I Could Not Brand Myself If I Tried

Ok, so I checked out this new Branding Test website just today. I struggle with the question of branding, and whether it is even important to me, and I thought I’d give it a try. Results — hmmm, I rated myself higher than I thought. I guess that goes to show you sometimes do things better than you feel.

The test was kind of simplistic in my mind, but it did encourage me to think about branding with regards to my company. It took only about 5 minutes to take (it would have been quicker if I had thought about branding more in the past). I was a little disappointed in the way the results were presented — I felt they were just regurgitating my answers in a very non-scientific manner. However, if branding is something you are interested in for your company or if you think about branding with any regularity, I’d say give it a try.

I did realize based on the my answers and the results that I need to work on my communication efforts more. I don’t always get my point across in a very positive manner (I guess it is the sarcastic approach I bring to the table). Now, I just need to think about whether I want to be branded better! Is overtly branding really worth considering for a small shop like mine where all of my clients come from word of mouth? We don’t solicit work, it has always solicited us — and I kind of like that flying below the radar.

Whoring Out Your Sites With Links

I read an interesting post on building blogs strictly to sell links (my paraphrasing of his post). It was actually quite a timely post given that I was pondering whether I should whore out some of my sites by selling links while I was sitting in Starbucks yesterday morning. I was thinking to myself while trying to determine how to maximize my revenues, that if I just took some of my PR4 sites, and slapped some Text Link Ads code on them, I could pick up an extra $50ish per month for each site for about 30 minutes effort total.

So, what was my conclusion you are probably wondering? Sadly, I don’t have a conclusion. I am still pondering the possible outcomes:

• The $50ish per site per month is a nice influx of cash (many sites)
• The upfront effort is nil
• The future of link sales is hazy if not just plain murky. With Matt Cutts pushing the Cuttlets towards ratting out sites that are selling links (that’s even if they have not already fingerprinted TLA code), there is a lot of FUD about being banned from Google.
• Potential losses from my excursions in to this could be managed if I limited it to a select subset of blogs.
• Using blogs that also monetized with paid posting could actually be a double-boon

I know the more pristine webmasters out there would say (like my post on webmaster revenues) to just build good content and let it do the work. However, if you have the right kind of blogs… say, less active, less actively maintained, less solid content-based, with a decent PR… it is at least tempting to be a link pimp.

Is It Really Easy To Make Money on the Internet?

I’ve been at this for a while now, and I still wonder about how easy it is to make money on the Internet. There are hundreds of companies whose goal in life (as they tell you) is to make you more money. Affiliate networks, ad networks, pay per post networks, and contextual advertising networks just to name a few of the verticals. So why are you not making any money?

My first guess would be a lack of traffic. Well that’s easy… buy some traffic. You can buy from ad networks (paying for the impressions), pay per post networks (paying to be reviewed or posted about), contextual advertising networks (paying for the clicks), or even affiliate networks (paying for the traffic/leads/actions). Gee, that seems funny, spend the money to buy the traffic to make the money that you use to spend on traffic. Sounds a little incestuous doesn’t it?

I have an idea…

1. Create a reasonably nice site
2. Put out compelling content
3. Put out more compelling content
4. Yes you guessed it, put out even more compelling content
5. Slowly build a base of recurring users as well as slowly build your search rankings
6. Make a little money (pay yourself back for the hosting you have been paying out of pocket for)
7. Go back to step 2 and continue

Now I realize that this is information that you can find in lots of places on the net, but I am truly starting to believe it. I’ve tried a bunch of the short cuts, and they do work to some extent. But I really believe that the good content is the safer, more conservative, and possibly more long run winning strategy. I guess it is the true dividend re-investment plan for smaller webmasters — it starts slow and builds on the power of exponential growth.