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Rediscovering ScribeFire

Matt Mullenweg waxed lyrical recently about Windows Live Writer, and recommended it as a quality blogging tool. Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered ScribeFire, or what you may remember as Performancing For FireFox.

ScribeFire has evolved into quite a nice system, one you should certainly look at if you write for multiple blogs. I’ve played with it for the last few days, and while I originally hated PFF, I’m gradually coming around to ScribeFire. Here’s why:

Excellent browser integration: I can see the page that inspired me to write a blog post in the same window, which means I can easily copy information from the original post without flicking between different windows. Not having to log into my blog’s admin page means I can blog more spontaneously.
Follow The Conversation With Technorati: The built-in Page Tools allow you to see who else is writing about this topic, so you can reference other bloggers and create a more informed and informative blog post.This service would be nicer if other services like Google Blog Search or Sphere were included.
Easily Save Drafts: You can save any draft as a post and it goes into your Notes area. From the Notes tab, you can see all your draft posts. You can load up any draft post, finish it and choose which blog to publish it to.
Easy Tagging: With advanced publishing options in ScribeFire, you can easily add a list of Technorati tags and automatically bookmark your new post at del.icio.us using the same set of tags. I seem to remember talk of integrating ScribeFire with the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin which would be much more useful.
Better Focus: Sort of related to my first point above. How many times have you logged on to WordPress to blog and got distracted by your latest incoming links, new comments or your stats plugin? Because you’re cutting out this step, you’re more focused on the topic that got you fired up in the first place!
Easily Edit Your Recent Posts: ScribeFire imports a list of your most recent posts, so you can make easy edits where necessary without having to visit your blog.
Works Offline? I haven’t tested to be honest, but I’d imagine ScribeFire caches your drafts locally so that you can work on them even if you haven’t got an Internet connection. Useful if you’re working on a laptop in the middle of a field…

There are other features I haven’t looked at yet, like the ability to upload images to your blog through FTP or your blog’s API (if it’s supported).

I’ve found my WordPress accounts extremely easy to connect to. Drupal sites need to have the Blog API module switched on before they’ll accept connections from ScribeFire, but otherwise work just fine. And of course, this post has been written entirely using…you guessed it.

Anyone else using ScribeFire or Windows Live Writer for blogging? Why not share some tips and tricks here if you are.

Gerard McGarry is a music blogger for Unreality Music, web designer and all-round Web 2.0 enthusiast.

Carnival of Internet Pros #1

This is the first edition of the Carnival of Internet Pros (aka CoIP). The idea is to promote articles that help us improve our skills for any sort of professional online career. Please see below the list of entries if you are not in this one.

To turn this carnival into the beginnings of a content workshop, in each edition of CoIP, I’ll pick out 2-3 entries and offer some constructive criticism. What I’d like is for anyone here at Perf to also offer constructive criticism – at least about the 2-3 articles singled out. The articles selected in the order they were submitted – no favoritism, and as mentioned before, very few articles will be turned down (see exceptions list at bottom). For this first edition, however, I’ve added brief comments about each post. I am not expecting everyone to agree with me, and whether you do or not, hopefully you’ll add some comments. The objective is to improve our content.

