The Contextual Partnership Plugin For WordPress Provides Free Advertising To Help Promote Your Blog & Get You Noticed…

If you’re looking for an effective solution to help get your blog noticed then the Contextual Partnership Plugin for WordPress bloggers could be well worth consideration. Perhaps the most attractive aspect is that there is no cost involved.

According to the developers the plugin is designed to;

Drive more targeted visitors to your blog (or blogs) by strategically linking your blog to and from other bloggers participating in the network. The exact method used to achieve this remains confidential but apparently it’s not a basic reciprocal link exchange – nor the more common 3 way linking arrangement often seen between bloggers.

Enhance the user experience for your blog visitors by providing them with links to other high quality blogs for further information on subjects of interest (and it can do this without you actually loosing the visitor which is a great feature).

Indirectly increase your search engine rankings by building highly relevant incoming links to your blog for keyword terms you define, related to your own niche market.

Not a bad indirect benefit at all.

To better understand how the network works, first you need to know what a “contextual link” actually is. A contextual link is simply a link “within content” of a blog post and “within context” of specific keyword terms in that post. For example the term “dog training” found within a blog post becomes a link out to another blog (related to “dog training”) within the network. Contextual Links are found all over the internet – bloggers interlink their own pages contextually, there are paid advertising programs that allow you to place contextual advertising links and earn per click, and bloggers naturally link out to other websites they find useful “contextually” as well.

This is the key to the “Contextual Partnership”. When you install and setup the WordPress Plugin, you’re asked to provide the URL’s you wish to advertise on other partners blogs, and the keyword terms you want those blogs to use to link back to your own. When a match is found within the network for the keyword terms you provide (and assuming it meets with the Contextual Partnership’s strategic linking methodology), a link back to your blog is assigned, and your account has a credit removed.
The amount of credits your account holds appears to be directly related to the number of links you’re providing to other partners in the network for the keyword terms they themselves are looking to use to advertise. Apparently for every link you provide for another partner, you earn 1 credit. That 1 credit is then “cashed in” to assign a link back to your own blog from other partners whenever a match is found for your own keyword terms. So if you already have 100 posts in your blog, and each of those pages finds a match to provide a link to another partner, then technically you could receive 100 incoming links to your blog as soon as you’ve been approved to participate in the partnership. You also continually earn more points and incoming links as you continue to blog and add more posts just like you usually do.

That’s the basic overview and you’ll find more specific information on the plugin website including details of many features not mentioned here (like the ability to select specifically which blog posts you want to include – or nor include in the network)…

http://www.contextualpartnership.com

Uptake by the blogger community seems to have been extremely good and this new service looks to become very popular. In the first two weeks of launch the partnership already had over 54,000 individual places to place links throughout the network, and within the first 4 weeks over 10,000 advertising links had been allocated between network partners. This is most likely a result to how easy it is to actually setup the plugin and participate – it literally takes 5 minutes to install and setup – although approval can take anywhere from 24-72 hours depending on the moderation queue as only high quality blogs are accepted to participate to keep out the splogs and spammers.
This seems to be one of those services worth giving a shot for a few months, and by the looks of things the developers have some exciting new features in the pipeline to make things even more effective for partners in the future.

You can find out full details and download the plugin below…

http://www.contextualpartnership.com

Or alternatively you can download the plugin directly from WordPress…

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contextual-partnership-link-exchange-plugin/

Logical Media is one of the innovative services that pay for ad placement within blogs. Do you have a blog and are you seeking a way to make additional money from the blog? Are you seeking a way to offset other programs with the use of ads? Through the registration with Logical Media, the blogger can have access to well-designed and functional ads, which are placed within the blog, earning the blogger money each time that a visitor to the blog decides to click on one of these ads.

As one of the top fifty affiliate networks in Website Magazine, Logical Media has reached a standard of customer service that many affiliate sites are simply unable to attain. Through the use of excellent placed ads, customer service and daily updates throughout the ads which are placed on the website, there are many reasons that you should consider Logical Media for marketing that can begin to earn you money from the moment you begin using the program.

