Tamar Weinberg (Photo credit: Tamar Weinberg)

What are the Best Ways to Monetize your blog?

Adsense – I think it’s a good way to monetize one’s blog and definitely worth doing. For someone who’s a beginner there’s a great article worth reading by Daniel Scocco called 28 ways to monetize your website. It is one of those easy things to do…it’s easy to set up.

I recommend that you have a lot of content on your blog, and an audience, then add Adsense later – you can make a lot of money because it’s contextual.

I use AdSense on photo generated sites – and it works there too.

A word of warning, if you have AdSense on your site – don’t click on your own ads – I have people who have have been banned from it as a result of this. It’s too easy for Google to track your IP address.

Feed Advertising

Adsense for Feeds – that’s interesting – someone like me who has been using advertising for a long time but the CTR of RSS is lower than that of banner ads.

It’s not great – if you want that extra income source it’s an inconvenience. There is an opportunity for FeedBlitz to jump in and reach people offering a monetizable RSS solution. [Thanks, Tamar, we did]

The CTR is low but it’s your choice – there is a CTR. If you are going to offer it it shouldn’t be your sole focus. Go more for on site adverts than RSS.

What is the Future for Feedburner?

I think that it sucks Google did what they did to withdraw the RSS advertising opportunity. It sucks for the publishers. It was a good product that was completely neglected. If there was someone with the passion and the team support to do it, I think it could be revived. It went in the garbage because no one was able to resuscitate and make it happen. That’s a sore point for everyone who’s involved in the space.

I think the creator must be upset.

Is FeedBlitz a Good Alternative?

The concern I have is that it’s not a free service and Google had a free service – they had a lot of metrics that they didn’t generally use.

Unless there is someone who can bring it to life again with the support of Google, it’s a great opportunity for you guys to take on the big giant – and it doesn’t seem to care any more. It’s a powerful tool – it’s a great tool.

And I have my RSS feed and it’s set it and forget it.

The Future of RSS?

RSS is not ever going away – there is so much power in it. We don’t even know how integrated it is in things we use every single day. The technology is very important, it’s critical. All the more power to the person who works to make it easily digestible – and all our data is so easy to consume – it’s a must have for publishers.

We’d like to thank Tamar for this great interview, and ask you…what are your thoughts on the future for bloggers?

What I found was something surprising. Not only can we track the normal stats, we can also pay attention to how engaged the readers are (even if they don’t comment), whether or not they’re big readers, and increases in subscribers (hi Feedblitz!).

The way to track those things are to set up goals in your analytics by time spent on site, pages visited by engaged users (in other words, not everyone, which is what Google gives you automatically), and a destination URL for your RSS and email feed.

Getting Started

Are you thoroughly confused?! Don’t worry! I’m going to show you how to do it.

First, open Google analytics and make sure you have administrative rights or you won’t be able to do this.

Then change the date to January 1 through the date you’re doing this. I used January 1-May 20.

Jot down the average visit duration (ours is 1:46) and pages per visit (ours is 2.37).

Now click on the bright orange “admin” tab in the right-hand corner. Click on the website name, which comes up under profile automatically. Then click on “goals,” which is the third tab in the next screen.

Engaged Users

Now you’re going to click “create a goal” and name the first one “engaged users.” Then click “duration” and click “next step.”

You want the duration to be greater than the average time spent – in our case it would be greater than 1:46 – then click “on” for value and add $1 (this will just give you a baseline).

Then click “save goal” and it will begin tracking for you.

What you’re tracking is the number of people who visit your website or blog every day that spend more time with your content than the average person. It’ll take a few weeks for it to begin giving you data, but we now know about 10 percent of our visitors are highly engaged.

We can talk later about what that means and how to create specific content for those people.

Reader

Next you’ll set up a goal to track the number of visitors who review more pages than the average person.

Click “create a goal” again and name this goal “reader.” Then click “pages/screens per visit” and click “next step.”

On this page, you want your goal to be greater than the average so, in our case, we’d say greater than 2.37, but it only lets you enter round numbers so we did greater than two. We add $1 in the value and click “create goal.”

This tells you how many of your engaged readers are going to multiple pages. This is pretty important if you have a website that drives people through a decision-making funnel of content.

For instance, we have a client whose end goal is to get someone to request a quote. The funnel we push visitors through gets them to that page and, with this Reader goal, we can track who is abandoning the process before we want them to do that.

