Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category
Founded in 2005 in an unlikely city in Scotland, Pete Cashmore has turned his dream of up to the minute updates on everything tech, media, web, and social networks into one of the most profitable blogs in history, Mashable. With over 5 million monthly pageviews, anyone that makes it on the site either in an article or as a sponsor for the site is sure to be seen by the who’s who of the online media world.
Mashable has been highlighted in Technorati, the New York Times, Washington Post and Forbes, while being a fan favorite to interact and catch up on the latest events. Mashable’s contributing writers are all published and established writers that look to be a part of a much bigger blog. Just recently Pete and the Mashable team put on a Mashable Tour with their partners of Social Media Camp. This multi-city tour highlighted presentations from the best of web and media minds and afterwards offered an excellent opportunity for these minds to mingle.
Currently Pete Cashmore divides his time between San Francisco, New York, and the UK. He’s constantly staying abreast of the latest trends in social networks, and hosts monthly events to keep the conversation going.
I have personally met Pete during one of the Mashable tours here in Austin, and was amazed at how cool and approachable he was. He literally took photos with all the hundreds of people that attended the after party and was truly interested in talking to everyone.
Mashable is a definite site to subscribe to, and make sure to follow Mashable on Twitter as well for even more information then you think you can handle. Just watch out for the overload!
One of the popular web celebrities who blog about blogging and making money from blogging is John Chow. His personal site was launched for no other real reason other than to see how much money he could make from blogging about, well blogging and making money. He’s a very successful tech blogger and media network owner, so he knows the ins and outs, but a year or two ago, blogging about blogging really started to take off, so why not jump on board, share some tips and tricks and profit. He’s done well, real well, nearly $30,000 a month well and has a cult like following.
I was a daily reader of his site up until he switched to version 2.0 maybe a year ago. At that point, it was clear that the focus was on ad placement and started to make reading the content that much harder. John’s primary readers are bloggers and creative writers who are looking for ways to turn a profit on their own sites, they want information, not blatant advertising. The overall layout was clean though with good graphics, but I stopped reading daily.
Today, Version 3 launched and John has moved the index of the site to be similar to one of the other super popular bloggers, Darren Rowse of Problogger.net with respects to being more of a magazine style with snippets of current articles, more ads and some static information. Inside the site is supposed need less scrolling to read the articles and be cleaned up even more; I can agree to disagree with that. He did finally do away with having exotic cars in his header, but that only appears to be because others ripped the idea and so he could fit more advertiser space in. On my 1280×1034 screen I count 13 ads plus the top half of two more ads and one more ad promoting his e-book. It’s a bit much. The footer takes on the trends of other larger Web 2.0 sites with what must be close to 500 pixels high worth of information, sadly there is no button to take you back to the top of the page
With more than 30,000 RSS subscribers, 2,000 more following on Twitter people listen to what he says, but I think more is being emphasized on how it looks instead of better content. John is still posting up photos of food and other random things and shares his insight on how to run a blog for money, but getting to the content for me isn’t worth the trouble anymore.
Like any good addiction, the first step is always admitting you have the addiction. For many of us, Twitter is that addiction. We find ourselves Twittering from work, twittering from parties, from events, from weddings, from bar mitzvahs, from the car, from our mobiles, you name it, we addicts are Twittering from it. On the other hand, there are still a few that remain of the mindset that Twitter is a time waster and provides no value.
Well for the addict like you and me, we are introduced to Tweetrush. A very systematic web app that provides you with your Twitter usage metrics. Now, after typing in your handle in the search bar, you can receive a breakdown of your usage and find out just how addicted you are.
Tweetrush was built on the analytics engine called Rush Hour, which basically looks at actions taken by a user, such as typing and sending a message via Twitter. Tracking can be done via the website and also through the various API‘s that exist for the web application.
Information can be tracked for the last 7 days of usage:
The tracking can even break down by the hour of usage:
No matter how you slice, it, Tweetrush is an excellent tool for measuring your addiction, providing useful information on usage, but ultimately also reveal just how much of your life Twitter has taken over. Give it a try and learn to live with the addiction, Twitter is not going anywhere soon!
