Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

Are you trying to get more commentors on your blog? Sick of seeing all those other blogs with multiple comments on every post? You’re in luck. Cesar over a fleethecube.com has started a new site trying to promote the disabling of the nofollow tag.

The site is called yesfollow.org and explains how you can help the blogosphere and your own search engine ranking by disabling the nofollow tag associated with your comments. In both movabletype and wordpress blogs the default is to put a rel=”nofollow” tag on every comment. What this tells the search engine spiders is to not follow the links associated with the tag.

The blogosphere knows this and looks at comments on less established blogs as too much work for no reward. They would rather leave comments on blogs with a lot of traffic in the hopes that people would click-through. Now I’m not saying this is always the case, sure people leave comments to be helpful and to promote open discussion on a topic that may be dear to them. But a lot of comments are meant to attract people to click through to your blog.

In comes the dofollow plugin promoted by the yesfollow.org campaign. The idea is to make the standard in the blogosphere be dofollow and incentivise everyone to leave comments on others blogs, newbies and oldies alike. Bloggers will of course have to watch closely for spam but if you have control of your spam (and there are plugins that do this) you should want to use the dofollow plugin and help your fellow bloggers out.

So go join Cesar over at and download the plugin, activate it, and leave your feedback. It took me all of 5 minutes to do the whole thing, including leaving some length feedback at yesfollow.

Don’t forget to spread the word, it’ll help you SEO process.

Happy Commenting!

Forums are tough in every sense of the word. From getting people to join and keep visiting to getting people to moderate them, Forums are tough. But from that hard work of sticking with it can come great rewards.

I recently came upon, through a co-worker who knows this guy, a random blog published by someone who runs a Forum that I happen to belong to. This publisher recently was offered $25,000 for a golf forum that had, at last check, over 6,000 members and over 15,000 pages indexed in Google.

The Forum is Golf Rewind and if you visit the site you’ll notice the publisher hasn’t done much in the way of monetizing the site. Therefore I think $25,000 was a shot in the dark offer and with some monetization on the publishers part he could get a lot more than that offer. Which I think is why he didn’t sell the forum.

It would be interesting to know the traffic numbers as well as why he doesn’t monetize every single forum thread. I see only a few with small Google ads placed in obscure places that probably don’t have high click-through rates.

I will try and track this person down and find out more about the offer and the plan for Golf Rewind but this publisher has put in a lot of time and effort making a site that has high traffic, excellent repeat visitors and a good place to make money. Forums are tough to maintain and you gotta give him credit for keeping with it.

In a recent post entitled Help Me! Should I change my Blog I discussed issues I was having with my blog. I have been debating with changing my blog and the direction that it’s going and splitting it up into a few different blogs. I don’t want to loose my page rank and all my incoming links and I worry about losing some the of the almost 30 subscribers that I’ve had over the past few months.

With that I discussed starting many blogs. It didn’t dawn on me until I wrote it down and then I realized that I was essentially saying I wanted to start a blog network from the ideas and directions that this blog has pulled me in. Of course there are a lot of blog networks and of course I have very little time to build a network of blogs that I can maintain.

It’ll be tough but there are a lot of people out there maintaining blog networks and making a decent amount of money from them. I don’t expect to become a Weblog’s Inc., or a B5media. They have been able to build good brand recognition and make continued growth. If I can make enough money to make it worth my while I will continue, who wouldn’t.

As I was going through my decision of whether or not to pursue this new idea I came to two points that I think anyone considering building a blog network as a solo blogger. (I could open the network up to more writers but that would be a good issue to have.)

1. Are there enough topics that you would want to write about to build a blog network on?
and
2. Can you build an efficient way to blog?

The first one I think is important. Find some topics you like and blog about them. Don’t worry about there be to many blogs in that category. If you continue to post you’ll gain a following, especially if there are some useful posts. The second one I think is a good point to look into. If you’re going to start a blog network as a solo blogger you can’t waste a lot of time thinking and debating about blog posts and layout. Pick a layout, and then just blog.

I will keep you all update as to how my blog network is going. I currently maintain 3 blogs but have been mediocre at best maintaining them. I plan on focusing my efforts on efficient ways to blog and will share my ideas with you here and possibly in another blog I plan on starting. Stick with me and I’ll hopefully stick with building a successful blog network.

I finally got a Google PageRank and it was initiated at a PageRank of 4! This actually came as I was debating whether or not to change this blog and split it up into 5 more directed blogs with the sub categories of Blogging, Finance, Running, Golfing, and Tennis. My thought is to stop this blog and change it’s name completely and write about each topic at a new blog. It would require a lot of redirects and a lot of transferring of data but it might be worth it.

As of right now my stats are about 40 unique visitors a day with an average of 28 subscribers a day via rss feeds. Not sure how many of those rss’ers read my text but the feeds are downloaded. These aren’t great stats and my blogging hasn’t become as consistent.

I guess I am unsure if my blogging has been helpful with this mosh pit of information. These are my options. Let me know what you think is a good idea.

1. Change just my blog name (essentially a title tag change not that big) - I like “Blogging on Empty” or “Running on Empty,” the reason for the change is because I don’t think the name lends itself to much modesty. Some people might get the wrong idea behind what I’m trying to get across.

2. Change just the name and URL - I registered BloggingOnEmpty.com and I think it conveys the fact that I’m trying to blog while doing all this other stuff and holding a full time job. Maybe I can give it as a show you how type of blog.

3. Slowly phase out this blog by switchting all writing about blogging, domaining, and site building to bloggingonempty.com and then start 4 other blogs about running, finance, golfing, and tennis. That way I could use my PageRank of 4 but I would loose all that valuable content were I to ever switch to my new sites completely. I guess I could transfer the content to the appropriate sites if I wanted to once this is done?….

I kind of like the last idea. That way I use my blog to change the url and the direction of it without loosing all the hardwork and links that I’ve built up so far. This might work. It would mean that I would have to essentially maintain 8 blogs at once but that might be a fun challenge. I don’t write daily at Sprint Rants and this one would be phased out in about 5 months so I would essentially have 6 full time blogs with the 5 mentioned here plus myHawaii activities site.

Let me know what you all think, those of you that consistently read my blog or are just dropping by. Leave a comment and direct me please.

Thanks guys.

Erik

For those of you that run, or those of you that blog, or those of you that run and blog, Darren over at Problogger had a post with a great analogy between running efficiently and blogging efficiently. He has recently been attending the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne Australia and noticed that some of the best sprinters glide effortlessly down the track easily beating competitors that push themselves to exhaustion.

For those of you who run and especially race you know the feeling when someone passes you with a smile on their face while you struggle with every stride. Annoying, isn’t it. If you’re like me you think the same thing when you visit a blogger who seemingly effortlessly posts massive amounts of useful content day in and day out.

Now some of these people, like Darren, blog for a living, and some those people, like Asafa Powell, run for a living. Keeping up with people who make their living at blogging is going to be tough. However, you can become better at posting by focusing on what makes posting easy and what allows you to write a lot. Mostly it’s going to be things you’re interested in. Try to have a plan and work towards. Like running it will take practice, you’ll need to practice a routine and focus on writing faster and better.

Of course, like running, blogging might not be for everyone but you can at least try for the “gold” and practice, practice, practice.

From Tucson, Arizona to Boston Massachusetts I couldn’t get away from the Indie Virus. I, along with a good friend of mine were recently “infected” with the Indie Virus from one of our favorite bloggers Yaro Starak. It appears a young man by the name of Chris pearson passed on the indie virus to Yaro and he was paying it forward to Cesar and I. Thanks for that.

To give you all an idea of how the virus has helped and to let Yaro know he done some good my feedburner subscriber stats read 20 people prior to the virus being sneezed my way. Now, 3 days later my subscriber stats have climbed 29 with steady increases each day! My stats are still having trouble surpassing the 60 uniques a day average but I have been away from truly helpful blog posts for a while and would find it hard to believe a mass of people would show up at my blog(step) just by dumb luck. You gotta help out the people to gain some sort of following.

Now I must pass on the Indie Virus and help out those around me that have inspired or entertained me over the past 4 months. Since my blog is basically about all the stuff I am working towards accomplishing I am going to send the virus to several blogs spanning a few categories. First off I am going to send the virus to Sean at A Runner’s Blog. I enjoy following his training and results to keep me going through my own training. Next up I am sending the virus to Success Minders” who recently wrote a nice article about training to learn. Good posts for those of you trying to work on your personal development. Lastly I am sending the Indie Virus to Scott. He may not need the virus but I love his blog and his idea. For those of you who don’t know he is a guy that has been wearing a name tag every day of his life for quite some time now as a sort of social experiment. Always interesting to see what he is up to.

Now that I have spread the virus and updated my blog I am going to have to head out. I’ve never been in Boston before and got in late last night so I had to start late today. I plan on visiting Harvard and MIT since I hear a lot of nerds hang out around there. Plus I want to say I’ve been there done that. Then maybe I’ll swing past Fenway Park and see if I can see any diehards setting up tents prior to the season beginning. I hear these fans are crazy.

