The result was my biggest month of earnings ever up to that point.

The idea was simple: offer discounts on 12 products over the 12 days leading up to Christmas. I used a mix of my own ebooks and products from other photography sites with affiliate commissions.

The result was massive. Not only did we see some great revenue generated, it created some lovely buzz on the site.

Due to the success of the 2010 campaign, in mid-December 2011 we launched our second 12 Days of Christmas promotion. This time around we made some changes and evolved things a little. The result? It was big. I’ll tell you more about just how big below.

A number of my Twitter followers have been asking how it went and how we changed things this time, so here’s a quick snapshot of the changes and lessons we learned.

The Web Marketing Ninja helps out

Last year, I ran the promotion completely alone. I’d seen similar promotions on other sites and thought it’d work well on dPS. But never having done such a promotion, I made numerous mistakes and spotted many ways I knew it could be improved. So I brought the Web Marketing Ninja (regular guest poster here on dPS who recently revealed his identify) on to manage it for me.

The Ninja worked hard on adding some of the new strategic elements mentioned below into this year’s promotion. Plus, his work took a massive load off my shoulders in terms of the day-to-day running of the campaign. 12 Deals in 12 days is a big task—that’s 12 sales emails, numerous blog posts, loads of tweets, liaising with partners, and more.

Using MailChimp

I decided this year to take the opportunity of sending out 12 emails to our list in 12 days to test out a new email newsletter provider: MailChimp. I’ve wanted to test out this service for a long time based upon the amazing feedback it constantly gets from other bloggers.

I’m very glad that I have tested it, because so far, using MailChimp has been a real pleasure. Their interface is really intuitive and their technology is innovative. Deliverability rates were high, support staff were really helpful, and there are loads and loads of add-ons and extras that you can plug in to make the service even more powerful.

If you’re in the market for an email newsletter provider, I can certainly recommend you check MailChimp out (yes, that’s an affiliate link).

A new landing page

Probably the biggest change we’ve made this year is to create a central landing page for the promotion. You can see it in full here (although all the deals are now over, so it’s not active). This is the work of the Ninja at his finest.

Last time, the promotion largely happened around a series of sales pages, but there was no central place to tie it all together and build buzz. This year, having the central landing page worked really nicely.

Offering better deals

Having run this promotion once before, we were in a better position to make smart decisions about what deals to run this year on a number of levels.

• Firstly, we know what types of products converted last year, and could focus on those. For example, last year we ran a couple of days on Photoshop actions which didn’t perform as well as teaching resource, so we swapped out the actions in favor of some new courses and ebooks.
• We learned last year that the bigger discounts converted better than the smaller ones—we were able to offer bigger discounts on our own products easily, but also feed that back to the product owners we promote with the affiliate deals, and in most cases they came to the party to give bigger discounts.
• We saw last year that bundles of products converted particularly well, so this year’s deals were more centred on bundles (around half of the the days’ deals) rather than single products.
• We were also in a better position this year to negotiate better commissions with some of our partners, having shown them what we could do last year. Interestingly, word had gotten out about 2010 and this time around I had potential partners pitching us to be involved months out from December.

Other lessons learned

• Use clear calls to unsubscribe: One thing that I’ve done in both campaigns is to give our newsletter subscribers a very clear way to unsubscribe right up front. Our first email explained the next 12 days’ program (and the fact that we were about to send 12 emails), and acknowledged it wouldn’t be for everyone, with a clear call to unsubscribe if it wasn’t of interest. Of course in each email we sent there was a similar call to unsubscribe. Note: we set up a separate email list for this campaign so that subscription cancellations wouldn’t stop people from getting our weekly newsletter. Feedback on this from readers was excellent.
• Super deals: We suspected that some of our deals would perform better than others, based largely upon last years results. As a result, we placed these on mid-week days (Tuesdays) to give them the most exposure possible. I also gave them extra promotion with blog posts on those days (I didn’t post on the blog for every deal).
• Diversity of deals: One thing that we were very aware of and tried to balance was mixing deals up so that readers didn’t get 12 invitations for fairly similar products. We did deals on physical products, software, ebooks, courses, and other teaching formats.
• Give some “space” in the lead-up to your campaign: We purposely didn’t promote anything to our readers for a good month before this campaign. While we could easily have launched a product or promoted an affiliate campaign late November or early December, I didn’t want to push our readership too hard. In fact, I sent an extra email or two in that period that was simply free good content. The same goes for afterward—we had a great new ebook on post-processing ready to launch mid-January, but pushed it back a week to give a little more space for our readers to “recover” from December.
• Be organized: The biggest tip I can give is to be organized. Work on partnerships for a month or two ahead of time, start working on sales emails as early as possible, and so on. The more you do ahead of time, the better, as there are always last-minute things to take care of.

The results

In 2010, this campaign contributed to December being our biggest month ever, up to that point. This last 2011 campaign saw us almost triple revenue from 2010. We have a new record-breaking month!

Revenue Comparison between 2010 and 2011 Campaigns

I did invest more into the 2011 campaign—paying the Ninja, investing some money into the design of landing page development and design, and beefing up our web hosting—so profit wasn’t tripled, but it wasn’t far off.

While this was a highly profitable way to end 2011, I can’t emphasize enough just how much work goes into a campaign like this. The 12 days itself were intense, with a lot of late nights and quite a bit of juggling.

For example, on one of our last nights we were preparing to go live when we realized the coupon code a partner had given us didn’t work. We had to quickly switch deals over, as it was a weekend and we couldn’t contact the partner.

Of course, along with the work comes a lot of fun. I’m coming to realize that there is a real rush that comes with launching products. Devising strategy, implementing it, and then waiting to see how things convert is a lot of fun (for me and the Ninja, at least). Doing 12 launches in 12 days just multiplies that!

Another big benefit—beyond profit and fun—of this type of campaign is that you learn a lot about your readership. In running 12 deals in 12 days, you get to test out a lot of different things. For example, this year our products included physical products, single ebooks, ebook bundles, courses, and software. Price points were also interesting to watch—products ranged from $17 right up to $180! While dPS has traditionally just published ebooks at a pretty similar price point, we now have some great information on what other types of products and price points our readers are interested in.

Onward to 2012

So with the 2011 12 Deals of Christmas behind us, we’re already thinking about how we can make the 2012 campaign even bigger!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How I Beat my Best Month Ever by Doing Something Good, Better [Case Study]

In my research into sharing, I realized I needed to develop a framework that would serve as a model for the decision-making process that takes place before someone spreads an idea.

This framework describes the three criteria that must be met before someone will spread an idea in any format:

1. The person must be exposed to your content. This means that the person has to be following you on Twitter, be a fan of your page on Facebook, subscribe to your email list, and so on.
2. The person must become aware of your specific piece of content (the idea you want to spread). S/he has to read your tweet or open your email message.
3. The person must be motivated by something (generally in the content itself) in order to want to share the idea with his or her contacts.

Every piece of content, social network, and campaign has a vastly different conversion rate at each step of this process. For you to understand the scales involved, it helps to visualize a hypothetical set of percentages. If you email 900 people, and 20% of them notice and open the message, and then 10% of those readers forward it to a friend, your email message was shared 18 times.

At each step, you can change the numbers in your favor:

1. Increase the number of people exposed to your content. Get more email-list subscribers or Twitter followers.
2. Create attention-grabbing content. Do lots of testing on your subject lines to increase open rates.
3. Include powerful calls to action.

The keys to real science are data and experimentation. I’ve spent nearly five years conducting research into the why, how, and what of contagious ideas. In the three middle chapters of Zarrella’sHierarchyofContagiousness (“Exposure,” “Attention,” and “Motivation”), I present some of my most important findings and describe how you can use them to optimize your ideas for maximum spread at each step of my hierarchy. This is an excerpt from the chapter “Motivation.”

The bottom level of my hierarchy of contagiousness is motivation, and it’s the trickiest to achieve. Once someone is exposed to your idea and it catches her attention, she has to be motivated by it to want to share it. This is where you can find the most superstitious advice.

People claim that they spread ideas only when those ideas are good, are funny, benefit the world, or conform to some other nebulous standard. So how do we really motivate people to share our ideas? That question is best answered in two parts: Why do people share ideas? And what kinds of ideas do they share the most?

What do people share?

Now that we’ve got an understanding of the real reasons people spread ideas, let’s talk about what kinds of ideas they share the most.

Uncomplicated language is contagious

Readability tests are designed to measure the reading grade level required to understand a specific piece of content. The higher the score, the more complex the language is. The most popular readability test is called the Flesch-Kincaid test and is built into Microsoft Word.

While studying Facebook sharing, I gathered a database of stories published in a variety of popular news sources, including geeky places, like Mashable and TechCrunch, and mainstream outlets, such as CNN and The New York Times. I measured how readable each story was and how many times it was shared on Facebook. I found an inverse correlation between the complexity of the articles and the number of times they were shared. As stories became more challenging to read, they were posted to Facebook less often.

I also explored the parts of speech in the titles of those same articles. I determined that the use of flowery, adverb- and adjective-laden language was related to lower sharing rates. As Strunk and White told us decades ago in their book, Elements of Style:

“Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place… it is nouns and verbs, not their assistants, that give good writing its toughness and color.”

The most and least retweetable words

Perhaps my favorite data set is my giant MySQL table of 100 million retweets. A while ago, I pulled out of that table a list of the most “retweetable” words and phrases. I found twenty words that occurred more often in retweets than they did in non-contagious tweets. I also pulled out the least retweetable words, or what I call “viral kryptonite.”

I’ve presented these lists at events probably a hundred times, and at nearly every event, someone will come up to me afterwards with his phone out and show me how cleverly he smooshed all the words together to make the world’s most (or least) retweetable tweet. It is invariably meaningless. The funny part is that when I tell the person to check his mentions, he often finds that he has actually gotten retweeted.

