I noticed a new source of readers that has been creeping up in terms of how much traffic it sends. Here’s the chart from the last few months.

It started as a trickle, but as you can see, in the last month there have been days on which traffic from this source has spiked up to over 2000 unique visitors. Even on an average day we’re up over 1000.

While it’s not the biggest source of traffic to the site by any means, it was a bit of a surprise and made me realize that I’ve not been as diligent in checking referral traffic sources as I once was.

Referrers are key

Before I reveal the source I want to emphasize my point: keep a watch on your referral stats. The source of this traffic doesn’t really relate to many of you who are operating in different niches, but the principle does. Be diligent in watching where traffic is coming from because there are almost always ways of growing traffic from these unexpected sources.

• If the source is another blog, you can build the relationship with the other blogger.
• If the source is a social network, you can get more active in that network, consider putting sharing buttons on your site, and educate your current readers about how to use it.
• If the source is a search engine, you can look at what you’re doing right on that post SEO-wise and try to replicate it. You can also tweak the posts getting the traffic to make them rank even higher.
• Whatever the source, you can look at the content that’s working out and produce more of it.

There are any number of ways of exponentially increasing growing sources of traffic, but if you don’t know about them, you will never be able to take action!

So what was the source of the traffic?

I know some of you skipped down here without reading the above section. You really should go back and read over it … but I’ll tell you now if you promise you will!

The traffic is coming from Pinterest.

Pinterest is a growing social bookmarking/network site (they call themselves a Virtual Pin Board) that is particularly popular in some niches like home decoration, weddings, craft, fashion, food, and more.

The traffic has literally arrived without me doing anything at all. I didn’t have an active account on Pinterest until the last week or so when I set up an account (connect with me here). I haven’t promoted the site there, or used their buttons (until this last week when I put it on a few of our hotter articles). The growth has been purely organic. I guess photography is one of those niches that Pinterest users are interested in!

Since finding out about Pinterest I’ve begun to participate there a little more myself, and have added a few share buttons to some pages that have been doing well for us. I’m taking my time as I don’t want to do anything spammy, but even since I’ve known about it and participated on this low level, I’ve seen traffic rise from a spike of 2000 or so visits in a day to over 3000—lucky I checked my stats!

As I say, this isn’t about Pinterest (although I’m sure some of you will find it fun and useful)—it’s about being diligent about your metrics, always being on the lookout for what’s growing, and working out how you can position yourself to be able to leverage that.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How I Overlooked a 1000 Visitor a Day Source of Traffic [And What I Did to Grow it to 3000 Visits a Day]

What is your blog’s URL structure?

Here on ProBlogger, I use one that has a combination of the date and post title by default: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/02/17/5-sales-email-myths-that-are-costing-you-money/

While on my photography blog I’ve chosen to use just the post title (without dates):

http://www.digital-photography-school.com/shooting-with-available-light-lifestyle-portraiture

My reasoning for these choices was pretty simple. For starters, I wanted words in the URLs because it was good for search engine optimization, and because word-heavy URLs tends to make more sense for readers when they’re looking at them—more sense, anyway, than the WordPress default, which is just numbers. Also:

• ProBlogger information does date reasonably quickly. Some of the technology and tools I was talking about back in 2006 aren’t really relevant for today, so I figured having dates on posts and signaling that in URLs made sense.
• dPS information is a little more timeless, as we talk more about principles of photography rather than specific gear (although that has changed a little since we started). I also update and repost old posts from time to time with a current date, so having the date in the URL was complicated and confusing.

So what about you? What’s your URL structure? Do you include dates, keywords, or perhaps leave it on the WordPress default?

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

What Is Your Blog’s URL Structure?

I feel like after many years of blogging that my opinions have changed. That’s natural, and in most cases it’s okay to have that archive of articles as a track record.

On the other hand, now that I’m in dental school, I don’t necessarily want readers to arrive at an old post and think “this is advice from a doctor,” because I wasn’t at the time.

So here’s the question: what do you do with posts in your archives that you’ve changed your opinion on?

• Do you go back and update posts with your new opinion?
• Do you simply delete them?
• Do you write new posts with your new opinions and link to them from the old posts?
• Do you simply let them sit there as a record of what you used to think, unedited?

Interested to hear your thoughts on this one!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

What Do You Do with Posts When You Change Your Opinion?

