My 2 Blogging Dilemmas – Solved!

Posted by sterndal in Consider This, blogging career on Aug 3rd, 2009 | 1 comment

Do you often work on long hours to gain traffic for your blog? I do, and I know how tiring it can be. Reserving whole days or weekends just for blog hopping is extremely frustrating knowing there is no guarantee that they will also visit back to me. My blogging techniques, just like those of many aspiring bloggers, obviously need improvement. I’ve thought about this overnight and here are my findings and solutions:  

Problem # 1 Very Low Traffic  

I suppose one of the many reasons why a lot of people are soo into blogging is because of the opportunity to earn money. This is my primary motivation, I admit. Unfortunately, I can’t do that without an impressive Alexa rank.  

Simple Solutions  

• Register my other blogs to Blogexplosion and alot at least 30 minutes every other day to surf sites. The more I surf, the better chances of getting free hits for my sites. I’m just not sure if bestfriend google will be happy to know about this because based on the quality guidelines, autorotation is not allowed. There is another site that offers the same function (Globalautohits) but it’s so effortless I’m hesitant to join.  
• I will also register my blog to Linkreferral to get constructive criticisms and reviews.
• Leave greetings and messages in blogs that have chatboxes or tagboards so the owner will be notified that I was there. I will leave my url and hope to get a visit in return.  
• Although I have an entrecard in my sidebar, I haven’t really used it that much. But I’ve seen a lot of bloggers attesting to how effective it is, so I’m gonna drop my EC to 300 blogs this coming weekend and see if it really works. It should, lol.  

Problem # 2 Need free backlinks  

I now understand why bloggers and website owners are going gaga over page rank. Although I still don’t have any idea on how it is computed (my blog I Love Sterndal has more than 100 backlinks while this one only has 4, but both got PR2), I am certain about one thing: it is a requirement to get approved in paid to blog sites like PPP. More incoming links means higher chances for a better PR. But the question is, where will I get free backlinks?   

Simple solutions:  

• Based on my personal experience, the easiest way to get free backlinks is through submission in popular blogging communities. My plan is to submit my blogs to Blogoria, MyBlogLog, Blog Catalog, Blog Hub, Zimbio, Technorati, etc.  
• Leave meaningful, sincere comments on other people’s blogs.  
• Ask other bloggers to exchange links with me.    

The only problem now is I’m too lazy to do all those solutions. LOL

What Makes a Blog Click

Posted by sterndal in Consider This, blogging career on Jul 4th, 2009 | 3 comments

Before your start reading this article, please allow me to clarify that I’m not an expert about blogging. I’m just talking based on my observations and personal experiences so I think “What makes a blog click to me” is more appropriate title for this post. Hehe.

Layout

Ironically, it isn’t really the content that catches my attention everytime I would visit a new blog. If I liked the color, theme, design or in other words, if the presentation is nice, most likely I’d stay for a few minutes and check out it’s posts. Some blogs are cluttered with unnecessary things which take away my attention from what the author of the blog is writing about. If I didn’t appreciate the layout, I’d just close the tab even before I get to see the title of the latest article of that blog. 

Topic and Tone

Let’s face it, if the posts are irrelevant or unuseful to me, I wouldn’t waste my time reading them. This is the reason why I tend to agree with people who say that content is king. But then, if the author’s tone is friendly and light-hearted, I am always encouraged to leave comments and to visit again and again, even if the topic isn’t new. Another factor would be frequency of updates. However, most of the blogs that I religiously follow take a few weeks before the authors write a new post. 

Writing Style

I wish I could write perfect english. I am easily impressed with bloggers who write so well. As we all know, blogs are often written in an informal manner but that doesn’t mean that readers and visitors are not noticing those grammatically incorrect sentences. In fact, it really takes good writing skills and also proper grammar in order to come up with something interesting and worth reading.

Those are just a few of the things look for in a blog. But then, what do I know? As I’ve said, I’m not an expert.

Given-up on Google Adsense

Posted by sterndal in blogging career, personal thoughts on Jun 19th, 2009 | 11 comments

Can somebody tell me how bloggers earn from Google Adsense? The clean and fair way of earning, I mean without cheating? Without encouraging other people to click on your advertisements? Without clicking on your own ads? I just don’t understand how I had an adsense account for more than half a year and I’ve seen people doing that. Sorry to have to say this but the “click on me, I’ll click on you” system is not only against the rules but is also unfair.

I will admit that I was also tempted to participate but then again I realized that it’s not worth it. My self-respect is worth much more than a hundred dollars! Pay me two hundred and it’s a deal. Joke – hehe! Seriously, ill-gotten money will not make me happy. Call me hyprocrite for all you want, you can even slit my throat but I intend to stick with my values. If adsense is not for me, for sure there are better ways of augmenting my income. For now, I’ve already submitted a cancellation request to Google so my ads in I Love Sterndal will be totally removed. They say the clicks and impressions will be reviewed and if proven that those are valid, they will pay me 12 dollars. It’s just consuming space in my sidebar and not giving me anything in return so I think I’m fine without adsense.

Perhaps, Google should revise their policies. Like, it shouldn’t be just pay per click, they should also pay per, let’s say, one dollar per a thousand valid visitors. Ah … I don’t know what I’m talking about so this shouldn’t be taken seriously. My point is that if they are using the space, they should at least pay a minimal amount even if nobody’s clicking on it.

Got My Page Rank Back

Posted by sterndal in blogging career, happy sterndal! on Jun 17th, 2009 | 4 comments

Just a few days after I submitted a reconsideration request for my other blog, I Love Sterndal, Google restored my Page Rank 3. I thought I will have to wait for months for my request to be processed so I was very pleased when I received a message in my webmaster account after just 5 days. They said they’ve already reviewed my site and it seems that they didn’t find any violation so I got my PR back. Here is a copy of my request:

***

Hello Sir/Ma’am,

A few months ago, my blog I Love Sterndal had a page rank of 3. Admittedly, I did some sponsored posts from PPP, Loudlaunch, Blogsvertise and Blogtoprofit so it didn’t surprise me anymore when my page rank dropped from 3 to flat 0. I knew it very well that this is against Google’s rules and regulations. Kindly check my site again. All of my paid links have been removed and I also no longer have the intention of doing paid posts again. I am confident that this request will not be rejected as my blog is now complying with Google’s Quality Guidelines.

Thank you

Yours,

Sterndal

***

So there, it’s official. Google and I are bestfriends again

The Missing Stylesheet

Posted by sterndal in blogging career on May 24th, 2009 | 2 comments

It’s always been fun to try different themes especially if you are running a blog with a platform like WordPress. Worry not about html tags and CSS because you just need to choose the design that fits your taste, click activate, and then you’re ready to blog away. It’s that easy.

However, a lot of things have changed ever since I decided to run a self-hosted blog. One of the first things that I had to do to set up my blog was to download free themes from WP Themes Directory. The instruction was to download the template to /public_html/ and then unzip the files. It took me more than two hours to choose the appropriate layout but only a few minutes to download and extract the files. The only problem that I encountered was the missing stylesheet. Most of the templates that I downloaded were broken themes according to the note below my themes directory. I had a bad feeling that while I was on the process of extracting the files, I accidentally click something that corrupted the stylesheet. WordPress sent me an e-mail saying “Don’t push your theme files down into another sub-directory within your zip file.” I didn’t know how to fix it so I just searched for another theme that would work.

Luckily, I was able to find a free wp theme designed by Mr. R.Bhavesh. I think this layout is simple yet elegant. I just wish the font size of the text is little bit bigger, and the color of the header is pink but for me, it’s really perfect! Well, almost hehe