Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

Wordpress 2.8 came out today.  According to its developers, this release contains some 790 bug fixes.  It’s now available for download from the Wordpress site.

Most of the interface remains unchanged, though it’s supposedly much faster.  The way widgets work is the most obvious of the changes:

The upgrade went smoothly on this blog (so far), and I’ll be rolling it out to my own sites, and some of my clients’ sites, over the next couple of days.

Entrecard began as a community-drive way for blog owners to trade ads.  Now, it’s becoming a paid ad network.

If you use the service, you probably know that Entrecards, which used to show approved ads from community members, and paid you in credits, and allowed you to advertise on other Entrecards, now show paid ads 50% of the time.  You can reject paid ads, and check an option (it’s not checked by default!) to only allow approved ads on your widget, but that doesn’t change this core change in the purpose of Entrecard.  OK, so that’s not what Entrecard was to begin with, and not what we signed up for.  But maybe we’ll all make some money, so let’s hear them out.

It was recently announced that algorithms would be developed to determine who gets payouts first.  The algorithm would attempt to determine your value to Entrecard’s community as a whole.  Feel the love.  Here are the criteria:

1. How many cards you drop / how frequently
2. % of paid ads you approve
3. % of Entrecard ads you approve
4. Listings you create / completed sales in the market
5. How many credits you transfer to others (indicative of contests, tips, and generosity)
6. % of credits you spend on Entrecard ads

Ok, so, I have to be willing to approve most of the ads coming my way, even if they’re irrelevant to my site and inappropriate for my visitors?  I have to participate in this weird marketplace community that trades goods and services for Entrecard credits (I thought those were for advertisements, but whatever.  I can pay 1EC for some guy to follow me on Twitter.  Yippee.).  And I have to hold contests for my credits, or just give my credits away?  You want to buy my credits, but only if I give some of them away first?

Of course, Entrecard has always been more valuable to those who have the time and energy to drop cards all day, to round up huge amounts of credits and hold contests to give them away, etc, etc.  But there was value in it for those of us with work, school, social lives, and, uh, blogging to do anyways.  I got a bunch of junk traffic, and a bunch of valuable traffic.  I got new eyes on my blogs.  I got comments.  But now, the value of the advertisements I place has been halved, since paid ads will show over mine 50% of the time, unless I, too, pay.

So, what motivation do I have to support paid ads on Entrecard? Whether or not I ever see a dime for showing paid ads on my site is completely uncertain.  It looks like if I become more active with Entrecard, I maybe, kind of, could see a few bucks.  But if I cash out the entirety of my credits right now (i.e. if they’d let me), I may be able to eat at McDonald’s.  Y’know, if trying to cash in credits weren’t enough to give me a heart attack.

News. Flash. I get more money than that from Google AdSense where I use it, and I don’t have to jump through hoops to get them to pay me.  I don’t have to run around visiting other AdSense sites and clicking on ads to get a return for the ad space I’m using myself.

Who would join Entrecard after this?  Here’s the pitch: “Put this widget on your blog.  We’ll show paid ads on it.  We might pay you for them, but, sorry, if you’re not going to play our little dropping game, you’ll be last on the list.  But why wouldn’t you want to participate?  Aren’t you a team player?  We’re all about community here.”

What makes Entrecard think it’s cool to push paid ads onto my site and say, “Hey, I’ll get you later”?  Entrecard was great as a community site where everything was about bloggers working together.  But this gradual change into a paid ad marketplace sucks, and the fact that it’s happening slowly has some bloggers excited about the idea that their credits could turn into cash.  So much so, that some people seem to be hoarding credits away rather than using them to keep the free half of the system moving.

I’m trying to have faith that this will work itself out, so I haven’t removed my widgets yet.  Maybe if I just reject paid ads and focus on the original intent of Entrecard, I’ll still get value from it.  Or, maybe the system will improve and I’ll eventually get some money from it.  Entrecard isn’t neccessarily doomed, but I don’t think they’re on the right track.  So, we’ll see.

I joined a community-driven, cooperative ad network.  Now I’m in a paid ad network.  And not a very good one.

