Top 10 mistakes new bloggers make

Written by Kevin Muldoon from Blog Themes Club

I’ve started to notice the same mistakes recurring by new bloggers. Infact, most of these mistakes are applicable to everyone who starts a website for the first time. Unfortunately, there is a learning curve with this kind of thing and the majority of new bloggers will only learn from making these mistakes. Very few will realise that they are actually making mistakes until further down the line.

I have decided to list what i consider to be the top 10 mistakes that new bloggers make. I’m sure many of you reading this have made some of these mistakes but this is nothing to be ashamed about, i myself made some of these mistakes when i first started in web development. As as i said, with a lot of these mistakes you only seem to learn about it by making the mistake yourself.
Anyways, enough rabbling, heres my list of the top 10 mistakes new bloggers make in no particular order. Enjoy
Repeating what other bloggers are saying – I believe that if you have something to say about a subject you should write about it on your blog however i’ve noticed a lot of new bloggers do nothing but just echo and repeat what other bloggers in their genre have said. It’s good to give your opinion on a subject but if you only post about topics which began on other blogs your blog is never gonna be successful.

No Opinion / Scared to rock the boat – A lot of bloggers are scared to go against the crowd and take a stance that is against what everyone is saying. If you disagree about something then say so in your posts

Link Trains – Bottom line, there is no quick and easy way to get traffic to your site other than writing good articles on a consistant basis. If a traffic scheme seems sounds to good to be true it most probably is.

Spamming other blogs with comments – So many new bloggers think that it’s a good idea to cheat their way onto the top commentators list of a blog by posting lots of small and pointless comments just to get their number of comments up on the blog. This won’t make you too popular with the author of the blog and may even discourage others from reading your blog. For someone to want to visit your blog from a comment you need to write something worth reading! A good comment is an indication of a good author.

Spending more time commentating that writing posts – If your launching a new blog, spending some time commentating on other blogs is a great way to bring your site to the attention of people. However, readers need a reason to come back to your site ie. you need to keep writing good content. I see so many bloggers who are spending more time commentating on other peoples blogs than writing on their own one!

Promoting their blog before its ready – This is a very common mistake which i see time and time again. I really don’t believe that a new blogger should do any major promoting until the blog is about 2 months old. You clearly still need to do some promoting at the start but more time should spent on writing posts. It’s like advertising a new shop before its got any stock in to sell!

Blogging about too many subjects – The top blogs on the net are all focused on one topic of genre. So many new bloggers are blogging about a very wide range of subjects. For example, ive read blogs that post about blogging, music, their pet dog, movies, computer games, their favourite sports team etc. It’s hard to buld a steady readership with categories and posts so random.

Erratic posting frequency – It’s very important to update your blog on a regular and consistent basis. Posting like crazy for a while and then not posting for a week is a sure way to lose you readers.

Trying to make money instead of just concentrating on running a good blog – Too many bloggers are putting all their efforts into making money instead of trying to write good posts and develop a good blog. Dont worry about the money aspect at the start of a blogs life, if you build a successful blog the money will come with it in time.

Expecting to have a successful blog within 3 months – It takes time, a lot of time, to build a successul blog. I’ve noticed a lot of new bloggers lose interest in writing after a few months. The time it takes for a blog to be successul isn’t always the same but if you continue to update it and work hard on the blog it will do well. It’s a hard long slog but it’s worth it. Don’t kid yourself that you can get to the top so quickly – Rome wasn’t built in a day

source: http://www.bloggingtips.com/2007/06/30/top-10-mistakes-new-bloggers-make/

How to Lose Your Subscribers

by Praval Singh
in Blogging Tips

As a blogger, keeping up with the subscriber count is one’s great desire. Good traffic, large number of RSS and email subscribers and a lower bounce rate is what a pro-blogger needs to run a great show. But, there are instances wherein blogs begin to lose their subscribers for some reason or the other.


