Archive for the 'Friday's Finds' Category

Friday’s Finds — 10/12/2007

This week was another jam-packed week for happenings not only in the Blogosphere, but in the news. Michael Vick has done wonders for Derrich.com. I think I’ve received somewhere in the neighborhood of 8,000 page views this week from Michael Vick-related searches alone. So, enough of that guy. Here are some other links I found to be interesting.

• Brian Clark over at CopyBlogger poses the question, Is Google Evil? in his post, Here’s How to Stop Worrying About Google Once and for All. The part I found interesting is the discussion of how Social Media has made the push for quality, nonrepititive content. Like Brian, I’ve posted less but have received more traffic thanks to Digg and StumbleUpon.
• Speaking of Social Media, the always helpful DoshDosh posted some helpful tips on How To Influence Social Media Users. Getting the big dogs on your side will do wonders for your traffic.
• As some of you may know, I played football for Southwest Texas State University, which is now Texas State University. In December 2002, we were included on the ESPN SportsCenter Top 10 in the #1 slot because Katie Hnida of the University of New Mexico became the first female football player to score in a Division 1-A game. Last night, we were included at #1 on the Top 10 because Central Arkansas Quarterback, Nathan Brown, threw a school-record 7 TDs against us on National television. Save for our Divisoin 1-AA Championship run a couple of years ago, that’s the extent of our SportsCenter appearances. Great. Good thing my high-school squad is undefeated.

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Friday’s Finds — 09/21/2007

Social Media has played a huge role in my online experience this week. Chalk another one up for StumbleUpon (SU). I thought I’d share a couple of helpful links I found via SU; show how Su has helped my traffic; and, introduce you to some more social media that looks just as promising.

• This week, Brian Clark over at CopyBlogger posted an interesting study about using instructions in anchor text versus descriptive anchor text. Maybe this observation needs to be narrowed down to split articles and previews, but the results of the study were pretty interesting. Click here to read more.
• Ben Yoskovitz of Instigator Blog did a guest post at CopyBlogger. Normally I wouldn’t lead you to one blog twice in Friday’s Finds; but this post expands upon the previous post, “Click here”. Ben suggests using links and specific styles of anchor text for different reasons by offering Five Types of
  Links and how to use them.
• Referrals have played an important role in my traffic this week. I received a total of 1,445 referrals from Google for Kyla Ebbert (the Hooters waitress kicked off the Southwest Airlines plane), 3,405 referrals from StumbleUpon for the Andrew Meyer taser story, and 280 referrals to my NFL Week 2 recap by being linked from a larger sports blog. Tad Chef over at SEO 2.0 shows a similar breakdown of traffic on his blog…declaring StumbleUpon “the most successful social browsing service”.
• BlogCatalog has introduced a new feature called Groups, which is currently in beta. From what I can tell, it is very similar to StumbleUpon. I urge those of you that use BlogCatalog to check it out.

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Friday’s Finds — 09/14/2007

So much has happened this week that I had to contain myself for this week’s Friday’s Finds. Here are a few posts I found rather interesting…and useful. I hope you find the same.

• Tyler Ingram has experienced a large fluctuation in his Technorati rank as of late. I have as well. I’ve finally reached the “Top 10K” status (thank you, thank you, *bow*bow*), but for a few days this week, I dipped down to 5,082. Tyler has made it easy to monitor your Technorati rank with his Technorati WordPress Plugin. I plan on adding it to my blog; he just released version v0.2. Be sure to check it out, and download it for your blog.
• Josh Alper over at The Feed discusses how the New England Patriots got off easy for cheating despite the fines and the potential loss of draft picks. Shame on you, Bill Belichick! I wouldn’t be surprised if he started walking around in shame with that hood pulled over his head. Apparently, he’s pretty tight with Junior Soprano.



• The Michael Vick apology on eBay ends today. The current bid is $10,200. The proceeds from the auction benefit The Humane Society of the United States’ (HSUS) efforts to end dogfighting and other forms of animal cruelty through its Animal Cruelty Response and Reward Fund. If you haven’t seen his notes…they’re just some points jotted down on an Omni Hotels notepad. Kinda impressive despite a bad situation.
• Ms. Danielle offers up another option for advertisers to make money online from a place where people are already looking to spend. You can buy text link ads on Amazon…one I’m definitely considering. I already use Amazon Associates, and I’m pretty happy with the results I get from that.

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Friday’s Finds — 08/17/2007

There were number of interesting stories I read on various blogs this week. Many people were writting about keywords and making money again. I try not to inundate myself with too much SEO/SERP stuff and ad service sites to keep my brain from feeling like it just got pureed in a blender. A couple of posts did hook me.

• Ms. Danielle introduced her readers to Digital Point’s Search Engine Keyword and Back Link Tracker. What better way to see if your SEO efforts are effective? Visit Danielle and learn how you can track your keywords.
• In his blog, Behind The Rhetoric, Michael Kwan writes an extensive review of Publisher Spot. The site was created by Tyler Cruz in order to make sense of all of the ad networks popping up. It is sites like these that save my brain from melting away. Read the review, and then check out Publisher Spot.
• Speaking of being pureed in a blender, I StumbledUpon a site, WillItBlend.com, that features a video of the iPhone and answers the question Will It Blend?. When I said I would pass on the iPhone, I didn’t have this in mind. But I’m glad someone tried it.
• CASH for COMMENTS is holding a blogging contest to win a 24″ wide screen LCD monitor. That’s one way to get paid. The contest is being sponsored by Elite Baseball Instruction dot Com which gives baseball training videos in hitting, pitching, infield defense, and outfield playing. He is also giving away a Free 4-Hour Workweek Book to enter early and the winner will be updated on the same blog post to drive traffic to their own site. Click here for more details the 24 inch LCD giveaway. If you enter by September 1st, you could win a copy of the 4-Hour Workweek.

If you have links that you think might be of interest to people, please feel free to email them to me at derrich [at] derrich dot com. I’ll check ‘em out, and consider them for Friday’s Finds. And in case you missed it, I decided to captain a team for the upcoming Alzheimer’s Association Memory Walk. Please check out the post and consider giving us your support. Bloggers can benefit with some back links, so everyone wins. Enjoy your weekend.

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Friday’s Finds — 08/10/2007

So many factors come into play when running a blog. It’s almost a mind-numbing experience. But once you get the hang of it and find your passion, everything else becomes second nature — did I use the right keywords in my title — is my anchor text optimized — the list goes on. Here are a few posts I’ve read over the week that talk a little about each of those factors.

• While selecting the right keywords is useful for every post, Erik Karey focuses on aligning his blog, with the term Internet Entrepreneur in his post about proper keyword selection. Frankly, I’m happy to be #1 when searching for Derrich.
• The WordPress Blog provided some stats for the month of July that I found rather interesting. In July alone, 133,000 blogs were created with over 2 million posts. Geez. Check out the rest of the July wrap-up for more stats.
• For popular searches, I like to use good ol’ Google Trends. Well, that’s good for Google searches. What about results from other sources? There’s a tool at SEOmoz.org that aggregates popular searches from other sources — Technorati: Popular - Flickr Hot Tags - Del.icio.us Popular Tags - Yahoo! Buzz - Top Overall Searches - Google Hot Trends - eBay Pulse - AOL Hot Searches - Lycos Top 50 - Ask Top Searches - Amazon, Most Popular Tags - Amazon, Movers and Shakers - Amazon, Best Sellers - Amazon, New Releases — and stuffs them into one list. The cool thing is all of the popular searches for each of these sites are also listed.
• Jamie Harrop appeared as a guest blogger on Jane May’s blog, Daily Web Ideas. Jamie suggests that a blogger’s worst mistake is breaking their blogging routine. I happen to agree. When you skip a day or two…or a week in Jamie’s case…it’s tough to get back in the groove.
• Loren Baker, editor of the Search Engine Journal, did a great job of sparking up some conversation this week. He heard that Google PageRank may be removed from the Google Toolbar. Most of his readers didn’t seem to care either way. What happened to the idea that PR is king when it comes to page validity and trustworthiness? How quickly we toss these quantifications aside. First Alexa, now Google PR?

