Blogs For Bucks: I Got 99 Blogs But Male Enhancement Ain't One.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Blogs For Bucks: I Got 99 Blogs But Male Enhancement Ain't One.

«‹›44 »

SweatyE: Jun 7, 2013

Forgive me if this has already been covered, but how often is everyone posting on their blogs? I was working on a post every three days, but after building up a backlog and putting out 3-4 posts in 4 days I've realized it's not a schedule I can maintain long term without content quality suffering.

I'm thinking either posting Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or just Mondays and Thursdays might be better long term. By spacing out content it means I won't burn out, but hopefully I'll see more comments as each post will be top of the page for longer. I've noticed my traffic drops considerably on weekends so it makes little sense to post then.

# ? Aug 18, 2013 11:41

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 18, 2024 01:58

RTB: Sep 19, 2004

SweatyE posted:

Forgive me if this has already been covered, but how often is everyone posting on their blogs? I was working on a post every three days, but after building up a backlog and putting out 3-4 posts in 4 days I've realized it's not a schedule I can maintain long term without content quality suffering.

I'm thinking either posting Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or just Mondays and Thursdays might be better long term. By spacing out content it means I won't burn out, but hopefully I'll see more comments as each post will be top of the page for longer. I've noticed my traffic drops considerably on weekends so it makes little sense to post then.

I've been trying to follow the advice I found from Derek Halpern - Spend less time writing and more time connecting and promoting.
http://socialtriggers.com/why-bloggers-fail/

I'd love to hear everyone else's thoughts on this too though.

# ? Aug 18, 2013 19:29

Kenny Rogers: Sep 7, 2007; Chapter One:
When I first saw Sparky, he reminded me of my favorite comb. He was missing a lot of teeth.

RTB posted:

I'd love to hear everyone else's thoughts on this too though.

Seems pretty straightforward - Mountains of content has no intrinsic value. Someone needs to be reading it.

# ? Aug 18, 2013 20:52

Omits-Bagels: Feb 13, 2001

mcsuede posted:

Manage your ad inventory with a system like ad injector, ad rotator, oio publisher, etc.

Woah, just noticed that ad injector is making my site do some funky things. For whatever reason, some of my posts don't load � well, everything loads but the content of the post. It is strange because not every post has this problem. Of course it made one of my main "money" pages not load. I think it is all sorted now but it took me a few days until someone left a comment on the page. I did see in increase in my adsense earnings though.

# ? Aug 18, 2013 21:58

mcsuede: Dec 30, 2003; Anyone who has a continuous smile on his face conceals a toughness that is almost frightening.
-Greta Garbo

Whenever you install something like that you want to check for js/jquery or caching issues, it's almost always one or the other. Check out AdRotate if Ad Injection doesn't work out for you. I personally don't use a management plugin, I manage it all by hand using php and js (you can do so much with wordpress conditionals), but it can be a pain while you're learning and if a plugin meets your needs it sure simplifies your mental overhead.

# ? Aug 19, 2013 04:42

Bobx66: Feb 11, 2002; We all fell into the pit

IS there a way to manage remnant inventory through one of the ad servers? Recently I have been using my pass-through codes from my remnant provider on my primary provider's ad server. However it has slowed my site down to the point where I want to get rid of them. Is it possible for an ad manager to identify when an ad isnt being served from 1 network and fall back to another network?

# ? Aug 19, 2013 12:24

MasterControl: Jul 28, 2009; Lipstick Apathy

SweatyE posted:

Forgive me if this has already been covered, but how often is everyone posting on their blogs? I was working on a post every three days, but after building up a backlog and putting out 3-4 posts in 4 days I've realized it's not a schedule I can maintain long term without content quality suffering.

I'm thinking either posting Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or just Mondays and Thursdays might be better long term. By spacing out content it means I won't burn out, but hopefully I'll see more comments as each post will be top of the page for longer. I've noticed my traffic drops considerably on weekends so it makes little sense to post then.

This is where a social audience comes in. I'd say scale back to once a week unless you're a "news" blog and schedule it out for as long as possible.

