Damien at the Speed of Life – DATSOL

Click on image to view the Excel spreadsheet.
This month’s theme: “Automation.”

Here are the textual results:

Postcards from the Funny Farm – PFTFF
9,651 Backlinks
8,630 Visits (in June ‘09)

Dynamite Lesson Plan – DLP
3,123 Backlinks
2,030 Visits (in June ‘09)

Damien at the Speed of Life – DATSOL
5,376 Backlinks
1,422 Visits (in June ‘09)

Net for all blogs= $207

Sources:
Backlinks-Yahoo
Visits-Google Analytics
Net-PayPal

Notes: Last month I used this word: “automation.” I suppose if I were putting out a CD I’d call it that. That’s the name of the game these days for my blogging life. I have just about everything automated to produce money and traffic. Backlinks are a little harder to produce that way but I’m working on new ideas every day. As a teacher who is getting more responsibility at work every day, I don’t have the time I used to devote to blogging.

Automation methods:
Backlinks: The only automation I can think of for these is submission to Article Avenue and the like. Many of my backlinks however are the result of people linking to my articles or blog because they like them. This would lead to the ultimate automation technique: “Write good content.”

Visits: In my experience, Stumbleupon and other social media has produced the largest increase in traffic. Find classy ways to ask people to read your work through social media. The following sites are the ones I am leveraging for traffic-

• Ping.fm – Choose the services you post statuses to and send a status and a link to your blog out to all of them with one click.
• Twitter – Ping.fm can take care of this one.
• Facebook – This is often a small group of a hundred or so friends. I usually use Ping.fm to drive my Facebook statuses but there are other features you can use on Facebook other than statuses to promote your blog.
• MyBlogLog -
• Blogcatalog – Send bulk messages to members of your community.

Net: Automation methods are Text-Link-Ads. I am making over $20 a month with my 3 blogs with this service. Google Adsense has made me very little money, but it is always increasing. Getting Adsense on a site is a good idea. The more traffic I get, the more Adsense will make for me.

These are the automated methods I use to make passive income. It is a small percentage of the total I make monthly but they are a substantial chunk. The rest of the pie consists of hard work writing and doing sponsored posts. I never do 2 paid posts in a row. Every other one is a rule I have for myself.

I encourage you bloggers out there to use the services and methods I have talked about.  Also, remember that each blog is its own animal.  What works for mine may not work for yours.  The thing that makes bloggers great, in my opinion, is their ability to create and innovate ideas that work for their blog.  I will continue to look for ways to automate my backlinks, visits, and net. Your comments are warmly invited.

I’ve written two previous posts on Entrecard in the past few months. You’ll find them linked below. This post will be my 3rd and serve as a conclusion to the many items I left unanswered.

• Entrecard Time Tracking
• Entrecard after a Month

I titled this post the way I did because I don’t mean to draw extra attention to Entrecard for good or bad. While I find their service quite good for certain bloggers, I am not convinced it is the best way to promote blog posts. This is what I was using it for. That’s the real point I am making, it depends what you use Entrecard for that determines its value to you. Since I need it to promote my blog posts, that’s where my review is coming from. There are other things you can do at Entrecard besides that. I have no interest in them.

To summarize my “real estate” on the web: I have three blogs. The one you are reading now is my general/personal blog where I write about blogging and my life. The other two are niche in nature: self-improvement/psychology and teaching. I used the widget for almost 4 months and saw no significant increase in traffic via Entrecard. Incidentally, I saw most growth coming from Stumble-upon. I recommend getting friends there and doing mutual Stumbling when you like each others’ posts. Entrecard traffic did come to some degree only when I spent a lot of hours a week “dropping” my card. This is a devil’s paradise that left me cross-eyed every time. It just isn’t natural to visit 100-300 blogs a day. With Entrecard, that’s one of the main ways you gain clout and theoretically: traffic.

I tried my hand at their marketplace and found it quite fun. It was also laborious though. You gain clout there by doing “tasks” for other bloggers as a means of a service. I got tired of doing that pretty fast as well.

So, with no real benefit to promoting my posts, I decided to be a “passive” Entrecard member. I have heard they occasionally ban people who speak ill of them so I want to make it abundantly clear I am only speaking about my experience. I definitely don’t want to be banned. I do believe Entrecard can and does work to entertain and promote many bloggers. It just hasn’t worked for me. You might ask yourself how many times you click on their widget? As for me, in truth it is next to never. If my experience is common to the blogosphere what you are doing there is working to get credits to put their widget on your blog. My question is why when you yourself don’t click on their widgets?

I already know a few friends who are going to take me to school about this post. I recommend you don’t. I remain a member of Entrecard and will use their services but for the time being, their service is not meeting my need of promoting blog posts. Because I know some of my mentees read this, I’ll just throw out who I am finding traffic with. If you want to know how, that’s what the comments box is for. I’d be happy to explain:

Main Stuff that works for me to promote blog posts:

Email lists
Ping.fm
Twitter
Facebook
MyBlogLog
BlogCatalog
Stumbleupon
Your recommendations?

I’ve noticed that blogging draws people for a million reasons, it isn’t just the desire to share your life online anymore. But whether you are looking to make money or  just experimenting with  a journal, there are three areas you’ll want to increase.  I use the acronym CAN to identify them.

C stands for Circulation. This is the number of references to your blog in the form of links. It is known by several names: backlinks, inlinks, blog reactions, linkbacks, and sometimes trackbacks (though those are falling out of use). Here are a few things you can do to increase circulation:

1. As you read, save links for speedlinking, or linking out to them in your posts. This by itself will not increase your circulation but people will stop by your blog if you reference them most the time and most the time, they will reference you back. It’s a great way to make circulation friends quickly.
2. Take “Nofollow” off comments. In the same way, those who see their comments are linking back to their site will be noitified and this is likely to get them back to your site as well as returning the favor of linking to their site. You can find out how to do this in a simple Google search of your blog platform. In Wordpress there are plugins.
3. Submit articles to Article Avenue and the like.
4. Submit your guest posts to social media. When you do a post somewhere other than your own blog, make sure you submit it to as many social networks as possible. This can (and does) ultimately lead readers back to you

A stands for Analytics. This is the traffic of visitors to your blog. Here’s what you can do to keep that number rising:

1. Do a series post like “Blog Tip of the Day” or other “…of the day” or your choice to keep people coming back.
2. Ask a few friends to announce them on their blogs.
3. Blog-Hop and comment intelligently as much as possible.
4. Stumble your best of the week (or ask others to).

N stands for Net. This is simply the amount of money your blog makes. The more I blog, it seems the less I care about this number. It seems to grow so I don’t look at it as much as I used to. To me, it’s all about influence and I think if you’re showing that on the internet, compensation will follow. Having said that, here are some practical steps to making bucks with your blog:

1. Check for opps. with the companies that pay you to blog.
2. Work on C and A more.
3. Be faithful to the opps you get.
4. Do quality work.

I hope that helps you out with your focus. Blogging is a fun journey and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.  Remember this phrase with regards to blogging: “I CAN!”

Here’s a list of companies that pay bloggers. I have used and been paid by all of them to varying degrees. THE LIST IS IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER. Book mark it and check back as I update it about every 6 months or so.

• PayU2Blog
• Blogsvertise
• Blogging Ads
• Blog to Profit
• BuyBlog Reviews
• ReviewMe
• Text Link Ads
• Google Adsense
• Social Spark
• PayPerPost
• LinkShare
• Linkworth

Please feel free to leave questions and comments on the subject of mmol.  I’m happy to help you if I can. Curious about what I pull down? Check the latest figires here at my blog stats archive. I started a webcast from my garage recently. I have some office furniture out there and a decent recording setup. I may start broadcasting more about making money online.

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my FEED Thanks for visiting!

My first tip in this series is based on something we all get stronger by doing:

routine

After I share my thoughts on blog routines, I hope you will join this conversation and share your tips and comments.

Establishing routines for your blog is the best way to generate “passive” traffic and income. While your blog should never become “botlike,” you can establish routines to make your blogging experience, or job if you do it for money, much more gratifying and successful. Routines can be like buying wholesale products over retail … it simply equals more value. A few posting routines I have integrated through the years have been:

• Speedlinking
• Monthly Blog Stats results
• Blog Tip of the day (or week, month etc.)
• Photo of the day
• Series posts on various topics
• Weekly podcast or videoblog

Before I wrap up this thought, I’d like to suggest you subscribe to my RSS feed to make sure and get future tips. Thanks for visiting!

