Written on January 31st, 2007 at 09:01 am by David Shawver Stanton

Speedlinking - 31 January 2007

Pro Blogging News 7 comments

• Zedomax has a post about Blogging as a Tax Deductable Home Business. I’m not sure it applies to every country but in some it definitely will.
• The Probabilist writes about the 10 Most Misspelled Words in Blogs
• Liz writes 10 Ways to Start a Blog Post
• Nick rants a little about why he dislikes the Snap Preview tool on blogs. I have to say that I agree with him. I put it on enternetusers here as a test and had so many complaints from readers that I took it off again within 24 hours. It really disrupted the flow of the blog.

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Written on January 31st, 2007 at 04:01 am by David Shawver Stanton

23 Ideas for Finding New Readers for Your Blog

Blog Promotion 136 comments

Over the weekend I ran an ‘open mike’ discussion which asked the question of How do you find Readers for Your Blog?

There were quite a few responses to the question - some of which went a little unnoticed as they were moderated until I got home. So I thought I’d summarize some of the main themes that arose in the discussion with a few quotes from those who left comments.

For the full series of comments see the post - but here are the main themes listed in no particular order except that they are vaguely the order that people submitted them in (keep in mind that these ideas come from readers - not all of them will be for everyone):

1. Comment on Related Blogs - raising4boys writes - “Commenting on related blogs is probably the most effective strategy early on in the process. And responding to comments when people leave them on your blog (this encourages them to keep coming back).” And from Brody - “I visit other blogs in my niche, add them to my feed and participate in the discussion on their blogs via the comments. Writing interesting comments often gets people to click through to see your site.”

2. Join Forums - elprezidente writes - “I’ve found that one very quick way to infuse readers to a new blog is to be Active in discussion forums related to your blog topic. Locate posts that ask for help with something you are familiar with and share your experience.”

3. Write Effective Post Titles - Aziz writes - “Simple and to the point. The title should create an instant urge to read the entire post… But of course it should be related to the topic of your blog”

4. Interviews - Ollie writes - “One example being to interview fellow bloggers who are in the same niche as me. This has gone down well, and has been great for both myself and the interviewee as traffic flows between us.”

5. Persist - Dan Norman writes - “Persistence is key. After starting up a new blog last month and letting go of another this month, I notice that traffic (quality traffic) doesn’t happen over night. On my last site, I think it took 6 months before ASK.com found me.”

6. Connect with Local Bloggers - Rob O writes - “The other thing I’ve been doing just recently is connecting up with other bloggers in my city and the neighboring towns. We’ve got something of a link exchange going and a nice side-effect to this is that I/we have discovered that there are quite a few more bloggers and/or website authors in the area than ever expected.”

7. Give Away Free Stuff - Peterandrej writes - “I’ve had some success with giving away free stuff, like free templates for WordPress. It doesn’t give me lot of new readers, because my blog is written in Norwegian, but the templates give lots and lots of new links to the blog, giving it a much better pagerank in Google, which in turn should mean more readers from search-engines.”

8. Be Opinionated - Trent writes - “Be opinionated, but encourage opposing viewpoints in the comments. Opinionated makes you interesting - encouraging other perspectives makes you essential.”

9. Ask Questions of Other Bloggers - Trent also writes - “Ask questions of other moderately successful bloggers and try to network. If you shoot too high, you’ll often get blown off because these people have so much stuff to read and deal with.”

10. Use Trackbacks - Maki writes - “Sending highly creative and penetrating trackbacks about a blogger’s original post.”

11. Advertise - Mike Panic writes - “Buy advertising space on related websites.”

12. Educate Readers about RSS - Mike Panic writes - “With the most recent blog I launched I created a page in WordPress called Feeds which not only has the RSS icon on it but a description of what a “feed” is and what are some of the most common ways to subscribe and use feeds, mostly pulled from a CC article.”

