Irish Political News

Iain has come out with a list of 75 top political books with links through to Amazon. This is probably the most widely use way of earning pocket money on UK Political Blogs. Nearly everybody does it - including me.

The way the Amazon affiliate programme works is that if a person purchases anything from the Amazon website within 24 hours of a click through on an affiliate link, then the affiliate receives between 4% and 10% of the purchase value.

Now that I have the links between my different websites in place, I have been looking at the amount of traffic being generated over the last month, and the most popular articles. Total Raw Traffic On this occasion I’ve processed all the raw log files using the free version of a utility called Deep Log Analyser, rather than relying on the data generated by a Wordpress Plugin. However, once caveat is that at least 4 of the sites (those which aggregate Parliamentary blogs - www.senedd.me.uk, www.holyrood.me.uk, www.europarl.me.uk and www.parliament.me.uk) are all less than a week old. So I have had to include some judicious estimates in the figures. Another difference is that certain files that are not part of the Wordpress installation are included in the numbers. The raw total of page impressions is 376,000 across all the 13 sites (the twelve in the toolbar and www.mattwardman.co.uk). More than half of these relate to www.mattwardman.com. The Impact of Files that shouldn’t count These are the top 5 files listed for www.mattwardman.com and what they are: Page Views - Filename - What is it? 14,880 Page Views. polls-js.php. This is used for in page polls which are refreshed without reloading the page. This should be excluded. 14,452 Page Views. podpress_js.php Part of the Podpress wordpress plugin. Not actually used on this blog. I should really find a way to exclude this. 13,872 Page Views. /blog/feed/index.php This is the home page for the RSS feed. This could be included or excluded depending on which statistics I am interested in. 11,747 Page Views. clickmanager.cgi This is the redirector programme “bounced off” when I need to count clicks on a link. This indicates 11,747 clicks on links in 30 days. I use it, for example, to count the clicks on the toolbar (hover over a button and see the “double” web address), and the clicks on stories in the Daily Roundup. This should be excluded. 10,710 Page Views. /blog/index.php At last one that counts. This is the Blog home page. It counts for very few impressions out of the total. I will return to this - it is a sign of how important blog archives are for attracting traffic. So - just to exclude 4 of these top 5 reduces the traffic to www.mattwardman.com by roughly 50,000 page impressions over the raw log files. Counting from inside Wordpress are cleaner, but still have a lot of “gunge” in the data. So what is a Reasonable Total? I am happy to quote a total number of page impressions for this 30 day period of “around 250,000” - a reduction of a third. But having done that - 250,000 page impressions in a month on a set of sites that are mainly only 8 months old is OK. The figure for the main www.mattwardman.com site is around 130,000-140,000 page impressions (with approximately another 30,000 or so for www.mattwardman.co.uk). These figures themselves roughly tally with the numbers given by the Slimstat-EX Wordpress plugin (140,000 and 35,000 respectively - also probably containing some search crawling). The Real Top Ten Pages on www.mattwardman.com After filtering out the noise, the following are the Top Twelve pages on the site in the last 30 days. Go and have a look at the links, and write down your conclusions - then read my notes below. Page Views - Date - Title and Link 3942 Page Views - 20070912 - In memory of free speech - Jesus and Mo - serious 3825 Page Views - 20070501 - Double Trouble - Posh Spice and Ananova - humour, morning funny 2130 Page Views - 20071010 - Wordpress Plugin - Category Images - tech tip 1616 Page Views - 20080213 - ABC Rowan Firestorm was started by the BBC - serious analysis 1422 Page Views - 20070904 - New Scottish Government launches official website - satirical 1280 Page Views - 20070905 - This posting may contain nuts - serious but funny - health and safety series 998 Page Views - 20070404 - Double Trouble - Guido Fawkes and Zorro - humour, morning funny 995 Page Views - 20070411 - Double Trouble - Morgan Lifecar and Thomas the Tank Engines - humour, morning funny 849 Page Views - 20071016 - Lib Dem leadership contest to replace Ming Campbell - humour, Lib Dems = box of ferrets 817 Page Views - 20070609 - Video Game Battle between Sony and Church of England - serious analysis 812 Page Views - 20080211 - Britblog Roundup - Ideas for Avoiding the Archbishop - serious 709 Page Views - 20070815 - Do Health and Safety Professionals Get too Much of a Kicking - serious - health and safety series (more…)

[Update on the typo: Yes, I know it’s a typo, but I quite like it so I’m leaving it. Also, this “teaser” article is in about 4 different places, and I’m busy this morning.] I came across a comment on Problogger that is one of the best summaries I have seen of things you can do to make your blog “sticky” - i.e., helping visitors find other articles of interest, and encouraging them to stay. His tips are a balance of common sense, marketing nouse and a varied bag of tricks. This is a good approach whether you are attempting to put your views across to your reader, or encouraging them to stay and view more adverts. It is from Ross Hill, a student who runs an “Interview” blog called Hatchthat. Since I cannot improve it, I’ve quoted the comment directly over at Poliblog Perspective. Read it all. Tags: blog tips, make your blog sticky, sticky blog, keep readers, defogging blogging

The Wardman Wire made an important milestone this afternoon: we just went past 20,000 measured uniques in a month for the first time. On this occasion, I’m not apologising for posting statistics - since it’s taken 9 months and a lot of work to get to this point. Figures for the Wardman Wire These are a couple of screenshots of the display from the “Slimstat-EX” plugin. Firstly, the summary. You can click through for a fuller screenshot illustrating how our traffic profile is rather different (less purely “politico” than most political blogs in the UK). “Visits” in this screenshot means “Unique visitors” (which is defined as the number of different internet addresses from which people visit during each individual day, summed across the month). “Hits” means page impressions. And a sorted version showing monthly figures since we started: These figures are not filtered for *all* search engines (it would slow the blog down dramatically), which is why I emphasize the “uniques” not the “hits”. The hits figures are likely to be high by perhaps 10-20%. The uniques figures will also be slightly high, but much less so than the hits. There are two major distortions in these figures. The July 2007 figures went haywire because I posted an 18th birthday interview with Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) at a cricket match. It is now up to 287 comments, which is ludicrous - including one from the man himself. And the “Hits” (page impressions) figure for December is inflated by perhaps 25,000 over and above the 10-20% I mention above, since I left the “search engine pinger” turned on by mistake while posting 100 or so cartoons to appear on the blog between New Year and the middle of April 2008. So the real “hits” figures for December 2007 and January 2008 are likely to be around 100,000 to 110,000 in my estimation. And the UK Edition The real figure for the uniques for the main site in January is likely to be 18,000 or 19,000, but fortunately there are another 4,300 or so who visited the UK Edition (again - click through for more detail) so it still comes in at rather more than 20,000. Before anyone asks, I have not got the foggiest idea why a search for “development For sweater opportunity building” should land on my site, unless it was a visit from Gyles Brandreth. Wrapping Up OK - enough statistical self-abuse. Back to politics. Did you realise that Mr Darling’s Capital Gains Tax reforms have abolished the indexation allowance for CGT (so you will be taxed on the increase in cash - not real - value of an asset, including if the value has gone down in real terms), and that in fact - like the last budget - they hit the poorer members of society hardest? More on that later when today’s Working Lunch is available online. Except for the most important thing: a really big thank-you to everyone who has visited, and especially those who have taken the trouble to link to the blog or participate in the debate here. Your presence is very much appreciated, especially if you disagree with what has been written and help generate a wider debate. A wider debate is a worthwhile reason for putting hundreds of hours into building a blog. Tags: number crunching, new year 2008, 20000 uniques, record month, political blogging, wardman wire, matt wardman

I regularly post video in Windows Media (.wmv) and Quicktime (.mov) formats, and Audio MP3 files (.mp3) here, and also embedded Flash Video (e.g., Youtube). I have done a posting over on Poliblog Perspective about the Wordpress Plugins I use to post video and audio. The other special things about these plugins, is that they all have tag formats that are capable of being posted from the Blogdesk offline blog editor into Wordpress without their tags becoming mangled in the process. The embedded video plugin is capable of parsing the web address from Youtube, Google Video etc and generating the appropriate code to save you having to post reams of HTML code. Read it all here. Tags: embedded video, embedded audio, video, audio, podcast, vodcast  

I’m currently doing a little work with a couple of the columnists who have been coming on stream with the Wardman Wire in the current period, and I have started to create our editorial guidelines. I’m therefore thinking about a number of questions around the nature of group blogs, and the process has raised some interesting questions. At what point does a group blog become a web magazine? Traditionally, blogs are distinguished by the architectural or technical features, such as “articles arranged in reverse date order”, “accept comments and trackbacks”, “syndicate content via RSS feeds”, or even “can be registered on Technorati“. I wonder if - in fact - we need to answer this question in editorial, managerial or subject matter terms: Is a group blog distinguished from a web magazine by the freedom given to the contributors? What is the difference between a group blog, a collection of individual blogs or a manually edited blog aggregator? What makes a blog attractive to read? I’ve also thinking about writing style this morning, and the factors that make a blog “easily digestible” - so that it is possible to appreciate the essence of the argument without having to ignore too many annoyances. If a blogger has something interesting to say, and a thought process that is logical and worth time for engagement, then what are the qualities of the writing that make a blog “sticky”? I’m not ready to post my own detailed reflections yet, but I would welcome others’ input on this debate. My Own Writing Style The only person that I am aware has commented on my writing style on this blog is the famous Blogpower curmudgeon known as “Baht At” - who could probably also be described as “Bah Humbug”, given the … er … incisive style of his reviews. He commented “decently written” - which is probably all I would hope for. There are two resources that I have found useful and challenging: The first is the Economist style guide, which lives here. The other is a Tim Worstall comment: So you wanna be a writer? OK .. write ! Tags: group blog, editorial guidelines, webmagazine, what makes a blog, plain english  

This is the fourth in my series of articles about starting a Political Blog. My first article, Starting a Political Blog I: Blogging is like Traditional Campaigning , introduced a parallel between political blogging and traditional political campaigning. The second article, Starting a Political Blog II: How to Get the Basics Right , highlighted the extreme transparency that exists when you write a blog, and the need to engage with your potential audience in a long-term strategy. The third article, “Starting a Political Blog III: Principles to Apply to be Credible“, looked at some principles to follow in order to remain credible in the blogosphere. This article outlines some technicalities involved in maintaining a blog. The technical bits of creating a blog are the boring bits, but also cause the most problems in the future if you get them wrong. These are my views, and some others will not agree. Put your blog in the right place Blogs suffer very badly when they move around the internet, because links and authority in search engines are based on specific web page addresses (called permalinks in blog-speak). A blog that moves to a new location has to start from scratch again. It can be done, but it is an intricate process that takes up your valuable time - and is not necessary when you plan properly. Read the full article over at Poliblog Perspective. Tags: political blogging, iain dale guide to political blogging, politics, matt wardman

This is the third in my series of articles about starting a Political Blog. My first article, Starting a Political Blog I: Blogging is like Traditional Campaigning , introduced a parallel between political blogging and traditional political campaigning. The second article, “Starting a Political Blog II: How to Get the Basics Right “, highlighted the extreme transparency that exists when you write a blog, and the need to engage with your potential audience in a long-term strategy. This post looks at some of the basic principles to follow in order to write a credible political blog. Principles to Apply Be transparent One major difference between blogs and newspapers is that blogs are usually more transparent. Newspapers often do not declare gifts and travel expenses paid; good bloggers do. Many blogs have their own voluntary “register of interests”. If you write about something, but do not declare a personal or financial interest, you will (rightly) be treated quite roughly when you are found out - especially if you are a public figure. Be consistent Do not start something you will not be able to maintain. Your blog is yours, and it is up to you to set your targets and to meet them. There is no problem if you wish to post daily, weekly, occasionally or even seasonally - as long as your readers know what to expect. Do not, however, give hostages to fortune. And please, do not apologise for “lack of blogging”. One of my pet hates is people who do that all the time. They would be able to do much more writing if they did much less apologising. If you find yourself needing more material for your blog, why not make it a “team” blog, or use “guest bloggers”. The latter is one good reason to develop a network of “blog friends” - or to join a network such as Blogpower (www.defendingtheblog.blogspot.com). Be circumspect A blog is a publication, and you are subject to the same laws as your local paper - without a legal specialist. Be (reasonably) circumspect, and do not give too many hostages to fortune. The Internet does not forget anything you say. Good ideas are to check two sources for anything questionable, and to ask a specialist blogger if necessary - most will give a little time to help a fellow “amateur” understand their subject. If you receive help, link back to their blog as a thank-you. Be anonymous? There is a place for the anonymous blog. The upside is that what you say will not affect your daily life and reputation - unless you are unmasked. The downside is that what you say will not affect your daily life and reputation - unless you are unmasked. If you are running a political blog aiming to help your political profile in the wider society, an anonymous blog is not an option. My blog - The Wardman Wire - is pseudonymous because I like to keep my online political writing separate from my work. Enjoy it! And finally, dont be surprised at your own success. If you stick at writing a political blog, you may find that after a year or eighteen months you have as many visitors as the circulation of your local paper. At that point you will have understood the fun of political blogging, and will have a number of new friends (and a few enemies). If you last 18 months of posting regularly and thoughtfully, you will probably deserve the success. Wrapping Up In my fourth article tomorrow, I will look briefly at some technical questions in positioning your blog on the Internet. Many political bloggers have not got the basics right in my view - whether it is sticking for too long with a blog built on somebody else’s website, or having a web address targeted to North American traffic rather than visitors from the UK. The upshot of that is that of the political bloggers profiled in Iain Dale’s Guide to Political Blogging published in the autumn of 2007, something well over half are stranded - like beached whales - on domains that are punished by Google UK in their search results.   Tags: principles to apply in political blogging, poliblog perspective