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!

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).

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

Is BlogRush Worth It?

What is BlogRush?

BlogRush is a traffic exchange program for blogs. How it works is: you place a code on your blog. The code shows links to 5 posts from other blogs on your page. In exchange, your post link is shown on other blogs that have installed the BlogRush widget code.

How Much Traffic Will BlogRush generate?

Disclosure: Very few of you know this. BlogClout was working on a service very similar to BlogRush.A  (Seriously. Check out the old BlogClout index page.A  Whats freaky is, I’d selected the same colour code as BlogRush has!)

But I put a hold to the idea because testing showed that a link would be clicked only once or twice for every 1000 impressions.A  So I’ve been spending time in improving the relevancy of the links exchanged.A  So that the links exchanged are relevant to the post on the page.

But while I was doing that, John Reese beat me to the punch and came up with BlogRush.

I’m no longer sure if I’ll release the BlogClout widget.A  Anyways, I doubt if BlogRush will generate a lot of traffic to your blog either.A  It should bring in about 1-2 people to your blog for every 1000 times the BlogRush widget is shown on your blog.

I’ll be testing the BlogRush widget on this blog for a couple of weeks and report back if it works better than that.

Verdict: The idea behind BlogRush is sound.A  You may want to test it out.A  But without relevancy, it won’t do well in the long turn.A  John Reese needs to add relevancy filters to his widget.A  And pull posts based on the title of the page where the widget is placed on.A  Only then will the click through rate go up.A  And only then will BlogRush members receive more traffic.

Three Prongs of Blog Marketing

What is the lowest number of prongs needed for balance?

“Two are better off than one, because together they can work more effectively. If one of them falls down, the other can help him up. . . . Two people can resist an attack that would defeat one person alone. A rope made of three cords is hard to break.” - Ecclesiastes 4:9

The biggest mistake a blogger can make is start a blog without a marketing strategy in place. Most blog owners have no clue about blog promotion. And so their traffic statistics are miserable… they make no money… and they quit.

You Need to Have a Marketing Strategy in Place Before You Start Blogging.

Let me repeat.

You Need to Have a Marketing Strategy in Place Before You Start Blogging.

Let me repeat again. Because this is very important.

You Need to Have a Marketing Strategy in Place Before You Start Blogging.

Blog Marketing Strategy

The best marketing strategies involve more than 3 tactics.A  If you do just one thing consistently to grow your blog traffic, you’ll do well.A  But you’ll almost never fail if you implement three marketing tactics together to promote your blog!

Action Summary:

Go through the list of blog marketing tactics below and pick 3 tactics that you can implement immediately and simultaneously.

An Un-finished List of Blog Marketing Tactics

• Search engine optimization
• Guest blogging
• Earning “link love”
• Writing press releases
• Syndicating articles
• Creating goodies
• Submitting to carnivals
• Commenting on other blogs
• Networking
• Using stumbleupon.com
• Using other social bookmarking websites

Can you add more tactics to the list?

Increase Your Search Engine Traffic by 15-20% in 3 Minutes

There are two different versions of your domain name:

• http://yourdomain.com
• http://www.yourdomain.com

Both versions of your domain name lead to the same page on your website. But the search engines count them as two separate files. The search engines index URIs and not web pages. Which leads to various problems.

Search Engine Canonicalization Problems

1. Because the search engines see two different version of your websites, the number of pages with duplicate content on them double!

2. Because people link to any of the two versions randomly, both versions will have average amount of back links. The search engines will show one version of your website and hide the another. But it will take into account all the links that point to only the version of your domain that they show in the results!

Thus, your pagerank won’t be as high as it should be. And your pages won’t generate as much traffic from search engines as it otherwise would. So what should you do?

The Technical Solution

The solution to the problem is slightly technical. But it isn’t too hard and takes less than 3 minutes to implement.

What we want to do is redirect visitors as well as search engines from one version of the website to another.

Part 1: Determining Which Version To Use

So which version of your website should you redirect people to? The one with WWW or the one without? There are arguments that support both sides. In short:

WWW: Most browsers will add www automatically with keyword shortcuts of “CTRL+Enter.” WWW depicts a website and is helpful in offline promotions. Most people have a habit of using WWW.

No WWW: WWW is extraneous typing. Its not required. It just bloats the web. There is a whole movement for No-WWW.

You may want to make your decision on those reasons. But there is a better way. Base your decisions on the number of backlinks each version of your website has!

Go to WWW or Not and find out which version of your website has more backlinks. And start using that.

Part 2: Redirecting From One Version To Another

To redirect one version to another, we’ll use 301 permanent redirection. You’ll need to open and edit .htaccess file in your root folder. And then add 3 lines to that file.

Copy and paste the code from below in your .htaccess file - depending on which version you go with.

Code to redirect to www from non-www version:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^blogclout\.com [nc]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.blogclout.com/$1 [R=301,L]

(replace blogclout.com with your domain)

Code to redirect to non-www version from www version:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^blogclout\.com [nc]
RewriteRule (.*) http://blogclout.com/$1 [R=301,L]

(replace blogclout.com with your domain)

Thats it. With the changes in place, your website should increase its page rank and attract more visitors from the search engines.

Action Summary:

• Visit WWW or Not and determine which version of the domain name should you keep.
• Update your .htaccess file accordingly.
• You should see 15-20% more visitors coming in from the search engines within 2-3 weeks.

