I have the huge luck of living in one of the biggest cities in Romania, Timisoara. Officially we have a population of half a million people (still we are getting close to 1 million with all the ones who have no legal forms in Timisoara). Not a huge city for the coutries that have bigger ones than we do, but pretty “dense” when it comes to people on the web and even bloggers.

Even if I don’t quite like getting out to meet strangers, I tried to leave the loner attitude aside and be more social. And I really haven’t got ANY reason to regret this.

I don’t go to web conferences. Most of the time these cost quite a lot and again most of the time there are only some general issues being discussed, things I can learn easily from articles and tutorials, for FREE and in my own time and speed. Most conferences are led by people who haven’t done too much to impress me and who can’t offer me some real solutions for the money I have to pay. So, no, I don’t believe in such “events”.

Still the local bloggers meeting is something else. We had a well known blogger make the arrangements, we have all been contacted and invited to the pub. It’s a small pub in Timisoara and the only “obligation” we had was to come there and be able to pay for our coffee or beer. Or natural orange juice or whatever we’d drink or eat. It’s just like getting out with a friend, less costly and more informal. God it was a blast.

Sure, we didn’t know each others by real name. I had to present myself as “Ramona Iftode” and then, seeing their faces (it was clear the name didn’t say anything to them), I had to add “I’m dojo, from dojoblog.info”. “Ah, it’s you, so nice to see you” was the response and I suddenly realized people DO read me and they do know me. At least they know that mean woman who’s writing on the Romanian blog.

The great thing about this meeting was that we were able to see the person BEHIND the blog. Most of the time we have a small picture on the blog and few words about ourselves. Imagine the thrill of getting to know that “picture” and talk personally to that “presentation”. Some people found me to be quite chatty and funny, others were more quiet and maybe weren’t too impressed. It’s absolutely normal: I also had people who really impressed me and some I wasn’t able to know that well and love from the first time we met.

The costs were very very small as compared to those famous web conferences. I drank some hot chocolate and an oranje juice, others “killed” the beers and others just fed their caffeine addiction. Some smoked and we all talked. We changed places at the tables (we were 20-30 people there) so that we can chat with other people too, we exchanged links and business cards (the ones who are also firm owners or just had the time to create some cards), and we even planned some projects together.

Right now we are working on creating a non-profit organization for bloggers. We’ll try to promote blogging in high-schools and show the students there all the advantages of a nice blog. Many bloggers are 16-20 year olds, why not be able to offer them more information and some official help? Blogging can be something wonderful for a teen-ager, we can help them and guide them as much as we can.

We have also discussed about a magazine I’d like to start and after chatting a little about this project, the most proeminent blogger in my city declared he’s 100% by my side and he’d help me as much as he could. Now this is really a great result after just 2-3 hours of chatting.

Our first “encounter” was so successful and we had such a nice time with all those strangers that we decided to meet monthly. On the last sunday, each month, we meet in a pub or outside for a barbecue since it’s so nice and warm outside. We have exchanged links, got to know some great people, some even befriended and started meeting outside our events.

This really made me think about the power of local bloggers and the fact many don’t realize all the opportunities. I see many people willing to drive hundreds of miles to God knows what conference, but they never thought about meeting other people from their own town/city who share same ideas and dreams. Sure, those huge conferences do have a point, you get to know the “biggies” in your area, but why not try to meet the local bloggers too? Sometimes you get better results from partnerships with smaller bloggers than with one huge one. Because some of these bloggers, just like you, might become big too. And it would be great to get your name out there, as much as you can.

So … have you ever been into such a meeting? How does the local blogger community look like in your own city?

I like to see the “daily blog tips” from time to time, so this morning I was greeted with an article I thought about for quite some time too: Twitter Less, Blog More!

Even if in this case the author has Twitter in mind, I think we can go further and expand this to almost all social networks that exist at this moment. And let me tell you, they are in quite a number.

I read a lot about tips of submitting your content to tens of social media sites, about how to get into the top spots in digg, mybloglog, blogrush, entrecard, sphin, technorati etc. How to add as many friends as possible, how to click on cards, enter “what I am doing now” messages, see how many people follow you, how to follow others, how to vote, click and blink.

Even if all these DO help us to get our content and blogs out there so that other bloggers can see them, we WASTE a lot of time by doing this. In my first days of Entrecard I wasted 3-4 hours a day dropping cards on others, reading and commenting, since I was trying to Get something more from that crappy Entrecard traffic

In all social networking sites in order to have success one needs to spend time and effort. It takes work to get those top results in network that are saturated with people who DO THE SAME as you do. They are all there, adding friends frantically, voting, exchanging hellos and trying to get their own content as high as possible.

Each minute you spend OUTSIDE of your blog, you spend it NOT working on your blog. It’s also true that these networks do bring in traffic and exposure, but it’s also important to balance this promotional effort with the content creation. It would be sad to spend hours a day promoting a content that’s getting less and less valuable, since you can’t spend too much time writing from all the efforts you are making to get the word out.

