No new is good news
No news is good news, or, as the English King James I wrote in 1616 'No newis is bettir than evill newis.' Anyway, I'm doing fine thanks! I hope the same holds true for Murlu (murlu.com). I was following his blog already for a while, for reasons I blogged about before. After leaving his job, cranking up the posting speed, and then leaving for Japan, all went silent: his main blog since march, his traveling blog since april. His Twitter feed continues, but all tweets since April appear automated. That's odd isn't it? And Spooky.
Referral spam killed the fun
What is odd as well, is referral spam. I blogged about it before, mainly focusing on one player that went pretty far and made things worth diving into. Then at some point my Blogger statistics went crazy with tons of weird sites. Here's my all-time top list of referrers:
getrxpills.com
edprescriptiondrugs.com
antibiotics-shop.com
basicpills.com
god-sersy.livejournal.com
9pillsonline.com
condition.dn.ua
deluxetravelua.com
amoxil-pharm.com
e-pharmacy-online.com
I don't recommend visiting any of those. It sure killed the fun of tracking Blogger's statistics. Google's Analytics however is not disturbed by all this (funny fact: they're both owned by the same company). So I've slowly switched to tracking that and webmaster tools, and reactions and follower counts both on Blogger and Feedburner. As long as Blogger doesn't do anything to defend against this, Blogger stats are plain useless, and a waste of programmer's time!
Back in town
Basically, Google Analytics showed an increase in visitors over time, even without new posts arriving. This encouraged me to return to the front line. Both my own activities and things happening in the outside world give rise to lots of stuff to talk about. A lot of my time recently went into the development of a Facebook application. Developing an app for Facebook, and learning more about this humongous beast of a website along the way, was surely an interesting process. Now there's the question: will it blend? Will our ideas, our technical implementations and - most important of all - our user's interests and demands mix into something sustainable? More about that later!
Post Scriptum
In other news, my first offspring blog wasn't really going anywhere. And my priorities have been such that a second one has not aired (yet). My company's doing fine although the Facebook activities are actually out of it's scope and hopefully will result in another one launched soon.
Posts tonen met het label Meta. Alle posts tonen
Posts tonen met het label Meta. Alle posts tonen
Metagain
Meta...again
I thought it was time for another meta blog post. There's only a few days left of December and with this post I am back on track for the one post per day goal. I admit some posts were shallower than others, but all together I do think it is a nice display of my current capabilities as a Blogger (leaving open whether these capabilities are any good). Let's look at how the Blog is doing.
Visitors
Woot, my site gets visitors! The transition from a total flatliner to getting-some-hits is very cool. I also have to admit that some promotional tweaking does help, at least in this phase. A few backlinks in other blogs (mostly comments I made myself I have to admit) and a niche subject that started to generate some hits did help a lot. Last two weeks I'm at +/- 15 visitors a day (multiple page hits per visit though), 20% are returning visitors: thanks! Really! Thank you! :-D
Tools / statistics
I have three tools I commonly use: Google Statistics, Blogger Statistics and Google Webmaster Tools. They all have their pros and cons. Blogger's statistics are real time, the other two are lag 1 or 2 days behind. I only recently discovered the cool things that Google's Webmaster Tools offers. Some features only become interesting when there's enough data available. One that works (for me) nicely at the moment involves Google's searches.
Pingywebedition
Apparently Google keeps track of every search, including the pages that were returned, their position, and which hits are actually clicked on. The only search query I see info for is pingywebedition. Although the amount of searches per day are around 50 (very low!), I have a CTR (Click Trough Rate, the percentage of times that my page is actually clicked when it is displayed) of 20% (this has been rising the last few weeks). This gives my roughly 10 visitors a day (each hitting perhaps a number of pages). Although these numbers are soooo low and insignificant in any way, it nicely shows how 'being big in a niche' can be better than 'being small in huge topic'.
New hits
Today I noticed I'm also being found once in a while now in searches for the Harmony Remote 650. Maybe this is coincidence, maybe some other factors play a role here that I do not fully understand (yet)! Don't tell, but I tried to push that a little more today by posting my review at a few other (relevant) blogposts. It is micromanagement, I know, and it is only worth the effort because of the learning experience. And the rush of rising graph's :-D
Next?
What's next? I had another idea today: start a new blog each month, niches this time, stopping what doesn't work or isn't fun to do, and use this blog as a meta blog about the whole process. That way, this blog would also get some focus (and less-than-a-blogpost-a-day). Haha, this is so me, not wanting to choose, even when I have to pick a niche, I think about picking 12 :-D Will let you know how this evolves!
