There are a lot of good reasons to accept donations on your website. Maybe you feel uncomfortable posting ads, or don’t have the time or initiative to rustle up advertisers, but you’d like to get a little something for all the work you’re putting in. Maybe you have an emergency and you feel you can […]
For most sites, especially when they’re getting started, Google and other search engines are the #1 source of traffic, especially for new visitors who might become regulars. It helps to know a little bit about how search engines work and how to make your site “search engine-friendly” so you an make sure your site is […]
I’ve covered this before a little, but it bears repeating: if you’re a writer, you should probably be blogging. You can make some money blogging, but that’s only one reason to blog. Here are nine other benefits that blogging offers writers.
Readers of The Writer’s Technology Companion might be interested in a post I wrote for Problogger, called Write Reviews That Add Value and Solve Readers’ Problems. If you’re not already familiar with Problogger, it’s the go-to site for people who blog for pay and offers tons of great advice about both the writing aspects and […]
Whatever the focus and goals of your site, take some time to create at least a few resource posts. Also called “flagship posts” and “pillar posts”, resource posts are entries in your blog that act as resources for your readers — the kind of stuff they’ll bookmark, email to friends, post to digg and del.icio.us, and generally […]
FTP stands for “File Transfer Protocol” and is the easiest way to upload files to a site on the Internet, especially if you want to send more than one file. You can think of it as sending files directly to the site through the backdoor, rather than going to the site through the front door […]
Sunday is a traffic black hole here at The Writer’s Technology Companion. Generally I get about 1/4 to 1/5 the traffic of a typical day on Sundays. The “received wisdom” about blogging is that traffic will plummet on Sundays, so I’m not alone in seeing this. Even the subscriber count goes down, since it’s based […]
One of the best ways you can promote your website is to link to other sites. Doesn’t make sense on the face of it, does it? How can sending people away from your site build traffic to your site? Well, there are several ways linking to other sites can help build up traffic for your own.
One of the great features of the WordPress blogging platform is the ease with which you can extend its functionality using plugins. WordPress maintains it’s own directory of plugins, and you can easily find others that aren’t in the official directory by Googling “Wordpress plugin [some function you want to enable]” (without the quotes). Installing […]
Here’s a quick blogging tip for anyone who writes online (which includes you, if you’ve taken my advice and started a blog to promote your writing). Stockpile posts ahead of time and use WordPress’ post scheduler to automatically post in the future. I try to do all my web writing for the week in two […]
