All Entries in the "Blogging" Category

Introducing a New Magazine Theme

Welcome to the new Greener Pastures!

If you’re enjoying this theme, and would like to learn more about it, head over to the Solostream website.

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Blog Notes and Statistics for March, 2009

Blog Stats

Blog income - see my Passive Income for March post.

* Visits - 7156 (+ 14% from Feb)
* Page views - 12687 (- 32%)
* Bounce rate - 63.92% (+1181%)
* Average time on site - 1 min, 42 sec  (no change)
*1.77 pages/visit (- 41%)

(above data from Google Analytics)  I don’t quite understand the dramatic drop in page views.  Did anyone else see the same thing?

I posted 28 articles in March (20 in Feb, 36 in Jan.)

Goals Progress

• Increase passive income to $75 per month. Got to $56 per month from $46.
  
• Fix scrolling of features section.  ( I believe a plug in has messed it up. ) Done.
  
• Shopping page? In progress- see the Deal Talk page above!
  
• Continue increasing readers, subscribers, traffic and comments. Feedburner subscribers ~ 150 at end of March. Up from last month by about 20?  It’s hard to get a montly average the way the data is presented.  I’ll need to make an excel spreadsheet or something.
  
• Find one new channel of revenue for the blog. To do
• Explore possibility of forming a Midlife Network, complete with widget, from the Alltop Midlife page. To do
• Develop new article series. Check out The Bloghound.  Send me contents - I’ll post it to help our traffic.
  

Blog Highlights

• Have become a proud member of the Pecuniary Network.
• Created a MyAlltop/GreenerPastures page.  Still working on it.
• Was featured in a post on the MSN Money Network

Twitter - 996 followers - Helping traffic.
Stumble - Still my best traffic generator.
Facebook - Helping traffic.  Need to work on.
Alltop’s topic pages:  Midlife and Personal Finance - not much traffic generated from these.

Goals for April

• Increase passive income to $75 per month.
• Hosting Money Hacks Carnival
• Continue work on the Deal Talk page
• Continue increasing readers, subscribers, traffic and comments.
• Find one new channel of revenue for the blog.
• Explore possibility of forming a Midlife Network, complete with widget, from the Alltop Midlife page.
• ???

How did your month go? Any suggestions for this blog?  Would you like me to look at yours and make suggestions or comments?  I would be glad to!

Photo credits: PicApp

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Blog Notes and Statistics for February, 2009

Blog Stats

Blog income - see my Passive Income for February post.

* Visits - 6296 ( + 14% from January )
* Page views - 18746 ( + 5% )
* Bounce rate - 4.99% ( - 36% )
* Average time on site - 1 min, 44 sec  ( - 35% )
*2.98 pages/visit ( - 7% )

(above data from Google Analytics)

I posted 20 articles in February  (36 in January.)

Review of Blog Goals for January

• Increase passive blog income to $50/month
• Increase subscribers and Twitter followers 10% 
• Increase comments by 5%
• Find one channel of revenue through the blog  
• Come up with a “shopping” page plan (In process)

What I’ve been doing to increase comments:

1. Added Most Frequent Commentors list to sidebar
2. Continue latest comments links in sidebar
3. Frequently responding to commentors
4. Comment Luv
5. Increasing the number of genuine comments I’m leaving on my favorite blogs, and new blogs.
6. Frequently leaving comments on the blogs of bloggers who comment on my blog.

It’s a slow climb, so if you like my site, please sign up for my feed and my Twitter. Oh, and a stumble would be nice, too.)

Blog Notes

Greener Pastures has been added to two of Alltop’s topic pages:  Midlife and Personal Finance!

Here’s the feeds below.  If you have a chance, please go check them out. There ’s some great blogs on these pages. While you’re there, if you take a second to click on a link back to my site, it will help me move higher up on their page.

Twitter - Increased to over 700 followers.  This h.as helped traffic
Facebook - too early to tell what’s going on.  See next month.

