Website Review of: Cleveland Ohio Real Estate Blog
Getting To Know the website.
What’s the purpose of this website?
To provide information for any one who is interested in buying, selling, or are interested in the area of real estate in general.
Who is the owner of the website?
Cecilia Sherrard, a full time Realtor with over five years experience in buying, selling and relocation specialist servicing Cuyahoga,
Cecilia takes pride in her customer service, negotiating skills, and her real estate in general. She doesn’t believe that she is just another seller, she does her job to help people achieve the American Dream.
Recent Blog Posts
Get A Grip - Share A Tip - A high quality post, that talks about some of the current issues plaguing the USA economy, the post also provides some very useful tips on how to cut your spending. On a side note, I do agree with the points made on this in regards to the loan problems going on right now in the usa economy.
Cleveland Idol - Auto Show - Great post, about a local event that happened in the Ohio area. Some photos of the event would have spiced the post up, but perhaps there were none allowed to be taken.
Economic Stimulus Package - As you can guess by the title, the post tries to talk about the recent Economic Stimulus package presented by the government as a solution to stimulate growth in the economy. It’s a short post, but if you read it you will understand why its a short post.
Celebrity Housing Problems - I enjoyed this post alot. High quality unique content that is fun tid bits to read. I was surprised to know that Michael Jackson was falling behind in finances, considering his great success in music sales. But then again maybe, he got sued a few too many times 
One suggestion though, resize the photos before you upload them. When you resize them on the page, it looks a little funny. Plus if you resize them before hand, they quality of the photo increases, plus the load time of the web site decreases too! So its a win win situation.
Rocky River Videos - Nice post, this was something I was looking for on the blog, its a small promotion for the area of Rocky river, a very professionally done video, that talks bout some of the history of the town, and cool hang out spots, and why a buyer in general would want to live in the area.
We Didn’t Make The Cut - This is such a great post that, it should have been digged! Well, it wasn’t digged, but hey I stumbled it! If you had just one choice to choose out of these 6 posts to read, it would have to be between this one, and the celebrity housing problems post!
I am surprised that no city in New York has made it on a top list, and then California took 3 of the top 10 spots. Still though, It wouldn’t surprise me if, New York does make it to the list. Personally I am hoping New York doesn’t get hit hard like California has.
Final Thoughts on Getting to know the website
Overall I thought the web site content was top notch, very high quality and relevant content to the web site.
One thing though, I found it hard to find a history of the posts, I wanted to see a history of the posts, and wanted to familiarize myself more with the blog. But there was no easy way for me to do that. I would highly recommend adding an archive page to the web site. Similar to the one I am running here at my web site http://www.jeancosta.com/archives.
Pictured below are the settings I am using for the archive plugin, in order to get a clean feel for the page, otherwise the default feels way too spammy.
Theme / Design Critique
Header
Very clean header, it fits perfect for the real estate theme, you can’t go wrong with this one.
I know sometimes when I visit business web sites, at times it can be hard to find the phone number to get in contact with the company, but this web site, makes it so easy for me to contact them. The header even has pictures of some of the workers and you are able to click on the image, and read more about the real estate agents.
Sidebar
Latest Blog Posts - I like this, its a good way to allow the users to easily scope out the posts. The position of the latest blog posts, is positioned fine where it is.
Subscribe To This Blog - I would suggest to Cecilia to put the rss feed subscribe box above the Latest Blog posts. I think there should be a little bit more emphasis on this, and where it is currently located it doesn’t stand out at all, and the subscribe rate is probably low.
Find Your Perfect Home - For someone looking to buy a home, and do some research, this is a fantastic feature. One suggestion, although not highly necessary to change, but it would help if the width was 2-5 pixels more on the right side, of the left side bar. Why? Because it will just make it slightly better looking aesthetically speaking. Is it going to hurt the web site if the change is not made? No, but it doesn’t hurt to make an extra touch up here or there.
Final Thoughts On Theme Design
Overall, I am quite pleased with the design, you can tell that Cecilia has put alot of time and effort into the web site.
If you liked this review, and you would like me to review your web site, then check out my post on how I can write a constructive website review on your web site.
Hosting fees can rack up pretty easily, especially if you own several domains. I myself own several domain names (at least 100 by now), more than most would probably own. There are some domain hosts, that offer individual hosting. Meaning you pay x amount for 1 domain to be hosted. If that were the case for me, my hosting fees, would be outrageous. That may be the case for some people.
As of right now, I have over 80 domains up and running under one hosting account, guess how much I pay?
I pay only $13.49 per month for the hosting. The same price, for a good meal at a restaurant these days. If I had less domain names, I could pay around $5.94 per month, about the same price as a meal from Burger King. So we are not talking about back breaking prices here.
