I had a look at other blogs 404 pages to get some inspiration and i really liked ProBloggers idea of one so i pretty much used that as a starting point.

So what exactly have i got on the 404 page? Well first of all i’ve got a message stating that the page doesn’t exist and that they should try searching the blog. I’ve put a search field on the 404 page just in case the user got lost even more. Secondly i put in a ‘Popular Posts’ list, although there is a ‘Popular Posts’ at the top of the blog but this only displays top 5. In the 404 page it displays 15 posts. Last but not least i’ve but in a ‘Recently at Talk Playsation’ description there, telling my users how to subscribe to the RSS feed and to check back to the home page for new updates.

Its far better than the ‘Nothing Found’ heading i just had, i think a lot of people might have been turned off by this.

If you haven’t customised your 404 page, chances are that it just says ‘Nothing Found’, try putting some extra information in otherwise you will turn visitors off.

my friends are saying i’m shooting myself in the foot by not running adsense or some form of adverts. I just reply with “i’m concentrating on expanding my readership and getting my name out there before i start putting adverts on”

Do you think i’m doing the right thing or have i really shot myself in the foot? Whats your say on this?

And here are the responses:

ProBlogger

“I personally put ads on my blog from day 1 so that I establish the expectation with readers that I monetize the site and don’t have to change the rules later on. However others do as you do successfully.

this post might help.”

DailyBlogTips

“I think you are doing right. Running ads now would give you pizza money, and it could slow down your growth rate.

Focus on building something big and good for readers first, then once you ve done that you think about how you can make money from it.”

John Chow

“One of the neat thing about the adsense and other networks is the set it and forget it ad serving they provide. Before the ad networks, you would have to sell your own ads and that meant less time to produce content. Now you still have time for content and let them handle the ads.

I don’t see anything wrong with adding some related advertising on the blog. For example, TTZMedia.com offers real time banners that can show prices for Playstation and Playstation games. Readers may see that more of a service than an ad.”

Smemon

“Yeah it’s always a catch 22 situation… ads can drive away potential subscribers but at the same time without revenue, you can’t be expected to keep a site afloat.

It’s always best to run a site at a loss and claim moral high ground rather than slap ads all over it claiming they’ll pay for the server. Loyal subscribers and readers are essential as these are the guys who will be promoting your site, commenting on it, linking to it etc… at some stage. But that’s my own opinion.

Having said that, many people expect ads on a site, so i reckon you could get away with one or two ads without pissing people off.

I think you could have two ad slots on that site, one skyscraper/square in the sidebar and one banner after the first post. If it were me, i would NOT place an ad before the first post, especially when the site is only starting out. That’s the first thing people will see and it’s a big turn off.

But seen as you’re traffic is booming you should definitely introduce some sort of advertising even if it just to have the site ‘break even’… server costs, domain, time spent on it etc… you could bank that much and then create a prize fund out of the remainder – that way you’re giving back to the community and taking the limelight off yourself”

Carey

Well, Carey works in the same building as me so i walked to his office to ask him the question face to face. He basically told me that running affiliates would work well. For example if i was talking about a named game i could have a link to amazon to buy this game. He also showed me some nice affiliate management websites which i will look into.

Shoemoney

No response yet.

Overall thank you for all replying to me and helping me out. It’s nice to get help from the big boys out there. I will certainly go over the answers in great detail and see which one will work for me the most.

I would receive around 1 visitor every 2 weeks which makes me think whats the point in having it on your blog? Along with not delivering traffic it slows down the site and eats resources so thats a bonus of removing it. Will i ever return to it? Probably not unless they do something about it and starts to drive real towards sites.

I might try some other neat looking tools such as Entrecard. I’ve heard good things about Entrecard and may give them a try sometime next week.

What is Entrecard?

“Entrecard is an easy way to network with other blog owners; Get to know your dedicated readers and favorite writers.”

All you do is display the Entrecard widget in your sidebar and it will show someone elses “business card” and of course your business card will show on another blog.

There are some big name blogs using Entrecard such as John Chow and Problogger.

The stats for daparky.com are:

• 120 posts altogether
• 2,548 Visits (from 18th March to 17th April)
• 4,259 Page Views (from 18th March to 17th April)

The stats for talkplaystation.com are:

• 119 posts altogether
• 11,531 Visits (from 26th March to 17th April)
• 16,469 Page Views (from 26th March to 17th April)

This clearly shows that a Niche blog is far better than a blog about anything. Thats not to say my blog is about ANYTHING, it’s about me, what ever is on my mind and my journey.

