ALL BLOGGERZ ARE BROTHERZ!!

Use forums to promote your blog

2008-11-16T05:10:00.001-08:00

A very simple yet effective way to promote your blog is through the use of online forums. The first thing to do is to find a couple of forums related to the topic of your blog and register up. Big-Boards.com is an excellent resource to find large forums. Currently they track almost 2000 of the largest online boards on the Internet.

Once you pick a couple of forums and register up you will need to customize your profile. Most of the boards allow the user to create a signature, make sure you use it to place a link to your blog with a small description of what users will find there.

Now you are set, just engage in the discussions and contribute with useful information, so that people will want to check out your signature link.

6 good online forums

2008-11-16T05:08:00.000-08:00

Some time ago I wrote about how you can use forums to promote your blog. Below I will list 6 very good forums for people interested in blogging and Internet opportunities in general, make sure you check them out.

Make your comments funny

2008-11-16T05:07:00.000-08:00

A very good way to promote your blog across the Internet it to leave comments over other blogs that cover a similar topic or niche. Most of the times, however, you will notice that every comment will attract one or two visitors, if you are lucky.

One of the things I noticed over the time is that whenever I made a funny comment it increased the number of visitors clicking on the link above the comment. The logic is quite simple, if you make people laugh they will want to check out who you are or what you write about. So the next time you leave a comment somewhere try add a bit of humor to it.

Clever use of Google AdWords

2008-11-16T05:05:00.000-08:00

The picture above is a screenshot that I took from Darren Rowse’s Problogger site. This is a very clever use of AdWords. If you pay attention all the Google ads carry a feature called “Advertise on this site”, but not many people seem to take advantage of that.

John Chow designed a funny and very targeted ad, and placed it over the Problogger site since he knows that such audience will probably find the content of his site also valuable. If you are going to spend money on pay per click advertising campaigns you should consider using this strategy, it certainly helps the click through rate and the quality of the visitors that you will get.

Are Technorati Tags Useless?

2008-11-16T05:03:00.000-08:00

Sometime ago there was a strong buzz around the blogosphere about adding the Technorati tags to blogs. If you head to the Technorati help section, in fact, you will find the following advice:

When you add Tags to your post, this will allow your posts to be listed in Technorati’s tag search from “http://technorati.com/tags”. To add the tags, add the below code for each tag you’d like add to your post into the body of your post (very important, since we only read tags if they are in the body of the post)

Apart from Technorati’s advice to include the tags on blog posts there were a lot of bloggers defending the case, and the main arguments that I heard were:

technorati tags will allow more people to find your blog
technorati tags will increase the traffic coming from Technorati
technorati tags will increase the keyword density of your posts
technorati tags will increase your search engine traffic

The arguments were quite convincing, and since one out of two blogs that I visited were actually using the tags I decided to give it a shot. On the following weeks I did receive a couple of extra visitors from Technorati, and the number of people coming through search engines like Google was also increasing steadily so I decided to leave the tags where they were.

A couple of months ago, however, I completely redesigned my blog and the process removed the Technorati tags from the template. Before placing them back to the blog I decided to monitor the statistics for a couple of weeks, and to my surprise the number of visitors coming from Technorati was exactly equal to the period when the tags were on. The number of search engine referrals was also still growing on the same pace as before.

You can guess that at his point I was getting skeptical about the usefulness of the tags. In order to get a more clear picture of the situation I decided to research about the Top 100 Popular blogs on Technorati, and here is the results I gathered:

out of the 100 most popular blogs only 7 were using tags in blog posts
of those who did, 4 were using internal tags (i.e. Tags linking to internal pages)
only 3 out of 100 were actually using the Technorati Tags (i.e. Linking to Technorati)

The results speak for themselves. If that was not enough I also checked 9 of the most popular SEO blogs on the Internet (you can check the list here). Those guys are supposed to know their way around search engine optimization, and none of them were using the Technorati tags.

Summing up, there is very little evidence in favor of using the Technorati tags. If you are still using the tags you should reconsider the value that they bring to your blog, and whether they are not just cluttering your template.

Cross Feed Promotion

2008-11-16T05:01:00.000-08:00

A nice way to promote your blog is to find another blog that is complementary to your topic and propose the author a cross feed promotion. Basically you will place a sponsor line at the end of every post on your RSS feed, with a tagline and a link to the other blog. The author of the other blog will then do the same for you.

Suppose you have the “ABC Blog” which deals with marketing and business strategy. Complementary topics to your blog could be finance, technology, Internet and so on. Once you find, for instance, the “XYZ Blog” that talks about corporate finance you contact the author and propose the cross feed promotion. Should both parties agree you will place the following line on your feed:

Sponsor: Get the latest word on corporate finance from the “XYZ Blog”

The simplest way to create a footer and add customized messages to your RSS feed is through the sig2feed plugin.

If the two blogs have different numbers of RSS subscribers, say 100 and 500, you can harmonize this disparity using the Feedvertising service from Text-Link-Ads. The service allows users to place advertising messages on their feed, and up to 6 different advertisers can be rotated on the feed. In our example the blog with 100 subscribers will display the sponsor line on every post while the most popular blog with 500 subscribers will setup his Feedvertising to display the sponsor line once every 5 posts.

Avoid leaving your blog name on comments

2008-11-16T04:56:00.000-08:00

Commenting on other blogs, specially those that are on the same niche, is a very efficient method to promote your site and receive new visitors. Some bloggers, however, are used to leave their blog names on the â€œNameâ€� field of comment forms, arguably losing some credibility.

I confess that when I started blogging I used to do that as well, after all I thought that no one would be interested in clicking on â€œDanielâ€� while if I left the name of my blog more people would be tempted to click on it.

The problem with that logic is that many readers might think that you are just spamming the comment section. Some of them will certainly click the comment with the blog name, but overall it might hurt your reputation.

Secondly the whole blog phenomenon exploded because it enabled people to establish relationships and to interact with other bloggers. Comments are trackbacks are supposed to generate conversations, and conversations must be personal if they are to be valuable.

Bear in mind that there are some exceptions for that rule. If your blog is named after yourself (e.g. ajaydsouza.com) or if you are speaking on behalf of a blog entity you could possibly leave the blog name and not your personal name. Also, if you really want to leave your blog name consider placing it under brackets after your personal name.

List of Ping Services

2008-11-16T04:55:00.000-08:00

Ping services allow you to automatically notify blog directories and search engines that your blog has been updated. The bigger your ping list the higher the chances of receiving traffic from those sources, so check out the list below and include it on your blog (Wordpress users can modify their ping list on the Control Panel, then Options, then Writing).

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

Blog Carnivals

2008-11-16T04:53:00.000-08:00

A blog carnival is a collection of links pointing to blog posts around a specific topic. Usually a certain blog carnival will have many editions, and every week a different blog will host it. In order to participate all you need to do is to browse around the Blog Carnival website looking for relevant topics and submit your entries.

This is a simple yet effective method to promote your blog during the initial months. The carnivals will bring you some traffic and some backlinks. Additionally it will also give you the possibility to interact with fellow bloggers.

Are you marketing your blog?

2008-11-16T04:51:00.000-08:00

There is a myth around the blogosphere that bloggers should not spend money on advertising for their blogs. It is founded on the success stories where established bloggers affirm that they achieved thousands of dollars in monthly revenues without spending a dime on advertising or other marketing techniques.

While those stories are obviously true they do not reflect the situation of the majority of the bloggers out there. Those successful bloggers usually started blogging many years ago and they basically created their own niche. Now a days the blogosphere is crowded. As a consequence it is much harder to make your blog stand out, regardless of the quality of its content.

Marketing is the name of the game

One of the solutions for this problem is called marketing. Most bloggers do have a marketing strategy (even if not clearly stated), but they focus on the free methods to promote their blogs. Free marketing techniques include leaving comments on other blogs, using online forums to spread the word about your content, article directories, blog carnivals, social bookmarking sites and so on.

Why do bloggers focus almost exclusively on those free methods? Exactly because they are free, you might say. That is true, but only partially true. The other half of the answer is connected with the fact that bloggers and other online publishers usually fail to perceive the value that a paid marketing campaign could create.

It is like saying “Hey, why don’t you invest $100 to advertise your blog?”. That is the questions that most people elaborate, and the common answer is “No thanks, I would rather use some free promotional methods”. What if we complete the question to “Hey, why don’t you invest $100 to advertise your blog? It will create a value of $500 for you!”? Now the idea is more interesting. It is the second part of the sentence that bloggers fail to grasp, and that is the fact the paid marketing might actually create value beyond the initial investment.

Value not money

Notice that I am using the term value and not money. While promotion might end up generating money for you it is not the only benefit that it will bring. Actually that is the reason why people fail to perceive the value. Not all the benefits coming from a marketing campaign can be measured with dollars. Below you will find 5 reasons (some tangible and some intangible) to actively market your blog, hopefully they will clarify why investing money into promotion might be a good idea:

Traffic: traffic is the most used currency on the Internet. Whether we talk about a blog, an online forum or a business website traffic is one of the most important factors for success. While free promotional techniques can also bring traffic paid solutions offer more consistent results. A couple of hundred dollars should generate thousands of highly target visitors for your website. Provided you have good content part of that paid traffic will also convert into regular readers.

Direct revenues: if you increase the traffic on your website you will also be increasing the monetization potential. People running Pay-per-Click programs like Google Adsense or Pay-per-Action affiliate programs will directly increase their revenue with promotional campaigns.

Branding: when I think about sportswear I think about Nike. Why? “Just do it!”. Marketing campaigns allow you to deliver a specific message to customers (readers in the case of a blog). After they see that message for three or four times they will end up associating the message with your product or blog.

Credibility: investing money in marketing can improve the credibility of your blog in several ways. If readers see that you are actually spending money to promote your blog they will know that you are serious about it and that you are pretty confident on the quality of your content. Secondly when you promote your blog on respected websites the readers will unconsciously think that the authors of that website endorse your blog.

Indirect revenues: traffic, brand awareness and credibility will also indirectly generate revenues for your blog. They might make easier for you to find potential sponsors or partnership agreements. Moreover if part of the paid traffic convert into regular readers they will contribute to your Adsense or affiliate program earnings even after the campaign is concluded.

7 Ways to Promote your Site with a Bit of Money

2008-11-16T04:49:00.002-08:00

Some time ago I wrote an article titled “Are you marketing your blog?” where I argued that there is a myth around the Internet that bloggers and webmasters should not spend money on advertising. The myth comes in great extent from the success stories of people that managed to create popular websites without spending a dime on advertising or other paid promotion techniques.

The reality is that most of those successful websites were pioneers on their niche, hence why they became popular without spending money on advertising. Now a days the market is crowded and you have thousands of websites and blogs even for small segments. As a consequence paid promotional techniques are becoming an important factor of any successful marketing strategy.

Below you will find 7 ways to promote your website or blog with a bit of money. You can use them to generate raw traffic, improve your search engine rankings, gain visibility on your niche and so on. Despite the initial investment most of those techniques will pay off on the short to medium term. If you are expecting to make money with your website there is no reason to assume that you will not need to spend some as well, right?

1. AdWords: Google make billions of dollars every year from the AdWords-AdSense combo. Why is that? Because they work. Adwords is probably the most efficient method to generated raw traffic for your website. In order to get started you should create an account, add lots (by lots I mean hundreds if not thousands) of keywords that are related your site and set the maximum Pay-per-Click rate at $0.01. After that raise the rate by $0.01 every week or so until you start getting the desired amount of daily clicks. Notice that at lower bids the keywords will be reported as “Inactive for Search”. Do not worry about it, it just means that your ads will not appear on the search network (Google’s search results), but they will appear on the content network (websites of people that use AdSense).

2. Site-Specific AdWords: if you pay attention to the AdSense units you will see that most of them have a link titled “Advertise on this site”. This feature enables AdWords advertisers to create customized ads that will be displayed only on specific websites. Those ads work on a CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) rather than a CPC (cost per click) basis, but they can generate a good amount of very targeted traffic since you will be in control of where the ad will be displayed and of the message. You can get even better results if you use some creativity when designing the ads, click here for some examples.

3. StumbleUpon Ads: StumbleUpon is a very innovative social bookmarking site that allows users to discover great websites by using a browser toolbar. When the user clicks on “Stumble” he will be delivered a website that people with similar interested rated positively. The user is also able to give positive and negative ratings to any website that he visits on the Internet. StumbleUpon also offers advertising campaigns, called StumbleUpon Ads, where you can deliver your website directly to those “Stumblers”. It costs $0.05 per page delivered, but since the websites that appear on StumbleUpon usually have a high quality it is very likely that part of that paid traffic will convert into regular readers.

4. Text Link Ads: if you are trying to increase your search engine rankings to leverage organic traffic you should consider buying some text link ads. While those text links can also generate direct traffic the biggest benefit you will have is an improvement on your search rankings, specially if the links are placed on authoritative and relevant websites. There are several places to buy text links, including specialized companies like Text-Link-Ads and Text Link Brokers or online forums like Digital Point’s market place.

5. Direct Banner Sales: most established websites sell banner ads or sponsorship plans directly. Those advertising deals usually are structured with weekly or monthly fees, regardless of the number of impressions or clicks that you will get. Despite this characteristic a banner placement can represent good value for money because apart from the direct traffic you will also create visibility and brand awareness. Readers of the website where you will display your banner will associate the message on the banner with your site or blog. Should they come across that banner or message two or three times it is very likely that they will get curious and decide to check what the buzz is all about. Another advantage of banner placements is the fact that people will unconsciously think that the author of the website endorses your content or product.

6. Sponsored Reviews: buying some sponsored reviews is a good way to kick-start a website. They will bring backlinks, traffic and RSS subscribers. There are many market studies confirming that “word of mouth” is the most efficient way to capture people’s attention, and that is just what you get with sponsored reviews. You can either pay a low price (sometimes as low as $5 per review) to get a large number of reviews from small sites or you can focus on large players (which can charge several hundreds of dollars for a single review) that are authorities on your niche. The best way to purchase sponsored reviews is through sites like SponsoredReviews.com, ReviewMe or PayPerPost.com.

7. Blog Networks: there are several blog networks founded around a traffic exchange principle. Basically you create an account for you blog and you earn credits by surfing other members’ blogs. Afterwards you can use those credits to make people visit your blog or to display your banners around the network. The interesting part is that most of those blog networks allow users to purchase credits with money, and the price is really convenient. You should be able receive hundreds of visitors or to get thousands of banner impressions for less than 10 dollars. Some blog networks that sell credits include Blog Explosion, Blog Soldiers and Blog Advance.

How to Get 2000 Subscribers in 12 Days

2008-11-16T04:49:00.001-08:00

I was really happy to reach 2000 RSS subscribers after 5 months of blogging with Daily Blog Tips. Guess what, the guys behind FreelanceSwitch.com managed to accomplish that in 12 days! There is an interesting post titled “How We Took a Blog from 0 to 2000 Subscribers in Just 12 Days”, where they explain how they managed to do it. Below you will find my summary of the article:

Choose the right niche: you should have passion and expertise on your niche, but it should also be somehow undeserved. Find a topic where you can add to the discussion and create value. How do you find it? Look around and experiment. The guys from FreelanceSwitch realized that the freelancing niche could be really popular after one post on that topic attracted a lot of attention from social networks.
Leverage existing assets: the authors of the blog already had other blogs and websites, so they used them to get the ball rolling. They also relied on previous knowledge to make sure that things were working and optimized on the new blog.
Write “Pillar” articles: pillar articles are longer, well-structured posts that give useful information for the reader. It is the kind of article that people read and say “Man, I should bookmark this!”. Great part of the strategy of the new blog was focused on building traffic and credibility through those articles (you can read more about “Pillar” articles here).
Leverage social media: after making sure that the quality content is there you will probably want to use social media to promote it. The authors submitted their popular articles to big blogs like LifeHacker, and they also used paid promotion techniques. That was used to build momentum, once the site was listed on some social bookmarking sites they receive a huge amount of visitors.
Use a professional design: do not underestimate the importance of design. Even if your content is great a professional looking design may give you an edge. It will make sure that visitors remember and revisit your site.

Write Guest Posts

2008-11-16T04:46:00.000-08:00

Even if people have not asked them, that is. Having a guest appearance on a popular blog on your niche is one of the best ways to gain visibility and new readers. Not all the blogs explicitly ask for guest bloggers, however, so how do you solve this problem?

Simple, take the initiative. Write the post and send it to the author of that popular blog, asking if he would be interested in publishing it on his blog. Make sure that you send an outstanding article, something that will get the other blog on the front page of social bookmarking sites. The author needs to read your post and say “Man, that is an awesome article, I am pretty sure my readers will love it!”.

The best thing about this promotion technique is that even if the other blog decides not to use your article you will still be able to publish it on your own blog.

Leveraging Weekly Internet Traffic

2008-11-16T04:44:00.000-08:00

If you are writing a “top notch” article for your blog, it would be a good idea to publish it on the most trafficked day of the week. This will maximize the number of potential readers, also increasing your chances of receiving backlinks and appearing on social bookmarking sites.

But what is the most trafficked day of the Internet? Getting an accurate answer for this questions is quite difficult, specially if we consider the large variations that might appear from country to country and during different seasons of the year.

That being said there are some studies around the web, and most of them agree that Monday and Tuesday are the most trafficked days of the Internet, followed closely by Wednesday. Below you will find the numbers provided by OneStat in 2004 (apparently that is the most recent report):

A good rule of thumb, therefore, is to publish your popular posts early in the week. Bear in mind that your blog readership might behave differently, so check your statistics and adapt this strategy accordingly.

How To Use Site-Targeted Google AdWords

2008-11-16T04:41:00.000-08:00

First things first, what are site-targeted AdWords campaigns? According to Google:

Site targeting lets AdWords advertisers choose individual sites in the Google content network where they’d like their ads to appear. You handpick your audience, big or small. The AdWords matching system does the rest, analyzing your input and creating a list of available content network sites for you to choose from.

You have probably seen some of those ads around the blogosphere. Some time ago John Chow was using them on Problogger, they looked like this:

The site-targeting feature of Google AdWords can be a very efficient way to promote your blog. First of all because it allows you to select specific sites to display your ads. Secondly because you can customize the ads and make them appealing or “intriguing” for that particular audience.

The main difference between keywords-targeted and site-targed AdWords campaigns is that the former has a cost-per-click (CPC) pricing structure, while the latter has a cost per 1000 impressions (CPM) pricing structure. Below you will find a step by step guide to create a site-targeted campaign.

Creating a Site-Targeted Campaign

In order to create a site-targeted campaign you obviously need to be a Google AdWords advertiser (if you are not you will need to register up, the setup fee is $5 and you need a credit card to finance the campaigns).

Log into your account and go to “Campaign Summary”, under the “Campaign Management” tab. On the right side of the screen you will have the option to create new campaigns, both keywords-targeted and site-targeted. Click on the latter.

1. Target Customers

Google will now guide you through the process of setting up your campaign. The first step is to name your campaign and specify what customers you want to target. If you are aiming for a specific geographical location just select “All Countries and Territories”.

2. Create the Ad

The second step is to create the actual ad that will be displayed on the targeted sites. It is a good idea to target one site at a time (creating one campaign for each site) so that you can customize the ad unit.

You can get as creative as you want on this phase. Try using the name of the author or the name of the site. Ask a question to that audience. Make a funny statement.

3. Select the Sites

The third step is to select the sites that you want to target. You have four options here: browsing around categories of sites, using keywords to find related sites, manually inserting the URL of the sites or selecting demographics.

Ideally, as we mentioned before, you already know what site you want to target, so choose the third option and enter the URL manually.

4. Setting the Price

The fourth step is to set the price. The minimum cost per 1000 impressions is $0.25. I would recommend that you start with that minimum bid and check whether your ad will be displayed or not. If is not being displayed raise the bid by $0.05, wait some time and check again. Repeat this process until your ads start showing on the targeted site.

