Unfortunately many of the themes are too blunt when there are no comments. For new bloggers and blogs, it’s not uncommon to see “No comments” or “0 comments” on a blog post. Wouldnt’ it be better if it would say “Leave a comment” or “Start the discussion” instead? This post will show you how to do it…

Introduction

One of the 15 tips to get more blog comments I wrote about was show number of comments, and a part of that tip was: add a call to action to the comment links, instead of showing “0 comments” or “no comments”.

In the comments, Benjamin (of Peaceful Prosperity) asked:

I’ve heard several people recommend the “start the discussion” idea as opposed to “0 comments” (which does look a little sad)… but I haven’t found an explanation of how to do this. Do you have any ideas about the ‘how to’… or can you point me in the right direction?

And Steve (at JEDsWEB) sent me the same question via email:

I would like to know to change the number of comments to a call to action (for me it would be a WordPress hosted blog)

The previous post, covered how to show number of comments in WordPress to detail, in this post, I’ll show how to add the call the action (it’s not hard, but it does require digging into the php-files of the WordPress theme).

In short, it’s matter of finding where the comment numbers are displayed in the theme, and edit the “No comments” or “0 comments” in to something else. The details and examples follow…

Warning: PHP code ahead

Since this WP hack takes you into WordPress theme files and you need to edit php-code, proceed with caution, but don’t be too afraid. I try to keep it simple, so anyone can do this.

If you edit the .php code of your theme, make sure to backup of all your theme files before doing any changes. If anything goes wrong, revert back to the original files.

When you edit the WordPress theme-files, or any other code, I recommend you edit them via FTP and use good text editor with code-highlighting instead of “Appearance >> Editor” in the WordPress dashboard.

How to Add a Call to Action to the Comment Link

Tweaking what your theme shows when there are no comments is not the most important thing in blogging, but it’s a cool little modification that can help increase the chances of getting more blog comments.

As mentioned in the beginning, a reader is much more likely to leave a comment if the comment link says “Leave a comment!” or “Start the discussion!” than blunt “0 comments”. So no “zero comments”, but something else instead… let’s see how to modify your theme and make it little bit better…

By default comments_popup_link displays

1. No Comments
2. 1 Comment
3. % Comments

If you theme displays “No Comments” or “0 comments” when there are no comments on a post, you should change that into a call to action, like “Be the first to leave a comment!”.

• open your theme php-files for editing, e.g. index.php
• look for comments_popup_link and/or comments_number, e.g.
  • <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments', '1 Comment', '% Comments'); ?>
• If you can’t find anything like that, look for anything related to comments with text that your theme currently displays
• edit the values in it
  • Edit the “No comments” or “0 comments” to something else

Here are some examples:

<?php comments_popup_link( 'Leave a comment', '1 comment', '% comments so far', 'comments-link', 'Comments are off for this post'); ?>

<?php comments_popup_link('Be the first to comment!', '1 comment.', '% comments already!'); ?>

Make sure there is enough space on your theme to display whatever text you use. If your theme displays the number of comments on a place (or you set it that way), you can use longer phrases, like

<?php comments_popup_link('Start the discussion!', 'One lonely comment. Add yours to make it two!', '% comments already! Join the discussion!'); ?>

Or if you want to add the post title for example, you can go for something like

<?php comments_popup_link(__('Be the first to comment on ' . the_title('','',false)),__('One comment on ' . the_title('','',false)), __('% comments on '. the_title('','',false))); ?>

Personally I use something like (I suggest you make your match your style and blog):

• Be the first to comment on this post
• One comment, go ahead and add another
• % comments already! Join the discussion

<?php comments_popup_link('Be the first to comment on this post!', 'One comment, go ahead and add another', '% comments already! Join the discussion'); ?>

Summary

It is better to not display “No comments” or “0 comments”, but “Leave a comment” or other call to action instead. In your WordPress theme-files, look where the number of comments and comment links are placed and edit the descriptions to match your and your blog’s style.

If you’re uncomfortable doing technical tasks like this, you can always ask for help from someone, look for another theme or just leave it be and concentrate on more important things about blogging, like creating great content.

Remember to backup your (theme) files before editing anything so you can go back to the unchanged files. And if you’re using a premium WordPress theme, you should contact the support of that theme before doing any changes, since they might have a solution or option in place so you don’t have to hack (and possibly break) the precious premium theme.

Tell me how can I make this post and blog better to help you even more! If you have any comments or questions about this post or other WordPress hacks, theme related or not, feel free to ask your questions in the comments or send me an email using the contact form.

1. How to show number of comments in WordPress
2. How to leave comments on a blog
3. How to get more blog comments and discussion

In this post, I’ll show how to show number of comments in WordPress, and the next post shows specifically how to add call to action into comment links by modifying the “No comments” into something like “Start a discussion” instead.

Preface

I collected various ways to show the number of comments in WordPress to this post. If you’re looking for ways to tweak your theme, create your own theme or otherwise need to use the number of comments, in a plugin for example, this post should have have what you need. If it doesn’t – tell me, and I’ll make sure it does.

If you edit the .php code of your theme, make sure to backup of all your theme files before doing any changes. If anything goes wrong, revert back to the original files.

When you edit the WordPress theme-files, or any other code, I recommend you edit them via FTP and use a good text editor with code-highlighting instead of “Appearance >> Editor” in the WordPress dashboard.

Number of Comments in WordPress Themes

Number of comments in WordPress can be displayed in many ways, including

• template tag comments_popup_link, which also links to the comments.
• template tag comments_number
• function: get_comments_number
• global variable: $post->comment_count
• custom functions

The template tags are the simplest ways to show number of comments, so let’s start with those…

Template Tag: comments_popup_link

This template tag must be within The Loop, or a comment loop, and it does nothing if  is_single() or  is_page() is true (even when within The Loop).

Or in plain English: the comments_popup_link does not work on individual posts or pages, only on homepage, or archives (e.g. author-, category- or tag-pages).

Template Tag: comments_number

WordPress also has comments_number template tag, which displays the number of comments, but doesn’t link to the comments. In this case, comments_link template tag can used for the link.

By default, comments_number displays both the comments and trackbacks (also referred to as “pingbacks”) with one number, unless the theme has functionality to separate trackbacks from comments.

Source: Stepping Into Template Tags at WordPress Codex.

Using the Template Tags to Show Number of Comments

There are two template tags in WordPress that can be used to display the number of comments:

• comments_popup_link
• comments_number

comments_popup_link displays a link to the comments popup window if comments_popup_script() is used (popup comments are relatively rare on WordPress blogs nowadays), otherwise it displays a normal link to comments. The default format for comments_popup_link is:

<?php comments_popup_link ('zero','one','more','CSSclass','none'); ?>

which inside WordPress theme is something like this:

<?php comments_popup_link('No Comments', '1 Comment', '% Comments'); ?>

• zero: (string) Text to display when there are no comments.
  • Defaults to ‘No Comments’.
• one: (string) Text to display when there is one comment.
  • Defaults to ‘1 Comment’.
• more: (string) Text to display when there are more than one comments. ‘%’ is replaced by the number of comments, so ‘% so far’ is displayed as “5 so far” when there are five comments.
  • Defaults to ‘% Comments’.
• CSSclass: (string) CSS (stylesheet) class for the link.
  • This has no default value.
• none: (string) Text to display when comments are disabled.
  • Defaults to ‘Comments Off’.

The other template tag, comments_number, displays the number of comments without a link to the comments. It only uses the “zero”, “one” and “more” (with the same defaults as above):

<?php comments_number('zero', 'one', 'more'); ?>

You can edit the “zero”, “one” and “more” as you like, as you’ll see just a bit later. When editing the theme-files, look for comments_popup_link or comments_number and you should find it.

You are likely to find it in theme files named (your theme does not necessary have all of these):

• index.php
• home.php
• category.php
• tag.php
• archive.php
• author.php

For example, you might see something this:

<?php comments_popup_link( __( 'Leave a comment', 'themename' ), __( '1 Comment', 'themename' ), __( '% Comments', 'themename' ) ) ?>

The “themename” is the name of the theme you are running, or the CSS class of the theme to be exact. If the “themename” is there in the comments link code, do not touch that part, leave it as is. It is related to styling and translation support of the theme.

For further information about these template tags and how to use them, go to the WordPress Codex:

• WordPress Codex: comments_popup_link
• WordPress Codex: comments_number

Adding the Number of Comments to the WordPress Theme

It is possible that your template does not display the number of comments at all, or doesn’t link to the comments, you should modify the theme and add theme, or change to a different theme altogether.

If you like your theme and don’t want to change it and it doesn’t have any links to comments by default, you need to add the comments_popup_link there yourself.

Comment Link on Home- or Archive-pages

Look into the files you want to add it into, e.g. index.php (or home.php) for the homepage. If the theme displays the_author, the_time or such, that’s usually a good place to add the comments link and count as well.

For example, your theme might have something like this in there:

posted by <?php the_author(); ?> at <?php the_time(); ?>

And you could add the comments there by making it:

Posted by <?php the_author(); ?> at <?php the_time(); ?>. <?php comments_popup_link('Be the first to comment!', '1 comment.', '% comments already!'); ?>

Comment Link on an Individual Post

On individual posts, you can add the number of comments using the comment_number and comment_link instead, like this:

<a href="<?php comments_link(); ?>"><?php comments_number('Be the first to comment!', '1 comment.', '% comments already!'); ?></a>

Showing Number of Comments without the Link

If you just want to display the number of comments, without the link:

<?php comments_number('0', '1', '%'); ?>

For CSS-styling, you want to place that inside some tags, like

<span class="comment-number"><?php comments_number('0', '1', '%'); ?></span>

get_comments_number

Using this function is relatively simple, for example:

<?php $commentscount = get_comments_number(); echo $commentscount; ?>

Global Variable: $post->comment_count

$post is a global variable, which theme authors do not need to use, but it’s there if needed, set in the method the_post.

For example:
echo 'comment count is: ' . $post->comment_count;

Sources and further reading:

• Global variables and the WordPress loop by Weblog Tools Collection

Custom Functions

Number of comments can be counted in many ways using custom functions, but for optimization purposes you should only use these when the default methods are not enough.

Common usage for this is separating trackbacks (pingbacks) from other comments:
<?php /* Count the number of comments and trackbacks (or pings) */
$ping_count = $comment_count = 0;
foreach ( $comments as $comment )
get_comment_type() == "comment" ? ++$comment_count : ++$ping_count;
?>

Which you can then use, like this (not displaying anything if the count is o):
<?php if ( ! empty($comments_by_type['pings']) ) : ?>
<?php printf($ping_count > 1 ? __('%d trackbacks') : __('One trackback'), $ping_count) ?>
<?php endif; ?>

and similarly for the comments:
<?php if ( ! empty($comments_by_type['comment']) ) : ?>
<?php printf($comment_count > 1 ? __('%d comments') : __('one comment'), $comment_count) ?>
<?php endif; ?>

Source: The WordPress Theme Comments Template at The Ultimate WordPress Theme Tutorial (an awesome tutorial I might add) by Ian Stewart (the man behind the Thematic Theme Framework for example).

Number of Comments in the Comments Section

The comments are displayed via the code in the comments.php -file in the WordPress theme and number of comments can be displayed there by many different means covered above (check the theme tutorial for inspiration).

Some themes use the comments_number, but since that includes both comments and trackbacks, some themes separate the trackbacks from normal comments, and have custom functions and hooks to calculate the counts and display the numbers.

Summary

There are many ways to show number of comments in WordPress, like

• template tags
  • comments_popup_link
  • comments_number
• via get_comments_number function
• via global variable: $post
  • post->comment_count
• custom functions

Choose the way depending on what you are trying to achieve with the code. For most situations, using the template tags is enough.

Tell me how can I make this post and blog better to help you even more! If you have any comments or questions about this post or other WordPress hacks, theme related or not, feel free to ask your questions in the comments or send me an email using the contact form.

1. Replacing “No comments” with “Leave a comment” in WordPress
2. How to show feedburner subscriber & Twitter follower counts
3. How To Add Category and Tag Based Advertising and Content to Your Blog

Pre-Writing Challenge

Group of blog writers has committed to the challenge of pre-writing two weeks worth of blog posts, and getting them ready to be published, on top of their normal writing/posting schedule. All this in the span of 1 month. – Carlos Velez

I’ve been toying with the idea of blog post buffer for a while. It all started with how to take a vacation from blogging and continued on my posterous with this post buffer -post, where I came up with the term blog post buffer.

Blog post buffer is a concept where blogger writes posts beforehand and schedules them to a post queue instead of publishing them as they are finished. This creates “a buffer of posts”, which creates flexibility to blogging and makes taking breaks from blogging, like vacations, easier.

One day I read a post about pre-writing at Website In a Weekend, written by Carlos Velez (Pre-Writing, Part 1 and Part 2), which talked about similar concept; writing content beforehand.

In the comments section of pre-writing part 2 Carlos “challenged” me to with an “accountability agreement” that we both would write posts like this (creating two weeks worth of content beforehand), and follow-up on each other to see how it’s going and motivated each other. With that, the idea sprang forth. I wrote my 2 weeks worth of blog posts -post.

Carlos took it a step further and the pre-writing challenge was born…

For further information about the challenge, check the Pre-Writing Challenge Main Page by Carlos Velez at Conscious Me.

Participants, Pre-Writing Challenge #1, 2010

• Carlos Velez – Conscious Me
• Aaron Pogue – Unstressed Syllables
• Justin Matthews – Catharsis of the Bogue
• Dustin Evenson – Professor Budget
• Megan Potter – Limitless Living
• Amanda Farough – Violet Mind
• Bert Padilla – Cebu Tech Blogger
• (me) Antti Kokkonen – Zemalf.com
• Deacon – Fine Art Woodblock Printmaking
• Eleanor Edwards – Give A Brick
• Ralph Carlson – Ralph Carlson Blog

Read author / participant bios, goals and updates from Pre-Writing Challenge Main Page.

Pre-Writing Challenge Updates

Carlos has been posting updates for the challenge, you can find them here:

• Pre-Writing Challenge Update: Week 1

My challenge updates…

The challenge started on February 19th and ends on March 21st 2010.

I’m doing most of my writing on the weekends, as I planned, which is awesome – I have a lot more time on the weekdays to do other stuff, like marketing, commenting and product creation.

I have a lot more draft posts than I did before the challenge started. But best of all, those a legit drafts, with plenty of content and not just headlines like I used to do before.

Week 1

At the moment I’m publishing every other day, which makes the target for the challenge (two weeks worth of content) 7-8 posts. On the first weekend I got 5 articles going and finished two of them.

For the second week I worked on my content strategy, and decided to push for a full series of posts about SEO (search engine optimization). I have the content outline drafted, and it looks like I might end up with more than the 8 posts I originally planned, but we’ll see.

Week 2

In addition to having 6 nearly done posts on drafts, I have 3 posts ready to be published at the moment, so I’m well on my way to the target of 8 posts I set myself.

Week 3

Week 3 has just started. During the week I’ll be planning and outlining the content, and writing again on the next weekend.

Special video message from Darren Rowse

Check what Darren Rowse (of ProBlogger.net fame) had to say when Carlos’ sent him a message about the pre-writing challenge…

Can’t see the video? Watch it on photobucket: Darren Rowse’s special message for all pre-writers out there.

Thoughts, Tips, etc

This style of writing (writing all the posts for the week on one go during the weekend) has boosted my productivity (writing one post creates idea for 2 more, etc.). I use a lot less time per post, but still produce better posts (in my own opinion at least).

And since I have the time on the week to do other things, if I don’t have any other things, I can plan and write even more content, which is great.

Even that the challenge is not even half-way yet, I recommend everyone to try this: write several blog posts on one go. If you don’t like it, that’s OK, but at least try, because the results can be great.

Discussion

Have you written content on one go? Have you set yourself a blog post buffer?

Are you in the pre-writing challenge, or are you otherwise working on writing more content than usual, for a info product, maybe? How’s it going for you?

p.s. On March 3rd 2010 this blog passed 300 subscribers for the first time, how awesome is that? If you haven’t subscribed yet, here’s your chance – subscribe via RSS or email.

1. Blog post buffer – Pre-writing and scheduling posts
2. How To Properly Take Time Off From Blogging
3. Writing SEO Friendly Blog Posts

Either case, you should add some sort of tracking to your blog or website from day 1 (or day zero to be exact). There are many ways to handle tracking traffic stats for your blog or website, but Google Analytics is the most popular one, it’s free and relatively simple to use.

In this simple Google Analytics tutorial, I’ll show you how to set up Google Analytics account to track your website traffic, visitors and other statistics. This is true beginner’s stuff, step-by-step style…

1. Set up a Google Account

If you have a Google Account already, move on to the next step. If you don’t have an account yet, go create yourself one right now. You’ll get GMail access (the best and only email you ever need), Google Docs, YouTube and all the other Google services with that same account.

Start by going to GMail signup (you can get Google Account with any mail, but using GMail is just too convenient to pass here.) and move from there.

2. Setup Google Analytics

If you are new to Google Analytics, first step is to sign up using your Google Account.

Sign up to Google Analytics using your Google Account. (If you have already created Google Analytics account, just click on the Access Analytics -button.)

1. Go to the Google Analytics official website.
2. Click the sign-up on the right hand side and
3. Sign-in using your Google Account.
4. Sign-up for Google Analytics account

Sign in to Google Analytics with your Google Account (if you're logged in to Google, just enter your password)

Sign up for Google Analytics account (just click on the button on the next screen)

Now you have setup a Google Analytics account. Inside Analytics, you can have multiple Analytics accounts, and in each of those, you can have multiple website profiles. And inside those website profiles, you can have multiple sites (if you want).

If you just signed up for a new Analytics account, you’ll be moved directly into creating your first website profile.

3. Set Up a Website Profile inside Analytics

Now that you have Google Analytics account, you’re gonna setup a new website account. This is where we create Google Analytics tracking code, which will be placed into your website.

