Let’s face it. If you have any interest in making money online then you will probably already be aware of this new reference site. It’s been discussed on many of the well known Internet marketing and blogging sites including ProBlogger, Andy Beard, eMoms at Home, Nate Whitehill and John Chow* and regardless of whether you think it’s a prime example of linkbait or not, it’s actually a great resource for anyone who wants to keep up to speed with the industry.
So the Top 100 Make Money Online Blogs list has proved to be something of a hit but how could it be improved?
Currently it uses Google PageRank, Technorati and Alexa ranks to score each site in the sector. Now as we all know, both Technorati and Alexa ranks are notoriously flaky so I’d like to see Mark go a step further and include other metrics such as RSS subscribers, backlink and social bookmarking data. All of this information can be found using sites like Xinu and I feel this would create a more accurate reflection.
Perhaps this additional data could then be seeded (i.e. PageRank outweighs Alexa, del.icio.us outweighs Technorati) and an overall score generated. That way it would prevent people from gaming the system by getting involved in link trains since they don’t know exactly what ingredients go into the pot.
Darren at ProBlogger also makes a very good suggestion that creating a mashup of all the feeds would be a great idea. In a lot of ways Maki at Dosh Dosh has already done this with the Dosh Dosh News so maybe the pair of them could work together on creating something.
Finally I think that the figure should be capped at 100. The list is currently showing 155 sites and I feel that this takes it away from being a legitimate resource to almost becoming a link fest. Any link juice is going to be diluted by having so many sites and, let’s be honest, how many people are going to realistically look that far down the list?
So all in all I think that Mark has come up with a great idea so a big thanks to him for all his hard work. I feel there are some areas where it could improve but overall it’s a thumbs up from me.
Oh, and before you ask, I’m currently #50 so I might have to start a link train before Mark changes the scoring mechanism 
* - I can’t believe I just linked to him! I think I need to wash my hands and then have a lie down…
4 responses so far ↓
Andy Beard // Sep 11, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Lol at the *
I am actually working on something similar with my own ranking and maybe a little more flexibility. Mark is pulling data using APIs, but what is reliable?
I don’t believe Delicious is necessarily reliable, as it favours sites that concentrate on publishing long lists of resources.
Feed data would be ok if everyone used Feedburner, but they don’t, and Bloglines really favors the older blogs.
Some kind of average could be taken between Alexa, Compete and Quantcast.
An aggregated feed could easily be make, but much better an OPML file that could just be plugged into megite who take a very short time making a new meme from it, I have one for my 900+ Technorati favorites
Backlink data is a bit of a mess on Yahoo and rarely reports the same or similar one day to the next, and social bookmarks? Which one?
I might have had as many fron page Sphinns as Problogger and John Chow put together, but I have never had a front page Digg - and those are all gamed as well.
Then you hit the problem of which data you can legitimately get without scraping.
At the end of the day it is a useful list. I love the one on Adage for marketing blogs, especially as I managed to bump my Bloglines subscribers up one point on their scale
45n5 // Sep 11, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Thanks a million for the detailed post, here’s some thoughts:
“whether you think it’s a prime example of linkbait or not, it’s actually a great resource”
linkbait and great content/resources are the same thing.
“I’d like to see Mark go a step further and include other metrics such as RSS subscribers, backlink and social bookmarking data”
Rss subscribers isn’t a universal metric, the majority of the list don’t provide this info.
backlinks are in the technorati metric, they are gamed the same as backlinks (ie when you are gaming technroati you are gaming backlinks) .
social bookmarking data is a potential for the future.
“The list is currently showing 155 sites and I feel that this takes it away from being a legitimate resource to almost becoming a link fest.”
sites above 100 won’t be included in the potential opml, aggregator, future features, etc. So their is still going to be value in the top 100. I’m showing more because I want people not int the top 100 to know how they rank.
Thanks again for the mention and feedback. The page is an evolution, I had to start somewhere
Cheers,
Mark
Mike // Sep 11, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Andy - I somehow feel a little bit…I dunno…soiled by linking to him….
Delicious isn’t necessarily an answer but my thoughts were that using the data available from a site like Xinu would give more power to the list rather than just using the current 3. Whilst the data might not be 100% accurate, everyone would be judged based on the same criteria.
I’ll be looking out for your project with great interest
Mark - Thanks for stopping by the leave some feedback straight from the horses mouth, so to speak…
I agree that linkbait and great content are the same hence the link. I didn’t mean anything malicious in the phrase
I think as a starting point it’s pretty darned good. It’s certainly got the sector buzzing and I imagine you’ve had a shedload of hits to the site as a result. I’m looking forward to see where you take it from here.
Thanks to both of you for stopping by.
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