1. Missing Emails – I’m afraid that for some reason a number of those participating are reporting not getting emails. There are a number of reasons for this:

• New Signups – if you signed up since Monday it takes up to 24 hours for the sequence of daily emails to kick in. New signups will be put into an email sequence where you’ll be sent daily emails starting at Day 1. This means you’re a little behind the main group but means you don’t miss anything that the main group has covered already.
• Spam Filtering - some people are finding our emails in their spam/junk mail folders. Please search for them there and mark them as ‘not spam’ and you should get future ones in your inbox.
• Missing Confirmation – some people did not confirm/verify their participation by clicking a link in the email that we sent you soon after you signed up. We need this confirmation before we can send you anything else. Search for this and click the link (it could be in your spam/junkmail folder). If you can’t find it try subscribing again on this page. If you still can’t find it – contact Aweber.com who are managing our list.

2. Email Delays - a few people are concerned that they see posts go up on ProBlogger for days but don’t get emails until hours or even days later. As mentioned above the main reason for this is that emails are sent out in a sequence. Most people reporting this problem have signed up since the program started and will be a day or two behind the main group. You’ll get the emails eventually but will be taken to the start of the sequence of emails.

Other people reporting shorter delays in getting emails will unfortunately just have to wait as we don’t have complete control over when emails will be delivered. Aweber queues these autoresponder emails so that they go out usually 1-3 hours after the posts go live on ProBlogger.

If you want notifications as posts go live please subscribe to our RSS feed. This way you’ll see posts as they go up on the blog. You’ll still get the emails eventually and can see any other information I’m including there.

Apologies for those experiencing delays but there isn’t a lot we can do about it at this point.

All in all though it seems that the project is being well received. We just passed 10,000 registered participants and many are reporting that they’re enjoying the tasks being set so far. Thanks for everyone’s involvement!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

FAQs about 31 Day Project and Email Delivery Problems

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I’ve run this twice previously (once in 2005 and once in 2007) so thought that I should continue the biennial nature of it.

This year I’m going to run it slightly differently so if you’re interested in participating please read on carefully.

Of particular note – this year I’m asking those participating to sign up as registered participants. You don’t have to do it – but to get the full benefits from it I ask that you do. I’ll explain more on why I’m doing this below.

You can register here:

Here are the details of the challenge this year:

The Idea

The idea behind this is simply to have a group of bloggers setting aside a month of their time to work at improving their blogs. While we all want to have better blogs sometimes it becomes one of those things that we’re going to do…. one day.

I personally find that I improve (in all areas of my life) when I’m more intentional and set aside a specific time to make the improvements. That’s what this project is about.

Yesterday on Twitter I mentioned that I was thinking of running this again and had 50 people express interest in 5 minutes. I quickly set up a sign up page just for my Twitter users and within 24 hours had well over 1000 registered participants. I guess people want to do it.

Interested in joining us? If so, read on…

How it Works

Each day from 6th April until early May I will make a post here on ProBlogger that is part of the challenge.

Posts will be designed to each have two aspects to them:

1. A teaching component (theory)
2. A practical component (a task/homework)

The idea is that often teaching remains in the realm of theory and doesn’t actually prompt those digesting it to DO something. This project is more about DOING than learning. I hope you will learn, but to be honest if you’ve been blogging for a while some of what we’ll cover many will have heard before – but this project will give you a framework and hopefully some inspiration to put what you know into action.

Some of the tasks will be similar to previous years tasks and some will be new (some things never change so there will always be some overlap). Some tasks will be more relevant to some bloggers than others so you may not choose to do all of them but they will be on a variety of areas of blogging including writing content, interacting with readers, finding new readers, design, tools etc.

This 31 days are designed for beginner and newer bloggers but many of the tasks will be relevant to intermediate and more advanced bloggers also.

To Participate

As mentioned above – this year I’m asking those who want to do the challenge to register their email addresses. You will receive one email per day over the 31 days notifying you that a new post is up, giving you the link to it as well as a little extra information for registered participants.

You don’t have to do this and can follow the posts via our RSS feed – but I’m asking for you to register for a few reasons:

1. Sometimes signing up for something is important in making us accountable to do what we say we’ll do.
2. It will enable me to give a little extra information than the posts contain themselves. On the blog the posts will be written in a way that anyone will hopefully benefit whether they do the full challenge or not – but in the emails that I send each day pointing you to the post I will include a little extra information just relevant to those doing the challenge.
3. My hope this time is to let the 31 Day Challenge live on way beyond the first 31 days. People will be able to signup and do the challenge at any point as the emails will be sent via an auto responder.
4. It will give me a little more insight into who is doing the challenge which will hopefully means I can tailor it a bit better to peoples needs.
5. Lastly – there’s a couple of things I’m working on as a bonus for those who register. I’ll write more of these as they firm up.

If you signup for the 31 days you’re more than welcome to unsubscribe at any point if you feel it is not helpful or not quite where you’re at.

At the end of the 31 days I’m not planning on sending too many more emails. I may add a few more tasks over time but the daily emails will stop. If I do keep sending a few emails, again you’re welcome to unsubscribe if it isn’t meeting your needs.

Sign Up to participate in the Challenge Here

I’m looking forward to the 31 Day Challenge this year and hope that you’ll join me.

Lastly – a special thanks to @Mark_MacDonald who put together the logo above and thanks also to the 15 other friends on Twitter who put together logos – I appreciate them all.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

31 Days to Build a Better Blog – Sign Up Here

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In this latest batch of blogging tips are some fantastic examples of blogging tips which I really hope you’ll enjoy.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the project. A special shout out to the team in the 31 Day Project who did the Chocolate Challenge – sounds like they had a sweet time of it.

Here are the last batch of blogging tips – make yourself comfortable and enjoy!

• Make Your Template Unique by Michael Martin
• Blog on the Air by Jerky Beef
• A Blogger on Blogging – Chapter 4: Easy Way to Confuse Your Users by Vlad H
• Notebook and Pencil by Martin
• Valid XHTML: Ampersands in Links by Martin
• WordPress Link Love – Follow On Plugins And Tweeks by Rob Malon
• Making a Favicon for Your Blog or Website by Tallfreak
• Why your “About” page is going to become more critical on your business blog by Krishna De
• 5 Blogging Tips to Maximize Pageviews Per Visit by Blain Reinkensmeyer
• The Nine Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers by Etienne Teo
• 10 Popular Firefox Addons for Better Blogging by Etienne Teo
• 5 Ways your Blog can GainTraffic From Media Power by Etienne Teo
• Get More RSS Feed Subscribers! by Matt Harzewski
• Hooked on Phonics Works for Me: How Learning to Spell Can Make You a Better Blogger by Kev at Special Kind of Stupid
• How To Find Hidden Links In Your Site by Courtney Tuttle
• Top 7 Sign’s You Are an Obsessed Web Stats Whore by Sarah Pacopac
• 5 easy ways to get bookmarked on delicious and become hot by Mohsin Naqi
• The First Months of Blogging May Break or Make You by Jan
• 5 Essential OSX Blogging Tools by Simon
• Using Outbound Links to Improve Your Blog by Steven Snell
• Wordpress Plugin of the week – Redirection by Blogmunch
• Wrap Your Brain around Viral Marketing by Suzanne Atkinson
• How To Get Your Blogger Blog’s Categories Indexed By Search Engines (Again) by Bloggeroo
• Adsense Isn’t Enough To Make Money Online by Taylor
• Rabbit and Turtle Race in Blogging by Ken Xu
• Break Your Blog Out of the Box with Mailing Lists and Cliff-Hangers by Fred Black
• Don’t Starve Your Readers or Give Them Indigestion by PabloPabla
• Better Google ranking by DPeach
• Fact errors, libel and blogs: How to cope by Glenn Abel
• What you need to know about outgoing links? from SEO perspective by Vijay Shinde
• 7 Ways to Turn Your First Time Visitors into Returning Visitors by Kreah
• Blog Design – Open Your Eyes by Snoskred
• Blog Hints – Refer To Yourself In The Third Person? by Snoskred
• Creating Content from Everyday Life by Pearl
• 10 Reasons Why Blogging is like Sex by kuanhoong
• blog migration series – Choosing Wordpress plugins by blogmunch
• Visualize Your Success by Pat B. Doyle
• What do YOU think is the best time of the day to post articles on your blogs? by Mark
• Golden Pencil’s Mission Statement by Anne Wayman
• Are Your Blog Posts Actually Useful? by Matt Jones
• How To Load WordPress From A Static PHP Script by Jeremy Steele
• 5 essential blogging tools by Shawn Wallace
• How I Added a Sparklet to my Lists by Suzanne Atkinson
• 7 Ways To Give Writer’s Block A Severe Beating by Jason
• 7 Ways to Brand Your Blog by Jordan (MamaBlogga)
• Easily Fix Broken Links & Prevent Your Visitors Getting Lost by Chris Lodge
• 5 Steps For Effective Uses of Lists In Your Blog Posts by Sly from Slyvisions.com
• Group Elements of You Website by Dan Cole
• Demystifying Blogger Template Editing by Sephyroth
• Writing Dirty by Skellie
• Raving Lunatics of the Twenty-First Century by Chris
• The Social Network That Makes you Money with Google by Shawonne Womack
• Avoid The FUD By Following These Three Simple SEO Tips by George Manty
• 50 Types of Links for Bloggers and How to Make Them. by Vin
• Increase Traffic Create a Google Gadget by Vin
• Hot Tips On Blogger Profiles. by Vin
• Branding For Small Business And Bloggers by Steven Bradley
• Analysing The Problogger Group Writing Project by Rhys
• 7 Ways to Lower the Buying Hurdle by Mason Hipp
• Does Valid Code Help Your Blog? by Michael Martin
• How Does Being Social Help Your Blog? by Pat B. Doyle
• A Simple Way to Create a Re Direct Link by Ian Fernando
• Wordpress Duplicate Content: You Control the Horizontal, You Control the Vertical by Widgett Walls
• Learning about blogging on my bike by Christine Martell
• blog migration series – cpanel orientation by blogmunch
• SUPERCHARGE your blog! What guidelines do you follow to make your blog successful? by Mark
• Affiliate Programs 101 – Blog And Make Money by Shine With Grace
• How To Get Others To Listen To You by Mohsin Naqi
• Social Media Marketing: The Secret Weapon of Small Business by Mason Hipp
• Ten Writing Errors That Makes Your Blog Less Good by Simon
• Text-link-ads: all-in-one blog advertiser / monetizer by Joe
• 1 Quick Tip to get 1850 Visitors to Your Blog by Jake
• The Importance of Comment Policy by Ken Xu
• 5 Stupid Ways To Sink Your Blog! by Ted Demopoulos
• Stop frustrating your Readers! by Bob Walsh
• Reach out to your online friends by Bob Walshb
• Do it on Fridays – cherry pick a mega list post by Bob Walsh
• 9 Essential Tools for Bloggers by Steven Snell
• Another Money Making Blog or Blog About Blogging? by PabloPabla
• Made A Mistake In A Post? Remember to Ping Feedburner by Matt Jones
• Actively Changing Your Layout by Dan Cole
• 1 EZ Tip to Beat the Rush and Make some Bucks by Jake
• Use 25 Expert Techniques to Have a Successful Blog by Yuri Filimonov
• How to : Time based Adsense by Ben Gillbanks
• How To Find Profitable Affiliate Programs And How To Display Them On Your Blog by Pat B. Doyle
• Update Your Permalink Structure by http://wolftales.ath.cx/webmasters/update-your-permalink-structure/
• Supporting Blogging through other Revenue Streams by Simon
• How do you REWARD your COMMENTERS and those who have BACKLINKED to your blog? by Mark
• What can Bloggers learn from Babies? by Simon
• Blogging for Business: Understanding the Two Types of Audiences by Aaronontheweb
• What you gotta ask yourself is, Do You Feel Lucky, Punk? by Mark
• What Your Readers Don’t Need To Know About You by Mohsin Naqi
• Why I Use the WordPress Default Permalinks by Pat B. Doyle
• Don’t Fall in the Expert Trap – Strive for Genuine Authority by Jan
• 10 Tips for Good Commenting Practice by Tejvan Pettinger
• Blog Tools and Services That Bloggers Need To Use by Sly from Slyvisions.com
• 31 Day Blogging Challenge — Day 27 – 31 by Sue Waters
• And The Winners Are…..The MiniLegends! by Sue Waters

Don’t for get to check out our Blog Tips for Beginners.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

98 Blog Tips for a Lazy Sunday

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Your task today is to run a SWOT Analysis on your blog.

A SWOT analysis is a strategic tool that has been used for many years in business (and many other fields) to look at the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats that that business might have or be facing.

Much has been written about SWOT analysis and how to carry it out (I’ll let you do some searches on Google for it if you’re not familiar with it) however let me write a brief description of how to apply it to a blog.

1. Define Your Mission and Goals

Before you carry out your SWOT it’s important that you know what your blog’s goals are (otherwise the exercise is a little pointless as you’ve got nothing to review your site based upon). As a result you’ll want to have done Day 28’s task – Define Your Blogs Mission Statement.

2. List Your Blog’s Strengths

What attributes does your blog have that will help you to achieve your blog’s goals? What does your blog have going for it? What are you good at as a blogger? What resources and assets do you have at your disposal? What do you do better than anyone else?

3. List Your Blog’s Weaknesses

What attributes does your blog that are holding you back from achieving it’s goals? What skills do you not have as a blogger? What is ‘broken’ on your blog or in your workflow? What could or should you improve about your blog? What should you probably avoid in your blogging? What is distracting you from your goals?

4. List Your Blog’s Opportunities

What external things could/are helping you achieve your blog’s goals? What trends are their in your blog’s niche that you could explore on your blog? What tools and technologies could you use to improve your blog?

5. List Your Blog’s Threats

What external things could or area hindering you achieving your blog’s goals? What are other blogs in your niche doing that could be hindrance to your own blog’s growth?

note – Think of Strengths and Weaknesses as internal factors while Opportunities and Threats are external factors.

6. Analyze Your Reflections and Generate Strategies

Take some time out to work out what you can do with your findings. How can you utilize your Strengths? How can you bring your Weaknesses to an end? How can you make the most of your Opportunities? how can you fend off the Threats?

As my old Marketing lecturer used to say – ‘doing the analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats is only half the job. Working out how to turn Weaknesses into Strengths and Threats into Opportunities is the key part of a SWOT analysis’.

7. Plan to Do Something and Do It

Translate your findings into an Action Plan and begin to implement it.

Doing a SWOT analysis is something that I do periodically on my individual blogs and on my overarching business also. Have you ever done one on your blog? What tips would you give to others wanting to do one?

If you want to do more strategic analysis and planning on your blogs you might also like to check out my series of posts – Strategic Blogging.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Run a SWOT Analysis on Your Blog

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Today’s task in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Project (this is the 2nd last day) is to explore a social media site (whether it be a networking site or a bookmarking one) that you might not have seen or explored previously. I’m not going to tell you which one to choose to explore (because you’ll all have had different experiences of different ones) but will leave that choice up to you (I’ve got a suggested list below of some you might like to choose from).

Social media sites are increasingly popular types of sites and are full of wonderful potential for bloggers wanting to improve their blogs.

Why Should Bloggers Take Notice of Social Media Sites?

Traffic – The most obvious attraction to many of these social sites is the massive number of people that many of these sites have and the potential for them to drive deluges of traffic in your blog’s direction.

