tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-188220812009-02-21T03:29:15.732-05:00A how-to guide to blogging for new/recent bloggers.blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.comBlogger93125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1158417619826321682006-09-16T10:32:00.000-04:002006-09-16T10:40:19.840-04:00

I'm unfortunately forgetful, and it's taken me many months to post this, but this URL has moved, sort of: BlogSpinnerV3.0. The new URL is similar to the old, but doesn't use the "/index.html" because it's a WordPress blog. The theme is different there, but I am hoping to update when I have some time, so forgive me until then. Anyway, if you found articles on this site that you liked, you really

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1139540834410039762006-02-15T21:45:00.000-05:002006-02-15T21:45:48.803-05:00

This post about productive writing habits for blogs/ online journals has been moved to BlogSpinner V3. Please click on the link to view the article.

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1139553277779817732006-02-15T21:43:00.000-05:002006-02-15T21:43:10.203-05:00

This post about managing writers for a blog network has been moved to BlogSpinner V3. Please click on the link to view the article.

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1139891373235367522006-02-15T21:37:00.000-05:002006-02-15T21:37:43.963-05:00

This post about writing and managing multiple blogs has been moved to BlogSpinner V3. Please click on the link to view the article.

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1139955472200489042006-02-15T21:23:00.000-05:002006-02-15T21:23:09.706-05:00

This post about converting Blogger.com blogs to WordPress has been moved to BlogSpinner V3. Please click on the link to see the post.

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1139516685666831032006-02-09T15:24:00.000-05:002006-02-09T15:24:31.553-05:00

The term Sliding Average has the same meaning as Rolling Average and Moving Average, or MA for short. I've talked about MAs and MMAs (Multiple Moving Averages) at length over many posts. I like to use MMAs as a reverse crystal ball to find patterns in my web traffic and ad revenue, as well as a means to making an educated guess at future trends.A moving average is essentially an average value

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1139459183820753562006-02-08T23:26:00.000-05:002006-02-08T23:24:32.093-05:00

A few visitors to this blog were looking for "tips to increase pagerank". The problem with any advice for this result is that it's mostly conjecture. Why? Because unless you work on a search engine team, you probably don't know all the necessary factors.I was once a search engine webmaster, but this was over a decade ago, when ranking in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) could be bought.

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1139449482583105222006-02-08T20:44:00.000-05:002006-02-08T20:44:42.613-05:00

With more and more people blogging on a daily basis, many bloggers are looking to differentiate themselves. One way that bloggers have been doing that is to podcast and vodcast media content from their blog. Podcasting and vodcasting specifically refer to including media files in your RSS or Atom web content syndication feeds (web feeds). However, the terms are also used to refer to including

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1139441841099281102006-02-08T18:37:00.000-05:002006-02-08T18:36:21.483-05:00

Hot on the heels of my previous milestone, I reached an AdSense milestone of the highest number of clicks in a given day, since I started publishing AdSense ads. Google's TOS (terms of service) do not allow me to tell you the number of clicks, but it is one click more than my October 2005 high.As for pageviews, while I almost reached the 300 pv/d (pageviews/day) level again yesterday, I missed it

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1139380151725271502006-02-08T01:29:00.000-05:002006-02-08T01:25:07.090-05:00

Now that I'm getting more traffic, and more regularly, I can see a correlation that I suspected existed. That is, there appears to be a relationship, but I haven't proven it yet.What my web metrics for my blogs and websites are showing is that on the days that I post less entries, my traffic is lower. So is the traffic for the next day, which sometimes sets off a chain reaction: disappointed in

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1139342709373641612006-02-07T15:05:00.000-05:002006-02-07T23:55:06.243-05:00

One of the debates currently ongoing in the blogosphere are questions relating to posting frequency. Should you post lots of short entries per day, or fewer longer entries. Should you focus all of your writing to a single blog, or branch out into several topics?These are important questions that you have to ask yourself. Your answer may be different than another bloggers. For me, I enjoy

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1139330390270905122006-02-07T11:39:00.000-05:002006-02-07T14:48:47.533-05:00

February is continuing January's role as a milestone-reaching month. After 3:00 am my time zone (12 midnight in Google's home), my total pageviews across all channels squeaked just past 300 for yesterday. That's after I subtracted my own page impressions, which I needed for testing.Now, granted that some of these 300 pageviews had a bit to do with a couple of higher-traffic blogs linking to one

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1139299125443692702006-02-07T02:58:00.000-05:002006-02-07T02:58:45.456-05:00

A scan of my Google Analytics reports shows the title question in the logs. Both the Google and Yahoo search engines have a PR (PageRank) designation. It's possible MSN does as well, but I honestly don't know. So does PageRank increase traffic?The short answer is: not necessarily. The more detailed answer is as follows. What a high PR does do is give those pages higher visibility in the SERPs (

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1139286606516958412006-02-06T23:30:00.000-05:002006-02-06T23:30:06.530-05:00

