The world should not be ruled by algorithms…and we need more than engineers to make the world safe for humans.

I’ve built probably 150 web sites in the 20 years since the web came into existence. Many of them no longer exist. Either it wasn’t their time, or I didn’t have enough of a mind for business to sort out great business models for them, or the idea for which I created them wasn’t strong enough to attract an audience. And, frankly…some of them were just junk, and I shut them down or otherwise disposed of them. Such is life, and I’m not bitter about any of that. No one DESERVES an audience for their idea…and even less so when there is nothing unique or valuable behind it. Lessons (mostly, at least) learned for me.

Google came into being a little over 10 years ago. They seemed to have built a better mousetrap, and most of my best web sites (especially those offering cool stuff for free) seemed to be treated favorably in their search results. For several years, in fact, I held the #1 position for keyword phrases like “kids music” and “free Christmas music”, because my sites were arguably the best resources available in those spaces. Thousands of people would visit many of my sites each day, I’d get emails thanking me for providing value, and I was pleased to invest my time sharing things that I cared about.

On top of that, in the summer of 2003, Google unveiled a program called AdSense to help webmasters monetize their quality web sites, freeing them up to stay focused on content instead of monetization. Advertisers seeking to spread the word about their products bought ads through Google…webmasters added a bit of Java code to their web sites, and relevant text ads were generated. When folks visited the web sites, they would occasionally click on an ad as an expression of their interest…sometimes resulting in a purchase, sometimes not…Google would make money, the webmasters would make money, and the advertisers would make money. Everybody was happy.

Then spammers entered the picture…hoping to game the system…both in terms of search engine results and in terms of Google’s ad program. They spotted weaknesses in both places and pumped them for every penny they could…and then profited by selling programs spreading the word about how to game the system. Google, of course, continually tried to shore up the system to fix these leaks…sometimes a bit harshly, but then usually moderating their moves as the overly-severe impact became clear. They wanted to protect the integrity of their search results, because that’s the only thing of real value they have to offer. Everything else depends on that.

The problem is this: Google doesn’t improve their process with human beings. They improve their process by tweaking an algorithm. A real human could have taken one look at a site like www.totlol.com and known that it was non-functional in 10 seconds…yet, it continued to show up on the front page of Google for many months after it was shut down. How many thousands of people wasted their time going there during those months? How many people gave up before finding a site worthier of their attention that was ranked lower in the results? But Google is a company run by…driven by engineers. They somehow believe they can (or should) do better by relying on algorithms.

So, several months back, they did a major tweak of their search engine ranking algorithm, called the Farmer update. Oddly (to my way of thinking), several of my sites tumbled from their previous rankings…some by 3 or 4 positions…others by 50 or 100 or completely out of the top 200 (though, truly…once you’re off the front page, it doesn’t really matter anymore anyway). Nothing had changed about the nature of my sites…but, interestingly, they were mostly replaced at the top by the sites of larger, monied interests.

And then Google dealt an even bigger blow. In their attempt to tweak their AdSense program (apparently to squeeze out more of the bloodsuckers in the system), they changed their algorithm there as well. Payouts to most webmasters seem to have taken a big hit in the process…and they still haven’t recovered. After 3-4 months of this, it seems clear that they never will.

As a result, I have lost a lot of money…but nothing changed with any of my sites. Did the competition get better? In some cases, probably. In other cases, if they did…it sure isn’t clear to me. But big behemoths are now being favored over little guys who were doing good things. Or at least, larger sites (likely an attempt to invalidate the hundreds of thousands of spammy little 5-page sites out there).

It would be one thing if you could call Google up and say, “Hey, can you explain to me how to get back in your good graces? Is there something about my site…the one you used to like and direct visitors to…that has somehow displeased the great Google Gods?” But, of course, you can’t. Because Google is about algorithms, not about people. There IS no one to call. And there is no transparency…because any time they even burp a bit of information, it’s pounced upon by system-gamers seeking enlightenment and used to artificially prop up rankings.

So what’s the bottom line here? I, a webmaster who built sites believing above all else in providing uniqueness and value for visitors to my web sites…am now stuck investing my time and energy in trying to get my sites better rankings and better monetization…while my web sites suffer with outdated content. In other words, I have been beaten back by the systems designed to disempower spammers, even though I hardly qualify as one myself.

