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Niche Bloggers Invited – Get Out Of Your Niche – Get Into Mine..

10 Comments Posted on September 21, 2007 by Snoskred

I am inviting any blogger reading this to jump out of their “niche” and make a guest post here on Life In The Country. If you would be interested in participating I would love to hear from you, see below for how to get in touch. I’m going to be asking several of my favourite bloggers and the order they reply in is the order they will be posted – this is your chance to jump in line ahead of them.

Say What?

For those of you reading this thinking “what is a niche blogger?” – that probably means you’re not a niche blogger. ;) Basically it is a blogger who focuses on one topic or one subject or perhaps a group of related topics or subjects for their blogging.

Get Out Of Your Niche –

My blog is called Life In The Country – so you could speak about life in your country. My niche is me, so you could speak about anything relating to yourself. :) Photo blogs are welcome, you can have more pictures than words if you like. You could even blog as your pet, I did that once and it was a lot of fun.

Keep It Clean –

Anything and everything is welcome, with a couple of small exceptions like swear words and material which is disturbing or graphic or overly sexual. ;) That is because my readers expect that from my blog.

Why Would I Want To Guest Post On Snoskred’s Blog?

Life In The Country is currently sitting at number 34 in the Top 100 Australian Blogs. This blog is estimated to have a page rank of 5 at the next page rank update – if Google ever get around to it. On average the blog sees between 2-5,000 unique visitors a week. This is your chance to speak to an audience which might not find your blog otherwise.

How Do I Do It?

Simply send me an email – Click Here To Email Snoskred – and let me know you’d like to get out of your niche. I’ll reply with a date on which your guest post will be published, and then it is up to you to write something. You can supply it as a simple text file and let me know if there is any formatting you want. Photos you want published in the post can be attached as .jpg images.

I’m Not A Niche Blogger –

You’re still very welcome to submit a guest post about life in your country or any other topic if you would like to participate.

I Want To Nominate A Niche Blogger –

Absolutely! Just send me an email with the name of the blogger you want to nominate, a link to their blog, and I’ll get in touch and let them know someone nominated them.

When Does It Start?

Today! I’ll be back in the next hour with the first brave soul jumping out of their niche. ;)

blog housekeeping, Get Out Of Your Niche

Comment Replies

4 Comments Posted on September 18, 2007 by Snoskred

I’m not sure how it happened but I got a bit behind in replying to comments. I have now caught up so if you commented in the last week you might want to check my reply to you. :) Back shortly with the Tuesday Think Tank – Technorati is the topic this week.

blog housekeeping

Weekly Wrap Up 16/09/07

5 Comments Posted on September 16, 2007February 28, 2015 by Snoskred

It’s just a quick wrap up this week due to my internet connection playing up, my apologies all. I’m only going to post the funnies and my favourite articles from the last week. I’m not really in the mood to struggle with this wireless constantly dropping out in order to finish the other sections.

The actual internet connection is fine, it is the wireless between here and The Other Half’s room which is the issue. Concrete walls and steel reinforcements don’t seem to help! I may complete the wrap up in a separate post tomorrow, if we can get this sorted.

Funny Search Terms This Week –

how to puswad your mum – I suppose this one could be a LOT worse. But Mums everywhere, watch out. In particular, mums whose kids are using Opal Telecom Dsl Network in the UK and whose computer uses internet explorer 6, windows XP, and 1024×768 screen resolution. Just in case you happen to be reading this. ;)

how to made sequin in photoshop – I hate to point this out but you can’t actually make physical things like sequins with photoshop. You can manipulate photos, and that’s about it. ;)

10 ways to clear your sinuses – I don’t know but if you find out can you let me know? ;)

morten harket dressed in norwegian – morten harket leather – pics of morten harket naked – It seems like everyone wants to see Morten but they’re not quite sure what they want him to be wearing. :) I’m voting for leather myself.

spray high powered water jets into pussys – I think this is quite an unwise idea, for *both* definitions of the word. ;) Don’t be squirting anything into pussys, either the kitty variety or the *ahem* female gentialia variety.

australians all a bunch of convicts – Yep, that’s right. So don’t mess with us! :)

weekly wrap up

Do NOT Rely On Your Site Meter.

24 Comments Posted on September 11, 2007March 2, 2015 by Snoskred

Today’s Tuesday Think Tank is all about Site Meters. I’m talking about how unreliable they are, how readers of your blog can stop them from working, how you measure your worth as a blogger, and possible ways you could increase your traffic and make sure readers stick around once they get to your blog.

Sephy has written a companion piece to this post – Track Your Visitors with Google Analytics which you should check out. :)

Site Meters Are A Free Service –

It’s rare on the internet to find something that is actually free. Blogger is one thing that is free, and it provides you with a lot of options and things you can do at no cost whatsoever. But if you stop and consider for a moment how much it costs to provide this service to any man – and his dog or cat! – who want to blog.. it costs bandwidth, it takes up CPU time (computer processing unit, your computer has one but so do all the computers at the other end when you look at something on the internet).

Most people who run a website have to pay to run it. They have to pay for server space. That could be as little as $7 a year but the more people who visit your site, the higher that cost can increase.

Consider The Source –

Free can sometimes mean you get what you pay for – i.e. nothing. If you consider these services which are used by so many bloggers but also websites across the www, it takes an enormous amount of “internet juice” (bandwidth, CPU, etc) to run these things. So these people are supposed to provide you with a great service which *costs* them money to provide it and is always reliable and always works, for free? Err, are we asking a bit too much here?

Things Happen –

Servers go down regularly, as any good internet host will tell you. You cannot expect that the information given to you by a free site tracking service is going to be 100% accurate. Unless you want to sit there and check it is working 24/7, which would be a great waste of your time. ;)

These sites also have customers who are paying for the service and if anything goes wrong the first people who they will look after is their paying customers. It makes sense from a business point of view. We cannot expect this free service to be accurate. You can use it as a guide, but that is where it should end.

There May Be Delays –

The information available to you may not be live information. There can be delays – sometimes up to 24 hours or more – with information being tracked and translated. If you post something and then check your counter and think “Nobody’s reading my post!” you may have incorrect information. There could be 50 people reading your post. You might see that days later in your tracker – or maybe not at all, if there was an outage.

It Matters Where You Put It –

If you put the code for your tracker at the very top of your sidebar, you will get different results to putting it lower down on your sidebar. If the code is right at the bottom of the page and it is not Javascript, everything on the page has to load before a “visit” gets counted.

I’ve been trying to find out for certain whether Javascript loads all the scripts on a page at the same time, or one by one in order and not having any luck, so if you know about that can you leave a comment?

People Can Hit Stop –

If your page load takes too long, most browsers have the “Stop Loading This Page” option. You would be surprised how many people use it and how quickly they use it, too. If they stop the page loading before your counter script runs? No data will be sent re their visit.

It Matters What Kind Of Code –

Some trackers are Javascript. Some internet users (myself included) use a Firefox extension called “No Script”. This actually stops any Javascript from loading in a page unless I (the user) personally authorise it. This means if I visit your blog for the first time, and you have a bunch of Javascripts running, they won’t load.

Take for example Statcounter. I have approved statcounter Javascript for any site I visit. That means if I visit a site the Statcounter will load, but none of the other Javascripts will. As an internet user this gives me a LOT more control over how I am viewing the web, but it can also mean my visits to your site won’t be tracked at all.

Why No Script?

I use it because there have been security problems with javascript from time to time, and I sometimes visit websites created by internet scammers. It is a quick and easy way I can tell what is running on a page without checking the source code, and anything I have not previously approved will be unable to run until I do approve it. Here’s what a page looks like when I view it with No Script –

Click for a bigger view. You can see that a little yellow bar runs across the bottom of the page, telling me which scripts I have previously approved are running. It also tells me how many scripts in total are running on the page and when I click on options (the screenshot shows me clicking on options) it gives me more information. I can choose to forbid any of those approved javascripts at any time.

Results Can Vary Widely –

I run two site meters on the site currently – Google Analytics and Statcounter. Feedburner also has a counter built in. Last Wednesday September the 5th –

Statcounter shows – visits 419, page views 861

Google Analytics shows – visits 349, page views 802

Feedburner shows – visits 323, page views 810

Do you see now how these are a bit unreliable? That is a huge difference, especially given two of the scripts (Statcounter and Google Analytics) are right next to each other in the sidebar. Which one of the above should I believe? How can I know how many people actually visited my page?

Don’t Invest Yourself –

If you define your worth as a blogger in how many people visit your site and you are relying on these free tracking tools, you are setting yourself up for heart break. For no good reason. Site Meters should only be used as a guide to the general traffic on your blog, and not as the bible of internet usage or any kind of measure of how many people are reading you.

How Do You Measure?

How can anyone possibly measure their worth as a blogger? At the end of the day, it could boil down some or all of the following –

If you are happy with what you are writing
(if not, work harder on the writing)

If you are happy with your blog template
(if not, test out a new one and consider changing it)

If you are happy with the look of your blog
(if not, take a good look at it, remove anything you don’t like)

If you are happy with your header graphic
(if not, create a new one. If you don’t have the tools, ask for help from other bloggers, run a competition on your blog to have your readers create a new one for you)

If you are happy with the amount of comments you receive
(if not, network. Get out there and meet new people, comment on their blogs, they will comment back)

If you are happy with the quality of your content
(if not, learn more about writing, edit, improve, read this- 10 Easy Ways To Improve Your Blog Writing. )

If you are happy with the relationships you have built with other bloggers
(if not, work on building relationships with other bloggers)

If you are happy with the amount of links back to you from other bloggers
(if not, link to them more and you will find they link back to you, a weekly wrap up is one good way to achieve this)

If you are not happy with any of the above, these are all things you can work on and improve.

You’re in charge –

You can create positive change in any area of your blogging. If I can do it, you can do it. Anyone can do it. Daisy The Curly Cat is doing it, even though it must be hard to type with kitty paws. ;) Love your work, Daisy. :)

Bloggers, don’t make excuses for your inaction. If you don’t have the time and energy to put into your blog, that is one thing. People have real lives. We all have to do the chores, etc. Some of us have jobs to go to. Some of us have kids and family. There is only a certain amount of time and energy we can each devote to blogging. We have to accept that, and be ok with it.

