Find Out Who’s Reading Your Blog

There’s no sure way to know who’s reading your blog unless they make themselves known to you. Asking for your readers to volunteer a comment makes sure that they leave a footprint for you to follow.

Create Conversations

One of the best things about blogging is creating conversations with people you’d otherwise never meet. When you visit your readers’ blogs make sure to contribute to their content as well. The conversations are what make the blog come alive.

Stumble Quality Articles and Make SU a Better Place

By stumbling the articles that you find interesting, you’re contributing to the quality aspect of StumbleUpon. When people ask each other for stumbles, they’re promoting their own agenda, and some of this content might be lesser quality. Give the truly curious SU users something really thought-provoking, funny, or controversial to ponder.

Pay It Forward 

Why not give something to those who take the time to read your blog? I’m so grateful that people still read my blog, I want to do something to get really involved every once in awhile in the midst of my workload. For myself a lot of the time I’m pulled away from my blog, so this gives me a way to really engage my little community very quickly. It’s fun!

Throwing a StumbleUpon party just creates a lot of buzz around your little piece of the blogosphere. Once you’ve done one you’ll see what I mean. Sure, some of your readers may stumble your content and give you some page views as well, but it’s part of the party. I’m not expecting anyone to stumble my site although they might since the thought is there. However, those extra page views are the icing on the cake. Imagine if everyone stumbled quality articles they found on their readers‘ sites. It’s just good karma.

A special shout-out goes to Karl Martinsson who posted this. See, you never know what you’ll find!

A Few Good Bloggers

I was very frustrated last night when I was working on updating pinkdeals‘ new theme. (Yes, I worked on pinkdeals on a Saturday night! ) I was trying to find a plugin that would list my “most popular tags” in a list form. Since I’m no programmer, I wasn’t able to create one or find one that suited my needs. Ultimate Tag Warrior wasn’t very intuitive and the latest version of Jerome’s Keywords is still in “beta.” The other plugins weren’t what I needed — just a simple list of tags for my sidebar, which would appear as “categories” (there is a non-arbitrary SEO reason for why we chose to do this). Finally I resorted to contacting Jon Lee who also happened to be online at that very moment.

I asked Jon if he knew of a plugin that would create what I needed. He replied back with, “You can use the built in tagging support.” Huh? And he comes back with the following code:

<?php wp_tag_cloud(’smallest=10&largest=10&unit=pt&number=20
&orderby=count&format=list&order=DESC’); ?>

Wow. Are you serious? That’s it? How the heck would I have found that? I wanted to high five him through my AIM! With that said, Jon helped me from tearing my hair out last night and therefore I wanted to say thank you.

If any of you need to display your tags as a sidebar list, use the above code. 10 = font size, 20 = max number of listings, and DESC can be changed to ASC if you need to arrange them in either descending or ascending order of popularity. Thanks, Jon!

Another helpful blogger is JerkyBeef of the Beef Jerky Blog. Awhile back I implemented the post and comment count that you see in my right sidebar. For some reason I thought that was a really cool feature since you can see that someone’s blog is interactive. One thing I love about my blog is that people interact and react to my articles, and interact with each other. Why not let others know that there’s some discussion going on here??

If you want to implement this feature, here’s the code:

<?php global $numposts; echo $numposts ;?> POSTS & <?php global $numcmnts; echo $numcmnts ;?> COMMENTS

Thanks, JerkyBeef!

One last helpful blogger I wanted to mention is Derek Semmler. Derek and I, as some of you know, share a blog birthday. We began our blogs on the exact same day so we cheer each other on and celebrate with each other whenever we can. Derek helped me figure out how to retrieve a list of Top Commentators for any given month. If you’re tired of waiting until midnight on the last day of the month to get a screen shot of your total Top Commentator count, then this will help. Sometimes it’s great to give a shout out to those who’ve helped build the most discussion for that month, and here’s how you can retrieve this list from a phpMyAdmin SQL query:

SELECT comment_author, COUNT( comment_id ) AS comment_count
FROM wp_comments
WHERE comment_date LIKE ‘2007-09%’
GROUP BY comment_author
ORDER BY comment_count DESC

Derek adds, “Just change the date string to be the month you want the totals. For instance, this was the query that I used to get me the top commentators for September.” For a full tutorial explaining how to do this, check out Derek’s post here.

Hope some of you can find these tips from these helpful bloggers useful. Thanks, guys, for the help!

Even though you may think that writer’s block only affects writers, nothing could be further from the truth. Anybody who runs a blog is probably familiar with this ever lingering issue; after all, blogging is writing!

So how do I get past writer’s block? This isn’t always easy, but something that I can’t give into. Here are three tips that help me to stomp writer’s block into submission, and in turn, get my work back on track. Of course, if these tips work for me, there is no reason that they shouldn’t work for you.

