chrisg.com

Would you believe I have a blogger doppelgänger out there? Yes, it’s true, and cruelly he is both younger and better looking. Not only that, he is a skilled designer.

Luckily for me I can redress the balance somewhat by trashing his new blog. But no! That last piece of evil revenge has also been snatched from me! His new blog is bloody good. Should I just give up now?

The “other” Chris Garrett (I am Chris Garrett number 1, after all, I was here first!) has launched a blog called Teevieo. Not the easiest of domains to remember, and I am not sure I am pronouncing it correctly, but quite cool in a Web2.0 Flickr-stylee.

This blog is about all things television, but in particular the kind of television geeks like me love. Shows like Heroes, Simpsons, Dr Who and 24. Perhaps we do have more in common than just blogging and our names? Chris describes it thusly …

Everyone loves TV, whether it’s chuckling along to some top quality comedy, hanging on the edge of your seat trying to untangle the many puzzles of Heroes or just kicking back to some mindless reality TV.

As you would expect from a professional blog designer, it looks really cool. This is exactly my taste in design, very “web2.0″. My one complaint is the favicon looks like a cross until you realize it is a letter ‘t’. Hmm … might want to look at that. Also there is a “find out more” link that doesn’t seem to go anywhere.

Content is just as you would expect. It rounds up all the latest news in a fun, snippy, informal way. One request I would have is if they can clearly mark spoilers, or do that reverse text thing that TV sites often do. I hate to have my favorite shows spoiled, especially “arc” stories like Heroes. I want to be surprised while I am watching the show, not before

A problem with UK based TV blogs is we are always behind the USA in our broadcasts. While there are … uh … technical solutions, Chris needs to work on getting a roster of USA-based bloggers to fill in the gaps. Even better if he can get an industry insider. Otherwise he will be relying on other blogs in the niche for news, giving little in the way of differentiation. Also worth thinking about would be a forum, both as a source of gossip and also to build community.

Finally, once I realized I really liked the site I went looking for the feed. I was very surprised to say it is hard to find. Almost like a treasure hunt! Chris, you need to get subscription options, both RSS and email, right up front.

In summary, a fun blog aimed just right for the target audience. If you are into geek TV like me I recommend you take a look.

One of the Twitter personalities I have been following is Sam Freedom who found one day his account had been suspended. It turns out from support there are several reasons this happens, mainly:

1. you’ve followed a large number of people in a short amount of time
2. there is a small number of followers compared to number of people you’re following
3. the updates consist mainly of links and not personal updates
4. a large number of users blocking the profile and writing in with spam complaints

Now, I don’t know the details, so I don’t know why this particular case happened, but it seems the first three could apply to over half of the people I follow.

What do you do when you first join Twitter? You add all your friends then go around following people that look interesting or fun. So most of us are guilty of #1 already in our first days of being a Twitter user.

Again with #2, if you are new or not particularly well known, for quite a while the people you follow is going to be a far higher number than those that follow you.

I can fully understand the last two. Most people want to see human conversation at least a good percentage of the time rather than 100% spam or links, but they do not seem to be clamping down on the links so much. Many, many bloggers are using software to post their feed right to Twitter for promotion. Some big blogs. Rather than being junked, they are gathering loads of followers.

People are using Twitter in a variety of ways, especially bloggers, far removed from what Twitter intended.

For me #4 must be the overriding factor. If you do all the above but get zero complaints I suggest you should be fine. After all, if you don’t like someone stop following them, right?

That being said, it seems the advice should be to grow organically and make sure you mix chatty updates in with your links.

You don’t want to put lots of effort into your Twitter account only to find it doesn’t work any more!

I think bloggers might be the most self-critical people I have ever met. In some cases monitoring our own progress can be a great thing, I expect we have all worked with people who we wish would have cared more about their own performance! But when we routinely beat ourselves up, something has to change.

Look around the forums and blog posts of struggling bloggers. Have you noticed how many ways we compare and grade ourselves?

• Comment count
• How many Adsense dollars we make
• Do we attract private advertising?
• Affiliate commissions, even the name “super affiliate”
• Google PageRank
• Monthly “Uniques” and page views
• Technorati #100
• Subscriber count
• Digg votes

You can probably think of more but you get the point

If you are feeling like a loser because of any single metric, stop! This is not a competition where you have to keep a score card. Metrics are there to help, not to make you feel bad.

All too often people start to blog because it is fun, then start to feel sad when they turn it into a popularity contest. I have even started to see the same thing happen on StumbleUpon where people are comparing how many stumbles they have made, how many friends they have, etc.

