Autopilot Traffic: How To Generate Consistent Traffic For Your Blogs

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I started adding a mailing list opt-in form to all of my new blogs.  Recently, one of my friends asked me why I still continue with mailing lists and newsletters when blogs and RSS feeds are better?  Here is my answer to him:

Mailing Lists Are Still Relevant

1. Even today, close to 50% of the people won’t subscribe to RSS feeds.  This number is higher for non-technical mass-market blogs.

2.  You can set up a series of automatic emails that people receive on subscribing.  So mailing lists can be awesome set it and forget it systems.  And they go a long way in building trust.

3. Mailing lists help in creating a traffic loop.

Whats a Traffic Loop?

Traffic loops are systems that you build that keep on getting traffic to your blog consistently and automatically.  Here is my traffic loop strategy that you can use for your blogs too:

1. Use various tactics to bring traffic to your blog.  Tactics like guest posting, press releases, joint ventures, SEO, article submission etc.

2. Once people visit your blog, ask them to subscribe for your newsletter.

3. As soon as they subscribe,  show them a one-time-offer.  1-10% of your subscribers will end up buying the product based on how good the offer is and how powerful your sales letter is.  Pump the profits you earn from this product into buying ads to promote your blog.  PPC advertising.  Banner ads.  Ads on other blogs.

4.  When people confirm their subscription, forward them to a page where they can see links to other blogs.  And enter into joint ventures with these other blogs so that they send traffic to your blog too.  (You could also show refer-5-friends form on this page too.)

Bullet points #3 & #4 creates the traffic loop for you.  As people who visit your blog result into more people visiting your blog!

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Making Money With PerformancingAds.com

A new ad program was recently launched: PerformancingAds.com. I’ve been using it for more than 4 days now on 2 of my blogs and I find it better than a few other ad programs I’ve tried out. The genius behind PerformancingAds.com is that they’ve merged 2 ideas together… they’ve merged ad selling together with banner exchanges!

Merging Adspace + Banner Exchange = PerformancingAds.com

When you use PerformancingAds.com but all your ad spots don’t sell, they’ll use the un-sold spots for banner exchange purposes and drive free traffic to your blogs!

PerformancingAds Pros

1. Free Advertising: The biggest benefit of using them is their Exchange Ads feature.  If your ad space isn’t sold, they will use the remnant space for banner exchange purposes. They’ll show other websites ads on the spots.  And in return, you earn credits that can be used to show your ad on other blogs.

2. Book Your Own Spots: Another benefit of PerformancingAds.com is that they allow you to sell or use your own ad spots as you wish. So you could sell ads on your own too. Or promote affiliate programs.

3. Ease of installation. Installation on 2 of my blogs took all of 3 minutes. Its very easy to setup and start running.

PerformancingAds Cons

1. Low Payouts: As a publisher, you only get paid 60% of the ad money. So if you sell $500 worth of ad spots, they keep $200 out of it. (But they do allow you to book your own ad spots too. So you can sell ads privately and then list them up.)

2. Un-Transparency: The ratios for their ad exchange program isn’t revealed. And they give away free credits to sites whose ad spots sell. So you may not be getting the traffic you deserve.

Verdict

It makes good sense to start using PerformancingAds.com. Especially if you are an up-and-coming blog. But don’t forget to try selling ads privately too (as selling ads privately will always earn you more money).

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Marketing with Google Knol

Google just released Knol - and the pundits are touting it as a wikipedia killer already. So what is Knol and should you pay attention to it?

What is Knol?

Knol is a Google project where users write authoritative articles on specific subjects and publish them at knol.google.com

Its not like wikipedia.com because:

1. Its not completely open source. Others can’t edit the articles you publish without your consent. So in that way, its more like squidoo.com than wikipedia.com

2.  The article URLs are in the format of
http://www.knol.google.com/k/[username]/[article-title]

So it seems like more than one person can write an authoritative article on the same topic - unlike on wikipedia.

So Should You Pay Attention to Knol?

One word answer: Yes.

Although historically, Google hasn’t given a lot of weight to pages created by others on the Google network (eg: on GooglePages and Blogger) - it seems like they have changed tracks for their Knol project.

More than half of the Featured Knols rank in the first page of Google for their titles!

• How to Backpack - Google Rank #4
• Tooth Pain - Google Rank #3
• Toilet Clogs - Google Rank #4

The other un-featured Knols aren’t doing too good at the moment.  But seems like that will change soon.

