Marketing My Blog – A journal of my techniques!

I recently started a new blog that is focused on the Paid-To-Click industry. It was made to discuss techniques, find reputable programs and discuss successes as well as failures among other things. I have decided to write a journal here to track its progress, share my techniques and look for feedback/suggestions.

In The Beginning!

The first thing I had to do was find a domain name that I like, and even more difficult, one that was available. I did some research and found the domain name BlogAboutBux.com was available so I bought it using GoDaddy.com. I then opened a hosting account and directed the domain name at that account.

After setting up the hosting I installed the latest version of WordPress and found a theme I liked and installed that. I then installed all the plug-ins that I liked and started to configure the site.

I have found that promoting a site that has little content is rather fruitless so I decided, as many on this forum have, to wait until I had nearly 20 posts before starting to market this site. I did some research and found a few hot topics in the industry and wrote a few posts about it.

I then found a friend who was interested in PTC and got her started on a program and asked her to post her experiences. She has done 4 posts already and I think her contributions are quite valuable.

I started writing posts and I am currently up to 19 posts in 7 categories so I think it is time to start promoting the site. My next post will be my plan and any comments and suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

 

Since you have a lot of competition, since the website offers nothing ground-breaking, I think the most important thing is persistence. Keep writing lots of good content (and advertise the content a bit) and you'll accumulate organic backlinks and end up with good search engine traffic.

 

You are correct, there is quite a bit of competition in the market. That was one of the reasons I picked it! I want to be in a market that can have quite a bit of traffic and a good return on my efforts. I also found that while doing research that many of the competitors in my niche offer nothing more than referral links to their programs. While my blog will certainly do so, it will mostly focus on providing quality info! I am in no hurry to make it a success, as doing so will only hurt its chances!

 

I plan on starting marketing using some simple SEO techniques to get the site indexed and to get a small stream of visitors rolling in to begin with. I have already set up Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.

The Plan – Week 1 of marketing

1. Install and configure All-In-One SEO
2. Begin Posting on PTC forums with link in signature
3. Comment on related blogs with link in username
4. Submit link to directories
5. Continue to write content

The first week will be just some simple marketing. I think that having 19 posts is enough to start brining in visitors but not enough to go all out with marketing yet. I am mostly looking to build backlinks and bring in a small amount of highly targeted traffic.

After the small amount of traffic starts to flow I can tell what parts of the sites are working and what is not and concentrate future efforts on those areas.

What else should I do in the first week?

 

I installed WordPress 23 days ago (August 28) and started with my first post on that day. I will start all my future posts with my general Google Analytics stats, and since the site is already indexed and I have received a few visitors I will post the stats now:

The Stats

Visits: 45
Page Views: 232
Page Visits: 5.16
Bounce Rate: 37.78%
Avg time on Site: 00:11:52
% New Visits: 33.33%
Direct Traffic: 34 (75.56%)
Search Engines: 7 (15.56%)
Referring Sites: 4 (8.89%)

Interpreting The Stats

The above stats are a little bit skewed for now. One of my research techniques was to talk to some people who have been involved in the PTC community for quite some time and have them give me opinions on my blog. These visitors were all direct traffic and spent quite some time on the site and had a lot of page visits each.

Of the 7 visitors from search engines all of them came from Google and every one used a unique keyword phrase to find the site. My search engine starts are as follows:

Visits: 7
Page Visits: 2.14
New Visits: 100%
Bounce Rate: 71.43%

This is about what I would expect for a site that has had no SEO done. Blogs, in general, have a little higher bounce rate because of the amount of information available on the first page. One of my goals is to increase the page visits and to drop the bounce rate significantly by increasing the sites relevance for the keywords the users search.

For those that did not bounce, the time on site was around 2 minutes, and that is a stat I would love to improve.

Well, that’s enough writing here, it is time to find some visitors now!

 

Nice man.. I'm going to check out how things are going for you. I'm also in the start of my blog. But I have some really good ideas of what to do to recieve traffic. Just need to write a lot of good content for it.

 

The Stats

Visits: 72 (+27)
Page Views: 297 (+65)
Page Visits: 4.12 (-1.04)
Bounce Rate: 47.22% (+9.44)
Avg time on Site: 00:09:19
% New Visits: 44% (+11%)
Direct Traffic: 45 (+11)
Search Engines: 16 (+9)
Referring Sites: 11 (+7)

It has been 2 days since my last post. I have not been quite as busy with marketing this blog, as I would have liked. I was quite busy working on my full time career and normal life. But here is what I did, and the results so far:

1. Install and configure All-In-One SEO
I finished the install and configuration of this plug-in. I have not changed all the titles and descriptions of past posts yet, but that is a goal of mine!
- Results: cannot be determined yet

2. Begin Posting on PTC forums with link in signature
I joined 4 niche specific forums and posted a total of 8 posts. Two of the forums require manual approval so I am still waiting for that. All the posts I made, I think, contributed some good information to the forums.
- Results: 8 Backlinks, 2 referring site visitors

3. Comment on related blogs with link in username
I have been having a hard time finding a PTC blog that I would be willing to have a back link on. Many of them are just link farms or they are solely made to promote their referral links. I did, however, place a few comments on a somewhat related blog that has resulted in a few clicks!
- Results: 2 backlinks. 2 referring site visitors

4. Submit link to directories
I have not spent anytime on this task yet. I may pay somebody from the BST forum to do this for me!
- Results: NONE

5. Continue to write content
Since I started this journal I have published 3 more posts, and I am about ¾ of the way threw another. My goal is to have no less than 1 post per day.

So far, the most effective marketing I have done is this journal. The majority of visitors to my blog since I started this journal are from this journal. I attribute this to me being a slacker so far with my marketing.

