Entries from May 2008 ↓

Recently I have been examining my webstats to examine the average number of pages visited by a visitor. On many of my smaller blogs, the average number of pages is very low. The average number of pages is as low as 1.1. This suggests people come have a quick look at the page and then leave.

However, on some of my other blogs (usually the ones with more traffic and more pages) the average number of page views is closer to 2. On one site, the average number of page views is 4.

From my own admissions, the ratio of page views to visitors is a very rough guide to the quality of the site. Generally, the sites with a higher average number of page views have more in depth quality pages. Sites with a very low number of page views suggest there is little depth. I wonder whether Google take this like this into account when ranking sites. It would make sense if they did. A high average of page views per visitor is a recommendation that they find the site interesting an want to explore further.

How To Increase Average Page Views.

1. Split up articles into different sections
2. Alwasy add internal links at the bottom of a page. When they have finished reading an article, give them a link to the next most relevant page. - Give them a reason to stay on your site rather than leave.
3. Show off Your best Articles on the sidebar. Not every page is of equal value. Make sure your best articles are highly visible and encourage them to see that.
4. Don’t just cover your sites with advertising. Keep it to a reasonable level. Think long term growth rather than short term profit maximisation.

• Tips for getting more links
• The importance of gaining momentum in blogging

On some of my blogs I have been successful in increasing RSS subscribers; others have proved a little more difficult. These are the things that I have learnt which really help increase RSS subscribers.
Don’t Give Up

The first 100 are the hardest. Therefore, don’t expect it to be easy. Once you reach a certain tipping point, the number of subscribers will increase with less effort.

Focus

When people subscribe they want to know what to expect. If you have a mixed blog, it will increase the chance of people unsubscribing. Poem of the Day is pretty self explanatory. Every day, one poem. It’s a very simple formula and an effective strategy for encouraging subscription.

Quantity over Quality.

On our self improvement blog, the average posting schedule is 2-3 times a week. That’s not a huge amount, but, we try to make each post worthwhile. We aim for bookmarkable content, rather than quantity. People are happy to subscribe when they know their RSS feeds are not going to be filled with ‘blog filler’

Guest Posting

I have written a series of guest posts for various blogs. This helps create a steady stream of traffic. The traffic is also highly targeted, they tend to be people who know what RSS is and therefore, are more likely to subscribe. I have only written one guest post for Netwriting, but, it did lead to an increase in subscribers.

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Recently, I have been blogging alot on recent developments in Economics. With blog entries on news, I notice Google initially give quite high rankings and good traffic, but, after a couple of months, these rankings fall and traffic drops off. In a way this shows that Google is doing a good job. When we search topical issues, we want to read the lastest blog entry, not blog entries from 3-4 years ago.

However, as a blogger, it raises the question - which is better writing timeless content or writing news items?

The problem with writing news items, is that your efforts will mainly last for a short time. If we write timeless content, then it remains valuable for many years. This is the great thing about blogging. Once you have written a timeless post, you will get traffic for ever and can earn without working. However, if we are blogging on news and latest development. It means we have to work harder and keep writing to gain new traffic.

• However, the advantage of news items is that it gives us new things to write about. There is a limit to how much ‘timeless content’ we can write in our niche.
• Our readers will enjoy reading about the latest trends and news.
• Writing about recent events helps to attract new readers to subscribe to our blog.
• Clearly there is room for both types of blogging; to some extent it depends what your prefer. Both types of blogging can be successful.

However, if your resources are limited and you want to get the best return on your efforts I would suggest focusing your efforts on creating timeless content. Write on topics that people will be interested in searching for many years. Limit the amount of posts you write which are specific to a couple of months.

1. Send To The Right Person

Make absolutely sure, you are sending it to the right person. It is unfortunately too easy, to send an email to the wrong point. A small mistake in sending to wrong person could cost you your job or a relationship. see: Email disasters
2. Don’t Use Autofill.

Autofill is when you start typing in a name and your email client automatically fills the name in for you. However, there is real potential for disaster. Imagine you are writing to tim_your_boyfriend and autofil fills in tim_your_miserable_boss. - It could be very painful.

3. Do You Really Want to Reply To All?

A good email client should always ask people, do you really want to send this personal message to your boss to every 200 employers on this mailing list? However, they don’t and because of a careless mistake, you have broadcast your thoughts to 200 people, when it was intended for one. Needless to say, this can be very embarrassing for all concerned. Always stop and think - Who am I sending it to.

4. Keep It Polite.

Email is a very impersonal method of communication. It is easy to be misunderstood. Whatever you do try to be polite and avoid making sarcastic comments.

