I’ve long wanted to share some blogging tips with you but that silly dog above kept destroying my notes. I’ve since disciplined the naughty dog, his name is Bondo by the way, so he’s kinda showing some manners now and is no longer getting in the way. But now, he’s playing the “Look at me, I’m so pitiful. My master is mean. I’m going to call the animal welfare activists” bit so I guess I have to give him some doggy style loving. Not that you silly, silly pervert!
Anyway, here’s some blogging tips in case you don’t know them already. You might want to apply them in your blog. They’re free so they won’t cost you anything.
1. Spruce up your blog with personalized images. So, do you like Bondo, the dog pictured above? I actually generated him with the help of Image Chef which allows you to generate your personalized images ranging from street signs, to flags, to remorseful dogs with droopy ears, to sticky notes, and many others.
In case you want more choices, you can also visit the Generator Blog or Ink4mador; both have links to just about every image generator. Churchy people might want to visit this site, which I used for our Holy Week image here . Saysit.com is also a good site particularly if you want to put words in George W. Bush’s mouth (which we did here), or Hillary’s, or the Pope’s, or Governor Ahnuld, etc.
2. In case you like to know where your blog readers are coming from, how they found you, and what they are reading, you might want to sign up with Google Analytics and install a tracking code in your blog’s html template. Another choice would be getclicky.com, which also involves registering and adding a tracking code in your html.
The good thing about Google Analytics is that your data is archived so you will know your blog’s statistics to as far back as when you signed up. The not so good thing about it is that the information is not interlinked. So you know that you have visitors from Saudi Arabia or Belgium (Hello Kailiyans!) but you won’t know how they found your blog or what entries they are reading.
Now, Clicky has this kind of interlinked data so I find it to be a much more useful tool. The Clicky data is also in real time unlike Google Analytics which is delayed in providing you with information. On the other hand, the not so good thing about Clicky is that it does not sum up your data; in case you want to know your total visitors for the month, you will have to add it up yourself. [I may be wrong about this though, maybe I just haven’t figured out how to do it.]
To get the best of both worlds (archived statistics and real time statistics), you should install both Google Analytics and Clicky since, as stated earlier, they won’t cost you anything. Clicky does eventually charge you something like US$1.25 a month if you want to sign up with their premium service. Essentially, the premium service would mean that you can continue to monitor your outbound links as well as what your visitors are clicking at the very moment. I decided not to sign up because although I would like to know the outbound links, I’m not too keen about knowing what visitors are clicking now since I can also figure that out based on the other free statistics provided (maybe just a delay of five minutes). But Clicky is very good and they’re just starting (I think) so some of you might want to support their good work by eventually signing up for their premium service.
3. If you are using Blogger/Blogspot and you want to play around with your template, the blogs to visit for hacks and other tips would be: Beautiful Beta and Blogger University. The hack which lets your readers to either expand or collapse your post, the click icon to email us thingy, and others which you have seen in this blog (but I might have eventually removed them hehe) are hacks which I learned from the two very helpful sites.
Okidok. Hope you try out these tips.
IMAGE CREDIT: Image Chef.
Never understood a thing about your “blog lingo”, that’s why I kenneth blog,hahaha…Anyways, I have fondness for that innocent, pitiful, underdog looking Bondo!!
Is modest Bondo he or she, or maybe
….hmmm never mind. Goodhealth.
Oops, haven’t thought of your question. But now that you ask, I will say that Bondo is a he. Siyempre pag she, her name would be Bonda. Hopefully, we will eventually find a Bonda so Bondo won’t be lonely hehe.