Are you going to stop selling links?
October 27, 2007
I can’t believe how much people are talking about the latest Google PageRank update! It even made the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper in Australia (at least the online version).
It’s not going to stop me selling links, at least on this blog. I am still making money with Text Link Ads and Linkworth, so it is going to be interesting to see how this income goes.
One thing I can see happening is that there are going to be more sponsored posts in blogs and linking from articles rather than from links in sidebars and blogrolls. Google kind of made the market for buying and selling links and now they are trying to close the market. Perhaps it is a good thing, I am not really sure right now. Selling links has become a very good source of income for many bloggers, especially where Adsense didn’t work so well.
I agree with what Darren has written on the subject:
I think that what Google has done this last week means that we’ll see more and more of the text link selling go further underground. We’ll see it happen less using systems like TextLinkAds and more happening in less transparent ways.
And if Darren is right, which I think he is, the internet is going to become an even less trustworthy source of information.
The World is Flat
July 23, 2007
For the past month or so I haven’t read a single book. Traveling through Vietnam and Laos the pickings have been pretty slim, especially in the way on non-fiction.
I am in Bangkok now and I picked up a copy of “The World is Flat” after hearing it had some similar themes to the Four Hour Work Week. Most business books are usually slow going, but I have found that I can’t put this one down.
For people working in technology or internet related industries, a great deal of the information in the book is fairly common knowledge. Some of the stories however were picked up on the author’s travels to India, China and Japan. For anyone who thinks that India and China are taking away jobs in western countries, this book is a must read.
Since, I have worked in IT for several years, I was pretty much against the whole outsourcing debate, but since I have been working on the internet I have seen how outsourcing and globalization makes more and more sense.
He also writes how the internet is empowering individuals to be content producers, or “uploaders” as he calls them. Again, fairly common topics, but the author has some great examples of how this happening and he has a great way of explaining how this is going to effect how we will be doing business in the future.
Mail from a Forbes reporter
June 22, 2007
Back in April I received an email from Andrew Greenberg from Forbes. He was writing an article on Google’s supplemental index. He found me through a comment I made on Aaron Wall’s blog. He wanted me to call him to discuss his story. (I need to get a phone one of these days!)
I was in Cambodia at the time so it would have been difficult to call him. The finished article was published some time ago “Condemned To Google Hell“.
I at least got close to getting a mention in mainstream press, but the point of this post is that journalists are going beyond the usual sources of information to research their stories and you never know when you might benefit from something you did months ago.
The four hour work week
May 15, 2007
I have read some good reviews of this book and not surprisingly it has been getting a great deal of attention in the internet marketing and blogging world.
I am currently in Vietnam so I am not sure how I can get my hands on a copy of this book. Many of the topics the author raises in his book are things I believe in. His point of “less is not laziness” is something which I struggle with some of the time. I have achieved my goal of being able to travel full-time, but I do sometimes feel guilty that I can live a comfortable life, while working less than I used to and have almost unlimited free time to do the things I want to do.
Having worked in Japan for a number of years I have experienced working with people where their whole life is work. Even though they might get 3 or 4 weeks of holiday a year, most will only take about one week off. Many also work until their last train, sometimes around 11 or 12 pm.
I have a theory that most people, especially people working in offices only do 2-3 hours of real, productive work a day. The other time is spent attending pointless meetings, reading irrelevant emails, writing reports that no-one will read or take action on. People work to satisfy the demands of their bosses, bosses create work for their employees to make it look like they are doing a good job.
Maybe I am cynical, but I found that in Japan it was expected of employees to work long hours, whether they had work to do or not. If you have a long time to complete a task you tend to take your time and pace yourself so you won’t be completely bored while you have to be at work.
In his book he proposes getting your most important tasks done by 11 am. I think this is great advice for anyone. Most people are freshest in the morning. The longer you delay doing a task that requires some concentration the harder it becomes to complete. If you apply this to working on the internet complete your “must do” tasks in the morning and more passive tasks, like reading forums/blogs in the evening.
Life of Pi
March 29, 2007
I just started reading ‘Life of Pi’. I really like this quote from it:
I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he’s not careful.
I couldn’t agree more!
Blogger merged with Google accounts
January 7, 2007
I logged into blogger today and got a message asking if I wanted to merge my blogger account with my google account. I don’t use blogger for much these days, but I still have the original acccount where this blog started.
My old blog still has a page rank of 4, so it is useful getting links and getting Google to index new sites.
I always recommend people creating a new blog to use their own domain with Wordpress, but there is probably a good case for using blogger in some instances. For starters it is operated by Google, so there is a good chance they will rank their hosted blogs higher. It is very easy to apply for an Adsense account if you don’t already have one. A great deal of the blogs that appear in Google alerts seem to be hosted on blogger. It is also very easy to add images.
The downside is that you have little control over the blog and the database if you run into problems. Google has cleaned up a lot of the spam blogs out there, but it is a never ending battle. No-one is really going to take you seriously, especially if you are trying to create a professional, money generating site.
Asian Expats
December 11, 2006
Have you ever felt you were the only person who felt a particular way? I couldn’t help reading this and feeling it relates to me fairly well:
Nearly all are long-timers and most have become disaffiliated from their home countries, many to the point of feeling like an alien when they return for a visit. Usually, things back home have changed…and in very case the expat has altered his psychology, if not his chemistry. And almost always, apparently quite comfortably.
At the same time, in their adopted country they remain outside. No matter how fluent in the language and adept in hurdling the cultural barriers they may be, forever they will be foreigners.
From:
The Google Story
November 25, 2006
After not being able to find anything that looked vaguely interesting, I picked up a copy of ‘The Google Story’ by David Vise and Mark Malseed. It is a fast pace read and is interesting to think what you were doing as the company evovled and when exactly you started using it for search.
I can’t really using anything else - I was very late to get onto the world wide web, even though I was using some kind of text version when I was at university.
People love to bag Google for whatever reason, but they have paid me several thousands of dollars of the past year or so, so I cannot really complain.
Even though most people would be familiar with their story, it still makes an interesting read and it is definitely required reading for any webmaster.
The wisdom of people
October 27, 2006
I have been thinking quite a bit about this article that appeared in the Washington Post (after reading it first in the Japan Times): The Top Pickers vs. the Pack.
While generations have looked to pundits for guidance, it has often taken a long time for their expertise to be recognized, and many have remained in obscurity. Now the Internet promises new ways to discover those who might otherwise get overlooked. And it can do so with breathtaking speed.
I think that this is just further evidence of how the internet is turning traditional ways of thinking and doing business on its head. I immediately went out and book, ‘The Wisdom of Crowds’.
Technorati Tags: The Wisdom of Crowds
I need an ebook
May 10, 2006
It seems like everyone is promoting their ebooks these days. I am not sure if anyone would be interested in purchasing a book I wrote, but I would love to give it a go.
