I’ve been changing a few things around on the Home with Heather’s side bar the last few days. Change can sometimes be a good thing, keeps things fresh. The first thing that got the boot was the Blog Rush Widget.

I was one of the very first on the band wagon with the BlogRush Widget back in September of last year. It was really exciting at the time. John Reese had the whole blogosphere talking and adding it to their blogs. The promise was that it would bring traffic for the “little guy”. In October, it actually did bring me a small bit of traffic - about 2 % of my unique visitors were brought in through the widget. In November and December combined, it was about .6 of a percent. That’s it!!

Now, I’ll take traffic from any source that I can get it… BUT that widget was taking up a huge amount of my most valuable real estate on the sidebar for 12 clicks in December. That’s just not worth it.

I have found many other sources that bring me much better targeted traffic than the Blog Rush Widget. I even played by the rules, displayed the widget ‘about the fold’ on my sidebar so that it would always be seen.

I really respect John Reese and what he has to say. Generally it’s bang on. Why did the widget fail so miserably? Not sure. My original thought was that all the credits were being given to the blogs with more traffic. I don’t really think that is the case because of read of some of the bigger blogs taking the widget down as well. Blogs like Problogger, and Clicknewz.

Are you still using the Blog Rush Widget? If so, is it bringing you in traffic? If not, why do you think that it failed?

Now I guess I’m curious about what others are thinking, so leave me a comment won’t you?

Expect the Best,

blog real estate, Blog Rush, Blog Rush Mistakes, blogrush, free traffic, john reese, side bar, Social Networking, traffic, Web 2.0, widget

I’ve noticed something the last few weeks. I’ve been posting less. But guess what? I’ve been getting more visitors to my blog.

Interesting.

Could it be that the information I’ve been sharing is just that good? Well, it could be but let’s look at other possibilities.

I’ve been blogging less, but have been spending much more time with my social networking, and commenting of other blogs. I mean really trying to spend time visiting blogs I haven’t been to before. I am spending more time stumbling, zooming, sphinning and plugging than I have in the past.

I haven’t even really had the goal of getting traffic in mind. Truth be told, I’ve been having fun doing it. Also I’ve been so busy with my offline life that I haven’t had time to do the research and prep work to bring as many quality posts.

I won’t lie. I do promote my own posts on these networks, but I’ve also been promoting others.

So what do I do?

1. I don’t submit every article of my own. Only the favorites, or the ones that I feel will really be of benefit to others.
2. I submit them to Blogging Zoom, Sphinn, PlugIM, and Stumble, once in awhile to Digg and Netscape but not very often.
3. I try to spend time daily commenting on blogs that I’ve not visited before. I only comment if I have something relevant to add.
4. I find the new blogs by spending time on Blogging zoom, and Sphinn. If I like an article title, I click and check out the blog.
5. If I really like the blog, it gets added to Bloglines, and submitted to the networks named above. I’ve submitted many more of other peoples articles than that of my own.

Seems pretty simple right?

And honestly I thought I was doing this in the past, but realized that I was promoting myself more than I was others. This last week, it’s been more of a curiosity and procrastination than anything else.

But… Guess what happens when you do it the other way around? More people will do the same back for your articles. I’ve had many more zooms, sphinns, and stumbles in the past 2 - 3 weeks than I have at other times.

So maybe blogging everyday isn’t the secret after all. Very interesting, and I certainly will be keeping an eye where I can spend my “blogging” time most productively.

Expect the Best,

blogging zoom, Commenting, community, plugim, spinn, stumble upon, su, Web 2.0, web promotion

Last weekend was the big Google Page Rank shuffle.  Many are screaming out against it.  It seems that some of the major players got a major Google bitch slap.

Google is trying to make it fair for everyone to compete.  What they are most concerned with is people gaming the system.  So many people (and I’m not talking about the major players now) don’t like to play fair.

Let’s take a look at this by way of example…

Blogger ‘A’ - Just a regular Joe (or Heather as it were ) goes about her business blogging everyday trying to provide quality content.  Trying to get links back to her site by way of reciporical reviews, blog rolls, comments, article marketing… you know using the very white hat methods.   A blog like that could remain low in PR and therefore low in the SERP’s (search engine results pages).

