Tag Archive for 'nablopomo'
Thanks to BloggingZoom, i’ve been getting a relatively good and somewhat steady flow of traffic coming to me over the past few days. That all started with my first submission, Don’t Quit Your Day Job, or: What to Do When Your Girlfriend Thinks Your Blog is a Waste of Time, which spiked my traffic from next-to-nothing, up to about 74 hits, in the span of less than an hour, which i thought was absolutely incredible. Apparently, i hadn’t seen nothin’ yet.
StumbleUpon is a wonderfully fun service that is great for killing time online when you can’t think of anything specific you want to look up. I had never even considered its potential for bloggers until a couple days ago, after reading a few posts about other bloggers using it to drive traffic to their sites. It was then that i realized what an awesome and powerful tool it could be. So i clicked the thumb’s-up sign while viewing my post (Don’t Quit Your Day Job, mentioned above) to submit the url to StumbleUpon, and i didn’t get the normal “discovery” pop-up dialog. The thumb’s-up icon simply turned green, meaning that somebody had already stumbled that page!! Incredible! I immediately signed on and sent the user (who happened to be Frank from OpTempo.com) a message thanking him for doing so.
Next, i went into my WP-Live and watched as the hits kept on coming! I ended up getting around 170 hits, yesterday alone! As for today…
I know this is miniscule compared to other blogs, but to me, this is a breakthrough. 
I’m now feeling much more confident about what i’m doing here, and that’s keeping me motivated to try even harder.
Out of curiosity, i’d like to hear when it was that you realized that you had the potential to stick around and actually make it in the blogging world. What were the contributing factors? Did you get a boost in traffic like i did and realize that you had a shot? Or was it something else completely? Leave a comment and let me know.
Technorati Tags: BloggingZoom, Internet, NaBloPoMo, Site, StumbleUpon
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being a relatively new blogger myself, i realize how frustrating and confusing it can be to get started. there are so many things to learn, so many other blogs to learn from, so many services to sign up for that can help immensely when you’re beginning.
so i’ve decided to start a list of articles and posts from around the sphere that i’ve either found useful myself, or believe would be useful to others that are trying to get their blogs up and running. this list will be updated as i find other articles that i think should be added (so remember to check back periodically!).
i hope this helps somebody. enjoy!
The List (in no particular order):
———–
Technorati Tags: Internet, Links, NaBloPoMo
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ok, so this isn’t so much an annoyance with BloggingZoom or it’s service, per se, but more towards people who abuse it, even if it’s unintentional or indirect.
i noticed tonight, after submitting my previous post about AdSense, that somebody had already Zoomed it.
“cool,” i thought, “i had doubts that anybody would bother zooming that one, since it’s just a small little update about my unimportant issues while signing up for AdSense. it’s not like a tip, or a link to a great article, or anything that would really interest anybody but me… wait a second…”
so, i checked out the person that Zoomed it. i went to their profile, and checked on the submissions they had made.
turns out, this person doesn’t even make posts in a category that’s even similar to Blogging (which is my main category for BZ submission) and then i noticed that they had made close to 5 submissions within minutes of eachother… this got me thinking.
in my previous post about BZ i mentioned a small tip about how to get more people to Zoom your submissions, which was to Zoom their submissions. it appears as though this user has done that, and leads me to believe that they’ve Zoomed my submission solely to get me to go look at and possibly Zoom theirs.
now, while this is certainly not against the rules, or even a bad idea in any way, it really aggrevated me for some reason. granted it was only a fraction of my time that was wasted by going to this user’s profile and looking at his submissions, but really. what a cheap trick. when i wrote my BZ review and left that little tip in there, i was thinking more along the lines of Zooming other people’s posts that were similar to yours, because there’s a greater chance that they would be interested in your submissions as well. i didn’t mean just go freely Zooming every upcoming submission that you come across, just to get more people to look at yours.
as i said, none of this is illegal, or even immoral. it just made me feel i had to clarify what i meant when i threw that tip out there in my review of this wonderful service.
