Motorcycle Blogging

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noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:16:00 +0000

This is a test post.

Blogging Versus Talking

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:38:00 +0000

One of the problems with blogging is that your words never come out sounding the same as if you were speaking them.

You can't hear the changes in pitch, loudness, the emphasis on certain words, you can't even see the hand gestures, or eyebrow movements. Without all that, you leave it up to the reader to fill in those blanks and make their own assumptions.

That causes people to misinterpret things.

Especially if you're like me, someone with an opinion who makes a living voicing his opinion.

Every now and then, I post something on one of my blogs that gets misinterpreted. Part of it is my own fault, because there are days when I feel like I don't give a s**t, and then I read an article where someone else is spouting off their pompous attitude. So I follow up with an article on my own blog, and spout back at them.

Except, my articles always sound like I'm the loud mouth with the attitude, and no one seems to pay attention to the first loud mouth that I was responding to.

In any case, as a blogger you have to take great care in crafting your words the right way so as to get your point across while minimizing any margin for misinterpretation.

1. Read your writing before posting it. Do as best as you can to put yourself in someone else's shoes to see if they can misinterpret it.

2. Take a look at your previous post. If you post articles several times a week on the same blog, people will follow it like a diary. So they'll read your newest article under the context of the previous one. Often times, if you're aware of your previous posts, your readers will find contradictions.

3. If you feel really pissed off about something, go ahead and write your article, but don't publish it until the following day. The re-read it the next day, and decide if you still want to say all that. (I've got tons of articles still saved in draft, that'll never get published).

News Blogs Versus Newspapers

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:25:00 +0000

Kelly Samardak, who writes the blog, "Just An Online Minute", attended the IFC Media Project Lunch Panel to hear some of the largest news people talk about blogging...

This is also how traditional "we were in the trenches during the civil war" journalists treat bloggers. Gauging from many an eavesdropping session and even at the panel that inspired me today, matured career reporters, journalists, and columnists still view blogging and online news dissemination as kid stuff.

True, blogging is looked down upon by the traditional media people. But if you ask bloggers, you'll get a similar reaction, that traditional media is old and stodgy, and soon to be dead.

The biggest difference between blogging and traditional media is that there's a lot less money being made in blogging. The whys on this fact can lead to another larger discussion.

But there are indeed news networks out there that exist solely on a blogging platform, or on some kind of Internet medium. But because the advertising income for these networks is still so much less than the traditional media outlets, it's tougher to compete.

News blogs have to spend their money very carefully, making sure everyone they hire can justify the expense. Personnel at a popular news blog often wear multiple hats. It also means they can't supply enough reporters to cover every news angle out there.

But that doesn't mean they are less serious about reporting, nor that they are less professional in what they do.

So what news blogs have done instead, is focus on "narrow verticals", which simply means focusing on niche topics that get less coverage in the traditional media channels. This is why you see news blogs just for custom choppers, or just for the Southern California motorcycle scene.

Likewise, traditional media outlets can't earn an income catering to such narrow markets. They hire so many people, that they need larger, broader, advertisers to pay for it all.

Google AdSense is doing well to help provide advertising income for news blogs, as are several other Internet advertising networks. And more than likely, it's going to take the continued success of AdSense to help bring about credibility to news blogging. Perhaps this downturn in the economy will encourage advertisers to give the cheaper, more transparent, online medium a try.

Criticizing Motorcycle Brands

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:39:00 +0000

There's an interesting court case pending regarding a website publisher who built a parody site that criticizes a company's attempts to build a restaurant in Manhattan's Union Square Park.

This isn't the first time someone built a parody site that criticizes a company for doing something. In fact, bloggers have long criticized companies and organizations for a variety of personal reasons. Most of the time those companies don't mind because the bloggers have pretty small audiences compared to newspapers and magazines. But sometimes, you get a blogger with a large audience that wants to make a parody.

While the First Amendment usually protects our right to free speech, there are still ways for companies to go after bloggers. In the case above, the company claims that the publisher made illegal use of their logos and trademarks.

How many times have motorcycle bloggers criticized Harley-Davidson, Orange County Choppers, or RevTech Engines? How many times have we used their logos, catch phrases, and photos of their products? While most of us are still too small make any serious impact on Harley's sales, somewhere, sometime, someone is going to create a site, or blog post, that'll grow legs and walk all across the Internet that will actually hurt The Motor Company to some significant degree.

And what will Milwaukee do about it?

It'll be interesting to see what happens to this particular website publisher and her parody site. How will the court rule on this? Will they defend the "fair use" doctrine of our Copyright laws?

Can You Live as a Blogger?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 16:36:00 +0000

The answer to that question seems to turn up as "no" more and more often.

Max Kalehoff writes on his Online Spin blog...

First, Q1 of 2009 is destined to be downright bloody in the online ad economy, amidst a larger U.S. recession. Keep in mind we're still riding the wave of a relatively strong 2007, as well as 2008 spending commitments that have been baked in for almost a year. We're also buffered partly by election-season ad spending.

Any strong income you might be seeing from ads placed on your blog are still due to advertisers having spent big chunks of cash several months ago, and have not yet depleted that spend. We're just now starting to see that spend deplete itself, with more advertisers opting to cut back, or not advertise online.

In October 2003, I made the decision to quit my day job, and work 100% as a blogger/website publisher. It's a decision that I had been mulling over for perhaps a couple of years, but was just too cautious to pull the trigger. Even though back then, I was making some great money blogging. The longer I delayed, the easier the decision became.

