I’ve worked on a lot of things in the past couple of months (mostly offline) and one of those things is a new design/theme and image for this blog. So it’s here and now live, ready to receive your comments. I hope you’ll like, because I really do.

It’s more than a new design, it’s also a new focus and redefined priorities. With this new design, among many other things, I clarified the tagline and purpose of the blog. As you probably noticed, the new tagline is:

The web, what matters, common sense.

It’s very simple and straight forward. No big deal, just common sense. I came up with this tagline after thinking about what’s really important when it comes to web development and websites’ promotion. My conclusion was very simple:

I think most people completely lost the focus when it comes to building and promoting websites. At the end of the day, what’s really important? Is it to rank #1 on Google, to offer the best user interface, to have the best design or to have the best social media strategy?

In the end, what really matters is to build websites worth visiting. That’s it: the web, what matters, common sense.

That’ll be the new focus: through posts about seo, web development, social media, analytics, web business and design, we’ll try to figure out common principles behind great websites, worth visiting.

That’s about it, I wanted to keep this short and let you have a look around. Please let me know what you think in the comments!

I learned today, like most people on twitter, that my friend Meg Porter (@megapixel on twitter) was killed in a car accident last week. She was only 24 : my age. This is a weird feeling as I never met Meg in real life, but we definitely built a friendship online. Social media is all about people and while it is 99% fun, this reminds us that it is not a game: it is all real.

Meg was awesome and there was no reasons for her to go, but it happened. She will be missed.

I offer my deepest sympathies to her family.

My Web 0.1 award this week goes to awesomebackgrounds.com that I discovered while searching for some backgrounds. It is a great example of what not to do if you want people to buy your products and before you think it’s an old website last updated in 1999, let me tell you that the page was last updated March 4th 2009.

They sell awesome PowerPoint designs, perfect for professional presentations (?):

And yes, there are some classic Web 0.1 animated gifs:

Visit the site and share your hidden gems.

I plan to do more of these, so feel free to send me your favorite Web 0.1 examples by email ( benoit at bentremblay.com ) or directly here in the comment section.

Thanks guys! (Oh, please comment on the changes! )

While it is extremely flattering to be on such lists or can be very tempting to invest time in analyzing the different metrics to rank higher or simply get on the list, here’s my question: “At the end of the day, does such a list pays the bills?” No it doesn’t, but if you pay the bills with your online business, you will get on those lists without even trying.

I guess what I am trying to say is that there are a lot of things out there to get you focused on the wrong things. Getting on lists or getting more twitter followers is nice, but these won’t help you achieve your goals at the end of the day: they are the result of a successful online business.

What do you think?

]]> http://bentremblay.com/en/so-you-want-to-get-on-that-list/feed 59 http://bentremblay.com/en/less-time-get-more-done http://bentremblay.com/en/less-time-get-more-done#comments Wed, 14 Jan 2009 07:04:53 +0000 Ben Tremblay http://www.frogstr.com/?p=642 A common misconception is that if you had more time available, you would achieve so much more. From personal experience (because of school, internships and holidays), I can tell you that more time often mean less things done.

When you have 8 hours in front of you to do what you want, you have plenty of time. Or at least, you think you have. For a lot of people, and this includes me, it’s easy to spend an hour on twitter, an hour on skype, an hour on MSN and an hour on forums when you have a full day in front of you. It is not all wasted time, because during those four hours you might have built connections or your brand a bit more, but let’s admit it: you’re probably procrastinating.

On the opposite, when you come home after a day of work or school and that you know you’ll have to spend some time with the family and eventually will only have three hours to do what you want to do, things go much faster and there are good chances you’ll be a lot more productive.

In those three hours, you can achieve what a lot of people achieve in 8 hours simply because you focus on what you have to do and on what brings you real results.

Time is no excuse

I am writing this just because time is often an excuse for not getting things done. From personal experience, I achieve more when I’m full time that’s for sure, but I can’t say that I do a lot more. When I’m full time, you’ll see me on twitter, skype and on blogs a lot. It’s not wasted time but in the end twitter doesn’t pay the bills. So, when I’m “part time”, I’m less active in the community (which is the case right now…), but that’s because I focus a lot more on things that make the business go forward. Don’t take me wrong here, commenting on blogs and being active in the community is extremely important, but it depends on the kind of business you build.

In the end, time is good to have, but it’s not the solution to every problem.

This is also a great opportunity for me to say thank you for being part of this. Every single time I wasn’t too sure if what I was writing or talking about was a little bit too much “on the edge”, you guys always gave great feedback and I thank you for this. Or is it because you guys jump to the comment section directly?

Have fun with your family and your friends and enjoy every single moment, because I will too!

Again, happy holidays!

Ben.

The guy

First, let’s talk about Rarst himselft. No, I am not reviewing his personality, but I can still drop a few words about how he is a good guy. He is an early adopter of frogstr.com and went through all the changes frogstr went through. That’s why you might hear him say this design is not frogstr 2.0, but more something like frogstr 3.75.  His real name is Andrey Savchenko and just like his blog’s tagline suggests, the guy is a bit cynical and has a very particular sense of humor. He his not trying to be someone else, sticks to his personality/what he is and I guess that’s why I also read him.

The blog in general

Now time to cover the blog. First of all, Rarst blogs about softwares, web and tech in general. He reviews software, but also talks about anything he feels like covering that is related to softwares, blogging, web or technology. I personally like that as software/tech websites are sometimes very formal and I love to hear people’s opinion.

I don’t remember Rarst.net using a different theme than the one he his using right now. This is not a bad thing as the theme has been optimized and tweaked a lot over the past months.

