Everybody knows about his achievements, but what really differentiated Michael Jordan was his work ethic and his killer attitude. Here are 5 habits of his Airness — and how it applies to blogging.
1. The Playoffs Are Way More Important Than the Regular Season
When it came to big games — Michael Jordan delivered (6 championship rings to be precise!). And that is what made him so great. When it comes to blogging, the championship game is “the scoop“. Its that piece of news or story you have that is completely unique — and nobody else has it. If you get the scoop, you get instant growth in readership — and you become a magnet for future scoops. Its not easy (Hey, who said winning championships was easy?), but it can be done.
2. The Last 2 Minutes Are More Important Than the First 46
In “crunch time”, Jordan would always demand the ball. When a big story is in play (e.g. “Paris Hilton in Jail”, “Google Buys Doubleclick” or whatever is “big” in your world of blogging), are you ready to demand the ball? What new perspecitives do you bring to the table? Are you adding to the story, or just reporting what Seth Godin, Robert Scoble or some other A-lister is saying?
3. Bring It — Everyday
Michael Jordan’s work ethic — on a daily basis — was legendary. He practiced hard and had a rigorous daily training schedule. What does this mean to you as a blogger ? Get into a rhythm. Get into what Problogger calls his “daily rhythm“. Ask yourself this question: what will get my readers back to my blog today? Most blog readers have attention deficit disorder, so keeping your blog fresh and vibrant is paramount.
4. Be Market Smart
Jordan wasn’t the only one to win a bunch of championship rings — but he was the man when it came to market savviness. He knew how to play the media and play the hearts of the TV-viewing public. As a blogger, you must build the relationships that elevate your status as a blogger. Why is this important? Because “Power attracts Power“. As you elevate your status as a blogger, you will notice more and more powerful entities attracted towards you (think: Michael Arrington of TechCrunch)
5. Make your teammates better
MJ was awesome when it came to getting the best out of his teammates; in some cases, they even made clutch 4th quarter shots to win championships instead of him. For you as a blogger, this is all about your community. They are your team — get them engaged. Get them rooting for you. And most of all: Show them the love. Make your readers famous. Show them some link love.
Comments are open. Please feel free to add your own two cents.
Posted by Alden DoRosario (alden [at] chitika [dot] com)
Take back control of customizing your ad units & increase your revenue!
How can you take your earnings potential to the next level if you can’t customize your ad service in your own way? You can’t. The most important thing to remember while catering to your visitors and your revenue needs is, you know your viewers better than anyone. With that in mind, what can you do to make sure your giving your visitors what they need to help you purchase a larger wallet?
eMiniMalls
1. Chitika gives you full power to select your own products to display. With this YOU are in control. This is important because your website may be about kitchen appliances, however, YOU KNOW your visitors would be interested in purchasing smaller items for their kitchen, like knives. So you would simply choose products for the knives you would like to offer your readers.
2. Let’s make it even easier, select from a pre-defined set of categories, like: Home and Garden. Let’s face it, you want it all! We don’t blame you, in fact, take it! You want to be able to choose the ads you’d like to display, but you don’t have time to sit and think of them all. Done! There are 45 different pre-made categories, simply click and go!
One of the observations raised at Elite Retreat San Francisco was: Digg Users are lousy ad clickers. So I decided to put this theory to the test using data from the billion+ ads served by Chitika over a 31 day period.
For the impatient, here is the take-away message:
Digg Traffic is more than 3 times Less Likely to Click on an Ad than Google Traffic
Background:
There’s been a lot of discussion about the value of Digg traffic (Problogger, Neil Patel, etc). This analysis aims to use the data culled from the Chitika logs over a 31 day period to put an actual number to this theory. Since pretty much everyone receives Google traffic, this analysis uses Google as a base to compare against.
The Actual Analysis (for the stats folk):
I started off with the entire log data over a 31 day period from Feb 26th 2007 - March 28th 2007. This comprised over a billion ad impressions and millions of clicks.
