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I got another Sponsored Reviews request today. This one is for My Live Signature, a web service that allows users create a professional but personal “signature” online. It is mostly intended to make your email correspondence more personal.

MyLiveSignature offers the services of creating and animating personal signatures. You can use it to easily create your own signature using a set of templates or to allow our designers to create your signature based on a scanned image. At the same time, our animators will give you the true impression that you sign your message with your own hand in real time.

Such signatures will allow you to easily and quickly breathe the energy of your personal presence into email messages, blogs, forums and websites and also they will serve as a pleasant present for your friends and relatives.

Ignoring the poor site design (which really doesn’t add to its credibility), the first thing that struck me was “How are these guys making money?” When I come across a “service” this is always one of the first things I ask because if it isn’t obvious how they’re monetizing their service, there is a chance it could be a scam. I also knew that they had to be earning an income because one of the first things I saw was “Affiliates” at the bottom. After reading more about My Live Signature and actually signing up for an account, I don’t think this site is a scam. First impressions, however, make a world of difference. I definitely suggest the guys at My Live Signature be more up front about the potential cost of the service right up front with the service description.

What they do is offer a free unanimated signature to anyone who wants to register (also free). You then have the option of purchasing an animated signature which is where they make their money.

Another thing you can do is get My Live Signature’s designers “to create your signature based on a scanned image”. This was another thing that put me off. Maybe I’m a little too paranoid, but I get taken a back a little bit when someone asks me to submit a scanned image of my signature.

Another thing I was curious about was exactly how large the animated signature niche was. How many people are actually searching for an online signature tool? I’m not sure, but from some searching I did on SEO Book it’s a fairly specific niche.

I have no idea, however, how much MLS is actually earning through their animated signature process or how many visitors enter their site through other search terms. At the end of the day the service looks really solid. The design could use a bit of a face lift, not due to its functionality but because it just isn’t as professional as it should be considering they’re expecting users to invest their money in it. As I also said before I really think MLS could build more trust for its service by being more up-front about the paid service. I think in the end it would convert into more money because more people would be willing to signup without really wondering how this company earns revenue. I saw nothing wrong with the actual service. The only thing I really suggest is that the company works harder to build trust before pushing their users to spend money at their site.

Sponsored by: My Live Signature

Popularity: 14% [?]

Popularity: 14% [?]

Jon’s recent E-Book crusade got me thinking about the whole question of whether or not E-Books are overall good, bad, or on a case-by-case basis. I don’t think Jon actually comes across and says that all E-Books are bad, but one would certainly get that impression from the way he talks about the E-Book industry. On the flip side you have the “warriors” who live and die by the E-Book and the success they claim it brings. Who is right?

I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. There are good E-Books out there, but unforunately there are more bad E-Books. Also, it seems to me that the majority of online earning E-Books focus on either selling more E-Books (how ironic is that?) or making a “killing” with Adsense. Not that you can’t do either, but there really isn’t a secret to it. If you want to make a killing selling E-Books then find 100 gullible bastards like yourself and pitch the same old pitch. If you want to make a killing with Adsense create a good site and put ads on it. Rocket science right? Anyways, back to the point…

E-Books, at least in the context of the online earning market, seem to take on two forms: 1) those promising instant, overnight success and 2) those providing actual information. If you come across an upsell page that *promises* instant and absolute success upon finishing their E-Book, then they’re lying - plain and simple. Nobody can promise success. On the other side, there are plenty of E-Books out there that may promise “enhancements” to your online business after finishing the E-Book and actually provide quality information.

The trick is to weed out the “get rich quick” schemes from the books giving out solid information. Sometimes this area gets a little gray, and there is little more you can do to distinguish the good from the bad aside from just reading the reviews. Your best weapon against lame E-Books is Google. Just do a simple search for the E-Book + reviews. If it’s lame then you’ll know immediately. If it’s not lame, new, or borderline lame then it might be a bit tougher and you’ll have to dig a bit deeper. But hey, it’s a start.

Why Pay for Information?

At the end of the day, you can almost certainly find any information in an E-Book available for free somewhere on the internet. That leaves many asking “why pay for information when I can get it for free?” Well there is certainly something to be said for having a grouping of specific information organized in a manner that is very easy to read and flows nicely. Also, some E-Books have information that would take you weeks, months, even years to accrue on your own just due to the sheer size of the niche. Not to mention the fact that there is a lot of knowledge out there that you just plain don’t know you should be looking for. Sure you might can learn everything there is to know about affiliate marketing without payiing a dime, but if you have no idea what to search for (CPA, CPC, ROI, etc) then how will you ever learn it? There might be some good general affiliate marketing articles out there, but you’ll have a hard time finding a free article as in depth as some of the better E-Books.

Long Story Short

If you come across an E-Book that promises you instant success, turn around and don’t look back. If you come across an E-Book that claims it can increase your income, do some research - find product reviews, blog posts, etc. Be sure to note the sources and motivation (paid post, littered with affiliate ads, etc). But do not discredit all E-Books; you might miss out on some valuable information.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Popularity: 4% [?]

Just about every webmaster today uses an instant messaging program, posts on forums, and/or comments on blogs in their industry. From what I’ve seen it looks like most people use their names - “Matt” “MattC” “MCoddington” etc. I, however, still use a nerdy little handle: feros. It’s something I do out of habit since the beginning of my online existence I’ve used a handle instead of my real name. So my question to you guys is, are handles unprofessional?

I post on a ton of web development forums from Digital Point to Wicked Fire and use my handle on all of them. I’ve wondered once or twice if there are people on thos boards that take me less seriously than other members who might not have much more to say than me but have a more “professional” username (ie. their real name or a variation of it).

I use these forums often for acquiring web development work - is it possible that I’m losing out on potential customers who see my handle, assume I’m a 12 year old, and ignore me?

Looking around at some of the more successful online developers the only other guy I know who uses a handle/nickname instead of his actual name is Shoemoney. I don’t think that anyone could argue that he is any less famous for using a handle instead of his actual name online. He’s even gone further and branded his entire web presence around it, including the little Shoemoney superman logo. However, after searching for a while (I haven’t searched my fingers to the bone, but I’ve done a bit) he’s the only really popular guy I’ve found who uses a handle.

What do you guys think? Are handles lame? Are they unprofessional?

Popularity: 4% [?]

Popularity: 4% [?]

Josh over at Tutorial a Day just put up an interview with me. It’s some pretty basic stuff but a good read overall. We talk mostly about blogging, and NBB specifically.

Tony is doing epic battle with Calcanis over whether or not the “A-list” exists in blogging. In my opinion it’s a ridiculous argument to suggest that the A-list doesn’t exist. I don’t personally read Jason’s blog, but I’ve seen it mentioned more times than I can count. Jason saying the blogging A-list doesn’t exist comes across to me like a pro athlete saying professional sports is a joke and that anybody can do it if they want. To make the A-list takes time, motivation, persistence, a little luck, and certain personality traits that not everyone has. There’s a couple good comments over at Jim’s blog too - sorry Jim, I usually agree with you (except for that BlogKits thing), but I’m 100% behind Tony on this one.

Tyler talks about the business of luck. I definitely agree that the are points in our life where we are presented with good luck (and bad luck) but it doesn’t stop there. It all depends on what you do with that good fortune - you have to act on it.

Is Shoemoney a fake? Do you know for sure? Do you really care? I don’t really think Shoemoney is a fake, but it’s a fun read nonetheless.

Terry over at Kineda just released Blog Fight! It uses inbound blog links collected by Technorati to determine the winners. Unfortunately Technorati is a joke. A fun use of a couple minutes anyway!

Popularity: 4% [?]

Popularity: 4% [?]

People put way too much stock in Technorati. In theory this is a great service - it ranks all the blogs on the web according to the amount of love (links) from other blogs they get. Unfortunately in its current state it is about as reliable as asking my drunk uncle Ted which blogs he thinks are the best on the web. Let me show you why.

Lets compare the Technorati ranking of Net Business Blog (which averages ~1500 uniques per day and ~1000 feed readers per day) with the ranking of my personal blog, MattCoddington.com (which averages ~100 uniques per day and ~50 feed readers per day):

How does my personal blog outrank this much higher traffic blog?

1) I have a sitewide text link on John Chow dot com - I exchanged blogroll links with John long before he started his blogging experiment. So when his blog got big I still had a link on his blog which really gave me some SE juice. But it honestly didn’t increase my Technorati ranking all that much. This is because Technorati doesn’t defaulty register each and every page on John’s site that included a linkback to my site (which was 100% of them).

2) Someone has been pinging the hell out of John’s blog recently - There is a simple Technorati trick that allows you to ping every URL that links to your site directly to Technorati, thus making it count in their database, thus adding a link to your ranking, thus increasing your overall position. So whoever went crazy and pinged every single page on John Chow’s blog not only increased their own ranking, but mine as well since I had a sitewide link on John’s blog.

A couple other people have benefited from this John Chow pingfest: Tyler Cruz, Career Ramblings, David Lithman, and Jon Waraas to name a few. Not to say some of these blogs wouldn’t be able to generate a decent ranking by themselves, but they certainly aren’t the top (traffic-wise) couple thousand blogs on the internet.

How Can Technorati Fix This?

I see two possible solutions:

1) One solution for this obvious exploit is for Technorati to count each and every linkback to every site period. I know they want to keep it exclusive to blogs, but if they can’t find a better way to filter out what is a blog and what isn’t (just the ping effect currently) then the system is completely pointless.

2) Count *all* links from blog to blog within the Technorati database.

In any case, they certainly need to update their system so that at the end of the day it counts *ALL* links, period. If they continue to only count some links then people will still be able to exploit it using these simple ping techniques.

Technorati in its current state is worthless and should not be taken seriously by anybody. Anyone who manages to get a sitewide link on a decent-sized blog can easily go from obscurity to the top 5k overnight. Not to mention if any popular blog finds out how to use this trick and decides to implement it. It could very easily be the push from a 2k ranked blog to a top 100 blog.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Popularity: 5% [?]

I introduced my case study last week, and things already have not been going as planned. I suppose it’s sort of a good thing though because in reality few things ever go exactly how you want them, and one of the things that separates the successful from the non-successful is how they deal with the setbacks.

The Domain - $8/yr

I got the domain registered (it’s a .com) but have decided not to announce it at this point. It honestly wouldn’t be all that hard for someone to figure out what it is since I’m not going to be actively hiding it. If you really take the time out of your day you should be able to find it pretty easily, but just to keep NBB’s mainstream readership from contributing too much to the new blog’s traffic I’m not going to publicly announce it here.

The Design/Coding - $300

I found a great designer for my rock and roll blog whose style fit exactly what I wanted. I contacted him and spoke with him last Friday. He told me that he would be done about a day after payment even though it was the weekend. I thought to myself “Great! I can have the theme installed by Sunday and start working on content!” Wrong. After depositing 50% ($125) for the design the designer vanished. I have emailed him a few times and have sent him IM’s everyday. Jon even volunteered to get on him a little bit, but the designer continued to ignore me and *pretended* that he wasn’t able to get in contact with me. So after a few days it became apparant to me that he had no intention of finishing the design (at least in the timeframe I required), so I did the job myself. It came out alright despite the fact that I really wanted this other guy’s style for this site.

I finished the design myself Wednesday and sent it off to the coder who advertises that he finishes all templates in “24 hours”. Granted this coder owed me a design or two for free, but I still expect advertised quality and speed for a free job. I just got the coded design in my inbox yesterday. Today is St. Patty’s so this is about the extent of the work I’m going to do today, so I will implement the theme into WP tomorrow.

The Hosting - $15/mo

Nate has agreed to host this case study for me for free! I really appreciated that offer and didn’t hesitate to accept it. I will, however, be factoring in a basic $15/mo hosting costs into the case study budget to keep it fair.

I setup the hosting the other day and am still waiting on the DNS to propagate. Hopefully that will be up 100% by Monday, and I can start posting to get some initial content before I start my promotion.

The Content

I spent all day today at a concert in downtown Columbia where Stretch Armstrong and Three Days Grace were playing among others ($10 tickets - yes I’m counting this as a site expense). There were a lot of awesome local bands as well. Seeing the local music scene lit up really motivated me to use live local promotion on this site as a serious marketing strategy. I’m going to be featuring local bands on hopefully a weekly basis and eventually plan to expand that across the nation.

Anyways, ranting aside, I don’t think I’m going to have a shortage of things to write about. Unfortunately I just can’t find the motivation to pre-write any content, so I can’t wait to get the site up 100% so I can start writing and get everything going.

I’m sorry I don’t really have anything concrete to show you guys this week, but that’s how the development stage goes. Getting the ball rolling on a new site/blog is the hardest step (for me at least), but once you get it moving it builds its own momentum and starts to really roll.

Next week I’m going to have a lot to talk about as far as initial promotion, so stay tuned Saturday readers!

Popularity: 4% [?]

Popularity: 4% [?]

Hey guys, just stopping in to let you know I’m going to have that case study update posted later today or very early tomorrow. Why the delay? It’s St. Patty’s Day! Go out and see some sunlight. Drink green beer. Pinch strangers. Take a break from the web!

Popularity: 4% [?]

Popularity: 4% [?]

A new story seems to have hit the mainstream media recently which talks about the recent release of McAfee Mal Web. The new program attempts to map out the most dangerous parts of the web by a couple (very limited) criteria. After fiddling with it for all of 2 minutes, I’ve decided it’s little more than another little gadget for not-so-savvy internet users and paranoid moms looking for more ways to shelter their kids. What are the most dangerous domains?

