If your blog begins to gain any kind of traffic it won’t be long before you start to get emails from other website owners, link builders, or automated systems asking you to place a link to their site into your content.

For many blog owners this is the first opportunity to make some money from their new blog building venture, but read on to find out why you might want to think carefully before accepting an offer of this kind.  This post forms part of our series on 29 debates bloggers have about blogging.

Links Make the Web go Round

Links are a very precious commodity on the net and a good quality link from a well respected site can lead to a big boost in traffic.  Not only will visitors click through the link but search engines will rank your website more highly.  A link from a leading site is a massive vote of confidence in your own blog.

Links are so highly sought after that people are prepared to spend money on obtaining them!

Google Wants you to Disclose Paid Links

The leading search engine, Google, doesn’t necessarily penalise you for selling links, they understand that this type of commercial transaction goes on.  All they want to know is which links are natural and which have been manually manipulated by cash.

If you label paid for links as “no follow” you shouldn’t get penalised by Google, however if they find you and your partner are trying to manipulate search results by selling links then both of you may be struck down the rankings.

Is it worth the risk?

Why I don’t Sell Links

There are a couple of reasons why I have never sold a link on any of my websites:

• The sums involved just aren’t worth my time.  Normally they offer very small amounts which don’t compare very well to other advertising.  If they got their link onto my site through adsense they’d be paying out for every click for as long as the link is active.  But link dealers are hoping you will be naive enough to sell your site short.
• Poor quality sites.  Unfortunately most of the link offers you will get early on will be from very poor quality websites that you would never consider associating with if there was no money involved.  If this is the case then I strongly urge you not to sell yourself out so early on as associating with a “poor neighbourhood” as Google terms it will only hurt your long term growth prospects.
• Conversely, I always link naturally to high quality sites.  No fee required.  Linking to other good sites is good for your readers and goes a long way to enhancing your own site and content.

If a site is worth linking to link to it for free!

As time goes on the quality of offer will hopefully improve, and you should be able to negotiate some better tenancy deals.  This is where you charge a fixed fee for a fixed period to include a link or banner on your site.  Think about what the equivalent adsense unit might generate for you and use this as a guide to how much you are charging.

Negotiation is easy when you can say that an adsense unit generates x amount each month – can you beat that?

Don’t Risk the Wrath of Google

Google really do disapprove of selling links and not disclosing it.  If you are lucky you will get away with it, however one of your competitors may find out what you have done and report you to Google, and before you know it you have dropped down the search rankings resulting in a far greater cost to your site’s long term traffic numbers.

There are plenty of ways to build an income from your blog, I don’t recommend selling links as one of them.  If a keyword in your content has value then why not place your own affiliate link there – it should be far more profitable in the long run!

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As your blog gets bigger the demands on your time will keep on increasing – something will have to give.

However outsourcing is the process of paying someone else to take on the various tasks on your website and thus freeing you up for other projects.

In this article in our series on 29 debates bloggers have about blogging we explore whether this is a good or a bad thing for the health of your blog?

What Can I Outsource on My Blog?

There are all kinds of tasks that you might want to pass over to someone else, everything from day to day running of the site to one off overhauls.  These days it is relatively easy to find skilled professionals via the Internet who can help you with all kinds of tasks.

Here are some popular outsourcing jobs:

• Content.  This is probably one of the most obvious things to pass on to someone else.  You can hire a writer to produce one off articles or even stream regular news articles onto your site.  The choice is yours.  Most content creation services will provide a fixed price for a writer of a certain skill level to produce a fixed number of words.
• Comment Moderation.   It can get very tiresome dealing with all the spam comments that come your way.  The auto spamming software can be quite easy to deal with but many spammers are posting comments by hand – and in some cases they are outsourcing their spamming to cheap foreign workers!
• Forum Moderation.  As above, if you allow user generated content on your site you need to keep an eye on what is being posted.  This can begin to take up hours and hours as your site become more popular and this time is probably better spent doing something else.
• Redesigning your blog.  Most of us aren’t talented website designers, or even if we have that artistic talent we don’t have the time to fiddle with the finer points of CSS tweaking.  Hiring a professional designer can be a great way to give your blog a new look.
• Link building.  Yes, even this process can be passed on to someone else!  Keeping a steady stream of links coming into your site is crucial to high search rankings.  Blogercise techniques suggest that you should be building links naturally, but if you are finding it hard to get going this is a job that can be outsourced.

