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This Week Around the Web

Shawn — Sat, 01 May 2010 02:37:57 +0000

Great tips and info from the amazing intertubes…

Should I Spend Time on Meta Keywords Tags?: The short answer is no, you can forget about them.
How To Make Your Own Luck: Johnny gives you the truth about being lucky online in the typical Johnny way. He’s went from zero to a six figure income with his blogging empire, and he did it in a little over a year so you might want to check his post out.
Benefits Sell, Features Don’t, and Here is Why: Learn how to tell your potential customers what they want to know, not what you think they want to know.

This Week Around the Web

Shawn — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 12:32:13 +0000

Here are this weeks little jewels from around the web:

The Houdini Guide to Getting Noticed Online: This post over on Copyblogger will give you five good ideas about making people remember who you are. Warning: the picture of Houdini is borderline NSFW, lol.
Google Webmaster Help: If Google is choosing their own description snippets for your pages rather than using your own meta description tags, Matt explains why and gives some tips on raising the chances of your meta descriptions being chosen.
DIY Themes released Thesis version 1.7 this week and it has some neat changes including a way to backup/restore your custom settings and an easy way to beautify your affiliate links. I made a video showing the new features which you can see here.
Darren Rowse announced that his ProBlogger site had been acquired by Google. Of course, it turned out to be an April Fool’s joke but it sure created a lot of buzz for him.

Thesis 1.7: New Features Plus a Surprise for Affiliates

Shawn — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 18:45:36 +0000

Thesis 1.7 has just been released by DIY Themes and there are some great new features including additional SEO controls, a way to backup and restore your theme customizations, plus a super easy way for affiliates to mask beautify their affiliate links for better click-throughs! Check out my video below for a quick overview of what’s new, then head on over to DIY Themes and see why so many internet marketers are in love with Thesis.

Click here to view the embedded video.

By the way, I just recently launched my new Thesis blog setups so if you’re planning on starting a new blog and you want the Thesis theme, you’ll get it included as part of my setup package.

This Week Around The Web

Shawn — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 23:38:37 +0000

I’ve not posted a lot lately because I’ve been up to my eyeballs in offline and online projects, plus its tax time and we all know what that means. Anyway, I came across a few great articles this week that I thought I would pass along:

WordPress SEO: The Only Guide You Need – Glenn over at ViperChill has written a great post on making sure your blog is up to snuff on its SEO.
How to Boost Blog and Website Traffic with Article Marketing – Pat over at Smart Passive Income guides you through the process of using article marketing to boost traffic to your blog.
When Should You Quit a Blog and Move On? – Darren at ProBlogger tells you why and when you might want to pull the plug on a blog, then follows up with a post on 7 Ways to End a Blog.

Enjoy the reading!

Day 5 of 31DBBB: On Second Thought…

Shawn — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:28:52 +0000

It’s been approximately 35 days since I started my series on 31 Days to Build a Better Blog and I’m only up to day 5, lol. I began this series of posts as a way to let people follow along with me as I went through 31DBBB (a great ebook from Darren Rowse of Problogger) and hopefully engage in some discussions along the way about the tasks involved. This series has been problematic though. I mentioned back on day 2 that I didn’t want to cross the line into giving away Darren’s information to everyone for free. It’s a great book and very inexpensive so cost shouldn’t be a barrier for people picking up a copy. However, it’s getting more and more apparent that I just can’t continue this series without giving Darren’s work away for free, so I’m choosing to end it now. I’ll still continue on through the course because I think it’s very worthwhile but I just don’t feel right about putting the details of the course here on my blog. If you’ve been following along, I hope you’ll continue on through the course. If you haven’t yet picked up a copy of 31DBBB, be sure and grab one because it’s packed full of some great information on growing your blog. Oh yeah…and it’s cheap too!

Day 4 of 31DBBB: Watch Somebody Do It Right

Shawn — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:52:08 +0000

I’ve now finished day 4 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. At the rate I’m going it will likely take me 31 weeks instead of 31 days to complete the course. But that’s ok, I said from the beginning I wasn’t on any strict schedule. My main goal is simply completing it. Day four’s task was to analyze a top blog in your niche. I’m going to briefly point out two blogs that I have in my feedreader and list a few things I like about each one.