The list of the most retweetable words is topped by the word “you.” People don’t want to hear about you; they want to hear you talk about them. Tweets that tell people how they can do things and learn things do very well. The list also contains phrases like “how to” and “top 10.” These phrases indicate that the content they point to is broken up into manageable chunks rather than being huge blocks of intimidating text.

The best phrase on the list, however, is “please retweet.” You should see the unicorn folks freak out about this one. They tell me that it sounds too desperate, demanding, and downright wrong. But it works. Try it out right now. Irving Kirsch, a researcher at the University of Connecticut backed me up in a recent experiment. He gave some subjects hypnotic instructions to mail thirty postcards, once a day. And just nicely asked another group to do so. “Please mail these.” The second group complied with the request more often. Social requests are just as powerful as full-on hypnotic trances.

On the flip side of the coin are the least retweetable words. Drivel like “tired,” “bored,” “watching,” and “game.” Words that indicate people narrating particularly boring parts of their lives. Of course I’m not going to retweet those.

The most and least shareable words

To come up with similar lists for Facebook, I looked at words in articles shared on Facebook and found the words that correlated most strongly with those articles being shared more often or less often. There are some significant differences between these lists and the Twitter word lists because the Facebook audience is a much more mainstream one.

The list of most shareable words is headed by the word “Facebook.” Yep, Facebookers love talking about Facebook. The rest of the list was mostly stuff you’d hear on the nightly news. Political words and phrases like “Obama” and “health care.” Most interesting, the words “why” and “how” do very well. Online, people want to get deeper into stories than they can with the thirty-second sound bite they heard on TV.

The list of least shareable words is full of social media dork words. Stuff like “apps,” “social,” and “Twitter.” Everyone is on Facebook. Both your mom and your college roommate are, and most Facebook users aren’t into every bleeding-edge new media website like you are.

This is an excerpt from Dan Zarrella’s latest book, to read it in it’s entirety, buyZarrella’sHierarchyofContagiousnessonAmazon. It’s less than $10 for the Kindle version (which will work on any computer or device).

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

What Motivates Readers to Share?

Writing for three blogs on a regular basis, with the odd request for a guest post elsewhere, my writing plans are already tight. But because I write for overlapping fields of interest, my  plans can also tangle. The most common:

• Snag A: The topic could be of use to any blog I write for. Should I send it to my friend’s blog, where the people know me better, or let it air at the writing forum where it’ll snag more eyeballs?
• Snag B: If I don’t write about this topic I’m gonna bust wide open, but it’s not appropriate for my audience’s needs, my friend won’t be able to post it till it’s no longer relevant, and I don’t think enough people will see it over a the writer’s group.
• Snag C: I have one blog topic on my mind right now, and only one. But I have three blogs to post to this week.

Whose blog first?

It might seem obvious the answer is my blog, but that’s not always the case. Depending on who the audience is, what the post is addressing, and the characteristics of the other blogs, it can be tough to decide.

Look at the post. When you have a post that may fit more than one blog, the post itself can sometimes tell you which blog it belongs to. What level of the industry or topic are you addressing? What point are you making? What image are you projecting?

Look at the blogs. Each of the blogs you write for may lie within the same area of interest or industry. But the reason you chose to write for them is because of their differences. What are those differences? Community size, reach, posting schedule, and general atmosphere often make your pieces self-selecting.
Look at the audiences. Think of one reader from each of your blogs. Don’t make one up. Literally find the readers who interact most often with comments and shares. Ask yourself which piece each person would most enjoy reading, and don’t hesitate to give it to him.

Readers have rights. It’s unfair to try shoehorning a post into anyplace it doesn’t belong (at least, not without a good excuse). That’s why you should look at the other factors involved when deciding where to post what. But what happens if you have something valuable to share, and nowhere to share it? Network with your fellow bloggers and find the right fit for a guest post.

Plan ahead. Do this only if you want to avoid getting into any posting snag in the first place. Create a chart including each of your blogs and the dates you’ll be posting. Fill in each date with more than one topic idea. This way there’s no worry about topics that overlap because there’s always an extra. Pick one and start writing, tangle-free.

Shakirah Dawud is the writer and editor behind Deliberate Ink. Based in Maryland with roots in New York, she’s been crafting effective marketing copy as a writer and polishing many forms of prose as an editor since 2002. Clients in many fun sizes, industries, and locations reach her through the Web.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Whose Blog First?

Blog readers have a myriad of reading options for almost every topic you can think of. In fact, within your niche, potential customers may be enjoying blog posts written by your competitors while they ignore your blog like the plague.

So what do you do about this dire situation? Do you hire ghost writers to create more content? Do you promote your content more via social media? Do you get better at SEO so you can attract more search traffic?

Well. These may work to a degree. You may see some minor bumps with more Tweeting, Facebooking and catching more long tail keywords in Google. But, it’s a long and slow process if you’re using these brute-force tactics.

There has to be a better way. And there is.

Like Darwin’s finches, which evolved different beak sizes over the generations to better suit their differing environmental conditions and to survive, your blog has to become better suited for your audience’s needs over time. You need to develop more “evolved” blogging strategies that are more effective at differentiating your blog and attracting and keeping the readers that you target.

You don’t want your blog to end up on the wrong end of Natural Selection, do you?

Here are 12 ways for your blog to survive and thrive.

1. Be the best teacher in your niche

Explain the things that most people in your niche assume don’t need to be explained. Answer all of your potential customers’ frequently asked questions in writing, with pictures and (or) in video. Do detailed tutorials on fundamental as well as on in-demand advanced topics.

Keep the quality high and listen closely to your audience when you pick topics and develop the content. When competitors start sending customers to your site to understand a complex topic, then you’ll know you’ve won!

2. Be more personal than the others

Getting personal can lead to a deeper connection with your audience and pay dividends in terms of allegiance to your blog and brand.

Many business bloggers put up a barrier between their personal lives and what they share on their blog. Including aspects of your personal life is one way to differentiate yourself from your “plain vanilla” competitors.

3. Be funnier than the others

People love to laugh. Using humor well is hard, but can separate your blog from the pack. if you can successfully pull off inoffensive humor (depending on your industry), you’ll bring a lot of readers back again and again. You’ll also likely increase the amount of social media shares that your blog gets.

4. Say what everyone else thinks

It’s uncomfortable to do. Saying what everyone else thinks is really hard. If you can be the “voice of reason” without upsetting everyone around you, you can gather a tribe of people who say “Yes!” to every post.

5. Be the expert on a specific sub-niche

Don’t focus on widgets: focus only on the custom-designed, high-end widgets from Alaska.

If you can focus on a specific, but important sub-niche within your industry and become the authoritative source, you can develop a big advantage against your competitors in that area. Once successful, you can extend from this beachhead into the broader widget market.

6. Have a bigger vision

Tie your blog to a bigger goal. What far-reaching vision can you use to inspire people to join you in your mission? Can you align your company and blog with a bigger movement that is out there? Can you create your own far-reaching vision that aligns with your passions as well as with your company goals?

7. Be more extreme than the others

Go much further than the other blogs in terms of topics, challenges, transparency or risks. It doesn’t have to be dangerous, just extremely different. You’ll get noticed.

8. Be more creative than the rest

If everyone’s writing articles, why don’t you mix in video? How about being the first infographic producer in your industry?

Try new topics, writing styles, media or blog post structures. Think of other ideas that will provide value while separating your from the rest. Give yourself permission to try something unique.

9. Cross-pollinate better than the others

Do you only work with other real estate-related blogs or influencers? How about looking at the lending, architecture, finance and relocation industries?

Spread your tentacles where your competitors never dreamed of going by guest posting, blog commenting or connecting with other bloggers in those industries. If the target audience is the same, you can gain some great benefits from this kind of cross-pollination.

10. Be the best curator of meaningful content

Find the best information that others have written and posted online—the best articles, charts, tables, infographics, videos, or pictures. Collect it in a logical, easy-to-use navigational structure on your blog.

Make sure you link to and give credit to your sources and only summarize (or take small portions of) the articles you link to. Content curation is a way to share great information that is already available and to become seen as a key source of great information.

11. Be the news source for your industry

Focus on being the source of timely news and analysis for your industry. To be able to keep up with the news cycle, this often means a combination of curated content mixed with some original content or analysis.

Niche or industry news blogs can do very well because they get lots of shares, links, SEO benefits and subscribers. Just have a plan for getting regular, high-quality updates onto your site.

12. Work harder than the rest

Sometimes all the right things are in place but you don’t have the results yet. Working hard can pay off, but pace yourself and don’t burn out! Grab more virtual land than the competitors to create a barrier to entry for “lazier” niche-mates.

Come up with your own unique variation

Just like nature’s many variations (which we never could have predicted), come up with your own unique way to differentiate your blog. The blogs that thrive in a given niche will be the ones who evolve in ways that allow them to meet the needs of their audience better than the competitors’ blogs.

Avoid finding yourself on the wrong side of Natural Selection by using one of the strategies above, combining a couple or by developing your own differentiated strategy.

Tom Treanor is the founder of the Business Blogging Telesummit, designed to help SMBs succeed with their blogging and social media efforts. Visit his blog at RightMixMarketing.com.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Charles Darwin’s 12 Rules of Blogging Survival

The pitches go like this: turn your archived content into an ebook that will rake in bucks while you sleep. Invest a weekend, maybe a few weeks, and you’ll have a book that will establish you as a thought leader and open the flood gates to new revenue streams.

But as my 85-year-old Dad asked when I told him I was writing an ebook: “Why would you write a book, now that everyone with a computer can?”