Goals for March

• Increase passive income to $75 per month.
• Fix scrolling of features section.  ( I believe a plug in has messed it up. )
• Shopping page?
• Continue increasing readers, subscribers, traffic and comments.
• Find one new channel of revenue for the blog.
• Explore possibility of forming a Midlife Network, complete with widget, from the Alltop Midlife page.
• Develop new article series.

How did your month go? Any suggestions for this blog?  Would you like me to look at yours and make suggestions or comments?  I would be glad to!

Photo credits: PicApp

• Google Analytics Video Tutorial: How to Use the Google Analytics Interface I've just come across an excellent video tutorial from Google, that gives a brief overview of how to use the Google Analytics interface.If you are...

Blog Notes and Statistics for January, 2009

Blog Notes

Transferred feed from feedburner.com to feedburnergoogle.com

• Heart failure.  I lost half of my subscribers in one fell swoop
• Warning - my stats were down for about a week after I made the transfer
• It fixed itself eventually
  

Averaging over 100 subscribers per day

• If you don’t count the google glitch.

Became a Twitterer

Stopped manic Entrecard dropping

• Drops for drops sake are stupid and a waste of time
• I like Entrecard - provides good exposure for blogs - will use it, but not by manic dropping

Posted ads through Commission Junction

• Absolutely no success to date
• They don’t pay on clicks, only from direct sales

cNBC Green asked me to sign on with them

• They’re a lot like Google ads, except they also offer cool links to green articles on cNBC.
• I signed up, and I have a little money coming in from them, as well as Google Adsense.
• They pay on clicks, not just purchases.

I signed up for Pluck

• Blogburst is working with Pluck to get their clients more exposure on other blog sites.
• I’m a Blogburst member, so I signed up.
• Part of the agreement is to put one of their widgets on my site.  The widget contains summaries of articles supposedly related to my content.
• I ‘ve seen some interesting articles, and found my way to some neat blogs from the links, so I’m going to keep it.  I think it will help improve the blog

Blog stats

Blog income - see my Passive Income for January post.

(from Google Analytics)

• Visits - 5,544
• Page views - 17,842
• Bounce rate - 7.83%
• Average time on site - 2 min., 40 sec.

Blog goals

• Increase passive blog income to $50/month
• Increase subscribers and Twitter followers 10%
• Increase comments by 5%
• Find one channel of revenue through the blog
• Come up with a “shopping” page plan

It’s a slow climb, so if you like my site, please sign up for my feed and my Twitter. Oh, and a stumble would be nice, too.

Photo credits:  PicApp

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2009 Financial Resolutions Blog Contest at Pecuniarities: Win a Free 6-Month Subscription to the Wall Street Journal

To celebrate their blog’s one year anniverary, Pecuniarities is having a great 2009 Financial Resolutions Blog Contest.  Check it out!

They’re also hosting the 188th Carnival of Personal Finance this week.  It’s the largest PF blog on the web, with loads of useful information.

So check that out, too!

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Wordpress Upgrade Easy With Automatic Plugin

I was hesitant to upgrade my Wordpress Blog to the latest 2.6 version. I had read some horror stories from other bloggers attempting the upgrade, and didn’t feel experienced enough to be able to deal with any potential problems.

But yesterday I fell upon this Wordpress Automatic Plugin, and this morning I installed it.   The process was fast and easy.  It took me about 10 minutes.  I had NO glitches, and everything’s been running smoothly since I made the upgrade.

The Plugin automatically:

• Created back up files of my blog.
• Put it on maintenance mode.
• Unplugged my plugins.
• Downloaded the appropriate files.
• Plugged in all appropriate plugins, upgrading those that needed it.

At each step it informed me that the work had been completed successfully, and asked me if I wanted to proceed to the next step.

I had been using version 2.3.3, but wanted to take advantage of some of the cool new features in 2.6.3.  I’m glad I made the change.  Some of the new features I can use now, such as a plugin for automatic plugin upgrades, and the ability to load plugins directly instead of having to download through Filezilla first, are great.

It was so easy I made a donation to the author.

One additional thought.  I’ve noticed the first version of any new upgrade has its share of bugs.  If you’re a newer user like me, you may want to wait until the first or second revision before making the next upgrade.  All the hackers will have cleaned up the bugs, and it will run great!

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