Sorry for the absence, but future posts will make up for it, we promise!
We recently came across a theme for Wordpress called Thesis – If you have thought about using Wordpress or building a website you should start here (unless if you are a developer, who has a ton of time on your hands, then you are on your own). The Thesis theme fills a void that is left between developers and casual Wordpress users who have a basic overview of HTML. On one side you can be a developer and manipulate Wordpress to however you would like and on the other side if you are not, you are limited to the basic look and feels that developers create with their templates. This is the first time that we have seen a theme fall into the middle – if you know basic HTML, you can tweak the attributes of the the theme in minutes to have the theme look and feel the way that you want it to. Thesis is the predecessor to Cutline and we must say blows it and any other Wordpress themes that we have seen out of the water. The secret behind the Thesis theme is the flexibility that is provided by using the OpenHooks plugin (which comes as part of download package).
It seems that every day, I get two more spam messages from the CyberWyre contact form than the day before. I’m now at a rate of about one every two minutes. I had to put this to an end, and just inserted a contact form with a CAPTCHA test to reduce the spam to hopefully zero.
The contact form that I’m using is the Dagon Design Form Mailer, which so far seems to be working. No spam yet! If you’re suffering from contact form spam as I was, I’d highly recommend checking it out, and installing it or a similar script.
I was just looking over my server logs for the past few months, and I noticed something very interesting. I didn’t even write my most popular pages! From CyberWyre logs, below are the most popular pages on this entire site:
What this shows to me is that you may not necessarily need to be the most grammatically correct, or write the most controversial, or witty articles to get a good amount of traffic — just give the people something useful, something they want. These types of pages are very easy to link to, and tend to get a lot of attention from sites like Digg or Netscape.
If you have some good web application development skills, try putting together a few PHP scripts to integrate with your WordPress blog. Think of some nifty little widget that others might find interesting or cool and drop it in your site. The best part is that once you develop it, it requires absolutely no further work to maintain. I wrote an article on inserting PHP script inline with your WordPress articles, titled Gotta Love Automatic Money.
I just stumbled across an interesting article on ProBlogger. Darren of ProBlogger asked his readers whether or not they believe links from their site should open in a new window, and 54% of them responded yes. I just wanted to respond to this survey, and add my comments. It has always been my belief that if you are blogging for profit, the moment your reader leaves your website, you loose the opportunity to monetize their traffic. As such, it has been my policy that external, non-ad links open in a new window (or tab). This ensures that once your reader is finished with the link you suggested, it is easy for them to return quickly to your page and you don’t risk them forgetting and simply closing the browser.
What are your comments on this? Should links from your blog open in a new window?
It’s been some time since I’ve updated my highest paying AdSense keywords list and I’m surprised by the results that I’ve found. It appears that mesothelioma attorneys are again paying the highest price for online advertising, at $69.10per click! It has always been the trend that attorneys, insurance companies, and loan consolidation services are among those paying the most for online advertising, as they stand to make the most from a single client than many other businesses advertising online — which is the reason why the term “magazine subscription” is priced at $2.25/click and “mesothelioma treatment options” is over $69/click.
Below are the top-25 most expensive search keywords.
I recently had the chance to check out WordZe, a new keyword research tool aimed at helping those in the affiliate marketing business. WordZe offers many interesting and useful tools to analyze keyword search trends, to find competitive sites given certain keywords, and many others.
I have been thinking of developing a few websites related to flowers to take advantage of search traffic for events such as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, etc and used the tools WordZe had to offer to refine my ideas. In particular, I was interested to know the search volume for the word “color”, pertaining to flower, or more in particularly rose colors. Using WordZe’s keyword trends search feature, I was able to obtain some interesting results:
I spent a good part of my day today researching new advertising networks such as Clicksor, and AdSonar to see if they are worthwhile experimenting with on CyberWyre. For those of you who have been readers since the beginning, you probably remember me talking about Text Link Ads (TLA) for some time now. Since discovering TLA, I have not found another advertising program which has given me a higher, and more stable monthly income than they have. For over a year now, I have been able to maintain a good monthly income from TLA, with payments received promptly on the first of every month via PayPal. I have also not been able to find a suitable replacement for them which will give a higher income.
