tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63709113519109919142011-05-14T19:25:41.215+10:00Tips on how to earn an income from blogging (such as how to optimise your blog for search engines and people), for producing and giving away craft, paper and digital scrapbooking freebies.Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955170314627888013noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6370911351910991914.post-57101704441573925382011-02-13T08:55:00.002+11:002011-02-13T08:59:16.219+11:002011-02-13T08:59:16.219+11:00

There are hundreds of free sites for storing your freebies and there are many reasons why you might want to use them. For a start, they are managed by a bunch of IT people who can ensure that your links are always available, there are no issues with bandwidth, you never need to worry about moving links if you change domain, you don't have to worry about whether your site goes down, etc. If you

Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955170314627888013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6370911351910991914.post-74294852549046760852010-08-19T21:23:00.000+10:002010-08-19T21:23:26.063+10:002010-08-19T21:23:26.063+10:00

The easiest way to measure how many visitors CraftCrave sends your way is to install Google Analytics or SiteMeter (or another analytics tool) on your blog. Then you can see where people are coming from. Hummie presents two great tutorials on these tools which are really handy!  I learned a few things I didn't know.

Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955170314627888013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6370911351910991914.post-54066870785989442172010-08-19T21:18:00.001+10:002010-08-19T21:20:21.569+10:002010-08-19T21:20:21.569+10:00

If incorrect preview images show up for your blog (as they will from time to time), you can prevent this to some degree - the system only makes a "best guess" so you can help it chose by choosing the names of your images more carefully. The system tries to identify the preview automatically. It can't "see" the image, and so it can only decide based on: the name of the images (it looks for

Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955170314627888013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6370911351910991914.post-61237551673589995992010-08-19T21:05:00.001+10:002010-08-19T21:19:30.021+10:002010-08-19T21:19:30.021+10:00

The system identifies the popularity of a blog by looking at its stats and by finding links or other references to the blog from other blogs or websites. It does this by combining the ratings calculated in a few different ways: (i) it looks at all the recent posts from other bloggers to see if your blog is listed there (not in your own, sorry!) - the more your blog is linked to by others the

Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955170314627888013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6370911351910991914.post-70416319531470686042010-02-09T18:43:00.007+11:002010-02-09T19:11:24.774+11:002010-02-09T19:11:24.774+11:00

In order for a search engine to find your site and to properly index your content, it needs to be able to read it, and also to be able to identify when something is new. The same goes for feed readers such as the Google Reader.  So it is important that you keep your RSS feed visible and useful. Some questions you may have: What is RSS? It stands for Really Simple Syndication and it's just a

Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955170314627888013noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6370911351910991914.post-5937153848614045082010-02-07T18:42:00.016+11:002010-03-26T17:13:39.971+11:002010-03-26T17:13:39.971+11:00

There are two main reasons why you might want to add your blog (or other feed) to CraftCrave: It is essentially a free advertising service, so if you would like to get more visitors, then sites like CraftCrave are a good way to achieve this.  Every link to your blog/site increases its "importance" in the sight of search engines, so if this is important to you then listing is a good idea. So

Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955170314627888013noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6370911351910991914.post-48753149956974209822010-02-02T14:00:00.000+11:002010-02-02T14:00:02.366+11:002010-02-02T14:00:02.366+11:00

Search engines look into your blog's markup to find valuable information. They can't see what the human eye sees and things like overall "look and feel" are not something that they can identify. So you might look at a blog and think it is beautiful but if all the words inside links are things like "here" that isn't terribly meaningful for a system. You should think carefully about what goes

Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955170314627888013noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6370911351910991914.post-66517068367274853002010-02-02T12:00:00.002+11:002010-02-02T12:00:01.221+11:002010-02-02T12:00:01.221+11:00

One of the factors in search engine optimization (SEO) is making sure that your site loads quickly.  It's pretty obvious that the more complicated a site is, the more time it takes to load. So you need to balance the complexity of your site with this factor.  To check your site load speed, you can install the page speed browser add-on.

Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955170314627888013noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6370911351910991914.post-19011564473485133412010-02-02T10:00:00.003+11:002010-02-02T10:00:03.840+11:002010-02-02T10:00:03.840+11:00

There are lots of free tools which you can add on to your browser which help you to get more information about your site or any other site you visit.   Most important of all, don't forget toinstall the Google Toolbar which has to be the most important given that Google is the top search engine.  But it's also useful to install toolbars for other search engines like Yahoo!, MSN and Alexa which is

Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955170314627888013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6370911351910991914.post-49543569175887904642010-02-01T16:10:00.002+11:002010-02-01T16:18:10.897+11:002010-02-01T16:18:10.897+11:00

For many craft bloggers or site owners, the idea of digging into their HTML code is a very scary thought.  This is justified to an extent because it's not a good idea to mess it up!  However, as long as you remember the golden rule, you can do this: Golden Rule: Always create a backup of your HTML before you edit it. Other than that, remember that if you don't try, you won't learn anything.  I

Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955170314627888013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6370911351910991914.post-19391851332964156992010-02-01T16:00:00.007+11:002010-02-01T16:18:31.934+11:002010-02-01T16:18:31.934+11:00

Let's face it, we all make mistakes.  I learned the hard way that editing a live site without testing it not such a great idea! I did something which completely messed up the blog - just something like not closing a comment tag, so that meant that everything between that comment and the next comment close just disappeared.  And boy, did I panic when I realised!  So, my first tip for all bloggers

Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955170314627888013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6370911351910991914.post-32682027370735805492010-02-01T15:00:00.006+11:002010-02-01T15:41:23.064+11:002010-02-01T15:41:23.064+11:00

If you want people to find your site, it is important that it is listed on the top search engines.  You can implement all the search engine optimisation (SEO) you like but if you are not listed, it won't help much.  When you set up a blog on a common platform like Blogger there are settings which allow you to turn off the search engine indexing for your blog but it is on by default, so Google

Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955170314627888013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6370911351910991914.post-9851123646618820542010-02-01T14:00:00.004+11:002010-02-01T15:29:02.108+11:002010-02-01T15:29:02.108+11:00

SEO is search engine optimisation.  It's all about improving your rank in search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Wolfram Alpha and so on.  Why should you care? Because this is the primary way that people find your site.  As I mentioned earlier, one of the main reasons I've started writing this blog is to share the knowledge that I have gained in in my journey with DigiFree and now CraftCrave.

Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955170314627888013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6370911351910991914.post-8246974983012822372010-02-01T13:30:00.005+11:002010-02-02T16:45:47.365+11:002010-02-02T16:45:47.365+11:00

Welcome to my new blog.  I'm going to be using this venue to provide tips on blogging and for producing and giving away digital scrapbooking or craft freebies. One of the main reasons I've started writing this blog is that in my journey with DigiFree and now CraftCrave I have learned a lot of lessons along the way and I think that many of my readers will find this useful. I will talk about all

Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955170314627888013noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6370911351910991914.post-12536131659868513592010-01-01T20:10:00.052+11:002010-08-19T20:34:43.108+10:002010-08-19T20:34:43.108+10:00

CraftCrave.com has several advertising spots available. Anyone can advertise on this site (i.e., not only craft suppliers) provided your product is family-friendly.  Adverts are shown on all the CraftCrave.com blogs. Rates: The rates are a flat price per month with a 20% discount for 6 months prepayment. Payment is via PayPal and rates are subject to change. Types: DigiFree currently provides

Mariahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12955170314627888013noreply@blogger.com