Blog link exchange, fun as a game! Isn’t that the way it should be for bloggers? Bloggers love to interact with one another and for the most part are very much community-minded people. Well, at least that’s my belief! You’re certainly welcome to disagree, but if you would like to participate in a way to do blog link exchange as fun as a game, then head on over and register at Link and Blog Challenge, and join in on the fun!
Just a bit of info on some technology stuff I think is interesting. We as bloggers naturally rely on a good computer and have to be assured it will be reliable. It’s amazing how much GB of storage you can get on the newest computers compared to just a few years ago. Technology advances so quickly it’s easy to be out of touch with what’s going on.
I watch very little TV, but there have been times that I wanted to catch a program or two from my desk, but we don’t have a TV in this room. Recently I thought about looking into adding something to my computer to watch TV from my computer, rather than buying a separate television.
With that thought in mind, I just ran across a Sony location free base station. What is this new gadget? It enables you to use a broadband Internet connection to access your television from your notebook computer, PC or PSP. It requires a wireless access point; broadband Internet connection with uplink and downlink speeds of 300 Kbps.
Just thought that was interesting, plus you can save some money from Best Buy or other merchants by using a coupon, which can be found on Coupon Chief. If you’re in the market for a new computer the coupon is a combo offer for Sony LocationFree. With technology, there’s always something new to think about!
For starters, let me clarify what this article is NOT talking about. It’s not about dryer sheets, your kids super ball or how far silly putty might bounce. For those of you perhaps panicking over how much you spent this week it’s also not about bouncing checks. 
This article IS about what every web or blogmaster would want to understand, but perhaps would prefer to ignore — the bounce rate of your landing page.
Have you checked your site stats bounce rates? It can certainly portray an ugly picture at times and will fluctuate depending on the referring source, your keywords, content, page speed and yata yata yata — a whole lot of other stuff.
On one of my sites my bounce rate had been what I considered to be fair for quite a few months. All that changed earlier this month and I needed to research why. As mentioned above, there are many factors that can affect your bounce rate so it takes some analysis.
In this particular case I attributed it to the fact that I began to receive quite a bit of traffic from a foreign site. Suddenly the bounce rate went to heck in a hell basket (or how ever you say it – lol), and I have determined it is most likely attributed to the fact that the foreign site is sending traffic over from mainly non-English speaking or reading individuals. Sure, I could change that by adding a Google translator, but I prefer to leave it in just English. Enough of that rabbit trail here, but that should serve as an example with how a referring site can affect your bounce rate either way.
Sometimes I think many bloggers just start to blog and blog and blog without ever taking the time to digest some important factors that affect their blogs traffic. I will be the first to admit that I was guilty of that for a long time, and primarily because it can be overwhelming with how much there is to learn. Blogging is far more than a social event and to not lose your interest you need to see an improvement in your traffic.
So, what to do? Start studying your blogs bounce rate, which begins by understanding how to read your site stats. If you would like to identify what to look for and what to do with the information to become proactive with your bounce rate I found several very good articles to refer you to.
This article about improving your bounce rate will give you some great food for thought so you can begin to understand more about what bounce rate is and how to improve your bounce rate, and click-through rate. Hope that is of help to you.
There may come a time when you decide to utilize a pay per click program for advertising, which takes quite a bit of analysis in order to make it a successful endeavor, and to get the most value for your advertising investment.
Much of the analysis goes into determining which keywords will deliver the best for you, and without draining your advertising budget prematurely! There is a critical balance between those two elements, which involves tweaking the keywords and ad correctly, but that’s just the beginning.
If you have not utilized pay per click advertising perhaps the overwhelming thought of all the analysis it requires is what holds you back. If so, that’s where it may come in handy for you to consider a pay per click management team working on your behalf to ensure your pay per click program is tweaked to equate to the best value per click.
The opportunity to take advantage of pay per click management may prove to be very beneficial to you. Advertising choices can be very difficult, and setting up an advertising campaign improperly would not only equate to lost dollars, but a loss of time and momentum for your website or blog. As they say, time is money, and getting the keywords tweaked correctly can be the key to your advertising success.
You have probably heard the news that broke earlier this week. Forbes slammed PayPerPost and those of us who are posties! Their article was not only demeaning to the bloggers who post for PayPerPost, but in my mind is also an insult to intelligent consumers. While everyone is entitled to their opinions, here’s mine if anyone cares to hear. In the Forbes article written by David Gelles, he stated;
What so enrages the masses online is that the soft sell is often concealed, disguised as an independent product or service review.
Is it just me, or is that not an insult to the intelligence of a potential consumer? Are consumers so easily deceived to not recognize a post as being a potential advertisement? Or, when they click through from a link within a blog post and land on a commercial site do they not comprehend that they just clicked through a link due to an advertisement? Furthermore, many of the advertisers require that the posties place a disclosure within the post to demonstrate that it is indeed an advertisement, or at the very least display a link on our blog to our advertising disclosure policy. Although David Gelles mentioned this fact, it was placed at the end of his article as if the disclosure policies serve no purpose.
Going further into the Forbes article he also criticized Colleen, the top postie for PayPerPost where she published an ad for a credit counseling company. He stated she should have used their services prior to publishing an ad for them! His response to her post was this;
Trouble is, the blogger pushing the site had never even used the company but was getting paid to flack it.
OK, this is the one I really have a problem with. I’m not so naive nor is the rest of the world to actually believe that every advertising agency out there publishing ads has “used the company” product or service prior to generating their ad! That is absolutely obsurd!
Here’s how ridiculous that is: Let’s just say for example that the particular credit counseling company he referred to had selected a different form of advertisement such as an advertising campaign with a newspaper, magazine or other form of media. Does that entity now have their people “use the” credit counseling service before they can do an ad for the company? Hogwash! Like any other form of advertising, bloggers or posties have the right to express their opinion after reviewing a companies website demonstrating the product or service they provide.
In a nutshell, perhaps the big dogs such as Forbes are angry with the fact that as bloggers take on the task of publishing advertisements, the big dogs will lose the grip they’ve had for so many years with raking in the millions of dollars from advertising. My take on this is they see the blogosphere as a threat to their “business as usual” and fear they will lose millions themselves from the advertising revenues they normally would generate from ads.
In closing, I would say Forbes’ attack against PayPerPost and posties demonstrates their acknowledgment of the power and influence bloggers have over the world. In that the majority of us blogging are considered to be the little guy or gal, our efforts combined together as a whole resulting from our voices heard through keystrokes may actually be a threat to the big dogs in more ways than we imagine! In my opinion, that’s a good thing! 
What’s your take on Forbes slamming PayPerPost and those of us who are posties?
Consider for a moment all the time you spend on your computer and creating articles as well as other documents. Also consider the fact that if you have a digital camera and have photos of your family and friends you will certainly want to be sure they are well preserved for access in the future.
Now think of the worst cases scenario in regards to all that data and consider the fact that it could all be lost in a heartbeat if your computer’s hard drive had a serious crash. Sure, you could consider the possibility of data recovery if your hard drive crashed, but at a hefty price! The other problem is the fact that the data may not be recoverable.
Also consider all the hours you have spent writing the articles, which make up your blog posts. Even though you may have access to backup of your blogs wouldn’t it be nice to know you have another option to access in case all else failed? It’s also advantages because you can use the service to backup your MP3 files which also take up a large amount of space on your computer.
With competition being stiff online you have the opportunity to access free online data storage for your photos, images or text files. At the free level, you have the capability to store up to 2GB. You may wish to take the time to research the opportunity to back up your data online with a free service such as IDrive for online backup of your data.
Idrive just may provide the peace of mind you need to protect your data better than you can by saving backup copies of your own, and here’s just one reason why. If you experienced a catastrophic event at your home or business, what would happen with your computer backup and computer? If they are both in the same area they both could be destroyed, which obviously would make your backup plan useless. Finally, another benefit is the fact that it applies encrypted technology, which provides you with security.
You may have read my prior posts about moving blogs from a free blogging platform such as Blogger to your own domain. Back in March I wrote a two part step-by-step guide to relocate blogs from a free platform onto their own domain. Part one and part two of that article may be of interest to you. As I mentioned in those two articles, I had plans to migrate my other two blogs from their free platform, but other projects have been too pressing.
In addition to that, I’ve been totally stuck on what the domain name should be for one of my blogs to move it off Blogger. After much consideration either way, although I would prefer to have all my blogs on my own domains I’ve arrived at the decision to leave both my other blogs on Blogger for now. For now I will simply have to make the best of blogging for free on the Blogger platform for those two blogs! I guess that’s one reason why I just didn’t get any inspiration for the right name for one of the two.
Although I know I may regret it later by not relocating them sooner, I should have done that many months ago prior to the blogs developing their page rank, which I didn’t even focus much on developing since I had intended to move them. The only linking efforts I’ve done with my blogs for the most part is by participating in the Link & Blog Challenges, and it’s been mighty fun in the process!
In regards to holding off on relocating my blogs from the Blogger platform, you may wish to call me crazy for not relocating the two blogs, but I also feel I would rather create some new blogs rather than taking the time to re-hash the two I already have. I guess it’s just sort of the mood I’m in for now, but even so my other priorities for Link and Blog Challenge are first in line.
As you know, developing traffic takes time and I again feel that perhaps the time is better devoted to my other areas of focus with the projects I have, which are more pressing at the time. First and foremost, Link and Blog Challenge is my priority in order to provide our members with a greater community environment. Since I’ve decided to leave my other two blogs on Blogger for the present time, I’m actually somewhat relieved with my decision, as it’s reducing the level of stress due to other time constraints I have. Just as with myself, if you’re planning to migrate your blogs off a free platform and onto your own, the timing indeed has to be right for you.
I do want to mention one last point in regards to this topic. The longer you develop and promote your blog from a free platform the more difficult of a task it is of course to move it. Plus the more difficult it is to mentally overcome the fact that you have to start all over again with establishing your page rank and Alexa rank.
In order to avoid the same decisions I’m faced with, if you have been blogging on a free platform and had begun to do so only recently, I encourage you to run this question through your mind. Ask yourself if you feel you will want to continue your blog long term. If so, then seriously consider relocating your blog to it’s own domain before you put so much effort into it that it makes it a difficult decision later.
Either way, consider your personal needs when making your decision. With moving a blog to your own domain there should not ever be a reason why you would regret it, but I can tell you it’s easy to feel regret establishing a good blog on a free domain. Free is certainly nice, but it has it’s drawbacks and mainly due to the fact that you do not have full control over a site on a free domain. Happy blogging!