With the added incentive that bloggers are equipped with, to earn twenty five dollars for signing up for the service, the blogger can begin to make money right away. With many other services, it seems that you are waiting weeks and even months for money to accrue within the account. However, with the instant twenty five dollars, just for signing up – you can begin to see an immediate profit!

With an easy to set-up and user-friendly interface, you can be up and running within a matter of minutes. Through the information which is provided and targeted keywords, ads will be developed that will be suited to your blog, your readers and your genre.

There are many other services which are offered to bloggers, in addition to the paid ad placement that can be taken advantage of throughout the blog. Through the use of valuable referral programs, in which the referrer can earn up to five percent through each referral and the real-time reports which the blogger will have access to, there are many ways that the blogger can learn to better the site – All while getting paid!

There are very few other paid ad placement companies that offer a high sign-up bonus. With the twenty five dollars that is offered to new customers you can begin to see your account move upward, through each click which is made on the ads placed within the blog. Are you seeking a program that enables you to track these movements in real time, while making real money? If this is the kind of program that you think would work for you, consider Logical Media, as the services offered are one of the many reasons more bloggers are choosing the company.

When it is time to get paid, bloggers always get paid on time, and the right amount. Through the use of intricate bookkeeping, bloggers are kept happy with accurate payments, regular payments and a variety of methods which are used to complete payments to bloggers that have signed up for the program. A reliable way to monetize your blog, more and more bloggers are choosing Logical Media.

The Joker is letting me take this one…

When we first bought and started posting on JOAB back at the beginning of August, earlier this year, a lot of people (including some of the “experts”) predicted our early demise.

So, while shamelessly blowing our own trumpet, but at the same time not saying that we have done anything particularly right or wrong, we make you, our readers, a Top 20 Jack.

And we bring you the facts.

In August, there were 3,571 unique visitors to JOAB.
In September, 3670.

In October, 4774.

In November, 5040

The total no. of visitors in August was 14,434, while in November – 17,141 (with a daily average of: 571.37) & the hits last August totaled 99,348 as opposed to November’s 118,961.

In conclusion (these figures from the cpanel’s awstats) traffic is up over 40% since we took over in terms of the most important stat: unique visitors.
The Google PageRank is the same- PR6.

The Alexa Ranking was 128,875 when we took over. Today, it is: 92,035 – an increase in traffic ranking of over 28%. And Alexa has pageviews up over the last 3 months 86%, while reach per million users, up 9%.
Revenue-: upon purchase: $380 per quarter from Revenews/Shopzilla. Same now. Adsense- beginning to do better using adsense beautifier- average $1 per day, from less than 50 cents per day. TLA- there were 4 out of 8 links sold. now 7 out of 10.

So from a total revenue of approx. $220 in August, we’re now at about $330- an increase of approx. 50%.
Who said we don’t care about the stats or revenue?!

Here’s to you, JOAB readers.

[tags]famous jacks,joab,awstats,alexa,pagerank,traffic,ranking[/tags]

Your very own Jack Of All Blogs won the Bloggy Award yesterday. You can read the review- here.

You’d think that Mr Bloggy would show some unbiased commentary, no? Nothing like sucking up to oneself. Well…there you go. All that time I was think Mr Bloggy was fair-minded and neutral, when in fact he’s been pushing his own petty, selfish little agenda. Damned snake! We don’t buy it for a minute here at JOAB. Insider trading, backslapping corruption at its blogobubble worst. Here’s a little taste of the greasy, slurping twaddle-:

If you know the history of Jack Of All Blogs, you would be aware of the controversies it had been involved in the past. The opinions posted are quite strong, and it’s either you’re for “JOAB” (as Jack Of All Blogs is fondly called) or against it.

Go back to your doghouse Bloggy!![tags]bloggy,bloggy award,joab,bloggy winner,corrupt,insider trading[/tags]

Askimet is not doing its job. Filtering the bloody spam takes too much time and life is just too short. So we’re shutting down the comments on JOAB for now while we put in some genius plugin that can somehow tell the wood from the trees.

Hopefully, this is a very temporary step. If you have anything desperate that you need to say – please email us here. And if it’s mindblowingly useful and we can’t resist it, we promise to publish it. Of course, you’ll need to be terribly nice and you can expect heavy censorship.

So watch this space…!!

