MelvinBlog

A blog that chronicles my journey on online marketing, blogging, social media, technology and life.

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Hey, Is Your Blog’s Layout Just Fine?

Hey, Is Your Blog’s Layout Just Fine?

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This post isn’t really about the blog’s theme or the how beautiful the design is. We all know people who can spend can have the “best” theme while people who don’t have the money can settle for the average. The post that I am going to tackle is about blog design resolution of your website/blog. Why resolution? Well the layout of your blog, might it be the best or the worst, highly depends on the monitor’s resolution of your readers. In short, good design is useless if your readers still have to scroll horizontally just to view every part of your content.

So to kick things, this is how MelvinBlog looks in my laptop (1280X800)  (click for larger view):

melvinblog-resolution

While on most computers w/c have the 1024X768 screen resolution, it does show like this:

melvinblog-res2

What you would notice is the fact that in my laptop, there is still a space both in the left and right side part while in most screen resolutions, there’s no margin anymore and the content is like stretched. And still it doesn’t look annoying at all!

The main point here is that don’t try to base the design of your blog in your wide screen computer’s resolution. In a certain survey about screen resolutions, it’s been proven that  a lot of people are still using the old fashioned 800X600 and 1024X768 screen resolution. In the end it just means that don’t decide based on your personal preference. Remember that our readers’ user experience is still the one that counts the most. We, liking the look of our blog is no match against them, not finding it good enough.

So, what does my blog look like in your computer? Scannable enough or completely crappy? How about you, have you already asked other people on what they think about the design of your blog based on their own screen’s resolution? Or maybe you haven’t even considered resolutions on carving out your design? Hmm..

Problogger Forums Is Fine As Long As…

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Darren Rowse, the genius behind the popular blog Problogger has already launched the forum which is more known as the Problogger Community. Although he hasn’t yet made a formal announcement of it in his blog, the community is rapidly growing already with over 3000 members on board . Some of the prominent figures I’ve seen there are the likes of Daniel Scocco (DailyBlogTips), Jim Kukral (JimKukral.com), David Risley (DavidRisley.com) and more.

Although there is no scarcity in blogging forums, the Problogger Community is still expected to surpass all other forums and get to the top in no time. Registration is NOT free but at $1.95, heck it’s a bargain. According to most, this registration fee exists to filter out spammers. The price is set to increase soon so if you’re planning to register then the best time to do it is now.

The forum is going to be big soon and there’s no doubt about it. But on whether it can be different on other blogging forums remains to be unseen. I have been doing some detective works and observing the forums. To be honest, the forum is really good because there aren’t so many categories yet it’s not lacking anything it seems. But still I am seeing a lot of reasons why this forum can be just your another average blogging forum and here are the reasons:

  • Experts Are NOT going to lurk there – The main selling point of the forum I believe is that it’s packed with several authorities in the niche. While it can really be exciting (and astounding), it’s still the fact that these bloggers won’t devote 10% of their time in that forum. I mean these bloggers are business guys and they are busy for most part of the day so I don’t see any reason for them to lurk over there. And if I’m correct, then the main selling point is canceled out already.
  • New Forum, Same Mindset – People who go to forums usually just go there to make promotions and marketing, both direct and indirect (debatable). Aside from its a paid membership, there is really no difference between it and other blogging forums. The rules are kinda the same. You still see people drop gazillion of links (like me, or Im just joking!), see annoying members, and see a lot of blog critiques with less than 2 critiques! The forums shows leniency and in my opinion I think it needs to be more strict.
  • Lurking is Bad – Like what I’ve talked here in the blog about lurking on forums, I think it can still harm people’s productivity. Most bloggers love to lurk and waste their time lurking. Im sure they enjoy it but since they joined the Problogger Community, then I’m assuming they want to be a professional blogger. And hurting your productivity doesn’t help to become a Pro Blogger.
  • Getting Bigger – Theoretically there’s nothing wrong on having a large forums, but I always prefer smaller forums. Why? Because a smaller forum can give you a tighter community where everyone really gets to maximize every benefit they could ever gain. It builds better relationship amongst bloggers and it can really help benefit everyone. Digital Point Forums and Warrior Forum used to be a good forum and it only gets out of hand when it became highly populated. You can post a thread asking for something and in the next 20 minutes your thread is already on the third page w/no replies. Big is good, but toooo big is not!