But..

If you DO have the time and energy and you waste it by constantly checking your blog stats instead of networking and building relationships with other bloggers and the zillion things you can do to improve your blog- that IS something you can change.

Consider taking some time to learn to manage time better. To begin with, you could try setting yourself a target – for example, comment on 5 new blogs a day – and then set out to hit that target each and every day. Be pro-active and you will see results :) Be inactive and you’ll get exactly what you put in – nothing. :(

There Are Ways –

To improve the traffic to your blog. See the article – 75 Ways to Increase Your Site’s Traffic – by Tay from Super Blogging for some great ideas. Try some of them out. If they don’t work, try something different.

They Say –If you build it, they will come. I have found this to be partially true. They won’t come unless you tell them where it is first. It is like throwing a party and not inviting anyone, yet expecting people to somehow know you’re having a party and find it anyway, and when nobody shows up you fret and get depressed about it. What did you expect? That people are psychic? ;) That they are somehow able to read your thoughts? That people would magically find your blog out of the literally millions of blogs out there on the net?

Stay Positive –

If you look at your stats and find it makes you negative, unhappy, or inspires you to write posts lamenting the lack of readers and traffic, stop right there.

It is one thing to say to your readers – how can I improve this blog – and actually listen to them when they tell you, and make the changes they suggest. That’s fine, and something we should all do as bloggers from time to time.

It is another thing to throw a full blown tantrum which makes the people who do read and are loyal to you feel like they aren’t worth anything to you as readers. Vent elsewhere. Never do it publicly on your blog.

Don’t Be Negative –

You may remember me writing – 14 Reasons Readers Unsubscribe From Your Blog. As a blogger, it is also not good to –

– engage in bitch brawls with other bloggers (not only will the blogger feel attacked but their readers will too, it’s one way to make many enemies at once!) or spend time attacking other bloggers in a negative manner
– post whiny, whinging posts regularly (more often than positive content)
– post things which made your readers feel physically ill (keep your poop and vomit stories away from me!)

Some Things Should Never Be Blogged About.

You know how we all have topics we simply refuse to write about? For some of us it’s sex, religion, drugs, rock and roll, bowel movements, whatever. I suggest it is in a bloggers best interest to add “lack of blog traffic” to the list of topics they will never ever blog about. But feel free to blog up a storm when traffic is good or exceeds your expectations.

I Know This Is True –

Once they arrive, if you do not build it, refine it, work on it, tweak it, make it better, make it load fast, make it pleasing to their eye, and create good content, they won’t stick around long. It’s no easy task and it requires you to be the master of many different subjects – or at least to know a little bit about them.

Blogger can let you down-

Sometimes my page load is slow because of Blogger – again we’re back to what you get for free. Sometime in the next few months this blog will be moving to WordPress, and I will have a lot more control over things like that. It will cost me money but I’m worth it – and so are my readers. :)

Weekly Wrap Up 09/09/07

3 Comments Posted on September 9, 2007March 1, 2015 by Snoskred

It’s been a busy week of moving for me this week, and also a busy week here on the blog. The wrap up is smaller this week due to me not being able to read many blog posts – I will have a larger wrap up next week which may include some of the posts I missed reading this week.

Funny Search Terms This Week –

wierd sex insertions snakes – Oh dear..

makes 5 million a year from mail order – Not possible, I’m afraid, has to be a scam. :)

how to rob a bank nigerian man who collect 5 million dollars – If you want to know how to rob a bank, watch Point Break. It should teach you that you can die doing it, so it’s a stupid idea!

Here On The Blog –

This week, we had Pearl from Interesting Observations drop by with a question. Thanks, Pearl!

I spoke about Spam, Spiders and Dofollow in the Tuesday Think Tank. This week’s Hump Day Hmm was about Values. I gave some Cereal Confessions, posted an Update that Came as a Surprise and also put up A Photo of Myself.

Past Snoskred –

Travel back in time and read my thoughts about some of the more sombre anniversaries this time of year – the passing of Steve Irwin and Peter Brock, and September 11th.

Coming Up –

We’ll have to wait and see – I have the thoughts of the day pre-blogged but other than that I’m out of pre-written material. :)

weekly wrap up

Weekly Wrap Up 02/09/07

12 Comments Posted on September 2, 2007March 1, 2015 by Snoskred

It’s been a busy week for me, both on the blog and around the house. If you’re listed in my blog sidebar, or a member of the Aussie or US blog communities on Bumpzee, I have given you an award in this post, so drop by to pick it up. ;)

Funny Search Terms This Week –

refer to yourself as the – Yep, that’s it. The what, I wonder?

refer to yourself using name – Are people confused about how to refer to themselves? ;)

refer in the third prson – Might help if you spelled person right. ;)

don’t breed cows – Why not?

she loves cows – Ayuh, she does. And I do. :)

sex therapy–photos – oh, you mean pr0n? Why not just search for pr0n?

snoksred – I’m used to seeing Snoskred, but someone searched for me and found me even though they mis-typed?

snokesred scam – And another one! Ya’all, it’s simple to spell. Snos and kred. Add them together. There you have it. ;) Sort of like K-fed and K-rudd. But better. :) You can just call me Snos if you like.

