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That Girl is Funny TGIF Links Review

My first commentator and absolutely young at heart favorite blogger has brought it to my attention a great network right on her site. In fact, she submitted the 100th post there and to my surprise brought in a lot of stumbles. So back when I asked if there was anybody out there, Cheryl came through. Call it lightning, she really came through again this time with TGIF Links.

TGIF Links

What is TGIF Links?

TGIF Links is located on thatgirlisfunny.com. It is a community within Cheryl’s blog which lets you share articles, participate and network with other bloggers. There’s basically four areas of concentration you will see distinctly:

Front Page Popularity – Vote up and comment on shared articles. If you’re on the go, having a glance here will show you what’s popular. You can RSS this section too!

Sharing Made Easy – Register, log in and submit articles to share with the community. Add a description and see your shares in the Latest section where others can vote on it.

Conversations – All shares come with the option to comment so you can voice yourself on the submission. Here you can make your thoughts or replies worthy.

Community – The amazing thing about this network is it has a large community and everyday the numbers grow. When you submit a link, someone may decide to follow you so you’ll always have readers ready to view the latest shares you provide.

NOTE: Spamming the network with sales pages or whatnot will not be accepted. In fact, you’re encouraged to be considerate of the community. Give them something to talk about, vote and comment on. Who knows, your followers might just be doing the same for your blog.

What are the benefits of joining TGIF?

TGIF Home

In order to join this community, you must register. It’s absolutely FREE. Use your gravatar e-mail if you have one. Your profile image will display your current chosen image from within. Once you’ve activated the link you receive through e-mail, upon logging in you’ll see the submit button at the top.

I decided to submit the July Month Review. When I enter in the URL of the link I wanted to share, the next page allowed me to add a few more things:

  • Title
  • Description
  • Chosen Category
  • Tags
  • Chosen Cropped Image
  • Subscribe to Comments

TGIF Fill in Description

After I filled in those options all I had to do was confirm what I input and let ‘er rip!

TGIF reviewJust like that my submission went through. It was at the top page of the Latest shares. Note: if your post is pending, most likely it needs to be checked by Cheryl. If it’s not spammy or salesy, you’ll see it soon.

So as I got in, I tweeted to share the submission again to my Twitter followers. Already there was one stumble. :) If you check over at the 100th post which Cheryl submitted to her TGIF Links, it got over 100+ stumble views by now. This let’s me know the community here is active. If you think about it, when you share something here, the more on target it is in terms of exposure, the more comments you can receive.

Watch below as Cheryl walks you through the community and shows you how to register and submit your links.

So what do you think?

Joining a link sharing community is worth your while when you can tweet, get stumbles and get shares. The exposure is very valuable when the visitors actually want to read your content. Even if they don’t, at least give them an opportunity to explore what you got.

The 100th post proved to me that this system works in terms of incoming traffic. Everyday I would see at least 10+ stumbles which is amazing. Thus, if you’ve read through the July Month Review, you’ll notice that 51% of the visitors are new.

Go ahead, post your links and see how it will be received. See what conversations will be stirred. The best part is you’ll be building backlinks as well. I think that’s already an incentive to join. Plus it costs you nothing. Zip. Nada. Zilch.

Once again here are the social networks and possibilities for your posts or shares:

  • Onsite voting system
  • Open conversations
  • Twitter tweets
  • Facebook Share
  • StumbleUpons
  • Onsite following

Overall, do not be alarmed by Cheryl’s passion for the martial arts. She puts the kick in fun.

To get yourself more familiar with the network, read this by the author herself.

How to Play the TGIF Links Game Effectively for the SITS Girl Problogger Challenge

Have you tried TGIF Links? What do you think? Share your stories below.

Filed Under: Performance Tagged With: , , , , , ,

July Month in Review PLUS Tools You Can Use to Track Your Site

Today’s post will feature a long list of new tools I’ve found which you can also use to track your site’s progress. This month alone is different from the others in that it has achieved a few things:

I hope in sharing this with you, you can get a better picture of your site’s overall progress. In turn, it will motivate you to practice the art of blogging. Without further ado, let’s see how this blog performed.

