Why Similar Blogs Sell for Different Prices

This guest post is by Jock Purtle of brokercorp.com.

If you are selling your blog, the first thing you will want to know is how much it is worth. You type into Google is something like “what is my website worth?” What you will get is a whole lot of free website valuation tools. If you use something like www.mywebsiteworth.com and type in “google.com” you get an arbitrary value of 1 billion dollars.

Now we all know these tools are can’t be right. So we might then type into Google “what factors determine a website’s value?” and when we collate all the information. we are going to get a long list of different things to look for when valuing a website. Things like domain age, PageRank, Google rankings, and so on.

But what these articles fail to identify is the single most important factor in valuing a website, and that is the future maintainable earnings of the site.

What needs to be understood is that the assets of the business are only indicators of future maintainable earnings, and do not add any extra value to the site. Value is determined by whether the site will make money in the future, and what level of risk the potential buyer is willing to take.

Let’s take the example of company A and company B. Each company has the same income and same net profit for the year. However, as we will find, their value differs completely.

The market has a strong opinion on what a site is worth. Buyers are looking for a good return on investment and the value is based on what they are willing to pay. That is why valuation is really only educated guess-work about what a site will sell for.

From the above example you may think that your blog meets all the criteria of company B, but that doesn’t mean that you are going to sell it for that amount.

The reason company B is deemed more valuable is because, from the information available, the site looks like it will continue to increase in revenue every year and there is a lower risk that the site will fail. Thus there is less risk for a potential buyer, and they would be willing to pay more to acquire it.

The table represents a rule of thumb that you can apply to any website. The factors listed represent the variables that should be considered in any valuation. There may be some outlying factors that skew the data if either site were to be purchased and that is why true valuation is only represented by the final sale price and the money has been exchanged.

The risk a buyer is willing to take in purchasing a website will determine the multiple of earnings that they’re willing to pay.

The general rule you will find in valuation follows something like this:

Net Income x Some Multiplier = Your Website Value

Here is a breakdown of those two factors.

Net income is represented by a company’s total profit for the year and is calculated by taking revenues and adjusting for the cost of doing business, depreciation, interest, taxes and other expenses, or in accounting speak, EBITDA (earning before interest tax, depreciation, and amortization).

A web business normally doesn’t have the usual expenses that an offline business has, like rent, office space, and so on, and this is reflected in the financials.

A simple multiplier will be based on an expected Rate of Return. This is used to calculate the final sale price and is reflective of the risk that the purchaser is willing to take.

Consider these multipliers:

12 times Monthly Multiple = 100% return (your money back in one year)24 time Monthly Multiple = 50% return (your money back in two years)36 times Monthly Multiple = 33% return (your money back in three years).

You are beginning to see why Internet businesses are a good investment. With low staff and expenses and less hassle than a traditional business, they can offer much better value than putting your money in the bank and getting 1-5% interest.

“But what about the value of my domain, and the rankings in Google, and the cost of the web development? Why isn’t that included in the site?” you may be thinking.

Unfortunately, the market doesn’t look at your site as a sum of all its parts. So even if you site cost you $15k to develop, and the domain cost $12k, if it only makes $10k per year, you are only likely to get $10k—$30k for the site, even though it cost you $27k to develop.

The assets of the business (content, rankings, domain, and so on) add no more value than what has already been calculated. The assets of the business simply form the structure for its revenue-generating capabilities.

It is important to understand this principle when valuing your site. Even though it might have cost you $27k to get the site up and running, your blog is no more valuable than the income a potential buyer can see the site making in the future.

Have you had your blog valued? Tell us about your experiences in the comments.

Jock Purtle is a Senior Broker at Brokercorp.com. They are a full-service website brokerage specializing in website sales and acquisitions. Jock is currently offering a free website valuation at http://brokercorp.com/sell/.

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Why Submit Your Best Posts as Guest Posts?

This guest post is by Aman Basanti of ageofmarketing.com.

If you have been in the blogging game for any number of months, you already know about the power of guest blogging in generating traffic and exposure to your blog. Yet there are new bloggers out there who hear about the power of guest posting, but still do not understand why it is so effective.

