RSS FeedTop 5 posts of 2008
Sticking with the them of looking back on the past year, I thought I’d take a look back at my top 5 posts as calculated by the number of page views. This is made a heck of a lot easier thanks to the excellent WordPress plugin, WordPress.com Stats. This plugin is so useful, I’m almost surprised it hasn’t become part of the core installation of WordPress. But, I digress.
And the top 5 posts of 2008 are:
#5. JHU Caption Contest
I’ve never been one to take myself to seriously. Posting a photo of myself with a thought bubble and leaving the rest up to my readers had potential danger written all over it. There were a bunch of great entries, and as I had hoped, it drove traffic to my blog. Win-Win.
#4. Become a Twitter Rockstar
This year Twitter really took off. And, like most things that become popular on the internet, people started trying to find ways to use it to make money. After using Twitter myself for a few months, I put together and ebook that describes how you can build a business using a blog, Twitter and some free time. The ebook is free. Sign up for the newsletter to get your copy.
#3. Fixing the WordPress login issue
Back in September a bug was found in WordPress version 2.6.1 that would let somebody go and create a user account on your blog and then force a reset of the admin password. This gave people fits as they were unable to log in to their blog. Thankfully the bug wasn’t really malicious, just annoying. My step-by-step instructions for fixing the issue was a popular post and still receives steady traffic.
#2. Review: Fisheye Lomography Camera
A few months back EpicEdits.com ran a contest where you had to buy a film camera (non-digital) for less than $50, shoot an entire roll of film, get it developed and then publish a review including all the shots you took with it. I had just learned about the Lomo fisheye camera and thought it was a perfect opportunity to pick one up and test it out. The camera is amazingly fun to shoot with and the results are silly/interesting/ridiculous. I may not have won the contest, but I gained a ton of exposure (ha, get it) for my blog and a fun camera in the process (again, with the puns… I kill me.)
Drum roll please… And the winner is…
#1. Rock Band Foot Pedal Reconstruction
Thanks to a heavily keyworded post related to the hottest game of the year, this post trumped all others in a landslide victory. The first wave of traffic came to this post thanks to StumbleUpon. But it wasn’t long before Google picked it up and this post ranked very well for several keyword combos bringing people to my site in search of how to fix their drum kit. On a side note, I’m sad to say that I have since broken the replacement part and have fixed it again. I’m back to rocking out once again.
So there you have it. Congratulations to all the winners.
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A quick year in the life of a blog
After blogging on geeeek.com for several years, for some unknown reason I decided to move my blogging to a more personally branded domain. Enter: JohnHawkinsUnrated.com. Last year on December 14th I started JHU and since then geeeek.com has fallen in to ruins. Actually, so have a few of my attempts at blogging. I have “plans” for many of these projects, it’s just finding the time to execute the plans that I need to work on. Really, what I need to do is find direction and figure out which projects are important to me and which are not. JHU I plan to keep as my personal blog. A place for me to rant. Welcome.
This is post #172 since the beginning of JHU. I was going to go back and pick out some of my favorite posts from the year, but I’m working on something similar for a post on New Year’s Day. so instead I thought I’d do something a little different. Here’s a snapshot of the “popular tags” found on JHU so far. I figure this would be a good way to figure out what my blog is all about.
By the looks of it, my year was dominated by the following:
Yeah, that pretty much sums up my year. It will be interesting to see how this tag cloud changes over the next year. What will dominate my time and interest in 2009? I can’t wait to find out.
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Music in the background
Growing up I was always surrounded my music. My Mom would blast bands like Queen and Supertramp while were in the car. When she started dating the guy who would end up becoming my step dad, he was in a band that would practice at our house seemingly 24/7. Even after I moved out on my own, music has always been a big part of my life.
I’ve always wanted to learn to play an instrument, but fear that opportunity may be behind me. Oh, I know I could learn to play guitar if I practiced. But, putting in the time needed to become even mediocre just isn’t something I see myself doing any time soon. But man, I sure want to play!
I grew up a rocker. I’ve always loved heavy metal, hard rock and some punk music. As I got a little older my likes and dislikes bounced all over the place. Today you could find me listening to Motley Crue, Garth Brooks, Madonna, The Beastie Boys, Nirvana or the Soundtrack to Juno. You just never know.
As much as I love all the bands I listed above and as much as I love music in general, when it comes time to dig in and get some work done on the computer, bet it blogging or programming, I have a very hard time leaving any of their music on in the background. Don’t get me wrong, I love to have music in the background, but listening to music with lyrics while I’m trying to write is nearly impossible for me. Instead I’ll listen to something like Blue Man Group’s Audio CD. This for me is the ultimate background music for getting work done.
I’m writing this post as a reminder to myself. I wasted 2 hours sitting at my desk trying to work on a project while simultaneously listening to the new Guns n Roses CD, Chinese Democracy. There’s nothing wrong with the CD. I’m actually growing quite fond of it. But, there’s a time and a place for it with me. At my computer while trying to work is NOT that place.
