Blogging

My 2007 Traffic Stats

Anatoly Lubarsky — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:23:00 GMT

Stats from this blog for 2007. In 2007 I had ~333000 visits and ~429000 pageviews.

I think it's not really bad since during the second half of 2007 I was totally focused on Facebook platform therefore I posted less and less with miserable number of posts during October - December. No doubt I'm gonna change that. The following picture is from Google Analytics covering 2007 general stats. So only browser traffic is counted here (meaning RSS subscribers not counted). With ~62% Internet Explorer and ~33% Firefox.

Don't Submit Feeds to RSS Directories

Anatoly Lubarsky — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 19:05:00 GMT

There are thousands of RSS feed directories out there. Innocent people just submit their feeds for hope that their blog/site would become more popular.

RSS directories just create a simple directory structure, simply republish feed content throw some adsense ads here and there. Almost zero investment overall.

Everything is fine until... Someone would actively link to your content under RSS feed directories, so that Google would pick them up, and drop your original as "duplicate content". I have experienced this "phenomenon" several times in the past with my blog.

People who run valuable content blogs loose ton of traffic (and money) because of this. To check if you actually loose traffic to RSS directories - search for a phrase (in quotes) that should be unique to your page. If you notice any other site besides (instead of) yours - someone is linking to your content on RSS directory site. Not include direct linking with citation here (as some kind of feedback) on other blogs...

A couple of such RSS directory services I can think of the top of my mind are a rssmad and purerss. It is almost impossible to opt out either.

It is possible however to block directories crawlers via code or by blocking their IP via firewall.

It was a free SEO tip for bloggers out there. Enjoy.

Unique Ideas and Blogging

Anatoly Lubarsky — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 04:27:00 GMT

Speaking of blogging - I believe there is some sort of ideas market. Some people or we may call them "early adopters" go and buy good ones. Others manage to get the rest until there is no single unique idea left...

There are so many blogs, but there is a limited number of unique ideas or material (to blog). Most people usually repeat, link to or repackage the stuff already written once. I guess that's cruel :) I don't speak here about personal blogs but more about the people who tend to have a unique point of view on some issue.

"Localized blogs" - people who write in other languages than English are more comfortable repackaging stuff since they have to translate it, so it does not really matter if they link to the source or not ...

Speaking of myself - I'm glad I have some sort of small but unique niche to occupy and manage to write about stuff I personally care about (here and there...).

Hosted or Standalone Blogging Platforms - Pros and Cons

Anatoly Lubarsky — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 02:12:00 GMT

Darren started an interesting "open mic discussion" - Hosted or Standalone Blogging Platforms - Which is Best ?

Do you use a hosted or stand alone blog platform? Why?
Do you wish you’d made a different choice when you started?
What are the Pros and Cons of the two options?
What would you recommend to a new blogger?

This discussion seems obvious to me (after 3.5 years blogging here) - so I decided to participate:

I have a standalone blog platform. Actually I have my own blog hosting service engine :) It has some crumbs from various services (.NET based) that were popular in 2003 - 2004. I have my own domain name, dedicated server and firewall. Why ?
- Having your own domain name is a must for a serious blogger. I realized this after a month of blogging when decided to switch services for the first time.
- I have a very big traffic/content ratio. My traffic load passed some threshold some time ago - so I had to move to dedicated server hosting to remain stable and grow.
- Firewall helps me a lot to fight spam.
- I have my own engine because I like to have things under control :) It is .NET based and has a ton of optimizations, tricks and advanced techniques implemented over the years. I'm a developer at the end of the day and have to implement things hands on. It is ASP.NET 2.0 based and MSSQL 2005 is a database server (Express edition).
I wish I'd get my own domain name when I get started.
Pros and Cons:
- It is more difficult to start and gain authority and traffic when you are standalone. When hosted - you have a piece of network and traffic already established from the beginning.
- The hosted platforms are usually free and easy to operate.
- Standalone blog platform gives me more control over my blog.
- However it takes more time and money to operate.
- However you can monetize traffic :)
- You can learn more when you are standalone.
- Independence and autonomy are valuable.
Recommendation to a new blogger - at least get your own domain name on a hosted platform to start and see what happens. If you are passionate and manage to get a piece of traffic over time it will be easy to switch services or become hosted.

April Fools Online Jokes = Pure Waste of Time

Anatoly Lubarsky — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 10:25:00 GMT

I don't really care why people are willing to spend thousands of hours online preparing April Fools jokes. Especially it is hard to see bloggers kinda fake site defacement or leaking new device from apple. Many bloggers start to heat up their readers days beforehand. Giants like Google usually come out with jokes intended for college aged students.

Anyway need just to not open feed reader on the 1st of April and not to spend time reading all those not funny, childish, predictable, stupid rants. Whatever...

Well, may be only techcrunch came out with something original.

What a drama ! Come on guys...

Sorry For The Downtime

Anatoly Lubarsky — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 20:53:00 GMT

My blog was down this morning and previous night. Seems like my hoster computer had some issues but I don't know exactly.

May be it is the time to get a new server ? Anyway, everything should be ok now.

Blocking Comment Spam Attempts

Anatoly Lubarsky — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 01:16:00 GMT

Lately I banned a bunch of IPs because of comment spam attempts, which I described yesterday - Thoughts on Comment Spam.

There are just many of them, but most attempts use the same software as I can see in the logs. Spam software uses the following user-agent string:

Opera/9.0 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)

No it is not really Opera :). At least one of spammers used a bunch of public IPs/proxies to post, but I managed to spot original computer spammer IP:

72.232.217.138 = SPAMMER. Block him guys. Please note he is able to post from different IPs. If you see Opera has a decent stat share on your blog, check your logs, Opera sucks and people don't really use it.

One of major drawbacks of online statistics services like Google Analytics is that it will never tell you that kind of info.

This blog is 3 years old

Anatoly Lubarsky — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 21:10:00 GMT

See 1st post

Livejournal is down

Anatoly Lubarsky — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 15:22:00 GMT

Livejournal is down today for some reason. Well it is not the 1st time it happens:

Hope LiveJournal users will survive several hours without blogging...

Update (22:35): No it is not up until now, may be partly and the service is very slow. My blog stats shows many distraught visitors that come to this post from various blog search engines (searching for LiveJournal status). LOL