The strings have been pulled again by Charles at Charles Lau Dot Com. His request? To discuss various aspects to marketing a blog. If you have a topic that you would like to see covered on BlissLogs, turn me into your puppet and pull my strings by sending me an email. So without further ado, here’s my 2 cents to the topic:

Free Marketing Methods

You’ve heard the saying “Nothing in life is free?” Believe it or not, there are ways to market your blog for free. It’s been said before, but that doesn’t make it any less true; that commenting on other blogs is a good way to market your blog. Charles commented on my blog, which got me to visit his blog. Don’t limit your comments to just other blogs, forums are another great place to provide links to your site. Just remember though, don’t spam the blogs or forums. . . that’s a good way to get banned from them.

Pay Per Click

Setting aside some money in pay per click advertisers such as Google AdWords, Yahoo! Marketing Solutions, and Microsoft adCenter are the 3 major players in the arena. If you’re not familiar with this method of advertising, here’s a quick top 10 steps to get you started (all 3 work basically the same).

1. You create an account with the pay per click organization.
2. Deposit some money in your account.
3. Investigate relevant keywords for your site.
4. Create a campaign/ad based on your chosen keywords.
5. Publish the campaign / ad.
6. Watch as new visitors find your site based on searches or relevant content.
7. Tweak your keywords and ads to get better click through rates.
8. Tweak your bid for each click to make the most out of your money.
9. Repeat steps 7 & 8.
10. Repeat step 9.

Explaining this pay per click advertising method should be an entire post in and of itself, which I’d love to do and will do soon. I just bring it up here to give you an idea of ways to market your blog.

Site Specific Advertisements

Many sites would be willing to put up an ad for you on their site if your willing to pay for it. You don’t necessarily have to find a site that is actively looking for advertisers. If you find a site that interests you and is relevant to your site, contact the owner to see if they would be willing to put either a text ad or banner on their site for a monthly price. Picking a site with LOTS of traffic is optimal, but would probably demand a hefty price for the advertising space. Advertising on a site that gets “humble” traffic would be cheaper, but you wouldn’t get quite the exposure. The advantage though of choosing this lower traffic site is that it will grow. If you stick with them while they grow, you may end up advertising on a site with LOTS of traffic and still a modest advertising fee. You can expect the price to increase as the site gains in popularity, but you will have a relationship and can usually get discounts.

Pay for Blogging

This is another option that has gotten lots of buzz over the past year. These sites are popping up all over the place that will let you ask bloggers to blog about your site (for a fee of course). PayPerPost, CREAMAid, LoudLaunch, ReviewMe, SponsoredReviews, Blogitive, and Blogsvertise are just a few that I can think of this second. The method here is simple enough. . . You request to have someone, or a group of someones, blog about your site in exchange for a set price.

Online Communities

If you have well thought out posts and they are interesting to lots of people, then online communities can be a fantastic way to generate some traffic. Sites such as Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon serve a purpose and when used correctly can get you thousands of hits a day. You’ll notice that the links to these communities open another window/tab in your browser; I did that on the off chance that you wanted to reference this site when submitting it to the community. These communities are all fairly similar, sites that get the most votes (diggs, stumble thumbs up, etc) gets more traffic. So you see why I said it is so important to have well thought out posts and interesting? If your readers find the post interesting, they’ll submit it and more traffic will flow to your site. There is a downside to these sites though. The traffic that these generate generally don’t sustain for the long haul. You may see a couple days that a post is popular, but it will eventually dwindle down. The readers that found your site in these communities generally won’t become regular readers. Don’t get me wrong, you probably will pick up a few loyal readers from these sites, so by all means use them.

Offline Marketing

This method isn’t used too much in the blogging world, but depending on your niche it could be highly successful. With offline marketing, you could think small and just put your business card in fishbowls at your local restaurants, or put up small advertisements on bulletin boards around your community. Or you could think big and take out an ad in your local newspaper, a national paper, or a magazine that is relevant to your niche.

Summary

So what you should take away from this post is that there are not set rules to follow when marketing a blog/website. The first step is to have content that people want to read. From there you have many choices as to how to get the word out about your blog. If you find one of these methods don’t work for you, try something completely different. Or better yet, try to figure out what about it wasn’t working and make the corrections needed to fix it. I’m sure there are many more ways to market your blog or website so come up with something that is new.

If you liked this post, be sure to submit it to all the online communities I mentioned and any others that you know of.

Last month I squeezed in a small AdSense ad, this month I’m asking you to buy me a latte. Why do I deserve a latte? Lets see. . . I have an hour commute to work each day and it seems to get longer each day. I have 3 kids (a 10 year old and 2-5 year olds) who wear me out on a daily basis. I have this blogging addiction that is uncontrollable. If those reasons aren’t good enough, it’s cuz I’ll write a site review of the first 5 people to buy me a latte. That’s right, buy me a latte and I will tell you if your site “plays in Peoria”. For the cost of a measly latte, you can get a full review of your site. Did that come off like I’m begging? Well, maybe a little.

If you do want to buy me a latte, there is a link at the bottom of every post and also one in the sidebar off to the right.

The buy me a latte promotion uses the very cool, “buy me a beer” plugin by Ankesh Kothari.

Hvae you raed any bogls taht tlel you taht seplilng eevry wrod crecorclty is a ncectisey to get yuor pniot aorcscs? I say taht is blulihst. You olny need to mkae srue you get the frist and lsat ltetres creroct for yuor rdarees to raed it crecorclty. Nxet tmie snmoeoe teirs to creroct yuor seplilng, gvie tehm tihs tset to see if tehy are albe to raed it.

