Start 2008 with a smile and a hug
Published by NeighborJohn on Tagged blogsThe start of a new year is a time of immense potential. A time to look forward and shake off any bad vibes from the past.
What better way to start it all than with a hug? This video made me smile and want to hug someone random (plus I love the song).
I found out about the Free Hugs Campaign on That’s What I’m Talking About, my bro’s blog and a fellow siteneighbor.
And just so no one is caught unprepared for tonight, here are the Auld Lang Syne lyrics.
Neighbor Spotlight: Geeky Mom
Published by NeighborJohn on Tagged interesting websites, neighbor spotlightMy very first neighbor spotlight shines on Geeky Mom (view Geeky Mom’s neighborhood). Geeky Mom was an early adopter at siteneighbors and I appreciate that. My intention with the neighbor spotlight is to bring some exposure to interesting siteneighbors member sites. Geeky Mom does not really need such attention. She’s already developed a strong community of readers. I can see why. She can count me as a fan.
Geeky Mom blog illustrates why personal blogs can be so popular. Her posts are interesting and insightful. Just like any well-written blog, the posts will not interest everyone but will resonate strongly with some readers. My personal enjoyment of the blog may be related to our parallel but opposite life paths. Geeky Mom chronicles her journey as a working mom completing graduate school and shifting into a full time academic career. During this same period, I’ve made the transition from full-time professor to entrepreneur. Her discussions of the academic life touch on topics I’ve considered for many years, while her discussions of career choices and technology seem particularly timely in my current life.
Of course, like any good blog, it all starts with good writing. She’s created a distinctive voice and as a result her posts don’t seem forced. I get the sense she posts because she has something to say rather than trying to find something to say because she feels the need to post. Here are two posts I enjoy:
The Internet is Making us Stupid and it starts in the Classroom
This post from last spring cracked me up and made my day.
To be considered for a neighbor spotlight, your website needs to be registered at siteneighbors.com and have a visible siteneighbors button.
Big Crumbs: Worth promoting for the month
Published by NeighborJohn on Tagged interesting websites, advertising, affiliatesYesterday I wrote about holidayizing your advertising. Big Crumbs is a good example. Big Crumbs is an online service that pays you cash back when you shop on eBay or at 163 other online stores. Big Crumbs also pays you a percentage for purchases from your down-line referrals (people you refer to Big Crumbs, up to five generations).
In general, I’ve found these types of services do not generate huge income. However, this is the time of year when they work for you. It is worth taking a few minutes to register and put a small Big Crumbs button on your website. Once the online shopping season is over, just remove your Big Crumbs button.
If you plan to shop online this holiday season, you may as well use Big Crumbs and get a few dollars off your purchases. Even better, signup and next week send a single e-mail to your friends and family with your Big Crumbs link. Tell them that Big Crumbs is a great way to get some money back if they plan to shop online and they will likely recognize the participating stores (including eBay).
Big Crumbs ‘How It Works’ page
Holidayize your affiliate advertising
Published by NeighborJohn on Tagged advertising, affiliatesWhat do you mean holidayize is not a word? I just wrote it didn’t I?
It is time to take a few minutes and make sure your blog’s advertising is ready for the short online holiday shopping season. For the next month, search traffic will change noticeably as millions of people fire up Google to complete their holiday shopping.
Here are three steps to tune up your blog for this holiday period.
1. Figure out what your readers want to buy.
A. Check your search traffic. If your blog is like most, a majority of your search traffic is from people looking for information not products. These people are unlikely to come to your site and suddenly decide to shop instead of read. However, this time of year you may find a subtle shift in your search terms as more people start searching for gifts. This is the time to pay attention to your blog visitor logs so you can catch these shifts. If your site is part of siteneighbors, I can help you use your search traffic to identify good affiliate partners.
I wrote an investing blog and last fall I noticed an increase in searches for gifts for investors. I added a link for gift subscriptions to Investor’s Business Daily.
B. Know the interests of your loyal readers. Don’t forget your non-search traffic. They’ll be looking for gifts for their friends and family. Can you figure out what type of gifts your regular readers may think are cool? Are they avid readers? Sci-Fi buffs? Techies?
I knew that many of my investing blog readers were music lovers so I added a holiday link to iFrogz (they’re in the shareasale program), a site that lets you design custom iPod covers. Even though this product had nothing to do with investing, the ad was my most successful holiday affiliate ad.
