Archive for the 'Blogging Tips' Category

posted by Alyona Susol @ 6:03 AM
April 19, 2016

Choosing hosting for a blog

In this article we will try to provide some general tips for beginners as for choosing hosting for a blog, without going deep into technical aspects. In order not to be prejudiced, we will focus on comparing characteristics instead of comparing companies. So, the main steps to take:

  • Choose between free and paid solution
  • Make sure that you will have a domain name along with web-hosting
  • Think of how much space the blog will take
  • Check the number of addon domains (for more than one blog)
  • Make sure that the needed software is pre-installed

Let’s see why these points are to be kept in mind.
Read the rest of this entry »

posted by admin @ 19:17 PM
June 24, 2011

disqus commenting toolIf you deal with blogging and have your own web log with numerous articles and thankful active readers, you are most likely to need a powerful tool that would help you with comments management. Currently the most popular tool of the kind is Disqus and today we are going to talk about it specifically. It’s not new and by now it has gained great popularity. You are most likely to have seen it used at different blogs, including ours, but if you are still hesitant about whether to install it on your own blog or not, let us tell you something, that may help you make up your mind quickly.

Numerous comment options

Blogging wouldn’t have any sense, if the ideas we share didn’t get any reactions. Comments are those reactions and they are very important – they let make friends with the most active readers, build partnership with like-minded professionals, share opinions and search for verity in disputable situations. One of the drawbacks of standard blog commenting tools is accessibility – anytime one wants to leave a comment, they need to provide their name and email. The procedure doesn’t look inconvenient, but it has a rocky bottom – people willingly provide their email addresses, that may be used by a spammer if their database somehow gets compromised.

The Disqus tool offers a lot of options, that are not only convenient but also way more secure. You can leave your comments not only as a guest, but also using your Disqus, Google or Yahoo account. Apart from this, you can use your social media accounts – Twitter and Facebook; OpenID login is available as well. Choosing the preferred way of commenting will make your blog readers become recognizable and let them build their online reputation. This will also help you with news sharing.

Social media aspect

Yes, you heard it – anytime you issue a new post, you have more chances to let it become popular, if you use Disqus. As soon as your blog reader comments on it using Twitter or Facebook with a reaction, their comments are placed under their accounts on the correspondent social network. If your post is interesting and catchy enough, it may get hundreds of views overnight thank to prompt spreading. Apart from that you can make new acquaintances faster – once you have a small conversation in your comment section on your blog, you may bring it at once to Twitter or Facebook. On the one hand it will let you keep your comments clean, while on the other hand you will be able to build partner or friendly relationships faster and easier.

Fighting spam

We have already mentioned spam as one of the problems connected with blogging. Many spammers use blog comments to leave spamvertized messages so it sometimes becomes hard to monitor blog comment sections. Even anti-spam tools, that really are very helpful, cannot cover all comments. And if your blog is rather popular and the spammers leave messages that pass all checks – finding non-spam comments may be hard.

Using Disqus makes things easier – since it disables native comments tool after the installation, all human comments arrive to Disqus, thus all the comments that you’ll keep receiving under the native comment section in your blog admin panel will be spamvertized and you can remove all of them without hesitations. As for spam in Disqus – their servers have a great database that is constantly updated and maintained, additionally you will be able to use administration dashboard to set your own comment policy.

If you want your blog to become more popular and live, you should look into installing Disqus comments tool on it. With its help you will be able to optimize the work of your blog and resolve a great deal of issues, connected with commenting – easier accessibility and high spam-protection will let both you and your thankful readers enjoy your blog and use it more actively.

posted by Archie @ 21:19 PM
May 10, 2011

wordpress logoWe all know many bloggers are open minded people who do blogging for fun. They run their web logs for their friends, relatives and like-minded people who they hang around the Web with, so they don’t usually look into making money on their websites. Well, if you are a pro blogger or your blog is simply that popular that you can’t lose your chance to earn something on it, you need to think of how to monetize its traffic.

If your blog is not a community supporting news feed or an add-on page for some website, but a sole project, there are not that many ways to earn on it, but choosing one of those, that we are going to introduce is definitely worth trying.

1. Become an affiliate

One of the easiest ways to start earning money on your web log is enroll into affiliate partnership with some company. The more relevant you partner is to the topics you cover, the more sales you are expected to get. For instance, if you are a photographer and deal with e-shops where you get your equipment, you can place their banner on your blog so any sale made by your visitors from your website will be rewarded with a commission.

