Entries from August 2007 ↓

I feel that Blog contests can be very beneficial and are certainly growing in popularity. I have entered a few and these are my thoughts on what determines a good blog contest. Of course, everyone will have different preferences, but this is what works for me.
A good Blog Contest should have benefit for both host and participant. These are the main factors that determine a good contest.

• Relevant Prizes.

I’m a blogger in the UKand I’m not particularly interested in winning a $15 Wal mart gift voucher, nor do I particularly desire to get a copy of books like “Make money online”

• Links.

As a blogger what I most value is links from good blogs. Links help our SERPS and Page Rank.

• Exposure.

Participating in a blog contest should be a good way to increase exposure amongst like minded bloggers. For example, writing contests at Problogger is an opportunity to make your blog known to people in the similar niche.

• The Criteria must be something worthwhile.

I will only enter a competition if I can do something worthwhile. For example, blogging fingers had a competition about Niche Blogging. I was free to write a post on niche blogging – Is it good to diversify a niche blog? As this is suitable for my blog I have nothing to lose through entering. I am much less likely to enter a competition where I have to review and unrelated product.

• Encourages High Standards.

A good blog contest is about encouraging high standards, writing a high quality article benefits the whole blogosphere.

Thanks to Binary Moon for including me in this link blog contest.

Note: A good blog contest is a good way of encouraging more RSS subscribers. I now read the blogs I have entered a competition

• Contest Blogger
• Blog Contests on the net

Since this blog is all about giving writing tips for bloggers, I thought I would take a different angle and look at blogging from a perspective of those who don’t want to / can’t write.

Quite often we hear the mantra that a successful blogger needs to write good unique content. But, Is it possible to blog and develop a successful website without doing any writing?

Picture / Video Blog

If you are able to take interesting, unique pictures this can make a very attractive blog. I think to stand out, though your pictures would have to be of a particularly high standard, or offer something not found elsewhere. You will face alot of competition and it may not be so easy to monetize. However building a successful picture blog, gives you an opportunity to sell your own pictures.

See: Ursi’ blog for good example of photo / link blog

Cartoon / Comedy blog

This is a successful blog which offers humorous cartoons. By enabling others to use and embed the cartoon enables the blog to get lots of backlinks. I think this is an interesting point: offering free content is a good way to success on the internet. It is part of Wikipedia’s success, because people can freely copy the content, the site receives many link backs.

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Today, I set up a new RSS feed with feedburner. New RSS feed for Net writing

Being a bit of a stats Junkie, I am interested to know how many people are subscribing to the blog.

Making the switch seemed to change preferences to short RSS feed, rather than full rss feed. It should now be switched back to full RSS feed.

Note: the old feed address is still perfectly valid.

Good debate here about advantages of Full vs part RSS feeds

It is always a good idea to step back and evaluate your own blog. Have a look at your own blog today, and think what you need to do to improve it. I had a quick brainstorm session and realised that there are quite a few things I should be doing.

10 Things I should do more of on this blog

1. Write to first time commentators, and reply to their comments.
2. Write speedlinking posts, which are collections of the best links of the week. – A great resource for readers and also a great way to meet new bloggers.
3. Use wasted space on my header. Its a lot of blue space, which is not used for anything. I am currently testing out blog themes at other blogs, if successful I can use the same theme here.
4. Move to unlimited bandwidth. At the moment, this blog is not on unlimited bandwidth. If I suddenly got on Digg home page, I may be left with many bitter regrets.
5. Write a post everyday. Rather than just posting anything, I should build up a bank of good posts for when I need to fill in a few daily gaps.
6. Highlight best posts of month from this site.
7. Link more to other bloggers. The problem is it is quite time consuming to find suitable links.
8. Get A contact form.
9. Have a blog contest, to encourage reader interaction.
10. A killer logo and tagline. Current logo is too ordinary.

That’s quite a lot of work I need to do. If you have any other suggestions I would be grateful to hear. Of course, giving advice is one thing; but, as the old saying goes: actions speak louder than words.

Related:

• Common Mistakes of Blogging my top 20
• 11 mistakes I made blogging at Blogging Fingers

I have been building websites for the past 4 years, but it is only in the past 12 months that I have really got into blogging. I have found managing a blog to be a great way to grow and build an established website. I have also enjoyed setting up a few new blogs from scratch. In fact, one problem I have been trying to manage, is keeping several blogs up to date at the same time.

What I learnt from my 1st year of Blogging.

1. Blogging vs Websites

Adding a blog to a website is one of the best things you can do to make your website more dynamic. See: advantages of blogs. Generally blogs have several advantages over websites, but there are still some situations where ordinary web pages can have advantages over blogs. E.g. Biography online works better as a web resource, rather than a blog. If you want to quickly add lots of pages, targeting keywords on Google, you blog is not necessarily the best place.

2. Page Rank does have some importance.

When I first started blogging, I was under the impression page rank, was no longer of any relevance. Why? Because on my websites, I had seen significant increases in traffic and SERPs without any change in Page rank. However, over the past few months, I have realised page rank, is of some importance. Its primary importance is as a signal. If nothing else – get a higher page rank and you can use this to command higher prices from advertisers.