Image copyright Franz Pfluegl - Fotolia.com

As one reader commented on my recent piece on guest posting, “You people are always advocating guest posting. But I am not convinced about guest posting. Can you help me in this case? Why should we submit our best work to someone else?”

It is a valid question and as there are always new people entering the world of blogging, one that is worth answering for the blogging community at large.

Accordingly, here are three reasons why you should submit some of your best posts as guest posts.

Here is what a lot of new bloggers don’t know. A-list blogs get a lot of guest post submissions every week. On average, an a-list blog like ProBlogger might get around 30 guest post submissions. In comparison, most blogs only post five or ten posts a week, which means 20 posts get rejected.

If you are sending in your weak posts, chances are your post will get rejected. By sending in your top posts, you increase your chances of getting published on an A-list blog.

Guest posting on A-list blogs gets you high quality backlinks that help you improve your rankings in the search engines.

Now, you might say, “But I’m getting backlinks through the comments section. Why would I go to all that effort of writing and submitting guest posts when I can easily get those backlinks through the comments section?”

The answer is that links in the comments sections of the major blogs are “no-follow,” which means that they count for a lot less (some say not at all) than the “do follow” links that you get in your by line or author box alongside a guest post.

Also, links higher up on the page carry more SEO benefit. As SEOMoz wrote in a post on SEO, “We find that links higher up in the HTML code of a page seem to pass more ranking ability/value than those lower down.” As most guest posts include a back link at the start and at the end of the post, it further magnifies the power of the backlinks.

Combine these two factors and it is easy to see that the backlinks from guest posting are far more valuable than those in the comments section.

Traffic from guest posts is some of the highest converting traffic you can get. Here are the subscriber opt-in rates for my free ebook page:

Google Adwords (Banner ads on the content network): 5% opt-in rate (I know I have some work to do on this, but still)StumbleUpon: 0.5% opt-in rateGuest posting: 40% opt-in rate.

Traffic from guest posting is, hands down, the highest converting traffic you can get. Also, on a big site, the chance of your post going viral is high. It is simple maths. More readers equal more people sharing the post. The more people sharing your post the higher the chance it will be seen by an influencer, further increasing its chances of going viral.

My post on The Warren Buffett Method for Building a Successful Blog, for example, went viral because it was posted on ProBlogger. That post earned me 50 subscribers, showed that I was a good writer, and put me on the map of other bloggers in my niche.

In other words, I got a lot more value from posting it on ProBlogger than I would have had I posted it on my own blog.

Unless you already have a popular blog, there is no reason why you should not submit your best posts as guest posts on major sites. More traffic, better search engine rankings, and brand exposure are some of the key benefits.

Plus, it gives you a bit of kick to get so many comments on a piece you wrote, which can motivate you to keep blogging so that one day you too will get that many comments on your own blog.

Aman Basanti writes about the psychology of buying and teaches you how you can use the principles of consumer psychology to boost your sales. Visit www.Ageofmarketing.com/free-ebook to get his new e-book – Marketing to the Pre-Historic Mind: How the Hot New Science of Behavioural Economics Can Help You Boost Your Sales – for FREE.

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What Bloggers Can Learn From Musicians

This guest post is by Jamie Northrup of jamienorthrup.com.

A lot of the keys to being a successful musician are the same as being a successful blogger.

Some of the similarities between these two professionals are that both write a lot, both present their work to an audience, and both can choose to do it for the art or for the money—or even both, like I do!

There are currently three ways to become a successful money-making musician:

Image copyright IKO - Fotolia.com

This is the oldest and most common way to becoming a successful artist. You can either push your demo or get discovered. Either way, you may not have as much control over your destiny, but you usually have some help getting to the top—or as close as possible.

This isn’t the easiest way, but it is probably the most rewarding. You have to work hard, but you get the control over what you do as an artist.

One artist that comes to mind is Master P, who basically sold CDs out of the trunk of his car. He made millions like that, and later founded his own record company. He was worth over $400 million, and was on Forbes richest people under 40 list in the late 1990s.

This isn’t new—it’s been around since television has been around with shows like Star Search—but it seems to have exploded in recent years with shows like American Idol, X-Factor, and others.

It’s a great way to become a star and showcase your talent, but it can be hard to even get into the early stages of the competition.

When you look at these options, you can see that attaining blogging success isn’t much different. You can join a “tribe,” do it yourself, or enter blogging contests—but chances are, like me, you fall in the second group of people trying to do it on their own.

Some of the techniques I use to be a successful blogger are similar to the ways DIY musicians gain success.

Think of a song as a blog post, and an album as a blog.

There are several techniques that work for both musicians and bloggers.

The first is guest posting. The same thing happens in music: guest posting is pretty much the same as one artist featuring another one in one of their songs. It’s a great way for either the musician or the blogger to establish themselves with a new audience, and get their name out there.

The second technique, which is quite similar to the first, is remixing a song. Lil Wayne is famous for doing this on his mixtapes (unreleased or non-mainstream albums). This artist would take popular songs and remake them with his own words. Bloggers do this quite often as well—I actually try and do it once a month. My latest attempt was “remixing” a popular post from Think Traffic.

The final link I like to draw between successful bloggers and successful musicians is that both write about what is hot—the trends. There’s no surprise that when you blog or sing about what’s in the news, you’ll get recognition. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s not, but apparently there is no such thing as bad publicity.

Choosing to blog on your own isn’t the easiest way to earn blogging success, but if you don’t quit, you will succeed—just like self-made musicians.

Do you see any other ways that bloggers are like musicians?

This post was written by Jamie Northrup, a web consultant based in Montreal, Canada. Jamie runs several different blogs, and tweets using his web handle DeuceGroup.

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Why Bloggers Should Self-Publish

By James Altucher of jamesaltucher.com.

I’ve published seven books in the past seven years, five with traditional publishers (Wiley, Penguin, HarperCollins), and the last two I’ve self-published.

In this post I give the specific details of all of my sales numbers and advances with the traditional publishers.

Although the jury is still out on my self-published books, How to be the Luckiest Man Alive and I Was Blind But Now I See (the latter was just published last month and is #2 for Motivation on Amazon’s Kindle store as I write this), I can tell you these two have already sold more than my five books published with traditional publishers, combined.

