Written on May 18th, 2007 at 07:05 am by Darren Rowse
Speedlinking - 18 May 2007
- Modern Life has put together an interesting analysis of the length of posts that the Technorati Top 100 blogs have done in their most recent 10 posts - ‘The vast majority of posts were over 100 words and under 500.’ I wonder what enternetusers’s average was!
- Jeremy builds on the model I linked to yesterday for estimating a blog’s worth with another one
- TechCrunch highlights the power of blogging by showing how a post on Engadget caused a serious fluctuation of Apple’s share price
- AddThis (a social bookmarking tool) has released a trends page to highlight what bookmarking services users of AddThis are using. The summary graph looks like this:
PS: AddThis have also added a little graph that shows what services readers are using for bookmarking on a blog by blog basis. Here at enternetusers - here’s what readers use the AddThis service for:
Written on May 18th, 2007 at 12:05 am by Darren Rowse
WP Text Ads Review
A couple of days back I linked in a speedlinking post to a WP plugin called WP Text Ads - a plugin that allows bloggers to sell their own text links. In that post I asked if anyone had used it and offered to publish a review of one if anyone wanted to write it.
Ryan Imel from who reviews WordPress themes and plugins at Theme Playground kindly offered - here’s his review.
After kicking around WP Text Ads on my blog, I think it’s one of the best all around plugins for Wordpress I’ve used, let alone reviewed. And if you get nothing else from this review, know this - Text Ads is fun to use.
It’s really fun to manage your own text ads.
IMPRESSIVE CONTROLS
The first thing I noticed was that updating aspects of the plugin on the Dashboard didn’t require a refreshing of the page. It updates and you save your place on the page. This is a huge timesaver. When will the rest of Wordpress operate this way?
*Cough* 2.3 *Cough*
Note: Remember to activate all three plugins when you add this one. That’s two widgets and the main plugin.
The spread of the WP Text Ads control panel is very nice; it is usually very explanatory, walking you through the different steps of setting up your ad system. The way you are able to customize the emails that are sent to potential advertisers right from your Wordpress Dashboard is awesome; each scenario is covered and you can craft your message specifically for each one. I wish the ad forms were are customizable as the emails are, thoughÖ
I would have liked to see more instruction on the control panel page about how to drop text ads in at different points of the site. There is a sidebar widget included (which works well) but it took a little digging to find the right call for text ads to display anywhere. Found answers at the WP Text Ads site under ìDocumentation.î
The display options are nice, and very welcome to extra little additions to the default code. For example, on my blog I added an extra list item at the end of the unordered list which said ìAdvertise Here.î This way every listing also gives the option to buy advertising for that particular spot.
BUYING ADS
All ad sales are done via a popup when someone clicks ìBuy a Text Link Ad.î There may be some usability issues here, so it might be worth adding a page to your blog with advertising information on it. On that, it would be nice to have the option to add the advertising form to a page within the site. Some visitors may have popups disabled and never see the ad, or just click it closed out of habit.
The way Text Ads keeps your database of advertisers organized is very intuitive and a breeze to navigate. The only option I found missing is one to manually add advertisers. It seems that even if your agreement is made in some way other than the ad forms on your site you still have to go through the dance to get it into the system.
SHOW SOME RESPECT
One of the respectable things about WP Text Ads is the form built into the control panel for sending feedback to Alex Choo, the author of the plugin. I can’t imagine how many very basic ìHow do IÖî questions he will get through this form. He’s a very brave one for making it that easy to contact him, but more power to him. It’s a very honest way to do plugins; I get the feeling he really does want the user to enjoy and appreciate his plugin.
The limitations of WP Text Ads Free Edition are worth mentioning, but it’s very cool that the Choo kept it so only the number of ads available is limited. No features are held back. In my case, I choose to purchase the license for the sake of taking full advantage of all the ads available in the Standard Edition.
While Choo claims that he doesn’t intend to replace Adsense with WP Text Ads, I can see it heading that direction. It’s much more appealing to me to have prices which I set and ads displaying exactly the way I want them to than to receive relatively less from Adsense and have little control over what ads display.
