Editorial & Opinion
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »How To Not Get Rich Developing A Web Site
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on June 25, 2010 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Friday, June 25th, 2010I’ll be back soon to let you know if my failure succeeds.
After two years of writing daily articles, I’m taking a little break to finish some other projects (a book and a small startup, among other things) and working on a long overdue redesign of Dissociated Press. While I do so, I thought I’d share some thoughts about how NOT to create, develop, and maintain a site. We’ll be back with fresh daily linkage and pithy commentary sometime soon, perhaps on a new domain.
How To Not Get Rich Developing A Web Site
1.) Don’t Get Too Clever With The Brand
When you’re naming a media property, you want something clever and catchy, but not too clever. While “Dissociated Press” is indeed a kind of clever name, it in fact fails six ways to Sunday. One of the more amusing things I learned over time was that the people who were most likely to appreciate the name were also the most likely to remember it incorrectly, constantly changing “dissociated” to “disassociated”. For the record, most dictionaries list the latter as an alternate form. But that’s irrelevant. The name is hard to remember, and can’t be turned into a verb like “googling” or “twittering” or otherwise be repurposed easily. And I honestly had no idea what “dp” meant to a lot of people. Yikes.
2.) Stay “White Hat” With The SEO
Early on I generated remarkable traffic and reasonable site revenue with some slightly sketchy search engine strategies. The downside? The site seemed to get “sandboxed” for a while, and has never recaptured the same same volume of visitors. This is actually a no-brainer, but I wanted to see the results of this kind of strategy firsthand. If you’re interested, the site went from zero visitors on June 11, 2008 to nearly 200,000 page views by December of the same year. And then promptly disappeared almost completely from all three major search engines. As of this writing, there are about 30,000 page views monthly, and although that has been increasing, it is increasing verrrrry slowly.
3.) Alternately, Don’t Rely Entirely On Organic Search Traffic
On the other hand, unless your site has very narrowly focused content, and some likelihood of high quality inbound links, don’t rely on simply coding and keywording the site well. Get out there and promote it in every way imaginable. If you don’t use sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, or other sharing sites, tap into your friends who do. Or solicit links from sites that rank for content related to yours. I have done neither, and I’m seeing the lackluster results of relying solely on organic search results.
4.) Use The Usability Knowledge That You Possess
When creating the original layout for the site, I did something remarkably stupid, in spite of knowing better. And paid for it. Or rather didn’t get paid because of it. The original design I used for almost two years presented daily posts in different categories on the front page. The newest article was always at the top, under a heading that said “Featured Today”, but the articles were arranged vertically, so people CONSTANTLY assumed that the site wasn’t updated daily, because they simply assumed the site was a “blog” with posts descending down the page in date order. A painful reminder of the fact that PEOPLE SEE WHAT THEY WANT AND EXPECT TO SEE, not what’s right in front of them. In a decade of web development, I’ve watched people constantly do things like clicking on the word they want to be a link, in spite of it clearly not being a link. And yet I want to believe that “the user” is not a numbnut. Accept it. The user is a numbnut.
5.) Polite Placement of Ad Content?
In the original design, I placed almost all the ad content in sidebars, as a courtesy to the user. I assumed people would occasionally click on ads as a courtesy. HAHAHAHAHA! That’s really, really stupid. I won’t resort to popups that make you click ads by accident or other fishy methods like those annoying “hover ads” that many sites torture us with, but POLITE AD PLACEMENT? What does that even mean? Stick ‘em in there baby, and use the heatmap. You’ll notice that the current layout uses the maximum allowable AdSense ads, placed in standard hotspots.
6.) Fresh Quality Content vs Promotion & Marketing
If you’re working alone, and are forced to make a decision between consistently fresh quality content and marketing, maintain a balance, and favor the marketing a little. The truth is that unless you have marketed the site and know that you have regular visitors from a specific source, your search engine traffic will comprise the bulk of your visitors, and they will have NO IDEA whether you update daily, and won’t care. Spend six months building up some quality content, then MARKET, MARKET, MARKET. When you get the traffic up to a respectable volume, you’ll actually be generating enough revenue that you can afford to write every day. Until then you’re just an underpaid writer, and there’s nothing dumber than being independently broke. I’m kind of an expert on that topic. Trust me.
7.) Quit If It’s Failing
Take the advice of people like Seth Godin and quit when it makes sense
Here are Jimmy Wales’ theories of failure:
Fail faster. If a project is doomed, shut it down quickly.
Don’t tie your ego to any one project. If it stumbles, you’ll be unable to move forward.
Real entrepreneurs fail.
Fail a lot. But enjoy yourself along the way.
If you handle these things well, “you will succeed.”
Happy Birthday To Us! Dissociated Press Enters Its Terrible Two’s
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on June 11, 2010 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Friday, June 11th, 2010Let us know what you think. Your input may have a big impact on the future of the site.
 This is me in 98 years if I keep writing for Dissociated Press every day. |
That’s right. Dissociated Press turns two years old today. So what does that mean? It means that every single day for two years we’ve served up something for your amusement. You know what else it means? It means we’ll be taking some time off. How long? That depends a little on you. That “Add A Comment” link below isn’t just window dressing, and this Dissociated Press Birthday Fund link works too! While we take some time off, let us know what you think. We value your input, whether it’s your thoughts or your money, so put your money where your mouth is, or put your words where the comment box is. While we (and by “we” I mean “I”; there’s only one of us!) take a quick breather, dig deeper into the site. With over 700 articles, even if you’re a regular visitor, there’s bound to be something of interest. View them backwards by date, or view them by tags, or view them by category. I like to think we’ve consistently offered up an interesting spin on Pop Media, Technology, Politics, and Lifestyle that stays relevant without simply regurgitating the content of the endlessly reposted blogosphere. If you’re a writer or developer, or just curious, read this to learn more about what Dissociated Press was meant to be, and where it might go. And in any case, thanks to all 30,000 of you for stopping by each month!
Dissociated Press Seeks Partners & Contributors
[ Comments Off ]Posted on June 11, 2010 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Friday, June 11th, 2010If you’re a writer, web marketer, or Wordpress whiz, drop us a line.
I originally launched Dissociated Press in June, 2008 merely as a way to force myself to write each day. I wanted to do something more like a magazine than a blog, so set the site up with specific magazine-like categories. At various times over the last two years, writer friends have said they’d start contributing, but never did. So I kept plodding along, and the site traffic grew, but not to a number of page views that generates significant revenue. With a busy schedule, I had to choose between fresh daily content and marketing, and opted for the former. Unfortunately, the organic search traffic (as one might expect) hasn’t provided quite the oomph I need to keep this up, so I’m making the tough decision to make one last stab at soliciting contributors or partners, or moving on to other projects. I’m almost finished with a book, and am also working on a small startup, among other things. If you’re a writer, web marketer, or WordPress whiz, drop me a line and we can discuss possibilities.
Thanks!
[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 26, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Thursday, November 26th, 2009Now how ’bout you start giving?
This Thanksgiving I’m pretty thankful. I’m thankful that people like you are reading this. I’m even more thankful when you click on the Google ads, the donate button in the upper right, or click through and buy something on Amazon, but there’s reward in just knowing that after people read the tripe I serve up, they actually come back for more. I’m thankful for all the friends that I’m lucky to have, I’m thankful for the fact that even during the tough financial times many of us have had recently, I for one have never once worried that I would actually go hungry, because I live in such an insanely prosperous country. Which reminds me that I’m thankful that people seem to be keeping a level head in the face of relatively bad times; although I think we could actually use a little civil unrest, there’s no need to get in a tizzy over a few endless wars and some relative poverty now, is there? Both things seem to be a part of the human condition. For the record, I think I’ve already had my *worst Thanksgivings. My worst was probably the year I got burglarized on Thanksgiving eve, and lost almost $10,000 worth of uninsured musical equipment. I called it “Thankstaking” for a couple of years after that. The second worst was when a former friend of mine in LA swore up and down that she knew that somewhere in LA, a decent place to eat would be open on Thanksgiving. I trusted her, and a rather testosterone-driven male friend of mine flew in from Las Vegas to join us for what we thought would be a sort of spontaneous and casual holiday dinner. Well, my friend was waaaaaaay wrong. After 3 or 4 hours of phone calls and driving around, we ended up waiting 45 minutes for a table at Denny’s. If I was thankful for anything that year, I was just thankful my guy friend didn’t eat *us before we found actual food. This year I’m having rack of lamb with a new friend, and chilling a little bit. I have no complaints. How about you? What was your best or worst Thanksgiving?
This Headline Is Self-Referential
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on November 18, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009Is There A Word For When You’re Writing About Nothing?
They say that amongst the basic offenses that one might commit when managing a blog, referencing your own blog borders on felonious. The words you’re reading are not a violation of this principle; for one thing, this site is a magazine-style link aggregator with commentary, not a blog. And for another thing, this content is being placed in the Editorial & Opinion section, which in a way actually requires that it be self-referential. The fact is, for the first time since June 11, 2008, I didn’t have anything I felt like writing about today. This reminded me of the last time this happened, which was back in 2005. At the time, I was thankful for The Nonist’s What Everyone Should Know About Blog Depression. Which I’m sharing as a public service today, since if anyone is in fact reading this, they almost certainly have a blog or web site or as many as 137 Twitter followers, and may find some solace themselves. It has great advice like “IF THE SIMPLE ACT OF READING A MAGAZINE FILLS YOU WITH A DEEP SENSE OF DISQUIET, IF YOU BREAK OUT IN HIVES, OR FIND YOURSELF INEXPLICABLY WEEPING, IT MAY BE CONTENT ANXIETY, IN WHICH YOU SUBCONSCIOUSLY EQUATE EVERY PIECE OF INFORMATION AS A POTENTIAL PIECE OF BLOG CONTENT“. And who hasn’t experienced that? I especially like that I put that whole excerpt in caps. It gave it a lot more oomph, don’t you think? Another powerful insight: “Meta-bloggers may experience particularly severe blog depression when they realize everyone is continually posting the same crap, on every other meta-blog, over and over and over. The realization that meta-content is never ‘owned’ can be painful“. Indeed. Read the rest of this entry »