The Booming WordPress Ecosystem

by Mearo on April 18, 2011 in Internet, Marketing, Wordpress with No comments
Wordpress

As you might have noticed this blog is powered by WordPress. As too are many other tech blogs, namely, Techcrunch, Mashable and Smashing Magazine. In fact, it is estimated that WordPress powers 8% of the worlds websites including many Fortune 500 companies such as Honda, Ford, WSJ, Nokia, and Samsung.

So just what is WordPress anyway? Wordpress is essentially web software that you can use to create a website or a blog using PHP & MySQL without actually knowing any PHP or MySQL! It is both simple to use and free, or open source. Crucially, it is built and developed by hundreds of volunteers. These factors combined have seen WordPress become the most popular hosted blogging and CMS platform in the world, a position which was cemented in 2010 when Microsoft began to switch it’s 30m Windows Live blogs over to WordPress. All pretty impressive you might say, so how did WordPress come to be such a powerhouse. Predictably, it was founded by a guy called Matt Mullenweg back in 2003, at the tender age of just 19. Since then, Mullenweg has been named as the 16th most important person on the web, led several rounds of VC funding, and now presides over Automattic, the premium hosting arm of WordPress.com, a profitable company of some 40 people. I won’t go into too much detail on his bio, I’ll leave that to the ever capable Wikipedia. Continue reading →

SEO Checklist – What’s Your Score?

by Mearo on August 3, 2010 in SEO with No comments
Search Engine Optimisation

This article started as an SEO checklist to jot down on paper what I have learnt about SEO over the past year or so. At first I thought this would be a succinct 10 point guide but soon became 20 and before long was creeping on towards 30. Some points are more important than others but I think this just shows what a time consuming exercise good SEO is and it overlaps many other disciplines like web design, media, PR, social media, analytics etc. Continue reading →

1 Week with the iPad – Does exactly what it says on the tin!

by Mearo on June 9, 2010 in Apple, Gadgets, Mobile with 3 Comments
iPad

So, I’ve been living with the Apple iPad for approximately 1 week now. I have the 16GB WiFi version retailing at £429 and I have to say it is a very sexy bit of kit.

Out of the box it’s simple to setup, you just need to plug it into the latest version of iTunes, sync up some content as you would with your iPhone or iPod, then off you go. However, the fact that you have to plug the iPad into your computer before you can use it eludes to my main gripe with the iPad. If this device is truly to replace a laptop or netbook then it needs to work out of the box. More of that later though.

Functionally the iPad is just a big iPhone, without the phone! It’s intuitive to use, like the iPhone, and after 5 mins of drooling I did find myself thinking…. “well that was fun”. 1 week later I have set up my email account, uploaded some video and installed some apps, and admittedly the laptop has been out much less. The fact that you can turn the iPad on or just unlock it and be on the internet within 10 seconds is perfect for a quick browse whilst watching TV or in bed. Continue reading →

Artificial Link Building for SEO – Good or Bad?

by Mearo on March 15, 2010 in Affiliates, SEO with No comments
Link Building

Inbound links are hugely important for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) purposes. The are the foundation of “PageRank”. If you are Mashable or Techcrunch then building a network of backlinks really isn’t a problem. However, if you are a small business working in a niche category then getting backlinks is likely to be a difficult task.

In simple terms there are three pillars of SEO….

1) Code – Make sure your site is written correctly using clean code and META Tags, ALT Tags, Permalink URL’s etc.
2) Content – Have plenty of it! Unique and written for humans, not search engines.
3) Connections – The authority of your site measured by backlinks and the “page rank” of those links. Continue reading →

Seasonality in Affiliate Marketing

by Mearo on March 7, 2010 in Affiliates with No comments

I currently have one affiliate site in the health sector – Whey Protein Compare. I started this site up in January 2010 and I had a great first couple of months. Then just as my traffic was really gaining momentum the conversions, and thus revenue dropped significantly. This was my first vital lesson in affiliate marketing: don’t be reliant on one site. Continue reading →

My First Month In Affiliate Marketing

by Mearo on February 21, 2010 in Affiliates, Marketing, SEO, Wordpress with No comments
Affiliate Marketing

At the start of 2010 and having worked in digital media for going on 5 years I took the plunge and setup my first affiliate website. Having investigated a few niche’s I chose nutrition supplements and promptly setup WheyProteinCompare.co.uk. Not being one to do things by halves I have found myself creating, by my own admission, a pretty complex website built on the WordPress.org CMS platform using a theme kindly donated by Woothemes.com.

