Some Love Links

Is it just me, or when you find sites/blogs you absolutely love do you kinda want to shout it from the rooftops to tell your friends? Or the world?!?

Okay, maybe not the ‘world’ because I’ve discovered that there are a lot of people out there who don’t blog {SHOCK} and just don’t understand the magnificence of it.

Well, I’m not luggin’ out my ladder to crawl up to the roof this morning. Somehow, I just don’t think all the neighbors in little ol’ Placerville, CA would appreciate a crazy old woman who’s still wearing her p.j.’s shouting about some websites.

But I think you’ll appreciate it, right?

Maybe, mebbe not. Humor me, okay?

Before I spill, did you notice the ads I added? Pretty hard to miss, but today’s campaign is Michael’s!!! I’m clicking myself to snag a 40% off coupon. Grab one for yourself.

You might wanna get some watercolor paper.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Ok - I wrote about CrafterMinds when they launched a few months back.

If you haven’t checked them out yet, please do. Like, maybe today? They’re always chock-ful of great blogging resources and articles, but yesterday they let some ol’ fool write a post about blog layout and design.

I dunno how I lucked out, but I did, so if you’d drop by and leave some comment love on CrafterMinds, I’d really, really appreciate it!

I’ve learned a lot from the gals at CrafterMinds. They host a weekly twitter chat every Monday at 1 pm PST, in case you want to join in the fun with an awesome group of bloggers. You can find us with #crafterminds.

They also turned me on to StumbleUpon. Have you tried it? Ah.May.Zing. Such fun sites pop up there. But it’s also a great way to increase your traffic. They say to allow six months before you notice an increase, but last month StumbleUpon was my #3 referring site. That’s big because I join so many linky parties and get a lot of referrals from them.

How did I know SU was #3 in referrals? Google Analytics for one. If you haven’t signed up, please do. Sooner or later, you’ll want to know how much traffic your blog is receiving and where it’s coming from.

I know, I know – we’re not supposed to care about numbers. Yeah. Right. We love numbers, don’t we? Followers, comments – numbers do matter to us bloggers no matter how much we deny it.

So a while back I added Statcounter to my blog – way before Google Analytics. For months I just looked at how many visitors I had each day. No big deal. But it was fun. Then I started poking around a bit more and found all kinds of neat stats about my blog.

Like ‘recently came from’. It never ceases to amaze me how people find my blog – and which pages get the most hits. But this morning I found a new referring site – Craft Roulette. It’s a little like StumbleUpon but just for crafts. Fun stuff.

It gets crazy, doesn’t it? Blogs, FB, Twitter, StumbleUpon and now Pinterest! I resisted Pinterest for a long time because there are just too many sites to visit each day! But yesterday I caved and signed up.

Are you on Pinterest? Let me know so I can follow you. Of course, that goes for StumbleUpon too.

And if you have a system or calendar for how you handle all of your online sites, I’d love to know what you do!