This month has proven how easily bloggers become the victim of the tactics of old media.
While trying to be informative and critical it is very easy to grab all the nice pieces of bait the old media use. There have been several examples of journalists playing with the blogosphere.
Surely there were the more positive ones such as TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year, NY Times embracing social bookmarking and more recently the John Edwards Youtube case. But more traditional media have not hesitated to hit either. The WSJ attack on blogs was the most recently hyped anti-blog story.

And there was quite some truth in it.

Taking over a blog might be one of the hardest things to do there is. You might be a mad-content creator, but replacing a blogger or reviving the spirit and fame of a blog never is easy.

Baby has lost his father. What will stepdad do?

If you were that lucky to get the opportunity I did, become writer at JOAB, you know that from day one people are watching you. Respected bloggers.
No need to ask for the demographics of the readers, no. You know the most prominent ones. Actually you even read them daily.

How are you going to deal with this?
This might not only be the opportunity you have always wanted, but trust me it also is the perfect way to lose everything before you even started.
Here’s my advice.

The Bloggy Network picked up an interesting blog last weekend at sitepoint. Quoting from the auction:

Buzzword Hell was a blog I started whose mission was to condemn all the buzzwords that floated around our industry. It’s a blog with a very unique system in that it “condemns” buzzwords to the circles of hell from Dante’s Inferno. Each buzzword is condemned based on the number of comments it has gotten.

It certainly is a very clever and original idea! And also some interesting backlinks; for instance from wikipedia’s page on buzzwords and an interview by Ben Bleikamp on his old College Start-Up blog.

Current “buzzwords condemned to hell” include-:

* Ajax

• Bandwidth
  
• Beta
  
• Blogosphere
  
• Folksonomy
  
• GYM Free
  
• Information Superhighway
  
• Live Search
  
• Meme
  
• Pagerank
  
• Paradigm Shift
  
• Progressive Enhancement
  
• Realign
  
• SEO
  
• Social Networking
  
• Spear Phishing
  
• Synergy
  
• Thought Leader
  
• Web 2.0
  
  

  BuzzwordHell.com is the creation of Bryan Veloso, known by his followers in blogosphere as “rock star”. Bryan is a member of the 9 rules network through his personal website: AvalonStar.com. He has worked for Facebook and Automattic, while achieving genuine “celebrity blogger” status through such landmark posts as his “Saying Hello to Aries” and the launch of his own WordPress theme: “Chaotic Soul“.

  
  

  Bryan has some good tips in his 9 rules interview for any wannabe “celebrity bloggers” out there. Amongst them, some modest advice-:

  
  

  I’m proud to say that I feel I have one of the most dedicated reader bases out there. For what reason? Why do they keep coming back? I really couldn’t tell you. I could assume, but then I could be making an ass of myself. Hmm… I try to talk to people like they’re right next to me, I try to be conversational. I don’t think there is any other way blogging should be. Blogging is a conversation between multiple parties. I’m a huge believer in transparency, which means that I never hide anything from my readers.

  
  

  [tags]bryan veloso,buzzwords,star bloggers, rock star,live search, web 2.0,9 rules,facebook,sitepoint,wikipedia[/tags]
  

The king of personal success, the guru of getting rich, Tony Robbins, would love to sell you seminar tickets, books, and self-help tapes so you can Fix Your Life.

You don’t need it. You only need a few things.

1. Develop a personal code of honor. Even pirates have a code. Regardless of your spiritual beliefs or lack of them, a code of honor will give you a higher purpose to live up to. Having a genuine sense of purpose will get you up in the morning.
   


2. Don’t ever be afraid of faking it. Most people don’t have what it takes at first; even if they do have what it takes, they think they don’t. Now, I once taught some classes (er, community service, of course – pirates never do good deeds) in which I taught my students, a somewhat disadvantaged bunch, to Fake It Til You Make It. Then I made them tell me what they did, every class session, until I knew they had gotten it. You can do the same. Do you want to be a writer, an artist, a chef, a business genius? Dress and act the part. Learn everything you can. Hang around with successful people. You’ll get the feel, and you’ll start believing in yourself.
   


3. Your personal attitude is what will determine your success. If you don’t think you can make it, you won’t. When is the last time you heard a celebrity, millionaire, or other successful person say they didn’t think they’d make it? Never, is my guess. That’s why they made it.
   


