(Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes)

WordPress is a great way to learn about the web. You need very little experience… drive and enthusiasm will put you over the top! Andrew Caldwell -self-proclaimed Leader of the Free World – tells you just how it feels, to go from web zero to web hero, in about a weekend!

I’ve Just Wasted $53 on Hosting and a Domain, s***, What Now? HELP!?

-By Andrew Caldwell

If you’ve ever thought about a website or a blog, you want to sell a product online, tell the world what kind of car you drive, that you can play a death metal polyrhythm on the drums or are trying to setup a business, WordPress is definitely for you!

WordPress? A blog? A website? Possible, but daunting. It’s always been something I’d been interested in, earlier in the year armed with a credit card, I purchased a domain and some hosting, and had a go at a ‘website tonight/go daddy’ style web builder. Let’s say the results far from knocked me off my seat… So that was that, if I wanted a hot looking website with all the functionality of other cool sites I’d seen online, I was going to have to ‘obtain’ a copy of a web design program and learn how to drive that, or better still, pay someone a lot of dollars to design one for me, oh joy.

The second and more recent attempt at a website was far more successful, I’d set a date in my calendar that I decided I was going to be ‘sick’ from work, and my first ‘paid’ day as a web designer begun! Again armed with said trusty credit card, I purchased a domain, got a ‘bonus’ first month free of hosting and I was away…

I’d heard about WordPress a little bit but didn’t have a clue. My knowledge of HTML was that it was ‘some sort’ of programming and Java was the annoying thing that often stopped me being able to watch movies online. So it’s safe to say I was a web designing retard.

So after purchasing the domain and hosting and having a massive panic attack, I wrote a flurry of ‘Help me, what the eff do I do now!!!’ emails to my web host, Dave from Website In A Weekend, Ali from Aliventures and Jonathan from Illuminated Mind. Thankfully these people where in a different timezone to me so after I’d calmed down and consulted Google, the planets all aligned and I figured out what was going on. Once the day was over and I had a website, I received the replies from my panic attack email respondents and I was slightly embarrassed, although they were all very helpful!

People often ask me stuff, I don’t know why, I’m not smarter, I just type more things into Google! So a few ‘how to’ questions in a search and (not so shameless plug) looking around on Website In A Weekend and I had scratched together what looked like a website.

I already had some blog posts saved up in a word document, so that wasn’t an issue, but as you’re crawling around the internet, like I did, I had the following questions ticking over;

• How do I get one of those green ‘share this’ buttons at the end of my posts…
• How do I show my number of subscribers? (I left this counter up for two weeks until Ali suggested it probably wasn’t that impressive that it read ‘13’ subscribers!)
• How do I even get subscribers in the first place!?
• I don’t know what that orange RSS button is all about, but I want one!
• Steve Pavlina has a donate button, why can’t I?
• Some peoples ads look really good, suit there site and are actually decent products, I want them on my site too?
• All the probloggers out there recommend a contact page, well I’m snookered then, because I know bugger all about coding?!

I was relieved to find out (and am still always amazed) that WordPress has a massive community of developers. These people pride themselves on handy plugins and application for WordPress websites. I am also blown away that WordPress themes are FREE to use for your site!

I was under the impression that editing anything on my site would involve messing around with template files, too many of these “<>/wrong” and a whole lot of foreign symbols.

Again, back to google or the wordpress.org forums and a sigh of relief! I was pleased to know I wasn’t the only person who’d ever asked for a green ‘share this’ button at the bottom of my posts, and better still, someone had gone to the trouble of making a wordpress plug-in to fit the bill!

Anything you want to appear on your site is pretty much a search engine, download and a few clicks away! WordPress revolves around installing plugins onto your webhost server, then within your wordpress dashboard you activate the plug-in, then you’re away. Instead of putting together screenshots, and a lengthy instructional list, like everything else wordpress related, someone online has already had the same issues you are having! And more often than not Dave has written something about it! (Installing Plug-ins -> here).

I could go on for days about how ridiculous it is that WordPress is FREE! I’ve learnt a hell of a lot since getting involved with it three months ago, next time you’re checking out a website and you’re impressed with the layout, scroll down to the bottom and you’ll more than likely find ‘Powered by WordPress’.

Andrew Caldwell – Self proclaimed leader of the free world, recently embarked on a quarter life crisis and has resigned from the employed working world. Recently started leadersofthefreeworld.org, giving you an insight into the mind of the free, cynical, entrepreneurial and passionate.

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Post from: Website In A Weekend

I’ve Just Wasted $53 on Hosting and a Domain, s***, What Now? HELP!?

(Reading time: < 1 minute)

Go outside and find something to do.

Or fix something.

Or break something.

And turn the computer off.

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Post from: Website In A Weekend

It’s Sunday. No Blog Post Today.

(Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes)

The curious thing about stereotypes is there is invariably a kernel of truth buried somewhere. And they are usually ridiculous generalizations, even with that tiny kernel of truth. But tongue-in-cheek, almost everyone recognizes certain stereotypes in themselves. I know I do. And I know which type of blogger I tend to be. Which type do you tend towards?

The Department of Ridiculous Stereotypes requests you please categorize yourself according to the following guidelines.

Type I Blogger (The Dramatist)

Your writing is emotionally driven.

You can pump out articles as fast as your brain can drive your fingers. The disputable facts are irrelevant. Or inconvenient. Or simply not important.

When you’re entertaining, your audience is huge! But the days they don’t love you, they hate you. For betraying them… for toying with their emotions… for coming out as a closet Republican (or Democrat or Tory or cat lover or whatever). Or maybe just for you being you.

Type II Blogger (The Professor)

Your articles must be factually correct. You obsess about accuracy. Precision is your byline. Writing a single article takes you hours. At least. The more verifiable facts you need, the longer the article stays in draft.

Days. Maybe weeks.

And once you get started, you can’t stop. Each claim must be backed up, referenced with an authoritative source, preferably several.

When you finally get it right, search engines love you.

(Disclaimer: I have a dozen of these articles in draft mode.)

Type III (The Expert)

You’re the absolute domain expert. The facts are what you say they are. You crank out dozens of articles really fast. Who’s going to argue with you? The competition? You have no competition.

You’re right because you say you are.

And you have the fan club to prove it!

Extreme John pops up with a claim of writing 73 articles in 24 hours… on the tanning salon business! Since John has been in the tanning salon business for years… this makes perfect sense. It would take me all day to 1 article on tanning salons. I don’t pity any fool trying to take on John in the Blogging For Tanning Salon arena. They’re going to get it handed to them. They deserve it.

Type IV blogger (The Artiste)

Writing is your agony. Your punishment. Your salvation. You are…

The Artiste!

And blogging is your art form.

You peer down your nose at lesser mortals, people believe writing is simply tradecraft, people who actually make money writing. Such is not for you!

Ok, maybe you aren’t that bad… but each level of detail and refinement you incorporate takes time to master. 90% of your writing you do in 10% of the time. Writing last 10% takes the other 90% of the time.

When you master your form, your fans are rabid, slavering pack animals shredding all and sundry detractors. Until then, you’re simply misunderstood!

Type V – Grandmaster

In the beginning, a blog post is just a blog post.

As we evolve and master our skills, we learn so much. We learn about list posts, about copywriting, about short and snackable, about catering to the attention-deprived with scannables, about satisfying our audience. Then, when it’s all said and done we learn something old that’s new again:

Are you a Grandmaster? Are there any Grandmasters?

What type are you?

What type are you? Did I miss anything?

*This blog post dedicated to San Francisco’s finest son: Bruce Lee. RIP.

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Post from: Website In A Weekend

What Type of Blogger Are You? (Ridiculous stereotypes, partly true)

(Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes)

The first week in November 2009. Amazing.

>>>NOTE: Catch “Upcoming” below for new comment policy, etc.

On the InterWebs

We’ll start close to home. Here’s an OK video on WordPress permalinks. His scheme is fine, certainly better than leaving dynamic URL structure. But what all these SEO experts don’t seem to understand is that just about any particular “SEO-optimized” scheme to increase index ranking (Drive Traffic!) is at the complete mercy of whoever controls the search engine algorithms. Which is why I don’t worry about it over much. Good content in your article trumps everything else long term, dynamic URL or no. (You can find such pages easily on StumbleUpon.)

On a related note, the /%category%/%postname%/ convention, which I like, is deprecated as being too slow on lookups. Whence the obvious question: “Why not change how lookups are done?” Exactly. There’s an issue on the WordPress development Trac pages somewhere. You can dig it up if you’re interested.

Off to Australia: Josh Kohlbach provides us with very short, concise article on shared versus dedicated hosting. If you have visions of problogger-ness, you need to understand this difference, because you’re going to have to have dedicated hosting to handle enough traffic to make money. This especially important if you’re selling to a list: if you can’t handle traffic spikes, you’re dead meat.

Next stop, Philipines, where Elmot shares his passion for blogging. Elmot’s passion is contagious! Check out the Pinoy Sounding Board. Learn something.

From England, via Julie’s comment on Ittybiz, never forget, it’s just the internet.

And back to Texas, where Blake Waddill gives us some Feng GUI. So much to know. Just when I think I have it all figured out…

New articles

First, do you like to share recipes? If so, the new version of hRecipe Plugin for WordPress was released earlier this week. This version features an improved editing interface for adding recipes to your WordPress Posts and Pages.

Check it out: hRecipe is in the feed at Planet WordPress, coming in from the mention at Weblog Tools Collection.

