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What Is So Great About This Blog?

The only chance this blog has of succeeding is to be different then the 100's of other 'How To Make Money Online' blogs.

What makes this blog different:

• This blog is about a website. It discusses and analyzes the creation, maintenance, and performance of howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com.
• All claims are backed up by actual data. You will not see claims like: 'post comments because it increases traffic'. This blog will show, by using actual data, how much traffic posting comments has brought to howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com.
• There are no false claims of how I made 1000's of dollars a day using a secret system. With this blog, lies and exaggerated claims are impossible because howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com reveals all of its stats.
• Being a webmaster is not always a sunny day. This blog discusses the real trials and tribulations of being a webmaster. If this blog/website are doing poorly then you will see traces of tears in the posts.
• This blog has no advertising or selling of any kind. It is simply information and entertainment. The website howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com does all the money making, not this blog.
• Most blogs expect you to follow their advice on the assumption that they are an authority on the subject. This blog expects you to look at the data and decide for yourself.

All Posts Are Written With The Following in Mind:

• Honesty.
• Mix information with entertainment.
• The visitors time is valuable. Provide clear and original content.
• No claims without data to support it.
• One day this blog and the website it discusses will be successful.

Enjoy!

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A little birdie told me that I have a guest post on Problogger.  This is great news.  With over 15,000 visitors a day Problogger is the biggest blog for bloggers.  And with a Page Rank of 6 this website will receive a great backlink along with the exposure.

Exposure and a great backlink should give this website a much needed boost.  Unfortunately ’should’ is not good enough.  What if I get a traffic boost for a couple days and then things settle back to normal – back to 60 visitors a day.  I want proof that a guest post on Problogger provides a long term benefit for this website.

Without a bubbling cauldron and a dash of bat wings it is difficult to determine with certainty whether the guest post will help in the long run.  The best I can do is figure out statistically whether sites with a guest post on Problogger are doing better then sites without a guest post on Problogger.

Question: Do people who have done a guest post on Problogger have more success with their sites then those who have not done a guest post?

Most Sites Fail

In a previous post (What Are The Odds Your Site Will Fail) I tried to determine the success rate of sites by taking the URL’s of Problogger commentors 3 years ago and seeing how their sites are doing today.  The current state of the sites where put into three categories:

• Dead (0-500 visitors/day)
• Serious Injury (500-2000 visitors/day)
• Alive and Well (2000+ visitors/day)

The results where humbling but promising.  Popular lore is that 99% of sites fail.  But according to the results things are not that terrible.  Here is the current state of site owners that commented on Problogger 3 years ago:

 

Instead of 99% failing only 72% are dead three years later.  Grim, but better then expected.   Commenting on Problogger does seem to give you a statistical advantage.

Most Guest Posters Succeed

A commentor on Problogger has a 72% chance their site will be dead in three years.  But now I am guest poster.  I have advanced from commentor to guest poster, what are the odds that my website will fail?

Determining the answer is simple.  Thanks to the great archive on Problogger I can go back in time and gather the URL’s of all the guest posters.  Then run them through a traffic estimator and see how the guest poster’s sites are doing today.

So with Vivaldi blasting out of the speakers I spent the day going through the Problogger archives gathering guest posters URLs.  From January 2007 to June 2009 I collected all the guest posters and put their URLs in a table.  If the post started off with something like “this is a guest post from…” I grabbed the URL.

After a few hours I accumulated 63 distinct guest posters.  Then I ran each one through a traffic estimator (webtraffic24.com) and noted how much daily traffic they currently receive.
With all the data collected I broke the results up into the same three groups – dead, serious injury, alive and well.  Here are the results (download table):

54% of Problogger guest posters have a successful site.  And only 24% ended up dead.  This is a big difference compared with people that only comment on Problogger.  I have drastically increased my odds of success with my guest post.  Now it is a coin toss – heads I win, tails I lose.

Why Does Guest Posting Increase Your Chances Of Success?

