Fri 3 Oct 2008
Now for some Friday fun. Can't find a good domain name? Think all the good domain names are taken? Well, you're wrong, according to the NYC- and LA-based sketch comedy group Quiet Library.
My personal favorite:
Goooooooooogggllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllek.info
(Think I might have missed some L's in there…)
Via: Self Made Minds
Sun 14 Sep 2008
How would you like to make $115,000 a month? I sure would. That's how much Sourcetool.com was making off of Google AdSense ads.
And that, apparently, caught the eye - and ire - of Google (GOOG).
Joe Nocera of the NY Times wrote about Sourcetool.com's dilemma last Friday in his article, "Stuck in Google's Doghouse". In short, Sourcetool.com was making $653,000/month in revenue by spending $500,000/month on Google AdWords. That means bidding on sponsored search keywords for about $0.05 - $0.06 a pop to bring traffic to their site, then getting around $0.10 each time someone clicked on an ad. Though Sourcetool.com is adamant that what they're doing isn't ad arbitrage, their business model essentially is.
Then Google made some changes to their AdWords algorithm, resulting in an increase of Sourcetool.com's minimum bid requirements to $1, and in some cases: $5 or $10. The reason given was that Sourcetool.com's landing pages were not high-enough in quality - they weren't sufficiently "googly", in Google-speak. Even after numerous phone calls, rebuttals, and changes to their landing pages, the minimum bid requirement remained. Google's stance is that their algorithm has spoken. Sourcetool.com's stance is that something unfair is going on, since Google has made exceptions to others before, including to one of Sourcetool.com's competitors.
Whatever the case, this basically killed Sourcetool.com's business model.
Let's put aside our feelings of ad arbitrage and Google's practices for a moment here. There are already lots of opinions in the blogosphere, from debating whether or not Google is a monopoly to potential dishonesty within Google's algorithm to Google doing what's best for their customers.
Let's instead talk about Sourcetool.com. Here's a business that had figured out a way to generate nearly $1.4M a year with a single web property. Not bad!
However, 100% of that revenue was dependent on one source - Google. (Or, more specifically, Google AdWords to bring in traffic, Google AdSense to monetize that traffic.) There's a strong inherent risk in that. They are at the mercy of one source, and should that source change its policies, go under, or simply turn its back on them, then they're screwed. And that's exactly what happened. They got screwed.
To be fair, there are lots of small businesses that rely on one source for their customers and revenue, be it a single product or service, or a single online marketplace like Amazon (AMZN) or Ebay (EBAY).
You know the cliche "don't put all your eggs in one basket?" When that basket breaks, you've lost all your eggs. That's what will happen if you have only one customer or revenue source. When it breaks, you've lost all your customers and all your revenue.
Although it's not as relevant to Sourcetool.com, I'm going to touch on product diversification first. In today's economy, product-line diversification is essential for business stability - just as portfolio diversity is essential for investment stability. Even large corporations realize this. The Walt Disney Company (DIS) is famous for diversifying from cartoons to movies to amusement parks. Apple (AAPL) went from personal computers to mp3 players to mobile phones. And Starbucks (SBUX) sells everything from espressos to board games to CDs.
Which, of course, begs the question - can there be too much diversification? Yes, if it goes beyond your core competencies and brand. But that's another discussion.
Now let's touch on marketplace or channel diversification. You can look at Google as a kind of distribution channel for Sourcetool.com - it was the primary way for them to acquire customers. No Google, no customers. That's a pretty simple and scary formula.
The reality of the situation is that Google directs the majority of web traffic nowadays, so most any web-related business needs to work with Google to some extent. But fortunately, there are alternatives.
According to the article, Sourcetool.com was only using Google AdWords to generate traffic. I'm sure that wasn't the only method, but for the sake of this discussion, let's assume it was. Here are some other methods:
Using the direct URL method means massively branding your URL so your customers know it and can type it into a web browser manually. It's probably the most costly method, but lots of start-ups with strong brand recognition do this - such as Flickr.com, YouTube.com, and PayPal.com. Same goes for large corporations like Pepsi.com, BankOfAmerica.com, and NYTimes.com. (Sure makes having a .com domain name pretty important, huh?)