(Alexa *cough* planet.wordress.org)

Here’s the posts for the week:

• Post Titles, Page Titles & Title Elements – Why POSH matters: If HTML title and header tags confuse you, you’re not alone: they are confusing. But they matter, and here’s a fast way to understand why.
• Big Shakeout Coming in MMO Blogosphere – You ready for it? Too many blogs & bloggers, not enough readers. What’s your plan to survive a readership crash? Do you have a plan? Get started now with these suggestions.
• Top 5 Biggest Lies About Blogging for Money: Some people make a lot of money blogging, you could be one of them, just done believe the hype! Read more to make sure you aren’t falling into these 5 traps.
• Despite Best Efforts of Online Marketers… You Are Not An Idiot: Everyone says write to the lowest common denominator. But is that your natural style? Consider writing congruently, and let your natural audience find you.
• Black Magic SEO! Vampire Weekend sucks SERPs: Find out what Vampire Weekend and Website In A Weekend have in common… ’s not what you think (what are you thinking anyway?), the answer is amazingly stupid.

Update! Update! Update!

The process works, Website In A Weekend is getting some vampire luvin’:

Getting some Vampire SERPiness. Fair is fair!

• Twitter Redux – Making Sense of Social Media Madness: Twitter frustration can be cured… with simple application of common sense, manners, and application of the twitter golden rule.

Updated posts

Added a link to a superb article on teasers by Demetris at op111 to WordPress Excerpts Are Not Teasers.

This is still a good read, and I’m going to keep bugging people to read it.

From the Archives!

Back at the end of last May (2009), I attended WordCamp San Francisco. One of the sessions I attended was hosted by Dave Gray of XPlane.com. This was a fantastic talk, and I took enough notes to write How Building a Web Presence Is Like Fishing In The Rain. Use the magic math of compounding to get ahead and stay ahead. Find out how little it really takes to dominate… if you’re willing to “fish in the rain.”

Upcoming

A brief look into the near future…

• Andrew Caldwell (Self-proclaimed Leader of the Free World) recounts jumping into blogging… he took the plunge all at once! Coming to a browser near you on November 9 2009.
• Commenting: Watch for “dofollow” commenting in the near future. Just a time thing for me to root out a decent plugin and make it happen.
• Along those lines… watch for one of those “Reactions” hoohas. Seems like all the Big Boys are implementing “Reactions.” Far be from me to swim against that current. (I’ve got other currents to swim against.)
• No more Sunday articles! I don’t mind working on Sunday, but I have other projects needing more attention.

The WIAW Week In Review Series

Last WIAW Week in Review

Put Your Pity Party Week in Review. You feelin’ sorry for yourself? Sorry to hear it, and we’re here to help. Check out the blind boy who uses echo location. Inspiring. More good stuff inside.

Next WIAW Week in Review

Stay tuned…

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• WIAW Week in Review: August 22 – August 28

Post from: Website In A Weekend

A Trip Around The World – Another Week in Review

(Reading time: 6 – 9 minutes)

I tell people I’ve been on the web since 1994 (and usenet before that), and their eyes either roll (”Here he goes again…”) or cross (”WTF is he talking about now?”).

But I wish you could have been there: Unmoderated newsgroups with no spam. Where the worst offenders were B1ff and Archimedes Plutonium.

And I wish you could have been on twitter in 2007. Whole different ballgame. Fun. Easy. Here’s how you got followers: “Hey, are you on Twitter? What’s your username?”

Now, not so much.

Life rolls on… and, here’s my current rules of thumb for dealing with Twitter. I managed to find a completely obvious “Golden Rule,” and it’s made the whole “Twitter Experience” much easier, and much more fun!

(Oh yeah, here’s the Official Website In A Weekend twitter handle: @websiteweekend.)

No. Just no.

This is me on twitter

Since I’m not a big twitter fan, I don’t have a lot of followers, and I don’t follow a lot of people.

I “know” this is leaving a lot of “money on the table,” but I’m not seeing how twitter helps me develop really great content. Marketing that content, maybe. But this assumes that my audience is using twitter.

What if they aren’t?

How would I know?

In any case, I’m not a Big Time Pro Blogger like John Chow or Darren Rowse, so I don’t feel compelled to do Big Time Pro Twitter stuff. Maybe later.

This is you on twitter

Currently, when I follow people, this is what I’m looking for:

• You have a real name somewhere in your profile, or you’re working a viable avatar reflecting you as a real person.
• You write or market your own content, not just others.
• You have a real picture (or I know you personally).
• You may or may not follow a lot of people. I don’t care either way.
• You say something about yourself. People are interesting. People do fun, crazy, cool, stupid and dumb stuff. I like reading about people and all their shenanigans. Sure, sell me your stuff, but tell me too.
• You listen to cool music and tell me about it. Seriously.
• You can tell what you had for lunch. Or dinner. A couple of my favorite people are serious foodies, and I enjoy reading what they’re up to. I mean serious too. They’re starting a private dinner series soon, I feel lucky to be invited.
• You’re more than a marketer. You can be a marketer, but you should be more than that as well.

