TouchGraph

A fascinating way to check out linkages to your web site: check out Touch Graph ... it's based off Google's "Related Pages"...

LinkedIn, some assembly required

I've generally viewed LinkedIn as a giant online phone book, with the added benefit of allowing me to keep up to date on career changes of folks I might not normally speak with. Thom Singer has a rant up today on his experience with LinkedIn. A user took offense to him refusing to connect, after he received the generic "You're a person I trust; let's link up" LinkedIn email.
Thom has a policy of "no linking unless we've shared a meal or a beer"...the question for him really is, is that the social norm at this point on LinkedIn> Given he's a public speaker, there are going to be a number of people who feel as though they have a connection, and would like to link to him... It's a tough call, since LinkedIn can rapidly turn into a network of people who want to make connections to sell something. Generally, people DO write nice intros, but I often find myself replying that I'll forward something, but it's going through someone I dimly know, and I can't verify it'll get to the end recipient. I've often thought that LinkedIn should allow some granularity with new contacts, for advanced users..something that would allow us to limit the contacts that requests might be forwarded on to.. Eg, if I've linked to person X, because we met at a trade show; maybe I don't want to forward requests through him, because I don't feel there's a connection there.
Thom's got to do what's right for him, weighing whether the occasional antagonized emailer is worth a clean network. I suspect for him it is.

Best bloglines tip ever

I found the best bloglines tip ever the other day. If you view the following screenshot of Bloglines, you'll see it shows 733 subscribers. If you, in a live Bloglines account, click on the number of subscribers, you'll see all those subscribers with a public blogroll. You can then click, and view their subscriptions. It's a great way to see who's subscribed to your blog, and/or find new blogs by people with a similar interest.

Xinu returns

I've been using a great new site lately, XinuReturns.com It'll give you a complete picture of site SEO rankings all in one place, rather than individually visiting, Google, Alexa, Delicious, Technorati, etc. Apparently, MovingLabs jumped in, after the creator couldn't afford the bandwidth.

Great online marketing links

Five link development experts talk shop:
Thought provoking piece on co-registration from Terrance Charles:
Facebook Flyers Pro: How Paul leveraged the launch.
Coming soon, the best bloglines tip ever.

Comparison Engines: Quality Score Impacts

PPC Super Affiliate has a great post on changes to Google's Quality Score ranks. The key phrase from Google:
The following types of websites are likely to merit low landing page quality scores and may be difficult to advertise affordably. In addition, it’s important for advertisers of these types of websites to adhere to our landing page quality guidelines regarding unique content.

* eBook sites that show frequent ads or install malware
* ‘Get rich quick’ sites
* Comparison shopping sites

This is a very interesting development, going into Q4 when the comparison engines typically raise their rates...Will they be able to get the traffic they need? I'll be curious to hear what Brian Smith or Scott Wingo have to say.
Amit has a take from the affiliates perspective.

Internet Retailer security breach

I received a note from Internet Retailer letting me know that their website had been hacked, and that I should contact my credit card company to request a new card.
Kevin Hillstrom has done a good job covering the situation, and the irony of Internet Retailer magazine being hacked. from his blog: "The letter I received does offer an apology, which is appreciated. The letter gives me steps to take to protect my credit information. Internet Retailer does not offer me anything, as a loyal customer, in exchange for a very serious mistake that may significantly impact my life, no discount on a future publication, no free reports, nothing."
From PogoWasRight.org, Jack Love... added that only a portion of the company's customers were compromised because the data was pulled offline as soon as the publisher was alerted by a customer that there was a problem. This begs for further elaboration...and I found it at DarkReading, where apparently the hackers really only could access one account at a time. I'm willing to accept that.
What I am confused by, is Internet Retailer doesn't have anything on their site, they didn't send an email (yes, it might have been perceived of as phishing, but it would have alerted people), they didn't call (obviously very time consuming, as I'm assuming this was a fairly significant breach), and their letter that was dated 9/7, just got here today, 9/19. No postmark, but I'm skeptical that it really went out on that date. It'll be fascinating to see how Internet Retailer covers this.

