Blog, Blog, Blogging along!

[rmg3010]

Greetings!
thanks Morganna I think I will get one of those counters. Alas, though, I don't think anyone is reading my blog. I must admit I don't monitor it and I haven't added to it. I am new to this blogging thing. I wanted to link it to my youtube however, I think all the instructions on youtube entail putting video into your blog.
How are you getting people to read your blog?
thanks again,
GMT

[gazlannathai]

A couple of notes for the users of blogger.com and the like - it's really difficult to get your individual blogs search ranked on those sites because the ranking belongs to the site, not your blog. I know they are free, and supposedly easy to get started with, but if you're going to use them to promote your business, you really need to break away from them and install something like WordPress on the same hosting as your ecommerce websites.

Apart from anything else, that'll give eBid more link juice when you link to your stores - each of your sites would then be a different domain and count as a unique link each. Right now, all the links from blogger.com to eBid have a diluted search value because they all come from a single domain name (blogger.com).

The same would apply if you went for the hosted version of WordPress at WordPress.com, instead of self-hosting via the free download at WordPress.org

Another reason to self-host your blog is much more flexibility in terms of the appearance and add-on functions you can use with your blog. This particularly has relevance if you want to import content from elsewhere (e.g. YouTube) regarding breach of a hosted sites Terms of Use (blogger can be quite draconic on this sometimes).

Lastly, beware of sites like blogspot.com - only registered users can see your stuff ... who's going to register at "yet another site" just to read something that popped up on a Google or Yahoo search? It's a bit different with forums - most allow a good mooch around before needing to register to get at the juicy stuff, but blogspot et al don't even let you past the landing page.

Gaz

[hotandvintage]

May have been a while since you were on blogger but there is a lot of apps available to host YouTube videos, which are created through google apps so I doubt they would stop them.

And unless you pressed the wrong button in your settings any one can read or even post to your blogspot blog posts.

There are several reasons to have your blog off your main site server, such as if there is any down time, you will have no contact with your customers.

There is also the point that a lot of users do not have their own site, and ebid is or will be their main venue.

You also have the group factor or the follow factor where your buyers may also be bloggers, as people forget that buyer users are human too and like to rant just as much as the seller.

You also have to consider most ebid sellers are users rather than sellers, and will buy and sell, so they may also be using the same things you are.