Written on November 1st, 2005 at 08:11 pm by David Shawver
Back
We’re back from our long weekend away and I’m feeling much more relaxed. Especially fun was getting my digital camera out and re-engaging with a passion that I’d not had much time to engage with lately. I’ve posted just a few of my shots on my Flickr account if you’re into that kind of thing. I might have to upgrade my Flickr account to a pro version though as I seem to have hit my limit :-)
Thanks for everyone who’s kept enternetusers Active for the last couple of days in the comments of my advance posts - it’s great to know that the blog continues to grow and be productive while I’m away.
Written on November 1st, 2005 at 07:11 pm by David Shawver
Chitika eMiniMalls Release Affiliate Banners
Good news for those of you who are a part of the Chitika eMiniMalls affiliate program with Chitika today providing 10 banner ads to help you promote their program. They come in a range of sizes from the small through to larger ones. Here’s a few:
Written on November 1st, 2005 at 07:11 am by David Shawver
The Distracted Blogger
In my daily blogging activities I get to interact with a lot of bloggers from around the world. They have blogs of all shapes and sizes and have a variety of different experience levels. However in the past week I’ve come across quite a few newer bloggers who fit into one of the following two types of bloggers:
1. The Paralyzed Blogger - I’ve come across quite a few bloggers recently who look at the wider blogging community and are so overwhelmed by what they see going. They see blogs with beautiful design, bloggers with incredible gifts of communication, the massive traffic numbers of some of the A-listers and even the big dollars that some bloggers are making - and they get sucked into the trap of comparing their blog with others and end up being quite depressed by what they see - to the point where often they give up.
2. The HyperActive Tweaking Blogger- I’ve also been bumping into quite a few bloggers that get so inspired by the wider blogging community that they spend 90% of their time tweaking their blog’s design, finding the perfect place for their ads, working on publicity etc that they actually become completely unproductive in terms of creating content for their blog.
(note: I’m not saying every blogger fits into one or the other of these categories - just that I’ve met a lot of them this week).
What is common to both of these groups of bloggers is that get distracted by other blogs and bloggers. The paralyzed comparisons lead them to depression and giving up while the HyperActive Tweaker’s comparisons lead them to working on secondary items to the detriment of content.
While I’m a big believer in watching and interacting with other bloggers (I’ve learned virtually everything I know from them… from you!) there comes a time when a successful blogger needs to knuckle down to do the hard work of creating their own content and to do their own thing.
Most successful bloggers that I come across have a good understanding of the wider blogging community (especially the niche that they operate in) but also have a healthily positive view of their own blog, a sense of what makes their blog unique, a plan for where they see it going and a willingness to work toward their goals over time.
Of course I qualify that rather long sentence with the word ‘most’ because some successful bloggers are just very lucky!
Written on October 31st, 2005 at 11:10 pm by David Shawver
Quotes for Bloggers
The other day when I was looking for quotes to finish up my Making Money From Blogging Takes Time post I came across a heap of great sayings from famous people that seemed appropriate for bloggers.
So I thought it’d be fun to start a little meme here to see what quotes you’d use to inspire, motivate, inform or educate successful enternetuserss.
So hit your favorite quote sites and nominate your favorite quote from a famous person (your definition of fame) and leave it in comments below and/or post it on your blog.
Here’s a few to get you going:
- “Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.” - Demosthenes
- “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” - Thomas Alva Edison
- “Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude. I like fun.” - Colleen C. Barrett
- “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” - Donald Kendall
- “100% of the shots you don’t take don’t go in.” - Wayne Gretzky
- “I’m a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” - Thomas Jefferson
- “The winner is the chef who takes the same ingredients as everyone else and produces the best results.” - Edward de Bono
- “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” - Albert Schweitzer
- “Never work just for money or for power. They won’t save your soul or help you sleep at night.” - Marian Wright Edelman
- “The world is but a canvas to the imagination.” - Henry David Thoreau
- “Seek to understand then be understood.” – Stephen R. Covey
Looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with.
Written on October 30th, 2005 at 10:10 am by David Shawver
Think Before You Link from your Blog
ME “Liz” Strauss has a good post over at Successful Blog called Think Before You Link which has five factors to consider before adding a link to your blog post:
- Does this link clarify what I’m saying here?
- Have my readers seen this link 10 times already?
- Is this information they will care about?
- If the link does belong, label the link and credit the writer.
- Will this link take my readers away forever?
Nice list. I’d add a one more thing:
- Have I read what I’m linking to? - I suspect that some bloggers fail to do this and feeling the pressure to post high levels of content link to almost anything they find without checking to see if it’s link worthy.
Written on October 30th, 2005 at 10:10 am by David Shawver
Long Weekend
This coming Tuesday is a public holiday here in Melbourne - it’s Melbourne Cup Day (a day off so some horses can run around a track for a few minutes).
As a result we’re taking off for a couple of days with some friends. I’ll be back on Tuesday evening but in the mean time there will be a couple of posts that I’ve already written appearing here to keep my wonderful readers amused. Have a good weekend friends!
Written on October 29th, 2005 at 04:10 pm by David Shawver
Bloggers SUCK - Lessons from Forbes
Forbes has an article in it’s latest edition attacking blogs. It’s called Attack of the Blogs (subscription required).
I’ve decided not to read it - mainly because to do so I’d need to subscribe to their online section. Part of me (the cynical part) actually wonders if the whole article is something of a publicity stunt.
I mean what better way to get million’s of people talking about you, linking to you and reading you than to write negative things about them.
Technorati has ‘Forbes’ listed as the fifth most search for term in the last hour (with some pretty stiff competition). I’ll be interested to watch these pages at BlogPulse and Alexa over the next day or two to see what their graphs look like as they update.
I’d love to get a peak at the sign up levels for their online section in the last day or two - I suspect they’ve had some pretty decent numbers.
Written on October 29th, 2005 at 02:10 pm by David Shawver
Adsense talks about the Facts of Smart Pricing
The team at Adsense have responded to some of the recent talk about Smart Pricing by writing a post on their blog on the topic. Their main points are:
1. Many factors determine the price of an ad
2. Clickthrough rate doesn’t affect advertiser return on investment (ROI)
3. Google doesn’t make money from ’smart pricing’
4. Remember the old chestnut: “Content is King”
I think their post is a good step in the right direction - at least they are engaging in the conversation (something I’m pleased to see them doing more and more) and there are some valid points there that are there to stop publishers panicking too much. At the same time there is still a certain vagueness about smart pricing from a publishers end that leaves me feeling a little uneasy.
Written on October 29th, 2005 at 02:10 pm by David Shawver
Opportunities at b5
If you don’t follow the RSS feed over at internetusers you might have missed a few opportunities that we’ve been advertising for including:
- a call for sports bloggers - particularly on baseball, hockey, football (American), basketball - but on other sports too
- a call for celebrity/TV show bloggers
- a call for a WordPressologist
Also we announced a fun new blog - Kapped - a blog that three of our bloggers (Ingrid, Erin and Jayvee) are having a load of fun with - taking screen captures from films, TV shows and video games and adding captions. I surfed through all the screen caps so far yesterday and found myself having quite a good giggle. I’m not sure how commercially viable it will be with Adsense - but I’ve just added it as my home page and think it’ll provide me with some entertainment each day.
Written on October 29th, 2005 at 08:10 am by David Shawver
Posting Goals
Rebelbagwan left a comment on my last post asking about posting goals. He writes that he intends to:
“write 5 posts of some quality a day , so far starting from zilch getting currently 60 uniques a day and will try and double this every week , do you think this is realistic and what is your reco for amount of posts per day ( 11000 divided by 3 years per day= 11+ per day in your case ?)”
It’s a good question and one that I’d like to take the opportunity to say a few things about.
- I think it’s a great idea to set yourself some posting goals for your blogs. Goals give you something to work towards - they help keep you on track - they motivate and help you to be more disciplined in your task.
- The number of posts that you choose as your goal will vary from blog to blog depending upon many factors including the topic of the blog (some topics naturally lend themselves to more content than others), the length of your posts, your available time etc.
- I generally advise people to start with a goal of 2-4 posts per day when they are just starting out with their blogging and to gradually increase their posting levels over time. The beauty of starting out smaller is that you get into the rhythm of your blogging, you develop your research and writing skills and so then when you go for a larger number of posts as your goal it is a more realistic and achievable target. It’s like going to the gym for the first time - if you do too much too early you can end up burning yourself out.
- Realistic yet challenging posting goals are very important - don’t set your targets too high - if you do you’ll either burn out or you’ll see the quality of your posts decrease. Set your goals too low and you’ll become lazy, lethargic and become undisciplined.
- Don’t overwhelm your readers with posts. One of the pieces of feedback I had here at enternetusers a few months back was that I was posting so many times a day that I was overwhelming some readers. I’d recommend that you consider starting a second blog if you’ve got the time and enough inspiration to write more than 4-5 posts per day.
- Quality posting is just as important, in fact it’s more important, than the quantity of posts you do. Anyone can post 50 meaningless, low quality, unhelpful and boring posts per day - I’d prefer the bloggers that work on my blogs to post 3 original, engaging, witty and informative posts per day than 12 junky ones.
Rebelbagwan’s goal of 5 posts per day is great. Over a year this will build his site to over 1800 pages of content - a substantial sized site. My own posting targets at present seem to vary quite a bit from day to day depending upon what other things I’ve got on. As I’ve taken on a number of projects recently that are not directly about me blogging (eg internetusers, six figure blogging and two others that I’m looking forward to announcing in the coming weeks) I’ve found that it’s harder to consistently reach the goals I was working on a few months back. As a result I’ve taken on a blogger to assist me in this.
My own goal is for 25 posts per day on weekdays. Weekends I tend to relax more these days and only post a handful of posts. Keep in mind that I’m a full time blogger and that I have 20 or so blogs. Some of these blogs only get posts a few times a week - others are posted to multiple times per day.
I hope that answers Rebelbagwan’s question - feel free to add your own two cents worth in comments below.
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