Blog commenting is a highly effective way to build links to your site and boost search engine rankings.

I’m pleased to announce a new blog commenting service where we will submit comments to DO-FOLLOW blogs on your behalf.  Do-follow links, unlike nofollow ones, are  followed by the search engines, passing link juice to your site.

This is not a spamming service.  We read the blog entries and submit relevant, on-topic comments that link back to your site. Many of the comment links will come from pages with high PRs, including PR5.

What’s more, you pay for only $1 for each approved comment (and backlink to your website).  Most comments will come from pages that are PR2 or higher.  Considering that PR5 links go for as much $20 a month, this isn’t a bad deal at all.

For more details and to place an order for our blog commenting service, please visit this page.

Google TOS allows a maximum of 3 Adsense ad units on a single page.  If you simply paste your ad code into your index.php file of your Wordpress template, Adsense will show up on your first three posts.

You may want two Adsense ads to appear before your first two posts and one in the sidebar as on this site, Rantstoriches.com.

Here’s a simple workaround to accomplish just that:

1. Open index.php in a text editor.

2. Look for the following code:

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>

3. Immediately before this line, insert the following code:

<?php
$postinc = 1;
$adsense1 = 1;
$adsense2 = 2;
?>

4.  Then look for the following in index.php:

<?php the_content(‘<br />Read the rest of this entry &raquo;’); ?>

5. Immediately before this line, insert the following:

<?php if ($postinc == $adsense1) {
echo ‘
YOUR ADSENSE CODE HERE
<br>
‘;
} ?>

<?php if ($postinc == $adsense2) {
echo ‘
YOUR ADSENSE CODE HERE
<br>
‘;
} ?>
<?php $postinc++; ?>

6. Finally, open sidebar.php in a text editor and insert your Adsense code in the desired location.

Additionally, you’ll want to repeat Steps 1-5 for archive.php.

That’s it!

Web directories should be a part of your link building strategy. In addition to driving traffic to your site through direct referrals, web directories provide one-way links to your site, increasing your search engine rankings.

But manually submitting to hundreds of directories can be a slow, tedious process.  To make life a little easier, I recommend using a software program that automatically fills out the submission forms for you, so that you don’t waste too much time copying and pasting your site information.

The following $7 software will do just that.  Link Directory Submitter comes preloaded with over 2,700 web directories, automates much of the form filling, and lets you submit to up to 10 directories at a time. Here are some benefits the software:

• Increase your link popularity.
• Get more traffic by gaining a higher position in search engines, such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
• Save time and money.
• Comes preloaded with 2700+ quality directories.
• Provides one-way static links to your site.
• Submit as many sites as you like.
• Display Google PR of every directory.
• Update directory list by simply clicking the Update Directory Button from within the software.
• The Link Title, Site Description and Keywords are rotated with each submission to a directory, allowing you to get listed by multiple keywords.
• Import and Export website profiles.
• Assign a custom color to each directory in the submitter.  This allows a color coding system to keep track of submissions.
• Export and email a submission history reports.

Ever wanted to find out which Twitter users you follow are not following you?  Here is a handy tool to do just that:

http://friendorfollow.com

To drop a user from the results, right-click on his or her icon to open their profile in a separate browser tab.  There you can unfollow that user.

Let’s face it: sex sells.

This is a truism that is as old as human civilization itself (you know what they say about the world’s oldest profession).

Everyday companies ranging from Coca Cola to Godaddy.com to Penthouse use sexual imagery– in varying degrees of explicitness– to help sell their products and services.

There is a solid psychological basis BEHIND the effectiveness of sex in advertising.  Advertisers realize that consumers respond not only to reason and logic, but also to feelings, emotions, and various impulses. By appealing to both the decision-making apparatuses that lie between people’s eyes and those between their thighs, they’re able to cover all fronts (even BACKS, too).

The BOTTOM line is, whether subtly or overtly, sex sells. As a blogger you can use sex to attract visitors to your site in various ways, including incorporating sexual imagery into your ad banners, website graphics, and even your post texts.

BUTT…it’s important not to get carried away. Moderation is key.  Knowing where to draw the line is what separates the more reputable companies like Coca Cola and Dove from those who peddle straight-up porn.

If you’re going to use sex to attract attention, think of more subtle and tasteful ways to do it. If you go overboard, you risk offending and alienating your readers, in which case you’re not being too ASStute….but ASSinine.

I’ve already showed you how to create your own targeted Entrecard “drop list” on your Firefox browser as a better alternative to using those quick drop lists that have become very popular among EC users.

Here is an even more compelling reason to avoid some of those “quick drop” sites:
VIRUSES!!!

With those “quick drop” lists you don’t get to specify which sites pop up on your browser. Not surprisingly some of them contain viruses, pop-ups, and other unwanted intrusions. These sites aren’t supposed to be Entrecard members, and the quick drop list owners aren’t always quick to remove them from their sites.

If you’re an active Entrecard user, you might have noticed that a significant percentage of your Entrecard traffic comes from blogs on which you dropped your card.

