Monthly Archives: September 2007

10 ProBlogging Tips Your Momma Always Told You

Did you know that those simple reminders that mom always told us (over and over again, everyday) since we were kids, can help us become better bloggers? Yes, mothers know best!

Here’s our list of 10 ProBlogging Tips Your Momma Always Told You:

1. Clean your room. The best environment for blogging is one that is clean and well-organized. A clean place helps to clear the mind of clutter. If you blog from the bedroom, isn’t it better if the bed is made and your desk is organized?

2. Finish your breakfast. Sometimes we interrupt meals just to “peek” at blogs. It’s always recommended to finish your meals before they become cold. A healthy blogger is a good blogger.

3. Take a shower. Having a writer’s block? Why not try a refreshing shower or bubble bath, and surely your ideas will flow like water.

4. Never pick a fight. Debating and arguing on blogs is perfectly fine, but when you begin to act like a kid, you lose readers — unless your blog is for kids like you.

5. Don’t eat too much candies. Nobody reads a toothless blogger. Seriously, too much sugar is bad and will give you a hard time sleeping at night.

6. Listen to people older than you, such as those who have been blogging for years.

7. Don’t eat junkfood. Eating junk food while blogging interrupts the thinking process and is bad for the keyboard. In fact, you should not be eating while on the computer because you tend to eat faster than normal.

8. Get some exercise. This is a must for bloggers and for probloggers. Because we tend to spend hours on our desk, we fail to give attention to our physical well-being. Take a walk and get some fresh air, or play basketball or catchball. Your mind will be refreshed and your body will too.

9. Throw out the garbage. Clutter. Clutter. Clutter. Nothing is more difficult than blogging in a messy environment. If you blog from home, it’s always helpful to clear the clutter, throw out the garbage, and clear the kitchen sink.

10. Find a real job. If blogging is a job for you, then there’s no need to find a job outside. But if you need a job, and you’re stuck blogging and hoping that it will give you a six-figure income soon, it’s recommended that you begin looking for employment. Being employed fulltime or part-time will not affect your blogging since you can do it after work, and will give you cushion in the event that your online income drops due to unforeseen circumstances.

10 BlogRush Secret Keywords

blogrush.jpgSo your blog headlines are being displayed all over the BlogRush network but nobody’s clicking to read your posts? Maybe you have to give more attention to your blog titles. Here is our list of 10 keywords that “might” attract more clicks via Blogrush:

1. “FREE” – the mother of all marketing keywords.

2. “SECRETS” – who wouldn’t want to know some secrets?

3. “MONEY” – when people see money, they click.

4. “HOW TO” – blog readers love tips

5. “LIST” – they also love lists

6. “TOP 10″ – another variation of lists.

7. “BLOGRUSH” – BlogRush is a hot topic right now, so if you blog about BlogRush, you could pull in some clicks.

8. “TRAFFIC” – aside from money, bloggers want traffic.

9. “INCREASE” – another top marketing keyword.

10. “ADSENSE” – the most popular advertising network. Put this in your blog title to attract more clicks.

Darren Rowse, in his post Tips for Using BlogRush to Generate Traffic for Your Blog, suggests that one of the ways to attract more readers via Blogrush is to optimize your titles, pointing out that the BlogRush widget will only display the first 40 characters of a blog post title.

NetBusinessBlog also gave this tip in 5 Ways To Increase BlogRush Traffic, adding that you are competing with four other blog posts displayed on the widget.

BloggingProfits is not encouraging you to use these 10 click-pulling keywords irresponsibly. Make sure that blog titles are related to the content of your post, otherwise readers would feel cheated and avoid your blog in the future. And it’s false advertising.

10 Outrageous Blogging Habits to Avoid

If you wish to turn blogging into a career, here are Blogging Profits’ list of 10 Outrageous Blogging Habits to Avoid:

1. Procastination – if you have an idea you want to blog about, blog it now. By putting it off for another hour or another day, you may lose steam and forget it altogether.

2. Endless Wandering – if you’re looking for a topic to blog, and you decide to start by visiting a favorite blog or news site to get some leads, you should know when to stop following links and start writing. If you’ve realized you’ve been doing nothing but follow links from one blog to another for the past two hours, then STOP. And write.

3. Blogging While Cooking – are you in the habit of reading or writing blogs while in the middle of cooking? Then you better get a good smoke detector because that fried chicken is gonna burn. Lesson learned: Stay away from the laptop while in the kitchen.

4. Thinking About Blogs While Driving – this could be worse than drunk driving. When you’re behind the wheels, your mind should be focused on the road, not your trackbacks.