However, while I’ve written numerous times on getting and leveraging traffic from social media sites (I’ll include some links at the end of this post) I have increasingly begun to see numerous other benefits of being an active participant in these spaces.

Let me briefly explore a few:

Branding – I wrote a post a month ago on Building Your Personal Brand One ‘Straw’ at a Time which highlighted the power of being involved in a variety of different activities online. In that post I shared an email from a reader telling me how he’d stumbled across me in six different ways before subscribing to my blog – two of these instances were social sites (Facebook and Digg). I’m amazed how many people have told me similar things having come across some of my different pages on social sites.

Reinforcing Relationships – A lot has been written about the nature of ‘friends’ in sites like MySpace where you can rack up thousands of ‘friends’ in a day or two yet ‘know’ none of them. While ‘friendships’ and relationships in these types of sites is usually of a different kind to what happens in ‘real life’ (although there are exceptions) I’ve still found that the interactions that I have on social media sites can reinforce the relationships that I have with readers on my blog. There are a number of readers that I interact with regularly on sites like StumbleUpon and LinkedIn that have led to closer interactions on my blog also.

Learning – I learn a lot about building successful blogs when I participate in social media sites. Spend half an hour stumbling through sites on StumbleUpon and you will learn a lot about how to design sites that immediately capture attention in just second or two (which is all you really have to make an impression on SU), analyze the popular posts at a site like delicious and you’ll see the importance of good headlines (and pick up some tips on how to write them), take some time to go surfing on MySpace and Bebo and you’ll see and learn about all kinds of subcultures that you might not have known much about previously, explore a site like Twitter and you’ll learn the power of conensing a message down into just a handful of words….

How to Use Social Media Sites?

I’m sure that many of you will share other things that a blogger will benefit from as a result of social media sites – but lets take a few moments to share a few tips on HOW to interact on social media sites. The following tips will be fairly general as each site is different – but there are a few principles that remain the same:

Don’t Spam – the temptation with many of these sites is to rush in and plaster links back to your blog all over these sites. However this could lead to you damaging your blog more than it’ll benefit from it. There is a time and place to submit your own blog to many of these sites – however do it as a genuine participant rather than just someone in it for self promotion.

Be an Active Observer – each social bookmarking and networking site that you’ll discover will have it’s own rhythms, language and etiquette. The culture at one site will be quite different to another – so it’s important to take your time in getting to know it and to spend time familiarizing yourself with it. Watch how it operates, analyze what type of people use it, get a feel for how people interact with one another and the content, see what people respond to and make note of how other people are using the site in productive ways. Out of these observations you’ll be in a much better position to see opportunities to participate in fruitful ways.

Be a Genuine and Generous Participant - once you’ve got a feel for the site create a profile and begin to participate. Building on my tip ‘don’t spam’ – I’d encourage you to spend as much time as possible using the site in a completely non self serving way. If it’s a bookmarking site – bookmark other sites (ones you have a genuine interest in), if it’s a networking site – interact with people in a real and friendly manner. While you should find ways to build your own profile, brand and authority – these things generally come in time as you naturally participate rather than by always pushing the boundaries and manipulating the system.

Look for Tour Guides – every social media site has it’s key and central participants who can help you to understand and know how to use these sites most effectively. Look for these ‘tour guides’, watch how they operate, emulate them, befriend them, help them achieve their goals and in time build a relationship with them. In doing so you’ll learn a lot, begin to understand the language and culture of the site and will grow in your own influence in it.

If you have more tips on how to use these sites best – feel free to give tips below.

Social Media Sites to Explore:

There are hundreds and hundreds of these types of sites popping up and I can’t possibly mention them all. Let me suggest a few (with links to my own profile where I use them more actively so we can become ‘friends’):

• StumbleUpon – mine
• MySpace – mine
• Facebook – mine
• LinkedIn – mine
• MyBlogLog – mine
• Bebo
• Delicious
• Digg
• Furl
• Reddit
• Netscape
• Spurl
• Blue Dot
• Ma.gnolia
• Flickr
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Sphinn
• Newsvine

Of course there are literally hundreds of others – many now appearing on specific smaller niches. Feel free to suggest the ones that you’re experimenting with in comments below.

Further on Social Media Sites from our Archives

• How to Draw StumbleUpon Users Into Your Blog
• Why StumbleUpon Sends More Traffic than Digg
• Digg Traffic vs Referral Traffic – which is best?
• Using Digg to Improve Your Content
• Ten Tips for Becoming a Top Digg User
• How to Build a Digg Culture on Your Blog
• 7 Ways to Guarantee Getting to the Top of the Delicious Popular Page
• Using Social Bookmarking Sites to Find Out What Your Readers Like
• How to Surf Blog Traffic Tsunamis

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Explore a Social Media Site

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• Google Juice – incoming links are gold when it comes to climbing the search engines rankings. Every link is like a vote in Google’s eyes – get enough votes from the right sites and your blog will see increases in search engine traffic over time.
• Reader Juice – incoming links from even small sites will generally mean that people click the link and visit your site. New potential readers!
• Branding Juice - sometimes the real benefit of an incoming link can be the general branding and reputation enhancing that it can do. A link can be like an endorsement for your blog and on larger sites it can have profound impact not only by what it does with traffic and SEO but the impression that the link creates in the reader’s mind.

There has been a lot written about how to get links to your blog of late – but one thing that can be just as important is how you cultivate the relationships with those linking to you.

One of the things that I’ve learned in the last year particularly is that when a blog or website links to you once there is every chance that they’ll do it again.

As a result it can be very worthwhile to get to know the person who does the writing on the site and to build a working relationship with them.

This generally starts with an email and/or a comment on the post where they link to you.

Today’s task is to send an email to a blogger or webmaster that linked up to you recently. For some of you there will be plenty to choose from, for others just starting out it could be difficult to find any.

Some places to look for who is linking to you:

• Technorati – type your URL in and hit search and you’ll find any blogs linking to you
• Google Blog Search – another good tool for real time link tracking
• Your Blog’s Metrics – any worthwhile stats package will give you a ‘referrals’ stat that shows incoming links. I use Google Analytics but you could also use Sitemeter, Mint, AW Stats or one of many other metrics tools.
• Search Engines – type in ‘link:http://www.yourblog.com’ at Yahoo or Google and you’ll find incoming links to your blog – note: this isn’t a quick or immediate method of finding recent links.

Once you’ve found another blog or site that’s linked to you – simply drop them an email of thanks. You can do a comment also – but I find an email is a little more personal and often leads into a conversation and perhaps relationship.

Keep the email brief and simple. Don’t pitch the blogger ideas – simply thank them and let them know that you appreciate both the link and their site (if you do). You may also want to make some sort of a comment or ask a simple question that relates to how they linked to you to show you’re engaging with them. If you intend to keep following their blog tell them (eg – let them know if you subscribe to their blog).

If the blogger responds in some way then let the conversation flow. You might find that it leads you to suggest another post that you’ve written, you might find that you can help them in some way or that you can work on something together – however don’t rush this. If nothing more happens than you saying thank you then you’ve lost nothing and made a little impression.

On the other hand you could well find yourself with a new friend and regular incoming links to your blog.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Email a Blogger that Linked to You to Say Thanks

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Today your task is to go on a hunt for a sponsor for your blog.

You might not think that your blog is big enough to find sponsors (and you might be right) but even if you’re unsuccessful in finding one you will hopefully learn a thing or two about finding sponsors and might even start a relationship that could be fruitful at some point in the future.

Getting a sponsor for your blog (or selling an advertising spot directly without relying upon an ad network like AdSense) is a great thing for numerous reasons – not the least of which is that you cut out the middleman and don’t have to share the revenue with a company like Google!

It’s not always easy to land a sponsor – but it’s a skill that bloggers wanting to make money from their blogs should learn – even in the early days.

