I've been having click-through advertising for about three months now on my other site. Despite expecting great things from it, and having a decent visitor rate, it didn't translate to very much.
I've been wondering why that is for sometime. I have formulated some conclusions, which didn't bode well for my future big blog money.
1. my topic did not have a lot of advertising backing. If you are in technology, you bet you're going to get a lot of ads. If you are into alchemy, well, there are some sites advertising but not so many. A telling sign is that the website Helium, that I frequent sometimes, says that it will not pay for religion and spirituality (and other categories as well) because there's not much advertising revenue in it.
2. the first time I put ads on site I got a lot of response. This decreased instead of increase in time. Why is this? Because the ads don't roll enough. They are almost always the same ones. I'm pretty sure by now that it has to do with point no. 1, the topic.
3. the click-through ads don't encourage one to stay on the site, but to leave the site. It doesn't reward readership and loyalty, on the contrary. It encourages random reading in search of another site to hop onto. On my site, due to my topic, I have several loyal readers. I am afraid they don't want to leave the site as fast as they should for money's sake!
4. click-through ads encourage gaudy and unprofessional-looking sites. I'm serious. The best click-throughs, from what I have gathered, are those that are situated between the title of the article and the post, or in the middle of the post. I don't like the look of these, and so far I have resisted this type of advertising. I don't want my reader to be annoyed. As weird as it sounds, loyalty is important to me. I care what people think of my blog.
I have been surprised and disappointed to find that, although click-through ad networks promise reward to readership, loyalty and good image, in fact they encourage in-your-face advertising for teenage-type uncommitted browsing. This may work on gadget or electronics blogs, but how will it work in a serious site about esoteric research? Thus far, the answer has been negative. Blog money is for a sector of the internet blogging market only. I will keep at it and try to find innovative ways of advertising, but big money is going to stay away from me a while longer.
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
Back Again... Seeing Things Clearer and Darker
I haven't written for about a month, wrapped around real-life commitments and developing my Esoteric Coffeehouse blog, some freelancing work, and two newer blogs, Project: Life, and Self-Alchemy, but of whom I drafted here on Blogger.
Since my absentia, I have become older and (somewhat) wiser. I no longer believe that pigs can fly, except if you are a really exceptional one like Dumbo. I'm also considering now that much of the hype around blog money is frankly nothing more than propaganda by people who know that the prospect of fast money sells. In other words, selling illusions.
I'm not saying that there is no money into blog-making, but that depends on several factors, must of whom I am still discovering. As far as I have noticed, blog success depends on the following:
a. topic
b. ad availability
c. turnover of viewers
d. crowdiness of the market
e. demographics - the most important aspect.
The sad part to it seems to be that loyalty to a site - something that ought to be most appreciated - doesn't easily translate in money terms.
After this upbeat re-introduction, I will seek to expand more on what I have found. I don't expect people will like what I have to say - reality often doesn't draw people in. As a matter of fact, I'm no different. I am urging to be proven wrong.
Since my absentia, I have become older and (somewhat) wiser. I no longer believe that pigs can fly, except if you are a really exceptional one like Dumbo. I'm also considering now that much of the hype around blog money is frankly nothing more than propaganda by people who know that the prospect of fast money sells. In other words, selling illusions.
I'm not saying that there is no money into blog-making, but that depends on several factors, must of whom I am still discovering. As far as I have noticed, blog success depends on the following:
a. topic
b. ad availability
c. turnover of viewers
d. crowdiness of the market
e. demographics - the most important aspect.
The sad part to it seems to be that loyalty to a site - something that ought to be most appreciated - doesn't easily translate in money terms.
After this upbeat re-introduction, I will seek to expand more on what I have found. I don't expect people will like what I have to say - reality often doesn't draw people in. As a matter of fact, I'm no different. I am urging to be proven wrong.
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
Readership and Making Money Off Blogs
I've been out for a while - moving house and moving internet provider. It has proven longer than I expected, but I'm finally back and on the scene!
I would like to say a few words about readership and money. The first thing to note is that, if you think that you can just jump into blogging and make lots of money, you're in for a sore disappointment. In fact, building a blog and putting ads on it right away is a sure way not to succeed, because a lot of directories and indexing sites will look down upon blogs with few posts but a lot of ads. As everything (legitimate) in life, money requires investment - in this case, of time, effort and creativity. To make money, you have to earn loyal readership.
