Mylot was a huge blogging fad, it seemed everyone joined and promoted it. It was a great thing for bloggers, because commission was easy. I made about $30 with little effort before my earnings fell off. I still have 30 cents pending.

Mylot was a huge blogging topic about a year ago. Every make money blogger was heavily promoting it as the best new thing. The last time that I wrote an article about Mylot was Feb 2007!

What is Mylot?

For those who don’t know, Mylot is a huge community with 127,478 members. It is basically a souped up forum with a little bit of Yahoo Answers mixed in. You can start any topic, ask a question or just simply make a comment or observation.

For each thread started or reply, you earn money. The money is small and I’m not exactly sure the algorithm. However for popular topics and replies you are essentially paid more. Once you reach $10 you are eligible for payment.

The real money is made with getting a bunch of referrals.

Mylots Referral Program

When you refer someone to Mylot you basically will earn 25% of whatever the person you referred earns.

A great feature is that you get to see how much your referral earns you each month. My referrals are no longer making me any money, I referred them over a year ago!

Promoting your Blog on Mylot

I just had remembered I made a few posts in Mylot and of course left my my URL. Checking my statcounter I noticed a few referrals from Mylot.

The blogging section isn’t very popular at Mylot, but there is tons of opportunity to promote your blog whatever the niche is.

Mike of Mikes Money Making Mission did this in a great way. Mylot was one of his biggest traffic referrals. The best thing is you are basically paid to promote your own site (since you are paid per post).

It does take a bit of effort, but if you are on daily for a few minutes it can be well worth it.

First I have to say that I am by no means a SEO expert, but I do know blogging. Improving your blog for search engines has never been easier for bloggers. It just takes a little bit of work. In the last month we’ve received 1,400 visitors from Google alone.

What Exactly is SEO?

When I first started blogging, I didn’t even know what SEO was.

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines.

The better your website is prepared and “optimized” for search engines, the more traffic you should get. Here is how you can improve your blog and start using basic SEO methods to improve your rankings.

Change the URL Permalink Structure

It’s important for your blogs URL to include at least the post title. Basic Wordpress default settings give your blog, example, “yourblog.com/p=1″. This not only hurts your SEO, but makes your blog look unprofessional. You can customize your post URLs to have whatever you like.

To change the settings, go to your Options tab in the Wordpress dashboard. Then select permalinks. To have your post link just have the post title, go to custom and enter /%postname%/.

I recommend to do this very early with your blog. By changing the URL structure, your blog will need to be re-indexed for the right URLs. If I changed my permalink structure now, people searching my blog would get errors because the URL for each post would be different.

Install the All In One SEO Wordpress Plugin

This is an essential (and easy) Wordpress plugin for any blog. This plugin allows you to perform basic important SEO techniques with your blog. You can change the title and description to whatever you want. This is what the search engines will see. You can also tag your post with keywords which is also very important for search engines.

If you haven’t downloaded the All in One SEO plugin, you can do so here.

Blog Your Key Term

Pick relevant key terms for your blog and use them. The obvious best way to start ranking for the key terms you select (at least longtail) is to blog about them. Make sure to include the key terms in your title, post and tags.

My post, 10 Quick Blogging Tips, helped me start ranking for “blogging tips” and other key phrases similar to that.

Build Links With Your Key Terms

To get better rankings for your key terms you need to promote it. I’ve had bloggers link to this blog with keywords like blogging tips and blogging tools. I’ve used this technique for link exchanges and leaving comments.

Of course the alternative is to buy links. However this can be costly. You also don’t want to go and get 1,000 links within the same key term in one day. This could ultimately ban you from search engines, or for that particular term. SEO can be a slow process, but rewarding.

Comment on Blogs - Do Follow / Top Comments

Commenting on blogs can not only drive traffic and subscribers to your blog, it can also help with basic SEO.

By commenting on blogs with “do follow” or a top commenter list, you can build easy links with whatever key term you chose. This is how I gained better rankings for key terms like increase website traffic and blogging tips.

An important rule here is to NOT SPAM. All the comments I left were on-topic and provided value to the article and comment section.

Courtney Tuttle has the infamous Do-Follow List where you can find tons of blogs that give you SEO juice. There are over 200 websites/blogs that are now on the “D List”.

How have you incorporated basic SEO into your blog?

My marketing budget generally isn’t that big, yet. The money I make goes into living, bills, etc. However I have purchased reviews, banners and links in the past.

Where Should You Invest Your Money?

This is a classic chicken and the egg theory that many bloggers have debated about. Some argue that with the right content, readers will come. Some argue that without marketing you can’t get readers. Some argue both are equally important.