Everything was green across the board this month in Alexa. Woo hoo!!! Most of that came pretty much from you new readers so thank you. Some of the stats are below so you can see more of what the percentages are. Overall, the bounce rate decreased a bit at under 3%.

With the blog going beyond the 3 month period, it enabled Alexa to see more into the demographics.

Take a look below at the stats and see for yourself.

July Traffic RankingJuly ReachJuly ViewsJuly Pageview Per UserJuly Bounce RateJuly Time on SiteJuly Searches

As I mentioned earlier, passing the 3 month range unlocked the demographics analysis for the blog. The age range seems to be more towards the 25-34 year olds, some college level, without kids and are browsing from home.

July DemographicsAlong with that, what’s interesting is the upstream/downstream actions for this blog. Upstream meaning the site before they came to the blog and downstream is the site they go after. Take a look at the streams below.

July Upstream/Downstream SitesNow let’s head on over to SmartPageRank and take some clips in comparison to last month’s review when I talked about how you can convince someone there’s value with blogging. Take a look as the number of backlinks, indexed pages and value for this blog flew.

July SmartPageRank

Both Alexa and SmartPageRank are showing positive stats. I want to also include their description of this blog. It seems relevant as within one month, anything is possible. What’s interesting is the US rank is pulled and reference in regards to Australia who shows this blog is popular there as well. :)

July Alexa reviewJuly Smart Rank Synopsis

These stats are only scratching the surface. Let’s go into Google Analytics and see more of what we can get out there. As I logged into my dashboard, in the visitors section I saw the comparison of the new vs returning. Surprisingly most are new and the blog increased at a whooping 51%.

July Visits Analytics

The next field which peaked my interest further was visitor loyalty. The results here were not surprising because a few great things happened which drove insane amounts of traffic to this blog, most of which only bounced off but is the result of the large amount of percentage of new visitors.

On average this blog brings in about 17 readers daily. Within visitor loyalty under depth of visit, all the incoming traffic streams with the most visits are displayed. Here’s the breakdown below:

  1. RSS feed
  2. Direct links from blog commenting
  3. StumbleUpon thanks to Cheryl from ThatGirlisFunny
  4. BloggersUnite readers from blog post Empowering Disability
  5. DoFollow listing
  6. Feedburner e-mail
  7. Designer’s Digest readers from guest post Making Ideas Happen – Giveaway
  8. LinkWithin plugin which displays relevant post below posts
  9. John Chow dot Com commenting
  10. Feedburner Twitter updates
  11. Direct Twitter updates
  12. eBlogTip commenting
  13. Digg thanks to Kevin from Designer’s Digest

July Analytics Traffic Source

Looks like I’m going to have to work on conversion. As you can see, the number of pageviews is mostly on 1. Those that have viewed the site more than once is on average about 19 which comes from RSS subscribers or Twitter followers.

July Analytics Pageviews

Finally, under content within top content, I got a picture of what converted best. Over 2000+ views from Jun 27-Jul 27, here are the top converters:

  1. Main blog URL
  2. 100th post
  3. About page
  4. How to Restore WordPress post
  5. Archive page
  6. 7 Link Challenge Response post

July Analytics Top Content

More tools to analyze and track your site

When I was experiencing technical difficulties with the deletion of this blog, the site went down. I mentioned about downtime then. While you won’t think of it now, there are a couple of tools which you can use to measure your web host uptime which is important if you’re running it for business later.

uptime robot logoUpTimeRobot – Add up to 50 sites to monitor, get updates through e-mail, your cell or even Twitter when your site is down and also when it is back up. Ping is every 5 minutes. No cost. FREE. If you log into the site’s dashboard, you’ll get the see the last 24 hours. Really simple and easy to use for a beginner.

Host-Tracker logoHost-Tracker – Get the average percentage of uptime right to your blog. Monitor your site through a script with a button.  This service is more advice. They have distributed monitors which scours the net to see how your site measures. Reports are more technical. Great for advance monitoring.