However I’d also love to get your suggestions on the most useful Premium WordPress Plugins.

Over the last few years we’ve seen more and more premium (or paid) WordPress plugins released. At first many bloggers were skeptical about paying for plugins but of late I’ve noticed a bit of a shift and more and more bloggers are willing to pay for quality premium plugins.

If you’re a blogger who has forked out a few dollars for a premium WordPress plugin – I’d love to get your feedback on which ones you’ve found most useful.

So which are your favourite Premium WordPress Plugins – and Why?

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Premium WordPress Plugins – What are Your Favourites?

Try to keep it to your top 5 so that things don’t get out of hand – but please share which free WordPress plugins are most useful to you in comments below.

If you have some premium/paid ones that you want to suggest – please hold off on sharing those as I’ll run a post later in the week asking for your feedback on those.

So – what are you favourite free WordPress Plugins – and Why? Over to you!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Free WordPress Plugins – What are Your Favourites?

It’s got me thinking back to some of the bigger days of traffic that I’ve had on my own blogs over the years and I thought I’d open up some discussion on the topic to see if we can identify any trends.

What was your biggest day of Traffic (or ‘days’ if you can think of more than one) and what happened to make them occur?

I asked this on Twitter yesterday and it was interesting to see the responses. Some of the reasons giving included:

• controversial posts
• creative posts
• random links from bigger sites
• social bookmarking events (getting popular on Digg or Delicious)
• ranking high for terms in Google around big news events
• breaking a scoop news story

I’m sure we’ll see some of these themes in your experiences but know that there will be other themes too.

For me there have been many bigger than normal days over the last 8 years. Two that spring to mind include:

• My Six Figure Blogging Moment – I had been blogging for a while and suddenly realised that I was on track for over $100,000 in a year earnings from my blogs. The first time I mentioned it was in an interview that I did. I didn’t really think about the implications of talking about it at the time but that interview went viral – as did my followup post. What kicked it all off was a mention on Slashdot (which at the time was equivalent to getting on the front page of Digg).
• Front page of Yahoo (sort of) – then there was the day that a post on my photography blog was featured by one of Yahoo’s tech blogs. That in itself didn’t sent much traffic but when that particular Yahoo blog’s post was featured on the front page of Yahoo for 4-5 hours one day I saw traffic hit my blog like I’ve never seen traffic before or since. I don’t remember the exact numbers but I saw more traffic from that 4-5 hours than I’d normally see in a week of traffic.

So now it’s over to you. What Was Your Biggest Traffic Day and Why did it Happen?

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

What Was Your Biggest Traffic Day?

What metric or statistic do you most watch on your blog?

There’s no right or wrong answer to this:

• for some it’ll be mainly about traffic – for some it is visitor numbers, for others it will be page views.
• other bloggers are more interested in subscriber numbers – against there is variation here, RSS and/or Email subscribers.
• some bloggers are more regularly checking the bottom line – earnings. This might be affiliate earnings, advertising earnings or even the sales of their own products.
• another group of bloggers are more interested in reader engagement – so comment numbers, ReTweet counts or Facebook ‘likes’ might grab their attention
• some bloggers are more focused upon the social media space and are monitoring Twitter or Facebook follower/friend numbers or how often they are replied to or interacted with.
• other bloggers get more into the more detailed stats – looking at things like bounce rate, time on site, page views per visit, referrals (where traffic is arriving from) or looking at what the most popular posts are doing in terms of traffic.
• further still, other bloggers are more into SEO and are always analyzing how many links are coming into their blog, how their blog ranks for certain keywords etc.

Of course there are more things to watch – but for you, what’s the #1 metric that you tend to be drawn to throughout your day or week? And why?

For me it varies a little depending upon what I’m focusing upon.

For example – during a product launch I’m obviously looking more at sales of eBooks, conversion numbers and at testing sales pages.

On a normal day I’m probably checking traffic numbers and watching for spikes in traffic so that I can take quick action to leverage them. I tend to check income streams a little less often (once a day) during a ‘normal’ day.

Further Reading: 17 Statistics to Monitor on Your Blog

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

What Metric or Statistic do You most Watch on your Blog?

“do you have a regular posting structure, or just post things as you think of them/find them. i.e. regular features or not?”

I’d like to widen the topic slightly and see if readers do any kind of planning of blog posts ahead of time – or whether they just blog as they sit down each day to blog?

