If you want to know more about WordPress and the tech side of blogging, please check out my Blogspinner blog, which I’m casually updating again. If you’re interested in the art of writing (whether blogging, authoring, technical writing, etc.) and learning/ knowledge, stay tuned here on this blog, as it’s one of the topics I’ll be adding.

Current topics that I write about include:

1. Freelancing
2. Blogging.
3. New + visual media (podcasts and audio, web video, screencasts, maps).
4. Creativity and creative problem solving.
5. Mind mapping.
6. Web applications.
7. Film.
8. Productivity.
9. Learning techniques.
10. Business, particularly bootstrapping and entrepreneuring.
11. Website analytics.

My rates are pretty affordable, and I also write ebooks and books, and do screencasting. If you’re interested in hiring me, just drop off a comment here and make you use your email address when you fill out the comment form.

For a while now, the thought of a team effort for building blogs has crossed my mind multiple times. A good Blogger or three, one Editor in Chief (EIC) for planning and vision, a Designer for the graphic branding work, and an SEO/ SEM/ SMM for optimization, analysis and promotion.

Makes sense, right? Magazines, for example, are produced every month by a team. But a website or blog is not a magazine. Can this team approach work for websites? Can they work for blogs? I believe they can, though this does not mean I’m advocating that each person has an equal say in every issue that arises. That is, don’t let the SEO make suggestions about design – unless they actually have design experience. And vice versa for the Designer.

So what is Seth Godin saying about creating a great website? He gives 10 tips for building websites, and the first one says don’t work by committee. (Also check out his article How to create a good enough website.)

Structured Roles

I’d have to agree with him on this, but I won’t get into details. His suggestions do not clash with what I’m saying. I’m talking about a team-based approach with distinct roles and no micro-management.

The ideal EIC is someone who has blogging experience – a Blogger in Chief. The ideal bloggers for a team are those with a bit of experience and loads of passion, whose work can be improved by the EIC/BIC.

The Designer would likely have a lesser role, as would an SEO. If however, you were launching a blog network, you then end up with a traditional hierarchy:

1. The Designer and SEO/SMM can now probably be employed full-time or half-time.
2. Each channel (cluster of related sites) would have a Channel Editor, which is more a guide/ editor than EIC/BIC.
3. Each blog would have however many writers are necessary.
4. The entire network would be overseen by a single visionary, though it might have more than one partner who has some say.

So each role is neatly compartmentalized, just like for a magazine. But everyone works as a team, not as a committee. However, you might have virtual Bullpen sessions where you brainstorm, using collaborative tools (Mercury Grove, Basecamp, Campfire, Comapping).

Will it Work?

This is in fact very similar to the way a number of blog projects are being run that I’ve been asked to be involved in. I can’t claim to know how some of the exiting networks are run, so for me, it’ll be interesting to see whether this model can work.

What’s possibly further unique is that everyone that is involved long-term will eventually get a share, though it’ll be done in a tiered fashion. Writers will get a flat monthly rate plus X% of net monthly revenue. The channel editor or editor (as the case may be) will get a flat rate and Y% of what’s left each month, after their own flat rate and payments to writers. Finally whomever is at the top of tiers will similarly be compensated.

This is unlike anything I’ve enountered in the offline world, but it does build upon profit-sharing models that some businesses have been following for years.

On the other hand, if it’s just whatever technology we’re currently using online in a given decade, then why “version” the web?

Well, I’ve been using public networks since the 80s, so I don’t really think of “versions” of the Web unless forced to. But it is easier to say “Web 3.0″ instead of “the Web technologies that were introduced from 2010 to 2020.” It also means that a version number won’t be appropriated to define some specific technology, or misinterpreted like Web 2.0 has been.

Web 2.0 is simultaneously “the social Web” and applications using AJAX or other backends and RIA (Rich Internet Application) front ends. But it is other things to other people now.

Web 3.0, according to Nova’s diagram, includes mashups (such as Yahoo Pipes, which I love), Widgets (which I don’t use), Semantic Search, Semantic Databases, and more.

This does mean that I have to stop calling the Semantic Web “Web 3.0″. As Nova points out, they are not the same. The Semantic Web will also no doubt play a big role in Web 4.0 (2020-2030), but most of the tools and platforms are expected to be released next decade.

If you’re interested in reading more, go check out Nova’s article and see his great graph of Web 3.0 and other technologies plotted on a timeline.

What I see, personally, is a larger integration of the Mobile Web (Mobile 2.0) with the “regular” Web – both in terms of tools and platforms.

Crystal comes with a stylish black background and a gorgeous patterned blue-grey navbar and blue links. It consists of two columns, header, and footer. The content column is wide enough for a standard banner ad, and the nav column is approximately 250 pixels wide – enough for a variety of ad widths. Blockquotes are crisp white with a vertical bar at left.

Check out the Crystal theme demo.

