Blogging Experiment » Under the Microscope

Under the Microscope: Stumpedia.com

Ben — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:52:14 +0000

I’ve mentioned before that I’m pretty much a search junkie. If it has anything to with search engines or SEO, chances are, I’m interested in it. So, when I was asked to take a look at Stumpedia.com, the new human-power search engine, it didn’t take much to convince me.

The first thing I noticed when looking at Stumpedia was the simplicity of the site. Similar to another famous search engine, there’s the name of the site, and the search bar. A section underneath the search bar gives you the latest activity on the site and also highlights different user profiles. While I like the simplicity of the design, I think it could use just a splash of color somewhere to accent things a bit. Maybe something as simple as using a larger version of the favicon as a logo or something. Simplicity is good, but there’s also a fine line between it and boring.

The functionality of the site is actually pretty cool. According to the home page, Stumpedia is a “social search engine that relies on human participation to index, organize, and review the world wide web.” That’s a more detailed way to say the site is basically Google, mixed with Wikipedia, mixed with Digg. Searchers type in the term they’re looking for, hit enter, and up pops the results that users have submitted and voted up or down. The more votes a result gets, the higher up it ranks.

As I said, the idea behind the site is very cool. However, I’m afraid it might not be practical. First of all, there’s already a pretty popular search engine around. To be a success, Stumpedia needs to be the people’s first option when they try to find something on the web. If they are going to rely on the fact that their site is user generated content, there’s already Wikipedia for that. I just don’t see a lot of people abandoning either one to use Stumpedia.

Also, whenever a site relies on human signals to determine search relevancy, the first thing that springs to mind is spam. If Stumpedia manages to attract some decent traffic, the very next thing to follow will be people trying to exploit the site. Look at the lengths some people go to try and game Digg’s voting system. If Stumpedia were able to deliver a good amount of traffic to sites that are listed in it’s index, what would keep a site from hiring people to vote it up for all sorts of irrelevant but possibly profitable terms?

With all that being said, I’m sure people thought the same thing when Google and Wikipedia were being started. They certainly both had issues and I think we would all agree they’ve done alright for themselves. So, is Stumpedia the next big thing? In the online world we live in, you never know. Go check it out and decide for yourself. Also, if you have any other feedback on what you like or don’t like about the site, feel free to drop that input in a comment below.

Under the Microscope: Hack WordPress

Ben — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 03:30:07 +0000

As part of the Affiliate Challenge prize, Kyle Eslick asked me to review his quickly growing WordPress site, HackWordpress.com. (update: the site is now WPHacks.com)

I’ve actually been following the site since it’s inception in October of last year. I must say, it’s going to be a bit difficult for me to come up with criticism because I enjoy the site thoroughly. I really feel the site fills a need and that fact alone puts Kyle in a great position to succeed (unlike his beloved Cubs ).

As you might expect, the site covers everything involved in using WordPress. Kyle covers as many themes, plugins, and naturally hacks as he can get his hands on. For example, one of his most recent posts was an in depth discussion about the future of premium wordpress themes (a subject I’m more than a little interested in). Another one of my favorite posts gives a long list of what Kyle considers to be the best plugins for all sorts of categories. I get questions about this all the time and I’ve got to say, I might just start pointing people to this post.

The other pillar of HackWordPress.com has got to be the different WordPress Theme Galleries:

If you’re looking at using or purchasing any themes, either free or premium, I’d suggest checking out Kyle’s review before you do.

As I said, it was difficult to come up with critiques but I did find a few. First and foremost, I’d really like to see the categories as a drop down item in the main navigation at the top of the site. With the block of 125×125 ads, and popular posts, etc, you have to scroll almost half way down the page before you can find the category list.

The other significant change I’d like to see is a splash of color on the site. I love the blue in the logo in the header, but I wish there were a bit more throughout the rest of the site. When you get down towards the middle of the page or the comment section, the different shades of gray can get a bit depressing.