I was recently Googling self improvement, entrepreneurship, and making money via content based websites and began to realize something. I’m stuck in a community where everyone knows everyone. What I mean by this is that I began blogging because a friend showed me Steve Pavlina’s and then Yaro’s Entrepreneur-Journey blog. From there I promoted my blog to those linked to and from Yaro’s or Steve’s. I would trackback, leave comments and try and link exchange with people who were reading those and similar blogs.

This was all fine and dandy for a while but I then noticed that all my comments were coming from people reading the same stuff that I was. The same stuff in the same niche dominated by Yaro, Steve, or Darren. Where is there room for me in that company?

That’s when I began to Google the topics of my blog looking for similar forums or blogs outside of this sub-web I got myself stuck in. Now don’t get me wrong, the sub-web led by the likes of those three is a good one to get in and I feel as though I have learned about a whole other business world. However, I needed to widen my blogs reach. I love the aussie’s as much as the next person but that seem to be where most of my comments were coming from and a good chuck of my repeat visitors as well. (Maybe they just like tennis and running more than other countries.)

In order to widen my blogs reach I decided to focus on several methods which I list below.

Google Your Topics

- As I mentioned the number one way to get into other sub-webs of bloggers is by googling your blogs topics and then following links on the blog or page results. I sometimes use google blog search beta but most of the time I’ll just google it and sooner or later come upon someones blog related to my search. I just make sure those people don’t have a link or back link to the usual blogs related to the 3 mentioned previously.

From there you can leave a comment, email the publisher, or click a link through to another blog. Eventually you should find someone responsive and if you leave good information you’re bound to get some type of traffic back to your blog. Even if it’s minor. Every bit of traffic helps.

Forums

- There’s no better way to boost traffic than by slipping your URL into a useful post at a medium to high traffic forum. It’s like when someone begin interviewed slips in their product line or company URL, you can’t beat the free promotion. Now some are bigger than others and you could post until you’re blue in the face and not get any outside links from it. But the goal here is to widen your reach. So look for forums that aren’t mentioned a million times in the usual pages you read. I found that the little traffic spikes from forum promotion have carried on for about 3-7 days depending on the forum posted in.

Just remember to post useful stuff. If you are shamelessly dropping your URL the people who visit often and ave websites to link from can spot you a mile away. Be helpful and informative and the traffic will come.

Look For No-Name Blogs

- Like no-name steaks, no-name blogs can be a diamond in the rough. I’m talking about blogs like this one where not a lot of people know it yet. If you bookmark the blog and comment usefully every now and then on their blog, and that person keeps posting and builds traffic, you’ll get the links into your blog. This is where you can really begin to widen your blogs reach.

Being the first “fan” of an up and coming blog will make you a hit. People that begin to visit or comment on that particular site will think you an expert or a friend, either way they’ll be curious and want to find more out about you. Click on your name, BAM, at your site. Beautiful.

Don’t Do The Usual

I guess in closing what I want to say is that if you are getting in a rut with your blog you should begin to search elsewhere for links. People in your niche might already have their 10 favorites and be passing yours by because they don’t have time. You want to find related blogs that don’t know about the big dogs yet so you can solidify yourself as a big dog.

Get out there and search for a new friend and possibly a new repeat reader. Keep updating your content and see where it leads. Hopefully some new eyeballs will be looking at your pages in no time.

I have been busy working behind the scenes on my newest site SprintRants.com and neglecting several posts that I have wanted to publish here. However, through my new site I learned a little php, a little MySql, and a lot of Wordpress. To give you a little background on Sprint Rants, I am a customer of SprintPCS cell phone service and not as satisfied as I could be, to say the least. I have been going through a battle for the last 2 months dealing with a phone that doesn’t work, customer service that can’t understand me, and local stores “Sprint Stores,” that have no clue what the main company is doing.

As I sat in a few of the stores, both here in Hawaii and on the mainland in Wisconsin I noticed that almost every person sitting in the store or walking out was disgruntled. Cursing the company or the service these people would walk out and let it out, let it all out. It got me to thinking that if these people were like me they needed somewhere to get it out. Friends just get sick of hearing how junky your service is and they begin to tell you to get another phone provider. But you know that isn’t an option because almost every service has something wrong with them.

That was when I came up with the idea for a sounding board of sorts. People could come to get updates on sprint offerings to see if there is a loop hole somewhere that they didn’t know about to make up for all the extra charges they see on their bills. It’s also place where I would give my week to week dealings with sprint and their customer service, or lack there of, just to keep you amused. Most importantly the site is for people to just come and leave their rants about how poorly they have been treated or not treated and read others rants and not so raves about Sprint.

In the process I was able to learn a few things about Wordpress, php, and mysql. I figured out how to use some plugins for a static front page and how the page hierarchy works making each page unique based on a specific template. The most important thing I started into was php and how it works with MySql. I was able to create a new field on the comment form, a new field on the wp-comments mysql database, and how to write a few functions to deal with the new field, a comment title.

