Random thoughts…

Year end is coming and it is good time for reviewing accounting. Last year I spent over $40,000 for content for our real estate websites (for example HomesParadise.com or CoastParadise.com ). Was it worth it? Honestly it wasn’t. You hear a lot that search engines loves content, but I didn’t get any special placement with the above websites even when there is plenty of content, which is original and good quality. On the other hand some other websites with minimum content investment brought much more in revenues. I don’t want to mention them at this forum, because I am not really proud of them. They are pure lead generation or AdSense revenue websites with no quality content. But ROI on them is 100x better then above examples. All websites were treated the very similar way in SEO optimization and link building. It just seems that investment in quality content wasn’t the best one.

Great tool to help you understand better who is coming to your blog and what the users are doing… MYBLOGLOG.com.

Where are your readers coming from? Where do they go when they leave your site? These are the core questions that every blogger needs answered in order to take part in the global conversation. MyBlogLog provides you with answers quickly, quietly and efficiently. Our Outgoing Link Tracking shows you which links on your site are most compelling to your readers, enabling you to tune your content and keep readers coming back. Our Real-Time Referrer service keeps track of who’s linking to your site and gives you that information now, not tomorrow.

I am looking for some ideas how to solve keyword searching in photo galleries. Adding keywords manually to thousands of photos is hassle. Also there are many keywords for each photo and one person can choose different keywords than other person. For example picture of the beach like this one:

Possible general keywords: beach, sun, ocean
Geographical keywords: Norther California, USA
Emotional keywords: fun, beautiful scenery
Plus every language will have its own names…

There are many more possibilities and I am looking for some way how to tag photos by as many keywords as possible. This should be something to get involved people with different backgrounds. Any ideas?

This is a great program for changing size, file names and resolution of large volume of photos. It is free and works great!

This is coming from guy who started GoTo.com, which later became Overture.com.

A year ago, Gross introduced the online world to his new vision: Snap.com, which is providing another commercial twist on search engines while also promising to deliver more useful results than industry leaders Google and Yahoo. The idea is Pay-Per-Action, or PPA, where the “sale” is the action. According to their website, Snap states, “Instead of relying on computer algorithms to rank search results, Snap also uses click-stream information from a network of one million Internet users. By recording and processing which Web sites users spend time on, and which sites they quickly leave, Snap improves the likelihood that the search results you get will be the results you’re really looking for.” Gross’s record of innovation helped separate Snap from other startups trying to elbow their way into the search engine industry, while offering an innovative and revolutionary method of no-risk advertising.

Damn, just another idea I am playing in my head almost 3 years and never made it happen:-) I think it is pretty good idea to see on what websites users stick. It seems to me that links as a measure of web popularity are so manipulated, that they are using their power and relevancy as they had in the past. There is definitively space for another approach, which might bring better relevancy then current leading search engines. If you are interested in discussion how such search engine should work don’t hesitate to contact me. In the meantime try how Snap.com works. It is very interesting.

I like to travel and sleep in good hotels. Priceline is a big help, but you have to know how much to bid. If you don’t know check out BiddingForTravel.com where other travellers post how much they bid and got hotel rooms. It will give you idea how much to bid for your hotel room. For example I was able to get most of the times hotel room in Los Angeles for only $35-$40 in places like Courtyard, Marriott, Homestead Inn, etc.

This is great video. Check it out. I met Bernard Ablola on PubCon conference in Las Vegas. Bernard is great guy and he will be very successful very soon. I checked his website this morning and found that video for Apprentice… and it made my day. Good stuff! Don’t laugh. I will start some venture with Bernard very soon and let you know how many millions we made! I think he will make more money with me then with Donald Trump:-) We have good ideas already in progress!

I just might say I am totally hooked on this blog: Xooglers. A gathering spot for ex-Googlers to reminisce and comment on the latest developments in search. Very interesting reading. Gives you idea how Google works…

I finally decided to stop guessing where visitors are clicking on our websites. Yesterday I purchased ClickTracks, which is program allowing you to see where people are clicking on your website plus much more. There is stuff you will not see in Google Analytics (which is not working properly at this moment anyway).

Just short example from this real estate website homepage:

I always thought that people are more interestd in New homes from Builders than Resale Homes (listed by agents). Now I know that nearly three times users are interested in Resales homes… but you can also see that they want to go and browse homes for sale. They don’t want to sign up for FLASH REPORT with dayly emails about homes for sale… very interestign stuff. It seems we have to redo the page completely, but it is good to know what to do and what is important to our users.

Some time ago I found out that few changes in color and placement of ad makes huge difference in CTR on Google Adsense ads. I didn’t find that myself. Actually my friend Vlado is taking care of some of my websites and he had much better results with ads than I had. Very similar websites were bringing triple or even more in ad revenues. These were all website with very small number of visitors (60-90 per day). I didn’t even pay attention, because I thought it doesn’t make any sense to spend more time on such small websites.

Let’s just got to very hypothetical example. Again, I am not discussing any existing website. It is all just example.
Website A and website B have all 90 visitors a day. Both are about the same topic.
Website A has regular AdSense code. No special placement and no color changes. Ad revenue per day $0.25. CTR about 0.50%.

Website B has optimized colors and placement. Ad revenue per day $3.00. CTR about 20%.

$3.00 per day is not a lot of money. But this is not website which will appear on the first few pages on search engines. This is average website lost somewhere in the SERP (search engine result page). If you look from long term view it is still worth it to do proper changes and make money. Especially if you have more websites like that. All combined together can bring nice extra money.