[tags]spam,askimet,comments,censorship,email[/tags]

Our latest purchase, under the Bloggy Network group of blogs and sites, has been Gadzooki.com. It was a private sale for an undiscosed sum. Gadzooki is perhaps most famous for it’s unforgettable tagline “I want one!”. It’s a truly excellent site that shines out in the extremely competitive area of gadget-related blogs. This is largely due to the insightful, cutting-edge content of its writers: “Quimby”, “Mr Butterscotch” and “Jackoozi”- all of whom have agreed to stay on.

Gadzooki was formerly in the portfolio of Blog Media, and one of the sites that David Krug, former owner of this blog, took away with him when he parted company with BM. It was sold privately via a sitepoint auction for an undiscosed sum last May. Despite slipping to a PR5 since then (expect that to go back up pronto!)- it only had about 80 visitors per day in those days. Now it has over 500 per day, on average, and it’s starting to generate significant search results.

This purchase comes hot on the heels of our acquisition of Biziki, as reported in a previous post. Given our intended design plans to use Chris Pearson‘s eratizine theme as the design “makeover” for all our blogs- we really had no choice but to buy Gadzooki! As mentioned before, the only other blogs in blogosphere that currently have this erazatine theme by Chris are yours truly (JOAB), Biziki and Gadzooki. We happen to think that Chris is the best WP theme designer out there and that erazatine is one of his most memorable and unique designs, although he has done excellent ones since. We are thrilled (with a caveat) to have exclusively captured the erazatine theme- especially as we feel that it will stand the test of time.

The caveat is, that although we have assurances from the previous blog owners of Gadzooki, etc- we’re pretty sure that, as with all “artistic” creations, the ultimate copyright reverts to the creator. As respect to Chris, we will be putting at the footer of all blogs: “A uniquely designed theme by Chris Pearson“. And we are encouraged (although saddened by the context of the thread: that someone had stolen Chris’ design; see Blog Herald’s take on it) by Chris’ (in not mentioning erazitine) comments when he says in his post:

“There are only three “living” projects in which I retain ownership — Pearsonified, Tubetorial, and Cutline.”

In his post “How Much Should A Design Cost?”- Chris says (dated last June)-:

At this time, blog designs start at $1500. This price is for a blog that has minimal graphical complexity, no customized icons, and no logo production. What you do get at this price is rock-solid, hand-crafted, browser-tested CSS, XHTML, and simple (but striking) graphic design. In most cases, bells and whistles like plugin support, unique page designs, and extra graphics push the price up into the $1800-$2000 range. From there, the price is largely dictated by page-specific CSS/XHTML production and custom graphic design. It’s totally conceivable that a pimped out blog could run as much as $3000. Rest assured, though, that it would be totally badass, and the recipient of the design would receive mad props for having such a killer online abode.

When I emailed Chris, I told him that we weren’t put off by his prices and wanted to be “pimped out”! Anyway, it didn’t end up happening as I explained in my previous post.

So what an expensive way for us to have gone about this plan! Even after spending the dosh on Biziki and Gadzooki, we still need to convert and customize all our other blogs. Currently we have 26 blogs in our network (which we own 100%) and a further 14 related Bloggy “service sites”.

I think all of this is a result of the fact that I am, on a personal level, completely obsessive-compulsive. If I want something, I have to get it- no matter the cost. I totally understood why Chris couldn’t help us out, so no hard feelings there. But I then had to find another way, by hook or crook.

Anyway, Gadzooki is a great site, as I said. So no regrets there….!!

[tags]gadgets blog, gadzooki,chris pearson,cutline,tubetorial,biziki,erazatine,blog design,blog skins,WP themes[/tags]

Matt Craven announced at the Blog Herald yesterday that Blog Media Inc. is rebranding itself into Problogging Inc. He goes into more detail about the whys and wherefores at the Problogging site itself. It does go a long way as to explaining why Blog Media (or now Problogging) have been so aggressive recently in selling up their blogs. To name just a few-: Biziki (which we bought), Gadget Bloggers, Mobility Watch and now Sporty Blog is on sale at sitepoint. To quote Matt-:

This is part of a deliberate strategy to move beyond the “wide & deep” network strategy that we have employed in the past in order to refocus our efforts on our consulting business and expand more into services for professional bloggers, including directly consulting in that arena.

