Timing Entries For Post Popularity

This site covers how to start a blog, build traffic and make money blogging. If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Thanks to social boomarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us, it seems like there’s a formula for just about everything pertaining to blogging these days:
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The Need For Speed

When it comes to first impressions, your blog has four seconds to load before the majority of new visitors decide not to bother reading it. That’s four seconds for full loading, by the way, and not merely part of your content filling the screen.
Speeding up a website takes work but it’s worth it. The […]

Google ToolBar Update In Progress?

Is it just me, or is anyone else noticing Tool Bar PageRank changing today?
One of my sites (which had unexpectedly jumped to PR3 a couple of weeks ago) is back to a PR0. Not that I care — I’m planning on letting that one go soon.
This site, though, showed up as a PR3 […]

Be My Guest (Blogger)

If you’ve been thinking about dabbling in meta-blogging — as in, blogging about blogging — but didn’t think it would necessarily work on your site, then I have a deal for you. I’m looking for a guest blogger (or two or ten) who are interested in writing for this site.
No, you won’t get paid. No, […]

Promote Your Blog Offline

Looking for ways to attract more readers? Why not try promoting your blog offline with these 10 weird promotion ideas.
Though, personally, I’d advise thinking twice about the first one. Writing your URL on bathroom stalls with a permanent marker might be a sure-fire way to land you in the local jail for a night… […]

How To Get Incoming Links

In response to my officer to answer questions about blogging, Pam (of Pamibe) asked how to get incoming links to her new blog, Beannachd.
It’s a question plenty of bloggers, both new and experienced, have. The internet is based on links and so much depends on them: PageRank, readership, influence and, yes, opportunities to make money […]

7 Ways Blogging Is Like Throwing A Party

Asked by the uninformed what a blog is, bloggers often search for something to liken it to. Some draw parallels to writing an online diary by sharing their personal experiences, sometimes in excruciating detail. Others consider it similar to small-time journalism published by people who actually acknowledge their political bias up front.
Me? I’ve always […]

Find Out How Popular Your Blog Is

Since so many bloggers don’t understand how and why to use trackbacks, it’s always a good idea to use other ways to learn about who’s linking your site.
Most bloggers know to create a Google Alert that will email them when their site is mentioned, but even that method has its flaws. Today I had […]

Blog Comments And The Art Of Conversation

Every blogger loves getting comments. No, strike that: every blogger loves getting comments from people interested in contributing to the conversation on their blog, and not merely being comment whores. Most bloggers also have a love-hate relationship with their email InBox: helpful emails are always welcome, but novel-length diatribes and unnecessary messages simply waste […]

Are You A Comment Whore?

We all know that commenting at other blogs is a great way to get to know fellow bloggers. Those kind of contacts often turn into quality incoming links to our content as well as our blog’s front page.
Participating in the comment section on some blogs often produces a steady stream of traffic as […]

BlogCatalog Adds NewsFeed Widget

The folks at BlogCatalog keep churning out more and more useful applications. The latest is their “News Feed” widget, released in Beta today, which tracks your social networking activities along with your blog entries. (You can see mine in the right-hand sidebar.)
Now, if you run multiple blogs, you may have noticed the same thing that […]

What Do Readers Really Think?

One of the great things about blogging is building up a fan base: loyal readers who visit often and comment regularly, people who would never dream of telling you that your blog makes your butt look fat.
A quick check of traffic stats will tell you those readers represent a very small percentage of your […]

Incoming Links Aren’t All The Same

The internet is built on links and, as any experienced blogger will tell you, so are blogs. Whether you’re just starting a blog or you’ve have been at it a while, you need incoming links.
There are, however, wrong ways and right ways to go about gaining incoming links. Examples of the wrong way to […]

How To Send A TrackBack From Blogger

Yesterday I covered how and why to use trackbacks with a WordPress blog.
If you’re using a blogging program that doesn’t include the ability to automatically send trackbacks you can — and should — still use them for all of the same reasons. You’ll just have to do it manually.
Here’s how, in six simple […]

How And Why To Use Trackbacks

Recently, Donna B. asked:
I was wondering it you could write on the value or non-value of trackbacks and how to do them in Wordpress.
You bet I can. In fact, I consider trackbacks one of the most underused forms of publicity available to bloggers, second only to leaving insightful comments at other blogs within their own […]

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