To The Moon And Back

This is how outdated I am.

I used to see updates on the sidebar of my friends’ blogs and always wondered how they do that. Of course, it’s nothing that a few clicks can solve but I was very busy (as always) that I didn’t have enough time to spare a few clicks. After two months, I’m happy to announce that I am now a Twitter. I just finished the registration and will be installing the widget on all my blogs. This way, my friends and not so friends will see what I’m up to even if I’m not blogging.

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool. Developers can use the API to make Twitter tools of their own. Possibilities are endless!

Try it out. It’s cool, it’s fun. It’s the best way to blog if you have a busy day but still want to keep your friends updated. I, for one, will take advantage of this tool.

I’m sure you’ve all heard about John Chow and read his blog. If you are interested in earning money online but haven’t visited his blog, then you will be surprised at how much you will learn just by reading two or three of his posts. He’s earning about $30,000 a month from his blog and posts regularly about money making websites, which puts him on top of my mentor list. He even has a free Make Money Online ebook that you can download (I have but haven’t gotten a chance to read it yet).

This morning, I saw an article in his blog - 10 Blogging Mistakes To Avoid. One of the tips caught my attention immediately.

Blogging Mistake #2 - Blogging Only For Money
If you’re blogging only for money, then you’re in for a shock. Yes, you can make good money with a blog, but despite what that National Post story on me said, it takes a lot more than “no effort.” 99% of blogs on the Web cannot make more than $100 a month. John Chow dot Com makes money because I don’t blog for money. If the only reason you’re blogging is to get rich, you will fail.

And he’s so right. The love for blogging / writing should always come first. Content is and always will be king. With regular updates and quality posts, you get lots of readers, tons of backlinks and high traffic. When you have all that, making money should just come naturally.

Yes, this is my own version of how to be a better blogger. These are just my opinion but I highly suggest you read them if you want to make your visitors stay longer or if you plan to do advertisements through blog. If you feel that only one or two people will read your blog, then do as you please.

Shall we start?

Content and Readers
1. Find a topic that you’re very comfortable with. Almost all my blogs are filled with parenting and working from home stories. I find it easy to write about parenting because I enjoy reading about it as well. And it sorts of mold together with my work from home stories. This blog on the other hand will focus on everything that you can learn in the Internet.

2. Once you have found your main topic, make sure to exchange links with blogs similar as yours. That way, you can guarantee that your readers will be interested on what you have to say. I don’t see how a 17-year-old who’s into skateboarding can relate to my mommy articles.

3. Install plugins that will promote constant interaction such as comment email responder, >commentLuv, and >subscribe to comments. Keep the comments coming in by responding to them all the time. I always feel special whenever I receive replies from blog owners.

4. Update your blogs regularly. Your visitors will surely come back everyday if they know that they will read something new.

5. Make your RSS links visible so that people can easily subscribe to your feeds. I use FeedBurner for my feeds and it’s very easy to install.

6. Add a brief but very clear description of yourself. People loves to snoop around so knowing how your favorite technology blog owner loves to watch old sappy movies will make them seem more human.

On visuals:
1. If you are using wordpress, take advantage of the thousands of themes available in the Internet. It can give your blog a professional and clean look. I assure you, your readers will appreciate it. Go to the official website for Wordpress Themes.

2. Related to #1, don’t install every single javascript or cutesy plugin that you will find. The mouse cursor effect with the trailing stars or fairy dust might look magical but it certainly giving my browser a headache especially in IE when it’s susceptible to javascript problems.

3. Refrain from using small fonts. Some of us can’t read that well and there are those who are just too lazy to go to File > View > Text Size > Largest so they will just leave your blog instead of exerting an effort to read your oh-so-tiny fonts

4. Always use a white or light background. If you feel that black will suit your blog’s theme more, then use white as the font color and don’t forget to apply tip #3

5. Add links to websites and add pictures (not too big) to make your posts more real and interesting

There’s more but I will have to save those for another day when I’m not being harassed by a client to finish his website design.

To my visitors (as if there are many), I’m in the process of organizing my links before I put them up. So if you have blogs that you want to add here, just leave a comment and I will add that to my list.

By the way, if you have about a hundred blogs on your blogroll, which I’m sure some of you have, you might be interested in the following Wordpress plugins.

Blogroll Page Plugin

WordPress Randomized Blogroll Plugin

I read this just today. To keep your blog from losing its PR, you need to avoid using a sitewide blogroll. One way to do this is move all your outgoing links to a separate page. You don’t have to manually type all your links, just install the blogroll page plugin and you can accomplish that in minutes.

Cool huh? I’m learning new stuff everyday so make sure to check back! I will definitely apply all these tricks to all my blogs.

Okay, on to my first blogging tip.

This I learned from a client who asked me to install wordpress for him and then asked if I can add the 5 most important SEO plugins. He said that another designer offered him to do all those things so I told him I can do it without even having the slightest idea what he’s talking about.

Anyway, let’s start with the term SEO. What is SEO anyway? Let’s grab a couple of sentences from wiki shall we?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic“) search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines

I’ve learned so much from that first project and been using the SEO plugins since then. As months passed by, the list have been updated so many times (mostly because of new wordpress updates) so I thought of just listing here the ones I have used. All my blogs and clients’ blogs are already using these and haven’t heard any complaints so far. There are also tons of articles written about these plugins so make sure to Google them when you have time. Now, if you ready to drive traffic to your blog, (more…)