Technorati Tags: BloggingZoom, Internet, NaBloPoMo, Thoughts
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well, i’ve jumped on the bandwagon and joined the countless numbers of bloggers using Google’s AdSense for including ads in their blogs. here’s a rundown on how the process of signing-up and setting-up went for me:
1. Initial Sign-Up Attempt:
this was absolutely ridiculous (my own fault). i signed up using Google Account A and waited for the verification email. got it. clicked the confirmation link and was told to wait until they had reviewed my application. so i waited. for a loooooong time. and i never heard anything back from them, after waiting approximately two weeks. so…
2. Second Sign-Up Attempt:
i tried again. i signed up using Google Account B and went through the verification process once more. this time i resolved to wait longer, no matter how long. so i waited. and i waited. and i waited some more..
after about three weeks, i finally received the email telling me i had been accepted into the service, and i could go ahead and finish the sign-up process. unfortunately for me, i had made a small mistake in the interim that hindered me from completing this step for about an hour…
3. Sign-Up Finalization:
while waiting for them to review my application and send me a confirmation email, i had decided to forward all incoming mail from Google Account A to Google Account B, because i almost never check Google Account B… so, silly me, when i finally got the review confirmation today, i got it at Google Account A, and therefore assumed the email was for that account. so. i spent close to 45 minutes trying to login to my brand new approved adsense account with the wrong account information. it didn’t even occur to me that this was the case, because i had completely forgotten that i’d forwarded my email from Account B to Account A.
4. Account Set-Up (finally):
this was a breeze. agree to terms and service, fill in tax information, set-up payment option (which i have yet to do), set up first ad, and voila! (i also installed a WP plugin called Adsense Manager, which i highly recommend)
so, all in all, the process was absolutely frustrating, but that was simply due to my own forgetfulness. =P other than that, everything was smooth sailing. a very simple way to get advertisements placed on one’s blog and start generating some revenue.
now, i can finally start putting all of my time and effort into producing the kind of (hopefully) quality content that will keep people coming back. that is, after all, the whole point..
i’d also be interested to hear how this whole process went for other people. have any of you had any trouble whatsoever in signing up and/or setting up your AdSense accounts? leave a comment and tell us about it
Technorati Tags: Internet, NaBloPoMo, Site, Updates, WordPress
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i’ve made a few small changes to my blog today, as you most likely can tell.
first off, i changed the theme. while i certainly liked the look of the previous one, “bluememories,” i didn’t think it looked professional enough to match what i’m aiming for. the current one, called SpotLight 1.3 created by Stephen Reinhardt and modified by Sadish Bala, seems to be more along the lines of what i’ve been looking for.
next, i finally got the permalinks working. i tried messing around with them when i started this blog, but i couldn’t get them to work. not even the ‘almost pretty’ permalinks. but, since i upgraded to WordPress 2.3.1, everything seems to have come together for me.
also, as i just mentioned, i have upgraded my WordPress installation to 2.3.1. this is a security/but-fix release, which seems to have completely destroyed all of the little annoying errors i’ve been getting recently. so things are definately looking up!
and finally, as stated in my previous post, BloggingZoom: Get Zoomed And See The Difference!, i signed up for BloggingZoom (which i highly recommend to everybody who wants more traffic directed to their blog). the results were immediate! after making my very first submission, i got a huge spike in page requests, and even received my second comment ever! amazing! i can’t stress enough how wonderful this service is. if you haven’t heard of it yet, and haven’t read my quick-n-dirty review, click the above link and read about it, then go check it out as soon as you’re done. i can practically guarantee that it will work for you just as well as it has for me, if not better!
all in all, it’s been a good week for me in terms of my blog…
i started in on NaBloPoMo, and have already posted more than once each day, which is HUGE for me..
upgrading WordPress went on without a hitch..
installed a much smoother / more professional-looking theme..
and, again, thanks to BloggingZoom, i’m finally starting to get at least somewhat decent traffic headed my way.
now all that’s left is to get the readers to stick around, and maybe even come back for more!
Technorati Tags: NaBloPoMo, Site, Updates
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