…but men can read them too
There are a lot of blogs out there done by women on a variety of topics. Men, don’t skip over this post, look at this as an opportunity to get a glimpse into the minds of our counterparts. Perhaps you’ll learn something!
I for one highly respect these women, and while I don’t always agree with some ideas shared, I do commend them for taking to the web and building a community to network with.
5. Broadsheet – This witty and well written blog on the Salon.com network covers women interests in lifestyle, politics, news, health, and celebrity gossip. The writing is very intelligent and I’m very impressed with the comments left in some of the posts. Of the more recent posts I highly recommend the hilarious post “1,250,444 ways to please your man.” Sorry guys, threesomes and foursomes are just not the order for the day.
4. Jezebel – I really love this blogs layout, and the articles range from fashion, to self help, to feature articles on people, places, and groups. This is another blog that has an amazing following and most importantly this blog holds no punches. You doubt me? Guys, think girls are all pristine and polite, well guess again, women are human, and the post “How Do You Break The Poop Ice With A New Paramour?” is a great article. Sure you can snicker and laugh at the topic, but she’s talking about a real problem, and not holding back. Definitely give this blog a try!
3. Our Bodies Ourselves – On a more serious note, this blog has information for women regarding motherhood, health, child care, and other body related issues affecting women. This site is a bevy of information and I recommended it to my wife. Men, I definitely recommend you read this site because these are issues that women, in general, feel very strongly about. Educating yourself on these issue would do you some good. I’d recommend an article, but through the the archives, this site just needs to be added to your RSS Feeds, everything is worthwhile.
2. Feministe – I’ve been reading this site for about three weeks now. I have to say hands down that this site makes me think more than some of the other blogs I’ve listed here. The posts are very tightly written, all topics are well formulated, and the comments are a great resource for discussion. This is one of those sites where I truly don’t agree with everything that is written, but I’d be lying if I said I was not intrigued. Great work, great writing, great posts. I highly recommend the post on John Edwards.
1. Feministing – Okay, this may not be the prettiest site out there, but damn if the information isn’t interesting. From the get go you are slapped in the face with the reality of how women are treated and/or thought of in not just our country but the world. This site tackles subjects on the treatment of women the world over. I find it highly encouraging that they are taking the time to also seek out women in specific industries and highlight them, specifically their women of science segment.
So now that you’ve had your fill, I hope to see women responding to these sites in the comments section. Do you have other sites you’d like to see highlighted or reviewed? I look forward to reading all of your comments!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=6a4d3de2-54a4-4aa8-8856-f9488b85df87)
A friend with a local business came to me with a somewhat unique request. He wanted to setup a blog that only his employees and certain other people had access to for sharing information, ideas and other business concepts. I suggested Google Apps for this, but he said not everyone that would be using this would be as tech savvy to fully grasp how that works and he needed more than just a text editor and a spreadsheet.
I set off to search for a plugin that would allow me to accomplish the goal of restricting access to the entire blog, forcing a registration. After a few minutes I ended up on Viper007Bond’s site. I’ve used his plugins before, so I knew they’d be top quality. He wrote a custom plugin called Registered Users Only which, will redirect all users who aren’t logged in to the login form where they are shown a user-friendly message.
Perfect! Upload the .php to the /plugin directory on your server, activate it and tick one box in the Options screen, you are done. As admin to the blog, you create user accounts for those people you wish to give access to. Since it uses the standard WordPress login screen and user database, you can simply add them as a Subscriber and once logged in, can see the entire site.
Total installation time is less than two minutes!
While the idea of putting a blog online is usually done so that someone will read it, this certain situation started to make a lot more sense to me. WordPress offers so much more than just a blog, it’s turning into a CMS, and a tool to allow, in this case, his business to expand and grow internally. The more I thought about it the more I realized that a private blog has many other uses to it.
Parents who want to setup a blog for their children, either from day 1 in their life or as they enter the tween stage probably won’t to protect who sees photos of their kids and what activities they do.
