Happy Christmas

"Sticky until the Turkey has all gone...."

Well it IS that time of year after all, and I just wanted to wish any visitors that happen onto my blog a Very Happy Christmas. I am 'into' the real Christmas, it's not a time for getting fat, drunk and obnoxious, but a time to celebrate the gift of life that we have all been given. For some of us, that will also involve celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Even if that isn't your focus, have a very merry Christmas anyway.
I will be taking a few days away from the Internet to enjoy some family time next week as I tend to spend far too much time in front of a PC when I am at home. Batteries will be recharged for the new year, ready to drum up some serious traffic....

More about commenting

I realised today that I had said that commenting is good, but not really explored how the commenting might be done. So today's post will look at how commenting can be done in such a way that it might be effective in building traffic for your blog.
The first thing to note is that your blog must have content that will interest your visitors - might sound obvious, but what I am saying is that there is no point trying to drive masses of traffic to a blog that hasn't been updated for a month... also no point if you just have a stack of paid posts...
OK, that's the first hurdle out the way - make sure when you invite people to your 'home' that it is ready to welcome your visitors.

Next is the nitty-gritty of how to browse intelligently. I have two methods, both which I tried yesterday to good effect:
1) Visit a blog you are associated with (a friend, or favourite blog), look at the links in the sidebar and look for commentors who have left a URL to a blog - follow this and look for posts that you can usefully add something too in terms of a comment. Don't make it an advert, I would never follow a link from a 'spam' comment that says 'hey check out my blog for ways to make cash quick' in fact the chances are if you do that on my blog, I would probably delete it. Add something on topic and intelligent or - move on to another post. Leave one or two comments, then find another URL in the sidebar or from another commentor. One good reason for using a commentor URL is that you KNOW that they are in the habit of browsing around leaving comments - not always true of a static URL link.
2) Go to a social bookmarking site and look for blogs in a similar vein, then follow the advice above. It is vital that whichever tactic you use, that the sites you visit are on topic for your blog. If you haven't joined social networking sites then these are some that I use:
Technorati
MyBlogLog
SpicyPages

No excuses then, your traffic should be on the move tomorrow if you start doing this today.
Things to look out for:
Sites that follow 'do-follow' guidelines and sites that use a 'top commentator' or 'recent comments' widget are worth prioritising.
Here's an offer for you then 'IF YOU LEAVE A COMMENT HERE - I WILL VISIT YOUR BLOG' thus your traffic will go up by at least one today.... Remember traffic now carries more SEO clout for blogs, and backlinks carries less...

A lesson in commenting

The buzz is all about getting back to basics now that The Big G (Google - that's right, who's your Daddy??) is getting wise to the things that bloggers have been taking for granted. There were the viral links which were incredibly successful at driving the Technorati Authority through the roof.. Mine went ballistic, but is dropping almost as fast now. How can I retain the ranking? Commenting of course, that thing we used to do before we 'grey-hatted' our way around the internet picking up cheap undeserved back-links. Trouble is now that Google has got it's stick out, some bloggers have reverted to 'no follow', so be careful where you comment (you know who you are - ha ha...)
To make matters worse, the Big G is now tinkering with the PR calculating hysteresis to try to stamp out paid bloggers. What can we do about that? Well the daft thing is that the paid blogging will now have to be 'under the radar' - I used to stick 'paid post' after every advert - I'm not going to do it now am I? I might as well just ask Google outright to permanently remove my PR.
So, as I said, let's get back to basics and start commenting on each others blogs again, spread the love... follow your linky heart wherever your browser takes you and leave little droppings of love behind... and be a bit more subtle about the old paid blogging.

Big Cash Giveaway!!

Quick post for a contest closing today… Dec 17^th at Midnight PST (whenever that is!). The contest is run in conjunction with ‘NeverBlueAds’ the affiliate network people. Rather generously they have come up with $300 cash to spread over three first prizes. You enter the contest by simply mentioning it in your blog post (pretty simple…), and giving a mention to the sponsors (I’m with you so far…) – further entries can be obtained by signing up with NeverBlueAds and using your own referral link to link to them…(Well why wouldn’t you????).

So that’s full marks for simplicity and big bucks! Get your skates on though!!!

If you want to know more about this sponsor, why not read the following article: Affiliate Marketing with NeverBlueAds.
Other sponsors for the prizes on offer: Blogging4everyone, Nspeaks, Select Index, and A Links Blog.
They deserve a mention just for making this big prize contest possible.

