by Eric Rowell (cofounder of www.adollo.com)
Treefrog Post (www.treefrogpost.com) is a new web industry blog who is a part of the Adollo network. You should definitely check them out! They’re a great source of web industry news for Adollo, and we’re happy to be partnered with them.
With so many people blogging these days, it’s pretty apparent that there’s money to be made in the blogging industry. Whether you’re just starting a blog, or if you already have one, you would probably like to earn some revenue from it. Who wouldn’t?
How to get readers
The golden rule of blogging is content, frequency, and consistency. In order to provide good, useful content to web surfers, you will need to publish fresh, interesting, and up to date content at least 4 times per week, and do so in a consistent manner. This is because you will begin to build a fan base, in which some of your readers may subscribe to your RSS feeds. Once you have readers following your blogs, it’s very important to meet their expectations and post consistently, especially if they are using your feeds for their own research or websites.
How much traffic do you need in order to make money?
Once you are getting a steady stream of readers, it’s time to start making some money! Let’s talk about realistic expectations first though. If you’re only getting a dozen unique hits per day, you won’t make a dime from blogging. Why? In order to make money, you need advertisers that are willing to pay you for potential traffic to their site. The reality is, only about 1 in 1,000 unique visitors will click on an advertisement to go to an advertisers page. In the advertising industry today, advertisers will typically pay about 25 cents per click. So, to make one dollar per day, you would need to generate about 4,000 unique hits per day on your blog. Yea, that’s a lot of hits! But it’s doable.
How to get advertisers
So, once your site is large enough to support advertisements, how do you find advertisers? There are three common ways to do this.
In my experience, the most effective way to earn money from advertisements is to use www.adollo.com. Once you create an account with them, you can set up your ad spaces and Adollo will provide you the html code to put into your website. Advertisers can find your ad spaces from the Adollo network, and rent the ad space for as long as they like. Adollo automatically updates the ad space in your webpage, and you get a check in the mail each month! It’s pretty straight forward.
The second way to get advertisers is to put a “Rent this ad space” area in your webpage. If an advertiser happens to read your blog, and wants to advertise with you, they can click on the link which will send them to a contact page or rates page that you have set up. After you’ve agreed on a price with the advertiser, he can pay you via PayPal (most common method of payment) and then email you the advertisement that he wants displayed on your webpage.
The third way to get advertisers is to use Google Adsense. Google Adsense can be a nice complement to Adollo, because it’s a different kind of advertising system. Google Adsense will automatically populate ads into your ad spaces, which makes ads more readily available for your blog, but yields less revenue than Adollo ad spaces.
Good Luck!
by Eric Rowell (cofounder of www.adollo.com)
With the announcement yesterday that Facebook will be adding a new “retweet” feature to stay ahead of Twitter, I thought that it would be a good time to look at where the companies stand today, and take a look at the futures of Facebook and Twitter. Will they ever join forces? Will they forever coexist? Or is this the beginning of an all-or-nothing battle, where only one of them will survive? Let’s take a look!
History of Facebook and Twitter
Facebook launched in 2004, and Twitter launched in 2006 (2 years later). Twitter had its own ideas about social networking, and was hoping that its platform could surpass the popularity of the current social networking sites at the time (Facebook and Myspace). From the time line above, you can see that Facebook immediately launches the news feed feature after Twitter is created. The “news feed” feature is basically a copy of Twitter’s platform, integrated with Facebook. Twitter probably didn’t see that coming.
This is about the time when Facebook begins to take the lead as the most popular social network, and when Myspace begins to decline in popularity. in 2006, we had three major social networking sites: the legacy social networking site Myspace, the micro-blogging social network Twitter, and Facebook which had the features of both. This is what allowed Facebook to pull in front.
