Market Leverage Is Buying the Blogosphere
Some affiliate networks have come in strong with blogger referrals or excellent programs. Market Leverage has almost bought their way into bloggers hearts with so many great contests and buying sponsorships on blogs. As you can see Market Leverage is a new BAYB sponsor and we are happy to have them.Market Leverage Contests
We missed the boat with this one, however many bloggers were able to take advantage of Market Leverage’s generosity. This has lead to many bloggers joining the network, building their affiliates and winning some great prizes along the way.
I have joined several, but haven’t been able to win any. If you are running a Market Leverage contest please let us know!
Market Leverage the Affiliate Network
Most affiliate networks are similar, but each have their own things that set them apart. Market Leverage has a great layout to help you find the offers that you want to run. You can also view the top performing offers just with one click.
Being a brand new member I haven’t really seen anything that I dislike and I am excited to start earning money with Market Leverage.
Market Leverage Affiliate Program
Market Leverage claims to have the highest paying referral program among other affiliate networks. How do they know?
MarketLeverage researched and reviewed the lifetime referral programs of every affiliate network that attended Affiliate Summit West 2008 and ad-tech San Francisco 2008. No other affiliate network had a higher paying lifetime referral program publicly disclosed on their website.
If you aren’t in to running the offers, you may as well promote the network. You will earn 5% of the commissions that the publisher you refer makes.
Should I Move Off Of Blogspot? YES!
A very common question I see bloggers ask is should they move off of blogspot. The simple answer is YES! If you really want to brand your blog and make money with it, you need to get off Blogspot. With that being said, I myself have several blogspot blogs. However, any blog I want to make money with all are .com.
Whats the Big Deal?
A new blogger may be thinking, what is the point? Wouldn’t it make more sense to stick with a free blog, instead of paying money for something else? Here are a few reasons why you shouldn’t think twice about moving off of blogspot.
Ownership and Branding
You never really own your Blogspot, Google does. They have the power to shut you down if they want to, just by suspending your blog.
You never see any of the big make money online bloggers, or any huge bloggers in general with blogspots. You don’t see John Chow Dot Blogspot or The Huffington Post Blogspot, do you?
Transferability
You can’t really sell your blogspot blog if you wanted to. You could figure out some way around it I’m sure, but it still wouldn’t have the value that an established .com would have. Some people are “weary” of just exchanging links with someone on a blogspot, why would they consider buying your blog?
Customization
With your own domain and hosting you can customize your website however you want to. There are thousands of WordPress themes and hundreds (thousands?) of WordPress plugins to make your blog function however you want.
Blogspot has some themes, very few already installed to choose from.
Affordable
Lastly to have your own domain and web hosting it is really affordable. A domain only costs about $6-10 depending on where you get it. Hosting can cost as low as $4.99 to about $10 per month. Use our Blogging’s Best Buys to find great deals on domains and hosting.
There are many reasons to jump on off the Blogspot wagon, with little reasons to stay. If you are asking yourself whether or not you should move off blogspot, I hope I convinced you.
No Self Pings Please
WordPress users know how annoying self pings can be. Almost every post that I write, I generally like to link to another relevant post. This creates a “Self Ping”. It’s not really a problem, except that it generally looks bad if you are displaying recent comments.
Self Pings really don’t have a purpose either. They don’t do anything, so I try to delete them after each post. This takes time, it’s another thing to do when preparing and publishing posts.
Now you can turn self pings off with the WordPress Plugin No Self Pings by Michael D. Adams. All you have to do is upload it and activate it, the plugin will take care of the rest.
You can download the plugin at BlogWaffe.
What WordPress Plugins have been helpful to you?
Where Does Your Traffic Come From? First Half Roundup
I thought it would be a fun to reflect on the first half of 2008. We are still pretty far off our Blogging Goals for 2008, but we still have time.
I put together a few lists of our top traffic sources.
Top 10 Referring Sites
- Entrecard
- 45n5
- Bloggeries
- Digital Point
- Daily Blog Tips
- Scratchback
- Total Web Review
- Resource for Bloggers
- Pay Per Post
- About Blog Contests
Top Social Media and Search Engines Referrers
- Stumbleupon
- Entrecard
- Sphinn
- Yahoo
- Blogging Zoom
- MSN
- MyBlogLog
- Site Hoppin
- Mixx
Top 10 Most Read Articles
- Stumbleupon Now Using Captcha for Reviews
- Getting Paid to Take Surveys Online
- Affiliate Marketing with Incentivizable Campaigns
- Top 20 Contest Blogs
- Search Engine Traffic is Easy With Tech Support Posts
- What is Bounce Rate?
