As someone who runs several websites, I can’t even begin to tell you how much time I spend dealing with comment spam. While most of it gets swept up by the invaluable Akismet plug-in, there are plenty of comments that seem to trickle through.

While some comment spammers are creative and/or thoughtful (making it kind of apparent that they might have at least read your article’s title) there are plenty of comment spammers that just need to go away and never return. Obviously, that’s who I’ve directed this post towards.

So without further ado, here are the 10 Commandments of Being a Courteous Comment Spammer:

1. THOU SHALL NOT USE BOTS OR PROGRAMS. If you’re going to spam someone’s site you should at least have the common courtesy to do it in person. Help bump up the site’s traffic stats by making an appearance on the site, leave your comment and then be on your merry little way.
2. THOU SHALL NOT LEAVE THE SITE UNTIL YOU’VE PAID YOUR TITHE. Essentially you’re wasting the site admin’s time by forcing them to read your comment and decide whether or not they’re going to let you comment spam. Also, don’t forget the fact that you’re trying to steal traffic from their site, so it seems to me that you can help compensate the site admin for their time and your traffic thievery by clicking on something that will make them a bit of money. Now, in the spirit of not being fraudulent, I’m going to assume that you’re going to click on an advertising link that actually interests you.
3. THOU SHALL NOT POST IRRELEVANT COMMENTS. Seriously, at least pretend that you’re trying to add something of value. Don’t just post something that says “great site” or “I definitely agree.” God forbid you actually post something that sounds smart. Who knows, maybe if you post something that adds to the article or post you’ll actually generate good traffic leads.
4. THOU SHALL NOT BAR OTHER COMMENT SPAMMERS FROM COMMENT SPAMMING YOU. I guess this is sort of along the same lines of “judge not lest ye be judged.” So, with that in mind, if someone allows you to comment spam their site, give a dog a bone should they choose to return the “favor” and hit you back.
5. THOU SHALL NOT INCLUDE MORE THAN ONE LINK TO YOUR SITE(S). There’s no need for you to leave even three or four links in your comment spam. All you get is the little URL box. One and done.
6. THOU SHALL NOT LEAVE MULTIPLE SPAM COMMENTS. Again, one and done, that’s all you get. The only exception would be if you were posting a legit follow up to someone else’s comment. Other than that, you’re cut off.
7. THOU SHALL NOT EMAIL THE SITE ADMIN UPON FINDING OUT YOUR COMMENT SPAM HAS BEEN REJECTED OR DELETED. Seriously, don’t waste time with a “hey, I noticed my comment isn’t showing up on your site” email. It was probably deleted for a reason; that reason being the site admin didn’t appreciate your comment spam. Chances are a follow up isn’t necessary.
8. THOU SHALL NOT COMMENT SPAM THE SAME SITES EACH AND EVERY DAY. Come up with some sort of site rotation so that you’re not constantly hitting up the same sites over and over. You’re probably far more likely to find a forgiving site admin if you comment spam once every two weeks as opposed to twice a day.
9. THOU SHALL NOT INCLUDE IRRELEVANT LINKS IN YOUR COMMENT SPAM. Let’s say you’re trying to comment spam a site that deals with gardening - do you really think it’s worth it to try and sneak in some comment spam if you’re linking to your car insurance site? Probably not. Now, if you’re linking to your gardening tools site, that’s a completely different story.
10. THOU SHALL ASK FOR A RECIPROCAL LINK BEFORE COMMENT SPAMMING. Being included in someone’s blog roll will probably generate as much traffic as comment spamming and it’s far less annoying. Try going this route first before you waste everyone’s time.

While following these commandments certainly won’t guarantee that your comment spam won’t be deleted, they certainly should help you sway a site admin to let your comment spam pass through.

Especially if you follow commandment number two.

• 3 Comments

As I’m sure you can tell by checking out the frequency of my posts here on The New Business Blog, I don’t subscribe to the theory that in order to have a successful blog you need to post every single day. That being said, I’m sure posting once every six months can be a bit of a hindrance to having a high traffic blog, too.

Anyway, I came across an interesting post today on MarkingProfs Daily Fix, which gave the top ten reasons why you shouldn’t post on your blog or website each day. Aside from the typical “burnout” excuse, the author, Eric Kintz, gave some pretty good advice for those of us who run websites and blogs.

In particular, there were three things that Kintz hit on that resonated with me:

1. It’s better to post three good articles per week than it is to post a crappy article every day. Not that I’d ever really like to admit this, but I’ve experienced this on several occasions, especially with Daily Fuel Economy Tip. It almost gets to the point where you’re posting for the sake of posting. Once you realize it’s about quality and not quantity, you should see your product improve drastically.
2. Loyal readers don’t exist. As much as you don’t want to believe it, people don’t come back to your site specifically to see if you’ve posted another article. However, they will come back every once in a while to see if you’ve posted any new quality content, and if they like what they see, they’ll probably scroll through your archives, read some more articles and be on their way. Granted, they may come back in another week or two, but it won’t be based on the frequency of your posts, it will be based solely on the quality of your posts.
3. You’ve got other things to do. Coming up with new content each and every day is a pretty arduous and time consuming task. Wouldn’t you rather just go ahead and write an article when the mood strikes you or after you’ve done some serious research into your topic? Why sit at the computer and hope for inspiration when you could be outside, laying in the hammock, enjoying a nice fall evening?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not telling you to abandon hope of having the most visited blog or website on the internet (okay, maybe I am) but if you can get the same results (hits, views, traffic, adsense revenue, blah, blah, blah) with less effort, why not give it a try?!?

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The other day I read an interesting article on MSN (courtesy of Oprah.com) which talked about ways for people to discover their “true passions.” While the article itself was worth reading, once I looked at it from a business standpoint, I found it completely fascinating.

In going down the ten items listed in the article, I think that each one is something that every entrepreneur has considered, even if they didn’t know it at the time.

Here are three items off the list that I’d like to discuss at length:

1. Listen to your inner voice. There’s really no point in starting a business if you’re going to run it half-heartedly, or if it’s something that you’re not truly passionate about. Sure, you’re going to have plenty of great ideas along the way, but if there’s some lingering doubt as to whether or not you believe in it, you’re probably better served to let it go and wait until you find something that really “moves” you.
2. Tune out the voice of the world. In order to become a successful entrepreneur you have to have some pretty thick skin because along the way you’re going to have a lot of people doubting you and your idea(s). Don’t get me wrong, there are going to be instances when the naysayers are right. That being said, if you truly believe in your idea and believe that you have the ability to make it a success, continue to go after it.
3. Be patient. Out of all the obsticles to becoming a successful entrepreneur, I believe that that being patient is the most difficult. We live in a very NOW oriented society, and many of us expect to reap the rewards of our business once we get it up and running. Chances are that’s not going to happen. For example, they say that for most people who make money off of their websites, it takes at least one year before you start to see all of your hard work pay off. From experience, I can say that this is 100% true.

Obviously, following these steps won’t guarantee that you’re going to succeed at your business. I’m sure there have been plenty of people who listened to their instincts, tuned out the rest of the world and patiently waited for their business to become a success, only to have to close up shop.

That being said, I believe that more often than not, business that ultimately do end up succeeding did follow many of the items pointed out in the MSN article.

• 4 Comments

Wow. Who knew something so mundane could cause such a stir?!?
Yesterday evening I wrote an article for Daily Fuel Economy Tip which was about the ways people waste gas when they think that they’re actually saving it; nothing super controversial or over the top. In essence, the post was pretty much the same as every other article I have on Daily Fuel Economy Tip.

Except, it wasn’t. Let me explain…

After finishing the article last night I submitted it to Fark.com, which actually ended up putting the article on its homepage at some point in the middle of the night. On top of that, because of the increased Fark traffic, the same article ended up getting on the homepage of Digg.

Unfortunately, for the first hour the story was on the homepage of Digg, I was having sporadic server problems due to the extremely substantial jump in traffic. Thankfully though, I had just refreshed my bandwidth for the month, so once the initial shock wore off, the site’s server was fully functional.

And if that wasn’t enough, later in the afternoon, I received an email from a radio station in Bloomington, Illinois (which is about two hours southwest of Chicago) asking me to be on their afternoon program. I obliged and actually have a link to share, so if you’d like to listen to the program, click here.

Needless to say, after all of the hoopla, Daily Fuel Economy Tip had about 75,000 hits today, and while I had a dramatic decrease in my click-through ratio, today has certainly been the most profitable day in the brief history of Carr Online Media, LLC!

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One of the most efficient and inexpensive ways for you to market your site or business is through “viral marketing” which is really just a fancy term for word-of-mouth advertising. Unfortunately, it’s a lot harder to pull off than what many unsuspecting entrepreneurs believe.

Today I came across an absolutely fantastic article in the Harvard Business Review which delved into some theories regarding viral marketing and how you might be able to increase your chances of success with it - and hopefully increase your traffic and revenue.

