Back in late March you may have noticed that this blog was shut down. In fact the entire Softduit site was down for several hours.
We never entirely isolated the issue, but basically there were 2 things going on that could be identified:

1. Wordpress 2.1, the software that runs this Maven Mapper’s Information, was leaking bandwidth severely - leaving a call open when something created ‘persistent connections’. Persistent Connections are not always bad, but they are dangerous when not used correctly.
2. I had a meta tag plugin (Autometa) that was creating an error that was not visible on the blog but creating significant havoc with my host.

When this happened, I was a bit frantic. I didn’t know a persistent connectin from a hole in my head. My host shut my site down, much to my dismay. Thinking that there might be something like a denial of service attack going on, but there was not.

Right away, I got rid of the Autometa (bye bye). It may or may not have been a big portion of the problem, but for troubleshooting reasons it was in the way and had to go.

The thing is that persistent connections are not always bad, but it was a bit beyond me to identify the good from the bad in this case.

Here is some of the information they gave me:

System administration has noted that your account appears to be using persistent connections in some of the software used on your site. Persistent connections are by and large not necessary for most software to function, and they can cause issues with your account.

To explain a bit further, persistent connections are one method PHP scripts may use to open a connection to a MySql database. Using persistent connecting is only useful in an environment with a high overhead in connecting to the MySql database itself - in your case the connection (and ‘cost’ in resources) is negligible compared to using persistent connections as all of your queries are executed immediately.

The persistent connections in this case are simply sitting idle consuming memory and may bring your site close to the predefined limits set for accounts in the shared hosting environment. If you have a database intensive site, this could make the site appear sluggish or appear to be down while the initial queries time out (this can take up to 300 seconds, depending on several factors).

You will need to review your code and see where these persistent connections are coming from, as spikes in traffic could cause your site to appear to be unavailable to your visitors.

Plus

I had to suspend your site due to the very high load that it was taking on. There were multiple IP addresses connecting to it over and over again. Some of the IP’s had over 80 connections each.

Here is what I learned.

1. After you install a plugin, check your error logs. Just because it seems to be working doesn’t mean that it really is.
2. The jury is still out on some things about Wordpress 2.1 that haven’t been documented well by the community yet, so pay attention to your bandwidth and be careful.

Note for all people new to hosting their blog on their own domain. - Be Careful!

It is likely that you have a hosting plan that allows a certain amount of bandwidth per month. If you go over that bandwidth a couple things are likely to happen:

1. Your host might shut your site down.
2. You might get an overage charge (like going over your minutes on your cell phone bill - very very scary if it happens and you are not prepared)

We are all used to getting typically hundreds to thousands of hits per day, but if your site goes into the millions of hits per day or hour you better make sure you have a good solid way of monetizing that traffic or else you are going to be in trouble.

Adsense May Not solve the Problem

You might think that Adsense will earn a tremendous amount if you see a spike in traffic (ergo you write the golden article that captures the attention of the world and that CPM number makes you rich!)

Wrong!

Google will sometimesshut down your Adsense account because they think there might be fraud going on (Google is like that ~unpredictable) . They like to see nice constant (expected/predicted) growth in your traffic. If you jump from 100 hits per day to several million hits in an hour (and your server doesn’t crash), Google may nix your account and not pay you your earnings blaming it on fraud.

Now you have a bandwidth issue, commonly referred to as a Big Fat Bill and you have no Adsense revenue and no Adsense Account. Its kind of like getting your right hand chopped off, having salt rubbed in the wound while someone slaps you in the face repeatedly with your own hand.

Page Popularity for Site: 31% [?]

The LinkyLoveArmy.com is launching a beta program this week.  Today, they released several insights into their Internet marketing 2.0 of strategies.  They are forming an army of bloggers to leverage the numbers of bloggers and blog campaigns in the direction and shape reminiscent of a wedge formation.

You lazy this type of structure they hope to penetrate advertising campaigns and in particular keyword searches that generates large amounts of traffic such that the bloggers can directly market to business-to-business and business-to-customer groups.

Up until this point in time, those Internet marketing 2.0 firms have offered up a bit of a free-for-all where advertisers come to purchase reviews with contextual links inside of his and bloggers respond acting as individuals in the marketplace offering up individual benefits.  The LinkyLoveArmy hopes to organize those bloggers with a much more focused strategic objective and at the same time harness a new revenue model for bloggers yielding a higher return on effort.