You may be surprised to know, that I am using Godaddy as my host. The current plan that I am using is the Premium Plan running a Linux based server, normal pricing for the premium plan, Linux based server is $14.99 per month, but since I have paid for 2 years in advance I paid at a rate of $13.49 per month. Even though I have paid in advanced, Godaddy is flexible enough, that If I wanted to cancel with godaddy, they would fully reimburse me of my money without any penalty fees for canceling. So It is a good idea to pay for advance, especially with the savings.
Still though, a lot of people, don’t know how to utilize the function of adding multiple domains to be hosted under the same account in Godaddy. How do I know that not a lot people don’t know how to do this? Well, I don’t remember what I called in for, but about a year ago, when I called godaddy technical support, the tech support rep was surprised at my knowledge, and acknowledged to me that he does not get a chance to speak to people who know what they are doing, and told me that not many people know they can add more than 1 domains under hosting on the same account for godaddy.
How to add another domain in Godaddy under one hosting account
First of all, there are a few ways to achieve this, but you need to have a Linux based server. Anyways, on to the instructions.
1. After you have signed in to godaddy, hover your mouse over, Hosting & Servers, select “My Hosting Account”.
2. At this point, you will see one or more of the hosting accounts that you have purchased from godaddy. Pick the one you want to work with, and click to open it.
3. Hover your mouse over settings, and select domain management. This will be the panel where you add all your domains, so pay close attention, so you don’t make any mistakes.
4. We are now in the domain management section, Under the “Assign Domain to Hosting Site”, select your domain, once you have selected your domain, you will need to choose your “Domain Hosting Path”, you will want to select “enter directory path”.
5. In the domain hosting path area, you will want to type a name, that is familiar to the domain name, so perhaps if your domain name is mydomainname.com then it would be a good idea to type in ‘/mydomainname’. After you have typed your desired folder path, you will then click add, and wait a few seconds for it to finish adding it.
6. When you login in your ftp server, you will now see a folder called ‘mydomainname’, anything uploaded to that folder is your mydomainname.com website.
If you have any questions on this process, you are always welcome to leave a comment in this post, and I will be glad to reply. Or alternatively, you can always call up godaddy support, they are open 24/7, and usually are very helpful.
Website Review of: Imp Nerd
Getting To Know the website.
What’s the purpose of this website?
To provide it’s readers the latest developments in internet marketing and to learn about new technologies, and web development.
Who is the owner of the website?
Although, you won’t be able to find the owner of the website listed on impnerd.com, the website is actually owned by Gary R. Hess. Gary has developed, designed, and written several websites. Gary has been a web developer since early 2003. He runs his blog to share his knowledge to others.
Recent Blog Posts
Old Stuff, New Stuff, Internet Stuff - I guess myself and Gary of Imp Nerd have something in common, where Thursday is “link love” in each of our own respective blogs. The difference between mine and his, is that my link love comes by way of reviews of websites. His link love, is linking to useful blog posts, that he finds around the internet. This concept is great, Gary has done all the hard work, and is saving his readers the time, and effort by linking them to the real meat, the really useful content! He also takes the time to give you a glimpse of each article, saving the readers even more time, to decide whether or not they should take their valued time to read the rest of the article.
On a personal side note to Gary, I would say to try and limit the number of links per Thursday link love. That way, its consistent every week, and plus, that allows him to build, save and have a backlog of good article links to share with his readership base. Additionally, by limiting the number of links posted, it will decrease his chances of having, the well of links from eventually drying out, so to speak.
Much like the stock market, some weeks the overall market is up, and some weeks it is down. It’s the same for the content around the web. Some weeks, there might not be as many links to share, while other weeks, the links may be abundant, by limiting it, it also allows for there to be a more stabalized balance, when there may not be many good recently written articles to share.
How to Think of a Blog Post - This blog post, is something many bloggers and webmasters can relate to. Most of us, in the end are in the field of content creation. We constantly try to come up with what to write about next, and creating that new blog post entry that will be enjoyed by the readers. At times it just flows out of us naturally, and at times, it can be downright hard!
I liked the post title, but I felt a little robbed, only 260 words in the post, I was hoping to read more! 
A great topic though!
Digging Deeper into the AdSense Heat Map - I liked this post, its funny the more I read imp nerd’s blog the more I can relate myself to it, since I too am a webmaster. Anyways, this post offers photos, and insights on different adsense ad placement positions. A good read!
5 Green Products to Look Forward to in 2008 - This one was a little different from the other posts, a Comical post, none the less it made me laugh a few times!
The Past, Present and Future of Entrecard - Gary has been with entrecard, since shortly after it’s inception, and he is able to share his insights on how the entrecard system is working. He addresses some of the key issues that have been raised by the complainers, and gives his two cents on it. He also offers his insights on the potential future of entrecard.
Final Thoughts on Getting to know the website
Overall Gary has done a nice job, detailed information, with pictures. No real complaints, except for the “how to think of a blog post” that lacked content in my opinion, the post could have used a little bit more meat.
Theme / Design Critique
Header
Overall the header is good, I can see that Gary is trying to brand his Imp nerd logo. Actually it’s interesting to note that the IMP stands for Internet Marketing Publishing, pretty cool!
Sidebar
Rss Feeds
A nice clean approach to the RSS subscribers. I like the approach of allowing readers to enter their email addresses. I would perhaps change the title to “Subscriber to my blog” as to opposed to just “Subscribe”. It gives it a little bit more flavor.
Top Commentators
I would suggest to Gary to experiment and try out the top commentators plugin. As a way to try and increase the number of comments on blog posts. Theres room for it in the current blog sidebar, so why not?
Final Thoughts On Theme Design
The blog designed looks great, very clean and professional feel.
It’s all on preference, but personally I prefer a center aligned website. To me, it feels strange reading a left aligned website. When I am sitting down, I am looking “straight” and into the center. A left aligned blog, means I have to turn to the left, and my eyes go to the left. Depending on the website, it can be a discomfort, and a centered website, would be better in my opinion.
On another note, being a first time visitor to the website, I wanted to see a history of the posts, and wanted to familiarize myself more with the blog. But there was no easy way for me to do that. I would highly recommend adding an archive page to the website. Similar to the one I am running here at my website http://www.jeancosta.com/archives.
Pictured below are the settings I am using for the archive plugin, in order to get a clean feel for the page, otherwise the default feels way too spammy.
If you liked this review, and you would like me to review your website, then check out my post on how I can write a constructive website review on your website.
I attend college full time, majoring in a finance degree. Not only do I attend college, but I also run an online business. To give you an idea, I own over 100 domains and a majority of those domains are live websites, just like this one.
In my business ventures most of my time is spent on content creation, managing the websites, answering emails. While as far as college, most of my time is spent, attending classes, studying and doing the homework assigned for those classes.
The combination of college and the business is a downright tough and painstaking routine. And in my personal opinion, it takes a strong mentality, to stay focused on what I have to accomplish. After all, if you think about it for 16 straight weeks I am residing on a college campus, a mini city of young adults, where a good portion of them, care more about partying, over anything else. Thankfully I refrain from participating in those events.
To bounce between my work, and my studies, it can be very tough, and without proper scheduling, my chances of failure are certainly increased. Without scheduling, I find myself spending most of my time on my online ventures.
By scheduling, I can see the real picture. I can manage my time more properly, and get things done more efficiently. Since I schedule, I can get a realization of how much time I actually have per day to get what I want accomplished.
Being a math geared person, I like to play with numbers, and that’s what I start with when making my general outline schedule.
I first take a general look, of how many actual hours I am awake. If I wake up each morning at 7am, and I go to sleep at midnight. I have 17 hours per day to do whatever. Per week that would be a total of 119 hours. And in a perfect case scenario I want to spend, 40 hours for college, and 40 hours for my work. That would still leave me with 39 hours left of free time. That free time, will go towards the personal needs, such as showering, eating, socializing, relaxing, etc!
My thought process behind scheduling is simple. First I schedule the required things or times that do not change, an example of something this would be, attending class. After I do that part, I then schedule in the remainder!
On a side note, the professors say that for every one class hour, a student should study for two to three hours outside of class time. If I were to follow this method, since, I am in class for a total of around 15 hours; I would at the most have to study, for 45 hours! Therefore 60 hours would be spent towards college. Ideally I would want to do this. But I find that I am able to get by with just one to two hours per class time. The fact is, some classes it may be necessary to study up to 3 hours for 1 class session, but others you might not. It’s a fine balance really. In the end, I generally put up to 40 hours per week into my college degree.
Below you can see my current schedule break down.
As for the schedule above, yellow indicates food time, orange means class time, and blueish-purple means study time. The orange is not accurate because, most of the classes are not 1 hour long. Some go for 50 minutes, while others go for an hour and 15 minutes. But in general, I spend roughly 37 hours per week on my school work, and for most of the remainder of my time, I work on my online ventures, which is highlighted in green. The green period is my very flexible period.
The key to making a successful time management schedule is to make it as flexible as possible. There are times, when you can’t account for things to happen, and you have to be prepared to change your times around. Example…. A friend might come over to visit, during your study session. If you have made a flexible schedule, you know you can sacrifice one of your other block schedules for it. So the key to a good schedule, in my opinion, is to be flexible, and open to modifications.
What’s the takeaway? By scheduling your time, you will increase your efficiency. And chances are if you have said in the past, that you are too busy, to start something new, write down in a piece of paper, and schedule your time. You may be surprised to see how much free time you might actually have.
