Archive for November, 2007
Friday, November 30th, 2007
This is the third and last free review given in the Shylock Contest.
The Link Bait is a blog about ….. yes, you guessed it, it’s about contests. A bit of an unusual name for a contest blog, but if it works for them, who am I to argue.
For those that aren’t familiar with this type of blog, it’s a place where people can submit contests, they are then announced on the blog and people that are looking to win prizes or cash can find out about them and what they need to do to enter them.
It’s a good system, that helps give your contests more exposure, and I’ve used this system myself in the past in my first contest. I don’t know how much traffic The Link Bait gets, but they should be pretty well targeted if you’re in the make money online niche. They’re probably bloggers that are looking to enter contests and win prizes, so any contests announced there have a good chance of bringing at least a few extra people.
I’ve looked around at the way this blog works, and I can safely say that it’s a nice example of having a blog with minimum input from the owner.
There are three ways of submitting a contest:
- free submission (you write the contest announcement)
- featured contest written by you (you write the announcement and your contest stays in the sidebar for 1 month for extra exposure) - $5
- featured post written by the blog owner (he writes the announcement and the contest stays in the sidebar for 1 month) - $10
I love it. All he needs to do is accept the submissions from people that write the announcements themselves, and he only needs to write when someone wants a featured post, that he asks $10 to write. The blog runs on user generated content for the most part.
If you’re looking to make some extra cash or win some prizes, then December is probably the best month of the year for contests. Head over to The Link Bait and subscribe to receive the latest contests by RSS. Or, if you’re looking to start a contest yourself, you can submit it there as well, for some extra exposure.
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Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
Aaron Wall wrote a very interesting post this week, one that I would definitely recommend to any blogger. For those that don’t know, Aaron Wall is the guy behind the SEO Book, the most praised ebook when it comes to learning SEO, and probably the only one worth buying.
Anyway, the article I’m talking about is The Blogger’s Guide To Search Engine Optimization. It’s a bit long, but worth it.
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Thursday, November 22nd, 2007
First of all, my bad for the lack of updates here. It’s a busy period for me, but I thought I’d give a few updates on things related to this blog.
First of all, the new WordPress theme for this blog is being coded right now, and I’m looking for people interested in advertising here. There will be 6 ads 125×125 above the fold, rotating, to give equal exposure to all of them, and I’m looking for sponsors for when the theme will be launched. It will probably be live before December 1st and I’m going to offer you a very sweet deal to advertise here.
If you order an ad on this blog for December, you pay for one month and you also get January free.
The 125×125 button above the fold is $15/month, so order an ad for December and you get January free.
The 468×60 ad, that appears after the first post on the front page and at the end of every article on this blog is also $15/month, and you get December at this price and January free.
Two months of advertising for $15, on a blog with 16,000-18,000 pageviews/month and 200 subscribers. You can’t find advertising that cheap easily. The price is a bit lower then my comfort level, but I need the money and I want all the spots sold.
All advertisers will also be mentioned in a monthly post, with 50 words about your blog or product. So if you order now, you’ll get the ad for two months for the price of one, and also two mentions of your blog/site/product.
The traffic is already bigger then it was in October, by 30%, and there are 7 more days until the month ends.
Order now!
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Friday, November 16th, 2007
Probably because it’s the only social media site where content is truly king. With Digg and other similar sites you have a much better shot if you have friends to send shouts to, if you submit your articles at certain times during the day, if you’re a top digger and so on. With StumbleUpon, all you need is a good article and the traffic will follow (if you submit to the correct category).
The screenshot below is the traffic from a new blog I started on October 28 I think.
One of the articles was submitted to StumbleUpon on October 31st. It was very successful with the StumbleUpon users, and in the last 16 days it brought me 45,000 visitors and 76,000 page views to that article, 30+ comments, the first 20-25 subscribers of the blog, and ~$14.
The money is irrelevant here, the CTR was absolutely horrible, the subscriber number is what interests me. Yesterday, more then two weeks since it was submitted, it brought 1,000 visitors to that article. And that’s without having a powerful account or taking into consideration the time of day for the submission.
True, a top stumbler can boost your initial number of visitors, but ultimately you need good content to be successful, and I think that’s where Digg is losing the battle.
A good start if you want to use StumbleUpon is an article from The Lost Art Of Blogging, called A Guide To StumbleUpon: Understanding And Beating The System. It’s well worth the read, and if you’re new to social media, you can also take a look at his article, Introduction To Social Media And Social Media Marketing.
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Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
I planned for some time now to release free wordpress themes on this blog, and the moment finally came. It’s a theme I bought on Digital Point some time ago, and after some more tweaking, it’s finally done and ready to be released.
I’ll probably release a second theme this month. A very good friend of mine is working on it as I write this, and it might be the theme that Shylock Blogging will use when it’s done.
Abstract Shylock is a 2 column WordPress theme, with a fixed width of 760px, which means it works even for those with 800×600 resolutions.
Screenshot of the Abstract Shylock theme:
Simply unzip the abstract-shylock directory into your wp-content/themes/ folder, go to your Presentation link in your admin area, and activate it.
You will find the psd file for the header in the zip file (it’s called banner.psd). Open it with Photoshop, modify it with your own blog title and tagline. Then save it as header.jpg and overwrite the header.jpg file from wp-content/themes/abstract-shylock/images/header.jpg.
You can modify the theme for your own use in any way you like, but please don’t offer it for download.
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