4. Story – a captain was once piloting a ship, and trying to avoid a sandbar up the coast. He knew where it was, knew there was plenty of room, but didn’t think he could make it around. In the end, he sailed right into it. The lesson: look through the things that are obstacles in your path. You’ll be surprised at how easily you circumvent them.
   


5. Love other people. (Of course, you should love their treasure more, but that’s beside the point.) If you bear a genuine love for your fellow man, they’ll pick up on it. That will make you friends who will help you along your road to success.
   


6. Learn to recognize opportunities. Opportunities knock all the time. They probably dent your door. But most people don’t hear them. Start looking at every drawback as a potential opportunity. You’ll quickly start finding out how many of them really are.
   

Arrr, me hearties! ‘Tis me favorite of all days, Talk Like A Pirate Day! Yarr!

You want to talk like a pirate? Don’t just change your words – change your attitude. John Baur and Mark Summers started this wonderful day about four years ago, and it’s exploded across the world since. One of their pirate wenches, Mad Sally, was in Wife Swap on Sept. 18th, if you can imagine trading your wife in for a swearing, hard-headed pirate wench, you get the idea!

But seriously, Talk Like A Pirate Day isn’t about running around with a peg leg and a parrot. It’s about a certain attitude, a freedom of thought and speech that some find refreshing and others find intimidating or threatening. (And there you have the gamut of reactions to me!) The Pirate Guys call it “pirattitude“. The rules behind it, as far as I can tell, are as follow:

1. Choose yer battles well, mate. If ye shoots a broadside at a galleon, ye’d best have more than a dinghy to back it up.

2. Never be afraid of saying what you mean, and not saying what you don’t. Tell me this: what kind of a world is it we live in, where we have to fear our own words? Though it’s not the government calling for it, is that not the realm of Big Brotherism? Where in all our treaties and all our contracts does it say we have to apologize for offending people? Sure, it’s nice. But only if you mean it. Which brings us back to the beginning.

3. Live your life on your own terms. Know that you are master of your own ship. You never have “no choice” in your life, even if you’re in prison and shackled hand and foot. Even if you’re about to die, you can choose to die well. Most of us aren’t at that point. Step back and look at your life. What choices do you really have? Now, instead of drifting into them as the wind whims, tack sail into the wind and shear forth where you will.

4. Read number 3 again. Really listen to it this time, because you didn’t the first time. Come back to it periodically.

5. Love your mates, and avoid your enemies. It’s the best way to live long and happy.

6. Laugh as often as you can—really laugh, not that weird you-live-longer-if-you-laugh semi-Buddhist thing that caught on a few months ago. Start here.

Yarr, me hearties! Adopt some pirattitude today, and confuse the neighbors when you tell them to heave to for boarding! (also fun at drive-thru windows)

In a recent post, I refered to the problem of relying on a business model that is based on paid text link advertising. I think it’s worth discussing this topic more and there have been some worthwhile recent debates about this very subject on blogosphere.

In Google’s “Quality Guidelines“, it states pretty clearly-:

“Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

Matt Cutts (hopefully, needs no introduction) said in a post last month-:

“The best links are not paid, or exchanged….the best links are earned and given by choice.”

Such was the reaction to this post, that Matt posted again just a few days ago to clarify his position-:

“I wouldn’t be surprised if search engines begin to take stronger action against link buying in the near future.”

Matt’s take on this is logical. Why, when Google won’t recognize its own paid ad links as “authentic votes” would it reward other sites’ paid ad links? Right now, the process still does reward, in error, those webmasters who want to gain pagerank. But the days of such PR transfers are clearly numbered.

An excellent soul-searching post appeared re: this topic on the O’Reilly Radar blog. To quote from the post-:

“Long term, I’m pretty sure that supporting people who game search engines is not a good thing. The result will be that search engines are less able to reach their promise as an expression of the collective intelligence of the net.”

...in reaction to a post of outrage on Phil Ringnalda’s blog.

This harks back to the Link Condom arguments a la 2005, open warfare in some cases: Danny Sullivan says YES, Jeremy Zawodny says NO and a host of other SE gurus weighing in. All of that seems to have quietened down over the last six months, but maybe, just maybe, it’s rearing its head again before the next Google PR update.

