Interesting Facts about Blogs

Along side that Time Magazine article Blogs Have Their Day. was another article titled 10 Things We Learned About Blogs. Most of the 10 things were common knowledge in the blogosphere so I'll just mention the 3 things that I felt were interesting.

"Bloggers Make Money." The article reported that the author of Talking Points Memo blog is making $5K/mo from banner ads. This is the blog that received fame for its role in pushing for Trent Lott's resignation as Senate majority leader.

"Most Bloggers Are Women. ... According to a survey of more than 4 million blogs by Perseus Development, 56% were created by women."

"Bloggers Can Be Fakers". The article mentioned the Layne Johnson blog which went on for 3.5 years and was suppose to have belonged to a Minnesota lesbian. It turned out to be a hoax by a 35 year-old male entrepreneur.

Also it mentions the popular fake Bill Clinton blog. This Clinton blog is kind of interesting. The author puts a lot of thought into the posts to make them seem real. Also, it looks like this blogger might be making money. It has an Amazon link to Clinton's book "My Life". I wonder if Amazon approved this guy as an affiliate. This blog doesn't have huge amounts of traffic, but it does have a decent number of about 180 visits/day. Looking at its Site Meter Stats, the blog had a surge of traffic in June of around 40K visits when it first started. Then it quickly fell and has been averaging around 5K visits/mo since August. I guess this is when people realized it wasn't real.

Fake blogs might get traffic, but it seems like there's a good chance of getting into legal problems if you're pretending to be someone else.

Things to Learn from the Power Line Blog

Here's more info on that Time Magazine article Blogs Have Their Day.

Some of the history behind Power Line is interesting and can be useful for wannabe bloggers. The blog now has three writers. It started as a lark by a 50-something lawyer named John Hinderaker. The next week Hinderaker called a friend named Johnson and asked him if he wanted in. Johnson agreed but said "I think the idea that we could ever have any readers for this thing is a pathetic fantasy."

Well, Power Line has many readers. I just checked their stats and they're averaging 52K visitors per day. And they are now making money through ads. They're using blogads.com. I see 8 blogads on their blog. From blogads, I see they're asking $300/mo for an ad. So that's $2400/mo. Not too bad for a hobby. However, it should be mentioned that there are 3 writers. So that comes out to $800 per writer per month (excluding their hosting costs).

The Time Magazine article gave some info about the Power Line blog that can help other wannabe bloggers. First, the Power Line bloggers post often. It said about 10 times a day. This seems to be a common thread to popular blogs.

Second, their posts are not too long. The article says "It takes 20 sec. to read a typical post, and when you're finished you've got the basic facts up to the minute plus a dab of analysis and a dash of spin."

Third, they've built a strong online community. The article mentioned: "When you read Power Line, you feel if you're part of a community, a like-minded righteous few."

So if you think it's a pathetic fantasy that your blog will have readers, don't be so sure. It's not easy, but it's definitely possible to have a successful blog. Just be persistent and creative. You might have a chance.

The Advantage of Blogs Over Conventional Media

Time Magazine's December 27th issue had an interesting article on blogging called Blogs Have Their Day.

The article mostly discusses the blog Power Line. This is the blog that was most responsible for proving those 60 Minutes National Guard memos were not real. After this information came out, CBS launched a formal investigation and Dan Rather announced he would be stepping down. The Power Line blog post that started all of this was called, the now famous, "The 61st Minute" post.

The article mentions an important feature of blogs that helped Power Line disprove CBS. That feature is a blog's interactivity in which readers can help the blog authors to enhance understanding and knowledge. This interactivity is unique to the web and can't be done to the same degree in other kinds of media.

The article mentioned that "the key information in "The 61st Minute" came from Power Line's readers, not its writers."

The article further mentioned "Conventional media may have more readers than blogs do, but conventional media can't leverage those readers the way blogs can."

How a blog can spread like wildfire

Here's an example of how quick a blog can become popular. On November 5th, someone started a blog called Open Letter to the Democratic Party. In this post, the lady provided reasons why she voted for Bush and not Kerry. It was very well-written and apparently, touched a nerve. Within two days, that one post received 281 comments until she disabled the comments to the post. A few bloggers came acrossed it and made reference to it on their blogs. This attracted more visitors and more links. So this is the perfect example of the importance of good content. Good content will be noted by other bloggers and your traffic can grow very fast. Bloggerforum had an interesting thread on this blog.

The key to blogging success?

The most important thing for blogs is content that's updated frequently. If you're interested in making money, then you should also be concentrating on a high dollar niche. What I mean by a high dollar niche is a speciality type of subject that involves profitable products or services. Then you can run Google's Adsense ads on your blog. As visitors read your blog, you'll get readers who will click on the Adsense ads which will relate to your content. If your content discusses high dollar products and services, then the ads will likely be similar. So when people click on the ads, Google will reward you with some money. The higher dollars items will bring in the most money for clicks.

A real good example of a successful blog is Mobile Tracker. This blog concentrates on cell phones and the cell phone news. It was started by a 19-year-old kid and has become very successful. He brought in over $4K dollars in the month of August. Most seems to be due to Adsense. Business 2.0 featured his site in their November issue of their magazine. Bloggerforum has a thread on this article. Also, this thread was joined by the owner of mobiletracker. In this thread, this blogger stressed the importance of content. Also, it needs to be updated often. In his case, he has often posted over 100 times a month on his blog.

Experience so far with blog explosion

Blog explosion has some great features, but it's not a silver bullet. Many are suspicious of blog explosion's traffic generation feature and worry that people who come to your blog through blog explosion are just interested in gaining credits and not reading their blog.

There is some merit to these suspicions. However, if you look at blog explosion as just another marketing tool (one of many) for your blog, it's really not a bad tool. Of course, marketing is useless unless there's something behind it. For blogs that means content. Good content that's frequently updated is really the key for blogs. But once you have content, you need some marketing.

Visiting a few sites each day with blog explosion can be a great way to not only bring in some new readers to your blog, but also to experience other nice blogs. If you come across a blog that you don't like, there's no reason to wait 30 seconds to get credit for it. Just move on. There's always something interesting being talked about in the blogosphere. And that's why I think a blog traffic generator like blog explosion can last.

Here are some threads from different forums discussing blog explosion. They include some positives and negatives about the site.

• thread at bloggerforum


• thread at forum4bloggers

Simple and Quick promotion with BlurtIt

BlurtIt is a simple little website to help your site get a little more exposure. What I like about it is it's simplicity. You just add your site's URL and name, and select the blurit button. That's it. Your site gets listed at the top of the list. Of course, most people who visit this are only interested in adding their own site, not visiting yours. However, you might get a few hits from this. And it's so easy and quick, there's no reason not to spend a minute once a week by submitting your site (Its rules state that you should wait till your post drops off the list before resubmitting which usually take about a week.)

Forums specific to your blog topic

Since blogs can be on anything, blog forums aren't necessarily the best place to find a loyal readers. It can be a start, but most folks on blogger forums will likely not be highly interested in your particular topic.

To find people who may be interested in your particular subjects of your blog, you may want to try forums that match your blog's subject. For example, there are forums on politics, web development, dieting, motherhood, writing, etc. By joining these forums and participating with your signature, you are providing a mini ad to your blog. Always be sure to leave posts that provide value to the subject. Otherwise, it'll look like you're just spamming the forum.

Many forums have an introduction section where you can introduce yourself when you join. This is an easy way to start posting. The best intros are those that will provoke a response. The more replies to your thread, the more visibility it gets. So be sure to review previous intros to see which ones were most successful. Once you've been a part of the forum for awhile, the intro section can also be a good place to greet newcomers. Posting a welcome message gets your signature to those who are joining.

Blogrolling vs Link Exchanges

blog rolling is a popular blog tool that manages your list of links to other blogs. Instead of manually adding in new links to your sidebar, blogrolling allows you to add links with a click of a button that you can attach to your browser menu. What happens when you click the button is that it records the link to your account's list. This list is kept on blogrolling's servers. At your blog, you just attach a unique reference to blogrolling. This unique reference identifies you. Blogrolling then returns the list of links to your blog.

This blogrolling feature is a great idea, but it does have a fundamental flaw. The blogrolling feature is implemented using javascript. The reference that you paste on your sidebar refers to javascript code that blogrolling outputs for your blog. The problem with this is that Google doesn't interpret code inside javascript. Thus, being listed in someone's blogrolling list won't help your Google pagerank. It may give you a few more visitors from the other blogs, but it won't help you with Google.

So my recommendation is to keep to the manual method, and add links directly to your sidebar. Ask others to do the same.

Some recommendations for using blog explosion

If you join Blog explosion, I recommend that you add a poll to your sidebar for blog explosion surfers that asks surfers to let you know if they're visiting through blog explosion. Why? It's a good way to see how many blog explosion surfers are reading your blog. Also, you may want to ask if them to comment also. So you might want to have a post that asks this. Leave a link on your sidebar to the permalink to this post. That way, it'll be visible from your front page.

Even if you don't plan on surfing to gain credits, it's worthwhile to join blog explosion just for its directory. The directory is better than most. It provides many interesting stats including number of visitors to your blog, number who bookmarked your blog through blog explosions "blogmark" feature, and the average rating given by those who visited through blog explosion. But like most blog directories, don't expect much traffic by just listing your blog there.

