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Yea so I’m referencing a Coke commercial, shut up. NBB isn’t quite at its two month birthday yet, but I thought I’d celebrate anyway by sharing some love with some of the folks who have contributed to its success so far.

Nate @ Infinfx

For about a month after NBB launched the site was crashing pretty bad everytime it got Dugg. It was going down even before articles got 100 Diggs. Many of my stories got buried as a result. I was using iPowerWeb and lost out on a ton of traffic because of it. I started asking around for some better hosting solutions. This site isn’t getting the amount of uniques to warrant its own dedicated server, but I really needed it to withstand the spike traffic. There’s where Nate came in.

Nate was able to give me a great deal on hosting on his dedicated server through his company Infinfx. Since I switched to Nate’s server the site hasn’t crashed once and has withstood 3 Diggs - all for what I was paying for before. Nate is also responsible for fixing the obnoxious comment line break bug! Lets give him a big hand.

Top Commenters

A blog isn’t nearly as fun if you don’t get much feedback in the form of comments. So thanks to Scott, Jane, Nate, Derrich, Allen, John, Raghu, Collis, Ajith, and Radu for giving me so many comments over this last month. I appreciate everything every reader has to say, and I love to see so much activity on such a young blog.

Bryan Le and John Chow for their Reviews

Bryan and John both reviewed my blog this month. They did a lot of research and gave me some great comments. I love hearing what other people in the industry think about my blog, especially successful people such as these two. I’d also like to thank John for letting me guest blog with him (in our little switcheroo) a couple days ago.

If anyone else wants to review this blog I’d be more than happy to give you a hardy link back in the next love-share post I do!

And Finally the Diggers, Deliciousers, MyBlogLoggers, and Stumblers

A lot of people whine that these sites don’t create return or quality visitors. I, however, have to give the credit for the majority of my success over the last month to these sites. My content has reached audiences that I couldn’t have began to target with my limited resources. Sure the 20k or so uniques Digg sends my way every week or so doesn’t stick 100%, but a lot of Diggers actually do find their way back here. Same goes for the other sites mentioned. I really appreciate everyone who finds my content to be good enough to bookmark, Digg, etc.

I hope this blog can continue to grow at the pace it has so far and that I’ll have plenty more love to give out next month.

When I explained this new MLM program in What the Hell is AGLOCO? I tried to be somewhat objective - whether I succeeded or not is up to you. I’m going to go ahead and warn you, however, that this post is going to be entirely my opinion as it relates to some comments I’ve seen across multiple blogs over the last week or two.

Argument 1: The Average AGLOCO User Won’t Make Much Money

I’ve seen this one being used by far the most out of any other anti-AGLOCO argument. Unfortunately it’s true. The average AGLOCO user won’t make much money. Here’s an excerpt from Shoemoney’s post on the subject:

Well AllAdvantage (the former company) had over 10 million members and paid out over 120 million dollars to it’s members. So at best the average person made $12 ?? And some people are claiming they were making 5-6 figures from AllAdvantage which means the average user probably is only going to make a dollar or 2….. at best… per year….

To which I replied:

To say it’s worthless because only a few people will be banking on it doesn’t really make any sense to me.

How many Adsense publishers make what you do?
How many Azoogle affiliates make what you do?
How many CJ publishers make what you do/did?

Sure a limited amount of people will be making the real money with AGLOCO (just like AllAdvantage) but is that different with any other earning avenue on the net? No.

Shoe didn’t give me a response, but I don’t think it’s because he was ignoring my point; I think it was because this post came just before all that MBL drama you’ve been reading about and he just didn’t get around to it. Just in case my point isn’t clear, I’m arguing that with anything online (and offline too) there is going to be a very small amount of people really exploiting any given industry.

Lets take Adsense for example. Markus Frind of PlentyOfFish.com earns at least $300,000 per month from Adsense alone according to John’s Google Whores post. I don’t know about you guys, but that’s a whole hell of a lot more than what I’m pulling in through Adsense. Does that completely discredit Adsense as a potential source of revenue? No, it doesn’t.