What music do you have on in the background while you are working?
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30 days of blogging
Just to be clear, no, the title doesn’t mean that this is my first 30 days blogging. Far from it. My original blog has posts dating back all the way to October 2003. I’ve been at it a while. However, I don’t always blog on a regular basis. Sometimes you’ll get 5 in a week, sometimes 3 in a month. Sometimes it’s less frequent than that.
At the beginning of September, Jason asked if anybody was interested in joining him in his 30 day challenge. The goal was to blog at least 1 time per day for 30 straight days. I’m usually really bad at following through with these types of things, so naturally I agreed to join in. And, as of today, this marks the 30th consecutive day! I made it! What’s most amazing is that of the 8 people I knew who were in the challenge, I’m the only one that finished all 30 days! I’m not sure how it happened, but I made it and I’m really excited about it!
There are a fair amount of benefits that you receive by blogging every day. Here’s a small sample of what my experience have been:
- Google page rank went from 1 to 2
- Alexa rating dropped from 616,280 to 371,929
- #of visitors tripled from last month to this month
- # of RSS subscriptions tripled in 1 month
I’ve also realized that the more I blog, the more I enjoy the writing process. It’s nice to have a place to just sound off on whatever topics I want. But even more enjoyable is writing posts that solve problems for people. The solution to an issue in WordPress and fixing my broken Rock Band drum pedal both have received steady traffic from people searching for answers on Google.
This month has been pretty gratifying. I intend to keep the streak alive and see if I can break 50 days, then 75 and maybe even 100 days in a row. We shall see.
Here are some highlights from the month in blogging:
Most visited blog post
Fixing the WordPress login issue
Most active referrer
http://stumbleupon.com/
Most common search term to find my site
rock band foot pedal
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Blog World Expo 2008 - Day 2 Recap
Day 2 of Blog World Expo started off exactly as I suspected… late. I don’t know that I have ever been to a conference where the final day has started on time. Especially a conference held in Las Vegas. I think the only way to have a final day session start on time in Las Vegas is to make sure the final day doesn’t start until noon.
The keynote today wasn’t so much a speech as it was a dialog/Q&A with Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week and Mike Shinoda, singer from Linkin Park moderated by Rohit Bhargava. 
They talked about building your personal brand and how it pays to be more interested than interesting. Rohit asked them the best question I had heard all weekend: How important to your success has it been to not be an asshole?” This headed the conversation towards how it is important to be nice to people you may think are non-important at the time. You never know which person is going to have the connection or cause you to be in a certain place at the exact right time. Tim also spoke about setting goals but know what the goals give you when you get there. He also suggested to “Talk to your readers like you would talk to your friends after 2 beers.”
The first session of the day I went to was called “My Blog is a Business? Building a Foundation that Can Help You Grow Your Blog Past the Hobby Stage” The panel consisted of Chris Brogan, Rob McNealy, Jeremy Wright and Nina Yablok and was moderated by Jim Kukral. The panel for this session was pretty amusing. Definitely a bunch of characters here. Nina forced them all to give their top keys to becoming a business in less than 5 minutes.
Chris made the following points: Be helpful in your space, write from your customer/reader’s side of the fence, don’t do a sales pitch.
Jeremy said he has 3 simple rules: think less, plan less, do more stupid shit. Don’t get caught up in trying to make things perfect. Of course, he didn’t mean that you should throw any crap together and expect to make money. But I think you get the idea.
Rob pointed out the following: professional bloggers work their asses off 80+ hours a week. Embrace the hard work to be successful, and, if you love what you do and are passionate about it, it doesn’t really seem like hard work.
The next session was called “Beyond Adsense: Exploration of Practical Monetization Streams“. This panel had David Berkowitz, Jason Billingsley, Michael Buechele and Matt Hulett and was moderated by Angel Djambazov. This session had a lot to do with tools each use for making money on their blogs. Mostly ad networks, affiliate links, software to display ads on WordPress blogs, etc. For me this session was mainly review and didn’t have a lot of new content, but there were several people in the crowd frantically taking notes, so I was definitely in the minority there.
Next was the Networking Reception on the Show Floor. During this time I made one final trip around the show room floor. I grabbed a couple more business cards and flyers and broke my rule from yesterday and collected 2 new T-shirts (thanks, Lijit). 
I drank a couple Jones Sodas (cream soda, yum!) and I picked up these two bottles that I think I’m going to go ahead and save for a while. I had some chicken fingers and chips and then I spoke with a few people about WordCamp:Las Vegas. By the time I was done, there was still another hour left before the next session started. I realized that my recent travel schedule plus the marathon day yesterday had left me wiped out. I decided to pack it in and head on home.
I had a great time at BlogWorld once again and I’m already looking forward to next year’s event. I hope to see you all there!
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