You’ve got to admit, that’s a good point from my 85-year-old Dad, who still makes money on his investments but sometimes can’t find his slippers.

Because everyone can now publish a book, lots more will. So your book has to be great. Make that spectacular. And don’t forget that you’re not only the source of the expertise and probably the writing. You will also be responsible for editing, page formatting, cover design, sales and much more.

Depending on your skill set and budget, you can pay for help from Createspace and other self-publishers, people you stumble across on the Internet or a marble-lobby public relations firm.

But for more of the work and most of the decisions, you are on your own.

Don’t get me wrong. I am tickled pink that more people can share their wisdom or art through ebooks and on-demand print. I’m simply advising you to go in with your eyes wide open, avoid the sleazier pitches, and think about some of these questions my Dad would ask.

• Are your goals achievable? If you want a book that makes money, it has to be good enough to compete with traditional publishers and the coming flood of self-published ebooks. If you are only interested in raising your prestige among a smaller group of people, you may set the bar a little, but not much, lower.
• Are you an expert? Ideally, you’ve been accumulating knowledge for years and updating your wisdom daily. If you’re not already passionate about a specific topic, don’t charge in.
• Do you have a unique approach? Like a product, your book has to offer something people can’t get anywhere else. In a world of countless niches, that might be relatively easy for you.
• Are you willing to invest time? If you are smart enough to have the expertise that makes a book worthwhile, likely you are not going to fall for the get-rich-quick charlatans.
• Can you write well? If you want to sharpen your skills, you can learn from many blogs, courses and books, including mine, Write Like You Talk—Only Better. If you’re a blogger, figure at least 30 to 50 quality posts on your theme that will then need to be edited, packaged, and sold.
• If your writing doesn’t measure up, are you prepared to spend the money and time on someone whose does? Most successful nonfiction authors who don’t eat, sleep, and breath writing pay big bucks to professional ghost writers, not a stranger whose site trumpets their rock-bottom prices. You get what you pay for, as my Dad would say. Unless you can find a 24/7 psychic ghost writer, you’ll also spend lots of time thinking about the theme and feeding your ghost writer your knowledge and revisions.
• Can you design the pages, cover and marketing collateral? Again, be prepared to pay for the kind of quality that will compete or at least spend the time to find the right online sources. Yes, templates are available, but much of what I viewed were woodlands or other looks that do not work for my cover. Right again, Dad. People do judge a book by its cover.
• Do you have a content marketing machine? You’ll need to spend lots more time feeding and building your social networks, courting legacy media and pursuing other strategies for marketing your book. Competition is stiff and getting stiffer. You have to do a lot more than sneeze in an elevator to go viral.

If there’s an ebook in your soul, go for it. I’m thrilled that the doors have opened. Just be prepared to pour in years of learning, months of prep time and days of fretting.

It has to be your best, not something you knocked off over a rainy weekend.

That’s how real money is made. Just ask my Dad.

Barb Sawyers, who blogs at Sticky Communication, is almost ready to publish in print and for ereaders the second edition of Write Like You Talk—Only Better. Preview it here.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Questions My Dad Would Ask Before You Started that Ebook

If you have been in the blogging game for any number of months, you already know about the power of guest blogging in generating traffic and exposure to your blog. Yet there are new bloggers out there who hear about the power of guest posting, but still do not understand why it is so effective.

Image copyright Franz Pfluegl - Fotolia.com

As one reader commented on my recent piece on guest posting, “You people are always advocating guest posting. But I am not convinced about guest posting. Can you help me in this case? Why should we submit our best work to someone else?”

It is a valid question and as there are always new people entering the world of blogging, one that is worth answering for the blogging community at large.

Accordingly, here are three reasons why you should submit some of your best posts as guest posts.

1. It increases the chance of your guest post being accepted

Here is what a lot of new bloggers don’t know. A-list blogs get a lot of guest post submissions every week. On average, an a-list blog like ProBlogger might get around 30 guest post submissions. In comparison, most blogs only post five or ten posts a week, which means 20 posts get rejected.

If you are sending in your weak posts, chances are your post will get rejected. By sending in your top posts, you increase your chances of getting published on an A-list blog.

2. You’ll get quality “do follow” backlinks

Guest posting on A-list blogs gets you high quality backlinks that help you improve your rankings in the search engines.

Now, you might say, “But I’m getting backlinks through the comments section. Why would I go to all that effort of writing and submitting guest posts when I can easily get those backlinks through the comments section?”

The answer is that links in the comments sections of the major blogs are “no-follow,” which means that they count for a lot less (some say not at all) than the “do follow” links that you get in your by line or author box alongside a guest post.

Also, links higher up on the page carry more SEO benefit. As SEOMoz wrote in a post on SEO, “We find that links higher up in the HTML code of a page seem to pass more ranking ability/value than those lower down.” As most guest posts include a back link at the start and at the end of the post, it further magnifies the power of the backlinks.

Combine these two factors and it is easy to see that the backlinks from guest posting are far more valuable than those in the comments section.

3. Attract high-converting traffic

Traffic from guest posts is some of the highest converting traffic you can get. Here are the subscriber opt-in rates for my free ebook page:

• Google Adwords (Banner ads on the content network): 5% opt-in rate (I know I have some work to do on this, but still)
• StumbleUpon: 0.5% opt-in rate
• Guest posting: 40% opt-in rate.

Traffic from guest posting is, hands down, the highest converting traffic you can get. Also, on a big site, the chance of your post going viral is high. It is simple maths. More readers equal more people sharing the post. The more people sharing your post the higher the chance it will be seen by an influencer, further increasing its chances of going viral.

My post on The Warren Buffett Method for Building a Successful Blog, for example, went viral because it was posted on ProBlogger. That post earned me 50 subscribers, showed that I was a good writer, and put me on the map of other bloggers in my niche.

In other words, I got a lot more value from posting it on ProBlogger than I would have had I posted it on my own blog.

Conclusion

Unless you already have a popular blog, there is no reason why you should not submit your best posts as guest posts on major sites. More traffic, better search engine rankings, and brand exposure are some of the key benefits.

Plus, it gives you a bit of kick to get so many comments on a piece you wrote, which can motivate you to keep blogging so that one day you too will get that many comments on your own blog.

Aman Basanti writes about the psychology of buying and teaches you how you can use the principles of consumer psychology to boost your sales. Visit www.Ageofmarketing.com/free-ebook to get his new e-book – Marketing to the Pre-Historic Mind: How the Hot New Science of Behavioural Economics Can Help You Boost Your Sales – for FREE.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Why Submit Your Best Posts as Guest Posts?

My reaction was not positive – in fact within a few moments I’d tweeted that I’d had the request and wasn’t overly impressed.

This post is not about Dummies.com – it’s about asking for links.

I have no beef with Dummies – they produce some great books by some amazing authors. This post isn’t about them. It’s about asking for links.

You see I get quite a few emails asking for links like the one from Dummies but they’re not always from big well known brands, they’re more often than not emails from bloggers. In 99% of cases the email ends up in my trash folder in Gmail but occasionally I not only read the emails but I link to the persons site.

Why do some emails generate links and others don’t?

Following are 11 suggestions for those wanting to email a blogger to ask for a link (whether they be big brands or bloggers):

1. Write something worth linking to – this is a no brainer but so many people don’t get it. In the same way you wouldn’t successfully pitch a TV news service or newspaper a story like ‘I’ve got a newly designed website – it’s got videos’ you’re not likely to get much success with a blogger. The best way to get the attention of a blogger is to write something useful, entertaining, controversial, helpful, informative, intriguing…. etc. Check out my series on LinkBaiting for more ideas on this (particularly the post 20 Link Baiting Techniques).
2. Suggest a Link to a post not your site – don’t ask for a link to your site – suggest that they check out a link to an individual page or post that you’ve written. A blogger is much more likely to run with a story linking to a post about a specific topic relevant to their topic than adding a link to your site.
3. Develop a Relationship – cold calling a blogger that you’ve never interacted with before asking for a link is not the best way to start off a relationship. It’s like in real life – would you walk up to a stranger and immediately start asking them for favors? Get to know the blogger, their blog and let the ‘favors’ emerge out of that.
4. Demonstrate Knowledge of the Blog and Blogger – building upon the ‘relational’ aspect – use the blogger’s name, show that you know what their blog is about. You don’t need to write an epic introduction that proves your knowledge – but a polite and not overly familiar approach can do you wonders. Also – introduce yourself to the blogger you are pitching to. You might feel like you know them but they could be in contact with many people – a quick reminder of who you are and what you do could help.
5. Research – sometimes it can be worthwhile doing 5 minutes of research before you email another blogger. Look back over their last few months of blogging. What is their topic? Do they link to other blogs? What kinds of sites/posts/topics do they link to? Do they interact in other mediums (ie perhaps Twitter could be a better place to contact them)? The more information you gather the more able you are to tailor your pitch to them appropriately.
6. Add Value – a blogger is unlikely to link to you unless there’s something in it for them or their blog. I’m not talking exchanging of money or even reciprocal links when I talk about value (although for some bloggers those will be motivating factors) – I mean the page you’re asking for a link for should be something of value that will actually enhance their blog. I can only speak for myself but I know that if someone pitches me a link that I’ll link to it or at least tweet the link in a heart beat if I think it adds value to the lives of my readers or followers.
7. Stay on topic – this really is an extension of a couple of the points above but it always amazes me how many emails I get for people asking me to link to their ‘golf’, ‘stock market’, ‘book review’ and ‘kids fashion’ sites (they were just 4 requests that I got today alone). If you’re pitching a blogger to link to something you wrote make sure that the blog you want to appear on has relevancy to your topic. For starters it increases the chances of a link, it increases the chances of a reader clicking the link and it increases the power of the search engine juice that you’ll get from the link.
8. Be selective in what you promote – we all like to think that every post we write is worthy of links from thousands of other blogs but the reality is that some are more likely to be linked to than others. Pick your very best posts to promote in this way and keep your requests to a minimum.
9. Reciprocate – I want to be clear here that I’m not talking about reciprocal links. ‘Link to me and I’ll link to you’ doesn’t really hold a lot of value in SEO any more from what I can see. What I am talking about here is being willing to be generous TO the blogger and not just expecting them to be generous to you. Shane Gibson described these emails on Twitter yesterday as “we Win you Lose invitations” – I think that sums it up nicely. See the relationship as being like a bank. You’ve got to put in to get something out. If you take too much out the relationship will be bankrupt. I’m not just talking about giving the blogger links – you can reciprocate in many ways including by writing them guest posts, sending them small gifts, sponsoring a project that they’re running, promoting them to your own network…. etc
10. Build on the Experience – no matter what the bloggers response is – you can learn from and build upon the experience. If they do link then there may be opportunity to deepen the relationship in some way. If they respond angrily, you probably don’t want to send them links again. If you get silence, don’t take it personally and continue to find ways to build relationships with the blogger.
11. Be Link Worthy – let me emphasize this again. The best way to get linked to by a blogger is to produce a page or post that is link worthy of the link.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