It's certainly not easy to diversify your online channels, but relying on one 100% can be disastrous. Say you relied on Google for 80% of your traffic, Yahoo for 15% and MSN for 5%. You'd still have 20% of your traffic if your relationship with Google changed. That's better than 0%, right?
And as a bonus, for ecommerce retailers out there, Amazon and Ebay aren't your only channels. The list above also applies to you, as well as these online shopping comparison engines & marketplaces:
Now let's touch upon revenue diversification. Sourcetool.com's only source of revenue is Google AdSense. Though their current problem is more about customer acquisition via a single channel, it wouldn't hurt to diversify their revenue streams too, especially if Google were to kick them out of AdSense.
Fortunately for business owners, AdSense isn't the only ad network in town. There are dozens of others, though none seem to do content matching as well as AdSense right now. Since I've listed a bunch of them in my entry about blogging for cash, I won't repeat them here.
There are also affiliate programs, which work like sales commissions. If you help a retailer sell an item, they'll pay you a percentage of the sale. Some savvy affiliate marketers are able to make six-figure checks doing this. You'll also find a number of affiliate programs on my list.
Along with the ads model are sponsorships. Sourcetool.com could try to get sponsorships from various retailers to earn extra income. That would change the nature of their directory though, as they tout themselves as a free directory right now.
There's also the subscription model, though I'm not sure what kind of premium content Sourcetool.com could offer.
Relying on a single source of customers or income from a single product or service is an inherently dangerous business model. If that source goes away, so does your business. To solve that, you need to diversify.
If you're relying solely on Google AdWords for traffic, consider diversifying. Try Yahoo. Try MSN. Try social media marketing. Diversify your customer acquisition methods.
Same goes for your revenue sources. If Google AdSense is your only income generator, consider diversifying. Try another ad network. Try an affiliate program. Try subscription models. Diversify your revenue sources.
Good luck! And remember - diversify diversify diversify!
Sat 30 Aug 2008
There was a time when I had six maxed-out credit cards. Frightening, huh? It was during the dot-com days, when I thought I'd make millions like everyone else - then be able to pay back those cards easily. Alas, that was not to be, leaving me with six maxed-out credit cards.
After that, I put myself on a very strict, very rigorous debt payment plan. And in three to four years, I worked it all off. I paid off all of my credit cards. Now, I pay out each balance full every month; no more carrying balances over!
While setting up my plan, I had looked into debt consolidation programs. Ultimately, I didn't do that, but I know at least one friend who did.
If you're not someone who's anal about record keeping and paying your bills, then a debt consolidation program could help you. The advantages include having one easy location to pay all your bills. The disadvantages include having to put up collateral, such as your home, and potentially paying more in the long run if you stretch out this new loan for a very long period of time. They are generally helpful if you have a lot of credit card debt though, since the consolidated loan they offer can have a lower interest rate than any of your credit cards.
But: beware of predatory lenders, who typically approach desperate customers and deceptively convince them to agree to unfair - and even abusive - loan terms.
One such program, Debt Free 24, just applied for a paid review. Since I've looked into debt consolidation programs before, I figured I'd give these guys a once-over too.
Being a website review, I of course can't help but look at its visual design - its layout, its use of text, its usability. I do this because it's really important. All too often, I'll hear a random user back out of a site because it "doesn't look safe" or "looks like it could be a scam." What they're really saying is, "this visual design sucks."
Debt Free 24's design doesn't totally suck. But it doesn't look as professional as I'd want a financial services firm to look. And since the debt consolidation industry is fraught with scam artists, it's easy to point at a poorly-done design and guess that they're a scam. (Of course, a slick design doesn't mean a firm isn't a scam.)
There's lots of text. Way more than the average reader will want to read. It's probably for SEO purposes though. What really bothers me about it is that it's all full-justified - meaning the words are lined up at both the left and right sides of the paragraph.
Notice how the words from my paragraphs are lined up on the left, but aren't lined up neatly on the right? That, in typesetting-speak, is known as ragged-right. Generally, it's easier to read paragraphs on computer screens that are ragged-right than full-justified. Only in print does full-justification look nice. The designer probably thought, "Hey, let's align this text with full-justification, 'cuz newspapers and books do it!" without any knowledge of computer usability. 'Tis the mark of an amateur designer.
