Bush Mackel

In my travels on the Internet, I have dabbled with a couple different things including everyone’s favorite, Affiliate Marketing.

I say everyone’s favorite because as you go about the web, it seems that all the people who are making all the money are doing it from, you guessed it - Affiliate Marketing.

In my past experiences with this craft, I did what a lot of people do and signed up with Commission Junction.

Shortly after that…

My interest wained as it took a lot of my energy to try and make heads or tails out of that website…

• I just found it confusing,
• I felt like I was running around in circles trying to use it,
• and I really didn’t feel any connection with CJ

Introducing the Pepperjam Network!
According to their official press release…

…Pepperjam Network addresses the two primary shortcomings of other existing affiliate networks, namely (1) poor, unreliable communication tools and (2) lack of affiliate transparency…

Now I’ve admittedly only been with PJN for about a day, but I already feel better about it than I did Commission Junction. For one thing, the signup was painless and QUICK. Secondly, (and this is a big secondly), Robin from the Pepperjam Network personally called me and made sure I was good to go. I took the phone call as an opportunity to learn more about the company and Robin took all the time in the world to discuss everything with me.

Where the company came from, what the company is doing, how to get started, learning resources, and her direct phone number in case anything came up in the future that I needed to talk about. In today’s age, being able to speak to a human (and not a machine sent back from the future to destroy us) means a lot.

Getting Started
Once you’re signed up, joining programs and getting the code from those programs onto your site is easy thanks to the attractive and clean layout of the site. And btw, you can see my first ad from Pepperjam via of the 125×125 Jimi Hendrix Clothing ad in my sidebar. So if there are those of you out there in TV land who need something to fill up the last of your ad inventory, that might be another good reason as to why you should join up.

So look - There’s obviously a lot of good things that are happening with the Pepperjam Network, and a lot of them I haven’t even touched on including their widget that you can use to rotate multiple PJN ads or the ability to chat with PJN advertisers. If you’re like me and you’re looking to try affiliate marketing again or if you’re just looking to fill up your ad inventory on your blog, the Pepperjam Network is at least worth a look. (#):) Check it out aqui!

The preceding was a sponsored, yet honest review.

If you’re a blogger who does sponsored posts, chances are you’re very familiar with Pay Per Post.

And you’re probably also familiar with Google and how they have been pummeling the Page Rank of sites that “sell PR”, by using specific anchor text to link to sites.

Obviously this site has already been hit which is why (as of this writing) your Google toolbar says this site has a PR of 0.

Thanks Google!

How I Feel About PR
Well as I’ve said before, I’m not mad with Google. All they’re doing is trying to make their search engine the best it can be and selling links using specific anchor text we are undermining their efforts is we don’t use nofollow in our tags. But as I’ve said before, the big problem I have with all of this is that Google has not officially ever said, “you can do this, you can’t do that” and with their Webmaster Tools, I don’t think they have a good excuse to not give an official word to all the webmasters who WOULD play by the rules if they knew what they were.

Introducing Real Rank
So getting back to Pay Per Post, they issue posting opportunities to its members based largely on Page Rank and Alexa Rank. When all of their members’ sites started going to PR 0, they (thankfully) did not change the Page Rank of their members’ stats, (likely because they would’ve had a freakin’ hard time trying to fill all their opportunities). So after all of this, it was really only a matter of time before a new ranking system appeared, and it looks like Real Rank is the first one to get its head above water. Here’s a snippet of the description from IZEA (parent company of PPP) :

…gathers REAL traffic information, much like your analytics platform and ranks users based on their standing within the network. The formula is relatively simple.

70% weighted towards visitors per day
20% weighted towards amount of ACTIVE inbound links per day
10% weighted towards pageviews per day…

Does Real Rank Fix the Problem?
I guess it depends on what you think the problem is and what side of the ball you’re on. The reason why I felt obliged to make this post was because of Court’s post on the subject, where for him it came down to the question,

Can You Survive Without Google?

In his opinion he said that “[.01% of bloggers don't care about Google]“. I would argue that it is probably much higher than that. I think there are a TON of people who have turned away from Google for whatever reason… AdSense doesn’t yield anything for them, and they’re not getting anything for G’s Serps. And I think for these people, Real Rank may provide what they need to make a buck from their site. Now I’m not saying that it will help them make 13K a month, but maybe the “few bucks” they’re looking for that helps them in their everyday lives.

