3+4 Tips for the Traveling Blogger

By Randy R on October 5, 2007 in Blogs

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Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up. (Ernest Hemingway)

When you travel, your blog doesn’t have to be the last thing on your mind. Make it your first and take your readers on a journey with you. Whether you’re going on a hectic business trip or a casual vacation, here are a few ways to bring your blog along for the ride.

View every new experience as a potential blogging topic. People you meet, sights you see, foods you eat, observations about the local culture, noteworthy events during the trip… the list goes on. Totally everything you experience on your trip has the potential to be a new blog post. With each new experience, just ask yourself, “Would my readers like to hear about this?”

Share the sights. Whether through photos or video, nothing adds a feeling of authenticity and connectedness more than a few visuals of your trip. Carry along a digital camera, snap a few shots with your picture phone, or just pick up a $5 disposable camera. Your readers will appreciate the opportunity to see the world from your perspective.

Add personality through anecdote. Even if your travel experiences aren’t suited to your blog’s topic, an anecdote is a great way to frame the context of your writing. It gives a sense of realism that helps readers relate with you and promotes conversation. You can spin the anecdote into a relevant point, casually mention it as an aside, or make it a full-blown post like a true pajama blogger. However you do it, your readers will be able to think of you more as a person than as a faceless voice in cyberspace.

Of course, finding content on the road is the simple part; actually blogging while you travel is often much more difficult. Here are a few tips to make blogging on the go a breeze.

Seize every opportunity to blog. Depending on the circumstances of your trip, you might have a lot of free time or virtually none at all. Be sure to set aside what time you can to fill your blogging quota. Time spent in transit (e.g., sitting on the bus or a plane) is especially good for this purpose. If you don’t mind eating at the same time, meals are also a great opportunity to fit blogging into a busy travel schedule.

Keep your laptop charged at all times. If you’ve got one, a laptop is ideal for blogging on the go. It won’t do you a lot of good, though, if it doesn’t have any juice. Be sure to keep the battery charged. If possible, bring along a spare battery or two just in case.

Don’t be afraid to use pen and paper. You might or may not have access to a personal on your trip. As it turns out, though, it’s possible to manually etch your writing onto paper with a stylus. I know it sounds crazy, but it actually works. Sure, you can’t actually post to your blog, and there’s no automatic spell check, but you can always take care of those details later. The important thing is to write, so don’t be afraid to break out a pen and paper when the need arises.

Use a voice recorder for notes on the go. Credit for this tip goes to my friend Adam Schultz over at Lagers and Loungers. While sampling beer at an Atlanta bar, he noted his reviews into the voice recorder on his phone. Sure, he looked a bit silly, but he got all the notes he needed for a thorough review in a matter of minutes.

Blogging Questions & Answers 1

By Randy R on October 5, 2007 in Blogs

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Welcome to the first edition of the “Blogging Questions & Answers.” I will kick it with 10 questions every Wednesday, so if your question was not answered today it will be next week. If the volume of questions increase I might change it to 20 questions answered each week.

You can ask your question either by leaving a comment on this post or via the contact form. Here we go!

Patrix asks:

Should we be worried about supplemental results? Mine seem to oscillate wildly and at times, remedial measures produce the opposite effects.

You should be worried if a huge part of your content is in the supplemental index. Pages in the supplemental index get spidered less often, and they only appear in search results for very narrow search queries. If a large part of your content is in supplemental index you should run a check-up on your blog to ensure that it is not coming from duplicate content penalties or other problems that Google might find while indexing your blog.

You mentioned that remedial measures might produce the opposite effect. My advice would be to eliminate duplicate content, to improve the internal linking structure and and to keep working on quality backlinks.

Webd360 asks:

Was there a specific blog or person that inspired you to start blogging, or did you just find out about it and decided to give it a try?

Late in 2005 I already had a small blog running. I had my own domain, and it was using the Blogger platform. Basically I was posting articles that I used on my economics degree, and the traffic was minimal.

After a couple of months I came across an article titled “How to Make Money from Your Blog,” written by Steve Pavlina. After reading this article I said to myself, “Damn, I think I can do it.” That is how I started blogging seriously.

Aseem Kishore asks:

\nDid you feel your web site had the sandbox effect? Are there certain times after which your traffic suddenly increases (certain number of months, etc)?

Although I am pretty sure I passed through a “sandbox” period, I did not notice it. Mainly because I was not anticipating organic traffic in the initial months, so it felt pretty natural.