In other words,
Blog Money = Loyal Readership + Number of visitors
1. Loyal Readership
I would define readership as people that a) visit your blog b) stay long enough to read your posts and c) are willing to interact with your blog (by posting comments, clicking on links, buying the merchandise you suggest etc). On top of this, loyal readership means people that keep on coming to your site, keeping your visit numbers up consistently. To achieve loyal readership, your blog must be meaningful to a number of people. This in practice implies that you must have a brand, a certain personality that involves the topic, writing style and presentation.
Branding is of course a huge topic of marketing, and I will not dwell on it for the purpose of the article. Suffice it to say that you have to satisfy two customers: the audience AND yourself. If you go only by what you think the audience wants, your creativity will be affected. If you go only by what you want, there will be no readership. Branding also requires building a pleasant place - a website that visitors can find a temporary 'home' in. Of course, a number of your visitors will come from RSS feeds, but the bulk will still be people that physically access your site. Therefore, make your blog a place you like coming to - not too cluttered, not too many ads, not too slow to load. On this I will come back another time.
2. Number of Visitors
On the other level there is the concern for the number of visitors that come in. This is linked with the topic you are involved in, how popular it is, whether the topic is on an upward or downward trend, as well as your ability to 'reach' for that audience. Some good ways to find what subjects are popular is on bookmarking networks as delicious or magnolia, 'news' sites like digg, or on article databases. Again, this is a large topic that is worth more in-depth analysis.
The combination of readership and visitor numbers is related to establishing one's niche in the market: creating the place that is only yours. Setting up a niche requires intuition - the niche must be big enough to have sufficient readers, but small enough to muster a loyal readership. Obviously, the choice of the niche has a great impact on your ability to gather money, because only where the stars meet - there is loyal readership AND a high enough number of visitors - you will make a lot of money. Yet there is no guarantee that going for a highly rated topic would allow you to win a lot of money: logically, if the topic is highly rated, a lot of bloggers already jumped on that bandwagon and 'filled' the niche. Of course, there is still room to leave your mark, but you have to put a lot of effort to 'get your foot in the door'. Another solution is going for a less rated topic, which may not already be as crowded. The less rated the topic is, the higher the chances of building a loyalty, a key ingredient in the mix. In any case, however, there will be a lot of work involved in establishing your blog as a 'voice' for the topic you choose.
I would like to say a few words about readership and money. The first thing to note is that, if you think that you can just jump into blogging and make lots of money, you're in for a sore disappointment. In fact, building a blog and putting ads on it right away is a sure way not to succeed, because a lot of directories and indexing sites will look down upon blogs with few posts but a lot of ads. As everything (legitimate) in life, money requires investment - in this case, of time, effort and creativity. To make money, you have to earn loyal readership.
In other words,
Blog Money = Loyal Readership + Number of visitors
1. Loyal Readership
I would define readership as people that a) visit your blog b) stay long enough to read your posts and c) are willing to interact with your blog (by posting comments, clicking on links, buying the merchandise you suggest etc). On top of this, loyal readership means people that keep on coming to your site, keeping your visit numbers up consistently. To achieve loyal readership, your blog must be meaningful to a number of people. This in practice implies that you must have a brand, a certain personality that involves the topic, writing style and presentation.
Branding is of course a huge topic of marketing, and I will not dwell on it for the purpose of the article. Suffice it to say that you have to satisfy two customers: the audience AND yourself. If you go only by what you think the audience wants, your creativity will be affected. If you go only by what you want, there will be no readership. Branding also requires building a pleasant place - a website that visitors can find a temporary 'home' in. Of course, a number of your visitors will come from RSS feeds, but the bulk will still be people that physically access your site. Therefore, make your blog a place you like coming to - not too cluttered, not too many ads, not too slow to load. On this I will come back another time.
2. Number of Visitors
On the other level there is the concern for the number of visitors that come in. This is linked with the topic you are involved in, how popular it is, whether the topic is on an upward or downward trend, as well as your ability to 'reach' for that audience. Some good ways to find what subjects are popular is on bookmarking networks as delicious or magnolia, 'news' sites like digg, or on article databases. Again, this is a large topic that is worth more in-depth analysis.
The combination of readership and visitor numbers is related to establishing one's niche in the market: creating the place that is only yours. Setting up a niche requires intuition - the niche must be big enough to have sufficient readers, but small enough to muster a loyal readership. Obviously, the choice of the niche has a great impact on your ability to gather money, because only where the stars meet - there is loyal readership AND a high enough number of visitors - you will make a lot of money. Yet there is no guarantee that going for a highly rated topic would allow you to win a lot of money: logically, if the topic is highly rated, a lot of bloggers already jumped on that bandwagon and 'filled' the niche. Of course, there is still room to leave your mark, but you have to put a lot of effort to 'get your foot in the door'. Another solution is going for a less rated topic, which may not already be as crowded. The less rated the topic is, the higher the chances of building a loyalty, a key ingredient in the mix. In any case, however, there will be a lot of work involved in establishing your blog as a 'voice' for the topic you choose.