So where does leave motorcycle blogging as a way to generate income for writers?

The good news is that many businesses are still going to need advertising to sustain business; it's just a matter of finding the most cost-effective type of advertising. Each business will have to find its own way. There are indeed businesses out there that will see online advertising as being most effective for their unique set of circumstances.

Affiliate marketing is seen by many advertisers as a cheap, and effective way to advertise. Since advertisers can pay publishers on a percentage of sale, the publisher ends up eating the cost of advertising to the 99% of visitors who didn't click. But don't expect large brands like Honda or Harley to get into affiliate marketing. It'll be accessories, like jackets, helmets, parts, and tools.

Online ad space is going to get way cheap due to advertisers wanting to spend less, and so many more websites continuing to get built. Today, it's still common to find CPM rates of $0.25, but I'm sure we'll be seeing $0.10 as the going rate.

To keep your online ad space valuable, you've got to focus your audience. It's not enough to run a motorcycle blog in general. There is already a glut of motorcycle blogs and websites. Think about starting a "motorcycle leather blog" where you announce new leather goods. Get manufacturers to put you on their press distribution list. You can convince the motorcycle leather retailers to buy ad space with that kind of focused audience.

For that matter, look at implementing a banner rotator that will allow you to manage ads that you sell directly.

Using the Public to Build Your Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:54:00 +0000

NBC News announced yesterday that it's relaunching its network of television websites into something called, "Locals Only", where it puts more focus on tapping into its users to create content....

Content will be aggregated from the best available sources – in many cases linking to outside content providers or contributed by the audience itself – in order to provide consumers with the best and most informed user experience. The online features will also be created with a more integrated approach, using text, videos, blogs, or whatever medium is appropriate, to tell the full story.

At the heart of all this change is that NBC no longer plans to feature only its own content, but now, feature content from other providers as long as it provides as much as local news as it can. In that sense, they've realized that they can't build the best local news website using only their own content, they need to rely on the "whole web".

The "whole web" approach is largely what modern-day blogging is about. One blogger, for example, is able to build a following of loyal readers by simply focusing on one subject, and using the entire Internet as a source for material. Instead of just writing about his/her own experiences in riding a motorcycle, for example, he/she examines everyone else's motorcycle blogs, shares his/her opinion, and links to them.

Traditional news websites tended to utilize a closed-door policy where it featured only their content. As a result, users tended to visit them, read what they have, and then move on to another news website to get more news.

There are some motorcycle blog aggregators out there, such as FAST3R, that look at hundreds of motorcycle blogs, feature the best content, and link to them. It gives the reader a central source for all things new in the world of motorcycle riding. Whether or not FAST3R finds success in becoming the top web destination for motorcycle news remains to be seen, however.

Still, as a blogger, you're better off writing about the "whole web", and not just about what you're doing, in order to build a popular destination. Many bloggers get into the habit of protecting their Google Page Rank, by not linking out to other bloggers, and writing about what their saying.

How Important is the Domain Name?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:44:00 +0000

If you're thinking about starting a new blog, one of the first decisions you'll make is picking out a domain name.

How important is the domain name towards the overal success of your blog?

Very, but it's not mission critical.

The most successful blogs out there are remembered by domain name. The people who read them all the time are one's who've memorized the domain name, and can get there by typing a few letters of it into their browser. And that's not a function of the domain name however, that's a function of a blog's popularity.

That is, it really doesn't matter what the domain name is, as long as you love reading it. So, a blog with a domain name like, "jklpoefhhguwpoe.com" will be remembered, and revisited consistently so long as it has great content published frequently.

To prove that point, take this blog for example. I picked out the domain name "motorcycleblogging.com". Note that since today, the last time I posted something new on this blog was way back in June, that's four months ago. So, I did a Google search for "motorcycle blogging", and this site showed up way down in the listings, around 103. That proves that the domain name is not a mission critical measure of success.

However, if I were to publish this blog regularly, maybe 2-3 posts each week, and write original material, I'll guarantee you I'll get that #1 spot.

That's because the domain name does indeed help towards your SEO. Having the same keywords in the domain name that match what someone is Googling for, will indeed boost a website higher in the listings. It's just not the panacea of SEO.

The other important aspect of domain names is getting people to click through from Google's search results. In other words, if someone is looking at a set of search results, how will they decide which website to click on first?

Just ask yourself that question. You might look at the Title, the description, and the domain name, to figure out if that website is going to provide you with what you're hoping to find. So, if you ran a search for "motorcycle helmets" and you saw a website with a domain name of "ksdojeufjslfjdf.com", and another website of "motorcyclehelmets.com", you'll probably click on the latter, first.

So, it's not enough to just be listed #1 on Google. You have to convince that person to click through to your site, instead of someone else's.

Is It Worth Buying a "us.com" Domain?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:05:00 +0000

If you register a lot of domain names, you probably already have seen advertisements for the "us.com" top-level domain (otherwise called domain name extensions).

Technically, "us.com" is not a TLD. It's an actual domain name (like www.us.com). The company that owns this domain name is CentralNic. They also own others like "eu.com" and "uk.com".

Their business idea is that people who want a popular keyword in a domain name cannot get such domains because they are already taken. So, by offering this new quasi-TLD, people can get the domain they want: computers.us.com, or motorcycles.us.com, etc...

The question is if it's really worth our while to register such a domain name?

Technically, what you're registering is a subdomain. A subdomain is another website residing under a larger website. For example, under the Google.com website, there are several sub-websites below that such as news.google.com, labs.google.com, desktop.google.com, etc. These are all self-standing websites that fall under the larger google.com hierarchy.