Argument 2 - Even Industry “Big Players” Are Staying Away From It

I saw a comment about this in John’s most recent AGLOCO post (6,000 signups) and have also seen it on a couple forums, IRC, and IM as well. It’s true a couple A-listers (gogo gogo) have expressed their doubts or outright disapproval of AGLOCO. That’s fine. These guys have taken what little knowledge they have on the subject (none of us have any real knowledge on AGLOCO at this point) and formed their own opinion. At the same time a lot of A-listers have also shown big support for AGLOCO. How do you pick and choose which A-lister to believe when (no offense) many of these guys didn’t even have names for themselves when the AA craze was at its peak?

I’m not saying the “big players” should be discredited, but when did *opinions* of these guys become the Word? I’ll go ahead and clue you in on something: the “big players” know as much about AGLOCO as you do. Use your brain. Come to your own conclusion. I’m not saying you shouldn’t listen to the opinions of others - that would be dumb of me - but what I am saying is to not take every word they speak as truth. At the end of the day it’s still opinion. It might be an educated opinion, but it’s still an opinion.

• Join AGLOCO and start building your network today

Argument 3 - AllAdvantage Went Under and So Will AGLOCO

Okay now this is just an argument spoken out of ignorance. Yes AGLOCO will run ads on your PC just like AllAdvantage did, but the business model is completely different. AGLOCO isn’t paying flat rates (as AllAdvantage did) for hours surfed. AGLOCO is going to pay in proportion to the amount of income they receive. Don’t take my word for it, read the terms that are posted on their website. Please read these terms in their entirety before comparing AGLOCO’s model to AllAdvantage.

Argument 4 - AllAdvantage Didn’t Pay Anyone

That’s simply not true. John made $25,000. What’s that you say? They paid John but not the little guys? That’s a lie too. Hell even my roommate who was one of the 0 referral fellas got a check. I don’t really even know what to say about this one other than the fact that people *did* get paid from AllAdvantage. Yes AllAdvantage went under (but so did a lot of other companies, remember?) but the users didn’t lose money. It’s untrue.

Argument 5 - AGLOCO Will Not Make Money Online! Ever!

Kumiko got a lot of link love for her post AGLOCO Will Not Make Money Online! Ever! She got so much attention in fact, that I’ve decided to dedicate a whole section of this post to hers!

1) Multi-level Marketing at its Worst
Kumiko claims AGLOCO is MLM at its worst. It’s true AGLOCO is multi-level marketing, but it’s far from a “pyramid (scheme)” as she puts it. With AGLOCO there’s no buy-in. There’s absolutely no way you can lose money. You might not make much if you don’t spend some real time promoting the service and building referrals, but it’s not a scam unless you risk actually *losing* money. You won’t lose money with AGLOCO. It’s not a scam like many other MLM programs.

2) Internet Advertising Market is Saturated
What market isn’t saturated? The only hurdle for internet advertising is to get the ads in front of visitors. The saturation doesn’t mean a damn thing as long as AGLOCO puts ads in front of people’s faces. It will do that with the viewbar. Why? Because they’re paying people for it. Kumiko also mentions “ad blindness”. Although she has no real data to support her claim, I would have to agree that certain demographics do have “ad blindness”. Unfortunately AGLOCO will target many of these people because you have to have at least some level of tech-savvyness (I’m sure that’s not a word, but I’m using it anyway) to use the viewbar. Will this affect it? I doubt it. I’m sure people will still click on ads that are relevant to their search patterns and even purchase products through it. Targeted ads generate leads and sales no matter what the demographic. The only thing that this may hurt is in the payout amount. The pay for end users may be smaller if “ad blindness” really is a problem, but it won’t eliminate it altogether.

3) It Failed Before and It Will Fail Again
See Argument 3 and 4.

