There has been a debate going on; if we have RSS why do we need e-mail lists?

I have a theory why. An RSS feed is relatively impersonal. If you read a column in the newspaper requesting that you perform a community service do you really feel compelled to do so? What about if your mayor sent you a personally addressed letter in the mail?

A few weeks ago Shoemoney sent out a mass e-mail to a lot of people who posted on his blog in the past. He reminded people that he had his first webmasterradio.fm show coming up and asked everyone to link to it. The next day I saw several prominent blogs linking to that story. Traditionally, blogging news is staggered by hours or days. Sending out an e-mail is a way to jump ahead of that curve.

If you run a blog or a content site which has hundreds or thousands of RSS subscribers there are still plenty of reasons to collect e-mail addresses. When a member of one of my sites needed financial help with a kidney, I blasted an e-mail to over 10,000 people. Besides helping that member raise money it also reminded people that subscribed months ago we still exist, and even more it sent a clear message of legitimacy to the audience.

You fanatical readers are going to pay close attention to your RSS feed. For a blogger like me, I watch my subscriptions often. To the casual user, or someone who has been focused on something else, e-mail has some very good uses.

Should you send every single RSS post out as an e-mail? Of course not! The less messages you send, the more effective they will be. Unlike spam, your audience should be thrilled to get a message from you, making its call to action even more powerful.

So why don’t I collect e-mail at WebPublishingBlog.com? I do, indirectly, by keeping track of who has contacted me or purchased a book.

There was a web designer who was very skilled. He could charge above the market rate and his clients were more than willing to pay for it. For several years he made very good money. He was not afraid to spend it and lived a very comfortable lifestyle.

Unfortunately the good times did not last forever. As time progressed his competitor’s skills grew and his rates started feeling the squeeze. Not only did he have to work harder but he also had to work longer. He was no fool, he realised he would not be able to do this forever. He made the decision to scale back his lifestyle and start saving.

Yes, that is a true story.

Today not just the web, but the entire world is changing and growing at an unbelievably rapid pace. I encourage you to take a serious look at outside threats to your business model. Instead of giving up, this designer could have started a design outsourcing firm. Where some see an end to their livelihood, others see new oppurtunities.

I am predicting that independent publishers are soon going to begin feeling the same pressures that the web designer did. Why? Pick up a recent issue of Business 2.0. The profitability of this industry is no secret, nor is search engine optimization.

This is great news for those who are building powerful sites, but very bad news for those who have hesitently pushed out mediocre projects for years.

Where do you stand?

Mark Brooks over at Online Personals Watch has interviewed Jimmy Wales the founder of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia was not Jimmy’s first venture into online encyclopedias — “We had more work done in two weeks on Wikipedia than we had done in two years on Newpedia.” That drives the point home; just because something is failing doesn’t mean that the concept is worthless. You may only need to do it a little differently.

In case you missed it I released my new blog ebook last week. I started this book last year and finished it up this past month. If you are a serious web site developer and either have no experience with blogs or feel like your blog is weak, check this out.

Blogs are not a fad, they really play a big role in the way the internet works. As a publisher they are a great way to build links. As a business person its simply one of the best ways to project your identity on a massive scale (perhaps there are better ways, but they cost a pretty penny.)

You can read a little bit more about the book on my very modest sales page.

StumbleUpon is a browser plug-in that randomly sends people to different websites based upon other sites they like. Its kind of like channel surfing on TV with thousands and thousands of channels instead of a few hundred.

Early this week I added one of my sites to StumbleUpon, so far its sent a few thousands referals. Yes, they click on ads. Not bad at all.

One important tip: if your site is garbage don’t bother. Out of three sites I’ve done this to, two got a little under 100 referals the first day and nothing more than a tiny trickle since. Neither of the two sites were bad, just not cool enough to hold people’s interest.

This morning WickedFire.com went online.

Why should you care? Run by Jon of Super Affiliate Marketing Blog they are doing a few things that the other forums have avoided, including allowing graphical sigs and affiliate links. Right now its a Saturday morning and there are already 35 members and over 150 posts within 6 hours of launch.

Jon is also running providing some very big incentives to bring in new members and posts. If you are one of the first 10 people to 250 posts or can refer 30 new users you’ll get a free site created by his team. If you are going to refer people through your site or blog be sure to tell them your username so they can enter it when they sign up (mine’s Andrew.)

Will WickedFire be able to compete with the big three — Sitepoint, DigitalPoint, and WebmasterWorld, in addition to the SEO boards? I’m leaning towards a yes.

Update: It appears that WickedFire.com is ending day 1 at just under 2,000 posts and 100 members. This is a perfect example of how to launch a new forum.

I just found this little tool called the Yahoo! Site Explorer. Whats so great about it? It shows you what the top viewed pages on a URL are. This is a very useful for multiple purposes. One example would be identifying pages to buy ads or hard links on. This is definately getting added to my “site detective toolkit.”

Are you geotargetting Yahoo’s PPC ads to the US? If not, you might think about doing so. Several publishers have been kicked out of the program recently for sending international traffic to Yahoo. Most recently, Chris from WebsitePublisher.net blogged about getting the boot. Some publishers have gotten kicked out despite having reps specifically telling them they would not be!

I am a little confused at why Yahoo can not do the geotargetting themselves, or at the very least just not pay for international clicks and let the publishers stay in the program. Perhaps they have another motive here? At least we can give Yahoo credit for paying what they tell publishers they will pay. In contrast, newbie Chitika issued suspicious account “audits” deducting up to 90% of publishers accumulated revenues.

Here is a solution to geotargetting your ads - phpadsnew.

I was just deleting some blog spam when I decided to take a look at one of the links, something I never do. After clicking on one, ringtones-dir.com, I got this message: “Domain deleted
Reason: ABUSE - GB abuse code #1932.” Either their host is on the ball or they are sleeping!

Often the sites with the highest profit margins are targed toward one time visitors. Many Adsense publishers focus solely on getting visitors to click on that ad as soon as possible and exit their site. Is this the best strategy when that same visitor could click on a few ads, contribute to CPM impressions, and even tell their friends about the site?

Here are a few things you do to crank up pageviews an get your visitors to come back to your site:

1. Add an e-mail newsletter to your site. When I send mine out at the beginning of the month traffic spikes. Visitors that saw the site once a year ago can come back again, and again, and again.

2. Link to other relevent content within your site. You may be losing revenue because visitors immediately clicked back instead of exploring your site further.

3. Integrate a regularly updated blog in to your web site. My (brand new) book, Real Blogging, shows the top 5 places to find fresh content blog.

4. Add a forum. There are very few ways you will get people to visit your site daily. This is on of them.