This is my second blog review in a series where I look at my subscribers blogs and point out what I think is good and what I think is bad about them. Last week I reviewed ‘Mommy Meryl‘, Meryl actually took on board some of my points and adjusted her blog to make her blog easier to read for her visitors.
As I pointed out last week, I am not telling the blogger what to do, I am just sharing my blogging experience and hopefully you can pick up some tips on how to improve your blogs as well.
This weeks blog is ClubBlogger.com, the blog is run by Larry, here is a quote from the about page:
ClubBlogger was created to share the latest and greatest in the blogging world, how to make money from your blog and other methods, and a place to go to find out how to be a better blogger!
The Club Blogger staff has had extensive experience blogging for several years now, and we have a goal to bring you top notch advice, tips, and tricks when it comes to blogging and succeeding online.
Below is a screenshot of the blog, for those of you who are not familiar with it:
My first impressions of the blog were slightly varied, the content is of good quality and informative, many bloggers would find useful. The design however has some major put-offs in terms of first impressions.
The fact is, when someone lands on your blog, you have only a few seconds to trap them and convert them to your blog, this means your blog needs to be easy on the eye and draw the user to the content.
I have picked out two points from ClubBlogger.com that I am going to talk about in this blog review. They are:
- Advertising
- Browser Compatibility
Advertising on blogs is something that has been talked about a lot in the blogosphere with everyone having their own views, each with advantages and disadvantages. In my opinion the two main views can be broken down into ‘Subtle’ and ‘In Your Face’.
‘Subtle Advertising’ is the one that I favour and use on my blog here, the ads are not blocking my readers from the content, nor are they obtrusive. This can have advantages such as making the blog easier for your visitors and making your blog look more professional. The disadvantages are that they can have lower CTR (Click Through Rates) which can effect performance in CPC (Cost Per Click) advertising.
‘In Your Face Advertising’ is a form of advertising where the user usually needs to click on an ad in order to earn you money, this means that your ads need to be visible and stand out to the reader. The advantages of ‘In Your Face Advertising’ are that you can earn more through CPC advertising. The disadvantage however is that it makes your blog look more unprofessional and often distracts from the content.
I much prefer the ‘Subtle’ approach on blogs, as their main focus is the written content. Going back to ClubBlogger.com you will notice that there is a mixture of the two, from my count I have found the following advertising on the homepage:
- 6 examples of ‘In Your Face Advertising’
- 9 examples of ‘Subtle Advertising’
That is alot of advertising for one page, my advice for ClubBlogger.com is to remove all In Your Face Advertising, and trim the Subtle advertising slightly to make the blog look more professional, I would suggest doing that by:
- Removing the Adsense Leaderboard and search box from under the navigation, this will help to pull the content of the blog further above the fold, helping to attract readers to your content.
- Remove the Adsense squares from the bottom of each post, to make browsing the content a lot easier.
- Remove the Adbrite banner from the footer of the page, as it is to far down the blog to have any impact.
- I would then move the 125×125 ads in the sidebar up above the ‘Image Hosting Secrets’ widget, so that they are above the fold and more appealing to potential advertisers.
- Remove the Adbrite inline ads, they can be very annoying.
These changes may see a drop in your blogs earnings, but by converting more visitors to readers you will increase your blogs page views and unique hits so that a higher fee can be obtained in the long run for the 125×125 ads.
Here is a what the blog would look like without the ads:
I am sure most people will agree that it looks more professional and would have a better first impression when landing on that blog.
Now onto browser compatibility, this is an issue that I have seen many blogger ignore. Every browser displays blogs slightly differently, so by check the compatibility of your blog in many browsers you can be sure that all your visitors are getting a good experience of your blog. Below is an image of how my FireFox browser views the ClubBlogger.com ‘About’ page:
As you can see I cannot read the content because the yellow sticky note is covering it. You need to check to make sure that your blog is compatible with the most used browers, check your stats to see the most used browser on your blog and make sure your blog works for those browsers.
As I have said before ClubBlogger.com has some good content, the way to grow this blog is to remove the focus away from the Ads and onto the content by bringing the content up above the fold and by sticking to ‘Subtle Advertising’ techniques.
Please check out ClubBlogger.com now if you have not already done so. Remember, if you want your blog reviewed, subscribe to my feed Via Email then Contact Me informing me you wish to be considered.
What are your views on ClubBlogger.com? Do you enjoy these reviews? Is there anything I should change about the reviews?
There is not a lot happening in the blogosphere today, so I thought I would take this as an opportunity to give you an update on ProTycoon.com, your favourite bloggings tips blogs!
