Ideas for moving The Pisstakers – up
I started The Pisstakers from zero a few months ago, with no blogging experience. I have been gradually getting into the swing of it, and about 4 weeks ago, I made a conscious decision to shift gears (not direction!) and get this blog moving. Afterall, in 2 years time, I expect to be supporting my wife off the proceeds, (you may recall I have a wife!) so, traffic will be key. I like this shifting gears idea btw, as the stats have got quite exciting in my modest world!
Talk to the reader, not at them
Content is the real king and fortunately I have no trouble finding the funny or satirical side of serious tech or general news, but I think I have been a bit distant. What I mean is, a blog is a personal voice, not a corporation. Now I consciously write less like the Onion, and more like Ed! The posts are pitched “I” not “us” (which is still part of the final plan), and I added Ed’s personal blog spot. Now there is no excuse, visitors have every opportunity to know what I am like – even if they don’t like me or even listen.
Blogs need a hook
So I have personalized the blog a bit, and next, I wanted to develop some sort of hook. Funny observations will get you quite far in life online and offline, but having something useful to offer will get you even further! So, I have devised a few features.
MyBlogLog Sunday is a link love day on the quietest day of the week for me, at least. By going round to all the members of my MyBlogLog community and letting them know the crack, there have been noticeably more faces in my sidebar. And Polliwog is a happy camper as last week’s first prize winner, so that is cool.
Today I started Spring Widget Saturday for flat-out humor blogs. If you have a Feedburner RSS feed you have the means to generate the code for a nifty spring widget. Send it to me and I will display it on the Pisstakers. Highena are the first, but not the last to appear, I hope.
The blogging experts always bang on about being focussed and developing a niche, so last week I decided to beef up the Search section and offer something specialist within funny-ish tech. Eventually, The Pisstakers will be the place for webmasters and bloggers to find out about web search, search engines, paid-to-search options, blah blah. Sounds like a boring topic, but the content I am turning out, isn’t! At least, that is the aim.
The outcome of new features
It has taken about 1 month to put these things in place. Last week I reported traffic for march had risen by 30% over February. Since April 1 I have had 150 uniques per day, about 30% more than ever before, and stickiness has dropped (or under 30 second visits have risen!) by only about 3%. There have been no spikes, no stumbles, no diggs nor reddits. And the SEO work has got Google growing slowly but surely too.
So, that is my blog about my blog for this week. And whether these benefits are exponential, or long term or not for The Pisstakers, time will tellonly . However, I am still pretty sure Matt and Lee are going to make a go of BAYB with their latest Blog Doctor ideas, contests and ongoing solid foundation. Blog on, guys.
Comment Friday: April 6
Haven’t heard about Comment Friday?
Comment friday is a fun and simple idea. Leave us a comment about anything you want. By leaving a comment, you will have your blog visited by me, and you may even get a link out of it. I will select a blog from the comment list to be linked to and have their link on our blogroll, until next friday.
As comment friday becomes more popular, you are also going to get a few hits. Not only am I visiting blogs, but other people are checking you out as well. If you are hosting your own comment friday let me know. Its a great way to get interaction with your readers and we could promote eachother.
Last friday we chose bobbarama as our winner. This week our goal is 30 comments, and by then we will have our new winner. It could be you!
Don’t forget about our two running contests, blog review competition and rss feed subscription contest.
I’m glad to see the increase in comments as of late due to our contests, so keep it rollin’ on our Comment Friday!
Round Up of My Blogs and Projects
Whew, it’s been a long week even though it’s a short one! Yay for holidays (even though I’ll spend it working probably!).
Instead of my usual post I thought I might give everyone a catch up on what I’m doing in general in the blogosphere.
Details About My New Project
First off and this is perhaps the item I’m most excited about right now is that I’ve just launched a new project called Urban Cultivation. The blog is all about my trying to inject a little bit a nature into my city life and grow some veggies around the house. If you’ve been reading my personal blog Quit your Day Job then you’ll know that I’ve been going on about closing the gap between where the food is grown and me eating it and this is a natural (excuse the use of the word) extension of that. So visit the site – a couple of people have already discovered it through mybloglog (less than an hour after it was first posted). Which is why I love mybloglog!
BAYB Round Up and Exciting New Feature ‘Blog Doctor’
Closer to home here Matt and I will be working on a couple of his projects, we just have to knuckle down some finer points so we can get rolling with those. Here on Blog About Your Blog we’re starting an exciting regular column called Blog Doctor. This is where you can contact us via the contact form and nominate your blog to have a checkup and I’ll go through your site and give suggestions for any problems you may be having. Things like people aren’t leaving enough comments or no one is visiting the site, anything that’s ailing your site! You don’t have to actually have anything wrong either you can always just get us to go over your and give you a clean bill of health LOL!
It’s a free service so you’ve got nothing to loose, we’ll post the suggestions here on Blog About Your Blog and check in with you later on down the track to see if any of the suggestions helped! At the very least you’ll be showing others in the blogging community that you are interested in improving (which is important for all of us!) and get a little exposure to boot! Remember just use the contact us form and nominate your site and I’ll send you some quick questions and we’ll be ready to roll!
