Build traffic to your blog by marketing your cornerstone posts

Marketing your cornerstone posts is part of the strategy of marketing your blog to people who are not reading your blog already. This is done by submitting your cornerstone posts to a variety of sites

• Blogger social networks


• Bookmark sites


• Recommendation sites

I will shortly deal with the ones I use.

Blogger social networks

For my main blog, the Necro Files, the most traffic comes from referral sites like blogger social networks. Most of my traffic comes from

• blogcatalog


• mybloglog


• blogflux

You need to sign up for these, and you do need to include a widget or some code on your blog. This is a minor inconvenience and is actually part of social networking fun.

Bookmark sites

Although many bloggers report getting steady traffic from these, I don't really. There is a quick and easy way to submit your posts to quite a few bookmark sites at the click of a button. It is called OnlyWire. Before you get all excited, many people have expressed concern about OnlyWire.

I have used OnlyWire for about a month. I enjoy the convenience of submitting my posts to a myriad of bookmark sites with minimal effort, and although I have not noticed a huge growth in traffic, it is worth it because I get various links back to my blog.

Recommendation sites

For the purpose of easy classification, I list the following as recommendation sites:

• digg


• entrecard


• stumble upon

Digg

This is a catalogue that offers users the change to digg or undigg posts. You may submit your own posts. I haven't had much success with digg, and unless your blog is of an overly technical nature, digg will not pick up on it easily.

Entrecard

A recommendation system most people have trouble with. I have had the most success with entrecard. The quick and easy way to be successful with entrecard can be found on Lisa's World, so I won't go into that further.

Stumble Upon

Also a moody system, which has given me loads of traffic on occassion. The key is to interact with other similar stumblers. Stumble Upon offers you a great opportunity to network with like minded Internet users, all of whom are potentially interested in your blog. You need to install a browser plug in. I use firefox so I am not sure if it works on Internet Explorer.

This is the second part of a series on how to build traffic to your blog. The previous post is build traffic to your blog by providing great content.

Useful links

• Dosh dosh guide to build massive traffic with stumble upon.


• Lisa's World guide to building massive traffic with stumble upon (different from the other link).


• Dosh dosh guide to the fastest way to build an audience for your new website.

Bloggernoob: Review Of a Money Making Blog

While I managed to set up my own blog, The Necro Files, for making money, my success so far does not equal that of Bloggernoob. Instead of dealing with affiliate programs and advertising devices, I decided to review this blog instead.

What Is Bloggernoob All About?
Bloggernoob is a money making machine. It appears to be a part time project with very clear targets set. The owner of Bloggernoob is clearly very gifted when it comes to marketing.

Bloggernoob regularly offers competitions - not silly ones where you can win an affiliate link, real ones where you could win awesome gadgets like a pmp. This is an excellent way to promote your blog.

Bloggernoob features a baby to indicate that the blogger is a noob – a newbie. This is very clever, although I rather prefer babies like this:



What can I say? There's no accounting for taste.

Why Is Bloggernoob Successful?
Firstly, I really like the layout of the site. It is uncluttered and easy to navigate.

Bloggernoob manages to entice readers to visit the site with off-site marketing. Joining a blogging network is definitely paying off for Bloggernoob.

The adverts are part of the blog organically. A reader never realises that adverts are on parade.

The Medicine
Let us consider Bloggernoob against Pro Blogger's 4 Pillars of Writing Exceptional Blogs. These pillars are as follows:

• Be Extremely Useful


• Write Great Headlines


• Make The Post Scannable


• Write In Plain, Concise, Common Sense Style

Is Bloggernoob Useful?
To be quite honest, Bloggernoob is more interesting than useful. I would suggest that Bloggernoob explain more about the art of making money with blogging.

Does Bloggernoob Have Great Headlines?
The headlines are usually succinct. One can clearly gather what the posts are about by skimming over the headlines. Bloggernoob does have great headlines.

Are The Posts Scannable?
The posts are not really scannable. It could be argued that Bloggernoob has short posts, so making it scannable would not really enhance the blog. However, I would still suggest more lists and perhaps a few bold keywords. It is always a good idea to pay mind to the inverted pyramid style of writing.

Is Bloggernoob In Common Sense Style?
This is where Bloggernoob excels. My posts tend to be filled with jargon because I am used to academic writing. My posts are often structured in a draconian manner, but due to the jargon much of the message could get lost.

Bloggernoob manages to stick to the point. The posts are devoid of jargon and definitely in a common sense style.

Conclusion: How Bloggernoob Could Improve
A suggestion from Contestime is to keep a running statistics bar somewhere on Bloggernoob. I agree, it could be interesting to see how much money Bloggernoob is making day by day, week by week or any such time division. It is one more reason to return to Bloggernoob regularly.

Bloggernoob is after all about making money, and I haven't seen such a running tab on any meta blog. It could give Bloggernoob that Unique Selling Point.

My Own Suggestions On How To Improve Bloggernoob:

• Try to work on the structure of the posts a little. The writing style and the headlines are great, but the posts could be made more scannable.


• Some of the posts have glaring spelling errors. This could be easiliy remedied with any word processor.


• Bloggernoob could use more interlinking to previous posts. This is a great way to lower your bounce rate. Link back to previous posts that were particularly successful.


• Lastly, some of the posts could be more useful. I feel the target audience of Bloggernoob is comprised of people who not only want to see how much money Bloggernoob is making, but also how he did it.

Bloggernoob shows that with great marketing, your blog could be noticed. This is my entry for the Bloggernoob pmp contest. If you have any ideas on how to improve Bloggernoob, please enter too!

Some Useful Resources
10 Steps To Writing A Successful Series On Your Blog
20 Types Of Blog Posts
How To Write For The Web

How To Monetize Your Blog

When you monetize your blog, you have several options. I will list the options I use in this post, and spend the next couple of posts on each of them. These are the methods I use for my main blog, The Necro Files. While I haven't made shiploads of money yet, the income from these methods has been increasing steadily.

The Main Methods to Monetize Your Blog
You can either allow programs to place ads for products or services on your blog, or sell items from your blog.

• Advertising Programs


• Affiliate Marketing

Advertising Programs
This is when you allow programs like Google AdSense and BidVertiser to add their advertisements on your blog. Google AdSense places the "ads by Google" boxes to your blog.

BidVertiser is very similar, but it pays out in smaller amounts, which means you get paid more often. You usually get paid per click. This means each time a reader clicks on their ads, they pay you a small amount. It all ads up!

Affiliate Marketing
When you allow a company like Amazon or Ads by ShoppingAds to advertise their products on your blog. You don't get paid per click, but they pay you commission on each item that is sold from your site. Affiliate marketing makes out the largest portion of income from my blog. I subscribe this to the fact that I write reviews for products.

Some Thoughts On Advertising Programs
Advertising programs are convenient. I added the Google Adsense ads to this blog using the same code from my main blog. BidVertiser is slightly more complex in that you have to add the URL of your other blogs to their network, but it is not really much more effort.

How Do I Add Internet Marketing Programs To My Blog?
We will touch on this subject in the next post. In the meantime, you can have a look at these links I found useful:

Useful Links
Collection Of Articles On Ways To Monetize Your Blog
How To Make Money From Your Blog
Ways To Make Money Online

How to add a youtube video to your blog

I realise you might be expecting a guide on how to monetize your blog. However, following my guide on Learning How To Write For the Internet, I had a few requests to explain exactly how one adds a youtube video to your blog. This is a quick guide on adding a youtube video to your blog, using HTML. Expect the monetizing guide soon!

How To Add A Youtube Video To Your Blog

1. Go to the video on youtube. Just open the link of the video in your browser.


2. Look for the word 'embed' in the 'About this video' box, to your right.


3. Copy the code in the text box next to it. It is important to get all the code. Get everything between the object tags.


4. Place this code on your page. Place the code wherever you want it to appear on your page.

This is a screen shot showing you where you should get the code:



This is an example of the code you should copy. Note that your code would obviously look different to mine if you want to put a different video on your blog:

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/iu1RikQPJHE&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/iu1RikQPJHE&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

How to resize the youtube video for your blog

Note that some layouts would prevent the youtube video from displaying properly. If you do not want to mess up your layout, just resize the youtube video.

1. Don´t be scared by the code. It is pretty straightforward.


2. Find the object and embed tags. Tags are HTML markers that help your browser to identify what it should display. You can also paste this code in a text editor before you paste it on your blog to make things easier.


3. Note that each tag has width and height attributes. Attributes are used to specify to HTML tags what they should look like. In other words, attributes specify to tags how they should display.


4. Both widths should be the same and both heights should be the same. Note that your widths may differ from your heights. The object tells your browser that you want to display an object like a video. The embed tells your browser where to find the video.


5. An easy way to find the correct width and height values is to open a new document in Photoshop or GIMP. Make this document the size of the youtube width and height tags. Ensure that the size is locked, that is when you adjust the width, the height also changes. Now compare this document with the area on your blog where you want to put the video. If it fits, you have the values for your width and height tags.
   
   The values which work on my blog are 425 for width and 355 for height.


6. Replace the values between the inverted commas directly after width and height in your text editor. Note that these are the only things you need to change. The inverted commas need to stay there.


7. Copy and paste the modified code onto your blog.

Finally, this is what it looks like after you add the video to your blog:



Now you know how to add youtube videos to your blog. Expect some tips on how to monetize your blog soon!

