Written on April 14th, 2007 at 01:04 am by Darren Rowse

Being ‘Discovered’ vs ‘Slow and Steady’ Blog Growth

Social Media, Blog Promotion 42 comments

Kumiko asks - ‘I was studying John Chow’s traffic patterns through Alexa and noticed that his popularity really surged after four of his articles were listed on Digg and his traffic went through the roof. He was “discovered” through these and his traffic levels have never really looked back. And receiving a link in one of your posts has done wonderful things for my own traffic!

What were landmark posts or actions that you did in order to receive the traffic that you have now? Was there a single post or link that sent your traffic sky-high and made you a ‘pro-blogger?’

Good question - although not the easiest one to answer as there have been many such moments in the 4 or so years that I’ve been blogging.

Before answering the question from my own perspective let me make a more general observation.

Being ‘Discovered’ vs ‘Slow and Steady’ Blog Growth

Every blog is so different and for some the process of ‘being discovered’ that you write about above is definitely a factor (usually after a big blog or social network site links up).

On the other hand there are also many popular blogs out there where the rise to success was much more slow and steady.

For this second group it is the accumulation of good blogging over a sustained period of time that gets them discovered - one reader at a time, one day at a time and one post at a time. I suspect this second group represents the majority of bloggers.

Speaking Personally

If i were to plot my own blogging experience on the spectrum between being ‘discovered’ and the ’slow and steady’ approach I’d have to say that it’s differed for me from blog to blog. Here’s how it’s been on three of my own blogs:

LivingRoom

My first blog LivingRoom (a personal blog that I really need to reinvent) was definitely a slow and steady growth blog. While it did become very popular in it’s niche (emerging church/spirituality) there was no major moment when traffic exploded and stayed at high levels. Sure there were moments along the way where I had bursts of traffic but it was a long and slow growth over a number of years of blogging. The growth initially came from regular readers and then from Search Engine Traffic as my ranking in Google increased.

enternetusers

Here at enternetusers things have been a little more ‘explosive’ at different times - however the slow and steady factor has definitely played a part. Perhaps the posts that put enternetusers into the minds of many readers in it’s early days were my posts talking about the kind of money I was earning from blogging. These obviously caused a real stir - particularly when they got onto Slashdot and other large blogs (I’m not sure Digg was on the scene back then).

Also along the way there have been many other occasions where I was Dugg or LifeHackered or featured in mainstream media - however I’d still say that these exciting bursts of traffic were just part of the slow and steady growth that I’ve experienced over 2.5 years of blogging. While the big explosions of traffic are great - the readers they bring in do tend to disappear a few days later and only small percentage stay on. What you do the day after you get on the front page of Digg is in my opinion just as important (if not more) than what you did to get on the front page itself - this is where your day to day readership decides whether to keep coming back or not.

Digital Photography School

Traffic levels at DPS have been somewhat more explosive than here at enternetusers. Perhaps it is that the topic there is a little more mainstream - but I’ve noticed that the big link ups really do have an impact - and a more lasting one than when they happen at enternetusers.

Perhaps the post that started it all for enternetusers was ‘How to Hold a Digital Camera‘ (a post featured on many large tech sites). I’m almost embarrassed by that - it’s the most basic post I’ve ever written - however sometimes basic is what people are after and for some reason that post was like a call to action for potential readers - the action that they took was to sign up for my newsletter, bookmark the site and subscribe to the RSS feed.

There have been numerous other posts that have done well along the way in a similar fashion - each bringing bursts of traffic that resulted in more people becoming loyal to the site.

Final Thoughts

Two random thoughts have come to mind as I’ve written this:

Write for ‘real’ people
Writing about how to hold a digital camera might not be the most profound thing I’ve ever written - but it struck a cord, met a need and connected with real people (not those cool web 2.0 types - but people like our parents, neighbors and school kids). Write for real people - after all, it’s not just the web 2.0 crowd who surf the web.

