My old chum John McGarvey just did an interview with Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief at Wired and author of The Long Tail. (See my old post about The Long Tail and blogging.)

It’s an interesting analysis of the free nature of internet content. Back in the beginning, I think people hoped that the internet would be free in the sense of non-commercial. The outrage over the first spam supports this hypothesis. Since then advertising has been the main way of making money from publishing online. However, Anderson identifies some other ways in which we ‘pay’ to consume online.

“Typically you’re paying with your time and regard. If you link to something, you’re paying by giving some of your own reputation to that site. If you’re spending time with it, you’re exchanging some of your scarce attention for that free product.

“Sometimes you do pay directly. Advertising, ultimately, is paid for by consumers in the form of higher prices for the products being advertised. It’s just not a direct shelling out of cash for products as in the traditional economy.”

All this hit a nerve for me. On the one hand, a reputable US media firm offered me a good sum of money to advertise on Bad Language.  I turned it down.  Mainly because I think advertising would make the site look awful.  Partly, also, I think that Bad Language is really a kind of advert for me and my work and I don’t want to share the limelight.  Also, I fear that if I advertised Bad Language would become more commercial than it is and I’d feel I had to write stuff when I didn’t want to and I’d have to get it properly proofread etc. 

On the other hand, I’m about to launch a new site for pilots and I do want to make some money from that because I’m investing real cash money in developing it.  I’m torn between an ad-funded model and a subscription model.  Currently, I’m going with adverts because I think charging subscribers will make the site more offputting than advertising.  At the end of the day, I still want people to read it.  I guess I’m both sides of this discussion.

(Full disclosure, John used be a client a few years ago. I used to write for Wired but never met Anderson. I use 123-reg for my own domain management. I don’t think any of this influenced the post.)

I’m working to improve my site (more on this later). In the process, I came across a number of online tools that are really helping. They’re all free, so you can’t beat the price.

Must-use tools

I use these tools every day. Highly recommended.

• Site24×7. This free online service pings your site hourly and graphs response times and warns you if the site goes off line. For a few dollars a month, you can get checks every 5m and SMS alerts.
• Windows Live Writer. This is a great, free offline mini-wordprocessor for writing blog posts. It’s much easier to use than WordPress’s built-in tool. It’s also easy to juggle multiple blogs.
• Firefox spell check. When you install Firefox, you get the option to install a dictionary for spell-checking things you type into the browser. This is great for spell checking comments on other people’s blogs and posts you enter directly into your own blog.

Development and techie tools

At some point, most bloggers have to roll their sleeves up and become developers, if only for an afternoon. These tools will help.

• DNS Stuff. This page encapsulates lots of useful tools for site owners. For example, you can check if your domain is on a spam blacklist, look up WHOIS records, ping sites, test for email problems etc. etc. I use 123-reg.co.uk to manage my domains and DNS Stuff helps me check everything is work.
• Web design reference resources. This site is really helpful. It contains links to reference sources for CSS, PHP, HTML, colour swatches, specifications etc. All on one page.
• Firefox developer tool bar. If you do any kind of web development, this is the must-have Firefox add-on.
• Favicon generator. I like this simple tool that turns an image into a properly-configured Favicon (the little icons that appear in browser’s bookmarks). All you need to do is upload it to your site and bingo.
• Embed Slideshare.net presentations in WordPress using this plugin.

Search engine optimisation

Most of my new readers come in via Google. Even for non-commercial sites like a blog, search engine optimisation is essential. These links will point you in the right direction.

• Search Engine Optimisation for WordPress. Okay, this isn’t a tool but it is the definitive guide to SEO and contains links to useful plugins and tools.
• Google Webmaster Tools. Your best insight into how Google’s search engine sees your site.

Visitor monitoring and reporting

Understanding your readers, finding your place in the blogosphere and generally massaging your own ego are essential parts of the blogging experience. These tools will help you get down with your stats.

• Technorati. If you haven’t done it yet, registering your site with Technorati will help you track your interactions with the blogosphere. Who links to you and how much authority your site has. Warning: addictive!
• Alexa. Yes, I know it’s the subject of much debate but if you get reasonable amounts of traffic, Alexa is one useful way of benchmarking your traffic against other popular sites. It’s also a useful way of seeing who is linking to your site.
• Feedburner. This is a bit of a Swiss Army Knife. It provides site and subscriber stats, simplifies RSS feeds, does some social network bookmarking (Digg etc.) and some other stuff. There’s a WordPress plug in that automatically switches existing RSS subscribers over to a Feedburner feed.
• Google Analytics. Completely awesome, interactive, online site statistics. I use Feedburner to monitor subscribers and Analytics to monitor visitors.