I then filtered down the data set to only publishers using the Chitika | RPU product line. Since the RPU is always placed in the exact same position on all publisher sites (i.e. the bottom of the blog post), this had the nice side effect of eliminating any positioning effects (as in: You should never compare an ad unit placed at the top of the page to one at the bottom).
I then filtered down the data set to only those publishers who get Dugg. This way, any publisher who gets a ton of traffic from Google but never gets Dugg does not skew the results.
Lastly, I calculated the impressions and clicks on the ads for traffic from both Digg and Google and calculated the click through rate (CTR)
Results:
Over the 31 days, the google traffic resulted in a CTR of 0.97% on the RPU ads — compared to 0.30% for the Digg traffic.
Digg traffic is more than 3 times less likely to click on an Ad than Google traffic.
Publishers who talk about Diggable topics like Apple, Games, Linux, etc seemed to get Dugg a lot. This indirectly confirms the demographic profile of the classic Digg user (think college-going Internet power user).
Dealing with Digg Traffic:
So what do you do with the Digg traffic ? Is it worth your time to get your post Dugg ? Here are some experts who have delved on this topic:
Last week our optimizations expert Ryan, put on his pirate outfit and headed into second life to give out some optimizations tips. Well good news, he’s back for more! Catch Ryan here in Second Life, Friday March 30th 3pm EST.
We have invited the best of the blogosphere in house to take over the Chitika Blog for the month of April! A new post every day from 30 different guest blogging gurus!
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You will not see any boring “blogging 101″ posts! Enjoy tips and explore insights about a variety of unique and interesting topics like, “Dare to be Odd” and “Shopping and Blogging: How to make the marriage work.”
WED. MARCH 21st! AT 3pm EST!!!
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We first started offering expert optimization tips for all Chitika users in Chitika SPHERE. Thousands of users have benefited from this so we decided to take the optimizations to another world we like to play in, Second Life.
Chitika Creative Creations is a new contest we started in February, 2007 to reward all of you who have some pretty cool Chitika ad integrations! We have been shuffling through our 12,000+ publisher network on the lookout for the best integrations and in the meantime we invited everyone to submit theirs if they thought they had what it takes to be a winner. Turns out, you did!
The second winner of Chitika Creative Creations is: www.froomb.com!
Froomb.com is, “Saving the world. One deal at a time” by offering a really cool “deal of the day” directory for all of you shopping lovers!
“I have integrated a number of Chitika eMiniMalls in such a way that they appear to be part of the content rather than ads. The approach has done very well for me.”
GIVE YOUR CHITIKA ADS DOUBLE EXPOSURE IN EACH POST
I have noticed that some bloggers will place their entire blog post on the main page of their blog not realizing that this only gives you one place for an eMiniMalls or RPU unit. SOLUTION. Place half of the article on the main page and provide the full article on the next page. This simple technique gives you two places to put an ad unit & increases your chance a visitor will see, and click through.
WHAT HE DID FOR YOU ON CHITIKA SPHERE
Ryan has made it possible for any Chitika member to receive expert advice on their Chitika ad implementation for their blog/websites. “It’s simple, post your URL’s and I’ll help you make the most from eMiniMalls, RPU, ShopLinc & ShopCloud$ on your pages.” -Ryan
I then found the Chitika forum and got great site optimisation from some people on it, namely Ryan, who has been a great ambassador and extremely friendly, helpful and really knows his stuff. Hats off to him. At this stage I had optimised my eMiniMalls to earn me about 50% more. -adscorp
LATE TO THE PARTY? That’s OK
November 2006, we opened the “Submit your URL for Expert Otimizations” post on our official forum, Chitka SPHERE. This became our largest and most popular topic in the forum. You couldn’t wait to receive tips from Chitika experts on how to optimize your site for the holidays so we extended our optimizations submissions post on SPHERE indefinitely!
For most of you, our best performing ad unit, the 468×180 will fit nicely in your blog column.
It’s important not to forget that your visitors typically don’t look below the fold on your page.
Avoid placing your ad units at the very top banner ad spot and the left sidebar for maximum performance.
Put yourself in your visitors shoes & show products you know they will be interested in.