Here On The Blog –

This week we were blessed with two wonderful guest posters – River and Dorothy from Grammology. Thank you both so much for taking the time to contribute a guest post. I appreciate it!

The Hump Day Hmm this week was about School. I spoke about Blog Design – Open Your Eyes on Think Tank Tuesday, and on Monday I gave you a few Blog Hints. There was also A Moving Update.

Past Snoskred –

Let’s look back at some of the men I love to watch – Christian Slater – Rob Lowe – Morten Harket.

Coming Up –

We get the house keys tomorrow but don’t ya’all worry, I have this entire week already written. Well, most of it. On Tuesday we’re going to talk about no follow blogs, and on Wednesday the Hump Day Hmm topic is Values. There’s also a guest post from someone special coming up on Thursday.

weekly wrap up

Blog Design – Open Your Eyes.

20 Comments Posted on August 28, 2007August 1, 2015 by Snoskred

Do you blog for you, or for your readers?

This is a serious question that every blogger needs to consider carefully. If you blog for yourself, you will choose a blog design that appeals to you, not caring what your readers think. If you blog for your readers, you probably will think about what your readers would like to see when they visit your blog.

If you blog for your readers and you chose your design for you? You might be upsetting potential new readers without even thinking about it.

Some Food For Thought

Light Is The Norm

If I could design my blog to look how *I* want it to look, the background would be dark instead of light because I find dark backgrounds easier on my eyes. I design this site for the readers, which means light is the best choice. Not everyone has an LCD screen yet. Dark backgrounds on a CRT screen (the older style of monitor which is more like a TV) are difficult to view.

Dark text on a light background is what the majority of Internet users are used to. It is what they see on most websites they visit. They are so used to it that when you make a site with a dark background color, they react negatively without knowing why. If you want to appeal to the broadest range of people, you have to take things like this into consideration.

Everyone Sees It Differently

On a forum I used to visit – it is no longer in existance sadly – they had a very dark blue color scheme.. People reading the forum on the older CRT screens often had to highlight the text with their mouse in order to be able to read it.

Users had been doing this regularly for some time BUT NOBODY TOLD THE SITE OWNER they were having so much trouble with the color scheme until the owner was considering making a change to the site themselves. I cannot imagine how annoying it must have been for those people to read the forums.

The Psychology Of Color

When designing a site it is important to consider the psychology of color. When I was a part of the team putting together a scam warning website – which also no longer exists – we looked into what would be the best color for a website designed to support scam victims.

The three colors we considered using on the site were blue, lilac and green. These are calming colors. You’ll note these are colors I tend to use a lot here, too.

For more info on color psychology, check out Color_Expert.

Color Is Important

When you’re putting colors together on your site you need to stop and think – do they work together? Do they look good together? They may look ok on your screen but be sure to check how they look on other kinds of computer monitors too.

Take A Moment

If you visit a blog and something about the design truly puts you off, you may want to consider taking a moment to let the blogger know. Politely, of course. If you are a blogger, you may also want to ask your readers.. but..

Will People Tell You The Truth?

Ah, there’s the difficult part. If you have been blogging for a while, you have a little community of people who love your content. If you made your background red with pink text (take a look, I made it especially for ya’all), they’d possibly still read it anyway, or they might seek out an alternate way to read – perhaps via a feed reader or subscribing by email.

Did you like the clashing red and purple title? How far could you read before you thought hell no, I gotta go! If you ask your readers what they think of your site design, they will tell you what they THINK you want to hear. They will be loyal. They will be polite. They will be friendly. They are the equivalent of men telling their wives “No honey, I don’t think it makes you look fat”.

That’s all well and good – and wise on the part of the man and on the part of the bloggers who read you – by now you are probably reading them back and they do not want to risk your readership by being brutally honest.

Unfortunately it does not help you as a blogger who wants to improve your blog design. It does not help you capture new readers. It does not help you to know what they find annoying. Even if you ask them to be brutally honest, some readers will struggle to do so. Not me. ;) Just so you know. ;)

Brace Yourselves Now

I am about to tell you a harsh truth. New readers coming to your blog for the first time? They will hit the close button in that top corner without reading ONE word of your content if they are put off by the color scheme or your header graphic.

If your blog makes their eyes hurt. If it looks like fingernails on a blackboard for the eyes. If your header graphic is poor quality. If your font is unattractive. There’s a multitude of design mistakes you can make as a blogger which will send potential new readers away quicker than you can blink.

Whether You Like It Or Not

There are many blogs out there – and the majority of blog readers will take a blog with good design but lesser content over a blog with bad design and good content EVERY time.

You work hard on your content so you owe it to yourself as a blogger to present it to potential new readers in a way they can see it. Especially given how difficult it is to get people to visit your blog in the first place.

