Statistics

Statistics are an important part of blogging and it is something that has to be taken very seriously. I am one of those blogs that take more time looking at stats than blogging. Statistics help me improve earnings and make me a better blogger.

Many of you can just blog and totally ignore blogging statistics, but it is the same thing, driving a car without knowing where it was going. Statistics may also be important for the following reasons:

Much More Focus
Statistics help you focus on your goals, whatever they may be. Analyzing your statistics will let you know if you are moving forward or not.

Make Required Adjustments
Proper statistics tracking can help you change some patterns like blog posting frequency, advertisement changes, theme changes and any minor or major changes.

Improve Demographics
A better understanding of the demographics of your blog statistics with information like geographical location and length of visits is useful when targeting visitors to meet the specific needs of your visitors age groups, lifestyles etc.

Identify Trends
With tools like the Google Analytics you will be provided with reports of different strategies that might be employed for better traffic, the success of posts and how social bookmarking may help. You will be able to track the increase in traffic and understand areas where you could improve.

In the next post, i’ll try to cover on how may you track statistics better,

backup

Everyone has a TO-DO list when it comes to blogging. Like me, I have the following on my list:

However, under any circumstances I would not have “Make A Backup” or anything in relation to that. It is so weird, but after Today i am going to make a monthly backup of my data. This is something that should be done on a regular basis, as these days hackers are quite active and can attack your blogs using different techniques. I almost lost all my data when attacked today.

While there are many ways to back your data, I would suggest using the WP-DB-Backup plugin, if you are using the WordPress CMS like me.

P.S. I hope you guys have updated to WordPress 3.3

This is my last post for 2011, I Wish You all a Happy New Year

A Picture is worth a Thousand Words. A big question common in the masses of bloggers all around the world is “Are Images Important When Blogging?” What is your say or word on this? I really would say a big YES, images are really important while blogging. An image in a blog can serve many purposes in a blog and I as a blogger have compiled a few of the reasons why images can be very important.

A Visual Appeal

When a reader comes to a blog the first thing the user notices is the theme design and then when he or she focuses on the blog post only an image can create a visual appeal to the user. I for once use clean and attractive images in posts to attract my readers. These can be images can be found via Google or if you might have premium access photo services like iStockPhoto.

SEO Attention

Search Engines love images. The use of more and more images will help your blogs leech out readers, so using the “alt” tags in images and adding a description to the images will allow search engines like Google and Bing index your blog posts. Just a small fact, I get around 5 to 10 visitors a day from Search Engine Image search.

Support the Blog Post

Like I started the blog post, a picture is worth a thousand words. An image in the post can explain the purpose of the post and explain the post easily. An easy example could be using a Football image in a post related to football matches, although there may be loads of examples of implementing images into posts.

Promoting a blog has always been difficult especially if the blog is a new one. These days I feel the even unique content won’t do much help if you have the skills of the so called SEO. Paying a big wad of cash can only help you get your blog listed in SE’s for a limited amount of time won’t do much.

Today I’ll introduce to you a site that I recently encountered. BlogSearchEngine is a PR6 blog and it was established in 2003 that makes it almost 9 years old with 2011 ending. What you can have done is with a small one-time fee get your blog listed, reviewed and blasted to the blogosphere. They offer various packages starting from $15 to a maximum of $100.

I have some advantages that you might consider getting your blog listed with the Platinum Package.

1. A PR6 Blog Post (You can easily boost your pagerank to 2 ~ 3 and you know how to make money via backlinks)

2. A PR5 Blog Post (Same advantage as above)

3. A Blog Listing on a PR3 Page for 30 Days

4. Featured link on Eatonweb blog portal for 30 days (This will attract loads of traffic and these might turn into loyal readers)

5. ‘Featured Blog’ display banner for 15 days on a PR6 Blog visited by thousands of people every day (Traffic + Link Love)

I am sure everyone would have their eyes stunned. I am going to use a part of my next months pay to get my blog listed on BlogSearchEngine, the question is Are You?

