2020 - Page 2 of 5 - This Week in Blogging

Hotjar Review – Lessons Learned After Installing Heatmaps on Our Sites

November 12, 2020November 12, 2020

If you run a website and want greater insights into the actions users actually take on any given page, you may want to give heatmapping a try.

Heatmap services, like Hotjar, offer a wealth of performance data from actual users (overlayed directly on your site for a visible breakdown of click locations), and lets you get a glimpse into the user experience of your site far more than global analytics data provides.

When we installed this one on two sites for a test, I have to admit the results were striking!

Virtual Assistants for Bloggers with Ben Butler of BizzyBim

November 9, 2020

We're talking today with Ben Butler about all things virtual assistants for bloggers. As the owner of a company that offers virtual assistants services, Ben is in a unique position to talk to This Week in Blogging about how bloggers can best utilize and work with virtual assistants.

Before we go any further, we'll give you a full rundown of who exactly Ben is, and why he's very much worth listening to.

Ben Butler is the owner of BizzyBim and a Virtual Assistant specializing in ghostwriting, promotion, and on-page SEO in addition to offering the flexibility to tackle any project a client may have for him. For seven years, he has been helping bloggers, content creators, and social media influencers do more by taking the day-to-day monotony off their plates so they can focus on the business of their businesses.

That's what it's all about in the end – hiring a virtual assistant that can allow you to take some tedious work off your plate, so you can focus on the big picture.

We hope you enjoy this interview, and don't forget that we've got plenty of interviews for bloggers looking to learn more, and take their site to the next level. We've got everything from YouTube tips for bloggers to brand partnership best practices!

And, of course, we've got plenty of non-interviews on our blog as well, so feel free to check out some of our blogging content at large.

Mediavine Review – Optimizing Our Blog’s Advertising Revenue

July 21, 2022November 6, 2020

I've tried a number of advertising options on my travel blogs over the years, be it through Google Adsense, ad waterfalls with multiple networks (back when Amazon ads were a thing, at least), and private ad networks like Mediavine, all with one goal in mind- optimizing my CPM advertising revenue.

When I first started on Adsense, I was lucky to get $3 CPM (on a session basis). Now on Mediavine, I get between $30-$50 CPM depending on the time of year. With my two travel blogs often receiving 150,000 to 250,000 sessions per month combined, this increase in advertising revenue was a make or break difference for me in being able to turn my blogging career into a full-time job.

But I have to admit I was hesitant on joining Mediavine at first due to their exclusivity clause and traffic requirements (now 50,000 sessions per month), but after a few rave reviews from colleagues I jumped in and never looked back.

We should never have hesitated on this one. So let's dive down into a Mediavine review for more!

How to Make $100,000 a Year With Your Blog and Why it is Difficult

November 3, 2020

Six figures a year from blogging. That truly is a dream we all aspire to, isn't it?

As we've found out in our quest to make a real income from blogging, there are many ways to get to six figures a year in income.

But while you can approach this question from many different angles, as we plan to outline extensively below, one thing is certain: they are all very, very difficult to achieve.

Even though it is entirely possible to make six figures from your website, you must be prepared to work your butt off for it. In this detailed guide we share why that is.

What to Do if You Get a DMCA Copyright Infringement Notice

November 3, 2020

Well, hello! If you found this article from a Google search, odds are good you just received a DMCA Copyright Infringement Notice from your host.

This typically means only one thing: you stole some content, got busted for it, and are now frantically trying to figure out what to do!

Don't worry, we are here today to help you out.

While we have not received DMCA notices ourselves, we have sent them to those who have stole from us. This article is our way of letting you know, from a content creator's perspective, what you should do. And that is pretty simple: remove the content as per the DMCA notice!

We weren't joking when we said it is simple, and in this one we're going to go into detail why that is.

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and the below does not constitute legal advice. This article is our opinion based off of our experience filing DMCA notices against content thieves only and our understanding of copyright law. If you have any doubts about what to do after receiving a DMCA notice, contact an attorney.

How to Move Articles to a New Blog and Retain Rankings

January 16, 2021November 2, 2020

Many long-time bloggers are opening focused, niche blogs these days, and some may find that existing content on their first site may be much more relevant for their newer ventures. But if these articles are already receiving traffic on your main site, it certainly brings up a number of possible concerns on the best course of action to pursue.

This certainly happened to us.

On our travel blog, for example, we had many articles about wine tasting around the world (and tangential wine topics as it has always been a hobby of ours). When we started our wine blog, these were a better fit for the story we wanted to tell and we were left with the options of writing a new variant of the articles outright or simply copying them over. The same is true for my blogging advice articles on my travel blog as well. Now that I write here at This Week in Blogging, many of those articles simply make much more sense for them to live here.

Ultimately, the question we're tip-toeing around here is all about branding- specifically whether or not you are more likely to get more clicks on your original domain or on a more niche-specific one (especially in search results). It doesn't take a big leap to understand that my general travel blog called Living the Dream simply doesn't make sense to be home for blogging topics when a site like this one has better branding for it.

I opted to go the route of copying articles over to my new sites outright, and I have to admit I was a bit skeptical about what would happen. I ended up being pleasantly surprised.

Copytrack Review – Copyright Infringement Tracking Good in Theory

July 29, 2022October 30, 2020

Copytrack is an image monitoring service that allows you to track your images online and file copyright violations on commercial entities that are using them without a license.

We've been members of Copytrack's service for quite some time, and now that we've had a few claims paid out, we wanted to walk you through what the experience is like.

So is Copytrack worth your time? We share our thoughts below!

BigScoots Review – Managed WordPress Hosting for Cheap

October 23, 2020

We've been fans of Managed WordPress hosting for many years now and finally decided to change our host to BigScoots as a cost-saving measure. We had heard about this one for quite some time (all good things, naturally), and finally took the leap in early 2020 in order to see what they were all about.

As it turned out, it ended up being a great decision, and we're going to share more as to why that is in this BigScoots review!

GeneratePress Review – The Only WordPress Theme You Need

October 23, 2020

I've worked on a half-dozen or so themes in my decade-plus blogging career, and I've finally settled on the one I'll be sticking with for the long run. This theme, the one you're seeing, is GeneratePress– one of the most customizable and fastest WordPress themes on the market today.

As I'm always seeking speed improvements for SEO goals, and I am just generally a nerd when it comes to optimization, it didn't take much more beyond hearing a few thumbs up from colleagues that GeneratePress is the way to go.

I bought access to the premium features, started a site design, and was blown away by both the functionality and the speed (and to be honest, I'm probably not even taking advantage of all the features, either!).

As such, I have a feeling I'll be sticking to this one for quite some time.