I guess the next question is: how long until full on graphics are supported? Just let me know, Choo - I’m in.
Written on May 17th, 2007 at 12:05 pm by Darren Rowse
Are You a Music Blogger?
If you’re a blogger with a passion for music then the team over at b5media are keen to chat to you about the launch of our new b5media Music Channel.
These are paid positions and we’re looking for bloggers to help us start new blogs.
There are a large variety of genres, artists and locations that we want to cover so if you’ve got an idea for a great music blog check out our call for bloggers here (and the ad on the job boards).
disclaimer: I’m VP of Training at b5media
Written on May 17th, 2007 at 09:05 am by Darren Rowse
Blog Bash Postponed - But enternetusers Meetup to Happen
I’m sad to say that the b5media/enternetusers NY Blog Bash event that was planned for 9 June has been postponed. The issue was not the level of interest from those wanting to attend (I’m confident that we’d have come close to selling out looking at the expressions interest we received - but instead the issue was around timing (or the lack of time we had to pull off organizing a full day event).
I want to apologize to those who this effects - speakers, sponsors and attendees.
enternetusers Meetup
While a full day long event is not possible I would still like to get together with NY bloggers for another meetup (like last time I was in town) - we can still have a party!
I’m pulling together a small group of NY bloggers to help me find a venue and will post details as soon as possible to give everyone time to plan. It’ll be a pretty informal night and unless a sponsor comes forward (shoot me an email) it’ll be a cash bar (everyone cover their own costs).
Written on May 17th, 2007 at 07:05 am by Darren Rowse
Speedlinking - 17 May 2007
- WordPress 2.2 is available for download Download and as always Aaron Brazell is releasing his article - the 10 Things you should know about WordPress 2.2.
- Gili has written a pretty detailed model (and calculator) for valuing blogging ventures - my own philosophy is that a blog is worth what someone’s willing to pay for it - but these calculators can be fun I guess.
- David reports that MyBlogLog is rebranding - about time, I’ve all but given up on them.
- Cory Doctorow writes a piece titled How to Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community - well worth a read and relevant for bloggers
Written on May 17th, 2007 at 12:05 am by Darren Rowse
A Secret to My Productivity Success
One of the little tricks that I use every morning when I first log onto my computer that gets me off to a flying start is to open up my ‘StartUp Folder’ on Firefox.
This is a bookmark folder that contains 15 or so key sites that quickly give me an indication of what is going on across my blogging business. Within 60 seconds I know what’s hot, what’s broken, where there’s a fire that needs to be put out and where I can give things a nudge to make them go viral.
Here’s how it works.
Firefox (and other browsers) allows you to arrange your bookmarks via folders and place these folders in your bookmark toolbar across the top of your browser. These folders can be accessed in two main ways:
- by clicking the folder and selecting a bookmark from the drop down menu
- by right clicking the folder and selecting ‘Open in All Tabs’ (if you have tabbed browsing turned on).
It’s this second method that I use every morning (and 2-3 times per day).
Inside this folder I have the following items bookmarked:
- Google Reader (my RSS reader)
- Earnings Stats - AdSense, Chitika, Amazon, Clickbank (and two or three others)
- Metrics Stats - Google Analytics and Sitemeter for my key sites
- b5media Pages - Dashboard (we have a cool dashboard that gives us a glance at the whole network’s performance on one page) and Forums
- Blog Pages - I have it set to open to ‘awaiting moderation’ page in the back end
- Forum - DPS Forum
I find that by opening all these pages at once in tabs I’m able to quickly get a handle on what’s going on across my blogs and am able to immediately set my agenda for the next session of work.
For example I logged on this morning to find a post had gone up on the main page of Digg and was able to modify that post to make the blog more sticky. This afternoon I noticed a hot topic in forums that I needed to step into. Last night I noticed one of my blogs was down on traffic and was able to track down a little problem in one of my templates that was slowing things down.
