Over the next few months I’d like to base as many posts as possible here at ProBlogger on real life questions and problems of readers.
As a result I’m opening the ProBlogger ‘question box’.
I can’t guarantee that I’ll answer them all – but I’ll attempt to get through as many as possible or to find others who are better qualified than I am to do so.
Anything related to blogging will have more chance of being answered – although you’re welcome to submit other questions that you think I might have anything to say on.
PS: If you don’t want your name/blog to be linked to your question feel free to ask it anonymously. Please submit the questions in comments below.
How does the general flow of your day run? I remember you posted a couple of ‘schedule’ posts a long time ago. Any chance of an updated one covering how your general day goes?
How do you work advertising on your site when it comes to the 125×125 banners? Do most of the advertisers just come to you and negotiate advertising or do you (or someone else) pro-actively go and find advertisers for this (and other) blogs?
How would you recommend getting more advertising such as this, is it advisable to “look” for advertisers or will they just come with the traffic?
Blogging is hard when you’re tired. How do you keep yourself brisk when you need to blog?
OK… let’s see…
I’ve been writing in Blogger for three year. Last september I moved the weblog to my own domain, with WP and all the stuff… So since then I have a weblog with three years of pretty good content and counting, around 300 unique entries per day, around 500 pageviews a day, 50% of my readership comes from Google (so I think I’m doing something well in SEO), my subscribers count is at around 240+ readers now, authority 51 in Technorati, PR3… does not look bad, eh? But I’m kind of upset because I cannot make AdSense grow at the same pace.
So the question is: Is there any relationship between these variables and AdSense? Or is it just the niche (immigration to Canada for an spanish speaking audience.. which between 2002-2006 represented almost 200K people so I guess it’s not that small)
I hope you can answer… Gracias Darren!
Hi Darren, I have just a quick question for you: what is something – other than content – that can help set a new blog apart from the millions of other blogs already in existence?
It seems that there are blogs for almost everything, if someone wanted to create a blog on a niche that is already covered, are there any “pro” ways that they could quickly climb to the top of the ladder?
Thanks Darren.
I started a blog about Professional Lifestyle a little over a month ago. It already has gotten 16,000 visits, has almost 100 subscribers and has a google page rank of 4 (somehow).
I want to do two things but do not know if I should yet (or at all).
First, should I put up advertisements at this early stage? And second, would it be okay to add a Donate button on an entrepreneurship blog?
The latter has been a huge debate between me and a few of my entrepreneur friends. I haven’t decided either way.
What’s the best way to make an effective tag line for your blog’s niche?
2 newbie questions-
Can you explain what a “trackback” is and if it’s something I should be concerned about?
and
If people subscribe to my blog via RSS or email, what’s the point of designing a cool looking blog if most people read your content in a feed reader? Should you drive people to your actual blog page instead? (sorry thats 3 questions….)
Thanks
What are your feelings about having a blog website and another website that is in a non-blog format?
Are you just about having a single source (1 blog) that does everything?
Both of my blogs are pretty niche specific (artist housing, and husband advice). I have decent readership so now I’m trying to figure out what the best advertising method is for small, niche market blogs. Do you have a recommended method?
How do you find a loyal audience when a niche is so small?
What is the protocol in 2008 for paid reviews and text link sales?
How is it that traffic and subscribers go up, but PR and Alexa ranking go down? How much weight do you put on those “rankings” to quantify your “success”?
That’s two questions, I know.
What is the best way to determine advertising fees when setting up an “Advertise” page?
In general, what would you say has the potential to generate the most revenue for a blog?
Thanks!
Jeff
Here’s my question:
What is the ratio of visitors/clicks/revenue between https://problogger.com and https://problogger.com/blog?
Also: Could you share with us a little info about how much percentage do you earn from your different ad programs? (For example: 125×125 ads: 25%, Adsense: 20%, etc.)
Thanks! :)
Can poor writing skills overshadow good content? I made that contention in a recent post of mine listing the 10 most common writing mistakes that make bloggers look dumb. I’ve gotten interesting responses and would like to know how important you think proper writing skills are.
Thank you, Darren. This is a great feature for readers.
Creating a successful blog is a long and slow process, how can bloggers be sure they are on the right path and doing the things they need to be do? What are some tips as to what bloggers should look at when creating every piece the big picture. A lot of new bloggers see the answer as being technology. Meaning things like having the best layout, most widgets, and belonging every social site, as well as commenting every post they read with “Great Job.”
