Rejoice Blogger and Blogspot users and commentors everywhere! Blogger officially announced on its own Blog yesterday that comments can now be left by just about anyone using OpenID.
I've seen many people ranting and raving about the complexity of commenting on Blogspot blogs, and the Monetizer agrees. It seemed to differ from Blogger blog to blog, most likely due to which version they were on (the Classic or New). Well, Livejournal, AOL Journal, Wordpress and other users can now express their opinions on Blogger blogs, which means there is harmony in the blogosphere!
To use this feature with your Blogger blog, you'll need to have the "Who Can Comment" field set to "Anyone". It's probably a good idea to do so, because comments are great for your blog in terms of feedback and additional discussion. You can read more about this exciting new development here at Blogger.
The Monetizer now welcomes bloggers from all over to leave comments as you please..
12/14/07
Comment Headache Ends for Bloggers!
12/13/07
The Death of Agloco
Let's all have a moment of silence for Agloco as a legit moneymaker or company.
I joined Agloco about a year ago, I believe thanks to the advice of Adsense legend, Joel Comm. I don't blame him for this and luckily I didn't work my butt off to promote sign-ups or have the viewbar running. John Chow reported the Agloco death on his site via an email he received from them. Agloco was probably dead for a while, but that email confirmed things for us. Here's the final stats for Monetizer's Agloco campaign (sigh of relief):
Lesson here is don't give false hope or promises if you're trying to be a successful business venture online. Yes failures happen, but anything this Agloco company or group pushes in the future will be a tough sell.
12/12/07
Get Wiki at Low Prices - QuarterWiki!
If I had a million dollars..think of all the Wiki pages I could buy. These days the internet has become a breeding ground for the Wiki page, most likely piggybacking off the success of Graham Langdon's "Million Dollar Wiki". That site allowed the internet entrepreneur to drop out of college and start up his other business ventures, including the recent Entrecard.
Well just when you thought there couldn't be another Wiki site, there is. And this time's its offering you internet real estate at rock bottom prices. Monetizer learned about the QuarterWiki site from blogger/money maker extraordinaire John Chow, and the deal seemed too good to pass up. The way it works is you can buy a Wiki page for your search term or terms. For example: "Make Money Online" (yes that phrase was taken). You then receive the rights to that specific page for just a quarter. You're obligated to buy 4 pages though, so in reality you will pay a whole dollar (via PayPal). Monetizer had to jump in and buy 4 pages. With a little creativity, the Monetizer decided on "How to Make Money Online" as one of the four.
I started to poke around a bit to check out the editing of wiki pages. Although the coding is different at times (the site explains it in How-To's), it seems to allow for quite a bit, including the ability to add Technorati tags, internal and external links, videos, images, and even the ability to embed another web page into your Wiki page. So why not buy a page and insert your RSS feed? At least until you can do more editing. For a quarter, you'll be able to really do some great advertising with this. Not only that, but you can add Google Adsense code and other advertising money makers!
So just a dollar later, The Monetizer is the proud owner of 4 Quarter Wiki pages. How successful will it be? It's hard to say. I believe in keeping advertising costs low right now, and this site will certainly do that. It offers the same benefits of every other Wiki you've seen, long-term SEO, traffic benefits, a place to advertise your sites or products and even re-sell your page(s). You're paying just a quarter to own your Wiki page for a minimum lifetime of 15 years, which according to the site is just 2 cents per year. It's very similar to that Big Choice game you see at Pizza Hut or Chuck E Cheese. You're spending a few quarters to play and maybe win with the pages you buy. And if nothing else, you gain very cheap internet advertising space for your site or product.
At last check, 426 pages ($106.50) have been sold, most likely thanks to Mr. Chow's paid review on his blog. If you're interested head over and Buy a Page! (Remember there is a minimum purchase of 4 pages = $1)
12/11/07
How Much Do Rankings Matter?