Image copyright photogl - Fotolia.com

The rest of this article is really three discussions: Why self-publish, rather than use a traditional publisher?Why bloggers should self-publish.How to go about self-publishing.Advances are going to zero: Book publishers are getting more and more squeezed by declining booksellers so they, in turn, have to squeeze the writers. Because there’s so much free content on the Internet, the value per unit of content is going to zero unless you are already an established name-brand author.Lag time: When you self-publish, you can have your book up and running on Amazon, paperback, and Kindle within days. When you publish with a traditional publisher, it’s a grueling process—book proposal, agents, lawyers, meetings, edits, packaging, catalogs—that ensures that your book doesn’t actually get published until a year later. Literally, as I write this, a friend of mine IMed me the details of his book deal he just got with a mainstream publisher. Publication date: 2014.Marketing: Publishers claim they do a lot of marketing for you. That’s laughable. I’ll give you a very specific example. After I published with Penguin, they met with a friend of mine whose book they wanted to publish. They didn’t realize she was my friend. She asked them, “what marketing did you do for James Altucher’s book?” They said, “Well, we got him a review in The Financial Times and we got a segment about his book on CNBC and an excerpt in thestreet.com.” Here’s what’s so funny. I had a weekly column in The Financial Times. I wrote my own review. As a joke. I also had a weekly segment on CNBC. So naturally I spoke about my book during my regular segment. And I had just sold my last company to thestreet.com. So instead of doing my usual article for them, I did an excerpt from the book. In other words, I felt the publisher did nothing, but took credit for eveything. Ultimately, authors (unless you are, for example, Stephen King) have to do their own marketing for books. The first question publishers ask, even before they look at your proposal, is, “How big is your platform?” They want to know how you can market the book and if they can make money on just your own marketing efforts.Better royalties: When I self-publish I make about a 70% royalty instead of the 15% royalty I made with a traditional publisher. I also own 100% of the foreign rights, instead of 50%. I hired someone to sell the foreign rights to my work, and they get 20% (and no upfront fee).More control over content and design: Look at this cover, designed by a traditional publisher for me (this was my third book). It’s hideous. Now look at the cover for my last book. You may or may not like it, but it’s exactly what I wanted. Publishers even include in the contract that they have final say over the cover, and this is one detail they will not negotiate. Also, when you self-publish, you don’t have any teenage interns sending back editorial comments that you completely disagree with. You control your own content.You have content: I have enough material in my blog right now (including my “Drafts” folder, which has 47 unpublished posts in it) to publish five more books over the next year. And I’m sure that number will increase over the next year as I write more posts.You have more to say. If you just take the posts (mentioned in the point above) and publish them, people will say, “he’s just publishing a collection of posts”. A couple of comments on that. So what? It’s okay if you are curating what you feel your best posts are. And for a small price, people can get that curation and read it in a different format. There’s value there.Don’t just take a collection of your posts. A blog post is typically 500-2000 words, but usually closer to 500. Do a bit more research for each post. Do intros and outros for each post. Make the chapters 3000-4000 words long. Make a bigger arc to the book by using original material to explain why this book, with these chapters, presented in this manner is a different read than the blog. Have a chapter specifically explaining how the book is different from the blog. With my last book, I had original material in each chapter, and several chapters that were completely original. Instead of it being a collection of posts, the overall book was about how we have been brainwashed in society, and how uncovering the brainwashing and using the techniques I describe can bring happiness. This was covered in a much more detailed fashion than the blog ever could, even though the material was inspired by several of my posts.Amazon is an extra platform for you to market your blog: Or vice versa. You won’t make a million dollars on your book (well, maybe you will—never say never) but just being able to say, “I’m a published author” extends your credibility as a writer when you go out there now to syndicate your blog elsewhere, or to get speaking engagements. And when you do a speaking engagement, you can now hand something out—your book! So Amazon and publishing become a powerful marketing platform for your overall writing/speaking/consulting career.Nobody cares: Some people want the credibility of saying “Penguin published me”. I can tell you from experience—nobody ever asked me who was my publisher.How will I get in bookstores? I don’t know. How will you? Traditional publishers can’t get you there either. Often bookstores will look at what’s hot on Amazon and then order the books wholesale from the publishers. In many cases, traditional publishers will take their most-known writers (so if you are in that category, congrats!) and pay to have them featured at a bookstore. As for my experience, my traditional publishers would get a few copies of my books in the bookstores of major cities (i.e. NYC and that’s it), but nothing more.

There’s lots of ways to do it, but I’ll tell you my experience.

For my last two self-published books, as I mentioned above, I took some blog posts, rewrote parts of them, added original material, added new chapters, and provided an overall arc as to what the book was about, as opposed to it just being a random collection of posts.

But, that said, you probably already have the basic material already.

I used Createspace because it’s owned by Amazon and has excellent customer service. The team at Creatspace let you pick the size of your book and then have Microsoft Word templates that you download to format your book within.

For my first book I did this by myself. For my second book, for a small fee, I hired Alexanderbecker.net to format the book, create the book design, and create the final PDF that I uploaded. He also checked grammar, made proactive suggestions on fonts (sans serif instead of serif), and was extremely helpful.

Createspace approves it, picks an ISBN number, sends you a proof, and then you approve the proof.

All of the above (from Createspace) was free. If I didn’t hire Alex to make the cover I could’ve used one of Createspace’s possible covers (I did that for my first book) and the entire publishing in paperback would be free.

With Kindle, Createspace charges $70—and they take care of everything until it’s uploaded to the Kindle store. Now your book is available in paperback and Kindle versions!

Readers of my blog who asked for it got the first 20 copies or so for free from me. Many of them then posted good reviews on Amazon to get the ball rolling.I’ve been handing out the books at speaking engagements. Altogether, I’ll do around ten speaking engagements, handing my latest book out.I write a blog post about how the bo0k is different from the blog and why I chose to go this route.Writing guests posts for blogs like ProBlogger helps, too, and I’m very grateful.Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Google+ are also very helpful.

You’re in charge of your own promotions (as opposed to having a book publisher handling them for you). For instance, n a recent blog post I discussed the differences between my latest book and my blog, and I also offered a promotion that lets readers get my next self-published book (Bad Behavior, expected in Q1 2012) free.