4) Do the “Maths”
See Argument 1.

5) Don’t Believe the Hype
Apparantly a Stanford MBA is worthless because Kenneth Lay was an asshole. Point?

I’m not sure why this post of Kumiko’s got so much love across the blogosphere, but I just felt I needed to dispel some of the myths she was keeping alive and arguing (with little to no support).

Conclusion

I’m not here to tell you that AGLOCO will succeed overnight, make you millions, and let you retire before you’re 30. But who’s to say it won’t? The fact of the matter is this is all still really new to everyone. Yea AllAdvantage existed before, but this is radically different in so many ways. It’s idiotic to cast AGLOCO aside because AA went under or because most MLM programs *are* in fact scams. Why not give it the benefit of the doubt? Build your network now while the competition is still relatively low. If it doesn’t work it doesn’t work. You lost no money. Your friends might poke fun at you, but who cares? If it does work you’re making money.

• Join AGLOCO and start building your network today

Mark at 45n5 emailed me last week about an interesting post he made on his blog. He addresses the issue of the pre-post gameplan and bases it off of a quote from Gray

“Content without promotion is like locking William Shakespeare in a closet to write for you, you’ll have great novels that no one will ever know about or read.”

I think this is one of the most overlooked aspects of blogging. Many new (and yes even experienced) bloggers think that if they just put content out there then people will find it. It’s true that it is much easier to promote a new blog than it is to promote a new website, but if you’re doing absolutely nothing to promote your content then you’re probably not going to get much out of your blog in terms of reach. You have to be willing to actively promote the content on your blog that you think is particularly good.

Letting Other Bloggers Know You Exist

I touched on this a little bit in my post: Little Known Link-building Secret - Being Friendly in which I talked about the simple method of networking with other bloggers in your content area and how beneficial that is. Mark gives a great list of ways to “pitch” your posts to other bloggers in an aggressive but non-spammy way.

Emailing industry friends with new posts should only be done when you think you have a particularly good article in my opinion. You don’t want to get the reputation of being that spammy guy who lets people know everytime you make a post. However, if you moderate yourself and pick and choose which content to introduce to other bloggers you’ll more often than not get a positive response.

When Should I Post?

This is another big question to take into consideration when building your pre-post gameplan. This varies from niche to niche as well as the specific type of blog you’re running (editorial, news, tutorials, etc). I’ll go ahead and drop a big secret of mine: I post when I think of something interesting to write about. Could I get more out of my posts if I posted at different times? Probably. Quite honestly, however, it’s just hard for me to find the time to pick and choose when I want to post. That’s not to say that researching the best posting times isn’t worthwhile.

One thing I’ve definitely noticed is that posting my “Digg-worthy” articles late at night tends to get them frontpaged around noon EST the next day. That is when getting frontpaged is most beneficial because there is less competition than during the evening and that is when Digg’s traffic is really starting to pick up.

Should Every Post Have a Pre-post Gameplan?

Mark says they should, but I’m not so sure. Practice does make perfect, but I think there is a point in everything where it just becomes overkill. Once you have your niche figured out, the “A-list” bloggers targeted, and a decent network of friends in the industry all that’s left is to write content worth promoting.

Hey! What Happen To Matt?

Hello, John Chow is here. Matt is gone. I have taken over Net Business Blog. However, do not worry. Matt will be back soon (maybe as soon as later tonight). In mean time, I have decided to do a guest post for him on the benefits of guest blogging. Why would I do this for Matt? Because I am such a nice evil guy, and because Matt is doing a guest post for me on my blog.

How Can Guest Blogging Help Me

Being a guest blogger has many benefits. The first is you expose yourself in front of a brand new reader base, who may not know who you are. This presents an ideal opportunity to give your blog a plug (visit John Chow dot Com now!). This can really help your blog traffic if you guest blog at a blog that is much bigger than the blog you run.

Being a guest blogger can give you more creditability, especially if you guest blog with a well-known, high traffic blog. Not only will you be better known, but your blog posts will be read by a lot more people and if they like what they read, they’ll more than likely check out your blog. Unless sated otherwise, all guest bloggers are allowed to link to their home blog in a guest post.

Guest blogging present a nice change of scenery. While Net Business Blog and John Chow dot Com both blog about making money online, I could guest blog at a blog that is in a completely different industry for a nice change of pace. I’m sure there’s a few food blogs out there that wants me to review some restaurants for them.

BTW - For those asking why I write about my dining out experiences, the answer is, “If I write about it, then it becomes a business expense – that makes the entire dinner tax deductible.”
Evil at work. :)

Being a guest blogger could lead to a paid blogging position. After Tony Hung guest blogged for Problogger.net for a week, Darren offered Tony a position to blog for Problogger every Thursday. Right now, Matt is guest blogging at my blog. Depending on how the readership responds to him, I may offer him the same type of deal.

Why You Should Have Guest Bloggers

If you are going away for a few days and do not have time to update your blog, then you should consider hiring a guest blogger. Nothing kills traffic faster than zero updates. Net Business Blog will do over 100,000 page views this month. It grew this fast because of a constant stream of high quality content. If Matt were to take a week off and not update the blog, all the growth he generated would stop dead in its tracks. This is where the guest blogger comes in.

The biggest problem is finding a guest blogger that meets your quality level. The best way to do that is by visiting blogs that you like and asking the owners if he or she would like to do a few guest posts on your blog. The problem with this technique is your blog has to be a decent size in order to be attractive enough for the guest blogger to take the offer. You can always toss in some cash to sweeten the deal.

There are a few blogs that I really enjoy reading because I can tell the blogger put a lot of effort into their posts. I would hire Jane May at Career Ramblings on the spot. The same goes for Jennifer Lynn of Broke-Ass Student.

You can also try a blog exchange like what Matt and I did. It’s a lot of fun and gives your readers a fresh view point on the issues. If you foresee yourself going away in the future, then now would be the time to line up the guest bloggers. You do not want to do it the day before you board the plane to Maui. Moreover, if your blog’s a moneymakers, then you cannot afford not to keep the blog updated while you’re gone.

Guest blogging can be both fun and rewarding. I recommend you give it a try.

A lot of people have been asking me lately how I price my website design services. A lot of people think there’s a formula to use (time + experience - overhead = rate) but that’s too restrictive. Others raise their rates little by little until they start to see a drop in client interest and then slowly level it out to find the optimal price for their particular service(s). I’ve got something much easier. It’s an all-inclusive checklist, and it’s the only reference you’ll ever need to price your web design services.

1) Start with a base value of $30 - Here’s an example of a $30 design.
2) Add $10 if it’s for a clan - Making clan templates is the first step to going pro.
3) Add $20 if it’s for a blog - Blogs are in.
4) Add $30 if it’s for a forum - Forums are inner.
5) Add $50 if it’s for an eCommerce site - eCommerce sites are innest.
6) Add $10 for every random vector you include - You can steal them from deviantArt if you can’t make your own.
7) Add $5 for every gradient in the design - Gradients are cool now.
8) Add $5 for everytime you use outer glow - Check out Windows Vista for outer glows in action!
9) Add $5 for everytime you use drop shadow - Check out Windows Vista for drop shadows in action!
10) Add $15 if they need a custom logo - You can use this totally not made for Adsense site to learn more about making custom logos.
11) Add $5 if they need a mascot - Just Google image search pandas or something and charge them for it.
12) Add $25 if they need it coded - Then hire a teenager to do it for you.
13) Add $1,000 to make it “Web 2.0″ - Just add a lot of white space and use pink as the main color.
14) Add $5,000 if the client asks you what “Photoshop” is - The ignorant pay more.

There you go. Just roll down this checklist everytime you have a new client contact you about a job.

