I’ve said it before, as have others, that local search will be the hot niche of the future. So far only a few bloggers have capitalized on this in their area. They’ll be sitting pretty by the time other bloggers figure this one out.

Update: I get a lot of questions about how to find and how to build Niche sites. The best legitimate resource on the Internet right now for learning all of this is the Keyword Crash Course. I took this course back when it was $597 and felt like it was worth far more than that! Now they’ve opened it up for subscribers. You can get in now for $1 and see all the training video’s that I paid $597 for and learn how to find keywords that pay, learn “The Formula” (this alone was worth the fee in my opinion!), set up WordPress, learn how and where to find backlinks plus a lot more. Then if you think this is something you’d like, you can subscribe to their monthly service for $29. Each month you’ll have access to new training material, Webinars and Q&A sessions. You won’t find a better deal about llearning how to build Niche sites on the Internet! Especially at this price! Click here to learn more and to take advantage of this opportunity for $1.

I’m constantly amazed at people who are searching for the latest hot niche to jump into. Many times it’s right in their own hometown or region and they never realize it until someone else takes it. If it’s niche blogging you’re looking for, look no further than your home town!

Why Local Blogging Is HOT

The reason local blogging is so hot and getting hotter right now is the same reason search engines blasted off at their beginning.

People want information and they want it yesterday.

They also prefer that information come from a trusted source. And who not to trust but a knowledgeable blogger who blogs about their community. Surely there aren’t many people with more knowledge than this guy/gal who blogs about their town?

Local bloggers can connect with local searchers without ever meeting them. Take restaurant reviews for example. Have you ever read a review you agreed with? Perhaps it was a good review of Bob’s Burgers on the out skirts of town. You love Bob’s Burgers and you agree with the review. You’ve instantly judged that writer in your mind.

“Gosh, that reviewer is so smart, everyone loves Bob’s Burgers”

or

“What a dweeb that reviewer is, everyone knows Bob’s Burgers uses roadkill in their meat”

Either way, you’ve made a judgement about the character of the reviewer. If it was a good judgement, you’ll definately listen a little closer the next time the review something. 

Once you have a captive audience, the World gets a little easier!

How to Monetize Local Niches

The sky is nearly the limit on how you choose to set up your blog on your local community. I’ve seen some blogs that had forums and business directories while others just blog on local events and people. It’s up to you how far you want to go.

I would start out by using a Magazine or News type blog theme. These use multiple subjects on the front page. The Revolution News theme by Brian Gardner would be an excellent choice.

How you choose to monetize your local blog is also up to you. Many simply use Adsense, which works well for local Internet surfers. However, by including a Jobs section and a Hotels or Travel section you could use Affiliate Programs from sources like www.ian.com and Job-O-Matic.

Your largest source of income though will likely be from local advertisers. You’ll probably have to sell some adspace on your blog to begin with, but after a few months if you continue to grow, the advertisers will be seeking you out.

Start by making a list of some of the top business’s in your area. You then send them all a sales letter along with a business card telling them about your blog and how they could increase business by advertising on it. Don’t send EMAIL!

Paid reviews can also be a huge money maker for local bloggers. Just make sure you do honest reviews about products or services you actually own or have used. If you continually post favorable reviews to places that everyone knows is a dump, you’ll soon loose your trustworthiness with the local readers. Tell the advertisers up front that there is no guarantee of a good review simply because they paid to have one.

Promoting your local blogis no different than promoting any other blog. Until people find your blog and start backlinking and sharing it with others, promote it just like your would any other website. Article marketing, submitting post to all the Social Media sites, directory submissions and so on. Make sure you use local keywords for your anchor text and you’ll soon see traffic come trickling in. Do you job well and you’ll see this trickle turn into a raging river of local traffic!

But I Live In A Small Town, There’s No One To Read My Blog!

I’ve heard this argument before. I’ve seen blogs covering towns with just 10,000 people do very well.

If you live in a small town, then widen out the scope of your blog. Blog about your County or Region. Don’t go getting to large though or you’ll risk having a blog that is vague and hard to rank for any specific keyword. Remember, this is a niche! Start off with your town and work your way out.

In large Metro areas, you may want to just take a section of the city and blog about it. I know a local blogger that only talks about her home life and the downtown area where she lives. She has made herself the “go to” person when it comes to events or other happenings downtown. Local advertisers can’t get enough of her site.

Trying to blog about the entire city of Los Angeles would be as much of a disaster as trying to blog about California. Remember, think small and connect with the people in your local area. This is why local blogging is such a hot niche and why you should learn how to build niche sites.

Share this:

It has always been said that Internet users have short attention spans. That’s still true for the most part.

When I first started, the rule was the post should be between 250 and 500 words. I naturally write long articles as it is. So I was getting comments and email saying my post were too long. So I started trying to keep them around 500 words. That was hard for me to do!

