Split testing, also called A/B testing, is a testing method where you compare a base sample with another test sample, changing one specific variable inside it.

For example, you could have a base landing page, and then you would compare it against a new landing page where you changed the main headline.

As a blogger, there are many things you could improve with split testing. Examples include:

• The number of subscribers you get by testing the headline and position of the subscription form.
• The AdSense earnings by testing different AdSense units and placements.
• The bounce rate of the blog, by testing different placements of your content above the fold.
• The number of retweets you get per post, based on the placement of the retweet button.

But how do you perform a split test? You have two options. You can either do it manually, by changing the variable one week at a time and then tracking the results, or by using a piece of software and letting it rotate the variables for you.

The second option is usually the best one, and a couple of days I discovered a software you can use to do that. It is called phpA/B, and it is free as long as you use it for personal purposes.

I haven’t test it yet, but it looks promising. The main idea is to let you test anything within your site, with a simple setup interface. You can also integrate it with Google Analytics if you want.

Definitely worth a look. Once I test it here I’ll write a more complete review, so stay tuned.

Post from: SocialMarketingReport.com

TECH CRUNCH – July 29 - When asked about Google’s partnership with
Zynga, Mr. Schmidt said “we haven’t announced it” but “you can expect a
partnership with Zynga” in the future. Expect Google Games to be
announced sometime this year. And Zynga will be one of the main game
engines populating it. And eventually one of these companies will admit
that Google invested in Zynga, too. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

See all posts on Google
See all posts on Zynga

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A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was definitely going to Blog World Expo this year. At that time I was only planning to attend the conference.

Then I heard they were welcoming speaking proposals, so I decided to send one. Long story short I got approved, and I’ll be speaking at the “New Media 101″ module. The title of my presentation is “Google AdSense Optimization.”

I am really looking to flying to Vegas in October. First of all the keynotes, presentations and panels are looking great. Here are some topics that will be covered:

• How to Get Media Coverage for Your Blog
• How to Keep Your Blog from Being Hacked, Stolen or Otherwise Violated
• 5 Strategies Bloggers Should Learn from Online Marketers
• How to Sell Your Blog
• How to Run a Successful Webinar Business from Your Blog

Second, I’ll finally be able to meet many friends and business contacts I only talked with online so far. People like Darren Rowse, John Chow, David Risley, Leo Babauta, Jonathan Fields, Yaro Starak and so on.

Many blog readers already emailed me saying they’ll be going too, so I’ll try to organize a DBT meet-up or something like that. If you are going, I hope you manage to attend my presentation too!

As we get closer to the event I’ll post more updates, so stay tuned.

Post from: SocialMarketingReport.com

Last week I told you guys I was working on a really long post that I hoped would become popular, remember? Well, I just published it on one of my other websites. The post is called 100 Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic.

I had seen a couple of similar lists around the web, but most of them contained only a single sentence per item, and most items were not directly related to generating traffic at all.

That is why I decided to write my own list. I made sure only to include points that are really going to increase your traffic (even if just slightly), and I also explained each point and included links to relevant resources where suitable.

The result is a monster post with almost 6,000 words. Here is a quote:

30. Launch a review contest. If you want to increase your search rankings you could launch a contest where people need to write about the content in order to get an entry. The links you’ll get will send you both Google juice and new visitors. Keep in mind that you need a good prize to motivate people to write about your contest though.

31. Launch a voting contest. You basically need to create a contest where the winner will be picked with a voting session. Suppose you have a fitness website. You could invite your readers to submit their best fitness tip, and then a voting session would decide which tip gets the prize. This would motivate participants to link to the voting session and to encourage their friends to visit your website and vote.

32. Launch a traffic contest. If traffic is what you want, why not be direct about it? You can launch a contest where people need to send traffic to one particular page inside your website. It could be the contest page (for a viral effect) or a resource page (e.g., a page where you give away an ebook). After the established time frame (e.g., 2 weeks, 1 month or anything else), you’ll simply need to check your web analytics to see which websites sent you more visitors, and then award the prizes.

