Shaun Low

I just wanted to let all of my non-Canadian readers know that Canada Day is coming up on July 1st. So what is Canada Day? 

Canada Day is often referred to as “Canada’s birthday,” particularly in the popular press. However the first day of July does not commemorate a clear-cut date of “independence” or “founding,” but instead merely commemorates the begining of the establishment of the Canadian confederation through the 1867 British North America Act.The British Parliament still retained several political controls over Canada after 1867, and the country still lacked many of its modern provinces. July 1, 1867 represented the establishment of Canada as a kingdom in its own right, the begining of a new phase of Canadian self-soverignity and democracy, and was the begining of the slow march towards full independence from Britain, attained with the proclamation of the Constitution Act by Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada, in 1982.

 

So I just wanted to let all of my readers know that I will be missing my first day of posting this weekend because I will be going out of town to celebrate Canada Day . My goal when I started this blog was to never miss a day of posting but I think this is a valid reason to leave for a few days. I should be back on Monday. When I get back I will return to my regular posting schedule. I hope you all enjoy Canada day!

Time.com has compiled a list of the websites we can not live without in this day and age. I have to agree with the majority of the sites on this list. The list is in alphabetical order so there is no #1 website on the list that we all need. Personally I couldn’t live without Google, Technorati, ESPN, and Wikipedia. Check out the whole story here.

Well I don’t think that’s entirely true but according to Dane Carlson’s Business Opportunities Weblog my blog is worth a modest $13,548.96. A friend of mine over at My First Million Dollars showed me this site and all you have to do is enter the URL of your blog and it will instantly estimate how much your blog is worth.

My blog is worth $13,548.96.
How much is your blog worth?

In todays blogsphere it is entirely possible for your feed count to decrease while at the same time your content is getting stronger and better. Spikes in feed counts do happen if your site hits the front page of Digg or Slashdot but retaining these readers is the key to your success. I will cover a few of the many reasons why readers can unsubscribe to your feed.

• Blog changes focus

In other words this can be described as too much off topic posting. Stick to your niche. Your investing blog should not drift off into the computer industry, nothing offends your readers more when you talk about something totally off topic.

• Too many posts

This doesn’t mean that updating a blog more than once a day is a bad thing, but I have subscribed to feeds and it came to the point that the posts became too overwhelming and I had to unsubscribe.

• Uninteresting content

Your blog must have an audience. No audience, no reason to run your blog. If you put out boring content that has no importance to anyone you will not get any noticable traffic.

• Posts are too long

People simply don’t have the time to read a 7000 word article. People are impatitent and you should be able to get your point across before you lose the interst of the reader

• Negative blogging

Creating an atmosphere of negative blogging will cause your readers to not want to visit your blog. You should be positive with the majority of your posts to keep your readers happy when they come to your site.

• Irrelevant Content

Your readers come to your site to read whatever you have to say about your niche. If your blog is not relevant to your niche you will loose readers.

• Blog titles do not describe content

Often times your title is the first thing your reader looks at in the making the decision to read the full post or skip it. Your title has to catch the readers attention and at the same time must effectively describe the post.

• The bloggers ego

Just because you run a successful blog great, give yourself a pat on the back and move on, nobody wants to listen to an egotistical blogger. If you consistently pump out good content your blog will speak for itself .

Has your blog been getting an increase in negative comments? Are your readers not happy with the content you are pumping out?

Negative comments encourage discussion, could you imagine if every single one of your posts were commented on with the same repetitive comments “Great post shaun!”, “awsome tip,”. Yup thats really boring. Negative comments within posts increases discussion among your readers and will generate more traffic. I will never block any negative comments on my blog because I know the negative comments will bring people with different opinions to discuss their side of the story.

I’ve read comments on other blogs and don’t know how many times I’ve heard the same thing from readers claiming that they are threatening to leave the site.  More often than not the reader will never completly leave the site. Odds are they will not visit your blog as often but it’s rare to leave and never come back.

Negative comments can be a clear indication of growth. Now I don’t want you to go around pissing off your readers, what I meant was to always express your true opinion on every topic. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and as the author of your blog you can not please everyone and you shouldn’t try to please everyone. With todays diverse readers it’s impossible to make everyone happy with you and seeing an increase in negative comments lets you know you are doing your job correctly.

