Written on January 22nd, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 12:01 pm by Darren Rowse
How Long Have you Been Blogging?
This week’s Poll is a simple one and asks ‘How Long Have you Been Blogging?’
Feel free to make a comment on this poll and your answer below if you so desire.
Written on January 22nd, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 12:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Best Blog Award Award Awarded
Last week’s enternetusers poll took a tongue in cheek look at Blog Awards and asked readers to identify their favorite one.
The results were overwhelming on two front.
Firstly by the number of voters. While polls in previous weeks have had over 1000 respondents (sometimes in much shorter time periods) this week only 163 readers responded which gives an indication of how much interest there is by many bloggers in awards.
Secondly the actual results revealed that just over 50% of those who could be bothered to vote did so in the ‘I detest blog awards’ category with a further 14% voting for these very awards. I think that shows just how much the average voter likes awards.
Of the serious awards nominated by enternetusers readers the one that polled best was Best of Blogs (23 votes), followed by the Weblog Awards (12 votes) and the Bloggies (8 Votes) - although the numbers were so low that I’m not sure much can be drawn from the stats and interestingly these were the first three blogs listed in the poll (in the same order that they finished).
Anyway - here’s this week’s poll’s graph for what it’s worth.
Written on January 21st, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 11:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Chitika Tweak Reports Pages
It looks like Chitika. have updated the design of their stats pages in the last 24 hours - adding a new menu bar. This is in addition to the new options to view your statistics for specific date ranges.
Apart from this newer option to view stats by date range (a week old) the latest update is purely cosmetic as far as I can tell.
Written on January 21st, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 09:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Update of enternetusers Competition - Thousands of Dollars in Prizes Donated
After a very hot day here (41 degrees Celsius - 106 degrees fahrenheit) where it was just too hot to sit in front of a computer and blog (plus I was marrying another couple in an outdoor wedding in the heat of the day - crazy stuff) I have logged onto my email tonight to find that the response for my call for Prizes for a enternetusers competition has been overwhelming.
A massive thank you to all that have responded, at a guess your prizes must total up at a value that exceeds $2500 - and that’s just a conservative estimate).
In 24 hours there have been more prizes than I was expecting entrants in the competition and it’s caused em to pondering if perhaps I might need to re-assess the plans I had for the competition. If you’ve offered a prize and not heard from me yet, I’ll hope to get in touch with you in the next day or two (although tomorrow is going to be 43 degrees (110f) - and could hit 50 in front of my hot PowerMac ;-) ).
You’re welcome to continue offering prizes if you so desire - however I will say that I’m not sure I’ll be able to use them all and may end up saying thanks but no thanks (I hope I don’t offend anyone - I’ll attempt in my reassessing of the competition to expand it to use as many as possible). I particularly probably don’t need any more prizes that are hosting packages from the scan I’ve had of what’s been offered already. We probably already have enough Amazon gift vouchers also at this stage.
As I say - you are free to keep offering prizes though if you have something that might be suitable. I’m particularly looking for a couple of feature prizes for 1st place getters.
Stay tuned for more details of the competition. It may takes me an extra week to implement my bigger plans.
In the mean time - those who entered my domain naming competition will be happy to know that a winner has been selected. I’m now in the process of securing the domain (my host had some problems getting it today so hopefully it will be ours tomorrow) so I will announce the winner as soon as I can after that. I appreciate your patience.
Written on January 21st, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 09:01 am by Darren Rowse
Lessons from my Tomato Patch on Pruning ‘Sucker’ Blogs
Warning, Tangent Ahead - One of the best tips I’ve had in my new found hobby of growing vegetables is when it comes to growing Tomatoes (we currently have more than V and I can eat - so the tip is working).
The idea behind the tip is simple.
Tomato bushes grow fast in the right conditions and while they might start as a small seedling, left unchecked they will sprout out into all directions with new stems and can quickly become quite out of control and tangled. The result is that you end up with a very healthy looking bush - but because it is so large a lot of the energy that ideally should be being directed into growing fruit is wasted on growing leaves and stems and as a result your crop suffers.
The tip therefor is to look for ’suckers’ and to prune them.
A sucker is a little shoot that grows out between two stems that can grow out into yet another stem (see picture below). In pruning them you keep the number of branches down and the bush doesn’t get out of control. Suckers also suck the energy away from your bush’s ability to grow fruit.
When I first heard this advice from my green thumbed friend it seems a little strange - surely one would want a big bush - wouldn’t that produce more fruit than a smaller one?
I decided to do a bit of an experiment. I let one bush go crazy and didn’t prune the suckers while I too the advice and removed them on my other bushes.
The results speak for themselves….
I now have one out of control bush that stands taller than I do. It’s actually producing some fruit but is so out of control that it’s obvious that there is less tomatoes and that they are in worse condition and are smaller than what the other bushes are producing. The other problem with this unruly bush is that it’s got a lot of weight to it with so many branches and so yesterday (a hot windy day) it fell over and I lost a fairly large part of it and quite a few un-ripened tomatoes.
As per usual, as I worked on salvaging what was left of my sick tomato bush yesterday, my mind wandered to blogging and I began to ponder how pruning off ‘blog suckers’ might actually be something that bloggers might need to do from time to time.
Perhaps this is more a lesson for me as a blogger with multiple blogs - but I wonder if it might also be where others are at.
As I look at my blogs (I have quite a few) I can see that they have a range of performance levels. Some are doing fantastically in terms of traffic and earnings while there are others that even after many months only attract a handful of visitors per day and correspondingly make little money.
When I analyse how much time goes into these non performing blogs I realise that while I do spend a little less time on them, they do consume energy and time that I could be funnelling into more fruitful activities.
It’s easy to get to this position over time. You have hopes of your blogs being vibrant places of community around a topic - but some just never take off. You convince yourself that they just need more time, that maybe next time Google updates that things will click and you persist - all the time pouring energy into something that bears little fruit.
The advice I regularly give to bloggers is to persist over time. Good blogs do need to mature and can take years to get to a decent level - however there are also blogs (suckers) that are unlikely to ever succeed at anything other than distracting you from your more fruitful blogs.
I’m coming to a point where I’ll need to ‘prune’ some of my own sucker blogs. I’m not planning of deleting them all together (after all they do continue to get a little traffic and make a few dollars a week - which adds up over a year) but instead I’ll just stop giving them attention and allow them to die their own death in their own time. The beauty of not deleting them is not only that they continue to earn a little bit but that they are there if for some reason they ever do take off (either as a result of the topic becoming more popular or by the search engines reindexing in their favour).
I’m still a big believer in diversifying interests and think multiple blogs are a good strategy - however one needs to keep balanced and realistic in the way they spend their time. Afterall - bloggers working by themselves on multiple blogs can only really sustain so many blogs without the quality of their work (their fruit) suffering so once you get to a point of working at capacity - one smart way to grow is to ditch the unproductive areas to focus on what is working.
update: The more I ponder this topic (and I apologise for it’s longwindedness, I’m thinking outloud somewhat) the more I find myself thinking of a book I read in my last holidays called The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less by Richard Kosch.
In the book Richard argues that 80% of results usually comes from 20% of efforts. In identifying where the productive stuff happens you can increase productivity. Pruning the unproductive parts can help in this process.
Written on January 20th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 03:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Publicize Yourself By Giving A Prize - Prizes Needed for enternetusers Competition
Do you have a product, service or site/blog that you’d like to get into the line of site of bloggers? Do you have something that you could give away as a prize in a competition?
If so I’d like to hear from you.
Next week I’ll be launching a little competition here at enternetusers - something that I hope bloggers will find fun but also rewarding. I’d like to be able to offer prizes to the winners and runners up and am looking for people with something that they can donate.
What will you get out of it?
In return for your donation your product, service or site will be linked to in a competition ‘prize post’ and I’ll make sure it’s linked to in other posts that I do about the competition.
As a result your prize will be seen by thousands of readers of this site (enternetusers currently averages between 4000 - 6000 unique visitors per day - and this competition could see that increase as I think it could be a little viral).
What am I looking for?
I’m looking for multiple prizes at a range of values. I already have three that I’m putting into the mix but would like to offer the top three place getters a number of prizes each to make it worth their while. There will also be a ‘Top 10′ in the competition if you have a prize that you’d like to give to a larger group of people.
Prizes could include anything such as:
- gift vouchers
- consulting services,
- books
- blog design work
- gadgets
- free hosting for a blog
- err….cash
The only real constraint I’ll put on it is that I’d like it to be useful to bloggers in their blogging (a fairly wide thing).
In terms of getting prizes to winners this will be something to be arranged between winner and prize giver (so if it’s a physical prize like a book if it can be sent from the prize giver that would help cut down the admin of it for me).
I’m not going to tell what the competition is yet but if you require more details I’m happy to fill you in.
I’m looking forward to this competition and hope you’ll join me in making it something that people want to participate if you can.
Please Email Me if you have something to offer.
Written on January 20th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 11:01 am by Darren Rowse
enternetusers Productivity Tip
Don’t spill your Coffee on your Computer’s Keyboard.
Written on January 20th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 02:01 am by Darren Rowse
enternetusers Reader Links
Each day I get 10 - 20 emails from readers suggesting posts that they’ve written that I should link to. Here are three from the last 24 hours that I enjoyed:
Written on January 20th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 12:01 am by Darren Rowse
What is a Domain Name Worth?
Update: Ok Gang - my apologies for not warning that the link contains some information that some people might find offensive. I’ll give you the lowdown here instead….
The story - the domain sex.com has apparently just sold for $14million (USD).
Written on January 19th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 09:01 am by Darren Rowse
Why Nobody Reads your Blog
Hugh has put together another top ten list - this time it’s 10 reasons why nobody reads your blog. Take it with the humorous tone it was written in but see the truth in some of the points. I particularly agree with these points (Hugh’s points in bold with my own comments afterwards):
2. There’s nothing in it for them - it’s about value. Give people something that they find valuable and you’ll find people coming back for more and recommending others check it out. Of course ‘value’ means different things for different people and can stretch from information, entertainment, inspiration, news, community etc
5. You have nothing to say - this is related to #2 really but takes it a little further. Many blogs fall into this trap with content that is dry and uninspired.
8. The very fact that you’re whining about traffic makes people not want to read your blog - this is a trap many bloggers fall into. I’d extend it to ‘whining’ on many topics. While the cynical, moaning, snide approach to blogging works for some people, in general I think people are attracted to blogs that are positive and offer something that enhances people’s lives in some way. As my wife says to me when I get into a whining state of mind - ‘build a bridge and get over it’.
9. You’ve only been writing the damn thing for a week - so true. With all the talk of massive blogs around it’s easy to expect too much too quickly. While traffic is important I recommend bloggers in the early days check their stats less and write more quality content. While you can do things to maximize your blog’s exposure the number one thing you can do is have a useful, relevant and up to date blog that over time develops authority on a topic. This doesn’t happen over night.
Perhaps in the vain of #9 would be the addition of ‘you only post once a month’. Regular posting and fresh content is key.
Found via Life 2.0 (who has a good post on the topic).
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