Monitoring, validating and quality assurance

Bad code, broken links and poor accessibility can ruin the user experience and damage your searchability on Google. These tools will help you find problems.

• SiteReportCard. I really like this because it does several checks in one, plus - crucially - a page weight and load time report.
• W3C CSS Validation service. Checks for errors and problems in your site’s style sheets.
• Feed Validator. Checks that the RSS feed for your site is okay.
• W3C link checker. Find broken links on your site.
• W3C HTML / XHTML code quality checker. This checks the underlying source code.

Technorati Tags: W3C, validator, SEO, search engine, optimisation, traffic, statistics, Google, Alexa, Feedburner, Technorati, Favicon, Firefox, DNS, tools, free, Windows Live Writer

There’s a nice post on MakeYouGoHmm.com that lists 49 jump starts if you’re staring at a blank screen trying to think of a blog post. Some of his suggestions have worked for me: reviewing a book, for example. I’d add the following:

1. Your obvious is your talent. Find something that you do everyday that may not be obvious to other people and write about that.
2. Lists provoke thoughts. For me, at least, taking a topic and then writing a list seems to generate new ideas that hadn’t occurred to me before.
3. Ask why. Pick a topic and speculate on why it happens.
4. Ask how. Ditto but how!
5. Interview someone.
6. Start a campaign. Find something objectionable (in my case lazy writing) and keep citing examples of it until change occurs.
7. Find a role model. Who writes well? Who do you admire? Praise them. The media is full of negative stories but it’s your blog, so write a positive one.
8. Expand on someone else’s idea. The blogosphere is a conversation. Take something (with attribution) and add your own original thoughts. Like this post.
9. Cartoons. Sketches, diagrams. Anything that makes your point without words. (See my previous post ‘A picture is worth a thousand words‘).
10. Build on a phrase. Sometimes a small phrase pops into my head and it inspires a whole article. Listen to your inner voice.

Technorati Tags: Writer’s block, blogging, writing, inspiration

I help a number of organisations with corporate blogs and I have run several seminars and workshops for marketing and PR folk about blogging.  This experience has made me realise that blogging is high on their agenda but often misunderstood.

• It’s an education sale. Even when people have heard about the concept of blogging, they are often unclear about what it actually involves, what works and what doesn’t. The most common misconception is that only one person can write a blog. Another is that it will involve unbridled reader criticism in comments. There are some good examples of corporate team blogs and corporate marketing sites that work well:  Southwest Airlines and the Boeing marketing blog).
• You have to allay their fears before you can appeal to their ambition. People in big companies rely on agencies like PR companies and marcomms (and, yes, copywriters like me). Writing makes them nervous. Similarly, they don’t have much free time. (Who does?) Also, they are very nervous about going public with something new that might get them fired. Addressing these concerns is critical. Running the blog like a magazine with contributions, interviews and proper editing with tone of voice guidelines helps because it is familiar territory to most marketing departments.
• Marketing matters. In big companies, marketing departments care a lot about whether the blog will conform to company design and style guides. Prototypes are helpful in addressing their concerns.
• Oh no! It’s the IT department. Sometimes you have to use a blogging platform that is safe but not as feature rich as, say, WordPress.  Big company IT departments are often, understandably reluctant to let you deviate from company standards.
• It takes longer. With my own blog, I decided to do it on a Monday and I had built it by the Wednesday. All the corporate blogs I have been involved with took months to get started.
• More people are involved. Getting things done is a meeting-heavy and consensus-driven process that, as an entrepreneur and also as a blogger, I find alien. However, it’s how big companies work.

Technorati Tags: GTD, corporate blogs, blogs, blogging, marketing

I’m considering upgrading my name. Either “Matt 2.0″ or “Stibbr.” What’s your 2.0 name?

According to Anne-Marie Nichols’s The Write Spot, NBC asked the top 130 New York bloggers how much they made from their sites. The results are revealing:

• 17% - over $1,000/month
• 14% - $200-500/month
• 4% - $100/month
• 14% - less that $100/month
• 51% - NOTHING

Guy Kawasaki, a top 100 blogger and hero of mine, reckons he earned $3,350 in his first year from Google ads; although the advertising on his site now is much more visible and perhaps he’ll earn more. I don’t think he’s going to give up running his VC business or writing books to live off his blogging income.

