Sebbie on the Webbie

I’ve been ignoring SEO for years. I felt that it can’t make that much difference and the only thing you should really focus on is to not to get banned from the search engines. So, I did pretty good job at staying hidden! A couple of weeks ago I found this great website that instructs you step by step on what to do and in what order. I’ve used the tools recommended there to track my keywords and I can see clear improvement on the site I’m working on – I haven’t done a thing with this blog yet so don’t look at the Google Rank here and go “Oh it’s not working!”

So, I don’t need to tell you anything about SEO, except that here’s a very helpful SEO guide that will tell you most anything you need to know about search engines.

Constructive criticism: You call this an effin' sock?

Unfortunately, it is very common for a website to create a culture of bitchyness if the administrators fail to discipline members early on. In the worst case scenario the bitchyness starts with the admins themselves, in which case the site is doomed to it. If the admins don’t know how to behave in a supportive manner, nobody else has a chance turning the site around. I have witnessed this with many websites. One that springs to mind was a community for photographers; the idea was to share your photos for “constructive criticism from your peers”. You can bet that when a new photographer is revealing their work for the first time to a knowledgeable audience and is greeted with nothing but bitchiness, nastiness and sarcasm, (nothing constructive about it) there is no way he or she will continue using that service. When they realize that it’s not really about their photos, but that everyone gets the same treatment, they may feel a little better about it but will find that the site has nothing to offer to them. On a site like this, meanness spreads like wild fire: If you said a nasty thing about my photo, don’ think I can’t find something wrong with ALL OF YOURS, you bitch!

It is completely up to you to set the tone on your websites. You cannot allow ANY rudeness to occur without reacting to it strongly and with as little fuss as possible -meaning that you cannot make it public (will easily result into a public flame war), but you will have to contact the offending member privately and let them understand that rudeness is not tolerated and if he doesn’t clean up his act, he’s good as gone. To fit in, people usually modify their behaviour to suit the surroundings. It is very unrewarding to be the only bitch in a group (because it’s not “fashionable” in the said group), but when you get one “friend”, on board, then another one… An yet and other one, THEN it starts feeling pretty damned cool. If you do not allow the first two bitches to bond, your site will be fairly safe to build on. As your site grows, you need to implement some sort of a report member (and post) -system to help you weed out the bad apples efficiently and without exception. You may put in a zero tolerance policy or a three strikes you’re out -policy, but you do have to be consistent about it. Sometimes people acting rudely are so ashamed of their behaviour that they’ll remove themselves after being corrected by the site admin. They may do this throwing shit at you during departure, but the reason they are departing is not because of you, it’s because they realize that going back into the group of nice people after what they said would be inconceivably embarrassing. And in all honesty, you don’t have anything against a rude person leaving your site. In fact, that’s the best thing that can happen to it. (If they don’t leave but keep bullying people, you can then give them a full ban and be rid of them.)

It is equally important not to let this policing go too far. It is not a relaxed place either if nobody is entitled to an opinion if it’s the least bit provocative (like, say being childfree) or a member is penalised for using words like “big head” describing a doll, because some member happened to be bullied by that name at school. Sometimes the victims can bully the community by being so overly sensitive, that everything reduces them into tears forcing the actually nice people tread around these sensitive souls like they were walking on broken glass. You can not allow this happen either. Everyone is allowed their own space, and their own thoughts and expression, but when one person tries to manipulate the space and dominate other’s way of thinking, speaking and expressing themselves one way or another, it is not cool. As a generic rule, if your first thought to a complaint is “don’t be ridiculous” or “grow a pair”, it’s probably about the member being manipulative instead actually in need of protection. (Unless you are inclined to being a bully yourself, in which case I don’t know how effective measurement this is.)

Even if a general balance is achieved, there’s always people who are so timid, that someone with a little more oomph to themselves will make an other feel inferior. You can’t help that. People are not created equal in talent and self-esteem, and if one person’s shine will make the other feel like she or he is sitting in a shadow then that’s how it’s going to be. It is not fair to ask a superiorly talented person to hide their candle so that others wouldn’t feel bad about themselves, any more than it is fair to belittle the untalented because their candle can’t shine as bright as the other ones.

We all love Facebook, and a lot of us like Twitter, and now there’s the next one – I believe; FriedEggs.com. It’s kind of a combination of the two, and also updates both of the above if you wish it to.

