Green Flamingobecause I said so

In the blogosphere, when everyone starts to blog and new people create websites everyday,  when you get busier and your blog becomes less important on your list, blogging becomes much more difficult. Quality posts are harder to write, and you have less time to comment on other blogs and maintain your site.

There is more to it than explained above. Sometimes it is the little things that count, and the little things that you don’t have time for. When on a tight schedule, you will not have time to update your twitter, guide along your technorati, digg other blog posts, tweak your rss feed, add new gadgets to your site, explore new blogs, comment on old blogs, optimize your SEO, optimize your pagerank, etc. These little standards bring together some of the things that promote your blog, and some ways that people view the status of your blog. Though all these are really little, too be successful in many eyes of all kinds, some of the tidbits are important over a range so large.

And even when one needs most of those things to feel completely in control, posting regularly and commenting seems most important. Even so, you have to watch how you go about that. I have seen on some sites lately that they have slacked a little, the grammar may not be kept up, or an ordinarily well built post will simply have the outlines to it. I have been no exception, I could draw my posts out into something very well received. It just gets harder and harder to keep up the best work.

How To Make Things Easier

To make things easier for yourself and your blog you need a plan, a schedule, and you need to compact. You also need to take the same principles of ecology: reduce, reuse, recycle. You can reduce the fluff in your posts, and the time you spend dawdling off on unhelpful sites. You can reuse your knowledge, and space, even some content. You can recycle your old content too by making into something new, recycle other blog’s posts and resources that you find.

Incorporation is a big part of the process as well, which follows along timing and schedule. If you incorporate most of what you need to do in short, well put together pieces you can get a great amount done in optimal time. If you quickly make sure your site is all working before you post, then write and publish a quality blog post, that will be a start. Then you can twitter about that blog post, and start commenting on other blogs, which hopefully have comment luv and will track back to your most recent post. You can also submit your site to directories, and social bookmarking sites at this time. All that should fill your blogging time for a day, and can be completed within 1-2 hours, depending on how much time you spend with certain activities.

Besides the normal routine, you can create a waterfall of visitors with a new idea, program contest etc, that is new and that will promote extra traffic to your blog. These types of things really seem to help people have a burst in profit.

The bottom line is, with blogging times getting harder, and time for blogging decreasing, then you need to know how to create the best plan for your blog with whatever is available to you.

Beta Advertising Update: Because of a feedburner delay, the raffled advertiser has still yet to be drawn, so you can still enter. There are also two more spots up for grabs, just comment on the beta post and let me know.

Getting Back To Blogging

I know that many bloggers have to postpone blogging career, but then often they wish to come back. This could turn out to be a little hard if they are not up to date or  do not seem cut out for more blogging. I know there are a fair amount that have this desire, and I hope I can help.

Section 1: pre-launch                                                                                                                      1.  1. One of the first things you want to do is to figure out why you couldn’t blog before, and fix that  problem. It could be because of time, content, stress, or any other reason that would prevent you from being able to blog on a normal schedule.

If it is due to a time problem, you might want to free time or “shape” the time that you have to make room for blogging. Because if you don’t have time, then there is really no way you can get all the necessary pieces to keep the blog running.                                                                              Regardless of the reason, you still need a solution. For some of you, this might be the hard part, but there is always a time to take the jump and go.

2. The next thing you need to do is optimize your theme and clarify the stature of your blog. The first part of this of course, is to find a theme that is up to date, and a style that is up to date. You can quickly check on other sites similar to yours as samples if you need some.                                          If you continue with your previous theme, and think it is up to date and modern, there is not much to be done. When finding a new theme, then you should make sure the title is yours and the RSS section directs readers to your feed. Other optimizations such as added promotions, gadgets, colors, site statistics, etc. can be added to your theme as well.

Once that is complete then you should clarify your previous content, organize posts, categories and tags, edit pages, so that your blog is current and ready for the public.

3. The third thing you should do is to write new content, as far as posts and pages. You do not need to wait a week before your new launch, but you should have one or two posts that are current for your readers to browse as they visit. The posts should be modern ideas and helpful information, probably not a “sorry I left but I’m back” 100 word post that you scrambled up in 10 minutes, but more like a half hour long, well written, well composed post that is thorough and new, showing readers that you care, and making then want to come back. It could also be thoughtful, and display some sort of message, if informative is not your type.