Consider why you are blogging. What made you start? What keeps you blogging?

Select metrics that help you towards that goal, keep doing things that make the metrics improve, and do not lose sleep over them.

Most of all, enjoy the process.

Blogging can be difficult enough without adding unnecessary pressure

I am by no means a wealthy man but I do enjoy living well, given the opportunity. Vezeo is a blog especially for people who have a passion for the finer things; international travel, food, restaurants, resorts, and either have the means or the aspirations to match.

The blog is off to a good start with a très elegant minimalist design. In fact most of the visuals comes from a mixture of typography and photography. A good idea considering the target audience of mid-twenties and upwards movers and shakers. Photography in particular is beneficial in promoting the luxury feel.

Advertising is under-stated, which could hamper click throughs, but I can understand the need to not have in your face banners on such a minimalist and sophisticated site. For a site that sells advertising it is essential to have an advertising page, you need to show advertisers how they can advertise and why they should consider it.

Look around your niche to see what other blogs do and who advertises with them. Do not be shy about approaching potential advertisers directly. If they don’t want to advertise right now, ask what would change their mind.

One minor niggle, and I am looking to the designers amongst you to back me up or correct me, it seems to me the Vezeo logo ought to align with the text or be centered. Right now it is neither and I find it a touch distracting.

Right now the subscriptions seem a little hidden away, I would like to see them more prominently above the fold plus I always encourage bloggers to list some popular or Flagship Content in the sidebar. Give people an idea of what else they can see and what is good. Kind of like a restaurant specials board really!

As is quite common, you can navigate to the blog using both WWW and non-WWW URL variations. This can cause problems in search engines so best to sort that out now before it becomes an issue. This is easily fixed either by upgrading to the latest version of WordPress or by adding a plugin.

This is a new blog so I wouldn’t expect thousands of inbound links but some effort is required to get the blog noticed. To do this some posts will need to link out, and writers will need to be encouraged to comment on other blogs, and stumble posts.

Links need to look like links, right now you can only detect links by swooshing your mouse pointer around. Use color and underline.

Overall this is a very nicely written and put together blog. There should be plenty of monetization opportunities and I can see lots of companies wanting to get involved once the blog gets more visibility.

Go take a look at Vezeo and sample some of the good life for yourself

What are your daily reads? Which feeds can you not do without?

I have just been trimming back my feed reading after realizing yet again I was just trying to consume too much. Luckily my feed reader allows me to mark each feed with a star rating, allowing me to trim from the bottom. Also I have my feeds in folders, so I was able to delete a full folder of items I never read.

Here below are my 5-star daily reads, exported, unedited, exactly as they are in my feed reader of choice, BlogBridge.

• Aaron Wall’s SEO Book.com
• Search Engine Land: News About Search Engines & Search Marketing
• Seth’s Blog
• Tropical SEO
• Copyblogger
• Liz Strauss at Successful Blog
• ProBlogger Blog Tips
• The Blog Herald
• Chris Garrett on New Media
• Codswallop
• Performancing.com - Helping Bloggers Succeed
• DarrenBarefoot.com
• commandN
• Spider Secret
• John Chow dot Com
• Strobist
• The Dilbert Blog
• Boing Boing
• The Invesp Blog
• Blogging Tips

Import the OPML file here.

You will notice my own blog is included. This isn’t vanity (well, maybe a little, heh). I think everyone needs to subscribe to their own blog and check every item you post. How else would you know if something is wrong? In fact really I should subscribe in various readers, but I only really use BlogBridge.

Over to you, which blogs are on your daily reads?

It’s funny but whatever you do, there will always be people who misunderstand you. The more public you make yourself the more you will be misunderstood.

In many ways it is our own fault, in different scenarios we wear masks to shield part of ourselves so we feel less vulnerable. Our “work mask”, the persona we have when with our friends, and another when with family. I often joke that my life online has been an open book, but even then I know there are personal and private things I haven’t shared in blogs and articles.

Is it surprising then that people do not get an accurate view of who we are?

Reading Scott Adams Dilbert blog I often feel for him how people take his words out of context no matter how hard he tries to make his position (or lack of) clear. I have a friend who has been shunned by people because he associated with people they consider dirty spammers. As we all know, through the safety and anonymity of the internet people can attack and misrepresent who or whatever they like with abandon.

The answer seems first to keep doing what you do.