Maybe it’s a good time to start spending more time reading useful content and preparing our articles, then run to FEW sites that would help us promote, send a link and spend few minutes and then get back to our blog. Maybe this would slow down some of that big less quality traffic many of these sites bring in and it would attract some visitors who would come back to read that good content we spend a lot of time creating. GOOD content will always attract, that’s the secret.

It’s crazy, I know .. we’re all writing in blogs, creating many many topics and hoping we can live a luxurious life from this. Or at least some expect this. But why are there SO FEW blogs that are worth reading? It’s weird: there are millions and still a huge part of them are sub-quality, spammy, idiotic posts blogs. As a blog writer myself and in the end visitor to so many blogs I kinda found out what makes ME leave a blog in 2 seconds. Let’s see what are the things that make your blog .. sink:

1. Hosted at blogspot or another free host.

Call me snobbish, call me anything you want, but I totally dislike anything that’s not on his own domain. Is a .com that expensive you weren’t able to get one? Did you really have to smoke that pack of cigarettes or drink that beer? Think about your health, eat less junk and drink less, not to mention quit smoking for 1 day and put those 9 USD for a domain. Once you start having visitors and make it successful you’ll thank me.

2. Default theme

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I have mentioned before that a blog is not a junkyard and I prepared there a list of the things that need to be taken care of so that a blog starts looking better. And since I mentioned the sidebar there too, let’s try and see now which of the items we have on a sidebar kinda waste space.

1. Google PR and Alexa rank buttons.

I know they are cute, but honestly, most of the people who want to know this have some nice plugins installed on their browser (I have both show in the status bar in Firefox for any site I want to see).

There is also a nice button from dnscoop.com (those who don’t know this: it’s a site that calculates the price for a site .. well, it’s not perfect, but it’s nice seeing the value. It takes into account the domain’s age, PR, Alexa rank etc.) Even if it’s a cool button, I wouldn’t use it on my professional blog since it’s tacky.

2. Feedjit and all other useless junk

I have seen these too. Some widgets that show where people are coming from, what they ate and how much they weigh. I know they seem cool, but I am interested in your CONTENT, not know that all your latest traffic comes from Entrecard or StumbleUpon

3. All kinds of widgets from programs that might help you advertise

I still have the MyBlogLog widget, but to be honest I don’t quite see its use anymore. Still, if you use such widgets try to have their color blend with the others. In the end we want the content to be seen first, not too fancy widgets.

4. Kill some of the ads.

Right now we have few banners: Entrecash (my latest project), linkworth and text link ads since they pay me now 400 USD/month (increasing) and HostGator since we’re on their servers and now I am pretty pleased with them.

The Entrecard widget and that should be it. I understand you try all kinds of possible revenue streams, just don’t try them all at once. It screams “desperate” and you don’t have too many chances to get a good revenue when you don’t know your true focus.

Advertising is very good, but has to be managed with care.

Each time you feel the need to put something else on the sidebar try to think if you really need this for the blog. Is there such an important information for your readers? Is this important as ad revenue is concerned? Try to be “cheap” with the space on your sidebar, most professional blogs do this.

I wanted to write something like “how to be pathetic”, but I think some of my readers would be mad, so I sweetened this a little. Let’s learn now how to run an unprofessional make money online blog. This shouldn’t be too hard, since I see so many people succeed into having such blogs. Maybe this article, mean as it is, would also help some people understand what is they are doing so wrong.

1. You’re on Blogspot.

There are 2 possible free hosts for blogs that are well known and work nicely: Wordpress and Blogspot. Even if Blogspot is the one most professionals hate you are there. Why? Because wordpress.com (even if better) doesn’t let you put ads there. And we all know you are not in the business to just offer content, you’re here to earn some bucks.

Nothing wrong with that either (I do make money too), but bragging about how cool you are with making money and using a free host for your small blog really sends some signals to me. And, as you might guess, none are positive.

Solution: Get a domain and a hosting. You shouldn’t have to pay more than 50 USD/YEAR for this, I assume you can afford this. Even if you are not the most successful entrepreneur (you’d like to let us think this, but we know you are not .. still), you can afford 4 USD/month. I can afford this in a poor country (I have 25 domains of my own, 4 reseller accounts and tens of other domains given for free to my webmaster forums members as prizes), so it’s not a big deal.

When it comes to your IMAGE this will be a HUGE deal. I’ll come and see your blog on a nice host/domain name and would surely think to myself: “OK, the guy looks serious. He’s got few articles, it’s a small blog, but I see he’s serious about this. Buying a domain name already makes you serious. 

2. I have seen your skin thousands of times before

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I have posted this article in the blogging section, but I assume it’s as valuable as advice for anything we do online (even in real life). I see way too many people try to mimic others, copy sites, copy articles, take an idea and use it too, just because they think their copycat site would be as successful as the original.

