Tag Archives: Media

Learning Some New Code, Stylesheets, Themes and Design

June 1, 2008 – 4:42 pm

I neglected by blog posts this weekend and instead opted for a new design, look, or fell, or whatever. I was trying to consolidate some older pages, and make it a little easier to get around the information I have posted already.  I am still putting the finishing touches on some of the graphics but you get the idea now. I would love to hear what you think about the new design, what can be improved or changed. This is a busy week coming up, our new study over at the Damascus blog is starting in Romans and will be posted on Tuesday.

Learning to Use a Stylesheet and PHP

Over time I have had to learn how to use a CSS or Stylesheet and some basic PHP.  As I have leaned more and more code I have found a bit of freedom to be able to change and adjust things to be exactly the way I want them to be, and in the process be able to mess things up as well.  I would really recommend learning as much code as you possibly can, over time, it will be invalueble to you since everything runs on code.

By Scott Fillmer | Posted in Media | Also tagged design, theme | Comments (0)

A New Daily Journal to Keep, Called a Blog of Course

April 13, 2008 – 4:49 pm

This is the first post in a daily journal I hope to update each day, even if just a little blurb, about the days happenings. This type of posting, more closely resembles a journal, was inspired by the memory of my mother in-law, Georgia Christal. I am creating a blog with the journals she created long before blogs ever existed, I hope I can keep up with her.  During a span of 3 years when she lived over seas in Europe, she wrote daily about what happened each day, and looking at it almost 10 years later, I can see what an amazing piece of work this turned out to be. I will make an attempt to write a daily post in this particular blog (I have several others), of just the normal routine of things.

Some days it may be a sentence, some paragraphs, but my goal is to write something in the blog each day. I have been a photographer for more than 10 years now, and one of the hardest things to do in photography is to actually get off your butt and go shoot something. I think it is the same with blogs or journals, you just have to get off your butt and do it.

When I look back at the images I was able to create because I took the time to go out and shoot, I am amazed, and glad I did make the effort.

Is a Blog a Blog or is it a Journal

All you bloggers out there, do you keep a daily journal, or is that really what you consider your blog to be?  This blog has been active and alive in various forms for years now, and when I look back at the various entries, I see a journal of what was important enough, at the time, to actually put down in a post.  My blog has been many things to me, a scrapbook, a blog, a journal, a business tool, soapbox, but that is just it, it can be whatever you want it to be. Today as I start writing daily entries of what went on in my day I will use it as a journal or diary of sorts, but I am sure down the road, it will grow into something more.  What about your blog?  What is the prime use or purpose you have for even having a blog… do you know or have you even thought about it yet?

In Dallas For No Good Reason

So what is going on right now.  Well the photo below was taken yesterday of my mother-in-law’s memorial service, so we happen to be in Dallas for her service.  One of the hardest weeks Deborah and I have gone through in a while but we are now on our way back home, finally.  I took many photos (on my iphone) that few days while we were in the hospital, mainly because all you have to do is sit and wait.  In the future I think I will do a much longer post about this week, but for now, here are a few images from those few days.

Flowers outside Baylor Hospital

Scott at the hospital, self portrait

Georgia\'s Memorial Service

The photo in the middle is the most telling to me.  I had nothing in the way of a camera to use for about the week we were in and out of the hospital other than my iphone, and I think it did an incredible job.  In total I probably took a few hundred photos with my phone, many of which tell the days and week better than these, but for a first journal entry, this is what we did yesterday and the few days before.  The idea of a “journal” actually came to me from Georgia.  She kept two journals while they lived in France and Germany which I am chronicling in My Life in Europe.  There will be better entries than this, I promise.

By Scott Fillmer | Posted in Journal, Travel | Also tagged action, dallas, georgia, hospital, texas | Comments (0)

Is Writing a Guest Post Article Worth the Time

January 2, 2008 – 5:00 am

I have looked at writing as a guest contributor to several blogs and sites and finally took the plunge when I read another article about a marketing company looking for some guest post articles. Each company or person’s needs are different, so as a content writer, your skills might not always match the needed content, but when it does you should consider writing a guest article.