A few tips for finding a sponsor:

1. Before you go out and start asking companies to sponsor your blog read these two posts – Finding Advertisers for your Blog and 10 Ways to make your Blog more Attractive to Advertisers. A big part of finding an advertiser is to get your blog in order first and to be prepared for what they might ask you.

2. If you have a smaller blog and haven’t had a sponsor before don’t aim for the stars straight away. It might be worth starting out by approaching smaller retailers, websites or companies in your niche and see if they’d be interested in some sort of partnership rather than aiming for the very biggest ones right up front. I did this a couple of months after starting my first digital camera blog and emailed 10 online digital camera sites to see if they’d be interested in advertising. 3 of the 10 bought small ads on my site (I think it was for something around $15-$25 a month). It wasn’t a lot of cash (and I didn’t have a lot of traffic to send to them) but I learned so much and made a little money in the process.

3. Target Potential Advertiser Carefully - before you start approaching potential sponsors think carefully about your blog and the topic that you write about and about who might want to reach your readers. Brainstorm a list of companies and websites that might fit the bill.

4. Wondering who to approach? Why not check out who is advertising on other websites and blogs in your niche. Quite often they’ll also be open to running a similar campaign with you.

5. If a sponsor isn’t sure whether to go with you or not – give them a discounted or free trial. I’ve done this a number of times and found it beneficial on three levels:

• It gives the sponsor a taste of what your blog can offer
• It can help get your readers used to the idea of advertising on your blog
• I’ve found that having one advertiser (even if it’s a free one) can actually attract other advertisers (or at least make selling sponsorships easier)
• You’ll learn a lot by getting the ad up, finding out how it converts and at a discounted rate you’ll even earn a few dollars

6. Find an Angle and Sell it - don’t just email a potential sponsor asking if they want to advertise with you – sell yourself. If your blog has a loyal community of core readers then sell this, if you get a lot of search engine traffic for certain keywords that the advertiser would want to have, sell it to them on this, if you have an audience who is researching to make purchases – this is a key selling point and if you’ve never had an advertiser before on your blog – turn this into a selling point. You need to give a potential sponsor or advertiser a reason to align their brand with yours.

7. If you can’t attract anyone – run a campaign of your own. Pick a part of your blog that you want to drive traffic to (perhaps a post, or a category, or a subscribe page) and develop a button or banner ads to drive traffic to it. I’m doing this here at the moment in the 468 x 60 banner position here at ProBlogger at the moment (there’s a number of different campaigns running there including some internal ones). The beauty of this is that you can test your conversion rates on different positions. Run a heat map test and you’ll learn a lot.

8. If you do manage to sign up a sponsor give sponsors as much value as possible. Do everything you can to over deliver on the campaign. Announce the sponsorship on the blog with a post, mention it any other newsletters or lists that you have, position it high on the page, consider throwing in a bonus text link in another part of your blog etc. The more traffic you can deliver to your sponsor the more chance of getting them to renew.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Find a Sponsor for Your Blog

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In that post I wrote:

“I use the word ‘competition’ hesitantly because the thing about blogging is that those blogging on the same topics as you are potentially your biggest allies. Connect and work with your competition and everyone improves.”

I’ve previously written more on when competition is good in blogging – but today we’re going to put the theory to the test.

Today’s task in the 31 Day Project is to link to another blog in your niche – a ‘competitor’.

While linking to other blogs in your niche might seem a little bizarre to some I’ve seen it’s power many times in my own blogging and that of others. Outbound links Matter!

So here’s the task – find a way to link up to at least one other blog in your niche.

There are of course many ways to do this. I regularly do it here at ProBlogger in my speedlinking posts (random recent links) and at DPS in a similar format called Digital Photography Tips from Around the Web – but there are other ways to go about it from linking to a post someone else has written, to writing a review of the blog in question etc.

So get linking up – and let us know how it goes in comments below!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Link up to a Competitor

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OK – I can hear what you’re probably thinking:

“What? The ProBlogger has lost his mind – what does shopping have to do with blogging?”

Stick with me for a second and let me explain….

The reason I want to encourage you to go shopping is twofold:

A. It’ll get you away from your blog for a bit - I was chatting with another blogger yesterday and we both admitted to each other that we’d been in our PJ’s all day blogging (it was 4pm for me) and needed to get out more – sad but true.

B. It’ll give you a chance to do some observation exercises that could help your - this is the main reason for today’s task and is based upon an experience that I had today at a local shopping centre (or ‘mall’ as many of you non Aussies would call it).

The exercise:

1. Step away from the Computer (come on, you can do it)

2. Grab a notebook and pen (do you remember them? They are the things you used to use before your primary form of communication involved typing)

3. Head to your local shopping centre/mall/CBD shopping area (easier for some than others I realize – apologies to those in rural areas, this may or may not work in your local general store)

4. Once at the ‘mall’ take 30 minutes or so to go ‘wandering’ with no agenda (don’t do your groceries) except to ‘watch’ and ‘observe’ in some of the following ways:

• Who is there? Who are they with?
• What are they doing?
• What are they buying?
• How do they make their buying decisions?
• What are the retailers doing to get people’s attention and stand out?
• What messages are they using in their marketing?
• What colors are in at the moment?
• What other things are ‘hot’ or in fashion?
• What sales techniques are sales staff using?
• What are retail outlets doing well? What are they doing poorly?

5. As you watch, make some notes. Don’t attempt to find any ‘lessons’ or try to tie it back to your blog yet.

6. Once you’ve spent half an hour or so on ‘observation mode’ find a spot to sit down (a food court perhaps) with a coffee and go over the things that you’ve noticed and see if there’s any lessons there that you might be able to apply to your blogging?

This process might seem a little random and pointless – but it’s something that I’ve done on numerous occassions over the last few years and each time that I’ve done it I’ve come away with at least one new idea that I want to apply in my blogging.

Some of the ideas have come directly from things I’ve seen retailers doing in their marketing (for example, today I saw a store using an attention grabbing technique that I want to try to apply to one of my blogs to draw readers eyes) – while others are more lessons about ‘people’ and how they operate and once or twice I’ve even seen illustrations to use for posts or ideas for new blog topics.

If nothing else it’ll get you out of the house for a bit!

I’d love to hear your experiences of this exercise in comments below!

Update: Here’s what I learned on MY shopping expedition today.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Go Shopping and Improve Your Blog

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Today’s task in the 31 Day Project your task is to do an SEO Audit of your blog.

I’ve written everything I know on SEO previously in a post called Search Engine Optimization for Blogs so I wont rehash it all in this post and I’d highly recommend you head to that post for a refresher on the topic (or an introduction to it if you’ve not learned much about SEO before).

Invest in Your Knowledge of SEO

If you have a budget for your education and want to learn from a real expert in SEO I highly recommend checking out Aaron Wall’s SEO Book (aff). It costs $79 and is the best resource I’ve found on the topic with 328 pages of instruction (with free updates – and Aaron does update it) plus a nifty little bonus called 33 Days to Online Profits. It has a 100% Money Back Guarantee if you find that it’s not for you.

A few tips for your SEO Audit

It can be easy to get overwhelmed by Search Engine Optimization so if you’re new to it or need a place to start here are a few basics that you might want to work on today:

• Make the Titles of Your Posts the Title Tags of Your Post Pages (Aaron shares how to optimize your title tags for SEO in this post. Also check out Title Tags and SEO).
• Use Good Anchor Text for internal links – hunt back through your old posts for poor anchor text to replace.
• Pick a few posts to do some analysis of your use of Keywords as outlined in the SEO for Blogs post. You might like to rewrite some older posts to make the most of this knowledge.
• Use good keywords in images in your posts – if you are optimizing particular posts that contain images renaming them and using good Alt Tags with the keywords you’re chasing can give you a boost.
• Think about head tags in your posts – here’s a very quick tutorial on head tags.
• Pick some key posts that you want to grow the SEO ranking for. Link to them from your sidebar/menus.

