We are mixing things up here again on the blog a bit. We are calling it the 5th revision but its probably more like the 10th… just the 5th since we got advertisers started keeping track.
The New Comment System
I love commentators and think they are important to a blog. You always want to keep commentators in perspective and be careful of spammers.
Long time ShoeMoney readers know I have played around with many various comment systems and have even done crazy contests and other stuff.
In my years of blogging I have discovered many things. One is that the first comment in a post gets about 90% of the clicks. I used crazyegg to show me this. This is probably why people rushed to be the first comment many times.
In Revision4 of the ShoeMoney theme I tried to combat this by reverse ordering the comments. The newest comment would display first. This would solve a couple problems. 1) People could comment and feel like its not buried on the page and 2) people could get somewhat equal exposure and clicks to their site no matter when the commented.
Well spammers figured this out and go through the blog and comment on every post that I have ever done insuring they are the first commenter.
So for Revision5 I wanted to solve many problems. I want to do some cool contests for commentators again plus work on the comment display order issue a bit.
So in this revision we are opening up registration for users. This allows us to do many things:
I am pretty excited about this ad it will be fun to see what we can come up with.
The Marketplace
Probably the biggest new feature is the Marketplace/Classifieds section. I made the marketplace years ago and it has a couple hundred RSS readers. The original marketplace just scraped forums where commerce was going on.
The new marketplace allows users to actually place ads for $25. The listings will be featured on each page of ShoeMoney.com on the sidebar. The listings will stay for 6 months or until they are deleted by the user. Listings are sorted by time of posting but can be bumped back to the top for a $5 fee.
People can place classifieds for things for sale or announcements and the price is pretty reasonable.
As with the ShoeMoney Store 100% of the proceeds will goto charity.
We also have are going to be integrating more of our behind the scenes footage and other things in the blog in the next couple weeks. Love to hear your feedback as it comes along this month.
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2416 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 72 comments… read them below or add one }
I like the new layout. I hope you don’t mind, but I “borrowed” your large social bookmarking buttons for my blog. Those are cool and any idiot who’s not legally blind can see those. Thanks.
I like it. WTF is up with the trackbacks URL though?
not sure what you mean?
In the comment box it shows the trackback URL as: http:www.shoemoney.com/trackback
That’s not the desired URL, is it?
Yes, nice changes in your theme. commenting changes is most important in your blog.
Cool. Signed up.
This one will give the more professional looks to your blog. This also shows that you keep trying new things and that is really really important to keep your positive impression in the eyes of your visitors.
I do love the latest changes in terms of the structure but I do not really like the designs.
I prefer the previous version as current design looks too messy for me – not sure bout others especially the chitika background.
This design make it much harder to focus on the main area – which is the content. It getting more confusing in my eyes when the banner in the header appear at the same time with the chitika background.
Maybe you can give a thought on this. However, this is just my though who prefer clean and minimalistic style.
p/s – read somewhere before that telling that the new styling for modern design is clean and has a lot of white spaces which can help to boost your readers’ attention span and focus.
We have been selling the background to companies for a couple months. Chitika is who purchased it for this time being but it will rotate with various companies.
I actually like it mixes things up a bit.
I do realise about the background. I think the loyal reader of your blog won’t mind of this issues as I think they know the quality of your blog.
For new visitors, I think it can be pretty hard for you to convert them as loyal reader and follower ( will probably take longer).
Just my 2 cents.
p/s : I missed the features where I can check your top post box for particular week/month or year. Actually, that is the first thing that i am looking for when I saw your latest design. (n_n)
The new comment system indeed sounds interesting. I’m curious that the actual results will be in terms of the average number of comments.
Well! You are in a position to experiment… $25 for six month with $5 ad placement booster is something very affordable for anyone.
Thanks for your thoughts and inputs. It shows we need to review and revise every aspect of our online presence, even for comments.
“The listings will be featured on each page of ShoeMoney.com on the sidebar.”
Jeremy, when will this start?
Its pretty close to being implemented. Maybe later today.
That is great that the proceeds from the Marketplace go to charity. Makes me more interested in placing an ad,
Looks good, although fell that your new logo doesn’t sit right.
Well, you are going on the right track. But, if you don’t mind, you can make this theme look much cleaner. The more you mess with colors and schemes the mote confusion it will create. I think the best example would be quicksprout.com
Love the theme Shoe!
But you still need to fix the ‘friend us’ links at the bottom!
It’s not bad, change is good. Not feeling the new logo, marketplace looks like it may be a hit or a total spam fail.
We can always increase the price and moderate listings if it becomes spammy.
Good point, moderation would probably be best….otherwise it looks like it may work out well.
This new temlplate is pretty awesome! I like it, it looks clean and well-organized. But why do you use Chitika in your background? A new sponsor??
I think it is cool, and it is good that you are mixing things up. Good Job Jeremy. Greg Ellison
Its starting to look like John Chow up in here.
Sucks about commenters worrying more about spamming your site than creating excellent orginal content of their own.
One of my medium term goals is to make enough money to outsource content protection. Steal my stuff… talk to my lawyers. I’m actually pretty liberal about what I allow, just ask first. Having found one my posts stolen and appearing in the #1 slot on Google at someone else’s site really pissed me off… because my original post was pages down in the serps.