Check it out. And if you like it, please help me spread the word with a stumble or a retweet!

Post from: SocialMarketingReport.com

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD – July 27 – Foursquare uses your smartphone’s
global positioning system (GPS) to broadcast your precise location to
your “friends” and, should you so wish, to the wider world. Users are
encouraged to “check in” on their phone whenever they arrive at a point
of interest – a shop, a cafe, a museum, a nightclub, an office – so
that fellow users know where they are. But with such power comes
responsibility and there are growing concerns that Foursquare is
proving to be a “stalker’s dream”.  Privacy advocates fear that
Foursquare, along with other geolocation apps such as Gowalla and
Google Latitude, are vulnerable to “data scraping”, namely, the
sophisticated trawling and monitoring of user activity in an effort to
build a rich database of personal information. The big worry, say
critics, is who might get to make use of this information.  It’s being
targeted at 18- to 25-year-olds. Facebook was forced in the end to
change its default privacy settings due to public concerns. Foursquare
should do the same. Some people are even checking in when they’re at
home. Recently Foursquare reached the 2-million-users landmark, just
three months after it had reached the 1-million mark. A week earlier,
the company received $US20M in venture capital.
FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

See all posts on Foursquare

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NY TIMES – July 24 – Mark Pincus, Zynga’s founder, told his company’s
newcomers that he had set out to build an enduring Internet icon, one
that was synonymous with fun. Mr. Pincus said the opportunity to build
an online entertainment empire was “like search before Google came
along.” Zynga is on a path to pocket as much as $500M in revenue this
year. While Facebook needed four and a half years to reach 100M users,
Zynga crossed that mark after just two and a half years. The company
has ballooned to ~1,000 employees, up from 375 a year ago, and now has
some 400 job openings. And investors, including Google and the Netscape
founder Marc Andreessen, have put ~$520M into the company. Zynga has
been valued at more than $4.5 billion. Its games have 211M players
every month, according to AppData.com. Though that figure counts a user
for each type of game he plays, it makes Zynga about four times larger
than its nearest rival, Electronic Arts. Playdom is third, with 41M
users. Zynga, which is said to be contemplating a public offering,
clearly does not want to have all its eggs in the Facebook basket. It
recently signed an agreement to bring its games to millions of users on
Yahoo. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES

See all posts on Zynga

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This is a guest post by Greg Hayes. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

With the recent announcement that Google will formally include page load speed as a ranking factor, I’ve started looking at this subject pretty closely. What I’ve discovered is there are a handful of simple things that one can do to make big gains in page load times. Below you’ll find four of them.

1. Remove slow loading site elements that don’t add value

Take a hard look at the load times of those buttons and badges in your sidebar (and elsewhere) on your site. On many sites, these account for very little (if any) traffic, and can be removed. One good tool to view their effect on load times is Pingdom Tools, which will show the how rapidly different parts of your site are loaded.

2. Get a solid theme

Up until several months ago, I was using one of the “solid” free Wordpress themes. It’s well-known and even supported, but after seeing how my site was loading, I finally decided to plunk down the cash to see if it would actually make a difference. While I have no doubt that there are some very fast free themes out there, I have little doubt that, for me, premium theme was worth every penny.

3. Get a Content Delivery Network

This was a new one to me. Content delivery networks (CDN) work by caching your data around the globe, so that static pages on your site are more rapidly accessible to your visitors. This makes your site “appear” to load faster.

From what I can tell, at one time, deploying a CDN was a very expensive proposition. But with the introduction of Amazon Cloudfront, you’ll get the advantage of delivering your content from Amazon’s servers, while only being charged for the amount of data your transfer. Costs are low, and the improvements in speed are worth every penny.

4. Install W3 Total Cache

Every Wordpress blog needs a caching plugin. I was running WP Super Cache, which was working well, so I was hesitant to change. But after making the leap, I can say with complete honesty that W3 Total Cache is a far superior plugin. It takes some work to configure properly because it’s so powerful, and I managed to screw a few things up along the way, but it was definitely worth the effort. Not only that, but support for the plugin is awesome.