Outsource Your E-Mail Lists Please! by Cade Kreuger of Write To Right.
Comments: Cade gives an example of good anchor text and deep-linking in this article touting the value of outsourcing your email lists.
3 Ways to Increase Your Blog Stats by Ant of The Beef Jerky Blog.
Comments: Short and sweet, easy to follow, and a bit of “meat” (explanation) for each item. However, maybe it’s a fluke, but your page takes a long time to stop loading. My guess is that you have a widget or some other web service that’s hogging time.
12 Common Mistakes of an Online Business by Kevin of Niche Site Domain.
Comments: A good example of over-delivering. Kevin said “12” but offers a bonus 5 mistakes. However, I think this woul have had more impact had the extra 5 been in a second “bonus” list. They’d have to have some distinguishing reason to be kept separate, though.
5 Great Reasons to Create Your Own Products by Craig Andrews of Internet Business Blog.
Comments: Affiliate marketing is said to be heating up. But instead of joining a program, maybe you have something to sell through your own affiliate program. Craig offers five reasons to do so.
Make Ends Meet, and Then Some by Shawn Edwards of Desty Online.
Comments: Yes, this post has an Amazon affiliate link (twice), but in this case, it’s worth it. Regardless of your faith, The Richest Man in Bablyon is an excellent book about success, and Shawn gives his interpretation of each of the Five Laws of Gold. In my estimation, this is an example of good affiliate marketing writing.
10 Reasons Why You Should Invest in Content Creation by Derek Beauchemin of DerekBeau.com.
Comments: Derek gives a nice example of a mini-bait, with good formatting for easy scanning and information absorption.
How I Became a Professional Blogger by Yehuda of Yehuda.
Comments: I love this one. Yehuda has given a perfect example of part of what this carnival is about: sharing our pro blogging experiences and knowledge.
Howto: Use Web 2.0 to Get Viral Traffic Your Blog by Andy Boyd of BoydCreative.
Comment: Andy gives another good example of what this carnival is for – sharing techniques to improve our online professions.
Serving Two Writing Masters by Sharon Hurley Hall of Get Paid to Write Online.
Comments: Who are you writing for? Do you know? Sharon discusses the two “masters” of your writing, and explains what some of her experiences as a writer have been.
20 Ways to Add Value to Your Products and Services by Terry Dean of Integrity Business Blog.
Comments: This carnival isn’t just about blogging. If you sell products or services from your website, read Terry’s tips on adding value.
Do You Stand Out From the Crowd? by Richard Pettinger of Net Writing.
Comments: Richard offers some wise advice about how to stand out on the Internet, to develop your brand as a blogger. I’d suggest, though, that the article title should have some relevant keyword. Don’t change the URL at this point, but consider tweaking the title.
Google Analytics Tutorial – How to Track Conversion Rates by Adam Taylor of Conversion Matters.
Comments: Adam deciphers some of the mysteries of Google Analytics, separating logical sections of the article with great descriptive headings.
Before You Begin Blogging: A Few Things You Should Know by Deb Ng at Performancing.
Comments: Normally, I’d want to go outside of Performancing for carnival entries, but this is a very important article for new bloggers to read (and some of us veterans, too).
The Value of Search in a Product Oriented World by David Krug of College Startup.
Comments: I’ve been reading College Startup since Ben Bleikamp created it and I’ve always enjoyed the concrete examples presented there. David doesn’t disappoint with an example of how he’s costed out the value of each sale of a door at his door affiliate marketing site, based on search traffic.
Warning! Make Your Graphic Designer Read This Before Creating Your Mini-site! by Stephen Dean of Stephen Dean’s Blog.
Comments: A short yet informative tip about conversion rates based on whether or not you use a header graphic on your sales pages.

That’s it for this edition of the Carnival of Internet Pros. If your submitted article did not appear in this edition, it’s likely to appear in the next one – unless:

Your entry is not relevant to the carnival.
Your URL produced a 404 error.
Your site has popups/ popunders.
Your article is promoting affiliate programs or other ads.
You’re one of the persons who submitted 4 or even 9 entries all at once. (If you entered two on separate days, I’ll accept that this time.)

Everyone else that submitted an article by Jul 20th and who is not here should appear in the next edition. (After that date, you will also likely appear in the next edition, on Wed Aug 1st.) If you are not in because of one of the above five reasons, you are welcome to submit something else that follows the rules and criteria for the Carnival of Internet Pros.

Please remember: one entry per week (running Saturday to Sunday). Don’t force me to read through all your entries – pick out your best on your own and submit one, maximum, each week. The submission form is at Blog Carnival.

Analyzing the Digg Effect to Write Better Articles

Last week, Performancing’s article entitled 10 Articles All Bloggers Should Read (at least once) got over 1,000 Diggs and made it onto the front page for almost an entire day. For those of you who happened to be around, a bunch of us had some geeky fun monitoring the Digg in real time.

But that’s not where the real value of a Digg lies. The real value lies in two effects: 1) Establishment of authority and 2) Backlinks.

I didn’t realize I was filling such a big need at the time of writing it, but my meta-article on blogging seems to have become an overnight, authoritative resource for new bloggers. From a preliminary investigation, the article is already getting linked to from the far ends of the blogosphere.

So what can we learn from this example of the Digg Effect? I see a clear lesson. The lesson is this: fill a real need and people will eat it up. Think about how many new bloggers are starting each day. Think about all the blog owners hiring new bloggers each day. Well, I did think about these things because it was starting to drag on my daily responsibilities. Having to constantly summarize the basics of blogging and provide tips for improving headlines was detracting from my more important work in SEO. So I put a list together for myself to fill a need. Then I realized that there are probably others with the same need. Turns out there were lots of them.

With all the junk information floating around the internet, many people have grown weary from the search for good information. Since Google doesn’t give people the information they really want anymore, one of the fundamental tasks for the blogger is to organize and serve good information. This makes you an authority.