Pop Culture Heroines, Crypt Hunter and Coast to Coast Kombis
Pop Culture Heroines had a huge month last month and more than doubled its readers to around 3000 which isn’t too shabby considering we don’t use the blog exchanges only mybloglog. Word of mouth has been awesome as well as some great contributions. W’ve got a great discussion going right now about Thelma and Louise and you’re welcome to come add your two cents!
Over at Crypt Hunter there is a promotion which if you link to Crypt Hunter and mention it in a post Memphis will send you a rubber training snake!
The other exciting news I have is some great news for one of my clients Coast to Coast Kombis who is still finding his feet in the blogging world but last month posted his highest hits so far on his blog and his main site so it shows that business blogging can help get you more hits on your company website!!!
So thank you everyone who continues to read my posts – Matt tells me that I’ve got a couple in the top ten posts here at BAYB so that’s very gratifying!
Have safe holidays everyone!
Lee
Making Money With Free Blogs
I’ve done six months. That’s blogging not prison!
It’s been an interesting journey so far, considering I was a blog virgin when I started out. My intention was to make money using only free blogs and without any financial outlay.
So what have I learnt?
Quite a bit I suppose, so I thought I’d do some longer than usual posts, on my blog, all about Making Money With Free Blogs.
These posts are mostly aimed at newcomers and I don’t profess that all of the content is completely original. There are, after all, only a certain number of things that can be done to make blogging a success.
Part 1.
The main theme is about blog content and how to retain any visitors that may turn up at your blog.
Part 2.
This second part moves on to getting visitors and hits to your blog.
Part 3.
The final part, so far, and this is the money making bit.
Have a great Easter Holiday.
Good luck,
Mike.
Subscribe to our Feed Contest
I am happy to announce our feed subscription contest!!!
All you need to do is simply subscribe to our feed. Read us through a reader, email, whatever you want. After you subscribe to our feed, comment that you have done so in this post.
After we get 200 subscribers we will be giving away the mini fridge! (we currently have about 60 subscribers).
The value is estimated at 60$ so you’re getting a nice deal. I hope you enjoy this prize, I think it’s pretty cool. Something fun to win! Here is the description I found of the fridge:
“Keep your food and beverages cool or warm in this retro mini fridge! Small enough to easily carry but big enough to hold 6 12 oz. cans, this fridge is ideal for your home, office or long-distance road trips. The transparent door window and stylish retro-inspired red and white exterior give this fridge a vintage look that is sure to get noticed. Features include a removable plastic rack that allows you to divide the fridge into 2 sections or keep as one for taller items. Includes both and AC and car adapter for use on the run or at home. Fridge measures 11 2/5″H x 10 3/8″W x 7 5/8″D and has a top carry handle for easy toting.”
This contest is open to anyone who is subscribed to our feed. If you’ve already subscribed before this contest, you are still eligible, just make sure you to leave us a comment so you can be entered. To win, it will just be a random drawing. Your name will basically go into a hat, and we will draw. Possibly “live” on a video camera. This contest is fast and free to enter, good luck!
I’m sad to say that to win this prize, you must live in the U.S. If you have any questions you can email me via our contact form. Thank you for understanding, we will have cash prizes in the future.
So what are you waiting for? Get subscribing!
Baseball’s Changing Ethnicity
Tomorrow at CGBB, I will begin a series about the changing climate of ethnicity in baseball. In the wake of globalization efforts, the decline of African-American participation, and the influx of international talent to the game, each part will focus on a different facet of the changing ethnic culture of baseball as we know it. We’ll explore some of the causes and the potential effects of the trends and even suggest some things to consider as we move forward into a new era of the game.
Blog about your Blog: March Stats
My computer is down, so I figure now is a good time to just review our stats, and what’s bring visitors here.
For the month of March:
We had 6,500 unique visitors, which works out to be an average of 209 unique visitors per day. For some reason, Thursday seemed to be our most popular day of the week.
72% of our visitors stayed from 0-30 seconds, while 8% stayed 30 seconds – 2 minutes. I’m curious how this will change for this month.
47% viewed us on FireFox and 34% on Internet Explorer.
Our biggest referrals are from BlogExplosion, StumbleUpon, Linkreferral, blogmad, and a few other traffic exchanges. MyBlogLog also brought us 147 visitors.
I’m spending about 15$ per month on adwords, and that brought in about 300 visitors.
Finally, our most searched keyphrases that brought visitors to us.
bayb and blogaboutyourblog those two are obvious. We also got searches for ebates, images of venom, leave a comment, vacations.net, free phone calls over the internet, and youths of today are leaders of tomorrow.
Photoshop John Chow Contest at The Details
Many bloggers have started competitions to help interact with their readers, and reward those loyal. Not only that, but to get more readers!
Our friend Nick over at The Details, is running a “evil” photoshop contest featuring John Chow. If you don’t know who John Chow is (maybe if you live in a cave lol), you can read my review of John Chow Dot Com.
All you have to do in this contest is make John Chow look as evil as you can, and you could win 10$ from Nick. Not only that but you will get four one way links from Nick (assuming from his other blogs) as well as getting a free review of your site. He writes great reviews by the way!
You only have until next Sunday, so get editing!
Here is Blog about your Blog’s official entry:
