I first heard about Kosmo’s new service called Sparks over at The Digerati Life. I am always looking to improve my site and I thought it would be helpful to have some input on how Out of Debt Again looks and functions through someone else’s eyes. At the time, Kosmo was offering the “Full Review” service at a very low introductory price, so I decided to go for it as I can consider it a business expense.
Current pricing can be found here, and you will notice that Kosmo has different prices depending on whether you’re a novice blogger, or whether you have an established site. Basically if you’re new to blogging you may be making some obvious mistakes that stick out and are easier to spot, as opposed to if your site is more established and you have had more time to develop your blog. It’s going to be more work to scrutinize an established site – “more digging” as Kosmo puts it.
My Experience with Sparks
I contacted Kosmo at 5am on December 9th, and before 10am I received a request for payment via PayPal. In the request for payment, Kosmo gave me an estimate stating that he expected to complete the full report by December 15th.
Well within the estimated time of delivery, on December 12th, a rather insightful four page report arrived by email.
I thought the report was very thorough; not only did Kosmo examine my site with a fine toothed comb, he also checked out the appearance of my blog posts as they display in my RSS feed and had some suggestions for improvement there.
I’ve taken a few of his suggestions to heart and made a few changes. For example, it was Kosmo’s clever suggestion to use my avatar as part of my header. You may have noticed the look of my avatar has changed in the last couple of weeks. When I got my haircut naturally I decided it was a good time to change the appearance of my avatar as well.
Regarding my RSS comments he suggested that I use Feedburner Feedflare, which shows the number of comments on my post within the reader (or within email if you are an email subscriber). He suggested if my RSS followers and email subscribers see the number of comments on a post they may be more inclined to visit and read the comments and perhaps contribute to the conversation.
Kosmo suggested that my excerpt links are too long, so I shortened that to “CLICK TO CONTINUE”.
Kosmo suggested the use of several WordPress plug-ins which I will be looking into, to see how they work and how they will work for my blog.
Now I don’t want to give away all the suggestions that Kosmo made as they may not be appropriate or necessary for your site. Overall I was pleased with the report and appreciate the insight that Kosmo was able to offer.
How You Can Benefit from Sparks
This is a great opportunity to get an unbiased opinion on your blog from someone other than your friends, coworkers or family. Check out Sparks by Kosmo today and see how your blog holds up to examination by Mr. Outside the Box.
Sounds like you got some good insight and useful tips 🙂
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
January 29th, 2011 at 3:54 pm
@Jackie, yes, I did appreciate Kosmo’s unique perspective on how my site looked to him. Thanks for visiting and commenting! 🙂
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Thanks for such a nice review, Mrs. A. One nice benefit to me (other than the obvious benefit of money) is being exposed to sites I might not have noticed otherwise.
Readers – if you’re not sure how much stock to put in my opinion, go ahead and take a peek at my flagship site The Soap Boxers by clicking on my name. Poking around this multi-faceted multi-author blog will give you some idea of the different directions my mind goes.
Very recently, I’ve added a sidekick, Sarah. She’s a longtime friend and fellow graduate of the greatest university in the world (Iowa State). She does NOT have the tech background that I have (13 years for a Fortune 50 company) but brings an unabashedly non-tech viewpoint.
If you hire me right now, you can take advantage of temporarily low prices. Additionally, as a bonus to OODA readers, I’m offering a special bonus – a PDF copy of “The Fiction of Kosmo, Volume 2” and the accompanying MP3 audio version of the feature story, “The Cell Window” – the tale of a tech savvy voyeur – from the point of view of the perp. (You can see more about this product in my store -> http://www.hyraxpublications.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=5&products_id=30 )
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
January 29th, 2011 at 3:49 pm
@Kosmo @ The Soap Boxers, you’re quite welcome, sir. And thank you for the great offers to my readers!
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