I thought it was time for another meta blog post. There's only a few days left of December and with this post I am back on track for the one post per day goal. I admit some posts were shallower than others, but all together I do think it is a nice display of my current capabilities as a Blogger (leaving open whether these capabilities are any good). Let's look at how the Blog is doing.
Visitors
Woot, my site gets visitors! The transition from a total flatliner to getting-some-hits is very cool. I also have to admit that some promotional tweaking does help, at least in this phase. A few backlinks in other blogs (mostly comments I made myself I have to admit) and a niche subject that started to generate some hits did help a lot. Last two weeks I'm at +/- 15 visitors a day (multiple page hits per visit though), 20% are returning visitors: thanks! Really! Thank you! :-D
Tools / statistics
I have three tools I commonly use: Google Statistics, Blogger Statistics and Google Webmaster Tools. They all have their pros and cons. Blogger's statistics are real time, the other two are lag 1 or 2 days behind. I only recently discovered the cool things that Google's Webmaster Tools offers. Some features only become interesting when there's enough data available. One that works (for me) nicely at the moment involves Google's searches.
Pingywebedition
Apparently Google keeps track of every search, including the pages that were returned, their position, and which hits are actually clicked on. The only search query I see info for is pingywebedition. Although the amount of searches per day are around 50 (very low!), I have a CTR (Click Trough Rate, the percentage of times that my page is actually clicked when it is displayed) of 20% (this has been rising the last few weeks). This gives my roughly 10 visitors a day (each hitting perhaps a number of pages). Although these numbers are soooo low and insignificant in any way, it nicely shows how 'being big in a niche' can be better than 'being small in huge topic'.
New hits
Today I noticed I'm also being found once in a while now in searches for the Harmony Remote 650. Maybe this is coincidence, maybe some other factors play a role here that I do not fully understand (yet)! Don't tell, but I tried to push that a little more today by posting my review at a few other (relevant) blogposts. It is micromanagement, I know, and it is only worth the effort because of the learning experience. And the rush of rising graph's :-D
Next?
What's next? I had another idea today: start a new blog each month, niches this time, stopping what doesn't work or isn't fun to do, and use this blog as a meta blog about the whole process. That way, this blog would also get some focus (and less-than-a-blogpost-a-day). Haha, this is so me, not wanting to choose, even when I have to pick a niche, I think about picking 12 :-D Will let you know how this evolves!
Meta
This is a meta blog post. Meta is a word found in various contexts, and probably a lot of people know the word but not its meaning. For instance webmasters know meta-tags, scientists know meta-analysis, Q&A pages as stackoverflow and serverfault know meta-cafe. And I decided it was time, again, for a meta blog.
Meta
To quote Wikipedia: "a prefix used in English (and other Greek-owing languages) to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter". I'd say: meta-blah is blah about/concerning blah. This meta blog post therefore, is a blog post about blogging itself.
Actually, the above text can be seen as meta-meta, because it concerns blogging about blogging about blogging. Right!
Anyhow
Anyhow, I learned today that when you add a picture to your post in Blogger, and do so by entering an url, you're actually hotlinking the image. You tell the browser, when your blog is displayed, to go and get the image (and nothing but the image) from someone else's website. Sometimes this is okay. Often it is not. Sorry I did it. I fixed it. Sidenote: when the other side changes the content of the image (but keeps the exact same url), then that is what is displayed to the user. This can be really awkward if your are a newspaper, hotlink an image and this image is replaced by the owner for something that is not to be seen by innocent eyes. It happens.
Visitors
Since last week, my blog is actually visited now or then. The pingywebedition post has been in the top 10 results of Google, which generated a bit of traffic (it's just a few hits a day, but I still get excited from every peak in the statistics section :-). But the most traffic comes from other blogs, where I left a comment or that link to my blog after I linked to theirs.
This whole process starts to become a learningful experience. I submitted my blog to Bing and some ping sites. This might seem contradicting to what I blogged earlier, but I just want to get an idea of what works and what doesn't.
Content
More important of course is the site / blog itself. The content. I stumbled upon the Blog Building University. It contains a lot of free content concerning the art of blogging. It even offers a email e-course. At first glance the site seems to be a nice mix of easy cliche's and some interesting ideas. The level of English, to my opinion, is moderate at most.
The one thing that stands out every time I think about this blogging adventure is this: what is the plan? Or actually, what will be the plan? One of the ideas I have is to start a second blog as a side project, more focused / dedicated perhaps to a niche even, and keep this one to discuss the progress of this sideproject, as well as everything else.