13. Offline Promotion - Mike Panic writes - “Talk to friends, family and coworkers about them… you’d be surprised how much the traditional way of “networking” really does work…. also Business cards, depending which blog I’ll post on a community board at a grocery store.

14. Search Engine Optimization - Michelle writes - “Properly optimizing my blog has been a big boost to my readership. Once I figured out how to play around with SEO I started getting a regular 25-35% of my hits from Google.”

15. Quality Content (mentioned by many) - ilker writes - “Posting only quality content.. obviously! Better posts are discussed more, increasing both the number of comments and references in other blogs.”

16. Blog Carnivals - Slade writes - “submitting posts to Blog Carnivals”

17. Memes - Leanne writes - “I’ve picked up a handful of wonderful friends and readers through initiating the “Thursday Thirteen”. Yeah, a meme. Bloggers want to know about bloggers, not just the business aspect of it but the *person* writing the blog. Reading a quick list of “getting to know me” type tidbits gives me instant inside information on whether or not I will become a regular visitor. Some participants have used it solely to gain business, but frankly I think that turns people away. People are interested in people first, and what they do second. It works.”

18. Frequent Posting - baggage writes - “I also try to post frequently. I find that the more I post, the more readers I have. The less comments, but the more readers.”

19. Guest Bloggers - Random Good Stuff writes - “I invite other bloggers to guest blog and allow always one link back to their site. I have 3 Active guest authors … and in return they link to my site from time to time.”

20. Get Links from Other Blogs - Jamdo writes - “Getting mentioned on other sites and blogs in the same niche, I think, has been the best way to get a readership who keeps returning to a blog. Make contact with other bloggers in yoru niche via comments, email, AIM, skype, homing pigeons - whatever.”

21. Newsletters - Adrian writes - “The Zookoda newsletter provides nice spikes and people tend to forward the newsletter to their friends.”

22. Social Networks - Ilya writes - “Submit your story to Digg and reddit and, regardless of whether it makes the front page or not, you get 50-100 free hits. The easiest way to generate quick exposure. Failing that, comment frequently on blogs that you like. With any luck, the blog author will want to find out more about you, follow the link to your blog, and perhaps write a post referencing one of your posts.”

23. Pitch Your Posts - Marty Weil writes - “I view other bloggers as a PR pros view journalists working in traditional media. I reach out to bloggers using tactics successfully employed in the world of professional media relations. For instance, I “pitch” specific posts that they might find adds value to topics they are writing about. I also send email introducing them to my blog, but only if there’s a good fit between my blog and theirs. The key is to be very selective in approaching the “media gatekeeper”–just as successful and smart media relations people do.”

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Written on January 31st, 2007 at 02:01 am by David Shawver Stanton

Guy Kawasaki to Speak at Elite Retreat

Pro Blogging News 7 comments

I’m excited - this afternoon I was informed that Guy Kawasaki is going to be speaking at Elite Retreat.

It’s not up yet on the main site (very recent news) but it’s official.

Guy’s a great speaker (I’ve seen him on numerous videos) - but from what I’ve seen he usually speaks at some pretty big conferences and to have him speaking in such an intimate setting (there’ll be no more than 40 of us in the room - 30 attendees plus other speakers) is a real opportunity.

Guy’s mantra is “empower entrepreneurs” and he’s got a list of entrepreneurial experiences that make him the ideal person to do it. I’m really looking forward to the time I get to learn from him alongside others at Elite Retreat.

I’m told that seats are selling quickly for the weekend and expect that this latest news will even more snapped up.

My own session is the first one on Day 2 - I love the morning sessions at these things so hopefully will be able to pack a fair bit into it. If you’re attending shoot me an email with any questions you’d like me to consider including some teaching on. If I don’t get to it there will be plenty of one on one time - but I’ll try to put as many answers into my presentation as possible.

