Domainers, for the uninformed, are people (or groups of people) that register large quantities of domains with the intent of reselling them for substantial sums of money. Have you run into a domain owned my a cybersquater (domainer)? Usually the page displayed is generic, and contains ads. Most of the time there’s also a link to make an offer to buy the domain. Yeah, it sucks that the domainers taking half of the good domains and not utilizing them, but they’re not about to stop anytime soon. They’re making hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars off the domains they sell.

So how can you get a good domain with all of this going on? You have three options:

1. Buy from a domainer
2. Come up with a creative domain that’s available
3. Look for an alternative TLD

If you just have to have that cool domain, go with option one. If you’re the creative sort, keep looking. The last option is to look for a domain with a different TLD. What’s a TLD? A Top Level Domain is the .whatever suffix on domain names. .Com isn’t the only TLD on the web. You could use a country level TLD like .us (great if you get something like www.stupendo.us), you could use .net, .info, or something else. There are plenty of alternatives.

Some counrtries have even made their country level TLDs available to the general web population, deciding that they don’t need them all to themselves. The republic of Tuvalu has made .tv domains available through several major registrars, and you can also get .fm and other country TLDs. .Tv and .fm are great for vidcasts and podcasts, as I’m sure you noticed.

Personally, I’ve been wanting a whole new TLD as a .com alternative. After years of wait, we’re finally getting one. Sometime in 2008, ICANN will create the “.web” TLD. It’s a general-purpose TLD that’s being introduced because of the overcrowded .com and .net. Finally! Of course, the domainers are going to have a field day, registering every word in the dictionary, as soon as it goes online. So you may want to keep an eye on ICANN’s website. I’ll probably register a few domains for future use, before their taken. I have some ideas for NTugo that would be better if they had unique domains.

So if you plan on starting a blog next year, but you’re not ready yet, keep an eye out for the .web domains!

After releasing statistics to their users, everyone started blogging about how they had x impressions of their headlines, but only a few clicks. Darren Rowse even. He’s had over 70,000 impresions, but only 35 clicks or so.

Well, BlogRush has just sent out an email to all of their users. If you’re not in the program, here are some excerpts.

” “My Click-Through Rates Are Really Low!”

Many of our members are reporting that they are
receiving low click-through rates on the impressions
for their blog post titles. This is due to multiple
reasons…

1. Since blog post titles become the link text
that is shown inside the widget, it must well-written
in order to get maximum attention and therefore
maximum clicks.

Many of our users are posting blog titles like
the following, “Now I Can See Why People Love
This Laptop.” This is a very VAGUE title, and something
more effective would be, “12 Reasons Why
The MacBook Pro Is A Must-Have.”

When writing post titles it’s best to be SPECIFIC
about the topic you are discussing.

Quite a few of our members are experiencing
click-through rates that are 8-10 TIMES GREATER
than other members. These members with
higher click-through rates have the same
thing in common — better post titles. “

” BUT… THERE ARE OTHER THINGS AFFECTING
THE CLICK-THROUGH RATES…

2. Our data is telling us that we need to add more
categories to help the widget deliver more relevant
content — which will only increase the click activity.
Some of our categories are too general in nature
and need to be expanded into more specific
areas. (We’re working on this right now.) “

” We ask that you have some PATIENCE and
let us work the problems out of our network
please. This is only the public BETA version
of our service and will only get BETTER. “

Well, I’m going to keep their widget on my blog, and we’ll see how they improve. My stats haven’t been great either, but I haven’t gotten much blogging in for the past few days.

First of all, why do websites run ads? To make money. I, and most other people, don’t have any problem with this. We’re used to it. You have ads in magazines, commercials on TV, billboards on highways. I place ads on my websites as well.

