I will continue to mention how important it is for a blog to offer incentive for their readers. Incentive to keep coming back, visiting, and contributing. What makes your blogs different from the rest? An easy answer to that can be incentive.

Here’s some incentive to visit these blogs.

Steve’s Tech Blog is giving away 50$ cash for answering a few questions and blogging about his competition. 25$ for a lucky drawing for answering his questions, media player related. Another 25$ to a lucky winner for blogging about the contest. If you are really lucky… you could win both! If you don’t want to blog about it, leaving a comment counts as 1 entry.

Our good friend Ryan is also hosting a cash competition. He is giving away 7.77$ to 7 lucky winners (which is also about 50$). Each comment you leave on his blog gets one entry, and every linkback gets 3 entries. If you decide to review his entire blog, you get 5 entries. So far I think I have about 5 entries now?

This last one has to be my favorite “contest” of all. Cash for Comments is giving free website reviews, just for leaving 5 comments on their blog. We were actually in his first review me batch, you can see our review by going there. It was very positive and well written. Definitely check out his site and get a free ReviewMe.

If you are hosting a competition or contest on your blog, let us know, we might just blog about it! We DO take bribes!

Comment Friday has definitely become what I wanted it to. I was a little late putting it up, and we had a few regular visitors leaving comments on other posts waiting for Comment Friday! Thanks guys, I love having you here for Fridays.

Remember if you do a Comment Friday or something similar on your blog, we would be happy to link to each other. If you got your idea from us we’d love a link back as well.

This week I offered any of our commentors to just leave their RSS Feed URL and I would subscribe. I was subscribed to most, but picked up a few new blogs to read.

This week the winner was an easy choice. Ian from TVs Worst Adverts asked a great question. He asked how to keep subscribers to his blog. I plan to write an article on how to keep your subscribers. However keeping your RSS Feed numbers up is different which I may touch on.

If you have any ideas for next week’s comment friday, let me know.

Not too long ago, I started a series called “Thoughts on Civility” that has presented many scenarios and thoughts about life, society and spirit. Today, I was compelled to draft the seventh entry in the series after reading a devotion and reflection on some current events in entertainment and technology.

Before I knew it, it became one of the longer posts I’ve ever entered. You can read it here. Please comment (on my blog or this one) as you see fit.

Another Comment Friday! Last week we asked the question, How would you spend 400$ advertising your blog? We had several great responses, if you missed it make sure to check it out.

Over the next few comment fridays I want to reward our loyal commenters. This week make sure to leave a comment about whatever you would like. Also make sure to leave your RSS Feed URL and I will subscribe. By doing this I can be active on your blog if I can relate to your posts.

The next few weeks I will be doing other things like joining your mybloglog, or stumbling your blog and anything else I can think of.

Don’t forget to tell your friends about Comment Friday!

Chris from Blog-Op just wrote a post about the benefits of linking to other blogs. By linking to other blogs you can receive more website traffic. Not only is getting traffic an option, but so is building links. Two very important things to for any website or blog.

Increase Website Traffic for free with Forums

Linking to other blogs can be a good form of traffic, however forums often go overlooked. Forums can be a powerful tool to increase website traffic and if you aren’t using them you are missing out on solid visitors. Bloggerforum is a great place to do this, especially if you are offering blogging or money making tips. By summarizing your article and publishing a link you are guaranteed hits. Forum topics I published months ago still get the occasional visitor.

Social Networking

Of course using such websites as digg and stumbleupon can be draw traffic. These are great free ways to gain visitors. If you are writing great articles and no one uses stumbleupon you can take it upon yourself to get votes. First there is always the option of voting for it yourself. Next is asking for votes, which I actually do on occasion to bloggers that I Instant Message with. Another thing you could do is an “exchange” of votes.

How do you get free traffic?

Blog Me Famous is a new blog that is a little less than 2 weeks old. The design is simple and pretty clean. Christopher Boyce is a college student who is making a killing in template sales.

His blog, generally, is a blogging tips, make money online blog. I don’t think he should have any problem getting a following with this blog, as his content is generally pretty good… so far.

Selling Templates for Big Money

Not only is Christopher trying to become a “famous blogger” he has been reporting his Template sales. According to his latest post, he sold 2,3000$ worth of templates in just 5 days.

Multiple Revenue Streams

Not only is Christopher trying to build up Blog Me Famous, he has been reporting his other ventures on the internet. Next to his template sales, he is working on Fragbucket, which is a video game media website. I assume he will be blogging about how he will be turning it around as he goes. He’s already listed his goals and ideas with Fragbucket.

Incentives

Recently on posts I have done, I have focused on Multiple Revenue Streams to earn money online, and incentive for your readers to continue to return to your blog. It’s nice to see that Christopher is doing both of these things. They are very important to being successful online and having a popular blog. Christopher is also giving away a free .info domain just for commenting on his blog. Linkbacks also count, I wonder if I get one for this post? *Evil*

Social Networking in your Blog Niche

I particularly like this post. Not only does he blog about me personally, I feel like a blogging celebrity already. He mentions how linking to popular blogs has benefited him. By linking, popular bloggers/blogs have visited, left comments, and linked back to him.

Five Guidelines to Guest Blogging

Another good article about guest blogging. Do’s and don’ts of guest blogging are all there. “Prepare to Sacrifice Content for Guest Blogging”. It’s interesting how he explains that one.

Blog Me Famous is definitely in it’s infancy, however Christopher already has experience, it won’t be that long until it grows up. Make sure to subscribe to his RSS Feed.

More and more bloggers are writing ’round-up’ posts, pulling together a series of posts from other bloggers into a single article on their own blog. Sometimes called ‘speedlinking’, it’s certainly popular, but is it something you should be doing? I think so.

However, I don’t think it’s worth just posting a list of links, or just linking to a bunch of articles from the ‘A-list’. Much more rewarding, both for your karma and your own blog, is to find some good articles from bloggers you read often, write a mini-review and give them some good anchor text.

While there’s no harm in linking to Problogger, most people will find his stuff quite easily on their own. I feel it’s far better to choose some choice articles from bloggers that are either less well-known, or are proactive in engaging with their readers. I love to find new blogs to read, and like to give my readers the same opportunities, so it’s great when you do a good round-up post which receives positive comments along the lines of ‘Thanks, you’ve given me some new reads’.

You can also help the blogs you’re linking to, by using good anchor text, contained within relevant writing to deep-link their content. This gives a good boost to their Google Page Rank etc. as well as giving them some new readers and subscribers.

Finally of course, you can benefit simply by getting noticed by the people you’re linking to – and if you write a nice review rather than a list of 20 standalone links, they’re more likely to appreciate it.

Examples

Here’s an example of how I write my round-up posts, notice I don’t link directly to their names or blog homepage, rather I try to either give good anchor text, or use their own post titles:

• If you want to read a blogger that will make you think, as well as one that can teach you a huge amount about optimizing your blog for SEO, marketing and social media performance, then your first stop needs to be Andy Beard. His writing is always detailed, insightful and easy to read, as his most recent post on how to choose the right social bookmarking sites shows. Some great tips on the differences between the major sites, how to implement them for maximum results and a great little insight into the psychology of Stumble users, which is certainly true for me.
• You may have little or no interest in Graphic Design, but I may be able to change your mind by getting you to check out the blog of Edinburgh graphic designer, David Airey. A talented blogger, his posts on the design process are interesting in themselves, but when he applies his knowledge to blogging, such as asking what does your website say about you? it has relevance for all of us.
• Scott has cast himself as the Savvy Affiliate, and if his young, but spectacular blogging career is anything to go by, he’s spot on. In only 3 months, he has written dozens of concise, yet informative articles, on most aspects of blogging, including how to make the most of adsense deluxe or how to increase the clicks on your affiliate ads. If you’re looking for sensible money making advice, and lots more, look no further.
• While rounding up, I’ll give myself a little plug, and just inform you of a little competition to win yourself an RSS ad spot on my feed worth $60 a month. It’s very simple, just link me up, and you’ll get a link back, plus a chance to go into the hat to get a permanent ad spot on my Feed using the link & anchor text of your choice. Full details on my blog.

Do you write round-up posts?

Let us know what you think of them.