Blog Readability Test

While scouring the world wide web I have come across this nice and cool tools that may be of help to bloggers and readers alike. Blogging is a challenge in a way that you have to post good and quality content for your readers. Readers comes in different level of education so when blogging especially when you are seeking a wider readership to get enough traffic to your blog therefore, at what level of education is required to understand your blog? This blog needs this level of education to understand what I posted here.
It means my blog can be understood by any person with a high school level of education and the net has lots of people in this level of education. I am satisfied by the result that at least I can convey my ideas to people in this level and higher quite understandably.

ABC of Blogging

Blogging is a challenge as this allows your capability as a person to discover your potentials and creativity. The power of this new social media is awesome as compared to creating websites that are static due to its dynamism and manageability. If you are thinking or about to start a blog here is the ABC of blogging that might be helpful to you.

Advertise. If you want your blog to get more traffic and readership, then you must learn how to advertise it. You need to experiment with your blog on how to let the whole blogosphere know what you are saying and sharing. I need not to elaborate about this as it has been tackled in my previous post here. Advertising your blog for traffic and readership.
Blog. Be it paid hosting or free hosting you need to create a blog, but the question is what topic and concept do you want to blog about? Is it about fashion, SEO, Marketing, Make Money Online, automobile or just simple general blog? You must have a topic or concept for your blog.
Content. Everyone knows that a blog is a content oriented social media so you must have a content and ideas to post in your blog be it advices, tips, rants, photo or simply your own personal journal. The idea is to have a content that is related to your topic or concept and not just content but you need to create or post good content.
Design. Good design contributes to the readability of your blog. Choose a good design that maximizes your blogs potential to generate revenue and readers.There are lots of free blog templates available in the web to choose from but be sure to choose a design template that is supported by your blog portal.
If you do all this basic things then your blog is on the go additions is up to you to maximize its usability.

Analyzing your blog traffic statistics to increase traffic to your blog

Analyzing your blog traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for a number of reasons. But before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data.
Most blog hosting companies will provide you with basic blog traffic information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. However, the data you receive from your host company can be overwhelming if you don't understand how to apply it to your particular business and blog site. Let's start by examining the most basic data – the average visitors to your site.
These figure is the precise measure of your blog's activity. It is therefore precise that the more traffic you see recorded, the better your blog is faring,but this is not the only parameter that you must consider. You must also look at the behavior of your visitors once they land on your blog site to gauge the effectiveness of your site.
The aim is to use the blog traffic statistics to figure out how well or how poorly your site is working for your visitors. One way to determine this is to find out how long on average your visitors spend on your site.


Let me take as an example this blog. As you can see in the graphics, my blog has 359 visits over all plus 15 before I sign-up with Sitemeter and with an average visits of 11 per day that's quite comfortable as of now since this is a new blog it means that I have made a good step in promoting my blog to the world. The over all page view is 532 and a 12 page view per day average that's quite good for now. By this stats, I could say that this blog has a good starting with regards to how I advertise and promote it. Based on this stats I can now have an idea how to proceed to increase more traffic to my blog.

Why the difference between the visits and the page view?
When you are browsing a site, every time you follow a link to a new web page, it is treated as a single page view. Site Meter defines a visit as a series of page views by one person with no more than 30 minutes in between page views. If you click on a link to another site, and then come back to your site within 30 minutes, you are still on the same visit and Site Meter won't increment the counter. But Site Meter will increment the number of page views recorded for your current visit. With a page view average of 12 per day and a total of 532 would mean that somehow visitors show some interest in one or two of my post here and again it is a good start. It would also mean that somehow I have some good post here that caught the interest of my visitors and it is a good start. So I get an idea that I need to have a good quality post in order to have a quality visitors.

Why the difference in the length of visits and the page view?
If I only look at a single page and then leave, Sitemeter don't know how long I looked at the page. If I looked at two pages and left Sitemeter would know I at least am on the site during the time of the first page view and the second page view. The difference between those two times would be the length of the visit.With a 0:45 seconds average per visit would mean that visitors at least take time to view and read at least two pages of my blog and it is acceptable for the moment. An average page view of 1.1 seconds that means visitors are staying and spend 1.1 minutes to at least read a few line of my post that interest them.
As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital information about the effectiveness of individual pages, and visitor habits and motivation. This is essential information to any successful Internet marketing campaign.
And finally it goes down to a single best criteria for increasing your traffic-ALWAYS HAVE A GOOD QUALITY CONTENT FOR YOUR BLOG, without this single thing you may have a lot of traffic but not enough quality and real visitors to your blog. Happy blogging!

