Here are the most obvious LinkedIn benefits for bloggers.

1. Brand yourself

LinkedIn profile is an excellent way to build personal brand and promote yourself as a blogging expert. A complete, well-planned, and linked profile is a powerful way to show off your professional achievements and expertise. Your LinkedIn profile sums up your professional experience, career history, education, skills and interests. It gives you an opportunity to demonstrate what you can do for others (your target audience). LinkedIn profile is an important part of your public image and credibility. Promote it on your blog and in your email signature by adding link View my profile on LinkedIn.

2. Promote your blog

LinkedIn gives you an opportunity to add customized links to your blogs or websites. You can add up to three personal links in your profile. But, you can also use LinkedIn applications like WordPress and Blog Link to promote your blog feed on your LinkedIn profile. This is an awesome way to give you profile visitors the sneak preview of your blog content.

3. Increase blog Traffic

It is a well known fact that as bloggers we use social networks to promote our blog content and increase traffic to our blogs. When it comes to LinkedIn, you can share links with your connections only, groups you belong to, or publicly, with everyone who visits your profile. But, use this opportunity wisely and don’t bombard your connections and groups with links. That may have counter effect. You certainly don’t want to brand yourself as a spammer.

4. Build your network

LinkedIn enables you to quickly grow your network and connect with others. You can easily search through your email contacts and see who already has a LinkedIn profile, find your ex-coworkers, school  and college friends. LinkedIn also uses the system of connections to recommend users whom you may already know. LinkedIn logic is simple: The more connections you have, the more your network will grow. By adding connections you are increasing findability of your LinkedIn profile.

5. Build reputation and authority

There are authorities and leading experts in every field. If you want to position yourself as a blogging expert or blogging consultant, then you have to build your reputation in that field. LinkedIn can help you in this pursuit a lot. You can build your reputation and authority on LinkedIn through LinkedIn Groups and Linkedin Answers. LinkedIn answers and LinkedIn groups enable you to easily demonstrate your expertise in your field. By answering other users’ questions, you demonstrate your knowledge and prove that you can help others. As an active and helpful member of the groups you joined, you can increase your visibility and recognizability.
Another powerful way to position yourself as an expert is to get recommendations. Recommendations are personal endorsements and proofs that you deliver what you promise.

6) Find ideas for blog posts

LinkedIn questions and group discussions are absolutely amazing tools for generating blog post ideas. They provide an insight into what people want to know and need to learn. You may want to subscribe to new questions in your area of expertise. For example, if you are blogging about technology, it would be wise to subscribe to new questions in this category.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of LinkedIn benefits for bloggers. But these six are certainly good enough reasons to visit the site and click the button Join Now.

Six LinkedIn Benefits for Bloggers is a post from: Blog Godown

There are many challenges of freelancing that can derail you on the road to success. From client management, to coping with distractions while working from home and even mundane tasks such as invoicing. There are many aspects of freelancing that are all designed to test the skills and patience of a freelancer, and thus only those who are perfect for this lifestyle should embark on a freelancing career. However, one of the most difficult aspects of freelancing is to effectively build your own marketing splash in order to promote your services and acquire clients. In short, you need to hit the ground running when starting out as a freelancer and only you will be raving about your skills and services and the best way to do this is to enter the blogosphere. So how can blogging get your talents out there to be seen by potential clients?

Entering the blogosphere

By entering the blogosphere you can make a name for yourself and more importantly your services by learning from fellow freelancers in your field and sharing your knowledge and experience with others in your position. Entering the world of freelancing can be extremely daunting and the demand of fighting to land projects in order to survive means that any tips and tricks that you can share with other freelancers will be greatly appreciated. Moreover, if you’re a young freelancer that is perhaps just starting out on the path, then of course without the years of experience behind you, the best way to learn from the practical experiences of others is to follow the main blogs from leaders in the field. However, interacting with the blogosphere means more than just reading blogs and writing the odd blog comment. Create your own blog in order to forge your own style/brand, and start connecting with other bloggers in order to collaborate on articles.

Using your blog to find new contacts

By using your blog as a platform to communicate and interact with other freelancers you will find yourself coming onto a first name basis with many of them. By offering guest article spots to fellow freelancers in your field then you are enabling their services and brand to reach your readers. This “you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours” approach to blogging is vital in order to build up a strong list of blogging partners that are happy to recommend your blog to other contacts. These new contacts will bring you more traffic and thus more readers who you can impress with your know-how. However, this sharing of knowledge will not land you with hundreds of contacts right away. Of course, you will need to expand your networking to other platforms such as twitter and LinkedIn in order to keep the flow of the conversation between you and your blogging contacts constant.

Landing new clients and projects

One thing that can’t be underestimated is that really effective blogging can take up a lot of your time. So you need to be realistic about what you want your blog to be. If you want it to be a lexicon style fountain of knowledge, with a constant publication of tutorials then this may leave little precious time for the work that will pay your bills – completing projects. However, using a blog to kill two birds with one stone is the way to go. Any completed work can be showcased on your blog (as long as the details are not private) in order to create a diverse portfolio for yourself. Moreover, investing the time into making a professional blog that is liked and shared around the freelance blogosphere is vital to impressing potential clients and landing new projects. Plus, your blog content does not always need to be heavily researched and in-depth, simply including posts which reflect on your experiences as a freelancer will bring unique content to your readers and show a more human side to potential customers, giving them an indication of you before they decide on contacting you for a project.

Boosting your freelance profile through blogging is a post from: Blog Godown

Are you spending every waking moment planning for your blog? Do you spend hours and hours searching other high ranked blogs related to your niche, reading blog after blog to find inspiration and ideas, checking traffic of your blog or sometimes just starring at your laptop’s blank screen and finally going to bed exhausted?

If the answer to the above mentioned question is yes, then you are over indulging in your blog. If, despite all of your efforts, you fail to be inspired and are not generating any new ideas for your blog then you’re suffering from blogger’s burnout.

Getting Frustrated is not the solution!

Questions to ask yourself

If you are not quite convinced yet that you are suffering from writer’s block or blogger’s burnout then ask yourself the following questions.

Ask yourself if all of your practices helped you achieve something remarkable?

If it helped you make any improvements to your blog?

If your answer is no then here’s the first sign that you just might be a victim of the notorious condition called blogger’s burnout. If you have any doubts then look around at the condition your room is in. Are there coffee stains on your table, energy drinks cans, chocolate wrappers or pile of cups? If yes, then there is no denying the fact that you, indeed, are undergoing a blogger’s burnout.

Dealing with Blogger’s Burnout

If you are in a state of denial about your condition then you can seriously aggravate it and take your “blogging burnout” to a point where you will be unable to post something new for your readers.

It’s a normal condition and happens with a lot of other bloggers too who have been blogging for a long time without having anything else to do. But rather than fretting too much about it, you can simply use the following tips to deal with it.

Make a schedule

There are certain rules of doing things. Blogging is like working from home for which you need to work by a strict schedule. Dedicate a few hours to your blog while taking out time for other things as well. You should not overwork or burden yourself too much just because it’s your blog you are working on. Take short breaks even within day and after some interval.

Create a proper working ambiance

Open up your windows and curtains, let light flood your room. Continuously working in a darkened room can affect your eyesight. Besides, working in little or no light can also cause stress which snubs the generation of idea.

Spare some time for yourself

It is not advisable to work continuously. You need to take out the time to allow yourself to live life. Go out for a walk, a jog or a swim. Make your limbs move and take in ample oxygen into your lungs. Meet your friends, plan some lunch or go out for coffee even. Not only will it be refreshing for you but you’d also feel much better.

Find inspiration

There is no specific time duration within which you can brew up an “exceptional idea” to work with. Go easy on yourself, relax and you will definitely come up with something new, something brilliant for your blog.

If for example, you come up with more than one idea then it is not necessary for you to start working on both of them. Note it down and schedule for some other time. Keep a notepad with you at all times to write down your ideas for later.

Learn to relax

You have got a blog like everyone else has, then what were you doing so exceptional to get it going? Once you are relaxed, prioritize your activities to allocate time to each one of them.

Once you will be back, even you write one post, make sure to optimize it for SEO, do some promotion and see the results. Instead of a big leap, take small steps towards your destination. All of these things will help you to get rid of your stress but also re-energize you. You’d see the affect of it all on your blog in the form of better response.

Telltale signs of Blogger’s Burnout and how to deal with it is a post from: Blog Godown

With more than 150 million blogs in existence, it can be hard to get the word out about one specific blog. Getting users to come to an individual site requires following seven steps to get the links out there on sites that have high traffic regularly.

How to get the word out!

