Blog networks may not be all the rage as a term right now, but they seem to be alive and well, and even growing.
Networking is good. You should always push your products, services, and whatnot across your network of sites, blogs, forums etc. The idea is to try and catch that visitor who might be interested in your other work as well, and not just the site s/he’s on. While relevant networking usually works best, sometimes you’ll find that people have very broad ranges of interests, and a diehard chopper fanatic might be in to knitting as well. The beauty of the Internet helps this knitting biker to get his fix within a network, nifty and nice everybody involved.
However, while it is true that people might have interests beyond the niche, you’re still better of to push for neighbouring niches rather than random ones. Chances are, someone interested in PlayStation3 might also be interested in PlayStation Portable, or someone reading a blog on HDTV might want to read about Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. It’s the logical step.
So how should blog networks push their readers across their board?
I think that the Splashpress solution is a sound one, which probably doesn’t come as such a surprise since I’ve been involved in it. Establishing sub-networks within the big network makes for more branding. If you visit The Blog Herald or 901am, you’ll see that they both are included in the same network of mainly news-focused sites. Another sub-network includes podcasting site Audival, and blogosphere snarky commenter Jack of All Blogs - another sub-network with a slightly different focus. more
If you want to get the most out of your site’s potential income, when it comes to ads, then you’ll have to get your hands dirty and sell them yourself. And by yourself I mean not relying on Adsense or any other sign-up ad program.
Selling your ads yourself is a good thing, if you’re up to it. You’ll be able to charge either for a set period of time (say a week, for instance), or for a set number of ad views. You might do pay per click solutions as well, of course, but that’s probably not a good deal, and besides, that’s what the ad networks is offering as well.
By selling your ads yourself you can charge more. This by getting the attention of relevant advertisers. more
For my first post here, I wanted to introduce a new idea, an authority profile. I want to create a small database of people that help answer the question, “who should I be following online?”
The first person on my list to talk about is Rand Fishkin. Who is Rand Fishkin? Well, first off all the SEO girls want Rand Fishkin. Being a dude, I really can’t say either way why that is, but I am pretty impressed with the site he has built. Rand is the CEO and Co-founder of SEOmoz, a site that includes a blog with over 10,000 RSS readers according to Feedburner. It was voted the best SEO blog in 2006 by Search Engine Journal, and has been mentioned in numerous high level places like USA Today, Washington Post, and Newsweek Magazine.
The reason Rand is an authority is because of his mix of understanding of Finance, due to majoring in the subject, the web, from all his years of experience and bringing it all together. His articles on SEOmoz are some of my favorites, and the site is just a gold mine of information. You can find him at Search Engine Strategies & Pubcon conferences around the world, and of course on SEOmoz.
There are a lot of great blogs out there, strong voices, up and coming leaders in niches, and superb content. Bloggers who really reaches out to their readers, makes an impact, and gains while doing so - be it actual ad or sales revenue, getting spinoff gigs or services, or just by building the brand.
It still baffles me that so many great blogs look like shit.
It baffles me even more that they look like shit because they still use some free crappy theme with a hacked logo at best.
Don’t get me wrong here, there’s a bunch of great free WordPress themes out there. However, most aren’t good, and besides, the whole point of changing from Kubrick with the rounded corners (or whatever’s the default one in your blogging platform of choice) to something else, is of course to distinguish the blog. more
As most designers out there, I think ads suck. They’re ugly, they mess up my carefully chosen color scheme, and sometimes they are exactly everything that a designer think is bad taste.
They are also a necessary evil. I won’t begrudge anyone making some money, they can’t afford me otherwise.
Designers like to blame ads, and their clients overall actually, for messing up their designs. However, while that certainly can happen, I think it’s bullshit. more
This is both fun and stupid. John Cow (not Chow) has hacked his own site. Take a look at johncow.com, or below if it’s “saved” already.
Clicking the PayPal link will reveal that the ransom money goes to cownapper@johncow.com, i.e. the John Cow fellow himself.
Brilliant or madness? I don’t know, it is great linkbait though, as the link spreads.
Scratch that, I think it’s silly. $100 to release the site? That’s undermining your own value to me, and that hurts your brand. Might be a fun way to try and earn some extra money, from a blog I guess, but I’d reckon asking for donations would work better.
The recent revelation that Automattic wouldn’t allow designer’s names in the footer on themes sold on the upcoming WordPress.com Theme Marketplace - which I blogged about recently - got me thinking. For me, it’s crucial that my name is visually exposed on the sites I design. These are the guarantees of gigs delivered, and a way for gaining recognition. Aside from pure recommendations, I know I’ve gained a few clients this way, and would probably gain more if I had the time, and put up a serious portfolio.