Eli has posted up an article on Blue Hat SEO on how to deal with pesky hotlinkers. This is a great solution to the problem inherent in optimizing your images for SEO traffic.

MyBlogLog apologizes to Shoemoney for banning him for giving out information gathered through an exploit. I wonder if Shoemoney will apologize for “ddn”s sensationalist post that accuses MBL of hiding their ad clicking script despite the fact that they display it publically and actually use it as a main selling point for MyBlogLog pro? Shoe, I understand you hate JZ, being banned, and Yahoo! in general, but letting your staff spread lies about MBL trying to cover up their ad click script is a little uncalled for, don’t you think?

Allen gives us 3 ways to expand our potential readerbase, and it’s stuff you actually may have not heard about before!

Matt has started a blog about blogging that shares money with commenters. There’s some good posts, and since contributors get paid, why not give it a shot?

I saw this blog earlier this week. J.R. plans to earn $1 million by the end of 2007 and give it all to his readers. Ambitious and deliciously generous.

Shoemoney just reported another potential problem with MyBlogLog (following a number of exploit posts which led to some drama). This time they say MyBlogLog is tracking your Adsense and YPN stats and possibly showing this private information to third parties. If you want to read his technical analysis you can visit his post or see this video.

I’ve said it time and time again: I’m a tech idiot. I barely know what all of that script stuff is. What I do know, however, is that in my MyBlogLog Pro account (that Eric hooked me up with, thx Eric) all of my Adsense clicks are counted *and* displayed for me to see as “outgoing links”. I can even sort by Ads. Here’s a screenshot:

Could this be a potential justified reason for MyBlogLog tracking Adsense and YPN clicks? Did they implement this planning on adding all ad networks in the future? I don’t know. Like I said, all this techno mumbo-jumbo is over my head. Maybe that means I’m completely off base, and that might be true. I’m just not so sure if this is a secret plot by MyBlogLog (and Yahoo!) to acquire ad click information or if it’s just a half-finished ad statistics tracker for MyBlogLog Pro.

Anybody have any ideas? Is this another problem with MyBlogLog or a legitimate tracking code?

Nothing is ever black and white, but for the most part I think every blog can be broken down into education, entertainment, or both. Educational blogs teach you something that you can use later in a practical way. Entertainment blogs usually just invoke an emotion; they make you happy, sad, angry, or a combination of emotions depending on the content. Many blogs provide a healthy combination of these two methods. So which is the best strategy to use: education or entertainment?

Entertainment blogs (or individual posts) are typically very easy to market. People like being entertained, and it’s fairly easy to do. If you make a wise crack at a group or figure that the majority of your demographic dislikes you’re likely to gain instant praise. Post a video of somebody falling down and you’re likely to get a ton of backlinks (who doesn’t like seeing someone fall down?). Entertainment posts also become viral very easily. If you succeed in entertaining your audience they’ll reward you by spamming their friends to go see the same thing. YouTube is a perfect example of this. All of the top YouTube videos are entertainment videos. Sure there are some educational ones high on the list, but the majority of them are funny, weird, or extreme. People like being entertained.

Educational posts have their benefits as well. If you have a solid blog filled to the brim with hardy information then people will be persuaded to revisit it. Posts such as these also win over respect from fellow bloggers in your respective industry. This adds to your reputation (which means a hell of a lot online) and will more often than not give you some sexy backlinks as well. The main downfall of educational blogs is that not only do you have to target people who want to be educated, which is a far smaller number than that of people who just want to be entertained, but you then have to succeed in educating them - giving them something new, everytime. It’s much easier to entertain than to educate.

Which is a More Successful Strategy?

As with just about everything in life the best method is to use a healthy mix of both educational and entertaining posts in your blog. With this blog I try to squeeze in the random cheap laugh in between my long, thought-out posts. Check out my Top 10 Worst Internet Marketing Videos Ever post, or 8 Reasons Why the Masses Love Lists. Both of those stories were Dugg and received a huge amount of traffic, but by being surrounded by educational posts, I believe I was able to retain more repeat visitors than I would if I had only entertained.