Here is a short video that they are offering on their website today:

Page Popularity for Site: 20% [?]

Another company has launched a blog marketing 2.0 service.  SponsoredReview officially launched today.  Many people are expecting some good things from this company as they are partnered with SEOMOZ.org (the same group that brings you the concept of page strength).

I’ve been waiting for the launch of this company so that I could test their services both as a blogger and as an advertiser.  I did not participate in their beta program - no invite 

Blogger Setup

Regardless my first impressions upon signing up as a blogger were positive.  They do offer a requirement that is probably the most strenuous I’ve seen in this category today.  They require a three to one ratio of nonsponsored articles to sponsored articles for a blog to be approved.  That means for every four articles in a blog three of them have to be unpaid without any sponsorship whatsoever.  I suspect that does not include articles with affiliate links, however its not specified.

The only other existing service that comes close to that type of requirement is blogitive, which requires a two to one ratio.  However blogitive’s ratio is not for paid to unpaid, but instead to one non-blogitive articles to blogitive articles.  So for every three articles a person might have is blogitive only one of them can be a blogger to sponsored article.

Otherwise the setup process was relatively easy with sponsored review.  Depending on the strength of your blog your blog will be categorized into different potential price ranges which you can manually increase or decrease.  This is very similar to the new process offered at Reviewme.  Sponsored review does perform a manual check of the blogs apply, and so it will take some time before blog is actually available in the marketplace to pick up reviews. 

Disclosure is required, however I have not yet seen the disclosure requirements in detail meaning I don’t know what you have to say or how you have to say it.

Advertising Setup

I set up an advertising account.  Similar to all the other services appears to do not have a blogger account and an advertiser account in the same setup.  No one that I’ve seen to date in offers a combination account which is unfortunate.

For an advertiser’s perspective the setup was relatively easy.  I establish my first opportunity and that was relatively easy as well.  However there are a number of aspects about the opportunity area that are undefined.  For example I attempted to put in several requirements, however I was not sure to what extent I might be a will to set or establish requirements.  For example I did not know if I could limit page rank, or if I could limit blogs to for example exclude my space blog’s, or if I needed to exclude blogs that included no follow links within the body of a article.  There are no FAQ’s yet in the FAQ section refers you to their blog, with a link to an actual article as opposed to the generic blog such that you have to cut a chunk of code out of the URL to get to the actual front page of the blog.

After I finally created my opportunity hoping for a little bit of luck in getting the opportunity to set up correctly, I realize that there was no way for me to actually fund the opportunity.  This was unfortunate as they were offering $100 incentive for first-time advertisers that spent $100.  I wanted to spend $100 and I wanted to qualify however their system did not allow me to do that.  There is no place I could find or I could actually pay my hundred dollars even though I had set up a credit card.  This was a little confusing. 

So I went to the blog I left a comment underneath the section where it talks about the hundred dollar incentive.  Then after the fact I found a ticket section where I could submit a  Help ticket, which I submitted to sales.

As I was trying to navigate back and forth between the blog and the help ticket and the FAQs page, the system kept getting confused about which user I was.  He couldn’t quite seem to be a wiki but if I were a blogger or if I were an advertiser and I can never tell when I was truly “logged into the system” versus looking at the generic website.

In addition to contact us tab doesn’t actually lead to a phone number or e-mail or any other way to contact them so that couldn’t get a simple question answered such as “How do I pay you?” 

This problem immediately reminded me of PayPerPost.  PayPerPost is notoriously difficult to get in touch with and you may get something fixed or solved in a hurry.  Obviously, sponsored review is still in their initial launch is the first day, however it has been my first can experience at a company that actually provides a phone number allows you to contact them is typically going to be easier to deal with than a company that does not.

As I finish this review its been approximately 30 minutes since I submitted my help ticket request.  And I suspect some other more fortunate advertiser has already claimed the hundred dollar prize or incentive that is.  So the potential for goodwill from that incentive is a bit lost now.  I do hope they work through some of these kinks.

As I’ve been working in the center strain now for close to nine months I’ve seen these types of issues pop up with many of the companies in the same industry competitors of sponsored review and I’ve seen just how these same problems can at times make or break a company to the extent that it will attract or permanently scare away a new advertising customers.