Site Meter LogoSite Meter – With the Basic FREE plan, track your site in real time. By placing a button, you can see the summary and details of your visitors by location, referral sites, entry pages and more. Track the visits to your site by seeing it over time up to a year and even by page views. You can also see the ranking of which page had the most visits. Their reports are really valuable. You get to see how much visits your site gets by the hour! So it’s a great way to see when you actually get traffic to know when’s the best time to post.

Website In Depth logoWebsiteInDepth – Like SmartPageRank, this browser based FREE analytics tool is unique in that it gets the estimated value of your site. You can vote on content and usability, see your Alexa daily reach, sites close to your IP, geo location, similar sites within range, the DNS info, type of analytics used for tracking and Whois Info. The only drawback is you can only update the statistics once every 15 days. Check out my estimated value. :)

July Estimated Value from Website In Depth

Website Grader LogoHubSpot Website Grader – See how your site is doing in terms of SEO and social media. Simply input in your site’s URL, your e-mail address and get a report that displays a grade followed by a detail analysis of your content. There’s over five sections here first starting with your blog’s grade then towards how well you’re optimizing your internal pages, where it’s promoting, any conversion outlets for your site and finally it’s ranking. If you want further advice, you’re taken forward to HubSpot where there is a large plethora of FREE internet marketing information. This is one of my favorites. I came in at a 97. Not bad. Check out the site’s grade below.

July Website Grade

Got any more tools I haven’t mentioned worth discovering? Share below.

Filed Under: Performance Tagged With: , , , , ,

SeededBuzz in the Spotlight, A Program Which Can Help You Create Content with Many Benefits

I first found SeededBuzz as I went through Facebook. Normally, I click an ad the first instant something looks interesting so I don’t wait around twice for it to tell me, ‘Hey look, we’re promoting something!’

SeededBuzz Seed graphic

What I noticed as I read through the first page is it aligns with my ideology on blogging. Through meeting and writing about blog posts on your own blog, you’re promoting the blogger as well as yourself. I also liked that the interface is clean.

The only thing is in order for you to get in, you have to apply. Now, not knowing how long it would take, I went through the application process which took about 2 minutes.

Here’s what you need to know in order to open up an account:

  • have an e-mail address
  • an invite code if any
  • a twitter username (optional)
  • a website or blog
  • then select the choices below
    • are you willing to publish guest posts?
    • write for paid posts?
    • be contacted by other bloggers?
  • choose 1-5 choices from a vast variety of categories
  • solve a math problem so they know you’re human
  • submit form

When I submitted my application, the next day it was accepted. With a speedy response, that’s high up in my book. Not only did that helped with following up further, it inspired me to write up this post.

I forgot to mention the categories available for you to plant a seed and buzz about. This will give you a better impression of the types of posts and blogs presented there. In turn, browsing through them will help you find some ideas for generating new posts.

SeededBuzz CategoriesNow when you receive your first welcome letter, you’ll be schooled in a couple of matters – seeds and buzz.

What is a seed?

Planting a Seed is you telling other bloggers about your blog post and inviting them to continue the conversation on their blog and link back to you. Just like the 7 link challenge, this program allows other bloggers to practice the art of linking. The only difference is you need to be a little bit more creative than simply linking posts.

You want to plant something that is worth conversing so that other bloggers will talk about it. This carries us to our next point – buzz.

What is buzz?

Buzz happens when you or another blogger picks up on, writes about and links to a Seed and submits it on the same page as the Seed itself. Basically, it’s what others are saying about the seed you planted or someone else planted. Buzz will carry on the seed onto other blogs thus producing a trial of blogs interlinking themselves to one another. Members will be able to click through and read about the full buzz on your blog or the relevant blog which has buzzed below you.

The advantages are immense. While it’s a practice which we all know brings in ranking to the blogosphere, it’s also good karma to get to know your neighbor better. It’s what I’ve been doing and what I’ve been preaching so far. Namely with integrating relative conversations into a new blog post.

Not only that, to make it worth your while, when you build up your buzzes, you’ll earn points towards free seeds. FREE users in general will be able to plant only 2 seeds per month, however with a premium plan, the seeds can reach pass the 2 mark.

