Nov 01
Page Rank Update 2007 – The Legend Continues
I don’t have the exact dates in front of me, but I know that many a webmaster has been waiting for this most recent Page Rank update, myself included.
Now, after the dust has started to settle, the whole thing seems to be a bit anticlimactic… But that’s probably due to most of us not getting the PR we expected or wanted…
And some of us losing the Page Rank that we already had…
The Crazy October 2007 Page Rank Update
Admittedly, this is coming from a guy who eagerly anticipated the update, but this last one was wild!
- Page Rank updates usually are spaced about 3 months apart…This one was about 6 (if it is truly done).
- Webmasters expected their sites to largely go up in PR, but a ton saw them go down as they were seemingly penalized for selling text links and otherwise manipulating the big G.
Now if you haven’t heard, the whole penalization for selling text links has gotten a lot of people in web development up in arms. Google has basically asserted that if you sell a text link ad on your site w/o the nofollow tag, you are essentially manipulating their search engine algorithm by unnaturally inflating the “importance” of sites making them appear higher in Google’s search engine results page. Google of course prides itself on being the biggest and best search engine on the web, so they can’t condone behavior like this.
Do You Care About Page Rank?
I do. I wish that I could say I didn’t, especially being a young entrepreneur… One of the basic tenants of entrepreneurship and business in general is that you should limit how many people and things you’re dependent on.As far as my websites go, I do all the work on my sites myself and I own the domain names and I (to a large extent) control the servers they run on.
But as a blogger trying to earn revenue for my blogs, the easiest source of income I have to draw on is sponsored posts who largely decide how much to pay their bloggers based on Page Rank (amongst other factors). And on the surface of things, it IS as simple as a better Page Rank means more money. This is why I care about Page Rank.
But on the flip side of the ball, consider if I had a Page Rank of 5, I’d be certainly making a decent chunk of change from this site. Probably so much that I would rely on it as part of my income. And what would then become of me when I lost some of my Page Rank and dropped to a 3? My income would drop… A lot. And I’d be in trouble.
It can be done! And in fact many people are doing it everyday. Us bloggers just need to get out of our box for a second. As I said, sponsored posts are the easiest way for us to make money… We don’t have to search for advertisers ourselves, and we can signup for a program when our site is just starting out. But when we do this, we loose control of our income by depending on our site’s rankings which are largely given to us by other companies like Google and Alexa.So what can we do?
There are many ways to make money online without Page Rank! Look at Casey for example over at News Notion. Before SHE had any noticeable PR she was hard at work selling ad space on her blog and she got all of her spots sold out in a manner of days. DAYS! And however much she sold her spots for, she got to keep 100% of the profits instead of splitting down the middle (if she was so lucky) with companies like Pay Per Post and Sponsored Reviews.
Another way to make money is through affiliate marketing! If you have a blog that provides great information on products and that people are finding through search engines, why not drop some affiliate links (esp if you feel strongly about the product). Opal T regularly says how much she loves affiliate marketing and how she loves not having to be married to page rank and page rank updates.
While Page Rank is something that can immediately help your site’s revenue, depending on it to fuel your revenue can cause some massive damage to you if it suddenly taken away from you. Do yourself a favor and plan for long time success by gaining control of your site again!(Parts of this post inspired by Opal T and all the lovely comments she drops on here!)
November 1st, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Opal could certainly help and teach a lot of bloggers to diversify their source of income. She is one of the best in my book.
November 1st, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Even my PR dropped from 4 to 3 . But i have noticed that the traffic have remained almost same .
November 1st, 2007 at 4:14 pm
@Brown – Agreed. I should really make her a cake or something for all the gems she’s dropped on here.
@Madhur – Yeah, it looks like the traffic has been the same for me from when I was a PR 1 and now. So.. *shrugs*
November 1st, 2007 at 5:31 pm
I watched my PR drop from 5 to 4. I guess it could have been worse.
Even with a PR5 blog and an Alexa rating averaging less than 71,000 I didn’t make much money with it. Mainly sponsored posts. I think it’s all in how you sell your blog, not how “popular” it is…. although, some popularity is also expected.
November 1st, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Mine went from a 3 to a 4 so I’m not complaining.
November 1st, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Thanks for the link Bush! And great pictures, haha.
November 1st, 2007 at 8:26 pm
@Bucky – Seems like those who experienced drops often dropped by 2 so I guess you DID get off easy. (#):) And it seems (at least with PPP) that PR of 5 AR < 10000 is the money spot for those big paying posts.
But I do largely agree with you that how you market your blog is really what it’s all about. *nod*
@Sassy – Congrats Ms. Sassy. (#):)
@Casey – Hey, everything I do – I do it for you.
November 1st, 2007 at 8:45 pm
A lower PageRank seems to have increased my traffic, so I’m not complaining yet. At this time I don’t care about PageRank, but I reserve the right to change my mind eventually.
Its really sad that Google is penalizing the wrong people because they are selling links, rather than penalizing the people buying links. It just doesn’t make sense.
