User predictions and blog plans for 2008
Yesterday I posted part one of my technology and economic predictions for 2008, and at the end of the article I asked for reader predictions. Here are some of them:
Jack Rack predicted:
1. Google shares will rise to over $900.
2. Digg will be bought by Microsoft (and slowly be run into the ground.)
3. Myeeos.com will do 1 of 2 things. Become an overnight sensation or literally burst into flames.
My analysis:
1. I agree. Google will surpass $800 easily next year and close the year above $900.
2. I don’t see Microsoft having much of an interest in Digg, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to predict that they will increase their holdings in Facebook though.
3. I wrote a month ago that myeeos has a long uphill battle ahead. The odds of it failing are greater than that of success. However, if myeeos fails it won’t be shut down but smolder. It will be very interesting to see how myeeos unfolds in 2008. One complaint I have though it how long it has taken for the site to be ‘officially’ launched.
Also in 2008 I plan to promote iamned.com more heavily mainly though the use of forums. I don’t have any plans to sell advertising or run ads. The main goals are to grow readership.
Stay tuned for 2008 predictions part 2
2008 Predictions Part 1
Sorry for a lack of updates. Been busy for the holidays.
I have compiled a list of predictions about 2008. This entry will consist of three parts and cover a range of internet, economic, and financial topics.
Social networking and web 2.0 predictions
1. Contrary to all the doomsayers and pessimists there will be NO compelling evidence of the bursting of the so called web 2.0 ‘bubble’. The current trend of social networking and web 2.0 will remain stronger than ever though 2008.
2. Google will acquire 5-10% of Facebook, and the unsold portion of facebook will have a valuation between $25-30 billion. Google’s last resort to enter social networking arena will be to acquire a small stake of facebook for a very hefty price.
3. Myspace’s and Facebook’s growth will continue to surge. Both site will be able to coexist without either one taking too much market share from the other. Facebook will report 80 million members from the current 45 million.
4. There will be no further ‘breakout’ web 2.0 websites. The current web 2.0 leaders (youtube, myspace, digg, facebook) will continue to reign.
5. Google’s Open Social and Android initiatives be be deemed a failure by the majority technology community towards the end of 2008.
6. Facebook’s advertising platform will be a resounding success in spite of the so called ‘privacy’ issues.
7. Web 2.0 sites Linkedin and Twitter will begin to falter in 2008 showing slowing membership growth.
Also feel free to post your own predictions in the comments section and I’ll post them under ‘reader predictions’ later.
Stay tuned for part 2
SEOmoz overrated?
SEO moz is an SEO blog that has received a lot of notoriety lately. For some reason it has become a go-to source for SEO information, and its popularity is showing no signs of slowing. According to techcrunch SEOmoz has taken 1.25 million dollars in funding.
However, upon a more detailed review SEO moz appears to be overrated. A lot of the headlines either seem very trivial, unrelated to SEO, or downright boring.
For example here is one headline in SEOmoz:
New Features in Google AdWords & Google Analytics
If you can rank well using SEO you wouldn’t need adwords now would you? Isn’t the whole purpose of the blog to help readers rank better so they DON’T need to use adwords?
Other headlines seem to actually overcomplicate the SEO process:
Rewriting the Beginner’s Guide: Part 4 - The Basics of Search Engine Friendly Design & Development
WTF is SEO friendly design and development? HUH?
SEO ‘design’ is as simple as just using title tags with keywords, keywords in the meta text, keywords in the body text , and keywords in the anchor text. It couldn’t be more simple.
However, this isn’t 1997 and on-site SEO doesn’t get you very far anymore.
This headline left me scratching my head:
Facebook: What I’d Do If I Ran Your Blog
HUH? How is this SEO related? Completely confusing.
Other problems with SEOmoz is that some of the articles are way too long. Although quality content is important rambling will bore readers.
Overall, while SEOmoz has become an authority source for SEO information, it appears that finding good, unique SEO information is like finding a needle in a haystack with all the filler and clutter articles. There is good content on SEOmoz but you’ll just have to dig it up.
