Blog Resources Online

I have seen a lot of discussion lately about blog comments. Some say it is a waste of time. Others find commenting to be a good tool to increase blog traffic.

Being a middle of the road person - I see both sides of this debate and have not abandoned commenting all together.

Why Commenting is Worthwhile

• It increases your site’s exposure.
• Frequent, constructive comments can grab the attention of another blogger.
• Commenting can somewhat increase your traffic - if another reader likes what you have to say they may click through to your site.
• If the site you are commenting on is “do follow” then you gain a backlink.

My Commenting Strategy

• If I take the time to read a post all the way through - it takes very little effort to leave a comment. So I usually do.
• If I am the among the first to comment then I always do. Being the first to comment is more likely to catch the attention of the blogger. Also, other readers are more likely to read the first few comments and may click through to your site. This is especially true on an “A-List” site. These sites get insane amounts of traffic and there are always sure to be a few click throughs to your site.
• If the site is “do follow” and I take the time to read the post - I always comment. A backlink is golden - so why not?

The key to my commenting strategy are the words “If I take the time to read the post all the way through.” I don’t search for sites with the sole purpose of commenting. I don’t think the rewards from commenting are worth the effort. But if I am hooked enough to read the whole post then I have already taken the time and the incremental time to comment is not that great of a time investment.

Do you have a commenting strategy? I’d love to hear about it.

Article Tags>> a-list | advertising | blogs | commenting | comments | discussion | internet marketing | opinions | sites | Traffic

Today Google’s free Blogger service announced a much awaited feature - future posting.

Now you can write a post and schedule it to be published to your blog at some date in the future. You must have signed up for Blogger in Draft to use this future posting.

Blogger just keeps getting better and better.

Article Tags>> | Blogger | future posting | Google

Should you be sending thank you emails to people that comment on your blog?

Jennifer Chait at Freelance Writing Jobs doesn’t think so. Why not?

• If all bloggers sent thank you’s, all commentators would have a lot of email “spam”.
• It is a waste of the blogger’s time - they should be working on quality content instead.
• It is just as effective to respond to a comment right on the blog
• It is a turnoff. Commenting on the blog again may result in another email.
• This puts pressure on the commentator to subscribe to the blog.

In some respects I have to agree with Jennifer. I have received thank you emails for my comments, but the ones that I dislike are generated by auto-responders.

My philosophy is this: if I take the time to leave a well thought out comment, then I don’t want a canned response. Either don’t respond at all (hey, I understand that we are all busy), leave a comment back on your blog, or send me a personal email that you took the time to write. I don’t expect an email for a comment that I make, but if what I said sticks with you and you want to email me - write it yourself.

Article Tags>> auto-responders | bloggers | blogging | commenting | personal | responding

My absolute favorite social networking site - Blogging Zoom - has been hacked. Courtney Tuttle, author of Court’s Internet Marketing School and  one of the founders of Blogging Zoom writes about it on his site.

How unfortunate that the success of Blogging Zoom has obviously created jealousies amongst some BZ wannabes. And how unfortunate that people with obvious technical talent misuse the power that they have.

In the end I know that good will prevail and Blogging Zoom will be back stronger than before. Blogging Zoom is a fantastic site designed to support the blogger. The community there is warm and welcoming and very supportive of each other. I have found many interesting sites through Blogging Zoom and have found a group of people that I don’t even know that give me encouragement to blog on.

Another site that the hackers have apparently taken down is Vic’s excellent Blogger Unleashed site (which appears to be back up - yay!). Vic, who is also a founder of Blogging Zoom, dispenses priceless information about making money online. Vic tells it like it is and offers some sound advice for those venturing into the world of blogging.

I wish Vic and Court the best of luck and also a good dose of revenge and justice!

