Who Is Reading Your Blog?

A lot of us bloggers are writing and spending a lot of time on our blogs, so much that it has become a passion more than a hobby or part/full time job. We talk about our lives, marketing strategies and share stories of how to make money online… something others would charge endless amounts for, and that people are paying! In the end though, we all keep writing, but are really only in touch with a few of our readers. How many RSS subscribers do you have, but your daily traffic is so much higher? How many RSS subscribers do you have, but your comment postings are so much lower? I love to write about how to make money online, my experiences with online marketing over the past 10 years and I also like to throw in some lifestyle posts about becoming Spiderman or my recent trip to Atlantic City. So, in the end… who’s really reading your blog?

I was checking out my latest postal mail the other day and saw an envelope from Hilton Casino Resort. My first response to Reena was, "Yes!  Another promotion or invite to pick up something sweet on our next visit!". I handed the envelope to Reena and I went through the rest of the pile real quick. Reena started to read me the letter and it said the following:

This was certainly a surprise! Not only did this Casino Senior Host go out of their way to contact me, but the letter was completely hand written. I’m flattered enough that they managed to find and come across my blog, then went to further look up my information to send the letter. (I did a little research and found that I’m #1 on Google for "Gambling at Caesars", so this may have been how they came across my blog)

As much as I ran about the bad parking garage and the poor rooms at Resorts, their staff and player loyalty always seems to outweigh everything else. I was just at Resorts again this weekend and picked up my free four piece luggage set! I didn’t stay over, but we did play in the casino for a couple hours and got something to eat. We had a great time.

The point of this post is that you really never know who is reading your blog! I had no idea that Hilton or any casino staff would ever come across my site, nor did I ever plan for that to happen. Either way, I still would have written about my game play and experiences at the casinos, as it’s part of my lifestyle posts and what I do. Some readers hate lifestyle posts, but I think it makes blogging only better. Don’t you want to know more about the people you are reading on besides just seeing their check stubs?

Keep on blogging and pouring out your hearts… you never know who may be reading!

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Traffic from John Chow Ad Spot

John Chow’s new blog design went live about a month ago, August 22st to be exact. When the new design went live, so did my new 125×125 ad spot on his blog. The cost of the ad spot was $400. At first my ad spot was on the top left section, then John decided to rotate the ads, which was fine. I had no idea what to expect as far as traffic, but the opportunity was there, so I took it! Like many others, I’m sure you are wondering how the ad performed… here’s how the stats went!

The chart above is the complete run down from August 22nd to September 21st. In the beginning there was a nice amount of click throughs since the layout and all ad spots were new. Click amounts for the first five days were 206, 129, 144, 79 and 93. From August 22nd to September 10th, the ad spot had sent over 1509 click throughs, with an average of 75 clicks per day. The reason I point out stats at this time period is because on September 11th, John made a separate post on his blog about my $10,000 in NeverblueAds earnings. The mention he wrote was part of his "Miscellaneous Ramblings - 9/11/2007" post. The result of this listing was the huge spike above, (what other sites have referred to as the "John Chow Effect"). The mention in his Miscellaneous Ramblings post brought in 403 clicks the first day, 239 the next and 102 the third day. (this is counting any clicks from the 125×125 ad spot as well). As you can see on the chart, a few days after the mention in his post, the traffic was slightly higher than normal.

In the end, the 125×125 ad spot and the listing in the Miscellaneous Ramblings post brought in 2,861 clicks… from 170 different pages off JohnChow.com. This comes out to approximately 92 clicks per day. I would estimate around 800-900 clicks were generated from the the text listing in the Miscellaneous Ramblings post, so if I deduct 900 from 2861, it brings the total to 1961… which brings the new average to 63 clicks per day… at an average of .20 per click (based off the $400 ad spot price).

Here are a few more stats based on the traffic that came over from JohnChow.com. Some key points are that the average visitor spend 3 mins and 41 seconds on the site, while a decent amount of the traffic sent over were new to the site.

In the end, it would be tough to say if the ad spot for $400 was a good decision, mainly because I was not trying to sell or push any product or advertising. The main reason I purchased the ad spot to bring in new readers to the site and to possibly help brand the Zac Johnson logo and blog name. However, at only a .20 per click average, I’m sure this ad spot would do well for any marketing software or affiliate network to bring in new affiliates. Since I was only one of eight different advertisers, I would be interested in hearing how their performance for the ad spot went.

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Make Money with DealDotCom

DealDotCom is an awesome new shopping site like Woot!, but focused on "Affiliate Marketing". The site in only a few days old and I’ve already purchased one of their featured items, which was the WP Affiliate Pro. This plugin for WordPress makes it amazingly easy to generate links throughout your blog, without having to change any past posts. To make it even better, through DealDotCom I was able to get the software for only $49.88, instead of it’s retail price of $97!