Subscriptions

The last goal we recommend is tracking how many people are subscribing to your content via email and/or your RSS feed through the site.

Of course, you can get these stats in your Feedblitz account, but why not have it set up in Google analytics so you have it all in one spot?

Click “create a goal” again and name this goal “subscriptions.” Then click “destination” and click “next step.”

In the destination box, paste your Feedblitz feed URL (without the http://www.), add $1 for the value, and keep the funnel turned off. Create the goal and voila!

Of course, a destination goal could be set up for nearly any URL on your site: A request-a-quote, a download, a subscription, a purchase, a shopping cart, or more. Once you’ve gone through the process, it’s pretty easy to see what others you can set up and track.

Once everything is set up, you’ll access the data by going back into your analytics and clicking “conversions” in the left-hand sidebar, “goals,” and then “overview.” All of the information is tracked there and you can view all goals together or by themselves.

Give it a week or so (it’ll happen as quickly as a day, but you want to have a few days of tracking) and come back to see what it tells you.

It’s pretty exciting and soon you’ll have smarter data that will help you make decisions specifically for your visitors and not what some blogger told you to do.

Gini Dietrich is the founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich, a Chicago-based integrated marketing communications firm. She is the lead blogger at PR and marketing blog, Spin Sucks, co-author of Marketing In the Round, and co-host of Inside PR, a weekly podcast about  communications and social media. Her second book, Spin Sucks, is due out in November 2013. Connect with her on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

Over the weekend I had the pleasure of chaperoning my daughter’s team at our town’s Relay for Life event. It’s her third one, and it was a joy to watch the kids’ energy and enthusiasm throughout the night – even if not everyone (including one of my co-chaperones!) didn’t manage to stay up all the way through to morning.

It’s a moving, uplifting event that is the essence of hope. Yet, as you can tell from the fuzzy cellphone photo I took at 2:00 am here, there are far too many luminarias lit around the track in memoriam.  From my own friends and family, cancer has taken too many, too soon.  It’s likely done the same to you, once you have enough mileage under your belt.

It’s all the more poignant because, coincidentally, several friends of mine have lost friends, family or colleagues these last couple of weeks, for a variety of causes.  I knew none of those who have now gone. I find it hard to know how to best offer comfort to them beyond mere platitudes.

Still, life, as the aphorism has it, goes on. We step through our days because we have to.  Frogmarched by the hands of time, sometimes all we can do is put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes, that’s more than enough, and a heroic act in and of itself. Simply showing up, day after day, whether in life, to support a friend, parent a troubled child or, yes, to build a business that lasts, is more than half the battle. It matters.

As a culture, we tend to focus on headline-grabbing acts, the dramatic escapes, the billion dollar acquisitions. Exciting stuff, for sure. But for me, personally, it’s been a sobering week, and I’m only – thankfully – a sympathetic observer. So today, as I dive into a fresh week here at work, I’m taking the time to think about the everyday heroes. Those forced by circumstance, chance or opportunity to make that small extra step to make a difference, whether at home or at work, often unacknowledged.

To the everyday heroes: Thank you all.

Fridays in the blogosphere are generally a bit more relaxed. Over at Spin Sucks, Gini Dietrich does her #FollowFriday recommendations, as well as the Gin and Topics series with the top five videos every week.

Geoff Livingston uses his Friday posts to talk about a subject important to him, the environment.

Ken Mueller is doing the Friday Blogging Experiment throughout 2013, where he turns Friday into his own personal sandbox.

Our #FunFriday will be a bit different as we’re going to switch it up weekly. Today is best of the web, next week might be our employees’ favorite music picks, the week after that…?

This week, we came across some great articles from the Interwebs – some fun and some newsworthy – so without further ado…

McDonald’s Egg McMuffin Brings Breakfast to the PM

Breakfast isn’t just a meal you eat in the morning, it’s something you can eat any time of day. How many times have you asked yourself, “Why doesn’t McDonald’s serve breakfast all day?” Whether or not you agree with McDonald’s business practices, their breakfast, specifically the Egg McMuffin, has been a favorite for 40 years so why not serve it all day? PRNewser does bring up a good point: Does McD’s run the risk that this increased availability might eventually equal McMuffin boredom?

