Blogging — Page 8 — You are in My World Now

The Traffic lull is over – I think

August 21, 2007 by Tricia

Well, looking at my site stats for yesterday it seems that most people are back from their holidays, back to work or back in school. Why do I think that? Well, my stats are up. All of my husband and I’s sites had a lot more visitors yesterday than we’ve had most days over the last couple of weeks.

It’s not like there was a huge drop in site visitors, but enough that I noticed. Fewer comments, and lower visitor numbers when I check my stats.

Have you noticed that your site or sites had a slight drop in traffic through maybe mid July until at least the end of last week?

I’ll be keeping an eye on my stats over the next week, but I think I’m correct. I know that a lot of schools opened up this week so the kids are back to school. Moms that stay at home might have a bit more time on their hands for visiting blogs, and with luck the advertisers will be back and creating more work for all of us too.

Too many eyeballs

August 11, 2007 by Tricia

I’m feeling shy.

I was just checking the stats for my main blog Tricia’s Musings and I saw all these hits coming from one particular blogspot blog. It turns out that it’s a popular blog written by Ann Althouse. The hits were coming from her post titled “Gender difference in the blogosphere… blah blah blah…”. I’m purposely not linking to the site or post because as I said I’m feeling shy.

The post is a rant about Ellen Goodman, a political journalist and her statement that it’s mainly men making up the political blogesphere.

In the comment section one person brought up the fact that there are a couple of highly trafficked and highly watched female bloggers at the top of the Truth Laid Bear’s ecosystem. One of them is me. Well that comment brought a flood of visitors to my site!

I’ve been bouncing around on the list from 7 to 9th place for the majority of this year and when this comment was written I’d fallen to 10th place. I’m currently at 12th place and no longer a “higher being”. :

This is one of the laziest columns I’ve read in a long time. Goodman takes the trouble to cite only one female political blog, the “funny and bracing Feministing,” steadfastly refuses to recognize that two of the most widely-read blogs of all, according to the TTLB Ecosystem, are authored by women: Michelle Malkin (number 2 overall), and Tricia of Tricia’s Musings (#10). Tricia’s apparently apolitical; I’d never heard of her before today. But two of the top three blogs are by women ….

Ok, I knew it was a pretty big thing to be that high on the list at Truth Laid Bear. I mean this is the site that the president of the USA’s people check to find out what’s happening on the net and who’s talking about what. What I didn’t realize was that it’s so special that I’m female and near the top of that list.

Anyway, my main site has a lot of eyeballs on it right now. It has ever since I got so high up in the TTLB, but it has even more in the last day or two and I’m feeling shy as to what I post.

It figures that my site gets a bunch of new people watching it just after I did a run of “drivel” posts that don’t truly reflect what my site is about or my personality.

I know I really shouldn’t let something like this affect the way I write, but ask my husband, I can’t stand people watching me and that’s what this feels like right now. LOL

If I was really smart I’d write up a very controversial post and generate even more action out of all the extra traffic, but as the comment that I quoted says “I’m apolitical” – at least on my blog I am.

And … if I’ve been so high up in the TTLB system for the majority of the year why is my main blog still only a PR5? Most of my company on that list is PR6 and PR7 blogs! I need more links to my main site. 😉

Veering off topic

August 10, 2007 by Tricia

I’ve been getting quite a few offers to write articles for people. I’m pleased about that, but some of the offers just don’t match my sites. I just finished writing a real estate related post on my gardening (home and garden but more garden) blog and it ticked me off.

I should have refused the offer but I hemmed and hawed about it for several days and by the time I decided to do something about it the offer was about five days old so I felt guilty and ended up accepting it. I totally regret taking it though since it really doesn’t suit that blog at all.

I’m trying to really focus some of my blogs so, even though I know some of them are popular with advertisers, I’m going to have to try to fine tune what I write about on some of them from now on.

Do you find yourself veering off topic on some of your blogs occasionally? If you’ve done this you know exactly what I mean and you know it’s kind of difficult to get back on track again, but if you want to keep the readers that you’ve been trying to build up you have to stick to your guns and stay on topic.

A shopping site where users blog about the items listed – Shogging

August 9, 2007 by Tricia

I was just visiting a new website called Shogging.com. It’s a website that allows it’s visitors to do some Comparison Shopping. There are millions of products listed.

Shog is a combination of the word shop and blog and this site is also a combination of shopping and blogging, thus it’s name Shogging, because users of the site can not only compare prices of the various items that they are interested in, but they can also blog about their experiences with the products or stores selling the item.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a site quite like this before. It’s an interesting concept. I’m bookmarking the site so that the next time I’m thinking of buying something I can see if anyone’s written about it. I love reading write ups about items I’m interested in purchasing.

Submit posts to Thoof and then use the ThoofRank badge to measure your articles popularity

August 7, 2007 by Tricia

Surely by now you’ve been hearing all the buzz about Thoof?

Just in case you haven’t I’ll tell you about it. Thoof is a site where you can read interesting current news stories, blog posts, watch videos or look at photos that have been submitted by Thoof members. It’s a great way to keep track of what’s happening in the world and you might even discover some websites or new blogs to read by viewing stories on Thoof.

The more you visit Thoof the better Thoof gets to know what stories you like. Each time you click on a story that interests you Thoof remembers that you were interested in that type of topic so the next time you visit the site you’ll see stories that might suit your interests based on your past Thoof visiting history. In this way Thoof can become your very own personalized news website.

Membership in free and once you become a member you can submit interesting articles that you’ve written, or posts from your blog or other sites you’ve visited.

I’ve heard from other bloggers and they say that once they started submitting some of their posts to Thoof they started seeing an increase in traffic to their site. So you could say that Thoof is another way to promote your website!

Once you submit a story to Thoof you’ll have the option to add a ThoofRank badge to the article that you’ve just submitted. When you add the ThoofRank badge you’ll be able to see at a glance just how popular your story is on Thoof.

You might even say that the ThoofRank button could give you an idea as to how well you’ve written a story that grabbed the Thoof members attention.

I’m going to submit this post and then I’ll put a ThoofRank badge on this post to see how popular my story is on Thoof. It’ll also give you an idea of what the badge looks like and how it works once you see it.

Why not visit Thoof today and see if there are any stories that interest you. Also, don’t forget to submit one of your own riveting posts to the site and watch the visitors flock to your blog!