I guess the only case where the sandbox effect would be noticeable is for a website that used some “shady” techniques and was held in the sandbox for a longer period. Should this website fix the problems it would suddenly receive a burst of organic traffic.

Health asks:

\nCan my site be sandboxed or punished in any way by search engines if it gets like 500 links in 1 day?

It depends on how old your site is, and on how many quality backlinks it already has. Getting 500 links in 1 day would not be a problem for an established or popular website. It could raise suspicion, however, if a site that got indexed yesterday by Googled suddenly receive these 500 links.

Overall I would not recommend mass buying links or directory submissions. If you still want to do it, however, do it gradually.

Fred asks:

How many daily visitors do you think you need to get in order to make decent money with Adsense?

It depends on three factors: what is the niche of the site, where the visitors are coming from, and what you think about to be decent.

The niche will affect how many cents or dollars you get per click. If your website is inside niche that pays well (college education, gambling, and so on) and your keywords are optimized, you could be getting as much as two or three dollars per click. That means that you would need less visitors to make a decent revenue from Adsense.

Where the visitors are coming from will influence the click-through rate (CTR), which is how often an average visitor clicks on the Adsense unit. Sites that get a big percentage of their traffic from search engines tend to perform better than sites that get mostly repeat visitors (because they become blind to the ads). The more organic (from search engines) traffic you have, the fewer visitors you will need to make a decent money with Adsense.

Finally, it depends on what you call decent. If you are aiming for $1,000 monthly from Adsense I think you would need around 3000 one-of-a-kind visitors daily (considering an average paying niche, average organic traffic and a not too aggressive ad positioning).

Costa Fong asks:

I see you have good sponsors to your blog. When will be a good time for a blog to get sponsors and how do you approach them?

Before approaching direct sponsors you need to make sure that you have some things in place, like a clean and professional looking design, a popular website, and a focused audience. There are no definite numbers here, but as a rule thumb I would state that you need at least a couple thousand daily visitors or RSS subscribers in order to offer a good exposure to the sponsors.

Once you have that in place you can start working on finding the advertisers. The first place is your blog itself. Write about the fact that you are offering sponsorships, and create an “Advertise Here” page with an overall description of the advertising options.

Initially it is probable that you will need to find the sponsors and not the other way around. Make a list of companies that have products related to your niche. Check companies that are already spending money with Google AdWords or other forms of on the web advertising. After that just contact them directly offering the sponsorship.

I’ve written a pretty detailed article on this topic titled “How to Find Advertisers for Your Website: The Ultimate Guide,” check it out for more information.

Warrior Blog asks:

It is more important to get just lots of traffic to your website or to get more comments on your website?

It depends on your objectives. If you are trying to build a community, for example, the number of comments would be important. People often use communities to test ideas, to exchange favors and to develop projects collaboratively.

If you are trying to build a popular website or to make money on the web, however, traffic is more important. Take a look at some very popular tech blogs like Engadget or Gizmodo. The have a very few readers commenting. Yet you probably know how much money they make…

engtech asks:

I’d love to see a getting started guide for blog monetization for people who have been running in “stealth” mode and already built up traffic, backlinks, search engine ranking, and a community.

This is topic for a whole article! A short advice would be to integrate the ads slowly and test the reactions from the readers (you probably knew that). Secondly, I would also focus the PPC ads towards older posts, so that your organic traffic is targeted and not your loyal readers.

Max asks:

How Long did it take till you had a good number of very special visit

ors per day?

If I remember correctly the traffic was slow for the first two months, and then it started picking up. Around the third month I was receiving 1,000 one-of-a-kind visitors daily, and that is a good number for me (at least it gave me motivation to keep working on the blog).

Ben asks:

Have there been any studies to find out which blogging platform is the ideal or is it all subjective? In other words, is WordPress superior than movable type, blogger and the rest. Any place that has an objective list of the pros and cons of each? Does it really matter which platform you use?

Yes, there are many reviews and comparisons of the two platforms. Here are two examples:
\nhttp://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=167839
\nhttp://www.webmaster-source.com/2007/07/03/wordpress-vs-movable-type/

The platform is somewhat important. Even though there are some very popular blogs using Movable type, WordPress is becoming the de fact standard platform. That means that more people use it, more people create plugins and extensions for it, and more people offer support and help with it.

I would not think twice before choosing WordPress over Movable Type.\n

Top 25 Web Design Blogs

By Randy R on October 5, 2007 in Blogs

The “Top 25 Blogs” is becoming a trademark around here. We have already created the “Top 25 Blogs About Blogging” and the “Top 25 SEO Blogs.” Now it is time to cover the web design niche.