Thursday, 13 November 2008
My Very Own Blogger's "Day of 13th" Story, or RESPECT Your Code, Man!
Well, ok, this all happened yesterday (12th) but it counted as a day of 13th story nonetheless.
To begin from the beginning (yes, I know you're already yawning), I have this damning habit that, when I wake up in the morning, I check out the status and traffic on my two ongoing blogs, this one and the other one (incidentally, www.esotericoffeehouse.com). This particular day, since Firefox for some reason was going a bit slow, I opened the IE browser. Lo and behold, my face dropped, the site looked all jumbled up, the sidebar at the end of the home page, the header skewed on the page, in one word, DISASTER!!! Now, I had been in the habit of checking my page in both browsers before, but not for about two-three days now. Well, SOMETHING had happened that had simply shred my site to pieces on the IE browser. Ironically, only the first page (which as we all know is the blog's heart so to speak) was shattered, the rest looked normal. But who would want to visit the next pages of a blog whose home page seemed to come from la-la-land?
That was not the only irony, of course; I had just advertised my blog to a group that I know personally, so I was already bit sensitive about how they reacted to it anyway. Just thinking they would have opened IE and saw that abomination gave goose bumps and cold sweat.
In Firefox, it was all light and peace on earth, God bless them.
However, the difference between Firefox and IE only made me more clueless about the reason of the difference. How could it possible be that my site looked fine in Firefox and lousy in IE?
As it turns out, RL (codename for Real Life) intervened and I could not sort this out for the next half a day. When I returned, nobody had magically solved my problem: darn. What happened to an old-fashioned miracle.
I spent the next five or so hours trying to figure out what's wrong, with my rather rudimentary programming skills. I thought for a while that, just maybe, it was Bill Gates' fault. Almost everything in the world is, so why would my glitch be any different? If Firefox works and IE doesn't what else could I think? So I tested the theory. I downloaded Opera, the 3rd browser I know of. To my dismay, the site bombed on this browser too. Thus I had to concede that it was my fault, not someone else's (darn!).
I had a moment of despair. How on earth am I going to figure out why IE would react differently than Firefox to my blog? Then I remembered something. Someone, in ancient history, had told me that if something works in one browser and not in another it is most likely a coding problem. I can't remember where, or when this was said! But it was the beginning of my salvation.
A long salvation, that is. If the code was wrong, I had pages and pages of codes to review! Considering that AND the fact that my programming knowledge is so-so, I had a daunting task in front of me. But did I have a choice, really?
Now, the website is based on the Wordpress template. But throughout time I had changed it quite a lot, little by little. Of course, the problem had to be a some recent modification, but for the life of me I couldn't remember all the changes I had done in the past few days. I started looking into tons of code - but my 'fixings' only succeeded to make half of the messed up sidebar disappear completely.
You can imagine that by now I was freaking out. And it was 12 at night.
Ok, it's time to calm down and recollect. I remembered I never got anything done in a state of utter despair and frenzy, so that couldn't be the way. I breathed out, and started thinking methodically. The fact that the other pages except the 'home' was showing out just fine was an important clue. But to what? Well, as I looked at the code I realized that Wordpress structures every page like this (this is getting a bit technical): a header (from a header.php file) + a customized body + a footer (from footer.php). The only real variation amongst the pages was the "body" part which was either index.php, page.php, link.php, what have you. So what you see on your screen is really three PHP pages combined.
If the only page wrong was the "home" one, alias index.php, there must have been something there that was awry. Now, I had already gone through index.php and found nothing. But why not compare MY index.php with the ORIGINAL index.php?
So, my index on the top of the page against the original on the bottom half, I started to verify every line of code for differences.
Everything seemed alright, except - what is this? Is this an extra "!" in the php code?? That's what it looked like, so I removed it. By this time, it was 1 o'clock and I was getting really really tired. So I thought - please please let this fix SOMETHING so I may go to bed feeling a bit better. I closed my eyes, pressed 'refresh' on IE, opened it...
and lo and behold, like magic, like a real miracle, everything was back to normal. The trouble that had horribly messed up my home page on IE and Opera was due to an extra "!" in one line of the code! Firefox, being my friend, had probably chosen to overlook this error, but IE and Opera punished me for it.