W3TC makes setting up Amazon Cloudfront a transparent process, and incorporates caching, as well as minification of .css and .js files. I’m still in the process of working through how best implement its features, but between Pingdom and PageSpeed, I’m convinced implementing this tool has reduced my load times by at least 30%.

What other tips do you have to reduce the load time of web pages?

About The Author: Greg Hayes is the author of Live Fit Blog, where he blogs about living fit while balancing the challenges of daily life.

Post from: SocialMarketingReport.com

There is a big change in the Google Webmaster Tools. Historically Google only showed a sample of your backlinks (i.e., 10% or less), so webmasters had no way to know how many backlinks their websites had according to Google.

People argued that this was a measure to prevent people from trying to reverse engineer Google’s search algorithm.

I was reading Search Engine Journal yesterday, however, and I discovered that Google just changed this feature. If you log into your Webmaster Tools account now, under the “Site Analysis” and “Links to your site” section you’ll find the complete backlink data for your website.

I remember that before this change Google was reporting around 500,000 backlinks for DailyBlogTips.com, and now it reports over 5 million (as you can see in the screenshot above). You can also see which pages are getting more links, and even export the whole thing as a spreadsheet.

I think this is an important change for two reasons. First of all it will help webmasters understand where their backlinks are coming from, and how they affect the search rankings of each page. Secondly, this change also signs that Google is becoming more transparent regarding how it indexes and crawls the web.

Post from: SocialMarketingReport.com

SNW INTERVIEW – July 20 – David Siegel is the author of a new book called Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business. David is also working on a next generation dating
service.

I would like to learn more about your background and the
semantic web. How might it be applicable to the internet dating world
in the future?
I started one of the first web design firms back in ’94 and wrote
the first book on web design in ’95. As the web has grown, it’s gotten
much more complex. It has turned into a big tangle of links and
keywords, rather than anything organized. So the idea of the semantic
web is to go back and organize our most important information and make
it easily accessible. In my view, the goal is for companies to
transition from pushing information to pulling it. So along with
working with startups, trying to get a new dating site going, and
starting a family, that is what I’ve been working on for the past 10
years, and that’s how long it’s taken me to get this book out. It’s
called Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business.

How can you help people who are looking for their other half?
The
goal of the semantic web is to put everything on a web footing, which
is far bigger than Facebook, Google, AOL, or even Match.com. The idea
is that you would be able to build a universal profile and host it
anywhere you like, just like a blog or a web site. The profile would
then enable you to use search engines to look for people across the
entire Web, so that you don’t have to continuously log into dating
sites. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the dating sites will go
away. Instead, they’ll become services. They’ll add value to your
search, helping you filter and find the people you’re looking for,
without hosting all the profiles themselves. I’m working on one such
engine now that is independent of the dating site I hope to launch.

Soon, people will be able to establish what I call an “online data
locker.” This is where they consolidate all their personal information:
medical profile, resume, school and work history, a personals profile,
as well as profiles for social networking, family management,
vendor-relationship management, and more. Then all they would have to
do is apply that single profile to as many services as they want. So
try to imagine a day when a dating site doesn’t have any members. Why
duplicate the profile-making process? If a dating site wants extra
information, it can ask for it, but this goes way beyond Facebook
Connect.

This sounds rather utopian. How long is this going to take? And what are the risks going to be?
It’s already happening, and it’s being supported by groups like the W3C, which governs web standards. We have FOAF,
which is Friend of a Friend, a social graph of people you’re connected
to. Those connections will continue to strengthen, multiply and diverge
into different kinds of groups. As we add more and more information,
we’ll find ourselves at our “personal information dashboard,” and we’ll
stop going to so many web sites. Check out DataPortability.org.
They want you to own your information, so you should be able to move it
from any account to another. For example, if I’m on eHarmony, I ought
to be able to move my dating profile to another dating site or to my
personal data locker and then manage it from there. Try that on
Facebook – they’ve said they are joining Dataportibility.org, but they
haven’t done anything about it. Google, on the other hand, wants you to
be able to get your data out if you want – see DataLiberation.org. This
is going to be a big deal. If Facebook and other businesses don’t
embrace data portability, they will suffer the consequences.