An interesting comment was left by John Evans from Syntagma Media and then a futher observation in a post-:

As I’ve written here many times, I believe the blog network concept was over-egged because Weblogs Inc was seen as a network rather than two superstar tech websites. The charge out of this space is becoming more like a stampede. As I write, Steve Rubel is asking whether Weblogs Inc itself will survive within AOL now that Jason Calacanis has left.

I am not going to argue the semantics here of this specific scenario, but I would like to pick up on the general gist of it- as there’s been a lot written about the “rise and fall of blog networks” recently.

I’m sure that Blog Media/Pro Blogging know what they are doing and have good strategies in place.

And I’m sure that Syntagma are sure that they are going down the right path as well. Anyway, it’s not really any of my business and I loathe the childish bickering that one often finds in blogosphere. Each to his or her own. And looking over one’s shoulder is a waste of time. As is egoism. Where I come from, humility is a quality, not a defect.

But what I would say is that we are perhaps seeing an evolution of the “creators” of blogosphere moving out, and the offline, “commercial players” (who can ride out long-term ROIs and gain lateral, rather than direct, benefits)- moving in.

Unlike John Evans, I believe very much that blog networks will be extremely healthy long-term investments. Far from being a “bubble”, I don’t think we have even seen the tip of the iceberg yet. Right now the US almost completely dominates the space.

This, in percentage terms, will change over time- a great deal. Blogging will increasingly become more “mainstream” and less “tekkie”. So that people who don’t even know what RSS is- will soon be signing up on their TV screens. Who do I want reading my blogs long-term? People who don’t even know what “blog” means yet. So if this takes us 5 or 10 years, so be it.

I used to work in the stockmarket and we, on a daily basis, were so obsessed with the “technicals” and trading “the margins”, that we never saw the real profits from the bull market, always too eager to buy and sell, and failing to see the overall picture.

The senior expert on a 15th Century Flemish artist, Jan Van Eyck (most famous for his “Arnolfini Marriage” portrait)- was called Erwin Panofsky. He wrote volumes about the symbolism of Van Eyck’s paintings. My point? He yearned to own a Van Eyck and was often consulted for authentication purposes. After he died and his estate was being evaluated- to everyone’s utter amazement, a small (previously unknown and attributed to “school of Master of Flemalle”) iconographic painting by Van Eyck was hanging beside his desk! In other words, while writing books and books on his favorite artist, Panofsky had missed the fact that he owned an original Van Eyck himself all along!

This was my experience playing the stocks. I was “too close to it” and too quick to predict the peaks and troughs. And this I fear is the same thing happening with false predictions now of the demise of blog networks- from the very people who have helped build them up. They are too close to the action and unable to see that the movement is only just getting started!

I hate to repeat a cliché from a previous post, but here it is again-:

“Fools build houses for wise men to live in“.

[tags]blog media,problogging,matt craven,blog herald,blog networks,john evans,syntagma,van eyck,stampede[/tags]

As it’s the holidays (well, in the US, anyway)- I’ll keep this one short. It wasn’t on my intended list of three samples! And it’s mainly for the benefit and ongoing discourse with Matt Mickiewicz of Sitepoint and anyone else out there who is reading this, and likes to trade on sitepoint. Last week there was a site for sale here. It was EFXscripts.com. We wanted it because we like the scripts that it sells and wanted to merge it with a site of our own which has some great, unique scripts, but hasn’t been performing well-: GorillaScripts.com. Plus it was a PR6 with seemingly natural backlinks, so cheap at the price.

Now for one reason or other, we were late to the bidding and somebody else bid at the BIN price. That was $750. Rather annoyed with myself, I messaged the seller and told him that I was sorry to have missed the bidding and that if for any reason the other bid fell through, I was willing to pay $1,000. So $250 over the BIN price. The seller responds to my message and says that I’m not too late as he hasn’t accepted the BIN from the other bidder. So the site was mine if I wanted it.

