It’s the end of the year and it’s time to reflect on the year at Eransworld. Traffic was up almost 40% over last year. We are over 50,000 unique visitors. I thought I would share the top 10 posts by visitors.

The first two are about basically the same event.  The demise of local radio station 101.9 The End and its long time morning personality Jimmy Chunga. Because of the popularity of this station many of my rants about its shows personalities also experienced more traffic. For the record it returned to its old format a few days ago.

1.  The Chunga Show at 101.9 THE END is Over!
2.  Is The DJ I Didn’t Like Finally Gone from 101.9 The End

I love to blog about heroes.
3. Utah Highway Patrolman Saves the Day

Can the IT Guy ever get a break? Of course not.
4. Top 10 Computer Skills the Average Worker Should Have According to the IT Guy

This may have been popular because I accidentally and unintentionally offended the parent of an autistic child.
5.  World Autism Awareness Day

6.  Microsoft Word Skills the Average Worker Should Have According to the IT Guy
7. Facebook Users Post Bra Colors for Breast Cancer Awareness

Utah got to flush the toilet on a Turd and gave participants a coin.
8. Utah Corrections creating commemorative coin for Ronnie Lee Gardner execution

I love reading the KSL Classifieds.   There are some creative sales people. (Last Years winnner)
9. Satan’s Lawnmower is For Sale
10. 5 Iconic Gibson Les Paul Guitarists

Google’s Blogger platform, Blogger.com/Blogspot.com is probably the most popular blogging service. There are literally millions of blogger blogs. However just because they are popular doesn’t mean that Blogger is the best route to go when creating a blog. Here are my 5 reasons why you shouldn’t use Blogger.

1. The pros don’t use it. Think, when was the last time you came across a professional blog hosted at a blogspot domain? What is NEVER? No serious blogger will use it. The biggest reason is that according to Google’s Terms of Service you don’t own your content. Business should never ever use blogger.

2. Limited customizability. There are very few themes available for Blogger, whereas for WordPress, there are more than 100 free themes available for their free hosted site at WordPress.com and there are literally millions of themes for self hosted WordPress sites. Eransworld is a self-hosted WordPress site.  Blogger doesn’t allow users to add widgets (free code to do special things to your blog) but WordPress.com supplies many, which are easily dragged and dropped right into the sidebar.

3. You aren’t promoting your blog, you’re promoting Blogger. Every part of your blog on blogspot has a promotion on it not promoting you but them. Every backlink you get goes to the blogspot domain, promoting Blogger and not you. With the navigation bar at the top of everyone’s Blogger blog, it steals away your branding. If nothing else reread your terms of service with Google.

4. Your blog has no monetary value. You can’t sell you blog after all your hard work. You can’t even sell a domain, since a Blogger blog uses a subdomain. Google also makes it difficult to export your posts.

5. Blogger is the official home of the splog. Yep, most spam blogs you see come straight from Blogger. Because blogger is known as a serious splog site your site becomes less trustworthy by others. It makes your information less trustworthy. If you don’t have the trust as an expert in your field your readership will go elsewhere.  Its all about credibility on the web.

6. Bonus Reason. Better Search Engine Optimization: This website has been a hosted site since 2000.  When I made the jump from using blogger as my blogging platform to using WordPress my site traffic tripled in the first year.  Every year since then it has at least doubled. This year alone I am on pace to exceed 50,000 unique visitors.  Wordpress is designed to be Search Engine Friendly.  Google loves WordPress sites.

Conclusion

These are my five reasons for not using Blogger. These should be 5 reasons why you aren’t using them either. The reason most people give as to why they use blogger is that its easy.  It was easy but now there are easier and better ways to blog.  If you want easy I would move your blog to wordpress.com or even better a hosted wordpress site. If you are interested in creating your own blog and use a host please contact Webnovate.com.

I think sometimes I fail to blog because I want to post large deep posts. I am going to try and continue that but I also want fast easy dirty posts like todays.

I thought I would just post some interesting things I have read across the internet recently.

Today’s Topic of links is Blogging

I have had this blog for 7+ years and a website previously that was a precursor to a blog for nearly 13 years.  Thus I get asked a lot about blogging…

Here are some good posts to get you more educated about the blogging process. Hopefully some of my clients will read these and get inspired.

What do you know? Six Helpful Questions for Beginning Bloggers.

Many people I know want to blog but they struggle like we all do with creating content.