One of the thing I like about his blog is that it is using “previews” of posts and not full posts. Why do I like that while my blog has full posts on the front page? Well, I think it is appropriate for a tech blog. It is easy to just scroll down and find something that interests you without you having to read all his cynical thoughts. He also posts very regularly and has a lot of content so I think having a full feed on the front page wouldn’t be a good idea.

I just feel like mentioning he has a “Random” feature on his blog that redirects you to a random post. Great feature and I thought about implementing such feature on frogstr when I saw it.

RSS Icon

Now, Rarst might argue that I am changing my blog theme too often and making too many changes all the time to my layout, but I can tell you he probably changed his RSS Feed icon like a hundred times. You see, he’s so sick of changing his feed icon that he now use a random image! You’ll see a different image if you reload the page. OK, I really don’t mind, I just felt like throwing something back at him.

To be honest, he his the RSS subscribers king so I won’t argue too much. There is a lot we can learn from his RSS branding.

Getting into social networks

After saying for too long he wasn’t that much of a social person, Rarst finally decided to get into social networks like twitter and has a small social network strategy. I can tell you I feel the difference since he started that social network strategy. I don’t know about his traffic, but I see more comments on the posts that I used to see before which is a good thing. I don’t know if it’s because of me and all the kicks in the butt I gave him to get a small social strategy, but whatever the reason is, I think it’s working great. If you guys don’t follow him on twitter, he’s a great resource to follow. Not too many tweets on what he had for dinners and a lot of useful tweets.

Anything I don’t like?

Is there anything I don’t like about Rarst.net? Honestly, just the logo I think. Rarst branding is the big “R”. You’ve probably seen that big “R” on this blog before because he uses it as his gravatar and he has to keep that because that’s his brand. Being consistent with logo and everything is key to branding and I think Rarst understands that. What I am suggesting for the website is a different logo without the “www” in front of rarst, that would make it look better in my opinion. Whatever logo change he makes, it’s still possible to focus on the big “R” and keep using that for branding. That’s just a thought.

The design of the theme is very classic. Looks like it’s been working well for him and it also goes very well with his personality. But you know, I think putting some colors here and there so that the website sticks in our head wouldn’t be too bad of an idea. That would go very well with a logo change.

Formal reviews

One thing I once suggested to Rarst was to do more “formal reviews”. Something with a rating from 0 to 5 on different features at the end of each post so that we can know how he rates softwares and what he really thinks. He answered me something that having non-formal reviews is what sets him apart from the competition: cynical thoughts on softwares. I never really considered that when I asked the question the first time and I have to agree with him: he’s doing things differently and that’s the way to go. I still think there’s something that could be done to make reviews more “formal”, just to receive more Stumble Upon love and things like that and still bring the cynical thoughts in those reviews. Again, just a thought and I don’t have any concrete ways of doing it right now.

That’s it

There you go, so honestly if you like software and web, you have to subscribe to www.rarst.net and also follow Rarst on twitter. Hope you enjoyed and drop comments!

Whatever their reasons, it’s not the point

OK, I am about to talk about the Make Money Online niche and how well “the dream” is being kept alive by a couple of selected bloggers. The fact that three good bloggers decided to sell their blog is just what I needed to post and write about the MMO niche and it is in no way related to the bloggers themselves. They all have different reasons to sell and that is perfectly fine with me. In fact, I spoke with Cooper from Linkers Blog and his reasons for selling are more than valid.

The dream

There is a dream out there my friends. The frickin’ dream that by blogging about making money online you will make money online. There is a CRUCIAL step that a lot of people tend to forget: successful “Make Money Online” bloggers were ALREADY making money when they started their blog. “The dream” keeps a lot of people going while the big guys are making the money.

The shift

The shift is about to happen guys. There are gazillions of MMO blogs out there and you know the funny part? Most people think that the only way to make money online is by running a MMO blog! Wrong. That’s just the dream and that dream is branded very well.

I see a lot of MMO blogs shutting down in the near future as the niche will get even more saturated and hard to monetize. Three big blogs are shutting down and I’m telling you this is only the beginning.

Internet Marketing is the next saturated niche

Unfortunately for me, I feel like the Internet Marketing niche will be extremely saturated as well. It’s important not to confuse Internet Marketing with MMO as IM is a lot larger and while it includes monetization, it also includes Internet strategies, social medias strategies, blogging, branding, etc. It will eventually become a much bigger niche as more and more people become “experts” and that the dream is kept alive. But you know, standing out of the crowd will be fun and challenging. At the same time, it is a nice reminder that it is important to focus on what’s outside the Internet Marketing niche because this is where the real potential is.

The winners will be the creative people

You know who will be the real winners in this industry my friends? The person who blog about cars, food, beer, tennis, chess or whatever, but with enough creativity, manages to be successful. These will be the next big Internet Marketers.

What are you waiting for?

OK, I actually know that most of you blogging about MMO/IM run a lot of other stuff in parallel and that is the way to go. I just want to say that if a MMO blog is the only thing you run, what are you waiting for? The MMO niche is not the real world, it’s important to know what’s out there and make a difference for the average Joe!

By the way…Just before you ask, I run other stuff

]]> http://bentremblay.com/en/sell-your-blog/feed 34 http://bentremblay.com/en/sponsoring-webtrafficroi-contest http://bentremblay.com/en/sponsoring-webtrafficroi-contest#comments Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:03:17 +0000 Ben Tremblay http://www.frogstr.com/?p=205 I thought I would just drop a line about this: my friend ZK at WebTrafficROI.com asked me if I would be interested by sponsoring the contest going on on his website at the moment. I accepted to sponsor it by offering a 125×125 ad spot here on frogstr for 30 days. It’s a pleasure for me to sponsor the contest and there are some other cool prizes there if you guys are interested. That’s it, head to WebTrafficROI.com if you want to see what this is all about.