Photo by Michal Mogmil

It’ll work once, but chances are it won’t work twice.

You may be able to apply the same principles to your own idea, but don’t expect success if you’re trying to clone it.

Lets say you’ve got a great idea for a website. Original, unique… never been done before. I have a lot of those ideas, and usually they don’t get further than writing down the idea in a text document, and a quick SWOT analysis.

More often than not I have more ideas then I have time for, but also lacking a few vital ingredients: resources (the necessary skills to pull it off, I’m not a php coder with mySQL knowledge) or money (paying someone to do that bit). Or in the very least invest in a bit of promotion outside of the 101 things I can do that will provide the tipping point.

Sometimes we have these ideas independantly of any outside influence or expsoure and we find out that someone has already done it and either found success, or failed miserably.

Other times we think we’ve found these ideas but they are in fact ‘borrowed’ from elsewhere. Which is the whole “lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place” that I’m talking about.

Lets take for example the Million Dollar Homepage. Remember that?

Brilliant idea. Wonderfully executed. Made the guy a million dollars. I found the site when he was only $7,000 from the start of his venture. I even bought a $100 worth of pixels.

If you were aware of the site while it was powering on to it’s million dollar goal you may remember that it ‘inspired’ a LOT of other copycat sites. They sprung up like weeds.

None were as successful as the original.

At the time I showed the site to a friend of mine and he could see how well MDHP was going and he said “We can do that! We can make an Australian one!”.

I knocked that idea on the head before he got too carried away.

Not too long after Joel Comm had an idea, and it was inspired by the MDHP. It was called www.500words.com

He was selling off words. Keywords. Rather than pixels.

He didn’t make a million dollars, but the amount of money he made and in the time he did it, was phenomenal.

Again, others tried the same formula. And failed.

Now the interesting twist to these two examples is that both entrepreneurs tried to use the same idea twice, and fell short of the mark.

Alex of MDHP launched www.pixelotto.com and had it been successful, he and some lucky subscriber would have made one million dollars each. In the end he made about $153,000 from the venture. Now that’s not bad really. I wouldn’t complain about earning that or winning that.

Joel launched www.499sites.com and probably sold about 20% of the 499 links.

No doubt the money made isn’t something to sneeze at. And if it were offered to me tomorrow you’d hear no complaints.

But the purpose of what I’m saying is… lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place.

Both parties who did so spectacularly well with their ideas in the first place, weren’t able to reproduce the magic the second time. And if they can’t do it, what hope would any of us have?

Don’t follow the leader. Don’t copy another persons groundbreaking idea because you’re hoping it’ll work for you.

By all means study it. Look at the mechanics of it. Study the formula that is fueling it. Find the source and see if it can be reinterpreted.

It reminds me of an interview with Phil Collen, the guitarist for Def Leppard who was talking about a Police song, it may have been “Sending Out an SOS” and he played it on a guitar while the camera rolled. He said how he loved the riff but he couldn’t just take it as is, so he inverted it. He played it a different feel and you could clearly hear the distinct Def Leppard tune. It was remarkable. Side by side you could see how he was inspired. But separately they were both unique. And both songs were chart topping successes.

The same with Joel’s 500words. He had a track record of success on his own before the million dollar homepage was even dreamed up, but when he saw it, he saw a different way of doing it. And he did. And he probably set a record for Virtual Real Estate sales.

But trying to pull off the same trick twice… well you’ve read my opinion on that.

Post from: Startpoint.biz

It’s delivered like a Google Books embedded page, so you can read, but you can’t copy and paste any text. Which will no doubt stop (to a degree) the scrapers who misappropriate other peoples textual content and publish it on blogs and other publishing platforms.

The partnership also extends to the development of a better search, and predictably: Google Adsense Ads.

Is the publisher of Popular Science listed on the Stock Exchange? Because I think they’re about to make a lot of money from increased advertising revenue!

Check out the Popular Science Archives.

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HubPages has moved up to 93. Having had their ‘Cracking the Top 100′ celebrations in October.

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And what is the difference?

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An advertisement which is written in the form of an editorial and purports to contain objective information about a product, although actually being limited to the advertiser’s own publicity material. Formed by replacing the first two syllables of editorial with the word advert to make a blend.

The advertorial (both the phenomenon and the word) first appeared in the US as long ago as the sixties, but did not become a common advertising ploy in the UK until the mid eighties. Advertorials came in for some criticism when they started to appear in British newspapers since there was a feeling of dishonesty about them (as deliberately inducing the reader to read them as though they were editorials or features), but they apparently did not contravene fair advertising standards as set out in the British Code of Advertising Practice:

An advertisement should always be so designed and presented that anyone who looks at it can see, without having to study it closely, that it is an advertisement.

In many cases the page on which an advertorial appears is headed advertising or advertisement feature (a more official name for the advertorial), and this is meant to alert the reader to the nature of the article, although the layout of the page often does not. The word advertorial is sometimes used (as in the second example below) without an article to mean this style of advertisement-writing in general rather than an individual example of it.

Yes, advertorials are a pain, just like the advertising supplement pages in Barren’s, but I question whether ‘anyone who bought FNN would have to junk the programming’. Barren’s 24 Apr. 1989, p. 34

This will probably lead to a growth in what the industry calls ‘advertorial’—a mixture of public relations and journalism, or editorial with bias. Sunday Correspondent 22 Apr. 1990, p. 27

Source: The Oxford Dictionary of New Words, 1991.

