John Chow and Darren Rose Sitting in a Tree...

.... looking down on us and throwing us bones to keep us happy as we bark up at them.

Blinggest* def:
- Combination of biggest, most bling and blog e.g. 'I am the bliggest!'

Two of the blinggest* bloggers in the 'blogosphere', John Chow and Darren Rowse were seen passing AdWords messages. Darren (arguably the MOST blinggest of the two on the blogosphere) has hardly mentioned the subject. Perhaps he feels he doesn't need the feisty Canadian, after all he is currently ranked number 43 in Technorati, as opposed to John Chow has a 'mere' rank of 561. John seems adamant to keep the relationship open and proudly proclaimed it to be a "love fest". Google are apparently thrilled with the news and so am I. I am hoping Google with send them both a token gift, perhaps an 'extra-large' domain name where they can consummate their relationship.



I am a regular reader of both their blogs and feel they have taken on the role of 'idols' and are greatly admired by many 'wannabees'. In my humble opinion, bloggers who become idols should be made understand the power that is in their dextrous hands. If all they write about is how to be successful, we will end up with an entire generation of bloggers thinking that is the only important thing in life. Both John Chow and Darren Rose should have to satisfy the other needs of bloggers. I.E. they should learn to sing and dance (don't worry John your already halfway there!) and tell us stories about the 'olden days' of the Internet and teach us about the founding fathers of the blogosphere. After all, is that not what we demmand from 'offline' celebrities?

I just hope I’m not barking up the wrong tree.

Google Analytics

To make money from a blog you need traffic. I have already discussed in several previous posts about free methods of getting traffic. The next stage is understand WHERE that traffic came from and knowing WHAT you need to do to keep it coming back and what you need do to ATTRACT more traffic from other sources.

Google Analytics does just that. The image shows the fascinating diagrams and charts that greet me when I log into my Google Analytics account. There is a map of the world with the positions of my visitors plotted on. There are two pie charts that show me where my traffic has come from and how many visitors have returned which at the moment is 33% which I am quite pleased about.

CLICK TO ENLARGE IMAGE



Amongst other features, there is a conversion summary and a very interesting Marketing summary. This shows the top 5 sources (URLs visitors found my sites link on), the top 5 keywords for my site (surprisingly my number 1 is 'AGLOCO scam' and the top 5 campaigns. There is also a content summary that shows which posts you folks have been reading and a unique visitor tracking section. I AM WATCHING YOU!!!

The two other main sections are the marketing and content optimisation sections which provide more tasty charts and helpful pointers as to what you need to do for your blog to progress. These sections are highly detailed; in the marketing optimisation section alone there are over 20 subsections.

There is a lot to learn on Google Analytics but you can chose to use only the simple parts if you with. However I doubt you will be able to resist advancing you knowledge in the name of success.

Google Analytics is free (and I get no reward for you signing up). You can sign up here

Google to Pay YouTubers Ad Money Share

It was announced on BBC News that Google is going to start "rewarding creativity". They will plaster ads all over Youtube and pay YouTubers a share of the money. This has been confirmed by Chad Hurley the founder of YouTube which now has over 70million users a month.

The system will not be implemented for a few months and we are assured that the ads will not ruin YouTube, a possibility is that there will be 'three second long clips'. Who knows exactly what this means but knowing Google’s uncanny ability to squeeze every last drop of money from a site and still keep people coming back I am predicting this will make Google and talented YouTubers alike ALOT of money.