Lately I’ve been having some problems with leaving comments on certain blogs that I was visiting. It made me wonder if I was the  only one that was running into these problems and if it bothered anyone else? I wondered if I was just being too anal  about leaving comments?  Ever since I first started blogging I’ve always been big into commenting, I really like the interaction that a comment allows between the blogger and the reader. I know we all read a lot of blogs everyday or at least try to and I for one always try to leave a comment after reading ones post. Then I started to hit roadblocks now and then on certain blogs, where I was unable to find their comment area or the owner of the blog had you jumping through hoops just to leave a comment on their blog.

“Make sure your site is easy to navigate. Nothing is more frustrating than navigating a site where it’s easy to get lost. This will negatively impact your profitability since potential customers are unlikely to stick around if it’s too difficult to find what they want. Simple and direct navigation is key!” from webreference.com/authoring.

Do You Make Your Readers Jump Through Hoops?

I think some blog owners are unaware that their comment areas are too involve for some bloggers to take the time to either register or sign in to leave a comment. There are some blogs that I’ve noticed that are so cluttered that after you read the post you expect to see the comment area and your unable to find it, you try putting your cursor everywhere to see if you can find the exact spot where you are suppose to leave your comment. If I can’t find the comment area within so many seconds then I’m on my way to another blog, or on to another project that I have to do online. Read more »

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Last week I had a Malware Virus to deal with,  so upon visiting my site you may have seen the blog but also gotten a warning to stay away from this site or you could get a virus. (Don’t worry, it’s very safe!) For those of you with certain virus protection you did not see my blog. In it’s place was a red warning page titled “Reported Attack Site” and a paragraph saying this site was under attack… which is how I found out I had a virus on my own blog! I thought “well, I’ll just go to my WordPress and see what’s up. (Duh!) My site was taken down so there was no WordPress to go to.  Also my webmail was taken down, and my blog’s name and domain was removed from all search engines. I’m told that if my blog did get into the search engines it would have had a warning saying not to come to my site. Ouch! But with the help of Hostgator, GoogleWebmasterTools, and Lloyd Lopez, I got through the malware attack pretty much unscathed. I didn’t lose anything and in the end, it was much less traumatic than I expected. Of course, when it first happened I was stressed, but so far, so good.

The message “Reported Attack Site” is a little confusing to me. I’m thinking maybe they should say “Report an Attack to Google” because that is what you have to do. Google detects the malware virus and shuts the site down to prevent it from going any further and protect anyone visiting the infected site. It is then your responsibility to get it fixed and send a report to Google. When it finally gets a clean bill of health they will put your site back up.

I found out that many new bloggers just abandon their blogs when they find the “Reported Attack Site” message because they don’t know what to do about it.Malware virus/hacking is something that all bloggers could encounter, so I will pass on the process that I went through to get my blog back up and running. Keep in mind that there are many different types of hacking and viruses, but mine was a malware virus. To learn more about malware viruses and how to protect your blog, go to Wordpress.

1. Call your blog hosting company. Whenever your blog goes down you should call or e-mail the company who hosts your blog. I’d much rather call than send an e-mail because I like instant feedback, so make sure you have the telephone number(s) of your blog host in a notebook ready for these occasions. I use HostGator for this blog and they’re also the host for the MCB Free Blog Tutorial.  I cannot say enough good things about them. They are patient, very helpful and easy to talk to for a non-techie like me.

1a. Send e-mail to host security requesting help. HostGator told me I had a Malware Virus and that I had to send an e-mail to HostGator Security to request help and tell them of the warning Google placed on my blog. Security immediately sent notification that they received my request and gave me a case number for the process.

(Of course, you could skip the initial call  [1] and just send an e-mail to Security [1a], but I’ve always communicated better through phone… or face to face… and the call was very informative and reassuring.)

2. Wait for notification from host security. It took a while but I finally got an e-mail saying that HostGator assessed my blog and I indeed had been hacked with malware. They told me I was hacked into from  Wordpress versions that had not been updated, and that my site was now clean.

Problem Solved! (Just kidding!) Now you have to notify Google and wait for Google to approve you.

2a. Report to your Google Webmaster Tools. HostGator told me I now had to let Google know that my site had been cleaned of all badware, so I did.  I then checked off the box saying “Please review my blog”..

3. Let Google review blog. I assumed I was in the clear, but Google informed me that they were still detecting “badware” on my site. So I called HostGator and they fixed each problem as Google told us of them. In my case this whole thing took about 3 days before my site was declared “cleaned of badware” .

3a. Wait for OK from Google. I checked my mail constantly and on the third day I was finally got the message: “Status of the lastest badware review for this site. A review for this site has finished. The site was found clean the badware warning from web search are being removed. Please note that it can take some time for the change to propagate.”

Keep checking to see if blog has propogated and you should be up and running when you see your blog online!!