1. Interaction

Interact with users on the blog. Responding to comments and asking for feedback are great ways to get more users interested in what the writer has to say.

2. Filling in as a Guest

Look for ways to be a guest blogger on other websites. When the entry is posted on the site, there will usually be links to a social media profile and bio, which allow for more exposure and access to the main blog. When choosing to follow this step, it is important to carefully read all guidelines and restrictions listed on the host blog, because breaking a rule could result in removal of the post.

3. Getting the Word Out

Comment on other blogs since anyone reading these comments can click on the profile to access another person’s blog. Online services such as commentluv and back linking also provide more access to the blog via comments. Those who are interested in the content of the comment may want to read more, and could thus become a loyal reader.

4. Participate in Contests

The next step is to participate in as many blogging contests as possible. There are many contests available online, and include a chance to become a guest blogger.

5. Then, Host a Contest

A fifth way is to be the host of a blogging contest as visitors can lead to more subscribers. When planning to host a contest, bloggers can gain sponsors, which can lead to advertising opportunities, meaning more income.

6. Linking to Other Sites

Along with this is the sixth step, which is to offer promotional pages. These allow fellow bloggers to be featured, which can lead to links on other individuals’ pages. This is a form of marketing that won’t cost the blogger anything.

7. Be Everywhere

The final way to increase accessibility to a blog is to market within social networking websites. The Facebook home page offers a news feed where a blogger could post frequent links to the topics on the blog as often as desired. It is estimated that Facebook currently has over 500 million users, and many of these individuals are accessing the site multiple times per day through a mobile application. Utilizing website development courses can also help users understand how to maximize the potential growth of the blog through these sites.

Making a blog stand out can result in higher traffic and interest in advertising opportunities for the writer, and interest in the opinions and thoughts of what is being discussed on the blog. Some bloggers start out with few readers, and then end up becoming some of the most highly visited sites on the web. Why not give blogging a try and increase readers with every step?

7 Ways to Market and Get your Blog Out There is a post from: Blog Godown

When I started blogging, I made a terrible mistake. I annoyed a few bloggers –unintentionally I might add- but I am sure that I did.

Every time I liked a post and commented on it, I thought – oh, here is where I am going to get discovered. This is my chance.

So while I truly liked the post, I somehow made the response about ME.

I wrote in the comments to get attention. Ouch!

Only because …

I had listened to the advice every new blogger gets. Comment on other blogs to generate traffic to your blog. How many times have you heard this? Heck, I am also guilty of saying the same to people who care to listen – the gullible newbies.

That’s just plain wrong.

You might get some views by commenting on other blogs, but not many. And that is not why you should be commenting anyway. You comment because you honestly have something to say. You have liked something and you want to add to it. Or you might feel to the contrary and want to say your two cents worth.

Beleive me when I say this, it’s not about you, it’s about them.

Think of how much time you spend on commenting on a post. Think again of how many comments you read and click on to follow to their blogs. I am thinking – not many. You won’t want to spend hours commenting on posts hoping other readers will click through. You need to be spending that time on

• Writing amazing posts (I get sick of word ‘content’ sometimes)
• Replying to comments on your own blog
• Reading up on books, magazines and other blogs
• Making sure your blog looks the way you want it to, and most importantly
• Creating mutually beneficial relationships in the blogging world

Case in point: Me

I had no business being online. I was a marketer and a business writer for a leading University. I had given up on practising law to become a teacher/writer.

Then I had a genius thought – hang on – why don’t I move my writing to online? Become a webpreneur. I have the skill – I’ll start a blog. All I need is people to find me, that shouldn’t be too hard.

Except a teeny tiny problem – I don’t know anybody online. Just like real life, I stink at networking. So what do I do? I start following the advice that is most frequently doled out to newcomers.

“Start commenting on other blogs to drive traffic to yourself.”

This is the biggest piece of crap I have heard.

Assuming you are awesome at what you do but you are just starting out – stop with the goddamn commenting on hundred random blogs. The other 89 readers on a post are NOT checking you out. No matter how interesting your comment is – or how brilliant your blog is – they are just not that into you. Don’t take it personally.

The other readers just don’t have the time to read each and every comment. Sure, they might read a few but they won’t necessarily follow the link to check out the blogs. I know I don’t do it, how can I expect this from others.

The only person who does seem to care about what you think is the blogger themselves. And they will not like it either if your sole purpose to comment on their blog is to attract attention – to yourself.

The biggest favour you can do for yourself is to start making friends with other bloggers.

I am sure you follow a few blogs. Are there any blogs that you absolutely can’t live without? Well you need to develop some sort of relationship with these people – network with these bloggers, because frankly you like them right?

Also you want allies in the world of blogging. You need people on your side.

How can you create networking opportunities with these people. Well, they already exist so no need to reinvent the wheel.

Participate in their Blogs

Comment on their posts – for the right reasons. If you are not quite sure, go back up and read my case study again.

Extend offers of help. Point them to resources you think might help them out.

Link to their Posts

Only because its necessary that you do. And when the timing is right, they will link back to you.

After a while you might be ready to approach them to do a guest post. By now you have known them for a while, hopefully you know you a bit too and like you as well. It doesn’t have to be a purely business pitch, it can be mate writing to another one.

Connect on Social Media

You are not a social media enthusiast? No worries – do something that even your grandma can do.

Connect with them on twitter. Follow their feeds and slowly start to establish a relationship with them. Reply to their tweets, RT them and say thanks for being an inspiration. And mean it.

Share the posts you love on facebook. Interact with them so they know you exist and you care. That in turn will show that you matter.

Then when you approach people for guest posting, it truly is because you have enjoyed reading their blog so much that you want to contribute. And there is no harm in admitting (secretly – to yourself) that you could use their help promoting yourself.

You cannot do more than that, as it is not under your control. Worry about what you can change and play nice. In time you will start to see steady rise in traffic. And this time around, the best thing is that the people are coming to stay.

Now is the time to start that joy of dance – let us begin.

Remember your days a low grade new blogger? Is this the advice you came across most often? How much time did you spend on commenting and what initially worked for you to bring in serious traffic? Do share in the comments below.

Commenting for the Wrong Reason? 3 Simple Ways for Effective Networking is a post from: Blog Godown

While some may think otherwise, people start blogs for one reason: to be read by other people. So, one of the most important things to keep in mind when writing posts for your blog is to avoid alienating your potential readers. Here are a few things that will turn your readers against you in no time.

How to scare away your readers

Assume You Are Better Than They Are

There is a big difference between imparting knowledge and climbing on a soapbox. One of the easiest ways to lose an audience is to talk down to them. Of course, it’s always okay to let them know what your opinions are and you should never back down when you believe wholeheartedly in something, but holding fast to a belief and disrespecting others for their beliefs are completely different things. Make sure that you always respect your readers point of view and always give them a chance to respond.

Don’t Allow Comments

This point ties in nicely with the point I tried to make above. Half the reason people read blogs and visit web sites is so that they can throw in their two cents. Everyone wants to be heard, and more importantly, everyone has the right to put their opinion forward. Let your audience interact with you and with each other by maintaining and curating the comments sections for all of your posts. Now, that doesn’t mean that you should let your audience go crazy and post whatever they want in your comments section, but be sure not to discriminate and/or remove comments that may go against the opinions you stated in your post. Remember, a strong comments section is a sure sign of a popular blog.

Ignore Those Mistakes

I know what it’s like to churn out post after post. Sometimes it’s more important to publish for the sake of publishing, as opposed to something that you are truly interested in, just so your readers don’t lose interest. But that is no reason to let the quality of your content let it go by the wayside. If you start letting small grammatical errors and spelling mistakes slip by, you are headed down a road that is incredibly difficult to get back from. Take pride in the work you do, and only publish posts when you are sure that they are error free.

Get Off Subject

Most blogs have a focus. Sales, politics, reviews – there are any number of subjects out there that would provide perfect fodder for a blog. But if you go to a blog whose subject is supposed to be reviewing the latest movies at the cineplex and you start reading a post about the author’s sister’s wedding rehearsal dinner, then there is a problem. Promising your audience that you are going to cover a certain subject and then writing about something completely unrelated is a sure way to get your site knocked off their favorites list.

Break Your Promises

Breaking promises is an easy trap for a blogger to fall into. You get into the swing of things, start posting more and more often, start covering wider and more interesting topics, then you go for the big gun and tell your audience you are going to present them with a jaw dropping, unbelievable post next week – and you don’t. Not only that, you don’t deliver the next week either. It’s easy to promise your readers something, but as soon as you break that promise, as soon as you don’t come through, you start losing your audience.

Become Stagnant

This may go without saying, but there are quite a few blogs out there that forget one of the most important rules of blogging: stay relevant. If you write about the same old things, post after post, week after week, your readers will come to expect the same old thing and lose interest. Evolve with the time, keep your audience on their toes. The more interesting your content, the longer your audience will stay with you.

6 Fast Ways To Alienate Your Audience is a post from: Blog Godown

Driving attention to a niche blog can be a hard task to accomplish, even if you’re a seasoned veteran at drawing in a ground. Providing readers with great content that engages them and leaves them wanting more is a sure fire way to draw in a crowd and keep them, but grabbing the initial attention of the readers is a hard task to complete. Thankfully, services like MyBlogGuest.com make it easy to connect with other bloggers in your niche so you can essentially swap readers.

How It Works

MyBlogGuest.com is essentially a network of bloggers who are interested in featuring guest content, or bloggers who are interested in providing guest content. This method of content sharing benefits both, as the person featuring the guest post gets fresh content and a new perspective that their readers are sure to enjoy, while the guest author gets backlinks and the potential for more readers to regularly visit his own blog since both blogs are in the same niche.

The service is extremely easy to use and there is no division between the guest posters and the bloggers. The marketplace is divided for easy browsing, but if you have a blog and you’d like to write a few guest posts to increase exposure while featuring guest posts of someone else, it’s completely possible. The best part of the whole service is that it connects you to like-minded people for free, so you’re benefiting each other.

Does It Work?

In terms of providing a place for guest bloggers to have their content published and content providers to find content easily, yes it does. Of course there are always quality control concerns when you have a massive marketplace like this, as anyone can apply and type up anything in the hopes that someone else will publish it. The service does feature quality writers, but slogging through the multitude of blog entries to find them can be tiring.

Thankfully, if you find a blogger or guest blogger who’s work you like, you can bookmark them to find their articles on the site much easier. This makes featuring content from those you trust much easier. The authors of content also retain the full rights of their articles, so there’s no need to worry about losing your valued work. Any links that are established within the article must stay put, so as long as you’re not abusing your link privileges as a content author, then your links will stay intact as well.

Overall, for anyone who needs quick content to maintain their blog while on vacation, or for anyone who is looking for an avenue to reach more readers, the MyBlogGuest.com marketplace is a great start.

Gautam Chips in: I have used Myblogguest.com and found it very beneficial for those who are just new to arena of guest blogging or who are looking for quality content for their blogs. I have had the chance of inviting several guest bloggers from this website and I must say, I was never disappointed with their work (actually I was a little surprised because some of them were really amazing).

MyBlogGuest.com: A Blogger’s Review is a post from: Blog Godown

Having an e-mail opt-in list is essential. Such a list provides a legitimate way to keep in contact with your customers or potential customers and reduce your chances of losing them to the competition.

Some of the top marketers, when looking into the reasons why some of their students are not making money, will, above all else, check to see whether that person has an e-mail list. It’s that important! There are, however, a few things to keep in mind when creating your opt-in list.

Subscription Software

Choose the best service for your purposes in automating your registration process for would-be subscribers. Once you have such a service up and running, visitors to your blog can automatically opt-in to your list without your supervision or intervention. You can even choose whether the approval of the subscriptions is automated or manual (but manual intervention will be needed only in rare circumstances). Three of the top mailing list companies are AWeber, VerticalResponse and Constant Contact.

The browser you use to access whatever service you choose does matter; for example, Safari for the Mac and AWeber’s site do not get along well with each other. Mac users of AWeber will need to use a browser like Firefox instead.

Make Them An Offer

Offer something of value, such as a free e-book or autoresponder course, to encourage people to join your e-mail list.  Be sure to place your offer in a prominent area of your homepage and, for best results, on every page of your website.

As with all aspects of your website, you should make regular checks to ensure that everything is always in good working order.

Call to Action

Make your offer enticing. You should offer strong encouragement to join your list. Create an effective call to action using short but powerful sentences and action-packed words to create a sense of urgency.

Deadlines

Special incentives can also include membership privileges or special discounts. For certain offers, you can get better results by placing a deadline on your promotion. A “ticking clock” will encourage more blog readers to avail themselves of your offer.

Quality

Do not downplay the value of your newsletter just because you’re offering a free bonus. It will do no good to get subscribers if they immediately unsubscribe after getting your gift. Frame your newsletter as an important benefit of your offer. Then do your best to make sure that your newsletter lives up to its billing.

For example, your e-mail list may give subscribers regular updates on the latest additions to your blog as well as members-only discounts. Newsletter content can easily be created with a voice dictation program like Dragon Dictate for Mac or Dragon NaturallySpeaking for PC.

Safety and Confidentiality

Another way to encourage people to sign up to your list is by assuring them that their safety and confidentiality will be guaranteed. You should always give your solemn word that their address will not be traded, sold or given away to other parties. A good mailing list service will also have safeguards in place to assure a secure platform that keeps customer data safe from being hacked.

The Bottom Line

Of course, the best clincher in gaining subscribers is your blog itself. If you consistently provide the best possible content on your blog, you will show visitors that you have something to offer and give them the best reason to sign up to your list. If they don’t see anything of value on your blog, they will have no incentive or encouragement to subscribe to your newsletter.

An Email List Can Benefit Your Blog is a post from: Blog Godown

You’ve decided on your blogging platform, and you’re excited. You look at the screen, and your fingers are poised on the keyboard and tingling with anticipation. But what do you type? How do you start well out of the blogging gate in the race for search engine attention and building a reader following?

The biggest question - What to do next?

Keyword Tie-Ins

Regardless of the theme of your blog, keep in mind what gets attention from search engines and from the reading public: keywords, content, and site or blog advertising.

Title your blog with one of the top keywords in your subject area.

Use keywords or phrases with a density of once for every 100 to 150 words, not including your blog signature, which should include your main keyword phrase or blog title. Don’t overuse the keyword in your posts. Search engines block listings from overly-dense content.

Post consistently and always with relevant content. Make a posting schedule and keep it. Try for a minimum of two or three times per week or more often if possible.

Legal Advertising

There are several methods that can legally—as in non-spam—advertise your blog:

1. Related Blogs and Forums: Find blogs and forums that relate to your blog topic. If direct URL posting is not allowed, contact the blog owner or site manager and request a link exchange. If disallowed, continue searching. There are hundreds of thousands of related sites on the Internet.
2. Your Personal Email: On every personal email address you have, you can legally advertise your blog in two ways: Signature Block: Create and use a signature block that includes an automatic link to your blog. Every person you email will get one automatically. Vacation Responder: Periodically use this tool to send a message to every person who sends you an email when it’s activated. The message can read simply, ‘Sorry I can’t answer right away. I’m busy with my blog, Border Collie Lover in Pasadena, found at:’ and include the URL. Finish it with something like, ‘I’ll personally answer your email soon. Thanks for your patience. Meanwhile, come read!’
3. Email List Owners: Sign up for e-zines about your blog topic. When you get a good feel for the content being sent, email the list owner and volunteer content for his or her e-zine. Include the content and the resource box listing your name, your blog’s name, and the blog’s URL. If the list owner likes the content and agrees to send your mini-article in the e-zine, you’ve just succeeded in advertising your blog to potentially thousands of people, and without spamming.
4. Social Networking Sites: Yes, yes, and yes. Yes, create a page, entitled the same or as close to your blog title as you can on every social network site. Yes, link to and from your blog, and yes, include the social sites’ URLs in your signature blocks and resource boxes.
5. Article Writing: Write an information article or series regarding your topic. Meet the submission guidelines regarding no ‘selling’ your particular site, and include your blog, et al, in your resource box. Allow others to use your article—with your name, your copyright notice, and your resource box left intact—freely on their sites. This allows you to advertise your blog on potentially thousands of web pages, creating a back link on each posting site.

Potential to Earn Money

Blogging presents two ways to possibly earn money: paid advertising on your blog and freelance blogging.

Paid advertising is either presenting ad space for others to rent on your blog or signing up for Google AdSense which pays you, as the blog owner, each time someone clicks an AdSense ad on your blog. The more popular your blog becomes to the search engines, the more people who are going to read your blog, which means there are potentially more ads clicked and more money paid to you.

Once you have a consistent, well-designed and maintained blog, others may contact you to write for their blog or you can apply to blog writers’ advertisements, and use your great blog as a sample.

I Have a Blog. Now, What Should I do? is a post from: Blog Godown

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to promoting your blog. While it’s fine to use ebooks, audio, video and interviews as promotional techniques, there are some older methods that still work well. Check them out.

