Monthly Archives: April 2009

Interview With Trent Reznor

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Digg Dialog’s 4th installment was with Nine Inch Nail’s Trent Reznor.  Judging by the name of the blog, it’s obvious that I would have an interest with what Reznor has to say about the current state of the music industry, distribution, and most importantly what lies ahead with NIN.  Some of the questions I felt were ho-hum, but that’s what you get with a system like Digg that requires votes and popularity to make it into the top 10.

Even if you’re not a fan of NIN, chances are you’ve heard what he’s been doing for music distribution.  This was talked about a little with Reznor during the interview, but seemed to be highly edited and cut short for time reasons.

It’s obvious that the man behind the songs that originally drew me to NIN has grown up, so to speak.  Closer, Reptile, Terrible Lie, and even some of the tracks from his Fragile album seem to be a distant past.  I would have preferred to hear what he has to say about the genre of music he’s currently releasing and if there will ever be a throw back to what originally excited me about a new NIN release.

Troublesome, would best describe my feelings at the end of the Digg interview with Reznor.  Nothing was said that we didn’t already know, except for the cute story about blaring unexpected music before a show.  Furthermore, Reznor indicated that NIN would be going away soon, but not saying for how long.  I suspect the latest tour schedule has finally started taking it’s toll on the now 43 year old influential rocker.

Oh well, as long as he never goes back down in it.

Chitika Review, First Impressions

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Well, it’s been just around 24 hours since I began testing the Chitika Premium Ads on my automotive site.  Currently, my automotive blog is receiving around 3,200 page views per day, with the majority of traffic coming from Google search.  This should spell a winning combination, considering how Chitika Premium works.  Let’s look at my first impression, downsides first, then lets look at what’s coming UP.

Initial Downside

Slow reports, which require at least till 10:00 AM the next morning before clicks are computed.  New users must also wait up to 3 days before earning are reported, so other than clicks and impressions, no other figures are provided.  When compared to Google Adsense, this is a huge short coming, but not something that will send me packing.

The reports, even once they are updating every 24 hours, require a audit.  This means that you will not be paid your reported earnings, rather a audit, based on quality of traffic, that usually amounts to a 10% drop in what is indicated.  I’ve never had this with other PPC programs, only on CPA traffic, so this is throwing me for a loop.

Last downside is the review process to start even using Chitika ads.  They require a detailed application, which is reviewed by a human and can take up to 3 days to be completed.  Thankfully, my review took less than 4 hours, I’m wondering if that’s the norm.  But again, only in CPA programs have I ever had to set through a review process, when I’m ready to start using a new program, let me start on my terms!  Nothing to scare me off just yet though.

Initial Upside

So easy to generate code and the wizard is self explanatory for customizing size, colors, and ad-variations.  I was very pleased to hear that Chitika could be used next to Adsense, so without sacrificing too much web real estate to try a new program, I can test placements.  Which also brings up the fact of having an alternate ad shown, even on another network, when there is no search term found or unqualified traffic views the page.  I’m using a Google Adsense block of the same size, so earning comparisons should be spot on.

Great referral program!  That’s right, Chitika has a great referal program that will pay you 10% of whatever your referral earns for up to 15 months.  This is what you earn per publisher, but make up to $25 for every $100 spent for referring an Advertiser.  Easy to see why so many guru’s have the Chitika banners plastered all over their posts, coupled with long winded multiple part review posts. (hmmmm)

In 3 days I will happily give a report of my published earnings.  I’m hoping to at least compliment my Adsense placements without subtracting from their current earnings.  Right now I’m making some pretty impressive bank from tried and true Adsense, I will be a tough nut to crack.

My Failed Websites And Why, Part 1

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I’ve been reflecting lately on some of my success and most importantly my failures.  I truly believe that a person can learn from their failures and online marketing is no exception.  In this post I hope to bring to light some of my failed websites, why they failed, and what I’ve learned from my own experiences in the pursuit of the mighty online dollar.

ObsceneCaffeine.com

This was my first website dedicated to MySpace and was a MySpace resource site.  I was an early adopter for the MSRS script, that had a lot of promises, plenty of automation, and a programmer that was willing to offer support.  I learned my first lesson in buying online scripts with this endeavor, which ‘was don’t believe the hype’.