Express yourself as best as you can, and know that you can do no more. Know that you know those people who criticize you as little as they know you, judging what you perceive to be their motives is as faulty as their perception of yours.

Another thing you can do is surround yourself with positive and supportive people. I feel blessed with the friends I have made but you do not have to know those positive people personally, just make sure you read positive blogs.  People like Scott Adams who make you laugh, or the monk, the miracle, Liz, and Slade who blog in uplifting and positive ways.

The best way though is to get to know your readers and really talk to them. Answer your emails and comments and get to know the people who want to know you. Think of your audience as people rather than a “count”. Give people a chance to really know you and for you to get to know them.

Digg users are famously hostile. In fact you could say the internet in general has long had a reputation for being hostile. What can we do to avoid the worst? What can be done?

This post will probably kiss away any chance of me getting on the Digg homepage again but such is life.

I’m taking a break from my “Making Money” online business series to talk about this for two reasons. First I was discussing the issue with a couple of friends who had both been upset by nasty comments from Digg readers. They were both so upset with what was written they are avoiding reading Digg altogether. The second reason is I am sure you are getting sick of me writing on the money topic for the last week!

To be fair to Digg, there are a lot of intelligent and friendly users on there and Digg is not the only site these sorts of comments appear on. Some stories on social sites can be more valuable for the comment threads than the story itself sometimes, even if one or two idiots try to spoil the conversation.

Somehow though, and I am not sure why, Digg in particular has attracted a particularly nasty herd of trolls. There are a bunch of folks on there who write stuff purely intended to knock, diminish or otherwise upset.

I’m not sure what sport they get out of it. I can only think their fragile egos are tickled by the thought of making another person feel smaller. Whatever the reason, it is making a sour smell around the site for people who would otherwise enjoy it.

While even some of the worst threads I have seen also contain one or two glimmers of humanity, when being attacked it is often the worst that is remembered rather than the positive. The worst part though is they often do not leave their nastiness on Digg but actually follow the link to leave more garbage on the blogs comment area.

A community reflects its founders and managers. If Kevin Rose and co are not putting a curb on the sorts of insults and trolling we see then they are implicitly encouraging it, agree?

Fortunately these sorts of comments do not matter as much as we feel they do.

Do you really care what some random angry and frustrated teenager ranting from their parents basement thinks? Unless they are your most wanted audience I think it is safe to discount any or all of their opinions, don’t you?

The way I look at it is to treat it as pantomime. If you are prepared going in to see a load of superficial trash talk and know to discount those opinions as being the random barking of idiots then it doesn’t have the sting it would have.

Comment flames only hurt us if we choose to let them 

You will find when you actually sort through the trash many of the flames have little to do with your article anyway. They call the author a spammer or attack Pavlov style any time they see the word “Blog” used.  When you understand that most of the more vitriolic posters never even took the time to read your article you feel more pity than anger.

Let them rant. It could be good therapy for them

So was Blog Action Day a success? I feel like it was. My post got a warm response and there was a lot of buzz around the intarwebs.

It seems though my comment about the topic getting folks hot under the collar was spot on. I had the worst day for unsubscribes ever!

I have FeedBurner email me whenever anyone unsubscribes. Every so often I will email and ask why people left. Up to now I have had stinker posts that send people away, but it is usually when people get tired of getting a daily email they leave me.

Yesterday I had double the previous record of unsubs. If you think email counts for around 40% to a half of my subscribers at any time this means I lost a shed load of people by talking about the environment.
While a good many will have dropped my feed because the post was off-topic (although I did try to make it relevant to blogging and memes)  and I use a few people every day anyway, it seems as I got positive feedback in the comments, the subject matter of the post was responsible.

Should I worry? Is there something I can do to “fix” this?

No, I don’t think so.

• Success means some people will hate what you do
• One off-topic post in several hundred is not excessive
• They likely only want to read stuff that agrees with their world-view, not likely to find much of that here
• I will be taking part in the next Blog Action Day so they might as well leave now

The time to worry about unsubscribes is when you have an over all downward trend or you have no idea why people have left you. I am pretty sure I know the reason for this as I have been monitoring my unsubs for quite a while and thankfully my trend has been broadly upwards since I launched

My advice:

1. Monitor your unsubscribes - Go to Feedburner and navigate Publicize/EMail Subscriptions then tick “Send me an email whenever people unsubscribe”
2. Ask Why - Email people who unsubscribe and ask why they did. Half the time it will be nothing you did or you will have no control over it.
3. Learn From Trends - You can’t please everyone all the time but if many people say the same thing there is probably something to learn from. Keep your subscriber count growing and experiment, learn from the positive and negative feedback.