That was it. I went to bed immensely happy and dancing on the inside.
Well, that was it and a lesson too. I was becoming a bit too cocky about my blogging knowledge. I was also starting to believe that I could mess around with the code as I saw fit and nothing was going to happen. The code came back to haunt me. And I had started to imagine that the code was just something in the background - but it is the foundation, the strength and the core of one's site. Nice articles, nice words, nice traffic - it's all good and well, but if the code 'ground' is not firm it will all go down the drain sooner or later.
My advice then, to myself and everyone else: learn CSS, HTML and as much PHP as you can. It's priceless. Respect the program, and all the people that worked long hours to deliver you a flawless template, as much as you might find it not snazzy enough. Oh yea, and of course: test your page in at least IE and Firefox every time you change it! Perhaps Opera and Safari too.
g'night folks.
To begin from the beginning (yes, I know you're already yawning), I have this damning habit that, when I wake up in the morning, I check out the status and traffic on my two ongoing blogs, this one and the other one (incidentally, www.esotericoffeehouse.com). This particular day, since Firefox for some reason was going a bit slow, I opened the IE browser. Lo and behold, my face dropped, the site looked all jumbled up, the sidebar at the end of the home page, the header skewed on the page, in one word, DISASTER!!! Now, I had been in the habit of checking my page in both browsers before, but not for about two-three days now. Well, SOMETHING had happened that had simply shred my site to pieces on the IE browser. Ironically, only the first page (which as we all know is the blog's heart so to speak) was shattered, the rest looked normal. But who would want to visit the next pages of a blog whose home page seemed to come from la-la-land?
That was not the only irony, of course; I had just advertised my blog to a group that I know personally, so I was already bit sensitive about how they reacted to it anyway. Just thinking they would have opened IE and saw that abomination gave goose bumps and cold sweat.
In Firefox, it was all light and peace on earth, God bless them.
However, the difference between Firefox and IE only made me more clueless about the reason of the difference. How could it possible be that my site looked fine in Firefox and lousy in IE?
As it turns out, RL (codename for Real Life) intervened and I could not sort this out for the next half a day. When I returned, nobody had magically solved my problem: darn. What happened to an old-fashioned miracle.
I spent the next five or so hours trying to figure out what's wrong, with my rather rudimentary programming skills. I thought for a while that, just maybe, it was Bill Gates' fault. Almost everything in the world is, so why would my glitch be any different? If Firefox works and IE doesn't what else could I think? So I tested the theory. I downloaded Opera, the 3rd browser I know of. To my dismay, the site bombed on this browser too. Thus I had to concede that it was my fault, not someone else's (darn!).
I had a moment of despair. How on earth am I going to figure out why IE would react differently than Firefox to my blog? Then I remembered something. Someone, in ancient history, had told me that if something works in one browser and not in another it is most likely a coding problem. I can't remember where, or when this was said! But it was the beginning of my salvation.
A long salvation, that is. If the code was wrong, I had pages and pages of codes to review! Considering that AND the fact that my programming knowledge is so-so, I had a daunting task in front of me. But did I have a choice, really?
Now, the website is based on the Wordpress template. But throughout time I had changed it quite a lot, little by little. Of course, the problem had to be a some recent modification, but for the life of me I couldn't remember all the changes I had done in the past few days. I started looking into tons of code - but my 'fixings' only succeeded to make half of the messed up sidebar disappear completely.
You can imagine that by now I was freaking out. And it was 12 at night.
Ok, it's time to calm down and recollect. I remembered I never got anything done in a state of utter despair and frenzy, so that couldn't be the way. I breathed out, and started thinking methodically. The fact that the other pages except the 'home' was showing out just fine was an important clue. But to what? Well, as I looked at the code I realized that Wordpress structures every page like this (this is getting a bit technical): a header (from a header.php file) + a customized body + a footer (from footer.php). The only real variation amongst the pages was the "body" part which was either index.php, page.php, link.php, what have you. So what you see on your screen is really three PHP pages combined.
If the only page wrong was the "home" one, alias index.php, there must have been something there that was awry. Now, I had already gone through index.php and found nothing. But why not compare MY index.php with the ORIGINAL index.php?
So, my index on the top of the page against the original on the bottom half, I started to verify every line of code for differences.
Everything seemed alright, except - what is this? Is this an extra "!" in the php code?? That's what it looked like, so I removed it. By this time, it was 1 o'clock and I was getting really really tired. So I thought - please please let this fix SOMETHING so I may go to bed feeling a bit better. I closed my eyes, pressed 'refresh' on IE, opened it...
and lo and behold, like magic, like a real miracle, everything was back to normal. The trouble that had horribly messed up my home page on IE and Opera was due to an extra "!" in one line of the code! Firefox, being my friend, had probably chosen to overlook this error, but IE and Opera punished me for it.