Over the next year, I have five different books planned, all on different topics. I’m super-excited about them because I’m allowed to push the barrier in every area I’m interested in, and there’s nobody to stop me.

You can do this also. And you should do it. There are no more excuses in this environment. Do you have questions about self-publishing? Let us know in the comments!

James Altucher has written 7 books, has started and sold 3 businesses, and has blogged successfully this past year at jamesaltucher.com. He also writes for the WSJ and other media outlets. He exposes himself way too much on his blog.

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Wealth Creation Through Blogging

This guest post is by Shaun of MoneyCactus.

There’s a blog for just about everything these days. Some are a lot better than others, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that any blog has the potential to become great.

It is completely possible to find a niche and an interested audience if you are serious enough about it yourself.

Image copyright Maria Goncalves - Fotolia.com

Some Internet entrepreneurs are better at doing this than others and make the process look easy. While many of these great bloggers definitely have a talent for what they do, the fundamentals of how they go about it really don’t change too much at all.

I guess now is probably a good time to tell you that this is not an article about making money from your blog. Before you even get to this stage you need to develop a strategy, understand your market, and allocate your resources. Good bloggers understand this. They are the same principles that you would use when making any investment.

If you want to create a blog that is successful, then these basic wealth creation fundamentals should go a long way to getting you there.

People often make bad investment decisions, most of which are based on their emotions or—even worse—a “gut feeling.” Bloggers can make this mistake when selecting a niche as well.

A hobby is not an investment, it is just another way to spend your money. You do not need to be good at a hobby. Really, it’s just something you do to waste time.

The best investments are made in things that you are very knowledgeable about. Don’t confuse something you like the sound of with something you know a lot about. In order to create an authority site and demonstrate social proof, you need to know enough about your area of interest to attract readers. You do not need to be an expert, but you do need to have a knack for delivering information that makes readers want to keep coming back.

Do your research before anything else. You wouldn’t waste time and money on a dud investment; don’t do the same with a blog.

If you told me I had an imaginary sum of $1,000 and then asked me to pick some stocks to watch over a year as a way to practice my investing skills, I probably wouldn’t have any trouble making a choice and playing the game. If you told me I had to actually put my own money on the line, the chances are I would be studying those stocks very closely and sweating every decision I made.

If you are really serious about blogging, then you need to have a stake in the game. It doesn’t need to be big money, but spending some money on your blog will help keep you motivated as losing it is never fun.

Forget Blogger, WordPress.com, Tumblr, or any of those other free platforms (believe me, I learned the hard way). Yes they can be useful and they are simple to set up, but if you plan to use your blog as a means to generate income, then invest in yourself, and pay the small amount of money it costs to get a unique domain name and a self-hosted account.

Tithing is practiced by many of the world’s richest people, but you don’t need mega bucks to start giving. You can give in lots of ways that help others, and the nice thing is that giving has a habit of coming back to you in lots of other ways.

Bloggers are quite possibly the nicest people I know. It is amazing how approachable they are, and what they will do to help or provide advice if you ask them. If you spend some time hanging out in the blogosphere, then you will quickly realize that the whole network runs on love. Bloggers write about things they love, people follow the things they love, and the better you are at showing people how to do what they want, the more love you will get in return.

If you can find ways to be ridiculously useful to others within your niche and over-deliver on your promises, you will attract people organically. Unsurprisingly, bloggers follow other bloggers in their niche, so reach out and give to a fellow blogger or combine your powers to offer even more.

In order to spread risk, investors often use different vehicles to grow their wealth. The same principles apply to blogging: a nice spread of traffic will ensure you are not reliant on any one stream.

There are many ways to do this, and you might have your own methods, but here are a few things that I have been doing to grow my audience.

There are ways to help make your blog posts as targeted as possible by focusing on keywords and employing other SEO tactics. But, to be perfectly honest, the most visited pages on my site are poorly optimized (I really should do something about that).

Instead, I write about what is affecting me, and I try to solve the problem. Funnily enough there are lots of other people that have similar problems, so my posts end up getting found anyway. I’ve found the best thing to do is just focus on a single topic per post. That way, basic things like keyword density seem to happen on their own.