Second, we already have serious security and identity risks
happening today. People are willing to give out personal details to
sites like Facebook, which exposes them to search engines. So those
issues are already a reality. We’re just going to have to iterate our
way from here to an end point that’s much more secure. Fortunately, a
group called Identity Commons (IdentityCommons.net) is already
developing the identity and networking protocols necessary to build
true webs of trust. Then we’ll add icards (see informationcard.net) and that will start to make the dream of a private, secure data locker a reality.

Could the personal data locker be Facebook?
To
get the answer, you’d have to read my book. Facebook provides a place
to put your information, but it doesn’t provide the privacy, security,
control, or the kinds of disambiguation and modularization of data
we’ll need. I would keep an eye on Google, which recently hired Chris
Messina, an Open Web advocate. If they play their cards right, Google
could start leading the way. Another site to watch is Power.com, where
you can aggregate a number of different social networks in one place
and manage them from there. The aggregation movement is hot right now
(Hootsuite, Mint.com, GoMiles.com, etc), and the personal data locker
is the ultimate aggregator – you’ll have everything under one roof,
with as much security and as many passwords and personas as you want to
manage. I think Facebook could eventually follow Friendster and Myspace
into the heap of irrelevant data silos. 

Facebook is under fire for releasing more and more of
people’s personal information. So it almost seems like users are
starting to demand this kind of data locker already. I’m envisioning a
central place. But based on what you just said, it seems like it can be
multiple places. Is that correct?
There are many potential scenarios, and with open standards we’ll
probably see all of them. Microsoft Health Vault is actually an
excellent place to put your health information right now. Mint is
acceptable for personal finance, but those who’ve read my book know we
have a long way to go. Interoperability is the key. The last thing you
want to do is enter all of your contacts or enter all of your health
information to find out it can’t be applied to anything else. You’d
want to be able to apply it everywhere. You’d want to build it once and
then reuse it over and over again, and that’s one of the principles of
the semantic web.

Will this all be free?
I hope not. I like to think of my personal information as pretty
important. I’d love to pay to have it stored and organized properly,
the way I do today with my photos. I prefer to pay, because I want high
levels of storage, security, privacy, and support. Of course, plenty of
companies will make the data locker free, but be aware of what you give
up in exchange. I’m sure we’ll see a range of offers, but I personally
would be happy to pay and be in complete control.

For more information, visit David online at http://thepowerofpull.com and follow him on Twitter: @Pullnews and @_dsiegel.

Post from: SocialMarketingReport.com

The browser is where we spend most of our time these days, and Firefox is the browser of choice for web geeks (along with Chrome these days). That is why I decided to start a series called “Best Firefox Add-ons.”

Every Monday I’ll be talking about one different add-on (also called extension), and most of them are useful to bloggers, webmasters and Internet addicts in general!

The first one is called SearchStatus. If I don’t have this extension installed it feels that something is missing on the browser.

It basically displays the Google PageRank and the Alexa rank of the website/page you are visiting.

On top of that you also have a wide range of features. For example, you can make the extension highlight nofollow links on the pages you are visiting, show the Whois or robots.txt of the website, and check how many backlinks the website or page has (according to different sources).

It is certainly the extension I use most frequently while working online, so check it out if you don’t have it yet.