Article Tags>> blog resources | blogger unleashed | blogging | blogging zoom | bz | courtney tuttle | hackers | internet marketing school | Social Networking | vic

In my article How to Love Feed Scrapers, I wrote about 2 methods you can use to protect your content.Today I came a across another good blogging tip at AffiliateWatcher.com.

Apparently Don at Affiliate Watcher uses similar methods to turn the tables. But he takes it even one step further. You can read his secret in his article How to take Advantage of your own Stolen Content.

Very sneaky, Don!

Article Tags>> blogging tips | content | feeds | links | RSS

Right now, on this site - Blog Resources Online - I offer full feeds.

I recently received an email from another blogger, Stephen Cronin, informing me that my feed had been scraped. I had written a post about Stephen’s Dual Feeds plugin. This post contains a link to Stephen’s site, More Than Scratch the Surface (incidentally Dual Feeds v1.11 has just been released). When my feed was published on the scraper’s site, Stephen received a trackback and very kindly emailed me to let me know of the theft.

Of course, all the contact info on the scraper’s site was bogus. I was angry - that was MY work that someone else was taking credit for.

Apparently Stephen was irritated, too. Using his technical savvy, he wrote an awesome plugin called FeedEntryHeader.

Right “out of the box” the FeedEntryHeader plugin adds copyright statement and a link to your site and to your original post at the top of each entry in your feed (if you are reading this post in a feedreader you will see this statement at the top of this post).

The beauty of the FeedEntryHeader plugin is if your feed gets scraped you will get the bonus of a backlink. And even if the scrapers remove the links, your url will still be displayed, so readers will know who created the original work.

You also have the option to customize this message and the links, if you wish. This makes the plugin extremely flexible, because you can add any type of message to the beginning of each of your feed entries.

Vic, at Blogger Unleashed, also sports an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” attitude. In a post called Scrapers Are My Best Friends, Vic takes this approach:

• Publish only partial feeds
• Use the Feed Footer plugin (along with Ultimate Tag Warrior)
• Check the Automatic Feed Tags option

And if it works for Vic, then it’s golden!

Feed Scrapers are a reality of the blogging world. Our best option is to use them to our advantage.

Article Tags>> blogging | blogging tips | content | feed scrapers | feeds | full feeds | partial feeds | Plugins | RSS | WordPress | writing

Google’s Blogger uses OpenID to Allow Links to All Commenters

Recently Google has come under fire in the blogoshpere for disallowing links to commenter’s who have blogs outside of the Blogger platform. Now Google’s Blogger uses OpenID to allow links to a commenter’s site on any platform.

According to the folks at Blogger this was a mistake. Blogger was in the process of implementing something called OpenID and they prematurely took away the ability for commenter’s to link to their non-Blogger sites. Here is the apology from Google’s Blogger Buzz:

The “Other” URL field

Right now, the only way to add a URL to your name when commenting is to sign your comment with OpenID. We apologize for removing the URL field from the comments form prematurely two weeks ago. That was a mistake on our part that came from launching OpenID support on Blogger in draft.

Ironically, our testing of OpenID, a feature that lets you use accounts from all over the web to comment on Blogger, made it appear that we were trying to force you into getting a Google Account. We regret this appearance, since we’re strong supporters of OpenID and open web standards in general.

If you haven’t set up OpenID, you can still link to your blog — or any webpage, for that matter — by using the standard tag inside the comment form.

So - What is this Google Blogger OpenID?

This is a service that you must sign up for and thereby get an “OpenID”. The purpose of all this is to make sure that you really are who you say you are. The effect of using OpenID on Google’s Blogger will be to reduce comment spam. But OpenID is confusing for some of us to implement.

If your blog is hosted by one of the following services, WordPress.com, LiveJournal, and AOL Journals, then you can easily leave comments on a Google Blogger blog with your blog’s URL because these services already use OpenID.

