USA TODAY Blogger & Podcaster Guide - Growing Pains
By: Larry
Last week was a very exciting one for us as we launched The Blogger & Podcaster Guide in USA TODAY. The guide is designed to expose our industry’s great content to mainstream America who isn’t familiar with how to easily find the kinds of blogs/podcasts that would interest them — think TV Guide for Blogs/Podcasts. Well all was peachy until the volume of traffic from usatoday.com homepage (where the guide is accessed) overwhelmed our servers. Our tech team is working with USA TODAY’s .com folks to remedy the situation.
For those of you signed up, no worries, we are not beginning your program until these bugs are worked out. All the exposure so far - and until we get this fixed - are on the house.
For those of you not signed up, who’d like to promote your blog or podcast to USA TODAY’s 10 million+ audience, the first month is on me. Here’s how you get registered:
1) Go to www.bloggerandpodcaster.com/usatoday
2) Select “New User” and go through 6 Step registration process
3) In “Step 2” be sure to enter ‘BP’ in Coupon Code box under Option #4. Then click “Option #4”. If you don’t enter this code, you’re going to be charged the regular price ($49.95 per month).
This will give you a month to test it out and see how it works for you without cost. Just remember to suspend your listing before 30 days or you’ll be billed for the next month.
- Larry
Publisher
Blogger & Podcaster Magazine
November 19th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Guys;
Love the concept, and signed up a couple weeks ago. However, I never received any notification and am unable to edit my listing. Can you please shoot me an email about this?
Cheers gang;
Jason/Insomnia Radio
November 19th, 2007 at 11:58 am
Jason,
One of the glitches we had when rushing to set up the registration is getting the auto-notification to work with email. I’m told it’s working now, but I went online and checked your listing and it is up…you can see it at http://www.bloggerandpodcaster.com/ut_listings.php?src=insomnia.
This will be on the USA TODAY as soon as we relaunch this week, and don’t worry none of this time is “counting” right now.
Larry Genkin
Publisher
Blogger & Podcaster Magazine
November 23rd, 2007 at 3:50 pm
I have watched the USA Today website and looked for articles with links to podcasts/blogs and have seen nothing mentioning a guide or links.
I did however see the print edition was published the first week.
Where can the guide be found on USAtoday.com and will they actually put links to podcasts and blogs with their articles?
November 24th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Just wanted to say thank you for this valuable new resource. As soon as I get back into the office I plan to sign up for the trial run (I have subscribed to the blog) and with the number of visitors you receive it should be a no brainer to anyone who wishes to advertise their blog/podcast here. I will be mentioning Blogger & Podcaster on my blogs today!
Wishing you much success in this new venture,
A USA TODAY Fan,
Heidi Richards, Founder & CEO – The WECAI Network - http://www.wecai.org
President & Chief Goddess – Eden Florist & Gift Baskets – http://www.edenflorist.com – We send flowers around the corner or around the world!
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, Check out the latest issue of WE Magazine for Women! http://www.wemagazineforwomen.com
November 24th, 2007 at 11:31 am
NB,
When we relaunch this coming week (hopefully putting these volume issues/tech difficulties behind us) you will find the Blogger & Podcaster Guide on http://www.usatoday.com in the “Marketplace” section at the bottom of the page. The contextual links program likely will not launch at the same time as we’re working with USA TODAY’s tech people to get our system to talk to theirs. Once it’s up and going what will happen is that links to blogs/podcasts that correspond to the content of a story someone is reading will appear on the page of that story. Readers will then be able to click into The Blogger & Podcaster Guide from the usatoday.com story page and see blogs/podcasts that are related to the subject at hand.
There’s a lot going on behind the scenes in making this work. Thanks for your patience. I think the wait will be worthwhile.
Larry Genkin
- Publisher
Blogger & Podcaster Magazine
November 26th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Hey, I got my notifications a few moments ago that my two submissions were listed. The scary thing is, my free trial from 11/7 is due in about 10 days. Did I lose 20 days of (free) value?
November 26th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Chuck (and everyone else receiving the same confirmation),
Disregard the dates on the notification. Your trial has not started yet because everytime we get up and running the volume crashes our server or our software. I’m told that this will be fixed (again) by tomorrow. We’ll see. In any event your 1 month trial won’t begin until everything is working properly. We’ll send you out a separate email detailing when that is. Until then just consider this all as bonus time.
Larry Genkin
Publisher
Blogger & Podcaster Magazine
November 26th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Thanks for the clarification Larry. We look forward to seeing the flood of USA Today listeners.
FWIW, I’m trying to find a way to sneak this new item in to the second edition of Podcasting for Dummies.
November 29th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
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