The Secret to Getting Others to Talk About You

I wrote a guest post for the awsome NorthXEast.com blog which quickly became very popular and was featured on the Digg.com front page as well as the Del.icio.us popular page. Click on the link below to read it:

The Secret to Getting Others to Talk About You

Copyright Permission Strategy

1. World Wide Distribution RocksA 

In many concerts, workshops and events I go to - they have a strict policy: no cameras allowed.

But I read about this rock band - who instead of not allowing cameras, encouraged it!A  They would shout to their audience:

“Take a picture of us with your digital camera; when you get home, blog about us, and put our picture on your blog!”

As a result, the band gained fame and sold more CDs!

2. The Other Side of the Coin

I usually have the rock band frame of mind: I don’t mind others using material from this blog.A  But there is another ugly side: Google and other search engines don’t like duplicate content.A  If other websites copy your posts,A  they may rank higher in search engines for the keywords in that post.A  And all the natural search engine traffic will go to them instead of coming to you.

So what should you do?A  Have a strict do-not-copy notice and enforce it?

3. The Solution

The solution is finding the middle path. I don’t allow people to copy all my posts.A  But I’ll let them republish one or two of my posts on their blogs or websites or newsletters.A A  Here are some rules I try to follow:

i.A  I don’t allow scrapers: people who syndicate the entire RSS feeds on their websites.A  I actively go after them.

ii. But I don’t mind if people syndicate excerpts of all my blog posts on their website.A  Excerpts is fine.A  In fact, its more than fine - as people will click on to this blog if they like the excerpts.

iii. Linking to other posts you’ve written before - from your new posts is a good idea. Because even if people syndicate your entire RSS feed, they will be sending their visitors back to you who click through the link to other posts.

iv. Using the Feed Footer plugin is a good idea too - if you use WordPress.A  You can add a copyright notice and a link back to your blog from underneath all your blog posts.

v.A  If people email me and ask if they can re-publish a post of mine, I usually say yes.A  Even if its for commercial purposes.

vi. In fact, I’ll also go through the trouble of re-writing the introduction of that blog post to better suite their audience if I feel like it’ll be worth the extra effort.A  By re-writing the introduction, I also make sure that Google indexes both the posts.

vii. I do use a tool from time to time to find people who plagiarize my content without permission.A  But I usually leave those people alone who’ve just copied one of my posts - and that too - to make a point of their own.A  I only go after people who copy all of my posts.A  The tool I use is available for free.A  Its called Copyscape.

Action Summary:

• Don’t discourage people to republish your work.A  It could lead to increase in traffic.
• But make sure you take steps to see that they don’t duplicate everything you write.
• Make sure that people send traffic to you whenever they use your material.

Overcoming the Barriers to Guest Blogging

Guest posting on other blogs can attract more traffic than almost any other technique. Yet very few bloggers actively seek out guest blogging opportunities. Very few bloggers shoot an email to other blogs and send them a guest blog post pitch.

This post aims to break all your barriers to guest blogging. So that you too can start creating your own guest blogging opportunities.

Objection 1: The ____ blog is so popular. I doubt if the author has time to even read my emails. I’m sure he won’t allow me to write for his blog.

I’ll let you in on a secret: most bloggers will allow you guest posting on their blog if you approach them with a unique story or angle. It doesn’t matter how popular they are. Its true that your chances of getting published on their blogs shoots up high if you’ve spent time in building a relationship with the author first though.

The Trick to Getting Your Guest Posts Accepted on Over 90% of the Blogs You Approach

Approach blogs that have already published guest posts by other authors before and your chances of being accepted to write for them will increase tremendously. Because these are the bloggers that already know the benefits of allowing others to write for them (variety for their blog readers, more free time for them), you won’t have to spend time to try and convince them a lot.

The 3 Rules I Follow is:

• Only contact blogs that you like
• First make an effort to build a relationship with the author
• If you don’t have a relationship with the author, only approach blogs that have already published other guest posts before

Objection 2: I just don’t have time to write guest posts for other blogs.

If you don’t have time to write for others, here is the solution for you:

Co-Blogging!

Approach other bloggers and ask them if they would be interested in co-blogging - where you write one guest post for them, and they write one guest post for you.

Objection 3: I want to save the best posts for my blog - so that I attract all the traffic from social media sites and search engines.

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” - Harry S. Truman

Its very short sighted to save the best posts for your blog. Because if you write mediocre guest posts for other blogs, they may not publish it. And even if they do, their readers won’t like it - and won’t come visit your blog. Which is the main purpose of guest blogging.

Only if you blow the readers’ minds away with your guest post will they come and visit your blog. And subscribe to its RSS feed and keep on coming back to it.

Always “Put your best foot forward first.”

Action Summary:

• Start approaching other blogs with guest blogging requests - at least once a week. Make it a part of your strategy.
• Asking other bloggers to co-blog with you is a fantastic idea too - which makes sure you don’t have to write more than you are used to.

The First Thing To Do After You Publish Your Post

Contact 1-2-3 bloggers and simply send them a short to the point email:

Hi _____,

Here is a post your blog readers might like:

<Post Title>
http://www.yourdomain.com/post-name/

kind regards,
<Your Name>

Many bloggers make a “link love” post once a week or so - where they share links to good articles they’ve read.A  They may add your blog post to that list if your post is good.

It hardly takes 5 minutes to shoot off 3 emails after you make a new post.A  And it could lead to a few 100 people stumbling across your blog!

Action Summary:

• A As you read various blogs, make your own list of the blogs that make “link love” posts.
• Then every time you make a new post, select 2 to 3 bloggers from that list and send them a short 2 line email.