Popularity: 1, Gravity: 380.704, Percent Per Sale: 75, Earned Per Sale: 31.1206, Commission: 75, Referred: 91

Popularity: 1, Gravity: 274.543, Percent Per Sale: 75, Earned Per Sale: 18.638, Commission: 75, Referred: 95

Popularity: 1, Gravity: 263.232, Percent Per Sale: 60, Earned Per Sale: 78.2712, Commission: 60, Referred: 82

Popularity: 1, Gravity: 520.562, Percent Per Sale: 50, Earned Per Sale: 35.3746, Commission: 50, Referred: 82

Popularity: 1, Gravity: 192.102, Percent Per Sale: 70, Earned Per Sale: 50.3683, Commission: 70, Referred: 78

Popularity: 1, Gravity: 555.42, Percent Per Sale: 75, Earned Per Sale: 16.5493, Commission: 75, Referred: 94

Popularity: 2, Gravity: 180.437, Percent Per Sale: 75, Earned Per Sale: 26.0351, Commission: 75, Referred: 96

Popularity: 2, Gravity: 375.461, Percent Per Sale: 75, Earned Per Sale: 24.049, Commission: 75, Referred: 89

Popularity: 2, Gravity: 399.109, Percent Per Sale: 75, Earned Per Sale: 17.1636, Commission: 75, Referred: 83

Popularity: 2, Gravity: 156.411, Percent Per Sale: 75, Earned Per Sale: 22.6571, Commission: 75, Referred: 96

Image by: re birf

Have you experienced such thing while blogging? Well, I am sure you have. This is called blogger’s block and is a normal thing and happens to every blogger including the top tier bloggers.

I was going through the same shit for last few days. I spent hours in front of screen and produced nothing. I am writing this post to help anyone who experiences or has experienced blogger’s block while blogging.Although a lot has been said on the subject on many blogs but I want to add fresh perspectives to it.

What causes blogger’s block?

Blogger’s block can be compared to a similar situation occurring in writers called writer’s block.The causes of these two similar phenomena are also same.
According to wikipedia the most common cause of writer’s block is stress, anxiety or fear. Here are the lines I have quoted from wikipedia-

Writer’s block can be closely related to depression and anxiety, two mood disorders that reflect environmentally caused or spontaneous changes in the brain’s frontal lobe.
Source

Apart from stress , partial or no research on the topic , monotonous life styles and loss of motivation may also lead to blogger’s block. Other less important cause is blogging in a niche that is not of your interest.( I say it less important because most of the bloggers blog in their area of interest)

I am telling you all these things because it is necessary to identify the cause in order to beat the blogger’s block phenomenon. With this said, let us now head over to the steps to follow to beat this.

How to beat blogger’s block?

The things you do while going through this phenomenon can either make things better or worsen it. For example, getting panicked in this situation can worsen it.So ,it is necessary to face it in tactical way to get rid of it at soonest possible. Here are some of the tips that you can follow to beat the blogger’s block phenomenon.

Don’t panic just relax-

As I have said earlier,stress and fear are the triggering events of blogger’s block. More fear and stress will make the situation last longer. Relax yourself. Do the things you love to do. Play your favorite game or watch TV and movies or go out for a walk or eat your favorite dishes in your favorite restaurant. Just do what you love to do. This will dispel your fear and relieve the stressed situation to some extent.

Change environment-

I live in a flat located in the heart of my hospital campus. So, there is much din and bustle going on near me everytime. Although I am accustomed to it but sometimes I am not able to concentrate in this surrounding. This is the time when I go out in a peaceful environment with my laptop.
Your surroundings has direct impingement on your brain’s activity.Changing your environment has a positive impact on your mind. This freshens your mind and you can concentrate better in the new surroundings.

Change your writing schedule-

Mind works at different pace at different times in a day .Normally, brain slows down after long day’s work and it works most efficiently when you have just woke up in the morning. You should select a time that tunes up well with your brain’s activity. For example, I work most efficiently during night when everything around me has calmed down and my mind works well in this environment. Most others feel energized in morning when they are fresh like morning petals.

Just think when your mind is fresh and you feel like you are energized from within. This is the time when you should start writing your posts.

Prepare yourself beforehand-

Blogger’s block is like Tsunami, you never know when it appears before you. It is nice to plan your future posts beforehand. So that, you have ample ideas to work on with even when you are going through blogger’s block kinda thing.

Always take a pen and a notebook with you ,so that, you are able to note down every idea that comes to your mind. It is easy to lose future post ideas just because you were not able to note it when it came.I have lost many ideas by not doing this.

Now just start looking into your notebook when you experience blogger’s block. The ideas noted down in your notebook can help you break loose of mind block. This can help you craft a post even when you are going through blogger’s block.

Engage youself in free writing-

Free writing is a writing technique in which a person impulsively write whatever comes to his mind for set period of time without regard to spelling, grammar or topic.A brief period of free writing helps fight blogger’s block and helps the brain to tone up. Free writing can be regarded as an exercise of mind.

Schedule a time for free writing session on a daily basis. You don’t have to do it for hours, a 15-20 minutes session of free writing is enough. Apart from beating blogger’s block it also helps in preventing it and sharpening your writing skills.

Read your favorite blogs and visit different forums of your niche-

If writer’s block comes from a lack of new ideas, attempts to spark creativity by visiting your favorite blogs and different forums of your niche can be useful.The posts on blogs and forums can trigger new idea formation. This has happened to me time and again.Many of the ideas on this blog has emanated while reading other blogs or feeds in google reader or forums.

Ideas need a triggering event to come through. Of course ,sometimes they may come spontaneously but most of the times they are result of some event like, going through a post on a blog or a thread in a forum.