So when you register something like "motorcycle.us.com", you're actually setting up a sub-website under the larger us.com website. The "us" is an actual domain name, much like "google" is a domain name on the .com TLD.

While each sub-website under us.com is a self-standing website, the search engine optimization (SEO) ramifications are still not well known. As it is, no one truly knows how Google handles subdomains differently than domains. What we do know is that Google treats subdomains as if they were separate from their parent site, as far as listings on the search results pages go. But we don't know if Google ranks these websites using their parent site's ranking, or if they force each subdomain to build up its own rank. Only the priviledged few at Google knows that answer.

Moreover, if the us.com domain name gets a penalty from Google, will that penalty trickle down to each subdomain?

That's a serious question to consider if you're planning to invest a lot of time and money into building a reputable website.

I'd avoid registering a name on us.com, and instead focus on registering a domain on an actual TLD (.com, .net, .org. .us, etc..). It might be harder to find the domain you want, or one that suits your requirements. But in the long run, you won't suffer (or benefit) from whatever happens to us.com.

Getting Paid to Ride a Motorcycle

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:10:00 +0000

So can you really get paid to ride your motorcycle?

Yes, in a way.

If you publish a blog about your experiences and travels on a motorcycle, and that blog earns income through some way or another, then it's technically a business.

And therefore, any expenses associated with that business, can be written off of your income to reduce your tax liability. That means the gas, the maintenance, the motel, the food, all of it.

However, if you also use that motorcycle for personal reasons, then somehow you'll need to separate the personal from the business. You might argue that your motorcycle blog is about ALL of your motorcycle riding experience. But that's an argument you'll have to make with the IRS auditor.

My recommendation is to examine each ride you take as being a personal ride, or a business ride. Then, keep your receipts on those rides that you determine to be business in nature. Even though your blog represents all of your riding experience, the fact is that the motorcycle is still being used for personal reasons.

What I do is treat the overnight rides as business rides. I'll charge the gas, the food, and the motel all on my corporate AMEX card. I'll treat it the same way another person might treat a business trip to visit a client. But if I take a joy ride on a Saturday, I'll treat it as a personal ride.

I figure that if an IRS auditor wanted to question any of my rides as business or personal, the fact that I have a formula for determining which is which, will demonstrate that I'm not just writing off every ride I take. Just having that policy in place, will help an IRS auditor know that I really did think this through. And I think that's all they're concerned about.

But, if you want to blog about every ride you take, then you certainly are justified in writing off those expenses. But you'll need to be more diligent in keeping your receipts for each ride, and keeping them separate from other rides. You'll also do good by printing out the webpage for each article, and stapling the receipts to it, just to prove that you really did make each ride a business ride.

If you really want to go the full distance in writing off your riding expenses, consider incorporating your blogging business. I did exactly that, and all of my blogs are owned by my company, Clear Digital Media, Inc.

Because I'm technically an employee of the company, I can have my company pay my healthcare insurance, and write that off from my company's tax liability. I can buy my computer, my office furniture, my office supplies, and make them all tax write offs. My cell phone, my landline phone, my Internet connection, are in my company's name, and is a tax write off.

My company gives me the benefit of using that cell phone and Internet for personal reasons.

And since I use one of my spare bedrooms as an office, my business pays me rent. And that rent is written off from my company's tax liability.

The IRS allows small corporations like mine to file a "Status S Exemption", which makes those companies, "S Corps". That basically treats all of your corporate income and expenses as personal. You still get the benefit of having a corporation, but the taxes are rolled up into your personal taxes. So in the end, it actually trims extra money off my personal taxes.

That might sound like I'm getting away with murder, but the government created the "S Corp" specifically to encourage the creation of more small businesses. Businesses hire employees, and I do have employees (aside from myself). That's how I give back to the country for these benefits.

You might think that the only thing I can't write off is the food I eat. Well, believe it or not, I publish some food blogs too.

Picking a Good Domain Name

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:25:00 +0000

Most of you reading this probably already have a motorcycle website or blog, and hence, may already own a domain name.

If you want to learn how to make some good money from publishing websites, you'll need to set up more websites, and build your success collectively, instead of just from one website.

There's two primary thoughts on how to choose a good domain name...

A domain name that has the most important keywords in it

A domain name that is highly memorable

If you can achieve both in a domain name, great. While many people say that all the good domain names are taken, it isn't really true. For example, I found "motorcycleblogging.com" still available.

If you're going to find a domain based on the first criteria, then you don't need to worry about getting a ".com". A ".net" or a ".org" is just as good. Even a ".us", or a ".info" is ok too.

Domain names based on important keywords are valuable because they optimize on Google and Yahoo a lot better. This very blog you're reading is about blogging, but specifically for motorcyclists. So, if you wanted to search Google about motorcycles and blogging, then a domain like "motorcycleblogging.com" is perfect.

I did the same thing for my other blog, "motorcyclephilosophy.org". I knew that the phrase, "motorcycle philosophy" had a fair amount of search volume on Google's keyword tool, and hence, I wanted to build a blog that would capture that search traffic.

Meanwhile, domain names that are based on the second criteria, that of being memorable, are those that often unrelated to the content of the website. The most famous of all, of course, is "yahoo.com". What exactly is a "yahoo" anyways, and how does that relate to a search engine, or personalized start page? But, it's very memorable.