Compared to Facebook

If you’re like me, you like to limit who sees your Facebook, but it doesn’t mean you wouldn’t have anything public to say. That is where Twitter or FriedEggs would come in. If you want to address a larger audience and get followers that are not your personal friends, this is it.

Compared to  Twitter

You will have more room to write, should you need it, and you can add multi media straigth into your message, kind of like on Facebook. You can also comment on a… an Egg? directly, or just “like it” just like on Facebook.

Compared to Both

You get a front page list of the latest eggs with and without photos/videos. I really truly miss this feature on both Twitter and Facebook, but the Eggs has it. I really like Fried Eggs as an addition or link to both Facebook and Twitter.

Follow my eggs. XD

Turning readers into cash

The easiest way to turn your traffic into cash is selling ad space. That’s the theory. If you have visitors the money will roll in. However, I have found through years of experience that this just doesn’t happen unless your blog fits into a very detailed category of blogs.

The most important thing for a blog to have is “high paying keywords”. On the top of the list, is “domains Yahoo” which can bring in a ridiculous amount of $97 a click. Ninety Seven Per Click! I wish I made 97 a year of my blogs or websites! The keywords by themselves of course don’t solve your problems alone. You will have to have the blog, have traffic, then have keywords in your content and advertisers who are willing to pay for displaying an ad on your website. It won’t help me one bit if I repeated that keyphrase a hundred times on this page, because my blog is low ranking and I don’t even run AdSense here (because it makes no sense on this type of blog).

In addition, your topic determines what kind of keywords you actually CAN use on your blog. If you blog about making handbags at home by hand, you won’t normally slip in words like insurance, lawyer and viagra. Even if you did, once or twice, the keyword density would make it obvious that you’re not exactly blogging about those topics, and therefore the advertisers stay away. If you started using these keywords regularly, I’m willing to bet your hand bag making readers would be quite put off by it.

If most of your readers come from countries that are not high on advertisers radar, they can cut you out from the list as well. This localisation, or targeting thing is really great if you’re advertising a local business and you really don’t need traffic from the other side of the world, but if you’re the blogger or webmaster and your readers, as in “eyeballs on your page” are of non-american origin, you’ve got the short end of the stick again. You can combat this a bit by targeting your content to the same market as the advertisers would, for example, if you’re Finnish, blog in Finnish for Finnish people about something they can buy in Finland.

Then there are those of us, who are not prepared to plan their website under the conditions of what advertisers want them for. In our case, monetising is a lot harder. Our readers may be scattered all around the world, with just a couple in each country, or just a “wrong” country. Our topics are not keyword dense. We talk about creativity, psychology and imagination, and those are things that are priceless – in the true sense of the word. They are the best things in life, but even though your readers would put a lot of money on their hobby, there’s not much of a reason why they would put money on your website, or why an advertiser would like to spend dollars on advertising on your site. The bottom line here is, that if you want to turn that kind of a site into cold hard cash, you’ll have to think outside the box. How do we do this?

I wish I could give you an answer. I know you were waiting for an answer, but instead all I can offer is a place for a conversation, maybe you, my reader would have some ideas. Maybe you can just vent out your frustration about your popular blog or website being worth zip in money… I’m thinking hard about this, and I promise I’ll tell as soon as I come up with something that I can actually try out in practise.

An English speaker using non-verbal communication.

Tell me if you agree (if you can). This is a thought that just popped into my head and I’m not sure if my hypothesis is accurate or not, but I’m going to share it with you regardless. Over the years, I’ve ran several Finnish language communities and tried to start at least equally many in English, with very little luck. I just realised, that from the get go, the Finnish communities have a different feel to them than the English, even though the same person – me – runs them. The same feel is present in other, successful English forums as well. They are far more reserved and cautious than the Finnish equivalent. And isn’t that a surprise if you have spent half a day with a group of Finns face to face!

Finns flock online. We thrive online. We drop our guard in a split second and spill our guts to the world – or well, to our nation, as the world doesn’t speak our language, even Google Translator is at loss with us. Online, we seem amazingly open, friendly and WARM. I make friends of fellow Finns online constantly, but not with such a luck with the English speaking people. A couple, here and there, but not with as much ease. I have a possible explanation for this.