On top of that, Google also shares Adsense revenue that are shown on your Knols pages.

So my prediction is that the Squidoo.com lens writers are going to jump on the Knol bandwagon in droves!  I personaly will be creating new Knol pages before creating Squidoo Lenses too (but I’m not totally giving up on Squidoo just yet).

Action Summary:

• Create your own knol for your blog
• But don’t try to make it an ad for your blog. Follow Google’s Good Knol Writing guidelines
• Reference other sites and links within your knol. Write your Knol like you are writing an article for a science journal
• Because the goal is to become one of the Google’s Featured Knol and enjoy a lot of traffic to your blog through the knol

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How To Blog *Consistently*

How to keep your blog going on and on and on…

I’m a juggler of projects.  At any given time, 3-4 projects are on my table simultaneously.  Thats why, I find it hard sometimes to be consistent with my blogs.

I’ve found that I’m not alone with this problem.  Some awesome blogs find it hard to be consistent too. So what can be done to make it easy for you to remain consistent with your blogs?

I have a few ideas…

Idea # 3: Have a buffer of posts

i. Find out how many posts you should publish per week.

ii. Then sit down over a couple of weekends and write at least 3 times the posts you need to publish per week.

iii. Follow an easy schedule now.  Because you’ll be ahead of your publishing schedule, your blog will always have fresh content on it even if you have to take some time off.

Note: This idea doesn’t work for blogs that focus on current news.  And you do have to be very disciplined to maintain a buffer of posts all the time.

Idea # 2: Hire a Co-Blogger

Another idea you can use to keep your blog fresh year after year is hire or joint venture with other bloggers.  There are quite a few benefits of having multiple bloggers write for one blog:

i. The pressure is off any single blogger.  If one blogger is slacking, others can put in a big more effort.

ii. You can now take vacations!

iii.  Multiple authors bring multiple view points.  Thus you can also attract a wider audience.

iv.  More bloggers = more promoters too.  Marketing your blog becomes a whole lot easier!

Idea # 1: Accept RSS ads

But the best idea of all to make sure you keep on blogging consistently is: accept RSS ads.

Let me explain: I’ve been consistently publishing a premium newsletter called Marketing Hotsheet for more than 4 years. Over the past 4 years, 98 issues of Marketing Hotsheet have been published (2 issues are published every month).  And I’ve never ever missed a single deadline for that newsletter!

How so? Because the subscribers of Marketing Hotsheet pay me in advance!  I have to be on time or else they’ll start calling me up to complain.  And a few may ask for refunds!

Because I’m already obligated to others to publish the newsletters on time, I’m never late!

The key is: you’ve got to be obligated to others to come out with new content on a fixed schedule.  By accepting pre-payment for RSS ads, you will be forced to be on time!

Why Doesn’t the Sidebar Ads Work in Making You Disciplined to Blog?

Because you’ll most likely be charging for the sidebar ads on a monthly basis.  Or on a CPM basis.  But with RSS ads, advertisers will be paying you for a fixed number of posts per month!

So How To Run RSS Ads on Your Blog?

i. If you use WordPress, you can install the RSS Feed Footer WordPress plugin to run ads.  (You may have to find other alternatives if you don’t use WordPress…)

ii. The easiest way to attract advertisers is to make a new post on your blog with a graph of the number of RSS subscribers you have.   And asking people to contact you if they want to advertise.

iii. You can charge as much as $5-50 per post for every 1000 subscribers. (Start low and then slowly increase the rates.)

iv.  If you don’t have many RSS subscribers, you can go to a forum like DigitalPoint.com and sell RSS ad placements for $1 or so.  The money is not important.  The fact that pre-selling RSS ads obligates you to write a certain number of posts every week without fail is.

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New Blog Launch: NonToxin.com

Launched on 2nd April: NonToxin.com

20th November 2007: Maki at DoshDosh.com made an open challenge to his readers: start 1 flagship blog per month. 1 blog per month can become a logistical nightmare after 3-4 months. But I knew I wanted to open my own blog network.