I have to confess to being a complete hypocrite in this matter. I sell text links via TLA and have even bought some on behalf of clients. Why wouldn’t I? It’s easy money and satisfies my clients who are obsessed with the pagerank game. If it gives them peace of mind and a way to make sense of things, so be it. I’m always just amazed at how many of my clients, extremely intelligent in so many respects, buy into this pagerank hoodwink. Of course it matters…I guess...but it’s just too random, without clear guidelines, to base anything concrete, business-wise, on. I have a lot of PR5 and PR6 websites which are just rubbish, make zilch moneywise and don’t appear in SE results for anything. Meanwhile, I have a lot of PR3 websites which have had a mountain of love and work put in, make lots of money and appear high in the SEs for a bunch of enquiries. As one of the comments said, by TallTroll, in reply to Matt’s aforementioned post-:

Matt, the professionals don’t care a lot about PageRank, and you know it.

And where it gets totally absurd is when people are buying text links in order to gain pagerank, so that they can in turn sell text links off the very same site they have been buying links for. Oh dear!! If only life were so simple....

I’ve been down this road before. Last year, on behalf of a large SEO firm in Dublin, with quite some trouble- I set up a team of manual reciprocal linkbuilders in Asia. I had 50 employees in place and had orders for over 100 websites, requiring an average of 300 confirmed, quality, relevant reciprocal links per month, each. Going on a 10% success rate, that’s approx. 3,000 websites researched per month, for each order- thus the significant manpower required. And then…the Jagger update happened in October, 2005. In a single day, our “business model” was gone and we were burnt. Out of the game. Finished. You could say that we had been unlucky- as what we were doing would have been almost a guaranteed success for the previous five years, so ours was just bad timing. In hindsight, however, I have come to realise that it was a “house built on sand“. On behalf of our clients, we were trying to artificially inflate their website’s ranking and employing shortcut SEO techniques, trying to fool Google and the other SEs in terms of link popularity.

This is the same scenario waiting to happen with paid text link ads. It’s not if, it’s when. Doomed. I’ll leave the final word to Matt Cutts-:

Many people who work on ranking at search engines think that selling links can lower the quality of links on the web. If you want to buy or sell a link purely for visitors or traffic and not for search engines, a simple method exists to do so (the nofollow attribute). Google’s stance on selling links is pretty clear and we’re pretty accurate at spotting them, both algorithmically and manually. Sites that sell links can lose their trust in search engines.

I have a confession to make- I’m a closet Deepak Chopra fan. I’m pretty cynical over a lot of the New Age stuff, but his logic cuts to the quick with me and I end up remembering his pearls of wisdom, quite unintended.

One phrase of his that sticks to my mind is Divine Dissatisfaction. And it’s a good one when thinking of how to build a successful blog. In the past, I have often gone quite potty in not understanding why, despite being somebody who would like to think of himself as “aware“, I can’t seem to ever sit back and just relax with a particular project. I can never say “job well done- that’s perfect.” Because it never is perfect. Resting on laurels just doesn’t ever feel right. So when Deepak articulated this in one of his books, it made me suddenly feel like I wasn’t some neurotic freak on his way to the asylum. Aaaah! It’s okay never to be quite satisfied….in fact….it’s recommended.

As Deepak recently wrote on the Intent Blog-:

Just as growing from infancy to adulthood radically shifts what you want from life, so does growing spiritually. Desire is always involved. The twists and turns of the detachment argument have worried generations of seekers, and still do. Nobody can adhere to all of these dicta, and since they often contradict each other, the result is conflict and confusion.

Desire....to make your blog as good as it possibly can be. Unlike static websites- blogs will not forgive neglect. Busy for a month and no time to post? Won’t do. Blogs need constant, tender care. Insomnia aside, what would be the driving force to make you go the extra mile? Greed? I doubt it- we’ve covered that one (I hope). Egocentrism? Maybe. What better motivating force could there possibly be than a thirst, ay a need, for perfection? And that this thirst is doomed to be forever unquenched, the need unfulfilled, the accomplished perfection to be elusive. But what great feats you will have accomplished on this frustrating path! In all aspects of your blog- content (break it down: grammar, spelling, interest…), design, technical and marketing- you are to be obsessively improving and improving and improving. Never satisfied.

How poetic is that!?

It does seem fitting to end with a quote from one of the greats, Robert Browning-:

“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp….”