In addition to getting some amazing deals on marketing material and software, you can also start making some money of your own with DealDotCom. You can simply join DealDotCom and post a link on your site/blog and invite your friends to join. For any referred sales sent from your affiliate link, you will earn a nice35%, for the LIFE of the customer. To make things even more cool, DealDotCom offers a 2-Tier program where you will earn 15% commissions on anyone that signs up below you and refers a sale.

Sounds great so far, right… but is anyone making money off DealDotCom? Well, considering DealDotCom is only a few days old, it would be hard to tell if anyone was really cashing in. Until that is, when John Chow posted his earnings today and shows he is already making over $200+ with the program in it’s first three days! Not to mention any future buys from all his referred members, since he will earn commissions on them for LIFE! I think I actually signed up to the network through his blog, so he also earned on my WP Affiliate Pro purchase as well! Congrats John, your earnings are looking sweet!

John Chow shows a chart on his blog of all referred sales and commissions.

DealDotCom is still brand new, you can easily still make a nice amount of money off this program just off referrals itself. There are several ways for you to monetize this program. You could write reviews on each product featured, setup a mailing list to mail out to you subscribers when items you like are featured, or simply do some ppc marketing!

This program is still so young, let me know if you have had any success with the program and what you would like to see from DealDotCom in the coming months.

Signup to DealDotCom and test your earning potential.

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ComScore Ranks HandHeld Entertainment #1

I last talked about HandHeld Entertainment when they announced that they were acquiring eBaumsWorld.com for $17.5 million. I also went into great detail on all the other site acquisitions they had over the past year and how their plummeting stock was a disaster!

In addition to keeping an eye on this stock and knowing pretty much all of the sites they have scooped up, I’ve also been holding stock in this company for a long time now. I first purchased right after they picked up Dorks.com back in November 2006… and have been buying on the dips, all the way down to $1.50! (52wk Range: 1.00 - 7.78)

Today I was looking over my portfolio and saw my numbers were up pretty high. I noticed ZVUE (HandHeld Entertainment’s Stock Symbol) was up over +50%! For the first time, comScore is now measuring all of HandHeld’s Web sites as a single entity. This is a big change over and mainly because of HandHeld’s formal launch of ZVUE Networks, its online video advertising network. With the new ranking in place, HHE was ranked #1, at the top of the ‘Top 10 Gaining Properties by Percentage Change in Unique Visitors” for August 2007. HandHeld had the largest increase in unique visitors (U.S.) by 327% month-over-month from July 2007 to August 2007.

In addition to the big spike on news today, ZVUE also made news saying they will buy back over a million shares of their own stock over the next 6 months. With all the news on this stock and a company buyback in place, is it now time to buy into ZVUE? Time will tell, and I’m sure they will have more business acquisitions on the way.

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Why & How BlogRush Should Make Money

Within only it’s first few days BlogRush already has a massive following and user base. BlogRush now has access to thousands of the largest blogs online with the simple click of the email button… but what’s the next step BlogRush will take? Will BlogRush attempt to stay completely free based, or will they offer a premium membership with better stats or impression conversions? BlogRush can make money online and I think they should, not only will it make them profitable, but they can also help other bloggers out along the way… here’s how!

If you remember the banner below, congrats! You’re probably an old school online marketer with at least 5-7 years under your belt. If you don’t already know, LinkExchange was on the first and largest banner exchanges. This banner network was spread across the majority of sites online, giving webmaster hopes and dreams of free reciprocal traffic to your sites! Unfortunately, conversions were usually less than 1%. If you didn’t have enough traffic to your web site, you could even buy ad impressions. LinkExchange was super popular, but unless you were a funded company spending a massive (overpriced) amount on 468×60 banners, it probably never sent you that much traffic. In 1998 LinkExchange was then purchased by Microsoft for around $250 Million.

Why does this matter? BlogRush is like LinkExchange, but more targeted and with a 2.0 twist. Blogging has been the new hot thing over the past couple years and so many people have a blog, but how many actually have consistent readers. Now with BlogRush, you can place their widget on your site and earn credits to be shown on other blogs… but what about the smaller guys, or blogs looking for more and faster traffic. Here is where BlogRush can cash in and learn from LinkExchange. I would not be surprised if BlogRush soon implemented a setup where users can purchase credits instead of just having to rely on their own traffic to generate more. I have no problem with BlogRush trying to generate money, and this is an excellent idea.

Let’s take it even further though. BlogRush can now learn from AuctionAds too! Everyone already knows that AuctionAds has a text link under their ad banners, and you receive credit if you refer any other affiliates to the network. BlogRush should do the same, but once (and if) they implement a setup where new advertisers come in and purchase ads… the site that referred the new advertiser should earn a percentage of the sale. If BlogRush ever took action and made this possible, I’m sure they would easily swoop up any other sites they are not currently shown on.

Congratulations BlogRush, I hope you find this posting interesting and highly profitable as it was completely free and not even a sponsored post! I’m all about affiliate marketing and blogging to help others out. Let’s see what BlogRush can do to help everyone else out and make the most out of this program.

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