Any suggestions?

 

Submitting your links to web directories will not bring in any traffic, it will however help you gain some more backlinks to your site. If you pay someone in the BST section, make sure you go with someone who is willing to rotate through several different titles and descriptions. Some of those directories will not even count as a backlink but it never hurts to do it anyhow, especially for only paying between $10-$35 to have someone else do it for you. Have you looked into article marketing at all? Write good quality articles related to your niche and have the links go to your site. Do not however take that same article and post it on your website. Those articles will not only give you more backlinks, but possible traffic from people reading them. If they are good and actually educate the reader, they will click on your links in your bio box at the bottom to visit your site to see what other good tips you have for them.

 

I was not thinking of using directories as a source of traffic. I am looking at them as a quick and simple way of gaining backlinks. SERPs, at the end of the day are my end goal!

I am somewhat familiar with article directories. That will be part of my marketing strategy starting in week 2 or 3. Right now all the writing I am doing is going on my site! There are plenty of things I can write about for articles, so I will get to them.

Anybody have any suggestions of what social media will work well for my niche?

 

So after a few days of lazily marketing BlogAboutBux.com I have realized that my biggest problem is that I have not set any goals. Before now, the only goal I had was to make reliable information about this niche readily available and to make a bit of money along the way.

So I have decided I need to set goals and deadlines.

Short Term Goals (before Oct. 1):
- Average 1.5 posts a day
- No less than 10 targeted visitors a day
- Build 500 backlinks
- Build a plan for future contests
- Build a solid list of keyword phrases to target

Mid Term Goals (before Jan. 1)
- Average 50-100 unique visitors per day
- Rank in top 10 for no less than 2-targeted keyword phrases
- Complete Ebook
- Build Email list using ebook as incentive
- Hold at least one contest
- Build RSS subscribers to 100+
- Begin to realize an ROI

Long Term Goals (1 year)
- Average 100+ unique visitors per day
- Rank in top 5 for no less than 2-targeted keyword phrases
- Rank #1 for at least 1 targeted keyword phrase
- Build RSS to 250+
- See a reasonable profit

These goals were set up rather quickly and are quite modest. I think every one of them is obtainable. These goals will be fluid over the next few weeks as the blog starts to find itself.

 

OMG not another MMO blog, please stop it!!

 

Very nice progress. I suggest paying a visit on the Make Extra Money Forum on MyLot. They have a lot of bux-site lovers there. But be sure to contribute something of value to the Bux People. With that said, I wish you the best of luck.

 

Howdy there!

I'm in a similar position. I started my blog on gray hat area techniques about 10 days ago.
Here are my stats so far:


149 Visits
94 Absolute Unique Visitors
365 Pageviews
2.45 Average Pageviews
00:05:04 Time on Site
55.03% Bounce Rate
63.09% New Visits

The best way to attract traffic is to simply go to related communities and be helpful. My biggest referral website is none other than BHW and I only have about 4 posts there. Google so far is out of the question as a referral source given the age of the domain, only 1 hit from it and that coming from a long tail search.

I'm also trying out twitter, but I'm building slowly, so no success there yet.

Good luck with your blog.

Regards, George

 

Are you greyhatter on Twitter?

 

Erm... no. I'm @geegel.

Regards, George

 

That is great progress, good luck with your blog In order to get better traffic you can try submitting each of your posts to digg

 

hi,

comment on other blogs using your signature because the forums i use when i need some help in the replies that i get they have many valuable links in their signature & it will work well blog commenting, it all helps.

 

The holy grail of Digg. Mate, unfortunately the deal doesn't work like this anymore. Submitting stuff to Digg is simply not enough. You have to put a lot of effort and time into building a network.

Regards, George

 

If you want to learn a few more methods for building up some traffic and links for your blog I jsut posted a new post on my blog: 23 Blog Link Building Tactics. Good to see that you have goals set up in advance

 

The Stats (since last update)

Visits: 87 (+15)
Page Views: 354 (+57)
Page Visits: 4.07 (-.05)
Bounce Rate: 45.98% (-1.24)
Avg time on Site: 00:09:07
% New Visits: 44%

So since the last update my traffic has grown a little bit. Most of it being from direct referrals. The search engines are still referring about 1 person a day from a unique long tail search for each visitor!

The one stat that I didn’t expect to drop, but did, was bounce rate. I expected the bounce rate to increase, but I guess the content is fairly decent because the bounce rate is fairly low and dropping!

The Plan

1. Install and configure All-In-One SEO
- Done… I am still tweaking titles and descriptions, but all is well!

2. Begin Posting on PTC forums with link in signature
- I have found a few forums that are starting to send me a very small amount of traffic

3. Comment on related blogs with link in username
- Still having a hard time finding blogs that are any good!

4. Submit link to directories-
I will be paying somebody from the BST section to do this soon!

5. Continue to write content
- I have published 24 posts and I have 2 that are scheduled to be posted over the next day. This is becoming the easiest part of this project for me!

Short Term Goals (before Oct. 1):

- Average 1.5 posts a day
Since writing this goal, I have been averaging a little more than 2.0 posts!

- No less than 10 targeted visitors a day
In the past 3 days (since I started marketing) I am averaging 14 uniques.

- Build 500 backlinks
I have about 220 that I can verify and a few that are still not indexed! Well on my way!

- Build a plan for future contests
I am going to be running a Comment Contest! Details to come!

- Build a solid list of keyword phrases to target
I have slacked on this goal, but, I still have a few days to get it done!

Overall I am pleased with my progress. I do not expect to have a flood of traffic until I start social marketing, and even then I don’t expect a ton of traffic. My goals are modest and I am accomplishing them so far!

Any suggestions?