Blind Ape Seo

Some of you might have heard of the National Novel Writing month or NaNoWriMo for short. You can see their stuff over at www.nanowrimo.org
However, as webmasters, none of us is really interested in writing a novel. Thinking about it, though the old simian has probably written the amount ofthree novels during his life as a coder and weblogger.

So, why not harness the power of the writing month for your web endeavours?

A huge, insane goal and no mention of quality - What makes the NanoWriMo so great
In the senile simian’s opinion, most of the power of the nanowrimo comes from its absolutely insane goalsetting.

Fifty thousand words are more than most of the participants manage to finish.
Combine this with the complete lack of quality standards - the goal is to write a novel with 50K words, not get it published or critically acclaimed leads to a setting where the only goal as well as the only option is to write, write, write.

With this thought, the senile sightless simian sensei would like to introduce the WebWriMo, the

Web Writing Month
The goal is the same as for the nanowrimo, only that the webwrimo is spent typing away on pages instead of a novel.
Another difference is the cohesion. While the nanowrimo is spent trying to write one novel, the webwrimo is spent writing many, many content pieces for - probably - many, many web pages.

This is Madness!
How to do this? In any way, this project will be pure madness.
To keep it under control, one can take the hint of the nanowrimo experts and set a daily goal of two thousand words. This will provide a buffer for slacker days.
One tool I recommend is one of the new distraction free text editors, such as darkroom or Q10, which allow one to write and only write.
(The simian is particularly fond of the Q10 editor, as it is portable as well.)

Scripts, content and HTML - the problem of weight
Having thought of many, many different ways to weigh pure text content versus writing scripts or databases, etc and how to count them against the 50K, the blind ape has finally given up on it.

So here is the challenge:

• A graphic will track the progress on the side bar.
• 50,000 words.
• Starting on the 1st.

PS: (This article is just over 400 words long… and won’t count against the final tally, damn!

So the old simian reads a certain small business blog quite regularly.

The guy is quite openly describing his experiences regarding his drop-shipping site and other ventures and has recently begun a series of posts explaining changes and improvements he is making to his shop in order to improve sales.

Some of the commenters pipe up and want to hear about SEO.

- cue cheap eastern kung fu movie music -

The blind ape enters the scene.

Writing the guy an email asking if he would like a guest post by yours truly about various SEO improvements that could be done.

He denies the offer politely.

OK. No bad feelings here, just a short WTF?

He denies a complete SEO Analysis, directions for improvement AND content for his blog at no cost other than a backlink in the article?

Can anyone explain this? Because this sight impaired old ape sure can’t.

And share this document wherever you can

Scientology OT levels

We are Legion.

The old simian is not in any way affiliated with them, but this is of concern for affiliate marketers in general. People reporting on the issue are being hit with Cease and Desist letters by clickbooth.

Well, it sure seems like clickbooth is stepping on quite a few toes.

Here we have some coverage of the whole drama:

http://skewism.com/companies-that-cant-take-bad-press-part-one-clickboothcom/

http://www.blogosis.com/2008/03/18/looks-like-i-might-be-in-trouble/

http://www.blogosis.com/2008/03/09/wickedfirecom-is-getting-sued/

http://www.slightlyshadyseo.com/?p=240 

::emp::

First part in a series…

Here is a paper about how waiters can increase their tips from Cornell university.
My wife has actually tried several (when she was still waiting tables) and they all work like a charm.

More on how to translate those into the internet business in the next installments.

I was not kidding with the crazy ideas thing.
::emp::

Well..

As announced on WF already, the Lord and I are going to collaborate on some podcasts over at domainingtips.com.

Not bad for an old atheist, eh?

At 1 click without any impressions… Man… I wonder how this will scale

Inspired by this post on Eli’s excellent blog:
http://www.bluehatseo.com/how-to-dupe-content-and-get-away-with-it/

The question that has to be asked here really is:
How does Google (and other engines) know that your content is duplicate content?

Obviously, this can not be a 1 to 1 matching, as any change (be it ever so small) would mark your text as original.

I presume (and Elis success with his techinque seems to confirm this) that the dupe chekers work along the lines of the duplicate finders used in academia, for example.

So how do those checks work?
Basically, a duplicate finder works in 3 steps:

1. Take x snippets from your text (normally those are chunks in varying lengths from 3-7 words)
2. Hit Google and other engines
3. Reanalyze sites / documents that return x positive matches.

Q: So, what to do about this?
A: Take more text from several sources and add to Eli’s techique.
Basically, what you want to do is this (in this example we take teeth whitening:

• Take text from 2-3 sources on teeth whitening
  You might not want to take the most poular sites for this. Hit some article directories and maybe even some forgotten archive.org sites.
• Mix the texts thoroughly.
  Take one sentence from here, another one from over there… leave a paragraph out.
  Add Eli’s techique.
  Change some words using Markov or manually.

Done.

::emp::

In the field of computer science, I often try to help newbies or people without programming experience.
Even a lot of affiliate marketing can be done without “real” programming experience.

Yes, you will fare better once you get your head around a programming language or two, but one can do a lot with the clever use of available tools.

 One such tool is iMacros, which allows you to automate any task done in a browser.

Go read a good article about iMacros over at Earner$blog.

Get iMacros here.

(To be true, using tools like this is often just programming in disguise, and I do hope it will raise some interest and ease the transition for some people.)

So… this is a project that has been simmering for a long time now and still has not come to fruition. Partly because I do not have time for this, partly because the problem space seems to be very confusing. In the spirit of the lazy web, I am offering my description of the problem space in the hopes someone wants to code this beast and share.

Goal
An application (web based or desktop) that allows for easy to use affiliate statistics.

Description of problem space
Affiliate commisions are very varied in their form and habitus. The application needas to keep track of both realized (payments received) and unrealized profits (payments pending)

Payouts
Payouts vary in time, payment methods and qualification for payment. 

Qualification for payment A threshold is imposed upon which payments will be made. Threshold vary from $10 to $100. A problem more of the smaller publishers, profits below the threshold also need to be tracked.

Payment method Paypal, wire transfer, check 

Time Net 30, 60, 90.

Investments and costs

These also vary in size and shape, from one-time investments to recurring payments.

Recurring payments
Hosting, domains, etc.. Interstitial and one-time payments PPC,new hardware, programming assignments… Amongst all those, time can also vary.

Hosting and domains can be paid for (or demanded) monthly, bi-monthly, yearly, 2 year contract…

So far for now.. if you want to add to this or offer a solution that goes further than the simian’s Affiliate tracking Excel sheet, please comment. ::emp::