However most of us don’t want to pay here, in fact, we want it the other way around. Pay us or give us something worthwhile so that we’re motivated to blog more about it. For bloggers, this brings on an opportunity for your site. You can start showcasing what you know. This solves a couple of problems most new bloggers will face:

  • bringing in new visitors
  • writing new content
  • promoting your site to new traffic

There are also companies here which might reach out to you. You and I, our attention is something valuable. Not only that, our word which we represent through reviews is considered gold.

Companies want to hear what we’re saying and they’re willing to pay you for it as well. If you have chosen paid posts as one of your options, you’ll get to hear more about this incentive part of the program. While this review is underway, I have not yet had a chance to test out this feature.

Stay tune for that in future posts.

SeededBuzz Home

How the program works

  • Apply
  • Plant your Seed
  • Wait as your seed creates Buzz
  • Seeds will be published via SeededBuzz‘s Twitter, Stumble and Digg feeds
  • Create a Buzz
  • Accept Guest Posts
  • Write Guest Posts
  • Tag Seeds for later Buzzing

The SeededBuzz training explains the overall process very well. In about 5 days you can accomplish all this.

How do they screen which blogs are accepted?

  • Posts are written at least every two weeks for two months
  • Contain original, well written and interesting content
  • Linking to other blogs for reference
  • Well designed
  • Talking to a small niche and attracting an audience
  • Connecting with other blogs
  • Does not contain illegal content

What’s the cost of joining?

FREE. Watch the demo video about SeededBuzz below to see how it works.

Promoting SeededBuzz

Once you’re accepted as a member, you’re encouraged to place a banner on your site. The choices range from mini-buttons to large flash banners with the cute little smily seed. Find one to your liking and then move on towards planting a seed.

SeededBuzz banners

Planting the first seed.

I had to think about what I wanted to create buzz around. Suddenly I thought about the 7 Link Challenge which Karen from A Meaningful Existence passed on. It was a perfect seed to plant.

I whipped up my response, refined the blog post, wrote a summary of it for SeededBuzz readers and then associate the seed with my link and let it rip. Now, this was over the weekend so I waited another day until someone actually buzzed about my seed.

Easy as that, I had an incoming link from Melissa Mashburn over at Sugar Filled Emotions who followed through. I read her 7 Link Post and commented to let her know how much I appreciate her buzz. This reciprocated the process.

Overall, did the program work? Absolutely.

Some Tips for Seeding

The buzz may vary upon your topic. You want to have your first seed be something general enough all bloggers will be able to contribute to. In closing, SeededBuzz is a great place to build backlinks to your site with bloggers who are standing by to buzz about you. On the other hand, blogs are waiting for you to buzz about them.

It is crucial that when you join, you upload a profile picture of yourself. This will help other members put a face to the blog which you’ve planted a seed or buzz from. When you do that, that makes you real and not someone who’s in just for linking. All in all, it creates a warm presence for your visitors.

Once again, the training where you’re taken through the first 5 days is a must read. It’s basically a walkthrough of the entire program. Most of the time, members end up lounging when they join something. This tutorial comes in handy and it’s also sent to you by by e-mail. So go for it.

I’ve only been through the first day. I’m planning my second with the buzz following up. So far, I’ve tagged those seeds which has peaked my attention. See how SeededBuzz can help you create buzz.

Read more about SeededBuzz on their blog. Read about the latest seeds. Some Q+A on frequently asked questions about the program and blogging in general. Join SeededBuzz.

Filed Under: Performance Tagged With: , , ,

What is DDOS and How You Can Better Protect Yourself From This Dangerous Attack

DDOS is a term which means distributed denial-of-service. It is also known as a crash or smurf. It’s an attack which happens on a software level per se because your site is rendered useless temporarily or permanently through incoming requests.

This eventually turns into an attack that can be big enough to slow down your site’s function, consume it’s resources or even stop it from communicating effectively online. In this case, it’s paralyzed. Check out Encyclopaedia Dramatica which goes into detail with humorous pictures about how a denial of service works or even Cert’s article on DDOS and what you can do about it. CNet also wrote about the difference between connections so you know what’s a regular request, a DDOS and one that’s filtered to protect you from a DDOS attack.