Participating in drop clubs is one way to get lots of ECs quickly, but none of the drop clubs I’ve come across organize sites by category.

Why is it important to group sites into categories?

You might want to drop your card on only those sites that are related to yours, so that those bloggers who return the favor by visiting your blog are more likely to be genuinely interested in your content.

Here is an easy way to create your own EC “drop list” on your Firefox browser:

1. Go to Entrecard.com and search for blogs that are related to yours.  You might search for the most popular blogs within your niche.

2. Visit each blog from the search results and look for the EC widget on each site.

3. Bookmark sites that load relatively fast and display EC widgets at prominent page locations. You’ll want to place the bookmarked sites into separate folders, each containing no more 10 or 20 sites (or 5 for slow internet connections).  You might name your folders Entrecard1, Entrecard2, Entrecard3, and so on. If you put 10 sites in each folder, you’ll end up with 30 or more folders containing only sites that are related to yours.

4. Once you’ve bookmarked your favorite sites, click on “Bookmark” on your Firefox browser menu. Next move your mouse cursor to the Entrecard folder containing the sites you want to visit (e.g. Entrecard1) and right-click on the folder to bring up the pop-up menu.  Then click on “Open All in Tabs” to open all sites within that folder on your Firefox browser.  Now you can drop your custom targeted “drop list”.

You’ll want to update your bookmarks regularly, adding relevant blogs and removing those that load too slowly or bury their EC widgets within clutters of ads or in hard-to-find locations.

I now accept ads on Rantstoriches.com.

Place a 100 x 100 banner ad on Rants to Riches for just $10 a month.  We accept a maximum of 9 sponsor ads on the 100 x 100 ad block on the right column.

Why advertise with us?

• At least 50% of ad revenues go back into promoting this site
• Reach a quality readership of webmasters, internet marketers, and business professionals
• Banner ads appear in prominent location on every page of the site
• Advertising rates will increase with our site’s traffic– purchase a multi-month ad run to lock in low rates

Please read the Advertising Section to place your ad today.

1. Your post titles suck.

As the saying goes, first impressions count. They count when you’re out on your first date, when you go for a job interview, and when you try to get a website visitor to read past the first line of your blog post.

Nowadays, with many visitors arriving at blogs through advertising networks like Entrecard and Adgitize, you have really only a few seconds to make a good impression. And your blog is competing with thousands of others vying for reader attention.

Your post title needs to be relevant and descriptive, but it also needs to jump out and grab the reader’s attention right away if they’re to continue to read your article. While there is no magic formula for coming up with a killer title, here are a few pointers to keep in mind when titling your entries.

“How to” titles are generally effective as many people visit blogs to find free information to accomplish a specific task like backing up a Wordpress database file or monetizing their blogs.

Did I mention free? Some words are inherently more attention-grabbing through their abilities to evoke certain feelings and emotions. Free is probably the most over-used word in advertising, but it continues to be a highly effective attention grabber. Truth be said, nothing in life is really free, which probably explains why people are always looking for something that is. Other attention getting words include killer, amazing, and even suck.

List titles like “10 Ways to…” and “7 Reasons Why…” are another effective method to engage the reader. Most internet surfers have short attention spans. The list titles are effective because they create the impression in the readers’ minds that what they are about to read will not be too lengthy and time-consuming (which may or may not be true) and that they can skip around and do not need to read the entire article to find information.

Creating curiosity is another way to engage reader attention. You can create curiosity by incorporating a short quip, a popular saying, reference to a recent event, or one-liner into your title. Suggestive titles, even sexual innuendos (e.g. “Size matters when it come to….”), can also create interest and get people to read further into your post.

Like I said, there is no magic formula for coming up with a killer title for your post. You should know your target audience, understand their temperaments, and balance these factors with what you’re trying to accomplish through your blog. Since RantstoRiches.com is a blog about blogging, I can get away with a colorful, but not overly offensive, word like suck in the title. If I were a physician dispensing medical advices through my blog, on the other hand, such antic could cost me my credibility.

2. You don’t come up with new posts often enough.

Actually, this blog is on the verge of sucking because I haven’t written a new article in a while. But I have a good excuse. While RantstoRiches.com is a blog about making money, it is not exactly a cash cow itself. Launched just over two months ago, it’s just one of a dozen or so blogs that I’ve created. Sure, I’d love to spend more time on this blog to flaunt my beachside mansion, Italian sports cars, and gorgeous women that I managed to acquire through the massive fortunes that I’ve made on the internet. And while I’m at it, I’ll even post fake screenshots of my Clickbank and Paypal earnings.

All joking aside, I simply can’t afford to devote too much time to this site. And the few dollars that I get here and there from this site simply are not going to cut it if I am to continue to make a living exclusively off the internet, unless I plan to move into my grandmother’s basement (actually, my grandmother passed away years ago and she never had a basement).

However, that’s not to say that I have no aspirations for Rantstoriches.com to become my main “money site” in the future, at which point I wouldn’t mind churning out a new post or two a day for this blog. But at this point I can’t really justify spending any more on this blog while I have 70 or 80 other websites to run.

