startatnothing.com

Recently, we’ve been trying to solve our traffic and readership problem here at SAN.com. The problem is…we have very little traffic and readership. So, we’ve been trying to market a little harder to bring some people in to the site. We’re putting ourselves out there a little bit more in the blogging world, trying to make some friends. The results have been relatively positive, so far, but it’s also enough to make your head spin. So, if anyone can offer up some advice on how to deal with this, we would really appreciate it.

Social Bookmarking Sites

I’ve read a lot of posts about social bookmarking sites, I even wrote one myself. Some people love them, some people hate them. Some people say they hate them, but then write about how one of their articles hit the front page of Digg or whatever, and they’re so excited about it because of all the traffic it sent them. That type of situation is hard to understand. That’s like saying you hate hybrid cars, except when you go on long trips because it saves you money.

There are so many bookmarking sites, but they all seem to do the same thing. I can’t distinguish which one is better, or why one could even BE better. A lot of people say that Stumble Upon is much better than Digg or del.icio.us or any of the other hundreds of bookmarking sites. I, personally, don’t know how anyone could tell the difference between them, though. I’m sure there are differences, at least I hope there are. If you can tell me how these sites are different I would appreciate it.

Twitter

So, I signed up for Twitter, I’m “following” 5 people, and I even have 1 “follower,” but honestly…I don’t even know what the hell Twitter is. I know that it’s a way to communicate with other people efficiently. But, I don’t really use it yet, because I’m not that sure how to. I know some of you reading this probably think I’m a moron because I say I don’t know how to use it. I guess I should say that I’m not familiar enough with it. And I don’t want to just dive into it and make myself look foolish. I want to learn about it, though, because I know many bloggers that swear by it.

But here’s my situation…on my homepage I can type where it says “What are you doing?” My question is…Who sees what I type in there? Is it my followers? Do people that I’m following see it? Does everyone on Twitter see it? Is it all of the above, none of the above, what?

Also, do people really want to know that I’m eating or sleeping or taking the Browns to the Super Bowl…if you know what I mean? I don’t know, I need some help.

MyBlogLog

I also started using MyBlogLog recently. You can find me here if you’re also a member, and we can be friends. Now, this site seems pretty cool. It’s a very good way to meet other bloggers with similar interests, and you can join communities that you are interested in. I really like it because it gives me access to a ton of blogs on subjects that I’m interested in, all in one place. At first glance, I thought it was kind of a way to centralize all of the things I’m talking about in this post, because you can list all of the social applications that you’re a member of (like Digg and Stumble Upon) in one place. But really, this only enables people from MyBlogLog to go to those other services and contact you there easily. It doesn’t really centralize all of the social aspects of blogging in one place. My mistake.

That’s my biggest problem with blogging, there’s no centralization. I feel like to be successful in blogging, you have to spread yourself thin over all of these applications – Social Bookmarking sites, Social Contact sites (like MyBlogLog, Facebook, MySpace, etc.), forums and discussion boards. Then, you have to find other blogs, and read them and comment. Not to mention writing stuff for your own blog. I just feel like there’s not enough time in the day to check all this stuff, especially with school, work, and other things that take up time.

It’s really a tough task. And the people who are successful at it, more power to you. I guess this post is just about how I’m feeling at this time. I feel like I can’t keep up right now with what I need to do to be successful. I feel like I could spend all day on each of these sites and still be missing something. I could also just be doing it wrong. Whatever the case, if anyone has any advice on what I could do to make this easier, I would certainly appreciate it.

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There are many ways to make money online with a blog, and SAN.com just added another one. As you can see on the sidebar to the right, we’ve added a Sponsors section. These are sites that will pay you to place their advertisement on your blog in the hopes that your readers will click on their ads and go to their site. I had seen this method of advertisement before, but I wasn’t quite sure about how to do it.

I found out about AdToll from a post by our friend Jay over at DatMoney.com. On that post he talks about how to get advertisers to buy direct ad space. Now, he warns about programs like AdToll because they take a percentage of your earnings and because there’s no guarantee that you’ll find advertisers. But, I honestly think that AdToll is the way to go for someone like me, because they make the process much easier for me, and they limit the chances of me screwing something up…royally…which is just about a certainty when it comes to me and implementing new things onto this website.

About AdToll

First thing you should do is click here, and go to AdToll to sign up for an account.

The best thing about AdToll is that almost everything that you need to do is done on their site. You decide what types of ads you want, what you want them to look like, you determine the price or have AdToll suggest a price, they can help you market it, everything you need to do is done there. Then, they give you the HTML code that you need to implement it onto your site.

