Monthly Archives: January 2005

On Blogal Diarrhea (or, Blog in Mouth Disease)

Posted on by
Reply

I talk about this a fair amount, but bloggers are never talking into a great empty void. There are people reading their words – and if they are extremely fortunate, a lot of readers.

But sometimes they’re not so fortunate.

One person who found that out the hard way was Joe, from Edinburgh, Scotland. A store employee in Waterstone’s (a book store), he was recently fired for having posted sarcastic remarks about his store, under a ‘gross misconduct’ charge.

Now whether he was in the right or wrong can spawn nearly endless debates: free speech vs. company policy, satire vs. libel, etc. But the end result is nobody wins – he’s out of a job and Waterstone’s will no doubt come under some flack for the firing.

Another example closer to home was the self-titled ‘the butcher of mayfair‘, who made some unflattering remarks about the U.S. president just before election day – and that in turn got him Secret Service agents at his front door. Now he writes about how awful it is to have an F.B.I. dossier…

Again, it’s not about who’s right and wrong here, but the fact that both sides lose – one fellow now has an FBI file he doesn’t want, and the President has given people another reason to be annoyed (not that I think the latter is going to lose any sleep over that).

Of course, saying something and paying for it later isn’t new – it’s just the speed of delivery has increased. As we saw in the past with email, so too now – it’s just too easy to write, hit the send button, and then think if it was suitable.

Blogs amplify that even more. Now that same missive doesn’t go out to one person with the potential for leaking out – it’s available immediately to the whole world, warts and all.

I hear about a lot of bloggers that ask if anyone’s listening. When you think you’re talking into a vacuum, it’s tempting to raise your voice, or shout – but don’t.

Even if no one reads your words in an hour, or two, or even a week, they will when you least want it – at that job interview, when you’re bidding on a contract, when you’re meeting the future in-laws (who, as luck would have it, are cooler than most and DO use the Internet).

Take time with the words. If you have something interesting to say, then by all means say it. But if it cuts too close, or may offend someone, or could get you into trouble – is it worth it?

Let me repeat – once you publish online, there’s no going back.

So make it count – or don’t say it.

Banner Ad Advertising

Posted on by
Reply

Many people seem to think that banner ads are long gone as a viable option for advertising. Not so, says I – and it’s not just because I offer banner advertising on all my sites.

The fact is, banner ads are a simple way to get your message out visually. Even Google, which started with text ads, now offers a banner ad option – proof that this is still a good thing.

So then, when ARE banner ads good?

  • If you want exposure. There’s a really annoying HP ad on eBay that stares at me all the time. I’ve never clicked on it, never wanted to – but it always has my attention. For some companies, that’s enough.
  • If the price is right. One benefit of all the nay saying is that banner ad rates are low – and likely going lower. As the cost drops, value increases.
  • If you use per-click. If you pay by the click, then you don’t care how often a banner displays – more importantly, you get free exposure while waiting for those clicks to register.
  • If you want to try something different. When the text-style banners came out, they were a novelty – and likely the first people got good results, and excellent return on their advertising dollar. Come up with something new, and who knows?
  • If your target market responds visually. Advertising exotic animals or designs, like art? A picture does speak a thousand words.

So don’t dismiss banner ads right off – and if you’ve got one, visit me and let’s get it showing on BigBizBlog.

Moving Your WordPress Blog to a New Directory

Posted on by

In a previous article I mentioned that you should carefully think about your blog’s placement. For instance, do I want people typing http://www.BigBizBlog.com/blog/?

But it’s just not aesthetics – search engines get used to directory structure, and the very worst thing you can do is move files around on them (at least, if you want them to index your site for those billions of people hungering for your product).

So here’s my blog rule of thumb:

If you start a website and your domain name has the word ‘blog’ in it, you’re doing a blog, pure and simple!

This came to me again while reviewing my weekend’s work – oBoyBlog is actually located in a subdirectory. Despite being a site about a blog, the blog wasn’t front and center in the directory layout.

So I decided to fix it – here then are the tips for moving WordPress to another directory on the same domain:

  • Back up all the files from you old blog directory (in my case, ‘blog’).
  • Copy them to your new location (in my case the root directory).
  • Run the old setup and login, then change the location of the blog (‘General Options’, ‘WordPress address (URI):’ and ‘Blog address (URI):’).
  • Log out of the blog, and log in at the new location (eg from http://YOURBLOG.com/blog/wp-login.php to http://YOURBLOG.com/wp-login.php).
  • If you’re using PermaLinks, make sure your .htaccess file is updated with any necessary changes.
  • cleanup the old directory.

Make sure that whenever you make edits to your blog that your widgets and plugins such as social buttons, WP Cache, polling software, and others of your favorite plugins are saved.

By the way, that cleanup step is optional – in fact, you could place an index.html file in there so old visitors are told about the new location – if you want, add a met refresh tag so they automatically get sent over (I’ve done one for oboyblog.com):


<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="5; URL=http://www.YOURSITE.com/">

One detail – because I already had an index.html file in the destination directory, I had a few moments wondering why my install didn’t take. If you have that problem, remember to remove it.

So the move was straightforward, and I’m up and running in the new location. But despite being relatively easy to do, remember if the site is devoted to a blog, put the blog in the main directory – and save the hassle.

The Real Secret of Making Money on the Internet

Posted on by
Reply

Put away all those eBooks, and courses, and reports – and hold onto your credit card until you’ve heard this, because I’m going to give you the secret of doing business on the Net…

Are you ready?

Traffic.

If you want to sell something, people have to be visiting – and viewing.

There’s variations of course – with Google AdWords, you can pay for the privilege of sending traffic to your site – but it still is traffic.

Affiliate programs? Traffic – unless your affiliates are going to take the visitors and sell directly to them (which really makes them distributors, a whole different ball game).

Traffic, traffic, traffic.

And how do you get traffic?

That’s where the eBooks come in. One suggests targeting sites to popular keywords on the net; another suggests doing affiliate sites; another suggests mini sites (a page or two of sales copy). And the search engines say quality content gets you noticed…

So I’ll chime in with my opinion – you have to do something you enjoy, and that you can work with over the long term. Because you probably will – even on the Internet, things can move slow, including businesses making money.

Pick something you enjoy, and get it up and running on the Internet. Make it part time, keep your day job, and nurture it. If it really is interesting to you, you’ll likely find it interesting to others – and with hundreds of millions of web travellers you’ll get your traffic.

…and then you’ll benefit from those eBooks and courses.

3 Blogs Set Up in 3 Hours?

Posted on by
Reply

This Friday (31st) I started an interesting project. I was talking to my Dad, and the subject of blogging came up.

Although he has web sites already, I suggested he look into a blog, if only to see what the fuss was about. I even offered to set them up and maintain them.

We narrowed it down to 3 things he was interested in (and felt he could write about easily): World War 2 planes, and horses (the third, gambling, will have to wait).

For the third one, I decided on an eBay themed site for myself, and then it was time – how fast could I set them up?

For the most part, it was about 3 hours, without extensive customization. Like an assembly line, things went fast – install a mySQL database for each, do the basic install, add a design from Alex King’s listings, adjust for my unique needs (I added the link spam control), and that was the basics, ready to go.

Of course, then the tweaking went on. Logos and color adjustments, and little adjustments here and there to make them more suitable (for example the Vintage plane site was redone in Royal Air Force colors). I also put banner ads in place, so the traffic wasn’t going to waste.

While I worked on other items, I found a bit of time to tinker with these blogs, finally finishing them tonight. The end result – one vintage aircraft blog, one equestrian blog, and one eBay blog.

I hope to track how well this goes for him in the next few weeks, but it’s quite positive so far. As the content builds (as well as traffic), I hope to expand this into targeted advertising – and eventually money for him.