March 18, 2008
It has been a while since I wrote anything because life has been very hectic. To compound that, I am going away tomorrow (to a tropical island with no Internet! Okay, okay - I’m just going to Melbourne 
)
That is why this blog is so quiet at the moment.
I will be back into blogging when I get back in about a week. So be patient, the blog hasn’t “gone dead”!
By way of news announcements, in my asides column I have been talking about my motorbike lessons - well, I got my motorbike licence on Friday! So now I can ride whatever I want whereever I want. Not that I actually have a bike at the moment…
While I am away, my traffic experiment will be dormant. You can still register, and traffic will be recorded for you if you do, but the results will not be displayed until I get back and approve the registrations. Head over to Traffic Experiment to find out more about it. You can score yourself some free
Posted in Blogging 
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March 11, 2008
From the beginning of writing this blog, I have said quite a bit that it is an experiment. I think it was important for me to remember that, and it was something that I lost sight of along the way.
So, swallowing my pride, I can say only this: For information about Blogging, seek the advice of a true expert. For information on Monetizing and general interesting stuff, go to an interesting site, and for reviews of fine restaurants, there is always John Chow.
While I have a lot of material prepared about blogging, I have had a bit of a waking up experience - I cannot be a full-time blogger at the moment, and that is why I am scaling my blog back. I want to get back into the fun of trying new things, but I don’t want it to take up all my spare time, and that is what it is doing.
This isn’t giving up - it is becoming more realistic. I have fought for weeks to keep going at the current rate, but it is not going to work.
So where to from here?
This blog is my personal blog, so this blog should be more about me than about some topic. At the moment, I am moving more towards some experimental ideas on the Internet, so that will be the general focus of the blog. I will post results and news about my different experiments here, and analyse how they may impact other Internet users - such as you, the readers!
I will still analyse the success of this blog, and try to reveal any good tricks or hints I come across. So for those readers who are reading for the blogging advice, you still might get some here. But Problogger is the place novice bloggers really should read.
To give you an idea what is coming up - there is my Traffic Experiment which has already begun. I may also be developing some plugins for WordPress, so that should be interesting (no promises, but send me requests if you have any, and I might give them a go). I will also hopefully be writing some simple applications, which may or may not interest the readers as well.
So please, stick around, keep your subscription - you may find it more interesting than ever before. I certainly hope you do.
Posted in Blogging 3 Comments »
March 10, 2008
I have been busy crafting a new experiment, and here’s the World Exclusive Release!
It is called Traffic Experiment and it has begun already.
The website is fairly terse because I knocked it together quickly, but basically, if you refer traffic to the site using the link you can get from a form on the site, the traffic you send is logged.
Then the Top 5 referrers during the month receive a link in the left sidebar, along with the number of referrals.
After the month is over, the Top 3 referrers for the month will receive a permanent link below the top 5, and the counters reset.
So all in all, this presents webmasters an easy and free way to get a link to their site. And if enough people join in the fun, then the site will quite possibly achieve some PageRank, adding benefit for the winners.
It isn’t a competition, and it isn’t a link farm. It is purely an experiment. So please participate in the experiment, and who knows, you may recieve a link to your site that stays on the web indefinitely at an ever-climbing PageRank.
Click here to participate in the Traffic Experiment.
UPDATE:
I should have explained a few things more clearly - after registering, the traffic referred with your special referral link will be logged, but it will not show up in the sidebar until your site is approved (by me). Naturally, I will not approve inappropriate sites.
The best way to get into the top 5 is to blog about the experiment, and generally promote it as much as you can. Remember, you will only improve your rank by sending more actual visitors to the site.
Yes, I am hoping for a bit of viral marketing helping the experiment out. But its just an experiment, so I don’t mind if it takes a while getting off the ground.
Enjoy!
Posted in SEM SEO SMO 1 Comment »
March 7, 2008
That’s right, seven days into March, I am reviewing February. I wanted to do this earlier, but I had some computer problems this week.
In February, this blog really got started. I mean, it’s been live since december, but nothing was happening then.
I started of February with the question - Are you a blogoholic? The thing I soon discovered was that I was a blogoholic, so I took a week off!
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March 6, 2008
It isn’t easy starting a blog. Well, it isn’t easy for someone who has never blogged before to start a blog. Once you have the experience, you know so much more and you set things up so differently.
But anyway, these are the challenges that new blogs face, and in particular, new bloggers:
Chances are someone else is already blogging in your niche
You’ve heard the sayings - there is nothing new under the sun - it’s all been done before. In a place that moves so fast, the Internet, this is especially true. It is very hard to come up with something truly unique when there are hundreds of thousands, or even millions of others thinking up ideas at the same time.
- It doesn’t matter if your idea is not unique - because chances are that it won’t be
- What is important is doing it better - aim to be the best in your field
- And hey, your competitors can always be an inspiration to you - but don’t plagiarise them
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March 5, 2008
Problem:
I have no readers / subscribers of my RSS feed.
Solution:
- Write more original content
- Ask readers to subscribe to your RSS feed
- Comment constructively on other blogs
If that doesn’t work, try also:
- Advertise your blog
- Use Social Media sites to get your blog seen by others
- Incentivize subscribing to your feed (its corny, but it will give you some readers)
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Posted in Blogging 5 Comments »
March 4, 2008
Everyone knows the tips and tricks, but sometimes you need to be reminded of exactly what you should do to get the best out of something.
So here is a quick commonsense guide to what you can do to improve the Advertising Revenue you get from your website.
Place your best performing ads in the best spots
- The best spots are close to the top of the page, in the content in the middle, or top left. This is hard to do with the sidebars on the right like in this theme, but I try to keep the ads toward the top of the page.
- There is no point putting an ad that isn’t performing higher than an ad that is. Don’t be afraid to keep changing them around to increase the exposure of the successful ads.
- If an ad network is doing nothing for you, drop it and find a new one. Be careful with exclusivity rules, but be prepared to cut ads that don’t work.
- EntreCard is free, therefore it makes you no money. Let it move down the page as your other ads start paying. (Unless you are a major EntreCard user, it will probably be secondary for you.)
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Posted in Monetizing 2 Comments »
March 4, 2008
On Saturday I was lucky enough to get the chance to go for a ride again. I needed to practice cornering - getting the whole countersteering thing right and building up the confidence.
We also went down to the bike dealers and checked out all of the different bikes. Well, not all, but quite a few. One that caught my eye was the Suzuki B-King - it is a monster of a bike - the styling is just so way out! It isn’t the sort of bike I would want, but it is quite impressive to say the least. Check it out:
So, I had a good time looking at the bikes and a good time cornering - I think I’ve got it well sorted now. Which is just as well because the test is in two weeks time!
A colleague of mine also had a motorbike accident on the weekend - a timely reminder that it is a dangerous sport.
Posted in Cars and Bikes No Comments »
March 3, 2008
You hear bloggers around the world either saying that the Alexa toolbar is great, or that it is rubbish.
They say these things because a lot of Alexa users are actually web developers themselves and therefore the sample of Internet users that they use to create the statistics is not valid or not a good enough sample.
So, I thought about this, and tried to analyse it from both sides of the fence - what is good and what is bad about it, and should I bother to download the toolbar myself?
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March 3, 2008
As I previously mentioned, I used to have Google AdSense ads on this blog and on some other sites, and on this blog they did nothing.
Now that I have some traffic, I am trying them out again to see if they are worthwhile to this site. I am going to try something different than what I have done with the AdToll and Project Wonderful ads - I am going to test inline in post ads.
I want to gauge two things with this campaign - the effectiveness of positioning, and the acceptance of the readers.
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Posted in Monetizing No Comments »
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