Web Publishing

The posts in Web Publishing are usually things I have learned the hard way, or the long way around. I like to do things my own way. I look for better ideas, well, different ideas, later – if I need them. People should always pick and choose what advice they follow. But, I have more than 20 years of experience creating, building, and maintaining my own sites. I’ve learned a few things, in my own contrary, independent way.

There are 866 posts filed in Web Publishing (this is page 6 of 87).

How can you Help Another Blogger

Do your good deed for the day. You don’t have to be a popular blogger, an experienced blogger or spend a lot of time on giving another blogger a little help. This list comes from the SITS Girls forum.

Write a high quality guest post that will be useful to another blog’s readers

Leave helpful and insightful comments

Link to the blog and share your readers with them

Promote the blog in social media and start a social bookmarking campaign for them

Recommend to your readers to subscribe to their blog

Email the blogger with some suggested topics you’d love to see them cover

Introduce them to a potential advertiser

Share with them an affiliate program that has worked for you

Write an email telling the blogger how you found one of their posts helpful.

Perform a significant action for another blog. Don’t just leave a comment on 50 blogs; focus your energy on one other blog in your niche.

Publishers Need Better Photography to Stay Relevant on the Web

Publishers Need Better Photography to Stay Relevant on the Web.

Most sites using images do it very casually, without putting in a lot of thought. Why would they when the image is just something they picked up to drop into the post. It has not meaning to them and often it is pretty meaningless in the post too. It’s just what you are expected to do now. Every post should have an image. That’s what the so-called gurus say.

I wish sites would go back to the day when people created their own artwork to illustrate posts. If you don’t have a professional looking photo ready for the post, draw something yourself. Why does it have to be a photo if you aren’t a professional photographer work with what you actually can do.

Draw something or get into other forms of web graphics. Turn text into art. All you need is a graphics program of some kind and the ability to type letters into it and move them around. Experiment.

Why Do they Keep Saying Blogging is Dead?

Blogging isn’t dead. Blogging is publishing and publishing online is just beginning to evolve.Where can you take your own site once you get started? Never think you are stuck in one direction or theme or can not change your point of view or your voice as a writer online. If you have gone as far as you want to, take another direction and talk about something that works for you as you have evolved now. The web (Internet) is developing – there is no need for it to stagnate or die.

via Blogging Is Dead (Again) | Six Pixels of Separation – Marketing and Communications Blog – By Mitch Joel at Twist Image.

How to Reach Beyond HubPages

Note: This was originally posted to HubPages, February 2012. I’m no longer writing at HubPages but the advice to people who write for network sites is still true and worth knowing. 

To my fellow HubPages writers,

I’ve been writing with HubPages for a few months. I had joined years ago, but I wasn’t writing Hub posts until recently.

My writing experience online comes from other sites, other writing networks and my own sites which I create, maintain and promote. I have moderated forums, email lists and newsletters. I have guest posted and I have accepted guest posts. I have begun working as a content curator. In the past I have been a web directory editor for The Open Directory Project and a less well known directory, BOTW. I have written for known and unknown sites like LockerGnome, Suite101, BackWash, have any Hub writers heard of these? Chances are you have not.

HubPages has become it’s own little microcosm, it’s own little closed in and sheltered world. The traffic here is mainly from inside the network or Google. This is not really a good thing.

Google is like a bird, picking at bits of food in a huge log on the forest floor. The Google bird just snips up one snack at a time. It doesn’t dive in and find more or tell anyone else to come and see what great snacks there are in this tree. Everything Google finds becomes part of its database and someone has to search for it in order to find you. In Google, your content is just a little bug waiting for another bird to dig for it, with the right words.

There are so many other sources for traffic! Most Hub writers are not usingTwitter, for instance. Twitter is simple to use. It would also let Hub writers talk outside of HubPages which is a good thing because it promotes HubPages – outside of HubPages. Twitter is only a beginning… StumbleUpon, Tumblr,Pinterest, Snip.it, Flickr… Are these foreign lands to you? Then it’s time to set your eye on the horizon and explore them.

