The Blogging Fool

Excellent Video on Increasing RSS Subscribers

2009-05-27T10:29:00.002-04:00

Darren Rowse and crew over at ProBlogger put together this video that offers up some solid tips on building your RSS subscribership (is that even a word?). Give some of these ideas a shot, they're sure to help...

Attention Wordpress Bloggers: Check Out WP Greet Box

2009-05-20T18:25:00.002-04:00

If you own a Wordpress blog then be sure to check out the WP Greet Box plugin. This thing could seriously drive up your RSS subscribers and makes every visit to your blog a bit more personal.

Roundup of All of the Free Wordpress Theme Roundups

2009-04-12T11:47:00.005-04:00

Finding a good, free Wordpress template for your blog can be tricky. To make things a bit easier we've pulled together all of those Wordpress themes roundups that we could find into one list:

100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes
83 Beautiful WordPress Themes
21 Mindblowing Premium-Like Free Wordpress Themes
21 Fresh, Usable and Elegant Themes
45 Excellent Free Wordpress Themes
50 Beautiful Free WordPress Themes
10 Fresh and Clean Themes
13 Wordpress Magazine Themes
20 Free Corporate WordPress Themes
45+ Free Premium WordPress Themes with Magazine or Grid Layouts
Ten Best Free Wordpress Themes and Templates Part 1
Ten Best Free Wordpress Themes and Templates Part 2
Ten Best Free Wordpress Themes and Templates Part 3
39 Amazing Wordpress Themes
16 Free Premium Wordpress Themes That Don’t Suck
45+ Must See WordPress Themes - Noupe
Top 50 free Wordpress themes - CrazyLeaf
15 High Quality Free Premium WordPress 2.7 Themes - Noupe

Alternatives to AdSense: Chitika

2009-03-30T12:04:00.003-04:00

Its hard to find a blog out there that doesn't use Google's AdSense as a part of their monetization strategy. But there's much more out there than just AdSense and if you're not testing other advertising options then its likely that you're leaving money on the table.

One other ad network that I've had some great success with on other sites that I run is Chitika. I use Chitika's Premium Ads which are targeted to your search traffic coming into your blog. By working this way Chitika Premium ads are in compliance with Google AdSense's terms and conditions and can be used on the same page as AdSense. You also have the option of showing untargeted ads to visitors that didn't come from a search engine, for example the ad below, if you came from a search engine, will be targeted to whatever you searched. And then if you didn't arrive here via search then it will just show a random advertisement. When you sign up you'll get the choice of whether you want to show the random ad or would rather insert blank space instead.

So that's the basics on Chitika, its totally free to setup and definitely worth a try on your blog. Click here to sign-up.

When Blogs Just Won't Work

2009-01-15T09:18:00.003-05:00

While in general I am a huge fan of blogs and blogging platforms, there are some instances where you may want to make a website and a blog just won't work for you. Usually this is the case if you want to have a more static look and feel to the site, for example a small business' website should probably not be a blog and should instead have a more professional and consistent feel to it.

So what do you do in these instances? Well, there are a few different options, but far and away I'd suggest using a Content Management System, or CMS, to get the job done. Technically, blog platforms (Blogger, Wordpress, TypePad, etc.) are CMSs, but in this instance I'm going to focus on a CMS that would be a better fit for the job and that's Joomla.

Joomla is a free open-source CMS that is widely used, supported and you can even get ramped up quickly with a ton of free templates built for Joomla. Learning Joomla does take some time and effort, but with a good template, you'll be up and running quickly and the customization process will be fairly straightforward.

Combating Splogs

2007-03-04T14:22:00.000-05:00

I recently noticed another blog that I run was getting an increasing number of trackbacks to my most recent posts. Seems like good news at first...people are liking what I write and writing about it on their own blogs. Not the case though.