Link Exchanges

Exchanging links with other bloggers has some advantages. First, you'll likely gain an occasional reader from the blogger who you are exchanging links with. Second, you'll get some traffic from readers of the other blog. Third and most importantly, you will improve your blog's page rank with Google. The more "real" links that exist on the web that point to your website, the higher the page rank in Google's search index. That means your site will be higher in the search results and will receive more visitors from Google.

Beware not to get involved with link farms which are intended to artificially increase the links back to your site. If everybody did this, the Google's usefulness would plummit. So Google is aware of these kinds of things and will not award your site. In fact, it's likely to punish your site with a lower page ranking.

Blogger Forum has a section for those who want to request link exchanges. This is a great place to start making exchanges.

Blog Forums Around the Web

In addition to BloggerForum there are other blogger forums which can be useful to promote your blog and receive feedback. The other ones aren't as popular as bloggerforum, but they can be useful. Here's a list of them:

• blogger forum - The blog forum leader and my favorite


• forum4bloggers - It's not nearly as active as bloggerforum, however, it does have some dedicated moderators. Also, they do advertise on Adsense so they are serious. If you know of any good blogs (other than yourself) they have a forum where you can post a recommendation. It's an easy way to post (which will give visibility to your signature with your blog.)


• blogger talk - Another small blog forum. Don't know much about this


• blog discussion - A new and small blog forum that's aligned with a new blog directory called blog catalog

New Way to Get more Traffic to your Blog

BlogExplosion is a great new way to get more traffic to your blog. Its principle is simple. Each time you visit a site through BlogExplosions, someone will visit your site. The more you surf, the more traffic you'll get. This is the best blog directory that I've seen.

Why not give it a try? Also, they have a referral system that helps you get even more traffic. So if you join through here, I'll get a little more traffic and will be very grateful :-) Also, this site is brand new. Be the first ones to join, and your chances at getting lots of referrals (and traffic) are great.

Click here to join BlogExplosion. Thanks!


Details about BlogExplosion:

Two weeks ago I found this great new blog resource called BlogExplosion. In most blog directories you submit your site and wait for traffic. But how much traffic do you get? If you're like most, you'll find you'll get hardly any traffic from directories. Most people are only interested in submitting their own sites, not visiting other sites.

But with BlogExplosion, you can guarantee receiving traffic. After you submit your site, you then can surf other blog sites. Each time you visit a blog site through blogexplosion, you'll gain credits which guarantee others will visit your site when they surf through blogexplosions. The more you surf the more traffic you'll get to your site.

There's been several previous sites that attempted this kind of system. One site that I had tried was clickthru.com. The interface was terrible. It was slow and confusing. I never did get any traffic from this. Also, there's a question about how useful visits through such a system is. Will the traffic really be visits from people who are really interested in your site. Or are they just visiting to get their own traffic?

I believe BlogExplosion is different. It has a fast and simple interface. The traffic you get from it will be those from other bloggers. There is more of a community where bloggers support other bloggers.

Also, BlogExplosion has many features to guarantee useful traffic. First, they have a system where you have to stay at a site for at least 30 seconds. Their system has checks to ensure that a human is surfing, not some automatic surfing software. Also, they have a nice bookmark feature where you can bookmark a site that you find interesting.

BloggerForum

A great way to introduce your blog to the world and to receive honest feedback is through bloggerforum. This is the best discussion forum for bloggers on the web. It has a great front page where you can quickly review the latest postings. In addition to a forum, it has other great blog resources such as a directory, a blog for bloggers, and a download section for useful blog programs and templates.

After you join, start off by posting in the "show off your blog" section. You'll likely get many visits to your blog. Also, you'll likely get some useful feedback about your content and design. Be sure to ask for feedback so people will be encouraged to reply. The more people who reply to your post, the more it will be shown on the front page and the more visitors you'll get.

Also, be sure to include a signature to your blog in the profile section. So each time you post, you'll advertise your blog. Also, the better the post, the more advertisement you'll receive. So be sure to include quality posts to provide value to other bloggers. It's a great way to share ideas and knowledge.

BlogExcerpts

How often do you surf blog directories? Probably not much. They're really not that interesting. They are just lists of blog names and descriptions. However, there is this new sort of blog directory that is fun to read. The site is named BlogExcerpts.

At BlogExcerpts, the list of blogs include an interesting excerpt from the blog. Also, there's a promotion system where the best blog excerpts get promoted. So it's easy to find interesting excerpts that lead to interesting blogs.

Another thing I like about BlogExcerpts is how easy it is to add your excerpt and site. There's no registration or waiting for approval.