Twitter - My Initial Thoughts

So I was reading the latest "Twitter" post on Shoemoney.com yesterday. After commenting that I was "twittered out" from

reading about Twitter every day, I was surprised to see my comment was never "approved" to be published. Funny how that works. Anyway, I found it interesting that Shoemoney was actually finding it useful, so I visited his Twitter site/blog/whatever.

Un-interestingly I found a list of random posts and responses in no particularly relevent flow. It was kind of like peering into a private chat room, but only being able to see every other comment or so. You can't really figure out what is being talked about, but apparently some kind of conversation is going on.

It got me to thinking about how it appears folks are using the tool. They seem to be having conversations with small groups (cliques) of people. Kind of useful to that small group. Kind of useless to the rest of the world. So why make these posts public? They have no value. They wasted about 5 minutes of my life I'll never get back just trying to find something of substance.

I can totally see the value of having these collaborative threads to keep in touch with friends. I have yet to see any value in following someone you don't know.

However I am apparently the minority, since there appears to be almost 500 fellow twits following Shoemoney's twitting... I feel sorry for those chaps... ;-)

Promoting and growing a new blog...

This week Darren Rowse of Problogger was guest host on WebmasterRadio's NetIncome show with Jeremy Shoemaker (Shoemoney). Great session. Here were my take away notes on how to promote and grow a new (or existing) blog:

1. Use Technorati's top 100 and market your new stories to related blogs...

2. Setup alerts on google for types of content you are interested in blogging about to keep up on what is new

3. Frequency of posts is based on your content and readership... If you are posting very thorough articles/posts... less is better... perhaps 4-5 week. If you are just commenting on news articles/links... you can do more since they are easier to digest...

4. 103bees.com - Helps generate ideas for new topics for your blog while analyzing how folks found you...

5. StumbleUpon traffic seems to linger longer and convert better... try to get stumbled

6. Stay on top of where big traffic spikes are coming in from... (ie - Digg) and update those entry pages temporarily to also promote your RSS feed... newsletter... etc... to try and retain as much of the traffic as you can...

7. Paid links/ads are OK if they are relevant... steer clear of unrelevant text link ads...

Good stuff guys. I heard it was Jeremy's (Shoemoney) last show for his current contract with WebmasterRadio. I hope he resigns for another season. I really learned a lot from him and his guests.

Welcome to Sock Money!

As a successful small-time web publisher, I thought it might be useful to share my experiences I learned over the years in the form of a blog. I am planning to tell my story from day one when I started on the internet over 10 years ago.

So why "SockMoney"? Well I was recently inspired by a successful big-time web publisher that goes by the name "Shoemoney". His blog, Shoemoney.com, offers great insight into how to become a successful publisher. Jokingly, my wife suggested "SockMoney" for the name of my blog. So I went with it...

Next up... my first post... The Early Years...