An important thing in blogging successfully is being an authority in your niche. What better of a way to show that you are by answering questions in that niche? Yahoo answers is perfect for that.

Yahoo Answers for Traffic

Yahoo Answers has a great search ability where you can enter keywords to find questions to answer. You can search between answers that have or haven’t been answered yet.

You can also leave your “source” when answering a question. This is basically asking for a plug of your own website. During football season, I try to take a few minutes every week to go through and answer fantasy football questions and give my “advice”. Then leave the URL as my source.

The questions also pose for great post titles and ideas for posts in your niche.

Yahoo Answers Trial

On my poetry site, Words of a Poet, I put my poems, famous poems, as well as song lyrics (that’s basically poetry too). When Brianna Taylor debuted her song Summertime on Real World, I quickly found the lyrics and post them. The next day tons of people were requesting her lyrics on forums and especially Yahoo Answers.

Looking up all the questions on Yahoo Answers regarding her lyrics, I began to tell them where I “found it” and linked to my own site.

From June 26th to June 29th (yeah 3 days), Yahoo Answers sent nearly 150 visitors. The traffic is obviously very targetted as they are finding the exact answer they are looking for.

Of course I got a little lucky to be one of the first to post the lyrics and I only answered questions for one day, imagine the potential.

Answer questions about breaking news in your niche, link to your site, and watch the traffic roll in.

Lately I have been installing WordPress Plugins like crazy. Probably about 10 in the last few days. I wanted to share a few ‘new’ ones that I have found from other bloggers. After reading the 15 Most Under-Utilized Plugins for SEO I installed many of them.

Askimet

This is the #1 WordPress Plugin to make life easier as a blogger. This particular blog gets at least 100 spam comments per day. Not sure why it’s so high, but imagine trying to moderate that yourself everyday. Waste of time!

I recently just upgraded this plugin, which is sporting a new feature. You can now automatically discard spam comments on posts older than a month. Check!

Download the Askimet plugin

TagMahal – Automatic Tag Suggestion

This plugin will simply find suggested keywords you can tag your post with. I am a bit lazy and would like to see more from this plugin. After generating these suggested keywords, I’d like to then click and add them, instead of copy and pasting them in. Still a time saver.

Download TagMahal.

Technorati Incoming Links

I hated upgrading WordPress after finding out my Technorati links would be replaced with some Google garbage. Well if you miss Technorati you can have it back. Simply install the plugin and you will have your incoming Technorati links back in the dashboard where they belong.

Download Technorati.

Broken Link Checker

We have posts dated all the way back to Nov 2006. We’ve done a lot of linking to try and share our traffic and really promote other bloggers. As we know, many come and go. This has left us with tons of broken links, way more than I had ever thought.

At the time of this post, the plugin has found 183 broken links. That’s after I’ve already cleaned some! How many broken links do you have?

Download Broken Links.

No Self Pings

I already blogged about No Self Pings Please, but I had to mention this again. Ever since installing I haven’t had to deal with any annoying self pings.

Which WordPress plugins make blogging easier for you?

I’m not much of a Facebook user. I am rarely even on Myspace. But I am aware that they all have advertising space, whether it is hosted by themselves, or by Google Adsense (myspace uses adsense).

However, when I saw this awesome offer, I decided to get a little acquainted with Facebook.

Free $250 in Advertising

You can easily get up to $250 in Facebook ads credit in just a few short minutes.

The first thing you need to do is register for Facebook Ads.

You will need to enter in payment information, but you don’t need to actually pay anything.

After that you can enter and redeem coupons.

• Click “Manage Ads”
• Click “Billing”
• Click “Funding Sources”
• Click “Enter Coupon Code”

The three $50 coupon codes are:

• T5V6-1JKV-TNH9-2MRH
• 2JXY-WTFK-72Y0-VJ6Y
• R1X5-0NH7-5FXW-5YEC

The first one expires July 31st, the other two expire October 11th.

The way to get an extra $100 is to install the Visa Business Application on your Facebook account. After you do that you will be emailed an additional $100 coupon to the email you sign-up with. That also expires October 11th.

This is great for any campaign you want to run, whether it be PPC or just to drive traffic to an established domain.

Thanks to Matthew of Internet Business Daily and John of Affiliate Obsession for this great deal.

Maybe you’ve never been lucky enough to win any contest. But the point is: what kind of contests have you joined? Only here at BAYB you’ll find the best and simple ones! A shout out to Super Blogging Tips for choosing us as a winner for a $50 gift card.

Win Cash, Win Entrecard Credits and more

Win $100 cash plus 1000 EC credits and free advertising at TechTreak. Get your points by subscribing to his RSS feed, writing about it or stumbling it.
Ends on July 31st.

Cash from Save Money

Save Money is giving you a chance to win a $25 Gas Card or the equivalent amount in Cash (by Paypal). Rules are very simple, as usual: write a post about their contest linking to the contest post and to another post on the site and subscribe to his RSS feed by email.
Ends on August 1st.

Cash from Earn on The Side

New month and new contest at Earn on the Side. First prize is $25 and you have to subscribe by email. The second prize is 500 EC and the winner will be randomly selected from his Entrecard Top Droppers list.
Ends on July 31st.

If you’re looking for blog contests, if you want to promote your own competition, don’t forget to visit About Blog Contests!

In a small promotion for our new theme and the easy ability to use one of our favorite WordPress Plugins, OIOPublisher. We have been able to sell a few banner spots, however not any text links. So we lowered our price to $5 per link.

This deal will only last for our first 5 link buyers, after that the price will go back up to $8.

Any questions you have please leave us a comment. Looking forward to some new advertisers!

We are doing great over here. Our new theme is working nicely and I think we have all the kinks out of it. We’ve also had some great articles with more on the way!

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.

I am putting together a list of great WordPress Plugins. If you had to chose one, what is your favorite? If you don’t use WordPress, what is your favorite online tool that makes life easier for you.

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.