Today Wordpress 2.6 got releaseed. There are several new feauters, but here are some highlighted ones:

Post Revisions: Wiki-like tracking of edits

AS you know wordpress got autosave by now. But in 2.6 you can check who made what changes just like in wikipedia. Guess this will be usefull on blogs with many writers.

Theme Previews: See it before your audience does

Finally you can make changes to a theme before you make them public. Much like writing a post you can now prview a theme.

Here are some of the smaller features and improvements in 2.6:

• Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.
• Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
• Bulk management of plugins.
• A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
• Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
• Plugin update notification bubble.
• Customizable default avatars.
• You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
• Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.
• Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
• You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
• Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts.
• Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
• You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
• A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
• Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.
• Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.

Here is an video that tells you what new in 3 minutes and 29 seconds.

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Just a quick post today. I logged into my Entrecard account today, and was kinda shocked to see that it costed 2048ec/day to advertise on VikingBlogger. Usually the price is around 15ec. (I don’t drop anymore)

I guessed it had to be a bug, so I checked the marketplace, and saw some nice figures. The most expensive one costed 262144ec per day!

How much is the price for a spot on your blog at the moment? (Talking Entrecard here…)

Update 9. april 2008: It looks like it aren’t a bug, sort of. Since Entrecard is introducing a new pricing system these day, the price of ads are effected by that. Thanks for the guys commenting on this.

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Today Wordpress realeased the newest version of this great software that almost all bloggers use, Wordpress. The version is called 2.5 and there are a lot of new things updated. A new interface is the most seeable thing, but people that post pictures on their blog does also have something to be looking forward to.

As you can see on the image above, the dashboard has got an facelift. Looks good:)

Breakdown of new things:

• Dashboard Widgets
• Multi-file upload with progress bar
• Few-click plugin upgrades
• Built-in galleries
• Friendlier visual post editor

I think I will be waiting a week or two before updating, since there almost certain will come an update that sorts out some minor bugs that people report.

Ohh, i mentioned that bloggers that post pictures had something to be looking forward to, see this video where Matt is explaining a new feuture.

Download Wordpress 2.5 now!

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Alright, I think this is an important issue that all bloggers need to know about. Lately a new form of scam has been used to take the hard earn money from honest people. This time it’s not regular people, but bloggers. It works like this:

• You as an blog owner get an enquiry about advertising on your blog. The subject are usually something like Partnership Enquiry and Website Partnership Enquiry. The names of the senders include Richard Thompson, Edward Johnson, Daniel Lee, Jason Miller, George Nelson, etc.
• If you response they will start to negotiate the price. Usually they are paying way over market price, and as a website owner you should not be blended by the high amount of dollars they offer.
• If you get to an agreement they will send you a check with an amount above the sum you agreed to. (ex. if you agreed to $2000 they send you a check for $3000)
• The people behind the scam will then claim that a mistake was made and ask that you refund $1000 via money transfer.
• If you send the money before the check clears you cannot stop the transfer and you will find out that you have lost your money since the check is fake.

This could possibly work, but since bloggers are quite good to keep contact with each other, and of course they use their blog to tell other people about this scams it shouldn’t take of like other scams. Have you got an email like this? Please leave a comment.

BTW; after reading about this I think they have tried to scam Darren over at Problogger.

What Other Bloggers Write About the Subject:

Beware of possible ‘Nigerian*’ Online Advertising Fraud
Bloggers Beware - Phishing and Scams
Bloggers Beware: Nigerian Fraud Has Evolved Into Display and Text Link Ad Solicitations

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Here I am, sitting in my bed with my laptop. Thought it would be a good thing to write a little post before I call it night. Most probably this will be a more personal post then before, hope you don’t mind.

When I started this blog, my goal was to keep it updated regularly, and post at least once a day. For about one month that worked out just fine, and I had more then enough time to write, and the ideas of topics kept coming.

If you have been with me from the start in January you might have noticed that I haven’t updated this blog so regularly the last week or two. Thing is, it takes time to make good content. A lot of time. And then I have to answer on emails, and try to market this site. It all takes time, and sadly it’s only 24 hours in a day.

Latly I have started up a couple of big new websites that needs my attention, and then this blog don’t get what it deserves. Anyway, I have tried to keep it updateded, but not as much as I would like. I just got to many things in the air at the same time atm. I need to take a couple of them down. (Just for the info, this blog is not one of them!)

Not only have I quit postpone my school, I have also got a day job, so then I have to focus and use time on that as well. I guess.

So, what happens to this blog then? Well. It will not be updated daily. Most probably I will try to post a couple times a week. I have also been thinking on video blogging. It would take a lot less work, and might be a good step to take this blog “to the next level”. Not sure about it yet though, just an idea I got.

How the blog goes

So, how does this blog go actually? It’s sunday, and I got some numbers for you.

(Last time in parentheses)
Alexa: 142,058 (215,825)
Technorati: 80,591 (126,758)
Authority: 86 (46)
RSS readers: 87 (60)
Posts: 70 (59)
Comments: 679 (547)

Alexa is climbing downwards to the 100k mark, but it takes sometime. Finally this blog is among the 100k top blogs according to Technorati. Currently with a rank of 80,591. When it comes to the RSS readers the blog will soon cross the line of 100 people. Right now it stays on 87, which are the top day.