Put together useful lists of resource articles for a broad audience and you’ll soon find that your site is becoming an authority. When people recognize it as an authority, you are going to acquire some killer backlinks.

So here’s what I learned from the Performancing Digg: not all Diggs are created equal. I’ve gotten on the front page before and only acquired 7 or 8 backlinks and no residual traffic. But if you make something that a large number of people really need, a timeless resource, it only takes a little nudging;-) and your article is an overnight authority (with lots of residual benefit).

July 2007 Performancing Experiment: A Statistical Analysis of Cost/Benefit for StumbleUpon Submissions

Experiment: Submit every new Performancing article to StumbleUpon by at least 5 people during a 2 week period and evaluate the traffic benefit (will you help?).

You can track the experiment by monitoring pMetrics statistics for Performancing.

Having run Nudger.org in Alpha for a few months, it has become increasingly clear to me that human tendency is to pursue the simplest solution with the biggest perceived payoff. My goal here is to change your mind about the biggest perceived payoff in social voting, and to change your promotion behaviors (just like I’m starting to change my own).

When bloggers are choosing whether to submit to Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon or Netscape, and they only have one choice, they almost universally go for Reddit.

I want to change this tendency because I am confident that it is the wrong approach. Normal Reddit traffic is borderline useless, except to artificially boost up your stats and maybe get an adrenaline rush. Reddit traffic doesn’t convert nearly as well as search traffic, and hardly any better than Digg (which is notorious for having poor ad conversion).

One hypothesis is that, all things being equal, there is a measurably better cost/benefit reward ratio for a steady dose of Stumble/Netscape then a steady dose of Reddit/Digg. Yet, I also believe that SEOs everywhere, including myself, are inclined to go with the Reddit/Digg combo or maybe just the Reddit solitaire. Why? Well, in the case of Digg it is so damn popular. In the case of Reddit, it is so damn easy (and I mean easy…)

The problem, as I see it, is that the simplicity of Reddit can become addictive and often provides no lasting effect. If you have an average blog you are probably getting somewhere between 75 and 400 visitors per day. Reddit can singlehandedly double or triple your traffic in any given day. But this traffic is largely junk traffic.

Netscape has the benefit of building strong, deep links over time. Some of my blogs have long-term PR 4 or 5 links straight from the Netscape domain. Many articles get short-term PR 6 and 7 link love. While you won’t drive much traffic from Netscape, you will help drive SERPs over the long haul. Netscape should be part of anybody’s long term link building strategy

Stumble traffic, in contrast to Reddit, is very focused and converts quite well. Sure, the initial submission is more time consuming, but then it’s all “thumbs-up” from there. Plus, I’ve found that a single Stumble can send thousands of visitors to your site. No need to get on the front page or anything. Just get a few people to “thumbs up” your article, and you’ll have sticky readers with an interest in your site topic flow right for high conversion rates.

So my hypothesis is this: Reddit has the least payoff of all the major social voting sites, but that it’s also the one solution that most people use. Instead of using Reddit, I think that a wiser use of your time is to go after topic-targeted traffic with StumbleUpon. It doesn’t hurt to do both, but avoid the temptation of using Reddit for all your social voting needs.

7 Steps to launching a Great Blog

In the ‘Ask Your Blogging Questions Here’ thread, franky asks:

How do you really start a new (niche) blog? Many times the ’10 articles’ and ‘establish yourself as an authority’ is managed, but what pace to set during the first period?

There are two established strategies to successfully launch your blog – the big bang model or the bootstrapping model – and these differ in terms of resources available to the blog owner.

The Big Bang Approach

If you have any one of these two:

a lot of money
plenty of good contacts in the industry

This is the ideal way to go. You can write a lot of quality content in advance (around 30-50 articles), and around launch time either spend big or network big and get the word out as quickly and as widely as possible.

Lots of good content + a lot of eyeballs generally translates into a good, successful launch, but there are two factors that you have to cater for.

One, make sure you’re working in a profitable niche.

Two, make sure you have a ‘phase 2’ – a plan for what to do and how to manage your blog after the launch. It won’t be possible to maintain the same blogging rhythm as during launch, and you’ll have to find a solution that scales and not just eats up your time.

Bootstrapping Approach

Best if you don’t have much time or money. Simply start blogging, putting out 1-2 articles per day and posting them on your blog. Promote your blog but at this stage focus on the key activities – attracting attention of the top blogs, writing linkbait, getting links from trusted sources, etc.

The key here is to focus on what you can do with the resources available to you – so if you’re the only blogger and you can’t churn out 5 articles a day, don’t go down that road, it’s not sustainable or scalable. If you can’t spend 4 hours a day promoting your blog, ruthlessly eliminate all but the most important of promotion activities and spend just 1 hour.

Cut down using the 80/20 rule and focus on what’s really important – quality content, picking a good niche and promoting through the right channels.

A 7-Step Checklist to Launching A New Blog

This checklist is based on the strategies I used to launch my own blog, Soccerlens (see the DBT face off here).

Provide resources that can be linked to, downloaded, read, discussed, etc. Do this at the start, and if possible prepare them in advance.

Get initial links from high-PR, high-trust blogs such as Performancing and ProBlogger by participating in blogging contests and writing articles about your own blogging experiences. I’d add Marketing Pilgrim, Blog Herald and Daily Blog Tips to the list while Chris Garrett and Mark Ghosh do roundups as well. There are probably more that I’m missing – bottom-line, pro blogging sites are a good source of links.
Think of all the people who’ve removed ‘no-follow’ from their blogs’ comments!

Establish and settle into a blogging rhythm as quickly as possible. Don’t fret about writing 20 articles in advance – just start writing them one by and one and put them on your blog.

Apply to be editor in Dmoz and BOTW Blog Directory for your niche’s category. If you’re accepted, build up those sections and add your site too 🙂 JoeAnt accepts applications automatically, so consider signing up there as well.

Make a list of the top bloggers in your niche and collect as much info as you can about them. Read their blogs daily and understand what type of stories interest them and what they link to. Then for each author, tie in their interest in a couple of your articles and ping them the URLs (without asking for anything in return). Your goal is to get them to be regular readers, links will come by themselves.

Remove all obstacles that prevent your readers from subscribing to your feed, from commenting on your blog, from sharing it with others, from linking to it and from finding things on your blog. This means not asking for ‘registration’ before commenting, showing your RSS feed (and email subscription box) above the fold, a prominent search box, a clear listing of site categories, social bookmarking icons (done subtly they look really good), etc.

Have fun and be yourself – without these two things, your best work will come across as ‘forced’ and ‘unnatural’. If your readers don’t see your passion in your writing, how are they going to respond? In kind, by not getting excited about what you’re writing and drifting away.
Thanks Liz for teaching me this.

Bonus Tip: I used the thought of beating my competition as motivation to work harder. Fretting about stats isn’t an ideal habit but if it helps you make your blog better then it does have some value.

It’s ok to start slow and build things up, but it’s important not to lose momentum once you’ve built it up – nothing is worse than taking your site to the top and then getting lazy and allowing it to fall back down in rankings, earnings and readership.

Also Read:

Starting a Professional Blog – Choosing a Niche
Starting a Professional Blog – Qualifying your Niche
Blogging Mistakes – Launching on an Empty Shell
How To: Launch A New Blog The Easy Way
Planning A New Blog Venture
10 Business Models for Bloggers
10 Key Ingredients of A Great Blog
Positioning Your Blog
10 Step Plan To A Profitable Blog

If you have any questions related to search marketing, blog promotion, WordPress or blogging in general, ask me here.

Blue Laptop Theme

We think that variations on a great theme can make another great theme. For that reason, we are excited to announce the release of The Blue Laptop Theme for WordPress, cousin of The Dark Laptop Theme.

Blue Laptop is the daytime version of Dark Laptop. Filled with about six different shades of blue, the theme has a calm, soothing effect on its readers. Just like Dark Laptop, this theme is chock-full of stylistic curves and design elements that you haven’t seen in any other theme before. Straight out of the box we believe that the Dark Laptop and Blue Laptop themes are among the most professional and original looking free WordPress themes ever available. If you’re looking to distinguish yourself from the crowd, without spending a penny on theme design, these are the themes to use.

Blue Laptop is the perfect theme for any topic in entertainment, technology, literature, or even professionals in counseling or law.

Download the Blue Laptop Theme or Click here for a live preview

Update: Blue Laptop has been updated for compatibility with WordPress 2.7 and up. Download the latest version here.

Visit the Performancing forum for the Blue Laptop theme support.

What Makes a WordPress Theme Great?

In the last hour or so I’ve been scribbling notes for what would make an ideal WordPress theme. It occured to me that any successful theme would have to meet 2 main objectives: proper structure, and focus towards a particular audience.