My Answer – I try to do a bit of both each week – I look at the week ahead most Mondays and put together a bit of a plan of attack for the week – but I also tend to swap things around during the week as inspiration hits. Sometimes I’ll add extra posts into the schedule and on other occasions I might swap the plan around and post things in a different order.

What about you – do you plan your blog posts ahead of time?

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Do You Plan Your Blog Posts?

Here are the results after 2195 responses.

I was actually a little surprised that the number was so small because in the introduction to the poll I included things like ‘blog design’ in what could be included in outsourcing.

Here are the types of things that those who said ‘yes’ said that they outsourced:

• tech/managing the backend (updates, plugins etc)
• product creation/design
• writing of posts – staff writers
• writing of posts – ghost writing
• blog/logo design
• marketing
• comment moderation
• SEO
• administrative tasks
• editing/proofing posts
• selling advertising

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

29% of ProBlogger Readers Outsource Part of Their Blogging

Looking forward to seeing how you respond!

PS: sorry about the ordering of options, ‘other’ should really have been the last one. Not sure why it ended up the top!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Where is Your Favorite Place to Blog? [POLL]

If you had to pick only one thing that makes a blog stand out from its peers, what would you pick and why?

I thought it’d be a good question to open up to a wider audience as its something I’ve touched on quite a few times over the last year or so and because what makes a blogger distinct is often, by definition, something that can vary from blog to blog.

What are you doing to make your blog stand out from the crowd? What have you seen other blogs do that makes them stand out?

Further Reading: Here’s a post I wrote on the topic earlier in the year – The Power of Uniqueness [19 Starting Points for Being a Unique Blogger]

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

What Do You Do With Your Blog to Make it Stand Out from the Crowd?

I introduced the question by sharing a story of a debate between a Christian group and Pagan group where each group was asked to not argue FOR their own belief system but to share what they disliked about their own Faith perspective. The result of that debate was fascinating.

Instead of it ending in an angry fight where everyone just had their beliefs reinforced the debate was actually quite constructive with both groups coming away having learnt something about the other and more importantly themselves.

Similarly the responses to my question about blogging were insightful also (in fact I’ve asked this question twice previously – in 2005 and in 2006 and both times were fascinating).

There were a couple of things that came out of those discussions:

• it was a place for some bloggers to get some stuff off their chest about their frustrations with the medium.
• the answers actually gave a number of blog tool developers some great ideas. I know that at least two WordPress plugins were developed to solve issues that came up in the conversation.

It’s been 4 years since I asked the question last – so in the hope of a productive conversation I thought it worth asking again.

What’s Wrong with Blogging?

What are the limitations of blogging as a medium? What are its weaknesses? Where does the blogosphere and/or blogging tools need to improve? What are you main challenges as a blogger that you don’t think you’d have in other mediums?

Hopefully in answering this question and deconstructing the medium of blogging a little we can play a part in the improvement of blogging as a whole. By identifying what’s wrong perhaps we can improve it.

Like last time the rules are simple – say anything you like about blogging as long as it’s not positive (note: I’m not inviting you to critique individual bloggers – but the medium itself). You can do this in comments below or by writing a post on your own blog (just leave a link below so we can find it). There are no wrongs and rights and everyone’s critique of the medium are valid and welcome.

So – what’s wrong with blogging?

Over to you!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

What’s Wrong with Blogging? [Take 3]

I’m halfway through writing it (I’m hoping it’ll be useful to established bloggers starting second blogs too) already and have a heap of content written but thought it might be good to include a few reader and Twitter follower tips scattered through it as well.

I’m not so much looking for tips on Pre-Launch stuff like getting a domain, choosing a blog platform etc – I’m more looking for short tips on taking a blog that is set up to being an active blog.

So if you have any tips for bloggers starting out – I’d love to see them in comments below. I won’t be able to use them all but those I do I’ll certainly credit back with a link to your blog.

All I’d suggest is that you try to keep your tips relatively short and to the point as I’ll be using these as short snippets at the end of my posts.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

Update: this series has been updated and compiled with other similar posts into ProBlogger’s Guide to Your First Week of Blogging – a week long guide into getting your blog going on the right foot.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

The First Week Of Your New Blog – What Do You Do?

What Have You Been Putting Off and What’s Holding You Back?