Almost anything that needs to be done round your site can be outsourced to a third party – but you need to make sure it makes financial sense!

Is Outsourcing Blog work Cost Effective?

Getting someone else to make your content seems a bright idea on the surface, you get to spend your time on other things – working on that new site, or perhaps just taking a break from your hectic life – whilst your blog continues to grow.

When spending money on these activities the one thing you always need to keep in mind is your Return on Investment (or ROI).  Sometimes this is easy to measure, on other occasions you’ll just have to use your instincts – but either way, you always need to think about whether you are getting value from spending money on building your blog.

Tips for Outsourcing Blog Work

I prefer to do as much of the blog work as I can, this is for two reasons:

• It gives me total control over my blog and content
• I enjoy it!  Website building is a hobby for me so it would be crazy to get someone else in to do it for me!

However I have outsourced a few pieces of work for personal sites, but was involved with outsourcing more heavily in my professional career when I used to work at a well known consumer web site.

Link Building: This is something that I saw in my professional career, it became a high priority when our CEO suddenly became obsessed with search engine optimisation and over night all our projects got dropped and switched to search related activities!

If you chose to outsource link building then I would first check very carefully exactly how and where your partner will build these links.  I would then have a serious think as to why you need to pay money to build links – why isn’t anyone linking to you naturally?

Content: This is something I have experimented with myself on a few occasions with mixed results.  The quality of the posts were not even close to the high standards of my own posts and I would normally have to re-write and enhance the content before I could publish, and these were supposedly from the “top quality” authors on the company’s books!

On the plus side the articles did do the job and gave a site I wanted to get up quickly a small boost.  Unfortunately the standard wasn’t good enough to build something to be particularly proud of.  But I guess that’s why these authors aren’t running their own blogs!

So Should I Outsource my Blog Work?

I guess it depends on your approach to blogging.  If you are trying to build a blog that you can be proud of and it’s something that you love doing then I would try to do all the work that I could.  Of course there are some things that I just can’t do to a professional standard and I would definitely ask for help there.  But otherwise I want to everything myself!

If you are looking at churning out sites and building up as much Internet real estate as you can in as short a time as possible then buying in help will surely give you a boost.  Just be very careful you don’t invest a lot of cash without seeing any return on that investment.

In time you might want to run your fledgling empire more like a business and in that case outsourcing will start to make sense.  You will need to keep a close eye on your sites though and be sure that you don’t compromise on the things that made your website a success in the first place!

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As discussed previously at Blogercise, monitisation is nothing to be ashamed of.  Most of us could do with a little extra cash in our life to make things easier.

So if you are going to try and earn an income from your blog, is it better to start including adverts right from day 1 or is it something you should add over time?  We answer this question in our series of 29 debates bloggers have about blogging.

Designing Your Blog

The famous Blogercise 10 step guide to building a website contains a page dedicate to designing your blog layout – if you haven’t already done so, check out this page for some tips on getting your layout right.

To be honest the temptation to tinker and improve your site’s layout will never go away, and in fact I would encourage you to continuously improve your site’s design.  With the best will in the world it is something you won’t get right first time and is something that will need to be refreshed periodically anyway.

Reasons to Monitise from Day 1

This is my recommendation, although later in this post we will discuss the reasons why you might want to wait for your blog to be established before beginning to add adverts and affiliate links.

Here is why I would monitise my blog from the start:

• If you plan to monitise your blog then why not start as you mean to go on.  If you are ashamed of putting ads on your site or believe that this somehow cheapens it then that’s very honourable.  But if this is the case surely this whole question is irrelevant to you as you will never be putting ads on your site.
• You’ll miss out on a lot of early income if you chose not to host adverts on your blog.  Sure, a new blog is unlikely to make hundreds a day but even low traffic sites can bring in a pound/dollar or two.  Over a year this adds up!
• As your blog grows you will find that some of your old posts become big traffic winners.  By ensuring these contain relevant affiliate links from day one you are ensuring that you’ll never miss out on any potential income.
• Ironically, well placed visual adverts can make your site look more professional.  After all if people want to get their ads onto your site then it must have some value.  Of course anyone can sign up to Google’s adsense or Amazon Associates but the majority of web browsers have never even heard of these schemes.
• Your readers will get used to seeing adverts on your site and won’t accuse you of “selling out” the day that they go up.  Some of your readers may place a lot of faith in you because of your lack of ads and when this ends they might kick up a big fuss.  Blog readers are used to seeing adverts and affiliate links on sites and most of them understand why they are there and will tolerate them in small doses.

The other question I would pose to those who plan to monitise later is: when would be the right time to start making money from the blog?  It seems totally arbitrary to me!  When you get 1000 visitors a day?  Why not when you get 500?

Why Should I Start with an Ad free Blog?

There are two main reasons that I read for wanting to keep a blog totally ad free in the early days.

• It Makes a Site Look More Attractive to Readers: The idea here is that by being ad free your site hold a higher degree of authority and an air of enhanced respectability.  This blog doesn’t need to sell out – it provides unbiased high quality independent content.  If you take this approach, my advice is to stick to it – if you monitise later you’ll look like a chump.  That said, your site would probably survive and you’d find an excuse for the change of heart – increased server costs or something.  A lot of readers will see right through you but hey ho, that’s the risk you’ll be taking.
• Search Engine Optimisation: There is a school of thought that suggest search engines penalise affiliate and advert rich sites.  So in the early days of your blog there is a chance that your content is thin on the ground and Google etc will think you are just trying to make a fast buck.  Now I think there might be some truth to this but the solution is easy! Make sure your blog doesn’t look spammy!  Search engines want to rank high quality content sites in their results, this is their one and only goal – and Blogercise is all about building such sites.  So just take an honest look at your site and ask yourself if it just exists to game the system.  If the answer is yes then you can’t really be surprised if your site falls flat on its face!

If you plan to build an income from your blog then don’t be shy, start building it into your site as you go.  You’ll learn many lessons as you do and doing so when your blog is emerging will be far less risky than when you are depending on the income!

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Recent legislation in the US has forced website owners to disclose the nature of their affiliations.  No such rules exist here in the UK however.

But whether we are forced to or not, is it a good idea to be transparent when it comes to linking to affiliated sites?   The following article in out 29 debates bloggers have about blogging series explores this topic.

The Genuine Article

I don’t know about you but there are some sites out there that make my blood boil.  You read a post one week that recommends the most amazing product ever, and then a few days later actually the site owner is now in love with a different product.  The one thing that both has in common is an affiliate scheme that pays the site owner a big chunk of money each month.

Some schemes are extremely lucrative, promising to pay out recurring fees for years to come.  Unsurprisingly, the more generous the payout the more heavily the product is pushed!

Of course these site owners will always wheel out the standard disclaimer “I only promote products I use myself!“.   Of course you do!  In fact reading that line on a site always makes me think twice!

Note:  I promote products through affiliate links, so I know for a fact that not all webmasters are exploiting their readers – I’ll have to leave you to make your own minds up on who the good guys and the bad guys are!

What is the Best Way to Disclose Affiliate Links?

I always try to make it clear how my sites make money. For example on the Blogercise site there are clearly adverts on the site but I have stayed clear from any affiliated products as the make money online space has a bad reputation for exploiting people desperate to boost their income.

I wanted to offer an alternative where readers would be sure that I wasn’t pushing a range of unsuitable products that won’t really give them the break through they are looking for.

On other sites I adopt the following policies:

• Double underline: Some sites use an asterisk, others use a colour code, I use double underlined links to indicate an affiliated link.  This makes it very clear that I have a vested interested in that click.
• I don’t recommend products:  I might review something objectively, but I never do the “I use this to make lots of cash and you need to if you want to succeed” hard sell.  Actually, I do sometimes recommend products, I just don’t use affiliated links.
• How this site makes money: On the “about” page or similar I will put up a site wide policy that explains how the site works.  I will normally also invite my regulars to support the site – something that I find goes down well.  When you are clearly taking the time to create useful content that is proving helpful to your regulars then they won’t mind buying a product through your site – it doesn’t cost them any more.
• Avoid Sponsored Links: Google doesn’t mind people selling links just as long as it is made clear.  When your site starts to do well you will inevitably start to get link requests coming in – often with a promise of a small fee.  I concluded early on that the price on offer wasn’t worth risking the integrity of my site for.  If I like a site, I’ll link to it naturally.