Section 2

4. Now it is time to relaunch your reborn blog! If you do not have a huge launch plan set up, then there are simpler ways to get your site back on the market. The way I like best if to visit other’s blogs and leave lots of comments. First of all, by reading your colleagues post’s, then you learn what is going on, more news, and if you have previously established a name for yourself the chances of recognition will be higher. You can travel to old sites, new sites, different sites and blue sites. All kinds of places you can promote the relaunch of your blog by just leaving a peace of your mind.                                                                                      If you feel like going all out, then you can throw in advertising, forum activity, and other ways of promoting your site, but really you only need to comment and your blog will start to grow back.

5. Now that you have gotten traffic back to your site, my last piece of advice is to keep up the blog, which like the first step, in solely your effort. You can make it grow bigger and bigger, and if you make money with it then you can hook up your programs and make money again once your site gets popular. So if you are able to post consistently, and visit others sites consistently, as well as leaving time for new things, then I think your blogging career will be very well back on track.

I have heard some people talk about how there are already plenty of blogs that help newbie bloggers to learn, and to guide them through the first steps. Though there are already many blogs like that, the opinion is still wrong, there are ways to get some views in that topic.

1. Type of site:

Create a super-blog, with ALL the information newbies need and will use in their near future. It could be somewhat of a database, well organized so they can find the answer they are looking for with a few clicks of the mouse. A database will take a long time to create, but when you are finished you won’t have to update as often. If you want more a traditional blog, you can still post consistently and then store your database information on another page or a sub-domain.

2. Promoting the site:

To promote a site for newbies, you have to target sites where they will hang out. You can either comment a lot on other “newbie info” sites, attracting the people who know they want to get into blogging, but they don’t know how, or you can try to attract visitors by getting others interested in blogging.

Social bookmarking can be quite popular, like twitter, stumbleupon, digg, and sites of that sort. You can even go to AIM or youtube, depending really on what kind of visitors you want.

And you can even make a name for yourself locally, telling your friends about it, and spreading the word to the people you know.

If yu decide to advertise, target the same type of sites, with a catchy ad to interest someone in blogging.

3. Making it stand out:

Not only do you have to have all the content, all the creativity, and all the organization, but whatever you put out there has to be easy to follow and understand, and you can’t skip much of anything important.

So I think 1, 2, and 3 cover one way that you can successfully blog to newbies. If you have another genius idea, feel free to share!

I am very happy to say that there was a pagerank update, and I am at PR3! I am back!

In August, after the Pagerank update then, I worked very hard to get myself back to PR3 as I had been in July and for many months before that.

I am very happy that I was able to increase my PR so I do not have to feel bad about it and also I can feel like my normal self.

This really helps my blogging spirit!

-The Now Happy Green Flamingo

I meant to write this earlier  but oh well, read it now or never.

There have been many contests circulating since June, that is when I really noticed a kick in all the contests that were being started.

Since June I have seen a few well run contests, and a few typical ones that are always great but are having almost the same contest as 70 other blogs (don’t ask me why I picked 70). These contests can get annoying as well. Though I do love contests and prizes, there are SOOOO many out there that I don’t have time to join and participate in every one, for there is just no point.

Usually, I would not care that tons of blogs are having contests, but in a certain way I do. See I love to read blogs, be surfing them, comment and get to interact with the author and other readers. When a contest comes up, the calm is disrupted and people will go crazy for the prize. There are a lot of spam comments, a lot of questions, and a lot of worthless and foolish stuff circling the blog. I almost feel like I should participate, but know I don’t have the time or energy to be the top commentator with 80 comments, write 10 blog posts about it and link to all the prizes and all the sponsors. It would just drive me crazy!

Recently, a friend and fellow  blogger Rajaie talked about how he hated that so many contests were being started, and I have to agree with him. Though contests are great, they can be a huge annoyance and sometimes you have to lay off the shit and get the gold.

Now we will move on the the real topic of this post, and that is what I qualify as a good contest vs. a bad or unworthy contest.

What makes a contest worth it

Some contests are really worth it to enter, let me share some of the reasons with you. I should tell you, I feel that our friend Ben Patton’s contest will really be worth it, he is giving away a laptop! And here are our 10 good reasons to enter.

