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.

In effort to make my blogs as attractive as possible to sponsored post clients and advertisers, I’ve been wading through some SEO optimizer posts today. Some really good advice came from this one I found by searching blog seo and it’s a good one:

3. Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post

If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post and pepper your blog titles or links with them appropriately.

Don’t overdo this or your posts will end up sounding unnatural and spammy to readers.
4. Use your keywords in the anchor text of links

Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.

Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages on your main site.

Link keywords where they naturally appear in the body text, but again, don’t overdo it, or you’ll end up with spammy looking pages.
5. Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily

Set up your blog so that the side navigation bar is present on all pages.

Make sure your archives and previous posts are accessible from all pages of your blog so they get spidered easily.

I think the best seo strategy will come about after attending a sales training course. After all, aren’t we really just selling our blogs? Finding the tools that help me do that is what my seo research consists of.

There are lots of tools that will show the keyword denisity of the index but I need one that will suggest keywords based on a larger selection of posts. Still looking.

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

Blog Stats from February 1 to March 1, 2009
This is a monthly feature here where I measure my 3 blogs’ progress. My goal with this series is to provide 100% transparency. You can browse current and past entries in the CAN… category. First I list the CAN data for each blog. Then I reflect with a few notes.

Legend
C = Circulation, or backlinks
A = Analytics, or number of visitors
N = Net, or the amount of money earned by the blog

Circulation (# of Google backlinks)
Postcards from the Funny Farm: 174
Damien at the Speed of Life: 32
Dynamite Lesson Plan: 40
The Damien Riley Podcast: 0

Analytics (# of visits last 30 days)
Postcards from the Funny Farm: 6,659
Damien at the Speed of Life: 532
Dynamite Lesson Plan: 540
The Damien Riley Podcast: 302

Net
Postcards from the Funny Farm: $64.66
Damien at the Speed of Life: $24.00
Dynamite Lesson Plan: $8.05
The Damien Riley Podcast: 0

TOTAL: $106.84

Notes: Stats this month are pretty flat.  I like to see Postcards at 10-15,000 visitors a month and it was way below that.  The main reason for this is because a human only has enough energy in a day.  As I have taken on the weekly podcast and committed to a schedule of posting through the blogs throughout the week, I have taken away some of that energy from Postcards.  For what I do, that’s not the end of the world.  I am making money through Text-Link-Ads and sponsored posts on three blogs.  For me (and my kids who get ice cream off my PayPal card) I’d rather share the energy across multiple blogs.  I feel good about my posts and the energy that I am broadcasting through the podcast.  The backlinks are holding, 2 blogs went up, one went down and the podcast remains at zero.

If you have any good ideas on getting backlinks, do tell.  Advertisers do look at that criteria.

No goals this month other than to keep my posting schedule and do the usual stuff I have been doing for months. As always, I want to be open to your questions and comments through this series. If you think of something you want explained, think of this blog as my wireless alarm The comment box is waiting for you. You’ve seen my results and read my notes, what do you have to say? Is there something I missed you’d like to discuss? How were your CAN results last month?

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

If you haven’t discovered it yet, Entrecard.com is a relatively new service for blog marketing and networking. You have an “entrecard” and all the other blogs do as well. You get points to advertise your blog through “dropping” on other blogs. There is a lot more to it but that is the basic gist of it.

I used to spend countless hours dropping and trying to get thousands of points. It got to a point where I was wasting valuable time on the service. Today mark the day I have really come back to it and I spent a very short amount of time. I wanted to record my results to see if I am at a good pace or if I am too slow. Plus, I’m hoping to get some pointers from you all. Here’s what I have learned works best for me:

1) Use IE as FF seems to crash a lot doing this heavy memory load stuff.
2) Use right-click “Open link in new tab” function, one drop at a time. I have tried multiple opens through “LINKY” add-on in FF and as I said, crash city!  It is way better in my opinion to drop one at a time.
3) Don’t rush. Be deliberate with each drop and take time to read the latest post. I even watched a video entry today and was very happy to see that. I do those from time to time.

That’s about all I’ve figured out so far. Here is my tracked time for today:

11:54pm start
12:10pm end
total: 16 mins.