You can promote your Hub posts in so many fresh, new places. Places you will enjoy exploring, places you will find new ideas to write about, meet new people with your interests and interesting sidelines to your interests.

Start your own blog on WordPress.com or Blogspot. It’s free in those places. Link to your Hubpages account, post links to your lastest Hub article and invite discussion. Yes, you want people to comment on your Hub, but they have to get there first. Post the best Hub comments on your blog, as a way to lure readers from the blog onto your Hub post where they can add to that discussion. However, don’t use your blog or any social media as just a way to promote your HubPages account. That is a slippery slope.

It takes time to use social media or a blog well. They should never be used as just a feed for your Hub content. Why would someone read a carbon copy? Have original content, things you don’t post at HubPages. Post ideas you find and may write about. Post updates to old Hubs you have written and, of course, link back to the original Hub content. Post about a bad day, post about your new achievements and goals you are setting for yourself.

Each place you land in, establish a presence in, will bring you new readers and give HubPages new life outside of itself. This will bring traffic from outside of HubPages, those places where most people have never heard of HubPages or think it’s not worth visiting. Reach out there and change their minds.

My Hub Traffic Comes From…

hubtraffic

I like to see where my traffic came from, more than the actual numbers. This is my Hub traffic. Image captured mid day, January 20th.

I don’t know if there are rules about posting traffic stats on HubPages. I don’t mind to share mine, to show my work.

My Hub traffic reaches out past Google. I get traffic from my own blog where I have added a link to my HubPages account right along with my Twitter, StumbleUpon and etc. accounts. I put in time on Scoop.it, content curating for topics which relate to the Hubs I write. While I do link to my own posts there, I also link to some of yours on HubPages and other sites.

On my blog you will see a wider variety of traffic sources. Some of these come from comments I have left on other sites and blogs. Some are networks I have joined. I also exchange links with other bloggers, web writers and friends online. I even get a little traffic from a writer’s network which is now abandoned by the owner.

So you can get traffic from a lot of places, even those which aren’t especially active. The key is in the focus of the site, especially in the case of a small or inactive site. People wind up there, with the focus of whatever the topic or niche is. If they find your link, chances are you will get clicked on because they came looking for your kind of content.

My Blog Traffic Comes From…

blogtraffic

This is taken from my main blog, Word Grrls. Also, mid day, January 20th.

 

Trading in SEO for Social Media

When you write a new blog post, or create a new blog (site), you should write, add the visuals and then edit before publishing. Then we would have focused on SEO, being pleasing to search engines. This seems to have changed in the last year or less. Now, it’s not SEO we work at but social media, link sharing and getting attention and content reposted to social media sources, like Twitter (my own favourite).

SEO (aka search engine optimization) has lost it’s crown. I won’t miss it. I never did like the phoniness and under-handedness of stacking a post with keywords in every possible nook and cranny. It was icky.

Social media has it’s moments of ickiness too. I especially don’t like how social media has turned the word friend into a meaningless word. A friend should be someone you like, not in a Facebook like way, but really actually like and enjoy their company, care about their day and… know something more than the name they use online.

However, social media does mean people have more say in the content that does become popular. It is not left up to stacks of keywords picked up by a web crawling spider bot – now there are real people who choose which information they pass along to their followers/ friends. The problem is still the amount of spammers/ commercial and business types who pass along garbage content – often content they have not even read or clicked through to be sure the link is active, working and not spam (or porn).

So, social media has it’s drawbacks too. But, at least it’s human powered. The marketing gurus seem to think a touch of being human is important for better sales. What a concept.

Blog Security

Procrastinating Writers wrote about being hacked and so could you… but wouldn’t you rather avoid getting into that situation?

Essentially…

Be prepared by having a back up of your content. Keep your files, blog posts, comments and images in a back up so you can easily get everything back online whether you are hacked, have content lost on your web server for some other reason or an error while upgrading blog software.

Use preventive measures by keeping your software (blog software, plugins, applications and etc) updated and manage your passwords. Use strong passwords, don’t share them with others and change them now and then.

ProBlogger – A post about using WP Database Backup plugin to keep back ups of your WordPress blog.