To close, establishing and keeping blogging routines can make the “passive income” flow more freely if you do it for a living and the quality writing for friends and family as well. There are times when blog routines are good to share with your readers because they may lure them to subscribe and return. Other times you keep them to yourself and they simply help you stay faithful at posting. Do you have a blog routine?

Wordpress is a mysterious animal to many many people. Prior to 2006 it was a 100% mystery to me. I’ve learned a lot since then, especially about crucial plugins.  Most people when starting Wordpress are concerned with themes, colors, and graphics.  To them I say this: Beauty is more than skin deep. Below is a photo of my daughter, with me in the background saying: “Don’t try to eat the guitar sweetheart … learn to play it first ;) and please don’t drop it on the porcelain tile.” Since I’ve written directions like this on plugins several times for friends and mentees through the years, I thought I’d start a post on this topic and tweak it as I need to along the way.  Take these as suggestions only, but ones I always install first thing when I start a new blog.  Last year I maintained 5 blogs.  Currently I run 3. CRUCIAL PLUGINS YOU SHOULD START WITH (they remain unlinked because they’ve been linked to enough.  Plus I’m lazy.  If you want them you can show them your interest via copy/paste):

1. All in One Adsense: http://www.linewbie.com/wordpress-plugins/
2. Executable PhP: Important for putting some widgets in your sidebar http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/php-code-widget/
3. Genki Announcements: This is helpful in many ways for ads, for updates, for sidebar, banners, etc. http://ericulous.com/2007/03/09/genki_announcement/
4. Google Sitemaps: A little advanced to install, but well worth it in the long run for getting traffic from Google. http://www.arnebrachhold.de/redir/sitemap-home/
5. HeFo: Stands for – “Header/Footer” This is for lines of code for applications like Google Analytics and some tracking codes. You never have to add again with this plugin. Without, you have to add to every theme you try. http://kaloyan.info/blog/wp-hefo/
6. MyBlogLog Widget: A networking tool that seems to hang around when others don’t. http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/community/com_widget_wp.php
7. Subscribe to Comments: This is really thinking of your readers http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/
8. Popular Posts: I, personally, find it very helpful to track the popularity of my pages http://rauru.com/wordpress-popular-posts
9. Post Views: This is a somewhat advanced plugin that I have grown absolutely dependent on. It tracks and displays the number of views for each post http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/

I’ll tackle “crucial theme” issues at some point.  Until then, happy hunting.

I find it utterly baffling how complete crap like the site below:

GWEI – Google Will Eat Itself

Can get a PR5 while quality sites of friends of mine with better stats and far superior content are smacked to a PR0.

Regardless of what Google metes out to me in PR, I am resolved to continue. You should do the same.

My hope is that one day all advertising on blogs will be paid by advertisers based on 100% transparency and not on Google’s secret mojo.  Sites like GWEI linked above are examples of how Google PR is not a good indicator of blog value.  Somehow Google has advertisers convinced it is the ONLY indicator.  To my friends out here who’ve been hit, let me share a sentiment that may encourage you as you focus on CAN for blog success.  This video one goes out to “the PR0″ … From REM to me to you:

Hang in there folks and remember this mantra no matter what Google labels your blog: “YOU CAN.” Don’t let mighty Google tor anybody else tell you different.

Traffic sources to my blog ‘Postcards’ 3-14-09 to 4-14-09

Blogging thrives on the gut of the everyman.  In other words: every blogger is a glutton for the same basic things.  One of those things is traffic.  If you are an artist, you want viewers.  If you are a musician, you want listeners.  If you are a blogger, you want readers and that means: traffic.  In my narcissistic quest to find more traffic I have learned a few absolute truths.  The biggest one is this: “Nothing I can ever invent will bring me more traffic than the existing tools around me.”  In the spirit of this truth, I have been exploring those services and tools that currently exist to help my blogs get traffic.

I have been dropping at Entrecard for about a month now after a long hiatus.  The only thing I have done in the past month is this (very important to note): Drop back on just the first page of my drops inbox every day.  I also have bought a few ads but only twice in a month.  The reason this is important to note in gauging Entrecard’s effectiveness is because I know there is far more that can and should be done with Entrecard.  I am a complete beginner there.  Still, if you look at the circled numbers, I got a significant return via Entrecard traffic.

Then there is Stumbleupon, my #1 traffic source.  The only thing I do there is submit my own posts in between other posts I find interesting.  MINIMAL EFFORT.  The number speaks for itself folks: 40% of my traffic last month came from Stumbleupon with minimal effort on my part.

I will continue to leverage Entrecard but I’m thinking I will read some more tutorials on Stumbleupon and spend more time using it … it seems the better investment, do you agree?

A lot has been written out there about what subject matter gets blog traffic and backlinks. What hasn’t been written about enough is how and where to get the inspiration to blog. That’s why I am sharing a few sources of inspiration I use.

1. Reading other blogs. I’ve used many methods of browsing blogs. So far, the easiest and most broad in scope has been through using Google Reader. You can develop a collection of favorite blogs over time and visit them in one place rather than bouncing around blog to blog. The blogroll is all but obsolete when you consider the handy nature of feed readers like Google Reader. As I read, I usually don’t even get through three blogs before I have an inspiring idea for a post. It is a good idea to recognize the blogger who wrote the article in your article. However, if the new post idea is not clearly related, you should feel no obligation to do so.

2. My kids. When I consciously take time away from my duties of life (including my computer) I get at least one or two inspiring ideas to blog on. I guess the only advice here is to do something with them away from the computer. If you end up making it into a profitable post, make sure you pay then with a trip to the pizza parlor or something else they’d enjoy.

3. Movies. I do most my movie reviews at Blogcritics nowadays. After that I usually write a shorter blurb about the movie on my blog to point people there. Sometimes these short blurbs get more comments than the Blogcritics pages. Every time I watch a movie I am imagining what the review will be like. I have learned a lot writing for Blogcritics.

4. Google Trends. This is another excellent service Google provides that shows you what people are searching for. This is probably not a sure-fire way to get visitors but it can get you thinking and therefore inspired to write a post that will indeed be relevant.

Those are four inspiration sources for me. I hope you’ll try them out and find success in your blog journey.

I started “blog hopping” this afternoon and there were so many loading and spelling issues I just had to stop. The great thing about blogs and self-publishing is that I have access to every Tom, Dick, and Jane out there writing content. That is also the not-so-great thing. Because anyone can publish a blog and get it “out there” there are some real eyesores that I have to bellyache, I hope I don’t offend anyone:

1. Homonyms misspelled: to=preposition too=Modifier of degree two=2 / there=place their=possessive they’re=contraction they are You/You’re: Your is possessive. “Is that your hat?” You’re is a contraction for you are. “You’re wrong.” Then/Than: “Then you’d like to go over this later rather than right now.” Its/It’s: Again, possession is the name of the game when it comes to its.
2. Too much on sidebar=long load times. Do you really need all that stuff? Take inventory and dump the stuff not helping you achieve your goals.
3. A completely untouched free theme. Come on now, can’t you at least put a feedburner brick in there to make it your own? How will we know it’s not spam? Take a little time to read a tutorial on Wordpress, html, php, or tweaking themes in general.
4. Less than 60 word posts. Why waste my time?
5. Poorly designed. Columns overlap etc. Take your writing serious enough to put it in a nicely structured theme.
6. Cussing. I just don’t like it. I think I have one cuss-word in my blogs and it’s like damn or something. Dooce can bite me if she doesn’t like it. I’m me, she’s … well, her.
7. Flaunted, unbridled, giddiness. Ever catch a load of this in your travels and assume you accidentally became a member or something you weren’t invited to read?
8. I apologize in advance for this one but I just have to say it because it bothers me in an irrational way: When I just did a paid OPP and come to find the same person did it with 1/2 the quality and probably got approved and paid the same as me who spent a long time. (I’m a grouch huh?)
9. Angry posts with no real point.
10. and finally … my last gripe about blogs out there is: pop-up-blog-newsletter-subscriptions (esp. seo ones) !!!!
11. Okay, I lied … one last gripe: Bloggers in Southern California who have motorcycle accidents and don’t call motorcycle accident lawyers Los Angeles. Why not use the best? ;)

Got any gripes about blogs these days?