In Google’s defense, I think they are trying to put more weight on social media, which is much harder to manipulate than their old system…because it generally (though not nearly always) tends to involve real people. But their refusal to have human beings vetting at least the search results for the first page or two of results for most keywords just mystifies me. As does their lack of transparency. Surely they could offer SOME explanation for why a site has dropped from #10 to #124?

So what is it: Am I just an embittered old guy who has been bypassed by the new conditions of business in 2011? Or is it the fault of those who steadfastly refuse to introduce another level of humanity to their business, and to face up to the human toll of hiding behind number-crunching?

It’s probably a little of both.

There are certainly realities here that must to be faced up to.

On my end, for sure. And I’m working my butt off to do my part.

But what about at your end, Google?

Taking another step forward in my plan for world domination (and to replace Howard Stern as The King Of All Media!), I am pleased to announce my second professional-quality video for the preschool/early-elementary crowd.

Following just over 2 weeks after the release of Yellowberry Jam on YouTube (now at nearly 10K views), today I have released The Fantabulous Cumulo-Nimbuli Pump. This story (actually, the only one I’ve ever written!) is about a boy who…frustrated with frequent rain-outs of sporting events, asks a scientist friend for help…and becomes the proud owner of a vacuum that sucks the clouds right out of the sky!

More videos are on the way in the weeks to come, as I move to push further into a market where I’ve had significant influence for some time…but am now focusing on the video end of things…both as an individual artist and as a part of several new partnerships with friends.

Because I’m starting almost from scratch here and it’s going to take time to get established in this new venue, I especially appreciate those of you who are sharing these two videos via email or social media.

In addition to my three popular web sites for kids:

FreeKidsMusic.com
LightUpYourBrain.com
TheColoringSpot.com

I also launched, earlier in the week, two new touchpoints for children’s video in the same market: BestVideosForKids.com

and the brand-new YouTube channel: YouTube.com/BestVideosForKids

Thanks for your interest and support!

We’ve all just finished another round in “the Google Dance”…those periodic interludes where the engineers take center stage…and we all watch the awkward movements as sites suddenly appear on…or disappear from…the front page of the search results.

This time is always fascinating to those who pay attention to such things, or whose job it is to track them and improve the rankings of the sites of others…and incredibly frustrating to those whose income is based in large part on being found in the search engines. It’s times like these that can kill a business deader than anything…

After a quick review this evening…there seem to be some subtle moves, as well as some dramatic ones. We won’t know for a while what factors went into this…or how webmasters and SEO types might adjust to the changes.

Here are the results reflected in changes of the rankings of five of my sites over a one-week period. Before proceeding, let me note the following:

• I always have link-building campaigns happening…so some of the changes may well be due to progress on that fron…and not just on what Google has done recently.
• These are only the terms I am currently tracking. Many of the keyword phrases for my sites are as high as they could ever get a (rankings of #1 or #2,  for example). Thus it is frequently a waste of time to track them over and over again (though not always… as we’ll see in a minute).
• These are 5 out of the 55 or so sites that I currently own…and I intentionally ignored some which barely moved.

Key:

• Keyword # is keyphrase number for purposes of this report
• Avg: XXK/mo uniques is the average number of unique visitors to that particular site each month according to Google analytics
• Searches per day is estimated daily searches (per Wordtracker) at the time the tracking was launched
• 02/17/11 is the site’s rankings in Google results on Feb 17, 2011
• 02/25/11 is the site’s rankings in Google results on Feb 25, 2011

Site #1:
Related to free, legal MP3 downloads within a particular tight niche.
History: 6 years old…ranked at #1 for its most targeted keyword phrase for a good 4 years now.

Site #2:
Related to free, legal MP3 downloads within a particular tight niche.
History: Virtually identical to #1 in concept and execution.

Site #3:
A 6-year-old site that is a great example of taking existing content and doing it better…nice presentation, interesting content, very decent traffic
History: Has been bouncing between the first and third pages of Google (almost inexplicably) for years now.

Site #4:
Clean, well-executed within a particular niche appealing to a tight demographic.
History: Less than 1 year old. Has been steadily gaining ground in rankings over the past few months.

Site #5:
A friend’s real estate site appealing to a top 60 metro market.
History: 8 years old, mostly page 1 & 2 rankings for selected keywords…though rarely in the top 5

OBSERVATIONS:

Site #1 is the real surprise. In addition to holding the number one spot for its primary keyphrase for the past four years, the content of the site makes it, by far, the very best site in its category… hich was reflected in its dominant ranking for so long.