How My Mom Thinks Search Engines Work

We’re so involved in our industries, we tend to think everyone knows how important they are, what we do all day long, and why. Of course, the reality couldn’t be more different. Ever asked your mom to explain what you do for a living? For Mother’s Day, Rob Toledo, contributor to SEOmoz, asked his mom a series of questions about what she believes his industry does, and how she thinks search engines function in general. It’s a fun conversation, but the gist is it’s valuable to remove yourself from your “echo chamber” and have a conversation with someone who has a minimal understanding of what your industry is all about.

How Your Business Can Use New Facebook Cover Photos

This isn’t news to those of us who use Facebook for business but this post from Social Media Examiner highlights what has changed and offers some great examples of how business are leveraging the new rules to boost their business. If there’s any that stand out to you, share them in the comments.

Really Bad Infographics

I realize this is a Pinterest board, but it is too good not to share. We live in an age where visual content gets a lot of traction. Infographics are a creative way to display your information in something other than a white paper or case study. When they’re good, they’re really, really good. However this isn’t about good infographics, this is about bad ones. Really, really bad ones.

If ‘Breaking Bad’ Was Made Into a LEGO Video Game

We’ve seen plenty of LEGO remakes, but this one is fantastic. When you combine these childhood building blocks with a hit television drama you get LEGO Breaking Bad: The Video Game. This video does contain spoilers from the show’s first four seasons so you have been warned! It’s amazing what you can do with a little time, effort, and some LEGO.

If you come across any good articles or funny videos, share them with us in the comments or drop them onto our Facebook page.

Happy Friday all and have a wonderful weekend.

Dicing Feeds with RSS Tag and Category Filters

One of the great things about a FeedBlitz RSS feed is that you can do more with it than simply share the feed URL. You can use filters to modify what the feed shows to subscribers. This enables you to create category-specific feeds automatically, which can then be used to create category-specific mailings.

You do this using path modifiers, /tag/ and /not/, to pick what you want in or out, respectively. If we use the FeedBlitz News RSS feed as an example (feeds.feedblitz.com/feedblitz), they could be used like this:

All posts tagged “FeedBlitz” only: feeds.feedblitz.com/feedblitz/tag/feedblitz

All posts except testimonials: feeds.feedblitz.com/feedblitz/not/testimonials

You can have multiple /tag/ and /not/ modifiers in a single feed URL. If you have multiple modifiers they are an OR, not an AND, i.e. All posts matching ANY of the selections will be included in the criteria.

Why is this useful? Because now you can use these feeds to create category specific content that can be served to a web site via an RSS widget, and create custom mailing content for niche audiences. Or, if you want to avoid syndicating some articles beyond your web site, you can restrict what’s publicly available via RSS.

These filters work on both your feed’s tags and categories, which FeedBlitz consolidates into a single “keyword” list, against which the filters are then applied. So a post will appear in RSS feed with the filter /tag/happy if it is either tagged “happy” or in the “happy” category.

FeedBlitz AutoCast

FeedBlitz AutoCast is the extension of FeedBlitz’s RSS feed management services. Ideal for producers seeking a FeedBurner alternative, FeedBlitz’s AutoCast enables publishers using the old FeedBurner SmartCast service to switch. It also delivers value – metrics, monetization and migration – for new podcasters seeking to take advantage of content distribution from services and tools like Apple iTunes.

If you’re switching your podcast RSS to FeedBlitz, AutoCast has a vital feature to enable you to migrate your iTunes feeds to FeedBlitz without losing your audience. FeedBlitz’s AutoCast can optionally insert the iTunes <itunes:newfeed-url> tag to an RSS feed, redirecting iTunes to the podcast source’s new location. This enables simpler migration of iTunes subscriptions both to and from FeedBlitz, ensuring that you can be assured your audience won’t be “trapped” at FeedBlitz like they might have been before.

When FeedBlitz detects that the FeedBurner SmartCast service is active during a FeedBurner migration, FeedBlitz AutoCast is automatically enabled (since February 18, 2013). Moreover, any feed can be podcast-enabled from the FeedBlitz RSS feed’s settings page.

iTunes New Feed Tag Insertion

Possibly the most important function in FeedBlitz’s podcast feed capabilities, especially from a FeedBurner migration perspective, FeedBlitz AutoCast adds the required element to your podcast feed so iTunes can seamlessly transition all subscribers to the new feed source without having to lose a single audience member.

