Bloggers Archive

I’ve flown on British Airways three times and all three flights went well. The last time on British Airways was in 2006 and was a short hop from Venice to London and I remember the crew making the trip smooth for someone who really doesn’t enjoy flying. So it was a shock to learn that an airline that has a good reputation is buying reviews and paid posts. I decided to take a look at two posts, one from former tech blogger Meghan Asha and the other from her NonSociety partner Jordan Reid.

You can read the posting on SocialSpark (that’s Izea’s posting service) where British Airlines outlines what they require to be included in the post. The paid post provides for $15 in earnings although I believe some Izea posters make more than what is listed.

It’s interesting that the posts from Jordan and Meghan basically follow the required script from British Airways exactly. Is that where the “real opinion” comes from? One requirement is that the post is more than 200 words; Meghan’s comes in below that at 186 words. Both bloggers provide a small button to note that the post is paid although it is at the bottom of the post. I know Izea founder Ted Murphy talks about the importance of disclosure is his network’s paid posts which is a good thing. One change I’d like to see is that the button is moved to the top and clear language is added to the top of every post noting that the post is paid. You may never even see the button on the two blogs because of the non-traditional layout that the NonSociety site employs.

Continue reading “Just What Did British Airways Buy?” »

Last month, I was one of the startups that attended an event in NYC which offered a chance for startups to meet the tech press of NYC. While I was there I started to think about an idea that might help the startups by helping each other. I’d like to share a rough sketch of the concept and would ask for your feedback if the idea has any merit.

The concept is pretty simple…a startup blog exchange. Nearly every startup I visit either for CN coverage, requests for assistance or URL verification at my startup has a blog. Startup Ticker is a great place to find all of the blog posts in one place. We run the ST ticker on the right menu of CN.

Instead of an aggregator, what I am proposing is a blog exchange where each startup blog includes a post from another startup on their blog. To make it simple, let’s assume there were three blogs in the exchange – they might exchange a post once a month in the following fashion:

• Blog A guest posts on Blog C
• Blog B guest posts on Blog A
• Blog C guest posts on Blog B

For this concept to work, we would need enough blogs in the exchange network to make sure that there is a good variety. I guess we would need some sort of categorization system as well. My initial thought is that the guest posts must be non-promotional but they should include a note about the author and his or her startup.

Continue reading “Request for Feedback: Startup Blog Exchange Concept” »

For over a decade I was responsible for posting financial documents either online or, before the Internet, to a variety of reporting sources. One thing was absolutely clear…post early and it won’t be pretty. Financial documents have associated post times and if the content was to be posted early (or late), it could affect the financial markets (e.g. stock trades, etc.). I can’t even count how many times I had to be up at midnight or later to make sure content went to the correct sources at the precise time. Not once did I enter a client document into any CMS system early because no matter how much we want to be careful, the content was just too sensitive to create a timed post.

It is amazing to read story after story about a blog that has broken an embargo or an agreed-to timed post because of “a problem with the clock in WordPress.” I am not going to name any names because sadly the list would be pretty long. We’ve seen some bloggers make one mistake and use the “WordPress” excuse while others have used the same excuse for nearly a week of “early” postings.

So bloggers…come really close to your monitor…I am going to teach you the secret, free of charge to make sure that your timed posts never go live ahead of time.

Most of the larger blogs have multiple team members and people working in multiple time zones. There is absolutely no excuse for pre-posting before the agreed to time, period. Some might say that a story is placed into the content management system so that it can be edited by the team. I say hogwash – use Google Docs or Zoho, etc. to edit the story. This is actually preferred as it’s easier to see the edits by each team member or blog editor.

If you are a single blog author or don’t have a teenager working for you, then stay awake to make the post live manually at the specified time. Unlike the financial documents I noted above, most tech news story embargoes are issued at a reasonable time.

Bottom line – never use CMS timed posts when an agreement is in place. See how simple that is? Remember, trust is earned.

And then ya’all can stop blaming WordPress.