Signup for new website account inside the Google Analytics by entering the website and account name

1. Fill in the website details and the account name
2. Fill in your contact details
3. Accept the Terms and Service

Enter your name and country or territory

Accept the Google Analytics Terms of Service

4. Get the Google Analytics Tracking Code

Once you create the account and website profile, you’ll get the Google Analytics tracking code.

You can copy the code and paste it to any web page you have or inside your blogs theme- or template-file.

Copy the Google Analytics tracking code and paste it into a web page you want to track.

Or if you are using a plugin or an addon, you probably just want the property ID (for example: UA-1231231-1)

This is the Google Analytics property ID. You need it for the Google Analytics for WordPress -plugin for example.

If you’re adding Google Analytics to a WordPress blog via the Google Analytics for WordPress -plugin like I recommend, you need to add the property ID to the plugin settings. Or you can copy the whole tracking code into the footer.php if you want.

I recommend the Google Analytics for WordPress -plugin, because you’ll get additional features like not tracking your own visits, automatically track outgoing links and other advanced features that make the plugin one of my trusted 8.

Summary

• Inside Google Analytics you can have multiple accounts (with your one Google Account). In the accounts, you can have multiple website profiles and in those profiles you can track multiple sites (or just one if you like).
• Setting up Google Analytics account is free. Setting tracking up is one of the first steps you should do when creating your first website, e.g starting a blog, and Analytics makes it quick and easy.
• In addition to your own blogs, you can use Analytics on all sites you have access to the source files or can otherwise add javascript to the page (many free services don’t allow this).

After setting the tracking, I recommend you only check the statistics once a week (or even once a month) and then analyze your traffic, top traffic pages, what keywords bring your traffic, what kind of visitors you get, etc.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful, and if you have any questions, leave your comments below or contact me if you don’t want to ask your questions in public. Enjoy your Analytics (but not too much, statistics can be addictive) and here’s hoping you’ll have plenty of traffic to analyze in there.

1. Adding Google Analytics to Your WordPress Blog
2. Track Outgoing Links with Google Analytics
3. What Everybody Ought to Know About Google Webmaster Tools

Is it because it is not worth it to craft the review, if you’re not gonna recommend it? Is it because, you don’t dare to say bad things about the product? Are you afraid you’ll lose the advertisers and/or partners if you publish a bad review?

This is the topic of the day for this discussion. I’d like to hear what you think. Join the discussion on the comments.

Bad review? Good review?

What is a bad review? Not recommending the product? Giving it a bad rating?

• bad review = “do not buy this”
• bad review = “this is not good”
• bad review = “rating: 1 out of 5″

Discussion

This is an open table and the word is free. Speak your mind about pros and cons of different kind of reviews. Below are some questions to get the discussion going…

Should you cover only the “good products” on your blog? Is it better to publish only positive reviews (“recommended”), or should bloggers publish bad reviews as well?

• Have you published a bad review on your blog? How did your readers react to the review?
• Do you only publish positive reviews, e.g. only products you like and recommend? Why?

1. 3 levels of affiliate marketing – link, review and promote
2. Step-by-step affiliate program evaluation checklist
3. Affiliate Marketing Explained

If you are looking to encourage interaction between the readers, a bit like in forums, you need to encourage comments and replies as well. The number of comments in itself doesn’t do anything. The purpose of this post is not only to get more blog comments, but to get the right kind of blog comments.

Introduction

This article was born when Cheryl (from That Girl is Funny) approached me to write a guest post for the BlogCatalog community blog. I wrote a post there called “how to turn blog comments into discussion”. The post answered the question Cheryl had in mind: How do some bloggers manage to get a conversation going with comments – almost like it’s a forum? I have trouble enough getting people to leave comments. Is there something magical to do to get people talking to each other instead of at me?

In that article I listed three things that blog needs to encourage discussion in the blog comments:

1. Blog (comment) setup that supports effective discussion
2. Blog posts that ask for reader input
3. Community that encourages discussion and sharing opinions

If the blog setup is not in order, getting blog comments is a lot harder. Ironically, the BlogCatalog Community blog’s commenting system wasn’t exactly “discussion friendly”. I only realized this after the post was published. Their blog commenting system has two major obstacles for good discussion:

1. Blog commenting requires a login
2. They don’t have threaded comments.

Most blogs have open comments and don’t require login, but not too many blogs have threaded comments enabled, so it’s a common “problem”. I’ve been running Disqus comments in this blog for a while now, and even that Disqus has its own flaws, it’s a great system to support discussion (which its name cleverly states).

But anyway, I feel that much was left unsaid on the guest post and I got some additional ideas from the blog comments that were left on the post despite the forced login, so I wanted to make even better post about the same subject.

I took the three things I listed on the guest post (blog setup, asking for comments and building a community) and expanded it into more detail, ending up with 15 tips on how to get more blog comments and how to turn blog comments into discussion.

Turning blog comments into discussion

Getting more blog comments and turning comments into discussion is more likely to happen with couple of key settings in the blogging platform in place, and more importantly by leading by example, replying to comments, and use couple of “techniques” on your blog posts and comments to increase the chances of others leaving comments.

Getting more comments to your blog and driving the discussion is somewhat tied to the blog platform you run on. Some blogging platforms support key settings by default, some require addons or plugins.

If you are using blogging platforms, where you can’t do much in this regard, check if external blog commenting systems like Disqus or IntenseDebate for example could help. If not, concentrate on the posts and comments themselves.

So first, we’ll take a look at the 3 important settings you need to check and enable if needed. And then we move on to blog comment strategies and the best practices you can use on individual blog posts and comments.

1. Enable threaded comments

Using threaded comments means that it is possible to REPLY directly to another comment and see if a comment is a reply to a previous comment. Without threaded comments, you can never have true discussion on the blog comments, or at least it will be enormously more difficult. Without threaded comments, the only way to reply to someone is to leave a comment and start it with @name or something.

The possibility to reply directly to other comments, and not just add your reply to the end of the other comments is the most important setting to drive discussion. Without this, even starting a discussion is hard, let alone to keep it going.

In WordPress, you can turn the threaded comments on by going to the Settings >> Discussion and enable the option under “Other comment settings”.

The theme you are using must support threads, but as the feature has been available for years, all new and up-to-date themes should have the support built-in. Turning on the threaded comments does not “convert” the old comments to threads, since the reply-option is only available when it’s on.

Enable threaded (nested) comments X levels deep, where the X means how deep the threads go, a bit like you would make a list with several sub lists. Because of this, it is immediately visible which comment the other comment is a reply to, or is it a new comment.

• First level
  • Second level
    • Third level
      • Fourth level
        • Fifth level
      • Another comment on fourth level
  • Another comment on second level
    • 3rd level
    • Still 3rd level
• Back in the first
• Etc.

If your blogging platform does not support threaded comments directly (many don’t), you can look into external blog commenting system, like Disqus or IntenseDebate. Disqus, which I use, supports all major blogging platforms like Blogger, Drupal, Tumblr and (self-hosted) WordPress.

2. Show the number of comments

Make sure the number of comments is clearly visible. The large number acts as social proof. Showing the number of comments is something your theme or template has to do.

In many blogging platforms it is a default, but in case your blog theme does not show the number of comments or you think it should show them more clearly, consider getting a new theme or tweaking your existing one. (update: to customize WP theme yourself, check the intructions on how to show number of comments on WordPress.)

Also, when there are no comments, instead of “0 comments“, blogging template or theme should display call to action, like

• “Start the discussion!” or
• “Be the first to comment!”

As mentioned in the beginning, I think the number of comments is not as important as the quality of the comments, but seeing that others have left comments as well is one of the best ways to encourage comments and thus, discussion.

3. Offer a way to subscribe to comments

To keep the discussion going you need to offer a way for people to subscribe to comments. This means giving the commenter an opportunity to get notified about new comments left on the post she commented on, the direct replies to her comment(s) or both.

This email notification will make people return to your blog, read the new comments and possibly leave additional comments themselves. Threaded comments, combined with the possibility to subscribe to comments not only increase the number of blog comments, but also increase blog traffic.

4. Have a clear comment policy

To keep the discussion going and moderate the blog comments, you need to have a blog comment policy. On this policy you can state the rules and tell that those who don’t follow the rules will get their blog comments deleted and marked as spam.

Your comment policy should state at least if it is OK to

• use keywords on the “name” (e.g. do you allow “keywords”, “websitename”, “name@website”, “name@keywords” or just “name” or something in between)
• add links on the comment text (e.g. OK when the link is useful)
• be rude and/or spam (e.g. don’t be rude and do not spam)

As an example, let me share you how I created my comment policy and why it is like it is…

My comment policy

Blog comment policy doesn’t have to be complicated. As an example, I have two comment rules here on my blog:

• Be excellent to each other
• Use your real name

I general, I don’t like link dropping, where people insert their own URL to the blog comments, so that’s included in there as well, but that’s about it. I like to see commenters to use a real name and I’ve been very strict about it (unless someone connects with Twitter, as many have some kind of nicknames as usernames there).

(update / clarification after discussion about my comment policy: using “name@website” is fine, I just like to see the name there, and if you want to add your website, that’s cool)

In general, I like to see less anonymity and more transparency and honesty online, or like I said on Twitter the other day: “If you do not want / “can’t” use your real name when you do something online, why you do it at all?”

For me, it is all about genuine discussions and real people. I much prefer talking to Bob, Mary and Jane than to “insert your ad-filled niche blog name here” saying “nice post!” – I prefer answering the questions from people who actually read my blog post and seeing what they have to say.

Your blog comment policy might be something totally different from mine, and that is OK, it’s your blog after all. I just wanted to share my views; how I formed my comment policy, based on what kind of blog comments I like to see and what kind of “web behaviour” I want to encourage.

5. Fight the spam

If your blog comments are filled with spam, the real comments and discussion will disappear into the mass, that is, if someone even wants to leave a blog comment in the first place with all the spam around.

Whatever blogging platform you use, enable anti-spam features, addons and plugins. For WordPress, Akismet is must and WP-SpamFree Anti-Spam is great addition. It doesn’t matter what system you use, but do use the means you got.

Even with the best anti-spam systems, some blog comments will always get through that are spam. And then you have to moderate. You must check all the comments, delete and mark as spam the ones that are against your blog comment policy and move on.

This is the reason why you need to have a clear comment policy, so you can delete blog comments without too much thinking. For example, if you say “use your real name” and someone doesn’t, you can remove the comment.

One additional way to moderate blog comments is to approve first time comments manually.

This means that when someone leaves their first comment, you must approve it before it appears. When the same person leaves a second comment, it appears automatically. In WordPress, you can find the option in the Settings >> Discussions (the same place where you can enable threaded comments).

6. Tell your readers how to comment

For most bloggers, blog commenting is like second nature. But for many blog readers, it’s not. Not everyone knows how to leave blog comments; some don’t even know what blog comments are and why you are asking for them.

Do one of these on your blog if you think your readers might need instructions on how to comment:

• Write a post about how to comment on your blog (and link to it when needed)
• Add simple instructions to the posts you want comments in
• Link to another blog with good instructions on how to leave blog comments

7. Add call to action at the bottom of each of your posts

The single best way to get more meaningful blog comments is to ask for comments. If you end your blog post with a question or ask for your readers’ opinion, they are much more likely to leave a blog comment. Thus, keep your posts open ended and ask questions.

At the end of your blog posts, always encourage comments, or even ask a question. Like these that Darren Rowse presented on Problogger.net post, 7 Questions to Ask on Your Blog to Get More Reader Engagement:

• What do you think?
• How do you feel?
• What will you do?
• What is your opinion?
• What is your story?
• What is your experience or example?
• What have you been working on?

8. Reply to as many comments as you can

Make people feel it’s worth their time to comment. Reply to comments people leave on your blog, especially if you spot that someone left their first comment on the blog.

People like that attention, and since they have already taken the time to comment already shows that they are somewhat interested in what you say, replying to their comment increases the chances of making them a regular reader (and commenter!).

Others reading your blog and the comments see that you are replying to comments as well. Replying to comments is the key to discussion and you have to lead by example and reply to the comments to encourage others to reply as well.

As an additional bonus, most blog platforms and themes count your own comments to the total number and since you show the number of comments (as of tip#2); your own comments will increase the number.

Like with blog commenting in general, replying to comments works better if you add something to the discussions and not just thank for the comment. If nothing else, ask a question from the commenter, which leads us to the next tip…

9. Ask questions in your comment replies

When you have threaded comments enabled and you can reply directly to a comment, and that person gets notification for that reply, she is very likely to read that reply (because it is in her inbox). With that reply, you show personal attention to her, which in itself is great…

But what if your reply has a question for the commenter? You show interest to her ideas, and it’s next to impossible for her not to respond (taken that she opted-in to the notification). Thus, similarly to adding questions and calls to action to the end of the blog posts, you can ask questions in your replies as well.

Don’t force a question in every reply, but when you genuinely have a question in mind for the commenter, put it in your comment (for example, if you are not sure what the commenter meant, tell what you think and ask “did I understand you correctly?”.

10. Have a discussion day on your blog

Write posts that specifically call for discussion. Start having a regular discussion day on your blog, e.g. Friday rant, Saturday discussion or similar. On these days, you would post a blog post with only short introduction from you to be the topic of the discussion, with specific questions and call to action to start the discussion.

• Since the post is specifically asking for comments, and does only that, people are more likely to comment.
• Add to the discussion by replying to people’s comments with additional questions and ideas.
• Keeping the discussion going and making it a regular event on the blog is a great way to begin building a community around your blog.

11. Use surveys and polls to drive the discussion

As Rich Hill pointed out in his comment on the BlogCatalog post, using a poll seems to inspire many additional comments. People tend to click on a poll more easily than leave a comment, and when they do, seeing the results might encourage them to say something in the comments as well.

You can use this tip together with the discussion day, adding a poll about the topic of the day, or taking the previous days poll as the topic of today. If the poll system you use allows customization, you could even test adding a question like “do you have a comment about the results?” when the guest sees the poll results.

12. Write posts that are controversial

This works on your normal blog posts and the discussion days. Write about something that divides people, and possibly have strong opinion on. The key in this is your opinion and then asking for your readers’ opinions.

For example, you can introduce two alternatives and tell what you think of them (or even leave your own opinion out of it). Then just ask what your readers think, or which of the two alternatives they prefer.

Each niche has something like this. “PC vs. Mac”, “Cat persons vs. Dog persons”, “DoFollow vs. nofollow” (for example, check the discussion here, when HotBlogTips removed DoFollow from their site) and similar “duels” where people are often passionately on one side. However, don’t let this kind of discussion to fall into trash talk and bashing.

One way of controversy is being completely honest, speak your mind and show who you are – your guests want to know who you are, no matter what you think. Give them what they want. Or write an angry blog post or rant if you feel like it, don’t be scared.

13. Form a group of blogging buddies and comment on each other’s blogs

If you don’t have much blog traffic yet or the people who are reading your blog are not commenting much, find fellow bloggers in the same situation and become discussion starters on each other’s blogs.

You can start this yourself by becoming a regular commenter on the blogs you read and connecting with fellow bloggers through forums and Twitter for example.

When you find a group of like-minded bloggers

• start leaving blog comments on each other’s blogs,
• reply to each other’s comments, and
• reply to comments left by the readers (who are not in your “group”).

You don’t have to do this for every post, but it works particularly well for the discussion days. Add questions to those replies to carry the discussion on. When others see the discussion, with replies to comments, they are more likely to join. If you have just 2-3 other bloggers adding to the discussion, your other readers see that and it might encourage them to add to the discussion.

14. Break news

This is not for all bloggers, but if you end up writing a news-breaking blog post about a big event in your niche, you are very likely to have active discussion on that post.

Of course you need to have some traffic already and your post needs to get attention, but if that is in order, make sure it’s easy for the people to comment on that post and share their views.

You can utilize the tips above to make the most out of an event, and include polls and ask questions about what people think, etc.

15. Pay attention to what works and do more of that

This last tip works for various things and turning blog comments into discussions is no different. What works on my blog might not work on your blog. Perhaps your guests love polls and debate, but you don’t get many comments on the discussion days. So drop discussion days, and add more polls.

Just like analyzing and tracking your blog traffic, you can learn a lot by looking at what happens in your blog. If you are adding questions to your posts, what questions seem to get the most answers? Was there something special about the post? Do you receive more comments on the short posts or the long ones?

Further reading

In case you are interested in reading even more on the subject, you might want to look into these great posts:

• Smart Passive Income: Tricks to Get More Comments On Your Blog by Pat Flynn
• Problogger.net: 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog by Darren Rowse
• Copyblogger: Confessions of a Comment Addict by Johnny B. Truant
• Performancing: 10 Tips for Attracting More Comments by Chris Garrett

Discussion

Getting discussion going on your blog is not easy, and it requires other people. But these tips will encourage blog comments and help you to start building the discussion culture on your blog.

But now I’d to hear about your thoughts on blog commenting and how you get discussions going on your blog? Do you use any tips I listed here, or do you have some other tactics others could try too?

On a post like this it goes without saying, but I say it anyway: comments are more than welcome and encouraged, so tell me what do you think?

p.s. If you have any questions you would like to get answered, contact me and ask anything. I will answer your questions via email and write a post like this sharing the tips with others as well (if that is OK with you). Or you can ask me to answer your question(s) as a guest post, like Cheryl did.

1. How to leave comments on a blog
2. Replacing “No comments” with “Leave a comment” in WordPress
3. Advanced Blog Commenting Tricks

In order to get seen online, we desperately look for means to get in front of people. We want to be in the search engines, the social media, forums, blogs, video and whatnot. These are the things you read about, how to get traffic, SEO, using Twitter and all that. These are the games we play. The games we have to play. Even if we don’t like to.