5. Reviewing and Saving the Campaign

Finally you will be presented with a summary of the campaign you created. Review the details, and if they are correct save it. This will activate the campaign.

Consider that the cost per visitor with a site-targeted campaign will be somewhat higher than with the keywords-targeted method. Depending on the click-through rate that your ad will receive, each visitor will cost from $0.1 up to $1 or more. Keywords-targeted campaigns, on the other hand, can bring visitors for as low as $0.01 if tweaked correctly.

Do not get discouraged by this price difference, though. A well structured site-targeted campaign will bring to your site visitors that are looking exactly for the content you have to offer, meaning that they are much more likely to become loyal readers.

Case Study: 5 Effective Ways to Build Links to Your Blog

2008-11-16T04:37:00.000-08:00

You don’t need to know much about SEO to realize links are the golden road to blog promotion. But how do we go about getting them? Which link building methods produce the best results?

Analysis

I recently did an in-depth analysis of my site’s (http://www.projectparadox.com/) inbound links, their relative value, and the methods that produced them. Here are the link building methods that I found to be most effective (below you will also find the methodology used).

1. Blog Carnivals (13 links, 16.26 value, 1.25 average value per link)
Putting time and energy into evergreen posts can pay off even greater dividends when you submit them to appropriate blog carnivals. The resulting links are valuable, relevant, and good for attracting comments.

2. Friends & Partners (5 links, 14.13 value, 2.83 average value per link)
Got a friend who blogs? See about getting on his or her blogroll. If one of your favorite bloggers submits an open call for post submissions, jump on it. You may not get a large volume of links, but the few you get can be worth their weight in gold.

3. Group Writing Projects (11 links, 9.17 value, 0.83 average value per link)
Specifically, Darren’s “Top 5″ group writing project. The volume of links was outstanding, although their relative value was diminished by the large number of outgoing links on each page. Considering it didn’t take long to write the post, however, I’d say it was well worth the minimal effort involved.

4. Links to Quality Posts (5 links, 7.44 value, 1.49 average value per link)
Writing quality posts is a good way to get links without ever having to ask for them. As a blog gets more readership and exposure, the value of quality posting increases exponentially.

5. Free Directory Submissions (5 links, 5.49 value, 1.1 average value per link)
Not surprisingly, free directories tend to have lots of links and low PR because of deeply-nested categories. I’ve made several dozen submissions to achieve minimal returns with this method. The three directories that showed any value were Dmoz, SoMuch.com, and Globe of Blogs.

It’s worth noting that several link building tactics did not produce results. Leaving comments, for example, is only good for referral traffic and exposure; almost all blogs tag comment links with rel=”nofollow”, so commenting is practically useless for link building purposes. Likewise, old school webrings often use deceptive redirect code that eliminates their value; don’t bother with them.

Conclusions

So, what are the take-home lessons from this analysis? First and foremost, participation is key. Blog carnivals and group writing projects are both excellent opportunities for link building.

Second, take every chance to network. Ask to get on your friends’ blogrolls. Reach out and connect with other bloggers in your niche. Offer to guest post in exchange for some bio links. Commenting can be an excellent route to developing these relationships, but they’re more like stepping stones to the goal than the goal itself.

Last, submit your site to blog indices and directories. Just don’t kill yourself to get in every single one you can find, since most won’t be worth the effort.

Methodology

For those interested in how I arrived at the numbers above, here is my methodology. First, I went to my Google Webmaster Tools dashboard and downloaded all of the external links Google had found for my site. I then plugged these URLs into a multiple PageRank Lookup utility to determine their PR values, removing URLs with a PageRank lower than 1.

Next came the manual review. I went to each of the URLs and checked to see if the link to my site was present and followed (i.e., not tagged with rel=”nofollow”), removing URLs where it wasn’t. For those that were, I used the Firefox Web Developer plugin to count the number of outbound links on the page.

Last, I computed a relative link value from each link’s PageRank and outbound links using the formula: PageRank / Outbound Links Count * 85 (related to Google’s dampening factor, multiplied by 100 for the sake of easy comparison). I then grouped the links by their method of acquisition and tallied their overall values.

For those schooled enough in SEO to know that PageRank isn’t everything, I couldn’t agree more. I use it here only as a measurement of each link’s relative importance. Frankly, I don’t regard it as a very reliable value. However, it remains one of the only visible metrics that we have to work with.

Web Directories Worth Paying For

2008-11-16T04:33:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine recently asked me if “500 directory submissions for $85″ was a good deal. A few years ago, before search engines were smart and I was savvy enough to know better, I might have said yes. Nowadays, though, my advice would be to shoot for quality, not quantity.

Disclaimer: Before I go any further, let me make one thing perfectly clear. The average blogger does not need to purchase links. With a niche topic, solid content, and a little networking know-how, there is no need to sink more money into a blog than is required for hosting and domain name registration (if that). Paid directory inclusion is only for revenue-generating blogs that stand to produce a positive return on the investment, and even they will benefit more from the factors I just mentioned.

For those truly business-minded bloggers, then, here is the bottom line: Not all directories are created equal. Some are worthless and others are little more than spam. Only a select few are worth your hard-earned money. More to the point, beware bulk directory submission services like the one I mentioned above. As amazing as their volume may seem, they will more often than not deliver less value than a single link on a reputable directory, assuming they deliver any at all.

Thankfully, the process of finding those diamonds in the rough has already been done for you. Search Engine Journal has a great list of paid directories that covers pretty much all the bases. Having bought links for several clients in the past, here’s my take on them.

Yahoo! Directory - SEJ ranks this as the best paid directory out there. I don’t disagree that a link here will provide a great deal of juice. However, the high cost makes it prohibitively expensive for most bloggers. Depending on your category, you’ll probably get more value putting that money elsewhere first.

Best of the Web - The name says it all. This is one of the best (and most selective) directories out there. More importantly, they have a separate directory just for blogs. Do not submit until you’re confident that your site is up to their quality standards.

Business.com - I feel very much the same about Business.com as I do about Yahoo! Directory. It’s a great link, but it’s just too expensive. If you’ve got a big budget and have already submitted to other directories, it’s not a bad choice, but it’s not my first.

Alive Directory, Aviva Directory, and Umdum - These are three solid directories with good quality and affordable prices. You might not get the same link juice as Yahoo or Business.com, but you’ll get more bang for your buck.

I don’t personally have any experience with the other directories on the SEJ list, so I can’t vouch for their quality one way or the other. Other directories that I would recommend include Site Sift, Gimpsy, Joe Ant, and Uncover the Net. All of these have come recommended to me multiple times by other SEO professionals and offer a decent value for the cost.

As always, do your research before buying a link. Look at the subdirectory page where your link is likely to show up. Do you see any other popular blogs in your niche there? If so, it’s probably a good choice. Would your link be competing with so many other listings that it might get buried by pagination? If so, you probably want to avoid it.

Of course, these are just a few criteria that you should use when evaluating a potential directory; there are dozens more. If you’re interested in doing some real in-depth analysis before making a purchase, there’s a Webmaster World thread with some great guidelines to follow.

When you’re buying, also keep in mind that all of these directories have one thing in common: They are human-editted. Your link may be declind, rewritten, or placed in a subdirectory other than the one you asked for. This is unavoidable for the simple fact that search engines only value directory links that go through an editorial process. Directories that include any link to come their way are eventually devalued as spam. In other words, don’t be surprised when your link doesn’t show up just the way you wanted it, because it wouldn’t be valuable if it didn’t pass under human scrutiny.

Case Study: Digg vs. Copyblogger

2008-11-16T04:30:00.000-08:00

Have you always dreamed about getting on Digg’s front page? Well, perhaps you should dream of being featured on an authority blog on your niche, instead. People have discussed widely the fact that traffic from social bookmarking sites is “peculiar,” but a couple of weeks ago I was able to track down the numbers.

Digg vs. Copyblogger

On June 18 I published the article “6 Foreign Expressions You Should Know.” It received almost 800 diggs, and it was also stumbled heavily. The result was a massive traffic, and a bump on the number of RSS subscribers, as you can see on the picture below.

Two weeks later, Copyblogger mentioned Daily Writing Tips on a post titled “Saturday Night Link Fever.” Judging by the picture, one could say that the Digg effect was much stronger, but was it really?

Analyzing the Digg Numbers

Digg sent over 20,000 visitors over the 2 days that followed. On monday, before the Digg front page, the blog was counting 647 RSS subscribers. The day after this number jumped to 857. Unfortunately, the next day the number dropped to 755 and kept stable at that level, meaning that the effective increase on the number of RSS subscribers was around 108.

Analyzing the Copyblogger Numbers

Brian published his “speedlinking post” on a Saturday, and maybe this influenced the number of visitors that he sent to my blog. A total of 400 visitors came from that link, 150 from the website and some 250 from the RSS feed.

The numbers are not even close to the Digg ones, but what happened to the RSS subscriber count? On Saturday, before Brian’s link, the blog was counting 910 subscribers. On Sunday it jumped to 967, and on the following Monday (which probably was still influenced by the link since many of his readers would not be reading the feed on a Sunday) it further jumped to 1025.

Conclusions

Only 0,5% (less than 1%) of Digg users subscribed to the Daily Writing Tips RSS feed, while almost 30% of the visitors coming from Copyblogger did so. Out of 20,000 visitors that Digg sent, 108 became RSS subscribers. Out of 400 visitors that Copyblogger sent, 115 became RSS subscribers.

Digg, Stumble Upon and other social bookmarking sites still represent the best source of raw traffic. Don’t get me wrong here, I do think the exposure you can get from those venues is simply amazing.

If you are trying to build a loyal readership and increase your RSS subscriber base, however, you should also focus on getting noticed by authority blogs.

Turning a Failed Post Into a Success

2008-11-16T04:29:00.000-08:00

This is a guest post by Steven Snell. Steven designs websites and maintains a blog for Vandelay Website Design. You can read more of his writing and see his portfolio at vandelaydesign.com.

All bloggers at some point face disappointing results with a post that they believed would make a big impact. It may have underachieved in terms of page views, comments, or inbound links. Whatever the case, the opportunity hasn’t been lost for the post to succeed.

But what should a blogger do to spark some excitement into the post? Read it again. Edit the post to make sure that it is useful to readers and consider adding more if it seems incomplete. Take an objective look at the post. If you still feel that it provides quality information that would interest people, take some further steps to draw attention to it.<

1. Link to it in the first paragraph of an upcoming post

Links higher on blog posts have a greater chance of being clicked. Most RSS subscribers scan through their RSS reader, only reading posts that catch their attention. By placing a link high in an upcoming blog post it will be seen by more subscribers as they scan. You can implement this by writing a follow up post, or just by writing a post on a related topic and mentioning the other post.

2. Announce that it has been updated

The majority of blog posts can be added to or improved in some way. Take the time to see what was missing the first time around and make some improvements. Once the changes have been made, write a brief new post announcing that updates and additions have been made, and if possible explain what has been added.

A great candidate for this is a post that contains a list or even just links to resources. Add more and then announce the improvement.

3. Add inbound links to the post throughout your site

Increasing the number of internal links to a post should improve the number of click-through visitors to the post. Those internal links may also help to increase its search engine rankings, as it now looks like a more important page.

4. Look for forums on the topic where you can present it as a resource to people

If your post is truly a helpful resource for others, you may be able to find some forum discussions on the topic. If so, join in on the conversation and include a link to your post.

5. Use comments on other blogs

This is basically the same idea as #4, except with blogs instead of forums. Do a blog search (try Google Blog Search, Ice Rocket, or Technorati to find other posts and discussions on the topic. Participate in the conversation, mention a few points from your post, and leave a link. You can also leave the link by using the URL to that specific post rather than your homepage URL when you are filling in the comment. This way if someone clicks on your name in the comment it will go directly to the post.

6. Use comments on your own blog

Most likely the topic of the post is relevant to a number of other older posts on your blog. Find posts that are related and leave a comment with a link telling readers that they can find more information on the subject by following the link. This is especially effective if you offer a subscribe-to-comments option on your blog. In this case your comment will be emailed to readers who have already left comments on the related post.

7. Mention the post at the bottom of your feed

Another place to promote your post is at the end of your RSS feed. WordPress users can choose from several different plugins, including Sig2Feed and PostPost, that will allow you to include anything you want at the end of your feed. Consider leaving a link and a brief description of the post to try to generate some clicks.

8. Submit the post to social media sites

Maybe a post that have not drawn much attention from your regular readers will catch on at a social media website. Try submitting the article to Digg, Reddit, Stumble Upon, or any number of the smaller niche sites out there.

Sometimes just writing a great post isn’t enough. By trying these methods you will have given your post the best chance to be seen by interested readers. Find a few that work well for you and implement them in the future when you think a post hasn’t reached its full potential.

The Best Website Taglines Around the Internet

2008-11-16T04:26:00.000-08:00

A tagline can make or break a website (well, maybe not, but it is cool to be dramatic). Below you will find a collection of the best taglines around the Internet. Some of them are funny, some are clever; but all of them deliver the message! Hopefully it will serve as inspiration.

The Straight Dope: Fighting Ignorance since 1973 (It’s taking longer than we thought).
Maxim Philippines: The best thing that ever happened to men … after women!
The Consumerist: Shoppers bite back.
Random Acts of Reality: Trying to kill as few people as possible…
Joshuaink: Same old shit, different day.
The Superficial: Because you’re ugly.
Smashing Magazine: We smash you with information that will make your life easier. Really.
The Best Page in the Universe: This page is about me and why everything I like is great. If you disagree with anything you find on this page, you are wrong.
Scaryduck: Not scary. Not a duck.
The Art of Rhysisms: Chronologically inept since 2060.
Needcoffee.com: We are the Internet equivalent of a triple espresso with whipped cream. Mmmm…whipped cream.
Ample Sanity: Life is short. Make fun of it.
Rathergood.com: The Lair of the Crab of Ineffable Wisdom - a load of stuff by Joel Veitch that will probably crush your will to live.
The Breakfast Blog: In search of the best eggs in town.
Dooce: Not even remotely funny.
Pink is the new blog: Everybody’s business is my business.
Shoemoney: Skills to pay the bills.
Oh No They Didnt’t!: The celebrities are disposable, the content is priceless.
YouTube: Broadcast Yourself.
Waiter Rant: Do you want Pommes Frite with that?
Newshounds: We watch FOX so you don’t have to.
Sabrina Faire: All the fun of a saucy wench, none of the overpriced beer.
Defective Yeti: A maze of twisty passages, all alike.
All About George: All about George Kelly… you know, if you go in for that sort of thing.
Go Fug Yourself: Fugly is the new pretty.
kottke.org: Home of fine hypertext products.
Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff that matters.
Gawker: Daily Manhattan media news and gossip. Reporting live from the center of the universe.
Get Rich Slowly: Personal finance that makes cents.
hi5: Who’s in?
Fotolog: Share your world with the world.
Jezebel: Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for Women, Without Aribrushing.
Autoblog: We obssessibely cover the auto industry.
Boing Boing: A directory of wonderful things.
Perez Hilton: Celebrity Juice. Not from concentrate.
DumbLittleMan: So what do we do here? Well, it’s simple. 15 to 20 times per week we provide tips that will save you money, increase your productivity, or simply keep you sane.
Lifehacker: Don’t live to geek, geek to live!
Gizmodo: The gadget guide. So much in love with shiny new toys, it’s unnatural.
John Cow Dot Com: Make Moooney Online with John Cow Dot Com
WebWorkerDaily: Rebooting the workforce.
The Simple Dollar: Financial talk for the rest of us.
TrafficBunnies: Making your hits multiply like rabbits.
Mighty Girl: Famous among dozens.
The Sneeze: Half zine. Half blog. Half not good with fractions.
Buzz Marketing: Because everyone is entitled to my opinion.

Your favorite tagline is not here? Just post a comment and I will update the list.

How to Attract More RSS Subscribers - For Real

2008-11-16T04:23:00.000-08:00

Building a loyal RSS readership is the most difficult part of blogging. Driving traffic, hitting the Digg front page and building links can all be fluked by being in the right place at the right time; but impressing somebody enough for them to want to read your blog every day is far harder.

Most of the worlds 50 or 100 million blogs will go through life with just a handful of readers before the writer decides to call it a day. Have you ever wondered how some blogs seem to attract new readers like a moth to a flame? Do you look at sites with thousands of readers and wonder how they do it?

Blog posts and tutorials designed to help you increase your readership focus on basic elements such as positioning your feed link above the fold etc. I’ve included these points in a basic checklist at the end but will be focusing on the more advanced methods of readership building in this article.

Citations from other bloggers

The first thing I did when starting BlogStorm was to sit down in front of my Netvibes RSS reader and look through all 200 feeds to try and figure out how I found them and why I subscribed to them. The results were very revealing and I found that most of the feeds added in the past 12 months were added after a personal recommendation from another trusted blogger. Only about 3 of the feeds were discovered after spotting the site on Digg or a similar social network.

Making use of this statistic is simple - you need to make sure lots of trusted bloggers with large readerships recommend your new blog. Of course this is easier said than done.

My method was to make sure the blog had something different to offer my readers and to use this as a marketing strategy. The internet marketing blogosphere is so saturated that for a new blog to start from nowhere offering unique advice was refreshing and a lot of people were happy to link to it.

I also spent a lot of time emailing all of my Gmail address book contacts to individually introduce the blog to them and make sure they knew all about it. Don’t beg for links, just make sure they know about your blog and who you are.

Gaining citations is a hard process and involves interacting with bloggers one at a time over periods of weeks, months or years. Sometimes you won’t ever get a link from them but if you know a blogger and have communicated by email they are much more likely to recommend you to their readers at some time in the future.

Pillar articles

The first five articles on a new blog are without doubt the most important. You need to establish a theme for your blog so that people know what type of posts to expect and prove to people that not only are you a great writer but that they really should subscribe to your blog.

Get these first few articles right and you can gain a few hundred readers in the first week.

Linkbait

Linkbaiting is a great strategy but it needs to be done in the right way. There is little point in hitting the Digg front page with a “Top 10″ article as thats not going to earn you any citations from popular blogs, unless you are just wanting to drive traffic. The key aspect of linkbaiting is to craft your linkbait in a way that is likely to gain you links from authority blogs and news websites. Hitting the Digg front page will send you a nice traffic boost and probably give you link from hundreds of sites that scrape the Digg feed, but unless your content is linkable you won’t see a boost in readership from it.

For me the main benefit of linkbaiting is to gain citations from other bloggers but its also a good strategy for driving what I call brute force traffic.

Traffic Bait

At the start of my promotion I wanted to raise awareness of my blog so I set about trying to drive as much traffic as I could in the hope some of it would stick. I call this brute force traffic and it’s a fun but not very effective strategy.

300,000 visitors later the fact that most of it doesn’t stick is only too apparent. Visitors from Digg and other social networks don’t subscribe to your feeds for the simple reason they visit maybe 50 new sites every day and can’t possibly subscribe to them all.

The main benefit of traffic bait is to drive natural citations and build brand awareness. If somebody doesn’t subscribe the first time they come across your site maybe they will the next time.

Your content

Regular readers don’t normally like to read loads of linkbait posts all the time. It’s very important you publish a mixture of very high quality posts and linkbait posts to keep your regular readers happy.

Give people a reason to read

People subscribe to blogs for a whole variety of reasons. Before you can attract a new reader you need to be able to understand why they might want to read what you have to say. If you write about the latest gadgets you need to break the news before Gizmodo and offer better reviews than Engadget if you want to be noticed. Internet marketing bloggers need to produce tips and articles that will help their readers make more money online.

Persuade your visitors their lives would be better if they subscribed to your blog.

