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The recent opening of the Avengers movie about a team of superheroes set a record for opening weekend ticket sales. The movie’s blend of jaw-dropping action, iconic characters and clever dialogue obviously resonated with audiences all over the world. That being said, you might be surprised to learn that these
characters can actually teach you something about blogging.

Captain America

Captain America, or Steve Rogers, is the supersoldier who serves as the leader and moral compass of the Avengers. Without his humility and self-sacrifice, his unswerving devotion to doing the right thing, the team of arrogant superbeings would never have learned to work together. His attitude is something that you would do well to remember as you create and promote your blog.

“Black hat” search engine optimization techniques of varying degrees of illegality or at least moral questionability can be very tempting. However, focusing on creating a high-quality blog and promoting it legally will be far more beneficial in the long run — both to your conscience and to your site’s search engine page rank.

Iron Man

Iron Man, or Tony Stark, is a playboy genius industrialist who created an extraordinarily advanced suit of armor that gave him a wide range of abilities. As a technological genius, Stark could create equipment that prepared him to handle almost any situation. In an iconic scene in the recent movie, however, he confronted the team’s greatest enemy without his armor or gadgets.

The lesson you can take from this is that, while technology can make your job as a blogger far easier, you should also be able to function when it fails you. If your laptop crashes, your smartphone falls into the sink or your internet service cuts out, do you have a backup plan that allows you to keep your blog functioning normally?

Thor

Thor is a demigod from an alternate plane of reality who can control lightning. His unbelievable power compared to most superheroes, let alone ordinary humans, gave Thor a healthy ego, to say the least — with an accompanying tendency to feel that he needed no one else’s help. Over time, however, he came to realize that even he occasionally needed help from a team.

If you have the initiative and motivation to start your own blog, you likely have a similar belief that you can make things happen on your own. This sense of determination and self-confidence is a good thing in many cases; without it, you will find successfully launching any venture difficult. However, you also need to recognize that there are some situations in which you need help.

Perhaps it is learning how to interview, how to set up a pay-per-click ad campaign or how to automatically back up your important resources. Trying to go it alone in these situations could reduce your chances of becoming successful; instead, rely when necessary on training, support, consultation and similar resources from experts in the field you are trying to learn.

The Hulk

Finally, the Hulk is the ferocious, enraged alter ego of the mild-mannered Dr. Bruce Banner. Until Dr. Banner learned to control the wild, instinctive destruction of the Hulk, he was as much a danger to his teammates as to their enemies. Although you might not periodically turn into a giant green monster, you might occasionally be tempted to go off half-cocked when it comes to working on your blog. Before you make any changes to your blog, large or small, take the time to first think them through and to ensure that they are logically the best for your blog’s future.

In a world where real-world heroes seem so often flawed and prone to failure, sometimes patterning yourself after those found in comic books can be a good idea. Even in a seemingly unrelated field like blogging, the Avengers can set a good example.

About Guest Blogger

This post was written by a guest blogger. Their details, if any, are in the post. If you are interested in guest blogging for Technically Easy, please read the guest posting guidelines.

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Last month saw traffic finally stabilize on Technically Easy after a few months of a minor decline. I was hoping to see that trend continue, and possible a little up swing as well in April, but I knew it would be a little difficult to continue the trend that I saw at the end of last year. Overall, thought, April was a good month with regards to traffic.

Steady Traffic

April say traffic continue to be steady, which is a trend that started in March. While it is nice not seeing traffic decrease, it would have been nice to see a nice slight increase. But I’ll take a steady traffic level over a decrease any day.

Traffic Stats - April 2012
(Click to enlarge)

As you can see in the graph above, the traffic showed a slight increase over April 2011, which is always good to see. In terms of how much of an increase, the table below shows the numbers for both visits and pageviews comparing April 2012 to April 2011.

Much like March, the year-over-year visits and pageviews increases were around 20-25%, which is a healthy increase for the monthly increase. In terms of comparing April to March, there was a slight increase in pageviews, but a minor decrease in visits. Of course, April also had on less day for reporting than March, so in reality the pageviews were higher and the visits between the two months were about the same.

Traffic Sources

In terms of traffic sources, search engines are still the largest source of traffic to Technically Easy. Unfortunately, this has also had a dramatic effect on traffic over the past few months as much of my older posts that discuss older technology are being searched less and less. Even though my rankings haven’t changed much, the decrease in searches has decreased my traffic.

