Disqus - Friends of danemorgan

Re: http://xposeyourselff.tumblr.com/post/893996396

Blog Catalog — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 11:42:21 -0000

Im not sure where you are going with your response Greg. To answer, what I understand you to be saying:

- there is no claim to being a "primary/major" source of a bloggers income. It's a source that supplements and in many cases will be their only income, perhaps just covering server costs and other fees. Many bloggers do it to express themselves, and making $100 additional a month is welcome to them.

- Information is instant in that people hear the news faster. We all want the latest. What's happening right now news. BC will provide our users with every option to pull what they want from the site. I understand this. Rolling out a product is step 1. Step 2 + = iterate. Bloggers are our heroes. We understand this very well.

- No need to run anywhere. Users have the ability to change any settings they want. Have you seen facebook's notification page, and how long it is? It's about giving your members "thick" value and control. We are committed to both.

Thanks for the note and kind wishes.

Tony

Re: How Google Cost Me $4 Million

Blog Catalog — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:53:59 -0000

Welcome to the club. Google's removal of 19 million visitors a month to my site, blogcatalog.com, had a similar impact. We lost over $1 milllion in annual net revenues overnight. Google did not drop us from the results they simple removed one url, that had received this amount of traffic for close to 18 months, from the results.

Does Google have such massive control of the search market that their practices are quite questionable? Personally they their actions toward's a partner site I consider to be evil.

This wasn't the first time that I have had this experience with them, however this was the time that had the largest impact. The challenge a site owner has with google is that while they won't "truly" tell you their rules (known as "guidelines") if you honestly cross one of the, without any intention of doing so, they "body slam" you. Once body slammed, if you try to use another company to generate revenues, the "body slam" your site again.

As an example, 2 years ago blogcatalog experience a 70% drop in google traffic and a respective drop in revenues. Google's "business as usual" approach doesn't include giving a site a reason. You have to guess. They will say, "we can't because it will expose our algorithm." The news isn't new. Google's algorithm now comes very close to sucking. Yet, they are still willing to harm their partners in the process.

My focus at BlogCatalog has always been on user experience and taking into account seo at a base level. Traffic is important and is the lifeblood of an online business. So no one, and Google, obviously knows this can afford to ignore SEO. Like any website I received some SEO advice, though since I understand Google's way of valuing a site, I have always remained on the so-called "white hat" side of seo; as my living, and those of my 14 employees (as of 6 months ago) depended Google traffic. Plus I have always admire Google as my own living has been made from them for the past 12 years.

However, like Answers.com, and a number of other consumer generated content sites, Google accounts for most of their revenues and traffic. Answers receives approximately 90% of its traffic comes from Google, as does a majority of their revenue. This was no different than BlogCatalog. This is very common. Probably far too common.

2 years ago, when our revenues dropped by $20k a month because of Google, I decided to sell text ads on BlogCatalog. The decision was made to so that we could stay in business. Selling text ads is practice that google now frowns on; though it is an industry that they created. Ten years ago, in fact, they actively promoted the concept of getting good links. They had speakers at SEO conferences talking about links. They spoke about good links vers bad links, and even show you how to determine who links to your site, by using Google. I was full aware of the risk of selling links. However, employees come first. Within a few months we had non-google ad revenue of over $25 and had kept every employee on board.

However, as Google does, they used the stick to get us back in line. Once they found our ads they dropped our page rank. Reacting to the drop in page rank, I decided to remove the text ads from the site and give up the $300k in annual revenue so as not to lose the traffic that Google was sending us. The moment I made that decision, I had no clue what we were going to do to pay employees and stay in business.

Amazingly a couple of days later a Google rep called me and asked if we would like to join their premium ad partner program. He explained that it meant higher cpc's and more features. I'm no dummy. I took enough multiple choice tests in college, that I answered YES.

Within a couple of months of this call, our revenues from google and traffic were up over 10x. Google was paying us over $1million in annual revenue and sending us 1/4 billion visitors a year. We changed nothing. Why would we? We had traffic back. Google "obviously approved of how the site was set up." Who wants to mess with pages when they are doing well. Of course I knew there was a risk. Who wants to be so dependent on one company even if they do call you a premium partner?

Voila. Five months ago, I checked the site's traffic, and it was down by 80%+. No explanation was given. "Hey I thought we're partners?"

The challenge now is that we were in expansion mode. We had hired new employees and were on the road to launching a brand new site. One that was much better for bloggers and readers. Something that would be great for our visitors; something that Google aspires to live by in their Corporate Philosophy.

Google had decided and that was that. Jokes about Google playing G_d are not that "far off" when an event like this happens to your company. The search pages they were sending 18 million visitors a month to, went from 18 million to zero in less than whatever a "google" is. I don't know what a google is but I think its some ridiculously crazy small fraction of a number. Whatever google means, I don't care. What it meant to me at the time was that our business may have just been killed in a google.

