Pandan Leaf Cake - what it looks like - and how to load photos onto blogger

Here it is. Pandan leaf cake. A photo from Wikipedia.

You can see it is not my photo but by somebody called Midori.

I have just worked out how to solve three problems.

You want a free photo. Is it free?

Just go to Wikipedia. Wikipedia was founded with the express purpose of providing free information for the public to use (educational) and for the small start-up business which could not afford the cost of paying fees, nor the time and money to track down photographers and pay them.

Photographers donate photos either because they think it's a good idea, or to get more exposure for their great photos and the kudos of having their name, or to get more business by putting up one of their thousand photos as a free one. If you like their photo and you are a business you can pay them to take other photos for you.

As a photographer myself, I appreciate that a photographer cares very much for their name to appear. However, it's a nuisance loading up the photo, then going back to find the name. Then typing it up. Often they have foreign names with unusual spellings. If you want five photos in an article (my son who is in SEO Search engine optimization, or marketing websites, tells me one photo is not enough ) you can spend another half hour finding five photos and copying all the photographers' names.

I just found a solution. I was trying to load up, or upload as we now say, more concisely in computer speak. I could not move photos from my Wikipedia onto my laptop and then directly into blogger. The process required another step, moving the photos onto the desktop (the laptop 'desktop' - more computer speak).

Then I saw the words 'from your phone'. Photos were not on my phone. It took several days before I tried the obvious - which now seems obvious. In desperation, I took the photo which was on my laptop screen on my phone. Yes, you get a reduction in quality. But when it came to a choice between no photo, and a not perfect photo, I thought any photo was better than none.

Problem 1
You Download a photo from Wiki - how do you copy the name?
If you take a photo of your desktop photo, you can include the photographer's name.
The job is done fast. Because you have taken a photo, you have eliminated the risk of mistyping. You do not waste time needing to check for typos.

Back to my original subject - enjoy the picture of pandan cake.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

How to Get Readers, for Writers, bloggers and readers of travel articles and more

Problems
An internet source is subject to typos from the writer and changes made later by spell checker.

Readers have strong views on preferences for one company rather than another, one country rather than another, one website rather than another. I read on line that some people are boycotting certain sites because they believe not enough is being done to stop terrorism. Other would prefer the BBC to the Mail, or the Mail to the BBC, or an American source instead of a British one. Some people would visit or live in Greece rather than Turkey, turkey rather than Greece, and so on. Some want to know about bargains, others about luxury.

Story
When I first wrote about honeymoon destinations for the British magazine Brides, I was told that although the majority of readers wanted to read about luxury destinations, their budget was more modest. Therefore I had to feature places in 3 price ranges, 5 star, three star and one star. That way every reader would find practical information and every advertiser could be sure that the editorial would be supporting the readership at which they aimed.

Therefore, when I have time, I try to give three choices in the hopes of giving everybody something which suits them in every way. This means occasionally instead of starting a new blog, I add an extra website to an old one.

However, when it comes to the internet, I am told by SEO experts, that if you aim too widely, the reader does not identify you with any particular niche. If you want readers to come back, you must select either bargains, or luxury. This is the challenge for bloggers.

If you would like me to write articles on your blog, or to copy your articles, or to have permission to copy my articles on your blog with links back to mine, please get in touch.

Angela Lansbury travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English and other languages. 

Who reads this blog, any blog, popular blogs?

Every day I watch the number of readers of my blog and try to work out what are the popular subjects. This month Halloween spider cake, although it's in a local suburban UK shop, got more viewers than top restaurants in central London.

American Readers
I view my readership stats provided by the site and compare yesterday versus today. I know that most of my readers are in the USA. Presumably simply because there are more English speaking computer owners there than anywhere else in the world.

London as A Topic
 If I write about London, and I am a Londoner, they may be Americans planning a trip to London, or interested in London, or fondly reminiscing, or armchair travelling.

Isolated Small Areas
I expect to get a surge in Singapore readers when I write about Singapore, but I don't. I puzzle over a lone reader in the Ukraine or Russia. Is that somebody in a hotel on a business trip? Or an isolated traveller? Someobdy stuck, unable to travel, in a war zone? Or a prisoner in solitary confinement seeing me as a link with the far off world? (As a creative writer and author I have to constantly fight down the urge to write a short story about what I imagine every other sentence I write.)

Time Travel
I look at the time difference. Oddly enough my computer says 1.50 A.M. when it's 8.51 in the morning in the UK.

Top Subjects
If you take magazines, years ago IPC, when I was working there, did a survey and found that the top subjects were Cookery, Gardening, and Fishing. That might explain the popularity of the spider cake post.

Top Blogs
How do you get more readers? By being different? Or copying the leaders?

Somebody has analysed the top blogs. The average can be the mean or the mode, the typical reader, or most common readers, or simply the middle point in the range.

Here's a guide to readers of the top blogs.
http://royal.pingdom.com/2013/03/01/blog-readership-demographics-2013/