Myspacepros seller survey review
A few weeks ago I conducted a seller review survey at the webmaster forum myspacepros.com asking sellers about their main grievances on myspacepros. There were a total of 47 votes. Here are the results:
| None. Everything is fine |    |
4 | 8.70% |
| Prices keep falling |    |
12 | 26.09% |
| Not enough buyers |    |
16 | 34.78% |
| People keep stealing stuff |    |
2 | 4.35% |
| Too many scammers/ripped off |    |
4 | 8.70% |
| Lack of originality |    |
8 | 17.39% |
Over 60% of people complained about ‘prices falling too much’ and ‘not enough buyers’ while the other choices got significantly fewer votes.
The polarized results of this survey don’t surprise me in the least. The results are reflective of the economics of supply and demand, as well as the increasingly difficulty of monetizing the internet which I go into more detail in my article Making Money Online Generally Sucks.
In terms of economics as supply increases there has to be sufficient demand for the supply or prices will fall. Therefore, when you have too little demand or too much supply prices will fall. This is inextricably tired into the results of the survey. We can conclude that on myspacepros there are too many sellers, but not enough buyers to compensate for the glut. In order to reduce inventory, prices have to fall to make the offers more compelling to buyers. In a fiercely competitive marketplace with perfect competition marginal costs equal marginal revenue. What this means is at best competing sellers can expect to break even.
But it gets worse. To create graphics to sell on the myspacepros marketplace requires time which is an opportunity cost. Other opportunity costs include negotiating with buyers, processing payments, and sleuthing competitors. But there is also an upfront cost of five dollars per marketplace listing as well as upfront costs for graphics software.
In summary, sellers are finding it increasingly difficult to recoup their opportunity and upfront costs in the marketplace due to excessive supply and insufficient demand, as the survey results indicate.
Evade Google by buying an established website
If you’re planning to launch a new website I highly recommend investing in an established website and then improving on that site. Although such a purchase will cost a lot more than simply registering a domain name and hosting, there are numerous advantages to buying out an established site that makes it worth the price.
The number one reason why you should buy an older site is for the invaluable SEO benefits. Google applies tons of penalties and filters to new sites, but by purchasing an established site you can evade some of these penalties.
New domains are subject to link aging filters and sandboxes and as a result of these filters SEO doesn’t work well on newer sites. Inbound links don’t improve rankings due to the aging filters. Newer sites also don’t have Pagerank which may make it more difficult to convince people to trade links with you.
When buying an established site make sure:
1. The domain is at least six months old so that the site should at least be out of the google sandbox. Unsurprisingly, older domains are better but more expensive.
2. The site is in google by performing site:domain.com and site:www.domain.com search
If no search results show up the site is either banned or un-indexed. Avoid at all costs.
3. Perform a search for its domain name with the domain extension at the end.
If the site passes the previous test but doesn’t rank for its own domain name it has a penalty and should be avoided.
4. Ask the owner if the site ranks for moderately competitive keywords. if the site ranks then the site is ‘clean’ and devoid of penalties. Unless the site actually ranks you have no way of knowing for sure if you are buying a clean, non-penalized site.
5. DON’T change the theme of the site to save money. If you buy a dog grooming site DON’T convert it into a legal site. Google will notice since it is too obvious. The site will eventually get a penalty and p00f your investment wasted.
6. A grey pagerank toolbar or PR 0 is to be avoided.
7. After you buy the site be prepared to make improvements. Perform more SEO by getting some inbound links, do link exchanges. Add new content, etc.
If you follow these steps you should have a major leg up when starting a new site. however, be prepared to pay up. A good site will cost between $1,000-4,000 but it is worth it.
Paypopup Review
If you’re trying to monetize your website I highly recommend paypopup.com. For the past five months I have used paypopup on my myspace resource site www.myspace-resource.info as well as other sites, with great success.
Advantages of paypopup:
1. Many different ad formats. The available ad formats are banners, pop-unders, in-page banners, and Interstitials. However, to apply for banner advertising you must be a paypopup member for several months. Popunder ads are available to any site upon joining. I recommend the pop-unders over the other formats.
2. Anyone can join. Unlike other advertising companies paypopup will let anyone in provided your site doesn’t violate the TOS of paypopup
3. Instant approval. You can start displaying ads as soon as you join. There is waiting.
4. Very consistent payment. I have NEVER missed a payment. Nor have I had any payments deducted though the auditing. They pay twice a month provided that you earn over $100.