This is one of the best ways I have found to share my blog posts as widely as possible and get referrals from other blogs. It is also a really great way to network with other people in your niche. Different carnivals have different rules, but they usually let you submit a recent article that you have written on your site. A link to this is then listed on the carnival host site, which means potential traffic from other bloggers and people that are regulars on the host site.

Blogging carnivals are often hosted on a different site each time, so submitting your articles regularly means you are more likely to be seen by a broader audience. If you want to look for a blogging carnival for your niche, you could try starting here.

This has got to be the next best thing to guest posting. You get to have your say on a topic, actively participate in an online community, and you can often leave a link to your site for people to see what you are all about.

I think that this traffic generation strategy is completely underrated. I can’t tell you how many times I have checked out a site because I liked a comment I read somewhere else, and Google Analytics tells me others do the same with my site too. If you want to develop your comment strategy, you might like this guide to writing killer comments.

The best blogs have “shareholders” in the form of subscribers. These people have decided that the site is an asset to them, and that it’s worth investing their time in. Like any good stock, a blog needs to continue to perform over the long term in order to hold or increase its value, and that requires ongoing effort.

I’ll be the first to tell you that there is more I could do more to improve the stock of my blog, but every time I have invested in it, I have seen a gain. My final wealth creation tip is to continue investing in your blog: set short-, medium-, and long-term goals, but view it as an appreciating asset that will grow in value over time.

Try these simple wealth creation strategies on your blog and see what happens for yourself.

Shaun is not an accountant, financial planner or life coach, but he writes about wealth creation anyway! Shaun’s motto is “Make wealth, not money,” which fits quite nicely with where he wants to be in life. You can find out more by visiting his blog where he shows you how to do nothing and grow wealthy.

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Want to Make Money Online? Then Stop Reading and Get Moving!

This guest post is by Danny Iny of Firepole Marketing.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post here at problogger.net about how Firepole Marketing makes money.

I explained that even though we’re less than a year old, we’ve already made over $20,000, and that over half of that came from offline sources.

We wanted to know how other bloggers make their money. Is it all online, or do they make their money offline as well?

In other words, we wanted to know if they were Semi-Local.

In October 2011, we surveyed 153 people; 107 who were already Semi-Local, and 46 who aspired to be. We asked a number of questions to find out what was really involved in becoming and being Semi-Local. Here are the highlights of what we learned.

The first major finding was about how many hours per week people who were already Semi-Local (current SLs) spent working, versus how many hours per week people who aspired to be Semi-Local (aspiring SLs) spent working:

Notice the discrepancies on either end of the spectrum: 31% of aspiring SLs work less than 20 hours per week, versus only 12% of current SLs. On the other hand, only 15% of aspiring SLs work 50+ hours per week, versus 28% of current SLs.

Do you think people are idealizing the Semi-Local life, and expecting it to be a lot easier than it really is?

Another interesting finding was about take-home income:

There’s definitely more money in being Semi-Local: 39% of current SLs make over $60K/year, versus only 22% of aspiring SLs. The majority (60%) of aspiring SLs make between $20K and $60K/year, whereas the majority (60%) of current SLs make between $40K and $200K/year—a big difference!

There’s some interesting data at the edges of the spectrum, though. 25% of current SLs make under $20K/year, versus only 18% of aspiring SLs, and only 2% of current SLs make over $200K/year, versus 4% of aspiring SLs.

One of the most interesting findings (to me, at least) was about how people actually go about becoming Semi-Local:

The majority (71%) of aspiring SLs expect to achieve Semi-Local status by creating an offer that is substantially different from their current offer. In contrast, the majority (60%) of current SLs did it by selling exactly the same offer to a new market.

The lesson here is pretty clear—put away all of the shiny objects, and look for new customers to buy what you’ve already got!

This is one of the top questions for anyone who’s thinking about becoming Semi-Local: how long does it take to launch?

There are really two “categories” of results here: the first category is “under 100 hours,” and the second category is “100+ hours.” Seeing the results in these two categories, we can draw a couple of interesting conclusions:

Current SLs have a stronger preference for smaller projects as a means of getting going (76% of current SLs, versus 70% of aspiring SLs).Current SLs took a lot less time to launch than aspiring SLs expect it will take (46% launched in under 40 hours, versus 34% who believe they can do it in such a short time).

