December 2, 2005
london geek dinner with robert scoble, december 10th
The London Geek Dinner with Robert Scoble is just one week away- Saturday, the 10th of December.
Please sign up if you haven't already etc.
I've also heard a rumor that certain members of the press are going to be there. Geek Dinners? Newsworthy? What?
[ALSO:] I'm wondering if the wee "blogvertising" thingie just below could be used as a standard, unobtrusive form of advertising media. Thoughts?
[BLOGVERTISING:] "English Cut. The blog of Thomas Mahon, Savile Row tailor, London."
Posted by hugh macleod at December 2, 2005 2:45 PM | TrackBackRe: blogvertising...
It's pretty unobtrusive (except that the tag is too long) but if it were something other than EC there might be the "huh?" factor.
How would you sell something like this? How would you sell it that's different than just selling a link (something Google frowns on)?
Come to think of it, you might as well do rel=nofollow from the start, because G is likely to downgrade all your links otherwise... so maybe this doesn't work for any SEO effect but does work for direct traffic.
I could imagine a sales pitch something like:
"For $x per click, I'll put up a blogvertising link to your site whenever I think it's relevant."
You probably couldn't have a full AdSense style brokerage for that (too easy to cheat) but it might work with someone like blogads, where there's a direct matchup between advertiser and blog. CPC is tricky though because you have to deal with the fraud angle.
On the other hand, if you don't think of this as a blogvertising revolution but rather as something limited to high-traffic blogs of good reputation (GV and so on) then you might not need a broker at all. First because not many parties are involved, second because in case of contractual problems the blogging party has something just as powerful as the other side's ability to withhold payment: you can berate them on your blog.
Yeah, Frosty, the idea is only hours old and I already hate it ;-)
Posted by: hugh macleod at December 2, 2005 7:51 PMHugh, On your style of blog advertisements. I have fewer than 100 unique visitors per day. So, I have taken your model and expanded the number of ads for several small businesses in order to help them and to help search engines find me. Since I have a small following I can not obtain high value sponsors and have to rely on G, other affiliate income streams, and smaller sponsorship values. Thanks for the inspiration.
There is argument over whether my wordPress entries can truly be classified as a blog, but it is an experiment which may someday define how blog advertising for small business is done. (I can dream can't I). I think of it more as a Conversation with small business owners, entrepreneurs, and those that provide tools or services to them. Keep up the great work and know that you do inspire us nobodys out there.
Posted by: eSearing at December 13, 2005 1:40 PM