In other words, delegate your website efforts. There’s far more to webmastering a successful blog than you might think. To see why, check out 15 key roles for a revenue-producing website.

Randa Clay Design

Randa is offering 2 prizes: a free custom blog logo and header, and a free blog review. The rules state how you can enter. It’s pretty easy – either add Randa Clay Design to your blogroll or subscribe to the site’s feed. There is no restriction about type of blog. While you’re there, read Randa’s article 4 reasons your blog needs a blog logo.

Logo Design Works

To apply for the Logo Design Works free blog logo campaign, your blog has to meet certain criteria, including being at least six months old and being about any of these topics: design, small business, marketing, SEO, blogging, freelancing, productivity and related topics. If you are accepted, you will get to work with a designer via email. All LDW is asking in return is either a blogroll link (after you are accepted) or a brief review with a link. Links are to their home page.

In 7 Thoughts on being a better blogger, points #6 and 7 talk about linking out and linking in, respectively. Deep linking is the same as linking in – meaning that you hyperlink from a new article to your own archived articles. (Note that “deep linking” can also refer to linking “deep” to another site’s articles, though in the context of this article, I’m referring to self-linking.)

Why Deep Link? Your Reason

Deep linking is an important strategy for getting your site’s pages (weblog or website) indexed, and for relevant search terms – which in turn is important if you want a site that earns income. If done properly, you can assign yourself some authority for search terms, provided your site already has gained some authority (either in PageRank or in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) rankings. [Note that as your site's authority grows, deep linking has a cumulative effective in search engines.]

Why Deep Link? For Your Readers

From a user point of view, deep linking exposes them to relevant older content on your own site, possibly articles they haven’t come across before. Good search engine algorithms reward this behavior because their whole motto is to provide relevance to searchers. It was that way when I was a search engine webmaster in the mid-90s and it’s still that way now.

Why Deep Link? The Technical Stuff

If you don’t assign authority to your own archived content by deep linking to older articles with suitable anchor text, then SE (search engine) algorithms may not do so either – unless you have lots of other sites linking to your archived pages. That’s not going to be true for most new sites.

Weblogs suffer from this more so than websites. Consider that for the typical blog platform, when your site is new, you might have, say, ten posts on the home page. The content on each of those pages is also visible singularly if you click on the “permalink” (permanent link).

When you post an eleventh article, the very first article in your archives, which is physically displayed at the bottom of your home page, might get pushed to “page 2″ of your archives.

Few SEs index permalink pages of very new sites – and sometimes not even for sites that have been around for months. Instead, they’re more likely to index your “page N” and monthly/ yearly archive pages.

Example

Let’s discuss a very specific example. Say that your site is about dogs. If article number one, the very first in your archives, is about Daschunds, then the SEs will have indexed your home page for “daschunds”. Maybe your next nine articles are about dogs but not about Daschunds.

Now you post an eleventh article, causing your first article to disappear from your home page. It’s still around but it’s “harder” to find for search engine users. If SEs do not index the permalink URL for your first article, then visitors searching for SEs might see your site listed and click on the SERPs result. But when they get to your home page, they don’t see “daschund” anywhere, and they leave.

What to do?

Plain and simple, you need your permalink pages indexed, and you need this done from the time you start your site. If you haven’t done this (else you probably wouldn’t be reading this far), no problem. You can start now.

Every new article you write should link to at least two relevant articles in your archives. If your new article doesn’t lend itself to any deep links, you either have to get creative or rewrite it.

This is a skill you learn, and I’ll be blunt: not every blogger “gets” deep linking, so they don’t bother acquiring the skill. Serious bloggers do, and they’re subtle about it. The writing cannot be awkward for the sake of a link. I learned that lesson last year the hard way.

It takes time to learn to deep link, and if you don’t want to take the effort, then godspeed to you.

How To Deep Link

Several examples of deep links are peppered throughout this article. The very first one simply links to an older article using its title. This is not ideal anchor text, but it suits my discussion. The other deep links use keywords in the anchor. In some cases such as where I link to two articles using “earns” and “income” split up a keyphrase.

Now, I don’t have any articles before this one that only discuss deep linking or even link building. I mention link building, but in the context of more general topics. So if I want this site to start ranking for “deep linking”, I have to wait until I write another related article, then use “deep linking” as the anchor text to hyperlink to the article you’re reading now. And then build from there.

Good hyperlinks contain keywords/ variations/ synonyms in the anchor text (or in the vicinity). The anchor text should be relevant and not misleading – thus good for both people and SEs.

How Many Links Per Post?

This might be a point of contention, but I have it on good authority that a good number is 2-3 deep links per article. That’s not a hard and fast rule, but is a recommended minimum. A longer article can have more.

