Archive for the ‘Tips & Tricks’ Category
Boring Your Readers With Sponsored Posts
I’m going to be honest and blunt about this. Sponsored posts are BORING. Unless you have an amazing knack to turn even the most dry topics (like fake plants) into something that will fascinate the people asides from your gardner, people will usually choose to not comment, or even read your sponsored posts. Admit it, writing it is boring, so how can you expect the people reading it to be entertained? If it wasn’t for the money behind it to motivate you, would you still write about the alpine industry? Probably not.
The thing with writing sponsored posts is that the more you write, the more it decreases the overall quality of your blog. From what I’ve read of other people’s (and my own) sponsored posts, they all sound boring and dead. To me it’s like watching the commercials on TV minus all the excitement. It repels readers, or at least, I get repelled away when I see that the first couple posts are sponsored posts. I go to a blog expecting to find some interesting content or at least to hear about your day. Not to listen to you talk about police gear, unless you happened to be a police or the owner of the store.
I know I sound like a hypocrite right now, because that is what I’ve been doing for the past couple months. It didn’t occur to me at first because obviously I don’t view my site the same way a regular visitor would, but after seeing the trend on other sites, I began to realize how ANNOYING it was. So I propose a simple solution:
Pair your sponsored posts with a quality, non-sponsored post. What does this mean? Basically, if you’re going to write a sponsored post, go for it. But right after you write it, write another decent, non-sponsored post, so your quality post will be the first one your readers see, not the one about anxiety medicine. As far as I’m concerned, no rules are being broken by doing this, because usually as long as the sponsored post is on the main page of your blog, the post order is irrelevant. So why not have your readers come to your site and read something decent, so they won’t think that your blog is a wolf under sheep skin? For example, this post will be the first you see and hopefully read when you arrive at my blog, not any other sponsored post. In short, always make sure the first post on your blog is a quality post.
Yes, you’re still writing humdrum sponsored posts and in a sense you are deceiving your readers, but at the same time, you’re making it easier for them. Now they don’t have to filter and skim through posts just to find that something good and real you wrote. 
3 Comments » | Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
The Importance Of Consistent Blogging
When I started blogging again on this site, I tried to make it a goal to write at least once every two days, if not every day. Why, because I read this article on Problogger about the importance of consistent blogging. I also found a similar article on MonkeyBlogger. I’m not going to go into details about why you should post consistently because I believe that those two sites already do a good job of summarizing that for you. What I will go into is what happened to the traffic on my site when <sarcasm> I didn’t post for *gasp* 4 days. </sarcasm>
The first thing is that my traffic didn’t decrease immediately. As a matter of fact, it went up for a day before returning to the average number and going down again. I’ve posted a screencap of the stat for my site for your viewing conveniences. I don’t know if it had anything to do with the fact that the traffic was high during the weekends, or if something else triggered the increase in traffic.
However, the evident fact is that my traffic did decrease eventually. I still dropped my entrecard, I still returned comments, and I still commented through despair regularly, so the only cause for this drop in traffic is the fact that I slacked off for a couple days, which worries me because I’m going to be gone for 3 weeks from tomorrow, so God knows what’s going to happen then. Also, not only did my traffic drop, my topsite rank dropped as well (I didn’t check my Alexa or Technorati ranks).
So to save my site (and maybe yours) from drowning, I’m here instead of packing for Taiwan. Now you’re probably wondering, does that mean I have to post everyday? The answer is no. I know it might sound like a contradiction to everything I mentioned earlier, but consistent blogging doesn’t always equal blogging many times a day. It means blogging consistently every two days, every three days, every week, or whatever your pace is. Of course, you don’t have to be on mark every time, but fluctuating from 2 posts a month to 15 posts a week is obviously a no no. Try to make a goal of posting at least # times a week, but if you don’t reach it, it’s ok. What’s even more important then blogging consistently is blogging with quality. I much rather read 1 good post a week than read 5 poo posts a day. TheMadHat has a good article on this.
Since I’m trying to build up the content of my site, I make an effort to write more often. It can get tedious because sometimes you run out of topics to post about. But as I continue blogging, I’m beginning to find that there is a lot you can write, from reviewing your must-have makeup item to ranting about stupid people you encounter online. And believe me, you can write a poo load on the latter
So what’s my conclusion? Find a blogging schedule that works for you. Don’t pull out your hair if you don’t always meet the dateline. Don’t force yourself to churn out 10 mediocre posts just because you feel like you have to. Quality > Quantity any day. 
11 Comments » | Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
Bye Bye Cambridge Hall - Tips On Moving Out
Though I still have one more exam to go on Wednesday (at 8am), I decided to check out of my dorm room today. Why?
- The door is filthy. My roommate has broke my vacuum cleaner, so we pretty much haven’t vacuumed the place since last semester. On top of that, she has a carpet installed in the room. Dust bunnies and carpets get along just a bit too well for my liking.
- The room is a mess. Roomie’s clothes are strewn all over the floor and she has food, or what is left of the food, lying around in random places. Her desk is a mess, her bed is a mess, and her hair is a mess. On the other hand, my side of the room actually looks organized, which is saying something since I’m usually the messy one.
- The last one to check out has to make sure the room is clean. Since my last exam is on the last possible day for exams, I probably should’ve been the one checking out last and making sure the room is in top condition. That means vacuuming, dusting, mopping, and fabreezing the place a couple times before I can get my butt out of that sorry room.
Hence there was no way I was going to stick around. And even if I did, my dad wouldn’t be able to pick me up on Wednesday with his SUV, and there was no way all my belongings would fit in my tiny Corolla. Surprisingly enough, my boyfriend managed to fit it in his beaten down and worn out 96 Camry AND he managed to drive us all back in one piece. As a matter of fact, he was the one who insisted that I check out today. I felt bad, but at the same time, it did feel kind of good to know that I was able to give my “wonderful” roomie one last slap in the face by making her deal with the rest. I know it sounds mean, but she deserves it.
