on the list, your networking is not focused enough.

I would be commenting at other blogs much more. You have to be out and about, you know.

Content
Traffic
Monetization

Those are the three elements.

As for monetization, the Google ads are back up. But Google ads only make good money if you have a ton of traffic. I wish I could dig into the NY tech ecosystem to have more companies let me do blog post ads.

Or maybe it is too early to think of full time pro blogging. The traffic is building up but it's not there yet. But it would be nice to be able to do it full time for a year. And then I could do a $1 salary thing for my startup the way Bloomberg does for the city, he is a $1 a year Mayor.

I should probably send out a few emails. Hey, how would you like for me to do a blog post ad for you? Letting me do a blog post ad or two for you is almost like hiring me as a business consultant. I bring along more than exposure. I bring perspectives.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Darren Rowse's Seven Links Challenge

Image via CrunchBase

Take the 7 Link Challenge Today #7links

My first post: When Web Hosting Is No Longer A Problem

This is me celebrating the new, free Blogger platform.
A post I enjoyed writing the most: Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever

I have received so much positive comments from people I know about this one.
A post which had a great discussion: Online Dating Newsflash: Race And Religion Matter

This is just Alex and me talking. But the talk went on and on.
A post on someone else’s blog that I wish you’d written:
How I Make Money Blogging: Income Split for June 2010

Darren Rowse makes it look so easy. Just jack up the traffic and run Google ads. His Feedburner count is at 140K, mine is at 2K.
My most helpful post: Could 2011 Be Venmo's Year?

The founders of Venmo really appreciated this. I touched lives with this post.
A post with a title that I am proud of: Me @ BBC

This is me hitting the big leagues.
A post that I wish more people had read: To Iran, With Love (3)

Darren, I think you should help me with this fundraising. It is a good cause. You should help me with this because you are the top pro blogger on the planet, and I am the top blogger in terms what big stuff I have been able to do politically through the blogging medium. What I did for Nepal, I want to do for Iran. I want you to take the lead on this fundraising.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

What Just Happened? 3,000 Page Hits

The page views count for this blog for today stands at 3,000, and the day is still young. What just happened? This makes it the best recorded day for the blog. The previous record was 1200 for a blog post that had the word Bill Gates in the title.

But most of the page hits for today have come from Google. Looks like this blog has managed to hit some kind of a sweet spot with the Google search engine. I am happy. But I can't explain. My blog posts today and yesterday have not been extraordinary.

On another note, my Feedburner count went from 2300 to less than 200 yesterday, and is still stuck around there today. I know Feedburner sometimes does that random act. But I am still anxious. Go back up, will you?

What Just Happened? May 2009

My page views for my Barackface blog yesteday stand at 1200. Most of that traffic is also coming from Google. That is the good kind of traffic.

Maybe I should put the Google ads back onto the blogs.

They say at 10,000 daily hits, you can make a full time income.

Friday, July 02, 2010

Blogger Stats

Image representing Blogger as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

Weeks back (Redesigning My Blog) I got rid of Google Analytics (and Google Ads) from this blog to speed up the loading time. Every micro second matters. The faster the better. Readers like it fast.

Today I learn Google has integrated stats into Blogger itself. That is a good thing.

Mashable: Google Launches Real-Time Blogger Stats
Blogger In Draft Blog: Introducing Blogger Stats
Blogger In Draft

I just learned this blog had 335 page views yesterday.

I just published a blog post - Brazil: The Overconfidence Of A Soccer Superpower - like a minute ago, and it already has 13 views. Wow.

For yesterday I have a peak around midnight - that must be India - and another, bigger pick around noon, more like 2 PM - that is America. Bollywood, Hollywood.

Last week my most visited post has been this: Larry Ellison. That just so happens to be one of my favorite posts.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Farmville Has Not Been Loading For Me

Over a week back I called Steve Jobs a Pied Piper. (The iPad Is No Laptop Killer) My farmville game has not been loading since. Did Steve Jobs get someone to mess with my Flash?

