Stephan Miller
Building Websites, Traffic, and Income
One Way to Speed Up Your Feed Reading
Image by eristoddle via Flickr
A feed reader is supposed to speed things up. You don’t have to visit the blog to read what’s been published.
That’s how mine started and somehow I have managed to collect over 2000 feeds which I have categorized along the way:
- Advertising
- Affiliate
- Blogging
- Design
- Developer
- Forums
- Internet Marketing and Make Money
- Money (finance)
- Productivity and Freelance
- SEO
- Social Media
- Tech
- Thinkers
- Upcoming and Memes
- WordPress
- Writing
A List of Top Blog Lists
I cover a lot of topics and read a lot of blogs. Up until recently, I had them all in one folder in my feed reader. Then I broke them up into folders. That took some thought and until then, I really had no idea what all my interests are. After that two hour organizing session, a lot of things became more clearer. I saw what I liked listed by topic. After that, I was able to create a few filters for each of my blogs. Now, if I’m in commenting mode, I just go down the river of articles in each filter. I have only headlines showing and open all the links in my browser. It is training me on writing better headlines and opening the link in the browser means I don’t have to retype everything when I go to comment.
7 Very Cool Free Desktop Feed Readers
I have been so wrapped up lately trying to replace desktop software with web apps that I haven’t looked into desktop feed readers for a long time. I used Firefox live marks until I realized that 700 feeds will slow down the browsing experience.
After that I went to Google Reader and have kept my feeds there for a while. I maxed out Google Reader with Monkeyscripts to the point it runs real lyslow and then I went to the mobile version in the sidebar of Flock.
The Importance of Knowing What You Want to Write
There are times I have had pretty good luck with just taking off with a topic and coming out on the other side with a post. This morning was not one of those times. But I knew. I could feel it.
Even though that is my favorite way to right a post, it didn’t work. I didn’t feel my juices flowing and I tackled a subject I had been thinking about for a while, but not quite enough. When the post was around 750 words long and I wasn’t sure I was halfway done, I knew I was in over my head. But I still tried to force it.
Feed Consolidation for Niche Blogs
One of the first things you want to do when starting a new blog is find the neighborhoods that you will hang out in when you are working on your blog. These will be the blogs you comment on, get news from and reference when writing the posts on your own blog.
Google Reader
I am a Google Reader junkie. I use it in the browser, in the sidebar, in iGoogle, and on the phone when I am bored in waiting rooms. It is fast and a very useful tool. And I found it a necessity to use someone else’s processing power after the feeds in my OPML file grew to the size of over 700 individual feeds. Live bookmarks just isn’t going to do the job. And this was just my reading list for this blog and Digital Products Review.
The Ultimate DoFollow Blog List
I figured I had to go over the top with this one. Not quite sure if I have. You tell me.
I have been using Fast Blog Finder to find dofollow blog posts for me. It helps and then it doesn’t. I don’t spam. I like getting beneficial links back to my site. I use tools like this because they simplify the process. But sometimes the posts are a little bit old. And I am not quite sure of the etiquette involved. Is an older post OK to comment on? I could see refering to it from a blog post. But after a post has 20 comments, how much do you really add to the conversation if it has ended? Read more... (469 words, 3 images, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)