Note: This is a heavily revised version of an article that I originally wrote around 2001, now updated for this year’s “significant” anniversary. 25 years online seems like a milestone worth marking!
I can say without hubris that I have a talent for communicating online. Which shouldn’t be surprising: I’ve been doing it for over 25 years.
Continue reading 40 Years Online: Communicating on the Internet Since 1982As a quick glance around any page will show you, I’ve been fiddling with ad placement on my site since I wrote the above. I was inspired by meeting Robin Good at barCamp Roma in January, where he reported that he earns 200,000 euros a year from advertising on his site. He has been remarkably generous with advice to others on “how to be your own boss thanks to your blog”, but the first tip I took from him was more by imitation. If you look at any page on his site, such as this one with video from rItaliaCamp, you’ll see that he has the (reportedly lucrative) “large rectangle” AdSense ad prominently (indeed, obnoxiously) placed right after the article title and before the body of the article, and a smaller ad is placed further down the page. I’ve never liked this aesthetically – I find it confusing to read. But apparently it brings in the revenue.
So I decided to experiment. Given my site’s current design, the closest I could get to Robin’s layout was to put an ad, as he does, between the title area and the body of the article. I chose, for the time being, to be somewhat less obnoxious, using a 468 x 60 pixel box (which usually displays two text ads) and the same background color as the page.
Wow! My AdSense earnings tripled overnight. That gain has not been consistent, but my average daily take has gone up 50% (from $4 to $6) between February and March – and I only made this change in the middle of March. I immediately applied the change throughout the site, as part of a general clean-up and simplification of my DreamWeaver templates and overall site design. We’ll see how things go now in April.
Google’s own AdSense blog offered a case study of a site which moved an AdSense text link box from the upper right corner of the page to a long bar above the title. I followed suit; that, too, has contributed to increased Google earnings, without being visually too intrusive.
I also realized that my earnings from BlogHer are per view rather than per click, so I should maximize the number of pages viewed with BlogHer ads. The quick way to do this was to put the ads into the comments section of my site as well (I also did a makeover on that area, changing the WordPress template to a simpler, non-widgetized layout which loads noticeably faster).
I can’t measure the results of this directly because BlogHer, after an initial warm fuzzy, has become impossible to work with: I lost my login information for the tracking company they are using (24×7 Media) in my infamous January Windows reload. Repeated pleas to various sources there (including a comments form that does not work) have yet to obtain the desired response – I have no way of knowing my stats for BlogHer ads. At least they do keep paying me money – the first couple of months actually more than my AdSense earnings, but February earnings were down significantly. I can only guess that this is because the ad campaigns being run on the site were less remunerative – my traffic is steadily increasing, so the numbers of views can’t be going down.
Apr 14, 2007
Thanks to a special offer from John Chow, I was able to join a new advertising network called Kontera. If you wander around my site a bit, you’ll see the results: the new double-underlined links are automatically generated by the Kontera code now embedded in my pages. Roll over these links to pop up ads relevant to those keywords and (we hope, as the system gets to know my content) relevant to the entire page.
Now we’ll sit back and see how well this one performs…
next:Â Kontera out, booking.com in!
70 million blogs, and thousands more “professional” news sources online, collectively produce billions of words every day. I rejoice that so many people are able to publish their thoughts and seek an audience, at low or no cost – information is good, freely shared information even better.
But I cringe at the abuses I see daily heaped upon the English language. Not “just” by bloggers, but also by journalists and others who should know better, working for news organizations that once upon a time had copy editors on staff.
Why should you care about excruciatingly correct grammar, spelling, and word use?
The very least you can do, as a courtesy to your readers, is to use a spelling checker – which is so easy that leaving misspelled words in your writing shows contempt for your readers and, indeed, your own work.
However, there are some kinds of mistakes that a spell check won’t catch: such as when a word is spelled correctly, but used in the wrong place. This happens most often with homonyms (words that sound the same but are spelled differently). Here are a few commonly-abused homonyms that you can easily learn to use properly:
Affect
Effect
Impact used to be a noun: “The impact of his speech was enormous.”
Impact as a verb: Twenty years ago, the only thing that could be properly said to be impacted was a wisdom tooth or a bowel. Nowadays, everybody uses it as a verb (“That’s going to impact our bottom line”), a usage which has crept into the general language from bureaucratic Pentagon-speak. Ugh.
bate means “1 : to reduce the force or intensity of : RESTRAIN <with bated breath>” (Webster’s online)
bait to entice or lure, as in fishing.