Answering this question bumps against the classic problem of causality.  There is no way to tell what causes what.  Do people with guest posts on Problogger end up with successful sites, or do people with sites that become successful guest post on Problogger?  Do people who smoke end up with cancer, or do people with a cancer gene end up smoking?  There is no way to tell.

All that can be argued is that if you belong to the group that smokes then you have a greater chance of having cancer, and if you belong to the group with a guest post on Problogger then you have a greater chance of having a successful site.

How much of the success can be credited to the guest post and how much can be credited to your site?    Again, no way to tell.  Most likely it is a tangled combination of the two.  Here is how it works:

1. You create a site. You think it is good but are uncertain because with little exposure not enough people have seen it to judge it.
2. You write a guest post for Problogger. It gets accepted – this confirms your suspicion that your writing and content is good (at least Problogger thinks it is good enough for his blog).
3. Your guest post goes live and exposes your site to a lot of people. Because your site is good, the visitors stay and tell their friends.
4. Your site becomes a success.

Your site becomes a success for two reasons: it is a good site and exposure.  To get the exposure you need a good site.  You cannot have one without the other.

It is not the guest post by itself that increases your chance of success, it is the fact that you have a good site and you get exposure.  It has been said a million times, in a million different ways – before anything else, before thinking about SEO, social networking, promotion, backlinks etc. make sure you have a good site.  Without a good site you are simply digging a hole to China – you will drown in a pool of hot lava.

Will This Website Become A Success Because Of A Guest Post?

I do not know.  But I have dramatically increased my odds by being a guest poster for Problogger.  Now I am hanging with the right crowd.  Mingling with winners.  Chess club is great for playing chess, but if you want the cheerleaders you need to join the football team.  Of course, there is still a 50% chance of failure – high, but a lot less then 84%.

The First Time You Were Surprised By Reality

Around puberty you begin to think about love.  Not the love for your mother or bone fetching friend Rusty.  You think about being in love.  Meeting that special someone to share your life with.  Walks in the park, smiles across a crowed room, tingles in the stomach, kissing as you suck a single strand of spaghetti.  You lay in your bed, stare at the ceiling and daydream about being in love.

Also around puberty you become inundated by the mass media machine.  Movies, music, books, and paintings.  You read books about eternal love, listen to songs about true love, watch movies that end with  ‘and they lived happily every after’,  your favorite picture is of a couple feeding each other grapes under a large oak tree.  The concept of love, how beautiful it is, how perfect it is, how eternal it is, forms in your young mind.

You cannot wait to be in love.  Everything will be perfect.

And then it happens.  You find somebody.  It is exciting – just like your favorite song said it would be.  Always smiling and skipping – everything just like in the movies.

Unfortunately you do not live in Disneyland – things do not end happily ever after.  Reality suddenly  arrives with a kick in the crotch.  Just knocks down the door and storms in, no knock, no ‘can I come in?’.  Love turns out nothing like you though it would be; like they told you it would be.  Instead of butterflies and rainbows there are slaps and flying dishes.  There is jealousy, pain, doubt and sometimes lawyers.  Cupid’s arrow hits the pulmonary artery and causes internal bleeding. 

Fortunately you are older now.  Now you know that mass media simply doles out what people want to hear.  Songs about love eternal sell.  Movies that end with happily ever after sell.  Paintings of couples embracing in the sunset sell.  Perfect love is not real but it sells.

Now you know better.  Your expectations about love are more realistic.  Hearing a song about love eternal causes the eyes to roll instead of the heart to swell.  Teens walk out of the movie theater with tears in their eyes, you are holding your mouth trying not to laugh.

Surprised By Reality Again

One day browsing the internet you come across a website that catches your attention.  A big flashy header, ‘Start your own blog today!’, it is easy, make lots of money, be famous.  You start getting excited.  This is exactly what you have been looking for.  To write and be famous.  To work from home and make lots of money.  To sit on the beach with your laptop and a martini.  You lay in your bed, stare at the ceiling and daydream about being a blogger.