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Written on January 30th, 2007 at 01:01 am by David Shawver Stanton

Speedlinking 30 January 2007

Pro Blogging News 10 comments

I’m back from a very quick 36 hours away to make the most of the long weekend here.

While I was gone there was plenty of action around the blogging community. Here are a few of the stories that have caught my eye so far as I’ve scanned my RSS feeds.

• Andy Wibbels shares how to add Google Analytics to your Blogger Blog.
• One of the biggest stories over the weekend was Robert Scoble’s posts regarding big blogs linking habits. The story has been widely commented upon - follow it via Techmeme.
• Jeremy from Shoemoney is being sued for a comment that someone else left on his blog. This is an interesting test case that could have significant ramifications. Apologies/Update - Jeremy has ben subpoenaed to appear in court to testify in a case where someone else is being sued over a comment left on his blog.
• UK blog network - Shiny Media - has secured $4.5 million in funding according to Paid Content and their blog. Congratulations to the team - I’ve been lucky enough to meet some of them and they’re a great bunch of people.
• It looks like YouTube will be moving to a model where it shares it’s revenue with users uploading video (see video below). Those experimenting with video blogging might just have a new way to monetize their blogs in the coming months. (via Lifehacker and BBC.

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Written on January 29th, 2007 at 08:01 am by David Shawver Stanton

Blogging for Money - A Passive Income?

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 60 comments

Last week two posts popped up in my RSS feeds with the words ‘passive income’ in their headings.

BJ asked - So Where’s the Passive Income? and Dave writes about Growing a blog or blogs as a source of passive income.

The idea of passive income is obviously one that many people strive for - and it’s a term that I’ve heard used many times to describe online income streams - including blogging.

Unfortunately I wouldn’t use the term passive income to describe blogging for money.

While there are a few aspects which could be described as passive - the overall experience that I’ve had is anything but passive.

Where is Blogging for Money ‘Passive’?

Archives - Perhaps the main area of where blogging has an element of ‘passivity’ to it in how it can earn an income is when it comes to your archives.

I’ve been blogging now for close to 4 years and in that time would have published over 20,000 posts across my own blogs. While the writing of these posts is anything but passive (more on that later) the great thing about it is that even after those posts drop off the front page of a blog they continue to have earning potential.

In fact as I look at the most popular pages of my blogs (and the ones that earn the most) - the vast majority of my income comes from my archives - posts I’ve not thought twice about for months, if not years.

In that regard - that income has a passive element to it - old posts are like an investment that continues to earn an income into the future.

Set and Forget Income Streams - One of the great advances from the last few years in generating an online income has come from the improvement of advertising networks like AdSense which allow publishers to add a snippet of code to their blogs that will automatically run ads on the blog over time.

While you can (and should) definitely work on your ad optimization - many bloggers get to a point with their ads that they are able to largely set and forget them. The ads will earn an income and the cheques (or direct deposits) will appear each month. There is no searching for or negotiation with advertisers - the system handles it all for you. This takes a load off many publishers minds and allows them to concentrate on other activities of running a good blog.

Put the idea of Archives and set and forget income streams together and there is an element of passivity to blogging for money. Add to it that money made from blogging doesn’t depend upon you being ‘open for business’ to make money (ie I make more money during the hours that I’m asleep than when I’m awake due to my time zone) and I can understand why people might describe it as a passive income.

However in my mind - that’s where the passivity in blogging as an income generator ends (feel free to suggest more ways if you can).

Where is Blogging for Money ‘Active’?

While there are these elements of passivity in blogging for money - there is also a lot of hard work.

Running a successful and profitable blog (or blogs) takes a consistent amount of work over the long term. This work needs to happen throughout the life of a blog - from the early days when you’re trying to establish yourself in a niche - through to those times when your blog ‘matures’ and you’re hit with a whole load of new responsibilities and pressures.

