Search Results for: feed

Enhance Your Search Functionalities With Lijit

by Melvin · May 7, 2010

One thing a lot of my readers notice since the start of this year was the different looks of the search functionality here in my blog. It’s not the built-in WordPress Search nor is it the one from Google, it is from a third party website called Lijit

What is Lijit?

First and foremost I’d like to clear that this is no way a sponsored review. In fact this post was in my drafts for like four months already so i might as well just work on this one.

Anyways one problem always with the search is that the built-in WordPress search isn’t as comprehensive and accurate as many of us want. Top bloggers like Darren Rowse and Jeremy Schoemaker agreed that it’s not really the best blog search engine available. On the other side of the fence, Google’s Search for blog may be a perfect alternative but making it work perfectly is quite a challenge since you need to tweak a lot of the algorithms and do all those geeky stuffs.

Lijit is MY best solution since its been very newbie-friendly while still having that robust functionality. It sports that web 2.0ish look while really not cluttering nor slowing down your blog.

You can get started by heading up to lijit website and basically signing up, its free anyways! Once done you’d do all the basic stuffs like putting up your blog’s name, feed and etc. The one unique feature with Lijit though is they incorporate your other social media accounts within their social platform. For instance, the search could return any article I’ve submitted through digg or stumbleupon etc. It can also fetch some of the posts from the blogs in the blogroll. Overall the add-on features are just exceptional.

Personalization is also as easy as hell. You can basically match the color schemes of the widget to your blog, modify the elements, use your own size and etc. There’s also an option wherein you could make your search results either on a light-box effect or have it on a different page instead.

Overall I really like Lijit and heck I wouldn’t write this long ass post if Im not recommending this one for you. 🙂 It’s not the perfect search but absolutely the ideal one for bloggers. It’s widely used by popular websites like the lolcats network and other famous sites like Problogger, Lamebook and etc. How about you? What do you think about Lijit? Have you had any bad experience with them?

Why Personal Posts Get LOTS of Traffic

by Melvin · Apr 29, 2010

I was playing with the logs and stats from my Google Analytics account and it really didn’t surprise me that some of the posts that gets the most traffic were the ones that really didn’t have anything to do with internet marketing, blogging or make money online (w/c is the topic of this blog). Here’s a short screenshot from G.A:

Contest posts are naturally high traffic ones due to its intrinsic nature, while some of the other posts here go within the theme of this blog w/c is internet marketing and blogging. The hits from other couple of posts and pages may seem unnatural though. The post about the best birthday gift for the girl I love have the most no. of unique counts and pageviews in terms of posts and the about and photo pages are the most popular in pages.

That is voyeurism at work. It continues to amaze me how offtopic writeups, mostly are personal posts, get so much traction. When I wrote that “teenage-love” affair post I really wasn’t so keen that I would get responses but I was surprised when so many people I do not know commented and gave me their tips. It also went hot on social sites and eventually just got so many traction.

Why it rakes in traffic

People love personal posts, there’s no doubt about it. Most of my readers read my blog because of my expertise in this topic so that being said, any other post outside my niche can either spark a good interest or no interest at all and luckily for me its working on a good side.

Voyeurism is a superb traffic technique just because of the fact that it enhances your relationship your audience. It brings you closer on a more personal basis and in marketing, that’s an added trust and credibility.

Top 3 ways on how to take advantage of Voyeurism

Build your expertise first and foremost – Ok, you cannot just start a blog and write random personal posts and then expect a heap of traffic. It is not gonna happen. What you can do though, is work on building a presence first, overdeliver good content in your niche and focus on growth. As I’ve said people become more interested on your personal stuffs when they trust you for what you provide.
Share your personal craps BUT STILL add value – One thing you would notice with all the personal posts is that they all add value. No one wants to read something they wouldn’t enjoy so whether that value accounts for enjoyment, or learnings, its all up to your readers. Just make sure they are going to pick up something useful.
Don’t hold back anything – People love honest stories and it’s always one thing that people admire. You cannot call that post personal when you’re lying so make sure you don’t hold anything back.
Limit yourself in doing it – Ok now we know that personal posts are the ones that get good traffic. We also understood that people like it for intrinsic reasons so what now? Make all your posts personal posts? Naah! Like anything there’s a limit. When it comes to superb content, you can’t feed your readers with these each and everytime as they will get overwhelmed. That goes the same with personal posts. Once you abuse the use of it, it would start boring the heck of your readers.

