Spindigg.com - Raves, Rants and everything in between…

Don’t ask me how the hell this tool calculates the value of your blog because I have no idea and I really don’t care. All I know is it somehow has something to do with Technorati, and whether that matters or not is probably debatable. I just thought it would be fun to punch SpinDigg.com into the computer and see what happens. SpinDigg is now about three weeks old so I was really curious as to how much this blog calculator would say it is worth. So here is the verdict.

The SpinDigg blog according to this tool after three weeks is valued at $565.54. Not bad and better than what I expected!

Then I thought hmmm, what other blogs can I check to see how much they are worth. Well after seeing how Shoemoney and John Chow are competing for RSS subscribers, why not see how they fair against each other for blog value!

So in this showdown of true big league bloggers the results are…. drumroll please!

And the winner is John Chow by $616,477.

If you feel like wasting some time then check out the tool

One of the things I love most about Wordpress is the plugins. Today I thought about looking a what I can do with the user comments and found this pretty cool plugin called Riffly Webcam Comments. It’s a really cool plugin that lets your users alternatively leave an audio or video message if they have a webcam and/or microphone.

Now I think this is so cool because of the fact that it takes user interactivity to the next level. Instead of just leaving a text comment, you can now leave an audio or video comment. Riffly is also free so it doesn’t cost either the blogger or the user anything, nothing, zip!

I have been playing with this now for about an hour and I am unfortunately having troubling recording but I’m not sure if that’s something on my network or theirs. Anyway, why not try leaving me a recording and let me know what you think. You can find out more and download the plugin at Riffly.com

One thing I have noticed is that since I’ve installed this plugin, it does break editing my sidebar widgets and requires me to deactivate the plugin when editing the sidebar.

A couple of days ago I saw that Brian Clark from Copyblogger has finished his free report about Teaching Sells. Actually when I signed up for the report I didn’t even realise that Brian had written it himself and I only realised after I was half way through it. If your interested in making money online at all then I recommend you get over there and check it out… and no, none of the links in this post are affiliate links.

I could sit here and tell you what it’s all about it, but it’s 3am in the morning here in Sydney and I’m kind of getting a bit on the sleepy side so get over to Brians post about it, sign up and have a read or download the audio. I’d be interested when I’m not so tired to hear what you all think.

I mentioned this earlier in this post about Googles keyword analysis tool. Well it’s been rolled out here in Australia. It’s a nice addition by Google to add this which will make lighter work of improving your campaign and understanding what is causing you any issues.

Here’s what happens now when you rollover the magnifying glass icon. It gives you a more detailed overview that what we had before with links to more detail.

Here is the ad showing link details. It has all your keyword details and gives some indications of quality score for keyword relevance and landing page relevance.

He is the ad showing details link. Again more detail than Google used to provide and is much easier than having to go to the tools menu to trouble shoot your keywords and ads problems.

This is last of a 12 part series.  If you just got here go back and see the start here.

It wasn’t that long ago that I was sitting at the local car wash watching the guys who clean the clients cars do their job. As I was watching them, I was thinking about what they were doing, what image the car wash was projecting to me as a customer, and what I felt and thought about what I was seeing.

The main thing that really stood out to me was not what they were doing, but what they weren’t doing! A guy was wiping the hood of the car but he was careless going over the same areas that were easy to reach and not bothering with the other harder to reach part of the car. There was no consistency between the staff uniforms which made it look like a cheap operation, and when I when I was driving away after they had finished, I saw that they have done a sloppy job of cleaning parts of the window and interior.

Here is another story…

A company emailed me today with the launching of their services as copywriters that know how to write to sell. I read the email which basically said how they they understood my business needs and how they would integrate their services seamlessly etc, more marketing pitch that nobody really believes. Sounded to me like they needed someone to help them with their marketing!

At the footer of the email was a banner with their contact details, web address etc. I went to click on their website link only to find it wasn’t a link at all but part of the banner image! Surely they couldn’t do any worse! So I open my browser and type in their web site address as any determined customer desperate to buy their services would do, and what do you think I find…. Website Coming Soon! Unfortunately not soon enough!

Unfortunately we’ve all been guilty of doing similar things and it’s not doing the little things that can break your marketing efforts. As consumers we are constantly bombarded with marketing from all angles so it’s important to do those little thing and get it right. Little things matter because that’s the difference between you and your competitors, and if your doing it and they aren’t you win!

Do the little things and start watching the transformation of your business from average to remarkable.

This is a 12 part series of which I’m showing one each day.

If you are in the search engine marketing game, I’ll bet you’ve heard that line from clients hundreds of times and if your like me, your SICK of it!

Google, Google, Google! This seems to be what the majority of business people think they need to succeed in their business model. Hey, I’m slightly anti-Google but that’s because those OO’s in Google just stare at me for hours most days of the week. In Australia we get a lot of search marketing success stories from the USA which Australians then expect Google search to provide the never ending traffic and leads from being ranked number one for a competitive search term.

The main issue here is that Australia has a population of 20 million people in a land area of 7617930 km² compared to the USA with 301 million people in a land area of 9161923 km². You do the math! Australia’s population is spread around the coastline with the middle of Australia collecting dust! So with only 20 million people over such a vast land area you need to keep your marketing more focussed as not many people are going to drive 4 days across Australia to buy a coffee with muffins if that’s your business is marketing.

Google is no silver bullet and it won’t be the reason your business succeeds however if combined with the rest of your marketing strategy, it can be a huge bonus to your marketing plan. From my experience, businesses who have built a strong brand tend to have better results in search marketing.

If you want to be number one on Google, build a brand and market that brand. Do this consistently and you will start to see results whether it’s search marketing or traditional off line marketing or a combination of both.

This is a 12 part series of which i’m showing one each day.

This is a 12 part series of which I’m showing one each day.