Basic Blog Tips : Old School Blogging Tips

Back To Basics: Three Blog Promotion Techniques That Still Work is a post from: Blog Godown

Create an Army of Loyal Readers using Offline Marketing

A good technique for blog marketing is offline marketing which is a good alternative to online marketing. Compared to online marketing, offline marketing can prove to be more fruitful. Offline Marketing has been proven to be beneficial for bloggers who want to promote their blogs locally or who want to expand their reader base using offline activities.

There are many ways and means to perform offline marketing. The effectiveness of each technique depends on the type of blog and the target audience.
Let’s take an example of a sports blog where the target audience is youngsters. They can market their blog by targeting sport tv channels as well newspapers or at bars where people watch sports(and most of them belong to the younger generation). The Idea is pretty simple, the technique used should be relevant and engaging, so that they go and visit your website after your marketing work is done.

I would like to share some of the methods which you can employ to create a successful offline marketing campaign:

Printed Material

Create well designed brochures or any other form of printed material and then distribute it. The material should include the important details pertaining to your blog i.e the link of your blog, link to your social media profiles, your email address and your phone no. Giving vital information helps in building credibility. Also, to increase your conversion rate, include a promotion on that printed material.

A good example of this promotion: A shopping blog can offer to give a set of coupons to the fans of their fan pages and their twitter followers. By including a promotion, you can increase engagement which will thereby increase the conversion rate.

Offer Freebies

Give your audience a free gift. It can be a CD, pen, folder, laptops, USBs etc. The options are endless, but the gifts should not exceed your budget. You have to ensure that the free material you are offering should contain your blog’s promotion. The way you embed your promotion in the freebies is totally up to you. The more creative you can get with it, the better the outcome will be.

Business Card

Business cards are a prerequisite to offline marketing. You have to create your business cards with all the necessary details and you should always carry it with you. Because, you might accidentally meet people whose interests might match with your blog’s niche. If you are ready, you can give your business card and you can expect at least one visit from that person.

Bundled Items

Instead of offering only printed material or just freebies, you can bundle these two together and offer it as kits. The more, the merrier

Sponsor an Event

You can sponsor an event which is related to your niche.

For example, an online training website can sponsor a college event which is based on academics and offer them prizes as well as free subscriptions to their online training portal. This will be a really good publicity stunt for their website.

This event will be able to attract the target audience and hence, it will be able to deliver a really high conversion rates.

Organize/ Participate in Blogger Meets

Blogger Meets can be ideal places to build awareness about your brand and also network with your fellow bloggers. Creating a network of bloggers helps in saving you a lot of time which you might have spent on marketing your blog.

Start giving free courses

Give some free courses or organize a knowledge sharing event on a topic which is relevant to what you blog about. As you are an expert in that field, you can  gain reputation and trust of others which will help in building your subscriber base.

For eg. A health blog can organize a talk on healthy living and its benefits.

Advertising Offline

Small business owners who want to grow their business at a rapid rate should use offline advertising. They can promote their blogs on the print as well as visual media. This technique might be expensive, but it is able to deliver in a very short period of time.

I might have missed on some points which might be equally effective. The best thing about offline marketing is, that there are no fixed ways of doing things. You can devise a technique based on your own idea. It would be good to share your ideas of offline marketing which you have used in the past.

How to Promote your Blog using Offline Marketing is a post from: Blog Godown

Blog Moderation is a tough task

No two blogs are the same, or at least they shouldn’t be. While topics and content can be similar, the major differences are below the fold. For me, at least, it’s about how the blog owner/author moderates the comments. We’ve already read pieces on different types of commenters, but how about the different types of moderators?

Link Nazi

The only thing this moderator hates are links in the comment section. No matter how valid the comment, what type of link it is, NO LINK FOR YOU. This doesn’t mean the blog owner is against linking out. More than likely he/she has a blogroll or a set of links to sites he/she supports. It doesn’t degrade the quality of the blog either. Just don’t be surprised when your link doesn’t get included.

For Example:

Blog Post: Dogs are Better Than Cats

Dogs rawk! Cats stink. Dogs like to play outside; cats do nothing but poop in a box you have to clean later. Dogs can fetch Frisbees while cats only lie around, get fat, cough up hairballs and get high on catnip. Dogs love to get treats and show you appreciation for giving them treats. Dogs FTW!!!

Commenter 1: Dogs are cool man. That’s why I’ve got four.

Author: Four? Dude that’s awesome. How can you afford to feed them all?

Commenter 2: Dogs are pretty cool. But what do you think of cats?

Author: Cats are okay. I’ve just grown up with dogs.

Commenter 1: Well, my job pays pretty well If I couldn’t afford to I’d have to give some away

Commenter 2: Hey you removed my link!

Author: It’s your first time here, and you’ve got a spammy username. Change it and stop by again and I might add your link. And commenting twice in the same post doesn’t count as a repeat guest

I’ll also add if it’s your first time commenting on that blog and your link isn’t included, but surrounding comments have them, I’d wager to say that particular blog is waiting to see if you’re a regular visitor before they will allow your link to be welcome.

Response Snob

Did you leave a comment completely disseminating the blog post you just read? Don’t hold your breath on this moderator responding. The author either isn’t responding because he/she:

• Is too busy, which can be understandable, but given the time still wouldn’t respond
• Wrote the piece just to stir the pot and watch the comments
• Doesn’t care to defend their post and pretend the comments don’t exist

For Example:

Blog Post: Dogs are Better Than Cats

Dogs rawk! Cats stink. Dogs like to play outside; cats do nothing but poop in a box you have to clean later. Dogs can fetch Frisbees while cats only lie around, get fat, cough up hairballs and get high on catnip. Dogs love to get treats and show you appreciation for giving them treats. Dogs FTW!!!

Commenter 1: Not all cats are like that. Sure cats get lazy when they get older, but so do dogs. It all comes down to how much attention and care the owner gives to their animals. How much attention do you give your dog?

Commenter 2: I like cats too, they show more of their personality than dogs do. Don’t get me wrong, dogs are great, but nothing is better than when a cat curls up on your lap. What do you think? Cat purring or dog using you like a pillow?

*chirp* *chirp*

In my own opinion if you aren’t going to take time to respond to comments that ask valid questions or refute the post itself, I’d just disable the comments altogether.

Flip-Flopper

I love discussion, it’s where real learning can take place. However, this blogger only thinks they are creating discussion when they are doing nothing but confusing the readers when he/she contradicts themselves in the comments.

For example:

Blog Post: Dogs are Better Than Cats

Dogs rawk! Cats stink. Dogs like to play outside; cats do nothing but poop in a box you have to clean later. Dogs can fetch Frisbees while cats only lie around, get fat, cough up hairballs and get high on catnip. Dogs love to get treats and show you appreciation for giving them treats. Dogs FTW!!!

Commenter 1: I love dogs too! They are better than cats!

Author: Hey thanks yeah dogs rock!

Commenter 2: This really offends me I love cats! Cats are better than dogs!

Author: Oh I love cats too! I think cats and dogs are equals!

Commenter 1: ???

It isn’t one way or the other with this moderator; it’s both.

Comment Hoarder

Every blogger that allows comments enjoys getting them, but none more so than this moderator. No matter how ridiculous/spammy/pathetic the comment, it will be approved. In most cases the threads end up looking like an outdated chat room full of random stuff. To this moderator, a higher number of comments is much better than the quality of said comments.

For Example:

Blog Post: Dogs are Better Than Cats

Dogs rawk! Cats stink. Dogs like to play outside; cats do nothing but poop in a box you have to clean later. Dogs can fetch Frisbees while cats only lie around, get fat, cough up hairballs and get high on catnip. Dogs love to get treats and show you appreciation for giving them treats. Dogs FTW!!!

Commenter 1: Are you lonely at night? Click here for the ultimate hook up!

Commenter 2: Dogs are just great. How many do you have?

Author: I’ve got two, a Great Dane and a Poodle. Do you have any?

Commenter 3: Awesome post! I will definetly subsricbe to your blog and learn more about these topic. If you are in need of good web site design for SEO contact me!

Commenter 4: I’m more of a cat person myself, but dogs are okay.

Author: I like cats okay, but my girlfriend is really allergic to them.

Commenter 5: Lose weight lose weight lose weight lose weight lose weight

Commenter 6: Cats FTW Dogs can suck it!

Author: Hey come on man, that’s a little harsh. Why do you like cats so much? Dogs don’t suck!

Commenter 7: Click here for your enlargement medication that will help get some great backlinks from sites that use advanced SEo tactics from getting keywords out of dictionaries.

You’ll see more advertising in the comment section than on the sidebars on this moderators blog.

Chatter Box

I almost lumped this one in with the above moderator, but the only difference is the chatter box loves to, well chat. The thing is if the comments are completely off topic, the moderator will respond to them as if they did contribute to the comment thread.

For Example:

Blog Post: Dogs are Better Than Cats

Dogs rawk! Cats stink. Dogs like to play outside; cats do nothing but poop in a box you have to clean later. Dogs can fetch Frisbees while cats only lie around, get fat, cough up hairballs and get high on catnip. Dogs love to get treats and show you appreciation for giving them treats. Dogs FTW!!!

Commenter 1: Dogs are awesome!

Author: Dogs ARE awesome!

Commenter 2: Dogs are okay, but cats are cool too.

Author: Oh I like cats too! But I never had one, my parents do though.

Commenter 3: Buy computer parts at a low discounted rate

Author: Hey thanks for the resource and for stopping by my blog to check out my post! Do you like dogs?

Commenter4: Dogs are pretty cool. Did you know you can increase your income by 10000% by reading my low cost e-book? Download it today!

Author: Yeah dogs are neat-O. I’ll check out your e-book, I can always use some extra cash! Thanks for stopping by!

This moderator could make friends with a brick.

So what do you think? What types of moderators have you seen? And for the moderators out there, which of the above traits do you think you possess?

5 Types of Blog Moderators is a post from: Blog Godown

This is a guest article by Lior who consults to a online task management start-up. You too can be part of this great knowledge sharing community. Take a look at our guest blogging guidelines.

Images are becoming an increasingly important part of any blog or website. Not only do they help improve the look and feel of the site’s content, but they are a crucial part of a robust SEO strategy, allowing for the insertion of additional keywords and opening up the possibility of traffic from Google Image Search.

However, it simply is not practical for most bloggers to take new images for every single blog post they want to publish. Most simply lack the time and/or tools to take their own photos or create their own artwork. To make matters worse, using images without permission is copyright infringement and can result in your blog being shut down or even being sued.

Fortunately, there are many artists and photographers who are happy to let you use their work on your site for free. It is simply a matter of connecting with them and meeting the terms of their license.

With that in mind, here are several sites that you should consider when looking for free, legal images for your blog:

1. Stock.XCHNG: The Stock.XCHNG (or SXC) is a free stock image site where you can use all of the photos for free, most without providing attribution. You can easily search over 350,000 images though you have to be careful to follow the exact license as many photographers add extra terms to their images.
2. Flickr: Though most of the content on Flickr is copyright protected, you can use the advanced search on the site to look up relevant Creative Commons-licensed photos and artwork. Be careful when using CC-licensed images to ensure that you follow the terms of the license completely.
3. Google Image Search: Ordinarily, using Google Image Search for stock images is a very bad idea but, as with Flickr, you can use the advanced search feature to find only CC-licensed images. Once again, be careful with CC-licensed images to complete the license terms fully.
4. Picapp: If your site deals more with news or gossip, you may want to look at Picapp, which lets you add images from various news sources to your site. However, images are handled as JavaScript embeds, eliminating much of the SEO benefit, and they display ads.
5. Wikimedia Commons: Wikimedia Commons is Wikipedia’s media end and it has a slew of images available under a variety of licenses ranging from public domain, meaning no copyright, to Creative Commons. Just be careful to reach each license carefully and make sure you comply fully.
6. Zemanta: Less a site to search for images and more a tool to help you search the Web for such images, Zemanta works with your blog’s backend to help you find and embed relevant, legal images into your post. Works as either a WordPress or a browser plugin.
7. U.S. Government Websites: Finally, any and all content produced by the U.S. government is automatically placed into the public domain and is available for use. So, any images you find on a “.gov” site can be used freely, unless otherwise specified.

In addition to those resources, you may also wish to look at Wikipedia’s very lengthy list of public domain image sources for additional suggestions.

All in all, with so many easy and legal resources for free images, there’s no reason for your blog to go without images or to have to use images illegally. After all, legal content is just a click away.

7 Sites for Free, Legal Images for Your Blog is a post from: Blog Godown

This is the second part of a two part series of Guest Blogging Checklist.

In the first part, I explained to you the importance of guest blogging checklist in order to improve productivity and effectiveness of the guest article. It also covered two important points on the checklist – Blog Search and Study the Blog.

This part will continue explaining the next 6 parts of the checklist.

3. Ideation

After the first two steps, you know the requirements and the outline of the article you have to construct. Now, you have to come up with ideas relevant to the blog’s topic which should create a spark among the readers enabling the content to spread like a virus and make you a blogging superstar. All these are idealistic conditions, but if you try to target these idealistic goals, then you will be able to achieve something that makes you stand out as a guest blogger. A handy tool for the ideation process is the simple and easy mind mapping technique.

4. Writing

Writing is the most important part of the guest article – after all, the effectiveness of your guest article depends on the quality of knowledge that the article is able to impart to it’s readers. Once that is achieved, then you can expect your influence to grow.

I usually try my best to create an article that has has a lot of intrinsic value. You have to do the same. Select keywords from ideas, choose a catchy title and build a write up around it.

5. Proofread

A guest article should be flawless (ideally) and it should have no mistakes whatsoever. Submitting an article which is full of such mistakes is bound to be rejected by the blog owner.

I have received many guest articles and I must admit, guest articles that are full of such mistakes are not at all liked by me. They are really very annoying.

Whether there is a grammatical or typographical error in your write up, your task is to get rid of these errors. The most preferred way to do that is by proofreading your articles, i.e. reading them multiple times and fixing errors as and when you encounter them.

6. Email to the author

The article should be ready before we reach this step. The process of guest blogging is only half complete till now and a major hurdle needs to be crossed. The part where you have to convince the blog author of your credibility (as a blogger) so that he/she allows  you to become a guest blogger of that particular blog.

The art of writing emails is a different subject altogether and it may consume a separate article. But you can easily take some help from sample emails available. The samples can only help in the format of the email, but the ability to convince others is something which is an inherent quality and you have to utilize it in the best way possible in order to be accepted.

7. Follow up

This is an optional email, which is required only if you don’t receive a reply in a week’s time. The email should follow the basic rules of follow up email. The purpose of this email should be to inquire the status of the article (approved or rejected) and also to avoid two unwanted situations that might occur:

#1 situation: You don’t get a reply from the author and you assume that your article is rejected and so, you move on and submit your article on your website or somebody else’s website. You publish the article and the host also publishes the exact same article. The main disadvantage is that two copies of the same content will affect the google search engine rankings and therefore, it may decrease it’s google search rankings. It may also lead to arguments about the ownership of the guest article.

#2 situation: You wait for a long time before you finally get rejected. It is not as bad as the 1st issue but it is still an issue of concern. This is not good as you have invested your time in a guest article and you should reap benefits from it.

8. Promotion

Once you’re guest article gets published, you should try to maximize the impact by promoting the guest article real hard. The best way to promote is by sharing the link on various social media websites. This will help in fulfilling two objectives. First, it would help in improving brand visibility (If you brand your website). Secondly, it helps in increasing your reputation.

Let’s Discuss

Do you have a checklist for guest blogging? Does it increase your productivity?

Guest Blogging Checklist – Part 2 – Article Creation and Further is a post from: Blog Godown

This is the first part of a two part series of Guest Blogging Checklist

Being a guest at somebody else’s place is a royal experience. You are treated well, special food is prepared for you – all those scrumptious meals that will make your mouth water. Plans are made according to your wish. It is almost as if you are the king of that particular house.

The hosts also have a reason why they bring a guest to their house.  Hosts get to spend quality time with guests in return of the hospitality offered by them. So, by making your stay special, they make their experience with you even more memorable.

But, in order to be invited or allowed to stay as a guest at somebody else’s place you have to behave properly and have a certain minimum set of etiquettes like table manners or social etiquettes. If you are lacking in any of those, you will not be welcome at anybody’s house.

The same applies to guest blogging. The host blogger invites a guest blogger to get some free content and add a slight change to the blog in return of the extra exposure given to the guest blogger.

Now, in order to be accepted, you need to comply to the guest blogging guidelines (it is a list of points which can be interpreted as the owner’s code of conduct) of the blog. Your articles should match the blog. You might have something different to say but your articles should not be completely off-topic.

A structured approach towards any task proves to be productive and effective. We can use a structured approach in guest blogging by maintaining a guest blogging checklist. A checklist helps  in making sure that you don’t miss out on anything crucial. If you miss out on anything important, it may lead to a rejection. Maintaining a guest blogging checklist does not mean that there is a  100% guarantee of articles being published, but the probability of articles being accepted surely increases.

My Guest Blogging Checklist includes a set of crucial steps which, in my opinion, should be never be missed in any guest article. The checklist is as follows:

1. Blog Search:

First and foremost task for guest blogging is to find a suitable host blog. Before you start searching for a suitable blog, i should make you aware of the fact that the sole purpose of guest blogging is to get more exposure and reach a wider audience. So, you have to search for blogs that are more popular than yours and ones that are centred around the same or similar niche areas.

Guest blogging on a blog that writes on a completely different topic than yours can be really disastrous for your blog, it will be a total waste of your precious time. Take an example of a gardening blogger who guest blogs at a technology blog. The technology blog has a set of readers who are following the blog because of the technology news. When they will receive a gardening article instead of a tech article, most of them will ignore the piece because it was not what they had ordered. So, this means that a very very small percentage of the readership will actually read the article. Hence you would not be gaining exposure. On other hand, you might be losing on your reputation.

Make a list of all the blogs in your niche or similar niches having significantly higher popularity than your blog and save it for future reference because you will need it whenever you want to increase your blog’s readership.

2. Study the Blog

Studying the blog is as important as searching for the blogs in your niche. You have to make it a point to carefully align your article with that of the host blog so that it doesn’t seem as a misfit.

Your first task should be to read the guest blogging guidelines. These guidelines are formulated for the sole reason that you are aware of two important things – what and how to construct an article, so that you don’t waste the host’s time and energy by asking too many questions.

Other than the guidelines, you should thoroughly study the blog. Take a look at the format and style of the writing. See, if the author adds certain images or videos to the blog articles and if that is the case, then, you should also follow the same format and add images or videos to your article.

To be continued….

Guest Blogging Checklist – Part 1 – Importance of a Checklist is a post from: Blog Godown

This is a guest article by Ann Smarty, the founder of the best guest blogging community MyBlogGuest. Join the discussion and voice your opinion by following our guest blogging guidelines.

Personas are user-profiles (or user groups) a website owner uses to categorize his website audience. They represent the typical users of a website or a service.

By creating personas for your site you can better understand your readers and easier anticipate their behavior, reactions and preferences. To create personas for your website audience the first thing you will need to do is to build hypothesis trying to imagine who a typical user of your site is, what he does and what he likes.

So what makes a good persona?

What can describe or characterize each persona of your website? Here are a few questions you can ask yourself to categorize each persona of your website user base:

• Who are they and and where do they come?
• How old are they?
• What’s their background? Education?
• What’s their income?
• What are their hobbies and interests?
• etc etc

Each persona should have a name and even a picture for you to better imagine it.

This is Tom. Tom is a U.S. high-school student who loves geeky stuff. He doesn’t go out often – instead he is sitting in front of his computer. To doesn’t make his own living yet – his parents support him. Tom loves…

Ultimately you will have at least 4-5 personas and you will be able to better understand how to tailor your website marketing efforts to each of them! Of course, you can go more descriptive and creative in names and let the persona names speak for themselves:

• Geeky Tom
• Loyal Troy
• Howard the Skeptic
• Busy Judith
• etc

Where do I get all this info on each persona?

The first tool you have is your head: use your imagination and your outlook. If you have a blog, your life is much easier because you regularly talk to your readers via comments.

Your website traffic analytics is another valuable tool. It will let you analyze what your readers tend to respond to and how (you can use Google Analytics goals to get a better understanding of your readers’ behavior). Google Analytics is free and it will show you detailed territorial info as well languages your readers speak, browsers they use, how loyal they are, if they use mobiles, etc.

Is there any way to test my personas?

Yes, for sure. After you have the initial list of your personas and the characteristics of each, try testing each with help of online questionnaires. Polls, surveys and quizzes will work for that purpose.

I personally prefer quizzes because they can be more fun to take. Who doesn’t like quizzes? You can actually use them to engage your site readers and hear back from them.

ProProfs online testing utility is a great tool to create nice interactive quizzes. They support various forms of fun including images and videos. I have played with the tool quite a lot and had a fun experiment in the past trying to categorize my readers’ Twitter habits. I had great feedback and lots of insight into how my blog readers prefer to Tweet.

ProProfs has various types of analytics:

• You can see what each user answered (think how much help that would be for your persona building!)
• You can access charts and graphics summarizing all the answers:

So how do we apply this to practice?

Good question. Here are a few tutorials teaching you to apply theory to practice and actually learn to use the personas in various website development and marketing strategies:

1. How to Apply Personas to E-mail Marketing: Tailor every offer to a separate persona. Sending a 10% off deal to a persona who wants luxury at any cost won’t get you much.
2. Personas for Keyword Research: The days of guessing at keyword research are over;
3. How to use Personas & Scenarios in web design and web page design: Personas are an extremely powerful design tool, which help you to visualize an end-product that you can be confident will suit your users’ needs by helping them achieve their goals, and help you test your success.

Post image via Flickr

Apply Personas to Your Blog Marketing Strategy is a post from: Blog Godown

Let's start experimenting!

In this guest article by Roderick Coleman, the owner of Queryads explains the importance of split testing for websites and businesses. For a website, it can help in identifying the design that is most liked by the user and which leads to more engagement. On the other hand, businesses can figure out a design which drives more sales and as a result help in making more money for their business. You can voice your own opinion by taking a look at our guest blogging guidelines.

How does split testing work

Split testing is a useful and confirmed tactic to boost web based offers. Testing it takes a lot of time and effort and by means of the right tools for the job

What is split testing?

Split testing is fundamentally testing two unlike variables on your sales page to know what gets the most value out of your page by detail, as in every detail of your page whether it is your fonts or font size, the size of your headline, the wording of your headlines, the pictures you use, the price of each product, text in every paragraph and so on.

Split testing is what differentiates the beginners looking just about from those who make money out of the World Wide Web market. The people that earn a lot of money out of this are those who are good and know how to split test. It should be done to make more and more sales while separating themselves from others as the cream of the crop of the internet market.

Why bother with split testing?

Split testing is what detaches the most excellent of web designers from all the others. It is because of the fact that they basically know what are the proper and accepted combination of variations to use, like the use of different combination of headlines, colors, backgrounds, etc. It eventually results in attracting more personalities to check the site and they can ask for a higher rate as a result split testing can help:

• Make the viewers stay longer
• Make the viewers to interact with site
• Make the viewers buy from the site
• Makes the viewers more interested to browse the site

Who should be split testing?

Web designers are more often than not the targets because of their environment settings and their creativity of running tasks on web sites to catch the attention of more customers to visit the site, build a bond with your customers and make them come back. Just keep your mind set that split testing establishes traffic flow because you need people to visit your site.

How do you split test?

Mainly, the trouble-free way is to split test the whole sales page at once this way makes it more rapidly and without ease is usually known as an A/B split test but the thing to take into consideration is the fact that it is not that efficient as compared to testing entity variables but it is free of charge to set up and is downloadable. You can create a free A/B split test with the use of different software that are available in the internet.

There you can start on purely by creating as many different types of pages you like for instance, you can take into consideration the 5 basic variations

• Your personal default sales page
• Default sales page with images
• Default pages with different font styles
• Default pages with different headlines
• Default page with different amounts

Here is a piece of advice for all the beginners out there who are interested to make it big in the internet market. It is important to maintain and keep an eye on your page. Try to modify only one variable on each discrepancy or else you’ll lose track of what is going on. From there you can direct each distinction evenly and see which gets more profit and that’s the fundamentals of split testing and it is ok if you don’t have the money to invest on it yet.

On the other hand by spending a little of your chump change would not hurt to because in return you can have vast list of software that will automate all your testing for you and you would have the supremacy to test as many dissimilar combinations as you would want and it gets improved and enhanced that you don’t even have to know how to split test for the fact that it does all the dirty and information work for you.

This great software is also known as multivariate testing software and is a replacement for getting mixed up with all the unlike types of webpage which are detectable and you can straightforwardly identify the unusual versions of each variable and let the software do the job for you. You also can never find out that it can guess out what types or variety of combinations to use on your page to make you more income.

Variation in Split Testing

There are three major contenders in the multivariate split testing manufacturing business. There is the kaizen track, split test accelerator and conversion chicken. The kaizen track is about $197 while the split accelerator costs about $891. The conversion chicken on the other hand is free for a basic account and is considered the best among the three. Let us know and understand what does conversion chicken provides us with.

Conversion chicken is cheap mainly with no included reason at all although it could be priced at approximately the same value as kaizen track. The main reason that makes split test accelerator and kaizen track for programmers and not for new ones because the known software targets the programmers who have deeper knowledge so that they can play around the configuration files and make good use of the software to anything they aspire to do and achieve.