Go right ahead and Blast Your Blog

Update

I Got my blog listed at BlogSearchEngine.com
As well as BloggyAward

It has been blogged in the past on how to research niche for a blog. Niche blogging talks on a precise topic so all focus can be directed in one area. I have summarized a few characteristics of a respectable niche blog.

niche-blog

1. Focused Content

There is a restriction for what topic to post on and any content added in the form of blog posts must be related to your niche and should it be required, very less mentioning of material from the universal niche available.

2. In-depth Information

Usually niche blogger face problems when looking for content but the main advantage of niche blogging is that a blogger can go in-depth on their niche and talk every small bit of item, example if your niche is Eye Surgery, there are a thousand types of surgeries that can be talked upon.

3. Uniqueness

Bloggers these days use feed aggregators to fill up their blogs with content via search engines or different blogs, but by offering visitors unique content one can get loyal readers and make them money in the process.

4. Advertisement Friendly Themes

A common mistake that bloggers usually make is overload their websites with advertisements so that they could earn money but it seems their greed drives away visitors and in turn their profits. Strategically positioning of advertisements can lead to extensive earning and returning visitors.

5. Having an audience

Choosing a niche that attracts traffic is very important and thought put in so that in time the niche should receive search engine visitors.

What are your thoughts; can you create and maintain such a blog?

Now that you’re making posts on your blog, you have to analyze exactly how you’re going to deliver them.

Quality

As I mentioned earlier, quality has everything to do with whether you’re going to attract 1,000 visitors per day or only 5. If you want to attract professionals, you have to write professionally. Don’t plagiarize posts or content from someone else’s site. If you’re posting well-written quality content on a consistent basis, visitors will increase.

Length

You must also take into consideration the average length of your posts. Much of this has to do with the type of audience you’re reaching out to.

Analyze some things about your target audience such as their average age as well as the average amount of time they spend online each day. By taking factors such as these into consideration, you will be more equipped to decide how short or how long your posts should typically be.

Frequency

How often should you post something new on your blog? Once a week? Once a day? Multiple times per day? Here’s an example:

Scenario A: Let’s say you have a blog in which you give information about legal issuespertaining to Wal-Mart. When Wal-Mart is getting sued, you want to tell people about it. Howoften do you think you should post? Possibly only a fewtimes per week.

Scenario B: You have a blog in which you share odd news stories and funny videos with your visitors. Do you think you would have strong reader loyalty if you only posted something new a few times per week? Probably not. Why? Because with as many strange things that get passed around the Internet nowadays, the content you would find on a blog such as this would be expected to change rapidly. A blog focusing on something such as this would probably make multiple posts per day. Think about your subject matter and your audience, then decide on a frequency that works best for you. The important part is that once you make a decision- stick with it! Nothing confuses your readers more than making sporadic posts.

Consistency

Many blog owners want to make that great first impression, so they’ll be posting tons of really valuable self-written content. Sometimes after a few weeks, you’ll notice the quality and frequency of the posts start to decline. Great self-written articles begin to be replaced by pulls from different RSS feeds. All of a sudden, posting YouTube videos seems much easier than coming up with new material. In the end, you will fare much better with 50 loyal, regular visitors than you will with 500 random one-time-only visitors. Be consistent with whatever you do on your blog. Otherwise, you will just confuse your visitors and they’ll go someplace else.

Give your opinion

Another way to attract more visitors to your blog is by being opinionated- borderline controversial at times. If you have something to say, then say it! That’s why you started a blog, isn’t it? Many people are afraid of stating their opinions because they feel that people will speak negatively about them- but, to a degree, negative talk about your blog is still talk about your blog! Not many people want to go to a blog to read straight facts and articles- there are plenty of resource websites and online encyclopedias for that! Whether readers believe this to be fact or not, I believe it to be true. If you state only cut-and-dry facts, you’re just passing around old news.