Since my older version of hacked  WordPress was hacked into, I had to change my passwords (for Cpanel and admin. log- in too) and make them very strong and I will be changing them often. If you haven’t started a blog yet, make sure you have a notebook or two to hold all of your many passwords, telephone numbers, and dates of expiration for your domain name, blog host, etc.

To decrease the changes of being hacked make sure you have very strong passwords with numbers and symbols mixed in and change those passwords often! If there is anyone who has had this happened to them or can share more information on this type of problem and/or  would like to share in comments section or interested in a guest post please leave a comment.

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Here’s a post by a frequent visitor and good friend of MomsCashBlog who formerly had a blog known as consultelaine and  who now has a blog named Bohemian Things.  She shows us how sometimes we  end up in a totally different place from where we began and just the process of starting a blog can get things rolling in the right direction. It’s a great story about finding your rightful place on the Internet and following your own heart.

The Life of One Blogger
by Elaine Murphy

When I first started blogging (again) my intention was to use my blog to make a profit. I will be the first to tell you—pick a subject that you have something in common with. Picking a subject you’re interested in, interested in learning about, or a subject you are already passionate about is a good way to go. This way you would avoid getting bored and run out of things to blog about. Okay, I got it.

As luck would have it I stumbled upon MCB free wordpress blog tutorial. The tutorial was very influential in helping me get set up with my first wordpress blog. Within no time I had a blog ready to go. Things were looking up!

My passion is hair. I love doing hair, and talking about hair. Although I am not a licensed cosmetologist, heck I could pull it off…easily. This was a passion of mine since I was a child so I naturally started to blog about natural hair care. Easy enough, so I thought. Let’s get started.

My blog talked about the latest hair trends, recommended products, and celebrities with natural hair styles. Whatever pertained to natural hair, I wrote about it. Things were starting to change — I was distracted by the template, and started wasting hours nitpicking and altering it out of boredom. I found myself changing templates more often than I would post. It was then that I realized I did not want to talk about hair every day. I asked myself…what is going on here? I became disenchanted with chasing a way to make money online and took a break from it all.

“I quit”, I told myself. Shortly thereafter I removed the blog. Here’s the irony—the blog was not, nor was it ever, about the hair.  What I was essentially doing was finding someone else’s products to sell and incorporating that into my natural hair care blog. This wasn’t working for me… as much as I enjoyed talking about hair it did not seem like that’s what my blog should be about. Blogging became tedious and exhausting for me, and I did not know what I was doing.  I quickly found out that I needed to learn a few things about the business…SEO, (search engine optimization), key words, Google Adsense, strategies, tips, tools, etc. I felt this extra stuff was keeping me from enjoying the process. This route took the fun out of a passion, a love I’d enjoyed all my life and still to this day.  I needed to go back to the basics.

One day I received an email from JJ inquiring about my now non-existing blog—she had been keeping her eye on me and wanted to know what was happening with my blog. I had explained to her it was temporally down and assured her that I did not give up on blogging. I did not want to admit to her that I did stop. She had always encouraged me to keep trying and to stay in the online business.

Then on January 14, 2009, I popped over to MCB to get my weekly fix of encouragement and what was the title of the blog “Start a blog today.” I truly felt like it was written with me in mind. I decided to give it another try. I had missed blogging.

I would blog again only without pressuring myself to make a profit with affiliate marketing. I changed my outlook and the course of my blog… it evolve into an extension of who I am and what I do. I would write about me and my creative process and  my own products instead of selling for someone else! I am an artisan. I find great satisfaction in creating with my hands, and blogging about the things I create. I create whatever my heart desires.

Now I maintain a blog showcasing products I enjoy creating. I joined a great community of like-minded crafters and artisans over at IndiePublic. I create products that are an extension of me, products I would be proud to promote. I have a shop set up on Etsy “a place to buy and sell all things handmade” were I sell my Bohemian Things with no pressure whatsoever. I truly love blogging and I never run out of ideas for a post because I am consistently creating and that’s what I found I was meant to blog about.

Had I not stuck with it, I would not have received this wonderful opportunity to share my creativity online and also have a guest blog here at MCB about “The Life of One Blogger”.

Thanks JJ. I owe it all to you.

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I am not a technical person and I want others like me to know that they can start a blog without being super technical. I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails from bloggers-to-be who feel overwhelmed by Search Engine Optimization. So, this post is for anyone who is hesitant to start a blog because they want to learn everything about blogging and SEO before they take that first step.

When it comes to blogging, the first thing to remember is “he who hesitates is lost”, so start a blog today. Don’t wait for the perfect time because there will never be a perfect time. If you’re a perfectionist and you’re trying to learn everything before you start a blog, you will surely be lost. I jumped right into blogging and bought MCB without knowing much about it. I’ve made some mistakes, but blogging is a “learn by doing” process. If you wait until you know everything then you’ll never get your blog off the ground. So I say just start your blog and learn as you go. Lucky for you, there are hundreds of bloggers out there ready and willing to help you with great posts about SEO and anything else you need to know about blogging. Read more »

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There’s a lot of talk about Google Toolbar PageRank this week with the New Year’s update causing blogs to show less PR and others gaining it — but on the whole it looks like Google is getting strict for 09. Mine went from 4 to 0 in the last round and I didn’t expect any new year changes, but I’m not too shook up over it. I am living proof that you don’t need good PageRank to make money with your blog! I’d much rather make money at home than have good PageRank, but of course, both at the same time is great! lol Unfortunately, with some of the ways blogs make money your PR will drop within a few months of using them.

