First Month Anniversary
I’m not going to be like any of those other blogs that do those stupid monthly updates but I do want to let you all know how things are going for this blog since it is the first month.
Blog Scrutiny currently has 8 RSS subscribers which isn’t much but for a brand new blog I think this is pretty good, especially since I haven’t done anything to promote Blog Scrutiny at all.
I’m not going to disclose any stats about visitors because I think that is silly but I will compare it to the first month on my other blog, I currently have on average 2x the amount of daily unique visitors then I did on my previous blog.
I want to thank all of my readers for continuing to support Blog Scrutiny by reading all of my posts and I hope you continue to do so.
Free Contact Form, With Captcha
I wrote recently about the plugin PXS Mail Form, one of the things that I wished it had was some type of spam protection. Well Siteguide has recently wrote a post about a free alternative, called Contactify, in which you don’t have to install any plugins.
Sign up is extremely easy, only 3 boxes, email, password, and re-type password. After you submit that form it will send you an email to confirm. After confirming just go to the homepage and you can edit the contact form or you can create a widget to embed on your own website. Here is an example of the widget:
I think this is a greaat idea and I plan on using this on my websites in the coming weeks. Check it out at Contactify.com.
Reviewing The Top Commentator, Monthly
At the end of this month the Top Commentator plugin will reset my sidebar widget and we will start over from scratch. But, I want to let you all know what I plan to do on a monthly basis. As a thank you to all of the commentators here on the blog I am planning to write a review every month with the subject of the review being whatever blog/website is linked to by the top commentator.
So now throughout the month you won’t just be writing for the single link to your blog or to carry on the conversation but as an added bonus if you are the top commentator you will also get a review at the end of the month.
Ok, Spammers realize that I will delete your comment if it isn’t on topic which means it isn’t even worth your time writing a comment like “Great Site!” Write something interesting and on topic and if you comment enough you will get a great review.
Have fun commenting and unless Kyle Eslick, Michael Fultz, or Blog Tools (weird name) really kick it up a notch in the next few days, TechZilo should be expecting a review.
Keep a Blogging Notebook
I don’t plan on writing a whole lost of posts here specifically on tips but I thought that I would mention this one.
One of the things I have learned from starting this blog is that it is extremely difficult to keep everything straight that is going on on more then one blog. That is why I keep a blogging notebook. Not just for taking notes about ideas for blog posts but also notes about plugins I would like to try out or any aspect of either one of my blogs that I would like to either change or improve upon.
You would be completely amazed at how well this works. I find myself jotting things down all of the time now. One of the key things to remember about this tip is to keep the notebook near you, take it with you wherever you go. You would amaze yourself at how often you find yourself writing things down while you are at other peoples house or even while shopping.
It doesn’t have to be a large notebook, a small pocket sized notebook would probably be even better that way it is even easier to carry it around with you. This sounds like kind of a lame tip and to those who are thinking that, just hear me out (my guess is if you weren’t interested in this tip you wouldn’t still be reading this so I going to abandon my idea of telling you to hear me out).
I just recently started this blog and have found this to be a life saver. Try this out especially if you have multiple blogs it will help you keep your sanity and you will thank yourself for deciding to spend $0.50 on a notebook (your so freakin cheap, you couldn’t get a nice one?)
Posting Schedule
Here I’m going to talk about my blogging schedule and this is something I plan on sticking to. One of the things I think that all bloggers should do when starting a blog is actually have a schedule (especially if their blog isn’t news related). However I find myself getting posts in my RSS feed completely randomly throughout the day, everybody please just sit down with a piece of paper and a pen and just come up with a schedule!
I also feel that it should be well known by all of the readers when it is that the blog is updated. I am very happy to say that on my other blog I update 4 times a day on weekdays and 2 times a day on weekends and almost always the updates are at the same time. So here is my plan for this blog, at least for the next few weeks or so until I get my blogging work flow down to a science.
No posts on weekends (this post is obviously an exception).
1 Post a day on week days with the post showing up at 12pm eastern time.
I hope this will help my readers, at least with a better understanding of when I post you won’t end up visiting the site 4 times a day wondering when the next post will show up, so I’ll pretty much be like no other blog out there. This will definitely help me with my writing. By setting a deadline I will force myself to get it done.