Marketing My Blog – A journal of my techniques!

interesting thread.

 

As an alternative you could try the "dofollow route".

Basically this would attract additional traffic and way more comments from tools like commentKahuna. The downside is that you will receive loads of spam, so you will need a tighter policy.

I haven't used this tactic on my blog, but rather preferred the top commentators plugin.

I hope this helps.

Regards, George

 

Well my blog is not about Webmaster stuff so I am not sure that I want to offer the Do-Follow comments. That opens the door to far to much spam and does not offer much quality traffic for my niche.

The comment contest I was thinking about would be something like this:

Open the contest for a month
Select a comment at random
The person who made that comment would get to place their referral link to a PTC program on one of my sidebars for 2 or 3 months.

I am thinking that the contest will continue on indefinitely. And the links will rotate at the end of each month.

This could lead to many referrals for the commenter and that is a big thing in this niche!

 

The Stats (since last update)

Visits: 131 (+44)
Page Views: 465 (+111)
Page Visits: 3.55 (-.52)
Bounce Rate: 47.33% (+1.35)
Avg time on Site: 00:07:38
% New Visits: 55%

44 visitors since the last post! That is far more than I expected! The new forums I joined yesterday have paid of a bit! This blog is also starting to show multiple visitors from search engines using the same keywords!

I also saw my first visitor from Yahoo. Up to now, all search engine visitors have been from Google. As the word gets out about this blog, I think the traffic will continue to grow and so will the SERPs!

The Plan

1. Install and configure All-In-One SEO
- Done… I will not list this anymore in my future posts/

2. Begin Posting on PTC forums with link in signature
- I am posting on about 5 forums now, but not being aggressive!

3. Comment on related blogs with link in username
- I think I am going to give up on this one. I cannot find any blogs I want to put my links on!

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

5. Continue to write content
- I have published 25 posts and I have 2 that are scheduled to be posted over the next day. Still proving to be the easiest part of this project!

Short Term Goals (before Oct. 1):

- Average 1.5 posts a day
Still averaging a little bit over 2.0 posts!

- No less than 10 targeted visitors a day
With 44 unique yesterday, I think this one is quite obtainable!

- Build 500 backlinks
Getting close to this one also!

- Build a plan for future contests
See previous post for this one!

- Build a solid list of keyword phrases to target
I am going to target “PTC blog” as well as the uber competitive “Paid To Click” phrase!

I am still pleased with my progress. I am seeing way more traffic than I expected, and I hope that continues. I set my humble goals to be obtained easily, and I don’t see that being a problem as time goes on!

I am going to be figuring out the next weeks plan tomorrow! I think it will include some social and some article marketing…

Any suggestions?

 

The Stats (since last update)

Visits: 167 (+36)
Page Views: 576 (+111)
Page Visits: 3.45 (-.10)
Bounce Rate: 46.11% (-1.22)
Avg time on Site: 00:07:11
% New Visits: 52%

It has been 2 days since my last update and I have been a bit of a slacker since then. My real job had me on the road for a few days and I was not able to do much marketing.

What I have done:

• Continued to post about 5 posts a day on 3 different niche forums
• Chatted in a few niche chat rooms
• Started writing ebook

What has happened

• Received first comments
• Received first organic backlink (that I can verify)

The decrease in traffic shows that there is a direct correlation between effort and traffic in the early stages of marketing a blog. I started six days ago, and I have been more successful than I expected, but I see that I could be even more so if I tried harder.

Monday I will start phase two. I will start to look into social media and other methods of marketing. I think I will post the plan for week two on Sunday!

Any Suggestions?

 

Try social media, Stumble Upon in special.

I've hit it big with it. Got around 500 uniques with a post that really flew.

You should also pursue that contest idea. I held one in order to increase the number of commentators and it really helped.

Regards, George

 

The Stats (since last update, 3 days ago)

Visits: 204 (+37)
Page Views: 702 (+126)
Page Visits: 3.44 (-.01)
Bounce Rate: 47.06% (-0.95)
Avg time on Site: 00:06:51
% New Visits: 50%

Short Term Goals (before Oct. 1)
- Average 1.5 posts a day - Accomplished – (1.75)
- No less than 10 targeted visitors a day – Accomplished - (~15)
- Build 500 Backlinks - Accomplished
- Build plan for future contests - Accomplished
- Build a solid list of keyword phrases to target - Accomplished

Week 2 of marketing my blog officially begins today. With that in mind I wanted to set some new goals and here they are:

New Short Term Goals (before Nov. 1)
- Average 1 post per day
- No less than 20 visitors a day
- Write E-Book
- Grow RSS to 20
- Write Link Bait page

I will be posting my plan to accomplish these goals shortly!

 

Week 2 Plan:

- Begin social marketing (Digg, Stumble, Squidoo…)
- Begin article marketing
- Research E-Book
- Continue forum posting
- Concentrate SEO efforts on key word phrases that are already bringing traffic
- Write articles centered around valuable keyword phrases

Well this is the plan for week 2. I know next to nothing about social marketing so this is going to be a learning adventure for me!

Any suggestions?

 

It has been a few days since I added to this post. I decided one of the most important things I could do for my blog was to redesign it. I did a complete top to bottom redesign. I think it went from being a boring, everyday type of blog, to being a top of the line looking blogs.

I think this will have a great effect on my bounce rate as well as time onsite. Having a professional looking blog is almost as important as having good content.

Any comments on the new design?

 

nice looking blog there man, i have also just started a blog and am very interested to see how this works out for you

good luck

 

good post guys...

 

Thanks...
I took about a week to design the blog and after I had the design another 2 days to tweek it. I think I am going to pay somebody to build a logo and e-book cover for me. But that is for another day!

 

Where is the profit motive for your blog?... someday you have to get paid... "show me the money". Work is not charity. But your profit motive #1 on your list.

 

subscribed!!!
i really love "starting a new website" journals ..

anyways... really good design!

and yeah.. dont worry........... if u make ur blog a hit.. money will follow!

 

I am not to worried about my profit motive. I am making a very small amount of money already. The best part about this blog is that it is seamless, there are not thousands of advertisements all over it making it look cluttered. I want to build a loyal following before I worry about hammering them with anything, and I will NEVER put my profit motive #1... Doing so will only cause the quality of the blog to suffer, a high quality blog WILL make money, a low quality profit driven blog will not!