Last month, Splashpress Media (the parent outfit of Performancing) revealed a re-energized Blog-Tutorials.com. While Performancing is the place to go for your regular dose of professional/advanced blogging tips, Blog-Tutorials takes us back to the basics. Definitely useful for beginners; that's not to say that veterans won't pick up new things from the blog!
Here's an appetizer of some sorts, a quick list of several Blog-Tutorials posts that you might find helpful: Read the rest of this entry
Sometimes, no matter how strict and disciplined our posting schedules are, there are events that will forcibly push us out of our rhythm, such as family tragedies and emergency out-of-town trips (to places without good Net access, to boot). The longer the event, the more work gets piled up, and the greater the disorientation upon our return. That said, count me as one disoriented blogger. (I have been one for the past two weeks!)
In response to this problem of mine, I cooked up a list of activities which helped me ease myself back into the numerous problogging tasks on hand. Hope these can help future bloggers who’ll unexpectedly get yanked out of “the flow”. Read the rest of this entry
Tired of sifting through your RSS feed subscriptions for a blog post inspiration? Looking for new ways to dish out content that’s unique on the Net? You can try these offline sources (feel free to list more in the comments!):
Newspapers – Not every article of the print newspaper appears in the online version. When you quote text from a print article and build a blog post around it, you can end up with original, and even linkbait, content. Of course, do some research first with the search engines. This ‘technique’ works well with:
1) National issues (an example: my old The Philippines’ ICT Ranking: Dismal post), which when marketed well (social voting, comments on your countrymen’s blogs, emails) can generate good attention and traffic – after all, national issues are always mixed with an iota of honor, pride, and patriotism; and
2) Niche topics buried deep in the paper’s subsections, with tech, health, and the arts as some examples. Niche newspaper sections = niche blogs. If I had a cactus blog, I’d be a very happy man right now, as the daily broadsheet I subscribe to has a cactus section (for some reason).
Magazines – Magazines are perfect for niche blog content as they almost always revolve around one field of interest only. Be it about mathematics or Dungeons & Dragons, a magazine article can talk about something that your blog’s readers might be interested in. A magazine article turned blog post can be seen in action right here in Performancing.
Books – We’re not talking about book reviews here. I believe this is best used with nonfiction books, though writing a political blog post about a chapter in Tolkien’s fantasy saga isn’t out of the question, too ;-) In nonfic books, what the author states as fact or as his viewpoint/opinion can get your blogging gears rolling, especially if you strongly disagree with it. Remember, it doesn’t matter if the book is old or new – a book is an eternal, tangible piece of the height of human discourse and creativity.
Events – Product launches, blog awards/meet-ups, expos, you name it, it can be blogged. These events often have press/media kits and souvenir programs, and they’ll be handy reference guides when you write a blog post. Of course, the info found in these kits/souvenirs might also be found online, and that’s why your personal experiences and self-taken photos count! One example is Ia’s post about the recent Adobe CS3 Launch in Manila.
I’m not too sure if there are many Performancing users who write literature on their blogs, but if you’re one of them, have you considered that the pieces you’ve published on your blog might be disqualified from appearing in literary publications and being entered into contests?
This isn’t an inconvenience for lit bloggers who just want to share their works with the world through online journals. It’s also not for writers who are already established (e.g. have published a book or have won contests). However, it is a problem for new writers looking to ‘break into’ the ‘offline’ (and often academic) literary circles.
When I began my first blog (Slip of the Pen) back in 2004, I wanted it to become the repository of my then-infrequent attempts at creative writing. Mercifully, a couple of good pieces sprung from the blog (or so I want to believe!). When I began to take lit submissions seriously, I naturally turned to those few good pieces. Being a lit industry n00b and all, I was disappointed to learn that these pieces couldn’t be accepted by many respected lit publications, both print and online, simply because they’re already considered self-published. Some journals even explicitly mention ‘blog posts’ as unacceptable submissions.
I personally believe this system sucks, especially if the lit blog in question isn’t monetized (and thus highly personal). But I didn’t and still don’t have a choice – I confess that I’m now writing pieces with a “publication first, blog later” mindset. It has paid off in terms of writing credits, but yeah, there’s been a trade-off – my lit blog’s content is becoming less diverse. Its recent posts have been narrowed to a single genre, that is, personal essays.
