How should we consider if a blog is a success: by analyzing his incoming traffic or by his subscribed feed readers? The traffic is defined by the number of unique visitors or page views per day. On the other hand, the number of subscribed feed readers is defined by the number of unique reader who asks to read the content of the blog’s feed each day.

Someone could say that they are same. The more you got traffic, the more people subscribe to the feed. In most cases, I think that this reasoning is good. However, what if the blogger is an ace when come the time to increase his search engine ranking but that his content is not so interesting? There is the difference when come the time to analyze the meaning the two numbers. The meaning of the two numbers is independent and tells the blogger two different things.

What is the most important: a high traffic or a high number of subscribed feed readers? It is definitely the high number of subscribed feed readers. This number tells me that I have 103 people that open their computers every day and check if I said something interesting that day. They have an interest in my writings. It makes all the difference in the world.

The FredOnSomething blog do not score high in traffic. To tell the truth, I have approximately 30% more subscribed feed readers than unique visitors every day.

So, I would like to take this time to thank you all of you for your support. I reached the symbolic number of 100 subscribed readers yesterday and it is the reason why I wrote this post today. I hope you always enjoy reading it and that I will be able to keep you as a reader in the next months/years.

I would have a question to ask to my readers. Why are you reading this blog considering the not so good English writing? What make you keep reading it?

Technoratie: [traffic] [blogs] [feed] [analyze] [subscribe]

A week ago, Feedster started an Anonymous tagging prototype system. With this system, your readers will be able to tag each of your blog’s entries. The idea is good and the principle seems to work. However, will this feature add something to all the blog readers’ experience? This is the true question to ask when you evaluate these tagging systems. Are they adding something to the experience of my readers/users? Or is the system just incorporating the system to follow the hype?

Are these tags, these keywords, really worth it? If yes, are they applicable to all classification systems?

Some tagging systems seem to work, and other does not. For example, I only use Del.icio.us to show interesting links to my readers. I do not really check what is bookmarked by other Del.icio.us users. There are just too many entries. The system is not convivial to search interesting stuff. I already subscribed to some tag’s feed and I always got the same stuff and lost my time to check at them. Now the only thing I do is to put other bloggers’ Del.icio.us account into my inbox. Then I subscribe to my inbox’s feed and get all the interesting stuff they bookmarked. The Technorati tagging system is also interesting, but limited. He suffers from the same problem: there are just too many things being tagged.

So… I’m questioning myself with this new “hype”. Meta-tags keywords failed… will Tags too? I do not know. I think that the concept is good for some application, but I doubt that they are useful for all things that have to be classified.

Technoratie: [Feedster] [tag] [tagging] [classification]

Some blogs have thousands of hits each day and others less than ten. Many factors could explain this fact. However, one of the most influent is probably the publication frequency. These blogs generally have a high and stable publication frequency.

You can’t attain this productivity by being sloppy and unorganized. Fortunately, there are tips and tricks that could be used to help you to be a more productive blogger. Keith, the blogger being To-Done, released a list of the tricks he used to make To-Done the popular blog he became. In his post “Be a More Productive Blogger“, he explicit 11 tips and tricks he use everyday to write his blog. It’s one of the best post I read on the subject since a while; it worth the reading.

Bellow I explicit and comment some of the points I found particularly important and that I already talked about.

• Idea journal. Keith uses an idea journal to keep track of his everyday ideas. It’s probably one of the best tricks he could use. Personally I use my pocket Moleskine diary as my ideas journal. I can easily slip it into a pocket, and I have enough pages to get track of a wide range of ideas, all at the same place.
• Read. Another of his trick is to read to find new ideas. I realized that reading was one of my primary sources of idea when I got sick in April. I hadn’t the mindset to read and I realized that I didn’t have any idea of writings to publish on my blog.
• Titles. The titles of your posts are not only essential to bring the attention of your readers. It’s also useful to help you has a starting idea, a way to always have in mind the main subject of your posts.
• Communicate with other bloggers. He also explained the importance of getting connected with and motivates to discuss with other bloggers. It’s essential for the good health of your blog, and also to find new ideas. It’s while conversing on other blogs, on others subjects that you do not write about normally, that you will have new ideas. It’s around these new ideas that your blog will evolve and grow. Personally I use a comments blog to get trace of these discussions. It’s is a place where I put all the discussions I had with other bloggers. Sometimes I skim it to find new ideas.
• Grammar. One of his points is: “Don’t get too hung up on grammar”. I hope his explanation is right; otherwise I would not have any readers. However, I always have to have in mind the first goal of this blog: to learn English.
• Evolve. The hardest thing to do is probably to keep the blog evolving. The content of the blog needs to evolve with the blogger. The subjects need to change. The reader need to see the blogger evolving in his writing. It’s hard to do. Fortunately, all the tips and trick of Keith will help you to evolve as a blogger. There are many good blogs that I stopped to read because I was losing my time. They were always saying all the same things in other words. Keep evolving; this is the key to success.

Which of these tricks do you use? How are you using them? Are you using other tricks? I would like to know them, share them here.

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