1. You have a unique or uncommon prize
2. You have a great or valuable prize
3. You have interesting ways to enter and earn points
4. You do not have 4 million prizes or sponsors
5. You are a good blogger with shark-bait content
6. Your previous contests have been great (not always a reason)
7. You don’t make your readers sweat to much
8. You are always interesting no matter what
9. You give a chance to get something for nothing
10. The thing I forgot [fill in answer here]

I was not sure I would come up with 10, but I edited and got that many. I hope you agree with those, be sure to fill in your answer in the comments.

What makes a contest hit the fan (what makes it suck like hell)

1. Your prizes are all too common
2. You have 10 million prizes and sponsors
3. Your prizes are worth 2 cents
4. You have stupid ways to enter and win
5. You never have good content
6. You have other contest failures
7. You make your readers go get you a million dollars
8. You are a dull person
9. Every prize you have to work your ass off for
10. You are a mean person

There are a few reasons for you that make your contest terrible.

Now neither of these qualifications really fit anybody, most are average, a lot of recent contests leaning to the bad side, maybe because it is just too small or some other reason. Most contests manage to pull of a good show, not quite like Jon Stewart or Chris Brown but still something that’s ok to waste your time on and win a few prizes.

So I am not saying your little contest is bad, but I am saying that next time you should think before starting a contest, you really have to make it worth it and not pull it out of thin air with a few ad spots, text links, and some reviews. You have to make it more sophisticated and interesting and then bloggers and sheep will come flocking to you like crazy.

I also have another post that I add onto and that adds on to mine, they would work combined I guess, so I should let you stomp on over to Jay at Datmoney and then come back and tell me what you liked of his article telling you 5 reasons why he WON’T sponsor your contest.

I should also tell you again I am thinking of running a contest, have no fear I will have most of the pro reasons in mine. I am looking for sponsors, so if you have a great idea for a prize let me know.

-The Green Flamingo

Last night I had a post in mind for very early this morning, unfortunately that did not work out, because I forgot. I might remember later, I almost did, but not quite.

Even though it was an idea for a great post, I think I might have to shift the focus of this blog once more anyway. I am trying to provide quality articles that really help you out or show you something, but today Jason made me notice that I am not always unique in content, because 50 million other bloggers are giving the same information.

I could go with more of an opinion on things for my posts, but it still uses the same topic and that can be very boring. I am trying to find an actual “niche” for this blog, I may stick it onto young entrepreneur and Internet marketing while I blog about blogging, but not about “blogging tips.” I think I have some ideas, I will continue later.

I do not need to list all the upcoming things I might have yet, I am going to have a post encouraging suggestions, though I do highly encourage suggestions on this post as well.

I also want to announce the winner of the review, the first of many I hope, and this weeks winner is…Big Ben Patton of Big Ben Patton’s Place! Look for the review tomorrow!

Also, today I spent a lot of time working on my new site, loking for themes and tweaking them, helping the author to write articles, things like that. See you later!

-The Green Flamingo

It has been over a week since I have posted anything, or maybe just over a week since my site has been down.

I am not sure it is so much readership that I have suffered, though it did take some people many days to comment on how my site is down.

I am disappointed in the loss, hopefully it can be won again, for I do not want to let Green Flamingo die.

I think some of you might want to know what happened, so I think I can relay that in a quick manner.

What Happened

I think it was on a Sunday, in the afternoon and I was working on Green Flamingo. I wrote two posts, one published immediately and the second of the University Kid to be published the following day.

I then thought I would touch up the site a little bit, as long as I have the time, and you rarely have time for blogs on vacation. I went into the footer file, remembering some of the weird links that were there. I had heard Jason say people will get really pissed if you remove footer links, but nothing superbad will happen.

So I took my chances removing an ugly beer link and a webhosting link. Why should I have those?

Then the trouble started.

I hit “update” and I either got the message straight away or when I opened my site to see the new look.

“This theme is released under creative common’s license and all footer links must be kept intact.”

I was willing to agree with them, maybe they just go a little extreme over it, who knows? So I went back and tryed to edit the file. I was sad that I did not have the exact format for them, so I opened greenflamingodesigns’s copy of the file and sure enough it was there. I copied/pasted the code in, but it still did not work.

Days later the site itself was fixed, but I had to use a different theme. Of course, I was stupid enough to try the other theme again, then again, and even a third time. The other day Ben tried to help via IM, he downloaded a copy and I emailed him a copy of my footer. He tried to find the problems, and I did too, and finally he decided to give me his footer text. I copied that in, deleting my other text and not saving it. The theme was still broken, and so I had to delete the theme and get a new copy.