Balance is the Key
While I’m someone who is always on the look out for a way to ‘get discovered’ in a new space I’ve found that it’s the day to day posts that you write that really matter most. While your linkbait might bring in 20,000 new readers from Digg today, what will you write tomorrow and what have you got in your archives that you wrote last week to keep them hanging around? I suspect that many bloggers put so much time and effort into the 1% of posts that are about getting discovered that the 99% of posts that really matter suffer.

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Written on April 12th, 2007 at 06:04 am by soccer jersey

Is Your Blog Template Holding You Back?

Search Engine Optimization 63 comments

This Guest Post was written by Wendy Piersall from eMoms at Home.

In the first few months of blogging, there was SO much to learn. I figured that SEO was one of those battles I would tackle once I was “more established”. But after 9 months or so, I hired a professional designer to develop a custom template for my blog. Quite literally the next day, my search engine traffic doubled. Soon I went from 800 referrals a month to nearly 2400 monthly referrals - just from Google alone.

I realized rather quickly that I had been terribly short sighted on the importance of SEO for a blog. The extra visitors are important, of course, but with more search engine hits came…

• New readers from outside of the blogging community
• New advertising opportunities
• A higher click-through on existing ads
• Better monetization options for highly ranked posts
• Mainstream press inquiries

How could a blog template impact search traffic THAT much? My question led me to Chris Pearson of Pearsonified and Sarah Lewis of Blogging Expertise, my template designer. Both of these talented designers know how to put a seriously powerful template together - and I decided to interview them to help you ensure your blog template isn’t holding you back, too.

Interview with Chris Pearson and Sarah Lewis

~Chris, I found a post on your blog in which you had a similar jump in traffic from an SEO perspective. You had recently moved from Movable Type to WordPress – what is it about WordPress that is so search engine friendly?

Chris Pearson:

WordPress itself is not necessarily SEO-friendly, but quite a few WordPress themes are constructed with SEO fundamentals in mind. This is generally what leads to the misconception that WordPress is the CMS of choice if you want your site to rank well.

That said, I chose to move my site to WordPress because the PHP architecture and theme capabilities allowed me to do things (like implementing dynamic page titles, for instance) that I was struggling to do with MovableType.

Simply put, I think it’s easier to apply SEO fundamentals with the WordPress architecture than it is with other CMS platforms. While this is a matter of opinion, it’s certainly a fact that someone could migrate their site to WordPress today, upload an optimized theme, and enjoy the benefits of good SEO almost immediately.

~Sarah, what are some of the things you did to my template to make such drastic improvements?

Sarah Lewis:

The main thing I did that impacted SEO results were behind-the-scenes code improvements. The theme you had before was a bit convoluted, code-wise. Some specific improvements were:

• The source code prioritizes your real content by putting posts first, then sidebars and extra stuff. The search engines like it this way.
• The theme emphasizes your titles and other important “keyword cues” by properly using header tags (h2, h3, etc.)
• I used the Google Adsense “start” and “end” tags to emphasize the core content (posts, etc.) and de-emphasize the rest.

~Chris, your Cutline Theme also played a major role in your SEO traffic. What are some of the additional things you did that made an improvement?

Chris Pearson:

Most of the key, behind-the-scenes “improvements” are actually quite simple, but in practice, their effects can be profound:

• Image optimization
• Using a sitemap
• Dynamic page titles, which I hinted at earlier
• Linking to interior pages directly from my homepage. I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but pages that have direct links from your homepage are going to receive more search engine love. I use WordPress categories to create groups of posts and serve them in the sidebar of my personal site, and I’ve found that those pages tend to do quite well in the search engines.

~Chris and Sarah, besides using the Cutline theme or hiring one of you, what are some of the other ways that people using WordPress can improve their search engine rankings?

Sarah Lewis:

Many people opt for “cute” or “clever” with the post titles, and miss out on traffic because they don’t realize that Google and the other search engines pay a lot of attention to titles.

Another SEO tip that fits in well with the general goals of blogging is to regularly write posts that focus on a very specific topic. “Regularly” because the search engines seem to follow blogs more if they are regularly updated (and of course that’s ideal for your readers, too!); “very specific topic” because it helps both search engines and readers figure out quickly and accurately what the point of the post is.