Doing stupid **** because everyone else is doing it too

It has become the norm to distribute same content all over the net. It has become the norm to artificially play the systems, like search engines, to make money. It has become the norm to do all kinds of stupid ****, just because everyone else is doing it. And doing stupid **** just because everyone is doing it is, well, pretty ******* stupid.

I’m talking about social bookmarking, article marketing, video distribution, blogging and how people are bending the rules to make money and get traffic to their websites. I’m doing it, you’re doing it and you are telling others to do it. I am telling everyone to do it too. We do it, because everyone else is doing it too. Why? Because these things work.

The stupid **** we do

Let’s start with the popularity contest on Twitter. Wouldn’t it be cool to have 100000 followers? Sure it would, and it is very easy if you put effort to it. All you have to is follow enough people until 100000 have followed you back. Yes, it will take (some) time, but anyone can do it. And if done right, you can make decent money through tactics like this. And many think this is cool and the way to go.

Similarly, it’s common understanding that as a part of search engine optimization, you need to do this thing called link building. I’m building links, because it’s good for SEO. Why do we even need to talk about link building, shouldn’t it all be organic? Why do we need to go out there and tell Google our blog is here. Why do those who shout the loudest end up winning?

Yes, I can create awesome content, but someone can copy your content and get more traffic than you, just because a search engine thinks their site is the “authority” as they have been doing some link building and you have not.

And speaking of content scraping, isn’t it wonderful when people can so easily take your post, publish it as their own and not even bother linking back to you and rank higher in the search engines and get more traffic than the post you worked 7 hours on? I need to do stupid ****, because they are doing it, and I can’t let them win.

What about social bookmarking? Why do we need to get our blog posts to Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Mixx and thousands of other sites? Who REALLY uses those sites? There is so much crap on all of these, that I need to wipe my face every second to see if there is actually anything good in there, and even then I rarely find any, apart from the same top 26.5 tips I read yesterday. What is the point of a system which only exists is to make something else popular? What happened to sharing?

And social networking is hip and cool now, you know, the social media. We need to “be everywhere”. Because there are hundred new sites ramped-up every day, and we have tools to automatically post to Twitter & Facebook, among other sites, why wouldn’t we? I could be broadcasting the same status messages to several social networking sites, even that I’m only really active in two.

And then there is article spinning, which is the way some people are doing article marketing, where they use a software to create tens, hundreds or even thousands of articles, all based on the same original text, but in different order, with slightly modified words, etc. Is it just me, but isn’t something wrong if we need to create clutter and post the same stuff in different order to 1000 sites?

There is only one way to make truly unique article and that is to write ONE article and publish it on ONE place, no spinning, no distribution. But that’s not gonna do anything. No-one will know that post or article is there unless you promote it. You must share that post on Twitter. You ask people to bookmark it on Delicious, Stumble it, Digg it and share it to their friends on Facebook. These are all cool services and I like them a lot, but it makes me sick that we HAVE TO do this.

Is there a way out?

There are people who are doing all of the above “the right way”, they are not doing anything “wrong”, but I’m questioning why anyone needs to this **** in the first place…

• There is so much clutter online, that do we really want to be part of creating more of it.
• When did distributing the same **** all over the interwebz become the norm?
• Why do we need to game the system and borderline cheat to make things work?

Let us not get depressed over this, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though this is what we have to live with today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.

I have a dream that one day we will find a way to make this work, look past our personal gain and help each other out instead.

I have a dream that one day we do not need to post our content all over the net just to get links to our site, but it will be enough that we craft amazing content for others to enjoy.

I have a dream that one day I can find the best source of information from the net instead of those who shout the loudest, and the truth will prevail over playing the SEO game.

I have a dream that one day we don’t feel forced to bookmark our own blog posts with 100 social bookmarking sites and I don’t need to join all possible video sites to get my videos spread all over the place.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, all over the Internet, people will give credit to each other for the work they have done. Link to each other, instead of copying the content and publishing it as their own.

I have a dream today!

- Inspired (obviously) by Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream”.

So… what now?

I could teach you thing or two about link building, article marketing, social bookmarking and the hip-cool stuff, but I haven’t yet figured out a way to do it without doing all the stupid **** everyone else is doing. Have you?

I do this ****, but I’m lazy. I wish I wouldn’t need to build links, write meaningless list posts to get to front page of Digg/Delicious or I wouldn’t feel the pressure to follow people on Twitter just because they followed me…

So I wrote this “angry blog post”, because it was less of an effort to whine about it than just do it. Maybe I need some lessons from Yoda again.

I am Antti’s eternal ability to not take action.

1. Are You Using Social Media Like You Should or Are You Social Notworking?
2. 7 Must-Use Social Networking Sites
3. A Secret to Making Money Online

Blog commenting is a great way for everyone on the blog to discuss and share thoughts together. This kind of interaction can add great value to the blog, making it more of a community than just a website.

To start blog commenting yourself, here’s an introduction to blog comments, explaining what blog comments are and how to leave comments on a blog yourself…

How to leave a blog comment

There are a lot of blogging platforms available. Some of the most populars are WordPress, Blogger (aka blogspot), Tumblr and Typepad. All these offer hosted blogging (some are available for self-hosted blogs as well, like WordPress.org).

The different blogging systems might have different way to accepting comments, but the principle is the same: You enter your name, write your comment and submit the comment.

Here’s what the blog comment form looks like on WordPress.com (the look varies based on the design, but the fields are more and less the same):

Leaving a comment on a blog is easy as 1-2-3:

1. Enter your name and email
2. Write your comment
3. Submit the comment
   

In most blogs, it is mandatory to enter your email address. And as an optional step, it is often possible to enter your website URL (e.g. a blog address) to the comment as well. In most blogging platforms, your name will be linking to your website URL.

Blog commenting basics

The name and the email are often mandatory fields to fill. If you have left a comment on a blog before, it is possible that these have been saved locally to your computer and you don’t need to fill them every time. Other fields are optional and might not even be available.

The name is needed because the blogger and other readers need to know who left the comment. Some blogging platforms allow anonymous blog comments, but I recommend that you always use your real name, either the first name or full name if you like. Do not enter your website name or any “keywords” in the name-field, unless specifically allowed on that blog.

The email is mandatory in most blogs, but not all. The email is needed to ensure that the comment is left by real person. The email is not used for anything else but this verification, unless you optionally subscribe to comments (to get notified about new comments via email). The blogger, or other admins of the blog, can see the email, but that’s all. Behind the scenes, the email is also used to fetch an image of you, if the blog is using them and if you have set a gravatar for yourself.

The website URL is optional. If you do have a website, ALWAYS add the URL to the field. This way others who read your blog have the possibility to find more about what you do by clicking on the link. If you don’t have any website to link to, go make one right now. At minimum, have a page that tells who you are, what you do and how people can get in touch with you.

The comment text is where you write what you have to say. In theory, you can say and write anything you want. However, if you don’t stay within the blog comment rules (not all blogs have blog commenting policy, but most should have), your comment will not be approved by the blogger, it can be marked as spam and deleted from the blog.

Blog commenting and SPAM

There are rules in blog commenting that you must follow. The blogger is using quite a bit of time to keep the blog comments free of spam. There are great anti-spam tools for most blogging platforms, which automatically filter out spam comments.

The spam comments are often left by automated scripts (“bots”), in attempt to get a link back to a site. This is why you, as a real person, need to stand out from the “bots” and not spam:

• Follow the general netiquette principles
  • Don’t “YELL” (use all capital letters)
  • Keep the comment on topic with the blog post you are commenting on
  • Don’t be rude
• Don’t add unnecessary URL links to the text

What to say in blog comments?

Blog commenting is an amazing opportunity to

• share your opinion,
• ask questions,
• thank the author and
• discuss the topic of the post
• (and also get a link, and maybe even some traffic to your own blog)

Use it well, and you will understand what makes blogging so special. Think of it like reading a great book and be able to thank the author about the experience, ask the writer questions if you didn’t understand something or agree/disagree with what you just read.

Summary

To leave comments on a blog

1. find the blog comment form
   • find a link, or
   • scroll towards the bottom of the individual blog post
2. add your name to the form
   • add your email (if needed)
   • add your website URL (optional)
3. write your comment
4. submit

Blog commenting is an excellent way to network with other bloggers and blog readers. At its best, blog comments turn into discussion and add great value to the blog community. To make the most out of blog commenting, you should add something to the post, either by adding your opinion, additional information, questions or something between those lines.

You can also build links with blog commenting and get traffic via blog comments, but you must not spam when you do this. To get the most results out of it, there are some advanced blog commenting tricks you can use.

But now that you know how to leave blog comments, you should try it out and leave comment on this blog… On this blog, I’m using a blog commenting system called Disqus, give it a try and leave your blog comment below.

1. Replacing “No comments” with “Leave a comment” in WordPress
2. How to get more blog comments and discussion
3. Why Blog Commenting Is So Important?

• Linking means you go and get an affiliate link to a product and add it to a blog post, tweet the link or whatever.
• Reviewing means you actually use and test the product (e.g. read a book, install and test a software program, test drive a car, etc.), and then publish a review of the product.
• Promoting means you put time and effort into actually selling the affiliate product (and not just link and/or review).

The idea with the 3 levels is that as you level up, the likelyhood of making sales increases, but at the same time, the amount of work goes up.

Preface

In my book, joining an affiliate program, copy-pasting a swipe-copy to your email list is not promoting. That’s linking. Placing a banner with affiliate link on your blog is not promoting, that’s linking.

Promoting brings you the best results, reviews work very well too, linking works, but it will not bring the results you can get from reviewing and promoting. All levels can and do make money, but in very different way. Linking relies on traffic volume, promoting relies on relationships and trust.

Linking is the first level. The second level, reviewing, is important in order to find the best products for the last level, promoting. As you go to the next level, the time you put in increases and the number of products on that level decreases.

• You can do plenty of linking (or choose to do very little)
• Reviewing takes time, so you probably can’t do it as much as linking
• Promoting works best when you focus your effort into a few products, so keep the numbers low

Now, let’s take a look at what each of these levels actually mean.

Linking

First of all, using affiliate links is necessary in order to make commissions online, unless specific coupon codes or such are used, but in this context, linking means using affiliate links without additional “selling” like a review or recommendation of the product.

Making money through affiliate linking is not much different from contextual advertising, the money comes (if it comes) with volume. The click-through rates are probably much smaller than with reviews and promotions, and the conversion rate into sales is very likely even smaller.

Linking is the least effective affiliate marketing, since you are “just” linking to a product. You can make money, but probably not much, because you’re not “pre-selling” or promoting what you’re linking to. Linking is how most marketers start after joining their first affiliate program, thus I refer to it as the first level.

Even when “just linking”, you need to consider if you want to be associated with something. I do this with any kind of linking, not just affiliate linking. I only link to places I think are beneficial to the reader, whether it’s an additional tips, further reading or some product related to the content I’ve done.

For example, I link to someone who has also written a book. If I do short intro of that person, I might link to that book on Amazon. If I haven’t read the book, I’m telling “this person has written this book” without actually recommending it. Since I’m linking to it, I might as well make it an affiliate link, right?

Some people choose to do this, some don’t do it all. Those who don’t do linking, think it’s not worth to do this, so they either don’t link at all or link without affiliate links.

Moving from linking to reviewing means that you have first-hand experience of the product. When you have used and tested something yourself, your recommendation and the affiliate link gets a lot more weight.

Reviewing

When doing reviews, you go through a 3-part process

1. choose a product for testing and using
2. test, use and evaluate the product
3. do (and publish) a review

If you haven’t used the product before (you are looking for new products to promote), the product must match the criteria from the affiliate program evaluation checklist.

Firstly, it must be worth the time you put into it. Since you put time into testing and reviewing, making a review should be worth it. Note that reviewing can be beneficial even if you don’t make money directly from it. For example, you can review a free product and that review can benefit you and your blog, even that you don’t make any sales since the product is free.

Secondly, if you think it’s worth the time, you can start testing and using the product yourself. How could you review a product if you haven’t used it, right? For a product or service you’re using already or have used before, these two criteria have already been met.

Lastly, the third criteria, does the product meets the needs of your following, will tell whether or not you recommend the product to your following.

If it doesn’t meet the needs, or the product is not good, it does not mean you should not publish a review. It comes down to decision, do you want to publish bad reviews or not.

To summarize reviewing,

1. first choose the products to test and use (starting from products and services you are already using is a good start, like a book you’ve read, a tool you are using, etc.).
2. Then evaluate the features, advantages and benefits of the product.
3. Based on this evaluation, you can decide if you do a review or not. If you think the product will benefit your following, or you also publish neutral or negative reviews,
4. the last step is to do and publish the review (write, record an audio or video).

Going from reviewing to promoting means you refer people back to your review or promote and recommend the product in other ways.

Promoting

Promoting an affiliate offer is the third, the highest level, and the most effective way of affiliate marketing. This is where you really put an effort into selling the affiliate product yourself.

Reviewing can be a preceding step for choosing the products to promote, but it is not necessary, although doing a review and then referring back to that review is a great way to promote a product.

For example, you can do affiliate promoting by recommending the affiliate product within your own products, offering bonuses for those who buy the product through you or teaching your following how to use the product.

When choosing a product to promote, the products you choose to promote should check well with all three criteria of affiliate program evaluation:

1. Does it meet the needs of my followers?
2. Is the payout worth the effort (ROI)?
3. Have I used or tested this product myself?

Since you are putting yourself, the trust you have built and your time into promoting the affiliate products, the products you promote must be worth it (both financially and effort-wise). In order to keep the trust, and keep it ethical, you should have used and tested the product yourself.

You should not waste time on anything that will not benefit your following, in fact, promoting something that is not good and beneficial can have negative effects on your business. With every affiliate promotion you do, you put your influence and trust on line. And no amount of money is worth enough to lose the trust you have built over time.

Conclusion

• When choosing products for any level of affiliate marketing, look for products and services that complement your own offering (your own products and services).
• You can link and review to many products, but only choose a few products that you put more effort into via promoting and selling.

As you build the trust with your following and your influence grows, you can see better results as you move to the higher levels of affiliate marketing. Remember to keep it real and honest, choose the affiliate products carefully, and do plenty of free content in between the reviews and promotions.

As always, questions and comments are more than welcome and encouraged. Please, share your thoughts and views on affiliate marketing on the comments below.

1. Step-by-step affiliate program evaluation checklist
2. Affiliate Marketing Explained
3. How To Join Your First Affiliate Program

When looking for affiliate programs that you could join,

• take a look at the product and
• ask yourself these 3 questions (in order of importance):

1. Does it meet the needs of my followers?

This is the first step and the most important one too. You’ll see much better results when you choose a handful of products that

• benefit your following
• complement what you already offer
  • other affiliate products, or
  • your own products and services

Whether you are doing an review, a larger promotion or just linking to a a product, ask

• is it something that will actually benefit your following?
• does it meet their needs?
• does it fit in with other products you recommend?

If the answer is no. You should look for better options.

2. Have I used or tested this product myself?

Every affiliate promotion you do, you put your influence and trust on line.

Trust is equally powerful currency to money.

• pick only the ones you really KNOW, TRUST and HONESTLY can recommend.
• concentrate your effort into those

For best results, choose the products you have used or are using yourself.

3. Is it worth my time?

You will invest time and possibly money to market this thing, so it should be worth it.

• you want to know what the payout is.
• make sure the money is worth it.

Does the ROI make sense? Will you end up making a profit from the product?

When evaluating whether or not it’s worth it, try to think of the indirect benefits as well.

• is the product so good that recommending the product will increase your influence?
  • it is worth investing some time to recommend the best of the best, if that increases your credibility and trust, even if you very little or no money directly.
• a product that rounds up your affiliate marketing portfolio can be good, even if the direct payouts are small.

Summary

Use the 3-step process as a checklist to choose affiliate programs and products to link, review and promote to your following.

• you want to find great product that
  • benefits your following,
  • is something you are using or have used yourself, and
  • is worth your time to start marketing it.
• if the affiliate program meets all three criteria on the list, you have a winner.

Note that the criteria is not just tied to products, use it to evaluate sellers as well

• if multiple sellers (with affiliate programs) offer the same product, choose a trustworthy and well-known seller over higher payouts
• if the quality of service is the same, check if one of the sellers is offering the same product on a cheaper price (= beneficial for your following)

Keep in mind, whatever affiliate programs you choose – do not market something just for the affiliate commission. There is no affiliate commission big enough that compensates the loss of trust you have built with your following if the product does not deliver and does not benefit them.

As always, comments are welcome and encouraged. How do you choose affiliate programs to promote?

p.s. This post was inspired by the Internet Business Mastery podcast, episode 86, 6 secrets to choosing an affiliate program. “IBM” is one of my favorite podcasts, so check it out if you’re interested in listening to Sterling and Jay and their #1 Internet business and marketing podcast.

1. 3 levels of affiliate marketing – link, review and promote
2. How To Join Your First Affiliate Program
3. Affiliate Marketing Explained

Many successful individuals, businesses and companies have been marketing with video for many years now, and there’s a reason for that – It works (just look at how well Zappos is doing). Here are some facts for you about online video:

• video sells.
• online videos get A LOT of traffic.
• videos rank well in the search engines.
• you don’t need fancy camera or video editing courses to do this.
• you can create awesome videos with just your computer (even for free).

Here’s Why You Should Start Doing Video Marketing…

I know making online video is scary, especially if you put your own voice, let alone face into play. But don’t let that fear stop you. Doing a video doesn’t mean you have to film yourself; you don’t have to become an actor, just a smart marketer.

The hardest video you ever make is the first one. Once you have done it once, it gets easier and easier every time. Those who have done this already, and use video marketing as part of their business are reaping the rewards.

But let’s be honest, it’s not like it’s any secret, right?

You know that online video works. Maybe you think it’s too hard, too expensive or will just take too much of your time?

