My friend Elizabeth and I talk quite a bit on Messenger — almost daily — so it wasn’t weird for me to be talking to her this afternoon. However, she decide to come visit my kids and me today! The cool part of this is that Elizabeth lives 4 hours from me! Elizabeth and her 2 year old are at my house right now for a visit. The three kids (my two and her one) are playing great together, and everyone is getting along great! Us moms were able to talk, play on our computers, get some blogging done, and generally have a good time. It’s going to be sad when they have to leave, but I am so glad they came to visit!
Posts Tagged ‘cid’
Meeting a fellow blogger
Saturday, July 5th, 2008Stoves, PR, RankSpanks, and Izearanks
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008I spent today trying to find a new oven online. My oven has decided to have a mind of its own. Sometimes it is twenty five degrees below what I set it; sometimes it is twenty five over. The thing can’t make up its mind, and it is getting increasingly more difficult to cook. What does this have to do with Izea?
The Rankspank
Well, several months ago, many bloggers who get paid to write posts were RankSpanked. What this means is that we once had PR, and we no longer do. PR is the holy grail to most bloggers who do any sort of paid work. The higher your PR, the more money you were able to charge. You’ll even see this badge on a lot of sites out there:
PR and other measures
Up until recently, there really wasn’t a good measure of a blogs worth. PR wasn’t even all that great. Yes, blogs with PR had backlinks, but you never really knew what kind of traffic they were getting. Alexa is another service out there. Your traffic with them only counted if you visitor had the Alexa toolbar, so that was not too good of a measure either.
At this point, Google seems to be changing the rules as they go. It is getting to the point you need a degree online to figure out how they are designing their algorithm. You use to need lots of backlinks to get PR. Now, it is anyone’s guess. At this time, you can have all the backlinks in the world, and if Google thinks you are doing any sort of blogging for pay, they will knock you to zero. They have knocked down sites that don’t do it. I have seen a lot of guilty by acquaintance. You mention one of your other blogs on a rankspanked blog — that new blog won’t get PR either. I know that because I have two sites that should have gotten some PR and didn’t. I’ll be honest, I hadn’t planned on including my cooking blog at all in any sort of blogging for pay. However, since I am not going to get PR anyway, I figured why not! Every so often you hear that people got their PR back and did nothing different to get it back. I wish I was one of those people. However, I am not.
How can you know what to do with the rules constantly changing and you have no idea what the rules really are?
The Answer
The answer to my stove problem is the thermostat. We either need to replace that or buy a new stove. The answer to the PR problem is that we either need to replace part of it or come up with a whole new ranking system. Since we have no control over Google, the best bet out there is the new measure IzeaRanks. IzeaRanks allows you to measure your RealRank, your pageviews, and your uniques. Something I have learned about bloggers is the last couple of years or so is that we are all stat junkies. We love to have multiple places to see where we rank.
How do I get it?
Getting it is super simple. You just go to IzeaRanks and fill out some information about your blog. You then are given a code to put into your footer. Now, you don’t have to do any sort blogging for pay to be involved in this. I think the majority of the blogs listed aren’t part of any service. To get your real rank, the system weights blogs 70% on daily unique visitors, 20% by daily active inbound links and 10% by daily page views. Here’s sneak peak of what the graphs look like:
Now, you will see 4 different lines on there. I used my 4 blogs to make the graph. You can use your blogs or any blogs in the system to compare stats. You can also graph pageviews and uniques too. Finally, a true measure of where you are at.
This is free to use, so you have nothing to lose trying it. What are you waiting for?
Guarding the Computer
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008Yes, we allow Madison access to the internet. Does it scare me? Definitely. I will never forget when two of my aunts went searching for apple pie recipes. Let’s just say the first link they went to was not for the apple pie recipe they were looking for! They laugh about it now, but at the time, they were quite shocked. I can only imagine how my kids would react. If my aunts can accidentally get to those type of sites, I can only imagine what a four year old can do. That is why I am extremely happy that there are programs out there like Integard which have the features I need to protect my children. This program blocks pornography, blocks inappropriate words and phrases in chat sessions and email, alerts me of any suspicious conversations or activities, blocks the sending of personal information, remote monitoring, sets search engine into their safe search mode, and time limits. This is just a few of the things it can do. There is quit a long list of all things it does to protect your family. If you aren’t sure if this a good fit for your family, they do have a 14 day free trial. What do you have to lose besides your worrying about what your kids are getting into?
Blogging, Hosting, and All That Jazz
Thursday, March 6th, 2008Once people find out that you do blogging and sometimes even get paid for it, they all seem interested in finding out how you do what you do. The hard part for me is taking almost two years of knowledge and condensing it down to a five minute synopsis and still have them understand what I am talking about. I try to hit the major points and let them make their own decisions from there.
One of the first things I tell them is that they should get their own domain. If they just want to try it out, yes, a free platform is okay. However, if you are truly serious about blogging, you really need to be on your own domain. If you want to make any money blogging, it is almost a requirement that you are on your own domain. Most advertisers do not free platformed blogs. Having your own domain shows that your serious. Would you trust an expert whose domain ended with blogspot.com? Most people would not.
After you have your domain, you have to host that domain somewhere. There are so many sites out there to choose from it can actually make your mind spin. There are sites out there like Web Hosting Bluebook that really can help you make your decision. They have everything from a hosting glossary to reviews on each of the services, so you understand what each one is offering. You have decide what company works best for you. I personally use Bluehost and love them (which is listed on their list!).
Once you have your hosting, you also have to decide which blogging platform you want to use. There are several platforms to choose from: everything from Typepad to Wordpress. I personally use Wordpress, and I love that too. Once you figure out how to use it, it really is easy. There are thousands (yes, I said thousands) of plugins that can do almost everything you want them to do (now, if you could get one to clean my house I’d be in seventh heaven – lol).
Once you have done all the above, you really need to figure out what you are going to blog about (though you may have figured this out before you bought your domain). You can have a niche blog or just a general one. Niche blogs mean that you only talk about one topic whereas a general blog pretty much covers everything under the sun. This post is on my general blog. However, I have 3 niche blogs also.
I guess my last piece of advice I can give to you is that you need to have fun with it. If you dread blogging each day, it will show in your writing. If you feel like you are burning out, take a step back. I love all the people I have met blogging, and this is something I will never regret doing.
A Shopping I Will Go
Monday, February 18th, 2008Yes, I think almost every post this week is going to be about my trip. This is the first trip I am actually getting excited about. I dreaded the trip to Las Vegas for BlogWorld, and I loved it there. I dreaded the trip to Miami, and that wasn’t too bad either. I thank you guys who told me not to feel guilty, because we are leaving the kids. I think I needed somebody to give me permission to be okay with leaving them. I feel semi-dorky though – I have been watching the virtual tour of my hotel today. I am just trying to get a feel for what to expect. It is all of seventeen degrees here and warm would be nice.
I have been checking out the weather report today, and I am still deciding if I need to find my shorts for not. Depending where you look, I am looking at lows in the 30’s and highs all the way up to 65 degrees. My big problem is that I am not sure if I will fit into any of my shorts (and where they are too). I think I will be going shopping this weekI already know where my swim suit is, so I am set with that. It is just figuring out if I need shorts that is the problem.
We are definitely packing jeans, sweatshirts, and our jackets. Who knows? I may actually start a list, so we don’t forget anything. However, anything we do forget, we can buy there.
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