That’s the question that we should all be asking before opening up our wallets for the latest training program on blogging and online business:

This is the most striking finding: 63% of current SLs said “no,” versus only 43% of aspiring SLs. The message here is very clear: you don’t need training, you just need to get off your butt and start working!

Do you want to see more of the numbers? Review more of the answers that the respondents gave us? Then download the full report—it’s free!

Danny Iny (@DannyIny) is an author, strategist, serial entrepreneur, expert marketer, and the Freddy Krueger of Blogging. Together with Guy Kawasaki, Brian Clark, Mitch Joel, he wrote the book on how to build an engaged audience from scratch.

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What About Google -1?

Dit gastpost is door Sriram Reddy van BloggingTipster.com.

Allen: Billy, waarom bent u op zoek zo somber? Uw Twitter volgeling tellen halveren overnachting? Hehe...

Billy: Nee, ik had net zo'n cheesy ervaring googlen voor materiaal voor Prof. Dwyer van toewijzing. Er was een ongebruikelijke hoeveelheid spam in de zoekresultaten. Ik had zo'n harde tijd scannen via alle deze zoekresultaten, maar ik eindelijk gevonden wat ik echt was op zoek naar.

Ik wens er een manier kon ik anderen schild in de internetgemeenschap van bezoek aan enkele van die sites die ik bezocht was — geloof me, ze waren een schijnvertoning. Als slechts er een manier die kon ik sommige van deze resultaten in Google SERPs begraven was. Pech dat Google niet geef me een optie om te ontmoedigen van mijn vrienden uit door dergelijke resultaten klikt. Zwarte hoed SEO's lijken langzaam te krijgen de betere van Google zoeken.

Allen: Ahh, ik ben het met u eens van Google is niet spam volledig uitgeroeid, maar maak je geen zorgen: Panda algoritme van Google is zeer effici?nt in het omgaan met spammers. Nog beter, de onlangs gelanceerde Google + 1 knop gaat absoluut om toe te voegen de menselijke factor dat Google de pagina rang algoritme zo ernstig behoeften. Het is een enorme stap naar het verwijderen van spam.

Billy: Hmm, ja ik moet toegeven dat ik hou het idee van + 1?ing iets. Het maakt me het gevoel meer in controle. Ik kan niet helpen maar denk van grote outfits die gaan door te bevelen hun leden naar + 1 hun eigen site via persoonlijke profielen misbruik de + 1.

Terwijl de knop + 1 SERPs in de juiste richting begeleiden zal, wens ik dat Google ook een knop-1 zou voeren te neutraliseren van het effect van de knop + 1 door sommige uitgevers gaming. Het eerste wat ik zou doen als Google vrijgegeven een -1 knop, is -1 alle spammers op mijn onderzoek voor Prof. Dwyer van toewijzing. Geloof me, ik ben zo ontmoedigd met mijn zoekopdrachten vandaag.

Allen: Whoa! Een Google -1 knop! Denk je niet dat we hebben genoeg sociale knoppen om te gaan met al?

Billy: Ik ben ervan overtuigd dat als u had een slechte ontmoeting met een zoekresultaat, u moet tip off uw vrienden en de hele wereld over, zodat ze niet hoeven te maken dezelfde fout u gemaakt — als ze kiezen om te gaan door uw aanbeveling, dat wil zeggen.

U weet wat anders ik zou graag zien op een Google -1 knop? Wen mensen-1 iets, zou het goed om te zien hun -1 openbaar weergegeven in zoekresultaten van Google als aantekeningen over de inhoud ze -1 ' ed — net als de +1s weergegeven in de resultaten.

Neem het voorbeeld van de opdracht dat Prof. Dwyer gaf ons vandaag. Iedereen in de klasse zullen zoeken naar dezelfde informatie op Google, en we zullen zeker alle websites die spam worden overkomt. Als ik werd niet tevredengesteld met een zoekresultaat, kon ik gewoon klikt u op de knop-1. Het zou dan weergegeven op mijn vrienden zoek dat Billy resultaten-1?ed dit. Hoe cool zou dat zijn?! Aangezien ik niet de link had gewild, ben ik zeker de meeste in onze klasse zou niet verspillen hun tijd op het.