Ask Someone Impartial.

If you want a fresh set of eyes to take a look at your blog the way a new reader would look at it, use my contact form and ask me. I will tell you the truth. I won’t be nasty about it. I’ll just be honest. It might be hard to hear but you may need to hear it. I also will give you ideas for improvement, which is useful.

Resolution Matters

If you are viewing my blog with your screen resolution set to 800×600, you have a vertical scroll bar at the bottom of your screen. My template width is 1000. That means there’s 200 extra pixels you have to scroll to see. In fact that is my entire right sidebar. Not a good look, right?

When I designed the template, I knew about this. I looked at my site stats and saw the majority of my readers (90%) were viewing the site in 1024×768 – which is becoming the new standard these days. It used to be 800×600 but as people change to LCD screens and larger screens they can’t use 800×600*. Unless they are my parents, in which case they will use 800×600 for everything because it makes the text bigger – they are too lazy to wear their glasses!

Make A Decision

So the first thing you need to do when considering a blog re-design is make a decision about resolution – and you need to take into account what your readers screen resolution is in order to do it. This means looking at your counter – bearing in mind counters are unreliable. 800×600 is one way you can go, 1024×768 gives you a lot more space.

If less than 85% of your readers use 800×600, you could go with 1024×768 but know that you run the risk of annoying people who use 800×600. On my site, they’ll miss out on seeing the right sidebar but they get the full main text and the left sidebar. That’s an OK compromise.

I found these excellent articles which are worth a read before you make the decision – How Tall and Wide Should I Design My Website? and also Understanding Monitor Resolution

Don’t Change

There is a blog I removed from both my reader and my links. The reason I removed it is simple. Each time I went to the blog, they were using a new template. They had changed it many, many times over the last couple of months. I feel like they are never going to make up their mind and stick with one template and frankly, I was tired of watching the indecision in progress!

If you want to try out a new template don’t do it on your actual blog that readers visit. Test it out on a test blog first. Blogger makes this easy for you – you can have as many blogs as you want. So does wordpress.com though that is tougher as they make you pay to customise templates. When you are sure you’re happy with it, install it on your actual blog – and stick with that template for at least 2-6 months.

Change is Hard

People do not like change. We bloggers are constantly tweaking, moving things around, adding things, removing things, making new blocks in our sidebars. I am as guilty of this as the next blogger. I am not saying never change anything, I am saying keep in mind the impact it has on your readers.

Your readers may know where to find something right now. If you move it and they are looking for it, they will be frustrated unless they can easily see where you moved it to. If you feel the need for change (as I recently did with my sidebars) pick one day, post a note to your readers who may turn up mid-changes to “bear with me, I’m changing some things around”, mess with it till you have it as you like it, then let your regular readers know what you have changed or removed via a blog post.

Above The Fold.

The instant first impression a user has of your website is what loads onto their page that they can see without scrolling. This is called “above the fold” – you know those broadsheet newspapers which have a fold on the front page, about halfway down? They know what is above the fold is what people see – and why they buy the newspaper.

It is no different on your blog. Decide what you want people to know about you when they first look at your page, and put that above the fold.

Browser Matters

Most people only use one internet browser. It might be Internet Explorer. It might be Mozilla Firefox. These are the two main ones you will see on your site stats. Do you know how your site looks in the one you don’t use? Do you know how it looks in different versions of the one you don’t use? A lot of people don’t use the latest version of browsers – when they find a stable one they stick with it like super glue.

Do you know how it looks in the rarer browsers like Opera, etc? Make a blog post where you ask people using those browsers to take a screen shot for you. Your readers using those browsers will generally be happy to help out.

IE NetRenderer allows you to check how a website is “rendered” (how it looks) when using Internet Explorer – several versions of it. I am still looking for a version of this for Firefox. Anyone know where to find it?

Flashing is bad

People associate flashing things with advertisements, which are becoming more prevalent on all the websites we visit these days. For Firefox users, you can get an extension called Ad Block Plus – and let your inner self be at peace without ads interrupting your internet. For your personal blog, I do not recommend anything be flashing. It’s annoying to many people.

Template Blend

Blogger has a standard set of templates which people can use. It is easy to just pick one of those and leave it at that. You would be making a major mistake as a blogger if you did, though. Anyone else using that same template can be mistaken for you. It is sort of like walking into a room where everyone is wearing the same outfit. How do you find the people you know, among the apparent clones?

The least you should do is change some of the colors and the font – Sephy’s post will explain how to do that. You can check it out here – Demystifying Blogger Template Editing.

Good Templates Are Out There

You just have to know where to look. Try searching the name of your blog platform combined with free templates and see what you get.

Not Everyone Agrees.

Good design is not easy. There is no one size fits all. If there were, nobody would want it because all our blogs would look the same. As a blogger, what you need to do is make sure you are not turning off new readers by making bad design decisions. Unless you’re writing your blog just for your friends and family, who will love you regardless.

New readers won’t have a chance to love you. They’ll be leaving skid marks with their mouse in order to close your site as quickly as they can, and move on to another blog – where the content may not be half as good BUT they aren’t offended by the design, or the flashing ads, or the music that starts playing without them asking for it, or the myriad of other things you can get wrong as a blogger.

