One of the first methods many bloggers approach to monetize their sites is selling space for banner ads. However, studies show visitors have become blind to banner advertisements. In “Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings” Jakob Nielsen reports:

The most prominent result from the new eye-tracking studies is not actually new. We simply confirmed for the umpteenth time that banner blindness is real. Users almost never look at anything that looks like an advertisement, whether or not it’s actually an ad.

Eye tracking studies show either a reader will scan content looking for a quick fact, and not be diverted to advertising, or dig into an article they find interesting and not be distracted by ads. The studies also show readers ignored design elements which appeared to be ads, whether they actually were ads or not.

It isn’t exactly new information. Neilsen refers to similar findings from a study he was involved with in 1997.

But it is interesting to see what bloggers do with the information. We continue to sell banner ads even though it may not be the best use of the client’s advertising dollar or the most productive use of space on our blogs.

One popular banner-ad defense comes under the guise of “branding”. The idea is keeping your company’s image in the minds of people who are not ready to act now, but may be in the future. It’s the perfect smoke screen for low-performing media such as banner ads because the emphasis is not on click through.

For most online marketers, this sort of branding doesn’t work:

1. Branding campaigns are expensive, depending on heavy market penetration or reach.
2. Branding campaigns require constant impressions over a long period of time to achieve significant results.
3. Branding overemphasizes the possibility of an emotional response. People don’t search the Internet looking for relationships with products, they want information.

Although studies like Nielsen’s show banner ads have for the most part become ineffective, many blogs continue selling banner space. The question which begs to be asked is, “Why?”

One of my favorite Dr. Seuss stories begins:

Now the Star-bellied Sneetches had bellies with stars. The Plain-bellied Sneetches had none upon thars.

These stars were small and served no purpose, but the Star-bellied Sneetches bragged they were the best on the beaches and soon the Plain-bellied Sneetches had stars installed on their bellies.

The blogosphere often runs parallel to Sneetch Beach. The Banner-bellied bloggers are seen as superior and everyone else copies them, forgetting or even denying, like the stars, banner ads are practically worthless. Perhaps one day the trend will reverse itself and it will be considered cool to be “banner free”.

Or perhaps we’ll simply ask ourselves what actually works instead of worrying about what’s plastered on our bellies.

Once upon a time there lived three Billy goat brothers. They were considered forward-thinking marketers and each had developed extensive opt-in email lists.

One sunny day the smallest of the three goats set out to market his wares and started across a small wooden bridge. When the Billy goat was half across, an ugly troll leaped from underneath.

“Who’s that tippy-tap, tippy-tapping over my bridge?” said the ugly troll.

Now, although this troll was quite ugly he was quite a media mogul. He owned a popular television station and several magazines with massive subscriber bases. So he was accustomed to pushing others around.

“Tis I, smallest of three brother goats. Please let me cross your bridge, I wish to market my wares on the other side.”

“You’d like to cross, would you?” snarled the troll. “Over the bridge there are hundreds who could buy your wares. I can give you access to them, but for a price.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” said the smallest Billy goat brother. He skipped away and sent an email out to his opt-in subscribers. The email brought in a 30% conversion rate, so he was quite happy.

Later the same day, the medium-sized Billy goat brother set out to market his wares and came across the same wooden bridge.

“Who’s that going rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat over my bridge?” said the troll.

“Tis I, the middle of three brother goats. Let me cross your bridge so I may market my wares on the other side.”

“I see you are larger than the brother I met earlier today, but are you smarter as well? He was foolish and did not recognize my power. I can give you access to thousands over the bridge who may buy your wares. But to cross over, you shall pay a price.”

“No thanks,” said the medium-sized Billy goat. He hopped away and sent out an email to his opt-in subscribers which returned a 40% conversion rate.

Without these new advertisers, the troll began to worry. How would he keep the wife in the lifestyle to which she had grown accustomed, without ad revenue? He had grown wealthy as gatekeeper to the masses he interrupted with ads and commercials as they tried to go about their daily business.

Plus, he liked jumping out from under the bridge and scaring people.

Soon after, the largest and oldest of the three goat brothers began to cross the bridge. The troll leaped up from beneath the bridge and snarled his best and ugliest snarl.

“Who goes tromp-tromp, trompity-tromping over my bridge?” said the troll.

“Tis I, the eldest of three brother goats. I am crossing the bridge to eat daisies in yon field.”