Blogger ‘B’ comes along and tries to game the system to get ahead faster.  He buys a bunch of back links, gets even more links from link farms, gets in with a “bad neighborhood” and doesn’t bother putting out quality stuff.  His blog is really spammy and nobody likes it anyway, but they are all sent there through these back links.  And because he has 4 or 5 times as many backlinks as Blogger ‘A’, he lands up higher in the SERP’s.

Google doesn’t like that - neither does the average reader.  I hate spammy blogs.

So Google tries to get tough with them and really crack down.  They want to make it fair.  But what there is a whole other group of Bloggers.  We will call them Blogger ‘C’ that is a mixture of hard work, great content and not quite perfect methods of obtaining links.  These often end up being the major players.  They have refined their blogging skills to have the best of both worlds, up until this most recent round of PR shuffle.  Thus the major bitch slap.

Do I think it’s fair that the major players were taken down like that?

Nope - I certainly don’t. 

But I do think something needs to be done about those spammy blogs.  Google just needs to try a bit harder to smack the right blogs.

With I’m sure Zillions of blogs floating around now, they do need to do something to level the playing field.

Obviously there is more to it than just that little example, and I could get into a bunch of stuff about giving out links on sponsored posts, interlinking in “bad neighborhoods”, when we should use no follow and when we shouldn’t.  But you know what?  Many great writers have already covered this and explained it very well.  Andy Beard, Grizzly, Ian Fernando, and Maki from Dosh Dosh just to name a few

At this point, I’m please with my increase to a PR4.  I actually thought that this would happen during the last update, but better late than never I guess.

With all the controversy, fuss and muss going around about Page Rank right now, many say it’s not worth anything anyway.  Perhaps this is true too.  But it’s worth something to me.   I guess it will always be something and as part of being online, we’re just gonna have to learn to roll with it.

Expect the Best,

google, google bitch slap, page rank, PR, SERPs, traffic, Web 2.0

I was reading a post Jon did at Smart, Wealthy, Rich on How To Get 1261 Subscribers in less that 3 Months with his new blog Freelance Folder.

Wow - that’s amazing to me. So how’d he do it, and what are the rest of us doing wrong?

In a recent post, Monika commented:

Good idea for a poll. I actually voted others and what I’d like to suss out is why I seem to personally struggle with getting RSS subscribers? This really bugs me as all the blogs I’m subscribed to (including yours) are all writing and blogging about the same stuff. We all talk about our journey, our experiences and our failures and yet some have these huge subscriber lists and others like myself don’t.

It is a mystery to me to be honest and if you know the secret, then let us know please?

Monika, it is a mystery to me too.  So I’m still looking for answers.

Jon mentioned a few things in his post that he’s doing, and I’m not (or wasn’t).

•  Allow RSS email subscriptions.  I’ve always meant to add this, but never had.  It’s very easy to do just by going in through feedburner and setting it up.
• Networking.  I network and leave comments, but this is always at the bottom of my list.  If I run out of time in a day, I don’t do it.  Funny though because I do take time to read many blogs and it would really only take a few extra minutes to comment them.  Jon says he was spending 2 - 4 hours a day networking.  Wow - that’s a lot of time.  But I know for myself, as soon as I do this, by unique visitors increase and so I would then assume that RSS readers would also increase.
• Getting links from A-listers.  Well I have gotten a few in the past, but will strive to get more.

Other things that I have not yet done are:

• Submit my RSS feed to RSS directories.  This is very time consuming unless you have software for it, or unless you outsource the project to someone.
• Put your email and RSS links on all of your remote site.  This is an awesome idea from Jack at FTR, check out the full story here.

And as always the way you’re going to get more people wanting to subscribe through RSS is to keep putting out quality content posts.  I find that my list of subscribers tends to fluctuate 10.  The type of post I put out on any given day, or if I’m not able to put one out at all has a huge impact on the number of subscribers to my list.

I will be implementing all of these changes and keep track of my numbers, just as sort of an experiment for myself.  Right now, I’m at 78 through my feedburner feed.
Expect the Best,

feed reader, Getting more RSS subscribers, list building, RSS Subscribers, traffic, Web 2.0

Instead of doing my Friday list of Favorites today, I thought I’d share two great reports with you.

Sometimes people discount free reports as not having any good information in them. What I find more so lately than ever before is that the information given in a free report is actually quite valuable.

These two free downloads are definitely worth the time to go through. They will certainly help you with your blogging. I have printed them out and will be referring to them often.