Progress: 12 ec drops and 2 comments left

Will you try Entrecard.com now that I’ve shared my tips? If you already do it, are there any good tips you can share to cut time? (Hopefully we’ll get some tips from dragonblogger)

When I tell people I “blog” part time they immediately blurt out one of three responses: They, 1) seem confused and ask what blogging is, 2) want to know how much money I make -or- 3) ask if I can get them making money immediately.  For this reason, I usually don’t get into the topic of what has become my part-time job.  On the other hand, I use my PayPal card often (a card bloggers get paid through) to buy my wife, kids, and friends stuff like pizza and Baja Fresh (Baja tacos in the photo were paid for through blog money)  .. that’s enough for me to feel successful!  In fact, it’s amazing to me that I get paid for writing and tweaking code!  That, to me, is blogging.  This is probably due to the fact that 1) I don’t do it primarily for money, 2) I love to communicate and broadcast ideas, and 3) I prune my blogging to fit into no more than 15 hours a week (strict personal guideline).  I read an article tonight a Stumbleupon friend sent me that decries blogging as a “get-rich-quick” method.  I’d have to agree with that.  You won’t get rich quick doing it.  Having said that, you can make “fun money” through writing and tinkering with code and graphics.  I couldn’t ask for more in a part time job.

I did my time in college earning a BA, MA, and a teaching credential in California, one of the most rigorous states for credentialing.  I have a great job as a teacher and I work 185 days a year developing young minds.  What more could I ask for?  Well, there is something and I am doing it: blogging.  I have developed, after over 2 years, a method of setting blog goals and strictly organizing my time to create income as I go.  I just did my 2008 taxes and saw that I made nearly $3,000 blogging … it adds up!  If I was seeking to quit my job, this would be disappointing but I am not.  Without my job, what would I write about?  Beyond that, I feel my blog helps my career.  Reflective journaling has been proven study after study to be an ideal habit for leaders in their fields.  I don’t blog to escape my life, my blog is integrated with my life.  Reading my blog you get life as I see it and I wouldn’t want to sit around in pajamas raking in millions through my blog.  Furthermore, I get comments and emails all the time from readers who tell me my “journal” has helped them in some way.

This year I hope to make more than last year but it still won’t be enough to pay my student loan each month.  One of my blog tenets is “100% transparency” and I publish my blog stats every month.  I’m not seeking to get rich blogging but I am seeking to get rich-er.  My college degrees, my teaching career, my 3 children and lovely wife make me rich in ways far beyond money.  I am comfortably writing about that every day and broadcasting a weekly podcast every weekend.  One part of my individual earning method is having 4 blogs instead of just one and scheduling post deadlines for myself throughout the week.  This allows me to have more variety in advertising pull and all I am doing is journaling, in essence.  I am a mentor to three people currently and I have mentored a total of 11 people formally since I started this.  I tell them all I don’t know how to get rich at this, I only know how to manage time and tasks and make some side money.  No one has backed out of being my mentee after hearing that.

In conclusion, If you read blogs to learn how to get rich, don’t waste your time on mine.  On the other hand, if you want to compare notes on how to get tacos and pizza and take your wife out on a fancy date once in a while, you would definitely profit from reading and listening to my stuff:

http://www.postcardsfromthefunnyfarm.com/ – My thoughts on psychology and inspiration
http://www.damienriley.com/ – My personal blog
http://www.dynamitelessonplan.com/ – My teaching reflections blog
http://podcast.damienriley.com/ – My weekly podcast (recorded each weekend in my freezing garage)

What’s your take on blogging?

This is just an example of what a 100% transparency rank system might look like. The key is working to increase these three excellent indicators of blog value. Google Page Rank, in my opinion, should not be the sole basis on determining value, yet currently for many advertisers: it is.

My method or strategy is a self-blog rating system to set and measure goals with. Let me explain it: First, the acronym:

C: circulation (or Google backlinks)
A: analytics (# of visitors)
N: net (dollars earned by the blog)

Now the rating formula:  I have put it in the form of a 3 question quiz.