One of the great lessons I’ve had to learn over the years of doing business online is that of “standing in the stream”. In essence, what that means is that people are looking for stuff they want/need online…and they are going to search for it in whatever way makes the most sense to them. In the old-school model, you first needed to create a perception of need and then brand your product so that it was tied (in people’s minds) to your product as the solution. But, in the internet age, it’s backward…if you’ve got a product that meets a need, you find out what “they” (the peeps) are looking for already, and then you get out there and “stand in the stream” where they are already searching.

Since the Search Engines are the tool that most folks use to search, learning “where to stand” involves the study of keywords and keyphrases…and then using the content on your site, as well as the content of links coming into your site, to show the Search Engines that your site is the place where they should be to find their solution. Monitoring your position in the Search Engines allows you to see how well you’re placed within that stream…with the obvious goal being to be the first result on Page 1 of Google.

All this is fairly old news to internet marketing types. Also old news, but with new relevance, is that Google’s terms of service forbids the use of automated rank-checking tools. I didn’t know anything about this until a couple weeks ago…when I was BANNED by Google for using Aaron Wall’s delightful little Rank Checker tool (a Firefox plugin). And, yes….I’m aware that part of the key is to delay time between searches in order to emulate human searching. The simple fact is…Google has clamped down HARD on these tools…so they are no longer working well…or in some cases, working at all.

So, hey, you ask…what does it look like when you get banned by Google? Well, it’s bascially just a CAPTCHA screen that stands between you and Google’s search results pages. And it informs you that it looks like “your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application” and that you need to confirm that you’re human to continue using their service. However, the CAPTCHA is not always very readable by human eyes, in which case, you’re screwed. And, when things get really bad, you don’t even get the CAPTCHA…you’re just out of luck until you’re reinstated (I’ve only seen that one time). There’s no appeal process…no nothing.

Now, the interesting this is…once I discovered the problem…I completely stopped using automated rank checkers for about a week. Google apparently prefers that you use a standard browser to do ranking searches. OK…it’s a HUGE waste of time, but I can do that. So I switched my browser preferences to display 100 results at a time, and started using Firefox’s Find feature to search for my site rankings by hands. Guess what? I still keep getting banned. Now, that’s just WRONG. All I can assume is that my name/IP has been added to some sort of Rank-Checking Terrorist Watchlist somewhere.

But the larger question is this: If Google is going to go to all this trouble to shut down a normal webmaster function, WHY IN THE WORLD wouldn’t they provide a legitimate option for acquiring this ALREADY-PUBLICLY-AVAILABLE information? Isn’t this the same stupid logic that has earned the RIAA the reputation of “world’s worst business model”? Why don’t they Just MONETIZE it and offer it as a feature? It could be a premium add-on for Google Analytics or Google Webmaster Tools. Charge me $15-20 a month to monitor, say, 300 keywords across 50 web sites. Update them 3 times a day (if they can’t always be completely accurate up-to-the-minute…just trying to protect their server resources) and then everybody is happy, right?

Of course, I’m sure they have some defense about “potential for abuse”…since that seems to be their favorite excuse for everything they don’t do well or don’t want to deal with. But, really…this seems like a lost opportunity for additional income for them…and it’s really starting to get under my skin. BOTTOM LINE: When people WANT to comply with your policies as you’ve requested, but you provide no good options for doing so….something is wrong with your business model.

AdSense has been the King of contextual advertising for awhile. But, before AdSense, there was Overture…which was acquired and rebranded by Yahoo some time back as Yahoo Publisher Network. I was approved for the program a couple years ago, but haven’t done much other than toy with it from time to time. Recently, I had occasion to pull AdSense off a bunch of my sites for awhile, and I decided to give YPN a closer look. It doesn’t completely suck, however, it doesn’t match up well with AdSense, either…at least not on my sites and in my content niches. I find this sad…since competition is generally a great driving force, and MSN seems to be…well, who the heck knows what they are doing with contextual advertising from a publisher side? Anyway…regarding YPN, here are my observations:

1. The pay is pretty good…at least on a per-click basis. I saw much higher payouts per click than I’ve seen with AdSense on the same sites in the last couple years (frankly, AdSense’s payout rate…at least on my sites…is pretty poor). I saw clicks paying many times higher with YPN. This seems to be good news…and if you’re on a site that pulls ads that compel folks to click on them, you can do well.
2. But…their ad targeting is not impressive. I’m sure there are categories where YPN has a good inventory of ads, but they are clearly FAR behind AdSense once you get outside certain topics. AdSense does a really nice job of finding some level of relevancy…although there can be a “settling in” effect while they hone in on the target (this can take a little time). YPN doesn’t appear to have a broad enough base of advertisers….or else their targeting technology just doesn’t work as well. Even though I don’t care for the way AdSense targets some things, and I find their workaround confusing and frustrating…YPN is even more limited. They have just 20 major categories for ad targeting, and maybe 100 subcategories…which means that you’re pretty much screwed if none of those categories apply to your site. I tried experimenting with the targeting there…but couldn’t get any good results at all.
3. No AdLinks-type ad format. In my experience, AdSense’s AdLinks can work as well or better than any of the other AdSense formats. In addition, they tuck in very neatly to a variety of web page designs. For some odd reason, YPN has not taken it upon themselves to include this ad format in their inventory. The closest thing is the venerable “ad banner” format, which at 468×60, is generally considered to be the most subject of all formats to “ad blindness”.
4. Cannot appear on the same page as AdSense. This is one that really baffles me. Google has already said it’s OK with them, as long as YPN ads would have a distinctive look so they weren’t confused with AdSense ads. It’s clearly a limiting factor to the growth of their own program (i.e., less advertisers and publishers both)…so why hold people at bay? I don’t understand the logic here one bit.
5. Sluggish/lame stats reporting. In my experience, AdSense updates about every half hour…so you can easily track how your ads are performing thru the day. This can be very helpful for immediate feedback when you’re tweaking formats, etc. And the AdSense data is always delivered with channel info right away. With YPN, the updates seem to be more like every 3 hrs or so….and you have NO access to channel data until the next day…so you’re always running blind for the current day.

Frankly, I have no explanation why #2 isn’t trying harder. The only thing I can figure is that it’s not a priority for them to grow the program…and they’ve decided to just tread water until they have a better vision…whereas AdWords/AdSense is Google’s bread and butter. AdSense continues to experiment and innovate…which is good, because I don’t see any other companies forcing their hand on this.

I had one decent day out of the 6 or 7 days in this test period. The rest of the days are simply embarrassingly bad…and it’s no surprise when I visit the pages and see the crappy ads they’re putting out there.

How about a dramatic statistic? The same site…two different days of the same week…one day with AdSense, one with YPN. Similar traffic. Exact same page positions for the ads. AdSense pulled over 13 TIMES AS MANY CLICKS as did YPN ads (and this isn’t a freaky statistical fluke…we’re talking about hundreds of clicks being pulled by AdSense). Yes, they paid relatively poorly in comparison with YPN per click…but I’d need a whole lot more clicks to compete…and YPN doesn’t show the quality of ads needed to compel anyone to express interest.

Again, I’m sure there are people in targeted niches that will have a different story. But while I will be continuing to use YPN, but I’ve had to head back to AdSense with my more productive sites…YPN’s poor performance is simply costing me too much money.

I saw an interesting article in the NY Times this morning, called Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike.

It’s about why an increasing base of knowledge tends to results in less functional products and services. The concept is this: “it’s nearly impossible to look beyond what you know and think outside the box you’ve built around yourself”

This has been a pet peeve of mine for the longest time. As consumers…sometimes we don’t notice it, sometimes it’s irritating, sometimes we’re enraged by it, and for me, I frequently find myself taking my business elsewhere (having concluded that…if a company wants my business, they’ll find a way to allow me to get what I need without killing myself). Here are recent examples from my own experience:

• I bought a camera the other day. I bought it online because I got a killer deal, and was waiting for it to be delivered on the day it was due to arrive. It was 3:30 and UPS hadn’t yet arrived, and I needed to get some money to the bank before 4pm…so I decided to call and see if I could leave a signed note on the door to ensure delivery (so that I didn’t have to wait a day, drive to the UPS hub to pick it up, or be emprisoned for another day waiting for a delivery at home when I had other things to do). I called the UPS help line on their site. This should have been a 30-second phone call, but after going thru several levels of voice menus…being given no option to speak to a human being, I finally had to pound “0″ over and over until I got someone live. Then, I was told that a signed note wouldn’t help, if the package required a signature. “Well, can you tell me if it requires a signature if I give you the tracking number?” No…they don’t have that information. Because…this information is hard to come by??
• Every time I go to pick up my smartphone, I try a new angle to pick it up from its dock (which requires a bit of lifting, as its a nice snug fit). Why the angles? Because there are so many buttons in strategic locations on the outside of the frame that I’m always activating the voice recorder, or the camera, or something else I never use. Whose idea was it to put them on the part of the phone where your fingers have to go?
• When I go to KFC for some fried chicken, I am first asked to listen to an 8-10 second recording trying to sell me something…then I am consistently asked to repeat my order 3-4 times, yet I am NEVER given a total amount due until I reach the pickup window. Thus, I can’t scruitinize whether or not they got the order right, and if I’m paying in cash, there’s no way for me to prepare exact change without holding up traffic while I sit at the window. Since this is all the time and not just an isolated incident, I contacted KFC about this recently through their web site…and received an assurance in the mail that they hold customer service as their “highest priority”. Oh, and here’s a 5-dollar gift certificate to keep you quiet. Ri-i-i-ght.
• When calling anywhere for tech support, I am repeatedly asked for identifying information (such as an account number) at every level of service…including the first level, even though I’m required to provide it well before speaking to a live person for the first time. It’s already in the system. Did you think I handed the phone off to an evil twin who is seeking to destroy my life?
• I was recently screwed over by a web hosting company (LunarPages) who took it upon themselves to police copyright law in such a cavalier manner that they disabled some of my web sites…simply took them offline…with no notice whatsoever. No delay for further investigation, no “get your stuff off our servers in the next 48 hours”, no nothing. The sites were just gone. For days. Without so much as an email. At first, I thought it was an accident…but after I saw it repeated multiple times (resulting in hundreds of dollars being sucked from my wallet in lost ad revenue), I confronted them about it. The service was restored…they decided that there really hadn’t been a problem with any of my content in the first place, etc. And I wrote an extensive email to the head of the company. Nada. No “thanks for letting me know”, no “sorry we screwed you over”, no “gee, we feel really bad and we’d like to extend your hosting contract to help compensate you for your loss”, etc. The losses exceeded the amount I paid for two years of hosting in the first place.
• The article cites the example of a DVD remote control with 52 buttons, and suggests that “every one of them is there because some engineer along the line knew how to use that button and believed I would want to use it, too”. I can relate. My cable remote has at least that many…and I only ever use 20 of them…and 10 of those are the keypad numbers. The rest simply serve as something to throw my devices into techno-hell when they are accidentally bumped. Why couldn’t there be two remote control options?: One for the average Joe, and one for those who want all the bells and whistles?

Now, tell me this: Assuming that the head of most companies ever used his own services or products…do you think such ridiculous, self-serving business practices would survive for long? Of course not.

Again, quoting the article: “When experts have to slow down and go back to basics to bring an outsider up to speed, she says, “it forces them to look at their world differently and, as a result, they come up with new solutions to old problems.”

I think this is the solution. To bring in people unfamiliar with your process/product/service on a regular basis…and watch them flailing to figure out how to navigate the maze to reach the cheese.

Because we all know that the heads of those companies aren’t going to do it themselves. And engineers…well, they think like engineers. We love that when we need something developed. But when engineers and programmers drive the development of a product or service all the way to its conclusion, things will probably not end well.

What do your customers experience when they come to your web site…when they purchase your services…when they call your phone number? Are you set up to leave them with a satisfactory experience nearly every time?

In this world of “regurgitated content”, how does one stand out? Well, first of all, I think that it’s generally a good idea NOT to invest yourself in just absorbing and then restating what everyone else is saying. Unless you’re an amazingly entertaining writer, or have a demonstrable talent for taking certain subjects and reframing them in a highly compelling way…for the most part, I can’t imagine what you think you’d be contributing. The way it’s usually implemented, I would describe this as “the path of the unimaginative”. Look, we all share cool things we’ve heard. That’s only natural. But…when you mix in a personal agenda for profit, things get a little dicey. Isn’t that obvious? Maybe not. So, I’ll say it again. Mixing business with relationship-building has to be handled delicately. Why? Because it’s too easy for motives to become mixed.

