elust returned from hiatus with some changes!
During the hiatus on e[lust], I revamped the site a little – new header, new sidebar buttons can be had, and a (very irritating) new theme that allowed for better/easier navigation menus up top. I’m hoping this allows people to find information easier on there.
Another thing I added in was the Blogger Education pages I’d talked about previously. The first one that’s up is the topic I always had people emailing me about, Paid Advertising. Basically this page tells you how your rate might be figured out; what sort of things to avoid that advertisers try to offer newbies with in hopes that they don’t know any better; basic tips on making the most of it.
The next one I’ve decided to work on is going to be about how to create a blog that people will take seriously. Many of you are bloggers just to have a place to kvetch and gather with your blogmates, and so can summarily ignore most of that page. Well, some will be of use because it doesn’t matter if you’re updating your friends everyday about your cat, your blog shouldn’t be an eyesore. Some things I’ve noticed recently that I want to write about:
- Header images – what to avoid
- Fonts – displaying a dozen font colors and types on the same page doesn’t help you
- Language – again, not applicable to every blog really but if you write toy reviews, erotica, OpEd pieces….anything other than chitchat about your day for the love of pete don’t use text speak! Write out the full words, please. Please!
- Sidebars – buttons and text and clutter, oh my!
- Littering posts with photos that aren’t your own – a few are fine. Go for it! But more than a couple is just overkill and makes you look like Myspace
I will do my best to explain all these offenses without showing screencaps of the offending blogs I’ve spottted :)
What have been your blog pet peeves that you wish people would stop doing?
Speaking of changes to e[lust] – FYI – I had to disable the Feedburner email subscription. Randomly it was sending out emails for old posts, and everytime that happened I’d lose a few subscribers. I was looking into Feedblitz, but they charge you for it based on the number of email subscribers – at 250, I’d be in the $10/month range. I’m still looking for another option that would quietly take the reigns from Feedburner without subscribers having to do a thing to change over.
The Blogger Education primary page lists some of my upcoming ideas – but I don’t have to be the one to write them! I’m looking for input from others, too. Maybe a few veteran toy reviewers can write up a few paragraphs on how to get started with sex toy reviewing? That way the page will give a few different viewpoints.
The thing I really don’t like is when people turn on the option that only lets an extract be published in Google Reader. I don’t know the official term, but it makes a) reading on my phone a nightmare and b) me less likely to actually click on the posts anyway. Maybe that’s just me. It won’t make me stop reading the blog, but I certainly don’t look at the content as much as with other blogs just because of the annoyance factor.
Oh and links that don’t click into a new window, I know I was guilty of that in the beginning but now it drives me crazy if the page changes just because I clicked on a link/picture.
xoxox
~ Yeah I’ve mentioned that before here somewhere, that bloggers who use only excerpts or worse, just titles, in their feed will generally get less traffic from me. I can see why they do it, to a degree, they think it’ll land more traffic. For me, if the whole post is in the feed then I will always read it, and will therefore be more likely to go leave a comment and/or view others comments
Building on Janie’s comment, I’m one of those who only show’s an excerpt in reader. I’ve heard that allowing the full post in Reader builds more loyal readers, so I tried it, for 2 weeks. The result? A 30% decline in visitors and a 50% decline in comments. I’ll stick with only excerpt in reader.
Oh, and here’s another peeve- word verification AND comment moderation. I see that, I won’t bother commenting.
Catching up on blogs tonight, I’ve thought of some more blog pet peeves! These aren’t about design but about content.
Spare me any talk of number of visitors you’ve had yesterday, last week, last month or last year. I don’t really care. The same goes for the number of posts or the number of comments. And speaking of comments, please don’t whine about the lack of comments when you never bother to comment anywhere else.
Oh, and replying to comments, either with a comment of your own or via e-mail, is generally good form and likely to encourage people to return and comment again in the future.
Biggest pet peeves: a lack of paragraphs, ignoring rules of basic sentence structure, glitter writing (what is this myspace?), constant typos & misspellings, no understanding of what a product is actually for or how its supposed to be used, anything that moves or flashes (blogs shouldn’t snow), and talking about yourself in the third person. I can show you some examples that would shock and horrify.
I love the idea of blogging tips. My pet peeve has to do with character names (assuming it’s that kind of blog.) First, please avoid initials. How can I remember just an initial? Second, make the names unique. There’s a blog that I love, but she has three characters named Jay, James and and . . . hmmm, I can’t remember the third, because the names are so damn similar, but it starts with “Ja . . . “