Setting up your blog, and making it work!
Domain Name Registeration
A domain name is essential if you’re serious about blogging. Its a $9 investment that makes you look professional. When BlogClout readers were asked who is their domain registrar, I wasn’t surprised that the overwhelming choice for domain registration is GoDaddy.
GoDaddy is the biggest registrar out there. And certainly spends the most amount of money on promoting themselves. In fact, I myself had all my domains registered with GoDaddy a couple of years back.
But that was before I read a horror story about GoDaddy.
i. SecLists.org archives various mailing lists.
ii. Some user posted MySpace usernames and passwords on a mailing list that SecLists.org archives.
iii. MySpace contacted GoDaddy - SecLists.org registrar and asks them to suspend that domain.
iv. GoDaddy leaves a voice mail for the owner of SecLists.org letting him know that they are suspending his domain - and suspends the domain after 52 seconds.
They suspend the domain name without giving any notice or warning. Or even time for SecLists.org to remove the content in question.
You can read more about it at: NoDaddy
Running various blogs, I realize that I don’t have control over all the content on my website. Anyone could come and leave a nasty or illegal comment. Should that be enough to get your domain name suspended?
Thats the time I inquired around and started transfering all my domains away from GoDaddy. I personally have never had a problem with GoDaddy. But as they say “Fools learn from experience. Sages learn from history.”
My choice for the new domain registrar?
Moniker.com
Why I think Moniker.com is the best domain registrar out there:
1. Many large domain name players that register 100s of domains recommend Moniker.
2. Even though Moniker is one of the big domain registrars out there, I’ve never heard them involved in a controversy.
3. They claim that they’ve never lost a domain!
4. Their prices are lower than other registrars if you request for the NamePros discount. (I’m not sure if Moniker will give a discount of all you register is 1-2 domain names. As I have a lot more domain names, I was enrolled in the discount scheme even before I was aware of their post on NamePros announcing the discount.)
5. Moniker also offers a domain testing service. Where you can cancel a domain name within 4 days of its registration and get your money back for a 25 cent stocking fee. If you are into domain arbitrage, this is a very valuable service!
Action Summary:
I recommend you transfer and register all your domain names with Moniker.com. Its better to be safe than sorry for your domain name. Because that is your identity online.
When Should You Start a Blog?
Skellie Wag - who runs an excellent metablogging blog - asks what can we do to make people comment on each others comments.
My short answer: Stop blogging. Start a forum.
It is very hard to build a community around a blog. Its much easier to build a community around a forum. That is because of the “rule-of-voice.” On a blog, the publisher has the biggest voice. On a forum, every member has equal voice. Hence, the incentive for someone to post on a forum is greater. And because there is no power difference, “discussions” can happen freely.
The flip side is, because everyone has equal say on a forum, it is very hard to distinguish yourself as an expert on them. You need a blog to position yourself as an expert.
When Should You Start a Blog?
1.To Position Yourself as an Expert
When you want to position yourself as an expert, start a blog. Because your voice is biggest on your own blog, its the best platform to position you as an expert.
2. While documenting a process.
When you want to document a journey or an adventure or maybe even a book - start a blog.
3. To Teach
If the topic requires conversation, go for forums. But if you already know more than most people - and want to teach instead of converse - go with a blog.
4. When You Don’t Have Time
When you don’t have a lot of time, go with a blog. Forums take a lot of time to gain momentum. And to moderate and make sure things go on smoothly. Blogs relatively take a lot less time.
Note: This doesn’t mean that blogs are a big No-No if you want conversations between readers. Conversations should be encouraged when you can. But it does mean that a forum is a better place for conversations while a blog is a better place for teaching and preaching
New NoFollow Plugin
Saying No to NoFollow
Disclosure: Your website will be crawled by search engines if you comment more than 2 times on this blog!
1. If you haven’t read the old post already, make sure you read why Saying No to NoFollow is a good idea. And why should you allow the search engines to crawl the websites of the people who comment on your blog.
