Author Archives: Admin

PageRank Updates

Leave a reply

While Google continually works on shifting the ranks of pages around, it is well known that around every 90 to 120 days, Google completely updates PageRanks, thus doing its little dance, and leaving people with a variety of different rankings. Sometimes people increase in PageRank, and other times people fall. There are also a few that stay in the same spot, and thus wonder why everyone is making a big deal.

That time is nearly at hand, with one set to happen sometime this August, and while it is most likely too late to do anything that would effect your PageRank in a major way, you can already start preparing for the next update.

I have already written a short primer on what can effect your PageRank, but to summarize it all into one bit of information: get links, give links, don’t sell links and of course write good content.

Good luck to everyone in the upcoming update.

Originally posted on August 8, 2007 @ 10:48 pm

21 Tips to Deal with Information Overload

Leave a reply

I deal with massive quantities of information every day. My wife makes fun of me because I can barely remember what I did yesterday due to the millions of things I have to sift through every day.

It was great to see an article on Web Worker Daily about dealing with information overload. My favourite entry in the list was of course number three:

3. Work less. Again, I submit that we get away from the mindset that we need to do more, more, more, and decide that we want to focus on the few things that are important to us. In order to do that, we have to eliminate things that are unimportant to make room for the important. And leaving some space around the things in our life (don’t schedule every minute) leaves us with a little breathing room and a little sanity. While I’m not saying you can achieve a four-hour work week, I do think you can achieve a 40-hour work week, and probably much less. I’ve been slowly reducing the hours I work, so that I now put in about 24 hours a week, and I’m planning on cutting that to 16. The key is to decide what is important, and focus on those things.

Read the whole list on Web Worker Daily.

Originally posted on August 9, 2007 @ 10:43 pm

Newspaper Content Wants to be Free

Leave a reply

Mark Evans has written a great post about newspapers and how they should be focusing themselves in this very blog and new media centric world. I have watched as newspapers continually become more and more obsolete, and that is not something I think the world is really ready for. I still enjoy reading printed news but I find myself sticking to the free local newspapers that cover what is going on in the city I live in.

Mark had this to say about focusing on local:

2. Local, local, local: Forget about spending your editorial budgets on national and international coverage because lots of people/organizations can do that job for you at a much lower cost. Instead, pour your money into local coverage where there’s less competition. For anyone still reading newspapers, stories about higher property taxes, real estate trends and crime will continue to be compelling.

This is one of those rare times where I completely agree with the plan that someone has come up with for newspapers to remain relevant. I hope the people in charge see his post, and take action.

As for us bloggers out there, how the newspaper and all “old” media companies learn to react to the continuing shift to have everything online, be aware that traditional news outlets could quickly become our biggest competition.

Originally posted on August 8, 2007 @ 11:22 pm

Four Reasons to Avoid Free Blog Hosting

Leave a reply

One of the biggest mistakes I see many bloggers making is jumping on one of the free blog hosting sites expecting to make thousands of dollars a year and becoming an Internet celebrity.

Limitations

There are limitations with using free tools. WordPress.com doesn’t allow advertising, nor does it allow you to add plugins. For some, this isn’t an issue, but it can become a real concern later on as your site grows and changes.

Search Engine

Do you want to be considered your own blog, or another of the millions of Blogger blogs? You like having Typepad as part of your domain and thus your branding? These are the things search engines will notice as they index your blog. If you are using your own hosting, and your own domain, you wouldn’t have to deal with what I consider to be search placement killers.

Outages

Today a friend of mine, David Krug, messaged me and said “Typepad is down”. I went to check it out and sure enough I couldn’t access any of their hosted blogs. Even their actual company website was down for me. While not all web hosting companies have great uptime. at least you can easily leave if they are constantly down. By joining a free blog service, most of the time you are locking yourself into that service, through its good times and bad.

Control

Blogs are a constantly evolving and changing beast of your own creation, and while some free services can be great early on, they lack the control that independent solutions provide. If Blogger decided to close your blog, would you have a backup of your posts? These are just some of the reasons that I implore you to avoid free services just to save a few dollars.

You can get great web hosting for cheap, and if they have a script called Fantastico, you can install WordPress, the same software used here, in one click.

Originally posted on July 25, 2007 @ 2:22 am

Can You Make a Living From Blogging?

Leave a reply

A question I get quite often is about how much money I get from blogging. It is asked in many different ways, but mostly by people that want to establish themselves as a full time blogger.

I like to avoid the answer because I make enough to pay the bills, but not enough to be rolling around in a Mercedes Benz or anything fancy. Simply put, blogging is my full time job, and it is working very well for me. I am paying off a car, and a small house. I have been able to afford more gadgets than ever before in my life, and all of it is thanks to the blogging work I do.

You have to remember though that there are bloggers out there that make upwards of tens of thousands of dollars each month, and there are others that make less than the price of a cup of coffee. It can take many different elements coming together to get to that full time income level.

On the flip side though, one of the people hired by the company I work for had only been blogging for a few months before he was “discovered”. Now he is coming up on one year of working with us, and very happy with his choice to become a problogger.

I would say that if you show a strong passion about blogging, and let others know about your passion, there is no reason why you can’t become a full time blogger if that was what you wanted. There are many companies looking for content producers, and there are many people looking for content. You have to differentiate yourself, be positive, and be focused.

Reading xfep.com is never a bad idea either.

Originally posted on July 25, 2007 @ 2:08 am