Some of the responses to the question in comments (and via email and Twitter) revealed a lot of bloggers really wanting to step things up and get what they’ve been putting off done.

So – lets set some goals – what do you want to achieve by the end of February?

I’m not going to be calling you up to check up to see if you’re meeting your goals – but hopefully in putting them down publicly you’ll find yourself a little more spurred on to reach what you want to achieve.

My Goal for February: I want to get a new E-Book out the door by the end of the month.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

What Is Your Blogging Goal for February?

“what’s one thing that you have been putting off that would improve your blog? (and what’s stopping you from doing it now?)”

The answers were quite varied – everything from redesigns, to writing E-Books, to posting more regularly to SEO optimization, to monetization.

A number of people reflected that just being asked the question helped them to move forward with things that they’d been procrastinating with – so I thought I’d ask the question again here on the blog.

Of course there can be good reasons for putting things off – timing is important and you can’t do everything at once – but if you’re anything like me there are things that you know you probably should be doing that you’re simply procrastinating about.

For me one of the big procrastinations for me until mid last year was creating a product of my own. I’d always said I’d write an E-Book – but every time I sat down to do it I never got past the planning stage (I have notebooks with about 10 different plans that never eventuated).

Why didn’t I do it? Was it laziness…. or busyness….? If I’m honest about it I’m sure it’d be a bit of both of those things – however I suspect it was also partly fear that held me back.

Fear that it’d flop, fear that nobody would buy it, fear that people would critique me for selling something and not giving it away for free, fear that it wouldn’t be perfect, fear that perhaps I didn’t have it in me to create a product like I wanted….

Actually – saying I was too busy might sound a bit better – I sound very insecure!

In the end – I knew that if I didn’t create an E-Book that I’d be kicking myself later. The time came for me to draw a line in the sand and just do it. I don’t have any secret strategies for getting over the hump of getting myself into gear really.

I did tell a couple of others that I was doing it – I did set aside two days purely to put it together – I did engage the services of someone to help me design it – I did set myself a deadline.

All of that helped me get going but in the end it was a change of attitude that got me over the hump.

“what’s one thing that you have been putting off that would improve your blog? (and what’s stopping you from doing it now?)”

PS: one of the reasons I started ProBlogger.com was to help those of us who procrastinate to be accountable to others. A number of our members over there are setting themselves (and each other) challenges to help them keep moving forward.

For example Paul recently set a challenge for members to create a free report/e-book to give away (that link is only viewable by members). What’s exciting to me is that a number of members have actually got their reports ready and launched as a result of working together in this way rather than just tackling their list of things that they must do alone.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

What Have You Been Putting Off and What’s Holding You Back?

Whether it be by selling an E-Book, training program or some other kind of learning program or whether it is selling one self as a consultant or promoting a product from a business that the blogger owns – more and more bloggers do seem to be exploring this as a way to make money.

The poll results were as follows:

I’ve not run this poll previously so have nothing to compare it to – however my gut feeling on this one is that if conducted even just a year ago the percentages would have been further apart. I suspect in the year ahead we’ll see them grow even closer.

Out of interest I thought I’d compile a list of the types of products and services that people said that they sell in the comments of the poll post. You can see that there’s a lot of variation (it’s actually a really inspiring list to me that illustrates a little of what can be done with a blog!

• Design work
• Web/Plugin Development
• Membership Site
• Coaching/Mentoring
• E-Books
• Reports
• Legal Services
• Book (hard cover)
• Software
• Speaking/Training Services
• Music Lessons
• Copy Writing Services
• SEO services
• Tutoring
• Screencast/Video Content
• Scrapbook Supplies
• Sewing Patterns
• Photographic Prints
• Excel Templates
• Music/CD
• Craft
• Flowers/Florist
• Bag Patterns
• Marketing Services
• Skincare products
• Handmade Soap
• Makeup Artist Services
• Craft Kits
• Calendars
• Vintage Clothing
• Gourmet Food Items
• Toys
• Website Templates
• Paintings/Art
• Diet Products
• Real Estate Brokerage
• Fitness Program
• Scuba Diving Education Business
• Personalised Spoof Newspaper Front Pages
• T-Shirts
• Jewellery

There are sure to be many many other examples of what can be sold off the back of a blog – feel free to add more of your experience in this in comments below.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

44% of Bloggers Sell a Product or Service Of Their Own From Their Blog

You see more and more I’m talking to bloggers (big and small) and am hearing that they outsource at least some of their blogging activities.