While many of the points brought up in the article were noteworthy and, at the very least, made me nod my head in approval, the following paragraph was probably the most important item I’ve read regarding viral marketing:

“The standard viral-marketing model is based on an analogy with the spread of infectious disease. It assumes that one starts with a seed of individuals who spread a message by infecting their friends, where the expected number of new infectious people generated by each existing one is called the “reproduction rate,” or R. When R is greater than 1, each person who gets the message will, on average, spread it to more than one additional person, who then does the same thing, and so on, leading to exponential growth in the number of people who receive it—an epidemic. By contrast, viral messages with an R of less than 1 are generally considered failures. That’s because purely viral campaigns, like disease outbreaks, typically start with a small number of seed cases and quickly burn themselves out unless their R exceeds the epidemic threshold, or tipping point, of 1.”

While this seems fairly obvious, I don’t think many of us actually think about how we want to implement a viral campaign before we attempt to put one in motion. Most of us just assume that all we have to do is simply get the word out to a lot of people at once and we’ll have ourselves a kick-ass viral campaign. Unfortunately, this appears to only be half true.

Based on the referenced paragraph, it might not be the quantity of people we reach as much as it is the “quality” of people we initially use to get our viral campaigns started. For example, if we get 100 people to participate in a viral campaign for a new site that we want to launch, but only 1 out of 2 people passes on the word (and the trend continues down the line), we should expect less than 200 people to come to our site because of word-of-mouth.

However, if we carefully select people that we know will pass on our site or business, we could easily expect an explosion in traffic. For example, if we carefully selected 10 people to help with a viral campaign, and each of them passed on our site to just three people (and the trend were to continue down the line), we should expect to see over 1,200 visitors in the same amount of time as the other campaign took to fizzle out at 200.

Anyway, if you get a chance, I definitely recommend that you print out the Harvard Business Review’s article and use it as the basis for any viral campaign that you launch.

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Apparently my “Stop Sending Those ‘Don’t Buy Gas’ Emails” article on Daily Fuel Economy Tip caused quite a stir; not only did it get nearly 2,500 Diggs, but it also caught the attention of a news radio station in Tulsa, Oklahoma - who has asked me to be on their morning program tomorrow to discuss the May 15 gas boycott.

Needless to say, this is really exciting news for me and is the most publicity that any of my sites have ever received.

When I was first contacted by the morning host, I almost told him no, simply because I figured I would be too nervous to talk on air. I mean, who am I?!? Thankfully I came to my senses and told them that I would be glad to be interviewed on their show.

For the better part of this afternoon I have rehearsed my answers even though I don’t know the questions, and have tried to do my best to figure out ways to make sure that my voice doesn’t crack (I’m 25 and just hitting puberty). Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure everything will be fine, it’s just that I’ve never done anything like this before.

Anyway, if you live in near Tulsa, do me a favor and listen to KRMG around 7:45 tomorrow morning. And in the meantime, wish me luck.

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First off, I apologize for the abnormally long time between posts. I recently tried to restain my deck, which was something that I thought would take just a couple of days to do. Unfortunately, it took over a week, and has been occupying most of my time.

Now that that’s out of the way, it’s time to get back to writing!

Anyway, today’s post is about business bartering, specifically how to trade advertising among websites.

Typically when you think of advertising on someone’s website (or having someone advertise on your site) you think of having to shell out (or receive) a certain amount of money for an ad space in the hopes that your traffic will increase. Sometimes this ends up being a pretty good deal and you get a nice bang for your buck; other times it’s the equivalent to you flushing your business’ money down the toilet.

In other words, you’re taking a somewhat educated gamble that you’ll be able to turn your advertising money into more hits or sales.

Lately, I have been approached by several webmasters that wanted to “trade” advertising - meaning neither site would receive monetary compensation for having the other’s ad run on their site, but both sites would receive the same benefits of a regular advertising campaign.

At first glance, this seems like nothing more than a simple link exchange, but it’s definitely a lot more than that. By trading advertising, you’re giving the other site more than just a link, you’re actually using banner ads and images in oder to drive traffic from your site to their’s (and vice versa).

Due to my love of money, at first I wasn’t too keen on this idea because I wanted to get paid for having the other business’ advertising on my sites. However, I’m starting to get over it as I begin to research the traffic stats of the other sites and realize that even though I’m not getting directly paid for swapping advertising, I’ll probably make that up with extra traffic and Adsense revenue.

So, if you are ever approached to do this type of advertising, please give it a thought before you automatically dismiss it. Even though it’s nice to receive that monthly check for your standard advertising fee, in the end you may come out ahead by simply swapping ads.

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Have mankind’s basic needs evolved to include time on the internet? From the results of a recent poll, it certainly seems that way!