Have your partner, family and friends always accepted blogging as a serious full time profession?
What work are you doing to change peoples’ perceptions of your profession?
In 2008, is “problogger” an acceptable job title?
What do you call yourself on professional forms like mortgage applications etc?
If your kid/s told you they wanted to grow up to be probloggers just like Dad, what advice would you give them?
It seems to me that there’s a long way to go before blogging is accepted as a serious career path, so I’d love to hear your thoughts.
I am perplexed by my blog. Many would call it a success: mature blog (three years), loyal following of great readers and commenters (average somewhere around 20 or so); awards, even bloggie nominations; good Technorati rating; posts picked up by major services including big news sites and magazines; active participation in networks such as StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, other localized groups, writing carnivals, etc. I believe I present a generally quality site with good writing. That’s the feedback I get.
Unfortunately, my traffic stinks for what I think it should be. Some days I struggle to get 100 readers! I’ve read tips and tricks and tried those. I can get a mild surge (high for me is 300-400 readers per day) but can’t sustain it.
It’s a conundrum, and its costing me. I get paid by advertisers for views plus I’m afraid if my traffic remains this low I won’t get to remain in the network. I already had two applications denied.
What am I doing or not doing?
Thanks for offering to answer questions. I see interesting ones above I look forward to hearing more about, and hope maybe you have insight for me, too.
(I am being anonymous because I feel like such a nag complaining and don’t want to offend anyone. I ought to be happy about all I have! If you need more information let me know.)
How do you get into a good routine? How do you filter all theblogs you read? Do you write daily before reading?
Hi,
this reminds me of an application I ran into on PaulStamatiou.com the other day: http://www.skribit.com – I haven’t tried it (I’m only just starting to blog more regularly) but as far as I understand it, it’s just what you’re looking for here.
Best wishes, YC
If you make a mistake in an article on your blog (not a simple typo, rather a factual error such as a bad date or dollar figure) do you simply correct the mistake, or do you correct and make a note at the bottom of the post? Or, do you simply do nothing and leave the post in its original form?
Thanks for opening up the “question box.” Nice feature.
If you change the layout of your blog posts, for example, you add a Stumble It or Add This button to your post, do you go back and change all your posts or do you just forget about it and move forward?
How much traffic/subscribers should you have before you consider selling 125x125s? How do you find advertisers, etc? This is a topic I’d like to learn a lot more about.
Since a great deal of your earnings come from your blogs, what measures have you taken in terms of security? What measures do you suggest your readers take to secure their blog from attacks and/or malicious parties?
Where does a blogger draw the line between putting up free content versus releasing an eBook? I’m all about an informative blog with great articles…but an eBook seems to be a good revenue point. So, should an eBook have exclusive information in it that you don’t share on your blog? Or is the value of an eBook found in it being an edited and formatted compendium of your blog? This is in regards to a social media in music blog I am working on to launch. Looking for ways and means!
I have all of the above questions and more! If you don’t write on some, could you point us to posts where the anwser might be?
I’m blogging about programming topics with Visual Studio as I am a programmer. I am also blogging about news items that interest me in 6 different blogs on my site. I know you have at least one other blog (where you started from), but do you have others, and if so, how does your daily schedule ensure you hit every blog to provide consistently fresh content?
I’m off to learn more from your blog. Love it and thanks for the helpful posts!
Wayne
Hello, My friend and I have joined forces to start a blog. I read several articles saying “content” or having a “theme” was key to a successful blog. My friend and I have different and similar interests, yet we enjoy making separate posts and maintaining the blog together. I guess our problem is there is no consistent theme (individually or together), and our content is random. To be quite honest, we like it that way – it is a surprise and you never know what to expect! The downfall? We have lost several readers, which I assume is from the randomness. How do we make this work? We have many different ideas and interests we want to express on this blog, and we want to stick to one blog. I guess we assumed we would find readers that had the same sense of humor and random interests – is that wrong? Please help – confused!
Darren
Do you do anything else beside blogging?
Do you think you will ever stop blogging and if you do what would you like to do?
In a competitive niche, such as blogging, what do you think are the best strategies for finding a unique voice and being able to offer something different?
My blog is nearly three years old. In the last six months I post daily. 10,000 uniques a month, all good but why does my blog have less than 20 subscribers?
What am I doing wrong? I think I basically want advice about ways to get people to keep people coming back to the site and get new visitors to subscribe, maybe my website attracts an audience that doesn’t subscribe to blogs? Do I need hundreds and thousands of subscribes to be a successful blogger?