5. For Difficult Situations Don’t use Email.

If there is a very awkward situation, ask yourself whether you could find a better mechanism for dealing with the issue. Speaking to people face to face, helps to avoid misunderstanding.

6. Treat Email Like A Postcard

Email is Not Secure. The contents of email can be easily hacked into. When writing an email, think of it like a postcard, you don’t know who might be reading it so you will keep very sensitive information to other more secure methods of communication.

7. Keep it Short.

Emails should be kept brief and to the point. Make sure you don’t wander off topic adding unnecessary emotion. Keep to a specific subject; if you have several issues try sending different emails, or at the very least try to break it up.

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There is an interesting thread on Freakonomics about People’s worst email mistakes.

Actually, it’s pretty gruesome reading. Some of the common mistakes come from:

• Replying all rather than replying to an individual.
• Using Auto complete for recipient. e.g. you want to write to steve_myboyfriend but autofill fills in steve_myboss.

It is also worth pointing out that:

• Email is not secure. You should feel like you are sending a postcard. It could be read by anyone.
• There is a lot to be said for using phone / letter for more important discussions.

At least there was one that made me laugh:

“I accidentally e-mailed a copy of university final exam to all of my students the night before the exam. Fortunately, they didn’t mind.” — Posted by Kara

No, but later yes.

A few of my friends have recently asked about making money online and whether it is worth trying. These are some observations from my experience in the past 2 years.

My first site, I tried to use for commercial purpose was quite hard work to make money from. I invested a lot of time in writing biographies of people. The return was relatively low. The ads had a low click through rate and relatively low earnings. However, it does get a reasonable amount of traffic and know earns about $100 a month. The thing is that because, it gives a low return, I have stopped adding content. Even though I spend no time on the site, it still earns a reasonable amount each month. This is the power of making money online. You work really hard in the beginning, but, then you can earn without doing anything. For the first year, the hourly rate was probably less than $0.01 per hour. With this kind of return, most people give up because why work for $0.01 an hour when you can earn $8 an hour working at McDonalds.

But, after the initial effort of the the first 18 months (and it was a lot of many hours) you can generate a steady stream of income, with minimal effort and hopefully this will be an income source for life. (The first thing I did after starting blogging for money, was to stop my private pension) I hope a blog will be my pension.

Other blogs I started, have a better ability to monetise because they are about finance or cycling products. These niches lend themselves to monetisation quite well because advertisers are willing to pay higher amounts.

Netwriting a blog on writing and blogging is relatively poor at earning money. However, I don’t mind, because I just enjoy adding content anyway. If you want to make money online, I would suggest a different niche to making money online and a blog about blogging (maybe due to the huge amount of competition)

The best bet to make money online is to find a niche, which you enjoy writing about. In this way you can combine a hobby with earning; this is the best motivator to keep going when you don’t make much money.

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I went through a period of low posting frequency on Net Writing. Ironically, at this time, I was being much more prolific with commenting on other blogs. I guess leaving a comment is less intimidating because it can be much shorter than a blog post; a blog post involves a bigger psychological effort. However, these are the reasons why I have largely stopped commenting on other blogs.

• If I have something interesting to say, I will post it on my own blog, rather than leave a comment on someone else’s blog. Leaving a comment on other blog, gives much less benefit than creating a post on your own blog.
• People give more importance to a blog post than a comment. On some blogs, the standard of comments is pretty high, like Copyblogger. However, people instinctively give a higher authority to a blog post than a comment. I usually read blog posts, but, don’t get round to reading the comments.
• I don’t read that many blogs anymore. I used to read many blogs to get ideas for posts, but, I find that reading many feeds, doesn’t actually give you that many new perspectives. Generally, I prefer to just use my own ideas.
• Opportunity Cost of Time. Leaving comments is time consuming. You have to find blog posts, think of something to say and then fill on all the captcha’s e.t.c. (BTW: Blogger blogs are the worst) If you spend an hour leaving comments, that is an hour you can’t be spending on your own blog or getting away from the computer. I’m not saying commenting is a complete waste of time; it just ranks fairly low compared to other things you could be doing.

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Why I Don’t Use Twitter

I noticed recently one of my blogs getting a good amount of referrals from Twitter. I started to feel slightly guilty for not jumping on the Twitter bandwagon and making the most of this potential traffic source. Problogger has been talking a lot about Twitter recently, so it must be giving some people benefits. However, I don’t use Twitter because:

• I doubt I would have much to say apart from: “please come and visit my blogs”
• I don’t particularly want to invest the time in growing a network of followers. (Interestingly I gained 6 followers, despite not adding any thing since I set up the account 4 months ago)
• My principle is that it is always better to spend time creating blog posts on your own blog, rather than working on third party products. This is a similar reason as to why I reduced the amount of comments I leave on other blogs.
• Many people say Twitter can become a bit of a time waster and you get distracted from doing other things.
• Note:
• Just because Twitter doesn’t work for me, doesn’t mean it can’t work for you. I have several blogs, so there are always blog posts to do. If you only had one flagship blog, it would make more sense to work on promoting the blog through things like Twitter.