A blogpost a day
I'm still on schedule. This post is actually already for tomorrow. Because then I won't be able to post anything. It is however, wearing me out a little bit. I blog mostly at the very end of the day and it always takes more time than I plan. Luckily, i have two weeks off starting this Friday. Nice!
Meta
To quote Wikipedia: "a prefix used in English (and other Greek-owing languages) to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter". I'd say: meta-blah is blah about/concerning blah. This meta blog post therefore, is a blog post about blogging itself.
Actually, the above text can be seen as meta-meta, because it concerns blogging about blogging about blogging. Right!
Anyhow
Anyhow, I learned today that when you add a picture to your post in Blogger, and do so by entering an url, you're actually hotlinking the image. You tell the browser, when your blog is displayed, to go and get the image (and nothing but the image) from someone else's website. Sometimes this is okay. Often it is not. Sorry I did it. I fixed it. Sidenote: when the other side changes the content of the image (but keeps the exact same url), then that is what is displayed to the user. This can be really awkward if your are a newspaper, hotlink an image and this image is replaced by the owner for something that is not to be seen by innocent eyes. It happens.
Visitors
Since last week, my blog is actually visited now or then. The pingywebedition post has been in the top 10 results of Google, which generated a bit of traffic (it's just a few hits a day, but I still get excited from every peak in the statistics section :-). But the most traffic comes from other blogs, where I left a comment or that link to my blog after I linked to theirs.
This whole process starts to become a learningful experience. I submitted my blog to Bing and some ping sites. This might seem contradicting to what I blogged earlier, but I just want to get an idea of what works and what doesn't.
Content
More important of course is the site / blog itself. The content. I stumbled upon the Blog Building University. It contains a lot of free content concerning the art of blogging. It even offers a email e-course. At first glance the site seems to be a nice mix of easy cliche's and some interesting ideas. The level of English, to my opinion, is moderate at most.
The one thing that stands out every time I think about this blogging adventure is this: what is the plan? Or actually, what will be the plan? One of the ideas I have is to start a second blog as a side project, more focused / dedicated perhaps to a niche even, and keep this one to discuss the progress of this sideproject, as well as everything else.
A blogpost a day
I'm still on schedule. This post is actually already for tomorrow. Because then I won't be able to post anything. It is however, wearing me out a little bit. I blog mostly at the very end of the day and it always takes more time than I plan. Luckily, i have two weeks off starting this Friday. Nice!
Countdown
And suddenly it struck. Countdown has started! Almost inaudible at first, hesitating perhaps, afraid to to forget, anxious to let go, nevertheless, slowly but surely growing into a roar of ecstasy, full of excitement and confidence. A new year will start. And it will start soon. Low and behold, it will bring us the date of all dates: 11-11-11.
But first there will be countless of lists. We will look back at the year that lies behind us, the soccer world cup, the Olympics. Haiti earthquake. Crisis. Google Zeitgeist takes you on a tour. And Christmas of course, 2 days of peace, preluding 363 days of needless killing.
And then there will be new year's resolutions. I'm starting to panic. I have none. I like my life.
Nah, do I? Or is it the other way around? Am I making resolutions on a daily basis? One that is still standing is writing a blogpost a day. I admit I missed one, but I made up for it today! And I discovered images. I like photography so maybe I should also post some of my own. An image-post would fit nicely with my plan to try out various types of blogposts. In the meantime my blog's getting some visits every now and then.
And my new year's resolution? Let me sleep on it.
Blog Month
Last month was 'reply' month: I would deliberately respond / reply to mails and stuff faster and more often than I normally would (I sometimes 'choke', especially if it is unclear if a reaction is 'required'). It wasn't perfect, but at least it made me more aware of things.
A Blogpost a Day...Keeps the Doctor Away
This month is blog month (as has been decided by me, myself, and I). I want to write a post everyday, on various subjects, in both English and my native language. I hope this will give me some insights, in what I like to do, what comes naturally and what's a pain. Subsequently, I should be able to make some choices, blog-wise at least. "To Blog", means nothing. To write with joy something at least mildly coherent that adds a little to the world (be it an App Engine tutorial or a life lesson), that's what it's all about!
Really?
"I want to write a post every day". Yes, it sounds ambitious. Well it doesn't only sound like that, it really is.. I am aware of that. It might be just phase. If it's 2015 and this post is still the last one on this blog: sorry, I didn't make it after all.