Domain names based on being memorable need to end in a ".com". If you're going to rely on people being able to remember your domain name, then you have to have the ".com" at the end, for the simple fact that people have a habit of expecting a ".com" at the end of everything.

And if you're going get a domain name that people can remember, then get one that people don't tend to misspell.

Long Domain Names versus Short

There was a time many years ago that people recommended short domain names like "yahoo.com" or those with three or fewer syllables. But I haven't seen any evidence proving there is an advantage to this.

If you're want a memorable domain name, it could just as well be long. I think, "letthegoodtimesroll.com" is pretty memorable.

Abbreviations

Stay away from choosing an abbreviation for a domain name. These are very hard to remember, and they don't optimize well on search engines. If you want to start a blog called, "Two Chicks with Harleys", don't get a domain name like, "tcwh.com". No one will remember that, and they'll have to bookmark you to find you again.

Get Rich Quick Schemes

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:09:00 +0000

The Internet is chock full of get-rich-quick books and CDs about how to make "$60,000 a year" from your blog. There's so much of stuff, I wonder if I should be selling books too.

I found a site today called, "Blogging for Dollars", after seeing a banner ad with this guy saying, "I earn $6,000 a month from my blog". Being that I'm in this business, I had to look at it, just to satisfy my curiosity.

Here's what it said...

Start your own blog site using your BlogToolKit. There is absolutely no technical experience required! The site is completely set up for you!

Begin writing about the things you enjoy; your pet, your favorite sport’s team, etc. Rest assured that there are people who share the same passion and want to read and participate!

Your BlogToolKit will automatically help you setup advertising offers on your blog in just a few easy steps. Then when people visit and read your blog, they will click on the ads and you will make money!

This is exactly what I do already. Except I don't need "BlogToolKit". Google AdSense sets up these ads automatically, as well as Yahoo Publisher. You can also set up similar rotational ads from Commission Junction, or create your own ad rotation from a wide variety of scripts.

The difference is that this site, "Blogging for Dollars", is selling you an instruction manual telling you how to do this.

Folks, don't buy this stuff.

There are already thousands of blogs and websites that tell you how to do this for free. There are hundreds more web forums devoted to this stuff. I'm telling you how to do this for free also.

In my town, there's this gal who's in the same business as I am, building websites and blogs, and making money from the ads. Except she spent tens of thousands of dollars on these books and CDs, on how to get rich from the Internet. She purchased memberships to other websites that sell this information. She spent more money travelling to conventions (air, hotel, meals), just to learn what she could have learned for free.

There's this guy named, "Joel Comm", who apparently has made millions of dollars writing blogs and monetizing them with AdSense. He's really famous in this line of work. But the fact is that he's not actually exceptional with AdSense, he's no more skilled than I am. He's just a guy who sells books and CDs, that teaches people how to do this. That's where his marketing expertise lies, taking advantage of people's desperation.

Profitable Blog Templates

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Wed, 07 May 2008 01:36:00 +0000

Which blog design tends to work best in getting people to click on ads?

It's not always an easy answer.

Most bloggers seem to be in agreement that a design that has the content on the right side, and the side column(s) on the left, tend to monetize the best.

Psychology of the Eye

Read an old article of mine, "Psychology of the Eye", which discusses what people tend to see first when they visit website for the first time.

Basically, people tend to read a webpage from the top to bottom, and from left to right. I also defined a principle called, "Contrast Focus" that says people to focus on colorful objects when placed against a dull, drab background. By using contrast focus, and the left-to-right principles, you can make someone's eye land on something.

The design of this blog, which uses two side columns, and one content column, has become the most successful design I've come up with. The AdSense unit positioned exactly where you see it now, in the second column, towards the top, tends to get the highest click-through-rate for me, than in any other area.

AdSense actually provides guidelines on where to place their creatives in the most effective places. What I'm showing you now, falls in line with the suggestions. They have other suggestions as well. You can read an older article of mine, "Best AdSense Placements", for more discussion on this.

Notice also that my blog design uses very little color. It's large pretty drab. If anything is catching your eye, it's either AdSense creative (using bright blue links), or the title of the first article, not necessarily in that order. The bright blue links contrasting against the mostly drab-white page design, are saying, "Hey look at me!"

Two Columns versus Three Columns

I've found that three column designs, set up exactly like this one, monetizes better than the two column design. For reasons that I still haven't been able to understand, the eye seems to notice the AdSense creative much more when its in a three-column design like this, as opposed to a two-column design.

I think there's something in our subconscious telling us that the middle column is likely the column containing the content. And so, our eye tends to rest on the AdSense creative. However, our rational thinking is saying, "no, the much wide column on the right is likely where the content is."

In the end, your eyes ignore the left-most column, but fights between looking at the middle column and the right column.

Pretty Blogs versus Drab Blogs

A very attractive blog is good for about 15 seconds. After that, people look for the content. If that content is weak, then all the work you did (or money you spent) was for just 15 seconds of eye candy.

A drab design, using mostly white, grey, or black colors, tend to work best. Now, I realize that many of my blogs use other colors, I don't make everything in shades of grey. Instead, use this particular blog to understand the basic concepts, and then you can explore ways to variate that.

The reason is because of "contrast focus", which I described above. By creating an otherwise boring looking design, you can use color most effectively. Banner ads become much more visible against an all grey, or all white page. AdSense creatives stand out much better. You'll get higher click-through rates because of this.

People will visit your blog because you have great content, not because you have a pretty design. So, utilize lots of the whites, greys, and blacks, to give your ads more visibility.