5. Blogging on Traffic Stops – related to No. 4, this habit could kill you. Turn off your Wifi-enabled laptop while driving so you don’t get tempted to go online on red lights.

6. Slouching on your seat – chances are, you will spend hours on your seat while blogging. Sit up straight. Slouching can lead to back problems.

7. Blogging While Swimming – while it looks cool to have a laptop while on the pool (you’ve seen that in commercials), you run the risk of soaking your hard drive or short-circuiting your keyboard. Have a book instead.

8. Making Excuses for Not Posting – unless you’re Vanessa Hudgens or some kinda ubercelebrity, people won’t really mind if you don’t post for a day. You have a life too and your readers should know that. Plus, they also have other things to do. (This is not an original idea. It came from Jeremy.)

9. Not Getting Enough Sleep – You need to sleep and rest your mind. Even if you’re not a blogger.

10. Blogging Before You Leave for Work – This is the worst.

Summary: Yes, some of the items on the list may seem too ridiculous, but in the drive for profit, fame and fortune, man has been known to do outrageous things.

BlogCafe.com domain name sold in auction

Just spotted BlogCafe.com domain passing hands today. With 17 minutes to go in the domain name auction, the number of bidders has reached 64 and highest bid thus far is $805. The domain name expired August 14, 2007.

See screenshot:

blogcafe-domain.jpg

Info about BlogCafe from AboutUs.org says it used to be a free blog hosting with no advertising and offering subdomain URLs.

BlogCafe.com has 122 backlinks on Google out of a total of 144 backlinks.

Will the buyer of the BlogCafe.com domain name launch a new service? Let’s wait and see.

How to format your WordPress blog for Google Adsense Mobile

With the recent announcement that Google Adsense may now be included on mobile versions of websites, bloggers should now make sure that their blogs are optimized or formatted for browsers on mobile devices. The mobile users market is expanding and as a blogger who wants to monetize your content and tap into this market, this is the way to go.

In these easy steps, BloggingProfits shows you how to format your blog for mobile browsers and show Google Adsense for Mobile:

1. Preview your existing blog’s theme on a mobile browser such as Opera Mini. This assumes you have a mobile device. Point your mobile browser to operamini.com, then click on “Download Opera Mini.”

If you don’t have a cellphone or mobile device, don’t panic. There is an online simulation or demo of the Opera Mini browser. Use the simulation as if you’re browsing from a cellphone.

The Mini Opera Simulator

The Mini Opera Simulator

2. Paste the Google Adsense for Mobile to your theme’s templates. Because AdSense for Mobile requires server-side scripting — unlike the client-side scripting in JavaScript which is not supported by most mobile browsers or webpages — the code is different from the ordinary Google Adsense code. You are given the choice of;

  • PHP v4.3.0 or greater
  • CGI/Perl v5.8 or greater
  • JSP v1.2 or greater
  • ASP v3.0 or greater

Since WordPress runs on PHP, we will get the PHP version of the Google Adsense for Mobile code which looks like this:

<?php

$GLOBALS['google']['ad_type']=’text’;
$GLOBALS['google']['channel']=’CHANNER ID HERE’;
$GLOBALS['google']['client']=’pub-PUBLISHER ID HERE’;
$GLOBALS['google']['format']=’mobile_single’;
$GLOBALS['google']['https']=$_SERVER['HTTPS'];
$GLOBALS['google']['host']=$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
$GLOBALS['google']['ip']=$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$GLOBALS['google']['markup']=’xhtml’;
$GLOBALS['google']['output']=’xhtml’;
$GLOBALS['google']['ref']=$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
$GLOBALS['google']['url']=$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
$GLOBALS['google']['useragent']=$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
require(‘http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.php’);

?>

3. Preview your blog again on a mobile browser or the Opera Mini Simulator. You should see the Google Adsense for Mobile (Adsense Help says it will take 48 hours to see the mobile ads, but the ads showed on Blogging Profits mobile a few minutes after adding the code to the template.)

We added the Adsense for Mobile code on our single.php template, just below the author and date tags. Shown below is a screenshot of the mobile version of BloggingProfits, showing the previous blog post (Google Adsense for Mobile is now here) with the Google Adsense for Mobile.

Wordpress blog for Google Adsense Mobile

* An interesting observation: Mobile ads are also showing on the desktop version of the blog, because the code is added to the template.