If you’re really waiting with “baited breath”, you just keep on waiting – ain’t nobody gonna kiss you!
Flair is a noun, meaning a certain talent or ability: “As a child he had a flair for numbers, so he grew up to be an accountant.”
Flare is a verb, meaning to flame up: “Tempers flared on the field after the ref’s disastrous call.”
But it’s also a noun: “The soldiers broke the darkness by sending a flare into the sky.”
Horde, a noun, means a large group: “A horde of locusts descended upon the field.”
Hoard can be a verb, meaning to amass or hold aside something so as to accumulate a lot of it, or a noun – the mass so accumulated: “The dragon slept on his hoard of gold.”
(Confusingly, Genghis Khan’s Golden Horde refers to his army, not to any treasure they may have carried with them.)
Any third-grade English teacher worth his or her salary should have taught you this, but it seems to be forgotten by many.
It’s true that ‘s indicates a possessive when tacked onto most nouns: “The boy’s ball was in the dog’s mouth.”
However, it’s is a special case: it’s a contraction for it is, just like he’s = he is, she’s = she is.
To indicate possession by an it, use its: “The dog had the ball in its mouth.”
Lay is a transitive verb: you have to do it TO something: “Lay the gun down on the floor and move away slowly.”
It is often confused with lie, an intransitive verb meaning “to be or to stay at rest in a horizontal position“. Therefore, “Do you need to lay down for a nap?” is incorrect.
Don’t be confused by the children’s prayer “Now I lay me down to sleep” – lay is correct here because the child is (somewhat archaically) laying himself (his body) down. (That the child is then called upon to contemplate the possibility of his own death during the night strikes me as not likely to produce sweet dreams!)
NEW! (Because frequent mis-use of these is making me crazy.)
Lead, pronounced LEED, is the present tense verb, as in “to lead the pack.”
Spelled led and pronounced LED, it is the past tense of that same verb: “The old wolf led the pack until she died.”
Spelled lead and pronounced LED, it is a metal, as in “He killed Colonel Mustard with the lead pipe in the studio!”
Therefore, constructions such as “That question has lead a group of researchers to examine…” are WRONG.
Peak is a noun for the top of a mountain: “Tenzing and Hilary scaled the peak of Everest.”
It can also be a verb, meaning to reach a height (from which you/it/something will then descend): “Brangelina fever peaked when…” – oh, who cares!
Peek can be a verb – to take a quick and/or clandestine look at something. In the UK, it’s synonymous with peep. “The children snuck down the stairs and peeked into the room to see what Santa had brought them.”
It can also be a noun: “Take a peek through this keyhole.”
Pique is most often used as a verb. Derived from the French piquer (to sting, prick, prod), it means to stimulate: “Her curiosity was piqued by the bartender’s odd behavior.”
But you can also have a fit of pique (irritation).
What you cannot do is to have a sneak peak (a sly mountaintop?) or to have your interest peaked (though your interest may peak of its own accord).
Both are verbs, both can be used with “over”.
To pore over means to read or study attentively: “She pored over her notes for hours before the exam.”
To pour means to cause to flow in a stream: “He poured maple syrup over his pancakes.”
If your student is pouring over her notes, you’d better make her take a break!
above: even the New York Times makes this mistake
The prostate is a strategically-placed male gland.
Prostrate is an adjective – (prone, lying on the ground: “They saw his prostrate form on the mountain path.”)) – or verb (to lie down on the ground, usually in front of somebody – “He prostrated himself before the golden idol.”)
Don’t confuse these two. The mental pictures conjured up are just too painful.
Reign is a noun meaning sovereignty or rulership: “During the reign of King Henry VIII…” Reins are what you attach to the bridle of a horse to steer by. “Free rein” means to give someone liberty to do as he likes. “Free reign” is an oxymoron.
I have not yet seen anyone offering “free rain,” and hope I never do!
Tenants are the people who rent a place from you. Tenets are beliefs. You probably don’t hold core tenants, unless you need that rent money very badly.
Than is a conjunction “introducing the second element in a comparison” (Webster’s New World Dictionary). “Mumbai is hotter than Miami.”
Then is an adverb, often (but not always) meaning “at that time” or “next in order of time”: ” “We’ll have dinner, then go to a movie.”
NEVER “I’m bigger then you are.”
Their – Possessive pronoun meaning “belonging to them”: “The kids wore their uniforms on the bus on the way to the ball game.”
There – That place: “When they got there, it was raining.”
They’re – Contraction for “they are”: “But now the sun’s out and they’re going to have a great game.”
Theirs – Possessive pronoun again: “They said that no ball of theirs had ever had stitching like that.”
There’s – Contract for “there is”: “Now there’s going to be an investigation by the Little League.”
The correct phrase is “wreak havoc”, wreak meaning “to cause,” “havoc” – devastation or disorder. To “wreck havoc” would presumably be a waste of time – havoc is already pretty much wrecked. To reek havoc? Let’s not even go there.
Here endeth the lesson. For today.
Feb 10 – Thanks to Jackson Day for the affect/effect grid and David Bratt-Pfotenhauer for some more pet peeves!
My new goal is to earn a living wage from this site. I’ve got a long way to go, but at least the trend is upward.
I’ve been using Google AdSense since May, 2004, to place "context-sensitive" ads on my pages. I earn money whenever a site visitor clicks on one of these ads.
The results to date have not been impressive: most months I didn’t even earn the minimum $100 required for Google to actually pay me (the earnings accumulate: you get paid the month after your total goes over $100). So I’ve been studying up, with the help of blogs like John Chow’s, applying what I’ve learned to my site, and observing the results.
Logically enough, revenues from Google AdSense seem to be linearly related to:
Furthermore, earnings are non-linearly related to:
I will deal with each of these aspects in turn, in several articles, before discussing my results.
According to Google’s rules, on any single page you can have a maximum of:
Right now, on most pages on this site, you’ll see Google ad units in the left and right columns and at the bottom, and a link unit in upper right corner. The search box is at the very bottom of the page – that’s been there for a long time, and was always intended to be useful rather than to earn money (which is a good thing, because it earns almost nothing). The product referral button (lower right corner on most pages) earns if someone clicks through and downloads what Google is offering. I don’t mind recommending Firefox because I’ve been using it myself for years, as do a disproportionate (to its market share) percentage of my visitors (I placed those buttons only recently – no earnings so far).
For a long time, being squeamish about bombarding people with obtrusive advertising, I had a fixed ad unit only at the bottom of the page. I doubt many people saw those ads. My web statistics show that over 80% of the people who land on my site leave within 30 seconds. Google probably registers a page "impression" for that bottom ad unit for every page viewed, because the ad was loaded on the page and, from Google’s point of view, available to be seen. However, a lot of my visitors are clearly just glancing at the top of a page and leaving again, so they never actually see those bottom ads.
Lesson: For an ad to be guaranteed to be seen, it must be "above the fold" – in the top area of the screen that is seen immediately without scrolling down.
Google’s own AdSense blog offered a case study about a site that quadrupled its revenues by placing ads in certain spots. So I added the ad unit in the left column below the section menu – the Google folks said that left columns perform better than right columns. In the case of my site, they perform very well, perhaps because the left column starts with navigation (links to other pages in the same section). Any eye scanning down the navigation list would tend continue on down to at least the first Google ad. (I would love to know if it is in fact the top ads that get clicked on, rather than those further down in the ad unit, but Google doesn’t give me this kind of detail.)
The ad unit on the right is more recent, a result of screen real estate being freed up by something else that I’ll get to in a minute.
According to John Chow, the most lucrative type of ad on his site is the "large rectangle," and it appears that he’s not the only site owner to think so. My suspicion is that its placement is more important than its format: on his and many other blogs it’s right in your face, interrupting and confusing the reading material so that sometimes I’m not even sure what’s blog and what’s advertising. I am not as much of a design purist as I used to be, but I draw the line at that (for now). For the time being, I will keep the center column of each page ad-free. (So, if ads really bother you, keep your eyes to the middle of the road.)
I have some very long pages, leaving a lot of room in the left and right columns. Google won’t let me show more than three of their ads, but I’m allowed to also show other ads, as long as these are not context-sensitive (which would put them in competition with Google).