If you have social accounts remember that you can schedule old content so long as its not of the moment news. For example I have 15000 followers but its a global audience. Many are uk based so reading at 8am their time is great. But what about the Aussie? And never mind people aren't on twitter Facebook and tumblr everyday. Also new audiences haven't seen it either. I have stuff from last year still going out and getting traffic. Buffer app is the best but hoot suite works fine.

My blog has 800 posts and now of course there is new stuff but my feeds have 3-4 stories a day going out.

Also try to put evergreen content in sidebars rather than categories or tags like everyone does. That's such a wasted space.

# ? Aug 19, 2013 17:03

Omits-Bagels: Feb 13, 2001

Throw your poo poo up on pintrest and make sure your pintrest image looks nice. I'm getting a good deal of traffic from there.

# ? Aug 19, 2013 17:24

Tesla Insanely Coil: Jul 23, 2006; Ask me why I'm not squatting.

RTB posted:

I've been trying to follow the advice I found from Derek Halpern - Spend less time writing and more time connecting and promoting.
http://socialtriggers.com/why-bloggers-fail/

I'd love to hear everyone else's thoughts on this too though.

I thought the idea of niche blogging is to get a relatively few hits per month. You get passive income by having 10-30 niche blogs that each make $10-$30 a month. If the cpc is $1 that means you get one dollar when someone clicks on the ad, right? So if you have 1000 visitors in a month, you would make $10 if 1% click on an ad. Is 1% realistic or is it 0.1%? I can't remember.

I'm VERY new at this and I'm still learning a whole bunch. I'm reading through this thread and I'm on page 14. It's possible the answers I'm looking for are in the last few pages so just tell me if they are but I've got some questions I would like answered asap.

-In the OP, there's a link to "what widgets you ought to have" - the info at that link is gone so I was wondering if anyone knew of a list somewhere else. I look at my blog compared to others and I know I'm missing a bunch of things but I don't know what widgets are the best and I'd rather have the goons' opinions than google's.

-I think screwed up on my keyword and so I have no idea if I'll be able to make money on my blog. I'm tempted to drop it but I'd like to get my investment in my domain back at least and I do enjoy writing for it so far. The Google Adwords info currently is:
Avg monthly searches: 2900
Competition: Low
Avg. CPC: $1.03 - but I've seen this number at $0.41

-I feel like I need more articles and at least some ads before I start promoting it. Is this the right way to look at it? Or is Google going to want to see that I can get some traffic before putting ads on my blog?

-I have Wordpress SEO and it says to not have just one keyword to promote! I've read the article it links to but now I'm all :psyduck:

about how to get my blog to rank.

Thanks for any help!

# ? Aug 21, 2013 22:17

Omits-Bagels: Feb 13, 2001

How do you get backlinks? I have a lot of good content and do decently with organic searches but hardly have any backlinks. The top results in google don't have as good of content as I do but they have a crap load of links.

# ? Aug 22, 2013 01:23

SweatyE: Jun 7, 2013

Omits-Bagels posted:

How do you get backlinks? I have a lot of good content and do decently with organic searches but hardly have any backlinks. The top results in google don't have as good of content as I do but they have a crap load of links.

Start by commenting on other blogs, the links back are probably going to be nofollow but it's better than nothing. Hop on twitter or Facebook and interact with similar blog owners. Email them directly.

Write some guest posts for other blogs in exchange for a link back. I had my first guest post published on a relatively small site a few days back and my traffic jumped from 20-30 visitors per day to over 100. It's maintained for about 3 days and is slowly starting to drop, but I think I've gained some repeat visitors from it. Planning on another guest post elsewhere in a few weeks - it sucks writing content and not getting to use it but it's worth it.

On a side note, Adsense has been serving about 99% of my page views until today - all day it is saying I've only had 7 ad views but analytics says I've had over 300 impressions...anyone had this problem before? Hoping adsense is just lagging behind, but it's been about 13 hours now

# ? Aug 22, 2013 13:19

Moniker: Mar 16, 2004

SweatyE posted:

Start by commenting on other blogs, the links back are probably going to be nofollow but it's better than nothing. Hop on twitter or Facebook and interact with similar blog owners. Email them directly.