Eager to acquire other smaller companies, Facebook tried to buyout Twitter for $500 million in November of 2009, but the deal didn’t go through. Almost a year later, Twitter launches the “retweet’ feature which basically allows users to pass messages around to other users. This brings us to yesterday, when Facebook announced that it will be introducing a “retweet” feature of its own very soon
Putting it together
So what does all this mean? Well, It’s clear that Facebook isn’t going to allow any other small social networking sites (like Twitter) to catch up. So what’s the best way to do this? Easy. Anytime someone else comes up with a good idea, copy it immediately and integrate it into your own site. That’s exactly what Facebook is doing. Sure, maybe it’s not very neighborly, but business is business. Take a look at Facebook’s and Twitter’s daily reach (courtesy of http://www.alexa.com)
At this stage in the game, if Twitter does anything new or innovative, Facebook is going to immediatly copy the idea and integrate it into their own website. Since Facebook is so much larger than Twitter, I think the only way that Twitter can survive in the future is if they do the same thing to Facebook, copy the ideas that work for Facebook, and integrate them. If they don’t, Facebook will continue to stomp them out until Twitter drops off the map just like Myspace did.
for more information, check out the following links:
http://mashable.com/2010/01/16/facebook-via/
http://kara.allthingsd.com/20081124/when-twitter-met-facebook-the-acquisition-deal-that-fail-whaled/
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc2009031_743025.htm
by Eric Rowell (cofounder of www.adollo.com)
What does Google have against client apps? Simple. They can’t make money from them with advertisements. The more time people spend on the web, the more opportunities Google has to make money from search advertising and display advertising. That being said, what could Google possibly do to make people start using the web more and use client applications less? Or for that matter, what could Google do to completely rub out client applications all together so that all users are on the web 100% of the time? That’s simple too: create a new standard of HTML for rich internet applications (RIAs) and create a new operating system that only runs web applications. And that’s exactly what they are doing. It’s called HTML5 and Google Chrome OS.
HTML5
HTML5 is the next version of HTML that is currently being developed by Google. Just like Flash 4 and Silverlight, its purpose is to give web applications the same rich user experiences that a client application can deliver. But unlike Flash which has to run in Adobe’s player, and Silverlight which has to run in Microsoft’s player, HTML5 will run in any browser without a plugin. The open source version of HTML5 was released this last month (October 2009), and the official version is supposed to be released in 2012. You can read more about HTML5 here:
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-content/html-5-new-elements-new-draft-update-report-002819.php
Google Chrome OS
Google Chrome OS is Google’s new operating system, which is scheduled for release at the end of 2010. It will be a free operating system bundled with netbooks (the notebooks that are used only to connect to the web.) I think it is no coincidence that Google has recently released the Google Chrome browser because I suspect that the browser may actually be a sort of beta for the new operating system. After all, the Google Chrome OS is basically just a fancy browser.
Google’s Vision of the Future
So let’s put this all together:
This looks like a very well coordinated set of releases if you ask me. By 2012, Google will have a free, solid operating system and its own version of HTML which everyone will be using. Google is obviously trying to eliminate the client application world. (Windows, Apple… be careful!)
Good luck, Google. We are rooting for you!
by Eric Rowell (cofounder of www.adollo.com)
That’s right, the number of web addresses are running out, and that’s a fact. How could this be possible?
The Problem with Web Addresses
All URLs (like www.adollo.com) are assigned to its own unique web address. Each of these web addresses are 32 bits, which means that there are 4.3 million possible internet web addresses. At the time this article was written, about 85% of all of the available addresses are already taken, and web experts predict that we will run out of them in about 2 years.
The Future of the Internet
So what’s going to happen? The next version of the internet (IPv6) will support 128 bit web addresses, which is astronomical. If web addresses became 128 bit, every single person on planet earth could own more a thousand websites! That’s alot of websites. It seems apparent that this is really the only solution to problem, but it’s going to come with a price.
Deja Vu
Remember when television went digital? Remember how everyone had to purchase analog to digital converters, buy new TVs, or upgrade thier television services? Well, it’s going to be the same story for stakeholders in the web. Just like when television went digital, there will be a period of time when IPv4 and IPv6 coexist until the world is ready to fully commit to IPv6. During this time, networks will have to support both protocals, just like television stations had to support both analog broadcasts and digital broadcasts until the government stepped in and mandated that every television station only broadcast digital channels.
For more information, check out:
by Eric Rowell (cofounder of www.adollo.com)
So What’s a Locking Column Grid Anyways?
A locking column grid is a grid that you can scoll vertically and horizontally, while the headers and certain columns stay in place. This is very handy if you are displaying a large amount of data that requires scrolling when you dont want to lose sight of your headers or certain columns of data.
