freshblogtips: blogging tips with a creative twist

Six Things to REMOVE From Your Blog (And make your readers happier!)

Sometimes we think that adding more to our blogs will improve our reader's experience. But, in most cases, the opposite is true. Think about some of the most popular design blogs: decor8, design*sponge, Apartment Therapy (and many more here). They are all clean, easy-to-read and have simple designs.

In the past, I've offered you advice on things to add to your blog to make it better. Now, I'm sharing six quick things to remove from your blog to make it better. And I doubt you will hear any complaints from your readers after you do.

1. Remove the music. Yeah, I know. Not a popular opinion. But I always turn off the music when I visit a blog that starts singing to me. Unless you are a musician or a singer or you sell music on your blog, turn the music off! (Or at least keep it OFF as a default, and let your readers turn it ON if they choose.)

2. Remove any ads or previews that pop-up when you hover over a link. Two of the companies that offer this service are Kontera and Snap. These pop-ups can be very distracting - particularly the Kontera contextual ads. You can recognize them by the double-underline under random words in a blog post. Common words, like "sale" and "furniture" become automatically underlined when you use them in a post. When you hover over them, a small ad pops up and covers part of the screen. No thanks!!

3. Remove the blogs in your blogroll that you don't read anymore. Just take a few minutes to spruce it up. I've had blogs listed on my blogroll that hadn't been updated in over a year.

4. Remove any type of counter that tells people how many visitors you have had to your blog. This wastes valuable space on your sidebar, and it could possibly lead to readers judging your blogging merits based on the number of hits you receive. You can use the stats that come with your blog to see how many visitors you've had. (Blogger/Blogspot, Typepad & Wordpress all have built-in stats).

5. Remove any outdated swaps, contests or events from your sidebar.  If you want to let readers know about the fun things that you've participated in, then create a separate page that lists past events.

6. Remove that dreaded Partial Feed. If you don't know what I am talking about, then you are probably safe. There is a setting in your RSS feed to only display the first few sentences of a blog post when people view it in Google Reader or Bloglines (or any feed reader). Please don't do this! I understand the point, believe me. You want your readers to click the "More" link and read the entire post on your blog instead of in a reader, usually to ensure that people are viewing the ads on your blog. But there are other ways to get people to go to your blog, such as including links to previous posts. For example, I sometimes refer to older blog posts in order to give some background information on a subject. This forces the reader to go to my blog if they want more info. If you are using a partial feed because you have ads on your blog, then think about including some of the ads at the bottom of your blog post. That way, they will show up in the feed.

So....do you agree or disagree? Is there anything in that list that you REFUSE to REMOVE from your blog? Or, do you have any more tips to add?

BlogHer Ad Network: Registration Is Open!

The BlogHer Ad Network registration is now open for bloggers, after being closed for several months. You may have noticed that I recently placed a BlogHer vertical banner in the left column of my freshvintage blog. Even though the registration had been closed, bloggers could still submit their blog address for review. I submitted mine in June, and received a "special invitation" to participate a few weeks ago. I felt so very special.

Well, I'm not so special anymore, because the registration is open to all bloggers who meet their criteria, which includes:

• Must be at least 90 days old
• Written by a woman/women, or geared towards a female audience
• Open to comments
• Updated at least weekly

If you are invited to join the network, you have to agree to place the BlogHer ad in the top part of your blog ("above the fold"). You also can't show any other graphic ads above the fold of your blog, unless they are ads for your own products or services. This might be problematic for bloggers who sell ad space in the top part of their blog. One more thing - if you write product reviews on your blog, there are some rules that you have to stick to if you want to continue with your reviews. I typically don't do product reviews, so this wasn't a problem for me.

Why am I so excited about the BlogHer Ad Network? For two reasons:

1. You get paid according to the number of impressions, not clicks. What the hell is an impression, you ask? An impression is an ad view. Your readers just have to see the ad - not actually click it - for you to get paid.
2. A link to one of your recent blog posts is rotated through the BlogHer ads that appear on other blogs in the network (the text link appears below the graphic banner ad). This drives additional traffic to your blog. Traffic = Impressions = $$$.

When I started blogging, I put Google AdSense ads on my blog. It is tough to make a lot of money with AdSense, since readers have to click the ads for the blogger to make money. In looking at my Google Analytics metrics, I could see that visitors who came to my blog from a Google Search were more likely to click on one of my Google ads. Probably because they couldn't find what they were looking for on my blog, so they clicked an ad that contained their search words.

As my blog matured, it became filled with more and more keywords that people were searching on, so I received more traffic from Google searches. And the amount of money I made on AdSense started to increase. But it still wasn't a lot. My biggest month was around twenty dollars, which paid for my Typepad hosting. Keep in mind, though, you don't get your payout from Google until you hit $100 in revenue.

I've had my BlogHer ad for 20 days and I've nearly doubled the amount I made in my biggest month using Google AdSense! And the past twenty days weren't particularly special - I actually had less traffic than I normally do. If I start posting more often, my revenue will certainly increase. (If only I had more time in the day. Or a live-in maid and personal chef.) Of course, the money you make is completely driven by the traffic you receive on your blog, so your revenue could be much more or much less.

I don't think the BlogHer ad is too obtrusive, which was a big issue for me. I feel that if you provide quality content, then your readers won't mind a few ads on your blog, as long as they aren't too distracting. But, I always second-guess myself when I see the little Ad-Free Blog image on other blogs. Do those bloggers hate me because I have ads on my blog? Should I even care what they think? Nope. I don't do paid editorials about products. For example, I would never write a glowing review of a crappy product, just because someone was going to pay me. With the BlogHer ads, there are no rules that govern what you say about advertisers. But M&Ms is one of their advertisers...how could anyone say anything negative about them anyway?

In case you are wondering, I don't get any kickbacks for recommending BlogHer. And I've only had it for 20 days, so it could all go horribly wrong. But I am happy so far. In fact, I'll register my freshblogtips.com blog as soon as it is 90 days old.

What do you think about advertising on blogs? Do you advertise on yours? Or are you averse to putting ads on your blog? How would you define "too many" ads on a site?

Updated on November 11, 2008: I received an email a few days ago that the BlogHer Ad Network has just closed to new bloggers. I strongly suggest that you still enter your name/blog/email address in their form.  As I mentioned above, I originally signed up when registration was closed, and I was contacted to join the network while it was still closed.  So, try it!