Many Comments

I have to say since my PR increased to 3 the amount of comments I get here on the blog has gone up quite a bit. So clearly my commentators want to take advantage of my DoFollow, CommentLuv, KeywordLuv and Top Commentator “offerings”! Which is great, that’s exactly what they are here for.

The only down side – for me – at this point is that I cannot keep up with replying to some of the comments. Not all require me to answer or reply to them, but there are always quite a few that I would like to reply to. But because of the sheer amount of comments and because I still do have a life apart from blogging (yes, I do!!! ), this has become a very time consuming and nearly impossible task.

I want to let you all know that even if I don’t reply to your comments, please don’t take it personally, I do read them and I do still hand approve all of them, I just cannot put all my time into responding any more. I will if there is anything really pressing, or I think I really need to answer or reply to a comment, but other than that I hope you will understand if your comment might not get a reply.

I have also looked into threaded (or “nested”) comments – this is when my reply to any comment appears straight after the comment and you do not have to scroll down any more to find the reply (have a look how it works on my Healthy Diet Weight Loss blog) -, but for some reason, even though I have the option ticked in my discussion settings, it does not change on my blog. I have to try and figure out why that is. Because some of my posts are getting so many comments, and it gets quite confusing to find the comments and replies that belong together.

Anyway, enough rambling.

If you are an avid blogger and you encourage your readers to interact with you on your blog, be prepared that keeping up with replying to the comments might take more and more time out of  your day. I love the interest all of you show in my blog posts, but please be understanding that I cannot reply all the time any more. Deal?

What would be one of the worst things to happen to an Internet Marketer addicted to the Internet? Who’s holy grail is the computer/laptop? – A COMPUTER CRASH! That’s right! Complete and utter non-functioning of vital systems and tools. So there is nothing else to do any more but

• watch TV
• play with the kids
• do housework
• spend some time outdoors… etc…

Well – that’s what’s happened to me. 4 days ago it was like somebody pulled a rug out under me. I toppled. My computer turned into a useless piece of JUNK! Hell, it’s not even a year old!

I could not do anything any more. Zip, Nada. I thought I had been had by a virus..Trojan.. something!! So I had to get the computer experts in. At a horrendous rate per hour, but hey, I’m an addict, so whatever the cost, just get my machine going again!!!

After several hours of doing stuff I have no idea about it was decided that the “Geek” was taking my computer home to locate the problem and repair it. – I haven’t watched so many movies in a looooooong time! Well, the next day I got the news – harddrive “finished” – had to be wiped and then everything restored to it. Well yupidooo, we all know what that means (well, I found out anyway)!

Since I have had the computer back yesterday I had to discover that most (if not all) the software I had installed on my laptop had gone. Do you have any idea how much software I had installed as an avid Internet Marketer? Well, – lots. Thing is, I have to remember now all that was on there before, then try to find it again and reinstall.

ALL my bookmarks in Firefox were gone. I had a list of a mile long of interesting and absolutely necessary websites I needed access to, programs I had subscribed to, my affiliate programs etc. All gone. And so much more. My computer feels and looks empty! Quite devastating.

I feel like a (Internet marketing) warrior mortally hit, trying to get up and running again.

Lesson to be learned? Prepare! Write down everything you sign up for, or download, including passwords and user names. Be diligent with your record keeping. Do it on the spot. Don’t just rely on your computer to remember everything, it can be fatal. Also, have all your access data in a safe place on your computer AND on paper somewhere safe in the house. Also do regular backups of your computer data. It can safe you a lot of trouble should anything bad happen to your favorite toy.

Wish me luck. Hopefully this alien thing called my laptop will soon be restored to its former glory.

Well, there have been hot discussions about whether by having these Plugins on your site you are actually “draining” your own site of “link juice”, because every link from commentators going out might take away a little bit of authority (link juice) from you, and therefore hurt your PageRank in Google. Nobody seems to be really sure whether these plugins do actually hurt your own site or not. That’s why so many bloggers are very hesitant about installing them. Also, there is the issue about possible spam comments – people are scared that these plugins might invite the spammers to leave tons of inappropriate comments for you to deal with.

Guess what – a couple of days ago my mind was put to rest about the whole issue. Because, to be honest, I wasn’t quite so sure myself whether these plugins were good for my blog or not. Want to know what I discovered?