Write some guest posts for other blogs in exchange for a link back. I had my first guest post published on a relatively small site a few days back and my traffic jumped from 20-30 visitors per day to over 100. It's maintained for about 3 days and is slowly starting to drop, but I think I've gained some repeat visitors from it. Planning on another guest post elsewhere in a few weeks - it sucks writing content and not getting to use it but it's worth it.

On a side note, Adsense has been serving about 99% of my page views until today - all day it is saying I've only had 7 ad views but analytics says I've had over 300 impressions...anyone had this problem before? Hoping adsense is just lagging behind, but it's been about 13 hours now

I've done the whole comment on blogs thing and let me tell you, the results are almost zero. If everyone is linking to their site on a blog, all of the comments are just spammy and they mean nothing. I, personally, say take that time and create well thought out content. Maybe analyze some of your articles/posts using the Google Keyword tool and optimize them for certain keywords. That would give far better results. The better your content is, the more you're going to naturally get back links.

On a related note, if you have good content, simply e-mailing and asking for a link in exchange for a weekly plug to a big site (or something along that level) would be more beneficial than posting to blogs.

Guests posting is a good idea if you can find a closely related blog.

# ? Aug 22, 2013 15:13

Frost000: Jan 10, 2004

I've been thinking of starting up a blog since I currently have the time to set it up and was wondering a few things.

For those of you who use Wordpress, did you upgrade when you originally registered? If I were to NOT upgrade initially, would Wordpress put ads on my page and limit my custom changes to whichever theme I were to use?

The domain name I would've used is currently registered to someone, but they're really not doing anything with it. Do any of you have any experience contacting someone through their whois information in order to buy their domain? Any suggestions or tips if I were to do so?

# ? Aug 22, 2013 19:58

jabro: Mar 25, 2003; July Mock Draft 2014

1st PLACE
RUNNER-UP
got the knowshon

List Building and You

A blogger in another thread asked for the benefits of an email list. I had about 500 words on email lists written out and why you should have one but in my research I found someone who said it better so I'm posting that here instead.

quote:

Email Marketing 101: Why You MUST Have An Email List To Make Money With Your Blog
by Dan & Jennifer

Today�s topic: Email lists, and why even today they are still important. Why do I need that? I have social media. No one uses email anymore, you say. We will tell you all about email lists and more importantly why you MUST have one to make money with your blog.

Wait, why email? Isn�t social media the cool new thing these days?

Well, that�s true. Social media is all the rage these days, and for good reason. It�s probably the most effective form of marketing on the planet today, maybe the most effective form of all time. It does wonders for your traffic.

But consider this: 90% of the people who get to your website, however they find you (via word of mouth, social media, search engines like Bing! or Google, for example), don�t come back. They visit once and leave forever. That�s kind of a problem if you want to start a website that generates ad revenue and ultimately generates you an income. You want them to come back and come back regularly.

How do you get those visitors to come back to your site?

It�s quite simple: you get yourself an email list set up � and get your visitors to sign up to it. The trick is to get people to give you their email address willingly, so that you can contact them regularly and entice them to come back check out all the cool stuff you�ve been writing about. All that is known as email marketing.

How do you get people to give you their email address?

So now you know you need an email list. But how do you get someone to give you their email address? Simple: you don�t. No one is just going to hand you that information.

Way too many people already have their email address and they are already overwhelmed by the sheer amount of legitimate emails they receive on a daily basis (and we�re not even mentioning the spam emails they get). Just think about your own inbox� you know what we�re talking about here. So they aren�t exactly in a big hurry to hand their email addresses over to someone who is going to pile even more emails into their inbox.

No one gives that info away all willy nilly, but they WILL give it to you, if you know how to ask. How do you ask? By giving them something. Saying things like �sign up for our email list in order to get this FREE (insert e-book, free credit report, free Aardvark calendar or anything else you think they just can�t live with out)� works a lot better than saying �please sign up for our newsletter or email list (which probably contains absolutely NOTHING that they�d want to read anyway).

The term some marketers use here is an ethical bribe� you bribe people to give you a chance to contact them over email by offering them a great incentive they ACTUALLY WANT in order to get on your list.

Tip: No one cares about your �newsletter�.

This leads us to a very important point. We want you to say the following out loud with us: Nobody gives a drat about your newsletter. It�s harsh, I know, but it�s true.

