February 2007

Starting today, I’ve disabled the “NoFollow” attribute for this blog. I hope this encourages visitors to particpate and comment more on the posts. This is a new blog so I didn’t think I Help You Blog was a target for spammers (since there is little link love to pass around at this point). Instead, I wanted to recognize the people who have taken the time to visit my blog and make a helpful comment. They will now benefit from the “link love” that will be passed around. Similarly, trackbacks will enjoy the same benefits.

When the nofollow attribute first came on the scene over two years ago, I really thought it was the best thing in blogging. Spam was rampant and out of control. Any number of website pages had useless and uphelpful content strewn all about. Spam was taking over everywhere.

Since then, we’ve gotten pretty good at controlling spam. The automated system Akismet is pretty good and new developments like the use of captcha has cut out the majority of automated spam. Therefore, I think the nofollow attribute is no longer necessary (if it ever was). And, being a new blog, I want to do everything reasonable to encourage the building of a community here.

A little over two years ago, Danny Sullivan posted about the uselessness (in his point of view) of the nofollow attribute. It is an interesting read and much of what he said has proven to be true. You can read it here.

I’m really letting the cat out of the bag on this one. I’ve been using Adsense as a monetization stream for over two years now and one thing that I discovered was how to skyrocket my Adsense click through ratio (CTR) using a very specific web page layout. A web page layout that I really stumbled upon by accident while I was redesigning my own sites. It’s not a page layout I use on any of my sites now because I have different priorities for them than I did before (i.e., maximizing CTR is not one of my priorities at this point). But, if you are solely concerned with CTR on Adsense or similar contextual (or even non-contextual) ads, you should read on…

[Note: Below, in order to provide context and for completeness, I first discuss common blog designs then discuss consensus optimization techniques. If you just want to get to the meat of this post, skip those two sections to the section entitled "Introducing the Killer Four Column Layout Strategy".]

The Current Common Designs

Most blogs have a two column layout. One column for the main posts and one column for the navigation and links. The default Kubrick Wordpress template is a prime example of a classic two column layout.

Another type of common layout is the three column layout with main center column. In that case, the main posts are in the middle column with two, less-wide, side columns for navigation and links. Here’s an example of the classic three column layout.

Finally, there are the layouts with three columns where the main column is at the far left and two smaller columns containing shorter articles or links grouped together on the right. The Blog Herald and the Engadget have this layout.

The Current Consensus Thinking On Adsense Ad Optimization

Google has an official guide dedicated to helping you maximize your revenues from Adsense. [You can find it here.]

Besides Google, others recommend that:

• Borders be removed
• Ads have classic blue links
• URLs of the advertisers have a color similar in tone to the background color (but not identical since you are not allowed to obscure any part of the ad completely)
• Text of the ads be black
• Background color of the ads match the page’s background color
• Use the largest ad size possible
• Use images next to the ads (though for Adsense this is now specifically disallowed)
• Place the first ad block “above the fold”

Introducing The Killer Four Column Layout Strategy (KFCLS)

Layout Design

With the basics out of the way, let’s move on to the heart of this post.

I’ve found that the most effective page layout that generated the highest click through ratio was quite unconventional and something I’ve never seen before (or since, for that matter). In my attempt to create a “newspaper-like”, tabloid layout for a gadget-focused blog, I created an index page layout that was four columns wide.

The middle two columns had the main posts for the blog while the two side columns were each half as wide as a main post column. The two side columns contained navigation links and links to my recent posts, top posts, etc. There was also a row that spanned the width of the main post columns after the first two “boxes” where I also had Adsense ads. Finally, the whole content area was 800 pixels wide to fit the lowest resolution screen monitors.

Insertion of ad boxes were in the first main content box, the row that spans the width of the main post columns and finally the box that is kitty-corner to the other ad. The final layout was like this:

Effect On Ad Performance (CTR)

I have to be careful to not violate the Google Adsense TOS so therefore my discussion here is in the hypothetical. These don’t represent any CTRs on any of my sites but, rather, are my conclusions based on my analyses of a number of factors and from a number of sources.

