Jentrepreneur

The PageRank vs Traffic Debate - Why You’re Both Wrong

Just a quickie today…. I get so sick and tired of seeing the same stupid arguments between webmasters; especially the one about whether PageRank or traffic is more important to making money on the Web. News flash: you’re both wrong! Here’s why:

It’s impossible to determine which will earn a site more money, because every site has its own monetization strategy. And Google be damned, PageRank isn’t going to stop making people a lot of money just because they did their little “paid links are evil” dance and chant.

If you sell text links, whether or not you actively promote the site’s PageRank, the PR is still going to be a deciding factor on the advertisers’ end, and will determine whether you get the advertisers and how much they’re willing to pay.

If you monetize using things like Adsense alone (stupid), then traffic will lead to more clicks which will lead to more income. But you’re not dumb enough to make a serious effort at monetizing a site while only using Adsense, are you? Didn’t think so.

So see that? Traffic is not the better factor in making money. PageRank is not the better factor in making money. Knowing how to run a damned business instead of buying into every bit of BS you pick up in webmaster communities is the better factor in making money on the Web!

Posted in Generating Income | 2 Comments »

Should You Use a Free Blog Host or Your Own Domain for a New Blog?

Many new bloggers launch their first blog on a free blog host like Blogspot or Wordpress.com. Personally, I’d say that’s one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a blogger. Here’s why:

1. Free blog hosts are less professional from a marketing perspective.
2. The domains for a free blog hosting account are longer and harder to remember from a reader-standpoint.
3. It’s hard to take a blogger seriously when they don’t care enough about their blog to spend a few dollars a year on it.
4. As a blogger, you don’t have as much control over your blog’s appearance and functionality as you might if you hosted your own blog on your own domain.
5. You may not be able to use all available advertising and monetization options when you use a free blog host.
6. You can run into problems down the road if you do decide to switch from a free blog host to your own domain and hosting, because you may not have access to be able to redirect the old blog to the new blog (meaning lost rankings and visitors). (more…)

   Posted in Blogging | 5 Comments »

TinyMCE Buttons Disappear in Wordpress

After upgrading one of my bigger blogs manually to the latest version of Wordpress (version 2.2), my TinyMCE buttons (the WYSIWYG editor buttons on your writing / editing screens that let you format your text outside of HTML / code mode) had disappeared.

I was still getting the “visual” and “code” tabs, but couldn’t format my posts without turning off the editor in my user profile and doing it in HTML (which I don’t mind, but I prefer having the options readily available at one click).

Anyway, I just spent the last few hours searching for a solution. Plenty of people were having the problem, but there weren’t a lot of solutions suggested other than “clear your cache,” or “reinstall the TinyMCE files.” Those didn’t work. (more…)

Posted in Blogging | 3 Comments »

Five Web Promotion Tactics You Probably Haven’t Tried

If you run a website or blog, you’ve probably heard of the typical list of marketing activities… submit your site to directories, submit your articles to article directories, submit your links to Digg, Del.icio.us, and other social media sites, target the right keyword phrases, comment on related sites and blogs, etc. However, there’s a lot more to Web promotion than simply doing what everyone else is doing, especially if you want to set your site apart from the competition.

Here are five Web promotion / Internet marketing tactics that you probably haven’t tried (or perhaps haven’t tried very effectively): (more…)

Posted in Marketing | No Comments »

Are You Stealing if You Use Ad Blockers?

There’s a discussion going on in the DigitalPoint forums about the ad blocker for Firefox, and whether it’s ethical, or content theft, to use tools that remove all (or the bulk of) advertising from free content websites. What do you think? Do you think it’s OK to remove ads from a site that’s offering free content? What if the ads aren’t of the intrusive variety (not hijacking your system, gathering excessive stats, or using heavy resources)? Or do you consider it stealing to remove the income stream from something people put hard work into? (more…)

Posted in Advertising | 2 Comments »

Female Blogger Roundup

There’s a great list of female bloggers posted over at The Copywriting Maven blog. There aren’t many good lists (or many lists at all actually) of female webpreneurs out there, so this is a nice niche one to take a look at.

Posted in Blogging | No Comments »

CIA Acknowledges Bloggers as Journalists

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has altered its rules regarding the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to include bloggers in policies formerly only applicable to more traditional journalists. Read the full story from ABCnews.

Posted in Blogging | No Comments »