Conclusion

But after all that was said, the fundamental standpoint and the fact that they produce identical output are important in split testing. You have the supremacy and the will to choose whatever software that you want to make use of. You have to meet the terms of your needs and go with what is best fit for you.

After all it is your own money investing on it and the option is yours alone but if you’re a beginner, it is very much advisable for you to use conversion chicken and work with it for the time being until you get your income.

Split Testing 101 – The Beginner’s Guide is a post from: Blog Godown

This is a guest article by Hadley of

Are you knee-deep in the blogging world and want to talk to some like-minded individuals? Check out some of these fantastic conferences around the world. Not only will you learn a plethora of new information to improve your blog, but you’ll get the chance to talk to individuals with the same passion as you.

BlogHer Conference: BlogHer runs a blogging conference August 6-7 in New York City. It focuses on helping female bloggers gain a presence on the Internet, as well as how to turn blogging into a paid career. It also has a focus on political and social blogging.

BlogWorld and New Media Expo: Running October 15-16 in Las Vegas, this conference focuses on general blogging and Internet businesses.

Blog Indiana: Blog Indiana runs from August 20^th to the 21^st, and focuses primarily on how to gain viewers and use a blog to promote non-blogging interests, as well as on general social media.

Netroots Nation: Running July 22-25 in Las Vegas, this blogging conference promotes using the Internet, including blogging, in order to foster liberal and progressive causes. This year, Senator Al Franken will be speaking.

Blissdom: Blissdom already had its 2010 conference in February, but it is usually a yearly event so be sure to check back in later. Like BlogHer, this blogging conference is primarily for female bloggers. Blissdom also specializes on supportive, positive help for female bloggers looking to follow their “bliss,” or passion. It also has a Canadian conference.

Wine Bloggers’ Conference: This organization actually runs two conferences: one, in Virginia, on July 22-24 in 2011, and one in 2010 in Vienna, Austria, October 22-24. The conference seeks “to discuss the convergence between the culture of wine and the web.” If you blog about wine, this is definitely a must for you.

South by South West: South by South West, which also goes by the acronym SXSW, is a general new-media conference that will be meeting next during the week of March 11-20 2011 in Austin, Texas. However, it does have some blogging-relating content, like “The Broke Diaries: Using Blogs and Twitter to Live Cheaply”. This conference would be fantastic for any current bloggers looking to expand outside of the blogging world.

Northern Voice: This conference is held in spring in Vancouver, British Columbia, and specializes in personal blogging and social media, rather than blogging for profit. Its 2010 convention has already happened, but it will be back in 2011.

Type-A Mom Conference: This conference, held September 24-26 in Asheville, North Carolina, has a focus on “mom bloggers”. It also emphasizes using blogging and social media to make money. People willing to volunteer may get free or reduced-price entrance into the conference.

Latin American Bloggers’ Convention: Held November 12-14 in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, this conference focuses on, as its name implies, bloggers from Latin America. It also has general information for beginning bloggers and is a great first step for anybody looking to break into the blogging world.

The Best Blogging Conferences in the World is a post from: Blog Godown

I get a lot of questions asking how I am able to get so many awesome sponsors to my contest and so, this article will focus on how you can get great sponsors for your contest.

Prepare a Sales Pitch

Once you have you have come up with a good idea for a contest, you need to prepare a sales pitch. A sales pitch in layman terms, is a small piece of text that lists out the benefits to the sponsors. After all, sponsors are willing to advertise at your contest, if they are able to get something in return.

Preparing a sales pitch is similar to making a good CV (curriculum vitae). You have to focus on the good points. You can list out the benefits like exposure, seo benefits. You can also say that you will market it really hard through social media or advertising. There are plenty of points that you can add and you have to think of some good ones in order to attract those awesome sponsors.

Note : Embellishing your points is not bad, but don’t try to fake anything. Sponsors are not dumb people, they will easily figure it out.

Go Advertiser Hunting

As you have your sales pitch ready, it’s time to do some advertiser hunting and it’s the most fun part. Broadly you can classify advertisers into 3 categories:

1. Product Owners – These advertisers have a product that they have created and they want more exposure on blogs to make more sales.
2. Website Owners – These website owners want to advertise in order to improve the traffic that their website gets. They would be interested in websites of same or similar niches.
3. SEO Hunters -  These are people who are more interested in the seo value they get from the contest in the form of backlinks.

Depending on your contest, you can target a specific category of advertisers or the whole group. You can use the following methods to target advertisers:

Contact Via Website

You can do a little bit search on the websites that would interested in advertising in your niche. The best method is to interact with these advertisers would be via email. You can get access to their email contact via the contact page present on their websites.

Forums

Forums usually have contest sections where webmasters can advertise their contests and also look for advertisers. If advertisers see you thread, they might contact and show interest.

Social media Websites

People who are following you on social media are aware of your social media power and they might be interested in sponsoring your contest. If you ask for sponsorship in social media sites, there are chances that you might get some advertisers.

Take a Glance at Other Contests

A sneaky trick is to approach those people who have already sponsored other contests. Take a look at the sponsors of the contest that have been organized recently and try to contact them. The chance of conversion is good, because most of these advertisers are always on the lookout for good sites to sponsor. You just have to direct them to your website .

Keep the Window Open for Advertisers

Even if your contest has started, don’t close the windows for advertisers. Some advertisers might not be aware of the contest before being launched. But, after the contest, they may show interest in sponsoring it. If you close the doors, you will lose out on some good sponsors.

In totality, the contest can get huge sponsors, only if you have worked hard on getting advertisers for it. It is the only mantra to a rocking contest.

Share Your Experiences

Have you organized a blogging contest? What was your experience with it?

How to get Awesome Sponsors for your Contest is a post from: Blog Godown

Whether you’ve been blogging for a month or for 5 years, all bloggers want to continue growing. You want to attract more readers, get more comments, have more linkbait successes, and just make your blog bigger. It sounds easy enough, but almost all bloggers plateau at some point and struggle to achieve more growth.

What can you do to keep your blog growing? The key to growth is identifying those things that stunt your growth. Here are 5 mistakes that may be keeping your blog down.

1. You publish irregularly. I’m not saying that you have to publish new content every day. What I’m saying is that you need to pick a posting frequency and stick with it. Your readers need to know when to expect content from you, whether that’s 3 times a day or once a week. Haphazard posting just doesn’t work. It makes it impossible for your blog to gain any momentum, and it makes it difficult for readers to stick with you on a long-term basis.
2. You make it difficult to share your content. Your readers can be your most valuable tool for promoting your blog. If you make it easy for them to share your content through their favorite social media websites, they can tell all their friends and followers about your blog with just the click of a mouse. You need to have social media buttons on your blog that include instant sharing capabilities with Facebook, Twitter, Digg, ReddIt, and other popular sites. This can be very helpful in making your posts go viral.
3. You post “me too” content. There are hundreds of millions of blogs online. And no matter what niche you’re blogging in, you can bet you have some competition. Why should someone read your blog? What do you offer that can’t be found on the other blogs in your niche? These are the questions you need to ask yourself with every post you write. Don’t just rehash what everyone else is saying. “Me too” blogs have very limited growth potential. Be different. Be yourself.
4. You don’t write like you talk. Speaking of being yourself, your personality needs to shine through in your writing. Readers want to feel like they’re connecting with someone when they read your blog…like they know you. The best way to forge a connection with them is to write like you talk. Your blog posts will feel more conversational, and your blog will have a voice that’s completely different from all others in your niche.
5. Your blog isn’t optimized for the search engines. Every post you write should be optimized for maximum search engine visibility. This means using keyword-rich titles, tagging and categorizing your posts appropriately, and using keyword-rich anchor text to link to other content throughout your posts. This can help drive search engine traffic to your blog, allowing you to grow over time.

What are some other mistakes bloggers make that keep them from reaching their full potential? Share your best blogging tips by leaving a comment.

5 Reasons Your Blog Isn’t Growing is a post from: Blog Godown

Are Guest Blogging Contests Worth It?

In this article, Melvin of MelvinBlog.com gives his take on guest blogging competitions which have sprung up recently. Join this guest blogging community.

I’ve said many times, guest blogging is one of strategies I’m seriously implementing even from the start of the year. I’m actually working super hard getting as much high quality guest posts as possible to big blogs and see how I can reap all the benefits.

But then another thing happened. And those are the growth of these guest blogging contests. These are just like the normal guest blogging but instead of the normal one, what it does is kind of incentivize the whole thing. Of course like any contest, many were enticed to join.

I was eventually one of them and although I know I didn’t work as hard as most people do, it’s all worth it. It’s ironic because just couple of days back I blasted these guest blogging contests and stated my reason why I dislike them.