Here are some great beginning blog posts compiled by kikolani.com

We all struggle sometimes to create and post content. I thought this was a great way to get focused

6 Steps to Writing a Blog in 20 minutes flat.

Once you have posted your new post its time to get it the love it deserves.

My Crazy Simple 7 Step Plan To Promote A New Post

Money seems a good reason to blog. However it should be noted that many don’t make money.

Blogging for Bucks: 8 Tips to Earn Pay for Your Say

Related Content: Blogging

2009 was the year of the tweet.  I am often asked how to do things by recreational bloggers. Like I have written in the past I am indebted to those who helped me out so I love a chance to show a trick or two.

Recently I have received questions about how I feed my blog to twitter and automatically tweet.  I thought I would take a few minutes and explain this in simple terms.

Automating the as many of the processes in blogging will save you time and add consistency to your blog. Everyone who blogs hopes to get read by someone so why not make it easier to send to your readers. One of the methods is to send it to your followers on twitter.

I use Twitterfeed.com to send out automagically generated blog post tweets.

Step 1. Create an account on Twitterfeed.com This is self explanatory you can figure it out.

Step 2. Create a Feed

Give the feed a name… Name it something useful because you never know what will happen with your blog. You may become famous.

Give the feed url. I use Google’s feed burner so my feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/EransRants

I click on the advanced settings.  Because I use bit.ly to shorten url’s or hide urls and for click tracking I select the bit.ly settings. Next to “Shorten Link Through: bit.ly”, select “bit.ly settings”. In the fields, enter your log in and API Key.  On the bit.ly website login using your login or create one. Select tools in the left tool bar and go to Access Link Data Generated Outside of bit.ly.  There is a link to your API KEY and login information that is needed in TwitterFeed.

By adding bit.ly you can now track links that you promote on any website. It is great for tracking traffic that you send. I strongly recommend it.

Step 3. Click to Step 2 which is will give you a successful message.

You can tie other accounts into TwitterFeed like Laconica, Ping.fm, Hellotxt, and Facebook.

I know that many of my friends who read this have blogs and enjoy the creative outlet. These last few posts have been to inspire them and others to be more creative.

Today’s post is where I give thanks to the websites that helped me to build my blog. 90% of the things I did in 2009 to my site was gleaned from these websites.

Mashable-The Social Media Guide

Founded in July 2005, Mashable is the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news. With more than 12.5 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is the most prolific blog reviewing new Web sites and services, publishing breaking news on what’s new on the web and offering social media resources and guides. Mashable’s audience includes early adopters, social media enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, influencers, brands and corporations, marketing, PR and advertising agencies, Web 2.0 aficionados and technology journalists. Mashable is also popular with bloggers, Twitter and Facebook users — an increasingly influential demographic. –About Us on Mashable

I don’t know where I discovered this site but I have been addicted to its feed ever since. If its web related they are covering it. The site is constantly updated with useful news and how to’s. Many of the plug-ins I use I discovered through Mashable. I wish more web sites devoted to news and niches were this good.

Mashable is successful because of a few things. First they deliver relevant content and they deliver it fast and reams of it. The site share tremendous knowledge with the average webmaster.

How To Make My Blog

I know that I mentioned this blog last summer but I really love it.  Marko Saric does a great job sharing his knowledge with others about how to create a great blog. He even took the time last time to post a comment thanking me and encouraging my dream project.

NOTE: Any blogger big or little who wants success leave comments on other blogs that encourage others and your blog will grow I promise you.

I wish that Marko would post even more than he does.  I know he spends a large amount of time creating his content but his content is so delicious.  I have been revisiting this post over the last few days.  Each visit I learn something new, a new idea, a new motivation, a new thirst for my next blog adventure that I am working on. I promise I will announce it soon.

MattFlies – a tech and news blog

Matt has a lot of great content about WordPress and Thesis.  I read his 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. It was a daily inspiration to help me get focused on what I was doing and what I needed to do. I loved it. I highly recommend it.  I loved this post 100 Resources for Thesis WordPress Theme Users

Daily Blog Tips

I use this site for inspiration when I am unmotivated. Relevant posts seem to spring up when I need them most. There are lots of posts about basic blogging do’s don’ts and advice.  I like the guest posts. Guest posts re-energizes me and probably the site when it needs it.

One of my favorite features of the site is the Blogger Face Off’s.  It gives a behind the scenes look and advice from successful bloggers.