Allen: Ah, dat doet me denken, ik beter zou eindigen met Prof. Dwyer van toewijzing spoedig, of ik zal kijken naar mijn tweede aarding in een week.

Billy: Bah! Voor algemeen gezochte termen de resultaten zijn in grote lijnen niet te slecht. Maar voor niche termen, heb ik gemerkt dat ik heb te besteden al geruime tijd aan het zoeken via affiliate links en doelloos blogs voordat ik vind wat ik wil.

Ik heb gehoord dat een derde van alle zoekopdrachten zijn eerst zoekopdrachten. Aangezien Google is nog steeds verbetering van haar zoekalgoritme voor query's eerst, zou hun voordeel met de hulp van mensen zoals wij te stemmen uit spam. Dit maakt een sterk argument voor een Google -1 knop.

Allen: Misschien bent u het een beetje te snel hier paniek knop te drukken. Een knop-1 zou erger dan ontketenen een brand-ademende draak.

Het zou openstellen websites voor sociale aanvallen. Organisaties zal gaan berserk - 1ing hun rivalen uit de competitie. Dit zou veel ernstiger gevolgen hebben dan gewoon de knop + 1 gaming organisaties. Dit zou veel meer dan de + 1 worden misbruikt. Geen wonder dat Facebook is niet een afkeer optie uitgerold!

Billy: Ik ben niet zeker of ik zou zorgen te maken over uitgevers-1ing hun rivalen. Google is slim genoeg om een dergelijke situatie. Ik ben zeker dat het is niet buiten hun bereik.

Enkel de manier een + 1ers identiteit zal worden gelabeld zijn aanbeveling + 1,-1s kunnen ook worden gelabeld Volksgeschiedenis profielen ook. Een algoritme van Google te geven hogere relevantie voor-1s van bepaalde profielen dan anderen die een geschiedenis van gaming knoppen hebben zou zeker de tabellen om te zetten in het voordeel van Google.

Ook, als een uitgever heeft gemaakt een merk voor zichzelf online, zelfs als een rivaal erin slaagt aan massa -1 zijn inhoud, hoe kunnen we korting van de uitgever volgelingen? Ze zou niet willen dat hun favoriete merk te zijn massa - 1ed, zouden ze? Ze zou niet aarzelen om naar + 1 te redden van hun favoriete merk.

Reddit, Digg, en Google's eigen Youtube werk op soortgelijke modellen. Ze trekken de beste inhoud tot de bovenkant van de stapel door middel van een mengsel van positieve en negatieve feedback, en zij zijn vrij bevoegde op het. We weten dat Google is kan dit nemen naar het volgende niveau.

Allen: U bent het maken van gevoel, maar ik weet zeker dat er veel bedrijven die er die zou niet comfortabel met een dergelijk model. Vooral kleine uitgeverijen.

Billy: Ja, kan er enige weerstand in eerste instantie, maar een knop-1 zal echt wonderen doen voor het Web. Stel je een universum waar er geen spam helemaal in de zoekresultaten van Google. Wat we te zien een dag zal niet doen als dat!

Bovenal zou Google worden empowerment van mensen om te kiezen wat ze willen zien. Als Google mij de optie om te beslissen wat is nuttig voor mijn vrienden en het Web gegeven is, moet het zeker geef me een optie om te beslissen wat is ook slecht.

Allen: Hmm... U maakt zin nu... maar ik ben nog niet zo zeker nog. Anyway, het al laat, ik moet gaan. Catch'ya morgen.

…Terwijl de knop Google -1 nog steeds een idee dat de meesten van ons zin is, was dit gesprek tussen Billy en Allen een poging om serieus overweegt de knop Google -1.

Wie zijn Allen en Billy? Allen en Billy (en Prof. Dwyer) zijn tekens die zijn aangevoerd met mijn verbeelding, als ik nodig had twee tekens via die kon ik weer mijn weergaven en counterviews op de knop Google -1.

Wat denk je over het idee van een knop-1? Ik zou graag willen horen je gedachten in het commentaar.

Sriram Reddy schrijft lock voorraad en draaiorgels over scherper bloggen vaardigheden op www.BloggingTipster.com. Volg hem op Twitter.

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