Bloggers Will You Proofread For Links?

ProofRead Errors

I am a horrible speller.  Yes, I said horrible, and I mean horrific.  I am uncertain the reasons why but spell check is my friend.  When I write a blog post I spell check and proofread every time.

As I have said on this blog before quality of content is important to me.  I will post when and what I want but I want to produce some level of quality content.  I have a sense as I write a post that a certain value of content should be reached.

I have established that I strive for a level of excellence but more often than not I fall short.  I always find typographical errors in the form of misspelled words and left out words.

I seem to always leave out words.  Always!  I can read a post 10 times but the moment I have released it to the wild I find a left out word.

I published a post titled “Down with FriendFeed Etiquette.”  I had worked on this post for quite sometime.  I wrote the bulk of the writing last week and had done the research weeks before that.  Despite the effort in crafting a post I still have numerous errors in it.  I found links that do not work, words that were missing, and sentences that simply made no sense.  The spelling was correct in this case.  Well, maybe I did not find any spelling errors.

Trusted Editors

The best candidates for proofreading my blog posts would be trusted individuals.

Friends and family make great although unsuspecting proofreaders and potential editors.  But, in this case I am looking for some expertise in the subject matter of the post.

Friends and Family can do a great job at simple editing.  They can find missing words and assist with general editing.

Proofreaders for Hire

Here is my proposal.  If you are a blogger and would be willing to proofread a blog post I will give you link credit as a proofreader.

Interested?  Sign up as a proofreader and when I get ready to post I will email you several hours in advance.  As a proofreader you promise confidentiality of the post content until released.

Then your job as the proofreader would be to look for spelling, grammar, and general nonsense in the post.  I am looking for the following questions to be answered:

  1. Are there any spelling and grammar issues?
  2. Do the post links work?
  3. Do the sentences make sense?
  4. Can you understand what I am talking about is it clear?

As for style and general sentence structure my style is obviously my style.  I am looking for help proofreading not rewriting or critique.

After proofreading you the reader would email me what you found.  If you were helpful I will include a line at the bottom of the post stating:

Proofread by: Joe of Joe’s Blog, John of John’s Deer, David of TechBlog, & Mary of TechStuff

Each name will be linked to each blogger’s blog.  Would you like to join my proofreading squad?

I will choose arbitrarily a squad of 5 people or so.  If you would like to try leave a comment on this post.

Write When and What You Want To: The Rest Is Bologna

Write what you want and when you want to because the rest is just bologna. I read posts all the time with hints, tips, and these grand thoughts about blogging. They instruct you on how to grow your readership, encourage visitors, and some even give pointers for monetizing your blog.

You are either adept at writing interesting content or you are not. Some people are good at writing and some are not. I read blogs that are absolute CRAP everyday. I love FriendFeed and enjoy the noise to a certain extent but let’s get real. The river of noise is full of poorly written bad content. That is fact. Crap existing in the stream of the blogosphere. But it is ok, this is what can distinguish your blog from the noise.

Blogging is more about luck than anything. These hints from the blogosphere are just pointers to increase your chances to be successful. It really is all about luck. Don’t believe all the problogger & copyblogger stuff. Did you read the words let me type them again: It really is all about luck!

I read several blogs not in the tech field that are very well written but not very interesting to most. They have a consistent readership under 20.

Does it matter what they write about? Not really they write because they want to. They are not in the obsessed tech blogger mode of checking stats 10 times per day. They could care less about publishing breaking news or timely posts.

They write to record their thoughts. What they post is thoughtful and interesting to their small audience. But even with readers under 20 because the content is well written all 20 readers hang on that bloggers every posted word.

So how does that apply to tech blogging. Write what you want to when you want to. If you write content that is well thought out and well written you will grow a following. But it will take time and luck as well.

Another thing I read about is posting timely. This really does not matter.

I posted today right after a product enhancement roll out and announcement. I posted literally 1 minute after the launch time. But I am a small blog. My exposure is limited.

I feel like I posted a well thought out solidly written post but it did not really matter. The posts later in the day by more well known bloggers got the majority of the page views. Post when you want. Even if it is old news if your insight or take is different and interesting a well written post can do well.

I was first today but it didn’t matter. Perhaps I should have posted tomorrow. Do page views matter? What is your goal as a blogger? Ultimately to grow your blog. I was happy with the post and the traffic was ok.

However last week I wrote a quick post about a Firefox extension and the post ended up on Scoble’s Google Reader shared items feed. That was the single best traffic day ever for this blog.

This is just a perfect example of the luck involved in being a new blogger. A post that you spend the most time on may not be the highest in page views while a quick post may go viral. You just never know.

But what you can control is quality. If you have the God given ability to write well then write well. Produce quality content.

Now another thing I read about being a successful blogger is to post more posts. Post daily or even more often. Well look unless you are blogging full-time this is not very realistic. Post when you can what you can. I have a day job. Blogging can become a hobby but as a hobby daily posting is nearly impossible for me. Do what you can when you can.