So what now? Here in my blog, I’m proud to say that people like my personality (debatable). I get both good and bad feedbacks but overall I think I’m doing things fine. Voyeurism is an effect of good personal branding and if youre not leveraging it, you’re missing a lot.

iBlog 6 Blogging Summit Recap and Some Photos

by Melvin · Apr 19, 2010

Long time no post here, at least for my preference. 🙂 Anyways, last Friday and Saturday I attended the biggest blogging event here in Philippines which is the iBlog Philippine Blogging Summit. The conference was held for the 6th time already and I actually can’t believe that I missed the previous 5 ones considering that I’ve been blogging for 3 years already.

I also mentioned in my post on attending Wordcamp 09 that since late last year, I’ve shifted my focus on trying to network more with my fellow citizens here and connect with more local bloggers. Since I’ve started I was more always on the international side of things. Most of my blogging colleagues are from the other side of the world. I have few Filipino blogging friends but I realized I have to have more.

So I attended iBlog 6 Summit. It’s a 2 day event, the first day was more targeted on businesses on tapping blogs while the second day is more on blogging as a whole. Unlike most of the iBlog posts, this is going to be a comprehensive one. 🙂

Disclaimer: I’m a nice guy but I’m honest so i would put out my personal opinion on every talk. If you’re name is misspelled, hit me up. 🙂 Im also a horrible photographer so I had to steal borrow other photos from other people

Day 1

Since its just my second event, its understandable that I am holding myself back a bit because Im shy. Ok, I arrived just on time by myself and with no friends on sight.

Janette Toral spoke about Blogging for business which is a pretty general talk on how blogs make money and how they are intended for business. It was a pretty broad talk wherein she covered making money from various things like paid review, corporate blogging and selling products.

Janette is a reputable figure here in Philippine and while its my first time hearing her speak, I was not disappointed. I think she laid out all the necessary info especially for noobs on how the money works on blogging.

It was followed by Abe Olandres speech about Advertising in Blogs which is a more in-depth topic than the first one. Abe is one of the pioneers of blogging here and is one who probably have generated the most revenue. Its a pretty great talk and he was not too shabby to share his figures. 🙂

The next one was the sponsor talk and its really something I dont want to talk about. The next speaker is Mr. Gary Viray who preaches about SEO and SEM. Its pretty fundamental for me but I know it really opened the eyes of most new bloggers in the world of SEO. It also debunks the myth of old SEO practices wherein it used to be based on quantity of inbound links.

Next is the lunch and networking part. The food is “” but thats considerable considering its a free and open for all event. Again I was not able to network that much because I was really really shy. But at the time, I met four people by then namely: Mariel, May Ann, Paul David and Jilcae w/c are the people that I pretty much talked with for the whole day.

Carlo Ople then presented something about measuring blog buzz in w/c he tackled on how traditional businesses are so much hurting themselves not putting up proper online campaigns and lacking specific goals. It was one of my fave talk for that day since it presented me to the offline business side of things. Im always like the guy who knows things online but its refreshing to see the “foreign” side of things. Carlo reiterated that we must “show respect to social media” which pretty much sums it all up.

Emerson Banez who is a lawyer tackled legal concerns in blogging w/c I initially thought was boring but he made a way to make it enticing to listeners. It was basically about copyrights, and disclaimers which was beneficial as well. Law is really not my forte but its good to learn something from that side too.

The next one is about the win-win situation for bloggers and advertisers which was presented by Didi Paterno. It was a bit sound and fundamental to me since most of the money made in this blog is through advertising.

Lastly that day, Manuel Viloria which i thought was dressed a bit overformal, discussed about attraction marketing which was a really fruitful topic. This topic was about building a list, capturing them, then using social media to leverage them is something that was an eye-opener especially for most bloggers here. Up to now, it still amazes me how a lot of bloggers dont go into the “relationship-building” business model and instead just stay on the old blogging bandwagon techniques.

Day 2

Day 2 is mostly for bloggers. I anticipated that this day is for newbies, people who haven’t had much experience yet with blogging. With that in mind, I still attended.

The very beautiful, mesmerizing and eye-capturing and lovable Ms. Hannah Villasis started the day by discussing about Blogging 101 which is basically just about blogging and how it has become it is today. I’m hitting my head so hard because I actually missed this talk and wasnt able to take a pic of her while on stage. I woke up late that day and it sucks!

Then the equally handsome Vince Gollangco discussed about Video Blogging which was enticing to me since I’ve been planning to go into that route but never actually have done it. Vince made a great emphasis that we should never really care about those negative feedbacks because there would be always. He also handed out some great tips on how to do videoblogging and how its easier than what most people really think.

PhotoBlogging101 is another interesting talk since I am fascinated with photography lately. Im not a photo blogger but I love taking random pics. Juned discussed it more on a photography aspect rather than the blogging side and it was really a nice session.

Then it was the sponsor talk, and then the talk about launching successful blog contests which is something that I already have an idea about. But again Im sure this talk has become useful to a lot of other people on the said event.

It was followed by the very interesting topic of Impact of Blogging to the community wherein Joseph Gonzales (by far the most lively speaker, also humorous), cited the intangibles of blogging and how he leveraged it in helping his community. It was so inspiring to hear that blogging can do more than what we all think it could and in his case, its really for a bigger cause. And then it was lastly followed by Marghil Macuha’ of Macuha.com talked on how SEO is a must for making money online. It was pretty a fundamental talk but I picked up some nice techniques of his as well. 🙂

Conclusion & Things Learned

The biggest blogging conference and event was really living to its bill. I was so happy that I was able to attend and meet all other bloggers and prominent figures here personally. Of course I still wished to have done better especially with the networking part. In conferences like this, I should be introducing myself, shaking other people’s hand, taking pics with other people, and just building relationship with them, almost none of those were done. (shy alert!)

All in all I would like to thank to all who have stumbled upon in the event. My new buddies, May Ann, Jilcae, Paul and two other persons I didn’t recognize that much. The speakers who I know really prepared so hard not just to present something, but to make sure they give out the best ones.

And of course the organizers, Ms.Janette Toral, the emcees, the photographers (hey how can I find the pics that may possibly include me?), the hyper-active Mike Abundo, and all those people who worked to make this happen. Usually organizers are the ones who don’t get much credit but here I’d like to put an emphasis to them for doing such a wonderful job. Having an event for 6th straight years is just plain awesome.

iBlog 6 Group Pic — Photo is from Carlo Ople

If you have your own coverage of your iBlog 6 Summit, please comment here so I can post your link here as well. 🙂 Do share your opinion as well about this Summit and let me know what talks did you enjoy the most.

Other iBlog 6 Press/Blog Coverages:

More Photos are located on the photos page

Automatically getting Subscribed to Comments, Good or Bad?

by Melvin · Mar 9, 2010

For the past few years I have been quite a bit critical and open on tackling blog comments. In fact, there’s even a dedicated category of it here just with that topic. Anyways today I would like to touch on something that I know people have mixed opinion with and that is comment subscription.

One of the guys I really look up into named Neil Patel has this enabled in his blog QuickSprout. What he basically has done is automatically have people commenting on his blog subscribed to their own comments. What happens is that if Neil (or some dude) replies to my comment, I would be notified vial email that someone has replied to my comment. 88 replies to my comment would then mean 88 notification emails (I know its unrealistic).

I’ve first seen that tactic on Gyutae Park’s blog at Winning the Web where the check box is automatically checked. To be honest with you, as a blogger myself, I find this tactic insidious and annoying. Why? Because of uhm, uhm, getting added emails and probably just really not caring to know if the guy replied or not. Both of which are lame reasons as well.

I was checking my subscription to comment plugin stats and I was surprised to learn that I’ve actually had a good number of audience here subscribing to comments. I was like wow. Over the past few years I’ve realized a couple of handful things on blogging generally. Maybe replying to majority of comments is not silly at all, or maybe this, maybe that.

So since we are talking about this topic, I am going to ask your opinion about. I would also like to say that by now, I’m discerning on following that tactic where each and every one of you who will comment will automatically be subscribed to comments. I’ve realized it’s not really annoying at all! But again thats just me…

[poll id=”5″]

Please let me know what you think by voting in the poll and also interacting in the comment forms below. Your feedback about this topic will largely affect my decision on whether to use that or not.