No one wants to hear about all the fancy new office layout or the new site redesign or whatever. People are busy and selfish. They don�t care about YOU, they care about THEM. They have problems and they want to know how to solve them. Focus on what they need. More importantly focus on how YOU are the one to solve their problems for them.

Send your subscribers great content to establish yourself as an expert.

Now that you�ve got them subscribed to your list, it�s all up to you� and it comes down to 2 main things: quality and consistency.

Quality: Don�t email people junk, send them useful stuff. It�s that simple.

If you expect someone to read what you have to say regularly and not immediately unsubscribe, then send them somehthing that�ll actually have some value to them. Maybe the best tips of the week for whatever topic of newsletter they signed up for, be it puppy care tips or whatever. Do it right, it�ll be worth it in the end. This is not to say you can�t send them offers for quality services they can use, that�s fine. But for every offer you send, plan to send 3 to 5 useful pieces of information that makes them feel your email is worth opening.

Consistency: Send out your newsletter regularly so your readers know when to expect them.

Sending your newsletter messages out consistently is crucial.

People (and search engines) like consistency, a reliable, predictable schedule that shows them �you�re serious� and in this for the long haul, not some guy out to make a quick buck.

Over time your email list will grow, and so will your customer base.

It will take time, but it is a moral imperative that you become a trusted expert in their minds. Why? Because when they want more information on a particular topic, or more importantly, if they want to buy something on the topic who do you think they will be turning to? Some random guy who sends out an email once a month. Are they going to ask themselves �What would Yoda do?� No, no they won�t. They will turn to their trusted expert on the subject whip out their wallet and hand that trusted expert some hard earned cash. Now do you see why you want to be their own personal Yoda (aka trusted expert) on the subject? That�s what we thought. Now you have seen the light, young grasshopper. Now go out and prosper!

So that is it. If you want anything expanded on just ask. Either myself or anyone here, who I know has a lot more experience on this than I do, can answer it.

Omits, on your blog you need to do two things. First, you need to dig out your opt-in from that hole you have it in and get it on top of the fold. Should be first thing on you right sidebar. Second, you expressed interest in writing an ebook. Do it. Write about something that deals with your blog obviously but make it something that wants people want to give you their email address. Hidden backpacking spots in Europe, hostel guide for spots that are near popular backpacking, something. Doesn't have to be War and Peace. Offer it free as enticement to signing up for your list. Have a picture of your ebook cover looking all cool wanting people to fill out that form.

Just putting your opt-in form above the fold should raise your rate for subscribers but giving them something free should shoot it through the roof. People love free poo poo.

# ? Aug 23, 2013 04:53

Tesla Insanely Coil: Jul 23, 2006; Ask me why I'm not squatting.

To reiterate, I'm super new at blogging. This is my blog: http://stargirlgame.net/
Without any promotion of any kind, I got a like on my Facebook page. I now feel a little more panicky to get the site finished and ads up.

I know I'm asking on a Friday afternoon but maybe there's someone who can take a minute and look.

Tesla Insanely Coil posted:

-In the OP, there's a link to "what widgets you ought to have"

I think I've got all the important widgets and plugins except for ads.

quote:

-I think screwed up on my keyword and so I have no idea if I'll be able to make money on my blog.

Too late worry about this! The official Facebook page has over 800k likes so I've been thinking of ways to attract those people.

quote:

-I feel like I need more articles and at least some ads before I start promoting it. Is this the right way to look at it? Or is Google going to want to see that I can get some traffic before putting ads on my blog?

I've got about 10 posts with 300+ words and a few shorter posts. I've got several more posts outlined and just need to finish them. Like I said, I've applied for adsense ads and hopefully I've got enough good content.

quote:

-I have Wordpress SEO and it says to not have just one keyword to promote! I've read the article it links to but now I'm all about how to get my blog to rank.

Since my current plan is to attract Facebook people, I'm worrying more about content than my special keyword for now.

So that's where I am!

# ? Aug 23, 2013 21:51

invision: Mar 2, 2009; I DIDN'T GET ENOUGH RAPE LAST TIME, MAY I HAVE SOME MORE?

Well, I had a fun year in Blog Land. Forgot to renew my domain while I was in the middle of moving across the country and trying to get set up.

