Not everyone has been in the blog-o-sphere forever; some people are new, some people need a review, and it’s always nice to know new things. So I decided to start a web meme. I hope you participate!

-Start Copy-It’s very simple. When this is passed on to you, copy the whole thing, skim the list and put a * star beside those that you like. (Check out especially the * starred ones.)Add the next number (1. 2. 3. 4. 5., etc.) and write your own blogging tip for other bloggers. Try to make your tip general.

After that, tag 10 other people. Link love some friends!

Just think– if 10 people start this, the 10 people pass it onto another 10 people, you have 100 links already!

1. Look, read, and learn. *******
-http://www.neonscent.com

2. Be, EXCELLENT to each other. ******
-http://www.bushmackel.com/

3. Don’t let money change ya! *****
-http://www.therandomforest.info

4. Always reply to your comments. ****
-http://chattiekat.com

5. Spell check is your friend. **
- http://thingsbymike.com

6. Be the blog. ***
-http://www.meandmydrum.com/

7. Your readers are your treasure. **
-http://www.brownbaron.com/blog/

8. Link liberally — it keeps you and your friends afloat in the Sea of Technorati. **
-http://www.chipsquips.com/

9. Titles Are Everything *
- http://www.realitywired.com

10. Learn From The Pros. ***
-http://www.shaunlow.com/

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Some bloggers offer a contact form (where you enter your contact information and the contact form gets sent to the author), and some bloggers offer their email address, so you can email them directly. So which contact method is better? That’s what we’ll look at.

Email to Contact
I used to think this method was time consuming (clicking the icon, entering contact information and details, etc.), but now I like this contact method better, because it feels more like you’re contacting the author personally, rather than through a form.
Some things to watch out for with emails to contact:

• You are giving readers permission to email you anything once you give out your email.
• Beware of spam. It may be a good idea to get some spam guard for your email account.
• Some readers sign you up for programs, as their affiliate. (So once you click a link in the email, they earn money off you.) Watch out.
• A lot of readers are lazy. Some people don’t have their email as an icon on their desktop, so it might take a while for them to open their email account.

Things to keep in mind:

• Make sure your email address is okay for your audience. An email address like 12345ilikeicecream@yourdomain.com wouldn’t make you look very good. A simple email address like yourname@yourdomain.com would do it.

Contact Forms for Contact
This way of contacting authors is more convenient, but when I see those forms on blogs, it feels like the author thinking readers are incapable of emailing or readers aren’t “trusted” with their email.
Things to watch out for:

• Some forms go through errors. Not all contact forms are accurate; be sure to test your form before asking your readers to contact via forms.

• Forms may be read by a third party. Depending on which contact form processor you use, they may be read by a third party.

Things to keep in mind:

• Make it visible, so readers do not have to search for the contact form.
• Some readers are lazy; provide an easy way for them to contact you. (e.g. no spam prevention words, terms to agree with before contacting, terms to read before contacting, etc.)

You can choose your contact method based on these factors. Which one do you prefer?

Arbitration in San Diego, with experts at Allen Barron. The motto is, New Thinking, New Results.

There was some hype over certain topics such as “The No-Follow Move” and “[Insert Company Name] has Acquired [Insert Company Name]” (There was the Youtube acquirement, the PhotoBucket acquirement, etc.) Those posts are seen around so much that people start to get bored and a 30% chance of reading the whole post appears out of nowhere.
While most bloggers browse around the blog-o-sphere and knows what’s happening to the web, some bloggers/readers only know one or two blogs that are tech related, and rely on those few blogs to give them a report on the web.
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If you have not done so already, read Part 1 of Fake Comments and Insightful Responses to Fake Comments to follow up on this post.

In the last post about Fake Comments, I’ve discussed how to identify fake comments, and what readers will think once they’ve established that you make fake comments. In this post, I will talk about what you should to if you have made fake comments in the past, what you should do in the future, what you should to do gain comments, and various other points.

Fake Comments in the Past (Over last month)
All bloggers have ups and downs. The past is the past. There is no use dwelling on fake comments in the past.
If a reader has contacted you asking about your fake comments, apologize about the comments and say you were trying to see if more people commented on posts with comments. (that is the truth)

Others Doing Fake Comments
This may be a not shock to you, but you are not the only blogger that has thought of doing fake comments. (Learn how to identify fake comments)
The best thing to do is contact them directly and warn them about their fake comments. (Give a link to this article if you want) Do not be conceited; make it clear that you are only trying to help. Most bloggers appreciate help. When others succeed, you succeed. If other bloggers do not move forward, you would not have competition, therefore you would not succeed. They might also warn you the next time you make a mistake. (and there you have a new friend!)