If you automate (and by all means, you should), be a little more clever than the screenshot over there to the left. Check out the posting times: 33-34 minutes after the hour… like clockwork, every two hours. I have to admit, the tweets are a bit more clever than promotional links, but still, what’s the point?

Another automation no-no: Please don’t repeat too much. Especially quotes. Not a big fan of quotes in general, and I don’t want to see a stream of quotes which cycles every day or two. That’s just lazy. And boring.

But there’s more! (I keep adding to this list… this article gets longer and longer.)

• “Make $$$ per day.” No.
• Sending me straight to a landing page is likely to get you unfollowed. Definitely if I feel “tricked” by your teaser. Especially if you msg me.
• Here’s a great way to get me to unfollow: insist on a quid pro quo. I had one person follow me with the demand that I follow back or he would unfollow me. Hahaha! Buh bye! Don’t let the door slam you in the a__ on the way out dude.
• And the absolute fastest way to get me to unfollow is to get all social media police on me. You don’t like something I do? That’s cool, unfollow me and send a nice email. I might very well change tactics or methods. Set yourself up as my personal social media cop and I’ll block you as well as unfollow you.

Basically, you need to be 1. a real person, 2. a real company, or 3. a celebrity, real or internet, that exudes high value and is interesting too (If I could think of celebrities I follow, I would list them.)

As it turns out, David Risley wrote a couple of articles about twitter which are very much worth reading:

• Top 10 Signs You’re Not Worth Following on Twitter.
• Top 10 Signs You ARE Worth Following On Twitter.

I now see there’s some overlap. When I first read these articles, they didn’t resonate because I wasn’t using twitter all that much. What’s cool is now that I have my own criteria, it’s much easier to compare to other people’s criteria.

No more cheeseburgers, please

All this following and refollowing, it’s like we’re selling each other cheeseburgers. I don’t get that part. If it’s not in the relationship, where the real value?

Please don’t think – in any way – that I’m telling you how you should twitter. That’s your business. These are just my guidelines for who I’m going to listen to.

So, after all this, do I really “get” twitter? I’m not sure. Frankly, I don’t think I do. I surely don’t “get” the notion of following more than maybe 150 people. Maybe I will when I get more experience. And I’ll be happy to blog about that then.

So the upshot is this: I’ll do my best for everyone to get with this twitter program, but it’s not my strong point. My strong point is creating killer content.

(Update: I’ve been hanging out on twitter last few days since I wrote this article… I think I’m starting to get it!)

Not just a twitter ‘tard…

Just to be sure I’m not coming across as some sort of Luddite…

I’m currently using a very cool new social media service, which I am absolutely not going to share with you… not yet anyway. Insiders first, then Weekenders. Then I’ll write it up here on the blog later. Hint: it’s location based.

Here’s how cool it is: everyone I asked to follow – except for one minor local celebrity columnist – friended me. And the minor local celebrity might yet, she hasn’t refused the invitation, it’s just sitting in her inbox. As I think of it, the other local celebrity I know refuses to sign on… but it’s only a matter of time for her!

Is this new social media thingie a marketers dream?

You betcha bubbette.

Will this new thing eventually get pillaged like twitter? Probably. In the meantime, we’re having fun.

What’s that you say? Golden Rule?

Simple: Don’t tweet anything you wouldn’t read.

(Note to Andrew: Yet another topic for a future blog post.)

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Post from: Website In A Weekend

Twitter Redux – Making Sense of Social Media Madness

(Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes)

Do a Google search on Website In A Weekend.

I get “vampireweekend.com” as my top result.

An absolutely irrelevant search result! How stupid is that? How much did that cost anyway?

Here’s what it looks like:

Vampire Weekend home page

It’s been this way since May 2009.

It’s not much of a web site. There’s no “there” there.

Here’s the funny part: this pop group is riding an Indie wave (and probably some sort of pop culture vampire meme…), but whoever’s promoting them has non-Indie deep pockets. Supposedly, it’s quartet of 4 South African musicians who all went to Columbia together. Uh huh.

Deep pockets…

Here’s their Alexa ranking at the time (11/1/2009) when I wrote this post:

Vampire Weekend Alexa Rank

Holy Smokes! That’s a lot of incoming links for something with so little traffic! It feels incongruent to me. With that many incoming links, they should have a lot more traffic. And they should have interaction on their front page. More stickiness. I haven’t spent time on their Myspace page (all indie bands have a Myspace page, right?), but I bet it’s a lot stickier.

Here’s what they’re getting coming on from search:

Vampire Weekend Alexa Search

I’m sure they’re getting some traction off of Website In A Weekend.

It be cool if I got some traction off of Vampire Weekend…

Hrm. great plan! I’ll load this article up with keywords and “Vampire Weekend” links. Let’s see if I can suck down some of their SERPiness.