It's a lot of work to get going with this, especially if you're not just trying to rank high for keyword x and SEO stuff. I spent a ton of time networking with people, talking, writing articles, finding things to write about, etc etc. With that said, I had a blast, and I might get back into it if I ever have free time in my future.

What'd I get out of it? About $1k for advertising on my site, about $3k worth of product demos, free invite to a $500 class, made about $75 on selling t-shirts, really really important contacts and friendships for the industry I'm in, a couple of job offers, and a free trip to Indianapolis for the biggest industry convention ever. I'd say that I came out WAY on top, but a lot of hours went into keeping the thing going - especially doing product reviews.

Total Cost: ~$9/mo for hosting = $108
$60 bro-deal for logos
Total: $168
Total Profit: ~4k

Was it worth it? Hell yes, but only if you have the time to spend on stuff. You ain't gonna get rich doing things how I did them, but if you're lucky, you'll meet a ton of cool people and have a blast.

invision fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Aug 25, 2013

# ? Aug 25, 2013 06:10

The Swinemaster: Dec 28, 2005

While we're sharing stories, I had an amazing weekend with my blog that was super encouraging.

I've had a few sites, but most in the past were geared towards niche keywords, with the goal of conversions - and nothing else. I got pretty sick of that, let them all die off, and started a new site based around quality content. I wrote about interesting things, did research, and barely monetized it at all. I also barely did much in the way of promotion or link building.

Somehow this weekend one of my posts exploded, and ended up on the first page of digg. I went from about 40/50 hits per day, to this weekend, when I got about half a million clicks. I did nothing to cause this, and it caught me totally by surprise. Now I've got comments, FB fans, likes, and all that good stuff.

So if you're feeling discouraged, just keep putting out good content, and readers will find you.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 06:01

Arsenic Life Form: Jan 1, 2011

Congrats on making the front page of Digg. Which post was it by the way?

# ? Aug 26, 2013 06:19

SweatyE: Jun 7, 2013

Congratulations - I was ecstatic when I went from 20 hits a day to 100 hits a day (which only lasted a few days). I can only imagine what going to half a million would do. This is also a brilliant example of why you should be running advertising on sites from day one - imaging taking off on Digg and not having any ad revenue being generated because you didn't think you were big enough yet. Do you mind me asking roughly how much (as a %) your income went up over those few days? I've always heard Digg traffic doesn't convert well but it sounds like you got some good results as far as comments and likes go so it would be interesting to know regarding revenue.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 13:25

The Swinemaster: Dec 28, 2005

It was this post here:

http://slumberwise.com/science/your-ancestors-didnt-sleep-like-you/

I was running ads, but it really wasn't monetized in a great way - I had links to Amazon without an affiliate link for a while. I did some updates on Sunday that helped a lot.

As far as percentage of traffic, it would be kind of a meaningless number, since prior to this I had earned maybe just a dollar a day. On Saturday I took in about $100 bucks from adsense. I also had a sidebar as advertising for a bed company, and this got a bunch of clicks but did not convert. I think for this kind of article - where readers are not really in a buying mode - Google adsense might make the most sense. I recently added the targeted Amazon links mentioned above, but since nothing has shipped I don't know my profit there yet.

And for Digg - maybe you can clarify how it works for me. Is it entirely self-contained, or does it use an algorithm to rank things based on likes and other social signals too?

# ? Aug 26, 2013 17:40

FCKGW: May 21, 2006

Digg is semi-curated. Editors monitor social traffic and find what's interesting or well-written, particularly with a quirky story that can have a very enticing title written for it.

quote:

What is the Digg Score?
A Digg Score is the sum of the number of diggs, Facebook shares and tweets for a story. Roll over any Digg Score to see a breakdown of the votes. The new Digg Score that we implemented with this launch is an experiment and a work in progress, but we�re excited to see how this new data can help us identify the stories that our users care the most about.

I keep hearing about Digg moderators. What is a moderator and what do they want?
We learned, while building News.me at betaworks, that finding really great stories requires a mix of smart algorithms, smart networks and, not least, smart people to parse the two. Digg is what the Internet is talking about right now, so our moderators, Dave, Ross and Josh will be watching diggs, Facebook shares, tweets, and a handful of other data to determine where a story should sit on the homepage. Facebook shares and tweets are important signals and will be closely monitored, but we care first and foremost about what Digg users have to say � measured, as always, in diggs.