Today, we take on a few reasons to give you an understanding on how does a blog lose its subscribers willingly or unwillingly;

Many bloggers lose their subscribers because of the Feedburner widget they install on their blog. There have been many reasons of losing your subscribers with Feedburner, the main being false plug-ins and unsupported upgradations. Cases such as that of Tom Raftery are actually hard to explain, but the end result is the loss of subscribers.
There have been instances when a site has been sold a number of times in a very short duration. That is, the ownership of a site has changed. Putting up a sigh on the site such as “For Sale” results in the loss of reader’s confidence. Consequently, the subscribers tend to lessen making a famous blog into an infamous one.
Irregular schedule of posting. Subscribers always have a particular expectation in mind about the number of posts in a day or week. Playing with this frequency results in loss of subscribers.
If the content that gets published on your site is old, plagiarized and shabby, it does not take much time to lose subscribers.
Falsifying facts and figures to gain false popularity is another way of breaking people’s trust for what you write.
Writing about topics which are no where close to what your site is all about often confuses subscribers. For example, if an affiliate marketing site starts writing about women health and beauty, it won’t make sense to subscribers resulting in a loss of numbers.
If you provide content to subscribers which they don’t value, chances are that you would soon lose your credibility and the subscribers too. Remember, greatest bloggers write content which is of value to readers and thus the word of mouth spreads. Content is the king!
Putting up a feed which focuses too much on advertisements makes your regular subscribers lose interest, unless you’re blog is all about rocket science!
Writing about topics or people which is not in the true spirit of blogging makes a dent in the number of your subscribers. For example, a true blogger is one who is able to publicize or promote his blog by not calling others’ work bad. One shall follow the Internet etiquettes.
The web is full of thousands of reasons for losing your subscribers but these are a few largely observed reasons.

Dear Bloggers and webmaster, remember that it does not take much time to lose your subscribers. Put in some sincere efforts to keep the number of subscribers of your site increasing day by day and try not losing them. Keep blogging!

source: http://www.profitblogger.com/lose-your-subscribers/

6 Tips to Attract More Comments on Your Blog

6 Tips to Attract More Comments on Your Blog
by Gobala Krishnan

in Blogging Tips

Do you ever wonder how to attract more comments from your readers to your blog posts? Blogs are unique because they enable writers and readers of a blog to add comments which in itself add to the unique content a blog provides. After conducting some detailed research, I discovered 6 tips that you can use to attract more comments to the posts you write on your blog. The 6 tips are as follows:-

Interact with your readers – When readers leave comments on your posts, make sure you reply back and ask questions to continue a discussion that your readers started.
Ask questions at the end of your posts - This will enable your readers to start a discussion that could end up involving many other readers.
Make it easy for readers to comment - Do make sure that your comments section is set up such that readers don’t have to go through a long process to register. This sometimes deters readers from commenting.
Notify commenters of new comments: A Subscribe to Comments plugin enables commenters on your blog posts to check a box before commenting and get an e-mail notification of further comments related to that particular post. This will encourage readers to come back and take part in the conversation.
Reward your commenters – You can encourage commenters to increase comments on your blog by rewarding them. You can do this by using the Show Top Commentators WordPress Plugin.
Use plugins that attract more comments – There are a couple of other plugins in addition to the Show Top Commentators WordPress and Subscribe to Comments that you can make use of to attract more comments from your readers. These are Comment Relish and Brian’s Threaded Comments. The Comment Relish plugin sends a thank-you email to your blog’s first time commentators. This will surely encourage them to come back again and comment regularly. Brian’s Threaded plugin adds a ‘Reply to this comment’ link to every comment which means, your comment is placed directly under the comment you replied to. This plugin make comments easier to follow and also prevents readers from scrolling down to look for answers to their questions.
These 6 tips will surely help you get your readers to add more comments to your blog posts and at the same time provide you with more unique content which in turn will keep the search engines spidering your blogs more often.

source: http://www.profitblogger.com/6-tips-to-attract-more-comments-on-your-blog/

Visitors know how to improve Your Blog: 7 tips to make them speak

Who is the best judge of your blog? For whom you spend most of the time reading, browsing web and thinking of a new killer post? Yes, the audience - your blog readers. For instance, check this article which says a simple, hard-hitting fact (you can skip reading the full article - but remember it) - Blog Readers Spend More Time and Money Online.

