Wednesday, June 27, 2007

10 Blog Traffic Tips

In every bloggers life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else's blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that's about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.


Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.


It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called "traction", which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.


Top 10 Tips


10. Write at least five major "pillar" articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good "how-to" lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.



9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.



You don't have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.



8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be series about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that's the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).



7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.


Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.



6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger's article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it's sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.



This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.



5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.



4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.



To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.



3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it's so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it's worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!



2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it's worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.



How you benefit is through what is called your "Resource Box". You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.



1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.



I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it's certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.



This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.



To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:



www.BlogMastermind.com


Click here to get The Blog Profits Blueprint

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Article Submitter Review

While article submission isn't anything shockingly new to
the world of SEO, many people STILL don't do it... and for good reason. It
takes so incredibly long to do manually.



I'll admit, I had tried article submission at one point, but
after I finally found a few article dircetories to submit my articles to,
and then after manually copying and pasting my information into the required
textboxes on each submission site, I quickly realized that my time could be
better spent doing something else.



Then I came across a free program created by Brad Callen and
Bryxen Software, Inc. that allows you to automatically submit your articles
to hundreds of article directories with a few mouse clicks. Basically all
I had to do was input my article criteria into the software, ONCE! Then, the
program would automatically fill in all of the required data at each of the
submission websites. Pretty incredible if you ask me.


The only part I didn't understand was why the program is free...
but I can't argue with that I suppose.


The software currently contains around 700 article directories,
all free to submit your articles to. It is the most straightforward program
that we've come across, in that all you need to do is:



1. Input your article details (i.e. title, article body, bio,
etc.) into the software



2.
Click on the directory you want to submit
to



And then the program will automatically fill in your article
details. Then, you simply click the submit button and your article is instantly
submitted to the directory. Then, you can move to the next directory, go through
the list, and by the time you're finished you'll have roughly 700 one way
links pointing to your website.



I can't think of an easier way to get links. Of course, if
you're going to get links this quickly, it's important to submit different
variations of your articles, to make things look more natural to the search
engines.



You can do this very easily via Article
Submitter
when you create your project in the beginning.


The
software is constantly being updated and
their is an incredible community of users
established that all work together to
make the software better and better, so
you know you're getting great value for
the money.



To
check out the software, go here:


http://bizop101.bryxen7.hop.clickbank.net

Saturday, June 2, 2007

A Down And Dirty Adsense Income Plan

There are several ways to make money online. One of them being Google's Adsense program. This program allows you to place ads on your sites and make money when someone clicks on those ads. Well there are just as many ways to make money with Adsense are there are ways to make money online, but in this article, I want to give you a down and dirty plan that will have you making money with Google Adsense in no time.

First, you'll need to find a software program that will allow you to do detailed keyword research. You'll need to find a keyword that has a high cost per click average. There are many software programs online that will allow you to do this. Just do a search on any search engine to find them. Some of these will cost a few hundred dollars but your income from Google Adsense should cover that in no time.

Once you have found your keyword, you'll just need to create one article around that keyword. You'll need to make sure that your content totally focuses on this one keyword though. The reason being is that keyword will make high paying Adsense ads show up on your site. This is truly the key to making this plan work, so make sure that your article is totally focused on the keyword you chose.

If you're not a writer try going to one of the freelance sites online and hire someone from there to write your article. For $5-$10 you can get a good article written that will totally be focused on your keyword. This will save you a lot of time and allow you to implement this plan over and over again quicker.

One last note about your article. The title of your article is also a very important part of your article. This needs to be something that will make people want to read your article. Almost like a headline that draws people's attention, and in just a moment, I'll explain why.

After you've gotten your article created, you'll need to build a one page site and put your article on that site. You'll then need to add your Google Adsense ads to your page. I recommend put a big square Google Adsense ad at the top of your page above your article, a skyscraper ad down the left hand side of your page, and then another big rectangle ad at the very bottom of your article.

Once your page is totally complete, you'll then need to find forums that are related to the topic of your article. For example, if you wrote an article on horses, then you'd need to find forums related to animals. If you wrote an article on roses then you'd need to find a forum on plants or gardening. I hope you get the picture.

You'll want to post in these forums and include your signature. Your signature will consist of the title of your article, and the link to your page where the article is. This is why the title of your article is so important. It's what will make people click on your link and visit your page and have them clicking on your Adsense ads. That's why it's vital that your headline be a real attention getter.

As you make more and more posts in forums, more and more people will come to your site and click on your Adsense ads. When you're not posting, create more pages by starting this entire plan all over again. You could do this for as many keywords as you want, and as time goes on, you'll see your Google Adsense income building.

Liz Tomey has created hundreds of Adsense websites over the last few years. For over a year now, she's created a 5 figure income from Adsense and is now sharing all of her knowledge at http://www.adsensegirl.com/members/?rid=312

Come by and get your free membership today!

Quick And Easy Content Site Profits

A lot of people are making a lot of money off of content sites these days. Content sites are simply just nice looking sites with content on them. If you can use a WYSIWYG editor, and write a short article, you can build a content site.

They do take a lot of work though!

One way that you can quickly and easily build content sites is to use RSS feeds. Many people are against using RSS feeds for content for their sites because of the duplicate content filters. However, there are tools out there that you can use so that duplicate content isn't an issue.

By adding RSS feeds to your site, you have instant content. You can search for niche RSS feeds on thousands up thousands of topics, and find a few that are related to the niche that your site is related to. You don't want to use just any RSS feed. Make sure that the RSS feed will put relevant ads on your content site.

Here's the "down and dirty steps" to creating a content site using nothing but RSS feeds.

1. Pick your niche

2. Find RSS feeds by searching RSS feed directories, article sites, and blogs. Make sure that you do have the right to use the feed though. Some sites don't want you to use their RSS feed.

3. Use an RSS aggregator to turn your RSS feeds into code that you can place into your website.

4. Build your site and place the code your RSS aggregator generated and place that on your site to fill it up with content. Add other resources to your site to make it look nice and add value to your visitor.

There's a lot more that goes into it, but that's the basics. I can't cover the exact "how to's" in this post, but you can get a free step-by-step video tutorial from http://www.rsscashsecrets.com/members/?rid=577
that will show you have to do all the above and more!

Once you've got your content site setup, you'll want to monetize it in some way. Be it Adsense, YPN, other PPC networks, selling links and/or ads, affiliate programs, etc.

http://www.rsscashsecrets.com/members/?rid=577 also covers the monitization aspects of building these easy content sites too. I highly recommend that you head over there right now, and grab the free video tutorial. There's no catch. It really is a free video tutorial. You'll get the full tutorial, all the resources, and more and it wont cost you a dime!

Okay, that's it for this "how to" post. I hope I've shed some light on content sites for you. There's no better time than now to get started...

Resource: http://www.rsscashsecrets.com/members/?rid=577

Hey, I need your help...

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