PS: I also use these types of folders to cluster other types of websites together. I have one for ‘metrics’ that opens up all of my blogs stats, one for ‘affiliate programs’ which opens up the earnings for all affiliate programs, one for ‘blogs’ which opens the front page of all my blogs, one for ‘edit blogs’ which opens the admin/back end of all my blogs and one for ‘b5′ that contains key pages from b5.
While I use many of these bookmark folders via method #1 above (ie opening pages once at a time) there are times when I use the ‘open in all tabs’ option to do a sweeping check of everything at once.
PS2 - The reason Google Reader is in my StartUp folder is because at the top of my list of folders of feeds is my A-list. I leave this folder open and fill it with feeds that are essential reading and that have a history of breaking stories in the niches that I write about. This means that when I do my ’startup’ process I immediately know if a story is breaking in my niche that I need to cover. I’ve outlined how I use my A-list previously if you’d like to read more about it.
Written on May 16th, 2007 at 05:05 am by Darren Rowse
Speedlinking - 16 May 2007
- Des asks - You’re a Nice Looking Blog - Who Owns You? - anonymous blogging anyone?
- Mani shares their 5 top mistakes when they started blogging (I think I could write a 50 part post on that topic :-) )
- Daniel shares his Top 10 Underrated WordPress Plugin
- Chitika’s posted a little information about the enternetusers group writing project winner - Nancy. It’s nice to see the money going to help such a nice person.
- WP Text Ads is a WP plugin that allows you to sell your own text ads. It costs $127 for a full license or you can use a limited version for free. The advantage of it is that you cut out the middle man who takes a cut of any ads you sell - the downside is that you need to find your own advertisers instead of letting ad networks sell you to their large database of advertisers. I’ve not tested it but am interested to hear from anyone who gives it a go - write us a mini review and I’ll publish it.
Written on May 16th, 2007 at 12:05 am by Darren Rowse
How Not to become a Grumpy Old Blogger
Comment Spam, Trolls in Comments, Servers Crashing, Personal Attacks in Posts, Getting Hacked, Public Critique….
While there’s a lot of positive things to be said for blogging - there are also days where blogging can all get a little too much and get even the most positive of bloggers down.
So how does a blogger protect themselves from becoming a grump (or at the very least depressed)?
As a blogger who has had his fair share of the above blogging downers here are five ways that I’m learning to preserve my emotional well being:
1. Your Personal Worth Is Not Tied to Your Blog’s Performance
One of the most helpful lessons that I’ve ever learned was to think about where my personal worth comes from.
We live in a world where Personal Worth often is seen as a result of two things. It can be put as an equation:
Personal Worth = What You Achieve + What Others Think of You
The problem with this equation is that in every sphere of life (especially blogging) it is very difficult to live up to this equation. There are times in all of our lives where we fail or fall short of what we set out to achieve and where other people’s opinion of us are not high.
Rating our worth as a person in this way can be a trap and as bloggers it can be an easy one to fall into.
On a good day where traffic is up, people are saying nice things, all the blog ranking tools rate us highly and we’re getting good press it’s easy to be on top of the world - but when it all falls in a heap the lows can be very low if we tie our personal worth to how our blog performs.
Personal worth comes from something deeper than what you do (or fail to do) and what others think of you. I won’t push my own opinions of where this worth comes from (for me it’s tied to my spirituality) - however I encourage bloggers to do some realigning and gaining of perspective in this area.
2. Don’t Believe Your Own Press
I’ve quoted Elizabeth Taylor before on this (believe it or not). When asked whether she reads what people write about her she says:
“If you listen to the good things people say about you might just start believing them. If you listen to the bad things people say about you might just start believing them”
While I do think it’s important as a blogger to monitor what people are saying about you and the things you write (the great thing about blogging is the conversations that emerge from it) I think there’s a difference between ‘reading’ what others are saying about you and ‘believing’ what others say about you.
One of the skills I’m attempting to develop is to read what others write and say about me without owning it or allowing myself to be sucked into it.
Over the last few years people have said some pretty outrageous things about me (both positive things and negative things). When you see this type of stuff it’s easy to be sucked into and be carried away by it - however if you do you’re setting yourself up for a roller coaster ride.
