Written on June 21st, 2007 at 05:06 am by Darren Rowse

10 Techniques I Used To Go From 0 To 12,000 RSS Subscribers In Seven Months - With No Ads Or Leverage

RSS, Blog Promotion 63 comments

The following guest post has been submitted by Trent Hamm from The Simple Dollar

Hopefully, that title got your attention a little bit, but it’s true. I launched The Simple Dollar at the very end of October 2006. I had no pre-existing blog that I could use to drive early traffic, nor did I have any personal contacts that I could use. I also had zero advertising budget. But by June 2007, I had 12,000 RSS readers and was generating enough traffic that I had to switch hosting plans twice. How did I do it? Here are a few specific techniques that really helped me build my blog’s traffic over time.

1. Lay some groundwork before starting

By this, I mean plan out your blog. What is going to be your topic area? It should be clearly defined, but not too narrow. Who is your target audience? Look at their age, their ethnicity, their nationality, their cultural awareness. You should also establish some goals - I would focus on having initial goals stated in percentages rather than raw numbers. Something like 10% readership growth per month for the first six months is appropriate. Some people miss the value of laying the groundwork for a blog, but if you’re intending to be successful, you need to be very clear on what you are talking about and who you are speaking to.

2. Listen to del.icio.us

The most valuable content that a blogger can create is the type of content that readers want to come back to time and time again and also that they want to share with others. These pieces will continually provide value to you, and the surest way to identify such content is to know how many people have saved a particular post at del.icio.us. I keep track of this by using Feedburner’s site statistics package and enabling the “flare” that shows this information. Posts that have del.icio.us bookmarks are usually the ones I use as guidelines for what works on my blog - if I try something different and no one bookmarks it, I usually realize that it’s a bad idea. I’ve found that time and time again, del.icio.us is the best barometer of good content.

3. Find your community

When you begin blogging, you may feel rather isolated from other bloggers. Try to communicate with other bloggers in your niche just to exchange ideas and build a framework of connections. Don’t initially go for the most popular bloggers in your niche - some of them are often so inundated with contacts that by sheer necessity they have to filter what they respond to. One good way to get started is to find blog carnivals in your topic area and contact the people running these carnivals.

4. Immerse yourself in a social bookmarking site

Many people have a hard time getting their foot in the door with social bookmarking because they just try to use it without giving back. Most social bookmarking sites are a community of people who enjoy interaction and discussion - if you just pop in long enough to toss up some links and then wonder why you’re not successful, you’re simply fooling yourself. If you want to be successful on a social bookmarking site, get involved. I’m involved in several - I post links to both my own articles and to other things and I’m also involved in many discussions on what others submit. Over time, people start checking in on what you submit on those sites and tend to be predisposed to voting them up, which can in the end merit you a lot of legitimate attention.

5. Don’t give into negativity

At some point, you’re going to be jealous of the success of another blogger. At some other point, you’re going to believe that the game is rigged against you - that there’s no way you can become really popular. Don’t believe a word of it. The blogosphere is the closest thing to a meritocracy that exists for sharing ideas - the things that get you ahead are working your tail off and having good ideas. Whenever you get jealous of someone, think of the time they’ve invested to reach their level of success and respect it instead. Whenever you get down on yourself or on the blogosphere as a whole, remember that by sitting there being negative, you’re wasting time that you could be using to directly or indirectly get your voice out there.

6. Keep an idea box

There are going to be times where you don’t have any ideas. These are dangerous times - ones that can make or break a blogger. To get me through these times, I maintain an “idea box,” which is for me a small collection of items that regularly inspire me. Most of these are books of various kinds, but a few are creative thinking puzzles and games. I usually find that a simple free association helps get me started - I basically just dump everything on my mind right now on a piece of paper, then spend a minute trying to connect that thing on my mind to the topic of my blog. This usually yields two or three avenues to follow and research.

