Planning Your Blogging Year Ahead

This time of year is perfect for looking back and looking forwards. Most blogs have a bit of a lull around about now due to your audience being overstuffed with rich stodgy foods and over indulging in festive spirit. Take advantage and get ahead.

Blogs and seasonality

Blogs are strange beasts. On the one hand they seem to not follow the same time line as the rest of your life, being the 24-7 type affairs that they are often trumpeted to be. On the other hand the people who post and visit are after all human and therefore are subject to things that affect people such as the calendar and seasons. So with this in mind first of all do not be dismayed if right now you are not making enough money from your blog to buy a postage stamp. On the other hand I imagine other blogs will have done great business and you will be hoping it will never end.

How seasonal is your blog? I know in the tech industry there seems to be two lulls, one around now where the only big announcements will be early January at the very earliest (tech companies tend to have great end of year parties too), and another quiet period in summer when the decision makers are sunning their pale hides on beaches. Gadget blogs though tend to do well on the lead up to Christmas due to the increase in interest in the niche. Lots of mums, dads, aunts and uncles all trying to find that perfect gift for little Johnny or Jilly.

What should you do about it?

If you can predict ahead when your busy time or quiet time will be this coming year then you will be better prepared.

Every blogger needs some time off otherwise you might well burn out. It is tough on the little grey cells to be constantly inventing and creating, it’s good to give it a rest for a bit to recharge your batteries and get reacquainted with your family.

Quiet periods are also perfect for implementing design changes, tweaking and housekeeping, changing hosting, all those things you don’t want to do in case there is downtime or your blog looks messy to new visitors.

Busy periods need to be planned for if at all possible so you can maximise your returns. For example if your blog is about selling old tat and unwanted gifts on auction sites right now you need to be prominent on all major search engines for relevant search phrases. This is not the sort of thing you can do on the spur of the moment. Same with gadgets and gifts leading up to Christmas, Valentines, Easter.

You can usually work out when the “money time” is for many industries by watching the television advertising. Around about now the vacation adverts will appear showing sunny scenes in direct contrast to what many of us are experiencing outside our windows. Also the debt consolidation and loans people will be going into high gear thanks to the hyper spending of months previous.

Niche calendar

The other aspect of calendar effects on blogs is there are certain events you need to plan for that are well known in your niche.

For bloggers and webmasters there are of course big conferences and events that all the blogs talk about. There are the search engine events, like SES, the big webmastering get togethers like webmasterworld then the blogger events such as Northernvoice.

It is no use deciding to just turn up to these things even if they are local to you (which for me they never are). For example Northernvoice is in February but if you want to speak and haven’t already got your slot then you are out of luck. Even if you want to attend just to listen you need to get organised with tickets, travel and accommodation plans.

If you want to be seen as an authority in your niche then you need to be covering the main events. Make sure you know what the big events are and ensure you are there and blogging them. It’s quite easy for your audience to get their daily fix elsewhere. I am sure there were quite a few blogs got a leg up with the Ipod and Xbox 360 announcements of last year.

Planning the year ahead

So, sitting as we are at the cusp of a new year, we are perfectly positioned to look forward and plan.

If you already have an established blog then you will have some advance warning of some of the things we have discussed in this post. Take a look at your years worth of logs and stats and work out where your peaks and troughs were. What posts worked best and when. Try and work out when you missed the mark or scored bullseyes.

Are you using this time to plan a new blog or take your fledgling blog to the next level? In that case you need to do some brainstorming. Get a calendar (electronic or physical) and mark in when your niche events happen and the big news times. Set yourself goals and try to put a milestone in every month.

• Traffic – when will you go from zero visitors to 100 a day, then 1000 a day, then 5000 a day?
• Content – try to plan at least one killer post a month, aim for more. If you start brainstorming now it will be so much easier when the time comes. Use the month and season as inspiration.
• Income – when will you be able to approach advertisers and sponsors? When will you write and release your ebook or blogcommerce? What is your starting income? When will you increase this figure by 50%, when will it increase by the same amount? When will you be able to quit your job and do this full time?

If you fancy being a blog overlord you might also want to phase your launches of new blogs. In which case you will also need to plan finding bloggers, setting up hosting and implementing designs, well before your planned blog launches.

What are you going to do?

Are you using this time to party or are you planning your year? Personally, I aim to do a bit of both. Tell us about your 2006!

Choosing A Perfect Blog Name

Choosing a name for your blog is like choosing a name for a child, choose carefully. How do you go about selecting the perfect name?

Names are tricky, along with choosing your niche a name can be one of the harder initial decisions. Surprisingly hard. When you do find a name that you like then you have to go back to the drawing board because the ideal domain is taken.

You can only do this well after settling on a niche for your blog. Only personal blogs can really successfully start with the blog name and choose the subject matter later! First have a think about what sort of blog you are writing. Take a look around at what sort of blogs are in your subscription list, here are some examples.