Personally, I don’t even know why I’m not doing more video, even that I’ve seen the results with my a few gaming videos… But that’s about to change.

It has to change.

So perhaps it’s time for you and me, to stop sitting on our a%¤es and learn how to do marketing with video, yes? Yes, you will have to learn a couple of new things, but in the end it’s not any more complicated than writing a post and publishing it on your blog.

Like anything else, video is not the silver bullet that will make everything work like magic and bring instant results, but the results CAN be amazing, because…

Online Video Gets a LOT of Traffic

Here are some numbers about online video and search in the U.S. (stats via ComScore):

• 33 billion videos were watched on December 2009
• YouTube got 13 billion views
  • 1/3 of videos online were watched on YouTube
• Google search is used by 10 billion users a month, all search engines get about 15 billion users.
• The popularity of online videos is not even near its peak

This means that all online video sites combined get 2-3 more traffic than all search engines combined.

What if I tell you it’s about 10 times easier to rank a video high in the search engines than it is with a normal page?

When it all comes together, it’s not as simple as that (because Google search only shows so may videos versus other web pages for example), but I’m taking 3 times the traffic potential for 1/10th of an effort any day.

You?

Search Engines Like Blogs, but LOVE Video!

Have you seen videos on the search results when you use Google? You probably have, and if you’ve paid attention you’ve noticed that the videos pop up quite high on the results, anything between 1st and 5th place, depending on the search phrase (not all searches show videos, but anyway…).

Without going in-depth in search engine optimization, you probably know that incoming links are the most important factor for search engine rankings, right?

For example, videos that are shown on the first page of Google might have about 10 to 20 links. When the web pages appearing below them might hundreds, if not thousands of backlinks.

Would you rather write a blog post, and get at least 100 links to it to get the the post to the first page of Google, or should you make a video, and get 10 or so links to that video (by yourself if you have to, using free blogs, Squidoo and such)?

Online Video in the Search Results

For example, with Google search for a phrase “how to bake a cake”

• There are about 21 million competing pages
• Search phrase gets 33000 searches a month, according to Google Keyword tool
• There are two videos in about 3rd to 4th place. Those videos have 2 and 10 backlinks when I checked.
• The normal pages on top and below the videos have about 30 and 100 backlinks. (and one of them is actually a VIDEO!)
• There are as little as 7 links to ranking pages on the whole first page, with minimum of 600 links to the domain

Here’s an example Google Search Results Page (SERP). …try not to be stunned by my mad skillz when it comes to image-editing and writing with mouse, OK?

for this example search phrase

• You can rank a video on the first page of Google with just 2-10 backlinks,
• When it might take over 100 links for a normal webpage to get the same result, or several hundreds of links to the domain

I also checked several other keyword phrases for same results. For one that gets over 200000 searches a month, there are two videos in 3rd place on the Google search results. One of them has 100 links, the other has 1000. A lot yes, but guess how many links the website below these videos has? – 2 MILLION.

You can get an estimate of backlinks yourself, by taking any URL/link you find from the search results and

• Go to Yahoo.com and enter search phrase “link:example.com” (without the quotation marks and replacing example.com with the link to the page you want to check)
• you’ll get directed into Yahoo Site Explorer and see the number of “inlinks” there
• enter in Google: “link:example.com”

Why Video Ranks So Well in Search Engines?

This happens through the power of online video sites and the fact that Google does what’s called universal search. Google looks for relevant content from all sources, not just text-based web pages.

And since the domain where the videos are hosted, e.g. YouTube, has so many backlinks that no site can match that. With the domain links, the individual pages, or in this case videos, need a lot less page-specific links to rank well.

Make sense?

There is still need for SEO writing, but if you are not doing video marketing, you are giving away HUGE opportunity (and we didn’t even go for the viral potential of videos, just search). The best case is to rank with both your videos and normal pages, but getting the video there is a good start.

Coaching Course to Professional Video Marketing

I learned much of what you saw above from Andy Jenkins‘ free videos that were available for a limited time at his Video Boss -site.

For a short time, there were free videos on the site, promoting the program, with over an hour full of quality info about making and marketing with video and I learned a lot. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen such huge amount of info packed into one just for a product launch. But like said, they are not there now :( I’m sorry if you missed them.

The links here (Video Boss) are affiliate links, so if you end up buying (when the program is available), I’ll get paid. With that said, Andy Jenkins is a professional video maker and he has done marketing videos for pretty much every “big” Internet marketer and product launch out there, in addition the stuff he has done for TV and movies (he got Emmy for video editing too!). So I’m thinking video marketing course doesn’t get any better than this, even that I haven’t taken it myself.

I left this information here in-case top-notch video marketing and professional video course (based on the free videos I saw) interests you. You can find out about the program via the official site at www.TheVideoBoss.com. If it’s sold out – sign up to the waiting list, so you’ll get noticed when the program is available again.

Conclusion

The video sharing sites get 2-3 times more traffic than Google search. Using video is better for conversions, better for sales, and you can even do it for free. YouTube is free, tens and hundreds of other video sites are free. Making a video does not have to expensive, you can do just fine with free video tools, so the only “cost” is your time.

If you are doing business online, NOT using online video for marketing is the biggest mistake you can do right now, since marketing with video is much easier that you think and the potential is enormous. Even if you use it “just as” a way to increase blog traffic, using video can potentially capture a lot more readers, subscribers and even buyers to your blog.

1. Affiliate Marketing Explained
2. Web Site Traffic Analysis – Lessons for Blog Promotion
3. The games we play and the stupid **** we do to get seen online

Or are you planning a vacation and don’t want to leave your blog stranded without fresh content? There is an excellent way to add flexibility to your blogging and it’s called blog post buffer and to get it going, you need pre-writing.

Contents of This Post

Since there are several parts in this post (all on this page thou), here are the quick links:

• Why Blog Post Buffer is Good for You? (Motivation)
• What is a Blog Post Buffer? (Definition)
• What is Pre-Writing?
• Getting Started
• The Pre-Writing Challenge
• Summary

You can come up here on the “table of contents” by hitting links like this:
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Motivation

This concept can be a great help for a beginning blogger. I know for a fact, that when you start your blog, you will be VERY EXCITED and write blog post after another. You only have couple of readers and even they can’t keep up with all the content you put up.

Then after a month or two, you don’t feel like blogging so much. You’re burned out (I hope it doesn’t happen, I’m just saying it can, and this is one of the reasons people stop blogging before they even get really started). You have put 100 articles out in 3 months and now you don’t know what to do.

What if you would have only published 3 posts a week (just an example), concentrating on networking with other bloggers, engaging in the social media and marketing your blog – and putting all the additional posts you write to the “queue”?

After three months, you would have published 39 posts (in 13 weeks which is pretty close to 3 months). You would have 61 posts (!!) in the blog post buffer, which would mean about 20 weeks worth of content for your blog.

What if, for the next 20 weeks (that’s a looong time, isn’t it?) you could do ONLY blog promotion? ONLY getting to know other bloggers, visiting forums and getting blog traffic? All this while your blog would get fresh content without you touching the blog, because you created and scheduled it weeks before.

And just think if you would go, and polish one of those blog posts each week, and improve it even further, putting all your energy into one of the three articles going out that week (which you could do, because you wouldn’t HAVE TO write anything else).

…of course, if you can keep up with the regular posting you have done, putting up a post or two every day even after the first 3-6 months, that’s awesome. But I’m speaking from experience, it is possible, or even likely, that you “hit a wall” at some point and it’s good to have “savings” in form of extra blog posts when that happens.

I wish I had done this when I started. After putting a lot of effort into the blog, I had to take a break at some point, I just couldn’t keep up with the tempo I had started. I had to “abandon” blogging for weeks, and without the buffer no new posts for my blog :(

If I had hold on to some of the blog posts I put out in the first three months like I described above, I could have build myself a blog post buffer with 3-4 weeks worth of blog posts and I am sure, I would have been able to keep up more consistent blogging like that.

However, the concept of blog post buffer is not just for beginning bloggers, as established bloggers can start doing and benefit from this, as you’ll learn as you read on…

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What is Blog Post Buffer?

a means or device used as a cushion against the shock of fluctuations in business or financial activity – (one definition of) buffer, Webster

In order to have “cushion” against the shock of fluctuations in your blog writing output, you need a buffer, a blog post buffer.

A blog post buffer is a queue of blog posts, where a blogger puts new blog posts instead of publishing them right away. All content is created beforehand, pre-written if you will, freeing up time from daily blog management to other tasks, like interacting with the readers and marketing.

Blog post buffer helps a blogger to take break from blogging, a vacation for example, while still maintaining the regular posting schedule. This can be done by taking advantage of scheduling options in many blogging platforms, making the blog put out new content automatically based on the dates and times set by the blogger.

Filling the buffer means writing more articles than you publish each week. Choose a posting schedule, 6 posts or 3 posts a week, or any amount of posts per week/month you are sure to keep up (if it’s one post a week, then it’s one post a week, you can always up the count as needed), and stick with that. The publish the same amount of content each week. Put the “extra” posts to the buffer. In the end, there’s nothing more to it.

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What is Pre-Writing?

Pre-writing means starting and maintaining a blog post buffer (Not to be confused with prewriting, the first part of writing process). In short, it is about writing content before you actually put it on the blog vs. “normal” blog writing where you hit publish the second you finish the post.

You can read more about pre-writing from these posts (1 from me, 2 from Carlos Velez):

• Pre-Write 2 Weeks Worth of Blog Posts
• Pre-Writing Is Your Friend – With Benefits (Part 1)
• Pre-Writing Is Your Friend – With Benefits (Part 2)

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Getting Started

Once you have pre-writing going, you have two (or more) weeks worth of content in the queue, you can just keep you regular blogging rhythm and keep the buffer alive. The hard part is getting started, since you need to get that post buffer filled.

Start putting one article a week on hold from this day on. Do this either by

• writing one extra article a week, or
• posting one less article a week than usual

With this, you will have a full buffer in 2x weeks (two times the x), where x is the amount of posts you publish each week. If you usually publish 5 posts a week, you’ll have full buffer in 10 weeks.

If you usually post 3 posts a week, you’ll have full buffer in 6 weeks. And if you get the flow on, and happen to write more articles one week, don’t publish them right away, add them to the buffer!

Or if you’re into having some crunch time, set yourself a deadline to fill the buffer, e.g. a month and fill the buffer on that time, while keeping your normal posting frequency.

If you regularly post 3 times a week, that means you need to write 6 posts to the buffer WHILE doing your regular posts. If you want to create a 2 weeks worth of blog posts in a month, you’d be writing about 12 posts as usual plus the additional 6, for a total of 18 posts in a month.

Or you can cut the posting frequncy to just 2 posts a week, and put the one post towards the buffer, with 8 posts going to the blog as usual and 6 posts to the buffer, you would only need to write 2 “extra” posts during the month. Very doable, right?

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The Pre-Writing Challenge

To get make this official and gather all of us who want to do this together, Carlos Velez from Conscious Me started the Pre-Writing Challenge, where those who want to start pre-writing help and support each other.

And there’s a chance to get some backlinks and traffic as well, but I think the focus is on collaboration and having fun…

You can read more about the pre-writing challenge here:

• Pre-Writing Challenge Main Page
• About the Pre-Writing Challenge
• Pre-Writing Challenge Forum

I’m participating on the challenge. I will create at least two weeks worth of content to this blog during the next month. I’ve updated my progress and notes to this post: Pre-Writing Challenge Updates.

For me, this means creating most, if not all, content during the weekends, so I can concentrate on other activities like networking and marketing during the week (in addition to my day job that is).

There are others on this already, and with the support from each other, finishing the challenge will be much easier! And after finishing the challenge, there will be a lot more flexibility to blog content creation than before.Visit Pre-Writing Challenge Main Page for more info and to see who else is doing this right now.

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Who’s in?

Go ahead and join the challenge with me. Or if you don’t wish to make it “official”, start writing one extra article each week, put it on hold (resist the urge to put it out), wait until you have two weeks worth of those posts on hold and you have your blog post buffer!

p.s. Make sure to subscribe to this blog via RSS or email to get the free updates to your favorite reader or inbox. You can also follow me 140 characters at a time via Twitter at http://twitter.com/Zemalf.

1. Pre-writing challenge updates
2. How To Properly Take Time Off From Blogging
3. Writing SEO Friendly Blog Posts

If you feel your niche is hard for making money (which one might consider to be an unprofitable niche), you have to think outside the box in order to find a way to give your readers what they want, which might be saving money, free stuff, entertainment, etc. – while making money yourself. Easy? No. Doable? I think so…

Question: How to Monetize a Blog (when you feel like you can’t)?

Brian told me that he has a site called Daily Fuel Economy Tip which actually gets a lot of traffic. He also has decent amount of people on his newsletter email list, too. Unfortunately, he is having the hardest time coming up with ways to monetize the site and email list. So Brian asked: “I was wondering if you might be able to give me some good suggestions on things I might be able to do (in order to monetize my blog and list). Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.”

Birney had similar problem as Brian. He also “suffers” from the business model of saving money. Folks who visit his site, Energy Boomer, come there to cut their spending NOT to spend. He makes some money through advertising and affiliate programs, but not much. E-Book sales are poor. Birney hasn’t been able to monetize her newsletter, after trying couple of affiliate programs, so he asked to hear about other ideas.

I gathered my answers, thoughts and ideas to this post, and I welcome you to continue the discussion on the comments.

When Your Readers Are Not Buyers

First of all, if you are blogging about a topic that feels hard to monetize, don’t give up! If you are passionate about the topic, keep going, it’s just a matter of finding the way. But you do have to think outside the box.

In niches and blogs sharing ways to save money, or getting stuff for free, you have to look into other means than selling (if your readers are not buyers, why bother trying to sell them anything?). I would personally keep growing the blog and mailing list through free content, giving out valuable tips as you have so far. And start thinking outside the traditional ways to earn money.

If other bloggers are selling eBooks or other products, that doesn’t mean you have to. If you have the readers, but they are not buyers, you have to find something else. Advertising is one possibility. Don’t be afraid to think beyond AdSense. Advertising can make you money, especially if you have plenty of traffic.

If traditional advertising doesn’t work, or you just want to diversify your income, contact advertisers and potential companies directly to ask if they would be interested in doing business with you and possibly give your readers discounts or other special deals.

Give Your Readers What They Want

If your readers are looking to save money, you have to give them exactly that (and collect the money elsewhere).

If you have a blog in a niche which is “hard to monetize”, people are used to free stuff or are looking to save money – do your readers a favor and… help them save money! Find products and services your readers are paying anyway AND find a way to offer that to them for cheaper price, while getting paid by the seller yourself.

For example, you blog about “saving money”, you share tips on how to save energy, drive economically to save fuel, etc. What if you could offer your readers discounts on their energy or fuel bills? And get paid to help them?

Find Ways for Your Readers to Save Money

I would contact potential advertisers and businesses on your niche, and suggest if they could offer discounts to your readers. In addition to selling advertising on your blog, work on to get special deals between you and the advertiser, for example discounts or free samples for your readers.

1. advertiser pays you,
2. you tell the people on your list about them (giving them a discount),
3. your readers get discount (save money),
4. the advertiser gets a targeted guest (and make profit).

The hard part is finding products and services that suit your blog and list, and then negotiating the deals. If you’re working on a relatively local niche, e.g. city, contacting the local businesses is good place to start, and if you work on it, I’m sure you’ll be able to find potential advertisers.

Then start working on working the details with those advertisers. Consider offering to distribute their discount codes for free to see how things go (for both you and the advertiser).

Look for Affiliate Programs that Offer Discounts

If suitable products and companies already have an affiliate program, contact the affiliate manager and ask for coupon codes and discounts to give to your readers, if the affiliate system doesn’t offer such by default.

Or alternatively, you can try to work on custom affiliate agreement with any company, e.g. they pay you (or you invoice them) when someone comes in and uses the special discount code you’re distributing through your list.

• Instead of selling to your readers (who are there to save money),
• give them what they want, like stuff that saves them money,
  • including discounts from businesses who pay you to advertise them.

The companies who work with you like this, might even get better results through special deals for your readers than they would through normal advertising.

For example, this is what Mike CJ and his wife have done on their travel blog – they are offering discounts to their subscribers and readers, all through DIY affiliate program with a local car rental service. You should also check the full case study (free) by Mike, sharing the whole story behind taking a Lanzarote travel blog from zero to a full time income in one year (inspiring story of how hard work pays off in the end. anyway, moving on…).

Whether you find discounts through available affiliate programs or set a deal yourself

• Write an overview,
• a review or
• do an interview about the product or the service, and
• publish it to the blog.

On the post, offer discount or special deal for the product (which you agreed with the advertiser). You can also offer a larger discount to those who subscribe to your email list, which can be huge incentive for people to join your list.

If you gather plenty of advertisers, or otherwise find a way to get a lot of different (and regular) discounts, with that alone you could turn your mailing list into premium service, or even a full membership site, and ask for a small monthly payment from the subscribers.

Can You Monetize Any Niche?

I can’t speak from personal experience, since I only have experience from handful of niches, but I think you can monetize any niche – it’s just a matter of finding the way. Yes, some markets will be a lot tougher to monetize than others, and might require a lot more traffic than others for example.

This is especially true for the markets where people expect content to be free, “funny” sites and humor is often referred as such (people expect to get entertained for free online). But there are people making money with funny cat pics, so anything is possible, right?

If making money online feels like running to a wall, you either find an opening or go through it. I hope this advice and answer helped you on that…

What are your thoughts on monetizing a blog in a seemingly unprofitable niche? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences! (e.g. What would you do if you were Brian or Birnie?)

p.s. If you have questions about niche blogging, making money online, SEO or anything else – send your questions to me through the contact form and I’ll answer you via email as soon as I can – and I might write a post like this, linking back to your site (if you want) as my thank you for your great question.

