Where are your visitors coming from?

Use google's gvisit to show where in the world your visitors are coming from. The link goes to the gvisit site for my Boston sports blog. It tells you where your visitors are coming from and what time they visited. It only tracks the last 100 visitors, but you might think it's either fun or important for your visitors to see where they are coming from.

It's fun and easy to implement, but make sure you don't put too many of these little gimmicks into your blog. If you put too many in, it takes too long for your site to load. Take to long, and your visitor will be gone.

Chicklet Envy?

Ever wanted one of those chicklets that all the cool blogs have? Well, now you can make them easily. Try it out at:kalsey.com's buttonmaker.

My chicklets:

Looking for a profile image?

You might try MyMe images. You can see my 'self-portrait' to the right. Looks just like me, except I wear contacts ;-). You can try them out for free, or they will create a custom image for $29.00.

Google and how you relate

Linking to and from the right sites can be very important to how google and other search engines see you. A little know trick is to use the related command into google. It lets you know who google thinks is related to your site. So head on over to google and put related:www.yourblog.com into the search. This will let you know how google thinks of you (or at least did the last time it spidered your site).

Another great tool for seeing those related sites is to use touchgraph. You can see the related sites in a graphical format. You'll need Java and (I believe) you can only see it in IE. But it's worth knowing how google sees your site.

Technorati and why should you get listed

Technorati is a real-time search engine for blog content. If you blog from LiveJournal, AOL Journals or Blogger, your posts will be searchable from technorati almost immediately. They are currently indexing 21.3 million blogs every day for the latest news.

What does this mean for you? Well, if you want to promote your blog, technorati can be a great place to do so. If you're looking for the latest news on the NFL, you can go to google (who probably won't have it listed yet) or you can go to technorati, who probably will. If you take the time to ping technorati (use pingoat to ping technorati and others, it's the best!), they will spider your site for new articles very quickly. And if you're looking for ideas on what to blog about, search for your topic. You'll find plenty of ideas in no time.

A nice feature of the technorati search is how you can see how many other sites are linking to the blog you're about to look at. If 0 others are citing this site, maybe they aren't as informative as the site that gets 104 links.

Does this mean that all blogs are everywhere are being seen through technorati? No. , not at all. But if you take the time to get listed there, people will be coming to see your blog soon.

If you're looking to do more with technorati, take a look at micropersuasion. He's listed 10 great ideas on how to use technorati to your advantage. If you want to know why you shouldn't use technorati, head on over to kottke.org. A good article on the effect technorati is having in reporting news appears at wired news.

Another option to use is pubsub. Get listed there to see some great stats on your site. For instance, take a look at what my ranking is for Question of the day.

How much is your blog worth

This little trick seems to be making the rounds in the blogosphere. The question is, how much is your blog worth?

Inspired by Tristan Louis's research into the value of each link to Weblogs Inc, Dane Carlson at business opportunities weblog created this little applet using Technorati's API which computes and displays your blog's worth using the same link to dollar ratio as the AOL-Weblogs Inc deal.

This is how much my blog question of the day is worth. Any buyers out there?

My blog is worth $9,032.64.
How much is your blog worth?

Where your visitors are going?

The one issue I have with statcounter as my counter of choice is the lack in knowing what my visitors are clicking on if they leave my site. I don't know what interests them enough to see more.

So, I put in MyBlogLog. This is a great service for those of you who care (and not everyone does) what interests your readers. Now I know if people are interested in stories on the Red Sox or perhaps it's the latest flash game they want to play? MyBlogLog also keeps track of where your readers are coming from, which is nice, but not what I was looking for when I signed up as statcounter already did that for me.

MyBlogLog has both free service and a paid service. If you sign up for the free service, you get a week's worth of pro (paid) stats to look at. But after that you are automatically reduced to the free version. If you end up paying for their service (and I have to admit I've been tempted to do so, but haven't yet), you get full historical data to peruse so that you can look for trends, not just the past week. Also, they will keep track of more than the top 10 outgoing links in real-time.

