DownUnder Update has requested a review, so the only honest thing to do now is to give them one!

First impressions of this blog is that it’s very simple. The layout is clean, but not at all eyecatching. Although that emu looks at me in an accusing way, the header in an aspect that could be utilised for much greater effect with a new design. The three columns of the layout are not used for great effect, although the top of hte page looks fine, scrolling down sees the sidebars finish long before the bottom of the page. Having two columns instead of three would make the length of sidbar more consistent with the length of posts. Or, filling the current sidebars with more things, perhaps twitter, or if Susanna wanted to monetise, then ads could also fit in the sidebard to lengthen them. Pages of older entries match up neater, whether this is because only older entries are shortened to fit nicely on the page or not isn’t clear.

The other disconcerting thing abouthte layout, is that it’s not all in English, which is off-putting to a plain-speaking bloke like myself.  You notice it under the title of each post, ‘comentarios’ instead of comments, or ‘entradas anteriores’. There’s that foreign tongue in the footer too. Is it French? Spanish? It isn’t Aussie, that’s for certain and doesn’t fit with the distinctly Australian feel to this blog. If it’s part of the template, then some editing is in order.

But what is actually written in this little blog? Wonderful things! The very first post left me with a hankering for quiche jam and cheese, and the rest of the blog is filled with equally good articles on stories about our culture and our life. It evokes a touch of nostalgia, and a sense of pride.

Overall, I would have to give this blog 6.5 out of 10. I feel that the layout lets down its charming content, bt I will keep looking back on this one for a good read.

Oh, and it has entrecard too if any droppers out there are reading today.

There are thousands of MMO, SEO and Internet marketing blogs drifting around out there that will tell you Stumbleupon and other social networks is the way to get your work out there and find some traffic.

It makes me angry to read that, it really does. Stumbleupon is not just there for webmasters to abuse for their own, extremely temporary benefit. It’s there for people to network (hence social networking),  to discover new websites and to rate them based on whether they’re good or not.

If you constantly submit every page of yours to stumbleupon, each of your stumbles is going to lose potency because not enough other people will like it. You will have less and less credibility until eventually each of your stumbles will drive a mere handful of visitors each time, not the hundreds you may have hoped for.

That’s not to say you can’t use stumbleupon to plug your own occasional article, so long as it’s a good one. However, it does need to be a truly shining example of your work, and your own sites must NOT under ANY circumstances be the only think you submit to stumbleupon. It’s just bad manners to push yourself forward all the time without acknowledging others around you who may deserve some attention.

‘Self-centred’ springs to mind.

Actually, ‘Self-centred’ seems to fit most blogs about making a few dollars from the Internet. But if you want your stumbles to mean anything in terms of the traffic they drive, you have to play the system the way it’s meant be played. It’s really very simple-

1. Discover and thumbs-up the websites that are good and actually worthwhile visiting.
2. Don’t trade away your stumbles for reciprocals, especially those that are a bit dodgy, or wouldn’t have been stumbled any other way.

If you want stumble to be good to you, you have to be a decent person in the first place. Discover other people’sblogs, your mates will appreciate the favour and remember it. If you don’t like anybody else on the Internet (you scrooge) then go stumble some lolcats. Lots of people love animal photos and will agree that your discovery is worthy of a thumbs-up. The more people who agree that your submissions are worthy, the more fans you earn, the more each of your stumbles will be worth.

In short, be a good Stumbler, and your Stumbles will be good.

When you don’t have any cash to spare, but still want to make your way in the net, there are a handful of recourses you can use to spread your links around. The huge advantage of free services of course, is that they cost you nothing to use and so any gains you make is all profit.

• Forums. There’s no better place on the Internet to strut your stuff or ask for help. They’re the internet equivalent of wandering down to the local pub and having a few pints. You never know who you’re gonna bump into, and just how useful those contacts will be. Some of the more useful forums to join are Bloggeries, Digital Point (beware of shifty people) and anything relative to what you’re writing. Smaller communities are often better quality. Larger communities, like larger cities, end up attracting scumbags and scammers.
• Social Networks are a highly regarded way of getting your pages indexed in google, and getting the attention of the casual web surfer. They are, however, difficult to use effectively and you get better results when someone happens to submit your writings without you begging for it or asking for an exchange. Stumbleupon is a personal favourite, other bloggers fantasie about reaching the front page of digg. I suppose it gives them a warm little feeling inside, but digg doesn’t appeal as much to me.
• Blog Engage is a social network that is similar to digg, but deserves a special mention for itself because it is just for blog posts, and nothing more. That shows a lot of potential for bloggers to promote themselves without competing with youtube videos and news articles.
• Entrecard. The infamous Entrecard is free, but if you’re going to get anything out of it you have to put into it.
• Search Engines are the holy grail of free traffic. They bring you the people who are actually, actively searching for you. Unfortunately, like Monty Python’s grail, you’ll find yourself going through al sorts of jokes, antics and quests to gain this source of traffic.
• Directories. They may help you with your keywords, and quality is more important that quantity, but don’t expect many people to find you thorugh them. Normal people search the search engines to find what they’re looking for, after all.
• Statcounters, including statcounter.com itself and google analytics, are invaluable free tools if you want to know how your place in the net is being used. There are a multitude of them out there, but the two mentioned above are free and will work for any type of site. Statcounter is best for low levels of traffic, which Google Analytics is more use for larger sites.

And in the spirit of free things, I have decided to offer free blog reviews and ctitiques to help the new fellows on the block get some feedback on how they’re going. All you’ve got to do is ask HERE (<– click)

It’s all just words really. You could read the same information in a dozen places, and it would all be of equal value, but that doesn’t mean it’s of equal enjoyment. The same old thing can be re-hashed again and again, and you care less and less. That’s why everyone needs an Akubra hat.

 A hat equates to a personality, a particular voice that comes through when you’re writing to make you more than just another re-hashed pile of information. If you can write with a unique voice, or in other words wearing your, then you suddenly become a real, live, human being and not just text on a screen.

Akubra’s aren’t for everyone. I’ve seen people write with the voice of philosophers, mothers, battlers, game characters and even cats. (If my cat did have a voice, he still wouldn’t say anything.) You  need to have a bit of personality, mate, you really do. Trying to be too informative without being personable is simply dry and boring. Honestly, who surfs the net to be bored?

There’s a lot to be said about people with a sense of humour. You can say things like “He’s not all that funny really,” or “Go on, tell us a joke then,” or “I don’t get it.” Or you could just have a chuckle and think no more about it.

But ocassionally you come across a few sites that make you wonder whether or not that writer would survive in  the Aussie bush and the farmlands. I mean, we’re all people here, but we’re most definitely not the same.

This fellow for example, a spanking monkey, has been having a whinge about a fart. Not just the fart, but his own inability to respond to it in anyway.

I had to laugh. This fellow definitely couldn’t work with cattle. When you’re working with cows, and you have them held tightly in the crush they have three means of defending themselves from anything you might have to do. If you’re up the front end, then they can try to thrash. If that doesn’t work, they can sit down and make everything more difficult for you.

But if you’re round the back end for any reason, then their most effective form of self defence is their digestive sytem. They will attempt to urinate on you, with force, and if that doesn’t work they will keep shitting until you let them go. But they can and will fart as well, with splatter and a very yeasty smell.

You get used to it and stop thinking about it after a while, but I couldn’t help  but wonder about this monkey-man’s reaction if he ever had to get milk fresh from the cow himself. A good light read, if you have the time to read his somewhat lengthy posts.