First on the list is Viper Chill, written by a young blogger who goes by Glenn. Viper Chill covers multiple blogging and marketing topics with the goal of teaching you how to make money online. Most of the posts are geared toward the blogger who has yet to make any significant income online, which probably includes most of the bloggers out there. Viper Chill has a very interactive readership. Just scanning through the posts on the home page at the moment, I see a low comment count of 27 and a high comment count of 95. Obviously, he’s creating content that lots of people like and want to discuss further. Currently, his Feedburner stats show a readership of 3,777.

The most interesting thing to me is his posting schedule. In December, he posted only four posts and with today being the last day of January, he has only six for the month. That’s a much lower frequency than most bloggers aim for but if you take a look at his posts, you’ll see what I believe is the main reason for his success. These posts are often massive and always filled with great content. Personally, I just don’t agree with bloggers who put a numerical goal for post frequency. I would rather not read a post unless there is some serious value behind it and Viper Chill fills that need for me.

Looking at the overall design of the site, it is fairly simple but has just enough visual punch not to be boring. Regarding monetization, well there is none. He does have other sites where he makes money, but this one is dedicated solely to helping others succeed and he’s chosen not to monetize it with affiliate links, banners, Adsense, etc.

The next blog on the list is Niche Store Builder, written by Mark Hansen. Niche Store Builder helps people build and develop niche affiliate sites. It’s a bit smaller in scope than the previous blog, but that’s the whole point of being in a niche. Mark’s blog is one of the best resources out there for anyone wanting to build niche affiliate sites. This is another blog whose readers are willing to interact by commenting frequently. Right now on the home page, there are several posts with double digit comments. Mark is posting about 15-18 posts per month, so about one every other day. Compared with Viper Chill, Niche Store Builder has much less content per post on average, yet it’s still pertinent information for anyone who is into building niche affiliate sites.

You can see from the social icons that Mark interacts with people on both Facebook and Twitter, so he’s marketing himself through the social networks and has a fair number of fans and followers. The overall design of Niche Store Builder is very attractive in my opinion. I like how the construction crane ties in with the whole concept of site building. Regarding monetization, Mark uses affiliate banners to promote various products and services on his blog.

The thing I like about both these sites is that they provide content that is truly helpful to their readers. This sounds like a no-brainer but there are lots of sites out there that just don’t do that. Many sites simply regurgitate stuff you see everywhere else. That’s something I don’t want to do with my blog. I don’t have any goal on number of posts per day or week. I would rather wait until I have something to say that I feel may actually help someone out there than to make a post for the sake of meeting some frequency goal.

I think both of these sites could be monetized better. It’s noble that Viper Chill opts for no monetization, but I think he could throw in a little without readers being turned off. People will still read his site for the great content. In Mark’s case, I think he’s written enough great posts on niche site building to combine several of them into some type of course or ebook and use this as a featured item on his blog. I’ll bet that would result in greater revenue for him than the affiliate banners.

So, what have I learned from these sites and how can I use it to improve my own blog? First and foremost, it affirms my goal of quality over quantity. Both these sites provide content that their specific readers find valuable and that is what it’s all about. People are just too busy nowadays to stop and read some post that is simply there because the blogger had to meet his daily post quota. If people give you their time, you need to give them back something great in return. Secondly, I want my blog readers to interact with me by making comments and continuing the discussion. These blogs do this both by writing content their readers are interested in as well as placing a call to action at the end of many of their posts.

What do you think about these two blogs? What do you like, or what would you do differently?

Next Up: Day 5 – On Second Thought…

Day 3 of 31DBBB: Time to Be a Pitchman!

Shawn — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 04:19:22 +0000

I’m now through with day 3 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Darren lists 11 different ways to promote a blog post and I used a few different ones on my post from day 2. Specifically I used social messaging, social bookmarking and internal links. Oh, and I also got another blogger to link to it so that makes four I guess. As far as short-term traffic goes from this promotion, I’m seeing minimal results so I guess I’m a poor salesman. However, building links is a long-term process so I’m not concerned. If you had any significant traffic bursts from your blog promotion methods in day 3, let me know.

Up next: Day 4 – Watch Somebody Do It Right

7 Ways You Can Profit from Your Blog

Shawn — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:47:08 +0000

Whether you’re new to blogging or you’ve been at it awhile but haven’t seen the money roll in yet, you’ll want to check out How to REALLY Profit From Your Blog, a great post by Pat Flynn over at Smart Passive Income. I know you’ve probably seen these “make money online” posts all over the web and most of them are just a way to drive affiliate sales, but this one is real. Pat lays out several ways for anyone to earn an income from their blog. These aren’t get rich quick schemes. They are real ways to make money online. I use one of the ways here at Ninja Blog Setup (providing a service) and two of his other recommendations are on my list for future expansion later in the year. If you aren’t happy with the financial results of your blog, don’t miss Pat’s post.

Day 2 of 31DBBB: Making a List and Checking it Twice

Shawn — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 04:32:29 +0000

I’ve made it through day 2 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, but before I talk about today’s task, let me say that I’m trying not to cross a line that I shouldn’t cross as I document myself going through 31DBBB. I don’t want this series of posts to be a free giveaway of Darren’s ebook. However, I do want it to be something people can follow along with after they have already purchased 31DBBB. After re-reading my post from day 1, I feel I went a little too far, so from this point on I will try to speak about the results of my daily tasks without giving away the actual content of Darren’s course. If you haven’t yet picked up a copy of 31DBBB, go grab it now. It’s very reasonably priced…less than the average book at Barnes & Noble.

Ok, with that said, today’s task is about list posts. Darren gives us eight great reasons why list posts are powerful for bloggers and describes three different types of list posts we can incorporate into our blogs. I chose to do the “post as a list” type and published it as my most recent post before this one. It’s titled 10 Free WordPress Themes That Look Like They Cost Money.

Let me know what you think. Also, feel free to post a link to your list post in the comments below!

Next up: Day 3 – Time to be a Pitchman!

Day 1 of 31DBBB: Baseball in an Elevator?

Shawn — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 06:01:04 +0000

Let me start this series by stating that it will most likely take me more than 31 days to complete 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. My goal isn’t to complete one task every day for the next 31 days. My goal is simply to complete the course in a reasonable amount of time. As busy as most people are nowadays, I think that is a more practical goal.

So here we are at day 1 of 31DBBB. Today’s goal was to write an “elevator pitch” for your blog. What’s an elevator pitch? It’s a short piece of information that you can tell people when somebody asks what your business is about or what you do. The goal is to inform people about what you do or what your site is about and leave them interested and wanting to know more.

This is a good starting point Darren gives us because it forces us to decide for ourselves exactly what our blog is about. What is the main purpose of your blog? What do you want your readers to take away from it? If you’re having to think very long about that, you’re probably in the same boat as a lot of bloggers out there, so it’s time to figure it out and develop your elevator pitch.

Here at Ninja Blog Setup, I provide technical services for bloggers who aren’t interested in handling the technical (or ugly) side of blogging. It’s kind of like changing the oil in your car. It’s a dirty job and most people would rather take their car down to the local lube shop and pay someone to do it for them instead. That’s the main purpose of my site, so I think my blog should mainly be focused on the technical issues of blogging. I want to provide my clients and readers with tips on tweaking their blog theme, various tutorials, informing them about security issues, passing on news about WordPress developments, etc. From time to time, I may stray from the technical arena and cover other blogging-related topics but for the most part, I want to keep this blog focused on the main goal of my site.

With that in mind, here’s the elevator pitch I’ve come up with for Ninja Blog Setup: Ninja Blog Setup makes blogging easier by performing the technical services most bloggers don’t want to do. I may refine this over the next few days but I think it’s a good starting point.

What is your elevator pitch? What do you think about mine?

Next up: Day 2 – Making a List and Checking It Twice