Blogging service Zemanta has announced the launch of their “Balloons” service. Zemanta’s goal is to bring together relevant databases and help enhance content across the Web and in email. They use a variety of databases including Amazon, IMDB, Wikipedia and Last.fm.

Zemanta Balloons are similar to what Snap offers — you can see an example below. If you are using Zemanta on your blog, you can add the balloons option. This allows readers to see a sample of the content behind the link before the reader clicks on the link. Zemanta notes that the content comes from, “the openly licensed Freebase database and content from YouTube, Google Maps and MusicBrainz, as well as millions of articles from Freebase contributors.”

As for the technology behind the balloons Zemanta notes, “the code underpinning Balloons is open source and built on Common Tag architecture, the open tagging format – developed by Zemanta, Freebase, Yahoo!, AdaptiveBlue, and others that aims to make content more connected, discoverable and engaging.”

On the Zemanta Balloons test page, one of the links provides content from Wikipedia and a link to Amazon for the product. While I don’t see an affiliate code in the link, it could be a way for Zemanta to generate revenue from the Balloons functionality.

One interesting note – in IE7 if you start a video inside one of the balloons and then mouse away, the video keeps playing and the only remedy is to close the tab or browser.

Related: Our full Zemanta coverage.

One of the toughest parts about blogging for money is trying to figure out how much to charge for advertising. Charge to little and you lose valuable income…charge too much and you may never get any takers. In the space that CN is in, I believe most of the “majors” are charging too little which helps them to sell out but reduces their total income and puts huge downward pressure on the 2nd and 3rd tier sites.

Online advertising marketplace BuySellAds has put together their “3 Golden Rules to Selling More Ads”. They discussing pricing models including eCPM pricing.

Ad placement is the second rule — different locations can mean placement premiums.

The last rule is content – as we know the better your content, the more you can charge.

If you are new to selling your own ads, you might try reducing the price a pinch below what you think is a fair price to check interest levels. Then as you get advertisers buying ads, increase the price little by little until you meet resistance. Also remember that many advertisers will want to negotiate so if you start low, you will wind up going even lower.

Share your pricing tips in the comments and I will add them to the post.

Back in May it looked like Technorati stopped indexing blogs and links correctly. We were told that the issue was a result of the Technorati team moving their servers to a new hosting facility.

Now we’ve learned via Thomas Marban that the Technorati service hasn’t updated their “breaking news” home page in more than four days. Oddly it appears that blog posts are still indexing as my post about the Disney Monorail crash is listed as a “rising” story way at the bottom of the page.

There is news going on across the world (Palin, missiles, hot dog contests, etc.) so not sure what’s up with the homepage not updating in the better part of a week. It sure would be nice to get some positive news out about Technorati one of these days!

Here’s what the home page looks like currently – note the arrows pointing to the time:

Most of us seem to agree that while the traditional online banner ad is still very popular, the ability for it to truly convert is lessening each day. Today everyone is trying to figure out what comes next after the text unit and banner ad. With the current economic downturn, ad dollars are shrinking and what each dollar must produce is growing.

We’ve seen more news and talk shows starting to introduce products and services directly into the shows. My guess is that the ads inside the shows convert better and are higher priced compared with a 30-second TV spot. It’s also way cheaper to produce the “live ads” than a produced ad spot.

The Mike and Juliet show runs Yahoo Buzz spots each week as regular show segments. Oprah is pimping Skype for cash.

Today I noticed Ellen is now running “live ads” for one of her sponsors – Advil. I’ve embedded the clip below. Is this type of ad more effective than a regular commercial? The audience seems to be eating it up even if they are forced to clap and applaud. Do they realize that it’s a commercial? The best part about these live ads is that they beat the DVR or Tivo.

We are currently seeing a variety of new advertising concepts tested on blogs, social networks and websites. Some are on the level, some ride the line and some are way over the “ethical” line. Whether its paid reviews, “sponsored conversations” or the “give product to a blogger”, we will see more new ideas in the market over the next 12-18 months. I do believe we will see WAY more campaigns which “rent” people who have high follower counts on the various networks (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.).

Will we see ads like the one below on blogs? We are already seeing the spots in video, will it enter the text world as well?