Google AdSense for mobile is now here

adsense_mobile_phone.jpgGoogle Adsense blog that Adsense for Mobile is now available on websites formatted for mobile devices. With this new feature, bloggers will be able to monetize content by optimizing your blogs for mobile browsers. Kenin also adds instructions how to customize your ad unit for AdSense for mobile.

The mobile AdSense network will be open to publishers 13 countries, including the United States, England, Germany, Spain, China and India, according to this news article.

ProBlogger broke the news before the announcement was posted on the Google Adsense Blog.

Formatting your blog for mobile browsers

If you are using WordPress, there is a plugin created by AndyMoore called the WordPress Mobile Plugin which allows posts, pages, archives and comments to be viewed on a mobile device. Posting and commenting can also be done from your phone or mobile device (“moblogging”).

There is also the WordPress Mobile Edition by Alex King. It is a plugin that shows an interface designed for a mobile device when visitors come to your site on a mobile device. Mobile browsers are automatically detected, and there is no configuration needed.

Tech bloggerMike Rowehl posts his experience about tweaking his WordPress blog for mobile access.

WeeklyRevenue.com domain name is for sale

Okay, we don’t want to keep this just for ourselves here at BloggingProfits. I happened to stumble on a good domain name being auctioned on eBay.

The domain name is WeeklyRevenue.com. The seller has a 100% positive feedback, and the domain name is registered on GoDaddy.com until August 2008.

If you’re looking for a good domain name for a blog, this could be one for you. As this is being written, there is still 20 hours to go in the auction. We’re watching the auction.

Visit Auction on Ebay here (aff)

UPDATE: Auction ended with 8 bids. Sold for $52. One of the top bidders joined eBay today just to bid.

Our First Monday Blog Links

Here’s BloggingProfits’ first Monday Blog Links. What is this? This is simply a list of interesting, useful, and amazing links related to blogging, blog monetization, traffic generation, search engine optimization, WordPress (the software we use) and all related topics to… guess what… blogging profits!

Let’s start with 10 links we found through our BlogRush widget, so as also to demonstrate whether the BlogRush widget really shows links relevant to our topics and whether these blogs also display the BlogRush widget. Found via BlogRush:

It’s Monday, the start of a new week. BloggingProfits wish you profitable days ahead!

BloggingProfits joins BlogRush

BlogRush

So I visited JohnChowDotCom this morning and he has a post about BlogRush, which is another way to get traffic to your blog.

John writes:

Let?s face it, without traffic it?s pretty hard for a blog to make any money. The more traffic you have, the more money you make. Everyone wants more traffic and we?re always looking for more ways to get it.

BlogRush provides a widget you install on your blog which flashes the latest posts on blogs related to your topics. For every page load on your blog that displays the BlogRush widget, your blog posts are displayed the same number of times on other blogs that use BlogRush — these are called syndication credits. This is the same idea behind the traffic exchange networks of old,but of course this is more “high tech.”

Described as a “Cooperative Syndication Network,” BlogRush is the brainchild of Internet entrepreneur, John Reese. Mr. Reese is the founder and CEO of Income.com.

From the About page of BlogRush:

BlogRush is a “Cooperative Syndication Network” that rewards its users for their contributions to the network — from the impressions they provide of the BlogRush Widget to the referral of other users through 10 ‘generations’ of activity and the impressions of the widget that they provide. BlogRush was designed to be incredibly viral and to provide its users with tremendous distribution leverage to receive exposure for their blog content (onto related content blogs) that they could never achieve on their own; at least without a massive advertising budget.

Related to BlogRush, Andy Roberts writes this review of BlogRush as compared with blog traffic exchange networks such as MyBlogLog and Romlet.

Another blogger, Abhiskek Tiwari, calls it a “A Pyramid Traffic Scheme For Bloggers.

BloggingProfits will install the BlogRush widget and I will post updates about our experience with BlogRush.

Google Analytics added to BloggingProfits

To better analyze traffic as we start BloggingProfits, we have decided to use Google Analytics.

Google Analytics

Feature and benefits of Google Analytics:

Google Analytics helps you find out what keywords attract your most desirable prospects, what advertising copy pulled the most responses, and what landing pages and content make the most money for you.

Google Analytics runs on Urchin software, “which analyzes traffic for one or more websites and provides accurate and easy-to-understand reports on your visitors – where they come from, how they use your site, what converts them into customers, and much more.”.

As we speak of website analytics, an interesting development is reported by DownloadSquad — Microsoft is launching its own web analytics tool.

Brad Linder says the Microsoft analytics tool codenamed Gatineau will be at least as powerful. Here is the link to request an invite to the beta.

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