• Personal Blog – These vary from “Jo Bloggers Blog” to completely random names. Personal blogs are all about unique personality and the names are either unimaginatively the persons name or evoke the promise of interest and fun. Sometimes a mixture of the two works like in Gill Gunsons Gillianic Tendencies
• Whimsical Blog – If the aim is to be funny then choosing a dry business like name is not going to work. Hugh Macleod is a cartoonist who draws on the back of business cards but he also has made a name for himself with his snarky marketing content, he calls his blog Gapingvoid.
• Product Blog – Product blogs range from the random Woot to the obvious PVRBlog, mainly depending on the tightness of focus.
• Business Blog – Some business blogs are just extensions of the company website, others are consultants and authors who use their own name, or a straightforward nod to the target audience such as Darrens ProBlogger.

So have a think about what your blog is going to be and think about what type of name you need to choose. Descriptive, evocative, direct or metaphor?

I quite like the metaphor route, names like BitTorrent speak volumes to me, evocative names also work for me too which is lucky because I think Performancing falls under that category. They are not to everyone’s taste though, just look at some of the arguments about Seth Godins new Squidoo service name. Product blogs about a particular item or service I think might work best when the name is clearly bound to the product as in the PVR example. A lot has to do with your target audience. What will your audience be expecting?

When looking at evocative or metaphorical names it is sometimes useful to think what the benefit is that your blog will provide, or what problem do you solve? Performancing is clearly about helping your blogging (and revenue) performance. We could have been more direct and called it something with “cash” or “money” or “ROI” etc in the title but Performancing really stands out, even if you don’t like it.

What are your competitors names? If standing out is important then you need to consider what your competitions names are like. If they are all descriptive a more creative name might give you that bit of difference. Your name is very important in branding and positioning.

Will your blog always have focus or will you want to extend out? A more generic name might be necessary if you will want to have multiple blogs off the same root name.

Good names

A really good name for your blog will be

1. Readable
2. Pronounceable
3. Spellable
4. Memorable
5. Concise
6. Unique

Brainstorm

Look at what we have discussed so far and aim to invent more and more words as they spring to mind. Play with ideas. Combining words and creating new words, checking a thesaurus, getting the help of friends and family can all help.

Switch off your internal critic while you create. Jot down every name no matter how daft, at this point you are aiming for quantity, not quality!

Once you have a big long list go through and ditch the worst offenders then copy the remaining list and either choose or get friends to each score a top three. Those you take to the computer and check for domain name availability.

A word on search engines

While there may be a small benefit with search engines to have your domain use a keyword, I believe this is by far outweighed by the branding benefits of choosing a great name. If your best name does not contain your keywords do not sweat. I would much rather have a good name than a keyword-laden one.

Finally

The name you choose will be up to you, you have to live with it. In the end it is your choice so while I have suggested you take others opinions into account, you go with what you believe is right.

For more information on this subject check out my other blog naming articles creating catchy blog names and Better blog branding – what’s in a name?.

How did you choose your blogs name? What feedback do you get about your blog name?

Why You Don’t Rank and What to Do About it

If you are looking at your analytics and wondering why you don’t get any search traffic, or looking at search results wondering why you are nowhere to be found, then read on.

There are fundamental reasons why one site ranks and another doesn’t, and sorry but it takes either effort or money to put right.

1. Your site is broken for search engines – If you can’t even get indexed then you will never rank, so that is the first thing to check. Next is your site being found with both www. and without? After that make sure your structure is correct and the content is well ordered and prioritized over markup.
2. You are not targeting the right keywords – If you do not target phrases then whatever you rank for, if anything, will be left to chance. What are the phrases that will bring the best traffic (not always the most, but the quality traffic you need).
3. You do not have enough links – Link building takes effort or you need to pay someone, but do not leave it to “build it and they will come”. If you are just hoping for links then you can be sure your competitors are actually doing something about it. Quality, on topic, good anchor text links = Rank

So what do you need to do? Get your site in order, work out what phrases you want to be found for, and start building links around those phrases!

If you want someone to do the link building for you, look no further than our own Performancing Services Link Builder Package.

Are Bloggers Opinionated?

I have a theory that bloggers are more opinionated than the average person. Think this might be true?

• Who else wants to put their thoughts out there for all the world to see?
• Who else wants to comment on other peoples thoughts?
• Snarky or kind, we like to link, quote and critique each other. Who else does that?

Of course in normal day to day life people advise, opine, gossip, bitch and moan, but bloggers do it online and try to draw attention to it.

What do you think? Is there a blogging gene that sets us apart?

Who Else Wants to be a Six Figure Video Creator?

Could you make a living out of creating how-to videos? According to New York Times, people are:

Many of the clips have been played hundreds of thousands of times, turning Mr. Kedersha into the top earner on Metacafe, a video-sharing Web site that pays the makers of popular videos. In little more than a year, the site has written him checks totaling $102,000.

It makes sense, in-demand content is the fuel of the web. More and more people are turning to the web for answers. Advertisers want to be where the eyeballs are.