There are some key questions to ask yourself before you decide to write the article and I will discuss a few of those below. If you would like to see the 3 part article you can visit allinanchor, or read the first part of the article, You Don’t Have to Run From the Online Competition, Part 1, and follow the link to the second and third article at the bottom.

Is It Worth Your Time

There are so many factors that will go into your decision to be a contributing writer but one of the main things to look at should be your time. I will list the items below I believe are the most important in factoring in the time it is going to take to write a high quality article for another site.

Don’t expect another business to want your second hand articles or take what you have left over. You will have to spend the time it takes to do it right, and you will want to, after all, it is your name that will be associated with the article.

How Much Time Will it Actually Take

If you want to write a high quality article you can expect it to take some time to put together. No company is going to want a content writer that throws something together in five minutes and then hands it over. Take a close look at how long it will take, and if you actually have the time to do the project.

Be honest with yourself. You may have all the qualities and abilities to write this article but you may not realistically have the time to do it. Look at how much research is involved, how much detail you normally put into an article, and what is required by the company.

Plan to spend several hours putting all the information together, writing the article, editing, proofing, and all the necessary things to give the company a completely finished product.

What are the Requirements for the Article

The article I wrote for allinachor was a three part article in about 2500 words, so it did take several hours to put together and write. Make sure you know going in what the company wants in the way of an article. How long does it need to be, does it need photos or images, and what category it should be posted to.

You should also find out what specific topic should be discussed. Some times this is up to the writer but many times the site will need a specific direction for the article and it is important to follow that guideline to complete a successful article.

Will it Take Away From Your Own Blog

Any time writing for another blog will take time away from your own blog. Do you have this time to spare? You can prepare articles for your own blog in advance if you don’t have time to do both at the same time, but be sure your time spent on other blogs doesn’t harm your own interests.

Is the Topic One You Can Write About Intelligently

I once read that a problem with some bloggers is that they never met a plugin they didn’t like. Well, you don’t have to take every article opportunity you come across, especially if the topic is something you can not discuss with some kind of previous knowledge or experience.

Be sure you know what you are talking about. The Internet can reach so many people that there is certainly going to be someone reading your article that knows more about the subject matter than you do, so you should make sure that everything you write about is as well researched as possible.

What is the Compensation For the Work

So why are you considering writing a contributing article anyway? Is it for money, for exposure on the site or blog, or both? Your work and time are worth something and you shouldn’t just give it away for no reason. If you do this, please, contact me, I have several jobs I would love to have you work with.

Most content writers will not consider doing an article for exposure only. Their business is in writing and the exposure comes with the article but their objective, as most in business, is to make a living of some kind. Know what kind of compensation is offered up front and agree on the given compensation before you write the article.

Do Not Expect Total Control Over the Finished Product

Are you a total detail freak like me? If so, you probably pay attention to the most minuet detail of each post or article. I specifically choose my links, my anchor tags, headings, alt tags, title tags and so on. Once you give the article to the company, you have sold the rights to that article, and they can pretty much do what they want with it.

It is still your copyrighted material, but if they don’t want to use your alt tags or links you might find them to be missing once the article is published. Don’t be surprised by this. If you want complete and total control over the final product be sure to mention this up front before it is handed over to the company for publishing.

Conclusion

There are several reasons you might consider writing a guest post for another blog, but be sure you have the time to complete the job in a professional manner and on time. Make sure you can answer the questions you have in min. How much does it pay, what benefit will it be to the company and you as a content writer? Is it worth the time it will take me to finish the project?

By islandzephyr | Posted in Business, Media | Also tagged content, writing | Comments (3)

Make Your 404 File Not Found Page Work for You and Keep Error Traffic

November 15, 2007 – 12:04 pm

404 File Page Not Found ErrorHow much do you pay attention to your 404 page? Do you know what your 404 page is or how it works? You can receive this error response for various reasons but the main reason is someone or something has tried to access a page on your blog or store that doesn’t exist anymore.   This also represents lost traffic for your blog or store that you can direct somewhere else, within your site.  Make this page work to your advantage. Making the best use of these queries can bring the user back into your site instead of showing a dead page that will most likely cause the visitor to move on to some site that doesn’t show errors on their site.