Before I could do that, my Internet was down for a day and a half, and it was down today being the reason I was not finishing this at 1:00.

I copied and pasted the theme files I edited like the stylesheet and sidebar into a word file to switch them with the new theme copy, but when I got to the header I found my part gone.

That was another place where I truly messed up, all the editing of the RSS buttons and email forms were messed up, plus ads and entrecard. I will probably recover soon, I am not sure if I can get the same images, or remember who was advertising. (If you were please tell me).

Anyway, my site is alive and hopefully I can get itr back to its previous staus. I hope you did not die hearing my long talk of problems, though sometimes a blogger must reveal his failures. And a tip for you: you might not want to remve that footer link, not matter how ugly!

As I have said a few times I love to review, and a while back I offered some free reviews, nobody took me up on the offer, Usually I do a review of some sort of product, technology, site, and it is all based on my opinion, and is not paid. Today’s review is not “paid” either, but it was won as a top commentator prize. I congratulate Rajaie, for being the top commentator on Green Flamingo in July and winning this review. I have gotten to know Rajaie well through Blog Premiere, his site, and his works.

More Traditional Review

Rajaie is a 14 year old entrepreneur, not much older than myself, owning a unique blog and by age is set apart from other bloggers. Though most sites belong to 16-20 year olds,  Rajaie displays his skills and professionalism through his blog Rajaie Talks, where he gives great blogging tips and very effective methods for improving your blog.

Rajaie Talks combines blogging tips with daily ramblings, having some fun experiments once in a while or a rant or two. I think it continually provides great blogging content that will really boost your blogging,  something that is common in the blogosphere but very important.

The stats of Rajaie Talks can be amazing, I have not looked deeply into them but I know he has 10,XXX inbound links according to Yahoo!. I am surprised how well Rajaie has raised his blog, he really seems to know a lot about blogging!

My Style Review

I think Rajaie Talks is a great site, is brings out the best of himself and the way of blogging. Rajaie’s blog is fun to hang around, maybe it does not have the most upbringing design but it has a very strong and supportive community, and I’m sure you will be able to find help there if you need it.

The site itself is clean cut, gentle, and has a cloudy but refreshing feel. When I first visited I was interested, because I have not seen a design quite like this one before.

When you first step in to talk to Rajaie and his friends, you are greeted by a nice logo, some flashy banner ads, subtle blue background, and best of all: useful and effective content. I like the content part, because to me there is not much special about the design, but with his writing you can really learn something.

I think Rajaie Talks is a site well worth visiting to learn and enjoy. Have fun!

I guess I am done with the review, I don’t know what else to add. If you have any tips for future reviews, let me know, when I do paid reviews I will consult with the client to see what they want in it.

See you tomorrow and good luck!

I am sure you have heard that you need to create a “user friendly” blog, so here we will expand on that idea. Of course, you do want to make your blog friendly to all visitors (excepting spammers) so that they will like the blog and come back. This will be part of a series here, and this is part one, the theme.

A theme distinguishes the look of a site, including colors, pictures, and layout can come with theme. If you look at my blog, the cover that you see is the theme, or if you are noticing how the design is constructed.

There are different types of themes, for different people and for different platforms.

• Probably the most common theme is the Wordpress theme. Since many, many, many blogs are using wordpress as a platform, then wordpress themes are all over. Now there are three main types of wordpress themes, which are:

Free themes – there are many free wordpress themes that you can find, and they really have a great look. The theme I am using is a free wordpress theme, but I have other plans for this blog and it’s theme. The only problem with the free themes are that there are so many out there, and so many good ones too, that it is hard t find the perfect one. I am not going to refer any free wordpress theme sites to you yet, because I think you should search on your own.

Premium themes - premium themes are made by very experienced theme designers. Premium themes cost you a bit, but they can be worth it. One thing notorious for premium themes is that they have a lot of features, meaning there will be places you can easily edit, such as banner ads, featured posts, RSS details, and many other things that can be much easier than going into your code and editing it.

Custom Themes – custom themes seem so great to me. Every blog that I come across with a custom theme really seems to have a nice feel. Custom themes are themes that you pay someone to make for you, it is custom for you, having whatever you need with it, and also is used for only you. It will not be sold to anyone else.

Now we move on to the second kind or type of theme, and these are Blogger Themes. These themes are for people joining Blogger, where it is yourdomain@blogspot.com. There can be some great blogger themes, but I see nothing special about them, maybe the reason being I am not a Blogger user.

