FREE: How to Start a Gossip Blog

February 21, 2009 By Leave a Comment


Are you thinking of starting your own gossip blog, but just don’t know how to get started?  Do you think you could be funnier and more entertaining than those other sites?  Want to earn some serious cash?

BlogCraving is offering our 6 Part Mini-Course for FREE for the first time.  That’s a $199 value!

Sign up above and get instant access to the course.  If you sign up now, we will send you Lesson 1 instantly.  Then each day, we’ll send you the next lesson.

Here’s what you will get:

Part 1 – Your plan of attack. How to pick your killer category, and crush it.  INSTANT!
Part 2 – Designing your gossip brand. How to design your site to match your voice.
Part 3 – Site hosting. How to pick the best web host that can grow with you (cheap).
Part 4 – Getting noticed. How to get the first eyeballs on your site, plus your next 10,000.
Part 5 – Show me the money. How to generate advertising money without doing any work.
Part 6 – Tracking your growth. How to track how fast you are growing, and keep it going.

You can unsubscribe at anytime.  We hate SPAM as much as you do.  Personally, we get thousands of unwanted emails a day, and we hate it.  That’s why we will never send you spam, and we will never sell your information.  Your email address is safe with us.

So sign up today, and get started on your new blog right now!

Filed Under: How to... Tagged With: , , ,

Why isn’t anyone reading my diary blog?

April 22, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Because no one wants to read that.

No seriously.  That’s why.

No one cares that you got stuck in traffic, the dog made a poop in the living room, or that your kid made a funny face today.  There’s nothing more boring than that kind of site.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write it.  If it makes you happy, go for it.  Some people just like to keep a diary, and if others want to read it, fine!  However, you shouldn’t expect people to come flying to your site in droves.

If you DO want to have a high traffic site with this format, it better be damn good.  The writing and stories better be phenomenal.  You had better have me falling off my chair with laughter each and every time.  Then, maybe you have a shot.

Otherwise, just be happy with what little traffic you have.

Filed Under: Don't Do It, Strategy Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

ShareThis

April 21, 2008 By Leave a Comment

sharethis logo tm ShareThisEveryone seems to be into the snazzy little sharing buttons lately.  It’s one of the first addons people decided to put on their blogs after they are up and running.

The theory is that adding these buttons will encourage people to bookmark and share your post with others if they think it is especially noteworthy.  Great concecept in theory.

In reality, the clicks on these buttons are fairly low.  However, every little bit of incremental traffic generated from them helps, right?  So why not.  Plus, you never know if a whale will bookmark you and bring a ton of traffic.

Anyway, the last thing you want to do is litter the bottom of your site with 100 little bookmark chicklets.  It looks bad and makes your site load slower.  So what’s the alternative?  ShareThis

ShareThis is a bookmarking tool for your blog or website that also does a simple “Email This to a Friend” function.

Right out of the box, it comes with all the most popular social networking sites and bookmarking sites.  In about 5 minutes, you can have this configured and launched on your blog.  It also comes with a handy little plugin for WordPress that makes the implementation slightly easier.  However, you don’t need the plugin portion if you are compfortable with it on your own.

You are left with a clean, small button on the bottom of your posts that says ShareThis with a little icon.  That’s it.  Nice and clean.  When clicked, it pops open to reveal your sharing options.

For you as the site owner, you can track the usage of these networking tools through the ShareThis website.  That way, you can see if people are actually using it!

Filed Under: Site Traffic Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How to Make Your Blog Load Faster

April 14, 2008 By 4 Comments

One of the biggest issues people come to us to solve is making their blog load faster. This is often the first challenge a growing blog faces.

Eventually, your blog will become popular enough to necessitate upgrading your hosting plan. However, there’s a lot you can do to put that day off for quite a while.

One of the first and most powerful things you can do is cache your homepage and posts.

What is a “cache” ?

To understand how caching works, you first have to understand a little about how WordPress works. Without caching, here’s how your blog works. When someone browses over to your site, WordPress immediately queries your WordPress database for all of the content and settings on the page.

A query is like a search. The site script searches the database for the appropriate content to display on the page. Every time the page is called upon by a user, the database is queried again and again. This repeated database query will eventually cause a tremendous amount of stress to the server.

The result is that pages start to load slower. Eventually, they may start timing out all together.  [Read more...]

Filed Under: Site Traffic Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Boost Your Site Traffic in 30 Days

March 30, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I stumbled upon a an old post on ProBlogger about increasing your traffic in just 30 days. At first, I didn’t notice the date it was published, but I really believed in what it was saying. Then I noticed the date, and it made me laugh because the tips still hold true today.

Tip 3 was worth highlighting:

Finally, I made effective use of trackback links to popular sites. If I commented on a post on another site I would make sure that I set up the appropriate trackback for it. The results from this are varied depending on the site and post that you are linking to but since I liked to comment and interact with the wider blogosphere anyway, it was free traffic!

Even though this is from 2005, it is still true today. If you want to gain respect in the blogosphere, you have to earn it. Just writing your posts and sitting around waiting for the readers to flock in doesn’t work. You need to proactively get out there and make your name known.