In general, I believe most sites with Adsense-friendly content generate a CTR of, on average, 3 percent to 7 percent. Depending on the source of advertising, this can be very significant in terms of aggregate revenue. However, I believe from my own analyses, CTR can be increased 300 percent to 500 percent with the implementation of the KFCLS on the home page of a site/blog. Therefore, a page with a CTR of 3 percent otherwise could improve to up to 15 percent and a page with a CTR of 7 percent otherwise could improve to up to 21 percent.

Here is the heat map of a site with the KFCLS implemented, compared to the official Google Adsense heat map:

One final thought, I found that adding pictures to the posts contributed to the increased CTR.

Why This May Not Work For You

You may implement this and find that it doesn’t work. I’m not guaranteeing that this will work for your blog/site or for any blog/site. I’m merely sharing my conclusions.

In general, I expect the following types of sites will find implementing the KFCLS beneficial:

• Sites focusing on a specific consumer product/topic area
• Sites where visitors come from searches from the search engines
• Sites that already have good CTR and earnings
• Sites that have a majority of visitors from MSN (since these visitors tend to click the most)

In general, I expect the following types of sites will not find the implementation of KFCLS to have a significant impact on their CTR:

• Sites without a clear focus
• Sites that don’t focus on a consumer product/service
• Sites that have a majority of repeat visitors (since repeat visitors tend not to click as much)
• Sites that have a majority of visitors from Google (since theses visitors don’t click as much as compared to Yahoo or MSN)

Conclusion

What I’ve revealed may not only be applicable to Google Adsense ads, but may also increase the CTR of other ads, both contextual and non-contextual. However, I only tested the KFCLS with Google Adsense ads. Also, I generally don’t like blogs/sites that are 800 pixels wide. While at one time, designing for that width made sense, most monitors now display much higher resolutions. You may be able to implement the suggested changes and see different results for different proportions.

Finally, A Plug For Me And I Help You Blog Plus An “Extra”

If you liked this post, you can expect more posts like it that help you monetize your blog/site. Please visit the archives for my other posts and also remember to subscribe via RSS or email.

Also, I’ve made this posting available for download in a nicely formatted PDF. You might want to download and file that PDF as a reference or give it to your designer/coder. However, it is only available via my RSS subscription. This is my enticement for you to subscribe!

Thanks for visiting!

Hi! I’m Philip Liu and I’m the New York City-based publisher of I Help You Blog. My background is in busines, law and accounting.I Help You Blog is a new blog about all aspects of professional blogging. Yeah, another “problogging blog” right? Enough of those already! But this blog is very different from the other problogging sites out there. I Help You Blog is about improving the value and worth of a blog from the point of view of someone who might down the road want to sell it. I Help You Blog seeks to demystify the factors that determine blog value and worth.So long as the blogosphere continues to grow and there continues to be a demand for excellent quality blogs for sale, there will be a place in the blogosphere for I Help You Blog to provide excellent advice to help bloggers improve their blogs’ value and worth, and to help buyers and sellers of blogs to identify quality indicators in blogs.I can presently be reached at the following email address: ihelpyoublog (at gmail.com). I welcome any and all questions and/or comments![There's more information on my first post called "About I Help You Blog".]

Do you struggle with coming up with original ideas for your blog posts? Want to get out of the “echo chamber” and not just report repeat news that’s been posted everywhere else? Yes? Great! You’re in luck today because I’m going to share with you my fool-proof, idiot-proof method of brainstorming great ideas for your blog that, chances are, nobody else may have thought about. Bring originality to your blog posts, increase readership and add value to your existing readers with “The Visitor Grid” method of brainstorming!

Brainstorming why your visitors are visiting your blog will help to focus your blog post topics, writing style, and traffic generation and monetization techniques. It is important to be able to “connect” with your reader and having a big brainstorming session before writing does that.

[Incidentally, Copyblogger has a post that expands on why connection with your reader is important in this post.]

It’s with those thoughts that I’ve been thinking about how to better make my posts be more responsive to visitors’ wants and needs, and I’ve come up with my own solution. It’s called the “Visitor Grid” and it helps me to focus my blog posts and laser-target the tone, writing style and topic of my posts.

Visitors to your blog visit because they are “looking” for something (a “need”) and “want” some result.

Blog visitors may be looking for/need:

• Information about people, places, things or services
• Opinions and/or reviews of people, places, things or services
• Like-minded people who share common interests and beliefs
• Funny, sad, provocative news about people, places, things or services
• Tutorials that teach them how to do stuff

Blog visitors may want:

• To be entertained
• To be re-affirmed in their beliefs
• To be helpful
• To be confronted
• To be enlightened

When I’m brainstorming ideas for posts, I match up those needs and wants in a system called “The Visitor Grid“.

How to Create The Visitor Grid

Make a big grid of six columns across by six rows down. Write in the boxes on the top row each of the things a visitor to your blog may be looking for. Write in the boxes in the first column each of the things your visitor may want from visiting your blog.

Once you’ve done that, you should have a table with “wants” in the left most column and “things visitors are looking for” (a/k/a “needs”) in the top row.

For example, say your blog is about gadgets. In that case, visitors may come to your blog looking for/need:

• Information about gadgets
• Opinions and/or reviews about gadgets
• Like-minded people who also have an affinity for gadgets
• Funny, sad, provocative news about gadgets
• Tutorials that teach them how to tweak gadgets

Using the Visitor Grid, place each of those bullet points in the boxes on the top row. Then, down the first column, list your visitor wants (you can use my list above or create your own) in each of the boxes. If you’ve done everything correctly, your visitor grid should now look like this:

Next, fill in the boxes with ideas on how you will match up a visitor’s wants with what that visitor is looking for (i.e., his/her “needs”). For example, your completed grid could look like this:

Now all there is to do is to focus your posts so that you are blogging about a topic from the top row that matches a need from the leftmost column.

For example, a visitor who is looking for opinions and/or reviews about gadgets may be looking because he wants to be confronted with different uses of the gadgets than intended. So, based on the Visitor Grid, you could focus your post on a review of a gadget that is being used in a different way than it was intended.

Here’s a real life example: John Chow has a posting about how an Ipod could be used as a source of power for a vibrator.

Another great feature about the Visitor Grid is that a properly filled out grid will allow you to laser focus your news search efforts on the topics that match the visitor needs/wants grid box. Also, you’ve just outlined ideas for 25 great posts.

Does the Visitor Grid get your creative juices going? If so, what are you waiting for? Get blogging!

There are always improvements one can make to increase his or her blog’s “worth”. If we define the “worth” of a blog to mean the value that that blog provides to its visitors, here are five things you can do now to make your blog more worthy:

1. (Re)Focus your “About” page into a mission statement. A mission statement is a statement of intent. It outlines what the blog’s goals are and addresses its position today in terms of reaching those goals.  A great mission statement identifies the blog’s target audience (i.e., its “customers”) and the critical processes unique to your blog that you believe will determine its success or failure. Finally, a great mission statement defines a blog’s unique characteristics that sets it apart from the crowd.
2. Evaluate and periodically re-evaluate your blog against benchmarks. Benchmarks are standards by which your blog should be judged and compared. You determine your blog’s benchmarks by looking at its mission statement and identifying those periodic benchmarks that you feel are the marks of a successful blog, consistent with that mission statement. By identifying a set of appropriate benchmarks, you will be able to make adjustments in the blog’s strategy and focus from time to time. Benchmarks can (but do not have to) mean number of subscribers, links or Technorati citations within some predetermined period of time, say, over every six months.  Benchmarks can also be more personal such as a posting goal per month.  If a blog consistently fails to meet and exceed its benchmarks, it is an indication that it may be time to consider retiring it or refocusing it.
3. Give supporting information in your posts. Blogs postings are full of opinions, ideas and arguments. But the very best posts are those that provide supporting information to back up those opinions, ideas and arguments. The more supporting information your blog postings have, the more useful your posts are and the more credible your positions become. An easy way to provide supporting information is by linking to related posts by you, or by others that you either agree or disagree with, or that present an opinion, idea or argument that expands on your posting.
4. Refresh old posts with new information. It’s easy to make a posting and then forget about it. But old posts form the corpus of your blogging body of work that is (hopefully) referred to by visitors well into the future. In order for your posts to have relevance tomorrow as it does today, you have to go back periodically and update old posts with new information. For example, search engine optimization posts are particularly susceptible to changes in approaches and attitudes. Updating old posts provides your visitor with more useful content than if those posts were left in your blog’s archives as mere memorializations of your past thoughts.
5. Show new relationships between ideas from your best posts past. Rarely are ideas completely distinct from one another. An easy way to set yourself apart from the pack is to be more comprehensive than your competitors. You can be more comprehensive in your niche (i.e., be more of an expert) by showing, for example, how two seemingly different ideas can co-exist. Or, by showing how two seemingly similar ideas cannot co-exist.

