I am not talking Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Quite simply, take time off from the exciting sexy side of blogging, and check that every “boring” part of your blog is uptodate. By that I mean, we have loads of info pages like About Us,About the Site, and Testimonials, the all-important SiteMap, Privacy… and on checking through, they weren’t quite current or accurate.

These pages don’t attract people to the site per se, but after a quick tweak, at least now we know that the info is correct for the visitors who stumble into the dark corners. And importantly, all nifty features that have crept into the blog mix over the past few months are now properly documented.

Do the policies stated in the small print, reflect your current thinking?

Another bonus of going into neglected corners of the site is to see what was going through your mind at launch time. Initially, I was looking for help with video reviews. But as time has passed, ideas have evolved and now for instance, we want to attract contributions from witty writers on any topic covered in the Pisstakers. If I hadn’t edited the relevant page today, who would have known about my slight change of tack and maybe another 6 months would have passed with little or no interest in contributing to the Pisstakers! (Maybe nothing will change, but at least I tried.)

In summary, I blog because it is good fun. I also like living in our house, but both need to be checked over, cleaned and tidied from time to time.

I have stayed away from reading the “celebrity bloggers” as I call them. I never thought they had much to offer me. I just read John Chow’s blog for the first time yesterday.

I had heard of him plenty, and seen tons of links from other bloggers referring to posts he had written or whatever the case may be. I really just took it as them kissing up, hoping for him to visit their blog, or something of the sort. Anyways, he’s already essentially rich (in blogging standards) it’s not like he needs another reader right?

Surfing through blogs I found a Google Adsense ad, from Chow stating he could basically help you monetize your blog. Okay, fine you have me intrigued, I’ll bite. *click*

From there I read in awe. He wrote that he had made 3,440$ from his blog in the month of January. Maybe I have never visited due to jealousy! Not only that, but he plans to make more money this month. Of course he does, but the funny thing is I don’t doubt that at all.

My current goal in life is to at least make some money online, maybe part-time job money. Something to show for with the time I’ve spent blogging and trying to further this blog and others. If John Chow’s blog doesn’t prove that can happen, it can be used as a guide to further your monetary success.

When the internet was essentially young and people were excited about receiving these new electronic mail messages someone out there recognized a brand new arena to spread the word about their product or service. You could reach a thousand people in a couple of seconds for next to nothing in cost. This was going to revolutionize the junk mail industry. Why pay people to pound the pavement doing mail drops when with a touch of the enter key you could cover hundreds of households more quickly than any kid on his bike could!

Marketing managers must have been salivating at the potential. That was of course until internet users adopted the term Spam from Monty Python and declared in unison that unwelcome emails were exactly that. Unwelcome.

Spam marketing emails are considered one of the biggest annoyances about the internet age and can really tarnish a businesses reputation if they actively pursue it. In a lot of countries it is now illegal and can damage more than just your reputation. The surge in spam has also resulted in a new industry of spam filters being produced that stop the unwanted emails before they even reach your inbox. I shudder to think how many of them get stopped at the gate that I don’t even see.

So with all the spam stopping software and the ill will it creates with the recipients why is it that people continue to spam?

The majority of spam that I do receive now days is barely above gibberish. There is rarely a sales pitch involved and often the keywords are misspelt to avoid automatic deletion. On the very rare odd occasion that I’ve decided to investigate who it was sending me this rubbish I’ve clicked on the link only to discover that the sender had already been reported and shut down.

So now you have an unwelcome email that barely makes sense, angers the person who receives it, is often caught before it reaches a real person and doesn’t generally actually link to a product. Surely it isn’t worth it?

An annoying advertising campaign can often result in the product or company being forever etched into the subconscious. In Australia several years ago a jewelery chain ran a campaign that amounted to the spokesperson repeating the words gold gold silver silver chain chain sale sale over and over during the advertisement. Now if you try chanting that over and over and it quickly gets stuck in your mind. Anyone from Australia who saw that ad can tell you which company it was and no I’m not giving them a free plug because they ran an annoying ad several years ago thank you very much.

So is it that the spammers think that by repeating the words viagra over and over again that we will become more brand aware of the drug? Granted I’ve mentioned it here but surely the hoopla that resulted when it first was released embedded viagra into the group consciousness forever! It is said that any publicity is good publicity but surely being associated with such a hated medium is not a good thing in the long run?

Obviously there is the more malicious spam that tries to trick you into giving your bank account or paypal details over to them. It is obvious what their intent is but I have to wonder what the arrest rate is on these scams and how many people still fall into the trap.

When you do send spam I would have to imagine that it does more damage than good to your public image. Recently I was infected with an online casino adware (software that forces your browser to open advertisements). Certainly they don’t think that I’m going to give my credit card details over to an organization that used nefarious ways to make me aware that they exist?

Perhaps I’m over estimating the general intelligence of your average internet user.

Lee is a freelance New Media Consultant who also writes for Quit Your Day Job, Crypt Hunter, Pop Culture Heroines (chief editor), ComicsPedia, Dr Fong’s House of Mysteries and Blog About Your Blog. He’s a huge popular culture freak, loves comic books, science fiction, soundtracks.

Have you heard about traffic exchanges? The idea is simple. Basically you visit sites and earn “credits” or “points” which in turn can be exchanged for traffic. You can use them to get other people to visit your site, or maybe display a banner or text link on the traffic exchange site. It is especially useful for newer sites/blogs because you then get exposed. To read a great article on when to use traffic exchanges click on the link.

With traffic exchanges I’ve gotten a lot of viewers to my blogs, as well as gained relationships and partnerships with certain bloggers.

Is this idea appealing to you?

It should be. Here is a list of some of the traffic exchanges I am on and would recommend.

First being BlogMad. You could be on this site alone and drive tons of traffic to your site. This has to be one of the top blog traffic exchanges. They offer 1:1 surfing ratio. Every site you visit you get yours visited.

Next has to be Blog Explosion. I like that you not only can “surf” but theres other competitions you can do. A nice feature I like is battle of the blogs. 15 people decide which blog is the best between yours and another blog, and the winner gets credits.

Blog Soldiers is slow but steady. It doesn’t seem to use up your credits like the previous two but can get you daily traffic if you have some credits saved up.

Last of the blog traffic exchanges ranks Blog Advance. It seems to drive the least traffic, but still worth it. I’ve used my credits more towards advertising on this site. Seems to pay off better, and you get ‘quality’ viewers as well.

There are other traffic exchanges that aren’t just blog related:

GoldenWheelSurf is for all sites and you are guaranteed 50,000 views, since they start you with 50,000 credits!

Link Referral is a bit different and is one of my favorites. You get to visit which sites you want and can even write reviews about them. You are limited 30 sites a day and 5 reviews. If you do that daily you will get a top spot on the rankings and will generate 25-30 quality viewers.

Most importantly you need quality content and site appeal, but to start getting viewers its a nice start.

Now I wouldn’t give you this information without a bit of a warning. If you are an adsense user DO NOT use traffic exchanges. It is violating their terms of service and you will get your account deleted.

With that said, happy surfing!

Tags: traffic exchange, blogmad, blogexplosion, blogadvance, blogsoldiers, goldenwheelsurf, linkreferral, adsense

We’ve been stumbledupon!

According to our new Firestats plugin
Last 24 hours : 1685 page views and 794 visits

I stumbled a few of Lee’s posts and that got the ball rolling! According to statcounter we almost reached 1,000 pageviews yesterday!

If you are wondering how you can get stumbledupon, read this great article by one of our very own Chris from Blog-Op. StumbleUpon can obviously be a great source to get traffic. Also a way to get addicted, keep stumblin’!

Chris From Blog-Op Writes:

Keep stumbling good stuff, write review & don’t spam, your network will grow and you will benefit. The best thing about SU though, is the sheer amount of great new sites that you’d never normally find. It results in a never ending stream of interesting stuff to blog about as well.

I realise that there are lots of survey sites about that promise big earnings but here is a genuine one – though, in this case, big earnings are not promised!

You Gov are looking for people to join their panel with a view to completing surveys and polls for payment.  This offer is for UK, USA and the Middle East only.

You Gov are a genuine company, quoted on the London Stock Exchange, and the results of their surveys etc. are often seen in national newspapers or quoted on television.

Earnings for completing the surveys isn’t mammoth.  I’ve been trying them out and for each one you get about 50p or £1.  What is good though is that they have now updated their commissions for referrals. 

What members now earn is pound for pound what people they have introduced earn for the first three months.  This still won’t make anyone rich but could possibly make some extra cash – and with a reliable, established company.

See what you think, more info here. 

Good luck,
Mike.
Mike’s Money Making Mission

This blog is quickly becoming me airing my blog writing dirty laundry! As I think about the topics to write here I find myself challenging the way I write my various blogs. It isn’t always fun to highlight one’s own faults but it can be rewarding and in the long run I’m hoping to become a better blogger for it.

Have you ever regularly visited a blog and been blown away by how each and every post is well written and entertaining? Even if a post is just saying that today I went out and bought the Spike puppet from Angel, when written by certain bloggers they can turn a snack into an entertaining meal.

I can’t say that I can honestly tell you what the secret is behind every one of these writers but a lot of the ones that I discussed it with had a similar habit that I thought I might share.

Editing.

Groan.

You probably shared in my groan there if you are anything like me, when I write a blog piece I often get to the end of the post and just hit the publish button whilst caught up in the rush of having finished a post and hopefully having gotten my opinion across.

More often than not I’ll check out how the post sits on the page and find myself reading through and realising that I’ve left things out or have very poor punctuation. So after the horse has bolted I find myself having to go back in and edit out my errors. Even when I’m doing this spot fire run I’m generally only targeting the mistakes that I’ve found before and give little thought to overlooking the whole piece.

The next time you are writing a post, particulary a long one I want you before you hit the publish button to stop what you are doing and take in a deep breath, maybe go and get yourself a drink or take a quick walk. Then come back to the post that you just wrote and read it over in the editor. Look not only at your mistakes but also the overall flow of the post.

Does the first paragraph make you want to read further? Does it make sense? Are there any in jokes that need explaining? Have you forgotten to link anything?

I can’t promise that this will make your posts more popular, if you are writing for yourself then you decide what makes a good post and if you are writing with a particular audience in mind they decide. If you do take a moment or two to edit your work I can assure you that your posts will become more consistent and that will make your blog better and bring readers back.

One last thing though. Too much editing can ruin a piece so don’t obsess too much. One or two quick run throughs should be plenty unless the piece has real problems in which case you should consider coming back to it in a couple of days anyway.