Here’s the danger: A lot of times, the things we say have no potential business implications. These are safe and easy. But, when you start to blog…and your blog is loaded up with ads…and you feel the need to say something on a regular basis (whether or not there’s anything that needs to be said)…and you start to endorse products (even casually) which (via affiliate links) stand to benefit you…well, are you getting the picture here? You are putting your word and your name on the line. Making a personal statement and a personal endorsement. Especially when you haven’t really experienced great success yourself…and your endorsement is more of a “wish” than a “testimony”.

Among other things, this is why I think a concept like PayPerPost is so despicable. Personally, I can’t think of such a concept and the attached $20 price tag without “whoring” coming to mind. Because that’s exactly what it is.

But, let’s assume that you DO have something to say. Something of value…that others might well be interested in or might benefit from. Some personal experience to share. An acknowledged talent or area of special interest. Maybe you understand finances, or programming, or business relationships. Or maybe you have an artistic gift…drawing, writing, music, acting. How do you begin to “brand yourself” so that when people think of that particular topic, you are the first, or tenth, or 25th person that comes to mind? If you want someone’s money in more than a drive-by manner, you need their trust. If you want their trust, you need credibility. But credibility, by itself, isn’t necessarily a memorable thing.

Branding is a well-established concept, and I’m no expert. But I’d like to share a few ideas which you might find worthy of consideration:

1. Tell people who you are. “About” pages are clearly the most neglected of pages on almost any site. It’s the rarest of things to find one that satisfies the natural curiosity about who you’re dealing with. “What do they look like?” “What have they accomplished in their life, or where has their personal/vocational experience been conducted?” “Why should I care what they think…?” If you expect your audience to grow beyond the 20 of your friends who might come visit your web site, then DO something about this. Invest a half hour, one time, into actually telling people who you are and why you do what you do. And put your FACE on the page somewhere. You know…a picture? “Oh, but I can’t. I’m a relatively attractive woman and I don’t want to be harrassed.” “I’m fat and I don’t want people to know that!” “I’m an ugly troll with purple hair growing out of all my facial orifices…” Fine….do you think you’re the first person in history who has these kinds of concerns? If you can’t find a way to take a reasonably attractive picture of yourself (they DO have professionals who help with these things, you know?), then at the very least, send a picture of yourself to a caricaturist and have them sketch up something reasonably endearing. It’s not that expensive, and maybe you’ll give folks a reason to smile. I have had a picture of myself online for most of the 10 years I’ve been building web sites. But I also have a caricature that I use for personal branding. It’s a caricature…not a perfect representation…but it looks enough like me that when a 6-year-old boy saw it last night and someone asked who that was…he pointed right at me. Close enough!

2. Give some indication of what you stand for….what people find compelling about you. Here’s an example: There are more sites on the subject “making money online” than just about any topic I’ve seen. Here are just a few examples of the names I’ve seen…culled from the first page of Google:

• Make Money Online | Make Money at Home with a 13-Year Old
• Make Money Online
• Make Money Online
• Make Money Online From the Comfort of Your Own Home
• Make Money Online (Without Spending a Dime)
• Make Money Online (Agloco)
• Make Money Online | Make Money at Home
• Make Money Online on Squidoo

OK…so we’ve got the idea. These sites/blogs are about “making money online”. But, what is compelling about any of them? Well, the one with the 13-year-old…that sounds like it might be worth a click, at least for kicks. Make Money Online (Without Spending a Dime) is slightly interesting…and implies that you are usually told that you MUST spend money to make money online. Not bad. The rest…well, the rest really don’t stand out at all. That’s a phrase that I see so often and consider to be so manipulative, deceptive and uninformed that I wouldn’t click on any of them personally. (I would surmise that those titles are written by folks obsessed with keywords and search engine ranking…not by folks who are really trying to communicate with people. Now…let’s look at an another way of approaching the same concept.

• Internet Marketing Blog
  with a header that reads Making Money Through Ethical Marketing

Now, there’s a statement. A good strong statement…implying that much of Internet Marketing is not done in an ethical manner. And this approach is why this blog is one of one two on the subject of making money online to which I subscribe. Could Josh’s browser bar page headline be more compelling? Maybe. But once you’re there, you find out fast what he’s all about. He differentiates himself quickly. So…define yourself. Instead of being a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none… focus in on the area where you want to connect with people.