A Last word on Balance in Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization can become something of an obsession (as can many aspects of blogging if you concentrate on them to the exclusion of other factors). For a little balance on the topic you might find my Confessions of a Linkaholic and Should You Write for Humans or Computers? helpful.

Further Reading on SEO

If you want to read more you might like to check out a recent post from Matt Cutts which is a summary of a talk he did on Whitehat SEO for bloggers (or watch the video of the talk below if you’ve got a spare hour – it is really great):

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Do a Search Engine Optimization Audit on Your Blog

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Today I’ve got another 97 reader tips for you (taking us to a total of 456 submissions so far) and once again they cover a wide array of topics relevant to any blogger wanting to improve their blog. If you’ d like to be included in the last lists simply follow the instructions in the Introduction to the 31 Day Project post. It’s worth doing – the last one of these posts went onto the front page of Delicious and i heard from a few readers that they had quite a bit of traffic as a result.

I hope you enjoy this wonderful array of blog tips:

• Testing Post Readability by Andrew Boyd
• Link Baiting Within Your Website – Part 2 by Rob Malon
• 50 Tips to Unclutter Your Blog by Skellie
• What kind of URLs are the best ? by Shrihari
• Everything you need to know about Linkbait : The Comprehensive Guide by kuanhoong
• Ultimate Guide to time saving for Bloggers – Tips and Resources by Shankar Ganesh
• Updating WordPress with Subversion by Bryce
• Write Content, Then What? by Martin
• How to Not Mangle Your WordPress Blog Code with Plugins by Jason Bartholme
• “Banned” By Google? Find Out How to Entice Googlebot to Recrawl Your Site by gaman
• Run a Blog Promotional Contest by JerkyBeef
• Three Rubbish Things New Bloggers Do, and Three Better Things To Do Instead by Rhys
• HOW To: Add emoticons/smileys in GMail by Sumesh
• Successful Health Blogging by James
• What I Learnt from My First Year Blogging by Tejvan Pettinger
• Increase your subscriber count overnight – Sureshot tip by Mani Karthik
• How to avoid duplicate content on Wordpress blogs by Mani Karthik
• Is it Easy to Make Money Blogging? by Jake from MoreMerchant.com
• 2 Steps to Quit Working by Jake R
• Identifying your Audience, and Knowing what YOU should expect from THEM by Simon
• Optimize WordPress Page Headings by David Zemens
• A Blogger on Blogging – Chapter 3: Unblocking Writer’s Block With the Help of Your Users by Vlad H
• Header KISS by Dan Cole
• 7,076 Unique Visitors! The Power of StumbleUpon. by Matt Harzewski
• What is it about a blog that makes you want to unsubscribe from its feed? by Mark
• Secret Formula To Writing Headlines That Catch Your Eyes by Vivien
• 3 New Wordpress Security Tips I Learnt from Matt Cutts by pchere
• Some Facts About Social Bookmarking Websites and the Traffic You Receive from Them by Vahid Chaychi
• Improving the Reader Experience by Robert Irizarry
• From Casual to Serious Blogging – what makes the differences and what does it mean? by we-wet
• 10 More Things To Do When You Have Nothing To Blog About by Sly from Slyvisions.com
• Top 10 SEO Tips for Blogs. by Vin
• How Problogger Inadvertently Gave Me 359 Headline Ideas by Tomaz Mencinger
• The Blogging Tips Google Gadget. by Vin
• Free Publicity for Blogs with Google Gadgets. by Vin
• Quick Blogging Tip: check all links by Trevor Hampel
• Good Words vs Great Words by Ken Xu
• Want to meet a great bunch of bloggers AND improve your Technorati rank? by Andrew Boyd
• Got blogger’s block? Two quick fixes comin’ your way… by Lori L
• 7 Top Ways To Lose 70% Of Your RSS Readers by Matt Jones
• 13 Quick Tips To Improve Your Blogging by Chris Lodge
• Wandering the Web at night by Frances McLean
• Is Your Corporate Identity Seductive? by Mason Hipp
• Blog Marketing by Mail by JerkyBeef
• Site subscription for dummies by Sue Hickton
• Hosted Blogging Platforms – Why and Why not ? by Shrihari
• 10 Things You Can Blog About On Weekends by Ramkarthik
• Put a tag cloud on your 404 – not found Page by Paul
• Be Your Competitor’s Friend by Charles Wolf
• Why You Should Want More Subscribers and How to Get Them by Jan
• 5 Ways I TRIPLED my Adsense Income by Simon
• Be Yourself in Blog Land: Don’t Join the Rat Race Unless You Like the Bait by Samir Bharadwaj
• Convert Category feeds to feedburner by violin kid
• AdSense and Chitika Combos That Will Skyrocket Your CTR by Tomaz Mencinger
• What is LinkLogger Feed? by Thejesh GN
• How blogging can help your business by Aaronontheweb
• 14 Reasons Readers Unsubscribe From Your Blog. by Snoskred
• Tuesday Think Tank: All About RSS by Sephyroth
• Make Sense of Your Blog With Proximity by Michael Martin
• Marketing your Blog with business cards by JerkyBeef
• Jimmy Spam (& SEO Tip)! by Lucia
• Blogging lessons I have learned that will benefit you and your brand! by Mark
• Retire Years Earlier with 1 Easy Tip by Jake – MoreMerchant
• Blog migration series – Choosing a webhost by Blogmunch
• Blog migration series – choosing my Wordpress theme by Blogmunch
• Important Points to Remember While Choosing a Theme by Simon Ward
• What does a Professional Logo do for you? by Eve
• How to use Robots.txt file effectively by Vijay Shinde
• Keeping your niche blogs on track by Andreas Sundstrom
• 10 Easy Ways to Find Permalinks of Blog Articles by pchere
• Do You Make This Mistake? by Dean Taplin
• Go Mobile: Get Your Blog Published On Your Readers Cell Phones Free! by Matt Jones
• Get the most out of guest blogging by Jordan (MamaBlogga)
• Video: Qualities Of a Good Website by Sly from Slyvisions.com
• Ride the Problogger Wave and Build Your Blog by Jake from MoreMerchant.com
• 7 Ways To Increase Your Productivity by Jeremy Steele
• Blog as if it matters – it does! by Ted Demopoulos
• 10 Traits Of Successful Bloggers by Bryan@OneMansGoal.Com
• What Makes A Digg-worthy Post? by Bryan@onemansgoal.com
• How To Get More Comments by Bryan@OneMansGoal.Com
• 3 Days to Successful Blogging by Takuin Minamoto
• What’s Holding you Back? by Jo
• A Guide To Overcoming Writer’s Block by Mohsin Naqi
• I Am Working My Way through 31 Days of Blogging Tips so you don’t have to by JD
• 10 Rare Tips and Tricks for Blogspot Blog by Muhammad
• 3 Best Affiliate Programs Of August For Your Money Making Blog by Ramkarthik
• Transform your blog into podcast using autocasting by Benedict Herold
• Increase Sales, Conversions, And Profits With The “Rule Of Odds” by Steven Bradley
• Competitive Ad Filtering with Adsense by Suzanne Atkinson
• Creating a More Valuable Blog for Your Readers by Steven Snell
• How Should New Bloggers Build Community? by PabloPabla
• How To: Niche Link Building by Alexandru
• Offer Multiple Feeds and Blogroll by Tech For Novices
• Top 5 Confidence Corruptor by Ken Xu
• Blogger does a Technorati umm Delicious – All profile links are tags by Tech For Novices
• Website Testing Validation URL Tools by Tech For Novices
• The Blogging Evolution by Vivek

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

What Everybody Ought to Know About Blogging – 97 Blog Tips

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Blogging is built on the ‘link’. One blog links to another blog who links to another who makes comment on another. This is a wonderful thing – but what happens when one of the blogs that you’re linking to is retired, is deleted, changes it’s link structure, moves etc? The link is a dead one (also known as Link Rot) and can cost your blog on two fronts:

Readability – clicking on a dead link can mean your readers can end up on error pages or being redirected to other irrelevant content to the one they were expected to get to. This can lead to reader frustration or giving the impression that your blog is old and/or out of touch.