- Social Media Could Put You On The Map
- 10 Firefox Add-ons to Supercharge Your Blog
- Bloggers Guide to SEO
- Could Mixx Be the Next Digg?
This list was definitely fun to make, several of the posts were written by Blog about your Blog authors. I also included Entrecard on both lists because it does have a social media aspect but I also frequently use the forum to promote Comment Friday.
Are your traffic sources similar? Whats your top referrer?
Contest Roundup July 6
You can’t lose with your blog. Have a look at the new contest roundup.
Free domains names
Two domain names for you every month! Subscribe to Webmaster Zone by email and you could be one of the lucky winners.
Cash from MoneyBites
Easy blog contest from Moneybites.com, a place that helps you on how to earn online. Three cash prizes: $50, $20 and $5. Simply write a blog post about the competition and subscribe to his RSS feed by email.
An Asus Eee Pc
The fantastic Asus Eee Pc may be yours with the Office Summer Fest from Shoplet.com! Make a little and fun blurb about your favorite office supply including provided keywords and get more points by referring the most people with your post.
Don’t forget about the great contests at Typo Buddy. The latest you can win eBay gift certificates for participating as well as linking to TypoBuddy.com and the contest.
If you’re looking for blog contests, if you want to promote your own competition, don’t forget to visit About Blog Contests!
Unleash the Fatman in You
Israel over at Fat Man Unleashed sent us this great t-shirt. He’s on a quest to spread the word about health, weight loss and working out. He’s already lost over 44 pounds! I’ve been following his blog for a while now, seeing recent pics of him you can definitely see the weightloss!
Israel is also in charge of Healthranker which we’ve already told you about, HealthRanker: Social Media Health News.
Back to the t-shirt, you can buy your own for only $9.97. Wear it on your blog and maybe you will be featured on his site! Make sure to tell him Blog about your Blog sent you.
Check me out wearing the shirt! I’m already 28 pounds lighter since my weight loss journey.
Comment Friday for July 4th
Happy 4th of July! Today we will be busy with a parade, eating, and fireworks. We hope you will have a chance to stop by and leave a comment.
If this is your first Comment Friday we give one lucky person a free weekly blogroll spot as our “blog of the week“. Along with that we are also giving that winner 250 entrecard credits.
Since we are adjusting our new WordPress theme, I was wondering what your favorite WordPress theme was. Have you changed themes lately? If so, why?
What Now? They Keep Unsubscribing
The problem with having a RSS base from contests and other promotions is that they might have only subscribed for the prizes. It’s your job, as a blogger, to make them stay long term. The last successful big contest we did was actually our Christmas Contest.
As we’d of course like to launch another huge successful contest, it does take a lot of time to organize and run successfully. With so much competition it is becoming harder to entice people to participate.
As mentioned earlier, some people just participate (like subscribing to RSS) then later unsubscribe after the contest is over. We’ve been able to keep a lot of our readers this long, but as of late, we’ve seen a lot of unsubscriptions. Other than a contest, what can you do?
Get Readers Involved
Give them a reason to want to come back and read day after day. This of course includes posting frequently, daily is best. But beyond that, then what? We always do our Comment Fridays which are definitely a lot of fun. This allows us to ask questions to our readers and get them involved.
Other things could be fun polls to do, round-up posts, or personal entries in your blog.
Launch New Campaigns
I would consider a contest, an advertising campaign, wouldn’t you? It generally takes time of course, as well as a prize. Advertising is your time and money invested into your website or product.
So why not try something else? I would definitely recommend visiting blogging forums and interacting with other bloggers, or other people interested in your niche. Our favorite blogging forum is Bloggeries.
There you can participate in similar discussions you talk about on your own blog, as well as promote your website as well as develop your brand.
Participate in Fun Competitions
Another recent ploy to get more RSS subscribers has seemingly been a “competition”. We’ve seen Conn vs Cow do whatever it is they are doing. I still don’t get it, but it seems to be working for them apparently.
Another interesting competition (which I wish I could of gotten in) is Blogging Idol at Daily Blog Tips. The competition is between 100 different bloggers. The main goal is to increase their RSS subscribers the most with different tactics. The top winner will receive $3000! That sounds like a fun way to increase subscribers with great incentive.
What do you do when you see your RSS feed count dropping?