We are trying out a few new things on the blog, let me do a run-down of everything that is going on.

First off, we are starting a blog carnival that will run monthly, and if successful, every two weeks. If you aren’t famaliar with blog carnivals you submit your entry URL and information you want posted, then it is run in sort of a list. It builds a link to your blog and exposure to it as well. To submit your blog click here, there is currently no category or topic, simply because we want your best post! Try to submit your best or favorite post of the month for the carnival.

We are adding new advertisements on the right sidebar as there isn’t as much income coming in. I will continue to try to monetize our blog as best as I can. We are currently running AdWords and other advertising to try to get as much exposure as possible. Donations are always welcome.

I would also like to announce, finally, our blog competition. We are looking for 10 blogs to review us! The review will be voted by a panel of 6 or so members of Blog about your Blog including me. The best review will receive 10 dollars, second place and third place will receive 5 dollars. Payments will be made by me, via paypal.

There are a few requirements, first your blog must be older than 30 days and updated somewhat regularly. The review has to be a minimum of 100 words and you of course must link to our site. You can write about whatever you want about us, look around our blog a bit first. Feel free to mention what you like, dislike, suggestions etc, but make sure it’s good! It’s a competition! Sorry BAYB members, this competition isn’t for you, but soon after this I will announce a competition exclusively for BAYB! Then only our authors can enter the review contest! (many of you blog about us anyhow, just trying to give back)

If you are curious if you qualify leave me a comment and I’ll personally check. All blog reviews will receive a linkback! Remember we want 10 blogs to review us. We hope to have this acheived in two or three weeks so our judges can get their scores to me.

No sports. No religion. No politics. All The Time!

Getting on track with the Blog Reviews, Tiny Voices in my Head is first up.

Layout

Great header at the top, as the tagline says “the perfect blend of good and evil”. The template is a darker theme, but it works. Simple but decent. No ad placement or huge banners to take away from the content. You do see a somewhat large picture of the author, I might make it a tad smaller.

Content

What I like everytime I visit this blog is the number of comments, it’s ridiculous. 39 on some, 42 on another, heres 53! It’s obviously a personal blog so there should be a few more comments than other blogs, but that’s still really good. She must have a nice broad readership. It gives the blog other story to read basically. First the article, then the comments.

After opening up the buttons on the site, you can see 38 readers on feedburner. More surprisingly though, this blog has been going since 2004! No wonder! Great job on keeping it up that long.

For some reason I really like this post on BlockBuster vs Netflix. Eventually I am going to get the BlockBuster direct, after reading this entry.

Most of the rest of her posts are random and humorous pointing out the things in life that don’t make much sense. You can see that by her most recent post entitled Grab Bag.

Suggestions

With a blog as big as this one, she should make it easier to find certain posts or topics. Categories or a search bar would definitely help that.

She also could possibly pull off having more posts on the front page, I only count 4. When I read a blog I like, such as this one, I usually scroll down to the bottom reading the posts that interest me. As long as it doesn’t take a year to load, the more posts displayed on the front page, the better. It gives me more of a variety to read.

I’m not much on giving ratings, I wouldn’t know where to start, but this blog definitely has something going. I mean your dealing with a 3 year veteran! Go check her out and say Blog about your Blog sent ya!

Click here to find out how to get your Blog Reviewed!

Here is a blog promotion question, and it isn’t rhetorical, so please feel free to answer.

You have a spare $25 and want to increase awareness and generate some buzz over at the new topfunnies blog. It is not a question of making money right now, just kickstart some targetted traffic that is interested in videos and posts about the world’s best comedians.

You have to use the $25 by the end of the month. One idea was to offer $25 for the funniest comment. What would you spend it on for maximum effect?

Having been around the business opportunity scene for quite a number of years I hate to see people being sucked into dodgy schemes.

One such program I feel is the Wealth Toolbox. Simply for signing up with them they claim they will pay $50 to new members. They also say that any referrals are also worth a further $50 each. This is obviously a load of old tosh.

In saying this, though, I’ve seen quite a few bloggers falling for the hype and promoting the program.  I’ve written a post today, on my own blog, about this: A Warning About Wealth Toolbox.

It reminds me of a Ponzi scheme first originated by Charles Ponzi before WW2.

Making money with advertised opportunities is a mine field, especially now with worldwide availability over the Internet.

The old adage is true: If a money making scheme looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Good blogging,
Mike.
Mike’s Money Making Mission

It seems that the task of linking to directories always appear in the blogger’s TO DO list. PR4 and above sites are best. Reading through Mike’s weekly stats, he isn’t so convinced of their usefulness, at least as far as driving traffic to your site. I guess like all things, you have to weigh up where your time is best spent, and there can’t be any harm in allocating a few minutes a week to signing up to directories that Google at least deem worthy as a link.

Anyway, I came across 3 options/alternatives that you might want to check out. Swicki, Chainki and bla.st. I am not promising the earth, but they may just deliver something more than the normal 1 visitor a month!

Swicki is a cross between a search engine and an on-line encyclopedia (wiki). If you go to our swicki and search your blog name, a set of results will appear. Ignore them! Directly below the search box, use the link to input your own bio. This will then be logged on Swicki, and whenever anyone else on the internet uses Swicki to search for you , your custom description will appear with your search result! Quite nice.

Chainki is a wiki derivative of DMOZ, one of THE main directories on the internet. Chainki is collaborative and like Swicki, you can tap into it by inputting your own abbreviated details/tag line in a suitable category. Like all wikis, it can be re-edited by others.

And bla.st is a new business cards directory that if nothing else, is going to cause a stir for a while, so it is probably worth jumping in there. It is free to upload your “business card” either of your blog, or a promo or service. You can categorise your card to suit. By bidding cents per day you can push your card higher up the heirarchy and for $5 a day you can be number one on the whole site. We did a review of bla.st at The Pisstakers and were credited 3 cents a day, which currently puts us second under “humor”!

Everyone likes comments.

There are bloggers who put comments above visits when judging their own success. I’m always pleased to see in the morning several comments stretched over my blogs. In fact nothing makes the process more enjoyable for me than reading a new commenter and seeing them come back.

Over at Jakob Nielsen they determined that reader participation often more or less follows a 90-9-1 rule:

• 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don’t contribute).
• 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.
• 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don’t have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they’re commenting on occurs. (source)

Now it’s true that this ratio is something that you’re just going to have to accept, there will always be a much higher percentage of lurkers. It doesn’t matter who you are. There are some ways to improve upon them though. I’ve sifted through a lot of them and here are what I consider the best ten ways to squeeze those comments out of your readers and of course in doing so make you smile (go on it’s ok - at least a grin).

1. Ask for the comment. Invite your readers to leave a comment or participate. For new readers to your site they may feel a little out of your community. This is your chance to say ‘hey I want to hear what you’ve got!’.
2. End your post with a question. This gives a springboard for your readers to know what they can say if they want to comment but not sure what to say.
3. Make it easy to post a comment. If it is too hard to leave a comment who is going to bother? You’re already batting against the 90:9:1 ratio. Don’t make it so your readers have to a particular account to leave a comment. I’m not against the verification text myself to stop spam either.
4. Make friends with other bloggers, by leaving comments and striking up conversations you will often get loyal readers in return. It’s never a good idea to go out of your way to be negative on someone else’s blog because you’ll only hurt your own reputation in the long run.
5. Interact positively with your comments.ÂIf someone takes the time to leave a comment you should respond! Even if you don’t agree with what’s said you can always discuss it like an adult without turning it into a negative conversation. Others will see you responding and be encouraged themselves.

As with anything some of these will work for you and others may not. Why not pick one and force yourself to do it for at least 2 weeks to see what difference it makes to the comments.

We’d love to hear how you go so leave a comment! Or if you have your own suggestions please feel free to add them here too.

The majority of the bloggers I read are all on mylot and earn a little extra money from it. On January 13 I received 21.34 and I am scheduled to make another 10.66 when they pay next. That number of course should increase a few dollars by then.

This is essentially just from my referrals, I barely post on there at all. On a good day my referrals can earn me almost 1.00$ per day. Thats 1$ a day without even having to post or visit the website!

When I first joined MyLot in late November their member total was about 40,000 people, since then they have 73,538 members!

Not only can you earn money through Mylot, you can also receive some traffic income. Mike reports he receives about an extra 12 visitors a day.

If you haven’t joined get in now, and start earning some money and get visitors to your site!

To get more traffic, you have to understand where your current traffic is coming from. To do that, I like to use statcounter. Basically by using statcounter, you can get MORE traffic. Never heard of getting more traffic with a counter before? Well…

By using the ‘Came From’ feature you can see what page referred the visitors to your site. From there you can see which methods you are getting the most traffic from.

You may be spending a lot of time promoting your website somewhere that just isn’t sending you traffic. You can conclude that it isn’t worth your time. It’s just the opposite when something is working. Spend more time with that!

There are other counters available, but statcounter is a must have on any blog. Its free and easy to learn, and only really takes a few seconds to install. After that you can even use it to track with an invisible code.

There are other features you can control as well, like setting up another user to see the stats, or you can simply make the stats public.

Lately I’ve seen many bloggers and webmasters ask which counter is the best. I give my recommendation to statcounter.