For the last 6+ months my blog has been a PR2. A few days ago Google did an update of PR’s, and my site went up to a PR3! I think that speaks for itself. I have had so many comments over the last few months, and all of them are DoFollow and have links pointing back to the commentators site, and what happened? My blog went UP in PageRank!

This has proven to me that by having these plugins installed and by actively encouraging others to interact with me on my blog I have added value to it, and somebody else seems to be thinking the same . As for the spam comments – yes, I do get more than before, but I have Akismet installed and it’s been protecting me pretty well. Also, I still do approve all comments myself, so there is no problem there.

So, to me it is clear – if you give, you surely shall receive! Now I hope that this post will inspire some of you to do the same…

So, I hope you are sitting down:

1. I am the artsy one in the Weiss family. One day my whole house will be covered in my own paintings! – If I ever have time to paint and draw again, that is, keeping you all entertained is taking up so much time!
2. Apparently I tend to often interrupt people when they are talking because I get so much into the conversation and want to get my word in before I forget what I wanted to say!
3. I was always really, really bad at writing essays – that’s probably why it takes me a long time to get blog posts together!
4. I am German, studied German administration and got a diploma, just to travel to Australia and end up “for good” there! The Australians don’t seem too interested in what I know about German administration…
5. I have climbed Ayers Rock in Central Australia and dived with sharks at the Great Barrier Reef (!?!? did I really do this?? How old was I??)
6. Since I had the kids (7 and 6 now) I have become the greatest CHICKEN on earth – I see danger in everything, hence me questioning No.5.
7. But I have still started to do waterskiing early this year and really enjoy it! When the season starts again soon I will have to learn how to drive the boat (shiver….) I don’t have a photo of me on skis, just of me and mini-me before her kneeboarding…
8. I absolutely love my two Jack Russells Boomer and Dash, but I am sometimes to lazy to take them for their walk (shame on me!)
9. I don’t like the telephone. Never have. It took me ages to get a mobile phone.
10. I am a “Yes”- Sayer. I can’t say no. I want to please everybody. I HATE my weak self!
11. I am obsessed about my weight. I eat too much. I love food. I LOVE FOOD. Constantly on a diet or other….
12. I am very good at making resolutions about what I am going to do; but I really SUCK at sticking with it!
13. I am extremely compassionate. Sometimes too much, because hearing about certain events can mess me up for quite a while…
14. My 2 dream holidays: Horseback riding in the Rocky Mountains, Painting course in Tuscany.
15. Swimming is one of my favorite sports. I am a water rat.
16. I’ve served ice-cream in our own store in the center of Australia for 7 years, and hated every minute of it. Loved the “all-you-can-eat-for-free” though.
17. Been together with my partner for nearly 15 years…
18. Never in my whole life has anybody asked me “will you marry me?” – …They must all have known that I would say no!!
19. I consider myself a single mum as my partner is constantly away on business.
20. I am currently doing Certificate IV in Bookkeeping – I want to be able to do someting for the unlikely case that my Internet Marketing doesn’t take off! (don’t put all your eggs in one basket, or so the saying goes?)
21. My favorite book right now is Enough: Breaking Free from the World of More fantastic read!
22. One of my favorite things to do is to go for a walk along the beach here with my kids and dogs and watch the sun set over the Indian Ocean…. (are you jealous??)
23. I love to do paperwork and office work. I know – I am a rare breed! And I have always been absolutely pedantic about being organized and neat. I should have married an accountant! – If I ever would have been asked, that is…
24. I cannot lie. I am too honest. That’s probably a good thing!
25. I am a happy person who enjoys life and I am on a quest to better myself by being more mindful, doing 10 minutes of meditation every day (so far I still suck at it, I have to learn), by giving more and being more content.
26. I am always up for a challenge (hint hint!). What I consider my biggest challenge right now is to show all my friends and family that you can actually make lots of money with Internet Marketing!!!

Here is what I have added after completing the list (I will keep adding here as I see fit, on an ongoing basis!)

• I yearn to see more of the world. I have been to lots of countries in Europe while I was still living in Germany, and have also been to Sri Lanka, Thailand and Bali, and of course now I am living in Australia, but I would love to see North and South America, and Africa! Russia, China, Japan….
• I have been snow skiing in Zermatt in Switzerland (at the Matterhorn)
• I have cycled around Bali by myself – now THAT was cool!