- She does NOT keep the room clean or organized.
- She broke my vacuum cleaner.
- She leaves expired food in my fridge. The food then somehow leaks and my fridge starts growing mold babies.
- Of course, she doesn’t do rats about it and I had to borrow Lysol wipes from friends to clean the fridge up.
- Her friends are loud and annoying and they insist on staying till 2 in the morning while I’m trying to sleep.
- She hogs up all usable space and gets the better side of the room and closet. I’ll give in on the first part just because she’s out of state, but still.
- She slams the door all the time.
Even though I was able to checkout today and complete my move out process in one step, it was still VERY hectic. So for anyone who’s going off to college to next year and living on campus, here are a few tips when it comes to moving out. Since I attend my state university, some of my tips primarily apply to those who go to an in-state school.
- Start taking your things back bit by bit. I wished I had started taking my things back starting the week after I went back for my spring semester. Take back some things you don’t need (things you rarely used the last semester) each week (or as often as possible). It will make your move out day a LOT easier.
- Organize your belongings. This makes the packing process a lot easier. That way when you unpack, you will know where everything is.
- Have duffel bags and suitcases ready. Actually, just have anything that will make carrying things easier for you. This could mean keeping the boxes and bags some of your things came in. I wasn’t prepared on this one and had put some of my things in a makeshift sack made from my blanket. I guess you can always use this as a last resort.
- Take advantage of your school’s move out supplies. My school provided free boxes, but being lazy and overconfident, I only took 2. It was totally not enough, which explains the makeshift blanket sack.
- Clean your room regularly. This is just to make your checkout process easier so you don’t need to clean up like crazy. It makes living in the room a lot more tolerable and enjoyable too. Don’t use carpets because those things make the room harder to clean.
- Don’t rely on your roommate. Unless you’re friends with your roomie, I wouldn’t rely on them to help your clean or keep on top of things. Maybe it was just my bad luck, but my roomie was nowhere to be seen during the exam days. Hence we were unable to communicate on how we should plan the move out process.
Luckily for me, it’s all over now. I’m so glad I’m living in a single next year.
2 Comments » | Sunday, May 18th, 2008
Giving Your Visitors Link Juice - Remove Nofollow
Just last week I wrote a post on adding nofollow to all outgoing links, or at the very least, paid links. However, I’ve been thinking about it and I don’t find it fair to people who comment on my site. Hence I’ve added a plugin that removes nofollow from people who’ve commented more than 5 times, as Wordpress annoyingly incorporates nofollow in all comment links. It’s supposed to prevent spammers and sploggers, but in all honesty, Akismet does more than a good job doing that for me.
So what is nofollow? This is your regular link in html:
<a href="http://www.ever-after.org">Ever After</a>
Now if you added nofollow, the link will now look like this:
<a href="http://www.ever-after.org" rel="nofollow">Ever After</a>
By adding nofollow to your links, you’re telling the search engine spiders not to index the pages you linked to, hence the pagerank of the sites you linked to don’t increase. The name nofollow is misleading because the search engine spiders do follow/crawl the said link, it just doesn’t index them. Wikipedia has a nice chart showing how each search engine interprets nofollow. Dofollow, on the other hand, isn’t an attribute. Rather, it’s simply the absence of the nofollow attribute. Those “normal” links will be crawled and indexed by the search engines and affect one’s pagerank.
Speaking of pagerank, the pagerank for this site is now back to its original PR2, while Riyuu.org went from PR2 to PR3. I found the latter to be surprising because I haven’t updated the site in the longest time. Must be the fanlistings bringing in links
Like I mentioned earlier, Wordpress will automatically insert a nofollow attribute to all links in the comments of your blogs. As a matter of fact, it’s been doing so since version 1.5. So if you want to reward those commenting on your blogs loyally, there are many Wordpress plugins that will remove nofollow from links. Give your visitors some link juice and remove nofollow 
5 Comments » | Friday, May 16th, 2008
Make Entrecard and Sociable Valid
I don’t know when it became a habit for me, but I like to make sure my xhtml and css are valid at all times. You can often find Valid XHTML and Valid CSS links across my newer designs (ex: Pieces of Love), and of course, here at this site. As I was validating my site today (instead of studying), I noticed two things that were giving my site errors, and I’ve found ways to correct both of them, so I thought I’d share with you here.
Entrecard is the image link you see on the side bar (conveniently under the heading “entrecard”). The code I used to generate the image was provided by another site, but after checking my site for valid XHTML, I realized that there was a problem with the code. This is the original code: <script src="http://entrecard.s3.amazonaws.com/widget.js?user_id=12580&type=standard_127" type="text/javascript" id="ecard_widget"></script>
The problem likes with the & symbol. Instead, replace that with &, so you get the following code instead:
<script src="http://entrecard.s3.amazonaws.com/widget.js?user_id=12580&type=standard_127" type="text/javascript" id="ecard_widget"></script>
The second thing that was causing trouble was the Sociable (a Wordpress plugin) CSS. The opacity elements were generating errors when I tried to validate my css because they were either browser specific (-moz-opacity) or haven’t been approved as standard css yet. There is a way to use javascript to get around it, but it doesn’t solve the issue of changing opacity on hover. So my solution? Remove the opacity elements altogether, hence why the sociable icons are not semi-transparent.
But is it really necessary to always have valid XHTML and CSS? Some argue yes, some argue no. Read more here:
Valid HTML/XHTML Trend
Validation Alone Isn’t Enough