Why do people block ads? Because some websites cross the line between making some money, and going crazy. I can tolerate some AdSense blocks, and other unintrusive ads. However, most commercial websites are so ad-heavy you want to scream. They don’t just load their pages with banners, but they employ such annoying ads that there’s no doubt why AdBlock came into existence. Here are some examples:

• Noisy Ads. Banner ads shouldn’t talk, buzz, or otherwise utilize your sound card. If I’m reading articles online, I don’t want my speakers to suddenly come to life, screaming “You’ve just won a free iPod! Click here to claim your prize.”
• Moving/Expanding Ads. Okay, vibrating and blinking banners aren’t good. Neither are ads that aren’t contained to their original box. George W. Bush shouldn’t dance across my monitor, and I banners shouldn’t double in size when I accidentally mouse over them.
• “Brick Wall” Ads. These irritating things are shown between page loads. Visit GameSpot or PC World and see this for yourself. You see a big full-page ad, with a bar along the top that says “Click here to continue to [Site Name].”
• Pre-Roll Video Ads. If I want to spend my valuable time viewing a video, I don’t want some lunatic ad to play for 30 seconds before I can watch it.
• Pop-Ups. Yeah, what a great idea. Opening a new browser window on us isn’t going to get us to visit your sponsor. More likely we’ll just leave.
• Kontera Keyword Ads. You’ve seen those double-underlined links, right? When you mouse over them you’re greeted with a stupid box that pops-up in your face.

This is by no means a definitive list. Really, you have to wonder. Do the people who run these sites actually visit them? I’m guessing they don’t. A lot of these commercial sites are run by actual companies, and the owners probably aren’t involved in day-to-day operations that much.

I’m a webmaster, and I’m a serious web user. I spend a lot of time online, and see vast quantities of ads each day. You see, spending so much time online myself, I know what annoys me. When I place ads on my websites, I do it in ways that wouldn’t annoy me. Notice this site? No pop-ups, no “Brick Wall” ads, just some AdSense mainly. Obviously I’m not making as much money as I would if I did otherwise, but I don’t care.

The web is an information/communications network that, first and foremost, is about the sharing of information. People forget that in the early days of the internet, there was a ban on commercial traffic. Of course, that was a kind of over-restrictive, and it was eventually lifted. I like making some money off of my content, but it’s a rather stupid business model to make all of your money off ads. I think the best way is to take Ars Technica’s approach. They’re ads are at a minimum, they’re content is free, and they’re still making good money. The web isn’t print media, so stop monetizing it like a magazine. Sorry, web users just won’t put-up with digital equivalents of magazine ads.

Web sites are a new medium, and therefore require different advertising approaches. The Pay-Per-Click scheme was pretty good when it launched, though it’s effectiveness has been waning. It’s now up to the ad networks to innovate new approaches to online advertising. It’s happening, though not as fast as we’d like.

A common argument about AdBlock is that its users are “stealing.” By reading content, and not enjoying the site’s ads, the users are taking the content without paying in ad impressions. I think it’s time for a metaphor. If you’re a TV network, you’re likely making your money off commercials shown throughout your programs. Of course, most people leave the room when the ads come on. They make sandwiches, they go consult IMDB to see what else an actor has been in, and they grab a Pepsi. Unsurprisingly, the companies purchasing ads are less willing to fork over the cash required to run a TV commercial. Is it stealing to watch a TV show, but not the commercials? “No, duh” is the answer here. So why is it “stealing” to read a web page, but not view the ads?

Ad blocking is a result of intrusive advertisements invading the internet, and I believe web users have every right to block ads if they chose. Personally, I don’t blanket-block ads like a lot of people. I just zap the worst of them. If people weren’t blanket-blocking ads, I could have double the ad revenue I have currently. Sure, I wouldn’t mind having some extra cash (I really wouldn’t mind), but I’m not complaining. I think web users have every right to block online ads.

Further Reading

• If Your Blog Doesn’t Have Ads, Are You Evil?
• Don’t Block Firefox!

Today, Technorati redesigned their homepage. The old page content is gone, swapped for the topics feature. See it here. To the right of the scrolling posts, you have lists of popular tags and search terms (no more tagcloud, unfortuantely). I’m not sure if I like it or not.

It depends. Snap recently introduced more functionality into the Snap Shots lineup. Some of the features are actually useful, while others are just annoying. Let’s take a closer look.

RSS Shots

“RSS Shots” display the contents of any RSS feed you link to. The usefulness-level of this is debatable. It could be useful if you link to other sites’ feeds.

