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As I dive deeper and deeper into this blog and as posts continue to pile up one problem keeps coming back to haunt me. It is a problem that exists for almost every webmaster, but I think it hurts bloggers the most.

Blogging’s biggest problem is that most of the best content gets lost on almost every blog out there.

Whether you are a small time blogger struggling to maintain your 50 feed subscribers or a big cat with 20,000 or so daily readers, you will almost certainly have to watch some of your best content fade off into the abiss only to be read by a handful of people. That is the nature of a blog. Blogs are in the moment, that is how they are designed. Sure there is an archive and just about every blog nowadays is sorted into categories. How often are those used though?

Do you check which pages are most visited on your blog? If you don’t you really should. And if you do I’m sure you’ve noticed that the vast majority of your archived stories go unread. As for NBB, the bulk of the stories I see people reading are frontpage stories and past stories that received major Diggs (thus resulting in repeat traffic from old del.icio.us accounts and other linkbacks that are a little slow).

There are a couple methods that I use to try to encourage my readers to visit older articles.

Post Roundups

If you’re a regular here then you have probably seen a couple of my monthly roundups. I have found that not only is this a great way to get your current readerbase interested in your past articles, but it also generates some decent backlinks from other bloggers who may not have been familiar with your blog back when the article was written.

Post roundups don’t have to be monthly, they can be however frequent you want.

Interlinking

As I mentionied in 5 Blogging Methods that Work, one of the easiest and most effective ways to get your readers exploring your blog (including past articles) is to simply link to them whenever there is a context for it. You don’t have to go crazy and link to your “domaining” category everytime you use the word “domain” but whenever you see a chance to link to a past article go for it.

Another great thing about constantly interlinking is that you may even discover an old post that you wrote yourself that even you have forgotten about. Sometimes it’s just nice to re-read your own content.

Revisiting Old Topics with New Information

A lot of bloggers suggest reposting old articles under new headlines with slightly different context. I know John Chow has done this on a couple of occassions especially with his AGLOCO articles. I tend to steer away from this due to the fact that I just like fresh content. What you can do, however, is to take a new topic and relate to an old one.

For example when I wrote about PPP Direct recently I also reminded users about my post on the new ReviewMe marketplace.

So how do you get your visitors to read your old posts? I have a couple methods (all of which are pretty simple) and I’m sure there are a ton of others out there. If anybody has any suggestions on how to get their readers into old content please drop me a line in the comments as I’d love to hear them!

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Popularity: 5% [?]

I was browsing Jim’s blog today when I noticed this post on PPP Direct. Since Jim is speaking at Postiecon I thought at first that this may be just a little agreement with PPP to advertise their stuff, but he disclosed that the post was not sponsored and that PPP Direct is just a good tool and a good move by PPP.

PayPerPost Direct allows bloggers to display a badge on their site with a review amount (or just “Hire Me”) which when clicked redirects potential advertisers to a purchase page where they can directly buy a review on the blog. This essentially cuts out the middle man, ie. PayPerPost, and allows for a more direct relationship between bloggers and advertisers.

What does all this mean? Well while ReviewMe was busy trying to cut into PPP’s cheapo review market, PPP was devising PPP Direct which will undoubtably replace the ReviewMe widget on most blogs. PPP Direct is not a replacement for ReviewMe by any means, but it is definitely going to give them a run for their money.

You have two badges on your site, both for $200. An Advertiser clicks one of them and you make $100 and the blog marketplace makes $100. They click the PPP Direct badge and you make $200 and the blogging marketplace makes $20. Why would you ever want to take less money? Why would the advertiser want to give half to the blog marketplace? With PPP Direct the advertiser gets more bang for their buck and you make more money.

- PPP Blog

While ReviewMe may still have a larger advertiser pool full of higher-paying advertisers, I believe without counter-action from ReviewMe, PPP Direct will basically take over the blog widget advertising market.

While it is still too early for anything conclusive, I have to admit this is the first time I have ever been impressed with PayPerPost. I’m eager to see what they do next.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Popularity: 5% [?]

Arrington over at TechCrunch has confirmed that Google has purchased FeedBurner for $100 million dollars. I don’t think I have to tell you that this is *huge* for the guys at FeedBurner. It’s great to see a quality service cash in like this. But hey what about loyal FeedBurner members, can we expect anything from this?

I think so.

The biggest problem with the FeedBurner Ad Network at the moment is its lack of inventory. If there is anything that Google has a ton of it’s advertisers thirsty to reach a larger audience. I would expect that Google will leverage their current advertiser network to increase the FAN inventory very soon. After all, does Google ever buy a company without serious monetization plans?

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. FAN is already a good money-maker, but I can’t wait to see how Google improves it!

D’oh, I just noticed that Maki beat me to it … and I thought I had an original insight! Maybe next time.

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Popularity: 4% [?]

Alright so maybe you still should backup all of your files when you’re working on your websites, but wouldn’t it be nice to at least have a program that could recover files you accidentally deleted? Handy Recovery does just that.

Handy Recoveryâ„¢ is an easy-to-use data recovery software designed to restore files accidentally deleted from hard disks and floppy drives. The program can recover files damaged by virus attacks, power failures and software faults or files from deleted and formatted partitions. If some program does not use Recycle Bin when deleting files, Handy Recovery can restore such files. It can also recover files moved to Recycle Bin after it has been emptied.

Handy Recovery isn’t exactly a one of a kind piece of software, but as with almost every product out there it’s the little things that make the difference. Naturally one of the first things I noticed when preparing for this review was the extremely high quality website they have. One of the best presales of any product is the immediate professionalism displayed by one’s website.

Once I got the program downloaded and installed I wasn’t disappointed as it continued to impress with so much attention to detail. Handy Recovery has a ton of features:

• FAT12/16/32, NTFS and NTFS 5 + EFS file systems support
• In-depth disk scanning for certain file types
• Option to create disk images for deferred recovery
• Shows probability of successful recovery for each file
• Recovers files from deleted and formatted partitions
• File filtering by name, mask, date and size

If you’re interested, you can download a free trial of the program for free here.

Sponsored by: Handy Recovery

Popularity: 6% [?]

Popularity: 6% [?]

Mubin, a delicious advertiser here at NBB, contacted me about a 3 part article he wrote over at his blog. It’s an interesting insight into setting up a website specifically to generate text link income as opposed to MFA which focus on Adsense income.

John Austin has launched a new website called SiteNeighbors. I’ve created an account but still haven’t figured out exactly what it does and why it is better than say MyBlogLog or the super delicious BUMPzee. It’s always good to test out new products though!

Leveraging your unique story - Casey Serin has finally started seriously monetizing his blog. He took his story of his absolute stupidity and has turned it into a cash cow. Ah, the power of the internet.

NBB is one of the Top 10 emerging influential blogs of 2007 according to Ryan Shamus. Ali also included NBB in his Top 5 blogs of 2007 list. Pretty sexy eh? Make your own Top 10 influential blogs of 2007 for the contest over at Digital Filipino (not Filipino exclusive!).

Reheul, a regular reader and commenter here, is excited about attending the FOOA in NY this year. He’s been writing about it on his blog. It’s great to see someone living their dream!

There is an interesting new blog online called Model Citizenship which focuses on the good and bad encounters with people in daily life.

And finally Alex emailed me about a rather … interesting post he did on 5 things you can learn from homeless people. It made me giggle.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Popularity: 5% [?]

To be perfectly honest, when I saw my first ReviewMe review request was for “make money with super affiliate zac” I almost hit the decline button without even taking a second look at it. Anytime I hear the term “super affiliate” used to describe someone I get on the defensive and usually end up discovering that the so-called “super affiliate” is nothing more than another guru pushing some e-book. It was a nice surprise to find that Zac Johnson actually *was* a successful affiliate marketer and his blog is more than just a pre-sale page for yet another e-book.

Zac’s blog was launched just a couple months ago in March of this year. I won’t hold that against him though - after all, NBB was launched in January, and look how amazingly turbo-awesome I am. It is a mix of his personal ramblings and some good information regarding the affiliate marketing industry as well as some other net-related tid bits.

Despite its youth, Zac has managed to fill his blog with a ton of quality information. One of my favorite pages is his “make money” post with testimonials of some of his favorite ad networks. He even has some sexy little screenshots of payout as “proof” that they pay - but we all know he’s just trying to look cool. Not that there’s anything wrong with looking cool.

Zac also has some other pages/posts that I think you should take a look at:

• Zac Johnson’s Webmaster Tools
• Merger Mania
• Why Do Affiliate Networks Let Super Affiliates Leave?
• Is AuctionAds Making Big Money?

The make money online niche is certainly a crowded one, and rarely is there a new face on the block that is actually worth mentioning. Whether you put much stock in paid reviews or not, you really should take a look at Zac’s blog. I’ve added it to my Netvibes reader.

Sponsored by: Zac Johnson

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Popularity: 5% [?]

I recently received an email asking me about something that really threw me off. A reader of my blog wanted to know what a turnkey was. Although I’m sure most are already aware of this term, I figured if one person wasn’t sure about it there are probably more who would appreciate a concise explanation as well.

A turnkey is basically a website that is created and operated with almost complete automation. Sounds pretty simple eh? It is and it isn’t. There are a number of different types of turnkeys that all do different things. There are also good and bad turnkeys as well as pros and cons to using a turnkey over created a custom website.

Most Popular Turnkey Sites

Myspace Resource Sites
These are websites that serve up Myspace layouts, graphics, little scripts, and everything else you’ve ever seen on a 13 year old’s Myspace page. They’re usually run off of scripts that can be downloaded free, but there are also plenty more that are considered “premium” that require a payment to use. I played around with running a Myspace website for a couple of months when I bought MyspaceLot.com from Rob of TalkFreelance. I was completely uninterested in the website and only bought it to get some information on the niche out of curiosity. Despite the fact that I never once promoted the site, spent a dime advertising, or did any link-building, it actually made money. A couple dollars a day. I know that’s not a lot, but it just goes to show you the power of a turnkey. Absolutely no value was added to the internet when I operated this website. There was nothing unique about it. Yet it was in the green.

Arcade/Media Sites
These are turnkey sites that are basically mass produced versions of EbaumsWorld. They have simple flash games and movies aimed at curing the user’s boredom and keeping them at the site long enough to get them to click an ad. Many of the turnkey scripts that run arcade sites also have the option of giving buyers access to thousands of games and movies as well. So not only do you have the development taken care of but the content as well.

Resources/Tools Turnkeys
There is also a huge market for webmaster resources and tools. Such turnkeys provide IP addresses, pagerank, link count, etc etc.

Turnkey Content

Most content for turnkey sites is either purchased or stolen. Even the bulk of the purchased content is just an organized database of stolen material. How do they steal content?

Many turnkey sites use scrapers which browse other websites in the same niche and simply copy their content and include it into their own database. Scrapers are much less popular in Myspace websites but are extremely widely used in arcade sites. Ever wonder why almost every “[keyword]arcade.com” you visit has the exact same games as all the others? It’s a circle of “borrowing” content.

Not all turnkey content is stolen. Many turnkey scripts just create the developmental framework so that the user can add his or her own content and actually create something unique.

Pros and Cons of Using a Turnkey

The only real pro of using a turnkey website is the automation. Turnkeys are extremely easy and fast to setup and fill with content. This means that not only does each turnkey website you create take very little work, but you get a lot more time to focus on advertising and promotion or to move onto the next turnkey website and repeat the process.

There are, however, a numer of cons - whether or not they outweigh the only pro is up to you.

1) They are not unique - users and spiders alike recognize turnkey websites as just rehashed versions of tons of similar websites. SE’s penalize them for their duplicate content and code and users often times just forget about them when they leave since they are unable to distinguish them from others.

2) They typically do not make much money - this is of course a generalization. There are many people making $xx,xxx per month running turnkey sites alone, but they often have huge networks. Each turnkey site can only perform so well due to the fact that it is not unique and has really no value in itself.

3) They’re exhausting - since you’re not creating anything unique, it is easy to get burnt out on running your turnkey network. There is nothing exciting about running a turnkey website aside from perhaps the Adsense check you get at the end of the month.

Overall, I personally know plenty of people making much more than me running turnkey websites. It is a solid income stream. But in my opinion, one should never make turnkey websites their sole source of income. Running turnkeys is fine as long as you diversify your income a bit between turnkeys and unique sites.

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Popularity: 11% [?]

It’s been a while since the last poll eh? The last one, How Important are Forums?, resulted in some numbers that pretty much correlated with the comments I got on it. For the most part people think forums are just optional. Although I think most websites will benefit from having forums, I know plenty of people who added forums long after their sites became popular and profitable. At the end of the day it’s just a hard factor to measure. In any case, here are the results!

Now it’s time for a new poll (yay, right?)! I’ve been getting some mixed responses, as was to be expected, to my latest series on business ethics and how they affect internet marketing in the public eye. Personally I always put ethics above profit, but that could be one of the reasons why I’m not a 6 figure earner. It’s one of the biggest questions not only in internet marketing but in business in general. However with the anonymity of the internet the ethics commonly practiced in business for the sole purpose of saving face tend to go out the window and we’re left with a much more raw version of business.

So what I’d like to ask you, my faithful readers - Do Ethics Affect Your Business Decisions?

What do you guys think? Does the consumer’s experience matter? Or is the only important factor your bottom line? I’m not going to criticize anybody who responds no matter how their opinion may differ from mine, so please feel free to comment and let me know how you really feel!

Popularity: 11% [?]

Popularity: 11% [?]

This is a multiple part article attempting to point out all of the worst aspects of internet marketing in an attempt to improve the industry as a whole. (Part 1)

So the first post was a little broad and pretty much took a stab at everyone who has ever used a shady method to market their products or services online. I’d like to get a little more specific, however, and talk about a few groups of people who are really giving internet marketing a bad name and are the main contributors to the poor public opinion surrounding it.

2) Gurus or “Get Rich Quickers”

Gurus are the guys you see pushing their infinite knowledge products that will take the reader from a life of mundane boredom and mediocure income to one filled with wealth. They’re full of shit. We know it, they know it, but for the most part John Doe Browser does *not* know it.

People are familiar with the “make millions doing real estate” scams because it’s something they understand. Many people even today, however, are still so unsure about the money-making potential of the internet that they actually believe these gurus when they tell them that they have the secret to absolute internet wealth. Half of the blame lies on the consumer. After all, there is no program that can ever promise you wealth. But the bulk of it is still with the guru, the sleazy internet marketer.

Most gurus spend their time pushing their Adsense E-Books using buzz words that the public doesn’t understand in order to confuse them into thinking that they have the kind of knowledge that one can only get their hands on after purchasing a $99.99 book. After the first two or three purchases, however, John Doe Browser catches on. The word of mouth hatred of internet marketers begins.

Now not every person who sells an E-Book is a bad guy. Some E-Books provide quality information, and it is understandable that when someone dedicates a large amount of time and energy into writing something that they ask for compensation in return for distribution of that material. But most of them are crap.

After 10+ years of fraud the public is finally starting to catch on. People are starting to see through these asshole E-Book pushers and internet marketing “gurus”. Hell just look at Clickbank’s 3-5 year chart at Alexa (yes I know it’s not totally accurate but it still shows a trend, so shut up).

As I said in the last article, the public tends to lump all internet marketers in together just as they do for any other industry. We have to separate ourselves from these “gurus”.

I’m sure a lot of people have read this article thinking “All of this is common sense. We know gurus suck so shut the hell up about it.” I know, however, that there is at least one person reading this blog (and probably a whole hell of a lot more than that) that has pushed a shitty Clickbank E-Book promising internet millions. So this is for you - stop it. Sure you can make some easy money promising some poor sap a million dollars, but why rip someone off like that with a product that you know won’t deliver? There is so much money to be made on the internet. Yea the other revenue streams might take more work, but at least you’re not screwing anybody over.

Ready for the next one? Look out e-mail “marketers”!

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Popularity: 4% [?]

This is a multiple series article attempting to point out all of the worst aspects of internet marketing in an attempt to improve the industry as a whole.

I don’t think it’s any secret to anyone in this industry that the public opinion of internet marketing is one of either disinterest or disrespect. Few people really know the ins and outs of internet marketing and most only see those marketers who are so appalling that they stick in their minds as slimy spammers just trying to scam an innocent old lady with a brand new AOL subscription out of a few bucks.

Sadly many of the stereotypes are true.

The lack of ethics in internet marketing is not a result of the industry itself but rather the channel it operates on - the internet. The internet is infamous for being filled with callous, anti-social individuals with little empathy for their fellow man or how their actions affect them.

Am I being too harsh? Maybe. Am I being too general? Certainly. But this is how people outside of the industry view it on the whole.

Rather than bash my own industry anymore I’d like to take a look into it and offer up some possible answers as to why internet marketers are looked down upon and often times not taken seriously or even hated by the general public.

1) Everybody with Internet Has Had a Bad Experience with an Internet Marketer

Notice I put no qualifier infront of “everybody”. Yes I am being so bold as to say that every single person online has had a direct bad experience with some sort of internet marketer. Everyone. No exceptions.

Just look at your own experience online. No matter how hard you try to protect your email address by using those [at] [dot] things or by only posting it as an image you *still* manage to get at least some spam in your inbox. When browsing YouTube for interesting videos you are barraded with sleazy marketers pushing their get rich quick schemes. At least once every one of you has registered for something online only to find out later that you have submitted your email address to an “opt-in” mailing list.

We can distinguish between this crap and legitimate marketers. The public can’t.

All John Doe Browser sees is the same slimy guys trying to sign him up for a $50 Wendy’s gift card that he has no interest in or “affordable” loan consolidation. How can we expect him to then have a positive opinion of the “good” internet marketers? We can’t.

But the “good” internet marketers turn their backs shouting, as they rest comfortably on their high horse, that they are not one of those sleazeball marketers. They’re better. They run legitimite websites and only run ads relevant to their users. Sure they push those 15 ringtones for “free” scam offers that wind up costing the victim’s mommy or daddy a couple hundred by the time they realize their 12 year old accidentally signed up for a subscription service, but hey we have to make a living right?

We then have the actual legitimite internet marketers following all of the rules, playing fair, and doing their best to keep the user’s interests in mind. But by the time the user comes across the few, the proud, the legit their opinions of marketers are already tainted by the get rich quickers, the “opt-in” mailing listers, and the arbitragers.

There are tons and tons of legit internet marketers out there. Unfortunately, however, they are far outweighed by the bad.

So What Do We Do About it?

Well step one to me would be to stop giving out bad advice. There are so many bloggers now trying to gain attention by showing little “tips and tricks” on how to weasel more money out of their visitors. Sure monetizing your website is well and good, and the more money one brings in the better, but when it gets to the point where you are actually taking advantage of your users then there is something seriously wrong.

Not naming names, but just take for example a recent post about cookie stuffing on another popular blog. The post did nothing more than to completely mislead a huge amount of up-and-coming internet marketers thus dilluting the rising pool of online businessmen and sending them one step closer to the dark side.

We’re creating the sleazy marketers we claim to hate.

Am I totally clean in this? Probably not entirely, but I like to think I try my best to keep my visitors from getting scammed or learning how to scam their visitors.

Everybody on the internet has had at least one bad experience with an internet marketer - are you the one they’re cursing?

Not a bad start eh? Stay tuned for the next rant in this series where I go after gooroos.

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Popularity: 4% [?]