When it comes to blogging, there are some decisions to be made related to our domain names. First of all, we have to decide where we want to host our website. For example, if we decide to host our site on Blogspot, then our domain name will look like this: domain.blogspot.com. On the other hand, if we choose a custom domain, then we can completely customize our domain name. We will also not be forced to use “blogspot”, “wordpress”, or any other word in our blog address. Custom domain cost money, but some sites can teach you how to have an extra income to cover the costs of your domains.
Being hosted on a custom domain name is generally considered to be a better solution, but why are there still many successful blogs that are hosted on Blogspot? I believe that they did not switch to a custom domain name, because they did not want to lose their domain age and back links. If that happened, this would mean that from a SEO perspective they would have to start from the beginning. Since accumulating links can take a long time, changing a domain is not an easy decision to make.
Another aspect to consider may be growing registration fees. The registration fees for domain names are generally getting higher, as VeriSign quite often raises the prices. VeriSign raised the prices at least two times since 2006, so some analysts are getting alarmed by this trend. I think that the prices are still relatively low, as the cost of hosting is the major expense for webmasters. This especially applies to those with a lot of traffic and downloadable resources such as videos, audio, and software. VerisSign claims that the .com and .net infrastructures are continually being fortified against more sophisticated cyberattacks, so let us hope that this company will spend the extra money it is receiving on security.
The decision whether to switch to a custom domain will ultimately be up to you, so consider all facts before making a final decision.
Blog, Tech, Web
If you like implementing videos on your blog, you might be interested in the feature I am going to discuss. Some time ago Adsense introduced a feature called video units that allows its users to embed a YouTube video on one’s blog. This allows to make money from ads being displayed along with the videos.
If the videos you embedded on your website are relevant to the topic of your blog, this feature will allow you to make some extra cash, while at the same time not distract your visitors from other content. You can be always sure that the ads displayed will be relevant to the video and they will be non-intrusive. Additionally, you will be able to blend your YouTube videos into your blog by customizing the color and layout, as well as choosing from a few different player sizes.
Of course, whether you will really benefit from videos on your blog depends on your blog’s niche. Some blogs can greatly benefit from YouTube videos like, for example, entertainment blogs. It might not be that easy to find suitable videos for a niche like blogging. However, since there are millions of videos on YouTube, I am sure that every webmaster will be able to find some videos worth embedding on his blog. There are many videos that can either teach something valuable or simply video that are entertaining. Whenever you implement a video on your blog make sure that your website loads quite fast. Many webmasters make a mistake of adding to many elements to their blog that take too long to load.
Biz, Blog, Finance, Health, Personal, Web
A lot of bloggers struggle to post on a daily basis on their blog. However, you do not need to post on a daily basis to be a successful blogger. What is important is that you should post on a regular basis, and that you should find your blogging rhythm. Here are a few tips which should guide you in the right direction:
-Consider your niche and type of blog. How often are your competitors posting? The ideal posting frequency might be once per week or even a few times per day. The posting frequency might depend on your niche. If you are a news blogs then you might need to post many posts per day.
-Be consistent. Try to establish a consistent posting rhythm, so that your readers will know when to anticipate your next post. You may decide, for example, to post on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
-Start out slow. Make sure you do not put unnecessary burden on yourself. It might take some time before you will get used to writing posts every day. Once you will be more experienced it will be a lot easier for you to write posts.
-Monitor your readerships response. Do your visitors enjoy your current posting frequency? Look for any signs you might not be posting often enough. On the other hand, maybe you are posting too much and it is hard for most of your readers to keep up?
You will have to make the decision yourself, so take into account all of the aspects.
Blog, Web
From time to time, I like visiting a particular blog that I could describe as very successful. This blog mainly discusses the topic of blogging. What I found interesting is that in one of his articles he listed all of the things he has never done to promote his blog. These included no feedcount, no guest blogging, no guest posts on blog, no contests, no paid advertising, no incentives (this means no eBooks, free reviews, or gifts of any sort), no Digg frontpages, and no frequent posting. This was a very surprising information as it shows that he did not use many different methods to promote his blog, yet he has a lot of visitors. I still wonder however how he achieved such a success. It seems that there is no consensus on how to achieve a large number of visitors. However, there are some things you can work on to increase the number of visitors. I believe that organizing and maintaining a blog is not an easy task, and that is why I want to give you some SEO advice:
-Optimize your blog properly. Your blog should be optimized first for users, then for search engines, and later possibly for monetizing it. My advice is that you look for a template that will have a white background.
-Change your permalinks so that they look as follows: /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/. This will make your permalinks more search engine friendly, and visitors searching for particular keywords will be directed to your post.
-Manage RSS feeds. RSS is a very good way to help your content read the data from your blog. I personally am quite familiar with FeedBurner.com; however, if you want you can also try OnlyWire.com and Technorati.com. To let the search engines know that you posted a message on your blog, use such free services like PingOMatic.com and Pingoat.com.
Blog, Health, Personal, Web
Every webmaster knows the importance of link building. Without at least a few links linking to the website, it is doomed to fail. The reason links from other websites are so important is that they can affect the website’s pager rank, traffic, as well as many other statistics. I have always thought that link building services are services that can help webmasters make their websites more popular. Even if I try to make my website popular on my own, I know that I can additionally ask somebody else to help me make it even more popular. I also want to always make sure that links pointing to my blog are quality links that will not do more harm than good.
