Welcome to the January 8th, 2007 edition of an absolute ridiculous blogcarnival of timecheeze. We appreciate your submissions and look forward to seeing this grow from issue to issue! This Blog Carnival features 20 different submissions of hilarity… so enjoy yo’self.

Much Love- TimeCheeze Staff

Azmi Mufti presents American Desi Notes » Blog Archive » Indian Guy Gets Caught Cheating on His Wife on the Radio posted at Azmi M..

Article Parody

Madeleine Begun Kane presents Mad Gift Giving Guide posted at Mad Kane’s Humor Blog.

Anna Farmery presents Creative Ideas for Business Games posted at The Engaging Brand.

Anna Farmery presents Corporate Diarrhoea posted at The Engaging Brand.

Anna Farmery presents MabelandHarry posted at MabelandHarry.

Smiles presents Tribute to John posted at Smiles.

bobbarama presents Soaring into uncharted waters posted at bobbarama.com, saying, “Thought you might enjoy my interview with the leading expert on pelicans. (Hee hee)”

Madeleine Begun Kane presents It Is Hereby Resolved (New Year?s Resolution Humor) posted at Mad Kane’s Humor Blog.

Deep Thoughts

Jon Swift presents Time Magazine’s 2006 Person of the Year posted at Jon Swift, saying, “Why You and not Me? I think if Time was going to choose a pronoun as Person of the Year, the best choice would have been Them.”

Robert Parker presents Presidential Seals, Dolphins and Stinkers posted at The View From Silverhorn Mountain, saying, “Is there a limit to the number of posts a poster can post to the carnival? I can’t remember if I submitted one already or not…..”

Jon Swift presents Jon Swift’s Predictions for 2007 posted at Jon Swift, saying, “Last year I made eight predictions for the year 2006 and nearly half of them came true, a better average than most psychics. Here are mt predictions for 2007.”

DIY-Do It yourself

Caroline Latham presents The Hermann Grid Visual Illusion posted at SharpBrains: Your Window into the Brain Fitness Revolution, saying, “A cool visual illusion.”

Caroline Latham presents Well-deserved break: Top 10 Brain Teasers posted at SharpBrains, saying, “A list of 10 fun brain teasers .”

Great Ideas

Gabe Recchia presents Scrabbleopoly posted at Gabe Recchia, saying, “Scrabbleopoly is an *awesome* idea. Now if only Parker Brothers would make it a reality. (If you see another post of mine you like better, that’s cool too.)”

Zany Madness

Anna Farmery presents Widows Quest » A story of Positive Thinking posted at Widows Quest.

Gavin presents Flossie the Bunny Rabbit posted at Reverend Qelqoth’s Journal.

Kim M. Bayne presents Shaving for the Clueless posted at Minced Media.

Robert Parker presents Fjuckyby Village and the Diana Probe posted at The View From Silverhorn Mountain.

Al Davies presents embarrassing moments part trois posted at 6° OF ME.

Queen of Venus presents blog.myspace.com/postcards_from_venus posted at Post Cards From Venus, saying, “I’m the Queen of Venus. Here’s a glimpse into my life. Go ahead, laugh. I know it’s funny..”

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Liane Bate

I have been writing original articles for my online business for the past ten months or so, and for various reasons a few of them have been rejected by some article directories. I know it can be a bit of a downer when you get an email saying that your article has been declined, but whenever this happens you should not feel like you’ve written a terrible article. Sometimes it’s only a minor change you need to make, and other times, it requires re-wording parts of your article. This article discusses some of the reasons that articles get rejected and how to format your articles correctly so that the directories will accept them.

Your article naturally starts with a title. This title has to be captivating enough for someone to want to read more. I like my titles to suggest a problem that people are having which my article will attempt to solve. When people have a problem they seek answers, so if your title grabs their attention, they may be more inclined to read the article. Remember that it takes time and energy to read an article, so make sure you create a killer title.

I have only had one article rejected because of my title being too short. Some directories will request more than three or four words to make sure your title has meaning. Other directories will reject your article if the title is too long. You should also get your articles accepted if you capitalize only the first letter of each word rather than capitalizing all the letters. Colons, exclamation marks, and question marks appear to be okay, but other forms of punctuation in the title will probably cause an article to be declined.

The body of your article should contain original content written by you, or by a ghostwriter. Your article will be rejected if there are too many articles circulating on the net that contain similar or identical strings of text, that are plagiarized, or clearly not your own works. I have had articles rejected for this reason, even though I have written my own original articles every time. I have had to write the editor and tell them it is my own work, after which they have accepted it.

