It’s official!

While you were away, Google brought webmasters their own Christmas present in the form of the Fourth Quarter 2008 PageRank Update! Many bloggers, marketers and web geeks alike wait for Google PageRank (“PR”) updates religiously, and for good reason. A high PR can send your blog to the top of search engine rankings, get you much more easily indexed, and help you rake in a lot more dough from advertisers who like to see high numbers. Don’t let anyone tell you that PageRank ain’t important, because it can really drive your website’s success.

So what happened to me? This round of Google PageRank updates was pretty solid overall. Jimvesting.com got upgraded from a PR 3 to a PR 4… though I already had a PR 4 back in May of 2008, before getting downgraded to a PR 3 in the fall. At any rate, that is solid news. On related websites, BullishBankers.com (my stock market community) received the bump up from a PR 3 to a PR 4… not bad for a website that’s only been around for 6 months. During the Q2 PageRank Updates, I reviewed the new ratings and how I felt they were relative to what I felt these blogs deserved. Today, we redo this process with 100 of the top MMO blogs on the internet.

Jimvesting’s Top 100 MMO “Fair Value” Rankings

Because of the constant ranting on how “unfair” Google’s Pagerank service is, I decided to pull from the top 100 “Make Money Online” websites on the internet (according to the leading Top 100 list), and put the new PR rankings to the test. Below, you will find a list of these blogs, their new Pagerank as of December 31st 2008, and their Jimvesting “Fair Value” ranking. You can call this a little “surprise” for Google… just thanking them for the PR upgrade by throwing 100+ links around!

Q4 2008 Jimvesting’s “Fair Value” Pagerank Analysis

Whew! That’s one heck of a list, eh? Again, if your site is listed here as “overvalued” it doesn’t mean that I don’t like you… it’s simply an indication that I feel you got a nicer pagerank than I feel your site has shown. This is, actually, quite a compliment for your ability to break past Google’s defenses!

The Results

It seems that in the 4th Quarter PageRank update, Google came out with a literal “gift” to many bloggers. I have found that the update was overall “soft” in that some less-than-stellar blogs were given extraordinarily high PRs to play with. Unfortunately, many of the solid blogs that I felt deserved higher marks were ripped off by the system this time around. This is confirmed in the numbers from this test sample:

• Appropriately Valued: 48%
• OVERvalued: 31%
• UNDERvalued: 21%

The Verdict

In all, we have much fewer blogs undervalued now in Q4 than in the Q2 update, when over 35% of blogs were undervalued. Accordingly, as essentially half of the blogs were again accuratly pageranked, we had a large amount of blogs that were overvalued (31%) compared to the measily 12.5% overvalued from the second quarter. Looking objectively at this, and assuming that I judged “fairness” in the same way, it looks like many bloggers got one heck of a gift this quarter!

Bottom Line: Google seemed to have once again done a fair job in pageranking the websites across the blogosphere. When you have around 50% of blogs appropriately valued, even subjectively speaking, twice in a row… you know that you have a pretty good system all things considered. There were many exceptions to the rule, but in general it seems like PageRank is actually a decent option to be objective.

-Jimvesting

I think that it is fair game to say that most of you reading this post either own a blog now, or would like to own a blog sometime in the near future. It comes as no surprise that many of us, myself included, like to monetize what we have with some advertisements to get some extra cash in our pockets. The average blogger will earn around $200 a month from private ad sales. But no matter how you decide to monetize your blog, it’s important to understand how pricing SHOULD work, so you can maximize your profits!

The most typical forms of blog monetization are through text ads and banner ads, both of which can be located pretty much anywhere on your website. Regardless of the format, what I am going to be talking about will apply as long as you offer your ads paid on some kind of periodic system. For example, maybe you charge your advertisers every month to put a banner up on your site; maybe you instead go by the week, or even semi-annually. Whatever the case, chances are that an ad today, is worth less than an ad tomorrow if you are running a successful blog. This is what we call in economics the “time value of money.”

The Time Value Of Money: So why is a dollar today worth less than a dollar tomorrow? Holding inflation aside, which will naturally cause the value of money to appreciate over time, we assume that you could always invest anything that you own today and make more money into the future! The less time you have to invest, the less money you will have in the long run.

