Web Publishing

This isn’t breaking news, but I noticed that MarketingSherpa has released the second edition of their very popular Landing Page Handbook. The first edition had been out of print for a while (despite also being sold in an electronic format) so naturally many web entrepreneurs had been searching for both pirated and after market copies. Now you can buy the real thing, and get data that isn’t two years old.

So, is it worth $501? (thats what I just paid.) Its your call. There is plenty of filler here, but as any successful online marketer knows: just a single idea can foot this price many times over.

I just bought my copy 15 minutes ago, a complete report/review will be forthcoming.

I have just returned from Ad-Tech New York. This is the first time I attended, although I was at the far smaller Ad-Tech Chicago this past summer.

Event highlights included the shoulder-to-shoulder packed after party at Pacha sponsored by PepperJam, RocketProfit, and whole bunch of companies which I do not remember. I also managed to attend a networking event for women in advertising, and consequently am now one of a handful of paying male members of Ad Femme

On a business owner to business owner standpoint I walked away realizing a few things:

Premium dot com domains are still significantly undervalued. Are those record breaking sales signs of a speculative bubble, or are buyers getting flea market priced bargains?

The online ad marketplace is going to become increasingly competitive between networks — high quality publishers (and type-in domain owners) will benefit greatly.

Annual internet advertising revenue projections are now moving north of $50 billion for 2011. Fair to say, you are in the right industry, at the right time. Don’t let the boat leave without you.

A year and a half ago I warned web masters that the US Dollar would continue to slide. This year, the US Dollar weakened significantly against the Canadian Dollar.

The last time I wrote about this issue, in June, we were approaching parity with the Canadian dollar, at $1.05. Today, parity looks optimistic.

The paradox of this situation is that most Americans do not care — many of them are not even aware of it. Last time, someone thought I was an idiot for even taking the time to write about it!

Companies and entrepreneurs are shifting their focus from the United States to international markets. If you haven’t begun to look into this yet, you should. While international stock markets may be speculatively priced, international growth online represents a great value investment. Not only will it diversify you away from the dollar, you will also have the opportunity to dominate niches which are already mature in the United States.

Yeah, the dollar slide hurts. Non-US web developers feel it when they cash their checks, Americans feel it when they fill their cars up with gas. Use this as an opportunity to diversify internationally and make it a win-win scenario.

Holidays present a huge opportunity for internet publisher and marketers. Consumers are online, looking for specific things, and their wallets are open. Even better, their search patterns are very predictable and reliable, year after year.

Thinking about Christmas? Go live in September. Halloween? If you are just getting your Halloween promotions live for Monday, you’ve missed half the audience.

I had a good laugh when I heard that attorney generals are calling for an extension in Microsoft’s antitrust settlement.

Right now things look grim for Microsoft on all fronts. Long ago Linux proved it ran better than Windows, now it looks better too. Internet developers prefer Linux as their web server of choice, again for performance, but also for cheap scaling.

Future growth compounds Microsoft’s problems. The developing markets, when told to stop using pirated versions of Windows instead will choose free alternatives.

Then there is the Google. Google is chasing after Microsoft’s core desktop applications with AJAX-powered web apps. Microsoft has failed miserably (so far) to enter the online advertising market. They are giving away billions attempting to catch up.

The New York group’s filing centers largely on what it calls the “indisputably resilient” monopoly that Microsoft holds in the operating system realm. The attorneys general said they were “mindful” that Windows’ approximately 90 percent market share in client operating systems is not the only test for how successful the antitrust agreement has been. But they added, “the absence of meaningful erosion in Windows’ market share is still problematic for the public interest.”

What is the public interest anyways? I build my sites on Windows, my servers run Linux. Others developers code in Ubuntu, power up OS X on their Mac to Photoshop, and then put everything together on Windows (XP, given how problematic Vista is, sticking with the trend that begin with Windows 95.) Thats not a monopoly.

If you were to have a long term illness would you be in big trouble? Or, could your employees continue to maintain & grow your business? On the more positive side, can you take a very lengthy vacation with no business contact?

I find it interesting that a company which profits from legal system exploitation (at the cost of thousands of small-time webmasters) would send unsolicited commercial e-mail spam.

I never opted in to any Getty Images e-mail list. I do not know where they got my address. That does not even matter because the email alone broke several CAN-SPAM requirements listed by the FTC, such as “commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender’s valid physical postal address.”

For proof, here is the full e-mail below. Getty Images should be careful next time as well as fire whoever was responsible for a) assembling their email list and b) ensuring CAN-SPAM compliance.

Wipe the drool from your mouth. Now you can license even
rights-managed quality images for a flat rate of $49 each*.

All contents © 2007 Getty Images, Inc. All rights reserved.

I am considering taking my name off of Web Publishing Blog and opening it up to other writers. If you are interested, and qualified, drop me an email. I am open to a wide variety of possibilities including co-ownership. Owning your own internet business is a must.

Do we need a Techcrunch for the part of the internet that doesn’t live off venture capital?

One of the most important lessons I have learned from web publishing and development is that testing & optimization is absolutely critical. Often a few minor adjustments done in 30 minutes can bring in more revenue than months of work. Its even better when those adjustments are done on the fly, leaving you time to do thing machines can not.

Last month one of my readers contacted me about a new service he co-founded, Pubmatic.com. This service allows publishers to auto-optimize their ad inventory on the fly. Unlike Right Media’s RMX Direct, the built in support for Adsense & Yahoo should be a big benefit self-employed content publishers.

Pubmatic currently supports Adsense, Valueclick, BlueLithium, and YPN. Expanding supported ad networks is a top priority, and many more are expected. Text ad color schemes are auto-optimized. Planned additions to later versions include ad size optimization, page position, and number of ad units per page.

One of the case studies Pubmatic lists is Sportsvite.com, which saw its revenue jump 90% during Pubmatic’s alpha testing period. While other publishers may not see such dramatic successes, double digit revenue gains are considered normal.

If that didn’t impress you, then at least check out their desktop widget for Adsense, YPN, Valueclick, and Komli stats, Pubmatic account not required.

If you do want to test out Pubmatic, they are now in open beta, timed just for TechCrunch40.

What is one simple thing that can slice away half of your revenue? If you are not measuring it, you may blame revenue and loss gains on randomness, or mistakenly assign it to something else.

That thing that matters oh so much is server speed.

Real numbers: One of my websites coverts at around 4-5.7%. However, an extra 10 seconds of loading time can slice that number down below 3%. When things get really bad, that number can slide down to 1%.

Whether you have an e-commerce site, or a content site, this will impact you. Friendster’s decline is largely attributed to growth problems destroying their performance. Without a prompt fix many members migrated to Myspace, and the rest is history.

If you are investing a lot of time into an advertising campaign you need to monitor page load times throughout the day. If you have a content site, make sure off-server advertisements aren’t breaking your site’s load times. If you insist on overloading your pages with images & rich media then you better be prepared to pay to ensure speed. Visitors just won’t wait around short of catching the latest nudie shots of their favorite celebrity.

Off topic, note for regular readers. I was an idiot and accidentally made a post based on a 7 year old story (argh!), which I deleted as soon as a reader pointed it out. However, I am planning a big post about parking domain names verse developing them later, possibly for late next week.