For the lit and other art bloggers (photography, paintings, comics, and so on, though I don’t know if the ‘self-published’ term applies to these works) who can see themselves in my shoes, deciding which work to put or not on blogs can be a tricky issue.
Will you save the best and post only the ‘good enough’ works? This might be construed as disrespectful to your blog readers, as they’re virtually on equal footing with print readers, and thus deserve the same quality. Will you post only the pieces which have been earlier published in journals? You’ll lose out on the early feedback and (hopefully) constructive criticism from your blog readers – and feedback is a blog’s forte. Not to mention new and raw writers need feedback, badly.
I guess one thing will help solve the problem a bit – writing more. More works to choose from, more room for a “publication first, blog later” mindset. This works well with spacing out your posts and sticking to a regular posting schedule. For example, if you post in weekly intervals, you need to resist the urge to post that spanking new masterpiece of a poem immediately a day after the last entry.
P.S. Technically, the term “literary blog” doesn’t just pertain to blogs with original works of writers and poets; the term can cover blogs that discuss books, feature other writers and their works, and deal with literature in general. I narrowed the term’s use here for simplicity’s sake. ;-)
Advertisements are a vital (and often the most vital) part of a problogger’s monetization strategies. Thus, the choice of which type of ads to serve on one’s blogs is always an important question. You might be interested in the results of a study conducted by McCoy, Everard, Polak, and Galletta that appeared in the article The Effects of Online Advertising (Communications of the ACM March 2007). Yeah I know, it’s May already – the copy arrived a month late ;-)
The paper presents nothing new or radical; rather, it somewhat ‘formalizes’ what many web surfers have known/felt for long:
Unfortunately, I can’t quote exact figures or an excerpt, as to republish part of the work requires prior permission and/or a fee. Suffice it to say, the figures for pop-up and pop-under ads are neck to neck; the article seems to suggest inline (e.g. banner) ads are the most user-friendly among the three.
(For those interested in dissecting the paper more, access to the magazine’s online version requires ACM membership.)
I don’t know all the ins and outs of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but I hope the ‘lessons’ our team of three learned from two consecutive Philippine SEO contests can help fellow bloggers here at Performancing. (One of my teammates was J Angelo Racoma, who now helps manage sites for Splashpress Media – Filipino bloggers like to tease him “blog overlord”.)
Without further ado:
Don’t be content with your rank, changes happen fast – You’re number one in the search results for “fake petunias” today, with your competitors nowhere in sight…but tomorrow they’ll overtake you. We learned this the hard way when our first contest entry grabbed 1st place in Google, only to end up in 5th weeks later. Even more painful was the second entry – from 2nd to 11th.
Don’t go overboard with the keyword density – There has been much talk and debate as to what is the right keyword density for each of the three big engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN). It is all right – imperative, actually – to conduct keyword research and inject keyphrases into your articles, but don’t be too generous in dishing them out. If the blog content sounds inhuman already – “Fake petunias can be bought at fake petunia shops by people who love fake petunias” – then you’ve probably gone overboard with the keywords.
Here’s good advice from Pholpher’s Perf post: “Don't spam by stuffing your posts with too many keywords. Three to four times should be enough for blog posts between 400-500 words.”
Don’t forget the images – As mentioned in this earlier post, inserting images and adding alt and title attributes to your posts can give you an SEO advantage.
Link exchanges still matter – One contestant diligently did the rounds of the Philippine blogosphere (IMO one of the friendliest and link exchange-hungriest blogospheres around)…and he placed high in the results. For your link-building efforts, Ryan’s 5 Ways to Diversify Your Links is a heavyweight resource.
Feed scrapers pay the price – One of our contest observations was that most blogs filled with duplicate content (mostly feed scrapers) languished in the SERPs. The same was true for blogs that relied on article directory content, though those that had a good balance between unoriginal and original content did fairly well.
Releasing a Wordpress theme can do wonders – Especially if it becomes popular! Getting a free PR 5 or so link from Wordpress is simply too good to pass up (not to mention the links from blogs using your theme). Once you’ve crafted a great theme, changing the colors and releasing them as spin-off themes can net you more links. With this tactic, one contestant who entered the competition quite late shot up blazingly fast through the rankings and finished among the Top 5 (if my memory serves me right).
