a1-fan-fun

Long gone are the times when I would get impressed at StumbleUpon traffic. Of course, for a beginner those huge hit waves would inevitably look very exciting and encouraging. But as time goes by and you have more articles stumbled, you tend to get used to the traffic spikes. You also learn to set your expectations in a more realistic level.

Is StumbleUpon traffic good? You bet it is and you can be sure I won’t reject it. But exactly how good is it? It depends on your aims.

If you want to develop a loyal readership and increase your subscriber base, maybe StumbleUpon won’t help you that much. Of course this comment is mainly based on my own experience. I’ve noticed that stumblers will only return to my blogs if I have new posts stumbled. Otherwise, they will read one article, (hopefully) like it and then forget it. And no, they won’t subscribe. I’ve seen other bloggers reporting similar experiences, so perhaps it’s not just me.

On the other hand, StumbleUpon is great to help you fight that kind of loneliness that torments so many webmasters when they realise that their stats are a bit too static, if you know what I mean. A decent article or a good image will do wonders for your ego when they are discovered by stumblers. I’d say that for non-commercial sites StumbleUpon is definitely the way to go.

One thing that has been disturbing me a bit lately is the increasing radicalism of certain stumblers. They often talk about preserving the “purity” of StumbleUpon. By their standards, if your site is remotely associated to topics like webmastering, blogging, marketing or SEO, you are just like Satan, or Bin Laden, or Pol Pot, or *fill in with your favourite villain*. Therefore, they feel entitled to attack and stalk you. That’s really disgusting. They act as if they were the site’s owners and want to impose their views over the whole community. They just won’t tolerate anyone who dares to disagree with them. You certainly don’t want to meet those types, because they will make sure to spoil your fun.

Another thing that disturbs me somehow is the kind of material certain people stumble. Obviously, one has the right to vote for anything he/she wants as long as it doesn’t infringe the site’s rules. But what amazes me is the fact that some gentlemen and ladies usually pretend to be lovely people and then stumble articles that contradict all their lessons about being nice to your fellows. As you can see, here is another use for StumbleUpon: measuring the sincerity of the people you deal with.

Do you remember my previous post? Have you actually read it? Although this blog has received several unique visitors since I posted it, only one person cared to leave a comment. Mariam hasn’t explicitly requested a stumble, but I never said it was required (unless a blogger wanted to have a specific post reviewed). What matters to me is the fact that she took the time to comment on that post. As a result, all my stumble love goes to her!

I chose to stumble the first part of a very helpful series she published on her blog. In fact I planned to stumble all five parts, but I was afraid that too many thumbs up in a row could harm her blog, instead of helping it. What if StumbleUpon’s algorithms interpreted it as spam?

As several days have gone by since my first stumble, I’ve just given thumbs up to the second part of her series. The remaining parts will be stumbled in the future. Meanwhile, I’ll post all the links here, so you can appreciate Mariam’s good job:

* Interest, dividends, capital gains – an all-in-one investment strategy, Part 1

* Interest, dividends, capital gains – an all-in-one investment strategy, Part 2

* Interest, dividends, capital gains – an all-in-one investment strategy, Part 3

* Interest, dividends, capital gains – an all-in-one investment strategy, Part 4

* Interest, dividends, capital gains – an all-in-one investment strategy, Part 5

Analysing my own offer — Suppositions and conclusions

The post where I offered stumbles as Christmas gifts remained at the top of my blog’s homepage until today. And as I said above, several unique visitors came here in the meantime (10 days), not to mention my dear subscribers. So I suppose my offer has had enough exposure.

I considered promoting that post in a few forums, but I didn’t want to do that because I hoped for spontaneous reactions from readers. Besides, I wasn’t convinced that such kind of promotion would really attract more bloggers.

If you read that post you know that I didn’t ask anything complicated; just a comment. So what happened? What should I conclude from this experience?

Possibility 1: Readers were somehow intimidated by my rules and/or gave up reading the whole post when they realised there were rules to follow.

If that was the case, I might assume that I haven’t expressed myself in a friendly enough manner. I could also conclude that most readers don’t like rules. Well, sorry folks, but I do like them. Not all of them, of course, but they are necessary anyway.

Possibility 2: Since I’m not a famous blogger, readers may have thought that my stumbles wouldn’t bring them any benefit.

Being a obscure blogger isn’t a sin and doesn’t make you “inferior” to well-known fellows. Besides, my lack of fame in the blogosphere doesn’t matter for StumbleUpon. I’ve sent some decent SU traffic to various articles. How do I know this? Their authors let me know.

Possibility 3: Bloggers just don’t need and/or aren’t interested in StumbleUpon traffic.

Really? Well, I’m still very interested in it. And from what I read in many blogs, sites and forums, I’m definitely not the only one. Perhaps my offer only reached those who don’t care much. It could have been an unfortunate coincidence… although I don’t believe in coincidences.

Possibility 4: Bloggers do want to have their articles stumbled, but some are a bit too shy — or proud — to ask.

Jane Smith reads the post, likes the idea but doesn’t leave any comments because she fears that she’d sound like a begger if she did. She won’t let anyone suppose she’s the desperate owner of a blog without visitors. John Brown also reads about the Christmas offer, but he thinks he doesn’t need social media votes to help him achieve blogging success. “Gaming Google is so much better,” he says to himself.

What am I going to do about it all?

Nothing.

I wrote this post more for (self-) entertainment purposes than for anything else. People are free to take or reject my offers; I can live with this. I don’t plan to find a way to control blog readers’ behaviour.

(Granted, I’d love to be able to do that. I know some bloggers who do it very successfully. So I’m going to study their dirty tricks and apply them all here, ohohohoho! <— You didn’t read that paragraph.)

Most bloggers — if not all of them — have some (or many) goals in mind for 2008. In order to participate of Daily Blog Tips’ latest group writing project, I am supposed to write about my own goals here.

This is my problem: I’m very reserved, hence I’d rather keep my blogging goals to myself. On the other hand, if I do it I won’t be able to take part in the writing project. It seems I’ll have to open my mouth this time… (Damn! They shouldn’t do this to a shy woman like me! *whines*)

Let me see if I can find a way to reveal my aims without exposing myself too much. Hmmm…

All right, this is what I have for you: after much pondering, I could only conclude that all of my blogging goals for 2008 are directly or indirectly related to my wish — and need — to become a better writer.

I could spend weeks and weeks working on a thousand ways to drive more traffic to my blogs, get more backlinks for them, increase their Alexa Rank, find them some advertisers and so on. But the truth is that I already know how to achieve it all. So there are really two things that hinder me from starting a more aggressive promotional campaign: persistent lack of time and a rather limited ability to produce compelling content. The former depends on things that I don’t have total control over, thus being out of this post’s scope. The latter, on the other hand, is my fault and no one else’s.

I have devised a little (perhaps not that little, now that I think of it) plan to improve my writing skills. Putting said plan into practice is the most important step that I must take to accomplish my blogging goal. If nothing goes wrong, by the end of 2008 I’ll have learned how to write that kind of content that makes blog readers come back for more. Then I’ll open the traffic hunt season.

This year I learned that I’m definitely not the worst blogger on Earth. Next year I’ll do my best to reach a higher blogging quality level. But I don’t want to do that alone. I want you, my dear readers, to follow me during this journey. So be nice to me and click here to subscribe to a1-fan-fun’s RSS feed. *grin* Oh, and don’t forget that your supportive comments are welcome. *double grin*

John Chow has recently asked the following question on his blog:

How many posts do you show on your blog’s front page and what is your reasoning behind it?

Much to my shame, I’ve realised that:

a) I’ve never paid too much attention to the number of posts displayed on my blogs’ homepages.

b) There’s no reasoning at all behind it.

I had already spent some time thinking about the subject, but I hadn’t come to any conclusions. Besides, I thought I had more important blogging decisions to make, so I kept on neglecting this matter.

Perhaps it’s time to think about it again. It may not be a major issue here, because most a1-fan-fun’s posts aren’t too long. But on Abaminds I tend to post longer articles. This habit may be affecting my visitors’ browsing experience somehow when they arrive to the frontpage. Hmmm…

I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately. Comment moderation is a very common practice around the blogosphere. But for some (obscure) reason I’m not totally sure that I should keep on moderating comments on my own blogs.

Comments on a1-fan-fun are all moderated. On Abaminds I took a different approach: only the first comment is moderated. Once it’s approved, the future comments left by the same reader should be displayed immediately. Two blogs, two systems. (This is one of the advantages of having more than one blog. I may write more about it someday.)

This blog gets much more comments than the other, for Abaminds is newer and I haven’t promoted it properly (yet). Therefore I still can’t make comparisons to base my decisions upon.

That being said, I came up with 2 short lists of pros and cons of comment moderation.

Why should a blogger moderate comments?

1. To control spammy messages not caught by anti-spam plugins: this is actually the main and best reason why anyone would want to read all comments before they are published.

2. To be able to edit comments before they go live: good if you suspect a certain comment to be spam but eventually decide to allow it. You may “punish” the supposed spammer by deleting, modifying or no-following the links he/she has left before they can be seen by other readers.

3. Because you want a chance to solve some delicated matters before they become public: if an usually friendly reader overreacts to a post of yours at first, he/she might need some time to calm down and realise his/her comment could have been toned down. With comment moderation turned on, you’ll have the chance to contact him/her privately and try to work things out. Or he/she might take the initiative.

I wonder how many bloggers actually put #3 into practice. I confess I don’t… There was an occasion when I could (perhaps should) have done it. But I had the feeling that trying to keep things “secret” would just make the commenter’s annoyance grow. Hence I chose to approve the comment as it was and respond it right away.

Why shouldn’t a blogger moderate comments?

1. Because some readers don’t like waiting: they want to be sure that their comments will actually be published. Just don’t ask me why. There must be a psychological mechanism that determines this behaviour. Maybe a need for reassurance? Who knows?

2. To show that you trust your readers: perhaps it’s a dangerous way to see things, with so many spammers out there. Nevertheless, it might not be a totally bad idea, if you know how to take advantage of it.

3. Because you may have to spend some time off-line: if that happens, you won’t be able to approve new comments and your blog will look too quiet.

After rereading my own lists, I still haven’t come to any conclusions. So here comes the part when I ask you to leave your comments on this post (you saw that coming! ).

What are your views on comment moderation? Have I forgotten to mention any good reasons why one should or shouldn’t have it turned on? As a blog reader and commenter, how do you feel when your comments are queued for moderation?

Your opinions are welcome and I appreciate any input you can give me.

This isn’t the topic I was planning to write about today. But it has come to my attention that some people have been deactivating dofollow plugins on their blogs. Among those there are some bloggers I admire and respect, such as Terry and Monika. There’s also a sort of alert post written by Grizzly, another great blogger.

Terry’s, Monika’s and Grizzly’s blogs are much more succesful than mine. And they make much more money than I do. Will I follow their steps?

No way.

You must be thinking I should, right? After all, if they are more successful and make more money, the wisest thing to do would be to apply their techniques to my own blogs.

Still, there’s this stubborn inner voice that tells me not to deactivate Lucia’s Linky Love (which is the dofollow plugin I use on my blogs).

Why?

Because I’m a very idealistic person. I believe that instead of immediately saying “amen” to everything Google (supposedly) wants from us, we may try to do things our way — and still earn an honest living online.

I’m also very curious. I really want to know where this dofollow issue will take me to. If the consequences are negative, then I’ll have to bear them and change my tactics.

As you can see, I know this decision of mine may be risky. But one has to take some (perhaps many) risks if she wants to do what she believes to be “the right thing.” And for me the right thing is to avoid becoming a slave to Google. Especially when there hasn’t been any official announcements regarding their views on dofollow stuff. And most especially when that search engine doesn’t send me any noticeable traffic (I can’t remember the last time my sites have gotten a single hit from Google). I’m always ready to change my opinions and behaviour though.

Let me make one thing very clear: this post isn’t meant to criticise the bloggers who’ve left the dofollow movement. They all have their (good and valid) reasons for doing that. Although I disagree with them and I think their acts are a bit exaggerated — after all, no one can tell for sure whether Google is really willing to “kill” the dofollow movement or not –, I sincerely respect their points of view. If I didn’t, how could I expect them to respect mine?

I didn’t plan to update this blog again today. I’d just verify the comments in the moderation queue and take a look at the stats. In fact, I did both things. There was only one comment to be approved (thank you, Simonne!), so that part was fast. Then I proceeded to check the stats out.

This was when I got truly scared.

I noticed a HUGE change in the traffic’s graph. As this blog gets around six daily visits, I calculated it should have gotten 30 or 40 today, hence the visual difference. Of course this was right before I saw today’s actual traffic: 318 views so far.

My first thought: “StumbleUpon.”

And I was right: almost all of those hits came from that site.

This wasn’t the first time I had a post of mine stumbled. So I knew how it was like to get some (much appreciated) increase in traffic thanks to StumbleUpon. But my previous experiences cannot be compared to this one. This wasn’t a mere “increase in traffic.” It was much more like an explosion.

I confess I wasn’t ready for this, because it was totally unexpected. I had no way to guess that my previous article on blog readability would generate so much interest. Now what am I supposed to do?

I don’t know! I vaguely recall having read articles about the things a blogger should do when she receives massive traffic from a social media site. But guess what? I’m so surprised and confused that right now I just can’t remember any single piece of advice about this!

Obviously I don’t expect the party to last for long. I know it’s improbable that these casual visitors become regular readers. But let’s see if there’s any detectable changes in average daily hits, feed subscriptions and backlinks. I’ll wait some days and then I’ll report the results. Even if I get no results at all.

At first this happening made me worried. I thought that from now on I’d have the “obligation” to write fantastic posts in order to keep my audience interested in this blog. However, I quickly realised that was a silly thought.

First of all, my previous article was all but fantastic; in reality it was rather lame. Besides, as stated above, those visitors are unlikely to return (unless I have another page successfully stumbled, but that would be another story). So, while stumblers will always be more than welcome here, I won’t go out of my way in a desperate attempt to please them at all costs. Instead I’ll stick to my original plans and continue to write my usual posts. This blog may eventually be taken to a different direction, but I don’t think the moment for it has come yet.

Now I’m really curious to know who’s the woman who discovered my post. I’ve read at StumbleUpon that she was from Romania. Simonne? Was that you?

As promised in my previous post, here is my analysis on the blogs whose reading level I’ve verified:

- Contrarily to my beliefs, being a non-native English speaker isn’t necessarily a disadvantage. Simonne is Romanian and her blog got a “High School” level; Lars-Christian’s blog was rated as “Genius” and the author is Norwegian. On the other hand, Jenna Glatzer is a professional American writer but her blog’s reading level is “Elementary School.”

- Speaking of writers, I expected blogs aimed at this target-audience to get the highest scores, because both professional authors and wannabes use to be careful of what and how they write. However, C. Hope Clark’s blog was the only one in this niche to reach the “College (Undergrad)” level.

- There was a group blog (Wrimo Buddies) among the writer-oriented ones, and its “High School” score made me wonder whether the amount of writers might affect a blog’s readability or not. Well, among those featuring more than one author, the level appears to vary between “Junior High School” and “High School” (Go Media Zine is the only exception). Not so bad, huh?

- Sadly, I’ve never been to college. However, I don’t find any difficulties in reading the blogs rated “College” (not even the “Postgrad” ones).

- As you all can easily tell, I’m not a genius. Far from it. Yet, I can fully enjoy all of the blogs that reached the “Genius” reading level. No, I’m not saying this to sound smarter. I can really read and understand their articles. Now will you please stop laughing at me? ¬¬

- Can the posts’ length influence a blog’s reading level? More or less. Apparently the blogs featuring shorter articles (see Internet Marketing Sucks!, for instance) tend to be rated “Elementary School.” But having longer articles won’t necessarily help you surpass the “Junior High School” score.

- Having your blog hosted for free won’t affect its redability. Not in a negative way, at least. There’s even a blog rated “Genius” among the freely hosted ones. And many of the privately hosted sites got low rates.

- Talking about blog hosting, it’s interesting to notice that blogs hosted under directories — instead of root domains or subdomains — tend to get lower rates. For instance, TheWritersManifesto’s main page scored “Junior High School,” whereas the blog (which is hosted under a “/blog” directory) was rated “Elementary School.”

How reliable is this analysis?

Not as much as I’d like it to be. Keep in mind that it was based on 39 blogs only. How many blogs are there on the whole Internet?

Please also note that each blog’s readability has been evaluated by an online tool whose criteria is still unknown. It’s safe to assume that blogs displaying several images in their posts are prone to get lower rates, because pictures can’t be read. Other than this, I have no idea of what factors can actually influence the results.

Maybe the test’s creators are still working to improve the tool. The first time I tried to evaluate Steven Snell’s blog, I got a message telling me it wasn’t possible to read it. I made a second attempt a few days later and got the same message. This is why I listed Vandelay Website Design’s main page instead of its blog’s URL. But today I tried once again and I finally got a result: “Junior High School.” By the way, this is lower than the homepage’s reading level, and seems to reinforce what I wrote about the (sub)domains vs. directories issue.

Is it all meant to belittle any blogs?

Of course not!

I have the feeling that some people weren’t exactly happy to find out that their blogs got low rates in the test. However, I don’t think they should take offence in it. Much on the contrary: they should be glad. As many commentators have stated, a lower reading level may actually be an advantage: your articles can be read and fully understood by a broader audience.

The owners of the highest rated blogs shouldn’t worry either: in most cases a reader doesn’t need to be a genius to understand a blog post.

Finally, I must say that many of the test’s results seem to be distorted and/or exaggerated in some way. All in all, this is a cool topic to write — and think — about, but nothing to lose your sleep over.

UPDATE: Liz Strauss has left a very interesting comment about readability here. Make sure to read it.

My post about the Blog Readability Test generated more interest than I expected.

Many thanks to all bloggers who took the time to leave their comments on that post! Special thanks to Grizzly for listing that article on Blogging Zoom.

So, what we got? I’ve put 39 blogs (including mine) to the test. All of them belong to one or more of the following niches:

* Internet marketing

* SEO

* Meta-blogging

* Writing (fiction and non-fiction)

* Make money online

* Web design

* Work at home / Freelancing

As for their readability level, here are the numbers:

- Elementary School: 9 blogs.

- Junior High School: 14 blogs.

- High School: 8 blogs.

- College (Undergrad): 4 blogs.

- College (Postgrad): 2 blogs.

- Genius: 2 blogs.

Those were the results I got on November 7th, 2007, when I wrote the original post. Then Lars-Christian told me his blog had been upgraded to the “Genius” reading level (which is true). I haven’t taken the time to verify all of the other blogs again. Therefore I’ll assume that the only change to the list above would be the addition of a blog to the “Genius” level and the exclusion of the same blog from the “College (Postgrad)” one.

On my next post I’m going to analyse that list. I’ve noticed some interesting things about it, and I want to share my thoughts with you all. Stay tunned!

I’m sure you’ve read several articles warning you to be extremely careful when promoting your own stuff on social media sites. The risk of being labeled as a spammer varies from “high” to “get-out-of-here-and-die-right-now” in most cases, unless you know what you’re doing. And those articles aim to teach you exactly the do’s and don’ts of social media marketing.

But do you know what? Not everyone will see you necessarily as a spammer when you plug your own content.

I get disappointed when I visit del.icio.us, click on “links for you” and never ever find anything. Not even actual spam! No one cares to share their bookmarks with me. Things are slightly better at StumbleUpon: once in a blue moon I receive a few links from friends and fans. Still, not nearly as many as I’d be interested in.

Being a voracious reader, and not having the time to keep track of everything that happens on the Internet, I’m pretty open to pitches — provided that they’re related to my areas of interest, of course.

Am I the only social media user who feels this way? I don’t think so. On the other hand, this post reflects exclusively my point of view. That is, I haven’t exchanged ideas with other people before writing it. Keep this in mind if you decide to try any of the tips below.

How can you promote your content to interested social media peers? Six random ideas:

1. Digg users have an obvious tool: the so-called shouts. Many have been abusing it though. What’s worse, some people send several shouts a day to their contacts, but don’t accept shouts from anyone. Do *not* follow their example. If you want to send messages, you should be open to receive some as well. It’s simple like that.

2. LiveJournal has just released a private message system. This is an old GreatestJournal feature, by the way. But both sites are friendship-oriented, i. e., you should join them to build actual relationships, not just to put your marketing ideas into practice. Otherwise you’ll be ignored by almost all users.

3. If you are a stumbler, you’d better send links only to your friends. If you’re bold and/or confident that your content would be of interest to any given stumbler who isn’t your mutual friend (yet), you can send him/her a polite private message and pitch your site/blog/photo/whatever. But good results aren’t guaranteed.

4. By MySpace’s standards my friends list is very small. Yet I receive much more bulletins than I’m able to read, so I skip over 95% of them. But I rarely receive any personal messages. Consequently, I always read the few ones I get. The same goes for comments. Hopefully you got the idea.

5. If you keep your bookmarks at del.icio.us, you may play a bit with the “for:username” tag. Unfortunately, many members overlook that feature and don’t seem to ever check the links they get. Another problem lies in the impossibility to send any messages along with your links. The ability to add a “personal touch” to your link sharing attempts might make a difference, if it existed.

6. You should try to promote video content to YouTube users. I know, I know… You must be laughing at me and saying that this is just too obvious to deserve a mention on this article. You must be right. But please tell me one thing: why *none* of the PMs I get on YouTube deal with online videos? Well, maybe some people think that after watching so many videos, their targets won’t be interested in even more. This must be why they choose to promote things that have absolutely nothing to do with YouTube’s speciality. Yeah… sure.

Three additional tips:

a) Don’t overdo it. Just because a social media user is deeply interested in a certain topic and/or is in your friends list, it doesn’t mean he/she has to be informed about each and every thing you publish on the Internet (some microblogging enthusiasts might totally disagree with such statement, but that’s another story). Be specially careful if you want to promote your blog’s articles, because some of your contacts may be regular visitors and/or feed subscribers. Therefore, they’ll be more likely to get annoyed if you send them links to things that they would have read anyway. Oh, and in case you use to rewrite your posts and submit them to article directories, do your friends a favour: don’t pitch your rewritten stuff to them. Unless you have among your contacts some people who’d be interested in studying rewriting techniques.

b) Many social news and social bookmarking sites are too generic. As a result, their members tend to have a long list of unrelated interests. If you find members who stick to a group of related topics, and the stuff you want to promote incidentally fits their specific tastes, you’ll be less prone to rejection. Before you say anything about those niche-oriented social media sites, let me draw your attention to a potential issue: people inside the same niche tend to react more aggressively to any attempts of self-promotion. It may be due to a stronger “sense of competition” or to a “specialised information overload.” So, it might not be necessarily safer to plug your content on such sites. Those fellows who try to specialise in certain topics even when they are members of general social media sites may be better targets. You might help them fish more specialised content from a sea of miscellaneous links. And they might be grateful to you for this.

c) If you really are too afraid of being called a spammer and you fear to lose some (or many) friends, there’s a very simple way to go about this, as long as you’ve already opened accounts on some social media sites and your friends lists aren’t totally empty. Here’s what to do: select the desired site and send a message to each person in your contact list, explaining your intentions. Tell them you’d like to send them some links from time to time. Specify the frequency: everyday, twice per week, once a week etc. Also specify the type of links you’ll be sharing, and make it clear that they will lead to content produced by you (or by your partners, depending the case). Ask whether they would be interested in getting such links or not. The answers will probably vary from a dry “no, thanks” to a very specific “please send me only your links about writing prompts, preferably on Fridays.” Take notes and respect everyone’s decisions. This is fair play applied to social networking. And it comes with a bonus: by following this tip you’ll be able to build your own informal newsletter(s) inside each site.

Cool resources:

* In case you need more info and advice on social media leveraging, DoshDosh is the place you’re looking for. Maki often writes in-depth articles on the subject, and they are all so good that I won’t even try to pick any examples. Just go there and use the blog’s search bar. You’ll probably find even more tips than you expect. And no, Maki hasn’t paid me a single penny to advertise his site. I just happen to be a big fan of his.

* Another blog you’ll want to visit is Vandelay Website Design. Despite the site’s name, design is just one of the subjects covered by Steven Snell. He also writes a lot about site promotion, for instance, and social media is often mentioned in his posts. By the way, he is the person who inspired me to write this article, as this is my contribution to his Social Media Group Writing Project. Click here to view the complete list of submitted articles.

And that’s all… for the moment. I may get back to this subject if you ask me to (and even if you don’t ). Feel free to post questions, share experiences, offer different points of view and so on.