Google penalizes blogs PR who use TextLinkAds, sponsored posting, pay per post, and some other proven money makers. As as blogger you have to decide what is most important to you. If you are blogging only to get PageRank then you’d better stay away from those types of money makers. On the other hand, if you want to make money with your blog, then you should look into them. But first, you need to get traffic coming to your site because you can’t make money any of those ways without having a good amount of traffic.

A big mistake some new bloggers make is to focus too much on PR. They think seeing good PR on the toolbar means a site is making money but that’s not always true. Someone who wants good PR can optimize their blog to rank well with Google and still not make any money. Read more »

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When I first took over this blog, I knew the basics of PageRank and the Alexa Traffic Ranking… but I wish I had known how important it is for a blogger to be using the Alexa Toolbar! So now I want to make sure that other newbies to the blogging world know why you should install this handy little SEO plug-in even if you don’t have a blog yet.

Alexa collects website traffic statistics for every website on the Internet and displays these stats on Alexa for all to see. At Alexa.com you can look up the stats of your own blog or type in the URL of any other blog/website online to see the Alexa traffic stats for that site. Keep in mind it’s not a true reading of website traffic because most of Alexa’s statistics are generated from Alexa Toolbar users. Basically, it’s a percentage reading of traffic based mostly of those who have installed the Alexa Toolbar plug-in on their browsers.

When you start a blog it will take some time for your website to appear on the Alexa Traffic radar. To help speed things up you need to install the Alexa Toolbar. By installing the Toolbar onto your web browser you’ll be helping your own Alexa Ranking and the ranking of the sites you visit. The more visitors you have using the Toolbar the better ranking you will get with Alexa.

Like Google, Alexa gives each website on the Internet a rank but since Alexa’s numbers are based on traffic percentages the numbers are larger and it ranks from high to low, with low meaning more traffic. The top traffic ranking is a #1 and Yahoo holds that spot right now. In the beginning, your number will be in the millions because there are millions of websites on the Internet that you are competing with. The more visitors your site gets from the Alexa Community (users with the Alexa Toolbar installed on their browsers) the lower your number will get. Having your number go down to 100,000 or even 200,000 is good, and less than that is even better.  Here’s one way to look at it: If your blog has a number of 165,000 then you know there are 164,999 sites out there with a better rank than you.

Techies and/or bloggers will be more inclined to install the Alexa Toolbar or other SEO plug-ins that include the Alexa Toolbar, so some say that you’re only getting a reading of the percentage of techies or bloggers that visit your site. It stands to reason that if you have a technical blog and most of the users have the toolbar, you’ll have a good Alexa Ranking, but the system does allow for a small percentage of traffic outside of the Alexa Community. The average web user doesn’t install the Alexa Toolbar so if your blog is about a non-technical topic such as gardening or beauty products you might not have a good Alexa Ranking because most gardeners or women into beauty products would not care or even know about Alexa. It doesn’t mean you don’t have good traffic coming in, it could mean you don’t have many other bloggers or “techies” visiting your site. Even though a good Alexa Ranking will give you bragging rights, you don’t need good ranking to have a successful blog.

MomsCashBlog’s Alexa ranking went so far up (which is not good!) this summer that it was off the chart and was no longer displayed on Alexa! However, at the very same time my other stats told me that MCB had the most REAL traffic in it’s history and I made the most money during the same time period that I lost my Alexa ranking! Obviously, I lost some “techie” visitors over the summer, but I gained some non-techie visitors and I made some good sales. I don’t worry too much about my Alexa ranking because my goal is to make money… and ranking well on Alexa doesn’t necessarily mean you make more money. Still, a good Alexa number gives your blog more credibility so if you have a good rank, be glad! If you don’t have good Alexa, don’t sweat it… just keep blogging, strive for good content, install the toolbar, and the rest will fall into place. (My ranking finally came back up to 210,805.)

You can install the Alexa Toolbar and become a member of the Alexa Community from either the Internet Explorer browser or Foxfire and you don’t need to have a blog to do this.  If you want to install it onto your Foxfire browser you have to go to the download page from your Foxfire browser. (The download is on the same page for Foxfire but it’s called “Sparky”.) Upon installing it you’ll have a small bar chart down in the lower right-hand corner of your browser which will change with each site you visit. Some SEO plug-ins have the Alexa Toolbar built in and displays each site’s Alexa ranking along with PageRank and other stats helpful to bloggers. Once you use the Toolbar and encourage your readers to install it, you will definitely see better ranking, so do it now!

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