I got started with Farmville in December. I was reading about it a lot. Finally I gave in. Obviously I started the poorest farmer in my neighborhood. Soon I was the richest. I was hooked to the game. I entered the fray out of business curiosity, and I ended up really appreciating some of the social aspects of the game.

I Just Became Friends With Anu Shukla
Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising

Then not long back a friend of mine who I did not know had more points than me befriended me and now he was the richest farmer in my neighborhood. I was working hard to win back my title, and that is when the Pied Piper episode happened.

I tried the usual remedies like uninstalling and reinstalling Flash. No effect whatsoever.

I am thinking perhaps I attained Farmville nirvana somewhere along the way, and there is nothing more left to do for me at Farmville. That is an explanation I could live with.

In the mean time I have focused my energies on blogging and actively commenting at other people's blogs. That also feels like farming.

Farmville Farmer's Market: My Idea

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Blogger + Amazon = Wonderful Things

Image via Wikipedia

One of the things I have done during the final weeks of 2009 is to make a serious attempt at blogging as a secondary career in 2010.

There are three components: content, traffic, and monetization. Unless you have great content, there is no reason for people to come to your blog. You can have great content, but unless you get your word out there, you are not going to get traffic. You can have top notch content, and thousands of visitors per day, but unless you actively take steps to monetize, you are not going to make any money from your blog.

There are five layers to monetization.

Google AdSense. This will make you little to no money starting out.
Blog post ads. Text link ads. Try Sponsored Reviews, Blogsvertise, LinkWorth, and InfoLinks.
Affiliate Marketing. Try Amazon Affiliate.
Using Aweber software to collect emails to sell eBooks and online courses to.
Corporate blog. Say if your blog is an instrument that helps you raise money for your tech startup.

Image representing Amazon as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

Image representing AWeber Communications as de...

The list is a spectrum. Item 1 makes you the least money, item 5 the most. And there is a gradation in between. In 2009 I did a lot of 1 and 2, mostly 2. And I had been gearing to focus more on 3 in 2010. I had mentally picked Amazon as the affiliate program to focus on. My reasoning was the same as why I picked Blogger as my blogging platform years ago. 10 years from now Google will still be there. I guess Amazon will be there 10 years from now. And they sell millions of items. I might try out other affiliate programs later on, but Amazon liked a good one to start with.

Image representing Zemanta as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

And so I was thinking I was going to start embedding links to Amazon products in my blog posts. That kind of embedding is the best way to do affiliate marketing in the first place. That was the impression I had from reading around the blogs of the pros. And then Sunday afternoon I discover after logging into the Amazon website that Amazon had integrated with Blogger and now embedding links to Amazon products in your blog posts was almost as easy as using Zemanta to jazz up your posts. Perfect timing. Just when I was waking up to affiliate marketing for my blog, Amazon and Google gang up to do this for me. This makes life so much easier for me going into 2010. Thank you Amazon. Thank you Blogger.

Accidental Post To Google's Blogger Buzz

December 16, 2009: Amazon Associates And Google Blogger Now Integrated

Bloggers highlight the relevant text and the Amazon Product Finder will search Amazon’s millions of products and recommend the ones that are most closely associated with the text ....... Bloggers can then insert a link or image to that product which includes their Associates ID, enabling them to earn up to 15% in referral fees from Amazon....... Bloggers will also be able to show dynamic content in their blog sidebar using a new set of integrated Sidebar gadgets, such as gadgets for MP3 clips from the Amazon DRM-free music store, an Amazon Deals gadget, and an Amazon Search box.

Well, I have had the Amazon search box at my blog for months now. You could do that long before this integration happened.

How have you been monetizing your blog? Please share in the comments section below.

The Pro-Blogger's Daily Routine
This Blog's Alexa Rank Is Up Substantially
Bill Gates Drove Up Traffic To This Blog
Seth Godin And Blog Traffic
TechCrunch Has Linked To A Blog That Stole My Material
7 Ways To Make Money Blogging
15 Ways To Boost Traffic To Your Blog
How To Become A Professional Blogger
The Big Money Is Not In Blogging

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Content, Microcontent, Blogging, Microblogging

Image representing Fred Wilson as depicted in ...

