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Playing Blog Tag – 5 Things You Don’t Know About Andy Beal

posted on December 14, 2006

OK, so when I first heard about “blog tag”, it sounded like one of those chain-emails, you know the ones – “Pass this on to someone else and you’ll receive good luck.”

After being tagged by blogging-buddy Avinash, I figured it might be fun to share the requisite five things you don’t know about me. So here goes…

  1. Not many people know that I didn’t go to college. Growing up in England, there’s not quite the pressure to get a college degree. Even so, I just couldn’t stand the thought of sitting still in a classroom over a 4 year period. So I grabbed my A-levels and scarpered.
  2. You can trace my ancestors back to Sir Christopher Wren – he being the famous architect who designed England’s St. Paul’s Cathedral and helped rebuild London after the great fire.

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Does Your Blog Have a Disclosure Policy?

posted on December 14, 2006

With more pressures on bloggers to disclose their business relationships, Weblog Tools Collection points to a neat WordPress plugin that helps bloggers set up their own disclosure policy.

Just last week, I added a disclosures page on Marketing Pilgrim, so there would always be a place where you could view my relationships with any company discussed (in case I forgot). With pay per review becoming a hot option for bloggers, it seems that if you want to blog with integrity, you should disclose who you’re in bed with.

So, what do you do on your blog? Do you have a disclosure policy? Do you keep partnership details a secret? What should be included in a good disclosure policy?

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Law Requires Disclosure of Affiliate Marketing Links, Word-of-mouth and Paid Reviews

posted on December 13, 2006

Copyblogger has been digging around a new statement made by the Federal Trade Commission and reported by the Washington Post.

The bottom line, the FTC is pushing to make companies disclose any compensation received when promoting a product or company. While this is not a new law, the FTC wants marketers to know how it intends to interpret existing legislation.

…companies engaging in word-of-mouth marketing, in which people are compensated to promote products to their peers, must disclose those relationships…Word-of-mouth marketing can take any form of peer-to-peer communication, such as a post on a Web blog, a MySpace.com page for a movie character, or the comments of a stranger on a bus.

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Have a quickie…

posted on December 12, 2006

…actually, have two quickies:

  1. Nathan reports that internet browser Opera has renewed its partnership with Google.
  2. Pronet Advertising – home of Neil and Cameron of ACS – are offering to pimp the links of a new site each week.
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How Hot is Click Fraud?

posted on December 12, 2006

It’s amazing just how heated of a subject “click fraud” is. When I published details of my conversation with Google, I made no attempt to cover both sides of the story. Long time readers will know that I’ve never believed the hype surrounding click fraud numbers, but they’ll also know that I’m balanced in my coverage.

However, with this article, I felt a balanced report would simply be that, a balanced commentary with no room for conversation. So instead, I kept it one-sided and let the community provide the balance – and boy did they.

So, what were the stats on the post?

5,000+ visitors more than the average day (3,000+ from Digg, ~300 from Techmeme)

50+ links

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BlogKits Launches With AdSense Alternative for Bloggers

posted on December 12, 2006

BlogKits.com has launched with a service that appears to be similar to John Battelle’s FM Publishing, except it focuses on the smaller blog site.

Believing that lower-traffic bloggers were getting a raw-deal by using Google’s AdSense, BlogKits creator Jim Kukral wanted to develop an ad network that would bring big name advertisers to small-name bloggers.

Hoping to make the process of monetizing your blog’s traffic easier, BlogKits promises a simple sign-up process.

  1. Select the style of advertisement to display on your blog.
  2. Decide on the type of advertisers that best match your blog’s content.
  3. Er, actually, that’s it. Upload the code and BlogKits handles the rest.

According to the official press release, initial advertisers include eBay, PayPal, Travelocity, 1&1 Internet Hosting, Cooking.com, USAToday, Staples, Sony, Priceline.com, Hotels.com, Kodak, GoDaddy, Starbucks, Discover Card, Edmunds.com and many more.

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2006 Search Blogs Awards Taking Nominations

posted on December 9, 2006

Search Engine Journal has opened up nominations for the 2006 Search Blog Awards.

I’d ask you to nominate Marketing Pilgrim, but I wouldn’t even know which category to suggest. Maybe Loren will add a “Best Search Industry News” or “Best Blog by an Ex-Brit” category. ;-)