Initial Review During Launch - Incomplete

For a fledgling industries such as Buzz marketing or Internet marketing 2.0, it’s essential that a solid first impression is made.  In this regards sponsored review doesn’t quite come away with the and A, at this point they look promising it might be worthy of a B, however I’ll have to reserve that grade and currently give them an Incomplete.

Page Popularity for Site: 13% [?]

The PayPerPost sponsored PostieCon ‘07 conference is confirmed. The event will take place on June 1 through June 2. Is a weekend to Memorial Day weekend.

Roberts Scoble will headline the event is the keynote speaker. The theme of the event is that lawyers are a rock star.

The goal of the blog conference is to bring bloggers together and help them learn new and better methods for blogging gaining traffic and monetizing their websites with PayPerPost.com.

The registration price is $200 if you register late after May 18 the price goes up to $250. The event will likely be a an excellent. opportunity. There will be in award banquet and an open bar which probably justifies the $200 price tag.

Other Speakers and Moderators

David Ponce, Dan Rua, and Paul Lewis

Events and Sessions

The itinerary for the events are not filled up yet. PayPerPost still looking for additional speakers and moderators. This is the first event for PostieCon. So it’s probably to be expected that it’s going to be a little green or rough around the edges. The big advantage of this event will be for bloggers to network with other bloggers. Everyone will get a chance to learn a great deal of information and benchmark about best practices.

The event is not open to other paid to post companies or networks. So this should be really looked at as an industry event but as a private event. It remains to be seen what type of turnout will show up for this event. PayPerPost has over 10,000 blogs in its networks these days and a couple thousand advertisers. However this is a company that’s based on an Internet model with people blogging and advertising from all around the world. Many of the bloggers have been categorized as “mommy bloggers” and it’s unknown whether any of those bloggers will actually be able to show up for event such as this.

So as these shows go especially when they’re launching, missile and probably par for the course. No big great opportunity for people it to attend to get in at the ground level because PayPerPost is will will only be a little less than a year old at the time this event takes place.

Softduit Partners Attendance

I will likely be at the show representing Softduit Partners as well as several of our advertising customers. For any of my readers or fellow bloggers or my sponsors and advertisers that we’ll be able to go, I look forward to meeting you there!

Page Popularity for Site: 21% [?]

PayPerPost has been working to add more value to its marketing campaign opportunities over the last few weeks. They have begun to apply segmentation to the blogs of bloggers.

This segmentation comes in the form of blog rank and blog category. The blog rank is determined via PageRank as provided by URL Trends and the category is self assigned by the bloggers and currently reviewed by PayPerPost.

This is an entirely new process for PayPerPost and they have had to work through a number of bugs in the first few days on the rank side that seem mostly solved at this point. The categorical review of blogs is proving a little trickier, but they are working on it.

The Goal

Ultimately they hope to be able to offer their advertisers to be more precise in the targeting of their campaigns to individual types of blogs. The obvious next step in categories is to find an objective technology capable of reviewing and indexing blogs by category up front.

I have found that technology and forwarded a summary of the capability to PayPerPost. The end result could allow PayPerPost to not only put blogs into categories, but it could enable PayPerPost to track in real time the metrics of the blogs performance and content characterization.

Selling Price Spike

PayPerPost has seen a spike in the upper selling price of ad reviews and placements taking the price from a previous high of around $20 up into three and four digit prices for a couple hundred words. The image on the right shows some current opportunity prices and their word counts.

Some Advertisers are willing to pay a premium for the laser precision option of hitting the right audience.

Still Lowest Commission rate in Industry

PayPerPost does charge a much lower service fee for blog marketing as opposed to competitors such as ReviewMe or Blogitive which can charge fees of 100 - 500% more than the amount that goes to the blogger. PayPerPost charges a rate of 35% for their portion allowing SEO and SEM specialists the pricing differential to come in and walk less experienced advertisers through a Buzz Marketing Campaign through the blogosphere. Even after an SEM markup the rates are still lower than their nearest competitor and the options that advertisers can require are infinitely more flexible and scalable to large and small campaigns.

PayPerPost’s biggest challenge will hinge largely on their ability to get solid metrics back to their customers as mentioned above, but providing the ability to launch campaigns of this nature will initially create something worth measuring.

Page Popularity for Site: 15% [?]

This week PayPerPost launched a new affiliate program to promote its services.