5 Ways to Make Readers Visit Your Blog Again

by Melvin · Dec 4, 2009

In this post, Mikkel talks about 5 ways on how to make your readers visit your blog again for more.

Does your visitor count go from 5 to 51 in a day, and then on 7 the next day? That’s a quite clear sign that you don’t have loyal readers, those readers can be hard to get. I have compiled a list of methods on how to get readers to come back

Contest – Everybody loves contests, if a reader is competing in a contest of yours he will get back, if he win he might want to read the blog, because you are cool – and then your blog is (of course) delivering good content.When you are running a contest be sure to make the contest as relevant as possible, don’t go offer an Internet Marketing product if your blog is about dog training. If you don’t have a niche or can come up with anything you’d like to offer, then just offer a cash prize everybody loves cold cash.

Maybe you should held a contest every once in a month – which will make people come back = repeated traffic.

Offer White Papers – White papers are really good for attracting readers – especially repeated traffic, if you for an example release a new white paper every month people will get back to your blog to download the white paper.Be sure to use the white paper to link back to your blog – just try to make it as relevant as possible. Add links in the text. In that way you will make people come back to your blog and then they make that a habit, so they will return more often.
Update Your Blog – The probably easiest way (but yet the one that takes time) to make people come back and read your blog is to write new content. Readers don’t want to keep checking your blog for 3-4 days in a row to find a non-updated blog – at least write 5 articles in a week – the more the better. One article per day is okay, if the article is above 500 words. If it’s 250 word per post, try to publish 2 articles each day.
Be a Part of Another Community – If you are member of a forum and write more than one post each day, people will remember your name and blog – so they check it out, maybe they are going to be loyal readers sometime. It will make readers come back because they see your post and look at the signature. Which reminds them of the fantastic content you provide.Maybe leave some comments on another blog (in your niche) – write a thoughtful comment, which will lead them to click the link to the well written content on your blog. That would make a loyal reader, because he finds your blog through a comment on his blog (a good comment), which also shows that you care about other people than yourself.
Write Content That is Unique – Write content that makes people think: “This is a unique blog, I haven’t seen a post about this topic anywhere else. I want to subscribe.” Lots of blogs about blogging talks about the same. You have to stand out from the crowd to get people to even think about coming back.

This is guest blogged by Mikkel from DaneBlogger.com. Mikkel is a 14 year old kid from Denmark who’s been blogging since 2007.Feel free to subscribe to his feed.

Do You Appreciate Your Readers?

by Melvin · Sep 28, 2009

It’s kinda sad that most bloggers (even popular ones) don’t seem to show they appreciate they readers/audience. There is a big imbalance between bloggers wanting to get too much traffic and bloggers showing their appreciation to their readers. One crucial factor I think why blogs get loyal readers is the fact that readers feel appreciated and therefore they keep returning because they know the author “care” for them.

Many people misunderstood my posts about not caring for PM’s on contact form and not replying on blog comments as a proof that I really don’t give much value to my readers. It’s understandable but it’s totally untrue. The value that I place to the blog readers is the highest (higher than advertisers). Because no readers literally means no money made at all and no fun.

Well today I am going to list ways on how you can show appreciation to your readers and I hope you guys like it.

Read and reply to their comments – It sure did take long for me to realize this one. Contrary to what I believed before, its not true that readers comment on blogs and don’t come back anymore. It surprises me a lot of times when I replied to a comment that the readers comes back and say thanks for replying. Replying to every comment may look silly but it builds readership and loyalty.
Link out to them – Although its impossible to link out to all your commenters, giving a link love to some of their best posts can be helpful. Believe me, bloggers feel appreciated when someone links out to them, may it be a big blog or a small blog. Most people are afraid to give links because they don’t want to dilute their pagerank w/c is a lame reason. Readers > Pagerank/Metrics.
Ask for their opinion – If you’re a long time reader of this blog, there is a customary question and answer thing here wherein a reader can ask a question and me hopefully me being able to answer it. The mistake that most blogs do is they stuff their readers so much that they are an expert in their niche that their readers won’t anymore do anything which is completely wrong. Ask out your readers for something, post a poll or just simply encourage them to do interactions with you.
Give out incentives – Ok, so here I have never had given an ipod or a flip (and I think it’s far-fetched). The blogosphere is a tight community that every incentive received is a big thing. I can’t stress this more. It doesn’t have to be a physical product or a cash prize but anything that can be useful to them is a nice thing.
Show Social Media Love – I always feel good when someone retweets my post or stumbles something here and stuffs. Another good way to show your appreciation is to actually do the same for them. If you’re into social media (who’s not?), a simple digg, or some buzz on their article can mean a lot to them. Remember it’s ALWAYS giving first then receiving second.
Network With Them! – The reason I put the little social bookmark/network icon on the sidebar is to network more with my readers. Everything we are doing online is marketing. Marketing is not business, but it’s a function of the business. It helps big when you connect to your readers via other social means like Facebook, Friendfeed or maybe Youtube and etc. The good thing with blogging is that it enables us to maximize networking with other people w/c at the end leads to bigger business relationships, joint ventures or just simple friendships. If you’re not doing this, then you’re missing out a lot!

