Internet — Page 5 — You are in My World Now

Back in business

July 26, 2007 by Tricia

Well it looks like I got side railed on my getting organized plan. As you probably know my sites were unavailable through the weekend and for the most part until sometime Tuesday for most people.

I’ve still had a few problems with my sites – had to change web hosts since my previous web host did something totally nasty – so I’m only just getting started catching up on posts.

I hope to spend the next couple of day writing up draft posts for most of my blogs – in my spare time (what is spare time anyway?) as it really does make it easier to be sure that you are able to post at least once a day. Just pick from your drafts if you don’t have time to write a whole new post.

Hopefully I’ll have some interesting new posts over the next few days!

Sorry again that my sites were down. I’m very relieved that they are back up again.

Blogging – getting organized and Schmoozing

July 20, 2007 by Tricia

As many of you likely know I have a number of blogs.

The majority of my blogs are well over a year old – so don’t be thinking I created my blogs to make money. No, I created them to divide up the various topics that I was interested in talking about regularly into blogs of their own.

When I first did that, and every time that I mention that I did that people think I might have cut my readership down by spreading out my blogs. I haven’t. I’ve increased readership all round because those that are only interested in particular topics can focus on the blogs that I created about those niche topics rather than digging from one or two main blogs that talk about ALL the things I enjoy or that I’m passionate about.

As my blogs have gained in readership I’ve been spending more time developing the sites and interacting with those who leave comments. This has actually taken time away from blogging and has made it harder for me to post in some of the blogs on a regular basis.

When I wasn’t quite as busy I’d take the time to write up a few extra draft posts on each site that I could use whenever I needed or set in advance to auto-publish so that the blogs always had at least one post a day.

I was to get organized and start doing that again. It really helps!

If this sounds like a good idea to you, I think what those of us with multiple blogs need to do is set aside at least one or two hours each day to write up a couple of extra posts on a few of our blogs. In no time at all you’ll have a stalk of draft posts just waiting to be published.

When most of your blogs have some drafts backed up you can then take a bit more time to get out and visit other bloggers sites or spend some time promoting your sites on directories.

One of my blogging friends, RennyBA recently gave me a Schmoozing Award the other day. I don’t think he gave it to me because I buzz around promoting my sites. I think it was more because I try to build communities with my blogrolls and make posts like this every once in a while with the aim of helping others with their blogging. Now if he’d given me this award last year it would have been for commenting because I think I regularly visited about 200 sites a day leaving comments on most!

Anyway, back to the point of this post. Help your self with posting and organizing your time by writing up some extra posts that you can save as drafts when you either have the time or when you are in a writing mode. Believe me, it will give you more time to schmooze and promote your site … or simply to relax!

Changing advertising trends?

July 19, 2007 by Tricia

It seems that over the last few days I’ve been on a writing frenzy. I can’t keep up.

I’m not complaining. By no means am I complaining at all. It’s just that I keep getting link requests, article requests, offers to send me samples, and private offers from big affiliate companies. I’m quite happy that all of this is happening, but it’s hitting all at once. How’s a girl to adjust???

Since the work has been coming to me I’ve barely been looking for work in my usual paid blogging haunts. They’ve been a little slow lately anyway which makes all the private offers I’ve been getting all the more surprising.

Perhaps internet advertising trends are changing?

Has anyone else noticed an increase in private offers? Surely a few of you must be getting some new action as well.

Create a Squidoo lens to promote your site

July 13, 2007 by Tricia

Hey, have you joined Squidoo yet? It’s another great way to promote your website or blog. You can also make some money while you are at it.

Squidoo isn’t a social network and it isn’t a web directory. It’s a site where you can make a lens for your website or if you don’t have a website you can make a lens about whatever you are interested in – hobbies, politics, religion … anything.

I bet your wondering what a lens is? Well, to keep it simple, think of a lens as a resume for your website. You can sign up with squidoo and make a basic lens in as little as five to ten minutes.

What I’ve done for this blog was to just make a preliminary lens. I added a short description of the site. Then, using the RSS feed module I added this sites feed to the lens, and a subscription link for my feedburner feed for this site.

When I have a bit more time I’ll add a small image of the blog in the description area and perhaps expand the description. Then I’ll perhaps add the flickr module so that I can show off some of my photos.

I’ll also be sure to add modules for Amazon, Ebay and a few of the other affiliate modules that can be added to Squidoo lens. You see if you set up affiliate modules and choose items that compliment your site if anyone who visits your lens clicks on any of the items or even better makes a purchase you’ll share in the profits with Squidoo.

If you visit the lens I created for this site you’ll see that it still needs a lot of work but it’s off to a good start. The lens that I made for my gardening blog on the other hand is perhaps almost finished. Take a peek at the As the Garden Grows Lens to see what you can do when you add in several of the available modules.

You can add YouTube video, photos, similar links and many other things … basically there’s no limit to what you can add. You could even treat your lens like a blog and update it regularly by changing information or writing a new post in the text module area every once in a while.

Check it out. Oh and if you do decide to sign up I’d appreciate it if you’d click on one of the Squidoo links above, or this one as I’ll make $5 for referring you!

CPU resources over used – trying to fix my sites!

July 4, 2007 by Tricia

Sorry for the lack of new posts lately. I’ve had a major problem with my web host. I got a message last Thursday evening from them stating that my sites were using too much of their CPU resources so they had moved all my sites and domains over to a slower non production server in order to give me time to fix the problem.

Well, I’ve upgraded all the WP blogs to the latest WordPress version and I have one of my websites running on Joomla so I upgraded that to the latest stable version too. That kept me busy for at least two whole days!

The rest of the time was spent going over just about every file in my directories to make sure that no new files or folders were added to my server that could be causing a problem. I got hacked once when I was with another web host and that caused a ton of problems.

I really can’t find a problem so I don’t know what’s going on. I’m still getting messages from my web host saying that the CPU resources are still high so I might have to move to a Virtual private server.

I don’t want to do that because 1. it’s more expensive, and 2. I’ll have to learn a whole new hosting system. I can barely keep up with my sites these days … I don’t want to learn a new hosting system!

Anyway … if you’ve been wondering why I haven’t been around you now know what’s been going on.

If any of you have had similar problems I’d love to hear how you solved them.