Here is how it works:

1. A blogger already enrolled in PayPerPost, includes a button in any article (related to PayPerPost or not).
2. see live example.
3. Then when any other blogger visits their blog, they can click the button to review the article in question.
4. They perform a review by writing an article in their own blog and linking to the original article.
5. If they sign up for PayPerPost, then PayPerPost will Pay them $7.50 for reviewing the post, and
6. PayPerPost will pay you $7.50 when they get paid for referring them.

So if you have a blog and you click on the button above and you meet the acceptance requirements for PayPerPost, you can then write an article reviewing this blog article. You will get paid 30 days after you publish that article and so will I! We will both receive $7.50.

The beauty of this affiliate program is partly the money, but it is more impressive for the viral nature of the enticement. It encourages new participants to review articles of other existing participants. This builds links and relationships for everyone involved, which improves the quality of the publishers working in the system. More links yields higher page rank and search engine rankings.

That means that everyone in the ad network ecosystem can benefit from the growing strength of the blog. Advertisers that previously purchased advertisements get a bigger bang for their buck as the page rank goes up. Bloggers earn more from having a higher PR, and PayPerPost gathers more writers and its existing writers grow and can charge premium rates.

Its an excellent concept and a very good execution of that concept.

Technorati tags: PayPerPost, afilliate programs, blog review afilliate hybrid

Page Popularity for Site: 12% [?]

ZDNet revealed last week that PayPerPost will target the top 100 bloggers with the rollout of a new system upgrade geared towards advertising segmentation and offering a new standardized disclosure policy that will trigger BubbleAds to appear when a user hovers over the disclosure badge in an article.

The increase in disclosure and transparency are noble advances in the correct ethical direction. 

However, Considering the PayPerPost business model, how will targeting their system towards the top 100 bloggers further business?

The Top 100 Blogs according to Technorati achieve their rank primarily according to the number of other blogs that link in to them.  At the high end of the 100 Engadget has 25,682 unique blogs linking in and at the low end the blog that has no English name has 2,995 blogs linking in.  For the sake of comparison, there is currently at least one blog in the PayPerPost network that has about 1,300 blogs linking in.  While this blog (Maven Mapper’s Information)  has 145 blogs linking in according to Technorati.

But what exactly will a new disclosure policy and a new ad delivery engine do to entice a blog like Engadget to seek sponsors from the same poll that Maven Mapper utilizes?

That I do not know and do not understand.  I do understand that one of the great powers of the type of Buzz Management or Internet Marketing 2.0 services that PayPerPost and many of its competitors such as Blogitive, Blogsvertise, LoudLaunch, iWebTools and others provide is the ability to connect advertisers with the leveraged power of thousands of bloggers and websites. 

Content is King on the internet and the strength in this model is in the vast army of content producers.  The Queen of course is Search.  If you cannot find the content then the king will be dethroned.  Building web buzz by leveraging the masses through both their discussions and their links is the second strength of this model. 

The fact that these services combine the power of the masses from all around the globe to generate content and push that content up such that it can be found is amazing.  Not to mention the fact that these blogs take their advertising sponsors and their keywords with them on that upwards journey in the Search engines.  This is truly where the power of the model comes into play.

The top 100 bloggers already have the ability to illuminate content they deem worthy, by shining a Google Page Rank 8 mega spot light towards a website or advertisers promotional link (using Engadget and Boing Boing PR examples).  They do not need a middle man.

From an advertisers perspective it would be the equivalent of purchasing a Super Bowl commercial from your local TV stations ad agency, and who does that? 

The top 100 bloggers cover their advertising sales and placements very well already.  Similarly, speaking companies that can afford a big ad spend are typically going to be covered in relationships already. 

The Real Penetrating Power of Buzz Management

PayPerPost can offer a buzz coverage and band width that is phenomenal (rumored to be over 10,000 blogs and growing every month).  Would a big company like to hit the same 100 blogs they are all ready hitting through a new middle man, or would they like to get access to the marketing bandwidth of 10,000+ bloggers downstream?  (Multiply that by two or three and elliminate duplicates to consider the entire industry.)

In the long tail model the theory goes that if you have blogs that have an average of 500 visitors a day (some on the low side an some much higher).  10,000 bloggers will bring you 5 million hits per day.  With an average ad spend of $10 per ad (including fees), a big advertiser could run a single campaign for $100k (10 x 10,000) across all 10,000 blogs.  Plus that is with an ad that is relatively permanent.  It will likely be there until the demise of the blog.  There are blogs that are in the top 500 that charge that kind of money for a single weeks worth of ads, with daily hits in the 1 million range.

