Todd has written a post that captures the spirit of SOBCon:
We come away from those events on natural highs. We promise ourselves we’ll do some things. Perhaps for you it was simply to stay in touch. Other folks will promise to change their blog, some will say they’ll change their life. Some people even offer business opportunities. It’s a very exciting time in our lives.
Read the whole thing here [link].
Brad wanted to let the SOBCon community know what he has been up to:
I have installed a new WordPress theme to better focus my Web site and blog on my core services:
- Content strategy,
- Copywriting,
- and business blog services.
The navigation of the new theme allows me to highlight important Web pages that were practically invisible with my old theme. Since my site traffic is steadily increasing, I decided it would be worthwhile to start monetizing.
I’ve developed a long term plan and in July began selling ads on my blog, very selectively. So far the response has been positive. I have a couple of new online service offerings in development that I plan to roll out before the end of the year.
Brad Shorr
Word Sell, Inc.
www.wordsellinc.com
Good luck with your new focus Brad! Check out Brad’s site and let him know what you think of the new look.
I recently had the opportunity to speak to Timothy Johnson of Carpe Factum and he gave me an update on what he has been working on since we first met at May’s conference:
Since SOBCon I’ve been spending the summer doing some editing and honing on SWAT. SWAT (Systems Working All Together) is a story about Systems Thinking, but it’s also a story about learning. We tend to go about our business rather myopically and think that only people in our business/company can teach us about how to do our jobs better. Part of the plot of this book shows how a young manager learns how to improve the processes of his call center project by using the principles of a tactical police SWAT team. We all intuitively understand the principles of inputs and outputs, but few of us take the time to look at how the behavior of the system impacts how we do our jobs.
I’ve also been working on preparing for the second printing of Race Through The Forest (my first book) later this fall. We’re adding in some charts, pointers, and templates for project managers.
Tim actually spent some time with a SWAT team as part of his research, and this looks like it’s going to be a very exciting new book.
Thanks Tim!
I have had couple of e-mail conversations with Jeff Sable of Chitika, and he asked me to share with all of you some of the new features of this service that have been incorporated since May.
Good morning. I would very much welcome an opportunity to introduce Chitika’s Premium ad program to the SOBCon audience. We have been known for years as a blog ad network but we were a strict product niche (i.e. we had product ad widgets for blogs that discussed products). With our Premium program we have significantly increased the advertiser base (we still have product ads but now we also have great ads for ALL blog sites) and we have improved our targeting technology.
The results? More money for more bloggers. Publishers with Chitika|Premium ads are seeing eCPMs are as high as $71 (averaging slightly higher than $2), with click through rates as high as 13.5% (averaging approximately 1.5%) and we now have high-performing advertisements for any type of web site (product sites and non-product sites in all verticals).
Note, Premium ads will only display to a portion of a blogger’s US traffic but when they display they perform very well. The ad units are available in 2 dozen sizes. For more information please visit Chitika or contact jeff at chitika dot com.
Thanks for the update, Jeff. I imagine that many of the attendees will be interested in this service as they work toward building their blogs into media properties.