What About For Me?
I don’t know. I’m kind of in the middle of all these things… I’m always working to improve my AdSense earnings, but while that’s going on, I love making some side cash with Pay Per Post. And as Courtney points out, I think it’s a fair bet that Google won’t stop on these penalties and will start banning/de-indexing sites all together. If THAT happens, there will obviously be a drop off for me on visitors, which of course impacts every other stat including my new Real Rank. Maybe this is a time that I should consider changing MY business plan for this site. Of course that would I’d have to have one first…

What about you? Do you care about Real Rank? Is it making you consider doing things differently with your sites?

Today being November 9th means that we all have two more weeks until the busyiest shopping day of the year, Black Friday!

(And maybe to mark the occasion), the biggest ads of the Black Friday season hit the net today - Best Buy and Circuit City!

GWA HA HA!

Truly for all of us Black Friday shoppers, this was a big day. Anyone else getting excited?

What I’m Really Looking For
Going into this holiday season, there weren’t many items that I was really coveting. As things are going, I think next year is going to be the big TV year for myself, but I was hoping that this year I could UP my digital camera game since mine is getting a little long in the tooth.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t readily appear to me that there are some sales on D-SLR’s but if anyone would like to correct me, I invite and encourage you to do so since my little guy is growing up faster than anyone anticipated!

What I’ll Probably End Up Getting
As has been the case the last couple of Black Fridays, I start at Best Buy and then go to Circuit City since those are usually where the bulk of “my deals” happen to be. Last year (and I think the year before) I went to local CompUSA at midnight (before the official start of Black Friday) and did some shopping there too. But as the local CompUSA has turned into a Micro Center and neither has their ads out yet, the jury is still out on that whole front.

What I do know is that Best Buy looks to have some good deals on 360 games and DVD box sets, so that may likely prove to be my first stop. I also heard through the grapevine that Circuit City has a $99 GPS so that might end up being a gift to someone. (I’m pretty sure they don’t read this blog which is why I divulge that).

On a related note, I’m pretty sure Rock Band will be out by then and I’m very surprised that the game hasn’t even been mentioned in the big retailer’s ads. Oh well.

What About You?
And of my fellow Black Friday shoppers getting excited for one thing or another? Some people are saying that BF is lookin’ kinda weak this year. Thoughts?

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.

Google and Text Link Penalties
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.

Making Money Without Page Rank
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.

Conclusion
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!)

Yesterday we had a lot of good talk about Page Rank, Google, and penalizations. And looking back in our conversation, I don’t think I really picked a side in the whole thing.

Now don’t get me wrong - I think for instance that Opal’s tendency to look outside of Google for monetization is a smart thing.

I mean, say you rely on Google and then you get hit with a huge penalty that takes away all your PR, Adsense and traffic in the SERPS.

You’re basically screwed. And it doesn’t help matters that Google isn’t warning webmasters first before stripping them of PR. (I mean, what is the point of webmaster tools if Google isn’t going to tell us about problems they are finding with our sites).

The Penalty Situation
So here’s what is a happemin’ - I originally read about the situation on Court’s blog, and it seems that the big G is laying the smacketh down on sites that are selling text links. Now thus far I’ve been unsucessful with text link ads but I’ve still been giving it the college try.

Until now.

I read a FANtasic article about text links and google. It’s long, but it’s well worth the read. If you want the short version of how I feel now, here it goes…

• Google is first and foremost provides a search engine and is constantly trying to make that search engine the best in the world. The practice of selling text links undermines what they’re trying to accomplish and makes their search engine not as good as what it aims to be.
• My current PR and Alexa Rank is so low right now that even if I WERE to sell text links, it probably wouldn’t outweigh how much I could make with a better PR. So the threat of penalty is enough for me to stop text link ads for now.

Interesting to Note
First, I have to re-iterate how much I think you should read that article. I think it is simply one of the best articles I’ve read in quite sometime and certainly deserves your attention.

But besides that, we all know about iWEBTOOL’s Page Rank Predictor right? Well try typing in those sites that have allegedly gotten penalized and it doesn’t return data. Other sites which haven’t been reporting penalties are doing ok per the tool though. Now I’m not saying this means one thing or the other, but I just thought it was interesting.

Out of nowhere, my friend Brad over at Do the Justice sent me an e-mail saying that there’s a rumble ’round the internet concerning the PR Update.

Mainly that there wouldn’t be one.

*groan*

Like just about everyone else in this web development game, I’ve been waiting on pins and needs for this update. Should you be worrying if it never comes?