Some of the many tasks bloggers need to engage in include:

Writing Content - 20,000 posts in 4 years = 13 posts a day (7 days a week). My posting frequency isn’t that high these days and I do have others working for me these days to help out - but there’s a lot of work in those archives and producing quality, useful, well thought out and stimulating content takes time.

Monitoring Conversations - As your archives build so too does the number of potential conversations happening on your blog. Many of these conversations happen with little need for your involvement (although good bloggers are Active in the conversations on their own blogs) but as a blog gets older the need for moderation of spam comments can increase.

Engaging in your Niche - Conversations happen outside of your blog also and most successful bloggers have systems in place to monitor what is happening in their wider niches. This lets them know what is being said about them elsewhere but also helps raise their profile and become valued members of the wider community. Monitoring the niche via RSS and news alert services are half of this equation - engaging in the conversations on other’s blogs is the other half. It all takes time.

Design - Different bloggers will put a different emphasis on the design of their blogs - but over time it will be one of the areas that you either need to invest time of your own into or to pay for someone else to look after for you.

Managing Others - Many bloggers eventually move their blogs to a multi-author environment to help them spread the load of running their blogs. This striving for a little more passivity brings it’s own work. Recruiting, motivating, paying, inspiring and setting boundaries for those that you engage the services of takes time also - sometimes more than it is worth!

Negotiating Private Ad Deals - once a blog gets to a certain size it’s fairly normal to be approached by advertisers wanting to buy space on your blog. This might be anything from a text link through to a larger banner ad campaign. This can be a very time consuming proces.

Other Tasks
I could go on about the other tasks that bloggers engage in in a lot of details - but here’s a list of other tasks that many good bloggers get into:

• Search Engine Optimization - many bloggers spend a lot of time on this
• Ad Optimization - while it can eventually be passive - to really get the most out of it you need to track results and keep tweaking
• Multiple Blogs - many successful bloggers expand into new niches
• Researching Blog Tools/Platforms - the industry is constantly changing and there are so many potential things to add to a blog
• Researching Ad Programs - there are an ever increasing number of ad networks being launched.
• Email Correspondence - answering reader questions, fielding interviews, responding to partnership inquiries
• Monitoring Metrics - keeping a track on what people are reading, where they come from, where they go, what they click on etc

Of course not all bloggers do all of these things - and some have their own routines and tasks that they would probably add to the list. But all in all I’ve found that while there are some bloggers who make good money from blogging that the majority of them do so as a result of a fair bit of work.

Can Blogging Become More Passive over Time?

Lastly - I’ve heard a number of newer bloggers hypothesizing that they’ll work hard in the short term of their blogging and then be able to slow down and live off the ongoing earnings from their archives.

It’s a nice image isn’t it - sort of going off to work hard in the ‘blog mines’ for big money for a few years and then retiring to the Bahamas to allow the investment you’ve made by building up your archives to keep earning you an income.

Unfortunately there’s a problem with the theory. Blogs that become inActive will usually have a decreasing income level over time. I’ve seen this happen to a number of blogs over the last year (including a few of my own).

For archives to earn an ongoing income they need to rank well in search engines. The problem is that one of the factors that Google (and other SE’s) use to work out how highly to rank a blog is how often they update. If your site is constantly changing and being updated they tend to rank you more highly. They also seem to look at freshness of content. The older a piece is the more competition it will have for it’s keywords and the more out of date it will be seen as.

So - what generally happens is that a few months after the ending of a blog search engine traffic will begin to slide. It may never completely disappear - but over time the income will diminish significantly.

The key to maintaining a good level of SE traffic is ongoing frequent posting - keep putting deposits in your archives over time and you should maintain (and even grow) your ranking. Stop posting and you’ll start to see a drop off.

The only way that the ‘blog mines’ analogy really works with regards to passive income is if you work hard to build up a blog and then sell it to invest what you earn in a truly passive income.