A cup of Coffee and a Blog

Blogging over a cup of coffee is what I do every time I am writing a post for my blog. This relaxes my mind and allows the free flow of thought to write. Blogging is not that easy; you have to think and organize your thought about something you would like to post on your blog and creating an idea needs a lot of energy to keep you going. I find it cool and relaxing every time I am writing a post when I have a cup of coffee at my desk and I do make it black, but with sugar. I think that when you are get used to something, your day is not complete without one. When you are get used to blogging your day is not complete if you did not have a single idea to post on your blog. Ideas oftentimes does not come that easy so what I do is have a cup of coffee and try to organize my thoughts and ask myself this questions.

Is my ideas good enough to help my readers? I ask this because the intention and purpose of blogging is to give information, insights and help to readers and fellow bloggers. Sharing ideas and thoughts is what a blog primarily is intended.
Is there any difference in my post? I always keep in my mind the readers of my blog, so I always try to make a critique of my post if there is any single difference, even a single line or paragraph that make my post different from others that readers could get this additional information to add to their list and help them more. If not I try to trackback a similar post that best describe what I think could best help readers without repeating it in my blog.

This things I do over a cup of coffee every time I am in front of my computer to type and post my ideas, but don't make a cup of coffee if you are not used to it.

Advertising your blog for traffic and readership

Perhaps daily, weekly or monthly you try to upate your blog because your blog is not just a simple journal but also your source of additional revenue. You write a good quality post and you try to compose a lot of ideas to share in your blog, but still no one reads them. Without any readers your Adsense and referral earnings is $0. If you are just starting a blog and have a 2 or 3 couples of post expect that it will not generate reveneu for you at the moment. What you need aside from blog creation is the other necessary steps to maximize your blog usability and potentials - ADVERTISING your blog.

Here I want to share some tips on how to advertise your own blog for traffic and readership. I'm no expert in advertising or marketing but in my experience I have this to share with you. Here are some that I learn for my years of using the internet.

Try to visit other blogs and leave a comment in one of the post that interest you. By this means you create a linkback from other blogs to your own blog. When making a comment it must be relevant to the post you are commenting don't just leave a comment like "Nice site or Nice blog" or "Good post here" if that's all you can say it will look like a spam comment without any relevance at all.
Use trackback if you find that a certain post is similar or related to your blog. It will save you time and effort to make the same post but still allow your readers to read your post and refer them to a lot or other valuable resources aside from you own.
Submit your blog to a Blog Directory like Blogcatalog, Mybloglog ,Blogflux or Technorati among others. There are lots of blog directory and most of them is free you only have to put a linkback code to get you listed that's all.With this community you can meet and socialize with other bloggers and gain some readers and more than that friends and contacts.
Submit your content to Social Bookmarking sites, such as .del.ic. ious,digg or stumbleupon as this sites has lots of readers and the likelihood that your content will be found by readers from this sites.
Use a feed reader like, feedburner, netvibes, rojo and lots of others to publicize your content to the entire blogosphere. This tools boost your blog's visibility and expose your blog content to potential subcribers aside from you own RSS feeds.

If you do all this stuff that I have shared I'm certain that your blog will have regular visitors and readers, but don't forget to post quality content in your blog or you will loss your readers.The purpose of advertising your blog is to gain traffic and readership, but a good quality content will keep visitors and readers coming back for more and gain you popularity and lots of revenue in the long run.

Entrecard: Another resources to get your blog notice for free.

Traffic is necessary to get your site or blog notice by Search engines and thus give your blog or site a pagerank by Google, Alexa, Yahoo, Altavista or any search engine portals. You get indexed by search engine if you have lots of traffic and links to your blog or site. Here is one that I recommend for new bloggers to have your blogs get notice for free and gain more traffic and readership.Familiar about EntreCard? If you still don't know about this social network for bloggers you better grab one.Entrecard is like a business card or a calling card that you give to your friends or someone you've meet to get lots of contact and get you notice.It is also an advertising portal where you can advertise your blog on anyone who is an Entrecard member for free.

Entrecard is the first and only free exchange network for 125x125 ads. Through this revolutionary platform, you can advertise your own 125x125 Entrecard on any blog in the network, for free, for a number of days.Why pay for advertising where you can get it for free.

What you have to do is

1. Sign-up and create and account with Entrecard
2. Enlist your blog in their directory, this is provided once you've an account.
3. Once you've done go to their help section to guide you on how to use Entrecard to socialize, meet other bloggers and get your blog notice, that's all you have to do to get you started. Quite simple isn't it?

If you notice in the sidebar of this blog a 200x125 widget with the caption Entrecard that's how it looks once you've become a member you have to place this widget to earn you credits in a form of Entrecard points. With this points you can buy ads slots on any bloggers who is a member of the network and off your blog traffic go.
So go ahead and try this cool stuff to gain traffic for your blog.

Get Readers to your Blog and keep them coming back

This guest post was written by Vanessa Brown for Self SEO and Guide to Blogging

Whether you have a business blog or a personal one you no doubt want as many people to view it and hopefully interact with it, and you, as possible. There are a few key things to remember when both initially creating your blog and then promoting it to others.

While in the beginning blogs were created more for personal use, as the internet and businesses develop more and more companies are using blogs to help promote their business, but the foundations remain the same:

1. First and foremost keep your readers in mind; even if you have a blog that is full of nothing more than your personal rants, if you want people to keep coming back you need to make it easy to read and understand. Remember that in this day and age people using the internet will often spend a lot of time just skimming over pages so you need to capture and then keep their interest, the best way to do this is to keep your writing clear and concise, while it doesn’t need to be grammatically perfect (at least for a personal blog) it should at least make sense.

2.Try to provide useful and relevant information for your readers, no matter what subject your blog is about if you can give the viewers the information they want or find helpful they will keep coming back for more.

You don’t need to use every technical gadget you come across on your blog; while they all have their individual places a business blog for example may lose some of its professionalism if the readers are subjected to heavy metal music the minute they open the page.

3.Make your blog as interactive as possible; give your readers the chance to leave comments or feedback, the more reason you can give them to interact with you the more often they will come back; on that note you can also give your viewers the chance to subscribe to your blog so they receive emails when your blog has been updated etc.

4.Finally, where possible, keep your individual posts in related categories etc. that makes it a lot easier for first time and casual readers to find what it is they may be looking for.

Remember though, whether it’s business or personal, blogs can be great fun and a great way to express your thoughts, get your creative juices flowing or promote your online or offline work.

Blog Design for Beginners

Here is a good post from Problogger.net that I find helpful for beginners who want to design their own blog and maximize their earning potentials. You see design can add tremendous value to a blog. When it comes to making money with your blog, proper web design can make a huge impact on your bottom line. Read the entire post: Blog Design for Beginners. It is a two part mini tutorials for designing your own blog. What you need is a graphic editor (like Photoshop or GIMP) and some knowledge about HTML, CSS and XHTML. So get started and read the tutorials and learn how to create your own blog design.

Net Ad Growth to Continue, Deal or Not

Net Ad Growth to Continue, Deal or Not from PhysOrg.com

(AP) -- Microsoft's unsolicited bid for Yahoo underscores the strength of online advertising - and the confidence the market has that the relatively new industry can withstand an economic downturn. Originally valued at $44.6 billion and worth about $40 billion based on Tuesday's closing prices, the bid is a bold statement on the promise of online advertising.

[...]

A Microsoft-Yahoo deal could shift money away from Google if advertisers no longer associate lucrative text-based keyword ads only with Google.These means Google will have a better competitor on text-based keywords ads and an advantage to publishers like us. If you get banned with Google then you have the MicroHoo as an alternative.

Weblog Usability: Blog's potential areas you should use to reach to your readers.

Weblogs are a form of website that is distinct from the conventional website we often see in the net, they have a unique characteristics and thus have a distinct usability potentials.

Usability Potentials:

To reach new readers and respect your existing readers' time constraints, use these blog usability potentials as much as possible.

1. Author's Biographies (About me section of your blog). The basic rationale for creating this section is that users want to know who they're dealing with. It's a matter of trust. Anonymous writings have less credence than something that's signed, unless a person is extraordinarily famous. Readers want to know more about you even if you don't have any credentials or experience. Readers will trust you more if you're honest about that fact, set forth your experience if any, and explain the reason for your interest and enthusiasm.