Weekly Wrap Up 26/08/07

5 Comments Posted on August 26, 2007March 2, 2015 by Snoskred

During the week I spotted this incredible shot in my sidebar from airliners.net – all I can say is WOW. Look at the people ducking under the plane! The wake turbulence from a plane that big flying over your head that low.. it must have been an incredible experience.

Here’s another shot taken just seconds later from a different angle, see all the sand getting kicked up from the wake turbulence? That’s one heck of a way to exfoliate. ;)

Funny Search Terms This Week –

Just when I thought I had seen all the sexual fetishes that existed on the internet, a new search term came to me as a surprise this week. I must say I got a good laugh out of this one, though the mental image I can do without.. ;)

crapping in a codpiece – I did once mention the word codpiece, in my “The Pirate Movie” review. Still, I can’t seem to find myself in the search results for it.

giving baby whiskey – STILL! Every time I see this I feel like I have to say don’t do it!

if you deposit and spend money on a counterfeit check can you be arrested? – Absolutely you can – it is very likely.

dream kangaroo attacking chasing – Sounds like some kind of nightmare. :)

Here On The Blog –

The big news in Snoskredland this week is We’re Moving at long last. Yay! Many of you know we’ve been looking for a place in our dream location for a while now.

On Think Tank Tuesday, I spoke about 14 Reasons Readers Unsubscribe From Your Blog and Sephy spoke about Tuesday Think Tank: All About RSS – if you missed his post be sure to check it out because it was fantastic.

I mentioned how I have a big.. camera lens .. it’s not how big it is, it’s what you do with it, right?

I Challenged Ya’all to compliment great service and products you love – note there’s some pics of the new place we’re moving to in that post. I also spoke about some of our past Neighbours.

And finally yesterday I Thanked The West Wing.

Past Snoskred –

Someone sent me an email this week about a post they’d read of mine from the new Snoskred Is sidebar – Prince Harry and his *ahem* large family jewels – I thought I’d share it with ya’all again. Also, I’m a bad daughter – and I still am a bad daughter, setting those little popup reminders :)

Coming Up –

I had so many blog links this week I’ve kept them for tomorrow’s Blog Hints post. Also in that post, I will reveal why Snoskred refers to herself in the third person so often – it isn’t what you think.

This coming Think Tank Tuesday the topic will be Blog Templates. I’ve got a great post on things your readers might be seeing when they look at your blog. Sephy will be covering a few basics on how to change Blogger templates.

On Wednesday the Hump Day Hmmm topic is School – I’ve already written my post.. Please feel free to take on the Hump Day Hmmm, all are welcome.

On Thursday we will be having a surprise guest post! If anyone reading this would like to put up their hand as a guest poster over the next 2 weeks while I’m moving, shoot me an email. :) I’ve asked a few people personally to guest post for me but I’d love to hear from anyone who would like to try it.

As you can probably tell, I have pre-blogged a lot of this. ;) I’ll be busy packing up the house but I’m not going to leave my loyal readers without something to read.

weekly wrap up

14 Reasons Readers Unsubscribe From Blogs.

41 Comments Posted on August 21, 2007March 12, 2015 by Snoskred

Recently I’ve been working on clearing out my feed reader. I have gone from 215 subscriptions back to 143 – a huge drop. This is no easy task, but some bloggers have made it easy for me to make the decision – keep reading, or unsubscribe? Here’s some of the reasons why I have unsubscribed from some of the blogs.

1. Posts Too Long.

Writing one huge long post every week and posting rarely in between. There was one blog on my google reader, I kid you not, who would write posts averaging between 4,000 to 5,000 words once a week. Was it anything I could use? No. It was simply egotistical shyte where the blogger answered a whole bunch of questions other readers had asked – some of you may know the blog I mean..

Their last post in my reader was 5261 words, 28792 characters and just to give you an idea, I pasted it into word. It went for 15 pages. ONE POST!!!!!! And people say my posts are long, ya’all ain’t seen nothing yet! Just for comparison sake – this post is 2199 words long, 11276 characters and was four pages when I posted it into word.

I don’t mind a long post, if you have something useful and interesting to say. If you’re just pandering to your massive ego, I’m hitting unsubscribe.

2. Posts Too Pithy.

Every post they wrote was three lines or less. Every. Single. One. I enjoy pith as much as the next person, but there is such a thing as too much pith. Give me some substance!

3. Where Are You?

Some of the blogs deleted last week had not been updated at all in over 6 months. Hello, these bloggers had people who were reading you and they went and blew it. Maybe they got busy. Maybe they got a life. Maybe they got hit by a bus. I don’t know, and now I’ll never know, because they just left me hanging. I’ve unsubscribed. Readers of this blog will be happy to know, if something happened to me I have a plan all ready to deal with it. You’ll never be left wondering here.

