Posts Tagged ‘thinks’
Mother’s Day
I am trying to figure out what I should be getting my mom for Mother’s Day. I know its not for another month, but I like to start early. I already know what we are getting Bill’s mom. My mom is the problem. She is seriously very hard to shop for. I would love to get her a walk in bathtubs. She has a really bad back. Now, she thinks she is getting arthritis in her back, so it makes things worse. I wish my sister and I could afford to get her one. Besides that one idea, I have no idea what else to get her.
What you do get your mom for Mother’s Day?
Stoves, PR, RankSpanks, and Izearanks
I 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?
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Business Card Reader
Every so often I come across a product that Bill could really use at work. Since it is a smaller company, sometimes they actually take our suggestions. The product I saw today was for a business card reader. As a project manager, he has hundreds of business cards that he keeps in a file. He has business cards from general contractors to suppliers to customers (and about a hundred other people that I am missing). Finding the card he needs when he wants it can be somewhat cumbersome. He doesn’t have a secretary, so currently, if he wants the information in the computer, he has to type it himself. However, this scanning software solves that problem for him. The scanner scans the card in less than 5 seconds and then creates a record in Microsoft Outlook. It can get both the data and any images on the card. Instead of having to carry a huge binder with cards in it, he can just bring his laptop (which he usually has on him anyway). It looks way more professional in my opinion. The cost for this product is $179 which is way cheaper than his company hiring a secretary to do this for him. I plan on showing this to him later to see what he thinks. In my eyes, it is a definite time saver.
5 Days Left 