Archive for the ‘basics’ Category

Reading Websites During Your Work

Monday, July 6th, 2009

A new study found that many americans read websites when they should be working. This study found that Americans spent more than 893 million minutes reading websites – or approximately 15 million hours – on entertainment news sites, with 44 percent of the total time spent reading websites at work.

I’ve noticed in my own traffic that plenty of people are checking my websites during the hours that they should be working. However, who hasn’t been tempted to check out entertainment websites rather than work? I am guilty of multitasking even while I write this site. It is simplier so easy to check out CNN, YouTube, your email rather than just straight working.

One area that has grown besides just reading websites at work, is watching websites while at work. The study found that the number of videos viewed growing 53 percent in the past year.

Is internet reading websites while working hindering work performance? Definately. However, do as I do. Take a break and rather than multi task, try doing one thing at a time.

Reasons Wordpress is Better than Blogger

Monday, February 11th, 2008

So here I am writing you from Blogger, yet after making the switch to Wordpress, I can give you more than just a few reasons why wordpress is better than blogger.

1. Host it yourself
When you use blogger, you rely on blogger. If blogger’s website is down or not working probably, you can’t update your blog. On the other hand, Wordpress is hosted completely on your own server. All that matters is that your website hosting is up and running. You can still post even if the entire Google network crashes.

2. Millions of Widgets
The best thing I’ve noticed after my switch to Wordpress is the widget support. Widgets allow you to add code to your website without actually touching any code. Unlike blogger, where I manually go in and touch code (I use bloggers first version). Though the new version of blogger does offer widgets, the amount of widgets does not nearly compare to that of Wordpress. I’ve easily installed related post widgets, favorite post widgets, as well as widgets designed to increase subscribers.

3. User Login
After upgrading Sampleaday.com to Wordpress, I’ve been able to offer users their own login accounts. This means users are able top easily contribute to the site, making it more of a community page rather than just me writing. Wordpress allows you to create your own login to allow users to self register themselves. Though blogger does offer the option to self register users, but this takes extra time and effort.

4. Better SEO Management
The tools regarding Wordpress SEO management is limitless in comparison to blogger. Blogger simply doesn’t have the same tools or plugins that are currently available for wordpress.

Blogger’s Advantages
Though I do recommend starting a blog with Wordpress over Blogger, there are actually many advantages to Blogger. For one, Google has optimized Blogger for its own search engine. Secondly, Blogger is much easier to install and manage than Wordpress. With Blogger, you just register for an account and everything is already setup. Point and click installation.

Coming up with Good Blog Topics

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

Coming up with new topics to write about can really be one of the hardest parts of blogging. When I am completely lost I like to look through my keywords on Google Analytics and see how people found my page. From there I look through the list and see if anyone found my website from a topic I didn’t write about.

Google Analytics
This tool does an excellent job tracking website traffic. It shows how people found your website, from what websites they came from and what keywords they used.

What to Write About?
Looking down the list at number 119 someone find my website through the keywords free website without banner ads. So tomorrow I am going to write about website hosting without banner ads. *TIP* The title of your bar are going to be the major keywords for your post. I am going to call tomorrow’s post “free website without banner ads.”


What I Learned From Blogging

Tuesday, August 7th, 2007

1. Blogging is difficult. It can consume hours of your day just to write one post. This requires a lot of research and a lot of time writing.

2. Better posts = more traffic. Having more traffic means more money made from your blog. Google Adsense works so that the more traffic you receive, the more potential you have for making money.

3. Being consistent is the key. By writing everyday I have been able to maintain a constant level of users. When I stopped writing on one my blogs, the users stopped, slowly my traffic went down to zero.

4. Making any money beyond paying for hosting costs is difficult. Remember Adsense won’t even send you a check until you reach $100. This has to also be reached according to their rules of conduct. Do not click on your own ads!

5. Besides for all the struggling that goes into blogging, its fun. I have learned a lot about internet marketing and how to drive traffic to my blog. Even if I don’t ever make good money from this blog, at least I have learned how hard it is to get users and the steps that go into it.