This plugin restricts ALL pages of the site, that is the only option. This fits the goals of my friend and I think many other people. Be aware, this does not protect your RSS feeds. I would suggest deleting all RSS feeds from your WordPress install to fully protect your blog, if that is your goal.
Download from WordPress.org
There is famous and there is infamous, and StumbleUpon (SU) can make you both. In a recent event, Darren Rowse of Problogger got a first hand look at what SU did to make him infamous.
Darren has been a big supporter of SU, thus using it very heavily to rate sites across the net. In return for his dedicated support of others sites, a great number of his readership returns the support by stumbling his articles, creating a supportive community. Yesterday, he was notified that StumbleUpon had not just blocked, but banned him for abuse.
This misunderstanding hit the media networks in approximately an hour and a half the entire situation was resolved thanks to dedicated fans, but more importantly a customer friendly, transparent company willing to be open on the errors they make.
While many feel that SU was in the wrong, I find that measuring a business by how it admits and handles its errors is more important than assigning blame. SU did a fantastic and prompt job responding to Darren and Problogger was reestablished.
What is StumbleUpon?
StumbleUpon, similar to Digg, allows you to vote for sites, increasing the popularity based on user support. Once a site has been stumbled, a chain reaction through the social network is viral, and many sites see an increase in traffic.
A toolbar installs into the browser header once downloaded. This allows them to “stumble” a site, a basic “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” If you “thumbs up” a site, you are allowed to provide a brief description of the site and your rating. If a site has already been stumbled then you’ve simply boosted the sites rating, which affects the frequency in the rotation of random sites that SU will display. StumbleUpon is heavily monitored for abuse to provide a level playing field for all sites involved.
I for one enjoy and fully support StumbleUpon, and encourage you to explore the application and while ranking sites is always enjoyable, clicking the “stumble” button can t
ake you to sites you may never have found otherwise.
Photo Credit, tris
It seems like blog directories are becoming rather numerous. I just recently did a review of BlogCatalog here, and now I am taking a look at Blogged.com.
Registration was easy, but not instantaneous, someone actually reviewed my site and then decided whether I should be added which is what I prefer. After placing some code on my site I was official, and in the first day my site was listed I received traffic. Google Analytics does a great job breaking down where I receive my traffic and I was shocked that Blogged.com worked so quickly. Definitely a place I recommend bloggers list their site. No promises that the same will happen, but what have you got to lose?
What struck me the most about blogged.com is the immediate breakdown of the sites in the directory on the front page. Users are provided well labeled categories to label their own site, but also to find others similar to it. As a registered user you can click on your profile and aside from seeing your site, you are also listed sites that blogged.com recommends you to view. A great way to network and find others like yourself.
Ranking was the most interesting 
to me. I don’t necessarily find their method to be accurate of a sites worth, but it’s a nice way to see if a site is active or has been dormant for some time. What blogged.com apparently looks at the frequency of the updates on your site and ranks it with a number. The higher the number the more active the site is, but the question becomes is the information worth my time? Is it relevant and well put together. I have friends that update their site three or four times a day, but their efforts are nothing more than to keep a diary of their day, not necessarily hard hitting information so to speak. Just my opinion though.
Users are allowed to write reviews and over time, as reviews are written and enough people have given their thoughts, a new rating is given to replace blogged.com’s rating. Seems a bit arbitrary, but I’ve not been with blogged.com long enough to really see this through. I’m curious to see how others rate my own site and furthermore, what the final outcome will be in terms of a ranking.
A social aspect of blogged.com is present, but does not differ than any of the other offerings from competitors. You are able to invite friends to your circle of favorites, share information through the site, and build a community around your own site.
The underlying factor in all this is simply to drive traffic to your site. Blogged.com does a great job of this, as noted in my own personal experience. Even if you are registered with other categories, it does not hurt to join this community. You might even find yourself enjoying the offerings of this well put together site for quite some time.
Let’s face facts, bloggers write, for the most part, so their articles can be read. They want them read for any number of reasons,
- Internet fame
- Potential to make money from ads
- Obsessed with statistics
- Conceited
- Enjoying knowing someone is reading what you wrote
- Etc.