Puh, that’s done! I hope I haven’t scared you off now, and you will keep enjoying reading my blog! Thanks, Gene, for tagging me to take part in the challenge, as you can see I have risen to the task, now I will go off and tag my 5 people, too!!! I will be listing the other “contestants” who get the T A G from me right here as they complete their tasks. Watch this space!

Here are the Internet Marketers who were fortunate enough to get tagged by me :

1. Rob Willis – 25 things you may not know about me.
2. Vance Sova – What are Alex Jeffreys students up to?
3. Veronica Purdey – Tagged by Petra for 25 random things

I think I will have to look at all my widgets, plugins and images – might have overloaded the site whilst trying to give you the best experience when visiting my blog Apparently that can happen – too many widgets, plugins and images etc. can considerably slow down loading time of a site.  We will see!

BTW, when I noticed that my site was having problems I immediately opened a support ticket with D9 Hosting (my brilliant hosting company), and they responded literally within minutes, personally! So, thanks, Paula and Dan, for your absolutely outstanding customer service, you have no idea how much it is appreciated!

So, sorry, but here you go, my blog, better late than never! May you have many more exciting years ahead of you!

KeywordLuv - Spreading Luv

This is just to let all of my readers and commentators know that I have now also KeywordLuv installed on my blog. I had been thinking about it for a while, but as I do want to encourage the interaction with you all, I decided it will be well worth it.

KeywordLuv will reward all of you who leave a comment on my blog by separating your name from your keywords in the link to your website, giving you improved anchor text. Like, when you leave a comment now, you can do so by putting down, for example,

“Petra@building lists”

and this will then anchor your site to the keywords you have picked, in this case to “building lists“, which will work well for any search engine optimization you are doing for certain keywords.

As you might remember, on this site I have also installed

• the Top Commentator widget, which will list the most active commentators in my sidebar, giving them a valuable do-follow backlink from each page within my blog
• CommentLuv, which will show a commentators last blog post with every comment
• and best of all, the DoFollow plugin, which means that all the links that are on my site from commentators are now being followed by the search engines!

I actually noticed today when I installed it that on my earlier post about dofollow and commentluv that I had promised to install KeywordLuv within the next few days, and now look at me! Shame on me! – But I guess what’s in my favor is that I at least did it now…

So, all that’s left for me to say is “please leave some comments here” and you will be doing some very active SEO!

Blog Of The Day

Yesterday when I read my emails I had a nice surprise waiting for me.

One of my fellow students in Alex Jeffreys class decided to award “Blog of the Day” to other students blogs whilst Alex’s traffic generation competition is on , from the 1st to the 14th of August. I actually love the idea, this is such a great way to engage with your readers and your fellow students, and it would have created a nice stream of traffic to Rog-Blog.com, too! Very clever!

Well, guess what, yesterday I had a “CONGRATULATIONS” email from Roger in my mailbox, telling me that I had won the “Blog of the Day Award” for Thursday 13th August! I was pretty much blown away, because I know that there are lots of Alex’s students out there with their own blogs, so to have won the award is very special to me. And he is giving me quite a good review, too!

As recognition I am now allowed to display Rogers award winning badge on my blog, which I am very happy to do!!! You will find it in my sidebar, and when you click on it you will be taken straight to Rog-Blog.com, where you can go and have a look what else Roger is up to, and also visit the other “Blog of the Day” award winners blogs and see what they are all up to, and maybe even be so nice and leave a comment, thus creating more traffic to your own blog (if you have one ).

Well, I’m a happy chappy today. So thanks Roger!!!!

The blog I created step-by-step whilst writing my ebook Affiliate Marketing S.O.S. has made it to Rank #7 on the first page of Google’s SERP’s – for my main long-tail keyword “healthy diet weight loss“! Whoooooooooo!!! Rank #7 out of 63,700,000 results for the search term “healthy diet weight loss”! BTW, that keyword gets searched for around 10,000 times a month

So, I guess I am doing something right! I am off to enjoy my victory for as long as I can; we all know that Google loves to “dance” and throw search results around from time to time… So if my blog isn’t on page one any more some time down the track, then you will just have to take my word for it that it actually happened!

If you can find my blog on page 1 of Google’s SERP’s, I would love to hear a short comment! Thanks! I am all smiles….