أرشيف شهر نوفمبر, 2007

nextMEDIA: Canada’s Digital Advertising Market Opportunities

نوفمبر 30, 2007 في 2:59 م · Filed under Advertising, Feature

Bryan Segal from comScore attended the event and gave a speech about their metrics service, which measures where people go on the Internet.

He also gave some great data on how Canada is doing in the world. Things like how we have the highest broadband penetration in the world with 72% of Canadians on the web, compared to 60% of the USA, and 54% of the UK. We may not have the most visitors online, but percentage based we have the most.

I found that very interesting because our country is so vast, and similar in many ways to the US in our need for technology, and broadband access, and yet, we’ve done better.

As for average page views per user, Canada also ranks first in that metric as well, coming above the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States of America.

Being that comScore is all about metrics, Bryan continued to hand out some startling data, including the fact that over 5.5 million Canadians visit Facebook, every single day. While I knew the social networking website was popular, especially in Canada, I had no idea it had progressed so far. No wonder the founders are so happy.

Sites like Facebook, MySpace and their competitors have grown 21% in the last year in Canada, with social networking sites now reaching 82% of all Canadians connected to the Internet, compared to 62% of those online in the US.

He also noted, via the comScore data, that Facebook is more popular in Canada than MySpace in large part to Canadians not rushing to MySpace. So despite our well connected country, we are slower at joining new services on the web, and so when something “new and better” came along, many Canadians hadn’t spent the time developing a profile on MySpace, and signed up for the first time to use Facebook.

I found the statistics very interesting and it seemed many content creators at the conference were excited as well. Especially, as these Canadian attendees try to attract the attention of the highly connected, multiple page viewing, Canadian Internet audience to their sites and services.

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AdBrite Takes In Another $23 Million

نوفمبر 29, 2007 في 6:03 م · Filed under Quick Notes

I don’t know yet if this is a sign of an advertising network getting stronger, or just running out of money, and trying to add more water to a leaking bucket, but TechCrunch has posted an article letting the world know that AdBrite has taken in another $23 million USD in funding.

From TechCrunch:

Ad networks are still catching money like rain. AdBrite raised $23 million from existing investors Sequoia Capital and Hedge fund Artis Management, reports Dan Primack. This is on top of $12 million, the company has already raised. In October, comScore ranked AdBrite as the 26th largest ad network after MySpace.

Have you used AdBrite and enjoyed its service? I have looked at it numerous times, but never really committed to their offerings. Have your say in the comments.

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nextMEDIA: Trends and Tools for Monetizing Digital Media

نوفمبر 29, 2007 في 12:49 ص · Filed under Feature, Monetization

This is continuing coverage of the nextMEDIA conference in Toronto. To find all the posts related to nextMEDIA, check out Splashpress’ Blog

The fourth session at nextMEDIA was entitled, “Trends and Tools for Monetizing Digital Media”. It seemed to focus much more on the trends, rather than anything else.

Duncan Steward, Director at Deloitte Research, had way too much text on his slides, and that reduced my ability to really figure out the root ideas of his presentation, but he did still bring up some great points.

Duncan mentioned that content producers should not repurpose content for other platforms. It seems easy enough to do sometimes, but by doing so, you are compromising the benefit you could be giving to your user.

He also spent a fair bit of time talking about traditional media, saying that while we are multitasking and television has become background noise for many people, only recently has there been a shift in attention away from television, where people are spending more time on the Internet than watching TV.

Duncan also noted that the majority of the Canadian population still reads magazines (as high as 72%). I found that shocking in one sense, as I continue to hope for the demise of the traditional published work, but I do understand the need for people to hold the magazine in their hands.

He also made an interesting statement that I don’t agree with and that is that “generations are different, but not extremely so”.

Deloitte also puts out predictions every year, and Duncan gave us a look at their 2008 list which includes:

  • HD Content is past the tipping point
  • Traditional media starts tapping the online world more
  • Millennials getting bored of digital (18-25 hitting a digital saturation point).

A very statistic oriented session, but another one that makes the online world look better and better to the advertisers that were both sitting in the audience and the ones online reading articles such as this.

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nextMEDIA: Travel

نوفمبر 28, 2007 في 9:49 ص · Filed under Community

This is a report of my travel to the nextMEDIA conference in Toronto. Full coverage of this event can be found on a variety of sites, but I will be linking all the posts from the Splashpress Blog.