The first is from Alex Sysoef at How-to Spot-er. The ebook is called Profitable Bloggin for Newbies. Alex has compiled some of his best “how to” posts and added some extra information to provide you with an easy reference guide for blogging.

The title says for newbies, but I’m sure everyone will find this book useful. I’ve been blogging for almost a year, and still find the information that Alex posts on his blog to be very helpful on a regular basis.

In this book Alex will show you how to make money on your blog, even if you never have up to now.

The second report I want to share comes from Brian Clark at Copyblogger. Brian has a huge reader base and it’s because the information he provides is always relevant and thought provoking. This free report is called Teaching Sells. In it, Brian talks about how people are making money online right now, and what you will need to do to make money in the future.

Is Blogging Dead? See what Brian has to say about it.

These are both really awesome resources and will make for some great weekend reading.

Expect the Best,

blog income, Blogging, Brian Clark, copyblogger, make money, online income, Web 2.0

If you use it properly it sure can be!

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post “Are You Harnessing the Awesome Power of Facebook”. In that post, I talked about the many different applications that can be used in Facebook to drive traffic to your website or blog, as well as other cool ways to be able to use Facebook as a central hub when you’re on the run.

I’ve been working on a project with Ian Fernando to bring you a quick guide to the powerful ways you can use Facebook as part of your daily Social Networking.

This is a no frill 20 page report explaining how to use Facebook to get noticed.

The ebook is called “Facebook Advances: All About Getting Noticed” and it was just released yesterday.

The book is written by Ian Fernando with contributions from Carl of TypeCarl.com and Me

Facebook is different than many other social networking sites going. It allows you to do things like:

• Incorporate applications such as “Blog Friends”. This application allows you to add your blog feed to profile so that all your friends can keep up with your blogs easily.
• Application like Twitter and Stumble Upon also make it very easy and useful in creating links.
• Facebook actually allows you to make money just by setting up some of the “make money” application. This was my part of the book, so be sure to check that out.

Facebook Advances will also teach you things like:

• How to set up your profile to get noticed.
• How sometimes it IS about “who” you know. Adding popular friends will gain you more exposure.
• Learn the Facebook markup language FBML.
• Learn how to use the marketplace to your advantage when selling ebooks, or other affiliate products.

As Facebook continues to grow at an exponential rate, you really do need to catch the wave and get in on this powerful tool.

In this new world of Web 2.0, it’s all about staying current with the latest in social networking. Customers and web surfers will no longer allow us to simply get away with putting up a sales page and raking in the cash.

They want to know more…

They want to know about you, they want to know why you are trying to sell this product or service. What makes you the expert? Clients want to be able to talk to you, get answers to questions. In today’s online market place, it’s all about making yourself available.

Using Facebook is a really great way to accomplish this.

Grab a copy of this report while it’s still hot off the presses so to speak. You can download it anytime day or night. Then start building your profile, and making this powerful yet free tool work for you. Remember, it’s kind of like the wind farm analogy I did on my previous post. You have to harness that power…

To grab your copy of this new report: Facebook Advances … Click Here

Expect the Best,

facebook, facebook advances, FBML, Ian Fernando, make money applications, marketing, networking, Social Networking, Web 2.0

I got a message yesterday from one of my friends on facebook.

Dan Reinhold from WAHumor.com is raising money for Autism. Dan is doing the first annual “Wonderful WAHumor Giveaway for Autism Research”.

Dan is a work at home Dad (which is cool ). One of his kids has Autism, and so this is an issue very close to his heart. Every year (for the last 9) they have participated in the annual Greater Boston, Massachusetts Walk for Autism Research.

This year he wants to raise $5000.00 to bring to the Walk, so he has teamed up with some of his Internet Marketing friend to provide this offer.

For this week only and for a cash donation of $25, Dan is giving you 7 Great Products. You can check out all the details here.

I have to say, some of the people he has contributing with products are some of the best in the industry.  Lynn Terry, Kelly McCausey, Harvey Segal just to name a few.

If you should feel like donating fifty bucks,  he’s bumping up the giveaway even more.  Check it out at the Wonderful WAHumor Giveaway for Autim Research

Why don’t you take a few minutes to make a donation and get some cool stuff, or spread the word with a blog post or email your list.  Or hey do both

Thanks for helping out.

Expect the Best,

autism, autism research, boston walk for autism, Dan Reinhold, special needs, WAHumor, Web 2.0