Popularity: 8% [?]

Nice one Google.

I’m now a PR2.  I’ve read tons of blogs out there and many have felt the Google Bitchslap.  Many go on and on about how it doesn’t really matter that Google has dropped the rankings and all that, but why the hell does it bother me so much.

Maybe I’ve been programmed to think that it does matter.  That somewhere along the lines of - how am I going to make money bears some weight on that little green bar called Google PageRank.  Isn’t it been programmed into our brains that a higher PR means… more authority on the Internet?  Doesn’t that bar bear some weight in the world of online advertising?  Good PR = Money well spent?  I think quite a few ad revenue sources do look at PR when gauging how much your links are worth on your site.  Doesn’t it?  Have I missed something somewhere?

I wish I wasn’t so hung up on the PR thing.

I totally wish I wasn’t.

But here I am… back at a PR2.  Do I place fault on myself because I’ve been trying different avenues to make money online on a website that is pretty damn hard to monetize.

Is this Google’s way to finally squish their competition?

It’s a hard road.  I never thought it wasn’t.  But damn.

Popularity: 9% [?]

When I had heard that Radiohead was coming out with a new album called “In Rainbows” I was excited (because I’m a fan), and I was also intrigued by how they were marketing the music.  I’d head that they were giving it away for nothing… which almost made my heart stop.  Why?  Ummm… how were they going to make any money?  Isn’t that usually the major bitch of record labels when they’re selling songs for .99 cents at iTunes… too little, want people to pay more… sort of thing.  But this is crazy - FREE.  Yup, they’d lost their minds.

Now it seems that you pay what you think is a fair price for Radiohead’s music.  Over at NME it looks that it’s about £5 (or approximately $10.26 US or  $9.87 CAD) for their album.    Which to me seems cheap.  I’m not quite sure that this sort of system would hold up normally - I mean, wouldn’t we instinctively low-ball the price to get the best deal.

The interesting thing about the way Radiohead has marketed their latest album is that I’m now seeing variations of this trend on the Internet.  Today I got an email from Travis and his BumMarketingMethod.com site which I’d signed up for his newsletter.  Today I recived one where he was offering information on how to place PayPal on your site with minimal hassle.  You pick the price you’d like to pay for the info and then you get the download.   I didn’t realize that PayPal was such a pain to put on a site (apart from WordPress and it’s loop).  But some might be looking for an easier way to do it - and Travis has info that could help.  But here he’s place the payment in your hands.  You pick how much you’re wanting to pay for it.

I wonder how that will go over for him.

Another site that’s taken a bit of a twist to the “pay what you think is fair” is 1 Month.  This is the brainchild of Gary over at OSWorld, where he’s offering digital products starting at $1 and it goes up over time.  The sooner you get in to buy it - the cheaper it is.  Super marketing idea - you can sign up for announcements before the site launches at the beginning of November.   That sort of idea has me interested - and I signed up to see what’s going to be happening on the site.  Who knows what you’ll be able to find there, for a cheap (decent) price.

I’m wondering if this will become more than a trend?  Will we as marketers of digital products give this sort of payment method a try?  I’m not sure we’d make a profit, but who knows there seems to be quite a few honest people out there.  With Radioheads latest music, we all have an idea of what a CD is worth… so we’d price it out accordingly (I suppose if we’re honest).  But when it comes to digital products, how can we base a fair price since pricing varies from product to product.   Hmmmm….

With the new arrival of this sort of way to pay for products online - where we set the price - do you think it’s a viable way to sell a product?

Popularity: 8% [?]

… a peg that’s called PageRank.  Apparently I’m not the only one.  Darren over at ProBlogger has taken a big kick in the teeth taking his site from a PR 7 to a PR4.  I went down 1 to score in at a PR3.

(SWEARING, SWEARING, SWEARING)

I’m not entirely surprised.  When I’d read about the PR drop over at 45n5 and the reasons Mark gives for the possible reasons that ProBlogger got throttled over PR do make sense.  I mean Matt has written about reporting on those of us who use paid links on our site( http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/).

I haven’t hidden the fact that I do.  But now do we have to work a little more under the table to make a few dollars online?

I mean, I’m looking at trying to make a dollar or two here online.  I take reviews to make that money online, especially on this site which isn’t the easiest to monetize.  I also get paid to put links on my site.  I don’t hide that fact either.  Do I have to start hiding the fact?  Do it all under the table?

There are so many implications to seeing this happen across the Internet.  On one hand I see that they’re trying to clean up their search results… on the other hand I see a monopoly grabbing us by the short and curlies and making it harder to make a few dollars online by offering paid reviews or paid links.

What is this leading up to?

Is it Google’s way to squash the competition and we go back to using them all the time on all our sites being paid pennies a month instead of hundreds (well, for some - for others like yours truely - I make enough to cover my domains, hosting and a beer at the end of the month)…. but you know what I mean.

Seriously what’s going on?

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I’ve added a little link on the sidebar of the site to promote a job oard I’ve set up.   The job board is there for anyone who has a job or two to offer to affiliate marketers, online entrepreneurs, designers and developers.  If you’d like to list your job on the BME Job Board it is FREE for the month of October.

To list a job for free use the code: PUMPKIN

This code is good until November 1, 2007.  So get your jobs listed today and get plenty of people looking at them who would love to work and make money online.

>> Post your job here 

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