Our last type of theme introduced is the plain html template, or CSS or xhtml, but basically it is just code making this template. I have started a site using just code, but that was a practice of Green Flamingo Designs and I have decided not to mess with code so much anymore, it just cannot do the same things as Green Flamingo › Edit — WordPressthe themes can. I do not recommend this type, for it is hard to deal with and a bit of a pain.

Choosing and creating your design

You should always combine certain aspects of a basic theme design into what your site looks like. Those will be introduced here, as well as some guidance on choosing or creating a theme.

• Creative
• Semi unique (not a hugely common theme)
• unique graphics
• friendly graphics
• accessible and usable
• not overwhelming or scrambled
• black on white text, not white on black

Creative – be yourself, be creative. Make the look something that is you.

Semi unique – if you have a free theme, choose one that is not too common, you do not want to be the same as everyone else! Same thing applies to the premium themes, so you might want to move on from the John Chow or Cow “Milk It” theme.

Unique Graphics – you want to have unique graphics, so you should probably get your own header, logo, maybe even RSS button.

Friendly Graphics – you want to keep your graphics friendly, mostly to the eyes, but in general as well. You want to have everything neat and friendly, with fun but professional graphics.

Accessible and usable – we want your visitors to be able to use the theme functions, so make sure they can do that!

Not overwhelming – you want to keep it short and sweet. Do not load up and graphics and pics, ads, or anything else disturbing to the eyes. If if hurts you to look at your blog, it’ll kill others.

Black on white text - I think you should keep it so that your text is black and background white. I have heard complaints from the white text/dark background thing. It does not have to stay completely black and white, you can add some variation, just have dark text on light background.

This was day 1 of the tips! Expect to see more tomorrow! I will be updating all of this, and I may put much of this into separate posts. We do not want too much in one post! I am not sure exactly how I will balance out all the information, I think I will just turn it into a long series of post, each one being about half this length. If you like it all in one, then let me know.

I think that this was a great post and would be very grateful if you submitted this to any sites. Thank you!

If you have been blog traveling lately you will have heard of the Google Pagerank update.

Google Pagerank or PR is measuring the authority of your site, like your technorati rank. How it works is Google counts how many backlinks you have to your site, and from there it gives you a rank from 1-10. It is rare to see a high PR site like PR8 or higher. Most sites are between 0 and 5 for pagerank.

So to increase your pagerank then you have to collect backlinks. It depends how high the PR is on the sites that you get links from. You can search for charts, or use this one, to see how many links of what PR to get to a certain rank.

The PR of Green Flamingo actually went down. I am very disappointed in this, but it is how it is. I used to be PR3, but now I am PR2. In between now and the next PR update I will try to increase the rank, hopefully to 4.

What is funny is that when I had PR3 I got that without even trying. In fact I think I received PR3 when I first looked into making money online. In Internet time this was years ago, but really around January. After I found out what PR was I was surprised at the number.

Now when I have been trying to increase my pagerank, for it can help increase sales or even boost the look of your blog. I am disappointed that is went down, but it is the way it is. For all of you that had a backlink on my site, some of your PR increase will be because of this backlink.

I think I mostly got my pagerank from tech-buzz.net and lionandmagicboy.com. On tech-buzz I no longer have my top commentator spot, and the PR5 or six that it was moved down. Fortunately it’ll be back up and my top commentator spot will be reclaimed in August. Lionandmagicboy will soon close down, but I have other sources for links.

I heard from Jason at theuniversitykid.com that it is not very good to have out going links, so this is one of the reasons I am not linking to some of the sites I mention, though it really does no harm. so I have a little announcement.

The links and banners that I was giving out at the beginning of July (I think it continued to the 5th or 6th though) I will be taking down in the next few days. This would come no matter what, my intention was to keep them up for a month. This is very close to a month, and since most were practically free, they are going to come down now. I am going to begin banner advertising, so if you received a good experience from having your banner up then contact me. My advertise page will be up soon, so if you are new here then you should read that. The links I will keep up until a few of the banners go down, and eventually the links will come down, though not right away. Really nothing will come down right away, but be prepared is all I’m saying. I do have a new category of links, these are the sites I read and love, so a lot of my blogroll if I read those blogs will be transferred. I am also going to add one or two more, some of the ones I read and comment on often.

Back to the PR update, and your status. I want to know what the PR update has brought you! We just want to know how your pagerank has changed, good or bad.