Web Usability: As Few Clicks As Possible
May 8, 2008
Hello guys, today I want to talk about a simple yet often overlooked rule of web usability. Read moreDo You Know Your Visitors? 5 Points to Consider
This is a guest post by Abhijeet Mukherjee. Yes this is the question of the day for you. Do you know your visitors? Do you know what exactly they are looking for in your blog? Do you know if you are writing articles for an advanced user or for a beginner? Daniel once said that for a blogger, his reader is his customer. Hence having a clear perception about your visitor and what exactly he wants is one of the most important recipes for success as a blogger. If you are a niche blogger, then this becomes easier, but even then you should be aware if you are writing for an expert user or a beginner. You will always encounter situations when the post which you consider good is not appreciated by your readers and simple posts which you never gave importance to, becomes popular among your readers. That is why it is important to understand the psyche of the majority of your visitors and write accordingly. 1. Analyze Comments Read moreMay 7, 2008
TiECON/Chitika Blogpreneur Contest 2008
Chitika, the advertising network, has partnered with the TiECON conference to create a contest for bloggers, called Blogpreneur Contest 2008. Basically they want success stories from bloggers and web entrepreneurs. Here is how to participate:May 6, 2008
The 3 winners, selected by a panel of experts, will get featured at the TiECON conference, exposure on their websites and will also win badges and a plaque (I think they could have put some more salt in the prizes, but anyway). The contest starts in April 24 and ends in May 8. Read more
- Publish a blog post on your blog highlighting the key factors of your success in free form (no particular structure)
- Include the contest badge (see below) within your post so we can recognize your post an an entry
- Email your blog post link to: Blogpreneur(at)chitika.com so we can make sure your post is counted
Get Started at Creative Writing
If you don’t know what creative writing is all about, or if you have an idea but would like to get started, you should check out our latest article on Daily Writing Tips, titled Creative Writing 101. Here is a quote:May 6, 2008
There is a common belief that because most of us are literate and fluent, there is no need to serve an apprenticeship if we want to become a successful wordsmith. … That’s what I thought until I tried to write my first novel. I soon learnt that a novel, like a piece of furniture, has its own set of requirements, laws of construction that have to be learnt. Just because I had read plenty of novels didn’t mean I could write one, any more than I could make a chair because I had sat on enough of them.What does creative writing has to do with blogging? Well, for one thing all bloggers need to be able to write efficiently, and to be able to express and raise emotions from time to time. That is, they need to go beyond the mere facts once in a while (or more often than that depending on your niche). That is what creative writing is all about.
Partner: MakeUseOf.com Amazing Websites and Tools you Never Knew About Read moreVideo Blog Review 1 - FavBrowser.com
Welcome to the first Daily Blog Tips video post. It has been a long time since the idea of playing with videos came into my mind, and now I am finally up with the first one. I am aware that the quality needs to get improved, but if you guys like the format it might become a weekly feature on the blog. Apart from blog reviews I will try to to tutorials and how-to videos as well. On this first blog review I will cover the design and layout aspects of FavBrowser.com, a blog coming from one of our readers (I asked his permission to review it). In future reviews we will cover different aspects, like search engine optimization, content quality, promotion strategy and so on. If you took the time to watch the video, please let me know if you would like to see more of them, and if you have any suggestions for topics or formats. If for some reason you can’t see the video player, here is the link for the YouTube page: http://youtube.com/watch?v=WI074pRX13w. Read moreMay 5, 2008
Advertlets: How to Get More Advertisements and Earn More Money
If you have not log in to Advertlets control panel for some time, you may not have noticed the Advertising Preferences. Login and you should see them in the dashboard.May 5, 2008
Please update your preferences to ensure that advertising stays relevant on your blog, and to your taste of your blog audience. All these are set to be automatically off by default. However, please take some time to configure your display of ads.Depending on what’s fine with you, simply select all options to start displaying ads ranging from politics to gambling to adult. After ticking every single options, I’ve noticed an increase of earnings from 20-30%
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Hitting The Right Keyword
Late last year I followed some advice from a good friend of mine who makes his living with blogger niche sites and built my own blogger blog within 3 hours. I posted ten blog posts using the inbuilt time stamp feature. I also posted some pictures to make the site look more appealing. The keyword I used was from Google Trends. That site will give you constantly updated information on what is hot right now and searched for a lot via Google. Google Trends is therefore a great tool to use for niche marketing if you target the right keywords. See the graph below of my sites traffic.May 5, 2008
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Why You Must be the First, in Google’s Search Results at Least!
