The new Search Marketing Standard Magazine issue is out for fall 07. It’s main topic: International search markets, UK, Italy, Germany, Russia and China and guess who wrote the article about Germany? 
Thinking about the “make money online” craze I asked myself whether it makes sense. Then I realized that the question to ask must be: Where does making money online make sense? In some countries and territories (India?) it most probably does indeed, in others your blog will barely pay your rent (Germany), even if it’s successful.
So I want to ask you to get a global perspective on this: How much money must your blog make to allow you a decent lifestyle where you live? 30$, 300$ or rather 3000 Dollars?
Tell me in the comments about the situation where you live!
On Sunday I was stumbled for real and ended up on top of the Internet section of StumbleUpon. That meant more than 2000 visitors just from SU. Besides, I noticed that some people clicked on the SU link from somewhere else: Social news mashup sites like Popurls which collect all hot topics from around the net favoring social media in most cases.
I use such mashups too as they allow you to quickly scan one day’s current news without clicking too much. So I took the mashups from the referers, the mashups I used before and did some research for more. Now I present to you: The top 10 social news mashups:
Well, as you might notice not all of the are social news, SEOmash e.g. is more a collection of blogs and news but all of them offer a quick overview what’s going on in the world or a particular discipline.
Dear Readers, Scanners and Stumblers!
I feel kind of dissatisfied. More than a week ago I promised 5 of you to review their websites for free. When I promise something I mean it. It was no “dirty blogging trick” or something as some of you might suspect by now.
In the last week I realized that writing more than a real post a day for this blog is impossible as long as I do it just for fun. I think about professionalizing it, but am not sure yet (just another problogger?). So the outcome is quite poor as I always have something to say other that reviewing: Just one review, not containing even a screenshot!
So I decided to harness the power of UGC (User Generated Content) to fulfill your wishes.
I want you to review your site yourself and publish it at SEO 2.0 for free! Does it sound great?
If yes, say “yeah!”. Can you hear me? If yes, say “yeah, yeah, yeah!” Throw your hands in the air!
Those who were the lucky 5 to get their website reviewed have to show some patience. I checked all your websites already but it’s real work to put into words.
Of course you guys can also choose to speed up the process of getting reviewed by submitting your own review.
This is an experiment so I can not guarantee that all DIY reviews will get published. It depends on the quality and number of them.
Here are some guidelines for the DIY reviews:
As I believe in the people power of micro publishing I suppose it will work out. Make it work out! Review your site yourself for free. DIY rules.
Of course the dislaimer abou illegal stuff etc. from the former post “Free Website Review” also applies here.
Send your drafts to onreact at onreact.com (use the appropriate character for “at”).
Even before publishing my post hailing StumbleUpon as the best traffic source in the world, 2 of my posts got stumbled in the meantime. So I decided to look closer at StumbleUpon optimization methods. In fact there are lots of articles that show ways of increasing traffic from eBay owned StumbleUpon, a forerunner of a great shift from search and social news to social browsing.
Does it make sense to optimize for StumbleUpon in the first place? Yes it does, all famous web pros agree: StumbleUpon traffic is
So now that you probably got the message check out those 10 how to articles, the best come first this time:
Those 10 articles are more than you need to know about social media optimization for StumbleUpon. If you just have a minute, I summarize the main 5 points:
What I like most about all those attempts at increasing StumbleUpon traffic are the ethics of them: It’s pure white hat SEO 2.0, it’s not even link bait like in the case of social news sites. It’s just about using this social browsing service right. I love it, I hope webmasters and stumblers will love it alike.
Do you think Digg or Reddit is the place to go nowadays? Never used StumbleUpon until now? You should, both as a user and a webmaster. Users get highly relevant content that matches their preferences, that’s the way of social browsing. Webmasters get substantial and steady traffic. Especially new and small non-profit blogs like mine can get a regular, even daily traffic boost. That’s not all though to say about StumbleUpon, it’s not just any traffic, it’s the best and most targeted traffic I have ever seen!
Let me present 7 reasons why StumbleUpon traffic is the best traffic out there:
Conclusion: If you set up a new blog or site that targets a niche, you are on shared hosting and you do not want your hosting bill to skyrocket or you are non-profit anyways try to target the StumbleUpon audience and skip the “you suck on the internet” mobs of Digg and Reddit.
Also do not concentrate on Google. Google does not send any significant traffic to new sites to prevent spam. So only older authority sites can built upon organic Google traffic.