As far as the actual content goes, you could have your article rejected if it sounds more like you’re trying to sell your readers your own products or services rather than providing useful information that can help them. I have written articles - without the intention of them coming across as sales pitches - that have been rejected, and I have had to re-word them. Some article directories will accept them, and some won’t. My latest article before this one was rejected by one directory because it sounded self-promotional, which again was not my intention, but this is something you have to watch out for. Since your article is not a sales pitch and is not self-promotional, you do not want to include any affiliate links within the body of the article.

Articles may be rejected for being too short. I have had a few rejected for this reason, and the solution of course is to add another paragraph or two. In general, I would suggest keeping your articles no shorter than 600 words to avoid being rejected. I have written some that were 550 words and that just wasn’t enough! In addition to this, I have had an article rejected for the paragraphs being too long, making it hard to read, so I had to go back and make more paragraph breaks. If you keep your paragraphs to three or four sentences each and then make a new paragraph, you should be okay. I think 600-800 words for an article is ideal, but I have gone over that without any problems before.

When you submit your articles to an article submission service or directory, be careful with punctuation when you copy and paste your articles from a word processor such as Word. Many of my articles have been rejected because the apostrophes, ellipses, and hyphens will show up funny in the article submission service, and I have to go back and delete that punctuation and re-type it in so that it shows up correctly in their system. In addition to punctuation, make sure your spelling and grammar are correct. Do a spell-check and have the article proofread before submitting.

Another reason your article may be rejected is because you have not selected an appropriate category for your article, or have submitted it to a directory that does not relate to your topic. You may do this by accident when selecting a category for your article, or you may use an article submission service that submits your article to an irrelevant directory. I have had emails saying my article has been rejected because of “0″, which I think means it is not relevant! I don’t think it means my article stinks, but sometimes that’s what a big zero feels like!

Finally, at the end of your articles you have the opportunity to add information about yourself in the author bio-box, or resource box at the end. This can include a link to your website or sales page, but some directories do not allow affiliate links or sales pages in their author bio-box. In these cases, I have opted to add my website URL and my blog URL only. Where affiliate links are acceptable, I would add them, because this is your opportunity to promote yourself where you can!

Hopefully these article-writing tips will help guide you to successful article submissions where your articles are easily accepted without any extra hassles. As you can see, I still struggle with formatting and wording my articles correctly, so maybe it’s just a part of the whole learning process! It does get easier with practice though!

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Welcome to the December 11, 2006 edition of an absolute ridiculous carnival of timecheeze. We appreciate your submissions and look forward to seeing this grow from issue to issue!

Much Love- TimeCheeze Staff

Sam presents How to Change the Oil in Your Car ! Surfer Sam posted at Surfer Sam and Friends.

Article Parody

Daniel Brenton presents The Round Files posted at The Meaning of Existence, saying, “Thank you for the opportunity of submitting to An Absolute Ridiculous Carnival of Timecheese.My sense is this submission falls under “Article Parody,” though it may be more of what you had in mind for “Deep Thoughts.” Those of us who keep an eye on the UFO community have been seeing a lot of “disclosure” kinds of statements by retired military personnel and government employees over the last few years. Of course, the UFO community is so sensitive to ridicule it can’t laugh at itself. With both of these things in mind I wrote “The Round Files — The Truth is in There.”Hope you enjoy it. — Daniel”

Madeleine Begun Kane presents Office Party Follies posted at Mad Kane’s Humor Blog, saying, “If you’re stuck going to an office party, this “contract” may come in handy.”

Avant News presents Archeology Report: The Armstrong Tautologies posted at Avant News.

Rich Peluso presents How Much Farter To Dallas? posted at DigitalRichDaily, saying, “Ideas for masking escaped vapors at 30k feet”

Deep Thoughts

Mark A. Rayner presents Ask General Kang: If a blogger blogs in the forest, and nobody is around to read it, does it exist? posted at the skwib, saying, “This might also qualify as parody or a rant, I’ll let you decide! Good luck with the new carnival! m.”

Jon Swift presents Jon Swift’s Complete Amazon Reviews posted at Jon Swift, saying, “Who says you have to read a book to review it?”

Zany Madness

Otterpop presents Pirate spotted in Breaking and Entering posted at Avast! The Pirate Blog, saying, “Who breaks into a house wearing a pirate costume?”

That concludes our first blogcarnival of ridiculousness edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of
an absolute ridiculous carnival of timec using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

]]> http://timecheeze.com/2006/12/10/timecheeze-blogcarnival-001/feed/ http://timecheeze.com/2006/12/04/90/ http://timecheeze.com/2006/12/04/90/#comments Tue, 05 Dec 2006 05:39:37 +0000 PiMpALiZe Deep Thoughts Life Hacks Productivity Tools Blogging Strategies http://timecheeze.com/blog/2006/12/04/90/ Aurora Brown
Expert Author
Published: 2006-12-04

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When I first started writing for the web as a freelancer, my conception of content was, naturally, focused on writing. As I was drawn further and further into the online world and my understanding of the web grew, I realized that content applies to a broader spectrum of web-related mediums besides writing. Recently I was browsing online and thinking about some forums I’d visited that were debating the definitions of quality content; needless to say, it got me thinking.