Conclusion

Practice deep linking immediately:

1. Write your article’s first draft.

2. Scan for any important (to you) keywords or keyphrases you would like your site to gain authority for.
3. Find related articles in your own archives. If you don’t want to use your blog platform’s search feature, you can use “site:” in Google. For example, if I want to find articles that have the phrase “deep link” (without the quotations) on this site, I would go to Google.com and type “site:rajdash.com deep link”. Use the URLs you find for your deep links.
4. If you cannot find anything related in your archives, link to someone else’s for now. You’ll simply have to write more articles about the topics important to you, then link back later.
5. You may need to rewrite your article to utilize good anchor text. That’s tough to teach you – just read lots of blogs in various niches and see what they do. You know now what makes good anchor text. Whatever you do, the finished article’s wording should feel natural, not calculated.

Why? Because building more blogs doesn’t interest me as much as it did two years ago. Yes, it is possible to have a full-time blogging career, but I also want to explore alternatives. So what’s the alternative? Sites or mini-sites, web services, directories, toolkits, etc.

If you surf around the blogosphere, you’ll see that bloggers fall into a lot of categories. Some are great writers, some are good at link building, others at building dialogue with readers, and others at marketing and promoting their blog. That doesn’t mean that they’re all earning reasonable revenue for their efforts. When that happens, building a blog becomes a chore, not a pleasure. And that will come out in the writing – eventually. Lack of passion in the writing, of course, spells the beginning of the end of a blog.

Alternative

Fortunately, there are several alternatives to building and maintaining blogs, and some of them can be more lucrative. One is to build and flip limited edition sites. A bit of research at a couple of domain/ site marketplaces (namely Sitepoint Marketplace and Digital Point Marketplace) shows a small group of people building and selling mini-sites around hobby and other niche topics.

I’ve purchased a few of these sites at US$100-200 each. While they show promise with the content, they lack something. So I’ve been changing static templates, adding a few visual elements, mini-directories, etc. In some cases, I’m rewriting a bit of the content or at least rearranging text to be a bit more readable, such as putting items in to bullet-point lists. And of course, I’ll be promoting the sites where possible. When the sites are done, they’ll be more than just a bunch of pages centered around a theme.

For monetization, some of these sites have Amazon or more exclusive affiliate ads. A few have Google AdSense ads as well, if the content talks about specific products. But AdSense is not the focus in most of them. And the real monetization will be when I sell them. I haven’t put a great deal of extra effort into any of the sites, so even if I only make $100-200 over what I paid, I’ll be making a profit. The sites will be affordable to other buyers, so they’re more likely to sell quickly. If they have any Google PageRank, they may sell at a premium.

Process

If you are thinking of trying something similar, here is a suggested process:

1. Pick a topic. Hobby or home improvement topics are often worthwhile for affiliate program-based mini-sites. See my tutorial at Tubetorial about choosing topics for blog posts (which also works for mini-sites).
2. Register or buy an inexpensive domain name.
3. Set up hosting. If you’re going to be doing this a lot, get a hosting reseller account that makes it easy to set up multiple sites at no or little extra cost. This way, if you have a site buyer that’s slow to move the site, you can offer them a bit of affordable hosting and still have room to build new sites.
4. Write 10-20 “evergreen” pages of content. By evergreen, I mean articles that’ll hold up a year, two years or longer from now. If you don’t feel like writing, hire someone. Edit their content if it’s not exactly the way you want it. Or you can buy a ready-made mini-site and tweak that.
5. Get a free static template from a site like OSWD or Free CSS Templates.
6. Add visual content such as images or videos. Often, you can reuse pictures from Flickr (check the copyright) and video from numerous sites such as Google Video or YouTube. There are loads more, and once I set up citizenCast, I’ll write there about audio, video, podcasting, and webcasting options.
7. If you want, you might add something such as a mini-directory, if its links do not draw traffic away from your affiliate links.
8. When you’re ready, build your HTML pages, which will require a suitable navigation bar.
9. Post your pages and start promoting with links, in forums, etc.
10. Sell the site. You can sell before the site gains Google PageRank, if you want a quick sale at an affordable price. Or you can hold onto the site, build PR, build some revenue, then sell at a premium.

The idea is to create quality, limited content on a topic: i.e, just once. If you revist a broad topic, try to pick a different sub-niche. For example, if you have site on dog breeding that you build and sell, next time try dog training. Doing this gives your buyers a bit of an advantage: you are not creating competition for them. That doesn’t mean there won’t be other sites on similar topics, but you can at least honestly claim limited edition sites – which makes them more salable.

If you build, say, two sites per week and make $200 profit on each, then you could make an extra $1600/m for a few hours of work per site. Of course, if you did this every day, you could make more, though I believe there’s a saturation point in the market. I may be wrong – test the waters and see. You don’t have to give up blogging, but if you want to supplement your revenue, and you have a sense for what might work in terms of mini-sites/ affiliate sites, flipping limited edition websites might be the way to go.