2. Choose your advertisers.
If you have less then 500 visitors per day, do yourself a favor and replace your Adsense ads with affiliate ads. I don’t care how many stories you hear about five and six figure monthly Adsense payouts, you will have better luck with targeted affiliate ads. Adsense ads can be useful as place holders when you don’t have something better for that space on your site.
I’ve used Commission Junction and Shareasale affiliate programs to find my advertisers. Overall, I have better luck with the advertisers in Commission Junction. Commission Junction also has an excellent affiliate management site for tracking ad performance. However, Shareasale often has affiliates in content areas that are missing from Commission Junction. Because siteneighbors.com is so wide-ranging, breadth of advertiser choice is important.
I invite readers to add comments about their experiences with these or any other affiliate management systems.
3. Check for seasonal promotions and banners.
If you already have advertisers set up on your website, check to see if they are offering any holiday promotions or seasonal banners. Commission Junction makes this easy to do with their link search options. You want these banners and offers on your site this week.
So mix up some eggnog, get ready for all those holiday parties and start hanging those website decorations.
Most visited topic pages: October
Published by NeighborJohn on Tagged top topicsIn response to Alex’s comment, here are the most visited siteneighbors.com topic pages in October.
We are working to modify how we list sites on our topic pages and hope to have a new look soon. I don’t like how some of the sites listed do not really fit the topic. This is a problem with some of the pages but not all of them. The top five listed below all seem fairly reasonable, with the exception of the music page. I suspect that these pages are getting a lot of search traffic primarily because they DO fit together so well.
I am working on a sort program so that more relevant websites end up at the top of each category.
Top 5 Siteneighbors.com topic pages
- Real Estate
- Music
- Photography
- Blogging
- Business
- Politics (OK I said top 5 but this page was practically tied with Business for number 5)
Tribbit: A tribute to the greatest…
Published by NeighborJohn on Tagged interesting websitesThis is not The Greatest Song in the World, no.
This is just a tribute.
From Tribute by Tenacious D
It’s fun finding cool new web ideas. Tribbit.com is one that I absolutely love.
Tribbit allows you to set up an online tribute about anyone or anything you want. Think of it as a living e-card.
You set up a page for free and then you can invite anyone to contribute text, photos, videos, etc. I love this idea. I browsed current Tribbit pages. There are ones for birthdays, memorials, military, bands, pets, camps.
I just think this is an excellent example of a simple idea that has great value. I was planning to create a webpage (sort of a we miss you page) for a friend of ours and can see how much easier it will be to use Tribbit. Now I can think of several tributes I hope to create.
Oh and if you are curious…here are the rest of the Tenacious D lyrics.
Disclosure: This is not a paid review but I do have an affiliate relationship with Tribbit. Creating a Tribbit page is free.
Most visited neighborhoods: October
Published by NeighborJohn on Tagged top neighborhoodsIn the past month, I’ve seen a significant shift in traffic patterns at siteneighbors.com. Most of our traffic is coming through search engines and going to specific neighborhoods. I’m excited by this development because I designed siteneighbors with the expectation of such traffic. Our intent is to help increase visibility of participating sites by creating search engine friendly neighborhoods which of course link back to the participating websites. This works if the neighborhood pages are continually updated to match websites with high similarity scores. Unlike standard directory websites, siteneighbors neighborhoods are not weighed down by dead or no longer relevant sites.
Because siteneighbors is so new (we’ve only been online for 6 months), it has been hard to gauge how well the site design was working. However, our traffic logs show an increasing amount of search traffic going to neighborhood and topic pages. In addition, the most recent Google pagerank toolbar update revealed siteneighbor neighborhood pages range from PR0-PR4. Given that the toolbar PR is historic and not current and that siteneighbors is such a new site, these pagerank scores are higher than I expected. After all, the summer pagerank update simply changed siteneighbors page scores from NA to PR0.
The top 5 siteneighbors neighborhoods for October
- Socially Awkward
- Color Guard Clothing
- Ann Arbor, MI and Saline, MI Real Estate
- DaftNotStupid
- ColumbusBestBlog
A quick glance at my log files tells me this list will be different for November.
Most neighborhoods are still fairly invisible. I can already see several actions that increase neighborhood visibility.