3. Give your site some sense of visual design…something memorable. Pretty much anyone can create a blog these days. But have you invested in a logo? How many real businesses do you know that DON’T have a logo? Doesn’t happen much anymore. You can find people to knock out a logo as cheap as 50 bucks…with a more common range between $100 and $300. It’s not absolutely required, of course. But it does communicate to people that you are taking your business seriously. You can farm this out on a site like Elance or Scriptlance, or just Google “affordable logo design”.

Also, I’ve never been a huge fan of favicons. They don’t work consistently in various browsers, etc. On the other hand…when they’re good, they’re good. They help cement the image of the site in your mind…especially when scanning your bookmarks list. I’ve been really impressed with this online tool for FavIcon creation: FavIcon.cc

You hand draw your icon if you have such skills…import existing images, grab someone else’s and doctor it for your purposes, etc. Very nicely done.

The point is this: Why do you think McDonald’s spends a bazillion dollars a year reinforcing their slogans in your mind, i.e., “You deserve a break today…” or “I’m lovin’ it!”? It’s because they are defining themselves as THE PLACE to go for quick, consistent food. I’d say it’s working. Do you have the same power working for you? Logos and favicon can both help move you in that direction.

I’m also sorry to report that I am cancelling my Bumpzee membership today. I have long felt that it was one of the more legit attempts at blogging community. Mostly, though, I’m just sick and tired of waiting 10-20 seconds for my blog to load because they’ve been unable to find a way to fix whatever issue is plaguing them. It’s been going on for a long time, and it’s time for me to throw in the towel. I still think MyBlogLog is worth participating in…although I wish they’d crack down a little on the profile pics. What’s the point of having them at all if you’re just going to be deceptive about your appearance in the first place? Good grief, people. It only takes a few minutes of your time to use Yahoo’s own tools to make an avatar who is similar in appearance to you. But, I must say…if someone is that afraid of putting their picture or some reasonable sort of likeness online…I’m not sure I want to have anything to do with whatever activities they are involved in. At some point, it becomes a trust issue.

I stumbled across something yesterday that I found interesting, and even though I my knowledge and experience with it is somewhat limited, I felt it was worth passing on.

EVERYONE is on the hunt for better monetization options…and many/most of us have tried all the various options out there: AdSense, YPN, AuctionAds, WidgetBucks, AdBrite…ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Some of these are great…some not so much. From extremely poor click-though rates to extremely poor payouts…from unwieldy ad formats to godawful ad serving (yes, AuctionAds & ShoppingAds… I’m talkin’-a’-you…), this monetization game can be very frustrating. And many of the problems are at the system level…i.e., beyond the publisher’s control. So I’m always on the lookout for a better mousetrap.

Project Wonderful appears to be a new approach to monetization. Where prices and payouts on many of the “big league” options are hidden behind layers of excuses and mystery…with PW, even a visitor to your site knows how much someone is paying for your ad space. Is this good or bad? In my eyes, it’s a good thing. I think most people who believe in their own sites are willing to drop a little coin to advertise it…and yet, it can be scary to ask about rates when you fear that you wouldn’t be able to afford them anyway…fearing that you may alienate someone by asking, etc. So, I like the openness. It actually functions as an auction system…where you know what someone else is currently paying…you can choose to try to outbid them (prices, from what I’ve seen so far, are always per day…so the commitment is not high either way) and you’re given plenty of info about traffic to each site in terms of pageviews.

On the advertising side: It reminds me of AdBrite, but with better integration…and nowhere near as many sleazy sites clogging up the system. So far, it appears many of the sites where you can advertise are web comics….but I haven’t gone very deep with it. So, if you’re only targeting, say, folks interested in blogging or making money online…is it worth doing? I can’t really say. What I do know, though, is that is doesn’t cost you much to find out. I placed orders for ads on two sites last night. The first ad was active on the site immediately. Assuming I haven’t been outbid yet…you can see my ad here…on the left side of the page, well above the fold, under the heading “Blaugh Premium Sponsor!”. I like the spirit of the comic…I feel it’s a good match for the target audience of my clean humor site, and to me, it’s worth the 50 cents a day that I’m currently paying to see what kind of traffic and exposure (and hopefully, RSS/email subscribers) it can bring me.

