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Archives for July 2010

How to Get Massive Traffic to Your Blog Contests for Free

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Blog contests are a great way to drive short-term traffic to your blog, and hopefully, if your prize is relevant to your blog topic, some of those new visitors who come to enter the contest will poke around your blog, enjoy what they see, and return!  Even better — they might tell their friends about your blog, link to your content from their own blogs and social web profiles, and more.

In other words, a blog contest can kick-off the compounding effect of blogging and help your blog grow in the short term and long term.

How do you get massive traffic to visit your blog and enter your blog contest?  Fortunately, it’s very easy and only takes a few minutes thanks to several websites that allow you to promote your blog contests for free!

Following are five websites where you can promote your blog contests for free.  All you have to do is register for each site and enter the information for your contest to get it in front of huge audiences of people who are actively searching for online contests to enter.  I have used all of these sites to successfully drive traffic to blog contests except SweepsAdvantage.com, so I can attest to the fact that they work!

1. Online-Sweepstakes.com

This is the best site I’ve used to drive traffic to blog contests.  Just create an account, login, and click on the Sweepstakes Directory tab in the top navigation bar and then the Add-a-Sweep link in the sub-navigation bar that appears.  Complete the provided form with accurate information, and your contest will be added to the directory.

2. ContestBlogger.com

This is another site that successfully drives traffic to your blog contests.  It’s actually a forum that you can register for and then post a new message in the forum to promote your contest.

3. About.com Blogging Forum

The About.com Blogging site has a forum that includes a folder dedicated to blog contests where you can register for a free account and post your blog contests to the forum at anytime.

4. About.com Sweepstakes Forum

The About.com Sweepstakes site also has a forum that includes a folder where you can register for a free account and add your blog contest to the list of contests and sweepstakes.

5. SweepsAdvantage.com

To publish a contest on the Sweepstakes Advantage site, register for a new account and click on the Add a Listing link in the left sidebar.

Blog Contest Promotion Quick Tip: To boost traffic to your contest, make sure the heading/title of your contest sounds really great when you submit it, because that might be the only information people see before they click through to enter your contest.  Make it impossible for them to resist by enticing them with a great title.

And don’t forget to write clear rules in your blog contest post.!

Where do you promote your blog contests to drive traffic to them?  Leave a comment and share your tips!

Image: stock.xchng

How To Leverage The Most Cost-Effective Blog Advertising Method: Blog Commenting

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Blog commenting is one of the most effective methods of increasing your brand awareness, attracting visitors to your blog and learning from the best bloggers in the field; thus helping you to fully grasp what your niche wants and needs. Its a blogger’s special tool for launching an effective advertising campaign and the only thing that will be spent with this method is time.

It is a proven method that I see many bloggers use to make strong connections in the blogosphere and grow their online presence to respectable heights. So let’s talk about how blog commenting, the right way, can give you that nudge you’ve been waiting for. [Read more…] about How To Leverage The Most Cost-Effective Blog Advertising Method: Blog Commenting

5 Ways to Drive Visitors Away from your Blog

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Writing great content is essential to attracting visitors to your blog and keeping them on your blog for more than a few seconds.  The last thing you want to do is drive them away before they even have a chance to read that great content.

If you want to drive people away from your blog quickly, do the five things listed below.  If you want people to stay on your blog long enough to read what you painstakingly wrote, avoid the five things listed below at all costs.

Are Blogrolls Defunct?

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blogrollThe blogroll was once an essential part of every blog.  Today, that’s no longer the case.  More and more bloggers have removed the traditional blogroll from their blog sidebars and replaced it — believing that a blogroll is not an effective use of the valuable real estate on a blog’s sidebar.

In simplest terms, the shift in thinking from “blogroll cricital” to “blogroll not very important” has evolved as bloggers determined their blogrolls did not deliver an adequate return on their investments (in this case, the investment is the blogger’s time and the space allocated to the blogroll in the sidebar).

So is the blogroll truly defunct or is there still value in having a traditional blogroll in your blog’s sidebar?

Naturally, different bloggers have different views on this topic, and only you can decide what’s best for your blogging goals and your audience.  If your goals for your blog include making money and building a larger audience, then every little bit of space on your blog should be filled with something that adds value either to the user experience or to your overall business plan for your blog.

Still not sure what to do with that blogroll?  Think of it this way – if an ad on your blog wasn’t bringing in revenue, you’d replace it.  The same line of thinking should apply to your blogroll.  If your blogroll isn’t helping you reach your blogging goals, you should replace it.

If you’re still not sure what to do with your blogroll, take a look at your blog analytics using a tool like Google Analytics to learn if visitors to your blog are actually clicking on the links in your blogroll.  On the flip side, look at where incoming traffic is coming from to your blog in an effort to determine how many people are finding your blog through other blogrolls versus links within blog posts, comments, etc.  Blogrolls work both ways in terms of driving traffic — outgoing to other blogs you recommend and incoming from other blogs where you’re blog is included in other blogrolls to your blog.  Analyze both effects to determine if your blogroll truly adds direct or indirect value to your blog.

If you decide to keep a traditional blogroll in your blog’s sidebar, make an effort to keep it up-to-date.  A blogroll that’s cluttered with blogs that are no longer updated or irrelevant to your blog’s topic and audience (for example, you linked to a blog out of reciprocal linking courtesy), is not useful and can actually damage the user experience on your blog.

So you have three choices when it comes to blogrolls: keep a traditional blogroll in your blog’s sidebar, delete your blogroll from your blog completely, or replace your blogroll with a single, separate page of recommended reading and links.   This final option is becoming more and more popular as a way to keep some form of a blogroll without sacrificing space on a blog’s sidebar.

It’s up to you to evaluate your goals and analyze how you’re using the space on your blog in order to meet those goals.  Just remember, you have choices, and just because another blogger is doing something, that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for your blog, too.

What do you think?  Do you still have a traditional blogroll on your blog?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

5 Crucial Tips To Help You Secure A Successful Blogging Future

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Blogging SuccessBlogging, depending on your approach, is a lot like investing in prime assets. Some niches appreciate faster than others and all require a dedicated overseer who is constantly tweaking and improving the portfolio and instruments to guarantee the best results. The blogosphere is your marketplace and the strategies that you implement and maintain will greatly affect the long term success of your blog.

However, before investing your precious time and effort into growing a blog you need to have a solid plan to execute and define clear goals for yourself. Here are some excellent tips to help you get started on the right track to achieve your blogging dreams. [Read more…] about 5 Crucial Tips To Help You Secure A Successful Blogging Future

5 Tips to Protect Yourself from Blog Contest Losers

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Nobody likes a sore loser, but they’re out there, waiting to complain about your blog contests.  Don’t set yourself up for trouble.  Instead, be sure to protect yourself by writing explicit rules for your blog contests.  Believe it or not, even if you’re just giving away a stick of gum in your blog contest, it’s possible that people could complain about the results if they don’t win.

Additionally, you should publish rules with your blog contest post to protect yourself.  For example, are you willing to pay shipping costs to mail your blog contest prize to the other side of the world?  This is just one thing you need to think about before you publish your blog contest post to make sure the entire process goes smoothly and you leave no loopholes to participation.

Following are several suggestions for writing your blog contest rules to protect yourself from potential complaints or legal trouble:

1. Clearly state the entry time frame.

Make sure your contest has a start and end date and time and include the time zone!

2. Clearly state prize delivery restrictions.

This is where you can communicate where you’re willing to ship prizes and what delivery method you’ll use.  For example, if you live in the United States, you might want to set a restriction saying that only people living in the United States can enter to avoid large overseas postage fees.

3. Clearly state what qualifies as an entry.

You need to make sure people understand exactly what they need to do in order to have a qualified entry into the contest.  Don’t just assume people will “get it”.  Instead, spell it out for them in no uncertain terms.

4. Clearly state how winners will be chosen.

If your blog contest winner will be chosen randomly, include that information in your blog contest post.  You might want to use a tool like Randomizer.org to select the winner, and mention this in your post.  If the winner will be chosen using a subjective selection process, clearly state the steps necessary to submit a qualified entry and explain how winners will be chosen from those entries.

5. Clearly state how the winner will be contacted, the prize acceptance rules, and the alternate winner selection process.

Believe it or not, your blog contest winner might not respond to your attempts to contact them to obtain their mailing address or other necessary information to send their prize to them.  Therefore, it’s important that you tell people in your blog contest post how the winner will be notified, so people are sure to include accurate contact information with their entries.  Also, explain how long winners have to respond to your attempt to contact them before an alternate winner will be selected, so you’re not holding a prize indefinitely for a winner that never responds to you.  Finally, describe how the alternate winner will be selected.

Blog contests are a great way to reward your loyal readers and drive a short-term traffic boost to your blog.  However, they can cause problems, and by following the suggestions above, you can protect yourself from some of those dangers.

What rules and information do you include in your own blog contest posts?  Leave a comment and share what works for you.

Image: stock.xchng

Creative Techniques To Help You Profit From Seasonal Blogging

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2010 World Cup FootballAlthough many of us are blogging for the long-term in very specific niches, there exists many more dynamic opportunities to achieve blogging success as well as various styles that can be adopted. Over the years I have learned that there are some of us who have not really mastered the quality of patience and do have difficulty being committed to tasks and goals that require long-suffering dedication that leads to success.

So I have a few ideas through which I can offer some inspiration for the short-term blogger and how you can take advantage of the various changes and seasons of popular events. [Read more…] about Creative Techniques To Help You Profit From Seasonal Blogging

WordPress Plugins to Reduce Load-time

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This is a guest entry by Selena from esvienne.com and searchenginejournal.com.

As our blogs grow and get more traffic, more “fun” things tend to get added on. We add a sidebar image here, a tracking script there, Adsense on top and below, etc. All these things eventually start becoming too much, and slows down your blog- especially when we start forgetting to delete old and outdated plugins as time goes on.

I don’t have to tell you this, but a slow loading blog makes for a poor user experience – and you do not want to lose those visitors you worked so hard for. Keep in mind that visitors subjected to poor site performance rarely complain – they just leave and don’t come back. Nobody is going to take the trouble to find your contact form and say, “hey buddy- your site is loading slow. I will be back here in 1 week to check to see if it’s fixed.” [Read more…] about WordPress Plugins to Reduce Load-time