Main Category, Web
When it comes to Massive Multiplayer Online Games, it seems that many of them are in the beta stage for an extended period of time. This especially applies to Korean games, as Western games are usually in the beta stage only while the developers work hard on the game. They usually keep the game private in a sense that they only allow a limited amount of testers to participate in the beta tests.
The situation is completely different when we take a look at Korean games. Those games are officially in the beta stages while they allow everybody to play it, and even after they officially launch. This means that many Korean games are getting released even though they are not polished enough. Unfortunately, many Asian games fall into this category. Many observers speculate that the reason behind extending this beta phase is to have an excuse for poor quality of many of those games. According to gamers, if everyone is allowed to play a game, it should not be considered to be a game in beta. Before a product is released and being sold, the developers should ensure that everyone is satisfied with the overall quality. Gamers will not trust developers that release unpolished games. That is just a simple fact and it is in the best interest of game developers to ensure that all products that they release are polished. If a game is released to the general public, then it does not look very professional if the developers uses an excuse the the game is still in beta.
Tech, Web
One of the most basic rights is the right of free speech. However, it seems that some countries want to censor the blogosphere. Do not worry, if you live in United States or Europe, you have nothing to worry about. However, for all of the Russians or Chinese this might be a real problem. From time to time we hear some news about the desire of these countries to censor the blogosphere. As an example, I can give you a discussion held in Russia some time ago about creating a Russian computer network, one that would be separate from the Internet. It would also at large be much easier for the authorities to control. This is mostly due to political reasons. However, as a blogger I just want to say that I strongly believe in the right of free speech, and I think that such behavior is unacceptable. I think that free media is very important, and that other bloggers will agree with me as well. Officials from some countries argue that they do not want various websites to spread lies about their countries, or political system. However, citizens should have the right to express themselves, even if for some reason they are not correct. The great thing about the Internet is that it is easy for anyone to express his opinions. One of the best ways to do it is to have a blog and that is why blogging is becoming more popular with each passing day.
Blog, Web
Sites like Flickr have been growing in popularity for the last few years. Taking photos and uploading them to sites like Flickr has been a hobby of many enthusiasts. Unfortunately, some people try to take advantage out of it, and are selling pictures taken from Flickr on sites like eBay. Usually, they claim that they are their own, which of course is not true. It is not easy to identify such people, and even if you are the one who took the pictures, it will not be easy for you to track each photograph you have made. Even if you are using some tool to detect duplicate images, it is easy to change the size of the picture by slightly cutting the bottom or right/left side of it. This way it should be impossible to track whether your photos are being posted anywhere else. Your best bet is to watermark your pictures.
Of course, if you are taking pictures simply for fun, then you are not going to lose any money because someone is selling your pictures. If would be a completely different situation if you were a professional photographer because people who downloaded your pictures from Flickr could undercut your prices very easily. That is because they would have no costs associated with downloading your pictures. I am not saying that sites like Flickr are a bad thing, but I am simply reminding everyone that it is easy for people to take someone’s work and claim it as their own.
Tech, Web
Wikipedia is currently the king of all online encyclopedias. Until now, there were no real competitors which would undermine that. Naturally, there were some sites which tried to repeat the success of Wikipedia. However, they either lacked funding, had the wrong motivation, or were simply released too late. Currently, the largest competitor of Wikipedia is Google’s Knol. I believe that Knol might achieve a big success because it is backed up by Google. Google might implement ads on Knol, and it might even share part of the revenue with the creators of pages. This could bring a lot of users from Wikipedia to Knol, especially those who hope to be paid for their hard work.
In some countries, sites like Wikipedia are very controversial. Until very recently, Chinese Internet users were prohibited from seeing some of the Wikipedia pages. This was due to the fact that they were considered to be inappropriate by the Chinese government. The site has been reported to be unblocked in several major cities in this country, including its capital city. As China was hosting Olympics in August 2008, the International Olympic Committee was urging the Chinese to give free access to Internet to everybody before the Games started. Wikipedia, as well as other sites, are still having a hard time in China. Not such a long time ago, a person who is probably China’s number one dissident, was jailed for three and a half years in prison. It was stated that it was because of publishing “inappropriate” articles on the Internet.
Biz, Web
Do you sometimes wonder whether participating in contests is a good idea or just a waste of time? So far I have participated in quite a few contests. Different contests have different entry requirements. I am not going to write about those contests that require entrants to pay a certain amount of money, because I do not think participants should be charged for such things.
The contests I am usually participating in do not have high requirements, although the exception was one contest where ten highest ranked posts written by ten different bloggers were winning an award. All of the winners of that particular contest put a lot of work into writing their posts.
Generally, I am more interested to participate in contests that will give me something valuable for my blog, like a link back, or directed traffic. I especially like if the organizer promises to link back to each participant just for entering the event.
I am almost always avoiding contests that have high entry requirements, and want me to do at least a few things like leave a comment, subscribe to RSS feed, write a post, and so on. Additionally, if there are many participants, and there will be only one winner, then do not get your hopes up too high.
To sum up, I would like to say that the right contests can be really great. Simply participate in contests you are interested in, and make sure you have a chance to win.
Blog, Web