Author: Barbara Swafford

If you blog, sign up for an affiliate marketing program, and become an associate/publisher/affiliate, you may notice, in the terms and conditions for advertisers, the term “cookie”. Some advertisers say they offer a 10 day cookie, others may offer a 120 day cookie. With some, the “cookie” is only good… read more Affiliate Marketing – Please Pass The Cookies

If you blog, and have a donate button or a “tip jar”, chances are you are using PayPal as the “collection service”. Today’s Lesson I have been receiving emails from what looks to be PayPal. Some say I need to update my account. Others say, if I don’t “take action”,… read more Phishing Emails Regarding PayPal

For some time now, there has been a debate going on about Google decreasing the page rank of a website or blog, if it has “paid links”. Today’s Lesson So, what are paid links? Not knowing for sure which links Google considers as “paid links”, I decided to go right… read more What Are Paid Links

Christmas is my favorite time of the year. I spend weeks preparing. I’m a nut for Christmas lights. I put tons of lights outside, and add pieces of yard decor. When darkness comes, I flip the switch, and the whole yard lights up. It’s beautiful. I also love to wrap… read more Celebrate Blogging

If I look back at some of my early posts, I laugh. I made up goofy definitions for some of the blogging terminology I was learning. In several posts, I was “beating my head against the wall” (I did that a lot back then), and others had obvious typos. Three… read more Baby Stepping Into Blogosphere

Today’s Lesson Two months ago, I started an experiment with Google AdSense, “ads for content”, ads. As I stated in that post, From this site, I have removed my Google Ads for Content, (which I had in the sidebar). Months ago, I read ( and I don’t know if this… read more Google AdSense Ads – Do Less Mean More

Are you a new blogger, or as some of you call yourselves, “newbie blogger”, “nube”, “novice blogger”, “infant blogger, etc? Are you disheartened by the low visitor counts your blog is experiencing? Are you looking for help? When you hit the “publish” button, do you wonder if your post actually… read more Help For New Bloggers With Low Traffic

If you have a blog, and have signed up for affiliate ads, through such services as Commission Junction or LinkShare.com, you know you have the choice to insert banner/image ads, text link ads, or keyword link ads. Today’s Lesson Adding banner or picture ads of different sizes, is a matter… read more How To Create An Affiliate Text Link Ad

In my last post, I wrote about what can cause spikes in your visitor counts. By studying what caused these spikes, you may be able to convert some of that “spikey” traffic, to regular readers. Today’s Lesson First of all, remember, spikey traffic, can be fickle traffic. Some of those… read more Learn From Spikes In Visitor Counts

I call it “spikey” traffic. You see an instant increase (spike) in your visitor stats, only to see your visitor counts fall, in a day or two. Today’s Lesson What are the causes of spikes in your traffic or visitor stats? 1) You left a comment on another blog, and… read more What Causes Spikes In Visitor Statistics

Starting, and maintaining, a blog, is like learning how to sell real estate. How? You ask. I will start with a short story. Today’s Lesson Years ago, a friend was starting a new real estate business. She had sold real estate in the past, but now wanted to have her… read more Does Your Blog Sell Itself

Today’s Lesson If you read Darren Rowse’s blog at Problogger, he released a video, and answered the question, “How long did it take you to get 1000 visitors a day to your blog?” His answer was, “approximately one year”. Now, I’m assuming, he means a steady flow of 1000 visitors… read more Blogging – Readership Takes Time

Have you looked at your statistics to see how many “unique visitors” your have? Is the percentage of your unique visitors high, or low? Does it matter? Today’s Lesson Being analytical, I love to study my blog statistics. One number that stands out, is my “unique visits”, or “new visits”…. read more Unique Visitors – An Analysis

Oftentimes, bloggers don’t link to other sites, as they fear their readers may like the “other” site better, and they may lose a regular reader. Some bloggers won’t link to other sites, due to page rank…but that’s another story……. Today’s Lesson When I first started blogging, my second post was… read more Are You Avoiding Linking To Other Sites

Today I upgraded to WordPress 2.3.1. Today’s Lesson Shortly after upgrading to WP 2.3.1, I proceeded to write a post. As soon as I hit “Save and Continue Editing”, I received an error message that looked similar to this: Table ‘wordpress.wp_xxxxxxxxxx(database)cat’ doesn’t exist] SELECT c.cat_name FROM wp_post2cat p2c INNER JOIN… read more Error Message With Upgrade To WordPress 2.3.1