Response

When somebody takes the time to comment on your blog, be sure to quickly acknowledge it. Just a simple “thanks for your comment” will do fine. Say “thank you” to everyone who visits your blog! If you’re using the MyBlogLog plug-in for WordPress, you will have a list of avatars for all the recent visitors to your blog. If it’s their first visit to your blog, click on their avatar to be taken to their MyBlogLog profile page and leavthem a message thanking them for visiting your blog. I have been loyally doing this since day 1 of my blog being online, and it has helped me to build many loyal visitors who return to my blog often. Blogs are all about being approachable. If you do nothing but publish posts, you’re keeping yourself distant. By regularly communicating with and reaching out to your visitors, you make for a pleasant user experience and motivate your visitors to not only return to your blog, but to tell their friends about it as well. Even when you’re receiving 500,000 unique visitors per month and you have 10,000 RSS subscribers, never forget to be approachable! Respond to all your emails and blog comments.

Honesty

Always be open and honest with your visitors. There are thousands of other bloggers just like you trying to make a place for themselves online. Share your accomplishments by posting them on your blog. For example, in the beginning of each month, you might want to make it a habit to post a summarization of what happened on your blog in the previous month.

You can highlight any publicity you’ve received as well as any new blogging friends you’ve made. You can also display a chart, graph or report highlighting the amount of traffic your blog received and what you did to get it. Once you start reporting a sizeable amount of traffic, visitors will come to the conclusion that you must be doing something right, so they’ll keep coming back to your blog to find out what your trick is. Just be sure to remain honest about whatever you report. If you use Feedburner, you have another decision to make: whether or not to display the number of your RSS subscribers.

This is another one of those subjects that is left up to each individual, but I recommend (along with many others) to only display the number of your RSS subscribers once you have reached a predetermined minimum number. You may want to wait until 30, 50 or even 100 people subscribe to your feed before you share this number with others. The reason is that you might have the best blog in town, but if I’m a first time visitor and the first thing to catch my eye is the fact that you have only 2 subscribers, I might come to the conclusion that your blog has either been abandoned or the content is worthless, when the realreason may be that your blog is only a week old. Similar to sharing your traffic stats, when you show people that you have a sizeable amount of people subscribing to your RSS feed, anyone who isn’t subscribed will feel like they might miss out on something good unless they join in with everyone else.

An example of sharing the number of your RSS subscribers with others is found at http://InternetMarketingSucks.com/blog, where you will notice they proudly display the number of subscribers at the top right corner of each page, now numbering over 1,000! If they only showed 4 or 5 subscribers, you wouldn’t feel like you’d be missing out on much by not subscribing yourself. But, since they have over 1,000 RSS subscribers, it seems like you’re missing out on something great if you don’t subscribe!

You are embarking on a new adventure…your very own website! You may have something to sell, something to tell, or just might want to be on the Internet for some other reason, or just because everyone else seems to be.
Regardless of the reason, there is one thing that all web sites need, whether it is corporate or personal, and that is an “About” page.
If you have a corporate, or business web site, your “About” page will be about the company you have, or the products you are trying to sell. If it is a personal web site however, the “About” page is usually about YOU.
So, what makes a good “About”, or “About me” page? First of all, I think your audience needs an introduction from you, so I would start with telling everyone, just who you are, and something about your background, and that will include:

1. Where you came from?
2. Where you were born and when?
3. Who your parents were?
4. What they did (if relevant)?
5. How you were raised?
6. You can speak about your religious background if that is appropriate.
7. Where you are educated?
8. Did you go to university? If so, what degrees did you earn?

This provides your reader with some idea of where your currents thoughts/ideas might have been formulated.

Try to make these factual statements about yourself entertaining, or at least well-structured and interesting to read. Don’t forget, you are laying the groundwork for someone to read your biography. In doing so, they will continue on reading being interested in what else you have to say on your website.

