Martin Gordon's Blog

We're going to see job boards pop up all over the place since it's a much easier way to monetize a site than traditional banner ads. Compare pulling in $200-$250 a job post guaranteed versus the crapshoot that is AdSense et al (click-thru rate, cost per impression, # of clicks and # of impressions are all variable). If you've got the traffic already (as 37signals, Om Malik and TechCrunch do), then it's a no-brainer, especially once you take into account the fact that geekier audiences are more likely to ignore ads.

Mike Arrington writes about how both Jason Fried of 37signals and Om Malik turned down offers to join forces. Mike envisioned a job posting API and all sorts of interoperability. The problem is that these job boards are simple revenue-generating machines. By keeping the boards closed from one another, each company looking to hire will have to pay Mike, Om, and 37signals a separate listing fee. If we open the system up, then employers only have to pay one fee and all but one job board site lose.

While the idea of a job board API for interoperability sounds great, I don't think it can come from a job board site (at least not one bolted on to a blog), it will have to come from the employers themselves. And since the employers are each competing with each other for the best talent, I don't see any of them really taking a lead on the project (see 37signals' response above). Dave Winer has volunteered to develop the API, and he possesses the objectivity necessary to do so (at least for the time being), but for the same reason Jason Fried and Om Malik didn't join forces with CrunchBoard, I don't see them adopting any API either.

Technorati Tags: TechCrunch, Michael Arrington, CrunchBoard, jobs, Monster.com, job search, job board, Jason Fried, 37signals, Om Malik, GigaOM, Dave Winer, Scripting News, API, open network, walled garden

Background
Just about 50 days ago, on May 30, on a whim I started a blog dedicated to the Dave Matthews Band titled The Blog That Jane Likes. This series of entries deals with some of the things I've learned after running the blog for a mere 50 days.

While there are strong communities centered around several message boards, there really are no real DMB blogs out there. In addition, most one-shot audio recordings (as opposed to full-length lossless recordings) are shared via yousendit and other ad-supported downloading sites. Since these sites are bandwidth or download-limited, most popular files need to be re-posted ad infinitum. It's a huge pain and a rather unreliable form of file propagation. With over 1TB/month of bandwidth and 25GB of storage to spare, I set out with the goal of making BTJL the place to download songs from the current tour.

The site has been a huge success, exceeding all my expectations. In the month of June, I've had 397 thousand requests to the site; July has had 150 thousand so far. I served 316 GB of data in June and 149 GB in July. All of this has been at zero incremental cost aside from the $7 domain registration.

I've made more from AdSense in the first few days from BTJL than I have in the year and half I've run this blog. Granted, I've peppered that site a bit more with ads than this one, which only had one ad until the latest redesign where it now has zero. While there's no way I could live off of the AdSense revenues, they will most likely cover my hosting costs for the year, which is good enough for me. I'm doing the site more for the fun of it than for any monetary reward.

Without incurring any costs, I had little to lose on a failed BTJL. Though I was in a bit of a unique situation with pre-existing hosting, there are plenty of free options (Wordpress.com and Blogger, for instance) for anyone who wants to start a blog. I don't know what those sites' policies on placing AdSense is, but I'm sure you can get away with Amazon referrals and the like.

Even if you do have to spend a bit, how's this for an idea: do it for fun and compare the cost to the price of a movie ticket, sporting event, video game, etc. Which one do you think will come out ahead? Talk is cheap, do it.

Technorati Tags: blogs, blogging, niche blogging, niche, Blog That Jane Likes, adsense, amateur, talk, tips, lessons

Google has released a pretty robust website stats package called Google Analytics. Straight from the horse's mouth:

Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site.

I've been a bit unhappy with the stats package DreamHost comes with, though granted I don't have much use for it anyway. Installing Analytics was as simple as copying three lines of code into my template, so it's too easy to not try it.

I can't really say much about how it works or the data it reports since no data appears despite them saying it'll be available "within 12 hours." Apparently demand was greater than they expected. I guess that's bound to happen when you release free, easy and useful software and your name is Google. A message on their help page dated (timed?) 5:22 PST states:

Currently, report updating for Google Analytics is experiencing delays. As a result, you may not be seeing any data in your reports even after implementing the Analytics tracking code.

We are currently in the process of updating all reports. You should be able to see these updates in several hours. While this is going on, you may notice different reports updating at different rates. Once this process has completed, all data should be restored to your profiles. Please be assured that this update process has no effect on data collection.

We apologize for any inconvenience. This reporting delay is associated with unexpected demand for Google Analytics. Under normal circumstances, the data in your reports will be at most six hours old.

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Analytics, analytics, AdWords, AdSense, marketing, optimization, statistics, websites

Make this holiday season the most memorable ever by getting a great deal on fascists on eBay!

Merlin Mann of 43Folders has a really funny photoset of AdSense ads he collected from eBay. It seems that eBay's ads are tied to the actual search terms and so doing a Google Search for strange terms returns hilarious computer-generated ads.

Check out the photoset to see them all.

(via kottke.org)

Technorati Tags: 43Folders, Flickr, eBay, Google, AdSense, funny, search, marketing