Why? Well because I either work from home, or fly, and for those small moments in between, I don’t need no car, I’d rather take a train. Ever heard of traffic jams? We seem to have invented those here in the Netherlands, or at least have a serious problem with them. Consider this: we’ve got longer traffic jams each office day, than that our country is long.

So why a “bakfiets”? Well I need to carry around my two kids sometime, and some beer, and this baby can carry it all at the same time. Ow and, just look how awesome it looks on me:

Now that we’re talking about rides by the way, I got my son a new ride too, a skelter:

Is that cool, or what?

Showing off my new ride! is a post from Joost de Valk‘s Yoast – Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don’t want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

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Shoemoney: From 420 lbs, 50k in debt, chain smoking and couch surfing to creating a million dollar company; Jeremy Schoemaker is the ultimate online businessman.

*****

David Risley: The founder of PCMech, David Risley enjoys a 6 figure income from the mentioned tech site and his personal blog.  He writes about the mindset of creating income online, freedom from it and his personal tactics.

*****

Blogtrepreneur: Acquired the site from Adnan in January of 2009, a UK student, two brothers (founders of YoungEntrepreneur) share their tips on becoming a successful entrepreneur.  They make their income online and share how you can too.

*****

Income Diary: Michael is only 21 but making alot of head way in becoming one of the main players on the net.  He recently sold his design site, webdesigndev for a cool 25k.  His blog has a bunch of interviews from many top online business owners.

*****

Smart Passive Income: Pat went from laid off architect to creating a very successful site in the LEED niche.  Making about 5 figures per month, Pat continues to breakdown his income and reveal what works and what doesn’t.  He’s been keeping busy with a new iPhone App, his personal blog and a newborn!  Truly an inspiration.

*****

John Chow:  He was one of the first individuals to come out and tell you he makes a good amount of money online.  He stopped revealing his blog income but he was reaching $35,000 a month!   Now, he is able to make $1,000 tweets and live the great internet lifestyle that many dream of.

*****

Tyler Cruz: Tyler’s blog has very in depth articles, the founder of Merendi Networks Inc, makes money from his many sites.  His personal blog alone generates about $3,000/month.

*****

Jonathan Volk: Jonathan Volk is the President and CEO of Surge Marketing which generates millions of dollars a year in sales.  He is a major player in affiliate marketing, at times he’s topped $300,000 a month.

*****

Zac Johnson: I’m not sure the exact figure that Zac makes but in one of his popular article he talks about (and shows a check) how he made $860,538.38 in 4 months!  That alone is impressive, he continues to post great articles on his blog and has expanded his network with Royal Tutorial.

******

Entrepreneurs Journey: Yaro has been doing this online money making for years.  I remember reading his blog when he was still a student and working at the library.  Now he makes enough income to travel and spend time on things that matter.  He has created a large audience and capitalized on them with a well thought out business model.

Related posts:

1. If Tiger Woods Were a Blogger He Would…
2. Why Treat Your Blog as a Business Now
3. Online comic book creator

A design is only as good as the functional usability of it. Think of it like a pretty lady or handsome guy with no brain or personality. You can only handle it for so long because they don’t offer much, which eventually leaves you bored or uninterested.

Just like the scenario above, regardless of how amazing your design looks, without any functional usage, readers will only stay for so long. Even worse they probably won’t return, which is what any website does not want. There is no getting around content as the number one factor to gain returning visitors, but there are some design and functional aspects that can be implemented into your web design to push more users to visit your site again. We will look at some of these popular practices below.

Displaying Follower Count

The Internet is just like high school: everybody wants to be part of the crowd. If you have a lot of followers via social networks and/or subscribers, then why not share it with the world. By displaying the count, visitors will be more likely to subscribe themselves because they see so many other people are doing the same. I recommend not sharing your follower count until they are at least plus 500; however, the number can vary through different niches.

You can see a great example of this here, at Inspired Magazine. Above the fold, visitors can easily see that there are over 35,000 combined followers and would be enticed to become part of the crowd.

Another example of this can also be seen at Smashing Magazine. In fact, they even designate a much bigger spot than most sites by taking up nearly ¼ of the space above the fold.

Subscription Box

Another method to increase the rate of returning visitors is to build an email list. This is usually done through a subscription box placed somewhere on the sidebar. Obviously the higher up, the more likely it is to be seen.

As seen on The Wild Investor, the subscription box is placed in the sidebar above the fold. More importantly it is styled in a different color box that stands out from the rest of the site.

More often than not, sometimes you just need to put the offer directly in front of the users face. John Chow does this through a pop-up box that is displayed to first time visitors and briefly describes what the subscriber will get and a concise form to sign up.

Subscribe to Comments

Getting readers to post comments is great, but usually visitors will leave comments and then never return. You can see where this could make it hard to build any sort of dialogue. A good method to try and fight this problem is to give your readers an option to subscribe to comments, either through RSS feed or email notification. This will not only bring them back to your site, but could also build your comments as dialogue will continue to grow.

Problogger simple adds a check box at the bottom of his comments box to subscribe using ‘Subcribe to Comments’ WordPress plugin.

Six Revisions attacks this problem by using a text link that directs you to the comments RSS feed.

Display Popular Articles

Whether your visitors come from search engines or referred from another site, odds of them subscribing or returning to your website will be based off more than one article or piece of your content. So help facilitate this process by sharing your most popular content.

Noupe does this by displaying a thumbnail and comment count of the 12 most popular articles. Not only does this show what type of articles is published on this site, but also when you see multiple articles with 100+ comments, odds of returning just jumped a whole lot more.

While a design should be pleasing to the eye, it should also be functional. What good does an amazing looking house mean if it doesn’t have a kitchen? Ultimately your design should facilitate growth, which could be hard to do without returning users. Hopefully the above examples and practices will inspire you to make some adjustments to your current or future web design.

With nearly a decade of experience in web design and owner of his own web development company, Amey Shivapurkar shares the latest webmastering trends, tools, and practices over at Webtolerant.

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