An advertiser can get 35 million eyes on their ad in 1 week for $100k through PPP theoretically in the first week and long tail eyes for months and years to come compared to 7 million eyes through traditional top blogs.

So what happens to the bloggers in the long tail of the blogosphere when the service refocuses on the nub of the tail? 

The risk is that the long tail will be neglected.  Unless the systems and organization are built out to cover the long tail needs in an automated and streamlined manner.  Instead of focusing on growing the blogger base from 10,000 to 50,000 or 100,000, PayPerPost seems to be opting to push up the average ad rate for top blogs chasing after someone else’s pie.

Step in the Right Direction

Now to their credit PayPerPost is working to put on a mass training event called Postie Con in Orlando next summer.  The event will bring some of the PPP Army of bloggers to learn new trends, improve their skills, grow their blogging business and increase the quality and effectiveness of their work.  This is excellent.  Analogizing the blogger masses to the elite 100 blogs, this is taking the grass roots, growing the yard larger and fertilizing it to nurture a healthy ecosystem.  Importing a patch or two of high quality sod however, will only stick out like a sore thumb and prove a distraction.

PayPerPost and the other Buzz Management organization should be pushing their network of writers, which I refer to as a Writer’s Collaborative.  The push should be towards improvement and growth.   With these simple Goals:

1. Establish more segmented blogs
2. Write Better
3. Write more (but spread on the additional blogs)
4. Optimize, Promote, and Grow Readership and Subscribers
5. Reform the long skinny tail into a muscular fat wagging tail capable of shaking up the internet with every swing!

To accomplish this, the Buzz Management industry needs to sponsor more education and provide more support for their ecosystem.  Possibly even utilizing technology found in common elearning solutions and virtual conventions such as the EcomExpo.

Closing Perspective

The world is closing in on 10 billion people.  The United States will likely hit 400 million people in the next 15- 20 years.  A network of 100,000 experience content producers five years from now could significantly shake up the world of media as we know it.   That would be 1 content producer for every 100,000 people world wide.

The Missing Dynamic - Collaboration

Let me also offer that this is just one aspect of the dynamic taking hold on the internet.  These numbers all assume that the content producers are working in a vacuum.  If you add in the other major trend the internet has enabled, and these producers collaborate, well then you have an entirely different topic and a much different entertainment, news, education and information industry.

For more Information:  See ZDNet Article PayPerPost to Launch disclosure badges, new tools; targets top 100 bloggers by Larry Dignan - January 30, 2007.

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Page Popularity for Site: 25% [?]

A new Web Marketing 2.0 company launched in the Buzz Marketing industry at the beginning of January and I missed it all together.

No surprise there as I have been traveling far too much and not working the blogosphere to full effect.

LoudLaunch launched just after the start of the new year. They offer completely disclosed reviews by bloggers of websites, software, products and anything that can e put in a press release with minimum self run campaigns of $50. Depending on the breadth and depth of a campaign total campaign spends will vary significantly.

Unlike some competitors in this industry aside from one, LoudLaunch charges advertisers and pays bloggers amounts that rate up or down depending on the PageRank rating of the blogger. The higher the PageRank the higher the advertiser’s fee and the more the blogger receives in compensation for having a more popular blog.

LoudLaunch - Compensating bloggers for their unbiased opinions, reviews, and analysis. View the LoudLaunch campaign release this post was based on.

Technorati tags: LoudLaunch, Web 2.0 Marketing, Buzz Management, Buzz tools, Internet marketing 2.0

Page Popularity for Site: 15% [?]

Maven Mapper’s Information is undergoing a review of many different Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing Services, service providers and consultants. 

Today we are reviewing DiscountClick Online Marketing Services.  DiscountClick provides a suite of SEO and SEM services from link building services to SEO consulting to Natural Search Engine Optimization and PayPerClick Management.  Their SEO promotion includes an optimization consultation to analyze a clients company, their website and competitor websites.  From this point they will build a strategy with a targeted cost point to generate results and return on investment.

They also offer a Search Engine Optimization Tutorial guide that can help companies and potential clients gain a better appreciation for the importance of Search Engine Optimization and the work and art combined to create successful Search Engine Marketing results.

Page Popularity for Site: 21% [?]