You should pick up a book on web copywriting so you know what works well and makes websites look good. I read a book once called "web copy that sells" Although most of the book is geared towards selling someone something, there is alot of good information on how to make a website look nice and readable and even tips & tricks to getting people to stay on your page and read your other writings. I'm guessing thats what you are trying to do...build an audience towards your website and eventually monetize it somehow, right?
I want it to look nice. I have already had a lot of tips and stuff. I was wondering as you are my target audience at least in part whether you like it or not. In terms of looks I was trying to make it look like serious cartoon style which is popular with economic and political blogs. In terms of monetisation I have held off advertising so far but I may in the future. The real aim is to get people reading my work and using the blog to show who I have written for like a CV. You have to admit having that blog with the articles I have written for so many different places is a wonderful thing to show to people working in that industry so it will help me get work in the future. Thanks for the feedback.
nice job. Appears very clean with good font choice, IMO. Green color highlight fonts kind of clash though; maybe darker?
I'm still going to stick with what I said earlier. Read a book on writing web copy. People on this forum know you and like you, so don't expect them to be critical of your site. Here check out this popular economics blog and see how it's written. http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/ Now...I can tell right away that the guy that writes that website has very extensive knowledge of how to write web copy. All his paragraphs are "bite size" and easy to digest. He boxes his and others article clips when quoting them in those light blue(almost invisible) boxes. Look at his fonts and use of colors for the titles of his articles. He knows there is a whole psychology to color schemes. I know to most people it seems like this stuff shouldn't matter if your information is good, but it really does. Oh also, I checked Alexa and I see you only have 2 linked in sites. Elitetrader and ieo.org.uk. You gotta get ALOT more sites involved if you want to drive traffic. Look at Mish's linked in sites to see where he has over 3000 sites linking in his blog. But first, I beg you...go to the library and check out a book on writing web copy. It will probably take less than an hour to read the parts that are relevant to you and your site will be 1,000 times better when you implement those actions and you will also understand why. Good luck with it.
Thanks for the tips. In terms of writing style I want to keep it the way it is because it is written in a way that explains things, which is what I think is needed. I prefer a broadsheet style weekly article and think there is a niche for that at the moment as the current blogs conform to the style in the link you showed. Also all my blogs are articles published elsewhere, which provides credibility, to do that I have to write to the style they want, not the style that attracts hits. The credibility of writing for established institutions is more important to me than web traffic so the style is dictated to me by who I write for. I think in terms of being a macroeconomist having papers written at acknowledged organisations is better than a successful blog. That is the primary aim of my blog to promote my macroeconomic work not to make money. In terms of linked in sites I will look into that. Thanks for the info.
There are a couple of ways. I could advertise blogger offers a service called adsense. I could sell my own merchandise and to an extent already do with my book.