Special thanks to memyselfandjuvy for requesting the video help.

Special thanks to Navin for asking how to resize your video.

Learning How To Write For The Internet

You have learnt how to find a place to blog, what to blog about and now it is time to learn how to add the content yourself.
Of course, you may find content for your blog somewhere else, but I will not be dealing with that option here. There are places on the Web where you can find free essays on just about any topic, but since the quality is generally poor, you will have to rewrite much of it anyway.

Learning How To Write For the Internet
Writing for the Web is much different than traditional writing. The reason for this is Internet readers read differently. Internet consumers tend to skim over content. If a quick glance does not capture the concentration of your readers, you have lost them. Here are a few tips:

• write your content in the inverted pyramid style. In this style, you tell readers what you are blogging about first, before fleshing it out. More on this below.


• add some multimedia content. It doesn't have to be full-blown 3D animation. A few pictures will do.


• check your content for errors and suitability.

The Inverted Pyramid Style
In this style, you turn the traditional writing structure upside down. Instead of laying the foundation with broad strokes and filling in the detail later, then reaching a conclusion, you give the conclusion first and then explain how you got there. It may seem counter-intuitive, but think about the way a news bulletin is structured in a newspaper:

• first a headline catches your attention. Writing a great headline is an art all by itself.


• the first few sentences give the crux of the matter. You start with the end, in other words you start off with the conclusion.


• gradually work backwards from the conclusion filling the gaps with background information.


• you will notice many lists in this blog and many others. Bullets catch our attention. They are easier to skim over.


• the same goes for highlighted keywords. I highlight the keywords, because it is easier to skim over a list with highlighted keywords quickly.

This is just a brief guide on filling your blog with content using the Inverted Pyramid Style. It might seem unnatural, because when we are taught writing, we are taught to begin with an introduction and end with the conclusion. The advantage of this style is that the more you do it, the easier it gets. It also makes sense, if you consider the structure of other blogs you read. For a good reference, please see writing for the web.

Putting Multimedia Content On Your Blog
Please! Please!! Please!!! Do NOT use copyrighted pictures on your blog! This means DeviantArt is OUT! Unless of course you have contacted the authors and reached an agreement to use the content on your blog. DeviantArt is filled with blood, sweat and tears. How would you feel if someone took your blog and used it to promote their own agenda? There are many stock images available for you to use, guilt free. Google is your friend.

Video is a great idea. Youtube is filled with hours of mindless entertainment. Adding a youtube video is remarkably easy, you just add the object code. Youtube has full instructions on how to do this, so I won't repeat it here.

For my main blog, I often edit images slightly. This adds to the USP of my blog. Note that to the best of my knowledge, the images I use are in public domain. The same goes for the videos.

Checking Your Content
Besides the obvious spelling and grammar, there are a few questions you should ask yourself before posting to a blog. This comes after you have fleshed out your content, added a few multimedia elements and right before you are about to hit the submit button.

Now you know how to deliver great content for your blog. The next post will deal with how to let search engines find your blog.

Working on content for your blog

This post is about filling your blog with content. Writing is a skill that you need to learn. You don't need a degree in a language, but you do need to communicate effectively.

What To Blog About
This may seem superfluous. You obviously have something to share with the world, otherwise you wouldn't be blogging.

My main blog, The Necro Files, started because I work in retail. I have many reviews I had written for customers as a guide. I am very passionate about my CD and DVD collection, so writing about it comes naturally. That's a very important ingredient - passion! The other important ingredient is knowledge - blog about something you know.

• blog about something you are passionate about


• write about what you know. This is an important writing tip. It goes for fiction too. Best-selling authors like Stephen King and John Grisham emphasise this point.

Something idiotic you will note about metablogs is that they tend to have the same content. See what Pro Blogger posts. Google the topic a day later, and chances are you would get 10 hits, all with exactly the same content. This reeks of retardation. You have a brain. Use it. Do you let someone carry you, even if you have legs that can walk?

I was apprehensive about starting another blog about blogging, since there are so many around. One thing I can say about my main blog, The Necro Files, is that there aren't many like it around (for better or worse!). Which brings us to the next point:

How To Blog About It
What I recommend is that you find a Unique Selling Point (USP) for your blog. Being passionate about what you are blogging about makes it much easier to blog about it. Where there is a will, there is a way. Finding an USP for your blog does not help so much to find content, but it does help to set your blog apart from other similar blogs.

This does not mean you need to be completely original. Just add an edge to your blog your readers will not be able to find anywhere else. An USP should lead to a unique reader experience.

• write with passion. Find a topic you are passionate about for your blog.


• find an USP for your blog


• learn how to write for the Internet

In the next post, I will deal with how to write for the Internet.
The next post assumes you already have somewhere to blog and you already have something to blog about.