The other day I saw an article from ProBlogger talking about ‘using dedicated Bookmarks‘ [the-commonsense-time-saver-we-all-missed] to help get your job done faster. In their article, they talk about adding links to a links folder on your toolbar to sites or resources that you user regularly while you’re busy trying to write an article. It’s a handy idea indeed.
In fact, it’s good for two ideas… to keep your resources handy and to also help you stay focused on what you saved out that you want to write about… that is if you need tools or tricks to stay focused and avoid the ADD mode like I get.
I’ve taken this ‘resource bookmark’ idea a step further in my processes and use two different resources to help me either track ideas or inspiring articles for writing, or resources. I use Google Bookmarks to slam things into so I can go back to them, and I use my own custom home page. I’ve been using my own custom webpage since 1999. It’s faster, easier and you’re in total control of it.
Oh, wait, I have a third process I forgot about… I also retweet into one of my Twitter accounts and paste into my Facebook account interesting things to my followers. This is also like a bookmark system, but if I never get to it, then at least my followers have seen the info in some form. (Which is why you want to follow me on Twitter and Facebook… there’s much more content out on those accounts that never makes it to article form here on the site.)
[click to continue reading…]
Myths About Your Blog and SEO
On ProBlogger, guest contributor Onibalusi Bamidele talks about 10 myths about blogging that he says you must ignore in your day to day deeds while trying to crawl your way through the masses to the top of the charts in the world of blogging. It’s easy to do, but tough to tackle the nuances of the business if that’s what you want to try and do.
Here are some of the points he made and my interpretations, as I’ve learned so far from my experiences:
1 – Content is King… and only if your site has millions of hits! Edgar Allan Poe would have vanished into obscurity in this day of tricky titles and SEO tricks.
2 – Marketing is King… If it points to a decent blog. I’ve seen the underhanded marketing stunts out there and sure, they’re temporary gains in traffic, but you need substance to hang on to visitors. Even an honest blog can still have flighty traffic because the web surfer is always in a hurry. (Not blaming them… I am too!)
3 – Focus on Social Media… It’s fun, but if you don’t already have millions of fans, it can be a long, slow haul up the blog-chain. In short, Onibalusi says traffic generated from Google has more long-term value than that temp boost you’d get from Digg.#1
4 – On The Other Hand, Social Media is Useless… It is not completely useless. My Facebook page traffic is growing by almost 20% a week. Not those who like it… those who visit it. Those who “like” my page, seem to be falling into my business theorem annotated in footnote #1 below.
[click to continue reading…]
This is an observational consumer review of two website, blog hosting companies. I’ve used GoDaddy since 2005 for a few websites, and in January of 2010, I had transferred most everything to HostGator.
If anyone out there has been following any of my sites, you know they were all brought together under one banner web site. Various scenarios came together to make that happen, but the real motivator was how my different sites were being handled by my hosting company. As a consumer, I want the best service possible just like you would, and I wasn’t getting it.
I’m on HostGator and I have GoDaddy to thank for it.
[click to continue reading…]
If you’ve been blogging in the hopes of making extra income, but it isn’t coming together for you, Darren Rowse, the creator of ProBlogger, and Chris Garret, have put together a book that outlines what Darren calls ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. Many recognized the virtues of the material and the first edition sold out pretty fast. This is the 2nd edition of the how-to book that outlines the sound approach they’ve experienced getting their own online industries going.
The description of the book on Amazon is as follows:
Thousands of aspiring bloggers launch new blogs every day, hoping to boost their income. Without solid advice from experts, most will fail. This bestselling guide, now fully revised with new and updated tips and tricks from two of the world’s most successful bloggers, provides the step-by-step information bloggers need to turn their hobby into an income source or a fulltime career.
- Earning a solid income from blogging is possible, but tricky; this book details proven techniques and gives aspiring bloggers the tools to succeed
- Even novices will learn to choose a blog topic, analyze the market, set up a blog, promote it, and earn revenue
- Offers solid, step-by-step instruction on how bloggers make money, why niches matter, how to use essential blogging tools and take advantage of social media and content aggregators, what a successful blog post should include, how to optimize advertising, and much more
Written by two fulltime professional bloggers, the updated edition of ProBlogger tells you exactly how to launch and maintain a blog that makes money.