So I spent the first quarter of 2008 putting systems in place so that I could create 1 blog per month without getting overwhelmed. I created systems and procedures on:

• Creating the blog and its design
• Having a consistent publishing strategy
• Automating marketing and reaching and touching the most number of people
• Monetizing the blogs

I’ll be posting parts of my procedures and systems in the coming weeks. But in this post, I would like to tell you that the first blog was launched exactly 7 days ago!
The name of the blog is: Non Toxin. The purpose of that blog is: to downgrade information and upgrade wisdom. And to never write about things that are hot today but won’t be remembered tomorrow. No Tech. No Gossip. No Politics. If the blog post doesn’t make you smarter, it shouldn’t be published!

Would you like an insiders look at how a blog does in its first week of launch?

1st week statistics for NonToxin.com:

• 2 Posts (1 of them just published 17 minutes back)
• 18 comments
• 839 unique visitors

All in all, its a good start. And I haven’t even started promoting the blog heavily. The only things I’ve done is:

• Announce the blog on 1 forum that I love
• Added a small link to a newsletter of mine

Besides that, one of my friends also submitted the first post to StumbleUpon.com that bought in about 106 visitors.

Whats the next plan of action?

• Cruise the waters till 5-6 posts are published on the blog
• Then jumpstart blog promotion

PS: I would appreciate it if you can hop on to the new blog and post a comment on the top most post if you like its content. As you know, having more comments on a new blog builds social proof and helps a lot in showing that its a busy blog and other people like it. Thanks!

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BarCamp Mumbai

Sorry for the late notice.

I’ll be attending the BarCamp Mumbai tomorrow (29th March).A  BarCamp Mumbai will also have a BlogCamp Mumbai session for which I may give a brand new presentation.

If you’re in or around Mumbai, do plan to visit it.A  Its a free event. A  And these camps and conferences are usually a lot of fun.A  You’ll get to meet some great bloggers and entrepreneurs.

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Steve Jobs Helps BlogClout Find Focus

Steve Jobs on Focus:

“Apple is a $30 billion company, yet we’ve got less than 30 major products. I don’t know if that’s ever been done before. Certainly the great consumer electronics companies of the past had thousands of products. We tend to focus much more. People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.

“I’m actually as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. The clearest example was when we were pressured for years to do a PDA, and I realized one day that 90% of the people who use a PDA only take information out of it on the road. They don’t put information into it. Pretty soon cellphones are going to do that, so the PDA market’s going to get reduced to a fraction of its current size, and it won’t really be sustainable. So we decided not to get into it. If we had gotten into it, we wouldn’t have had the resources to do the iPod. We probably wouldn’t have seen it coming.”

(This is a long post… but you deserve an explanation on what is up with BlogClout…)A 

Not posting consistently is the biggest mistake a blogger can make.A  Because when you don’t post consistently, most people don’t complain.A  They just leave.A  And to get these people, you have to work harder than before.

So then why am I not posting consistently over here at BlogClout?A  It has to do with Steve Jobs’s advice.A  Let me explain the whole situation to you:

1.

This blog was started to pre-launch a new blog application.A  I was working on an application similar to “BlogRush” where you could exchange links to blog posts by other bloggers.A  But internal tests showed that the click through rate for the application was dismal.

So I and my team started working on how to improve the click through rate.A  We were testing a feature where the links shown on your blog would be “relevant” - our logarithm would match the title of your page with blog post titles.A  And show only those blog posts that matched well with your page title.

We were also testing on making the post links integrate well with each and every blog.A  Instead of coming out with a widget, we intended to replace the “Related Posts” feature that many blogs have.

But while we were working on these features, John Reese went ahead and came out with BlogRush.A  (It was just one of those things… 2 people on 2 different ends of the world working on a similar idea… and he beat me to it.)

Its my opinion that there is no place for a second BlogRush.A  And so the BlogClout application was scrapped.

2.

After the launch of a competing application, we scrapped the launch of our BlogClout application.A  But I kept this blog going on for some time (and the response was pretty good).A  The problem was… all the initial motivation was gone.

And better projects attracted my attention.

I needed to focus on those other projects (especially one other project that shows great potential and I think will help more people than I could ever help with BlogClout).A  And so I gave very little time to BlogClout.

3.

Good news: The project I’ve been working on since the past few months is about to be launched in the next couple of weeks time.

4.

So what will happen to BlogClout?

After the launch of the other project, I should have some more free time.A  And I plan to pick things up with BlogClout.A  And share some very new cool ideas that I’ve tested that I know no one else is talking about.