Here are a few reasons why you should be writing long blog post:

• If you’re only interested in attracting Social traffic, stick to making those short, concise post. Most Social readers have shorter attention spans than a 3 year old, especially if they come from Digg.
• If on the other hand, you want your post to rank high in Google SERPS and bring in loads of targeted organic search traffic, you’re more likely to do it with longer keyword optimized post than shorter ones.
• You’ll naturally have more long tail keywords in your long blog post. Long tail keywords bring in more targeted organic traffic to your site.
• Looking at it from Google’s perspective, which post is more informative? A short one or long post? Google is in the business of delivering targeted relevant information to Internet searchers. Google’s algorithym searches for the most relevant and informative information on the Internet when you enter a search into the the search box. So which post do you think it will return higher in the SERPS? A 250 word post about ‘Mens Hair Loss’ or a 1400 word article?
• If you run a content rich site with Adsense, you can increase your CTR with longer post and articles. Why? Because you’ll stand a better chance of the reader losing interest and clicking on an Adsense ad. Yeah, I know, it’s a pretty underhanded Adsense trick hunh? But it works
• You may lose a few RSS subscribers who do not like long post, but you’ll also gain a few more who feel long post are more informative and detailed. They’ll see you as a detailed authority on the subject.

What constitutes a long post?

The way I look at it is, anything over 1000 words is a long post. I know some who say 700 to 800 words is a long post, but a 1000+ word blog post is much better, especially if it’s keyword optimized.

Long post are also more detailed. Instead of making some short-to-the-point sentences, you can take your time and go into more details with your post.

Tips For Optimizing Your Blog for Long Post

If you’re worried about losing your RSS subscribers to long post, here are a few tips that will help you keep them interested and to optimize your long post.

• Use the H3 tag to break up your long post into sections. Properly constructed H3 headings also add SEO benefits to your long post.
• Use bullets and numbers to break up list or for making points
• Use blockquotes when quoting others or for highlighting a resource
• Use Bold, Italics and Colored Text to get your point across and to break up your long post.
• Not all of your long post have to be a War and Peace novels. Just the really important post you want to expand on and the ones you want top rankings for. It’s okay to mix short post with long post. I’ve done this same thing here on AffiliateWatcher.Com

Still not convinced that long Blog post are better?

Take a look at the thumbnail picture below (click it to enlarge the picture). It’s a screenshot I did of a search for “How To Monetize A Blog With Adsense.” I posted it Monday morning and when I got home that afternoon, I was sitting at the #2 spot for that keyword term.

I jumped over some pretty big names to get to the #2 spot with nothing more than a 1400 word post about how to monetize a blog with Adsense. The only reason the B2evolution network outranks my post with their little generic post is because they have more backlinks to that page. It would be rather easy to outrank them and take that #1 spot away with fewer backlinks because my post has more weight than theirs.

Fortunately for me, this happens a lot with my long blog post. Whether or not it’s on this blog or one of my other ones. Long optimized blog post rank better! I no longer ask; how long a blog post should be, I just start writing and stop when I’m done!

Share this:

This post has been a long time in coming. I guess you could say that I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it no more.

I spent about an hour and a half this morning browsing the do-follow list and leaving comments on several blogs. So what’s the problem? Many of the comments sections on those blogs using the do-follow list still have the “nofollow” attribute.

What’s The Do-Follow List?

The do-follow list is a list of bloggers who have removed the “nofollow” attribute from their comments so that the links left by Commenters are “nofollow” and will be followed by Google.

I used the do-follow plugin briefly on this site, found that I didn’t like it and have since used the Top Commentator plugin to reward my regular commenters with a PR4 backlink.

Luckily I never submitted my blog to the do-follow list.

Bloggers Beware of The Do-Follow List

The problem with the do-follow list is that about 80% of the blogs listed on these list, and there are several, still have the nofollow attribute on their comments.

Now you can look at this several ways. Either they’re being completely dishonest by not using the do-follow plugin as they are advertising or they’re just naive.

For you bloggers who think you’re leaving all these wonderful comments and that Google is following your link back to your site, you’re dead wrong. You’re being taken advantage of by many bloggers on the do-follow list!

Most of you have no idea whether or not the bloggers on the do-follow list have actually taken the nofollow attribute off.

When I’m using the do-follow list, I use Firefox with the SEO extension. This allows me to see which links are nofollowed and which ones aren’t. On some blogs, you can also look at the source code, but trust me, the SEO extension for Firefox is quicker. Just make sure you activate it in your toolbar! It then will highlight in a redish pink color all links with the nofollow attribute. Pretty easy!

Also, if the blog you’re looking at is a Blogger blog, the comments are nofollow. You’ll find a whole bunch of Blogger blogs on the do-follow list that claim “You comment, I follow“. Either these bloggers are dishonest or they don’t understand what nofollow is. Out of the hundreds of Blogger blogs I’ve visited, I’ve only seen one or two that actually had the nofollow removed and they were custom sites with their own hosting. If Blogger is hosting the blog, the comments are nofollowed and your link will not be followed by Google. Don’t waste your time.

If these bloggers were on the up and up, they’d do several things.

1. Take down the “U Comment, I Follow” icon
2. Find all the do-follow list and have their blogs taken off. As a blog owner, it’s your responsibility to remove your blog from these list if you’re not going to follow the do-follow guidelines.
3. Or if they truly wanted commenters, they follow the guidelines for do-follow

No Keywords In The Name Field

Here’s another area that is getting me a little peeved lately. Several of these blogs have comment policies where they do not allow you to put a keyword in the Name field.

WTF difference does it matter what is in the name field? This tells me one thing. The blog owner wants the maximum benefit of my comments on his/her blog but doesn’t want me to have the maximum benefit of a followed link. Pretty damn stingy in my book!