Getting up early wasn’t a real issue, though I didn’t sleep well the night before the conference, feeling a little like a child waiting for Christmas, when the alarm went off at nearly five in the morning, I leapt from the bed and started my final preparations to go.

The train boarded just before departure time, and being awake at six thirty in the morning started to feel really early. In two hours I would be in Toronto, and walking towards the conference. I would miss breakfast, but I am not a big breakfast eater anyways.

Going to nextMEDIA in Toronto is rather exciting for me because I am still new to the conference scene. A friend of mine online let me know that going to conferences would get old as I continued to travel around, but I enjoy traveling, despite not taking the time to enjoy each place.

Like this Toronto trip. I got up at five in the morning to go, and I will be coming home tomorrow right after the conference is finished. I could have probably arranged to stay another day, but my wife would miss me too much or at least that is what I like to believe.

I also try to find the least expensive ways to attend events, while I believe going to conferences is a valuable experience, being in what amounts to a startup environment compels me to try to be as inexpensive as possible with such trips so that we can allocate money for more important things, like my monthly pay.

One thing I am glad about though is that I am not taking the bus. I am so sick of traveling by bus, so the train is a welcome change. This will be my fourth major conference since I started blogging and so far, each conference I have attended has been better than the last. I will have more on if nextMedia continues that trend, though I think Mesh Conference in Toronto will be very hard to beat.

As we slowly shuffle forward in the train, the snow is getting thicker and thicker, until we hit the metropolis of Toronto, with its heavy pollution, and thus no snow.

I am very happy I brought my laptop on this trip, and while I didn’t take advantage of the expensive WiFi on the train, ($10 for 24 hours, $4 for 15 minutes) the multimedia on my laptop was more than sufficient to keep me entertained for the two hour train ride. Even better, they have power outlets for laptops on the train, which allow me to not run my battery down.

I am still slowly waking up, and already the conference doors have swung open by now for the breakfast eat-in. It’s a shame I am not already there, as during the Norther Voice conference in Vancouver last year, the breakfast was a great time to meet people.

Thankfully, I will be arriving before the opening speech. I hope to see James Cogan early on in the conference as having a friendly face nearby provides a fair bit of confidence in meeting people, while also giving a safety net when you just want to relax and enjoy some sessions.

Conferences are a thousand times better when you have someone there with you. I highly recommend bloggers and blog networks send two people to conferences.

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nextMEDIA: Who’s Attending?

نوفمبر 26, 2007 في 1:16 م · Filed under Community

As I get ready for the nextMEDIA conference in Toronto, I have been slowly going over the list of companies and speakers that are attending, and I am getting really excited. The caliber of people making this conference great, are the upper echelons of the online who’s who, and I am excited to be attending and listening to them talk.

Here are just a small sampling of people that will be there:

  • Leonard Brody, CEO, Now Public
  • David Carson, Co-CEO, Heavy.com
  • Joe Casale, CEO, Casale Media Inc.
  • Mathew Ingram, Technology Columnist, The Globe & Mail
  • Will Pate, Community Evangelist, ConceptShare
  • Bryan Segal, Senior Director, Comscore Media Metrix
  • Dick Soule, Head of International Sales, YouTube

While I have seen Will Pate at a few events in Canada, I hope that this time I get a chance to speak to him. I also hope to have a chance to talk to Mathew Ingram, a great guy with an interesting job. I am actually a little nervous to be going to such a conference, though I have a feeling that I am still not well known enough to get “noticed”.

I remember when I went to my first web-related conference, one person recognized the company I worked for and called me “the guy that works for the guy that bought Scrivs’ sites”.

I hope to see some friendly faces, and I hope the event goes well. How can anyone get sick of going to conferences?

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Tips for Public Speaking: Useful in Blogging as Well

نوفمبر 26, 2007 في 10:01 ص · Filed under Quick Notes

I found a huge list of tips for public speaking, and what I quickly realized is that many of them would be great for bloggers, video bloggers, and podcasters. As we continue to develop our skills, tips like these become more relevant and more useful, and so I thought I would point it out.

Here are just the first ten from a list of two hundred and fifty.

  • Audience always comes first, ask yourself “How can they benefit from listening to me?”
  • Remember, it’s never about you!
  • Stage time, Stage time, Stage time.
  • Humor is greatly appreciated by your audience. Have you ever hear someone complain “This guy is way too funny!”?
  • Never try to wing a speech – your audience will know it.
  • Most people seek validation and not education – don’t be like most people.
  • If you want to be twice as good in 70 days, do a self evaluation after every speech or presentation.
  • We all bomb – get over it.
  • More importantly, learn how you can get better the next time.
  • Don’t ever imagine your audience naked. Unless you are a pervert who gets your high on seeing naked bodies.

Check out the rest of the list from the Public Speaking Blog, and let me know which ones you find that are relevant to bloggers, as I am curious to see if you’ve noticed the same ones as I have.

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Make Money Online Blogs You Must Read

نوفمبر 26, 2007 في 9:43 ص · Filed under Feature

In the blogging industry, there are very few that give you real information that you can use to build your blog into a powerhouse. Some teach, others lead by example, and still others give out ideas that could make you millions of dollars that they themselves haven’t the time to use.

With hundreds of blogs in the make money online arena, how do you do know which ones to follow? I am here to cut through all the crud. There won’t be any spam blogs in this list, nor any blogs that have recently been sold. I want to make sure you have the best blogs to follow.

Problogger

Problogger – Darren Rowse is an australian who has risen to fame quite slowly, but has deserved all the attention he has created. Darren is a blogging teacher. The way he words his articles, you can tell they have been given significant thought. While I sometimes believe he asks more questions than he answers, getting us to all think is never a bad thing. If you want to become a better blogger, then this is the blog to read.

If you want to make a bunch of money online, you will want to move on to others in this list. While Darren does make a fair bit of money from his blogging efforts, he doesn’t really give away information on how he does it, rather keeping that knowledge closer to his vest pocket, so to speak.

Without Darren’s help, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today. One of the best bloggers you will ever talk to.

Shoemoney and/or John Chow

Shoemoney, and John Chow have very similar blogs. I find John Chow pushes affiliate programs a bit more than Shoemoney does, but either blog will give you great examples of how you have to monetize in this day and age, as well as some sound advice.

Also, if you watch their blogs closely, you will get a heads up on great affiliate programs and advertising programs that may help you generate revenue off your blog.

Be warned though, that both of these blogs (especially John Chow), stray off topic, and can be a little “spammy” in nature, as they continue to do whatever is necessary to build revenue from their respective sites.

Performancing

Performancing is a very strong, long lasting brand in the blogging scene. It is a multi-author blog, where anyone can post their opinions and have them widely read, but they only get on the front page if you are good at writing. Their standard list of authors are very knowledgeable and friendly, having helped me out in many ways over the past year.

Performancing is a community, and that is something hard to build. You can learn about link bait, search engine optimization, and many other very important aspects of blogging that some other sites don’t really give much focus to.

Daily Blog Tips

Daily Blog Tips will give you some sound advice, and a great conversation in its comments section. With an active community of people in the comment section of the site, you can learn much more than what is put in the already very detailed articles. I suggest checking out Daily Blog Tips for another view on the blogosphere, and some interesting advice, but more than anything, involve yourself in the conversation going on in the comment section of nearly every post.

45n5

45n5 will give you ideas, and ask questions which we should all be thinking about. Mark, writes very well, and has an interesting opinion on the blogging world, but even better, he is not shy in giving out advice, and ideas. The ideas that he tosses out are amazing, and if you have the drive and determination to follow them through and build something, Mark will be there cheering you on.

Also, Mark is one of the few that actually does video, and while this is interesting, and sometimes more helpful than text, as it provides context, inflections, and other visual cues, it probably doesn’t do as well in the search engines than if he had written all his thoughts out.

Mark has allowed me to join his Group Platform project, where I will be working on AltSciFi

Entrepreneur’s Journey

Entrepreneur’s Journey is a blog by Yaro Starak, a well known online celebrity of sorts. The reason you should be checking this site out is that it gives some entrepreneurial information, and helps drive any self-employment spirit you may have.

Yaro hands out some interesting advice, though I don’t like the posts done by other people on this blog, overall, it is still an amazing resource. With business information, passionate articles, and a bit of friendly advice, Yaro has done quite well with his blog, and I would consider it a needed addition to your daily reads if you want to stay passionate about online business.

Blogging Tips

Blogging Tips is a massively multiplayer online blogging related blog. Currently, one of the biggest MMOBRB’s* out there, Kevin, its owner, has done a great job bringing many personalities, points of view and types of advice together into one giant resource.

Subscribing to Blogging Tips is like subscribing to more than half a dozen different blogs, all of which are relatively high quality. The type of information, tips and advice runs from novice to expert, and includes some really amazing, writers, designers, copywriters, and many other backgrounds.

*MMOBRB – Massively Multiplayer Online Blogging Related Blog is a term made up by me to be funny, but I do think it fits well. Feel free to use it and adopt the term into our wonderful blog society.

Freelance Folder

Freelance Folder is a blog about being a freelancer, and blogging, be it for yourself, or for a blog network is very much like freelancing. It is very inspirational to read some of the posts done on this blog are done by freelancers, some very into the blogosphere. There are a fair number of really amazing posts on this blog, but they also point out posts on other sites that would be of value.

Definitely worth subscribing to if you are going to continue to blog, or write freelance for blogs over a long period of time.

Conclusion

Sure, there are other blogs out there that are great, don’t get me wrong, but with this group, you should be able to learn enough to make your blog successful.

Of course I also recommend subscribing to this blog, eXtra for Every Publisher, as I think my advice, as a network paid full time blogger, will be very different than the opinions found on the above list.

If you would like an OPML (file with all the feed locations) of the above blogs, feel free to download it here: Make Money Online Blog Feeds (right click and select save as..)

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30 Must Read Articles To Help Kick Start Your Blog

نوفمبر 25, 2007 في 4:08 م · Filed under Quick Notes

A great post from My Tropical Escape today, which has links to some great blogs and articles that can help get your blog running. I think starting a blog is great, and it has given me a career, but remember, it isn’t just starting a blog that’s important, but keeping it going.

Here is a snippet from the article:

There are a tremendous amount of sites on the internet today that promise to assist you in your blogging venture and just like everything else in life, some of it’s good and some of it is horrible.

To help you save some time (yes, I am very kind!), I thought that I would piece together an informative article to help those of you out there who might be frustrated with blogging, looking for some inspiration, searching for a few additional tips to help promote your site, or are interested in making money online.

Check out the full list, and hopefully next time they will add Xfep.com to their must read list.

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Over 200 Feed Readers

نوفمبر 22, 2007 في 4:06 م · Filed under Site News

Around two weeks ago I had 183 RSS feed readers according to Feedburner, and I am proud to say that I have finally hit another milestone on this blog, and have over 200 RSS feed readers according to Feedburner. I want to take a quick second to thank everyone that has subscribed. I plan on putting up some amazing articles before this month is out, and I hope you will stick with me.

For all of you that have not subscribed yet, click on the big orange RSS logo over to the right, and get subscribed. If you don’t know what RSS is, or how to subscribe, I recommend filling out your e-mail in the form at the bottom of the right hand sidebar, and clicking subscribe. This will allow Feedburner to send you updates on this blog to your e-mail.

And just to make it clear: I will never distribute or sell any personal information that you submit to this site.

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nextMEDIA 2007: I’ll Be There

نوفمبر 21, 2007 في 11:37 م · Filed under Community, Feature

nextMEDIA 2007Thanks to James Cogan and Splashpress Media, I will be attending the nextMEDIA 2007 conference in Toronto on the 27th and 28th of November.

The conference hails itself as the monetizing digital media event and will have speakers from companies like YouTube, NBC Universal, Google, and many other heavy hitting companies.

I am very excited about attending and want to thank the organizers of the event for what is sure to be an amazing two days.

Here is some text from their website:

With the skyrocketing popularity of online video, social media and digital advertising, opportunities have never been greater for content creators, advertisers and online publishers to work together to leverage digital technology for increased profitability.

Enter nextMEDIA – Monetizing Digital Media: a unique digital entertainment, interactive advertising, and technology conference dedicated to connecting all sides of today’s rapidly evolving digital media marketplace. Delegates will come away with the tools and contacts that will enable them to create and execute profitable digital strategies for their organizations.

One of the things that has me really excited is the fact that there is only one stream of speakers to follow. While this makes presentations shorter than other events, I am very happy to not have to choose which sessions I hear, and which sessions I miss.

You can expect a lot of coverage of the conference here, and on other Splashpress Media blogs.

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