That was it. I went to bed immensely happy and dancing on the inside.
Well, that was it and a lesson too. I was becoming a bit too cocky about my blogging knowledge. I was also starting to believe that I could mess around with the code as I saw fit and nothing was going to happen. The code came back to haunt me. And I had started to imagine that the code was just something in the background - but it is the foundation, the strength and the core of one's site. Nice articles, nice words, nice traffic - it's all good and well, but if the code 'ground' is not firm it will all go down the drain sooner or later.
My advice then, to myself and everyone else: learn CSS, HTML and as much PHP as you can. It's priceless. Respect the program, and all the people that worked long hours to deliver you a flawless template, as much as you might find it not snazzy enough. Oh yea, and of course: test your page in at least IE and Firefox every time you change it! Perhaps Opera and Safari too.
g'night folks.
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
Shopping for Web Hosting Services
I promised the other day that I would share my "knowledge" on web hosting. This is only in case you want to go "solo" on a platform like Wordpress.org or Movable Type - I have done this on one of my older blogs. It's not necessary on free hosting services like Blogger and Wordpress.com.
This is the information that helped me decide on the web hosting service to choose (I have ordered the list in according to what I find most important):
1. Space on their server: 1 GB is acceptable
2. Data transfer capacity (the size of documents you can transfer at once): 5 GB is acceptable, 10 GB is better, more only if you need to transfer huge quantities of documents.
3. 24/7 tech support: you need help for when the site crashes or something doesn't work anymore! There should be a phone number associated with the tech support, so you can call them up immediately and not have to wait who-knows-how-much for an email reply. I can tell you, this is 24/7 tech support with phone number is one of the hardest (and most important things) to find in a web hosting service.
4. Cost: I deliberately did not put this item first, since it is too often the case that people go for a cheaper service that offers almost nothing and it's in the last instance, useless. Too cheap usually means bad quality, lousy tech support or something like this. One aspect is to check if the price of the hosting per se is cheap, to compare it with the cost of the purchase of domains. I found that in some cases services were cheaper but were more than compensated by outrageously expensive domains.
5. Money Back Guarantee: there should be a clause in your contract to give you money back within a trial period (usually 30 days). This way you can make sure that, if you discover that the server is going down a lot, you can withdraw from the scheme.
6. Location: it is best if you use a web hosting service that is roughly in your area. If you live in the US and the web hosting is in Singapore, it's not a very good thing. Having an address of the company is usually an advisable thing.
7. Testimonials: it's best if you do a bit of research around the web hosting service you want to choose. Best idea is to pick up two-three web services, make a table and compare them. After that, search for testimonials online about the service. Of course, these have to be taken with a grain of salt. Sometimes there are awards given to some hosting services (mine had one) for good service / quality, that helps.
8. Length of Contract: usually services offer a pay-by-month cost and pay-per-year price (cheaper). Make sure you're not signing into a yearly or double-yearly pay when you don't want to.
9. Control Panel for web services: the most well known is CPanel. It's quite good.
10. Email Accounts: preferably unlimited, so you can play around with it
11. Number of Domains allowed: preferably unlimited, or at least more than 10, particularly if you want to play around with blogs.
12. Number of Databases allowed: also preferably unlimited
13. The Web Hosting service MUST support PHP 5, MySQL and CGI. That may sound Chinese but it's necessary if you're going to do much with your blog.
14. Existence of a User Forum to post questions
15. Existence of Tutorials to guide you
16. (optional) Fantastico DeLuxe: this is a little program that installs other programs that you need for blogs. For instance, installing Wordpress.org is very easy with their help. However, it's not mandatory as you can install the stuff yourself.
17. Online Website Builders / Frontpage extensions: can be quite handy, but I never used them. If you use CPanel and Wordpress.org, for instance, they have sufficient help online to manage without these. Frontpage might be quite handy though to modify the standard templates, particularly if you don't know css and html well.
18. FTP accounts: you may use this to 'beam up' your documents online. CPanel, however, has this feature integrated and it works very well.
19. other free programs and perks: usually hosting services offer programs for free, some of which can be quite good and others useless. I didn't find these extra things to be something I base my decision on, but some people might.
20. the Operating Program the web hosting program is using. This may be Windows, Linux or Unix. I found that Linux /Unix systems are cheaper and they are reputed to be quite good, so don't be put down by the name. You won't have to use Linux / Unix on your computer, this is just their toy to play with!
My advice is to shop around on the internet, select 5-6 services, make a table with the main issues and compare them; then cut down to 2-3 that you investigate for testimonials and may ask questions of. Sometimes you may have to compromise on some issues; preferably the ones at the bottom of the list rather than the top.
I know this list may sound daunting, but it's better to be thorough than find that the server you paid a lot of money on is down 50% of the time and you can't claim your money back. Believe me, it happens!
This is the information that helped me decide on the web hosting service to choose (I have ordered the list in according to what I find most important):
1. Space on their server: 1 GB is acceptable
2. Data transfer capacity (the size of documents you can transfer at once): 5 GB is acceptable, 10 GB is better, more only if you need to transfer huge quantities of documents.
3. 24/7 tech support: you need help for when the site crashes or something doesn't work anymore! There should be a phone number associated with the tech support, so you can call them up immediately and not have to wait who-knows-how-much for an email reply. I can tell you, this is 24/7 tech support with phone number is one of the hardest (and most important things) to find in a web hosting service.
4. Cost: I deliberately did not put this item first, since it is too often the case that people go for a cheaper service that offers almost nothing and it's in the last instance, useless. Too cheap usually means bad quality, lousy tech support or something like this. One aspect is to check if the price of the hosting per se is cheap, to compare it with the cost of the purchase of domains. I found that in some cases services were cheaper but were more than compensated by outrageously expensive domains.
5. Money Back Guarantee: there should be a clause in your contract to give you money back within a trial period (usually 30 days). This way you can make sure that, if you discover that the server is going down a lot, you can withdraw from the scheme.
6. Location: it is best if you use a web hosting service that is roughly in your area. If you live in the US and the web hosting is in Singapore, it's not a very good thing. Having an address of the company is usually an advisable thing.
7. Testimonials: it's best if you do a bit of research around the web hosting service you want to choose. Best idea is to pick up two-three web services, make a table and compare them. After that, search for testimonials online about the service. Of course, these have to be taken with a grain of salt. Sometimes there are awards given to some hosting services (mine had one) for good service / quality, that helps.
8. Length of Contract: usually services offer a pay-by-month cost and pay-per-year price (cheaper). Make sure you're not signing into a yearly or double-yearly pay when you don't want to.
9. Control Panel for web services: the most well known is CPanel. It's quite good.
10. Email Accounts: preferably unlimited, so you can play around with it
11. Number of Domains allowed: preferably unlimited, or at least more than 10, particularly if you want to play around with blogs.
12. Number of Databases allowed: also preferably unlimited
13. The Web Hosting service MUST support PHP 5, MySQL and CGI. That may sound Chinese but it's necessary if you're going to do much with your blog.
14. Existence of a User Forum to post questions
15. Existence of Tutorials to guide you
16. (optional) Fantastico DeLuxe: this is a little program that installs other programs that you need for blogs. For instance, installing Wordpress.org is very easy with their help. However, it's not mandatory as you can install the stuff yourself.
17. Online Website Builders / Frontpage extensions: can be quite handy, but I never used them. If you use CPanel and Wordpress.org, for instance, they have sufficient help online to manage without these. Frontpage might be quite handy though to modify the standard templates, particularly if you don't know css and html well.
18. FTP accounts: you may use this to 'beam up' your documents online. CPanel, however, has this feature integrated and it works very well.
19. other free programs and perks: usually hosting services offer programs for free, some of which can be quite good and others useless. I didn't find these extra things to be something I base my decision on, but some people might.
20. the Operating Program the web hosting program is using. This may be Windows, Linux or Unix. I found that Linux /Unix systems are cheaper and they are reputed to be quite good, so don't be put down by the name. You won't have to use Linux / Unix on your computer, this is just their toy to play with!
My advice is to shop around on the internet, select 5-6 services, make a table with the main issues and compare them; then cut down to 2-3 that you investigate for testimonials and may ask questions of. Sometimes you may have to compromise on some issues; preferably the ones at the bottom of the list rather than the top.
I know this list may sound daunting, but it's better to be thorough than find that the server you paid a lot of money on is down 50% of the time and you can't claim your money back. Believe me, it happens!