Checklist: 7 easy ways to increase your readership

Use a large RSS button in a prominent area on your page
Offer email subscriptions
Email people who forget to confirm their subscriptions
Hold contests only for RSS readers
Add a note to the bottom of every post pointing out your RSS feed
Show off your stats with FeedBurner
Include a link to explain what RSS is for your non internet savvy readers

This was a guest post by Patrick Altoft. Patrick started the BlogStorm internet marketing blog in June 2007 and gained over 1000 readers in 3 months. Subscribe to the RSS feed for more information on blog marketing & linkbait.

Build Brand Awareness with Google AdWords

2008-11-16T04:21:00.000-08:00

Google AdWords is one of the best places to advertise your website. Most people, however, avoid using it thinking that they would need a big budget in order to obtain results. Not at all, my friend, especially if your goal is to build brand awareness rather than to generate massive traffic on your site.

You can create mainly two types of ads on AdWords: text ads and image ads. While less popular around the Internet, the image ads represent a very efficient tool to build your brand. First of all because a catchy banner will make your name or logo stick in people’s head. Secondly, because you can play smart with the campaign settings in order to obtain a surprisingly low cost per impression.

Image ads have a cost per click just like text ads, and you can set this cost as low as $0.01 per click. At this range you will not get many clicks, that is for sure. As we mentioned before, however, your goal here is to build brand awareness, so as long as you are getting impressions you will be fine.

My advice would be to start with the lowest possible bid and raise it by one cent every week until you start getting the desired number of impressions. Some of my campaigns have a CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) as low as $0.05. That is, for every 1,000 times that my banner is displayed I paid, on average, $0.05.

In order to create an image ad you will need to log into your AdWords account, then click on “Create new keyword-targeted campaign.” Afterwards just follow the instructions until they ask you what type of ad you want to create. Notice that you will need to have a banner ready to go, and the 468×60 format usually is the most popular one.

9 Blog Hacks to Help Show Readers Your Best Stuff

2008-11-16T04:17:00.000-08:00

Are you letting your killer posts languish in your archives, sandwiched between January and March? How many great posts have you published in months gone by that new visitors will never see?

Readers come to your blog for its content, so it’s important to show them straight away what you have to offer.

Your recent posts will hopefully go some way towards doing this, but to rely on them alone is to short-change the long-term effort you’ve put into building your blog. This post contains 9 blog hacks you can use to show new (and regular) visitors the best that your blog has to offer.

1. Introduce highlighted content. This could be a list of reader favorites, popular posts, most commented posts, and so on. Most bloggers handle this with a ‘Popular Posts’ widget. This is one of the most important elements of your sidebar, as it shows new visitors straight away why your site is worth exploring.

2. Take control of your highlighted content. Though most bloggers handle ‘Popular Posts’ with a plug-in there are plenty of benefits to doing it manually. You can choose which posts you want to highlight, and mix up new and old content. If you’ve got a guest-post at another blog, or if one of your posts makes it big on social media, you can tailor your ‘Popular Posts’ to suit the incoming audience.

3. Make your highlighted content unmissable. Your list of killer posts is probably more useful and interesting to new visitors than anything else in your sidebar. The perfect place for it is right under your feed button, towards the top of your sidebar. If you want to be more inventive with your placement you can, but keep it above the fold.

4. Use images to draw attention to your best posts. Images are eye-contact magnets. Rather than displaying your best posts as text links, why not create images for them? The strategy I use on my own blog is to make a medium-sized button from the image I included with the post, and add the headline as text over the image. It’s something a lot of readers seem to enjoy interacting with, and it adds some more visual interest to the blog.

5. Regularly change your highlighted content. Don’t forget about regular readers when highlighting content. If your list is static then visitors will engage with it once and forget about it, thinking they’ve seen everything it has to offer.

If you regularly change your highlighted posts you give new and old visitors a reason to engage with the content you’ve highlighted. One advantage to using images to highlight your content, as suggested above, is that it’s immediately clear when you’ve added or subtracted an item from the list.

6. Give readers somewhere to go when they’ve finished reading. Many bloggers use a ‘related posts’ plug-in, and while I do like this plug-in, I suspect that it suffers somewhat from being outside the content of the post. Firstly, feed readers miss it. Secondly, readers turn down their attention levels once they’ve finished an article. One way to best ensure readers explore your related content is to recommend it at the end of your article. For example:

Interested in this topic? You might enjoy another article I’ve written called …

Adding the suggestion to your article will catch readers while they’re still in ‘reading mode’ and devoting maximum attention to your words. However, I’d suggest using this only when you’ve written something else directly related to the topic. If your recommendation is spot-on, readers are likely to listen to other recommendations you make in future.

7. Weave targeted internal links into your posts as you write. This can be done badly, or it can be done well. A good guide is to make sure your links are highly relevant to the keywords you’re making a hyperlink. Linking a specific match (for example, linking the words ‘writing with clarity’ to an article you’ve written on the same topic) will be appreciated by your readers. Linking vague terms (like ‘blogging’, or ‘making money’), however, is not good usability because it’s simply too unclear where the link will lead.

8. Mix up posts linking out with posts linking in. A great way to draw readers deeper into your blog is to highlight great content in dedicated posts. You could highlight a selection of the best posts last month, or the most popular posts on a specific topic. You might highlight posts from this time last-year, as Lifehacker does, or list some undiscovered gems from the early days of your blog.

9. Give readers a birds-eye view of your blog. Your archives present the perfect opportunity to allow readers to view your blog from a top-down perspective, with everything it has to offer on one page. The SRG-Clean Archives plug-in presents all your post headlines under sub-headings for each month, and displays the comment count besides each. This allows readers to browse through your headlines and explore those they’re interested in.

Targeting StumbleUpon Users

2008-11-16T04:12:00.000-08:00

What types of readers do you want to attract to your blog? Readers who regularly add comments and contribute to the conversation certainly are important. Other bloggers that are willing to link to you are also valuable. How about those who use social media websites to help your blog get more exposure and reach new readers?

StumbleUpon is one of the largest social media sites and best of all, it’s easier for new users to get traffic with StumbleUpon than with almost any other social site, especially Digg. Many bloggers receive hundreds or thousands of visitors everyday as a result of a handful readers stumbling their posts.

If you’re fortunate enough to have active SU users as subscribers you can quickly reach a much larger audience and gain new exposure. It’s like having a team of people who work for you going out and telling people about your blog. Simply put, StumbleUpon is one of the best ways for new bloggers to promote themselves.

If you do much reading online you’ve probably seen a number of articles recently about StumbleUpon. Most of these articles focus on 1) general information and use of SU, 2) tips for creating content and drawing traffic from SU, or 3) SU’s features.

My goal with this article is to cover 1) sending traffic to other SU users, 2) being a valued “friend,” and 3) how this will wind up benefiting you.

One of the big advantages of StumbleUpon is that it is not anonymous. What I mean by that is every time you use the system to stumble of page, review another user, or send a message, your avatar will be right there to give you credit. The idea is to help others, let your avatar and your activity show others that you are helping them, and naturally attract others like yourself that will return the favor.

StumbleUpon is consistently the number 1 or number 2 source of traffic to my blog. Shortly after I began seeing considerable traffic, I started to consider how I could maximize this traffic. Creating blog posts targeted towards social media users and including a link to remind readers to stumble helped me to keep the traffic coming. But I’ve also had great results from networking on StumbleUpon and targeting its users as readers of my blog.

One of my favorite features of SU is that it gives you more ways to connect with other users than most social media websites. It’s easy to find the right people to target, and then it’s possible to build a mutually beneficial relationship.

To target StumbleUpon users you basically want to find users who have interests that correspond to the topics covered in your blog and try to get them to visit your blog. If their interests match up and your content is solid, there’s a good chance they’ll stick around.

Finding the Right Readers

Step 1 – Check other blog posts in your niche.

To find those who have similar interests you’ll simply want to see who has been stumbling other blog posts on the same topics that you write about. I’m sure you know of a few other blogs in your niche that you can use to research. Preferably try some of the more popular blogs as they’ll probably have more stumbles.

If you’ve installed the StumbleUpon toolbar, all you have to do is visit a particular blog post and click on the icon that looks like a little speech bubble (shown below).

Now you’ll see who has reviewed this page and who has given it a thumbs up. You’ll also want to check your own blog posts to see who has been stumbling them. If they liked one of your posts, they’ll probably like others.

Step 2 – Visit their profiles.

By clicking through to the profile of the user you’ll see the interests that you have in common with them (on the right sidebar), and if you click on “About Them” you’ll see a link to their website or blog (if they have one). From their profile you can also see some other pages that they have recently stumbled.

Step 3 – Help them to notice you.

If you think they may be a good fit there are a few ways you can get them to notice you. First, StumbleUpon has a system that allows you to send a message to them (these messages do not go directly to their email, although notices of new messages do get sent. The messages can be read and sent from within the SU profile). Second, you can write a review of them by clicking on “Review Their Blog” in the sidebar.

Step 4 – Build a relationship.

Finding the right people to target is a great start, but in order to really benefit you’ll need to develop a mutually beneficial relationship. The concept is pretty simple, if you help others, they’re more likely to help you too. I’ve found most StumbleUpon users (at least those who have their own blogs) seem to follow this principle.

In the previous step we looked at the options you have to send messages to other users and submit reviews for them. Reviewing other users is especially productive. Everyone loves a good review. Most of the users that you review will take a look at your profile, and many will add you as a friend. Several times I have submitted a review for another user and then noticed them stumbling my blog posts.

My goal in developing relationships with other stumblers is to regularly read their blog posts and comment whenever possible and stumble the posts that I like (and I’m more prone to stumble posts from my friends than from others).

To make this easy, I created a folder in my RSS reader for my SU friends. Now whenever I go through these feeds I pay closer attention to the content and I look for opportunities to help my friends with a comment or a stumble.

As soon as I started doing this I started seeing those other bloggers stumbling some of my posts. Of course, not everyone that you help will return the favor, but many will. Submit as many reviews as possible, leave comments, stumble posts, do whatever you can to help send traffic to others.

Step 5 – Provide quality content.

Getting to know other stumblers is a great way to grow your traffic, but that doesn’t lessen the importance of having good, original content. In order to have real success with StumbleUpon this is necessary.

Start using StumbleUpon today to send more traffic to your friends, and see what happens.

How Microblogging Can Help You

2008-11-16T04:11:00.000-08:00

Microblogging allows you to develop skills that will make you a better blogger. It’s also a lot of fun. What more could you ask for?

Services like Twitter and Tumblr have a number of distinct benefits for bloggers, and in this post, I want to explain how you get the most out of these services.

If used correctly, these tips will have you making every word count, getting to know your readers, revolutionizing the art of link sharing and writing fearlessly.

Practice the art of economical expression

Microblogging is all about brevity. Twitter restricts each tweet to 140 characters, and while there’s no limit on Tumblr, it’s against the spirit of the service to be too verbose. As bloggers, we’re often told to omit unnecessary words, and to leave out the parts that people skip. Microblogging is the perfect medium to help you hone this useful skill.

Keep your finger on the pulse

Twitter, especially, is useful for this. It’s become something of a social bookmarking service, with users sharing links to interesting articles or breaking news. It’s a useful place not only to find great links but to gauge what people are talking about at the moment: all great fodder for blog posts.

Develop the skill of writing now, worrying later

Microblogging is casual. It’s not your magnum opus, so typos and errors in expression don’t matter. It’s the perfect platform to practice free-writing without constantly stopping to critique your words, or as Daniel puts it, to write like there’s no tomorrow, then edit.

Allow readers to get to know you better

Microblogging is a personal platform. Tumblr asks you to share links, images and quotes that capture your interest, even if they’re not at all related to the things you blog about. Twitter asks you to tell readers what you’re doing, and doing so can give them a little window into the person behind the blog. Personal connections are always stronger than informational ones.

You can also use a service like Twitter to socialize with readers and network with other bloggers.

Exercise your off-topic impulses

I can’t count the number of times I’ve had an impulse to blog something, only to find it probably wasn’t at all suited to the target audience of my blog. The link ends up buried in my bookmarks, having not received the attention it deserved.

Microblogging allows you to express this impulse without muddying the focus of your primary blog.

Share links with readers

How about a new way to handle the old blogging standard: link posts? Zen Habits handles its links with a dedicated Tumblr account that provides a regularly updated stream of relevant content from other sites. There’s nothing to stop you creating a Twitter account for your site, also, as Mashable has done.

When you update links via microblogging it becomes a lot easier to manage a higher volume of links. When someone pitches a link at you, why not add it to your site’s Tumblr account?

Public Relations Pitfalls

2008-11-16T04:08:00.000-08:00

In order to build a popular blog you’ll inevitably need to contact other bloggers, pitch unknown website owners and network efficiently with as many people as possible.

If that is the case, therefore, you need to make sure that you are not making PR blunders, as Chris Garrett calls them (Brian Clark teaches wannabes).

On the article he covered 10 common mistakes that bloggers commit when doing public relations:

Not using the bloggers name
Not reading anything on the blog
Or worse blatantly lying that you have
Copying and pasting a press release
Taking 2000 words to say nothing
Using a non-reply email address
Only supplying a telephone number
Cold calling late at night
Making it clear EVERY blogger in your niche is getting the exact same message
Being completely and utterly irrelevant

Personally I find that his first point is among the most important. Several times people that send me emails do not include my name, making me wonder if they knew who they were sending the email to in the first place.

Even worse, sometimes the sender puts a wrong name there. I have been called Darren countless times (although this could be a good sign…), Dave many more, and so on.

What about you, what drives you crazy when people try to pitch you something? Have you made any of these mistakes?

This post contains a clue for the Performancing Treasure Hunt.

Comment on Highly Ranked Posts

2008-11-16T04:07:00.000-08:00

Leaving (meaningful) comments on other blogs is a well known tactic for acquiring traffic and readers. Apart from picking a handful of blogs that are on your same niche, however, is there anything else you can do?

Sure. One alternative method is to research for specific posts that are ranked high in Google for your related keywords, and leave comments there.

Suppose you write extensively about “web design software,” ”logo design” and “futuristic design.” All you need to do is search in Google these terms and filter all the blog posts that appear among the first results. Once you have that list, just visit each one and leave a comment.

Ideally you want to add some value to the discussion, show your expertise and link to one of your own posts where you covered the issue in depth.

The logic is quite simple, these high ranked posts are probably getting many visitors from search engines (called organic traffic). These visitors are, in turn, looking for some specific information, and if they happen to see your comment and find it interesting, there is a high chance that they will follow the link to your site to find what other information you have there.

Let’s Exchange Social Media Contacts

2008-11-16T04:06:00.000-08:00

I created my Digg account back in 2005. During 2006 I also started using Stumble Upon, Reddit and Del.icio.us. Until a couple of months ago, however, I was taking mostly a passive role within these social bookmarking sites. I would visit them several times a day, but rarely I would take the time to submit the interesting stuff that I was finding on my browsing sessions.

This changed recently, when I realized that these communities would not work at all if everyone was to take such a passive role. I truly believe that social media is revolutionizing the way we communicate and work, so it was about time to contribute.

Long story short, I am now trying to be more active inside the social media sphere, and I thought it would be cool to write a post where all the readers could share their profiles and contacts. I browse around blogs and websites pretty much all day long, so if nothing else I will share with you the interesting stuff that I’ll come across. Here you can find my Stumble Upon profile and my Digg account. If you use them just add me as a friend and I will be glad to reciprocate.

Also, feel free to post your contacts and profiles below on the comment section, so that other readers will be able to add you as a friend as well.

Do Small Bloggers Have A Chance With Digg?

2008-11-16T04:04:00.000-08:00

I visit Digg on a regular basis to vote on stories that I like as well as to find new and interesting information. A few days ago I was reading through the items that were currently listed on the front page of the technology section, and was observing the rich getting richer and smaller bloggers having a difficult time cracking the upper echelon of Digg success.

The Digg voting system is intended to allow the most popular stories to get the most exposure and to prevent users from gaming the system. But one of the results of this system is that it heavily favors blogs and websites with huge audiences while those with smaller audiences are left with much more difficult odds of gaining exposure from Digg.

If you visit the technology section on a consistent basis, you no doubt see many of the same websites and blogs being featured almost daily. These sites consistently publish new content that Digg users appreciate and they have built very large audiences for a reason. Some of those that you’ll see on a regular basis include Ars Technica, Engadget, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Mashable, Valleywag, Lifehacker, and ReadWriteWeb, among others.

Admittedly, these sites all provide quality, timely articles. However, I can’t help but believe that there are plenty of other deserving stories in the blogosphere. I think most Digg users that visit the technology section already subscribe to most of these blogs, I know I do. In this case, wouldn’t Digg be a more useful resource to users if it introduced them to content sources that they don’t already have in their RSS reader?

At the particular moment that I was on the technology front page, 11 of the 15 stories were from what I would consider to be major players. Ars Technica had four items on the page, and Gizmodo and ReadWriteWeb had two each.

I understand that it’s not Digg’s responsibility to provide bloggers with the opportunity to reach thousands of new readers. Digg’s objective is to show the most popular stories to its visitors. However, as a Digg user, I would like to see more stories on the front page that are new to me and I would like to be able to discover new sources of information. There are thousands of blogs out there that provide quality content that would interest me, but I may never find most of them.

Many of the larger blogs mentioned earlier have such a huge following that only a very small percentage of readers need to digg a story in order to get it to the front page. On the other hand, a smaller blog may need a lot of help to get the necessary votes to reach the front page. The larger blogs often only need to include a Digg button somewhere on the post or in the RSS feed to convert a large subscriber base into a high number of diggs, an advantage that smaller blogs do not have.

So what options does a small blogger have to get to the front page? One option is to build a powerful Digg profile, which can take a lot of time and effort. Digg users with strong profiles (and lots of friends) have better chances of their submissions reaching the front page, but many Digg users frown on someone submitting their own content, so this may not be a great option. Digg’s shout system seems to be largely ineffective, so adding friends and sharing your story probably won’t get you very far either.

I believe this leaves small bloggers with only a few options, some of which Digg itself does not approve. The first method that I have used with occasional success is to create as much traffic as possible with other social media sites and hope that it translates into diggs. Another option is to email friends and contacts with a request for a Digg. This essentially does the same thing as the Digg shout system, except that it may actually work. There are even some groups of Digg users that agree to share their submissions with each other in order to gain more diggs for everyone. Alternatively, you could contact someone with a strong profile and ask them to submit your story. The last option, and one that has gotten many people banned from Digg, is to buy diggs.

What is Your Opinion?

I’d like to hear your thoughts on whether or not small bloggers have a chance with Digg. Do you think Digg would be a more useful resource if it didn’t constantly feature articles from the same sites? Do you have any methods that have worked well for getting diggs for your blog posts?

5 Steps to Become a Better Social Media Marketer

2008-11-16T04:03:00.001-08:00

If you want to be more effective with driving traffic to your website or blog with social media, here are five steps that are sure to improve your results.

1. Targeting the Right Sites

There are hundreds or maybe even thousands of social media sites that you could be using. Obviously no one has the time to use them all effectively, and some of them aren’t worth your time anyway.

One of the first things you will need to do is find a few sites that will work well for you. Of course the larger sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are popular choices because of the large traffic volumes that they send. But if you are looking for sites that can send high quality traffic, first look for niche-specific social media sites.

Also targeting a general news website like Digg or Reddit can be helpful because once you have developed a strong profile you can promote all types of content, not just stuff that fits into one specific niche.

2. Consistent Use

If you hope to ever become a true authority on social media, you’ll have to implement consistent use. As you use the sites that you have targeted every day you’ll become familiar with what works and what doesn’t, and you’ll get to know some of the other consistent users.

