I am compiling a list of Commentluv-enabled blogs that are also Do-Follow. For more information, please check out Homemade Bread. The completed list will be featured here, as well as there.
Get your blog listed today! URLs accepted for a limited time only!
One of the biggest reasons I moved over to WordPress from Blogger is that I found joining the I Follow Movement did very little good in Blogger’s format: the rel=”no follow” attribute is taken down, but comment links are led back to Blogger profiles, not to the blog. Fat lot of good that does to spread link love!
I realize that my blog is by far not one of the biggest or even all that popular - the highest number of hits I think I have ever gotten in one day is in the neighborhood of 250 unique visitors. This isn’t a niche blog by any means - I write about whatever moves me at the moment! - which often makes it harder to get a strong readership. But the idea of giving my readers and commentators a little reward in the form of link love very strongly appealed to me. Andy Bailey’s Commentluv WordPress plug-in gave me the opportunity to do exactly that.
When I posted about my favorite WordPress plugins, Andy left me a comment about his new AjaxCommentluv plugin and I ended up being the first beta tester for it. For this, Andy gave me link credit on the AjaxCommentluv plugin page.
As if that weren’t enough, this morning I discovered that I am the very first Featured Site at Commentluv!
Those who are registered at Commentluv will be able to select from a number of their last posts (as opposed to their last post only) while leaving comments on other Commentluv enabled blogs, have access to a lot of fascinating statistics, have the ability to change your feed URL and a lot more!
If you do not have Commentluv - people, what are you waiting for! Besides spreading link love to your readers and commentators, you will “be in business” with one of the friendliest plugin coders on the web.
Thank you, Andy for all your link love. I’ve sincerely enjoyed working with you. When you need future beta testers, do not hesitate to contact me!
Also, thanks to Sire for a very lovely review!
I’m not going to get too crazy here, but I am now using some banner ads on my site.
Since joining Entrecard, I’ve come across several blogs where people are talking about and are pleased with Freebies4webmasters. The payout is pretty decent, too. As you all well know, we could really benefit from some additional income, so I signed up. You put a code on three URLs of your site and get £10 for the first month, paid out through Paypal and £5 each additional month your site/blog keeps the banners up. And yes, Paypal will convert the currency for you for a small fee. That converts to about $16 for the first month, about $8 each additional month. Plus, for every site you refer, you get an additional £10.
Sweet!
I see an opportunity.
Husband and I have this phenomenally great chemistry with regard to all-things-money: sincerely, I have never been on the same wavelength with another human being about finances and expenses the way I am with Husband. That’s not to say we are reflecting that well these days! Rather, it’s here that the opportunity showed itself to me.
I have started a new blog.
The purpose of this blog is to first and foremost, be a source of passive income for us with ads and hopefully affiliations. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it’s going to be a place where I organize my thoughts and ideas about money-making and money-saving to share with my readers. I subscribe to and have come across (via Entrecard) a large number of blogs that cover these types of topics, but I always feel like something is missing. Hopefully I can fill that gap.
(That is not to say that these blogs aren’t worthwhile reads - they most certainly are! It’s only to say that a lot of them strike me as too narrow or too broad of focus.)
Without further ado, please meet my new blog: Homemade Bread. Get it?!
I have spent most of yesterday evening and today installing and tweaking it, so there isn’t much there past a welcome greeting.
Yet.
Stay tuned.
Just a quick note to let y’all know that I’m doing some tweaking and that CommentLuv may be down at times here. Andy (of CommentLuv fame) has provided me with the Beta version of his Ajax CommentLuv, which I am testing “in the wild” and we’ve encountered a bump or two.
Please stand by.
I’ve heard lots of things about Entrecard about the interwebs and finally went over to have a gander myself. It seems like a really great program if one has the time (I do).
The premise is fairly simple: you are, more or less, swapping advertising space with fellow bloggers. You drop your card on blogs participating in the program to earn credits, which you then spend to advertise on a blog of your choice (obviously, it must also be participating in the program). You also earn credits when others advertise on your blog.
