If you thought that only shampoo commercials and sinabawang gulays are the only ones who can have their own Jingle, the people behind the Philippine Blog Awards are out to prove us wrong for they have made their own Jingle about the Philippine blogosphere!

Oh, and my blog was mentioned along with the song! Yeah!

“Cut your losses early by quitting when you’ve lost the passion or will to work hard. Because one rarely gets profitable or influential without interest or perseverance.” -Doshdosh

For years PinoyBlogero.com has been the place where Pinoy bloggers flock when they want to be on the know on the latest news and trends surrounding the Philippine Blogosphere… But not anymore.

Yes, my dear readers, starting today PinoyBlogero.com will be changing it’s blog’s focus for a more personal one. Please welcome, PinoyBlogero 3.0, also known as my new personal blog.

If you are a regular reader here in PinoyBlogero.com, then I guess you are already familiar with my Weekend Recaps every Sunday that contains lots of interesting posts and news that I have collected from the Pinoy blogosphere.

With an average of 10-15 posts per recap, it’s no surprise that people are asking me how I manage to collect such a big number of interesting posts per week.

Well, the trick to it is really simple. All you need to do is to have lots of sources as possible. What are these sources? Let me share some of mine.

• Feeds – I am currently subscribed to over 100+ Pinoy blogs on my feed reader. Most of them are for “post ideas” and “weekend recap” purposes. What I do is I look for blogs that I know would come up with interesting posts from time to time and those who are updated in the latest happenings in my niche.

• Blog Aggregators – Blog aggregators like PinoyBlogosphere.com and PinoyBlog.com are a great source of articles posted by Pinoy bloggers. The only problem is that you have to sort them all out manually, it is a pretty tedious task considering that blog aggregators average about 50-100 articles per day. What I do is I scan the headers of the articles to save me time.

• Google Alerts – Google Alerts is a nifty feature from Google that alerts the user if there are newly indexed posts under a specific keyword. For example, Google Alerts notifies me of a new article under the term “Pinoy Blogging” every time a new post is made and indexed on the Google Search Engine. It’s really helpful because I usually discover posts that are not on my subscribed feeds and blog aggregators. All you have to do is to specify a group of keywords that are related to your niche and let Google do all the finding for you. (You could read my review of Google Alerts, here)

• Twitter – Some bloggers make use of Twitter to twit about their new posts or interesting articles that they have discovered. Following these people is really helpful especially if you let Twitter send twits directly to your mobile phone (Yes, you can do that).

• Mailing Lists – If you are a member of PinoyBlogosphere.com, you might also want to subscribe to their mailing list. I usually get lots of interesting material from these mailing lists because of discussions between members regarding lots of different topics. Just be prepared to receive lots of messages on your mail inbox, people get a little chatty at times.

• Forums – On other niches, forums are one of the best possible news sources that every blogger should hunt down. Unfortunately for me, there are only a small number of forums about Pinoy blogging or the Pinoy blogging community. Nevertheless, I still check them out every once in a while. Here is a list of forums about Pinoy blogs and the Pinoy blogging community: Yugatech Forums, PinoyBlogosphere.org, Wordpress.ph Forums, and Wordpress Pinoys.

Happy blogging!

Just want to share this really cool thing that has happened to my blog last Sunday. Thanks to Pacquiao and Marquez’s Rematch, my blog has received a huge amount of traffic because of the people who searched for the results of the fight.

Look at that, 7423 (almost 7500) unique pageviews in just one day. It’s a good thing my web server didn’t collapse under the huge load just like what happened to Dexter. Aside from traffic, I also received a spike in AdSense earnings and a good number of Feed subscribers. All thanks to Pacquiao!

Here are some of the lessons that I learned about SEO while optimizing for the keyword “Pacquiao vs Marquez Rematch Result”:

• Social Bookmarking Sites and Forums are a good source of backlinks
• Make sure that your blog is ready to handle a sudden increase in traffic
• Off-page optimization carries more weight than On-page optimization
• .edu backlinks gives a blog a big boost on the SERPs. How did I get one? Secret. hehe.
• Effective placement of ads is very important if you want to get the most from the traffic.
• It takes some time to get on the first page of SERPs. Optimize early. In this campaign, I optimized for the keyword a week before the fight.
• There are times that your blog will inexplicably disappear from the SERPs page and would come back again after a few hours/days. I dunno why this happens, but I’ve heard it happens often.
• It’s really hard to determine what position you are in on the SERPs page. I don’t know if I should believe my Rank checker tools, they all say different results.
• Only use the main keyword that you are optimizing for as your anchor text when linking to your post.

I know, i know. I’m becoming an SEO addict. Don’t worry, I won’t forget my duties as a blogger.

Goodluck in your next fight, Manny! We’ll be there to blog about it!

Happy Blogging!

On my post, “The Reason Why I am Afraid of Guest Posting Here on PinoyBlogero.com”, I asked my readers on whether or not I should accept guest posting here on my blog. It was a problem that I was having second thoughts with for the longest time, which is why I decided to leave the decision making to the hands of my readers. The replies that I got were a number of “No, please don’t do guest posting”, a couple of “Sure. Go ahead”, and some “Why are you asking us? You’re the blogger. You decide”.

When it comes to making big decisions on my blog, I try to make it into a habit of asking my readers about the issue before taking any action. There are some people, however, who think that the decision should be entirely up to the blogger because they are the ones in charge of their blogs. They can do anything they want with it, so why ask the readers?

Aileen Apolo left a comment saying “I think it (your decision) depends on what you are comfortable with and not what your readers want. It’s your blog and as Yolynne said in my blog, “You’re the president of your blog!”

Although, it is true that we can do anything we want with our blogs and we have full authority over it. Shouldn’t we consider what our readers want? After all, aren’t they the ones who will be directly affected by the changes?

I always think of blogs as a business wherein my ideas and thoughts are my products – packaged in the form of blog posts – and my readers as my customers. In order for a business to further improve, isn’t it a good move for the establishment to get feedback from the customers and use it to aid with the decision making? Or better yet, why not give the readers a chance to be a part of the board of directors?

By letting readers be a part of the decision making, it would be easier to know which decision to make because we know what our customers want. It also makes readers feel that they are in control over the growth of the blog. This establishes a certain connection between the reader and the blog. They become an important part of the blog’s growth.

But of course, in the end, the final decision would be entirely up to blogger. I would listen to what my readers think, weigh the options according to their feedback, and would decide on what course of action to take. The result would be an improved blog and lots of happy readers.

I know that everyone has a different approach on running their blogs. But this is how I run mine. Yes, PinoyBlogero.com is my blog. However, it is also a blog FOR my readers.

So, I ask you, do you let your readers in on the decision making? Share your thoughts below!

Happy Blogging!

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