So what am I going to talk to you about today? I’m going to talk about properly valuing your ad real estate using compounding interest rates. This is an important lesson, as you could be losing hundreds of dollars if you don’t keep this in mind when you negotiate.

Don’t Rip Yourself Off!

Just a few days ago I received an order for a text link ad, only the advertiser wanted to buy a text link for an entire year… that’s 12 months worth! While this was great news, ordinarily I would have just asked him to pay for one month at a time. Not wanting to lose such a massive sale, I decided to use a compounded interest chart to map out what the fair cost would be.

A typical blog owner would say that if my current rate per month is $20.00, then 12 months would be $20.00 x 12, or $240. This sounds fair, right? WRONG! If this was your answer, you need to seriously rethink the way you do business. Assuming that you are running a decent blog, your rates will go up over time, correct? Therefore, we need to adjust for this when we work the rates into a 12 month period.

What I have done is create a compounded rate excel file that will take a starting rate (e.g. $20.00) and adjust it up x% for each month, depending on how quickly you predict you will develop your website and increase the value of the advertisement. A small note, this is not the same as adding 60% for 12 months of 5% growth… this is wrong. The way that this works is that we would start at our base price, $20.00, then add 5% for the second month, or a new cost of $21.00. After that, it is a third month at the second month cost plus 5%, or $22.05. This process continues all the way to the 12th month, when each ad spot would cost $34.21 adjusting for that 5% growth we expect.

Think it doesn’t make much of a difference? Think again!

If you had used simple straight-line growth at a constant rate, you would have billed a total of $240 for the ads. However, if you used a 5% growth per month, you would have billed a total of $318.34… that’s a difference of $78.34! This is revenue that you are just giving away if you are going to give an advertiser the same rate into the future.

Jimvesting’s Advertising Cost Model – A FREE Gift to You!

I have developed in Microsoft excel a model that will take two inputs, a base ad price and a rate (specified by you), and generate a 12-month pricing plan… showing you the difference between constant rates and compounded rates. It’s very easy to use, but if you need some help, follow along in the video so that you can see just how to use this powerful model.

DOWNLOAD THE NET FOOL’S ADVERTISING COST MODEL

Remember, you can really use any growth rate that you want, and my 5% is only a sample. Suppose you are a newer blog and you are going to grow tremendously in the first few months… maybe you would like a rate closer to 20% growth? Or suppose you are an old timer who doesn’t increase traffic as much as you should… perhaps you use 2.5% growth? My model can pump out valuations 12 periods into advance, and you can look anywhere in the middle and pick out, let’s say, 8-months of payment if you’d like.

Bottom Line: If you are going to sell ad space to your users, you better make sure that you aren’t ripping yourself off! If somebody asks if they can pay for a year of service… don’t tell them “no!”, tell them that you need to account for 5% growth and show them my model in work… they should easily agree to the terms. Heck, it works for me!

- Jimvesting

It’s Sunday, and you know what that means…
… it’s time for some SUNDAY LINK LOVE!

We had a shortened week this time around because of the Christmas festivities, but that doesn’t mean that nothing happened! Well to be perfectly honest, it WAS a slower week as things go. With volume dropping ever lower on the stock market and the blogosphere taking a well-deserved winter festivus, we have ourselves a slower week of news to report. But before we get into the news and events, let’s hit up some weekly linkage ending December 27th, 2008:

• Money Bites – Affiliates: Think Sustainable
• The Moneyac – Link Building With Free Blogs
• Uber Affiliate – Experiences with Smaller Traffic Sources
• Dat Money – How Much Will Your Site Sell For? Depends on the Buyer!
• The Blogoholic – 10 Effective Methods to Get More Comments on Your Blog

So there we have it, this week’s top tier writers! Max from MoneyBites.com brings all the affiliates out there an important message: stop destroying your niches! A nice change of pace. Uber Affiliate talks about his experience with smaller traffic sources, which is always interesting stuff. Jay from Dat Money brings us an informative piece about selling your blog, and how your buyer determines the biggest aspect of your sale price. The blogoholic talks about getting more out of your comments. Finally, the Moneyac talks about how you can start link building by using free blogs.

Stock Market Update
Not a big week, but also not a good week. In this shortened trading week, the market dropped 1.7%. What does this mean? Back over a 40%+ loss on the year… it’ll be interesting to see where it all ends up, eh? Typically, a lot of new money pours into the system on January 1st and that whole first week of the year because of new gamers getting into it tax-free… heck, it’s how I did it. I feel that we are reaching an attractive buying point for the long term, and would suggest keeping a close eye on the markets. I want to see if I can bring you all a quick 2008 recap into what happened so we can all dissect this more easily.

This was really a front-loaded week in terms of news. In a nut shell, we saw another drop in oil prices, more poor economic news and some more aggressive claims from the Federal Reserve about liquidity in the system. In November, existing home sales declined 8.6%… the worst in 17 years on an annualized basis. Additionally, jobless claims hit a 26-year high, durable goods fell 1% and personal income & spending fell marginally. What is much worse, in my opinion, is that Japan’s industrial output posted its biggest drop on record in November, falling 8.1% from October. This really reveals our global economic slowdown as Japan is an export-dependent economy and simply isn’t getting the orders it needs.

A bright spot this holiday season will be Amazon.com, who said that 2008 was their best year in terms of orders to date. This is great news, but could reveal disturbing news for other retailers, as online orders seem to be taking away from the impulse-buying habits of Americans. My prediction? A lousy report from everyone buy Walmart and Amazon.com.

Blogosphere Update
So what went down in the blogging world this week? Jason from The University Kid has given up on selling his blog in the short term, and is going to load it again with articles and re-try the sell later. Our friend Richard Bonner is hitting new personal bests in affiliate marketing, way to go! Normal Joe lost a close competition to Shannon Lilly from Infected by Bugs, and had to make a post about it! Finally, Derek Salyers recorded a new podcast from the official Click Consultants Radio Show, so check that out if you are into affiliate marketing or if you want to get started on the right foot.

A lot of smaller bits of news surrounded the blogging world, as most wrote a few articles and called it off for Christmas day itself. It was a productive week, perhaps, simply because it was so relaxed. Everyone needs a week to re-charge, and I think that we got it!

Contest Updates and Results
First off, I ran a little promotion for a free 125×125 banner on theNetFool.com on Christmas for whoever could drop the best Christmas-related comment on me. I have taken a look at all of them, and have determined the winning comment to be: JR from GetInternetMarketingStrategies.com… congratulations and thanks so much for your awesome story!

Additionally, we are running a BIGGER promo here that ends at the end of the year! If you haven’t heard already, you can score an Apple iPod or a Flip Mino HD if you drop me a comment on the official post… so check out Jimvesting’s Christmas Giveaway sponsored by Market Leverage today!

- Jimvesting

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

No big post today, just some housekeeping. I know that a lot of you probably celebrate Christmas, and are just getting up and un-wrapping those presents, enjoying time with your family and a hearty breakfast of eggs and bacon. If you don’t celebrate Christmas… Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanza or Happy day off of work! We can all share in that joy, eh?

What Did You Get For Christmas!? Win a FREE Banner Ad!

I’d love to hear about what some of you got for Christmas this year, or what was your all time greatest Christmas gift, memory or maybe even a favorite prank! Whatever your holiday, drop a comment with your favorite holiday memory and you can win a FREE 125×125 Banner Ad on theNetFool.com for a full month… that’s a $30 value, yours free! I’m going to judge these based on whoever gives me the biggest smile… so maybe it’s biased, but if you have a really heart warming story or a show-stopping funny memory let me hear it!

Whatever you get for Christmas…
It really can’t be worse than what this kid got. As “The Sun” Newspaper puts it… “there is really only one thing worse than not getting the present you want this Christmas season – and that’s finding your most wanted gift is just an empty box.” Haha, this is probably the cruelest thing I have seen to date, and the small child is absolutely broken after he realizes that the XBox 360 his parents told him they couldn’t afford… was just an empty box. Check it out!

Have a great day, and a merry Christmas!
-Jimvesting

How many people could you name off the top of your head that have great looking websites and blogs? Probably quite a few!