Traffic Sources - April 2012
(Click to enlarge)

As I have been saying for many months, I am still hoping to increase my referral and direct traffic numbers, but so far it has been a struggle in doing so. I don’t like having almost 90% of my traffic coming from search engines, as one algorithm change can have a dramatic effect on the traffic numbers

While I am happy with the traffic numbers for April 2012, I am hoping that I can start to increase the visits going forward. I will also continue to look at increasing both my referral and direct traffic numbers. With Google constantly changing their algorithm, it may impact my visitor numbers in the future.

About Paul Salmon

Paul Salmon is the founder of Technically Easy. He is a an experienced PC user, and enjoys solving computer-related problems that he encounters on a regular basis.

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Related Posts

1. Traffic Stats: April 2011
2. Traffic Stats: March 2012
3. Traffic Stats: February 2012
4. Traffic Stats: May 2011

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The month of March saw traffic to Technically Easy continue to stabilize and also continue where February ended off. While traffic is still lower than it was a few months previous, at least it has stopped dropping and will hopefully start to increase over the next few months. March also saw the number of pageviews return above 100,000, and my visits increase to almost 90,000.

Traffic Stabilized

While I would like to see an increase in traffic throughout the month, I’ll take traffic that is stabilized than traffic that drops. At least with traffic numbers that are level throughout the month I can start to build numbers to reach my target of 200,000 visitors. I am not quite halfway to my target, as I was at the end of 2011, but I am starting with better traffic numbers this year than last year.

The graph below shows the comparison between March 2011 and March 2012. One encouraging aspect of the graph shows that last year the traffic numbers decreased throughout the month, while this year they remained stable. I’m hoping this is a also a good sign for the remainder of the year.

Traffic Stats - March 2012
(Click to enlarge)

For the year-over-year numbers, there was a nice increase in both visits and pageviews. While not as large as I have seen in previous months, especially the end of last year, I still consider the increase pretty good. The table below shows the comparison numbers.

While the increase in numbers is good, I have been looking into the decrease in traffic over the past few months. At first I thought it was related to a problem with Javascript executing on my blog, as it had affected other areas. After solving the problem I realized that it really didn’t have a large impact on the reporting of the visitors to Technically Easy.

Doing a bit more research into my traffic numbers I realized that some of the traffic has to do with the fact that my blog is a technical blog. One of the posts on my blog generated a large amount of traffic each month, but unfortunately the post is about a piece of hardware – an older piece of hardware. As the hardware becomes obsolete, less and less people are visiting the post about it, which has caused my traffic to drop.

The fix is to continue to publish posts to try and offset such traffic drops, but it won’t be a quick fix. Over time, however, I should see traffic numbers increase, hopefully, above where the numbers were at the end of 2011.

Traffic Sources

With regards to traffic sources, traffic from search engines continues to lead the way by a large amount. Referring and direct traffic numbers continue to lag far behind the search engines, but combined they produce over 10,000 visitors to Technically Easy. The graph below shows the traffic sources comparison.

Traffic Sources - March 2012
(Click to enlarge)

My goal is to continue to find ways to offset the large search engine traffic with referring and direct traffic sources. I have been trying for a few months, and while I haven’t made much headway in that department, I will continue to try. I’m stubborn that way.

Overall, while I would like to have traffic numbers that match the ending months of 2011, I know that it will take time to achieve such targets. I am still hoping that I will reach 200,000 visitors by the end of this year, so I do have a lot of work ahead of me.

About Paul Salmon

Paul Salmon is the founder of Technically Easy. He is a an experienced PC user, and enjoys solving computer-related problems that he encounters on a regular basis.

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Related Posts

1. Traffic Stats: April 2012
2. Traffic Stats: February 2012
3. Traffic Stats: January 2012
4. Traffic Stats: December 2011

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Although some bloggers may focus specifically on just one blog at the same time, there are several bloggers that manage to maintain many different weblogs at the same time. However, not every bloggers do that effectively. Many bloggers affect quality of content and also amount of content by trying to maintain a lot of blogs whereas other bloggers are able to maintain a number of blogs updated and interesting to site visitors. There are some important elements to help you maintain multiple successful blogs.

Keeping Content Original

Bloggers who maintain multiple blogs must be careful to keep the content of each blog original. Even if the blogger maintains several related blogs it is important to ensure each of these blogs has original blog postings.

Bloggers are also informed not to steal posts from other related blogs. This is not just illegal but is also not going to help the blogger a lot since dedicated readers from the original blog will likely realize the new blog is just stealing content from the more successful blog.

