Recently the web directory IDK got a review from blogger John Chow. We have interviewed the founder of IDK.in in a previous interview - Syed Balkhi. Later IDK also known as genuine paid directory was sold to a new owner. Am not too sure about the final price but was around the $20k mark. Ohh and yes, if you want know what Syed is doing these days, well he is blogging! Yep, here he is - Balkhis and he also giving some free stuffs too.
So, coming back to sponsored or paid blog review - is the blog reviews worth it? Am sure not many Internet marketers worry about the PR alone when they go for the reviews! The most important thing is the conversion, or in other words the ROI [return on investment]. Say, some online picture frames related website asks me to review their website, will the review help them to get some sales, I highly doubt that. But if the review was made on some blogs that are related to that niche, then the conversion can be expected. Thinking from another point of view, a general web directory which has all the categories of the internet can have any traffic, as they have all kinds of website to direct the traffic to.
So far I have read a few reviews of john chow, one was that of zorg links. I have also interviewed Mike the owner of Zorg links. Here is what he has to say about his john chow review,
“Its good but not as good. My alexa ranking went to 9000 the day of the review, which was pretty good, although I don’t fuss over alexa too much. Many other webmaster/seo blogs picked up the story so I gained many other back links as a result of the initial review.”
Another review was of a blog directory, a part of the popular web directory - Alive directory. Chris is the owner of this directory. Chow’s review about web directories are not all that impressive, and in that review he got confused about the directory category numbers and number of sites listed there. But anyways chow’s blog is popular among webmasters and with 16k+ feed subscriber, I guess a review from that blog is not all that a bad idea after all.
Yahoo, the web’s biggest portal and a huge search engine had received an offer of 45 billion dollars. But will yahoo take the offer and sell out? Lets see what yahoo has to say about this. The last time we emailed yahoo as a small business publisher we got the following reply.
Here is the question that I asked yahoo:
hello,
am hearing all this rumors about microsoft, buying yahoo!! is this all correct, and if it is, then is it going to effect my account. I am having linux space, will Microsoft force me to buy windows space.
thanks for your answer,
regards,
uttoransen,
Then yahoo replied:
Hello Uttoran,
Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Web Hosting. There is nothing to the rumors that have been circulating recently about a merger with or purchase by Microsoft.
Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.
Regards,******
Yahoo! Customer Care
So, the last time it was very much clear that yahoo had no interest in the deal, but this time things have changed a lot. Google had taken an even greater share of Internet’s search and advertising business, and yahoo and msn are cornered by great margin. The best bet for yahoo and msn is to merge together and fight for their share of the net.
Benefits of the merger or overtake:
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Yahoo has a YPN [Yahoo Publisher Network] : Right now the program is only for US residents, but once Microsoft takes yahoo, YPN might come out of beta and people from other countries can join the program.
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Yahoo web hosting: This feature of yahoo, where we the webmasters host there sites on yahoo hosting, has serious limitations, like we can’t upload .htaccess etc. these limitations might be cured.
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Yahoo is worlds biggest portal, with the most traffic! Msn can cash out on that traffic with their better ads network.
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The buzz created by buying yahoo, will surely help msn.
Limitations:
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Yahoo Search and msn search combined makes less than 20% of total internet’s searches. I don’t think even after joint experience, they could stand google’s domination over the search.
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Adsense and adwords are already very popular, as far as advertising is considered, Google can’t be defeated there as well.
Anyways, all the buying/merging news or rumors are coming from the Microsoft’s end, Yahoo on it’s part is still silent on the matter. What will be yahoo’s stand on this, will yahoo really sell out this time!
