MyBlogLog, a Passing Fad?

If you spend any time reading blogs, you cannot help but have noticed the impact of MyBlogLog ("MBL") over the last couple of months. For example, you've probably noticed those "Recent Readers" widgets sitting in the margins of many blogs, including this one. However, there seem to be mixed feelings about MBL and whether it really is a useful service or just a passing craze.

For example, Darren "ProBlogger" Rowse just authored a post entitled, "MyBlogLog - Is It Adding Value?" in which he wrote:

I guess I'm also still a little confused about what MyBlogLog offers bloggers . . . I'm worried that in it's current form their communities could actually hurt the reputation of the blogs that they form around.

Yet other "A-List" bloggers such as John Chow have been actively pushing their MBL communities and John has even run a competition for which you had to join his community in order to be entered. A sure sign that he's keen to build up his MBL community membership.

Futhermore, MBL was recently purchased by Yahoo, Inc. and will soon be transitioning to using Yahoo IDs in order to log in.

What Does MBL Offer?

Stats
So what does MBL really offer? Well, in my opinion, the best thing that MBL offers is its stats and the best bit about the stats is the "What Readers Clicked" listing, which lists all of the hyperlinks on your blog that visitors clicked on, including AdSense ads, external hyperlinks, etc.

However, even though I really like the stats, there are other sources of such stats, especially where your visitors came from and what they viewed.

Contacts & Admirers
I like the fact that I can see what other MBL users have linked to me as a contact or an admirer. But does this really have any value apart from massaging my ego . . . and the egos of other MBL users? I suspect not. However, people like having their egos massaged (and I got quite a buzz to see someone as well-known as Jill Whalen adding herself as a contact!) so I guess there is some value here but it's an intangible value and not anything that will actually add to the value of your blog in any real sense.

Communities
Again, this merely shows a list of people who have joined your blog's community. This gives them a chance to network with each other and to have your ego massaged again. Yes, it gives you a way of networking with others that you might not have met elsewhere but I'm not convinced again that it offers any real value despite the John Chows of this world that are making such a point of promoting them.

Spam
Yes, MBL offers quite a bit of spam, both in the form of messages, requests to co-author blogs, spam images in the "Recent Readers" widget (including scripts to refresh pages so a person's icon remains in the listing all day) and so on. In fact, this last weekend witnessed a bit of an MBL spamming frenzy, which the MBL owners have since tried to take steps to prevent in future.

Conclusion

If it weren't for the stats, I would say that, at the moment, MBL offers more fluff than substance and it was the stats that really caused me to join. The only other real value that MBL offers is the value that has been placed on it by well-known bloggers who are both promoting it and using their services on their blogs. As for whether Yahoo will add any real value to MBL remains to be seen and I shall look on with interest to see how it develops over the coming months.

Technorati Tags: mybloglog

Effective Blogging: Stick to a Theme

I recently read a question from a blogger/AdSense publisher who was wondering why his blog had such a low CTR, and also wondered if was a result of low volume traffic. This question raises a couple of important points for effective monetization of blogs.

Traffic Doesn't Affect CTR

First, the volume of traffic doesn't affect the CTR. - for example, if you get one visitor, and therefore one page impression, and that visitor clicks on an ad, that's a 100% CTR!! However, if you are lucky enough to get 5,000,000 visitors and 1,000 click on ads, that's a CTR of only 0.02%!

Themes Mean $$$

Blogs are most effective when the bulk of the posts relate to a central theme. This ensures the ads are always relevant and pertinent to your readers. On the other hand, blogs that are comprised of mostly miscellaneous rambling posts on a wide variety of topics are going to have ads related to the topics most recently posted when last visited by the AdSense bot. This means, the topics of the ads will change frequently and may well be out-of-date by the time the visitors even come to your site.

For example, supposing one day you decide to write about the hassles you had when buying a new carpet for your living room. Shortly afterwards, you'll probably find carpet-related ads appearing. Then, a few days later you decide to write about your thoughts regarding some Hollywood starlets latest antics. In that case, you'll get yet another lot of ads appearing, yet your visitors may be there to read about buying carpets, not about Hollywood gossip . . . and so on.

However, if you regularly wrote about issues involving purchases from retail outlets, and you regularly wrote about Hollywood gossip, you should simply create a "retail hassles" blog just about those types of problems and another just about Hollywood gossip, then the ads will always be relevant.

Conclusion

Blogs that are just meandering ramblings across a wide variety of topics will not get ads that are highly targeted to the readers and, therefore, will almost certainly get low CTRs, no matter how well placed and "optimized" they may be. Furthermore, low traffic has no affect at all on your CTRs.

Technorati Tags: blogging, ctr, adsense