I see many sites struggling with spam comments and making changes. Some good and some pretty bad. Affilliate Summit blog for instance is complete crap now and not worth visiting cause you can’t leave a comment.
Love the strategic thinking on the commenting.
It’d be cool if you let us know how you did it, what you’re using, etc. (and made it available!).
I assume you’re having these custom features coded specifically for your site and not using “existing plugins”?
Is the voting aspect just a plugin? If so, which one?
Cheers
Jay
I’m with you Jay. I’d love to know how created the new design and what plugins (or custom script) you used for the commenting.
Yea booooyyy
Comments seems to be a hot topic this week with bloggers! Great ideas for mixing it up a bit.
I also LOVE the idea of the $25 ads….a great price that should really see a lot of response.
This change is very good. It seems like a breath of fresh air at Shoemoney.com.
Change is good and I like that you are focusing on your visitors!
Another change you could have done to remember the name, email and website.
You can do that with FireFox if you use it.
BTW just registered, its neat.
Seems like a good idea on the comments. The marketplace looks good – will be trying it shortly. perhaps a little screening(80-90% instead of 100%) on the background would address other readers’ concerns.
I always thought changes have a sent of something new, and that’s why i afiliate this to something well taken care. I did a god job by mixing up your theme.
I really like the new design. Change is good once in awhile.
По-моему, у Вас украли эту статью и поместили на другом сайте. Я её уже видела.
У него много постов воруют и не всегда даже ссылки ставят. Но реальные вещи пишет – интересно читать.
Talking about spammers…
The new theme looks great. I see all the ads and login box and a few elements going out of borders in IE7, but overall the look of the new theme is nice. Good colors, good usability… I think the “comments” link at the end of the posts would be nice since the users need to scroll up to click on the name of the post to comment now…
I like it. I registered. I just view your posts through Google Reader more often than not though.
I like it. Good job. I’ve seen your Blog upgraded over the years. U R DA MAN!
You can never stop amazing me, you are a brand in the blogosphere.You know what? I say kudos to you. This theme is amazing. I wonder how much chitika pays you for this conspicuous ad on here. You are a guru.
I love the new design, Shoe. Especially with the latest comment being featured in your home page.
Sweet. Love the new design. I know you’re always changing things and pushing the limits on advertising but the background ads are a bit much imo. I bet Chitika paid a pretty penny.
I actually prefer these kind of ads than a 728×90 leader board or a 250×250.
Cool Design!
New layout looks great.
Comments are a double edged sword. They drive traffic to your site because they create content, but they also take traffic away from your site. They also seem to increase page rank too, if page rank is important any more.
It looks the same for me. I don’t notice any changes.
Real cool. However, I do oppose on selling advertising on the background (chitika). It makes this blog then a ‘chitika branded site”..
Other than that all’s been totally cool..
I don’t know, I kind of got used to the old design. I find that sites with white backgrounds run faster somehow. maybe its just in my head. the new outside borders looked like they would be “clickable” but they are not. makes you wanna hunt down chitika on google, instead of here. make it clickable
I love the new look, it has a really nice feel to it.
The new theme is awesome. Care to reveal the designer company who did it ?
one more thing. Why isn’t the logo clickable ? I always click on the logo of a website to go to it’s homepage and I’m sure most of the internet users do as well.
Contents can help you be visited by internet users. But there is other factor that you must take into account in order to generate more and more traffic.
Having a site doesn’t stop there. You must have a site that can attract the interest of internet users for them to come and visit your site. One good way for you to attract internet users is through having appealing site with the help of blog themes.
Nice layout but font selection is not so good.
I agree. I like the new site layout, the icons, etc…, but the font you used for “shoemoney” in the header looks like it’s from 2001.
So many great news |:
i´me liking the new comments layout, seems cool. Just a suggestion, the visitors could click in a arrow that would hide the gravatar and the “Don´t be a sheep, speak your mind” and increase the comment text fields. xD
As long we don´t know your actual monthly profit, i don´t know if the quantity you would earn in that store would make any difference but stills a great new
Really cool.The idea of viewing the latest comment on the home page is good. Love the theme
I have to say, the new layout is gorgeous, and we’ve seen a ton of traffic thanks to the background image. This should be a must-have for anyone who wants to advertise here. We’re thrilled to have been able to get this!
Dan Ruby
Chitika Director of Marketing
Is it possible to add a link in a Marketplace ad?
where am i? you changed a lot…
Just noticed…
The header graphics are partly hidden by the menu when not logged in..
Is it possible to have an rss of the marketplace?
Personally, I love this theme better than any other theme at the moment! The commenting features are A+! It is definitely a good idea, and the registration option will really help both the visitors and you. Best of luck!
I love the theme and I can’t wait to see the results for the changes you’re going to implement, a blog or a website that looks the same for years it’s getting boring.
Восхитительно, добавил в букмаки.
VeryGood. Thanks!
I am sure it does show your concern, which I appreciate as a blogger & it also helps you understand your readers better. It’s a great gesture on your behalf.
I would love to know the impact of these details on your plan of action.
I like the new theme! Please keep up the good work.