Frequently Asked Questions
The Top 50 Aussie Writer Blogs is a list of blogs by Australian writers, ranked by a formula based on strict criteria. In putting together any resource of this type there are bound to be queries, disagreements and corrections. Hopefully, the following ten questions and answers provide most of the information you need to understand how the list works, how to participate and what you can do to improve your own ranking.
If you have any questions not answered here or wish to point out necessary corrections on the list, please use the contact form.
1. "Why did you create the list?"
I love blogs and I love writing. By producing a (hopefully) comprehensive list of writers who blog, both amateur and pro, it will hopefully encourage networking and benefit everyone on the list. Blogs cannot be solitary. Like a partygoer, you get nowhere standing in the corner talking to yourself. Consider this the ultimate writer's party mixer.
With writers sharing their advice and experiences, ideas and observations with each other, everyone can learn from the wider blogging community. This will hopefully become a valuable resource for writers new and old, to find fellow thinkers and network. It is for this reason the list is restricted to blogs on the act of writing and not blogs of book reviews or literary criticism. This list is for writers, not readers or critics.
2. "How is the list calculated? What are all those numbers?"
The formula for ranking these blogs comes from the three most commmonly used methods of blog tracking; back-links (in this case, as calculated by Yahoo!), Google PageRank and Alexa rankings. These are calculated in such a way as to give a final score for each blog out of 100 for easy comparison and ranking.
Yahoo back-links (worth 50/100)
The internet is a linked space. The best content is that which most people link to as each link is seen as a form of recommendation ("I think you should read this"). Blogs, particularly, rely on links to help attract readers. Because links are at the centre of all measures of success on the internet, I have given it 50% of the total weighting in this calculation. As the number of back-links varies dramatically across the blogs on this list, I decided a fairer method of assessment was to calculate a score out of 50 for each blog. This I did by using Excel to calculate a percentile score for each blog on the list. This gives everyone a score out of 100 depending on how many back-links they have. A percentile score of 90 means you have more back-links than 89% of the blogs on the list.
I chose this method to reduce the effect of some pretty massive outliers on the overall average. Instead of having the whole chart skewed substantially by a couple of blogs with hundreds of thousands of back-links,a percentile score gives a fairer representation of where each writing blog is in relation only to other writing blogs on the list. Once I had that score, it was simply a case of halving it to give me a score out of 50.
Google PageRank (worth 20/100)
The second score is PageRank - a Google number out of ten given as a guide of the relative importance Google assigns to a webpage or site. Based on the number of links and the popularity of the keywords used within, PageRank helps a webpage appear within the Google results. PageRank is not seen as a major source of influence or achievement these days, so I have given it a lower weighting in the scores - 20 out of 100. The PageRank score appearing next to a specific blog listing is the current Google PageRank. As the final total is out of 100, the calculation merely doubles the PageRank score to give it the appropriate weight.
Alexa score (worth 30/100)
The third and final score provides the final 30% weighting to a blog's total. This is the Alexa ranking, assessing a website's traffic numbers and placing websites in order from 0 to just under 30,000,000. Some blogs have yet to have an Alexa score - usually through having too little data from traffic for one to be calculated. This obviously results in a '0' score. I then applied the same percentile methodology as above to give every blog a representative score out of 100. This does mean that even those blogs without an Alexa rank still get a mark representative of the percentage of the whole group who also don't have an Alexa rank.
The final calculation
Once each of the three scores has been calculated, it is merely the task of combining these three scores in such a way to weight them as 50% back links, 20% PR and 30% Alexa.
(Yahoo score / 2) + (PR score x2) + ((Alexa score / 10)x3) = final score out of 100
3. "How do you define a blog? There are plenty of writer websites not included."
A blog must have a few things.
- The ability to subscribe via RSS or another appropriate method.
- Allow readers to leave comments, interacting with the posts
- Regularly updated content in a journal or article format.
Some blogs I have come across are not actually blogs, but are websites manually updated without the use of a blogging platform. As these invariably fail to have the first two of the above features, I haven't included them.
4. "I have a blog on writing but it isn't included. What do I do?
Please send me the details through the contact form and I will include the blog at the next scheduled update.
Include a two or three word description of yourself and the blog - for example; romance novelist, or copywriting, or aspiring screenwriter, etc. if you have a Twitter account, include your Twitter name.
5. "What makes a blog eligible?"
The blog has to be by a writer - either amateur or professional. Whether you are a published novelist or an unpublished poet, a marketing copywriter or a struggling screenwriter, if you write about your experiences getting words onto paper, then you're in.