To my mind, this was unethical behavior on behalf of the seller. I was really in two minds as to how to proceed. The other bidder had won fair and square. My message was in the spirit of “if the other bidder doesn’t pay up…” In this case, I was saved as I got a secondary message from the seller saying that the original BIN bidder had upped his bid to $1,050 – outbidding me. So I was able to gracefully exit.

This example, Matt, is intended to show you how your policies, in bending over backwards for the seller- have created a “black market” of behind-the-scenes bidding. It was the seller’s choice to create a BIN price- he/she didn’t need to. And if it was too low, tough luck. Plus this sort of sale will make future “valuations” practically impossible for buyers, as unlike in the past- one can’t really gauge the “going rate” for a particular type of site.

I do have some suggestions. Here’s the first-: sellers should be forced to sell to the buyer who does a BIN on their auction- if the buyer meets certain criteria (prompt payment, etc).

[tags]sitepoint,scripts,BIN,PR6,blog sales,ethics[/tags]

In my last post, I explained why I feel that buying off sitepoint has become so deadly dull these days. So here is the first example of a recent blog buying experience we have had-:

Widgetoko.com

Okay, we really, really wanted this one. It was listed at sitepoint here with a fairly low starting bid. While it was listed as PR0, it had some fabulous backlinks- including from Digg’s frontpage, Scobleizer, Lifehacker, Wired and other mayor websites. Just a backlinks and a future pagerank check showed us that Bob’s your uncle!! A nicely customized design and short, slick, unique widgets. A perfect match for our own more content-heavy Bloggy Widgets.

So we waited and waited….two minutes to go. The current high bid was $1,001. So we put in the suggested bid of $1,050 (that’s us- “saloschin”). What happens? The auction extends for 4 more hours, automatically. We monitor it. Phew! We still won the bidding- got the email from sitepoint and take the “seller has not yet chosen to accept your bid” as just the usual red tape stuff. Hang on. We don’t hear from the seller- so we message them. And then we get the reply saying “sorry…site already sold to the previous bidder..”.

Now this was all wrong! Firstly, the previous bidder was “private” but had his username revealed to us in the message from the seller. A certain “Problogging”. Damn! We know that one. No less than the former owner of this blog, David Krug. Of all people to be pipped at the post by!! And beaten by a bid of $1,001- lower than ours? Weird!
Did we get a fair shot at winning the site? No. The seller should have indicated that a higher bid had been offered prior, giving us the chance to again increase our bid. How much did the seller actually get? Supposedly $1,001. That’s what it says. How much were we prepared to pay? Approx. $3,500. The seller sure didn’t get that.

In conclusion, neither the seller nor the buyer’s best interests were served by this auction. We didn’t get a fair chance to obtain the site and the seller didn’t get the opportunity to get the highest price that he could. And the whole thing was a rather annoying, frustrating “cloak and dagger” experience that left a bad taste in the mouth. Sitepoint’s policies, while clearly well-intentioned, are actually creating a fundamental lack of transparency- which cannot be good for trade.

Plus, where was the fun? If we’d known that “Problogging” was bidding against us- hell, we’d have paid double just for the fun of it!

And as a follow-up, I’m wondering if the blog sale even went through? Checking the “who is” on the domain now and it seems to still be with the old seller. I don’t know why this is, but what I do know is that such an experience will not serve sitepoint well, long-term- with the potential to lose both buyers and sellers. The current sales lack so much of the articulation and banter of the olden days- and I’m wondering if this will also give sitepoint less “search phrases” to be linked with- enquiries from the SEs in mind, and thus bring down their performance- at least in the marketplace. Time will tell!
[tags]sitepoint, widgetoko, lifehacker, wired, bloggy widgets, widgets, online auctions, david krug, problogging, digg, scobleizer[/tags]

Buying websites off sitepoint used to be a lot of fun. Rather like with eBay, it was the closest thing- adrenalin-wise, to gambling- that I know. As a former art dealer, one of the favorite part of my jobs was bidding at auctions. Swooping in at the last-minute for a piece of art that you desperately wanted, meanwhile poker-faced as if to say “ah well, I’m don’t really care about this one- it’s just an impulsive whim…“And while that sort of inter-personal energy isn’t the same online, it’s still a lot of fun bidding at online auctions- especially if it’s for something you desperately want. This is of course is the cornerstone of eBay’s success, and the element that cleverly backs this up is the feedback system for buyers and sellers.