But what about the music?

So are these gents any good? I don’t have a clue. I did listen to about 2 minutes of the track on the home page. I wonder how coincidental that 2 minutes is to their bounce rate?

Indie rock is not really my listening preference at the moment; currently, more into deep house, psytrance, dubstep, ambient, chillout and breakbeats. If you can’t the difference between various genres of electronica, no worries. Just know that the difference between something like chillout and trance is like the difference between Roxy Music and Jefferson Starship. Both rock. Just different. Or Miles Davis 2d quintet with Louis Armstrong. Both Jazz. Just different. Or Mendelssohn versus Wagner. Both Romantic. Just different.

In any case, they might be good, they might not be. They have a lot of really good press though, with 600+ backlinks.

Isn’t it cool how well Website In A Weekend is doing with 4 backlinks? Yep: 4 backlinks, and we’re pretty much kicking it around here. Website In A Weekend is definitely in the game.

[Update November 6, 2009]

I just love it. Check out this screenshot from my stats page:

Getting some Vampire SERPiness. Fair is fair!

How cool is that?

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Post from: Website In A Weekend

Black Magic SEO! Vampire Weekend sucks SERPs

(Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes)

Website In A Weekend readers are smarter than average. (Probably better looking too)

How do I know this?

Because I don’t treat you like an idiot.

I treat you like you’re smart, ambitious and capable. I treat you like you’re an interesting, literate individual.

I can’t help it. It’s just what I do.

Sure, I could probably make more money treating readers like idiots. What a bore.

Check this out…

I taught a couple of semesters of Engineering Geology lab sections to Civil Engineering undergraduates. Now right there, that’s a problem. Engineers are traditionally very suspicious of geologists. You know, if you want 3 different opinions, ask 2 different geologists, that kind of stuff (Larry knows what I mean here). Engineers are trained to get The Answer.

Not “it depends.”

In any case, my teaching evaluations were good (no surprise), but one of the comments really tickled me:

I had to laugh.

Now, that comment is partly due to the culture at Cal (don’t ask questions), and partly due to the energy I was putting into the class. Which was a lot, and I assumed people were keeping up.

I’m bringing that energy here… and I’m assuming you have a fair grip on the material that interests you. If this assumption is wrong (which wouldn’t surprise me), let me know. Leave a comment, or send me an email. If you’re not on the mailing list, you’re smart enough to find the contact form. I’ll either answer you directly, or, I’ll use my answer as fodder for another blog post.

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Post from: Website In A Weekend

Despite Best Efforts of Online Marketers… You Are Not An Idiot

(Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes)

Today, special guest blogger Gabe Young of Free Blog Help dot Com explodes the top 5 money-making myths running rampant through the blogosphere. Gabe has a very strong background in Information Technology, and and MBA. In short, he’s an authority, and very much worth reading.

Top 5 myths of blogging for money

By Gabe Young

If only it were so easy!

There’s just so much information (and misinformation) on the web today, how do we sort through all the garbage and find the real useful stuff that will actually help us earn an income by blogging? Let’s set the record straight on some common myths.

Top 5 myths of blogging for money

1. You can get rich quick. Not at all! In fact, it’s the opposite. If you poured your heart and soul and every waking moment of your day into blog for a month straight, you would probably making more money flipping burgers during that same time. Whether you plan on being a full-timer or a hobbyist, your blog site is still a business, one that requires nurturing and time to grow. In the long run, you will out-earn a short-order cook but it will take plenty of time on your part.
2. It is easy to make money with a blog. Also totally untrue. Anyone who tries to sell you a “secret” to making money fast is a scam artist. So let me add a caveat to my previous myth: you cannot get rich quick unless you are a scam artist, then you have a small chance. Not only will growing your blog take a lot of time but it will also require focus and energy. You will have to pay attention to it closely and perform many experiments. Then you have to find solutions for your problem areas, which require creativity, patience, and lots of trial and error.
3. You can start your money making blog for free. Of course you can start a blog for free but if you want to make money, it will cost you. It’s an investment in yourself, after all. Your upfront costs are a domain name and hosting, usually less than $100 for the year combined. However, before your first year is up, logos, themes, email service, and advertising are among your other costs, which can add up real quick.
4. There is a recipe for success. There are general road maps but there is no “system” that works for everyone; there are just too many variables. Even if you were to try to reproduce the niche, the strategy, the tactics, and the theme of a successful blogger, the timing isn’t the same. Futhermore, you don’t get to see what strings are being pulled from behind the curtain. Take the time to learn from experts, digest the information, and as Simon, Paula and Randy would tell you, “make it your own”.
5. Once a blog is successful, it can be put on autopilot. The internet is organic. As a result, there is no autopilot button that would work well long-term. Let’s say you were able to create amazing success after a few months or a year, in order to continue that success you would have to keep up with trends, adapt to changes, grow existing relationships, create new relationships, rethink your strategies,  fine-tune your tactics, continue to market your blog, perform regular SEO and tweak your ads. And did I mention that you still have to write fresh content?!?