5. Excellent support. My questions are answered by paypopup staff within 24 hours.
Downsides:
1. The ads are somewhat intrusive. I don’t recommend paypopup ads for a business related site, forum or a blog where the ads may turn off people. Instead I recommend paypopup for sites that have LOTS of traffic and for a younger demographic. I don’t recommend the Interstitials since they may frustrate and annoy users.
2. Low CPM. Unless your site targets a low CPM audience such as teens or young adult I don’t recommend paypopup. You can make more money with adsense or affiliate programs.
Paypopup works best for high traffic myspace arcade, wallpaper, music, teen, entertainment type sites.
Overall, if your site meets the criteria above I highly recommend giving paypopup a try. I have been a member for over five months and have had no complaints.
Interesting Myspace Hacks
For the past year myspace has been combating spammers and SEO by converting all links into msplink format. For example if you post a comment for a friend and link to google instead of the html code showing http://google.com the link will be converted into a complicated strong of characters.
Anyway, to get around this simply use this code in the link below:
That way your comments and links will be redirected to your site while bypassing myspace links. Also you get SEO benefits from the links.
Second, if you want to turn you myspace profile into a huge invisible link use this code:
That way whenever someone clicks on your profile they will be taken to your site because your entire profile is covered with an invisible giant image link. No one can see it. Pretty cool, huh?
I have used these methods to drive small amounts of traffic form myspace profiles to my site as well as index sites though myspace. There is no need to pay for PR links when you can just drop your links on myspace profiles instead for free.
You don’t have to be ‘right’
Last night I was flipping though the TV and I came across Jim Cramer’s Mad Money show (Mad money is a call in stock market show hosted by hedge fund manager James Cramer. Read more about it on wikipedia). Curious about Cramer’s reaction to the recent elevated market volatility I tuned in. Just before Cramer cut to commercials several lines of glowing praise from Man Money fans were briefly displayed. And at that very moment I came to an important realization; you DON’T have to be right to be a success.
Cramer’s stock picking track record has been spotty ever since Mad Money’s inception in 2005. According to a scathing Barron’s review, Cramer’s stock picks have underperformed the major market averages by many percentage points. Cramer’s under performance is also verified by many other sources, and yet amazingly enough Mad Money is as popular as ever. Jim Cramer’s Mad Money grew 37% from last November, to 243,000 viewers, according to Nielsen. You would think that Mad Money’s rating would fall due to his poor stock picks, but it certainly hasn’t.
But what does Cramer have to do with internet marketing and blogging? A lot, in fact. For the same reasons why Cramer is popular in spite of his inability to consistently deliver winning stock picks is the same reason why bloggers like Johnchow.com, seoblackhat.com, Shoemoney, Aaron Wall, and johncow are still so popular. These blogs are intended to help their readers become more experienced in internet marketing and making money online, but generally fall short of those goals in the same way that Mad Money falls short. Sure these blogs offer interesting insight and industry updates, but I don’t know anyone who has reaped a small fortune after reading these blogs. A lot of the advice in these blogs tends to be vague and inexplicit, yet readers continue devour it.
The reason why people remain loyal to Mad Money and the popular SEO blogs is not due the content, but because of the perceived AUTHORITY of the TV host or blogger. Naturally, people seek authority sources for answers such as “How do I make more money online?” or “How do I make more money in stocks?-even of the answers are insufficient. The content or ‘being right’ is irrelevant. It isn’t what you say, but who says it.
This actuality is somewhat discouraging to aspiring bloggers and publishers that seek an audience because there is less emphasis on content and . My recent criticisms of Bluehatseo and Johncow are irrelevant because I am judging these blogs on content and content doesn’t matter. Being ‘right’ doesn’t matter.
Another possible google penalty. Sandbox to blame?
Last week I discussed Admish.com possibly being hit with a googe penalty because it didn’t rank in google for its own domain name. My readers speculated that it could have been caused by paid links or the sandbox. But unless google divulges its algo we will never know for sure.
However, I have come across a myspace resource site that seems to have run into a similar ranking problem as admish.com. The site in question is www.blingcheese.com. Although blingcheese isn’t banned from google and has a pagerank of five, from my inspection it doesn’t seem to be able to rank in google for any of its targeted keywords.