Throw negative thoughts out of your mind-

Blogger’s block also occur due to too many negative thoughts hovering in your mind.If this is the case with you ,you have to get rid of them as soon as possible.I know getting rid of negative thoughts is easy said than done. But some of the things that you can do to throw out negative thoughts are-

• Focus on the good things that has occured to you. Has a reader appreciated your work or did you get many votes on some of your posts in social media sites?Just remember those moments and soon you will start thinking in positive way.
• Read the top posts you have written. What are the posts that got maximum coments or managed to get extra votes on social media sites? Read out your own posts loudly and soon you may start feeling flow of positive energy in yourself.

Research if you already have an idea-

Sometimes blogger’s block doesn’t occur because of lack of ideas but because of failure to expand upon the existing ideas to make up a post. This usually points lack of research.In this case you have to do a thorough research to beat the blogger’s block. Google the topic ,read relevant articles and visit different forums and sites to make an in depth research.

Organise the points once you are finished researching.Many a times you are not able to write just because you are not able plot your post. Organising your points can help you to beat the blogger’s block in this case.

Chat with other bloggers in your niche-

A nice and productive chat with other bloggers can trigger your idea engine to get some ideas. Recently I had a nice chat with one of my friends (who is also a blogger but doesn’t blogs in my niche). We were discussing the cases where bloggers were sued.It sparked of an idea and I finished writing the post- “How to blog without getting sued?“

So, getting involved in a chat does help in beating the blogger’s block. Apart from triggering your idea engine it also helps in relaxing your mind.

Is there anything to add?

Everyone has different tactics to get rid of blogger’ block. Things I discussed above are the ones that I practice. I know many of you can add some more tactics to beat blogger’s block. You are most welcome to discuss it if you have one. It is highly appreciated.

Although this advancement has been quite exceptional but the so called ‘freedom of speech’ has also created situations where bloggers got sued because of it (mostly due to misuse of it). The fine line between being critical and being defamatory is obscure and has added to the plight of bloggers. As a result, the cases of bloggers getting sued has been on rise since last couple of years.

For past few weeks I have been studying some of the cases where bloggers were sued and came to a conclusion that in most of the cases a blogger can avoid the trauma of getting into the courtroom by following some simple steps. This is what I am going to talk off in today’s post.

Take care of following points while blogging to avoid getting sued-

1) Don’t write defamatory posts-
While as a human being every blogger has right to criticise a person or a company ,criticism based on false facts is something you should refrain from doing. Furthermore, if you are criticising someone and some company time and again on your blog, you are inviting a problem.

In 2007, a blogger named Joe Albero was sued because he made fun of Salisbury police chief time and again in his blog ,Salisbury news blog. Police chief, Allen Webster sued him because he repeatedly made fun of him sometimes calling him “Chief Jack and coke”. (Source)

Take another example, in July 2008, one of the blogger from Malaysia, Raja Petra was sued by two army officials when he declared the officials to be involved in murder of Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu.The blogger made this statement without backing his statement with citations and proofs from reliable sources and did it repeatedly on his blog. He was charged RM 1 million in damages. (source)

In both these cases bloggers were sued because they criticised someone and the statements were based on either false facts or without citations and proofs from reliable sources.Furthermore, they did it repeatedly on their blog.

So, to not get litigated for defamation you need to-

1. Criticise someone only when you have solid backings in the form of solid citations, quotes or proofs from authority sources.
2. Refrain from criticising someone repeatedly on your blog.
3. Refrain from making false statements on your blog.

Don’t infringe copyright policies-
While researching the topic last week, I found copyright infringement to be second most common cause of getting sued.

The hottest example of this would be perezhilton.com. The author was sued by a Los Angeles based photo agency company, X17 Inc. for illegally using some of the photographs on the blog. The company charged the blog author, Mario Lavandeira with accusations of using 51 images without permission , payment or credit. (Source)

Another example, Britney spears’ label record sued a Los Angeles based popular gossip blogger for illegally posting tracks from her album even before it was released. The company demanded unspecified damages plus legal cost for this copyright infringement. (Source)

The lessons to take from these two cases are-

1. Read the copyright policies before using any rich media on your blog.
2. Don’t indulge yourself in plagiarism.
3. Take permission of copyright holder before using something in your blog.

Don’t disclose other people’s secret-
While it is OK to break news of your niche, it is not good to disclose secrets of either an individual’s personal life or a company’s policies or product secrets.

There was a case when the computer giant company, Apple charged an owner of blog to divulge secrets of the products even before the products were officially launched. Although the company and blogger agreed upon a settlement after 2 years but the mental trauma that the blogger would have suffered during these two years can be imagined. ( Source)

Although divulging someone’s secret can give you overnight popularity but it would be nice to not indulge in such things to avoid future problems.

Take a close look at the comments appearing on your blog-
Once the famous blogger, Aaron Wall of SeoBook.com was sued for the comments that appeared in his blog. One of the Las Vegas based company, trafficpower.com charged Aaron Wall because some of the comments submitted by readers were defamatory for the company.

Some visitors to Mr. Wall’s blog had posted comments complaining about what they said were unprofessional business practices by Traffic-Power.com, while others said they didn’t think the tools sold by Traffic-Power.com were effective in boosting search-engine rankings.
Source

As a blog owner you are responsible for the things that appear on your blog (including comments). So, to avoid getting sued for comments appearing on your blog you should-

1. Moderate all the comments that are inappropriate or possibly defamatory and harsh.
2. Disallow anonymous comments on your blog.
3. Make a comment policy for your blog stating the types of comment that are allowed or not allowed on your blog.

Don’t write anti-government posts if your government forbids it-
There has been cases where bloggers were sued and tried for writing anti-government posts. While it is allowed to criticise government policies in most of the countries, it can’t be said for all countries of the world. If writing against government policies is not allowed in your country , you should not write about it to avoid getting into a problem.Please make a note that the freedom of speech I talked about earlier is not followed in all countries of the world.

Although there has been situations when bloggers has been sued for quite absurd and obscure reasons but by following the points I discussed above you can avoid running into a problem in most circumstances.

With this said, let us now jump off to know some basic SEO.

What is SEO and how a blogger can benefit from it?
Although this might not be a difficult question to answer for many of you but let me answer this for someone who has just joined the internet world and has no idea about it.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In its simplest form it is the things you do on your site and off it to get high search engine rankings. Search engines rank websites by taking certain factors into account. SEO is just knowing those factors and applying that knowledge to attain a high search engine rankings.

Now let us take the other part of the question. How SEO can benefit a blogger?
Well, the success of a blog depends upon the traffic it gets.You are a successful blogger if you are getting more hits on your blog.Furthermore, search engines are one of the best sources of traffic. So, by attaining a high search engine ranking you can assure you find readers to your blog.

So How can I optimize my blog for search engines?

As I have said earlier, search engine optimization is a vast topic to deal with in one post. But in most of the cases a basic knowledge of SEO is just enough to get high rankings.Here are some of the points that you should know to make your blog more search engine friendly.

• Do a solid keyword research- Keywords are the words or phrases that are used by people to make searches. A keyword used time and again to make searches and with less website using it in their pages is better. Now, to find such a keyword you have to do a keyword research.Here is the link of the post where I have discussed keyword research in some detail. Choose three keywords for your post ,one primary and other two secondary.
• Use your keyword in title ,sub-title and uniformly in the content- Titles are the part that get most attention by the search engines. So, it would always be good idea to use your primary keyword in title.Furthermore, use your secondary keywords in subtitles and all of them through out the content.
• Make use of html tags- Search engines take a close look at the things written in bold, italic or in heading. So, make use of bold and italic Html tags to emphasize your important points. Just make sure your important lines contain your keywords.
• Add fresh content regularly- Search engines in general and Google in particular love fresh added content. A site/blog with regularly updated posts get some preference by search engines.So, write more content and add pages to your blog regularly.
• Make navigation easy- Search engines (and also humans) love easily navigable sites. Make sure you have interlinked your related posts with each other. Navigation makes crawling easy and also that your pages are crawled properly. Other things you can do is, list your top and popular posts from your sidebar.Details in the post-”Organic search engine optimization part-3- internal linking“.
• Don’t use java and flash overly- Unllike humans search engines are blind to javascripts and flash. So, keep use of javascripts and flash to bare minimum.Furthermore, java and flash cause delay in page loading this will cause improper crawling of your blog and is also irritating for most visitors.
• Build links for your website- A link from other website is seen as a vote to your page by search engines. More votes to your blog mean you have worth content and deserve a high high search engine ranking.Furthermore, a vote (link) from an authority site has more weightage than a link from ‘C’ grade site.Links increase Pagerank of your blog which is one of the metric used by Google to rank websites. For details read the post- “Pagerank Explained.” Read the post ” 10 powerful ways to build links” for details of link building.
• Use keywords in the anchor text- Anchor texts are the words used to link a page from another one.Having your keyword in your anchor text is seen as search engines as the page being relevant for that keyword. So, instead of using ‘click here’ or ‘here’ use your keywords as anchor text.

I think this much is the basics of the search engine optimization every blogger should know. I would like to say here that often there is temptation to write with your keywords and search engines in centre of your mind. My word of advice here would be to write content for humans and use your keywords in a way that it does’t interferes with the user experience.

Still you wonder why the traffic is not coming .Here is the solution.One of the easiest way to get traffic to blog is through Stumble Upon. The traffic from StumbleUpon is quick and unlike other social media sites you don’t require a lot of votes to get visitors.

You just submit your blog or blog posts and manage to get some votes and see visitors coming to your blog. Another good thing with stumbleUpon is traffic is sustained.This means you will get traffic as long as people keep on giving thumbs up to your posts.

The video below shows how you can generate traffic to your blog through stumbleUpon. This is somewhat long video (9:54 minutes) but is worth watching.Hope you would enjoy watching this one.

The video was prepared by MakeMoneyOnline and was taken from Youtube.The video was originally prepared for Web2Marketer.com.

But before you watch these videos let me give you some basic ideas about Stumble Upon.

Stumble Upon is a social bookmarking site and a way to randomly discover and surf col websites on the net.The site has a virtual community behind it who discover ,vote and review the pages and based upon votings and reviews the websites are presented to an user.

So how as a blogger you will be benefitted from stumble upon. You can benefit by three ways-

1. Discover cool websites- For being a blogger you have to be a learner first. You will get immense learning opportunity here by discovering some websites or pages having ocean of knowledge on almost all topics.
2. Network with others- Success as a blogger depends upon your networking capabilities with both your readers and other bloggers in your niche.Stumble Upon provides you with excellent opportunity to network with like minded people.
3. Traffic building opportunity- Stumble Upon can be used to get instant traffic to your blog.One of the best features of this social media site is it gives quick and good results in terms of traffic.You can get hundreds of visitors even if you manage to get only 2-3 votes from your friends or other members of the community.(this is a clue)

Now just watch these videos to get started with stumble upon.

Video by Mauibob33 and taken via YouTube.This video was originally prepared for RecognizedExpert.com

The video below shows how to use the Stumble Upon toolbar.This is 2.43 minutes video and worth watching if you are a beginner. The video was prepared by casttv and was taken from YouTube.

First let me give you some stats of my Twitter usage during the week. At the time of writing this post , I had made 170 updates (tweets) ,I have 57 people following me and I am following 32 people. I got 12 @ replies and sent 17 . I got 4 DMs (direct messages) and sent out 4 to others.These numbers are not great but since I have been there only for a week and mostly as bystander, so, these numbers are all expected.

During these one week I noticed some specific type of tweets getting me more followers than others. Furthermore, this has been a repetitive phenomenon ,meaning this phenomenon has been reproducible time and again. This led me to think that there certainly is some correlation between tweets and follower number.

With that said, I would now move on to the things I have observed.
The first surge in the followers number came in when I tweeted a famous humorous quote by Albert Einstein.Here is the screenshot of the tweet I am talking about.

I got 10 followers within an hour of posting the quote. I wondered ,if that was due to the quote I just posted. I was not sure of it. So, I posted another humorous quote to check if it was the earlier quote that caused the surge.Here is the screenshot of that another tweet.

This one got me 8 followers about half an hour after it was posted.

So,I was wondering what caused these two tweets to get some followers? Well, I am not sure. But my obvious guess is , these tweets were humorous in nature and humorous things are quite popular in social media. I guess, the followers picked this up from public timeline and followed me because they found those tweets entertaining.

Now take a look at the screenshots of these two tweets that were posted hours after the earlier ones.

These two tweets were made at an interval of an hour between them.The “blogging news” tweet was earlier to go.With this one I got 7 followers within half an hour. Another thing that I noted with this one was most of the followers were bloggers and most said they were passionate about blogging in their profiles.

Now I think you are correlating it well. By using the word “blogging news” , I got followers who were bloggers. My explanation for this one is- these followers made twitter search using the term “blogging” or “blogging news” and saw my tweet there, got interested and followed me afterwards( I am not sure of my explanation though).

Now take the case of “twitter news” tweet (screenshot above). This one caused the steepest spike in followers count. It got me 17 followers just after it was posted.(May be because it involved three celebrities- “Obama” ,”Britney Spears” and “Twitter”. Furthermore, it was about a news that was red hot when it was posted.

I posted another newsy material to test this hypothesis further. This time I tweeted this news-

Although in terms of numbers it didn’t bring me more followers ( I got 4 subscribers after this one) but I noted an interesting thing here. This time 3 out of those 4 followers were interested in Search engines and SEO (the news I tweeted was about google). I think you are getting the correlation right.

Conclusion-
The number of Tweeter followers increases when you tweet about something that is popular in social media. In my case it was humour and breaking news. Furthermore , you get targeted followers if you just tweet about the topic you are interested in. In my case I got bloggers as followers when I tweeted about blogging news and Search engine marketers when I tweeted about Google.

P.S.- These datas are based on my usage for past one week only. This certainly is not reliable and it has to be supported by further datas. I will keep you updated on how it goes. In the meantime, I would like to get some feedback from you about your experiences with twitter and some correlation between your tweets and followers if you have seen it happen.

Image by: Mykl Roventin

Twitter has shown tremendous growth last year and tweeting phenomena has taken over every other social media site. I have become a part of Twitter community only recently and I have discovered some areas where Twitter can be beneficial from a blogger’s perspective. This is what I am going to deal in here today.( I have also posted a video at the end of the post on the topic and hope you would enoy watching this.)

OK, then, let’s discover the 8 reasons why a blogger should be on Twitter?

Networking opportunity-

In some ways blogging is like running a business. Just like businesses make relations with their customers and prospects ,a blogger has to interact with his readers. Twitter can be used as a platform to communicate with your readers and also with other fellow bloggers in your niche.

You can have a nice chit chat with others or answer reader’s questions or even ask questions to others. Tremendous !! I mean ,you can do miracles with those 140 characters in terms of building relationship.

Updating your readers-

You can make use of Twitter to update your readers. You can share your latest posts with them by twitting the link. Or you can share a link of a nice article you just found while surfing or you can share the breaking news with your fellow tweeterers.
Just see, how easily you can update your readers about the latest happenings in your niche.Isn’t this fantastic?

Learning opportunities-

I have found some great articles when someone else tweeted about it and I feel ,I couldn’t have found those articles Googling.
So, you can also get some learning opportunities through Twitter.Afterall a blogger has to learn before he delivers.

Posting ideas for future-

A nice chit chat can transform into an idea for your future post. Although this hasn’t happened to me yet but I have heard some bloggers talking about getting ideas from a tweet or communication they had on the Twitter.

Making new friends-

Just like any other social media site, you can make friends on twitter from areas which are out of your reach. You can track other people’s conversations and befriend someone who is involved in useful and interesting conversation.

Finding new reader-

Although I am using twitter for last few days only, but Twitter has provided me with some visitors.The numbers are understandably not great right now but I expect some more visitors to my blog once I become more involved.

Traffic from twitter is usually achieved by tweeting about one of your posts. You can also request your friends to tweet about your posts (not every one only those which are interesting).You never know when some of your post goes viral this way.So, twitter can also be beneficial in increaseing hits on your blog.

Tracking conversations about your blog-

You can track the conversations involving your blog.You can know what people are saying about your blog and this can be a nice feedback to improve your blog.
This is done by making use of the twitter search.Type in your blog’s url or title and see what people are saying about your blog. Easiest way to get feedback from a community, isnt it?

Networking on the move-

Imagine ,you are in a restaurant eating delicious recipes and something interesting happens around you.Now, if you are on any social media other than twitter you have to rush to your computer or nearest cafe to share the event. But with twitter you can share the incident instantly using your mobile phone.
From a bloggers perspective, you don’t lose contact with your readers even when you are on a holiday or in a train or plane.

Here is one of the videos that effectively answers the question – ‘why you should use Twitter?’. I find this video extremely beneficial and interesting. The video has been prepared by jeffBT and was taken from youtube. Jeff is a young entrepreneur and runs the site besttechie.net. Hope you would enjoy and learn from this video.

image by- Juhansonin

While running those blogs I learnt a lot about driving traffic to new blog and this is what I am going to discuss in this post.I have learnt these tips from my earlier experiences as well as by taking a look at activities of other bloggers in the blogosphere.