Some accidentally hit your blog through search engines - few subscribe or bookmark and visit often but, everyone who have visited your blog always formed an opinion about your blog. That might be a good or bad - but, they had something to say, right? They make or break a blog - if they love your blog, they would bookmark you.

So, we should spend some time on listening to our customers - shouldn't we?

Imagine, what if you have known to some 100 ideas about improving your blog for FREE. I will swap a month's pay for that. Ok, we get down to business - How do you make your readers speak on your weaknesses? Here are 7 tips:

1) Conduct a Poll / Survey: If you have not collected a feedback for your readers, it is the best time to conduct a user need survey. Use polldaddy for a one question blog or you can design a full questionnaire (limit to 10, please!) using zoomerang or surveymonkey (both have free accounts - but maximum 100 responses for a 10 days period).

2) Reward those who speak: Do not think you have not got a BIG reward. Either you can announce 'a random winner will get an iPod' a deal or if you do not have a budget, give-away a free e-book for all the respondents (Write a feedback and download this e-book).

3) Add a Guesbook: You can not have a permanent poll running around - so, have a guestbook link at your blog contact page or more prominently in the front page. Do you know the second most checked thing in a blog (after the About page) is the Contact us / Feedback page. Make it obvious that you are listening.

4) Feedback link in the RSS feed: Ask your feed readers to help you in improving your blog. Add a 'request a blog post / tip' or 'Ask a Question' link so, readers can easily reach you and by this way, you can get ideas for future blog posts (Stop scratching your head!).

5) Rating - One-click for rating for posts: As long as it is a simple, unobtrusive - a simple thumbs up / thumbs down icon - it is OK to have at the end of every post. Get a rating widget for new Blogger from Spotback. You can find many plugins for Wordpress blogs.

6) Make them comment on your posts: This is tricky - because as the Problogger himself says, only 1 out of 100 readers (read his excellent tips) make an effort to comment (we are lazy!). But, even we have to come out of our shelves to comment on others' blogs. Set out a time to take a blog walk - just to interact with readers - use mybloglog, blog directories, backlinks - and comment on their blogs. They will come back and do the same thing for you.

7) Publish Recent Commentors / Comments: Recent commentors ( 5 or 10) list is a good way to reward the readers who leave a feedback. Link their name with their blog or web page - they will love it.

Similarly, recent comments also good to show how readers thought about your blog posts.

source: http://www.howtoliveonline.com/2007/06/visitors-know-how-to-improve-your-blog.html

What is PageRank?

PageRank is what Google uses to determine the importance of a web page. It's one of many factors used to determine which pages appear in search results.

The History of PageRank
PageRank was developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford. At the time that Page and Brin met, search engines typically linked to pages that had the highest keyword density, which meant people could game the system by repeating the same phrase over and over to attract higher search page results.

PageRank is patented by Stanford, and the name PageRank likely comes from Larry Page.

What Does PageRank Measure?
PageRank measure's a web page's importance.

Page and Brin's theory is that the most important pages on the Internet are the pages with the most links leading to them. PageRank thinks of links as votes, where a page linking to another page is casting a vote.

This makes sense, because people do tend to link to relevant content, and pages with more links to them are usually better resources than pages that nobody links.

PageRank doesn't stop there. It also looks at the importance of the page that contains the link. Pages with higher PageRank have more weight in "voting" with their links than pages with lower PageRank. It also looks at the number of links on the page casting the "vote." Pages with more links have less weight.