At any rate, it’s vital to have fresh, updated content to get people to come back to your site. Although this subject has been beaten to death thousands of times before by countless others, fresh content is even more important to blogs (short for “weblogs”) since they are electronic diaries that are supposed to be updated frequently, even daily. Just imagine, you can have some great articles that captivate visitors who stumble upon your blog. They come back a few days later only to find out you haven’t added anything new. A week later they come back to find that you’re still missing in action. Sooner or later, they don’t come back.

3. Your blog is not you-nique.

“Content is king”, as the mantra goes. If you want your blog to stand out, it need unique and original content.

But what exactly is unique, original content? In all likelihood, you’re not going to come up with a cure for cancer or a new theory on the origin of the universe. Everything you have to say probably has been said thousands of times by countless others already.

So, how do you go about being unique?

The answer is, you. That’s right, you. There are some six billion people on the planet, and you are what’s truly unique in this world. Your looks, personality, temperament, education, views, and other personal traits are all you-nique to you. The way you express yourself, your choice of words, your writing style are an extension of yourself. By lending your personality to your blog, you add life to it and renders it you-nique and original.

4. You seek to take rather than to give.

Whenever someone visits your site, it had be worth their time. Why should a visitor read your blog rather than the million others?

One way to compensate your visitor for their time is to blog with the mindset to give rather than to take. But how do you go about giving through your blog?

If you share some specialized knowledge that visitors seek, then you’re giving. If you teach people how to do something they want to learn, then you’re giving. If you inspire them to take action to bring about positive changes in their lives, then you’re giving. If you can put a smile or laughter on their faces through your articles, however silly and trivial, then you’re giving. At the end of the day giving is about enriching people’s lives and making them feel good about themselves.

5. You don’t actively promote your blog.

To be sure, a blog doesn’t necessarily suck because nobody reads it, but it sucks to have a great blog that nobody reads.

After all, the idea behind blogging is not to talk to yourself, but to share with others. Blogging is a two-way, peer-to-peer communication medium in which there is little barrier, technical or financial, to publishing. What this entails, unless you’re someone famous, as a blogger you’re really no different from a million others in the blogosphere.

Although some blogs have managed to become popular without much marketing and self-promotion, most of us aren’t good enough to gain significant readership without active promotion. Besides, at this stage of the game, you need to promote yourself even if you’re an exceptionally talented blogger, because there are so many other talented bloggers out there already.

You should not ignore the social aspects of blogging. Aside from optimizing your blog for the search engines, joining traffic-generating networks like Entrecard and Adgitize, and submitting it to blog directories, you must be willing to devote your time to engage your readers as well as other bloggers. I read other people’s blogs regularly not only to get new ideas and for inspiration, but also to leave comments on them and make friends with fellow bloggers. Sharing your knowledge and expertise on forums and discussion boards is another excellent way to get people to know you. Writing articles and submitting them to article directories like EzineArticles and GoArticle is another way to bring traffic to your blog.

There you have it, folks, five reasons why a blog sucks. I could go on and come up with 95 more reasons, but I see that I’ve already surpassed the 1,500-word mark for this post. Considering the short attention spans of most web surfers, I had better stop because I’m dangerously close to exhibiting another characteristic of blog suckitude (is that even a word?): excessive verbosity. Anyhow, the point is not to give 5 or 100 reasons why a blog sucks, but to share some ideas to avoid blog suckitude into blogging suckcess.

An important aspect of blogging is that it is a two-way, peer-to-peer communication medium. To get your blog read by others, you must actively engage your readers and build mutually beneficial relationships with other bloggers.

One way to get others to know about your blog is to leave comments on their blogs. I regularly read blogs not only to get ideas and inspiration, but also to reach out to other bloggers and promote my own blog. Leaving relevant, on-topic comments on other people’s blogs is a source of both direct traffic and one-way links back to your own site.

But blog commenting can be a tedious process. A few days ago I stumbled across a blog commenting software that relieves much of the headache involved in finding blog posts and leaving comments on them. With BlogCommentDemon, I can find hundreds of blogs that are related to my topic of interest and quickly leave comments on them. This piece of software is the only one of its kind with a comment tracking system. You will be able to track if your comments are approved.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t advocate spamming in any way, shape, or form. I am not suggesting that you buy this software to leave “great post…I agree” comments to thousands of blogs. But if you want to make life a little easier, BlogCommentDemon is the way to go.

Here are some of the features of BlogCommentDemon:

- Track your comments to check if they are approved.
- Deep crawl a website for more similar pages.
- Sort blogs according to TLD, PageRank, Dofollow/Nofollow.
- Scan the number of comments and outgoing links on a blog page.
- Random proxy server support.
- Dashboard showing all your recent dofollow blogs.
- Ability to add and organize the blogs as favorites.
- Auto-fill the comment field.

Visit this link to buy the software for just $47. Yes, I am an affiliate of BlogCommentDemon (and a happy customer, too).