1. The number of your Google backlinks is between: (tip: to get this number, type link:http://url into a Google search)

A. zero or unknown
B. 1 – 100
C. 101 – 200
D. 201 – 300
E. 301 – 400
F. 401 or higher

2. Your visitor count last month was between:

A. zero – 500
B. 500 – 15,000
C. 15,001 – 25,000
D. 25,001 – 35,000
E. 35,001 – 45,000
F. 45,001 or higher

3. The amount of money your blog earned last month was between:

A. zero – 100 dollars
B. 101 – 200 dollars
C. 201 – 300 dollars
D. 301 – 400 dollars
E. 401 – 500 dollars
F. 500 or higher

Where A=0, B=1, C=2 and so on up to F=5 respectively, add up the total value of the three letters in your answers: ie; B,C,D would equal 1+2+3=6  Then divide by the total possible(15) to get your can percentage:  6/15= 40%

Then assign your percentage a CAN Blog rating based on this scale:

0 – 16%=CAN0
17 – 33%=CAN1
34 – 50%=CAN2
51 – 67%=CAN3
68 – 84%=CAN4
85 – 100%=CAN5

The example score of 40% is between 34 -50% so it earns a

Thanks for previewing my rating system.  I recommend setting your own goals for your blog. These parameters work for me but certainly they are not universal. If interested you can follow my blogs’ CAN BLOG RATING progress.

This is a monthly feature here where I measure my 3 blogs’ progress. My goal with this series is to provide 100% transparency. You can browse current and past entries in the CAN… category.  First I list the CAN data for each blog.  Then I reflect with a few notes.

Legend:
C = Circulation, or backlinks
A = Analytics, or number of visitors and feed subscribers
N = Net, or the amount of money earned by the blog

1. Postcards from the Funny Farm, a psychology and inspiration blog

Circulation
Google Backlinks: 224
Yahoo! Backlinks: 6,884

Analytics
from 12-01-08 to 12-31-08
Visitors: 11,531
Page Views: 15,536
Feed Subscribers:  110

Net
$68.50

2. Damien at the Speed of Life, my online diary

Circulation
Google Backlinks: 36
Yahoo! Backlinks: 272

Analytics
from 12-01-08 to 12-31-08
Visitors: 603
Page Views: 1,520
Feed Subscribers: 17

Net
$30

3. Dynamite Lesson Plan, a teaching blog
Circulation
Google Backlinks: 224
Yahoo! Backlinks: 6,884

Analytics
from 12-01-08 to 12-31-08
Visitors: 217
Page Views: 503
Feed Subscribers:  14

Net
$25.01

NOTES: December was a great month for traffic.  I had close to 12,000 visitors which is a record by about 5,000 visitors.  So what happened?  Well, my static “Crazy Quotes” page has gained the 5th place on a Google search of those 2 terms.  I have been getting 300-500 hits on that page a day!  This has really helped the normal traffic and boosted the totals immensely.  A special post or page can carry your blog without a need for traffic driving methods.

You may recall last month I decided I was done with empty clicker traffic such as Entrecard.  It hurt me at first but very soon my other methods far surpassed Entrecard.  I just feel that the quality of blogs there is not high and most people who came to my sites just clicked for their points and took off like a bat out of hell.  I chose to work with Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks a little more.  You will see attractive buttons in all three sidevars linking to my profiles on the social networks I am working with.  Please add me to your lists!

My net suffered this month because I didn’t bother much with it.  I decided to put my mental health above straining over sponsored posts.  I did make a nice chunk of change without trying hard at all.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note my recent Google PageRank increase on all three blogs.  They used to be 1, 0, 0 and last night after the roll through, they became 2, 2, 2. This will enable me to get more paying posts and potentially more advertisers.  I am a very happy camper as you all know I have been working very hard to bring my PageRank values up.  Still though, I believe the future is going to be based on 100% pure transparency of stats and not on any dictator of value like PageRank.  That’s the reason I will continue to post CAN stats on all my blogs through 2009.

As always, I want to be open to your questions and comments through this series.  The comment box is waiting for you.  You’ve seen my results read my notes, what do you have to say? Is there something I missed you’d like to discuss?  How were your CAN results last month?