When i’ve sorted out talkplaystation i’m going to do some advertisement to try and expand my readership. i’m more than happy with the way things are going with talkplaystation.

Check out his blog and you might want to follow his foot steps!

Wheres Nigel?

If you reached this post because you clicked the link, post a comment saying you did so. Thanks!

p.s. For the regular readers, this is just a test to see if BlogRush can actually drive traffic using catchy titles.

The current plugins i have installed as of now are:

• Advanced Tag Entry
• Akismet
• All in One SEO Pack
• cforms II
• FeedBurner FeedSmith
• Google Analytics for WordPress
• Google XML Sitemaps
• Gregarious
• Lightbox 2 Plugin
• MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer
• Popularity Contest
• Robots Meta
• Similar Posts
• Tag Suggest Thing
• WordPress Video Plugin

The following are not compatible with WordPress 2.5:

• Gregarious
• Advanced Tag Entry
• Tag Suggest Thing

I’m sure either the plugin authors will update or there are replacements.

There are some new plugins added to the list such as Robots Meta, Similar Posts and Popularity Contest. Robots Meta is a decent plugin that adds meta tags to admin pages etc. Pages you don’t want indexing by search engines. Similar Posts and Popularity Contest plugins are used for the top bar i made.

Take a look at my previous plugin updates here and here.

I might try something cheeky so stay tuned to see if it works!

I used social media and article submit websites to gain visitors and the subscriber count is going up day by day.

In terms of traffic for daparky.com, it’s going pretty smooth and stable. Brining in on average 70 unique visits per day. I know March isn’t over yet but the daparky.com received 2,187 unique visits for the month which isn’t bad, the blog has only been online since Feb 8th.

You could see a Gran Turismo 5 Prologue review from me in the coming week along with a movie review which i haven’t done yet. I also plan to start the Web Development category which i haven’t done so yet due to busyness.

In terms of traffic, it’s been ok, talkplaystation.com received 19 uniques yesterday which is good for a site thats only been online a few days. It’s not even indexed by Google yet. I’ve only submitted it to Technorati.

Traffic for this blog is at a steady 40 uniques per day on average, i’m sure that will increase when i start advertising.

I think i’m pretty much done and can just get on with publishing new content. I will probably make changes to the layout, for example, maybe add in a top bar like i did for this blog. I’m hoping to attract Playstation fans and feed them with up to date news. I will keep you updated with how things go in the coming weeks.

In terms of work, i am going to write a review for Rainbow Six Vegas 2 which i received on Wednesday through the post. Expect the review tomorrow or Sunday.

I want to launch a few more blogs in differen’t niches, i don’t want to discuss that here just yet, in case someone goes ahead and takes it on board without myself doing so. This niche isn’t crowded at all and could be a good niche to invest in. I can use the 4 day weekender to sort out and plan the upcoming blogs.

daparky.com has hit a new record, with 20 subscribers. I want to carry on developing this blog and provide you users with quality content thats worth reading! if you haven’t already done so, please subscribe to my blog to receive blog entries direct to your RSS Reader.

I mentioned that i was going to get rid of the video game category and make a dedicated blog for that. I’ve now decided to keep the video game category and just use it for personal opinions on video games etc. I will get rid of other categories that i don’t need including the money one.

I hope to launch talkplaystation.com this week too which is a blog for Playstation fan boys. Similar to the video game category on this blog, i will be posting new screenshots, news, videos for the Playstation platform. I was going to try and cover all three next generation systems but i figured out this would demand a lot of time and i only own Playstation products. If talkplaystation.com gets a lot of visitors, nothing will stop me from creating a blog for each of the consoles.

The key behind traffic is unique content and thats why this blog is receiving a fair amount of visitors.

Advantages of blogs

1. Freedom of speech
2. Share knowledge with other people
3. Make friends online
4. Can be used as a diary

Disadvantages of blogs

1. Need to keep it constantly updated otherwise you lose potential readers
2. Easy to start, hard to maintain

Thats my say on the advantages and disadvantages of blogging. I found a very good article which covers most of this, take a look at it here.

I used Googles removal tool within Webmaster Tools section to remove these directories, including the admin pages and tag archives. I finally think i’ve worked it all out in terms of what i want indexing and what i don’t want indexing. I chose categories over tags and appled ’noindex’ to the tag archives using ‘All in one seo pack‘ plugin.

Using both of these plugins together is very effective on what you want indexing etc. All i want indexing is my blog posts, cateogories and nothing else. I don’t mind the /page/ directory being indexed.

In a later post, i will post what i have blocked google from indexing and why.