To the designer's credit, there is a clear call-to-action and clear navigation. I know how to sign up for a debt consolidation program. That's way more important than the alignment of the text. Kudos! Users ought to be funneling into the sales flow nicely.
To sign up for this service, you need to fill out an online form with information such as:
After supplying that, along with your contact info (address, email, and phone number), you're told that:
By submitting your request, you are granting permission for up to $product.maxNumberOfSales of our Premier Partners to contact you either by phone or email even if you are on the Do Not Call Registry.
Wait, how many Premier Partners? $product.maxNumberOfSales? Oops, looks like someone's code is peeking out!
Once you get past the unsecured (http, not https) form submission and buggy code, one of their Debt Repayment Representatives will contact you to set up a debt consolidation program. After interviewing you about your financial situation, the representative will contact all of your outstanding creditors (credit card companies, loan companies, mortgage companies, etc) to negotiate a potentially lower interest rate for you. Then Debt Free 24 will combine your debt, so you only have to pay one creditor - Debt Free 24 - and not hassle with multiple bills.
They don't indicate whether they offer secured loans (where you have to offer up collateral) or unsecured loans (where it's determined by your credit rating), however.
Under the section, "News Updates," Debt Free 24 has a number of articles about debt management and personal finance. The articles don't look terribly helpful, so I suspect they serve SEO purposes. Unfortunately for them, they haven't done much in-page search engine optimization. These articles could be helping them a lot more than they are right now.
Good luck, Debt Free 24!
Thu 28 Aug 2008
It's amazing how many different ways there are to make money, isn't it? One is in buying and selling virtual goods, a growing industry.
The idea around the virtual goods market is that you can purchase something that exists within a virtual world. Like a Habbo avatar or Gaia clothing or even Second Life real estate. What crazy times we live in, huh?
Within the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) world, there is World of Warcraft (WoW), the king of all MMORPGs. And lots of enterprising people have decided to build online markets to sell & buy WoW accounts. One such service is even purchasing paid reviews like this one.
So onto the review. Their site, called BuyMMOAccounts.com, isn't exactly what I'd call professional-looking. Kind of 1980s, if you ask me. The value proposition is simple enough: you can buy and sell your WoW account, though they certainly push buying an account as opposed to selling one. Let's pick it apart, shall we?
I see lots of annoying marketese. That's bad. Many users are turned off by what appears to be a pushy or sketchy sales pitch. The frequent use of bolding, text color changes, and text size changes all reek of this.
There's also way too much text. Most readers aren't going to read any of this. The use of gratuitous text has SEO benefits, though. There's lots of keyword-rich paragraphs here. I can't knock them for that. Unfortunately, it looks like someone with Microsoft FrontPage marked this page up and believed that every other paragraph needs to scream for attention, making none of the paragraphs very readable or enticing.
I don't see a clear focal point. Sure, my eye is attracted to all the elves, gnomes, and orcs scattered everywhere. But there is no clear call to action. I have to hunt around to find out how I can buy a WoW account. That's bad. Don't make me work to pay you.
After a bit of searching, I can see the Buy Horde Accounts and Buy Alliance Accounts links in the left column. Ah. So there they are.
Now how do you sell an account? By happening to see the link buried in a paragraph below the fold in the middle of the page somewhere (or on the graphical link in the left column). I can understand that. They're trying to minimize sales and emphasize sales. And perhaps, with the keywords they're targeting, they're not trying to increase their supply of accounts. Perhaps they already have a vast supply being created by players overseas and just want to profit by selling them. Fair enuff.
But at least make the buying process easier. That's why users are on the site, right?
One last nitpick. The homepage has a line of text that looks like a link, but isn't. The line: "When purchasing an account from us you can be assured that" is blue and underlined. But it's not a link. Bad bad bad.
The site isn't shy about it's 100% guarantee, though it's delivery doesn't fill me with trust. I'm hit with more marketese that looks more like the site is trying to scam me than reassure me. I'm sure that's not their intent, but that's what's happening.
To their benefit, there is a live chat option and a couple of toll-free phone numbers. That's cool. If their users don't want to deal with a sketchy-looking site, they can deal with a live person. However, do people who use virtual worlds want that kind of hassle? Wouldn't they prefer virtual help over real live help? I don't know; just a guess. I also wonder how much these support options cost BuyMMOAccounts.com. A well-designed site could actually cut down on these support costs.
