
Rss feeds
I hate it when people use my rss feed. Seriously, you want to read my stuff then come to my site. I cant stand it when sites and bloggers tell how many Rss subscribers they have. I bet you not even 1% of people that are subscribed to a site actually come and visit the site.
Although I hate it when people read my rss feed on a reader I still like reading other sites on readers. I know, my right to be annoying.
Leaving url in comment
Sometimes I am amazed at people. The comment section clearly states url. Now that means you dont have to repeat your url in the actual comment, it saves you time and effort. But no, you get these annoying people that fill in a comment and then put their urls under what they've written. Maybe someone should make a comment how-to to explain how the thing works.
Telling people where you've not been before
I have done exactly this for some time until I realized how stupid I must of sound to those that really has been there and know what they are talking about. Although I now have the experience, i also blogged about how to make money before I actually made money.
its like fooling people into believing you make money to make money from them.
Link exchange
I get these really annoying emails asking for link exchange. Here's a tip. Link your one page to your other page. There you have a link. Happy now?
I often speak to people that tell me to stay in South Africa while they are enjoying the richer countries like Europe or Somewhere in America.
They all have the same story, they left South Africa and now they really miss it and then they tell you to stay because its a great country.
If you ask them why they are not here they will give you a few good reasons but the fact is they are still not here. The only advice you really can take from someone living in another country is to emigrate, but you cant take their advice to stay in South Africa because they are not even doing it.
You will see comment from home sick South Africans all over the internet, what a nice country etc we have. Well just like they are not in the country because of some issues the same way you might want to leave the country.
Its nice sitting in a place of safety and security telling people to stay.
Today is a holiday in South Africa, the Day of the Covenant celebrating the Afrikaners' miraculous victory over the Zulu forces of Dingane during the Battle of Blood River on 16 December 1838. Whereas the new black-nationalist government of South Africa erased most holidays celebrated by white South Africans and was at one time even considering abolishing Christmas as being "Eurocentric", it has kept December 16, albeit under a new name, so-called "Reconcilition Day". In the Newspeak of the New South Africa, "reconciliation" normally means accepting black racial domination and aggression. For example, as part of ongoing attempts to obfuscate the horrific crime and racial violence that characterise South Africa today, various liberal and left-wing groups have advocated that white victims of black violence should get reconciled with their aggressors. A white female rape victim, for example, might pray together with her black male rapist in prison - if ever he did go to prison as most such crimes go unpunished in South Africa - and will foregive him so as to be reconciled with him. Within the sick mentality of our society, this type of travesty is seen as the new ethical ideal, often embraced by mainstream churches and religious leaders. The South African pathology of "reconciliation" derives from traditional African justice where the harmony of the tribe took precedence over individual rights. Even murder was easily forgiven after paying a few head of cattle to the victim's relatives, something which occurs to this day in South Africa, even in urban areas. However, whatever the TV news will say tonight about the many ways in which whites may prostrate and humiliate themselves as part of getting officially "reconciled", tens of thousands of white Afrikaners in towns and cities all over the country will be participating in a very different type of patriotic and religious ceremony. Like their forebears did 170 years ago on the eve of that great battle in which 450 whites defeated an army of at least 13 000 Zulus without any losses in their ranks, they will recite the famous oath: "My brothers and fellow citizens, here we stand in the presence of the Holy God, creator of heaven and earth, to make a vow unto Him, that if His protection shall be with us and He give our enemy into our hand so that we might be victorious over him, that this day and date every year shall be spent as a memorial and a day of thanksgiving, just as a Sabbath is spent and that we shall erect a temple to His honor wherever it will be pleasing to Him and that we shall also instruct our children that they must also share in it, as well as for our generations yet to come. Because the Honor of His name shall thereby be glorified and the glory and honor of the victory shall be given Him." South Africa's ANC regime has been trying to erase the Covenant and the Battle of Blood River from the history books in a way that reminds one of the constantly changing past in George Orwell's 1984. The hero of that book, Winston Smith, is employed in the Records department of the Ministry of Truth where the falsification of history is his official job. As Orwell puts it: "Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary." Despite the suppression of Afrikaner history in schools, as well as the changing of Afrikaner place names to eradicate all evidence of the founders of their towns and cities, the Day of the Covenant has remained like a glaring anomaly beyond the formidable reach of the Ministry of Truth. Not only do most Afrikaner leaders deliver a vast number of speeches on that day, but English-speaking whites are increasingly becoming intersted in joining the annual commemoration and are seeing great significance in the event. As one of them, Peter Hammond, has recently commented: "It is remarkable that, despite the treachery that the Boers had endured at the hands of the Zulu, and the massacres of so many unsuspecting women and children on the banks of the Blaauwkrans River, that no atrocities were committed by the Boers in retaliation. Instead, the Biblical injunction to love their enemies was fulfilled by the vigorous missionary work which was established by the Reformed Church in Zululand, establishing schools, hospitals, churches and orphanages, even within sight of where Piet Retief and his followers were so brutally murdered. In the century and a half since that original Day of the Covenant, many millions of Zulus have come to Christ and Zululand has been blessed by Revival. In a very real sense all of that began