Message time.

I think I’ve been getting a message in the past 24 hours about Mashable – or, as the title actually goes, Mashable! The Social Networking Site.

Yesterday I was looking for some collaboration tools for a group I’ve just joined and picked up a link somewhere to a list on Mashable of sixty collaboration tools.

Today, an email about the launch of the new aideRSS tool included a link to a review on Mashable.

Then in a feed reader I read Jim Kukral’s encomium for Mashable. In I Defy You to Find a More Useful Blog than Mashable.com he lists as examples of How Cool Mashable Is the lists on Mashable of tools for web design and torrenting and comment plugins for WordPress.

And, to coin a phrase, there’s much, much more.

Clearly a priority feed from now on.

Post from: EveryJoe

Mashable Shares Social Networking Goodies

Google’s announcement last week on its move to a universal search model “that will offer users a more integrated and comprehensive way to search for and view information online” suggests that I, and anyone involved in business blogging or other aspects of online business, need to give video a lot more attention, and now:

Google’s bloggers say that the first iteration of universal search right now centers on video, news, local, and books. Searches with video results showcase the most dramatic changes. For instance, for a search on coke mentos, Google includes three videos in the results, two from Google Video and one from YouTube. Each of the video results has a thumbnail image from the video, along with a “watch video” link which, when clicked, opens the video right in the body of the results. All three of those videos can be played at the same time. The purity of text-only search results is waning at last.

I know that I can make a video right now, just using the webcam built into my notebook computer and Windows Movie Maker which came installed. In fact, last night I started experimenting – results not of a standard to be shared!

For anyone wanting to get seriously into video production without taking out a second mortgage, Jim Kukral shares his video production kit building decisions, with the cost of each item. Total just over $3,000, the biggest cost item being the camera at $2,216.29.

I appreciate that Jim wants to make high quality videos. As he says,

The goal of this setup is flexibility. I wanted to be able to shoot inside and outside, and in low light and in bright sunlight. I also wanted to be able to get good sound.

But for some small businesses, outlaying over $3,000 to get into making videos might be a serious ask. I’m just wondering is there an intermediate stage, with more modest initial ambition and at a lower entry price?

Even so, Jim’s list of purchases makes a handy reference document.

Post from: EveryJoe

Time to Get Serious About Video

However, the two are not incompatible. As well as having advertisements for its own products or services, a business could well decide that it made sense to run advertisements for other companies’ products or services, without that detracting from the blog’s purpose.

This needs to be handled with care, especially with contextual ads served dynamically by another party. I’ve had the situation more than once that I looked at my blog and saw a number of ads appearing that I wasn’t happy about, for example:

• ads for the services of direct competitors – could be very confusing for readers as well as needlessly complicating for my own advertising efforts
• ads for products in an industry I was part of, products which I regarded as second-rate, to say the least, and therefore products I did not want advertised on my site

One of the best known contextual ad products is Google’s Adsense, described by Marziah Karch on About.com:

AdSense are Google contextual ads that you can place on your blog, search engine, or Web site. Google, in return, will give you a portion of the revenue generated from these ads. The rate you are paid varies, depending on the keywords on your Web site used to generate the ads.

You can see Google AdSense ads on this site and others, tagged “Ads by Google”.

Some people have had some challenges with Google Adsense. Wendy Piersall has posted about this on her always informative eMoms at Home blog. Her post, Banned from AdSense? What’s Your Blog Advertising Alternative? helpfully lists, with comments, eleven other options besides Adsense.

Another advertising option I like, but which is not contextual although ads are rotated, is BlogKits . Owner Jim Kukral is a full-on dedicated blogger: I’ve found him a great guy to deal with, very responsive and keen to help. He is very clear about the kind and quality of ads you can expect to see. Apparently the fact that BlogKits ads are not contextual means that you can run BlogKits ads and Google Adsense on the same site without having any grief on that account from Google.

Darren Rowse has a stack of information about blog-based advertising in his Tips and Hints Toolbox collection of posts on ProBlogger.

Post from: EveryJoe

Making Money with Advertising on Your Blog