Image via CrunchBase

I was just busy leaving tens of comments at this particular blog post by Fred Wilson, the VC also known as AVC, and it occurred to me that we treat blog comments as almost illegitimate. There is that near universal no follow command that pulls down comments left at most blogs. I appreciate the logic behind it. Spam commenters would skew the Google PageRank mechanism. Links in the comments sections should not carry the same weights as links in the body of articles and blog posts. But to say they should carry no weight

Image representing WordPress as depicted in Cr...

Image via CrunchBase

at all is ridiculous. By that logic, email should be banned. Those Nigerian dictators are reason enough. So far the way we have treated blog comments - with hostility - stems out of ignorance. If you don't fathom it, destroy it.

[WordPress #336657]: Not Being Able To Leave Comments

By that logic, Twitter is out and out ridiculous. (I Get Twitter) 140 characters? Come on.

There is blogging and there is microblogging. Twitter is microblogging, and has more than earned its rightful place. It has all the buzz. Blog posts are content. Blog post comments are microcontent. Microcontent has not been given its rightful place. And I think that has been a mistake. Good to see Disqus at work to remedy that. But it is not growing fast enough for me. There are too many blog posts that I come across that I want

Image via CrunchBase

to comment on but can't because I got there before Disqus did.

I would be curious to know how Disqus deals with the no follow nonsense.

It is Google that is slow. It has yet to deal with tweets. Google and/or Facebook have still to deal with Facebook updates. Google is nowhere close to even wanting to deal with comments at the bottom of blog posts. How social is that? Not at all.

Tweets And Facebook Updates: The Mumbojumbo

Thursday, September 03, 2009

Netizen: The First Blog To Place The PayCheckr Button

The promise of blogging is that anyone, but anyone can get published. The promise of PayCheckr is that any blogger, but any blogger can hope to make part or full time income blogging.

Image via CrunchBase

PayCheckr's beauty is that it economizes space. It is a button. It is small in size. It can be placed anywhere at your blog. I'd prefer to have it show at the bottom of all my blog posts, just like the Share This button.

It is so easy to create your particular PayCheckr button. Right now you don't even have to register. You pick and choose your channels, and, voila, your button is ready for you. Copy and paste your code.

Image via CrunchBase

I have started out with four channels.

I recommend the Amazon Affiliate program to all bloggers out there. I think your Amazon store has to go with the theme of your blog. If your blog is about digital cameras, your Amazon storefront will do brisk business if it displays digital cameras.

There is one bottleneck with using the PayCheckr button. You can't blame the button if yours is not a high traffic, great content blog. PayCheckr has not made me rich yet, but I think it is because my blog is not yet the high traffic, much linked to blog that I am working to make it. The onus is on me.

But you don't want to wait until you are a large traffic blogger before you put a PayCheckr button on your blog. Do it now. Do it right away. Get people into the Amazon store through your blog.

The PayCheckr button is beautiful for how little space it takes. It is so not intrusive.

I am obviously leading by example here. My blog Netizen was the very first blog to get a PayCheckr button. I want 10 million bloggers to follow my lead. That will allow you to experiment with various business models for your blog.

Every blog is a storefront. PayCheckr can turn every blog into a storefront. Take the plunge.

In a few months you should be able to have tens of revenue channels for your blog, and the button does not get fat in the process at all. Same small space, many different revenue models. You tweak to your heart's fill.

Go to PayCheckr and get your button now. In about 10 seconds, you will be in business.

Eons.com: Share Your Love Of Eons With The Share Button

Netizen: The First Blog To Place The PayCheckr Button
The PayCheckr Promise
PayCheckr Potential
PayCheckr: Bringing Money Into Blogging?

(Disclaimer: I am a small part owner, and part time team member of PayCheckr.)

Pages

Thursday, September 02, 2010

Related articles by Zemanta

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Related articles by Zemanta

Monday, July 26, 2010

Related articles by Zemanta

Friday, July 16, 2010

Related articles by Zemanta

Related articles by Zemanta

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Related articles by Zemanta

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Related articles by Zemanta

Friday, July 02, 2010

Related articles by Zemanta

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Related articles by Zemanta

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Thursday, September 03, 2009