Digg is a great marketing tool not just for technology websites, for all websites. Getting your story or article on the front page usually guarantees a great increase of traffic. With that increase in traffic you usually are also guaranteed an increase in ad revenue. Lately I have noticed a lot of people making simple mistakes that make it so their stories do not make it to the front page of Digg.
The biggest problem I see with users who submit to Digg is that they submit every article / review they write. This is a HUGE mistake. I’ve seen this with a few review sites and just wonder how they think every one of their reviews are going to make it to the front page. For one who is going to digg that review when there are probably a lot of other reviews of the same product out there. Also if digg users see that you are submitting everything all of your content they will automatically not digg it, or even bury the story as spam!
As you look at the front page of Digg almost all of the stories are somewhat interesting. So when writing articles you want to submit to Digg you should try to make them interesting so other Digg users will digg the story as well. If you are not creative try to write about something controversial that will grab people’s attention. These are type of stories Digg users like and will digg themselves.
If you run a review site like me you know that product reviews are not that interesting, but you can still get these stories to the front page. How do you do that? Well for starters you want to give the story a good name, not something like Asus WL-500W Router. That review did make it to the front page of Digg, but the title of the story was File, Print, and Webcam server in 1, the Asus WL-500W N Router. This title tell the users that it’s not just some ordinary router. Other techniques include saying thing like Exclusive, Worlds First, First Look, etc.
Digg has become very bloated with millions of stories that get under 10 diggs, so if you want your story to get to the front page try to make it interesting and unique.
The other day I logged into AdBrite to take a look at my earnings. I rarely even go in there and look because I really do not use AdBrite that much. While looking at my earnings I saw a new thing for videos. Wondering what it was all about I took a look. I discovered AdBrite is offering a very nice video advertising solution. Unlike ValueClick’s video advertising solution AdBrite uses their own web player, much like YouTube.
AdBrite has a video that tells you all about this new service and the video itself shows how the ads are displayed in your video. Upon watching the video I was very surprised at how unobtrusive the ads really were. The video player is a lot like YouTube’s. The cool thing about it is just like YouTube you are given a code to embed the video onto not just your website, any website. So say you have a very popular video and a lot of people post it on their blog, with YouTube you basically get nothing for it, but with AdBrite’s player you get paid even if the video is not being played from your page! Here is an example video that I used for the SilverStone LC14MC HTPC Case review on ThinkComputers.
This all sounds great, but there are some downfalls. The biggest is that you have to host to video file. If your videos are very popular then this could rack up a large bandwidth bill and using a lot of bandwidth will also slow down your site. Second the file can’t just be any movie file it has to be .FLV. This can be a pain for some who are just used to uploading their video straight to YouTube.
As far as how much you get paid I am really not sure. I set this up yesterday and when I go into my AdBrite earnings under the videos it says so data is available so I am not sure if I am even making any money! I will keep you updated over the next few weeks to see how things go. If you want to signup for AdBrite do it via my referall link HERE!
You may have noticed some new features on the blog the past few days. I have been meaning to add these features for a while now. So let’s see what is new.
First off I FINALLY updated wordpress to version 2.1. This was well over due, especially because the version I was using before had a lot of security vulnerabilities. John’s and Stephen’s blogs both got attacked by someone exploiting these vulnerabilities. So I guess I am lucky no one has tried to mess with my blog, or maybe I’m just not that popular!
The first feature I implemented was threaded comments. This allows users to actually reply to specific comments, not just to reply to the post. This makes post discussion a lot better and when you reply to someone they are know you are talking to them. Threaded comments are achieved with Brian’s Threaded Comments plugin.
Keeping up with your comments may be a tough thing to do, especially if you visit and comment on a lot of blogs. With this in mind I installed the Subscribe to comments plugin. This will ad a check box in the comment section that users can click that will subscribe them to the comments via e-mail. So when someone comments on the post they are notified.
One thing I really like about a lot of blogs and even websites is that if you are reading a certain post at the bottom of the page there is a list of related links. These links are other posts that deal with the same thing as what is being said in the post you are reading. That is why I had to add the related posts plugin.
I have seen a lot of my friends add MyBlogLog to their blogs so I did the same. It is really cool to see the different people that view your page and you can checkout their MyBlogLog profile and see what blogs / sites they author. With the addition of MyBlogLog I have also added MyAvatars. It actually puts a user’s MyBlogLog picture in their comments. This really puts a face to your readers.
So that’s about it for the blog updates. If you know of any other worthwhile plugins that you don’t see on my blog please let me know, thanks!
If you are a frequent visitor of ThinkComputers than you may have noticed a few things that are different. I told you before I was doing some Ad testing on my inline Google 336 ads. With the addition to that I have been making my actual review pages longer. This cuts the total review pages down. Why would I want to do this? Well here are a few reasons.
First my average pages viewed per visit is 3.52. This means that on average if 1 person visits my site they check out 3 pages then leave. So what’s the point of having a 10 page review if most of the people viewing the site are only looking at 3 of those 10 pages.
Also if I have 10 pages all with Google 336 ads on them it is likely that not as many people will click on the ads. Now with the 10 pages my impressions will go up, but my CTR will go down. This won’t really help me at all. So if I make the pages longer and have less pages with ads on them for one the ads won’t seem as obtrusive, and people are more likely to click on them.
Ok so I have made that change and things are going good, but I also made another change. If you look on the left side of the page you will see another 160X600 banner ad. This banner ad is Tribal Fusion. If they can accept you I would definitely signup with them. They have really good rates, and a lot of them are direct CPM. So now that the pages are longer people will actually see that ad, they won’t have the scroll down past the article the view it. This will help so people will actually click on the ad, but if it is direct CPM it does not even matter if they do click on it!
Now I was running my top 468X60 on Tribal Fusion, but one thing with Tribal Fusion is that they do not have a lot of inventory, especially for a 468X60 placement, so a lot of the time you would see an ad council ad. You don’t make any money on ad council ads. So I have put that in rotation with a Google ad. Also I have also put a Tribal Fusion ad in my 728X90 rotation. So it is now Google, TF, and TTZ. 728X90 and 160X600 ads pay more and have a bigger inventory, which is why I have added them.
So how has this helped? Well on average I was making like $2.50 a day off Tribal Fusion. Now I am making around $12 a day! That is $360 compared to $75! A nice increase for just adding some ads in! Also I have not noticed a big change in the Google 728X90 revenue. This is good because I was expecting it to go down, because instead of just 2 ads in rotation, there are 3. It’s a little too early to gauge Google 336 earnings. I will update you with that next week!
That’s right I am hiring bloggers for ThinkGaming. I really want to get the site going and I can’t count on people that will “do it in their free time” so I am hiring people. I have already done a job posting on Problogger. I have got 2 responses since I posted it yesterday, hopefully more will come in. Here is the job listing…
The ThinkNetwork is looking for a video game blogger for our recent re-launch of ThinkGaming. We are looking for someone who has a passion for writing about all gaming topics from console gaming to PC gaming. The ThinkNetwork is expanding and we would like you to be a part of it.
What we are looking for:
Reliable Individuals
A Passion for Gaming
A Passion for Writing
Creativity
Writing Skill
You will also need to be familiar with WordPress, an FTP client, and have basic knowledge of HTML.
This is a paid position and we are looking for someone who can post at minimum 1 post a day.
To apply send an e-mail to bbuskirk@thinkcomputers.org with your basic information, a writing sample, and any URLs of current or past blogs you have worked for.
So if you are interested please let me know. Please make sure you are reliable.
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