more on lifehacking

43folders.com is another lifehack site (read: personal productivity), and I think I like it better than lifehacker.com. Clearly they're direct competitors; lifehacker.com has a lot of cute webby stuff and some highly annoying glib health recommendations, one of I mentioned in my health blog today. As a web effort overall, I like what they're doing at lifehacker.com, as well as the fact that the principles are women, but 43folders.com has more in-depth, better written (if a little raunchy and guy-oriented) articles, and this GTD ("Getting Things Done") stuff looks like... well, the stuff.

I have to say, after reading all this stuff about productivity, I can see why there are suddenly so many life-coaches about. You don't actually have to DO this stuff yourself, but it should be really easy to take people's money by TEACHING it! You just need to get your act together enough to put up a website. The market has got to be huge - capitalism makes us all feel inadequate about what we accomplish. I'm not saying there aren't good life-coaches out there, but the temptation of making a living by teaching other people how to make a living seems almost irresistible.

lifehacking
43 Folders

must-read site

A 43T friend has recommended the blog Lifehacker to me twice now, and I have to say, it's just an all-around great resource for keeping up with new and cool web stuff. Here are a few posts relevant to blogging: a comparison of blogging software and how to start a blog.

The posts mostly have links to other people's sites. In other words, it's something like this blog would be were it ever to grow up, and then some. Another cool thing is that the editor and one of the two associate editors are women. I see that editor Gina Trapani is a freelance writer and web programmer. I think she's my new hero, and I hope she's well compensated for Lifehacker.com!

How trackbacks work

Every day, you should learn something new. That's what I tell myself when I find that I've blown three hours surfing, checking my blog stats, reading 43Things, etc.; I can rationalize it all by finding something really cool, especially if it's worth sharing with others.

Like trackbacks.

I keep seeing these trackback links in the comments area of people's blogs, and wondering what they're for. Simply put, these links allow someone you've linked to in your blog to know that you've linked to them. Looking at Technorati's links is another way to do this, and I can't tell you how that works. I'm assuming it helps lift your page rankings in Google and other standard search engines as well as Technorati. Anyway, here is a very clear, explicit description of how trackbacks work, and how to add them.

I'm assuming I'm going to get really quick at doing this, so it doesn't add yet another 20 minutes a day to my webplay/work.

trackbacks

A couple of new directions

I came across (and adopted) a goal at 43things.com called "Get more people to read my Blog." There were well over 600 people with this goal, which surprised me; not sure why, but it did. Apparently people are blogging, and thinking about this question, but they don't appear to be working too hard at it. Comments left there are mostly along the lines of "Gee, only 2 hits a day. This sucks." But a couple of people have posted serious questions about how to promote readership, and others have offered some novel ideas. I proposed starting a team to promote some real discussion and mutual support, but to do that, I actually have to invite people to join the team - not hard, I just need to do it.

One idea proposed that was completely new to me was to play blogshares. It's a fantasy blog-stock market game. You list your blog(s), each of which comes with a few thousand shares, start off with $500 (fake, and you don't actually need your own blog to play), and trade in blog shares. I'm no day trader, but this seems like a simplified, interesting way to learn about how the stock market works (well, that may be pushing it) and to expose your blog. At any rate, it's yet another way to kill time on the internet, because you can never have too many of those. Ahem.

On a different topic, I want to confess that it's really hard for me to remember to include Technorati tags in my new posts. I can't tell you how many times I've had to go back and edit them in after publishing a post. I made a little text file that I keep on my desktop with the code, and I am trying to keep it in plain sight to help me remember. When I grow up to be a real geek, I'll have this code committed to memory.

technorati tags
blogshares
43things

blog as boutique

Remember the other day when I was all worried about having non-Google ads on my blog? Well, this morning I found a link to this blog in the NY Times home and garden section, and I'm not worried anymore. She's been around since 2004.

Pretty cute stuff, too.

Now I just need to think about who might want to advertise with me, on any of my three blogs.

Food for thought! (No pun intended, I swear, but for those of you didn't catch that, you can check out my new recipe blog.)
blogging
advertising
affiliate programs

another take on making money with your blog

Here's a link to Andy Wibbels' website about blog-based businesses. He's selling a bunch of products. There are some impressive claims here, e.g., making over $10,000 a month with your blog.

I've made $6.14 so far. My impression from watching my stats is that people by and large do not click on ads.

I'm sure I could use a little help, but jeez.

On the other hand, I do have some ideas for content I could actually sell.

Any thoughts? Anyone tried this?