Ever since we were kids, the nature of most schools has been to encourage strong competition amongst the students. Everyone achieves grades, marks, scores, progress reports and rankings. Rankings determine where we stand in the competition, and possibly even considered a measure of our self-worth or importance. Even though group projects and collaborative efforts were encouraged in high school and college, you still get assigned that individual rank at some point. Whether it be your position in the graduating class or the way a professor curved an exam, you found yourself compared to the rest of the pack. Quite possibly you were the Leader Of The Pack
First off, here's the ranks you might be interested in as a blogger/site owner:
1) Alexa Rank - This number which some say is less significant than other ranks shows your traffic levels for your blog or site. The lower the number, the more visits your blog or site is getting. It measures you against the millions of other blogs and sites in the world wide web universe. Download Alexa toolbar here and you can check and monitor your rank in the lower corner of your web browser. Alexa Rank usually updates on a month to month basis.
The Monetizer's current Alexa rank is: 421,137 (meaning there's 421,136 blogs or sites which receive more traffic online).
2) Google PageRank - Assigns a number, 1-10 which is the importance of your web page in Google's world. It's based on things such as backlinks from other quality ranking sites and helps your search engine position. It's Google's way of telling you how your site matters to them or not. Many have started to disregard this rank as well, because Google has started to drop the ranks of those selling text links, or doing paid reviews. Google basically has rules for your rank, in order to keep their business going strong. The Monetizer's current Google PageRank is 3.
3) Technorati Rank - Technorati defines this as "the number of sources that point to a weblog, relative to another weblog". The more sources that reference a weblog, the higher the Technorati ranking. So it's an authority rank for your particular blog genre or niche. Sign up for Technorati and add your blog if you haven't yet. For comparison sake, one of the top make money bloggers, John Chow has a rank of 41 and Authority of 5,807. The way these ranks work, you want a lower Technorati rank number and a higher authority number.The Monetizer's current Technorati Rank is 170,597 with an authority of 46.
4) 45n5 Top 100 Money Making Blogs list - This list would only matter to those of us in the "Make Money Online" niche of blog sites. It's a rank nonetheless and a fun one to watch. 45n5.com keeps a Top 100 list of the Make Money Online blogs (make sure to submit yours). The ranking here is based on the 3 ranks mentioned above (PageRank, Technorati and Alexa). It allows bloggers in the Make Money blog realm to measure their blog against the others in the highly saturated and competitive field. If you're in this niche, I recommend you head over there and add yourself, just for kicks, and the extra traffic value of being displayed on the list. It's not going to give you hundreds of visits (unless you're top 20 maybe), but its a nice place to be listed. The Top 3 right now are: Problogger, Shoemoney and JohnChow. The Monetizer's current 45n5 Top Make Money Blogs rank is 190.
5)IZEA Real Rank - This is a newcomer to the list and some say the least relevant rank right now. IZEA developed this in response to the whole PageRank penality phase by Google. IZEA is the recently new owner of PayPerPost, and they created the RealRank to allow members of PPP to still obtain paid blogging opportunities. Many bloggers have said Real Rank doesn't solve anything in combating the effects of the Google penalization though. RealRank is a flat rank, with a calculated score for each blog they track. The resulting scores are sorted to assign each blog a rank from 1 to n. It's based on code installed into your blog or site which measures visits your blog gets. You can read more about RealRank here. The Monetizer's current IZEA RealRank is 861.
Those tend to be 5 ranks that bloggers will look at (four ranks - if you're not in the Make Money niche). Each has it's own importance and the Monetizer says that these ranks can be quite good for you, but don't obsess over them. I agree with those who say don't sweat them, or don't worry if you lose a rank, but overall the ranks can give you a good gauge of how well your doing. It's most important if you're relatively new to blogging, SEO and marketing, because you're able to measure and see your blog's progress. There's a positive effect in seeing a rank climb and striving to make it higher. It's probably a carryover effect from how we were taught to compete in school. And in the competition online, many bloggers and site owners use the ranks as advertising points when joining payed review sites, or selling ads, links or reviews independently. To say ranks are meaningless and to ignore them would be a bad idea, as they can only give you a positive and hopefully realistic measure of how well your doing in your blogging ventures.
So don't look at rankings as a popularity contest. Don't be too upset if you're not ranked high right away. You should also be concerned with the number of RSS Subscribers you have. This gives you an idea of possibly loyal readers and followers of your blog. While it's not really a rank, it's probably the best indication of whether or not people want to come back to see what you have to say.