with the Covenant proposed by Sarel Cilliers, and enthusiastically adopted by the Wencommando." Today the Battle of Blood River has become an allegory of the impending struggle for survival to be fought by Western man on a global scale. In places like South Africa where whites are already a minority of less than ten percent it is a real physical struggle with members of the surrounding African horde attacking us at random every day. Not only have South African blacks benefited from quadrupling and even quintupling their population since 1950, but the ANC's open-border policy has allowed illegal immigrants from other African countries to stream across our borders, adding to the numbers already present. Elsewhere in the West, in North America and Europe, however, it is a moral and ideological fight that is no less intense. Whereas the strategic threats posed by China and a resurgent Islam are universally recognised by Western commentators, the leading role played by blacks from Africa in the moral assault on our civilisation is not. White guilt is after all not defined by the history of Western interaction with China or the Middle East, but by American slavery and European colonialism in Africa. Africans and their apologists are in the forefront of the accusation of "racism!" levelled not only at every white person somewhere in his or her lifetime, but more fundamentally at Western culture and history itself. Black radical thinkers from WEB Dubois onwards, through Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Thabo Mbeki and, I daresay, Barack Obama, have been unanimous in their condemnation of the West and its history as evil and rotten to the core. The Chinese and Middle-Easterners will no doubt stay at home. But the 800 million Africans who will rise to just under 2 billion in the next few decades, will descend on the ageing Western world like they are overwhelming the formerly European cities and towns of South Africa, appropriating everything in their path with the self-righteous violence that has become the African way. The United States, lest we forget, already has an African American as president. The election of Barack Obama was seen as a milestone in Africa's claim, based on her growing population numbers, to a greater share of world resources which will be provided by Europe and North America. While Mugabe is wrecking Zimbabwe, the US is pumping in aid money to keep the country's population alive, demonstrating that the inhabitants of Zimbabwe have as much of a claim on US resources as the American taxpayer. White demography is plummeting and we all know it. Among the many pronouncements of John Maynard Keynes, the famous economist, the following is the least quoted: "The great events of history are often due to secular changes in the growth of population and other fundamental economic causes, which, escaping by their gradual character the notice of contemporary observers, are attributed to the follies of statesmen or the fanaticism of atheists." Keynes ascribed both the First World War and the Russian Revolution to rapid population growth in Germany and Russia, respectively. Thermopylae and Poitiers are often seen as two critical battles that saved white, Western culture from extinction in their times. However, as a symbol of the shrinking global European population facing the barbarians at the gate, especially from Africa, Blood River has become far more apposite. In this dark hour when it seems that, apart from the corporate oil wars of the Bush administration, the West has lost its will to stand up for itself, we need to be reminded of the Gideon-like triumph of Andries Pretorius and his men over the Zulu army on 16 December 1838. Outnumbered thirty to one and armed only with antique muskets that took 30 to 40 seconds to reload, they fought bravely and won, against all odds. Only a superhuman effort of the same order could save us here in South Africa today from being driven from our land like the white Zimbabweans were from theirs. Very soon, our kin all over the Western world who are like sleeping babes before the impending peril will face the same predicament - of being a racial minority surrounded by a hostile and aggressive majority. The Day of the Covenant should be internationally celebrated among all those who believe that our Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian civilisation is still worth fighting for.
A South African blogger has been hit with a R 461 500 defamation case after he blogged
about his experiences with a timeshare company.
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This will save a lot of people a lot of time. A plugin that uses adobe air and sits on your desktop, you can then moderate your comments directly from your operating system.
read the full review at Techyard
The other day I had a post on HOW TO START BLOGGING and i thought it would be great to ad this post to that one.
Today I would like to show you some blogging essentials.
Blogging is fun but at the same time blogging can teach you a lot of great stuff. One of those things is management. A blog has to be managed, almost like a business. If you dont do certain things a blog will just go dry. And soon the blog that is left to survive on its own will just become more search engine clutter with no real humans behind the box.
The Blogging essentials that I am writing about today are not all needed but they are great tools to have. And if you dont know about them all you might find a treasure between all these things. If you know of everything that is listed here, feel free to add something I have missed.
Rank
Rank is important both for advertisers and for your blog to grow. While you or I dont really care much about rank, it still is a factor when trying to get your blog to the point where you can make a living from blogging. As some of you might of notice, its not a as you imagined before you started blogging. Blogging is tough. At least that is what I think. Ranking also enables you to make more money. For instance: People with a Pagerank of 6 could easily ask a nice price for advertisers whereas blogs that have a pr1 or 2 would not make that much money. Ranks reflect your blog's community and traffic. Most of the time.
One thing about blogging is that the better your rank the more traffic you get and the more traffic you get the better you will rank.
Here are some places to check your rank or status:
Alexa
Old, belongs to Amazon if I am correct. Alexa is not as accurate as some would claim, nevertheless people still use it and if you rate very high (low) on Alexa you can get more money for advertising space. Some companies use Alexa ranks to choose if they want to buy or sell domains. Alexa rank is important for your blog even with it's inaccuracy.