This is a monthly feature here at my personal blog where I measure my blogs’ progress toward goals. You can browse current and past entries in the CAN… category. CAN stands for:

Circulation: Incoming links.
Analytics: # of visitors (Measured in the graph above)
Net: Money made and key takeaways. (Because money isn’t everything.)

I often use shorthand in referring to my blogs:
Psych Blog: Postcards from the Funny Farm
Personal Blog: Damien at the Speed of Life
Teaching Blog: Dynamite Lesson Plan
Podcast: Damien Riley’s Podcast

Below are my CAN results for the time span of 11-26-08 to 11-27-08:
___

Psych Blog:

C – 18

A – 10,099

N – $68.50

Personal Blog:

C – 22

A – 564

N – $30

Teaching Blog:

C – 7

A – 251

N – $25.01
—

Notes: December marked the time I broke the 10,000 monthly visitors mark with my psych blog.  This extremely exciting for me since I have been working on traffic for that blog for 2 years.  I noticed a chunk of that traffic comes from my Crazy Quotes static page.   This teaches me that a dedicated page with search friendly tags and description can lift a blog’s analytics considerably.  For this reason I will continue to put quotes about being crazy and other psychology stuff on that page.  An interesting question is this: “Is there a better way to monetize just that page?”  If any mmol seo types out there have a suggestion I’d appreciate it.  My blog domain has a Google PageRank of 1/10 and yet that quotes page has a 2!  Go figure.  I am quite hopeful in the next PR rollout my blog will increase notably.  I have set most paid links to nofollow when it is ok with the paying advertiser.  That affected a lot of links so we’ll see how much if at all my PR improves.

Another thing I learned in December is that Google weighs inbound links against the number of outgoing links.  If you have a lot of inbound links on a regular basis, that helps your rank.  If you have a lot of outgoing links however that negates the effect of your inbound links.  You can check your inbound links at any time on Google by entering site:(your url) and doing a search.  I don’t know a way to check ones outgoing links but I’d like to find out.  You will find I am linking out less and less and using nofollow on all links unless I want to give a special site link juice.

I have really been slacking in my guest blogging.  I want to do more of that this year.  The best ones for me are the “regular gigs.”  I have two of those and then several open invitations if I get an idea.  The first one is: It Might be Love which is owned by Chelle.  She has become a great friend in this blogging business and I really appreciate her blog concept.  The other is the FuelmyBlog blog.  I am fortunate enough to manage their monthly and sometimes biweekly blog carnival.  Kevin and Sylvie are a couple of really gracious people.  Apart from those two, I want to make myself available to bloggers out there.  If you ask me to guest blog, you will get a great post of 300 words or more with pictures and a solid inbound link from my blog.  Let me know if you are interested.

Now, the last thing: “Analytics.”  How I achieved that 10,099 number is the mystery of the universe.  I’d like to think it was due to my amazing writing.  I think we all know that isn’t the reason.  Traffic is the result of strategic activity.  I have been working really hard this month to test and set in place a traffic generating plan for 2009 and I think I have actually done it!  Here is a bullet list of the items I will use to drive traffic in 2009 (not in any order):

• Stumbleupon networking (by far the best)
• Other social media
• Specific Social Networking: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Wordpress.com, Blogger, Technorati, FriendFeed, Ping.fm, Last.fm, flickr, LinkedIn, and YouTube
• Blog Directories: MyBlogLog and Blog Catalog
• BlogCarnival.com
• Maintain organic Google Reader Feed Subscriptions and commenting often
• Keep to a weekly posting schedule as a minimum for posting to all three blogs
• Continuing to experiment with my Podcast.

I will publish the official numbers in 6 days when December is officially over but I hope you enjoyed these results.  You might say, the future’s so bright, I gotta wear bamboo shades. If you’d like to follow my journey in 2009, I encourage you to subscribe via FEED or EMAIL.

The title is a line from “O Holy Night,” my favorite Christmas song. I thought it a fitting way to start looking at my yearly blog stats which I am so very thankful for this Christmas.  Merry Christmas if you are one of the first readers!