Not exactly what some of you want to hear, is it?

There’s a bright side to it: I’m not trying to de-motivate potentially great bloggers, rather, save bloggers who wouldn’t make it anyway several months of their time.

So, if you still want to blog for money, go for it! Now you know what you’re up against.

Gabe Young is a business professional with an entrepreneurial spirit. Gabe has an MBA and managed IT departments in the Fortune 500, creating strategies and tactics for some of the most popular websites. Visit Gabe at Free Blog Help dot Com.

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Post from: Website In A Weekend

Top 5 Biggest Lies About Blogging for Money

(Reading time: 10 – 16 minutes)

The blogosphere is getting saturated. Are you part of the problem, or part of the solution? Do you know? Here’s my view… and if you manage to read to the end, I promise it will be worth your while.

Back in 1980’s, when the notion of the “service economy” was first bandied about, detractors claimed there was no way to maintain a viable economy by selling hamburgers to each other. Back then, the internet was still ruled by people who at least understood Bill Joy’s sockets code, if not capable of actually hacking it. Email was sent using uucp.

That was then… this is now… and it looks like, indeed, we can’t support an economy by selling hamburgers to each other.

I believe the same principle holds for internet marketing and MMO businesses. There’s going to be a few McDonalds and Burger Kings and Walmarts – the top 10% – raking in 90% of the market, leaving the other 90% to scrabble over the remaining 10%.

The uphot: there will be a few big players in the MMO field. But not many.

And not a helluva lot in between. At least if the recent past is any model for the future.

Johnny B Truant is right: Not everyone is going to make it.

To be sure, the MMO market is hot right now, so there should be plenty of small business opportunity in that bottom 10%.

And because technology changes so fast… the small, furry animals of this ecosystem have a real opportunity to become the mammoths and mastodons of a new era.

You know who some of these are already: John Chow. Jeremy Shoemaker. Darren Rowse. Each run their blogging as a business, and while they may be pushing million dollar operations, I can guarantee you having 20 employees (Shoemaker) doesn’t leave a lot of that million bucks left over. Think about it: one of the top bloggers in the world, 7 years in, barely cracking a megabuck… with a lot of overhead.

Go ahead and follow those guys. I’m not competing with them; they’re years ahead of the likes of me.

MMO blogging is no gravy train either. Take John Chow for example. Mr Chow gets a hard time. He pushes the envelope and gets smacked. Like, being dropped from Google’s index. But he gives away a lot too. Good stuff too. I’ve learned from the free material he’s posted on his blog. John Chow gives away stuff I’d like to sell, actionable information that took me time to learn.

Can you compete against John or Jeremy or Darren?

Sure you can! But you better buckle up and strap in, because it’s going to be a brutal, brutal ride… over a long, long haul.

And bear in mind that MMO, or blogging in general is entertainment at best, but more like a service industry. If you don’t show up every day, you’re going to get killed in the search index. I’m watching one of my previous reader’s traffic plummet right now. I think she’ll come back up fast, but she’s going to have to put the time in.

In fact, MMO/blogging looks a lot like a pyramid scheme to me: Too many bloggers, too much being written, not enough readers.

The MMO pyramid scheme

Here’s why I feel it’s all going pear-shaped:

• Expensive products from two years ago got heavily discounted last year, and are now given away as promotions for low cost membership plans. The value of the information hasn’t changed a bit: it’s worth every minute of the time you put into it.

  But the cash flow is drying up.

• Too many claims for too little work producing too much cash. I have specific names in mind, which I’ll not mention. Let’s just say these folk are brilliant sales people, but in my mind they’re playing the greed angle. Which doesn’t work so well with me because I’m not that greedy.

  This is like the stock market: everyone makes money off the greater fool, until there are fools no more.

  In short, the further down the food chain you are, the less return you get for your time and money. The low hanging fruit has been picked by the time you come along.

• Not enough of the information – especially on blog posts – is actionable. Small, “keyword rich” posts saying very little yet attracting many comments (because of, say, dofollow linking) have trouble passing the “So what?” test. Which means they have little long term staying power.

  Much activity in the MMO blogosphere is equivalent to serving each other cheeseburgers.

• Too much recycled pap. If it was pap when it was first published, recycling it doesn’t make it any more nutritious. Those cheeseburgers don’t provide a good base for an economy.

Yikes. That’s quite an indictment!

Let’s take a stab at an answer…

Surviving the MMO/blogging infopocalypse

If you’re in the MMO/blogging niche, I predict within a year, let’s say Dec 2010, you’re going to have to make some tough decisions. Should you stay or should you go?

I can’t answer that question for you. Can’t even answer it that well for me.

