It’s actually a question that new bloggers are asking especially that there are established bloggers who advised new bloggers to write a long post. There are others who said blogposts should be short because the internet users tend to read short internet articles.

These bloggers who gave contradicting advices are all successful in blogging and making money online through their blogs.

There are also other bloggers who claimed that the length of post is not really important. What is important is the frequency of posting articles into the blog.

So, if you’re new to blogging and you’ve read both these contradicting advices, you will have the tendency to be confused. And this confusion sometimes will lead you to feel bored and disinterested in blogging.

Observations on Successful Blogs

There are already thousands of blogs that exist today that can be considered successful. Few of these blogs are: Steve Pavlina’s blog, Problogger, and Yugatech.

Below is my observation regarding the length of articles published and the frequency of posting those articles into each of the blogs.

1. Steve Pavlina’s Blog

The blog of Mr. Steve Pavlina at http://stevepavlina.com/blog/ is all about personal development. Articles published on that blog are all long which ranges from 2,000 words to 7,000 words (my estimate). Longer articles are posted 3 to 5 days after the previous article was posted, and shorter articles are posted 1 to 2 days after the previous article was posted.

2. ProBlogger

ProBlogger blog of Darren Rowse at http://www.problogger.net/ is a blog that contains helpful tips on how to blog, and how to make money from blogs.

Articles published on this blog are long but not as longer as those articles posted by Mr. Steve Pavlina. Most of the times, an article is published once a day. But there are also times that 2 to 3 articles are published in just a day.

But not all the articles published are written by Darren Rowse himself. There are guest bloggers who write and publish articles in behalf of Mr. Darren Rowse.

3. YugaTech – Philippine Technology Blog

Yugatech blog is owned and managed by Mr. Abe Olandres. He’s considered as the father of the Philippine Blogging. He’s not the first Filipino blogger but he is the first to promote blogging to his fellow Filipinos.

The Yugatech blog can be accessed at http://yugatech.com/blog/. Articles published on it are short that ranges from 200 words to 500 words.

Yugatech has no guest blogger. In other words, all the posts posted on it are believed to be his own personal writing. He is posting 1 to 2 articles everyday.

Conclusion

In other words, whether you are posting shorter or longer articles that are posted on your preferred frequency, you’ll still be successful in blogging, just like these 3 blogs we reviewed above.

Length of Posts or Frequency of Posting?

Length of posts and the frequency of posting the posts are both important to be considered in blogging. But on how long should your posts be and how often you will publish posts into your blog, all depends on the following:

1. Type of your blog

If you are maintaining a news blog similar to the following Pinoy Blogs:

1. Daily Contributor – “Your Daily Contributor on News, Technology, Sports and Entertainment“
2. Showbiz Intriga, Get it from Boy – “Your total Philippine Showbiz Authority! Philippine and Hollywood celebrities scoop and breaking news.“
3. Starmometer – “Your Total Entertainment Blog! The hottest stars and the latest buzz in the entertainment industry, it’s all here! Now on its 3rd year.“

… You are obliged to post at least 1 (short or long) blogpost daily because your frequent readers, especially your subscribers will be looking for fresh news articles from your blog everyday.

But 1 post a day is actually not enough, considering that most of the news blog is multi-topic blog, from Technology, Sports, Entertainment, to Politics and other news topics.

The Yugatech blog that we reviewed above can be considered a news blog which is focused on technology, gadgets and mobile phones.

However, if you’re maintaining a Tips and Tricks blog just like the blog of Mr. Steve Pavlina and Mr. Darren Rowse (both reviewed above), then there’s a tendency that your articles will be longer than those posted in the news blog, because there are things that you need to explain and demonstrate clearly.

But writing longer articles can be time consuming. So, it is also expected that you can’t post articles in daily basis just like what Mr. Steve Pavlina did at his blog.

In Mr. Darren Rowse case, he managed to post article everyday even if those articles are long because he got guest bloggers on his side. In times he couldn’t write article, his guest bloggers are doing it for him.

You can check the articles of the Filipino Blogs listed below that can be considered as tips and tricks blog. Then examine the length of the articles and the frequency of posting them:

1. Millionare Acts – “The Journey to Financial Freedom.“
2. Father Blogger dot Com – “Useful tips on parenting, marriage and blogging.“

2. Design and Structure of your Blog

If you’ll ask John Chow, why the posts published at his blog are longer than 200 words up to 1,000 words or longer, his answer is this:

The reason I do the 200 words minimum is so I have enough words to wrap my Google box ad. If I make a post that has less than 200 words, like a video post, then I will leave out the Google ad.