SEO – I’m not sure of the technicalities of it or what the latest research shows but from what I can tell a dead link is not looked upon favorably by search engines and you run the risk of penalties.

So how do you detect dead links on your blog?

The most obvious ’solution’ is to surf every page on your blog and manually check all the links. This is something that might be achievable on a new blog – but on older blogs with hundreds or thousands of posts it’s just not feasible.

There are many link checking tools available but to be honest I’m yet to find one that I’m really happy with. I do hear that Xenu’s Link Sleuth is a good option for those using Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP. I’ve also used the free version of Dead-Links.com (which only checks to a reasonably shallow depth) – but I’d be keen to hear from readers on their suggestions of other options.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Go on a Dead Link Hunt

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I did an informal survey of bloggers at a workshop and asked them why they blog. The majority of answers had something to do with one of the above questions. While many bloggers also have some desire to make a difference in the world or to help others – to do this they also generally have a goal of being noticed and read by more and more people.

Today’s task in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog project is to take a break from building your own fame and influence and to build the fame and influence of someone else – preferably one of your readers.

Pick a reader (and if you’re new and don’t have any yet – pick another blogger in your niche, preferably a less well known one) and make them famous in some way.

Here are a few ideas on how to do it:

• Promote a comment to a Post - sometimes readers make incredibly insightful and wise observations and tips in the comments of your blog. While they will be read by a handful of people in the comment thread – why not pull it out and use it as the basis for one of your post – highlighting the wisdom in it and the person who made the comment.
• Write a Post about their Blog – visit the blogs of those leaving comments on your blog and pick one that you resonate with to post about. Write an ‘unpaid review’ of the blog – highlighting the best posts and what you like about it.
• Send Your Readers to Comment on Someone Else’s Blog – write a post that links to someone else’s great blog post and instead of asking your readers what they think about it on your own blog ask them to head over and comment on it on the other person’s blog. Shutting down the comments in your own post and saying that you’ve left a comment on their blog already can help make this more effective.
• Give Readers an Opportunity to Promote Themselves – run a project or write a post that gives readers an opportunity to promote themselves in some way. Last week on the spur of the moment at DPS I wrote a post asking readers – do you have a photoblog?‘ As I wrote the post I thought I’d add a line inviting readers to share a link to their photoblogs. I didn’t think much of it until the next morning when I woke up to 250 comments on the post and a whole heap of emails thanking me for giving readers the opportunity to highlight their work.
• Reader of the Week – SingForHim recently left a comment here at ProBlogger talking how how she runs a weekly post called Readers of the Week where she highlights some of her readers and how they’ve interacted with her blog. Here’s one of her latest examples of this (you can see from the comments that readers appreciate it!).

OK – I can hear some of the comments on this post already.

“Isn’t the real reason that you want to make your readers famous so you become more famous?”

True – one of the side effects of highlighting the great things about another person is that it will often come back to you in some ways that benefit you too. Call it ‘karma’, call it ‘reaping what you sow’ or call it anything you like – it’s a principle that you’ll find to be true.

However try to get away from that more selfish motivation for a moment if you can. The blogosphere was built on principles of promoting others, conversation, celebrating diversity, open source knowledge etc. Some days I wonder if those things still exist – and to be honest somedays I wonder if I’ve played a part in making them endangered species. Lets recapture some of it by making others famous today on our blogs.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Make a Reader Famous

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At least once a year I like to write a post on my blogs inviting my readership to comment on a number of areas of my blog. These include:

• Content (topics covered, post length, types of posts, post frequency, depth of exploration of topics etc)
• Design (navigation, colors, fonts etc)
• Blog Features (RSS feed, blog tools etc)
• Community (how it could be enhanced)

While some blog readers will give you this feedback from time to time whether you ask for it or not – others like to wait to be asked and many wouldn’t even give it any consideration until they are asked.

Why Survey Your Readers?

There are two main reasons why this exercise is worth doing:

1. Blog Improvement - the most obvious benefit of asking readers to review your blog is that you find out what they like and don’t like about it so that you can make improvements
2. Reader Participation – asking this question draws readers out of their lurking state to make a comment or send an email. In doing this you actually create users who take a little more ownership of the site and who feel like they are being valued and listened to

How to Survey Your Readers

A few more tips that I’ve found helpful when running reader surveys

• Determine What You Want to Know First - I find that these reader surveys are more effective when I have some sense of what I want to find out first. While simply asking ‘how can I improve’ might get some good responses – having some ideas on possible future direction for your blog can be helpful in forming the questions that you ask readers. Use this process to test possibilities. For example in a recent reader survey at DPS (see link below) I asked if readers would be interested in buying a ‘best of… ‘ type ebook to test whether this might be something that I could develop down the track.
• Ask Specific Questions – all some of your readers will need from you to give good feedback is an invitation to do so. However other readers will need a little guidance and asking some specific questions will give them the framework to give you the type of feedback you want. So ask a mixture of general questions (like – ‘tell me what you think about my blog’ and very specific ones (like ‘do you like video post?’ or ‘would you like a forum?’).
• Set ‘Rules’ – you’ll notice in the two examples that I give below of the most recent times I’ve asked readers for feedback that I’ve set some ‘rules’ in place. The reason I do this is to attempt to get readers thinking positively and constructively about the feedback that they give. Comments like ‘this site is crap’ don’t really help you improve your blog – so encourage your readers to make suggestions and be constructive.
• Set Good Expectations - the other thing it is worth doing is giving readers a sense of what you’ll do with their feedback. If you intend to respond to each comment, tell readers that that is your intention. If you can’t respond to each suggestion then tell that. This will save you pain later when readers email to ask why you didn’t get back to them.
• Be Willing to Hear Critiques – don’t ask for feedback unless you are willing to hear it (and not just the glowing praise). The whole point of this exercise is to find things you can improve upon – as a result you’ll hopefully have some of your blog’s weaknesses identified. If you’re not in the headspace for this type of feedback simply don’t ask for it.

Examples of Reader Surveys

If you’d like to see how I do this – I recently gave readers opportunities to comment on my main two personal blogs at How Can I Make ProBlogger More Useful to You? and How Can We Improve Digital Photography School.

So put together a reader survey and post it on your blog. I tend to do it simply as a post and let the resonses come in via comments or email – but you might also want to use an actual survey tool (although I find the response rate to using these is lower). Once you’ve done it I’d love to hear about how you found the process.

What did you learn? What would you do differently next time? Did readers respond? What tips would you give others wanting to do reader surveys?

Another Example

For another example of how do this check out this recent post over at Copyblogger in which Brian asks readers to tell him what Copyblogger means to them. It’s a great question because not only does he learn a lot but readers are responding in ways that cement their readership as they’re telling each other what they like about the blog.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Run a Reader Survey on Your Blog

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While this is one of the simplest acts that a blogger can do (I almost didn’t publish this because it’s so basic) it is something that can have a real impact upon your readers.

Despite this – it’s often one of the things that slips for many bloggers over time as a result of a growing blog and/or the busyness of life. I’m as guilty of this as anyone and have been attempting to put more time aside in the last couple of weeks to comment more on my blogs (it’s a daily struggle).

So block out a little time today to scan through the latest comments on your blog. Answer questions, respond to others ideas, leave a welcome message and continue conversations by asking questions of your own.

This acknowledgment goes a long way and is one of the best ways of developing a commenting culture on your blog.

PS: Here’s another quick tip that I found very useful in the early days of my own first blogs. Click the links of those who leave comments on your blog. When you do this you’ll find that some of those who leave comments on your blog who check their own blog’s referral statistics will notice your visit and come back to see if their comments have been responded to.