Is this right? According to Google's corporate philosophy, found at http://www.google.com/intl/..., number 6 states

"You can make money without doing evil."

So if this isn't an evil way to handle business partnerships what is? Google can't play naive. They have too many PhDs. Perhaps this is one of their interview questions.

1) If a company is doing over 1 million a year in Google revenues and 80% of their traffic comes from google, what would happen if we reduced that traffic by 80%?

2) If Google did this to the company, and didn't give them a reason, and the company hadn't changed anything, and families depended on this income to make a living, would this be an evil thing Google to do?

What do you think? is this evil?

For us, the direct costs were 4 employees were let go. I had to sell all my assets, including my car; I now either walk to work or borrow my partner's car. So my health has improved though my kidney are probably no better off because of the anti anxiety medications. My partner borrowed money. I borrowed money. The 2 of us haven't taken a salary in 5 months. We almost lost our hosting account with Rackspace as we had just moved to 15 spanking new servers, as we were getting ready for the new site's launch, and could no longer afford them. We are still working out this challenge.

And of course employee anxiety has gone up. "I wonder if I'm going to be next?" Must have been a thought that became a mantra in many of their brains; despite my reassurances that they were number 1 and I'd "go to the ground for them." Fortunately, we have sold off assets (primarily other sites we owned) and have come through the most difficult part of the challenge.

Google is not a company that should have their Philosophy point 6 on their site. It is false and they consistently violate it.

Google has little to no respect for their partner sites. They are not transparent. They provide no warnings to large partner publisher who depend on them.

Essentially google wants you to behave according to their rules. Their rules are a moving target.
Don't try to speak to a human on their search team. They refer you to guidelines, which are more like deciphering the internal revenue code for meaning, than they are helpful.

So if you accidentally get someone at google on search who has a bad day, and penalizes a site, or an algorithm is changed, that affects one url, causing it to go from millions of visitors a day to zero, you don't have much recourse.

Yes, they do have a form for asking "forgiveness." Yet, how does one do that if you don't know what you have done wrong.

I venture to guess that Google will implode on the search side. I am certain that their actual number of searches per average user (not including new users who join the web) has gone down with Twitter and FB taking market share away.

The thing that is saving them is the number of google adsense units on the long tail of the web. Advertisers are either paying less or google has lowered the % paid to publishers, as almost every publisher I have spoken to laughs out loud when you ask them about googles cpc.

Would I like Google to reinstate whatever "penalty" they imposed? Absolutely. Who wouldn't want that sort of traffic? The end result, is better for me as a businessman, it has tested me and my partner and the team. We are better for it. Google itself will face it's own consequences of actions like these.You don't violate your own philosophy, the philosophy that made you who are you are not pay the piper.

I treat what Google did as a gift. We are better off for it. Not because Google didn't harm human lives; they clearly did. They did damage to people's lives. We are a stronger company for it. We followed the "heroes journey." We are being challenged to replace Google with new traffic and revenue streams. That is where an entrepreneurial company grows and gets stronger, or dies.

Our income is down yet we are much better at running a business. Our focus is much more laser like. It is all about our core users : great bloggers and their readers. This is the gift.

By tomorrow we will have an entirely new site launched along with Blog Reader. Soon after that we will have a iPad app with the "best" long tail blogs on the web. Thereafter we will start making money for bloggers who are under represented by the Apples and Technoratis of the world.

BlogCatalog is still the largest social community of independent bloggers and a directory of blogs on the web. That hasn't changed. Google changed. And now they should change ore eliminate their Philosophy number 6 from "Do no evil" to something more accurate. It worked for Larry and Sergey when they found the company. As a public company they clearly cannot live this philosophy.

Re: 100+ Upcoming Social Media & Tech Events

Blog Catalog — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 02:42:53 -0000

bloggersunite.org features over 60 events where bloggers unite around social causes, from save the Gulf, to BloggersUnite against human trafficking. Focusing on the business side to social media is important though there is also room, I hope, to use the power of social media in an organized way to unite bloggers to raise awareness and funds are issues that have major implications for the future of humanity.

Re: How Google Cost Me $4 Million

Blog Catalog — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:49:54 -0000

@karen, thats a great point about "anyone can hang out a shingle." I believe the challenge is that you can lose a business without even trying to do anything to "spam" google. They have so much power that if they change something, overnight you can lose most of your traffic.

The problem is making a list like: avoid link buying, avoid link selling, don't scrape content and repackage without adding value, etc. never covers areas where Google's corporate challenges may affect a change in their search algorithm and therefor a loss in major traffic.

Re: How Google Cost Me $4 Million

Blog Catalog — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:57:15 -0000

"white hat" seo is a misnomer. SEO is SEO. If you buy links, you essentially are violating Google's guidelines. They want natural links. If you go out and do link exchanges, which is done all the time by SEO companies, both white and black hat, you are not following google's guidelines.