Upon scanning my Google Analytics report recently for this blog, I found a few people searching for instructions on setting up a blog on a regular website. The short answer to this question is that it really isn't much different than if you were to set up the blog's homepage as also being your website's homepage.You need to create a subdirectory under the root directory of your domain. In this

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1139033729660108772006-02-04T01:15:00.000-05:002006-02-04T01:17:13.210-05:00

As with my previous web metrics posts, this one uses Google Analytics as an example, but you can use any web analytics package. Under the Marketing Optimization section is a subsection called Visitor Segment Performance. Under this subsection is a report called Referring Source. This an extremely valuable report, and a potential source of ideas for future blog posts.Once you've clicked on this

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1138988618455009032006-02-03T12:43:00.000-05:002006-02-03T12:45:48.693-05:00

If you're using the Blogger.com blogging platform (or something like it), like I am for this blog, you might be frustrated by the fact that your home page displays each article in its entirety, instead of excerpting like most other blogging platforms do. There are actually several ways that you can excerpt in Blogger.com so that each post displays a portion of the text, then has a "read more"

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1138949008658028002006-02-03T01:43:00.000-05:002006-02-03T01:46:24.286-05:00

I've been working for myself for so long that I habitually assess my potential for the new year each January, with revisions in Februrary. This is something I need to do early in the year so that I can set my targets and work towards my goals. In the last post, I talked about some blogging revenue and traffic goals. I revisited my goals earlier today, realizing that I'd neglected some potential

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1138859883770253282006-02-02T00:56:00.000-05:002006-02-02T00:58:03.786-05:00

I've mentioned in recent posts that I have a number of New Year's resolutions for blogging, including reaching certain traffic levels, as well as reaching ad and article revenue goals. One of these goals is to hit the $100/m mark in Google AdSense ad revenue sometime this year, preferably by summer. Another is to get 1000 unique visitors daily across all my sites/ blogs before the end of the year

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1138839548235741752006-02-01T19:19:00.000-05:002006-02-01T19:20:30.196-05:00

One of the struggles I've been going through for two months is in choosing the most appropriate blogging platform for several new blogs (mine, friends, family) that I'm trying to set up. There are a number of features that are absolutely crucial for the selected platform to have:Online community-building features:ForumsPersonal blogsContribution trackingAd revenue sharing (at least Google AdSense

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1138731612903144672006-01-31T13:20:00.000-05:002006-01-31T13:17:09.236-05:00

January has been a month of milestones for me. This morning, I passed another one, that of a new level of monthly Google AdSense revenue.I passed the $40/m mark, which for me is great. For several months, I've been hovering just above or below the $30 mark, not going much further. At the time of this writing, I'm only five cents above $40 for January. A close call, but I was pretty certain that

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1138691217323961202006-01-31T02:06:00.000-05:002006-01-31T02:33:07.786-05:00

After about 6 months of steady blogging, I've come to the point where I've started to branch out to write for other blogs, as I mentioned in my last post (links below). I've mentioned before that there are a number of sources of blog revenue:Ad revenue from existing ad networks.Ad revenue from your own ad network.Sales of your products and services.Merchandise sales through another

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1138385737757681112006-01-27T13:15:00.000-05:002006-01-27T13:13:17.063-05:00

While I'm talking about blogging milestones, I reached another one yesterday: that of writing for a 3rd blog for which I can earn or am earning either ad revenues or a pay-per-post fee, or both.Sure, 3 different blogs isn't a lot, but throughout history, 3 is considered a magic number of sorts, and a catalyzing point in business. And being a metaphysical kinda guy, 3 is a magic number for me. I'm

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1138377231842803982006-01-27T10:53:00.000-05:002006-01-27T10:51:45.626-05:00

A few days ago, I finally passed the Chitika eMinimalls ad revenue milestone of US$10. It's a milestone because it's the smallest amount they'll pay out via Paypal. Unfortunately, my excitement was short-lived.Now, I know $10 is no big deal, and I'm by no means whining. I'm simply documenting my milestones for posterity, and for anyone new to blogging, so that they have a realistic idea of how

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1138261626839595202006-01-26T02:47:00.000-05:002006-01-26T02:47:39.580-05:00

If you've actually been reading other blogs lately, you'll know that online communities are hot. Human beings have always been social creatures, for the most part, and always align themselves to some group or other. While such a group might typically be kinfolk, in the blogosphere, it's often one of the many online communities and social networking sites.Online communities offer something to

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18822081.post-1138136767989848532006-01-24T16:06:00.000-05:002006-01-24T16:07:07.703-05:00

As stated in the overview to this series, the most fundamental way to get more traffic to your blog (or website) is to have more sites link to you. As many other bloggers have stated, you want to gain these links organically. That is, these links should be acquired gradually, and the link text shouldn't be the same for every linking site. Moral: don't buy links.So how do you gain links

blogslingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09263250561416943757noreply@blogger.com0