Pagerank
Pagerank used to be the biggest way people would rank a site. But in recent months no one really cares about Pagerank, or at least know one I know including me. That is because they have changed the old realiable way it worked. I am guess it was a good thing since they are improving their search, but for me, watching my PR go up and down every month is just to annoying.
Technorati
Technorati is also a great ranking tool. Technorati is also well known, they trace a few million blogs all over the internet. If you make it to the top 100, you've basically made it as a blogger. I would'nt mind.
But recently technorati removed all Wordpress 2.3.3 blog. Maybe not removed but they stopped indexing them because of the vulnerability in Wordpress 2.3.3. I think I lost my technorati rank as well. But they did it so people's blogs wont get hacked.
Amatomu
The reason I am putting in Amatomu is because I am a South African. Amatomu matters for South African bloggers because it shows you where and how you rate between South African bloggers.
Compete
Another ranking system.
Wordpress
Adman
Adman is a great plugin for Wordpress. Adman enables you to insert Google Adsense or other code generated by PPC or affiliates into your blog posts and on the frontpage. Adman has three options, paste it in on the top of your posts in the middle and below. There is also a setting that enables you to have a ad in the first post of your blog on the front page as well. Adman works great with Wordpress 2.5
Related Posts
The related Posts plugin is great to enable your readers to explore your blog more. Using it underneath your post or below the comments where they can see it will also increase your pageviews because they might just read more posts. Related Posts works great in Wordpress 2.5
Popularity Contest
Many Wordpress themes need this plugin to display the popular posts on the right hand side of the blog. It enables your readers to see which posts are nice and those that other people have liked.
Money
Adsense
Adsense is well known. You can make a lot of money using Adsense if you use it correctly. Adsense was started a few years ago by another guy and got bought by Google. That is why we now know it as Google Adsense. Just a bit of info.
The most famous adsense format is the 300x250, it is said that is the adsense format people make the most money with. I have to agree. Although many bloggers do not like seeing Adsense on other blogs, it is still widely used. Some people might disagree.
Chitika
Chtiika is one of my favourite ways to make money online. They offer a lot of formats and things that you can use to make money. I think the most famous one is the linx code. Linx code is the one I like the most. They also have a referral program where you can refer people and friends to them. You get paid for everyone you refer to them.
Smorty
Smorty offers a lot of different affiliate banners to choose from. Smorty is another way of blogging and posting payed blog posts. A nice way to make some more money.
Linkworth
Linkworth has many, many options and ad formats to choose from. you can also do payed posts for Linkworth to earn extra cash from your blog.
Seo
Headspace2
Traffic
Entrecard
Entrecard is a great way to get people to come to your site. You will just have to use more methods of attraction than the Entrecard widget itself. Entrecard is great for sites that first start out. But one thing you have to keep in mind if you are using entrecard is Adsense. Adsense and Entrecard does not work well together. That is because a lot of people come to your site just to click, but that brings your revenue from Adsense down.
Feedburner
The reason this is under traffic is because I first wrote it. I guess feedburner can go under tools or community. Feedburner is a way to keep track of your feed statisctics and helps you optimize your content. You can also make money with your feed by embedding Adsense in your feed through Feedburner.
Community
Blogcatalog
Blogcataglog is the bussiest blog community site I have found so far. On Blogcatalog you can get a widget to embed in your blog. You can also get a lot of traffic from Blogcatalog if used correctly.
Mybloglog
Mybloglog is also a blogging community site.
Theme
Getting a unique theme or making your own theme unique is very important for branding purposes. A great theme will help you make more money while giving your viewers some eye candy. This is obvious. Your blog has to stand out from the crowd and be unique. It should reflect the blogger's taste.
Firefox
Scribefire
or
Deepest Sender
Stragedy
Having a blogging stragedy (plan or whatever its called) will enable you to work towards a certain goal. Here are some stragedies in blogging:
Linking and networking with other bloggers
This is really important. Since most people reading blogs are bloggers themselves. We as bloggers need to network and help each other. Networking is the most important thing that will keep your blog going. After all, remember when you did your first blog, it felt so stupid because it felt like you were speaking to yourself. That's how I felt. Not networking would mean you basically blog on your own.
Commenting
Commenting to show others that you actually read their blogs and participate is actually part of networking. Commenting is participating in the blogging community. Commenting should be done with caution. You can delete a crap post but you cant delete a crap comment. Comment on as many blogs as you can BUT do it sincere and not just to get people over to your blog.
Competition
Running competitions on your blog is a great idea to get your blog out there.
Read more here
Learn
Wikipedia
You can learn a lot of blogging terms at wikipedia. Although you cant trust everything you read its still worth something.
Problogger.net
I guess everyone knows problogger but I have learned a few things on his site and its worth including.
So there it is. A few things that could help you start with blogging or further your blogging career / hobby.
If you liked this post please consider bookmarking this on Sphinn / Stumbleupon / Digg or any other site you use.