Whew.

We recently sent out a massmail to both Blog Top Sites - we are looking for bloggers interested in blogging about their local city (major US cities only for now). If you are interested, do email local@bloggynetwork.com.

Already 163 responses, and getting one per ~5 minutes. I think we will end up with roughly 200-250 emails.

I believe, in terms of approaching local, we now have the most massive breadth:

• iBegin - city search
• iBegin Source - business data provider
• iBegin Geocoder - geocoding abilities for US/Canada (not launched yet)
• iBegin Source Hosted - hosted platform for local search. Eg Minnesota.com or Lauderdale.com
• Blog Flux Local - aggregated local news powered by blogs (not launched yet)
• is My Home - city blogs [eg newyork.ismyhome.com] (not launched yet)

We have other stuff coming too (community-related), but those are 6+ weeks off. Everything else mentioned above should be live within four weeks.

This massive breadth will allow us to do some … interesting things. We get roughly 20,000 unique visitors a day now, but by end of year we are targeting at least 50,000 a day. Should be a fun ride.

Slight Update: 24 hours after posting this, we’ve now received 261 emails from people interested in being a part of our local blog network. I think we will end up around 275.

I have a lot of experience with widgets/gaining links on other sites. From back in 2000 when I first started to hammer away at top sites, to Blog Flux, widgets are something that I am intimately acquainted with.

Nevertheless, I still follow widgets like a hawk. If there is anything that Digg did well, it was creating an easy ‘Digg This’ javascript system. Basically a widget, it got Digg’s brand everywhere.

In local, widgets are especially fantastic. Yelp has one, but I’m not impressed - the map system means heavy load, which … well - sucks. I find it surprising that neither Judy’s Book nor IP ever released such a widget - or if they did, their promotion efforts for it were horrible.

So I was actually glad Judy’s Book this time actually had a widget for their Coupon Looker, but also confused. It was brand heavy (link on top, and more on the bottom). It didn’t pay anything. The actual results were a bit retarded - instead of sending them to the actual coupon, it just sent them to the search results on Coupon Looker (which you were getting already through the widget).

So I did what anybody curious would do - I emailed everyone on their ‘Who’s using the couponlooker widget?’ list. Or at least, I emailed everyone that didn’t work for JB.

Key observations:

• A few of them had used JB previously. They had stopped using it for this or that reason.
• Quite a few of them have their readers ask about coupons. This was a good solution for them to offer to their readers.
• Most haven’t looked at it in depth, but will review it in time (did JB say it was in progress?)
• None of them were paid. BUT - quite a few said that if there was a commission (perfectly acceptable imo) they would much prefer that.
• Most of them found it ‘acceptable’. Most had a shortlist of features that could improve it. Most of these features involved flexibility (design, categories). The most interesting one was recommending contextually. I can see a contextual + affiliate system could be a sustainable ad system.
• Link back. For most, who were teetering on the cliff, the link back pushed them over.

Almost all promised to monitor how the system works over the coming week before coming to a decision to ’stick’ with it or not. And while the link back closed the deal, all the bloggers did do it for their readers (a few mentioned that the traffic they did receive from that link has been minimal). Not a single person mentioned SEO.

UPDATE: It also seems like that CL is a team play.

During the middle of World Cup 2002 started, when Rivaldo was one of the hottest players, I remember reading about how he had gone from highly-criticized to much loved.

Mind you, this face-clutching episode (read Wikipedia entry) was definitely one of the worst moments in soccer-acting, but that is another point.

Rivaldo credited his resurgence to the coach. While many had called for his head, the coach had told him that he had nothing to worry - his place was guaranteed. With the stress of having to prove himself every game removed, he played at a much higher level, knowing that one bad game wouldn’t get him axed.

Of course, the opposite could also apply (player knows he will start no matter what, plays soft - eg Vince Carter), but again - another point.

So when it came to Bloggy Network and our paid bloggers, we never took on a pay-per-post model. I absolutely hate it. Successful blogs produce compelling content. They are insightful, interesting, and require some research. When a person is being paid per post, what motivation does he/she have in producing excellence? A pay per post model, imo, simply encourages people to post as often as you want. Of course there is a certain level of editorial control, but defining requirements is a non-trivial task. It isn’t fun.

The other model, a flat-fee, is working very well for us. It was stressful at first, but the fantastic growth we have been experiencing validates our model. We hired bloggers based on their ability to write interesting and compelling content, not because of their ability to churn out post after post (great for search engines perhaps, but really a shitty solution). We did of course put in certain conditions (you have), but they also meant the stress factor was a lot lower. Our writers knew they would get paid the same, be it with 5 posts in a week or with 50. They also knew that by working harder on each post, by ensuring a higher quality of work, the long-term potential and upside were far better than a post-churning blog.

