Written on July 8th, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 12:07 am by Darren Rowse

What would I do different if I had to start my blog over? - Theron Parlin

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 11 comments

200606222142-2The following is an answer from Theron Parlin from Thought Mechanics responding to my one question interview question of what he’d do differently if he had to start his blog over again.

When I started blogging, I was a bit neurotic.

It was like I had O.C.D. and couldn’t settle on a blog, so I ended up starting a bunch of them. I started with theronparlin.com, then went on to projecttalk.us, then bionicjive.org, then I tried blogger, then went back to theronparlin.com, then setup thoughtmechanics.com , then I closed it, then I opened it again, etc, etc.

Needless to say, it was a rocky road of unreliable behavior. If I had to do it all over again, I would pick a blog and stick with it for the duration. Had I done that from the start, I would be way ahead of the game now.

Read the responses of other bloggers to this 1 Question Interview on what they’d do differently in their blogging

Written on July 7th, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 08:07 am by Aaron Brazell

Flat Fee Advertising All That’s Left?

Advertising, General 27 comments

If you go by the story from SEOMoz, there’s too much fraud in the advertising arena and the only format that makes sense for advertisers is flat-rate models such as Text Link Ads (aff).

The post writer, Michael Martinez, cites a staggering fact that 14% of clicks in the click-through variety of advertising is fraudulent. I don’t know where he got his numbers, but I have no reason to doubt that they are accurate.

I’ve thought for some time that contextual advertising is dead, and I see the argument about impression based advertising. But could his prediction be true? I sure hope not.

Written on July 7th, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 02:07 am by Aaron Brazell

College-Startup for Sale!

Blog News 19 comments

College Startup is a wonderful little blog that I was turned onto some time ago by Darren. Since then, it has been a notable little item in my Bloglines account which was where today I found out that its owner, Ben Bleikamp, has decided to sell. The auction is being held over at the SitePoint Marketplace and he is taking bids. Opening bids start at $1000 with a Buy it Now of $6500.

This really is a gem of a website and if I had the cash I’d make him the offer he can’t refuse. Hopefully, someone else will find the value in this site and give him the offer he can’t refuse.

Written on July 7th, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 01:07 am by Darren Rowse

What would I do different if I had to start my blog over? - Hugh MacLeod

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 11 comments

200606222142-3The following is an answer from Hugh MacLeod from Gaping Void responding to my one question interview question of what he’d do differently if he had to start his blog over again.

OK, the question “What would I have done differently” is a toughie. I have found blogging a blast pretty much since the day I started. So I dont exactly look back on it with any big pang of regret.

I think there’s one mistake I always make, and a lot of people do the same: writing “something that is not unique”. I still do it far too often.

By this I mean, there are two basic types of blog posts:

1. “Generic“. The kind of blog post that could have been written by anyone [”Scoble quits Microsoft. Everybody is talking about it” etc].

2. “Unique“. The kind of blog post that could only have been written by yourself. Your own, unique, twisted inner voice shining through. Those are far more rare, and far harder to write.

So overall, I’d say my main regret is spending so much time cranking out “generic” posts, when the energy would’ve been better spent just on “unique” posts. But that is as true today as it was 3 or 4 yers ago.

Read the responses of other bloggers to this 1 Question Interview on what they’d do differently in their blogging

Written on July 7th, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 12:07 am by Darren Rowse

What would you do differently if you had to start your blog again? - One Question Interview Series

enternetusers Site News 18 comments

200606222142

I’ve been interviewed on quite a few occasions by other bloggers and podcasters in the past 12 months and there is one question I get asked time and time again:

‘What would you do differently if you had to start your blog again?’

It’s actually a good question in my mind and is one that I’ve used myself from time to time when in conversation with more experienced bloggers and webmasters.

As a result when I was thinking about a series of posts that I could run while I take a couple of weeks off as paternity leave I thought it would make a great ‘one question interview’ series.

So I quickly emailed 30 or so fellow bloggers (mainly longer term and fairly experienced ones) and asked them to have a go at answering the question. I told them they could answer it with one line or an essay and could tackle it any way they wish.

The answers have rolled in over the past couple of weeks since I sent the request. Some have had said that they have too much on their plates to participate, a few others have not responded - but what will follow over the next two weeks will be the replies of those who responded.

Some loved the question, others found it harder to answer. Some submitted two or three versions before being happy with what they’d written while others sent one liners. Hopefully the results when read together will help those of us in the start-up phase of new blogs to not make the mistakes of those who’ve gone before us.

If you didn’t get one of my emails asking for you to participate - please don’t be offended. I was pretty random with who I sent them to and just because I didn’t officially ask you to participate doesn’t mean I don’t want you to. In fact consider this your official invitation!

What would YOU do differently if you had to start your blog again?

Tell us in comments below or write your own post and think leave a URL below. I was going to make this an official enternetusers Group Writing Project but I won’t be around to collate all the links - so we’ll leave it as an unofficial one. I’m looking forward to reading your answers on my return.

But in the mean time - over the next couple of weeks you’ll see the responses of my interviewees - I hope you enjoy them.

update: See the responses of those I interviewed here.

Written on July 6th, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 05:07 pm by Darren Rowse

enternetusers Junior comes out of Beta Testing

enternetusers Site News 137 comments

Just a short note on a quick dash home from the hospital to let readers know that ‘Mini-Rowse’ or ‘enternetusers Junior’ as some are calling him came out of beta in the early hours of this morning.

His name is Xavier and he and V are doing really well.

Here’s a shot of us taken just minutes after he was born.

(He’s 8 pounds and 13 ounces - just a touch over 4kg)

enternetusers-Junior

There’s another photo below for those who are clucky.

It was an amazing experience and I could not be prouder of either X or V - both are beautiful beyond belief and I can’t wait to get back to the hospital to spend more time with them.

As a result enternetusers swings into ‘Paternity Leave Mode’. Here’s how it’ll work:

  • Regular enternetusers columnist, Aaron Brazell, will be writing some guest posts over the coming two weeks
  • I’ve advanced posted a series of short ‘one question interviews’ with some bloggers that I admire (see the upcoming post explaining this) - these will run on a once per day basis for two weeks
  • There will probably be one or two other guest posts this week from another blogger (or two) who has volunteered to stop by
  • I won’t be responding to any emails over the next couple of weeks (unless I see them as urgent)

I hope you enjoy the next couple of weeks - I know I’m looking forward to it! :-)

enternetusers-Junior-2

Written on July 5th, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 06:07 am by Darren Rowse

More of Page Views

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 22 comments

Chris over at Performancing has a good post on the topic of Do You Have a Post View Problem? where he comments on the fact that many blogs have a fairly low page view count per visitor.

He gives some reasons why this might be the case:

  • “Homepage-centric navigation where all the action is on the first page you visit. Browsing the homepage lets you see all the new stuff. If you return every day then there is no need to click any deeper.
  • Defaulting to full post rather than snippets. If you switch to partial content as teasers you force the reader to click through to see the rest of the post, only you can decide if it is worth it as some visitors might not like the change.
  • Success of RSS. If your readers tend to read the RSS rather than visit the blog you will only get post views on those posts where the RSS user has to click through.”

He then gives a few ideas on how to keep page views higher. If you’re looking for more similar tops you might find my post on how to increase page views on your blog also.

Written on July 5th, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 12:07 am by Darren Rowse

WordPress Plugins that Target Search Engine Traffic

Blogging Tools and Services 29 comments

A couple of weeks ago one of my fellow b5media directors or bloggers (I can’t remember which) sent me a link to a WP plugin that they thought looked pretty cool. I didn’t have time to really look into it at the time but today have decided to give it a go here at enternetusers.

It’s a plugin that very few of you (as regular readers) will notice in action - but is one that new readers coming from Search Engines will hopefully benefit from.

The plugin is Landing Sites 1.3 by The Undersigned.

This plugin shows visitors who have arrived on the blog a special welcome message and some suggested posts that relate to the search that they’ve done to get to the blog just above the post that they’ve landed on itself.

The best way to illustrate it is to go to Google and do a search for “How to Surf blog traffic Tsunamis” - then click on the link to enternetusers.net (it should be the #1 result). This will take you to one of my individual posts that has a list of 5 suggested posts just above my post.

Another WP plugin that does a similar thing is the MoreMoney plugin which I discovered today after spotting it on Weblog Tools Collection. MoreMoney also senses when a visitor comes from a search engine and lets you include a number of things to them including a welcome message or advertising (for example you might want to put in an AdSense ad that will only be seen by SE visitors but not your regular readers.

I’m yet to try out MoreMoney but the Landing Sites plugin does seem to be working well as I’ve already noticed a slight increase in the number of page views per visitor. The obvious benefit of Landing Sites is that it drives traffic deeper into your blog.

This plugin will of course work best with blogs that do get search engine traffic - blogs that are yet to get ranked in SE’s might want to install it for that time that they do but they’re not really going to get much benefit from it in the short term.

Written on July 4th, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 12:07 am by Darren Rowse

Google Pages Allows AdSense Ads

Adsense 12 comments

Some publishers using Google Pages have today received an email from AdSense telling them that they are now able to use AdSense in the pages that they create. Here’s the email those of us who got the email got:

We’re happy to let you know that Google Page Creator is now compatible with AdSense. Please feel free to add the AdSense code to your Page Creator web pages. If you don’t know how to implement the AdSense code with Google Page Creator, please follow the instructions below:

1. Log into your AdSense accoun t at www.google.com/adsense

2. From the AdSense Setup tab, customize and generate your AdSense code

3. Copy the generated code from the ‘Your AdSense code’ box

4. Log into your Google Page Creator account

5. Select the web page you’d like to dis play AdSense ads

6. Select the field where you’d like the ads to appear

7. Click ‘Edit HTML’

8. Paste the AdSense code in the HTML source code of the page

9. Save your updated web page

10. Publish your web page

After taking the steps above, your ads should appear shortly. If you have trouble implementing the Ad Sense code onto your web page, please feel free to respond to this email.

Good luck,

The Google AdSense Team

Of course I’m not really using Google Pages these days so won’t be giving it a go but if you’re a Pages publisher and give it a go let us know how it works for you.

Written on July 3rd, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 02:07 pm by Darren Rowse

Gawker Blog Network Reshuffles

Blog Networks, Pro Blogging News 16 comments

Nick Denton has a fascinating post regarding a restructuring of the Gawker blog network - it’s called Battening down and in it Nick outlines some of the changes Gawker is making (ending two blogs and reshuffling staff on four others.

The reasons for the changes are five-fold:

  • Decreases in Advertising
  • Increases in Operational costs
  • Despite Cross Promotional Attempts traffic wasn’t sticking on some blogs
  • Difficulty in turning around a title (they are either hits or flops and the die is cast early on)
  • Desire to shake things up a little and get out of ‘comfortable habits’

The two blogs that are ending are up for sale (they are Sploid and Screenhead).

Also a number of bloggers are leaving Gawker, others are reshuffling to new positions and a a few new bloggers are joining to head up and write for different blogs.

It’ll be interesting to see what impact the reshuffle has on the Gawker empire.

Update: The NYT has an article on the reshuffle also.



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