Even if your goal is to do basic seo. Good internal link structure. Good title's. Create a valuable end user experience, thereby generating value to your users, Google's "guidelines" are simply that. They are guidelines. Google can decrease your traffic overnight because you came fell into the cross-hairs of a Google business objective.

The challenge I have with them is that call publisher's partners. They call certain publishers' premium partners. They make those partners great money. Their partner's businesses thrive because of Google, and Google then has the power and they use it, to destroy a business with one decision.

It is no longer about SEO. SEO is built into most platforms today. Yes, you need links. Natural links happen when you build a good product. So SEO is dead or dying.

Google however is far from dead. They wield mighty power and need to be careful and not negligent in how they use that power. Their philosophy of "do not evil" is not practiced at the Googleplex anymore.

They are becoming more like Microsoft was. They "bu(ll)y" what they think is hot; or say that "they don't need you because, they can build it themselves. Remember the good old Microsoft acquisition days. Google seems to be moving much closer to being how Microsoft was.

Re: Join Mashable & (RED) in Celebrating Social Good Day: Social Media for #SocialGood

Blog Catalog — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 16:00:56 -0000

the ideas are at http://www.bloggersunite.org

Re: The Girl Who Played With Fire Still Smolders

Blog Catalog — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 15:11:57 -0000

Liked Dragon and am eager to see Fire. I usually don't put too much stock in critics and so I think I will be a receptive audience for this sequel. I had forgotten about this one recently but maybe I'll grab it from a Redbox on the way home tonight. -Jason

Re: Flipping The Scale: Influencers Are The Most Influenced

Blog Catalog — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 11:38:13 -0000

Thanks for the reality check Rich. I always enjoy your insights and appreciate you challenging not only the way I perceive things, but how "the industry" as a whole thinks and operates. Good stuff. -Jason

Re: 30 Days of Truth: Day 11

Blog Catalog — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 22:58:23 -0000

Holy mackerel. I feel like I just read a description of myself. Thank you for sharing this insight about yourself. You definitely have me interested and I'll be back to read more of what gets past the inner critic. -BiggJTX

Re: Rose and The City: CELEBRATE!

Blog Catalog — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 10:45:11 -0000

Congratulations :)

Re: The 13 Business Blogging Master Post Templates You Can Use, Part 1- Process Stories

Blog Catalog — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 13:20:08 -0000

Do not retweet this post anymore as it is at exactly 13 tweets. You'll mess up the synchronicity.

Re: Democracy - Our lifesaver?

Blog Catalog — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:11:31 -0000

Bigger rubbish has never been spoken. It's extreme views like this that lead to hate. You expect all people of the world to go by the law of Allah. What makes that law supreme to the law of any other religious text?

Re: http://clickcheckmom.tumblr.com/post/7391699585

Blog Catalog — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 16:32:41 -0000

It's beautiful.

Re: Fashion Style Bloggers We Love – Miss Molly

Blog Catalog — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 19:26:21 -0000

Odd being in the States and we are choosing summer styles

Re: Jewellery Displays – Presented by The Fearless Fashionista

Blog Catalog — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 19:26:50 -0000

Absolutely love it!

Re: Maltese Falcon: The Largest Sailing Yacht In The World

Blog Catalog — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 20:05:57 -0000

double dopeness

Re: Maltese Falcon: The Largest Sailing Yacht In The World

Blog Catalog — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 20:06:13 -0000

true dope

Re: Guess How Much Americans Drink A Year

Blog Catalog — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 23:42:25 -0000

Great blog! Love it.

Re: Barbecue Feta Turkey Burgers

Blog Catalog — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 17:08:23 -0000

Those look absolutely delicious. Now I am starving *__*

Re: Don’t NOT Do It – Just Do It Awesome

Blog Catalog — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 22:55:20 -0000

love your attitude

Re: Essay: Jobs’s Departure as CEO of Apple Is the End of an Extraordinary Era

Blog Catalog — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 21:43:36 -0000

I wish Mr. Jobs all the best & prayers that he will recover from this threat to his life. He has done miraculous work in the business world and had a major impact on society. May G_d give him the strength to do the same for his health.

Re: Hippie Living

Blog Catalog — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 04:39:25 -0000

Stunning post.

Re: Well, that was highly disappointing-10 Parting Points From World Series 2011

Blog Catalog — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:30:11 -0000

did you cry at the end ;) ?

Re: Blauthor, Blauthor!: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Blog Catalog — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 08:37:09 -0000

1 of 3 books that made you cry in your life. that would indicate an excellent book :) thanks for joining blog catalog.

Re: 360 Tips: Tips to Write Perfect blog post

Blog Catalog — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 01:11:41 -0000

Terrific blog post. The actual post follows your advice for How to write a perfect blog post. Great job!