It takes time. It can be highly stressful. But I liken it to the shotgun approach vs the sniper approach. The pay-per-post is shotgun-like - keep scattering fire and hope one hits. The sniper approach, far more deliberate and slow, yields much more positive results. A person with a shotgun can get to it right away, but a person with a rifle takes time to gain proficiency. Just need to be patient (and that patience is being rewarded now).

Our approach is in contrast to most other blog networks out there.

In my previous post on ForumTemplates.com hitting the 100,000 download mark, I also mentioned how it wasn’t getting any search engine love, even with all the links.

Stefan Juhl and I had a little chit-chat going on in the comments, where Google does recognize 3000 pages, but thinks only 42 are unique enough to mention.

The problem that arises are two fold:

1. Stefan suggests I put in more text, as that might be confusing the search engines. But adding more text would serve no purpose - this is a design that people are downloading/buying - text serves no real function here. Google keeps telling me to design for my users, not search engines. And I have, but it seems like it isn’t working. At all.

2. We have a lot of links as our freebie templates (over 100) require a link back. These aren’t paid. But we could be getting penalized because they are ’site-wide’ (in the context of the forum software). This is a the slippery slope I was talking about in an earlier post. People saw the design, liked it, downloaded it, and installed it. That is as good of a vote (via link) as you will get. But it seems like we are getting penalized. Fantastic.

So we will see. The site *is* successful (zero PPC, weak organic). But I also believe the site is more than good enough to rank highly in the organic results. Yahoo! shows over 800,000 backlinks. People like this stuff.

Some of our divisions are quite quiet, just slogging along, making money without making a peep.

Case in point: Forum Templates. It just crossed the 100,000 downloads mark yesterday. It employs two people full time.

This incidentally is the one site Google gives no love to. Just filed a reinclusion request, I think it is because the domain was PPCed when we bought it (well over a year ago). At the same time, Google reports ~9200 links to the frontpage, ~50,000 to the phpBB page, and ~97,000 to the vBulletin page. The grand total comes to 157,342 links.

My first ever re-inclusion request (previously when I bought a domain that was PPCed and couldn’t get to rank, I simply moved on to another domain), I will post on how it actually goes (other sites in my sitemaps account account for roughly 150,000 unique visitors a day, so it is in good company).

Judy’s Book recently launched Coupon Looker, which … umm … helps you find coupons.

Pretty obvious.

What is odd is how there is a non-obvious connection to Judy’s Book itself. On the about page, it is (dismissively I think) stated as follows:

couponlooker was started by a few of the folks at Judy’s Book who recognized a need for a fast and efficient coupon search engine.

Huge difference between ’started by a few of the folks’ and ‘owned and operated by’. The terms page also mentions it once:

The couponlooker site is controlled, operated and administered by couponlooker, a subsidiary of Judy’s Book from its offices within the United States.

Much more obvious - so the question remains, why is Judy’s Book hiding the relationship? Do they believe the Coupon Looker dilutes the brand? Or that Judy’s Book has a negative image in coupons?

One other thing - widgets. I have a lot of experience in building widgets/tools to gather links and branding awareness - but who would put a coupon looker widget on their site? Seems a bit odd. I know they have links listed on the right, but those could easily be seeder ones. Speaking of which - I am going to research this and get back on this.

Technology in itself is benign - it simply lets us do things we could not before.

The internet is a fantastic place, but also a classic double edged-sword: while it lets people read news/information they would have never had access too, it also lets people spread mis-information and other general douchery.

Text is hard to communicate with. I use emoticons a lot (will post about it later), even though it can come across as unproffesional to some. Conveying tone and language through text is extremely difficult.

This also means a lot of people get offended really easily. I’m not even talking about political correctness (also for a later post), I’m talking about people making mountains out of molehills.

Case in point, on my post about how blogging journalism gets its due. Hassan had this to say:

Should not you be saying Allahu Akbar bro? Man this western influences…

I’ve received hate from all religions - I’ve been called anti-semite for rejecting blogs on Blog Flux where the webmaster was Jewish (how would I know that? Not to mention Arabs are semites heh). Ive been told that I will be going straight to hell for accepting blogs on atheism, and yadda yadda.

It is amazing how we have all evolved into a culture where a single word of criticism is considered offensive. I personally love criticism (objectively - personal criticism by people who don’t know you or general blanket statements like ‘you suck’ are retarded). Half of my posts on local search are about local-search sites and how they do things wrong. I’m doing them a big favor - pointing out flaws they didn’t notice themselves. Instead, most of them privately gripe about how I have a conflict of interest. Instead of being thankful for free advice that will improve the user experience, they complain. Amazing.