But this time, I plan to do things well.A  I plan to bring on another blogger to write for BlogClout.A  So that you’ll have a wider base of ideas.A  And you’ll never be left in a lurch if my attention goes to some other project in the future too.

Action Summary:

If you run a blog and always wanted to share your blogging successes and failures, contact me.A  I am looking for one or two co-bloggers for BlogClout.A  (Its a paid position.)

Comments (9)

Blogger Interview: with Jon of FreelanceFolder.com

In December, I had interviewed Jon of FreelanceFolder.com. Jon had successfully setup a “group blog” - something that I had plans for.

But that interview didn’t see the day of light because I’ve been busy with another project of mine and have neglected BlogClout a bit <shame-on-me>.

Better late than never - right? So here is the interview with Jon:

1. Can you give a quick introduction of who you are and what you do?

Hello, I’m Jon from Montreal Canada, my blog is located at SmartWealthyRich.com and I also run a multi-author FreelanceFolder.com with a bunch of really skilled writers

I’m a freelance writer, blogger, designer, and a musician.

2. Why did you start Freelance Folder? Did you have any specific goal in mind before you started blogging?

I wanted to start another blog and a multi-author blog was the way to go. I really enjoy starting conversations and networking with other bloggers, so after seeing pretty good results with my first blog I thought the next logical step was to start a multi-author blog.

I didn’t have any specific goal in mind before I started blogging. In fact I had no idea what WordPress was, I just downloaded it 10 months ago, installed it on my server, and voila. Now I have goals, but back then I honestly had no idea what I was getting myself into - hehe

3. How has blogging changed your life?

Well a lot of things happened since I started my first blog. I quit my day job about 3 years ago leaving behind the security of the paycheck every 2 weeks. I now work my own hours, get to improve my writing skills and meet a bunch of cool people online, some of which became business partners.

4. What is the “one” ingredient or idea that played the biggest role in your blogging success?

‘It’s all about the conversations’

That’s sorta like my motto. I just love to engage in discussions with my readers, that’s the single most important thing for me. I always try to write posts that will make people want to leave a comment and connect with other readers. I love it when my readers share their own tips and tricks and give advices, that rocks. It’s all about the conversations.

5. How do you find and attract writers to write for Freelance Folder?

I first posted about it on my own blog which at the time had around 300 readers, and got a really good response. You could say I used this blog as a launch pad for FreelanceFolder. I simply asked my readers if they’d be interested in partnering up with me on a new blog. Some wanted to write on a regular basis while others were interested in writing just a post or two.

I also sent a couple of e-mails to fellow bloggers, but that didn’t work so well. Now I don’t really go out and look for writers, I just let people know I accept guest posts and I put up a ‘write for us’ page on the blog, and I usually receive 2-5 e-mails per week, which is really nice.

6. How do you generate traffic to your blog?

I’m really active on social sites like StumbleUpon (my fave), Digg, Reddit, Del.Icio.Us, and other smaller niche sites. It takes some time to build a profile, but it’s really worth it. I can spend anywhere between half-an-hour to 3 hours per day on social media sites just reading, bookmarking, subscribing, commenting, networking.

7. Whats your secret of getting so many of your posts on the front page of Digg?

I’m probably the one who knows the least what he’s doing. It never really happened I wrote a post especially for the Digg crowd, I know some people specialize in that, but I don’t. I just write and don’t really care about making sure my posts are ‘Digg-worthy’. Pretty much anything can make the Digg frontpage anyway.

One thing I do though is when I see a post is getting some traction on StumbleUpon, I’ll add the Digg button right away. It’s called the ‘domino effect’

• Stumblers see the Digg button and vote your post
• Diggers come to your site and bookmark your post on Del.icio.us
• Del.icio.us users Stumble and Digg your post
• and so on…

8. How do you monetize your blog?

I use different services like text-link-ads (not on FreelanceFolder though) and Google Adsense, but these two don’t generate much revenue. I prefer doing private ad deals. I regularly send e-mails to potential advertisers and just ask them if they’d be interested in advertising on my blog(s), sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes advertisers contact me first.

I also recommend services and products to fellow bloggers (hosting for example) and use different affiliate programs.

9. What does your average day look like? How do you budget your time?

I usually go to sleep really late and wake up… yes, late. I find my most creative time is between 11pm and 3:30am.