The more you look into it the better it gets.  There are so many successful blogs out there – everybody is doing it.  And the best part is that it is so easy.  All you need to do is write a couple paragraphs everyday.  Visitors will adore your writing, they will tell their friends, your blog will have thousands of visitors in a matter of months.  No more nine to five at the office, goodbye idiot boss, time to get off your knees begging for a bonus.  Everything will be great – you will be a rich blogger.

Like a giddy little school girl on the first day of class, you start blogging.

Six month later you are a bitter old man feeding pigions in the park, cursing the cruel world with an occasional shake of the fist.  Without asking to come in, reality barged through the door again.  Writing everyday is not as easy as you expected.  You only have 50 visitors a day.  Instead of thousands of dollars you have hundreds of pennies.  Most of your time is spent deleting spam.  You dread the boring promotional tasks that need to be done everyday: commenting on blogs, writing articles, adding links to directories.  Being a blogger is nothing like you thought it would be.  It is hard work with little reward.

You were fooled by mass media again.  Stories of people making thousands of dollars a month.  Websites claiming that you can have a successful blog by working only a few hours a week.  Blogs claiming that all you need to do is buy their ebook and in no time you will be making a living from home.  They make these claims because they sell.

Now you know better.  Again.

Real Love, Real Blogger

Real love requires patience, persistence and hard work – so does being a successful blogger.

Charley Parkhurst was a wild west bad ass. He was a stagecoach driver during the 1850’s gold rush in California. He spit tobacco, smoked, drank and was a private man of few raspy words. Kicked in the face by a horse, he had only one eye and a jarred scar across the face. Not a pretty sight, but if you needed to make the San Jose to Santa Cruz stage run then ‘One Eyed Charlie’ was the man for the job.

There was just one problem with this man of men. On his death bed and in his birthday suit the mourners noticed that he was missing more then just one eye. He was a she.

Throughout her life Charley had to do a lot of work to hid her secret. But thanks to the internet you do not have to get kicked in the head by a horse to appear like a man.

Why is Your Blog The Same Sex as You?

You made a choice that you are probably not aware of. You are the same sex on your blog as you are on the toilet.

If you use your real name then you give your sex away instantly. And if you use a unisex name like ‘Admin’ then you reveal yourself away by your point of view.

Let’s not get scholarly, let’s just admit it. Women and men have different points of view. For most blogs you can tell whether the writer is male or female. Either they give it away directly by stating their sexual point of view or indirectly by writing ‘don’t you hate it when you walk over a manhole and the updraft flings your skirt over your face’.

By admitting your sex you lose an exciting opportunity for something that you cannot do in live relationships. You can change your sex.

A Sex Change Is Exciting For You

Besides what you do in the privacy of your bedroom, when else do you have the opportunity to be the other sex.

You are probably bored of your sexual point of view. It’s the same you have had all your life. By changing sex new life emerges in your writing. You see new things. You are more conscious of your words. You have to think like the other sex thinks.

A Sex Change Is Exciting For Your Readers

For example. In a world where the majority of sports writers are male it is easy to get lost in the crowd if you are a male writer and virtually ignored if you are female writer. Sad but true. But a female writing as a male has a big advantage. She gets to ‘join the club’ of male writers and is guaranteed to have a different point of view. A wolf walking amongst dogs.

Sport readers tired of the man’s perspective but too prideful to read the woman’s will find solace in your writing. They will not figure out exactly why your writing is different, but it is – it has to be – you are a women and your audience thinks you are a man.

Is Having A Sex Change Honest?

Is it honest that you spatter your sentences with fuc#s and shi#s around your friends, but utter nothing but please and thanks at your grandmother’s birthday party?

Is it honest that you watch football with your boyfriend and bat your eyes with interest during his play-by-play commentary, but lecture your little brother on how he is wasting time watching numbskulls chase a stupid ball around?

You are a multi shaded person. For each relationship you reveal a different hue. Nobody sees the real you – they see the side of you that you choose to reveal. The only person that you are completely honest with is yourself. 3:30am, lying on your bed, staring into the ceiling, wondering what your life has become is the real you. Everybody else just gets bits and pieces.

The relationship you have with your blog readers is no different then the relationships you have with friends,family, and foes. Shining different shades of yourself to each of them is not lying. The difference with the internet is that you are not as limited as in face to face relations. On the internet you can decide which sex to shine.

How To Change Your Sex Online

Fortunately it is a lot easier to change your sex online then it was for Charley in the wild west.

It can be something as simple as using a name of the other sex. Your readers will assume your gender is the same as the name’s gender. It’s not your fault that just because your name is Bill “The Big Bone” Smith visitors assume you are male.

If you want to appear male then write like a male. Virginal Woolf provides a clue on how to sound more male, “I detest the masculine point of view. I am bored by his heroism, virtue, and honour. I think the best men can do is not to talk about themselves anymore.” So write about virtue, honour and yourself. Of course these are suggestions, not hard and fast rules.

And finally the appearance of your blog can be used to appear as a specific sex. Rounded corners and bubble gum colors are more female then army colors and sharp edges. Generalizations and stereotypes but effective.

This Post Is Female

Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology created a algorithm for predicting whether a piece of text was written by a male or a female. They argue that depending on your sex you are more likely to use certain words. There is a simplified version of this algorithm online – you can test whether your writing is male or female. I ran this post through the test and, as intended, this post is female.

One Eyed Charlie was a female stagecoach driver in a world where only men can be stagecoach drivers. She did not let her sex dictate her life’s ambitions, there is no reason why you should let your sex dictate your writing. Be whatever sex you want to be.

Fossil fuels are bad.  By burning them CO₂ is released into the air.  People get sick, the earth heats up, and nature is thrown into a tailspin.  Do not use fossil fuels – use renewable energy sources like wind power.

Wind power is bad.  Birds fly into the rotating blades and get chopped up into small nuggets.  The swooshing sound of the blades creates noise pollution.  Due to the low air pressure around the wind turbines bats die – it is believed that the sudden pressure change around the turbine causes their lungs to collapse.

The environmentalism movement is full of such contradictions.  It seams that everything humans do has a negative effect on the environment.  If humans are doing it then it is bad – not natural.  And regardless of what solution you try to find there will always be a group of people who do a study showing how harmful  it is to the environment. 

The problem is that environmentalists do not have a united front.  Thousands of  individual groups each fighting for their own chunk of the environment to save.  One group wants to reduce the use of fossil fuels and another wants to save the bats.  There is only one solution to satisfy every environmental group’s wishes – move the entire human race to the moon.

Although environmentalists are a threat to the existence of humans on this planet, there is a more pressing matter which directly concerns bloggers.  So far the environmentalists have not turned their gaze towards blogs, but soon they will aim their punitive eye towards us.

Blogs Are Bad For the Environment

Factories are an easy target for environmentalists.  Dark gray clouds of smoke hover around them revealing their evil.  The sun is blocked, trees covered in soot, squirrels coughing.  It is easy for environmentalists to rally up the public and force the factory to shut down or move.  All they need to do is point to the smoke stack.

Bloggers do not create smoke.  There are no smoke stacks to point at.  No dead birds, no three eyed fish and no confused wales.  But environmentalists are very determined – they will not give up so easy.  With will there is always a way.  Let’s give them the credit they deserve – they are awesome at discovering ways to show how humans are destroying the earth.

Here is how they are going to do it: Blogs are created on computers.  Blogs are read by people on computers.  Computers use electricity,  electricity that was generated by CO₂ emitting fossil fuel generators and bird killing wind turbines.

Environmentalists will look at the blogosphere and ask: how much electricity is being consumed creating and reading blogs?  Every blogger spends countless hours on the computer writing posts and promoting.  The readers of the blogs collectively spend more hours on their computers reading the blogs.  Environmentalists will add up all the electricity consumed by the blogosphere.  Then they will do some calculations and figure out how much environmental destruction is caused by generating the  electricity.  When this happens, we as bloggers are screwed.  The cross hairs of their big environment saving bazooka will be pointed right at our heads.

Of course, they will not try to shut the entire blogosphere down all at once.  They will start by picking off the easy targets  – the millions of low traffic blogs.  Blogs with a small following.  Blogs that nobody cares about.  Blogs that if they suddenly disappear nobody would notice.  They will argue that electricity is being wasted on these little blogs: are they necessary, do  these little blogs add enough value to justify the damage they cause the environment?

The problem is that the environmentalists would be right.  A lot of electricity is consumed on blogs that end up going nowhere – blogs that have their run for a couple months and die.  Earth heating up and birds dying for nothing. 

How Much Electricity Does the Low Traffic Blogosphere Consume?

Although the environmentalists have not attacked the blogosphere yet, lets see what they have in their arsenal before they arrive.  Specifically lets focus on their first targets – the low traffic blogs.  Blogs that have a small amount of visitors and therefore do not contribute to the greater good – are not worth the electricity being consumed by them.  Individually these blogs consume a small amount of electricity, but taken as a group they consume a lot.

According to technorati.com in March 2006 there were 15.5 million active blogs (blogs that have been updated in the past 90 days).  Also according to technorati.com 49% of blogs have less then 1000 unique visitors a month.  This means that in March 2006 there were 7.5 million active low traffic blogs.  Blogs that the environmentalist will target first because they do nothing more then waste electricity and pollute the environment.  

Here are the parameters we are going to use to get estimate of the amount of electricity consumed and CO₂ emission created by blogs with less then 1000 visitors a month:

• Number of active blogs with less then 1000 visitors a month: 7.5 million
• Average visitors a month: 500
• Hours a month spent updating the blogs: 20
• Average time visitor spends reading the blogs: 2 minutes

Unfortunately I could not find reliable statistics for the average amount of time bloggers spend on their blogs.  Nor could I find the average time visitors spend reading blogs.  Fortunately, this blog is a blog that fits nicely in the ‘low traffic blog’ category so I used the stats from this site to estimate for the entire low traffic blogosphere.  It is not perfect but good enough for this general calculation.

Following are the results for the amount of electricity consumed, the cost, and the amount of CO₂ produced by blogs with less then 1000 visitors a month:

As you can see, a lot of electricity is being used by blogs with less then an 1000 visitors a month.  Lots of waste, lots of money spent on electricity, lots of CO₂ emissions.  Environmentalists do not like wasted electricity and they certainly do not like lots of CO₂ emissions.

One of the tactics environmentalists like to use to persuade the masses to their cause is to take the numbers and create statements that people can visualize.  Like these:

• Every month low traffic blogs consumes enough electricity to light 385,416,667 standard 60W light bulbs for 1 hour.
• Every year low traffic blogs produces the same amount of CO₂ emissions as 36,513 passenger vehicles.
• Every year low traffic blogs produces the same amount of CO₂ emissions as 7,928,571 propane cylinders used for home barbeques.
• Low traffic blogs consumes the same amount of electricity a year as 27,750 average homes.
• It will take 5,045,455 tree seedlings growing for 10 years to absorb the CO₂ produced by low traffic blogs.
• 149,173,171 pounds (67,663,812 kilograms) of waste will need to be recycled instead of being sent to the landfill to offset low traffic blog’s yearly greenhouse gas emissions.

Should You Be Worried That Your Blog Will Be Attacked By Environmentalists?

Its seems that the environmentalists have a good case.  Blogs with less then 1000 visitors a month do cause a lot of damage to the environment.  They use up precious electricity that could be used for people (or preferably animals and plants) that really need it.  And by wastefully consuming the electricity these blogs contribute to the CO₂ emissions problem. 

The environmentalists will argue: what good are these low traffic blogs?  Who needs them?  How do they benefit the planet?  Wouldn’t it be better if we shut them down and conserve the electricity?  They will caricature bloggers as big steel footed monsters stomping through a pristine nature scene and they will be on CNN stating that, “Low traffic blogs will cause massive hurricanes that will wipe out the entire eastern seaboard”.

There is no stopping them.  If they could have their way all blogs would be abolished.  Like a swarm of army ants – individually they are harmless but together they demolish everything in their path.  They will take down the entire blogosphere.  The only consolation for bloggers is that that it will take time.  They need to start at the bottom – attacking the low traffic blogs first.  You will never be completely safe from them but you can get off the forest floor, climb up a tree as the first wave passes by.  They will get you sooner or later, but you can keep your blog alive a little longer by working on getting more monthly traffic and not being the first in their path.  

How Much Pollution Does Your Blog Generate?

Here is a online calculator you can use to find out how much CO₂ pollution your site generates.

Sources:

Number of active blogs in March 2006:
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/archives/2007/04/blogging_growth.html

Percent of blogs with less then 1000 visitors a month:
http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/the-how-of-blogging/

40 years ago Robert Zajonc did a very interesting experiment.

Volunteers are asked to watch a screen as a series of Chinese symbols are displayed.  None of the participant understand the symbols, to them they are nothing more then a bunch of intersecting lines and squiggles.  After each character is displayed the viewer states whether they like the symbol or not.

Of course, this is a very subjective thing.  Each person either likes it or does not like it.  If asked why they liked or disliked the Chinese symbol they usually say either that they did not know or they gave a reason like – it just looks nice.

To the participants it is an easy task.  Look at the symbol and state whether they like it or not.  They suspect nothing sinister.

What they do not realize is that milliseconds before each Chinese symbol is displayed on the screen there is another symbol flashed on the screen so quickly that they do not concisely see it.  Before a Chinese symbol appears on the screen the experimenters flashed one of two recognizable symbols – either a smiley face or a sad face.  They flashed it so fast that none of the participants reported seeing it.  But it was there.

The result of the experiment is that the participants where statistically more likely to like a Chinese symbol that had a smiley face preceding it.  Flash a smiley face, and the Chinese symbol will be liked.  Flash a sad face and the symbol will not be liked.

The revealing thing is that people can be primed to like or dislike something.  And the best part is that they do not know that it is happening.  Knowing this you can influence a persons opinion without them knowing you are doing it.  They  like something, but they do not know why.  There must be a way to harness this power and apply it to a website…

How To Apply The Smiley Face’s Mind Control Powers To Your Website?

Obviously the best way to apply this knowledge is to have a smiley face flash milliseconds before your website appears.  It would be so quick that the visitor would not notice it, but their subconscious would notice it.  They would be primed to like your website.  When your website does appear, without knowing why, they will like it.  Before reading a single line, before knowing what your website is about, they will be in a state of mind to like your website.  You will have them right where you want them – puppet on a string.

But unfortunately this cannot be done.  Not because it would be wrong, but because the technology is not there.  Currently it is not possible to have a image flash fast enough in a browser without the visitor noticing something suspicions.  The browsers might flicker, or depending on the connection speed the visitor would notice a lag in page loading speed.  Browsers are not dependable enough for this to work properly and reliably.  There will be some error, some glitch, some unintended loading pause and sooner or later you will be found out  – and that would be embarrassing.

So what can be done?  It is a waste not to use this knowledge to your advantage. 

The experiment teaches two things: people can be primed without knowing it and people are more likely to like something if they see a smiley face. 

Technology prevents you from flashing a happy face before they enter your website, but there is nothing preventing you from having a happy face somewhere on your website.  The effect will be the same.  Incorporate it into your logo, or simply have it sitting somewhere inconspicuously on your website banner.  

The visitor will notice it visually, but they will be unaware of its subversive subconscious powers.  They simply see it as a happy face graphic, without realizing they are being primed.  The visitor does not know that the smiley face has special mind powers -  the innocent smile sitting on the top-corner of the website reaching into their soul and forcing them to like the website.