Archives for January 2014

Courtney Gordner | January 31, 2014 | 9 Comments

10 Tools To Find Monetization for Your Blog

For most bloggers, developing a loyal reader base is their number one priority. When this reader base is obtained – typically through engaging posts, frequent updates and a presence on social media – then it’s common for bloggers to ask this question: How can I monetize my blog? With a good reputation and solid reader base, it is possible for you to have monetization for your blog. Bloggers’ incomes can vary from pennies to a legitimate full-time income, but the monetization tools below can help every blogger achieve the latter category:

WP125 – Ad networks and sponsored posts are ways to monetize a blog, but many bloggers opt to deal with advertisers themselves, foregoing the middle men that are ad networks. Having a clear ‘Advertising’ page on your blog with some rates and a contact e-mail is the best way to do this. For easy placement of these ads for bloggers, the WordPress plugin WP125 is especially useful, allowing consummate management of 125×125 ads, with features such as click tracking and setting ads for a specific timeframe.

WordPress Calls to Action – Especially useful for blogs that sell products through their posts, this plugin keeps inbound marketing practices in mind via a variety of placement options, from pop-ups to sleek sidebar widgets. Calls-to-action can be very effective when employed on social media and blogs. The WordPress Calls to Action plugin helps immensely with the latter.

NRelate – Content networks like NRelate, Outbrain and Taboola work by providing links to relevant content at the bottom of a blog’s post. Visitors clicking on these links will provide revenue to the bloggers, who are usually paid via PayPal. These networks vary in relevancy, effectiveness and payouts, so bloggers should be prepared to try several to see which one works best.

Adzerk – Used by large sites like Reddit and Newsmax, Adzerk provides an excellent ad serving platform that balances speed and power. Adzerk performs 30% faster than OpenX and 9% faster than ad serving leader Doubleclick, all while carrying similar content.

Optimizely – It’s very important to test the effectiveness of ads, both in terms of creativity and location. Optimizely makes that easier, with a very accessible interface that tracks conversions, sign-ups, visitor engagement and more.

Mynaweb – An alternative to Optimizely, Mynaweb stresses fluid quickness by utilizing “multi-armed bandit algorithms” to run optimized pages and ads with extreme quickness. It also filters out ineffective, poorly-performing variants.

Crazy Egg – It’s prudent to price ad locations based on the popularity of them. This can be found effectively via heat maps, which Crazy Egg specializes in. Finding out detailed user information, including where they click the most and least on your site, is a breeze with Crazy Egg, whose lean interface is opposite the bulkiness of used heavy equipment.

Mouse Flow – An alternative to Crazy Egg, Mouse Flow has the extremely cool feature of allowing blog owners to watch site users in real-time. Live recordings of user behavior and instant heat maps provide perhaps the most immediate visitor behavioral analysis of any service.

WP Bounce – This tool is great for getting the most out of search traffic. For visitors that only view one page on your site, WP Bounce can pop up a message upon them hitting the ‘Back’ button to return to the search results. Particularly useful for blogs with high bounce rates, the plugin can showcase specific products on Amazon, using your referral link in the process.

SolveMedia – If you implement CAPTCHA on your site, it’s likely in the comments section to prevent spam. Monetize CAPTCHA by using tools like SolveMedia, which prompts users to type in brand phrases instead of random letters and numbers, making it easier for them while providing bloggers with additional revenue.

With these various available tools, bloggers can advance and monetize that which they already devote time and energy to: their blogs.

Which monetization tools have you used? Did they work for you? Let us know in the comments below!

Photo Credit: zzpza

Julia Winston | January 30, 2014 | 2 Comments

3 Part Series: Drama Free Confrontation – Part 3

In part 1 we shifted our mind to embrace the idea that well done confrontation is a caring and compassionate thing to do. In part 2, we made sure our feedback skills were pleasant. We crafted our feedback so that it is useful and specific. In our last part, we will talk about what to say when you have to initiate a confrontation.

Confrontation is a form of feedback that has a simple two part job. The job of confrontation is to (1) point out discrepancies and (2) invite a response. Let’s look in detail at these two parts.

Pointing out discrepancies

A discrepancy is an inconsistency. Confrontation points out at least 4 inconsistencies.

1. When one has said two different things. This is the easiest form of confrontation. If one person has said two different things on a matter, you have to inquire which is correct. An example of this is if you ask your son if he has homework. He says, ” Yes.” After dinner, you ask your son if he finished his homework and he says, “I didn’t have any.” In this case, there are two different answers to the same question, so you need to confront him, or point out the discrepancy to get to the bottom of it.

2. When one has said one thing but acted in another way. This is a very common confrontation. This is when the walk and the talk don’t align. If your employee says he will finish his report and give it to you by tomorrow, and then he turns it in two days later, you need to confront them, or point out the discrepancy to get to the bottom of it.

3. When one source reported one thing and a different source reported another. This is the classic “he said, she said” situation. If your husband said he ate lunch alone at his desk today, but your friend said she saw him eating lunch at a restaurant with a woman, you need to confront, or point out the discrepancy to get to the bottom of it.

4. When one’s behavior and an external standard don’t align. This is when a person’s behavior is inconsistent with an external standard, usually a law or policy. If there is a no smoking policy and you catch your employee lighting up in the break room, you need to confront, or point out the discrepancy to get to the bottom of it.