How’s that for a headline?! Brian Clark is clearly doing too good of a job because I’m seeing so many creative and attention-getting headlines like:

• The Ultimate Guide to [blank]
• 12 Sure-Fire Ways to [blank]
• The Secret of [blank]

And therein lies my beef.

The “Ultimate” guide turns out to be less than ultimate. The “12 Sure-Fire” ways aren’t very “sure-fire”. And the “Secret” of [blank] wasn’t such a big secret and was actually quite a letdown.

Does anyone remember some famous marketer say that he would reveal “The Single Biggest Mistake You Could Make That Will Doom Your Online Business Before It Even Gets Off The Ground”? And the only way you could find out was to purchase his $247 package of marketing materials?

Well I sure did! And bought his package I did too! Express delivery thank you very much! And then… I found out what his big “Secret” was (with a capital “S“). I’m going to reveal it to you now…

It was… (drum roll please)… “Not Researching Your Market Before You Start Your Online Business”!

Ok, I admit it was an important point to make but, seriously, wasn’t it a little over-hyped? Boy, did I ever have a let-down! If it wasn’t such a hassle to return the whole package, I probably would have. I was like, “Gee, thanks for giving me some really useful advice pal (not).” Not only was it over-hyped, it also wasn’t particularly helpful in terms of laying out the steps on how I was to research my market.

To the point of this post–using attention-grabbing headlines but then underdelivering on the content will kill your blog’s reputation. How many times did you click on a blog posting with a juicy, watery, itching to be clicked headline… only to be disappointed in the content when you clicked through and read the post? I’m sure I’m not the only one.

And the feeling I got was “how fast can I hit the ‘Back’ button so I can get the hella outta here!” That blog and whoever posted it was mud to me. I will never visit or link to that blog in my entire blogging life.

Not exactly the kind of feeling you want to convey to your visitors. But, I see a lot of blogs do this–overhype and underdeliver. If you are going to use an attention grabbing headline, make sure you really have the content to back it up. There’s nothing more disappointing to your visitor than feeling like a sucker for clicking through. For example, if you are rehashing advice you saw in six other places, it ain’t a “Secret” anymore!

Also, please don’t over-do it with the attention-grabbing headlines even if you do think you are giving the most awesome advice, secrets, whatever, out in the blogosphere. Because there is nothing worse than going to a blog and seeing nothing but attention-grabbing headlines everywhere. The feeling it conveys is like being at a flea market where you are the only customer and there are a thousand eager-to-take-your-money sellers pitching their products.

One last thing, the best posts with attention-grabbing headlines are the ones that, in addition to delivering on the goods, also make the reader feel that if the advice didn’t work for him, it was because of something he, the visitor, did or didn’t do and not the other way around.

Your thoughts? I would really appreciate some examples of great posts that use attention-grabbing headlines. (I’d rather not embarrass anyone so please don’t post comments that identify poor posts!)

Want to know what else will kill your blog–head over to Problogger for Darren’s list of 10 mistakes that will kill your blog.

I’ve been kicking myself for not getting into the bidding for The Blog Herald when it was for sale by Duncan Riley. At the time, blog sales were a new thing (and it still is) and I didn’t know how to value a blog. Also, the public price bidding war was up to $72,000 and there was no way I was going to pay that much for any blog. Eventually, the public bidding fell through and a private deal was negotiated.

The Blog Herald had some intangibles at the time that I really liked. It was well established but not yet top tier (i.e., not yet considered an “A”-list blogging site). There were many citations to the site but at the same time it was also essentially the mouthpiece of one man–Duncan Riley. Thus, there was room for improvement (e.g., by adding more writers).

Also, I thought The Blog Herald’s advertising space was not fully optimized nor had all advertising avenues been explored and implemented. Therefore, if one could acquire the site for a reasonable price, there was certainly opportunity for improvement and gaining a respectable or better return on investment.

It was with that background that I watched with interest the sale process of Aaron Brazell’s blog “Technosailor”. Until I had heard about the sale at Problogger, I had never visited Aaron’s site. But, I do know who Aaron is from his associations with B5 Media, and his writings and mentions in problogging websites.

I visited Technosailor and I must say it didn’t immediately strike me in the head what the site was about. The domain “Technosailor.com” didn’t give any clues except that maybe there was a technical slant to the site (though the tagline in my browser window did say “Technology, Blogging and New Media”). Also, the “About” description was kind of vague (it discussed the power of “people” and “communities”)

However, once I delved into the posts at the site, it was evident that the site was a problogging site (meaning that it was about blogging professionally) with a strong focus on blogging news and ideas. There was also a mix of technical posts (e.g., on changes to the Wordpress publishing system, etc.). Then there was a distinct tone of the posts there which I guess must be attributed to the author, Aaron.

Unfortunately, it looks like the sale of Technosailor has been cancelled. I’m disappointed for Aaron that there wasn’t a deal because the site had much potential. You can read about his reasons for canceling the sale in the previous link. And that brings me to the main point of this post: How much are blogs worth and what are the indicia of value in blogs for sale.

Various people have thrown around figures like 12-18 times monthly income as a measure of a blog’s worth. I don’t think that’s accurate in and of itself and is dangerous if taken too literally. A blog’s worth is a combination of many factors including:

1. Age - How long has the blog been in existence?
2. Quantity of posts - How many posts does the blog have?
3. Frequency of posts - How often is the blog updated?
4. Quality of posts - What is the relevance, currency and depth of the posts?
5. Design - How does the design relate to the content? Does the design convey the appropriate feelings for a visitor to the site? Is the design appropriate for the subject matter? Can the design be improved?
6. Monetization avenues - Has the site fully explored all monetization possibilities and revenue streams?
7. Personality - Does the content of the site convey a particular personality? Is that personality desirable and/or congruent with the future direction of the site?
8. Subscriber quantity - How many subscribers does the site have?
9. Subscriber loyalty - How likely are the subscribers going to continue after a change in ownership?
10. Subscriber growth - How likely am I able to grow the subscriber base after a change in ownership?
11. Cult of personality - How many of the subscribers are subscribers because of the person who is writing the blog posts and what are the costs should that person leave?
12. Statistics - What are the sources of the traffic the site receives?
13. Number of authors - How many writers are there for the blog? What are the opportunities for growing the blog by adding more authors after a sale?
14. Real costs - What are the current and future anticipated costs of running the blog?
15. Intangible costs - What are the non-out of pocket and opportunity costs you expect to incur to implement the above improvements? For example, what is your sweat equity worth?
16. Transferability of revenue streams - Are the revenue streams transferable to the new owner or do they go with the seller?
17. ROI timeframe - How fast do you expect a return on your investment?
18. Current revenue - How much does the blog take in on a monthly basis now?

You should notice that I list current revenue last. That’s because it is the least relevant of all the considerations. To properly value a blog, you need to consider each of the points above and to see if it is a detriment or an advantage to you–whether you can improve on each one to bring in more revenue, how long it will take you to improve and how much it will cost you to do so.

After you’ve done all that, it’s simply a matter of determining what your acceptable level of return is and what the required purchase price is and seeing if the return on investment is acceptable for your time frame–those of you with a business background would do a net present value test of expected future cashflows at this stage.

If I were selling a blog, I would take a hard look at the points listed above and try to remove as many roadblocks as possible to a smooth sale. For example, if the blog has a voice that is centered primarily around me, then before I sell, I would have other authors/writers make posts for a consistent time in order to let my regular readers get used to other writers and to remove my personality from the mix and alleviate a buyer’s fears that the site will go down in value after I leave.

I would appreciate any thoughts on the above. Chris Garrett also has an interesting posting about his thoughts on blog sales.  As does Lorelle at The Blog Herald. Please DO comment if you have any additional thoughts/ideas.