In other words, you need to consider your blog’s design in deciding how long should your post be. If you think, short posts can ruin your blog’s design and structure then you need to make your posts longer or just enough to keep the design of your blog.

3. The Number of Visitors and Subscribers

Sometimes, it is wastful to write articles everyday if you only have few visitors and subscribers. It’s like producing more cola drink even if your target consumer is only few. So, more products will just be wasted because only few of them will be consumed.

However, we should not forget also that visitors of our blog is not just human. Search engine bots frequently visit your blog too.

So, if your blog is new and has only few visitors, then why not publish 1 article everyday. it will be advantageous to you if you publish at least 1 article everyday because search engines love fresh daily content. And through the search engines, you can gain more visitors and subscribers for your blog.

4. The number of your blogs

If you have lots of blogs to maintain, then it is also impossible to post content in daily basis, especially if you don’t have guest or paid bloggers who could write blogposts in your behalf.

But which is more Important: Length of Posts or Frequency of Posting?

Just like what I said, both the length of posts and the frequency of posting the posts are important. But the Frequency of Posting the posts is more important.

You can post shorter articles or longer articles into your blog as long they contain useful information. It will be fine for your readers or visitors including bots to read shorter or longer articles.

But failing to post articles based on your established frequency of posting articles into your blog will only frustrate your loyal readers, even the search engine bots.

And while coping the need to publish post in your establish frequency, don’t ever forget to publish quality articles… just like what everyone knows, “Quality is better than Quantity.”

A reader or our blog asked me this question through his email sent to me. Below is just part of his email.

Hello Sir Sel:

… I was banned from Adsense due to invalid clicks. I don’t know who clicked my Adsense ads. What I knew is that I did not clicked them by my self. …

Can I still create new Adsense Account? …

My Answer:

Unfortunately, if you are banned from Adsense, you are actually banned permanently. In other words, you can’t register a new Adsense account again even if you created new blog or website and host it with the new domain at a new server.

Banning you permanently is Google’s way of protecting their advertisers.

However, by changing your identity, you can still get new Adsense account. What I mean is that you can register again from Adsense if you will use your child’s identity or of your wife’s but not your own identity.

And after successfully getting new Adsense account, you need to forget the identity you used in your former account including your blogs and websites and any accounts in Google because once Google will notice that you are connected to the banned account, your new Adsense account will eventually be banned again.

And one more thing, you also need to learn to follow the Google Adsense policies because if not, even if you get new Adsense account and forgot your old identity, Google will still ban your account.

Just read my old article. My thoughts contained on that article will tell you how to do that: How to register again from Google Adsense?

I’m sure you have your blog already. You already have posted articles, journals or simple blogposts. And on some portion of your blog, you placed Adsense ads, and other affiliate ads, hoping that you’ll make money from them.

After several days or perhaps months, you checked your Adsense account and wishing that you’ll see $$$ in there. But you’re seems unlucky because until now, your Adsense income is just cents.

“What’s wrong?” You’re asking your self.

You tried to invite people to visit your blog. But the question is, are those people you invited really visited your blog? And after visiting it, did they come again? Did they invited their friends to visit your blog?

If you’ll just rely on visitors whom you invited to visit your blog, you’ll never earn much money from it. You need to understand that visitors coming from the search engines are most likely the ones who will send enough money for you. So, you need to SEO your blog.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will be your problem again. You tried to read articles, ebook, journals or anything about SEO hoping that you’ll learn how to perform it. But before finally learned the SEO, you already have spent a lot of money.

I know that spending lots of money without earning some is not what you wanted when you started blogging. But that’s the reality in blogging at your own blog.

If you really want to earn immediately, then I think, you need to blog at someone’s blogs. They call this job as “Freelance Blog Writing“.

You can visit Darren Rowse’s Job Board. Check every opportunity posted there and who knows, you’ll find the right blog that you think you can make money online.

What you need to do is to create a funny video on how to make money online. Watch the first infolinks video below for you to learn few ideas on what to film:

Actually, there are three prizes at stake:

1. $5000 for the grand prize
2. $1000 for the first prize
3. %500 for the second prize

And the requirements in joining the contest are:

1. Create a movie clip (live or animation) up to 2 minutes in length, showing your creative and  funny ways of making money online.
2. Finish the movie with the attached slide: “Infolinks Challenge – Final Slide”
3. Upload your video to YouTube at www.youtube.com.
4. Send us an email to blog@infolinks.com during the Contest Period including your complete name, address (including zip code), telephone number, primary e-mail address and the URL of your video application posted at www.youtube.com.
5. During the contest period selected videos will be posted on this blog for all to view.