This also makes a certain amount of sense. Pages that are important are probably better authorities in leading web surfers to better sources, and pages that have more links are likely to be less discriminating on where they're linking.


How Important Is PageRank?
PageRank is one of many factors that determines where your web page appears in search result ranking, but if all other factors are equal, PageRank can have significant impact on your Google rankings.

Are There Flaws in PageRank?
There are certainly flaws in PageRank. Now that people know the secrets to obtaining a higher PageRank, the data can be manipulated. Google Bombs are a classic example of PageRank manipulation.

"Link farming" is another method people attempt to use manipulate PageRank. Link farming is the practice of linking without thought of the relevance of the pages being linked, and it is often automated. If you've ever run into a web page that was nothing but a collection of random links to other websites, you may have run into a link farm.

Google has adapted their calculations to filter off possible link farms. This is one reason why submitting your website to directories with low or no PageRank may be a bad idea.

If you find your website linked in a link farm, don't panic. In most cases this has no effect at all on your ranking. You can't control who links to you, anyway. Just don't link back to link farms and don't submit your site to them intentionally.


How Can I See PageRank?
PageRank is measured on a scale of one to ten and assigned to individual pages within a website, not the entire website. To find the PageRank of a page, use Google Toolbar. Very few pages have a PageRank of 10, especially as the number of pages on the Internet increases.


How Can I Increase My PageRank?
If you'd like to increase your PageRank, you need to have "back-links," or other people linking to your website. You can trade links with other people, but make sure you only trade relevant links, and make sure you're not trading links with a link farm. You can register your website with directories, such as the Open Directory Project, but use directories with high PageRank whenever possible.

As you build web pages within your website, you can create some of your own back-links by linking to relevant pages within your own website. This is a technique you may notice on this website. However, remember that the number of links you create counts into the equation. Don't overdo it.

The best way to increase your PageRank is to have quality content that other people want to link.

source: about.com

Simple Ways To Get More Blog Traffic

This is every blogger’s dream. Increasing your blog traffic and in effect, your page rank. So you’re looking to increase your blog’s popularity this year, here are some basic tips:

• Be mindful of your content . In blogging and the internet in general, it is important to carve your own niche. What is your blog about? Is it about parenting?computer hardware? Health and beauty? It is important to identify your target reader and concentrate of building your blog with them in mind. It is also important to have a feature article at least once a week. Think about a popular topic that will interest a lot of readers. Think about keywords also. These are words that are most likely to be used when searching for topics using internet search engines. It is important to have blog entries that will be interesting regardless of date, no matter how many years ago you wrote it.

• Update often. Search engines can detect if a blog is active. If your blog is updated regularly, the more likely your blog will appear first in the search engine results. Try your best to update daily, or at least three times a week.

• Participate in other blogs. Don’t spend too much time trying to make your blog the best there is, it is also important to network with other bloggers with similar interests. Choose popular blogs with high page rank. Visit them often and comment on their posts. Establish a friendship and join the community. Once you’ve established a relationship with them, try linking them up and wait for them to do the same. This will definitely be plus points for your blog’s popularity. These blogs will send traffic your way.

These are pretty simple tips that you may have already heard. Take them to heart and seriously consider them when logging on to your blog. I hope you see positive changes soon. We are all rooting for a higher page rank and increased popularity of our blogs. Good Luck!

Attract More Readers To Your Blog

The key here is minding the structure of your blog posts. Well structured blog posting will catch the readers' attention, and make them want to read what you have to say.

