The Real Blogger Status

Many people who publish blogs also have FaceBook pages - and one of the easiest ways to get traffic, to the blog, is to share the blog to a FaceBook page. Some people want money for publishing their blogs. AdSense is a very popular way to earn from publishing. AdSense produces the best results, with lots of readers to read the blog, click on the ads, and buy the products and services advertised. FaceBook, and similar social network sharing services, is not the best choice for advertising a blog that uses AdSense ads.

We've been exploring bogus redirection of reader traffic , for a few years. Similar to dubious awards and web rings , we have "traffic exchanges". Traffic exchanges are similar to "affiliate marketing", where readers of one blog are randomly shuffled to another blog , then to another - all the while, lighting up ads on each blog.

Blogger blog owners, like everybody else, like to save money. Some blog owners prefer to save money when registering a custom domain, for their blogs. We've seen several free domain registration services, providing what is claimed to be a two level Top Level Domain "co.xx" (where "xx" == various country codes). The latest in this ongoing story appears to be "net.tf" - and 13 other "top level domains" . There is also an additional free service offering third-level .tf domains, under the name United Names Organisation. They occupy 14 second-level domains , including .eu.tf, .us.tf, .net.tf , and .edu.tf. They are run by the same company as smartdots.com, and are given away as URL redirections.

Blogger blog owners, like everybody else, like to save money. Some blog owners prefer to save money when registering a custom domain, for their blogs. We've seen several free domain registration services, providing what is claimed to be a two level Top Level Domain "co.xx" (where "xx" == various country codes). The latest in this ongoing story appears to be "co.vu".

We've known of resourceful scammerspammers, for years. One long known scam, popular with home / small business blog owners, has been to award a badge for a "Most Excellent Blog" - and encourage the badge recipient to award the badge to friends with "Most Excellent Blogs". The recipients of the "award" would proudly display the badge on their blogs. The "Most Excellent Blog" badge, of course, contained a link back to the scammers blog. Recently, a spammer in a foreign country hosted an "SEO Contest" for other blog owners, where everybody participating was again, encouraged to put the "SEO Contest" badge on his blog or website. Again, the badge lead back to the spammers website.

We see the signs of naivete, periodically, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . How do I require my readers to enter a password, to keep my blog safe from public view? This blog owner does not understand the realities of setting up a private blog. Long ago (very long ago), a computer system might have "private" files, and a shared password, known by everybody, for each file. Nowadays, a private Blogger blog uses team blog access - or team blog ownership - and each team member gets to choose her / his own Blogger account , with a password that he / she decides to use (and hopefully, remember).

Some Blogger blog owners treat custom domain publishing, as drivers in Miami USA treat the suburban streets. Have you ever been to Miami, Florida, USA? Many of the suburban streets there are long, straight, and intersect at 90 degree angles. And as you get into the outer suburbs, with housing developments which (this year) may be right next to the Everglades - there will be almost no traffic, much of the day. The major streets intersect with stop signs or traffic lights. Many of the natives blow the stop signs, run the red lights, and speed with almost reckless abandon. And auto collisions are frequent - and lawyers and police are very busy.

Some blog owners wish to publish their blog anonymously. One of the most obvious ways to achieve anonymity - and one of the least useful - is to not publish your name, in your blog posts. Edit the "Blog Posts" gadget, in the dashboard Layout wizard, and de select "Posted By". This solution will immediately remove your name from any posts published by you - as long as a dynamic template is not involved. The dynamic templates, as with the blog posts newsfeed, do not reference the "Blog Posts" selections. This will be a problem, for achieving anonymity.

Here's a great investment idea. Everybody who needs money (which is most likely, everybody reading here) can invest $10 each. Everybody, reading this, can send me $10. Surely, each of you have a spare $10, to invest. What will I do with the funds received? I will, immediately, take 10% off the top. That's for my retirement account. I will let my friends (don't you wish that you were my friend?) take 5%, each, off the top. As I get investments from more blog owners, I'll send you - and the other initial investors - a token payment. At the end of a week, you, and the other investors, get to divide up the remainder. Isn't that a great investment idea?

