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Break it or Squish it? If you found a good topic to write about, and requires a quite a bit of writing, would you break the topic up into multiple posts or squish it up into one post so readers don’t have to search for the remainder posts?
Vote and comment to share your ideas!

 
When: Saturday, January 5th, 2008 11:30am – 7:30pm
Where: Soho - 45 Spring Street, Tel: 212 334 9391
West Village - 49 8th Avenue (corner of Horatio) Tel: 212 242 2537

Crumpler generally revolves around messenger bags, and this time, they want to help you regift your old gifts. If you have old gifts that you don’t want, take it down to one of two Crumple stores in Manhattan and get 40% off your purchase. Your gifts should be rewrapped, unused, in good condition. They will then be donated to the Salvation army.

You’re helping charity, getting a discount, and getting rid of your old gifts. So if you live in Manhattan, and you visited, be sure to share how it was. If you aren’t planning to go, what do you think about this event?

“A form of expression (not using `like’ or `as’) in which a quality or characteristic is given to a person or thing by using a name, image, adjective etc normally used of something else which has similar qualities, etc.” -Dictionary.com

Do you use metaphors to write your articles?

Some metaphor posts… (Leave a link to your metaphor post to get linked)

• 7 Things Playing In A Rock Band Taught Me About Business from Smart Wealthy Rich
  
• The People of MyBlogLog from Bloggrrl

I realized that I haven’t written a metaphor post yet, so you can be expecting one very soon. :)

There are lots of different search terms and keywords out there that people sometimes stuff into their articles. (Keyword stuffing gets you excluded from searches.) I’m curious about the search terms or keywords that have generated traffic for you this month.

The search term that has generated the most traffic for this month (for me) is… buy me a beer from the WordPress Plugin: Buy Me a Beer. (Did you come here from this keyword?)

So I’d like to know which are your blog’s ‘favourite’ keywords. :)

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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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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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.

Everybody has a different schedule, right? I’m curious about your schedule. Do you blog in the morning and read others’ blogs in the afternoon? Do you read other blogs first? When do you subscribe to a blog? Do you have a set schedule on when you blog? (it actually is better to, so visitors know what to expect.)

I generally surf around just to see what other blogs are out there. The design of the blog is the first thing that hits me; the post titles come second. If anything appeals to me, then I usually end up reading some posts.

I’d really like some feedback on this topic; the feedbacks may end up helping you.

Comment posted by Robert Irizarry
at 5/29/2007 7:10:54 PM

Because of the demands of my job and home life, its hard to stick to a specific schedule. However, I typically go through my RSS feeds a couple of times a day - once in the morning and once in the evening. As far as what catches my attention, I would say a clean layout is important. I want to be able to quickly assess the content without being distracted by a lack of whitespace and too much clutter. Post titles are the next thing I look over. As far as what I end up subscribing to, content is king. I probably track about 70 feeds at this point covering a variety of subjects.

Comment posted by Court
at 5/24/2007 11:27:16 AM

I write my daily post first thing in the morning. After that I usually spend the rest of my work day doing marketing of some kind. Sometimes that is writing articles for article directories, submitting to traditional directories, or being social with other bloggers. I have to get the writing done first!

Comment posted by teddY
at 5/22/2007 6:37:30 AM

Ah wells since I’m pretty busy with studies lately I only have enough tim every weekend to comment on all the blogs I’ve linked maybe when the exams are over I’ll resume my old blog-hopping habit, which always never fail to give me pleasant surprises by discovering new interesting blogs elsewhere.

Comment posted by Rob O.
at 5/22/2007 3:59:04 AM

My wife tends to read her Google Reader subscriptions in the early evening right after we get home from work and I’ve noticed that she can’t help but share interesting tidbits as she goes. While this is nice, is sure makes for a difficult time to catch up with my own blog feed updates. That said, since I’m a very early riser, so I typically catch up with my RSS feeds in the pre-dawn hours before things start to heat up for the day. The thing I love most about Google Reader is that my feeds travel with me. I steal away little moments here and there to pop in and read a few posts.

As for blogging, whew, if only I were so structured. I don’t plan a time to blog - and indeed, don’t blog every day - but rather just post thoughts as they come up. I do have a (currently mostly depleted) small cache of blog ideas that I keep simmering on the backburner that I refer to when I’m in a dry spell. These tend to me more lengthy or thought-provoking entries rather than the lighter, day-in-the-life kinda stuff that rolls out easily and quickly.

Comment posted by CHAN
at 5/20/2007 6:23:33 PM

I always read the blog at midnight, if I found something new I bookmark and share some useful tips to my blog readers. I also overlay on design like you.