The World’s Riskiest Web Domains:
No. 1: Tokelau (.tk)
No. 2: Information (.info)
No. 3: Samoa (.ws)
No. 4: Romania (.ro)
No. 5: Commercial (.com)
No. 6: Business (.biz)
No. 7: Russia (.ru)
No. 8: Network (.net)
No. 9: Families and Individuals (.name)
No. 10: Slovakia (.sk) - Forbes

CNNMoney quoted the article but only focused in on the “large country domains”:

Everyone knows Russia isn’t exactly crime free, but here’s a tip: Even if you’re going to visit Russia online, you’d best travel with security. That’s just one tidbit from a report released today by McAfee (MFE), “Mapping the Mal Web,” which notes that “the two riskiest large country domains to visit are Romania (.ro) and Russia (.ru), while the two safest are Finland (.fi) and Ireland (.ie).” Nice to see Ireland in the headlines for being peaceful. - CNNMoney

I guess they were trying to directly relate online travel to real life travel? In any case, this list comes across to me as completely trivial. Are you going to block all .tk domains after reading this? No. Is there going to be any brand new content filtering software that takes this list seriously? No. Overall it’s just a toy.

So why did it make the news again? Who knows, but hell I’m writing about it so there has to be something appealing here!

Popularity: 10% [?]

Popularity: 10% [?]

I first came across Dream in Code when I heard it on one of the earliest Won Li Do Sho’s when Chris (the owner) did a phone interview about how he manages the forum. Chris started guest blogging on ForumTrends about the same time and made a lot of great posts on the basics of running a forum, keeping your staff happy, and other tid bits. He has definitely put theory into practice with Dream in Code, his programming forum for the last 6 years.

Dream in Code is a programming and web development community with 20,000 members. The site offers visitors free access to code snippets, tutorials, and forums. Members can ask programming questions and get answers from experts in many programming languages including: C/C++, Java, Visual Basic, PHP, ASP, .NET, ColdFusion, and more. Dream in Code just received a face lift and now offers visitorsfree programming magazines including Dr. Dobbs and Queue, as well asfree t-shirts to any member with 500+ posts. Members can alsoparticipate in a monthly drawing for a 1GB Thumb Drive.

One of the things I thought was really cool about this forum was that they are running member blogs. That in itself isn’t so unique as there are a ton of forums with member blogs, but the guys at Dream in Code actually have *interesting* blogs. There is also a ton of information available here that you might normally have to scour a few other sites to collect.

If I had to pick one thing to change about Dream in Code it would be the Adsense placement. I understand that Chris is trying to make as much off his blog as he can, but it is a real put-off for me when all I see on his site before the fold is a header and then Adsense.

Overall I have been impressed with what Chris has done with Dream in Code since I first saw it. I’m not much of a programmer myself, but I do understand enough of it to know a bad programming community from a good one. The guys over at Dream in Code are very friendly and willing to help out newcomers and experienced users alike. If you get a chance, I suggest you Chris and his board a visit.

Sponsored by: Dream in Code

Popularity: 3% [?]

Popularity: 3% [?]

I was reading a post by Andrew Wee the other day and made a note to write about it. His post is about the recent Top 6 Most Prolific Bloggers List by The Biz of Knowledge. The question he brings up, and is also being discussed at Weblog Tools Collection, is whether or not you can judge the quality of a blog (or even the amount of information it provides) based on its post count. After all, more is better right? Kinda, sorta, maybe not…

There is a not-so fine line between updating too little and updating too often. I think it’s pretty safe for most bloggers to update 1-3 times per day, especially if those posts are spread throughout the day. That is also assuming that the content is good. Another thing to keep in mind is that blogs lose popularity damn quick. If you stop updating, they’ll stop visiting. It’s as simple as that. So it’s not so much a thin line between too little and too much in my opinion, but you have to be aware of and willing to walk it.

Why Too Much Can Be Bad

From what little personal experience I have with using an RSS reader (I only used one for about a month then went back to good ol’ bookmarks) one of the easiest ways to get me to unsubscribe was to fill up my window with posts from the same blog. I’m backed up by some of the reader’s of Problogger. Darren asked his readers “What makes you unsubscribe from an RSS feed?” and a whopping 37 (the most responses) said too many posts. Do you need anymore proof than that?

Does this mean you shouldn’t post everyday or even a couple of times a day? I don’t think so. However, I do believe if you start posting 5, 10, or 20 times a day that you will lose readers. Personally, I don’t really count my posts per day. I obviously write at least one per day, but more often than not it’s 2-3 posts because I usually have something worthwhile to rant about. I try to keep the fluff at a minimum especially since that is one of the main selling points of my blog!

Maybe my next poll should be “what amount of daily posts is ideal?” Or would that be a lame poll? Maybe I should make a poll about how lame of a poll idea that is?

Popularity: 3% [?]

Popularity: 3% [?]