Overall though, I really can’t say enough good about HackWordPress.com. Kyle’s got another great site on his hands (he also writes for slickmania.com and slickdomains,com) and I’m certain it will be successful for a long time. If you haven’t yet, you should absolutely subscribe to his feed.

Under the Microscope: Med Store

Ben — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:26:05 +0000

I’ve discussed affiliate marketing countless times on this blog. However one niche I haven’t mentioned yet is prescriptions and supplements. A lot of times people immediately think of “PPC” (in this case, pills porn and casino) as soon as they hear prescriptions. The truth is though, prescription affiliate sales can be a great source of income. Most affiliate programs in the niche give you credit for all sales over the lifetime of any customer you refer. As your referral base continues to grow, it wouldn’t be tough to imagine affiliates generating some significant passive income. With so much money to be made, it’s no surprise companies in the industry hope to recruit as many affiliates as possible. In fact, when MedStore.biz asked me to put their site under the microscope, they asked that I focus exclusively on their affiliate program.

When landing on the affiliate information page, you’ll immediately see that MedStore boats an impressive 70% commission rate with the leading program. Now don’t get too excited because to get that commission rate you actually have to generate more than 81 orders per day. However, even the lowest rate of commission (50% for 1-5 orders a day) is still a pretty high percentage. Basically, the more orders you generate, the higher the commission rate. While that aspect isn’t unique to MedStore, there are a couple of aspects of the program that were different than any other affiliate program I’ve participated in.

First of all, that commission percentage isn’t just a percentage of the product price. The percentage is actually taken from the profit you generate from each sale. While that seems a bit odd, it makes quite a bit of sense considering the other interesting aspect of the program. The reason MedStore can’t just give you a percentage of the product price is because that price will change with every affiliate. You see, MedStore allows each affiliate to set their own price for the products that they sell. This gives you a larger measure of control over your earnings from each sale. You can choose between setting an extremely low price and hopefully generating a lot of orders per day (earning a higher commission rate in the process), or you can set the price higher and make more profit off every sale.

Suggestions

Really the only negative observation I have about the site is the lack of information about the affiliate process. MedStore does a good job of selling their affiliate program, but they don’t give many details about the program itself. Do you sign up and embed product listings on your own site? Do you simply link to a dynamic page on their site? How do you go about setting your own prices? What kind of tracking do they provide? I’m guessing that affiliates that have previously participated in this niche and therefore know the drill, but adding this sort of information might help them attract more affiliates that are new to the prescription industry.

What do you think?

So I’ve given you my opinion, what do you think? Have you ever participated in an affiliate program for a drug or supplement site? If so, what kind of results did you see? If not, why haven’t you given it a shot? Also, I’d love to hear any suggestions or feedback you have for MedStore.biz. To get started with the MedStore affiliate program, simply click the banner below, then click on Affiliates:

Under the Microscope: SEOmeter.com

Ben — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 03:23:00 +0000

As many of you know, I’m an in-house SEO for my day job, so naturally topics and sites involving SEO are near and dear to my heart. So when I was asked to put SEOmeter.com, a new free SEO tool, under the microscope, I happily complied. The concept behind the site is simple, but incredibly viral. The site measures what they call the “crawl cycle” of all sorts of websites from across the web. For those of you unfamiliar with how search engines work, they send spiders or bots to “crawl” your site and index its content. They then rank that content according to their algorithm and then display it to people searching for the appropriate terms.

Basically, they use the frequency of Google crawls to rank your site in comparison of other sites on the web. By allowing people to pit their site against others, SEO Meter taps into the competitive nature of webmasters. And, since it’s a free tool, you can bet it’s going to attract a lot of links. When you throw in the fact there is a HUGE demand for tools to rank websites (think Alexa, Technorati, etc) and it makes the site down right viral by nature. To capitalize on the viral aspect, SEOmeter provides several different sized badges or images to place on your site to brag about conveniently check your crawl rate right from your site without having to navigate to SEOmeter. As more and more people begin to see the badges, you’ll have people clicking through to find out how their site stacks up. It’s genius.