We see evidence of confusion, from time to time, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? . How do I move an established blog to WordPress (or any other platform), while retaining the history, reader interest, search engine reputation? Some blog owners think blog readers are cattle (to be herded from blog to blog) - or monkeys (to be attracted by shiny things). We've known for some time, that Blogger blogs cannot be used as gateways, with traffic automatically redirected from one blog to another - or from a blog to a non Google website . Use of traffic redirection scripts is a known cause of blogs classified as malware hosts .

Some Blogger blog owners, trying to save a few dollars while publishing their blogs to a non BlogSpot URL, have used the free service "co.cc" for registering their domains. As "co.cc" increased its base of "customers", their reputation for providing free registration grew - and they became popular with scammers and spammers. Last year, Google, weary of the overall poor search engine reputation of co.cc customers, de indexed all websites registered by co.cc . This week, co.cc apparently stopped serving DNS information for its "customer domains".

Blog owners have been asking, for years, how to protect their blogs against viewing by undesired or unknown readers. How do I password protect my blog? When told that Blogger password protection involves membership invitations, accepted using a Blogger Google account , some would be private blog owners decline the suggestion. That's too complicated for my readers! Can't I just give everybody a password? But Blogger does not use common passwords. Some blog owners, who are technically astute, find add on template code, provided by third parties - which demands a password, in a popup window, to continue. This is where their problems start .

One of the oddest displays of naivete we see, from some blog owners, asking in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , would be How do I let anybody post to my blog? These owners have no idea how popular they would be, with spammers, were this to happen. If you have a blog, and you want to let up to 99 of your closest friends publish their thoughts to your blog, you can setup a team blog , and have fun. Beyond that limit, you cannot - nor should you - go.

A few folks find unexpected content in their Reading List. How do I stop Following that blog? It's not listed, in "Manage Blogs I'm Following", and I never Followed it! When you check the "Manage Blogs I'm Following" wizard, you get a list of the blogs that you Follow, with the Settings link for each. Oddly enough, these mysterious blogs - that you can't remember Following - won't be listed, under the observed title, on the "Manage" wizard display.

Video content, like music (audio content), can provide education and enjoyment to your readers, when properly included in your blog. Video, also like music, can be a problem, when improperly included. If played without warning, as part of your blog, video content can be a worse problem than music that plays automatically. Just as it's not in your best interest, as a blog publisher, to include music that plays automatically, it's even less in your best interest to include a video that plays automatically.

Many blog owners are experimenting with multimedia, as part of their blogs. People who have 5 channel audio / 3D video systems, and various sources of content for each, look at their blogs and decide that the next frontier, for decorating their blog, has to be music. Any blog with a visual theme surely deserves an audible theme, also. Unfortunately, many blog readers like to surf the net, while listening to their favourite tunes. People who are listening to new age music won't appreciate surfing to a blog that makes their computer suddenly start to play grunge rock. Nor will classical music fans appreciate the latest rhythm and blues, or urban beat, hit tune. Unexpected music can create both a bandwidth annoyance, and an audible distraction. People surfing blogs in a shared environment - for instance a public library - won't appreciate any audio content , in any blog.

There are many ways of getting traffic to your blog - some are good , while others are not so good . If you truly respect your readers, you 'll write content that's interesting and relevant to the needs of your readers , and you'll use the search engines to advertise your blog . Other people might join a forum, where everybody promises to read each other's blogs. A third way would be to use the magic of RSS, and join your blog to a common feed . TRAFFIC via RSS by ananth77 with 2,473 members Tagged: blog, blog building, blogging, feed, Marketing, promote, rss, traffic Build your traffic via RSS. Simple Rules : 1. Subcribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/feed_traffic 2. Update your RSS feed address in the reply. 3. Your feed will be merged with all the other blogs and web sites. What a deal. All that you do is make your blog part of the Feed Traffic feed, and you get a piece of all of the traffic, from / to all of the other blogs in the feed. This used to be ...