Tips for increasing the power and visibility of your neighborhood
1. Add a link to your neighborhood on your website. This is the most important thing you can do. You can do this with the siteneighbors button or simply by adding your neighborhood to your blogroll.
2. Get other websites with similar content to join siteneighbors. The more websites in our database with connections to your website, based on either similar content or shared traffic between websites, the more neighborhoods your website will belong to. Those other siteneighbors neighborhoods will provide internal siteneighbors links to your neighborhood and, as an added advantage, one way links to your website.
3. Get other bloggers to link to your neighborhood. This may be a stretch but I’m just thinking off the top of my head here. Perhaps create a separate blogroll of interesting neighborhoods and get a bunch of your friends to add it to their websites.
Stay tuned for changes here at siteneighbors. Our goal is to use siteneighbors to add value for our participating websites. We are working on some exciting new ways to do that.
Spotlight on a siteneighbor
Published by NeighborJohn on Tagged UncategorizedIt’s about time to start spotlighting some of the websites in siteneighbors. I will begin using this blog to promote particularly interesting websites in the siteneighbors town. I’ll limit my discussion to websites with a visible siteneighbors button. I’ve found some hilarious stuff by browsing the neighborhoods. While I search for a good website to spotlight, I’ll leave you with these great parodies of promotional videos for Microsoft Surface and Wii Fit. Both parodies were produced at SarcasticGamer.com.
The Microsoft Surface parody is presented via Monty’s Bluff (a siteneighbor: view neighborhood) who found it at Turner’s Perspective. I link to the Monty’s Bluff post because it includes the original Microsoft video as well (and not just because I write Monty’s Bluff… I promise.)
The Wii Fit parody via SarcasticGamer.com.
Using siteneighbors as a political organizing tool
Published by NeighborJohn on Tagged siteneighbors usesI’ve always been a bit of a political activist so it is no surprise that I see great political organizing potential in siteneighbors.com.
Siteneighbors can potentially link up candidates, activists, and bloggers in new ways.
Let’s say, just for the sake of illustration, that every candidate running for office, local to national, had their website listed on siteneighbors. Let’s also assume that a large number of political blogs and advocacy group websites are included in siteneighbors. Siteneighbors’ visitor-based method for updating neighborhoods would enable continuous new connections between these websites.
For example, a political blogger writes about health care reform. That blog’s neighborhood will likely start to include websites of candidates who are campaigning on the issue of health care reform. The blogger may not have known about that candidate before but now they have a connection. The same process can help the candidate identify potential online supporters and advocates.
Because the siteneighbors neighborhoods are constantly updating, this process could happen over and over throughout the campaign cycle. Today the neighborhood brings together websites connected to health care reform. Tomorrow it may be election reform or immigration. Every day brings a new potential ally or at least someone with a new perspective on an important issue.
For this potential to become reality, activists to spread the word. Get your friends to register their site. Get your local candidates to register their site. Get your national advocacy groups to register their site.
Let’s test out this little online experiment and see what it can do!
siteneighbors is not a social network site
Published by NeighborJohn on Tagged running FAQThere I said it.
People keep trying to figure out how siteneighbors works as a social network site. That is a difficult thing to figure out because siteneighbors does not do the main thing that social network sites do…connect people. I understand the continued confusion. After all, we are using a neighborhood metaphor, which has become a staple of social networking websites (at least we are not calling them communities: 
). In addition, we offer a widget, button and layout that is unapologetically web 2.0 in look. However, our neighborhoods group websites, not people, and our site does not have the standard functionality of your typical social network website (ranking systems, high levels of user customizing features, user interaction tools, etc.).
Siteneighbors connects websites not people. It is more like a website directory that evolves and continually changes as the content of the participating websites change. If a website evolves from a politics website to a sports website, its place in siteneighbors will automatically adjust. This keeps site neighborhoods internally relevant and means the neighborhoods remain interesting to visitors and positive additions for search engine scoring.
Siteneighbors does allow visitors to discover new websites that may interest them due to the innovative way neighborhoods are created. Each site has at least a few neighbors that may be surprising. However, since the neighborhoods are created by analyzing visitor patterns, there is a good chance these odd neighbors have something interesting to offer neighborhood visitors.
Siteneighbors is a directory of websites that may adjust the categorization of a website before the webmaster even realizes they’ve shifted the website topic.
So there it’s said. Siteneighbors will not try to be the next great social networking website but we will try to be the coolest way to categorize websites on the net.