For more info, just visit the Infolinks blog.

For example, if there are 100 visitors visit your site, and 80 of them leave the site without visiting other pages of that site, then the bounce rate is 80%.

The process can be expressed mathematically as:

Bounce rate = [ (no. of single visit) / (no. of total visit) ] x100

To make it clearer, bounce means the visitors exit the site from the landing page or entrance page itself. If the visitor visit the homepage of this blog and leaves the blog from this page without visiting other pages, then it is already a bounce.

There are actually several ways of leaving your blog that are considered as bounces. Few of these are:

• If your visitors leave your blog through the link from within your blog to the other blogs. For example the visitors click the links in your blogroll listed at the sidebar, or the links within the article to the other blogs or websites that are used as references.
• If your visitors leave your blog through the Adsense ads or any other ads displayed on your blog.
• If your visitors leave your blog by closing the tab or the browser’s window.
• If your visitors leave your blog by clicking the “Back” button of your browser.
• If the visitors open a new website by typing the new URL.
• If your visitors do nothing after landing on your blog. What I mean is that, your blog is opened for a long time.

But what does high bounce rate of my blog really mean to me?

Actually, having a high bounce rate means two things: Either you failed or you succeed. Whether having high bounce rate is good or not depends on your goal in blogging at a particular blog. For example:

1. If your blog is made for Adsense, having high bounce rate means two things: (1) your visitors click the Adsense ads; (2) your visitors leave your blog immediately after knowing that your blog is just made for Adsense.
2. If your blog is a marketing type, having high bounce rate means two things again: (1) maybe your visitors clicked the ads on your blog; (2) maybe your visitors were not interested in the content of the landing page.
3. If your blog has only 1 post, then you’ll be expecting that your blog has high bounce rate, from 80% to 100%. It’s because there’s no other post that your visitors could visit.

Bounce Rate and the SERP

It might be advantageous to you if your blog has high bounce rate especially if the visitors of your blog leave your blog by passing through the Adsense ads because it could mean huge Adsense income for you.

However, bounce rate is already considered by Google as a measure of quality visit and that the high bounce rate indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. And there was an speculations from SEO experts that bounce rate could greatly affect your blog’s ranking on the SERP.

What I mean is that if your blog has high bounce rate, especially in a certain googling or searching, your blog will be outranked by those blogs or websites or webpages that has low bounce rate.

It happens because the main goal of the search engines is to serve the internet users with the relevant search engine result. And one factor considered by the search engine in learning whether your blog is relevant to that certain googling or searching is the bounce rate.

So, how can you decrease the bounce rate of your blog?

Few of the ways that might decrease the bounce rate of your blog are:

1. Make your blog user friendly. Your blog should be clean, orderly and appealing to the visitors. The text should be readable and the downloading should be fast.
2. Write Quality and Relevant Contents. The articles published at your blog should be interesting and useful. Give your visitors the reason to stay longer at your blog.
3. Inter- linking articles. Offer your visitors more articles to read that are relevant to the landing page. This can be done by
   (1) linking to the other articles by using the relevant keywords within the article;
   (2) by listing few related articles at the bottom of the article.
4. Proper SEO. In optimizing your blog or every pages of your blog for the search engines, you need to target the keywords that are relevant to the page being optimized.
   For example, if your targeting the “Pinay Scandal” keyword, make sure that the landing page contains relevant content because if the content is not related to the keywords used to find a page of your blog, mostlikely your visitors will immediately click the “Back” button of the browser to check for another websites listed at the SERP.
5. Brother Mapiles added this: Make at least two parts for a long post. I usually do this to get at least two page visits on my post. I don’t put everything in one page. If I’m posting series of videos, the next videos could be found on the other page.

Other articles:

• How to track your blog’s visitors?
• How to make your Wordpress blog loads faster?
• How to increase your blog’s pageviews?

Now, there’s another way you can do with your Adsense ads. Google launch a feature that give you the ability to change the font size of the text of the Adsense ads. There are three options you can choose with:

1. small
2. medium
3. large

Currently, the font size is set to medium.

There are actually two ways of changing the font size of the Adsense ads.

1. Account wide setting
2. Individual Unit setting

Account Wide Setting:

• Open the “MyAccount” tab.
• Click the “edit” link on the section as shown below:
  
• Then select your desired font size.

The font size setting here will be your account’s default font size. But this can be overridden by the font size you set on individual ad units.