7. Clear your schedule when you’re in the flow

I generally find that there are some periods where I can just pump out content all day long, while other times I have difficulty writing even a word or two. When I’m feeling it, I try very hard to clear my schedule for an extended period of time so I can ride the wave - I’ve even cancelled appointments because the writing flow was so intense. If you’re serious about blogging and get in the writing zone, ride it for as long as you can.

8. Keep a posting schedule - but make it slow at first

Many bloggers make the mistake of starting off with a posting schedule that they just can’t maintain - I almost did this myself early on. What I’ve found is that over the first few months, you’ll find out that you can write quality posts at a certain rate - your actual posting schedule should be somewhere around 60% of that. Why? You’ll want to use those extra posts for guest blogging on other blogs, getting ahead a little bit, and so on. If you don’t know what your schedule should be at first, try shooting for five posts a week and then adjust it as needed over the first month or two. Once you’re established, though, readers will have some expectations and it will be much harder to switch things around.

9. Get ahead - don’t fall behind

So many bloggers rush to post the latest, greatest idea that they have, but then when something unexpected happens in their life or when they’re having writer’s block, their blog goes dead for long periods before popping up with some lame excuse about why they haven’t posted in two weeks. My solution, one that’s worked well for me, is that I have a large handful of completed posts that I hold onto. When an emergency happens and I won’t be able to post for a while, I set these up to post automatically by setting the date in the future. Similarly, if I’m having a bad case of writer’s block, I post one or two of these to help me over the hump. Then, during my writing sessions, I replace the used ones.

10. Email readers as much as possible

Make it easy as pie for readers to contact you and email them as much as you can. When you’re starting off, I would even recommend emailing people who comment, though that becomes much more difficult as time wears on. Why? These early adopters will likely stick around and regularly comment on your posts, and then new readers will see that you have Active commenters and will perceive your blog as an Active and lively place. Even better, quite often these commenters will turn out to have great ideas of their own, which can often develop into posts.

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Written on June 21st, 2007 at 12:06 am by Darren Rowse

8.9 Posts Per Week - Too Many? Not Enough?

Writing Content 35 comments

Over the weekend I asked enternetusers readers to tell us how many posts they’d written on each of their blogs last week.

142 comments were left referring to a total of 181 blogs. Here are a few of the figures:

• The average number of posts that bloggers posted to each blog was 8.9 for the week.
• The most common response was 5 posts for the week (27 blogs had this number of posts - or 15%).
• 50% of blogs had 6 or less posts posted to them (and 50% had 7 or more posts over the week - or 1 post per day)

Here’s how things look when we graph them. The bottom axis is the number of posts written and the left axis is how many blogs had this many posts.

Note: I’ve excluded a couple of the responses because they didn’t give enough detail on a blog by blog basis.

An observation
My initial reaction to the figures was that it fit pretty closely with what I’d expected. The average blogger is able to get around 1 post out per day (or at least per weekday).

However my curious little mind automatically wonders what would happen if we did a similar survey on a list of more prominent and successful blogs? On previous occasions I’ve spent time surfing through the Technorati Top 100 to find out how often they post per day. On one occasion I found that the top 50 posted around 20 times per day (140 times per week) and on another found that the top 10 posted an average of 30 posts per day (210 times per week).

If someone’s got time to do a more recent survey of how many times they post I’d love to see it - but I suspect that the graph would look quite different to the one above - with a much higher average and a shape that had a higher proportion of blogs at the right hand end of the graph.

What is the optimal number of posts per week?

By no means am I suggesting that post frequency is the key to successful blogging. There are many factors that come into play when we analyze successful blogs.

Comparing enternetusers readers post frequency with the Top 100 at Technorati is not a fair comparison. For starters, most of the blogs in the Top 100 at Technorati are written by full time bloggers (or teams of bloggers).