The Story
From this post on Search Engine Roundtable, Matt Cutts says,

As far as the toolbar PageRank, I definitely wouldn’t expect to see it in the next few days. Probably not even in the next couple weeks, if I had to guess.

Since I really try to not rehash posts on other sites, I strongly suggest for you to go visit the post as it was pretty interesting but this begs the question…

What Does This Mean for You?
Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your situation), a lot of money making ventures on the web place a tremendous amount of value into your Page Rank. Some advertisers like you to have a strong PR but for us bloggers, we see a lot of this in the sponsored posting companies we work with such as Pay Per Post for one.

Focusing on the Important Things
Even if the Google Page Rank Update never comes, that shouldn’t mean that you or I should stop doing the important things in regards to our websites. Think about it… Focusing on seo basics and other important web development techniques will ensure that no matter what kind of rank system comes up in the future, we’ll be all but ready to jump all over it. So while we’re all waiting, make sure you’re doing the following:

• SEO Basics - You know the deal - Making sure your titles are good, keyword and description meta tags are concise and contain your keywords, making your code neat so spiders have no problems finding content, anchor text, et.

• Incoming Links - Making sure that you have a ton of incoming links is crucial in establishing authority with search engines. And if you’re targeting certain keywords (which you should be doing), make sure you have that in the link text too!

• Content - Content is still king right? Well, give your visitors a reason to come back! And YOU KNOW there’s nothing that looks better to your readers than frequently updated content that’s interesting and useful.

We all know that coComment was once heralded as the blogger’s ultimate schmoozing tool. But since then, excitement has definitely wained as users have experienced disappointment after disappointment.

Execution with coComment has been less than stellar because of the myriad of problems the plugin has produced including comments going unrecorded, and web forms failing to execute.

coComment : “We’re Sorry!”
After Mark’s post Smackdown: co.mments vs coComment, I was thinking that’d he be the first to post this, but maybe I’m the only special one who got this e-mail. *WINK* Here’s what the e-mail said:

Dear coComment User -

Firstly, an apology. The upgrade of coComment to Version 2.0 Beta has been difficult and I know that, as users, you have been inconvenienced. We are sorry and promise not to do it to you again.

As well as the usual teething troubles and unexpected bugs, we experienced a database corruption which made coComment increasingly slow and unresponsive to requests. We believe that we do now have the bugs ironed out and that the service should be faster and more reliable than before the upgrade.
However, if your experience differs please do let us know and we will resolve it for you.

We have also had a lot of feedback on the design and its usability. We have, in response to many comments, reverted conversation display to the old ‘accordion’ style within the MyConversations framework and the client to the previous version. The ‘new’ client, which appears on websites to allow you to control coComment, is now only activated when you use the Sidebar viewing mechanism. We will give you the option as to which client to use, with the default setting being the less ‘intrusive’ version.

This is still a beta product . the final version will be released September 24th . so we are completely open to feedback on usability/functionality/design/look and feel. Please let us have your comments/concerns and we will respond.

Once again, our apologies for the difficulties. We believe very strongly in the future of the comment space and coComment 2.0 is intended to take the state of the art a long way forward. In trying to do so much, in one step, we created problems for you and ourselves. We will not, in future, shy away from developing the product to move it forward BUT we won’t try and do quite so much in one go !

Please feel free to email us personally with your feedback/comments and thank you for your patience and understanding.

Best regards,

Matt (CEO) - matt@cocomment.com
Nicolas (CSO) - nicolas@cocomment.com
Christophe (CTO) - christophe@cocomment.com
Kristina (VP Marketing) - kristina@cocomment.com

Giving it Another Whirl
Now I’m not gonna lie. I’ve had coComment turned off for a while now ’cause I just got sick and tired of its crappy performance. BUT, I applaud coComment for writing this very humbling e-mail and I think it’s going to have me checking out the plugin again. Here goes nothing!

MSNBC is reporting that 29,000 registered sex offenders have profiles on MySpace. The only thing I gotta say to this is “Shocker”.

And you know there’s way more than 29,000 on there. The way I figure, that 29,000 are the 29,000 who were too stupid to not alter their information or keep their profile more on the DL. There’s gotta be smarter sex offenders out there.

Is This MySpace’s Fault?
I can’t blame MySpace for this. It provides a service and people use the service. Just like craigslist where people can pretty much advertise anything including opportunities for one night stands and false advertisements leading to “very bad” rendezvous…What are they supposed to do? I don’t know. Like everything in this world it’s the balance between safety and freedom. Sure you could try and have background checks including criminal checks and cross referencing with SSN numbers but I mean really? Who would go for that?

