November 2013 Archives - 2/4

Writing Great Blog Posts Consistently is Nearly Impossible

Lately I've been trying to come up with ways to write great blog posts consistently for all my websites. Everyone wants to write the best articles that their audience will really engage with. I sort of had the sad realization that writing engaging posts consistently is something that lots of bloggers and content marketers struggle with. Honestly, you can't always predict what people will like or hate until you've written it and it's gone up. It sucks.

I've experienced this sad truth firsthand many times. One of the most frustrating blog posts I've written was “Most Expensive and Cheapest Gas Prices around the World.” I spent a lot of time researching and playing with numbers to make sure this was an accurate piece. (That's saying a lot for someone who compared math teachers to nazis.) Not only that but I choose the keywords and title for this article carefully. It was well researched, SEO optimized, and had all the right ingredients to come out to be a masterpiece the internet would love. Except… it failed miserably.

How does a blogger know when great blog posts have failed? Usually it's when you've put a ton of effort into an article and nobody comments on it, nobody shares it on social media networks, and basically nobody likes it since Google Analytics is not showing anyone landing on it. This is exactly what happened with my gas prices article. Even though I did a lot of research and put a lot of time into writing it, people for some were not attracted to it.

To this day I still don't really understand why. Usually in author's mind the post they wrote was “Epic” or “Awesome” or choose another word to insert here. This is basically what I thought but I was wrong. Hard to admit but it's true.

Let me tell you something, it doesn't matter how much money you have to analyze data. It's damn near impossible to predict what articles Google will rank you for, people will share, connect with and comment on. Talk to professional bloggers and they will tell you the same thing. “I spent hours writing what I thought was a great post, but nobody commented on it. Then I just posted a picture with a few words and everyone commented on it.” was something I heard at Affiliate Summit recently. Several other successful bloggers complained about the same thing.

This is really not an uncommon discussion to have with bloggers across the spectrum and different niches. Sometimes it's just hard to know even if you've put in the time, research, and effort. Those great blog posts that everyone loves seem harder to come by then a white truffle sometimes.

This is why I encourage blog coaching clients I work with to focus on Quantity over Quality in the beginning. Sure, it's hard to know what other people will think is a great blog post but if you don't have enough posts up to see what people are landing on, it is even harder to know what you should be writing about. The more content you have the easier it will be to know and figure it out. Still, you will be pulling your hair out like other bloggers because it can drive you mad.

Maybe you can read my gas prices article and tell me why it sucks and nobody liked it? Have you experienced the struggle to find those elusive epic and great blog posts? I'd love to hear your frustrations and blog bombs too.

When Starting a Blog Focus on Quantity over Quality

If you are someone new to the world of blogging then I recommend that you focus your efforts on Quantity over Quality. Notice I did not say “quality” first I said “quantity.” When starting a blog I encourage clients I work with to put their efforts toward writing a lot of posts instead making them awesome.

I know this is not what most people are used to hearing and most other bloggers and writers will preach the opposite, Quality over Quantity. That's not necessarily the best thought process when you are starting a blog. The reason? You will get too concerned with writing great blog posts, when in reality it's not going to happen if you are new and not used to doing it.

Looking back at my first blog posts, I cringe. I was not that great of a writer but with effort, time, and lots of practice my writing has improved a lot. Now I am a member of the Washington Automotive Press Association (WAPA) and the International Motor Press Association (IMPA).

I want you to embrace the fact that your first blog posts are going to well… kind of suck. That is just the reality of learning to blog. Once you can accept that in your head you will be ready to focus on getting articles up, a lot. If you learn to do this consistently and develop what I like to call a ‘Blogging Rhythm' then writing killer blog posts will come naturally. Quantity over Quality is going to help you make this happen. Also you will get faster at writing which is an important skill to master.

For a second I want you to think back to your language classes in school. Remember when the teacher would ask you to say a sentence. You would try and then she would say, “No you are not using the correct noun.” You would try again and get something else wrong. The best way to learn a language is not how it was taught in textbooks or the classroom. The best way is total language immersion. This is where you either move to the country or the teacher doesn't speak a word of English to you. This forces a student to think harder and work on speaking a lot of say French. Total immersion language programs focus on the quantity of language instead of the quality in which you speak. Eventually, hopefully, you will speaking of French will improve over time.