According to a poll on The New Business Blog, nearly 65% of us spend at least eight hours each day trolling the internet. It doesn’t take a math wizard to see that this represents, at minimum, 1/3rd of a day.

The results of the poll breakdown like this: 64% of respondents stated they spent at least eight hours on the internet each day; 20% of respondents stated they spent between five and seven hours on the internet each day; 14% of respondents stated they spent between two and four hours on the internet each day; and only 2% of respondents stated they spend one hour or less on the internet each day.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the results of this poll are slightly skewed for a couple of reasons, namely, the poll was conducted online and because The New Business Blog isn’t normally a site that a lot of people just come to (people tend to stumble upon it while surfing the net) it seems to me that the site’s visitors are probably people who spend a decent amount of time online.

That being said, even for 65% of the survey’s respondents to state that they spend at least eight hours each day online really blows my mind. I know that we have become accustomed to the internet and, on some levels, depend on it, but the fact that a majority of us are spending more time online than sleeping is a bit disconcerting.

Fortunately for those of us who run online businesses, this is pretty good news. During the days of dial-up, when people didn’t spend a whole lot of time online, it was tough to make sales and get your site seen by lots of people. But now that most people have high speed internet and spend lots of time online, the chances of you scoring sales or hits has really increased.

Now, get off the computer and go get some exercise!

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It’s no secret that starting a business is one of the most likely ways to generate “massive wealth” but unfortunately too many people never get around to forming a business because they think it’s simply too difficult and risky. Fortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.

Starting an online business has been one of the easiest things I’ve ever done. It doesn’t cost much, is simple to set up and the potential rewards (i.e. money) are far too great to pass up.

Here are the top five reasons why starting an online business is something that you should seriously consider:

1. There’s very little overhead. For most of us who run small websites - and even for some of us who run larger sites - a majority of our overhead costs come from buying our domain name and having the site hosted. And with the fact that you can get good, reliable hosting starting at $5 to $10 per month, that’s certainly a heck of a lot cheaper than the hundreds or thousands of dollars you’d have to pay to cover the overhead costs for a brick-and-mortar business.
2. Creating a site is easier than ever. Not only is it easier than ever, but it’s also cheaper than ever, thanks to great open source software like Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla. Even if you’re unable or unwilling to do the site development on your own, the cost of having someone else do it for you has decreased dramatically.
3. You have easy access to an international market. By having your business online, you can easily reach people all over the world, not just the people that live within a reasonable driving distance to your store. Now your potential customer list has grown from a couple hundred thousand to the several billion people around the world with an internet connection.
4. It’s easy to have multiple streams of income on one site. By having your business online, you can make money from Adsense or other contextual advertising, affiliate programs, direct advertising deals, selling your own products - the list goes on and on. Whereas your revenue streams tied directly to the products or services you sell from your brick-and-mortar business, the ways you can make money online is relatively endless and, most importantly, easy to change around.
5. It’s easy to maintain contact with current and potential customers. All you really have to do to remind people to come back to your site is to send out a quick little email. That’s it. Just slap together a professional looking newsletter, talk about your site, what you’ve updated, what deals you’ve got going on, etc., and then fire it off and wait for people to come back to your site.

Obviously, the list could go on and on - I haven’t even talked about how much fun (yes, despite all of the hard work, this is pretty fun) running your own business is, how you can easily turn a hobby into an income, etc., etc. - but I’ll go ahead and stop here.

Long story short, there really is no reason why you can’t start your own online business, so get moving!

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Going about starting your own Limited Liability Company (LLC) can be a pretty daunting and intimidating task, especially your first time around when you absolutely no idea what you’re doing.

Fortunately, before I started the process of putting together my LLCs I bought a copy of Nolo’s Form Your Own Limited Liability Company, and I have to say, it was probably one of the better purchases I’ve made in quite some time and I would certainly recommend it to anyone who is interested in either learning more about or forming their own LLC.

One of the reasons why I found this book to be so useful is because it does a very good job explaining the legal ins and outs of an LLC, what its benefits and downfalls are, and why you should or shouldn’t choose it as your legal structure.

As I was putting together my businesses, I wasn’t sure whether to choose an LLC or an S-Corp as my business’ legal structure and this book went a long way towards helping me figure that stuff out.

Form Your Own Limited Liability Company 4th Edition

Despite the usefulness of this background information, I think the most helpful resource in this book was the included CD, which contained all of the forms necessary to make your business legally legit. This way I didn’t have to search all over the internet to find all of the forms that I needed to fill out, which saved me a lot of time and aggravation.

Anyway, if you’re interested in forming a business or you would just like to learn more about LLCs, I would certainly recommend this book; I definitely think it’s the best LLC resource out there!

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