I don’t have anything against the new community. If I have, then why would I join? Why would I care about writing this post? It’s a good forum that can be a future source of awesome content to the right person. But as far as seeing the difference of it to other blogging or webmaster-related forums, I don’t see much. I may be correct and I may not be. And someone can prove me wrong here.

Being Nice To Your Readers

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Intro: If you guys don’t know it yet, Lax is running a cool contest in his blog where one can win $100 per month by just commenting. Must-see! Anyway’s this is not a paid plug or stuffs. I just thought its worth a mention 😉

For today’s recipe I would like to talk about my experience of communicating to my readers and if I am being nice or not. When I was just getting started with this blog, the blog didnt really had much traction and attention from other people and I was receiving very few PM’s and comments. But anyways I did respond to them just as like as how I respond to people now.

This blog has been up for about 2 years (?) and I’ve had tons of experience with dealing with different kinds of people. Sure there are those who were really annoying, some are so arrogant, some are douche, and some are too nice that I’m not sure it’s for real! I also made some mistakes in the past and have really adjusted with it.

The main point of this short post is just remind you guys to try as much as you can to be nice to your readers. Sure, it’s hard to make yourself look godly when you’re really not but I think there goes a threshold where we, bloggers have to be professional in the way we communicate. I know some of you would say “hey Im not a pro-blogger”, but since blogging is just everywhere, being more approachable to a wider sense of people can still be the “better” thing.

I’m going to be the first one to tell you that it’s hard. Yes, it is. I myself is a hardcore criticizer, someone who mocks the misery of an idiot, a guy who makes fun of any hilarity, and a frequent user of slang destructive terms to people. But does those stuffs evident here? Partly yes, but I bet you’d noticed it. Not being nice to douchebags is never a good thing although Im not saying the contrast is the best thing. My point here is that your audience/readers is generally flawed. They ask questions that are totally written in a post, they demand too much, and they can just be annoying to a certain degree. But what we bloggers can do is just simply try to interact with them, the most polite way we can.

I’m sure all of us, at each certain times, used to be annoying as well. And maybe that experience is something that we can use to deal with it this time. How’s your take against it? Is there a point here when you think I was being too harsh to you, readers?

Your Blog Can’t Survive This Year

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Early this year I made a challenge post about if your blog can survive 2009. The post was made specifically asking my readers and partly the blogosphere if they can sustain their blogs up to the end of the year and hopefully for life. Although most bloggers really can, there are several factors though that can still make it the other way around. Blogging is so cheap that any man making a minimum wage can pay for it without having a problem at all! The problem I think lies on other factors like lost of desire and passion, or simply being too busy and stuffs.

Well I was scanning pretty much of the blogs that used to be a loyal reader and some blogs that I used to visit and notice a lot of them have died (literally)…  Here’s the long list (blogs in mmo niche) of them (most of you know them) and the reasons and stuffs:

  1. SuiteJ.com (stopped blogging)
  2. MoneyBites.com (stopped blogging, heck I even one several contests with this blog)
  3. BlogSmartly.com (The owner was a promising teenager but for some reasons he just stopped posting)
  4. SplendidKid.com (The owner was a fellow Filipino. It looks like he either had his blog hacked or database corrupted (no backup), hence has to start over.
  5. BloggerVenue.com ( The blog was a promising one but he decided to sell it and the new owner just totally sucks.
  6. TheGermz.com (Another student who has been super duper busy)
  7. Blogsessive.com (Not died, but decreased his posting frequency to once a month, wtf?)
  8. MakeMoneyDynamo.com (site had a thousand subscribers. Eventually, it looks like Jason just completely abandoned it… sad)
  9. Flimjo.com (The guy was one of my first blogs to read because he blogs interestingly about how passive income and the usual misery of having a day job.. Stopped posting for a long time)
  10. Courtneytuttle.com (Another established blog that seemed to just vanished off)
  11. InternetBabel.com (I love this blog! Even when there’s a change of ownership I thought the posts were still great. Apparently Dave’s lack of posting and interaction (and theme change?) killed the community. from 60K alexa to 1M+ today, sad)
  12. TheBlogEntrepreneur.com (Stopped Posting as well)
  13. Green-Flamingo.com (The guy had struggles with maintaining this blog and have seemed to be tentative since then)
  14. Blogriffic.com (The owner is experiencing health problems, get well soon Salwa)