Happy Friday, everyone!

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Friday’s Finds — 07/20/2007

Recently, I’ve been using StumbleUpon to increase my traffic. It has worked like a charm. But after using it on a daily basis for the last couple of weeks, I can tell you that it has much more value than simply generating traffic. Your eyes are opened up to the Internet like never before. I’ve made a couple of good friends, and it has proven to be yet another great way to take advantage of social marketing. To some of you, StumbleUpon is old news. To those of you that haven’t started using it yet, get over there. Here are some blog posts about StumbleUpon, one of my most recent stumbles, and a quick shot of sports.

• I’ve stumbled upon many different websites, pictures, and videos. Some grab my attention, others get the “thumbs down”. Jesus of the Week was one I stumbled yesterday. It shows images of Jesus on a variety of canvases from wheels to buildings to belt buckles. Goes to show…Jesus gets love on more than toast and tortillas.
• Apparently StumbleUpon has been busy making its mark on a variety of people. You won’t just find bloggers there. There is a whole new audience looking for specific things…and discovering new things. TechIndustryNews has posted an Alexa snapshot showing trends from StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Digg.
• The Web Urbanist has posted a list of the 8 funniest things ABOUT StumbleUpon. If you use it regularly, you’ll find that these are painfully true. I know a couple of people that Stumble all day and all night.
• If you’re wondering what the top stumblers look for, look no further than BloggingMix.com. Rocky has asked some of the top stumblers 2 questions: [1] What do you usually look for to stumble (article, video and podcast)? and [2] What do you advice bloggers to do in order to increase their chances of getting stumbled upon? To find out how to get stumbled by top stumblers, head over there now.
• In sports news, the FBI is investigating an NBA referee who allegedly was betting on basketball games. Nice. First the childish tirade by Joey Crawford and now this. Read the rest of the article by Murray Weiss over at the New York Post. I can’t wait until they announce his name. Sorry, Ookie. This takes zero attention off of that dogfighting indictment.

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Friday’s Finds — 07/13/2007

So, it’s Friday the 13th. I was going to throw out some “scary” or “superstitious” links to commemorate the day, but I’m not superstitious (maybe a little scary, though). I’ve decided to lead you to the blogs of my Top Commentors to thank them for their contributions to Derrich.com. Without further ado…

• This month’s top spot goes to Leo Chiang. Actually, he’s been a comment whore on just about everyone’s blog this month. Leo bought a new camera this week: a Pentax A10 digital camera. Coincidentally, I’m in the market for a new camera. This thing fits in an Altoids box. And if its good enough for Leo…
• Gregg Hawkins is a familiar face I haven’t seen in awhile until recently. Thanks for stopping by and bestowing your knowledge upon us. Gregg wrote a great post that lists some unwritten rules for blogging. A great list for beginning bloggers, and a noteworthy reminder for you seasoned folks.
• Warren Buffett is a name with which many are familiar. Our good buddy at the RetireRichBlog makes an excellent suggestion with regard to investing in the stock market: It’s time to buy Sears Holdings. I couldn’t agree more. This reco goes along with my thoughts on buying stocks on sale.
• If you speak Turkish (I think its Turkish) and you are interested in investing, check out green’s blog, Mikroproje.com.
• Matt Propst has participated in the Bloggers’ Tournament, interviewed me on his blog, and is now a Top Commentor. Thanks, Matt. On his blog, Fleeing The Social Scene, he talks about having difficulty selling Text Link Ads on his blog. If you have some suggestions for Matt, stop by and let him know.
• Irwan has mission: financial freedom. He poses the question “Are Investors Doing The Right Thing?”. Check out his blog Irwan.biz for some more articles about investing.
• Andrew Kontra is a new a face at Derrich.com. Quite frankly, I’m a little confused by what his blog aims to accomplish. But he did create this video (I have yet to watch it due to viewing limitations at work).

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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BlogRoll

• Milk Was A Bad Choice
• CrackBerry.com
• Stock Trading 101
• For The Love Of Sports
• Project Spurs
• Busted Coverage
• WallStreetFighter

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