My own experience? I get about $10 a month in Google ad revenue on ModernPilot.com, my flying website. I don’t run ads on Bad Language but there’s a trickle of income from Amazon Associate links, perhaps a few pounds a month on average.

Having said all that, blogging is fun. It brings in business (my blog is my marketing department). It builds connections with interesting people. Readers’ comments and feedback inspire me.

Technorati Tags: blogging, income, advertising, revenue

I’m testing the new ‘post-from-Word’ feature in Microsoft Word 2007. My main concern is to see if Word inserts its usual HTML spam and to see whether pictures upload okay. As I type this, it looks a lot like Office Live Writer but with all the extra tools of Word (such as a spell checker that knows about British English).

Less than a year after I started Bad Language, it’s still a surprise to me that a) it’s been as successful as it has been and b) people now ask me for advice about starting a blog. Equally, nobody told me the whole thing would be so much fun.

Anyhow, I was asked again for some tips by someone starting a blog and I thought the most appropriate response was a blog post.

So this is a list of what has worked for me. Your mileage may differ.

1. Write often. I try (*try*) to write every week day. It doesn’t always happen because of work pressure but it is easier to maintain the discipline if it is regular. I like using Joe’s Goals to track this. Traffic seems to drop off dramatically at weekends so I don’t post then, although I sometimes run a ‘links list’ style post on Saturdays but it’s mainly things I’ve collected during the week.
2. Keep a scratchpad. I use the notes field in an Outlook task item for each of the blogs I write to capture links, ideas, to-do items and so on. When I actually sit down to write, I’ve usually got two or three ideas to hand and a bunch of links to explore. It’s useful to have a few stub posts ready to expand or edit in case you don’t have time to write a long piece.
3. Have a time to write. I tend to blog first thing in the morning, usually around 6am. That’s just me. (See my post on how to get up early.) I know other people who write after work or in their lunchbreak.
4. Variety is the spice of life. I prefer to do posts of different lengths and styles. The ‘how to’ list is popular but I like to run longer, more formal articles and interviews as well as more personal observations. One of the pleasures of the blog is that I don’t have an editor who tells me what to write or how to write it. To this extent it is a playground for me.
5. Contribute to the conversation. There are an awful lot of sheep on the Internet. With nearly 60 million blogs in existence,you really want to try and be a sheepdog. In my opinion, it’s important to say something new and something interesting to contribute that the conversation.
6. Be yourself. Voltaire once said, “if we don’t find anything good a least will find something new.” Ideally you want to say something interesting, Just be yourself. Some of the best blogs are the ones that are unique, idiosyncratic, and highly personal. The extraordinary thing about the blogosphere is that whatever you write about, there is an audience for it.
7. Show your face. I think it’s good to put a picture of yourself,your e-mail address, and a little bit of biographical information about yourself on your blog. Sometimes a nom-de-plume is necessary but turn your blogging alter ego into a ‘real’ person too. One of the interesting things about the lonelygirl15 story was how accepting fans were when they realised that Bree was, in fact, an actress.
8. Get the technology right. If you’re serious about blogging, you need to have a proper website address and not one from a free blogging company. I use WordPress software. A Google search will list all kinds of companies that specialise in blog hosting. Once you get your site setup, you need things like spam filtering (I have had 15,000 comment spams since starting this site) and other add-ons. A good site design will help but there are lots of open source designs to get you started. Finally, I recommend using dedicated software to write posts rather than the blogging software’s built-in editor. In my case, I use Microsoft Live Writer.
9. Plug into the blogosphere. The easiest way to build traffic is to comment appropriately on other people’s sites. The blogosphere is a reciprocal sort of place. Link their blogs and they might read and link to yours. Critical to all this is a good newsreader and a good selection of sites. I use NewsGator because I can access my feed list on any web browser, on my PDA and on my main work computer and they are always synchonised. Make sure your site is registered with Technorati.
10. Linking and loving. I’ve always been impressed by people who email me nicely when I comment on their blogs. I wish I could find the time to do it - I try. Surprisingly, the blogs that I am ‘closest’ to in terms of mutual sympathy and mutual linking are also the ones who are, on the face of it, my ‘competitors.’ They write about the same stuff I write about. Actually, though there’s no real competition and finding your online community is a good way to start building a reader base.
11. Traffic is important but regular readers rule. Occasionally, you’ll produce a post that goes ballistic. I’ve had 20,000 visitors a day on occasion. Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Slashdot, Del.icio.us and all the others pick it up and you’re away. Only a fraction of those people stay and subscribe. It’s very exciting when it happens but what matters is the number of people who keep coming back, who comment, who link to your site and who enjoy what you write. Write for yourself first, then write for them. The harder I try to get a traffic monster, the more elusive it becomes so I sort of forget about trying and they keep happening.
12. Don’t forget search. Google is my number one source of incoming visitors. Remember to register your site with all the usual search engines. I use Google Analytics and Google Sitemaps to monitor what they are searching for and tweak headlines and content a little to make sure I’m delivering content that searchers want. Advice on interviews is very popular.
13. Use pictures. Pictures, cartoons and illustrations are essential. Just imagine reading your favourite magazine if there were no pictures. Yuck! A good picture illustrates the point you are making and draws in readers. I like iStockPhoto which is a cheap source of good quality images but they can be a bit corporate.
14. Write for the screen. Be conscious of how people read on computer screens. Check out Useit.com and in particular, how users read on the web. Also check out my posts about how to write for a blog and how to Write strong headlines. Headlines are important because most people read blogs using RSS readers and use headlines to decide whether to read the whole post. (My favourite: man bites robotic dog and Darren Strange’s Bill Gates runs like a girl).
15. Give people different ways to read: Make the online visit easy to read - don’t go for crazy colours or unreadable fonts. Many bloggers overlook email but FeedBlitz makes it easy for non-RSS subscribers to get Bad Language in their inbox. Make sure you have a visible, easy to spot RSS subscription button. However, I would avoid the icon clutter that some blogs display when they try to accommodate every single blog reader and every single news aggregator. It’s your site, not a billboard for other people’s.
16. Schedule blog upgrade days. Maintaining a blog is not just about writing content. I try to dedicate a day every two to three months to upgrading the site itself. This means recategorising posts, checking for broken links, implementing new features and other engineering stuff. I know just about enough HTML and coding to tinker with a site’s template but not enough to build a new template. However, there are plenty of people who can help with this stuff and one way to stand out from the crowd is to have a unique site design as well as unique content. For more information about my blog is built, see Slugs and snails and puppy dog’s tails.
17. Monitor your stats. Anyone who is a true blogger will be addicted to their stats. But what is interesting is how I have changed the way I use them over time. Initially, I was obsessed by the raw visitor numbers. While these are still important, I am much more interested now in what brings people to the site, what posts they liked, whether they revisit and how often, what they search for and so on. I’m trying to use the stats to help me build a better site for my readers, not to gratify my own ego (well a little bit of that too.)
18. Market your blog. Occasionally people ask me to contribute to their sites, perhaps with by-lined articles or interviews. For example, I write a free monthly column on Visual Thesaurus. This brings in a nice stream of new visitors who are interested in writing. I also make an effort to comment on sites and posts that are relevant to my readers and my areas of interest. This is probably the main form of blog marketing. It takes time but it pays long-term dividends. I still get new visitors from comments I wrote six months ago. However, the comments have to be appropriate, useful and link to a relevant page on my site. Comment spamming is naughty. Then there is the old fashioned kind of marketing. I like to my blog from my personal site, from my email sig, from presentation decks, in fact I mention it pretty much any time I can.