Gaining More Comments
Rather than write fake comments, why not use other ways to gain more comments? Here are some of the ways you can gain more comments:

• Post comments on other blogs. Posting comments on other blogs in the same league as you (around the same status; same number of visitors) helps you make more blogger friends, which may help you in the future stages of your blog.
• Guest blogging. Guest blogging brings more exposure to your blog. You can find a blogger friend and guest blog on each others’ blogs. That is always a good trade. Make sure your post is good quality.
• Posting in forums. Join in a crowd, post regularly (i.e. once a day, etc.) so that people know you; have a unique thing about your posts. (more information about identity)
• Get WordPress plug-ins. The Top Commentators encourages your readers to comment regularly, getting a link-back on your site. The Recent Comments WordPress plug-in is nice to have, but is not necessary.
• Reply to comments. Even if you know that the reader is not going to check back for your comments, reply to them to let your readers know that you care about the comments that they leave.
• Offer give-aways. Some blogs have recently been holding a [Number]th Comment contest. Those have been successful on the most part.
• Ask questions. Asking questions encourages readers to respond. [Short] surveys and polls also work.
• Ask for comments. What can be easier than asking for comments directly? (Ask a question and tell readers to respond by leaving a comment, etc.)

Those are some of the ways you can gain more comments. If you have any suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments area so I can add them to this list.

I got a lot of responses for Fake Comments Part I, and I want to share some with you. I’ve picked some of the interesting or more insightful ones. (I’m sure you don’t want to read responses like, “No I don’t.”) The author of the comment is linked.

Angie Hartford said:

Fake comments are kind of like voting for yourself in order to win the Miss Congeniality award in the Miss America Pageant.

jerrydrussell said:

If you wrote a fake comment, then you’d have to answer said fake comment, which would lead to answering the reply…..

Ack.. Makes my head hurt. It’s the blogging version of time travel paradox

Brown Baron said:

I think the best advice for that would be to just keep writing. The comments will come eventually.

teddY said:

Hmm well sometimes when I get no comments for a post I’ve spent a lot of effort writing I got tempted to write fake comments so as to attract others to leave comments. But I’ve never done it before because thinking twicee about it, leaving fake comments is just meaningless. You can deceive yourself that someone actually left a comment but then you can’t hide from others - because the writing style is almost identical, unless you’re really good at impersonating others’ styles.

I completely agree with what Brown Baron said: “…just keep writing. The comments will come eventually.”

Thirft Shop Romantic said:

No, that’s sort of sad. It’s like Mr. Bean sending himself Christmas cards.

incinq said:

Kind of related… I have run across other community project blogs, where I’ve suspected that the “anonymous” entries (usually confessional in nature) are fake/written by same person.

stoneman said:

Not “fake” comments, but I sometimes add a comment as a kind of footnote with additional information. I sign it with my own Blogger initials, so it should be pretty clear that I’ve added the information myself.

dharmagypsy7 said:

I read somewhere that getting the first comment is the hardest and when you have comments it means people are reading your blogs so some have resorted to leaving comment count up than what it is.. i.e

0 Comments but you put in the value of say 10 comments. This will make it more likely that the person will click on the comment box because other people have commented on it.. but of course when they go to the comment box.. there’s no comments…

I guess you can just leave comments for yourself. That would work too.

SiteProPlus said:

Do more women write fake posts than men?

BrentD said:

The amount of shocked and negative feedback to this question leads me to believe that most of the respondents are very serious people with very serious blogs. But what if you have a very humorous blog? What if you are not trying to provide technical information or punditry, but instead trying to entertain?

I have a couple fictional characters who post on my blog and who occasionally heckle me in the comments when I post in my name. They all track back to my site however, so any diligent seeker of Truth in Blogging can tell in an instant what’s “really” going on.

I put a lot of effort into this personas, so I do not consider them fake.

Just fictional.

thereyoucome said:

Isometimes post comments to make sure the commenting function works well, because it seems long time no comments, and sometimes comment as a footnote, all in my comment ID.

BrentD, I agree with you to some extent, just like a scene often used in comics, an angel side and an evil side of you, or a strong side and a weak side of you, they can play debate on a thing you’re not decided or not certain.

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Have you ever written fake comments for yourself or someone else? If you haven’t, would you want to? Let’s look at what fake comments can do for you.

While writing fake comments can be enticing, it would also be somewhat obvious that some of your comments are fake.