As discussed elsewhere, monitising a blog is nothing to be ashamed of, however your savvy readers will become aware if your site is geared up to extract as much money as possible from readers without providing anything useful.  Ironically you may end up being less successful if you attempt to milk your regulars for every penny they have as you end up trying to squeeze more and more out of fewer and fewer readers.

Building Trust

Ultimately it is up to you what type of site you want to run, do you want to run one of those high pressure sales sites that target vulnerable and susceptible people – convincing them to buy poor quality products that they don’t really need.

Or do you want to build something you will be proud to show your children in years to come?  Something that will grow to be a leading web resource that will command authority and respect from your readers and peers?

I know which I think has the better chance of long term success!

It can take a long time to build up trust with your readers yet it can take one post to throw that all that hard work away.  By being honest, clear and transparent when it comes to discussing your partners you’ll go along way to securing that trust with your readers.

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Blogging has proved a very lucrative business for many, yet others are content to publish for personal enjoyment.

Does making money from blogging harm the quality of your website?  We look at this as part of our 29 debates bloggers have about blogging posts.

Turning Your Blog into a Cash Machine

Let’s be honest, most of us would like a little extra money in our lives, and why not?  Working hard to provide for ourselves and our families is nothing to be ashamed of and an honourable goal.

Unfortunately monetising blogs can be a difficult thing to get right:

• Is the site’s topic suited to generating money?
• Does filling a site with adverts damage its integrity?
• Will the money making drive spoil the quality of the content?

I don’t think there is anything fundamentally wrong with trying to make some extra income from our websites – I obviously do so myself!  But I do think it needs to be done in a measured way.

Note: It can be tempting to squeeze every last promotional opportunity out of your site, but you may destroy the long term potential of your site in the process.

Does my Blog have the potential to Generate Income?

Some sites are much better suited for monitisation than others, but that said, there is normally an angle to be found somewhere.  The simplest way to get started will be with a system like Adsense which will automatically pick out relevant adverts for you, you can then move on to trying to push specific products yourself, or even sell something of your own.

The amount you can make will be a factor of how much traffic your site is getting and what kind of products you are able to promote.  And actually a well targeted site that answers a specific need has the potential to make money without requiring 1000s of daily hits.

In fact I have sites that I run that only get 5-10 people passing by each day, but the site is so highly targeted that one in five of those people will convert.

How Can I Maintain User Confidence?

If you do decide to monitise your blog, and I would suggest that you have a go, make sure you get the balance right.  Most web users are familiar with advertising on websites, those that really hate it chose to block it out, the rest of us don’t mind well targeted adverts – they often highlight products and services that we are actually interested in which is a win-win situation all round.

However I strongly suggest you avoid the following:

• Promoting poor quality products and services.  Associating with such services will just make you look bad, it will make it look like you are just in it for the money (maybe you are?) and aren’t really interested in building a decent website.  Well here at Blogercise we promote the idea of building positive websites and will always advice people to balance the monitisation with creating something you can be proud of.
• Forcing adverts in at every opportunity.  OK, it is true that placing adverts right in front of your visitors will result in higher click through rates, and again if your goal is to just get people to click on ad rather than build a long term user base then perhaps stuffing your site with ads might work for you.
• Putting up insincere content to promote products you don’t even know about.  Your readers aren’t stupid, they will size up your site in a matter of minutes.   They’ll know if your “reviews” have been made up to get some incoming search engine traffic or whether you have genuinely used the product you are talking about.

A Second Income

Building an income from your website is nothing to be ashamed of and by working hard and building something to be proud of you’ll be able to enjoy that extra income knowing that you have earned it.  This is why here at Blogercise we promote the idea of creating decent websites that meet a real need and deliver content to those that want it.

Note: Over monitising a popular website might result in a lower quality site, less visitors and therefore a lower income.

There are plenty of get rich quick schemes out there on the Internet and who knows, maybe some of them might even work for a lucky few! However if you are looking for a long term earner then you’ll need to invest some time and energy into building a decent website.

Gone are the days where we had to hand code pages of HTML, the modern webmaster builds his site using a content management package.  But which is the best software suite?

For more information, check out our content management software article.  And more blogging debates can be answered in our 29 debates bloggers have about blogging series.

WordPress

Lets get straight to the point.  Wordpress is by far the leading free (and most likely beats paid software too) blogging platform available to download right now.  Nothing else quite compares to the full feature set, ease of use and more significantly the huge ever growing user community.

You can’t really go wrong with WordPress!

There are some reasons you might want to chose other systems and we’ll discuss those later in the article but if you have set your sites on running a blog and you’re not sure where to start – just download and install WordPress!  You are very unlikely to regret this choice and running your site on WP is not going to limit your options in the short term.

Heck, Blogercise is WordPress powered so it must be good!  Seriously, have a good look round this site and I hope you agree that it is easy to navigate, looks simple yet smart and presents the information in a professional manner.   Yet I have had to do almost nothing to get this site up and running!  Just a few years ago something like this would have taken months to put together, but I threw this up in an afternoon.  Really.  Obviouly the content has taken many many hours of hard work and careful consideration, but that’s all I’ve had to work on.

The rest just looks after itself.

Hosted Blogs

We have discussed the pros and cons of self hosting in a previous post, so I won’t dwell on this issue here.  However if you don’t want to buy your own domain and rent some “web space” you don’t have to,  check out the following:

• Blogger – the free platform from Google.
• WordPress.com – this is the hosted version of WordPress, it is free and easy but there are some limitations.

Why Would I use an Alternative CMS?

If you are hoping that your new site will be a little more than just a blog then you might want to think about using a CMS that has more flexibility and functionality.  Although WordPress can be used to run all kinds of sites, there are somethings that you’ll struggle to manage without something more specialised.

Consider the following scenarios:

• Looking to run a forum?  There are a couple of forum plugins for WP and I use one myself.  However they are only useful for small sites and I wouldn’t want to run a large community with one.  In this scenario you have a couple of options, either run specialist forum software along side wordpress, or use an integrated content system.
• Want a single login across a range of site features?  The problem with starting to use multiple products, eg a wiki package, a blog, a forum all from different sources is that they are unlikely to play nice together.  A massive advantage of an integrated CMS is that everything is centralised.

Alternative Content Management Systems

So we talked about integrated CMS systems above, here we briely mention some of the options:

• Joomla
• Drupal
• E107

These options are worth a look if you are planning to take your site further that a traditional blog style website.  Each has its own pros and cons and all have their own APIs to help you develop your own plugins and modules.  I have only set up one site using one of the above suites and have to say that I was glad that I did, but in most cases a straightforward blogging platform will meet your needs.

Bloggers

As I hinted earlier on in this article, I would think carefully about what your plans are and whether you will need anything more complex than WordPress.  However if you do want to build a more varied site then have a very careful think about where you want to go as changing your engine later will be time consuming and potentially damaging (although not impossible to do!).

If you are starting out for the first time then I would get going with WordPress and build up from there.

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Previously in our series of 29 blogging debates we talked about the importance of blog comment moderation.

In this article in our series of 29 debates bloggers have about blogging we are going to talk further about interacting with your readers through comments.

How can you best leverage comment posting to get the most from your readers?

How to Adopt a Comment Strategy

One of the many enjoyable aspects of building up a blog is getting to know your readers along the way.  Over time you will hopefully attract some regular readers who share your interest and passion enough to follow each article you right.  In my experience these people initially tend to be bloggers themselves or have a specialist interest in the topic.  But as your blog grows you will attract readers from all corners of the Internet.

Regular readers will have plenty of knowledge and input to share with you and your other readers.

When I grew the largest of my sites I had a policy of replying to every single posted message and I think this really helped as it brought people back for multiple visits.  Over time I found that these regulars began to interact with each other more, soon I found people would:

• Post up additional information on blog posts I had made.  This was great for improving the information on my site.
• Ask and answer reader questions without me having to get involved
• Monitor and report spam comments that got through moderation

When this starts to happen I think it is important that you then don’t drop out of the loop, if a question has been answered already then it seems pointless to answer it a second time, but don’t hold back if you have something extra to add.

Always to listen to your readers, whenever you come across criticism, think carefully about whether the input is actually justified before getting irritated by it.  If you take the time to listen you’ll learn a lot about the people who read your blog which will only help you to make it better.

How Can I Attract More Commenting?

Blogs often start out very quiet on the comment front.  Some seem to attract 100s of messages from a small number of committed readers, others seem to get 1000s of readers who aren’t so keen on interacting.

• Ask for them!  Yes, it can be as simple as having a standard message at the bottom of each post asking people to leave their thoughts.  Web surfers are often bumbling around vaguely trying to research a particular topic.  When they get to the end of the a post they wil begon to think about what to do next and by giving them some options you can influence this decision.  Always make sure you put some further actions in front of your user and the end of any page.
• Allow them “do follow” links.  Often commenters are there to promote their own site, but the majority of blogs will block search engines from following links generated by comment posting.  If you let people know that your links will be followed then this should result in more messages appearing.  On the down side this might all be spam!  Wordpress plugins such as “comment love” will even automatically link to the last blog post of the commenter.
• Get creative.  Come with a post that is all about community input.  Run a survey on your readers favourite breakfast cereal.  This kind of post normally gets people interested and coming back to follow the results, you also get to post up the results down the line.

Should I post Fake Comments?  I’ll be honest, I used to try this back when I first started!  It took a lot of time and I quickly concluded provided very little value.  You are better off investing that time in writing new posts.

Running a blog should be a fun activity (if you don’t enjoy it then go do something else!) and talking with your readers not only helps you to improve your blog but is one of the great things about working on a website.  You get to talk to people from all over the world – all of whom share your same interest and passion.

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Getting back links to a new site can be hard early on, one way to get things kick started is to post material up that is likely to attract attention – and therefore links.  Welcome to the world of linkbait!

But how far should you go when it comes to trying to attract attention? Our 29 debates bloggers have about blogging series continues.

What is Link bait?

Link baiting is the process of creating content to attract links.  This is generally an acceptable practice when it comes to building your websites profile, Googler Matt Cutts has even mentioned on his blog in the past.  Regular readers of Blogercise will however realise I do not promote the creation of content for any other reason than to provide the best possible user experience.

And this is the critical point to remember:  Link baiting need not be a separate activity,  you should be continuously striving to create articles that people will want to read and then share.

Building Respect

There is no doubt that kicking up a storm can get you recognised, and if that is your strategy then I can’t stop you going down that route.  Many bloggers, professionals and celebrities have boosted their public profile though controversy.

If you have read around this site (if nothing else check out our 10 step site building guide) then you will know that the Blogercise way is building websites through honesty and integrity.  If for no other reason that I want to look back at my creations and know that they succeeded on their own merrit.

I am not naive though, for every webmaster who wants to build something to be proud of there are a dozen that want a quick route to easy money.  If this sounds like yourself then you’ll probably not find a great deal of use to you on this site.  But I hope you keep reading and perhaps you’ll see why investing the time might just pay off!

The irony is that many people who turn to the dark side end up working harder and harder but never getting anywhere.

The choice, of course, is yours.

Legal Responsibilities

If you do try to be controversial then please watch that you don’t get yourself on the wrong side of the law.  I am not a lawyer and so can’t offer any advice about what you can or can’t post about people, products or companies but if you think you might be close to crossing a line then please seek professional help.

It is tempting to think we have free speech but actually there are many laws and rules around what you can or can’t say.  Like I said, I can’t offer specific advice but if you start making stories up or inciting hatred then you may find yourself in a lot of trouble.

It might seem that making up a story could be a good way to get links but you might find yourself in hot water if someone makes a formal complaint and gets the layers involved.  Not a risk I’d want to be taking.

Linkbait for the Safe Blogger

My most successful link building exploits have all been around getting a scoop.  If you can be the first to publish a genuine story of high interest within your niche then you are bound to attract attention.  Remember to notify the key players when you put the post up and wait for the links to come in.

This example is a win-win situation whereby I have provided something useful to my readers and the wider blogosphere that will attract attention and linking.  So perhaps we can argue that this isn’t link bait at all, it’s actually about creating a good website that people will want to read and share.

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With Facebook becoming the most visited website, surpassing the mighty Google, for the first time it is clear that the social media phenomena cannot be ignored.

But is it about time bloggers focused on these sites as a primary traffic source instead of the search engines?

This post forms part of our series on 29 debates bloggers have about blogging.

The Social Media Phenomenon

Many so called experts dismissed the new wave of social media networks as a passing fad when they began to gain ground in the first decade of the 21st century.