Most of us enjoy knowing that someone is reading what we as writers spent time and energy to write, the side effects of money and fame can be nice as well, but how to achieve? One simple way that I’ve found is to ask people to view your site. But how? Where? Relying on Google search results can take time and not everyone reads your MySpace bulletins or the tweets you obsessively send via Twitter, digg.com isn’t working that well and neither is Stumble Upon, and it may not be in your budget to buy ad space on a more popular site right now, so what can you do?
Email blog owners who have written similar articles and let them know about the one you wrote. Yes, it’s that simple. Don’t do this with every article you write, pick your very best and send the links to the biggest and best blogs out there. Don’t ask them to review your site or link to it, simply let them know you have written similar material that they or their readers might want to use and you like their site. Be honest and don’t make it sound cheesy.
How do you find people with similar articles? Try Google Blog Search and look for articles written in the last week or month. Does this really work? Absolutely. I used this technique last week, here’s what I did and the results from it.
They filmed part of the Transformers II movie in my town last week and some co-workers got behind the scenes photographs of the set and a video. They gave me permission to blog about it, which I promptly did. Next, I did a Google Blog Search for similar sites and found the Transformers Live Action Movie Blog, the owners email is displayed on the left sidebar. This is the email I sent him:
I saw you recently published an article & photos regarding Transformers 2… wanted to share with you one my recent articles with more photos and a video (with more videos being edited now for publication).
Thought your readers might enjoy these: http://www.randomn3ss.com/2008/06/05/exclusive-filming-of-transformers-2-photos-and-videos/
That’s it. Within a few hours, they published this article that contains a link to my site’s homepage and the direct link to the article. More than 1,000 unique visits came to that specific article over the following 12 hours from the Transformers Live Action Movie Blog. I’d call that a success.
I’ve used this technique sparingly as not to become a burden on anyone, seem pushy or ungrateful for what others have done for me. Using this method though, I have successfully had articles linking to my sites on Lifehacker.com, GetRichSlowly.org, and several other very well known high traffic blogs.
I’d love to hear about some success stories from people who give this a try. Not every email you send will have great results, but it does work. Keep an open mind too when a fellow blogger approaches you with an idea or to share content.
For nearly the last two years I have been blogging, writing nearly a thousand articles. Lots of time, energy and creativity go into these words I write, and I publish them in the hopes that others will not only read them, but enjoy them, apply them and leave comments or ask questions. The one evil of the Internet is Spam though, and over the last few years Spam bots have been attacking blogs like no other. This is partly due to the number of new blogs being created.
The problem is comment spam. These are comments that are left on articles that usually point to some website that tells you how she’d like you to be thicker and longer lasting, or how to find a great deal on your next new car. Nothing of value, in face, these types of comments detract from the credibility of your content and worse, possibly lead to your readers leaving from clicking on a bogus link. There is help.
Shortly after one particular article got bombarded with tons of traffic from several social bookmarking and networking sites at once, the comment spam started to roll in. Using WordPress, my preferred platform for blogging, I set out to find some sort of Captcha system to add to blog posts to help cut down on the spam. Generally speaking, I don’t like anything that interferes with a users experience, but this plug-in is a must have.
Did you pass math? adds a small math question to the bottom of your comment box, above the submit button. It prompts the commentator to do a very simple math equation, like 7+3= [fill in the answer]. The plug-in can be found here: http://www.herod.net/dypm/ – and while it hasn’t been updated in two years, I don’t see that as a problem, it simply works. To install it, simply download to your computer from their site, unzip the files and upload [via FTP] two PHP files (English is default, but support is there for dozens more). Login to the admin section of WordPress, activate the plugin and you are done.
Since installing the Did you pass math plug-in, my comment spam has been near completely eliminated. As an added bonus, there was zero negative feedback and no backlash from the my readers after installing. Some even thanked me for not using a true Captcha system, since they can often be very hard to read. My suggestion would be to install this when first setting up a blog, so you aren’t in a situation like me, trying to fix a broken problem while it is being broken even harder.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=9a8a8402-cc65-42d8-8c9b-8a061bc32212)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=ed8ff833-2a93-4b19-88f8-4067534b4156)
