The Computer Zone

The Christmas season is quickly approaching. This means lots of snow, eating great food and spending time with family. It also means spending lots of time trying to find the perfect gift for the loved ones in your house. As a blogger, there are a lot of Christmas presents we’d like to see our blog receive. Here are a few things that I would like to receive for my blog.

1. A 1000% increase in visitors
   How nice would it be to wake up and see that instead of the normal 100 visitors you now have 1000 visitors.
2. The average visitor stays for 10 minutes
   Now that you’re getting 1000 visitors by the time you wake up, all of your visitors stick around for 10 minutes each. They’re reading your articles and interacting on your site.
3. minimum of 30 comments per post
   One of the best ways to see if people like your articles is to see the comments on them. A great Christmas gift for me would be at least 30 comments per post. This is a great way to see if people actually like what your writing or not.
4. Only important emails
   Instead getting spammed with a lot of useless emails requesting links, asking for posts, etc… all of your emails are extremely important. People wanting to give you stuff,people wanting to buy advertising on your site and things like that. This would make your day a lot easier because you no longer have to wad through the useless emails.
5. Your articles get referenced by professional bloggers everyday
   Darren, John Chow, and Daniel reference your articles every day increasing traffic even more.
6. Your site becomes Page Rank 10
   Because of all the backlinks from popular site your Page Rank goes up to 10. This also means that you can sell your advertising for a lot more.
7. You can become a professional blogger
   Because of everything above it is now feasible to become a professional blogger. You can shed your job and start writing full time and actually make a good living off of it.

If all of these things were given to me for Christmas I would be the happiest blogger around. Just imagine if you woke up on Christmas morning and even one of these things happened. But thats just what I would want for my Blogging Christmas. If you could have anything what would you want?

<Guo_Si> Hey, you know what sucks?
<TheXPhial> vaccuums
<Guo_Si> Hey, you know what sucks in a metaphorical sense?
<TheXPhial> black holes
<Guo_Si> Hey, you know what just isn’t cool?
<TheXPhial> lava?

———————————————————————————–

<i8b4uUnderground> d-_-b
<BonyNoMore> how u make that inverted b?
<BonyNoMore> wait
<BonyNoMore> never mind

———————————————————————————–

<jeebus> the “bishop” came to our church today
<jeebus> he was a f****** impostor
<jeebus> never once moved diagonally

———————————————————————————–

<death09>my girlfriend broke up with me and sent me pix of her and her new boyfriend in bed
<ktp753>ouch.
<death09>yeah.i sent them to her dad

———————————————————————————–

<kow`> “There are 10 types of people in the world… those who understand binary and those who don’t.”
<SpaceRain> That’s only 2 types of people, kow.
<SpaceRain> STUPID

———————————————————————————–

<Patrician|Away> what does your robot do, sam
<bovril> it collects data about the surrounding environment, then discards it and drives into walls

I thought it’d be fun to share with you guys some of the reasons I started blogging. Now, I’m a fairly recent contestant in the blogosphere. I started back in August and haven’t looked back since. I’ve made a number of errors, I’d change a number of things but I must say its been a fun ride so far. Here are ten reason why I started blogging.

1. I was bored at work
   Over the summer I worked at Rogers Media and I was completely bored out of my skull. There were days where I wouldn’t have anything to do, so instead of just sitting around I decided to be more productive and do something
2. I wanted to learn something
   This may sound a little weird but I actually started blogging because I wanted to learn PHP and HTML. I though it’d be good to code my own blog.
3. I wanted to be heard
   This is probably the biggest reason why I started blogging. I had things to say and I wanted people to hear it While I’m not sure if this has happened I know a few people have heard me.
4. I wanted to make money
   While I hadn’t blogged before I was on the internet a lot and I had heard that a few people were making a lot of money doing this. Being a university student, I’m always looking for different ways to make money so I thought I’d try.
5. My friend told me to
   My friend Alex was probably the most influential person in my early blogging months. He was the one that told me about wordpress and he was also the one that said I should learn PHP and such. If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be blogging.
6. I’m a computer nerd
   I enjoy being on my computer. I like surfing the web, writing computer programs and playing games. Blogging was just an extension of what I already did so it was fun.
7. Proving I’m an expert
   While this may sound a little conceited my first blog was a blog about the C Programming language. I wanted to prove that I knew my stuff and it was a great indicator of how much I actually know. Even with this blog I enjoy showing that I do know a little about blogging.
8. To inflate my ego
   Comments are awesome. Every time I get a comment my face lights up and I’m happy. This may sound a little loserish but it’s true. Blogging makes me feel good because I see that people are reading my stuff and some even like it
9. To get connected
   Before I started blogging I was reading a lot of blogs and I thought that starting my own was definitely a good way to get connected in the blogosphere. I was certainly right on that point.
10. To write lists like this
    Honestly, this has been my dream To write 10 lists and share them with the world. Seriously, I just couldn’t think of a 10th reason.