Once you have it on your site, within the ad space AdToll places and “Advertise Here” link with your referral number embedded in it. So, if someone wants to advertise on your site, they click that link and they’ll be taken to AdToll’s website to purchase ad space from you. You can determine the price advertisers will pay, and the length of time their ads will appear on the site. You can even offer a discount for advertisers if they agree to purchase an advertisement for a longer period of time.

Implementation of AdToll on WordPress

I’d love to help you with implementing AdToll on all websites, but I only know how to do it for this blog, which runs on WordPress. I did it in a very simple way. I’m sure there are other ways to do it, but this way is the simplest one I could think of.

Once you figure out how you want the ads to look, AdToll gives you your code to put on your website. The way I did it was just using sidebar widgets with WordPress. I put a simple Text Widget onto the sidebar, put Sponsors as my title, pasted the HTML code into the body of the Text Widget, Bob’s your uncle, and there it is. As simple as possible, and that’s definitely what I need.

It’s very easy, so if you want to advertise on your blog, don’t wait. Go over to AdToll, sign up, and start making money.

Advertise on SAN.com!

If you would like to advertise on SAN.com, please go up to the Sponsors section and click Advertise Here, or just click here. I would really appreciate it, and it’s very cheap…only $0.50 a week. If you need someone to design your ad for you, our friend Jay from DatMoney.com can do it for you. He does a great job and it’s cheap. Click here to find out how to get him to do it, and to view samples of his work.

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I feel the need to share this with you all, because I feel like this is an important topic. I’ve been reading a lot recently about the Semantic Web. I don’t know much about it at all, but I get this funny feeling it’s going to be big…like the kind of big that almost makes me want to go out on a limb and say it will be the “New Internet.” Many times in my life, I’ve heard about or thought of something without acting on it, and I end up regretting it because whatever I heard or thought about becomes relatively successful, leaving me feeling like I missed out again. But I think this time, I’m going to keep an eye on the Semantic Web and see if I can’t use it to my advantage.

What I know so far…

The Semantic Web can be thought of as the “Intelligent Web.” Many people are calling it “Web 3.0,” or at least saying that the Semantic Web will be part of Web 3.0. It is based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF), which builds on Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) and Extensible Markup Language (XML). Now, if you’re like me, you have no idea what I just said…and honestly, I’m not totally sure about what I just wrote. My understanding, as simply as I can say it, is that today’s internet uses mainly URI and XML, so the Semantic Web will build on that using RDF.

Today’s web is driven by content, which is brought to you through applications. On websites, you only see information that the owner of the website wants you to see, in the way that they want you to see it. This is because you are limited by applications.

Basic Example

Say, for example, you are searching for an apartment. You go to one website to search for an apartment in a certain area, and the result of the search gives you a list of, let’s say, 15 apartments for rent in that area. Each apartment that you click on gives you a limited amount of information that you have to dig through one-at-a-time. Then, you want to see a map of where the apartments are located, so you have to open a separate instance of Google Maps, or whatever, and find each address individually for all 15 apartments. Pretty inefficient.

BUT, the database of the apartment website has all of the addresses of every apartment listed under one category. Of course, you can’t see that because you’re limited by the application and what it wants you to see. A basic description of what the Semantic Web will do, to my understanding, is on the apartment website, the RDF can go in and get all of the addresses from the search results list, and plot them together on a single Google Map in a matter of seconds. Much more efficient.

The web of data

The point is, the Semantic Web is a web of DATA, not a web of content and applications. It’s kind of like a synergy of the entire internet as we know it. The great part is that the Semantic Web is still in its infancy. I truly believe it’s going to be something big. Maybe even something totally different that we can’t even imagine today. Who knows, it could be the end of websites all together, resulting in a single gigantic database.

Whatever the case, I’m going to try and keep an eye on its development. I’ll update you with any information that I find about it. Hopefully I’ll be able to figure out a way that people might be able to make a little profit off of it.

Other Resources

Here are some other websites you can look at to find out more about the Semantic Web:

www.w3.org — Semantic Web Creators’ website

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_web – Wikipedia (obviously)

Semantic Web Introduction – GREAT info, easy to understand

Logicerror.com – More great info, also easy to read

Semanticfocus.com – Blog about Semantic Web, go there and subscribe!

If you have any information about the Semantic Web, please contact me, either by clicking “Contact” at the top of the page, or by leaving a comment below. I’m really trying to learn as much as I can and I don’t know much, so please don’t hesitate to share your wisdom!

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