There was a time when blogging wasn’t solely motivated by money, but instead valuable information for particular web communities. I’d like to think people are still blogging for pleasure, but John Chow seems to have forgotten his roots and believes otherwise. Overdone and just another cookie-cutter monetized site with more emphasis on income than content, he’s lost his readers in exchange for the big bucks.

I started my blog with the impression that AdSense was the only viable option for monetizing it. The n00b that I was, I subscribed to John Chow’s site so that I could learn more. However, this awful post lead me to doubt. It simply attempts to promote a eBook for generating traffic. When you have so many free options available — valuable content you can easily dig up, why pay for it?

Read rest of story…

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting, come back soon!

I was browsing a SEO forum and going through my feeds and just saw a bundle of services that, coupled with my reads, got me thinking. There are a lot of BS services out there that guarantee you getting on the first page of Google or getting a storm of visitors on your site. In fact, few deliver what they promised and you might get stood up, a few bucks shorter. Here is a quick breakdown of some services that might not be what they claim to be:

Read rest of story…

It sounds like a blasphemy but when I check the backlinks of a site, Google AdSense serves me this ad:

So guess it’s ok to buy links now, right?

I wrote this article a while ago for someone that didn’t want it anymore, so I thought I’d give it some attention.

If you’re part of the web savvy audience, terms such as „diggin’” or „stumblin’” will be very familiar. These are some of the pieces that form one giant puzzle called social media marketing. As opposed to the classic link building strategies, social media optimization targets the readers, creating something new that will convince them to linking to the material.
This trend is constantly changing, websites optimizing their look and content to fit the puzzle. As usual, every community has its top players. If social media was a planet, then Digg and StumbleUpon would be the asteroids hovering around it. If you play it safe, you get, apart from traffic, constant readers, subscribers and backlinks. But which tops which? What should be the strategy to achieve success in both of these communities? Here is a breakdown of the two giants, with all their ups and downs:
Read rest of story…

Here banks never open when they should. That’s why I have to wait for 5 or 10 minutes in the freakin’ rain to get in. When I finally get in, I have to pass all the other idiots that came after me but want to get ahead.

I only had to get the PIN for my card, since I somehow misplaced it. While waiting for the chick to scan my ID card, one guy was moaning around, asking where he can exchange 2 euros to get 2 beers.  He was pointed to the cashier.

After 2 minutes I hear him screaming and complaining. They needed his ID card to make the exchange and he didn’t have it. “You can get 2 beers without an ID card. What has the world become?” Why he wanted beers at 9 am in the morning I don’t know. I really can’t understand people that drink during the day. It’s sad and depressing. But then again… that’s just me.

For almost a week now, this tune has been haunting me: Terranova & Austin Leeds - Follow Me. Looking forward to a busy summer, especially the upcoming house parade festival. Will finally see Markus Schulz and Cosmic Gate, ftw.

Going back to the web side of things, adsense kept injecting the page of an article with public service ads. Why, you ask? Just because the article contained the word “nude” one time. And it wasn’t pr0n or anything. The page got some hype eventually, all by itself.

Just discovered some brilliant quotes from George Carlin. Check them out, some really funny ones!

These days I focused on launching a new project which I hope will be big. Stick around, something is bound to slip!

Are press releases the lazy man’s way of getting one or two links? When you don’t have time to get some links through good ol’ fashion way, you stick a press release on some website, pay for some overpriced links and wait for the outcome. Ideally, your press release will be featured by major news sites. Normally, it gets lost and not even indexed. Haha!

WordPress 2.3.2 (we’re on 2.3.3 at the moment) introduced a nice new feature many of us will find useful: : the possibility to create a custom database error page. Here’s an easy tutorial on how to create yours - link

This guy got kicked out from BlogCatalog, but drove some nice traffic to it’s blog. Here’s how - link

Some eye candy: an amazing list of 33 websites that use wooden designs. - link

The following list of free web design ebooks and guides will get you started building accessible, usable, and useful web sites in no time. - link

Since tomorrow will be Women’s Day in many parts of the world, I thought of the perfect gift. It’s a long way from having it, but it’s wishful thinking!

A change was recently implemented on digg, namely the removal of the white stripe next to each digg button. I am not sure as to why it was done, nothing official was announced but I was used to the way every button looked like.

Once you get many friends, the stripe will appear at almost each submission that gets on the upcoming list. But I can live without that. What I really miss what the small window that appeared when you scrolled over the button, showing you the friends that recently dugg the story. It was fully removed, as I noticed: when you see a webpage with that digg button, the green stripe is still there.

I guess from now on, we will have to use the digg alerter.

later edit: just a bug in digg’s system!

In a response to my friend Lyndon and his article about digg not being social media marketing, I want to give you my take on the issue. The chat was long and productive, even though it started from a plain hello.

Considering the recent algorithm change, I had the chance to reconsider what digg really means for the virtual environment and why everyone is  struggling to get on the frontpage. And yes, what it comes down to is finding those 100 people in the 50,000 visitors you receive upon getting frontpage. Those 100 people are your target audience, the ones that will acknowledge your article, your brand or your website.

But isn’t there an easier way to get to that small crowd? If you look at it from a different perspective, it is. Social media goes deeper and offers the platform for any niche communities to stay in touch and share their opinions.  So if you’re promoting - let’s say - some new get-thin recipe based on fruits you need to go to the website treating weight issues, to bloggers that frequently write about the subject.

It’s a lot more work, I know, researching, investigating and involving yourself in the community but the outcome will be much bigger. Still, for a more targeted audience, StumbleUpon is the answer. And if you wanna go deeper than that, you know about social media website for niche topics such as fashion, environmental issues or tech.

It all comes down to time and how little we have. How much time are you willing to invest in your work? And these days I don’t have that much to do what I want. But it’s all for a noble cause. I learned a lot of things and I’m still learning.