I’m finding quite a number of new (to me) blogs that I’m really interested in. And hell, I did just eliminate some of my Google Reader subscriptions, so now there’s room for some of the blogs I’m encountering that I think are pretty swell. I’ve already subscribed to a few! Even better, some participators of the program have I Follow policies! There are even several blogs that have impressive Page Ranks.
Some of the bloggers on Entrecard take Entrecard very seriously, dropping the maximum 300 cards per day, and/or posting monthly about their Top Droppers, etc. There are contests where the prizes are X number of Entrecard credits, “slots” to play, and a number of other ways to earn extra Entrecard credits. It’s been very fun exploring and dropping my card around. I’ve “purchased” some advertising space on a few blogs and some has been purchased from me.
Take a peek over in my sidebar for Today’s Featured Blog and if you can, click through to visit!
Entrecarders, don’t forget to leave a comment for some link love!
One of the reasons I moved over to WordPress was to get CommentLuv. What a great concept! It is by and far my favorite plug-in. If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog and don’t use CommentLuv, than you are just a big, fat meanie! To further spread the link love, I have used the NOFF plug-in so that when you do leave a comment, you get a link that follows back to your site. This is what it is all about! I Follow! I got these two plug-ins immediately after installing WordPress.
More recently, I have found a most excellent plug-in: Micro*Kid’s Related Posts Plug-in. It’s ridiculously easy to use and looks quite fabulous, too. It does not find related posts automatically, so I have had to go back and edit some of my posts to link them to related posts, but it was worth the effort, particularly that it reciprocates (link Post A to Post B, Post B is automatically linked back to Post A as related).
I also use the All-in-One SEO Pack. It’s a great way to add meta tags to single posts. I won’t swear to results from this plug-in, but then I haven’t done the research yet.
To tackle the never-ending spam problem, I use Spam Karma 2. It’s done a pretty good job so far, only harvesting one comment that wasn’t spam, but caught every actual spam comment. I know everyone loves Akismet ’round these parts, but it required getting a key and I read that some folks were having issues with that in the Global Dashboard. Best avoid that problem altogether, thanks.
Other great plug-ins I use:
It wasn’t easy finding good plug-ins for WordPress 2.6, since it’s still fairly new. A lot of plug-ins creators haven’t had time or opportunity to update their plug-ins. Too bad for me, since there are a number of them I have my eyes on!
Last month, we were Blogging the Recession. I subscribed to every blog that commented on the original post, as well as to every blog that was posted on my Plurk Blogroll. This meant my subscription list in Google Reader had nearly 200 blogs! And I kept my pledge as best as I could, clicking through to every post in an effort to help out with pennies or page views/comments.
Now that it’s September and I’ve become busy with off-line matters like knitting and football season and whatnot, I’m overwhelmed by the content in my Google Reader.
To deal with it, I’ve unsubscribed to a lot of feeds.
First off my subscription list are those that do not provide full content feeds. Teaser feeds don’t entice me - they irritate the snot out of me. I suppose I understand the motive for teaser feeds and perhaps it works to get more people onto their site and/or leaving comments, but it doesn’t work for me. I offer full-content feeds here and hope that, if so moved, my readers will click through.
Further, while I realize there is no better time than now to post about it, I’ve been put off by more than one blog author posting about the election and/or the candidates from both sides of the aisle. Perhaps I’m becoming more… erm, what’s the right word here? Uptight? Refined? Snooty? Diplomatic? Point is, I just don’t care to discuss or read about political opinions. I’m not persuaded by it and I don’t hope to persuade others to my line of thinking, either.
All that said, I still have 166 subscriptions! A score of them haven’t been updated in months. I spent some time this morning virtually cleaning up and dividing them into categories:
Sheese!
Update: Having just went through my Google Reader for purposes of catching up, I have unsubscribed to 2 more blogs.
I also wanted to add a point about how lame I find commenting on blogs that use both Captcha and comment moderation. Seems these blogs are also the ones with next-to-no comments. I’m going to let you on a little secret: using both is totally unnecessary and only serves to drive away would-be commenters! I understand (really, I do!) that you don’t want to be spammed, but if you are moderating comments, you can simply reject spam and if you are using Captcha, that will catch the spam. I am boycotting leaving comments on your blog on principle, dammit, ’cause it’s just plain annoying.
