We advertise quite a bit. Be it Adwords/Overture, or sponsoring sites (ie becoming the sole advertiser), newsletters, forums, etc - advertising is an important part of how we keep our profile up.

I was quite excited when sponsored blog posts came out. Not the PayPerPost crap (it didn’t allow you to control who did the review - how absolutely retarded. Maybe it has changed since then).

The thing many people fail to understand is scale of a business. Lets say I have something tech-related that tech-bloggers would find interesting. We will try to build relationships with 10-25 bloggers, but it is impossible to build a relationship with the 500+ tech bloggers (who have traffic we are interested in). $5,000 is not that much. It is far easier (time efficient) to simply nurture relationship with a dozen bloggers, but pay the rest. With contextual relevance - we have a product that makes sense for their audience.

In an effort to save even more time - Sponsored Posts allows you to create an ‘opportunity’ and let bloggers bid. You don’t even need to go looking for them now (both SR and ReviewMe have medicore search capabilities).

While they were originally decent, both of them now suck ass. Two primary reasons:

Firstly - laziness. Most of these bloggers are horrible at doing any sort of decent look through (one great exception that quickly comes to mind is Michael Gray - his reviews are intelligent and meaty). We bought about a dozen reviews for iBegin Source. I’ll admit people have a hard time understanding the significance - local data is expensive, and that is why we keep seeing the same re-hashed sites. Plus - local data is inaccurate. Horribly so. It is relatively technical, but still an issue any tech blogger should be aware of (accuracy of local search sucks today).

I actually stopped using ReviewMe (their horrible ordering system didn’t help) after those reviews. It ground my bones that here I was, paying hundreds of dollars, and they couldn’t even be bothered to fix these inaccuracies - trying to contact the bloggers and explain their factual errors were blown off or entirely ignored.

With Sponsored Review’s opportunity system, we’ve gotten at least 75+ bids. I think less than 5 actually met the requirements I had clearly spelt out (ie must be tech-related, must be in english). For example - I had a spanish parenting blog apply for the bid. Thanks dumbass.

Secondly - utter shit. These bloggers are basically whores, willing to review anything that pays. Both ReviewMe and SponsoredReviews suffer from this - blogs full of paid reviews. SponsoredReview’s opportunities make it even worse - I love how a tech blog can talk about drug rehab, credit card debt, and fashion shopping all on the front page. What makes it even more annoying is not only are people basically doing a ‘drive-by’ and applying for every single opportunity they can - they have multiple blogs all with no focus, no quality, just filled to the brim with absolute shit.

A few of them even went ahead and did a review! This just helps elucidate my earlier point about paid links -I definitely did not pay for those, and I have no desire to be associated with those neighbourhoods. What is to stop a competitor from buying 100 (shit) paid reviews at $5 a pop? When being at the top of a keyword search can net thousands of dollars in profit a day, $500 is but a walk in the park.

I do want to state that there are some decent blogs out there doing intelligent and relevant reviews out there. Unfortunately there is so much shit out there (making it hard for me to find that) that you can count me as an advertiser who is pulling out.

So we launched iBegin Weather today. Focus is on clean and easy.

We also have a weather widget. Again - focusing on clean, you don’t even need a visible link to iBegin (or any branding). The hard part of course is promoting it - maybe I can put my earlier look Coupon Looker’s widget to good use.

This is half feature/half site - I don’t think we could run with it on its own, but as an extra feature of iBegin I think it becomes more powerful.

And you could always digg this.

iBegin Source has been around for over a month now, and we’ve had over 2500 non-commercial downloads (more on that later).

I thought I would take the time every few months to showcase a few sites using our data.

First up is Restaurant Reviews. We had a bit of hand in this product - the design was done by our design firm, Design Disease.

I absolutely love the design. I am definitely biased here, but I really think it has one of the nicest/cleanest UIs a local site has (I will admit - even nicer than iBegin’s).

The site is very fast to use, but I do wonder how they will get users involved. I talked to the two operators, Anita & Todd Cowan, and they promised me they have some interesting ideas. They did underscore that they want to remove anonymity and focus on the ‘meat’ - actual reviews, not stories and tales. Time will tell how it goes, but it does look good, and it does respond fast. I’ll do a follow up in a couple of months.