Here’s what a ‘typical day’ looks like:

• wake up
• make coffee
• check e-mails
• start reading blogs
• leave for the recording studio (I’m a guitarist)
• check e-mails again
• write/blog/brainstorm
• work on projects for clients (design, paid writing gigs)
• spend some time on social sites
• go out, take some time off
• sleep

It’s like that pretty much 7 days a week

10. Any product / service of yours that you would like my blog readers to know about?

I’m always looking for more work, whether it’s to design or customize a blog, write blog posts or articles, or if you simply need advices about blogging, I may be able to help.

Editors note: If you need to setup a blog - Jon is the guy to go to!

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The Microsoft Strategy

Its been a long long time since I’ve posted here.A  (I’ll tell you what I’ve been upto very soon.)A  Because its been a long time, I wanted to start out with a super-duper stellar post.A  But thats just delaying things.A  So let me start out with a hypothetical brainstorming post that will likely not help you unless you are one of the top execs at Microsoft.

Microsoft recently made a bid for Yahoo.A  Their reasoning is: to beat Google’s 75% dominance in the search and online advertising market, they have to partner up with Yahoo or they’ll never become numero uno.

I think thats a disastrous move.A  Two stale companies can’t usually beat a nimble company.A  Just like you-and-me can’t team up on LeBron James and defeat him. We have to improve our skills first.

So how can Microsoft improve their skills?A 

To know the answer, you have to ask one more question: how did Google achieve the #1 position online?

1. Google created a search engine that gave out far better results without any clutter

2. Google then created or bought ad space or partnered with others so that their ads can be shown.A  (While you search / while you check emails / while you surf other websites.)

So lets evaluate each of Google’s dominant fields and see how to beat them.

Search Engine DominanceA 

I’m of the opinion that there can be no better system than listing search results on the basis of how many other websites link to yours.A  Links are the votes that determine online popularity.A  The only other option is to chase the idea of human voting to determine popularity.A  And for that, Microsoft will have to buy StumbleUpon.com from eBay or create something similar.

Advertising Dominance

Why is Microsoft lagging in their online ad sales?A  Because they don’t have as big a reach as Google.A  And so most merchants only use Google Adwords.A  What can Microsoft do?A  Use Google API to match up with Google.A  By using Google API, Microsoft can come up with a “one-click-import” feature where merchants and advertisers can import their Google Adwords campaigns to Microsoft instantly!

Microsoft can then work on their “reach” to one-up Google.

Email Dominance

How to beat Gmail?A  There are 2 ways to come up with a better email system.

i. keyword@username.MSN.com email addresses.A  By allowing people unlimited email aliases, they can have better control over spam.A  For eg: if I wanted to register at WSJ.com - I would give my email id to them as: wsj@ankesh.msn.com.

ii. Pay people to email.A  Share the ad revenue that Microsoft earns via email ads with the users.

Browser Dominance

Because FireFox uses Google as the default search engine, Google has bagged a big share of browser searches without their own browser.A A  Microsoft has to open up their browsers so that others can create extensions and add-ons for IE browser too.

And as long as Microsoft is doing that - they might as well allow people to create extensions for MSN messenger too.A  And maybe people can come up with extensions for the desktop too?

Ads on Other Websites

Two things Microsoft can do:

i. Buy WordPress.com to compete with Blogger.com

ii. Give a bigger share of revenue to publishers than what Google gives.A  And lower the minimum payment threshold from $100 to $20.A  And pay on a weekly basis.A  Improve the payment terms and lots of publishers that use Google Adsense will move to Microsoft.

Aquisitions

Instead of Yahoo, there are other better properties to buy.

i. WordPress.com

ii. ebay.A  By buying eBay instead of Yahoo - Microsoft would also get StumbleUpon.com (the only other technology that hold the promise to make their search engines better than Googles), Skype.com (a far better instant messenger) and PayPal.com (an obvious match with their ad program)!

iii. Facebook.A  To extend their advertisers reach.

Comments (13)

The Pause Before the Run

Hello guys!

Just a short note to thank you for your patience.

There hasn’t been a whole lot of new content on BlogClout. A  And I’m going out of town and will be back only by 17th of January.A  So there may not be any more content till then either.A  But you’ll be reading some awsome posts after that.

• I’m starting a new blog and will chronicle its progress over here
• You’ll also be reading a few more interviews of some prolific and famous bloggers

So stay tuned.

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