TheAnand

The recent reshuffle of the Google results has severely affected one of my most active websites with traffic falling more than 80%. It was one of my biggest single earners in terms of money and loosing revenue from it is a big time bad news for me.

After almost 3+ years of solid rankings and earnings, the sudden drop on the website was a surprise. The website in question was very genuine, with original content, optimized and valuable content for many keywords. Initially it was curiosity, to know why PANDA update caught my website in its filters and kicked it out of top spots.

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So, time to get the “blogger” words out of my resume/linkedin/twitter (*breathes) facebook/websites and business cards!

Are you a blogger by definition? What keeps you inspired? Where do you draw inspiration to keep your readers entertained?

Let me know your  thoughts in the comments section and don’t forget to leave your URL

My dad is a huge fan of the stock market. He spends time studying the market, trading and watching the ticker on for hours. It was last week I heard about the youku Initial Public Offering(IPO) listing in the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) with a valuation of $5 Billion giving it a worth which is more than AOL!

I was stumped to be honest.

A video sharing site, which is popular in China alone and posting a loss of RMB 167 Million (25 Million USD) in 2010 gets a run away hit on the NYSE taking its listing up 167% on the first day.

Believe it or not, I never relied extensively on my browsers’ dictionary to spell the word – entrepreneurship until recently when I started to fill up my profiles on the web. As with everyone, with frequent usage I learnt the word without having to wait for the wavy red underline.

Someday is not a day of the week.

I have been meaning to update this blog “someday soon”. “Procrastination”  is the word I learnt. It was true. “Someday” never came over the past few months and this blog sat around ignored by its own author. While there are stats about how many blogs are started every hour, there has to be a similarly surprising numbers of blogs which just hang around stagnant.

Having a well-organized blog can make a huge difference in the ability of your readers to navigate your site quickly and efficiently. Moreover, there are few who will likely disagree that keeping your readers happy is one of the best ways to keep them coming back to your blog. If you’re looking for some ideas on how to make your blog more efficient and better organized for your readers, here are some tips that could help you do so.

I have been a lazy blogger for most part of this year for some reason. While initially it was due to work and getting the basics up at ayruz, these days its more like a loss of purpose in blogging life. The traffic to this blog has been fairly stable at 40,000 pageviews a month and revenue from adsense being a little over 5$ a day making it the dream no-maintenance blog in my network.

But at TheAnand, I do want to blog! Just that I am lost at about what to blog. As the traffic is stable, I cannot guess which type of posts interest you the regular readers of this blog.

Internet copywriting is different from traditional copywriting for many reasons. I recently remembered a highlight about my trip to Manipal University where I was able to interact with Mr. Raviraj, who is a Journalism professor there. It was interesting to know from him that he is trying to train his students on writing for the web. I am no journalist, but I blog Here are a few key differences I noticed about web writing and print writing.

• Web Users are active and they suffer from attention defiency syndrome. Click and poof! They are gone forever.

So, how do I do it?For one, I am always mentally prepared to write content for my blogs as I know my niches well and I get ideas for posts mostly in the shower or in a place where I have no internet access. I use my mobile to jot in content ideas and sync them up. And two, I have a fairly good typing speeds of 65 wpm. So, lets start off!

1. Open  up Google or your favourite article source site and search for the topic you are going to write about. Open up 3-5 pages.

Calling the techies of Kerala!

With BarCampKerala and BlogCampKerala, we made a great stride in getting all of us up and personal offline. I think there are a lot more of techies in Kerala who are scattered and we really need to get to them. This will not only help in organizing cool events in future like a WordPress workshop, a tweetup or more members in CochinBloggers meetup. So, if you are a techie from Cochin trying to reach like minds, I have the following options for you.

The mailing lists of techies which I am a part of and active in are:

Its very important to have your blogging milestones set before you start off blogging – thats what theory says. Unfortunately, I or anyone is rarely guided by people while starting off. After about 3 years of Blogging (4 years, If manually updating html pages everyday can be considered blogging) , here is what I think is the best way to start with your blogging milestones.

And while monetization comes in the later parts, this will probably answers your questions on making a living from a blog

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is something really simple and it amuses me that corporates are willing to shell out loads of greens on maintaining their top positions on SERPS. But then, though we all know how to change a bulb, we still pay an electrician to do it. Speciality is money in itself.

Here are a few excerpts from my mindmap on SEO that I am currently working on.

1. Incomplete sites, 404 links and  pages with little to no content will give you the boot on search engines.

This was what I found on a orkut profile:

“Don’t bother adding me as a friend, I do not add strangers as friends. ”

Then I thought, I would scrap him on orkut, but then it said only friends can scrap! Hell, then why even have accounts on all these “social” networks!?!?! I understand you want to use your orkut account only for friends, but why block the possibility of getting new contacts and friends and even fans?

The other day I was pondering with the pencil in my hand. What can we bloggers learn from a pencil? Here are a few things we can learn from the humble pencil.

1. The lead inside matters more than the wood outside.

You might have the best of designs on your blog, but if you have crappy content rehashed from elsewhere, or post infrequently and post without a purpose or a meaning. Visitors can start with a “Awww…” with your terrific blog design and end it with a “….Sheit!!!” seeing your content.

2. Pencil can leave a mark.

StumbleUpon, every blogger loves this one! Its a great source of traffic for every blogger, big and small. The best part of StumbleUpon is that it gives you free traffic and is not really into the crowd mentality like Digg or the other media sites. Though hard to monetize, it builds a brand by putting it in front of a million people. Thats very important if you are looking forward to become a problogger or a popular one. Here is a screenshot of my traffic: