Marketer's Eye » Blogging http://marketerseye.com Just another Ecomsmith Blogs site Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:12:14 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 TopGamblingBlogs is up! http://marketerseye.com/2006/05/16/topgamblingblogs-is-up/ http://marketerseye.com/2006/05/16/topgamblingblogs-is-up/#comments Tue, 16 May 2006 14:18:24 +0000 Bruce Kroeze http://marketerseye.com/2006/topgamblingblogs-is-up.html . . . → Read More: TopGamblingBlogs is up!]]> brain xray TopGamblingBlogs is up!After more hours of work than I care to share, I’ve posted Top Gambling Blogs. This is my first pure content-for-adsense play. I have another 3 similar blog sites queued up to receive a similar treatment.

The idea is that every month, I will list and track the changes in ranking for the top 25 gambling and poker blogs. I get this information through a multi-step method, which I have (mostly) scripted nicely in Python.:

  1. Get the URLs for blogs listed in the first ten pages of results for "gambling blog" and &quot:poker blog" on Google, Yahoo, and Alexa.
  2. Strip all obvious garbage results
  3. Pull Alexa ranks for all of them
  4. Pull Technorati inbound links and inbound blogs for all of them.
  5. Sort them properly.
  6. Test each link, throwing out spam blogs and non-blogs, until I’ve pruned the list to the top 25.
  7. Write short descriptions for each blog.
  8. (next month) Track ranking changes from last week.

It took a while, but I really like how it turned out. I think it is valuable, not spam, and might actually get linked well.

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]]> http://marketerseye.com/2006/05/16/topgamblingblogs-is-up/feed/ 0 Don't be surprised when you get left behind http://marketerseye.com/2006/02/21/dont-be-surprised-when-you-get-left-behind/ http://marketerseye.com/2006/02/21/dont-be-surprised-when-you-get-left-behind/#comments Tue, 21 Feb 2006 19:50:33 +0000 Bruce Kroeze http://marketerseye.com/2006/dont-be-surprised-when-you-get-left-behind.html Excellent quote from one of my daily reads, talking about blogs.

If you think this is just a game of bubbles, bandwagons, favoritism and knowing the right people, as opposed to having good ideas and plain old hard work- Fine, go ahead and believe it. Nobody cares. Just don’t be surprised when you get . . . → Read More: Don't be surprised when you get left behind]]> stop button Don't be surprised when you get left behindExcellent quote from one of my daily reads, talking about blogs.

If you think this is just a game of bubbles, bandwagons, favoritism and knowing the right people, as opposed to having good ideas and plain old hard work- Fine, go ahead and believe it. Nobody cares. Just don’t be surprised when you get left behind, same as you did every other time the world changed.

Sometimes I think that what drives the nay-sayers is simple “fear of looking dumb”. They seem to be afraid they’ll start doing something just when it stops being popular, and so they’ll look dumb. Sometimes I think that it is just a driving need to fill column inches with text, even if it doesn’t mean much.

For what it is worth, I don’t care if “Blogs as a business model” has “peaked”. If it has, then some of the heart-not-in-it folks will drop off and clear the air a bit. You can’t force a good blog, and it is painful to see some people try, convinced that it will be profitable if they can just force it long enough.

]]> http://marketerseye.com/2006/02/21/dont-be-surprised-when-you-get-left-behind/feed/ 1 Gift Observer is up http://marketerseye.com/2006/02/06/gift-observer-is-up/ http://marketerseye.com/2006/02/06/gift-observer-is-up/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2006 21:07:36 +0000 Bruce Kroeze http://marketerseye.com/2006/gift-observer-is-up.html It took an afternoon of work, but my latest site is finally live! Gift Observer is a site dedicated to talking about gifts and gift giving. Obviously, there is a lot of marketing I can do with the site concept, but I have even bigger goals than just reviewing things that I am promoting . . . → Read More: Gift Observer is up]]> valentine gift Gift Observer is upIt took an afternoon of work, but my latest site is finally live! Gift Observer is a site dedicated to talking about gifts and gift giving. Obviously, there is a lot of marketing I can do with the site concept, but I have even bigger goals than just reviewing things that I am promoting via affiliate links.

The world has enough “quick links to small gifts” sites, so that I not where I’ll be focusing my energy. Instead, I’m focusing on actually being of service to my readers, by finding interesting stuff and creative ideas, and by providing them some real value-added services. Not just same-old-same-old, the site will be growing within a month or so to include a great application I am writing. This app is going to make a big splash in the niche. I’ve never seen a real competitor, though I am sure there will be some in this space sometime this year.

Basically, I’ve launched the blog part of the site before the application part, to make sure that I am well and truly out of the Google Sandbox before next fall. Every little bit of juice will help me hit critical mass with this site!

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]]> http://marketerseye.com/2006/02/06/gift-observer-is-up/feed/ 0 Forget stealth mode http://marketerseye.com/2006/01/24/forget-stealth-mode/ http://marketerseye.com/2006/01/24/forget-stealth-mode/#comments Tue, 24 Jan 2006 20:56:08 +0000 Bruce Kroeze http://marketerseye.com/2006/forget-stealth-mode.html You should forget any idea of “stealth mode” right now. The concept is foolish and has never worked, except possibly for so-called “submarine patents“. In fact, the idea is counter-productive on numerous fronts. What you want to do is to strip down your functionality and your goals to the minimum point where you might . . . → Read More: Forget stealth mode]]> hiding face Forget stealth modeYou should forget any idea of “stealth mode” right now. The concept is foolish and has never worked, except possibly for so-called “submarine patents“. In fact, the idea is counter-productive on numerous fronts. What you want to do is to strip down your functionality and your goals to the minimum point where you might be of value to anyone. Release. Get users, maybe, if you did anything right. Then release some more, with your users’ active input.