To be successful you need a lot of luck. But what you can control is quality, interesting, well written content. But don’t worry about readership your audience will arrive just be patient.

Always write what you want and when you want to because the rest is just bologna.

Linked June 1-3 2008

Steven Hodson of WinExtra posts what he calls the “From the Pipeline” of the best links of the day. That is a nice concept. It will be great to look back on a year from now as a history of what took place. These are my links for June 1-3. Not all brand new content but on my radar. Heard from the noise.

Excuses, WordPress, & Blogging

For the past 6-8 weeks I have been tech blogging. Well at least a little. I have managed to post sporadically with a quest to post regularly. Sporadically is probably the best I can do for now. I tried blogging before and had given up on it. But this time I think it has stuck. I will maintain this blog and try to post daily but at least once a week.

As a new blogger I have been working to spruce up the site. I have been researching many WordPress themes, many sidebar widgets, and lots of tweaks for the blog. Several months ago I added the Disqus plugin for threaded commenting. Disqus is great! If you do not use it for your WordPress blog you should really give it a try. Installation is easy and it works great. One of my favorite features is the commenting by email reply .

During the past week I have been looking at WordPress themes and wordpress theme development. The main process in a wordpress theme that displays your posts is called “The Loop.” The loop looks like this:

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

//Code here would display and format the post.

<?php endwhile; ?>

All wordpress themes have the_loop but some have more than one. Some premium themes and magazine style themes may also display post excerpts in a sidebar or else where on the page. They have multiple loops. The following is a list of links that I have viewed as I was researching multiple wordpress loops.

I looked at ways to enhance my theme with category pages. I wanted a specific verbiage at the top of each category page. Here are some relevant links:

As I stated I have been looking at many different wordpress themes. It is good to choose a theme and stick with it. Here are couple places to take a look at themes:

I decided on Cutline by Chris Pearson for now. It is a 3 column theme. But I intend to tweak it further by changing the theme’s pages, categories, sidebars, and general setup.

Here a couple more general WordPress links:

One more thing. So you want to play with new themes, or just tweaking your site. One thing you can try is installing WordPress locally. So you do not have a Linux machine? No problem, XAMPP to the rescue.

XAMPP is a free, cross-platform web server, consisting mainly of the Apache HTTP Server, MySQL database, and interpreters for scripts written in the PHP and Perl programming languages.

XAMPP lite contians just what you need. XAMPP is zipped and requires no install. There is even a portable apps version of XAMPP. XAMPP contains everything needed to run WordPress. Check out the following link:

This link gives you step by step instructions to get your local WordPress install up and running.

I like this blogging thing no more excuses but to post.

Comments Floating in the Blogosphere

Comments here,
Comments there,
Comments posted everywhere.

Comments here,
Comments there,
Comments floating in the blogosphere.

The blogosphere is a buzz. The conversation is about comments. I wrote the other day about “the FriendFeed disjointed comments problem.” My post was pointing out how FriendFeed could help move the conversation back to the original blog.

Conversation is taking place outside of the originating blog and the problem is far bigger than just FriendFeed. The buzz began over the weekend when Louis Gray’s post “Should Fractured Feed Reader Comments Raise Blog Owners’ Ire?hit Techmeme.

I watched as Louis Gray’s post hit and the problem was clearly demonstrated. Conversation took place on the blog post, on plaxo, and on friendfeed. Certainly that was not all of the stir. I am sure other conversation took place on many other sites as people on del.icio.us commented as they bookmarked it, commented on the digg submission, etc.

The FriendFeed conversation was certainly spirited. The whole issue revolved around Shyftr and whether they should allow commenting with full text RSS. Some compared it to simple content scraping. It led one user to state, “they (Shyftr) can expect to get hit with a DMCA take-down notice” if his content was used.

My take on the whole issue. Shyftr is great to allow comments. Almost every Google Reader user would love the ability to comment in the app. However let’s create a system to allow posting back to the original post.

I posted the following on the FriendFeed conversation:

I wonder if CommentsPortability.org or OpenComments.Org are available? A system must be devised to send the comments back to the blogs. An open standard will come out of this. I can see Disqus being one of the early players. As for the offenders they are too numerous to name. Disqus, Digg, Del.icio.us, Plaxo, FriendFeed, Shyftr, Mixx, etc. Anywhere you post a link and comment not on the original blog would be included. I think this applies to linkers as much as the sites that pull the full text RSS.

The issue is protecting content creators. I have seen numerous posts lately about the changing landscape of the blogosphere and the lack of original content. Content creators simply feel threatened by someone else getting the page views and never even knowing about it.

So I was kidding about CommentsPortability and OpenComments but we simply need a system to let the Shyftrs, the FriendFeeds, or wherever else the conversation is taking place send comments back to the original post.

As my comment stated I do think Disqus could be a major early player in this.

Dave Winer says that RSS has elements in place that can be used. Can’t we allow just get along?