Me and MySpace
As most of you know, I really don’t have any love for MySpace. Now I’m not going to lie and tell you that I don’t have a MySpace account, because I do. And I wish I “could” delete it but unfortunately some of my friends who are in parts unknown seem to only want to contact me through the horrible site. Furthermore, some people I have lost contact with over the years often get back in touch with me through MySpace. But guess what? I still hate it and now that I have my blog in full effect, I know why…

Why I Hate MySpace and Like My Blog More

1. A Lot Less Sexual Predators on Here vs MySpace - Now even though I don’t have the numbers in front of me, I can say pretty confidently that the number of predators in my blog community is less than the number I’m “connected” to through MySpace. I could be wrong, but if I am I expect Chris Hanson to tell me so.
2. My Site Looks Better - I know that you can change the look of your MySpace account somewhat through the limited code they allow you to use, but at the VERY LEAST on the blogging side of things, my site looks better than the blogging look over there.
3. My User Interface is Better - You know what’s ugly? MySpace’s user interface. It has been the same crappy thing forever now, and it doesn’t look like it’s ever going to get better.
4. My Site Has Better Spam Features - When you’re on MySpace, you have crazy SPAM all over the place coming in various forms including e-mails, messages and friend requests. Sure I get SPAM here, but my plugins catch 99% of them. 99%. RESPECT.
5. No Glitter On Here - It’s probably one of the reasons why all the pervs are attracted to MySpace in the first place. No one is going to be sending me some dumb “glittery happy birthday bear” on here where it’s on parade for days before I realize what someone did.
6. This Community > MySpace Community - It has been said before but blogs are such a great way to engage each other an intelligent conversation. Everyone on here has valuable things to say and usually says it. Do you have these kinds of conversations on MySpace? No way. It’s like a poor man’s version of Twitter but worse. I swear, if I see another MySpace message saying “just saying hi!!!” I’m going to break something.

If you’re like me, (or any other video game fan out there), you’ve been looking for a reason to buy a PS3. So far it’s been a bit of a hard sell given its $600 price tag, the lowered price of high definition dvd players, and most of all - Its lack of a game library.

All that has changed in the last couple of days with the release of a gameplay video for the highly anticipated Metal Gear Solid 4 by Konami.

The Skinny on Metal Gear Solid

If you’ve never played Metal Gear, you take control of this guy Snake and basically weave him through intricate stories involving these things called Metal Gears. Metal Gears (if I have this straight) are essentially walking tanks that can fire nuclear weapons.

Now apart from the story and cutscenes, (which have always been the best you will find in the whole of gamedom), the gameplay has always been something special. As a player, you can basically play through the game trying to use stealth to avoid detection or you can go the other way and just shoot up everyone and everything in your path.

You will have to use every trick in Snake’s arsenal including shooting and tranqing bad guys, holding them up, dragging them away, hiding in lockers, hiding in cardboard boxes and basically using every bit of sneakery you can get away with.

Now I don’t feel like I’m really doing the series justice, but believe me when I say it’s one of the most revered franchises ever and has positioned its creator Hideo Kojima as arguably the greatest game designer ever.

Fast Forward to Metal Gear Solid 4
Basically take everything from the previous Metal Gears and amp it way up! Graphics are way up, sound is way up! *drool* Look, I’m not going to waste anymore of your time listening to me. Here’s the infamous gameplay video that EVERYONE is talking about. Tell me you don’t think this game is crazy!? (BTW, if you can - Look at it when hooked up to a proper sound system, it’ll sound NUTS!)

Even though it may sound like it is, this is not a sponsored post. I forget how, but I recently found an AWESOME website, www.ihateyourjob.com.

I don’t know if I’ve ever stated it on here but…Hm…how to put it…Well let’s just say that I view my job as a means to an end. While I’m there I strive to do the best I can, but I don’t lose sight of the fact that if my hard work yields my company $100, I will probably see 50 cents of it, if not lower. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read Rich Dad Poor Dad. It will completely change how you think about jobs and money.It’s because of this kind of mentality that this site really speaks to me…It addresses a part of my mind that my closest friends can’t relate to and most others just can’t understand. But you know what? I’m getting a little off base here and I could easily spin this conversation into a larger post. To sum up what I’m trying to say, I point you to perhaps my favorite post on the site so far: How Our Jobs Sometimes Rob Us Of Our Lifestyles. Trust me. It’s a fascinating read.And btw, the webmaster couldn’t be a nicer guy, so make sure you show him some love while you’re there. (#):)