Here’s what a locking column grid looks like:
The locking column grid is made up of four quandrants: the upper left, upper right, bottom left, and bottom right quandrants. The headers for the data grid are in the upper left and upper right quadrant. The columns that you want to always show are in the upper left and bottom left quadrant. The rest of scrollable data is in the bottom right quandrant. As you scroll to the right, the upper right quadrant also scrolls to the right so the columns match up, while the bottom left quadrant stays stationary. Likewise, as the bottom right quandrant is scrolled vertically, the bottom left quadrant also scrolls vertically while the top right quadrant stays stationary.
So how is a locking column grid made with HTML?
Easy! First, create the following html:
<table>
<tr>
<td>
<div id=”topLeftQuad”></div>
</td>
<td>
<div id=”topRightQuad” style=”overflow:hidden;”></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<div id=”bottomLeftQuad” style=”overflow:hidden;”></div>
</td>
<td>
<div id=”bottomRightQuad” onscroll=”scrollGrid()”></div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
Next, you need to insert your grid headers into the top left and top right quadrants using tables, and then insert your grid data into the bottom left and bottom right quadrants again using tables. Essentially, the locking column grid is composed of four different tables, each within a cell of a 2×2 table.
Finally, you will need to create the “scrollGrid()” function. When the bottom right quadrant is scrolled, this function will get the x and y scroll position of the bottom right quad. It will then set the x scroll position of the top right quad, and then set the y scroll position of the bottom left quad.
That’s it! Good Luck!
by Eric Rowell (cofounder of www.adollo.com)
So you have a new website, and you’re all excited to see it take off. You give it a couple days, a week, a month, and then you finally realize “okay… apparently this isn’t going to be as easy as I thought”. And you know what, you were right. Increasing traffic to your website takes a lot of hard work. Fortunately, there are five easy steps you can take to finally get your website rolling like you imagined!
1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
This should be the very first thing you do when launching your website. First, go to google and yahoo and then submit your website using the following urls:
Google – http://www.google.com/addurl/
Yahooo – http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
Next, you need to make sure that you include the title tag, decription meta tag, and the keywords meta tag at the top of your page. these tags look like this:
<head>
<title>Title of your Webpage</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”This is a description
of my website!”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”these, are, keywords”>
</head>
Next, you need to make sure that important titles in your webpage use the <h> tag. Finally, be sure that the file name of a particular webpage matches the content on that page. For example, if you have a webpage that lists different mouse pads that you have for sale, dont name the file “www.mysite.com/page1.html”. Instead, name it “www.mysite.com/mousepads.html”.
2. Start a Blog
Blogging is a great way to bring people to your website especially if you blog about hot topics that people will be searching for when using a search engine. For example, if you have a dating website, you might want to blog about the dangers of online dating, or about how online dating is becoming more socially acceptable in today’s age. If someone does a Google search for something you’ve written about, your blog can easily come up on the first page. Those web surfers who read your blog might be interested in also buying your product or trying out your services. Best of all, the blogs that you write will stay in cyberspace for a very, very long time! Blogging provides a consistent stream of new visitors to your website.
The best blogging tool by far is Word Press. You can download it here:
3. Link Partnerships
Once you have your blog rolling, it’s a good time to start partnering with other websites. A link partnership is when another website links to you, and in exchange, you link back to them. These partnerships not only send you traffic from the other websites, it also increases your ranking in search engines. Ever wonder how Google knows which websites to put at the top in search engines? Well, it’s determined by the website’s SEO and how many people link to them! Link Partnerships are very important!
4. Paid Advertising
Once steps 1 – 3 have been started, it’s time to start advertising! There are three major ways to advertise your website:
I would try all three and see which work best for you.
5. Press
Finally, submitting press releases will also yield a big return on new traffic to your website. The best place to publish a press release is www.prweb.com. Each press release costs about $80 to $360 depending on which packages you choose. It might seem a little pricey, but they are very effective! Once your press release goes live, you will instantly see your release in hundreds and hundreds of news websites and blogs. If you can afford it, a press release at least once per month is very effective. Even one press release published every few months is very helpful.