There are thousands of great resources on the internet to help you improve your blog. These are just a few that I like and have used.

Today’s Message: Get of your butt and get inspired about your blog.

Sometimes you just need to pay back those who helped you. This is one of those posts. Through the last 12 years I have had a website there have been thousands of other websites that helped me take my site to the next level. I would like to pay back by paying it forward. I am including 5 things I did to improve my blog for free.

Stop Using Blogger.com

I know a lot of people that use Blogger. Not everything Google does is gold.  Blogger is a good entry level platform but in reality though Blogger sucks to build a blog site around. You would think that a site owned by Google would be good at Search Engine Optimization and traffic building. Blogger is not good at either and I personally believe that it hinders both traffic and optimization.

Blogger does nothing to build your blog. It limits a lot of the things that will take your blog to the next level.  Sure there are thousands of cool blog templates and goodies but this isn’t a reason to stay with blogger. Customization on blogger sucks. Trying to build your own template was a pita and really was a hack at best.

All of bloggers features (Bells and Whistles) kills loading speed, kills search engine work and limits traffic. These features are there to benefit Google not your blog. Google wants to maximize profits by sharing your hosting limiting your bandwidth and forcing you into using their advertising model. Just look at the blogger nav bar put on every site that uses blogger. None of these things are a positive for your blog.

If you spend the time to post to your blog even if its only for family and friends you deserve the best for your product. Google is watching out for Google not your blog.

Remember your blog is your property…not Googles.

Start Using WordPress

My recommendation is to more to WordPress.  You can buy a domain name add hosting and add a cool template like Thesis for under $150. The increase in your ad revenue through a better optimized and better SEO friendly site will easily pay this increase in cost.

WordPress is designed to be used as a heavy use blog platform. It comes predesigned for Search Engine Optimization. The backend is even easier to use than Blogger.

The open source support that supports WordPress is huge. There are millions of features and things that are free to download to make your blog better.

I believe that by just switching to WordPress my posts became much more Search Engine Friendly and the traffic I gained was at least 50% of my increase.

The idea of blogging is to share your thoughts. Why blog if no one is going to read it?

Connect your social media and your blog

One of the best moves I made in 2009 was to connect my Facebook account and my blog. Every time I make a blog post it is automatically posted to my status on Facebook. I have approximately 450 friends on Facebook. For my blog this is my target audience, my friends. For a business it could be people interested in your business or fan page or whatever.  These are people already interested in you why not engage them directly. Facebook is a glorified address book that posts changes in your life or business to the internet in real time. It is easy to add a social media tool bar to every post on your site.

It is easy to connect your blog to any number of social media products from Digg to Reddit, to FriendFeed.  You can see eransworld’s social media links here.

Social Media also allows you to build relationships with other internet surfers. Build personal relationships, business relationships and other types of relationships through social media.

When someone appreciates your work and adds a digg or a tweet about your post send them a thank you message. Add them as a friend; add their link to your blog post. There are many ways to show appreciation.

Being a Social Butterfly Pays…

Installed Thesis

Thesis is an added extension of WordPress. It’s a technically called a theme but it’s so much more. I think it’s a template to make a great blog. It takes many of the more popular widgets  (widgets are coded packages that allows for an installable plug-in for WordPress) and other fun features and combines them into one package.  Here is an excellent review of Thesis: A Review of the Thesis WordPress Theme

It extends the usefulness of WordPress.  For those of us who are PHP hacks and not programmers it makes our lives much easier.

Another Great resource for Thesis users: MattFlies: 100 Resources for Thesis WordPress Theme Users

Why not make blogging easier?

Upgraded site navigation

This one was a multi-step process to upgrade the stickiness and the ease of navigation around my blog.  It is easy for posts to get loss in the natural evolution of a blog, however often times that content is timeless and should be relevant.

I did some research and found a way to install a plug-in that keeps track of the most popular posts. It is a good idea to reheat once hot topics. I have many posts that have had several different periods of activity.

Creating a site map that is useable to the user.  I have an xml site map for google indexing but I needed one that allowed users to casually browse my posts. I have often found great content on sites that may have not been search for directly. Clicking on a recent posts or most popular posts or even site maps has generated great content for me to read.  Again I found a plug-in for WordPress that addressed this issue.

My home page shows the last 10 posts in order. The top two show the full content and the 8 remaining show a blurb of content with a graphic. This allows visitors to view your sites content quickly and easily. For my site it offers a buffet of tastes. My site doesn’t always have a theme other than thoughts I have had while thinking. Different things make me passionate enough to write about in my blog so the content is varied and not themed. Most successful blogs are themed/niche blogs.