My personal vision for the Bloggy Network is that it must, at its core, be a creative outlet for quality writing. If I could release my pet genie, I’d have all the greatest minds and writers in the world sharing their views on our blogs every day of the week. The thing that attracted me to blogging in the first place was its creative potential- the fact that one can immediately publish your writing (your personal opinions, thoughts, dreams and experiences) and share them with others across the world without geographic boundaries, political censorship or any time delay. The same could be said for the internet as a whole, but none as user-friendly or mainstream as is the case with blogs.

We must write unique, original and interesting stuff. And if we don’t, on my head be it. The dilemma, as any “blog network” owner must find- is getting people who can actually write. The only way to achieve this (that I can think of) is to create a platform that is sufficiently prestigious, so that those with the skill to articulate “life” on a certain level – will want to do so for free, knowing that the exposure guarantees impact.

That means a Top 100 blog and we’re not there yet! When I think of one of my most successful author friends, Alex Garland (The Beach, 28 Days Later, etc)- if I paid him and instructed him what to write about, apart from charging an arm and a leg, he’d do it begrudgingly for me at best. If I begged him to write about something he wanted to write on (knowing him, whatever he was feeling annoyed about at the time) and told him I couldn’t afford to pay him at all, he’d do it happily and enthusiastically!

Such, ironically, is the psyche of writers who can actually write....

So the aim here, first and foremost, is to create a blog that will attract the very best in writers and then, by natural recourse, a quality reader base. I have my doubts about whether you can “buy” this. It’s tempting at this point to do a bit of mud-slinging. I’m just amazed at the nonsense that is spewed out daily on some fairly high-profile blogs, owned by well known blog networks. So many, many words and such little sense. Aaargh! I’ve got my own problems. Sometimes discretion is indeed the better part of valor...

If you asked another former owner of this blog ( or not quite owner…whatever…-:) ), what the “key” to “measuring” a successful blog is, I’m pretty sure that he would say the answer lies in the statistics. Unique daily visitors, page views, CTR and so on. This along with the usual stuff- Google PR, Alexa, SE backlinks & indexed pages, inbound Technorati links, etc. All to be carefully analyzed and scrutinized as if we’re piloting a programme for primetime TV.

Again, I disagree. Too many smart Alecs out there, by a long shot, manipulating the stats and working the system. Just like revenue, statistical success will come later once you have found your voice and established your blog.

As in all disciplines of life, if you put your heart and soul into something and drive yourself to a sense of pride in your work- you will succeed. Online, offline- it doesn’t matter. You should never be afraid to make mistakes or to take risks. And you should act with dignity, honesty and integrity at all times. The inter-blog “cat fighting” that one witnesses all too much these days can be quite amusing, but it is also pretty much adolescent nonsense and a stain on the reputation of those involved. Bottom-line, it reads like a playground affair-: “I’m bigger, better and cleverer than you are. So there!“. Well done, maybe you are. But then again, take it from Socrates, if not from me- a wise man is only wise when he knows that he’s a fool. The profuse language commonly used in such blogs is often offensive for the sake of it and brings out the the worst, rather than the best, of those involved.

When making a plan for your blog, you must lay down some strong principles which you will stick to. One principle that I would like to discuss in a later post is the absolute need for unique and creative content. Another principle I would employ is to have no adult-related content or imagery on my blog. These, along with many others- are my choices. You must make your own. Whatever your choices are, don’t be swayed by the “statistics“- but rather your own sense of right and wrong. A good way of doing this might be to search through blog directories and bookmark the ones which you admire the most, then take note of the common threads of principles which they all adhere to (self-disclosure, privacy, spam, etc..).

Talking of Socrates, you could do worse in your search for definitive principles, than to adhere to his Triple Filter Test.

In short-:

– Is It True?

– Is It Good?

– Is It Useful?

Assuming that you adhere to your own principles, and strive for quality tenaciously, the statistics will look after themselves. Google et al will reward you royally. This is the future. The SE crawlers will become increasingly adept and will divert the traffic to the sites with the highest quality in terms of relevant and unique content. And those taking their SEO “shortcuts” will be left behind. At any rate, wouldn’t you far rather have 50 genuine site visitors every day on a blog- who gave interesting and eloquent feedback- and who were loyal to your site, rather than 5000 “semi-scrapers“? Yes, you’ll lose out on some digg votes or social tagging for now, but later on you will have built an authentic, genuine reader base that stays with you and grows as you and your blog does.

And all this (please forgive my prudish nature…each to his/her own) should give your blog a strong, long-lasting foundation for success. If it doesn’t, I have plenty of hats to eat.