1. How To Choose a Domain Name for a Niche Site [Q&A]
2. Make Money Review, June 2009
3. How To Find Good Keywords For Your Blog

There are many ways to do marketing, Internet business and even blogging. For me, some ways resonate a lot more than the others. And I’ve noticed I respond to certain kind of marketing a lot better than I do for something else. So perhaps there’s something to learn here.

Taking

Do you write blog posts only to get people to your blog and maybe down the line, buy some of your stuff. Or things you promote products of others via affiliate marketing?

Are you hoarding Twitter followers by mass-following people you don’t know and hoping they follow you back? Are you trying to get a lot of followers so you could get money from sponsored Tweets? Or drive people to your blog to buy your stuff?

Are you linking and endorsing certain product because their affiliate product pays better (or because they have an affiliate program in the first place and the other company/product doesn’t)? Are you aware of free alternatives to the paid products you promote, but refuse linking to them to keep people paying you?

Do you send emails to your list ONLY to make money? Is every mail you send an affiliate product to a product you never even tried yourself, but it does pay a fat commission? Or maybe you actually promote products that are good, but that’s all you do.

You do Internet marketing because you want to make money. You want to take their money. You want my money. You’re a taker. And I don’t like you very much.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s OK to pursue the entrepreneurial dream. It’s OK to make money, but the paradigm shift is here, the way you’re selling is changing. Or if you’re not changing, you should.

Giving

When was the last time you gave something without expecting anything in return? When was the last time you helped someone? Could you be an unconventional giver?

When was the last time you added something to your blog, or send to your email list, that didn’t sell anything. Even indirectly?

And no, sending out free giveaways of an affiliate product does not count…

You know – just give.

Have you sent an honest tip, link or suggestion to your email list or made a post to your blog sending people to a great source of information, just because you think that way? Without affiliate link, or expecting that person to “share the love” and link back?

Do you understand how much TRUST you build doing that?

Helping

How about asking your subscribers what they need help with? Or what do they want to know? Or maybe look into other blogs, Twitter, other social networking sites and search for what people are struggling with…

And then help them, write blog posts, eBooks, make videos and answer their emails. Just help. Give it away for free. No follow-up post the next day to buy your shit. No up-sell one time offer, or even an email opt-in.

Maybe, just maybe you could feel great for doing just that. Wouldn’t that be an awesome way to build your personal brand?

Wouldn’t it be great if people, when you finally have something for sell, would come and say that they would love to buy and support you for all that you’ve done for them before?

…Will Set You Free

You have given stuff away for free. You’ve helped people without expecting anything in return. But now you decided it is time to start selling your own product or service…

Some would say, why you are NOW asking for money? Why are you not giving it to us for free like you used to do? But most will understand, and you keep the trust you’ve built through power of free, and some will buy.

But you don’t stop there. You will continue, you’ll continue giving away free stuff, helping people, healing the world. And you’ll keep growing your business, selling more while at it. Helping even more people.

You are very honest about it, you’re trying to make a living, just like the guy or gal next to you. And you can be very honest that you’re in it to make money, get rich even, but deep down you know that you are in it to help.

And that, my friend, makes you truly awesome.

1. 3 Ways to Earn Money Through Internet
2. Affiliate Marketing Explained
3. Learn from the Internet Marketer Masters for Free

I’ve written about the challenges that non-native english blogger faces, but that is nothing compared to the confusion that surrounds the U.S. taxation system. Seems that no-one has clarified the issue once and for all, and thus everyone is guessing. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice, so proceed with extreme caution, but here’s is how I understand it.

DISCLAIMER

I am not a lawyer. Do not take this as any kind of legal advice. This is but my understanding based on information I’ve found online. Heck, I don’t even know if this disclaimer has any validity, because I am not a lawyer, so you should take a notice of that and consult someone who actually knows their taxes, OK?

Non-U.S. Business with No U.S. Activities

Here’s a quick guide explaining why most non-U.S. affiliate marketers are not subject to tax withholding in the U.S., hopefully clarifying what we “foreigners” need to know about the U.S. taxation.

This applies to people like me,

• who are not U.S. citizens,
• do not live in the U.S. and
• do not have any employees or equipment in the U.S.

In other words, all my business is done and sourced from where I work (and also happen to live). In my case, Finland. I have a Non-U.S. business with No U.S. activities. If I would have some U.S. Activities, it would be different.

I don’t have any U.S. activities, because

• I don’t have any employees in the U.S.
• I don’t own any equipment in the U.S.

In fact, like many other Internet and affiliate marketers, I don’t have any employees and pretty much the only equipment I own is my own computer. Isn’t Internet business amazing :)

U.S. Activity and Web Hosting?

Having or not having employees is probably pretty clear to you as well. But owning equipment in the U.S. on the other hand, might sound tricky as many of us have blogs and websites, sitting on web servers in the U.S., right? Well, at least I don’t OWN the server…

And unless you have specifically BOUGHT a server that is run in the U.S., you do not own the web server. Hosting websites on a U.S. web hosting service is not owning U.S. equipment. Thus, renting a shared hosting (or even virtual private server) from U.S. based hosting service doesn’t mean you have U.S. activities.

To clarify, let me quote Google AdSense Tax Information (they have it right):

Generally, utilizing an unrelated third-party U.S. web hosting service to host your web pages, renting web servers that are located in the U.S. from an unrelated third party, or having your payment sent to a U.S. Post Office Box or mail forwarding address, do not of themselves constitute U.S. Activities.

No Need to Fill the W-8BEN Form

I’ve had to go through this many times when joining a affiliate program, and every time it’s equally confusing. They send or ask me to fill some weird tax forms, even that they shouldn’t even need to do that.

Many affiliate programs ask non-U.S. affiliates to fill a W-8BEN form. However, this W8-BEN form is only required to be filled out for U.S. sourced income. Now “U.S. Sourced” doesn’t mean where the person writing the check is, it means where the work was done by the payee (or an affiliate).

As the W-8BEN instructions (from IRS) state:

Who must file. You must give Form W-8BEN to the withholding agent or payer if you are a foreign person and you are the beneficial owner of an amount subject to withholding.

In general, as an affiliate for product/service/company X, living in Finland with no employees or owned equipment in the U.S., my affiliate income is foreign sourced income. If that’s the case, the foreign sourced income is not subject to tax withholding in the U.S.. No tax forms are required in this instance, e.g. the W-8BEN form.

Source: Forum post, (Why there is usually no need to) fill the W-8BEN form for foreign affiliates

Commission Junction Example

Commission Junction is big affiliate service and for non-U.S. affiliates, they ask affiliates to select either (this is where I first encountered this):

• Certification Of No United States Activities
• W-8BEN Certificate of Foreign Status of Beneficial Owner for United States Tax Withholding

I hope this post clarified to you, that in most cases, the choice is to certify that you have “no U.S. activities”. The same goes for many other affiliate programs as well. If they know what they’re doing, they have similar place to state that you don’t have U.S. activities.

If the people running the affiliate program are not sure, they will send you the forms and ask you to fill them (because they think they have to withhold taxes unless they have the form from you), even that they should just ask if you have any U.S. activity (as they already see that you are not from U.S. when they asked which country you are from.

Anyway, since they don’t know what they should do, it’s good that now you know better, and you can state that your affiliate income is not subject to tax withholding because you don’t have U.S. activities (if that’s the case).

Of course, if you do have employees and/or actual U.S. based equipment, the W-8BEN form is quite simple and probably know what to do anyway – or have the resources to get help, as you have employees :)

Conclusion

I say it again, that I am not a lawyer, and this it not legal advice or any kind of fact, but after reading and checking these things many times now, I’m pretty sure this is correct…

In short, I pay and handle my taxes where I work and live, in Finland. This is because I don’t have any employees in the U.S. and I don’t own any U.S. equipment and thus, don’t have any U.S. activities.

If you do have employees in the U.S., or you own equipment in there, your U.S. based income is subject to tax withholding and you do have to fill the required forms and do a whole lot, but unfortunately I can’t help you much there. If this is the case, I welcome you to write a part 2 on the subject if you want to share how you do handle the U.S. taxes, just contact me if you’re interested in writing such a guest post.

But if you’re like me, living somewhere else than the USA, you don’t have any employees (or if you do, they’re not in the U.S.) and you run your blogs and websites on rented servers (or servers not in the U.S.), all your income is “foreign sourced income” from U.S. point of view.

No IRS tax forms to fill, no U.S. taxes to be paid, just handle the taxes in your own country (which are probably much simpler to manage than the IRS / U.S. system), at least that’s the case for me.

Thoughts? Your experiences with the U.S. taxes?

p.s. If you found this post useful, you might want to subscribe to this blog via email to get free useful content like this delivered straight to your inbox (or get the RSS to your reader).

1. Affiliate Marketing Explained
2. How To Join Your First Affiliate Program

This time the questions and answers are related to building niche sites, and more accurately search engine optimization, SEO, and choosing the right domain name.

Preface

These questions came from Ravi who had several questions about choosing domain names for niche sites. I didn’t get a site to link to (at least yet), but the questions were good. I hope you find the answers useful :)

Choosing a domain name is important for any blog and website, but it’s even more important if you are planning to drive traffic through search engines to the site, using optimize the site for one main keyword phrase and couple of related phrases. In such a case, it’s very beneficial to choose a domain name that matches the main keyword phrase exactly.

Question: Can I Add a Word to Keyworded Domain Name?

Ravi asked: “Do you think that part of the domain name can be in a longer name or should the entire domain name be keyword only?”

In other words, the question is: if I have found that “blue widgets” is a great keyword phrase (enough search volume, not too much competition), is it OK to get a domain like bluewidgetsblog.com (adding blog to the end), bluewidgetsstore.com or similar if the bluewidgets.com (and .net/.org) is taken?

Answer: Avoid if possible

It’s OK to add a word, but always try to find exact domain name if possible (.com .net or .org).

So I’d always choose a domain with just the keyword phrase. Adding a word to the end, like site or blog is OK. It won’t be “perfect”, just OK. When going for very targeted niche and using SEO as main source of traffic, the exact keyword in the domain is essential.

It’s usually better to move on until you find “perfect” domain and pass the “OK” ones. But in the end any domain name CAN work, so adding a word doesn’t mean you are doomed to fail.

Q: Should I always get the “perfect” domain name?

Ravi asked: “Do you think the lack of a perfect domain name can be overcome with good content (in terms of search) or do you really recommend moving on?”

A: In short, yes

If I’m about to build a niche site, I usually look until I find a good keyword phrase (with good search volume, not too much competition) where I can get domain name with the exact phrase with the three “main” extensions:

• .com
• .net
• .org

and then go with that. If the exact domain name is not available I usually move on and try to find something else.

If you’re building a more long term blog, e.g. your “main blog”, the domain name is not that important (SEO-wise) and the good (UNIQUE!) content is always important. You can make a blog work with any domain name, but good domain name will help both search engines and the visitors find the site faster if it has the “perfect” keywords in it.

Q: What do you think about domain names with hyphens?

Ravi asked: “how do you feel about hyphens in domain names?”

In other words, is it OK to have a domain like buy-blue-widgets.com (if buybluewidgets.com is taken)?

A: I’d stay away from them

For the hyphens in domain name, I don’t like them. One hyphen maybe (in two worded domain), but not otherwise. I’d find another domain. Although I haven’t tested and tried them, so not sure if they work or not, I just don’t like them :)

Q: Doing SEO consulting?

Lastly, Ravi asked: “Are you doing SEO consulting for clients?”

A: Yes.

As a part of my consulting and blog coaching services, search engine optimization is definitely part of it. But to be honest, I just haven’t thought about it as doing SEO consulting per se, as I assist clients with wide variety of topics. With SEO, I’ll be helping others with that in the future as well, and continue being a humble student and scholar of the art :)

Summary

These answers apply to choosing any domain name, but in particular when choosing a domain name for a niche site. For such a site, the main source of traffic will be the search engines. And a site which is optimized for one good keyword phrase and just a couple of related phrases, with the main keyword phrase preferably being the domain name.

• Always choose a domain with one of the three “main” extensions
  • .com
  • .net
  • .org
• The more exotic extensions like .me, .biz and .us might work, but I’ve stayed away from them
  • the exception here being the national extensions if you’re building a local site
• Get a domain name with the exact words in your main keyword phrase
  • e.g. for “green widgets”, take domain “greenwidgets.com” (or .net/.org)
• Avoid adding words to the domain and try to find another phrase instead
  • e.g. don’t go for “greenwidgetssite.com”
• The same goes for hyphens (-) in the domain name, avoid using hyphens and try to find another phrase instead

If “all” the domains are taken, go back to keyword research and find good keyword phrases. If the competition is high and/or the domain names you’d like are taken, go for the longer tail, for example look for three word keyword phrases and domains instead of one and two words.

If you’re interested in improving your blogs SEO beyond domain name, I suggest you take a look at the two-part SEO series I wrote recently. Check the blog SEO -post first, and then the other one about writing SEO friendly blog posts. For reliable domain name registration services and cheap domain names, check my resources-page for domain registration links.

Thanks Ravi for asking great questions, I hope you make it work with the domain name you found in the end :) And for the rest of you, I hope the answers helped you as well. If you have more questions, go ahead and ask me…

Do You Have a Question for Me?

You can ask me anything you want. If the question is related to the topics I usually write about, like blogging, WordPress, SEO, Internet marketing, geek stuff, it’s always better. But like said, anything goes.

I answer every question and at least let you know if I can’t answer the question. Feel free to leave your questions to the comments to any post you have a question about, or use the contact form to ask the question.

I’ll answer your questions via email first and if it’s OK to you, I’ll share the question and answer with the other readers as well here on the blog.

I’ll always link to your website and chosen social network profile (e.g. Twitter) if your question is chosen for the blog. You can send your question through the contact form here on my blog and you can also ask me questions at Mahalo via http://bit.ly/askantti

1. How To Find Good Keywords For Your Blog
2. How to Make Your Blog SEO Friendly
3. How to monetize a blog in an unprofitable niche? [Q&A]

AdSense Secrets and More

Joel Comm is giving out some of his guides for free in order to promote his current product, the Secret Classroom. There are three Contextual Advertising Guides, including one very famous guide for AdSense, two more for Chitika and Kontera.

• AdSense Secrets 4.0, 237 pages
• Chitika Secrets, 35 pages
• Kontera Secrets, 39 pages

The AdSense Secrets guide, now available for free, is the updated version of the famous What Google Never Told You about Making Money with AdSense -eBook, originally published in 2005 and updated in 2008.

Joel has also published New York Times and Business Week bestselling book The AdSense Code (in 2006), so he probably knows something about AdSense, or at least I’m assuming so. I don’t know if the print book is the same, or follow-up, for the eBook as the tagline is the same, but one of them free, so let’s go with that :)

These products have been on sale before (the AdSense Secrets guide for $97), and they are now available for free. In total, there’s three contextual advertising guides with over 300 pages of content available for download after giving your name and email to sign up for a email list.

Disclaimer

I wrote this post to share the free guides, not to promote or recommend the Secret Classroom itself. I suggest you download the free reports, at least the AdSense one.

I cannot recommend the Secret Classroom as I am not familiar with that myself. Secret Classroom might be really good product for all I know or it might be bull crap, so you’re on your own with that :) Since I’m sharing the free downloads with you, I might as well use my affiliate links while doing it, right? With that said – if along the line, you choose to join the Secret Classroom, I will get paid (and I thank you for the coffee!).

Oh and feel free to unsubscribe from the email lists as soon as you have the PDF -files on your computer, or stay on lists, there might or might not be something good there. I’m cutting the email clutter myself, so I’m quite fast at unsubscribing from lists if all I see is promotions and sales pitches.

Google AdSense Secrets for Free

Who Else Wants The Most Popular eBook On Making Money with AdSense – FREE!

The AdSense Secrets guide is the updated version of the famous What Google Never Told You about Making Money with AdSense -eBook which Joel published in originally in 2005 and updated in 2008. This has been paid product so far, priced at $97, not available for free before.

People have been paying for this eBook, so it’s definitely “worth it” now when it’s free. Making money with Google AdSense is probably not as easy as it was couple of years ago (if it was actually easy even then), but the principles are the same and this book has them all.

The AdSense Secrets is good, in-depth guide to Google AdSense, or at least it is relatively long and comprehensive. There are sections on tweaking the ads to increase click-troughs, using proper colors, ad placement instructions, how to control the ads, using Google Custom Search, and advanced topics like building content, getting traffic, SEO and tracking performance.

There’s even sections on combining AdSense with other contextual advertising networks, like Chitika, Kontera, etc. So all in all, this is great guide for AdSense and it even includes 12 case studies, which are always great addition to any information product.

If you get just one guide of the 3 shown on this post, get this one from adsense-secrets.com. Do note that it’s been a paid product before, so you’ll see the “typical” sales page (not too long thou), don’t mind that as the eBook itself is now free – just scroll down to the bottom for the “Download for free Today”.

Go the the site, sign up for the email, verify the subscription, download the PDF. In true Internet marketing fashion, this is for limited time only, whatever that means (a week? a year? forever?), so get it while you still can as I can’t predict what Joel will do :)

The Other Guides

The Chitika and Kontera guides are much smaller. I wouldn’t pay much for these, but luckily they are now free, so no worries there.

Chitika only shows ads for search engine traffic from US or Canada (other countries like UK is on it’s way). So the ads are not showed to regulars, like RSS readers or people coming from Twitter for example, which is great.

The ads are highly targeted for the arriving search traffic, which results in high click-through rates compared to other advertising. In a sense, Chitika is actually helping your readers, which is the reason I like it a lot. If you’re not using Chitika yet, I suggest you give it a go. The free guide gives an introduction to Chitika, so it should help you get going.

Kontera on the other hand turns words on the page into adwords / links. This is something I haven’t used yet, but apparently it is working for some people, as I see many sites, including some really big sites, running Kontera ads. If you want to give it a go, this free guide will help you get started with Kontera.

If you’d like to have one or both of these guides, you can get them from these pages (again, signing up for the email list, verifying the subscription, download, unsubscribe if you don’t want to stay on the list):

• chitikasecrets.com
• konterasecrets.com

How To Get The Free Guides

In case you’re not familiar with the email list dance (the sign up for a list, verify for the list (double opt-in), get second email with the download link, download), here are the instructions how to get the free guides:

• You get the download information after joining the email lists
• You can unsubscribe any time you want (right after you have the guides on your hard drive)

1 Go to one of the pages

• adsense-secrets.com
• chitikasecrets.com
• konterasecrets.com

2 Enter your name and email address

Scroll down a bit if needed. Ignore the “sales page”, as the guides are free.

• You’ll be redirected to Secret Classroom, but just ignore that
  • Close the page once you are taken to secretclassroom.com
  • (unless you have the time and really want to see what’s it about. I didn’t)

3 Go to your email and check if the mail arrived

The subjects of the emails will be something like these:

• Response Required, confirm to receive your copy of AdSense Secrets
• Response Required, confirm to receive your copy of Kontera Secrets
• Response Required, confirm to receive your copy of Chitika Secrets

4 Verify the subscription at your email inbox

5 Download the PDF

Repeat for the other 2 sites (if you want all 3). You’ll probably receive sales and promotions from Joel if you stay on the lists, but you can unsubscribe after you have all the PDFs on your hard drive (I know that’s not “cool” thing to do, but signing up for four lists to get 3 guides and keep all subscriptions is a bit much, isn’t it?).

Conclusion

If you’re thinking about making money with Google AdSense, or displaying AdSense ads on your blog, the AdSense Secrets eBook will help you with it. It won’t be easy, but you won’t know if it works for you if you don’t try. With this it’ll cost you nothing apart from the time you take to study it and then put what you learned into action.

I wish I could give you the direct links and save you the email hassle, which is kinda pain in the ass, but what can you do. And like said, at least get the AdSense guide, the other three are not that good.

p.s. I said it at the beginning, but just ignore the Secret Classroom stuff you’ll be redirected to (or check it out if you really want, I don’t care). I have very little knowledge about it, but wanted to share the free guides with you.

1. How I Made One Dollar and 88 Cents ($1.88) With Google AdSense!
2. Search Targeted Advertising Seems to Work For Chitika and Blogs
3. Get Free eBooks to Boost Your Online Success

They launched five of their web-based applications (Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack, Writeboard, Ta-da List), and Ruby on Rails, in just two years with no funding, no debt, and only 7 people. And they’ve written a book how they did that. The book is called Getting Real. I haven’t read it yet, but it went straight to my wish list now that I heard about it.

But this post isn’t about that book, it’s about doing business online. And more importantly, this is about doing small business online and the right mindset, the beauty of thinking small and mastering the art of the start.

Getting Real with 37signals

I haven’t used any of the 37signals products myself (probably: yet), so I can’t recommend you their actual products, although I’ve heard nothing but good things about Basecamp and the other applications. And I know how incredibly good application framework Rails is. But I like how these guys do business, I’ve enjoyed their podcast, video presentations and speaks, so I can recommend them and what they do.

How many other companies and businesses do you see out there making a podcast, publishing books, giving public speaks (as a result of their books and blogs) in addition to their “main products” like 37signals? Not very many, right?

Do you think their business is doing better because they do this? Do you think they enjoy what they’re doing more because they SHARE what they learn and know? You bet your ass they are.

Do you think their business would be as big as it is, if they had kept their processes and tools for themselves as a “business secret” and not publish Ruby on Rails to the world? And not write a book about their journey?

Take the first secret right there: START SHARING.

A Secret

With that said, this whole post was inspired amazing video presentation and speak by David Heinemeier Hansson (partner at 37signals and the man behind Ruby on Rails, in addition to co-authoring their more recent book, Rework). The presentation, A secret to making money online is the best speak I’ve heard in a long time, if not ever.

Don’t let the “making money online” topic fool you, it’s not about “Internet marketing” as such, but more about building a profitable (Internet) business (drawing from the experience they’ve had with 37signals, building their business and creating their web applications) and there’s a whole lot of wisdom on that one.

The video was recorded at Startup School ‘08 in San Fransisco, so it’s not new or anything, but I just found it today when I listened to 37signals podcast episode which had the audio of the video. Anyway – what you’ll see below was highly influenced by the video.

Making Money Online

The secret? Have something to sell. And set a price to it. Do this well enough (just a little bit better than the others) and you’ll make money.

1. Great application (or product/service/etc)
2. Ask people money for using/getting it
3. Profit

The other secret? Be happy with “enough”, you don’t need to make millions to be successful. Web start-up or Internet business is successful even if they don’t come up with the next Facebook or MySpace. Making a million is very nice (and even 6 figures is more than needed) for most, so why target making a billion which is a lot harder and will probably never happen?

Wouldn’t you rather have some than nothing? Would it really make a difference if you would make a gazillion or just enough to live by, doing the things you love the most? Remember – you don’t have to be rich, just rich enough.

Think Small

Let’s continue with the million vs. billion example.

Let’s assume that you have:

• 1/10 chances to make a million
• 1/10000 chances to make billion

On average, both “odds” result in 10000. But isn’t it better to actually get there 10% of the time. Let’s say you use 10 days for each attempt (yes, it probably takes a lot more to earn a million, but play with me) – even if you fail 9 times, you’d get there in 100 days, rather than in 274 years!

David suggests (and I agree), that a lot more people should take the better odds and just do it, and try to make a million (or even 100k) instead of trying to make a billion. It’s not easy, it is still very hard, but it’s not as hard as making a billion or trying to build the next big thing (which again, will not happen that often).

When you think about a million, it feels like a lot, right? But when you break it into little chunks, it doesn’t feel to unreachable anymore.

Here’s an example from the video, seeing how much it takes for a subscriptions based service to make a million:

• 2000 customers
• x $40
• x 12 months
• = 1 Million / year

Still hard. But achievable.

If 5% of people sign-up for such a membership, you would need 40000 people (about 110 a day!) to visit your site to get 2000 sign-ups. The 5% conversion rate is just an example here, but even with something like 1%, it would still be “just” 550 visits a day. Trying to get 110 visitors a day (or even that 500) feels a lot more achievable than trying to make a million dollars.

Break Things into Comprehensible Chunks

Apply this to your blog and you’ll have easier time shooting for your targets. Trying to get 1000 subscribers feels like a distant goal when you’re starting. But how about getting 5 new subscribers a day? You’ll be in 1000 in 6-7 months!

Still hard. But VERY achievable.

Or if you’re selling an eBook for a 35. That’s about 28600 copies sold to make a million. Sounds like a lot, but what if you’d sell 5 each day? It will take you over 15 years to make a million, BUT you’d be making over 60000 each year. With conversion rate of 1%, you’d need 500 visitors to sell 5 eBooks a day (or 15000 a month to sell that 150).

Hard? Yes.

Impossible? Hell no!

I’d say 50 thousands a year is very good income. Especially if it would be relatively passive in this case. And of course, you would have something to build on it.

Apply this on any of the ways to earn money through Internet. If you’re selling advertising, check how much you have to charge per day (even if you actually charge monthly) to make your target income. If you’re doing affiliate marketing, do the calculations like you would sell your own product – how many sales with commissions of X I need to make to make Y?

Or apply it to any other product, industry or niche. Just replace membership or an eBook with anything, like T-Shirts, DVDs, coffee makers, service, or whatever it is you’re selling and do the math. Check how many you need to sell on one day to make the income you’re looking for. It will make it feel a lot more achievable.

There is No Business Too Small

And you don’t have to be the best, you just have to be a little bit better than the next guy. If you’re selling flowers, sell them a little bit better than the business next to you. If you’re selling cars, do it a little bit better than the store next to you and you’ll do fine.

Yes, you can EVENTUALLY be the best, the number#1, but you don’t have to be there on day 1. It can happen after 7 years (or it can happen after 2).

You don’t have to be “Fortune 500″ company AND you don’t have to try to build your business WITH the Fortune 500. There’s plenty of business in the Fortune 5000000 as David calls it.

And to “make it”, you don’t need funding. You don’t need investment. You can just do it. And it will be enough. In fact, it will be great! You might end up in the “top” one day, but you might as well enjoy the journey, right?

Run at your own pace, don’t rush it. Don’t build a business with the idea of selling it and THEN enjoy (that day will never come and even IF you end up selling your business for profit, you probably won’t enjoy “doing nothing” afterwards). How about building a business you can enjoy for the next 20 years instead?

Conclusion

There’s a whole lot on the video that I didn’t mention here, so I suggest you check the whole presentation, a secret to making money online. It’s VERY useful, but incredibly FUNNY too.

As mentioned, I first heard this speech in 37signals podcast, which I highly recommend you subscribe to. The podcast is in iTunes and you can find all the episodes and the subscriptions links from the 37signals Podcast page. The episode#5 is the audio of the video that started this post in the first place.

All the tips and lessons on the video are great, but I think the biggest one of them all is making use of “by-products”. Products that get done while you’re doing something else.

This might be knowledge. Whatever you’re doing, you’re learning and building knowledge while at it, right? Write a book, these guys have done it. Or make videos. Record public speaks if do them.

Or it might be a whole new product. Maybe some of the tools or scripts you’ve created for yourself could help others too. Did you know that Ruby on Rails was originally a by-product of Basecamp?

Do you have an eBook (or print book) out? Make an audio version of it. Heck, turn it into short presentation, keep a webinar, record it and sell the video. Or give it all out for free if you like.

And of course I loved the idea that it’s OK to be small. Everything is easier when you think small. It’s OK to dream big, but don’t let those big dreams freeze you. I’d love to have 10000 subscribers on this blog, but I won’t get there overnight. But I will get there 1 new reader at a time.

1. 3 Ways to Earn Money Through Internet
2. Where Is The Money in Social Media?
3. Affiliate Marketing Explained

Would you spend 1-2 minutes more on a blog post that will be online for years, to drastically improve the chances of that post bringing you free traffic from the search engines without you lifting a finger? If you do, read on. If you think SEO is hard and there’s something fishy about it, don’t read this and others will get your traffic.

Still here? Good.

The previous post covered foundation for blog SEO, the blog and theme setup. This post will go into the every day on-page SEO and how to write posts that will rank high in the search engines.

It is much simpler than you think it is. There are two things that go into writing a SEO friendly blog post:

• The first part is writing a unique, original post that has some value, whether it helps a reader solve a problem or gives them great information on a subject, makes them laugh or whatever.
• The second part, SEO if you will, is helping the search engines to put your post in front of people who are looking for that exact information.

SEO Writing for Beginners

Good writing begins with the title. It continues on to getting the attentions of the reader with great first paragraph. And the rest of the post follows through delivering what the headline and first paragraph promised. The whole text is easy to read and the same things are not repeated too much.

Search engine optimization of your posts is not any different. With these three things, you don’t even have to think you’re doing any “optimization”, you’re just writing great content. The only exception is if you decide to find good keywords and include specific keyword phrase in this, but apart from that, you’ll be golden with these:

1. write a magnetic headline for your post
   • include the main keyword phrase for the page into the title (if in any way plausible)
   • when you have proper settings on your theme and plugins, the headline will automatically be your title tag
   • if you do this alone, you’ve done most of the SEO you have to do – everything else is optional
2. continue the message of the headline in the beginning of your article
   • first paragraph, and the first 50-100 words
   • in addition to your headline, the beginning of the post has to capture the attention of the reader
   • make sure the keyword phrase you’re targeting is included in the beginning
3. be careful with your keyword use and number of repetitions
   • don’t repeat the same words or phrase too many times
   • in addition to title tag and the headline, main keyword phrase should only be “repeated” 2-3 times, not much more.
   • write naturally, make the text readable

With the above and the settings covered in the blog SEO -post, you have done most of your on-page SEO. Keep in mind that you are writing for the readers first and search engines second; the headline and beginning of the article are important for both. SEO and writing good copy goes hand in hand in this.

95% (absolute guess) of the bloggers don’t pay any attention to their post headlines and titles. You do this and you’re already ahead. Do a keyword research that takes 1 minute and include the best keyword phrase in the title and you’ve done more than 99% of the bloggers out there (again, just a number I made up with no facts backing it up).

Advanced SEO Writing

One part of writing online is linking, so you should learn to do it well and often. It is important to both link and link with relevant keywords as the anchor text. The anchor text is the text which is linked and those words have the highest effect on search engine rankings, especially with links going from site to another (external linking).

To help your readers find additional information and/or check your sources and references, you should do plenty of both internal and external linking. Link out to the sources and references you used, and link to your own posts with related or further information. An online page with no or very few links is unnatural, and search engines will ignore such pages and not rank them high.

Link with good keywords and phrases related to the post your writing AND the page you are linking to, and always link to sources which search engines see as an authority and trustworthy website. Example: see how I linked on the previous sentence to Wikipedia with anchor text “search engines”.

• linking out: always link out to trusted sources of information as references
  • when you link out to a website which the search engine sees as reliable source of information, an authority site, you will gain a part of that trust when you link to them
• link out a lot
  • link to other bloggers
  • link to Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo, big news sites, etc.
  • link to pages which already rank high for the related terms
• internal linking: link back to your own posts
  • use good anchor text on all the links, especially the internal ones

Link to RELATED information, pages you used as references and pages with further information. Your link to the pages is a vote for that page WITH for the keywords in the anchor text. For example, as this post is about writing SEO friendly posts, I’m linking out to other pages about SEO and writing, both internally or externally.

Why? Because online, linking is the natural thing to do.

This helps the search engine understand what the post is about (because you’re referencing to all those pages, in addition to what is on post itself). And more importantly, the links will help your readers find more information about related subject if they want to. I like to think that what’s good for the people, is good for the search engines as well.

• anchor texts in links
  • always use relevant keywords when linking
  • even when you “link out”, the anchor text affects your on-page SEO
  • internal links on your posts are more important than external links (you linking out to other sites)
  • the anchor text is even more important for the “receiving end”, whether it’s your own internal page or another website
  • always link with keywords, and don’t put the link to “click” or “here”.

You should also use sub-headlines when applicable and possibly use related keywords in them.

• Sub-headlines, <h2>-<h6>
  • For individual post, you’ll be using the headline tags between H2 and onwards
  • the post headline is already H1 when you have a SEO friendly theme

You should highlight certain words with bolding and italics. This has very little to do with search engines, so use it to make your text more readable and scannable, making it easier for your readers to scan through the text and still get the most important parts.

• <b> or <strong> -tags (bolding) & <i> or <em> (italics)
  • Little significance for SEO, so use these to highlight the important parts of the text for your readers

From these three, anchor texts in links are the most important thing to do (and linking in general). Using sub-headlines and highlighting is a bonus, which you should do if it will make your text easier to read. The sub-headlines, bolding and italics have very small effect on the search engine rankings, but the it’s so small that you don’t have to pay too much attention to it.

Additional SEO Tweaks to Your Posts

If you want to do a little bit more, it is worth it to develop a SEO routine to make these part of your SEO-process as well, as it doesn’t take too much time and most does affect the readability as well:

• manually edit the post permalink (also called “slug”)
  • The URL of a document should be as descriptive and brief as possible.
    • shorten the URL, removing all the a’s, and’s and the’s from the permalink
    • set the post permalink as the main keyword phrase for that article
  • e.g. for this post, instead of the default “writing-seo-friendly-blog-posts”, I set the permalink as “seo-friendly-posts”.
• Add ALT-texts for images
  • Always add Alt-text to each and every image
  • You could even install a plugin like SEO friendly images to automate this.
  • Optional: Add descriptive title-attribute to the img-tag.
• Use clear image file-names
  • Small thing to do when setting images for your blog
  • Instead of uploading images with file name “picture12478.jpg”, upload then as “keyword-phrase.jpg”
    • similarly as you edited the permalink url, rename the files before uploading it to the blog

Alt-text is also a requirement for web standards, which makes it even more important. And the alt-texts and image file-names can potentially bring your traffic from the image searches, so this is very important for photobloggers, but every blogger can benefit from. More images and photos you have on your blog and better you optimize the alt-texts and image file-names, more traffic you will get from the image searches.

Meta Description and Keywords for SEO

In addition to writing a good title and content for your post, there’s one more thing you need to do. Editing the “meta information” search engines read. With some themes, or plugins, you’ll be able to manually edit the meta keywords and description. If your blogging software allows this, you should edit the meta description. Meta keywords you can safely ignore (or let a plugin / addon generate them).

Meta keywords are unnecessary for SEO purposes today, but for historic reasons people still keep updating them “just in case”. On WordPress, if you use a plugin like All in One SEO Pack for WordPress, it can automatically use tags or categories for meta keywords and that’s all you have to do.

While meta description isn’t important for search ranking, it is very important because this is the description the users sees in the search engine result pages, along with your title, if the searched keywords or phrase is in the description.

Thus, even that it doesn’t have any, or very little, effect on the actual ranking, the description is ESSENTIAL in capturing the attention of the potential visitor, by providing enough information about the page in question, for the user to clickthrough to your page.

Conclusion

In short, with SEO, you’re helping search engines to index your great content better and thus, helping people find the answers they’re looking for. Over time, you will start seeing the benefits, even if this is all the SEO you do:

• optimize your main headlines (H1) and title tags
• use keywords in the anchor texts and do plenty of internal and external linking
• put the main keyword phrase in the beginning of your blog posts
• manually set the permalink for each post
• use alt-names on images

The next step is the off-page SEO. As you have optimized your titles, you have already started, because your titles are most often used as anchor text when linking back to you, which is the most important factor for search engine rankings. Now with your homebase organized (on-page SEO), it’s time to begin building trust, getting links and climbing on the search engine rankings.

This ends the two-part on-page SEO series. The first part was about blog SEO; blog setup, configuration and SEO friendly themes. This post showed what to do when adding new content, whether it’s images or new blog posts.