When thinking about the optimal number of posts to write per day a blogger really needs to think carefully about a number of factors:

• Blogger Time and Energy Levels - How much can you sustain as a blogger? Posting too frequently takes it’s toll on you as a blogger and will impact the quality of the posts that you’re able to produce.
• Reader Energy Levels - Bloggers are not the only ones that can burnout from producing too much content - most readers have an upper limit of posts that they are able to consume.
• Post Length - Many of the Top 100 blogs that are producing high numbers of posts are doing so with shorter posts. This makes it easier for both bloggers and readers.
• Topic - different blogs tend to lend themselves to different styles of blogging. For example a blog like Gizmodo which covers the very wide topic of ‘gadgets’ has a lot wider scope than a blog focussing upon a single type or brand of gadget. As a result Gizmodo gets away with a lot more posts per day.
• Reader Type - different blogs attract a different type of reader. To use Gizmodo again as an example - it’s readers are information junkies whose thirst is the latest information on anything gadget related. They are tech savvy and able to consume large amounts of content - partly due to the large amount of time that they spend online. Other blogs might have a completely different type of reader. For example on my digital photography tips blog I seem to have attracted a lot of older, less tech savvy, beginner level digital camera users. I find that they are less willing to interact with lots of posts each day - so I keep it to a more manageable level (5 posts a week on average).

The optimal number of posts per day or week will depend upon the blogger, the blog’s topic and the reader. There’s no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ number and to find the number that suits your situation will take a time and a little experimentation.

The key is probably less about the number of posts and more about the consistency. A blog which regularly posts 200 posts a week that suddenly drops to 5 will probably find it’s readers pushing back and complaining - similarly, a blog which posts 3 posts a week that suddenly moves to posting 80 will probably find itself with a reader revolt.

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Written on June 20th, 2007 at 02:06 pm by Darren Rowse

AdSense Publishers Reporting Earnings Slump

Adsense 99 comments

I tend not to report too much on the ups and downs of AdSense performance because from day to day it is quite normal for a publishers earnings to go up or down (for a variety of reasons). However over the last 48 hours I’ve had emails from quite a few readers asking if I’d noticed a downturn in AdSense earnings?

The performance of my own blogs with AdSense hasn’t really been impacted too much (although today for the first time in ages my CTR is quite a bit lower and click values are down by around 40%) but from what I can tell quite a few AdSense publishers have seen significant decreases in CTR and click values for the last few days.

My Adsense Nosedive (at Digital Point), AdSense EPC Going into Freefall (Webmaster World) and Is it slow, is it the weather or is it me? (Webmaster World).

As I’ve mentioned above - it’s quite normal to see variations in earnings from day to day but perhaps something a little bigger is going on here?

Have you noticed any changes in your AdSense earnings over the last week or so?

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Written on June 20th, 2007 at 06:06 am by Darren Rowse

Your New Yorker and You - What’s your blogging goal?

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 21 comments

This Guest Post has been submitted by J.T Dabbagian.

When I worked for my community college’s newspaper, I was told a story about a man whose goal was to work for the Los Angeles Times. My teacher stated that it was his New Yorker. Not to be confused with the Literary Magazine The New Yorker, the term ‘New Yorker’ is given to the print, literary, or other media outlet that is the dream or goal outlet of a person.

As bloggers, a good deal of us have blogs that we greatly admire, and many would jump at the chance to work, or even contribute to such a blog. For me, my New Yorker is the productivity blog Lifehacker. For others, it could be sites like enternetusers, or a Google Blog, or any other blog. Whether your goal is to actually work for the blog, or merely to continue having your own blog, you can benefit from having a New Yorker to look up to.

Remember that in blogging, it’s best to have a role model in the blogosphere. Your New Yorker should be none other then that very role model in your blogging experience. Want to write for The Motley Fool? Learn their style; it’s probably one of the reasons why they’re so popular. Don’t completely rip off their articles, obviously, but there is something to be said in copying the professional style of a blog. How does this tie in to making money? It works in two ways: Directly, with contribution, and indirectly, with reference.

