Web’s Best Blog

The only way to get a pay raise from blogging is by posting more. There is no way to stand still and expect the money to keep going up, it just doesn’t work that way. Some of the pages in your archive will fall from glory, whether your rankings slip or because the word is no longer popular, so constantly adding new pages serves to replenish your stock.

Updates are the road to success

When you have a small blog archive, it’s tough to imagine a day when your archive will pay your bills. But such a day exists. It exists if you can build your archive to a place where it contains bunches of useful posts. If you do, then search engine traffic will come to your website and monetization is as easy as pie.

Blog archives around 500 posts or bigger seem to be very rewarding. Now I’m sure this isn’t a magic number, but 500 pages in your archive indicates you have the tenacity to keep on blogging. It also creates a great internet linking structure which helps your rankings. When in doubt, just go ahead and update.

There’s something weird about blogging when it’s still dark outside. It seems like it’s way too early to be up and hitting the WordPress. But really, why not? I have a blogging schedule I’m trying to keep, in order to increase my blog revenue, so there’s no time like the present to get working.

Other people out there are blogging when it’s dark because it’s so late outside. I usually don’t care to do that, as I’m an early riser. But the point remains the same. You have to get your blogging done. Dedication to the task is what you have to display, no matter what.

So for anyone else out there right now blogging, I salute you. With your increase in blogging productivity, you’re undoubtedly looking for a big raise in your pay very soon. Good luck.

If you don’t feel like blogging on the weekends, you can let your archives do the work for you. You still have every page you ever worked on, and they are all running ads. So you know that your past efforts will pay off for you. The best part of being a blogger, really, is your archive.

If ever there was an advantage to doing a job, it’s the fact you can make passive income from blogging. You do not have to be sitting in front of your terminal to get paid. Now, obviously, you have already had to do a ton of work, but at least some of your efforts pay off over time, too.

Your cumulative efforts are what will get you paid when you take off on the weekends. All of your posts which are already finished, and archived in search engines will bring the needed visitors for you to earn. And when you get back on Monday, all of that money will be waiting for you. I can’t think of a better job!

It’s nice to get comments in your blog, but there are some downsides to the practice. Most notably is the fact that incessant spammers constantly try and bombard blogs with messages. No matter how many years go by, this practice always remains popular. I doubt it will ever cease to exist, because apparently they’ve found a way to make money from the practice.

But even when humans add comments, it doesn’t always increase the value of your blog by much. Many people who leave comments are just “doing it by hand”, and although technically not spam, they make quick low-content comments in order to put links back to their own websites.

Conversation does happen sometimes. There are times when comments are very useful, and these are the moments that blogger hang on to. The few gems are worth sorting through the chaff in order to glean knowledge from the nuggets of wisdom. The only problem is, they occur about as often as meteor showers. Ah, well.

Making money from your blogging is not as hard as rocket science, but it still is a bit of mystery to many people. But I’ve found one thing that can move your blog to profitability quicker than anything else: consistency in posting. If you can maintain posting schedule for your blogs, you have a leg up on any bloggers who aren’t adhering to a strict regimen.

Consistency also speaks to the “quality” of your posts. You can’t have a great post one day and follow it up with a few weeks of garbage. Whatever goodwill you would have won from your readers will be lost at that point. You should stay within your range for the most part. If you drop an 8,000 word piece one day, but don’t write that way for months, people probably won’t take you that seriously.

Consistency in posting is as simple as introducing discipline to any area of your life. You set your mind to achieving a goal and you take the steps necessary to doing it. The main thing to remember is: you benefit from your work.

How consistent have you been about blogging?

Here’s a trick that you can see done by many bloggers: write authoritatively, no matter how little you know about a subject. Nobody actually checks your credentials, so it’s quite easy to pretend to be an expert, especially if you adopt the proper tone.

Blogging is at a point where credibility is beginning to matter, but it’s still not of paramount importance. You don’t have to get a degree from “Blogging University” to get started. All it takes is WordPress and some free hosting. Or, if you want to spend nothing, you can do Blogger and get your blog on.

Will acting important do the trick in the long run? No. Real experts will eventually figure out what’s going on, but you might be able to get away with it for awhile

Lately I’ve adopted a hit’em quick staccato method of blog posting. Sure, not all of my posts are likely to be works of art if I’m shooting them out like a Tommy Gun, but at least I’m likely to get visitors. As long as you can see progress from you efforts, then you keep on running and gunning.

Who runs for the most yards in the NFL? Generally it’s someone who gets the most snaps in the entire league. Co-incidence? I think not. The more a reliable player carries the ball, the higher the stats go. It’s no different for blogging. Keep on posting and you’re likely to lead the league in scoring new visitors.

If you tire, someone who’s working much harder is likely to overtake you. This is just the nature of the game. But if you’re doing quick hit staccato posting, you won’t get tired easily.

For spring cleaning I’m upgrading WordPresses and implementing design changes. So far, the upgrades have gone remarkable well. What’s the quickest way to upgrade a WordPress blog?

After you untar it, type “rsync -rv /newblog /oldblog”

Voila! That will overwrite the files with the updated files. Log in and you’ll be prompted to repair your Database. After you do that, check and see if any of your plugins stop working.

So far the only plugin that broke was a meta plugin that had an update.

WordPress gives off a ton of duplicate content in its’ default state. One thing you will definitely want to do is check your template and do these things first:

1) Cut any links to the “trackback” and “feed” pages, which will show up as dupes.
2) Add the following code to your header.php file:

if ((is_home() && ($paged < 2 )) || is_single() || is_page() || is_category()){
echo "";
} else {
echo "";
}
?>

Don’t copy that code directly, as it is escaped for formatting. You can use this file to copy and paste from.

This will remove most of the sludge pages such as the categories, the index pages numbered greater than 2 and the redundant archive pages. These are the major sources of duplicate content using WordPress, so this addition is a must.

In fact, many blog posts that I happen along are quite short. The main key is: does the blog post convey a message of deeper significance? If it does, and the user and the blogger connect, than the blogger can be forgiven their brevity.

All in all, though, it’s rare that a completely short blog post will convey enough meaning. If you feel your original thoughts aren’t clearly outlined, then don’t hesistate to add a few more sentences, or even a paragraph to make clear your meaning to any readers who happen by.

With practice, you’ll easily be able to determine just the right post length for every occasion.