Maintaining Each Blog Updated

Bloggers which manage multiple blogs are suggested to make sure each blog is kept updated. This simply means they must take care to publish on each blog frequently. Also the best and useful blogs may lose traffic quickly if your blog visitors don’t see new content regularly. The Web is consistently updating. Because of this Online users are able to become picky and will not going to stay focused on a blog that doesn’t post new information frequently simply because they may likely find other blogs easily available which do provide updates on a much more regular basis.

Finding Time to Focus on Each Blog

Bloggers that maintain many blogs will also be given the job of finding time to focus on each blog. However, this is necessary simply because bloggers do not want to neglect a number of there blogs. This process can lead to a marked decrease in blog traffic. Thus bloggers who want to keep multiple blogs should budget their time properly to dedicate time to each blog.

Some blogs might require a lot of time and effort every week to maintain the blog working properly whereas other blogs might require very short period of time for the similar reason. Generally blogs which need a lot of study will need more energy of the blogger than blogs that are depending on the bloggers views and feelings.

After the blogger has decided that how much time it will likely be needed to maintain each blog, he is able to schedule his time consequently. However, they should decide to look at how good each blog is working and could need to make adjustments to the schedule when needed. Additionally, he might should also decide to remove a blog or get help in order to keep the blogs updated if needed.

The author Harry Sehgal recommends you to read TechnoZeast for more tech related articles. He Especially recommends the article on unfollow twitter tool.

About Harry Sehgal

I am Blogging from around 1 year now. My Interested Topics are WordPress, Blogging, SEO. I like to write articles daily.

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When maintaining or starting up an online business, if you’re up to it and feel that you need to share your expertise on something, it’s wonderful to post about important issues and let others know of your findings and experiences. If you’re in the blogging or article writing business as well, it’s very important to always read the other users’ comments under the posts you stumble upon. This is how you will get the most value for every article you read.

So you’re reading up on your favorite topics, and researching for your next post, article, or project. Or maybe you’re just reading about your other daily interests. As you have noticed (and most likely, have set up on your own website as well), there is a comments feed under each and every post. Have you ever thought about how important it is to read readers’ comments on posts you browse?

• You should give time to examine any tidbits or value that a comment can give you. Just one sentence or one mere suggestion can help you spin off tons of ideas and get inspired to write more articles. Or, if everyone seems to have the same kinds of questions, you can write a whole series of articles pertaining to that subject and explain everything further yourself. It’s like a non-stop flow of ideas, just reading what others have to say. Plus, you can learn a lot that you were never really aware of!
• Watching and observing readers’ comments can be a tiny form of market analysis: people ask for and about what they really want on the market, and what they’re interested in considering and/or buying. What do people ask most frequently? What are they really interested in? Could you possibly profit from that? How could you use this knowledge and apply it to your own website?
• You may have missed something in your own posts – by all means, don’t forget to read your own user comments as well! In a recent post I’ve written on my Internet Marketing Blog titled: how to lower AdWords campaign keywords’ average cost per click rate, our reader Zayd wrote: “I found that when creating a specific ad group keyword list, you should have all 3 match types per keyword. Increase the bid price for match type Exact and Phrase slightly more than the Broad keyword:)” That was a wonderful insight! Someone who didn’t read through the comments, wouldn’t be able to get this gem of information, something that might help their business tremendously.

Many are the times that we’ve forgotten something even though we’re sure we’ve done all research needed, and someone comes along and gives us a bit of insight. It’s wonderful, because it actually means people are reading your stuff. Always appreciate things you may have passed over, and after thanking the commenter, make additions to your posts or write additional ones on the topic with the corrections/suggestions.

• You can also get tips and ideas for your own website and posts. It’s like copying the split-tests of the giants. Look at the design and feel of the blog or website. How are people reacting to the content? What are they saying? Do they want more? Many readers will share what they think about the whole experience of visiting that website, or for more specific things, at the bottom of each post. Like we said in the beginning, readers are the most important part of an online presence! We should always take what they think into consideration.
• Readers sharing experiences will create a much more interactive experience for the rest of the visitors. If  readers are encouraged to keep commenting by having questions answered by the post writers and other users, thus providing value and good Q & A time, be sure that other visitors will chip in as well. Besides, there’s nothing nicer for a webmaster or article writer than seeing his or her followers interact with their content!

So don’t just read the posts and take off! Make sure you take the time to carefully read what other readers and users are saying – you never know just what you may learn.

About Angelos Papaioannidis

Angel is enjoying life as a freelancer and entrepreneur while at the same time trying to help other people understand the concepts around Internet Marketing and how they can apply the methods learned into their everyday business life. You can find more about him at his Internet Marketing Blog called Moneytized.

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