2. Personal Photo. Photo is important for two reasons:

• It offers a more reasonable impression about you and enhance the credibility by the fact that you are not trying to hide under your own blog. Psychologically wise, users relate more easily to somebody they've seen. The human brain is more keen on remembering and recognizing faces.


• The virtual and the physical world is often interconnected. People who have met you before will recognize your photo,and those who have read your site will recognize you if ever you meet in person- at a conference, a party or simply in the street.

3. TitlePost or Headlines. Use descriptive headlines to let your users grasp the main idea of your post. Posting title is a microcontent that best describe the kernel of your post. Descriptive headlines are especially important for representing you blog in search engines, newfeeds, and other external environments. Users often see the headline and use it to determine whether to click and view your full post.

4. Links. Create links to other related sites as much as possible to help your users find more information aside from what is in your blog. Remember that a blog is an all-in-one portal for the purpose of making less time and effort to do a manual search in search engines. Make your blog as much as possible a "microsearch engine" where users could find other information related to their query by using links.


Using the potentials of this sections of your blog gain you readership on the long run, makes your blog search engine friendly and will earn for you revenue if you are incorporating revenue earning programs like Adsense or referral ads on your blog. Happy blogging.

Cooking and your blog

Cooking and your blog what the heck is the link to it! Well I found it a good point to relate the everyday chore we humans are doing with regards to blog. You see when we cook something be it a simple fried chicken or a fish to a sumptuous meal the likes of grilled spareribs or a beef casserole we try to organize the necessary ingredients for our recipe and when we put it in the fire we always make a balance of all the ingredients for it to be palatable. Same can be compared to blogging.
How can it be?
-In cooking, we prepare the necessary ingredients for our recipe. The right amount of this and that is necessary for a palatable meal. In blogging we too must have a good balance of the necessary ingredients in order to have a good blog.
What are the ingredients of a good blog?

1. Content, content and more content. This is the main ingredients to have a good blog. Not just content but a good quality content. Most amateur bloggers like me often fall on the mistake of creating a blog just for adsense and money without regards as to how their content would be of use to the readers. This media is now so powerful that it is being utilized as a tool to reach people, socialize, share ideas and earn a living from it, Darren know best about this.So when blogging always provide as much as possible good content that can be of use to or help others, that user may not ditch your blog and never return back. Here are some example of a quality content rich blog:
Problogger offers a lot of topics on how to use your blog to its maximum potential to earn money the right way. Darren is an expert on this subject.

A List apart a blog for people who make website. Advices and tips given to users who are knowledgeable with HTML, CSS and Javascript for creating web pages.
This are but a few examples of good content of a blog. A good content would mean readers who are interested to know something about what you are posting and when you draw readers and visitors to your blog that means revenue for you.

2. Aesthetic and Presentation. In cooking when the recipe is finished and ready to be serve we try to put some arrangements to make the recipe more palatable. In blogging a good design and presentation of a blog contributes to the attraction and readability. In the example above the added points for the quality of these blog example is the design, the arrangement of the content. How they maximize all the available space of the blog design and arrange them in orderly fashion. If you view them you've probably notice the arrangement of the post, adverts area ;how they place their ads in a manner that it blends with the design and content of the blog and not too empowering as to appear it is solely made for ads. Notice also that these example blogs does not used too much ads to scatter them all over their blog, they only place ads at the sidebar and uses what ads suits their blog meaning they did not solely use adsense but some referral ads or maybe affiliates. When choosing a design it depends upon the blogging platform you are using, if you are using Wordpress it is in php format and your web hosting must support or allowed php in your database.The advantage of using Wordpress is that it is easy to use and edited and you can add your own widgets especially adsense.But if you host wordpress in their own site ads are not allowed whatsoever, you must have your own domain and a hosting site that is compatible with this blogging platform to incorporate ads on your blog. If you are using Blogger, free or paid hosting you can incorporate ads on your blog to monetize it. I've mention this two specifically because based on what I know this are the only blogging platforms that best supports ads to monetize your blog for free. So much for the monetization, a good blog therefore must be orderly and well arranged just like our cooking example.
This two points is the heart and soul of any blogs: Content and Design.