“But your brothers wanted to sell their wares, don’t you too? For a small price, a mere pittance really, I can give you access to millions who will buy.”

“I am not interested,” said the eldest goat. “Your ads interrupt people and they have learned to ignore you. My customers have given me permission to contact them because they are already interested in my wares, so I have no use for your ads.”

“But I can help you reach billions,” said the troll. “I can put your wares in front of more people than you ever dreamed possible.”

“Permission-based marketing methods are replacing the interruption-based model, and old gatekeepers who control access to customers are becoming a thing of the past. You too shall become a thing of the past if you don’t step aside and allow me to cross the bridge.”

But the troll had too much vested in the old methods of marketing. Besides he was a bit of a control freak, so he wouldn’t step aside.

The eldest of the goat brothers applied a head butt to the ugly troll’s belly, knocking the ugly troll into the gully below. The eldest goat then crossed the bridge and enjoyed an afternoon of munching delicious daisies. Later that day, he went home and sent out an email to his opt-in subscribers which returned a 50% conversion rate.

So of course he lived happily ever after.

Last week I hung a bird feeder in my backyard, but didn’t realize there would be a social media lesson involved.

The first parallel might be obvious. I hung the bird feeder up and hoped a few birds would come, much like we might build a blog or another website and hope for a few visitors. Unfortunately I didn’t know of any social media sites where I could let the birds know about the feeder, so all I could do is wait.

For a few days nothing happened. No birds. I started to wonder if it was a bad idea, a waste of time. Or perhaps I should have hung it in the front yard where I had already seen birds hang out. But my cat hangs out in the front yard and rarely enters the fence to the back (where the dogs are), so the back yard seemed safer for the birds.

Eventually a few birds did show up. Crows. They were not exactly the cute little birds I imagined fluttering joyously around my back yard but they were visitors nonetheless. The next day I noticed a couple robins, and yesterday there were two finches. Now the bird feeder is a resounding success.

But I noticed a Social Media truth in the process: the crows were first to show up.

A Prejudice Against Crows

I’ve always thought crows were attractive with their shiney black feathers, but I remember my mom shooing them away from her bird feeder when I was a child. To my mom, crows were the criminals of the bird world. They ate trash and ransacked the nests of smaller birds. Crows were scavengers, the lower class birds.

An online friend recently sent an invitation to a new social media site. The site is still in beta, so membership is by invitation only. The site looks promising although it’s still small. But I remember thinking to myself as I registered, “I wonder how long before the Internet Marketers come?”

Internet Marketers are one type of crow in the online world. Marketers are among the first to arrive when someone hangs up a new “birdhouse” because they’re constantly on the prowl for something new. They are the early adopters, but the online world often views them as lower class birds.

Crows Are the Early Adopters

A few years ago I received an email from Seth Godin inviting me to sign up for a new site called “Squidoo” where I could create something called a “lens”. I didn’t consider myself an Internet Marketer, and I’m not sure how I got on that email list, but I remember he told me I was an “early adopter”. I liked the sound of that and was flattered by the title. I did sign up and fiddle with the site but never finished building one of those “lenses”.

I guess I didn’t really see any need. However, the crows saw the need; they saw what was in it for them and helped make Squidoo into what it is today.

The same thing happened when Blogger was new. I signed up and built a blog, but abandoned it soon after because I didn’t have a need for it. I also built countless blogs on the Movable Type platform and a few on the old WordPress 1.5, but only because I enjoyed tinkering. However, marketers saw the potential of blogging and were a major force behind its development as a publishing platform.

A few months ago the Internet was buzzing about Google’s version of Wikipedia which would allow monetization by the author of each entry. I mentioned it on an Internet Marketing forum and I could imagine those particular crows drooling. A part of me wanted to shoo them away from this new bird feeder, however I knew it would be inevitable and the crows would come.

But without the crows clearing a path, how long before the finches would decide it was safe? The finches are cute but often it’s the crows who pave the way.

Crows provide social proof the place is worth a finch’s time.

It all started with an email from DreamHost. That domain name I got along with a years’ subscription to their hosting plan was about to expire, and I had to decide if I wanted to keep it. Along the same lines I also had to decide if I wanted to keep that hosting plan, the one I hadn’t really been using.