Now having said that, let me say I do not blame them one bit if someone leaves a comment with a link back to a bad neighborhood such as drugs, porn, gambling or other bad neighborhood. You have to protect where you’re blog is linking too. I also do not object bloggers removing comments that do not add value to the blog post.

But refusing to allow a commenter to use a Keyword instead of their name is just plain selfish. The whole point of using the do-follow plugin is for bloggers and their readers to mutually benefit.

Another form of Dishonesty are the bloggers who advertise their comments are nofollowed but only a select few commenter’s links are nofollowed. These blogs may only remove the nofollow for their friends or for those who make “X” amount of comments. That’s all well and fine, but do not advertise that your comments are do-follow because they’re not!

If You’re Going To Comment, Do It Right!

Just this morning, I deleted 4 comments by someone who left comments on 4 of my blog post. His/her comments were “Thanks for sharing”.

That’s bullshit. If you’re going to leave a comment, leave one that benefits the blog. If you don’t have the time to leave a decent comment, don’t leave one or I’ll make the time to delete them on this blog and I don’t blame others for doing it.

When I comment, I try and leave at least two sentences, most of the times it’s more…a lot more if I get on a roll.

The Do-Follow Dishonest List

I’ve been seriously thinking of starting a Do-Follow Dishonest list. This list will comprise of blogs who advertise they use the do-follow plugin or otherwise have removed the nofollow attribute from their comments but who have not:

• removed the nofollow attribute from their comments
• removed their blog from Do-Follow list
• stopped displaying the “U Comment, I follow” icon or other forms of advertising that their comments are nofollowed.
• allowed all comments to be do-follow. If you advertise your comments are do-follow, then all comments should be do-followed, not just those of commenter who’ve made “X” amount of comments or those who you like. Otherwise stop advertising that your comments are do-follow. This is nothing more than scamming visitors into thinking your comments are do-follow!

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think this would be a good idea. What do you think?

If you use the do-follow list at all, you owe it to yourself to get Firefox and get the SEO extension so you’ll know who’s being honest and who’s not. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time if you’re posting comments for a link.

The whole point of the do-follow plugin and the do-follow list was so that Bloggers could help each other. Bloggers would use nofollow on their comments so they could attract visitors who would leave comments. The commentators would then get a link back to their website for leaving comments. Now some of these blogs have benefited due to the do-follow movement and do-follow list but refuse to play by the rules. I’m calling your guys/gals out right now.

Stop being dishonest with your visitors!

are do-follow bloggers dishonest

Share this:

The main reason that I’m seeing is that BlogRush didn’t live up to the hype it got from Bloggers. At one point, ProBlogger.Net’s BlogRush widget was shown over 70,000 times with only 35 clicks. That’s not pretty bad, that’s a damn shame!

I don’t want to be the “I told you so” type, because, honestly, it was just a lucky gut feeling that I had at the beginning, but I told you so.

Let me start out by saying that the inventor, John Reese is an freakn’ genius marketer. There are few who have his talent for marketing.

Having said that, this whole BlogRush thing just didn’t smell right from the get-go. I’m not sure if John and his team rushed to get BlogRush out or if it was never thought out well to begin with….or both.

To me, BlogRush seemed like a Pyramid Scheme. That’s one of the biggest reasons I didn’t join…well that and the privacy concerns.

BlogRush Autopsy

Below is a link to an Alexa graph comparing Blogrush with Problogger.net and Shoemoney.com. As you can see, BlogRush is not quiet dead yet, but it looks like the Hearse is backing up.

Click here to see the graph

So what went wrong?

Several things that I can see went wrong.

1. When you hype something this much, it had better perform. As you can see from the graph, traffic started dropping off just after all the A-lister hype.
2. When you get the top A-listers in the Blogging community to hype your product, don’t piss them off a few weeks later by banning their blogs or declining their blogs inclusion into the BlogRush program. Apparently many A-listers and large blogs were banned or had their accounts put into an inactive state. It seems that the editorial staff over at BlogRush didn’t know a good blog when they saw one and sent out a lot of these type of emails. Hey, perhaps it’s the same editorial staff at ezinearticles???
3. The widget relied on bloggers using it correctly. The blog owner had to put the BlogRush widget above the fold where it would be seen the most. From what I saw, many bloggers were putting the widget below the fold and saving the area above the fold for their money makers. Who could blame them? Besides, we know that not everyone reads the instructions!

 Lessons We Can Learn From BlogRush?

• Just because an A-Lister says it’s good, doesn’t mean it’s true.
• Even a trusted and skilled Marketer like John Reese can have a Ugly Duckling every once in a while
• If you want something to work properly, read the damn instructions
• If you manage to get Bloggers to hawk your product or service, don’t piss them off. Many of the same bloggers that hyped BlogRush also were the cause if its death by blogging about their negative experience with BlogRush.  Look at the graph again in late October and through November. This is where Blogrush really screwed up and the negative blog post started rolling in. You can see where the traffic started plummeting.
• I may not always be right…but I’m damn close! LOL (okay, okay, so I said that this whole Social Networking-Web 2.0 crap was a fad and would blow over in time…geez do you people ever forget?)