Now you have provided the reader with your background, begin telling the reader:

• Why do you have this web site of yours?
• What are your goals in providing this information?
• Why information are you trying to impart?
• What audience are you trying to reach?
• What message are you trying to pass along to people who reach your web site?
• Are you interested in trying to convince someone of something?
• Do you have a cause you are promoting? If so, where in your background would you have reason to promote the cause?
• Are you published?
• Are you the creator of some wonderful invention?
• Are you the son/daughter of someone famous with a need to correct some misconception of your parents?

These are all questions you should ask yourself when writing an “About me” page. The length of the page will depend entirely on your depth of experience in life and what you are representing. I suggest you take a look at as any web sites as you can to get ideas. See what other people have to say about them selves. Check out the “About me” pages for the famous, and not so famous. Which do you like, which “About me” holds your interest, which speaks to you and leaves you with a longing for the life just led. These are the pages that spring off the screen and truly tell you something about the person. Yours should do the very same thing. Good luck and I can’t wait to read all about you!

If you are looking to update your blog and add features that will make it more appealing to your users, plug-ins are an excellent option for you. There are tons of plug-ins out there for use; here are some of the best:

Easy Paypal Payment for WordPress
A nifty little plug-in that makes accepting Paypal payments a snap. Use it for payment on products, services or even donations, this plug-in works for multiple currencies with just a click. Design your page as you wish as this plug-in works as a sidebar, in the post or your page.

Simple Shopping Cart for Paypal on WordPress
A clever plug-in makes shopping simple on WordPress. Allows the use of shopping carts as well as adding the ‘add to cart’ button on any page or post WordPress contains.

Integrate Thickbox on WordPress
An elegant way to display large images simply, this plug-in means never having to open a new window to view an image. Utilizing jquery and opening gallery images in something akin to a lightbox just use the ‘add an image’ button and your done. The ‘open in the same window’ option makes this plug-in a breeze.

Contact Form Seven
An easy to add and implant contact form, this plug-in makes collecting contact information a snap. Supports multiple languages and Ajax submitting, it filters out bots and other non-live attempts to fill out the form

Google Translator
This is an awesome plug-in for bloggers with multi-national readers. This plug-in allows for simple text translation utilizing the same functionality of the Google translator. This plug-in does a fair job at translating, although nothing is as good as a properly translated blog.

WordPress Gallery Flipping Book
This clever plug-in allows your users to turn your pages just like they would books. Please note, this plug-in comes with author branding. It can be removed by paying a small fee for the paid version of the plug-in.

XML Google Sitemaps
This plug-in will automatically inform Google when you make any changes or add any content to your WordPress site. This plug-in is indispensable for bloggers with multiple blogs that are changing constantly.

Showcase and Theme Changer
For those bloggers who want to allow their users to change the theme when they visit, this nifty little plug-in is ideal. With a drop down list as well as thumbnail views, your readers can easily customize their view of your webpage.

AX Sidebar
This plug-in allows for a few extra fields in post administration. Add content and title utilizing plain text or HTML and it will show up in the sidebar associated with that post.

Page Peel by Pageear
A tested marketing tool, page peels are an excellent idea if they are not too overwhelming. This nice little plug in is not. Very easy installation and lots of features make it a nice addition to any WordPress Page.

New plug-ins are created every week, keep abreast of the changes with research and implement plug-ins you like to keep your website looking fresh and up-to-date.

It seems like everyday, another new blog site or blog purpose is appearing. Originally used as a simple form of communication between one person and many, blogs have taken on a life of their own. With uses ranging from personal reflection and information dissemination to product marketing and promoting social causes, everyone is jumping on the blog band wagon. Many new bloggers are unsure how to create and maintain a successful blog. Beginner’s mistakes can lead to a bombed blog, so it is important to take the time to do it right by following a few simple tips.