3. Development of Content that Appeals to the Audience

Driving traffic to your website through social media will require content development that meets the expectations of social media users. Creating blog content that targets social media users doesn’t mean that you have to alienate your subscribers, contrary to the opinion of some people. What it does mean is that you will have to dedicate the time and effort to find a topic that is of particular interest to your readers and present it in a way that also appeals to social media users. For example, social media users like lists, breaking news, photos, controversy, and informative topics.

4. Networking and Helping Others

Content creation and networking are the two most important aspects of social media marketing. Great content without a network will have a harder time becoming popular and a strong network is an asset, but its value will not be realized without great content.

Networking on social media sites involves voting for the submissions of others, leaving comments, adding friends, and generally getting to know other users. With a strong network your submissions and votes will get more attention and you’ll have some friends to call on when you need help getting those extra votes needed to get over the hump.

5. Conversion

In most cases just getting traffic to a website will not be your ultimate goal. Social media traffic is pretty much useless if you are not able to convert some of it into what you want. Maybe you want to convert the traffic into links, or maybe subscribers. The conversion rate of social media traffic will usually be lower than the rates of other types of traffic, but the huge volumes sent by social media can offset a lower conversion rate and make it very valuable traffic.

While these steps will all help you to reach your goals of promoting your site with social media, they all require one very important step - taking action. So go get started today and build some momentum with social media.

Direct Traffic: 5 Reasons Why You Should Care

2008-11-16T04:02:00.001-08:00

Undoubtedly you read a lot about bloggers improving traffic and finding new sources (I know I’ve written about this myself more than a few times). Social media, search engines, inbound links, commenting, they’re all common topics for bloggers who are aiming to increase their traffic levels. But very rarely do I read anything about improving the numbers of direct visitors.

If you track your blog stats, which I know most of you do, you’ll see a section of visitors that come directly to your blog rather than being referred from another website or from a search engine. Most of the time we’re more interested in the other traffic sources and we focus our attention on improving those results.

Why Is Direct Traffic Important?

1. When a large percentage of your visitors are coming directly to your blog, it shows that they are recognizing you and thinking of you. For example, if someone is looking for writing tips, they could go to a search engine and do a search, or they could type dailywritingtips.com in their browser and go directly there. In this situation, the visitor feels that there is no need to do a search for writing tips, he or she would rather go to Daily Writing Tips first because it is recognized as a valuable source of the information that is being sought.

2. Direct traffic is not dependant on shaky factors like search engine rankings or social media popularity. While these things can be outstanding and valuable sources of traffic, they are always going to be somewhat out of your control. If people know your blog and they choose to visit directly, there is nothing to stop them.

3. The traffic that you receive directly will likely be the most targeted traffic that you can get. People are coming to your blog because they want to find something specific or see what new posts have been published. In most cases they’re already familiar with your blog and they are choosing to come back.

4. Increased recognition leads to increased loyalty. Every blogger aims to be recognized by those within the niche or industry. Think about your own habits as a blog reader. Which blogs would you say that you are most loyal to? Are they also the same blogs that you visit directly? Most likely they are. With increased recognition and direct traffic you will receive more repeat visitors.

5. Direct visitors are warm leads. Whether you are selling products or just attempting to grow your subscriber base, your direct visitors will be the most responsive to whatever you are offering. Because they have chosen to visit your site specifically, they probably value your opinions over others.

How Can I Increase Direct Traffic?

1. Creating a strong brand is important to driving direct traffic. If readers know you as being the source of information on a particular topic and they remember things that they have learned from you in the past, they will be more likely to come directly to you. Potential visitors should ideally think of you instantly when they are looking for something specific. When I think about what blogs I visit directly, I think of ones like ProBlogger and Copyblogger that have done an excellent job of branding themselves.

2. In order to effectively draw direct traffic you will need to be remarkable in one way or another. For people to think of you first, there has to be some reason that you stand out from the crowd. Of course, being remarkable is not easy, but it should be the goal.

3. Use a domain name that is easy to remember. Daniel wrote an excellent article The 7 Characteristics of Good Domain Names. If people can’t remember your domain name it will be very hard for you to build up a substantial amount of direct traffic.

What Are Your Thoughts?

Do you pay much attention to your direct traffic numbers? Have you found any specific ways to increase the amount of direct traffic that you receive?

10 Important Facts of Blog Promotion

2008-11-16T04:00:00.000-08:00

Almost every blogger aims to grow their blog and reach a larger audience. Unfortunately, most new bloggers don’t know much about promoting a blog when they are just getting started. The good news is you will learn pretty quickly if you are consistently involved and working at promoting your blog. Here are ten things that I have learned to be true from my experience.

1. Building Significant Search Engine Traffic Will Take Time

New blogs generally take several months, at least, before they gain enough trust from search engines to produce any type of significant flow of traffic. If you are planning to focus on search engines as your primary source of traffic, you would be well advised to also focus on some other sources of traffic, especially in the early months.

Building a blog that is search engine-friendly is critical if you want to maximize search traffic, so take care of that from the start and focus on creating great content that others will talk about and link to.

2. Not All Traffic Is Equal

No two sources of traffic are quite the same. I get a good percentage of the traffic at my blog through social media, and I can attest to the fact that social media traffic is generally less responsive and less likely to stick around than visitors from most other sources. Focusing on stats without looking at the true results can cause a bit of an illusion. Sure, visitors are great, but are they leaving after being on the blog for 30 seconds and never returning?

Search engine traffic is highly sought after because these visitors are actively looking for what you have to offer. But other types of traffic have strong points too. Visitors who are referred from another blog will generally be more responsive since they have been recommended by someone they trust. Every source of traffic has pros and cons, so try to take these things into consideration when you are promoting your blog and analyzing the results.

3. Consistent Posting Is Key

Most bloggers need to keep publishing new posts in order to keep traffic at a certain level. Some bloggers are able to generate large amounts of search engine traffic to older posts to the point that traffic will be fairly sustained without new posts, but this is pretty rare. New posts keep subscribers coming back, they keep social media votes coming, and they keep adding new pages to search engine indexes.

Posting consistently doesn’t mean that you have to post every day, it simply means that you need to publish content on a regular basis, whatever that may be. Almost every blog that successfully draws traffic is publishing new posts with some consistency.

4. Consistent Traffic Is Almost Impossible

Although posting needs to be consistent to keep traffic levels up, that doesn’t mean that it will keep traffic levels consistent. Every blog has ups and downs and two days are rarely the same. This is a natural occurrence and it should be embraced or else it can become very frustrating. Make sure that you enjoy the times when traffic is high, and keep on plugging away to get through the slower times. Blogging would almost be boring is traffic levels didn’t fluctuate like they do.

5. Repeat Visitors Should Be the Goal

Yes, it’s great to see an impressive number of unique visitors arriving at your blog, but how many of them will be back? Repeat visitors are the lifeblood of blogs. Subscribers, of course, are most likely to keep coming back, so focusing on subscribers is typically a good thing.

Repeat visitors will not only help to improve your overall traffic flow and stats, more importantly they will be your most responsive visitors in terms of comments, social media votes, sales, and just about anything else. As they keep coming back and reading your blog, you will be earning more of their trust and your network will grow.

6. Links Help In Several Ways

Building inbound links is a priority for most bloggers, and for good reason. They drive click-through traffic from other blogs, they increase your exposure around the blogosphere, and they help to boost your search engine rankings. Link building is often prioritized because of search engine rankings, but the other factors should not be overlooked. If you blog in a competitive niche, recognition and exposure will be critical in convincing visitors that they should pay attention to you. Getting a few links from respected blogs can help with search engine traffic, but the added credibility that you get can be just as important, especially for newer bloggers.

7. Balance Is Important

Diversity in traffic will help you to avoid losing a huge percentage of your visitors if something unforeseen happens. Search engine rankings are not permanent, especially with Google being so ready and willing to penalize blogs who they feel have violated their guidelines. If you rely too heavily on search engine traffic you could find yourself losing a big portion of your traffic at any given time.

Also, social media traffic is extremely inconsistent, so just because you have been getting decent traffic doesn’t mean it will continue. The best approach is to spread things out and focus on growing traffic from several sources rather than just one. That way you will always be safe and you won’t depend on a particular source for your livelihood.

8. Smaller Sources of Traffic Shouldn’t Necessarily Be Ignored

Not all sources of traffic will send thousands of visitors, but that doesn’t mean that they are not valuable. For example, participating in forums is likely to drive some traffic to your blog, but not tons. However, those visitors can be very valuable because they have met you or learned from you through the forum and they’ll be more likely to subscribe and become a loyal reader.

Likewise, leaving comments on other blogs will bring some traffic, but it is rare that any one comment will bring a lot of visitors. Still, this traffic is valuable because many times they have clicked through due to something that you said catching their attention.

Don’t simply assume that traffic is measured only in terms of numbers. Smaller sources of traffic have been instrumental in building many successful blogs.

9. Networking Is Critical

All successful bloggers are surrounded by a strong network of other successful bloggers. This is something that I didn’t really think much about before I started blogging, but I quickly came to realize the importance of networking.

A strong network will provide you with friends and colleagues that can be a help when you need some advice, they can provide links to your blog, they can give you social media votes, they can be an inspiration and encouragement to you, and they can even wind up being your partners in future projects. Being a strong networker is all about being willing to help others and being proactive in meeting others.

10. Blog Traffic Can Be Bought for Relatively Little Money

If you are interested in getting some extra promotion or growing your blog quickly, there are a number of affordable advertising options that will drive real traffic to your blog. Pay Per Click ads can be very effective and inexpensive (depending on what words and phrases you bid on). StumbleUpon advertising is another option. You can purchase their traffic for just $0.05 per visitor. Even banner advertisements on other blogs can be relatively cheap. Running an ad for a month or more will give you exposure to a new audience and if you were to calculate a cost-per-click it is usually pretty low.

Extending Your Reach from Blogger to Influencer: 12 Practical Tips

2008-11-16T03:59:00.000-08:00

Many top bloggers are not just seen as bloggers. Some have been able to transcend the role of blogger and have become icons of their industries that have significant impact and influence on others. A successful blogger may be able to attract readers and make money through their blog in one way or another, but an influencer’s reach will extend well beyond their own blog into the niche as a whole.

Common Characteristics of Influencers:

Large Audience - The size of a blogger’s audience can be an indicator or influence, but this is not always the case. Not every blogger with a large audience truly is an influencer, and some bloggers with comparatively smaller audiences are in fact influencers. In general though, the size of a blogger’s audience is one of the measuring sticks of influence.

Vibrant Community - Every influencer will have a very active and enthusiastic community around the blog. The community is really what dictates a blogger’s influence.

Actions Are Followed By Others - An influencer by definition will have an effect on the actions of others. Other bloggers may try to imitate the habits and tendencies of influencers, plus their recommendations will be trusted by a much higher percentage of the audience than a typical blogger.

Mentioned Frequently On Other Blogs - The names of influencers will appear regularly on other blogs throughout the niche. This is generally a pretty accurate gauge of which bloggers are most influential in a specific niche.

Reasons for Aiming to Become an Influencer:

Improved Overall Success - As an influencer, you will basically be securing the success of your blog. Others will want to read what you have to say and they will trust your opinions. Additionally, any new blogs or other projects that you start will be extremely easier as you will already have an established audience and reputation from which to build.

Improved Credibility - While average bloggers are struggling to build trust and credibility, the influencer has already accomplished this, and it will affect almost everything that he or she produces. In the competitive world of blogging, credibility is invaluable.

Increased Ability To Help Those That Are In Your Network - As an influencer, you will have a tremendous ability to offer help and assistance to your friends and contacts. A simple mention and link from your blog could make a world of difference for your friends.

Security - Are Darren Rowse’s subscribers going to unsubscribe if ProBlogger has a few lower quality posts? I don’t think so. An influencer’s reputation is enough to increase the security of a blog.

Word of Mouth Referrals and Links - Influencers benefit greatly from referrals that come from their readers. As an influencer, you will generally receive a lot more referrals and inbound links than other bloggers.

Tips for Becoming an Influencer:

1. Be Patient - Becoming an influencer takes a considerable amount of time. Don’t expect to launch a blog and gain a huge influence on your niche right away.

2. Be Consistent - In order to keep making progress towards becoming an influencer, you must be consistent and diligent with your blogging efforts. No one ever ascended to the role of influencer by sitting around and waiting for it to happen.

3. Grow Your Knowledge - Influencers are generally very knowledgeable on the topics that they cover, and you should never stop learning and growing. The more knowledge you have at your disposal, the better off you will be as a blogger.

4. Focus on Quality Rather Than Quantity - The quantity and frequency with which you post is far less important than the quality of your information. Never sacrifice quality in order to produce more content.

5. Be Original - Influencers are not followers. In order to stand out and show your value to others in your niche, make every effort to be original and don’t get stuck in the rut of following blogging trends.

6. Be Fair - Others in your niche must respect you in order to be an influencer. Always be careful about how you word things and how you come across to your readers.

7. Brand Yourself - All bloggers need to be working towards achieving a strong image in the eyes of readers. Influencers typically have been very effective at branding themselves.

8. Take Pride in Helping Others - Aim to meet the needs of your readers and those in your network. If you are able to help others to be more successful, you will be well on your way to becoming more influential.

9. Be Focused - Try to maintain a strong focus on your niche and stray off topic as little as possible.

10. Don’t Limit Yourself to Your Blog - In order to become an influencer you may have to increase your exposure by writing guest posts for other blogs, leaving valuable comments on other blogs, participating in forums, etc. All of these things can help you to reach new readers that you would not be able to reach otherwise.

11. Network Online - The network around a blogger is a huge factor in that blogger’s influence. There are a number of ways to network online, including social media, emailing other bloggers, commenting, posting in forums, etc.

12. Network Offline - In addition to networking online, most influencers have increased the strength of their contacts by networking offline as well. Conferences and seminars are just two examples of offline networking opportunities.

Freelance Bloggers: 12 Tips to Promote Your Work With Social Media

2008-11-16T03:57:00.000-08:00

There are growing numbers of bloggers making money by writing for other blogs. With the popularity and success of multi-authored blogs and news-related blogs, this appears to be a trend that will continue as there is a considerable need for valuable, well-written content that draws attention. As a paid writer, if the work that you produce consistently draws traffic, comments, and links, blog owners will want you to write for them. You’ll have more repeat opportunities as well as more new opportunities that find you.

Social media provides an excellent opportunity for freelance bloggers to promote their writing and draw traffic and exposure. Many paid writers assume their job is over as soon as the post is submitted. However, a little bit of extra effort to promote that post with social media could make a world of difference in the success of the post and in the amount or work that you get. Blog owners are paying for results. If you can outperform other freelance bloggers by delivering some extra traffic with social media, your services will be more complete and more effective.

Why is Social Media a Great Fit for Freelance Bloggers?

1. Portability - With social media you can build profiles on various sites that will help you with just about anything that you write. You can essentially build profiles and take them with you from job to job. Whether you write for one blog or for ten, your profiles with social media can help you to promote it all. When you start a new gig writing for a different blog, your social media profiles are ready and able to produce results right away.

2. Noticeable Results - Many blog owners that are paying writers are routinely watching stats to see which writers and which posts are producing the best results. With social media you will be able to generate enough traffic to your writing that the blog owners will take notice.

3. It’s Free - Promoting your work with social media will cost you nothing. Once you have been active, learned how the sites work, and built profiles, you can quickly promote your work at no cost.

4. Exposure - There is almost no other way to get your work in front of as large of an audience as you can with social media. If you’re using the most appropriate sites and categories to promote your work, the visitors that arrive will be fairly well targeted.

My Experience Promoting Paid Blog Posts with Social Media:

5. StumbleUpon is Key - A decent StumbleUpon profile is extremely valuable. I’m not one of the top users, but my profile is effective enough that I can submit or review one of my articles and get the ball rolling. If the article is worthy, several of my friends will wind up seeing it and giving a thumbs up or a review, leading to more traffic. StumbleUpon is also very flexible. Almost anything you produce will have a place on StumbleUpon if it is high quality. Best of all, you can start using StumbleUpon and producing results amost immediately. It’s not like Digg where you have to have a very strong profile to have a good chance at drawing traffic.

I almost never give a thumbs up to content on my primary blog, as I leave it up to readers to determine whether or not it is worthy of a stumble. However, very frequently I’ll give a thumbs up to my work on other blogs. Submitting your own content to social media can be a sticky issue for some people. I personally don’t see any problem with promoting your own work on other blogs, but I would be interested to hear your opinions on the subject. From my perspective it’s just a little something extra that I am able to provide to the blog owner that is paying me for my work.

6. Don’t Ignore Niche Sites - If you tend to cover specific topics or industries in your various projects, niche social media sites can be another great resource. While niche sites will not be able to drive as high a volume of traffic as the major social media sites, the quality of traffic will be much higher and visitors will generally be more interested.

7. Sharing Can Help - Most social media sites allow some type of functionality for sharing links with your friends. When appropraite, be willing to share your work with friends that you think will be interested. Many bloggers do this regularly for their own work, but not too many do so for their paid writing.

Some Tips for Getting Started:

8. Start with Major Sites - Unless almost all of your paid writing is highly targeted on a specific niche, general social media sites will give you the best results. Building a profile with a site like StumbleUpon will allow you to promote a higher percentage of your work. If you are just getting started, focus on what will give you the best all-around results.

9. Go for the Most Noticeable Results - One of your goals should be to create results that will get noticed by blog owers. If they notice that your work is typically bringing a lot of traffic, your work will be more valuable to them. This is another reason to focus on major social media sites. If you’re writing for a blog that draws decent traffic, the blog owner may not think very much about a niche social media site that send a few hundred visitors to one of your posts. On the other hand, a few thousand visitors from a major social media site would be very noticeable.

10. Become an Avid User - Take the time to use the social media sites that you’ve targeted on a regular basis, not just when you need to promote one of your posts. Being a strong social media user involves much more than just promoting you own work. Get to know the site and be looking for opportunities to help others as well.

11. Don’t Force It - Not every blog post will be a good fit for social media. When you write something that just isn’t likely to draw much interest from this audience, don’t force it. You’ll have better results when you stick to promoting your best work that is well-suited to social media.

12. Build a Network of Friends - Regardless of which social media site you are using, friends are a significant part of your success. Be sure to dedicate enough time and effort to build up your social media relationships. Networks of friends aren’t only important on the social media sites themselves. Many bloggers are able to help promote their work by emailing a few other blogging friends to request social media votes when they need them. Building a strong network of other bloggers can be a big help in this way. Of course, you need to be ready and willing to help others whenever you can.

From Building Your Website To Building Your Brand

2008-11-16T03:56:00.002-08:00

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that all there is to being an online entrepreneur is building websites and that monetizing them is the only way to make money. Is that really all there is to it, or does being an online entrepreneur have far more potential than meets the eye?

You may not realize it but, with every project of yours, you are actually building a brand around yourself as well. Sure, you may have only been interested in branding as far as your websites are concerned but, like it or not, you are the person behind them and, as such, a lot of people, especially other webmasters will judge you based on how successful your projects are.

Why would you want to ignore this aspect and not use it to your advantage? Let’s say that your first project has been a huge success and that the community has given you credit for your achievements. As such, every new project you choose to launch will have an important advantage as far as exposure is concerned, as a result of the brand you’ve created around yourself with your first project and as a result of the contacts you have made.

Bloggers who you have been in good contact with will gladly write about your new projects and the effects will be more than worthwhile. Let’s face it, a project launched by a person who is both well-known and respected stands far more chances at being successful compared to a similar project launched by an online entrepreneur who does not yet have a strong brand associated with his or her name.

But with such important advantages also comes a great deal of responsibility because, in the end, you have a reputation to protect and it is inevitable that people will judge you based on your achievements as well as based on your flops. While they will give you credit for the things you do right, they will also show no mercy once you make mistakes and, as such, your brand might have to suffer.

Being well-known will never guarantee the fact that a certain project of yours turns out to be a huge success. Yes, you will receive more exposure and yes, that will increase your chances of maximizing results but no matter how popular you are, you will never be above failure.

In the scenario I have previously mentioned, if you are popular for being behind a successful project, there will indeed be some great advantages you can take advantage of but on the other hand, rest assured that, if you continue by launching one flop after another, your reputation won’t be what one would call stainless and, as such,
others will not be as thrilled to cover every new project of yours as they initially were.

You have to understand that there is more to being a webmaster than simply making money as a result of monetizing your websites and you have to understand how important the brand you are building around yourself can be and why taking this aspect into consideration is a must.

Note from Daniel: I agree with Alan’s points, but I think there is an even more important issue around it: integrity and ethics. If you keep your integrity and work under ethical values on all your online projects people will respect you for that. If, on the other hand, you fall short to using shady and unethical techniques, even if just once, your reputation and credibility might get damaged for good. So think twice before trying to find shortcuts to hard work. There are none.

Website Traffic Series Part 1: Using Web Design and CSS Galleries

2008-11-16T03:56:00.001-08:00

Like it or not, if you want to be successful on the Internet, you will need to generate traffic to your websites or blogs. It does not matter if your goal is to make money with advertising, to sell ebooks, to generate leads to your business or simply to share your ideas; if people are not visiting your site your efforts will be worthless.

That is why I decided to start this “Website Traffic Series,” where on each post I will cover one different traffic generation strategy. Now I am not trying to reinvent the wheel, since I know that there are plenty of advice out there on this topic. What I will do is to summarize what is known about each strategy, and break it down into “Concept,” “Doest it work?” and “How to get started.” That is, I want to provide some practical advice and a reality check with my own experiences at the same time.

If things go all right this so be a long series, so stay tuned!

Part 1: Web Design and CSS Galleries

Concept: There are literally hundreds of web design and CSS galleries around the Internet. Basically these galleries gather and filter creative and good looking websites from around the world (mostly CSS based, but some also feature Flash and XHTML) and showcase them for the visitors.

Some of these galleries are extremely popular, and they can send thousands of visitors your way if you get featured there. There is also a bowling effect from smaller galleries that end up picking the designs featured on the top sites, so the overall traffic boost could last several days.

Does it work?: Yes, provided you can get featured on one of the top rated galleries. Achieving that is the hard part, though. A unique design will not suffice, it must be appealing and creative.

Daily Blog Tips has a unique design, for instance, but I doubt that it would get featured on one of these galleries because the design is too simple and minimalistic.

Another point to consider is the quality of the traffic. Most of the incoming visitors from the galleries will be interested in your design, and not necessarily in your content. Should you have a good strategy to convert them (i.e. highlights of your best content, clear subscription options and so on), however, there is good chance that some of these visitors will like your site and return later for the content and not for the design alone.

How to get started: First of all you need to have a creative and appealing design. If you are good with CSS you could do it yourself, otherwise hire a professional designer. You can improve your chances by using a clever color scheme, innovative navigation menus and so on.

Once the design is in place you will just need submit it to the galleries and cross your fingers. Check The Great Website Design Gallery Roundup for a complete list of the galleries and a detailed description of the features included on each one.

Over to the readers: Have you had any experience with web design or CSS galleries in the past? How did it work out?

Website Traffic Series

The Huge RSS Icon Experiment: Subscribe Today!

2008-11-16T03:55:00.000-08:00

I always preach that blogging and online marketing is about experimentation, so here we go with another experiment. That big arse RSS icon (I know it hurts the eyes, sorry about that!) is to remind you visitor, you that have not subscribed to Daily Blog Tips yet, that you should! Else you risk losing the simple yet valuable tips that we publish every day.

Considering that it is 7 pm of Wednesday here, I will track the results on Friday and see how many visitors we encouraged to become RSS subscribers.

On The Importance of Adressing People By Their Names

2008-11-16T03:54:00.002-08:00

Suppose you are inside a crowded place, say a stadium or a concert, with thousands of people talking, laughing and screaming at the same time. In similar situations we are trained to filter that external noise, so that we can focus on what our friends are saying nearby. Our brain is extremely powerful, and it does that job quite effectively.

There is one word, however, that would catch your attention even if it was uttered by someone far away, passing through your filters (well, one word except “Fire!”). It is your name.

That is right, your name is the most important word in the universe for you. Did you ever turned your head involuntarily to someone that uttered your name, only to find out that he was actually calling someone else? When that happens to me I just think “Oh, another Daniel.” It is a weird experience nonetheless.

Now, what does that has to do with websites and the Internet? Well, if you think about it, the Internet is just like a crowded stadium. Among emails, wikis, blogs and social media you have millions of people talking at the same time.

Moreover, if you have a website or blog, I am pretty sure that sooner or later you will want to catch the attention of someone. It could be to request an interview, to propose a deal to a partner, to offer an advertising opportunity to a company, to get the feedback from someone about an article that you wrote.

Regardless of the motive, if get used to addressing people by their names, you will have higher chances of success.

Here is a simple example that illustrates the case. I get dozens of email daily, most of them asking me to visit a link, to review a product or to answer a question. While I try to answer all of them anyway, the ones the start with “Dear Sir” or “Dear Daily Blog Tips Team” kind of lose my interest right away. Why? Cause it communicates to me that the person didn’t even take the time to visit my site or to read a couple of articles.

The emails that start with “Hi Daniel” or “Dear Daniel Scocco,” on the other hand, get me in a more positive mood, and my answer to them is prompt and detailed. I know that the person at least knows who I am, so I become glad to help her out.

Additionally, addressing people by their names is important not only when dealing with emails. If you are going to quote an article, for instance, do not write “The folks over the XYZ blog” or “The XYZ blog.” Try to discover who wrote the article and use his name on the credit (I must admit I also slip on this point sometimes).

It might sound exaggerated, but I am pretty sure that people would be more likely to link to you if you credit them by their names.

It is a sign of respect, after all.

Website Traffic Series Part 2: Submtting Your Content to Blog Carnivals

2008-11-16T03:54:00.001-08:00

On the first part of this series we covered how you can generate traffic to your website via Web Design and CSS galleries. On the this second part I want to cover one of the most basic traffic generation methods for bloggers: Blog Carnivals. (By the way, this will be a long series. The basic stuff is coming first, but soon we’ll have more salty techniques, so stay tuned!)

Concept: A Blog Carnival is basically an event where bloggers that cover a particular topic will get together and post a collection of their articles. Usually you have one hosting blog and the participants. The participants send the links to their articles and posts, and the hosting blog will then publish all the links in a single post.

There are all sorts of carnivals around the web: weekly, monthly, with fixed host, with variable host, standalone editions and so on.

Does it work?: Yes. If you manage to participate in a Blog Carnival, at the very minimum you will gain a couple of backlinks and some incoming visitors. Obviously the overall result will depend on the quality and size of the carnival in question.

When I was promoting my first blog a couple of years ago I used to participate in many blog carnivals, and some of them would bring as much as 500 visitors and dozens of backlinks.

Here is a quote from Steve Pavlina who also used them:

In my early traffic-building days, I’d do carnivals submissions once a week, and it helped a great deal in going from nothing to about 50,000 visitors per month

Over the time this practice lost some popularity, but you can still find valuable blog carnivals around the Internet, or even try to create your own.

How to get started: The easiest way to get started is to visit http://blogcarnival.com/bc/ and to browse around for carnivals that are aligned with your niche. Check the ones that have a “Next edition” coming out soon, and submit your best articles.

There are also many self-hosted carnivals around the web, where a blog owner will just publish a post asking for its readers to contribute with articles around a given topic, so keep an eye open for those as well.

Finally, depending on the size of your readership, you could also try to start your own carnival. You could host the first edition on your blog and then get other bloggers to host the subsequent editions.

Website Traffic Series

Website Traffic Series Part 3: Leaving Comments on Other Blogs

2008-11-16T03:53:00.002-08:00

On the first part of this series we talked about how you can generate traffic to your website by getting it featured on Web Design and CSS galleries. On the second part we talked about Blog Carnivals. Today we will cover another basic yet effective strategy: leaving comments on other blogs.

The concept: Blogs are conversations. Most of them, in fact, allow any user to post a comment at the end of every article. Usually you just need to write down your name and email (kept private) and publish your comment.

Most blogging platforms also allow you to insert your website URL, which will then be used to hyperlink your name to your website.

Should people get curious, angry, excited or feel any other emotion while reading your comment, there is a good chance that they will click on the name to see what kind of website you have on the other side. If the blog where you left a comment is a popular one, you could end up receiving hundreds of visitors from a single comment.

Does it work?: Yes, but mainly when your blog is new. You will still receive traffic from blog comments even if your blog is one or two years old, but by that time I expect that your average daily traffic will be too large to be able to notice the blog comments incoming visitors.

There are also some guidelines that you should follow. First of all do not spam as many blogs as possible with as many comments as possible. People will recognize a self-promotional comment miles away, and usually they will just delete it (apart from the fact that it is pretty lame to leave comments just for the sake of traffic).

So first of all make sure that you are adding value to the conversation with your comment. That should be something easy and natural if you comment on blogs that are related to your niche. You should have endless things to talk about the topics you like after all, right?

Secondly, there are certain types of comments that will attract more attention: the first comment, funny comments, thought provoking comments and controversial comments are just a few examples.

Finally, pay attention to the size of the blog where you will be engaging in the conversation, and on how active the community over there is.

How to get started: Just create a selection of blogs that are relevant to your niche and engage on the discussion there. Ideally you should subscribe to their RSS feed so that you can keep updated and follow up with comments as soon as an interesting post is published.

If you don’t know many blogs on your niche just head to Google and start searching, it shouldn’t be difficult to find heaps of them.

Over to the readers: Have you used the strategy of leaving comments on other blogs to generate traffic? How did it work?

Website Traffic Series

Website Traffic Series Part 4: Faking A Website Sale

2008-11-16T03:53:00.001-08:00

In the previous parts of this series we talked about generating traffic to your website with CSS galleries, Blog Carnivals and by leaving comments on other blogs. Those were all basic techniques, so lets talk about something less trivial today: faking a blog sale.

Before going further, though, keep in mind that I consider this technique to be unethical. I try to keep a 100% transparency approach on all my projects and endeavors, therefore I would never fake something to generate traffic, and I don’t recommend other people to do so either.

But if we are going to talk about all the traffic generation tricks and techniques (that is the plan with this series) we need to cover the “black hat” methods as well, if nothing else for the sake of discussion and to keep people aware of what might be going around the web.

The concept: The idea is pretty simple, you make it appear that you are selling your blog, and try to generate as much buzz as possible around it. The traffic might come from several sources.

If you list your blog sale on big online forums or marketplaces (some free and some paid) you will inevitable receive visits from the curious folks and potential buyers. Sometimes thousands of them.

If your blog is somewhat popular and has a loyal following you might also receive traffic from the readers that will write about the sale on their blogs or websites.

After a couple of weeks you just mention that the reserve price was not met, and you call the sale off.

Does it work?: Overall no, it does not work. First and foremost because the traffic that you will receive will not be targeted. People will visit your website because they are planning to buy, or because they are just curious to see what is going on. Sure some people might like the content and come back in the future, but I would say that they represent 10% of the total traffic.

I happened to list some of my blogs for sale in the past, but because I really intended to sell them. If I remember well I received around 2,000 visitors from the marketplaces (Sitepoint), but the sale listing had no impact on my traffic levels or RSS subscribers on the following weeks.

There is also a negative effective connected with this practice. Some of your loyal readers might feel deceived. If they stop trusting you they might also stop visiting your website.

How to get started: Just don’t get started! As you can see the couple thousand visitors that you might end up receiving using this strategy are not worth the damage that you will do to your credibility.

Over to the readers: Those are my opinions are least. Do you think that it is OK to fake a blog sale? What about the kind of traffic that you would get using this method?

Website Traffic Series

Open Discussion: What Do You Think of Internet Marketers? (aka the long sales page gurus)

2008-11-16T03:52:00.000-08:00

First of all, notice that there are several types of Internet marketers, the questions I raise in this post regard specifically the ones that use long sales pages and several other questionable tactics to sell their products and services.

Brian Clark from Copyblogger is certainly an Internet marketer. He recently launched a program called Teaching Sells, where he managed to create an initial buzz around it, had affiliates on board and so on. Yet his tactics were down to earth, and I am pretty sure that no one had anything negative to say about his program.

The same cannot be said about people that resort to the long sales pages, though. If you navigate around the web you will notice that there is a great deal of controversy around these practices.

What do I think?

So what do I think about them? Firstly I know that for sure there are honest people selling legitimate products with long sales pages and hype marketing, but even in those cases I don’t like their approach.

It appears to me that these guys are just trying too hard. They use several persuasive (and sometimes even deceptive) techniques to sell, and I don’t like that.

For instance, they try to create a feeling of scarcity by saying that they product will stop selling after 24 hours, or that only x number will be available. Secondly, they also load their sales offering with thousands of dollars in bonuses. The product itself often costs less than $100, but if you buy you will get over $10,000 in bonuses. It makes me scratch my head.

Sometimes there are even pictures around with the guy using his laptop from a Caribbean beach, or images of the cars and houses that he bought making money with the secrets that he is about to reveal to you….

An example

There is a recent example that illustrates the case. Joel Comm is a very famous Internet marketer (apparently also a millionaire and New York Times best selling author). Recently he launched his AdSense Secrets book on the market for just $9.95. The book used to sell for $97 a couple of years ago, so you can imagine the amount of buzz that it raised.

A couple of days after the initial buzz, however, some people started to discover that once you bought the book you became automatically subscribed to a course with a monthly subscription of $30. That is, supposing you didn’t do anything about it, after 30 days you would be billed for another $30, and so forth every other month.

Truth be told, Joel did mention that on the sales page. The problem is that the sales page was HUGE, and out of 6500 words (I went there to count) only a single sentence was mentioning the subscription. Needless to say that dozens of people bought the ebook without realizing they were getting automatically subscribed to the monthly deal.

The deal was so big that many bloggers started calling him out, and he posted a public apology, saying that the problem was on his shopping cart….

Integrity in the first place

I am pretty sure that those Internet marketers are nice guys, the only problem with them is that sometimes they put their desire to make money above their principles and above integrity.

It is about the path you decide to follow. Personally I prefer to make a fraction of what they make, but to keep my principles and the respect from other people.

Returning to Joel Comm. The guy is a marketing genius, that is for sure. I really think he is much smarter than most of us (including myself), and he is light years ahead of most people in terms of Internet experience. Yet if you head to his blog you will notice that he has 2,300 RSS subscribers. Why is that? A guy with his brain and experience should have 50,000 RSS subscribers. I might be wrong, but I think it has something to do with the path he decided to follow.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to preach anyone, and I also did several mistakes in the past and probably will still do them in the future. Regardless of that, I do try to put integrity above everything else on my life.

What do you think?

Those are my opinions, and I know they might not be correct. What do you think about marketers that use long sales page and other persuasive marketing techniques? Would you be willing to use them to make more money in the long run?

Breaking the Digg Code

2008-11-16T03:51:00.002-08:00

The guys from Invesp.com just released a special report titled “Breaking the Digg Code.” It is a small PDF with 21 pages, but packed with information about how to get your stories popular on Digg. In fact the tagline is: a step by step instruction to getting on the first page of Digg in four weeks or less.

I scanned through the report and the information seems to be solid. They have a nice step by step approach that you can follow easily. In order to get it you will need to subscribe to their blog either via RSS or email.

On a side note, remember that I don’t think you should try to game Digg or any other social bookmarking site. The problem is that sometimes even unique and quality content will get lost among the huge number of submissions that these sites get daily, so understanding how the system works can improve your chances or getting the deserved exposure.

Careful When Asking for Stumbles!

2008-11-16T03:51:00.001-08:00

Just a month or two ago, StumbleUpon has started doing some spring cleaning by banning accounts that discovered spam websites and submitted them to the system. If you skipped that part of the Terms & Conditions, know that StumbleUpon forbids the use of one’s account for incentivization or promotion of websites. Inviting users to vote for one website or exchanging stumbles is also strictly frowned upon.

The crusade against spammers is not over. Up until now, the only website banned from the StumbleUpon system was Digital Point, a forum previously infamous for the exchange of stumble or diggs (they now forbid it). StumbleUpon goes further this time, by banning websites with certain voting patterns. In brief, the website received votes from the same group over and over again. One example is http://zedomax.com/ (you can try to stumble it).

Here is the dreaded message you receive if a websites has been banned by StumbleUpon:

But what does lead to this extreme measure? If you have used your account so far for promoting your website, both your account and your website might be already flagged. If you’ve been trying to fake a system that delivers impressive results, it’s time to get clean and start using it properly.

Actively contribute to the StumbleUpon community! Take at least 30 minutes to build up your profile. Try to discover interesting articles, which can turn popular on their own.
It’s a social website, so start socializing! Make friends, review their profiles, and communicate. Find people that share common interests, befriend them or simply say hi. It will pay off in the long run.
Prove some altruism – be less about yourself and more about the community. Don’t submit your own articles; focus on the quality and less on the traffic. If you have a good piece, people will be naturally inclined to stumble it.

Note from Daniel: I believe we can summary this on the following way: do not try to game the system. StumbleUpon has an inbuilt feature that lets you send content to your contacts (the “Send to”), so I am pretty sure they are fine with friends sharing stories with friends. But only get the help of friends to get the ball rolling and not to artificially pump your stories; other StumbleUpon users will gladly promote your content if its worth it.

The author, maxyRO is a social media enthusiast, and active on most social bookmarking sites. You can read more articles from him on his blog maxyRO.com.

Website Traffic Series Part 5: Pulling an April Fools Prank

2008-11-16T03:49:00.000-08:00

On the last part of this series we talked about a shady technique to increase your traffic: faking a blog sale. Overall I don’t think it is an effective one, and even if it was, I would still encourage people to stay way from those shady tactics. Your credibility is worth more than the visitors you might end up receiving.

That being said, there is one day of the year where you could actually pull a fake blog sale. In fact you could pull out pretty much anything you wish, and the wilder the better. You guessed: April 1st.

The concept: On the offline world April Fools’ Day is no big deal. I remember I used to pull some small pranks in school and in work, but that was about it. On the Internet, however, it is a wide spread phenomenon. Just consider that Google itself does several pranks every year.

Basically you need to come up with something weird, new, controversial or funny and publish it on April 1st. Obviously it does not need to be real, though the closer you can make it to a realistic situation, the better.

If you play your cards well you might end up receiving a lot of traffic and backlinks from websites that either got fooled by your content, or that got the prank but found it interesting nonetheless.

Does it work?: Yes, although it is losing efficacy in recent years.

Until some years ago when the practice was not so vivid on the Internet, websites that managed to create creative pranks on April 1st would get flooded with traffic.

Nowadays most websites try to come out with a prank, and as a consequence Internet visitors already know what to expect on that day.

Some people are also trying to combat this prank-blindness effect by jumping the gun and releasing their pranks a couple of days earlier (I am not talking about time zone differences). Michael Arrington and Tim Ferris did this last April (last May, actually), and I don’t think it is a cool thing. If we keep at this pace within some years people will be shooting their pranks on January…

How to get started: Just keep the date on your calendar for next year. If you want to maximize the traffic you will receive, however, you better plan something in advance. You need to be creative.

This April, for example, I said that Daily Blog Tips had been acquired for $168000. While it managed to attract some buzz, the “we have been acquired” prank is as old as the Internet, so next year I will definitely try to come up with something more exciting.

If you need ideas for inspiration check out the website April Fools’ Day On The Web.

Over to the readers: Have you tried to generate buzz and traffic with an April Fools’ Day prank? Did it work?

Website Traffic Series

Website Traffic Series Part 6: Using Forum Signatures

2008-11-16T03:48:00.002-08:00

Time to analyze another traffic generation strategy: using forum signatures. At the bottom of this post you will find links to all the previous parts on the series, and stay tuned for future ones, we are going to cover literally all of them!

The concept: Online forums are as old as the Internet, and despite being around for a long time, they are still a popular destination for Internet users that want to get specific questions answered, find solutions for their problems, or simply to socialize with other people that are interested on a specific topic.

Most of these forums also allow their members to create a custom signature containing hyperlinks, that will appear at the bottom of each of their posts. Now if you consider that some popular forums get hundreds of thousands of visits every day, you can see how a catchy link below your posts could end up sending some traffic to your website.

Does it work?: Yes if your blog is new or has a small audience. The traffic won’t be huge, but it will be real. Provided that you hand pick the forums where you will participate and use signature links, this traffic might also be very targeted.

When I started Daily Blog Tips I was pretty active on Digital Point, one of the most popular online forums for webmasters. I remember that my signature links would send 20 to 30 unique visitors every day to the blog. Not an impressive number, but every little bit helps when you are starting out (plus there is some SEO value on the links as well).

How to get started: Head to Big-Boards.com, a site that lists the largest online forums divided by topic, and select some that are large, active and relevant to your niche.

Register an account on these forums and start participating on the community. Remember that you need first to give before you get something in return. This means that you should contribute to the conversation and add value where possible, and not just spam posts around. This should be easy after all, because I suppose you would have endless things to say on your niche.

Aim to write a minimum number of posts daily, and make sure to give your opinion on the hottest threads around as well (because they will receive/send more traffic).

Over the time, as the number of posts that you have on the forum increases, you will start to see some traffic flowing from your signature links.

Over to the readers: Have you used forum signature links to generate traffic to your blog or website? Has it worked? Do you think this method is worth the time you need to spend on it?

Website Traffic Series

12 Tips To Grow the Subscriber Base on Your Second Blog

2008-11-16T03:48:00.001-08:00

One of the biggest benefits to having multiple blogs is the ability to transfer many of your readers from one blog to another. Building a significant audience is obviously not an easy task, so if you can get a boost in your subscriber count and number of visitors by having multiple blogs, you’ll be able to grow much faster than you could otherwise. Not only can this help in terms of numbers, but readers that subscribe to all of your blogs will tend to be more loyal and more responsive to you.

There are several high profile examples of bloggers that are able to successfully transfer a large number of readers from one blog to another. When Skellie started her second blog, AnyWired reached 1,000 subscribers in less than a week. Leo Babauta had no problem attracting a large audience at Write to Done as well.

I know many readers of Daily Blog Tips are in the position of owning or running multiple blogs. Within the past few months I’ve also launched a second blog, so this topic is particularly of interest to me. Through my experiences I’ve been learning some things and trying to observe what others are doing to succeed in this way. This post provides a summary of the things I’ve been seeing.

Here are 12 tips for turning a subscriber of one blog into a subscriber of two blogs:

1. Blog on Related Topics

First of all, it helps tremendously if your blogs cover similar topics. Obviously, if this is the case, readers of one of your blogs will be more likely to have an interest in your other blog. If you have two blogs, one covers celebrity gossip, and the other publishes advanced articles for software developers, the two audiences are unlikely to have much overlap. If you want to blog in two completely separate niches, that’s fine, but you won’t see much of a benefit in terms of transferring readers. Take for example David Airey’s graphic design blog. One of his primary topics was logo design, so he started a second blog dedicated to just the topic of logo design. Of course, many of the readers from his primary blog quickly subscribed to Logo Design Love because it’s a subject that interests them.

2. Use Banner Ads for Your Other Blogs

Most blogs have some type of banner ads, whether they are affiliate banners or ads that are sold to advertisers. Why not include a banner to promote your other blog? You may lose a little bit of income, but you may be able to make up for that in terms of growth for the other blog. Honestly, I haven’t tried this on my own blogs yet, but it’s something I’m considering for the near future.

3. Link to Your Other Blog Within Posts

One of the best ways you can promotes a second blog is to link to it within the posts of your primary blog. Links within posts are very effective because they are relevant to the subject of the posts that is being read. Additionally, your subscribers will be able to click-through to these links from their RSS reader or email, whereas they will not see any banner ads that only appear on the blog itself unless they click-through to the post. You can use links within the content of the post, or you may want to add a brief sentence or paragraph at the end of the post to mention a related post on your other blog.

4. Ads/Links in the Footer of Your Feed

Advertisements with feeds are becoming more and more common, especially in the footer area. For WordPress users there are number of different plugins to accomplish this, including PostPost. This is another location where you could include an advertisement for your own blog, especially if you currently don’t have any paying sponsors for this spot.

5. Write a Series of Posts on Both Blogs

Series of posts can be very effective for drawing repeat traffic, increasing pageviews, and creating anticipation, but a series doesn’t have to be limited to one blog. Publishing a series on both (or more) of your blogs can help to spread out the traffic in all directions and gain some exposure to more readers. Plus, if the series draws enough interest from readers of your primary blog, they may subscribe to your second blog so they don’t miss the next part of the series.

6. Build Your Name

If you look at the bloggers mentioned at the start of this post, you’ll notice that they are all well-known and respected in give their specific niches. As a blogger, you personally are one of the biggest selling points of your blog. By building a name you’ll bring instant credibility to all of your future projects. People will trust you and see you as an expert that they want to follow. Building a blog will take time. So will building your name. However, your name is more easily transferable to other projects.

7. Use the Look of Your Blog to Create Familiarity

I think one of the great things that Daniel has done with his network of blogs is to keep the similar look and feel at Daily Blog Tips, Daily Writing Tips, and Daily Bits. By using the same theme and mixing up the color schemes, each blog has a unique look, but readers still have a comfortable and familiar feeling when visiting the other blogs in the network. I know when Daily Bits first launch I noticed that it seemed more friendly and welcoming to me because I was used to seeing Daily Blog Tips just about every day.

8. Create Descriptive About Pages

Every blog should have an About page that will give new visitors a place to learn more about the blog and the author. This is a great place to link to your other blogs and mention what you are doing with the other blog. Readers go to your About page because they are interested in what you are doing and they want to learn more. Why not give them a chance to see your other work as well?

9. Link to All of Your Blogs from Your Profiles at Networking Sites

Most bloggers have profiles at social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace and at social media sites like StumbleUpon. At these profiles you’ll probably want to include a link to each of your blogs so those who are checking out your profle can see everything that you’re doing.

10. Offer a Combined Feed

Another option that you might want to consider is creating a combined feed that includes posts from all of your blogs. If they cover very similar topics or if readers simply want to follow you more closely, they may want to subscribe to everything you publish. You can use Yahoo Pipes to create a custom feed that combines your individual feeds.

11. Provide Quality Content at All of Your Blogs

This is last because it’s obvious, but I think it’s a necessary reminder. If your primary blog is high quality, readers will assume the same of your other blogs. If your primary blog is low quality, why would readers subscribe to your other blog(s)?

12. What’s Your Experience?

I’d like to hear from those of you how run multiple blogs. What has worked for you?

Funny and Smart Uses of Google AdWords

2008-11-16T03:47:00.000-08:00

The Royal Pingdom blog create a nice compilation with funny and smart uses of Google AdSense. I had seen some of those in the past, but not all of them. The ASCI art ads are particularly interesting, and the car rental company that came up with the idea claimed that the click-through rate increased by 47%…

Last year we had also seen John Chow sending text messages to specific bloggers using AdWords (read How To Use Site-Targeted Google AdWords for more info on that).

Do you remember any other clever use of this advertising tool?

Website Traffic Series Part 7: Putting A Blog on Your Static Website

2008-11-16T03:46:00.000-08:00

The Website Traffic Series will try to cover all the traffic generation strategies available, so some of them might not apply to blogs necessarily. This one, for instance, is geared towards people that have static websites, like a company or business site. Even if you are a blogger, however, you might need to create a static website in the future, or to do consulting for a company that has one, so I think you could still benefit from knowing the different angles of this technique.

The Concept: Blogs revolutionized the Web for several reasons. First of all, the appearance of blogging specific software like WordPress or Movable Type, as well as the free hosted solutions like Blogger, enabled pretty much anyone (even people with zero knowledge of HTML) to create their own website and to share with the world their ideas and knowledge.

Secondly, blogs introduced features like comments and trackbacks that allowed users to interact with each other more efficiently. What before used to be a monologue (from the few websites that published information) became a conversation where blogs, websites, authors and readers all interacted and shared their thoughts.

By adding a blog to your static website, therefore, you are basically entering this immense conversation that is going on around the Web.

This new platform will allow you to publish new content, to promote this content on new channels, and to receive a large number of new visitors that would otherwise never have found your website.

Does it work?: Definitely. Once you get used to how things work on the blogosphere you will realize that it is much easier to generate traffic with a blog then with a static website.

First of all you could publish interesting articles related to your niche, and pitch them to other bloggers covering related topics. If your content is good they will gladly link to you and send readers your way.

Secondly, you could also try to promote your content on social media and social bookmarking sites.

Finally, there is also an organic advantage to adding a blog to your website. Google and other search engines tend to favor dynamic websites that publish new content on a regular basis, so a blog could also boost your search engine traffic significantly.

How to get started: The best solution on the Web is WordPress. It has all the advanced features that you will need, and a vibrant community that is always releasing themes, plugins, and supporting the development of the project.

Just create a subfolder on your website called /blog/ or something else, and install WordPress there. If you are not tech-savvy, post a message on some online forums asking for help, and I am sure you will find someone willing to assist you.

Once the blog is up and running, it is time to put some fresh content there. You are free to get as creative as you want.

It will take some time to figure all the peculiarities of blogs and online marketing, but once you grasp them you will see the traffic soaring. Check also the other parts on this series, some of them will definitely help you to promote your blog.

Over to the readers: Have you used a blog inside a static website to promote it? What results did you get?

Website Traffic Series

Website Traffic Series Part 8: Adding a Forum to Your Site or Blog

2008-11-16T03:45:00.000-08:00

Last week we mentioned how you could generate traffic on your static website by adding a blog to it. If you have a popular site or blog, however, you could also consider adding a forum to it.

The concept: Online forums, regardless of format and structure, are as old as the Internet. They became popular because they enabled people with similar interests or needs to connect online, to exchange experiences, knowledge, and to get questions answered by peers.

By adding a forum to your website or blog, therefore, you would be creating a new channel for your visitors to interact with the website, with its authors, and with other readers as well.

Should the forum become active, it will probably increase your overall traffic significantly. The members will want to log regularly after all, and they will also produce user generated content, that in turn might attract further visitors or search engine traffic.

Does it work?: Yes, provided your site is big or popular enough to get an active forum going on. You need a good member base to keep the content coming and to get the questions answered, else you will end up with a ghost forum.

There is no magic number here, but you should wait for 5,000 or more daily unique visitors before launching a forum. Just consider that we had around 10,000 RSS readers on DailyWritingTips when we launched the DWT Forum, and out of those only 400 or so registered for the Forum.

That was enough to get the forum going on, especially because our readers are very engaged with the topic, but it should illustrate that getting members is not as easy as it sounds.

How to get started: If you already have a decent amount of traffic and an active community around your site or blog, you just need to select the forum software you want to use and you are ready to go.

There are some good open source solutions available, the most popular one being phpBB.

If you have some money to spend, however, I would recommend going with vBulletin. The single user license costs $160, but it is well worth it, especially if you consider the support you will be getting for one year.

Once your forum is up you will need to give some initial boost. You can write an article on your site about it, put some badges around linking to the forum, or even create a small competition with prizes for people that register on the forum.

Over to the readers: Have you created a forum before? What do you think are the main difficulties to get one rolling? Are they worth the results?

Website Traffic Series

Website Traffic Series Part 9 - Buying Targeted Traffic

2008-11-16T03:44:00.000-08:00

As you know the intent of this series is to cover all tactics and techniques to generate traffic to a website, so we will touch both free and paid methods. Today I want to talk about a paid one, the so called targeted traffic deals.

The Concept: Do a quick search on Google for “buy traffic” or “targeted traffic” and you will see an immense number of sponsored results. Those are basically websites that sell targeted traffic (or so they claim, but read on).

The amount of traffic and cost vary. Here are some examples that I gathered: “250,000 real visitors for $69,” “10,000 targeted visitors for $39,” and “10,000 visitors for $9,99.”

As you can see they have solutions for all pocket sizes…

Basically, therefore, these websites will send you traffic in exchange for money.

Does is Work?: Hardly. The trick of this business is that they make the impression that they will send real Internet visitors to your website, but most of the times the traffic will come from popups, popdowns, traffic exchange and get-paid-to-surf schemes. Here are some disclaimers that I collected from those websites:

“Client understands that HIT COUNTERS on your site DO NOT ACCURATELY REPRESENT THE NUMBER OF VISITORS SENT TO YOUR SITE.”

“The client understands that if the visitor viewing the the ad closes it before it finishes loading (due to network bandwidth, high impact graphics, animation or lack of interest on the visitors part etc.), IT WILL COUNT AS AN AD VIEW ON OUR SYSTEM, WE HAVE SENT YOUR SITE TO THE VISITOR AND HAVE THEREFORE FULFILLED OUR OBLIGATION.”

I also found it interesting that most of those websites have an identical Terms of Service. Either they are copying from each other, or someone owns them all.

How to get started: Don’t. I have considered purchasing those services in the past, but they always sounded too good to be true. Guess what, probably they are.

The techniques and methods used to delivered the “targeted” traffic are so cheap that the overall results should be close to zero.

One of those days I will take one shot for the team and order some “10,000 real visitors” to see what traffic I will be able to track from Google Analytics.

Until them I would not recommend anyone to spend money on such schemes, unless it is done for scientific purposes…

Over to the readers: Have you ever purchased one of those target traffic offers? Did it work? Do you think some of them could be legitimate?

Website Traffic Series

Website Traffic Series Part 10: Using Email Signatures

2008-11-16T03:42:00.000-08:00

There are techniques that will send thousands of unique visitors to your website. Others will just send a hand full of them. Both types should be considered though, since when it comes to website traffic generation, every small bit helps.

The concept: Do you know anyone who does not use email? Depending on your profession or background, I could even ask you: Do you know anyone who does not use email heavily? The answer to both of these questions is usually “no.”

Email is just pervasive these days. Whether you are a banker, an attorney, a web designer or a logistics manager, I am sure that at least 10% of your day is spent sending and replying to emails.

If that is the case, why not take advantage of this pattern and promote your website along the way? By adding a small link pointing to your website on your email signature you will be able to generate some very targeted clicks. Not a bunch of them every day, but over the time they will add up.

Does it work?: Yes, although as we stated before, do not expect to crash your servers with the traffic that will come from the email signature links.

The overall amount of clicks that you will get will also depend on the number of email messages that you exchange daily and on the relevancy of your website to the people that is exchanging emails with you.

Apart from the clicks, though, adding a link to your website might also help you in other ways. Suppose you sell stereo systems, and you are exchanging emails with a client. Should he discover your super cool blog about stereo audio after clicking on your email signature, I am sure he will be more inclided to close the deal with you.

Over the past months I also received several emails from a wide range of people that wanted to congratulate me for the interesting blog that I had, mentioning that they had just subscribed to it also. Most of those discovered the blog via my email signature.

How to get started: The good part about this technique is that it is easy to setup. Most email clients will offer you the possibility to create a custom signature with a couple of clicks. On GMail, you just need to click on “Settings” and the signature box will be right there.

I do not recommend jamming your signature with many links though. Put one link there, perhaps with an enticing message, and the receiver might click on it. Put ten links there and you will just scare the person on the other end.

Over to the readers: Do you have a link to your website on your email signature? How effective do you think this technique is for generating traffic?

Website Traffic Series

Open Discussion: Does Your Traffic Feel the Summer Slump?

2008-11-16T03:41:00.000-08:00

When I was at the University (some three years ago) I used to love the period that went from June to August. It was summer time (on the northern hemisphere at least), we had a study break and so on. Now that I work as a web publisher on the Internet, however, that period sucks.

Curiously enough, it sucks for the same reasons. It is summer time, and people are taking a break from their studies or from their work. The only difference is that my perspective changed. Today I want people to stay in their homes or on their offices and visit my websites!

Now it is not as bad as I described it, but every June-August I do feel a downwards pressure on my traffic. I remember that in 2007 my traffic went down by 20% in June and July. On August it returned to the previous level, and in September it started growing again.

This year I managed to handle the slump better. June and July were flat months (almost the same traffic as May), and in August I expect the numbers to get back on the growing path.

Regardless, it is pretty annoying to see these sluggish traffic trends when during the other months of the year it is always growing.

I guess it also depends on your niche and demographic audience. A website that focus on U.S. teenagers would feel a much greater summer slump right?

But what about you and your websites. Does your traffic goes down between June and August? What tactics do you use to combat it, or you simply take a break as well?

Website Traffic Series Part 11: Putting Your URL On Online Profiles

2008-11-16T03:40:00.000-08:00

If you are a savvy Internet user, I am sure that you have a bunch of online profiles spread all over the place. Facebook, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Twitter and so on. Sometimes we just create an account on those places because friends encourage us to, or out of sheer curiosity. Regardless of the motive, it would be cool if you could put those many profiles to work and gain some traffic out of it right?

The concept: The idea is pretty simple. List your website URL in as many online profiles as possible. Usually most social networks already offer a place where you can list your website. Even if they don’t, try to find a field where you can stick it in.

StumbleUpon for instance does not have a specific field for you to insert your website URL and share it with other users. They do have an “About Me” section though, and it accepts HTML, so just stick your link there.

Does it work?: Do not expect to crash your server with this technique. If you have many online accounts, however, combined they could end up sending you a good amount of monthly visitors. Obviously if your website is large already the effect would be hard to notice, but for new websites every small bit helps.

Secondly, the traffic that you will get from the links place on those online profiles will depend on your activity on the respective social networks. If you are very active on Digg, for example, more people will end up checking your profile, and more people will be likely to click on the link to your website.

How to get started: I would not recommend creating online profiles only to be able to place your link there afterward. This technique is fruitful if you already have dozens of profiles online and can edit them easily to include a link to your website.

Over to the readers: Do you have many online profiles scattered around the web? Do they all contain a link back to your website?

Website Traffic Series

Website Traffic Series Part 12: Emailing Bloggers to Showcase Your Best Content

2008-11-16T03:39:00.000-08:00

Content is surely king, but if no one gets to see your content, it will just get lost on the immense sea of bits and bytes that we call the World Wide Web, right? Email is the most popular method for online communications, and it can contribute immensely to your promotional efforts.

The image above only serves as illustration. Email someone with such a large and spammy font and he will trash it immediately…

The concept: Once your blog becomes popular and with a loyal following, you will probably be able to focus on the content creation alone. Until you arrive on that level, however, merely publishing top notch content will not be enough.

You will need to actively promote it, and one very effective way to do so is to email bloggers and webmasters on your niche to let them know about your best articles. Should they like what you are sending them, there are good chances that they will link to it, sending both visitors and link juice to your website.

Does it work?: Yes, although the overall success of this technique will depend on several factors. First of all, the higher the quality of the content that you are emailing away, the higher the chances of receiving links.

Secondly, the pitch that you include on your email will play an important role. If you add too much unrelated information the person on the other side might just think that you are spamming him, and skip your email.

Finally, if you take the time to develop your network slowly over time, and with a genuine interest for building win-win relationships, this technique will work better.

How to get started: As stated before, you will need to work on the content first. There is no use in emailing people around if you just have some average quality articles to show them. Check out the post Use These 10 Tips to Write Your Most Popular Post Ever for more info on how to create killer content.

In parallel to the content development strategy you should start to network with bloggers and webmasters on your niche. Do some guest posts on their blogs, invite them to guest post on yours, link to their articles and so on.

Once you have both of those in place, it is a matter of publishing your killer article and emailing your contacts and friends to let them know about it. Don’t beg for a link on the email, this is plain annoying. Just mention that you think they will find it interesting. If they do, they will be glad to link spontaneously.

Over to the readers: Do you email bloggers and webmasters on your niche to let them know about your best content? Has this strategy worked well for you in the past?

Website Traffic Series

Your Most Popular Stuff Must Go On Mondays

2008-11-16T03:38:00.000-08:00

An idea for a killer post just pops in your head. You perform a quick Google search to check if someone wrote about it in the past, but no one has. Cool! You spend some days researching and writing the post, and then editing it to make sure it is bullet proof.

Now the question arises: “When should I publish it, to ensure it will get as much exposure as possible?”

There are different statistics around the Web, but most of them highlight higher traffic from Monday to Thursday, and a small dip on Fridays and over the weekend. That is what one would expect though, and it doesn’t help to answer our question.

Is it the same if you publish your killer article on Tuesdays or on Thursdays? The difference might be small, but I think that the earlier in the week you publish it, the better.

The answer therefore is: Monday is the best day to publish your best content.

The overall traffic around the web must be similar for the first week days, but there are other factors favoring Mondays, including:

1. Fresh stuff. Bloggers and webmasters are always more likely to link to fresh material. Weeks start on Mondays (on most western countries at least), therefore people tend to associate content published early in the week with fresh stuff. I suspect that the same breaking news would generate more buzz if it came out early in the week, then if it broke on a Friday, for example.

2. More time for links. You need to also to consider the fact that bloggers and webmasters won’t link to your article right away. Most of them have a posting schedule, and they might have other material to be published on the same day that you released your killer post. Now if you publish your material on Monday, they will have the rest of the week to find some time to link to it. If you publish it on a Wednesday, for example, there is a risk that the weekend will come in and that some bloggers will just forget to link to your material.

3. More time for social media traffic. The same principle applies to social media traffic. Usually it takes 24 hours for the traffic to peak (e.g. hitting the Digg front page or getting a critical mass of thumbs up on StumbleUpon). If you submit your material on Monday, therefore, the mass traffic will start coming on Tuesday, and you will have the rest of the week to capture it. If you publish your content on a Thursday, on the other hand, the traffic peak will already be smaller, because it will happen on a Friday, and the subsequent days might be disappointing as well because it will be the weekend.

Obviously there are some drawbacks as well related to publishing your stuff on Mondays. It is the most crowded day of the week, so you will be competing with more material for attention.

That being said, if your content is really top notch, I think that the advantages out weight the disadvantages.

What about you, when do you prefer to publish your best content?

On Linkbaits, Socialbaits and Viral Content

2008-11-16T03:37:00.002-08:00

If you have been involved with online marketing, web publishing or blogging for a while, I am sure that you have come across the terms linkbait, socialbait and viral content at least once.

Despite the widespread in their usage, however, we still don’t have a clear grasp on their meanings.

What is a linkbait? What is a socialbait? What is viral content? Are they all the same? What characteristics they share? What differences they have? Are they good? Bad? For whom?

Those are just some of the questions that are floating around, and I thought that it would be interesting to write an article trying to answer them.

Keep in mind that the ideas presented below are merely an exploration of our understanding of those terms, and they don’t have the pretension to become the ultimate truth on the topic.

Linkbaits

The first thing we need to lay down is a definition for each of the three terms, right? Let’s take a look at how other people defined linkbaits in the past.

Darren Rowse from Problogger wrote:

The term linkbaiting is a one that seems to have surfaced over the past 12 or so months and that is used by webmasters to describe a variety of practices - all of which seek to generate incoming links to a website or blog from other sites.

It is actually a difficult term to be definative about as it covers a lot of different practices ranging from running awards or competitions, through to writing attacking posts on high profile bloggers in the hope of them biting back and linking to you, through to providing other bloggers or site owners with tools (with embedded links back to your own site) that they can put on their blogs (we’ll run through more linkbaiting techniques in one of my next posts in this series).

In reality the term ‘linkbaiting’ is a new term for something that webmasters have been doing for many years. From my earliest days of blogging four years ago I know I saw people doing lots of things to get links (even though the term was never used).

Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team, wrote:

On a meta-level, I think of “linkbait” as something interesting enough to catch people’s attention, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. There are a lot of ways to do that, including putting in sweat-of-the-brow work to generate data or insights, or it can be as simple as being creative. You can also say something controversial to generate discussion (this last one gets tired if you overuse it, though). Sometimes even a little bit of work can generate a reason for people to link to you.

Stuart Brown from Modern Life is Rubbish wrote:

Linkbait is essentially a piece of content placed on a web page - whether it’s an article, blog post, picture, or any other section of cyberspace - that is designed for the specific intention of gathering links from as many different sources as possible.

With the rise of the blogosphere, meritocracy and social bookmarking sites, all it takes is one interesting page on a site, someone to notice the page, and a few people to share the link - and before you know it, you’ve accrued a large number of links across a wide variety of sites.

As you can see the definitions have a lot in common. Putting it as briefly as possible, I would say that a linkbait is a piece of online content (e.g., an article, a video, a picture, a quiz, a game or anything else) which is created with the purpose of attracting as many links from external websites as possible.

Linkbait Examples

Sometimes it is easier to show than to describe with words, so let’s take a look at some real linkbait examples.

The first one is the Blogger Spelling Test. If you visit that page you will notice that the quiz was moved somewhere else, but the backlinks are still in place. Yahoo! reports 350 of them.

That quiz is an example of blatant promotional linkbait because it was targeted at a very specific linkerati (i.e. people that are able to link) segment - bloggers - and because right after taking the quiz you are be presented with your score on a badge (ego play) and an HTML code, encouraging you to put it on your site. Needless to say that the HTML code already comes with an embedded link to the quiz.

Another sign that this linkbait was a pure marketing effort comes from the fact that the main website behind it is a dating site…

Most linkbaits, however, are not crafted with such blatant promotional goals mind. They are rather created to provide valuable information to the audience of the website where they will be published. In other words, they are genuine.

Smashing Magazine illustrates this concept well. They often publish huge lists with beautiful designs, photoshop tutorials, fonts and the like. We certainly can classify those as linkbaits, but they are created with the main purpose of providing value to the core audience of the website, and not to cheaply attract backlinks.

As one would probably have guessed, those value-based linkbaits tend to perform better. The article 50 Beautiful CSS-Based Web-Designs in 2006 has attracted almost 3,000 backlinks since it was launched, far more than the quiz we mentioned above.

Socialbaits

The term socialbait has not been used as extensively, and many people would just consider it a synonym to linkbait. I believe the two concepts have some differences, however, and therefore they deserve a separate classification.

Obviously socialbaits will tend to behave as linkbaits most of the times, because something that goes hot on social media and social bookmarking websites will inevitably receive many backlinks. The opposite is not true, however, as some forms of linkbait perform poorly on social media (one example being online quizzes).

Secondly, there are many situations where a blogger or web publisher is more concerned with page views and raw traffic than with backlinks. One example would be website owners that have CPM advertising deals in place (a form of advertising that pays based on how many impressions the ad will receive). As a result, he might end up crafting content that has high chances of becoming popular on social media, but that is not necessarily going to attract a huge amount of backlinks.

My definition of socialbait is: a piece of online content (e.g., an article, a video, a picture, a quiz, a game and or anything else) which is created with the purpose of receiving as much traffic as possible from social media websites.

Socialbait Example

Again let’s take a look at a real example to understand the concept. Sometime ago ValleyWag published the 13 Signs You May Be A Digg Power User picture.

This is a clear socialbait example, because the article and the picture were specifically crafted to target the Digg audience.

The numbers back up this view. The article received over 2,000 diggs, 245 comments on the Digg website, and I am sure it also generated a sheer amount of traffic when it was released.

Was it as successful in attracting backlinks? Not at all. In fact Yahoo! reports it only has 145 external links pointing there, which is quite a small number for an article that received over 2,000 diggs.

Viral Content

Seth Godin was the first to use the term “viral” as applied to ideas and online content, so we must quote him here:

For an idea to spread, it needs to be sent and received.

No one “sends” an idea unless:
a. they understand it
b. they want it to spread
c. they believe that spreading it will enhance their power (reputation, income, friendships) or their peace of mind
d. the effort necessary to send the idea is less than the benefits

No one “gets” an idea unless:
a. the first impression demands further investigation
b. they already understand the foundation ideas necessary to get the new idea
c. they trust or respect the sender enough to invest the time

This explains why online ideas spread so fast but why they’re often shallow. Nietzsche is hard to understand and risky to spread, so it moves slowly among people willing to invest the time. Numa Numa, on the other hand, spread like a toxic waste spill because it was so transparent, reasonably funny and easy to share.

To put it in a shorter form, viral content is a piece of online content (e.g., an article, a video, a picture, a quiz, a game or anything else) that raises certain emotions on people, creating an urge on them to share that content in one way or another.

One key difference between viral content and linkbaits/socialbaits is the fact that the former might emerge spontaneously, while the latter is usually created on purpose.

I would also say that viral content is stronger that linkbaits/socialbaits, exactly because it hits harder on people’s emotions. Think about the spelling quiz we mentioned earlier. Sure it was a successful linkbait, and it managed to generate hundreds of backlinks. But it was not viral, it didn’t installed on people an urge to share it.

Viral Content Examples

A classic example of viral content is the Star Wars Kid video. It features a kid playing with a staff, and apparently the kid is unaware that he is being filmed.

The guy who released it on the web knew it was quite funny, but he was not expecting the video to spread like a virus!

It has almost 10 million views on YouTube, over 45,000 comments, its own Wikipedia entry, and if you Google “Star Wars Kid” with quotation marks you will get around 370,000 results.

This video illustrates how viral content can emerge spontaneously on the web.

There are cases where one person manages to create viral content with specific goals in mind as well.

Seth Godin himself used this strategy when he released his ebook Unleashing the Ideavirus on the Internet. It was easy to understand, useful, easy to share (the ebook was free and downloadable), and by spreading it people would be increasing their own powers (because other people would be thankful to them).

The result? One of the most popular ebooks ever! If you don’t have a copy of it, you are with the minority.

Putting It All Together

At this point one should be asking himself: “What is the relationship between those three concepts? Are they related? Are they the same?”

In my opinion they are all distinct, although they have similarities and can overlap sometimes.

A linkbait might also be viral content, but that is not necessarily the case.

A linkbait might be a socialbait at the same time, but that is not necessarily the case.

A socialbait might also be viral content, but that is not necessarily the case.

Viral content, finally, might emerge from linkbaits and socialbaits, but that is not necessarily the case.

We can represent those relationships easily with a Venn diagram, as the image below shows:

Are Linkbaits, Socialbaits and Viral Content Good Or Bad?

Finally, we need to answer the question of whether those concepts and strategies are a good or a bad thing.

Darren Rowse, on the same article we mentioned earlier, wrote:

Linkbaiting is often written about in negative terms. I regularly see people writing off a post that others have written or a comment others have left as ‘just being linkbait’.

I personally don’t like the term ‘linkbaiting’ on some levels as it does seem to have negative connotations. ‘Baiting’ has a sense of trying to trick or trap an unsuspecting person or thing into doing something that they don’t really want to do. While this is accurate with some forms of linkbaiting it is not true with others.

There is a lot of debate around both the term ‘linkbaiting’ and some of the practices that people talk about it incorporating. Some argue strongly that it is just a by-product of quality content, others argue that many linkbaiting strategies border on spam, others seem to talk about linkbait as being the answer to all web promotional problems (increasingly SEO companies are offering linkbaiting services).

My own opinion on whether link bait is good or bad is that it depends upon the type of link baiting that you’re talking about. I think some techniques that people use are just good standard blogging techniques - while other things that people do in the pursuit of links are destructive to the blogging community and I’d argue against them.

And Stuart Brown wrote:

Of course, that depends on the content in question and the intention behind it - but one advantage with social linking and meritocracy based sites is that the dull, spammy and unworthy content generally sinks to the bottom, leaving the good, well crafted stuff to float to the top.

As you can see there is no clear cut. It all depends on how the content is elaborated (i.e. to provide value vs. to trick people) and with what intentions. I think Stuart is right on the mark though when he mentions that the web itself regulates the market. It is a meritocracy after all, and you can’t fool hundreds of thousands of savvy users.

I think exploring the concept of linkbaits, socialbaits and viral content is therefore important and valid for anyone involved with online marketing. You just need to make sure you approach those strategies from the right side.

What about you, do you agree with my definitions? Do you think linkbaits, socialbaits and viral content can be part of a honest online marketing strategy? Speak your mind!

Website Traffic Series Part 13: Faking a Hacker Attack

2008-11-16T03:37:00.001-08:00

As we said before, on this “Website Traffic Series” we are going to cover ALL the traffic generation tactics and strategies out there, even the weird and the blackhat ones!

The concept: The idea is pretty simple. Popular websites that get hacked tend to make the headlines around the blogosphere. As a consequence, they receive many backlinks and a good amount of traffic. People are curious, and they will want to check out what happened.

Now instead of opening up some security holes on your website and waiting for a real hacker to come (which apart from the traffic would also give you some head aches…) you could simply fake the attack.

All you need to do is to create a weird HTML page, put a “This website was hacked” message there, and redirect your domain to that page.

Does it work?: Yes and no. First of all you need to have a somewhat popular website already for this to work minimally well. No one is going to care if your two-week old .blogspot blog should get hacked, right?

If you do have a somewhat popular website, though, there are chances that you will receive a good amount of backlinks and traffic with this technique. JohnCow.com pulled that trick some months ago. For 24 hours he redirected the visitors to his domain to a page that contained the image on top of this post.

Many people linked to him as a result. Some thinking it was for real. Some calling him out for a cheap stunt. Others just intrigued by the whole deal.

As you can see it does work to some extent, but it will also bring some negative publicity and criticism to your website.

How to get started: Personally I would not try to generate traffic with this method. I think it might work for sites that deal with blackhat or out-of-the-box promotional methods (JohnCow.com was born as a parody site after all), but that is not the case with most of us. Try this at your own risk, therefore.

Over to the readers: Have you ever considering to take something on your site to generate traffic? Would you get pissed if a website that you read regularly pulled this trick on your?

Website Traffic Series

Website Traffic Series Part 14: Promoting Your Content on Social Bookmarking Sites

2008-11-16T03:36:00.000-08:00

Promoting content on social bookmarking sites is one of the most popular marketing strategies around the Internet. And not by chance. Getting featured on the front page of those websites can send tens of thousands of visitors to your blog in a matter of days.

The concept: Also called social news aggregators or community bookmarking, social bookmarking sites represent a family of websites that allow users to discover, submit, share and vote on stories and articles from around the Internet. The most popular social bookmarking sites are Digg.com, Reddit.com, StumbleUpon.com and Del.icio.us.

If your blog is relatively new, you will need to submit your top quality content to those sites and hope that other users will like it and rate it. Should enough people vote your story up, it might end up on the front page, sending a huge amount of traffic to your blog or site.

Once your audience starts building up, there is a chance that the readers themselves will submit and promote your content on those bookmarking sites.

Does it work?: Absolutely. As far as traffic generation is concerned, there are very few techniques and channels that will beat social bookmarking promotion.

That being said, that are a couple of things that you should know. First of all, social bookmarking traffic is very peculiar. It does not click on ads. It does not stick around on your site. And it rarely subscribe to your RSS feed.

Secondly, not all types of content will work on all social bookmarking sites. SEO and blogging related topics tend to perform really poorly on Digg, for example, while political coverage receive good attention on Reddit. Over the time you will need to find what is the right social bookmarking site for your content, therefore.

How to get started: Generating a couple of hundred page views with social bookmarking sites is an easy task, you just need to submit your story and ask some friends to vote on it. Making your story go “hot,” attracting tens of thousands of visitors, however, is a whole different story.

To tap into the real potential of social bookmarking sites you will need first to understand how they work. What kind of content users are looking for? How the voting works? What are the hidden rules of those communities?

The best way to answer to those questions is to become a user on those sites yourself. Once you get a grasp of what is going on, start testing and see how things are going to work for your site.

Take a look at How to Create Digg-Friendly Content and A Comprehensive Guide to StumbleUpon for a more in-depth look into those sites.

Over to the readers: What is your experience with social bookmarking sites? Do you think they are a necessary part of any online marketing strategy?

Website Traffic Series

Open Discussion: How Much Traffic Does Social Media Really Generate?

2008-11-16T03:35:00.000-08:00

Last week I wrote an article on how to generate traffic with social bookmarking sites, and one question popped into my mind: How much traffic do those website really generate? If you browse around the web you will hear all sorts of numbers, from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of unique visitors.

That is why I decided to write this post and invite the readers to share their own experience. Being able to access the numbers behind real stories is always beneficial for understanding the whole picture.

Let me share my experience with the main social bookmarking sites:

Digg: Over the past years, through out my different blogs and websites, I have been on the Digg front page 11 times. The smallest traffic I have seen from a front page was around 5,000 unique visitors. But that was coming from an article that talked about writing mistakes, which is not really a hot topic on Digg.

The highest traffic I have seen was around 50,000 unique visitors, spread in two days, from an article that featured a list with websites that every gamer should know.

Most stories fell somewhere in between those two ends. I would say that an average front page would send me 25,000 unique visitors.

An interesting point to note, though, is that a Digg front page will usually trigger a bigger avalanche of traffic because other social sites will grab the story, and many people will link to it. The story that got 50,000 uniques from Digg also got 50,000 uniques from other sources on that same day, and probably those were triggered by the front page on the first place.

StumbleUpon: It is harder to measure the total traffic coming from Stumble Upon, because apart from the spike on the day of the submission, you will also have visitors coming on the following days and weeks (sometimes even months!).

On the peak day, which is usually the same day of the discovery or one day later, I have seen as many as 15,000 unique visitors coming from Stumble. Some article I published, however, experienced a prolonged peak with 10,000 unique visitors coming from Stumble for many days in a row. I think it is completely possible, therefore, to hit 100,000 or more unique visitors in the course of a week, if your article explodes with thumbs up.

Average articles that I have seen submitted received far less traffic, hovering on the 10,000 unique visitors range after one week (so around 2,000 unique visitors daily, with a decreasing amount as the days went by).

The good thing about Stumble is that pretty much all submissions will get some traffic. Even posts that readers submitted for me and had only 5 or 6 thumbs up ended up receiving a couple hundred of visitors.

Reddit: I have only reached the front page of Reddit once. It sent me around 15,000 unique visitors if I remember well.

Usually you can reach the front page of the single categories (e.g., politics or gaming) more easily, and those will send anywhere from 500 up to 3,000 visitors from my experience.

Delicious: I have been on the front page of Delicious many times. Usually as a consequence of being exposed on some other social bookmarking site or larger website. The site can send anywhere from 1,000 up to 5,000 visitors depending on the quality of the article.

Over to the readers

Those numbers come from my personal experience, though, and I know that other people will have different tales to tell.

What traffic did you receive in the past from the different social media websites? What was the highest and lowest you have seen around?

Going To Advertise Your Website? Use a Landing Page!

2008-11-16T03:34:00.000-08:00

This is one mistake that I did on my early blogging days. I wanted to experiment with paid advertising, so I created an AdWords account, and purchased a couple of banner ads as well.

I pointed all those ads to my homepage, put in the money, and crossed my fingers for the results.

After a month or so the traffic was coming, but it was not sticking around as I would have expected. The paid visitors were visiting few pages around the blog, and the conversion into subscribers was very low.

Then I thought: “Hmmm. There must be something I can do to improve the performance of those ads.”

After thinking and researching around a bit I came to answer: use a landing page!

Landing pages are as old as the Internet, I know, but somehow I was missing this key step, and I see many bloggers and webmasters doing the same mistake these days.

Whenever you buy advertising or plan a special event, it is essential to have a custom made landing page, tailored at the visitors that will be coming and structured with your goals in mind. This simple tweak can do wonders to your conversion rates.

Once I started using the landing page for my ads, twice as many paid visitors would end up subscribing to my blog.

If you want to check an example, you can find one of my landing pages here. There I have put a brief explanation of what the blog is about, an invitation for the visitor to subscribe, and a showcase with some of my best content.

As you can see, that page is much more friendly to a first time visitor than my homepage is.

Website Traffic Series Part 15: Promoting Posts That Link to You on Social Bookmarking Sites

2008-11-16T03:33:00.000-08:00

First of all a small announcement: I will publish all the “Website Traffic Series” posts on Thursdays now. This should encourage me to write them more consistently, and the readers will know that every Thursday they will find a new traffic generation strategy posted.

Now about today’s post. Last week we talked about how you can use social bookmaking sites to promote your own content and generate traffic. Well, curiously enough, you can also promote other people’s content to generate traffic to your own site!

The concept: You probably know that social bookmarking sites can generate tens of thousands of visitors to a website that gets featured on them right? Now, what if a particular page or post receiving a huge amount of social media traffic was linking to one of your posts? You would end up with a good amount of referral traffic.

The idea is simple therefore: whenever you come across a high quality page or post that is linking to your website, help to promote it on social bookmarking sites. Practically speaking, give it a thumbs up on Stumble Upon, digg it, bookmark on Delicious and so on.

Notice that I mentioned “high quality page or post” because it would be useless to go around voting for every post that is linking to your blog. They need to be appealing to social media as well, else your efforts helping to promote it will be fruitless.

Does it work?: Yes, although the referral traffic you will get will not be huge. Conversion rates for links inside posts gravitate around 1% (rough estimation for the sake of the argument), so if 100,000 people visit the post that is linking to you, you should expect 1,000 to click on the link that leads to your website.

The traffic is not huge, but every bit helps right? Additionally, this is a win-win situation, because you will also be helping someone that was willing to link to your site on the first place. It is a way of saying “thank you” for the link love, if you will.

Finally, if people notice that you are willing to help them out, they will be glad to help you in return, perhaps promoting your articles on social media as well.

How to get started: Applying this strategy is really easy, you just need to keep your radar up for people that link to you blog. Most blogging platforms display the recent backlinks on the control panel, so that is a good place to start.

You can also use blog tracking services like Technorati to monitor that. Try to identify that posts that have good value (e.g., a big list of resources, a comprehensive analysis on some topic) and then just promote them on social media.

Over to the readers: Do you have the habit of promoting posts and sites that link to your own? Have you noticed any traffic coming from it?

Website Traffic Series

10 Ways to Brand Your Blog or Website Efficiently

2008-11-16T03:32:00.000-08:00

On the latest State of the Blogosphere report, Technorati claimed that they are tracking over 133 million blogs. That is a freaking lot of them. If we take into consideration standard websites as well, this number will be even bigger. The result? Hundreds, if not thousands of blogs and websites on virtually every single niche on the web.

You can also bet that a good percentage of those will be offering outstanding quality content just like you do, so the competition is fierce.

Under those circumstances, how can you make sure that your blog or website will stand out of the crowd and attract visitors?

In one word: branding.

Bricks and mortar businesses have discovered the importance of branding decades ago, but on the web this is a relatively new trend (just five years ago you didn’t have that many websites around after all).

Below we are going to cover 10 ways to brand your blog or website efficiently.

1. Having a Clear Purpose

You must have a crystal clear vision about the purpose of your website, and you must communicate that to the visitors as well. They must know why they are visiting your website. Why it is worth their time.

“I am going to write about tech” ain’t going to cut it. What part of technology you are going to write about? Gadgets? Web 2.0? What angle you are going to have? Breaking news? Deep analysis? Where will the value to your readers come from?

You need to be able to answer to those questions easily.

Your aim is to make people associate a concept or thing with your website. If I say online video, you are going to think YouTube. If I say funny pictures of cats, you are going to think I Can Has Bheezburger. If I say gadgets, you are going to think Engadget or Gizmodo.

You get the idea. Now you must make this with your own website. It is not easy, and it takes time, but you should always keep this principle in mind.

2. Being Consistent with the Writing Style

There are many studies confirming that the writing part of a blog or website is one of the main parameters that readers use to determine the overall quality of that site.

You need to be consistent with your writing style if you want to strength your brand with it. It does not matter if you write bringing your personal experiences aboard or if you try to keep a more neutral tone, the important thing is to be consistent with it.

If you read tech blogs frequently, I am sure you would be able to tell a post from TechCrunch and one from Mashable apart just by looking at the writing style right? That is what branding is all about.

This point is particularly important to blogs that have more than one author.

3. Sticking with Your Tagline

Using a tagline is not mandatory, although it can help if you come up with a really catchy and descriptive one (check The Best Website Taglines Around the Internet if you need some inspiration).

The important thing, however, is that you stick with it. It got stick in people’s heads. If you change your tagline every other month, people won’t remember it, and they might even get confused about it.

If you are going to use a tagline, you could also consider adding it to the title tag of your website. This will make sure that the tagline will be displayed on search engines when users come across your site, reinforcing the message that you want to pass.

4. Investing Money in a Good Logo

Just like medieval castles used to be identified by their flags, websites are identified by their logos. If you have limited money to spend on design, make sure that the logo is your top priority.

These days you can get good looking logos for as low as $100 (obviously though that the more you spend the higher the quality you should get).

The logo is important because it is the first thing that visitors pay attention to, and usually it is also the image that will stick on their mind once they are gone.

Additionally, whenever people mention your website on blog, they will consider using your logo as an illustration on the article, meaning that the logo itself will characterize your site even on external places. The image on top of this article is an example.

5. Using a Favicon

Most modern browsers support favicons, therefore you should make use of them. Try to adapt your logo, or use the initials of the name of your site, and put them on the favicon.

Favicons are also important because they will appear on the bookmark section of your users, enabling them to recognize your website more easily among the hundreds of others.

If you are not sure how to create or implement a favicon, read How to Create a Favicon.

6. Making the Design Match the Content

The overall look and feel of your design must match the content. If you plan to talk about stock markets, it would be weird to have flowers on the background image right?

Identify what your core audience is going to be, and design around their perceptions and preferences. If you are going to write for professionals or older people, perhaps a traditional newspaper look would be a good choice. If your readers will be younger, a more colorful design could be used. And so on.

7. Being Consistent with the Colors

Make sure to choose a color palette and to stick with it. Colors and moods are very easy to be remembered, so use this in your favor.

You could use the main color on the links, on the favicon, on the footer and so on. If you are going to create special images or badges for the website, make them match the overall color pattern.

Through out the years it is probably that you will need to give a face-lift to you design. That is fine, as long as you keep consistent with the color readers will still feel at home, and your brand will be kept intact.

You can get more information about color palettes and suggestions on ColourLovers.

8. Using Your Website’s Name on Social Media

Are you going to use Twitter? FriendFeed? Facebook? If you are, you could create an account on each of those services specifically for your website.

Social networks are a big online trend, and probably one that will last. If you manage to get your site inside those networks, your brand will rejoice.

Here is a good example: Michael Arrington is a web celebrity, but instead of creating social networking accounts on his name, he always create them as “TechCrunch,” reinforcing his brand across those platforms.

9. Spending Money on Advertising

If branding was easy, companies around the world would not spend billions of dollars every year on advertising right?

It is possible to create a strong brand without spending money on advertising, but paid promotional efforts can certainly make you reach this goal easier and faster.

If you don’t have a big budget, you could consider spending money only during the launch and on the first few months. Use the money to kick start your brand, and after that work with the content and free methods.

One advantage of paid advertising is that it allows you to deliver a specific message to a specific audience. If you purchase a banner on a popular blog, for example, you know who will be reading that, and you can tailor your words to pass your brand to those readers.

10. Spreading it Everywhere

Branding is psychological, meaning that you will need to get inside people’s heads. Sometimes this will inevitably be a numbers game. That is, the more exposure you manage to give to your brand in front of the web users, the longer it will stick with them.

Practically speaking, use your website name and logo in a many different places as possible. Put the link on your email signatures. Write guest articles for popular blogs and put your website name on the byline. Talk about your website in online forums. Purchase advertising banners. Stamp tshirts with your website logo on it and so on.

Website Traffic Series Part 16: Promoting Your Content on Social Networking Sites

2008-11-16T03:31:00.001-08:00

A couple of weeks ago we talked about how you can use social bookmarking sites to generate traffic to your website. Social networking sites represent another sub-category under the social media umbrella, and they could also be used to generate traffic. Below you will find how.

The concept: The term social networking site encompass a wide range of websites and applications where the goal is to let users of a certain group, or having a certain interest, to connect, interact and share things. Popular examples include MySpace.com and LinkedIn.com.

Most of those websites allow its members to write a small bio or profile, and usually they also let you include a link there. Given the popularity of social networking sites around the web, it is possible to use those websites to generate traffic to your own.

Does it work?: Yes, provided you are minimally active on the social networking sites where you plan to promote your website. The traffic can also be significant depending on how popular your “profile page” will get. I have seen webmasters receiving as much as 500 uniques a day from MySpace or Facebook profiles.

Another advantage of registering with those services is that some of them will follow the profile links of members, meaning that you will also reap some SEO benefits along the way.

How to get started: First of all you need to create an account on those services. Some that you might consider are:

Once you have an account, you will need to get as many friends and contacts as possible. Just get busy and active in the community and people will notice you. Make sure to add your link to your profile, and try to share it inside specific groups as well. As usual, test with different strategies until you find efficient ways to drive traffic to your own site.

Over to the readers: Are you active in social networking sites? Do you think that it is possible to generate traffic with them? What strategies have worked for you in the past?

Website Traffic Series

How NOT to Ask for Sponsorship or Advertising: 6 Deadly Mistakes

2008-11-16T03:29:00.000-08:00

Often times I get emails from people that want me to sponsor a contest or event on their blogs. Most of the times I take the time to at least check it out, and if the contest is structured well, I am happy to donate free copies to my eBook or licenses to premium WordPress themes.

Sometimes, however, the email is so bad that I just think “Man, you got be kidding!”.

Last week one of those came through. I asked permission to the sender to republish it here, but I will keep it anonymous for obvious reasons. Here is what the email said:

hello friend congrats for your pr6.I am organizing a contest in my blog.So if you are interested then please sponsor in this contest.we will be happy if you sponsor here.

So many things wrong here that I don’t even know where to start. I will break it down in 6 points so it is easier to follow:

1. Not using the name of the person. If you want to get someone’s attention, you must make sure that you will address him or her by the name. When people start their email with “Hi Daniel” I will make sure to read it and give it enough attention, cause I know at least that the person on the other side knows who I am.

2. Blatant ass kissing. If you are going to make a compliment, make sure it is genuine. If it is clear that you are just saying that to please the person you are asking something, it will do more harm than good.

3. Crap writing. When you write emails to your friends or relatives, I guess you could be informal and not pay too much attention to grammar and punctuation. If you are writing to a potential sponsor, however, you want to make sure that your message is perfectly readable. Capital letters to start a sentence and spaces are the very minimum you wanna go with….

4. No link or URL. So you want me to sponsor your blog eh? That is all right, but what is your blog? Give me the link, or I will sure not sweat myself in Google trying to find it by searching for your name.

5. No explanation of what I have to gain. We got be frank here, there is no charity going on around the Internet (well perhaps some, but you get my point). People will just sponsor your contest or website if they have something to gain out of it. It is in your best interests therefore to make this part as clear as possible!

6. No explanation of how the contest is structured. You also need to explain how the contest is going to work. Some people might not want to get involved with certain practices (i.e. blackhat or affiliate marketing).

There you go. If you want to get someone to sponsor or advertise on your blog, try to avoid those 6 deadly mistakes.

Website Traffic Series Part 17: Using Article Directories

2008-11-16T03:28:00.000-08:00

Article marketing, which is basically the practice of submitting content to article directories, used to be very popular around the web. It is losing appeal lately, but it still can be used to promote your website and generate some traffic to it.

The concept: Article directories allow people to freely submit articles to their database. Usually you just need to register an account and you are ready to go. They also allow the insertion of an author byline, and a link to an external website, so depending on how popular your article will be, you could end up receiving traffic from the link you placed there.

Most article directories also allow third parties to republish the articles, as long as they are not modified and the credit links are kept intact. This feature could send you some further traffic if other people decide to republish your content.

Does it work?: Until some years ago article directories used to have a lot of love from search engines. As a result, a carefully optimized article could easily rank among the first positions in Google for related terms. The author would then receive highly targeted traffic from his byline link.

Lately, however, article directories are losing their power, and it is harder to rank well with submitted articles. That does not mean that this strategy is obsolete though. If done correctly (SEO wise), and in mass scale, article marketing can still produce good results. One requirement, therefore, is that you have a good amount of time to work both on the articles and on the submissions.

How to get started: First of all do some keyword research to know what keywords you should be targeting with your articles. Then write as many articles as possible around those topics, and craft their titles carefully (i.e. make them appealing to search bots). You could also generate many variations from a single article to maximize the number of submissions.

Once you have the articles written and ready to go, register an account with some popular directories and submit then there. You could start with those two:

Don’t forget to add a byline in the end of the articles, and drop a link or two pointing to your own website.

Keep in mind that the articles you will be submitting should have been written specifically for this purpose. Do not re-use articles previously published on your blog or website, as this could harm your search rankings with duplicate content penalties.

Over to the readers: Have you ever tried to promote your website by submitting articles to directories? How did it work? Do you think this strategy is losing efficiency lately?

Website Traffic Series

Website Traffic Series Part 18: Exchanging Links with Partner Sites

2008-11-16T03:27:00.000-08:00

The practice of exchanging links is mostly used for SEO purposes, but it can also be used for traffic generation if structured correctly. Below you will find how you can use this technique to generate traffic to your own website or blog.

The concept: Porn websites are undoubtedly the most popular around the web right? If you take a look at them (under an educational perspective obviously…) you will notice a very common trend: most of them display links to partner websites on the footer or on the sidebar.

Some of them create those link exchange networks for the SEO benefits, but many also do it for the traffic gains.

Suppose you have website A, B and C, each owned by a different person. If all of them decided to put a link to the other two websites on the sidebar, with a headline like “Partner Sites” or “We Recommend,” all of them would benefit and end up with more visitors in the end of the day.

Does it work?: Yes, although the results that you will get will vary depending on how big your site already is, and on how related the topics of your partner sites will be.

If your website is receiving 500 daily uniques per day, you would be trying to partner with websites with a similar traffic level (smaller ones would not be beneficial for you, and larger ones would not agree to). A sidebar or footer link on a website that receives 500 daily uniques will send anywhere from 1 up to 10 visitors your way, per day (this is a rough estimation, the numbers could be different depending on the circumstances).

If you manage to get 5 link exchange partners, therefore, each one of you should expect from 10 up to 50 extra daily visitors (or 300 to 1500 extra visitors per month). Nothing spectacular, but nothing to be ashamed of either.

The larger your blog, the larger the number of visitors that you could receive from link exchanges. The positioning of the links might affect the click through rate as well (i.e., links placed on a header stripe will generate more clicks than links on the footer).

Provided your link exchange partners cover related or complementary topics, there is also the benefit that those new visitors could end up liking your site and becoming a loyal visitor or an RSS subscriber.

How to get started: As I mentioned before, you will need to look for websites that have a related topic and a similar traffic level.

One good place to start is your own blog. Take a look at your most active commentators, and see if any of them have a blog on your same niche and with a similar traffic level. I bet there are some.

Secondly, take a look at who is linking to your articles or blog already. If someone naturally linked to you, he would certainly be willing to discuss a link exchange partnership.

Once you have a list of potential partners down, just contact them explaining the idea. Make sure to highlight what they have to gain out of the deal.

Finally, it might be a good idea to nofollow your links if you want to avoid troubles with Google.

Over to the readers: Have you ever exchanged links with other websites for the purpose of generating traffic? Did it work?

Website Traffic Series

Election Updates, Election Polls… It Is All About The Elections!

2008-11-16T03:26:00.000-08:00

Give up guys, today it will be all about the U.S. presidential elections. The rest of the week will follow alike probably.

What does this mean for bloggers and webmasters? It means that you should save your popular posts or big announcements for next week, else they would get lost in the middle of the election buzz.

This is a trick that you should always keep in mind: before publishing that killer post or announcing your latest project, check the calendar to see if there is some big event going on or a holiday in the U.S. or U.K. or on your largest market.

The smaller the amount of breaking news and big events going on, the higher your chances of getting some big exposure for your content.

Now I am off to check the election updates….

Pop-up Mania! Will They Come Back To Vogue?

2008-11-16T03:22:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago Darren Rowse posted an article where he shared a technique that increased his newsletter subscription rate by over 700%, from an average of 40 news subscribers per day to 350!

He probably could not have foreseen the mass effect that the post would trigger!

After that post, in fact, dozens of bloggers started using pop-ups to promote their newsletters, from John Chow to Shoemoney and many smaller bloggers, too.

The trend is so noticeable that I often find those pop-ups coming up on random sites that I am visiting over the day.

So what happened to the “pop-ups are the ultimate evil” motto that we had going on around the Internet?

I think it is starting to get questioned (which is not necessarily a bad thing, mind you).

Basically Darren found out by testing that the increase in the conversion rate of his newsletter was huge, while the drawbacks of adding the pop-ups were not so big. A couple of people emailed him complaining about the intrusiveness, but that was pretty much it.

Of course we need to take into consideration the people that got annoyed with the pop-ups and quit the site to never come back again, without letting Darren know about it. But will this effect be eve noticeable on his traffic trends?

Pop-ups remain one of the most intrusive and annoying promotion forms, but are they capable of hurting your traffic tangibly if you provide quality content?

Here is a question for our poll: would one pop-up offering you a newsletter subscription be enough to make you stop visiting a website? Assume you would see the pop-up only once, and not on every visit at that site. (RSS and email subscribers might need to visit the site to see the poll)

Website Traffic Series Part 19: Using Cross Feed Promotion

2008-11-16T03:20:00.000-08:00

Last week we talked about how you can exchange links with partner websites to create a small network and share traffic among its members. Apart from your website, however, you can also use your RSS feed for this purpose, and we will cover this tactic below.

The concept: Just like you can exchange links on your website, you can do the same on your RSS feed. Suppose there are three bloggers (A, B and C) that want to use the cross feed promotion to gain some traffic.

Blogger A would place a message like “Visit our partner site Blog-B.com” on its RSS feed footer. Blogger B would do the same but with a link to Blog C on its footer, and Blogger C would finally complete the loop linking to Blog A.

The readers of each of those blogs would probably notice those footer links, and some would end up clicking to check what that “partner” blog is all about.

Notice that you could also use different link exchange structures, like all bloggers would place a footer link to all other bloggers on their RSS feeds.

Does it work?: Yes, although just link with website link exchanges, it depends on the size of the RSS readership of the involved blogs, and on the relevancy of the topics.

The higher the RSS reader base and the relevancy, the more clicks each of the partners will get out of the deal.

I used this strategy myself on different blogs and on different stages of their development, and it was beneficial most of the times. If the topics are related, there are good chances that the incoming traffic will stick around and perhaps even subscribe to your Feed.

How to get started: Identify some blogs that have a similar RSS readership and a related or complementary topic, and approach the blogger to see if he or she is interested on this kind of promotion strategy.

You could start with a period of one month to test drive, and after that you could decide if it is worth to leave the RSS feed links there or not.

On the technical side, I recommend this RSS Footer plugin for handling the links. It is very easy to install and to use.

Over to the readers: Have you ever engaged in a cross feed promotion deal? How did it work? Do you plan to try it in the future?