In that post briefly I covered that the main intention of guest blogging becomes different with contests. Instead of providing superb content, the guest blogger would try to win the contest. On the flip side, there’s also a massive change in reader’s anticipation. With normal guest blogging, people read the articles as it is. While with contests, most of the readers are contestants as well hence they really wouldn’t read it, instead they’d observe. In short, the benefits a guest blogger can get is non-existent with these contests.

Enough rant. It’s not that I hate it, in fact I like it just with some doubt in my mind with the results. But then I learned these things after winning the contest here in Blog Godown. It somehow changed my perspective on guest blogging contests because of the things I’ve realized. Anyways here they are:

• Competition is there, whether you like it or not- When you are part of  a competition, one thing I observed is that the other contestants are usually the commenters of your guest post first and fast. They’re accommodating, there will be times when they’d give you a pat at the back. But the truth behind it is that they’re tracking their status and the overall progress of the contest. Competition is so tight in any contests. Even if its just commenting contests or whatever type of contests. And, hey! you would have realized that its fun competing!
• You get into these friendly circles – I always preach that blogging is all about establishing relationships. The good thing with guest blogging contests is that it puts you instantly into the little community of a blog. The first time I actually heard about Blog Godown is when the contest started and honestly I never had an idea what the blog was all about. So what eventually happened is that I started connecting with these people who joined this contest and boom, I have a new reader in them!
• You will learn (surprisingly) – A lot of people use this phrase a lot and to be honest I’m not too big on it. But with Blog Godown’s contest, I learned a lot of things. As I’ve said, I never heard of Blog Godown before and I thought it was just another blog filled with ads and etc. So when the contest started, I thought I was the only qualified contestant (sorry, I’m arrogant). Long story short, as I was reading all the entries I realized that hey I’m learning a lot with these entries. Eventually I bookmarked some of them for future reference.
• If you win – great, if not – move on and improve - One of my mistakes is always my crappy grammar. I’m not a native speaker and so sometimes I get messy with my statements. But by writing more and more and more, we improve. I get a lot of emails everyday asking for tips on how I get to be able to publish so many guest posts. My answer is “just write your article”. I mean instead of worrying about so many metrics and stuffs, why not just sit down and write. Over time you will get better and in this business, good writing means a lot.

These are 4 small things that I learned specifically by joining the contest here in this blog and I’m sure you have your own stories as well. Guest blogging is a deadly technique to get massive REAL traffic to your blog. I always like to use Viperchill as an example and for right now not a lot of people are doing it right.

By constantly doing things, we improve and with these contests, it gives another layer of reason why we should do it more. What is your say?

Innovative Things I Learned With Guest Blogging Contests is a post from: Blog Godown

1. Getting articles indexed within hours
2. Link building for off-page SEO
3. Find new blogs and designers to follow

For designers, finding the right bookmarking site can be difficult. Most sites are niche specific or so large their work never gets a chance for readers to find their sites.  As a designer and blogger, I write articles for several different niches and I found that there are bookmarking sites that work great for one niche but the traffic can be limited for design and development. Originally, I mostly used Blog Engage and MMO Social Network to share my work and get more traffic to my site. These sites are great for almost any niche but, web design, graphic design, and development is hit or miss. Some of my articles got a lot of traffic and some not so much. But both of these sites are still my favorites and I am seeing more designers and developers signing up for these sites. Eventually these sites will be another great way to get traffic if your a designer.

Once I decided to move toward design and other new media topics, I decided it was time to find another way to get more referral traffic. Through my research I found ten sites that have driven more traffic to my site or other designers have found successful. As with any bookmarking site, you have to spend the time and build your network and make friends on these sites. These sites won’t send you a large amount traffic from the first few posts but it will send you more traffic and all of these sites will help you get indexed within an hour. Be patient, submit useful articles along with your work, vote and make friends on these networks and you will see a difference in your traffic numbers.

I listed StumbleUpon and Digg to this list because I do get a large amount of traffic from these sites. Digg does have section for designers and developers that with time will drive traffic to your site. I found StumbleUpon to be one of my higher referral traffic sites, with minimal amount of work.

Take a look at these sites and try them out. If you have already used these sites, let us know what you think about those sites and how well they work for you. What sites do you use?

1. Design Float

Page Rank: 5/10

Alexa Rank: 7,250

2. The WebBlend

Page Rank: 3/10

Alexa Rank: 19,883

3. Design Bump

Page Rank: 6/10

Alexa Rank: 10,121

4. DZone

Page Rank: 6/10

Alexa Rank: 2,506

5. DesignGIZER

Page Rank: 4/10

Alexa: 639,206

6. faqpal

Page Rank: 5/10

Alexa: 20,266

7. WP Scoop

Page Rank: 4/10

Alexa: 88,374

8. Blogger Den

9. StumbleUpon

Page Rank: 8/10

Alexa: 204

10. Digg

Page Rank: 8/10

Alexa: 102

This article is a part of the guest blogging contest. If you liked this article, then help in supporting this author by retweeting and commenting on it which will enable the author to win this contest. By the way, you can be a part of the contest, it is still not late

Traffic Building Tips For Designers and Developers is a post from: Blog Godown

SEO short formed as search engine optimization is a process whereby a website is being optimized to appear and rank in the search engines. So many people think SEO is not required to rank in the search engines, but i want you to know that if everything is not in place such as the robots.txt and some other on page factors then your page will not be indexed by the search engines. So many factors are entailed when talking about Search Engine Optimization but we have to deal with the important ones first.

i. ON PAGE FACTORS: The onpage factors of a website has a long way to go in affecting a websites search engine rankings. Some you need to work on are:

• META TITLE: The meta title is your website’s title, it is what is being shown to your visitors by the search engines. The following are tips for choosing a good website title:
  a. Let the title be attractive.
  b. Let it make sense.
  c. Let it be in line with the theme of your website.
  d. Make sure your keyword is included in the tilte.
  e. Make sure the title is as short as possible.
• META DESCRIPTION: Aside the meta title, the meta description and keywords does not influence your search engine rankings, but why is there a need for optimization? You ask! The need for having a good meta description is because this will be shown to your visitors by the search engines, it will also improve your click through rate. It is possible for you to achieve high search engine without getting the right amount of visitors if you have a poor meta description. It is important to make your meta description attractive, but don’t worry about the keywords in the description because it will not affect your search engine rankings.
• META KEYWORDS: This has to be the list of your desired keywords, you might not bother much about this as it is less regarded by the major search engines.
• KEYWORD DENSITY: This is also a very important and overlooked method of achieving high search engine rankings, this is also very important when targeting highly competitive keywords. It is important to make sure that your keyword density is not more than %3 of your whole content.

ii. OFF PAGE OPTIMIZATION: Every other thing that can be done outside your website to improve your website rankings/traffic is called off page optimization. Some of the important off page optimization strategies are link building, Social bookmarking,Creating media awareness e.t.c.

• Link building: This is one of the most important factor for ranking websites and it is very important to consider mostly dofollow websites in your link building efforts. It is also very important to deeplink to inner pages of your website from bot your website and other link sources.
• Social Bookmarking: This is another method of improving your search engine rankings, and any webmaster that is not tapping this yet is missing a lot. Some good social bookmarking sites to start with are: Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Sphinn and Twitter(social networking).
• Creating Media Awareness: This can be done by creating videos and uploading them to video sites such as Youtube. Just make sure your link is included in your description and and video when doing this. It is also important to consider press release sites.

Great SEO tips for Everybody is a post from: Blog Godown

Why should one use Blog Engage?

1. Blog Promotion: If you submit your post at Blog engage, it will be read by other users and therefore your blog will get free promotion.

2. It is new so there is more chance of become a power user. Being a power user, you get the power to publicize any post you submit and that may increase your traffic inflow to multifolds.

3. It is a community of new and active Bloggers: It means that not only will they vote for your post, but they will engage by commenting and also subscribing to your blog.

4. Do Follow Link Love: Blog Engage is Nofollow free, i.e each post you submit will get a link back. And this may increase the page rank of the blog post.

5. Get on to the Spotlight: Blog Engage also rewards it’s active members with a spotlight on their blog. This means more exposure to your blog and therefore more traffic.

6. Get Featured on Brian’s Blog: Blog Engage’s owner Brian has a great blog and he links to most voted posts on his Blog. This means an up on your technorati rank and authority.

All in all it is a great oppurtunity for new and active bloggers, to promote their blogs and get attention.

I have added a Blog engage button on top of each post so you can vote for the post you like. And i believe in “Sharing is Caring”

Are you already a Blog Engage user? If yes, share your experience with us.

Blog Engage – A Social Media Site for your Blog Promotion is a post from: Blog Godown