Chris Pearson :

I tried to address this very issue late last year when I published my mini-series, entitled SEO for Everybody. The idea was to present people with a few things they could do on their own to whip their site into high-ranking shape. Topics include sitemap implementation, dynamic page titles, and image optimization.

~Thanks Chris and Sarah!

To WIN a SEO friendly site redesign yourself, you might want to head over to SEO Week at eMoms at Home.

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Written on April 12th, 2007 at 01:04 am by Darren Rowse

See How Easily You Can Become a Successful Blogger

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 21 comments

This post has been submitted by Neil Patel. Neil is co-founder and CTO of ACS) and writes regularly on social media issues through the company’s blog, Pronet Advertising.

Engadget, The Huffington Post, Boing Boing, and TechCrunch all share the common thread of being wildly popular and successful. While that seems entirely wonderful and we’d all hope for the same thing with our blog, the reality is that most of us will never have blogs that popular. I am hoping that people will step up and prove me wrong and to give everybody a head start, here are some things we can all learn from the success of these blogs:

1. There is nothing wrong with blogging once a week, but the more you blog the more traffic you will receive. All of these blogs put some merit in quantity and blog a ton of content, yet they try and not sacrifice on quality either. This isn’t easy to accomplish by any means, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that quantity doesn’t matter.

2. Like any normal business, you are going to have a good amount of competitors or in this case people writing about the same thing and fighting for those RSS subscribers. Again, like any normal business you need to carve a niche of your own and really differentiate yourself in the crowd. Pick a passion and become a thought leader within the confines of your niche and your blog will grow in popularity.

3. If you want to make tons of ad revenue you need to focus the topic of your blog and capture a highly targeted audience. This will put you in the right place to charge more money for every thousand ad impressions. Another great thing about focusing your blog on a specific subject is that you also start making money from contextual ads such as AdSense or YPN.

4. Breaking news is an important factor to the success of a blog. If you can scoop others and break news first people will see much more value in your blog. Once you start growing your audience, others will start tipping you off however until this happens you’ll have to put in a lot of effort and let your fingers do the walking in order to get these scoops.

Creating a successful blog isn’t easy, but it is not impossible either. Just like any other business, you want to learn from others who have had great success and more importantly learn from others who have had multiple failures. If you can spot why blogs succeed and others fail you can increase your chances of success. Take a moment to really examine the successful and not-so successful blogs and try to figure out what works out there.

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Written on April 11th, 2007 at 01:04 am by Darren Rowse

Finding Advertisers for Your Blog

Advertising 25 comments

Alistair asks - ‘Having a niche blog means that I will never have the same amount of visitors as some of the larger technology/media blogs. This means that advertisers such as blog ads will not allow me to use their ads as they see me as having lower visitor numbers. Traditionally manufacturers in my niche are wary of the internet even though they have websites - I have contacted a few and state my visitor numbers etc but still they are unwilling to even trial. I think it is because my blog is “personal” but in my niche I can get away with that as it is classed as a diary. Any advice?’

Tough one Alistair. I could write a lot on this (and have actually asked Chad, b5media’s Ad Sales guy to write some posts for me on the topic too) but here are a few tips that come to mind. I hope you don’t mind me compiling them as a list as they’re somewhat random ideas:

1. Show them what they’re buying - one of the most powerful strategies I used in my early days of selling ads to people was to show them how I ranked in Google for their keywords. Compile a list of words that you rank for that you can pull out next time you’re talking to an advertiser. If when people search the web for information on products that they sell they end up on your site you have a key selling point.

2. Traffic is a Powerful Motivator - there’s no getting around it - to many advertisers traffic numbers are key. I hope that this trend is changing (what I saw at ad:Tech in Sydney recently confirms this as advertisers are looking to get more niche in their focus) but in the mean time it does count. Keep working to build traffic and be ready to share your numbers and back them up with graphs/tables etc.