November 1st, 2007 at 9:21 pm
@Kyle – Interesting point there, but I wonder if one side is more “wrong” than the other. I’m sure Google sees it like US law sees drugs. Whether you’re buying or selling, you’re still gonna be in trouble.
November 2nd, 2007 at 8:11 am
Thanks for the mention…..
Yeah! Bush realizes he can make money without his PR but when is he going to start doing something about it? That is the question.
Why do you think you need PR to make money? It’s time we (bloggers) start thinking outside the box. Perhaps the Big G wants us to think we cannot make money without them?
Having a good PR does not mean you will automatically make a lot of money online. If everyone with high PR’s that are trying to make money online would be cashing in. Some of them aren’t.
My virtual home are in order that was why I was not running around like think my virtual sky was falling down on me when my PR fell on Vegan Momma. I did not care. If I had not laid a strong foundation by marketing via other bloggers, social networks, forums, etc., I would have been scrambling around like some webmasters when their PR took a nosedive. I think that should be a lesson to them, as well as others, on what not to do in the future.
Getting into affiliate marketing wasn’t easy for me. In the beginning I actually thought I could throw up a pretty ad and people would automatically click! Ha, that didn’t work for me at least not in the beginning. I actually had to work for those conversions. Wow, Imagine that!
The beauty is now I’m making money without appearing to do anything.
I only recommend products that I have used and I believe that helps with my conversion rate. With one product my conversion is 50%, the average conversion is under 10%. I believe that is on my cooking website. For me it’s important to get the trust of my reader if I have that they are more likely to buy what I recommend. I only recommend products that I believe in.
Personally I don’t do a lot of paid reviews because my website Vegan Momma was not designed with that in mind. I can think of a few websites that I visit that do well simply because they marketed their websites as review websites. Brown Baron is an excellent example. That, in my opinion, is how reviews should be done. He brings a lot to his articles.
Marketing Myself
If I don’t do it who will? Vegan Momma and my technology websites receive emails weekly from advertisers that want to purchase adspace. I’ve turned them all down with the exception of Vivid Seats which is on Vegan Momma. I can understand Vegan Momma but The Mac Diva, well that was a surprise, it is a lot smaller and it was a PR 0 when I started receiving offers. I eventually see great things happening to it but for now I don’t have that type of time. I imagine what the advertisers are looking at is the quality and the amount of time I spend on my tutorials. Some of them receive a high amount of clicks.
A few of my posts on Vegan Momma actually have PR simply because they are highly trafficked posts. I knew that would happen when I wrote them. I have adsense blocks installed on those post. Those do very well. Eventually I’ll add some affiliate links. The same goes for a few of my pages on Vegan Momma.
I purposely added pages on my blog because I wanted static pages. I also knew some of them would receive traffic. I wanted my blog to be more than just a blog. I wanted pages.
My homeschooling website has been up less than two days and has already received over 200 unique visits. I’m not even indexed yet. I added that website to some of the social networks and made a few thought provoking comments at a few homeschooling blogs. People checked me out.
I also targeted a few people directly they are prominent bloggers and also are on the radio. They are people I respect and I check them out often via RSS feed, or tuning into them when they are on the radio. I have no problem emailing someone that is “respected†to let them know about one of my virtual homes. Of course I choose one that I have a feeling they will be interested in. My new homeschooling website. Yesterday two of them contacted me via email. I was mildly surprised because they have high traffic websites and in their contact form they mention “we might not be able to get to you due to high volume†. I marketed myself in that email. I’m sure they will be watching and I’ll make a point to drop by their virtual homes and comment a lot more.
I knew they actually read my website because in their reply emails they each commented about some of my articles. Who knows they might throw some traffic my way their communities have people who are very supportive of homeschoolers. That website has not made money for me yet but in time it will.
When I create my websites , and yes I have a lot, I don’t create them to make money. In fact some of them don’t have any affiliate/adsense blocks. I create them because I genuinely enjoy writing about them. The ones that have links will do well monetarily (some of them already are) because I have established myself as an authority on some of my websites. On those websites if I mention a product I’ll get a sale. My readers trust me not to recommend junk. I won’t. I give away a lot of free information/recipes on those website. I regularly give back. It takes time to build trust.
You have to market/brand yourself effectively. After all you are your website if a person does not believe in you they most likely won’t be visiting your virtual home regardless of how good it is. I can think of one blogger that I’ve known for years. He has a lot of great information on his blog but I don’t visit because his attitude is condescending.
November 2nd, 2007 at 10:16 am
@Opal T – See? This is why you deserve baked goods from me!
Nice points as always and I hope that everyone will take something from it. Yeah Opal, I’ve been thinking a lot about this site (as I so oft do) and the direction I want it to go and as importantly, how I’m going to get it there.
I think for the most part, I’ve decided where this site is going to go, but I think recently I’ve been doing rather terribly and getting it there. (And I’m not speaking financially either at this point). I think to a large part thus far it has been a problem of time, but the other part is not taking the time I’ve had and using it constructively to push this blog where I want it to go.