I had neglected to grab a couple of Wordpress updates, so when I saw the notice about Wordpress 2.7 on one of my dashboards today, I figured it was about time.  I went to download it, installed, and was suprised to see… things were different.

The new dashboard on my Xbox Living blog.

The Wordpress team has been busy, it seems.  It wasn’t that long ago that the Wordpress Admin had design change, but this takes things further.  The buttons feel very Safari/Apple-inspired, but the interface still feels like Wordpress.  I’m going to have to play around with it, but I’m finding it very easy to work with.  I haven’t struggled to find anything yet.

So far, I’m impressed.

It’s past three in the morning, and this post is a bit rantish.  I feel it’s important to issue that warning.

I’m not normally impressed with blogs that spend their time repeating what the “A-list” bloggers say.  It seems that every time a blogger like Seth Godin opens his mouth, half the blogosphere reports on it.  It’s awfully repetetive.

But now you’re going to have to excuse a moment of hypocrisy, because I’m compelled to comment on what Seth said today on the topic of blog conflicts through advertising, if only because it mirrors some recent decisions I’ve made.

I have to chuckle a bit at bloggernoob.com, where that site’s author (”the noob”) wrote earlier about an over-emphasis on content.  He likens the stance of the “blogging purist” to a misunderstanding of the blogging economy.  My grin comes from the fact that the next day, one of the most famous bloggers in the world (who quite obviously understands the blogging economy) posted about how he doesn’t sell space on his blog, specifically to make it “as pure an exercise as [he] can”.

Don’t get me wrong — I have no problem with ad-supported sites.  I still run several of them.  But sometimes, a site’s revenue is less direct, and ads can actually pull away from a more valuable opportunity.

Seth makes money from his blog by giving the world a glimpse into his mind.  The very fact that we know his name shows that he’s a good marketer.  The fact that so many bloggers agree with, and repeat, everything he says shows that he’s either very smart, or very charismatic.  Either way, it earns him a living as people pay him to talk or write.

I’m not getting paid to give seminars or write books (yet), but I profit from my online ventures in a similar way.  I’m entirely self-taught.  Over the past ten years or so, I’ve learned how to design, develop and market websites.  Aside from some high-school courses in basic programming, I’ve never been formally trained in these activities.  I learned what I know by putting up websites, getting people to them, and measuring results.

Now, my clients pay me for that experience.  I do a variety of things, from coding Wordpress themes to running AdWords campaigns — from writing email copy to developing full marketing programs.  These skills didn’t come from nowhere: I’ve learned what does and doesn’t work through years of experimentation, both on my own and through employment.

So when I relaunched my Philosophy Index site this week, I decided to remove all ads from the site.  Considering how little they make, relative to my other forms of income, they’re really a burden.  They take up space and distract me from what I actually love about that site.  (I’m starting work on a Philosophy degree this fall, so reviving the site has a double meaning to me.)

I feel really good about the decision, and I’ll be honest — reading Seth’s blog post did re-affirm that feeling.  It’s not a “holier-than-thou” thing, like the noob says.  It’s a choice thing.  I want content to be my focus, and I want this blog (and my sites) to be all me.  If I were writing short content in simpler language with pictures of models, my blog would be horribly inauthentic.  I’m not after the idiots with wallets.  I’m looking to work with smart people who can use (and will value) my services.

Last October, bloggers around the world were called to join together and raise awareness of a single topic on one day.  Blog Action Day saw thousands of blogs writing about a single socially relevant topic: the Environment.  I wrote on a few of my blogs, including Xbox Living, where I offered some tips on saving energy with the Xbox 360.

This year, Blog Action Day will focus on another global problem: poverty.  Bloggers from around the world are called to write a post about the issue and publish it on October 15 to raise awareness of global poverty and work together to help the problem.

I’ve just registered Work, Web, Play to participate this year, and I’ll be writing on my other blogs where I can.   It looks like I made it into the first 100 sites to register.  Be sure to get your blog registered on blogactionday.org and join in the cause on October 15!

This year, it’d be great to see some more corporate blogs take part as well — social awareness is always a great trait to see from the corporate world.  This is a great opportunity to promote your business as a socially conscious, forward-thinking organization.