DDoS Attack depictionHackers tend to use this type of attack and it even has spawned different variations as attacks become more sophisticated towards more intelligent systems. Dmitry Tarkanov talks about Black DDOS over at SecureList and explains how one type of DDOS process works. Team Cymru also provides you in-depth reading towards DDOS Basics in their whitepapers section. Jelena Mirkovic also has written a journal on A Taxonomy of DDoS Attack and Defenses. There’s also a cheatsheet towards considering, preparing and analyzing DDOS if they do occur from Lenny Zeltser.

The thing is these types of attacks are being created everyday to test systems as well. So if you think of it in terms of lab experiments, it takes on a nightmare of it’s own in the real world. It’s essential to know what’s going on to protect your site from future losses.

To put it into perspective, here’s what happened and what’s going on right now in the world:

These examples are enough to show you on a global scale how dangerous DDOS attacks can be. I would think my site has nothing to give to hackers and they have no reason to attack my site. But then again, if I had created enemies, DDOS is a great way to render my voice useless via bringing my site down.

This is a dangerous problem in the online world today. While you may think that your site is not susceptible to DDOS attacks, think again. Sites are being hit everyday and a lot of money are being lost because of it. A LOT!

DDOS Attack cartoonBefore we go all Sherlock Holmes and point the finger at a recent conversation we’ve been in which might of resulted in your site’s downtime, let’s backtrack. Look at the evidence and the facts on what’s really going on.

What’s your host saying? Some things are coincidental and some things are beyond our imagination in doing. If you can imagine it, it’s possible but is the attacker whom you’re pinpointing your blame towards capable of such technical know how?

I would think not. But then again, I could be wrong. It only takes a program, a few plugins or some modifications which loads the script you want and attack! There goes your site.

Reality Check, Another Side to DDoS

On the other hand, let’s not get ahead of the real problem and that is:

  • your site is still down
  • your host is trying to fix it via a hardware issue (or so they say, my downtime article explains this)
  • your site is now experiencing a DDOS

Contrary to downtime, the hit towards my web host produced the status below.

Server Status DDOSWhat is really going on?

Servers can experience issues when they are upgraded and normally these issues would include a few things – exploits, buffers or holes. Microsoft is notorious for this because they’re always distributing patches which covers up the security holes we so frequently have. Thus, you might be familiar with their security updates.

Software in general is not very streamlined to handle all tasks. Programmers kind of take it as it come to make the future versions better. So if you often see something like a changalog or a log of changes which shows the bugs and the modifications repaired, you’ll understand that documentation of work is an ongoing process much like downtime.

The thing is these problems can also create a DDOS via hardware issues. So rather than having the granduer notion of being attacked by a hacker. Think of it in terms of a software program which is written incorrectly and not really tested accordingly.

It’s the main reason beta versions are released everyday so that users can challenge the programmers in which they can finalize products. Some hosting providers now will allow you to purchase a premium service which will attach itself to your server’s DNS and bounce off DDOS attacks if detected. That might be something to consider if going big is something you want with your site.

Here are some resources to better educate you on DDOS. I’ve mentioned them in the beginning of the article but I’ll list them here again for your convenience.

Have you experienced a DDOS? From a hacker, your web host or what? Share.

Filed Under: Performance Tagged With: ,

Blogging Through E-mail, The Posterous Way

Some spam landed inside my comment box but I was curious because it said anti-snore. Plus it had an extension leading to Posterous, another blogging platform some of you may be familiar with. The spam site overall wasn’t too pleasing, junk information which anyone can Google, backed by a product on the front page and chock load of keywords below. I decided there’s got to be something else more pleasing.

Posterous LogoClicked through to Posterous and was amazed with the first impression. The landing page was quite clean in design. Without going below the fold I glanced over to the right sidebar as I’m asked Who’s it for? Impressive. Scrolled down and noticed that the footer remained static. Convincingly with their non-invasive design, asking another blogger to switch over might be a temptation.

Posterous Front Page

What Posterous Can Do

All the well-known FREE platforms like Blogger, Typepad, SquareSpace, Tumblr, WordPress and even Flickr was on the list of switchover made easy. There’s plenty more so just click on any one of the platforms available and you’ll see the comparison. Reasons why Posterous might be better for you is convincing here.

However, I’m more concern with design and while WordPress has some of the best templates around, I don’t have a clue about CSS. Honestly, that might propel me NOT to switch. As a blogger, I found that design is like clothes, I need to change it frequently, even if it’s in the little regards. Not knowing CSS is already limiting my accessibility.

Will Posterous allow me to tweak my theme without touching too much of code?

I had to find out. So what I did was read through the FAQ and get this! You blog through e-mail! If I missed that the first time around I apologize, I was looking more for overall features. When that was resolved, the a-ha moment came through.

Posterous Switch Page
Who Posterous is Good For

Scrolling through the FAQ, the overall feel of blogging on Posterous was obvious. This would be a great platform for those on the go who’s constantly with their phone. Catering to this kind of crowd is smart because who knows, at just about any minute on the train, the bus or flight across somewhere, a new blog post with a picture is written and published.

I find the e-mail part is still not catching on to me. If I had a nice smart phone which I was on all day this would be a godsend. But I’m more into writing long articles. So this is almost indirect in nature. I’m so use to logging into my dashboard and checking the stats, this forces me to check my e-mail.

What if I’m distracted by other e-mails?

Posterous calms me down and continuously provides reasons why they think publishing through e-mail is better. You can also post through a document which converts into a page for you or through a link and if it’s a video, they’ll also embed it for you.

We focus on THE best email experience, and do a lot more to support large photo galleries and other file downloads. Other sites force you to upload through cumbersome web forms. With posterous, you can attach any files you want. Plus, you don’t have to remember a gibberish secret email address. Just post@posterous.com and that’s it.

Posterous AutopostAs I got deeper into other features Posterous showcases, here is what I found.

  • autopost – broadcast to social media sites to update your followers on Twitter, Facebook and so on.
  • bookmarklet – let’s you find things you like on other sites and post it onto yours like videos, photos, etc.
  • markdown – for fancying up your posts, this rich-text language can be used to make your posts look good.
  • custom domains help – down the line if you want to transition your blog to your own domain, Posterous will help you with the technical process.
  • analytics and feed – like other blogs, analytics through Google and RSS through Feedburner is possible.
  • widgetized – paired with WidgetBox , display your posts as a widget or even share with other Posterous members.

Still curious? What about AD-FREE. For those who aren’t into the blogosphere yet, here’s a great spot to stretch some muscles. While Blogger and WordPress may lead the pack, with a little patience and some time, getting your blog up can be a snap. Better yet, already have one with one of other platforms listed? Transfer over. Now just publish through e-mail.

What Posterous Might Not Be Good For

Somewhere down the road, your blog might be something you want to monetize. Who knows, it might also be something you’re attached to but having no control over it is something most FREE services do. They only give you the space and tools for you to whip up your storm. In the long haul, if you’re going against the terms of service, don’t be surprise to see your blog go bye-bye overnight.

Such as the case with most blogs who think that FREE services are worth trying. Just know you’re treading on risky grounds. All the hard work can be wasted. Those who are into marketing, SEO or making money online should not consider FREE services. It’s better to get a self-hosted account if profits and long-term marketing is your thing. You can start as early as testing out the first month. But I suggest 3 months or more will give you effective results.

This is if a few things are important to you:

  • site ranking
  • monetization
  • control

Otherwise, if you’re not into SEO or the ranking of your site isn’t important and while you haven’t yet ventured into having your own domain, Posterous might be a fun place to blog on. After all, there’s no system to learn the ropes of. All you need to know is how to send an e-mail and your post is published.

Posterous Easy E-mailCheck out Posterous’ blog to read more about new features they’re including. Take a look around other Posterous blogs and get a feel for what they are. Remember, if you can e-mail, you can blog.

This article is not a paid post by Posterous, it is only the author’s stumbling onto the site, follow by reading through which led to this review. If you find Posterous worthwhile, share it with someone you think will benefit from this blogging platform.

Filed Under: Performance Tagged With: , , , ,
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