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Here is the official FTC announcement.

“The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement.”

Mashable says “the new rules would seemingly apply to any situation where something of value changes hands between advertiser and blogger” Source

Associated Press via SFGate.com says “The FTC will require that writers on the Web clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products. The commission also said advertisers featuring testimonials that claim dramatic results cannot hide behind disclaimers that the results aren’t typical.” Source

It’s easy to understand that bloggers, and that definition would include any online publisher (Hub Author, Lensmaster, etc) who accepts cash or in-kind payment to write a review, have to disclose that connection. What I haven’t yet uncovered is whether bloggers have to add that dislosure to all their previous posts, articles, hubs or lenses.

My real concern was if it applied to writing a review of a product that you’ve bought but you have links to the same product on Amazon. I think that is answered (in part) with this

“Thus, a consumer who purchases a product with his or her own money and praises it on a personal blog or on an electronic message board will not be deemed to be providing an endorsement. (Even if that consumer receives a single, unsolicited item from one manufacturer and writes positively about it on a personal blog or on a public message board, the review is not likely to be deemed an endorsement, given the absence of a course of dealing with that advertiser (or others) that would suggest that the consumer is disseminating a “sponsored” advertising message.)” (Source: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. Page 9.

I think that means that if you got a gift out of the blue, that you didn’t request, then it’s safe to do (what I hope is) an honest review.

The “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” (you can download it here) is 81 pages long and not the most exciting reading a person can do in one morning with only 2 cups of coffee in their system, but I did find a couple of interesting points:

“In contrast, postings by a blogger who is paid to speak about an advertiser’s product will be covered by the Guides, regardless of whether the blogger is paid directly by the marketer itself or by a third party on behalf of the marketer.”

“Although other situations between these two ends of the spectrum will depend on the specific facts present, the Commission believes that certain fact patterns are sufficiently clear cut to be addressed here. For example, a blogger could receive merchandise from a marketer with a
request to review it, but with no compensation paid other than the value of the product itself. In this situation, whether or not any positive statement the blogger posts would be deemed an “endorsement” within the meaning of the Guides would depend on, among other things, the value of that product, and on whether the blogger routinely receives such requests. If that blogger frequently receives products from manufacturers because he or she is known to have wide readership within a particular demographic group that is the manufacturers’ target market, the blogger’s statements are likely to be deemed to be “endorsements,” as are postings by participants in network marketing programs.”

In summary, if you’re getting kickbacks as a blogger, hubber or lensmaster, you need to disclose it. If on the other hand you’re reviewing something you bought, you’re unaffected.

Also note that none of this should apply to anyone OUTSIDE of the US. Unless of course there are existing laws in the country in which you reside that enforce it.

Edit: This does not apply to Adsense. On Adsense ads you’ll notice the bit that says “Ads by Google”? That is a disclosure right there. And despite that, an ad is an ad. Banner ads are known to be what they are, it’s not pretending to be a personal recommendation. The same will apply to in-line text ads (ie: Infolinks, Kontera) while it may appear to be a personal recommendation by being a part of the content, when moused over it is obvious that they are ads.

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What an achievement!

The thing I find most fantastic about this magical milestone is that they could have accomplished it quite a while ago, but the stringent quality standards they have in place sees low quality, overly promotional and straight spam hubs filtered, flagged and bumped to unpublish status. The author can either fix it, or delete it.

Here are the current up to the minute (or hour, I’m not sure exactly how often the stats are refreshed) HubPages Statistics:

Published Hubs: 500,187
Forum Posts: 374,835
Total Users: 751,402
Published Users: 97,918
Hubs with 1,000+ hub views in the last month: 5,548
Hubs with 100+ hub views in the last month: 45,905
Hubs with 10+ hub views in the last month: 191,066

Which, by the time you have read this blog post, would no doubt have changed. So check out the HubPages Statistics page for the most up to date information.

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I imagine there would be those looking for well known poems or famous poets.

How does a person go about finding a poem? Are people searching for new poems? Or is the traffic coming from some combination of keywords and the searcher isn’t actually looking for poetry at all?

Are people publishing poetry online for the money, or for something more self-fulfilling?

I don’t have answers for any of these questions. I was wondering what others think or have experienced.

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We’ll see an increase in size where its noticeable: biceps, chest, shoulders. Perhaps a reduction of size in around the gut and love handles if that was ever a problem. Our strapping young lad looking at himself in the mirror isn’t a sign of ego. Okay, there’s some vanity involved, but it’s good to see the progress that’s being made.

The same goes when you’re publishing online. You’re researching your ideas, drafting your articles, editing them for clarity. You publish. You promote. And then it’s good to check the stats. Visitors, who’s linked to you, click outs… And of course the revenue stats… how much money is being made and so on.

But don’t become a stats addict. They don’t need to be checked every 30 minutes. Again, like our bodybuilding analogy, can you imagine if a person spent most of their time just posing and posturing in front of the mirror? Our weight lifting lad wouldn’t make any new gains. At best he may just maintain his size. Though he may even start to see some muscle loss. Which is a shame, because he really wanted to become a professional bodybuilder.

The same will happen if you spend too much time revisiting your daily stats several times per day, you won’t be able to keep producing the articles that was part of your plan to become a quality online publisher.

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