Chilling Out With Sunny Spain On My Mind

Would you be thinking of a Spanish holiday and forget blogging for a while? Spain has always been among the top tourist destinations in the world with a wealth of attractions. Many of the tourist sights are steeped in history. A friend and his family just returned from their holiday in Spain and they were singing praises of the places they visited, especially in Madrid, the capital, and Barcelona.

In Madrid, they had the pleasure of visiting some famous landmarks like the Plaza Mayor, a 17th-century architectural masterpiece, the bustling Puerta del Sol and some famous art musuems. But they were simply delighted with the second largest city in Spain - Barcelona. Famous for its architecture and style, the Catalan city has a lot more to offer. They were particularly impressed by the famous street called La Rambla where you see street artists performing, brightly coloured flower kiosks and open-air restaurants and more.

Before they embarked on their trip, Dale had checked for hotel accomodation at the Cheaperthanhotels.com site having read about them in one of my earlier posts. He looked up hotels in Madrid and hotels in Barcelona for that's where they were bound and was happy with the attractive rates. It was a holiday well spent.

Come to think of it, Barcelona is a great place to visit and being a soccer fan I have always admired the city's world famous football club, Barcelona FC. I have watched many of their matches on live TV and they have a history of great players. There are two players in the present team I like to watch - French international Thierry Henry and Argentine ace Lionel Messi.
Nothing is more exhilarating than to be on the terrace of Nou Camp Stadium cheering on the Catalan team, adding your voice to the roar when a goal is scored. With the European Champions League in full swing this season, many fans will be following their teams all over the Continent.

Who knows, I might check out Hoteles en Barcelona and make a trip to watch a great football team in action. Puede recommendar un...hotel barato? (Can you recommend a...cheap hotel?)

Are We Facing A Rumble Over BlogRush?

Some stats are trickling in if you log into your BlogRush account to check what are showing on the Dashboard. Over at Problogger, Darren Rowse had indicated that he had gotten some good and bad things about his initial BR results.

But if you checked the comments coming in response to his post, the early impression is that most of those who are using the BR widgets are expressing some disappointments with their results.

Early indications are not encouraging from the majority of comments although a few have expressed some satisfaction with their results so far. I wouldn't jump the gun right now until we get a clearer picture of this so-called web traffic generator from Income.com.

In my previous post, I did mention that compelling post titles are the key to attract clicks. Up till now, I have seen widgets with post headlines that are mostly a run-of-the-mill affair. How to get people to click on them when they don't have the "Wow" factor?

However, in response to the negative vibes, the BlogRush people have shot off an email to users to explain why many members are reporting low click-through rates on the impressions for their blog post titles. Redwall_hp over at Webmaster-Source had posted some of the excerpts from the BR email.

This is a small-time blog if you want to compare it with the likes of Problogger, Shoemoney, or John Chow, but I guess, at this point in time, I can feel satisfied with the BlogRush results. And not just because of the widget. I think it also comes down to the content you write that helps to keep the interest intact.

Here's a couple of stats from my account dashboard that just came in:





















Of related interest:
BR rushed and slam- dunked within one week