5 Reasons The Top Bloggers Are Successful

After reading what Thomas Sinfield  wrote about  5 Reason Why You Will Fail At Blogging I got a great idea for my next post. Why not share the 5 Reasons The Top Bloggers Are Successful. Lists are one of the easiest ways to increase traffic to a blog because people will spread the word to others if they find them helpful. I will be posting one or two lists every week that are motivational and inspiring relating to promoting websites and building more traffic. I may even put a publisher in there once in a while since the majority of the theory’s about them are not true.

Why exactly do the top bloggers make so much money and have such a loyal following? Here are some of the reasons these guys are successful and by following these you will be on your way to joining them at the top!

They write a new post everyday
Although they may have the post timestamped and may have not actually created it at that second they always have new content coming out. Sometimes these guys are way to busy and have “Guest Bloggers” do the posting for them that week. Either way they get the fresh content out there and everyone loves reading it. It is suggest to post at least once a day and most bloggers cannot even find the time to do it once a week. Imagine the surge in traffic and rss subscribers if you posted on a day to day basis. Give it a try, it is the best way to gain exposure.

These guys are the promotion kings
They can promote a product without some people even realizing it. Sometimes they may be a bit deceptive and hide the affiliate links but they still get signups which is more money in their pocket. Then they use this money to further promote the blog until word of mouth takes over.  They are also amazing at hyping contests, Darren of Problogger offered over $54,000 worth of Prizes on Offer in the ProBlogger Birthday Bash Competitions! The great part is that almost all the prizes were donated so it was almost free exposure to his already massively popular blog.

They know what they are talking about
Always do research before making a post, it will give you even more ideas and will make you look like a professional in that area. Even though you may already know a great deal about the topic, the readers may not, posting a tip or trick is a great way to build a loyal reader-base. Surprisingly even the basics of Google Adsense such as adding code to a webpage is difficult for beginners, and if you have that they will be sure to bookmark the site and return in the future.

They build a list of contacts
Every top blogger has a Blogroll or list of other webmasters blogs that they enjoy reading. This is a great way to find other interesting blogs and spread the word about your own. Find the best blogs in your topic and ask them to do a blogroll exchange with you. Some may be nice enough to do it even if you are a new blog, others may other do it with close friends. It’s worth a shot though! This also helps build powerful backlinks that are sitewide most of the time which means a bunch of pages will get indexed, search engine rankings will improve, and you will get that small pagerank boost.

They love what they do
These guys are working as bloggers fulltime and love it. They attend conversions and seminars for the topic and just cannot get enough of it. This allows them to share insider news and tips that other bloggers cannot. They are great at promoting their name and always conduct themselves professionally. Without this type of passion their blog would have never made it. Keep this in mind as a bit of motivation when writing your blog.

Posted in: Blog, Ideas, Make Money Online, SEO, Tutorials, Wordpress | Date: November 16th, 2007 | Posted by: Derek | 6 Comments »

The Best Wordpress Plugins in The Blogosphere

In an earlier post Wordpress Plugins Ever Blogger Should Use, I introduced the LinkLove no follow plugin. This WordPress plugin turns off the  nofollow attribute for all commenters who have posted a set number of comments (configured in the admin panel). This plugin is now enabled and everyone that posts a comment will get a SEO boost back from their contribution. Keep in mind I have the comments set to be manually approved and want them to have thought and be insightful. If anyone has a question or comment just ask me there and I will be more then happy to reply to it.

With that said here is the second list of The Best Wordpress Plugins

Theme Switcher
Easily show demos of other themes or switch between them.

Show Top Commentor
Shows the members that have commented the most time in order. Great for encouraging activity in the blog and keeping them reading the posts.

Buy Me a Beer - Displays a beer or coffee icon and provides a link to your Paypal account for readers to buy you a beverage of your choice. A great way to encourage the readers to give back something to you.

SpellChecker
Provides spellcheck functioning on your dashboard. Great if you do not use Firefox which as that built in (not as useful anymore).

WP-Contact Form - Creates a contact form for members to reach you at. Use this to sell advertising, report issues, or just for general contact.

Gravatars - It lets you place the small pictures (avatars) of your readers next to their comments on your blog. Another great community builder! Please note this is the new and updated Gravatars 2, the first one was discontinued.

Adhesive - This plugin that lets you make blog posts sticky, so they will remain at the top.These posts will remain at the top of the page no matter how many other posts you wrote later.

Posted in: Freebies, SEO, Wordpress | Date: November 15th, 2007 | Posted by: Derek | 3 Comments »

The Fundamentals To Creating A Successful Blog

This is Part 2 of the Creating a Wordpress Blog series, Be sure to read Part 1 first.

If the first part of this series I tried to make sure that anyone interested in started a blog was actually capable of sticking with it. This is important because it will feel like a complete waste if time if nobody reads the posts. The next step is to narrow down the topic or niche that is going to be covered in the blog. For instance if in my case I had to decide if I was going to be mainly writing about making money online or Derek’s past money making experiences. This blog would be extremely different if I was writing about the websites that I run compared to the money making tips and advice that I have been sharing. I decided to keep that to the About Me section and instead focus on writing articles that are both interesting and encouraging.

