16 Ways to "Drive" people to your blog!!!

You’ve got your blog set up and you’ve started posting pithy, useful information that your niche market would benefit from and enjoy. Days go by, you keep publishing, but no one comments and your traffic stats are barely registering. What do you do?

Like any website you own, you must do some blog promotion to start driving traffic to your site. Here are 16 steps, in no particular order of importance, that you can start doing now to get traffic moving to your blog.

1. Set up a Bloglet subscription form on your blog and invite everyone in your network to subscribe: family, friends, colleagues, clients, associates.

Http://www.bloglet.com

2. Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your site gets regularly spidered by the Yahoo search engine (see tutorial on http://www.biztipsblog.com)

http://www.my.yahoo.com

3. Read and comment on other blogs that are in your target niche. Don’t write things like “nice blog” or “great post.” Write intelligent, useful comments with a link to your blog.

4. Use Ping-0-matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish.

http://www.pingomatic.com

5. Submit your blog to traditional search engines: http://www.submitfire.com

6. Submit your blog to blog directories. The most comprehensive list of directories is on this site:

http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Tip: Create a form to track your submissions; this can take several hours when you first start so schedule an hour a day for submitting or hire a VA to do it for you.

7. Add a link to your blog in your email signature file.

8. Put a link to your blog on every page of your website.

9. If you publish a newsletter, make sure you have a link to your blog in every issue.

10. Include a link to your blog as a standard part of all outgoing correspondence such as autoresponder sequences, sales letters, reports, white papers, etc.

11. Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures and flyers.

12. Make sure you have an RSS feed URL that people can subscribe to. The acronym RSS means Rich Site Summary, or some may consider its meaning as Really Simple Syndication. It is a document type that lists updates of websites or blogs available for syndication. These RSS documents (also known as ‘feeds’) may be read using aggregators (news readers). RSS feeds may show headlines only or both headlines and summaries.

To learn how news aggregators/RSS readers work, see this site: http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-readers.htm

13. Post often to keep attracting your subscribers to come back and refer you to others in their networks; include links to other blogs, articles and websites in your posts

14. Use Trackback links when you quote or refer to other blog posts. What is TrackBack? Essentially what this does is send a message from one server to another server letting it know you have posted a reference to their post. The beauty is that a link to your blog is now included on their site.

15. Write articles to post around the web in article directories. Include a link to your blog in the author info box (See example in our signature below).

16. Make a commitment to blog everyday. 10 minutes a day can help increase your traffic as new content attracts search engine spiders. Put it on your calendar as a task every day at the same time.

Tip: Use a hit counter to track your visitor stats: how many unique visitors, how many page views, average length of visit. You can get a free hit counter at http://www.sitemeter.com

About the Author
Denise Wakeman of Next Level Partnership, and Patsi Krakoff of Customized Newsletter Services, have teamed up to create blogging classes and marketing services for independent professionals. You can read and subscribe to their blogs at http://www.biztipsblog.com, http://www.coachezines.com and http://www.bizbooknuggets.com.

Write to Mint!!!

Normally when you submit an article to an article directly you benefit from the backlinks and the occasional traffic you receive. The site owner benefits from the income from the advertising revenue that is earned from the adverts displayed on the site. All this is about to change with the advent of The Article Sense Network.

As an article publisher it is now possible for you to share in the advertising revenue. The revenue share model has been around for a couple of years now and is within Google’s terms and conditions.  So not only can you now benefit from the back links and traffic but you can also earn an income from Adsense at the same time.

Before we look at how the Article Sense network operates it is worthwhile noting that you will also receive 10% of the income from any referrals you make. Over time this can build up into a healthy income.

Sites in The Article Sense Network are different from any another article directory you have ever seen. Firstly there are 2 types of members of the network site owners and article publishers. The ability to earn income from your articles is unique enough but as we’ll see below there is so much more that makes these sites stand out from the crowd.

As an article publisher you will join one of the sites in the network. When you publish your article it will appear on that site. It will also have the first 500 characters displayed on 33% of the sites in the network along with your resource box and links and your Adsense code.

Within a few hours of the launch there were over 70 sites that had joined the network many of these are sites with high Pagerank. Doing a bit of simple maths will tell you that if only 30 more sites joined every article you submitted would get you 33 links back to you site. Yes, all this is FREE.

There is still more, you can even embed videos into your articles. This is a great way of selling products and keeping people on the page longer which will have a positive effect on your Adsense income.  Just upload your videos to YouTube or grab one already online and embed them into your article.

The final part of the jigsaw is the site owners. Site owners receive 40% of the income generated by the articles on their site. This includes income from the published snippets. Each snippet also includes a link back to the originating site. over time this can result in a large number of links from the rapidly growing network

It’s really difficult to express the potential that this network has and I am sure this article didn’t do it justice. To find out more please click on the link below you’ll be glad you did.

If you would like to learn more about the Article Sense Network Read More Here Alternatively have a look at a Typical Network Site

Flashy Mobile!!!

Based on a report released by Jupiter Research and iProspect, online camera cell phone ratings affect the purchasing decisions of consumers. Their studies show that rankings and comparative analyses on sales is a major factor for choosing the type of model or brand of mobile devices.

The report, released in January of 2007, indicated that as many as one in every three consumers with online access will consult social networking sites when looking for information about a particular products.

A survey on different products conducted by Amazon showed an amazing number of respondents. Majority of the 2223 viewers voted that not only did they checked-out the site’s camera cell phone ratings, but also browsed through various mobile devices featured and their listed prices.