Do you care about reading your readers’ comments – apart from the ones of this thread – as you have so many ? my impression is no.
Is it a good idea to post photos from an existing photoblog on Flikr? If yes, why? If not, why not?
Darren,
Recently I have seen more and more publishers moving away from Adsense and focusing more on affiliate programs and selling advertising directly to generate income from their blogs.
Do you see shunning Adsense in favor of other advertising as a growing trend, and have you started to move away from Adsense yourself?
Do you know of any blogs in the “personal blog” niche that have had reasonable success earning an income via blogging?
Is problogging something really only reachable by those who right more “informational” style blogs?
Darren, how do I attract readers? My blog’s traffic is rather erratic at the moment – granted it’s not very old, but still… Last week I had 200 visitors, this week, about 20.
What is the best way to connect with other bloggers and build some dialogue? I frequent several blogs and regulary leave comments on subject.
I’m not sure if this is normal or not and haven’t been able to find anything on Google about it: why does Google Analytics and Feedburner report a different amount of site visitors? According to GA I get about 150 visitors every day and on FB it’s 250. Why the difference?
Do you invest your money in things others than your business? I mean, real estate, stock market, etc?
Guest Posts on a Blog
Darren –
You promote the Guest Post quite often on your blog and I see it on other highly successful blogs. My question is what is the best way to get a quality guest blogger to post for your site and how do you go about becoming a guest blogger on others?
Any good tips/tricks?
Thanks,
John
I have a successful blog, now I’m trying to build it out into my own blog network. Have any guides on building a network of blogs or branding a network of blogs. I’m not sure how in-line with my original theme or niche I should be, weather each site should be branded completely differently or have some logo or tag name in common…I know this answer could be written as a book but do you have any resources I could look at?
Thank you very much.
– Richard
HedgeFundBlogger.com
As someone above said, I am also interested in knowing more about how many unique visitors in a day/month I should have before offering advertising space? I think adsense in both my niches is unlikely to bring me very much more than pennies but can see that there is a lot of potential for private advertising. I’m not really sure how to go about it though. I’d love to hear your advice.
Many thanks.
How important is, for a blog, have an exclusive layout? It’s an vital issue to fix the blog’s identity or if a take a free wordpress theme it’s just ok?
(1) You’ve mentioned blog networks before. What is a blog network, and how does it work?
(2) Where a blogger has several blogs, all distinct but related, what do you think to the concept of a central “hub” blog which can be promoted to all, along with the url of the niche blog to its specific audience?
Example: I have blogs for RVing, travel, motorcycling, and history. All cross-post to some extent. It’s hard, sometimes, to know which url to leave in a comment. For bikers, RVers and travelers it’s truly obvious; for more general blogs, would it be a reasonable idea to leave a link to a hub which showcases all the different niche blogs instead?
hi darren. i’m a non-us blogger. i was wondering what tips do you have for nos-us bloggers that have a blog in their own country and own language.
My concern is that countries like France, Germany or Romania where i’m from, or Japan and other, that have their own language, don’t “speak” to such a large public like the us blogs do, or let’s say english written blogs.
What should you do when your possible audience isn’t that big? What advertising methods should you use if the blogosphere in your country isn’t as developed as the us one?
What would you do if you found yourself in a country where the blogosphere is still at start-up point?
Since a lot of people are earning good money by blogging, did you see in some time that this will be a regular proffesion like any other? maybe when asking a kid “What do you want to be when you grow?” the kids will answer “Well I want to be a blogger!”
I really believe it will happen therefore not everybody is diciplined enough to be a profesional blogger. But thats my opinion whats yours?
It seems there are so many different systems or models of blogging how do you navigate through all of that. For someone just starting it’s a little overwhelming. Most of us can’t ante up for the secret handshake over and over till we find the right one for our niche. Make sense or is it just me?….
Hello, thanks for the chance to ask a pro about blogging…we are just getting started, and would like to know how to link…how to publisize our blog, something that would help us get out there….we will be putting images on it, as we know this is helpful…thanks for any info, we appreciate it…I have RSS feed of ProBlogger on my home page…thanks….Rick
I am starting to write an eBook.
It shall be on web design as opposed to blogging, but some tips on writing and/or publishing and/or getting the word out on an eBook would be most appreciated.
I don’t plan on publishing it any time soon, but aid would be nice.
:-)