Individual Ad unit Setting:

If you want to change the font size of the previously created ad unit, then what you need to do is just edit the ad unit at the “Adsense Setup >> Manage Ad” tab. In the middle of the page, you’ll find the options as shown below:

From Adsense Team

And here’s part of the message from the Adsense Product Manager:

The font size you choose will be applied to the body of the ad, with the title scaled appropriately. In order to fit the ad text correctly, the actual font size will vary for each format size, font face, and user-specific settings such as browsers and operating systems. In addition, some formats sizes currently have very limited room, so the font size application will be most apparent in cases where the number of ads appearing in your ad units varies automatically in order to maximize your performance. …

We encourage you to combine these new font size options with the other customization options in your account to test the optimal layout for your pages. We’re excited about this launch, and we’ll be sure to follow up with another post to let you know once the default font size has been changed.

It was posted at the Official Adsense blog that the Adsense Policies have been updated.  The update are related to:

• Google brand violations. Adsene ads or Search boxes should not be placed on pages that “misuse Google logos, trademarks, or other brand features in the page content or URL, and which could mislead users into thinking the page is associated with Google”.
• Deceptive implementations. It’s just made clear that “ads may not be formatted in a way that makes them indistinguishable from other content on the page where they appear“.
• Ad placement in emails and email programs. This updated policy clarifies that Google ads , search boxes, and search results may not be placed in emails, as well as alongside emails.
• Other Google products’ policies. Adsense ads, search boxes, or search results should not be placed on, within, or alongside other Google products in a way that violates the policies of other products. The given example is: Placing adsense ads on site of pages that promotes the downloading of Youtube video.

For more info, visit the Adsense Program Policy page and the Adsense blog.

• Picking the right webhost for your blog
• Best webhost for your blog

But I think those articles are already obsolete. I wanted to edit them but I think, it would be better if I will write a new one.

And few days ago, I also published an article related to webhost or webhosting. The article has a title, “Avoiding Blog Downtimes“.

On that article, I mentioned that “a shared server is not the best server for a  blog that caters thousands of visitors a day“.

Why shared server is not best for your busy blog?

The shared server is a server that hosts hundreds or thousands of webhosting accounts in which the total server’s resources are being shared by websites of every account hosted by that server.

The number 1 disadvantage of a shared server is that when a website caused trouble to the server by simply eating up the resources, all websites hosted by that server will be affected.

That’s what this blog (SELaplana) had actually experienced since its early existing up to the time when I decided to transfer it to a VPS server.

Before, you’d always noticed that when accessing this blog, your browser would tell you an error had been encountered by this blog. Most of the time, this blog had the error in connecting to the database. But there were also times that the server of this blog was simply inaccessible due to its firewall problem or was simply dead.

So, what kind of webhost’s server that is best for a busy blog?

You have actually two options to choose:

1. VPS (Virtual Private Server)
2. Dedicated Server

VPS or Virtual Private Server

Virtual Private Server or sometimes called as Virtual Dedicated Server acts like a dedicated server even if it is part a server shared by other webhosting accounts. It can be best compared to an apartment building which is divided into the apartment units and each apartment unit has its own and independent power and water supply.

In other words, a VPS is a server divided into partitions of servers of which each partition acts like a dedicated server. Each of the partitions has its own operating system, disk space, memory allocation and can be rebooted without affecting other partitions.

VPS is more expensive that a shared server but is cheaper than the real or physical dedicated server.

Here’s few of the VPS offered by popular webhosting companies. It includes  info about them. Some bloggers that I knew got hosting solution from them.

• InMotionHosting
  - Plan 256M – $49.95/mo (if monthly billing)
  - Memory: 256MB – 1GB
  - Disk Space: 40GB
  - Bandwidth: 500GB
  - Websites to host: Unlimited
  - Park Domains to use: Unlimited
  - IP : 2
• Media Temple DV
  - $50/mo (if monthly payment)
  - Memory: 256MB
  - Disk Space:  20 GB
  - Bandwidth: 1,000GB
  - Websites to host: unlimited (can be used as reseller)
• DreamHost PS + PS – MySQL
  - 256MB DreamHost PS: $25.6/mo + 150MB PS-MySQL: $15/mo = $32.48/mo with 20% discount. (DreamHost PS and PS-MySQL are adjustable from 150MB up)
  - Plus $119.4/1-year hosting
  - Other features: unlimited

Dedicated Server

A dedicated server is a single unit of server which is offered to a single client. In other words, if you’ll get a dedicated server, there’s no other client who can share that server from you. Except of course if you’ll share it with your friends.

So, a dedicated server is more expensive than the VPS, considering that the whole server is being rented by you.