$25 Blog contest

Another easy contest as reported on the new ContestBlogger forum:

All you have to do is tell your readers about the contest, link to the original contest post and link to the IBDinsurance.com homepage with a relevant anchor. In truth, I think the contest devisers have been quite cute because this seems like a cheaper way to get links than using a paid to blog service, but the chance to win $25 can’t be ignored….so I’m in!

And....if you happen to be looking for Health Insurance in North Carolina, then pay the site a visit.

Random draw to be made on 1^st Jan, payment via paypal or money order.

Get more for your endowment

There are a number of reasons why you may need to sell an endowment policy, for instance if you can’t keep up the payments, you lose your job or you need some capital for a major purchase.

In most cases, simply surrendering the policy to the issuer will mean that you will lose a lot of your investment, but there is an alternative.

Instead of surrendering the policy and returning it to the policy provider, there are a number of agencies who will be able to sell on your policy to a third party and may well be in a position to offer you a better deal. One such service offering to Sell Endowments is endowment express who say they can find buyers willing to pay up to 30% more than the policy surrender value.

The future for blogging

I firmly believe that the current drop in paid to post blogging could be a temporary blip during which time some of the poorer paid blogs will cease to be, and the better ones will continue to pick up in some form or other in the future.
PPP have shown that there is money available and you can rest assured that the people running PPP, Smorty, Blogsvertise etc.. will be working out a strategy to keep their market going via the bloggers that they have on their books. This month, I have to admit that opportunities have all but dried up (I'm glad I made the most of last month!), and I expect to make virtually nothing over December (althoughI will collect much of the cash earned last month).
The emphasis now must be on building traffic, which ironically seems to rise automatically during intensive paid blogging periods (basically because I am posting daily). Traffic seems to be up over all of my sites recently, and I haven't made much conscious effort in that department - I must put more energy into it and see if I can raise my 'RealRank' from the rather poor standing it has at the moment. Let's see what the future brings.

Good start to December

My first earnings for December have arrived in the form of a $5 prize (less the usual paypal fee) from a competition post completed in October (waterproof memo boards). I really hope some of the November contests are just as successful!!
Technically, you could argue that contests were a way of getting paid links, so perhaps I should keep quiet about winning anything in case Google turns up again to slap me... However seeing as I have no PR, I guess I can do whatever I want.
Of course, ironically Google own my blogging platform so I guess if they wanted to, they could pull the plug on me by kicking me off Blogger.... Ah well, I will continue to do contests in case that's the only way to raise cash via a blog in the future....

Looking back at November

This is how my earnings spreadsheet looks for the month just gone. The 'Total' is the earnings since March, and the 'This Month' figure is how much was generated in November (PINK for earnings, RED for actual money received via paypal, the rest will be paid out in the coming month). For comparison, I have shown the same table for October.

NOV - spreadsheet:

I will talk through some of the major points that have had an impact on earnings in November. From the top then, I think that I have pretty much given up on Creamaid due to them being less likely to approve a post for no apparent reason - I may use them again if I get desperate... Blogsvertise has actually been the biggest earner for me in November yielding $157 through their 'grab bag' system, this time I used my other blogspot blog to do most of these opps. PPP started well, and I made over $100 in the first week through PPP and Blogsvertise, leading me to speculate on a possible $400-$500 this month, but the Google effect kicked in and opps all but dried up by the end of the month - the same was true of Smorty, once the PR dropped, it wasn't long before the opps dried up. This was a shame particularly because I had only just regained my PR, and opps were flying at me from all directions. You may spot that I have tried a new service 'Sponsored reviews' which gained me an opp for $13, if any further opps arrive from this source I will be sure to post more about it.

OCT - Spreadsheet:

All the usual suspects are listed for the 'small change' earnings, I can see that I could combine the two survey sites (Ciao and Pure profile) for future spreadsheets, and I will combine some other sections to make the sheet easier to read for the future.
Despite the loss of PR, this month has been my most successful so far netting me nearly $324 - ironically this was entirely due to the fact that my PR had shot up at the end of October!! At least I was able to make a little hay whilst the sun was shining, and hold out hope for the future. Having seen my PR going up and down so much recently, I remain hopeful of regaining PR again in the future.