Sunday, 9 November 2008
Step 1: Tweaks, Comments, Feeds & Firefox
I have been doing a few things to the blog since we last spoke.
a) I have played with the color scheme a bit. The green of the template just didn't do it for me, so I went for a violet scheme. Now I have a confession to make: I am relatively familiar by now with changing css templates due to my previous blogs. Not that familiar, I should add, but enough to tweak the template around a bit. So my Advice Number 1: CSS. Unless you are madly in love with the blog templates out there, it pays immensely to learn some basic css and html. Nothing fancy, just basic things. A good way to learn is to play around with a few things. But, Advice Number 2: If you do this, and you're not entirely sure what you're doing, download the initial template first. This way if you screw up massively (I have done on several occassions!!!) you can refer back to the template and restore the code. Advice Number 3: Personalize your blog: try to customize the blog in a way that expresses who you are. Of course, unless you're some guru it's hard to know who you are, so just follow your gut instinct and initial reactions. Advice Number 4: Customizing only goes so far if you go with a pre-drawn template (I STRONGLY advise you to go for those. Unless you have millions of hours on your hands, templates do at least half of the work for you.) Anyway, at some point you have to 'let go'. Spending huge amounts of time customizing your template detracts from your time to build the content and promote your website. If you are generally pleased with it, just get it out there. Hopefully you can get some tweaks in later.
b) I have took the comments off. Some smart bloke I read, and I can't remember his address :( - I will try to look it up tomorrow as well, he had some really great things to say about blogging. If it's very likely that you won't have a lot of comments in the initial stage it's better to take them off at the beginning.
c) I got my feed through FeedBurner. What the hell is a feed? Well, it's basically this little programme that allows your reader to subscribe to the blog and receive all updates. In other words, it's like a standard newsletter you receive. Now, this is the good news about the feed. The problem is that, apart from the yahoo email, I haven't noticed any other email programs that import the feed directly into the email . I don't want to scathe anyone, but for me traveling to some other page (like Google Reader) to see a feed is too much for my time, patience and opened tabs. I'm not paid by Yahoo to promote their email service (oooh I wish), but they don't have to: it's my favorite. I have accounts with two others and they don't compare.
FeedBurner - I'm testing this. I'm a bit wary that Blogger induced me to sign up for it (the almighty Google has spoken), but I will give it a shot. I heard several testimonials that it was great. We'll see.
d) Oh! one other thing. Again, no advertising included (the gods of Yahoo, Google and Firefox and IE are completely oblivious of my existence), but I use Firefox. I used to be with IE like everyone else, but then again, I followed Firefox because of their ability to open a gazillion number of tabs in one browser window. For a person that frantically searches the internet like I do, it's mighty important. Plus, they offer the option of saving your tabs till next time. Every time I open the IE browser, it takes me back to square one. It's like Sisyphus for me. There are other pluses (like the built in download manager) but the two mentioned above made me opt for Firefox.
a) I have played with the color scheme a bit. The green of the template just didn't do it for me, so I went for a violet scheme. Now I have a confession to make: I am relatively familiar by now with changing css templates due to my previous blogs. Not that familiar, I should add, but enough to tweak the template around a bit. So my Advice Number 1: CSS. Unless you are madly in love with the blog templates out there, it pays immensely to learn some basic css and html. Nothing fancy, just basic things. A good way to learn is to play around with a few things. But, Advice Number 2: If you do this, and you're not entirely sure what you're doing, download the initial template first. This way if you screw up massively (I have done on several occassions!!!) you can refer back to the template and restore the code. Advice Number 3: Personalize your blog: try to customize the blog in a way that expresses who you are. Of course, unless you're some guru it's hard to know who you are, so just follow your gut instinct and initial reactions. Advice Number 4: Customizing only goes so far if you go with a pre-drawn template (I STRONGLY advise you to go for those. Unless you have millions of hours on your hands, templates do at least half of the work for you.) Anyway, at some point you have to 'let go'. Spending huge amounts of time customizing your template detracts from your time to build the content and promote your website. If you are generally pleased with it, just get it out there. Hopefully you can get some tweaks in later.
b) I have took the comments off. Some smart bloke I read, and I can't remember his address :( - I will try to look it up tomorrow as well, he had some really great things to say about blogging. If it's very likely that you won't have a lot of comments in the initial stage it's better to take them off at the beginning.
c) I got my feed through FeedBurner. What the hell is a feed? Well, it's basically this little programme that allows your reader to subscribe to the blog and receive all updates. In other words, it's like a standard newsletter you receive. Now, this is the good news about the feed. The problem is that, apart from the yahoo email, I haven't noticed any other email programs that import the feed directly into the email . I don't want to scathe anyone, but for me traveling to some other page (like Google Reader) to see a feed is too much for my time, patience and opened tabs. I'm not paid by Yahoo to promote their email service (oooh I wish), but they don't have to: it's my favorite. I have accounts with two others and they don't compare.
