BLOG DESIGN JOURNAL

I just discovered this site where you can make a widget of your own blog posts. They call it a “blidget.”

This widget, or blidget, automatically picks up and displays your last few blog posts. It is your very own private BlogRush-type widget, featuring only your own blog!

Others can then get your blidget and put it on their blogs if they want to keep up with your posts (sort of like putting the Digg widget on your blog). Or you can put your blidget on other blogs and/or websites that you own.

Not only that, but when you create a blidget, you can then easily add it to your Facebook, MySpace, LiveJournal, or other site by clicking a button. It’s all very automated and easy.

Here is an example that I made for this blog:

You can customize your widget, and others who get your widget to put on their blog can customize it to suit their site.

Register, and you can store your widgets and have them listed in a blog directory for others to see (and maybe post on their blogs).

Also, by registering your blog, you get a free link back to your site from what is sure to be a highly Google-ranked site as it catches on. (That’s great for getting traffic and helping raise your blog’s ranking).

This is really fun stuff! Go see for yourself at Widgetbox.com.

I’m currently trying out a service called Real Traffic Exchange. It puts text ads on your site with links to other sites. Your ad for your site, in turn, is shown on other sites in the Real Traffic system. These do not compete with Google Adsense, so you can have both on the same page without violating the Adsense terms of service.

To see how the ads will appear, scroll down and look below the tag cloud on the right-hand side of this page. Nice, eh? The ads can be customized to some extent, and I like them.

And there is no cost to join or use the service. You can buy extra ads if you want to. That could be a good way to launch a new blog.

I have not analyzed the results yet, and I’ll let you know when I do. Meanwhile, you may want to give Real Traffic a try for promoting your blogs and other websites.

Do you want 2000 links to your blog for free? Yeah, I thought so.

In case you are new to blogging and/or search engine optimization, let me explain. A big part of how Google determines the Page Rank (PR) of your site is by how many backlinks (one-way links to your site from other sites) you have. The higher PR the sites that link to you have have, the more they help raise the ranking of your site. (That is search engine optimization (SEO) in a nutshell.)

Brad Callen offers a program called Directory Submitter that you can download from his site at no charge. It allows you to select which directories to submit to (for example, only PR 4 or above). Then it automates directory submission, saving you hours and hours—or days and days—or time.

All you do is provide your email address and register the program. It’s that simple. You can download Directory Submitter here.

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Go, now! Sorry I didn’t mention it before.

By the way, Brad’s other programs are excellent, too. Not all of them are free, but they are great.

I just reread the message that appears in the blog category area of the BlogRush dashboard. What they are saying seems to be that if they don’t think your post fits into the subcategory you selected, they move it to the General category.

That’s better than not displaying it in the widget at all, but it still leaves the problem of not having enough subcategories. And, of course, there is still the problem of some blogs either not fitting in any category or fitting a little bit in several but not well enough in any. How to choose?

And why won’t they allow us to just select a main category to begin with instead of making us choose from their few, often inappropriate subcategories?

Hopefully they will keep expanding and revising the blog category scheme till they get it right. Until then, what is your strategy if you have blogs that do not fit?

I eagerly awaited the promised new blog categories at BlogRush. Now I’m really disappointed! The new categories have really hurt some of my blogs. As bad a fit as some of the overly general categories used to be, some of my blogs no longer fit into the new BlogRush category scheme at all!

Why Should We Care About BlogRush Categories?

BlogRush now apparently filters your posts and decides whether or not to sydicate them. So if you categorize your blog as being about, say, Painting, and you make a post that is mainly about drawing (which of course is an important aspect of most paintings), your post may not be syndicated (listed in the BlogRush widget). As near as I can tell, it would now be considered to be off topic!

By getting too specific with categories (and get rid of general categories as an option), they are crippling the more general blogs and also the specialized blogs that do not fit into BlogRush’s new, very narrow specific categories. Following are examples from my own experience.

Read the rest of this entry →

It’s not enough to design and write a great blog. You still have to promote it. Preferably you should promote it in as many cost- and time-saving ways as you can, as long as they are legal, are search engine safe, and they work.

One of the best, proven ways to promote your blog is by writing and placing articles on the blog’s topic in free article directories. If you do that already, you know how much time that can take.

If you simply place the same article on several directories, Google filters them out, negating some of their value. If you rewrite them in your own words, and change the bio box, that can take a lot of time.

Generally if you use article spinner software, you get a mishmash that does not sound like any real human being wrote it. That isn’t going to make people want to read your blog.

What to do? You might want to take a look at a free service that makes things easier, called JetSpinner. You enter pieces of your article in your own words, in phrases or paragraphs called “snippets” in several variations. So you might break up a 500 word article into 100 pieces.

But then JetSpinner automatically reassembles the snippets (all of which *you* wrote) into a new article anytime you want. Best of all, the service is free! So you might want to give it a try. Multiply your article submission power with Jetspinner

Blog design is my priority, but let’s face it. We all have to be constantly on the lookout for good ways to promote our blogs. Especially quick, easy and free ways.

So I was thrilled with the idea of BlogRush.com, and I told you about it a week or so ago in a post called Promote Your Blog Instantly With BlogRush. No Charge!

At the time, the service had no track record. But I was betting on the brilliance of the concept—and of the founder, John Reese, who has made many millions on the Web. The results are in. It works! It is especially good for younger, less-well-known blogs, like this one.

The only thing I didn’t like was the widget itself, which was ugly. It really clashed with some of my blogs, but I used it anyway.

Early on, John promised colors, or “flavors” of widgets, and I could hardly stand the wait. Now they’re here! And they are beautiful, well-chosen colors.

I’ve chosen a conservative dark blue to blend with this blog, and various other colors for my other blogs. (Feel free to go look, please.) Talk Like a Texan got Ice (pale gray) to go with the colors of oaks, bayou and spanish moss.

New Health Ideas got a Plum widget. Art Fun Cheap got a Watermelon (emerald green) widget to match the accent color of the WordPress theme. And so on. It was so much fun.

And here’s (almost) the best part. You do not have to cut and paste any code/scripting/whatever to change the widget Flavors. Let me say that again: No cutting and pasting. No wp-admin.

Once you’ve registered and added your blogs, you can just go to the BlogRush site, log in, and apply whatever flavors you want to. Anytime. It all happens remotely.

Sheer blog design bliss! It’s my favorite new toy!

And the widget works with other blog engines. I have put one on a Blogger blog, Tengsha.com, and it works great there, too, including changing widget colors.

As far as the service itself goes, I’m delighted. There have been problems with cheaters lowering the overall click-through rates, but I’m confident that those will soon be sorted out.

BlogRush is truly a fantastic service! And it is free, quick and easy—three of my favorite things.