11 Ways to Increase Your Chances of Being Linked to By a Blogger

I’m not going to rehash all of the reasons why email marketing is worth adding to your blogging or even give tips on how to build a successful email newsletter – today I just want to illustrate with a couple of charts why I believe in email marketing.

What you see above (click to enlarge) is a screen shot of the Google Analytics area of the forum area of Digital Photography School (ie it doesn’t include the blog area’s traffic).

The stats go back for 6 weeks and you’ll notice that there is a nice weekly pattern going on in terms of rises and falls in traffic.

What causes the predictable rises in traffic each Thursday? Thursday is the day I send newsletters.

Each week a newsletter goes out to readers that simply contains a summary of the latest activity on the site. Interestingly – the newsletter only contains one link to the forum area – yet that one link is enough to come close to doubling traffic to the forum for that day.

But Wait, There’s More

OK – so the ability to drive regular traffic to your blog is one great reason to start an email newsletter for your blog – but today as I analyzed my blog’s stats I realized that there’s another reason.

Take a look at this chart. It shows traffic from Digg to the blog area of DPS since mid last year (click to enlarge).

OK – it’s a little hard to see a correlation between newsletters and Digg traffic from that graph – but what I noticed today is that the majority of my ‘Digg Events’ happen on the same days of the week. Let me show you (click to enlarge):

I’ve had 19 ‘Digg Events’ in this period and 16 of them have happened on a Thursday or a Friday (two of the others hit the front page on a Saturday).

Articles hit the front page of Digg every day of the week yet on my site they almost always fall on a Thursday or a Friday.

I send newsletters out to my readers on a Thursday morning.

Now I rarely mention Digg or any form of social bookmarking in my newsletters – but it seems to me that the newsletters are having an impact upon social bookmarking to me.

Further Reading on Email Marketing/Newsletters and how to use them Effectively:

• Why email marketing is worth adding to your blogging  
• How to build a successful email newsletter
• How to dramatically Increase Signups to your Newsletter
• Why I use Aweber to Deliver My Email Newsletters

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

4 Pretty Pictures to Illustrate Impact of Email Newsletters on Traffic (and Social Bookmarking)

Why are there so many unsuccessful websites when others continue to flourish? Much of the reason has to do with poor marketing. This article explains five of the most popular marketing mistakes made by new website owners trying promote themselves. Usually with tight time constraints and even tighter budgets, the margin for error is very slim. Keep these points in mind before starting your next marketing campaign and you’re sure to see much better results.

1. A little of this, a little of that

This mistake is often made by those who want to take on the whole world with a tiny budget. They advertise a little bit on one website, a little bit on another, they try a little bit of email marketing and so on. However, with limited budgets, they only accomplish a small presence in each. To maximize results, narrow your choices and regularly run ads that will get noticed on a constant basis. One known marketing illustration is as follows:

The first time people look at an advertisement, they don’t see it. The second time they look at and ad, they don’t notice it. The third time, they become conscious of the ad’s existence. The fourth time, they vaguely remember seeing the ad somewhere before. The tenth time, they think ‘someday I am going to buy that’. The 20th time they see the ad, they finally execute the “call to action”. Establishing a well known presence in just one area will work much better than scattering yourself all over the web.

2. Ignoring statistics

If you’re one of many who dislike mathematics, this can be a hard avenue for you to overcome. However, in any marketing campaign, it is essential that you regularly measure results. Know which aspects of your marketing campaign are working best for you. Where do your visitors come from? How many unique visitors do you receive each day? How many of them are repeat visitors? Which pages on your website are viewed most often? How long does the average visitor stay on your website? On which page do they usually leave your site? What is your conversion rate? Which pages convert the most? Keep a spreadsheet to track this information on a weekly basis, and measure the trends. Doing so will allow you to cut out ineffective marketing efforts and focus more on those that work.

To help track these statistics on your website, you can use tools such as Google Analytics or Statcounter.

3. Tweaking things that aren’t broken

Here we remember the rule “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”. If you have a web page that ranks well in Google and brings you a fairly decent amount of targeted traffic, don’t go modifying the page contents, images and META tags. Doing so will most likely penalize its search engine ranking. Constantly changing other aspects of your website will also confuse your regular readers and make it much more difficult to build up your “branding”. Find something that works for you and stick with it.

4. Jumping the gun

Many website owners make the mistake of pumping out a massive advertising campaign too soon. Don’t take action just to meet a certain date you have in mind. Be sure everything on your website functions properly and is cross-browser compliant. Nothing screams “unprofessional” more than a broken website. If you require more time than anticipated to have your site up and running, you may have to push your planned release date back a while. Correct the kinks, finish your design, and fully test your website’s functionality before inviting everyone to visit.

Browsershots is a free online utility that will allow you to see how your website appears on dozens of different Internet browsers.

5. “Flying solo”

Without a very hefty advertising budget, it will be next to impossible for you to take on the whole world without any help. Build relationships with other website owners and arrange a way for them to help you promote your site or product. Word of mouth continues to rule as the champion of advertising methods. Generate a buzz amongst the online community about what you have to offer by doing something for other site owners in return. With practically every aspect of business, it’s all about who you know. By creating a strong, positive relationship with others, you can help spread the word about what each of you are offering.

The vast majority of us don’t build our website merely as a hobby- we are usually working toward earning some sort of income online. With careful planning and by giving attention to detail, your time and money can be used to the best of its ability, thereby allowing you to gain the highest return possible.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Five Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Many bloggers that I chat with tell me that their blogs hit plateaus in terms of traffic after around 6 months of blogging.

They launch with enthusiasm, great content, significant time invested into networking with other bloggers and the results pay off with a steady growth in traffic. However in time the enthusiasm dries up a little, life gets busy, networks don’t seem to produce the results that they once did and traffic levels out.

It can be confronting and depressing to realize that your blog has stopped growing.

If this describes you - then the time might have come to put some time aside in the coming days to put a more concerted effort into trying some new ways to grow your traffic. The time has come to look for opportunities to expand your audience.

Of course growing readership is a task that bloggers of all levels will be wanting to explore but as a blog grows new opportunities do arise due to your blogs profile and loyal reader power.

1. Partnerships and Relationships with other blogs

Look at your niche and work out what others are doing and if there are opportunities to work with them or cross promote each other.

I’m not just talking here about ‘getting to know’ other bloggers in the hope that they might link to you one day – actually attempt to build more strategic partnerships with other blogs – partnerships that are mutually beneficial to both of you. For example:

• offer to run a banner ad for another blog in an empty ad slot on your blog if they do likewise for you
• do a guest blog swap once a month with another blogger – where you write on their blog for a day and they write on yours
• promote each other’s RSS feeds or newsletters in posts

These types of relationships can really take many forms and are only limited by your creativity. They can feel a little weird at first because effectively you are promoting a competitor – but from what I’ve found there is plenty of room in most niches for numerous blogs and to work together can actually mean everyone grows. I personally don’t mind if another blog in my niche doubles their traffic if I do too!

It gets easier to get the attention of other bloggers once you become established so you might want to raise your sights a little and even begin to cultivate relationships with bloggers a little higher on the food chain than yourself.

2. Reader Evangelism

Once your blog has a core readership (even if it is smallish) you have one of the most powerful forces for growing your blog right in front of you – people who already read it.

The key is to find ways to release and encourage them to promote your blog for you. Here’s something simple that I did last year which worked on my photography blog:

I simply added an invitation in my weekly newsletter to pass on the newsletter to a friend.

It sounds incredibly simple – too simple in fact – but it worked. You can see the invitation pictured to the right – notice that I also included an invitation to subscribe for those who got the invitation from a friend.

What I found is that the ‘subscribe’ link got a lot of clicks (you can track this with Aweber) and I started getting emails from new readers who’d had friends recommend that they check out the newsletter and subscriber numbers went up considerably the week I first did it.

There are of course other ways to mobilize readers to help promote your site. Another way that I did it early last year was to run a competition to see who could recruit the most new forum members. I’ve also seen others run competitions where to enter you have to write a post about their blog. Another option is to add an ‘email this to a friend’ link at the bottom of posts.

These competitions and tools do work – but so does simply asking readers to tell their friends about your blog. Of course you need to have a blog worth recommending to a friend for it to really work – the more useful your blog the more likely it’ll be for your readers to pass word of it along to their friends without you asking.

3. Social Media

It can be difficult to have much success on social media sites on a blog that doesn’t have much of a readership – but as it grows a blog can naturally and organically grow in this area as more and more of your readers will be active on these sites.

I wrote a little about this in my post ‘How to Build a Digg Culture on Your Blog‘.

The key at this stage of your blog is to give your readers easy ways to pass your blog on to others. It can also be well worthwhile to do a little familiarization of different social media tools that your readers might find useful (a post about it educating them of the tools) and also be able to promote your blog with.

Then to add social media buttons can also work (although i’d advise just picking a small number that relate to your niche rather than adding every one available).

4. Look a Little Outside Your Niche

There comes a time for some bloggers where they feel like they’ve networked as much as they can within their niche. They know all the other bloggers, they’ve done guest posts on all of the blogs, they have good profile in that niche and there’s not a lot more that they can do to grow their readership through that network.

One of the ways forward out of this situation is to look at surrounding niches and find ways to network and produce content that appeals to those niches.

Example: again, with my photography blog (it’s the one I know best so easiest to pull examples from) I hit a plateau in traffic about 12 months in. At that point I started to think about what connecting points my topic of photography might have with other niches. One that I had some success with was the Mommy Blogger niche by writing a series of posts on How to photograph Children. Writing posts like this and then doing a little promotion to a few key blogs in that niche saw a whole influx of readers from blogs that I would never have previously considered might read my site.

Similarly I had quite good success by pitching some of my posts to sites like Lifehacker and even Gizmodo. These are blogs that were not ‘photography blogs’ but which had some overlap in topic as they were tech focused.

Sometimes lifting your sights a little beyond your immediate niche can have great results and find you a whole new untapped readership.

Add Your Tips

Of course there are many other ways to promote a blog and find new readers. This post could literally go on and on…. and on. I’ve compiled a lot more tips on how to find new readers for your blog here but would love to hear your tips – particularly tips for blogs that have been around before and not just blogs finding their first readers.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How to Expand Your Blog Audience when Traffic Plateaus

Image by meagen

You can’t read a post or a blog about “being a better blogger” without some mention of carnivals. They’re a great way of getting your stuff out into the world and creating links that point back to your site.

It’s a win-win and it takes virtually no time or energy to submit to them.

But what about hosting a carnival? Can it also deliver a lot of bang for very little buck?

Not quite.

Hosting a carnival is a LOT of work. You have to read ALL of the submissions that are sent in by hopeful writers looking to expand their footprint on the web. You’ll also have to sift through some junk in order to weed out the good from the bad. And the ugly…

The Good

Image by x-eyedblone

We’ve all seen carnival posts before, it’s usually a long list of articles that all rally around one central premise or theme. From “Saving Money” to “Blogging About Monkeys,” it seems like there’s a topic out there for everyone.

Notice I said “long list of articles.” When you host a carnival, every single one of those articles should hypothetically be promoted by each blogger that’s featured. So instead of getting one link back to your site (which is what happens when you submit a post to a carnival if it gets picked), you can get as many as you like.

That’s not entirely true—you get as many as you’re willing to weed through and publish on your page. And that can turn out to be a very big number. But that means you’ll have a ton of sites pointing back to yours…which is great.

It’s lots of bang for lots of buck.

The Bad

Image by daveiam

Let’s not kid ourselves—it’s a lot of work. Making a carnival unique and interesting for your readers takes a lot of time and energy. No one said it would be easy, right?

When I hosted the Money Hacks Carnival (which was my first carnival), I had no idea what I was getting into. I checked to see how many posts there were a couple days before it was to go live and my stomach dropped. Wow. I wasn’t sure I had time to read all of them, let alone choose my favorites.

You’ll have to get yourself organized and prepared in order to do it right. That means gradually making your way through the submitted posts instead of leaving it all for the last minute.

And coming up with a theme or concept that ties all the posts together to make the whole thing an enjoyable read can get pretty complex when you have a lot of articles to post. But the more time you have, the better off you’ll be.

The Ugly

Image by Spider.Dog

There’s a lot of bad writing out there. There are a lot of spammers out there. Some people will submit anything, regardless of what your carnival is about. The carnival I started on The Writer’s Coin is called Comics and Cents, and the idea is to write something funny and entertaining about personal finance, but I’ve gotten submissions for really detailed posts about refinancing your home and tips to cut your budget.

Useful? Sure. Funny? Not in the way I was intending. Expect a good amount of the submissions to have absolutely nothing to do with what you asked for.

This is the frustrating part, but hosting a carnival can still pay off big time by driving new readers to your site and getting tons of links back to you. It can also turn into a really useful compilation of info/entertainment for your reader.

Some Tips

• Be picky: Don’t publish every single thing that’s submitted. It will lessen the quality of the carnival, and no one wants to read a post that has links to 70 different articles (unless you can keep my attention).
• Promote: Don’t just post it and forget about it because you’re getting your linkbacks and you’ve done a ton of work. Spread the word and drive some traffic. It’s good PR for your site and your carnival.
• Be creative: Say something about each post you’re accepting. It can just be a line or two, but give your readers an intro and make it clear you’ve read through every one you accepted.
• Keep your readers in mind: Would they find this informational/entertaining? When picking articles for Comics and Cents, I’m terrified of picking something that will be greeted with “Eh, not funny.” Keep your readers in mind.
• Be prepared: Give yourself time. Go through the articles bit by bit before the deadline hits. It’ll give you time to do all of the above and make it a great carnival.
• Start your own: It takes even more time and promotion that just hosting an existing carnival. But if you create something unique that people are into, it’ll be even more valuable for your readers. My Comics and Cents Carnival doesn’t get a lot of traffic right now, but people appreciate that I’m publishing personal finance stories that are funny right now. Blog Carnival is a great place to create your own carnivals.

Hosting a carnival is just another tool at our disposal when it comes to broadening our blog’s audience and giving them some valuable content that they’ll keep coming back for. It also helps with backlinks, traffic, and SEO.

So, yes, it’s a ton of work and there’s a lot you need to keep in mind. But as they say, “Hostin’ ain’t easy.”

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Blog Carnivals Are Great, Hosting Them is Better

Today I want to focus upon the topic of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

While SEO is something that is well worth while focusing upon right from the start of your blog – I’ve found that it becomes particularly important once your blog is at least a few months old. In my experience it is not until a blog is 6 to 12 months old that it really begins to grow in its authority in Google.

I will not rehash everything I know about SEO here (I’ll link to some resources at the bottom of this post) but here are just two tasks that I think established bloggers will particularly want to focus upon (I’m assuming that you’ve got some of the basics like getting titles set up right):

1. Optimizing Successful Pages on Your Blog

I mentioned this earlier in this series of posts but one of the first things to do is to identify and analyze the pages that people are arriving to your blog on from Search Engines. If you’re like most blogs you’ll find that a handful of your old posts generate a significant percentage of your search engine traffic. Identify these pages and you can then go about increasing the ranking of those pages even further in Google by doing some of the following:

• increasing keyword density of these pages – don’t add the keywords that people are searching for too many more times, but it can help to add them 1-2 times more, bold the keywords, add them to heading tags, add them to image tags etc.
• increase the internal links to these pages – if you find a page that is getting a lot of search traffic, any extra links to the page that you can generate (from both within your blog and outside it) can help its authority. You might want to even highlight some of these pages in your sidebar or navigation – or to link to them within other posts on your blog on a similar topic.

2. Create More Content on Related Search Terms

Once you start getting a handle on what type of information that people are searching for you should begin to make a list of other related topics that you might want to write about. You can get ideas from this by looking at keywords that people use to arrive on your blog and thinking about synonyms for those words but also by looking at online services like Google Trends which maps what people are searching the web for.

Another good tool for analyzing search traffic and coming up with new topics to write about it 103bees which gives some metrics on the questions people are asking to find your blog. These questions are topics your readers are actually asking which shows you what they’re typing into Google. Another great tool to try is Lijit which is a search tool you can use on your blog (see it in my sidebar). This tracks what terms people are searching your blog for. The useful thing about it is that they also show you what terms people searched for that there was no search results on your blog for – very handy information.

There is A LOT more that you can do to increase the search engine authority of your blog. Part of it just comes down to writing great quality content over the long haul (which over time increases the number of doorways into your blog and grows the number of links from other sites to it) but below I’ve listed some other resources from both within ProBlogger and from SEO experts that will hopefully give you plenty of things to work on.

Further Reading:

• Search Engine Optimization for Blogs (SEO)
• SEO Book – one of the best resources to invest your time and money into in this area of SEO. I’ve learnt a lot from Aaron the author of this resource.
• 9 SEO Plugins Every WordPress Blog Should Have
• How to Get Search Engine Traffic to Your Blog

Also – here are three helpful videos (particularly for WordPress Users) with some great tips from Matt Cutts (Google Engineer), Joost de Valk and Stephan Spencer.

WordPress SEO & Optimisation Strategies a4uexpo London 2008 from existem on Vimeo.

.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How to Grow Your Blog to the Next Level With SEO

This issue is particularly relevant for blogs who’ve achieved a certain level of authority in search engines and who get a steady flow of traffic as a result of this ranking (although it is relevant to blogs getting traffic from any source).

It is always an exciting thing to get this first search engine traffic to a blog.

A Case Study

I recently felt this excitement on my Twitter Tips blog TwiTip which after a few months of life has seen some steady growth when it comes to traffic from search engines.

While this graph is encouraging as the owner of a relatively new blog the reality is that getting the search engine traffic is only half of the job – the REAL challenge is converting these 1000 or so daily visitors into repeat visitors. Unfortunately unless you do this second step the majority of your search engine visitors will simply never return to your blog.