Watching John Reese over the years, I bet he’s not crying over spilled milk. He’s probably already moved on to bigger and better things. That’s what good marketers do.

So have you taken the BlogRush widget off your site or did you ever put the BlogRush widget on your site to begin with?

R.I.P. BlogRush 

Share this:

What?

Yeah, you heard me right. Your links suck!

You see, you proclaim to be a blogger or Webmaster. Yet, you make links like it was 1995! C’mon into the modern Internet age. Today, backlinks are probably the most important off page ranking factors for Google. And if you want to catch a bloggers attention, you’d better make them links properly!

If you’re going to take the time to make a link, then do it right and make it count!

How To Make A Link Like A Rockstar!

To make a proper link that will benefit the blog or website you’re linking to, you first need to structure the link correctly. I have several previous post on how to do this, but I’ll go ahead and spell it out one more time for those of you who are just joining us.

WordPress and many other programs with WYSIWYG editors make creating perfect links easy with the little link icon. Just fill in the URL and “Title” fields and it will take care of the rest.

If you don’t have that option, here is how to make a proper link using HTML code. Let’s say you want to link back to this site. This is how your HTML link structure would look:

<a href=http://www.affiliatewatcher.com” title=”affiliate programs”>Affiliate Programs</a>

This is how it should look when you post your article: Affiliate Programs

Now you’re probably asking yourself why I have the words “Affiliate Programs” as a link instead of something like affiliatewatcher.com. The reason is that the words “Affiliate Program” are my anchor text.

Anchor text tells Google what the page is about that you’re linking too. If you have two identical links and one has anchor text and one doesn’t, the one with anchor text will carry more “weight” with Google than the one without. So when you link to this site with the words “Affiliate Programs,” you’re telling Google this site is about Affiliate Programs.

Notice the red ‘title=”affiliate programs”‘ in the link structure above. Your anchor text goes between the quotes (“”). Your anchor text should be a keyword or keyword phrase that describes the site you’re linking to. Let’s take this site for example again. If you wanted to link to this site, you could use the Anchor Text (keywords);

• affiliate programs
• internet marketing
• top affiliate programs
• best affiliate programs
• ebay affiliate programs.

It’s also important to put the same keyword or keyword phrase (shown in red here) between the …”> and </a> signs.

If you really want to make a blogger or Webmaster notice you when you link to them, bold the Anchor Text (keywords).

Here is an example of how you might link to another blog or website:

Don at AffiliateWatcher.com had an interesting review on ebay affiliate programs. This review got me to thinking of how I could take advantage of the ebay affiliate program on my own blogs.

Notice that I didn’t link the bloggers name or their site’s name. Always use the most relevant keywords describing THE PAGE you’re linking too!

If you’re linking to a story on the front page of a blog, click the story headline and use the page URL for your link. If you just link to the domain, the post may be off the front page when your visitors click on the link.

Also by linking to the exact page, you’re helping that blogger or Wembaster build deep links to his/her interior pages which is excellent for their SEO efforts.

So now you know how to build proper links and the reasons why you should be building the perfect links. No more linking to names and website URL’s! Now that you’re a link building Rockstar, go find those linking Groupies!

Share this:

Like it or not, there are few steps we can take to protect our content from scrapers.

I’ve spent a good amount of time fighting for my content when I find it on other sites. Many of these sites use RSS feeds to steal content. Yeah, there are a few things you can do, but is it really worth all the time and trouble it will cost you?

Here’s what you need to know.

If you post to your blog often, Mr. Googlebot will visit often. Googlebot visits my site at least once every other day. There are times it comes around every day. It loves fresh content!

Having said that, I do have a few blogs that I let slide without making post to them over a several week span. Googlebot slowed visits to these blogs, to a point where it was only visiting every other week or so.

What does this have to do with Scraped content?

You’ve probably heard about Google and the duplicate content penalty…right? Many people will tell you not to worry about stolen content because you published your article first.

Well, that may or MAY NOT be true. If you publish a blog post and it is indexed in Google first, then you generally have nothing to worry about.

However, if you do publish it first and Googlebot doesn’t visit you often and in the meantime your content is scraped and Googlebot visits the scraper site before it visits your site, guess who has the duplicate content then?

How I’m Dealing With Scraped Content

Honestly, I’m not worrying about it much.

What I am doing though is letting the scrapers help me.

What I’ve done with sites that are being scraped but not being visited often by Googlebot is that I’m putting a lot of links in the blog post.

Normally when your content is scraped, it’s being done automatically. The program sucks up all you content on the page including links and sometimes even photo’s. Now when your content is spit out on the scraper sites, there are links in the content pointing back to your site (if you put them in). There are a few scraper programs that strip out links, but from what I’m seeing, most don’t.

And…if you put your affiliate program links in your content, you now have some affiliate links on those sites as well.

But Aren’t All Scraper Sites Low Quality Sites That Don’t Make It Into Google’s Index?

Ahhh…I see you’ve been listening to Google lately. This is what Google would love for you to believe. But it’s not true.

If you Google often, how long has it been since you’ve come across a scraper site that was listed high in the rankings? I found several this morning while searching for some Sports news!

Okay, okay. So all these sites aren’t going to be PR 6 and PR 7′s listed at the top of the SERPS. That’s okay. However you will get a little link love from many of these scraper sites, especially if they’ve been around a while.