Podcast files are linked into RSS feeds using “enclosure” elements. When AutoCast is enabled, FeedBlitz tracks enclosure accesses separately from other links within the post, reporting them as downloads (D/Ls in the reports pages). It’s entirely possible, depending on the nature of the subscriber’s podcast app, that other links and tracking from the post will not be available to subscribers. Tracking downloads separately shows you the true reach of your content.

No Podcast?

No podcast? No problem! With AutoCast switched on, FeedBlitz will find any audio, video, or flash file that you link to in the post and create an enclosure from it if one isn’t already there.

AutoCast also allows you to set up to five iTunes category / subcategory combinations to be defined for the feed, making it more likely that iTunes and other podcast app users will find your podcast when searching for something new to follow.

There are many iTunes specific fields that can be optionally added to a podcast RSS feed. If they’re not already there, FeedBlitz will create them automatically from the other tags in your feed. This creates a richer subscriber experience when browsing your podcast.

Any RSS feed can be followed via email or in an RSS aggregator / reader – and that’s true for podcast feeds too. FeedBlitz now adds a relevant audio, video or other icon to the post’s content in RSS and email to highlight podcast elements that might otherwise be missed by a non-podcast feed subscriber.

And there you have it. With all the chatter lately about FeedBurner’s possible (future) demise, I hope we’ve shown you a few reasons why FeedBlitz could easily – and efficiently – become your community building and content sharing choice.

The series starts on the third Wednesday of every month, beginning in June, so be sure and mark your calendars!

Why Feedblitz?

Many publishers, bloggers and businesses make the migration to FeedBlitz because they need a professional, supported FeedBurner alternative. Here are some of the most frequently cited reasons people make the switch:

• Prompt corporate support and ongoing development
• Greater email design flexibility (e.g. add your own sponsorships to the mailing)
• Multiple email scheduling options
• Ability to send an email newsletter blast to your list without a blog or feed entry
• Custom fields, personalization and segmentation
• Auto responder capability for drip marketing or simple incentive mailings
• Extensive email reports for click, bounce, open tracking and more
• Automatic subscriber management, including automatic dual opt-in reminders
• Better email deliverability to major US Internet service providers, such as AOL
• Greater integration with social media
• SSL support

Ok, so we do all of those things, and we do them pretty well, if I do say so myself. But ultimately we’re nothing without you – our users – and customer support and ease of transition is vitally important to us. That’s why our webinar series is going to start off with a step by step guide to migrating from FeedBurner to FeedBlitz.

We’ll address things like:

• Creating feeds and email lists in FeedBlitz equivalent to your FeedBurner feeds and lists.
• How to update your web site to use the new FeedBlitz feeds and lists.
• Migrating FeedBurner RSS subscribers to FeedBlitz.
• Optionally deleting your FeedBurner RSS feed.

If you don’t currently have a Feedblitz account, sign up and spend a bit of time exploring what we can do for you. Then watch for more details on our Wednesday Webinar series. We can’t wait to get started. In the meantime, if there’s anything you’d like to see on our blog, or addressed in one of our webinars, let us know here in the comments or leave us a note on our Facebook page. We appreciate your input.

Now, I recognize that today isn’t Thursday. It’s Tuesday. But in the spirit of change, we wanted to get you started with two installments this week. So come on back this Thursday, and every Thursday thereafter, to learn more about what Feedblitz can do for your organization.

So, you’ve either already switched to FeedBlitz, or are considering it. The big question will be – where to begin? And that is a question only you can answer, I’m afraid. You will know your audience, your site and your business much better than us, after all. We’re here to help facilitate your switch, and provide you with all the information you need to get started, and keep moving forward.

FeedBlitz Flexibility

One of the great things about FeedBlitz’s RSS feed functionality is how flexible it is. Which, of course, is one of the challenges: There’s a lot to figure out, and it can be daunting!

Which brings me to splicing and dicing (well, splicing actually – dicing is in the next chapter on). Splicing is the process of merging other content into your main feed so that what your subscribers end up with is more than just your source feed.

Accessed via the “Add Other Feeds” button from your RSS feed’s home page, you can add content from your other social media channels to your feed, or incorporate any other RSS feed into your posts. You can therefore enrich the RSS subscriber’s experience by merging multiple content feeds into one.

Merge and Cross-Promote

For social networks, all you have to do is identify your account. For example, my YouTube channel is at youtube.com/phollows. To include my YouTube channel’s feed into the FeedBlitz RSS feed, I simply enter “phollows” in the box next to the YouTube icon on that screen. It’s the same idea for all the other social networks too. For any arbitrary third party RSS feed, simply specify the RSS feed URL in the “Service ID” field on the form. It’s a great way to merge and cross-promote different blogs into a single feed, for example.

The drop down on the right tells you how you want the posts inserted into the main feed. A daily list that pulls all the content from the relevant feed, a daily summary that is a bulleted list of titles only, or by merging the third party content into your feed in chronological order.

Now, sometimes feeds can get very large. FeedBurner would simply give up when that happens, but instead FeedBlitz will include all new posts up to the RSS feed size limit we impose. If that content consists entirely of spliced in third party content, FeedBlitz extends the feed until at least one of the “main” feed’s posts has been included.

And that’s that! Watch this space on Thursday, and every other Thursday to come, for more on making the most of your FeedBlitz account.

But the challenges of building a business like this, even as it grows more or less steadily (and 60% year on year growth, over multiple years, is fast), and even though FeedBlitz is still pretty small by many standards, is that the change required to support that growth is distinctly non-linear.  The way it was run this time last year is not sustainable.  It hasn’t been for a while.

Only: I hadn’t fully grasped that fact. I was so busy dealing with the increase in business and concomitant work that I’d missed the warning signs. We couldn’t keep up with the dramatic increase in customer service.  The net result was that we all were running to stand still – and, despite our best efforts, ended up moving backwards anyway.

So it turns out that vacations are a good thing. Clearing my head gave me the time to recognize, realign and recommit.  To enable and empower the rest of the FeedBlitz team.

Last week from poolside, I decided to hire; it was in fact one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever made one I’d got my head out of, um, the sand, for long enough to see what needed to be done. Heather made it happen with a brilliant move in less than 24 hours. The metrics are already moving back in the right direction, and although we’ve much catching up to do, we will do so quickly, and we’re not going to let this happen again. We’re ready for the next step.

But the change required is not just about increasing resources, though. Parts – the most important parts for the long haul – are cultural and personal. The team now knows that heroics, while occasionally welcome and indeed sometimes necessary, shouldn’t have to be the daily modus operandi.  That’s incredibly unhealthy.  I’ve got to be a better enabler, too, and focus more on what lies ahead rather than reacting to what’s happening now. Done and done.

To those who didn’t get the response they needed quickly enough, the blame is mine alone; I’m sorry. I hope we can make this right for you.

Meanwhile, though, FeedBlitz is no longer running to stand to still.

And, damn, that feels good.

So I should ‘fess up here: I might be a workaholic. I love my job; building and running this crazy business. And for those of us who are driven to build businesses, the hardest thing is letting go – not only letting go to other people, but also letting go of next enough to take some time off.

I stink at taking time off. Next is so, so very seductive. But I am, this week, taking some time away (that’s a real photo of my hotel pool). I’m going more or less offline, and to hell with my Klout score (that’s an inside joke – pay no attention to your Klout score. Seriously).

Taking time off is making me antsy, nervous and all sorts of fidgety. I clearly need to take some time off! I shall try to put the phone down, keep the laptop more or less closed, and try to enjoy the down time.  And if you recognize yourself in any of this; perhaps it’s time to embrace the nightmare and enjoy a little R and R yourself. Wish me luck and a couple of pina coladas; I’ll be back next week…

Update: 09:15 am EDT – The datacenter seems to be back up and running and system functions are back to normal. We’re still clearing backlogged emails though; please bear with us while we work through the delayed mailings.

Update: 09:04 am EDT – Admin pages are back, but may be slower than normal to appear. Backlogged mailings are restarting; don’t rush to do a newsflash or on-demand until this post updates to indicate all the backlog has been cleared. Email opt-in ads and ad reporting are not yet restored. RSS-ads are working correctly and will flow into emails as usual.

Looks like the datacenter where FeedBlitz is hosted is having some problems today. While they’re trying to deal with it we’re trying to work our way around the availability problems that’s causing us and, hence, for you, our clients. FeedBlitz admin functions are limited right now and may return server errors; mailings have been delayed since around 3:30 am US eastern this morning. We’ll update this post as we make progress. We apologise for the inconvenience this is causing.