Indeed, it is quite a difficult task to drive traffic to a new blog.You don’t get anything from search engines as a new blog is never ranked higher or may be not even indexed. You might not get direct traffic and links from other blogs as word about a new blog is never out until a few weeks (or even months) has elapsed since starting it.

Timing of promotion of a new blog is important-

Timing of starting blog promotion is very important. In my opinion you should not jump off to a promotion campaign until you have published 20-25 pillar posts .By being early in promotion you might disappoint the visitors if they find just 1 or 2 meaningful posts on your blog.
So, my advice here would be to accumulate some quality content and then get your hands into the promotion.

Having said this, I would now set off quickly to actual tips.

Tip #-1- Announce your new blog from an existing blog-

According to one of the surveys conducted by Technorati, vast majority of bloggers write on more than one blogs. So, I will presume that most of you already have a blog.You can just capitalise on your existing blog to drive traffic to the newer one.

Take an example, Just about a few weeks ago Darren (the man behind Problogger) launched his new blog- TwiTip.com.And guess what, he announced his new blog from Problogger.net. Now, see the results.At the time of writing this post, Twitip.com has 3529 subscribers.This,I think, is enormous figure for a blog just about a few weeks old. You can yourself watch this tip in action.

Of course, majority of you don’t have that much reader base as Darren but even 50- 100 visitors coming to your new blog matters.
Alternatively, you may also place a banner-link of your new blog on your older blog.

Tip #2- Be a guest blogger in an already established blog-

Recently I came across a very nice but relatively new blog- howtomakemyblog.com.This blog is written by a very nice guy Marko. The blog came to my knowledge because Marko featured as as a guest blogger at probloggr.net.

Here is that guest post I am talking about. According to Marko ,he got 287 visitors from that guest post and also 60 subscribers just after his post was published (source). Now, these figures might not sound like great but it is really great figure for a blog which is relatively new. At the time of writing this post Marko has more than 200 subscribers to his blog.

My conclusion on this is, a new blog requires an initial offshoot to take off in the blogosphere and I reckon guest posts to be the fastest and relatively easier way to provide that off shoot.

Tip #3- Start commenting on related and well established blogs-

Commenting is the easiest method to drive traffic to a blog. Although you won’t get flood of visitors to your blog by commenting but by being a consistent comment maker you can gradually build traffic to your blog. Just take care of following points while commenting-

1. Comment on blogs with high readership
2. Be first to comment on a post.
3. Make your comments useful and unique
4. Make your comments eye catching by making use of bold and italic tags.

More details on comment making in this post- “How to master the art of comment making on other blogs?“

Tip #4- Make full use of social media-

Web 2.0 has already taken its full effect and it would be insane not to use social media sites in the era of web 2.0. One of the biggest reason why I am a fan of the social media sites is because they give instant results. You submit your pages to these sites and manage to get some votes and booom, you start seeing a lot of visitors coming to your pages.

Again I will take the example of Twitip.com. One of the reasons why twitip.com took off too quickly is because Darren made use of his strong profiles on social media sites to drive traffic to this blog. I have often seen Darren voting his posts on Stumble Upon. Furthermore, he always announces his new posts on Twitter. Here is the screenshot of one of the updates Darren made on Twitter-

Now, Darren has more than 25,000 followers on Twitter and announcing his new post updates to those thousands of followers means thousands of visitors to his blog.

Apart from Stumble upon and twitter many other social sites are there on internet and making use of these sites is an excellent way to generate some traffic to your blog. Also a blog needs to have an unique content to get viral in these sites but I have seen many average and some below average posts also getting some traffic from social media sites.

Tip #5- Advertise through Adwords-

Personally I don’t prefer this method but many bloggers advertise their blogs during early days and once they accumulate some readers they pull off those ads. This can be an excellent way to drive traffic to anew blog but it is not free and might not be suited for many of us.

These are a few ways a new blog generates some traffic. Driving traffic to a new blog is pretty difficult undertaking but it can be achieved by keeping yourself motivated and trying hard. The initial times are hardest in a bloggers life and if you win this situation ,I am sure you can cruise along nicely later.

I have learnt a lot in 2008 and my next move in 2009 would be to capitalize on this knowledge to make my blog more worthy than before.I jotted down some of my mistakes ,experiences and some experiments that I havn’t done yet or didn’t get time to work out.

I spent about 4 hrs. thinking over the issue and came up with a big fat list of 56 things which I need to do in the coming year (the list will grow as the year passes on).Next, I spent about one extra hour to arrange the list according to priority.

Today in this post I would talk about my top 5 plans for 2009. I am not sure how many of you would be benefitted from my plannings but I think some of you might get some ideas from this post.

Here comes my top priority-

1) Regular and frequent posting-
This is in top of my agenda. My posting frequency and more importantly regularity has been dismal all the year round in 2008. I have always adviced everyone to be regular in posting but I myself has not acted on my own advice. I can tell you, this is real bad feeling.(I have no excuses to make though)

In 2009, I will be getting some relieving from work load off my shoulders and I am quite serious to act on my own advice. Still ,I will not be able to maintain the daily post frequency but yes, it will be around 3-4 posts a week.

2) More laser targeted but short posts-
In 2008, I have written pretty long posts. Most of my posts are of 1000 words or longer. This has also been a reason why my post frequency has been so poor in 2008. I never cared about the post length in 2008 but I am planning to get more serious over it.

While I will still write long pithy posts atleast once a week ,my focus in 2009 would be laser targeted short posts discussing one issue at a time. Don’t worry though, the short posts still will be of great value.I will not compromise with the quality.

3) No monetization in 2009-
I will not monetize my blog in the coming year at least until August. I want to focus my attention in growing the blog next year.I don’t want to dissipate my energy in monetization ,rather I am willing to apply my full energy in growing my blog.