They also list credentials from VeriSign, McAfee, and RatePoint. I'm not sure how much security that actually means, but the average user may not question it as much as I am.
Okay, enough of the harsh criticism. I ripped into these guys good. Now it's time to play nice. Here's what I'd suggest, listed in order of importance:
Suggestions #1 and #2 are more important because they'll increase sales. It looks like BuyMMOAccounts.com already ranks pretty high in search engines, especially for the keywords they purchased in this review. With these suggestions, I believe they'd be able to convert more visitors into buyers, thus increasing their overall revenues.
Good luck, BuyMMOAccounts.com!
Mon 11 Aug 2008
This is an oldie but a goodie. SEO specialists know this already. You should too, if your internet business depends on traffic from Google at all.
Back in August 2006, AOL (TWX) released the search records of 500k users collected over a three month period. The data was removed as quickly as it was published, due to privacy concerns. It is still available on various mirrors on the internet, however (nothing is ever completely erased from the internet).
Then Richard Hearne of Red Cardinal took the data and figured out the average click-through rate of each position on Google's search results page:
SEO specialists and internet marketers can then use this data, cross-reference it with the Google's Keyword Tool, and figure out potentially how much traffic they can receive per keyword if they're able to achieve a high search engine rank.
How reliable is this data? Pretty reliable, since the selection size is so large. There may be some bias (they were all AOL users), but I'm guessing it's fairly accurate. Ed Dale believes it's pretty spot on.
A couple of months later, several researchers from Cornell University did an eye-tracking analysis of Google's search results page. They came up with slightly higher click-through percentages, as Oleg Ishenko of SEO Researcher shows with the following heat map:
The Cornell study is less reliable, however. Their sample set was only 26 undergraduate students who performed 397 Google queries in a usability lab.
In either case, these results show a strong click-through rate for the first result (no duh). The rates taper down until the last result, which enjoys a slight uptick. It should also be noted that this data only shows rates for organic search results and not PPC/sponsored listings.
Cool stuff though. I love free data.
Mon 28 Jul 2008
Will Google's Knol start taking over Google's search results? Who knols?
Ha! Sorry, I was dying to make that joke. Moving on now…
Just a week after it's launch, Google's Knol is beginning to stir up some controversy. First, Wil Reynolds of Seer Interactive noticed that a Knol article was already ranking high on Google for the search phrase "how to backpack". As of this post, the article is ranking #1 on Google. (Incidentally, the author, Ryan Moulton, is a Google employee.)
"Really?" exclaimed Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land. "I mean, how many links could this page have gotten already?" Then Aaron Wall of SEO Book tried a test: he created a Knol that replicated content he's published elsewhere—an article on SEO basics. Just compare the two (original and duplicate) and you'll see they're a word-for-word copy.
Say you tried to search for that exact article (using an exact sentence from it). What would you expect would happen? You'd probably get the original article—since it's older and thus more likely the original—and perhaps the Knol article somewhere below it if Google has started ranking its Knol articles, right? That's what Wall expected too. What happened instead was the Knol article ranked higher than the original. Of this, Wall says (emphasis his):
Some may call this the Query Deserves Freshness algorithm, but one might equally decide to call it the copyright work deserves to be stolen algorithm. Google knows the content is duplicate (as proven by the notification they put on their page), and yet they prefer to rank their own house content over the originally published source.
Whoa boy, time to copy some of my old content and slap it into Knol! But… aw rats, the "create a Knol" function seems to be down right now. Perhaps there are too many other people trying to do the same thing?
Quite a few others feel similarly to Wall. Dare Obasanjo of 25hoursaday.com also tried his own test similar to Sullivan's, and concluded that (emphasis his):
Google is clearly favoring Knol content over content from older, more highly linked sites on the Web. I won't bother with the question of whether Google is doing this on purpose or whether this is some innocent mistake. The important question is "What are they going to do about it now that we've found out?"
This observation kind of runs counter to what Google told Sullivan earlier:
Google assured me that the authority of Google's domain wouldn't give Knol any additional trust. Knol pages will be scored based on the links and PageRank pointing to individual pages.
Huh, really? Doesn't quite seem that way, does it?
