Hot answers tagged blog
30
Yes, there is an easy recourse. You send the infringer AND the hosting service a DMCA copyright infringment notice. Give the infringer a few days to remove the material. If he doesn't the web site host will remove the offending material for him (and probably remove his hosting account).
There is a standard format for DMCA notices and if you do not follow ...
15
Don't take Joel's advice. I mean that in a good way, that is, don't take it at face value.
You see, Joel is driving 2 main points (1) he doesn't need to blog anymore because he has all the exposure he needs, and (2) most startups do it wrong anyway, with blog posts about internal startup matters, etc that no one cares about.
The overall point is if you are ...
14
Too cluttered, not really structured nicely, way way too many ads. I was on and off in 5 seconds flat.
I will trust what the previous poster wrote, that there's good content. That being the case, I would change the look of the site a bit to be clean, neat, and easily navigated. I would remove the ads entirely.
Then: make sure Google Analytics is in ...
13
I started to write a comment to Joe A's answer as I agree wholeheartedly not to take Joel's advice at face value, but then I realised I disagree with his point "don't steal time away from building your startup".
Joe's right - you're not Joel - I'm not saying my mother will have heard of him, but anyone that cares about their trade in the programming world ...
10
It completely depends on what your objectives are for blogging.
SEO benefits within a company site, yes.
Dynamic communication with your customers and prospects, yes.
Ability to have somewhat of a conversation with customers/target audience, yes.
Help build yourself as an expert in a space, yes.
Differentiate from competitors, potentially yes.
...
9
It depends on:
How much time do you want to spend blogging? Two blogs is double the time. You probably don't have that kind of time if you're also running a business, so unless all your employees will contribute and contribute a lot, just have one.
How much do you want your own identity tied to your company? Do you want to sell someday? Joel and Jason ...
9
Forget it. Big waste of time. Why have a blog?
Think of it this way: what companies do you know where a blog really made a big difference to getting them off the ground?
I can think of two.
Joel on Software / Fog Creek Software
Signal vs. Noise / 37signals
Over the last few days I've been trying to come up with other examples and I've come up blank. ...
9
Consider:
Use $1 CPM as a benchmark for a banner ad rate on your site. (Obviously lots of variables, industry you're in, whether you do Google AdSense or display banner ads, etc.) So for an ad you display, every 1,000 times that ad is displayed on a page, you get $1.
So to make $1,000, you need to have 1,000,000 ad views.
Let's say each page has two ads. ...
8
Start with a few real classics:
1) Zig Ziglar - Secrets of Closing the Sale
2) Tom Hopkins - Mastering the Art of Sales
Some more modern books:
3) Seth Godin - Small Is the New Big: And 193 Other Riffs, Rants
4) Rich Dad's Advisors: Sales Dogs
5) You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself
Blogs:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
...
7
A bit more information for you:
Sample letter to the infringer
Website Copyright Cease and Desist Order
To:
You are in violation, as you are using a number of works that I own the copyright to. These appear on a site operated by you at <>. I have reserved all rights to this work, which was first published on <> on <>.
Your unauthorized use of ...
7
None at all.
I know some people say it's the whole thing, but in the past three years of blogging I still get almost zero traffic from Google and tons from human beings sharing links (in every way: Twitter, FB, Reddit, blog posts, email, whatever).
You win when people like it and tell their friends.
It's too hard (IMHO) to compete on Google with ...
7
William, I love tumblr but it is mostly a non-commercial social service (unlike Facebook which is an ad network masequerading as a social service). I use it for personal scrapblogging, and the majority of blogs on tubmlr are not monetized because they are also used for personal reasons. As a community, Tumblr feels a bit like a modern LiveJournal. It's just ...
7
There is no reason not to start a blog, even if you do decide to put the information elsewhere.
If your articles are well-written, informative, and cover ground that currently doesn't have many good resources, you will generate traffic and notoriety as a subject-matter expert. This is a great way to generate a small but loyal group of people who will be ...
7
A quick question to think about is why?
What you are proposing to do is quite a lot of work, does it therefore provide enough of a projected return to put that much investment in while your product is not complete?
The answer could well be yes, that said generally most product blogs fail for several reasons mainly based around time management, even a weekly ...
6
Just write about what interests you. If you aren't interested in the topics youa re going to get bored/tired/etc. People like to read stuff that is done with energy and passion. your blog will get old and stale if you are not interested in the topics - either you will do a crappy job or you just won't do it at all.
Write what you are passionate about. ...
6
I hate to point to another moz article, but this one is a bit more recent and talks about why subfolders are generally preferable to subdomains - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites.
6
Wordpress 100%. Plugins take WP to the next level. There is such a dedicated community you can surely find a plugin to take care of all your basic needs - contact form, seo, sitemaps, navigation, social sharing, facebook plugins, bookmarking, CMS, print CSS, etc.
Most people don't associated Wordpress as a Content Management System, but it can also be ...
6
I think the cases in which you need to keep something secret are pretty rare. I would also add that if this is your first startup you should get feedback as early as possible and validate your idea.
See if people are interested in what you are doing, if you are solving a real problem, and if people are willing to pay for your solution. It's easy to spend a ...
5
Great salespeople aren't born, they are created. None Of us likes rejection, and that is what defeats most folks from being successful in sales.
There are a number of widely available sales training programs. Sandler Sales Training, a franchise, has incorporated most of the basics and is available almost everywhere, but there are others.
Just keep in mind ...
5
Check out BuySellAds -- ad sizes are pretty uniform, and you can hand-pick targeted sites where your ads are displayed.
You can also target display ads within Google AdWords if you put in the time, and AdSense ads are constrained to a specific list of sizes.
5
I recently researched best ways to contact bloggers, so I present you part of my notes:
NOTE:I didn't write almost any of this, sources were answers on this site and various blog posts. Some URLs are at the end, others were forgotten.
It's a tricky balance, building a relationship with a media contact. But I think it's about providing a mutually beneficial ...
5
For learning Wordpress, I found it best to grab a few templates (lots of free ones out there) and see how they work. Very quickly you see the basic tricks.
For plug-ins, go to the standard plugin site and go through all of the "popular plugins." There's a zillion, but you'll probably have 10-15 installed before you're done, so it's worth pawing through ...
5
Look at it backwards: Which brand do you want to build/strengthen? Is your goal to say "I'm good at what I do, and here are the things I am working on," or is your goal to say "This is X, a new company. Here are our experiences building it."
I think if you decide this first, then the choice of how to blog will be easier. If you want to do both, then ...
5
For most cases, Google does not punish duplicate content; they just sort it out themselves.
From the official google webmaster blog:
Google wants to serve up unique results and does a great job of picking a version of your content to show if your sites includes duplication. If you don't want to worry about sorting through duplication on your site, you can ...
5
I think the point that what's right for Joel now and you now are not the same has been covered; so let me come at this from a different angle: If you (and presumedly your startup) have value to share, are passionate about what you are doing and can help people, why not blog?
Approaching blogging as only an SEO tool won't work. Generously sharing what you're ...
5
and welcome to this site. :-)
You should not use http://company.wordpress.com or http://company.blogger.com -- it looks unprofessional.
If it's possible, then the classic advice is to keep as much content as possible on just one domain name, i.e. www.company.com/blog/ .(company.com is one domain name, www.company.com is another, and blog.company.com would ...
5
Reddit is better than Digg.
Digg has one front page, and only "power users" ever get anything on the front page. If it doesn't make the front page, you will get very few hits. Reddit lets users decide which topics they are interested in. Each topic has it's own front page. Each front page has it's own threshold of upvotes on an article to get it to that ...
5
Don't worry too much about the keywords in your posts. I agree with Jason that the best way to increase traffic to your blog is to write interesting content, good content will keep people coming back to your site. However, I believe it is also important to make it easy for people to subscribe to your blog, either by email, rss feed, etc... try to motivate ...
4
I agree with Gabriel's last point.
Beyond a "tell me when it's ready" signup, you should make your main promotional push when you have something that people can log into and play with. If you don't have a product, they'll get excited about the idea and then forget all about your product by the time it's ready for them to actually use.
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