Post from: SocialMarketingReport.com

TECH CRUNCH – July 8 – Nextstop, the startup which launched in early 2009, mixes social
recommendations with search and adds a reputation system and elements
of gameplay. It was founded by a couple of ex-Googlers, Carl Sjogreen
and Adrian Graham, who helped launch Google Calendar and
Google Groups, and Picasa. The site grew out of their frustration with
finding interesting things to do in unfamiliar places. The startup’s employees are joining the
social network, with Facebook acquiring most of the assets of Nextstop.
The site will be shut down on September 1 but the startup is working on
ways for current users to export their contributions to Picasa, Google
Maps or other sites. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

See all posts on Facebook

Post from: SocialMarketingReport.com

MEDIA DAILY NEWS – July 6 – Social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, are now going after the
big media prize: billions of worldwide TV advertising dollars. A new
“Social TV” report from media researcher Futurescape says the next leap
in the social-marketing world is pursuing the business of “social
television,” tapping into an $180 billion worldwide ad market. Google
TV and other connected TV systems will put Facebook and Twitter
targeted ads on TV screens. FULL ARTICLE @ MEDIA POST

See all posts on Facebook
See all posts on Twitter

Post from: SocialMarketingReport.com

What is the medium with the largest advertising spending on earth? Television. How are the ads displayed there? Between the editorial content, using the same format (i.e., video). That is why television ads are so effective for advertisers and so lucrative for television companies, because viewers will inevitably pay attention to the ads.

Can we say the same about content based websites, like blogs? Not exactly. If you consider Google AdSense or banner ads, the most used monetization methods, you’ll conclude that they practically separate from the editorial content. For example, if you have a blog and display ads on your sidebar only your readers will be able to completely ignore the ads if so they desire. Some even use ad-blockers, so they won’t see your AdSense units or banners no matter where you place them.

What would the equivalent of a television ad be for a blog? Probably an advertorial, which is an article written by the advertiser about his product, and posted in the blog like any other post. A close alternative are the sponsored reviews, which are posts written by the blogger reviewing a certain product or service. Most bloggers prefer this model because they get to write the content themselves, and readers won’t be annoyed with a different writing style/author.

And here is a fact that re-enforces the similarity of sponsored reviews/advertorials with television ads: If you ask any advertiser whether he prefers to pay for a banner ad or for a sponsored review, he will certainly say the sponsored review. Why? Because he will get a much better return on investment, as the sponsored review will give his product a better and greater kind of exposure with the readers of that blog.

As a result, sponsored reviews are probably one of the most lucrative ways to monetize a blog. Last week one company offered me $800 to write a review about its latest product. It was related to my niche, and I was sure most of my readers would find it useful. Despite that I turned the offer down, because I don’t do sponsored reviews.

But this made me wonder: are most bloggers leaving money on the table by not doing sponsored reviews? For example, if I started doing them on this blog I could easily add another $3,000 per month in revenues (considering one sponsored review per week), which would basically double my advertising revenue on the blog. I believe this proportion is true for most bloggers. That is, if they started doing sponsored reviews they would double their advertising income.

So why sponsored reviews are not widely used? Probably because there was a lot of controversy when companies started exploring this advertising model. For example, PayPerPost initially didn’t require a disclosure on the reviews, and people started questioning the ethical aspects of the whole thing.

That being said, I think it is possible for a blogger to do sponsored reviews while keeping his integrity. There are 3 main requirements:

1. a clear disclosure on each review,
2. honesty while writing the review,
3. and the choice of products that are truly relevant and useful for the readers.

Other people claimed that sponsored posts could get you in trouble with Google, but this is not true as long as you use the nofollow attribute on the links inside the review. Google doesn’t have a problem with sponsored links, as long as you clearly label them as such.

Personally I am still on the fence regarding sponsored reviews, so no, I am not stating that all bloggers should start doing them. What I wanted is to raise the questions, and see what other people think. Why aren’t you writing sponsored reviews on your blog? Would you be turned off by them on a blog you read? Do you think the model could work if the requirements I mentioned are present?