I am passionate about website usability. Good copy is an important part of that but not everything. So I asked John Allwright, head of web design and development at Microsoft UK, and John Harris, a user experience evangelist there, to talk about what makes websites good.

Full disclosure: my company, Articulate Marketing, does a lot of work for Microsoft, although this conversation was triggered by an article on the BBC’s website, websites face four-second cut-off. This reported that 75% of users would not return to websites that took longer than four seconds to load.

What are the most common usability problems you deal with at Microsoft?

John Allwright: The same problems that any large corporation faces. It comes down to how you do content management. Everyone wants to be on the front page of Microsoft.com and obviously, they can’t be. The number of pages you can host is endless (actually in the order 5m pages across the whole of Microsoft) but then it becomes an issue of navigation.

How important is search to usability and navigation?

John Allwright: We do surveys of how people find information about our products. Generally, they come to it through a search engine (obviously Live.com!). We’d like people to access the information more easily from within the site.

It’s interesting how people perceive websites. When asked where they got some information, people will quote the search engine [that they used to find a piece of information] rather than the site that served it up.

John Harris. It’s increasingly a case that people arrive at a landing page and do a search rather than spend three or four minutes browsing. Whichever search engine you used, trying to find the right document among 150,000 pages is quite difficult. People expect to see a search box. It’s not just best practice but it’s now an expectation.