Regardless, back to Hassan. He was somehow offended that I didn’t bring up God, and that I was ’succumbing’ to western culture. Forget that all the major religious figure heads (including Prophet Muhammad) stressed education and learning. Forget that there was no religious context at all to my post. He still got offended.

With everything so connected now, its hard to take a step back, take a deep breath, and look at something calmly (I’m almost always late to report on ‘news‘). I’ve noticed the longer I sit on my computer/use the internet, the more irate I become. My personal solution is to go out back and throw things around for the dogs. I suggest everyone find their way of cooling off.

Pretty simple.

Matt complains about selling text links through WordPress to game search engines (he focuses on templates, but you know the gist of it).

He does this on a blog that has the following links:
* Donate your car
* Online payday loans
* Payday Loans
* myspace layouts
* Free web directory
* Professional Web Hosting
* domains
* Payday Loans
* Articles & Tutorials
* Rome hotels

Kettle, pot, black - you know the drill.

I didn’t blog yesterday because of what happened in VT. People talk about hitting home, but this one really did. I remember running the business and going to university at the same time. University was far more stressful. Of course, my emotions melted away and turned to disgust after seeing shit like this.

Technology can be horrible. It allows people like Debbie (ie consequential only because of their hatred) a platform to reach similar people. But its also fantastic that it lets us see news we would never have otherwise, and also to expose people like Debbie.

My next post is going to be quite political. Been see-sawing through it for a few weeks now, but I believe it is something that has to be said.

Over the years, I’ve been a ‘fan’ of Google. I say that with hesitation - I’m not an unbridled fan that runs around saying how Google is the bestest ever. I simply try to take a step back, see what they are trying to do, and think it through. I’ve made many a snide comments on Webmaster World to people who do nothing but bash Google non-stop. But I can see reasoning. As someone who has lived in highly oppressive countries, I believe that education is the single best way to help people. So I sorta understood why Google wanted to operate in China (the altruistic companion to their desire to make more money).

I only mention the China incident to separate me from the usual Google-bashers. Sometimes second-best is better than nothing.

But the recent post by Matt Cutts (lead of their quality control team) on reporting paid links really ground my bones.

As in most things in life, there is black, there is white, and there is a ton of gray in between. Matt’s previous post on hidden links was quite slam-dunk - that was a concentrated effort to hide the link from the users. The trifecta of link posts came with Matt agreeing with Matt (Mullenweg, creator of WordPress) that sponsored WordPress themes are bad (something for another day).

Four separate issues to tackle.

1. First off, I agree with Michael Gray - Google is now trying to dictate what we can and cannot do. The common argument is that if an advertiser is buying adspace for traffic, why not just nofollow it? The problem with that is nofollow was never intended for such use. The intention behind nofollow was links you could not throw your merit behind. When someone posts a comment on my blog and throws in a link to his/her website, I have no clue if that website is spam or not. Nofollow was a way of covering my ass. But advertisers are different. I’ve vetted them. They make sense for my audience. I am only going to allow related ads on my site. Just like Google ensures ad-quality by having relevant ads, I do that myself. So I can vet for these links, and nofollow makes no sense. I have no problem with recognizing that these advertisers exist, and are useful.

2. The one place where Google’s hypocrisy shows - dealing with sites they ban. They’ve publicly caught, banned, and shamed large companies like BMW for using spam-techniques (keyword stuffing, black text on black background, etc). Matt hosted spam content on Wordpress. What did BMW and Matt get? A slap on the wrist - they were back in the index within a few days. If I did the same? Good luck to me. I’m still fighting to get domains unbanned that were banned a year ago (when I didn’t even own them). The double standard here is bullshit.

3. What exactly construes a paid link? This is a huge gray area. What about partnerships? What if I happen to like a site (most webmasters do not worry about SEO and PageRank - thats why Blogflux.com has 2.6 million backlinks, of which most are not even required). How is Google going to make the distinction that a link is paid or not? On my personal site, I could link to sites that I own. That is now suddenly a no-no? On Enthropia.com (PR7) we link to sites which we own and operate. How does Google know if those are paid links or not?

4. What about pre-filled links? The WordPress installation comes with a default blogroll, and links to quite a few sites. What do we do with those? Does Ryan deserve his PR8? Should I report it? Over on the Wordpress Trac, Matt Mullenweg completely dismissed the idea of removing any of those links. So those are suddenly fine now?

As a webmaster, we have a very tenous relationship with Google. This latest call by Google is so close to a witch-hunt that it makes me feel uncomfortable all over.

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