Personally, I don’t care about building pagerank with these design credits in the footer, but I could understand people wanting to do that as well. If a client requested a nofollow on my design credit I’d probably think he was a bit cheap, but fine, I’d probably be OK with it. Unless I took a principal stand for some reason… Anyway, the point is, I’m not putting those links in there to build Google juice, I have them there to prove that I did the design, and to possibly gain new clients.
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In case you didn’t know, the folks over at Automattic are planning to add a Theme Marketplace to WordPress.com. It’ll allow the users to buy licenses to premium WordPress themes, for use on their hosted blogs. Given that there is more than 1.7m WP.com blogs, that should be a great deal for designers, right?
Well, yes and no. There are a few kinks.
- You’ll split the asked price for a theme license with Automattic, as in 50% goes into their pocket.
- You’ll have to GPL your theme and offer it free outside of WP.com, as in every WordPress user with their own install can get it for free.
Basically, this means that if I make a premium theme and sell it on the WordPress.com Theme Marketplace for $50, Automattic will take $25 for every sale I make, and I won’t be able to sell it for use on self-hosted WordPress blogs since they just can download and install it themselves.
Does that sound fair to you?
Tony Hung points out that this should be a great way for upcoming designers to reach a big audience, and I agree - it sure is. But for people like me, who’s used to charge quite a bit more, it isn’t exactly a no-brainer, right? more
I know am, dead tired actually. Everything’s rounded these days, sometimes with a touch of gradients for depth. There’s nothing wrong with it, technically, I do it as well since it just plain looks good sometimes, but I do feel that especially blog design have gotten into a slump.
I blame Kubrick.
If you’re thinking “The what now?” then you haven’t paid much attention to that default WordPress theme. It isn’t bad, it’s just old and in desperate need of a refreshing update. Or an honorable farewell, perhaps. It’s a bit stunning that they stick to it as the default theme really. Just look at the way it displays tags, as of WordPress 2.3 - a boring centered list below the post. It feels thrown in there, which it probably is.
While it might not be Kubrick that is responsible for all these rounded corner blog design today, it sure has been putting them in a limelight. Yes, it was new and cool, and rounded is the shape of Web 2.0 as well.
But enough is enough.
I’m not saying that you should go all blocky on me, dear designer reader, but maybe you should stop and think before you do yet another rounded box. Consider other forms, consider squares and uneven forms that might or might not bring lots of problems with your CSS coding, since there isn’t a billion tutorials covering that particular form out there.
Solve it. That’s the way we used to do. You see, when 28.8 kbps modems were king, we did table layouts and solved every weird little problem without Google. Without frameworks and CSS magic, Ajax and IE hacks.
Those weren’t the good times, don’t get me wrong here. They weren’t the lazy times either.
Screw the rounded corners in your next design. I dare you. Maybe that particular project will prove to be an eye-opener. Because you know as well as I, that it’s way too easy to just slap something together in Photoshop, rounded with gradients and big fonts, a bit of Helvetica and a touch of Georgia and you’re there.
That might be all right, but it won’t help you evolve as a designer.
Grow Grow Grow, wails PJ Harvey. Don’t mind if I do.
Dear readers. My name is Thord Daniel Hedengren, and I call myself a designer, writer, and blogger. I could perhaps go on like that, but I find it boring and so do you.
I’m here to take over Wisdump, get it back on its feet for real, and then taking it up a notch. From now on you can expect regular posts on design and other Wisdump-ish things, by me and the team of writers I’ll build. Some you’ll know, others will perhaps be new to you. I’ll be sure to present them later on, of course. I’m not that egocentric…
So who am I? Well, if you really want to know, do hop over to my blog, at rethord.com, and read up. In short, I’ve been doing a bunch of blog designs lately, as well as worked with branding within Splashpress. The web’s been my livelihood since 1998, and I do mean livelihood. I’ve been a freelance journalist, published several magazines, a book, a pen-and-paper role-playing game, and done bunch of videogames websites - among other things. In Swedish, so you would probably not know anything about it. Take my word for it.
You might, however, remember my name from The Blog Herald, 901am, and a bunch of footers on blogs and sites I’ve been involved in for design purposes. Or from BloggerTalks, perhaps, what do I know.
But I digress.
While I have a vision for Wisdump, I’ll be wanting to hear from you guys as well, reader input is important to me.
So what do you want from Wisdump? Speak up.
