whydowork.com

This is the first review from the three given in the Shylock Contest.

If I had to put ThinKlear into a category, it would be quick online tips, with a dash of web development, SEO and make money online. It seems geared towards those a bit geeky, heavy Internet users, that have a blog or website, and want to improve it. The blog is 3 months old right now and if it’s heavily promoted and he continues to deliver good content on a regular basis he has all the chances to make it big.

Posts I Liked

The web programming category for example has this neat post about 3 icons search engines, arranged by Alexa rank, that’s already bookmarked in my Tools folder.

And if you take a peek into the design category, you’ll see a few other gems, like this one pointing you to a resource of RSS icons and the post about laptop stickers, which I’ll definitely do (works great as a gift for your friends that own a laptop). Another resource for webmasters is the one about mini pixel icons.

We’re all downloading files left and right (well, I know I do), especially when you have a blog. Plugins, themes, add-ons, ebooks, all these zipped and with no knowledge of what’s inside. This post points the way to a Firefox add-on that lets you scan files for viruses before downloading.

And, if you’re a heavy WordPress user, I’m sure you’ll find these WordPress tips quite handy.

ThinKlear IT Helper

Got a problem with your computer or you don’t know what Firefix add-on to use for a specific task? Chris has a special page where you can ask questions, called ThinKlear IT Helper, and he’ll do his best to help you with your problem.

Hello there - if you have any problems regarding your computer you are free to ask me here…

do you want me to write an article about something you really want to know about it [from IT of course] - eg: what Firefox extension should you use for downloading YouTube Movies, where can I find great firefox extensions, … ?!?

This one’s a cool offer in my book, though I feel he should be a bit more specific on the areas where he can help (Windows, tweaking, virus, browsing add-ons, finding resources online, php?, mysql?, design, etc). Once the blog gets a bit more momentum, it can be a good selling point for him.

Design

The blog has a clean, two column, white design, with plenty of space for content.

There are a couple of things that could be improved in my opinion. Right now, at this stage in the blog’s life, I don’t think its needed to show the number of subscribers or how many page views a post has. This is an area where size matters, and there is no point in showing off low numbers. With so many blogs out there to choose from, people tend to pick those that are already established and validated by others that subscribed.

Also, the WidgetBucks ads make the page hang for half a second while they’re loading (and they only load when you’re on top of them as far as I saw). Since you got one right after the first post, this can be a bit annoying when you browse the blog.

Suggestions

About and Contact pages - they should be there. People are often interested who is the blogger and they might want to contact you in private instead of leaving a comment on the blog. It doesn’t take long to put a page up and it certainly has benefits.

Categories - There were 34 of them yesterday when I counted, many of them with just 1 post. IMO, I think it’s a bit much. Maybe focus on just a few categories (10-15), and also use tags?

Promotion: there are a few successful blogs out there that are focused on online tips. Quick Online Tips and Connected Internet come to mind right now. With some quality guest posting I’m sure that some of those readers might come your way. Using social media sites is quite nice also for this type of blog.

Content: some linkbait posts might work well. Take as example the posts you linked to, the one with the RSS icons collection and others. Mashable has a great collection of lists with useful online resources that you can use as an example.

Conclusion

All in all, I like it, and I feel it has great potential if more work is put into it. From content to promotion and the design, they all could use a bit of improvement if you want to make it big. It’s all up to you. I for one am subscribed and I’ll be watching it closely :).

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed.!