New design
And while I was at it, I decided to pimp the design a little. Just basic stuff (except for the migration of the Google Analytics and Syntax Highlighter snippets), because my aim for this blog was to make use of existing technology and minimize efforts in designing & coding (trust me, I do my share amount of those during the rest of the week). Rounded corners, transparency, and a handful of fluffy clouds. Me like.
From the couch in my cleaned up living room, candles on the table, Yiruma piano music playing softly in the background, I'm out. For now.
A Blogpost a Day...Keeps the Doctor Away
This month is blog month (as has been decided by me, myself, and I). I want to write a post everyday, on various subjects, in both English and my native language. I hope this will give me some insights, in what I like to do, what comes naturally and what's a pain. Subsequently, I should be able to make some choices, blog-wise at least. "To Blog", means nothing. To write with joy something at least mildly coherent that adds a little to the world (be it an App Engine tutorial or a life lesson), that's what it's all about!
Really?
"I want to write a post every day". Yes, it sounds ambitious. Well it doesn't only sound like that, it really is.. I am aware of that. It might be just phase. If it's 2015 and this post is still the last one on this blog: sorry, I didn't make it after all.
New design
And while I was at it, I decided to pimp the design a little. Just basic stuff (except for the migration of the Google Analytics and Syntax Highlighter snippets), because my aim for this blog was to make use of existing technology and minimize efforts in designing & coding (trust me, I do my share amount of those during the rest of the week). Rounded corners, transparency, and a handful of fluffy clouds. Me like.
From the couch in my cleaned up living room, candles on the table, Yiruma piano music playing softly in the background, I'm out. For now.
Silence?
Except for a visitor or two, my blog went quite unnoticed. I have done nothing to promote it and will definitely keep it 'separate' from my other web presence(s) for now, but on the other hand I find myself hoping for some traffic every now and then.
I do admit that I am totally clueless in what I want with it. The posts have ranged in subject so much that I wouldn't be reading / following it if it had been someone elses blog. Especially some of the coding-related posts are not quite 'readable'. I think I secretly hope they attract a whole stream of visitors from Google.
I do think a nice set of blog posts will emerge as soon as I get my company going. I also think I would be better off blogging in my native language. Furthermore, I wonder why I blog at all. Do I want to reach an audience, do I want to get rich, do I want to sell something? Well, I have nothing to sell yet, but maybe I want to set the stage? Whatever the reason, is it all worth the effort?
Most likely, I am just blogging to get an answer to the aforementioned questions.
Strange visitors
Today I noticed three hits, all referenced from bogus-urls. I am quite clueless about what to think of this. Maybe they hoped that I dropped by, but the one I tried didn't work. Maybe it has something to do with dodgy SEO (Search Engine Optimization), or maybe they wanted to spam my guestbook. The latter though would have worked just as well without a 'reference' url.
Sleep
Nevertheless I'm going to get some sleep now!
Bye!
PS: Got to love Chrome's spell checker ;)
I do admit that I am totally clueless in what I want with it. The posts have ranged in subject so much that I wouldn't be reading / following it if it had been someone elses blog. Especially some of the coding-related posts are not quite 'readable'. I think I secretly hope they attract a whole stream of visitors from Google.
I do think a nice set of blog posts will emerge as soon as I get my company going. I also think I would be better off blogging in my native language. Furthermore, I wonder why I blog at all. Do I want to reach an audience, do I want to get rich, do I want to sell something? Well, I have nothing to sell yet, but maybe I want to set the stage? Whatever the reason, is it all worth the effort?
Most likely, I am just blogging to get an answer to the aforementioned questions.
Strange visitors
Today I noticed three hits, all referenced from bogus-urls. I am quite clueless about what to think of this. Maybe they hoped that I dropped by, but the one I tried didn't work. Maybe it has something to do with dodgy SEO (Search Engine Optimization), or maybe they wanted to spam my guestbook. The latter though would have worked just as well without a 'reference' url.
Sleep
Nevertheless I'm going to get some sleep now!
Bye!
PS: Got to love Chrome's spell checker ;)
Complex!
Ouch! It's complicated. There's more to it than I thought, setting up my own company. That might not sound so unexpected, but to me it still was. If you are planning something like this as well, beware: even this warning will not help you, it will only land once you face the beasts yourself.
With beasts, I mean the horrors and wonders of taxes. Of course challenges will differ from country to country. For me, I'm facing a situation where 'starting small' will put me in a different category, which has certain uncertain and disturbing consequences.