But I can take action, which you can see from the posting history here on Website In A Weekend:

1. Providing content ranging from beginner to guru. SEO articles are popular, well-read and attract comments. And ephemeral. Nobody tomorrow cares about yesterday’s hot SEO trick. (I have a lot more to say about SEO in the future.)

   Articles on using chmod in cygwin to fix a permission problem for the Apache server in Windows are not as popular. But they stand the test of time. Windows has been borked for a long time, and I’m not holding my breath that Windows 7 will be any better. And the traffic such articles do attract can be very high quality.

   On the other hand, content ranging from beginner to guru risks confusing readers.

   It’s a tradeoff.

2. Demonstrating measurable skills. I won’t write an article unless I personally did something.

   Conversely, anyone wanting know exactly what I can do can find it here.

   I don’t worry about content theft for articles demonstrating actual skill. The only articles I’ve had stolen are related to social media and SEO. That is, “hot money keywords.” Thinking about it this way, I shouldn’t even worry about it. The stuff I really know how to do can’t be stolen. That stuff is between my ears. Writing out a description of it won’t help anyone that doesn’t do the work.

3. Learning new technology independent of the MMO/blogging industry. For example, I’ve got a Google Wave invitation which is going to occupy a fair bit of my time in the near future. A couple of my WordPress plugins are also begging for attention. And I have a few long term projects completely outside the web application industry.
4. Learning how to monetize. Yes, I would like to fire and forget Website In A Weekend at some point. Get it set up to run on autopilot. Have the cash roll in automatically.

   But that’s not how it works.

   Instead, I’m working to decouple revenue from the clock on the wall, and learning how to leverage content so that the effort per unit time multiplies rather than sums returns.

5. Learning how to really write. Good writing skills are “platform independent.” Transferrable.

   Same as programming, something HR people don’t seem to understand. Solid software engineering skills result from a mastery of process, not buzzword compliance. But I’m digressing…

   Getting back on topic, I’m specifically teaching myself to write compelling long copy. My favorite authors, and some of the most widely read bloggers, write very long articles on a regular basis.

   Writing long articles is easy.

   Writing long articles that attract readers is harder. Here’s a little offer for you: closest guess to the word count of this article gets an hour of my time on chat for an editorial sweep over any article you please. My website or yours, we’ll dismantle that article into it’s components and put it back together 5 times better. (Offer ends Midnight PDT November 4 2009.)

Actions you can take right now

There’s plenty you can do, right now, to insulate yourself from a readership crash. Here’s a few suggestions:

Leverage off of your existing skills. If you haven’t yet established yourself as an authority in your field of expertise, that’s a great place to start. It doesn’t matter what that field is, if you can write about it, you can build authority and credibility, likely with much less competition than in the MMO/blogging realm.

While you see me learning the ins and outs of WordPress (and some MMO) here on Website In A Weekend, I have a long queue of articles on C programming on a different blog, waiting for opportunity. If necessary, I’ll finish and publish these. Surely you have something similar you can write about.

Choose one or two very specific online technologies to master. For example, if you master mailing list technology, you may be able to market just that service specifically. Or you be a whiz at Twitter. Or Facebook.

Spend time in meatspace for networking. Real, live face-to-face interaction is an important component for building trust and credibility, and for meeting people outside your own circle. Pick the best conference in your area of interest. For bloggers, that’s probably Blog World Expo.

I’m super weak on this. I like hanging out at home. When I go out, I like to go surfing, or clubbing, or whatever as long as it’s not working. Networking events always seem to be held when there’s a great swell in the water, or there’s a DJ I really want to see. So I fight traffic to get somewhere I’m not sure I really want to be… and spend my time thinking about shredding something gnarly at Ocean Beach. Yeah, bad attitude. I’ll work on it.

Opportunity abounds

There’s too much information, and not enough time. Those are problems. Where’s the solutions?

Smells like opportunity:

Very few tools exist for evaluating trust and credibility. It’s almost creepy to think about, but I suspect most of us will live to see a “trust index” similar to Fair Isaac. You ready for that?

And no tools for measuring actionability. I don’t know if actionability is even a word… but I would like a way to evaluate online content for it’s applicability to my problems. Before I have to read it.

What about aggregated affiliate tracking? I don’t want to log in to umpteen different web site to track my affiliate account status. Is there software for this? Has this problem been solved? Maybe so, someone point me at it.

Homework: how can bloggers – us – create or add value to help solve these problems? Then we’re part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Speaking of affiliation…

Affiliate technology may be in the dark ages

Read Vernor Vinge’s Rainbow’s End for one extremely plausible account of where affiliation may lead us. Affiliation could be huge, and it might end up as blowback on corporate media interests which have spent 30 years downsizing everything possible. Hey, there’s real people out here, and we’re gonna talk to each with or without Mainstream Media! We’re going to license each other’s content, and we’re going to support each other’s businesses. With or without corporate involvement (Web 4.0 folks. You read it here first).