This is also important from the search engine rankings perspective. Make Money Online is a high searched term and fits very well with the theme of my blog. I will list some keyword research tools that will help you to select the best name.

For the demonstration I will be using the Adwords Keyword Tool

When I first found this tool I was confused by it. This tool was made to find alternate keyword ideas. If you already thought of a topic for your blog or website place the keyword of phrase in the box and click “Get Keyword Ideas”. A large list of keywords that are related will come up showing the Advertiser Search Competition, Previous Months Search Volume, and the Average Search Volume. The more competition the more that advertiser is willing to pay to show their advertisement on your site. Pick one that sounds good and has average volumes.

To get more keyword ideas click the Site Related Keywords tab. Then enter a webpage URL you want to find the keywords for. This should be a competitors website or one that has been successful.

The next thing to do is add a personal touch to the title and descriptions. Nobody wants to read a blog called Technology. There needs to be descritpion in it and this goes for any Title that you ever end up making. Make it as descriptive as possible and fun to read so the reader is attracted to it.

Title 1: The Most Effective SEO Optimization Technique That Nobody Knows

Title 2: SEO Optimization

Always ask yourself, would I read this? In this case it is pretty obvious that more people would read the first title. I am just touching on this for now but will cover it more in depth in a future post.

The next fundamental involves writing the posts themselves. My blog so far has been a longer one I would estimate some posts have been well over a thousand words. In general the length recommended is 200-300 words. They should be handwritten by somebody always never copied from another source. If it is a video that is fine just add a unique description so the RSS Feed Readers will not have it showing up as a blank post. This will also draw them into the blog to see the video increasing the traffic!

1. Select a niche and narrow down what to write about
2. Select the most on-topic keywords and titles.
3. Be creative with the title name

Having all of this done is half the battle. Keep in mind I will not cover installation of Wordpress because most web hosting companies have an installer that will set it up for you.

You are reading Part 2 of the Creating a Wordpress Blog series.
Read  Part 1 How To Create A Quality Wordpress Blog
Continue to Part 3 (coming soon)

Posted in: Blog, Make Money Online, Tutorials, Wordpress | Date: November 14th, 2007 | Posted by: Derek | 2 Comments »

How to Create a Quality Wordpress Blog

Posted in: Blog, Tutorials, Wordpress | Date: November 12th, 2007 | Posted by: Derek | 3 Comments »

Wordpress Plugins Every Blogger Should Be Using

Almost everyone with a blog is using Wordpress, and if not they should be. It is by far the easiest software to install and everything needed to enhance it can be found on the Internet for free. There are thousands of different Wordpress Plugins out there and figuring out what ones to add is no easy task. For the most part wordpress plugins take less then five minutes to install and can enhance the wordpress theme right away. Below is a list that I have compiled of the best wordpress plugins, I will update it each time I add a new one to the blog. I had trouble finding the top wordpress plugins right away, so I figured why not blog about it so others will not have to waste the time that I did to find them. Be sure to leave me a comment if I am missing a plugin that you think is very useful.

Best Wordpress Plugins

Ordered List
Adds a clean and fresh layout to your Dashboard, making it easier to navigate.

Shylock Adsense
Allows you to place Google AdSense advertisements into your posts. Also allows you to not display them until a set amount of time has passed (getting them off your front pages so it doesn’t effect your regular readers).

Got Banners
Randomizes the display order of your website’s banners. Ideal for rotating 125 x 125 banners, as well as randomly displaying affiliate links

Live Comment Preview
Shows a preview of the comment as it is typed.

Link Love
WordPress plugin which turns off nofollow for all commenters who have posted a set number of comments (configured in the admin panel).

Search Meter
Shows detailed keyword stats to help determine where the users and coming from and what pages and posts are most popular!

Ultimate Tag Warrior
Ultimate Tag Warrior is a multi-headed hydra of a plugin. It allows you to add tags either through the Write Post page in wordpress in a tag box.

Related Posts
Automatically add links to related posts at the end of each post. Helps keep the users at your blog and reading the posts.

Subscribe to Comments
Plugin that enables commenters to sign up for e-mail notification of subsequent entries.

Popularity Contest
Keeps a count of your post, category and archive views, comments, trackbacks, etc. and uses them to determine which of your posts are most popular. Great mod to encourage activity among your readers.

Adsense Deluxe
This plugin makes it a snap to add Adsense, YPN, or any other publisher to your blogposts. I found it to be the easiest. Just insert the (“<!–adsense–>”) tag in your desired location and it will put the preconfigured ad unit in that spot. No messing with the large code anymore, save valuable time with this plugin.

Posted in: Blog, Wordpress | Date: November 11th, 2007 | Posted by: Derek | 10 Comments »