A Visible Drop Of Traffic
May 12, 2008 | By Monika Mundell | 3 Comments »
When I started blogging on my freelance writing blog back in June 2007, I blogged often, between 20-30 entries per months. Over the course of the following months and as my freelance writing business grew, those posts got less and less. Partially due to time constraints and also due to testing whether the myth is definitely true about the fact that posting less will reduce readership and commenting frequency.
The results are in
I can now honestly say that posting less has negatively affected my visitor numbers. While I received a steady grow to my blog’s traffic in the period from July 07 to January 08, the number has dropped since then to about half of what I had before.
Interestingly enough, my RSS subscriber number has been growing ever since and so has my comment section. I put this down to getting more recognition due to branding in the blogosphere and making new friends who stick by me regardless of how often I post.
Knowing this now is proving to me that posting less does drop traffic for sure. I suppose it also depends on the topic of our blog and since I’m mainly blogging about topics related to my freelance writing business, this might further affect traffic, because it is a more narrow market.
How to turn lack of traffic around
It’s easy really, instead of posting just a couple of entries every week I intend to go back to posting 5 entries instead. Since my blog is still in its building stages, I can’t afford to become lazy and justify its growth. It is my flagship blog after all and as you all know, they take time to build.
If you face the same problem and have been rather slack in posting frequently, then I suggest you do the same. Post more often and become active as a commenter on other blogs.
I made the mistake of relaxing about this too much and now I have to face the consequences. It’s not that I’m stressing about it, but I wanted to show you how important it is to post frequently to further grow any blog.
I understand that it is important for the growth of any blog to attract a constant stream of traffic and that is what I’ll focus on again from now on.
What did I learn from this experiment?
I suppose the most important lesson is to never get too relaxed about the frequency of posting. Another area I gotten slack about is to bookmark my posts. I used to bookmark them every time I made updates, but haven’t done so for a long time, which has further contributed to loss of traffic I believe.
The good thing is, that I always saw this as some kind of test to help me understand blogging metrics better.
Tell me, do you find blogging less affects your blog as well, or is it quite the contrary for you?
Tags: Blog Traffic, blogging, blogs, frequent blog posts, posting frequency, traffic for blogs, traffic-generation
Other Related Posts:The Wise Man Said
May 11, 2008 | By Monika Mundell | 5 Comments »
The wise man said that you shouldn’t pick your nose in public. The other day I received an email from a reader asking me whether it is easy to start making money with a blog and how fast she could quit her day job if she started now.
Hello?!
I mean, excuse me. You can’t just start to make money like that. You will need a plan and work it to be successful and it certainly won’t happen overnight either.
Quitting your day job sounds like fun that most of us would enjoy, but sadly most never will.
Here is problem number one: most people have the false belief that it is relatively easy to make money online with a blog or a website. They read an inflated and hyped up sale message and think, “gee, I can do that too”.
It is easy to underestimate what it really takes to become successful when we dream. Really, we can’t be blamed or can we?
As the wise man said, don’t quit your day job before you are absolutely sure that your business will support you. Some business owners become successful overnight and quit their job only to find themselves without an income 30 days later.
Always have a backup plan. For me, that would be to go back to my hated job as a galley slave, but I don’t intend to do that ever again. That is why I’m working so hard right now. I’m building my business into an empire and hope to dominate the blogosphere one day. Ok, that was a joke - not.
Kidding aside though, how are you going with your day job? Have you got step by step plans that bring you a little closer to your goal every day, or do you just amble about (not sure whether this even a word).
For most businesses it takes anywhere from a few months to a couple of years to become successful in monetary terms. Even if you follow a plan and work hard. This alone fails many since they give up far too early.
It is also a good idea to find out what the average income is in your country. This will help you to set achievable milestones.
Many factors play into a potential business success, but the single most contributing factor is still you. Don’t make the mistake of leaving yourself in the dry and quit your day job too early. It could become very costly indeed.
Tags: blogging for money, business blogging, making money online, money, online business, running a business
Other Related Posts:Just Lucid WordPress Theme
May 10, 2008 | By Monika Mundell | No Comments »
The new Just Lucid WordPress Theme is neat and clean for blogger who enjoy whitish themes. This one has also a nice and nifty looking footer that looks very attractive as it stands out from most other footer designs.
Just Lucid was designed by DemusDesign and includes some smart navigation.
Here is what they say on their site: Main menu expands automatically - The image to the right of the main menu automatically expands to the size of the menu. So you can see what I mean, I’ve included a demo of different header sizes. For the image I have included, it works best to have it centered vertically, if you change the picture you may want to find “.menu” in the css and change the background value to read “no-repeat bottom right” or “no-repeat top right.”
To see the various style tags from this theme, head over to the style tags page.
Below is a screen shot of the footer.
Overall the Just Lucid WordPress theme is very clean, easy on the eye with some nice functions.