I’ve proven this technique with two sites that I knew were getting scraped.

Sure, I’d love it if we didn’t have to deal with these kinds of issues, but we do. So we might as well try and make the best of it when it happens. I don’t know about you, but I’m too busy to spend hours on end hunting down my scraped content and threatning the site owner.

As the old saying goes, shut down 1 scraper site and 10 more takes it place!

Share this:

Many of the blogs that I visited had removed the MyBlogLog widget. So then I logged into MyBlogLog account and noticed that there were fewer subscribers to some of the communities and my own community had shrunk.

In fact, when I looked at the top 10 A-list bloggers, I noticed only 1 had the MyBlogLog widget on their site.

What Has Caused the Exodus of MyBlogLog Subscribers?

So I started doing a little research into why this was happening.

I read old reviews about the acquisition of MyBlogLog by Yahoo and really found nothing.

Now I knew that some bloggers have had a problem with MyBlogLog from the beginning when it was reported that their widget was reading and possibly recording traffic to the blogs that used their widget. It was even reported that this widget would read and log clicks to Adsense. Needless to say, this didn’t set well with a lot of people.

Even with those reports though, many bloggers were adding the MyBlogLog widget to their blogs in huge numbers.

It wasn’t until I started reading post on other blogs about Yahoo requiring a MyYahoo account to login to MyBlogLog that I started seeing a lot of discontent. Obviously many MyBlogLog users refused to make the changeover and decided to leave rather than be forced to open a Yahoo account.

Why would Yahoo make this move?  Surely they knew it would drive away subscribers?

Life After The Yahoo Acquisition

Personally, I don’t like the move either. I have multiple MyBlogAccounts and Yahoo accounts. When I go blog browsing, I have one MyBlogLog account I use. However, sometimes another profile will pop up on the blogs MyBlogLog widget. This doesn’t set well with me.

I’m not sure what Yahoo’s plan is for MyBlogLog is. From where I’m standing, it doesn’t look like a good fit for Yahoo. I believe their move of requiring a Yahoo account to login proves this.

So what’s in store for MyBlogLog? I don’t know honestly. I don’t use MyBlogLog as much as I did previously. It also seems to have become very spammy.

I’ll continue to show the widget in the short term, but I’m wanting to see some advantages of using it.

What experiences have you had with MyBlogLog? Do you still use the widget? Share your experiences with the rest of us by dropping a comment.

Share this:

I don’t usually toot my own horn, and I’m not going to start now. Why? Because Evan Carmichael at EvanCarmichael.Com has done it for me! Evan runs a very information packed site about Entrepreneuring. His site has been featured in main stream media outlets like the New York Times, Dallas Morning News, The Globe and Mail and many others.

Now you can understand why it was such a surprise when I found his email in my inbox stating that AffiliateWatcher.Com was chosen as one of the Top 50 Marketing Blogs to watch in 2008!

If you look down the list, you’ll see that I’m in some pretty good company. Actually, it’s pretty humbling to realize this blog’s been picked along with many A-listers in Evan’s Top 50.

The Top 50 is a Who’s Who in Internet Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Affiliate Marketing, Business and Technology blogs.  This is one of the most comprehensive, if not The Most comprehensive, list of top expert bloggers and entrepreneurs in their field.

Bloggers such as Darren at Problogger.net, Wendy at eMoms.com, Drew at drewsmarketingminute.com, Brian at Copyblogger, Andy at andybeard.eu and many other Top-of-the-line bloggers! Go ahead and follow the link above to see the list. You won’t be disappointed!

I’d like to say “Thank You” to Evan for choosing this blog as one of his Top 50!

Share this:

“Umm, I don’t know why?” I half heartily replied because I was’t really listening.

“They sent us a check for $246.18. Are you sure you don’t know who they are”

Man, I was out of my chair quicker than Flash Gordon!

“Let me see, let me see it” I said. Halfway expecting it to be one of those phony checks you get in the mail from banks, mortgage companies and other Spammers of snail mail.

“Cool” I said.

“So you do know who Click Bank is” my Wife stared at me.

“Yeah, I may have heard of them.” I gingerly replied.

How I Used Blogger and ClickBank To Start A Profitable Blog Empire

Now, $246 isn’t going to set the world on fire, but when you’re not expecting it, it’s cool. And when you realize you can duplicate it over and over, you begin to see how you can that this technique has some power to it.

I’d like to tell you this was planned from day one, but I can’t. Here’s what happened.

Late last year I bought the eBook “Blogging To The Bank.” It’s about a technique of creating Blogger blogs and gaming MSN search, IMHO. MSN search use to have a loophole where you could quickly and easily take advantage of their love of Blogger blogs. You could easily outrank most any website with a blogger blog and some backlinks.

About the time I bought this ebook, MSN finally got around to closing this loophole, although I didn’t know it at the time.

I read the eBook. It sounded a lot like the author would use PLR articles and some RSS feeds for content on his Blogger blogs. I thought “Geez, if I pick a category I know something about and write some quality content, it should work better.”

Here’s How I Set My Blogger Network Up

I set up 5 or 6 Blogger blogs on a niche that I settled on.