They also have the option of letting your readers know what's hot and what's not using a hovering image (as your reader hovers over a link, MyBlogLog will let them know how popular that link is). I don't happen to like that service, but it is optional. They can also post the top 5 links for your site as well.

Some known issues (as of today) with MyBlogLog are: it does not track Google's AdSense ads. Also, clicks are not counted in Firefox when "Ad Blocking" is turned off. And MyBlogLog reports fewer page views than my other stats package. Each of these issues are being worked on and you should check MyBlogLog's help section for more info.

Counters you can count on

When I set up my blog, I started looking for a counter so that I could keep track of how many people were looking at my site. I was naturally curious and I was also naturally disappointed by how few people were looking at what I had to say (but I'm getting ahead of myself).

A good counter to use if you don't want to know anything more than how many hits you're getting is amazingcounters. They have several options on what your counter will look like, so you can fit your new (free) counter to your template. The drawback is the ads that come along with it. It's not a really big issue as the ads are small and located right next to the counter (which most likely is down at the bottom of your site anyways).

A better option would be sitemeter or statcounter. Both counters give you a total count, broken down by hits, unique users and repeat users. You also get to see where they are coming from. Unfortunately, you only get to see reports on the last 100 visitors (with the free service). Both reports are in 'real-time' which is not the same as instant. Keep in mind it takes time for the information to get to their servers and it takes time for it to be processed.

SiteMeter's info is accessible by all. So if you want to advertise your high traffic rate, sitemeter may be the counter for you.

Statcounter allows you to hide the counter altogether.

I've included a sample graph that I get from statcounter on how many visitors have hit my blogs.

Google has come out with it's analytics recently. I'm trying it out to see what they have, but I'm not ready to recommend it one way or the other.

Monetize your blog

Part of my efforts in developing my blogs have been put to how I can make money doing this. After all, I put my time and energy into creating (what I hope) is interesting and/or entertaining sites. Also, I've never been comfortable with putting a 'tip jar' (asking for donations). So, using advertising/sponsorship seemed like the way to go.

A big part of monetizing my blogs has been putting google's adsense onto each of my sites. Unlike using affiliates, Adsense places targeted ads (ads relevant to what you're blogging) onto your site without any further effort from you in locating those advertisers/sponsors.

Signing up for Adsense was easy (especially for anyone using Blogger, which is owned by Google anyways). The trick after having signing up is making those ads accessible. I also continue to play with those ads as location and formatting are extremely important. Try to think like your readers and attempt to figure where and why they would want to click on your links. Continue to experiment, but make sure the ads always make sense aesthetically.

There are several points about the adsense Terms of Service (TOS) to keep in mind. Read them carefully if you sign up. Some of the most important ones to keep in mind are: Make sure you don't fool anybody into clicking onto ads. Don't muck with the code they give to you to place on your site. Don't let any other ads on your site look like they are trying to to be adsense ads. Keep your Adsense off on pop ups, pop unders or mass e-mails.

Your ads should not be displayed on content sites that promote illegal activity or tampering of the legal rights of other people or business. Included in this are the content that is considered adult and gambling ones. If you think that you may be breaking this rule, immediately remove your content or Adsense from the web page.

Again, make sure you read through the TOS to make sure you're doing the right thing. If you have any questions, contact google first. If something suspicious seems to be occuring, contact google. They're helpful and friendly unless they think you're trying to get away with something.

Having access to your template is important

Without access to your template, you can't make the changes you need to make. Total control over everything that appears in your blog is extremely important.

Having said that, whenever you add something new to your blog, make sure it fits. Don't just add because it's 'cool'. Or for that matter, don't just don't add simply because everyone else has it. You want your blog to stand out from the crowd. While it's fun to get the 'new thing', it gets wearing to everyone else who comes to your site and sees the same thing everyone else has.

Tips for Beginners

I've been bloggin for several months now without any technical (web-wise) know how. I've been trying out different tools and whatever and I'm starting to lose track. So, I'm going to put my tips for beginners here, not only for you, but for me as well.