The Author name and URL give a hint. When a lot of comments coming from one or more people without URLs, people become suspicious. People have tried to bypass that by creating various social networking accounts, but it would also be obvious if most URLs came from social networking sites.
In some situations, someone has posted your blog in a forum, so people go comment for a specific reason, but that is rare. Most people comment if they have a blog, for promotion and exposure.

Details in comments and writing style also leave hints. For example, a comment like this:

That is a great image. Turn the “Screen” option on when vectoring. Turn it off when writing text. Other than that, keep it up! Looking forward to seeing your work again!

versus

I totally love that! Make more!

People can tell if it is your writing style or not. Your writing style would be similar to the posting style, and the vocabulary would be similar.

Comment length goes with detail, but generally when bloggers fake comments, the comments would be short, unless only one or two comments are faked.

So once readers recognize that comments are faked, what will they think of you?

• You do not have a large amount of comments; thus faking them
• You want more comments
• You want to look good
• You are “evil” and probably have done other dishonest things for your blog in the past
• You have too much time on your hands
• You cannot manage your time well enough, and depending on your blog topic, will make you loose readers
• You cannot think sensibly

These are just some of the points that readers will think of you once they find out you are faking comments.
In Part II of Fake Comments, I will be discussing what you should do if you have faked comments in the past, what you should do in the future, what you should do to gain comments, and various other topics and questions related to Fake Comments.
Subscribe to my RSS Feed to know when it comes out!
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In general, in what position are the ads when you click on them? What do you usually click on? (text link ads, banners, in-text ads, etc.)

Let’s look at some details…

The F Shaped Heat Map Theory

Left to right: “about us” section of a corporate website (far left), an ecommerce product page (center), and search engine result (SERP; far right).

This heatmap shows the way people read webpages. The reddish parts are the most/first read, and fading into blue. Notice that they are in a distinct F shape.

The way you position your ads depends on how you are paid… Per click? Per view? Per month? Per click means you get a certain amount of money for each click. That is the way affiliate programs such as Adsense and Bidvertiser work. Per view means you are paid a certain amount of money for every number of views the banner gets. If you are paid $1 per 100 page views, you would get $10 for 1000 page views. Per month means you get a certain amount of money no matter how many clicks the ad gets.

Position Your Ads

If you are paid per month/view, you will need to write very good blog titles to capture your reader and not let him/her wander away. The first two to three paragraphs should capture the reader.

The most effective place for banners (standard size) usually would be right before your main content. That is the place where people usually look before they read your content; to “anylyze” your layout, etc.

If you are paid per click, try to follow the heatmap theory; which is somewhat accurate. More details on the heatmap at Jabob Nielsen’s site. You will want to put your ads near the reddish parts in the heat map.

My Adsense ads are usually before, after, or in the cut of a post. The cut of a post is a good place to put ads, as the reader views the ad when he/she is interested in your post.

Comment posted by Weekend Links 06/15

at 6/15/2007 2:58:56 AM

[…] Grace discusses the most effective place for ads. […]

Comment posted by LISTIKAL

at 6/19/2007 3:02:45 PM

I really need to dig deep and figure out ways of getting better CTR. I’m getting quite a few page views now, but am still not making much money through Adsense.

UPDATE: TUTORIAL ADDED.
Do you think the screen is really transparent? Some people fall for it.

Transparent screens are an excellent effect on a lot of things, as long as you don’t move the screen around. I recently stumbled upon a Flickr photo account with images of transparent screens.
The image to your left is an example of a “transparent screen”. Browse around the photo album and I will come back later today or tomorrow with a tutorial for a “transparent screen”.

How to Make a “Transparent Screen” Desktop

1. Move your screen away and take a picture of the space behind your screen. Try to take it from where the device would be.
2. Put your device back; careful not to move any wires, etc. Take a picture of it with the device. Upload the pictures onto your computer.
3. Open up any photo editing software (I’m using Adobe Photoshop) and open your pictures.
4. Drag the image with the device onto the one without the device. The image with the device should be on top.
5. Use the Selection Tool to select the screen part. It usually is distorted. Don’t worry; It will turn out alright.

6. Go to your Layers palette and drag the layer with the device into the trashcan. Make a new document the same size as your screen resolution and copy your selection and paste it.
7. Distort the image so that it fills up the whole document (your screen resolution) perfectly. If you don’t know your screen resolution, press alt+Print Screen beside your F12 key and paste it onto a new document in your photo editing software. Check the size. That is your resolution size.
8. Adjust the lighting. This part is tricky. You make it so it looks like a camera lens and not a image.
9. Set the image as your desktop. You have a “transparent” screen! As long as you don’t move it around a lot…

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You see a lot of posts everyday telling you to DO NOT EVER DO THIS! or DO NOT EVER DO THAT! This post is about How To Overwhelm Your Visitors. I will tell you how to overwhelm your visitors, and you can decide what to do to prevent that.

1. Writing over 2-3 posts per day. People cannot spend their entire time on your blog; they have others to go to too. Be considerate; If yours is too long, they will skip it entirely.
2. Too many Topsite buttons and Stat counters. Using one or two stat counters is enough. Google Analytics is a good one. MyBlogLog is another good one if you want to track where your visitors are going. If you currently have over 3-5 buttons on your blog, remove them one day at a time. For example, today, you can remove one. And another one the next day, and so on. That way your visitors won’t notice a big change.
3. Sharp colours, easy eyes. Watch your colours. Your colours should somewhat “mix” together. For example, black can go with almost any colour. Use green and purple with caution. Colour Combos is a good colour scheming site if you need help.
4. Be considerate of where people live. If your blog is intended for people in a specific place, then clearly state the information on the main page.
5. Going on and on about a particular thing. While you can call that excitement, it can also be recognized as over-reactiveness, or obsessiveness. Be careful about what you go on about; repetitiveness is also very annoying. The next half-point relates to this one.
   Constantly reporting on your “amazing” stats. A status report once a month is enough, and once a week if your blog is not over one month. One or two posts expressing your amazement to your status is enough; people will disregard them if you rave about it too much.
6. When you blog, stay on one topic and move on. This is a mistake that a lot of people make, called Rambling. It’s perfectly fine if you say that it is going to be a ramble at the beginning of the post, but when your visitors come from a search engine referral, they expect to see what they searched for, and not bits and pieces of it.
7. Using too much font decorations. This will hurt peoples’ eyes and annoy (not to mention overwhelm) them. It is very hard to read, but if you truly have good content, some visitors will copy and paste your text onto an editor like Notepad where font decorations do not exist.
8. Using animated images. It will redirect your readers’ attention to somewhere else, and most will find it annoying. Background and cursor effects have the same results.
9. Resizing their browser windows. This is the one thing that always catches people– having their browser windows resized. Most have their own preferences to what size their browser window is, and like to keep it that way.
10. Hording visitors with advertisements. People hate it when presented with too many advertisements. (e.g. visit any MySpace fansite, and you will see how far some people go.)

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When a you have a technical difficulty, what do you do? Would you fix it not mention it? Would you fix it and apologize? Or would you acknowledge it and fix it later?

It is best to fix the bug as soon as possible. If the bug cannot be fixed in a small amount of time, then post a message notifying your visitors of the bug and fix it as soon as possible.
Your message should be short and sweet, or else no one will read it. It should be similar to this:

We are having technical difficulties in our database. The blog will not be accessible. Please check back in a few days. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Details

Explain to your visitors what is going on. They like to be informed. Phrases like “We are experiencing problems…” “We have encountered problems…” work too.

We are having technical difficulties in our database. The blog will not be accessible. Please check back in a few days. Sorry for any inconvenience.

How will your bug affect your visitors? Let them know.

We are having technical difficulties in our database. The blog will not be accessible. Please check back in a few days. Sorry for any inconvenience.

When to check back? This keeps your visitors coming back. It is best to put a date so visitors do not get annoyed when you are still not back up. If you want to get more specific, put the time. (Don’t forget to put Time Zone.) However, if you do not know when the bug will be fixed, don’t put the date, but offer an email or RSS subscription, and when your blog is back up, you will let them know.

We are having technical difficulties in our database. The blog will not be accessible. Please check back in a few days. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Offer an apology. Be polite– you are the one causing inconvenience for visitors.

We are having technical difficulties in our database. The blog will not be accessible. Please check back in a few days. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Optional: Offer some sites for your visitors to pass their time. (As an apology gift or however you see it) If your visitors liked the sites you offered, they may either visit your blog more often, thinking you have more to offer, or love the new site too much that they abandon yours. This is a gamble, but I wouldn’t do it.

We are having technical difficulties in our database. The blog will not be accessible. Please check back in a few days. Sorry for any inconvenience.
In the mean time, it would be great if you visit this site:
http://neonscent.com

Do not tell visitors to rate or vote for you while your blog is down. Your blog is down; you have nothing to offer them, thus earning bad votes and reviews. Plus, what would they review your blog if there is actually nothing to review? Nothing, right? What rating would you get? 0, right? While your regular visitors may give you good ratings and reviews, new visitors may not. So if you make requests on your message, be careful!
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