Upon a little closer inspection I found a few different sites with the exact same content as I had posted to my blog just minutes beforehand. Spam blogs or more commonly splogs. These splogs were reading my blog's content from my RSS feed and then posting it to their site literally minutes after I post it.

This is bad news. Google and the other search engines do not look favorably upon duplicate content and there's no guarantee that the search bots will visit my blog before the splog. If the splog gets indexed first then there could potentially be penalties for my blog.

So what options do legitimate bloggers have against splogs?

Flag the Blog - If the splog is hosted on blogspot, click the flag button in Blogger to report a blogspot splog.

Report the blog - Splog Reporter and SplogSpot are two services looking to aggregate a list of splogs. Not sure how effective they are but worth a try.

If the splog uses AdSense, tell Google that they are violating the AdSense Terms of Service - To do this Click on the Ads by Google link on any of the AdSense ads on the splog. Then select "Send Google your thoughts on the ads you just saw." From there its pretty self-explanatory, just report that the site is using your content to profit from AdSense.

Contact the splog owner and ask them to discontinue using your feed - Not much chance of this succeeding but it still might be worth a shot. A WhoIs search would be the place to start. If that fails then you could try leaving a comment on the splog. Again, this method has slim to no chance of working but might be worth a try.

In my case, I have pursued all of the above options. I'll be sure to post again on any success (or failure) that I have in reducing my splogs stealing my content.

The Power of Blogs -TrueHoop

2007-02-16T12:45:00.000-05:00

An interesting development in the blogosphere occurred the other day when TrueHoop, a blog about NBA basketball, was bought by ESPN.

Just goes to show how blogging about something that you love can really pay off in the end. No idea yet on how much the deal was worth but I'm sure the TrueHoop owners made out ok.

So what can we the average blogger take away from this? Well, a few things.

First of all check out TrueHoop, the site design is very plain and simple. Way too often bloggers overload the senses rather than just clearly communicating their thoughts to their readers.

Secondly TrueHoop has clearly done a great job of getting readers to participate in their conversations about the NBA. Each of there posts has a number of comments, most of which add to the overall site's content.

And finally you might notice that TrueHoop has 0 (yes...0) advertisements on it. For many bloggers that's just a crazy idea (me included), but it is interesting to note. TrueHoop is about the NBA, nothing else. Focus your blog on a specific topic and keep writing.

Adsense Optimized Blog Templates

2007-01-26T10:07:00.000-05:00

In light of my previous on using AdSense in a blog to make money, I thought I share this site I just stumbled across that provides free AdSense optimized blog templates based on Google's heat map. The site has both Blogger templates and Wordpress templates. Might be worth checking out.

If you use one of the templates, swing by again and leave a comment to let me know if the templates work out well or not.

Making Money From Blogging - Part 2: Affiliate Programs

2007-01-26T09:57:00.000-05:00

The use of Affiliate Programs can be another excellent source of income from your blog. Affiliate programs are basically just a way for large online retailers to pay you for referring sales to them.

Most likely, no matter what your blog is about there is some sort of affiliate program that would make sense for your readers.

For example, my blog, The Blogging Fool, uses Amazon.com's affiliate program to post those various blogging books that you can see on the right side of the page. Anyone that clicks through on one of those book links and then buys anything from Amazon.com, I get a commission on. Pretty simple.

Before deciding whether or not to give affiliate programs a try, take a second to ask yourself two questions:

Who is my target reader?
What goods or services are they most likely to be interested in?

Answer those two questions and you'll be well on your way to making money from blogging via affiliate programs.

A few good Affiliate Programs:

Amazon.com Associates Program - You can almost always find some sort of books or cds that your reader may be interested in.

LinkShare Referral Program - LinkShare runs affiliate programs for Target, Apple, Macy's, Netflix, Overstock.com and a ton more. Odds are you'll find something worthwhile.

Commission Junction - Affiliate programs include Sony, Hammacher Schlemmer, Petco, Home Depot and a lot more.

Making Money From Blogging - Part 1: Adsense

2006-11-08T10:58:00.000-05:00

This is the start of a new series on making money by blogging. Today we'll start with probably the most obvious method for making money from a blog, AdSense. AdSense is a free service designed by Google that anyone can place on a webpage. AdSense then determines what the topic (or topics) of the webpage are and shows advertisements relevant to those topics. For example, on this blog, The Blogging Fool, the main topic covered is blogging and making money from blogging. So if you look at the ads on the right side of the page most likely some or all of the ads are in regard to blogging and/or making money from blogging. Simple enough.

Get AdSense

So if you don't already have an AdSense account I strongly suggest that you get one right now. It's totally free and will help you start to make money from your blog. If you're interested, click on this button to sign up: Ok you've signed up, now what?

Placing Your Ads

The next step is placing your ads on your website. Google's heat map is a huge help for this. Based on Google's research, the heat map shows you exactly what sections of a website tend to be most successful. Of course, every webpage is different so this should only be used as a guideline. In fact, no one knows your webpage as well as you do so take a minute and think of how people's eyes look at your page and go from there. One great resource that AdSense also provides is custom channel tracking which will allow you track the performance of each ad unit on your page. Make sure that you use custom channel tracking and check every few weeks or so to see which channels are performing best.

Color Choices For Your Ads

One other choice that you must make when placing AdSense ad units on your page is the color of the text in the ads. There are two schools of thought on how to best do this. One is to make the ads blend into your page so that they fit with the overall theme and appear somewhat as part of the content. The second is to make the ads stand out by using contrasting colors to draw visitors attention. As you can probably tell from the ads on this page I prefer the former, in which the ads are blended into the page. I think it makes the site more professional and avoids giving people the feeling that all you want to do is make a quick buck. Well that's all for now, if you have any further questions on AdSense please drop a comment and I'll either respond with my own comment or write another post to clarify. Best of luck with AdSense!

Making Money From Blogging

2006-10-31T10:57:00.000-05:00

For most of us blogging is just a hobby, just something we do in our spare time for fun. But there are a select few bloggers out there who are making mad money from their "hobby".

And there's no reason that you can't get in on the action too. In fact, a cover story entitled "Blogging for Dollars" was in a recent issue of Business 2.0. I read the article and was less than impressed with Business 2.0's tips on how readers can make money from blogging. In fact the tips were so rudimentary that it was almost embarrassing that someone thought those tips alone could help. Well they tried...and they bring up an interesting point, how does one go about making money from blogging?

Over the next few weeks I'll be discussing some of my thoughts on the issue. For now if you have anything you'd like to see covered, post a comment and let me know.

Also, before we get started be sure to review some of my previous tips on increasing traffic to your blog because without traffic there is not going to be much money to be made.

Simple Intro to Increasing Traffic to Your Blog

2006-10-22T12:12:00.000-04:00

Increasing traffic to your blog is fundamental to your blog's success on the Internet. As you'll soon find, it isn't all that hard to increase traffic to your blog, but it does take time.

The first and most important rule for increasing traffic to your blog is to post, post and then post some more. Posting new and unique content on a regular basis to your blog is crucial to success.

Another critical method for getting traffic to your blog in through by establishing links to your site on other people's webpages. This servers two purposes for your blog. First, a link on someone else's site can be clicked on thus bringing a visitor to your site. Secondly, links on other sites pointing to your site factor into the equations that Google, Yahoo and MSN use to determine the order in which sites are listed in searches conducted on their site. These types of links are referred to as "inbound" links.

When you try to develop inbound links it is important to make sure that the links are relevant. For example, if your blog is about cars then it doesn't do a lot of good to have an inbound link from a website about vacation spots. Your goal is to get inbound links on sites similar to your blog or, at a minimum, sites that target the same type of people (age, gender, interest, etc.) as your blog.

