Tag Archive for 'Blogging'

This Is Why I Read Your Blog


(or What Makes A Good Blog?)

There are a number of reasons that can contribute to the success of any blog, and reasons why people read said blog. You should try to analyze the blogs you read, and why you read them, and then try to emulate those things in your own blog. For example, these are the main reasons I read the blogs that I read:

  • They have the latest news and information (so I can keep up to date)
  • They have good designs
  • They get exclusive articles/reviews/information
  • There’s something new to read all the time (every time I visit)
  • It’s written by people I’m interested in (famous people, people who do amazing/interesting things, etc)
  • It’s written well
  • It’s written with edge, sarcasm or wit
  • It doesn’t have too many ads
  • The ads it does have aren’t intrusive
  • It has contests (especially if I win one)
  • It is confronting, interesting and/or engaging
  • Doesn’t take too long to load
  • Etc.

Let’s take a look at a few major examples. Big blogs such as Engadget, Destructoid and Maddox (The Best Page In The Universe). Engadget has always had a great, good looking theme, but their latest is so much more clean, simple and sophisticated. Very nice. On top of that, they always have all the gadget news to occupy me for at least 20 minutes a day (which is 20 minutes I’m exposed to their advertisements) and their writing is often witty and engaging. Perfect combination! (It also has competitions, is informative, has the latest gadget news, doesn’t have too many ads, etc.)

Destructoid takes this to a whole new level. They are down-to-earth, confrontational, amusing, engaging and more, whilst also being up-to-date and informative. To top this off they have a great theme (if a bit slow to load), host contests every now-and-then, and write with wit and style. Great site. Maddox takes the wit and humor to a whole new level. His opinion is rude, funny and never wrong, but usually politically incorrect. His very subjective and opinionated writing coupled with his sense of humor (and very simple, quick-loading website) make this site a winner.

So everyone, take a minute, two minutes, five, ten, whatever you can spare, and take a look at what the sites you visit have, that your own site doesn’t. How are they so popular? What makes you visit them? Don’t just enjoy their content, learn from what they do.

The Pirate Bay Launches BayWords Blogging Service


The Pirate Bay have launched their new blog hosting service, BayWords, to promote freedom of speech in blogging. I guess then we can expect blogs to be entirely uncensored - perfect for your controversial or less-than-legal blogger. Simply give a username and email address when you sign up and it’s all straight forward! Check it out!

How To Come Up With Post Ideas

One of the hardest things, for some bloggers, is coming up with new things to post about. Sometimes you find yourself with writers block, or sometimes you think you’ve run out of topics you could possibly talk about, but that isn’t the case! Read on to discover how to come up with more post ideas than you can keep up with…

First thing to do is look at what your blog is about. For this example, we’ll pretend we’re blogging about “places to travel in Asia”, but it doesn’t matter whatever you’re writing about, the first thing you should do is google it. But don’t just google “Places to travel in Asia”, try other similar phrases as well. For this example, we tried:

  1. “Places to travel in Asia”
  2. “Top destinations in Asia”
  3. “Asia Destinations”
  4. “Travel Asia”
  5. “Travel In Asia”
  6. “Sights and Activities in Asia”
  7. “Asia Holiday”

The list could go on, but you get the picture. Now, if we take a look at a page of google search results for “Travel Asia” we get this:

As you can see from this image, I’ve highlighted just a few of the sponsored results. You’ll notice some keywords in their like GAP Adventures, Tours, Flights and Malaysia (as well as “Travel Asia”). This means that people are paying google to show ads whenever people search for the keywords “Travel” and “Asia” or both together, so if you can write about these subjects, you’ll hopefully get those same ads on your site, which can earn you some money (if you’re using AdSense). Now, we can use these keywords to come up with a list of possible things to write about:

  1. GAP Year Adventures in Asia
  2. Tours in Asia
  3. Tours in (Asian Country/City)
  4. Holidays To Malaysia
  5. Cheapest Flights To Asia (Maybe a weekly/monthly feature)

As you can see I’ve already come up with 5 different ideas. I could even do separate articles for different tours of Asia, and do separate articles for tours in each country or city, and I could even turn “Cheapest Flights To Asia” into a weekly or monthly series. On top of that, I could write about the cheapest flights from the UK, UK and Australia, as these are the countries people are most likely to be flying from, OR i could analyze my traffic and write about the cheapest flights to Asia from the countries that most of my visitors come from.

The next thing I’ll want to do is have a look at my incoming searches. This means having a look at the terms people were searching for when they ended up at my site. If you are running Wordpress, which chances are you are, I suggest you install the stat-monitoring plugin called Statpress. It will automatically track all your statistics for you, including the latest Search Terms used to find your site.

Now, take a look at the top results on all of the search results you’ve looked at. Look at the content of these pages. What are they doing that you aren’t? What content do they have that you don’t? You can write about anything that is even slightly related to your site.

Another place to find articles ideas is from the news. Look at, for example, your local news site, or even cnn or the bbc. Look for any news about the subject your blogging about. For example, I could blog about the recent Earth quakes in China or the Tsunami in Myanmar (Burma) because they would effect travel in Asia. Remember to credit any sources of information though. Finally, you can also try looking at similar blogs. If your blog’s “niche” is quite a crowded niche, why not try doing a best-of-the-week type post? Summarize all the best posts of the week in your niche, so then visitors can go to your blog not only for your own original content, but also to have the best related posts served up once a week with no effort at all.

So through just a few easy methods, you can come up with dozens, or potentially hundreds, of new posting ideas.

Done.

Change Of Site Focus (Slightly)

This site will now be focused mainly on blogging, marketing, money making and similar subjects. I’ve started another blog/project focusing on the topics of design, web design, web coding, etc. so now Blogmastr can focus on the things mentioned above.

This doesn’t mean we won’t post about other subjects, but our main focus will now be on blogging, and making money. We’re going to start by writing some articles on different subjects - basically the basics of blogging and marketing, and soon we’re going to host a competition.

Out.

5 Reasons To Host Your Own Blog

So you want to start blogging, right? You want to get started quickly and easily, right? So you should use something like blogspot or blogger, right? WRONG! When starting a serious blog (especially one where you’re looking to make money) you should always get your own domain name and web hosting. And here’s why…

Continue reading ‘5 Reasons To Host Your Own Blog’