Why I Don’t Use Twitter Very Much

Well I couldn’t resist testing what I was criticising, this is my first ‘twit’ in the past 6 months. Tejvan Twitter Profile

Q. What is the plural for people who use Twitter? A bunch of twits? (sorry, poor joke alert)

One of the more difficult aspects of blogging is the ability to keep a regular posting schedule. If you are able to keep a regular posting schedule, it will help attract regular readers. It is also a good way to build up the number of archives and pages.

Don’t Always Aim for Perfection.

Not every post has to be a 1,000 word epic. Sometimes short posts are just as good. I went through a stage of thinking I should always write with Digg in mind. Therefore, articles could take over an hour to write; this was a great disincentive to post - sometimes I went a week without posting.

Try a Few Shorter Posts

Similar to the point above, try posting a few quick posts. See: Advantages of short posts

Write on What You Know

Sometimes we set ourselves difficult challenges by trying to write on obscure topics or topics that need research. When posting think of what you already know about. Maybe you have been having a conversation with someone about an aspect of your blog. If you can talk about it, there is no reason why you cannot write about it.

Write En Masse.

Often I will sit down and write 6-7 posts for Netwriting in one day. On another day, I might write 5-6 posts for my cycling blog. By doing this, you can get into a groove for writing about the topic. Then you can use wordpress time delay publication. This is a very useful feature of Netwriting. You can have new content published throughout the week, but, only need to work on the blog for one day.

See also:

• How To Be A Prolific Blogger
  
• 10 tips for Inspiration to Write

Getting Your Website / Blog

1. Choose Your Niche. Choosing a good niche is essential to a successful blog. It must be good for you and a profitable in terms of advertising.

2. Interest in Blog. You must have an interest / knowledge in the topic. Don’t blog on something you don’t know about

3. Some Niches are much more profitable. It is worth bearing in mind that if you are getting a very high return on ad clicks, it is remarkable how quickly you can develop an interest in your profitable niche.- I never knew Mortgages could be so interesting.

4. Finance The niche should ideally be related to a product which has a financial value. If you blog about funny videos don’t expect a high click value rate. If you can get traffic for a blog about finance, insurance, mortgages, you can expect a higher return.

5. Motivation and Interest can Make any niche profitable. Any niche can make money so long as you can drive enough traffic. So if you have a real knowledge, interest in one subject that could be the one that is the most successful for you.

6. Blog on Products Blogging about Products is another way to make High revenue. If you blog about philosophy, general life, advertisers have no products to advertise. if you blog about different goods like computers, cameras there is a wide range of advertising programmes you can use like Amazon, bidvertiser e.t.c

7. Get your own domain. Don’t use a free domain like .blogspot and .wordpress. It looks bad, people / advertisers will take you less seriously. It will be harder to get links. You will regret it at some point, maybe not today, but you will regret it.

8. Make Bold Decisions. If you currently have a .blogspot address. - Change it now.

9. Choose a catchy domain, if possible with keywords. The ideal domain should be 2-3 syllables, which are memorable and remain in people’s mind. If you can get related keywords it will help. However, it is not essential as some people claim. Choose carefully, there comes a point when changing your domain is painful work. Memorable blog titles “Problogger” “Pick The Brain” “Copyblogger” “Lifehack.org” “Net Writing… :)”

Choosing Your Blogging Platform

10. Choose Wordpress. It’s that simple.

11. Plugins for any Need. Wordpress offers great flexibility, a variety of plugins, and choice of themes. It is being continuously developed and improved. It is also stable. You can customise it as much or as little as you want. Many have made the transition from blogger to wordpress.

12. My Experience. I switched several blogs from blogger to wordpress. I’m sure other blog software have their merits, but, having tried a few different ones I recommend wordpress as the most effective and easy to use.

Getting Started

13. A good, solid design is a must. True, you want to avoid spending too much time on frills and cosmetics. But, it has to look professional.

14. Avoid Looking Ordinary. Do not just use a standard blog theme. At least create a unique header.

15. Content is King. Sorry a bit of cliche but, work on creating content Writing High quality, interesting articles.

16. Be Patient. Don’t be despondent if traffic is slow in the beginning. Don’t worry about your earnings, or lack of them for the first 6 months. It takes time to get traffic.

17. Spread the Word. Let people know you have a new blog. This can be done through targeted emails plus commenting on other blogs.

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