In addition if you don't have many blog posts up to see what people are landing on, it's kind of hard to know what you should be tailoring your writing on. If you are working on quanity over quality, and not quality over quantity, of your posts you will have a better idea of what is working and not working for your blog. I am prepared for the nasty emails and comments for saying this, but it's true. Besides, I can tell you from experience running different sites that cover a range of topics.

I see a lot of clients say they struggle to come up with articles that will ‘engage' their audience. Well I hate to burst anyone's bubble but if your blog is brand new you don't have a readership base. You you have few posts up there isn't much reason for someone to find your blog, stay on it, and follow you. It's a hard truth but that is the reality.

I just want people to understand I am not saying to throw-up a lot of bad blog posts at the beginning. I just want you to realize that your first blog posts are not going to be perfect and I see too many clients I work with struggle. They spend hours refining a single blog post almost to the point they don't want to read it or write anymore. That's just not a good way to start your online career.

If you are not comfortable with my suggestion to put up articles as often as you can I understand. Coming up with content daily or several times a day is quite difficult. If it was easy though everyone would be blogging.

Few people are going to have a ton of success when they first start. I didn't and it's taken me several years to be able to get to this point. (I still have a long way to go.) While I would link-up to some of my past bad blog posts I am not going to and hope that you just don't visit or see them. 🙂

What do you think of my decree to focus on quantity over quality? Is this just crazy or are you going to accept my challenge?

Grand Theft Auto 5’s web portal EyeFind.Info isn’t a Website

For anyone that's been playing Grand Theft Auto 5 (probably every male between the ages of 20-45 years old with a PS3 or Xbox360) you know the web portal EyeFind.Info. You visit this search engine on your smartphone in the game and it's used for email addresses for players and characters.

The other day I decided to visit EyeFind.Info in ‘real life', meaning on a web browser on my computer, since I assumed Rockstar would have put a funny mini-game or maybe there would be a cool website or ton of extras to Grand Theft Auto 5 they put on the domain. To my surprise… they are doing nothing with it. Currently this Apache page displays if you visit EyeFind.Info.

I thought for a second that Rockstar games just used the domain name in Grand Theft Auto 5 and possibly they did not actually own it. I checked and Take Two, the parent company of Rockstar games, does in fact own the domain name. I guess they just didn't feel like putting up an active website for it though.

What's odd to me is that I am sure the EyeFind.Info is getting a lot of type-in traffic from players of Grand Theft Auto which are probably thinking the same thing as I did. It seems odd to me that the marketing department and web developers they have didn't think to do anything with it. I mean really? It's not like Rockstar and Take TWo didn't bank enough money to throw-up something.

I checked some of the other domains in the GTA5 and noticed all of them displayed the same Apache page. I think they should either;

Redirect these to the Rockstar website.
Build the domains into real websites as extras to GTA5.
Put up advertising and videos for new games Take Two is developing and releasing.

Least they could do is just redirect the traffic to some GTA5 forum or the Rockstar website. A lot of video game makers would kill for targeted traffic for gamers and they could make money on advertising. (Of course why help your competition.) Seems like they should be doing something with EyeFind.Info and the rest of the domain names they used in the game. A team already built a Grand Theft Auto app for iOS.

Just another example of how big companies let good domains go to waste. Remember it's always better to do something with a domain name instead of just letting it sit. Would you visit this site if it was a parked page?

I know not everyone has the time or resources to build out a website on ever single domain they own. However, a big company like Take Two interactive does.

What do you think of Rockstar overlooking using EyeFind.Info? Have you seen companies do this before?

TweetDeck makes Twitter Easy-to-Use & Hella Awesome

For anyone that has tried Twitter and doesn't really understand it, I usually recommend they try using TweetDeck before they give-up on the social media platform altogether. What is TweetDeck and why would you use it? Basically the best way to describe TweetDeck is it's a Twitter app that makes organizing and managing Tweets a lot easier and more fun to use. At least that is my opinion about it.

TweetDeck has a lot of features that Twitter natively doesn't have. For starters you can see and sort different columns for your timeline showing your latest Tweets from people you follow, interactions with others, direct messages, Twitter trends, and more. For those that haven't used TweetDeck you might be saying, “Can't you do that in Twitter?” Actually no, not really since with Twitter you can only view certain parts of your profile one-at-a-time whether it be on a mobile device on desktop. With TweetDeck you can see it all in one place simultaneously without having to click to go anywhere. It makes managing your social media profile a whole lot easier and saves a lot of time.

This idea was so simple but brilliant Twitter actually acquired TweetDeck several years ago. The creators of TweetDeck actually figured out a better way to handle and manage Twitter, than the Twitter themselves.

In addition with TweetDeck you can control several different Twitter accounts all in the same dashboard. If you are a Twitter power user with several accounts for different sites you run, this comes in handy. This allows you to not have to sign-in and then sign-out out for all your seperate Twitter accounts. Several small business owners use TweetDeck for keeping track with their personal and business accounts. I've also seen people with 10 or more accounts in 1 TweetDeck about but that gets a little bit crazy.

Using multiple accounts in TweetDeck comes in real handy in many situations though. Let's say you just got a funny fortune cookie you want to share with your followers. With TweetDeck you can send out the same Tweet to several different accounts at the same time.

If you'd rather the funny fortune cookie Tweet go out in a few hours, when you know more of your followers will be on Twitter, you can easily schedule Tweets to go out in the future. If needed you can schedule Tweets to post tomorrow, into next week or even next month. Scheduling Tweets is a good idea if you want to constantly connect with a Twitter fanbase but you know you can't be there 24/7. Twitter has no scheduling function you can use.

Another thing TweetDeck has over Twitter is the ability to easily filter Tweets. You can choose to only see Tweets with the hashtag “#awesome” and only see images with that particular hashtag. Sounds #awesome right? The filtering capabilities of TweetDeck are also useful for participating in a Twitter Chat, which is like an online forum chat on Twitter centered around a specific topic. If there are several Twitter Chats happening at the same time TweetDeck is useful for following both. Of course that can get a little confusing if are not prepared for it.

TweetDeck also makes creating Twitter lists a lot easier and more usable. Another nice feature they introduced a few days ago is custom timelines. I haven't used it too much but see the benefits.

I should emphasize the best part thing about TweetDeck, it's Free. While you might have already assumed that a lot of social media management tools are not and based off of Freemium models. (Meaning you can use it for free but extra features you need to pay for.) I've tried a lot of them and honestly don't like them. It's hard to integrate capabilities of several social networks that have their own idiosyncrasies into a single social dashboard. For using Twitter and managing multiple profiles, I don't know what else you would use besides TweetDeck.

If you are interested in trying out TweetDeck I recommend you visit the website and sign-up for an account.

You can use TweetDeck with a Twitter browser app or use the service at this URL. I wish TweetDeck Mobile Apps were still available but Twitter shutdown the apps earlier this year though. Another thing that kinda of annoys me is that you used to be able push out Tweets from TweetDeck to Facebook. I guess since Facebook is Twitter's main rival they realized that didn't make sense.

I hope you found my article useful if you haven't used or heard of TweetDeck before. If you have questions about using it please leave them below and I will try to answers them as best I can. I should let people know I am not social media guru or anything. If you are a TweetDeck user I'd be happy to hear tips, tricks, and what you find useful about it.

Catch me on Twitter @AdamYamada… if you can!

Domain Auctions can be Annoying and Frustrating

Lately I've been trying to participate and learn the various rules of domain auctions across different sales platforms and domain registrars. Mostly I've been sticking to the major auction houses and registrars that run their own auctioning services. While it can be interesting to see what gets dropped more often than not I am finding that searching through and participating in domain auctions for quality dropped domain names can be quite an annoying and frustrating experience.

First off even if you read through the rules of domain auction services and try to understand their Terms of Service and guidelines before bidding, I am always finding there are little caveats or rules that are missed. This can really hurt you when bidding and trying to acquire a domain you really want or have a use for. I could list a lot of examples but honestly this post would be get a little long. Anyone who is experienced with in domain auctions knows exactly what I am talking about though. From what I've read on the domain forums and experienced myself it's hard to know every situation until you've gone through it yourself. Hey, you learn from your mistakes.

