Category Archives: Blogs & RSS

talking specifically about blogs and rss.

New Book On Using WordPress for Business Now Available – “Top 10 Tricks to Conquer Your Niche With WordPress”

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Updated for 2010/2011, “Top 10 Tricks to Conquer Your Niche With WordPress” is now available online for purchase.

The book explains how to use the popular blogging tool WordPress for business: making it work as a regular website instead of a blog, how to optimize the text and site itself to maximize search engine impact and gain visitors, and everything that needs to be done to make an easy to maintain website.

Revised continuously since 2005, the latest edition is almost fours times the size of the previous volume, with new content on the latest WordPress 3, as well as beginner sections on topics such as domain name selection and what to look for when choosing web hosting.

You can visit Amazon to purchase the fifth edition of “Top 10 Tricks to Conquer Your Niche With WordPress”.

Starting a Career in Photography with Your own ‘Lenzr’

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Like photo-taking – but not earning anything? Maybe it’s because you haven’t been ‘seen’ enough around the Internet.

The Internet is a very visual medium, and so if you take pictures for a living (or hope to) the ideal way to get started is to get your photos out there and seen.

And although you can get your own Flickr account and upload them, it’s kinda like putting a blog out there – doesn’t mean anyone will visit.

Another way however, is to showcase your work where the traffic is – and an easy way is by entering photo contests.

For example, I was looking at Lenzr today, which is currently advertising three contests:

  • Best Gourmet Food. Fellow bloggers The Wine Ladies are building traffic to their wine blog with a contest featuring a photo on ‘the best meal’. Capture an image that cries out ‘delicious’ and you might win.
  • Kids in Action. As the page points out, it’s riding, jumping etc (the sponsor, a Toronto dentist, obviously cares about kids).
  • Everyday Tangled Web. I like this one the best: a photo expressing the tangled that is our wired lives, but artistically. A mess is one thing – but a pretty mess? Not coincidentally, the sponsor of this contest is a supplier of an office phone system that will help you ‘untangle’ your life.

Enter one – or enter all. The advantage of contests like this is many fold:

  • Obviously in this case, there is the recognition if you win. Tack that to your resume and improve your ‘brand recognition’.
  • The contest is socially run – that is, viewers vote on the best. So even if you don’t win, your photo gets looked at by a lot of people – and that exposure can easily beat a single website of your own.
  • You get practice. As they say, writers get better by writing – and photographers get better by taking pictures.
  • It’s great discipline. Sure, anyone can take a picture, and if a photo can be anything or everything, then everyone can take a shot or two that’s passable. But to make a tangle of wires appealing? That takes talent and discipline, since you likely will have to stage a very specific shot to win.
  • And of course, there’s prizes for the winner – each contest has a different one.

If you’re starting out, and you’re committed to making a life around photography, contests like this are a boon to getting your portfolio out there. And if you also score a win, your name and recognition can help cement your ‘brand’ further.

…of course, even if you don’t plan a career in photography, being able to say ‘there’s my photo’ is a great conversation starter – and a perfect invitation to explain more about your interests.

Comments: Sometimes The Real Meat Of A Blog Post

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I was yawning through a article on the perils of running a home business when I decided to read the comments:

What a piece of total fluff this story is… it ignores the most challenging problems faced by people adjusting from “workin for the man” to running their own show.

The commenter then listed items like “Closing time” (keeping clients at bay during off hours), “Taxes” (not putting enough away to pay them, “Focus” (avoiding distractions), and “Cash flow” (suffering without a regular paycheck).

To put it bluntly: in this short reply, that commenter did more for the article’s focus than the original writer!

Now normally I don’t pick on other bloggers (part of my Golden Rule: “Treat other thin-skinned writers as my thin skin would wish to be treated”). But in this case, the author is #1:anonymous, and #2:paid for his/her work. With the paycheck should come some responsibility – and I think it’s a shame when the commenter is more informative that the writer.

Now not every blogger is like this – after all, if a blog is uninteresting, people leave, so it’s only paid writers that can consistently write bland. But I often find that comments can be quite informative – like this example.

Sadly, while someone takes home a paycheck, the writer I’d like to thank won’t – and to the best of my knowledge, no one has successfully parlayed ‘blog comment writer’ into a paying profession (ethically, at least). But still they soldier on – and I for one appreciate it for enhancing the web, sometimes with more quality than the original writers.

So to “Losing it” of Aldergrove, BC, I appreciate the info. Keep it coming.

Join And Win – Can Contests Build Up Your Blog Traffic?

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Success breeds success – and one example of that is the ‘JohnCow.com‘ competition on their blog.

And no, this isn’t JohnChow.com, which makes about $30,000 a month – this is a site making a play off the name (and possibly getting traffic from the misspelling).

Nonetheless, I’ve been watching the site for some time – and watched the $3,000 in prizes rise to $27,000 currently.

So it works – and the question is, can YOU use a similar system to succeed?

Frankly, contests are good way to get attention.

And as the attention comes in, people offer products to get noticed. In the end, it becomes self-perpetuating – after all, you MIGHT subscribe for $3,000 – but how could you NOT subscribe when the prizes are closer to 10x that amount?

However, it can get tricky:

  • Google takes a dim view of anyone ‘buying’ links – it remains to be seen how they feel about people posting for a ‘chance’ only, but it’s a risky way to get a significant portion of your site’s links.
  • If you start the contest, and no one joins, you still have to pay out – so plan accordingly.
  • The ‘sweet smell of success’ comes when the ball starts gathering speed – which means if the prizes don’t increase, the site may not gain momentum, and the contest won’t do as much for you.
  • Prizes of course must match the audience. I was at a music site where the prizes was a guitar – but if they had instead offered makeup, they may have had fewer people go ahead (although I’m sure many would still have subscribed).
  • Lookieloos are a problem. Frankly, if people subscribe just for a contest, how soon after it ends do they unsubscribe? The end result may be a short burst of subscribers, then a mass exodus.
  • Contests need rules. In this litigious society, running a contest incorrectly can make someone mad – and cost you if they have a lawyer on tap. So making sure the contest runs legally means a little extra effort, and cost.

I’ll keep watching this to see how it fares – but remember that your ‘chance’ is one of many, and so visit (and sign up) because you enjoy the information primarily – not for a guaranteed ‘win’.

High Priced Blogs?

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I was reading a blog post today in which the author talked about the high price of blogs and how expensive they are to sell (he noted that blogs regularly sell at twenty times the monthly revenue).

I feel the problem with trying to sell a blog is that you’re risking new ownership taking over the blog and hoping to keep it to the same level as the previous authors. Drop off from that level, and revenues drop too.

Of course for a collaborative blog, this may not be a problem, as you might be able to keep the writers, or find writers with similar styles.

It’s especially difficult though when you have a blog that is hosted by one particular person – especially someone having a very unique writing style and voice.

An example of this, the blogger mentioned JohnCow.com (not JohnChow.com), offered for $50,000 on SitePoint. This site has a very unique look and style, meaning it’s going to be very difficult for something else to just take it over and continue with it. And with a site going for 20x monthly revenue, you’re looking to keep up and running without interruption!

(And by the way, if – and it’s a big if – this factor holds true, this would mean that JohnCow.com, even with its unique writing style and look is only earning about $2,500 monthly. Contrast that with the original JohnChow.com, which recently posted $30,000 in monthly income – or $600,000 for the blog using the 20x calculation).

I’d debate whether 20 times is fair value – but it does highlight that if you expect the blog to continue to make money at the current rate, you’re looking at almost 2 years of blogging at the current income level to pay for the blog itself. I think that’s rather unreasonable, especially for something as mercurial as online websites.

Of course, I could be swayed – being offered 20 times the value of this blog’s advertising revenue certainly sounds better than two or three times!