100k Job Blogging From Home

If you just bought a new domain and put a Wordpress blog on that domain you will not get any traffic. That is, unless you have lots of links pointing to your blog. Remember, “no links equals no visitors”. Let me say it another way, you have got to get links pointing to your site or you will not succeed!

These links should be high in terms of quality. If you get twenty five links from sites that are not authority sites it will not do you much good. It would be much wiser to get five links from web sites that have good page rank and are closely matched to the overall theme of your blog.

There are basically two ways to get these types of links. First, you can research the web and find high quality web sites that are theme related to yours and email them asking for links to your site. However, why would they want to link to your new page rank zero site?

You will get better results if you build a “Blog Farm”. A blog farm has one distinct advantage, it is under your complete control. Instead of having to go asking for links, you will have the ability to post a link from your blog farm to your new Wordpress blog yourself. You will have the power to add a link to “any” new blog that you build in the future.

This is what happens, the link to your new Wordpress blog draws the search engine spiders which is mandatory in order for your blog to be indexed in the major search engines, which are Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

I will go over exactly “how” to build a blog farm in my next post.

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The Entrecard competition attracted 5 entries, they are: Melody Campbell, Apollo, Riyanne, Webdesi3, and Chethan. A draw from the hat reviewed the winner of 1000 EC credits - Riyanne.  Congratulations! Thanks also to all the parcitipants. Hope we have some more attractive prizes in our next competition.

This week saw my Alexa ranking broke through the 500k mark for the first time, it stands at 481,656 at the time of writing. Technorati ranking not moving much at 220, 166.

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Expired domains, how can I receive traffic from them? Can I profit from expired domains?
Those are two very important questions you are asking yourself. Here is the bottom line. You are probably like most on-line entrepreneurs. You have been struggling to snatch your share of that whirl wind of traffic that you hear about from every guru wannabe out there.

Chances are you have probably invested strongly in banner ads, classified ads, search engines or even spent a pile on so-called “safe lists” only to find yourself disappointed again and again.

There is a perfectly legal, outrageously effective, traffic generation technique that, until now, has gone relatively unnoticed by the masses.

What if you could recover existing web traffic that is currently being overlooked and basically being flushed down the toilet?

What if you could grab one of those prized listings in Yahoo that cost $200 with no guarantee you’ll even be included in the directory?

What if you could get that traffic for a fraction of what other advertising methods charge?

Expired domains might be an option to mull over. Every day over 3 million hits of targeted traffic are lost due to abandoned web sites.

Why does this happen?

Webmasters may lose interest or they don’t have the money or time to manage the site. Occasionally they just forget to renew. A large part of these expired domain clicks come from sites that were never developed. BUT, some were once solid sites generating traffic and sales.

Expired domains is all about capturing all the effort, time and money that the previous owner developed and putting it to good use for yourself.

What if a domain name had link popularity, had a coveted dotcom (.com) extension, or was even listed in Yahoo or had Google Page Ranking?

What is Link Popularity? Simply put, Link Popularity is the number of other websites that link to your site. Doesn’t it stand to reason that if a domain name previously had Link Popularity or was one of those coveted dotcoms or was even listed in Yahoo, that it might have once been a thriving website?

Not only that, but with a little time and effort, you might even be able to pick up some popular domain names just for conjecture or to resell on eBay ! Many of the domain names that expire every day could be resold even without Link Popularity or any of the other “carrots” because they just happen to be highly regarded as a tangible asset. Short, descriptive domain names that end in a “.com” or “.net” are examples of this.

The best part is that you can get these names for the price of registering them, often for less than $10!

Even if you didn’t use the domain name to redirect traffic to your own web site, if you find a couple and sell them at auction for $25, $50 or more, that’s a pretty suitable return on a very small investment.

If you are looking for alternative ways to generate traffic to your site, expired domains might be a good investment.

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Research shows that many people love to use the web to communicate with other people around the world. Some people will use the web primarily to talk with family and friends, but most people enjoy talking to the complete strangers they meet via chat rooms or message forums. It was once unrealistic to think social bonds could be created this way, but today these communications are completely accepted. With more people using the web for this type of communication, website operators are beginning to utilize the “chat” trend. Twitter is also like a meeting place these days, which is perfect for building up your community.

When setting your online community up, think about exactly what you want to do. If you are relying on the community to bring most of your traffic, you probably want to make it easy to access from your homepage. You might make it the largest link or the top link on the page. Use different colors and fonts to get the attention of those who visit your site. Making your site easy to navigate is a great way to get people to participate. The goal is to get the attention of your visitors. If you are placing a lot of emphasis on the online community function on your website, then they will be more likely to use it.

You can always offer a small chat area right on your homepage. This can be a great idea for those website operators who want to place the largest emphasis as possible on their online community function. It can however distract viewers from seeing other areas of your website, so be careful when setting your homepage up in this manner. The best thing to do is to create an easy link right to the chat or message area from the top half of your homepage. This allows the user to get right to the intended area.

With thousands of online users spending large amounts of time participating in online communities like chat rooms, twitter, forums and message boards, it is logical to believe these functions would help increase traffic on any website. This is an easy and inexpensive way to draw traffic to your site and can be a lot of fun for everyone involved. If you think this may work for you, simply sit down and decide which method to use. Then choose the best plan for adding the online community to your actual site, whether it is on the homepage or a secondary page. Once everything gets rolling, you will be shocked at how effective establishing an online community can be for increasing your website traffic.

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Every Sunday from today, I’ll give a summary of my blog’s traffic stats and subscriber stats.

This week I gained almost 9k in Alexa traffic ranking and a marginal gain in Technorati ranking:

Alexa traffic ranking - 530,404 (620,792 last Sunday)

Technorati ranking - 242,461 (244,901 last Sunday)

Also I’ll put up a list of good articles/posts on making money online.

Here are this week’s links:

Make money online - 100+ Tools and resources
Stumbleupon mathematics for stumblers
30 Internet Marketing Blogs You Must Know to Succeed Online
101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website
15 Abilities You Must Have to Get Out of the Rat Race

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A lot of blog income opportunities can only be maximized if your blog is receiving a good amount of
traffic. Make sure your blog is listed with as many blog directories and
communities as possible so that you can ensure a good amount of traffic. Here is a list
of great blog directories and communities that can help your blogs traffic and popularity
sky rocket. As always, please advice any other directory or community site to share with everyone, and your best experience with any of these directories.

My Blog Log: http://www.mybloglog.com
Unique in the sense that this blog directory lets you create your own free widget to
display your recent readers and their information. It helps you track traffic and
communicate with repeat readers. My blog log also has many communities that are
great for networking and establishing link exchanges. It also gives you basic traffic stats on visitors to your blog and clicks out of your blog.

Blog Rush: http://www.blogrush.com
Rather than simply list your blog in a directory, blog rush adds your latest posts to their
widget which is seen by thousands of viewers. Your site headlines are shown on blogs
with content similar to your own, which means readers that will be interested in your
product or news are going to be seeing your headlines. This tool is great for generating
massive amounts of traffic to your site. In order to get the most out of Blog Rush keep
your post titles short and attention getting to encourage readers to leave the blog their
reading in order to visit your blog.

Blogarama: http://www.blogarama.com
This is one of the largest free directories on the Internet. Once your blog is listed on
Blogarama users will be able to rank your site, and many users using Blogarama will
comment on your posts and refer your blog to other users.

Blog Flux Directory: http://dir.blogflux.com
In addition to letting you add your blog to their directory Blog Flux offers a variety of
tools that will help you promote your blog and increase your revenue. Blog Flux offers a
button maker, online now codes, advance tracking, and much more.

Blog Universe: http://www.bloguniverse.com
A directory of text blogs, audio blogs (podcasts) and even video blogs (vlogs) that are
organized based on subject/content.

Blog Toplist: http://www.blogtoplist.com
This is a toplist just like the name suggests. Blog Toplist has built up year’s worth of
fantastic blog traffic and has an excellent reputation. List your blog and benefit from
this toplist’s traffic and various advertising campaigns.

Blog Search Engine: http://www.blogsearchengine.com
Finally, a search engine dedicated entirely to blogs and blog related tools. Users
visiting this site are only seeking blogs so you don’t have to worry about attracting
visitors who are completely uninterested in blogging.

Bloggernity: http://www.bloggernity.com
A combination blog directory, search tool, hosting company, and forum. An all in one
resource for new blog owners to promote blogs, search for tools, and connect with other
blog owners.

Blog Hop: http://www.bloghop.com
Add your blog to this directory and searchers will be able to find your blog through other
blogs with similar content. A great source for targeted traffic.

Blog Sweet: http://www.blogsweet.com
This directory is composed of some of the most popular blogs on the internet. Blogs
listed here benefit from higher search engine ranking and usually see a large increase
in traffic.

Blog Watch: http://www.blog-watch.com
This service offers a little bit of everything. Inclusion in their search engine, tools for
your blog, and even great templates for you to use to make your blog even more
unique.

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Ever since the Olympic traffic surge from the gold medal bonus post (which generated as much as 20 times or 400+ daily readers to my blog), the traffic to my blog returned back to normal.

I was trying hard to get another traffic surge. One attempt was the video post on YouTube about the taekwundo referee kick, it failed miserably. The video itself got 2000 plus views, yet very few of those viewers were directed to my blog.

