Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

3 Blogging Secrets Learned From My First 5 months

Monday, May 26th, 2008

This article is a guest post from a blogger friend Mwangi of the Displaced African. He has been a great encouragement to me and he is full of wonderful ideas. Read and Enjoy 😉

My name is Mwangi and I come to you from the blog known as the Displaced African. Technically speaking I have been blogging for a lot more than five months. Like all professional bloggers I have left a small trail of dead blogs. One was a blog where I left only entry: After watching the movie “the Corporation“, I left one blog post on a quickly created blogger account. I paraphrase:

“I Loved the Corporation! If you did too, say something!”

Of course there was no traffic and of course no one left any comments. Clearly I missed the memo that said that blogs do not automatically become communities because I have written one sentence on them, I have to provide value first. Fortunately I have grown as a blogger since and am enjoying a steadily growing readership, an Alexis Ranking that jumped about 20,000 points the day I wrote this and a commenting community that I just adore.

So today, I thought I would share with you three things that I have learned about this blogging thing from the school of trial and error 101.

1) If You Want Your Readers to Do Something, Ask Them….Nicely 🙂

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Website Kings vs Website King Makers!

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

If this is not what you thought it is, I apologise. I am not about to share a secret from the manual, instead, I want to share something I discovered (which can be verified) during the week. If you already know about it, then, hop unto another post. Happy reading.

It has been a great week even though I started the week feeling down-casted because I was not getting the attention I wanted from the kings (site visitors). My first post for the week was just a thought that dropped into my head and my fingers started flirting with the keyboard, at the end, the post “Are You Willing to Sell Your Blog?” was added to my ramblings (I was actually addressing the king makers – my friends). The response was good and that kept me going for some days. I was quite busy after then even though I still fulfilled my daily quota.

By Thursday, I have started getting grumpy again because of some frustrations I was experiencing online while trying to please the kings (nothing good come easy). While in that mood, I poured out my heart in another post that is pure ramblings, “Are You Still My Friend?” (by now you must be wondering if I am a serious entrepreneur 😉 )I was not expecting anything good to come out of those two post, but looking back now, I can say that they produce better result than my other posts that were focused on the theme of my blog and were carefully written out.

So, what is the catch. (more…)

How To Make Visitors Linger More On Your Site

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

Internet is all about speed. The online users are always in haste. Usually, the visitors want to spend 1sec and then hop to another site. The only way they will spend extra seconds is if something grab their attention and keep them hooked (unconsciously). Leading them from one interesting bait to another until they have finished consuming all that is available. So you as a webmaster or blogger are immediately saddled with a new task after accomplishing the difficult task of bring the visitor down to your site (no room for relaxation). You have a new goal to accomplish. Simply put it looks like this: (more…)

Are You My Friend?

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

Are you my friend?

If you are, I need 2minutes of your time. I am not ashamed to ask for your help because I have learnt by experience that Ask and You will Receive! Let me give you a little background information.

I checked my BlogCatalog Dashboard, and it tells me that I have 138 Friends! Hmmnn in real life, that is something to boast of. Technorati states that I have 178blog reactions and my Rank is 307,201.
I then ask myself, with all this wonderful figures, and the fact that FireStats claims that 6,177 visitors have been to my blog, how come I have less than 40 RSS Subscriptions? Why am I yet to have a post with at least 40 comments? Why is my Compete Rank static? (it is the most worrisome of them all).

How to Generate Free Traffic From Forums

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

One of the best place to generate free quality traffic is Online Forums. The great thing about forum is that you can target a particular group that fits the niche market you are interested in as an online entrepreneur. Forums provide a wonderful opportunity for you to build your reputation and trust online because you have the rare advantage of having a prior information about the people you are dealing with (you have access to their profiles and past posts).

Here are some tips to help you make the best use of the opportunity:

  • Register with the forum using a name that is distinct (more…)