I do LOVE the Internet however! The wonders of being able to find answers to your questions (plus plant more new questions in your mind), on Sunday afternoon, in your pyjamas, for free. For me, that has always been the way to deal with complex stuff: dive into it until I fully understand it. Right now, for the current questions in my mind, I'm almost there!
Still next: chamber of commerce, after that: bank-account and domain name
With beasts, I mean the horrors and wonders of taxes. Of course challenges will differ from country to country. For me, I'm facing a situation where 'starting small' will put me in a different category, which has certain uncertain and disturbing consequences.
I do LOVE the Internet however! The wonders of being able to find answers to your questions (plus plant more new questions in your mind), on Sunday afternoon, in your pyjamas, for free. For me, that has always been the way to deal with complex stuff: dive into it until I fully understand it. Right now, for the current questions in my mind, I'm almost there!
Still next: chamber of commerce, after that: bank-account and domain name
Inkskape
I love it when a plan comes together.... everything is in position now for me to take over the IT world. Well, actually I just learned that my boss is totally ok with me setting up my company and decrease my contract hours as my company grows. I think I'll start with 1 day a week for my company, and see where it goes from there. My (financial) life would be just as stable if I would give up on the whole thing after a few weeks and start enjoying a 3-day weekend vs 4-day workweek but that won't happen, I would just use that 3 day weekend to set up a company again ;)
So...a company uh? Where to start? I got my field: software development (windows or web). Coming up with a good company name turned out to be not-so-easy... especially since I want to have at least the .nl and .com domains still available.. I came up with the strangest ideas only to find that other companies already took them to the public. But finally I think I have something I will eventually settle with. I even designed a logo already. That's one of the wonders of Linux/Ubuntu: free software. I used Inkscape. It's great. Seriously. And free. At first it seems a little complicated, but as you go (at least for someone like me, having used other vector drawing tools before) it appears that everything seems to be there. At least for the basic stuff. I had my logo into a svg file and on paper in only a few ours!
Next step: bureau of commerce and a domain name!
So...a company uh? Where to start? I got my field: software development (windows or web). Coming up with a good company name turned out to be not-so-easy... especially since I want to have at least the .nl and .com domains still available.. I came up with the strangest ideas only to find that other companies already took them to the public. But finally I think I have something I will eventually settle with. I even designed a logo already. That's one of the wonders of Linux/Ubuntu: free software. I used Inkscape. It's great. Seriously. And free. At first it seems a little complicated, but as you go (at least for someone like me, having used other vector drawing tools before) it appears that everything seems to be there. At least for the basic stuff. I had my logo into a svg file and on paper in only a few ours!
Next step: bureau of commerce and a domain name!
Perspectives
I need perspective. My current job's ok, the salary is moderate. But it just that I know there's so much more. More adventure, more freedom, more money. I want to start up my own company. My programming skills are good enough, I have learned to be organized, to read and write financial reports, to deal with various sorts of rules and legislations. I already have a work-order via a connection from the days I worked there as a student.
So I will try to get this thing going, but next to my current job. Actually, I hope I can go from 5 days a week to 4 (or 3?), preferably without losing too much in salary (I think I deserve a raise anyway ;).
That would be the perfect perspective.
So I will try to get this thing going, but next to my current job. Actually, I hope I can go from 5 days a week to 4 (or 3?), preferably without losing too much in salary (I think I deserve a raise anyway ;).
That would be the perfect perspective.
I am Anonymous
For now...I am anonymous.
For now...you will not read this.
At least, that's what I think. Because in fact Google knows who I am. Not because it knows 'everything', but simply because this blog is connected to my email and real name. But I really do hope Google does not dispose my name and contact data in any way, like Twitter did: I thought I was just twittering into nothingness, perhaps to a random person passing by, and of course to a bunch of bots that started following me. But instead, my first human follower was an ex-boyfriend of my sister. Needless to say I haven't twittered much ever since.
As a final remark: changing the layout of your blog is not easy without any posts. What happened to lorem ipsum? Now I have my own :-D
Bye!
For now...you will not read this.
At least, that's what I think. Because in fact Google knows who I am. Not because it knows 'everything', but simply because this blog is connected to my email and real name. But I really do hope Google does not dispose my name and contact data in any way, like Twitter did: I thought I was just twittering into nothingness, perhaps to a random person passing by, and of course to a bunch of bots that started following me. But instead, my first human follower was an ex-boyfriend of my sister. Needless to say I haven't twittered much ever since.
As a final remark: changing the layout of your blog is not easy without any posts. What happened to lorem ipsum? Now I have my own :-D
Bye!
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