There are some industries where entertainment alone works. Just check out Perez Hilton, the top celebrity banter blog on the net. This guy makes a living doing nothing more than gossiping about celebrities. There’s little education to be found in that, yet his blog is ranked in the Top 50 Technorati. That’s a feat.

Know Your Audience

What it all boils down to is knowing your audience. If you’re targeting a bunch of gossip-hungry teenagers then you can probably get by just giving them the garbage they need to feed on day in and day out. If you’re competing against a bunch of online business experts, you probably need to provide a bit more than a “Who’s Sexier: Shoemoney or John Chow” post. Although now that I think about it that may be a good writeup. But I digress.

At the end of the day you just need to do some trial and error. You can research until you’re blue in the face about what should work, what won’t work, etc. But it will come down to what you find out personally works the best for your blog and your niche. For most blogs, however, it will be best to mix education and entertainment to keep your audience interested and happy.

Someone over at Digg pointed this video out to me early today on the 5 Blogging Tips That Work Digg page. This is a hilarious video. It looks like a long lost episode of The Office.

Darren got my neurons flowing earlier with his latest post on how important .com and .net domains are. Rather than just saying “.com is best” he posed some really thought-provoking questions, and I thought I’d give my personal responses to them here for everyone to read. I’d also like to hear what some of my readers think about them.

Are .com And .net The Best?

The .com extension is by far the king domain - if you are in any situation where you can choose between .com and any other extension it’s a no-brainer, go with the .com. Why you ask? I’ll explain with a sexy bulleted list:

• People are used to .com’s. Try having a conversation with someone who’s not so web-savvy about what they think about domains. More often than not you’ll get a response similar to “you mean dot com’s?” People recognize .com as domains over anything else, .net, .org, .co.uk, and especially ccTLDs.
• Usually .com is the first thing people try when they try to revisit a site they saw earlier. You know you’ve done it, we all have. You visit a site, you think you remember the name of it, so you type in “somename.com”. Then if it takes you to something you don’t remember THAT’s when you Google it.
• .com’s get the most type-ins, period. For the reasons listed above more people are likely to type in “[keyword].com” over any other extension.

So there’s no doubt in my mind that .com is always the way to go. But what about .net? I would put .net on the same level as .org and possibly .co.uk (just because there’s so many UK-based web users and the stress they put on the .co.uk extension over there).

When is it OK not to go with Them?

I would say always go with .com when you get the chance. Even if you’re setting up a non-profit organization (which most people associate with .org) I would suggest getting the .com and simply redirecting it to the .org. If you absolutely have to have a keyword that has already been registered as a .com but is available in another extension you might can make it work. But I would always suggest branding your logo and site name with the extension included (if it’s not a .com). Just to make sure people know what the URL is.

Another time using a less desireable extension can work is if you’re doing a niche minisite or abitrage site. Domain extensions matter, but much less when doing these types of sites.

What’s More Important to You? SEO or Branding?

That’s an extremely tough question to answer. I’m a big fan of finding SEO-friendly domains, but I appreciate the brandability factor as well; after all, it’s an important part of domain valuation. Let’s take this site for example. When I was looking for a name for this blog I was actually going for brandability over SEO, but I was able to find something that landed somewhere in between. “Net Business” comes up a fair amount in searching and is starting to get me some targeted organic traffic. At the same time, what the hell does Shoemoney have to do with SEO or the business industry? Nothing, yet his content and blogging personality has built him an undeniable following.

At the end of the day it’s the content that makes the most difference. If you can grab an SEO-friendly domain, that’s good, but it’s not the end of the world.

I hope you guys didn’t mind my random domaining rant too much. I’d really like to hear what my readers have to say about these topics as well, so leave a comment if you have time. You can also sound off at Darren’s thread.