You can take this another step further by leaving a comment on their blog to further develop the relationship.

This is one of those little 1%er tips that may not send a deluge of traffic to your blog but that can have an impact on a reader by reader basis (you might also find a good blog or two in the process).

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Respond to Comments On Your Blog

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One of the challenges that faces blogs that have been around for a while is that they end up with a wonderful collection of posts in their archives that are rarely read by readers.

Write 1 post a day for a year and you’ll have 365 posts in your archives – but if your blog is like the majority of blog it will only be the latest 10 or so posts that readers will see when they arrive on your blog.

The challenge therefore is to work out how to propel readers towards some of the best posts in your archives.

One solution is what I call a ‘Sneeze Page’.

A Sneeze Page is one that simply directs readers in multiple directions at once – back into your archives. Let me explain further by giving a few tips on how to write Sneeze Page and then examining how to strategically position them for maximum impact.

How to Write Sneeze Pages

Writing a Sneeze Page for your blog isn’t that difficult a concept really – in it’s most simple form it is simply a list of links looking back into your archives. However as I think back on how I’ve done it before there are a number of techniques that you might like to use.

1. Themed Sneeze Pages – these are posts or pages on your blog or site that revolve around a single theme. For example – on the front page of the newly designed ProBlogger you’ll now find a section called ‘Best of ProBlogger’ which has a tab in it titled ‘Darren’s Favs’. The five links in this section point to five new pages on ProBlogger which are in effect Themed Sneeze Pages (How to Make Money Blogging, How to Find Readers for Your Blog, How to Write Great Blog Content, Search Engine Optimization for Bloggers and Darren’s Recommendations).

These pages each break down the overarching topic or theme of the page into sub themes and then list off some of the key posts that I’ve written on the topic.

Interestingly – some of the posts that I link to are the central page for a series of posts (which are Sneeze pages in themselves – for example the page on writing content links to the 7 Days to Rediscovering your Blogging Groove series). As a result these pages have the potential to sneeze readers into hundreds of archived posts very quickly.

2. Time Related Sneeze Pages – a Sneeze page that is based around a defined period of time can be very effective. These ‘best of’ posts highlight your key posts from that period to either remind readers of previous posts that they might want to revisit or to highlight posts that they might have missed.

The period of time that you choose can really be anything from a year (here’s my best of 2006 at ProBlogger post) through to a month, week or even a weekend (ie a post that summarizes the posts from a weekend that those readers who don’t read your blog on a weekend might have missed).

3. Hot Comment Thread Sneeze Pages – I haven’t done this for a while but I used to occasionally compile a list of the posts in my archives that had comment threads on them that just wouldn’t die. This drove traffic back to engaging conversations, controversial debates and insightful discussions through my blog. It was actually a great traffic driver that worked quite effectively.

4. Series Sneeze Pages – as mentioned above – the introductory or summary post of a new series of posts can be an effective Sneeze Page. The best current example of this on ProBlogger is the central page for the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog project which will end up being a list of 31 posts from this blog as well as hundreds of reader submitted tips.

Go Beyond The ‘List’

One more quick tip on writing Sneeze Pages – don’t make them just a list of links. Readers will use them a lot more and follow your suggested links into your archives if you take al little time to introduce what the page is about and to describe what they’ll get when they arrive at the page. This little extra effort will mean your page is more useful and useable for readers.

Also resist the temptation just to drive traffic to your money making pages. While you can definitely include pages that contain affiliate links and well converting ads in your Sneeze pages it will be much better received by readers if the posts you highlight are truly your best and most useful work.

How to Strategically Position Your Sneeze Page

The key with Sneeze Pages is to position them in a way that will enable them to be seen and used by the maximum number of readers. On some occasions this will simply been posting them as normal posts on your blog (see discussion below on ‘posts vs pages’ and in other instances it will mean highlighting them throughout your blog in other key positions.

Obviously at ProBlogger I highlight a number of Sneeze Pages from my ‘Best of’ section (something that is working quite well) but in my previous design I had them positioned in my top navigation menus (again – this worked very well).

Another way to highlight these pages is to link to them in posts when you’re talking on an issue. You can do this either within the content itself as you write or at the end of posts as suggested further or related reading.

Posts or Pages?

Those of you who use a blogging platform like WordPress (or now MT 4.0) that have the ability to write pages (as opposed to posts) on your blog will have an interesting choice when it comes to how to present your Sneeze Pages.

I use both posts and pages depending upon their nature. For Sneeze pages that will be linked to prominently for a long time on my blog I tend to go with a page (as they don’t have dates on them that could ‘date’ the page. But for smaller recaps of time periods or hot threads I’ll publish them as posts that will appear on my actual blog.

An Example of a Blog which Sneezes Effectively

Before I send you off to create some pages let me highlight one blog that I see using this technique very effectively – Lifehacker.

Here are four recent examples:

• Around the Watercooler: Best Comment Thread Roundup – this is a regular feature on Lifehacker that drives readers back to the hottest comment threads over the last week.
• Summer Fun Roundup – this one fits more into the ‘themed sneezer page’. Lifehacker regularly does this type of thing – particularly around topics.
• Retro Roundup: One Year Ago on Lifehacker – another regular feature that looks back to the better posts a year ago.
• This week’s Best Posts – another time based sneezer page

Your Homework

It is time to head back to your blog and create a Sneeze post or page for your blog. Use any of the above methods (themed, dated, hot threads etc) or use one of your own. Head back to this thread afterwards to tell us how you did it (and feel free to link to it so we can see some more examples of what others are doing).

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Create a Sneeze Page and Propel Readers Deep Within Your Blog

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Note – This task will take a small budget (unless you get creative and find another website willing to give you some free advertising – which isn’t just a bad idea, perhaps you could do an ad swap with another blogger) but it need not be much. One of the methods below could drive at least 100 new visitors to your blog with just $5.

One of the things that I do from time to time is set myself a small budget for advertising my blog. I do it as a little bit of a challenge – to see what ad systems work best and more importantly to see what I can learn about branding and promotion. The bonus is that it also drives some new visitors to your blog.

Where can you advertise?

If you’re just starting out with advertising your blog I’d suggest experimenting with different types of advertising to see what works best for your blog – but today I want to suggest an easy and relatively cheap way to get started.

StumbleUpon – StumbleUpon is a growing social bookmarking service that is used by many people around the globe. It is a service that many bloggers target to drive organic traffic to their blog – but one that also offers a means to advertise a website upon it. StumbleUponAds allows you to submit a page on your blog to be shown to StumbleUpon users as they go Stumbling. The cost is 5 cents per impression so for as little as $5 you can have 100 SU users see your page.

The beauty of StumbleUpon is that it is relatively cheap, you don’t actually need to create an ad (just a page to send people to), that you can target your page to be shown to different categories as well as specific demographics (age, location and gender) and that you have the chance of your page being Stumbled up the rankings in SU naturally.

SU lets you set daily budgets and limits to how many impressions you want on any given campaign. The payment is via PayPal or Credit Card.

If you pick the right page to submit in this way and throw a few dollars at the campaign it is not uncommon for organic stumbling to happen and to end up with many more impressions than you paid for. The key is to pick a page that SU users will like and vote for (more on this below).

The StumbleUponAds interface gives you a report on how many people saw your site, how many voted your page up and how many voted it down. This enables you to test different pages that you want to advertise and to adapt those pages to see what different versions of it work best.

How to Make StumbleUpon Advertising Work Best

The key to making a StumbleUpon advertising campaign work for your blog is to do two main things:

1. Make Your Content Appealing to SU users to get Organic Stumbles – While 5 cents per impression isn’t that expensive (it’s a lot cheaper than some other forms of advertising) it’s more expensive than natural traffic from SU. Your goal should be to start the campaign off with paid visitors and then let the natural voting up of content take over. To do this you need to create content that is appealing to SU users. A couple of days ago I published a guest post here at ProBlogger that talked about some of the principles that draw StumbleUpon users into a site. This would be a useful starting point for designing the page that you want to advertise.