This does not include literary review blogs or the plethora of sites devoted to recommending books and interviewing writers. As these blogs are written by and for readers - not writers - they don't fit the definition I've laid out. I know some people would debate me on this, but it would a) dilute the list significantly to include literature, library and other book sites, impacting the visibility of otherwise deserving writer blogs; and b) divert from discussions from how we write to what we read.
The blog also has to have been updated within the last three months. This will mean inactive blogs will drop off future updates, maintaining a vibrant and current list. Three months is definitely too long for most people to leave a blog untouched, but some people do have busy lives, book tours and other things that can get in the way, so this seemed a fair time scale.
Not every post has to be about writing, but there should be a reasonable smattering of them among the other observations and commentaries. This is particularly important if you aren't a published writer. Saying that you're an aspiring novelist in your bio but only ever writing about your cats won't keep you on the list. I will be more lenient with published or professional writers as the list benefits from including them - but in most cases professional writers tend to cover their experiences in publishing or discuss producing new work anyway.
6. "Is there a badge I can place on my blog to show off the list to my readers?"
If you want to display your award on your blog, you can with this convenient 125x125 panel that links back to this chart. Just cut and paste the following code into your blog sidebar and let your readers know how successful your blog is.
7. "How can I improve my blog's ranking?"
The element that you have most influence over is your back-link score. In fact, by encouraging others to link to your blog, it can also positively impact your Google PageRank as well as attract more visitors which can improve the Alexa score.
A great way to build back-links is to build relationships with other blogs. Comment on their posts and they may just come to check you out if they like what you have to say. Better still, blog a more detailed response to someone else's post on your blog with a link to them and you may find other people willing to link to you. Building back-links on blogs is often a 'give to receive' type activity. Be friendly in giving links to other blogs and people will show the same courtesy to you.
Your Alexa score is determined by monitoring the number of visitors to your website that have the Alexa toolbar installed, and then extrapolating from that ratio an estimate of the percentage of international web traffic that visits your blog. That percentage then helps create a ranking. Installing the Alexa toolbar in your own browser can help improve your score, but the goal is to attract more traffic.
You may have noticed how many more people on the latest list have Twitter accounts than did previously - especially towards the top of the list. Twitter and Facebook are fantastic for spreading content and attracting readers. The more people read, the higher the likelihood that others may link to you.
8. "My favourite blog is not included. Are you insane?"
Nope, but I'm not omnipotent either.
If the blog truly fits the above criteria - and not all blogs submitted to me do - it may be that I have yet to discover that particular blog through any of the channels I've used to collate this list. The idea of this list is to help provide exposure and lead other interested writers to find the gems hidden within these blogs. If a particular blog has not been recommended to me, doesn't appear in common Google searches and hasn't crossed my path in my everyday online activities, it makes it very hard to find, classify and include it. Hopefully, this list will help correct that.
9. "Blog XYZ is definitely better than blog ABC, but is lower on the list. This list is therefore bogus and you are a poo-poo-head who can't recognise quality when he sees it."
To avoid complaints of bias - and allegations of being a poo-poo-head, ignoramus, philistine and others - there is no subjective 'judging' of the blogs on the list. All the scores are produced entirely from established and recognised blog / website ranking systems; Yahoo back-links, Alexa and Google PageRank. Some people may believe that a particular blog is more 'worthy' than another, but these scores are the best measure of true online influence. The best writer blog around cannot be deemed successful if no one is reading it or no blogs feel the content is worth linking to.
If it is truly more worthy, why doesn't it have more people linking to it?
10. "How often will the list be updated?"
The plan is to update the list every three months - March, June, September and December. However, if there is significant activity, a lot of new blogs to include or a PageRank update, interim updates may occur, time allowing.
Never miss an article. Sign up for free CopyWrite updates by RSS or email.
CopyWrite: Recent Entries
- How Ghost Stories Work
A few nights ago, I made the mistake of rereading Charles Dickens' 'The Signal-Man' in bed. Bad, baaaaad idea. It's long been my favourite ghost story - and the BBC adaptation one of my favourite short slabs of telly - but even knowing every story beat in the tale didn't protect me from that growing unease and dread.
…- The 35 year comic book cliffhanger
As a young boy, I loved visiting the newsagent. Whenever I was taken out shopping in Stockport, instead of asking to visit the toy or sweet shops, I would pester until I was allowed into WH Smiths. That big two-level store was bliss to me - more books and comics than I had ever seen in one place.
…- All the right words - just not necessarily in the right order
It is often said that the key to great comic delivery is timing. I would go further and say its the key to great writing too. But before I get into that, let's examine the power of timing in the best way possible - Morecambe and Wise.
…