To begin developing inbound links, do a search for other blogs that are relevant to your blog. If your blog is about cars then search "cars" in Blogger Search or Technorati (two of the bigger blog search engines). Browse through the results that you get and make a list of those that you think are well designed and interesting. In order to get a link on those blogs you will most likely have to give something in return and usually the easiest thing to give is a link to them. So from that list add a link on your blog for each of the blogs that you liked. Then, after doing so, email the owner of each of those site and write something along the lines of:

"Hello, my name is John and I write for Crazy Cars, a blog about cars. I've recently added a link to your site on my homepage because I feel that my readers are in a very similar demographic to that of your site. If you get a chance check my site out and if you like what you see please link back.

Thank you, John"

Remember that these blog owners don't owe you anything for you linking to them, but often if you ask nice you'll get a link back.

Another way to build inbound links to your blog is by submitting your blog to blog and web directories. These directories contain literally thousands of websites and very rarely will someone come to your site by clicking on a link in one of the directories. However, including you blog in these directories can in many case help your ranking in search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc). Don't spend too much time doing this but if you have a little free time they are worth looking into.

Finally, and maybe the biggest key to increasing blog traffic is to write interesting and excellent content. The most powerful way to get people to your blog is to write content that your readers want to read. This will not only make people want to come back but it will also make them want to tell others about your blog. Anyone can get someone to come to their blog once but getting someone to come back again and again, that is the key to increasing your blog traffic.

So post often, build links so people can find you and then make sure to keep it interesting. They'll come...for now, work hard and be patient.

"Talk the Talk" - Participating in Discussions to Increase Traffic

2006-07-17T13:35:00.000-04:00

Just a quick thought today, and its something I recently posted on 43Things and it has to do with being a part of the conversation that blogs facilitate. I'm calling it "Talk the Talk."

Blogs from the onset, were created as a tool for communication. They allow people (like you and I) to speak their mind and in turn the entire world has access to their thoughts, although for most bloggers very few ever read what they write. But blogs aren't just about one person talking, blogs are more of a discussion as evidenced by the ability to leave comments on your and other people's blogs.

So if you're looking to increase the amount of discussion taking place on your blog (and thus increase traffic to your blog) then first take your thoughts to where the people are. Go find other blogs about similar topics to your own and participate in discussions on those blogs. Don't just go to post a comment and hope someone clicks back to your blog, be genuine, thoughtful and courteous. If you add to the discussion happening on another blog then it is much more likely that someone would clickthrough to come read more about what you have to say.

Running a blog is about having your voice heard, in order to do that, first let your voice be heard where the people already are, if they like what you have to say, then they'll come.

Article Submission - Building Links to Your Blog Series #3

2006-07-12T22:09:00.000-04:00

Part three of the Building Links to Your Blog Series is on article submission. As I've discussed previously, one way links to your blog is key to your success as a blogger. Google, Yahoo and other search engines are well away of link exchanges and even triangular link exchanges so they are much less significant than a one-way link is. The problem that you and I face as bloggers is that creating one way links can be a very tedious process. Getting a one-way link to your blog requires that someone else must choose to link to you for some reason or another. Most often that reason is because you (and your blog) is unique or has some sort of useful information on it. The Catch 22 of it is that in order to get other web sites to find your blog you need to increase traffic to your blog, but in order to increase traffic you need to have more people find your blog. So what is a blogger to do?

Write articles.

Articles are an outstanding way to begin the process of building one way links. Here's how they work:

First, you write an article about something. The article should be at least 300 words and should somehow be related to the topic of your blog. So, if you're writing a blog and you focus primarily on new automobiles then you might write an article on features on the latest new hybrid vehicle. Ok simple enough so far...

After you have written the article you are allowed to attach an About the Author section in which you can post a link back to your blog. In the About the Author section write something like, "For more information on hybrid vehicles and other new vehicles visit http://www.MyReallyGreatCarBlog.com."

