Miles’ Blog » Blogging

Looking at a few previous posts (such as Most Viewed Posts of 2006 and Placing Value on your Blog), I would forgive you if you started to think I was fascinated by blogging, and by the inherent ‘is this blog interesting to people?’ thought process I’m sure every blogger has.

As a matter of course for the first few months I used to regularly trawl my blog statistics package, looking for an insight into who reads which posts and when, what posts capture interest, and which don’t. However that quickly wore off, and it’s rare I even check them out at all.

However, back in my Placing Value post, I talked about using comments as a form of measurement tool. So, it won’t come as a surprise to you that I recently started to wonder which of my posts have garnered more comments than others in the last two years of blogging…

So here it is; the top nine posts (who needs 10?), using comments as a measurement:

1. The Web 2.0 Secret Weapon was my very successful tongue in cheek look at the Web2.0 phenomenon, including Photoshop Palette.

2. Job applicants take note was a rant of mine after a recruiting campaign, at the lack of care applicants put into finding that job.

3. If Web2.0 applied to cars was another joke based around Web2.0 - get the feeling I liked to knock that trend?

4. An Absolute Honour, a recent post about my own personal achievement in winning a business award.

5. 39 hints when looking for web industry work allowed me to cover what I consider to be the basics when applying for a position at a web company.

6. Lets use English in HTML was another rant, albeit with the intention of encouraging debate, about the usage of American English spelling in HTML.

7. Make Money Blogging was a discussion around what methods bloggers go to, in order to earn a buck.

8. Design Thieves Part II was a rant about an unfortunate incident back mid last year, when we had a website completely copied. It eventually settled out of court, in our favour.

9. Well explained forms was a chance for me to get on a soapbox about a form I had encountered, and what was blatantly wrong with it.

Now, I need to start re-thinking my strategy. They say you’re meant to pick a niche, and stick to it - I certainly never heeded that advice with the above posts, nor with the other 130 or so. The above nine posts cover one huge range of subjects, albeit with some vaguely similar themes around recruitment and web2.0.

Image: Grapes in our backyard.

Another milestone reached here at this humble blog. Since May 2006, when I installed the fantastic anti-spam tool, Akismet, I have now clocked 200,000 comment spams on this blog.

Perhaps it’s my previous posts showing my fascination with comment spam (see this November 2006 post and this January 2007 post), or I am just an unwitting spam magnet, however the graph above illustrates that Akismet is catching an average of 12,500 spammy comments each month (this works out to 416 per day).

Please, celebrate this milestone with me. Let’s send our thanks to all of those peddling dubious medications, nasty spyware and other less than savoury products and services for this milestone.

Image: Graph of comment spam received at Miles’ Blog.

Since starting to accept advertising back in April 2006, I have been amazed at the growth of opportunities which this humble blog has had. It took about 2 months for me to be able to afford that lunch per month, as I suggested in the original post, then within six months, I was selling enough advertising (mostly through Text Link Ads [aff]) to buy lunch every second week.

Now, fifteen months later, I’m making enough from advertising on here, that I can afford a eating out for lunch most days of the week.

So, how did I do it? Well, I certainly didn’t do it with any intention on making much money. I didn’t follow most professional blogger suggestions, and keep my blog ‘on topic’ or even post daily, I didn’t use any trickery with SEO or the like, it turns out that a few posts of mine got big in the blogosphere, and that created link bait, which took my in bound links from near zero to over 3,000 in a short period of time.

This created a Pagerank of 3 and advertisers using Text Link Ads [aff] started seeing the search engine benefits of a PR3 blog linking to them. That, and my link for sign ups through the $100 worth of free text link ads [aff] campaign, mean I get ongoing revenue from those who use my link to start selling text links on their blogs too.

I also have Google Adsense and Auction Ads [aff] unobtrusively in the sidebar as well, however they probably only bring in 10% of the revenue, compared to the text link advertising I get both directly and through Text Link Ads [aff], who pay not by click, but by month instead.

What would have happened if I had followed the advice, and designed the blog around revenue? I don’t know, but maybe I’ll try it with another blog soon!

Oh, and a big thanks to the advertisers who appear on this blog right at the moment, and keep me in lunches. They are;

• iPod Accessories
• Concert Tickets
• Discount Laptops
• office furniture
• Apple Notebooks
• Perth website design
• australian web directories
• backpacker jobs perth

So, do you make an income from your blog? What works for you, and how did you do it?

Image: RAIL road sign, Northam WA

If you ever needed proof that a standards based layout, a dash of search engine optimisation and a wordpress blog were great ingredients to get a good Google rank, then you’ll be interested to note that I have received a few unsolicited requests from Singapore accommodation providers about reviewing their properties.

It seems that, since after my April visit to Singapore, this blog has been rating high on Google Australia for;

singapore hotel rates (#1)
singapore blog (#1 and #2)
singapore hotels (#17)
singapore hotel blog (#1 and #2)
singapore accommodation (#27)

That, along with just about every version phrase for Web 2.0 colour palette you can imagine, and a referring keyword list which looks very random, means I am getting a wide variety of topics happening on this blog.

Welcome to those looking for Singapore information, Web2.0 detail or photos of Melbourne laneways. I hope you find what you’re after!

Bloggers - what are some of the strange terms you see popping up in your logs?

Photo: Grapes and blue fence.

I get a lot of visitors come from search engines and the like, but there’s also a fair amount to this blog who have come from links from other blogs. I try to check my referrer logs every month or so, so I am aware of many of you, however I wanted to publicly say thanks to those who have shown my humble blog some link love in the last 12 months.

First up, SEO & Marketing blog, Profit Papers. Thanks to the finely named Miles Evans, who dropped a link to here some time back. Love that header graphic and enjoy the reading.

A big wave to Tina Roth Eisenberg and her finely crafted swissmiss blog - love the inspiring posts and design work!

Cool cats Smashing Magazine have also sent some folk my way - cheers for that, and keep up the great work. Props to the uber-cool Uneasy Silence for their kooky content and link love.

OK, so idea*idea and Dr. Web and Pinceladas da Web aren’t even in English, but they still managed to drop links my way - thanks for that, wish I could read what you’ve said!

Natalie Jost over at Standards for Life, great design and posts, here’s to your return one day soon. Thanks also to Troy Worman for keeping me up to date with marketing, ethics, and more.

There’s plenty of others to thank and reciprocate, but I think I’ll save them for another rainy day.

Image: Train Tunnel, John Forrest National Park