The other site is OddPath.

OddPath is an interesting one, a lot due to what happened in the background.

The site was developed by Kailash. Very smart and very talented (we acquired Commentful from him). When we had launched iBegin Source, I had showed him the site.

A few weeks later, we were chatting about performance optimization for searching through 10+ million records. After some discussion, he mentioned how he was working on a local site using iBegin Source.

One of the motivating factors behind iBegin Source was to enable hobbyists (ala Kailash) to build something local. While I firmly believe that our price point is extremely affordable, it can still be expensive for others (ala Kailash - a student). So while I had never officially announced it (I imagined it would be months before it would be useful) - we had always intended on awarding ‘free’ commercial licenses to interesting projects. They would still have to link back to iBegin Source, but otherwise they would get the full commercial data/license.

Case in point: OddPath. Kailash did the entire site himself, without incurring a dime in expenses (other than hosting). And he was able to do this because of iBegin Source.

Before I digress any further - OddPath’s best feature is its mobile search. Simple and effective, I think this is OddPath’s best feature. Other features such as ‘Buzz’ and ‘Pictures’ are interesting, but definitely need some fine tuning. The mobile feature (and its simplicity) could push him forward there.

So Greg posts about City Waboo, yet another local search site.

I did comment about how it seemed a bit rough around the edges.

The next comment was from BurbankGuy with the following:

Hey what do you know, my business is listed. I looked at the packages to upgrade, seem fair enough. it says they are against the pay per click model, thank god someone is, i have waisted more money on PPC in the last 6 months then anyone.

Seems like it is still in beta, so I would expect few things not working. I would like to see it when its out of beta.

BurbankGuy’s homepage is SendFlowersFast.com. So City Waboo has them already listed - impressive right? But wait - the WHOIS shows the following owner:

Administrative Contact:
Arakelyan, Eduard

And check out Waboo’s press release:

…” said Eduard Arakelyan, co-founder of CityWaboo.com.

Well well - looks like BurbankGuy actually owns Waboo.

This of course doesn’t negate the comment after BurbankGuy (by ‘BusinessExecutive’), which is so syrupy and full of praise it just screams ‘I have a vested interest in this site.’

Alexa, while crappy, makes for some fun analysis.

Frappr: it was bloody everywhere a year ago.

Today: ouch.

People forget that trends can take some time to rear their head. Then again, I’m still waiting for Yahoo! Answers to flame out - might have to wait a long time!

Since my last post on our all out assault on local, it seems like I’ve gone AWOL.

Alas, between a quick trip to Houston and focusing on such said assault, it is hard to get a break. Stuck staring at a computer screen for upto 16 hours a day, spending even more time makes me dizzy.

I had missed over something when I had talked about local - weather. Our most requested feature on weather. So after my latest blog post, we got another two requests in one day for weather.

It was time to do something about it.

So (while running everything else), we heavily pressed on weather. Turns out the US Government provides weather information, as does the Canadian Government (but not nearly as openly). Problem is that relying on the government for an XML service is dangerous - their servers are notorious for flaking out at any given time. So we pressed for enterprise solutions to weather delivery.

In under 10 days, we have a fully functioning weather site: iBegin Weather. It is 99% done - the caching element is still a work in progress (right now we fetch data ‘live’ - the updated version will automatically do that every 20 minutes). The site design is ripped straight from iBegin Source - keeping with our simple/clean/quick loading motif. We even have a nice widget for spreading weather. Example: Share San Francisco, CA Weather.

Again - underlines the versatility a larger company can have. Our illustrator did the icons and other misc graphics (roughly 100). Our JS/PHP guy did the widget. Another programmer focused on the primary engine. Data-provider gave us easy to use CSV files that make data manipulation easy. Our geocoding abilities let us figure out spatial distances that would have cost a pretty penny. And previous experience with sites like iBegin let us churn out an intelligent structure, XML feeds, and even try to guess where the user is from.

We should have the site 100% by Tuesday morning (and thus our ‘launch’). We should be in the rest of the world (~15,000 locations outside of the US) in 4-6 weeks.

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.