3. Work Life Balance
If I was to track and graph my ‘grumpiness’ I suspect it would look something like this.
Work/Life Balance is so important - particularly in an area of your life where you’re needing to be creative, fresh and relational (and particularly when you’re an introvert like I am).
Time away from blogging, the web and related activities become crucial for maintaining your emotional well being as a blogger.
4. Be a Relational Blogger
While I’ve always talked about being relational in blogging I’m increasingly convinced that its vital not only as a way to promote your blog and improve your content but in terms of your ability to withstand the tough times that might come your way.
The relationships that I’ve built in my own blogging have:
- helped me with balancing the gaps in my own skill set
- encouraged me to keep going on those days when I just feel like throwing it in
- kept me accountable to my own goals
- been a sounding board for helping me to respond to critique
- provided me with a few home truths on those days when it was me who was out of line not others.
- given me perspective when in my mind the world is coming crashing down (when in reality I’m just having a bad hair day)
- helped me keep balance by injecting humor and friendship into my life
5. Get Thick Skin
I come from a family which is incredibly encouraging, forgiving, caring, loving and diplomatic (we always see both sides of every situation).
While this is a fantastic environment to grow up in (and I’m incredibly grateful for it) one of the few negatives with it is that I grew up to be a little sheltered from some of the harsh realities of life. As a result when I first got into blogging and experienced my first troll, personal attack and comment flame war I was really taken aback and somewhat shaken.
In lots of ways blogging has helped me get in touch with reality in this way and I’m grateful for it - however I’ve also had to toughen up a little to survive it.
While I don’t want to toughen up too much (I want to be someone who is in touch with my emotions, who feels, who connects on a heart level etc) I think there’s something to be said for thickening one’s skin a little if they want to survive the rough and tumble of the blogosphere.
Find the balance between blogging at a ‘heart’ level while maintaining an arms length from it and I suspect you’ll be a much healthier blogger who is able to sustain themselves for the long haul.
Bonus Tips - Don’t forget the lesson a Buddhist Monk once taught me about blogging and dealing with negative people. Also posts that might be helpful include Communications Skills for Bloggers and 10 Steps to Conflict Resolution.
What do you Think
How do you sustain yourself despite the negative things that sometimes come your way in the blogosphere?
Enjoy this post? - Digg it here
Written on May 15th, 2007 at 01:05 pm by Darren Rowse
Copywriting Contest - $10,000 in Prizes Up for Grabs
Brian at Copyblogger has just announced a cool group copywriting project which I’m sure many of you will enjoy competing in.
It’s all about creating irresistible offers using landing pages.
There are $10,000 in prizes up for grabs and it will be a judged competition (I’m one of the judges - no bribes will be taken…. unless they’re really good).
Get full details of the competition at Copywriting Contest: $10,000 in Prizes for Irresistible Offers
Written on May 15th, 2007 at 09:05 am by Darren Rowse
LineBuzz - Inline Comments
LineBuzz is a new commenting solution for blogs that has got me a little curious. The concept is pretty simple - it allows your readers to comment on specific parts of your blog post by highlighting any text that you’ve written.
It’s probably best to learn about it by seeing it in action - something you can do at their blog Buzz This!.
Once the page loads you’ll notice that some text in comments is underlined with dots - these indicate that someone has commented on that particular part of a blog post (see the links highlighted below).
Hover the cursor over these links and it’ll tell you that there are comments like this:
Click the link and the comments open up as a little popup:
It’s an interesting concept and one that I can see some real usefulness in for those bloggers who write longer posts making many points - however I’m not convinced enough to install it on my own blogs.
From what I can tell the comments only get recorded inline and not in the comments at the end of a post - so there’s no place to view all comments on a post (unless I’m missing it) and keep an overall conversation in the one spot.
I would also worry about posts that get a lot of comments and how messy it could end up looking. For example my recent post - which feed reader is best? - is approaching 200 comments. That’s more comments than words - the whole post could be one massive jumble of inline comments.
It’s an interesting service and is one that is still in beta so I’m sure they’ll develop it further. What do you think of it?
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