Use White Space Effectively

Placing a lot of white space in between objects helps people see where one ad ends, and another one starts. The more space you put between two objects, the most people will tend to see them.

It's the same "contrast focus" principle. People's eyes don't want to look at the white space. Hence, the more white space you put between two ads, the more likely they'll see both ads.

Credit Linking is Blogging Etiquette

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:34:00 +0000

One thing I've noticed among the top motorcycle blogs, is that very few give credit where credit is due.

A "credit link", or "reference link", is simply a link back to the blog or website where you found the inspiration for a new article. It's part of a larger blogging phenomenon called the "meme".

A meme is like a "thread" on a message board, except it's carried out across multiple blogs. One blogger will post something really profound, funny, newsworth, or cool on their blog. A second blogger will see it, and then write about it on their blog, and include a credit link to the previous blog. Then other bloggers will see the second blogger, and then write about it on their blogs, and post credit links to the second blogger, or first blogger, or both. And then so on and so on. It starts a chain of reaction that spreads out across several blogs, sometimes thousands.

That chain reaction builds up Google PageRank value for each of the blogs linked within that chain. The first blog in that meme ends up with a bonanza of PageRank, and that's usually how people build themselves a career in blogging, by writing really good material that gets the blogosphere talking.

If you don't offer that credit link, then you're breaking the chain. You're stealing thunder, basically, for yourself.

Credit linking is very strong in the electronics and gadget blogging world, and as a result, it has built up a lot of PageRank for all of the blogs there. Because everyone gets involved in reacting to each other's articles, and linking back to them, everyone shares in the PageRank, and everyone gets a boost out of it.

I just wish I could see more of that in the motorcycle blogging community.

If you found a very interesting piece of motorcycle news on Biker News Online, and you decided to blog about the same news on yours, then give me a credit link, just to say thanks for giving you the inspiration. I'll do the same for you.

Methods of Credit Linking

Often, bloggers will just create a credit link using some words in the middle of a paragraph.

But there's also a popular way of using a postscript. For example, you might see the following at the end of an article...

via Motorcycle Philosophy

KT DID via Motorcycle Philosophy

The first example above, simply says, "The source for my article came from Motorcycle Philosophy".

The second example says, "The primary source of this news comes from KT DID, but Motorcycle Philosophy is where I found out about it."

Instead of using "via", you could also say, "source", or "thanks", or whatever you think works.

Just do all of your fellow bloggers a favor, and give credit where credit is due, and you'll find that they'll do the same for you.

Do Blog Directories Work?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Sat, 03 May 2008 06:58:00 +0000

There are probably hundreds of "blog directories", websites that contains thousands and thousands of links to blogs. They categorize them, rank them, and review them. But do you get anything out of it?

The biggest selling point is that by having your blog listed in a directory, Google will give you some additional PageRank. That is, because Google relies on links to determine popularity and authority, the directories argue that getting listed on their websites will help towards your search engine rankings.

It's largely baloney.

Google is smart enough to know what a directory looks like, and is smart enough to know that links from directories "don't count".

The reason is because Google considers a link to be a "vote of confidence" on behalf of the site being linked to, AS WELL AS, the site that's doing the linking. It means that the website publisher found a website that he/she felt to be worthy of a link. These opinions are what Google is aggregating across the entire Internet.

So ask yourself, what opinion is there in a blog directory? A blog directory allows any blog to be listed, even if the blog sucks. Anyone who pays money, or offers a reciprocal link, can get listed into the directory. The links in a blog directory obviously doesn't reflect an opinion on behalf of the blog directory owner.

So you're not getting any PageRank value from those links. However, those little image buttons you're placing on the side of your pages are links that do in fact give PageRank back to the directory. You're giving PageRank value to the directory, and the directory is giving you nada.

All that you can ever get back from a blog directory is some direct referrals. Take a look at your blog's statistics, and see if you've ever received traffic from a blog directory. Then wonder how much traffic and PageRank you've given to them instead.

Here's something you can do prove this to yourself.

Go to Google, and type in the following query...

link:http://www.myblog.com

Replace "www.myblog.com" with your blog's address.

This will display all the URLs that link to your blog, but only those that Google considers to be worthy. These URLs are the only URLs that Google is using to calculate your PageRank. I bet you won't find a blog directory in those URLs.

There are actually many more URLs out there with links to your blog, but Google doesn't count them either because it can't find those URLs (behind a database or login), or because those URLs are too new, or because those URLs are redundant, or because Google considers those URLs to be worthless.

Now, go to a blog directory that your blog is listed on. A really popular one is Blog Catalog. In fact, go to their motorsports section...

http://www.blogcatalog.com/directory/sports/motor_sports

Now go to Google and run a "backlink search" on that URL (click below)...

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=DKUS,DKUS:2006-44,DKUS:en&q=link:http%3a%2f%2fwww%2eblogcatalog%2ecom%2fdirectory%2fsports%2fmotor%5fsports (opens a new window)

Now tell me if you find your blog in there.

Was it there? If it was, do you feel ripped off? You gave them PageRank, but they didn't give you Jack. They're getting rich off of you.

Take my advice, get rid of all those blog directory links and buttons. You're giving away PageRank to them, and they're using it to grab a higher spot on Google's search results. Run a Google search for "motorcycle blogs" (opens a new window), and go through a few pages. Notice that many blog directories are ranking higher than actual motorcycle blogs. Those directories are grabbing traffic that you could've gotten.

Focus instead on getting links from other people's blogrolls. I've found that those are the most valuable links you could ever get. I'll explain some other time.