Then you just submit your article and the About the Author section to a few different article websites (I'll provide a short list below). These articles sites in turn allow other website owners to download your article and post it as content onto their website. The only rule is that anyone that posts your article must include the About the Author section which has your link in it. For every person that posts your article on their site you will be getting a one-way link in return.

Give it a try and post a few articles on some article sites. Let me know how it works and also post a comment if you know of any other good article sites.

Article Sites:

Blog Directory List - Building Links to Your Blog Series #2

2006-07-01T12:47:00.000-04:00

As a blogger you have a small advantage over other sites in building links to your blog because not only can you submit your blog to free web directories but you also can submit to blog-specific directories. Below is a list of many of the top blog directories, if you come across any others please post a comment and we'll update the list.

Free Blog Directories

www.technorati.com
www.blogdigger.com
www.weblogalot.com
www.blogshares.com
www.blogrolling.com
www.blogstreet.com
www.blo.gs
www.newhome.weblogs.com
www.bloglines.com
www.blogdex.net
www.bloghub.com
www.blogcatalog.com
www.blogarama.com
dir.blogflux.com
www.blogrankings.com
www.blogexplosion.com
www.synblog.com
www.britblog.com
www.blogdirs.com
www.blogsweet.com
www.findingblog.com
www.blogmad.net
www.bloggernow.com
www.blog-search.com
www.blogwise.com

Submitting to Free Directories - Building Links to Your Blog Series #1

2006-07-01T12:26:00.000-04:00

Submitting your blog to free web directories can provide a lot of free one-way links to your blog. Doing so can be a very time consuming process but if you're serious about increasing traffic to your blog then submitting to at least some of the free directories is a must.

Resources for Submitting to Free Directories

DMOZ (if you submit to just one directory, this is the one)
Excellent List of Free Directories
A listing of some niche directories

To make submitting to directories easier check out RoboForm, an automated form filler so that you can enter your blog's info once and have RoboForm fill the same info in for every directory.

Building Links to Your Blog Series

2006-07-01T12:22:00.000-04:00

One of the most crucial elements of building traffic to a blog is creating incoming links. Not only do incoming links create traffic when people click on them but they also factor heavily into search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo, etc.) ranking systems for websites.

Over the coming weeks The Blogging Fool will be highlighting various methods for creating links to your blog and also further detail the reasons for doing so.

Free Icons For Your Blog or Desktop

2006-06-29T12:18:00.000-04:00

MaxPower is maintaining a listing of a bunch of free icons that may be the perfect addition to your blog. Some of the icons are really good others just so-so but the list is definitely worth scanning through to see if anything might make your blog pop just a little more.

Web Color Palette Tool

2006-06-27T09:48:00.000-04:00

Just stumbled across this sweet color palette tool at ColorBlender.com. If you've eve had trouble decidiing on what color combo to use on a site then this is the tool for you.

ColorBlender has a slidebar for Red/Green/Blue and as you slide each bar the site automatically calculates a 6 color blended color palette for you. Even better yet once you've found a combination that you like you can export it to Photoshop, Illustrator or email it to yourself or someone else.

Exhaustive List of Blogger Templates

2006-06-26T10:26:00.000-04:00

Comment if you know of any other good template sites...

Keeping Stats on Your Blog

2006-06-23T10:38:00.000-04:00

One key to building traffic to you blog is to keep track of who is coming to your blog and how they are getting there. In order to do this you need to use what is commonly referred to as a hit counter. A hit counter is a counter of how many people come to your site but it can also be a lot more. Good hit counters can tell you where a visitor to your site came from, how long they stayed, what web browser they used, what operating system they have, where they are located and more. Some of the info will be usefult to you (i.e. where they came from) and other info won't matter a whole lot for now.

Installing a hit counter is actually quite easy, all you need to do is paste a little piece of code into your blog template and off you go.