Other navigation aids include categories. Every time I add content I make sure that I enter category data into the post. This allows posts to be segregated into mini-themes like music, business etc. You can be as detailed or as vague as you like but by categorizing and using tags you can group posts together.  This is good for example if someone sees a cool music post on your blog and would like to easily find other music related posts they can simply click on the category in your navigation.

Another important tool I added was a tool by LinkWithin. It makes a section at the bottom of your post with related content. It uses images to give a visual plug to your content.

You spent the time to write about what you are passionate about why let it die there?

Bonus Item: Content is still King.

If you want to create a successful blog you need to produce content. Provide your readers with value and they will keep coming back. One popular method to do this is with a how to post. A how to post is designed to explain some process or procedure that people in your niche are seeking an answer or explanation.  A good example is from my Freshman English class in High School where we had to write out a technical process. I remember a fairly hot girl in class writing about how to peel a banana. (It was probably R-Rated and thus why I remember it. Thank you Ms Terris for such a wonderful assignment.)

I recently wrote a how to piece on a common repair on my wife’s atv. In a few short days it has become quite popular in the atv community. I had a problem with my wife’s atv. I googled the problem and found many people needed answer on the problem. I fixed the problem and created a blog post about the problem.

The key to building your blog bigger and better is to provide value for your reader. If they gain something every time they visit they will return. Building readership through content is the most successful way to build a great blog.

Blogging is what writing a book 30 years ago was. Blogging is closer to real time information. The delay is shrinking from the time of discover until it is published. Blogging allows anyone to become an instant publisher without delay.

Happy Blogging

It is the end of the year and it’s time to look at my site stats. This is the first year where I really focused on traffic to see if I could build traffic by following the advice of many pro bloggers who blog about building their blogs.  Warning: This post will probably become a multi-post affair.

From this Post I hope to spawn about 10 New Posts over the next month including posts about the following:

• 5 Blogs that gave me ideas to build a better blog.
• 5 Things I did to Improve my Blog
• How to purchase a domain/hosting and set up WordPress?
• 5 Top Sites to Jump Start Your Traffic
• How to Integrate Your Blog onto Social Media?

Stats it’s about stats.

I was born a baseball junkie. It wasn’t my fault but I was and because of this I was born a stats junkie as well. I love looking at performance from baseball, to cars to the video games I play I love looking at stats.

A brief history of this site. It started in late 1997. It was hosted without a real host and a domain name for many years.  In 2002 I bought hosting and a domain name. Eransworld was born. I stole the idea from a website forum called jimworld.com (I used jimworld to learn all sorts about web development). At the time I was running a scrapbooking website. Anyway Eransworld is a place that I use to play with coding, graphics, writing and making fun of many things. It has often been used as a sandbox for my day jobs. More recently it has become a place to try and become a good enough writer to write a book, something that is on my lifetime goals list.

The reason I have spent the last year improving my site is simple. I have been having a mid-life crises so to speak. I am not sure what I want to be when I grow up. I am about to turn 40 and its time to decide. I have been thinking about becoming a professional blogger. I have a site and a topic and I will reveal it soon.  I don’t know what will happen but my start up costs are extremely small and it’s a subject that I am passionate about.  Look for an announcement soon.

For all my stats, I run Google Analytics.  Its free and if you are completely lost I can help set it up for you.

The raw stats as of today for the year from January 1, 2009 until December 27, 2009.

I had 38,602 unique visitors to my site.  Last year I had just over  10,000. That is an increase of almost 4 times.  Not bad. I had 1.74 page visits per unique visitor which is down substantially from 2.74 last year.

My 5 Top Posts of 2009:

I know that these do not match the popular post section on my site. It is because that started well into last year. I will be resetting it again on January 1.

There are 138 posts this year. Here are the top 5.

Caveat Emptor BUYER BEWARE

6,035 unique visitors.  This is a very funny ad selling a Honda Civic. The photos include jumping it off jumps.  My favorite part was the reason for selling: “Too Balling for Us”.

You Know It’s a Bad Year When a Dog Becomes a Shoplifter

3,809 unique visitors. This is video of a dog walking into a grocery store and stealing a raw hide bone and walking out, all caught on surveillance video.  This was actually posted on Christmas eve last year. All total it had more than 10,0000 unique visitors.