How to Make Money Online - An Overview

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Fri, 02 May 2008 19:05:00 +0000

When it comes to making money by publishing websites, there are passive ways, and active ways to do this. I largely focus on the passive ways. I find it easier to manage, and it offers me more time to spend with my wife, friends, and motorcycling.

I'll just give you a brief overview of making money from blogging, and will publish more articles later on that go deeper in depth.

Passive Income

You'll hear the term "passive income" a lot within the website publishing circles, because it's what everyone strives to achieve. It basically works like this...

You build a website or blog

You design the site to optimize well on search engines

You spent time creating content

Simultaneously, you also spend time building traffic

You add some revenue generating components, like ads, affiliate links, donation boxes, etc.

Over time, your site builds traffic from search engines. The search engine constantly feeds more traffic to you, as you increase the amount of content.

The visitors click the ads, and you make money.

As long as traffic maintains its volume, or increases its volume, you don't have to do anymore work. You let the search engines send you visitors, and you let the visitors click the ads. The advertisers will even deposit your income directly into PayPal, or to your checking account. Your website becomes a perpetual money-making machine.

This basically allows you stop updating your website for months on end, giving you time to build more websites, or taking that cross-country motorcycle trip you've been dreaming about.

If you don't update your website ever again, it will eventually lose its traffic. I have some blogs that I haven't updated in about 5 months, and the search engines continue to send me thousands of visitors, each day, to each blog, and I continue to earn money from them. I don't know how long I can go without updating them, however.

That's why everyone wants to achieve "passive income". It's not easy to achieve, but you can get there if you work at it.

Content is King

You'll hear the phrase "content is king" many times in this business. And it's true.

If you want people to visit your website, without having to "buy traffic", then you'll need some really good content to attract them. Moreover, you need to publish new content frequently to keep them coming back.

If you can do this, then you'll also get other website publishers and bloggers to put a link to your website. Getting these links will increase your search engine rankings.

Focus is the Key

As a motorcycle blogger, think about the different kinds of content you publish: gear reviews, personal thoughts, news, cool videos, ride reports, etc., and fragment that stuff out on their own unique blogs. That way, you can focus the audience.

Other websites tend to broaden themselves by covering every aspect of motorcycling into one place. What often happens, is that they discover it's very tough to create a reputation as "general" authority on motorcycles, mainly because there are already several magazines out there that do this job better.

By focusing down to a more narrow niche, you can achieve that "authority" more quickly, and attract links more quickly. Better yet, having a focused audience makes it easier to match them up with relevant ads. If you're using Google AdSense, you'll find higher click through rates when you narrow down your niche.

Focusing also improves your search engine marketing efforts. A website that's focused only on helmet reviews, will do a better job of attracting people who are interested in buying helmets. Google tends to reward these sites with higher rankings, than the general motorcycle sites.

Having five blogs that are focused on different aspects of motorcycling does not get less traffic than one blog focused on all aspects. If anything, you'll get more. Refer back to my previous article, "Content Fragmentation" for more info.

Revenue Sources Overview

The two most popular forms of revenue are advertising networks, and affiliate programs. Both warrant several articles focused on various aspects. I'll just touch on them here.

Google AdSense is an advertising network. Interestingly, they actually have an affiliate program embedded within the advertising network, they call it, "AdSense Referrals". AdSense is probably the most popular form of revenue for website publishers, because its so huge it can provide relevant ads to just about any website.

Value Click is another advertising network that focuses on banner ads, as opposed to Google's text ads. It's the most popular banner ad network around. They have a client-base of advertisers that buy "impressions" from them. An "impression" is when an ad is displayed on a website. Each advertiser buys up millions of impressions, and Value Click spreads those impressions out across its network of website publishers. Value Click shares the money from these impressions with its publishers on a "CPM" basis. I'll explain this in a future article.

Commission Junction is an affiliate program network, and is most the popular. They have thousands of "merchants", who are companies that sell products and services. They also have millions of website publishers signed up as well. Each merchant has an affiliate program set up in Commission Junction, and each website publisher can join that program, and earn revenue from it. Commission Junction acts as a neutral third-party that monitors merchants and publishers, and figures out who owes what. Affiliate programs typically reimburse publishers based on a percentage of sale. If your website visitor buys something from a merchant, you'll earn anywhere from 1% to 50% of that sale.

Open Internet Ratings

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Fri, 02 May 2008 07:26:00 +0000

Open Internet Ratings refers to websites that publish traffic statistics about other people's websites.

Alexa is the most well known example.

A lot of us refer to them because we want to know how our publishing efforts stack up against others. There's certainly a vanity aspect with this, but this is also good information to know. You need to set expectations for your websites and your own success in making money from them. If you know that another website, with similar traffic, is more successul at monetizing that traffic, then you know you're not monetizing effectively.

Internet marketers also use open internet ratings to decide which websites to pursue for their own business. It's good to have a website that ranks highly, so as to earn more potential business.

Panel Data

To understand open internet ratings, you have to understand panel data.

Most of us have heard of "Neilsen Ratings", it's the rating system that's used to measure television viewership. The company distributes monitoring devices to randomly picked out households, and keeps track of what television shows they watch.

From that data, they can figure out a "guesstimate" on how many people watched a particular show.

Open internet ratings is also based on the same principle.

Each publisher of these ratings gathers that panel data in different ways. It's how they gather that data that determines the accuracy of their "guesstimates".