A few good, free options for hit counters:

I personally have only used SiteCounter but the others should be good too, if anyone disagrees please let me know.

Using TrafficSwarm to Increase Your Blog's Traffic

2006-06-10T23:45:00.000-04:00

TrafficSwarm is in the same vein as BlogMad and BlogExplosion. Its completely free to join and can help you as you start to build traffic to your blog. Just for signing up you'll get some free credits that you can redeem to get people to visit your blog. Then you can also earn additional credits by surfing other TrafficSwarm users' blogs. A great way to get ideas from other people's blogs, leave comments (with a backlink to your blog) and get some traffic to your site in return.

TrafficSwarm also lets you sign up for a free subscription to Revenue magazine, just for joining TrafficSwarm. Revenue is a magazine devoted to the latest trends in online and affiliate marketing.

tags: traffic swarm

Using Feedburner for Syndication

2006-06-09T10:49:00.000-04:00

Feedburner is a great way to syndicate your content and get more people to read what you write. Feedburner offers a bunch of different services to help you build awareness of your content, keep stats on who is reading and even will help you with ways to monetize your blog.

A few highlights of Feedburner:

The Feedburner PingShot automatically notifies a bunch of web directories when you post new content.
Feedburner lets you easily setup email subscription lists.
Gives you serveral different chicklets to put on your site to make it easier for people to sign up for your feed.
Allows you to automatically add links to social bookmarking sites (e.g. Digg, del.icio.us, Slashdot, Furl, Spurl, etc.) on each blog post and also in your FeedBurner feed. By using these links you can have your readers promote your blog for you. This is a very powerful tool for you to use as you grow your blog.

All in all, Feedburner is an awesome and free tool. Definitely worth checking out.

tags: feedburner

Blog Traffic From Yahoo Tip

2006-06-06T10:56:00.000-04:00

If you are just getting started blogging, here is a quick traffic tip to possibly get your blog's feed indexed by Yahoo quicker.

Start a MyYahoo page.
Then click the "Add Content" link in the upper left. This will take you to a screen to search for content for your page.
Click on "Add RSS by URL" on the right side of that window.
Then type in your feed's URL, click Add and then on the next page click "Add to My Yahoo" in the upper right corner.

Thats it. Hopefully it helps.

Idea courtesy of JohnTP

tags: yahoo

Using Meta Tags

2006-06-03T14:47:00.000-04:00

There is some debate amongst search engine optimization (SEO) professionals as to how important meta tags are these days. In the early years of the Internet meta tags were seen as a quick key to success. Search engines weighted meta tags heavily in determining search placement for websites. Meta tags weigh was high enough that their use was widely abused and has since led to less serious of an importance placed on them.

How to Setup Up Meta Tags

There are many different meta tags that are used by people. For the sake of simplicity I suggest you focus on two of them: keywords and description. Both are fairly self explanatory, keywords is used as a listing of keywords related to the web page and description is used for a short description of the web page. These tags are placed at the top of a web page's code immediately after the html title tag.

Keywords

For keywords, select between 15 and 25 keywords that you hope people will find your site when searching for. For example, if your website is about your favorite new music then your keywords tag might look something like this:

Description

For the description meta tag you need to write a 200-250 word description of your website. Some search engines will use this description of your site in their search results so make sure that it makes sense and uses proper grammar. Again, if your website is about your favorite new music your description tag might look something like this:

One Final Meta Tag - Robots

The only other meta tag even worth mentioning is the robots tag. Properly used it will look exactly like this:

The robots tag is used to indicate to a search engine if you wish for a certain page to not be indexed by the engine, hence the "noindex". You do not need to use this tag to tell a search engine to index a page, without the robots tag your page will get indexed.

The Bottom Line

Only some of the major search engines use them and their weight is low but since it only takes a few minutes to set them up its worth it. Don't count on your meta tags to do much for you but they can't really hurt.