Not looking so badly considering I haven’t been writing so much. The big contest is over, so the rss count might fall a bit the next days. I guess we have to wait and see.

Wellwell. Thats it for today. Now I got to get some sleep. Have a nice day/night, and remember to subscribe to this blog if you aren’t already!

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On my daily reading round, a post over at The University Kid got my attention. Basically, he got an post featured at digg, and received some traffic, and a nice amount of RSS subscribers. (87 of them) Anyway, thats not the most interesting part. I noticed that he had a really nice chart displaying the stats, and I wondered where he got that. Kind as Jason is he told me, and I found the service really cool.

It’s called Feed Analysis, and it makes a really fancy chart of your RSS data. To generate this you only need to feed them your feedburner link, and they arrange the rest. So, basically you can check out how others are doing as well.

This is how they describe their service:

By the use of Feed Analysis, the number of subscribers for each month is neatly shown on the column chart. You can also view the number of subscribers, hits, views and clicks for every single day from the line chart. The best/worst day of the week is also available which is displayed on the pie chart. And also, Feed Analysis can give you an estimated value for your blog / site according to the number of your subscribers.

Above is my chart, and as you can see today I hit a new peek and got 81 subscribers.

Other then that, it does also calculate your growth rate, and can predict your subscriber count 12 months ahead. If you got a fairly new blog this prediction doesn’t need to be as accurate as when you got an older blog. Anyway, the more stats, the better.

Based on my data, VikingBlogger.com will have almost 4k of subscribers after 12 months. Hmm, sounds good:) I guess we just have to wait and see if its accurate.

Check out Feed Analysis

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Update 1. mai 2008: I are no longer using PPP services. I want my PR!
As I’m looking after ways to monetize this blog, getting paid to do reviews are a natural way to make money. Today VikingBlogger.com finally got approved at PayPerPost. Long story short they provide bloggers with reviews, where they pay them (the bloggers) between $5-$200 per review. (Usually in the $10 range)

There are several houndreds of offers avalible to get rewied, but you can’t pick them all. The advertisers that makes the offers can set some terms which your blog have to meet. The most used one is page rank. If you don’t have x high page rank you don’t get paid to review the product.

Since VikingBlogger.com don’t have a page rank yet I’m not looking on a high income stream from PayPerPost yet, but it might get alright with time. And don’t fear, I’m not going to fill this blog up with paid reviews of all sorts. If I’m doing a review it’s going to be something that has to do with the theme of the blog, or something that I’m really interested in. (ex. phones)

$20 sign-up bonus (kinda)

When you get your blog approved you got at least one offer avaliable for you, and thats PayPerPost themself. Write a little “I joined PayPerPost” post at your blog, and get paid $20 doing so. (Like I am now!)

Are you selling reviews on your blog? Thoughts?

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Alright, I have tried Spottt for a week now, and I’m not impressed. The exchange are not going to work for sites with low traffic, period. The only sites I can see this service work for is big sites with loads of views. That way they get an big amount of credits just for the views, but most certain they aren’t giving a good CTR. The only way such a service will work is either A: It’s based on clicks, not views. You send 2 clicks get 1 back. B: A more powerful category system, where your sites gets placed in a category with similar sites with similar CTR.

Free Credits

One day when I logged in I suddenly had over 4k credits. I’m not sure what it was, but thats the only reason that I got a couple clicks back to my site. Anyway, I think it was a mistake, and before I got around and used all the credits they have taken it away from me. Hehe.

My statistic page

Anyway, the service is not getting my premium location, and I’m taking them of. Most probably not going to put them up again.

Have you used or are using Spottt on your blog/site? How are that working out for you?

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I noticed my subscription counter jumped from 62 to 55 today. Pretty big jump downwards, and it didn’t actually make any sense at all. So I decided to check it out. When looking at my CP at Feedburner I see that there are something diffuse with the Google Feedfetcher stats. yesterday it was 10 subscribers, today its 2. Since my stats are small it’s hard to tell, but i think the problem are located here.

Stats for yesterday

Stats for today

I wanted to check other blogs, if I saw something unusually there, and guess what. I did.

JohnChow.com got as of today 10239 subscribers. At a normal day he got over 16.000 subscribers.

Shoemoney.com got as of today 7353 subscribers, which are about the half of his subscriber base.

So, it looks like feedburner has messed up, again. (and again actually)

On second hand, it might have something to do with this news release. And most probably the problem will be fixed tomorrow. Have a great day guys, and remember, sign up for my feed, and join the contest!

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If you take a look over to the sidebar you can see a new 125×125 banner just beside my RSS counter. This is a banner from Spottt. (Strange with triple “t”, but I guess you have to be creative since most good domains are taken.) They have just launched, and the guys behind the program are the same guys that runs AdBrite. Banner exchange programs are nothing new, but Spottt got sweet design, and it looks like they are getting an high amount of traffic - fast. (An Alexa rank of 18k yesterday)

They have been live in about one week, and got over 1300 members already. Thing is though, not only blogs allowed in the network, so not sure about the quality of traffic. They are also taking a lot of views them self. For every 1000 views you generate you get your banner showed on another site 500 times. IOW; Spottt takes 500 views. A 2:1 ration, which aren’t really good.

Anyway, I am going to leave the spot in my sidebar for a week, and see how it goes. I will of course report to you guys!

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