When I started commenting on some of the other money making blogs out there, I immediately noticed that my inbox was filling up with emails thanking me for my post and providing the usual spiel about my first comment on the blog, and so on.

Am I the only person who doesn’t like these emails? They seem to be very vogue right now. At first I foolishly thought that the bloggers had taken the time to email me personally. That I thought was a brilliant touch and I really appreciated it, but then I realized that the emails were automated. What a let down. Everyone does it. Kumiko was doing it when she had comments turned on (turn them back on for God’s sake Kumiko – I’m eternally frustrated that I can’t comment on your blog!) and Pureblogging does it too.

Make your choice

If you do want to send an email out to all first-time commenters, it’s really rather simple. I found a post on Pureblogging  that laid it out. There is a Wordpress plugin called Comment Relish that sets the whole process up for you. At the moment it’s not something I will use because I detest automated emails, no matter how good the intentions of the blogger are. The fact is, I received a number of very lame emails from some bloggers and they put me off going back to their blogs.

Out of all the mails I received, I must say that Kumiko’s was the best, but it still didn’t make me happy to have the it drop in my inbox.

What do other people think? Am I being up tight about this?

Tags: Tips and tricks by Angel
1 Comment »

I’ve been looking for ways to improve the promotion of this blog. So far I’ve been spending a bit of time going around commenting on other people’s blogs, but I was starting to get lost. I came across 3 Things to do for a New Blogger over at Daily Tech News. Although it’s only three things, the things were broken down into sub sections. The first thing of interest I saw was this:

Social Book Marking sites can get you a huge number of traffic. You ought to have a great content to hit the front page. If you hit the front page of Digg or Netscape, you will have a good time seeing visitors flow by your site. Stumble and Del.icio.us can get you traffic in long term.

Social bookmarking to boost your traffic

I hadn’t previously given much thought to social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking is a way of sharing sites or pages of a website/blog that you come across with the online community. I was a bit confused how I could use social bookmarking to market promote blog, but it was obvious really. Those Digg, Stumble and Del.icio.us links I have at the bottom of every post could drive huge amounts of traffic to this blog if people come across a post they like.

What this means is that I need to work on more original content that I think people will enjoy reading. To get links and icons for social bookmarking to add to your blog follow this link to 3Spots.

Bookmark yourself

Another side of social bookmarking is adding your own blog posts to the major online bookmarking services. I went over to Pro Blogger to see what Darren had to say:

While I don’t recommend spamming social bookmarking sites I would recommend being aware of them and submitting your best posts from time to time. In this way you put your posts out there for others to find. They may or may not take off so don’t think it’s a guarantee that you’ll get visitors - but you’re at least giving them a chance. If they do get popular the traffic doesn’t last long - but in the process you just might retain some extra new readers and perhaps just as importantly often after being ‘dugg’ you find that other bloggers link to you - giving you all important incoming links to your post which will help with Search Engine Optimization.

Sound advice and noted – I won’t be submitting all my posts. Over at John Chow’s blog, he was recently paid $400 to review a tool that costs $47 and takes care of all your submitting to social bookmarks in one go. The makers of Web 2 Submitter say that they can save you hours with their software, but think about it: Unless you’re submitting every single one of your posts, which you shouldn’t be, why pay $47?

One thing that immediately put me off Web 2 Submitter was the homepage, which is one of those really annoying websites that takes an eternity to scroll down, going past recommendations and testimonials and case studies – honestly, when I see a product marketed like that, it annoys the hell out of me.

Gerard over at Scribble Designs pointed out that Social Poster does all of what Web 2 Submitter does… for free. I tried it out, and sure enough, it’s a damn good utility. You can drag a link to your Firefox toolbar or bookmarks, and then whenever you’re on a page you want to bookmark, you hit the link and can submit it to all the usual bookmarking sites. You need to be registered with all the sites you submit to, but if you aren’t then you can register as you submit. Easy!

So that’s me clued up on social bookmarking. I haven’t reaped the benefits of implementing any of the above yet, but I hope in the near future that something will take off.

Tags: Blog promotion by Angel
2 Comments »

I was out drinking with a few buddies when one of my friends received a phone call. Apparently there was a mob heading our way and we were told to get the heck out of the bar we were in and go home. We looked at each other, unsure what to do, trying to make sense of the phone call, when an enormous tank rumbled by outside. A coincidence, surely. Not a chance. We were in the middle of a military coup.

We shared a taxi home and on the ride back we passed tanks and soldiers and some very big guns. Back home and the local TV channels had been taken over. This was Bangkok, Thailand, on September 19 last year.

When most of you blog there are probably a few things you take for granted. For starters, I’m sure you don’t live in fear that your blog will be censored. Internet censorship is a huge problem in Thailand. In June alone more than 10,000 websites were blocked. That includes voices speaking out against the current military regime.

Blogs in Thailand are often the best sources for getting information about what is happening in the country. Take the simultaneous bombings on New Year’s Eve as an example. Bloggers around Thailand shared what information they had and stayed ahead of even the news wires. But even bloggers can suffer at the hands of the government, as many blogspot users found out last month when the domain was partially blocked for a period. Some bloggers couldn’t even access their own blogs!

Did you know that we haven’t been able to access Youtube since April when a video deemed offensive to His Majesty the King was posted? Just this week, July 24, some people in Thailand on some ISPs could log on to the video-sharing resource. The minister of information and communications technology keeps telling us the ban will be fully lifted soon, but we’re still waiting. Every time one of you guys posts a video up from you Youtube on your blog we normally get to see a big, blank space.

These aren’t the only problem faced by bloggers in Thailand. Internet connections are notoriously slow and unreliable. My wireless cuts out several times an hour, and the fastest download speed I have ever achieved was 50kbs. This makes updating blogs and tweaking code a slow, monotonous process.

On July 18 a new law was passed giving police the right to monitor computer activity of people they think might be breaking the law. In a country like Thailand you can be sure that such a law will be abused by the authorities. And did you know that it is now illegal to send a private email with porn in it? The authorities can wade through anyone in Thailand’s personal files on the vague premise that a person is breaking the new cyber laws.

So next time you write you blog post and hit “Publish” and you only have to wait a few seconds for your new, shiny post to load, think about me and my blogging buddies over here in Thailand, where I can’t go to sleep anymore unless there is a chorus of dogs barking outside my window.

You guys have got it lucky.

Tags: Blogger rant by Angel
2 Comments »