I want to keep that longer but that’s it for now. Although it’s been stressed many times that blogging is just blogging and cannot be put ahead of more important things, it still feels sad to see a former blogger/reader stop blogging or struggle with it. The blogosphere is a tight and enjoyable community and that’s the main reason why it’s sad.

For the case of Blogsessive, CourtneyTuttle, DoshDosh, they really don’t need to post everyday, every week and stuffs. These blogs are authoritative blogs and they can go on w/o posting that much and still rank below the 50k mark of Alexa w/o any problems at all. My bet is that they’re getting a ton of organic traffic because they have their blog indexed really deep (both quality and quantity) on search engines.

But in most blogs, it’s really kinda sad. Of course we can’t say a blog is dead until it’s domain is already parked, but a blog w/a dead atmosphere and community is 3/4 dead anyway! The surprising thing is when you ask people time from time, they usually respond saying ‘yes they will be patient and can hold on with their blog for a long time’. At the end it just goes to show you how really unpredictable things are. Today, you’re blog is in top 100, the next month it’s for sale, the next few months its nearly dead, in a year all the content is completely wiped out and the domain is not even renewed. Things move very rapid. It’s profitable, all of a suddent its not. Of course, it’s still nicer if there’s such a thing as farewell post every time a blogger kills his/her blog. But that happens very rare…

What say you? Any other blogs to add in the list? Or if you’re one of the bloggers listed above, any reasons why you’re blog got killed?

Why Most Blogs Couldn’t Just Get It Going..

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One reason why the ‘blogging tips’ niche is growing larger and larger and becoming more and more profitable is that because there’s still a huge number of persons/market that consume/need it. It’s no secret that a lot of people who have a blog or who is just trying to have their own blog is seeking to become a problogger, and make tons of money from their blog just like famous guys do. While there is an overflowing of good stuffs and content about blogging, a lot of people still couldn’t have it going.

While the rule of ‘reading too much, implementing less’ still follows, I think still almost 90% of the bloggers are not satisfied with the way their blog is performing. Either they feel they aren’t making that much money, or not a lot of people reads their blog or for whatever reasons. The truth about blogging for fame and for money these days is that providing good stuffs alone is not enough. I have read some blogs with really superb content yet they’re not getting the traffic (I think) they should deserve. They say content is the king but experience and observation tells otherwise. Here are some of the things that I realized why most blogs don’t just fly:

