I wanted to update everyone on the new Netscape.com's Food and Travel section. There was some discussion about it on here a few weeks ago, but I thought that now that the site has grown in popularity and registered readers, I'd mention it again and share results of a post I made on the site yesterday.
On the new Netscape.com anyone can post content to the site and the top posts get moved to the top of the site, similar to Digg.com. Digg doesn't have a food channel though.
I posted my a link from my own blog about fresh tomato sauce. The posting brought about 50 new readers to my site in 12 hours. While this isn't a huge number, even for relatively small sites like mine, I was happy with the results. I might get one or two regular readers out of it and that would make me happy.
We might try to post our best work on Netscape and see how it works?
Each time you post an article in the Netscape.com system you get to add keywords to it, maybe we use the tag "foodblog" to tag our stuff? This way we could simply find each other's posts on the site and, if we like what we see, vote for each other.
You can also post work of other food writers. I've submitted some of my favorite food blog posts to them.
The site is a Beta and they are always looking for comments and advice from users. If you find it distracting to have the food and travel headlines mixed together, as I do, you might want to mention this to them. The site is run by Jason Calacanis who was the founder of Weblogs Inc. He's posts some interesting thoughts on blogging and the future of promoting content on the web.
This Post was written by Chris from Electric Stove
14 comments:
I agree completely that food and travel should be separate categories. I've gotten quite a bit of traffic from a post I submitted there (How to Freeze Fresh Basil) but I haven't watched closely enough to see if people are coming from the netscape site. I like your idea of using the tag "foodblog". I'll do that next time I post something. Their system is pretty user friendly, but I don't think it's quite working right. Posts with the most votes don't seem to be going to the top?
Kalyn,
Cool . . . I found your freezing basil post on Netscape actually, didn't know you were at S'cool too.
The site is still a bit buggy and is evolving.
There are other variables besides number of votes that sends posts to the top. The posts on the top page will likely always get the largest number of votes so the list of top stories would be self-perpetuating.
Good to hear that you got a nice amount of traffic from your link. Does the traffic continue to come over a number of days or was it mostly right after you posted?
Also, there's a good guide to how the site works here:
http://www.netscape.com/welcome/
I just signed on to see how it works. I noticed that there doesn't seem to be any spot for highlighting new posts, just popular ones, so I'm not sure how someone would necessarily find your post. I also wasn't impressed that when I clicked on the link to my site, the netscape bar frames it, and the url comes up with mine embedded in netscape's.
Will see how it goes. Thanks for pointing this one out, Chris.
Oh yeah, and I added the foodblog tag, as per your suggestion. Now everyone else has to do the same, for it to start showing up.
Chris, what I meant was I've gotten a lot of people coming to that site because of the post on freezing basil, but I don't know if they're coming from Netscape or just because they're googling how to freeze basil. I'll start watching for the netscape site as a referrer.
I posted earlier today but blogger choked hard so its all lost! *punting blogger*
I posted several to the food/trav part of netscape and have gotten TONS of traffic. (its clearly a major referrer in my hits)
Yall (Chris) definitely need to separate food and travel.. they have a different feel.
We also need to have control over making our own little thumbnails.. that really boosts traffic and votes.
Nika, great suggestion on the thumbnail image. I could use the same one for Netscape and Blogger too, building some kind of identity for my blog.
Kalyn, I'm seeing a lot more referrals from Netscape today too. Now I'm really rooting for this new site to make it, tho like Rasberry says there are a few design problems with the site. Though the frame itself is ugly, I don't mind the it so much . . . one time the frame highlighted other sites that were similar to what I was reading. I thought that was helpful -- while I was reading my summer tomato sauce recipe, two other tomato recipes posted to Netscape were highlighted.
Any suggestions on how to make a thumbnail if I don't have Photoshop and don't want to use a pre-made one?
Chris: thing is you cant upload a thumbnail into their system.. it requires an admin to do it.
You need some sort of image processing software to make the thumbnail (unless you use Flickr.. you can make a tumbnail easily there)
Nika, what do you mean by thumbnail? Is it the tiny ones you add with your profile? Or, completely different photo next to a post [larger than the tiny ones next to our name?]
The ones on the profile can easily be uploaded.
I have tried adding a photo with my submitted entry and when i previewed it, it was showing but when it was published, the image wasn't there. My codes were obviously right for it to show up on preview so i'm not sure what happened there. Maybe they don't simply allow images other than 'Getty Images'.
Also, i had plenty of traffic from my submitted entry. I never knew Adobo could be so popular!
Mae,
I don't think you can send them your own issue. They use all those dull stock images from Getty. I sent them an email question about that, asking if I could give them my own photo to use, but they didn't reply yet.
Thanks so much for this, Chris!!!
Hi Anonymous, That's what i thought. Please let us all know the outcome of your email.
I found out that there's an easy way to link directly to all Netscape articles tagged with "foodblog."
Just go to:
http://www.netscape.com/tag/foodblog/
I just submitted my post on Thai/Indian curry, just to see what it is like, and what happens with it.
I did notice that a lot of the readers there were, uh--well, their comments were...interesting.
We'll see what happens!
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