How did Blog Action Day work out for you? Let me know in the comments …

In the first part of “Buying and Selling Blogs” we looked at ways to see value over and above the traditional income and value of the domain. The next step after looking to see what value is there, is to see what value you can add.

It’s just like in the real world of real estate, website real estate can be refurbished and sold for a higher price than an uncared for dilapidated property.

All of the value elements can be improved upon apart from the domain. But wait, you can switch to another domain! Unlike in the real world, if you have a great property online in a bad location you can move it to a better neighborhood relatively painlessly! So there is little on a blog you can not add value to, but obviously some will have more room to grow than others.

Earnings

Many people value a site based on multiples of income. Different people use different multiples, I have seen “2x annual” and “20x monthly” both argued as fair, and both derided as over priced. So a site that makes $100/mo could achieve $1200, $2000, $2400. Any valuation using this method though multiplies any earnings you can prove. If you want to sell for the best price therefore you must boost your earnings!

This is no time to be picky about how you earn blog income. Put whatever you can into the pot. If it is an ethical direct monetization method then try it and leave it to the buyer to judge which to keep. Consider the difference $100/mo TLA sales can do to a 20x monthly valuation.

Design and Content

In bricks and mortar we have curb-appeal, online you can get your design refreshed to have the same effect. A great domain hosting a poor design and lousy content will only be appealing in the same way a burned out husk of a house would appeal to a developer who prices the sale based on land value. They will tear it down and drop the price appropriately. A great design backed by excellent content on the other hand will be seen as an asset.

Even if you have to pay for some flagship content, you only do yourself favors selling a complete site rather than a potential site.

Traffic and Links

While it is not ethical to inflate your traffic artificially (spamming, buying ads), the usual traffic building methods should be used to increase value. Do use linkbait, not to get to the front of Digg but to build long term links and traffic from other sites. A site with good, varied, deep links will be more marketable than a blog nobody has noticed.

Buy, Refurb and Flip - Low Money Down

I am sure you can think of many other ways you can improve on a site. When you get confident at it you can consider buying sites to refurbish and sell on. While you might now be thinking the monthly income is what you are looking for, consider there are deals where you do not have to pay out the full value of a site all at once.

It’s quite common now for sites to be bought with a deposit and monthly payment plan. This reduces your initial capital outlay and allows you to fund the purchase through the improvements you make. Obviously this is not “no money down” like in the big bad world of property speculation, but is close enough to keep more money in your bank.

Another option is to buy a share of a site, not the whole thing. Why would you do this? Consider when you buy a blog you are also taking on responsibility for keeping it going. Buy 50% of a blog in return for the blogger staying on and keeping writing and maintaining it. They get a cash injection and the benefit of your improvements, you get a 50% cut of the site and any revenue it makes. The percentage and price are down to negotiation, but you can see how the deal might appeal to some people.

I hear there are even blog networks who will buy a blog outright and pay you a salary for staying on. You swap ownership for steady income.

Sell or Hold?

I’m considering what to do with my raft of domains but I am leaning on building them into salable properties. The valuations after a small amount of work will be way higher. Possibly from the sale of those I will then be able to buy and refurb some others and buy and hold still more.

All this takes money and time, it could be one of the blogs in your portfolio could be sold now to fund investment in others. Is your jewel in your crown a seller or a holder? Only you can decide. One way to judge is what your gut tells you about the blog. Chrisg.com is my jewel but I could never let it go, while other topics don’t hold the interest and passion I once had.

Summary

Bottom line, the value you receive or pay is down to you and the potential you can see. If you can do more with a property than the current owner then you have the chance to make some money just with your time and expertise. This is why buying and selling blogs is a growth area of professional blogging.

Can you see yourself buying and flipping? Perhaps you already have? Let me know in the comments …

Selling blogs is a growth area of professional blogging. Having said that it’s not just people who want to buy or sell blogs that want to know how to value them. Bloggers often want to compare their progress against others.

This is a very difficult question because often you are comparing apples and oranges, plus you have to take into account what the bloggers intentions are.

The main generalized criteria will be the value of the domain, plus traffic, income, comments and subscribers. Unfortunately there is no standard measurement for blogs as to what is a good “score”, even worse is trying to compare blogs across niches.

Even closely related niches do not compare well, for example “make money” and “pro blogging” might have a lot of overlap but they are not the same by any stretch. More people are searching for making money than blogging tips, and a blog about making money is easier to monetize.