I have some plans to grow my blog and those will take some time to work on. I will pore whole of my energy working on those plan. Money is still, no no for me !!

4) More twittering-
Twitter has been the biggest sensation in 2008. According to one of the stats most of the Twitter users (about 70%) registered in 2008 and about 5000-10,000 new users join it per day.

I am seeing Twitter as one of the places where I can find new readers for my blog as well as network with those who already are readers. I have registered an account in Twitter a few months back but I have never been active there.

Next year, I am planning to do some Twittering.I am checking out some tools and plugins to make Twittering more fun and productive.By the way, you can follow me on Twitter if you desire to get connected with me there.

5) A better blog design-
In offline world the first impression is created by your face or the way you dress yourself or the way you walk. But on the internet, you don’t have a face to show . The design of your blog is what that creates the initial impression about you and your blog.

I have decided to revamp my blog design to make it more professional while retaining the simplicity. I hve already changed the template of my blog and I am working to give a tinge of professionalism in it.

These are my top priorities in the coming year. The list may grow in coming few days but for now this is it !!

Image by: Dabawenya

Writing content is not an easy task specially when you are burdened with loads of expectations from your readers. But this can be made easy by following the basic steps every expert writers talk off. The process of writing can be divided into three steps-

1. Pre-writing- Things you do before writing
2. Writing- Things you do during writing
3. Post-writing- Things you do after writing

These basic steps apply to all kinds of writing like, fiction writing, journal writing and even blog writing. Following these steps can make your posts better, well laid out and interesting for your readers. But don’t expect things to happen in seconds or overnight because although these steps are essential ,practice also plays its part to make your writing better.So, if you just write more and more with these basic steps in mind you can make a good writer in yourself.

I hope you are getting what I mean to say. In very short, These basic steps plus a lot of practice makes your writing rise above the level of mediocrity. Furthermore, while I can tell a bit about these three steps I have listed above, practicing is something that is completely under your control. So, just take a look at these steps as I describe them below and start practicing. Let us start with the first step- Pre-writing.

Pre-writing-

Pre-writing is the thing you do before you start writing the post. This consists a variety of things like, choosing a topic, researching, outlining and researching the keywords. Pre-writing can be considered as the foundation of your post. Without this you may fail in your endeavour. Let us take look at the things you do before writing a post-

Find a topic or an idea to write about-

Every posts or any writing starts with an idea or topic. An unique idea or a well sought for topic is admired and others are just overlooked. So, try to choose a topic that people are looking for or if you have an unique idea in your mind just go on with it.

One of the finest way to do this is by taking a look into the forums and blogs in your niche. Just try to figure out what are the things people are asking for and choose it as your topic.

Research the topic-

Half cooked food is always bad to eat, isn’t it? In a similar way , a post having incomplete facts and no solid backing is way too boring to read. As a blogger you should try to present quality content to your readers with solid facts and back it with solid citations and links. This is where, researching becomes so essential.

Read articles ,books and other blogs to have a clearer idea on the topic. Note down the points that you would like to mention in your article. Talk with experts and other bloggers to get an idea about their opinion on the topic. These are some of the ways you can research the topic. Researching is an ultra essential part of pre-writing and in any case it should not be omitted.

Outline your post-

Have you seen a painter painting or an artists making his art piece. Well ,I am sure most of you would have. Just take a close look next time a painter paints. A painting or an artwork starts with an outline. Even the masterpiece of Da Vinci, the Monalisa would have started with an outline.

The purpose of telling you all this is, a good article or a blogspot starts with an outline just like a good painting. The points or facts that you have collected while researching is obscure unless it is arranged in a meaningful way. This makes your article well laid out and easy to understand. But the question is, how an article is outlined?

Well, Just think of the sub-headings ,you would like to mention in your post. Once you have your sub-headings, list the points you would mention in each of these sub-headings. This is the staple element of outlining an article. Other advanced outlining methods include,picking out images and videos to be embedded in the post, the sentences to be cited or links to be given under each of these sub-headings.

Writing-

Writing means giving ideas the shape of words. For many of us it might be an easy thing to do but for most of us including me it is pretty tedious job. But if you just try and practice more you can become a better writer.

Now, for purpose of simplicity ,I would classify a post into two parts-

1. Title or headline of post
2. General body of the post

Both these parts has some importance. Title helps grab the attention of visitors while the rest of the post is for holding that attention.
I have already written detailed post on both of these parts and would suggest you to go through these posts if you are interested. Here are the links-
How to write articles on blog- Part-5 (Writing Title)
How to write articles on blog- Part-6 (Writing Content)

Post-writing -

Post-writing is largely concerned with proof reading and editing. No film is complete without editing- cutting some scenes and adding others. Similarly, apost has to be edited before being published. Read your post time and again before publishing. Look out for any grammatical and spelling mistakes you have committed and correct them.

Apart from mistakes also look for words and sentences that are useless or otherwise not in good shape. If you are not satisfied with your own writing, chances are there that your readers won’t be either. So, cut the useless sentences and add some colorful ones to make your post more appealing. I have details about proof reading a post in the post- “How to write article on blogs?- Part-7 (proof reaing)”

Once again I would like to mention, these steps are just to help you learn blog-writing and are not an alternative to practice. Remember the the phrase that you have heard so many times during your lifetime- “Practice makes a man perfect.”

Image by: cogdogblog

Actually I have experienced the same sort of things when I decided to have my own domain name for this blog. The disarrayed situation led me to make many mistakes and ignorance also played its part to make the situation worse. I am writing this post to share the things that I experienced an year ago in a hope that you will learn from the mistakes I made. But before I go on , I would like to start the things from very basic.

What is a domain name?

Just like your letters need an address to reach your home or office ,your domain name is the address that tells where your blog /site would be found. For example, if you type in dr-sandy.net into address bar of your browser you will reach on my blog. So, dr-sandy.net is the domain name for my blog.

Why should you have your own domain name?

Most of the free and semi-free blogging platforms like blogger, wordpress.com ,livejournal and many others provide you with a name. But that is with their own extension and you don’t own it. The domain name will look like this-
Myblog.blogprovider.com and in some cases
blogprovider.com/myblog

For example, a blog on blogger will have a blogspot extension, like, myblog.blogspot.com

Now this name can be used if you are blogging for fun and you are not willing to pay for domain name but if you are looking for a long haul with some other objectives other than fun then you should consider having your own domain name.

Your own domain name gives a sense of professionalism and also helps to build a buzz around you. Furthermore, you won’t lose your readers and back links when you plan to move your blog from one platform to other.

This is why every serious blogger with long term objectives should get serious about having his own domain name.

How to choose a domain name of your blog?

Many factors has to be considered while choosing a domain name. Some of them are absolutely needed while most others are based on your personal preferences. Here I am providing you with a list of things to be considered while deciding a domain name for your blog.

1. A domain name should be short and easy to remember- You should think off a memorable domain name so that anyone can reach your blog by typing in your blog’s domain name in the address bar. For example, if I would have registered a domain name like DoctorSandeepKumar.com then probably I would have lost many direct visitors.
2. A domain name should communicate straight way-This is where I made a mistake while choosing the domain name.A domain name should tell what a blog is about. For example, if somebody says DailyBlogTips.com then you straight way know the blog is about blog tips.
3. A Domain name should have your keywords incorporated- For past few years the internet has become pretty competitive as more and more bloggers have joined the blogging bandwagon. The scenario will become more and more worse in the near future. So, it would be a nice thing to have an edge over rest. Domain names with keywords in it do well in search engines. So, having them would always give you a competitive edge over others blogging in the same niche.
4. A domain should be brandable-More and more bloggers are getting serious over branding their blog and guess what, domain name helps a lot in branding a blog. Think about problogger or TechCrunch, they have built a brand around their blog names.
   The other school of thought is to make a brand around blog authors name. A nice example would be Chrisg.com of Chris Garrett. Even this blog can be regarded as an example of this thought.
5. A domain name with numbers or hyphens-Personally ,I don’t like numbers and hyphens in the domain name. But many a times you have to choose a domain name with hyphen or numbers because of non-availability of non-hyphenated and non-numbered versions of domain names. I bought a hyphenated domain name (dr-sandy.net) because of this reason.
6. A domain name should have preferably .com ,.net or .org extension-Personally I prefer a domain name with .com ,.net or .org extensions. There has been reports about these extensions working well in search engines although there haven’t been any reports from experts on the issue. But it would be nice to play it safe by buying a domain name with above mentioned extensions.

   You may think of getting a country specific extension if you are willing to target a certain geographical area. For example, if you think your audience will be from USA then you might think of a .us extension or for india it would be .in extension. It depends on your personal preference. Their are no hard and fast rules for this.

In my opinion you should spend some time to give a thought over the selection of domain name. A carefully selected domain name will always benefit you in some way. Furthermore, apart from some essential factors much of the decision of domain name selection depends on your personal preferences. I would love to know about your personal preferences as well as your own thoughts regarding choice of domain names through comment section.

Image via Wikipedia

I wanted to take this topic on this blog as I think the discussion is still red and hot and I should post my own thoughts on the issue.

Although QuadsZilla has supported his views with some solid snapshots of his stats but still I feel bounce rate can’t be a ranking factor. Furthermore, I don’t see it as a strong and influential factor which can make a large difference to search engine rankings even if it happened to be a part of Google algo .I have many facts to support my point of view but before I go on with those facts it would be better to get some basic ideas about Bounce Rate.

What actually is Bounce Rate?

Bounce rate is the percentage of vists in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.For example, if 3 persons out of 10 visited just single page (the landing page) of your site then your Bounce rate would be 30%.

A high bounce rate means most of the visits generated a single pageview. A lower bounce rate would mean most of the visitors are visiting more than one pages on your site.

Can Bounce Rate be a ranking factor?

At first instance it may seem like bounce rate can be a factor for search engine ranking. A high bounce rate mean that you don’t have a stuff users were looking for. That is why they left your blog without visiting other pages of your blog.

Take a look at the way Google has defined Bounce rate in their help page of Analytics-

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert.
Source

So, from above sentences it is clear that google relates bounce rate with the relevancy and quality of the webpage and relevancy as such is a ranking factor in google.They may have included bounce rate based on this hypothesis. But still there are reasons why bounce rate can’t ba an effective metric to rank websites.

1. Not all webmasters use google analytics. Although there are many other ways to collect data about visitors activity (like GToolbar, Firefox and Chrome) this information covers no more than 50% of the sites.
2. Many of the top blogs get much of their traffic from social media sites. Furthermore, social media site users are very notorious groups because they are not interested in your blog as a whole but just one post which has been bookmarked or shared.They would visit the shared item and then move on to other website.So, most of the blogs getting traffic from social sites will have a high bounce rates and lower ranking if i believe this hypothesis).
3. On a blog many people find the site with a search for specific information. Typically they read the article they found, then move on to the next search result. Usually people are looking specifically for the info they land on. They don’t usually start reading all sorts of other posts on the site. Penalizing for this sort of traffic does not make sense.
4. Blogs usually have high bounce rate which is easily explained, by the fact that loyal users come to the blog (usually coming from RSS reader), read the newest article and leave.

Based on above mentioned reasoning ,I don’t see Bounce Rate as a metric to rank websites.Remember, Google itself has to compete with other search engines like Yahoo and MSN and if they start including these absurd metrics in their algorithm, they know they will be on a loser side.