Translation:

Have you read any blogs that tell you that spelling every word correctly is a neccesity to get your point across? I say that is bullshit. You only need to make sure you get the first and last letters correct for your readers to read it correctly. Next time someone tries to correct your spelling, give them this test to see if they are able to read it.

The focus of your blog should be to tell an interesting story and not worry about perfect grammar and spelling. If you want your blog to have an heir of professionalism, correct grammar and spelling should be attempted, but should not be a show stopper. Has anyone ever tried to “help” you by pointing out spelling mistakes in your posts? If so, tell me about it. I will make a confession here. I did correct someone’s misspelling on a post a couple months ago, but it was my name that they misspelled, so I felt within my rights to correct that.

Don’t worry about all those small indiscretions, take up my new motto, “Just Blog”.

I just received an email from Text Link Ads (TLA) enticing me to become and advertiser on a site within their inventory. I thought I’d share this with you in case you are on the fence about using them to advertise for your site. Maybe this coupon will push you off the fence. TLA is a great way to generate traffic to your site with targeted ads. By the way, you can get your TLA on BlissLogs for only $15/month. If you haven’t signed up to be an ad publisher yet, you can Monetize Your Site or Buy Links at TLA.

Hello Jason, it is a great time to check back in at the new inventory at Text-Link-Ads.com The inventory of niche websites have been growing fast I wanted to extend to you a special discount. Save 15% on all NEW orders for the rest of August! Just enter: august

into the coupon code at checkout and you will save 15% off your order for the life of the order. We are excited about the growth of our inventory and the results reported back from our advertisers. If you are ready for an ad that can drive traffic and raise your natural search engine rankings head on over to TLA now. Thanks again!

——————–
Patrick Gavin
President
http://www.Text-Link-Ads.com
pgavin@text-link-ads.com

The first person has pulled the strings and requested a topic for me to blog about. This request came from Mariam at moneyrelations.com. Mariam asks; “As a new blogger, I want to know what is the etiquette for getting added to blogrolls?” I’ll give you my 2 1/2 cents worth of info on the topic. Mariam goes on to break her question down into more detailed sections.

Do you need to make a certain amount of comments to break the ice and then slip it in that you want to be added to the high ranking blog?

If you are going to ask to be included in a blogroll, it is important that you have some sort of relationship with the owner of that blog. How many of you would just contact Darren Rowse or ShoeMoney, without any previous contact with them, and ask to be included on their blogroll? The answer better be 0. Comments are a good way to form that relationship, however there are others that might get quicker results. Email them. If there is a high ranking blog in your niche that would be willing to help you out with either tips or an entry in a blogroll, regular email conversations will help you stand-out from the crowd. It still may take weeks, or even months to make a blogroll, but imagine the tips you could derive in the mean-time. So to answer the question, there is no set amount of comments (or emails) required before asking for blogroll inclusion. Use your judgment and ask when you feel comfortable enough in your new blogger relationship.

What happens when someone adds you to their blogroll? Are you obligated to add them in return despite the fact that space is an important consideration?

While it would be nice to be able to add hundreds of people to your blogroll, that is simply unfeasible for the aesthetic conscious blogger. So the simple answer to this question is a definite NO. While I’m sure there are those out there that only maintain a blogroll in the hopes that they will themselves get added to one, that should not be expected. The quality of the site should also play a major part in your decision to add it to your precious blogroll.  Which leads us to the next part of the question.

Should you just trade links with new blogs indiscriminately even if they are of poor quality?

Do this at your own risk. I would prefer to populate my blogroll with sites that I am proud to link to. If you receive a link from a site that is poorly written, poor design, and poor content; don’t link back to them.  By linking to them in your blogroll, you are endorsing them. At that point, this poor blog is an extension of yours and your readers will see it that way too.

Mariam asked some good questions, and based on the wording of those questions; I think she already knew the answers. Getting added to other blogger’s blogrolls is a sign that your blog is evolving and growing legs of its own. To get added to a blogroll takes patience and a mutual dialog before both parties are comfortable enough for blogroll additions. If you find an authority blog in your niche, I say stalk them. :smile:  It is ok to email them and ask questions, but be specific when you do. Don’t email them to ask them if you can ask a question, just spit it out and hope they are open to helping you out. Most of them are.

I just finished replying to a bunch of comments and sat down to write a post. Then I changed my mind. I’m lazy tonight, it’s now time to put you to work. I want you to request a topic.  Pick any topic you want, I’m open to anything (that could get me into trouble :twisted: ).  I don’t care if I have to research whatever topic you want (I actually welcome it!)  Make your request 1 of 2 ways.  Either leave a comment to this post or use my contact me page (I added a new reason in that form).

I hope to fulfill all requests, so each requester will get their own post with a linkback.  Let’s see what kind of imagination you have and what you’ll get me to blog about.  I can’t wait.

I figured now was as good a time as any to throw out some link love.  Today, I’m giving it to the last 5 visitors that have a MyBlogLog account.

• ezyweb at Blogging Dosh
• ChristopherBoyce at Blog Me Famous
• sukosaki at HiTechBlogger
• Jamaipanese at Jamaipanese.com
• theprizeblog at (surprise) The Prize Blog

How’s that for getting some link love?  All these readers had to do was visit my site.  Who knows what criteria I’ll use the next time I’m in the mood for some link love.  To be safe; you better visit, comment, subscribe, and (did I mention) comment.