In the left column below the Google ad unit, you’ll see an "Omakase" ad unit from Amazon. "Omakase" is a Japanese restaurant term meaning "as you like it." Each unit is generated on-the-fly by Amazon, taking its cue partly from page content, but more from Amazon links elsewhere on the site (including my own Amazon store). If you (the visitor) are already an Amazon customer, the links shown are also based on your own history with Amazon – guessing from the ads I see myself, this may even be the heaviest factor in Amazon’s decisions about what to display (though they are likely also playing with the mix to see what works best). You and I would never see the same Amazon links, even if we visited the same page at the same time.
(It did not occur to me til just now to wonder whether Google considers this competitive… Feels to me like a gray area. I guess someone will yell at me if they don’t like it.)
These links have been on my site for a few months and have indeed increased my Amazon revenues: from zero to $10 in three months. I don’t know who’s making money as an Amazon "associate," but it sure ain’t me. But any money is better than no money, and I like the look of the Amazon ads.
On the right side of most of my pages, you’ll see the result of my recent membership in BlogHer, a network of women bloggers. Adding that right column space to a site that wasn’t originally designed for it has been a bitch and a half, and the job isn’t done yet. Although I’m using DreamWeaver templates, which automate some of the changes, I’m having to touch up every page by hand, to create a center column that doesn’t run into the advertising on the right and therefore become unreadable and ugly.
But this has had two useful side effects:
It’s too early yet to tell how much revenue BlogHer will be worth, but it may prove useful to drum up new readers: as my site now features links to others in the BlogHer network, my site is featured on some of theirs; I get a little bit of traffic from this. And I’m finding the people at BlogHer nice to work with. Although (story of my life) I don’t fit the normal blogging mold, they have gone out of their way to work with me, and even pro-actively suggested useful changes. It’s a far more personal relationship than I could ever have with Google or Amazon, and, with me, relationships count.
There are other ad networks out there. I tried Adify, which offers to sell advertising space, but, as far as I can tell, I never even got a sniff of a customer from them. (Google also offers a "buy advertising on this site" option – you can see it in every ad unit, but I don’t think anyone has bitten yet.)
Apparently you don’t start to make real money until you can attract the big boys, as John Chow has done. And, to do that, you have to have large numbers of visitors. Yes, I’m working on that – as I will discuss in a near-future article!
read Part 2, on increasing the number of pages on your site
links to John Chow
Someone anonymous claiming to be an Apple employee launched a blog (now vanished) to discuss his/her thoughts on Apple’s communications with its customers. This was big news in the blogosphere, because Apple is notoriously secretive and uncommunicative.
The only Apple product I own is an iPod (I had a Mac SE 15 years ago, my first and last Macintosh), but I have read the few entries on this new blog, and the accompanying reader comments.
Many of the commenters decry the blogger’s anonymity, saying that it proves that the blog is a fake perpetrated by Apple itself as a publicity stunt. Some blogs have recently come to light claiming to be produced by individuals who “just happen” to love a company or its products so much that they would dedicate time to blogging about it, but these blogs turned out to be funded by the companies in question (e.g., Wal-Mart). Such subterfuge cannot long remain hidden in the teeming online world: when thousands of minds attack a puzzle such as “who’s really behind this blog?”, it gets solved very quickly.
The Apple blogger him/herself points out, reasonably enough, that to be identified by the company could cause her to lose her job (most of the commenters seem to assume the “Masked Blogger” is a man, while I, for no particular reason, think she’s a woman).
The Masked Blogger’s avowed purpose is to start a conversation about what Apple could be doing to communicate better with its customers. She’s asking the right questions, and some of the answers are useful. It therefore doesn’t matter whether the blog is genuine, because Apple is reading it. Whether they read it to see how their PR experiment works out, or to try to identify their rogue employee, the conversation about conversation is taking place – and Apple, volente o nolente*, is listening.
Whether they will learn anything is another question. It surprises me that this conversation is still needed. All the “new wisdom” floating around the blogosphere about how companies should communicate with their customers (the current vogue, of course, is that they should use blogs) follows principles that I invented for myself over ten years ago, starting in CompuServe forums (yes, I am a geek antique).
You want to communicate with your customers online? It’s not rocket science.
The basic principles are:
Be prepared for suspicion and abuse. Just keep smiling, and nice them to death. Trolls get bored quickly, and they are a small minority, no matter how loud. The silent majority will respect your patience, good manners, and tolerance. In fact, if you hold out long enough, they will start leaping to defend you!
Okay, I’ve told you everything you need to know. Now get out there and talk to your customers!