Showing your audience that you appreciate them is a big factor on having a successful blog, successful business. Sad state is that most people don’t even pay attention to it. What do you think? I would love to have your own take about it and you can do so in the comment form.

Note: Interestingly, all people who are in my top commentators list (@ sidebar) would be able to get a free advertising for one month. Just comment here and I would hook you up on something. Thanks. 😉

What Makes Your Blog “Not Just Another Blog”

by Melvin · Aug 13, 2009

As almost all of you know, there are about over 100 million blogs in the blogosphere. And there will be more in the coming future as most kids/wives/other people will take interest into that especially with over a million blogs telling you can really make money online with your blog. Before school started I have been pretty much reading a lot of blogs related to my niche and alth0ugh I do read many, only few were able to catch my attention. Of course as old adage says “first impression lasts”. Most of the blogs that have caught my attention before are the same blogs that I keep on following so it speaks so much about it.

I would really like to make an emphasis on the importance of leaving a “sticking impression” with the brand of your blog. An impression that doesn’t just make a reader say “just another blog”. In any niche you can see its importance as they normally determine your future followers, subscribers or even customers. So now I put up some things here that make me think a blog is “not just another blog” and is worth following for. Please take note these are all aside from posting a good content which has been rehashed over and over again. 😉 Here they are:

RSS Subscribers – Now this is always hard to achieve when starting out thats why most people will tell you that the hardest part is when starting. But for most sites, I think seeing a blog with over 500+ feed readers make sense to me a lot. It goes to say people are following that blog and for a reason. Last year I was wondering why people are working so much growing their rss subscribers. I even never cared about my blog’s feed fluctuating just between 50-100 before. But now I have realized a lot of things about its importance. So try growing your rss subscribers first then a ton of conversion from curious readers to loyal readers will follow.
Nice layout and design – Design is an integral part of everything. Whether you are promoting a brand or what. Believe me, nowadays design is overcoming good content. There are many blogs right now that just have a “unique custom blog design” and yet they are followed well. I’m not really saying go ahead and go a custom theme (because I myself doesn’t have one), but you see there is always a distinction between a nice theme, simple and minimalistic from ugly and cookie-cluterred one. 🙂
About Page – When I visit a blog and I see a great post, the first thing I do is read the about page of that certain site. Although most people have their own About Me page, not a lot take effort to make it more than just being readable. Personally the About Page means “Why should I subscribe” to me.
Non – Intrusiveness – Ok lets face it, every douche blogger puts an ad on their blog whether its a sponsorship or maybe referral/affiliate links or so. But that doesn’t mean your site is intrusive and not user friendly. Sometimes when I see a blog with a lot of ads (especially in IM niche) and I mean really a lot I come to think “Is this guy really want to make his readers learn making money online, or he just wants to make money from them?”
Interaction – Or more familiarly known as comments. I run a couple of blogs outside this dirty niche and I really love the interaction on some posts. I mean originally a blog really is a form to communicate and share each others views on certain things right? So basically getting to see some interaction in posts really makes a blog a better one. Let’s be honest, we are skeptic to comment if we don’t see a comment before us right? But then its a different case for bigger blogs.

Are you missing out those things? Start working for it now! It may be hard (for some its not seriously) but the rewards are so big! With all the blogs giving their best effort to stand out and gain traction, you may not want to go far behind…