I have a lot of fun compiling these lists because it allows me to discover a bunch of new blogs, most of them with excellent content. It is also interesting to see how the different blogs on a specific niche perform under the parameters. Once again we based the analysis on Google’s Pagerank, Alexa rank, Bloglines subscribers and Technorati authority. The details about the algorithm can be found below the table.

		$\"Google$	$\"Alexa$	$\"Bloglines$	$\"Technorati$	$\"Total$
#1	A List Apart	8	10	10	10	38
#2	Smashing Magazine	6	10	10	10	36
#3	456 Berea Street	7	8	10	8	33
#4	Meyer Web	8	7	9	7	31
#5	Simple Bits	7	7	10	6	30
#6	Pearsonified	7	6	7	10	30
#7	Tutorial Blog	5	8	7	8	28
#8	CSS Beauty	7	8	7	5	27
#9	Snook.ca	7	7	7	6	27
#10	Bartelme Design	7	6	9	4	26
#11	The Man in Blue	7	5	10	3	25
#12	Andy Budd	8	3	10	4	25
#13	Particle Tree	6	6	8	5	25
#14	Warpspire	7	4	3	10	24
#15	Brian Gardner	6	7	1	10	24
#16	Sitepoint Design Blog	6	10	4	4	24
#17	The Undersigned	7	3	3	10	23
#18	Bitt Box	5	7	5	6	23
#19	Fadtastic	5	3	5	10	23
#20	Colour Lovers	0	9	5	8	14
#21	David Airey	4	7	3	8	22
#22	Design Meltdown	5	6	7	4	22
#23	Clagnut	7	3	8	3	21
#24	Dev Lounge	6	6	4	5	21
#25	Smiley Cat	6	4	7	3	20

Blogs considered: the list thinks about only blogs that have a high percentage of web design related content.

Google Pagerank (0 to 10): the actual Pagerank was used on the algorithm.
\n
\nAlexa Rank (0 to 10): Ranges were determined based on the Alexa Rank (i.e., 150k and up, 150k-100k, 100k-75k, 75k-50k) and each range was assigned a number

(1 to 10).

Bloglines Subscribers (0 to 10): Subscriber ranges were determined (i.e., 1-50, 50-100, 100-150, 150-200) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 10).
\n
\nTechnorati Authority (0 to 10): Ranges were determined based on Technorati’s Authority rank (i.e., 1-100, 100-200, 200-400,400-600) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 10).\n

Notify Unconfirmed Subscribers Plugin

By Randy R on October 5, 2007 in Blogs

If you have been offering email subscription for a while, you probably have a pile of subscribers that have not confirmed their subscription. Emailing these inactive subscribers individually might be worth it, but it is certainly also tedious.

In order to solve this problem Keith from Techie-Buzz decided to code a wordpress plugin, the Notify Uncorfirmed Subscribers (NUS).

Basically you need to provide your Feedburner login details and the plugin will fetch all the unconfirmed subscribers. After that you create a custom message, and the plugin will send it to all the inactive subscriber.

If you want a guide on how to write that custom message you can check this post I had written some time ago on the same topic.\n

