Troy

No problem Chris, that is why I asked folks to post their banners here. That way I don't have to worry about everyone's server availability. Also, would you edit your post to include the URL you want me to send people who click the banner. Finally, if you ever get banners for the other sizes add those to the post too. Uploading banners for all sizes makes it easier for folks to run you add. For example, while I can serve the 728x90 banner on my site, I don't have the available inventory, but I could find a spot for a 300x250 banner. Once I get a few more banners (at least three banners for each size) uploaded here, I'll post the code with instructions. Maybe I'll run the 728X90 banner ads on the bottom of the discussion forum pages.

Thanks Chris the canonical element on the page (shown below points to your website): <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.cbpublish.com/business-how-bloggers-can-help-each-other/" />That said, I think this is a really good idea to share blog posts. Imagine if just 1/2 of the 198 bloggers currently on Huria Search, found an article on one of the other blogs and used "Pressed This," just once a week. I don't think this would be too difficult, as most of the Bloggers use WordPress. I'm going to press another Bloggers article once a week. Maybe the other Bloggers I press will return the favor. I've been tweeting other Blogs a few times a week, but I think this is a better strategy. Thanks Chris!

One of the most important things that will serve this effort is data. I will try to share what I have. I hope other will do so too. I wrote a Blog post called, "How Bloggers Can Help each Other" I'll report how many people read the post after it has been up a while I also posted a link to the Blog post on the Blog section of Huria Search I sent an email to all of the Bloggers for whom I was able to find an email address. When I sent the email there were 195 Bloggers in my database. I was only able to find email addresses for 128 of those Bloggers. Apparently 5 of those email addresses were no good, so my email reached 123 Bloggers. Just over half opened the email and only 12 clicked any of the links in the email. While a better than 50% is excellent, I'd hoped for a better response rate; so far only two additional people have expressed an interest on this forum. I did share minimally via social media (non-peak periods) and on a Black Blogger social network, called Black Blogger's Connect. I have not noticed any engagement through these efforts and I have not really looked though. I plan to share information about this in my next eNewsletter, that will drum up more support. I never had any illusions that this would be an easy task. But ultimately I'll like to learn why a Blog would not join an effort to share information and collaborate.

Chris can you shoot me an example of this on your website. Better yet, why don't you demonstrate how to do this by pressing my Blog post about Bloggers helping Bloggers: http://aalbc.com/blog/index.php/2015/08/18/bloggers/

OK probably the easiest thing to do to get this one rolling would be to solicit banner ads from folks. I'd actually have to create the banner ads for my own Blog. Anyone who is interested in doing this here are the steps 1 - Post three banners for their website on this forum. 728x90 (horizontal)300x250 (rectangle)160x600 (vertical)If you do not have three banners post what you have. 2 - Supply the URL I would expect this to be your Blog's homepage 3 - Add the Code that I will provide to display all of the participants banners on your website (this should be the homepage and the very minimum) Basically that is all that is required. Our course in order for your banner to remain in rotation on the other sites you must display the banner on your website. Once I get a few participants I'll provide three pieces of code (one for each ad size). Participants will be required to serve at least one of the ad sizes. We will use this conversation to keep track of all of the participating Bloggers.

This idea was initiated by Patricia here. Hi Patricia, I probably was not being very clear. What I was asking you was how would YOU update a page to include a the canonical element on a specific page. Would you be using a specific wordpress plugin to make these updates on your blog for example? For example, if I said you could you publish my "Only 54 Black Owned Bookstores Remain in America" blog post I would need you to use the following line of code on the web page: <link rel='canonical' href='http://aalbc.com/blog/index.php/2014/03/31/54-black-owned-bookstores-remain-america/' />I do not think most Bloggers would know how to update their Blogs to make this change. I'd bet there is a plugin that could make this change, but again, I'm not sure the average blogger would know who to make this type of update. Now as far as paying for content, something I do, I would not want to use a canonical URL to point to the originator. There is no incentive for me to publish the content, and give all the SEO benefits to someone else.

I was thinking about creating an aggregated feed of everyone's Blog, publishing it on Huria, and making it available to others. Maybe the feed could be segmented by category so that readers can customize what the read. This could actually be monetized, converted into a mobile ap, and more. It would take some work to create this and is not what I would call low hanging fruit, but someone with some technical skill could knock this out pretty quickly. If we had enough blogger committed to sharing, using and promoting the feed it might be worth the effort.

How about committing to commenting, or sharing, information on another Blog on a regular basis? We could do this monthly, weekly, or even daily. Some of us are on social media everyday; why not invest in elevating our own properties? This idea is not to force people to comment on other blogs, just for the sake of comments. I'm suggesting that we make the effort to find an article that truly interests us and share it with others who are likely to appreciate it. Finding a blog should not be a problem; here is a list of more than 200 blogs to choose from: http://aalbc.com/blogs/

I was thinking about having each blog create a banner ad which would display an advertisement for each blog. The ad could be placed on web each of the participating blogs and every time the website's page is loaded a different blog's would appear. Of course some Blogs are more suitable for banner advertisements than others, but that is a detail that can be worked out it people are interested in the idea. Some Blogs only have a few inbound links. This idea would create a great many more, which would raise everyone's profile. It would perform better than a paid ad--because it could probably get a higher CTR and be done at no cost.

Everyone: I just created a new forum Bloggers Helping Bloggers: http://aalbc.com/tc/index.php?/forum/14-bloggers-helping-bloggers/ I will pick up on the canonical conversation there.

I'll play devil's advocate from time to time just to vet ideas as I hope people will do with things I suggest. Chris I was not aware of Media before you mentioned it. I just joined and posted an excerpt from one of my more popular blog posts: https://medium.com/@aalbc/only-54-black-owned-bookstores-remain-in-america-9ac086de43bc Of course I'm down with anything that leverages our own platforms over anything else. Organized we could use Medium in a way that benefits us. For example if everyone reading this would like or share the article I just posted, on Medium, that platform could be far more beneficial to all of us. Patricia, I think I see what you are saying. Technically speaking, a canonical URL is just a way to tell search engines which is the prefered URL for a page. I handle this on my own site by using redirects. A simple example would be my preference for aalbc.com (without the "www") so if you broswe to www.aalbc.com you would be sent to aalbc.com. Now as far as using a canonical URL on other websites (cross domain) to boost SEO that is great if you can get other sites to do it. There would be a learning curve involved, becuase I doubt most blogger are that sophisticated. For example Patricia, if I gave you permission to post, a book review that is already on my site. How would you, specifically, change the canonical element on the page where you posted my book review?

Using the word Niggers make white folks rich. Dr. Dre and be a billionaire soon, while Mellie Mel, is obscure, a relative unknown. Maybe the VA Battle flag is indeed a racist symbol, as it is on the KKK's membership application. The American flag is on the application as well. Perhaps it too is a racist a symbol....

I stumbled across this 2015 documentary on Public Enemy (really just a recording of a concert they gave in London), on Showtime, while looking for a movie to watch last night. The flick was about 1 hour long and was "OK." I watched it in about 20 minutes, skipping through much of the music, while my wife dozed next to me. I always liked PE's music, but their performances are not much better than listening to the music alone. Apparently Terminator X was replaced by DJ Lord (I winder when that happened). They closed the show with a song I was unfamiliar with and liked. I will look it up a buy it. Chuck D said their music was appreciated more in London than in the US. Here the BBC made a documentary of Public Enemy, "Prophets of Rage" as part of their Black Music Legends of the 1980s series. I have not watched this documentary yet, but I'm confident I will enjoy this one more. It has Professor Griff in it. Who wasn't even mentioned in Showtime's so called "documentary." Still no major motion picture. I'd see that happening anytime soon. Maybe a Flavor Flav bio pic would get greenlighted 'cause Flav is dysfunctional enough to appeal to a broad white audience.

Oh, OK I did not realize were were one of the previous "guests." I know what canonical URLs are but it is not clear what you mean in the context of driving traffic. Would you elaborate? Congrats on the paid gig.

Hi Patrica, please share the URL of your blog. Would you mind sharing this effort with your African American Boomer Bloggers friends. Have you considered using your blog, rather than Facebook, to manage your community? That would certainly drive more traffic (and revenue if you are into that) to your website. Surely the boomers in your community, would understand why, this makes sense.

OK I see why I was not with you; I was still focused on the family. What you are really describing Chris is the culture; which families reflect. You do have families today doing all the right things, but those efforts are thwarted, or at best best diminished by a culture that works against everything we need for a stable and strong family. So while we can debate about which generation had it easier than the other, the one constant is that we always operated in a hostile environment. What is indeed different is the culture which results in many families ill equipped to deal with the environment--I'm with you on that. Lack of education and a low class mentality would cripple anyone in a the environment we are in today. The folks running around today would never have survived the Jim Crow era... Cynique made a good point about a teen aged girl getting pregnant. I remember when that was embarrassing, people were ashamed of it. The pregnant teen would be sent down south. Today it is baby showers galore, but the crazy thing is that the public school system facilitates the behavior by providing free onsite childcare in some of the school public schools! While we made fun of the brainiacs, or kids who "talked white," but God help you if you got left back! The ridicule would be relentless, No one wanted to repeat a grade. That meant you were stupid. Today there are schools where the majority of students flunk, not just a few classes, but and entire grade--and it is no big deal; because it has become par for the course. I could go on and on with examples but our culture is screwed and trust me rich white folks know it. I believe that is why they are hoarding wealth.

You don't have to be an academic to be an intellectual, and common sense does not automatically come with age. You are creative, curious, observant, self-aware and a critical thinker with a fine sense of humor. That combined with a talent for self expression makes you a terrific intellect. Some of your throw-away comments are as profound as anything I've read by the celebrity intellectuals we may be more familiar with. You are a gift to us all, and I feel fortunate be able to regularly read what you have to say. Thanks for continuing to share your thoughts here. I know you could be doing anything else. Much love to you, and here is to many more happy birthdays!

Thanks Cynique. It seems I'm just old enough to remember the things you are talking about. Shame, respect for elders, romantic music, etc. I really wish we could bring back shame, it seems we live in a world where pretty much anything is tolerated, save shooting a lion. Thank God child molestation is still frowned upon, if you are not too big a celebrity. Speaking about good conversations I was at a wedding last Saturday and you could easily spot the different generations. Younger folks (under 40) were buried in their cell phones the whole evening. When one woman's battery died, she found an outlet and every few minutes or so went back to her phone. As far as I could tell, they enjoyed the wedding by sharing photos and engaging with folks that were not there. They also laughed and shared unrelated photos and jokes, (all via facebook). I would have prefered we all were truly present with each other, but I guess younger folks find that boring... On a related issue, I've noticed how couples don't dance together as much anymore. I've been to three big events in the last two weekends and at all the events either the women danced in groups, or everyone (women mostly) did a line dance. Will the Electric Slide ever die? I've also noticed in many events, whether it is a wedding, publishing event, whatever, women outnumber men. Perhaps that is why women have taken to dancing with each other. I know that is a serious digression, but feels somewhat related... Chris, what specifically is wrong with the family that you would like to fix?

Chris that is a good idea and requires no coordination, just a desire to support. Many of the websites in the database already link to other websites. Some have a long lists. I'd like to see the links but also like increase the number of times those links are seen by readers. Traffic is the fundamental problem. Popular sites can can help the less popular sites here but this kind of thing is hard to get very popular sites to do. Right now we have 4 bloggers interested let see how the list of interested bloggers grow over the next few weeks. In the meantime, everyone, spread the word.

Cynique would you care to elaborate on the things that you feel were better in you day than today and vice-versa. It would be interesting to know how typically your life is. I'd be willing to bet it is more typical that and certainly nicer than someone growing up in a modern day ghetto. I have dealt with overt racism on many occasions including being called nigger and having rocks thrown at me by white people because I walking in the the wrong neighborhood. Whether it was interactions with police or in corporate America; I experienced overt racism first hand. But I have also experienced generosity from white folks too, On the other side of the coin I have been robbed (as a kid with my mom) by gunpoint, knifepoint, have had my car stolen and broken into numerous times, and I have had a place I was living broken into, I've been jumped by gangs as a kid (narrowly escaping both times by running). Relatively speaking I was pretty lucky compared to some of my peers fared much worse. All of these crimes were done against me by other Black people (the car stuff I can't be certain about, but white folks don't generally come into the hood to break into cars). In my day there were more jobs and the schools were better. People coming out of da 'hood had a fighting chance. Today, looking around, it appears to be much more difficult for the kids coming behind me, despite technology, despite a Black president, despite Black Twitter, and despite a lack of Jim Crow laws.

Ok, I'll buy that argument, but only to a point. Because in reality it is not either or but a combination. Now NY City has is home to over 2 million Black people. Someone making $30K would have to spend ALL of that salary to have a decent place to live. Throw in a 2nd person and a couple of kids and you are living in POVERTY--I don't care how frugal you are. If you double that by sending the 2nd parent to work you are better off but not not twice as better; cause now you're in a different tax bracket and qualify for less aid, have the additional expense of child care, commuting, etc, you see my point. But using your logic every Black person living in NY City, making under 30 grand a year ,needs to go to someplace to live like Mississippi. Of course the devil is in the details and this is much easy to say that to do. First you need car outside major cities and second you need a job. The last time I looked job prospects in many of these lower cost of living locales were not looking too bright especially for brown folks. Also people are sacrificing now. There are millions of people who will never travel abroad (the majority of American's have not even bothered to get a passport), stay in a fancy hotel, or even eat a fine restaurant. Their kids are at the mercy of the shitty public schools. The best part of the day may be watching TV or goofing around on social media with a beer or a joint... Man you are I are smart and have decent educations, plus you have the added benefit of being fiscally responsible, but the vast majority of folks in this country will never know what it means to make more than $100k a year or even have the capacity to enjoy Toni Morrison's Beloved. Shoot I wish less people had smart phones. They are not used as tools to enlighten they are used by corporation to generate revenue. People spend the majority of time using facebook. Some folks are--even folks of modest means are spending well over $100 every month to a damn smart phone and "upgrading" them every year or two. And don't get me started on computers in the public schools. Man I'm beginning to rant, but this is serious stuff and it pisses me off to see us in this condition What more do we need? Man I don't even know where to begin. Maybe I just need to spend more time in FL... I did not get to go this summer.

To one of the finest intellectuals I know. Happy Birthday!

Hi Patricia and Missy if you create an account (upper right hand side of the page) you won't have to posts as "guests" and say who you are each time you reply. Patricia, a webring was basically group of sites linking one to another is such a way that a reader could visit each site by clicking on a link to go to the next website, and the next ,and ultimately return to the first site in the virtual ring of website; hence the name. At any rate, it was a 90's solution. We could probably come up with some better ideas. Here are a few of my own: ------------- 1 - Free Banner Advertising I was thinking about having each blog create a banner ad which would display an advertisement for each blog. The ad could be placed on web website every time the website's page is loaded a different banner for a website could appear. Of course some Blogs are more suitable for banner advertisements than others, but that is a detail that can be worked out it people are interested in the idea. Some Blogs only have a few inbound links. This idea would create 195 more, which would raise everyone's profile. In would perform better than a paid ad--because it could be done at no cost to the participants. ------------- 2 - Share and Comment Another idea that comes to mind is the we could all commit to commenting or sharing infor a direct Blog or a regular basis, monthly weekly or even daily. Some of us are on social media everyday, why not invest in our own properties. The idea is not to force people to comment just to be commenting, but to find an article that truly interests you share it with other likely to appreciate it and make a comment. ------------ 3 - Aggregated Feed I was thinking about creating an aggregated feed of everyone's Blog, publishing it on Huria, and making it available to others. Maybe the feed could be segmented by category so that readers can customize what the read. This could actually be monetized, converted into a mobile ap, and more. ----------- These are just a few ideas off the top of my head. The first two could be done tomorrow. The effectiveness of each is really dependent upon participation--the more the better. Two sites working together can help we each--imagine if it were 100 or even 200. In some of these scenarios the larger, more established Blogs, will not benefit has much and the smaller newer blogs--but they will benefit. I mention this because often the larger blogs/websites (I include my own in this category), are reluctant to participant in these activities. The general feeling, as expressed to me, is that the larger sites have worked hard to get where they are and that the smaller websites will just benefit without putting the work in. I understand this sentiment. But I also understand that it is highly inefficient (unprofitable) for each and every website to have to learn everything on their own or pay a corporation. This only impoverishes indie Black Blogs, which weakens Black voices on the web. It also takes resources away from creating great content and redirects that energy into things like social media marketing, which for a content provider just cannibalizes your site's content and enriches whatever social media platform you are using Finally, if there is indeed enough interest to pursue these collaborative efforts. I'm happy to create a secret group here where we can honestly flesh out ideas and strategies. I think the effort will be worth it--when is investing in yourself not?

Editor's Note: I just created a forum called: Bloggers Helping Bloggers: http://aalbc.it/bloggershelpingbloggers To continue the sharing of ideas over the long term. The goal of the Blogging database on Huria Search is to help readers discover a Blog they will enjoy. I just emailed all of the bloggers (well 127 out of 195) in the database to solicit ideas on ways we can collaborate and provide mutual support and improve of Blog's readership, revenue, or any factor we deem to be an important measure of success. If you are a Blogger and did not get my message you may read it here. If you would like to add your Blog to our database you may enter it here: http://www.huria.org/blogs/addnewblogform.html So, how can bloggers support each other? Let us know by replying.

Agreed, but I don't make a distinction between Hollywood and their tools (the rappers themselves).