We’ve covered a lot in this article. As Johnny notes, not everyone is going to make it. But everyone can use blogging to create their own portfolio. It’s not a waste of time by any means.

If you’re addicted to blogging; if you have to write, keep after it. Your content is yours. You’re building your own intellectual property. This means even if you stop blogging, you still own potentially valuable content! And if you’re not exactly sure what to do, do what I’m doing: Put the pedal to the metal! Devil take the hindmost!

What’s your plan? Anything specific you want to talk about? Speak!

Similar Posts:

• Blog World Expo Recap: Blogging Success Requires Passion and a Lot of Writing
• How To Make It Easy To Catch People Stealing Your Articles
• How To Know When To Write A New Blog Post
• The WordPress 101: I’m in a bind, and you benefit!
• Factors Contributing to Blog Failure

Post from: Website In A Weekend

Big Shakeout Coming in MMO Blogosphere – You ready for it?

(Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes)

Have you heard that WordPress gives 85% SEO, right out of the box? Do you believe that?

It’s true.

And it’s partly because of plain old semantic HTML, commonly referred to as “POSH.” POSH is a really easy concept to understand, if you know even a little bit about HTML.

The basic idea driving POSH is that the header and other structural elements should be used to support the document semantically, not just visually. Thus, the main idea – headline or title – should be encoded in the most important elements of the web page such as <title> elements or <h1>. Less important ideas, phrases or keywords are expressed in
less important elements, such as <h2>, <h3>, or <h4>.

Here’s where WordPress is brilliant:

WordPress displays <title> elements and <h1> elements on web pages according to context.

Remember, a web page is something the browser displays on your computer screen. A WordPress Post is a special type of web page delivered by WordPress. (I’m going to start capitalizing “Post” and “Page” to indicate context.)

The simple rule WordPress is demonstrating in both cases is one <title> and one <h1> element on each web page. Let’s see this rule in action for two cases using WordPress Posts:

1. Front web page with a list of Posts
2. Single post web page

Front page lists posts

I’m taking this information directly from the source code view of the front page:

• <title> By default, the name you choose for your web site. For example, “Website In A Wekeend.”
• <h1> By default, your tagline; here it’s “Dr WordPress takes you from Web Zero to Web Hero in 1 Weekend.”
• <h2> Title of latest post. For October 26, 2009, that’s “WordPress Architecture – The Building Blocks of Web Publishing“
• <h2> Title of 2d latest post: “WordPress Plugins, Google Wave — There’s a busy month ahead!“
• <h2> &c.

Single post page

• <title> WordPress Architecture – The Building Blocks of Web Publishing | Website In A Weekend. Note the suffix append after the vertical bar “|” is handled by (in this case) by All In One SEO. Your theme may have similar capability.
• <h1> “WordPress Architecture – The Building Blocks of Web Publishing.” This is the same as the <title> element, but it doesn’t have to be! There’s some evidence for better keyword coverage – thus better traffic – using a slightly different title for the web page than for the article.
• <h2> Subsections within article: Programming language background
• <h2> Basic Wordpress, or Wordpress straight out of the box
• <h2> &c.

There you have it: one <title> and one <h1> for each web page, value depending how the web page is displayed.

I can hear you now: “Why does all this matter?”

It matters because WordPress gets POSH right, and that’s about 85% of your SEO effort according to Matt Cutts of Google.

POSH – Required reading

The canonical reference for POSH has to be the microformats.org POSH wiki entry. Everything on microformats.org is worth reading carefully. Semantic web technology is coming. Be ahead of the power curve.

From POSH – Plain Old Semantic HTML: Here’s the meta description (what you know as “SEO Description”):

Teach people how to use plain old semantic HTML to create valid, well-structured, accessible and interoperable websites.

The comments on the article are very good, consider taking a few minutes to read them carefully.

No list of references on semantic HTML would be complete without the Wikipedia entry. This Wikipedia entry is a little weak, but there you have it.

Here’s a whole blog devoted to Plain Old Semantic HTML. There’s a lot of really good information on this blog, most of dated a couple of years back, but still valid.

Going the extra mile…

I could make a 5 minute screencast on this topic. It would take about an hour (I’ll have to script it to get it under 5 minutes). Is it worth it? Who wants it? Here’s what I’ll do: if I get 5 comments with “Make a screencast!” or similar, I’ll fire up my microphone and Behringer mixing board and make a really short screencast showing exactly what this is all about.
Similar Posts:

• WordPress Architecture – The Building Blocks of Web Publishing
• What the Heck is HTML TITLE element and why do I need one?
• Fast Process For Fixing Image SEO In WordPress
• Head vs. Header — A critical difference for modifying WordPress themes
• Advanced SEO IMG Element Handling For WordPress (Part II)

Post from: Website In A Weekend

Post Titles, Page Titles & Title Elements – Why POSH matters