But you may be wondering what is the purpose of analyzing these sites. By analyzing why certain sites aren’t able to rank well, webmasters can learn which SEO mistakes to avoid. Although I obviously can’t tell you exactly how to rank better (I doubt any other blogger is gonna tell you either), by analyzing why certain sites fail to rank we can try to extrapolate a set of rules or guidelines that will be helpful when trying to perform SEO in the future. The culprit for these penalties is almostnever as simple as ‘keyword stuffing’ or ‘meta stuffing’. The causes tend to be more more subtle.
Here are some vital SEO stats regarding www.blingcheese.com:
1. Possible authority site. Performing a google search of its domain reveals sub links, which is indicitive of authority status.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=blingcheese.com&btnG=Search
2. Pagerank of 5
3. Google shows over 2000 inbound links
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=link%3Awww.blingcheese.com&btnG=Search
A lot of these links are from established, high PR, myspace resource sites like ww.mypsace.org
4. A whois lookup reveals that the domain is roughly seven months old
5. Clean, well designed site layout.
6. Keyword rich title tags and mta tags.
7. Google shows over 1,500 pages indexed
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awww.blingcheese.com&btnG=Search
Overall, blingcheese.com is an established site that should be able to rank well in google for its targeted keywords. It has a lot of inbound links, plenty of indexed pages, and a high pagerank.
However, it doesn’t rank well in google in spite of all these positive SEO factors, which confounds me.
Blingcheese has an inbound link from http://www.quizmymates.com/ with the anchor text ‘myspace comments’ yet blingcheese doesn’t rank anywhere in the first four pages for that keyword.
Nor does it rank anywhere for ‘myspace graphics’ which is in the title tag of the homepage.
If you extract keywords from blingheese’s meta data such as “Free Animated MySpace Glitter Graphic”
you can see that it doesn’t rank in the top ten in google for that long sring of keywords.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Free+Animated+MySpace+Glitter+Graphic&btnG=Search
Nor does it rank well for any other 4 keyword combinations in the meta tags.
It is disconcerting that google would suppress the rankings of a site that has all the qualifications to rank well. It is possible that the site is still in the sandbox, but it has a lot of inbound links and appears top be an authority site and the doain is already seven months old. The sandbox shouldn’t take this long. There is no keyword stuffing, no spam pages. The layout is professional, and the on-site and off-site SEO is thorough.
If my readers can try to help solve this puzzle it would be appreciated.
A critique of John Cow 7-ways-to-optimize-your-workspace
Today I will critique yet another mind numbing article from Johncow.com. The title of the article is 7 Ways to Optimize Your Workplace (http://www.johncow.com/7-ways-to-optimize-your-workspace/) The advice in this article is so painfully obvious and useless that I had to resist the urge to gouge my eyes while writing this critique.
Why do I write these critiques? Because I judge a blog only by its content, and the best content is inspirational and thought provoking as opposed to content that insults your intelligance. Ninetyfive percent of John Cow’s posts fall into the later category. Also due to its large readership, John Cow makes an easy target since most people are already familar with it.
As a disclaimer, I am not responsible for any involuntary tremors, eye rolling, hand slapping, drolling, convultions, or seizures induced by reading this article. Proceed at your own risk.
My commentary is in the red font.
—————————–
7 Ways to Optimize Your WorkspaceHaving an optimized workspace is important to anyone that works on their computer a lot, whether it be on or off-line, an optimized workspace will save you a lot of time, and time is mooney! We’ve had a look at the things we’ve changed around since we started spending more hours behind our iMac to provide the world with bovine inspiration and entertainment. Here’s a list of seven things we came up with that help us in our daily quest for on-line fame and glory. Not all points will be applicable to everyone’s environment, but we’re sure our readers are smart enough to fit these tips into their own workspace:
I’m tingling with excitment. The suspense is killing me. My workplace is hopelessly unoptimized. Pleeeaaase help me John Cow.