Watch out for hackers – Hackers a.k.a. your competitors? Possible. It happened to us. Don’t let your efforts go for naught; always run regular backups so you can bounce back with a vengeance, and bounce back fast.
Google’s the easiest, Yahoo the middle guy, MSN the hard-to-get – It’s my opinion that Google is the easiest search engine for a new blog/domain to break into. Barely a week with scant content and we were already there. On the other hand, it took us a month or so to appear on Yahoo. As for MSN, well, our entries didn’t appear even after three months.
* * *
Of course, there's a big difference between an SEO contest and a ‘rivalry’ among blogs in the same niche: the former has a deadline. The latter just goes on and on until the warriors fall one by one by the wayside. Just like in every business, ensuring that your blog outperforms its rivals in the search engine wars requires perpetual vigilance, research, and experimentation.
Not entirely.
In my previous posts, I’ve mentioned from time to time my disdain for blogs (and ‘probloggers’) relying almost exclusively on free content from article directories. (Disclosure: I own an article directory.) Two reasons why I think public domain articles do more harm than good for our blogs:
However, when used judiciously (and infrequently), free articles can get you out of a rut, provide you with keyword-rich content, and can be another way to showcase your expertise in your industry. Here’s what you can do with free articles on your blogs:
Finally, if you don’t know your way yet around the article directory scene, let me point you to several great sites. EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com are good places to start, and I’ve been submitting articles to them for nearly a year already. You can also visit ArticleCrux.com, which I own and carefully maintain.
That said, the list above can’t build you a problogging career. You’ll still need to start where all good probloggers started – with highly original and helpful content.
It doesn’t matter.
Ia Lucero’s post on the Perils of Problogging is an interesting read for Performancing.com users, who more or less look to earn money from their blogs. The post has also been picked up by a couple of other blogs, most notably by The Blog Herald.
In the post, Ia raises a lot of points, ranging from bad site monetization choices to blogs being given a bad name by the numerous unoriginal “money mills” out there. My attention was piqued by one line she wrote (emphasis added):
With the abundance of article sites out there, amateur probloggers (what a paradoxical term!) think they can get away with posting unoriginal content, an especially attractive tactic since minimal effort is required.
Hmm, “amateur probloggers”? Does that pertain to Z-listers earning mere Adsense cents a week, or part-time probloggers? Heck, what makes a problogger in the first place?
Darren Rowse has a guest post by David Wilkinson about it, and so does Michael who talks about it in a country context. For me...
I don’t really care. If someone blogs and makes money from it, whatever the method or ethics, then he can trumpet to the world that he is a problogger. I’m hoping he doesn’t give the ‘job title’ a bad name by filling his site with content o’ junk and loads of poorly placed ads, but really, that’s out of our control. Why, how many people regard lawyers and salesmen with suspicion? (Not to offend our lawyer and salesmen friends out there.) For every profession, there’s somebody out there who thinks it’s make-believe or a joke. We’ve got to live with that.
I believe the best way to approach the word “problogger” is with guarded recognition, especially during the blogging industry’s formative years. It’s a title that is secondary. Because before you blog, you might be already a freelance writer, journalist, corporate executive, web designer, comic artist, and so on. I guess this is why many people – even those who already earn substantial amounts from their blogs – go “Huh?” when given the word “problogging”. They see blogging as just a supplement to their incomes and an extension of their main jobs. This POV in turn conflicts with full-time bloggers who eat, breathe, and live by their blog earnings.
Now, I’m really interested in hearing your feedback on this one: Do you call yourself a problogger? Do you get weird reactions from friends and relatives when you tell them you are one? And what alternative job titles do you use or suggest your problogging comrades use?
Me: I call myself a problogger; it’s proudly displayed on my tech blog’s sidebar. Yes, I’ve gotten dozens of “Whaa?” faces, especially from those who own only LiveJournals and other diary-type blogs. More recently, when somebody asks me what I do for a living, I simply say, “Writer”. (Many think it’s too generic, but I believe it’s just one of the most elegant titles in the world.) And if the person who asks me looks like a Net user, I chip in, “Website owner” or “Webmaster”.
How about you, guys?
There are many ways to problogging gold and glory, such as writing great content that keeps people coming back for more, being patient with SEO, getting the ad placements right, and so on. I’ll remind you of another one: your willingness to interact with your readers -- fans and detractors alike.
Let me explain.
Before I was a blogger, I was a creative writer first. For the early part of my writing days, I kept all my works to myself and a handful of friends. As with all people who mature oh-so-slowly over time, I realized something: to take writing to another level, a writer should be ready to receive both solicited and unsolicited advice, to bravely participate in literary workshops (where one’s art might get criticized and manhandled), to readily admit his mistakes while reminding himself not to repeat them. Basically, to interact with fellow writers and a wider reach of readers. Depending on the writer’s persona, all of these things might be big steps out of the writer’s “shell”...but he needs to take them, nonetheless.
In my opinion, the same principle applies to blogging. To take your blogging a step further -- professional blogging -- you'll need to:
Item number one is easy to check off -- open your blog posts for comments. If you can’t for one reason or another, leave a contact form or your email address. Yet, I’ve seen bloggers who are ‘experts’ of this-and-that industry (as claimed by their header or sidebar text) whose blogs don’t have any of the above-mentioned.
I’m not saying the lack of reader interaction undermines a blogger’s credibility; rather, it would be better if the readers’ reactions and thoughts could give the blogger much-needed feedback if he 1) is doing a fine job sharing his expertise and helping others a great deal, thus affirming his being an expert, or 2) needs improvement, which might be an understatement or not.
Item two -- here's where the going gets tough for some. I’ve dropped by some blogs with commenting on, all right, but where the blogger is absolutely picky as when to reply, or never replies at all.
It’s possible that the blogger replies to each comment by email instead; still, the other visitors would like to see the discussions between the blogger and the past commenters. (You can email and place the reply on the blog, too, though that will eat more of your time.) During a seminar’s Q&A section, whom do you prefer, the speaker who answers questions via the microphone for all the audience to hear, or the speaker who writes down his answers on pieces of paper to be handed discreetly to the inquirer?
Finally, item three. Every blog post of yours is a product of your pen (or your keyboard). It is yours*, and you better show that you care for it. If someone likes it or finds it helpful, express gratitude. If someone ridicules it, take a stance and whip up a response worthy of true statesmen (a witty retort might also do!). If someone points out a mistake, give the reader the benefit of the doubt, analyze his points, and admit the error if indeed it is. If someone seeks advice, be as helpful as you can be. Don’t discriminate among real-life friends, long-time blog-mates, or new visitors. Engage everyone with the same enthusiasm.
*On a side note, if a monetized blog’s thousand or so entries are all merely public domain articles or echoes of news feeds/other blog posts, then I believe that the blog owner practically doesn’t own his posts. He has no business as a ‘professional blogger’. Rather, he is a professional waster of bandwidth and server space.
Yesterday I gave an introduction on opening new blogs to strengthen one’s 'home domain'. These personal-niche blogs revolve around topics that you can easily write about: hobbies, health conditions, musical interests, video games, and so on.
The concept is that these “personiche” blogs require initial effort but don’t need to be frequently updated thereafter. As the months go by and you hammer away at more serious and time-intensive problogging jobs/projects, these blogs slowly get strong in terms of Google PageRank, traffic rank, and monetization power...and so does your whole domain.
With disciplined SEO and great content right off the bat, each of your new blogs can get Google PR 3 or 4 in the next PR update (5 is doable, but difficult to achieve when these blogs are merely ‘auxiliary’ rather than the backbone of your problogging). If my understanding is correct, the Alexa traffic ranking service lumps together traffic for all the subdomains, and every blog that contributes traffic to your home domain’s rank helps a lot.
Aside from using blog monetization systems that partly depend on your PR and traffic rank (e.g. Text Link Ads), your highly targeted blogs can have good Adsense CTRs (a discussion of what makes a good CTR can be found at Darren Rowse’s site).
After six months or so of opening a couple of new blogs, you might be looking at a home domain that has an increased traffic rank and gives you a steady stream of income from multiple sources, even if your efforts on each “personiche” blog have tapered off.