I never really had a problem with DreamHost, although some of my sites seemed slower there. But since I upgraded to WordPress 2.5 I had been having problems with editing posts, and a little research showed it was a host problem. So I headed over to DreamHost and found I didn’t get the same errors on a dummy WP 2.5 installation. Maybe it was time to give DreamHost another shot.

Then I remembered one of the original things that had attracted me to DreamHost, the fact they are striving to be a “Green” company and reduce their carbon impact. Seems they figured out running their company generated the same amount of carbon dioxide as 545 average-sized homes, and they decided to do something about it.

Green is a Popular Color

Although Kermit the Frog may have told us “It’s not easy bein’ green”, the staggering number of products today marketing themselves as “environmentally conscious might lead you to think otherwise.

Since The American Marketing Association’s workshop on “Ecological Marketing” in 1975, and the public’s adoption of the term “Green Marketing” in the late 1980s, the number of green products offered has skyrocketed. For example, the Energy Star label appears on home products from 11,000 companies.

It’s becoming easier to make your home “green” (and we’re not talking about paint here), and the products to help you do that have vastly improved since the early 1970s when “natural” laundry soap left your clothes dingy and water-conserving shower heads sputtered. Now compact fluorescent lightbulbs don’t flicker and hybrid cars don’t need to be pushed up steep hills.

How Green Are You?

The London-based market research firm, Mintel International Group, tells us around 12% of Americans are “True Greens” and 68% could be classified as “Light Greens”. But at the same time, Roper-Starch’s annual Green Gauge Report indicates 42% of consumers believe environmental products don’t work as well as mainstream products.

Nevertheless, the drive toward a sustainable future and the growing global concern over climate change is making consumers more and more environmentally conscious, and Mintel Research Director David Lockwood says, “All the corporate executives that we talk to are extremely convinced that being able to make some sort of strong case about the environment is going to work down to their bottom line.”

How Green is Green?

In spite of a growing interest among consumers and the increase of available quality products (corn-based disposable drinking cups, anyone?), a lack of controls in Green Industry leaves consumers skeptical as marketers run amuck. For many, the question “How green is Green?” remains unanswered. No universal standard must be met before a product can call itself green.

How Green is the Web?

I had always thought of my involvement in SEO, Internet Marketing, and Social Media as fairly green activities. I knew I wasn’t burning fuel to go to work, except maybe a disproportionate amount of coffee, but I hadn’t thought about the companies who host my websites and run the services I use.

While activities on the web don’t consume much in themselves, what are the tradeoffs? I’ve heard Google offers its employees a $5000 incentive to purchase hybrid cars, but how many gallons of gas does it take to get all their people to work and back home each day? What resources do companies like Microsoft and Apple consume? And of course, what is the carbon footprint of the hosting companies where the Internet lives?

A lack of understanding and regulation leaves too many grey areas in the production of environmentally-conscious products, and until the shades of grey are removed Kermit the Frog will still be right.

It really isn’t easy being Green, but I decided to stick with DreamHost. At least it’s a start.

This is a blog post dedicated to the SEO newbie who can be vulnerable to the addicting Web 2.0 paradigm. A lot has been written about social media and the power of audience participation in an online marketing campaign. Sure, it’s cool and helpful (to a certain point) to build social bookmarks and online communities. There is gold in implementing advanced link building techniques in this Web 2.0-crazed world. But just like in any sort of entity, core substance is the most important thing.

These days more ears perk up over anything social-media, but the fact still remains traditional SEO is the real sure-fire way to hit your goals.

Here are reasons to appreciate the basics, despite all the social buzz noise.

White Hat Traditional SEO is Long-Lasting

Algorithms and Google updates are common challenges for the regular SEO guy. But with ethical white hat SOPs in SEO, you can’t go wrong. There can be some changes to your rankings, but it will not hurt as much as if you did something really, really dark.

A Good SEO’d Site Suits Web 2.0

Social Media Marketing – all those bookmarkers and social networks dig sites with quality content, good navigation, and well-structured links. How can anyone be attracted to link to a spammy, SEO-abused website?

Many Businesses Lack Core SEO Ingredients

Why do you think Web/online marketing agencies thrive? Simply because most companies with websites lack the core basics to gain visible web presence. There is still a lot of work to do in terms of making online business properties SEO-compliant. And this includes the use of core SEO techniques.

Web 2.0 techniques are not the inferior methodology. In fact, this phase of the World Wide Web fits perfectly with the expectations from well optimized sites – sites that still conform to the traditional, and time-tested white hat SEO techniques.