Many bloggers have started selling articles for easy revenue. The more people selling, the cheaper you can buy articles for. You don’t even need to be a writer, to be a blogger, you can get someone to do that for you.

With that dilemma, which should you purchase?

Articles

In the Bloggeries Forum, Bobby is selling his articles for $3-$5 dollars. By choosing the right topic and SEO, you can not only hope and expect your post will get social media traffic, it will also get traffic from search engines.

I get paid to write articles for different blogs and it’s a nice gig. The best thing you can do is get it to be steady. For a particular blog I make over $100 a month, so I can see why this is appealing to bloggers.

Advertising

Buying advertising and links can be cheap fill, unless you renew. The traffic you get sometimes only lasts so long. However, you can also convert that traffic into readers if you advertise on the right blog. We just (finally) added an advertising page with many great options.

Given that argument, I am interested to test out purchasing articles. This not only will save me time for other things, its another fresh perspective.

What would you rather buy, an article or advertising?

Linkbait has become a popular way for bloggers to increase their readers and traffic.

What is Linkbait?

Linkbait is basically a piece of content placed on a web page that is designed for the specific intention of gathering links from as many different sources as possible. Many linkbaits are also designed to go viral or go be popular on social media sites.

Good linkbait can be gold for any blogger or webmaster.

My Linkbait

Recently I tried my own linkbait, 8 reasons to link to our blog today. I wouldn’t say it failed because we did get some links (which I definitely appreciate). However it wasn’t as many as I had hoped.

It was a simple idea that I thought might spark some interest, especially to our regular readers. We did gain several rss subscribers along with a few links.

Why Did Your Linkbait Fail?

There could be several reasons why your linkbait failed.

Not Interesting Enough. The post just didn’t serve it’s purpose as linkbait. Whether it was simply boring or not eye-catching, the post or image just didn’t work.

Couldn’t Go Viral. For whatever reason your post couldn’t go viral. Maybe it wasn’t the right topic or submitted to the wrong websites. It’s important to put it on the best sites possible depending on the category.

No Promotion. Most linkbait definitely needs promotion, at least to get going. You need those votes and views for people to actually SEE the linkbait. This would be a good method for all I’ve written about on Social Media like Sending Stumble Requests to your Friends.

Viral but No Links. Sometimes posts go viral and go popular on digg and more, but you don’t get people writing about it. Another linkbait I’ve written, Top 10 Reasons to Sleep Through New Years Eve, went popular on digg and others, but didn’t get people linking to it.

Social Media Didn’t Like It. You can have a great posts, a few votes, but not enough. Sometimes I’ve had over a dozen stumbles on an article, but only a small trickle of traffic. It often depends on WHO votes for it, instead of how many.

It’s Been Done Before. It’s hard for people to be into something that they’ve actually just seen, or seen before. It’s almost like “copying” to people. Digg’ers are the hardest to please when it comes to that sense. If you do anything even similar to what they’ve seen before you post will likely get buried.

Have you ever written linkbait? What were the results?

After a few quick emails with Kelly Curtis from Pass the Torch we began discussing Stumbleupon. I mentioned the Send To feature, but she had never used it before. Getting your stumble friends to stumble your posts is another way to utilize stumbleupon for more stumbles and more traffic.

How to Use the Send to Feature

On your stumbleupon toolbar there is a “send to” feature. By clicking that it lists all of your stumble friends. Instead of emailing each one separately when you want to promote an article you can simply use this feature.

For this feature to work the person has to be your “mutual” friend. I currently have 20 ‘mutual’ friends that I can send my stumble requests to.

Once you send them a request, there will be a number next to their stumble button. This will indicate that there is a request. The next time your friend presses the stumble button, they will be sent to the page you that you ’sent to’ them.

Get Your Stumbles

I am always looking for new articles to submit and stumble. An easy way to do this is requesting me as a friend and “sending” them to me.

Another option on stumbleupon is the ‘contact’ page. This way you can send private messages to users on stumbleupon. This is a great way to use stumble to build your base and increase your votes. I get plenty of requests a day, so don’t worry about bugging me! Send them on over.

How do you promote your articles on stumbleupon? Have you used the Send To feature?

I recently turned down an opportunity to publicize and receive reviews from Bloggers Showroom, because they require putting a widget on your blog. They require putting a widget on your blog. I respectfully declined, widgets just aren’t for me. Too many widgets scare me, I don’t even use the MyBlogLog Recent Readers widget anymore.

Too Many Widgets is Like…

A generic blogspot blog.

A widget overload may be okay for a personal blog or new blogspot user, but not for “established blogs”. You don’t see A-listers displaying badges or widgets saying their blog rank or directory links. The only time a widget is needed is if it offers something very beneficial for you as a blogger.

For example, entrecard sent about 400+ unique visitors this month already. MyBlogLog used to send 100-200 visitors. Scratchback earns about $20per month. These widgets, at least for me, are quality and beneficial enough to keep on the sidebar.

Once a widget no longer offers value for your blog it should be removed. Once MyBlogLog stopped delivering the traffic it used to, it was gone. Sidebar space is prime real estate for important features on your blog.

Benefits of Widgets

Depending on the widget there are several benefits to display widgets.

• Referral traffic
• Networking
• Value for your readers
• Publicity for displaying the widget (similar to referral traffic)

Negatives of Widgets

There are also several negatives of displaying widgets.

• Sidebar clutter
• Slower loading page
• “Free” advertising
• Unprofessional look
• Design clash

“Over Widgetizing”

By “over-widgetizing” you can be ‘just another blog’. Surfing the blogosphere I often find 3 column blogs with very slow loading pages that turn me off on the first visit.

Widgets are definitely addicting to bloggers. They generally provide free or “cheap” traffic. By simply adding a widget you could get visitors to your blog. As bloggers we sometimes get lazy and give into widgets, but at what price?

Are you addicted to widgets or guilty of “over widgetizing”?

Promotion and discussion on forums can definitely help your traffic as well as web presence. I’ve even tried to run my own forum however it proved to be too time consuming and difficult to fight the spam bots. The benefits of forums are great and I really wanted to tap into that area.

Instead I’ve tried to be active on several forums (as well as social media) because it’s important to branch out. Talking to other bloggers and conversing can really only help you expand.

Out with the Old

BloggerForum once was a great place for link exchanges, posts about new money making opportunities and a place to share your blog. They took some downtime figuring out a new way to fight the spammers. As they have re-emerged (I had no idea they were back until today) they are missing several key categories, as well as no easy way to search new posts. I was there several minutes without success.

PayPerPost Forum was a great place for me for a while. Lately their forum hasn’t become as blogger friendly, just postie friendly. My blog promotion and social media promotion wasn’t very well received the last few times. Stumble and digg requests go unanswered and blogging news needs constant bumping to keep it alive.

In with the New

Bloggeries forum has been very impressive so far. It’s one of the few “new” forums I’ve joined. Several seemed to pop up all at once. I’ve given Bloggeries forum a shot and it’s been pretty good. I’ve gotten to know the owner pretty well as well as converse with several members. The posts have already proved to be worth it, sending about 20+ unique visitors in just two or three days.

9Mb is a webmaster forum that is owned and run by Nomar. He is previously from KingNomar.com but that has been sold. The forum is a mini-digital point. They have a tight community of users who are frequent and active. It’s good for link sales, exchanges as well as blogging questions among other things.

Have you moved on to any of the new forums yet?

Traffic from search engines is the blogging gift that keeps on giving. You can find yourself receiving a steady flow of new visitors to your blog each day once you have a post ranking high in search engine results. Of course, it’s not easy to get on the first page of Google for a search term so you need to think creatively. I have an idea that can help.

Every day millions of people search for solutions to their tech support problems. This is a golden opportunity for you drive new visitors to your blog. Simply write a post detailing a computer problem you are familiar with and offer up the solution. Post it and forget about it while the Google crawler works its magic on your behalf.

Here’s a real world example from my own blog. Almost a year ago I ran into a problem with an Access database. I eventually realized the problem was with an Internet Explorer setting (of all things) so I wrote a short 100 word post about it called Access Files Located on an “Untrusted Site” and moved on with my life.

Lo and behold, over the course of a few weeks my post slowly rose in the ranks of Google searches. As of today, it’s on the first page of results for a variety of searches related to Access and “untrusted site” error messages. The post receives new and unique visitors each day from search engines. I’ve since gone on to write a number of posts containing tech support solutions that now account for about 40% of my incoming traffic.

This idea doesn’t require you to write long posts or have a lot of technical knowledge. A lot of these problems and their solutions can be found online already. Just keep these two things in mind when writing your post:

• Be smart about your post title. Use keywords you think people will use in their search results. It’s a good idea to use words or phrases from any error messages the problem contains if possible.
• Keep your description of the problem and its solution clear and concise. People want a fix for their problem and not more confusion and frustration.

Helping people solve their computer problems is a simple way to generate natural traffic to your blog. In fact, you could probably start a brand new blog offering nothing but fixes and solutions for any software package on the market today and have traffic rolling in. It just takes a little patience as the search engine spiders crawl and index your posts.