What is the difference between a blogger and a publisher? Have the lines between the two blurred so much that there is no difference? Some say that the difference between labeling someone a publisher or a blogger is size. The size of what though? The site? The amount of content they produce? The type of content? Lets talk about it.
Blogging
Plants Can Blog To
Watch the video to find out how.
Blogging Is A Juggling Act
As I reach ever closer to my goal of being able to use blogging and online activity as my primary source of income, I am finding it increasingly difficult to manage my time to accomplish tasks from day to day. I’m currently bringing in around $1,300.00 a month from my blogging ventures but that cash is spread out amongst 3-4 different jobs. On top of this, I work 32 hours a week from 9PM-5AM and that doesn’t seem to make things any better. I’ve also noticed that my sleeping pattern has changed to the point where I am really sleeping in instead of waking up at a decent time. This is leaving me with even less time to get things done and it is driving me up the wall.
I’m really thinking about cutting myself down to weekends only for a little while to see if I can get my life back on track. I envy those like Lorelle and others who seem to write mile long posts and publish things on time. These folks make it seem easy although I doubt it really is.
Kudos to those out there who are making a living online by creating content while also maintaining a social life as well as a second job.
Thank You Commentators
Just wanted to pass along a quick thank you to the top five commenter’s for the month of August.
- Andrew
- Sierra
- Trisha
- Ian Stewart
- Justin Tadlock
I really appreciate you guys and gals for sticking around and being part of the discussions which take place on the blog. I can handle blogging into an empty chamber but having some commentary around makes blogging a much more fun, engaging experience.
This blog post was an entry in the blogging challenge created by the Perfcast Podcast.
Is This How Comment Spam Works
As I was checking out my Akismet spam filter one day, I noticed a comment that was labeled differently than most of the other ones I’ve seen. This comment linked to a site called BotMaster. According to the site, BotMaster sells a service called Xrumer that comes bundled with Hrefer which is an automated link-building tool. BotMaster claims that the tool has nothing to do with spam and that its primary purpose is to build links and search engine power to your site.
These are funny claims considering a comment which was created by the BotMaster software appeared in Akismet as spam. This is the first time I’ve come across an actual site selling services/software for link building purposes. The software will set you back $450.00 but that seems like a high price to pay to have whatever site you are promoting to show up in Akismet as spam.
I am not trying to actively support or advertise this service but rather, highlight the fact that these things do exist. This makes me wonder how much spam is generated on forums and blogs with software such as this. Anyone else come across botmaster within their own Akismet interface?
Back To The Beginning – Then And Now
Life sucks without the Internet. So to kill time, I’ve been going through my backup files to figure out which ones I feel I can definitely live without. While organizing my backup files, I came across a text file which contains all of my posts from my blogging venture over at EFx2.com. What an interesting read. What I call my very first blog post in 2004 contained an abundant amount of typos with no regard to grammar. As a trip back in time and for archival purposes, here is what my very first blog post looked like.
General: Something Fresh
Wednesday, November 17, 2004 05:52 PMWell I’m pretty new to the blog scene when it comes to having my own. I have read over the years about blogging, and I have seen many many weblogs that just end because well I guess they get boring and people don’t want to update them anymore.
I will try not to let that happen here. I am currently pretty involved with Photoshop and graphics design. Recently I have developed some skills related to Cinema4d, a 3D rendering program. Using this program allows me to create some cool renders that I have been using for some of my abstract wallpapers.
I hope to see you around and go ahead and leave a comment in the shoutbox. I will be at work turning this blogging site into a spiffy graphical wonder in the next few weeks or at least see where my limits are with this system.
General is the category while Something Fresh was the name of the post. You know, I think I remember that day in November when I hit the publish button for the first time. So what have I learned since then?
- Spell checking is a godsend.
- I’m a much better writer, now that I have blogged for such a long period of time. I’m getting better with each post.
- Blogging is still fun when you write about the things that interest you.
- Comments are still one of the best things I love about blogging.
- The friendships I have made over the years through blogging have been wonderful.
Back in 2004, there was no Web 2.0. It seemed like blogging was much simpler just four years ago. Now a days, you have videos, screencasts, podcasts, audio posts, images, galleries, massive interaction, and everywhere you look, there is something embeddable. I may sound like an old fart reminiscing the good ole days, but I’m simply comparing two different time periods of blogging. I’m sure those who started blogging back in 2000 have much more to say in regards to then and now.