In my experience, monetization is not the be-all and end-all. When you link your good-PR blogs to new domains/projects, the PR juice can spur the growth of the latter. I believe Google regards links coming from the same domain with less weight than those from multiple domains, but still, it’s better than none. An example: my subdomain blogs helped me and my teammates place high in the Philippines’ first two SEO competitions. They also helped put a couple of new, start-from-scratch domains in the search engine results fast.
Last (and maybe the least important for the income-minded), having a diversity of blogs under your home domain (or home ‘portal’) makes you more human, more interesting in the eyes of your readers. This is great especially if you’re looking to build a strong online persona.
For the past year or so, I’ve unwittingly carried out this technique on my own domain, which is also home to my two main sites. I won’t link the niche blogs here (that’d be too much self-promotion). Instead, here are the topics I chose:
Health -- I’ve been suffering from asthma since childhood. I decided to share my experiences on an experimental blog; experimental, because I just wanted to see if a new rarely-updated blog can have good search engine referrals. I’ve written less than twenty posts for the blog, yet the earnings are more than enough to pay for the next few years’ hosting and domain expenses.
Hobbies -- The moment I bought my first airplane miniature model, the first words that popped into my mind were, “Blog It!” I blog about every model I add to my collection, as well as my wish list. Less than a hundred unique hits per day, but the monetization is turning out to be decent (not wildly successful).
Books -- I love fantasy, sci-fi, and history books. I picked one genre of the three, then created a blog. Funny thing is, I never got around to ‘formally launching’ it, much less writing content. But believe it or not, search engine referrals do trickle in (due to some SEO I did a few months ago), and visitors sometimes click on the ads. Rare clicks, but no doubt, once I get around to writing actual blog posts, the site can contribute some food on the table.
Video games -- You see, I’m a huge fan of a 1998 space-sim game that never attracted mainstream fans but earned a small cult following. I created a blog that has more static pages than posts. The jury’s still out on this one; small cult following translates to few visitors, with only a few ad clicks.
Last but not the least, here are seven steps you can follow when creating “personiche” blogs to strengthen your home domain.
1. Identify the topics you can write about with ease. It’s either you’ve mastered these topics already, or have the burning desire to explore and learn more about them.
2. Do some keyword research. Run some blog searches (e.g. Technorati, Google BlogSearch) for competitor sites or related posts, and see if the advertisements displayed on those pages are targeted enough.
3. Deploy the blog. My favorite choice is Wordpress, which is very SEO-friendly in my opinion (do change the default permalinks, though!).
4. Do the preliminary SEO. Optimize the site by choosing a good blog title, adding meta information in the HTML code, configuring the WP permalinks, and so on. If you have existing blogs, add the new blog to your blogrolls.
5. Initial burst of content. Five posts over two weeks and a few more timestamped in advance (to be automatically published in the future) are a good start. Make sure these posts are keyword-rich and interesting, with your own writing tone and voice.
6. Further SEO. Armed with good content (and better with a good blog design/theme!), submit the blog and its feed to directories, build links from related sites, join a blog carnival, and so on. You can also write short articles on the blog’s topic with a link to your blog, and submit them to the many free article directories out there.
7. New content, now at your own pace. Have some free time in between your major problogging projects? Squeeze in some “personiche” posts.
Rinse and repeat.
Ryan’s recent post, How To Squeeze More Income Out Of Your Blog inspired me to add to the excellent points he raised, based on experience.
Many bloggers who own multiple domains or write for other people’s sites have what I call a “home” domain, which might host the blogger’s main blog, personal blog, web portfolio, or CV. (Mine’s at Corsarius.net.) This means the home domain doesn’t even have to be a blog and can be a static site.
A good way to raise the value of your home domain (value in terms of Google PageRank, Alexa traffic rank, etc., which can be monetized) is to create sub-sites with their own subdomains or subdirectories. One of the easiest sub-sites to create are blogs, which can be deployed rather quickly (e.g. Wordpress). What’s great is that blogs, as most of you already know, can be easily updated with content, at your own pace.
The last phrase is important: at your own pace. You might ask: “Isn’t this a little bit crazy, because for blogs to be successful, they need to be regularly updated?”
True. However, if you’re already managing/writing for a slew of blogs, there’s no sense in spreading yourself too thinly by opening new blogs that will take away your time, ruin your momentum with the existing blogs, and probably cost you your problogging “day job”.
This means that for your home domain, you can open blogs that don’t need to be frequently updated. If you can update them fairly frequently (such as once a week), then better! But an initial burst of keyword rich posts followed by a trickle of new posts from time to time, combined with search engine optimization will do.
Heck, no. If you want to fill your home domain with generic, article directory-content blogs, then go ahead, but do remember that your home domain carries your name and reputation. The blogs you would want to open are a cross between personal and niche blogs, blogs with topics that you can easily write about: hobbies, health conditions, musical interests, video games, and the like. (At the risk of sounding a bit too absurd, I’ll call these the “personiche” blogs.)
Because these topics are fairly attached to your life and you’ve amassed quite a sum of shareable knowledge about them, you can easily create content. Let’s explore some of the example topics we listed above.
Hobbies -- A book blog is an easy pick. It might be as simple as featuring the latest book you’ve read, plus a short review. Scrapbooks, chess, scrabble, model trains, RC cars -- all these are blogs with highly-targeted content.
Health conditions -- People search the Net for professional medical advice, but they also like to hear personal experiences. For example, if you suffer from allergies, you can write posts on what you’re doing to combat them, with a bit of allergy-related health news and trivia. Just don’t get overly “endorsing” of a particular health product you use, or else you run the risk of being accused of merely advertising.
Video games -- Same with books, you can create posts on your collection of video games, or build a blog centered on one game or one genre (e.g. multiplayer online games).
Needless to say, these blogs are NOT meant to form the backbone of your problogging endeavors -- you'll need to focus on just a few blogs for those. But if one of the suggestions above strikes you as a topic worth investing a lot of time and effort in, then by all means, do so.
A reminder: Be personal with these kinds of blogs! It’s your experiences and opinions that count.
In the next post, we list the benefits of creating these “personiche” blogs under your home domain, as well as some examples from my experience.
As I mentioned in my first Performancing post:
While words are the pillars of blogs, don't forget the images. Think of your blogs as magazines rather than academic publications. Heck, the latter even have diagrams to break the text.
Ever heard of the maxim that you've got less than a second to grab the attention of the reader? Aside from a captivating headline and lead sentence, there's another blog element that can reel in readers -- images.
Adding one image to a post doesn't take much time, and can be extremely rewarding. If you're having problems looking for free images on the Net, my usual haunts might be of help:
Speaking of Wikipedia, it has a comprehensive list of public domain image resources which you can use.
Images don't only work for human readers -- they help in search engine optimization as well. Make sure the name of the image file is keyword-rich. Include the alt and title tags in the HTML code, and fill them in with keywords as well (don’t overdo it, though, as there's a thin line separating keyword-rich content from outright spam).
If your competitor blog does not use images (or uses them but doesn't care about the SEO), that means you've got one area where you can soundly defeat him in traffic building. In my early blogging days, I didn't give much thought to images, but when I noticed a daily stream of traffic to my blogs thanks to an 'accidental' optimizing of one image, that's when I took the practice seriously.
A word of caution: don't go about sprinkling tons of images on your blog posts (photo blogs are an exception, of course). The phrase "everything in moderation" wasn't concocted for nothing; too many graphics will slow down your blog. If you're not yet an A-lister, new readers will be turned off by your site's slow response time. If you're already famous (to an extent), having lots of images will eat up your web hosting plan's bandwidth and storage allowance.
One last thing when you're using images in your posts -- don't ever, ever hotlink! Save the image on your computer, then upload it to your server or free photo hosting service.
Hello everybody. I'm Phillip, Performancing.com's new resident writer. I have been a Performancing user for nearly a year now, so when I was approached to regularly write blog posts for the site, I couldn't have been a happier man.
I've been blogging for more than two years now, and problogging for nearly a year. Needless to say, I love blogging, and being able to earn something from it inspires me to further hone the art (yes, it's an art, not merely a trade!).
Hopefully, my experiences in blogging and writing in general will be of help to fellow bloggers, especially those who are just starting to dip their toes into the water. The water might feel frigid at first, but trust me, once you're wading neck-deep in it (neck-deep in a backlog of blog posts and hopefully volumes of traffic, that is!), it will be far from frigid.
You'll see more of my posts in the coming days, but for now, let me leave you with a pseudo-appetizer -- some of the pseudo-rules I observe in blogging.
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