Post Promptly
One of the best things a blogger can do to increase traffic to his blog is to post often and promptly. Posting a schedule and adhering to it will make readers more likely to return. Whether posts are done daily, weekly or monthly, let readers know when the next post is coming and stick with it.

Experience Excites
When writing a blog, use first hand experience. Blogs were meant to be a personal experience medium and readers are much more likely to connect to the material and its writer if it comes from a real or true place. Use the first person and simply talk to your readers. For example, when blogging about a new restaurant in the neighborhood, a good blogger will relate his or her own experience at the restaurant and not rely on generalized impressions or information from critics. Keep it real.

Find Your Place
In blogging, communities of bloggers interested in a particular topic are called niches. Find your niche and use it. Make sure to read the blogs of other niche bloggers and comment on their blogs in a timely and relevant fashion. In this way, bloggers familiarize others with their material and blog, thus driving traffic to their blog.

Write Right
When posting a blog, it is important that proper grammar and spelling are used. This does not mean a conversational tone cannot be used, it just means that bloggers should take time to treat their readers with respect by producing quality writing that is easy to read and adheres to accepted writing standards. Blog writers who use poor grammar or spelling are likely to lose readers as bad writing tends to make the writer appear ignorant. No one wants to take advice from someone who appears ignorant. Take the time to proofread and edit a blog.

Make a Splash
It’s ironic that a blog, often used as a marketing tool, needs to be marketed as well, but it does. Social networking sites are an excellent way to do this. Use MySpace, Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites to market blogs.

Run a Tight Ship
Neatness counts and a clean, simply designed blog is sure to go far. With all the tools and add-on available, it is easy to lose sight of the actual blog, so be careful not to overdo it. Keep it simple and clean and filled with good content!

Following these simple techniques is an excellent start to a well received blog. Just remember, it takes time for anything to take root and flourish, so do not be surprised if it takes several weeks to develop a strong following!

Themes? Just what are we talking about here, a blog theme? Web site theme? Social network page theme? What, exactly?

If you have a page on the web and that page is owned by you, or represents you, you can present a “theme” coupled with the content. This will separate you from the masses and provide some stamp of uniqueness that represents you, or what you are trying to convey.

Now that you have decided that a theme is something that you want. You have the choice of a free theme, or a customized theme. A free theme, of course, is just that, free, and usually comes with the web page, or site you are dealing with. It will be limited in scope and will vary from single color backgrounds to multi-colored backgrounds, but it usually stops there. It may be quite sufficient for you and you need not look any further to get added impact. In fact there are some rich, and warm colors with free themes and you might want to stay with something simple. This will depend on the type of page the theme is going on.

If the page is very shallow in terms of showing the theme, then you do not need to be elaborate. If there is a dearth of space that needs to be filled up, or your entire page background is covered, then you might want to consider something with a little more pizzazz, a little more artistic flair. This you will get from a customized theme.

Now, not all customized themes are created equal. You might only get a choice from a limited package. A theme might be just a “skin”, or it might be more involved and provide buttons, motions and secondary actions when hitting links for instance. So it pays to shop around and look for the best choices based on the theme you are trying to project.

You will almost certainly have the choice of many customized themes when you make your decision.

A contributing actor when making the decision for free or customized is obviously price. A free theme is just that, no cost, and there are a lot of nice free themes available. Some are equal to, or better than premium price themes. For custom, or premium themes, you will get a multitude of choices ranging from a few dollars up to $100. You have to decide whether it is worth paying the premium, and that decision will be based on the audience you want to keep once they get to your site. Premium themes will generally give a clean and more professional look and will likely provide more functionality. The theme developer will usually be able to support the theme, especially the higher price ones. So although there is a cost involved, it may dividends to have that extra professionalism and functionality.

Make your decision based on your need. Don’t throw money away, but neither shy away from paying for a very professional look and feel. You are presenting yourself, your company, or an idea to a global audience. Make it look good and give the visitor a great experience!