But if you have a self hosted WordPress blog, then you will have to sign up for an OpenID and then add two lines of code to your own blog’s head section. You can then start to leave comments on other people’s Google Blogger blogs and have those comments link back to your blog. It is a complicated rigmarole to go through for the simple privilege of commenting with a link (and not necessarily a Do Follow link) back to your web page.

Sam Ruby wrote a most execellent article entitled OpenID for Non-SuperUsers where he describes the OpenID service in more detail. He also provides the following code to put in your blog’s head section to enable commenting on Google’s Blogger using OpenID:

If you have an OpenID identity and a blog, then follow these instructions. If you don’t have an OpenID identity, you can get one for free at MyOpenID. Here’s mine.

Given such an identity, copy the following into the head section of your weblog, adjusting the two URIs as appropriate:

<link rel=”openid.server” href=”http://www.myopenid.com/server” />
<link rel=”openid.delegate” href=”http://samruby.myopenid.com/” />

That’s pretty much it. What this says is that the web page in question is owned by the owner of http://samruby.myopenid.com/ and furthermore http://www.myopenid.com/server may be used to verify ownership of http://samruby.myopenid.com/.

Of course, when using the above code you would replace Sam’s OpenID with your own OpenID.

The capabilities of OpenID stretch far beyond the task of commenting on Google’s Blogger Blogs. As more companies and services embrace OpenID it’s strength will grow. But for the non-techies, muddling through the OpenID signup and altering your blog template seems to be a poor use of precious time.

After signing up for OpenID and putting the code in my blog, I put it to use. I left comments on a few Google Blogger blogs using OpenID and my name showed up as a link back to my site.

Success!

Article Tags>> Blogger | blogging | comments | Google | Google's Blogger | internet marketing | links | OpenID | sites | WordPress

Is Web 2.0 just another internet bubble?

The people at Richter Scales seem to think so.

While the video is funny, I hope it’s not true!

Source: John Chow

Article Tags>> blogging | funny | internet | money | vc | video | youtube

Around noon today Feedburner froze.

My visitor numbers on all my blogs have been the same for the last half of the day.

However, Google Analytics shows much more activity, thank goodness! (I was getting a little worried there)

Anyone else with Feedburner issues today?

Article Tags>> blogs | Feedburner | Stats | visitors

Some people are like magnets. When they enter a room they attract a crowd. Some call it charisma or chalk it up self confidence. But the bottom line is that these people are born salesmen. They are good at self promotion and know how to work a room.

This power of attraction translates easily into the online world. Making friends on social networking sites is a breeze. Sending out shouts and messages, and saying “hey, stop by my site”, is second nature. Before you know it, Mr. Popularity has a strong following and a profitable blog.

But other people are more private in real life. They are quiet and conservative, and have a small circle of close friends. These people are cautious when it comes to meeting new people and quite modest. Embracing the power of the web can be difficult for people with this type of personality.

A friend of mine has just started her own CafePress site. She is just beginning to explore social networking on the web. She called me one day with alarm because someone had asked to be her friend. “But, I don’t even know them!”, she cried. To the uninitiated this could seem like an invasion of privacy.

Someone with a cautious personality may find it difficult to try new things, like new affiliate opportunities for instance. They also may find it hard to abandon an unsuccessful blog. Even writing posts can take longer. Time is spent hashing and rehashing ideas until they are perfect instead just taking an idea and running with it.

Age can also be a factor in online success. Those that grew up in the internet generation have a distinct advantage over those who did not.

And how about gender? Is there an equal amount of successful women bloggers as there are men? This one may be different depending on what niche you are looking at. But I do know that many of my offline friends that are women are not using the net the way I do. This makes it harder for me to market my blog offline.

Whether you are an extrovert or an introvert you must treat your blog like a business (unless, of course, it is a personal blog). You, as the business owner, must learn to self promote and speak with confidence about your blog both online and offline. Overcoming the fear and learning from the extroverts amongst us will lead to online success.

photo by jurvetson

Article Tags>> blogging | personality | profitability | Social Networking | success