Those are the reasons why I started blogging and I’d really like to hear why you started. What were the main reasons why you started blogging?

Today I wrote a post and emailed it to Ben at Bloggingexperiment.com. When I logged back in to my computer I was happy to see that he posted it on his blog. The post is entitled “Maximize Your Guest Posting Efforts“. For those of you who are coming from that page I’d like to welcome you to my blog. Here are a few of my most popular posts

• Why you should post on the weekends
• Five tips to being a better guest poster
• Encouraging comments on your blog
• 10 things to do with your old computer
• Five things every blogger should have near their desk

If you like any of these posts feel free to subscribe to my feed or subscribe via email.  If you have any questions feel free to email me at adam[at]thecompzone.com or via my contact page.

Yesterday I talked about why you should post on the weekends and today I’m going to play the devil’s advocate and take the other side.

There are a number of good reasons to post on the weekend. It can help bring in new readers, keep you posting consistently, and will help you differentiate your self from other bloggers in your niche. A question you might have is with all of these plus’ how can you say you shouldn’t post on the weekends?

While there aren’t as many reasons not to post on the weekends there still are a few and here are some of them.

Not as much traffic
Most people don’t receive as much traffic on the weekend as they do during the week. This may be that their readers surf the web more during work and spend the weekend with family. Because of the smaller traffic numbers these people think that they should release their best posts when there will be more readers to read them.

Spend the time organizing
Instead of posting, use your time to better your blog. One of the best things you can do is organize your week ahead of you. Organizing your week is a great way to stay atop of your posting schedule, it can help you post daily, create better content and improve your blog.

While I think that you should post on the weekends there are a few reasons why you shouldn’t. If you have any reasons why you shouldn’t post on the weekend feel free to add it in the comments section. If you think I’m totally nuts you can voice that too

One of the ongoing debates in the ‘blogosphere’ is whether or not to post on the weekends. Some people say that since their traffic generally goes down on the weekends they should save their best posts for when their site is receiving the most amount of people.

Others say that posting on the weekend is a great way to get new readers since a lot of people are home during the weekend. My opinion on the matter is that the weekend is a great time to organize your posts and thoughts and maybe post about things outside of your niche.

Here are a few reasons why you SHOULD post on the weekends.

Consistency is King
Some people say that posting consistently is important and I would have to agree with this, especially for a newer blog. Posting consistently can increase your feed numbers, increase the number of visitors that you have and increase the number of comments that you get. Posting on the weekends proves that you can be a consistent blogger and this is always a good thing.

Bring in new readers
Some people work so hard during the week that they don’t have time to read blogs and surf the web. These people do all of this during the weekend. To capture these readers you need to post when they read, the weekends. A lot of people who don’t post on the weekends say that their traffic goes down so why should they post? My question is, is their traffic going down because they don’t post?

If other bloggers aren’t doing it, you should
One of the problems with beginner bloggers is that they jump on the blogging bandwagon and don’t think of the consequences. They think that if other bloggers don’t post on the weekends that they should follow this. GET OFF THAT BANDWAGON. If other bloggers don’t post on the weekend this is an excellent reason why you should. If you post on the weekend then you may get their readers who leave their blog because they don’t post on the weekend.

These are a few of the reasons why I post on the weekend but what I’m really interested in is whether or not you post on the weekend?

Today I’m proud to announce our first ever contest! The Computer Zone has been around for just over two months and I thought it would be a cool idea to throw a little Christmas Giveaway.

I’m really excited about this because it’s our first contest and the prizes are really good. Without further adieu here is the prize bundles:

• A one month 125×125 ad spot on JohnTP.com and a one month 16×16 or 12×12 ad spot on Chipseo.com
• ‘Under the Microscope’ review on Bloggingexperiment.com and a one month 125×125 ad spot on Thecompzone.com
• A blog review on Thecompzone.com

As you can see there are some great prizes there (totalling over $300). But now, how do you win them and how will the winners be decided? To enter the contest you need to do three really simple things:

1. Blog about this contest. All you have to do is write a few lines detailing the contest and the prizes and link to this page as well as link to my main page with the anchor text ‘The Computer Zone’
2. Subscribe to my feed so you can see who wins the contest
3. Email me at adam[at]thecompzone.com with the url of your blog post.

Thats how easy it is. On December 24th I’ll close the contest and pick the winners. On December the 25th I’ll announce the winners on this blog.

Heres a quick recap of the contest:

• Begins: Today
• Ends: December 24th
• How to enter: Blog about this contest (and link to it), subscribe to my feed and email me the url of your post.

On the 25th I’ll do a random drawing from all of the emails I receive to see who wins which prize bundle.