1. How to Make Your Blog SEO Friendly
2. HTML for Bloggers: What Every Blogger Needs To Know about HTML
3. Search Engine Optimization Tutorial

• The on-page search engine ranking factors are the things on your blog and on your pages.
• The off-page factors are the things outside your domain, e.g. links back to your site.

Because the on-page SEO is fully in your own hands, that is where you should focus first. The on-page SEO helps the off-page SEO as well, but we’ll come back to that on later parts of this Blog SEO -series.

You’ll learn the most important things for this one-time BLOG SEO on this post. The second part of on-page SEO is the continuous optimization, writing SEO friendly blog posts. The next post on the series, will cover that.

The on-page SEO on your blog is two-fold as well. The first part is the blog setup (domain name, blog configuration and plugins) and blog theme or template. In short, the things you only need to do and set once. When the setup is done, the blogging software and the theme takes care of most on-page factors of the blog.

BLOG SEO: Domain Name

First part of blog setup, and an important on-page factor for a blog, or any website, is the domain name and registering one. The domain name should contain relevant keyword phrase or keywords for your blog. For focused niche site, trying to rank for spesific keyword phrase, you pretty much must have the keyword phrase in the domain.

For a more longer term blogging, and your main blog, whatever it is, will over time rank for many different phrases and the importance of the domain name, SEO-wise, will go down. So if you already have a blog, and the domain name is not particularly good for SEO, don’t worry, a non-keyworded domain can do well too, just take a look at Mashable.com for example, or one Zemalf.com :)

Anyway, here are the guidelines for choosing a blog name (that’s good for SEO).

• keyword(s) in your domain name
  • if possible, have a keyword rich domain name
  • try to get short domain name
    • a short and catchy domain name can be better than a keyword rich one
    • the domain name can be long for niche sites
  • niche sites must have the keyword phrase in the domain name
    • for very focused niche blogs, the main keyword phrase is what will drive the traffic, and most of the blog will be optimized for that keyword phrase and closely related terms
• naming your blog
  • name of your blog actually goes into blog settings and it’s displayed by the theme or template, but the domain name is often the blog name as well
  • your blog name and domain name are your brands, so think how you want to be seen online

If you’re setting up a free blog, your blogs name will be sub-domain and you should use good keywords in it, even that the sub-domains don’t have nearly the weight of the root domain, it still matters.

BLOG SEO: Installing the Blog

If you are setting up a self-hosted blog, you have to install the blogging software. This post won’t go into detail on the actual install, but for SEO, there’s one thing you need to know: Unless you have a site up already and you’re adding a blog, never set up your blog in separate directory, e.g. example.com/blog/. If you’re not sure, just install everything to the root, you’ll save yourself lot of trouble in the future.

If you do decide to install the blogging software in separate directory, but want the blog to be at the root, configure the blog root to be at domain root. For example, you can install WordPress in its own directory, like example.com/wordpress/ but your front page is actually at example.com. You could in theory install the blog to a “keyworded” directory, but that is not necessary with the best blogging software, like WordPress, as the directory can be “faked” with the permalink structure if needed.

BLOG SEO: Settings

When you have the domain and you have installed your blog, it’s time to configure it. You only need to do these once and the blogging software, theme or plugins take care of the rest and you can focus on the content. Some parts of the following are WordPress-spesific, but similar principles apply to other blogging software as well.

• Make sure the search engines can index your site
  • If you want, you can wait until you’re ready to “launch” your site,
  • but for a new blog, just enable it right away
  • in WordPress, it’s in the Settings >> Privacy
• add your blog name to the settings
  • of the domain name as well
• add the description of your blog to the settings
  • this is also your blogs tagline
  • not always displayed on the blog (although it should be)
  • put main keyword phrase in the description, especially if your blog name is not keyword rich.
• use the best permalink structure for SEO
  • not /?p=123 pages, but SEO-friendly links instead,
    • e.g. /important-keywords/ or /***/keyword-phrase
  • I recommend /%post_id%/%postname%/ for WordPress permalinks.
• install and activate a SEO friendly theme
  • proper headline tags for different pages
  • title tags customized for different types of posts and pages

Free blogs allow you to change the theme, so choose a SEO friendly theme from choices you have. Or tweak the theme a bit if that’s possible with the service and ensure the title tags and headline tags are set properly (for example, the default templates in Blogger.com are absolutely horrible for SEO by default).

Note that most free blogs don’t allow you to modify the permalink structure, so you can skip that (WordPress.com does allow editing). And overall, your choices are limited by the provider. With self-hosted blog, you’ll have all the control (not to speak it will be your domain getting ranked, not theirs).

BLOG SEO: WordPress Plugins

If you have high quality theme, you don’t necessarily need any plugins for SEO, but this is the one I recommend and use on all my blogs, just because they work so well and make things convenient.

All in One SEO Pack

• sets front page description as you like
• takes care of title tags for all the pages
• automatically generate meta keywords and descriptions
  • allows editing these for every post too

In addition to All in One SEO Pack, for more advanced blog SEO:

Robots Meta

• ensures you’re not blocking search engines totally with the privacy setting
• helps to focus the attention of the search engines where they you want them to focus,
  • e.g. on individual pages instead of front page, on front page instead of the subpages, etc.
• Robots Meta helps setting up nofollow and noindex definitions for different pages, for example:
  • Index and try to rank with category-pages, but not tag-pages, or vice versa
  • Nofollow all outgoing links on the front page
  • Automatically nofollow links to the comment inside your blog
• set the meta tag verifications for Google Webmaster Tools, and
• manage your .htaccess rules and robots.txt from the Dashboard

If you need instructions, check my essential WordPress plugins -post.

BLOG SEO: Theme and Templates

To identify whether your blog and theme is SEO friendly take a look at the HTML code of your

• Front page
• Individual post
• Individual page
• Archives, e.g. category-page

And look for the title tag, the H1 tag and the other headline tags.

On the homepage, pay attention to whether the blog name or description has the H1-tag. The H1-tag should be on blog name or description, depending which has the more relevant keywords. On individual posts, pages and archive-pages, the H1-tags should be on the post/page/archive -headline. Blog name and description can be in DIV-tag for example.

Your blog is not SEO friendly if

• the title tag on an individual page is something like: “Blog name: Post title”
  • The post title should be at the beginning of the title tag
  • It should be “Post title – Blog name”, “Post title | Blog name” or similar
• the H1 headline tag is on your blog name or description in all those pages
  • H1 headline tag should be on the post-/page-title on individual pages, and
  • on the blog name or description only on the front page
• there is more than one H1 tag on one post or page

The theme is good for SEO, if the title tags are set properly and on front page, H1 is the blog name or description and individual post headlines are H2. In the best themes for Blog SEO, the sidebar headlines are not higher than H4-tagged, if that (as you rarely have the keywords you want to optimize for in the sidebar titles).

The higher the element is in the HTML code, more important it is for SEO. For example, things in the footer don’t matter as much as the top of the page (in HTML, as that’s what search engine reads). Also the sidebar is often below the actual content in the HTML, even that it’s displayed on the side.

Any clutter above the H1 tag hurts SEO. Text above the main headline tag will dilute the effect of the headline tag and the beginning of the post. However, search engines learn to ignore the menus and other repetitive elements, but don’t avoid adding lot of text in elements over the headline and post.

I don’t go into details here, but the theme should also be complient with W3C standards and use validated CSS (mine is messed at the moment, mostly because of using Disqus, grrr).

The loading time will become more and more important for search engine optimization, so keep that in mind as well, so use caching and set the essential .htaccess rules. Your blog should not be cluttered with “cool features” that slow it down and you shouldn’t ruin it by filling your sidebar with all kinds of widgets and bright lights. On WordPress, only use the must-have plugins.

BLOG SEO: The HTML Tags

To understand the above and what makes blog theme SEO friendly, here’s further explanation about the title tag and the different headline tags. For more information about the HTML tags, take a look at HTML for bloggers.

• title tag
  • the most important on-page factor for SEO
  • title tag is what you see on the top of the browser window
  • the theme or template (or a plugin) should modify the title tag based on the page
    • front page example: “blog name | tagline” or “tagline | blog name”
    • single posts and pages: “post title | blog name”
      • not “blog name: title”
  • In WordPress, All in One SEO Pack or similar takes care of the title tag
    • Some themes are readily optimized, some are not.
    • e.g. if your the title tag for a blog post is “blog name: post headline” your theme is not optimized.
• H1 headline tag
  • second most important on-page factor
  • only one H1 per page
  • Homepage: H1 headline tag should be on the blog name OR description/tagline
    • the other element can be in div-tag, using css or “blog-description”
    • the headline and description are formatted via css-classes to ensure they look the same, whether displayed with H1-tag or div-tag
  • Single posts and pages: H1-tag is on the post headline for single posts and pages
    • blog name and tagline can both be in div-tags
  • Archive pages: H1 headline should be on the the category-, tag- and similar headline.
    • again, blog name and tagline in div-tags
• H2-H6 headline tags
  • little significance, but help both your readers and search engines via proper structure
  • post headlines on the front page should be in H2
    • not H1, which is reserved for the blog name or tagline
  • theme should have elements that don’t matter much with H4-H6 headline tags, or no headline tags at all
    • e.g. sidebar headlines could be H5, or no headline tag at all

Conclusion

All this might sound a bit complicated, but in the end it really isn’t, as you only need to set these once, and if you have a good, SEO-friendly theme, you don’t have to do much. All you have to do is check if the theme is good for SEO or not, as now you know how, and if it isn’t find a new one, tweak it yourself or ask a developer to make change it.

Apart from the theme, you now know that the domain name and permalink affect SEO, you know that the permalink structure should be keyworded, not numbered, if you can go and change it. You now to add the relevant keywords in the blogs name if possible, and also in the description (tagline).

The most important on-page factors are covered by the blogging software itself and properly designed theme. In fact, a normal user doesn’t even have to understand SEO, as the blog and the theme do most of the job automatically. This is one of the reasons search engines love blogs.

Now that you know quite a bit about how to make your blog SEO friendly, you need to be familiar with keyword research to make the most of it, so you might be interested in reading how to find good keywords for your blog.

This was the first part of the series. On the next part, I’ll cover the second part of the on-page SEO, writing SEO-friendly blog posts. You’ll then learn more about the headlines, links, anchor texts and how to write in a way that search engines will rank your posts high.

p.s. If you have any questions about SEO, feel free to ask them on the comments below, or just tell me what you thought about this post.

1. Writing SEO Friendly Blog Posts
2. How To Choose a Domain Name for a Niche Site [Q&A]
3. How To Find Good Keywords For Your Blog

At the beginning, I didn’t really know what I was doing, I was reading a lot blogs, tons of how-to’s and tried to learn as much as I could. I did learn a lot, but I was having hard time deciding what I actually should do with the limited time I had. There were so many good tips that I got paralyzed. I faced an information overflow.

After working a while with the new blog, I saw that Darren Rowse of Problogger.net released an eBook called 31 Days to Build a Better Blog (31DBBB). I bought it the day it was released and started doing what the book told me. The clear structure of the book not only showed how to do things, but why and when too.

I felt I was making progress, which was important for my motivation at the time. I was putting effort to the things that really mattered and my traffic started improving. I’ve shared my blog traffic stats from 2009 with you and the real time stats from this blog are publicly available, so you can see how I took this blog to 4800 visits a month on July 2009 (second full month after I started), using what I learned from the 31DBBB workbook.

Traffic for the first 72 days of my blog. I had traffic from the start because I moved an old blog to this domain, but the traffic increase from June to July was based on hard work, following the advice I got from the book.

Did all that happen because of this eBook? No. I did a lot of work for it. I knew what to do, because of the tasks given in the book. And I learned a lot about blogging and walked away with a better blog, just as the book promised.

I later moved the gaming content back to the old blog and traffic for this blog dropped for a moment, I even took a short break from blogging, but I’ve continued to use the 31DBBB as the road map for improving this blog. I’ve read more books and taken blogging courses since then, but the foundation for my blogging came from this book.

If you want to do the same, buy the 31DBBB eBook, take 31 days, do these tasks, and drastically improve your blog and its performance. You’ll learn the best practises for blogging; get clear instructions on what to do, why that will make your blog better, and how to do it. If you want to read more about what this eBook is, read my 31DBBB review below, or head out to Problogger.net and get it right away.

What is 31 Days to Build a Better Blog?

31 Days to Build a Better Blog (31DBBB) is a downloadable eBook, created to help bloggers to make their blogs better and become better bloggers in the process.

Originally 31DBBB was a 31+ posts series where participants took one action each day to make their blogs better. Thousands of new and experienced bloggers alike have taken the challenge and enjoyed great results afterwards.

The 31DBBB “event” itself has taken place on 2005, 2007 and 2009, and the 31 DBBB -workbook was published on 2009, combining all the posts in the series into an eBook.

Even that the original posts are available for free at Problogger.net, the 31DBBB eBook sold nearly 20000 copies in less than 6 months, and has continued to sell well.

The daily tasks have been improved and polished for the book giving more information than the original blog posts, to keep it up to date and give more value for those who decide to take the step and buy it. And it’s easy for you to print it out and have it next to you when doing the tasks.

How 31DBBB Works?

On each of the 31 days, the workbook

• gives a task for that day
• explains why it’s important to do that task
• tips on how to do the task
• additional notes and extra bonus tips for the task

This format works well, as it gives clear action to do. The 31DBBB workbook takes you step-by-step through the tasks and it is easy to see why the book is so popular.

There’s no fluff, just pure content.

• The tasks are easy to understand.
• The tasks are easy to implement because the book tells you EXACTLY what you need to do.
• The tasks make sense, because the book explains clearly why the task at hand will make your blog better.

In short, each day or task is formatted like this:

• DO THIS – TODAY – WHY – Here is HOW you do it.

31DBBB Workbook Will Help You

• Improving the focus of your blog
  • Writing an elevator pitch for your blog
  • Analyzing a top blog in your niche
• Creating better content
  • Come up with 10 post ideas
  • Writing a list post
  • Writing a link post
  • Writing an opinion post
  • Writing a review post
• Keeping your blog fresh
  • Creating an editorial calendar
  • Updating a key page on your blog
  • Interlinking your old blog posts
  • Breathing life into an old post
  • Hunting for dead links
• Building a community to your blog
  • Paying special attention to a reader
  • Calling your readers to action
  • Solving a problem your reader has
• Promoting your blog
  • Joining a forum and participating
  • Promoting a blog post
  • Leaving blog comments on other blogs
  • Boosting your blog’s profile and readership

And more, like building relationships with other bloggers, monitoring your blog statistics and planning the next steps for your blog.

This book won’t show you how to start a blog, how to install and configure plugins and widgets, or how to choose a blog topic. If you already have a blog, you’ve written couple of posts, the book is great. It won’t show you how to build a blog; it will show you how to build a better blog.

How to Use 31DBBB Workbook

Even that the book is called “31 Days” to build a better blog, it could also be called 31 tasks that will improve your blog. You can use the book as the original 31DBBB was, doing one task a day, or do the tasks at your own pace. Or just read the book and make your own way to incorporate these tasks into your blogging schedule.

If you choose to go through the book in 31 days, you can then start again, making it a monthly habit. During the next cycles you can skip some tasks if you have already done it, or check if you can improve what you’ve already done related to that task.

I suggest you take the book and go through it once, doing one task each day and see how it feels. I’m sure you’ll see great results and can then decide whether to turn the tasks into a monthly habit. Or you might notice certain tasks working exceptionally well for you and you can put more effort into that.

How to Buy the 31DBBB Workbook

As it is a downloadable eBook, you can be reading the book right after you order. Darren sells the workbook through E-junkie.com, which uses PayPal to process the payments.

You don’t necessarily need a PayPal account, but for the future, you might as well open one while at it. The payment at PayPal is secure, and your purchase is backed-up by Darren’s money back guarantee, if you for some reason are not satisfied after a month.

1. Go to the official 31DBBB -page at Problogger.net, check the full information and click on the “Add to Cart” there. Or you can buy the eBook from E-Junkie right now:

• New window will open and
• take you to the E-Junkie.com shopping cart where you can finalize the order.

2. The E-Junkie shopping cart looks like this:

3. Check the order

• the 31DBBB workbook should be there and the amount is automatically set at one.
• change the amount if you’re ordering several

4. Click on the PayPal icon for checkout

5. You’ll be taken to the PayPal for the payment:

On PayPal, either login to your account and proceed as instructed, or you can pay with credit card (and bank account on some countries) even if you don’t have PayPal account.

6. After payment, you’ll be taken back to Darren’s site and you will receive an email with the link so you can download your eBook.

Download the eBook and you’re done. Now you can read the book on your computer, or print it out, put it in a nice binder and start taking action.

My thoughts: Awesome book for any blogger

I bought the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook when it was published and I think it is the best investment I have made as a blogger. For less than $20 it has improved my blogging and blogs tremendously and more than any other book or resource I’ve read about blogging.

With that, I am proud to recommend it to you (and use my affiliate link). 31DBBB is more than worth what it costed ($19.95), and I’d been happy to pay more if it would’ve costed more (but it didn’t, so it was a steal).

I think each and every blogger, new or old, should go through the 31 days / tasks and improve their blogs and blogging skills in the process. Even if you don’t go through the book over 31 days and just read it, you will enjoy better blogging results and understand what it takes to build a great blog.

When you take what you learn, either following the book step by step or on your own, taking action, you will have a better blog. Start here: 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

Summary

Rating

Head out and buy your 31 Days to Build a Better Blog -eBook here.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the book, and how it has helped your blog. So if you’ve already bought the book or decide to buy it now, join the discussion below!