2. Make Your Page Sticky – The other way to get extra value from a StumbleUpon advertising campaign is to get the visitors who come to your blog to come back again and become loyal readers. This is one of the biggest challenges that you’ll face with advertising using any means – but particularly on a service like StumbleUpon where users have their cursor hovering over the Stumble Button ready to surf on to the next site. Of course the best way to hook someone onto your blog is to create compelling content that they can’t live without – but also consider other ways of making them loyal readers by prominently offering subscription methods, driving people deeper into a blog. Most of what I cover in my latest video post on Stickifiying Your Blog applies here.

3. Test and Tweak - The key with StumbleUpon is not to throw big money at a campaign straight away. Get your landing page/post ready and then set a small budget (a few dollars) to see what results you get. Once this is spent – do some analysis of how many people voted the post up and down. If there were more downs than ups you might want to change something about the post (title, add a picture/video, change your opening paragraph etc). Then run another small campaign to see what impact the changes have. Do this until you have a page that is consistently getting voted up and then turn up your budget a little. Keep in mind that you might only need to get a relatively small number of up votes before SU will start sending you organic traffic so be ready to pause your campaign once this starts to happen or you could waste your money.

What NOT to do

While you might think that the front page of your blog is the best page to send traffic from an Advertising campaign to – I would highly recommend that you don’t. Instead – use a single post as the landing page for your campaign. Pick a post that relates closely to the category and demographic of StumbleUpon users that you are targeting and pick a post that you could see becoming viral (whether as a result of it being entertaining, useful, controversial etc).

Give it a Go

So set yourself a budget and give StumbleUpon advertising a go. It’s actually quite fun and if you keep your budget to a reasonable level it’s not that expensive to do. You’ll drive a little traffic and hopefully learn something about the way people interact with your content through the process.

Other places to Advertise Your Blog

There are many places that will sell you advertising space for your blog. Other blogs and sites in your niche can be a good place to start but so can ad networks. Two that I’ve had some success with are BlogAds and Google AdWords. Both are worth experimenting with – but both take the same sort of ‘tweak and test’ approach as outlined above.

– (aff)

Have you tried advertising your blog? Let use know what you’ve learned about it in comments below.

Update – read my follow up to this post at More on Advertising on StumbleUpon.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Run a StumbleUpon Advertising Campaign For Your Blog

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Today your task in the 31 Day Project is to do some analysis of what people do when they’re on your blog by creating a heatmap.

This is a little similar to one of our earlier tasks (doing a first time reader audit) but this one is on a larger scale and using a clever tool that I find incredibly useful by the name of CrazyEgg.

Some of you will be familiar with CrazyEgg already as I’ve mentioned it numerous times previously at ProBlogger but I’ve never really given it a full review.

The basics of this tool are that it tracks where readers of your blog click when surfing on your blog. It creates a heatmap of the results.

All it takes is to embed a little javascript on the page that you want to track and CrazyEgg will do the rest. Here’s an example of a heatmap of a page from Digital Photography School that I ran a CrazyEgg test on recently (click for an enlargement):

This is just the section of the page above the fold (CrazyEgg tracks the full page) but it shows you quite clearly a number of hotspots on the page (particularly the top left hand navigation section and the picture).

The other useful tool that CrazyEgg offers is one that they call ‘Confetti’ (pictured below). This pinpoints the exact position on the page that people click and analyses them by a variety of ways. In the following screen shot the different colors signify different sources of traffic.

The red dots are where Digg users clicked, the yellow dots are tracking visitors from Google etc. Confetti also lets you track people according to their operating system, the keyword that they arrive on a page using, browser, window size and even how long they stay on the court before they click.

So why would you want this type of information?

Knowing where your readers click when arriving on your blog is GOLD! I can’t emphasize to you enough how much you’ll learn about your blog and reader by doing this type of analysis.

Here are just some of the ways you can use this information:

• Ad Positioning – CrazyEgg tracks clicks on ads like AdSense. You can track where on the ad they click, test ads in different positions and of different designs (run one test for a few days, then make a change and run another one).
• Design Testing – Once we finish a few more tweaks of the ProBlogger design I’ll be running CrazyEgg tests on the front page and single posts of this site and comparing the results to the previous design of ProBlogger. In doing so I can compare how different design elements, navigation etc are working to fine tune them.
• Content Development - I’ve learned a lot about writing and how to structure posts using CrazyEgg. Particularly interesting is how readers click different links in your posts. It’s also fascinating to see where people click on your blog where there are non live links (you can track these too)
• Reader Analysis – Being able to track how readers from different sources use your blog differently is very useful. For example what if you could find out what type of links or ads Digg users click as opposed to Google traffic? You could use this information to serve up different type of design to different users etc.

Really the list goes on and the more you use CrazyEgg on different parts of your blog will reveal all kinds of useful information.

Give it a go. CrazyEgg does have a free option (that allows you to track 6000 impressions per month on up to 4 pages). I personally use a paid plan which allows more impressions and pages but even the free plan will teach you a lot.

Once you’ve given it a go let us know in comments below what you learn. I’d be fascinated to know what you find and how you use the information.

Please note – that the link to CrazyEgg in this post isn’t an affiliate program but has a problogger code embedded in it because CrazyEgg is doing a special offer for ProBlogger readers to give them extra impressions for the ‘free trial version’ (6000 impressions instead of the normal 4000).

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Create a Heatmap of Where Readers Click on Your Blog

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Today’s task in the 31 Day Project is to ’stickify your blog’.

This week’s video post is based upon a tip I mentioned in a recent podcast interview with Yaro and revolves around a technique that I’ve recently used to help convert one off and first time visitors to my blog into RSS subscribers.

It revolves around identifying key points where traffic is entering your blog and then optimizing those points for stickiness either by providing means for subscribing via RSS or email or by driving people deeper into your blog.

Posts mentioned in this video include:

• Guess My Top Referral Keyword Phrase Competition
• How to Write and About Me page

This video goes for 3 minutes and 15 seconds.

PS: this was recorded last week when I had a cold – sorry about my nasally voice :-)

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Stickify Your Blog

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Note: I use the word ‘competition’ hesitantly because the thing about blogging is that those blogging on the same topics as you are potentially your biggest allies. Connect and work with your competition and everyone improves.

This is actually an exercise that I recently recommended to a friend in the process of setting up a blog as part of his process in refining a topic. Having thought about it since I’m becoming more convinced that it’s actually a good exercise for established bloggers to do from time to time also.

1. Make a list of 10 blogs in your Niche
2. Get the RSS feed of each of these blogs and commit yourself to reading them each week
3. Do some analysis by asking some of the following questions:

• What do they do well?
• What are the boundaries of the topics that they focus upon?
• What don’t they write about?
• How often do they post?
• How long are their posts?
• What level are they pitching their blog at? (beginners, intermediate, advanced)
• What questions are their readers asking in comments?
• What style or voice do they write in?
• What type of posts seem to get the most attention (comments, trackbacks, incoming links)?
• What is their design like? What do they do well and what do they do poorly?
• What are other blogs writing about them (use technorati to check this)?
• If they have an open or unlocked stats package what can you learn from their stats? What pages are popular? Where does their incoming traffic come from?

Why do you need to ask these questions?

Good question – I’m glad you asked!

My reasoning for doing this type of analysis is not to copy other blogs in your niche (although you might find some things that you want to emulate) – but it is quite the opposite.

In asking these types of questions you will often find gaps in the niche that others are not writing about that your blog might be able to fill. You’ll also have a good feel for what is working and not working for others, might have some possible ideas for connecting with other bloggers in your niche, could come up with some potential post topics etc

Let us know what you find in doing this analysis in comments below.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Analyze Your Blog’s Competition

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