Finns rely on mostly spoken message in their communication even face-to-face. Our basic interaction-face could be described as “a stone face” or “a poker face”. We’ve become extremely efficient in picking up tones and the choice of words from each other, as well as the minimal signals we give out in facial expression. When an English speaker sees no change in a Finns face, we can look at the same person and see if he’s on a bad mood or excited beyond description. But I would guess, that since we are so good at picking up tones in speech, we are more efficient in it in writing as well. Also, the facial expression doesn’t carry as much weight as it does to an English speaker. We would be pretty much as comfortable talking to each other with our heads covered in black bags as we are without them. We would feel silly, but that’s all.

In the photo, I have an English speaker waving his hands around, with a silly grin on his face. As we assume he speaks English, he’s fine. If you saw a public speaker in Finland speaking Finnish doing the same thing, we’d be thinking “what a complete wanker” and would probably not believe a word he said. And probably, the English speaking need exactly that to trust him.

The English speaking, when posting online, are probably thinking a lot more about who is going to read their post. The possibility to be misunderstood is far greater. Essentially, they are speaking to the whole world, to a host of different countries and nationalities, cultures they might not even know about. It puts a fair bit of pressure on you if you start thinking about it too much. Then, of course, they keep telling us that 90% of communication is non-verbal. When you’re not used to relying on people’s words alone, you can feel like you’re walking on thin ice with people you can’t see. Maybe that has been my problem when dealing with the English speaking, maybe they need a lot more reassurance of your character and intentions than the Finns do. I probably can’t use the same template dealing with the English speaking as I do with Finns.

What do you think, especially if you have experience in both nationalities, not only when running online communities, but also chatting with them, tweeting and that.

I have been an advertiser on the Project Wonderful for quite some time, always relying on the square 125×125 standard advert, out of sheer laziness, really. I had one created for EntreCard and thought to stick one on Project Wonderful too. (Not much to loose, you know.) Then I started thinking… There are probably a lot of people like me, and the other ad boxes that must be out there go virtually unused… AND unpaid. So, I decided to create a version of my ad in all available sizes. The ad design is very similar, and the variation in textual message is minimal regardless of the size of the ad.

I realised that the standard 125×125 advert will cost me more to run, because the competition is higher, but on the flip side there’s a lot more sites to advertise on, so I kept it in the game anyway. (Besides, with PW rates, who cares?) To my surprise, the smallest of ads, the button, performed best. How odd is that? The button, based on my results, brings in 1/3 more visitors compared to the square 125×125 ad, maybe because it’s so small it doesn’t look like a paid ad but something the page author recommends. (I remember reading a blog entry along these same lines saying the same about the button ad, but to the life of me I can’t find it anymore to link to it.)

As an experiment, I spent 6 dollars on Project Wonderful and 6 dollars on Facebook advertising. Even though I created a highly targeted campaign on Facebook, the cost per click is as high as $0.16 (again using a version of the same ad showing only to people who mention “Barbie” on their profile or are fans of an official Barbie collectors page). On Project Wonderful, I ran a very untargeted campaign, showing the ads where ever I could get them for 0.01 dollars, and as a result I got about double the clicks and paid on average from $0.001 to $0.02 per click depending on the size of the ad. (The cheapest being the massive rectangle ad, and the most expensive a shared position between the 125 square and the full banner.)

Of course, there might be a situation where Project Wonderful simply doesn’t work for you because your genre isn’t on the whole network. I have found only one other site running PW ads that is about Barbie, but I am lucky in a way that my topic is a fashion icon, and everyone knows her already. I can also run the ad on craft sites, and chances are there’s a Barbie collector there who sees the ad. Also, I know that people who are into crafts can be curious about Barbie, so even if they’re not collectors yet, my site might coax them into it..! I know similar things have happened when I’ve been interviewed on the telly or magazines about Barbie stuff, and someone, who hadn’t even THOUGHT about collecting before got inspired to see what it was all about and are now active members of the community. That is why you don’t always want to put in highly targeted ads to people who may already have a routine in the niche, they might have their favourite blogging tips site that they visit every day and they don’t have the need for your tips.

Then, once the clicks are in, it’s up to you to keep them coming back. Make sure they know instantly what your site is about… And don’t do it like I did with broken links on the front page!!

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