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Written on January 28th, 2007 at 10:01 am by David Shawver Stanton

How do you find Readers for Your Blog? - Open Mike

Blog Promotion 87 comments

I’m heading away for one night as part of our long weekend here in Australia for Australia Day and so thought it might be time for a reader discussion on the topic that everyone seems to be asking me about these days - ‘how do I find readers for my blog?’

Share you own experiences and tips on how you’ve drawn readers to your blog.

What’s worked for you?
What hasn’t worked for you?
What would you recommend for someone just starting out in blogging who has no readers?

Looking forward to reading your responses when I get home tomorrow.

Have a good weekend!

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Written on January 28th, 2007 at 07:01 am by David Shawver Stanton

When is it Time to End Your Blog?

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 8 comments

Lorelle has written a great 15 point post on How to Know When to Stop Blogging.

Sometimes bloggers feel they ‘have to’ keep a blog running - when the best thing for it is to end it.

If Lorelle’s post connects with you - you might also like to read my mini-series on How to Kill a blog Successfully.

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Written on January 27th, 2007 at 07:01 am by David Shawver Stanton

Speedlinking - 27 January 2007

Pro Blogging News 11 comments

• Lorelle’s post Fear Not WordPress 2.1 and WordPress Plugins is an essential read for those WP bloggers scared of upgrading for fear os losing plugin functionality.
• David from Blogging Pro writes a post - Making it Easy to Subscribe to RSS feeds on your blog.
• Lorelle from Lorelle on WordPress covers a similar topic in Understanding, Using and Customizing WordPress Blog Feeds
• Lifehack.org shares 7 Ways to Track the Internet’s Trends and Popular News via Steve
• Inside AdSense shares a few tips on Custom Channels - why they’re useful and how to use them. NB: This isn’t a new feature as many are reporting today. It was actually announced back in November. My suspicion is that most publishers found it too complicated to use or didn’t see the point and there probably wasn’t much of a take up in using it - which is probably why AdSense are now writing about it months later on their blog.
• Net Business Blog writes 5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Make and ‘I Got Dugg’ post - not a week goes by when I don’t get someone emailing me to tell me about a post they wrote about being Dugg. While I’ve done it myself I think it’s probably a post we’ve seen enough of.
• Cornwall SEO writes a clever (but also insightful) post titled How to Get Kevin to read your blog.
• The Australian Blogging Conference is definitely on on 8 March. I’d love to make it but I’m not sure I’ll be able to justify another trip up the coast so shortly before we leave for the US a week later.

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Written on January 26th, 2007 at 09:01 pm by David Shawver Stanton

The 2007 Bloggies - Finalists Announced

enternetusers Site News 16 comments

Finalists have been announced for the The 2007 Bloggies and enternetusers has been nominated in the ‘Best Web Development Weblog’ category again.

This year the competition is pretty hot and PB is up against some of my favorite blogs including CopyBlogger (Brian - who I link to every second day). Also nominated is the amazing A List Apart, Learning Movable Type and Daily Blogging Tips.

Also this year I’m fortunate enough to see my Digital Photography School blog nominated in the ‘Best Photography of a Weblog’ category.

Thanks to whoever nominated me - whoever you are.

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Written on January 26th, 2007 at 08:01 pm by David Shawver Stanton

How Steven Bradbury Can Make You a Better Blogger

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 20 comments

Warning - Tangent Ahead

Today is Australia Day here in Australia (a public holiday). As part of this annual celebration - when we eat a lot of BBQ lamb (BBQ), play backyard cricket and watch the Tennis and Cricket (could the Aussies have demoralized the English any more?) - a hundred or so Aussies are put on the ‘Australia Day honors list’. The list usually acknowledges Aussies who have made some sort of contribution - whether it be in business, charity, sport etc.

This year one of those honored was Steven Bradbury.

You might remember him from the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics when he did this:

The story is actually a little more remarkable than this video of the final shows.

In the quarter final Bradbury came third (only the first two go through) but one of the others who finished ahead of him was disqualified, meaning he advanced to the semi final.

In the semi final Bradbury was coming last when three others in the race crashed leaving him to come second and advance to the final.

Steve Bradbury’s ‘lucky’ win in the 1000 meters speed skating is video footage that gets played regularly on Australian TV and he’s become something of a symbol of the Aussie Spirit (he even had a postage stamp - above) - although we do laugh at him a fair bit too and his name is sometimes spoken with a giggle or two as we remember Australia’s first Gold Medal at a Winter Olympics (in fact someone told me it was the first Gold Medal for anyone in the whole Souther Hemisphere).

It’s not uncommon to hear people use the phrase ‘he did a Bradbury’ to describe events where fortune seem to fall in the lap of someone. It’s even in some Aussie slang dictionaries now.

I heard Steven Bradbury interviewed on the radio this afternoon and as usual he was introduced with the usual chuckle from the interviewer.

During the course of the interview I learned a few things about Steve that I’d not heard or considered before.

• 2002 was Steven’s 4th Olympics
• He’d previously won a Bronze medal in the 5000 meter relay in 1994.
• In 1994 he had been the favorite of the 1000m but collided with a competitor and was knocked out of contention.
• Steven had been a 3 time world champion medalist (Gold 1991, Silver - 1994 and Bronze - 1993)
• Steve overcame two life threatening crashes of his own in his career. Once in 1994 he was impaled on a skate and needed 111 stitches and lost 4 liters of blood. In 2000 he broken his neck in training (he also fractured his skull in a bike riding accident)

So why am I talking about Steve Bradbury on a blog about blogging?

I love to learn from successful people so as I listened to Steve Bradbury being interviewed today I asked myself:

‘what could a blogger learn from him?’

Two main things came to mind.

1. The 12 Year ‘Hard Slog’

As I listened to Steve talk about his 12 years of sacrifice, hardship and commitment this afternoon it struck me that there was so much more to his story than ‘the moment’ that all Aussies remember in 2002.

While that moment perhaps defines him in the minds of many - in his mind he was defined by what preceded the moment. This is what he was talking about when after the race he said:

“Obviously I wasn’t the fastest skater. I don’t think I’ll take the medal as the minute and half of the race I actually won. I’ll take it as the last decade of the hard slog I put in.”

When I first started to see a few dollars come in from my blogging I’ll admit that there were moments when I had dollar signs in my eyes. I remember a few nights not being able to sleep as I’d dream of all the ways I could make quick and easy money from blogging. I quickly discovered however that ‘easy money’ or ‘quick money’ are not really words that many bloggers ever see from blogging.

This is a message that some new bloggers don’t seem to grasp. I speak to at least one a week with grand dreams of quick riches.

While I admire the excitement and passion of these bloggers - the reality is that blogging for money is a ‘hard slog’ with a lot of work, commitment and sacrifice. While there may be no physical injuries sustained (although I’ve had my worries on that level) you might even take a fall or two along the way that you need to push through in order to find success.

2. Put Yourself in a Position to Win

In today’s interview Steve talked about his strategy in the final. The fact was that he was the oldest guy in the field and after four races to make the final he was exhausted.

He didn’t expect to win but thought if he could just stay in touch with the leaders yet far enough away to avoid any falls he might be able to capitalize on one of them taking a tumble (as happens in speed skating). You can see that he slotted straight into the back of the field from the firing of the gun.

He never dreamed that all four would take a tumble (he was hoping for one last bronze before retiring) but decided to put himself in a position to benefit from any opportunities came his way.

While one group of bloggers that I talk to have unrealistic expectations of quick money in their eyes - another group that I bump into from time to time are those who talk a lot about what they’re going to do with their blogging but who never seem to do anything about it.

In order to be successful in any area of life you’ve got to put yourself in a position to be successful. If you’re not willing to enter the race - what chance do you have of winning it?

There comes a time when there’s enough talk and the only thing left to do is start something.

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