WordPress; Curiosity; Google, Kansas
A week of interesting news, life, and creation. Wordpress went real-time. Scott Adams wrote of Curiosity. The moon has water. A town is being renamed Google. What a wonderful world!
Data as Sound: NYTimes Sonification of Winter Olympics Results from information aesthetics
Topeka, Kansas Is Now Google, Kansas from Google Blogoscoped by Roger Browne
WordPress Goes Real-Time With PubSubHubbub from Mashable! by Amy-Mae Elliott
Curiosity from Dilbert.com Blog
Huge Garbage Patch Found in Atlantic Too from National Geographic News
How the earthquake in Chile could change Earth’s axis from Scientific American
Creating and Managing a WordPress Website
Michael Gray has documented a fantastic SEO-based process for creating and managing a Wordpress website. If you’re in the business of building or managing a website, or are interested in learning how the smartest webmaster’s do it, I highly recommend reading his post here.
How To Build a High-Traffic Blog Without Killing Yourself
Tim Ferriss, author of The 4 Hour Workweek gave this presentation at WordCamp recently. His title: How to Build a High Traffic Blog without Killing Yourself.
[From ProBlogger Blog Tips by Darren Rowse]
How to Get Video/Image Thumbnails in Google Search Results
Image thumbnails have been displaying in Google SERPs for some time. I’ve sure you’ve seen them every once in a while during your average search on Google. Usually, these thumbnails will only display for Youtube or Google Video results. Strangely, these image thumbnails have been showing for many other sites, including popular blogs and several other video hosting sites, including Vimeo and Metacafe. However, I’ve been seeing the video image thumbnails for some sites that don’t have video embedded, but rather a single image. See below:
Image Thumbnail in Google SERPs
Here’s another, less short tail, cooler looking result.
The Image Thumbnail Grabs Attention
Do you know how to get video / image thumbnails in Google SERPs?
I am testing out a few theories now, but they’re still just theoretical. Like the above results, I’ve had some early success, but have found that results aren’t entirely replicable. If you have inside info, leave me a note. Here are some of my early thoughts and observations:
- Rel=”thumbnail” could be entered in <a> tag around an <img> tag. Doesn’t always ensure display in Google SERPs, but makes you feel thorough. I’ve seen image thumbnails show for pages that do this, and pages that don’t.
- Host a few crawl-able videos on your site. Embed some. May alert Google’s Engine that your pages are more important and video-related. Still unknown.
- Image dimensions should be similar to Video dimensions. 3 by 2. 5 by 4. Should look like a video for Google SERPs to say it’s a video, right? Still unverified, of course.
- Relevancy. For instance, an image thumbnail doesn’t display for the keywords “makeover west hollywood jealous” even though it does for “qmania makeover“. Although every combination I can think of for “hang in there jack coupon” gets the image to display next to that blog post. I’m unsure how to resolve or predict on this tip. Any ideas how to associate relevance better, related to getting a thumbnail to display?
Thanks y’all! Contribute and spread this post to your friends who’d be able to help. Thanks again.
Bloggers Outnumber Lawyers, Often Make Very Small Profit
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Bloggers outnumber Lawyers. The Article: America’s Newest Profession: Blogging.
The article was great but overemphasized the potential to make money from blogging. Figures from ProBlogger indicate that 39% of Bloggers don’t make anything from their blogs, and of the 61% who did make money, 54% reported making less than $100 a day. That means most Bloggers make a very small profit, or no profit at all from their blogs. Even though they outnumber lawyers, I have to wonder what the aggregate income is for all Bloggers compared to the aggregate income from all lawyers. Boiled down, here’s how much money Bloggers make:
How Much Bloggers Earn Annually
One third of Bloggers make no money from their blog. (39%)
Of course, many Bloggers aren’t blogging for money. I’m not, and that’s okay. Though, if you’d like to send me money that’s cool too. :)
One third of Bloggers make $100 or less per day from their blog. (33%)
That’s somewhere between $0 and $36k per year. This range is similar to the range of income folks with an Associate’s Degree or less will make.
One third of Bloggers make more than $100 per day from their blog. (28%)
That’s somewhere between $36k per year and dirty rich. This range is similar to the range of income folks with a Bachelor’s Degree or higher will make.
More analysis is available on ProBlogger.
Photo and Credit: Helmet13
Do you have a blog? How do you fit in to these numbers?