2. Removing NoFollow tag from your blog does invite more spammers though. Many comment spammers use a script that finds blogs that have removed the NoFollow tags. And then automatically post a spam comment on that blog - never to visit it again.
3. Here is a solution to discourage these comment spammers: remove the NoFollow tags only if the commenter places more than one comment on your blog. Web sites of drive-by commenters won’t be craweld. The plugin that does this for you is LinkLove WordPress plugin - that has been activated on this blog recently.
(You will have to read the readme file and change one of the settings manually to reduce the minimum number of comments a person has to post to get his websites crawled. The default is 10 - which is way too high. I recommend to change it to 2 or 3. Don’t worry, its very easy to change the default setting by using notepad.)
Having Two RSS Feeds: Full Post Feed as well as Summary Feed
One of the blogs that I follow infrequently is LifeHacker.com
If you scroll down the LifeHacker blog, you will find that they provide two syndication options:
dual-post-feeds.gif
This is a fabulous idea in my opinion.
· If people prefer full content RSS feeds, they’ll get it with ads. So that you can make some money too.
· And if they prefer not to view your ads, they can opt for the partial content RSS feeds. And come visit your blog if they want to read the full post. You can then monetize your blog.
I always wondered what plugin LifeHacker uses to provide two feeds for their blog. But never did try hard to find such a plugin.
WordPress Plugin: DualFeeds
Yesterday, I came across a WordPress plugin that allows your blog to have two RSS feeds too: one with full content. And one with partial content.
You can download that plugin here: DualFeeds
I’m not sure if LifeHacker uses the DualFeeds plugin. But it serves the purpose.
Top of Form
Blog Publishing Frequency and Strategy
Instead of publishing one new post every week day on this blog, I’ve shifted gears a bit. I’ll only be publishing 3-4 new posts every week.
I won’t be reducing the number of posts I write. I’ll just not be publishing them on this blog. Instead, I’ll be trying to find other blogs where I can guest post. This way, more people will be reading what I write. And more people will visit this blog.
From time to time, I’ll also be asking others to write guest posts for this blog. So hopefully, the amount of useful content you read on this blog won’t reduce.
Action Summary:
You will do good adapting your publishing strategy too. Don’t post everything you write on your blog. Instead find other blogs to guest post at.
Top of Form
Removing MyBlogLog Increases Adsense Earnings!
MyBlogLog
A snapshot of the MyBlogLog widget
I recently removed the MyBlogLog widget from this blog. Why? Because after 15 days of testing, my statistics showed that MyBlogLog reduces your blog earnings!
Lets take a more detailed glance at MyBlogLog Pros and Cons…
MyBlogLog Pros:
1. It makes your blog look busy. Popular even.
2. It could generate a quite a bit of traffic to your blog if your blog makes it to their “Hot Community” section. However, the chances of this happening are quite slim - especially if your blog is not already popular.
3. The best advantage of MyBlogLog is that it is a conversation starter! You can see who visited your blog. And if you see a popular person on your bloglog, you can send them a quick note thanking them to visit - and start a conversation!
(Contrary to MyBlogLog’s official selling point, MyBlogLog widgets don’t make good community builders. Because there is really no way for you to keep in touch with your MyBlogLog blog community. And no pain for your community members to leave your community.)
MyBlogLog Cons:
1. It makes your blog load slowly. Showing images of 12-15 people takes quite a long time.
2. It provides absolutely no advantage to your blog readers.
3. It decreases the click through rate for links placed near the MyBlogLog widget.
MyBlogLog helps the blogger more than it helps the blog readers. Its more of a fashion badge that serves little purpose. And so I decided to remove the MyBlogLog widget from this blog… at least for a little while.
Since I removed the widget, the click through rate for the Adsense ads shown in the sidebar has more than doubled!
I may bring the widget back for more testing. But I’ll never place it in the sidebar again. Where 99% of the bloggers place it. If I do test it out again, I’ll only place them in my blog footers. Making sure that their slow loading time doesn’t affect my blog readers. While providing me the advantage of starting conversations with a few of my blog readers.
Action Summary:
· MyBlogLog widget is not the best use of your blog theme real estate. You may want to remove it.
· If you do keep them, make sure you place the widget at the bottom of your blog where it doesn’t interfere with your blog readers.
Top of Form
Cool Tool: Browser Shots - Test Your Blog Design in Different Browsers
Do you know if your blog looks OK in all the various different browsers?
A couple of days back, I received a phone call early in the morning from some one who complained that one of my websites didn’t show up well in his browser. He used a computer with Linux on it and had a browser that I’d never even heard the name of. There was no way for me to know what the error was.
So I did some Googling and came up with a solution. BrowserShots.org!
This is a nifty website that allows you to test your blog or website and see how it looks in various different browsers - without you having to download those browsers on your own computer!
BrowserShots.org
Action Summary:
1. Go to BrowserShots.org and submit your blog URI
2. Make sure you select “4 Hours” from the drop-down list under “Maximum Wait”
3. Bookmark the page you are forwarded to. And visit it after 3 hours of submission - but before 4 hours.
Top of Form
Saying No to NoFollow
Saying No to NoFollow
Disclosure: Your website will be crawled by search engines if you comment on this blog.
Commenting on blogs was the easiest way to increase the number of backlinks your blog has. It was so easy that many spammers created bots that would automatically post blah comments on random blogs.
In a bid to discourage comment spam, in January 2005, Google advised all bloggers to add a “NoFollow” tag to all their outgoing comment links. And almost all the major blogging softwares added the NoFollow tag to their core.
Unfortunately, this didn’t stop spammers from posting spam comments on blogs. The whole NoFollow idea failed to prevent spam. So since a few months now, some bloggers have started a grass root campaign to remove the NoFollow tags and allow search engines to start crawling links in comments again - so as to give an incentive to their readers to comment frequently.
I think that is a very good idea. Its one more way of rewarding your top readers who spend their precious time in improving the conversation and posting the comments. That is why, I’ve removed the NoFollow tag from this blog.
The WordPress plugin I used is “DoFollow”
3 Blog Tag Line Tactics
Frequently Asked Question: I’m having a hard time creating a tag line for my blog because I cover a lot of different topics. How should I go about creating the tagline?
Since writing the Blog Tag Line post, I’ve had 3 people ask me a similar question. What should you do if you cover a lot of topics and can’t decide on a short tag line?
Tag Line Tactic 1: Focus
Case Study 1: Dominos sells more than just pizzas. Yet their tag line was “Fresh Hot Pizza in 30 Minutes or Its Free.”
Case Study 2: This blog covers a lot of various topics like blog designing, making money and increasing traffic. Yet the Tag Line is just “How To Grow Your Blog Traffic.”
It doesn’t matter what you offer. Your tag line is not there to convey your entire sales message or mission statement. The purpose of the tag line is simple:
To Make People Interested and
Surf More Pages of Your Blog
So focus on your best feature and go with it. Some questions that may help you out:
· What can you be the best in the world in?
· What differentiates you or your blog?
· What is the corner stone of your blog?
· What topic is your target audience most interested in?
Tag Line Tactic 2: Umbrella
Another tactic to create tag lines is finding the umbrella - the big picture topic that covers all the things you publish. For example: one reader asked me that he fixes computers and is also interested in blogging about new media. What tag line should he go with?
My answer: Computers and New Media - both are two very different topic. But fall under the same big umbrella: Technology.
If he wants to cover all bases, he should create a tag line that focuses on technology as its key word.
Tag Line Tactic 3: Division
The third tactic is: division. Create new blogs on each different sub-topic. And then create a tag line for that narrowly focused blog.
This requires more work on your part. But the pay-off is usually better too. Because by narrowing your interest, you’ll position your blog as the ultimate authority in that sub-niche.