Several weeks ago, I wrote about how to use keywords and keyword phrases , and how I had signed up for HitTail. It took awhile to accumulated enough HitTail “keywords”, and for the long tail to grow. Today’s Lesson I carefully studied the keywords that HitTail produced, as well as… read more HitTail Results In More Traffic

Using WordPress for your blog, makes setting up a blog, posting and publishing easy. Today’s Lesson After you’ve been blogging for awhile, you may want to change your theme, add HTML code, or additional plugins to your blog. Finding the best source for technical information on WordPress, is right at… read more Best Resouce For Help With WordPress

If you have been surfing the internet, you have probably seen many sites that claim they make lots of money with their blog. Some will suggest, that If you buy their ebook, they will tell you how you can get rich, with a blog, too. Today’s Lesson Making money by… read more Can You Get Rich Blogging

Anyone who blogs, and researches “about blogging”, will run into the terminology “meta tags”. Today’s Lesson Meta tags, are “hidden”, HTML tags in your blog. Search engines can “see” these tags, however, they are not seen by your visitors. Meta tags can help with your SEO (search engine optimization), as… read more Meta Tags May Increase Your SEO

If you have been blogging for any length of time, you know about “Google page rank”. Today’s Lesson There is also an Alexa ranking. With Alexa, the lower the number, the better. It is written, that your Alexa rankings are looked at by services such as Text Link Ads. The… read more Alexa Ranking – Is It Important To You

Yesterday I wrote about How to Prepare For Uncreative Blogging Days Today, I will piggy back on that post, and discuss how to determine if your post should be divided up, into more than one post. By dividing a single post, into more than one post, will not only increase… read more Fine Tuning Your Posts

If you have been blogging for any length of time, you may have found that some days, you don’t feel very creative. In fact, you don’t even feel like writing. And, the harder you try to write a post that contains value for your readers, the bigger the writer’s block… read more Prepare For Uncreative Blogging Days

From time to time, I like to have fun with my blog. Today’s Lesson In the past I found enjoyment in writing two poems about blogging. One is titled: ” I Love To Blog”, and the other is: “Creativity Strikes Blogger At 3 a.m.” To kick off this lesson, and… read more Blogging Poetry – An Assignment

Are you new to blogging? Are you confused with all of the blogging language? Don’t understand your blogging software? Today’s Lesson When a person is new to blogging, learning all there is to know, can seem overwhelming. First of all, you have a new “language” to learn. But, what do… read more Blogging Definitions – A Fun Test – Part 1

This week’s lessons have been about duplicate content. Today’s Lesson Having studied Google’s Webmaster Help Center, Google suggest numerous ways in which we can decrease duplicate content in our blog pages. Included in their list are: Robots.txt files 301 Redirects Linking consistency Use of top level domains Careful syndication Use… read more How To Decrease Duplicate Content

Over the past two days, I have been writing about duplicate content. As discussed earlier, WordPress blogs are notorious for duplicate content. Duplicate content can confuse search engines, and can get you penalized by Google. Today’s Lesson While researching on Google’s website (webmaster tools), Google suggests using a robots.txt file… read more How Important Is A Robots txt. File

Today’s Lesson In an effort to reduce the amount of duplicate content I found on my blog pages, the first this was to use a plugin. The plugin I am using, is named: Homepage Excerpts WordPress Plugin written by Daniel Scocco. Thank you Daniel. What this easy to install, plugin… read more Plugin Reduces Duplicate Content

Over the past week, I have been spending time on Google’s website researching how search engines may see our blogs. Today’s Lesson One issue that caught my eye, is duplicate content in blogs. With WordPress, we have duplicate content throughout our blogs. One post can be “recorded” in many different… read more Duplicate Content – Should You Worry

It’s one thing to try and protect your blog posts from being plagiarized, however, now I’ve been asking myself, a different question. Today’s Lesson In the event of a natural, or man made disaster, how safe is my blog? Recently, (week of 10/21/07), if you watch the news, you saw… read more Save Your Blog

In my previous post, I wrote about adding internal links in your posts, to deter having your content plagiarized. Today’s Lesson How would you know if your content is being plagiarized, and if so, what will you do? Shortly after I started blogging, I wanted to see how many of… read more Has Your Content Been Plagiarized