That particular article seems perfect for the site.

# ? Aug 26, 2013 20:09

FAN OF NICKELBACK: Apr 9, 2002

I have read through the OP, a few of the latest posts in this thread, and googled a bit (I figured out meta descriptions an hour ago hooray). I think I might be an idiot who has bad ideas, but I'm not smart enough to be able to tell!

I had an idea to start a website/blog about interviewing (mostly for ex-employees and friends who ask for interviewing advice, but I barely have family time anymore). A friend of mine convinced me to let him "whip up a wordpress site" and all I needed to do was a mock up in GIMP and give him a graphic for all the pages.

That inexplicably turned into "Hey what if I buy a domain for money and hosting too and put the site there and then somehow money falls out of it!"

I put it up a week ago and have no idea what to do outside of what the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin tells me I should to make little balls turn green.

Basically, can someone who knows something look at https://www.interviewscience.com and just tell me if there are bad things that could become good things? Are there any recent entry level articles that I should read since the OP is almost half-a-year old? I just want this dumb thing to pay for its own hosting by years end at this point. Tell me things like I am a dummy.

FAN OF NICKELBACK fucked around with this message at 08:20 on Aug 29, 2013

# ? Aug 29, 2013 08:03

Frost000: Jan 10, 2004

Is anyone here a member of Elegant Themes?

I ask because I'm interested in joining and figured I'd use someone else's affiliate link so we can split the commission.

Edit: Done. Thanks, jabro!

Frost000 fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Aug 30, 2013

# ? Aug 29, 2013 13:16

Dr. Kyle Farnsworth: Apr 23, 2004

Is there a particularly good method for building backlinks besides just emailing various people and asking to be added? I know there's various automation tools but some of those look shady as hell and I know spamming gets pretty harshly punished by Google.

# ? Aug 29, 2013 20:08

Moniker: Mar 16, 2004

Dr. Kyle Farnsworth posted:

Is there a particularly good method for building backlinks besides just emailing various people and asking to be added? I know there's various automation tools but some of those look shady as hell and I know spamming gets pretty harshly punished by Google.

I used a few spam tools and got #1 in Google before my domain expired and didn't e-mail me prior to doing so.

They are shady but man, a lot of them work. Haha.

# ? Aug 29, 2013 22:55

jabro: Mar 25, 2003; July Mock Draft 2014

1st PLACE
RUNNER-UP
got the knowshon

Frost000 posted:

Is anyone here a member of Elegant Themes?

I ask because I'm interested in joining and figured I'd use someone else's affiliate link so we can split the commission.

No one posted but here is mine if you haven't used one yet.

http://www.elegantthemes.com/affiliates/idevaffiliate.php?id=22538

# ? Aug 30, 2013 06:06

sim: Sep 24, 2003

FAN OF NICKELBACK posted:

Basically, can someone who knows something look at https://www.interviewscience.com and just tell me if there are bad things that could become good things? Are there any recent entry level articles that I should read since the OP is almost half-a-year old? I just want this dumb thing to pay for its own hosting by years end at this point. Tell me things like I am a dummy.

reduce the height of your header graphic -- it's annoying to scroll past it and it's not adding much visually
consider linking to your recent blog posts from your homepage (so the homepage is updated regularly)
consider shortening the homepage text and including more links to your articles
fix the quote on the homepage so it spans the full width (or place something to the left of it)

Otherwise I think it's a very good start. You may not see the traffic/ad revenue for awhile though. Have you done your keyword research? Do you know what keyword(s) you're targeting? The Yoast SEO plugin is a great guide per page, but you should have an overall plan for your entire site.

BTW I think your OP in SA is fantastic and this is a great idea for a blog. But I have no idea how competitive the niche is. You may find it hard to break in SEO wise, but if you focus on great content you can start a following and with a big email list, you'll have even higher potential earnings.

sim fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Aug 30, 2013

# ? Aug 30, 2013 14:43

FAN OF NICKELBACK: Apr 9, 2002

OK I literally spent 4 hours right clicking in Chrome and dicking with elements to make things happen in an internet language I know nothing about. The tips were solid, so I hope this makes things OK. If there's anything else let me know because I made the background a blue gradient and then made a div style with a shadow.