Few of my friends recommended to me the Host Gator’s Dedicated server.  The price of the Linux server at the HostGator ranges from $174/mo to $374/mo depending on the processor used by the server.

More VPS and Dedicated Server

I know that some of you got your own VPS or Dedicated Server for your websites of blogs. Please share something to us about your servers, for to learn something that would help us decide what webhost is best for us.

I already had tried before signing-up an account from the ClickBank but at that time, Philippines was not yet supported by the program.

After learning that the ClickBank has opened its program for marketers residing here in the Philippines, I immediately registered and started testing ways on how to effectively promote ClickBank Products.

What is ClickBank?

ClickBank is the best venue for the Vendors and Affiliates to make money online. Vendors can sell products through the ClickBank, while Affiliates will promote the products of the vendors connected with the ClickBank.

On the other hand, ClickBank will track all the events happening from the promotional activities of the Affiliates up to the selling of the products at the vendors’ end. It also handles the collection of money for every purchases made and then the Affiliates will be paid for the commission in every products sold through their promotion.

How to Make Money from Clickbank?

Just like what I mentioned above, there are two ways on how to make money online through ClickBank:

1. As Vendor. If you have digital products like ebook, etc., just sign-up an account as Vendor. Then sell your product through ClickBank. But of course you need to create a good landing page then link to the order form at ClickBank… and then leave the product promotion to the thousands of the ClickBank Affiliates. Sign-up an account here.
2. As Affiliates. The Affiliates are the ones who promote the ClickBank products. And once buyer will buy the product through your referral, you’ll be paid commissions. Sign-up an account here.

How to Promote ClickBank Products?

I am currently in the testing phase of a certain way of promoting products. But I already have ideas on how to promote them, like:

1. Article Marketing. You write articles that are related to the products you want to promote. Then on the signature or About The Author area of the article, include a valid Affiliate Link to the product you are promoting. Then submit your articles to the Articles Websites like ezinearticles.com, articlecity.com, etc..
2. Adword PPC Ad Campaign. Use the Google Adword program. Create PPC Ad campaign of the products you want to promote. Just make sure that the target URL is the valid Affiliate link so that you’ll be paid for the commission of the successful purchases of the product through your referral.
3. Blogging. Create a blog with a niche related to the product you want to promote. If you already have your own blog, you can just write a blogpost or article about a topic related to the product you are promoting, then establish properly the ClickBank Affiliate Link within the articles. You can also promote the product by simply displaying banner or text ads on your blog.
4. Blogs and Websites Advertisement. Some ClickBank Affiliates buy space from blogs or websites and display the banner or text ads on that space.

I know, that there are lots of ways on how to promote ClickBank products so that you’ll earn money from them. You might know some of it that I didn’t mentioned above. Please share them to us.

I was enjoying the money that this blog got from the advertisers brought by the Project Wonderful for more than a year already. And I thought that I will be earning more money from it especially that I noticed that from time to time, advertisers were bidding for those spots on higher price per day.

But yesterday, I discovered that the Project Wonderful management disabled all the ad spots that I mentioned above because according to them, this blog violated the terms of the Project Wonderful.

Project Wonderful Terms and Policies

Before joining the Project Wonderful, I read first the terms and conditions of the program. I also checked the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) in using the system. And from there I knew that my blog violated one the terms or the policies like:

1. This one mainly applies to blogs. There are blogs which have accepted money in order to link certain products. This can take a few forms: “review posts” (usually with affiliate links), links to other sites through click-tracking relays, double-underlined links on keywords, and so on. We have found that such tactics are very anti-reader and cause any additional advertisements (i.e., ours) to perform very poorly. If you have such posts on your site, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to have you as a publisher.
2. Obviously beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but a site that is too difficult to navigate – or already is so plastered with ads that it’s hard to tell where the actual content is – is hard for both readers and advertisers, and is unlikely to be accepted. Furthermore, if your site already has pop-up ads, or ads that take up over the browser window (”pop-over ads”), we cannot accept your site. Such ads are very anti-reader and furthermore, obscure our own ads from being seen. It just wouldn’t work out!

You already know that this blog is publishing Kontera intext ads. And the keywords used by the Kontera system can be recognized by the double underline. I even applied the so-called “click-tracking relays”. And the most obvious thing is, the design of this blog is not really designed well and the blog is cluttered by different ads.

In other words, I knew from the beginning that this blog might be denied from the Project Wonderful sytem.

However, when I tried to add this blog into their system, they approved it and allowed me to publish ads of the Project Wonderful advertisers. And I was very much thankful for that.

But, the people behind the Project Wonderful have changed their mind. This blog is now banned from the Project Wonderful system.