It’s not always as simple as it sounds. Writing for a blog, I mean. You come up with a great idea, you write the heck out of it in a blog post featuring all of the latest attention-getting tricks… Bold headers, font sizing, lists, images, etc… You spend a solid two hours writing the best post you’ve ever conceived. You come up with what you think is a great headline… “Bringing in More Adsense Profits”. You hit publish, and anxiously wait to see the masses click to your blog.
Three days later, your two-hour article has received exactly fifty hits.
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Pearsonified has an interesting article about siezing the blog moment. Yes, I know it’s from back in last December, but forgive me, I’ve only just found that blog. heh. In the article, Chris discusses ways to sieze the blog moment - in other words, ways to increase the chances of your grabbing a bloggable moment (whether to blog about it, immediately, or late).
A lot of times, we go through our days experiencing thing after thing that we could blog about. Unfortunately, we’re never in front of our computer when that happens. So… What can we do to increase the chances that we’ll still have that bloggable moment with us when we sit down and put fingers to keyboard? Chris has a four item list, and I’m adding a couple more items. Here we go:
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Howdy folks. Yes, I know it’s been a good long while since I’ve updated MindBlog. There’s a reason or three for that… but that isn’t what this post is about (I’ll give an updated post, soon, about what’s happened over the past couple-three months). What it’s about? Well, resources, really. One of the ultimate collections of blog tools, found over at Weblogs Compendium. Now, a lot of the tools on this list are out of date, and/or simply don’t exist any more… but the majority of them are still valid, still useful, and still worth looking at. I’ve found a few new things to play with from that list. Give it a look-see at: Weblogs Compendium - Blog Tools
Speaking of blogging tools, has anyone ever used Elicit? It’s supposed to be the end-all, be-all of integration, including del.icio.us, flickr, amazon, and so on. If anyone has used it, or is using it, I’d love to read a review from you.
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Justin Shattuck (of justinshattuck.com), has released a WWW Redirect plugin. Almost the direct opposite of Matt’s no-www plugin, Justin’s plugin adds back in the www, and insures that all variants (http, https, index.php, etc…) are directed to the appropriate central URL.
In short, http://domain.com becomes http://www.domain.com.
http://domain.com/index.php becomes http://www.domain.com
and https://domain.com/index.php becomes https://www.domain.com/index.php
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There’s a new website in the mix. It’s not promising to be Web 2.0. In fact, it’s not promising to be anything. It is, however, undergoing one of the most interesting viral marketing campaigns in the history of online viral marketing. I have absolutely no clue what the site is about… No one does, apparently.
I’ve Googled, searched on MSN, altavista, yahoo, asked people, made several dozen calls about it, and even debated e-mailing a bunch of people and asking around. I’m not going to tell you what their viral marketing campaign is all about… Part of the fun is discovering it for yourself. I will, however, give you a banner, and if you check the link, you can see that I have no tracking code on it, it’s not an affiliate link… it’s just a banner to a website. What that website will be, I don’t know.
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This is a pretty hard entry for me to write, as it means a lot of changes to this blog. First and foremost, I will be changing some of the ad schemas, and whatnot. That’s no big deal. The big deal is that I will have very little time to blog.
Certain events have unfolded in my life, the past few weeks, that will soon result in my having very little time to devote to blogging - at least for a month or two. Ultimately, I will be moving to another state, later this year - probably in August or September. Until then, I have to concentrate heavily on - and devote the majority of my time to - my company, GEL Web.
What does this mean for MindBlog? In short, I’m not sure. As always, if any of you are interested in guest blogging, please feel free to let me know. So long as you wish to blog on any of the topics listed at the end of this entry, there should be no problem. Additionally, I will be contacting specific bloggers in the next few days, and asking if they would mind writing at least an entry a week, here at MindBlog. I hope to bring in some powerhouse bloggers, although I doubt I’ll
be able to get Darren Rowse or Duncan Riley. heh. Again, if you’re interested in joining the MindBlog team, please, let me know.
If I have any spare time (after work, blogging, and spending time with my fiance), I will be devoting it to two project blogs I have in the works. They are:
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MindFaith - a blog about faith, spirituality, self awareness, and soul searching. This will be a community-style blog, with semi-open membership.
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(To Be Named) - a blog, by men, for men, about men (and no, we’re not talking an LGBT blog, either).
I also have one other project in the works, and that’s the creation of a new blogging network, dedicated to the amateur blogger. The new network would allow amateur bloggers a place to showcase their talents, get insight and help from others like them, potentially get discovered by larger networks, and even earn a little money while they’re at it.
The project blogs are semi-long-term goals (two to four months). The network creation is a long-term goal (six to twelve months, or more). I wish all of these could happen much sooner, but the fact is, I simply won’t have much time to dedicate to them, at least for the next month. Rest assured, my loyal participants, this isn’t a lull because I don’t want to blog. I’m not burnt out… If anything, I’m way hyped about the ideas I have. This is something that boils down to three things.
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I have to make something happen with this company.
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I have to get myself and my life ready to move.
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I have to ensure some sort of future for my fiance and myself.
(Those are actually in reverse order of importance.)
There you have it, folks. That’s the conclusion of this little heart-to-heart. I hope you’ll understand if the blogging is spotty until I can find some folks to help fill in the gaps. I really hope you’ll be willing to stick around and see what happens when I can really put nose to grindstone in the blogging arena. Until the next update and progress report…
((( Topics acceptable for guest bloggers:
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Wow, folks… it’s been a while since I’ve posted. My apologies for that, life has taken some unexpected twists in the past couple of weeks. I’ll be back to full speed, very soon. Until that time, I’ll try to post at least once a day.
For starters, I’m going to be rolling out the latest MindBlog series: 37 Tips for New Bloggers. Actually, the tips are valid for both new and old bloggers. I’ll be making a post each day (once we get going, probably on Monday) for 37 days, each with a different tip. Some of the posts will be very short, as the idea contained within will be rather self-explanatory. Some of the posts will be a bit longer, and - I hope - will give more insight. At any rate, I’m confident it’ll be a helpful series.
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Do you use Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner, or Comcast for your Internet access? If so, you may want to learn about some legislation the big phone and cable companies are pushing. It’s a legislation that will get rid of Net Neutrality. In other words, AT&T, Time Warner, etc… will begin charging websites for access to their networks. The amount of fees paid by those websites will dictate how fast the site loads - or if it loads at all.
Not sure what all this is about? Go read this FAQ… I’ll wait.
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I’ve been doing some thinking, and I figure it’s time to branch out and test the waters of other advertising systems out there. Therefore, I’ve replaced the AdSense wide skyscraper on my sidebar with a Bidvertiser skyscraper. Bidvertiser is a bid-based system where advertisers bid to be listed on your website. Obviously a lot of advertisers have default bids for any and all websites, as I just checked my bids, and - after having only been a member for a little under an hour - I had a couple hundred ads to approve/disapprove. Originally, I had set it to auto-approve all ads. I’m changing that, due to ad targetting issues. I don’t think you guys need to see ads about house painting. I’ll be testing other ad systems on my other blogs, as time goes by. I’ll let you know how well each work.
CASE STUDY…
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In an attempt to play with my knowledge of AdSense, Chitika, and SEO, I am creating a series of single page sites. Essentially, information sites, design to provide basic information and provide links to purchase products, online.
Primarily, I will be using AdSense and Chitika. If one does not perform well, it will be removed and replaced. As you can see, I am also using Amazon.com. I don’t know how well my amazon link will do… we’ll see.
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