1. Identify the Problem

First things first, you need to know how to identify writer’s block. This may sound easy, but sometimes it can sneak up on you when you least expect it. Remember, there is a big difference between suffering from this “illness” and not paying attention to your work. Make sure that you do not confuse being distracted with facing writer’s block; they are not one in the same.

Writer’s block is when you are fully prepared to work, but have no idea what words to put down. No matter how hard you try to generate ideas so that you can move forward, nothing seems to come out right. This is my personal definition of writer’s block.

2. Gather Your Thoughts

When you know what you are dealing with, you can then conquer it. One of the best ways to overcome writer’s block is to brainstorm your project. For instance, if you are attempting to write a blog post, brainstorm an outline. Your outline should include details on the title of your post, the opening, body, and conclusion. In fact, this is much like a book report that you wrote in grade school! When you brainstorm, thoughts will begin to loosen up in your head. Sometimes all you need is an outline to get over the hump.

3. Step Away From Your Computer!

If writer’s block really has you down and out, step away from the task at hand. There is no point in staring at your monitor, while attempting to write, just to find yourself wearing out the Delete key. Do yourself a favor and rest your mind for a few minutes. Take a walk to the kitchen, or your backyard, or anywhere else. Anywhere besides your computer chair is a great place to be. When you return to your work station, attempt to start from square one. You may find that you now have a clear head, you’re ready to focus, and your writer’s block is no longer.

Instead of letting writer’s block become your downfall, use the three tips above to help you acknowledge the problem and conquer it accordingly!

[This post was written by Chris Bibey from Chrisblogging.com, a blog about freelance writing, blogging, and making money online.]

I’ve been receiving a lot of feedback lately about my blog, and one thing I’ve read more than a few times is that my readers appreciate that I take the time to put some thought into my writing. Actually, I’m glad to hear this feedback because I really do put a lot of thought into my posts, whether they be ppc related or seo related or just silly topics that I feel like sharing. The bottom line is, I prefer not to publish anything for the sake of publishing something.

So what’s the big deal about putting thought into your blog, you ask, since well, it’s your blog and not mine? It’s just some advice I wanted to share. People enjoy reading perspective, and being intellectually stimulated. Anyone can report what’s happening, but giving your own unique analysis or twist will provide much more value to the reader. Value creates loyal readers, and loyal readers help spread the word of your site.

What I tend to do with my blog, since it’s a mix of industry information, marketing tips, and personal anecdotes, is that I try to space them out accordingly throughout the week, and create a rough outline for each post. Having a powerful intro and thoughtful closing to any type of blog post gives structure and strength to your writings.

Here are a few recent reviews for my Zune contest that caught my eye because either 1.) the writer emphasized that good content is the basis for reading my blog, 2.) the writer, in exchange, also provided thoughtful, interesting, and engaging content, or because 3.) I did not request a site review but the reader provided it anyway, because they felt my site deserved the added value.

Blisslogs

I’ve been reading Ms. Danielle’s blog site for a few weeks now… Her blog has seemingly the perfect mix of personal posts and useful blogging posts, which is helping her blog grow. Her contest isn’t asking for a full review, but I think I’ll give one… Needless to say, the major strength of this blog is the content. It’s well written and interesting topics. [Thanks for your critique!]

Enkay Blog

I also like the fact that she throws in a little bit of personality into her posts by including some personal stories… I really love it when bloggers take the time and put effort into their posts rather than just talk about what happened in their day today – which to me seems like every other day. She brings in personality, news, and her unique writing style is what helps her in being successful and I wish her luck in the future! [Thanks, Enkay! You, too!]

A Blue Star Blog

I checked out her site and found a interesting post right away my-top-5-favorite-childhood-cartoons and I decided to write my own top five. [Cool!]

Remember that anyone can come across your blog at anytime, through your home page, through a Google search, or through word of mouth. In this day and age of increased adult-onset-ADD (!), it only takes a few seconds for someone to click on your site, miss the value, and click away. You want to do whatever it takes to convert that click into a loyal reader. Consider your blog and ask yourself this, Have you truly put your best foot forward?

[Image found here]

FeedBurner
With that said, my rankings to date are satisfactory, when considering everything from readership to traffic. And also considering that this isn’t a highly targeted niche blog. I’m very proud to say that I’ve crossed one threshold recently that I’ve been eagerly awaiting. My goal of attaining a readership base of at least 100 was reached on Monday, June 4th. Woohoo!! To think that 100+ people are now reading this blog proves to myself that I am producing quality content that others find interesting. Your readership number will guide you in how you’re doing overall as a blogger, as drop-off rates indicate the interest level of your readers. If you are a blogger, keep in mind Darren Rowse’s readership poll that found the top two reasons why people unsubscribe from a blog are 1. too frequent posting and 2. not posting frequently enough. Posting fives times a day can be just as detrimental to your blog as posting once every ten days, in some markets. And on that note, if you’d like to subscribe to my blog now, just click here and choose your method of subscription. I try to post about once every 1 – 3 days, so I promise I won’t inundate your reader with content, which I know could result in number 1 of above.

Technorati
As for my other metrics, my current Technorati authority is 395, and my rank is 8,797. How did I do it? With the help of other bloggers and a little online marketing. 395 indicates that there are 395 other blogs that link to my site. 8,797 indicates my actual ranking among the 70million+ blogs that Technorati is tracking. Getting your site out there through community interaction and getting others to link back to your content is good SEO. If you forget how to get people to link to your site, just remember this first and foremost, Don’t publish poor content. No one wants to refer a friend to a mechanic that knows nothing about cars. Similarly, no one will link back to your blog if they don’t consider you a good resource in one way or another.

Alexa
My Alexa ranking today stands at 92,938. This is a bitter sweet accomplishment, since I had the goal of reaching under 100k, knowing all the while that Alexa rankings don’t really mean much concretely. I could put it this way — my blog is ranked 92,938 out of the millions of web sites that are tracked by Alexa, through methods of tracking that are skewed and inaccurate, and most likely not a true reflection of my ranking, but for lack of a better source, will have to do. So…relatively speaking, it’s pretty good I suppose. At least it’s not ranked in the millions anymore!

The Next Three Months
I’m hoping that in the next three months I’ll be able to better focus this blog, consistently publish interesting quality content, and keep gaining in my readership. I’m realizing that unless you’re aggressively seeking monetization, you don’t have to worry too much about these statistics. As I’ve mentioned before, the most important thing is that you’re constantly moving forward and making progress. Keeping this in mind, all of the statistics I’ve listed are an improvement from a month ago. Thank you to everyone who’s read my blog, left a comment, or subscribed to MsDanielle. It’s because of all of you that I keep this thing going!

Well I guess Binky likes fish because he dropped by Johnny’s fish tank blog to see what was going on in the wonderful world of water. I have a fresh water tank, so I think Binky wanted to find out how to help me clean it. It’s a really cool blog about everything fishy! Afterward he navigated over to Bobs‘ blog on tips, tricks, and nonsense. Seems like Bobs is busy these days with work, and we all know how it can be trying to keep up a blog while keeping the 40. Keep it up Bobs! Binky will be back soon…

Then he went to check out Ed’s awesome blog, browsing Ed’s new workstation set up. I wonder if Binky thinks my workstation sucks now. I wouldn’t be surprised – it’s a Dell desktop and mini birch veneer desk from Target. Ha! Ed’s workstation is much awesomer!

I’m not sure why he went to check out Derek’s post on long tail keywords but I have a feeling he thought it had to do with girl bunnies. Sorry Binky, no cotton tails here, just long tails… But he didn’t leave without reading about Derrich’s proud golf moment. He shot a 72! I now have inspiration for my new golf venture.

Here are some other cool posts that Binky came across in the blogosphere while I was away:

• Jon Lee’s created a really cool Showoff Rankings Plugin for Wordpress
• DoshDosh’s 50 Web Tips for attracting and retaining visitors
• Gary Lee instructs how to optimize web images
• Jane May explains how to turn $100 a day into $300 a day
• Darin Carter is giving away a Nintendo Wii for a review. And so is Rick Uyesugi at BentoBoxReview… Sweet!
• Raz gives great hotel and restaurant reviews during her travels
• Cynthia Blue rescued a beautiful collie named Sam. YAY!
• Kristofer Brozio broke his badluck streak by making the frontpage of the Consumerist

Thanks, Binky!

Go into your WordPress admin, click on Comments, and then click on Akismet Spam to approve any comments that have been falsely flagged. I check mine once every couple days, if not more. You might be surprised at how many aren’t spam!

The plugin works great. Thanks, Bob! And it’s as simple to install as the name implies. I hope it helps with my site nav. Now I just have to get my RelatedPosts working, and create my favicon. Jez…Bobs…help??

So then, here’s the million-dollar question for all you money bloggers out there: Are you trying to make money online, or get rich quick?

Ever since John Chow announced his blog’s February 2007 earnings, it seems like a slew of “make money” blogs popped up left and right in March. In fact, it even inspired me to start up MsDanielle and see what I could do with it. I’ve been slowly growing it, but knowing all the while that the potential isn’t there quite yet for me to be raking in the big money. You’ve got to finesse your blog, get everything optimized, and find your perfect niche voice, which I’m still developing. Some of the blogs I’ve come across seem eager about making money, when the focus should be on creating a quality site.

So this brings me back to John Chow. My friend Gary and I have been keeping an eye on JC’s blog for awhile, and we know he didn’t just up and make $7,000 in one month out of thin air. JC’s been in the internet marketing game for years and he knows his stuff. For instance, around 2001, he made over $25,000 with AllAdvantage (now AGLOCO). That’s no small feat! And because he’s internet marketing savvy, he was able to get over 30,000 unique users per week to his blog after about a year, at which point he began seriously monetizing it in September 2006. Throw some Google ads up in the mix and it wasn’t hard for him to make money. But most of us starting off don’t have the savvy to get a steady stream of tens of thousands of unique visitors per week, so in Feedburner terms, we analyze, optimize, publicize, monetize and “troubleshootize” our sites in order to cut out the fat. We persist and persist until we get a steady, loyal following.

Why am I rambling about this anyway? Because I’ve been seeing a lot of blogs lately where the main focus is on making money. That’s cool and all, we all want to make money eventually with our blogs. But just make sure that you’re not blinded by the bright bling bling because it’s quality content, internet marketing know-how, persistence and savvy that will help you reach JC level blog revenue.

One really great blog I recommend you all checking out is WhoIsAndrewWee.com. Who is Andrew Wee, you ask? Well…go to his blog and find out! He discusses making the mistake of committing “internet marketing suicide,” among a range other online marketing topics. I don’t see too many familiar faces in his MyBlogLog recent readers, so I hope you guys will find him a good resource. And if you guys want to see what a real “make money online” tips blog looks like, check out DoshDosh.com. I don’t know how Maki does it almost everyday, but he cranks out some awesome money-making tips!

The bottom line is, keeping a money-making blog isn’t some “get rich quick” scheme. Yes, there are a few tricks and short-cuts you can make along the way, but making money online is quite the opposite of getting rich quick. Remember that blogging for dollars is hard work, requires a focused niche voice (beyond “making money” unless you’re as good as DoshDosh!), takes an immense amount of research and time, and is not a quick process. Your blog isn’t a “set it and forget it” project. It’s an on-going, integral part of your life that, when done right, will be very consuming, but equally as rewarding.

Two of the more popular operators are:

link:
“The query [link:] will list webpages that have links to the specified webpage. For instance, [link:www.google.com] will list webpages that have links pointing to the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the “link:” and the web page url.”

site:
“If you include [site:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to those websites in the given domain. For instance, [help site:www.google.com] will find pages about help within www.google.com. [help site:com] will find pages about help within .com urls. Note there can be no space between the “site:” and the domain.”

“site:” can also be used to check for particular keywords within your site pages and return only those results, like [site:www.msdanielle.com make money online]. In this case, there are three pages indexed in Google with keywords related to making money online. You get the picture…

But there’s one other Google operator that I like to use that isn’t listed in their Operators page, and that’s the query modifier “allinanchor:”

“allinanchor:” returns the sites that have specified anchor text pointing back to their site. To clarify, I’m going to use my other blog PinkDeals as an example.

PinkDeals is an online coupon and deal site that I author on the side, and it’s targeted toward women like me. If I do a natural search for “online coupons” in Google, my site pretty much doesn’t show up because there’s an enormous amount of competition, and it’s a highly untargeted keyword phrase. However, if I do a natural search for “deals for women” my site appears as the fourth search result (Woohoo! Sorry, had to do that…). PinkDeals appears below DealNews, WomensDeals, and JudysBook.

Now, let’s take a look at the query [allinanchor:deals for women]. My site comes up number one! Yowzas! If and when PinkDeals gains significantly more back links and posts with “deals for women” in its anchor text, it could pass up the top three. (This is where I shamelessly beg for back links. Please link to www.pinkdeals.net for positive karma points. Or you can link to it and I’ll give you a back link from this post. Just leave me a comment to let me know. Preferred anchor text includes “online coupons for women” or “deals for women”)

Anyhow, this is an example of why anchor text is so important, and how it helps your site rank higher in natural (i.e. organic) search engine results for specific niche markets. But if you want to see an example of how powerful anchor text is for other larger markets, run a check for “allinanchor:make money online.” You’ll see John Chow is second, right below Bidvertiser, a fairly large and really crappy advertising network. His ranking is most likely due in large part to his recent back link promotion. Running an “allinanchor:” check for keywords that you’re targeting will help tell you the popularity of your site for particular anchor text phrases relative to your competition. If you’re nowhere to be found in the organic search results for your targeted keywords, you better start putting more of them in your anchor text!