While I do very much like the tool, I also think there is one area to improve upon. I really think a bit more explanation is needed about what the crawl rate actually reflects. The question is addressed on their FAQ page where it says this:

“It is usually the case that a website “trusted” by search engines is crawled by search engine robots more frequently. This trust, in turn, is reflected in the website’s search engine ranking. Therefore, by monitoring search engine’s crawling activitites [sic], webmasters can gauge the search engine’s trust in their website.”

However, as much as I would like to have a ranking system that would replace Google’s increasingly irrelevant PageRank, I don’t think relying on the crawl rate gives an accurate display of the value or trust Google places on a particular site. For instance, when I clicked on the Top-20 and looked at the blogging category, I see wordpress.org at the second spot from the bottom of the list! Now I’m sorry, I enjoy blogaboutyourblog.com but I have a hard time believing that Google values or trusts that site more than it trusts wordpress.org. In my mind, results like that would seem confusing, especially to people outside the SEO field and more in depth explanation would seem needed there.

Other than that, I think SEOmeter.com is on the right track. The site has a clean, straight-forward design. And you really can’t beat a free tool, especially one that has to do with SEO. I’ve registered Blogging Experiment and I should start seeing tracking data soon so surf on over to SEOmeter.com and see how your site compares.

Under the Microscope: Avot mV

Ben — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:53:15 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve done an Under the Microscope post, but the people from Avot mV purchased this review and asked me to put three sites under the ‘scope in a single post. That seemed like a lot of sites to cover in one post but since I’m trying to improve upon last month’s $500 showing for the month, I figured I’d give it a shot.

The Product

The main site that I’ll be looking at is the Avot mV – Product Site. As you can see, Avot offers “millions of videos from the internet in your pocket” and is essentially a video delivery system for mobile devices such as the iPhone, the iPod Touch, as well as all the devices listed here. The site not only lets you watch videos from sites like YouTube etc, it also allows users to create their own play lists and, in true web 2.0 fashion, share them amongst other users with their built in messaging feature.

While I’m a huge fan of all things Apple, I haven’t yet been able to talk myself into an iPhone just yet. However, I was able to snag a co-workers for a long enough to surf over and watch a clip from The Simpsons and I’ve got to tell you, it’s probably a good thing I don’t have my phone doesn’t have video enabled. YouTube is bad enough when I’m at home on the computer but I’m pretty sure my wife would kill me if I was able to watch all the same videos on my phone. Anyway, if you have any other questions about the service, there’s more info on Apple’s website since Avot mV is a “Staff Pick” application in the entertainment section

I also would like to point out that I reviewed this site previously on one of my other blogs while it was still in it’s early stages and I’m very impressed with the changes they’ve made. Being a staff pick of Apple instantly provides the site a TON of credibility and it’s nice to see that featured prominently on the page.

Corporate

Up next in the trio of sites is the Corporate Site. This site caries over the simple but sharp look and feel of the main product site which really plays well with the white sleek style of the Apple line of products. Anyway, the corporate site is obviously oriented towards the business side of things with links to more information about the company, and contact information for anyone looking for a career or partnership with Avot. Corporate sites don’t really have to do much other than present relevant information and this site does a decent job of that. One thing they might want to consider is having a contact form on the page rather than just displaying an email address. It would just give it a touch more professional feel to it, although I can’t be too critical of this, that’s also something I need to do for this site.

The Blog

And last but certainly not least is the Official Blog of Avot mV. This was really the only site I just didn’t care for and I’m willing most of you will immediately see why. The blog is using the default WordPress Theme and doesn’t at all flow with the look and feel of the rest of the site! They did at least change the color of the header to red from blue but really when the rest of your site looks that sharp, there’s no reason to have a blog that looks like this. As I said, they’ve made quite a few improvements to their site in the past couple of weeks so hopefully this is just a temporary look while they have a custom theme designed. Also, the blog hasn’t been updated since the end of November. Now I realize things are busy, especially this time of year, but when you combine the lack of content with the default look, it seems like Avot knew they should have a blog, but haven’t spent a whole lot of time working on it.