It truly doesn’t matter, 9 times out of 10, whether your product is provably “better” than another. What matters is eyeballs, user-base, and momentum. You can’t get any of that without releasing at the earliest reasonable time. Kevin Burton on his Feed Blog says the truth very clearly:

Ideas are a dime a dozen. If you have a viable idea it’s almost certainly on the minds of at least 50 smart geeks in the bay area.

You want an idea for a startup? Buy me a cup of coffee and I’ll give you a dozen in 30 minutes. If your idea was worth money you could auction if off on EBay. Try it. It won’t sell because an idea isn’t worth money.

You don’t have time to execute? You think you’ll have more time in the future? This article says you’ll likely never have more free time than you do now. Think about it.

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]]> http://marketerseye.com/2006/01/24/forget-stealth-mode/feed/ 0 Another tip to make your blog search friendly http://marketerseye.com/2006/01/20/another-tip-to-make-your-blog-search-friendly/ http://marketerseye.com/2006/01/20/another-tip-to-make-your-blog-search-friendly/#comments Sat, 21 Jan 2006 06:40:59 +0000 Bruce Kroeze http://marketerseye.com/2006/another-tip-to-make-your-blog-search-friendly.html . . . → Read More: Another tip to make your blog search friendly]]> tennis racket Another tip to make your blog search friendlyLet the world know that you are actively adding content to your blog. This just takes a moment to set up, and pays off with more timely and accurate search crawls of your site. To do this, you need to choose an “update notification pinger”. Once you’ve chosen one or two, you configure your blogging engine to use them. In WordPress, this is managed in the admin pages under “Options, Writing, Update services.”

What this does is send a notification to a service that you’ve updated your blog. While you could have your blog send notifications to every service around, I think manually setting up every one is just not worth the aggravation, so I suggest using a “meta-pinging” service. These services will pick up your update notification and relay it to many other blog search and aggregation sites. I like using Pingoat to do this, with Feedburner as a backup.

Refer to Technorati’s nice configuration howto for details on setting up b2, Blogger, Ecto, MarsEdit, Movable Type, Nucleus, Radio UserLand, TypePad, and WordPress to use ping services.

Ping services to choose from

  • pingoat – PRO: has a rep for reliability, and a LOT of services, Google sitemap generator is a great tool, free. CON: May tag you as a “splog” if you are overly focused on marketroid speak. Services: 1engine.com, Weblogs.com AudioRPC, a2b.cc, amagle.com, bakeinu.jp, bitacoles.net, bitacoras.com, bitacoras.net, blo.gs, blog-search.net, blogdb.jp, blogdigger.com, bloggers.jp, blogmatcher.com, blogmura.jp, blogoon.net, blogpeople.net, blogrolling.com, blogshares.com, blogstreet.com, blogstyle.jp, bulkfeeds.net, catapings.com, cocolog-nifty.com, coreblog.org, dontpushme.com, effbot.org, feedburner.com, feedster.com, focuslook.com, freshpodcasts.com, geourl.org, gpost.info, icerocket.com, ipodder.org, longrank.com, memigo.com, moreover.com, my.yahoo.com, newsgator.com, newsisfree.com, pubsub.com, rubhub.com, syndic8.com, technorati.com, technorati.jp, topicexchange.com, veneblogs.com, weblogalot.com, weblogs.com, weblogs.se, weblogues.com
    Ping server address: http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
  • FeedBurner – PRO: nice interface, great services in general, fast, free. CON: not that many services. Services: Blog Buzz Machine, Feedster, Icerocket, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Ping-o-matic, PubSub, RssFwd, Syndic8, TailRank, Technorati, Weblogs.com, blogdigger
  • Ping-o-matic – PRO: many many services available as options, free. CON: Seems to be down a lot. Services: A2b GeoLocation, Audio.Weblogs, Blo.gs, BlogRolling, BlogShares, BlogStreet, Blogdigger, Feed Burner, Feedster, GeoURL, Icerocket, Moreover, My Yahoo, News is Free, NewsGator, PubSub, RubHub, Syndic8, Technorati, Topic Exchange, Weblogalot, Weblogs.com
    Ping server: http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
  • Blog Flux – PRO: interesting other services besides just the pinging. CON: ??? (comments welcome) Services: 1740, A2b.cc, Audio.weblogs.com, Bakeinu, Bitacoles.net, Bitacoras.com, Bitacoras.net, Blo.gs, Blogbot.dk, Blogdb, Blogdigger, Blogg.de, Bloggers.jp, Blogmura, Blogoon, Blogrolling, Blogshares, Bulkfeeds, Catapings.com, Feedburner, Feedster, Geourl.org, Goo, Moreover, My Yahoo, Odeo, Rubhub, Sourceforge, Syndic8, Technorati, Weblogs, Weblogues.com
    Ping Server address: http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc
  • technorati – Not a meta-pinger, but they are very important and they suggest direct pinging.
    Ping Server address: http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

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