Is the Media Anti-Religion? Attacks on Carrie Prejean Continue.

2,893 unique visitors. This was a post about how I believe the media was attacking Carrie Prejean for her stance on gay marriage. I find it more of an attack on religion by the media.  In the America I grew up in speaking up for your beliefs should be encouraged not destroyed because some people may not agree with them.

Swine Flu… Another Over Hyped Media Event

1,209 unique visitors. The swine flu last April was being over-hyped by many people in the media.  I still believe the media blew it completely out of proportion. There are worse killers in America that get much less attention.

Twitter for Busy People

890 unique visitors.  I must admit I was extremely late on the twitter bandwagon. I still don’t completely understand the best way to use it.  I do however use this site to give me a summary of activity from people I follow.  Follow this blog on twitter?

These are just a few of the posts that I was able to create over the last year… I hope you enjoyed them.

Coming soon more posts about increasing your blogs potential.

Ok my loyal readers are trying to figure out what the hell has happened to this site…

I decided it was time to add to my variety of skills. I added the Thesis 1.6 theme to my site.

Thesis 1.6 is a feature rich addition to WordPress.

The Thesis Options panel provides you with an unmatched level of control over your site by allowing you to do things like:

• Fine-tune your SEO settings for an airtight site!
• Manage your home page style and content display options
• Setup and broadcast your RSS feed without the need for any additional plugins
• Construct a perfect navigation menu with simple, intuitive controls
• Manage default settings for theme behaviors

In the coming weeks I will be trying to find/design a new look for this site.  This is the current iteration.

If you want to take your site to the next level I strongly suggest that you ditch Google’s Blogger platform and start hosting your own WordPress Site. WordPress has the ability to add custom themes and widgets that make your site infinitely customizable even for the code illiterate. It also makes your site Search Engine Optimized.  I switched to WordPress over a year ago and my traffic has increased from 13000 uniques to nearly 43000 uniques by just swapping to it. I left blogger and now I am 100 times happier.

If you would like help making the jump to WordPress contact me.

The Twitter Revolution has changed the blogging world. Some of my most favorite blogs have changed and become mere tweets.  In some ways blogs were bound to be replaced like any king of the mountain business. Just ask Mark Cuban.

For those not in the know…  Twitter is a service by which messages are sent in 140 character segments. It seems to be a new fad amongst the techies. I have been slow to jump on the Twitter band wagon but over the last 6 months I have been using it.

Some simple observations are that twitter is a cool tool to communicate and stay abreast of new information by those whom you follow. The problem is if you follow more than about 10 people who tweet often it becomes a full time job. Reading 140 characters about others becomes a monster to keep up with especially in a busy world.

I have tried to use software to make it better. Things like twirl and tweetdeck.  While they both made it easier to tweet than going to twitter.com it still was overwhelming.  I needed something to condense the task.  I stumbled upon Twitterforbusypeople.com. I find that it’s easier to browse through tweets and read what’s important to me.

Twitterforsbusypeople gives you three views, last hour, last day and more than 1 day ago. I find that helpful in that who cares about last week’s tweets. If you use twitter as a tool, I suggest that you give it a try.

If you are interested in following me in Social Media go here.

If you own a website or are a webmaster, it is guaranteed that you have a toolbox full of online tools, services and hacks to do your job. I use a variety of industry tools with some new some old some blue and some used. Most of these tools are used for promotion and monitoring of online success.

Many of you use social media to promote your websites. Twitter is on fire at the moment but soon another fad or legitimate tool will burgeon onto the scene. Due to twitters limited amount of characters long URLs often times don’t fit especially if you include any other commentary. Tiny takes a large URL and creates a shorter and more easily managed and shared URL. Tiny URL’s have become the rage with the Tweets. The site I use is bit.ly.

Most webmaster likes their stats and ability to track success at view them at the granular level. There is now an online tool that tracks the impact of such URLs. If I take this post URL http://www.eransworld.com/my-rants/tinyurl-tracking-tool/ and convert it using bit.ly it becomes http://bit.ly/2twMmw. This services allows you to track clicks and posts in real time. You can even view the history of your URL. This makes it easier to track tweets about your site. You can now track your successful tweet campaigns. I am sure that this tool will spawn a new generations of social media measuring tools.

You can view my test URL @ http://bit.ly/info/2twMmw

Related: How to Feed Twitter Your Blog Posts