1. Give the blog posting an amazing or thought provoking title that will surely catch the reader’s eye. This is the first thing they see and will help them decide if it is interesting to them.
2. Put the main point in the first paragraph. If the reader is merely scanning the post this is the only thing readers will see and if it is interesting enough, they will want to read on.
3. Put the details in the following paragraphs of your posting.
4. Finally in the last part of the posting add the background information. I know this writing style is slightly different from what we're used to, in school we are taught to wrap it up or summarize in the end. But in blogging, we do not have the luxury of time.We are constantly battling for our readers attention and everything must be kept interesting for them, be it the beginning, the middle or the end.

blogs and copyright

A copyright is an exclusive legal right to a property, in our case, it is the legal right to anything we write and any picture or videos we take and post on our blogs. Everything is copyrighted upon creation, meaning that these belong to the person who created it. There is an implied “all rights reserved” in every blog. If a person wants to re-use any material, there should be an explicit agreement allowing him to use it.

However there are cases when you are willing to let others use your work, as part of promotion of your blog, and in these cases, you might want to consider putting up a license in your blog, specifying the rights you are allowing other users. Use the search engines in looking for the proper license you’d like to have on your blog.

Here are a couple of rights you can choose from:

Attribution – you let others use (copy, distribute or display) your copyrighted work, and derivative works based on it, but only if they give you proper credit.

Noncommercial - you let others use your work, and derivative works based on it, but only for noncommercial purposes.

No Derivative Works – you let others use your work, as long as they use it word for word, and no derivative works should be based upon it.

What will you do if your copyright is violated?

Act on it fast. Contact the blogger who plagiarized your content and ask him to remove your articles or pictures from his site. Make a strong point by making a link to the copied article in his blog and your original work. Ask him point blank. No need to beat around the bush. No one likes a copy-cat. But of course still show your breeding, no need to be threatening or crass.

If he doesn’t respond to diplomacy, then take more serious action. Email the web host provider. Most of these companies take care of their reputations and they would not like to be know as an accessory to any crime. Do this for every violation the blogger commits, this should get the hosts’ attention. If he has any advertisement on his blog, email the advertisers and let them know what happened. This should strike a nerve since you’d be attacking his source of income.

Try to warn other bloggers. Share your experience on your blog, let your readers and blog-friends know about this violator, share in also on social communities like twitter and plurk. We should all be aware of our rights.

In coming up with an article, we use our time, talents and treasure, and we have the right to protect and enjoy the fruits of our labor.

tips in writing your blog

Let me put it simply, if you intend to create a good blog, you need to instill in your mind that you should write very clearly and concisely, that in writing for the web, you should adapt the web mentality. Put yourself in your target readers’ shoes. You may be at work or at home when reading the blog, but nevertheless you don’t have the luxury of reading in a leisurely manner. I mean let’s face it, being on the web costs money. Some people are billed for the size of the data they download, while some are billed for the time they spend on the net. Meanwhile, we are not asked to pay for the time we spend in reading books or newspapers. With all that said, the old adage still rings true, in writing for a good blog, you should KISS: KEEP IT SHORT AND SWEET.

A reader who happens to hop by your blog will only skim through your articles. Very few people actually reads the blogs word for word. If he sees something that catches his eye, he may stay on and read some more, till his interest wanes and he hops off to another blog. That is precisely why your blog articles should be dotted with key words and catch phrases. Enough to catch your readers’ attention. Articles should be well-written, self explanatory and make sense by itself. Often times your readers are directed to your blog through search engines, they don’t have the luxury of reading through the previous entries in order to understand the one they are currently reading. Not everyone understands tech jargon, so keep the newbies in mind when writing your entries.

Blogs, unlike other websites, have a personal tone. Readers like to feel the author’s personality, his humor, and his sentiments when reading the entries. Readers should feel like the author is actually sharing information with them, communicating with them, wanting to have a conversation with them. Stay relaxed but focused. Readers shouldn’t feel like they are at the receiving end of a lecture or a marketing pitch. When readers feel at home in your site, they will leave comments or questions for you to answer. Don’t be rattled. This is a good thing. Readers are reaching out to you, this can actually lead to an increased traffic. Respond in a warm and welcoming manner. Reply as if you’re talking to a long-time friend. Establish a relationship, this will keep readers keep coming back for more!