Blogging Tip: How NOT To Increase Your Readership

You see post after post of “How To Get More Blog Readers” and “Increase Your Ad Revenue by 500% In a Week!”, but you never see a post about how NOT to increase your readership.  This post is going to be short, because in the 11 months I’ve been blogging, about 10 minutes ago is the first time I’ve learned a lesson in how not to blog:

Do. Not. Over. Tag. Your. Posts.

WordPress blogs are greater than all other hosted blogs.  Reason?  Well, once you get past WordPress’s generally awesomeness, it’s the fact that WordPress.com gives you a great tool to publicize your blog through tags and categories.  For those not familiar with tags, here’s an easy-to-understand definition:  words or short phrases that describe your post.  You simply type them into the “Post Tags” line next to an under-construction WordPress post and SHAZAM!  Your post is now at the top of the listing for each tag you typed in.

This feature is no doubt a huge assets to starting bloggers, and veteran bloggers alike.  When I started my blog, I saw this feature and took notice of its great power.  In my excitement, I decided I should harness the full power of WordPress tags by taggingeach post with nearly every word included in the post, plus some general tags like “Politics”, “News”, “Entertainment”, etc.  This went on for about 11 months (meaning from blog startup until a few minutes ago).  I was surfing the “Education” tag category to catch up on the latest opinions about Barack’s big speech today and I noticed that my grade-A post wasn’t listed anywhere on the listing.  Of course I had tagged “Education” to the post.  So I looked around and it finaly dawned on me that there COULD be a tag limit.  I thought about it and I realized that no one else ever used a trillion tags but me; I guess I just thought I was the only one that caught onto that trick.  I decided to post my question in the forums and was promptly given a response by a great forum member (Raincoaster):  Wordpress blocks your posts out after around 10 or 12 tags/categories, and after several posts of over 12 tags/categories, you are considered a tag spammer.

Well imagine my excitement when I learned that I’m pretty much number 1 on “WordPress’s Most Wanted” since I regularly use upwards of 100 tags on each post.  That would explain why I never get hits from wordpress tags.  I figure it’s better to not be getting hits because I’m in the “WordPress Tag Slammer” than because my content is boring.

What failed techniques have you tried to increase your blog’s readership?  Leave your comments below or send an e-mail to theconservativejournal@gmail.com.  Don’t forget to bookmark The Conservative Journal and sign up for the RSS Feed and the daily e-mail newsletter.

Thanks for reading!

Rick

Also, be sure and use the new rating feature, found at the bottom of comments and posts!

Increase Blog Traffic With Blogsurfer: Check This out!

I’ve been talking about Alpha Inventions and all of the great help it’s been in furthering my site for nearly a year now.  While I’ve been praising and using Alpha Inventions nearly I every day, I’ve also been using a smaller blogging utility called Blogsurfer.us, formerly known as Condron.us.

Blogsurfer.us allows you to submit your blog into a continuous shuffle of blogs, leading to an increase in traffic.  While the traffic numbers don’t really rival those of Alpha Inventions, Blogsurfer.us has its benefits.  For starters, Blogsurfer is extremely stable and has a very precise feel.  Blogsurfer displays a timer in the top left corner that displays how many more seconds until the next blog will appear.  This is extremely useful in assuring yourself that you have enough time to bookmark blogs you are interesting.  Also unique to Blogsurfer is a forum for users to interact and exchange blog URLs.  Submitting your blog to the rotation is also extremely easy; you simply press “Add Blog” and type in your URL, e-mail, and category.  I can usually pull out about 10 unique visitors per submission, wihch is definitely worth the 5 seconds it takes to enter the blog information.  Be sure and check out Blogsurfer.us today!

To visit Blogsurfer.us, click here.

To view all winners of the weekly “Check This Out!” award, click here.

What has worked for you in increasing blog traffic?  Leave your comments below or send an e-mail to theconservativejournal@gmail.com.  Don’t forget to bookmark The Conservative Journal and sign up for the RSS Feed and the daily e-mail newsletter.

Thanks for reading!

Rick

Also, be sure and use the new rating feature, found at the bottom of comments and posts!

Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Exlporer, Safari… WHICH INTERNET BROWSER DO I USE?!

Unless you spend a lot of time reading the specifications and hard details of internet browsers, you probably don’t know what half of internet browser reviewers are talking about.  When I read that Google Chrome uses the latest NVIDIA 8600 Graphics Unit, my head starts to explode a little.  And the fact that Mozilla Firefox has 1 GB of RAM and a 1200x Processesing Core means nothing to me.  What I would like to read is a user account of the performances by each of the major internet browsers.  Well, lucky for you, that’s exactly what this is.  So sit down and buckle up because this is my first forray into technological smartness stuff, and it’s sure to get ugly along the way.