1. How I Pushed My Blog from PageRank 0 to PR4 in 37 Days
2. Beyond Blogging – A great book about successful bloggers
3. 8 Free eBooks That Have Helped Me a Lot

So there must be something to that, right? If you’re offering an email subscription option to your blog via FeedBurner’s RSS to email option, your blog posts will be automatically send to your readers. This is great (I use it too). But what if you want to send special newsletters for your readers and not just the latest posts you put on your blog? Nope, sending the mails manually is not good, so you need a system for it.

They say you should sign-up for Aweber, which costs $1 for the first month and then $19 a month (or little less if you pay for the full year) and the price will go up as your list gets larger. You’re just starting out, you don’t have a large following on your blog yet, and paying 19 bucks a month doesn’t sound so tempting. So what do you do? Well, you bite the bullet and sign-up for a service and start collecting emails. or you get…

Free Email Newsletter

You can go for the FREE option with Google Friend Connect and use that to deliver email newsletters to your readers. No, it’s not an autoresponder system, like AWeber, but it IS a mailing list – FREE mailing list.

And as a bonus, the Google Friend Connect has other features like creating interest polls for your readers, something you might want to do anyway. There are several gadgets available, like ratings and reviews, recommendations, targeted content for your readers, and others which you can use to get your readers involved with the blog. It even connects to the comment systems in WordPress, Drupal and phpBB.

However, because the Friend Connect is not an autoresponder system, so you do have to send out the newsletters manually as an broadcast to current subscribers, and the new subscribers won’t get the same sequence of emails as those who joined earlier, so it’s not suitable for setting up a eCourse delivered via mail for example. For something even better, you will also want a…

Free Email Marketing and Email List Manager

In the end, you should get a “real” mailing list, if you’re looking to make money online. And even if you don’t, an proper email newsletter service or autoresponder can be a great addition to any website or blog.

If you’re ready to pay for a service like AWeber, go ahead, but I recommend that you sign-up for MailChimp which is free up to 500 subscribers (and 3000  mails a month ~ 6 mails to a list of 500 a month, which is plenty). They don’t ask for credit card details and force you to upgrade from their forever free plan if you don’t want to, so it’s 0% risk free.

Account creation couldn’t be simpler.

1. Go to MailChimp
2. Hit “Sign up for free”
3. Enter your email address, desired username and password
4. Go to your email
5. Open the confirmation mail from MailChimp
6. Hit “Activate my account”
7. Done

If you sign-up to MailChimp through my affiliate link AND decide to upgrade to paying option along the line (which you don’t have to do, if you don’t want to), I will get 30 monkey credits, which I can use to send bananas to my list. I won’t get any money and buy myself a fancy tree house in the jungle, but you’ll get a great autoresponder system. Seriously, no monkey business.

If bananas is not your thing, you can go set up the friend connect and start building your community right out of the gates, also for free. Or you can get both! And even if you already have a mailing list and autoresponder system up and running, you should still check Google Friend Connect out if you could use some of the features.

How to Add the Google Friend Connect

• Go to Google Friend Connect
  • If you have or start a free blog at Blogger, your site is automatically included in the Friend Connect, so you can go in there right now and check your settings.
• Sign in with your Google account
• Look for a green plus icon and text: Add new site
• Hit it
• Fill in the “Tell us about your website”
  • Website name
  • Website URL
  • Language for the Widgets
• Hit Continue
• Your site has been added.

You can then create a Members -widget for your blog if you want. For the newsletter, check the Newsletters -link and enable the newsletter sign-up when someone joins your site and generate a newsletter sign-up like the one you see on my sidebar on the right.

Was This Useful to You?

How did you like them apples (or bananas even)? If you liked this tip, go ahead and join my site via Google Friend Connect. Move your eyes to my blogs sidebar on the right (come visit the site if you’re reading this elsewhere) and look for Community, and the gadget with “join this site” -button. While at it make sure you select the checkbox to “sign up for our newsletter”.

Why? Because I might throw in some exclusive content & latest mon(k)ey making secret in there one day and you don’t get it because you didn’t signed-up for the newsletter. It’s definitely not as exclusive as Jordan Cooper’s super awesome mega exclusive E-Mail Blog newsletter as just anyone CAN sign-up, but it sure is cool.

p.s. I just added the friend connect in here , so you can be among the first ones in! Just don’t forget to signup for the newsletter when joining.

1. Give it away for free
2. Get Free eBooks to Boost Your Online Success
3. 4 Things to Do Before You Start a Blog

Total Visitors per Traffic Source

Since this blog was launched on 20th of May 2009, my blog has got total of 18610 visits. Based on Google Analytics, my traffic sources were as follows:

• Search Engines 10956 (58.87%)
• Direct Traffic 3783 (20.33%)
• Referring Sites 3,692 (19.84%)
• Other 179 (0.96%)

Here’s the breakdown based on my own analysis (direct traffic via bookmarks or RSS feeds is not included):

Blog commenting and being active in social media sites has other benefits, but search engines CRUSH the other two on pure traffic volume:

• 662 visits via my blog comments, from which 486 were unique. 291 of all the visitors stayed on site (didn’t bounce).
• 1588 visits via social networks. 952 unique visitors and 400 didn’t bounce.
• 10955 visits from the search engines. 8698 unique visitors. 2569 read more than one page.

These are just my numbers, but if one would shoot for sheer traffic volume, e.g. for a niche site, it would be OK to forget social media and blog commenting as a way to gain traffic and only use them to build couple of links and then put all effort and focus on SEO.

Blog Commenting Traffic

I received most blog commenting traffic from Problogger.net, Entrepreneurs Journey, Daily Blog Tips, the Copyblogger and JohnChow.com. Those were also the sites I probably commented the most.

Traffic-wise, two of my blog comments in stand out: the one on this post at Problogger and the other on this post at Entrepreneurs Journey, with the two delivering several hundreds of visitors combined, which goes on to prove that my advanced blog commenting strategy worked.

The first comment was a spot on addition to the original post with an in-comment link to additional info here on my blog and the latter, in addition to being a valuable comment, benefited from being the first comment for that post.

For effective blog commenting:

• Comment to add to the discussion first, everything else is a bonus
• Spam comments will not send you any traffic, so forget it
• Be among the first ones to comment (if the comments are displayed with the oldest on top)
• Leave meaningful and value-adding comments
• Use your real name
• Always adopt to the blog comment rules of the blog
• Link back to your site from the comment text only if it is really relevant, and if the comment policy allows such links. Make sure the comment itself is beneficial even without the link, which is for additional information.

Social Media Traffic

The sites I counted as social media traffic were: Twitter, Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Blogengage, Delicious and Facebook + a whole load of tiny streams of traffic from other social networking sites. This is somewhat limited view on “social media”, as blogs, video sites, forums and all can be considered to be social media, but this is what I used this time. Here’s my breakdown of the traffic (as requested by Phaoloo at Ask Zemalf -post.):

• Twitter: 913
• Digg: 185
• Reddit: 180
• StumbleUpon: 154
• BlogEngage: 72
• Delicious: 35
• Facebook: 32

From the social networks, I’m most active on Twitter. BlogEngage has been great source for the couple of months I’ve used it. Facebook I’ve kept for for friends and family I know well, which explains the relatively small numbers from that (vs. Twitter for example).

Time Spent on Site

The visitors from blog commenting and social media did spend more time on site than the ones from the search engines, with blog commenting being the clear winner.

When someone spends more time on your blog, e.g. actually reads the whole post, views multiple pages, leaves a comment, the blog is doing better. And the likelihood of that visitor subscribing increases.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is a term used in web site traffic analysis. It essentially represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who only read the one page they land on and “bounce” away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site. The formula used to calculate bounce rate is: Bounce Rate: Total Number of Visits Viewing One Page / Total Number of Visits. – Wikipedia

My blogs average bounce rate for the studied time period was 73,93%, which is horrible, and I didn’t go into deeper analysis why it’s so high at this time. The bounce rates for the different traffic sources were:

• Blog commenting: 56,04%
• Social media: 74,81%
• Search engines: 76,55%

Conclusion

• Search engines (and SEO) is SUPERIOR on traffic volume
• Social media is great way to build relationships, but traffic-wise it might be disappointing
• Blog commenting is OUTSTANDING in terms of gaining laser-targeted traffic in addition to other benefits, like getting exposure on other blogs and forming relationships with other bloggers

Even that search engines ruled bringing in the majority of the traffic and in the end social media is more of a relationship building than traffic building method, the analysis also showed that blog commenting is outstanding when it comes to keeping the new visitors:

• The bounce rate for the traffic that came via blog commenting is 25% lower than the traffic from social networks and the search engines.
• The time spent on site is 20-30% higher for blog commenting traffic than for the social media sites and the search engines.

Unfortunately I didn’t have advanced blog tracking in place, e.g. how many RSS subscribers my blog received from these three sources. And one must consider how much to invest on the efforts. I did spend way more time on blog commenting and social media than I did for search engines.

However, I’m guessing that the subscription rate is higher for blog commenting than for the other sources. And new visitors from social media are more likely to follow me on Twitter for example. If someone has had sophisticated tracking in place, it would be really interesting to see proof of this, so please, leave a comment if you do.

Also note that there are many great ways to increase blog traffic I didn’t utilize during 2009 to full extend:

• Guest posting (writing posts to other blogs than yours) is the most important one and reportedly the best way to get referral traffic, in addition to getting incoming links
• Podcasting and video have the potential to deliver traffic in thousands, even millions, and your regular readers will appreciate non-text content as well.
• Being active in related forums is huge for some bloggers
• Article marketing is similar to guest posting, giving you exposure outside your blog and providing links for SEO and some traffic as well

Discussion

Now that you’ve seen my data and analysis, it’s time to continue this on the comments:

• What is your experience or example on effectiveness of different blog promotion techniques and traffic sources?

1. Look Back on the Year 2009
2. How To Choose a Domain Name for a Niche Site [Q&A]
3. How to Increase Blog Traffic

For certain terms, like your name or your website(s), it is good get notifications even when you don’t have Twitter open. To achieve that, we can do Twitter searches and then subscribe to the RSS feed of that search query, and get notifications on Google Reader whenever your name, businesses or websites are mentioned.

Because of the superior dedicated clients, I think getting all your Twitter messages to Google Reader would be foolish (it is possible through the API), so we’ll concentrate on getting RSS feeds of Twitter search queries to our reader as a kind of social media monitoring.

How To Get Twitter Searches as RSS

1. Go to Twitter
2. Enter Twitter Search for the terms you want
   • Use quotes around multiple words
   • Utilize the operators for advanced queries: OR, AND
   • e.g. search for “your name”:
3. Look on the sidebar at the bottom of the page and
   • locate “RSS feed for this query”:
4. Click to subscribe and add the feed to a Google Reader
   • Use folder named “me”, “monitor” or such to keep things organized

Unfortunately, if you have a relatively common name, or you have the same name as some well-known individual or celebrity, this won’t work very well for you, but you can get your Twitter mentions as RSS using your “@username”, read on for instructions on that.

And if your RSS feed subscriptions are not automatically going to Google Reader, check the settings of your browser.

• In Firefox (my preferred browser)
  • go to the Tools >> Settings, when there,
  • go to “Applications” and
  • locate “Web Feed”. Then
  • choose “use Google”
    • If you use some other reader, select that.

Setting Up Twitter Searches

You can also do a query without going to the Twitter site if you want:

1. Start the search query with:
   • http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=
2. Add the search terms
   • Replace space with %20
   • Replace quote (“) with %22
   • Replace @ with %40
3. Insert the full search query URL to your browser, and
4. The search will go automatically into Google Reader

Example Twitter search queries

• “your name”
  • http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%22your%20name%22
• example.com
  • http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=example.com
• username OR “your name”
  • http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=username%20OR%20%22your%20name%22

Getting your Twitter “Mentions” as RSS

• Follow the instructions above, and
• enter @username (%40username) as the search term.
  • e.g. my search for @Zemalf, would be:
  • http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%40Zemalf

If you prefer some other RSS reader to Google Reader that is fine, but if you’re not using any reader yet, Google Reader is the best option. You can access it anytime and from any computer, the folder system is great for organizing and sharing posts directly from Google Reader to Twitter, Posterous and other services is very easy.

You can set similar queries in other services too. Keep your eyes open for the RSS icons on the searches. Not all services have them, but most do. And while we’re talking about social media monitoring, go and set up some Google Alerts too.

1. 3 Ways To Use Google Reader Like a Pro
2. Quick and Easy Market Research Using Google and Twitter
3. Quick Remote Working Tips

I’m not doing Internet business, blogging or marketing, as a primary source of income, so all this is extra for me, which is great. For all this I own HUGE thanks to the 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, the book most are familiar by now.

On April 5th 2009 I placed on order at Amazon.com – DVDs and some books for my wife, H. For some odd reason, I don’t know how, the Amazon magnificent recommendation system showed me the 4HWW while I was placing the order.

I ordered the book, it arrived 2-3 weeks later (takes a while for packages to arrive from US to Finland), and I immediately started reading the book. So this was around beginning of May. In matter of days, I read the book and it changed my life, especially my “online life”.

The World of Warcraft-, EVE Online and XBOX 360 -playing gaming geek suddenly realized he could make some extra cash online. And that’s how I started. On 20th of May, Zemalf.com was born. And here’s how I did traffic- and money-wise.

Traffic

Statistics from Zemalf.com are public at See the Stats and here are stats since birth of the blog, 18358 visits:

This blog was founded on 20th of May 2009 (or actually 21st, but as I registered zemalf.com on the 20th, let’s call that the birth day). The above statistics are all time stats for Zemalf.com as of 7th of January 2010, which makes this blog 233 days old, or 7 months and 19 days as of today. According to this date duration calculator (pretty handy btw), that also converts to about 5600 hours and over 330k minutes.

As there were 18358 visits within that time rage, there has been about 79 visits each day on average, or 3 visits every hours. Near the end of 2009, the daily visitor count was at 100.

Unique Visitors and Traffic Sources

During 2009, 13645 unique visitors checked visited this blog:

During the first couple of months, the blog had redirected traffic and imported posts from my gaming blog, which I later exported back, thus the quick traffic from day one (and the downward spiral from middle of July to late August). Majority of the traffic came from search engines, namely Google, but there were other sources as well, on smaller volumes:

There were not big spikes during 2009 and I didn’t do any guest posting (something I will work on during 2010 and onwards). Interestingly, blog commenting alone brought Problogger.net to the list of top traffic sources. Nothing earth-shattering, but 187 visitors is 187 visitors.

I should probably combine all the traffic I’ve received from blog commenting and we’d be talking thousands, which is huge for a new blog, all thanks to the advanced blog commenting tricks and keeping it real. What makes the traffic from blog commenting so special? Bounce rate for blog comment traffic is 35% smaller than the average (for me, based on top 10 blogs that have sent me traffic through my comments).

That reminds me, that I really got to work on my bounce rate. It’s at 70-80% range, which is really bad. Not sure of the reasons, but probably the lack of eye-candy on the design has something to do with it.

RSS Subscribers and Hub Sites

As of today, this blog has 209 RSS subscribers, which I’m quite happy for. The number fluctuates a bit, but it’s still a rough estimate. Unfortunately, the subscriber count has quite a bit of “subscribers” from FriendFeed, and the real number of subscribers is around 110-130.

As for other blogs of mine, largely thanks to the gaming blog I mentioned, there were about 40000 visits to all my blogs combined. In addition to this, some of my Web 2.0 videos and documents did nicely (not related to Zemalf.com, but to the gaming site instead).

• AnttiKokkonen / Scridb, 9673 reads.
  • 30+ page guide on how to create perfect character in Fallout 3 (great game)
• TheZemalf / YouTube, 90,406 views.
  • WoW Achievement: The Lurker Above has about 80k views all time.

All this in addition to increasing Twitter following relatively naturally from 0 (I registered on Twitter on November 2008 and started actively using it on May or so) to 1390 by the end of the year, 2009 was a great year.

Money

As I stated on 7th of June 2009, until that day, I had made 1 dollar and 88 cents (through Google AdSense) online, and that was my starting point. And here’s how I did on 2009 (note that this blog no longer has any form of advertising, and most of the income is from my “niche blogs”):

• Advertising $592.70
  • Contextual Advertising
    • AdSense $15.06
    • Chitika $1.64 (tested for a bit)
  • Direct Advertising $576
• Affiliate marketing $258.25
  • Affiliate products $230.39
    • Reviews on Zemalf.com
      • Beyond Blogging
      • Beginner’s Guide to Twitter
    • Misc
      • Micro Niche Finder
      • 31 Days to Build a Better Blog
      • + Other products on the niche sites
  • Amazon.com $13.12
  • eBay $14.74
• Product sales
  • No products $0

Total Income Online: $850.95

I went from $1.88 to $850 in seven months (or 214 days), which equals to nearly 4 dollars a day :) Not something I’ll retire on, but taken that prior to May/June 2009 my Internet marketing skills were 0 (that’s zero) as all I knew to do was activate AdSense on a blogspot blog, I’m happy I got that much.

2010

2009 was a great year, but now it’s time to think bigger, here are the goals.

At the end of 2010 the numbers will be at least:

• Traffic: 500 unique visitors a day
• Subscribers: 750 RSS subscribers, 100 email subscribers (to be started)
• Money: 250 dollars a month

To be honest, I’m not sure about the “money-goal”, but the traffic and subscriber numbers are within reach but I gotta step up the game for those as well, and whatever money I happen to make will be a nice bonus. 2009 was a life-changing year for me and now it’s time to make 2010 even better.

How will I achieve this? Primary methods for traffic: Guest posting and article marketing, in addition to more focused SEO strategy. And I’ll be experimenting more with my niche sites, as there’s great potential there, as I didn’t do much to get the figures I showed above (from which majority came from other sources than this blog).

Was the 2009 as exciting for you as it was for me? How did your blog do?

1. Make Money Review, June 2009
2. Web Site Traffic Analysis – Lessons for Blog Promotion
3. How to Take Your Blogging to the Next Level