4. They Went Quiet.

They used to post regularly and I was loving it, but now I realise I haven’t heard from them in a couple of months – and their last post didn’t say “I’m going on holidays” “I’m taking a break from blogging” “I have to do (insert important thing) so you may not hear from me so much over the next few (length of time)”. If it did, I’d be ok waiting. Seriously. We all have lives to live.

They have a term for this with nuclear submarines – going quiet. Unless you happen to be living in one, it’s not a good idea to do it with your blog. Readers will unsubscribe – like I just did. It is a good idea for bloggers to let their readers know if they are going to be away for a bit. It’s a nice thing to do for their loyal readers.

5. They Are A Wanna-be.

I linked to them for at least 6 months and I told them I was linking to them via a comment. They never linked back. They never dropped by my place and left a comment. In their links list all I see are “a-list” bloggers. All they talk about is what the “a-list” bloggers are saying or doing. If I wanted to know what the “a-list” bloggers were saying or doing, I’d be reading the a-list bloggers. I don’t read the a-list bloggers. I wanted to read *them*, not some poor soul wishing they could be on the “a-list” and sucking up to the “a-list” bloggers in every post.

I’ll give that link to another blogger who deserves it more. Just a hint they might be able to use – Spread your link love around and base it on content, not what supposed “list” the blog is on.

6. I’m Not Feeling It.

In order for me to read a blog, I have to sometimes know what the blogger is talking about. There is one blogger I deleted because they write these major in depth posts that read like a legal document. On a personal blog. There is never any personal posts, never any images and a lot of 50 cent words you only hear used in spelling bees.

If a blogger is writing like that on their personal blog, maybe they need to take a holiday. Relax. Not that I can’t handle in depth posts and legal wording but from time to time, chill out and have a laugh! Tell me something funny that happened. Lighten up.

7. I’m Overwhelmed.

Some people post too much. Two to three posts a day is one thing. Four every day, a blogger may be pushing it. 5-15 posts a day is way out of control. I want to know about the bloggers I read, but I don’t want to know every single detail that happens in their life! Learn to edit. Write things and put them aside for a wrap up post, one longer post instead of 6 short little ones.

Writing doesn’t have an expiration date. It is perfectly fine to write 5-15 posts in a day but a blogger can schedule them to post over the next couple of weeks. They will feel fantastic because you know their blog is posting the things they wrote, and readers will feel good because they get to read it in small, manageable daily chunks rather than one huge mind dump. ;) Don’t pummel your readers with posts!

8. The Content Went AWOL.

Some bloggers have got into paid posts so much that it is all they blog about anymore. I’m all about supporting a bloggers right to make money but if bloggers aren’t providing non-paid content as well, they will lose their readers, and consequently find it harder to get paid blogging jobs. My preference is that bloggers follow up a paid post with non paid content soon after posting the paid content, at least on the same day.

9. The Content Was Negative

Not one positive post in the whole time I’ve been reading? Some bloggers just want to whinge and they are not prepared to look at the positives in life? Sorry, that’s not for me. I prefer positive thought. Occasional snark is one thing, I can appreciate that. Being mad at the world 24/7/365? It’s depressing the heck out of me. Let me off this rollercoaster ride into negativity!

10. I’m Waiting.

One post a month? One post every two months? Seriously? Are their readers so unimportant to them? They have nothing to say? They can’t find a news article to speak about? They can’t post a photo and one line of text? I have to tell those bloggers, I think maybe they are too busy to have a blog. Seriously. I’m unable to deal with such long gaps between posts unless the content is *incredible*.

11. They Moved.

Without telling me more than once – and now I’ve lost that connection to them. Here’s a piece of advice for moving bloggers. Keep the old blog for at least a month. Once a week during that month, post a reminder that the blog has moved have moved on the old blog. That’s for feed readers of the blog, who may not have received the message that the blog is moving the first time. A reader may have hit “mark all as read” because there were 500 posts in one folder and they couldn’t face reading it.

Give your blog readers every possible chance to follow you when you move. They are not expecting you to move and are unprepared for it. Me personally I’d be posting “I’ve moved here” once a week on that old blog for six to eight weeks.

12. They Were Cliquey.

Some bloggers just want their friends reading. It might be best to make their blog private so readers don’t get attached to them. It can be hurtful to people when a blogger totally ignores some readers and comments, while responding to others.

13. Template Issues.

Every time I visited the blog, there was different template. And I visited the site a lot over the space of a few weeks, I said via comments how much I liked a couple of the templates but one day I got tired of the constant switching, things moving around.. it was just too much. Sorry. The content was ok but not good enough to overcome the massive template indecision.

14. They Told Me They Were Quitting.

I understand. I’ll miss them. In order to keep the blogroll alive, I’ve taken the link to that blog down but if they come back, I’ll put it back up before I finish reading the first post saying they are returning to blogging, I promise. I enjoyed their blogging and I hope they return.

But Wait A Minute?

Some of you may have read this list and thought “I do that” “Ouch, I’ve made that mistake” or even “I never realised how annoying that could be to my readers, I’ll never do it again!” If so, that is fantastic. It will make your blog even better – for me and for all your readers. Perhaps now is a good time to take a moment – to consider whether you are being considerate of your blog readers and mindful of what could make them unsubscribe from your feed.

If your name is still on my blogroll, it means one of two things.

1. You are linking to me, which I deeply appreciate, thanks! I’ll never de-link you while you link to me. If I did it by accident please let me know. This job has been evil and I have been working on it for over a week now and still have not tracked down everyone linking to me.

2. I love you so much I can’t let you go. Even though you don’t link to me. It would be nice if you did, but I enjoy your writing and I’m giving you that link because of it. If you don’t enjoy mine, you probably shouldn’t be linking to me.

My Future Policy – updated 26/1/15

If I like your blog, I add you to my feed reader. Once a month I do a new feeds post which you can find here.

After 6 months, I review the blogs I added and decide whether I am keeping them or unsubscribing. If I am keeping the blog, it will be listed on my blogroll.

Weekly Wrap Up 19/08/07

11 Comments Posted on August 19, 2007February 28, 2015 by Snoskred

On Tuesday this week, Sephy and I will be introducing a new feature to our blogs called Tuesday Think Tank. Each week we will look at one aspect of blogging and ways you can improve your blog. Sephy will be going into the technical stuff – how to do things you may not know how to do – while I look more at the blogger or reader side of things.

This week we’ll be looking at RSS feeds. I am in the process of clearing out my Google Reader, and I’m going to give you an insight into why I’m unsubscribing from blogs – it might help you consider why people would unsubscribe from yours. I’ve already written the article and believe me it’s a cracker, make sure not to miss it. ;)

Sephy will be delving into the more technical aspects of feeds – everything from how they work to how to put a subscribe icon in your sidebar. It will be most educational. So there’s a little heads up for you.

And now, the weekly wrap up.

Funny Search Terms This Week –

romeo juliet hair leonardo – His hair was fantastic in that movie. Juliet was not wearing her own hair- those were wigs, just so you know. She even had a special underwater wig. Yes, I watch dvd commentary tracks, I have all kinds of info like that on many movies. ;)

dazzleland adelaide photo – If you find it let me know, I would love to see one.

why do light globes explode in australia – Do they? I have never had this experience and I’ve lived here for 32 years.. hmm.. should I be worried? ;) If they did explode, would that mean we’re completely in the dark at night time or having to use lanterns or something?

why don’t you eat dairy cows? – Because they are good at what they do and not so good at being a steak?

why do some cows have udders and others dont – Because only female cows have udders? Male cows have something else where the udders should be.

stereotype of a reporter – They get stories wrong. That’s my main bone to pick with them.

what is the safest place to keep 5 million dollars? – I would suggest.. in a bank? Buy some real estate? Waterfront somewhere? Are you sure you’re not being scammed though? Where is this 5 million dollars coming from?

Here On The Blog –

I’ve been removing and moving things around on the sidebars this week. If you’re looking for something and can’t find it just shoot me an email. One thing I have changed is the blog archives. You now have a drop down menu which looks a lot neater. I have also revamped the About Snoskred section – it is now “Snoskred Is”. There are links to a lot of my older posts in there. I have reasons why I have done this, which I will go into in tomorrow’s post, if that is ok.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions on changes I should make to the blog or the sidebar, please let me know. ;) You can leave a comment, or email me.

This week I’ve talked about The Place We Found – Getting Organised – Fashion Challenged Kanye West – Weighty Issues – My Blogoversary – Buying Your Own Domain & Social Networking – What I Really Need

Past Snoskred –

It’s Big Cat week here in Past Snoskred. Travel back in time and read my thoughts about – Tiger Mating And Hand Rearing Tigers with some nice Tiger photos. ;) And this post, which is a little sad and you may need to BYO tissues – Wear Sunscreen.

Coming Up –

I have some posts pre-written but I’m not too sure when they’ll be posted. I might hang onto them for when we’re moving, if we do. I’ve been asked to write a guest post on check fraud over at I’ve Tried That, and I’m going to put together an actual check bait for the readers there so they can see how these scams work. I’ll post a link to it when it is published. I’m always willing to guest post on scams, all you need to do is ask. ;)

weekly wrap up

Snoskred – Life in the Country

About This Blog

Niche Bloggers Invited – Get Out Of Your Niche – Get Into Mine..

Comment Replies

Weekly Wrap Up 16/09/07

Do NOT Rely On Your Site Meter.

Weekly Wrap Up 09/09/07

Weekly Wrap Up 02/09/07

Blog Design – Open Your Eyes.

Do you blog for you, or for your readers?

Weekly Wrap Up 26/08/07

14 Reasons Readers Unsubscribe From Blogs.

1. Posts Too Long.

2. Posts Too Pithy.

3. Where Are You?

4. They Went Quiet.

5. They Are A Wanna-be.

6. I’m Not Feeling It.

7. I’m Overwhelmed.

8. The Content Went AWOL.

9. The Content Was Negative

10. I’m Waiting.

11. They Moved.

12. They Were Cliquey.

13. Template Issues.

14. They Told Me They Were Quitting.

But Wait A Minute?

My Future Policy – updated 26/1/15

Further Reading

Weekly Wrap Up 19/08/07