So there you have it, Avot mV under the microscope x 3! I think the site and service will be a big hit with iPhone owners and anyone else that has mobile browsing and video on their phone and the corporate site is solid. The blog leaves a bit to be desired but hey, 2 out of 3 is pretty good, especially when the third can be fixed with just a little bit of design work and some extra content here and there.

What Do You Think?

As always, I’d love to hear what the rest of you think. Do you like the sites? Do you agree with me when it comes to the blog? Did I leave out anything you would like to see changed? Let your voice be heard in the comment section below. Also, if you’d like to have your site placed Under the Microscope, drop me an email (blogex[at]bloggingexperiment.com) or purchase a review to move to the top of the list.

Under the Microscope: 4rehabilitation

Ben — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 05:31:02 +0000

Well I’ll tell you what, these review requests are getting more and more diverse. So far I’ve covered a dating site, a contest site, and tonight, I’ll be looking at a rehab site. 4rehabilitation.com offers “information on drug and alcohol addiction rehabilitation treatment programs.” The site has a TON of information on all sorts of drugs and other common addictions and goes into a lot of detail. I’d like all that information to be presented in a bit larger font. With so much reading to do, the small type and narrow content makes it seem a bit daunting. However, the rest of the visual presentation is very well done. The green is an almost soothing shade and for a site that deals with such an uncomfortable subject that really shouldn’t be overlooked.

As I mentioned before, the site has a ton of quality information. They cover everything from alcohol to marijuana to GHB. They detail exactly what addiction is, go in depth describing the downward spiral that every addict travels, and have a contact form to help you find treatment for your addiction and put you on the road to recovery. I’m assuming this is how the site makes their money, especially since the headline on the home page is “Drug Rehabilitation Referral Service.” While some people might view this as capitalizing on someone else’s suffering, personally as long as people get the help they need I don’t care how it happens. To me that’s the genius of a site like this. Not only are they able to make money, but they also are able to provide a service which could actually help people. To me that’s the best of both worlds.

The only other flaw with the site that I’ve found is the links of interest page. I expected some sort of resource list but instead found a basically empty page. I’m not sure whether that’s just an issue suffered in FireFox or what but I didn’t have any problems throughout the rest of the site. Really this page would be the perfect place to put extra affiliate links for other services or products that would appeal to addicts or their families. Amazon links to addiction books or books about living with an addict would be perfect. If they really wanted to make some money they could put affiliate links to some pharmaceutical site but that might be defeating the point a bit

Under the Microscope: Laser-Toner.co.uk

Ben — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 19:38:28 +0000

Apparently my Under the Microscope posts from last week got some people’s attention because I’ve been receiving several more requests lately. Remember, if you’d like me to take a look at your blog or website, drop me an email. I won’t get to all of them but it’s worth a shot. Of course if you want to assure I cover your site, you can probably figure out a way to get my attention.. Anyway one of the sites that went that route was Laser-Toner.co.uk so here we are.

According to the about page,

“Laser Toner UK was one of the UK’s first online suppliers of high quality compatible inkjet and toner cartridges direct to businesses and the public. We now handle hundreds of thousands of orders every year and every customer is assured of a friendly welcome and that their purchase will be dispatched promptly.

Now, it’s been a while since I purchased any toner or inkjet cartridges but I do remember them being fairly expensive, especially if you have to buy them regularly. Fortunately, there are several stores and companies now that refill old cartridges making it much more affordable. Apparently Laser Toner UK is one of those companies that offers this type of toner cartridge for sale.

