John Chow is an online idol of mine. While I don’t agree with how heavily he monetizes his blog, you have to respect someone that can do so well from their blog. Sidenote: he is a fellow Canadian He recently released a post talking about valuing advertising space on your blog and makes some good points.

Here is a snippet from the article:

The bottom line is Google AdSense can only get you so far. If your prime ad spot isn’t pulling in the kind of money you like then ask yourself what you can replace it with. Can you sell the spot to a direct sponsor? Can you replace it with an affiliate deal? Would the spot do better promoting your own site(s)? Would it be better just to get rid of the spot? The key is to experiment and mix things up. It is a lot easier to double blog income by tweaking than it is to double income by doubling blog traffic.

There are very few websites though that have maximized their potential with Google’s AdSense program, but working on various high level blogs, I have seen situations where this has occurred, and like John, private sales seem to be the best way to attain the maximum amount of money from an advertising spot.

The last thing I would like to say about all this is that bloggers should try hard to balance their need to monetize their traffic with the user experience of the site. I find certain types of advertising really put me off using a site.

Read John’s full article for some insightful details on how you can get the most money for your advertising space.

Originally posted on August 17, 2007 @ 2:08 am

I deal with massive quantities of information every day. My wife makes fun of me because I can barely remember what I did yesterday due to the millions of things I have to sift through every day.

It was great to see an article on Web Worker Daily about dealing with information overload. My favourite entry in the list was of course number three:

3. Work less. Again, I submit that we get away from the mindset that we need to do more, more, more, and decide that we want to focus on the few things that are important to us. In order to do that, we have to eliminate things that are unimportant to make room for the important. And leaving some space around the things in our life (don’t schedule every minute) leaves us with a little breathing room and a little sanity. While I’m not saying you can achieve a four-hour work week, I do think you can achieve a 40-hour work week, and probably much less. I’ve been slowly reducing the hours I work, so that I now put in about 24 hours a week, and I’m planning on cutting that to 16. The key is to decide what is important, and focus on those things.

Read the whole list on Web Worker Daily.

Originally posted on August 9, 2007 @ 10:43 pm

Mark Evans has written a great post about newspapers and how they should be focusing themselves in this very blog and new media centric world. I have watched as newspapers continually become more and more obsolete, and that is not something I think the world is really ready for. I still enjoy reading printed news but I find myself sticking to the free local newspapers that cover what is going on in the city I live in.

Mark had this to say about focusing on local:

2. Local, local, local: Forget about spending your editorial budgets on national and international coverage because lots of people/organizations can do that job for you at a much lower cost. Instead, pour your money into local coverage where there’s less competition. For anyone still reading newspapers, stories about higher property taxes, real estate trends and crime will continue to be compelling.

This is one of those rare times where I completely agree with the plan that someone has come up with for newspapers to remain relevant. I hope the people in charge see his post, and take action.

As for us bloggers out there, how the newspaper and all “old” media companies learn to react to the continuing shift to have everything online, be aware that traditional news outlets could quickly become our biggest competition.

Originally posted on August 8, 2007 @ 11:22 pm