Marketing Pilgrim

Marketing Pilgrim posted a request for comments on their site. It's one of the sites on I have on my start page. The two most useful things I've generally found are their link posts, which are usally good for a take on current marketing issues online, and their point of view on the latest Internet marketing trends. For example, their thoughts on BlogRush have been very useful, as far as their click thru rates, and what they see as the value, or lack thereof.

Pagii launches

I've been checking out Pagii, the new "social publishing" site from Freewebs. It's got a very cool authoring interface..basically, true drag and drop anywhere on the page. Many of the elements can be resized as well.. It seems like a great way to create a collage or locker type wall, which I'm sure will appeal to the demographic it's targeting. I've created my own Pagii page, but it's unclear if the external world can see it without an account. They have also put together a very slick photo-importing app from Flickr, that will let you add any photo from your photostream onto your page. I can easily see where this would have fantastic utility as a scrapbooking application. There are a few rough edges still visible, but it's a fun app. Now, the big question will be, how do you drive traffic to it?

Car dealership consistency

How does your marketing resonate with your customers?
I recently was at one of the Pohanka dealerships to have some car work done. They had a giant sign behind the front desk comparing prices to other dealerships in the area, attempting to show that the total cost of having work done, wasn't so bad vs. other dealerships in the area. It seemed to make some valid points; that there were lesser diagnostic charges, and they had some add ons, so the $100+hour tech rate wouldn't be so bad. Obviously, they'd gotten dinged by a variety of people about this. They even had the same sign above the stalls in the bathroom. Which is where the helpful information broke down, in the small print. The survey was done in March of 2006. 18 months ago! If you're going to go to the trouble to try and convince people you're offering people a premium product, you need to be consistent, and one part of that would be to have up to date data. I have a feeling it wouldn't change, but a lot of people probably saw the date, laughed, and discounted the entire marketing effort they'd put into it, because of that detail.

Blogrush

I'm trying out BlogRush, which is the new widget down on the left side of the blog. It's a new, viral web traffic driver that's out. Supposedly, it shows related posts, and posts your articles on widgets on other blogs, after yours is viewed. The traffic exchange component is what interests me; I'll update stats as I start to see new visitors.

Review my blog

I've had several reviews done lately of my blog. Folks such as Charles Lau and Matt Huggins have offered valuable suggestions on revamping the blog. I've implemented several, such as updating permalinks and the RSS logo, and am working on others, like the font/colors of the blog. I'd like to extend the offer to others; post a review of this blog, link to it in the comments, and I'll link back to you from the front page of this blog, which currently has a Google Pagerank of 5.

Top 100 blogs about making money online

Mark from 45n5 posted a brillant list of the Top 100 bloggers about making money online. He's managed to get a lot of links and publicity in return for the investment of time he made in putting it together. It's interesting to see the stats of the top blogs. While my blog isn't in the "make money now!!! vein", it does focus on online retailing, which probably results in a bit fewer visits and hits... However, looking at some of the stats, I'd probably break into the top 100, or come close, which is nice to see.

Speaking at Conferences

I'm speaking at ad:tech in November. I saw this post on the nature of speaking on panels at conferences. Some good thoughts on how you put a conference together, without relying too much on people trying to sell their products.

Blogger issues - part 2

I've used Blogger as my authoring platform for the last five years or so. I've been contemplating making the change to WordPress for a bit now. There seem to be some good tools to migrate over, and maintain the permalinks for existing posts. My current issue with Blogger related pages is there inability to index properly (or what I would consider properly in Google). For example, I have written posts on "baby shower cards" and Corey Stroeder. The baby shower card post has a URL of http://www.joshgreene.com/2007/08/baby-shower-cards.html. However, Google seems to continually index my main URL, www.joshgreene.com, rather than the extended URL, which makes it difficult for someone coming through Google to see the exact post. There are links to the permalink URL, which makes this challenging to fix. More as I research it further.

Why so many posts?

If you subscribe to this blog via email, you may have noticed several recent days with many posts, many of which seem recurring. I'm updating all the posts with titles, so you'll be seeing a number of older posts show up, as I go back through and update them. I'll also post, in the next few weeks, some indications of what impact this has had on Google rankings. Previously, all blog posts had just indexed under www.joshgreene.com, without the detailed URL information, and I'm now on the way to getting this changing.