While the about page implies that Laser Toner UK has been online for quite some time, archive.org puts the age of the site at months, not years. On top of that, the site does absolutely nothing to inspire consumer confidence. While the home page is pretty simple and straight forward, it goes down hill quickly from there. After clicking on one of the Most popular brands, you’re greeted with a long list of toner cartridges. There are no pictures, no information about which printers they are compatible with, just a long list of links. Not only that, but a large majority of the links take you to a page that simply says there were no results found. I clicked around about 25 times before I actually found a page that actually listed a product for sale!

As if that weren’t bad enough, clicking on the Toner Refill button takes you to a page which promises toner refills for 75% off, but has only “Coming Soon” as the text. Brilliant. When I checked out the delivery info page, I had to scratch my head. The page claims “Order before 4.00PM Monday through Friday and we’ll deliver your printer cartridges for the next [working] day” of course they then qualify it with a quick “(please allow 1-2 working days for delivery).” Wait, what? Is it next working day delivery or isn’t it? Maybe this is a language difference (UK English vs. US English) but to me if you say next working day delivery it had better be at my home or office the next working day. I’m guessing they mean that they’ll fulfill and send out your order within one working day and then the actual shipping will take another day or two. While that might be a small mistake, it’s just the icing on the cake for this site.

So there you have it. Any readers from across the pond, I wouldn’t suggest using Laser-Toner.co.uk for your ink needs. They might in fact be a quality company, but their website doesn’t reflect that at all and as they’ll see from this review, you only get one chance to make a first impression online.

Under the Microscope: Contest Blogger

Ben — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 02:00:32 +0000

Back when I launched the Complete Blogging Package Contest one of the best moves I made was getting it listed on Contest Blogger. So, when Phil asked me to put his site under the microscope I figured it was the least I can do. We’ve both come a long way since then and not only does ContestBlogger.com have 388 subscribers, but Phil’s other blog RomanceTracker.com has another 278. However, since I’ve already had my fill of love related sites this week, I’m only going to be focusing on Contestblogger.com.

The first thing you’ll notice when you hit contestblogger.com is that it’s not just a blog, Phil has also added a forum. While I definitely think a forum is a good idea (and it appears several other people think so as well), I don’t much care for the look of the home page. Personally I liked the look much better when the blog made up the home page. It seemed to keep things fresh and changing rather than the static look the front page has now. I’m also not crazy about the prominent placement of the Google ads. I know first hand how much this site can help anyone wanting to publicize their contest, and to me having the ads be one of the first things you see on the page takes away a bit from the credibility.

The design aspects aside, the site is still about blog contests. And, as the about page says, holding a blog contest is

also a great way to:
Grow your blog’s audience
Build backlinks to your site
Rank higher for keywords in search engines
Increase your blog’s Google Page Rank and Technorati Ranking
Increase your blog’s RSS readership

I’ve already told you what hosting a blog contest can do for you so I’m not going to cover it all again, but rest assured, a contest can do everything on that list. They can be a lot of work and Contest Blogger apparently realizes that as well. In fact, Phil has capitalized on it. If you don’t feel like going through all the trouble of setting up, announcing, promoting, and running a contest, you can actually team up with Contest Blogger and sponsor a contest that they will run for you! For those of you that do put together your own contests, I’d highly recommend getting featured on the site. While the price has gone up since I used their service, so has the site’s popularity and reach.

And last, but certainly not least, the contests! While I’ve so far focused mainly on the contest host’s side of things, the contest blog is a wonderful resource for any bloggers looking for a contest or 20 to enter. There’s always a wide range of prizes and all sorts of different ways to enter the different contests. So, if you wouldn’t mind winning anything from a free copy of SEO Book, to a $100 Amazon.com gift card, to a new iPod Touch, you’ll want to be sure to subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed. It’s basically all the blog contests from across the web, in one handy feed.

Bottom line, whether you’re hoping to win a blog contest, holding a contest on your blog, or just want the benefits without the hassle, ContestBlogger.com is most definitely the site for you. But Phil, really man, I miss the old look.