Invite a response

The second job of confrontation is to invite a response. I purposely use “invite” here. Going back to the feedback model, you want to make your feedback appetizing. Inviting a response assumes you are confronting from a place of curiosity. How do you confront from curiosity?

Get specific
Point out the discrepancy
Invite a response.

Let’s look at an example of low-risk confrontation and high-risk confrontation.

In part 1, I posed a question. If your mom said the package she mailed should arrive on Friday, but it never showed, you would call her out of sheer curiosity to point of the discrepancy between what she said and what actually happened.

“Mom, I remember you said the package was suppose to arrive on Friday but it never did. Help me understand.”

That statement stated the observation–“I remember you said…” Then specifically pointed out the discrepancy–“package was supposed to arrive on Friday but didn’t”. Then you invited a response–“help me understand.”

That situation is relatively low risk.

Let’s look at high risk confrontation situation. But the same model applies.

You and Joe have been organizing a photo shoot for a client. You come up with the idea to shoot on location in a desert to capture the theme. One day you get sick and Joe pitches the entire idea to your boss. Your boss calls to congratulate you and Joe on a great job and notes that he especially liked “Joe’s idea” to shoot it in the desert.

“Joe, boss called saying he loved your idea to shoot in the desert. But the location change was my idea. Help me understand why he thought it was yours.”

In this statement, you specifically stated the discrepancy and invited a response. Do you see how the model applies here even though the stakes are higher?

Confronting from a place of respect and curiosity is confrontation done well. Let me be clear. When I say confrontation “done well” is a caring and compassionate thing to do. The “done well” part is not a measure of the result, it is a measure of the approach. Whether Joe stole credit for your work or your boss just misunderstood that little detail, you are only responsible for your actions.

I wish confrontation could be this neat and tidy. It can be simple, but it is usually not neat and tidy. For teaching purposes I use neat examples to help you get it. In my coaching practice, I walk my clients through what to say next and HOW to say it. You have to watch your tone of voice because even though the words can be technically accurate, if your tone of voice is full of sarcasm, anger, accusation, and heat, you have blown it. We role play and practice to get your body used to saying the words.

Successful leaders set examples with their actions, and actions are the only things you can control. Drama free confrontation is a state of mind that allows you to say what needs to be said. It points out the discrepancies and asks for restoration. Sometimes restoration can not happen, but most often it can. We just need to know how to skillfully approach it.

Leo J. Lampinen | January 29, 2014 | 4 Comments

Are Women More Effective Leaders?

I recently stumbled upon an article from Business Insider that outlined a study which makes a very bold claim. The article and associated study suggests that women are more effective leaders than men.

Now, if I could answer the title question without delving into the article or the associated study, I would have to say that the answer to this isn’t a simple ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. A lot of people from both genders have characteristics of great and effective leaders. To simply say in one sentence that women make more effective leaders than men, or vice versa, is asinine.

The study, conducted by leadership consultancy Zenger Folkman, examines some of the factors in which they found women leaders to be more effective than men. They found that overall women were more effective by about 2.7%. This is a considerable amount when you factor that the total sample for the study involved just under 16,000 leaders, of which one-third were female.

They go on to say that early in their careers, both women and men are about equal on the effectiveness scale. But as women matured, they were found to have increased in effectiveness. The main reason for this was because women were found to have been more apt to ask for feedback and to act on the results from it. And basically, when men matured they perceived themselves to be competent enough to not be concerned with additional feedback and deeper personal development. Of course, the surveys done to conclude the study are only showing a trend, and this does not mean that all women and all men are this way. Maybe this has something to do with why it is said that men never ask for directions either?

Another compelling reason for the increase in effectiveness is that a majority of women generally stated that in order to be perceived as effective as men, they had to work twice as hard and make less mistakes.

One of the clues for us came from talking with women about this research. When we ask them to explain why women were perceived as more effective, what we frequently heard was, “In order to get the same recognition and rewards, I need to do twice as much, never make a mistake and constantly demonstrate my competence.”

I wish this weren’t the case, but sadly I have heard it in conversation as well. A number of years back I heard my aunt talk of a glass ceiling. She was a very hard worker and had made some significant achievements all throughout her life, in family and in business. I didn’t quite know what she was referring to at the time, but she was basically saying that she may never be able to reach the peak she so desired even though she wanted it and had worked for it. This was appalling and unbelievable to me. I kind of brushed it off, but I still think about our conversation to this day.

Positive perception in senior positions

The article is concluded by referencing another survey which points out that as women climb the ladder and are put into more senior positions, they are perceived more positively. I would hope that every person in charge of hiring out there takes this data into consideration when selecting candidates for higher positions. Women are just as likely to perform exceptionally at a higher level as men, and for that matter at any level.

I wanted to share this because I think there is still a negative perception in the minds of some on the effectiveness of women in the workplace. As leaders, we need to move past any of that. As leaders it is our responsibility to recognize the true effectiveness of every individual on the team according to their actual performance. As leaders it is our responsibility to recognize any areas of improvement in our team and to do whatever it is that is necessary to make that team successful, regardless of the gender makeup.