ProfileShots

Forget it! “ProfileShot makes it easy to deliver the vital details of social network profiles”? As I’m sure a lot of you know, I don’t like MySpace, Facebook, or any of those types of sites. They’re simply a waste of time. Is you’re blog really useful if you link to MySpace profiles often enough to use this?

PreviewShots

Formerly known as “Snap Preview Anywhere,” these are the “classic” ‘Shots that most of us think of when we talk about Snap Shots. They’re kind cool, but there’s not much point…unless you run a design gallery.

StockShots

If you’re into stocks, you may like this one. It has a few valid applications, but the majority of us won’t see it much.

WikiShots

Bloggers tend to link to Wikipedia entries a lot. Since the most important parts of Wikipedia articles are generally at the top, this is one of Snap’s best ‘Shots. With this, your readers don’t even have to leave your blog to see what Wikipedia has to say. You’re saving your readers time, and keeping them on your blog.

VideoShots

YouTube, Revver, MetaCafe. Web video has taken the web my storm. With VideoShots, you can link to a YouTube video (instead of embedding it), and anyone who hovers their mouse over the link will be greeted with a word-bubble carrying a video player. This is great for users of WordPress MU blogs, since WPNU makes it a little hard to embed videos.

MovieShots

If you haven’t heard of IMDB, you must not watch many movies. The Internet Movie Database allows you to look-up any movie, actor, director, etc and find out a ton of information. Which 007 films had Sean Connery as James Bond? Who directed Pirates of the Caribbean? Using Snap’s MovieShots, any IMDB page you link to displays some of the page in a “SnapBubble.” Depending on your blog’s topic, you may want to look into this.

PhotoShot

What? “PhotoShot” is only one letter away from Photoshop! If you’re into Flickr or Photobucket, you may like PhotoShots. Using PhotoShots, you can easily preview Flickr galleries and such.

AudioShots

Hey, podcasters! AudioShot plays audio files, and can display metadata like the title, album, artist, and cover art.

ProductShots

This one displays the contents of any Amazon page you link to. Now, if it plays nice with your Amazon Affiliate links, then this is great. At least, I think it is. Would people be more or less likely to click through if they can see a preview? Think about this carefully if you use Amazon Associates.

So, should you use Snap Shots? It’s up to you. Personally, I don’t care for them too much, as it’s pretty much hall or nothing. If you want Snap Shots, you get all of the ‘Shots. If you read Snap’s help page, you can find instructions to only display ‘Shots on links with a certain class. You could use that feature so as to have only one type of ‘Shot, but I don’t think it’s worth it personally. It’s up to you, though.

How does it work? To join, you must link to the Network page (linking guidelines available on the site), and then request inclusion in the Network. If you are accepted, you’re site (with link and RSS feed) will be added to the Network page. Also, your posts will appear on the page (and the NTugo home page) as well as in a feed of the most recent posts from the networked sites.

It’s free and kind of cool. This blog is a member of the Network, along with a few other sites.

You can now customize the heck out of your Pageflakes pages, changing themes and creating your own. You can change pretty much any theme element…and even edit the CSS if you choose to. To top that off, you can make themes publicly available to other users.

Also introduced is the new Pagecasts feature. It’s sort of like the Netvibes Universes, but anyone can create one. See for yourself, here’s the NTugo Network pagecast. You just add a new page to your Pageflakes account, add some content, choose or create a theme, and choose the “Make Pagecast” option.

Take a look at Pageflakes’s updates. Even if you use Netvibes, you may consider switching. The speed on Pageflakes seems to have increased significantly, and with all these new features…

Personally, I don’t really use either. I read my feeds with MyNT, and I don’t have much need for most of their features. I use Yahoo Widgets, and that offers most of what the web-based thingies do.

First of all, people naturally link to Amazon. If you write an article about a book or other product, you naturally link to a place where you can buy it. There are tons of book review sites that link to an Amazon page for every book they review.

Second of all, you have an interesting little scheme service known as Amazon Associates. How does it work? In short, Amazon pays you to link to them. You read that correctly.

