How to determine brand potential

One thing I’ve struggled with - not least through trial and error - is how to determine a brand and build it.
Lessons I have learned include:
1. Use familiar words to define a brand where possible
2. If using made up words, try to avoid more than 2 syllables
3. Thriving communities confer brand by sheer familiarity
And of […]

Tips for buying sites/domains

I’ve been buying sites/domains of late, and already wasted money doing this, so I thought I’d pass on a few tips with regards to buying a website or domain name.
The reason for buying sites and domains should be obvious: asset development.
There are so many reasons why asset development can be useful:
- capturing mindshare
- lead generation
- […]

TV - the internet endgame

Bored by people worrying about how big their little green bar is, as if it’s some kind of objective measurement of penis size? Thinking about the real future of the internet?
Read on, then…
Here’s the endgame of the internet laid out in a simple acronym: TV.
Not TV as we currently know it, but an information-rich multi-media […]

How to make blogs successful

I just got an email request for an interview - the second over the past few months. No idea what happened over the first as I was never updated, so I’ll repost my answers here.
The basic gist was - what makes for a successful blog?
Obviously ibrian.co.uk isn’t a particularly successful blog - but I’m not […]

How long before citizen journalism is faked?

The BBC lauds the contribution of user generated media - photos, video, etc, not least in the recent spate of flooding to hit the UK.
As a viewer, it was brilliant being able to access images of places I knew, photographed by old neighbours and published on the BBC website.
But here’s the stark stark warning - […]

10 reasons why my sites suck - do yours?

It gets just a little intimidating when I read of publishers earning over $1000 a day for a single site, and other sites generating hundreds of thousands of visits per day.
Especially as I’m doing nowhere near either with any of my sites.
So what am I doing wrong?
Just a cursory examination of some similar sites in […]

Tips for brainstorming for a brand

If there’s one thing I’ve really gotten wrong in the past, it’s registering domains on a keyword basis.
I don’t mean anything obviously spammy, and I’ve only ever registered a single domain with more than one hyphen in it.
But otherwise, while the domains have been good for getting a keyword in there, they really suck as […]

Revenue Share - the next webmaster economy?

Recently I’ve noticed an emerging new trend online - revenue share as a business model applied to forums, blogs, and news communities.
The idea is simple - whatever advertising revenues the site earns is split with the active community members.
The most common way this is set up is via contextual advertising accounts, such as Google Adsense, […]

Now is the time to have a business survival strategy: recession is looming

I know many people don’t pay too much attention to general economic data, but because of the news sites I publish I’ve been covering economic indicators over the past three years.
Here’s the bottom line - the booming world economy has been financed by borrowing - a debt bubble that has been warned about continually for […]

Passion - the great asset online

If I look at my sites, the most successful are those where I’ve had a real passion. Not simply for the subject matter, but also in promoting them.
The least successful are those where I feel little enthusiasm and make only token promotional efforts.
The best websites I think communicate that passion from the start - in […]

Paid blog posts - a closing window of opportunity

I’ve tested out the ReviewMe service previously, but after they opened their campaign marketplace I’ve been tempted to try them again and run a few campaigns - especially after Shoemoney’s recommendation and decent quality of some of the paid for reviews.
Anyway, results have come in from the weekend - so far variable as expected.
There’s a […]

ReviewMe: Benefits, hazards, and overall use

ReviewMe is one of a number of services that pays bloggers to review websites. Simple.
The aim is to try and generate some kind of buzz for sites leveraging the blogosphere, and there has certainly been no shortage of nervous comments about the potential for commercial corruption of the blogosphere.
Anyway, when Aaron announced discounts on the […]

Opportunities in a multi-tiered internet

With the growth of social media has come a massive fragmentation of the internet into individual tiers which in themselves are microcosms of a larger whole.
These microcosms aren’t necessarily small - YouTube, Digg, Flickr - are all structures built into the internet which are mini-internets unto themselves.
Similar rules apply, similar opportunities apply.
I already knew this […]

Quality content indicators for human users

I’ve posted before about possible quality indicators for Google, so now we’re going to look at a couple of quality indicators for human users.
Michael Gray posts a nice set of indicators for providing value content for human users:
1. Create a Glossary
2. Use Video and Podcasts
3. Do Interviews
4. Provide Conference Coverage
5. Cover News and Emerging Trends
In […]

Resources for improving conversions

While looking for information on PPC management, I’ve found an interesting number of resources about improving conversions.
While many of these are focused on the PPC market, the organic SEO’s like myself ignore these at our peril.

Four Steps To Better Business Leads From Search
Podcast: Use Feedback to Boost Lead Generation
Do You Recognize the 4 Warning Signs […]

How to make a Call To Action work better

The number of links a user has to click between visiting a site and fulfilling an action can have a serious impact on conversions.
I don’t have any live stats on this, though I expect the PPC stats trackers are keenly aware of this.
The difference is that it’s all too easily overlooked in SEO.
For example, when […]

Adding value for monetising websites

Today I got to thinking a lot more seriously about revenue generation options for monetising websites.
Although I’ve pretty much doubled my Adsense earnings over the past month, it’s still not a huge amount.
And today it really hit me how meagre the revenues are relative to other earning options.
The main reason I have websites is to […]

Think about Link Equity and Content Value

Link Equity
SEO’s used to talk a lot about preserving PageRank - I used to think of PageRank as like water, and building a good site archtecture was about funneling this into the right sections of the site in the right manner.
PageRank as a useful SEO term is pretty much redundant, but Aaron Wall now speaks […]

Someone’s using my brands - time to look into Trademarks

I just tried to sign up with Google Talk in order to chat with Aaron Wall via IM.
A username is required, so my first attempt was for iBrian. Sorry, not available.
Okay, no big deal. It was popular enough to see the .com registered.
So I tried platinax. Sorry, not available. Huh? Platinax is my own unique […]

Buying links for mindshare, not search engines

After Aaron gave notice that ReviewMe was going to be offering half-price posts this month, I figured I should give the service a closer look.
We already know Google wants to devalue paid links, and for once I’m not looking at buying ReviewMe posts for direct ranking benefits - instead, I’m looking to buy mindshare.
One of […]