Post from: SocialMarketingReport.com

Post from: SocialMarketingReport.com

TECH CRUNCH
- July 6 – The number of visitors to MySpace UK has halved in the last
six months, leading to a fresh round of layoffs at the London office.
Monthly visits to MySpace UK are down from a peak of just under 10M at
the start of the year to ~5M as of the end of June 2010. MySpace UK has
been using a strategy of buying up cheap and sometimes unrelated Google
keyword ads in order to “generate dirty traffic” to bump up the
publicly accessible comScore stats. Ironically Facebook.com is also now
the third biggest referrer of traffic to the site. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

See all posts on MySpace

Post from: SocialMarketingReport.com

What is the medium with the largest advertising spending on earth? Television. How are the ads displayed there? Between the editorial content, using the same format (i.e., video). That is why television ads are so effective for advertisers and so lucrative for television companies, because viewers will inevitably pay attention to the ads.

Can we say the same about content based websites, like blogs? Not exactly. If you consider Google AdSense or banner ads, the most used monetization methods, you’ll conclude that they practically separate from the editorial content. For example, if you have a blog and display ads on your sidebar only your readers will be able to completely ignore the ads if so they desire. Some even use ad-blockers, so they won’t see your AdSense units or banners no matter where you place them.

What would the equivalent of a television ad be for a blog? Probably an advertorial, which is an article written by the advertiser about his product, and posted in the blog like any other post. A close alternative are the sponsored reviews, which are posts written by the blogger reviewing a certain product or service. Most bloggers prefer this model because they get to write the content themselves, and readers won’t be annoyed with a different writing style/author.

And here is a fact that re-enforces the similarity of sponsored reviews/advertorials with television ads: If you ask any advertiser whether he prefers to pay for a banner ad or for a sponsored review, he will certainly say the sponsored review. Why? Because he will get a much better return on investment, as the sponsored review will give his product a better and greater kind of exposure with the readers of that blog.

As a result, sponsored reviews are probably one of the most lucrative ways to monetize a blog. Last week one company offered me $800 to write a review about its latest product. It was related to my niche, and I was sure most of my readers would find it useful. Despite that I turned the offer down, because I don’t do sponsored reviews.

But this made me wonder: are most bloggers leaving money on the table by not doing sponsored reviews? For example, if I started doing them on this blog I could easily add another $3,000 per month in revenues (considering one sponsored review per week), which would basically double my advertising revenue on the blog. I believe this proportion is true for most bloggers. That is, if they started doing sponsored reviews they would double their advertising income.

So why sponsored reviews are not widely used? Probably because there was a lot of controversy when companies started exploring this advertising model. For example, PayPerPost initially didn’t require a disclosure on the reviews, and people started questioning the ethical aspects of the whole thing.

That being said, I think it is possible for a blogger to do sponsored reviews while keeping his integrity. There are 3 main requirements:

1. a clear disclosure on each review,
2. honesty while writing the review,
3. and the choice of products that are truly relevant and useful for the readers.

Other people claimed that sponsored posts could get you in trouble with Google, but this is not true as long as you use the nofollow attribute on the links inside the review. Google doesn’t have a problem with sponsored links, as long as you clearly label them as such.

Personally I am still on the fence regarding sponsored reviews, so no, I am not stating that all bloggers should start doing them. What I wanted is to raise the questions, and see what other people think. Why aren’t you writing sponsored reviews on your blog? Would you be turned off by them on a blog you read? Do you think the model could work if the requirements I mentioned are present?

Post from: SocialMarketingReport.com

What is the medium with the largest advertising spending on earth? Television. How are the ads displayed there? Between the editorial content, using the same format (i.e., video). That is why television ads are so effective for advertisers and so lucrative for television companies, because viewers will inevitably pay attention to the ads.

Can we say the same about content based websites, like blogs? Not exactly. If you consider Google AdSense or banner ads, the most used monetization methods, you’ll conclude that they practically separate from the editorial content. For example, if you have a blog and display ads on your sidebar only your readers will be able to completely ignore the ads if so they desire. Some even use ad-blockers, so they won’t see your AdSense units or banners no matter where you place them.