Suppose you review a book or other product on your blog. You link to the Amazon page so your readers can buy the book. In that link, you include an ID code that represents you. Whenever someone clicks through the link over to Amazon, the mega-shopping-giant starts logging what the visitor is doing. If they buy anything in the next 24 hours, you get a 2.5-8% commission. The big bloggers do this a lot, and make a considerable amount of money.

How does this help Amazon? Number one, you’re convincing people to buy stuff from them. Number two, that’s another link pointing to their domain. Once you realize that there’s a huge amount of people in the Amazon Associates program, it’ll hit you. Each one of those affiliates may have hundreds of referral links scattered throughout their sites. Multiply that by the thousands (if not millions) of Amazon Associates members, and…that’s a lot of links.

Don’t get me wrong, Amazon Associates is a great service. I’m just pointing out how much it’s benefiting Amazon. If they can do something like that, so can you. All you need is a valuable resource, and means of convincing people to link to you (I doubt you can afford to pay linkers, so I suggest coming up with something else).

It seems that Google has been “un-googlebombing” sites. Sure enough, all those famous Googlebombs have been altered. They claim that their intervention was not manual, but a change in their ranking algorithm.

Is it ethical though? Technically, the search results were that way because of genuine links. Despite their “Don’t be evil” motto, they’re tampering with the results. Should they be doing this? What do you think?

Personally, I think they have a responsibility, as the most widely-used search engine, to not fiddle with their algorithms for frivolously “fixing” things such as Googlebombs.

Okay, here’s how this fill work. I’m going to compare Blogger, LiveJournal, and WordPress.com. We’ll see what free blog provider is the best. Let’s start with LiveJournal.

LiveJournal

LiveJournal has been around since 1999, providing blogs mainly for people in the 13-20 age range. Personally, I’m not a fan of LiveJournal, but I’ll keep this review unbiased.

• URL Format: you.livejournal.com.
• Domain Allowed?: Not for free accounts, though the ad-supported “Plus” account allows the use of a domain name (which costs $5-7/year, and I highly recommend).
• Major Flaws: Transfer speed of free blogs is limited at peak hours. Very limited theme support.
• Any Ultra-Cool features?: No.
• Themes: Very limited. Some color changes mainly. To create your own theme, you must have a paid account.
• Ads: No ads in the basic free plan, though there’s a “Plus” plan which offers more features in exchange for some ad space.
• Ease of use: Not great.
• Rating: 2/5

WordPress.com

WordPress.com, is based off the very nice blogging software available at WordPress.org. WPC offers blogs that have some of the features of the WordPress blogging software, though the feature-set is not really comparable.

• URL Format: you.wordpress.com or domain.
• Domain Allowed?: Yes.
• Major Flaws: Really limited themes.
• Any Ultra-Cool features: Free OpenID URL (your blog’s URL).
• Themes: Choose from small selection. You cannot create your own theme, though if you pay you can edit the CSS.
• Ads: None. You cannot add your own, for lack of theme support.
• Ease of use: Fairly easy.
• Rating: 3/5

Blogger

Blogger is the best of the free blog providers, a Google service for the past few years. Many of the shortcomins of other providers are nonexistent, thanks to Google’s generosity.

• URL Format: you.blogger.com or domain.
• Domain allowed?: Yes.
• Major flaws: Atom instead of RSS (though Feedburner, another Google service, can remedy that). Limited themes, though the least limited compared to the others.
• Any Ultra-Cool features: N/A.
• Themes: Limited, though the least limited compared to WordPress.com and LiveJournal.
• Ads: No ads. You can easily add your own and make a few cents.
• Ease of use: Really easy.
• Rating: 4/5

Blogger, it seems, is the easiest to use free blog provider….Though you can’t compare it to the self-hosted WordPress system (which isn’t that hard to install). If your on a really tight budget, and need to use a free host, I suggest using Blogger. Get a domain, if you can afford $6/year. If your blog starts to gain popularity, and you decide to give WordPress a go, you’re covered. WordPress can import posts (and comments) from Blogger, and you can re-point your domain to the WordPress installation.

If you want to install WordPress, we’ve got a tutorial. The Starting a Great Blog tutorial covers everything from Domains and Hosting to Installing WordPress to Stat Tracking.