However, I caution you against belatedly plugging yourself where ever you go. Don’t just comment on someone else’s post because you are looking to get clicks back to your site. And don’t make your comments into a big advertisement for yourself.

Instead, actually contribute something worthwhile to the conversation. That will gain you more blogging street cred

Filed Under: Site Traffic Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

WordPress 2.5 is Here!

March 29, 2008 By Leave a Comment

The brand spanking new WordPress 2.5 “Brecker” is here, and just hours old.

The crew over at WordPress just cut the newest stable version loose, and of course we installed it immediately. It is awesome.

wordpress25 300x192 Wordpress 2.5 is Here!There’s a ton of new features, bells, and whistles. However, I must say, my favorite thing is the new design of the back end from a cosmetic point of view. It is very clean, simple, and easy to navigate.

It’s also very BRIGHT! You actually feel lighter when you write. A very airy feel to it that makes it enjoyable to work.

The new “Write” screen also has built in tools for adding media such as YouTube videos, you own images, pdf’s, audio clips, and other media. You can even toggle to full screen mode, which makes the writing a little easier when you are working on those big posts. It blows the writing area up to the full width of your browser, which then makes it look/feel like you are working inside MS Word or similar word processing software.

After typing in your headline, you also get a preview of what your permalink will look like for that article. It is placed in a clear area for you to see. I’m hoping this encourages users to think about their slugs and urls a little more. The smarter you write your slug, the better your SEO will be.

If you write a blog with more than one person, there’s new features for you too! Now, you don’t have to worry about being inside a post and having your partner save over your edits. Once you open a post, it will keep other editors out while you work on it. That way you aren’t both working on it at the same time and saving over each other.

Tons of great features. iCast Limited is offering our professional services for this upgrade. If you would like to have us upgrade your WordPress blog for you, it will cost you just $29.95. Contact us if you are interested in this offer.

Don’t have a WordPress blog? It is very easily to migrate your current blog over to this platform. We offer those services too.

Filed Under: Wordpress Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Should I Blog Anonymously?

March 28, 2008 By Leave a Comment

341429556 4ad8824eec.thumbnail Should I Blog Anonymously? It depends.

No.  If you are writing a blog for your business or with a journalistic style, then generally: NO.  Go ahead and put your name on there and take the credit you deserve.  Since you’re writing this blog to build your business and attract new customers, you want to tell everyone under the sun.

OR

Yes.  Do not put your real name on anything!  If you don’t fit the profile above, it is probably better to leave your name off the blog.  No one really needs to know who you really are.  In the long term, your life will end up easier.

Also, don’t tell anyone you know about your blog including friends, family, co-workers, clients, employers, etc.  The nice thing about a blog is the ability to speak your mind freely.  If all of a sudden, your mom and your boss start reading your blog, you might run into some issues.

They might get pissed at you over something you wrote, or you are naturally going to hold back because you know they are watching.

You also would have to keep your politics to yourself if your name were out in the open.  If you ever go out to get a new job, and your blog pops up in a background search (and it surely will), your political views might go against your proposed employer’s.

So if you are going to blog, just keep it under wraps when it comes to your personal life.  Everything will work out much better this way in the long run.  And you’ll enjoy the complete freedom to publish anything you want without fear of personal retribution.

Filed Under: Free Wordpress Services, Security Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Part 2: Of Making Your Business Site Better

March 25, 2008 By 1 Comment

We continue with our discussion of how to make your business website better. After yesterday’s article, I realized that these tips really don’t apply exclusively to business sites. Really, you can use this information for any site that you want to make better. Anyway, on with the show. We left off with…

What if I don’t want to spend any money at all?

I know it doesn’t seem like it could be true, but you really can make significant improvements to your site and you overall brand without spending any money.  There’s a lot of places on the web that claim “Free traffic,” “Increase Sales for Free,” “Free Links,” etc.  In those cases, it is a little too good to be true.  However, there are some good places to start.

Update Daily!

That’s right folks, daily.  The key to web super stardom is simple, but a big commitment.  If you want to see an increase in traffic to your website, update it everyday.  Give it 3 to 6 months, and you will see a huge jump in traffic.

Visitors don’t want to see the same thing every time they come back to your site.  If you’re lucky enough to get someone to come back a second time, and they see the exact same content they did last time, they’re not coming back.  Period.  Why would they?  They already know what is going to be there!

However, if they come back a second time and see all new content, now you’ve got them right where you want them. It immediately peaks their interest.  They’ll now know (and expect) that every time they come back.

I don’t care of you own a plumbing business or a bookstore, you need to update regularly.  Every. Single. Day.

How can I update everyday?  For that matter, what possible updates could I have? 

Since we are in the “spend no money” mode, here’s what you do.  Stroll on over to Blogger or WordPress.com and start a blog.  From your main site, just link over to it.  From there, you will have a wealth of simple tools at your disposal enabling you to make updates whenever you want (aka everyday.  I’m watching you). [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business, Site Traffic Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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