There are two “styles” of camera cell phone ratings sites:  the ones managed by an individual or handful of cell phone experts, who really know their stuff and are not afraid to put their recommendations on the line with clear recommendations.  But as more and more camera cell phones with more and more advanced technologies hit the marketplace, they can get behind the curve.

Survey sites and online stores, like Amazon, also have their own camera cell phone ratings. The members or site visitors are asked to rate and give their comments on a mobile device they have used. These studies are more focused on an individual’s preference for a particular brand, rather than on the merits of its features. The more widely used an item, the higher is its ranking. Thus, the outcome of these surveys is based more often than not on a mobile device’s popularity. The technical aspects are not usually considered.

In an ideal world, camera cell phoned ratings sites would combine recommendations of camera cell phones based on expert, unbiased testing with input from consumers who have used those phones for a reasonable amount of time, under reasonable real-world conditions.  These sites would have no vested interest in recommending the phones from one manufacturer; in other words, they would neither be selling the phones nor getting them at no cost in exchange for a friendly review. For more information on cell phone ratings and reviews visit http://www.highenergymagic.com

However, at the moment, most camera cell phone ratings sites sell advertising space and encourage promotions featuring certain brands. These, evidently, are needed by the company to make their websites lucrative. It is these promotions that help increase traffic to their sites.

Therefore, if you are looking for a more straight-forward and honest online camera cell phone ratings, then your best bet would be those published by the technological specialists who are doing it independent of any mobile manufacturer. They can provide you with a thorough and comparative study of different brands. Sometimes they show a graphic chart comparing the features included in each model. Unfortunately, most of their contributors have community standing and are paid for their opinions. You may have to register and pay for subscribing to their site or viewing their studies.

If you're looking for the best camera cell phone it is important to check out camera cell phone reviews and opinion prior to a final decision.

Signs of change-Christopher Breen

Sometime around the beginning
of 2007, I sensed a change inthe air.The first whiff came when Microsoft’s
"No fooling, this thing really is an iPod killer” Zune laid a big stinker
during the 2006 holiday season. Then,in January, when Macworld Conference
& Expo took place on the same weekas the massive Computer Electronics
Show in Las Vegas, guess which one got more press? (Hint: It wasn’t the
show keynoted by Bill Gates.) Since then, there has been a steady stream
of stories about the iPhone, the Apple TV, and Apple in general.
What was unusual about that coverage was that—for once—it didn’t portray
Apple’s products as pretty but overpriced and Apple’s customers as
artsy-fartsy kooks. Rather, the press seemed willing to entertain the notion
that Mac users might be savvy consumers seeking quality and ease of use
in an attractive wrapper. As someone who has followed Apple
for the better part of two decades, I’veseen the company go through plenty of
highs and lows—from the introduction of the Mac Plus and the bungled opportunities
to deprive Microsoft of its tooclose- for-comfort Windows operating
system, to the successful advent of theiMac, Mac OS X, and the iPod.
Through it all, one theme remainedconstant in the coverage of the company:
Apple and its customers were ananomaly. This was frustrating. Knowing
what the Mac was capable of, seeinghow god-awful clunky Windows was,
and glancing at the declining rate ofMac adoption, I’d wonder, “What am I
missing here?” It’s that disconnect between how I see Apple’s products and how the mainstream media portrays those products that’s changing. On a Roll Apple’s numbers are up. The Mac’s share of the personal computer market is a full percentage point higher than it was last year. The iPod has helped. Independent data suggests that Mac
sales have indeed improved because of the iPod halo effect. Those consumers
who’ve previously shunned Apple products now take a second look at Macs because they like the iPod. Glory be,some of those switchers are members of the press who enviously couldn’t write the name Apple without a preceding beleaguered.It also helps that Apple hasn’t made a major mistake in a long time. The company has had plenty of opportunities to fall flat—the transition from OS 9 to OS X, the jump into the music and media business with the iPod and the iTunes Store, the launch and
growth of Apple retail stores, and the switch from PowerPC to Intel processors. Yet each move went smoothly. Since Steve Jobs returned to Apple, only the Power Mac
G4 Cube and the round mouse spring to mind as clear missteps. Microsoft, on the other hand, stumbles around as though someone tied its shoelaces together. When the company initially talked up its upcoming Longhorn (now renamed Vista) operating
system, it claimed that the new OS would be the same kind of built-fromthe- ground-up effort as Mac OS X. After years of delay, Microsoft eventually released four flavors of a tartedup version of Windows XP that even Windows enthusiasts find to be slow, bloated, and bug ridden. Then the Zune came along, trailing a cloud of negative publicity. In a sign that even Microsoft recognized the Zune’s failings, Bryan Lee, the corporate vice president of Microsoft’s entertainment business who oversaw the development of the Zune, stepped aside after the product’s dismal launch.
The negative publicity—and Apple’s continuing success—seems to be getting to our good friends from Redmond. Bill Gates was recently quoted in Newsweek ining, “Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit; your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.” Hang on a sec, Bill. Let me just look cross-eyed at my Dell box for a bit . . . and . . . right, completely taken over. Rather than take offense at Gates’s fatuous statement, I take heart. In the past, Microsoft has seemed to think of Apple as an amusing but manageable
annoyance. Things haven’t been going so well in Redmond lately, and computer buyers are starting to catch on. Maybe they don’t have to put up with Windows’ bugginess and insecurity. Maybe they’ll think to themselves, “There must be a better way.”
As an admitted Mac advocate, I’m happy to show it to them.