Making a contribution to the site

If you’re a contributor to one of the sites, or an author, odds are for the bigger blogs that you might be able to work out a deal for either a segment of the revenue, or maybe be paid directly by the site! Often times, even the smaller blogs, or blogs that don’t rely too much on revenue can often give you something in return, such as hosting, or a recommendation on LinkedIn.

Furthermore, If you become an author of said site, their influence, their reach, all becomes YOUR reach! Also, their audience becomes your audience as well, to an extent, which means more traffic driven to you, more ads clicked, and more money!

So what do you do? Write a query email to the blog’s head writer, and send a proposal of your topic article. Later on, as you post more entries, you might consider offering your services as an editor.

References and Recommendations

For blogs that look down on generating money or revenue, or can’t generate good revenue, you can still get a good deal out of working your blog in a similar style. When the blog site in question posts a blog entry to something similar to what you’ve done, comment and show the blog entry in question.

In another aspect, you can also email the blog any time you have an interesting entry you’d like them to read. Email then with something like ìInteresting blog entry (Blog topic)î in the subject, then describe the post, and why it’s relevant to their blog. Best case scenario is that they link to that blog, in a way recommending the post. This way, you still get traffic, a link to your blog, and a potential reference for later.

So with that in mind, the question I’d like to ask you is what YOUR New Yorker is? Post in the comments!

Read more of J.T’s posts at www.jtdabbagian.com

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Written on June 20th, 2007 at 12:06 am by Darren Rowse

How to Dramatically Increase Amazon Affiliate Sales with Bestseller Lists

Affiliate Programs 21 comments

A sales technique that many businesses and industries employ is to create ‘Best Seller Lists’ to highlight to consumers what others like them are purchasing.

A few examples spring to mind:

• The New York Times Best Seller Lists
• Americas Top 40
• Amazon’s Bestsellers

Of course there are many more we could list. Virtually every music, video and bookstore have their own version of these sorts of lists, as do newspapers, magazines and other kinds of stores.

Another recent local example was a department store here in Australia who had the Top 10 Selling Mens Fragrances strategically placed next to the sales counter of their mens clothes section.

Best Seller lists work in many industries for a number of reasons

• As much as we like to think of ourselves as unique individuals, we’re social creatures and like to know what others are doing
• We like to feel a part of trends and don’t like to feel left out
• We are lazy and any short cut to finding something of a good quality appeals to us
• We know that there’s some truth to the idea of The Wisdom of Crowds

How to Create Your own Best Seller List

A number of months ago I realized the power of best seller lists and decided to start exploring them on my blogs. It struck me that my readership might just like to know what they were buying collectively and that I actually had those figures at hand - in my Amazon Affiliate Program Reports.

At the end of every day publishers in the Amazon Associates program are presented with a number of reports for the previous day. These can be viewed by day, month or any time frame. These reports not only tell you how much you earned over the timeframe selected but shed some light on what items people are purchasing.

This information is both interesting and useful - particularly when you present it back to your readers.

Here’s how I last did it over at DPS - as a Popular Digital Cameras and Gear post.

The post identifies 6 major categories of products within the niche that DPS readers buy. I manually listed the top 10 products in each category, listing each with an affiliate link back to Amazon. I explained that they were affiliate links and that the commissions earned from purchases were sown back into improving the blog.

The Results

There a number of tangible results of producing such a list:

• Sales - every time that I produce one of these lists (and I tend to do it on a quarterly basis) I see an increase in sales at Amazon. Users do take the recommendations of their wider community seriously.
• Conversation - as you’ll see on the post at DPS, there’s been a reasonable amount of conversation as a result of the post. We’re up to 20 comments on the post - with an array of responses (most positive).
• Increase in Commissions - one of the side benefits of driving up the number of sales is that you also drive up the percentage in commissions that Amazon pays out if you’re tier payment system. I find that the months that I do these types of posts that the number of sales goes up and I generally see my % payout increase a percentage point or two (it’s just a pity that Amazon don’t include consumer electronics in the tiers - they stay at a flat 4%).

A Word of Warning

Do keep in mind that making these types of posts too regularly could leave some readers feeling a little disillusioned. I tend to do them on a quarterly basis (they work particularly well in the lead up to Christmas) so as not to seem too greedy or take the blog too far off topic.

A Tip for Increasing the Longevity of the List

Using this type of post can be an effective technique - but once it drops off the front page of your blog it converts significantly less. One way to increase the length of time that the post is effective is to link to it prominently. You’ll see I’ve added a link in the DPS top menus to ‘Popular Cameras’ which links to the post in question. Initial testing shows that this is a fairly well clicked on link in the menu and drives good traffic to the post over time.

A Wish

One of the things that I’d love to see Amazon develop is to have some way of automating this process. To be able to have a way to automatically compile such a list of purchases made through a publisher’s account would be a pretty useful thing.

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Written on June 19th, 2007 at 08:06 pm by Darren Rowse

Bucks for blogging Interview

Pro Blogging News 9 comments

Thanks to Martin for letting me know about an article in Australian PC World featuring an interview with me Bucks for blogging.

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Written on June 19th, 2007 at 05:06 am by Darren Rowse

Reasons to Build RSS Subscriber Numbers

RSS 19 comments

Dosh Dosh explores Why You Should Build Your Feed Subscriber Base and gives a variety of good reasons for building up the number of readers subscribing to your blog including:

• Personal Gratification
• Feed-based Monetization
• Social Proof
• Ability to Initiate Feed-Level Promotions
• Improved Linkability
• Buzz Generators

I’d add two more reasons to build your RSS readership (and I’m sure there are many more that readers will suggest in comments):

1. It increases the Viral Nature of Your Blog - while RSS is becoming more widely spread in the type of people using it - I still think that you’d find that those using it are a fairly tech savvy crowd and that many of them are bloggers. I have no way of measuring this - but my own anecdotal experience through conversations with readers shows that those who subscribe to feeds are more likely to link up to your blog than those who follow your blog through other means.

2. SEO - it strikes me that search engines are becoming more and more interested in RSS. One example of this is Google’s recent purchase of Feedburner - but we’re also seeing more and more integration of RSS into the personalized search offerings of Yahoo, Google etc. I am yet to see any real evidence of this happening yet - but to me it is a logical extension that Search Engines would start to integrate into their algorithms the popularity of a site’s feeds. Of course there are complications with the implementation with the implementation of this - but it makes sense to me that if a company like Google can see how many subscribers your blog has (and they should be able to get a guide to this not only through Feedburner - but through Google Reader, iGoogle etc) that they could fairly easily use such information to rate a site’s popularity. It’s just an untested theory - but one that is a hunch I’ve had growing in me for a while now.

Lastly - I guess it’s good to grow your RSS readership for the same reason that it’s good to grow every other type of readership that you have - influence. The more people that read your blog (via any means) the more likely you are to achieve the goals you have for that blog - whether they be monetary goals, fame, influence etc.

Want to read more about getting RSS Readers for Your Blog and how to keep them?

First - subscribe to enternetusers’s feed.

Then - read some of these articles:

• 11 Ways to Find New RSS Subscribers for Your Blog
• 10 Sure-Fire Ways to get RSS Readers Visiting Your Blog
• 34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog

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Written on June 19th, 2007 at 12:06 am by Glen

The Most Important Tip For Better Writing

Writing Content, General 41 comments

Glen Stansberry is the author of the blog LifeDev (feed). Check out LifeDev for other tips about productivity and life improvement.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Becoming a better writer is the best thing you can do to improve your blog’s readership and traffic. Not how many buttons you have for easy submission to social services, not detailed SEO optimization, and certainly not gimmicky headlines that are created to tempt potential readers into reading your article. All of these things do have some effect on getting people to your blog, but if they don’t like what they’re reading, they’re sure-as-shootin’ not going to come back. It’s all about the content.

Good writers have an advantage on traffic because their readers come back every time they write a new article. Many blog readers are also bloggers, so they in turn link to the posts. The more links a blog has, the higher its posts rank in search engines, and the blog receives even more traffic. Not only that, compelling content gives readers a reason to submit to social sites like Digg and Del.icio.us (regardless of whether or not you have those handy buttons).

So how does one define a good writer? At the very least a decent writer can construct sentences that show at least a 3rd grade reading level. (While this is a rather facetious statement, I have come across a couple blogs that don’t meet this standard. Hopefully the authors really were 2nd graders.)

Some other things I look for in a good writer:

• Great word choice. It’s not how many big words you know, but carefully choosing words that fit perfectly.
• Decent grammar. While blogging is a more forgiving medium, proper usage of grammar still shows masterful writing.
• The ability to make me laugh out loud. There are a few writers who can do this, and it’s a huge draw for me.

There are a few other undefined variables that go into being a great blogger, but really it’s just something the reader can sense. So how does one improve on all of these aspects of better writing?

Really, the answer is painfully simple:

Read other great writers.

That’s it. There’s no magic involved here. The more great writing you can soak up everyday, the more your writing will improve.

Sure, one could take a writing class to improve their writing chops. But how much do you remember from your English education in high school or college? I can’t remember hardly anything except funny words like “dangling modifier”. (That one gets me every time.) I do remember great writing though.

So to get us started, here are a few great writers that I read frequently:

• Merlin Mann of 43 Folders
• Gina Trapini of LifeHacker
• Kathy Sierra of CreatingPassionateUsers
• Woot blog
• Any of the All Things Digital blogs

Reading more high-caliber bloggers is one of the most effective ways to improve your writing. What you read shapes how you write. If you read better blogs, you’ll start to see immediate results in your own writing. And it’s a lot more fun than learning about misplaced modifiers and past participles!

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Written on June 18th, 2007 at 02:06 pm by Darren Rowse

Giving Up on Making Money

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 42 comments

Jon wrote an interesting post last Thursday titled Why I’m Giving Up on Making Money which has given me food for thought over the weekend (found via Rich Minx).

In the post Jon quotes a course that he’s doing:

“If you try to “make money,” you’re in for a long and fruitless ride. Instead, please people within a subject matter you are passionate about, You’ll never grow tired of growing your business and your business income will grow as a natural result.”

This resonates with me. While I do know people who are successfully making a lot of money from blogging by doing little of value (eg - some big time sploggers) - the majority of those who I’m interacting with that are making a living from blogging are doing it as a result of creating websites of true value to their readers.

Jon puts it nicely when he writes:

“To put it another way, are you focusing on “what can I get?” or “how much can I make?” when working on a project or are you focusing on “what problems can I help people solve?”“

Focus upon a question like “what problems can I help people solve?” and you’ll not only build something that has real value and enhances the world we live in on some level - but you’ll also put yourself in a position to be able to build a sustainable business.

Of course - to some extent I’m speaking idealistically. While I strongly believe in what I’m saying the harsh reality for many attempting to make a living from their online activities is that despite attempting to solve problems for readers that it doesn’t always work out that doing so is profitable - but I guess that’s the same in all avenues of business - sometimes even those things that should work don’t.

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Written on June 18th, 2007 at 06:06 am by Darren Rowse

How Many Posts Did You Write Last Week?

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 151 comments

Time for a quick reader question:

How many Posts did you post to your blog/s last week?

Lets make the dates from Sunday 10th June to Saturday 16th June.

I’ll kick it off:

Here at enternetusers I posted 17 posts - at Digital Photography School I posted 5. Those numbers are pretty average for me (although at enternetusers I was relying upon guest posts pretty heavily last week).

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