  • Bloggers are just idiots – No offense to the statement (I was thinking of a better way to express it). What I mean is that everyone starts out from scratch and is an idiot himself. Two to three months later, it’s either that a blogger has learned a lot (hopefully implemented what he learned) or is still an idiot just like when he started. The basic explanation in this is that blogging is like schooling. Some people never get to pass on some levels primarily because of their lack of knowledge (and drive maybe).
  • Lack of drive and determination – Please do take note that bloggers like Darren Rowse, Shoemoney and Chow had blogged for over a year without being recognized and now look where they are now! I could even testify that making a blog popular and profitable is easier these days rather than before. If you’re entering the blogging business, then make sure you have the necessary juice of determination and patience to keep it going for a long time. Do you really think you can handle blogging for a long time?
  • Not enough Marketing – Blogging is internet marketing, remember that! Carving out a successful blog includes giving out good content first, then finding a way to reach the most number of audience as possible. Sure it’s not hard to create good content but marketing and promoting what you got is something to really focus on. Content is the king no more! 30% content. 70% marketing.
  • No clear goal – This one should’ve been written first I guess. Anyway, everytime a person starts a blog and has no goal, it’s like driving without a map or like shooting the basketball with a blind fold. Make sure to set your objectives and goals on blogging. Are you going to just create a personal blog? Are you going to create a flagship blog that would boost your online brand? Or you’re just creating a blog to be flipped soon? Either way, a blogger really has to be clear on this one. Saying ‘I just want to start a blog period” is a retarded statement. Believe me.
  • Proper funding – Starting a blog is a low-risk investment I must say. But when one does start a blog that he intends to monetize later on, he must understand that a blog may not get its initial income return on it’s 6th month or even a year. I do really feel bad for a lot of my friends who do start it out alright, provides good content and then flop afterwards because of lack of budget. It’s either the site got suspended by its host or the domain just not renewed. $100 for a year is the safe number of budget needed. You’re gonna be needing more of course when you want to fast track your progress.
  • Afraid of trying Out New Things – Assuming you are NOT one of those things listed above, then you must not be afraid to try out new things. If you have a blog and its consistently getting 50-100 pageviews a day and is doing good interactions, are you just gonna stop there? Why not take your efforts a couple notch higher? Or try to experiment new stuffs? It’s a common misconception that when an experiment fails, expect tons of drawbacks. Don’t be afraid to try untested things, or to do something different. If you fail miserably, then chances are you’d benefit more in the long run, unless you’re an idiot. 😉
  • Not Building Relationships – In my guest post on ThouShallBlog about using  blog as a reputation tool, I stressed how a blog can make you reputable and do a lot of good things more than just making money from it. Blogging is a very large, yet tight and accomodation community. I have met a lot of bloggers, talked with them and shared insights with them. Like any other business, building relationship with other bloggers within your community is a key. If you’re not then you’re missing a  lot.

Building a ‘good blog’ takes more work than what you think, yet it’s not as rocket-science as building your own company or making a male baby. Remember the 7 things I listed above and make sure you enjoy what you are doing. If not, then maybe you should re-assessed whether blogging is for you. Feel free to share your own piece please.

Blogging And Facebook

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Ok, we all know that (probably) all people who are aware that the internet exists do have their own facebook accounts. But not all are concerned on having their own blog. I’m all fine with that as I really don’t recommend blogging to everyone and it depends on one’s interest whether to enjoy it or not. Although blogging and facebook (alongside Twitter) seemed to be somehow connected with each other, we can all agree that both can be time-waster’s as well. Here’s my take on their advantages and disadvantages:

ADVANTAGE

The good advantage of having a facebook account and an own blog is that it already sets your own stage online. It gives exposure to who you are and what you do best. Some may think its retarded but the truth is when you meet people or when you are applying for a job or a position, a company will always do a Google search for your name to see who you really are, yep its so true! Having both accounts (or even just one) is already a big plus if you’re trying to carve out an online reputation for yourself (or even just a personal brand).

DISADVANTAGE

Ok, like the ones we’ve talked about lurking in forums a couple of weeks ago, both can also waste your time. Most people that have their own blog and do online business would waste it by ‘blog-hopping’ or maybe by caring too much about the looks, designs and metrics of it. While facebook on the other hand has a ton of applications/games embedded into it that could mesmerize one, hence it’s easy to get distracted, just enjoy it and neglect other responsibilities. Those who don’t have an online biz or stuffs can also ‘lurk’ in facebook too much (w/c is harmful as well). I have talked with a lot of my friends and they shared to me that facebook takes 90% of their time in the internet (by playing third-party games and taking stupid quizzes and stuffs). I really don’t have anything against it but if you’re a student or someone who does something , then probably you can be better doing your own stuff. Oh well, maybe just my 2 cents.

As for every online property, entity or whatever, they have their own disadvantage for their use. Sure facebook is fun and so is blogging but at the end, it’s not really hard to figure out whether either of them is hurting your productivity. Or maybe its just me. If you agree w/me then add me on Facebook. 😀