Another thing that kills me is when you are a high or only bidder in a domain in auction and you assume you will get it. When only a few hours before the auctions ends, boom, it disappears. What happened? The original registrant of the domain decided to renew it. This is great if you forgot to renew your domain and it was an oversight but not so great if you thought you were going to get the domain. I guess that's why ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) decided to implement Renewal Grace Periods. I agree with the ICANN policies but it's soooo annoying when it happens. I have had several quality domains I thought I was going to get for a great price when the original registrant renewed it.

For domainers and web entrepreneurs out there, have you ever been annoyed when participating in domain auctions? Have you had similar experiences as me?

Paid Links, one of Blogging’s Dirty Secrets

A few weeks ago I was reading a few successful and highly trafficked blogs. I was quickly looking through what I thought was a well written article when all of a sudden the article flow came to a halt and I noticed something interesting but not unusual… paid links in the article.

Was I surprised? No, not really since paid links are one of the dirty little secrets in blogging and the SEO (search engine optimization) industry that nobody really likes to talk about. However, I will since I am not afraid of touching on taboo internet marketing topics I will.

What are Paid Links?

Paid Links are pretty self-explanatory and sound exactly like what you think they are. It's when a site owner or blogger agrees to place a link on their website in exchange for cash. The link is mostly always a DoFollow link which passes pagerank onto the other site. Sometimes the SEO company gives you the article content and other times they'd rather a blogger work the link into an article so it makes sense.

The amount of money a company has to pay is usually determined by a site's pagerank, age of the domain, authority of the site, amount of traffic, and the authority of the blogger. I've seen some people charge as much as $1,500+ per year for a link. Sounds like a lot but when you hear what some SEO agencies charge, some bloggers should be asking for more.

In case of of the big time blogger I was reading she probably charged a lot for the link since it was for freezing women's eggs (embryos). More importantly her demographic seems to be women 22-40 years old. The medical company was aiming for wealthy women 20-30 years old probably. (Although the article and blog is not entirely aimed at women.) Most people know that health (and fitness) is a very profitable internet vertical. If you are in fertility and cord blood and can manage to get paid for a link for it, that's some serious money.

What does Google think of Paid Links?

Google frowns upon companies and people paying for links and it is against their Webmaster guidelines. (It would be good to read them if you haven't by the way.) However, few people that engage in paid link schemes get caught.

Since Google is not on the side of bloggers making any real money honestly… fuck them. They are many ways to monetize a blog but few that pay well enough so you can make a living. Paid links are one of the best and most profitable solutions if you are someone with an authority blog. (Of course creating an authority blog nowadays is no easy task.)

The blogger in question will probably never get caught and will not face any Google penalties. I don't like she was using paid links and misleading her readers, but quite honestly it's not like I don't understand why she was doing it and haven't seen it before.

Keep in mind Google employs engineers that can't read for shit. Just look at search results for competitive topics like domain names, web hosting, medicine, etc. Low quality spammy sites still rank 1st or 2nd in a lot of cases.

How Did You Know the article had Paid Links?

It wasn't like the blogger explicitly said, “Hey these are paid links.” but I knew immediately since;

The article lost it's flow at that point.
They were medical related sites for freezing women's eggs. Which in turn made me say, “WTF is this?”
The keywords used were highly competitive.
It was deep linked URL.

When you add it all up it was clear this blogger's article on, “6 Things to do in your 20s to make your 30s good” had paid links placed in it. At least that is my “expert” opinion.

Paid Links Conclusion

Next time you are reading one of the millions of blogs out on the internet I encourage my readers to be aware of paid links. It's good to be aware of how other bloggers monetization and content strategies. This is why I try to read a wide variety of authors and bloggers. You get an idea of how they target their content and who they is reading them, especially when you notice paid links.

On this blog I've had plenty of link requests but since it is a personal blog, I do not accept any of them. I haven't been offered money for this blog yet but if a person or company did, I wouldn't accept it.

What do you think of paid links? Is it ok for a blogger to use them to cover the costs and time they need to put into a blog? Should they be upfront with readers? Have you been offered money for a link on your site?