What I’m interested in, is hearing your history of blogging. Create a blog post and link back to this one if you must or simply leave a comment. When did you start blogging? What changes have you noticed between then and now? If you feel a little daring, you can also share your thoughts on the future of blogging.
Three Golden Rules Of SEO
I can’t even remember how I came across this blog post on DaveFleet.com but it’s a discussion on whether or not SEO could devalue news releases.
Dave does an excellent job conveying the aspect of SEO sheep within his post.
My problem with this, as with many SEO principles in general, is that people will take it to an extreme. They’ll follow the advice like sheep and will force inappropriate keywords (read: jargon) into their writing, and their products (and clients) will suffer.
Sure, these releases may rank highly for some words but so what? People arrive, see a poorly written release or page, fail to find what they want and leave. It’s a cheap tactic – one that’s no better than spamming people with emails.
When I read that paragraph, I wanted to shake Dave’s hand as that is how I feel about SEO in general. As I’ve always pointed out, SEO is not hard. Why people spend thousands of dollars on an SEO guru is beyond me. I have yet to spend a dime and Jeffro2pt0.com shows up on the first page of search results for things that I have written about. No optimization needed.
As for news releases? I don’t want to read a news release which contains a bunch of keyword stuffing crap. Instead, the release should be relevant, useful and to the point so as not to waste the readers time. Dave hits the nail on the head when he says, “Just Write Well“.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a news release, blog post, book, story, forum post, just write it well and everything else will fall into place. It’s worked for me and no, you won’t have to hire me as an SEO consultant for $500.00 an hour for me to repeat this common sense.
Three golden steps of SEO:
- Write Well – Writing well can make or break content. The best of both worlds is writing well while injecting a sprinkling of keywords into the content. There is nothing wrong with adding specialized keywords into your content just so long as they don’t take away from the article/release.
- Be As Relevant As Possible To The Niche You Are Writing About – It’s all about relevancy. From the blog title, meta site description tags and meta keywords, it’s about taking everything your site has to offer and making it relevant towards whatever niche you are writing about. For example, if you are writing a tech blog, don’t write about popculture events or if Brittany Spears is back in rehab. Also, don’t use hundreds of keywords in your meta tag area. This will penalize your site in the search results.
- Write Unique, Desirable Content – This one is pretty self explanatory. If the content you write is unique, chances are, people will link to it. This creates back links and will propel your content ahead of others. The desirable content is content that your audience wants. Find out what your audience needs and provide that to them. Desirable content will also aide in generating back links if your content covers a wide audience.
Do those three things on a consistent basis and I guarantee you’ll notice a spike in organic search engine traffic.
Blogosphere Can And Will Influence
I invite all of you to partake in a discussion I started on Performancing.com in relation to the influence of the blogosphere. In this post (5 Events The Blogosphere Influenced) I highlight five seperate events in which the blogosphere played a major role in the outcome. While performing research for this article, I discovered that politics and blogging appear to be the most widely used method of measuring influence. Another thing I learned is that, in this realm of blogging, the Army Of One attitude need not apply. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you do, if the blogosphere decides one way or the other, thats just the way it’s going to be, no questions asked.
Imagine being on the receiving end of a blogosphere ass whooping!
StumbleUpon Site Scanner
Does anyone know of a tool or service which I could use on Jeffro2pt0.com that would tell me which pages have been stumbled and perhaps tell me how many thumbs up or thumbs down that particular article received? As a bonus, I’d also like to see reviews of the articles which were submitted.
New Version Of Woopra Released
Excellent news for all of you lucky enough to be able to use Woopra as your statistical analytics package. The Woopra Client is now up to version 1.1.2.1. This new version contains a number of bug fixes alongside some new features.
One of the reasons which might of taken this client update so long to be released is that, according to John P. the client update works hand in hand with the back end architecture of their servers. In other words, the client update comes out at the same time that their back end undergoes an update.
Three features which become immediately apparent are as follows:
- The live map view now displays the page that a visitor is reading as they view it.
- The calendar has been updated to a cool new extremely easy to select slider bar.
- We’ve added multi-monitor support to the full screen live map.
Despite the new features and the bug fixes contained within this release, 1.1.2.1 is considered a minor release with a major version scheduled to be released within the next three weeks or so. Also worthy of mentioning is that all users who have been waiting to be approved should be approved by tomorrow evening. After the approvals, Woopra will have a testing base of over 20,000 users. That is 20,000 users which didn’t exist over 2 months ago.
Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff 