Anecdota.org: New reader-built site

Another reader has setup a new blog thanks to the information in my book. Anecdota.org collects anecdotes from all over the web, publishing only the best stories that it finds.

Again, if the owner of the blog will excuse me, here are some ways to improve the blog:

• First of all, there are limits to what you can do using a Blogger-based blog. The good thing is that Anecdota.org has its own domain and is not using a Blogger subdomain. Think about switching to using WordPress, though.
• The layout needs some work. It would be nice if the box containing the blog posts and the box on the right with the topics, archives, etc. lined up. Also, the home page link looks out of place by its lonesome. (And it doesn't work on individual post pages…)
• Speaking of the home page link, it might be worthwhile to place a horizontal link unit next to it, since you have all that empty space to work with.
• The placement of the AdSense banner right above the entries like that isn't great. Again, since you're using Blogger there are limits to what you can to customize the layout. Ideally you'd want an ad unit associated with each of the top 3 blog entries, but I'm not sure you can do that with Blogger (it's trivial with WordPress). So for the main page of the blog you could try placing a leaderboard ad in the header area and one at the bottom, though the latter really wouldn't be seen by anyone. If you could get Blogger to only show the last 3 entries in your blog on the home page then you could place an ad unit at the top or bottom of each post and not go over the 3-per-page rule. You can certainly do this for individual blog posts.
• You're linking directly to the original articles for where the anecdotes came from and not making it easy to read them directly on your own site. You might want to rethink that, and you might want to add some commentary about the postings. (Don't get me wrong, you need to credit the original source and link back to it… but at a minimum open those pages in new browser windows…)

Yes, it needs work. But everyone's first blog needs work. I was playing with this blog's design for quite a while, and I still tweak it once in a while. The important thing is that the blog is started and that it's got some real content to it. Good luck!

Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense.

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