If you’re interested, check it out on Amazon: ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income.
Alexa rankings are a slice of the web population. Some focus on them as the end-all of statistics while others say that because the rankings are only from specific web surfers who have the Alexa Toolbar installed, that they don’t amount to much.
Maybe Alexa is just a slice of the humanity on the internet and the pragmatic perspective is that it’s a small, unimportant piece of the pie. But then some folks might have a disconnect they haven’t thought of. Nielsen Ratings! Wha? Nielsen Ratings are statistics derived from projection of a sampling of the viewing TV audience. There are an estimated 25,000 Nielsen families out there, amongst a U.S. population of en estimated 308,987,486 people. This is how TV RATINGS are set.
[click to continue reading…]
This is a fascinating experience of a product review that I’ve got to tell!
Up until recent months, I had 3 web sites that were rather stagnate in traffic growth. It was frustrating and at one point I was considering just giving up on blogging my own sites.
I also started having issues with GoDaddy with site load times. I didn’t think that you, my visitor, liked waiting 15 to 90 seconds for a small site to load up. Their inability to detect the issue drove me to another host provider. I found another host and moved but I couldn’t install plugins or add pictures. (Long story)
But after I moved, my web traffic increased by a factor of 10. Literally! I went from 1 to 10 visitors a month. Woo hoo! Not only did I get an instant increase in traffic, I had a very consistent growth slope! Things were getting fun. (See New Host point in time on image)
[click to continue reading…]
GoDaddy Girl Candice Michelle
If you use Godaddy.com’s services for domain registration or hosting, you know that when you sign up for these services, you are presented with a myriad of other services that you can use in conjunction with what you are ordering.
It can be mind boggling.
As an experienced web programmer, I found things like Website Tonight to be annoying. It’s great for the beginner. They give you everything you need, but as you grow in your programming, you might find the editorial restrictions I encountered incredibly annoying.
But that’s for another article. Today I want to talk about their Search Engine Visibility Tool.
It will run me about $30 to renew this service and I have to say that the service isn’t as much a service as it is a guidance of what you can do to get exposure.
[click to continue reading…]
When a Blogger runs a website, sometimes they monetize their blog. They do this for any number of reasons.
Mine is twofold:
I like pointing people to places they can possibly buy stuff they’ve been looking for. (IE: My Amazon links) Heck sometimes my own articles remind me of things I was wondering about.
The 2nd reason I monetize is to create supplemental income to help support the services that I pay for to do this.
I love blogging, but the time and money spent will break me unless I make enough to buy my beer and pay the recurring server, hosting and domain registration fees. At least it would be nice to see my hobby-writing support itself!
But to make funds, there are some fundamental premises in place.
[click to continue reading…]
I found a fascinating function of my new version of WordPress 2.9.1. They declare that it has a photo editor on board, and for all intent purposes, that is what it seems to be.
But what it really is, is just an appearance manipulator!
On one post I wrote the other day, [http://brusimm.com/2010/01/07/a-bit-about-jeff-gluck-nascar-fan-power-twitter/], I uploaded a photo, then cropped out what I wanted for the article.
And for all intent purposes, it looked like WordPress did just that. But if you click on the image in the post, the entire image shows up.
This tells me that all it’s doing is framing the image for a section to be seen. That also possibly means that when your site visitors load up your website, they’re not loading that cropped image you worked so hard on, but the entire image. That kills bandwidth in the long run if you “crop” a lot of images for your site.
Me, I’m sticking with cropping before upload so I know that my visitors aren’t using extra bandwidth that they don’t need to use.
Alert to all WordPress Users: WordPress 2.9.1 is out and in the wild! If you’ve made the tragic or fatal error of installing version 2.9 and have been cussing a lot lately, GO GET 2.9.1 and UPGRADE. upgrade yesterday! Or not!
To be honest, no one is at fault for the greivous existence I’ve lived over the last few weeks. S* happens!
Let’s see what my pain has been:
- Publishing, though successful, gave me a blank page in response.
- Adding links gave me a blank response page.
- My control panels would disappear from the right side.
- My right side columns would disappear.
- Images would load, but not center, if they showed up.
At times, if FireFox didn’t work, Internet Explorer would. If neither worked, then Google Chrome would work.
[click to continue reading…]