If you rely on commercial success concentrate on StumbleUpon first and then go on to other social media when you can afford the 300$ hosting bill and your success makes you immune against flame comments of the mob. Instead of the mob following the lowest common denominator choose the smart mob of StumbleUpon and other social browsing services.
As I always aim to surpass the best of the best I wondered for a while how John Chow managed to gain as much popularity on the Net. What’s the secret of his success?
Well, now I finally found out! Just read this two words slowly and at least three times: John Chow, John Chow, John Chow. Did you get the idea?
Right! It’s the name stupid! It’s about his name! How could you ever succeed with a name like Tadeusz Szewczyk? John Chow is just one syllable for the first name and one for the family name. They sound just perfect, strong, somehow American but still exotic nonetheless.
Somewhat of a mix of John Wayne and Jackie Chan: John Chow. His name sounds already like that of a star, so becoming one is just a matter of time.
So what now? Will I stop here at admiring my competitor? No!
I will proceed to outsmart John Chow by a better name and a better motto! As I already asked you to call me Tad I will elaborate on that a little. You know, my name Szewczyk only looks unpronounceable. In fact it is pronounced like two well known English words: Chef and check!
As I know what’s cooking in the SEO kitchen I do not need to check it: So Tad Chef is born!
Isn’t Tad Chef much better than John Chow? Maybe not, but now listen to my motto: Have fun making money online! Do you get it now?
You are still not convinced? So I give you 7 more reasons why John Chow will fail in the cat fight John Chow vs Tad Chef:
I am convinced that in 12 months from now Tad Chef will be more successful than John Chow! Watch me kicking John Chow’s butt! SEO 2.0 will prevail!
Wow! More good ranking news: I rank #4 for SEO bullshit at Google.com!
My main competition is Jason Calacanis who is cited everywhere by saying
“SEO is bullshit”.
Well, in times of SEO 2.0 you can really say that SEO is bullshit but that’s not what I want to do here. I really prefer the poetic language so I want to use a metaphor: SEO is bullshit! Like real bullshit (manure), you can create clean energy from, the SEO bullshit is not all bad.
As most websites are still bullshit if it comes to their user and search engine friendliness as I prefer to call it you of course need some SEO bull to shit down on them.
Enough SEO bullshit for your site can make it a cash cow.
Then comes the real shit! SEO 2.0! If SEO is bullshit, SEO 2.0 is elephant shit! Basically you just need an elephant, a great site so to say and then to give it some fodder and then wait for huge chunks of shit.
You will see, it works, as everybody notices an elephant around! Everybody will spread the word! There’s an elephant in the neighbourhood! Just look at the huge piles of elephant shit!
On a side note, I wonder what the SEOs from India have to say about that…
Do not be afraid of SEO bullshit, it might stink at the beginning but the money of your cash cow does not. But then again: Elephant shit is even greater, that’s why you should use some SEO 2.0!
Why do I have to use such graphic metaphors in the first place? Well, I want to outrank Jason Calacanis for SEO bullshit. It’s the same guy who created a social news site that does not even work and is short of a breakdown all the time and then abandoned it. Do you think such a looser can tell you anything about SEO? Bullshit!
If you love the stink of fresh SEO bullshit, link to me! Even plain link farmers are welcome!
John Chow, another term for “make money online” has redesigned his website John Chow Dot Com (johnchow.com not to mix up with johncow.com).
It looks very professional now, like all other professional blogs and I already miss the sportscar that was on John Chow’s header image…
[Update: Ian Fernando has already analyzed the pros and cons of John Chow’s redesign]
Today I noticed on my referers that I entered the Google.com top 100 for “seo blog” which is kind of interesting as I do not optimize for that and barely use the word “blog” on my journal at all
While checking the other blogs out there I found numerous blogs that bored me to death by calling themselves “SEO Blog” in their titles…
Well, do you really think you can stand out in such a “niche” by calling your blog “SEO Blog”? I doubt that.
So I collected the 7 funniest or strangest SEO blog names out of the top 100 to show you that a little more imagination is possible. I assumed that the HTML title or the URL is the blog title not the keyword stuffed parts of the sites:
OK, for those who still have difficulties finding a good name for their SEO blog, try “one of the top 10 not yet existing“. On the other hand: You just need 5 SEO blogs so invest your time in a real topic, like SEO 2.0 for instance