What is your opinion on the topic? I would love to hear your opinion on the topic.Do you think Bounce Rate can be a measure of site’s quality and relevancy and can act as a factor for ranking?Or, are you of belief that this can’t be included as ranking factor?
Over to you !!

All those videos were nice to watch with some basic valuable message in them. Here is the first video that was released about 2 weeks ago.

I would also like to mention some of the sentences that they mentioned while releasing this first video.

Publishers often ask us what the best ad sizes are to include in their site’s design, and we always point them to these three:

• 300×250 medium rectangle
• 728×90 leaderboard
• 160×600 skyscraper

These ad units have proven in the past to deliver better results for both publishers and advertisers. Advertisers favour these formats, and if you’ve receiving all ad types, you’ll find that advertisers will specifically target your sites more often. If you position your ad units well, users will be more likely to see these ad formats and find an ad that they’re interested in.
Source

The second video was released a week ago. Here is that second video.

Here is what Adsense team mentioned while releasing this video-

When you design your AdSense ads, keep these tips in mind:

• Use colours that either blend with or complement your site’s colours. Make the ads a part of your site.
• Use lighter colours for borders, or no border at all.
• Try rotating colours or occasionally switching the location of your ads on the page.
• Save sets of frequently-used colours as a palette.

Source

The last video of this series was released about three days back and it contained some valuable information regarding positioning of the adsense ads. Here is the third video that Adsense team released.

I would like to mention some of the sentences that the adsense team had said on Official Adsense Blog while releasing this third video.

Great positions include:

• Above the fold of a page (the section of the page a user can see without scrolling)
• At the end of an article
• Aligned with content

But don’t just take our word for it – every website is different. Make sure you use your judgment of how visitors interact with your pages to determine good ad placements.
Source

These videos have some great tips shown in them and are worth watching.
HAPPY EARNING !!

Other blogs in the niche are excellent source to promote your own blog.This is usually done by commenting on other blogs discussing same topics as yours. I think you already have commented on a number of blogs in a hope to get some traffic to your own blog. But my question here is- Did you get the traffic you were eying at? Many of you might have answered it in an affirmative way. OK, you did got some visitors but did you get A LOT of visitors to your blog?

Not exactly, most of you would have got some 10 or 20 odd visitors to your blog a day (through other blogs ofcourse). And I think 10 -20 visitors a day is nowhere near to “a lot of visitors” I am talking about.What I would discuss here in this post is getting a lot of visitors to your blog from other blogs and not just 10-20 odd visitors.

First of all let me ask a question. Why does other blogs send such a less amount of traffic even when you do a lot of commenting on them?

The reason, as I see it, is one (or more) of the following three-

1. You didn’t pick up right blogs to comment on
2. Your comments were not unique and useful
3. You didn’t made your comment noticeable

Now I think you are getting some clearer idea on what you have to do to promote your blog through other blogs. What you have to do is-

1. Comment on blogs having high readership
2. Make your comments unique and useful
3. Make use of bold and italic tags to make your comments noticeable

Why should you focus upon blogs with high readership only?

I don’t have enough time and always run out of time when it comes to posting on my blog and promoting it. This is not just my story but it is a story of majority of us. So, you should focus upon a blog that saves your time and energy. It is better to post one insightful comment in a top blog rather than commenting on hundreds of low quality blogs.

Of course, low quality blogs can send in some traffic but it is not worth your time and energy. If you are like me you should aspire more for little work and that can be done by commenting on a blog with high readership.

Just make a list of 20 – 30 blogs in your niche and be a regular commenter on those.

Why should you care about unique and useful comments?

Nobody cares about “great post” type of comments. When you have to attract some visitors to your blog, you have to be useful. Why should people care about you and your blog if you don’t have anything exciting to offer? Useful and unique comments are the only way through which you can tell others that you have something great to offer.

An useful comment makes people inquisitive and if they become curious enough they might click your link to reach your blog.

Why should you make your comment noticeable?

Earlier in this post I have said , you should comment on a top blog to get better results. Now, a blog with high readership also gets more number of comments. Most of the bigger blogs get more than 100 comments on an average. Your comment should stand out of other 100 comments to get noticed. How can you get a visitor when they are not able to see your comment a t first place?

Furthermore, people tend to skip comments very often when there is higher number of those. If you are making your comments noticeable they might have a good look at it even when they were scrolling down carelessly. So, making your comments noticeable helps grab visitors attention.

A good question that might arise here is-

How can I make my comments noticeable?

Well most of blogs allow some basic html tags in the comment section , such as, bold and italic. Just make your important points bold or make the font-size bigger. This is one excellent way to make your comments an attention grabbing stuff.

One other way to do this is making a longer comments.This is based on my own behaviour on the net. I tend to read longer comments and skip one and two liner comments. On an average most of the comments are about 4-5 sentences long. If you can just post a comment having 10 or more sentences it might grab attention of people (like me).

I think these are the ways you can make your comment more productive and draw in more visitors to your blog. These are my own opinion and you may differ from me on the issue. If that is the case , I will be more than happy to take a note of your angle of perception on the topic.

Popularity: 1, Gravity: 376.216, Percent Per Sale: 75, Earned Per Sale: 31.0867, Commission: 75, Referred: 90

Popularity: 1, Gravity: 266.201, Percent Per Sale: 60, Earned Per Sale: 78.2389, Commission: 60, Referred: 81

Popularity: 1, Gravity: 200.557, Percent Per Sale: 70, Earned Per Sale: 50.4463, Commission: 70, Referred: 78

Popularity: 1, Gravity: 529.812, Percent Per Sale: 50, Earned Per Sale: 35.378, Commission: 50, Referred: 82

Popularity: 1, Gravity: 273.79, Percent Per Sale: 75, Earned Per Sale: 18.6181, Commission: 75, Referred: 95