Blog Tipz

this post we will take a look at the future of Blog Tipz and the change in direction.  There are several big announcements and additions that we have to make, so this post was written to outline them more than anything, if you are unaware of them.

Forum

A forum was added, although at this point it is incomplete.  More categories and threads must be added.  The purpose of the forum is geared towards extending the community and allowing people to post reviews of their blogs/others’ blogs without necessarily being marked by a spammer had they done that in the comments.

You can share your thoughts about top blogging stories, your experiences with blog services, or simply your general thoughts about this site.

Join the forum today.

Back-end/Administrative Changes

To accommodate growth, I instituted a change in the categories (compressing many topics into one), taking advantage of the new WordPress tags feature, and tried (apparently unsuccessfully) to organize all the posts in a somewhat functional manner.

I am pleased with the new WYSIWYG editor as most of my HMTL is kept intact and using it doesn’t result in having to make major changes over and over like I found before.  What this meant was that I had to “convert” all posts to the Visual Editor format.  I needed to re-center all text and images using the editor and removed any spaces this caused.  You’ll find that older posts may have a different appearance as they are less spaced out.

Advertising Options

Over the past couple weeks (since the beginning of March), we have added several more advertising options and had to bump up the price (due to the amount of work the site required recently and our plans), however all prices are still extremely low and reasonable.  Ranging from free (Entrecard) to banners at $10/month, there are several options that will fit in your budget.  Remember that as the blog gwows, there will be a higher return on investment.

The stats and information regarding traffic and subscribers has been updated reflecting updates from the services.

Coming soon, we will likely make it easier to advertise, with the stripe ads (?), ads in feeds, more banner ad spots, and/or text ads in the directory or sidebar.  We despise some of these forms of advertising, but in order to meet demand from advertisers we will direct them towards certain groups.  We are not in this for money, we are in this to provide a resource for aspiring bloggers.

Check out the advertising options.

Job Board

A jobs board serves as a way for bloggers to find out about jobs that may be available in their particular field. By adding the jobs board, my main objective was to conenct job advertisers (automatically added) to people looking for those jobs.  At this point, it is fully functional, but needs to be oriented towards bloggers and needs a more intuitive interface.

Special: Currently, you are able to receive a free 60-day submission of as many jobs as you’d like using the code 7ad8EH. The code expires on June 15th, 2008 at the end of the day (PST).  This is a great opportunity to post jobs if you are a blog owner and need co-authors.

After the special ends, you may add jobs at a rate (currently) of $10 per 60 days.  Jobs are gathered and purchased through Job-a-matic.

Visit the job board.

Guest Posters and Writers

Coming shortly! - If you would like to be a part of a growing blog, you can register as a contributor to begin or contact us to work out a specific deal.  Down the road, we may begin paying posters as an incentive or rewarding them with other services.  Please note the specific terms included on the Write for Us page.  The main topics you should write about are blogging, design, search engine optimization, and blog tips.  We are looking forward to hearing from you.

For a long time, we put aside the thought of having multiple writers, but today we feel that it is one of the fastest ways to see blog growth and see a positive return for both readers and writers at the blog.

Directory, Archives, Policies, About, Contact Pages

These pages have also been updated or redesigned for better return rates.  Instead of a link page, you can now add your site or service (must be your own) to the link directory.  The process is extremely simple.

Theme Changes and Reorganization

Further changes will be occurring on the visitor’s end, with more resources, links, and community-oriented widgets placed or redistributed throughout the sidebar.  Features such as comment rating and plugins which reward commentators will also be implemented.

Minor change: the ShareThis plugin was displayed twice on feeds and the incidence has been resolved – the HTML and plugin were enabled.

Recap

There are exciting changes occuring and we want you to be a part of them.  Our main goals at this point are to deliver the most content per reader and have a higher reader invovlement with our site.

Take advantage of the new features and leave your feedback.