I am trying LastPass which was recommended in comments on the Procrastinating Writers blog post.

Set new passwords using StrongPasswordGenerator rather than coming up with something you come up with yourself.

Making a Plan for Running Ads on your Blog

If you accept ads on your site have you set up a pricing schedule? This is something I had not really done. I haven’t really thought of myself as a blog which runs ads yet either. So, it’s time I got it together and sorted out a plan.

First, I have to get my brain around the fact that I do accept ads. I thought I would hold out longer but, the fact is that money does talk. It’s also useful for so many things.

Second, I am deciding on a pricing plan and giving space on my blog real estate for running the ads. These two things come together because they are very dependent on each other. Your pricing plan should reflect the time and space the ad will require. Time being the length of time the ad will run. Space being the position and size of the ad on your blog real estate.

Also, the actual payment versus not getting paid. You need a contingency plan of some kind. How long after posting an ad will you wait for payment? When do you decide to pull the ad due to non-payment?

Another thing which I didn’t think of until I had run a few ads and lost track of them… is keeping track of them. Keeping track of when they expire and where they were placed (some are in individual blog posts rather than your blog sidebar) so you can remove them when the time is up.

So far the ads I have run have been from advertisers who approached me. If I take it to the next logical step and begin approaching advertisers myself I will need to have information for them. So it’s time for me to figure out what my numbers are. I’m not someone who loves bean counting so this step will  be the one I have to push myself to work at and finish.

I’m also going to look into WordPress plugins for running ads. Not because I can’t continue adding in the code myself but, I think it would be simpler to have the software/ plugin to help me keep track of it and likely deal with extras like images which need to be resized to fit my WordPress layout, or to watch for malware links hidden in the code. This is something else you should check before posting whatever the advertiser sends you.

Read the HTML code and watch for anything suspicious, something that shouldn’t be there. You don’t want the advertiser to have tricky code which pops up extras you didn’t agree to, or code which will send them to another site as soon as they land on your site. Stuff like that does happen.

To rehash for the blog skimmers:

  • Make a payment schedule
  • Decide on time and space
  • Create rules for advertisers
  • Keep track of ads 
  • Work on statistics

Don’t ignore ad networks. You can sign up, figure out how to add the code to your site, etc. But, once you get over the hurdle of starting up an ad network can make it pretty simple to run ads on your blog. However, you don’t get the full ad price yourself when you involve a middle man this way. On the plus side, the ad network finds the advertisers and evaluates them. I like Project Wonderful, mainly for their excellent customer service. However, the advertisers are mainly small sites with a small budget. So, Project Wonderful won’t suit everyone.

Changing, Choosing and Deciding

I’ve been off kilter for a few months. I stopped writing here awhile but I know I don’t want to stop writing Word Grrls. Instead I need to change my focus, choose something that works better for me and decide what I can maintain as myself rather than trying to be what other people claim a blog or site should be. I’ve never liked following the pack. Likely trying to do just that has caused me to feel less creative, happy and fulfilled. Burnt out, in short. (I know that’s a sentence fragment, sometimes you just have to ignore a little rule to show the message. Communication isn’t an exact science.)

I don’t know quite where I am going. I will be working on finishing up a lot of post ideas which I have half started and floundering around in my draft posts. I like my current tagline. It says a lot about how I’m feeling about web publishing these days. But, it may change.

No promises – other than those I make to myself.

Offalings Not Accepted Here

Guest posting is not worth the time it takes to moderate, edit and argue about it. Why do all that for a post which isn’t paying you anything? I accept the odd paying post or text links, if they pay. I’m willing to put in some time working with them. But, the freebie guest posts are very seldom worth posting.

It’s very rare to be offered a guest post which is actually relevant to my site. Most of them don’t spend any time beyond looking at keywords and page rank. Some of them know how to use spellcheck. Some of them submit something that looks like comment spam. This blog is written by a human being, not a machine. If they can’t appreciate that, I can’t take the time to read their offalings.  (Offlalings = offal + offerings).

If you still accept or seek out guest posts for your site why do you and what do you get out of it?