Believe it or not, Neilsen is actually one of the two largest sources of website panel data. They have a division called, "Neilsen NetRatings". The other largest source of panel data is Comscore Networks.

Unfortunately, these two companies don't publish their full datasets online. You have to purchase a subscription to their service, and then you can see it. The largest Internet advertising networks out there all purchase it, and use it to figure out which websites to buy advertising from. The biggest websites also purchase it to figure out how much to charge for their website space.

The rest of us rely on the open internet ratings, the free data.

Alexa

Alexa is the most widely used public metric simply because they were the first. It doesn't necessarily mean they are accurate. Quite the opposite. They're widely accepted by all publishers and marketers as being the most inaccurate. But they because they have the largest panel datasets, it's still the most popular resource.

The innaccuracies are due to how they gather panel data. It's collected from a toolbar that people install on their web browsers. Alexa doesn't pick out people and ask them to install the toolbar. It's done passively, by people visiting Alexa, and voluntarily deciding to do it. Because of this, computer geeks tend to make up the lion's share of panel data. So whatever websites computer geeks like to visit, tend to rank very high.

The other problem is that website publishers themselves were installing the toolbar and visiting their own websites frequently to boost their own ratings. The toolbar is not available for Mac computers, so websites focused on Mac computers ranked low.

Also, Alexa was developed in South Korea. Originally, it was mostly South Koreans who installed the toolbar. And for awhile, several South Korean websites ranked in the top 10. These days, they've all moved down, but South Korean websites still rank higher than they should.

However, in April 2008, Alexa tried to address its inaccuracy reputation by incorporating "outside data". They haven't explained what this outside data is. But once they did this, many websites ranked lower, while others ranked higher. The websites that now rank lower claim that it's more inaccurate, while the websites that now rank higher are much happier.

Quantcast

Quantcast is actually my favored open internet ratings site. It collects panel data from advertising networks and ISPs. Those two sources tend to reflect a broad-based panel set, from all genres of users. For that reason, several publishers consider it to be the most accurate. But even though the panel set is more broad-based, it's history of data is much smaller than Alexa's. That is, because Alexa has been around a lot longer, it can produce a guesstimate on more websites than Quantcast, even though that guesstimate is based on demographically disproportionate data.

In addition to panel data, Quantcast collects "directly measured data". They offer websites a piece of Javascript they can embed into their pages, and have Quantcast measure the traffic directly. Of course, this is much more accurate than panel data.

You'll notice that I have the Quantcast button on all of my blogs. You can click on it and see my ratings.

Compete.com

Compete.com is the newest entrant into the foray of open internet ratings. They work similarly to Neilsen NetRatings, in that they've build a panel of about 2 million Internet users, and monitor their usage. From that, they come up with a guesstimate on website ratings.

In addition to ratings, they also publish a subscription service that let's you type in your website's domain name, and discover all the keywords and phrases that are used to find your website. They only show you five of those keywords for free, and you must purchase the subscription to see the whole shbang.

Because it's so new, it covers the smallest set of websites.

Technorati

Technorati is actually a blog search engine. It does keep a rating system on all blogs in its database. But it's not based on panel data.

Rather, it looks how many other blogs are linking to yours. If you have links from 5 different blogs, then you get a ranking of 5. They determine that the number of blogs linking to yours is a reflection of your blog's popularity and authority.

The number of links is not the total links of all blogs linking to yours, it's just the number of blogs that link to yours. For example, one blog might have 20 links pointing to yours. But Technorati will only count that as one link. One blog, one link.

While Technorati is the largest blog search engine, they seem to be slow in finding new blogs, as well as new blog articles. It might take weeks for them to discover one. Even if you pinged them, it still seems to take forever to get your blog to show up in their listings. Many blogs seem to never show up in Technorati. For that reason, their rating system has never emerged as a respected metric.

Google Toolbar

Google's toolbar is the most popular toolbar around. Every website publisher has it installed, mainly for one reason, the "PageRank" indicator.

The PageRank displays a value of 0-10. People tend to accept this value as a measurement of a website's authority and popularity, and is one of the most respected metrics today. The higher the number, the more respect your website commands.

PageRank is a very long subject, and I'll cover it in a later article.

How to Write Effective Titles

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:00:00 +0000

Since the title of each blog article is a key element in search engine optimization (SEO), it behooves a professional blogger to craft effective titles, designed to optimize primary keywords, and attract clicks from people perusing search results pages (SERPs).

Most blogging platforms (Blogger, WordPress, Moveable Type, etc) use the title as the filename (and URL) for the article. The words found in the URL are also an element towards search engine optimization.

Later on, I'll talk about how the words in the URL are also part of what determines ad relevancy on Google AdSense.

To illustrate effective titles, look at one of my recent articles, "The Harley Sucks People", on Motorcycle Philosophy...

http://www.motorcyclephilosophy.org/2008/04/harley-sucks-people.htm

I wanted to write an article about "motorcycle bashing", a popular subject on motorcycle forums, where people talk about how their favorite brand of motorcycle is so great, and how everyone else's brand is so bad.

Since I'm always thinking in terms of how to leverage the most from search engines, I put a lot of thought into crafting a good title.

A title not only must contain the most important keywords, but it must contain the most popular variety of that expression. For example, I could have also used...

"motorcycle bashing"

"motorcycle hate"

"Harley bashing"

"Harley sucks"

"Harley hate"

"Harley-Davidson hate"

"Harley-Davidson sucks"

And I'm sure there are many more.

So, I wanted to find out which phrase is the one most people use when searching Google.

