The Industry Review

 
Let’s face it. At one point or another we all found ourselves visiting a website/application much more than we wanted to. It could’ve been MSN messenger or AIM. It could’ve been Facebook or Twitter. It could’ve been a favorite blog. It could’ve been an online game (such as World of Warcraft). However, one day we realized that it’s become a detrimental habit: it has started affecting our personal lives and even work. So we decided to take our distance or maybe even quit.

 
..and then we found out it’s not so easy..

 
Sounds familiar? I’m sure it does to many.

 
In one previous post I mentioned I used to have a very successful blog in one community blogging site, and that I eventually I left for various reasons. But even after I left I used to visit quite often. There were fewer and fewer reasons for me to do so, and yet I still found myself going for a quick peek. Some people have addictive personalities, I actually don’t (when I decide I need to diet, I do – I lost 40 pounds this way), but it was extremely hard for me to break from that site – way harder than dieting – though eventually I managed to do so.

 
So if you ever want to retire from a website or internet application from various reasons, these are my guidelines:

 
First, think about why you want to do this, and whether you truly want to. Do you have a hidden agenda, one you may not even be aware of (finding that it provides escape from real life? drawing attention to yourself? etc) then it might not work. You need to really want to do this for the process to be successful.

 
It’s quite possible that after doing some thinking you’ll realize that you don’t want to stop. A friend of mine faced a very unusual dilemma (which unfortunately I can’t share, though it would make a fascinating story), and struggled with withdrawal for a long time (and talked to me about this a lot). Eventually she just said “I know it’s bad for me, but I can’t stop doing it. I guess it’s not important enough for me to quit. If it ever does, then I will”. Although I think she made the wrong choice (and told her), I respect the fact she took responsibility for this decision.

 
Second, if you are certain you want to go ahead with this, simply make a decision. Decide that things are going to change from now on. It might sound corny, but you need to make this decision consciously to be mentally prepared.

 
Third, decide on a time frame. I find that people often fail with such decisions because they give themselves leeway. “I’ll start my diet tomorrow”. “I’ll quit smoking after the new year”. No! Decide on a time frame, which could be now, tomorrow or next week, and stick to it. Until that point you are free to do whatever you want, even overdo it. If it were smoking, I’d say, smoke 10 packs of cigarettes, but smoke them before the deadline.

 
Fourth, and I find that for me this is the most important element: remove the physical cause of the habit. I found out that regarding addiction, at least for me many times it’s hard to break simply because it became a habit, something I’d do without thinking about it. Just turn on the application. Just open the website.

 
So if this were smoking, I’d say, get rid of all cigarettes in your home, all the ashtrays, and all the lighters. However, in the case of internet applications or sites, I’d say uninstall the relevant applications and clear your browser cache. If you really suspect you may waver in this decision, change your password to gibberish and store it somewhere (could be a physical printout). This will make going to the website/application a much harder thing to do, as you’ll actively struggle with your commitment with it (so it won’t be a 2-second thing but breaking this process would have to be done consciously). The moment I realized that my attempts fail because they became a habit is the moment I learned to beat these things permanently.

 
Fifth, expect withdrawal symptoms. If it’s a social website, are people talking about you? If it’s a chat application: what’s going on around there? If it’s a MMORPG (yes, I quit that habit too, years ago), are there new areas? Has the last raid been successful?

 
Every time you have these thoughts think of the reason you decided to leave. Why leaving is good for you and how it will improve your life. If necessary, even note it down for yourself. In case of smoking, this would be physical withdrawal symptoms, but then you’d have to think about your health. About your child who is exposed to your smoke. Et cetera.

 
Sixth, DO NOT TEMPT YOURSELF. This is where the success stories end. You could be successful for months, and one day just say “Hey, I’m over this, I’ll just do this one time”. No, not even once. From what I hear, this is how many ex-drug addicts and ex-alcoholics resume their old habit.

 
Finally, Start and don’t look back. Be strong. This will work if you’re committed.

 
How amusing. I wrote this with regards to internet applications/websites, but this really can be applied to any addiction.

 
When I decided to do my diet (which was a very specialized no-sweet diet), I took things to an extreme: I avoided all things with sugar, milk, fruit, carbohydrates and a couple more things. People who know me well understand how much this was a sacrifice for me (I have a sweet tooth and am a very hungry person by nature), but I decided I need to do this for health reasons. So I completely avoided these foods. For 3 months, I haven’t made even a single slip-up. At the same time, I lost a lot of weight very quickly without doing any extra exercise (or ever hearing a diet lecture or reading a diet book). This simply worked. Not that it wasn’t hard, it was very hard – but it worked. I’ve done this multiple times so far.

 
Just to finish this anecdote, I eventually stopped. After 3 months, my boss at the time brought high quality chocolates to an office party. He kept pushing me “come on, take one – it’s not going to be bad to eat just one”. I ended eating 3, and then more at home, and within the following week I was back to my old habits. Clearly this broke my diet.

 
In hindsight, I don’t regret it – 3 months were plenty for what I was trying to accomplish and I really didn’t need to continue. However, in other circumstances this would be really baaaaaaaaaad. This is exacty what would make me fail. As I said, from what I know, people who have quit really dangerous addictions for long periods of time (such as drugs or alcohol) fail in precisely these circumstances.

 
It’s important to also realize what your temptation boundaries are: for me it’s OK to see my temptation as long as I don’t do it myself (i.e. I can see my wife eating ice cream, and it would be hard, but it would not cause me to break). For other people it might be necessary to completely avoid it. Whatever works for you.

 
I don’t know how many people who read this are actually considering breaking a habit, but if you are, then this will work. Since I intend for this blog to stay here for a while, I hope this may end up actually helping someone. If it does (or I can help with anything), please do let me know. I’d really like to hear your story.

Up until now I assumed Paypal is kind of like a credit card company (in some ways). That is, if the seller doesn’t give you what you’ve purchased, they will refund you. Well, it turns out this only applies to physical products and not downloadable software. I’ve bought software using Paypal numerous times and never had any issues.

 
That is, until now: this week I purchased a product I saw advertised under the ’30 day money back guarantee’ (which is practically the standard these days). In my second day of usage I realized it’s an inferior product, so politely asked for a refund based on that statement. The manufacturer refused. I disputed the transaction with Paypal based on the above premise, and in response, the software company revoked my license to use their product (which, again, I already paid for). Based on this claim, I escalated things with Paypal and now demanded a refund (in their lingo: turned it from a dispute to a claim). Paypal refused on the grounds of “not offering this protection for downloadable software”. When I asked ‘then what are you good for?’ they answered ‘well, we do not give your bank details to the vendor’. True, but that’s not my problem at the moment. And I was always under the impression they do this, probably because they do extend this protection for everything else.

 
So you may have been aware of this, but I was not. Considering that a large portion of affiliate marketing software is purchased through Paypal, we all need to know this.

 
I’m still giving the software manufacturer some time to comply (hint: it’s a maker of one of the popular twitter applications), and that’s why I’m not saying who it is.

 
My conclusions:

1. From now on I will make considerable effort to use a credit card instead of Paypal whenever I can, simply because when you need them – they are not there for you and 99% of all internet marketing products are software based (I’ve never bought one which wasn’t). This way, if a vendor cheats you, you have someone protecting your interests.
   
    

2. If the software manufacturer does not comply (I won’t get a refund, but at least I want my license to use their inferior tool), I’ll start by advertising precisely who they are, and every single time I see a tweet on Twitter (which I see quite often), I’ll convince them to stay away from that piece of code. Hey, even if I convince one person not to buy it, I’m already successful – but I will be much more successful than that. Maybe I’ll use some of the other Twitter tools to automate that 😉
   
    

3. I may sue them in a small court or something. It’s only $97 but it’s a matter of principle. And clearly the law is on my side.

This is one of the times I am happy I have a blog. Even if I don’t win this battle, I’ll definitely win the war.

I’ve been slow to update my blog lately. Lots of family issues to take care that have been distracting me, and worse, kind of prevent me from being able to write cheerful posts (which is what I intend to write next, hopefully today or tomorrow). But this is something I wanted to share first:

 
I always see people measuring their Twitter follower growth using TwitterCounter. In fact, I have done this too in a previous post.

 
That being said, I recently found out that the TwitterGrader has a much better growth chart. It appears to be virtually real time, much more accurate, and easier to access. Although I highly disagree with their grading algorithm (..which I mentioned here..), their charting method is top notch. In fact, here’s my chart.

 
Isn’t it interesting? You could tell I tried different approaches in my Twitter follower attraction by the various patterns.

 
But a picture is worth a thousand words. Just look at the differences between the two charting methods I mentioned:

 

Chart Using TwitterGrader

Chart Using TwitterCounter

 
I thought I’ll share this story with my readers because I find it inspiring and because it happened to a good friend of mine.

 
My (ex) Ph.D. supervisor and friend, Peter Bentley, has an iPhone he really loves (I mean it, he really loves it). I became Peter’s student after I read one of his books – he’s published quite a number of academic texts and popular science books. Peter is a great writer, and I learned a lot from him (regardless of the fact I got a doctorate thanks to him!). Here’s Peter’s Wikipedia page (yes, I’m mentioned there too).

 
One day, purely for fun, Peter created an iPhone app: it was called iStethoscope and with it you could basically use your iPhone as a stethoscope: listen to your heartbeat, etc. Since he genuinely created it without any intentions of profit, he distributed it for free, and it became quite popular. I remember recommending it to a friend of mine who downloaded it and thought it was quite cool. I never used it myself since I don’t have an iPhone (or any other Smartphone), but that’s another story.

 
It turns out such an application has commercial usages. Peter was contacted by a cardiologist who was really interested in the application and suggested creating a commercial version: one which will allow people to record their heartbeats and send it to him to check for irregularities. Apparently this is much more powerful than many existing “real” medical applications. Moreover, people from all over the world can use it to get the services of a good cardiologist, as long as they have an iPhone and an internet connection. Peter naturally agreed, and the result is iStethoscope Pro, a commercial iPhone application that’s being now sold.

 
When he told me about this I thought it’s a really cool story: this truly demonstrates the strength of our present day society which is backed by modern technology, everything is so well connected that potentially someone in the other side of the world can utilize something you’ve created for yourself as long as you’ve shared it – or talked about it – online. Collaborations become easy, and as this story demonstrates, at times you don’t even need to seek them – they’ll come to you (though I assume usually that is not the case).

 
I like this kind of story, where someone does something for altruistic reasons and it results not only in helping people in a far greater extent than he anticipated, but he also ends up getting a reward for his efforts. In particular I like them when they happen to a friend of mine.

 
To read more about iStethoscope Pro, check out its page on Peter’s site.

 
I’m also going to share a number of videos Peter created to demonstrate how to use it which are useful.. but I also find them quite funny too since he doesn’t say a word in any of the videos! 🙂

Alexa is an internet service that by using a toolbar that is installed on a large number of people’s browsers, is able to collect a lot of information on internet sites. Since the claim is this statistical sample is large enough to make statistically significant statements, Alexa theoretically can be used to accurately measure traffic of most (if not all) internet websites.

 
The lower the traffic rank score, the more popular the site is and the more traffic it gets. For example, I just checked Google’s traffic rank and it is 1. I tend to believe this is accurate and Google is the most popular website in the world. Bing is ranked at 19. Of course, it can’t be 100% accurate since not all internet users in the world have Alexa installed, but the claim is that it’s accurate. And with a large enough base of users that accurately represent the collective behaviors of internet users (this is pretty important!) it should be true (this is the same problem faced by people who conduct polls – to get a sample that represents that the population demographics).

 
I noticed that with some of my sites, Alexa seems to estimate traffic pretty accurately However, with others, it is completely and utterly wrong. For example, my most popular site – quite a niche site admittedly – yet one that has been able to get a very decent daily number of visitors and two page 1 Google rankings, is assigned an extremely bad traffic rank of ~5,000,000! This is far from accurate. The mentioned site gets at least 3-5 times as much traffic as this blog, yet has a far, far worse rank. And this blog is barely a month and a half old.

 
The answer to this question is simple: the ‘average’ user does not visit my mentioned website as much. However, isn’t the claim that Alexa’s user base is large enough to be able to give a good indicator? And if that is not the case, how can we trust its rankings for anything except for the most popular/mainstream websites, really?

 
My goal in this post has not been to analyze the pros and cons of Alexa, but more to pose an open question to readers: How has been your experience with Alexa rankings? And if it’s been accurate (in your opinion), is your site big/small, on a popular subjects/niche topics, targeted to a specific demographic/worldwide? I am just curious in trying to get a better understanding for this.

A quick recap of the previous post, Enticing People to Visit Your Blog: Part 1 of 2: new blogs and websites often suffer from a malady – no matter how hard the creator may work, and how talented he may be, no one visits his site. In the previous post I suggested ways of overcoming this using common sense and attitude. In this post I will cover technical methods of drawing people to your blog.

 
In general, these methods can be loosely categorized in two ways: one by allowing your blog to be more noticeable, the other is by giving your visitors a reward.

 
Although allowing your blog to be better noticed is clearly a way to attract visitors, what are the things your blog can potentially give its visitors? I can think of two major things: Link Juice (or more formally phrased: “Inbound Links”) and Publicity. So how does one enable his or her blog to do that?

 
Ok, let’s begin:

1. DoFollow links: as I mentioned in an earlier post about DoFollow links, many users feel that commenting in a blog is an action worthy of a reward. Now, I don’t mean for this to sound like a criticism, it just that we, the users, don’t have to leave comments, so if we do make the effort and leave a comment, should we not get at least a reward (in the form of an inbound link)? I’m deliberately speaking from the users’ perspective since I am one as well (I visit other blogs). Unfortunately, WordPress settings automatically define all comments as NoFollow links and this discourages many people from commenting at all.
   
    
   My recommendation: install the NoFollow Free plugin: it’ll allow you to set your commentators’ links to be DoFollow and have a lot of control in the process of doing so. This way, users are more likely to visit your blog. Yes, some will only come for the link, but it will get them to look at the blog as well, and they may like what they see. Besides, if they leave a good comment, it’s not a problem – and if they don’t, well, then just remove it – it is your blog after all.
   
    
   Note that in my previous post, Stephan (@ThatSwissIMGuy), raised a good question: what do we gain by getting comments? After all, they helps ‘bleed’ link juice from the site (so effectively weaken its Page Rank). Although that is true, Google really favors blogs with plenty of comments, and if you write a post that becomes popular, you’ll notice that it really helps that post’s rankings. Of course, Google hates fake comments, and I would not be surprised if it knows how to detect those (and I’m sure it knows how to detect spam comments). Interestingly, I recently read an article about a guy whose site was banned (deindexed) for using a fake comment generator. So I would strongly advise not even attempting to go down that route!
   
    

2. Controlling anchor text: one problem with leaving comments on blogs is that they are associated with the name of the person who left them. Go to a typical blog, and see that every name that has a hyperlink points to a website. Although the link is useful, it would be far more effective in terms of search engine optimization if it used a good anchor text, since anchor text is hugely important when doing SEO. For example: in most blogs, if I leave a comment, the link to my site will be associated with my name, Udi Schlessinger. Although this will help me better rank for “Udi Schlessinger” when doing a Bing or a Google search, it would be so much better if I could control this anchor text, let’s say, have it be “Best Computer Games” for my computer game website (which is a site I have).
   
    
   KeywordLuv is a fantastic plugin that enables users to do just that – determine their anchor text. Furthermore, by searching for the text “Enter YourName@YourKeywords in the Name field to take advantage” with a keyword, users are able to find blogs/websites that use this plugin and are associated with their chosen keyword. Again, this may get your blog visited only to get a link, but if they like what they see, they’ll keep on coming – which is the goal, no?
   
    

3. Advertising your blog: another very useful plugin is CommentLuv. Blogs that have this plugin installed show the name of the last post the poster has created and a link to it next to the actual comment that he left. Therefore, if you have a catchy title and leave interesting comments on other blogs, they are very likely to draw attention and consequently, visitors.
   
    
   Similarly to KeywordLuv, there is a search string that users can use to locate this plugin (it is not always active, but if active, it is “CommentLuv Enabled”). See below.
   
    

4. Top Commentators: this is slightly more subtle but very much powerful. Some sites have a ‘Top Commentators’ bar (look to the right, this one does). Although there are several such plugins, my favorite is the ‘Top Commentators’ plugin. I used to think this is only for show, to ‘award’ individuals who leave the most comments per week/month/year with sort of a title. My opinion immediately changed when I found out one day I’m getting about 70 inbound links from a site because I was a top commentator, and my name/link appeared in every one of the blog’s pages. At first I couldn’t understand how this could be the case, but then I realized: since the ‘Top Commentators’ widget appears on every page, I got as many links as there were pages! Although some blogs disable the linking function, many do not. And even if you don’t get any link juice, the publicity alone is worth it.
   
    
   It is possible to find such blogs by simply searching for “Top Commentators” and your keyword of choice.
   
    

5. Social media: sharing your posts in various social media sites is a sure way of getting them noticed. Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter – you can share your posts in all of them. The good thing is that there are plugins that make this a very easy task. Better yet, your visitors can do that as well if they like your post. Again, there are many plugins that do that, but my favorite is the Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button plugin.

 
The next three suggestions are also technically based, but are not plugins:

1. Signature: many forums allow you to place a link in your profile or in a signature that appears on every post you make. Regardless of the potential for link juice this may get you, if you are an active member of the forum other users are bound to notice this and visit your website at some point. This is, obviously, true for email as well: if every email you write ends with your site’s address, then quite often you’ll notice in your site’s logs that visitors have arrived through that link.
   
    

2. Videos: one sure way of getting attention is making interesting videos that advertise your site, either by actually showing its usage (through capturing the screen while you use it), by actually talking to the camera about it, or by simply including a link at the end the video. Either is a good way to advertise your blog.
   
    
   In addition, if you upload a video to YouTube (or other video sites) some users will look at your profile (a statistic I read said that 0.5% of the visitors do so) which can include a link to your website. Although 0.5% is not a lot, if your video becomes very popular, this becomes significant. In fact, some people offer to buy or rent popular videos for this very reason (there’s a whole online course dedicated to this method).
   
    

3. Incentives: this is something I have not personally done, and most affiliate networks/individual publishers do not allow that. However, some publishers and networks are fine with it. If you give an incentive (i.e. free iPod to the 100th commentator on a specific post) and just mention it on a public forum or use Digg, you will very quickly get traffic. Of course, you’ll also need to shell out an iPod for the winner, so hopefully the post will pay for itself (using an appropriate affiliate offer that allows incentives).

 
Ok, that’s it for now. Although I can think of a few more methods, I think I’ll stop, as it is becoming a long post. Hope you find this information useful! Please let me know if you do.

 
Quick edit: I knew that installing KeywordLuv and CommentLuv would draw attention from people just looking for links. However, it seems posting this article made my site 5 times more visible. I am going to include comments as long as they contribute to the discussion, and will reject all others. I advise readers to do the same.

Ducks tend to use DoFollow

 
Continuing the title of this post, I don’t think this is really a question (maybe a rhetorical one). To me, the answer is clear: DoFollow. I just picked the title because I thought it’s amusing 😉

 
Yesterday I got a call from my good friend Miki Rapoport. He said “Dude, why are you using NoFollow links in your comments? How do you expect anyone to comment?” and I said “ehhm.. but I’m not!”. And then I remembered, WordPress’ default setting is NoFollow. This was purposely set up to discourage spammers (who won’t gain link benefits though they will get potential traffic). I’ve learned this a long, long time ago but well, haven’t really thought about it since then.

 
This was pretty annoying to find out and I’m glad Miki mentioned it to me. I’ve created dozens of websites, but this has always slipped my mind. And even though I often check the follow status of other websites, that’s not something I’ve ever done for my own sites!

 
Irritatingly, WordPress doesn’t offer a way to turn it off. However, multiple plugins exist for this very purpose. I repeatedly kept trying 3 Plugins (they all failed) until I found out that the theme I use hard-codes the nofollow links. Once I realized that’s the case it was a trivial thing to correct.

 
That being said, I tried one of the other plugins, the one that was my favorite, in another of my sites, and it worked like a charm.

 
The one I recommend is NoFollow Free, in particular because it is very configurable: you can set it so a number of comments a person makes are nofollow and after a threshold is reached it becomes dofollow. You can also set it so that certain words immediately trigger a nofollow. Pretty useful.

 
I also tested the other two, and they probably work as well (I don’t know because of my theme).

• DoFollow Plugin
• Following my links Plugin

 
Highly recommended for people who want to give some ‘link juice’ to people who leave comments on their websites. The only concern is spammers, but that’s a different story (Akismet, how do I love thee? let me count the ways)

 
Now that my blog is setup for DoFollow, go ahead, leave a comment. I dare ya! 😉