However they were quickly proved wrong as sites like MySpace, Facebook and the newer micro blogging site Twitter have all become massively popular destinations on the Internet.   Social media sites allow us all to become publishers of our own content and to build connections with like minded people in ways that we have never been able to before.

These connections form an incredibly strong pool of prospective blog readers that you need to think about tapping into.

Using Social Media to Your Advantage

In a previous post in this Blogercise series, I have discussed the benefit of building our own websites.  I talked about how I believe we are better off building our own sites that we own and control – if for no other reason than the site can’t be shut down on the whim of a faceless corporation.

However we can still utilise social networks to build up our sites and send targeted traffic to our blog where hopefully the visitors will become long term readers.

Getting the Right People to Your Site

An early lesson that some new bloggers learn the hard way is to know that not all traffic is equal.  I know some sites that get 1000s of daily visitors yet achieve almost no conversions.  Yet I have small static niche sites that get no more than 10 visitors a day yet make 2 or 3 sales.  That’s a few pounds each and every day 365 days a year for a site that requires no further input.  Repeat that a few times and you can see why website building quickly becomes exciting!

New bloggers often work very hard to get their site into a prime position on a social media site,  the classic example is getting to the front page of Digg.  Achieving this feat will guarantee you a massive, yet short lived, boost in visitors yet normally this not accompanied by a likewise increase in sales.  Unfortunately these sites tend to send over the wrong type of traffic.

There are two types of Internet browser:

• Those sitting at their PC with their wallet on the desk looking for something specific.  They are there to make a purchase and it’s all about who that purchase will be made through.
• And then there are people who are just clicking around aimlessly, no matter how good your sales pitch these people just aren’t going to be customers.

Why do Search Engines Work?

The genius behind the search engine business model is that the engine provider, yes that normally means Google, knows exactly what you are looking for and can therefore target you with highly relevant advertising.  If you type in “buy flared trousers” then it is highly likely that you are looking to buy flared trousers!  If you are a trouser retailer then these are the people you want to target.

So by targeting your site around certain keywords you can have a large influence over the type of traffic that the search engines send over to you.  This can be much harder to do on social media websites.

Primarily my goal is to create useful sites that meet the needs of my readers, this is the Blogercise way!  However my next objective is to think about how search engines will respond to my site, and finally I will use social media outlets to communicate with people on the net – which is after all their primary purpose!

How Can I use Social Media Sites to boost my Blog?

When you get things right however, social traffic can prove very useful to you.  You just need to think carefully about what you are doing as you may end up wasting some serious effort.

Don’t be one of these fools who follow as many Twitter users as they can each day in the hope that the same people will follow them back.  I have lost count of how many times I’ve seen accounts with 20,000 followers and the same following.  Of course no one is really paying attention to the fleeting transient tweets that flutter by and I bet most of them are automated bots following other automated bots!  What a waste of time for all involved.

Here are some tips on how to use social media networks to drive traffic to your blog:

• If you are a twitter user then follow me because you are interested in this site and what I have to say and for no other reason.   By keeping your twitter list targeted people might actually care about what you are writing and take the time to read or even respond to your tweets.
• Facebook groups are my favourite tool of the moment.  Earlier in this post I talked about the dangers of chasing high volume meaningless traffic.  But groups allow you to focus people around a specific interest.  From here you can link to your blog, build your brand, or hopefully both.
• Flickr is a site that is often left out of these types of discussions.  But again this is a site I have used successfully to build contacts and drive traffic.  Almost everyone has a digital camera these days, whether on their phone, a compact, or a full on SLR beast.  Inviting people to contribute pictures of a specific product gets people engaged and once a group begins to grow it can be another hub delivering people to your site.

Personally I focus my attention on search engines, but an ongoing presence on the major social sites will definitely do you many favours.  Besides they can be great fun and you know what, you can even make new friends!

Just remember to focus on building quality meaningful connections rather than chasing huge quantities of unqualified traffic that will do nothing (other than crash your site!).

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Most blogging systems allow your readers to leave their own thoughts at the end of a post, but should you let people post everything and anything or should you filter out the good comments from the bad?

In this article, as part of our series on 29 blogging debates we look at how you should treat the comments left on your blog.