We talk about the car on the John Chow blog, even if this is just an example: we can refer here to many things, not just stealing a famous header idea. So the guy makes lots of bucks. OK, let’s find a prototype car, the most UFO like the better, put it in the header and see what else we can take. Read the rest of this entry »

This idea came after I had a member in one of my webmaster forums asking me if he should start a blog. He admitted he’s considering this, but still he is now that sure he does want to open such a project. He asked us to give him reasons to start a blog and since I always liked twisted articles and ideas, here are some reasons for you to NOT START A BLOG

1. Because you need me to tell you “start a blog”.

It’s very simple: if you need me and my other members to convince you to start blogging, maybe it’s not the best idea to begin with. When I started blogging, I did it because I FELT THE NEED. Since I couldn’t care less about trends and the herds following them, I started a blog when I felt I want to share some of my ideas and not because it’s cool and few people make a fortune out of them.

I have seen way to many useless blogs in the last years and most of them shouldn’t exist. In a perfect world, where only useful and quality things would be “alive”, the internet would have 1% of the sites it has right now. We would rule out the spammers, MFA sites creators and all the junk we have to put up with daily.

A blog is a personal thing (when we talk about online diaries) and a project filled with good information presented by each of us as we can and understand to do so. It’s true that we all kinda use the same information, but we present it in our own way. Some are very serious, some are joking, others are plain cynical. We are who we are and this attracts people to our projects.

So, if you think you can come out to hundreds of potential visitors a day and present your ideas the best you can, then by all means do so. But if you’re thinking you’ll hit it big with a useless splog or you just don’t feel like blogging, then spare us the thrill of having to ignore yet another useless site.

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I know how you all hate Entrecard related posts, so I won’t chime in with yet another useless one to tell you how cool it is and how much traffic I am getting from it. I will though talk about HOW to make sure that traffic is less crappy as it should be in such a program.

If you want repeated QUALITY visitors and many comments, then just don’t go to Entrecard. Just like StumbleUpon, Digg and other schemes like these, Entrecard is a good way to get visitors, but the bounce rate is HORRIBLY HIGH. Yes, Entrecard traffic is crappy traffic, but it’s traffic in the end. It’s still good because you do get some visits (quite many if you are active there) and you might also discover some nice blogs to befriend with. Some of the biggest blogs are also present in the program, so maybe it’s not that bad anyway.

Let’s see now HOW to make sure some of this non-quality traffic turns into repeated visitors who are actually interested in what you write there, not just to drop that stupid card and be out of the blog before you can say “spam”.

1. You do get what you give.

So, you know about some scripts that can help you drop 300 cards in 3 minutes. Or less, or automate this process and earn as many credits as possible while not giving a damn about the blogs you visit? I think you have the big chance of getting the same result as the poeple you try to “fool” in this game.

Before you download that script think about this: “Would I like my visitors to use such scripts so that they don’t have to spend less than 1 second on my blog?”. Are you happy thinking you spent yet another hour writing that meaningful post 99% of your visitors won’t even bother reading, because they are interested in just dropping a card and be on their way?

In the end how DO YOU FEEL about this?

I can tell you with all sincerity that it saddens me, especially since I know how much I work for my articles and how useful some of these are. In the end I didn’t open my blog just to be ignored, I love it when people come and read and why not, even comment.

This is why I DO NOT use ANY automation script. I do visit each blog, even if it does take a while. And from hundreds of crappy blogs (yes, so many are just junk) I have found some excellent ones I also commented. And I am thrilled to be able to visit them daily and read some more of their great articles.

2. Search for relevant blogs.

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I was responding to some topics lately about blogs and I recall at least 2-3 instances the topic was about the most famous bloggers and their uber blogs. I know them and visited them. And still .. I am shocked to see so many people discuss about them in such nice ways. With due respect to such people who made the blogging world what it is today .. some of the blogs are totally uninteresting to me. Weird .. I know.

I hear people chat about johnchow, techcrunch, shoemoney and other assorted names in awe about how nice and interesting the stuff there is. I visited and tried to read them in another day too .. may I am having a bad hair day or something.

Still… no .. no sweet taste in my mouth. Am I a total idiot? How can I not like them when thousands of people like them? Why do I like problogger and some small blogs that are far from being famous? I tried to think more about this and here are some of my reasons:

1. First, I don’t like herds. If people worship something like sheep because they know others think it’s cool and not because THEY feel this I just go nuts. A lot of the hype on some blogs is just .. hype. A very good promotion effort some good content (they won’t become famous with crappy posts) and consistency. Read the rest of this entry »

Few months ago I wrote a similar article on my Romanian blog and the feedback was pretty interesting. I try this experiment with you here now. One of the things I really like is reading. I started reading at 5-6 years of age and I would read 1 book / day at 12 and for many years. Yes, I caught that time one would have an actual bookshelf in the room with many books (all of them already read), subscription to the local library and so on.

I kept this habit even in the IT era, when I have to admit most of my reading is done online. As you could guess blogging attracted me fast since I can now satisfy my hunger with all the articles I can find in hundreds of blogs. I “waste” time daily from my design clients or own projects to be able to read something new on a blog. I like reading the biggies and also some smaller blogger since, when it comes to QUALITY content size doesn’t always matter (I find many big bloggers to be boring and am attracted to some smaller ones who are just great).

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