Associate Programs Newsletter #321
Are you blogging, reblogging or merely chicken scratching?
Here are four ways to make blog posts which achieve something useful.
CONTENTS:
1. Are you wasting your time blogging?
2. How to watch our feeds on Google
3. How to watch our feeds on Yahoo
4. Linkbait case study: Links and rankings soar
5. Thought for today: Attempting the impossible
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1. Are you wasting your time blogging?
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I keep an eye on quite a few blogs by scanning blog headlines on my My Yahoo page. It's a very easy, fast way of seeing what's happening on blogs, whatever industry you're in.
I was searching for something today, got distracted and wasted three hours, checking out a bunch of blogs written by affiliates. It was a frustrating, depressing experience.
I was reminded painfully how many totally pointless posts are being made on blogs.
Are you wasting your time blogging when you could be doing something more effective? When you could be generating decent revenue instead?
Are you blogging constructively with a purpose in mind, or are you just chicken scratching - energetically kicking up dust and straw but hardly ever finding a worm?
I'll make my bias plain here. I don't own a blog. Maybe one day I will, but I've been earning my living online quite happily without one ever since I quit my job in 1998.
If I DID own a blog, here's what I'd do.
Before I wrote each post, I'd ask myself: "What reaction am I aiming for? What do I want the reader to do after reading my post?"
For example, you can...
* Review a product, giving specific details which explain just how useful the product is, leading the reader towards making a decision to buy through your affiliate link. The result: Sales and commissions.
* Publish a helpful how-to article. Result: You give your business a face and a voice. You build credibility. If you're doing this, I hope you have simple, easy to understand instructions telling people how to sign up for your newsletter or RSS feed. Once you've impressed people, you should be adding those new fans to your database. Otherwise, what's the point? They'll probably just quickly forget you and chase the latest buzz.
* Make an insightful comment on news in your industry. I mean a really insightful comment, not just a reblog or someone else's opinion. Result: You build credibility.
* Publish linkbait, aimed mainly at attracting hundreds of links to your site. This makes pages throughout your site rank higher in Google. For a detailed case study on linkbait, keep reading.
Before you make your next post on a blog, ask yourself, "What's the point? What do I want to achieve?"
You should ask the same question before you write every article for a website.
[UPDATE, 2008: Professional blogger Yaro Starak doesn't just "blog for money". He has cleverly combined a blog, email and automation to create a 6-figure business. He describes exactly how he does it in his Blog Mastermind coaching. For details, see my Blog Mastermind review.]
By the way, although we don't call it a blog, we do have a sort of blog...
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2. How to watch our feeds on Google
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You may not have noticed, but the whole of AssociatePrograms.com works like a blog. It has ever since our big revamp last year.
You could call it a blog without blather.
You can keep up to date with what's happening in any sections of AssociatePrograms.com - in the affiliate forum (well, there IS some blather there as well as very good stuff), or the affiliate directory, the newsletter, new articles or News - by subscribing to any of our dozens of RSS feeds.
It's a hassle-free way of keeping up to date.
You can find our RSS feeds here...
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/pages/RSS-Feeds%7B47%7D-Syndicate
(If I'd known the new system was going to create such an ugly URL, I would have named that link differently.)
You can subscribe to any of the site's sections - the forum, the latest 10 articles, or any particular category you're interested in, such as "Super affiliates", "Recruiting affiliates", "Residual commissions", "Getting traffic", "News", and so on.
Some sections seldom receive new articles, so a good choice is "latest 10 articles". It includes all the site's new articles and new newsletters. It doesn't includes News. You may want to subscribe to it separately.
You can choose to subscribe to just one section or a dozen, or more. It's your choice.
Here's an easy way to subscribe - without needing an RSS reader. Just add the feed to your Google HomePage. If you haven't set up a Google HomePage, don't worry. It's very simple.
How to watch AssociatePrograms.com RSS feeds on Google:
1. Go to our Feeds/Syndicate page:
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/pages/RSS-Feeds%7B47%7D-Syndicate
2. Choose the RSS feed you're interested in, for example "Latest 10 articles RSS".
I recommend that choice.
3. RIGHT-click on the link.
4. Click on Copy Shortcut (Internet Explorer) or Copy Link Location (Firefox).
5. Go to Google HomePage - http://www.google.com/ig
(If necessary, click on "Make it your own" and set up your Google HomePage.)
5. Click on "Add stuff" (It's at the right of the page).
6. Click on "Add by URL". (It's at the top, near the search box).
7. Do a Ctrl-V to paste the RSS feed URL you've chosen into the box and click "Add".
That's it.
One big advantage of using My Yahoo and Google HomePage is that many blogs make it very easy for you to use these services by clicking on a "MyYahoo" button or an "Add to Google" button.
Subscribe to your favorite blogs this way and you'll be able to monitor them all quickly and easily on one web page.
Just one thing...
If you're watching RSS feeds via My Yahoo or Google HomePage, you need to know that new posts do not appear instantaneously. I haven't done an in-depth study, but when I checked yesterday and today, blog headlines seemed to be appearing faster on Google HomePage than on My Yahoo.
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3. How to watch our feeds on Yahoo
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As well as having a Google HomePage, I have a My Yahoo page, so I can watch how these two behemoths compete with each other.
Here's how to watch AssociatePrograms.com feeds on My Yahoo:
Follow Steps 1 to 4 above.
5. Go to My Yahoo - http://my.yahoo.com
If necessary, follow the simple instructions to set up your page.
6. Click on "+ Add Content" (The link is near the top left-hand corner).
7. Click on "Add RSS by URL" (It's near the Find button).
8. Do a Ctrl-V to paste the URL you've chosen into the box, and click "Add".
There are many other ways of monitoring RSS feeds. Jay Stockwell discusses some options in this article...
RSS demystified
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/articles/468/1/RSS-demystified
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4. Linkbait case study: Links and rankings soar
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Daniel Tynski of SEO company Voltier Inc has written a superb case study of linkbait and its effect on a site's traffic and rankings in Google.
The catalyst was a totally off-topic article, "8 Diseases That Give You Superhuman Powers", which was hidden on an inside page on a car dealership website.
It was posted on Reddit and Digg. Traffic soared.
Within five days, the site received almost 234,000 unique visitors.
"We knew from the beginning the traffic would absolutely be worthless... The purpose was to help a site that was relatively unknown get a little bit of authority. It was the backlinks we were interested in," Daniel says.
Look at the links the site received...
Before the Digg: 207 backlinks
3 days after Digg: 1,270 backlinks
5 days after Digg: 2,642 backlinks
7 days after Digg: 3,545 backlinks
"We already know that untargeted backlinks are not nearly as effective as targeted ones from authority sites with similar content. The Digg did, however, produce links from many sites with authority in areas that are not entirely unrelated, and in some cases, from some sites with very high traffic and trust," Daniel says.
"Google's latest crawl (7 days after the Digg) resulted in a huge increase in our rankings for our targeted keywords. We jumped up anywhere from 20-300 places, with most of our most important keywords ranking in the top ten (many in the top 5). Furthermore, Google has increased its rate of indexing, has increased the number of our pages that appear in the index, and have released over a dozen important pages from the supplemental results."
Unfortunately, we're not all as clever as Daniel at writing linkbait. I imagine he'll receive a lot of business as a result of his post.
Here's the full story, plus comments...
Anatomy of a Super Digg
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/anatomy-of-a-super-digg
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5. Thought for today: Attempting the impossible
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"The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible - and achieve it, generation after generation." - Pearl S. Buck.
All the best
Allan Gardyne