This is a task that I’m setting myself for the next month and it means a shift of gears from what I’ve been focussing upon in the first few months of the life of this blog. Up until now I’ve been focusing upon building a core readership (we’ve hit around 5000 visitors a day and 5500 RSS subscribers) and building the content archives up (we’ve hit 170 posts published).

Now that the blog has achieved in those areas and the search traffic is coming in it is time to shift gears a little. I’ll continue to work on both of those tasks – but now it is time to work on ‘stickiness’ (or capturing first time visitors) a little more.

I’ve previously written a fairly extensive post on how to make a blog sticky (with 21 tips that I recommend you read) so I won’t regurgitate all of that information here…..But I did want to mention three things that I’m planning to do on TwiTip to make it more sticky:

1. Redesign

The theme that I’ve been using to this point (Thesis) has been fantastic. In fact the way it is set up is probably one of the reasons search traffic has grown relatively quickly for the blog – however in the coming month I plan to give the blog an overhaul (I’ve already engaged a designer). The main reason for this is that I’ve largely used Thesis in its default mode and want to enhance it to make it more sticky.

The redesign will include a custom logo (branding), a distinct look (differentiating it from other blog), more prominent subscription options (designed to grab attention and connect with new readers), a variety of tools to integrate it more with Twitter (increase reader interaction and connection with its primary audience – twitter users) etc.

2. Highlighting of Best Posts

One of the challenges of blogs once they have more than 100 or so posts in their archives is that it gets difficult for readers to find the ‘best’ and most ‘helpful’ content for their needs. One of the techniques that I have on my agenda for TwiTip is to develop a number of ‘sneeze pages’ that will be linked to prominently that will target new readers specifically. One such page will be a page for beginner twitter users – highlighting some starting points for them as twitter users (and linking to a number of posts for beginners). These sneeze pages are fantastic at converting first time readers into loyal readers.

3. New Subscription Methods

To this point I’ve only really offered RSS as a way to subscribe to Twitip. I will definitely include in the new design an option to subscribe via email – and I’m also considering a weekly email newsletter.

As mentioned above – there are a lot of other ways to make a blog sticky and convert readers. These three methods might be relevant for your blog – but so might some of the others covered in my how to make a blog sticky post.

What have you done to convert first time visitors to your blog?

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Converting First Time Visitors to Loyal Readers

Analyze why Readers Come to your Blog….. and then Build on It

The first thing that I’d highly recommend medium sized bloggers do when I speak with them is to set aside some time to analyze the current performance of their blog and particularly to focus upon the successes and strengths that the blog has.

While there’s a lot to be said for identifying a blogs weaknesses in order to improve I think many bloggers spend so much time working on improving the negatives (patching holes and fixing problems) that they fail to build upon their successes.

Here’s a ‘secret’ of success that I’ve observed in quite a few successful bloggers…

They don’t do everything well, but what they do do well they keep doing it over and over again.

3 Examples of Blogs that Build Upon their Successes

Many successful blogs illustrate this principle. Let’s take a quick look at three:

• I Can Has Cheezburger – these guys are geniuses, I don’t know when they discovered that putting captions on pictures of cats would draw hundreds of thousands of readers to a blog – but when they did they focused upon that. Their blog design might not be the sexiest and they rarely write a post with more than a handful of words – but they worked out what their readers wanted and kept giving it to them. In fact they’ve taken the LOLcat formula and have rolled it out for Dogs, Celebrities, News and Politics etc.



• Post Secret - in some ways this is a similar story to I can has Cheezburger – Frank discovered that the idea of posting people’s ‘secrets’ on postcards captured people’s imagination. Again – I’m not sure where the idea came from but Frank latched onto it and has continued to keep his blog focused upon what works. In fact he’s expanded the idea into books and traveling exhibitions – all focusing upon the same thing – postcard secrets.



• Smashing Magazine – this blog has seen incredible growth in the last year or two and a lot of it is by building upon what works. If you analyze their posts you see certain types of posts that are repeated again and again. Check out their post 35 examples of animals photography for example – a post filled with great images on a theme. They do these weekly and they always generate lots of interest on social media sites. In fact this ‘list’ type post isn’t just photographic – they do lists of tips, resources etc. They’ve worked out what types of posts work with their readers and they continue to apply it again and again.

I could go on with most successful blogs. They identify something that works and repeat it over and over again. This doesn’t mean that they simply repeat the same content – the key to their success is to find new ways to apply the same formulae.

So what has worked on your blog? How can you do it again and even improve upon it?

Let’s Get to Work and Do Some Analysis

Here are some questions to ponder to help you to identify these points of energy on your blog that could be worth expanding upon:

Questions about Content

• What posts have had the most traffic to them?
• What posts have had the most comments?
• What posts got the most links from other blogs?
• What posts did better than others on social media sites?

When you’ve compiled a list of these posts that did better than others – do some analysis of WHY they did well.

• Was it the topic?
• Was it the style of post?
• Was it the title that you used?
• Was it the use of an image?
• Was it the posts length?
• Was it the use of humor?

There could be any number of factors that contributed to a post’s success – but there’s usually one or two that stand out. Do this analysis on a number of successful posts and you might just discover that the same things come into play in each case. Identify what these factors are and you’re in a great position to develop more of this type of content.

Questions about Traffic

Another type of analysis to do is asking questions around the ‘source’ of current traffic to your blog.

• What are the top sources of traffic to your blog?
• What other blogs or sites are linking to your content?
• What social media sites seem to be liking your content?
• What search engines send you traffic?
• What keywords are people arriving on your site as a result of searching for

Looking at the source of traffic coming to your blog is a powerful technique to help you grow your blog further.

I’ve found that when you see a significant source of traffic to a blog that there are almost always ways to build that traffic further. For example:

• When you notice a lot of traffic coming to certain posts from Google it can be helpful to optimize those pages for the keywords people are searching for to increase the traffic (looking at keyword density, linking to the page from other parts of your blog with good anchor text, tweaking titles etc).
• When you notice another blog linking up to yours there’s an opportunity to build a relationship with that blog. Get to know the blogger, thank them for the link, submit other posts that they might find useful, link up to them etc
• When you notice a social media site has been sending traffic it is a signal for you to get involved in that site. You might want to do some analysis on the type of content that does well on that site, you could educate your current readers on how to use the site, it might be worth adding a ‘voting’ button from that site to encourage readers to vote for you etc.
• When you get a lot of traffic for certain keywords from search engines it can be a hint to write more content on that topic. Pay particular attention to ‘questions’ that people are typing into search engines as these can be ready made post titles and topics to write about.

Identify Your Blogs Successes and Strengths

In this post I’ve only unpacked two types of strengths and successes that a blog might build upon (ie traffic sources and types of posts) – but there are of course a lot more. The same principles apply – once you identify something that you’re good at or something that people are responding to on your blog – keep doing it. It doesn’t mean that you can’t explore other things or improve upon weaknesses – but spend as much time building upon your success as you do in fixing weaknesses and I think you’re probably onto a good thing.

Tomorrow we’ll continue this series of posts on taking your blog to the next level by looking at converting first time readers into loyal ones.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Build Upon Your Strengths as a Blogger

Article marketing for traffic is by no means a new concept, but as old as it is there are still great misconceptions about the best way to use it as a tool in creating new targetted visitors to your blog.

I was inspired to make this post after I recently checked the traffic stats for an old niche blog that I hadn’t worked on for a number of months.

It was a blog that we launched almost solely on the back of article submissions and article traffic and now despite server changes, half the site getting lost, total reindexing and other drama, the traffic to this site from the search engines continues to flow, see below diagram:

And primarily from the search engines…

Not an enormous amount, but for a site that hasn’t been touched in months and survived all the mentioned havoc, it’s not bad.

The big benefit of article marketing is that it allows you to generate both quick traffic and traffic that lasts when done properly. Furthermore it allows you to generate traffic in 3 separate ways that I’ll illustrate in this post.

Before we begin, let me clarify that by article marketing, I mean the submission of articles to directories, blogs and websites in order to gain exposure to your website through your author biography links.

Article Marketing Traffic Generation Part 1:

Just by submitting your article to a directory, you give it the potential to be found by other people interested in your topic, who are searching through that directory.

It’s not a lot of traffic but it’s fast and it’s relatively targetted.

When we started this site we went on a steady article marketing campaign, submitting a few articles each day to some of the big article directories like ezinearticles.com.

I couldn’t get a screenshot for you, but in the first month or two of this site, ezinearticles.com was the number one source of traffic to the blog (where Google now is in the second shot above) pushing more than a thousand visitors a month to the blog, just from that single directory.

That’s one of the fast traffic elements. Again it’s not enormous traffic but is is fast and targetted. Just having your articles in the directories can bring you traffic. The point to note though is that this is not the MAIN source of traffic that article submissions can bring…

Article Marketing Traffic Part 2:

This next kind of traffic is the one that a lot of new blog and online marketers got stuck focusing solely on and that’s “bum marketing” – just another word for submitting an article to a popular directory and trying to have it rank for a long tail keyword.

Because article directories like ezinearticles.com are old, strong, authoritative domain names, the content you place on them can outrank content optimized for similar terms that you put up on your own (new) website. So when you submit an article that is keyword optimized for some long tail keyword, that article on the directory can get quickly ranked in the search engines, and the author link can be followed to your website.

But this traffic is also only temporary. For more reasons than there are time to list, these pages tend to rank well quickly but drop off quickly too, meaning you see an increase in traffic from the search engines, but it doesn’t last if that’s your only strategy.

This happened with the site above too. In the next couple of months we started to see our search traffic creep up to the same level of traffic the article directories were bringing in.

Most article marketers will stop there and wonder why their traffic dries up within a month or two. That’s part 2 of getting quick traffic from your article submissions but the 3rd and most important part is yet to come.