Now how do I get a big email list or emails from people to make a list. I wanna do the thing where people have to sign in to comment but I have no idea how to do that.

I emailed a few rad places for interviews about their interviewing process but I GUESS THE TEXAS SNAKE FARM IS TOO BOURGEOIS. I'm starting to think I made a really bad and embarrassing decision.

Also, why is China 54% of my pages served.

FAN OF NICKELBACK fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Aug 31, 2013

# ? Aug 31, 2013 05:40

sim: Sep 24, 2003

Take a look at startupfrontier.com. He's doing a similar thing, but focused on startups. The easiest way to get people's emails is to just ask for it. Once you start getting some traffic, you'll be amazed how many people will sign up. Basically the idea is you public great content for free, you promise exclusive content via email, then with a decent list you can mix in affiliates offers or whatever else you can sell to that target audience at a much higher conversion rate.

The new header/homepage looks good. You already have the "must be signed in to comment" setting turned on.

# ? Aug 31, 2013 14:25

Plasmafountain: Jun 17, 2008

Something has struck me about certain interest of mine and I was thinking of starting another site (yes, I know).

Unfortunately googles keyword tool has changed beyond almost all recognition since the OP. How the christ do you use the new one? :psyduck:

# ? Sep 7, 2013 12:44

mcsuede: Dec 30, 2003; Anyone who has a continuous smile on his face conceals a toughness that is almost frightening.
-Greta Garbo

Zero Gravitas posted:

Something has struck me about certain interest of mine and I was thinking of starting another site (yes, I know).

Unfortunately googles keyword tool has changed beyond almost all recognition since the OP. How the christ do you use the new one?

It's a mess, use long tail pro or raven or moz or something instead.

# ? Sep 7, 2013 16:49

Kenny Rogers: Sep 7, 2007; Chapter One:
When I first saw Sparky, he reminded me of my favorite comb. He was missing a lot of teeth.

Zero Gravitas posted:

Something has struck me about certain interest of mine and I was thinking of starting another site (yes, I know).

Unfortunately googles keyword tool has changed beyond almost all recognition since the OP. How the christ do you use the new one?

Muahahahaha!

I'm working on a guide on how to use it as we speak. I came here to mention that just now, and saw these last two posts.
Good timing! =)

# ? Sep 7, 2013 19:21

sim: Sep 24, 2003

I'm also working on an update to the OP, so if anyone has some suggestions, let me know. Kenny Rogers, I'd be happy to include a link to your guide once it's finished. In addition to the tools mcsuede mentioned, there's also Market Samurai. Check out the eCommerce thread, as there's a lot of discussion about keyword research that relates to blogging.

# ? Sep 7, 2013 20:25

Plasmafountain: Jun 17, 2008

Checked out that thread. Finding a GKWT replacement wasnt easy and Im very distrustful of things where I give my email to sign up like market samurai. Any chance you can post that new updated GKWT guide instead?

# ? Sep 10, 2013 11:52

Kenny Rogers: Sep 7, 2007; Chapter One:
When I first saw Sparky, he reminded me of my favorite comb. He was missing a lot of teeth.

Zero Gravitas posted:

Checked out that thread. Finding a GKWT replacement wasnt easy and Im very distrustful of things where I give my email to sign up like market samurai. Any chance you can post that new updated GKWT guide instead?

Working on it... I've got my monthly big meeting on Thursday, so I haven't had the time that I'd like to have had this week.
quick tip, though.
GKWP doesn't work with AdBlock Plus. You've got to whitelist it.

# ? Sep 10, 2013 14:57

Kenny Rogers: Sep 7, 2007; Chapter One:
When I first saw Sparky, he reminded me of my favorite comb. He was missing a lot of teeth.

Doing research, I found this - which does a way better job than the guide I was doing.

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/4111-SEO-Using-Google-s-New-Keyword-Planner

Here's the example from the OP, updated

thestu posted:

type in a broad word that my blog covers ('sleeping bags', for example), with [Exact] clicked under match type and 'Only show ideas closely related to my search terms' clicked as well (and the Location set to United States if you're like me and from somewhere else). This should give you a big long list of potential long tail topics.

For the sleeping bag example a lot of it is stuff like 'princess sleeping bag', which isn't right for my blog, but just go through and filter out the bad stuff. You'll notice a lot of duplicates as well, like 'compact sleeping bag' and 'sleeping bag compact', and I usually just write the one that gets more views, unless I can make the two posts reasonably different.

It depends on the niche, but for anything below 500 global searches or so, the competition is probably going to be low enough to warrant writing. Anything above that it might not hurt to just check the first page of Google and see.

Google keyword tool is useful, but you really need to go and actually look at the first page of the Google results for whatever the keyword is and see what kind of chance you have of getting there. This is a half decent guide on analyzing the first page of Google to see what your chances are, but if you're willing to put more work in, more competition for the first page is acceptable.

That's the old way. Now:
Sign in to your Adwords account and select the Keyword Planner from the dropdown under Tools and Analysis.
Select "Keyword Ideas"
Put in your search term ("sleeping bags")
Select any targeting or customization on the left. This is where you'd put in your >=1000 searches and >-$1.00 CPC.

BAM - Sortable columns!

That should get you started, anyway.

Kenny Rogers fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Sep 10, 2013

# ? Sep 10, 2013 23:37

PurpleLizardWizard: Jun 11, 2012

I've been toying with the idea of starting a blog for a while, and I've finally got most of the research done and decisions made. However, there's one thing I just can't figure out.

I'm wanting to make a statistics-centric blog in which I'll probably be throwing up formulas all over the place. How the hell do I give credit to the textbook when I do that? Do I give credit to the textbook? Am I gold if I just put up a page listing the books that I'm using, or what?

# ? Sep 15, 2013 20:50

Tars Tarkas: Apr 13, 2003; Rock the Mok

A nasty woman, I think you should try is, Jess.

You should source everything, either as you go or at the end of the article. A stats blog will probably bring in some academics who will appreciate proper citation. You can find some examples of different styles at the bottom of here - http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/jse_author_info.htm If you have books you use often, you can list them on a page and then just refer to them via shorthand/link. I would try to include blogs as you cite stuff as people will begin to notice you via trackback/referrals and might leave comments. Then you reciprocate and leave comments on their blog, and check out who they link to and the sites of those linking comments. Even if you don't have interesting things to say, you might get ideas for new posts. Another thought is book citations can also include Amazon referrals.

# ? Sep 15, 2013 22:30

PurpleLizardWizard: Jun 11, 2012

I don't think I'll be drawing in any academics, but I do want it to look fairly professional, so I think I will be citing at the end of each post.

The general idea is the blog would provide tutorials for probability and statistics that focused on examples from pen and paper RPGs, videogames, boardgames, all that general type of stuff. In between the tutorials, I would do longer, in-depth problems. Stuff like if different generations of pokemon games had statistically significant skews among the number of each type, how to tweak random encounter rates if you want players to be a certain level by the end of a dungeon, ranges for the number of times someone might run a raid to get a certain drop, that sort of stuff. I'm hoping that by the time I run out of examples I'll have at least a token reader base that could throw more questions my way.

The inspiration largely comes from one of my computer science friends who drove me up the wall over a year ago when he had to take a probability course and kept insisting that it was utterly useless to him. It took me just minutes to think of dozens of ways probability and statistics could be applied to game design, his desired future career. It didn't really change his mind, but I figured that there might be more receptive people out there, or at the very least people interested in reading the conclusions of my analyses.

I'm not really expecting this to become a source of income. Mostly, I'm looking at this as a resume booster, reason to review my basics, and possibly a future launchpad if I want to see if being hired as a freelance consultant or tutor is feasible.

PurpleLizardWizard fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Sep 15, 2013

# ? Sep 15, 2013 22:48

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 18, 2024 01:58

Tars Tarkas: Apr 13, 2003; Rock the Mok

A nasty woman, I think you should try is, Jess.

That sounds like it could produce some cool articles/infographics.

# ? Sep 16, 2013 00:12

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Blogs For Bucks: I Got 99 Blogs But Male Enhancement Ain't One.

«‹›44 »