Tags: just lucid, just lucid theme, just lucid wordpress theme, Wordpress, Wordpress Themes, wp, wp themes
Other Related Posts:Skribit Helps To Cure Writers Block
May 9, 2008 | By Monika Mundell | 3 Comments »
Skribit is a new user generated application for bloggers that is currently in closed beta (sniff). Update: It is live and has been for some time. Seems I got the wrong end of the stick (see comments). When I checked it out, it looked interesting enough to give it a go since it helps bloggers in more than one way.
For example, Skribit can help bloggers:
- to cure your writers block
- get important stats and reader insights through analytic reports
- Connect with readers by learning what they want
Readers can also benefit from Skribit:
- you can connect with fellow readers
- let the blogger know what is of interest to you by suggesting blog post topics’
- helps to increase your online presence
- and discover related blogs
I found out that Darren Rowse of Problogger is currently using Skribit on his blog. Here is how it looks.
As you can see, readers have suggested blog topics and everybody can vote on the importance of them. Both suggestions and voting can be done with a user account or even anonymously. To make a suggestion on a blog that features this widget just click on the Link above the votes and a new window will open, looking like the next image.
The Skribit widget is easy installed in four steps (once they are live) and you can give it some prime real estate in your sidebar. The widget is fully customisable with your blogs colours.
They will work with WordPress, TypePad and Blogger blogs.
For Skribit’s FAQ go visit this page.
Tags: skribit, skribit beta, skribit widget, widgets for wordpress, Wordpress-Widgets, wp widget
Other Related Posts:Meet Your Commenters WordPress Plugin
May 7, 2008 | By Monika Mundell | 8 Comments »
As bloggers we all love to get as many comments as we can. After all, having an active community of commenters gives us a sense of achievement. With the Meet Your Commenters Plugin you can now connect even more with the people who comment on your blog by showing you some “insider” information within your dashboard about them.
The Plugin works with the help of the Google Social Graph API.
When visitors leave a comment on your site they leave more info than you think and with the help of this Plugin you can connect through social networks where information is provided all through your dashboard.
As you can see from the screen shot above, with each name are some links that lead to that persons social network profiles. This makes it incredible easy to connect with them as all you have to do is click on the link and follow or join their network.
Just download the zip file by going to the developers page and follow the instructions outlined.
Tags: meet the commenters, meet the commenters wordpress plugin, Wordpress, wordpress plugin, wp, wp plugin
Other Related Posts:Hitting The Right Keyword
May 4, 2008 | By Monika Mundell | 6 Comments »
Late last year I followed some advice from a good friend of mine who makes his living with blogger niche sites and built my own blogger blog within 3 hours. I posted ten blog posts using the inbuilt time stamp feature. I also posted some pictures to make the site look more appealing.
The keyword I used was from Google Trends. That site will give you constantly updated information on what is hot right now and searched for a lot via Google. Google Trends is therefore a great tool to use for niche marketing if you target the right keywords.
See the graph below of my sites traffic.
I’m getting a constant flow of traffic of about 30 unique hits a day on that site and the last time I updated, was back in December 2007.
So what is the secret of my traffic and how come I’m still getting so many hits?
The secret is that I managed to hit on a very popular long tail keyword that helps me to rank on position number 3 and 4 on Google.
Admittedly I can easily get to rank higher by updating my content and point some links to it from PR sites I have. The reason I haven’t done this is because I’m having one problem and that is monetizing the site.
It’s crazy really, here I have a great niche site that could earn me a possible $20 a day and more and I can’t seem to sell anything from it.
One of the reasons is because it is in a very hard niche to monetize and the other is that I really haven’t taken enough time to bother with several potential winners.
This is stupid and it just shows how important it is to rank well, but also to find a way to monetize a site once it does.
Because what is the point to rank well when we can’t earn any money?
Just by hitting the right keyword and using some SEO to optimize my site, I got onto Google’s first site within a day back then.
Now I just have to find the perfect way to monetize and I’m good to go.
Tags: choosing keywords, how to build niches, keywords, niche marketing, niche sites, optimizing websites, SEO
Other Related Posts:Display Your Latest Action With BT Active Discussions
May 3, 2008 | By Monika Mundell | 2 Comments »
BT Active Discussions is a brand new WordPress Plugin that acts via a phpBB platform. Instead of having a recent comments Plugin you could use this Plugin to save space in your sidebar and yet still give your readers a great overview of where the action is on your blog.
I really love this Plugin, as it will save space but allows readers to see where to go to find active comments on your blog. This means no more hunting around to see where, what and when as you can do this on the “recent discussions” page instead.
To install the BT Active Discussions Plugin, download the zip file from the WordPress Plugin Directory.
- Unzip the file
- FTP the folder bt-active-discussions to your plugins directory
- Activate the Plugin from within your WordPress admin
- Create a new page or use an existing one and copy the following %%bt-active-discussions%% to the code version on that page for the Plugin to display correctly.
That’s it, you are done!
If you like to further customize the Plugin page you can add the following two options to your Plugin file.
- $inc_trackbacks = 0; // set to 1 to include trackbacks
- $max_topics = 30; // the number of posts you want to display
Have fun.
Tags: active discussions plugin, bt active discussions, bt active discussions wordpress plugin, plugins, Wordpress, wordpress plugin, wp
Other Related Posts:Branding Yourself With The "Guru Theme"
April 30, 2008 | By Gobala Krishnan | 6 Comments »
Blogs are a great way to make money online. However, sometimes the money is made not from direct methods like Google Adsense or affiliate marketing.
Sometimes, all you need a blog for is to grow your personal brand as a guru or an expert and the money comes in many, many other ways.
I’m releasing the theme I use for my work-at-home blog as The Guru Theme so you can use it on your blog too. I basically created space for a bigger blog header, which is necessary if you want to band yourself well.
This simple theme is perfect if:
- You just want to build readership and brand yourself as an expert in your field
- You want to build market credibility - there is a dedicated “testimoials” page you can make use of
- You want to focus more on selling your own products or service instead of advertising income
Yes, I know it’s only available in yellow right now 
If you know CSS it’s pretty easy to change the color scheme. Maybe in the future I’ll add all those other boring colors - red, blue and grey.
Tags: guru, wordpress theme
Other Related Posts:The Power Of The Force - The Internet
April 30, 2008 | By Monika Mundell | 4 Comments »
Ok, I admit it, I’m a huge sucker for the Star Wars movies and the concept of the force in general. When Keith left a somewhat negative comment on my social networking post the other day, I admit I was both upset and puzzled at the same time. While we sorted out the misunderstanding that clearly took place it got me thinking about the things I’m thankful for.
While I am not a person to get sucked into negativity I do like to point out things that bother me to help others so they become more aware of potential downfalls.
Thanks to Keith I got my brain into action and started thinking about why I love the Internet so much. While I say I love the net, I’m not unaware that there are many dark characters who lurk in the folds of this strong force, but since I like to focus on the positive, luckily I don’t have to bother much with people like that.
The Internet really is a powerful force and after some brainstorming I was able to put this into context to share with you guys.
So here it goes:
- Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.
- like the quote above, when we fear to move ahead with our online ventures, it will eventually lead us to suffer from inaction.
- Truly wonderful the mind of a child is
- to me this child is the Internet. We create, nurture and help to educate much like we do with children
- Always in motion is the future.
- The Internet is a moving living thing that grows every second and doubles at lightning speed.
- A Jedi gains power through understanding and a Sith gains understanding through power.
- since a Jedi represents the good guy and a Sith represents bad, I see this quote reflecting the differences in learning as we go and trying to understand how things work, rather than demanding absolute power from our peers.
- The fear of loss is a path to the Dark Side.
- don’t fear! The Internet basically invites us to do and learn from our mistakes.
- Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you?
- how often have you judged a website by the lack of page rank or RSS subscribers? I know, we are all guilty of it in some ways. Look beyond the first layer and discover an endless well of goodness.
- There’s always a bigger fish.
- don’t worry about the others, be proud of your achievements and move at your own pace. Much like there are always bigger fish, there are also smaller fish than you, regardless of where you are at.
These quotes pretty much sum up to me the powers of the force - the Internet. It is an amazing living thing that is constantly being created and re-created by the Jedi’s of the online world.
Fighting for balance, wisdom and a better world in general, Jedi’s are proud to call themselves warriors of the truth. We can do the same by being honourable members of the Internet force - doing our individual bit to keep it this amazing place it is.
Tags: internet, jedi knights, sith's, star wars, the force, the force of the internet, the internet
Other Related Posts:Monochrome WordPress Themes By Graph Paper Press
April 29, 2008 | By Monika Mundell | 2 Comments »
Here is a cool WordPress themes developer who has managed to design some really nice and clean looking themes for WordPress. Graph Paper Press WordPress themes are versatile enough to suit most needs and feature some cool looking magazine style themes.
From what I have seen, their themes are all customisable and you can create your very own show piece blog on the web for free or for a reasonable fee.
Monochrome Gallery is a free theme that supports Ajax powered featured posts on the home page. A great way to showcase the best you have with the help of images.
The theme also supports thumbnails and widgets and would be great for bloggers with video, news style blogs or even photography blogs.
Monochrome Author is so cool, that I actually consider this for my own blog for a make over. I have fallen in love with the Ajax powered features since they allow bloggers to really put emphasis onto their best content. Images are in my eyes very important too.
They help to attract and draw your concentration to it. Plus, the neat navigation as well as the color scheme are well down my alley.
Monochrome Pro is an advanced theme from both the Gallery and Author in the same range and actually costs $75. Still very affordable considering what you are getting. Buying the theme will also allow you to remove the credits in the footer.
Like the two themes before, this one is also widgetized and supports
Monochrome Lite does away with clutter and offers a streamlined approach for bloggers who don’t want too many thumbnails or Ajax powered featured posts. The posts are still supported by thumbnails however and the CSS framework helps with customizations.
There are many more designs to be found by this very able company. Some do cost a reasonable fee, while others are completely free. They have also planned to release a new theme every month for the remainder of this year.
I shall look forward to what they release in the future.
Tags: graph paper theme developer, graph paper wordpress themes, monochrome wordpress themes, themes for wordpress, Wordpress Themes, wp themes
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