While sitepoint has never had such a feedback system, it has always been a great place to buy and sell sites because of its inherent prestige and clout, i.e: if someone plays crooked, there will be consequences and the moderators are very professional. Also, every member was always “open” in that you could see his/her profile, how many posts they have made (& then read them)- and make contact at will.

These were the good old days! Auctions were completely free to list. The seller determined things like the BIN price, the length of sale and bidding format and, on the whole, everything was open and transparent. Private deals were possible, but everything was pretty much ‘out there’. In other words, the “spirit” of a true auction process was retained. If a seller declared the end time for an auction to be 17.00 EST on a specific date, then even if a higher bid came in at 17.01- the seller was ethically bound to sell to the bidder that was in time. So much ‘swooping’ last minute was possible! It was also possible to have open, honest discussions about the merits of that particular auction, with other members weighing in on the pros and cons and giving their advice- without being moderated out. And asking the hard, probing questions.

These days, all that has changed on sitepoint. I can see why the management at sitepoint wanted to shake things up from the rather chaotic, amateur process that was in place before. But in doing so, they have also managed to kill much of the charm and fun of bidding, as well as make it much harder to get a bargain. They have also made it harder to be 100% sure that you have won a site or to gain the useful advice and sometimes OTT battering of other members.

The first change that took some of the fun out was the over-zealous moderating. That members can only ask pertinent questions in regards to the sale if they are genuine buyers. They have drawn the line of “sabotage” too far- so that even fair, reasonable questions get moderated out. Rather like referees over-protecting goalies in footy!! The seller should be allowed to answer the difficult questions, while now, under current rules- they just whinge and duck them.

The second policy that has spoilt the fun is the separation of “established sites for sale” and “turnkeys”. Why? Because of the lack of definition in terms and the misunderstanding that most sellers and buyers have for what a turnkey actually is. So many buyers who would usually consider a “turnkey” won’t even visit that markeplace- thinking “I only want something established” and ditto sellers not listing there. While it makes sense in concept, in reality it has made for less excitement and fun.

The third policy that has really affected the process of buying & selling on sitepoint negatively- are the fees. From being free, they went to $4.95, then $9.95, then $14,95, then $19.95 and now just $20 (for “established sites”). What this means is that a lot of sellers who own, technically speaking, “established sites”, will be completely put off listing their $100 sites up for sale, as they’re losing 20% before starting! So for those who are looking for real “bargains” at that sort of level- hoping they can get such a site to be worth $1,000 with a bit of work- are denied the opportunity and their hearts just sink as they go through the many sites for sale for the $000s. And then with the ones who are still up at that price range- you nearly always find that they’re really not worth anything at all- which is why they don’t mind paing the fee and taking their shot.

And the fourth and last reason why sitepoint‘s new rules have diminished the experience is the actual bidding/selling process. Firstly, some of the auctions can go on forever. When you see “time to go…27 days…”, you lose interest pretty quickly! Then, if you do wait until the last moment to bid- in the hope that you can get the site at the best possible price, and get the better of your bidding rivals (!), suddenly- if within 24 hours, the auction’s time period is extended for 4 hours more! What is more, because of the new “privacy” option- which nearly everyone seems to be using, one can’t see who one is bidding against- and therefore judge their patterns and see who are the cheapos and who are the real players. And you can only clock up “credits” (via posts) with “PM stats please…“
After all this is said and done, you have bid and won the auction. Or so you think…another irritating last hurdle to jump through. “A winning bid has been made (or BIN)…but the seller has not yet accepted or declined the offer…so you can make an offer…”.

Aargh!!! So after all that, I don’t even know if I won the site or not??

Seemingly, these latter policies are in line to help the seller achieve the best price possible. The question is if it does, in reality, achieve that. In my next post, I’ll be giving three recent examples of our own experiences on sitepoint- as evidence that not only has sitepoint become a boring place to buy sites from, but that it also doesn’t work in practice as it should.

You can see sitepoint’s new “auction guidelines” here.

[tags]sitepoint,buying sites,auction, online auctions,turnkeys,privacy,blog sales[/tags]