When your readers do leave negative comments always respond to the comments professionaly and always reply in a positive manner no matter how negativly the comment reflects your blog. If there has been some profanity left within the comment you can always edit the comment and delete the profanity then publish the comment live for the other readers to read.

When you start seeing an increase in negative comments don’t look at this in a bad way, remember this is a sign of a blog maturing and growing.

If you ever wanted to know which blogs have the most feed subscribers you should check out this post made by Self Made Minds . Many blogs and sites compete for the most feed subscribers and many people base the success of a site or blog just based on the amount of feed subscribers. The top 10 are:

1. Engadget - 849K readers
2. Boing Boing - 421K readers
3. TechCrunch - 409K readers
4. Simply Recipes - 235K readers
5. Xataka - 155K readers
6. Interesting Thing of the Day - 158K readers
7. Mashable - 151K readers
8. 43 Folders - 108K readers
9. TechCrunch.fr - 96328 readers
10. Dumb Little Man - 72511 readers

After taking the “Which Super Hero are you quiz” the results predicted I would be the Flash lol. “Fast, athletic and flirtatious”, I think that describes me fairly well  .
 

  The Flash

The Flash 85% Robin 62% Green Lantern 60% Iron Man 60% Superman 50% Spider-Man 50% Supergirl 50% Wonder Woman 50% Hulk 40% Catwoman 25% Batman 20%

Fast, athletic and flirtatious.

Take the test for yourself it only takes 30 seconds. Click here to take the “Which Super Hero are you Quiz”. After the test come back and let me know who you are!

In one of my recent posts Life of a Google employee I provided you guys with a video of what it’s like to work with Google. In the post I had a spelling error and spelled the word “benifits” instead of the correct way (benefits).

So why is this a good thing? Well if you Google the term “Google employee benifits”, guess who ranks #1 for that, yup me . But if you were to Google the term with the correct spelling shaunlow.com will not even be in the top 20 pages. Many Google users are constantly incorrectly spelling words while searching. These incorrectly spelled words have low competition for the top spots on Google and there is a much better chance you will rank high if your site matches the same incorrectly spelled words the users are typing in Googles search box.

How much traffic will this bring me?

Not much actually so far I have been getting about 2-3 clicks per day just for that term but if I had used the correct spelling for that post I wouldn’t have gotten any clicks.

Spelling mistakes should be kept minimal on your blog. If your blog is loaded with improper grammar, wrong punctuation and bad spelling your readers will question your ability to read and write and result in a loss of traffic and loyal readers. The odd spelling mistake is fine and sometimes even better .

We all know that we can make money from Google AdSense and that some keywords pay more than other keywords. But which keywords pay the most cost per click?

Thanks to CyberWyre we have a list of the Highest Paying Search Terms. The list includes the top 230 paying search keywords. The top 10 paying keywords all pay more than $38.00 per click:

$54.33 mesothelioma lawyers
$47.79 what is mesothelioma
$47.72 peritoneal mesothelioma
$47.25 consolidate loans
$47.16 refinancing mortgage
$45.55 tax attorney
$41.22 mesothelioma
$38.86 car accident lawyer
$38.68 ameriquest mortgage
$38.03 mortgage refinance

Remember that there has not been a confirmed list about the top AdSense keywords and the cost per click is a dynamic automated system that will continue to change. Now that you have a list of the top paying keywords don’t stuff your site with these keywords. Great content is what keeps your readers coming back to your site .

Here is a list of todays articles I came across while reading other blogs similar to mine. They are excellent articles so visit their site and see what they have to say!!!

• Mr.GPT has provided us with The Ultimate Guide to Building a Downline.
• BetShopBoy explains how reviewbackis an excellent way to get free link exchanges to increase traffic and seo rankings.
• The Gomer Zone breaks down the difference between HD DVD and blue ray disc.
• EJ Cooksey teaches us 10 tips on how to generate blog traffic.
• Ahmad Affzan tells us why holiday is bad for bloggers, who knew?
• Scot over at Meridiancrest tells us how to increase our Alexa rankings and make more money doing this!