Article Marketing Traffic Part 3:

This is what ensured that I locked in traffic from Google, used article marketing to create an authoritative blog and claim traffic that won’t dry up even if I want it to.

From the beginning, with each article we submitted to a directory, we left two links in the author biography. One link was to a post of content on my blog that was related to the article but contained more detail than the article. So I submit an on “exercise balls for fitness” and put a link in the author bio to a post on my site at the URL: http://myblog.com/exercise-ball-workout-tips with the anchor text “exercise ball workout” or some keyword that I want to rank for with that post.

The other link in the author biography always went to my blog home page but with a different keyword as the anchor text with every submission. We followed the same submission frequency and guidelines for about 4 months and you can imagine what happened.

Our search engine traffic didn’t dry up, but continued to increase. The only thing to note is that it didn’t increase from the articles at ezinearticles.com that were getting found in the search engines, it increased from our own blog posts getting found in the search engines, in many cases outranking the ezinearticle.com submission we made on the very same keyword!

From there it took off. The extra search engine exposure caused other bloggers to find us and link to us, all that incoming link value made our domain more authoritative so that all the new content we added was getting indexed and ranked at light speed and pretty soon our traffic had tripled.

Another thing to note is that with enough work, our own site now became the big authoritative, strong domain. We didn’t need to submit as many articles to the article directories anymore because it could rank just as well being up on our site.

It’s these factors that ensured that we still see traffic despite all the drama that happened with this site and that keeps that traffic flowing today.

I hope this gives you an insight into the power of this kind of “triple whammy” article marketing and that it’ll inspire you to start an article marketing campaign of your own.

Andrew Hansen has helped thousands of bloggers and aspiring online business owners to discover profitable niche markets, drive quality traffic to their blogs, and turn their traffic streams into cash through his blog at AndrewHansen.name, and his blogging and traffic generation software Firepow. Subscribe to receive updates and learn more about how Andrew can help you make more money online.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Smart Article Marketing For Fast AND Long Term Blog Traffic

It’s a well-known fact that commenting on other people’s blogs helps drive traffic to your own blog. I knew this, but until today, I had never seen its real results. Harnessing the action ability has led individual blog owners to comment back, which happened to me several times, like here, here, and here.

But, this time it was different:

To begin with I received a new digital camera for Christmas.

Now not knowing too much about digital photography, I went searching the experts over the Internet.

One of the first places I landed was at the Digital Photography School.
I immediately fell in love with the site and instantly subscribed to their RSS feed.

Low and behold, the other day, just as I was browsing my Google Reader, a new post from DPS popped up, What is Your Favorite Landscape Location?.
I just had to comment, and like most California girls, my favorite place to shoot pictures is at the beach.

Now, I know I’d hit it lucky because my comment was only the second one on the list. The prevailing theory is that the closer your comment is to being first, the more hits it will get.

Because my blog is only a month old, I usually don’t get much traffic, on average about 15 -20 hits per day. But on the day I made the comment, I got 195 hits, an increase of over 975%, with almost all of it coming via the Digital
Photography School. Recently Darren over at Problogger reported getting his single largest day of hits on DPS to the tune of 250,000 hits. Although 195 isn’t even close to 250,000, but I’ll bet the increased percentage on Travelin’ Local was higher.

All from that one comment.

On another bright spot, dgwphotography left the following comment on this blog post’s featured photo at Flickr:

“This is beautiful – I saw this from your reply on the Digital Photography School blog.

I love the deep depth of field here…”

The power of comments is truly inspirational; when translated into action.

Do you leave valuable comments? Have you ever had a comment experience like this?

Note from Darren: thanks to Lisa for this post. As Lisa says – 195 hits from a comment might not seem like a lot – but for a blog starting out it is a great way to grow traffic. Of course the danger in leaving comments as a way to drive traffic is that some bloggers fall into the trap of getting ‘spammy’. To help you avoid this I’ve previously written a post titled 11 Tips for Getting Your Comments Noticed on a Popular Blog. I hope it helps!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

The Power of a Comment

One of the most undervalued places to find readers is a niche social networking site. Right now there are niche sites for just about every subject imaginable. Would you like to share your love of old cars? Not a problem. Want to connect to other mothers? There are tons of sites. Do you want to reach out to other people that pose as vampires? Believe it or not there is a site for you.

Here are some of the benefits of joining a niche social network:

You know other members share the same interests.

Instead of having to hunt through groups on larger sites or looking for people through keywords in their “about me” section you know right off the bat you share the same interests. Just by participating on the social network you are going to be connecting with people that may be interested in reading your blog. It is a targeted and focused environment for you.

Tip: Try spending 10-15 minutes a day just adding friends and interacting. Not only will people find your blog but also you will discover loads of others.

Smaller community but a larger voice.

Sure the pool is smaller compared to larger sites but you can be a big fish in a small pond quickly. You can quickly obtain an authoritative voice in a niche social network by listening, participating, and sharing.

Tip: Participate in forums or large groups to establish your voice and become a go to source of information. Sharing your knowledge and helping others out has lasting benefits.

Most of these sites link to your blog, pass on page rank, and bring a flow of traffic just from filling out your profile.

I have registered on over 700 social networking sites in the past few months and I was shocked to see the sheer number that pass on page rank when I link to my blog within my profile. Additionally by just setting up profiles and including my blog information I was getting a steady flow of traffic to my site even though I hadn’t “officially” launched yet.

Tip: Take time to actually fill out your profile. Have a document that already has your about me, favorites, and other typical topics you find on social networking sites ready to go so you can cut and paste your info from it.

Additional features like social news voting and forums are a great way to gain readers.

I found multiple sites ranging from sports to art that had their own social news section that was active. In testing a few of these out for a client I realized that the conversion from visitor to subscriber was high. Compared to traditional social news sites where it is very low.

Tip: The traffic from here can also lead to voting on traditional social news sites as well. Use these features to drive people to posts you really want to push on Digg, Reddit, or other sites. Make sure you embed buttons on the post to give them a cue.

Now don’t just run out there and register for every niche that might apply to your blog. There are a couple of things to watch out for:

• Is the network active? Make sure you check out the forums or any place that shares content from other users that has a date. Check to see if there is a constant and recent flow, it is a good measuring stick to show you how active the site is.
• What is the target country for the site? – If your site has a regional appeal you may want to check to see where the site is based out of and where the users are from.

I highly recommend picking out a site or two and experiment with it. Investing a little amount of time per day or even week can go a long way on these sites. On my blog I have a pretty comprehensive list of niche social networking sites, which is always evolving and growing, hope this helps as a starting out point.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Use Niche Social Networking Sites to Gain Readers

Feel free to add a comment below to tells us more about your answer – I’m particularly interested to hear from those who have guest posted about how you found the experience.

PS: thanks to all my Twitter followers for suggesting poll topics and for @rustylshelton who inspired this one.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Have You Ever Guest Posted on Someone Else’s Blog? [POLL]

You’ve heard the blogger cliché “content is king”. It’s a lot like the real estate industry’s “location, location, location.” It turns out blogging and real estate have something in common: for both, you need content and location.

When it comes to pro blogging, thinking about location matters. There is no “build it and they will come”, and only 20% of your work is publishing posts.

By making strategic partnerships with other bloggers, you can produce content and put it in a great location, or you can get great content for the location you own, depending on which side of the partnership you are on.

Strategic partnerships can take a lot of different forms, but guest posting is the most obvious because it’s a one-off deal. There isn’t a need for a complex relationship or terms and conditions of the partnership.

In December, I wrote a guest post here at Problogger about how you need a blog strategy. Darren got a piece of unique content without having to write it (not to mention a post that now hovers between the #1 and #2 rank in Google for “blog strategy”), and I got the authority of having shared my insights, high quality links to my blog, and 200 new subscribers in a day. My earlier guest post about Digg had a similar effect.

The purpose of today’s guest post is to help you grow your blog, add to the Problogger content library, and continue to build my blog’s audience. To work, guest posting has to be beneficial for everybody involved.

From Darren: I can’t emphasize this enough. Many guest post submissions that I receive (and reject) are little more than self promotion of the guest poster filled with links to their own blog and little actual value to readers. These give me little motivation to use them and so end up in the ‘sorry I can’t use this’ basket.

The best way to make a guest post pay off for YOU is to make it pay off for the reader. Write something that makes readers think – ‘I really want to read more from this person’ and they’ll check you out in droves.

You see the value in guest posting, but how do you make it all happen? It takes 5 steps:

1) Be a reader

It’s important you be familiar with the blog you approach for a guest post. At the basic level, you need to know what the blogger writes about and what kind of guest posts usually get published. More importantly, you need to look at the most successful posts of that blog, looking for hints.

I look at the format other guest posters use and which has attracted the most comments. For Problogger, the “Best of Problogger” widget on the front page gave me some key insights.

I noticed that “how to” posts dominated the all time list and list of Darren’s favorites. After a search for “how to guest post” on Problogger and Google, the topic of this guest post began to form in my head.

I visited the Guest Blogging 101 section and read Darren’s How to be a Good Guest Blogger. I saw a different angle to approach from — namely, guest posting in order to promote your blog.

I also saw something useful about a guest post about guest posting describing the self-aware process of being published. Woah, that was a mouthful.

The point is: if I wasn’t familiar with the Problogger style and audience, I wouldn’t have been able to write this post.

From Darren: The main thing I’d add to this is to consider whether the topic that you’re writing about has been covered before – or at least covered recently. This is another reason that I often reject guest posts – simply because the topic would be repeating advice given in the recent memory of readers.

