What would I do if I was starting over again?

What would I do if I was starting my blog all over again? My blog is almost three years old, there’s a nearly endless list of things that I could do better, with 20-20 hindsight. But, the honest answer is that I’d do some things the same, and some better.

I’m not displeased at the progress my blog has made. I never started out to become a pro-blogger, and still don’t have that goal in mind. Some of the things I know I could do better, I probably wouldn’t. For example, I could post more. Certainly I’d be more successful as a blogger if I posted once a day or more. Keep up the pace of two or three insightful posts every single day is nearly a guaranteed recipe for success, but I won’t do it. Not to pah-pah at anyone who’s been a success as a blogger, but I just have other things that interest me more.

I could put up a better design, and integrate ads and bring in some income. I have a few hundred people visiting per day, and a nice PageRank. Certainly I could monitize that. Perhaps I will some day. But, I’m glad I didn’t have that as a goal when I started out. I think I would have disappointed myself, and given up long ago. Not that it’s impossible, or even difficult to make good money off a blog, it’s just as websites go I know of many other ways to produce that are far easier than blogging. If I had gone into this as a point of making money, I would have realized this at least as soon, and been disappointed and abandoned the project. So, this is another thing I would not have changed.

Ok, I can hear you asking, what would I have changed? Sure, lots. I’d be more of a link hound. I’ve been doing that more this year than in past years, and met with some success. I’d have started that earlier. I’d do more networking with bloggers who are interested in the same topics. I’m not an island. I’ve been making far more efforts this year to reach out and make connections with other blogges than ever in the past. I enjoy that part of blogging.

I’d stay more with the unique stuff. Blogging about what everyone else blogs about isn’t interesting. Well, this topic is, but I feel I have something unique to say about it, and that it’s worth saying. I rely heavily on Bloglines to read my most favorite blogs. I gets rather tiresome when I see everyone writing the same topic. I’ve been guilty of that too. My goal is to only post something if it seems remarkable and if I think the people reading this blog will find it useful and haven’t already found it on another source. Sure, that makes it more difficult to come up with interesting posts, but I’d rather stick to my couple of posts a week and make them count than be a “me too” blogger.

This is in response to Darren’s call for people to discuss this topic. I really like the idea, and the subject, and decided to participate. Here are a few other blogs posts that I read who jumped into the discussion.

• Re-Knitting My Podcast and Blogs by Rhonda
• There is only one thing I’d change by Eric
• Starting Over by Tony
• Regrets, I’ve had a Few by Debra
• My wabisabi Blog by ricemutt
• The vision for this blog… would I do it again? by Thom
• 3 changes I would make and 3 I would not by Joe
• Ready, Fire, Aim that Blog! by Brad
• I should have thought bigger by Danae
• One Step Forward, Two Steps Back by Damien
• Regrets… I have a few… but then again, too few to mention (almost!) by Adrian
• Fix This Blog! by Alan
• RobZazueta.com – Regrets, I’ve had a few…. by Rob
• Why this Blog isn’t perfect by Lisa
• Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda by Christina
• If I had to start my blog Again by Costa
• I’m Not a ProBlogger, But… by Andrew
• My Vision Was Too Cloudy by George
• If I could Turn Back Time…. by Retrospector
• If I had to Start My Blog All Over Again by Adam
• Blogging to Infinity and Beyond by Ken
• Discover the Fun of Blogging by Stefan
• B4B Reincarnation by Jack
• blogging takes two…. by dcypl
• Gee, That’s a Funny Domain Name by Ella
• Look more forward than back, two million in the distance by TDavid
• An Even Bigger Chorizo by Matthew
• If I could turn back time, if I could find a way by Vincent
• If I had to Strt My Blog Again – I will be frustrated… not anymore by Anthony
• Hindsight is 20/20 by Ian
• If I had to Start My Blog Again by Hanneng
• Things I would do different if I started my blog again by Darren
• Eight Mistakes a Blog Newbie made: Did you make the same Mistakes? by Razib
• Throw Away my blog. I’m Starting Over by Aaron
• Five Blogging Tips I could have Done Better by Hendry
• Been There Done That by Chris
• Wanted: DeLorean – If I had to start my blog again by Leon
• More bloggers blogging on my Blog! by Trisha
• Three months of Getting Rich Slowly by J.D. Roth
• Rip it up and Start Again by Ian
• Lessons I’ve learned while blogging by Bill
• Turn Back your ‘bloggy’ clock by Paul
• If I could Turn Back Time… on Blueprint for Financial Prosperity by Jim
• What I would do if I had to start Free Money Finance Again by John
• Biggest Mistake: Pressing the “Sign-Up” Button on Blogger by Jon
• Is it a Blog… Or is it a Column? by Caryn
• Would I Want Today to be Different? by Tricia
• Memories of the Way It Was by Robert
• The vision thang by OmegaMom
• Which earlier nuts should have been added to my bolts? by Catherine
• Bake it, Taste it and Savor it by Renee
• 3 Things I would Change as a Weblog Starter by Conn
• Wordpress and Typepad and Blogger, oh my! by Kelly
• Don’t Let Your Boss See Your Posting Times by Todd
• Darren Rowse’s Group Blogging Project by Melissa
• If I had to Start a Blog Again by Laurie
• Poor Old Michael Finnigan, Begin Again by Thatedeguy
• How I Screwed Up My Blog by James
• Blog Reconstruction Dreams of Time by Paul
• One Small Step for Blogkind by Jersey Girl
• Kill Fifty Birds with One Stone by Curt
• Learning from Experience in Blogging by Brem
• Do Over by Chris
• Digg me Out of This Mess by Darnell
• If I had to Start My Blog Again by Angusman
• How Palm Discovery may have been if I started out today by May
• But Don’t Look Back in Anger by Jan

Where to buy a website

I get asked this a lot, so I’m just going to post a list here. These are the places I regularly look at when I’m out to buy a website.

Sitepoint’s Sell Your Site Marketplace

Digitalpoint’s Buy, Sell, Trade Sites Section

Namepros Developed Sites for Sale

Geek Village Website for Sale

DN Forum Developed Websites

Ebay Internet Businesses and Websites

Webmaster Talk Websites for Sale

Search Engine Forums I Want to Sell My Website

BizBuySell Internet Businesses (you need to do the search yourself)

Webhostingtalk Other Offers and Requests

These are just the places where I’ve had success hooking up with people to make a deal. There are other places, the list could go on forever, but these are the ones that I will regularly visit.

The best of all method is when people contact me directly. If you have a website for sale, I welcome you to pitch it to me, send it to my email address p-t-da-v-is-at-g-m-a–i-l.-c-o-m (remove the hyphens).

And, if you find a great buy as a result of this post, be sure to send me a commission! Good backlinks work as well as cash.

Seth Godin’s Haircut

I find this hilariously funny.  Seth, who brands himself as the guy with the bald head, gets asked by the receptionist at a “spa/place” whether he’s there for a haircut.  When you get passed being amused at the bald man being asked if he needs a haircut, there’s an important problem that most entrepreneurs face.

How do we hire good people?  Seth chastens us against “hiring the cheapest person,” but I don’t think it’s necessarily about the money.  I’ve known people who are paid oodles of dough, yet do things that could be categorized along with what Seth experienced.  Conversely, I’ve known very lowly paid people who excel.

So, back to the question, how do we hire good people?  Pay more?  I don’t think so, I’ve tried that.  Is it in the hiring, or in the quality of your leadership?  Probably both, but if you don’t hire well you have a higher wall to climb to lead the person.  Do I have the answer to this question?  No.  Do you Seth?

Forum Promotion with Contests, a case study

One of the most difficult jobs of webmastering is getting a community site off the ground. Among the most successful methods of promoting a new forum is by running a contest. I’ve been following a contest put on by Lee Dodd to promote his new site, the Earners Forum. Lee created the Earners Forum to bring together people interested in making money from websites. The novelty of the forum is that Lee has setup private areas where people are grouped together based on their level of income.