This has lead me to the conclusion that I LOVE Text Link Ads!
I’ve been using Text Link Ads since March 2006, and have nothing but positive things to say about them. I have had many direct email conversations with the president of TLA, Patrick Gavin, and can tell that he genuinely cares about his users, and takes an effort to personally reply to every message that you send him. Due to TLA’s strict Page Rank requirements (qualifying sites must have a PR > 3), it ensures good rates per link sold for qualifying publishers.
I’ll keep this post short, since I have no real fresh content to post here, other than my appreciation for TLA and what it’s done for me over the past year.
If you haven’t done so already, do check them out, and let me know your experiences with them so far. From what I have read, many other bloggers out there are quite happy with them as well.
A poll has been collecting votes from visitors to this site for a number of months now, recording their monthly income from blogging. It is not to my surprise that the majority of blogs are making less than $20 per month. From 2,411 votes collected, over 50% of these reported having a monthly income less than 20 dollars. Below are the results of the poll.
CyberWyre Poll Results
Reported Blog Earnings / Month
$0 – $20 (51%)
$1250 + (21%)
$20 – $120 (15%)
$120 – $450 (8%)
$450 – $850 (4%)
$850 – $1250 (2%)
If it is your goal to earn an income online from your website, then you’ve got to stop thinking about what you find interesting, and what the masses will find interesting. Traffic = Money. Maybe there’s 50 people out there who care to read about what you did today, but how can you attract 50,000 people to your website in one day? Everybody cares about love, everybody cares about sex, everybody cares about health. Perhaps your next site could be about better living, or the latest gossip in the Paris Hilton prison case. This site, CyberWyre, became a hit because everybody cares about money.
It happens to all of us — perhaps you’re like me, and haven’t had the time to write for your blog in a few weeks, and now that you’re finally free, just can’t think of how to start again; Maybe you’ve already written about everything there is to write about in your niche, and can’t think of anything else to say, or maybe you’re just simply stuck. Whatever it is, you’re not alone.
With now over 60 million blogs online, and two new ones created every second, to stay competitive for your readers, it’s imperative that you produce fresh, original content almost daily. This isn’t always easy to do, especially if your site has been around for a while and you’ve nearly covered everything there is to say. Here’s a few tricks that I like to try when I’ve hit writers block:
1. Try searching around the net a bit for keywords surrounding your topic. What’s going on that you haven’t heard about yet? What are others talking about? What interests you? Chances are it’ll interest your readers too. For example, I will search terms such as “blogging for profit”, SEO, etc.
2. Take a break! Go do something completely non-writing related. Go work out, walk your dog, relax with your family, anything but think about your writing. This article came to me in the shower, randomly.
3. Start with just one word. Everything starts somewhere, doesn’t it? Start with a word, and just go with it. Write a sentence, maybe two. It doesn’t matter if it makes sense or not. I find that as I write more, my language becomes clearer as I go. You can always backtrack, cut-up, and rewrite the gibberish that you started with.
4. Have a drink! It might just be what you need to loosen up a little to get your writing juices flowing. You might also try anything that excites you. Go jump in the snow, have a cold shower, or a shot of espresso — whatever it takes to get you moving.
5. Have a conversation with someone about the topic you will be writing on. It would be helpful to a) speak with someone who is knowledgeable in your subject area — they may challenge you to think in ways which you haven’t; And b) speak with someone who knows nothing about your subject. Find out what they could learn from speaking with you. Maybe your readers could benefit from learning the same things.
6. Work on more than one project at a time. I’ve found that when I get stumped with one writing task, I may have great ideas for another, or have great success starting something completely different. Put your current work aside and come back to it in a few hours.
7. Make bulleted, indented lists of topics and subtopics which you can write about. It doesn’t matter if they are related, or make any sense. Just write. These lists will provide a great aid in finding good section headings and topics for the article that you’re trying to write.
Hopefully these suggestions will help you get out of a writing rut, if you should find yourself in one. You might also want to take a look at this great guide: When You Can’t Get Started Writing, which overviews the complete writing process from finding your ideas, to polishing your final draft.
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