On the publishing side: I don’t have much info to share yet. I am intending to add some well-placed ad space to some of my sites. And I’ll probably be breaking up a larger space so that several smaller ads can be easily visible, rather than a skyscraper, etc. I only applied last night…so my publisher account hasn’t been approved yet. I hope I’ll be able to manually approve the advertisers/ads. If not, that may cause a problem for my clean humor site. But there appears to be a delay built-in…either to give existing advertisers a chance to bid up, or more likely, a chance for the publisher to approve or deny.

I haven’t seen huge dollars represented in the process here…but using their search tool, it appears to me that the highest current bid for any of their existing advertisers is $65 per day…on a site with a half-million page views.

So, to me, it’s an interesting cheap advertising model…and it’s also an interesting approach to monetization, with all parties’ cards on the table. I like it so far, and I hope it succeeds, because I think this could be something worth building on for the future.

After reading the Tim Ferriss book, The Four-Hour Work Week…I was motivated once again to dive back into the world of outsourcing in order to get some of my personal projects moving.

I did all of my hiring via Elance and GetAFreelancer.com. Unfortunately, I’m only batting about .500 at this point…great for baseball, sucks in real life.

Some of my horror stories:

• I hired out some data entry work on a niche web directory. I provided all the raw data and the job was to confirm the existence of the web sites and input the data in the proper relevant category. Unfortunately, the company I hired (in this case, an Indian company) had a bad apple somewhere in the bunch. My carefully-monitored directory had ended up with a bunch of SPAM links added to it (i.e., someone was working on the job as a dual agent and probably saw an opportunity to double-dip). Obviously, the firm was fired midway through the job.
• I hired out a graphics job which should have taken no more than a week to complete. The artist was located in the former Soviet bloc. After firing and rehiring the artist over extreme delays and poor communication, the job was finally completed SEVEN weeks later.
• I hired out creation and directory submssion of a large number of articles. In this case, the provider was in the US. But the articles were so lacking in content and legitimate value that I ended up buying my way out of the deal halfway through…leaving me with nothing usable whatsoever in exchange for my money.

BUT…not all the news was bad. So far, I’ve discovered a handful of quality providers…with whom I intend to work again, and whom I feel comfortable in recommending to others:

• Syscon Software Consultants: I hired this Indian company to create a back-end that would significantly simplify administration of one of my sites. Their price was reasonable…their communication excellent (even taking into account the 9.5 hour time difference between us), and they met their deadline. Quality of final product: Excellent
• Gilbert Design: I hired this US-based graphic designer to design my latest business card (I haven’t had new ones done for years). She was very patient through all my ideas and revisions…was a great communicator, and the price for her services was probably too low. I have already hired her for a logo design job. Quality of final product: Excellent
• I’ve also found two good resources for article writing The TDS Group (no web site yet) and Northern Lights Press.

So…in my experience, outsourcing is definitely a hit-or-miss proposition. As Ferriss said, it’s critical to be extremely precise in your instructions when outsourcing work. However, such precautions don’t account for variations in cultural work ethic, nor do they protect you from those who are patently dishonest.

I still have several projects in outsourced status, and will be continuing to do so in the future. I will follow up with more personal observations in the future.

Ah well, it’s late at night, and I should be in bed. But I ran across this and just had to share it before I sleep. I visited Aaron Wall’s SEO Book blog tonite and read his post on internet site rankings. He was pondering the relative value of his blog, which came in at #112,095 out of the top millions sites according to the Quantcast rankings (7.04.07). Which on one level, struck him as pretty cool, until he noticed that a site called PornHater outranked him by 5 spots.

And…well, I just couldn’t resist. Here’s how my some of my sites stacked up:

• #30733: thecoloringspot.com
• #100217: mademelaugh.com
• #121244: freekidsmusic.com
• #315168: christianmpfree.com
• #484837: lightupyourbrain.com
• #497518: greatsongsfree.com
• #498756: freesolopiano.com
• #735840: feelslikechristmas.com
• and I recently gave away one of the sites I built by hand several years back, which came in at #232896: KidsMusicWeb.com

So, I built nine of the one million most popular sites on the web, eh? Not so bad. But, like Aaron…I don’t even want to mention most of my neighbors on the list. Yikes!

Well, that’s one way to finish off a Sunday night, eh? Good thing tomorrow is another day!