Today to my suprise, I did get another traffic surge, and it turned out that one of my readers added my blog or one of my posts to the Weblogs topic on StumbleUpon. It immediately doubled both my daily reader count and page view count. Thank you very much if you are the one kindly StumbledUpon my post!

So the verdict, StumbleUpon is the one to go if you want more traffic.

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Thanks to a lot of different online money-earning methods, you can earn commissions when visitors go to your blog. For instance, you can put up advertisements on your site through an affiliate network or through an advertising program. If one of your visitors clicks on your ads, then you get commissions. The ads are tailored to fit the contents of your website, and they are made so that your visitors will most likely be interested in them and thereby click on them. Therefore, you need to have good website content, as this is what the ad companies need in order to know what kind of ads to place on your site.

Moreover, the more visitors you have, the greater the chance that someone will click on your ads and that you will get commissions.

This means that you need to invite more and more people to your blog, and not just to get money, but to get attention. After all, if your blog is interesting enough, you may get a lot of people linking to you. One way that you can promote your blog is through posting on forums.

If you are interested in posting in forums and getting your voice heard, and if you want to get your blog noticed in the Internet universe, then you may be interested in the following tips. Take note, however, that these are only a few tips to guide you on your way to blog superstardom, and you need to learn on your own along the way and pick up your own lessons, too.

- Post in a forum that you are actually interested in. Believe it or not, the degree of your understanding of and interest in a topic in a forum will shine through your post. If people see that you are interested in the forum topic, then you may get more attention than people just reading your forum post.

- Post in a forum whose topic is related to your blogging topic. This can be critical when you are dealing with die-hard fans of a certain artist or film, because posting off-topic posts in a forum concentrated with users who have a single interest and aim can be distracting, not to mention grounds for kicking you out of the forum.

- Be dignified enough to spell right. Text shortcuts can make texts almost unreadable, and you can annoy a whole lot more people. If you make the effort to write in your blog, make an effort to write well on the forums, or you may find it harder to invite people to read your blog. Why should they read your blog when they can’t even understand what you are posting on the forum?

- Extend help to other forum members when they need it. Remember, people do not care about what you have to say until they find out that you care about them first.

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Following on the post about some dofollow blogs worth your effort to put comments on. Today I will talk about how to do your commenting properly and effectively.

People say that to make an impression, you’ll have to open your mouth.  While that is physically impossible in the virtual world of the Internet, saying your piece is not entirely difficult to do.  Thanks to blogs and forums, you can leave a comment or start a discussion thread about virtually any topic from anywhere in the world.  And yes, you can leave comments to drive traffic to your blog and increase your readership.

Leaving effective comments

You should keep in mind that not every comment that gets thrown into an opportunity for interaction creates the desired effect, much less become appreciated by those who hear or read it.  If you don’t use this technique carefully, you will either waste the opportunity or simply allow it to create the wrong impression.  Here are 7 ways you ought to do it:

Choose the sites you leave comments on

Apart from choosing dofollow blogs, choose the sites and blogs with a topic or subject related to your very own blog.  Practice only purposeful commenting – the kind where you leave only well-crafted comments on sites that will help build the buzz about your blog. 

If the site is completely irrelevant but you have the urge to leave a comment, do so only during your spare time.  Otherwise, focus your energies only on more productive activities.

Know what you’re saying

Before you leave a comment with the purpose of driving traffic to your blog, at least write one that is useful.  Your goal is to be noticed AND respected for your opinions so leaving useless and dead end comments such as ‘Cool!’ and ‘Way to go!’ just won’t cut it. 

But if you can write and have something meaningful to say, by all means, do so.  With every comment you have, make sure you keep it short, concise, to the point and useful.  Talk about relevant topics and avoid those that will do nothing for your purpose.

Avoid strong language

Of course, some sites will probably allow you to leave comments that are strongly worded or at least camouflaged as symbols such as !#$%&*, but there are ways to get your point across, regardless of how angry, upset or argumentative you are. 

Have a sense of humor.  The Internet is a vast expanse of space, currently limitless.  In fact, it’s a whole universe unto itself.  If people leave comments on your post that seem to insult you or argue with you, don’t fight back without thinking. 

Check replies to your blogs

Maximize commenting on other sites and drive traffic by frequently checking back on the forum you participated in to see if there are any replies to the post you left.  This is a good way to build buzz and network.

Check your facts

If you will be quoting someone or citing a certain study, make sure your facts can be corroborated.  Don’t use make believe or newly invented figures and statements or even half-truths and try to pass them off as legit.  You will be exposed.  If you want to drive traffic to your blog by leaving comments, make sure you don’t tarnish your reputation with the effort.

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