Mahalo.com's Jason Calacanis isn't very happy either. He blasted Google in his latest email:
Now, Google says they will do no evil and since I've worked with their team across three companies I tend to believe them. However, with the launch of Google Knol I feel like they are not being totally up front with us–their partners. It feels like they've stabbed us in the back to be honest. I'm not the only one who feels this way–even if I'm the only one stupid enough to say it.
If Google is going to be in the content business and compete for the top ranking in the operating system they control why not be honest about it? Why not have David Eun say, "listen, we're experimenting with content and we want you to be involved in it. Put your content in Knol!"
Frankly, it's insulting to say you're not in the content business and then launch Knol and compete with content companies for their authors, users, and placement in the rankings that you control.
For the record, dishonesty falls under evil in my book.
Tell us how you really feel, Calacanis. Heh.
Business-wise, this is pretty smart. They're adding more instances where users could interact with their properties. More instances means more pageviews, more ad space to sell, and more control. And in their eyes, if Knol's content really is of higher quality than, say, Wikipedia's content, then it deserves to rank higher.
Also, just to compare—Yahoo's search engine already does this. A search for Dark Knight yields a search results module from Yahoo! Movies at the top, above the official movie site from Warner Bros. and IMDb. No one's cried foul on Yahoo for this.
But then again, Yahoo! Movies has editorial content from Yahoo, whereas Knol has user generated content (that is rated and possibly written collaboratively). Plus—to Calacanis' point—Yahoo makes no mistake that it's a media company, whereas Google has always stated that it's not
Controversy indeed. I wonder what's going to come of all this. Whatever it'll be, I agree with Internet Entrepreneur Joe Duck: "I expect knol to be a huge topic at the upcoming search conference - SES San Jose." It sure will be.
Thu 24 Jul 2008
I'm going to try an experiment. Google launched a new service called knol this past Wednesday. It's been billed as the Wikipedia/Squidoo/HubPages alternative, though perhaps more akin to the latter two because of it's monetization offerings to entry authors, via a Google AdSense revenue-sharing model.
Seeing this made me wonder: could knol be used for search engine optimization purposes?
I know, I know. It's not the most altruistic thought. But I'll bet others are thinking the same thing too. So with that in mind, I whipped up an entry on "Michael Lee". To be fair and still offer hopefully useful community content (though, erm, I guess that's debatable), I linked to a bunch of other Michael/Mike Lee's as well.
That's not too smart, SEO-wise, since I just gave link love to my "competitors" (and by competitors, I mean others who rank high for the name Mike Lee on a search engine). But then I also filled out my knol profile, which seemed to create another entry for "Mike Lee". Both entries seem to have equal weight in a knol search, even though I thought one was just a profile page. Hmmm.
So will this give me any link love?
My guess is: probably not. I really doubt anyone's going to be searching knol for the name "Mike Lee". And since Google isn't surfacing any of this content onto their search results (yet), I doubt many people are going to see it.
But will it help my search engine ranking to have a link from the google.com domain? Perhaps? I'm not sure. I'll revisit this little experiment to see if it's had any impact in a week or so. Stay tuned!
Mon 14 Jul 2008
Happy happy, joy joy! Google has updated their Keyword Tool. You can now get the exact number of searches on particular keywords.
That may sound pretty benign to you, unless you're an internet marketer of some sort. In which case, it's HUGE news. Enormous. In the past, you had to guesstimate the amount of traffic you could receive from each keyword. But without exact numbers, all you'd have were relative measures of effectiveness.
So why is knowing the number of searches on a keyword important?
Up till now, internet marketers have been using the handy keyword service Wordtracker. One of it's more useful features was offering an estimated number of searches on particular keywords. Google's update now trumps that, since Google is able to provide the exact number of searches.
This doesn't mean Wordtracker is out of the game, however. They still offer other useful features, such as estimating the level of competition per keyword and a Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI), which helps find untapped keyword niches within a general topic.
The internet marketing world is buzzing with this news right now. Ed Dale, internet entrepreneur and marketer extraordinaire, even provides some information on how to determine the exact number of searches from Google's Keyword Tool.
And as Dale says, this is enormous! ENORMOUS!
Thoughts about business, technology, the web, & entrepreneurship from Mike Lee.