My second question is how many of these people actually write solid content?
About half.

This disturbing fact has gotten me flustered over the course of blogging up to this point, I’m not going to hide that fact at all. In fact, it seems that when I advise people about starting their first blog… or even how to make money online in general… the problem is not how you are doing it… but your ability to project a professional appearance! I want to talk to you today about how to build a blogging empire online simply by deceiving your users, simply because so many people have been able to do this. Sometimes, it’s not about the content that you write, but how well it is received on the other end.

Deception? What Are You Talking About?

That’s right ladies and gentlemen, you are being duped by many bloggers into the belief that because they are putting up content… they are the “real deal.” In fact, it stretches far beyond this. While some people simply make blogs on generic-looking templates that have some level of credibility… but never really get over that bump… quite a few bloggers go the extra mile and order custom templates that make them seem downright immaculate. Once a blogger orders a custom template and you visit their blog, simply seeing their personalized settings immediately triggers in your brain the notion that “oh, they have a custom built blog… they must be good… I think I’ll subscribe!” Let’s take a look at an example:

Which blog would you subscribe to?

If I were to show you the two websites here, you would probably think I was crazy if I were to recommend you actually subscribe to the second one… right? Well as it turns out, the one on the left is theNetFool.com. The one on the right… is theNetFool.com.

For about 4 months I operated under terrible conditions with around 20 RSS subscribers (including myself) at the peak. Why? Simply because my design was generic. I decided to invest a few hundred in a professional template… and boom! My quality of work didn’t go up at all, yet my RSS subscriber chart was off to the races! The bottom line here is that you could be the best blogger in the world with money-making ideas that will feed a family. If you cannot relay your information on a professional-looking website, you will never succeed.

Sounds Simple Enough… What’s Wrong Then?

I consider myself to be a writer that gives you useful information and a reason to read. I don’t trap anyone into scam deals, and I sure as heck don’t waste your time with posts about my personal life, my next contest or even constant advertising. The problem is that for the same reasons that you would rather choose blog LEFT over blog RIGHT are the reasons that there are so many success stories out there that don’t deserve it. It’s not your fault, it is human nature to trend toward the aesthetically pleasing, eh?

No, I am not going to name names… that wouldn’t be fair or very nice of me. I like to be constructive, not destructive. Because of this, I want to challenge you to go through your list of “favorite blogs” and really take a look at the content. Have a quick glance at the archives and see if they are still writing interesting content! Chances are… if it is a fashionable blog, they are giving you about as much information as (insert metaphor here). I could run off a list of bloggers 20+ in length that I know personally, that only exist because they have “cool” looking blogs that people subscribe to because they associate good looks with good content.

Using Deception to Your Advantage!

Let’s turn it around, eh? Perhaps you are a fantastic writer and you are still using a “premium WP theme” that is completely free for anyone to download. A quick news-flash to these “blogging hopefulls:” anything “free” is by definition not premium. In fact, if I visit your website and I see a design that I have seen somewhere else, I am already half discrediting your authority in my mind! It’s sad, but it’s entirely true! If you want to be a successful blogger in a tough niche, one thing that you absolutely need is a customized theme… or at bare minimum a fancy logo that will designate you from the pack. Heck, you can grab an awesome logo for under $20 if you set up an auction on GetAFreelancer.com, DigitalPoint or WarriorForum.

Another great tip is to create a mascot for your blog. With me, I represented myself in a cartoon rendered version. There are many professional cartoonists out there on the internet just waiting for you to drop a few bucks in their direction. Think about it this way, the cost of an RSS subscriber is somewhere around $10-$18 as estimated by comparable blog sales in the past. A new mascot will run you anywhere from $40 to $100 depending on the quality of work you choose. Because of this, any cost you take on the front end will be almost immediately recovered by an essentially automatic RSS boost.

Bottom Line: You NEED to upgrade your blog to stay competitive! With the amount of bloggers that run around with professional designs these days (and not much else), you need to be able to make a name for yourself with a flashy new design, new logo or a new mascot for your blog. Never sacrifice your content to put out what only has the appearance of professionalism, but remember that it’s not always what you write… but how you write it!

-Jimvesting