There are many reasons a site will report a 404 file not found error, but knowing how they work, who tried to access the missing file (a search engine or person), and knowing which page or title they were trying to access is all important information to have when working with the traffic of your blog.

What is a Server Response 404 File Page Not Found

The 404 error page has been with us as long as there have been web pages, and for the most part is a request for a page that doesn’t exist on your site.  This can be displayed for more reasons that just a file was not found that was once there, and is no longer.  You could have re-named a url in your blog to correct a spelling error, which will make the original url incorrect.  You could have deleted a file, or a search engine could be doing its own thing. Wikipedia states it like this:

The 404 or Not Found error message is an HTTP standard response code indicating that the client was able to communicate with the server but either the server could not find what was requested, or it was configured not to fulfill the request and not reveal the reason why.

We have all come across these pages from time to time, some have even made some humorous cases out of the 404 page, but either way, it is an error as far as the visitor goes, and you want to convert these visitors in some useful manner, not have them leave because they think your site is not working properly.

Customize The 404 Page to Increase Traffic Conversions

You can make this page useful by doing some basic customization to what is seen when the 404 error response is given.

Chipseo 404 File Not Found Page

The standard domain or blog usually has access to the 404 page just like a normal .php or .html page that is called when a specific url address is given. You can see an example on my blog when you type in any url that doesn’t exist and you can also see how other domains handle their 404 pages by doing the same thing. It can be any url that doesn’t exist, like http://www.scottfillmer.com/tHisPagEofMinE (which doesn’t exist) will show you how this one is setup.

When you customize the page make sure you say a few things.

  • Explain in lay terms what page the visitor has reached and why
  • Offer a way out, at least back to the main page
  • Provide useful links or additional articles to the visitor to click through
  • Use your standard design layout so it looks the same as the other pages
  • Try to avoid the standard “ERROR” language, look, and feel

I have used my 404 page like I would any other page on my blog. I setup a static sitemap of sorts with a short explanation of the page they have reached and what the visitor can do at that point.

Monitor Your 404 Page Requests

Something I didn’t think about at first was to keep an eye on which pages are getting requested. There are several ways you can do this. If you are running a blog, the easiest way is to use a plugin. There is a very good Wordpress Plugin by Alex King called the 404 Notifier that will send you an email or rss feed of your 404 page requests.

404 Notifier Wordpress Plugin

This plugin is easy to use and install and it provides you a list of exactly which page addresses are being requested. I was surprised at home many pages were being requested, but I never would have know without looking at the list being created.

If you are not working on a blog but on an ecommerce store site check with your hosting provider for exact details on how to access the 404 file page. A good way to monitor non-blog related pages is to use Google Webmaster Tools. Google Webmaster tools will give you the page in question, the date, and the actual server response.  Knowing who these errors are coming from is also a very big help in correcting them as well.  Being notified every single time your site reports a 404 error can be somewhat annoying when you have a lot of errors, but the information is very helpful.  Look at who the error was referred by.  Some most recent examples from my blog look like this:

There are several pieces of information each email will provide.  A “referred by” and a “user agent”.  Sometimes you will have both pieces of the information, sometimes one one or the other.  Referred by above is a mail system, which mean someone (a person) probably clicked on a link in the email and was taken to a 404 error.  The user agent mozilla is a browser, like Firefox.  Bot’s refer to search engine robots or spiders that crawl your site to deliver traffic to your blog.  Once these spiders find a 404 error they will often notate that and not index the page again.

There are many different responses you can get for errors like this.  If you are unfamiliar with any of them, follow the link they give you if there is one, if not, google the user agent and find out who it is.  Most likely it will be some type of indexing system for the Internet.

Correct the 404 Errors If You Can

If you are going to monitor the 404 error reports you should also do something with that information. I couldn’t believe how many error reports were being generated, but I noticed some of them should be, and could be, eliminated by changing a few page titles around. There could be a typo in your url or a page you deleted by accident could be re-uploaded. There are probably several 404 reports that you could eliminate just by correct a few actual errors you weren’t aware existed.

