Monthly Archive for June, 2008

A Wordpress Theme For The iPhone

Published
by
darcy
on June 13, 2008
in Blogging
. 1 Comment

Now that the iPhone 3G has been announced, and will be launching in a bucketload of countries, the iPhone, and mobile internet in general, is appearing as a major contender for advertising dollars. This means it’ll be a major sauce of income for many people. To that end, you’re going to start to see a lot of websites pop up catering for iPhone users.

One of the easiest ways to start catering for your iPhone users, is to intergrate an iPhone theme into your wordpress blog, but only use it for people visiting your site from an iPhone. This may seem like a daunting task, but ContentRobot is here to help.

Check Out Their Wordpress Plugin & Theme

This Is Why I Read Your Blog

Published
by
darcy
on June 6, 2008
in Blogging
. 2 Comments

(or What Makes A Good Blog?)


There are a number of reasons that can contribute to the success of any blog, and reasons why people read said blog. You should try to analyze the blogs you read, and why you read them, and then try to emulate those things in your own blog. For example, these are the main reasons I read the blogs that I read:

  • They have the latest news and information (so I can keep up to date)
  • They have good designs
  • They get exclusive articles/reviews/information
  • There’s something new to read all the time (every time I visit)
  • It’s written by people I’m interested in (famous people, people who do amazing/interesting things, etc)
  • It’s written well
  • It’s written with edge, sarcasm or wit
  • It doesn’t have too many ads
  • The ads it does have aren’t intrusive
  • It has contests (especially if I win one)
  • It is confronting, interesting and/or engaging
  • Doesn’t take too long to load
  • Etc.

Let’s take a look at a few major examples. Big blogs such as Engadget, Destructoid and Maddox (The Best Page In The Universe). Engadget has always had a great, good looking theme, but their latest is so much more clean, simple and sophisticated. Very nice. On top of that, they always have all the gadget news to occupy me for at least 20 minutes a day (which is 20 minutes I’m exposed to their advertisements) and their writing is often witty and engaging. Perfect combination! (It also has competitions, is informative, has the latest gadget news, doesn’t have too many ads, etc.)

Destructoid takes this to a whole new level. They are down-to-earth, confrontational, amusing, engaging and more, whilst also being up-to-date and informative. To top this off they have a great theme (if a bit slow to load), host contests every now-and-then, and write with wit and style. Great site. Maddox takes the wit and humor to a whole new level. His opinion is rude, funny and never wrong, but usually politically incorrect. His very subjective and opinionated writing coupled with his sense of humor (and very simple, quick-loading website) make this site a winner.

So everyone, take a minute, two minutes, five, ten, whatever you can spare, and take a look at what the sites you visit have, that your own site doesn’t. How are they so popular? What makes you visit them? Don’t just enjoy their content, learn from what they do.

Entrecard’s On Fire!

Published
by
darcy
on June 1, 2008
in Advertising
. 2 Comments

Literally.

Entrecard’s host has been the victim of an electrical fire and won’t be back up for up to 12 hours. That’s 12 hours of dropping you all miss out on :( but don’t worry - all your credits should still be intact. Lets see if they compensate people for the advertising time they miss out on…

Update: It seems Entrecard is once again serving ads, so good news for those who are paying entrecards for ads that weren’t showing EXCEPT that the ads don’t link properly (if you want to test this, try clicking the ad on my page, just links to Entrecard’s error home page). Hopefully they’ll get this sorted out soon, but they’ve updated there site saying they have no ETA, so it’s anyone’s guess when they’ll be back.

Feedburner to Launch Adsense for RSS

Published
by
darcy
on June 1, 2008
in Advertising and Blogging
. 0 Comments

Beginning next week, and starting with a small group of publishers, Feedburner (if you aren’t already sending your RSS through them, do so now) will begin to roll out Adsense for RSS feeds, as they announced on their blog. So this means that in addition to reading a nice, clean and convenient RSS feed from one of your favorite blogs, you’ll be reading a nice, clean and convenient RSS feed, plus some contextual advertising thanks to Google. This means that the ads you see will be semi-relevant to the content you’re reading.

This should be good news for publishers and bloggers looking to make an extra few pennies out of their readers, but bad news for readers who chose RSS to escape the annoying ads and bandwidth-heavy content. So far, attempts at monetizing RSS feeds have been poor at best, but now with google owning Feedburner, as well as one of the biggest RSS readers (google reader) and having a huge advertiser base (adsense, adwords), the tides could be turning.

If you operate a blog and haven’t signed up to feedburner already, we advise you do so now, and in a few weeks you could be earning some extra pennies from feed-based adsense.