What would the equivalent of a television ad be for a blog? Probably an advertorial, which is an article written by the advertiser about his product, and posted in the blog like any other post. A close alternative are the sponsored reviews, which are posts written by the blogger reviewing a certain product or service. Most bloggers prefer this model because they get to write the content themselves, and readers won’t be annoyed with a different writing style/author.

And here is a fact that re-enforces the similarity of sponsored reviews/advertorials with television ads: If you ask any advertiser whether he prefers to pay for a banner ad or for a sponsored review, he will certainly say the sponsored review. Why? Because he will get a much better return on investment, as the sponsored review will give his product a better and greater kind of exposure with the readers of that blog.

As a result, sponsored reviews are probably one of the most lucrative ways to monetize a blog. Last week one company offered me $800 to write a review about its latest product. It was related to my niche, and I was sure most of my readers would find it useful. Despite that I turned the offer down, because I don’t do sponsored reviews.

But this made me wonder: are most bloggers leaving money on the table by not doing sponsored reviews? For example, if I started doing them on this blog I could easily add another $3,000 per month in revenues (considering one sponsored review per week), which would basically double my advertising revenue on the blog. I believe this proportion is true for most bloggers. That is, if they started doing sponsored reviews they would double their advertising income.

So why sponsored reviews are not widely used? Probably because there was a lot of controversy when companies started exploring this advertising model. For example, PayPerPost initially didn’t require a disclosure on the reviews, and people started questioning the ethical aspects of the whole thing.

That being said, I think it is possible for a blogger to do sponsored reviews while keeping his integrity. There are 3 main requirements:

1. a clear disclosure on each review,
2. honesty while writing the review,
3. and the choice of products that are truly relevant and useful for the readers.

Other people claimed that sponsored posts could get you in trouble with Google, but this is not true as long as you use the nofollow attribute on the links inside the review. Google doesn’t have a problem with sponsored links, as long as you clearly label them as such.

Personally I am still on the fence regarding sponsored reviews, so no, I am not stating that all bloggers should start doing them. What I wanted is to raise the questions, and see what other people think. Why aren’t you writing sponsored reviews on your blog? Would you be turned off by them on a blog you read? Do you think the model could work if the requirements I mentioned are present?

Post from: SocialMarketingReport.com

What is the medium with the largest advertising spending on earth? Television. How are the ads displayed there? Between the editorial content, using the same format (i.e., video). That is why television ads are so effective for advertisers and so lucrative for television companies, because viewers will inevitably pay attention to the ads.

Can we say the same about content based websites, like blogs? Not exactly. If you consider Google AdSense or banner ads, the most used monetization methods, you’ll conclude that they practically separate from the editorial content. For example, if you have a blog and display ads on your sidebar only your readers will be able to completely ignore the ads if so they desire. Some even use ad-blockers, so they won’t see your AdSense units or banners no matter where you place them.

What would the equivalent of a television ad be for a blog? Probably an advertorial, which is an article written by the advertiser about his product, and posted in the blog like any other post. A close alternative are the sponsored reviews, which are posts written by the blogger reviewing a certain product or service. Most bloggers prefer this model because they get to write the content themselves, and readers won’t be annoyed with a different writing style/author.

And here is a fact that re-enforces the similarity of sponsored reviews/advertorials with television ads: If you ask any advertiser whether he prefers to pay for a banner ad or for a sponsored review, he will certainly say the sponsored review. Why? Because he will get a much better return on investment, as the sponsored review will give his product a better and greater kind of exposure with the readers of that blog.

As a result, sponsored reviews are probably one of the most lucrative ways to monetize a blog. Last week one company offered me $800 to write a review about its latest product. It was related to my niche, and I was sure most of my readers would find it useful. Despite that I turned the offer down, because I don’t do sponsored reviews.

But this made me wonder: are most bloggers leaving money on the table by not doing sponsored reviews? For example, if I started doing them on this blog I could easily add another $3,000 per month in revenues (considering one sponsored review per week), which would basically double my advertising revenue on the blog. I believe this proportion is true for most bloggers. That is, if they started doing sponsored reviews they would double their advertising income.