I plan on writing a nice little outline about how I did that so people who don’t really know php or mysql could add the same field as me or to learn how easy it is to work on the files associated with Wordpress.

My 12 sites in 12 months is on it’s way and I continue to work on this site as well as Aloha Update in order to reach my 500,000 visitors a month goal. Hope you all are working towards your goals, and sorry if I kept some of you wondering what I’ve been up to.

Ever notice all those blogs with the add feed buttons like the ones I have here to your left? There are all different aggregators which keep you up-to-date via RSS (real simple syndicate) with all your favorite blogs and feeds. I use Google Reader right now but only check it every so often. Most of the time I use the drop down history address bar to get back to my favorite blogs but find the aggregators simple to use. Most people use them especially to keep track of the multitude of blogs that are out there. As a reader it’s simple, click and done, but as a writer, all you have to track those clicks is your exit url stats from your stat counter, which often times can miss a click.

That’s where FeedBurner comes in. If you’re using WordPress, Blogger, TypePad or similar software you already have a rss feed url that comes with it. This is no doubt what you currently use for syndicating your feed. Those are great but they don’t track your statistics. What FeedBurner does is allow you to track how many people are currently reading and downloading your feed from their aggregator. You can track current results, feed evolution, what aggregators are most popular, and page views from each aggregator.

The other great thing about FeedBurner is that it allows you to tell your readers how popular you are. This is a great way to garner excitement and readership for your blog. If someone sees that 1000 people are currently reading your blog regularly that will more than likely make them want to add you to their aggregators just to keep up with the Jone’s. This is also a way to attract advertisers if you are into that. A prospective client that visits your site and sees that you have feed statistics similar to say TechCrunch.com, will want to jump on your site right away to get their products out to more viewers. FeedBurner also helps match up advertisers with similar content feeds to help monetize your blog and feed.

I was able to get setup using wordpress within a few minutes. All that was need was to follow the simple instructions linked to on the front page of FeedBurner.com which included a plugin download and I was set to go. If you’re interested in making money off a blog, or just want to allow people easier access to your feed while keeping track of them, FeedBurner is definitely the way to go.

Happy Burning,
Erik

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Quite ironic that the title of this post has nothing to do with it’s content which is SEO, search engine optimization, but I thought I would start out with a little bit of lame humor. Living on an island I have come to realize that if a couple people are sick in one office every office on the island will eventually get it. Half of my office has been out sick at one point or another for the past 2 weeks along with my girlfriends (which is where I think I got it.) Today I foolishly decided I needed to be at work for at least half the day but came home after I realized I would continue to perpetuate the sickness around the office with my caughing if I stayed. On the way home I got to thinking, “If it’s always hot outside, such as the case in Hawaii, do you catch a cold, or can we start calling it a hot.” I guess if the symptoms are the same you might as well call it a cold, but people here call their porch a lanai, so why can’t I call it a hot? I mean I don’t feel cold. Ponder that for a second.

On to what I really wanted to talk about. One of the blogs I just began reading is about designing niche websites for automatic income, called automatic income sites or AIS. Although I haven’t fully jumped into developing these, the idea behind it seems fascinating. Put up a site, leave it alone, and watch it make money for you. Brilliant. The blog is called Niche Designer Blog and is part of HelloKelli.com. HelloKelli is where the main information and links to each niche site are but the blog I find interesting because the person (I assume Kelli although have not found an about page), has begun posting about the niche site development process as well as earnings and advertisement trials (not just the default AdSense).

Her (or His) most recent post is about SEO tools. The post has a link to a site called Search Engine Optimization Tools. Why I haven’t found this site through my Google searches is beyond me but I’m glad I’ve found it now. There are all types of tools located there including a really useful tool called the backlink builder. It allows you to enter a keyword and then it returns sites that offer link exchanges or add url here pages. It’s great for building incoming links which is half the battle in developing a high traffic site.

There are countless other tools that are pretty fun to play around with as well. You can check out the rankings and indexed pages of all your competitors or favorite pages, you can see how much a link should cost on your page per month, or see the density of keywords on your pages. You can use that last tool to check on a competing site and see how many times a keyword is used on their site, especially if it’s google search results ranking is higher than yours. For niche sites, this could mean dollars a day! There are quite a few other tools all neatly organized into one simple site. Sure you can go to Google and type in all the links:www.blahbla.com or site:www.blahblah.com but it’s so much easier when someone does it for you. Why re-invent the wheel?

Hope it helps you out.

Aloha,
Erik
Trying to get better