Is loading speed still relevant with so many people on broadband?

John Allwright: It’s still a problem. There are a whole bunch of things that can contribute to slow loading. Even with broadband, some sites still seem to take an age to load. Loading times are a user experience issue. If you can’t deliver your pages quick enough, there are lots of other people out there who can do it better.

John Harris: A lot of people get fixated on home page download speed. What they fail to appreciate is that if the server is on a heavy load, the speed might very. Big ecommerce sites actually see sales drop off in real time on slow servers. Sometimes, a slow response isn’t down to the site design. It can be an internet blockage or a slow server. Equally, you can have a page load instantly and then pop up an advert that takes a while. Bingo, you’ve lost them.

Why do sites get so bloated?

John Harris: it’s a lot of different factors. Quite often, it’s the difficulty of standing up to a client that is demanding, say, flash intro animations. The large agencies and big design companies deliver really good, compelling websites. In the mid market, the designers perhaps feel uncomfortable standing up to clients.

Another reason is that a lot of companies struggle with the whole idea of user experience. They like the sound of it but then it is ‘show me the cold hard facts.’ There’s always a moment of scepticism around user experience because you can’t prove the point until you’ve made the changes.

It’s also a question, often, of making small, detail changes. Too often there seems to be a sense that people need to replace a whole website with another website when optimising the way a single form works could be more effective. User experience isn’t about building a whole website but about concentrating on where it goes wrong.

Web 2.0 – myth, reality or promise?

John Allwright: My personal opinion is that it’s a useful vehicle for discussing the state of the web. Some people see it as gradient shades, rounded corner and a bit of AJAX. But there are more fundamental things at work. For example, demographic changes, increasing broadband and user-contributed data mean that new business models spring out of it. It’s a way of reflecting on what is possible now. I don’t want ring fence it with any particular technology or any particular vendor. People’s definitions vary but that doesn’t matter.

What does it mean for Microsoft?

John Allwright: We’ve debated this long and hard in the UK. What it means to us is to be a voice at the table when people are talking about it. To have something to add to the discussion. Of course, some of it is tactical – we have an AJAX offering, for example. But strategically, it’s about engaging in the right discussions and not being excluded.

John Harris: From a design perspective, what I really like and what Microsoft is getting is the ability to push better, more interesting interaction. It is a great time for people to be building stuff, playing around with ideas. From my side of the table, I don’t think there’s any scepticism around ‘Web 2.0’ but we do have to make the bets in the right place. It’s not like when the web took off in the first place when people charged in and tried to do as much as possible. It’s about making it all work together. It’s no good having great technologies for the sake of great technologies. We’re not being cautious. We’re making sure that what we release, when we release it, is usable.

What do bloggers need to learn about user experience and usability?

John Harris: I guess it’s how you treat your audience. A lot of people worry about frequency – should I blog every day? You get a lot of blogs where there are lots of one line link-based posts that don’t provide any additional information for readers. People are looking for consistency. Putting up a really interesting piece once a month could be good. It’s about finding your own style and rhythm.

There seems to be a lot of consistency between blog user interfaces from different vendors. Does that hamper usability or not?

John Allwright: RSS readers are very handy for getting nuggets of information. There might definitely be space for someone to take that to the next level where you have a richer experience more like reading a magazine online.

We’ve been working on a reader for the New York Times for some of their online content. [It has lots of different ways of navigating form article to article.] If your content becomes interesting and you can start relating blog posts to others within the same blog then it becomes more than a stream of consciousness.

How about a quick plug for your new design tools?

Microsoft Expression is a new family of programs aimed at designers that are focused on experience design. When most sites want something more than AJAX they look to Flash. A lot of times, it’s the right answer, but sometimes you want to go further or reach deeper into the capabilities of the desktop, such as 3D acceleration and Expression enables that.

Technorati Tags: usability, website, Microsoft Expression, John Harris, John Allwright, Microsoft, content management, blogs

Write2Market, an Atlanta firm of copywriters, is running a survey about business blogging. Some interesting results:

• 58% of business bloggers had received a qualified lead because of their blog
• 44% had closed business thanks to their blog
• A quarter of respondents got 15% or more of their leads this way
• 43% believe blogs are ‘here to stay’ and 40% read a variety of business blogs
• 45% set specific marketing and sales goals for their blog

While this is a small sample (211 total respondents as of today) and they are a likely to be reasonably blog-savvy since this is how they probably heard of the survey, it still shows that (some) businesses are taking blogging seriously and treating their blogs as part of their marketing activity.