I am not going to give a dollar value but give you some ideas of what makes a blog more valuable outside of the obvious subscribers, income and domain name. First though a word on flukes …

Fluke Versus Strategy

Most bloggers want to know how to get more traffic, or achieve better search rankings. Occasionally though you have a page or site that gets a top ranking and some exposure purely by accident. How do you value an unexpectedly successful attempt, and most importantly make the most of a lucky fluke?

What do I mean by lucky fluke? One example I heard about today was a funny picture gallery that had become popular. It was never intended to be a viral success but all of a sudden it was ranking for a phrase and the hit counter was spiraling out of control.

I am in no way disparaging lucky accidents. They are great! But if you are looking to buy or sell a blog where it seems more good fortune than good judgment that has gotten it where it is you really need to dig further to find its true value. First you need to determine what has happened and why. Then you need to determine the value and how long the value will last for.

A fluke could be over or under valued, it all depends on who is seeing the value and what price they put on it

Content

If the blog has any chance of getting traffic or money then there will need to be great content and lots of it. Content is seen by some as a commodity, and in some ways it can look like that, but as any reader or subscriber will tell you not all content is made equally. The quality of a blog, and therefore value, has to come from the content and how much of it is there. If you have to choose between quantity and quality, go for the latter.

Where has the content come from, who does it belong to and where will the new content be generated?

Search rankings

While many people would like to rank #1 on Google, there are rankings and then there are ranking. Some phrases are worth a great deal, some appear like they might be worth a lot but are not, and some are worthless.

If you are ever going to buy a site be very careful when the description lists “ranks for many phrases” as an asset. Find out exactly what the phrases are and if they are any use.

A search phrase is only useful if A) people actually search using those keywords and B) if you can do something with the traffic.

Traffic

Following from the above, is a particular page or entire site generating traffic? If so, how much and where from? In general you want long term traffic from a steady source.

Front page Digg stories will send a spike of traffic all at once, but in three days will probably have fizzled out. If your blog is suddenly popular in social media just enjoy it while it lasts, on the other hand if there is traffic from several sources sustained over time then that is worth leveraging.

Digging up a property ready for sale is a new variation on old scam. You look at the stats and see thousands of unique visitors and think it is worth a great deal, only to find it has been on the social media sites every week for the last couple of months through less-than ideal means. In older days the traffic would be paid for to get the same result, now Digg and co are spammed like crazy. It makes the page views look good but unless you have access to the same Digg team don’t expect it to continue.

Non-targeted traffic has value when sold as CPM advertising or funneled towards another money-earning property. Targeted traffic can be valuable with performance based ads, such as adsense or affiliates, or for generating leads or selling products. With the humorous pics above it will likely be loosely targeted. If there is a theme to the content or audience you can usually monetize better than generic traffic.

Inbound links

Even a tiny blog will be worth a great deal more if it has tons of good quality links. You want a spread of links between the homepage and deep links to articles. Even better if there are a bunch of articles with many links each. Links are the currency of the web, they mean your blog has been noticed and voted for, and this turns into a search boost.

What you don’t want to see is the link count inflated by junk, spam or paid spots. Junk links are crappy sites set up just to increase the link count, like a lousy copy and paste job at blogspot or a rushed Squidoo lens. That is bad enough, but some blogs have their count increased by spamming comments, forums and guest books. Not good.

I have heard about blogs being sold with a bait and switch (or pump and dump, however you want to see it). To increase the perceived value links are created to point to the domain using friendly sites and bought links. Once the sale has gone through they all magically disappear, leaving way fewer inbound links and a big drop in actual value.

Attention and Loyalty

While this might be similar to traffic and links, attention is something that has value on its own. Think of attention as “brand recognition”, “profile”, “fame”, etc. On the one hand we do feel loyal towards certain blogs and bloggers more than others, on the other hand would we feel the same way should a site change hands?

When Performancing was sold Ryan, Raj, Ahmed, and co did a great job of rebuilding the community. It could have easily gone way worse in less capable hands. Consider if Techcrunch was sold without the authors staying on, could you keep the site going for long?

For each site you have to work out what the draw is, if it is cult of personality or access to a particular network you might have a tough job keeping the value after purchase.

Summary

In general you have to look past the surface of a blog to see its real value. You have to lift the hood to see if the value is real or smoke and mirrors.

Have you ever bought or sold a blog? Let me know your tips, stories or feedback in the comments …