To answer, I used the "Adwords Keyword Tool"...
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

This lets you type a word or two, and see how often it was searched on Google. It also shows you all the variations of phrase, and their search frequency.

It turns out that "harley sucks" has the highest search frequency.

Therefore, I used the title, "The Harley Sucks People".

And if you're using Blogger as your blogging platform, note that Blogger doesn't put the word "the" into the title.

Blogger actually has a character limit for the URL. If your title is longer than a certain limit (I don't know what the actual limit is), then it simply leaves off the extra words. Seems like most Blogger URLs cap out at 4-6 words.

To make sure that Blogger doesn't cut off your most important keywords, figure out a way to write a title that has those keywords at the front.

The other thing you can do with Blogger, is to write a "rough title", which is one that contains only your important keywords. Then publish the article. Now, go back to your article, and change the title to a finished title, and republish. You'll notice that Blogger keeps the original URL, but changes the title.

Increasing Clickthroughs from Google SERPs

Even if your page shows up at number one on the SERPs, doesn't guarantee that people will click on it. So, it helps to write a title that picques their curiosity, or uses words that captures their attention...

Notice that your title is also the title used in Google's SERPs. Also note that Google displays the URL with it also. Write a title that's short, but still picques someone's curiosity, to make them want to click.

Content Fragmentation

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:46:00 +0000

The term, "content fragmentation" is something I coined to describe the strategy of publishing multiple blogs, or multiple blog articles, instead of consolidating everything into one.

It's largely a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.

Much of my career success as a blogger lies in publishing tons of content. The more content you put out there, the greater the likelihood of attracting visitors from search engines. That is, each URL you put into Google, is another chance of getting your blog listed at the top of its search listings.

With content fragmentation, you simply break your thought into two separate articles, instead of just one. Each article is written to optimize its specific keywords and phrases. Hence, you end up with two URLs, instead of one. And therefore, you've doubled your chances of getting listed at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs)

As some of you may have noticed, I have several motorcycle blogs...

Biker News Online

Motorcycle Philosophy

Harley-Davidson Gear

Cool Biker T-Shirts

Motorcycle Blogging (which you're reading now)

Originally, I had just one, Biker News Online. I used to publish all sorts of content on it, not just news, but my own personal thoughts, cool t-shirts I'd find somewhere, kooky H-D logoed products, and so on.

Then I decided to break out H-D logoed products into its own blog, and then broke the t-shirts into its own blog as well. Later on, I decided to break out my personal thoughts into its own blog too. And now, I created Motorcycle Blogging just for moto-blogging thoughts.

This has the same effect of stuffing more URLs into Google, but with the added effect of raising the "page rank" of each blog. Now I can link these blogs to each other, and make these blogs more popular in Google's eyes.

I can also raise some legitimate page rank too. If I can get some motorcycle bloggers to link to all of my blogs, that actually gathers more page rank than if they just linked to one.

Also note that I have two other blogs related to the subject of blogging, "In Your Web", and "Money with AdSense". By creating "Motorcycle Blogging", I can create a transition between my circle of motorcycle blogs and my circle of blogging blogs. This "transition blog" acts as a conduit between the two circles, transferring page rank.

Of course, I could have just taken my one Biker News Online, and still link to my blogging blogs (I've actually done this), but both Google and Yahoo are increasingly looking at the "contextual relevancy" of these links in calculating page rank.

"Page rank" is a term used by SEO experts to identify the "authority" level of a website. With Google, it's largely calculated by how many websites link to you, and then further adjusted by a variety of factors, including how many websites you link out to, the contextual relevancy of these links, and others. The more page rank your website gets, it generally ranks higher on SERPs.

Think of ways to fragment your content into multiple articles, and even multiple blogs. It's almost like each URL you publish is another door into your website(s). Don't shut old websites down just because you haven't updated them in a long time. They still hold "page rank", that you can leverage.

Contact Me

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:29:00 +0000

Contact me...

Steve Johnson
P.O. Box 3622
Quail Valley, CA 92587

About Motorcycle Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:49:00 +0000

"Motorcycle Blogging" is meant to publish my thoughts, ideas, successes and failures on the subject of making money from a motorcycle blog. The subject of making money from a blog, also includes building traffic and blog design.

A couple weeks ago, I went through a list of blogs on Motorcycle Bloggers International, and notice the list of bloggers had grown quite long from the last time I looked at it. There were a lot of motorcycle bloggers there.

And since my sole source of income is from blogging and publishing websites, I'm always looking for an untapped market to exploit for my own profit. I'm sure several of these bloggers are interested in learning how to put their blogs to work.

I'm also hoping that if I give you, for free, my 11 years of experience of website publishing for profit, you'll return the favor by linking to me. It'll improve my search engine rankings, and help me earn more cash.

There are actually thousands of blogs devoted to the subject of blogging, and making money from blogs. Of those, about 100 of them highly successful in terms of popularity and profitability. The subject of blogging itself is one of the most profitable blogging topics.

In December of 2004, I launched my own "blogging blog" called "In Your Web". My problem was that I didn't publish it regularly, and it never caught on. I still post something new on it, under the same frequency, about once every few months. Later on, I published a different one called, "Money with AdSense", trying to narrow my focus to something more specific. This time, I was blogging more frequently, but quickly ran out of things to say.

So now I figured that if I combine my passion of motorcycling, and my career as a blogger, maybe I can carve out a niche in the "blogging" topic.

But should I fail to earn any success with this blog, maybe I can at least help out my fellow motorcycle bloggers with some tips.