You were raising some great notes about marketing, and I’ve honestly not done much to market this bad boy. What I need to do is sit down (maybe I’ll do it today!) and take my sites and figure out where I want them all to go, financially and otherwise, and take the steps to set them all up to go there.
I’ll let everyone know how that goes. Thanks for the inspiration Opal! (Oh, and one of those sites will be on the affiliate marketing tip so I hope you give me a virtual high five!)
November 3rd, 2007 at 7:48 pm
This is a great post but the best bit has been the conversations that have followed it.
My PR turned up as 4 and I was chuffed
. I never believed I would get that and it has definitely helped me in my start with Pay Per Post. Finally I can earna little money online.
I do realise though that I can;t build a future income online solely by relying on Pay Per Post a few cents here and there from Adsene so I need to start reading seriously about all the alternatives and there really are some very inspirational bloggers out there (that means you Vegan Momma
).
I know I have said nothing new in this comment but I just wanted to show my appreciation too. I love the fact that bloggers work together so much. I remember once reading a post just saying if we all work together we can all make it (I wish I could remember where that post was and who wrote it!)
November 3rd, 2007 at 9:39 pm
@Forest – Hey man, what do you mean that you’ve said “nothing new” in your comment! I scrolled up and didn’t see another one like it!
And I’m glad you liked the post and the conversation that followed, the latter is definitely the best part about blogging. (#):) And I completely agree with you that the community is just fantastic. I can’t remember ever being apart of something where everyone was just so willing to help everyone else out. It’s really great.
November 4th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Forest,
I think you added to the conversation and congrats on the upgrade in PR.
Bush,
The sites that do the best are the ones that are associated with products for example cooking some of the foods that I make even simple require certain type of products. I also put up Amazon links and a few others from CJ on that website. It took a while before I got sales but they came, with some people it takes months. On Healing Yourself Naturally I have readers waiting for me to sell. I have not done it yet and yeah I’m dragging my feet.
Direct selling is a good money maker (thats how I make the most money thanks to my business.) You don’t have to make a product to sell it you can look for a distrubutor that sells low and resell for a profit. I’m currently looking for a distributor where I can but items cheap so I can sell them at a profit on Ebay. I scoped out my competition on there and I’m confident I’ll do well.
I know one person who’s income made strictly from Ebay now that I think about it most of my real life friends/acquaintances are entrepreneurs and the majority have done well but they did not do well by sitting on the behinds whining about how it was too hard to make money. They put in their time and now they are reaping the benefits.
If a person is not prepared to put in the time needed they most likely will reap the whirlwind. Those are the ones that I usually see later stating that you cannot make money online. It’s all in how you market yourself what works for one person might not work for another. You have to find what works for you.
I like affiliate marketing because with some of the programs I make money every times a person purchases from that business. It’s not easy in the beginning but after you get it it might look easy to others.
When I first started with Affiliate marketing I logged into my account ever few weeks now I check every few days. The work is starting to pay off.I predict the homeschooling website will do well down the road right now I’m working on building a community. The other stuff will come later.
I believe you would do well with it just think of what you are passionate about, market yourself well, put in the hard work, and roll with it.
November 4th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
@Opal T – eBay, looking for distributors…You’re a woman on a mission! And on this note, Opal or anyone else, if you can recommend any good affiliate programs for home electronics, I would be much obliged!
November 4th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
I managed to make about 50 to 70 dollars a week before I had page rank. I know page rank means a lot more money but there’s a little bit to be earned even without page rank. That’s how I ended up with so many blogs, trying to earn a little bit of money on each one. Now that their page ranks have gone up the opportunity to earn is awesome. Blogging is pretty much a temporary thing, it’s scary that it’s not a really secure source of income. But I figure why not try to get as much out of it while it lasts.
November 5th, 2007 at 4:42 am
Bush,
I told you Before Commission Junction! If you sign up through me I think I get a referral, literally thousands of businesses on there.
I’ve narrowed down a possible distributor, along with my real life friend and a blogging buddy who also does this full-time I got a lot of great tips. They are doing very well. We’ll see how it goes. I’m buying the products wholesale and will be selling them on Ebay. Eventually I’ll sell some on one of my websites.
I love making my skin care products but that requires me to do make them.
I’m not going to stop making my skin care products I just want something to fall back on if something should happen to me I still would be able to make money with this business.
Now, I need to decide on a business name and register it. I’ll knock that out sometime this week.;-)
You can make a lot of money with a PR of 0. I made well over 1k with my PR 0 websites using affiliate marketing. It’s all in how you market yourself.
November 5th, 2007 at 11:33 am
@Christy – Yeah, keeping your blog income steady is a challenge (to put it one way). I think the trick is not relying on unsteady sources of income. (There are alternatives aren’t there? (#);D )
@Opal T – You know, I think I’m already a member of CJ, I just need to learn how to really use it.