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Alltop

07.22.2008 by Ray Niekamp // Leave a Comment

I recently added a graphic/link to the sidebar for Alltop. Alltop bills itself as a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. It can also be thought of as a one-page aggregator.

Alltop’s home page features a number of topic areas, and each topic area features a number of web sites and blogs pertaining to that topic. The Alltop graphic in the sidebar links directly to the Cycling topic.

There, you will find the big cycling news sites. As this is written, the Tour de France is in full swing, and Alltop has several sites for Tour news. The big blogs, like Bike Snob NYC and Cyclelicious, are featured, too. But so are a lot of less well-known blogs, like Bike Noob.

One of the founders of Alltop is Guy Kawasaki, the original Apple evangelist. Guy is now a venture capitalist, based in Silicon Valley, and maintains a popular blog, “How to Change the World.”

I don’t know how Alltop found Bike Noob, but I’m sure glad it did.

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Categories // Blogging Tags // Alltop, Blogging

The international blog audience

06.25.2008 by Ray Niekamp // 8 Comments

Back in my junior high school and high school years, I used to listen to broadcasts from around the world on shortwave radio. One of the statistics I kept was a record of how many foreign countries I had received.

Shortwave radio is now passé, since most of the international broadcasters stream their programs over the Internet. But I find I’m collecting countries again, among folks who find this blog and spend a little time here.

I was astounded a few months ago when Bike Noob drew its first comment from overseas, from Brazil (Olá, Renato!). That was followed by other commenters from Germany and Singapore.

Site Meter, which I use to track visitors to the blog, uses little flag icons to show where visitors come from. I get a kick out of seeing flags of countries that haven’t been here before.

For each numbered link in “detail,” Site Meter tells you the name of the ISP, the operating system and browser, and what pages within the blog visitors started and ended their visit.

And, for every 100 visits to the blog, Site Meter displays a pie chart showing what percentage of those visitors come from given countries:

This example is a bit unusual, in that U.S. visitors tend to account for 75-85 percent of Bike Noob’s page views. Australia, the U.K. and Canada often alternate in second place. In the above example, those countries’ numbers are a little higher than average, which is usually closer to six percent each.

As of today, I have had visitors from 46 different countries around the world. While I treasure every overseas visitor, I delight in getting page views from “exotic” locales, such as the U.A.E., Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Thailand, and Malaysia. I hope you are able to understand my idiomatic English.

I have spoken before of blogs as being part of an online “conversation,” and I believe that my experiences here bear that out. Individuals from any part of the globe can get along. It’s their governments that make things difficult. Let’s keep the conversation going. Ride, post, comment, repeat.

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Categories // Blogging, Community Tags // Blogging, countries, Site Meter

What I’ve learned about blogging

06.18.2008 by Ray Niekamp // 18 Comments

This post is going a bit off topic, in that it deals with blogging more than biking.

After posting awhile ago about the blog and what it’s taught me about biking, it occurred to me that I’ve also been learning a lot about blogging.

Bike Noob has been more successful already than I’d ever thought it would be. I average about 100 page views a day — a small number, compared to some of the really big blogs like Bike Snob NYC, but substantial enough after being online for only five months or so.

So what’s important when blogging?

Comments are golden. I can count visits and page views, but when readers take the time to write a comment about something I’ve written, that starts the “conversation” that the Internet promised way back in the ’90s.

Commenting on others’ blogs is almost as golden. There are some devices the blogger can use to drive new readers to the blog, such as commenting on others’ blogs. That may prompt some of their blog readers to check out yours. I know I’ve picked up a number of regular readers that way.

Post at regular intervals. It doesn’t have to be every day, but shouldn’t be too long between posts, either. I’ve tried to develop an every other day routine. I’ve noticed that my page views fall off markedly when I go a day or two without adding new content.

Content matters. Well-written items that resonate with others’ personal experiences seem to attract the most views. It’s still a surprise to me, but my most viewed post is a little narrative titled, “Smoked by an old guy.” I felt I needed to post something that day, but I had nothing until I went out for my ride and the incident happened. I thought it was a cute, okay item. But the popular Kent’s Bike Blog from Seattle stumbled onto the story and linked to it. My traffic soared that day. “Smoked” has now had more than 900 views in just two months, and still gets several visits every day. (And now I’ve ensured that those views will continue to mount.)

Even the most mundane posts seem to get the greatest response. An entry on whether I should choose bandanas or sweatbands to keep my forehead dry drew 10 comments (a lot for me). Maybe it was the picture of my dog that did it.

In that case, here’s another look at Emily, my 13-inch Beagle.

By the way, I still wear bandanas, but my preferred SCD (sweat control device) is a HeadSweat — one of those things that makes you look like a pirate.

Sometimes, people discover you by accident. I use WordPress as my blogging platform, and WordPress generates links to what it thinks are related posts at the end of every entry. Sometimes those “related” posts bear no relation at all to the subject of the entry, but by clicking on the link, folks have found me.

Always check which sites referred visitors to your blog. It’s weird to find some blogs that link to you that don’t seem to have any connection to your subject. My favorite of these oddball links comes from “Being grown and sexy: Fashion, tech and politics from the prospective (sic) of an (sic) black male nerd.” What he finds of interest in a biking blog written by a white guy in late middle age stumps me, but I’m in his blogroll.

Nonsensical search terms can somehow connect readers with this blog. Every so often I check to see what search terms people wrote that brought them here. Some favorites: expensive beer bicycle jerseys, my foot goes numb with road shoes, one up two down, sidi soles number straps mean, and why do my jerseys stink when i sweat.

The most recent posts are not necessarily the most-read ones. Sometimes posts I did weeks ago show up as the most viewed on a given day. I have no idea why.

Some bloggers actually make a living from their blogs. I don’t expect to ever do that. (If you’re interested, Australian uber-blogger Darren Rowse’s Problogger site is loaded with tips to make the big bucks blogging.) I do expect to keep up my posts, and hope to keep interacting with commenters. Regardless of topic, the most important thing I’ve learned about blogging is to keep up the conversation.

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Categories // Blogging Tags // Blogging, Smoked

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