A domain name is essential if you’re serious about blogging. Its a $9 investment that makes you look professional. When BlogClout readers were asked who is their domain registrar, I wasn’t surprised that the overwhelming choice for domain registration is GoDaddy.
GoDaddy is the biggest registrar out there. And certainly spends the most amount of money on promoting themselves. In fact, I myself had all my domains registered with GoDaddy a couple of years back.
But that was before I read a horror story about GoDaddy.
i. SecLists.org archives various mailing lists.
ii. Some user posted MySpace usernames and passwords on a mailing list that SecLists.org archives.
iii. MySpace contacted GoDaddy - SecLists.org registrar and asks them to suspend that domain.
iv. GoDaddy leaves a voice mail for the owner of SecLists.org letting him know that they are suspending his domain - and suspends the domain after 52 seconds.
They suspend the domain name without giving any notice or warning. Or even time for SecLists.org to remove the content in question.
You can read more about it at: NoDaddy
Running various blogs, I realize that I don’t have control over all the content on my website. Anyone could come and leave a nasty or illegal comment. Should that be enough to get your domain name suspended?
Thats the time I inquired around and started transfering all my domains away from GoDaddy. I personally have never had a problem with GoDaddy. But as they say “Fools learn from experience. Sages learn from history.”
My choice for the new domain registrar?
Moniker.com
Why I think Moniker.com is the best domain registrar out there:
1. Many large domain name players that register 100s of domains recommend Moniker.
2. Even though Moniker is one of the big domain registrars out there, I’ve never heard them involved in a controversy.
3. They claim that they’ve never lost a domain!
4. Their prices are lower than other registrars if you request for the NamePros discount. (I’m not sure if Moniker will give a discount of all you register is 1-2 domain names. As I have a lot more domain names, I was enrolled in the discount scheme even before I was aware of their post on NamePros announcing the discount.)
5. Moniker also offers a domain testing service. Where you can cancel a domain name within 4 days of its registration and get your money back for a 25 cent stocking fee. If you are into domain arbitrage, this is a very valuable service!
Action Summary:
I recommend you transfer and register all your domain names with Moniker.com. Its better to be safe than sorry for your domain name. Because that is your identity online.
When Should You Start a Blog?
Skellie Wag - who runs an excellent metablogging blog - asks what can we do to make people comment on each others comments.
My short answer: Stop blogging. Start a forum.
It is very hard to build a community around a blog. Its much easier to build a community around a forum. That is because of the “rule-of-voice.” On a blog, the publisher has the biggest voice. On a forum, every member has equal voice. Hence, the incentive for someone to post on a forum is greater. And because there is no power difference, “discussions” can happen freely.
The flip side is, because everyone has equal say on a forum, it is very hard to distinguish yourself as an expert on them. You need a blog to position yourself as an expert.
When Should You Start a Blog?
1.To Position Yourself as an Expert
When you want to position yourself as an expert, start a blog. Because your voice is biggest on your own blog, its the best platform to position you as an expert.
2. While documenting a process.
When you want to document a journey or an adventure or maybe even a book - start a blog.
3. To Teach
If the topic requires conversation, go for forums. But if you already know more than most people - and want to teach instead of converse - go with a blog.
4. When You Don’t Have Time
When you don’t have a lot of time, go with a blog. Forums take a lot of time to gain momentum. And to moderate and make sure things go on smoothly. Blogs relatively take a lot less time.
Note: This doesn’t mean that blogs are a big No-No if you want conversations between readers. Conversations should be encouraged when you can. But it does mean that a forum is a better place for conversations while a blog is a better place for teaching and preaching
New NoFollow Plugin
Saying No to NoFollow
Disclosure: Your website will be crawled by search engines if you comment more than 2 times on this blog!
1. If you haven’t read the old post already, make sure you read why Saying No to NoFollow is a good idea. And why should you allow the search engines to crawl the websites of the people who comment on your blog.
2. Removing NoFollow tag from your blog does invite more spammers though. Many comment spammers use a script that finds blogs that have removed the NoFollow tags. And then automatically post a spam comment on that blog - never to visit it again.
3. Here is a solution to discourage these comment spammers: remove the NoFollow tags only if the commenter places more than one comment on your blog. Web sites of drive-by commenters won’t be craweld. The plugin that does this for you is LinkLove WordPress plugin - that has been activated on this blog recently.
(You will have to read the readme file and change one of the settings manually to reduce the minimum number of comments a person has to post to get his websites crawled. The default is 10 - which is way too high. I recommend to change it to 2 or 3. Don’t worry, its very easy to change the default setting by using notepad.)
Having Two RSS Feeds: Full Post Feed as well as Summary Feed
One of the blogs that I follow infrequently is LifeHacker.com
If you scroll down the LifeHacker blog, you will find that they provide two syndication options:
dual-post-feeds.gif
This is a fabulous idea in my opinion.
· If people prefer full content RSS feeds, they’ll get it with ads. So that you can make some money too.
· And if they prefer not to view your ads, they can opt for the partial content RSS feeds. And come visit your blog if they want to read the full post. You can then monetize your blog.
I always wondered what plugin LifeHacker uses to provide two feeds for their blog. But never did try hard to find such a plugin.
WordPress Plugin: DualFeeds
Yesterday, I came across a WordPress plugin that allows your blog to have two RSS feeds too: one with full content. And one with partial content.
You can download that plugin here: DualFeeds
I’m not sure if LifeHacker uses the DualFeeds plugin. But it serves the purpose.
Top of Form
Blog Publishing Frequency and Strategy
Instead of publishing one new post every week day on this blog, I’ve shifted gears a bit. I’ll only be publishing 3-4 new posts every week.
I won’t be reducing the number of posts I write. I’ll just not be publishing them on this blog. Instead, I’ll be trying to find other blogs where I can guest post. This way, more people will be reading what I write. And more people will visit this blog.
From time to time, I’ll also be asking others to write guest posts for this blog. So hopefully, the amount of useful content you read on this blog won’t reduce.
Action Summary:
You will do good adapting your publishing strategy too. Don’t post everything you write on your blog. Instead find other blogs to guest post at.
Top of Form
Removing MyBlogLog Increases Adsense Earnings!
MyBlogLog
A snapshot of the MyBlogLog widget
I recently removed the MyBlogLog widget from this blog. Why? Because after 15 days of testing, my statistics showed that MyBlogLog reduces your blog earnings!
Lets take a more detailed glance at MyBlogLog Pros and Cons…
MyBlogLog Pros:
1. It makes your blog look busy. Popular even.
2. It could generate a quite a bit of traffic to your blog if your blog makes it to their “Hot Community” section. However, the chances of this happening are quite slim - especially if your blog is not already popular.
3. The best advantage of MyBlogLog is that it is a conversation starter! You can see who visited your blog. And if you see a popular person on your bloglog, you can send them a quick note thanking them to visit - and start a conversation!
(Contrary to MyBlogLog’s official selling point, MyBlogLog widgets don’t make good community builders. Because there is really no way for you to keep in touch with your MyBlogLog blog community. And no pain for your community members to leave your community.)
MyBlogLog Cons:
1. It makes your blog load slowly. Showing images of 12-15 people takes quite a long time.
2. It provides absolutely no advantage to your blog readers.
3. It decreases the click through rate for links placed near the MyBlogLog widget.
MyBlogLog helps the blogger more than it helps the blog readers. Its more of a fashion badge that serves little purpose. And so I decided to remove the MyBlogLog widget from this blog… at least for a little while.
Since I removed the widget, the click through rate for the Adsense ads shown in the sidebar has more than doubled!