The website gained marginal traffic, in the neighborhood of 100 uniques per day and had a pretty good distribution of theme uses.  The problem was that monetiziation was virtually eliminated once Google took a stand and no longer allowed small images directly next to Adsense ads.  Essentially the entire website was created in the hopes that unsuspecting visitors would be clicking on ads, thinking they were being taken to other parts of the official ObsceneCaffeine website.

To add insult to injury, there was no development with the script.  Essentially less than 5 months after the script was released it was abandoned by it’s original developer.  The support forum provided was ho hum, but for all intent and purposes…it was dead.  The overpriced script was now worthless and the website, unable to properly monetize, was worthless on the market.

What I learned from this experience was don’t buy into hype and early adoption is not always a good thing.

Styckr.com

This website was created in the hopes I could create a free image host and monetize with ads like Adbrite, hopefully bringing in plenty of views.  I used a free image hosting script that worked, was supported, and was extremely user friendly.  However, modifying the script proved difficult and monetizing even more of a challenge.

All to often users would hot link images and attempts to force page loads was met with decreased traffic.  There is far too much competition in this arena for me to compete successfully, which coupled with my coding limitations proved fatal.  As I mentioned, it was successful shortly after launch, which crippled my server.  I couldn’t justify leaving up a minimal money earner that constantly threatened the stability of the rest of my sites.

What I learned was that free was great, but the general public would take advantage of it at every opportunity.  Furthermore, the majority of those looking to host free images are looking to upload porn (which is it’s own problem legally) and drive traffic that is less than premium.

TheTounge.org

This was the very first domain I ever purchased, complete with misspelled words. lol.  I was naive and intended to create a thriving gadget/tech community on the backend of a Joomla script.  Because creating content was a burden at the time, I figured why not cut ‘n paste press releases.  As well all know, but I had yet to learn, Google hates duplicate content.  TheTounge.org was struck down repeatedly for duplicate content before I wised up and shut’er down.

Joomla was also, at the time, constantly updated and any brief period it wasn’t updated it was hacked.  This was extremely frustrating and an eye opener.  Not everyone wants to see you succeed and some will even go out of their way to cause heartache that stretches far beyond the typical forum troll.

What I learned from this website was general SEO common sense.  Thanks to TheTounge.org I learned what it took to stay in the Google good graces.

Z-Blackfox.info

This website was originally purchased as an expired domain with high PR.  Little did I know that PR could be spoofed and what you were left with was a dead domain, possibly even black listed.  I held on though and after about 12 months I had developed a working directory, complete with link building news blog.

Z-Blackfox.info was also the first website that I started investing in, at least heavily with advertising campaigns.  The link directory relied on a small review fee and certain sponsored listings.  I think I broke even…maybe.

What I learned was that there is such a thing as too-good-to-be-true in domain purchasing.  Also, that just because you throw money at a project does not guarantee success.  Without a solid business model, like any business, failure is always a step away.

This is the conclusion of Part 1 of My Failed Websites and Why.  Trust me, I have plenty of other failed websites that I will be covering in another post.  It’s just as important for people to share their mistakes as it is for them to share their successes.  All too often in the blogosphere guru’s are willing to talk about how great they are, yet fail to mention all the failures they walked over to get where they are now.  Hopefully, this exercise will teach someone, something, at least how not to fail like I did.

WordPress Post Publish, Please Return To Dashboard

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Oh lord, lately I’ve been ramping up the frequency of blog posts on all of my blogs.  What’s annoyed me beyond belief is the fact that the Word Press dashboard refuses to take me back to the dashboard or give me a blank slate to immediately start on another post.  No, I have to set there and be notified that it was posted and asked if I want to view it.  Damn’t, just give me a blanks late to start over.

Yes, I’m being picky, and I’m fully aware that a blank slate for a fresh post is just one click away.  But damn’t, it’s annoying, I don’t want to have to do it and it’s something I miss of Word Press releases of days gone by.

Does anyone have a mod, plugin, anything that will automatically take me to the dashboard or better yet give me a clean slate to starta  new blog post?  The last thing I want to do after spending 20 seconds typing out a thought out post is to stare at it and maybe edit it.  My ignorance of poor grammar, shoddy typing errors, is what keeps me from blowing my brains out at night from a long day of content creation.