Skip to content
Home

Topic: goalsSyndicate content

Congress of the people releases their policies

December 8, 2008 by evl

Changing the course of this blog

October 28, 2008 by evl

I also thought about blogging about online tips and such, but I have never wanted to blog about these things until I was at a place where I could give prove, many people still dont believe that you can make a living by blogging but it is possible. So i would like to change the focus from general stuff to blogging, wordpress and more online things. I know I have blogged about this earlier as well but did not exactly know how to change the course of this blog in a quick way.

Taking over more than one niche was my goal but you have to blog about what you want and what you like because if you dont you will lose focus and your blog will become another statistic.

Anyway the point is I can now blog about the things I love, which is blogging tips , Making a living on the internet and online marketing. Also dont forgot those Worpdress which has become my cms of choice for working with any site.

Please join my rss feed. ( Oh by the way wprecipes did a post about how to put your "subscribe" text at end of every post, you can read it here.

I am going to put that on a bit later but adding rss to every page is the first step to getting those readers to subscribe.

How any blogger can be a full time blogger

October 28, 2008 by evl

Full time blogging sounds so mysterious, as if you make millions by just sitting around waiting for the money to come in, this is far from the truth.

The most important part of full time blogging is cutting back on expenses and not making debt. If you can buy everything you need cash you can be a full time blogger. Sure there are people that do make millions but for a ordinary blogger to be a full time blogger you need to work out how much you need at a minimum, then you aim for that much even if its only what you need to survive monthly. When you reach that you aim for other goals but at that point you already are a full time blogger and dont need a day job.

Once you cut back on expenses you will realize that it does not take that much for you to become independent. Having no monthly expenses is not anyone's way of living but for a start it sure is better to sit on the beach while your friends are working on something they really dont own in the first place.

Full time blogging is about being a entrepreneur and being a entrepreneur is starting small and manage what you can, growing slow but steady. Increasing your income monthly by setting goals for yourself.

Blogging Essentials

September 30, 2008 by evl

The other day I had a post on HOW TO START BLOGGING and i thought it would be great to ad this post to that one. Today I would like to show you some blogging essentials. Blogging is fun but at the same time blogging can teach you a lot of great stuff. One of those things is management. A blog has to be managed, almost like a business. If you dont do certain things a blog will just go dry. And soon the blog that is left to survive on its own will just become more search engine clutter with no real humans behind the box. The Blogging essentials that I am writing about today are not all needed but they are great tools to have. And if you dont know about them all you might find a treasure between all these things. If you know of everything that is listed here, feel free to add something I have missed. Rank Rank is important both for advertisers and for your blog to grow. While you or I dont really care much about rank, it still is a factor when trying to get your blog to the point where you can make a living from blogging. As some of you might of notice, its not a as you imagined before you started blogging. Blogging is tough. At least that is what I think. Ranking also enables you to make more money. For instance: People with a Pagerank of 6 could easily ask a nice price for advertisers whereas blogs that have a pr1 or 2 would not make that much money. Ranks reflect your blog's community and traffic. Most of the time. One thing about blogging is that the better your rank the more traffic you get and the more traffic you get the better you will rank. Here are some places to check your rank or status: Alexa Old, belongs to Amazon if I am correct. Alexa is not as accurate as some would claim, nevertheless people still use it and if you rate very high (low) on Alexa you can get more money for advertising space. Some companies use Alexa ranks to choose if they want to buy or sell domains. Alexa rank is important for your blog even with it's inaccuracy. Pagerank Pagerank used to be the biggest way people would rank a site. But in recent months no one really cares about Pagerank, or at least know one I know including me. That is because they have changed the old realiable way it worked. I am guess it was a good thing since they are improving their search, but for me, watching my PR go up and down every month is just to annoying. Technorati Technorati is also a great ranking tool. Technorati is also well known, they trace a few million blogs all over the internet. If you make it to the top 100, you've basically made it as a blogger. I would'nt mind. But recently technorati removed all Wordpress 2.3.3 blog. Maybe not removed but they stopped indexing them because of the vulnerability in Wordpress 2.3.3. I think I lost my technorati rank as well. But they did it so people's blogs wont get hacked. Amatomu The reason I am putting in Amatomu is because I am a South African. Amatomu matters for South African bloggers because it shows you where and how you rate between South African bloggers. Compete Another ranking system. Wordpress Adman Adman is a great plugin for Wordpress. Adman enables you to insert Google Adsense or other code generated by PPC or affiliates into your blog posts and on the frontpage. Adman has three options, paste it in on the top of your posts in the middle and below. There is also a setting that enables you to have a ad in the first post of your blog on the front page as well. Adman works great with Wordpress 2.5 Related Posts The related Posts plugin is great to enable your readers to explore your blog more. Using it underneath your post or below the comments where they can see it will also increase your pageviews because they might just read more posts. Related Posts works great in Wordpress 2.5 Popularity Contest Many Wordpress themes need this plugin to display the popular posts on the right hand side of the blog. It enables your readers to see which posts are nice and those that other people have liked. Money Adsense Adsense is well known. You can make a lot of money using Adsense if you use it correctly. Adsense was started a few years ago by another guy and got bought by Google. That is why we now know it as Google Adsense. Just a bit of info. The most famous adsense format is the 300x250, it is said that is the adsense format people make the most money with. I have to agree. Although many bloggers do not like seeing Adsense on other blogs, it is still widely used. Some people might disagree. Chitika Chtiika is one of my favourite ways to make money online. They offer a lot of formats and things that you can use to make money. I think the most famous one is the linx code. Linx code is the one I like the most. They also have a referral program where you can refer people and friends to them. You get paid for everyone you refer to them. Smorty Smorty offers a lot of different affiliate banners to choose from. Smorty is another way of blogging and posting payed blog posts. A nice way to make some more money. Linkworth Linkworth has many, many options and ad formats to choose from. you can also do payed posts for Linkworth to earn extra cash from your blog. Seo Headspace2 Traffic Entrecard Entrecard is a great way to get people to come to your site. You will just have to use more methods of attraction than the Entrecard widget itself. Entrecard is great for sites that first start out. But one thing you have to keep in mind if you are using entrecard is Adsense. Adsense and Entrecard does not work well together. That is because a lot of people come to your site just to click, but that brings your revenue from Adsense down. Feedburner The reason this is under traffic is because I first wrote it. I guess feedburner can go under tools or community. Feedburner is a way to keep track of your feed statisctics and helps you optimize your content. You can also make money with your feed by embedding Adsense in your feed through Feedburner. Community Blogcatalog Blogcataglog is the bussiest blog community site I have found so far. On Blogcatalog you can get a widget to embed in your blog. You can also get a lot of traffic from Blogcatalog if used correctly. Mybloglog Mybloglog is also a blogging community site. Theme Getting a unique theme or making your own theme unique is very important for branding purposes. A great theme will help you make more money while giving your viewers some eye candy. This is obvious. Your blog has to stand out from the crowd and be unique. It should reflect the blogger's taste. Firefox Scribefire or Deepest Sender Stragedy Having a blogging stragedy (plan or whatever its called) will enable you to work towards a certain goal. Here are some stragedies in blogging: Linking and networking with other bloggers This is really important. Since most people reading blogs are bloggers themselves. We as bloggers need to network and help each other. Networking is the most important thing that will keep your blog going. After all, remember when you did your first blog, it felt so stupid because it felt like you were speaking to yourself. That's how I felt. Not networking would mean you basically blog on your own. Commenting Commenting to show others that you actually read their blogs and participate is actually part of networking. Commenting is participating in the blogging community. Commenting should be done with caution. You can delete a crap post but you cant delete a crap comment. Comment on as many blogs as you can BUT do it sincere and not just to get people over to your blog. Competition Running competitions on your blog is a great idea to get your blog out there. Read more here Learn Wikipedia You can learn a lot of blogging terms at wikipedia. Although you cant trust everything you read its still worth something. Problogger.net I guess everyone knows problogger but I have learned a few things on his site and its worth including. So there it is. A few things that could help you start with blogging or further your blogging career / hobby. If you liked this post please consider bookmarking this on Sphinn / Stumbleupon / Digg or any other site you use.

No traffic is useless traffic

September 30, 2008 by evl

 

 

 

Sometimes while reading blogs I find people saying that certain traffic is useless. For instance I have read many people saying entrecard and stumbleupon traffic is useless. Also people sometimes claim that traffic from digg.com is useless. I used to agree until I actually learned that no traffic is useless. Its what you make of the traffic that you have that counts.

 

What is useful traffic?

Any traffic

What is useless traffic?

Actually I dont know, according to me its what you make of the traffic that you get that depends if you see it as useless traffic. But I see a lot of people blogging about it. So I will try and give my reasons why I believe no traffic is useless.

Visits = rank

Many places where you can register, like blogging services etc determines your rank by how many hits your site gets, therefore every visitor your site gets pushes your rank up on that certain blogging service. A example of this is: When I was a member of Amatomu ( a south african blogger site) which uses every visit to your site to determine how you rank, I used traffic from entrecard to push me into the top 100. And when you get in the top 100 your site gets more traffic and subscribers. Because entrecard pushed up my rank I got more visitors from Amatomu and since I got more visitors from Amatomu I got more stumbles which in turn gave me more traffic and so it went till I got kicked from Amatomu for having to many blogs. Not only did then Amatomu and Entrecard help me there but that pushed up my Alexa rating which gave me more advertisers and even more traffic. So we see how we can use blog traffic and even big bounce rates to increase the value of your blog by using one thing to gain at another

Alexa

Every visitor you get that uses Alexa toolbar pushes your Alexa rating up a bit more thus resulting in a lower Alexa rank which could make you more money from advertisers since people still use Alexa to determine if they would like to advertise on your site. I have seen a lot of people say that installing the alexa widget on your site will also help your rating with Alexa but to be honest I dont know if that makes a difference, Maybe someone can share in the comments if it really does work. But I do know any traffic with Alexa toolbar is traffic worth getting.

Stumbleupon

I dont believe any stumbleupon traffic is useless, as I said its what you make of it. I actually like stumbleupon traffic more than Google traffic. Even though Google traffic brings clicks to ads. Stumbleupon people are those that already know how the web works and you dont need to beg them to subscribe or comment because if your content is good enough they will join your rss feed and subscribe. They will also comment. Many people say stumble users dont subscribe but I have gained many subscribers that liked something I have blogged about. Stumbleupon users most likely also have the Alexa toolbar or Firefox plugins installed since most of them have their own blogs as well. That is great because as I said earlier it pushes up your Alexa rating (or actually down which is how Alexa works). If they like your site they will also bookmark it on sites like Reddit or Digg since most people are loyal users on other communities apart from stumbleupon, they would want to submit great content to those sites that have not been found by other users on those certain sites. So having a Digg, Reddit or Sphinn button will also increase the chances of turning Stumbleupon traffic into even greater traffic than it already is.

Trust me, no traffic is useless. People browsing your site is not useless traffic but that is why we blog for people to read it and to have a impact on them.

Another thing about Stumbleupon is when someone reviews your site and for everyone else that reviews your site you get a link back from their profile page to your blog.

Technorati

Adding a small technorati "add me" button will help you. You might not think it would but people do click it. Even those stumblers that's on a rush to get to the next site. If they enjoyed your post they will click it.

Pay per impression

There are advertisers that pay per impression. Now that does not sound to bad does it. For every single visitor to your site you get paid a small amount. Although the pay per impression affiliate companies are not everywhere, in fact I dont have one at the moment that I use but there are lots of people using these and the do work for certain blogs.

Audio ads

If you want to kill your blog use Audio ads. But if you have a blog that gets traffic where readers are not important as passers by then by all means go for it. I dont know who would have such a blog where you dont really need the readers but have the traffic but I would advise you to use audio ads only at cases where you have no other options. The point is that you can make money from any traffic using these kind of ads.

Get them hooked

Another way to go by is to type the best content on the internet and get them hooked on your blog. This is everyone's goal but do you really do your readers justice by writing a paragraph a day? To get your readers hooked you need outstanding content which is getting harder now days because everyone has a blog and produces great content. So to get people hooked on your blog you can use "series" of posts. You just better make sure that part 1 is very good. There are probably more ways to get people hooked on your content but this is just the one I can think of now.

Comments

No matter what traffic you call useless, most of the time someone will stop and comment on your blog, then its always good to have the " notify me of future comments" . When people comment they usually want to know what they guy after them says, maybe he tells the guy how wrong his comment is. And people know that. So whenever they leave a comment and that option is there, most people take it. Displaying recent comments or top commentators will encourage people to comment even more when they quickly pass by your site. Why is this? Because the top commentator plugin and the recent comments plugin both contain their Blog or website's url. Not just that but there is something about these two plugins that I will share in a later post that will make you smile. So dont forget to subscribe.

Competition

People want to win, whether its a link or another prize, they want to win. Lets say you have entrecard on your site, why not write directly under that, that you have a competition. People known as chain droppers wont all pass by. Entrecarders love competitions as I have come to know. Attracting so called "useless" traffic with competitions will not only increase your comments and readers but it will also increase your backlinks if that is part of your competition resulting in even more traffic. So it might not be "useless" after all.

Link bait

We all know what link bait is. But having linkbait on that certain page you see people enter your site will also increase the chances of them going further into your site instead bouncing.

Design

I have stumbled through many sites and sometimes it's nothing but the brilliant design of a site that makes me look further. I mean I dont even see the content. I just see theme. I might be a sucker for site designs but if I go further into a site because of the design and layout I bet you there must be more people that will check out a site and not just bounce because of how the site looks. Having a great theme or design will increase your chances of turning that bounce rate into history.

Email and Rss subscribe

The more visible these buttons are for those who only come to your site for one article or a stumble the greater your chances are of getting some subscribers. Once again I would use myself as a example. If I stumble and I read a great article I usually join the rss feed for more great content

Where they came from

Even if there is a high bounce rate you can still see where the users came from. That is a indication that the content you have might be of interest and if you keep on in that direction you can even increase your traffic more by analyzing where users come from.
Where they are going to

Using mybloglog and similar places or tools you can see where users went from your site, what they clicked on. That is a indication of their interest. Knowing the interest of your readers gives you the opportunity to write better content.

People, mybloglog, blogcatalog

Having a bunch of faces on your site might be annoying to regular users but for someone who just bounce your site that might get their attention. As I wrote here on a short post

Tell a secret

Saying something like "10 secrets to more traffic" is always a good idea and placing it where you know the bouncers would see it would also decrease your bounce rate. I guess this is the same as link bait.

Give something away

Offering free wordpress themes around the places people usually bounce from for instance getting Entrecard chain droppers to go further into your site you can put links under your card that says something like "theme of the day" which will attract people to click on it. It works for me. Whenever I visit a site and I seem to be stumbling through or when I used to chain drop while checking out how things work on Entrecard and I see something like that I would click. Free stuff attracts people and especially free wordpress themes. I dont need themes, I cant even design wordpress themes but I still like browsing through them.

Sooo. I hope you found "No traffic is useless traffic" useful and interesting. Please subscribe or be so friendly and Digg or stumble this post.

Leave some comments and tell me if I missed something.


Uber shelter: Emergency Shelter - brilliant design and great idea

September 15, 2008 by evl

The Uber Shelter is exactly what the name says. Its a great idea by Designer : Rafael Smith. Looking at the pictures it looks way more useful than any tent and can even change the camping industry if there is such a thing.

The Uber Shelter is made of reusable and recyclable materials.

The designer quotes:

My goal is to create more than an emergency shelter. This project is a shelter solution that meets the needs of emergency response but also provides victims with a more personal place to live; a base unit that can serve as a very basic shelter but also have the capabilities to upgrade and implement modern infrastructure. This shelter is also stackable. Many alternative housing solutions deal with small scale but can

Lazy people dont succeed in making money on the internet

September 8, 2008 by evl

Working on the internet is a hard job. Making money online is also hard, even than being payed to work on the internet. If you are lazy you wont make money on the internet. When I first quit my job and decided I wanted to make a living from the internet I never knew it would be that hard. But in fact if you are willing to put in effort in your money making goals you will succeed. The richest people in the world are not those that succeed once but are those that refuse to fail.

Following so called A list bloggers wont help you.

July 30, 2008 by evl

People can say what they want. Everyone wants a piece of the cake and everyone that wants to make money online keeps an eye on the so called A list bloggers. Now lets say there are 100 thousand real bloggers that go after the goal with everything they have. If 50 thousand read those same blogging tips as you I bet you they will also blog about it at some time. What you learn you will blog, so now everyone has this so called secret to success. I dont think so. A secret is something that is hidden. Do you think I will share my traffic tips if I had any? No I dont think so.

Just imagine, you read those tips on famous blogs but half the blogging world reads them as well. It just does not make sense. Part of being creative is thinking of your own ways of doing things and making money. That is the fun part as well.

I will carry this on at Bloggingniche.com

Do you have a business blogging plan to make money online?

May 31, 2008 by evl

With any business you need a business plan. The same goes with blogging, especially full time blogging. You need to plan how you are going to achieve certain blogging goals. Dividing a goal into "getting there" parts will be way easier than running around and blogging all day with no plan. When you have a plan you know if you blog is growing and if you are actually climbing the blogging ranks. If you dont have a plan you dont actually know if you are half way to your goal or if you have not even started. If you dont have a plan how do you track your progress? I have been blogging for some time now. I have some other blogs as well and I have a goal, but today I realized that to get to that goal I would have to set up a plan, almost like a business plan. You know write the vision and make it plain. So if your dream is to become a full time blogger you really should have steps layed out on how to get there. Even if its 100's of small steps. happy blogging