I may bring the widget back for more testing. But I’ll never place it in the sidebar again. Where 99% of the bloggers place it. If I do test it out again, I’ll only place them in my blog footers. Making sure that their slow loading time doesn’t affect my blog readers. While providing me the advantage of starting conversations with a few of my blog readers.
Action Summary:
· MyBlogLog widget is not the best use of your blog theme real estate. You may want to remove it.
· If you do keep them, make sure you place the widget at the bottom of your blog where it doesn’t interfere with your blog readers.
Top of Form
Cool Tool: Browser Shots - Test Your Blog Design in Different Browsers
Do you know if your blog looks OK in all the various different browsers?
A couple of days back, I received a phone call early in the morning from some one who complained that one of my websites didn’t show up well in his browser. He used a computer with Linux on it and had a browser that I’d never even heard the name of. There was no way for me to know what the error was.
So I did some Googling and came up with a solution. BrowserShots.org!
This is a nifty website that allows you to test your blog or website and see how it looks in various different browsers - without you having to download those browsers on your own computer!
BrowserShots.org
Action Summary:
1. Go to BrowserShots.org and submit your blog URI
2. Make sure you select “4 Hours” from the drop-down list under “Maximum Wait”
3. Bookmark the page you are forwarded to. And visit it after 3 hours of submission - but before 4 hours.
Top of Form
Saying No to NoFollow
Saying No to NoFollow
Disclosure: Your website will be crawled by search engines if you comment on this blog.
Commenting on blogs was the easiest way to increase the number of backlinks your blog has. It was so easy that many spammers created bots that would automatically post blah comments on random blogs.
In a bid to discourage comment spam, in January 2005, Google advised all bloggers to add a “NoFollow” tag to all their outgoing comment links. And almost all the major blogging softwares added the NoFollow tag to their core.
Unfortunately, this didn’t stop spammers from posting spam comments on blogs. The whole NoFollow idea failed to prevent spam. So since a few months now, some bloggers have started a grass root campaign to remove the NoFollow tags and allow search engines to start crawling links in comments again - so as to give an incentive to their readers to comment frequently.
I think that is a very good idea. Its one more way of rewarding your top readers who spend their precious time in improving the conversation and posting the comments. That is why, I’ve removed the NoFollow tag from this blog.
The WordPress plugin I used is “DoFollow”
3 Blog Tag Line Tactics
Frequently Asked Question: I’m having a hard time creating a tag line for my blog because I cover a lot of different topics. How should I go about creating the tagline?
Since writing the Blog Tag Line post, I’ve had 3 people ask me a similar question. What should you do if you cover a lot of topics and can’t decide on a short tag line?
Tag Line Tactic 1: Focus
Case Study 1: Dominos sells more than just pizzas. Yet their tag line was “Fresh Hot Pizza in 30 Minutes or Its Free.”
Case Study 2: This blog covers a lot of various topics like blog designing, making money and increasing traffic. Yet the Tag Line is just “How To Grow Your Blog Traffic.”
It doesn’t matter what you offer. Your tag line is not there to convey your entire sales message or mission statement. The purpose of the tag line is simple:
To Make People Interested and
Surf More Pages of Your Blog
So focus on your best feature and go with it. Some questions that may help you out:
· What can you be the best in the world in?
· What differentiates you or your blog?
· What is the corner stone of your blog?
· What topic is your target audience most interested in?
Tag Line Tactic 2: Umbrella
Another tactic to create tag lines is finding the umbrella - the big picture topic that covers all the things you publish. For example: one reader asked me that he fixes computers and is also interested in blogging about new media. What tag line should he go with?
My answer: Computers and New Media - both are two very different topic. But fall under the same big umbrella: Technology.
If he wants to cover all bases, he should create a tag line that focuses on technology as its key word.
Tag Line Tactic 3: Division
The third tactic is: division. Create new blogs on each different sub-topic. And then create a tag line for that narrowly focused blog.
This requires more work on your part. But the pay-off is usually better too. Because by narrowing your interest, you’ll position your blog as the ultimate authority in that sub-niche.
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