FeedBurner - I'm testing this. I'm a bit wary that Blogger induced me to sign up for it (the almighty Google has spoken), but I will give it a shot. I heard several testimonials that it was great. We'll see.
d) Oh! one other thing. Again, no advertising included (the gods of Yahoo, Google and Firefox and IE are completely oblivious of my existence), but I use Firefox. I used to be with IE like everyone else, but then again, I followed Firefox because of their ability to open a gazillion number of tabs in one browser window. For a person that frantically searches the internet like I do, it's mighty important. Plus, they offer the option of saving your tabs till next time. Every time I open the IE browser, it takes me back to square one. It's like Sisyphus for me. There are other pluses (like the built in download manager) but the two mentioned above made me opt for Firefox.
Saturday, 8 November 2008
Preliminaries: Hosting Services & Broadband Connections
Hello you, (thus far it's just my blogger alter-ego around :)
I want to do a brief re-cap of what I've done until starting to actually blog. In other words, what you see is already the end result of some time put into it.
1. I got a good internet connection. Needless to say, no broadband = no blog. If you don't have access to a fast and reliable internet connection, damn, girl? you are in serious trouble. Get that sorted out first and foremost.
2. I have a relatively good computer (laptop) to work with. Nothing fancy, 1 GB RAM, 1.73 Ghz CPU, 110 GB space. I'm not an expert on this!!! RAM has to do with how many applications you can have opened at the same time. I usually end up having a lot. CPU speed is about, well, processing power. If the computer 'thinks' a lot, it's not a very good sign.
3. I did some general, but not too deep research into blogging offers out there.
The conclusion: there are two main approaches:
- hosting on your domain. I can't afford this one at this point, though of course if this does well I would enjoy having main own www....I am aware that there will be a bit of a trick transfering from a hosted domain to my domain later, but there you go. Money makes the world go round. If you host on your domain, you have to research (a) hosting providers and (b) domain providers. Usually they are the same thing. I will try to write another post on the future regarding hosting providers, because I have had the experience in the past and it's a quite grueling subject to deal with.
- hosting on a (free) domain. My default option. There are four main hosts I believe:
i. wordpress.com - this apparently is great and nice-looking, but no adverts are allowed. Ouch. Not good for my monetization strategy.
ii. typepad - they charge, so out of my books.
iii. blogger - Google's blogger is generally default choice. Disadvantages is that most names you want to put on your blog are already taken :( . I also read there are problems with spamming, but I will see on that. Other disadvantage: the limited ability to customize. BIG advantage: free, easy to use, already marketed in the Google world and beyond, well-known.
If there are other options I will let you know. In the end, I didn't look any further: Blogger so far suits my limited needs.
I will be back!!!
Jo the Blogger
I want to do a brief re-cap of what I've done until starting to actually blog. In other words, what you see is already the end result of some time put into it.
1. I got a good internet connection. Needless to say, no broadband = no blog. If you don't have access to a fast and reliable internet connection, damn, girl? you are in serious trouble. Get that sorted out first and foremost.
2. I have a relatively good computer (laptop) to work with. Nothing fancy, 1 GB RAM, 1.73 Ghz CPU, 110 GB space. I'm not an expert on this!!! RAM has to do with how many applications you can have opened at the same time. I usually end up having a lot. CPU speed is about, well, processing power. If the computer 'thinks' a lot, it's not a very good sign.
3. I did some general, but not too deep research into blogging offers out there.
The conclusion: there are two main approaches:
- hosting on your domain. I can't afford this one at this point, though of course if this does well I would enjoy having main own www....I am aware that there will be a bit of a trick transfering from a hosted domain to my domain later, but there you go. Money makes the world go round. If you host on your domain, you have to research (a) hosting providers and (b) domain providers. Usually they are the same thing. I will try to write another post on the future regarding hosting providers, because I have had the experience in the past and it's a quite grueling subject to deal with.
- hosting on a (free) domain. My default option. There are four main hosts I believe:
i. wordpress.com - this apparently is great and nice-looking, but no adverts are allowed. Ouch. Not good for my monetization strategy.
ii. typepad - they charge, so out of my books.
iii. blogger - Google's blogger is generally default choice. Disadvantages is that most names you want to put on your blog are already taken :( . I also read there are problems with spamming, but I will see on that. Other disadvantage: the limited ability to customize. BIG advantage: free, easy to use, already marketed in the Google world and beyond, well-known.
If there are other options I will let you know. In the end, I didn't look any further: Blogger so far suits my limited needs.
I will be back!!!
Jo the Blogger
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