January 12, 2008
A view from a Google Analytics Map Overlay report
The key to recovery is to admit the problem — isn’t that what they always say in movies and television shows about celebrities and others facing major life issues?
I’m admitting that I have an addiction to blog statistics.
Sure, I can handle my stats. I just tell myself that so that I don’t feel so bad about having multiple redundant systems keeping track of hits and visits and all sorts of other information about my blogs.
My statistics packages include:
Google Analytics
Statcounter
Quantcast
WordPress.com Stats
Analog 6.0 and Report Magic
Is it a bad sign I can’t just stop at one?
January 11, 2008
I have to admit that I used to think that people who used WordPress for their blogging platform were reminiscent of cult-members on a mission for new recruits. It might have been the blogging crowd I ran with at the time that always brought on the full force of peer pressure to join the WP world.
After using WordPress for a couple of months, I can say that all of the evangelism for the free program is warranted. I host the program on my own server and my hosting company installed it at my direction. (They also handle upgrades, so there’s no need to manually delete and replace old files using FTP).
Before WP, I had used Blogger and the draft version of Blogger and hosting the files on my own servers. After suffering the curse of Blogger users who FTP — long wait times to get new posts to upload — I finally took the plunge and set up my blogs using the WP platform.
The best thing about WordPress its ability to automate many functions that I was manually doing when I was using Blogger. Sitemaps are automatically updated and pings sent to various services when I create a new post. Have a lot of comment spam? The Akismet plug-in takes care of most of it.
Before WP, I wasted time creating my own sitemaps using various programs that required me to upload the sitemaps to my server. I’ll never do that again, but I’ll get all of the benefits of having up-to-date sitemaps.
Using WordPress takes a lot of the tedium away from blogging.
I love writing, but dislike spending lots of time hassling with administrative issues required to ensure Google and other search engines come to visit. It’s great to be freed from the techy chores when they can be done in the background by the software!
WP makes it easier to concentrate on producing great blog content.
January 7, 2008
I’ve found over the years that Problogger.net is a great source of ideas for all things blogging.
The site is oriented to monetizing your blogging creations. Author Darren Rowse is a blogger who makes a ton of money selling ads on his blogs, in addition to running a blog network and being a part of an emerging church in Austrialia.
But, the fact that Problogger is designed for those aspiring to make money doesn’t have to stop someone who isn’t interested in the monetary aspects of blogging.
The blogging tips can be applied to any blog written by someone who wants to propagate his or her ideas throughout the universe.
Some of the posts are inspirational, as well as informative. Some deal with getting traffic. Other with design. There’s always something to be learned.
Problogger is a great place to learn more about being a great blogger.
January 2, 2008
The year 2007 has come and gone — way too quickly it seems.
Looking back at last year and what I’ve learned about blogging during 2007, I have to say that the number one thing I’ve learned starting up a blog in 2005 is to never “delete” a blog on Blogger. If you started a blog there, but don’t want to continue it, just let it sit fallow. Deleting it guarantees that a splog will invade it once you leave. If you don’t want any content on the blog, delete all of the previous content, but keep control of the subdomain.
The second lesson I’ve learned is how nice it is to use WordPress after using Blogger as my platform since May 2005. I had dabbled with WordPress previously, but never took the plunge and seriously used it. I wish I had started using WP as soon as I had discovered it. Plug-ins make blogging easy by doing all sorts of things such as capturing spam and creating XML sitemaps that when done manually take up time and effort. The chores of blogging are reduced so that bloggers can concentrate on the creation of content.
The third was learning about BlogNetNews and reconnecting with Indiana bloggers and subsequently connecting with Northwest Indiana bloggers. I foresee great things for NWI’s bloggers and look forward to seeing all of the new content (and new bloggers) during 2008.
What are the lessons of blogging that you’ve learned — good or bad — that might enlighten the blogging community in general?
December 30, 2007
Here’s a great blog tip from Problogger.net – Network to improve your blog.
Responds David Peralty in response to a question from Problogger’s Darren Rowse on what improved ones blog the most in 2007:
With everything else I have done in my blogging, networking is really the only thing that has really given my blogs a huge push in 2007. Talking to people from different backgrounds, connecting with them and learning from them. It is really amazing what kind of effect it can have on your productivity, as well as traffic, resources, and even monetization, all from making a few friends.
December 27, 2007
A secret to growing a blog is to post daily.
Readers always love seeing new content and as a blogger, you always want to keep them coming back for more.
As with every rule, there are exceptions — some blogs do well in the search engines with “evergreen” posts — and during holidays, readership always drops off, so it isn’t critical to have a post come out on Christmas Day or New Years Day since there probably won’t be many people expecting content on those days.
Once nice feature of Word Press is the ability to edit the post time stamp. WordPress’ edit post timestamp allows a blogger to write a post, then publish it at a later time. While this might not be necessary for all posting, it is helpful when one will be away for vacation or unable to update their blog.
The edit time stamp feature comes in handy on those occasion when I’m inspired to write a lot of posts, but don’t necessarily want to have them come out all at once or when I know that I’m going to have a busy week and won’t have a lot of time to keep the blog updated. In fact, I wrote this post on Christmas Day but delayed it so that I wouldn’t have to worry about writing a post later in the week.
On news oriented blogs, it is helpful to be able to write several posts at once, but have one come out in the morning and another in the afternoon.
For other blogs where the content isn’t time sensitive, the post timestamp feature is a blessing because it allows a blogger to write a week’s worth of posts, then have them come out once a day.
Leo Babauta of Zen Habits write about he has adopted this strategy as part of his minimalist blogging habit.
In recent months, I’ve reduced the time I spend writing posts for my blog to about half a day’s work, and I spend about an hour or so more every day of the week responding to comments and emails.
Here’s what Lorelle says about using the post timestamp feature:
When you’re blogging, you want to post as consistently as possible. If you’re on a three-days each week schedule, then you want to post on the same days each week. If you’re posting once-per-week, you really want to try to publish a post each day.
Notice I said ‘post each day’ not write each day. Of course you can write a post each day, if your life allows. But how do you take a weekend off? How do you go away for short spurts of vacation? What about getting bogged down with work and not having the time to blog?
Leave it to the developers of WordPress to have a solution for you: Post Timestamp.