Talk With Readers, Not At Them

Interacting with your readers is one of the core attractions of running a website.  I have chatted to hundreds of fascinating people and have even made some good friends since I became a webmaster.

Comments are the Window to Your Reader’s Soul

In many cases the little comment box that appears at the end of each post is the only connection you have with your readers so it would be a shame to ignore it.   However opening up your website brings with it some problems:

• Other webmasters will try to use your comment area to promote their own site.  There only intent is to get visitors from your site to theirs
• People will inevitably post rude and unhelpful comments
• Automated spam bots will tirelessly post rubbish to your comment area day and night

But don’t let that put you off, the pros outweigh the cons and as you will see, there are ways to deal with these problems.

Should I Censor My Blog Comments?

I have a policy of posting all comments that appear to be have been entered in good faith.  That is they are posted by people who have something to say about the post, they want to add something to the discussion and not just from people who haven’t even read the article and are most likely trying to promote themselves.

Note: This does include posting negative comments and criticism, sometimes bloggers get quite spiteful messages on their blogs, other times it is very constructive and helpful.  Either way I tend to let the entries stand.

One area you should always be careful about is your legal responsibilities.  In some parts of the world, such as here in the UK, publishers (that’s you!) are jointly responsible for content.  So that means if you actively chose to post illegal user generated content you could find yourself on the wrong side of the law.  In particular you should watch out for potential libellous comments.  If in doubt – consult professional legal advice.

How Should I Deal with Negative Comments on My Blog?

First of all, never take the comments personally.  By posting your thoughts up to the Internet you are potentially sharing your ideas with thousands of readers and at least one of them (most likely many of them) will disagree with you.

There is just no way you will be able to appeal to all of the people all of the time!

If you really can’t bare the thought of being criticised then blogging isn’t for you!

When the inevitable happens, you need to keep your cool and act rationally.  By all means respond to the comment but think carefully before doing so.  It is advisable to show your reader that you have listened to them, taken their thoughts on board and although you might not agree with them they should still be allowed to have a say.

What you don’t want to do is enter into the classic Internet style argument (also known as the flame war).

I have seen many pointless arguments pan out over the years, some that have gone on for weeks and weeks.  Often several parties are continuously posting up “clever” responses within minutes of each other.   It is sad to see so much time and effort going into such futile inane debates – they could have spent the time Blogging!  Positive and constructive debate should be encouraged but when a thread goes sour – do yourself a favour and close it to further posting!

Spotting Comment Spam

Here are some top tips for spotting comment spam:

• Does the comment actually reference your post?  Spammers have got much better at creating generic comments that look like they might be genuine.
• If your blog accepts links, have a look to see what they are linking to.  If it is anything to do with betting, pharmaceuticals, etc then it can be ditched.  If in doubt have a look at the site – genuine content and community?  Let the comment stay.  Nothing but affiliate links and ads?  Bin it.
• Is the comment Nonsense?  In many cases the comment will not make any sense at all, don’t think twice about trashing the posting!

If in doubt, bin it.  Having spammy looking comment around your site makes it look like you don’t really care about keeping it clean and tidy.  A blog that looks unloved will be far less attractive to new readers.

How Do I Moderate Comments?

Here on the Blogercise site I have a very strict comment policy and in fact I might turn comments off entirely as I haven’t really had time to approve any comments.

Unfortunately any website remotely connected to  ”making money online” attracts a great deal of comment spam from people looking for a quick win. Ironically if these people took the time to email/tweet me and talk to me (as many of you do) you’d find I would be happy to talk to you and would see if I could put up a meaningful link back to your site.  But no, that would be too much effort!

On other sites I either:

• Leave comments off from the start.  If the site has been built just to get people on and off quickly then there is no real need for comments.  I like these sites to be zero maintenance so I don’t want to be checking for valid comments on them.  Or,
• Carefully moderate and manually approve posts.  I only let through posts that look to be from genuine readers of the site.  Anything that doesn’t make sense or consists of just a one line “nice site” gets binned instantly.

Once a comment is posted I always take the time to respond.  If it is positive feedback I thank them for their thoughts and try to show further interest.  If it is a negaive comment the first thing I do is think carefully about whether they have a valid  point.

I’ve actually made some big improvements thanks to criticism that has come though.  If many readers are saying the same thing then maybe they have a point?

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