Money Online

Sp@m seems to embrace many forms these days. Have you ever heard of “widget sp@m“?
Well, recently I have become a member at MyBlogLog community. I have met new people, discovered some great websites that I did not know about, joined communities, traffic increased, etc. So far so good…
The dispointement however started shortly after I have put the MyBlogLog “recent readers” widget on my blog. Even if the traffic was increasing even more, I saw that I started to have visitors that were spending less than 10 seconds on my blog… so I started to wonder what might have been the cause of that. Looking further at my stats, realized that plenty of exit clicks were pointed towards that widget. So why would people come to my site, stay for less than 10 seconds just to click on somebody’s avatar?
The reason for this is simple. Most of the blog owners (especially ones that don’t receive tons of traffic dailly) are curious to see who visited their website, so almost instinctively they go to their visitors blog as well. The downpart is that this curiosity can be speculated and it can become a cheap method of increasing traffic to your site.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have nothing against it if they actually read my blog, but I suspect that this type of visitors visit one site after another navigating just through that widget.
(I think that everybody can agree with me that a blogger should look for quality traffic that will eventually convert to returning visitors not just spikes that will only result in lower CTR and conversions.)

The irony is that I was actually convinced to join this community because of that widget, and now I removed it because I don’t like this kind of “spammy traffic”. But I still am and I will still be a member of the MBL.
I need to add that after having removed that widget from my blog, I have noticed that the “10 seconds” visits are almost gone, even though the traffic has been basically the same.
It is really a shame, since the idea was original and interesting; another good thing about to be “ruined” by sp@m…

The worst part is that I have absolutely no idea how this kind of sp@mming can be controlled. In fact I am not even 100% sure that it can be called sp@m.
I hope that the guys that are administrating the mbl community will find a way to resolve this, or concentrate on better ways of communication between contacts and members of different communities. At least there, you could have a lot more control over things.

Before publishing this post, I have searched the web to see if I am the only one that thinks this way (in other words, to make sure that I wasn’t paranoid, especially since I knew a lot of well known bloggers which I respect a lot, (like Yaro Starak, for example,) were very happy with it.

Surprisingly or not, there were some other people that have the similar issues with this. Take a look at what Michael Arrington had to say about it.

Again, I really like MyBlogLog, because it is a place where you can make contacts easier, a good start for a beginner to have his blog noticed, and to be honest I even like the idea of seeing my picture on the websites that I visit, but at least for now you won’t see your picture on my blog… really sorry about that.
I would be happy to know what you think about this; is it really important for you to see your picture on other people’s blogs? Did you notice a similar trend with your blog or is it just me?

Technorati Tags: Blogging, MyBlogLog traffic, increase traffic

The main problem that websites and blogs encounter is that they don’t get enough traffic, especially if they are new. I have tried to put together a list of all the ways that I could think of in order to generate traffic. Based on my personal experience, and from what I have heard from other webmasters, these methods are known to give results. If I have missed any (and I most probably have) feel free contribute to the list by posting a comment on my blog, and I will add it to the initial one (along with credits and a link to your website, of course).

Post comments on other blogs
Go to blogs that have a similar topic to yours (no matter if you have a blog or a website) and post interesting comments. It is important not to post spammy comments such as “check out my site” or “great blog! Check out mine!” because this kind of comments will be instantly deleted and reported as spam. Most of the blogs have the “no follow” attribute to comments, so don’t expect a page rank increase from doing this. The main advantage is that if you say smart things you will attract attention and you will have plenty of visitors to your website. From this point on it will only depend on the actual quality of your content if the decide to stick around or not.

Join online forums
Same things apply to online forums. Be an active member and use a link to your website in your signature. This will get even better on the long run, since older members tend to gain more credibility. Also the threads are archived and don’t go anywhere, so you may notice visits coming from there long time after you have posted.

Join online communities
Join online communities like MyBlogLog. You will be amazed about how much you can benefit from it. If you are like me you are probably spending a lot of time visiting other websites. If the webmasters of those sites are also MyBlogLog members and have a widget installed (which is provided for free) you will actually see your avatar on “recent visitors” area directly on those web pages. Interesting avatars, can catch attention and people will be curious to visit your own site. Basically you are generating traffic just by surfing the net.
Besides that, you will have a chance to create your own communities and gain exposure. This community has been recently acquired by Yahoo and it has the potential to grow a lot in the near future.

Advertise with videos
Use Youtube and other similar places to your advantage
For some niches this is the best way to advertise. Depending on your topic you can chose to do funny videos or video tutorials but don’t forget to put your website address somewhere on it. People will come for more!
Adbrite is preparing something that looks to be a great product: Adbrite Video. With fully customized video player, split screen ads and shared revenue this promises to be one of the best products of it’s kind. At the moment the program is in beta testing and no one knows all the details, but I am sure that when they launch it, it will be a success.

Capitalize traffic from major sources
Myspace and Squidoo receive a huge amount of traffic and it would be a shame if you don’t try to redirect a part of it to your own website, especially since it is not rocket science to do that. You have to create a profile/lens add content, links to your website and try to make friends with as many people as you can.

Use social bookmarking sites
As I have mentioned in a recent article, social bookmarking sites are a great source for traffic. I even dare to state that their level of importance is the same as for search engines. Write interesting posts with intriguing titles and description and submit them the major bookmarking sites out there. Use plugins like Sociable to make it easy for your visitors to vote for your article and you will see a sudden boost in your traffic rankings.

Tag your posts
If you have a blog, register it with Technorati and tag the relevant keywords from every post. You can do this manually or by using the Simple Tags plugin.
Make sure you ping to the main blog directories. I regurally use pingoat and pingomatic.
Be generous with links
When you find something interesting on the net, don’t be afraid to post a link to it. Many people are afraid of the competition and the thought that they may loose their audience scares the hell out of them. This is not at all a positive attitude. Outbound links, can actually generate more traffic to your site than you are sending away. If you link to a blog that has trackback enabled, it could turn in lots of traffic back to your website.

Participate in user groups, yahoo answers and similar services
Participating in discussions from yahoo answers and similar services can prove to be an important source of traffic too, especially if your answers and suggestions are highly apreciated.

Submit articles to article directories
Although, this is not as important as the others mentioned above (in my opinion), if you submit your article to several article directories you may experience an increase in traffic. Further more, you will gain some inbound links which will contribute to your page rank

Directory submission
I know that general directories are known NOT to generate traffic (their primary purpose being link popularity increase) but some niche directories can prove to be a quite significant source of traffic for your website. Get to know your niche very well and find the appropiate niche directories in which your site fits in and you will see some results.

SEO
Last but not least, optimize your website to make sure that search engines are indexing your website at full capacity. This is something that you must not oversee, since organic traffic is known to be one of the best for monetizing your site, especially with contextual advertising.

Conclusion
The day has only 24 hours, so try not to waste any of your time. Even if you are just surfing the internet try to find a way of marketing your website while you are doing it. Make friends with as many people as you can that have the same interests as you no matter if you “meet” them on myspace, social bookmarking sites, communities or blogs, and most importantly don’t think of them as your competition.

Technorati Tags: Increase Traffic, Social Bookmarking Sites, Traffic Sources, Traffic, Search Engines