People always say that you need to be in the first page of results in Google if you want to receive clicks, right? Well, this will hurt, but the reality is that merely being in the first page is not enough. In fact, if you are around the lowest positions, you could end up getting a meager 1% of the overall clicks on searches for those keywords. This is a very hot topic, but strangely there it not a large amount of research around it. The most reliable study so far comes from the Cornell University. They used an eye tracking technology to discover what percentage of users would click on each of the 10 results appearing on the first page of Google for certain topics. The results, at least my opinion, are pretty shocking, as the image below illustrates (image via SEO Researcher):May 2, 2008
Let’s use some numbers to understand it better. Even if you manage to rank in the first page of Google for a keyword that receives 2,000 searches per day, you could end up receiving only 28 clicks daily if you appear on the ninth position. Even the web page appearing in the second position will only receive 268. Not a bad number, but it pales in comparison to the 1126 clicks that the first result would reap. Read moreApril 2008 Most Popular Articles
Below you will find the most popular articles of the past month. Check them out to make sure you have not missed any.May 1, 2008
- Let’s Follow Each Other on Twitter, Shall We?: After reading about it virtually on every single website on the web, a couple of weeks ago I decided to give Twitter a try. I must say that, contrary to what many people claim to, I did not get addicted to it.
- Embracing the Status of Part-Time Blogger: 5 Practical Tips: I’m sure you read a lot about pro blogging and what it takes to earn a full-time income from your blog. This is a common topic among active bloggers and there are plenty of great articles that cover various aspects of the subject. With the huge amount of focus that is given to becoming a pro blogger, I think that becoming a successful and profitable part-time blogger is often overlooked. Earning a reasonable amount of money on a part-time basis is actually more desirable than most people realize.
- May 1st RSS Awareness Day: Get Involved: What is the takeaway message? Only a very small percentage of the Internet population is aware of the RSS format and its benefits.
- Killer Domains: My First eBook is Available Now: If you tried to find some good domain names lately you know how disappointing the experience can be. It feels like all the marketable domains are already gone. And the problem is that the success of your website starts with the domain name.
- 7 Reasons Why You Might Never Be Productive: Are you disappointed with the fact that, no matter how hard you try, you can never seem to get things done in a productive manner? If so, then acting now is the way to go because you can rest assured that things will not exactly get better if you just stand there and wait for a miracle. As a blogger, being productive is definitely a must if you are serious about long-term success and living in denial is simply not an option.
- Open Discussion: What Do You Think of Internet Marketers? (aka the long sales page gurus): The same cannot be said about people that resort to the long sales pages, though. If you navigate around the web you will notice that there is a great deal of controversy around these practices.
- The Best Sources of Content for WordPress Users: If you’re looking for technical documentation or support, the codex and forums are usually the first place to look. However, I would like to share some blogs and websites that provide a good amount of WP-related content that I think you will appreciate. Whether you are a theme designer/developer or a blogger who is looking to get more out of WordPress, visit some of these sites and see for yourself.
- Website Traffic Series Part 3: Leave Comments on Other Blogs: On the first part of this series we talked about how you can generate traffic to your website by getting it featured on Web Design and CSS galleries. On the second part we talked about Blog Carnivals. Today we will cover another basic yet effective strategy: leaving comments on other blogs.
- Make Sure Your WordPress is Not Hacked: Lately there there seems to be a hacking spree around old versions of WordPress. Most of the times the hacker will edit your theme files to insert spam links. One of my older and non-active blogs got that problem, and I had several friends complaining to me about it as well when chatting over IM.
Partner: MakeUseOf.com Amazing Websites and Tools you Never Knew About Read moreKnow your DNA to improve your personal brand online
Having worked in recruitment for over 11 years, the DNA of potential new hires have been critical to being successful in growing my own teams and helping clients build theirs. What do I mean by DNA? Well it is their physical and mental make up, what defines them as individuals, how do they perform, what makes them valuable, what makes them special, what makes them tick e.t.c. If the people you work with, hire or seek to work with are not uniquely special, then why have you set the bar so low? I use an acronym to define what I feel is essential to know about an individual that makes them different. D - elivery N - iche A - ttitude Think about this from your own perspective. Read moreMay 1, 2008