What surprises me is all the coverage seems to be around people selling their videos to sites for $20 a pop, or sharing revenues with YouTube. Nobody is talking about the sites that are PAYING for these videos and how much THEY are making.

To me that is where the real action is.

Yes, $20 for a 5 minute video might sound like a fun way to make money, but think about this for a second. Buying a $20 video that could bring in tens of thousands of views consistently, an asset that lives on, seems like the wiser side of the deal.

How-to videos are not ephemeral like other topics. Fixing your plumbing air lock or building a scale model of a tank are pretty ever-green subjects.

Then there is the higher potential profits to be found in premium paid memberships.

It seems like video is well worth looking at if you have the skills or the willingness to learn them.

Why Bloggers Should Also Be Photographers

Just like Raj, I also have a fondness for looking at the world through a camera lens. It’s my therapy, and it gets me thinking about things other than work and stress.

Today I realized there is another benefit. I hardly ever have to rely on stock photographs!

I have been putting together little banners to funnel traffic to key parts of sites, for example these for credit cards. Even though the topics are diverse I managed to pull solutions out of my existing picture collection.

Ok, my photographs are hardly Ansel Adams quality, but for banners and blog post illustrations I think they suffice. Crestock has a daily free photograph, plus I have a account stuffed with credits that I have yet to touch. Even so, very often I turn to my own Flickr account before I think of using iStockPhoto or Crestock.

From looking at my Flickr friends, I think there is quite a crossover between photographers and bloggers.

Are you a blogger that also likes photography? Let’s see how many of us there are

Hanging in There

Today started bad and only got worse. It’s days like these that make me want to escape to a log cabin in the mountains somewhere far away. Ever feel like that?

It started with me feeling nauseous and only got worse with me making someone angry, which then made me feel physically sick.

This isn’t the first bad day on record, nor will it be the last. Quite a few of you will have much more valid bad-day reasons than my small troubles. But the woe we feel is real to us, even when trivial to others.

So it’s not new, we all get those days, and if we are going to get anywhere we have to keep plugging away.

What keeps us going?

A big boost came from my twitter followers sympathy and cheer-ups. They didn’t judge me, they didn’t tell me how they had it worse (while I expect many do), they just sent me some good vibes. That makes me smile.

The lesson there is be nice when you are riding high and things are going well now because some day you might want some nice back.

Next booster is knowing what I am in this for. My daughter came home from school. She lit up the room. Kind of puts things in perspective. It often helps to look at the big picture, think of what will be important to you next year or ten years from now.

How do you deal with the off days when everything you touch turns to poo?

The Blog Platform War – Not Over Yet?

I while ago I wrote a long series of blog software reviews here for performancing. Time has flown, as it does, and I was wondering if the same sorts of results would be found now as then.

Back then Drupal and WordPress came out strong. There were also a good number of well known and not-so well known names.

Between then and now I have concentrated purely on WordPress after giving up trying to keep abreast of the Drupal goings on (those guys really crank out some code!).

Each have been given several iterations, the software is both familiar now and new from back then.

Recently MovableType had a resurgence of interest since going back to open source.

So is it a one-horse race or is there still everything to win for any one of the platforms out there?

Would you re-score any of those results knowing what you know now?

A Free and Handy SEO Software Tool

Lately I have been getting back into the whole SEO thing and I have just been reading Khalids review of some very clever SEO software.

SheerSEO might have a funny name but it certainly seems to be very useful!

What it does is checks and reports your search positions for your most wanted keywords. Because it is automated (and currently free!) you can save a lot of time, time that you can put towards improving those rankings.

The site allows you to add up to 200 keywords to check for your site ranking: The interface to add the words is straight forward to use. The current number of keywords sheerseo tracks is 200 but I am sure they will be expanding this in the future.

Check out the software and Khalids full review.

Which SEO software do you use?

Digg Service Considered Dangerous?

There are many people providing social media marketing services. We do! But what you do not get with these services is paid diggs.

Your usual “deliverable” with a social media buy is a top class article, resource, widget or tool, that is attractive and compelling enough to draw votes and links naturally.

Now, obviously there is the temptation for anyone frustrated with their performance in the social media sites to cut out all this hard work and lack of guarantee. They want to buy a front page story and don’t care how it is achieved.

Enter paid diggs.

These services have been around for a while, Digg eventually neutralizes them, but subvertandprofit.com has been getting some Twitter attention so I thought I would mention it.

$2 a vote, what are the downsides?

Well you could well lose any chances of ever getting dugg again, but if you are not getting to the popular page anyway what have you to lose? Well, your reputation I guess.

BUT, what if some competitor saw you getting in Digg all the time and wanted to end your fun? One or two small payments to get you on Diggs banning radar and boom, got you banned.

And what about blog sales? Pay for votes, inflate your traffic (and therefore sale price), leave you to clean up the mess.

Am I paranoid or do these services cause more problems than merely subverting the social bookmarking sites?