1. Make sure everything is in reach - This means not just your mouse, keyboard and coffee, you will also need a pen and paper at times so save yourself the time and energy you’ll need looking for them, just make sure they’re not stuffed away under a pile of books on your desk. If you have business cards, have them in a pile underneath your screen for example. There’s nothing more annoying than to having to look for someone’s details when you suddenly need to contact them - if you’re clever, they’re already stored digitally on your machine anyway! Other things that should be in reach for example are your phone and something cheap to throw against the wall if your Windows PC bluescreens again 
Keep everything in reach? Dammit now you tell me. I got the stapler on one end of the room, and a stack of papers on the other. The hole puncher in the basement and the printer is in the attic. No wonder I can’t get anything done! Thank you so much John Cow.
2. Be prepared - If you’re using a wireless mouse that has no charger, have an extra pack of batteries in your desk draws. A pen can run out of ink - have two. Even though you shouldn’t, loads of us eat and drink at our desks. Having tissues around can be a lifesaver sometimes…to clean up spillage from your coffee and crumbs from your sandwich! Pizza is a different story - just don’t eat pizza at your desk. (blasphemy!)
Two pens? Extra batteries? Whoa now we’re stretching the budget. Speaking of tissues, this article almost makes me want to cry. I have empathy for any reader who endured the same agony and torture reading this article as I have been subjected to. May god have mercy on all the unfortunate souls.
Do myspace friends count? If not, having read this article I have now developed schizophrenia so maybe the voices in my head could suffice as friends. Thanks John Cow for forever altering my sanity. Speaking of plants, John Cow maybe you should hire one as a guest writter. The plant can’t possibly be any more insipid than you.
4. Be plugged in - If you have the opportunity to utilize all your USB ports, make sure thy are fitted with cables you use daily. We for example have our iPod cable plugged in at all times and a usb cable that fits into our Canon Ixus 65 camera and also into our 2,5″ 60GB portable harddrive. Besides the cables, we often have our USB stick ready to go.The last time I checked, and I could be wrong, USB devices tend to work best when plugged into a USB port. But you’re the expert.
5. Get comfortable - Your chair is probably the most important thing of your work environment since your ass is parked in there for the best part of the day. Make sure you find a chair that fits you well. Obviously recommended is a chair that can adjust in height, rotates and has arm rests. We’ve taken it a step further and ‘installed’ a electric back. (it’s really just some sort of pillow that goes over the back of your chair) Besides the iMac, this must be one of the best buys we’ve made in 2007. If you’re back feels tense and strained from sitting in that chair the whole day, 20 minutes of massage makes such a difference!
So does that mean I have to return my medieval torture chair? I would buy an Aeon chair, but I think I blew the budget on an exta pen and pack of batteries.
6. Create space - Its great to have two LCD screens to work with, not only can we improve the digital work flow because we don’t have to switch the active windows all the time, it also declutters the entire desk. The old VGA screens just take up way to much space. The space we’ve won with this is now being utilized by the stuff we mentioned in point 1.
Let me get this strait…I need space to work?
7. Create barriers - We’re talking physical barriers. If you’re working, you don’t want to get distracted by everything and everyone. Since our house isn’t that big (ridiculous housing prices here in Dublin!) we’re forced to make our bedroom double as ‘the office’. One of the things we do to shut out the outside world is simply to close the door. We turn our favorite music on at a volume that will drown out any noises that come from outside the office. Once you’ve created an ‘isolated sphere’ most of you will find that these are the times that you really can get into the zone and reach your productivity peak.
Um ever hear of something called headphones? Too bad you can’t create an isolated sphere to house your fatuous ideas and advice John Cow where they can’t do any harm to the public.
Another thing we left out of our office on purpose is am wall clock. Those things are just too distracting for us. Years of work in real offices has made that clock a beacon of hope - we’re all waiting for the mighty 5 o’clock to strike so we can go home! Since we’re not employed by the man anymore, we don’t have to answer to anyone. (Besides the landlord and credit card company once a month
After reading this final tidbit I was beginning to wonder if perhaps John Cow wasn’t serious and was trying to be satrical, to give him the benefit of the doubt. However, John Cow has a histroy of publishing these contentless, trite articles and his readers take him seriously.
Some readers attest that johncow.com is intended to be a parody of the more popular Johnchow.com, but John Cow comes accross as being dead serious in this article. I didn’t detect any satire or parody whatsoever. This was a lazy, indolent effort by JOhn Cow to thow a bone at his readers by offering ‘useful’ advice, but his effort came across as half-assed and asinine.
More critiques: