Guess Who`s Back? VikingBlogger.com Is Not Dead
Hello.
First of all – is there anybody here?
There is now over 1 year since i last wrote something. In fact last post made was on December 13th, 2008. It is now January 30th, 2010. Wow. Time flys.
Anyway, I’m still here. My name is still Staale, and I still live in Norway.
I have the last month or so been thinking of starting a new blog in Norwegian talking about seo, blogging, money etc. Basically a Norwegian version of this blog. I have been thinking, and thinking about what domain name I should pick, but really never found one that was available, and good. This made me set my plans on hold.
Today I got a thought, why write in Norwegian when you can reach so much more people writing in English? Well, the biggest reason would be that the competition is really low. In fact there isn’t any. If you got a half decent seo/marketing/money blog in Norwegian you will get readers. On the other hand, there is only about 4.8 million people in Norway. In USA there are over 300 million. Almost all Norwegians do talk and read English, so I will still reach a lot of them if I write in English, if they are interested. Only thing is that I can’t write about local stuff, but thats ok. I think.
So, what now? Well, I will try to get this blog up and running again. I see that there is still 57 people on the feedburner count. That’s cool. 
Looking at the Feed Stats I really don’t know why I stopped blogging 2 years ago. The amount of subscribers where raising fast, and things looked good. Well, can’t do anything about that now. Have to look forward, and it will be cool to see if I can get this blog up again.
As always, you can subscribe to this blog in many different ways. I will start using my Twitter account again, and I have just create a brand new page on Facebook.
(To my old readers; if you are still in the blogging business, write a comment, and leave your url, and I will plug you in a post tomorrow.)
Google Launches SearchWiki – Vote The Search Results Up and Down
So, then it has been released. Google SearchWiki. The new system that allows you to vote on the sites that get listed in the search results. Here are some features:
- You can vote any search result to the top of the search.
- You can delete any search result, and it will disaper from the search result.
- You can write comments in each search result.
- You can add a new site to the search results and it will be added to the top.
One thing though, the changes you make only affect your own searches. So, the search result for other users will stay the same. But, there is one way to see how the other users have used the SearchWiki. On the footer on each page there is a link called “See all notes for this SearchWiki” clicking on this link will bring you to a page, where the sites with the most “ups” will be displaying on the top page. Kinda like a “digg” version of the search result.
Only For Google Account Users
The “SearchWiki” links, and voting system is only available to signed-in Google users. This means, if your site is used by people that most probably don’t got Google accounts, this wont affect your site at all. Since your visitors won’t see the “SearchWiki” links.
Video Explaining The Deal
Below is a video from Google explaining the the SearchWiki system.
Will This Affect The Regular Search Results?
Well, as I wrote some sentences ago, Google says your voting only will affect your own search results. But, I think, if this system gets good, and not that easy cheatable the voting might get included as a part of the algorithm. But until that, your voting can still make more visitors coming to your or somebody else’s site, because Google got a page where you can see all notes about one search term. That means, on that pages, the sites that got most votes, will be displayed on the top.
Ex. All notes for the term “Games” in Google.
As you can see in the screnshot above the top ranking site now is addictinggames.com and miniclip.com on second place. If you do this search without adding the SearchWiki values miniclip.com will rank above addictinggames.com. Most probably this will not mean that big of a different since, both these sites is so big brands, sp they get the traffic they should anyway. But, whats interesting to see is the number 3 result. “Scolex Games“. That sites grabs the 3. place only by having 3 votes. Scolex Games is no where to be found in the origianl search result, but with only 3 votes, it ranks good in the SearchWiki result. That means, if you get 4 votes, you will be ranking in the third spot for this really high volume search term.
The question is, how many people will be scrolling down on the search page, and click the “All Notes” link, when they can get good result on the first page? In the start it will probably be quite a few, but many of them would be webmasters like you and be. Will this be something for the future?
What do you think about this?
Advanced Segments Added to Google Analytics (New feature)
I use Google Analytics to track my stats, and recently they have added some new features to it. The last one they added is called “Advanced Segments”. That allows you to choose up to four different segments to show the graph on your dashboard. You can use some of the default ones, like returning visitors, search visits etc, but you can also make your own custom from what ever stat you want. This is a great thing, but I don’t really like the limit on 4 segments. Wellwell, I guess I can’t get everything.
Now I only waiting on adsense to be integrated into analytics. Then I don’t need anything for christmas! 
AdToll.com Acquired by a US Company
So, today AdToll sent out a email to all it’s partner and wrote a post in their blog that they have been bought.
We are pleased to announce that we have acquired AdToll.com from Purplex Pty Ltd. Dan & Paul have done a great job building and nourishing AdToll and we intend to continue to provide you the same service and responsiveness. We are a US based corporation with many more resources and we plan to grow the product and provide additional services in time. We will tell you a bit more about us in the coming months. In the meantime, please review the revised Terms of Service.
I did use AdToll on some of my sites before, but found out that it diden’t pay of. However I have found a couple good deals on there as an advertiser. Do you use AdToll?
Btw; Anyone know how much they sold for?
Monday Mock-up Post
Sorry about the title. Don’t really have any fantasy right now. Well. I have been away from my computer since friday morning. The weekend have been used to meet up with the family, and celebrate my fathers birthday. Woho. It has been a pain without the computer, but I did have my “eee” with me. (Talk about that one in a later post).
The big comment project
If you are a fan of reading blogs and commenting on them, you have probably noticed a guy called “Danny Cooper”. He is everywhere, and if you have a decent blog in this niche chances are big that hes on your blog as well. Nothing wrong with that though. Thing is, Danny have a project going, called “October Case Study: Blog Commenting“.
Danny sent me an mail asking for a plug, so here you go. To sum up the plan Danny got he got a list of about 60 blogs which he are following each day. Each time someone makes a post he will leave a comment. He claims that he is not going to spam, but tell his honest opinion on the subject posted. This case study is going to all October. When October is over, he will make a report, where he disclose traffic, referrals, back links etc.
I think it’s a good approach to increase traffic/subscribers, and it will be fun to see the result. Check out Dannys blog here:
What about VikingBlogger?
Hopefully you have noticed that my posting frequents has increased by a lot lately. And to my joy a lot of you old guys still are hanging around, and are starting to make comments again. There is also a couple new faces. I would love to know more about my readers. So if you want to tell me and rest of the crowd more about yourself and your site(s) your welcome to do so below in a comment.
The top commentators
Once in a while I like to give something back to my commentators. One of the way I do that is by giving them a link. Well, it’s time to give the top 5 some love again. Here is the guys that have made the most comments on VikingBlogger so far in October.
Top Commentators
Gravatar added
I have added gravatars to the comments. So now you can easly see who have made the comment. This is also a good opportunity to brand yourself. If you haven’t made yourself a gravatar yet, you should do so now. Just go to Gravatar.com and sign up for an free account.
Would You Leave a Comment And Link To VikingBlogger If You Got A Do-Follow Link?
I guess thats got to be the longest headline ever. Right? Anyway, the issue is simple really. I want the get the activity up on the blog. I think that one way to do that is to make VikingBlogger a do-follow blog. Since I can’t give any traffic back (the blog don’t have any:P) I guess a valid backlink would be worth it.
When you comment on a post, your name will link back to your site. This is now a no-follow link, so that only gains you some clicks. (if you are really lucky) and if you link to one of the posts here you will get listed as a trackback. Those links are also no-follow. What I’m thinking of is to make those links do-follow.
So, my question is; Would You Leave a Comment And Link To VikingBlogger If You Got A Do-Follow Link?
Entrecard Is Not For Sale Anymore
Guess what, Entrecard.com is not for sale anymore. Yesterday Graham wrote a post in the Entrecard blog about the decision. Graham starts his psot with the following:
The 48 hours that transpired since listing my site on Sitepoint have been incredible. In fact, no less than 20 people have reached out to me and gave me a phone call. Over the past two days, I’ve talked to business leaders, CEOs, advertising execs, Tony the CEO of BlogCatalog, VCs, biz dev people, a gaming company in Israel, companies in the UK, and more. I’ve been on the phone so long I’m probably developing a tumor.
It looks like the whole sale thing got a little viral. The auction did not get any bids, but Graham received some bids behind the scenes, but I guess no one was high enough to make him sell it off.
It looks like Graham now is determen to make Entrecard work. I think it’s the right move, and hopefully he can take Entrecard back on it’s feet again.
Woho, I Won A Shoemoney T-Shirt
Just checked my email, and guess who I got an email from. Shoemoney. Or, well, technically it was from Susan, but I guess she is working for him.
Dear VikingBlogger,
Congratulations! You are the randomly selected winner for your comments written on a shoemoney blog post on 2008-09-26. You have won a ShoeMoney t-Shirt and a chance at this months grand prize!
Each day Shoemoney draws one comment left on his blog, and sends the commentator a free t-shirt. They ship it for free anywhere in the world, so I guess a sweet shirt is heading my way in Norway. (Hey, that rimes..)
Link In The Header
The other cool thing about winning this draw is that Shoemoney places the last 4 winners in the header of his blog. The name is linking back to the winners blogs. So for 4 more days I got a free link on a premium location on Shoemoney.com. Cool. I wounder if it brings any clicks…
Have you won anything lately?
Entrecard.com is For Sale on Sitepoint!
So, on my daily round to see if there is some cools sites for sale over at Sitepoint I found a familiar name, Entrecard.com.
It appears that the owner Graham Langdon are selling his baby. The starting bid is $100.000 and he says in a comment that he got a reserve that is just under a million dollar.
If you have been blogging the last year, you got to have heard about Entrecard. But if you haven’t it’s basically an simple banner exchange for blogs. You display 125×125 banners on your site, and you get your banner on other sites.
The Lift Of
The service got really popular after a couple of the big shots in the industry put them on their blogs. This included Shoemoney, John Chow and Problogger. Hey, even I put them on my site for a while. But, after some time a lot of bloggers found out the most of the traffic was crap, and took the widget of their site. Non of the big bloggers got the widget on their site anymore, and neither do I.
Alexa Tells The Truth?
If you are a fan of Alexa you might notice that the stats are going down for Entrecard. At least for the site itself.
In my world, this chart actually tells me what I have been thinking, that Entrecard flopped. The funny thing is though, when reading the auction description it looks like Entrecard actually did the opposite thing. Here is what Graham start the description with:
OUR AD NETWORK DELIVERS:
80 MILLION IMPRESSIONS PER MONTH
3 MILLION CLICKS PER MONTH
GROWING AT 16% MONTH-OVER-MONTH without any marketing
Thats pretty impressive stats, and doesn’t fit really well into my “flop” theory.
I launched Entrecard ad network 11 months ago, and in that time is has spread to 20,000 blogs delivering 80 million impressions per month. We’re growing fast, and in the next year alone we’re on track to sign up between 40,000 to 80,000 more blogs
Ok, so Entrecard got 20.000 blogs in their network now, and are calculating with up to 80.000 blogs within 2009. Graham says that around 100 new blogs sign up each day, which are 3000 each month and 36.000 each year. Pretty impressive. But how can the network grow and grow, but fewer and fewer big blogs are getting on board. Hey, most of them are actually jumping over board.
If we get back to the falling Alexa stats he explains the falling in traffic on the site with the launch of the Entrecard toolbar. He says that the toolbar is used by 7.000 bloggers, and that they don’t need to go on the site, because they can do everything with the toolbar. I guess thats make sense. But It’s still strange that the traffic is falling that dramatically. But then again I just got alexa stats, I don’t got the server stats, so it might not be that accurate.
The Reason
The reason of why he is selling of Entrecard is actually quite good, I’ll just copy/paste what he wrote:
I am selling because I have come to a stalemate. Entrecard is growing fast, but I do not have the
resources to put behind it. I recently met extensively with Venture Capitalists who were going to make a 700k seed investment and a 2-5m follow on Series A investment in 6 months. The deal fell through in the 11th hour, right before the terms sheet, because they lost faith in my ability to execute the plan after a series of tests in which I did not know I was being tested. The valuation we were discussing was 8 million. We were going to open a headquarters, hire 10 people, and go straight to the top. Then it fell apart, and after getting my hopes up, I just haven’t been able to get back on my feet. I’m a wreck and feeling like a failure to come so close only to drop it due to my idiocy.
Strange reason, but it might be legit. I don’t know Graham in personal, so I can’t be the judge.
12x Montly Revenue Right?
The ongoing price for sites these days are around 12 times monthly revenue. I know Entrecard don’t fit well into this, but I find it strange that Graham haven’t monetized the site better then making around $2.000 per month. Hes bragging about ideas that easily could shoot the earnings up to $30.000 per month. The question I got in my head is; Why haven’t Graham implemented this ideas himself?
Final Words
I think Graham are trying to sell a sinking ship. Thats my personal opinion. Next year Entrecard will be a service that are almost dead. I have quoted Graham some times in this post, and I guess we have room for one last quote:
Whoever buys this site, if you develop it and hold onto it for a year or two, will sell it for 20 million + easily.
Right, that brings me back to the monthly income issue. Why don’t you just keep the site yourself for a year or two and cash in 20+ million dollars “easy”. :0/
Do you still have the Entrecard widget on your blog?
Congratulations Google!
It’s been 10 years since Google saw the light. I’m not going to write a big post about this, but go and checkmout the cool timeline that they have created.
To start with, Larry and Sergey (the founders) was calling their search engine BackRub, but they decided it needed a new name. 15. september 1998 they registered the domain Google.com.
Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a new name. After some brainstorming, they go with Google – a play on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.
If we take a look at the Google homepage back in 1998 it looks kinda similar to todays version. heh.
In my daily internet use, I do use a lot of Google products. What product from Google exept the search and gmail do you use, and like the most?