WordPress 2.3

By Randy R on October 1, 2007 in Internet Marketing

I’m thrilled to announce that Version 2.3 “Dexter” of WordPress is now ready for the world. This release includes native tagging support, plugin update notification, URL handling improvements, and much more. This release is named for the great tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon.\n\nThe entire team is really proud of this release, and I’m happy that this is our second on-time release under our new development schedule. The grand experiment of a more agile WordPress with significant features in the hands of users more often is working. I could write a blog post about each new feature, but I’ll try to be brief:\n\n 1. Native tagging support allows you to use tags in addition to categories on your posts, if you so choose. We’ve included importers for the Ultimate Tag Warrior, Jerome’s Keywords, Easy Tags, and Bunny’s Technorati Tag plugins so if you’ve already been using a tagging plugin you can bring your data into the new system. The tagging system is also wicked-fast, so your host won’t mind.\n 2. Our new update notification lets you know when there is a new release of WordPress or when any of the plugins you use has an update available. It works by sending your blog URL, plugins, and version information to our new api.wordpress.org service which then compares it to the plugin database and tells you whats the latest and greatest you can use.\n 3. We’ve cleaned up URLs a bunch in a feature we call canonical URLs which does things like enforce your no-www preference, redirect posts with changed slugs so a link never goes bad, redirect URLs that get cut off in emails on similar to the correct post, and much more. This helps your users, and it also helps your search engine optimization, as search engines like for each page to be available in one canonical location. More info here.\n 4. Our new pending review feature will be great for multi-author blogs. It grants authors to submit a post for review by an editor or administrator, where before they would just have to save a draft and hope someone noticed it.\n 5. There is new advanced WYSIWYG functionality (we call it the kitchen sink button) that grants you to access some features of TinyMCE that were previously hidden.\n\nYou’ll notice that two of those features are straight out of the most-voted for ideas list. That’s just the user facing stuff, if you’re a developer you’ll be interested in:\n\n 1. Full and complete Atom 1.0 support, including the publishing protocol.\n 2. We’re using the new jQuery which is “800% faster.”\n 3. Behind the user-facing tags system is a really kickass taxonomy system, which adds a ton of flexibility. It’s probably the biggest schema upgrade since version 1.5.\n 4. The importers have been revamped to be more memory efficient, and you can now add an importer through a plugin.\n 5. Through hooks and filters you can now override the update system, the dashboard RSS feeds, the feed parser, and tons more than you could in 2.2.\n 6. The new $wpdb->prepare() way of doing SQL queries.\n 7. Finally there were over 351 tickets in Trac closed for this release, with over a hundred people contributing. This is the polish, the hundreds of little bug fixes and features that make WordPress what it is.\n\n

Value of a Blog

By Randy R on September 30, 2007 in Internet Marketing

blogging seems to be all the rage now. Many of these are personal blogs, where people just give their views on various topics. Others, however, are business blogs. blogs can let more people find your site, as there will be more content for the search engines to pick up on. And they will be more likely to stick around, as you have interesting content.

The first thing you will need to do is pick someone to write your business blog. It needs to be someone who writes well and knows about your business. In some cases, those may not be the same person. Often, in very small businesses, the owner is the only employee. If that is you, it\’s possible that while you do not write extremely well, you do know a lot about your business. If that is the case, you might try a system where someone else proofreads your blog and corrects and slightly rephrases things where they could be improved.

The next think you will need to decide on is what your subject matter will be about. In some types of businesses, it is appropriate for the blog to be slightly more personal in nature. If you are marketing to high school and/or college students, they would be more interested in local events than they would in the details behind your latest business partnership.

Another option is to blog to keep clients and others updated on where you are in various projects or what inventory you have gotten in. For a golf store, you might keep your clients up to date on when you are expecting a new line of golf clubs.

A third option is like my own blog, where you give advice that will help others, regardless of whether they are your clients/customers or not. On my blog, I try to make sure that you don\’t have to have a lot of technical expertise to use my advice. I don\’t blog about how to write HTML. Instead, I blog about the types of features you can have on a site and whether it would be to your advantage to use those features. It\’s general advice that can be applied to websites whether the reader has a working knowledge of HTML or pays someone else to do that.

I\’ve found that my blog (and it\’s accompanying monthly printed newsletter that\’s basically the \”best of\” the blog entries from the previous month) seems to increase my perceived credibility and my approachability. And to get new clients and customers in the door, perceived credibility and approachability is what you need. To keep them, you will need actual credibility and good communication, so hopefully you have both.

You can also publish your blog entries to sites like ezinearticles.com or goarticles.com and include a link to your site, which is what I do. Then other sites will also publish your articles, but they have to include those links to your site also.

Personally, I post on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I think that any less frequently would be a waste of time. And remember, in addition to making sure the entries will pull in new visitors from search engines, also make sure the article is useful to them. If you are a good writer and write on the types of subjects you mentioned, you\’ll do well.

About the Author

Tim is the owner and senior web designer at T&S Web Design. His company has developed and maintained website for dozens of small businesses and organizations. Tim also maintains a blog with free website advice for small business owners, GetASiteOnline.com.

Auto Parts Online Blog Keeping Up With the Latest

By Randy R on September 29, 2007 in Internet Marketing

As the old adage goes, \”There is nothing permanent in this world but change.\” And yes, it is very much true. Oftentimes, when there is a time to take the leap and make a change, it is a very risky decision for one easy reason. Changing could actually cause something to rise to success or it could also be the cause of its downfall. Many people, companies, and businesses have tried that out as part of their strategies and it would be interesting to note that they are actually living testimonials of dealing with change.

To deal and keep up with the various changes going on in the globe as well in the car and automobile world, Auto Parts On the internet continuously keeps itself updated. By doing such, this on the web store and company is able to bring up to date its categories of auto parts and accessories.

Auto Parts On the internet is one of the leading suppliers of car parts and vehicle accessories on the world wide web. It has been in service and in existence for more than twenty five years. It holds a wide collection of parts that include hard to find auto parts and truck parts. Aside from providing easy access and an easier shopping experience for customers and car owners, Auto Parts On the internet also provides important trivia, tidbits, and facts regarding various vehicles, automobiles, and auto parts.

To add up and support this online store\’s function of providing information, it has launched a blog that would provide customers, visitors, enthusiasts, aficionados, and guests further and in depth news and ideas on the realm of automobiles, automobiles, and cars. Any new broadcasts in their line of field and business would be posted and updated on the Auto Parts On the internet blog. Further awareness and information would be the main function that this online blog would serve and adhere to. Any breakthroughs, news, events, or recalls would also be posted. As long as something is noteworthy, you could be sure that you would be able to read it from the Auto Parts Online blog.

One of the latest news you can find at the Auto Parts On the web blog is about a new way for drivers of any kind of car or automobile to communicate with each, not just through honking their horns, flicking on their light signals, or the very seldom use of hand and arm gestures. The latest news that has reached the Auto Parts On the internet blog is that there has been a revolutionary and innovative design and creation that would give drivers the chance to communicate with each other not just through signals and signs but with words as well. This would be done so through the use of innovative LED displays. To find out more, interested parties and individuals can simply access the Auto Parts Online blog.

Auto Parts Online remains committed to delivering better and up to date auto parts for different vehicle types and brands. And just like that, the Auto Parts On the internet blog will also continue on keeping up with its commitment in delivering worthy and up to date news and features regarding anything and everything in and about the world of cars.

About the Author

Jenny McLane is a 36 year old native of Iowa and has a knack for research on vehicles and anything and everything about it. She works full time as a Market Analyst for one of the leading car parts suppliers in the country this day.

Blogging for money: a fabulous freelance writing job?

By Randy R on September 27, 2007 in Internet Marketing

You have all seen the adverts. \”Freelance writers wanted!\” they scream from the pages of just about each freelance jobs site on the internet. \”Get paid to blog!\”

To many people, this sounds like some kind of dream job. If you keep a blog yourself (and google says that a few thousand of us do), then the chances are you are currently blogging for free, either because you see blogging as a good opportunity to drive traffic to your website, convert traffic that\’s already there into sales, or just because you feel you have something to say.

If this sounds like you, then of course you\’re going to jump at the opportunity to get paid for something you\’d do for free. Who would not? And if you\’re a freelance writer looking for work, you\’re probably going to jump at the opportunity to: you write, you make money. What could be simpler?

Well, the paid-to-blog business isn\’t quite that easy, unfortunately. You see, you are technically not being paid to blog. What you\’re doing is blogging on someone else\’s website, and being given a share of the google adsense profits your posts make – in most cases, 50% goes to you, the rest to the web page publisher.

Still sound good? It might well do. After all, on the world wide web, content is king. There\’s good money to be made from google adsense (the program whereby you displays google adverts on your website and are paid every time someone clicks on them). Isn\’t there?

Well yes, there is. But in order to make money from blogging on an adsense site, you\’re going to need to be able to do more than just write. First of all, you\’re going to have to be able to identify a niche to write in. This cannot be just any old niche, either: it has to be one which you can churn out content on, day in, day out – and content which people will want to read.

You also have to know how to drive traffic to the content you create. On the paid-to-blog sites, some of the traffic is already there: but in order to make real money from this type of writing, you will need even more traffic than that. Where are you going to get it? What do you know about internet marketing? About driving traffic to websites? What do you know about search engine optimisation? You will need knowledge of all of these things if you want to make money from blogging – and even if you have that knowledge, you will still need the energy and enthusiasm to blog every day.

Say you have all of that. What can you make?

Theoretically, there is no limit to what you make. There are people out there making a very nice living from blogs and adsense. There are even more people, though, who aren\’t making a cent. Realistically, you are much more likely to fall into that second group. So, is blogging for money a great freelance writing opportunity?

In a word, no. blogging networks are great places for people who\’d like to make a few dollars per month doing something they\’d happily do for free anyway, or for people looking for a lively blogging community to join. They are not for serious freelance writers who want to make a living wage from their writing.

Still want to make money from blogging? Find a corporate giant who needs someone to maintain their blog – and is willing to pay for it. Save the paid-to-blog network for your free time.

About the Author

Amber McNaught is the owner of WritingWorld.org, a site which aims to help freelance writers find freelance writing jobs

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