Check the Results in Google Analytics or Webmaster Tools

Once you have found and corrected some of these errors you can check the various stat tracking sites to see the results you have accomplished. What is great about these two particular tools is that when a page is not found and then the visitor goes to a page that is found, you can get an idea of how many visitors are utilizing your 404 file not found page.

In Google Analytics check to see where the user came from. If you know it is a page that didn’t or doesn’t exist then you know your 404 file not found page was utilized to bring the visitor back into your site. Following the example I noted above, when I check my stats for traffic on the page http://www.scottfillmer.com/tHisPagE I know this page doesn’t exist. When I see traffic to other pages that came from that particular page, I know the user clicked on a link on my 404 page.

What Does Your Company Do With the 404 Error?

There are so many different way to deal with your 404 file not found error. Some don’t know or choose not to do anything, but I think you can utilize your 404 page to work for you and bring traffic back into your store or blog. Don’t loose traffic that would otherwise stay if it wasn’t for an error on your page.

Does your company have a specific procedure for handling 404 requests? Share it with us.

By islandzephyr | Posted in Media | Also tagged 404, error, traffic | Comments (0)

Reasons to Keep Running Google Adsense Ads on Your Blog

October 13, 2007 – 9:39 pm

Google AdsenseWhen considering an advertising company for your blog or website Google is probably going to be high on the list, but shouldn’t be the only one. I opened a Google Adsense account on April of 2004. The screen shot shown here was take a few days ago that shows we have now reached the payout amount minimum of $100 for Google Adsense.

Obviously we were not publishing ads on big PR7 sites, we just used it here and there on a few different store pages, but, for those counting, 3 1/2 years is a long time. Comparing different revenue rates for different people is impossible because of all the variables involved, but that isn’t really the point here, so instead I will just give you my $.02, don’t spend it all in one place.

Sometimes Time Spent is a Little Money Earned

It may be a cliche, but does that make it any less true? Once we opened this account we threw it up on a few different sites and quickly forgot about it. It wasn’t until I started trying to add a few Google ads recently that I realized what ads I had run and on what websites. It was really nice to log on and see a balance of around $80 when I had forgotten about it, but at the same time, it was only $80, after 3 years and a few months. That comes to approximately $1.90 per month for the time period stated, not a great return, but you have to look at the time that was spent to receive that as well, and it was probably about an hour.

Google Adsense PaymentOnce I actually started working with the ad program again, started putting some time into placing the ads on pages with higher traffic rankings and most of the normal things you would do to increase your ad revenue, it started moving a little faster. It took 3+ years to go from $0 to $80, and only a few weeks for it to move from $80 to $100 with just a few changes to where the ads ran and on what sites.

No matter if you are running an eCommerce site, a blog, or an informational static pages, the more quality time you spend placing ads in the proper locations, producing well written content, creating a good design, and proper SEO, among other things, the more your traffic will increase, and the better your ad revenue will be. This is not something special with the Adsense program, it works with just about everything.

It is not always at the return rate you would like though. Sometimes we can spend a lot of time for a lot of revenue and other times we can spend a lot of time without much return at all. The key is of course to try to minimize our risks and to look for places that will provide a good return verses our time spent. That was the question I asked myself when I started looking more closely at my Adsense account.

There are some good reasons to keep running Adsense ads on your blog or website. You can do a quick search and find people that love it and hate it, but lets look at some solid reasons for keeping at least some Adsense ads running, and some reasons we should look elsewhere. In this post we will look at some Reasons to Keep Running Google Adsense Ads and in the next post we will look at Reasons to Look at Options Other Than Google Adsense Ads.

Reasons To Keep Running Google Adsense Ads

Listed below are some positive points for starting, or continuing to use the Adsense program. This is not a pros and cons look at the program, that I will save for another article so keep that in mind when looking over the below items.