To find the niche, I went to Google and searched for a niche that would have less than 1 million pages showing. I know this sounds like a big number, but trust me, not all those pages are about your niche.

For this example, I found a niche called Royal Copenhagen Glassware. As you can see, Google is showing 169,000 pages. This is a very small niche. (by the way, I love Royal Copenhagen glassware, but I don’t have a website about it)

I would then add content about Royal Copenhagen glassware to each of the Blogs. I would designate one as my Primary blog that would have the Affiliate links on it. The other blogs were designated Satellite blogs and have no affiliate links on them.

Use your main keyword for your Primary blog. Your Satellite blogs should be made up of relevant keywords to your Primary blog, but not the exact keyword. Make the network relevant to the Niche you choose. One niche blog network per Main keyword. This is where your network will get it power to generate profits from.

Each blog would have anywhere from 4 to 10 SEO keyword rich post on them. All the blogs would have links with the keyword in the anchor text pointing at the Primary Blog.

The last post on the Primary blog would be a review of the Clickbank product along with an affiliate link to the Clickbank product. “We’re pretending there is a Clickbank product about Copenhagen glassware, I have no idea if there really is”

TIP:Do not put ADSENSE ads on these blogs! In fact, do not every put Adsense ads on a Affiliate Marketing site. That site should be dedicated to selling the Affiliate product! Never give your visitor a reason to leave your site for a few cents! I’d rather have them leave and not make nothing rather than lose a potential sale because my Visitor left on an Adsense click! If you want Adsense money, build a Content site!

How To Find A Niche Product On ClickBank

One of the most important things that helped some of these sites achieve the high Click Thru Ratio that they achieved, which you need with a small niche, is the price of the ClickBank product. I chose products that had a price tag under $20. The product also had to pay me at least $9, preferably more!

The reason I look for something at or below the $20 threshold is because I believe people do not hesitate much, if any, on pulling out their credit card and buying something under $20. So far this has worked extremely well on these niche blogs.

Another important thing to do is go and look at the landing pages to see how well the Copywriting is. If you’re not compelled to order the product, chances are your Visitors won’t either.

Next, buy the product. Yes, you heard me right. You should never sell an info product if you’ve never read it or used it! If it’s crap, you’ll end up with a high return and all your hard work will be for nothing! ClickBank will not pay our for returns!

To find a good product on ClickBank, I look for a product in the marketplace that has a “gravity” of 60 or higher and a refer rate of around 75.

Gravity is the number of distinct affiliate’s who earned commission with this product. I really like products with a Gravity over 100, but that’s hard to find in some niches.

Refer rate(or Rdfd on Clickbank) is the fraction of the totals sales referred by Affiliates. The high the number, the better. This tells you that other people are having succes at selling this product.

Patience Is A Blog Empire Builder’s Best Friend

Once you have your product chosen and quality content on your site, you then need to get them indexed in Google. Just find some high PR relevant sites to link back to each of those blogs until they are indexed. It’s that easy! It usually takes a few days for my blogs to be indexed.

Next is the hard part. Wait! Have Patience! Expect your blogs to sit for 6 months to a year before they climb the SERPS and start bringing in the Search Engine traffic. You can work at driving traffic to the blogs, but I prefer the “Build ‘em and forget ‘em” approach. I have way too many other things going on!

You can help the SERP climb of each of the blogs by linking to them from other sites already indexed outside your network, but it’s not a “must-do”. The higher the PR, the better the link. Just remember to use keywords in your anchor text!

Where My Mini-Blog Empire Is At Today

What happened is that those networks that I built about 10 months ago finally started getting some PR and climbing their way up the SERP ladder in their little niches.

The Primary blog on one of these networks has only 3 post on it. Yet, somehow, it has a PR2 with no backlinks (go figure that one!). Apparently Google isn’t counting any of the backlinks to it, yet Yahoo shows 45 backlinks to the page. (backlinks I found for them)

The Primary blog is at #12 for the Primary keyword and two other lesser keywords are on the front page about halfway down in the Google SERPS. This is where the traffic is coming from for those sites.

The blog network worked it’s way into the Top SERPS positions sometime in late Aug. and early Sept. That’s when the orders started trickling in, unbeknown to me!

Build ‘Em and Forget ‘Em

I had forgotten all about these blog networks. Shortly after I built Blogger network #3, I started hearing that MSN had closed the loophole that allowed Blogger blogs to dominate its SERP’s. Sure enough, none of my Blogger blogs were indexed by MSN. So after a few weeks, I wrote off the project.

So you see how sweet it is that Google came to my rescue and started sending them traffic.

I have no doubt, that if I had used PLR articles and RSS feeds, they’d still be in SERP hell and no where near the top. The articles on those blog networks are quality how-to articles and I sincerely believe that’s why they are nearing the #1 spot in Google SERPS.

What I’m Doing Now To Boost The Blogs In The SE Rankings

In the last few days, I added more keyword anchor text pointing at my Primary blogs on the network, from high PR sites, this should be the final straw and those blogs should reach the top 3 within a month or less.

I’ve also added some more keyword rich articles to the Satellite blogs. This should help them continue upward in the SERPS.

This technique is not for everyone I understand. But it may be something you want to add for an additional stream of revenue, especially if you have a small niche! A small niche may not have enough traffic to support you by itself, but having a network of niches can provide you some good passive income!

