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Just a quickie. I’ve noticed a bit of confusion over my name of late – particularly with the letter ‘U’ slipping in.
It’s actually Rowse.
Of course to confuse the issue it’s pronounced like you’d say it if you were to spell it Rouse…. like House and Mouse – but it’s Rowse.
Not a biggie – but thought it was worth clarifying.
Just stumbled over Know More Media, a new (launched mid December, I must have missed it in the end of year frenzy) blog network that has quickly launched quite a few blogs – all focussing upon business. I’m yet to get through all of their blogs yet but some of them seem to be doing pretty well – and they are covering a large range of topics within their niche.
I think we’ll see more and more niche-networks emerge in 2006.
My only unsolicited advice/feedback/observations to Know More Media is (hoping I’m not overstepping the mark here – it’s really just my initial impressions):
The blogs that are currently active have some really great bloggers on them and I suspect this will be a pretty active and worthwhile network to keep an eye on. As I say – dominating a niche with a network is something I’m seeing quite a bit of at present.
Update: Tim from Know More Media has responded to my post here and gives some insight into why they’ve started with empty blogs – along similar lines to what I thought.
I really appreciate the response from Tim – I was a touch worried that this post would be taken in the wrong way – my intention is definately just to give honest encouraging feedback and it seems it was taken that way – phew.
It dawned on me last night that I have not had a cheque from AdSense arrive in my PO Box for quite a while so I went digging back through my records. Lucky I did because the one that my payment records say was issued on 23 December never actually arrived.
I’ve been a publisher with AdSense since October 2003 and have never had a problem with late payments so I guess it was bound to happen sometime. Oddly enough I don’t seem to be the only one waiting on this cheque – b5media’s mailbox is being checked daily for it, as are three other publishers who I talk with on IM.
Perhaps a patch of cheques is sitting unnoticed on someone’s desk in AdSense HQ?
It’s probably nothing more than their normal ‘lost in mail’ problems that must happen every month with the amount of cheques they send out but it is a little odd that so many people I know seem to be waiting.
If you haven’t had your cheque sent yet you can write to them asking for a reissue via their Contact page. They only do this after the 25th of the month following the month when a cheque was issued. It’s all a little confusing but they explain the process of what to do if a payment is missing here.
update: I’ve been in contact with the AdSense team on this and am getting a cheque reissue as it’s now 2 Feb and still no cheque for November earnings.
Here’s a few random links I came across today to keep those of you on the other side of the world amused while I sleep tonight. Enjoy:
Well it’s official – I’m now one of the presenters on the Blogonomics Blog Cruise (my page is yet to go up on the presenters list but trust me – barring unforeseeable circumstances I’ll be there – update – it’s up now – although they must not have like my picture – will have to send them a non nude one).
In fact Andy and I will be presenting a condensed version of the Six Figure Blogging course as a 3 hour intense workshop (at no extra cost on the cruise). Of course the cruise does go for 4 days and the ship is only so big (I can’t stay in my cabin the whole time) so the 3 hour workshop is only the starting point for plenty of other great conversations I guess.
There is also talk of me doing another shorter session on SEO and Magnetization of Blogs (yet to be confirmed).
Coming? Help me pay for my airfare? – of course getting to Fort Lauderdale means I’m going to be incurring some expenses (flights are not cheap these days from Australia) so if you’re planning on attending there is a way you can help out a bit (without spending any extra money) by simply letting the organizers of the cruise know I referred you to the cruise in your sign up process. Doing so will earn me a small amount to go towards my costs.
You can do this as follows:
When a person registers for the Blogonomics Blog Cruise they are requested to enter the website that referred them. Simple add www.problogger.net. Also in the entry for “Registrant Code” your need to insert the code “problogger”.
I’m very very excited about this opportunity. Both to actually do some live presenting on blogging but also to meet those that I know are already coming (starting with the speaker list – but going beyond that to some of the regular readers of this blog).
Lastly if you’re a company that has a product that relates to blogging I’d love to talk to you about a sponsorship of our session on the cruise. There are numerous ways you can sponsor the cruise and the many sessions that it will have but particularly Andy and I are looking for someone to sponsor our workshop on Six Figure Blogging. There is more information on sponsorship on the cruise sponsorship page.
Users of Spam Karma 2 (a WP comment spam plugin) might have noticed increases in comment spam in the last week. Dr Dave (the guy behind SK2) has written a post with a little information on this and the struggle he faces in getting on top of it. He also asks users of SK2 to consider a donation so that he can dedicate more time to fixing it. I for one am someone willing to put some money up and encourage others who want to see better tools developed to combat comment spammers to do likewise.
The team at Chitika have added a new feature to their eMiniMalls. today but allowing publishers to select ‘category hints’ for their ads. This means that if you choose a keyword to trigger an ad and they don’t have one to serve to your blog that you’ll have a backup ad that is relevant. Here’s how they explain it:
‘Category hint is a new targeting option by which you can pick and choose from a list of categories supported in the eMiniMalls system. Your selected category will be used as a “fallback” in the event that the system does not find an appropriate product for your preferred keyword(s).’
The categories you can select from are outlined here.
The other way to use categories is to allow them to rotate a variety of popular products from your category on your blog. For example on my digicam blog I might choose select the ‘Digital Cameras’ category and not choose any keywords – this will then show a variety of relevant ads for digicams.
So in short – if you have a keyword Chitika will try to serve an ad for that first, if it doesn’t have an ad (or if you don’t select a keyword) it will fallback on the category you’ve selected.
There are two ways to activate categories – firstly for new ads you can use their code panel in the set up process for new ads and secondly for existing ads you’ve already put on your blogs you can insert this line of code:
ch_default_category = “XXXX”;
Where XXXX is the category code listed on this page.
Here’s a bit of fun – a tool that can convert an IM conversation into a cartoon.
Here’s the start of a ‘typical’ conversation that I seem to be having a lot of lately. The name of the person asking the question has been removed to protect the stupid innocent (click to enlarge):
BlogSEO has posted an interesting list titled 10 Must-Have Things That Should be on Your Blog’s Side Bar which I’m certain will cause some debate among ProBlogger readers.
As I look down the list there are some I strongly agree with and others which I have a personal aversion to. Here’s their list headers with a few comments with my own opinion in brackets after each:
As you can see, a sidebar is a pretty personal thing. Some people choose to have two (or even occasionally three) of them to fit more features in and an increasing amount of bloggers are experimenting with blogs without sidebars altogether and are instead incorporating their ‘must haves’ into their footers, horizontal menus and headers (in fact big footers seem to be very popular at the moment).
Other ‘essentials’ that some bloggers include in their sidebars include:
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My name is Darren Rowse and I’m a full time Blogger making a living from blogs like Digital Photography School and TwiTip - Twitter Tips.
In 2002 I stumbled upon an article about ‘Blogging’. I didn’t know it at the time but that moment changed my life. Read more about Darren or contact him. Connect with me on Twitter at , Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.