Under the Microscope: Date.com

Ben — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:00:06 +0000

I received a request to put date.com under the microscope and since I hadn’t done one of these in a while I figured I’d give it a go. According to their website, Date.com is “the premier free online dating service that helps single girls, and guys, men and women, meet other singles, who may be looking for friendships, love, romance and marriage.” Obviously this site is in a very competitive market with the likes of eHarmony and Match.com (just the two that spring to mind).

Before we go too much further I should probably put in this disclaimer. I am incredibly happily married and therefore did not sign up to try out the service. I did however examine the site closely and think I have a few observations that are of value.

Ok, with that out of the way, when I pulled up date.com I was greeted with a fairly standard sign up form. Personally I would have liked to see a bit more information about what exactly I was signing up for but I guess if I were their target audience, I might not care. They do offer a Site Tour which naturally I took. The tour basically takes you through several pages of explaining how date.com can help you find that special someone that you’re looking for. Each page has a picture of models, most of them coupled up and looking quite happy. Obviously they are using the imaging to convey the idea that if you sign up, this is the kind of good looking happiness that awaits you. Again, that’s probably pretty standard for dating sites.

After the site tour I decided I’d check out the registration page to see how involved of a process it was. The home page asks you a few short questions but the next page asked quite a large number of questions about my personality etc. Again, this is an area that didn’t really appeal to me. I’d much rather get signed up and answer all these questions in a profile page or something like that after the signup process is complete. In all honesty it probably wouldn’t have taken all that long to go through but I certainly wasn’t going to go answer all those questions just to get registered. I decided to go check out the rest of the site and clicked the back button to head back to the home page.

Much to my dismay this popped up two prompts. The first one implored me not to leave, and that a live representative wanted to chat with me about a “special offer.” Needless to say this immediately became an adversarial relationship. I wanted control over my browser and they didn’t want me to leave. The chat window appeared to show a representative named Kasey typing out several messages to me. She just wanted me to let her know I was there and all I had to do was type Hi or Hello to gain access to thousands of singles near me. Again I realize I’m not their target audience now that I’m married but I was at one time, and this kind of stuff would piss me off no matter how lonely or desperate I was.

Finally I got back to the home page, after ensuring the site several times that yes, I did indeed want to get the hell away from their live agent who was practically begging at this point. Obviously at this point my skepticism level was pretty high but the rest of the site didn’t do anything to help bring it back down. The Success Stories and Date Info options both too me to pages on the Date.info domain. This absolutely floored me. If you had the good fortune to own date.com, a domain name which is likely worth a million dollars for the name alone, why in the world would you ever use the date.info domain? This might be my SEO experience or maybe it’s my marketing side showing through but in my mind .info might as well say .spam. Seriously, when you see that domain extension aren’t you immediately think that the site is spam or some sort of knock off?

As if that weren’t enough, the last option on the main menu is to Download Toolbar. Just for a quick recap, this site has made use of a pop-up to try and keep me from exiting their signup page, they have a “live” representative trying to talk to me about a “special offer”, half their site is on a .info domain, and now they expect me to install their toolbar on my machine? You’ve got to be kidding me!

Alright, if you’re date.com, where do you go from here? First of all, recognize the value of your domain name. Put ALL of your content on the date.com domain. Keep the date.info registered so you don’t have people trying to knock off your brand etc, but for heaven’s sake, please don’t use it yourself. Also, make the registration process much quicker and easier. Don’t ask me all those questions until after you’ve created my account for me. Allow me to come back and answer the questions later if I’m busy or something comes up. And last but by no means least, get rid of the pop-up. If you’d like to drive people to chat with your agents, put a “Live Chat” or “Live Support” badge somewhere on your site. Don’t try and force it down my throat. Just those quick and fairly easy changes would help your credibility and image immensely, at least in my eyes. I know I was a bit harsh on the site but I hope this helps.