My newest blog, which is a discussion of music related topics to accompany my album review site is run on WordPress's blogging software. All of my other blogs are hosted by Blogger, so this is a change for me. The biggest pitfall that I have encountered was with submitting my RSS feeds to Google's Webmaster tools in order to ensure that my new posts are added to their database in a timely manner.
Hopefully my experiences can save someone else from pulling their hair out. After submitting the posts feed and the comments feed, I received five errors for each: 1 "Invalid URL", 1 " Invalid XML: too many tags", and 3 "Invalid XML attribute" errors. Google's submission software does not support RSS 2, and, unfortunately, that is what the links at the bottom of WordPress generated blogs are (in the form of feed=rss2 and feed=feed=rss2). There is an extremely simple fix though.
I noticed that the links say rss2; there would be no need to explicitly state rss2 if they were not also creating an RSS 1 version. With this in mind, I just changed the links to feed=rss and feed=comments-rss and they miraculously worked. I did not see any documentation on this on either Google or WordPress's site; this has to be a common issue and I am surprised that no one has addressed this before.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
To advertise or not to advertise
I am running several blogs besides this one and have decided early on to advertise on them. The earliest blog that I worked on that is still extant, Mindless Ramblings, is exactly what the name says. The blog that you are reading now is my third blog. Recently, I have created a music discussion blog to accompany my music review site. My very first blog is no longer in existence, and analyzed emerging trends in technology.
At first, I was unsure of whether or not I should advertise on my blogs as I did not want to clutter up the display and detract from the readability of the sites as I have seen many others do. Also, I didn't want to "sell out" just to make a buck, or in my case, about half of a buck. Third, I was concerned about disreputable advertisers attempting to rip-off my readers.
When planned out properly, advertisements can be displayed in an unobtrusive manner where they do not interfere with readability. The second issue, fear of losing credibility, does not concern me as the ads that are displayed are targeted and I believe that they provide a valuable service to readers. Finally, Google seems to do a great job of screening out seedy advertisers, so I do not have to worry about readers being taken advantage of.
Many of the ads that I use - especially on the product review on this blog - are from Amazon and show an image of the product being reviewed. This provides two valuable services to readers. First, as the saying goes, "a picture is worth a thousand words"; instead of just relying on my description, people can actually see what I am talking about. Second, if the image is clicked, it allows a prospective customer to immediately purchase the item from Amazon without having to search the web for a retailer. Google's AdSense program also seems to be targeted extremely well and I have been tempted to visit sites that are advertised on my blogs.
If you have concerns about monetizing your site, that is perfectly understandable; but, the concerns that I was facing turned out to be unfounded.
At first, I was unsure of whether or not I should advertise on my blogs as I did not want to clutter up the display and detract from the readability of the sites as I have seen many others do. Also, I didn't want to "sell out" just to make a buck, or in my case, about half of a buck. Third, I was concerned about disreputable advertisers attempting to rip-off my readers.
When planned out properly, advertisements can be displayed in an unobtrusive manner where they do not interfere with readability. The second issue, fear of losing credibility, does not concern me as the ads that are displayed are targeted and I believe that they provide a valuable service to readers. Finally, Google seems to do a great job of screening out seedy advertisers, so I do not have to worry about readers being taken advantage of.
Many of the ads that I use - especially on the product review on this blog - are from Amazon and show an image of the product being reviewed. This provides two valuable services to readers. First, as the saying goes, "a picture is worth a thousand words"; instead of just relying on my description, people can actually see what I am talking about. Second, if the image is clicked, it allows a prospective customer to immediately purchase the item from Amazon without having to search the web for a retailer. Google's AdSense program also seems to be targeted extremely well and I have been tempted to visit sites that are advertised on my blogs.
If you have concerns about monetizing your site, that is perfectly understandable; but, the concerns that I was facing turned out to be unfounded.
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