So why sponsored reviews are not widely used? Probably because there was a lot of controversy when companies started exploring this advertising model. For example, PayPerPost initially didn’t require a disclosure on the reviews, and people started questioning the ethical aspects of the whole thing.

That being said, I think it is possible for a blogger to do sponsored reviews while keeping his integrity. There are 3 main requirements:

1. a clear disclosure on each review,
2. honesty while writing the review,
3. and the choice of products that are truly relevant and useful for the readers.

Other people claimed that sponsored posts could get you in trouble with Google, but this is not true as long as you use the nofollow attribute on the links inside the review. Google doesn’t have a problem with sponsored links, as long as you clearly label them as such.

Personally I am still on the fence regarding sponsored reviews, so no, I am not stating that all bloggers should start doing them. What I wanted is to raise the questions, and see what other people think. Why aren’t you writing sponsored reviews on your blog? Would you be turned off by them on a blog you read? Do you think the model could work if the requirements I mentioned are present?

Post from: SocialMarketingReport.com

What is the medium with the largest advertising spending on earth? Television. How are the ads displayed there? Between the editorial content, using the same format (i.e., video). That is why television ads are so effective for advertisers and so lucrative for television companies, because viewers will inevitably pay attention to the ads.

Can we say the same about content based websites, like blogs? Not exactly. If you consider Google AdSense or banner ads, the most used monetization methods, you’ll conclude that they practically separate from the editorial content. For example, if you have a blog and display ads on your sidebar only your readers will be able to completely ignore the ads if so they desire. Some even use ad-blockers, so they won’t see your AdSense units or banners no matter where you place them.

What would the equivalent of a television ad be for a blog? Probably an advertorial, which is an article written by the advertiser about his product, and posted in the blog like any other post. A close alternative are the sponsored reviews, which are posts written by the blogger reviewing a certain product or service. Most bloggers prefer this model because they get to write the content themselves, and readers won’t be annoyed with a different writing style/author.

And here is a fact that re-enforces the similarity of sponsored reviews/advertorials with television ads: If you ask any advertiser whether he prefers to pay for a banner ad or for a sponsored review, he will certainly say the sponsored review. Why? Because he will get a much better return on investment, as the sponsored review will give his product a better and greater kind of exposure with the readers of that blog.

As a result, sponsored reviews are probably one of the most lucrative ways to monetize a blog. Last week one company offered me $800 to write a review about its latest product. It was related to my niche, and I was sure most of my readers would find it useful. Despite that I turned the offer down, because I don’t do sponsored reviews.

But this made me wonder: are most bloggers leaving money on the table by not doing sponsored reviews? For example, if I started doing them on this blog I could easily add another $3,000 per month in revenues (considering one sponsored review per week), which would basically double my advertising revenue on the blog. I believe this proportion is true for most bloggers. That is, if they started doing sponsored reviews they would double their advertising income.

So why sponsored reviews are not widely used? Probably because there was a lot of controversy when companies started exploring this advertising model. For example, PayPerPost initially didn’t require a disclosure on the reviews, and people started questioning the ethical aspects of the whole thing.

That being said, I think it is possible for a blogger to do sponsored reviews while keeping his integrity. There are 3 main requirements:

1. a clear disclosure on each review,
2. honesty while writing the review,
3. and the choice of products that are truly relevant and useful for the readers.

Other people claimed that sponsored posts could get you in trouble with Google, but this is not true as long as you use the nofollow attribute on the links inside the review. Google doesn’t have a problem with sponsored links, as long as you clearly label them as such.

Personally I am still on the fence regarding sponsored reviews, so no, I am not stating that all bloggers should start doing them. What I wanted is to raise the questions, and see what other people think. Why aren’t you writing sponsored reviews on your blog? Would you be turned off by them on a blog you read? Do you think the model could work if the requirements I mentioned are present?

Post from: SocialMarketingReport.com