3. Collect Demographics - every ad agency I ever spoke with about buying space on my blogs asked about the demographics of my audience. Do some surveys and collect this data as it’ll help sell your case.

4. Start with Small Advertisers - when I first started trying to sell advertising on my blogs I aimed too high. On my digital camera blog I went for Canon, Adobe etc. Of course I failed. So I decided to go to the opposite extreme and started approaching smaller digital camera stores and websites. The tactic worked - they bought up ad space at reasonable rates quite quickly. In time however traffic grew and the bigger campaigns started to appear - having advertisers already on board helped convince the big guys though.

5. Put together an Advertiser Pack - compile your stats, rates, advertising options (ie what you offer) reader demographics and any other relevant figures into a professional looking document that you can email to interested advertisers. Include your contact details and references from other advertisers if you can get them.

6. Sell the Niche Angle - the fact is that most of us will never compete with the broad publications that are out there - so don’t compete with them by trying to fool advertisers into thinking that you’re bigger than you are - sell the fact that you’re different and that you can reach a narrow and targeted group of people that makes the money an advertiser spends much more effective. ‘Spend $1 on a big site and you might reach a lot of people who are mildly interested in your topic - sell $1 on our site and you’ll reach people who are obsessed with your topic….’

7. Key Influencers - do other bloggers read your blog and pick up on what you write? If so - sell this too. You’ve got influential readers - not just passive ones!

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Written on April 10th, 2007 at 01:04 am by Darren Rowse

What Bloggers Can Learn From… Indirect Earners

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 27 comments

Today’s guest post is from Chris Garrett from chrisg.com.

For many bloggers their income focus is based on direct methods. Most bloggers have at least tried some advertising, particularly Adsense. There is a massive potential though for earning money indirectly from blogging.

Direct methods would include

• Advertising - Adsense, Banners, Chitika
• Affiliates - Visitor buys through your link, you get a commission
• Links - Paid for having their link on your blog
• Paid Reviews - You pay me to review your site/product through PPP or ReviewMe
• Sponsorships - Tends to work like a longer term advertising but can include the sponsor providing products and services rather than a purely financial arrangement.
• Gifts - Visitors like your stuff so much they reward you with tips, or perhaps you have a donation drive to attract a certain figure for a particular purpose

These methods will involve your blog as the central driver of the transaction. In indirect methods the driver is usually you and in most cases the blog is absent from the transaction. The critical factor in indirect methods is your reputation. A reputation built completely or in part using blogs.

Let’s take a look at some ways bloggers have used their blogging reputation to earn money because of their blog but not necessarily using their blog.

• Gina Trapani - Through having a successful blog with a large audience, lifehacker attracted a book deal. As well as being an income in itself, a blog deal further builds public awareness, reputation and credibility.
• Aaron Wall - Aaron Wall funnels visitors to his ebook. While again his ebook is a great money-spinner, the advice it contains helps build trust in his expertise which leads to consulting gigs.
• Joel Spolsky - Joel demonstrates his expertise through his blog but unlike those above earns his money from software. His techie audience, attracted by his software development tips and wisdom, are converted into customers of his FogCreek products.
• David Krug - As well as being a means to earn money, blogs also have value as assets which can be sold. I think the best known person who makes money by buying and selling blogs has to be David. You can earn money by building up your own blog and selling it, or you can buy up under-valued blogs and selling them after giving them a little TLC.
• David Hobby - While he is still a working Photo Journalist, through his “strobist” blog, David has become the web “Flash Photography” expert. He now runs successful workshops teaching all of his tricks of the trade. Even though it is possible to learn a great deal from his blog his customers know there is nothing that compares to being guided through the topic in person.

Take a good hard look at your blog and the audience it attracts. With a bit of creativity you could be sitting on a potential goldmine … Do you have any more examples of bloggers earning money through indirect methods? Add your thoughts in the comments.

Read more from Chris Garret at his blog chrisg.com.

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Written on April 9th, 2007 at 04:04 am by Darren Rowse

Connect with me via Facebook… and more

Social Media 20 comments

Over the last few weeks I’ve had an influx of invitations to connect with people on Facebook. I’ve never promoted my page on this social networking site but as there seems to be some momentum on it I figure why not - so if you’d like to connect there please do via this badge.

Also - if you’re interested in seeing what happens when some of the b5media team get together face to face check out some of Chad’s photos of the evening last night at a French restaurant in downtown Toronto.

PS: While we’re talking social networking - if you’d like to be my ‘friend’ or be ‘connected’ on other social network sites you might also like to do so at:

LinkedIn

MyBlogLog

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Written on April 9th, 2007 at 01:04 am by Aaron Wall

Is Your Blog Biased?

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 26 comments

This post has been submitted by Aaron Wall - the author of the comprehensive Search Engine Optimization e-book SEO Book. He blogs at seobook.com

What is bias? According to the Wikipedia:

A bias is a prejudice in a general or specific sense, usually in the sense for having a preference to one particular point of view or ideological perspective. However, one is generally only said to be biased if one’s powers of judgment are influenced by the biases one holds, to the extent that one’s views could not be taken as being neutral or objective, but instead as subjective.

Bias is talked about as though it is a bad thing, but many of the most popular media outlets, websites, and social networks are popular precisely because they are biased. People are more inclined to believe, pay attention to, and syndicate things that reinforce their current worldview. And people are more likely to respond to things they sharply disagree with.

How many popular centralist political blogs are there? Compare that number to the number of popular left wing and right wing political blogs. Which number is bigger?

Don’t be afraid of your bias. It is what makes you who you are, and what will attract like-minded people. Your biases, flaws, identity, emotions, and personal experiences are the only thing you can share that can’t be outsourced to a cheap worker or done by a computer.

Share what you love and the love will come back, usually in the form of comments or somewhere with an a href nearby.

Read more of Aaron’s work at his SEO Book Blog.

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Written on April 8th, 2007 at 01:04 am by Darren Rowse

What Blog Metrics Packages Do You Use?

Blogging Tools and Services 73 comments

Edward asks - ‘How can I know where the readers of my blog mostly come from? Search Engines? MyBlogLog? Other Blog’s Links?’

Finding where the readers to your blog mainly come from is something that is well worth doing as it can help you grow and improve your blog.

There are many statistics (or metrics) programs out there available for you to use to get this information. They range from the free and very easy to us to paid packages.

Let me outline four that I use on most of my blogs (note - there are many others and I’m sure readers will suggest their favorites in comments below):

Sitemeter - this is one that a lot of bloggers use because it’s very simple to install and gives you some good, basic, useful information - it’s also free (as long as you don’t mind everyone else being able to see your stats too). I use Sitemeter on many of my blogs and find it very useful for checking how a blog is doing from day to day (or hour to hour). While it’s not quite as accurate as some of the other stats packages below (I find that it under estimates actual figures) but many bloggers find it a useful tool to get a feel for what’s happening on a blog quickly.

Google Analytics - Google’s stats packages is quite a bit more advanced than a package like Sitemeter. While it does give you all the same information it also allows you to track a whole lot more and even to set goals and track them. I don’t use Analytics on a daily basis - but find it a very useful to check into every week or two to see how the blog’s performing on a higher level.

Server Side Stats (AW Stats) - If you host your blog on your own server (or a shared one) you’ll almost always be offered some sort of statistics package. For example many servers will offer AW Stats. Again, these stats are very comprehensive. While Sitemeter will only really show you statistics for the last 100 visitors on your site - packages like AW Stats will give you stats for all your visitors over different time periods. Again - I don’t use AWS on a daily basis - but if I’m wanting to do more detailed analysis of how my blog is going this is where I’ll head.

103bees - in addition to the above packages I do also use one more that has more of a niche focus - search engine traffic. 103bees looks at those arriving at your blog after doing a search on a search engine and gives you an array of useful information about them including the words that they use, the questions that they ask etc. While you can get a lot of this information from the above packages too, 103bees put it in really useful form.

But the above four stats packages are just the ones I’m using. What do you use and why?

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Written on April 7th, 2007 at 09:04 am by Darren Rowse

Toronto Blogger Meet Up This Tuesday Night

Pro Blogging News 18 comments

This is pretty last minute but for those of you base in the Toronto area you might like to come along to an impromptu bloggers meet up that the b5media gang are putting together this Tuesday night.

A number of the core b5 team are flying into Toronto over the coming days for meetings (I’ve been here two days now) so we thought it might be a fun night to get together with the wider blogging community in the area.

The details:

Time: 6.00pm to 9.00pm
Place: Irish Embassy
49 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario M5E 1J1

It’s on Upcoming here.

Hopefully the venue’s nice and warm (it’s freaking freezing here) and we’ll have a fun time together.

After the great time we had at the enternetusers meet up in New York I’m looking forward to meeting some more of the Canadian blogging community. I hope you can make it.

Update: ok - due to popular demand - I’ll offer a couple of prizes. Anyone who gives me their business card goes into the draw to win either a six figure blogging course or a ‘best of enternetusers’ ebook.

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Written on April 7th, 2007 at 12:04 am by Darren Rowse

Custom vs Premade Blog Themes

Blog Design 65 comments

The following post on custom vs premade blog themes was submitted by Matthew Coddington from Net Business Blog.

At one point in every blogger’s career he or she has to make a choice between investing in a custom template or staying the course with a premade, downloadable template. There are important factors that you have to keep in mind with each ranging anywhere from funds to brandibility.

Pros & Cons of Premade (Non-unique) Themes

Pros

1) They’re free - Is it any surprise to anyone that this is by far the biggest pro for premade themes? They’re free! Free is good. You don’t have to pay for free.

2) There’s a wide selection - There are a ton of themes out there for you to choose from, especially for the more popular platforms such as WordPress. You will almost always be able to find a theme suitable for your blog’s niche.

3) New ones everyday - Designers are constantly releasing new themes everyday whether it’s in an effort to generate backlinks or just to increase their own popularity. There will never be a shortage of new premade themes entering the blogosphere for you to pick from.

Cons

1) They’re non-unique - In many cases this point alone supercedes all of the pros of premade themes. If you are able to find a premade theme that you think is just perfect for your site, do you really want to share that image with potentially thousands of other people?

2) The good ones get used by everyone - There might be a ton of themes out there, but there will always be a sort of elite group of the best themes that everyone wants to use. For example with WordPress you see an abundance of people using MistyLook. That is because it is one of the more attrActive themes available.

3) Harder to generate a lasting memory - If someone gets to your site and it looks just like every other blog they’ve visited in the last week what are the chances they’ll find their way back? You might not need a good blog design to leave a lasting impression, but you had better be an amazing writer.

Pros & Cons of Custom Themes

Pros

1) They’re unique - The big one. When you get a custom theme made for your site, nobody else should have it - unless maybe your designer is less than honest. Nobody will wander into your blog and think “oh another guy using that same old theme”.

2) Helps create a brand - People think the idea of creating a brand is reserved for large corporations, but blogs (even the small ones) need to work on their brands as well. You want to be memorable. You want to stand out. You want people to revisit your blog. Custom themes create a unique image for your blog that add to your brand.

3) They’re usually much prettier - Even the best designers don’t do their best work when releasing free themes. It’s a fact of the industry, and I really do not see it changing anytime soon. The best looking blogs will always be the ones that were custom made.

4) There’s only one con - Price.

Cons

1) Price - Custom themes are expensive. You can get a decent theme designed for as low as $300, but many designers now charge upwards of $5,000 for a blog design. I sort of think $5,000 is overdoing it a bit for a blog design, but that’s for another post.

Overall when should you make the jump from a non-unique to a unique theme? In my opinion, I would say as soon as you can afford it. You can create a successful blog without a custom theme, and you may even be able to go your whole online career with a downloaded template. But why would you want to? Sure branding yourself, creating a lasting memory, and standing out from the crowd *can be done* without a good, custom theme by it’s so much easier with one.

Read more of Matt’s work at Net Business Blog.

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