To build buzz about his forum, Lee came up with an idea for a contest. Typically, contests will have one winner, perhaps a second and third prize. To make it more interesting, Lee has set up his contest to have five winners, each to receive the same prize. I like the idea of more than one winner. Particularly in this case where were there only one prize, and a frontrunner could discourage others from jumping in and making an attempt at the contest. Randomly selecting a winner perhaps would have a similar effect, but in this case Lee has the contestants working toward the prize (more on that later).

So, what to give, what to give? Money. Obviously. Lee states that he’s going to take a single day’s worth of his revenue, which is rounded to $5,000. Split that five ways, and we have an even thousand for each of the five winners. Could someone without deep pockets successfully use a contest to help with their launch? Sure. Lee is offering an hour’s worth of consultation to each winner, and, five websites, one to each winner, built up and optimized for Adsense. This could be applicable to most any niche, as Lee is taking advantage of his skill in the topic to make value here. But, we don’t stop there either. Lee has assembled a number of co-sponsors for his contest. I’m not privy to the exact arrangement, but generally you’d be offering the co-sponsor free advertising in exchange for goods or services to the contest winner.

Who will win? The sixty-four thousand dollar question. Or, to be more precise, the $4,072 question, as this is the value placed upon each of the five prizes. Contestants earn points for several tasks. Each of these tasks is something that is very relevant to building a forum. Posts. Recruiting new members. Writing articles. Spreading buzz through blog postings. Each valued at a different point level, the five contestants with the most points at the end of the month win.

How well do contests work? In this case, it’s working out very well for Lee and Earners Forum. Earners Forum counts 870 members, and over ten thousand posts, less than a month into the forum’s existance. I’ve rarely seen a forum take off that quickly. Heck, most forums don’t even make it that far ever, let alone in a few weeks. The conclusion? I’m off to brainstorm some contests for my own forums! Good luck Lee! Point of disclosure, I’m moderating for Lee at Earners Forum.

Don’t ‘just let it happen’ Mr. Schmidt.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt discussing the problem of click fraud is quoted as saying “just let it happen.”  Google’s Adwords auction system is, he believes, self-correcting.  His explanation is that any click fraud that is not caught and reversed will result in the decline in the amount an advertiser will pay for each click.  Thus, the advertiser ends up paying the same amount.

Well, let’s examine that from an Adsense publisher’s point of view, and see if “just let it happen” sounds like a good way to deal with the problem.  So, in an average day for Adwords Advertiser, there are 20 honest clicks coming to them from the publisher network.  Things are happy and dandy, the Adsense Publisher gets paid 100% of the take (after Google takes whatever its percentage is out, of course).  Then, one day Click Farm comes along, and clicks Adwords Advertiser’s ads 80 times.  Maybe he’s paying 80 people in 80 different places to click one time per day each, sounds like a good idea right?

So, now we have Adwords Advertiser paying for 100 clicks.  Well, according to what Mr. Schmidt says, the self-correcting Adwords system will reduce the amount each cilck is worth so the Adwords Advertiser isn’t out any cash.  But, from Adsense Publisher’s point of view, things don’t seem so rosy.  He’s now getting 20% of what he used to get.  Click Farm is happy as can be, even though he’s getting a reduced value for those clicks, he’s paying his Click Farm workers a pittance anyway so any amount is a profit.  Click Farm is making four times the amount that Adsense Publisher is making, and Adsense Publisher is the one sending 100% of the honest traffic.

Sounds apocalyptic for the Adsense Publisher program, but I may be missing something.

Reference this article in ZD.

Spam Alert: Forum spam links in post punctuation

Several of my forums have been hit by a particularly insidious form of spam. The spammer will place links to the worst type of sites inside the post, hidden under punctuation.  Check your periods, colons, semi-colons, commas, hyphens, everything.  They contain links to porn, viagra, phen, cialis, and whatever else you might imagine from a spammer.
The spam post’s title are relatively indistinct.  One, on my RC Drifting Forum was titled “That’s How She Says Goodbye.”  The post looks like computer generated language, perhaps correct grammar, but not really meaning anything.  However, in the punctuation I see links to lesbian sex sites.  They even hit my Card Model Forum, with a post titled “‘interesting’ story not true” which linked out to sites about xanax, levetra, and other pharmaceuticals.  I expect to see more.  Check your forums.