My first month was largely spent writing content, fiddling with the design and generating price comparison deeplinks manually. Any affiliate marketers out there will know what an arduous process this is and I will certainly be using Easy Content Units going forward! Or maybe a MySQL database if I really feel brave. Continue reading →

Television 2.0 – TV Gets Connected

by Mearo on October 27, 2009 in Apple, Gadgets with No comments
Television 2.0

iPhone, iMac, iPod, soon to be iTablet? All revolutionary products, all of them changed their respective segment of the market. But for me there’s one thing missing. One last product that you can bet your bottom dollar Steve Jobs has his eye on. That product is the humble television. On the face of it, it’s almost too obvious. It has all the credentials, long standing product category, heavily commoditised marketplace, lack of recent innovation etc etc. This is prime Apple territory.  Apple only compete in markets where they can charge a premium over the rest of the market and where they can produce quality leading products. So far all the boxes are ticked and just like they did with the iPod, Apple must be licking their lips at the thought of swooping in and revolutionising the market overnight. In fact I’d be surprised if Apple Chief Designer, Jonathan Ive is not locked in his office sculpting some minimalist designs right now. Continue reading →

Micropayments – A New Revenue Model?

by Mearo on May 19, 2009 in Internet with 1 Comment
Square Mobile Payment

So what exactly are micropayments then?  As ever Wikipedia is bang on the money.  “Micropayments are means for transferring very small amounts of money i.e. 1/1000th of a dollar.  They are typically payments that are too small to be affordably processed by credit card or other electronic transaction processing mechanisms”.

So why am I writing about micropayments then?  Well would you be reading this article if it cost you £0.10 for the privilege.  Probably not, but I won’t hold that against you.  Micropayments are getting a fair bit of coverage at the moment for a number of reasons.  The main one is that we are in a global recession, marketing budgets are in free-fall and as such quality content providers (especially journalism – great article by Freakonomics, and news) are seeing their ad revenues drying up.  This brings us back to the debate over the free vs subscription model for online news providers which was reignited by Rupert Murdoch and the WSJ recently. Continue reading →

The Battle For The Single Web Identity

by Mearo on March 27, 2009 in Internet, Social Media with 1 Comment
Login

I don’t know about you but my web experience is becoming a myriad of logins, usernames and passwords.  Some tools like iGoogle, and Netvibes bring everything into one place but ultimately that’s not solving the problem.  Microsoft identified this problem years ago and went about creating a service called “Passport”.  Although 90% of us have one of these Passport accounts (via Hotmail) it hasn’t been adopted by any other publishers.  Next up was Open ID.  To quote Wikipedia “OpenID is an open, decentralized standard for user authentication and access control, allowing users to log onto many services with the same digital identity”. What Open ID is not is a single password / username.  It’s much more technical than that and it scares a lot of people off.  Don’t by mean means write this one off though.  So who else is throwing their hat into the ring?  Well suprise suprise there’s Google and Facebook.  Where have we heard that one before! Continue reading →

Social Media Monitoring

by Mearo on February 22, 2009 in Featured, Internet, Social Media with No comments
Radian 6

The best analogy I have heard for social media, from the guys at Ryan MacMillan, is to imagine you are at a dinner party and you don’t know anyone.  You look across the crowd and there are several, possibly hundreds of people out there and many different conversations going on. Some may even be about you.  What right do you have to go up and join in any given conversation?  The answer is, you don’t have any right at all.  What say this time you bring something of value like a couple of glasses of champagne and introduce yourself.  Well, the glasses will most probably be gratefully received and you may exchange a few words and then leave.  Alternatively you may strike up a conversation and stay. Either way, you have brought value to the conversation and you have not outstayed your welcome.  Too often I hear people tell us if a conversation is going on online about our brand we need to take part.  I disagree, I think we should know about that conversation but only choose to enter if we have a role to play or we can add value. Continue reading →

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