The most interesting thing about affiliate partnership is that in fact you don’t need to be bound with one company specifically – you can cooperate with as many of them as you like. And of course, the topics you write about play a very important role. The more niches your blog covers the more different companies you can advertise, and the hosting provider, too, by the way, since you host your blog somewhere, don’t you? Who says your readers don’t want to run their own sites as smoothly as yours. And if you do not want to deal with specific companies and participate in various affiliate programs making new deals anytime you or they need to change something – you can join an affiliate network, like the one held by Commission Junction. Cooperating with them will let you find best affiliate offers and help you with marketplace picking.

2. Offer advertising positions

If your affiliate earnings are going to depend on the visitors’ interest and your partner’s reputation, selling advertising positions will guarantee you constant stable profit. The profit, however, may be questionable and so may be the interest in occupying those positions. Your blog has got to be very popular and have a great number of daily hits to be worth placing one’s advertisement at.

To look and sound more serious and attractive it is advisable to have your blog prepared for expected adverts – work out the positions you are going to leave for them, create kind of a media plan to estimate pricing for those positions depending on the size and period of an ad, gather some traffic information about your resource – number of daily/monthly hits, incoming traffic sources, conversion rates (if any are available by that time). Finally you may look for companies that don’t run affiliate programs but nevertheless may be interested in partnership – even if that doesn’t multiply your funds, you may still expect some bonuses. To find potential advertisers, you may check the relevant keywords on Google – find the keywords that make your blog get displayed on top of search results and check the resources that prompt in Google Adwords – this is going to be a perfect match for your blog. Then you may study the resources you like best and contact their holders personally.

3. Place sponsored reviews

Sponsored reviews is something that is not usually considered as fair advertising. Those e-commerce owners who are not much concerned about acting fair prefer this way of advertising. On the other hand, those bloggers who honor fair-play never accept sponsored reviews placement proposals, although these are well-paid. Well, if you want to earn on this and keep your honor, you may offer placement of such reviews on your own, picking those service or goods providers, you would recommend your readers in fact. If you don’t know how they do it, you can take a look at some of those resources that deal with sponsored reviews placementhttp://linkfromblog.com/, http://bloganything.net, http://www.solidblogger.com.

As far as you can see, even doing blogging just for fun may bring some profit. The tips above will hardly make you rich overnight, but will for sure help you cover the cost of your hosting and some other minor spendings. In order to start earning by any of those means you need to make sure your blog is interesting and the contacts you are trying to partner with are relevant. Of course, this will also require good communication skills, but this is something, bloggers don’t usually miss, so good luck 🙂 By the way, if you are looking for an affiliate partner, already – spend another minute to check out our Affiliate Program at SiteValley.com.

posted by Archie @ 15:34 PM
November 23, 2010

Transferring WordPress Blog ManuallyEach blogger is much concerned about his or her content integrity and any data loss becomes a real nightmare. The most embarrassing thing that can happen is when the blogger kills his own content by accident or by mistake when performing a manual transfer, for instance.

The Internet is actually full of various articles on how to transfer WordPress blogs, but when we came around the need to move our own blog to a different location, we had to do it in a slightly different way. This was mostly connected with the peculiarities of the initial setup of our blog, but we believe we are not the only ones who might encounter same problems. Additionally, not all the articles have all important details mentioned. Therefore, we decided to share some experience in manual WordPress blog transferring – SiteValley.com version, so to say.

Common Peculiarities of Manual Blog Transfer Read the rest of this entry »

posted by Archie @ 16:38 PM
October 25, 2010

Social Media IconsMany blog owners consider their blogs to be a nice place to share some news and ideas on. Some of them, however, do not expect high number of visitors and keep posting articles for their friends and a limited number of loyal readers, while still hoping for higher traffic. If you check out some popular personal blogs you will see that despite the fact that not many of their owners work out some strategies, spend time on SEO and do much other work to get their websites promoted, they still get nice traffic. Their secret lies in the use of other promotion means, namely in promotion with the help of constant social activity. Thus, if you are interested in getting your blog socialized, keep reading to find the key tips.

Use Social Networks and Bookmarks Read the rest of this entry »