I am not hardcore with my schedule, but I use it as a guide, to make sure I get my things done. I would highly recommend it to anyone, to at least write down in a weekly schedule at least once, to see their break down of what they are doing each day. By doing so, you can see where you are losing time, and what you can do to increase efficiency. You might be surprised, how much extra time you might have!
As with tradition of the JeanCosta.com blog, Thursday’s is Review Thursdays. If you want me to review your website, then read the post on how you can get a free constructive website review.
Website Review of: http://www.antibarbie.net/
Getting To Know the website.
What’s the purpose of this website?
To entertain readers.
Who is the owner of the website?
Dawn, a thirty year old mother of two little girls. Who’s occupation as she calls it, a tech slave. You can read more about Dawn, by checking out her about page.
Recent Blog Posts
Happy Valentine’s Day! - A really short post, 59 words to be exact. But with 9 comments so far. It’s nice to see that even though it is Valentine’s day, Dawn stays true to her beliefs, as the “anti barbie”. However, I think Dawn could have made a few more words out of the post. Perhaps she could have written about her personal experiences from Valentine’s day. What she was planning on doing for Valentine’s day, etc.
Short Story - Fresh Meat - A nice long post, a story coming straight from the minds of Dawn, the anti Barbie herself!
Poetry - The Winner - A nice poem! At first by reading the title, I thought someone had won a poem contest, but then after reading the post, I found out that the poem was actually called The winner.
My whole family is sick! - It’s always a bad thing when people get sick, and I hope the anti Barbie Dawn, and her family have recovered from their sickness, and that all is well. But similar to the Happy Valentine’s day post, this post had so much potential, but yet was cut short. In the end, the more content you write, the happier the search engines are, and the happier your readers, so its a win-win situation. People love reading personal stories, and I think, Dawn could have went into more details with this one.
QOTW - What Should Your Superpower Be? -A nice little post as part of the Question Of the week, however like most of the other posts above that I addressed, the lack of writing is evident. A count of only 96 personal words.
Final Thoughts on Getting to know the website
Try to put an emphasis on avoiding short blog posts, and to try to think of ways to increase the word count on short blog posts. More times than not, there is always something to talk about. Similar to what I referenced to in some of the posts. And in the end, longer posts suggests to me and others as well, that the owner of the blog or website is really trying hard, giving it their all, going above and beyond!
Theme / Design Critique
Header
The header is not too bad, I like the image of the women, it fits the theme of “anti” Barbie. The only thing I do not like is the font style being used. To me, it feels rather hard to read. For some of the words, it takes me a few seconds more to read what it says. Especially with the changing of colors.
Sidebar
Rss Feeds
A nice big custom made RSS feed button. Which is great for those that know how RSS feeds work, and how powerful they can be. But bad for those who have no clue what RSS feeds are. I would recommend to Dawn, to rework the RSS feed area. Make it easier for those who have no clue about RSS feeds, to sign up to an RSS feed via email.
Top Commentators
It’s great to see dawn using the top commentators plugin. It’s a great way to give back to the commentators, who take their time to leave a well valued comment. She currently has the limit set to the top 5 commentators, and as of right now the top commentator has a total of 13 comments!
Site Meter
From the looks of it, Dawn is using Sitemeter to track her website stats. I haven’t used sitemeter, but by the looks of it, it leaves a nice graphic button on her sidebar, promoting sitemeter. I would suggest to Dawn, to experiment, and try out Google Analytics.
Here is a link to what you can see if you are using Google Analytics, and much more beyond this image!
3D AntiBarbie Avatar
I clicked on the image, so I could visit the website it was linking to, however, as soon as I did, my Firefox browser crashed! This was bad for me, as I lost some of the writing that I am writing right now for this review. Luckily I was able to recover most of what I had typed, but still I lost some of the writing 
Final Thoughts On Theme Design
The biggest thing, is try to look over the rss feeds, and try to make it easier for all users to be able to subscribe to your website.
Being a first time visitor to the website, I wanted to see a history of the posts, and wanted to familiarize myself more with the blog. But there was no easy way for me to do that. I would highly recommend adding an archive page to the website. Similar to the one I am running here at my website http://www.jeancosta.com/archives.
Website Monetization
Currently I do not see the website being monetized, which is not a bad thing. It means that Dawn, values her readers, and puts an emphasis on pleasing it’s readers, before cashing in on the website. I hope Dawn continues on this path, and does not try to monetize too early on. If her blog is getting bigger and bigger, I would then slowly begin monetizing it. If and when Dawn does, start monetizing her blog, I would recommend her not try Google adsense. Because for personal blogs like these, the amount of revenue earned with Google adsense is quite low. She could earn alot more via private advertisement on her website, than using Google adsense.
« Previous Entries Next Entries »
Subscribe to my RSS Feed