Good Luck!
by Eric Rowell (cofounder of www.adollo.com)
Once upon a time, you may have decided that it was time to try advertising your business online, and as a result you may have spent countless hours researching methods of getting more traffic to your website. After awhile, you probably began to realize that the dominant service out there for advertising your business is Google Adwords. And when you read about it, you were probably thinking “Wow! This looks like it will really work. I can put in $100 and instantly get some traffic!” Unfortunately, after your first ad campaign, you realized that you just blew $100 bucks for nothing. I know the feeling!! So what happened???
What’s Google Adwords?
Google Adwords is the leading service through which advertisers can advertise their businesses with text or image ads. Unfortunately, when you create a campaign with Google Adwords, you have no idea where your ads are going to show up. Yes, Google Adwords is supposed to be able to display your ads in relevant webpages pages (publishers who are using Google Adsense), but it’s far from accurate. For example, if you’re trying to advertise your hot rods forum, your ads might show up in some website about “Hot Peppers” or “Metal Art”. This means that the people clicking on your advertisements are less likely to to be really interested in your products or services, which means that you arn’t getting the biggest bang for your buck.
What’s worse is that there are a ton of very small websites out there trying to make money from Google Adsense by fraudulently clicking on the ads that show up in their webpages (which is money coming out of your pocket!!!) Everyday, people with crappy websites can simply click on the advertisements that appear in their pages on multiple computers to earn a small profit. This sucks!!
So what’s the alternative to Google Adwords?
Well, if you havn’t heard about Adollo, where have you been!? www.adollo.com is a revolutionary new way to better advertise your business. Adollo is an advertising network that allows advertisers (like you) to find and rent ad space from quality publishers.
So how does Adollo work?
To advertise your business, you can use the Adollo search engine to find websites who have available ad spaces that match your target audience. The results are ordered by rating which is a measure of the effectiveness of the ad space. You can quickly check the stats of each ad space (clicks, impressions, etc.) and even see exactly where your ad would be placed in the publisher’s webpages. Once you have found the ad spaces that you like, you can rent them for as long as you want (up to two weeks) starting on the date that they are available.
Where do I go to create an Adollo account?
You can create an Adollo account by going to:
by Eric Rowell (cofounder of www.adollo.com)
Some of you may have heard about JQuery but aren’t sure exactly what it is or when it’s good to be used, so I would like to take a moment to explain!
What is JQuery?
JQuery is a really cool open source Javascript library that makes Javascript development slightly easier and provides tools to create hover effects and animations very easily. You can download the source here:
When should JQuery be used?
I’ve asked several people what they think of JQuery, and most of them refer to its easy notation of accessing html elements via an id using:
$(“#id”)
instead of
document.getElementById(“id”)
It makes sense! It’s so annoying coding “document.getElementById(“id”)” everywhere in your javascript scripts. The second thing people mention is that it’s great for creating image galleries or slide shows with Javascript code if you don’t want to mess with using Flash.
For more information and good tutorials on JQuery, check out:
http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/jquery-tutorials-for-designers/
by Eric Rowell (cofounder of www.adollo.com)
For those of you hearing about Flex for the first time, you may be asking “what’s so special about Flex, and why should I use it instead of the Flash IDE?” Well I can help with that.
So what’s Flex anyways?
Flex is a framework developed by Adobe that enables developers to more easily develop RIA’s (Rich Internet Applications). The Flash IDE is great for creating animations and spiffy visual effects for web applications, but often times it is very tedious to create simple web forms and charts. The world is beginning to realize that web users want more and more flashy web interfaces, which has caused a lot of web developers to spend a ton of time in the Flash IDE (hence the creation of Flex).
When should you use Flex?
If you are creating web applications that use heavy flash, and you also want to use form components like text boxes and radio buttons, or you want to use other advanced web elements like data grids or charting, you definitely need to try out Flex. The Flex SDK is free to download, but you have to pay for Flex Builder 3 ($249 for the Standard edition and $699 for the professional edition). If you are serious about Flash development, I highly recommend purchasing at least the Standard edition. The Professional edition comes with alot of extra graphing and charting components. You can download the Flex Builder 3 free trial here:
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=flexbuilder3
Good Luck!