Sometimes good ideas turn into great ideas.
Take for example, the recent post by John Cow to create a feed list, getting everyone linking to each other’s blogs for the sake of traffic and RSS readership increase.
Well, folks I’m here to tell you it’s working. My Technorati rating has gone from basically a half a million to under the two-hundred thousand mark at 195k. It’s taken less than two weeks for that to happen. Not only has my authority increased along with the overall ranking, but my alexa ranking is chugging it’s way up the hill too.
This blog was languishing in obscurity before the infamous link-bait post I made on the 19th of July. Since then it has jumped from 4.5 million to 2.9 million. Now when you think about how many blogs are out there and just how many people are creating new ones each day, that’s pretty impressive. In just under 2 weeks I have nearly halved my ranking, which is good…remember the lower the number the better here kinda like golf.
The real test here will be readership retainment. A blog is only as good as the people reading it and I hope there are lots of you. I just changed my feed to feedburner which seems to be the norm these days. The main reason for this was that I wanted to track the number of RSS subscribers and associated traffic. Unfortunately Wordpress doesn’t include a good tracking tool for RSS subscribers.
So if you haven’t done so already, sign up for my full RSS feed! While you are here, don’t forget to read about my contests and enter! You can’t win if you don’t enter, so get to work!
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In 2 days, this contest ends. I am giving away a $5.00 Starbucks Gift Card as well as an old Casio Pocket TV. I know they aren’t the greatest prizes in the world, but when you are strapped for cash and you really need that $4 Frappiccuno…well, you’ll have the card so you won’t need cash! The best thing is you can reload the card online and always have a credit card like item just for spending at Starbucks.
As for the Casio TV, it works as long as you can get channels via “rabbit ears”. Unfortunately nothing comes in where I live so this thing is just taking up space.
To enter either contest, just reply to this post or the original posts I have linked to above. Both of these contests end on August 1st so hurry!
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iPhones, iPods, MP3 Players, water bottles, bottles of Jolt cola. Gadgets are everywhere and every conceivable market has convinced us we need all these gadgets. A USB powered drink cooler? Well of course I need that. A USB powered desk lamp, heck yes, throw that bad boy in the cart.
Yep, you guessed it…these gadgets are being given away…again!
The USB cooler started life in John Chow’s blog contest and travelled across rivers and pastures to John Cow’s good graces where it eventually packed it’s things and shipped off to Everybody Go To.
Now it’s your turn to win this fabulous device. Simply go to the link above and comment on the blog…or better yet, comment and then post your own blog. Everybody Go To is a fun site and one that I have in my RSS live feed to keep me abreast of the goings on. The fun doesn’t stop there though, you can also win a shiny new USB powered desk lamp!
Does it get any better than that? Maybe you can find another contest somewhere out there giving away a USB 2.0 add-on card, because I think you are going to need it should you win
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Everyone likes winning stuff. You don’t care how big or how small the prize is, just the fact that you won anything usually gets your adrenaline flowing. Remember the last time you won $6 on the lottery? Or that time you went to your son’s casino night fundraiser and won that silent auction? Didn’t it get you pumped?
The great thing about the internet is there are all kinds of free giveaways going on. You can win anything from a $5 Starbucks Gift Card to an Apple iPhone. Or maybe you want a Nintendo Wii? I bet you wouldn’t mind seeing a Playstation 3 in your electronics cabinet.
I love giveaways, they give people a little glimmer of hope and happiness in a mostly dreary and depressing world. I of course always try to look on the bright side of things because I think dwelling on the negative just fuels more negativity.
We talk alot on blogs about writing quality content and keeping readership and increasing traffic, but it’s nice to give back to the community that is so loyal to us. In one of Robert Kiyosaki’s books he talks about the virtue of charitable giving. He says that his “rich dad” gave away a lot of money so that he could make a lot of money. Good things tend to happen to good people. You don’t have to give money necessarily either, volunteer time is an excellent thing to give to others.
I like that so many bloggers give away items. It makes for fun reading and don’t you just love that tingling feeling going up the back of your spine thinking about that prize arriving in the mail? Don’t you?
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When you are looking for the best SEO techniques there are so many to choose from, it’s almost impossible to not use every trick in the book. Darrin Carter’s site Darrin.CC which discusses the techniques for Search Marketing has so many good tips, you would be foolish not to put many of them into practice.
One especially good tip is his advice on getting out of Google’s supplemental index, or as you may have seen in other places what we call “Google Hell”. He has many posts on Google and SEO strategies which should help even the most experienced blogger.
Another quite successful technique Darrin uses to boost traffic and readership is giving things away. Right now he is giving away another Nintendo Wii! Contests and giveaways are another terrific way to reward your readers. Don’t let that be the end of what you read on his blog however, be sure to take a look at his Pay Per Click topic as well as the excellent Advertising section.
Using many of the techniques Darrin offers up, I have been able to reduce my Google supplemental results from a whopping 900 down to under 150. It really does work!
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One of the ways blogs are found is by linking to and from other blogs. There are many reasons to get links to your own blog but the main one is credibility. Search engines like Google use incoming links as a judge of how popular your site is. The more high quality incoming links, the more search engines respect your site.
Technorati behaves in a similar manner in that the more people link to your site, the more “authority” you have. It basically means visibility and visibility leads to traffic. After all, when you see the number 10 blog on Technorati you sure wonder how they got there right?
Well the mad cow at JohnCow.com has come up with a great idea for linkbait.
As we already know, readers love lists and what better way to create a list than to add a list of blogs. The great thing is since it’s a post of links, Google and Technorati will pay more attention to the links because they are considered content as well, unlike the static links you see in the right hand sidebar.
#Start copy here# The idea is simple: You want readers and you want link backs too because that’s all us bloggers want, it’s more precious than milk for some
So how does it work?Simple! You just copy the list down below on your blog, hence creating link backs for your blogging friends and then click the RSS feed link to subscribe to all of them. Then you add yourself and up to 5 other bloggers and their feeds to the list before you publish it on your own blog. Show your friends some link love

Just imagine if just 10 people would do this and then 10 more after them. That would get your blog 100 extra link backs and 100 extra feed subscribers!
The Original List:
The Extended List:
The Really Extended List
#End copy here#
Not in the list? Don’t worry, you can grab it, publish it and if we get a pingback, we’ll add you to this list too!
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This is probably the hardest thing for most people to cope with. Do you manage your time effectively? Today Jane May at Daily Web Ideas blogs about this topic.
While I agree with her points on this, here are five things you can do each day to help manage your time better.
- Put off what takes the longest until later in the day. Generally I try to take care of the easiest tasks first. If you can hammer out the simple tasks first you will also feel more accomplished and you can spend the bulk of the day working on the longer, more difficult issues.
- Take a break. This sounds silly, but it really is ok for you to take a break, or two or three during your workday. Studies have shown that the more frequent your breaks are, ultimately the more productive you are because epiphanies usually happen when you aren’t at your desk.
- Read More. Breakthroughs rarely happen when you are staring your problem in the face. Try doing research to see if someone has already accomplished what you are trying to do. No need to re-invent the wheel unless you think yours is better.
- Avoid email first thing in the morning. Email can be a hindrance to your time and productivity because we tend to use email as a to-do list. Take a half hour in the morning and use it for “me time” – eat something, read a blog, read the paper and then get to work. This can help you be relaxed and allow you to focus when you need to.
- Find plugins that help you keep from stat-checking. This is in direct response to Jane’s note about checking stats. Ever heard the term “a watched pot never boils”? Well, your stats aren’t going to update constantly unless you have massive traffic like YouTube or Amazon.com. So use some browser plugins to help you out. A great one is AdsenseNotifier for Firefox. With this little browser add-on you can have your Adsense stats in the lower right corner of your browser status bar and see your clicks and earnings. It’s also customizable and a right click can take you right to your adsense account. Another great add-on is the SEO for firefox. With this tool you can quickly check your PageRank as well as how many links you have coming in and from where.
This isn’t a complete list and I am sure there are plenty more things you can do to effectively manage your time, but I think it’s a good start. A lot of time management and productivity comes down to will power. It’s easy to be distracted and lose focus especially when you work in a cubicle world. Prairie-dogging to see what your neighbor is talking about isn’t going to help you get more work done and at the end of the day you’ll be wondering why you just can’t seem to finish all your work in 8 hours.
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