Internet Babel

Earlier today I tried going on DP but it didn’t load. Tried every few hours but wouldn’t load. It finally loaded just now but very very slowly and all of the forums and threads open painfully slowly, sometimes not at all.

Anyone else having problems with DP today?

Here’s episode 5 of The Next Internet Millionaire. So far I’ve found it pretty… interminable but… I’ll continue to give it a chance. So far it just seems like pretentious turds and some cheesy promotion. But the production is amazing.

John Reese has recently said that the main reason for super low click through rates with Blogrush is due to the fact people are writing titles too broadly. I don’t believe this is the reason, for one Problogger had 35 clicks with a staggering 75,000 impressions. Which is terrible, not even 1% and I think he’s pretty experienced on writing captivating titles.

I think the main reason is the placement of the widget on blogs. Every blog I have seen the widget on has the widget down really far out of sight. Now obviously if nobody can see it, nobody is going to click it. People are obviously far more likely to click if it’s right up in eye-line. But I think bloggers are aware of this and are doing it purposely to avoid people losing focus on their own posts and I can understand that. And because the widget is still on the page, they still get the impressions, so no harm done. But what’s the point of getting the impressions with no traffic back?

But… with everybody doing this, nobody will ever get good traffic from it, so it’s pointless. John Reese said there is high click through rates with things like philosophy, now that’s obviously partly due to the fact philosophy is very passionate and… well, philosophical. So it’s sort of more… in-depth intellectually therefore higher CTR is understandable. But I think also maybe people with philosophy blogs aren’t Internet marketers which is why they don’t care about ads and placement and all sorts of other issues they wouldn’t think of.

I think big blogs with big traffic can have the widget up in clear view without any harm because they have thousands of readers anyway. But I think small bloggers are a bit scared they might lose readers and what not by doing so and I was abit to. But the good thing is, Blogrush opens the links in a NEW window, so if people click you wont have a one click and gone effect anyway.

So any bloggers reading this with the widget way down hidden in a sidebar… put it in view! if you don’t other people wont and we’ll all continue to be a bit selfish with it and continue gaining credits without having traffic as our reward! they don’t leave your site and it gains you traffic, so use it properly to start this network of traffic circulating!

We are all always trying to get more traffic. Without it why bother having a blog. Below I’ve made a list of 100 ways you can improve your traffic. Enjoy.

1. Write lists about how to get more traffic to your blog.
2. Write about Google, Digg and other hugely popular sites.
3. Be provocative.
4. Be polite.
5. Ask people to comment.
6. Break news.
7. Post regularly.
8. Use social networking sites like crazy.
9. Link to your posts in popular forums.
10. Make your RSS subscribe button very noticeable.
11. Provide an email subscribe option.
12. Be extremely opinionated.
13. Write eye catching blog post titles.
14. Use a top commentators plugin to improve comments.
15. Use a threaded comment plugin to provoke discussion.
16. Be controversial.
17. Be original.
18. Give good advice.
19. Give your readers free stuff.
20. Write for humans, not Google.
21. Give people free reviews.
22. Write to the best of your literal ability.
23. Don’t pander to the majority.
24. Blog obsessively.
25. Become top commentator on big traffic blogs.
26. See what big blogs are doing and do more.
27. Be arrogant.
28. Be humble.
29. Contradict yourself.
30. Be yourself.
31. Write posts that will benefit people.
32. Do occasional wacky posts.
33. Use images in your posts.
34. Make a fresh design.
35. Compliment other bloggers.
36. Disagree with big bloggers, provoking them to respond.
37. Do parody blogs.
38. Answer your reader’s questions.
39. Use a top posts plugin.
40. Don’t have any ads.
41. Write as much unique content as possible. Avoiding any borrowing, semi-duplicating or re-wording.
42. Write naturally.
43. Use correct grammar.
44. Write in your own language. If it’s not English, don’t write in English to compromise for bad grammar.
45. Write about making money.
46. Write about blogging.
47. Absolutely focus only on the enjoyment people will get from your blog. Make it the best quality you can and the best resource you can.
48. Write about what you love.
49. Write about what you hate.
50. Become an authority.
51. Prove your knowledge.
52. Write what you would like to read.
53. Post at peak times.
54. Write about things that appeal to the masses.
55. Write about things which appeal to a small obsessed group.
56. Share your knowledge.
57. Give contact details.
58. Buy links.
59. Buy reviews.
60. Try and become a guest poster on a popular blog. Be persistent.
61. Submit your best and longest posts to article directories.
62. Share the love with a blogroll.
63. Use Blogrush.
64. Use Technorati.
65. Write about news other bloggers are missing.
66. Use YouTube and other video sites to market your blog.
67. Brand your blog, make it unique.
68. Be passionate.
69. Don’t compromise your personality or style.
70. Don’t swear.
71. Swear intensively.
72. Be professional.
73. Encourage your readers to digg your posts.
74. Use social networking buttons, on all posts.
75. Keep your blog clean and uncluttered.
76. Don’t sell out.
77. Write in unbelievable detail.
78. Purposely miss things out to provoke people to correct you.
79. Be generous.
80. Make your blog as different as possible.
81. Use interactive features like polls and surveys.
82. Let your readers know about great little known resources.
83. Take criticism.
84. Admit your faults.
85. Create bragging rights.
86. Figure out what makes other blogs successful and try and emulate that.
87. Never copycat posts.
88. Give people credit.
89. Ask any bloggers in creation for a shout-out. For something in return.
90. Make your SEO as good as possible.
91. Do what ever you can to create backlinks.
92. Think viral.
93. Make your blog as easy to navigate as possible.
94. Be patient.
95. Spend entire days focusing on nothing but getting more traffic.
96. Rack your brain to write posts nobody else can think of.
97. Don’t get sloppy.
98. Add as many friends to your social networking profiles as possible. Never stop.
99. Never give up.
100. Be honest.

Well done for reading this unbearably long list. Post any ideas you have in a comment.

As soon as Blogrush came out I thought of a very obvious way you could exploit it. Since the amount of times your blog headlines are shown on other widgets relies on the amount of impressions you get on your blog (with your widget) this can be very easily faked.

All you have to do is simply use the Firefox refresher. This was also used alot to cheat YouTube videos to the front page (which I managed a few times). If you’re unaware of this tool, basically it’s a Firefox extension that you can enable to automatically refresh pages.

With the use of multiple tabs this tool could get your YouTube videos alot of views, very quickly. And of course the same principle can be used to exploit Blorgush. All you would need to do is place your widget on your blog, open multiple tabs with your blog open and enable the tool to refresh every 5 seconds. You could literally get thousands of impressions in no time.

I’m not saying this is a good idea as you may get banned, but you can see how easy it is to cheat yourself alot of traffic with Blogrush. I can’t see how they are going to counteract things like this.

Finally, Blogrush stats are working. took about four days. Well anyway, so far the traffic doesn’t seem to be worth it for small to medium blogs but obviously the only answer to that is to generate yourself more traffic. So if you want Blogrush to work for you, get more traffic.

So, anyway, anyone waiting for their stats to start showing… they are now! We’ll see how this goes.

Blogrush stats are still not working, for me and I don’t think for anyone yet. But after just checking my Awstats I can see that I have had traffic from the Blogrush widget, not much. Literally like… 5 hits. This is after… well, when did it launch… the… 14th. So this is after 4 days.

So, on the outset it looks like… it may only be worth it for BIG blogs that get huge amounts of traffic therefore can produce alot of syndication credits and have their headlines shown alot of times.

I mean… I still love the idea but in my opinion, if you have a small / medium sized blog. It may do more harm than good and actually you could be losing out on possible ad clicks for the sake of a few hits.

Here’s the 4th episode for those who haven’t seen it yet.

Everybody writes lists on how to succeed at blogging and making money online. So I thought I’d go against the grain and compile a list of how to achieve the opposite.

1. Irregularity – This is probably the biggest killer so I put this one first. Irregular posting is a surefire way to kill off your blog. You need to make sure you post on a regular basis so that you’re readers can establish some sort of timescale as to when you will be posting. If it’s once a week… stick to that, if it’s once a day… stick to that. But don’t try take on something you can’t handle so you end up losing interest or not being able to keep up. Something mental like 20 posts a day… you might end up running out of ideas so quick that you could not post for a week. Keep your posting regular!

2. Writing for search engines – Another deadly killer. In-fact, you can still get traffic to your blog obviously if you just write good organic text, but the main point here is it will only ever be that. It will be hard to establish any sort of word of mouth, blog to blog kudos or social following unless you are strongly opinionated or an exceptional writer or both. Make sure you write for your readers, not Google.

3. Lack of effort – This is obviously… well, obvious. But alot of people do it. Sometimes you can start to build some traffic and you think you can just start riding that traffic and you become sloppy. Or sometimes the opposite, you’ll get no traffic so you’ll become annoyed and just do wild or sloppy posts. Make sure you always keep up your post quality to entice your readers and keep your blog a fresh quality source.

4. Not citing sources – Sometimes you can just do this accidentally, you can forget to credit people. Make sure you always give credit when due to make sure nobody thinks you are a content duplicator. Also, if you are a content duplicator… DON’T BE!. It’s one of the most annoying things ever and in the end, will get you nowhere, remember to cite your sources if you ever happen to ‘borrow’ something.

5. Lack of creativity – Try and be as fresh as you can be. Obviously if you are in a saturated market it can be hard to come out with constant fresh posts, but that’s where personality comes in. Don’t be afraid to be yourself and give your opinions in your posts and be as creative as possible, people get fed up of reading the same stuff. Stand out from the crowd by pushing your creative intelligence to the limit.

6. Bad grammar – Generally this wont kill a blog off but I think it can harm the perspective your readers have on you. Good grammar and spelling will help make your blog and you seem more professional so… just use the spellcheck. Is it really that hard?

7. Swearing – I actually swear alot in real life but this isn’t a good thing for a public blog. I mean… it all depends on who your audience is and if you can get away with it but generally I would avoid swearing alot as you could kill off alot of ‘easily offended’ people. Which like it or not, could be good potential readers.

8. Lack of opinion – This is similar to the creativity point but I think it should be said again. Bloggers with strong opinions succeed, why? because there are alot of people who agree with them! obviously there are also alot of people who don’t agree with them. But what do they usually do? argue! which creates? more comments, which creates? better blog! So let your true opinion come out in your posts and don’t worry about who you’re pleasing, there will be enough people out there who agree with you.

9. No marketing – Try and market your blog as best you can. I mean, even if you are absolutely BROKE, no money to market what so ever. Marketing can still be done. Think about it – social networking, forums, friends, viral marketing. There’s lots of ways to get your blog seriously noticed without money and I think your brain can conjure up a smart enough way to do it. So do it!

10. No branding – Another big killer. Without a brand, or something unique, a logo, tagline or something to identify your blog in a unique way. It’s unlikely that you will stand out in people’s mind. As I instantly think of a branded blog I think of Shoemoney because his blog is branded so well, I immediately think of the big S logo. It’s class. Do something to help readers identify your blog and stand out from the saturated, ad covered blogs they come across every other day.

The End!

Are you tired of not succeeding online? bored of no Adsense income? exasperated from the lack of instant cash? well then good for you. You’ve come to the right place keep reading to discover the ultimate secret to making money online.

“Drum rolls please!”….

And the secret is… HARD WORK!

Sorry to disappoint! you were probably expecting some cheesy pitch for some ‘get rich quick’ ebook right? or if you’re abit gullible you were expecting an actual easy solution to your lack of greens.

Well, forget the self-help ebooks. Forget the $97 tutorials. Just focus on one thing as the primary force of your future income: hard work. It doesn’t get any simpler than that and I need to apply the same rules to myself. Luckily I never wasted tons of cash on crappy ebooks etc because I have just never been that gullible to believe anything in life is that easy.

But I did anticipate that making money online would be easier than it is. Which is where I was wrong, don’t kid yourself or the people around you. It’s as hard as any other job, what makes it more rewarding is the payout and when you get that payout and that constant flow on the go, the workload is reduced. But on the way up, you need hard work. I do to, we all do. Now get to work and subscribe for some real tips to come!