After researching the term and trying to come up with a specific definition, I realized that it just wasn’t possible, because ‘quality’ content can’t be defined by itself; it has to be defined by its audience. The main audiences concerned with quality content online are:

• Users;
• Search Engines;
• Website owners, Webmasters & SEOs.

Quality content from a user’s perspective

From a user’s perspective, quality (or my preferred term, valuable) content, whatever the medium, is characterized by one essential factor: it fulfills the user’s needs at the time they’re looking for it.

While average, informational, well-structured content may be considered “quality” content, for users, true “quality” comes in the form of any unique idea, tool or medium used to give people the information they want on a given topic. This can range from humor-filled or debate-stimulating articles and crazy video blogs to interactive websites or those just offering expert advice. Essentially, any material that engages their emotions, expresses opinions, invites interaction, commentary and debate, and most importantly, meets their needs.

For example, in the beginning of my web-based writing career, I put too much emphasis on the particulars of writing: if it was well written, if it was long enough, if it was grammatically correct and well-structured, etc. I soon came to realize that, while these factors are still important, they are not necessary to creating “quality” content. Authors of wonderful, incendiary or groundbreaking articles struggling with structural and grammatical errors ranked above many of mine every time because they gave people what they were looking for.

Quality content from a search engine’s perspective

From a search engine’s perspective, quality content seems to be determined by the most on-topic (relevant) and trusted material in the online community.

Relevancy is affected by the number of links to a page’s content (like ‘votes’ for the page), the content’s significance, how well the search engine algorithm understands the meaning of the page (semantics) and how well the content matches the searcher’s topic.

Trust is the other part of the equation, and is determined by the types of sites that link to a webpage. For example, .edu sites are generally more trusted than other domains. Because of this, sites with lots of .edu links will probably do very well. Sites highly trusted on a particular topic, or “authority” sites, range from smaller websites with lots of ‘quality’ content to larger sites considered leaders in their field. The search engines love these sites, so if several link to your page’s content, it gives your page validity with the search engines.

Note: this is a purposefully broad generalization; there are many subtleties that go into how a search engine determines the quality of content, but I’m not writing a book; I’m simply taking a stab at generally understanding how the search engines analyze ‘quality’ content.

Quality content from a website owner, webmaster or seo’s perspective:

From a web owner’s, web masters, or website owner’s perspective, quality content is simply content that garners links, offers value to users, is properly optimized and draws traffic that can be used for brand recognition or monetization.

More recently, a large determinant of a website’s quality of content has been its ability to gain links through a number of methods, including social bookmarking. If a user likes a site, they can bookmark it or link to it; this in turn increases the site’s prominence.

In his guest article on Blog@v7n.com, Aaron Wall of Seobook states that “you can write a thousand pages all day long on your site and absolutely nobody is going to care if they do not know who you are.” I see where he’s coming from, as most content offering basic tips, a glossary about thingies or a how-to guide will be ignored by most people. Users will go to the sites they trust, the people with the rep, or sources like Wikipedia before they read an unknown website or blog-unless you create content with a unique slant (opinionated, editorial, catchy, humorous, creative) or content that’s ultra detailed (e.g. a fifty page guide to thingies or a super reference site).

However, I think that a large part of problem also lies in the fact that many website and blog owners don’t know how to market or promote their content properly. If they lack an understanding of seo, internet or viral marketing and other methods they can take to get themselves noticed, such as commenting on blogs and in forums, optimizing their site or blog correctly, etc., they have no chance to compete against the big guys, no matter the quality of their content. However, if they have valuable content, know how to promote themselves effectively and use the vast array of online tools available, the little guy can win, even without the rep. Acclivity’s blog, Stir Crazy, is an excellent example.

We set out with the intention of creating enough valuable content that our blog would take off with a running start. And it did. Less than a week after we launched Stir Crazy, Chris Crum approached us with an invitation to join WebProNews as a blogging partner; needless to say, we did, and one of our articles was even featured on the main page of Searchnewz (as of Dec. 3). The website and blog have been up less than two weeks, and we already rank for some decent terms.

In the end, quality content means different things to different audiences. So give ‘em all what they want and reap the benefits: universally valuable content that offers unique ideas, meets their needs, satisfies their algorithms and gets them links.

Give away the result of the article in one short sentence and you might just pique the reader’s interest enough to click through and read the whole article. Instead of, ‘Scientists conduct cell transplant experiments,’ say ‘Scientists grow human ear on back of a mouse.’

Via [ModernLifeisRubbish.co.uk]