Google is Google

Google’s complete presence on the Internet is unmatched. Sure there are countless good companies on the Internet, but few have permeated and infiltrated companies and personal pages from the biggest to the smallest little site out there like Google. Biggest doesn’t always mean the best, but it does have its advantages. Google is Google may not be a great reason but… it’s Google. Everyone knows who they are and users know the ads most likely won’t contain any malicious links.

Ease of Use

There are so many different options within Adsense it takes some time just to explore all the opportunities available. You can do everything from link ads to affiliate ads and everything in between. You can customize the layout, integrate colors that match your website, choose from many different sizes and shapes that will fit just about any ad block, and choose from a list of affiliate ads so large that it would be hard not to find something that goes well with your site and matches your target audience.

Information Availability

Google has so much information about the Adsense program available on the Internet that if you can’t find what you are looking for from Google chances are you will find it somewhere. Google has a blog devoted to Adsense and updates it frequently. This goes right in line with number 5 but is a little different. You don’t just want to see the polished view that a company gives out, you want to know what the real issues are. These can be both positive and negative items, but with some newer companies it isn’t as easy to find out the real information you are looking for, and with Google there is just tons of it.

Coming up soon I will be reviewing several different marketing options for your eCommerce store site, and a few of these companies are brand new. One of the newest companies I am looking at is only about 30 days old and they are charging quite a bit for their services, but when you go to look for information outside of the company you can find very little other than what the company has put out for us to see.

Continued Advancements

Google continues to add to the program and probably will always do so. The most recent highlight for the Adsense program would be the addition of Google Ads for video units. This is something that has been rumored about for a while and has now been implemented. Right now it is only available in the United States but it is sure to be added to the U.K. soon.

There is a lot of information posted about this new advancement and it looks to be very promising. Search Engine Roundtable posted an article on how to setup video units (see article), and there are bound to be new advances in how and where the ad program will be used in the future. After all, Google is all about ad revenue, that is what built this company so it will continue to focus on this for some time to come.

Another recent topic has been that Google added new payment options for people in Malaysia where they can get paid through Western Union. In a recent article from Adesblog, How to withdraw your AdSense earnings through WesternUnion, he takes a good look at how this new option functions, and although I basically run from payments via Western Union I am sure it is something those in other parts of the world are glad it has been added as an option.

Support Network

The sheer number of people that must work on, and with, the Adsense program must be huge, so it should count for something. The network of support pages and content to help new users is extensive and most of it very helpful. In a recent article on their blog, Getting more quality inventory for publishers, Google talks about improving the validity of their links and several other important issues facing its users.

Our goal with this change is to ensure the long-term effectiveness of the referrals program for both publishers and advertisers. By increasing the value and quality of the referral network, we believe we’ll attract more advertisers and provide more opportunities for you to earn.

Like most things Google, they also have an extensive Google Adsense Group that helps with current issues and questions you might have, and with so many people using the Adsense program you are sure to find some good help in this particular group.

Availability To Have Your Ad Seen Worldwide

Availability is something that not all ad programs can offer. Google will run your ads worldwide and not even Yahoo’s ad program is as easy to use when you want a worldwide marketing program put in place. It is as easy as choosing that option and they continue to add the program to new areas of the world all the time. Google recently announced (see announcement) the Adsense program would start in Vietnam and Indonesia and it isn’t likely to stop there.

Reporting, Tracking, and User Interface

I put this in there because when I compare it to other ad opportunities, most do not compare to the reporting and tracking functionality that Google Adsense presents to its users. You can track your ad programs by many different options like adding new channels for specific pages or sites you want to track. It shows you where your ads are most effective and where you should improve or move ads if they are not getting the proper visibility. The reporting functions are pretty standard but the detail you can get goes back years if you have that much data and you can customize reports to meet the needs of your company.

As I mentioned at the top of this article, coming up, I will post an article about the many other options that companies can choose when looking at their online marketing strategies. To me, these are probably more interesting since everyone knows about Google, but may not know about many of the other opportunities available to all of us. Google is certainly a viable option for those wishing to advertise on their website in an easy to use manner, results may vary.

By islandzephyr | Posted in Business | Also tagged adsense, google, marketing | Comments (1)