Which is the best internet browser; Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Apple Safari?

Internet Explorer 8.0

You know, the only positive thing I can come up with is that Internet Explorer has great support.  Probably the best of all of the browsers I used.  However, 99% of people have never and will never use or care about Costumer Service and Support for their internet browser.  So this is pretty much useless.  I used IE 8 when it first came out, and as with all Internet Explorers, I was unimpressed.  Right out of the box it was one of the slower browsers.  When you begin to download toolbars, however, it gets really ugly.  I was operating an election 2008 toolbar and a StumbleUpon Toolbar on each browser that had support for those applications and Internet Explorer took the add ons the worst.  Pair that with the fact that as I type this the only browser that isn’t working of the four I have downloaded is Internet Explorer (It’s telling me I’m offline.  Clearly that’s not the case.), and it’s obvious that it’s the weakest of the bunch.  For slow loading and start times, not to mention poor stability, I give IE 8 2 of 5 stars.

Mozilla Firefox 3.0

Mozilla definitely pulled out all the stops with their Firefox browser’s third version.  The newest version features better privacy features, quicker performance, and, coolest of all, new applications.   The best thing to be said about Firefox is it’s vast expanse of applications.  Like the iPhone, I can assure you “there’s an app for that”.  Whether it be a theme or a weather widget, the mozilla.com has it all.  Thankfully, Firefox can handle the extra applications.  I’ve installed over 20 applications, and website loading time hasn’t been drastically increased.  However, I’ve been experiencing some stability problems with the latest update to Firefox.  The browser often crashes and leaves me having to restart and try and remember all of the tabs I have open since it doesn’t save your tabs by default.  Definitely an inconvenience, but not a deal breaker.  For the vast array of applications, Firefox still gets 3.5 of 5 stars.

Apple Safari

When Apple announced the release of the Safari browser to Windows-based computers, I was pumped.  I’d heard all my Mac friends talk about how zippy Safari was for years, so of course I needed to be a part.  Unfortunately, like most things, Safari must work best in its home environment because I was not all that impressed.  Though Safari has the second best start-up time, it’s all a big scam.  Once the window starts up the browser stalls for 3 to 4 seconds then loads.  Though Safari was the second most stable browser in my tests, the 3 to 4 second delay between page loads is extremely annoying.  When you’re running several tabs, that adds many minutes on to your browsing experience.  And quite frankly, Safari doesn’t have the extra features to justify the slow performance.  For that I give it 2.5 of 5 Stars.

Google Chrome

Ahhh Google, you amaze me.  As if Google wasn’t cool enough already, they release a killer internet browser that blew the competition out of the water.  Once I finally got around to downloading Chrome, I found that it was what I’d always looked for in an internet browser.  The window pops up immediately after clicking the icon, and the home page loads quickly after.  It amazes how Chrome manages to open and load so much faster than the other browsers when they are all operating on the same wireless network.  Each time I click a link or load a page, I’m amazed by the speed of Chrome.  I’m so amazed, in fact, that nearly every time I get the chance I tell my friends and colleagues to download Chrome.  It’s allowed me to be so much productive when on the internet because it doesn’t have the unstableness of Fireforx, the stalling of Safari, or the generally crapiness of Internet Explorer.  For being far superior to anything I’ve ever seen, I give a perfect score of 5 out of 5 Stars.

Final Score:

1. Google Chrome: 5 out of 5
2. Mozilla Firefox: 3.5 out of 5
3. Apple Safari: 2.5 out of 5
4. Internet Explorer 2.5 out of 5

Which of the browsers do you use most often?  Leave your own experiences with internet browsers below or send an e-mail to theconservativejournal@gmail.com.  Don’t forget to bookmark The Conservative Journal and sign up for the RSS Feed and the daily e-mail newsletter.

Thanks for reading!

Rick

Also, be sure and use the new rating feature, found at the bottom of comments and posts!

Alpha Inventions: (Re)Check This Out!

One of the very first “Check This Outs” I awarded was to AlphaInventions.com, the increasingly popular advertisement utility for blogs all across the interwebs.  I owe Alpha Inventions and its creators a lot of credit for helping The Conservative Journal get off the ground and keep from falling off the face of the blogosphere during my leaves of absence.  To express my gratitude I decided I would award them an unprescedented SECOND “Check This Out” Award!  Be sure and check out Alpha Inventions and submit your blog to the reading cycle, allowing thousands more eye balls to grace your fine work!

To visit Alpha Inventions, click here.

Leave your comments below or send an e-mail to theconservativejournal@gmail.com.  Don’t forget to bookmark The Conservative Journal and sign up for the RSS Feed and the daily e-mail newsletter.

Thanks for reading!

Rick

Also, be sure and use the new rating feature, found at the bottom of comments and posts!