Andy Merrett asks over at the Blog Herald whether super-short posts are good for one’s blog. He argues that a lot of A-listers do it (a.k.a. the speedlinks). He cites some informal studies that say soundbites of about 150 words or less per post are more easily indexed by search engines and likewise easily digested by readers, too.

How’s that for great writing?

Well, in my opinion, it’s not really in the length of a post (or lack thereof) that makes your writing effective. It’s in how your writing gets your point across that matters. So you can write a thousand word essay and not make any sense at all. Two well thought-of, excellently-worded sentences might be all it takes to cinch that deal.

Then again, somewhere in the middle might be the most convincing.

Here’s a good example. AhmedF has a case study at TechSoapbox. He rambles and rambles, and 15 minutes after, he edits his ramblings and came up with a shorter (although not significantly so) article, but a better read at that!

Here’s where 229 words are greater than 326.

His conclusion. Those who write the lengthier posts are lazier than those who write the shorter ones. Or rather, those who edit their posts for brevity, clarity, and ease-of-reading deserve to be called great writers. It’s all about the editing.

Sure, blogs are mostly for rambling. But while you’re at it, why not make your ramblings more readable and understandable? You can even probably earn better from it (if you’re monetizing).

Remember the elevator pitch? You get 30 seconds to pitch your idea to an investor, your CEO, or anyone in power to help make things happen. That 30-second pitch should be brief, but well-thought of.

Be straight to the point, but do remember to include the essential details. Keep it short and simple.

This plan has been under wraps for some time now, and people I know who have been in the loop tell me they almost burst with excitement because of this un-shareable knowledge they had. I didn’t even know about it until the announcement, but people were already dropping hints. And that’s about Splashpress Media‘s recent acquisition of Performancing.com. Splashpress got to bag the metrics package and community of Performancing, and I think that’s a great thing.

Previously, it has been reported that Performancing’s metrics and community assets were acquired by PayPerPost, but that deal seem to have fallen through. Apparently, Performancing’s top honchos didn’t go too well with the idea that the new owners were of questionable online ethics (if simply because of the grey area that pay-per-post blogging occupies).

One disclaimer: JOAB is owned by Splashpress Media (the same Splashpress that acquired Performancing). And I can probably speak for the network when I say our ethics are intact, and we don’t do evil (sound familiar?).

So the Blog Herald was one big thing, and when Splashpress purchased it from Problogging, Inc last December, we were still quite inexperienced when it came to blog networks and even blogging itself. We’ve experienced a lot of growth since that time, and with another big ticket purchase, I would say we sure have a lot of challenges ahead of us! Performancing is, after all, dedicated to helping bloggers succeed, with its analytics tools and community. Hopefully we can live up to that expectation.

Performancing is now being managed by JOAB’s previous owner, the reformed (really?) Celebrity Cowboy, David Krug. I hear he has big plans, especially with building up the community. David, we’re all behind you on this!

Well, it’s not necessarily so in my case. I mean, I write for a living and I can say it pretty much helps me pay the bills and make ends meet. But writing for a living does have its quirks. For one, there’s the dreaded writer’s block, those times you just feel you have to squeeze out every drop of creativity from your already-numb brain so just you can meet deadlines.

But most of the time, it’s the yearning for respect and acknowledgement that makes for the biggest disappointment in all. True, accomplished writers get respect, but that’s usually very rare, especially in the literary field. Not everyone gets to be a Steinbeck or Hemingway. And yes, sometimes you’d also have to be very dead before you get any serious respect from the community and the public.

As for writing for print and online journals (blogs included), well, it’s a whole new world. Respect doesn’t come around easily. In fact, I can say writing can sometimes be a thankless job. Some people even think you’d have do crazy stuff to get people’s attention.

It kind of feels like writing for the movies:

Even the biz hates writers. When a movie is good, everyone praises the director. When a movie sucks, everyone asks who the fuck wrote this steaming pile of filth. You watch a movie, the credits say: a film by so and so director. Never the writer. Never. It’s like everyone in the biz thinks the writer is just a necessary evil. It’s this auteur theory bullshit going around, making everyone think the director is everything in a movie. -the Man Blog

Here’s to literary rockstardom!

Bloggers look to Darren Rowse’s blog for advice on practically anything about improving one’s blog. Aspiring probloggers hope to get tips in earning better (or even breaking into the industry). Personal bloggers, meanwhile, check it out to see how they can enhance their traffic and connections. Even established probloggers love Darren’s site, or so it seems even Darren himself!

At least that’s what I first thought when I saw this ad on problogger.net some weeks ago.

Now that’s some crazy ad copy, John! I think I’d better switch over to my AdWords account and bid for ads on problogger.net saying “JOAB loves you too, Darren!”

Ever hear about those people complaining about their jobs being taken for granted–such as maintenance crews, service people, night watch men? These are people who do a great service to those around them, but oftentimes they’re unseen; they work away from the limelight. They’re invisible to most everyone else. True, they probably don’t have as glorious jobs as top-paid lawyers, doctors or famous pro athletes. And they probably don’t wield as much power as politicians and business tycoons. But they’re there, and they’re part of the backbone of the economy (not to mention the world would probably be a mess without them).

Anyway, sometimes I feel like pro-blogging is one of those occupations that seem to be so thankless. Most of the people who read blogs probably idolize those A-listers and those people who seem to be earning gajillions from their blogs and blog networks. But not everyone is like that. And on the audience’s side, not everyone reads blogs, and everyone is a fan of professional bloggers, no matter how high in the A-list you are.

It’s probably because pro blogging is not yet as recognized as other IT-related professions like, say, web development, programming, systems analysis, security-related specializations, and the like. Heck, when I tell people I earn some part of my living through blogs, I get raised eyebrows in puzzlement (and usually the big “Really? How?”). And hey I hear some people have even been turned down by Immigration when entering certain countries because they stated their business being in blogging.

It can even be worse if it’s your own family that criticizes you for those late nights spent sleepless in front of your computer scouring for interesting ideas to blog about. Or those weekends spent, again, in front of the computer madly typing that scoop you got from some insider info. Or perhaps they’re just concerned?

Anyway, if the money is good, then why not? But then again I think pro-bloggers deserve a little more credit.

Entrepreneur’s Journey has an excellent analysis of whether problogging is a sustainable endeavor. Yaro Starak writes:

Even those professional bloggers who do realize full time income from blogging and enjoy the independence of the occupation, eventually realize that rather than creating a business with a sustainable income model they have created a job for themselves. Essentially professional bloggers are like freelance journalists, dependent on their ability to perpetually type day after day in order to keep the content = traffic = income equation functioning.

Yaro argues that while content + traffic = money (yes, the math’s a bit off, but you get the picture: good content and good amount of traffic translate to revenues, assuming you do monetize your site), for most people earning from their blogs, it becomes a job. True enough, you have to write, you have to research, you have to give attention to your blog or blogs if you intend to earn good money.

Not that there’s anything bad about that. But Yaro is approaching the concept of problogging from an entrepreneur’s perspective. And to an entrepreneur, having something that you would have to continuously work on to get returns is not the ideal situation. The ideal is to pour your heart out starting something so that after some time you can simply reap the rewards even when you’re not actively working on that endeavor. In short: passive income!

Yaro then gives examples of how you can be assured of passive income. It won’t come easy, though. For one, you might have to be really popular before this can happen.

Steve Pavlina is perhaps one of the best examples of a blogger who could stop writing and currently doesn’t write every day (although he does write some nasty sized articles) and can expect reasonable income – very high income compared to most bloggers and salary workers – for many months and even years to come thanks to his blog archives.

The conclusion?

Professional Blogging Is Not A Sustainable Business Model

As far as I can tell there is no way to create a sustainable business model if you are the only person doing the work as a professional blogger. The best result you can hope for is a very well paying scenario of self employment.

Probloggers can explore other possibilities, though. Start a blog network! Or, build up blogs to sell afterwards! I know of a couple of people who follow these business models.

Of course, being a self-employed problogger can be a good start.

Over the last weeks there have been some changes in the blog journal landscape. 2 Consolidated papers and a new comer. Positions haven’t changed yet, but the tone of the blogs has.
Lets have a look at the 3 blog papers I mentioned in my Follow The Blogosphere with only 20 Feeds.

More →

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]

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]