Blogging | Andrew Wee | Blogging | Affiliate Marketing | Social Traffic Generation

When A Blog Isn’t A Blog… May 12, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wee in : blogging , add a comment

With the multitude of functions that blogging platforms are currently being appropriated for (especially WordPress software), is blogging in danger of losing its identity.

It’s no surprise that blogs are highly optimized for search engines, tend to be the weapon of choice for linkbait campaigns and are usually the chosen weapon when a single individual (or marketer) decides to take on an airline, supermarket chain, or budget airline.

confused

Add to that the fact that affiliate marketers are also employing it’s flexible architecture to construct landing pages, opt-in forms, affiliate content sites, shopping/shopping comparison sites, coupon sites, customer loyalty sites (plus the occasional or maybe not so occasional affiliate cookie stuffing site) and you’d realize that it’s not just a diarying platform anymore.

In a tweet yesterday, Top Ranking Marketing CEO Lee Odden fired (more…)

Overcoming Blogging’s Style Versus Substance Challenge May 7, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wee in : blogging , 3 comments

The answer to an old question whether it’s more important to focus on style or content (also sometimes refered to as “form or function”) when it comes to content publishing on the internet will have most listeners responding “You need both quality content and an interesting way to generate traffic and monetize it.”

Easier said than done though.

challenge

From my research, most podcasters and video bloggers who generate “interesting” (ie not boring) content tend to be clever/witty, use cool background music, broadcast/guerilla-style video effects and transitions, to the point of being Seinfeld-ish (ie being about nothing) in nature.

If anything, the message is (more…)

Popularity: 5%

Tags: blogging, branding

Et tu, Twitter? - Will New Social Media Render Blogging Obsolete? March 12, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wee in : blogging , 4 comments

With the amount of publicity in old guard mainstream media (late night talk shows, old line newspapers), you’d think that Twitter was the best thing since sliced bread, which leaves some wondering if the death knell has been sounded for bloggers.

Take a look at the signs of the impending apocalypse, once proud A-Lister bloggerati have taken a hiatus, stopped blogging, or are pummelled over the twitterstream into irrelevance. Is blogging, once the circa 2006 golden boy of mainstream media, now it’s whipping boy?

dinosaur

More importantly, is anyone going to read more than the 140 character limit imposed by micro blogging platforms like Twitter?

Are we destined to become a SMS/text nation?

Gee… (more…)

My WordPress 2.x Wishlist February 23, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wee in : blogging , 2 comments

Since it’s been almost a year since I set up my last blog, it’s been a somewhat nostalgic experience looking at how the platform has changed since I started using it in 2006 with it’s 1.x incarnation.

Having played with a WP 2.7.1 install, it seems to chug along slower compared to it’s 2.5.1 predecessor, and hopefully this doesn’t signal a path down the bloatware route, even if it comes with lots of shiny bells and whistles, compared to before.

WordPress has become much easier to use now for the most part, with several functions accessible behind the browse-based point-and-click interface. In the past you had to FTP files down, edit them with a text editor and upload them, or use the clunky “theme editor” function and edit the text from there.

I started out in 1997 writing HTML on a text editor and created tables writing raw table, tr,td,/td,/tr, /table tags. I later progressed on to using WYSIWYG text editors and software like XSite Pro. These days I do almost everything exclusively with WordPress only or in tandem with other software like vBulletin forum software, Aweber email autoresponder software, Joomla or some of the new CMSes I’ve been working with recently.

HTML editors have gone to the scrapheap for me. That’s not to say that WordPress is the final word in creating new niche affiliate sites though.

Here is my wishlist:

wishlist

Here are a couple of things that WordPress has done well:

Spam control: Akismet works hard to keep trackback spam, comment spam out of the woodwork. I use a couple more for good measure so very little spam is sitting in the moderation basket each day.
Tagging: Keywords and tags help readers find relevant content, especially with the millions of blogs floating in the blogosphere. They’re one step further towards relevant and have made older plugins like Tag Warrior float into lesser prominence.
Native embedding of video and other embed code: While you had to jump through hoops to place a YouTube video in a blog post, the process is a pretty seamless copy-and-paste job now.

Here are a couple of things that would help WordPress become (more…)

Thesis WordPress Template Product Review February 20, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wee in : Internet Marketing, blogging , 2 comments

Chris Pearson is a smart designer/developer who’s latched on to the emerging trend in publishing - the move away from elaborate, bandwidth-heavy, ornate websites to the more subtle, clean design that’s seeing its way on more progressive blogs.

Is this an influence of the minimalist style micro-blogging platforms like Twitter? It’s hard to say, but having a simple, yet intuitive design will give blog visitors easier access to your content and reduce the distraction that a cluttered blog template can create.

Chris’ Thesis WordPress template has been around since last year, so it’s not exactly a new kid on the block. In that time, it’s made its way on a number of blogs, especially based on its strengths.

I’d been looking for a clean and SEO-optimized template for use on a number of new content sites I’m in the process of developing and after reading a Thesis review by Rae Hoffman AKA SugarRae, it sealed the deal for me.

Here’s what the default installation looks like:

thesis

As you can see, it consists of a text area on the left and a prominent (more…)

The “Is Blogging Dead” Meme and Other Navel-Gazing Nonsense February 12, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wee in : blogging , 4 comments

It seems like it’s becoming an annual tradition for a blogger or reporter on a slow news day to observe that a trend of “a-lister” bloggers are retiring from the blogging scene and one of the informal golden rules in reporting is:

If it happens once, it’s an accident.
If it happens twice, it’s a coincidence.
If it happens three times, you have a “trend” story on your hands.

So 3 prominent bloggers quitting the scene within a period of 1-2 years = trend?

The one thing about the “golden rule” was that it generally applied to the brick-and-mortar context, not as much when you’re talking about 3 or more bloggers out of the hundreds of millions of blogs out there.

Statistically, even 100 top bloggers out of a universe of 100 million blogs would be 1 / 1,000,000. In decimal points that would be 0.000001% of the blogging population.

is blogging dead

So wondering if “blogging is dead” is akin to wondering if fixed-line telephones are dead or if the fax machine is dead. Nice linkbait, but I don’t think there’s much substance or value to that argument.

Jason Lee Miller notes in his WebProNews piece that fame (or the price of it) might be the cause of (more…)