What Are You Doing For Your Commentators

Written by blogboy from http://www.bloggingfornoobs.com/ on July 19th, 2008 | 7 Comments

Every blogger wants a reaction to their posts.  Whether or not everyone will admit, this is the whole reason we do what we do it.  It is no fun talking out of your ass if everyone ignores you.  So ask yourself what are you doing for those people?

I have put a lot of thought into this of late.  I know how to get a lot of diggs when I want, and a lot of traffic too.  What I was missing though were lots of comments.  I read what the big guys were saying.  Then I realized many of them were just talking out of their asses, because if it were really great advice they would be doing it themselves.  Read more »

Theme Building Challenge

Written by blogboy from http://www.bloggingfornoobs.com/ on July 12th, 2008 | 3 Comments

I was recently had the unfortunate experience of using a one of my local libraries computers to access one of my blogs.  Not only are they still using IE 5.X they have very limited resolution.  Despite 17″ monitors and a couple of 19″ for the really blind folks the resolution was horrible.  They were all stuck at a static 800×600 except for the large monitors for the severely visually impaired which were stuck at 640×480.  While those setting should be an option, they made for pretty horrific view of many sites I took a look at.

My challenge to theme designers is this design a theme or more importantly themes that make use of the theme switcher plugin.  I don’t have all the details worked out yet but there needs to three available sizes of the theme to choose from.  The small size should be readable full screen with 800×600 screen size with important data above the fold. The second size should cover the most prominent 1000pixel width size, but not extend past the edges of a 1024 width.  The last size should make use of wide screen monitors in either the horizontal or vertical.  Figure the resolution of 900×1440 as the widescreen standard.

I don’t know what the prizes are yet either, but if there are any sponsors who want to get in on this let me know.  The contest will begin August 1st.

Blogging For Bucks

Written by blogboy from http://www.bloggingfornoobs.com/ on July 12th, 2008 | 0 Comments

If you read my blog, it is most likely you are either a) a friend who is trying to get inside my head, or b) want to make money from blogging. I am going with the latter. You, like me, may be frustrated with Google for a variety of reasons that we won’t go into, but I am here to say there are alternatives. I am partial to BidVertiser myself, but I am looking into a number of affilate programs right now to replace Google on The Hart Blog Network blogs.

The latest new affilate I have found is ScribeFire which I also see Darren Rowse has up on his website, Pro Blogger.

John Cow wrote up about the soon to be gone Adsense Refferals.

Instead of their Adsense Referral program they are now going to use the Google Affiliate Network.  What this is going to allow is now publishers are going to apply for an advertiser program and then get paid based on advertiser-defined actions instead of the usual clicks or impressions.

Darren Rowse of Pro Blogger has an interview with Kristopher Jones of Pepperjam Network

Earlier in the week I posted that PepperJam Network was giving all new publishers who signed up with their network a signup bonus of $10. Today I’ve managed to get a quick interview with Pepperjam Network’s CEO and President Kristopher B. Jones to ask him about the network, why he started it and what tips he could give us as publishers for using it in a way that earns us the most money.

John Chow has been pushing NeverBlue Ads pretty hard of late. I am also interested and owe them a return phone call. It seems these days even the bigger blogs are abandoning google so fast we can smell smoke. Possibly it is the guys at google taking the torch to ever more bloggers. It is hard to say for sure.

Earlier in the week John also wrote on TinyMasive.com

What do you get when you combine the contextual advertising of Google AdSense with an interactive shopping widget that can offer some pretty good deals to the visitors of your site. In some respects, TinyMassive.com may just look like another shopping-based ad network, but over the course of doing this review, I came to discover that it has a few unique qualities as well.

There are many other networks available. Some of them are sketchy. Some of them just hard to get into. Some of them only in beta, like Yahoo. They are out there though and for those who are frustrated with Google, fear not there are options.

CYA For Bloggers

Written by blogboy from http://www.bloggingfornoobs.com/ on July 7th, 2008 | 1 Comment

BlogBoy doesn’t often make political stands when it comes to the online world, but this is one that can’t be ignored.  There isn’t a blogger alive who doesn’t need to consider freedom of speech issues in fact.  In Yahoo news this morning they write about public online spaces not having the same freedom of speech rights as say your public park.

‘Public’ online spaces don’t carry speech, rights
“Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content
that’s controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their
own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they
cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors.”

Read more »

Note To BlogBoy Feed Readers

Written by blogboy from http://www.bloggingfornoobs.com/ on June 24th, 2008 | 0 Comments

there may be a bit of downtime in the feeds and you may have to resubscribe to the Feedburner accounts.  We are transferring services between accounts, and Feedburner warned us possible interuptions.  We will transfer the account on 6/26 so please be advised.

Thanks

brad