I personally don’t mind topics being repeated as long as they have fresh ideas and a new perspective – but too much on the one topic can frustrate readers. To be honest when I first saw this post from Josh I almost said no for this reason as this is a topic we’ve covered a few times before – however he has covered the topic a with some fresh ideas which won me over.

2) Write the guest post

I won’t belabor the point, but it should go without saying that your guest post be worth caring about. Duh.

The interesting part about this step is where in the process it comes; before you contact the blogger.

For most of you — assuming you take the “pro” part of blogging to heart — the places you want to guest post treat their blogs as businesses. You can reach out to these blogs pitching an idea, but that just gives them an opportunity to reject you.

When you really wanted something as a kid, did you ask your parents for permission or forgiveness?

If you contact a blogger in order to guest post, send your post with the email. Don’t ask for permission, just do it. If they don’t want to publish it, you can make some modifications and send it to another blog (or publish at your own).

I finished writing this post before Darren even knew it existed.

From Darren: This is one point I differ on a little from Josh. While I do publish quality posts that are submitted before I know they’re being written – a guest poster will have an increased likelihood of success if they contact me BEFORE writing the post.

3) Send the guest post to the blogger

Your guest post is going to be enough of a headache to read, so don’t bother writing an essay introducing yourself. The biggest concern I have with allowing guest posters for my own blog is not how nice they are, but whether or not their post is going to be kick ass. There’s only one way to find that out.

The first time I contacted Problogger I said the following:

“Hi Darren. I’d like to publish this guest post on Problogger, because I think I have a message that is both valuable to your readers and different than what they’ve been hearing elsewhere:”

Then came the guest post. Darren wrote back to say when he was publishing, and that was that. And the next guest post?

“Hi Darren – thought I’d send another guest post your way since the last one went so well. I think your readers should get something out of this one.”

Networking can be important, but don’t be shy about letting your guest post do the talking. How did I set up this one?

“Hi Darren – Here comes another guest post. You should get a kick out of this one :) Could be interesting for readers if you added your own comments, or even wrote a post from the other side of the conversation.”

A new twist; let’s see what happens.

From Darren: The idea that I add some comments was actually one that I’ve taken up and is a new twist on guest posts here at ProBlogger. I have actually considered doing it in previous posts but never did – I’d be interested to hear people’s reflections – do you like me chiming in like this?

Also – another bonus for me is when I get a guest post with an image in it. I love visuals and do try to add them to many guest posts that come my way but this can be time consuming. Adding an image of your own or finding a high quality Creative Commons image on Flickr and giving the link as a suggested image can really help to lift a guest post to the next level.

4) Promote the guest post

You didn’t think your job was done, did you? One of the great things about guest posts is the cross-promotion gained by leveraging both bloggers’ social networks.

The last thing you want is your guest post to be a flop, especially if it’s the first time you’ve written for the blog. Anyway, guest posting is a perfect opportunity to promote someone else and demonstrate your willingness to leave your blogging bubble. You can’t go wrong with good karma.

It bears mentioning that spam is not welcome! Promote your guest post with the same care and thoughtfulness that you would your own blog. Whenever I guest post, I make sure to tell my “regulars” through Twitter, because I know they’ll want to hear about it.

From Darren: This is an area that many guest posters don’t even think to do but which can pay off big time for both the blog you’re submitting to but also to you.

Of course if your post does well and the blogger you’re submitting to sees you promote your own work they’re more likely to want more content from you!

5) Stalk the comment section

Just as you should promote your guest post the way you would a post on your own blog, treat every comment on the guest post as if it were on your blog.

Every commenter took the time to read your post, and is a potential subscriber for you to win over. Respond directly and personally to the thoughtful posts, and as early and often as you can. The bigger and faster the comment section grows, the happier the blogger.

When a commenter is particularly insightful and engaging with your content, shoot him or her an email with a detailed response (or rebuttal).

As usual, put yourself in a reader’s shoes. What would most impress you in a guest poster? Now go do that.

I’ll see you in the comments below.

From Darren: Another great sign of a quality guest poster is that they’ll engage readers. On DPS we see a lot of our guest posters really engage readers by doing this and it brings the blog alive.

What do you think of guest posting?

Have you had success guest blogging? What’s your biggest concern about it? Share your best guest posting story in the comments, whether it’s an impressive chance you got at a big blog or a horror story of ruined opportunity.

From Darren: Looking forward to reading your comments also. Do also let me know about this idea of me adding to posts – does it disrupt the flow too much or add to the depth of the post by getting a 2nd perspective?

Josh Klein advises Fortune 500 companies on their web strategies and writes a web strategy blog about making websites that matter to human beings.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How to Guest Post to Promote Your Blog

• It all started with the publishing of this post – Long Exposure Photography: 15 Stunning Examples. The post is simply a collection of 15 amazing images all illustrating the same technique (long exposure photography). The images are all creative commons images from Flickr (meaning they are all available for republishing).
• The post went live on DPS and was quickly submitted to Digg and StumbleUpon. I added a ‘Digg this’ button to the top of the post (now removed).
• I had a feeling that the post would do well on StumbleUpon so was on the lookout for traffic from there so when I noticed the traffic coming in from StumbleUpon I tweeted about the post – noting that it was doing well on SU. This was the only ‘help’ I gave the post – a viral like thing began to happen.
• Momentum from SU began to build as more and more people began to organically come from the StumbleUpon toolbar. As they did I noticed that Digg numbers began to rise also. People saw the Digg button and were clicking it naturally.
• 4 hours after it was submitted to Digg it hit the front page of Digg. It did so with around 110 Diggs. I was quite surprised by the relatively low number of Diggs that it took and the speed that it went to the front page.
• The first hour after the post hit the front page of Digg the traffic was around 28,000 unique visitors. This surprised me a little as it was midnight on the West Coast of the US and the early hours of the morning on the East Coast (not usually the best time to hit the front page).
• The diggs continued to come in. StumbleUpon traffic also continued to gain momentum. The post hit the ‘popular page’ on Delicious (where it remained for at least 15 hours… again an unusually long time – you can see the page for it here).
• Traffic from Digg tapered off after the first hour on the front page. From memory it was around 8000 visitors the 2nd hour and tapered further to around 4000 the next few hours.
• I went to bed around this time and expected things to continue to taper down and return to ‘normal’ sorts of levels while I slept.
• I woke up the next morning to find that DPS had had another big spike of traffic just after I went to bed. Most of the traffic came from Digg. Getting a 2nd big spike of traffic from Digg wasn’t something I’d experienced before but it had definitely happened. It came around 7 hours after hitting the front page of Digg and send around 25,000 visitors in an hour (and quite a few more in the hours that followed). It turns out that the post had gained so many Diggs that it hit the ‘Top in All Topics’ list which sent it a second wave of traffic.
• Over the next 6-7 hours Digg traffic again tapered off (but was still significant). StumbleUpon continued to send good traffic and I began to see a lot of secondary social media sites sending traffic (sites like popurls (it was the #1 story there for quite a while), Wykop, Jimmyr and plime) and also quite a few other blogs and websites (big and small) like The Agitator, Monitor and Naver. Interestingly many of the links were from non english sites. I have included a screen shot (right) of the top 15 sources of traffic to the post over the last 36 hours.
• Today things are somewhat quieter in terms of traffic – but they are still around double a normal days traffic. Most of the traffic now is coming from StumbleUpon and secondary links from blogs and websites. From past experience this will continue for a while. StumbleUpon has the potential to send decent traffic to a post for weeks (and months). In the long run I expect StumbleUpon will probably send more traffic to the post than Digg (although Digg has currently sent triple what SU has).
• What will generally happen next is that a little search traffic will come in because the post has been linked to from quite a few sources (Yahoo currently sees a couple of hundred incoming links – Google sees quite a few more).

So what impact does a rush of traffic have on a site?

Beyond getting a rush of adrenaline and perhaps a bit of an ego boost – what impact does a day like yesterday have on a blog?

• Ad Revenue – traffic to the site yesterday was around 5-6 times normal levels. Conversion in terms of ad revenue was not that high – but did see a good bump. For example AdSense earnings were almost three times higher than normal.
• New Loyal Readers – it is too early to tell how many of the 250k readers subscribed to my RSS feed yesterday (it is at least over 1000 new subscribers) but I can see that newsletter subscriber numbers were considerably up on normal levels. On an average day we get around 450 confirmed new newsletter subscribers to DPS – yesterday it was around 1000 (and there will be more as some take a while to verify). Today it’s over 800 (and will probably hit 1000 again). While a 1-2% conversion rate doesn’t sound like much it can actually be quite significant. 2000 new daily readers over a year or more really adds up to a lot of new page views on a site.
• SEO – one of the best parts about a day like yesterday is the extra links that point at your blog once everything dies down. As mentioned above – there are around 200 links pointing at the post mentioned – some of which also point to the front page of DPS. There’s no real way to tell what impact this has on a blog but it is a significant number of links and will add to the authority of the page and site in the eyes of Google and other search engines.
• Buzz – another benefit that is difficult to measure is that of ‘buzz’. There’s something very uplifting to an online community when they get noticed by other parts of the web. I’ll highlight what happened in the weekly newsletter that I send our regular members tonight and I find that doing so helps lift the morale around the community. It’ll also send a fresh wave of traffic to the post as people go to see what caused all the traffic.

All in all it was a good day. I’m most happy about the conversion to new readers than happened and about the SEO boost (I’m also happy that the servers didn’t skip a beat) – however I’m very aware that the extra traffic is relatively fleeting and today it is back to work.

Social Media Traffic Tsunamis are exciting events but the real challenge is to keep growing your loyal reader base by providing quality content day in day out. Speaking of which…. it’s time to get back to work.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

The Day 250,000 People Showed Up At My Blog: Case Study