By structure I’m talking about the basic building blocks of themes (or even websites):

Code must validate – adherence to web standards

Cross-browser compatibility

Should follow basic usability guidelines / requirements

Uses modular, easy-to-customise code

A focused channel for theme support and upgrades

Follows WordPress coding standards

A website will be limited by the imperfections in its foundation – so if you’re building a theme that will be as popular as Cutline or K2 (or even more popular), then you must lay the proper foundations.

The second condition is focus – and knowing which audience you are designing the theme for.

Designing a general-purpose theme is hard than one focused towards a specific audience. It’s easier to plan the layout of a theme for a photoblog or a car blog than it is to plan the layout of a theme that could be used in a thousand different ways. You have to allow for the design to be immensely flexible and at the same time include the basic elements that would be needed by and be useful to everyone who takes your theme for a spin.

For the sake of discussion, let’s work on building a general-purpose theme.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of different decisions to make when doing a layout of a theme. Most of these though, are personal preferences, using the 80/20 principle and focusing on the core factors, I ended up with the following list:

Banner + horizontal menu at the top
Personally I’m not happy with restricting a theme to this option but the thing is, this setup works well for a majority of blogs

Multiple options for columns
Instead of restricting the theme to a single column pattern (2 column right-sidebar), I think it’s a better idea to go Semiologic’s way and build a system in which the blog owner can easily change the number and alignment of columns through the WP Admin area

Extended footer
the 2 or 3 column footers seen on several WP themes are an excellent means of organising information – while the theme may appear bottom-heavy if there’s no banner at the top or if there’s not enough content in one post, the multi-column footer technique can work well and should be used.

Advertising
Some basic concerns when building a theme with advertising in mind – 3-column versions of the theme should have a content area wide enough to show the 300px AdSense block / 468px AdSense banner, and the 2-column versions should have a sidebar that’s at least 270 px wide to accomodate 2 columns of graphical ads

Navigation / above the fold elements
A reader lands on a random page of your website – how does he orient himself and what does he do there? Another reader lands on your blog’s main page – how do you provide them direction through your blog and how can they, in a few seconds, find all the key areas / functions of your blog?

Make it fully customizable
I’d prefer a theme that can be completely customised and turned inside-out using the same building blocks

Static home page
What is the main purpose of your blog’s front page? What is the main purpose of any category archives page on your blog? Chances are, the two answers are different, so why would you keep your front page looking the same as a category’s archives? A static front page helps you plan and implement a proper landing page for prospects and direct readers to different sections of your blog

Questions

What color scheme should be used?
Which plugins should have built-in support?
What changes would you make to the structure discussed above?

Comments are welcome – let me know what you guys think.

Before You Begin Blogging: A few things to take care of before that first post

When people send me mail at About Weblogs the majority has to do with how to start a blog, specifically the first steps to take. Not necessarily how to write a blog, but the steps one needs to take before one begins. Everyone has different advice on how to prepare, but here’s what I tell those who ask.

1. Choose your niche. What do you want to blog about? Whether you want to turn people on to the joys of asparagus farming or start yet another blog about blogging, you have to talk about something. Make sure you know enough about your chosen topic, however. If you’re spouting off fluff your readers will know; find something you’re good at and talk about it.

2. Visit lots of other blogs. Don’t just visit blogs in your niche; check out as many popular blogs as you can. What is it about them that appeals to you, and what don’t you like? What do they do to encourage community? There’s a reason popular blogs are popular, study them and learn why. Get ideas for your own blogs.

3. Choose a blog platform. I’m going to receive a lot of flack for this, but I always recommend Blogger for beginners. Stop laughing for a second and hear me out, because there are good reasons for this.

Blogger is a really simple platform. Registration is easy and so posting. If you’re technically challenged like me, it’s a good place to start.
Blogger is free. Sure you can host your blog on your own domain but what if it’s a flop or you find you really weren’t as interested in it as you thought you were? At least with a free blogging platform your only loss is that of time.<.li>
You can monetize Blogger. WordPress.com is a great free platform for beginners, but the difference is that you can’t place Adsense or other ads on a WordPress blog. You can monetize to your heart’s content with Blogger.
If you find you love blogging and it’s working out for you, it’s not difficult to switch to WordPress.

Still, even though Blogger is my platform of choice for beginners, don’t just take my word for it. Research the different platforms and choose the one you feel works best for your needs and level of expertise. If you feel confident enough to purchase your own domain and host a WordPress blog, that would be my first choice.

Writing a blog is easy. It’s all those steps you need to take to ensure a blog’s success that make it more of a challenge.

Skip links

Blog

The Big Bang Approach

Bootstrapping Approach

A 7-Step Checklist to Launching A New Blog

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