Author Archive for Benj Espina

Jul | 12 | 2007

To Snap Or Not To Snap

Posted by Benj as Opinion, Tips Several months ago, someone figured that making small preview windows of outgoing links on your blog was a good idea. At face value, there seems to be some credence to the concept. With such an application, one can easily see what you're about to visit! That's a good thing, right? It's no different from testing merchandise before buying it or getting a free taste before commiting to buying a slice of pie. And thus, Snap Preview Anywhere was born. After a while, it caught on, Wordpress even offered the service to their free blog subscribers. Well, not quite. If you don't ...

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Jun | 23 | 2007

Quantcast: Pushing Analytics Further Or Too Far?

Posted by Benj as Opinion, Tips Aside from Performancing's Pmetrics, one interesting new tool that could help bloggers and web developers in understanding their audience is Quantcast. Quantcast is basically a site that provides the service of snooping into your demographic at a level that has never been even been explored in mainstream blogging. Aside from knowing what browsers your readers use, you can now also see the age, sex, gender, ethnicity and other particulars that might help you in further customizing your blogging strategy. How does Quantcast come up with these numbers? Good question. That's the exact same thing on my mind when ...

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Jun | 15 | 2007

Perception Manipulation: More On Statistics

Posted by Benj as Community Building, Software and Widgets, Tips Numbers are very powerful little buggers. Make them eye-popping enough and you can make people swing one way. We see this phenomenon happen a lot in pre-election surveys, TV show ratings and other studies that supposedly reflect the preference of individuals regarding different issues. In blogging, it's also possible to harness the oh-so-human reaction to seemingly compelling numbers to your favor.

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Jun | 14 | 2007

The Value Of Stat Tracking

Posted by Benj as Opinion, Tips After over a month's worth of SEO-goodness brought to you by the able writers of Blog Tutorials, you've probably enjoyed a considerable benefit of increased hits, incoming links and blog revenue from sponsored advertisements. Since it's always better to give a current endeavor your best shot instead of being half-hearted with things, it will be to your advantage if you couple your impeccable SEO strategy with an equally competent stat tracking program.

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Jun | 04 | 2007

On-The-Go Online Image Editing

Posted by Benj as Tips Unless you're a barnacle, bloggers don't stay in one place for long periods of time. If you're unfortunate enough to not have a laptop everywhere you go, you may end up opting to blog using work stations in computer rental shops that may not have the image editor of choice. Luckily for us already unlucky sods, there are various online image editors that bloggers could use just in case one is blogging from less-than-ideal environments.

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May | 30 | 2007

You Are A Brand (Part 2 of 2)

Posted by Benj as Blog Tutorials News In the first part, we tackled the finer points of consumer behavior in the blog perspective. For this installment, we shall be discussing the traits that most readers look for in blogs. Different kinds of blogs will obviously attract and cater to different types of readers so it is important that a blogger is sensitive to the nuances of these sectors. As far as personal blogging goes, much emphasis is put on the person behind the blog. The blogger is the star in the personal blog. Running a personal blog is similar to running an official website for a celebrity with fans who are hungry for the latest tidbit and updates. If yours is a personal blog, it is important to zero in on your more likable aspects such as your hobbies, work or other interests. Special talents may also help you stand out from the crowd and get you recognized as a bankable must-visit blog.

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May | 30 | 2007

You Are A Brand (Part 1 of 2)

Posted by Benj as Opinion, Writing If you're a blogger whose main objective is to achieve a certain level of popularity and celebrity status, it is imperative that you view yourself (and your blog) as a brand. Just like in any field, clients and customers will go to the institutions and venues that would cater to their needs. This will be the case whether you're blogging for stature, monetary considerations or a combination of both. This is true for almost every blog out there. Whether you're featuring political articles, culture-related writeups or even just personal experiences and day-to-day life, it is important that you consider your target audience and your current audience.

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May | 30 | 2007

Selling Out On Your Blog?

Posted by Benj as Opinion Most bloggers start out without the slightest thought of making a healthy profit through their blogs. Sometimes, the old timers are not only disdainful of the practice of monetization, a lot of times, they're even unaware of the various ways you can make money by simply keeping a well-updated online journal. Needless to say, it may seem like somewhat of a dilemma when one tries to make the jump from hobby/recreational blogging to a more profit-oriented or even profit-driven approach.

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May | 23 | 2007

Who Clicks Them Anyway?

Posted by Benj as Monetization, Opinion We all know that Google AdSense holds a huge potential that is waiting to be tapped as far as monetization goes. In Brix's previous article, he tackled the basic game plan on how to make money off Adsense. My colleague was right in stating that the basic idea is to: 1) get visitors to go to your site and 2) make them click your ads. If you're like most people, you would soon realize that Google Ads just don't click themselves.When you're just starting out, chances are, most your visitors are people who behave like average Joes - i.e. they're the types who consciously ignore the ads while reading your blog. Since a majority of people are likely to purposely block out ads - let alone click them --- have you ever stopped and wondered? Who clicks them anyway?!

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May | 17 | 2007

Embedding Youtube The Easy Way

Posted by Benj as Blog Reviews, Plugins, Software Features, Software and Widgets, Videos Given the technology that bloggers have at their disposal nowadays, it is now easier to publish material on less-than-conventional media. Videos blogs and podcasts are no longer a rarity but they're not exactly that mainstream as far as your everyday bloggers go. Fortunately for Wordpress users, a lot of plugin developers have since chipped in making multimedia embedding easier.

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