CIAO9to5

I spent a lot of time yesterday trying to get my W3 validation to pass. It took a while, but I think it was worth it.

W3 standards are the standards that your code needs to abide by. Yes, there are standards code needs to conform to. No, this isn’t some form of a communistic uprising on the web. The W3 standards basically just help your website function better.

By following these standards the browser has an easier type deciding what language and such your site is in. Sure, it has become easier for browsers to figure out that Chinese isn’t English, but that doesn’t mean we want them to have to spend any extra time deciphering our web page, even if it is for just a second. I don’t know about you, but I’m extremely impatient when it comes to waiting on websites to load and it’s highly unlikely for me to stick around if I can find the same stuff(can be done easily, this is the internet) on a website that has a decent load time.

But, telling browsers what language your site is in isn’t the only thing that W3 standards concern. It does concern how fast the browser can read the code and probably some other stuff. I’m not exactly what all it concerns, to tell the truth. All I know is I want my site to load fast so I’m going to try to fix the errors.

Most of the standards can be learned at the W3 website. However, there are a couple I had to find myself that you bloggers might find helpful.

The MyBlogLog script causes a few errors in W3 validation. All that needs to be done to fix them is to replace the &’s to & amp;.  Don’t include the space between & and amp;.  I used that so it would display correctly.  Example: the URL(not entire thing) in my script used to be

…comm2.php?mblID=2007122617090373&c_width=198&…

But it is now:

…comm2.php?mblID=2007122617090373& amp;c_width=198& amp;…

Don’t keep the space between the & and the amp;.

Another problem some bloggers might run into is embedding a YouTube video. The code to embed a video without validation errors is

<object type=“application/x-shockwave-flash” data=“YOUTUBE VIDEO URL” width=“425″ height=“355″>

<param name=“movie” value=“YOUTUBE VIDEO URL” />

<param name=“FlashVars” value=“playerMode=embedded” /></object>

I might write more on this later if I come across other things, that people use, that don’t validate.

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments. Also, if there is something you’re having trouble making valid, let me know, I’ll see what I can do.

Still missing out on some easily blog revenue from PayPerPost? It’s probably because you haven’t signed up yet. The other day I received my first revenue from PPP. It is only a mere $30.00, but it is still money. And, if I say so myself, it isn’t that bad for a few days of work. It might not be the $18,000 some people are making but I’m sure it will grow quickly in the future, as my blog continues to grow. So, what are you waiting for? The money tree is ripe for picking.

I think one of the most annoying things I come across when looking through a blog is the lack of an archives page. I admit, I did annoy people for about 3 days. But, I stopped that quick. Well, luckily for you bloggers without an archives page, it’s easy to implement one.

iDunzo has a very easy to install plugin that will create an archives page just like mine.

Having an archive page is important because it gives your readers more to read. It makes navigation through all your many content page easy. Because you’re a hard worker. You write 10 blog post a day. People need an easy way to navigate through the depths of your information dome.

A lot of times, I find some of the most interesting blog post to be some of the first written. This could be due to the fact that I, myself, am just starting out and I enjoy seeing what and how others did when they first started. Other may have different reasons to read old post. Regardless of the reason readers need to go back in time, the demand is there. So, get an archive page. It’s cheaper than a time machine.

A big emphasis on how well your blog is doing is by tracking your RSS subscription numbers. Are they high or are they low? Either way, you’ll never have too many. Increasing RSS subscribers is something every blogger is always trying to do and it isn’t as easy as it sounds.

A big mistake that a lot of new bloggers make is not being upfront with their want of RSS subscribers. I see little RSS subscription buttons on blogs, way in some distant corner. Don’t be ashamed of your RSS button. It is your friend. Do something like me. I smacked a big ass banner on the top of every single post page and the main page. If that doesn’t get people’s attention, then I don’t know what will. Don’t be afraid to ask your readers to subscribe, either. I’m sure a lot of them come to your site daily anyways but have never gone through the trouble of subscribing.

As your RSS subscription rates increase, so will your traffic and revenue. That’s what we’re aiming for, right?

Some quick statistics about why I believe this will work(don’t take it personally guys, just needed examples ):

http://www.imbloggingthat.com/ has been around since the genesis of January 2006 and has 26 RSS subscribers. This is due to the fact that Katy has her subscription buttons on the bottom of her page. They’re hard for me to find and probably are hard to find for other readers.

http://theblogscape.com/ has been around since August 2007 and has 16(let me know if this is wrong Ben, I got it off your about page) RSS subscribers. I think that Ben could easily increase his numbers by putting his RSS link at the top of his post instead of at the bottom so that it is more noticeable.

Both of these are good blogs. They are both well written and informative. However, due to some bad placing, they’re not maximizing their amount of RSS subscriptions.

And now for my stats.

I’ve been open for a little over 5 days and already have 21 RSS subscribers and seem to climb everyday. At the moment, I should hit my 100 goal easily. Why? Big ass banner.

As your blog grows and you begin to cover more and more subjects about your niche, there comes a time when you need to update your old post.  I don’t mean to go back rewrite all of your old post.  I mean as you gather more articles about the subject you’re preaching about, go back and create trackback links in your old post to the new articles.