Perhaps the most common of these is hiring designers or writers – but there are many other activities that I see blogger outsource.

Here are some of those that I’ve seen bloggers do as well as a few suggestions from my followers on Twitter:

Please note – I’m talking about ‘paid outsourcing’ - not guest posts or getting a friend to help you with some aspect of your blog or even buying a blog template – but paying others to do some aspect of your blogging.

• Blog Design
• SEO
• Paid Blog Writing
• Comment Moderation
• Selling Advertising
• Administrative Tasks (like managing email)
• Post Editing
• Tech – Looking after the Back End
• Creation of Products (E-Books)

I’m sure there are many other things that could be added to this list (and I invite you to do so below).

So now you know the type of things I’m talking about – do you outsource any aspect of your blogging?

PS: again, I’m talking about outsourcing to freelancers or paid staff in some way and not buying a blog template or getting someone to do some of these things for free.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Do You Outsource Any Part of Your Blogging?

Recently I surveyed subscribers to my newsletter on the challenges that face them going into 2010. Quite a few of the responses to that question came from bloggers for whom English was not a first language.

The problems that this group of bloggers presented to me were numerous but two recurring challenges were:

• Not knowing which language that they should blog in – should they blog in their own first language and have a smaller potential readership or blog in English where their readership could be larger but where they had challenges in writing as well?
• Feeling isolated from other bloggers – a number reflected that at times they felt that they were not taken as seriously by bloggers in other parts of the world and found networking difficult.

As a blogger who speaks no other language but English I’m probably not the person to bring much wisdom to this topic – however I’d love to get the thoughts, experiences, tips and stories of bloggers who have been in this situation in comments below.

My hope is that this post will not only give bloggers struggling with these and other issues a place to tell of their challenges – but that some might also share how they approach the challenges and give some tips and advice for bloggers from a non English speaking background. I’d also love to hear stories of (and see examples of) your successes (and those of others) as I know that the blogosphere is alive and well in all corners of the globe.

If you’d like to share in your own language and/or English I’m happy for you to do so in any way that you feel comfortable.

I’m looking forward to reading what is shared below.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Bloggers from Non English Speaking Backgrounds – Share Your Tips and Stories Here

As tends to happen with these kinds of posts – the list caused a lot of discussion!

Not only did people post comments about it and Tweet up a storm – some bloggers even put together alternative lists of bloggers that they are watching in 2010 (see Sherri’s list here for example).

Sherri’s list got me thinking – perhaps it’s time for a mini ProBlogger ‘Group Writing Project’.

My hope is that this little project will not only highlight some great bloggers, but that it’ll help bloggers generate a little link love from one blog to another within niches and also be useful to your readers (and hopefully some of these posts will generate some buzz for your blogs – these types of lists generally do!).

Your Task is to write a ‘Bloggers to Watch’ post on your blog

Jade’s list last week was a list of bloggers that she’s watching (and as a result did have a focus upon a certain type of blogger that she follows) – but my hope is that this little project will generate some lists of bloggers that focus upon all kinds of niches/industries.

• If you’re a craft blogger – write a list of Craft bloggers to watch in 2010.
• If you’re a sports blogger – write a list of sports bloggers to watch in 2010.
• If you’re a political blogger – write a list of political bloggers to watch in 2010.

Your list doesn’t have to be 30 bloggers – it could be 100, 50, 30, 10…. or if you have a small niche even smaller.

Once you’ve created your list…. Tell Us About It

After publishing your list – come back to this post and leave a comment with a link to your new post (please only submit new posts that have been written this year).

Also take some time to surf through the other comments left on this post to see what lists that other readers have created!

I’m looking forward to reading your lists of bloggers to watch!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Create Your Own ‘Bloggers to Watch’ List and Tell Us About It Here

Do You Have Any Blogging New Years Resolutions for 2010?

Would love to hear your thoughts on where you’ll be heading and what you’re planning?

My plans are coming along for ProBlogger. I’m planning on a review of the whole brand of ProBlogger in the coming weeks, a redesign (that will flow out of that), new features and levels on ProBlogger.com, a new E-book in the coming month and a lot more.

What about you?

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Do You Have Any Blogging New Years Resolutions?