Once you have your first network tweaked and running, wash, rinse and repeat!

Share this:

Yesterday, after getting my Internet service back, I finished a blog post for one of my other blogs which I had started last week. The blog post turned out to be nearly 2500 words long. Wow, that is my all time long-winded blog post!

An instant after I hit ‘Publish’, the thought came to me that I should have cut that post up into smaller sections and did a mini-series. That is, I should have used short 300 to 600 word blog post over a period of days to get my message across rather than one huge blog post.

To Break Up a Blog Post or Not…That Is The Question

I personally do not have a problem with the length of blog post as long as they stay focused on the subject. I don’t care if they are 200 words long or 2000 words long. The important thing to me as a blog reader is that the post gives me the information I want and I just as soon have that information in one large chunk, not strung out over a few days.

I understand why some bloggers use a mini-series type post. They can micro-cover one subject over several days. If the subject you’ll be posting about has many points or differing angles, you might consider breaking it up over several post rather than one long one.

Of course another advantage of breaking a long post up is that you’ll have several post on the same subject. This may help you in search engine rankings, especially if every article is SEO optimized and linked to the other related post.

So When Is a Blog Post Too Long?

When the blogger starts to wonder from the main point and fails to remain focused. A blog post should be a focused article aimed at one singe idea or subject. If you get off track and start talking about something else totally different in the post, it’s time to back up and end it. You can always put up another post dealing with the different subject and link back to any previous post to prove your point.

Long blog post can also run the risk of losing your readers interest. Now, having said that, if you’re a captivating writer you may be able to keep your readers interest from the first word to the last. It depends on you.

Here are Some Pro’s and Con’s of Long Blog Post

Pro’s

• You’re able to give the reader all the information in one chunk
• Your post should be focused and SEO optimized which will help you in the rankings.
• If it’s truly a pillar article, it’s more likely to get back links

Con’s

• Run the risk of losing your readers interest
• The keyword density of the page is diluted
• It’s harder to keep a long blog post focused on the subject your writing about

Only you as the blogger know your readers and what they like/dislike. If you’re the type of blogger who dishes out short, lazer beam focused 300 word post, then hitting them with a 2000 word post may send them over the edge. You need to be aware of the Pro’s and Con’s of long blog post and know when to break it up!

Share this:

While there, be sure to vote for this blog!

Share this:

I hate to admit it, but Social Networking is probably one of my biggest weakness’s when it comes to generating blog traffic. So much so that I’ve been kicking around hiring someone to do it! I just don’t have time to figure out all the ways each Social Networking site works and the best way to generate traffic from them!

Anyway, I was surfing along the other night, looking for ways to maximize my Social Networking skills when I came across two sites that seem to make this job easier.

The first one was a site called Socialize-It.  Socialize-It is an automatic bookmarking service that will let visitors bookmark your post in many of the popular Social Networking sites. With just one click I might add.

For Webmasters, you can bookmark a page to all the Social Bookmarking sites with just one click.

Socialize-It works by cutting and pasting code into your blog where you want the button to show up.

Bookmark Pages to Multiple Social Networking Sites With 1 Click

OnlyWire is the next site I found.

OnlyWire is a service that let’s you add pages that you’ve bookmarked to 22 of the most popular bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us and ma.gnolia.

It’s easy to create an account with OnlyWire and of course, it’s free.

Both of these sites allow your visitors to also vote up your bookmarked pages in the Social Networking sites as well. This is where the real power behind these services shine. Best of all, they’re both free and easy to use.

If you’re like me and find the chore of bookmarking pages to many Social Networking sites overwhelming, give these services a try.

Share this:

I’d like to thank everyone who’s stopped by and participated in this blog. I have some exciting and fun things planned for the future and I hope you come along for the ride.

Blogs are fairly new to me and I appreciate all the help I’ve received from many of you. They’re certainly a lot different than creating my normal content/affiliate marketing sites!

If you’re a new reader, here are a few articles you may have missed over the last 100 blog post.

• I started this blog off back on January 1 with a post title “Affiliate Marketing For Beginners“, not bad for my first post if I do say so. This post described the many failures I see beginning affiliate marketers making.
• My second post was about how I believe there is no such thing as a Google Sandbox. My theory is that it exist in peoples head way more than it does on a Google datacenter.
• That same month, I reviewed the very excellent Firebox plugin called SEO for Firefox. If you don’t have it,  you need to get it.
• Then in May I had a post about the “Secret to Making Money with Affiliate Marketing“. This one went viral and brought in some good traffic.
• That same month, I entered Problogger.net’s group writing project with a tongue in cheek post titled: Top 5 Reasons Shoemoney May be the Anti Christ
• “Think Your Way to Affiliate Marketing Riches” was also a popular post I did in May.
• Most of my other top post are listed in the sidebar beneath the Heading “Popular Articles on AffiliateWatcher.Com“
• Today is also the launch day of “The Next Internet Millionaire” so get over to Joel Comm’s site and watch it. It should be fun.

As I said above, I have some fun things planned for this site. I’ll start a monthly giveaway of cool things.

My first ebook for this site is still in the works. I was going to make it a blog post, but it keeps growing and growing. It will be about building backlinks and generating traffic and yes, it will be FREE!