When you first started your blog, you probably had a lot of things that were the first things for you to post about(they had to be at some point).  Well, as you build on these concepts that you talked about in the past, you can go to your old post and link to the new ideas that you’ve formulated.  This helps keep the reader reading.  They’ll get a lot more information out of your post too.  This is a lot easier than your reader finding one thing to read on your blog then having to search for a new one to build off of what they learned.  Keep the reader hooked, keep them on your blog.  They shouldn’t need another blog for information, you should give them all the information they need.

Also, always make sure that the links are trackback links, not regular links.  The trackback links help the readers find your old post, also.  It is probably a good idea to mention that you have already written related topics about the subject and give links to the articles, too.

The main focus here is keeping the reader interested in your blog.  You want to strive to keep them coming back for more.

I’ve been noticing that some beginner bloggers don’t take advantage of the permalink options that Wordpress gives you. Permalinks are the things that make the addresses of your articles look like mine do. They take out all the “.php” and ID numbers and such. These are a must if you are striving to have good optimization for search engines. It makes it easier for spiders to crawl and indexes the pages better. This in turn gives you a higher rank in search engines and more people will see it.

To use permalinks, go to your Wordpress admin, click the options tab and the Permalinks sub-tab. You can customize it any way that you want. I use /%postname%/. I thought that this would be the easiest for spiders to crawl and would provide the most optimization. I could be wrong. I don’t know. This will probably mess something up if I name two post exactly the same. But, that’s just a chance I’m going to have to take. Hopefully I can remember what I named my post.

I’ve listed all the avaliable structure tags below so that you can customize however you want:

• %year% - the year of the post
• %monthnumb% - the month, in number form
• %day% - day of the month, in number form
• %hour% - the hour it was posted
• %minute% - the minute it was posted
• %second% - the second it was posted
• %postname% - the name of the post
• %post_id% - the id of the post
• %category% - the category the post was placed in
• %author% - the person who wrote it

More information can be found at Wordpress’s official site.

I know this is a BIT off topic for my blog, but I’m sure you’ve all heard of the 80/20 rule.

Anyways, apparently Osama Bin Laden has been murdered. David Frost of the BBC was interviewing Benazir Bhutto(the women who was murdered in Pakistan). During the interview she mentions “the man who murdered Osama Bin Laden.” She says this without a pause. It’s like everybody already knows this happened. It’s not a big deal. I’m very confused as to why this isn’t all over the news and such. It seems like the news is trying to keep it away. It’s even hard to find information about it on the internet.

Skip about 6 minutes into the video:

Starting tommorow I’m going to be running an advertising campaign experiment. I’m going to try various ways to promote my blog. During this time I will keep track of increases of everything: revenue, traffic, RSS subscriptions, incoming links to my blog, et cetera.

Each day after I finish one campaign, I will post the results. At the end of the experiment I will post a synopsis of the results and determine which is the best way to go about blog promotion. All details will be given.

Read about them here:

1. I’m going to fill this out as I go.

I hope this experiment helps with your promotion techniques!

I’m going to try something new. At the beginning of every month, I’m going to link a random blogger for everyday in the month. Maybe I’ll get a couple of links back for this, in return.

1. WyriHaximus
2. Part-time Blogger
3. GO! Smell the flowers
4. How I changed the world today
5. Israel on Blog
6. Global Epiphany
7. n8itude
8. Terella
9. All That Jaz
10. Beinki’s Review
11. A.D. Notepad
12. Dane’s Marketing Blog
13. My Futures Blog
14. Let’s Go Shopping
15. Colourrain
16. Hollywood Jokes
17. Alterna-Blog
18. They Eat Horses, Don’t They?
19. TeqEdge Blog
20. Admission Sync
21. Vallarta Blog
22. The BenSpark
23. Ironic Surrealism II
24. Pop-C-Cles
25. Past Expiry Cartoon Blog
26. New York City FC
27. JJ’s Path: A Field Guide
28. The Mexile
29. TheLostGirl’s Blog
30. Theodoro y el perro filosofo
31. Agring’s Garden

I thought about making a list of goals for 2008 and try to complete them, but the more I thought about it, the more that sounded like a bad idea. You see, I have a problem of trying to finish everything I need to have done during the last minute. Well, I’ve decided how to fix this. I’ve decided I’m going to set goals for each month during 2008. This way, I have more last minute deadlines to meet, making me work more(It sounds good in theory). At the beginning of each month when I list my goals, I will also talk about my past month’s goals. Did I achieve them, why didn’t I achieve them, et cetera…

Well, here are the goals I have, for my blog, for January of 2008:

1. Have 100 RSS subscribers
2. Have 100 authority on Technorati
3. Make $100.00 - this will be hard considering many ad networks won’t accept a site so young.
4. Improve my post quality

I’m not sure if these goals are modest or not. I suppose as time goes on, I’ll get a more general idea of what my blog is capable of. But, I didn’t want to set myself up for failure.

Since it is the beginning of the year, I’m going to make a couple of new years resolutions as well:

1. Make all A’s at school
2. Improve my French and Italian
3. Become fluent in C++, PHP and either Python or Java
4. Start up another online business
5. Manage my time better
6. Become more self-disciplined
7. Make a habit of waking up at 6:00 everyday

Well, wish me luck for January and the new year!