I’ve learned more each day as this past year has whizzed by. I’ve learned how to be better dad, to meet my goals more efficiently at work, and last but not least: I’ve learned key strategies to be a better blogger. As I sat down to outline this post as I always do, I realized I could never fit all I’ve learned about blogging in one post. Better yet, I decided to craft it into a series of post. If you tune in each day until New Years Day 2009 (or when I run out of ideas) you will get all my blog tips, free of charge. If you are tuning in after the series is finished, I hope you find the set to be helpful to you in creating, maintaining, and enjoying a valuable blog.

Looking Back

Last year, I embarked upon a blog journey of the acronym C.A.N. The letters stood for the three goals I measured each month:

Circulation (inbound links)
Analytics (visitors)
Net (Income)

I made goals each month and reported them to you. You can find the last several months C.A.N. results here. This was a very efficient way to measure my own progress. Here is a chart showing how my three blogs Fared in traffic the past 4 months:

I think the smartest thing I have done this past year is to monitor progress toward goals through my monthly CAN post on my personal blog. My hope is that my lower two blogs will rise in their analytics and come close to my psych blog.

Moving Forward

Since this date last year and now, 12-24-08, I’ve earned a total of: $2,137 blogging. If you are interested how I made that chunk of change, here are the sources, in order of highest earnings:

Pay Per Post
PayU2Blog

Review Me
Buy Blog Reviews
Private Ads (Random people who’ve asked to advertise on my blog)
Text Link Ads

I made the majority of this past year’s income when my highest PR was a 4/10. A few months ago, Google reduced me to a 1/10 and much of my opportunities to make money disappeared. This is the irony of Google’s PageRank system: They penalize you for posting sponsored posts and yet the ones who sponsor you pull away when Google penalizes you. There is a solution but it is quite cumbersome: add the tag rel=”nofollow” to any paid link. I’ve been diligent at doing this, not only with paid links but also with links that are irrelvant. I have heard this can affect PageRank as well.

What’s an honest blogger to do?

The secret then, to what I hope is my future success is to always be relevant when linking (ie; no blogrolls, random “link love” posts), always write valuable posts with excellent content (paid or not), rel=”nofollow” ads and sponsored posts when the buyer allows it (note: does all nofollow), and measure my progress toward goals on my personal blog. Finally, as I said earlier, I hope to bring the analytics of my teaching blog and this blog, my personal blog, up to the region on the chart where the psych blog is. If I pull that off in 2009, I will feel I’ve truly accomplished something.

I have many other strategies I am playing with to hopefully put a plasma big screen on the tv stand. In future posts in this series I will discuss social media and networking along with personal habits like scheduling times to post and future time stamping posts. I’ll also be taking YOUR QUESTIONS.  I hope you’ll “tune in.”

One sided phone conversation with a new blogger:

Photo from: Coffee 2 Go

So you want to blog eh? Well, you’ve come to the right place. I love helping people start their semantic journey. It reminds me when I started making a personal website on Geocities way back in 1997. You had to do everything in HTML back then and the closest thing to a blog was a guestbook I suppose. It was still freagin fun! But let’s get back to you. I understand you are on Blogger. No, I don’t mean you smoked the ashes of someone who used to blog, I am referring to the free blog platform owned by Google called “Blogger.” You are? Oh ok great. Actually not great. Did you know most school and public institutions block that provider? Why? I don’t know, ask them. Maybe the word “chat” pops up too much who knows? Anyway, if you want a decent audience, that fact alone will cut back your chances considerably. Oh, and did you know you can’t really change the appearance much other than their small collection of templates? I know a format that will make your appearance choices virtually unlimited. Oh, one more thing, you should know that your Blogger account has the most obtrusive and difficult to fill out comment forms for your readers. You will have a lot of people turn away because it’s so complicated. The one I know of has a simple box at the bottom of each post. Oh last but not least, did you know your blog platform is not as SEO friendly as mine? This means the search engines will place you lower than Wordpress blog with the same topic. Ready to try something different? Ok then! Cool. What’s that? You say you can’t afford to pay? Hmmm. You can’t afford $8.95 a month? What if you made $100 a month on your blog? Something to think about.

If you are interested in making the jump to a self-hosted Wordpress blog, I’d be glad to help. Drop me a line.