3. The Importance of Writing

Writing is the building block of a successful blog and website. With writing you should aim for quantity and quality. You can’t expect to make a successful blogger, with a few well crafted posts. It is important to continuously build your archives and pages. At the same time as writing in quantity, you have to write articles that are useful, informative and give people a reason to link to them. If you find writing very difficult, you will not find blogging easy. Writing Tips

4. Work on Building Links.

Net Writing has accumulated a number of backlinks; however, the majority are through some personal effort. Either submitting to blog carnivals or being aware of writing projects e.t.c. Don’t sit back and expect to see your technorati ranking shoot through the roof. Tips for getting more links

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I wrote an article for Lifehack about how to criticise others without causing offence.

Generally, as a blogger it is not usually necessary to criticise others. However, if for example, we have a multi contributor blog there may be times when we need to correct other contributors. The important thing to remember when criticising others is that it can easily create a very defensive attitude; people feel hurt from the criticism and so seek to respond in a defensive way. However, if we wish to create the optimal response it is important to criticise others with tact.

I think this advice also applies to leaving comments on blogs. Some commentors seem to get a certain pleasure from leaving inflammatory comments. However, this will not endear you to the blogging comment. If you feel inspired to leave constructive criticism, and it is done with the right attitude I think many bloggers will appreciate the feedback.

There are good ways to criticise, but, if we are subject to aggressive criticism then it is important that we react in the right way. We should try to avoid being defensive. If we react with nobility and avoid responding with a similar negative attitude we can create a good impression to other readers. If we respond in the right way we may even encourage the commentator into moderating his approach.

For some negative comments, it may be appropriate to just remain silent and not respond. If the criticism is based on falsehood; there is no need to respond at all. If we do respond there is a danger of giving it an undeserved importance. Instead we can just concentrate on doing good things, if necessary correcting misinformation, without directly responding to the criticism.

Thus, don’t be dismayed at a negative comment, just see it as an opportunity to turn a negative comment into a positive experience.

I am quite happy when people point out errors in my writing, because it motivates me to aim for higher standards.

Some may say, it has had a bad reputation for along time, because it is used on so many splogs.

Recently, I posted why I had decided to remove Google adsense from Netwriting. Interestingly many top bloggers are also saying that they are giving up on google adsense. Problogger’s new design is adsense free. Kevin from Blogging Tips writes a post – Adsense good for the lazy blogger. John Chow is also selling his google spot.  Numerous other top bloggers recommend maintaining an adsense free blog. Yet, of course there are top bloggers doing very well out of Google adsense

Michael from Problog design asks a good question does not adsense still have some value, especially for beginners ? I think it always will. However, the crucial thing is that it’s usefulness depends very much on the blog niche.

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Recently, I had a writing competition with a friend: we wanted to see how many articles we could write in a 24 hour period. There was a minimum length of 400 words, and each should be checked for grammar/ spelling. In the 24 hour period, I wrote 14 articles, Shane wrote 24.

It was an interesting experience which taught me a few things.

1. Develop Concentration.

If you focus on only one thing, to the exclusion of everything else you can really concentrate on that particular task. When your only objective is writing, you can get into a groove of writing

2. It is worth Specializing in something.

A Blogger has be good at many tasks. Design, writing, css, article promotion, commenting e.t.c. Because there are so many things to be good at, there is a danger of becoming a Jack of all trades master of none. Yet, to really stand out in the blogosphere, it is essential to stand out from the crowd. This can only occur if you rise above mediocrity and become well known in something. By spending a day on writing you can give this a high priority and help to improve the quantity and quality.

3. Focus on One Thing at a Time

It is useful to spend one day working on the design of the blog, get it to a good standard, and then leave it for a while. Another day you could spend on commenting, or promoting your articles.

4. An Article Bank

It is good to have a bank of articles, especially if you have a regular posting schedule. If you post everyday, you create a daily interest. To do this, can be difficult. However, if you have a bank of articles then you can use them whenever necessary.

5. Does quantity adversely affect quantity?

The problem with writing alot of articles is that if you aim for quantity then you may feel quality suffers; however, this need not be the case ( I hope anyway!). Sometimes when you focus on quantity, quality can be just as good.

Today I decided to remove Google ads from netwriting. The reason is:

1. Low Click through rate and little money earned
2. Absence of google ads looks a little more professional.
3. They can always be added later, if the blog generates very high traffic levels.

True, I didn’t place them in the best place. But, even in the best place, I think the small income doesn’t justify the nuisance factor. It is good to see a blog as an investment. When you are waiting to build up subscribers and get the first page rank, there is little to be gained by over monetizing your blog.

This is also one of the 23 things Nate Whitehill mentioned in his blog post about how he built up his first 500 RSS subscribers ( I would imagine it won’t be too long before he makes 1,000)

Now, the main problem with this blog is the header. Either I need to modify existing template, with new logo (I wish php was as easy as Html) or find a new wordpress theme.

Tip: when removing things from your sidebar, it’s a short cut just to comment them out. This means if you want to change your mind the code remains where it is.
<!– – - > code for commenting out note there are 2 dashes –
/* */ for php

If you have a successful niche blog, which has a decent Page rank and good SERP, it is tempting to diversify your blog / website.

These are the advantages of diversifying

1. Topics often overlap.

People interested in mortgages are probably interested in general finance issues. Thus you don’t have to just blog about mortgages but can talk about debt, loans, interest rates, house prices.

2. More Traffic.

Increasing the range of articles which will enable higher traffic, more chance for links and a more powerful blog.

3. More Articles to Write about.

It can get  a little boring just writing about mortgages, a greater range of topics will stimulate more writing and keep you interested, this is very important for the long term success of a blog.

4. Saves Duplicating effort

Saves effort of starting a new blog, and getting all the necessary links, new design e.t.c. There are definitely economies of scale in blogging.
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