So, sit back and let’s celebrate with a cold one, unless you’re driving (in which case you shouldn’t be reading this anyway) and help me celebrate my little milestone in the blogosphere.

Share this:

PingOMatic is the default pinging service used with WordPress. It’s suppose to notify all the other major pinging services but I have my doubts about that. Since I added more pinging services to this blog, my traffic has increased. This tells me that PingOMatic is not hitting all the pinging services it should.

How To Increase Your Blog Traffic With Pings

You should first learn how to add or remove pinging services to your WordPress blog. Start by going to your Control Panel, then to Options. After you have the Options menu open, go to Writing. Once you have that menu open, scroll down to Update Services.

You should see this:

In the text field you’ll see web address to PingOMatic unless you’ve changed it. This is where you’ll be updating Ping services.

You can find a list of Ping Services to submit to at the bottom of the page.

Submit Your Blog To RSS Directories

You’ve heard it and I’ve heard it. To increase traffic we need to submit our blogs to blog directories. How many of us have actually searched out all the blog directories and done this? Do you know there are also RSS directories? Have you submitted your RSS feed to these? If not, read on, I’ll tell you about a cool Firefox Plugin that will help you do it free and easy.

Another benefit of submitting your blog and RSS to these directories is that you’ll receive a backlink.

I found Submitemnow. This is a Firefox plugin that you will download. Once downloaded, you’ll see the following in your Firefox toolbar.

The 1st thing you’ll do is go to the “Project” tab and select New. Next fill out all the information required, trust me, you’ll thank me later! Tip: I would use a disposable email address. Some of these sites you’ll be submitting too will require a confirmation by email, so you’ll need a valid email for the time being, just use a free one from Gmail or Yahoo.

One you have all the information filled out, you’re ready to start. Click on the “Next URL” and it will take you to DMOZ. If you haven’t submitted your blog there, you should. After you’re done there, hit the “Next URL” again. Once again a different site will show up with all the information automatically filled in (in most cases). Just keep working your way through the database.

I did find a few sites that were no longer active. I also found a few that had stopped taking submissions and some that charged for the submission. If you don’t want to take the time with these sites, just hit the “Next URL” button and the next directory will be loaded into your Firefox browser.

The Submitemnow Firefox extension will highlight the sites you’ve submitted to under the tap titled “Database”. When you open that menu, you’ll see the sites you’ve already sumbitted to. Pretty cool to keep up with all these sites. And there are hundreds!

It’ll take some time so be patient. Your hard work will pay off, it has for me! Also, if you don’t feel like submitting to all those directories, you can hire the people at Submitemnow to do it for you. I noticed they offered this service on their website.

Good Luck and watch the traffic start coming in once you’ve added your blog and RSS to these directories!

List of Ping Services

Here is a huge list of Ping Services. I borrowed this list off of DailyBlogTips. There are other list out there or you can use Submitemnow. I highly recommend you manually submit them at least once manually. I was surprised at how many directories didn’t have AffiliateWatcher.Com in them. For some of you, if you cut and paste this entire list into the text area, it may take quite a while to post. Others with broadband connection may not exprience any difficulty. Start with a few and work your way up.

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

Share this:

I’m still amazed at the bloggers who have a huge lump of text in thier post. I’ve even seen the whole post be one giant 600 word block. Even I couldn’t read through it all without wishing it would end.

Formatting your blog and making it user friendly includes using paragraphs and sectioning. Remember, most blog readers are skimmers. They’ll skim right over most of your text.

Who Wants $10?

Don’t believe me? When I did the post about sponsored links in WordPress Themes, I buried a challenge in the post. The challenge was that I would pay someone $10 if they could tell me how many embedded links are in a WordPress default install.

Although that page was linked-to pretty heavy and I received a good amount of traffic to it, few guessed at the right number. Most I believe skimmed right over it and never saw the challenge. So from now on, I’ll be leaving little challenges like that in my post, just to see who’s paying attention! By the way, the challenge in that article is over, no one guessed the right number, keep reading to find the next challenge buried in an upcoming article.

How To Format Your Blog for Reader Loyalty and Ease of Use

Here’s how to ad some formatting to your blog to make it more user friendly.

• Use bullet points for list (like this one) - Bullet points tend to break the text up and make list easier to read
• Use the <H3> tag for section headers – I believe the H3 tag is underused by many bloggers. Instead of using the <Strong> tag for section heading, use the <H3> and make your post easier to read and increase your SEO. Some search engines like Yahoo and MSN thrive with on page optimization.
• Bold Keywords – If I click on a site and see many of my keywords, I tend to stay around the site longer reading relevant information. If I click on the same site and see a huge blog of text, I don’t bother. So do many other people. Use the <Strong> tag to bold keywords in your article.
• Use the <em> tag – The <em> tag is the same as the <i> Italics tag. Use italics to make quotes or your powerful thoughts jump out on the page. Italics pull peoples attention span out of “skim” mode. More so than the <Strong> tag if you ask me.
• Keep paragraphs short – I’m bad about this, but I’m getting better! Don’t go on and on forever. Keep the sentences focused and on point…yeah…I’m guilty of this one also

It doesn’t take long to break some paragraphs up into sections, use some bulleted list and bold some keywords. This will make your blog “Skimable” and will make many of your readers happy!

Share this: