Blogging

Blogging Update: How many sidebars are enough to drive you crazy? and more…

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I’ve been looking at redoing my sidebars for sometime on InvestorBlogger. But the thought of doing that really strikes horror into me. There’s so much that needs tweaking. I have five blogs on InvestorBlogger Dot Com, and each of them has two sidebars. Worse: each of the sidebars needs multiple changes!

SideBar Changes: Adsense, Stats, and more…

I’m planning to remove the Adsense from all of my blogs to get impressions back to zero. It’s obvious from the number of clicks, payment rates and so on that my Adsense account has been targeted as ‘underperforming’, or to use Adsense’s euphemism “smart-priced”. I’m not sure what’s covering that phenomenon, but once I reduce my impressions to zero, I can begin giving them a test to see what the source is. Right now, my publisher code is spread across numerous sites.

Financial stats are outdated by more than a month. In fact, in September I easily broke through US$12K earned since I started blogging online! I have now averaged a little under US$500 per month, and recent months have edged towards US$600 in all, though the past two months or so have been weak. But I’m not keeping up with the ads, so I need to find some way to tame the information.

Trimming one sidebar, and standardizing the content much more would also help, as each sidebar appears different. This also makes trouble when widgets need to be pulled. I typically add as much to one widget to cut processing time, so I have to hack the HTML code in each text widget to make sure things are okay. It’s a bummer if I didn’t tag the code properly! I can’t find it! Right now, I need to move the BlogRush code because the BlogRush Project hung up its shoes (not surprisingly).

In future, I think I’m only going to have one major sidebar on my blog, likely on the right. It will it make finding things much easier! But there are other changes afoot.

InvestorBlogger and DollarTravels

I recently merged all my blogs into one ’superblog’, and created URL redirects. I figured it would be much easier to manage one superblog than numerous mini-blogs and each blog would benefit from the ‘traffic’ juice, thus gaining more exposure. The results have been pretty mixed: traffic is up, but I noticed a couple of things that give pause for thought: the sub-blogs are much stickier than the original blog itself; the original blog is ’somehow’ lost … and some traffic is not clicking through in quite the same way. I also preferred having an automatically updated blog. WordPress MU isn’t much fun. Many plugins just don’t work properly. Some of my favorites cause problems for search engines by not working properly.

It seems that I’ve underestimated the hits on traffic to InvestorBlogger as a result of the Google Spank last year. My blog has failed to gain any appreciable increase in PR since then, and advertising revenue has not increased much since then. Some advertisements are sold, but many are not. This all-in-one strategy hasn’t really worked as it has also undermined mini-blogs by not providing a more focused and more ad-ready audience!

So, it looks like I’ll be reestablishing some of the original domains with the original content sometime soon, as well as adding one or two more. InvestorBlogger will remain but minus some of the financial content. It *could* be that InvestorBlogger in its current form is now reaching the end of its useful life: but then I thought that last year, and, if anything, content and traffic are 100% better. So who knows? It is clear that some refining of InvestorBlogger’s focus is becoming necessary at some point.

Izea does affiliates: First Impressions – lots of potential and limitations, too.

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Well, Izea has been slowly building out the SocialSpark platform for quite sometime. It’s moved slowly from Beta to full launch, and it’s becoming increasingly sophisticated in a number of ways.

As a blogger, though, there are some problems that I’ve had with the platform, most of which is that I’m not getting enough work from them to be really bothered. Still, I’ve maintained my blog in the system to get access to the stats, keep an eye on SocialSpark and perhaps be able to take part on a better level in the future. So I’m keeping an open mind.

Izea Does Affiliates

Recently, though, Izea expanded the platform even more by adding affiliates . I’m naturally interested in affiliate marketing so I was pleased to see this opportunity in the marketplace. You can take a look for yourself.

socialspark affiliates

There are only limited opportunities right now, but the payouts are quite generous. A smart blogger, for example, could easily attract extra income to the blog by posting certain affiliate type banners and links on their blogs. Of course, one has to ask the question: are blogs could places for making conversions? So far, I’ve not had much success with conversions, so I’m not convinced yet. But that may be due to my own limitations, rather than anything problems inherent in using blogs for affiliate marketing.

There’s a big but. It doesn’t seem to work like traditional affiliate programs. Why? There’s a time limit to the opportunity of one year. This would preclude certain types of sites that would be built to a longer time horizon. A friend of mine has just spent a lot of time and money building a website to market lawncare products and services, it’s taken him months to build his website, do the SEO, and start the marketing via AdWords. If the marketer only had a window of 12 months to pursue an affiliate program, it just wouldn’t make much sense: the first three months would be gone in the build-up period.

Since SocialSpark is simply trying out affiliate programs at the moment, we’ll see if they take a different tack in the future on this issue.

When blogging and traveling: five tips for bloggers on the move!

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I’ve been away, ’tis true. This is the sole reason I haven’t maintained a healthy posting schedule, and for that, dear readers, I’m surely sorry.

When traveling in the UK (my home country), I was pleased often to find hotels that offered various forms of broadband or wifi. During my stay, I stayed with friends, small inns, student accommodation, and a formal hotel, and I was quite surprised how many places actually had good broadband. It’s quite a different scenario from just three years ago. But …

BEWARE: high charges and poor connectivity

But I realized that there are still too many places that charge an arm and a leg for wifi service that is at best mediocre, T-Mobile, for one, had spotty coverage and iffy bandwidth. Worse, they promised a full 24 hours but I was unable to login the last sixty minutes or so, purportedly because of IP issues. It’s not a great idea to pay so much money for iffy and intermittent connections.

There are many coffee houses that provide both good coffee and free wifi to attract customers, including the BeanScene in Edinburgh, so it’s wise to check ahead and see if you can find such coffee shops or other free access. Checking accommodation to see if broadband is provided is now a priority on my list of criteria for a decent guest house, so much so that I would prefer a place to stay without a TV, if it had some form of WiFi. But why on earth are ethernet cables so expensive here?

Great Websites: for Travel and Hotels

There are many great websites for booking rooms and flights, both company specific sites (like BMI of http://www.flybmi.com) and vacancy aggregators (such as LateRooms of http://laterooms.com). I appreciated these sites for several reasons: online booking from abroad was possible, credit card payments were accepted, and there was little hassle – bookings were made, checkins were swift and payments were trouble-free. So, as a traveller, I don’t tend to prebook a lot of things as it’s always difficult to accommodate last minute changes into a rigid itinerary, and just sometimes very early or very late bookings can get discount rates that will make your eyes water.

Preparing BeforeHand

While away, my posting schedule was really awful. Some days none, some days just one across the entire InvestorBlogger network. Mmm. I discovered that I was only able to really focus when I had peace and quiet, a good internet connection, and a good cup of tea. But when I was in Scotland, I rarely had all three in one place at the same time. This was despite the best intentions to keep up a regular posting schedule. But it all fell apart, and I was powerless to prevent it, or at least, lacking willpower to insist on personal space. I should have at least prepared some more irregular filler posts or published some feature articlels that are half-written or mostly edited. But alas! I didn’t.

Travel Equipment: Tools on the Go

Since buying my AspireOne, I have found it to be a wonderful tool, fully capable of supporting quality blogging on my blog. I’ve installed nearly all my standard ‘blogging’ applications without a hitch, and found that with Skype set up, it actually becomes a very powerful, very inexpensive communications tool slashed the exorbitant fees charged by my cellular company. Of course, a USB handset really helps set the mood. Additionally, a decent camera is essential, but photos taken on the SD Card can be rapidly uploaded to the PC, incorporated in a blog, and published within minutes. I know I’ve already done it. When I get back to Taiwan, I will register for a mobile broadband account, and should be able to blog from almost anywhere.

There are three tools that I would consider adding: a GPS tracker for USB or BlueTooth so I can find out where we are whenever we are lost; a decent mouse as the trackpad is frustrating for big fingers like mine; and (maybe) a larger keyboard. Other than that, I can’t see what I’d buy… Though I was envying a solar charger or a handpowered charger (just in case).

Quiet Time: Well, quite…!

But most of all, I’d try to make quiet time, time away from everyone, time away from books/tv/papers, etc.. It’s too easy to be swamped by stuff, and to forget that I have to make that quiet time to sit and think and reflect and write.