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 One of the easiest ways to steadily increase your visibility is by getting other blogs to link to you, but this often isn’t an option for people with awful blogs some. Luckily, there is a much easier way of getting natural backlinks without resorting to blackmailing and googlebowling your competitors - blog carnivals.

BLOG CARNIVALS? WILL THERE BE CLOWNS?
No way, inquisitive headline! A blog carnival is when a blogger decides they are too lazy to write a post but still wants to throw something up on their blog - it’s a compilation of links to other articles.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE LINK LOVE
The great thing about blog carnivals is that you can easily submit your own posts for consideration on a blog carnival. To do this, just sign up at blogcarnival.com and search for a few blog carnivals that are coming up in your niche. Gather some select blog posts to use for said carnivals and submit them to it. Within a few days, the carnival will take place on someone’s blog and you’ll get an improved Technorati rank, more traffic, and a free backlink!

AND NOW FOR THE CATCH…
There is none. Sorry to burst your bubble, readers - I know you love paying money for things but blog carnivals are absolutely free (unlike real carnivals. Damn clowns peddling me out of my money with their rigged games) and require pretty much no effort to join.

Posted by Max Miroff | 8 Comments »

StumbleUpon is a fickle beast - it can either lead to salvation (thousands of visitors) or the banhammer (ouch). You see, apparently you CAN’T thumbs up every single post you make: shocker, I know. Blog Badly learned this the hard way; on a scale of one to ten, my level of traffic from SU for the past month was about a none. I can only assume this is because I, uh, *ahem* perhaps reviewed one my own posts? I didn’t even get any traffic from about three other posts with no reviews whatsoever by me! One of them had 15+ thumbs up yet only received about 20 visitors.

But now, it seems that my bad karma has been lifted. After being a diligent user and stumbling/reviewing other sites, Blog Badly started getting hits from StumbleUpon again. I can only assume this was because I stopped stumbling Blog Badly and just decided to let it stew for a bit. Yesterday, I got 300+ visits from StumbleUpon on my latest post. That means that getting “unbanned” from StumbleUpon is as easy as being an active user with stuff other than site promotion on your mind. After all, those pictures of cats are pretty funny!

Does this mean I’ll stop thumbs upping my own site? Of course not! I’ll think about it. Still, it’s a relief to have such a good traffic source back with me again.

Posted by Max Miroff | 23 Comments »

Alexa rankings were once fickle things - changing on a whim. 50,000 visitors with no toolbar on one day? Your rankings tanked. 100 visitors with the toolbar? Hello, Top 100k!

Sadly, this mildly amusing fluctuation has been replaced with a more reliable system. That’s right: new Alexa rankings.

“We listened to your suggestions, and we believe that our new rankings system is much closer to what you asked for. We now aggregate data from multiple sources to give you a better indication of website popularity among the entire population of Internet users.

You gave us many other suggestions as well, and we are working hard to implement them. We won’t tell any secrets just yet, but you can expect to see new features rolled out over the coming weeks and months.”

What does this change mean for you? It means that blogs and websites with high percentages of web-savvy Alexa toolbar users will follow the route of the Hindenburg (you know, the zeppelin?) whilst sites with high quantities of traffic will actually get the rankings they deserve. The big question on everyones mind is namely the following: “will it work?” Blog Badly’s ranking shot down 100,000 points after the update, so I’m not complaining. Still, there’s sure to be ripples around the net either shocked/amused/scared/happy/outraged about these changes. For example, John Chow’s ranking went up 14,000 points while John Cow went up over 80,000 points.

Is Alexa ranking still mostly meaningless? Yes, but now it’s slightly better - and at least they’re trying to make their rankings fairer. Of course, you have to forget all the things your first grade soccer coach told you: effort isn’t all that matters. Webmasters want fair rankings and people want reliable knowledge. Lets hope Alexa can shape up and provide both.

Posted by Max Miroff | 9 Comments »

If your articles suck so much that no one on StumbleUpon wants to thumbs up them you’re just not getting any traffic from StumbleUpon, then you might want to try this little method of getting free thumbs up, reviews, and traffic (hence the title) for your articles. Now I’m not guaranteeing anything (read: no suing is allowed), but this might work for you.

ONTO THE FREE STUMBLEUPON GOODNESS
There are currently three sites in the Google results for this search (This is the secret, btw). Each of these sites offers you three free automated stumbles a day with whatever review you want - a pretty nice sum. All you need to do is spend a few minutes filling in the reviews and a captcha and VOILA! Stumbles for free!

Posted by Max Miroff | 8 Comments »

Homeless people and advertising. Much like the fusion of chocolate and peanut butter to create Reeses candy, this combination (”Dude, you got your homeless person in my advertising”?) may not seem practical at first. Still, have you heard of anyone not liking those creamy, chocolatey, peanut-buttery candies (This message brought to you by Hershey’s)? I didn’t think so.

Think about it this way: it’s a cheap way to get your website out to thousands of people. After all, most hobos live in crowded urban areas with thousands of people passing by them every day. For pure CPM rate, hobos can’t be beat.

WAYS TO GET A HOBO TO ADVERTISE FOR YOU
There are three different ad formats you can try out with homeless people: t-shirts, cardboard signs, and yelling.

T-Shirts
The easiest and cheapest way to get advertising from homeless people is by giving them a t-shirt with your URL and a catchy slogan on it. It’ll cost you about 15-20 bucks per shirt and will still put your brand name in front of people. Commuters are bound to stop and wonder why a homeless person is wearing a nice, clean shirt with a website on it. All you have to do is find a willing hobo and offer them your shirts.

Cardboard Signs
This is slightly more expensive and time-consuming than free t-shirts because you’ll have to pay an ongoing rate and make sure the homeless person is actually using your sign. Just get a sturdy piece of cardboard and make it attractive, then pay a hobo to carry it around.

Yelling
Not recommended - most people will just think the homeless person is crazy for shouting out “GO TO BLOGBADLY DOT COM AND LEARN TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE THE EASY WAY.” It is not recommended.

If anyone would seriously consider doing this (it’s a good idea! I promise!), I’ll be glad to cover it on my blog as well as the traffic effects and reactions. Get out there and advertise with hobos, you lazy bum! After all, who wouldn’t want their brand name associated with homelessness?

Posted by Max Miroff | 16 Comments »

Forums are great places to spam promote your blog. Take Digital Point, for example. Because the majority of the people there are internet marketing newbies hoping to find someone that will take them by the hand and lead them to online salvation, they’re eager to click any link promising “instant SEO success” and “millions of visitors to your website on under 2.3 seconds.” It doesn’t matter if these claims are true or not - I’m actually pretty sure the people clicking on them know that these are all false claims but they like to pretend. Newsflash (are people still allowed to say this?): instant solutions like that don’t exist.

But lets get off of this tangent and onto forum marketing.

STEP ONE: BUILD TRUST
Lull other forum users into thinking you’re actually a helpful member by posting informative replies to their questions. If you start to promote immediately, you’ll probably get either banned or (even worse) negative reputation

STEP TWO: THE PROMOTION BEGINS
Begin citing your blog as a source for your replies. For example, every time someone asks for a good advertising network I mention Adsdaq (I honestly believe it’s awesome) and inconspiciously include a link to my Adsdaq review. Just like that. Since forum threads can rank highly in search engines, you’ll get indirect organic traffic.

STEP THREE: CREATE A THREAD
Post a discussion on the forum about the topic of one of your recent posts (for example, here’s one I made). Add a link to your post telling users that they’ll get more info there. Since you’re technically not spamming your site, the discussion won’t be deleted. Aren’t loopholes fun?

Just rinse and repeat to get some nice traffic to your blog.

SOME MORE TIPS

• People love controversial topics. Tell people you hate Google and love Answer (you monster!) or that you think content isn’t king.
• Add a link to your blog in your signature in big red font. Telling people it cures cancer is optional.
• Talk about your successes. People will always congratulate you, even if it’s only earning your first dollar. I’m not kidding - it’s kind of sad.

Now go out there and spam some forums promote your blog!

Posted by Max Miroff | 15 Comments »

I’ve got some really sad news for everyone writing great content then expecting people to come and find it without marketing it - it’s not going to happen. In fact, finding a blog with amazing content is already harder than picking out a needle from a haystack (albeit less cliche). Without marketing, it’s nearly impossible.

Think about it - good content is, well, good - but how is anyone going to find it? Randomly typing in your URL? Keep dreaming. Even the best blogs require promotion through Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, and the likes.

MARKETING’S VICIOUS REIGN
It’s true that awesome content that is marketed well does better than crap content most of the time, but the key phrase here is most of the time. Through the magic of marketing, even the worst of bloggers can become popular.

Focus on writing amazing, original content but don’t hope on people finding it themselves. Guide them to it like moths to a flickering light and promote very aggressively.

Just try not to get a restraining order.

Posted by Max Miroff | 11 Comments »

Thanks, Google

I’m still not sure what this signifies. I haven’t really written anything about that (won’t mention it or else it’ll have a good chance of reappearing!) and I don’t think my blog is about that kind of stuff. Then again, I phase out sometimes while posting so you guys are gonna have to tell me if I accidentally make any lewd comments ;).

IS THERE ARE GOOD SIDE TO THIS?
Well, maybe this new ad topic will boost my revenues. We’ll just have to see what my apparently mostly male audience (according to Quantcast) thinks about it.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO MY MAIN POINT - YOU GUYS!
Quantcast (I made a post about what it was before. Here it is) has now added detailed demographics to Blog Badly. Lets see what they have to say about my average readership:

So, do these statistics match you as if someone had been stalking you for your whole life or are they completely off? Leave a comment and tell me! We’ll put Quantcast to the test.

TESTIMONIALS - NEW!
Geology Joe said it well:

“so the majority of people who read this blog are Old, make no money and are neither white, black, Asian or Hispanic….
Those are some SOLID stats”

Jonathon is the kind of guy I thought my core audience was. Quantcast disagrees:

“I am male, Caucasian, 26 with a household income of between $60-100K. I guess that makes me kind of on the minority of your readership.”

Posted by Max Miroff | 7 Comments »

• This is a bulleted list, and no one likes it. It’s like numbered list’s ugly adopted brother.
• It tries to be funny but it isn’t. You see that attempted humour in the above bullet? Yeah. It wasn’t that funny, and that’s coming from the person that wrote it.
• This list isn’t new content. Seriously, top ten lists are everywhere - what makes this one different from all the others? It’s just the same old crap in different, shinier packaging.
• This list doesn’t have any images in it and thus looks pretty boring.
• It’s published on a fairly unknown site, and if it’s not a big-name blogger then why should you even bother reading this post?
• This list has a filler entry which really doesn’t contribute anything to the list except to add another entry.
• This list is built purely to get more traffic in social websites and doesn’t provide any real value to its readers.
• This list doesn’t elaborate on its points - it looks like it was put together in five minutes.
• This list only has nine reasons. Users of Digg and StumbleUpon hate this a lot and often leave comments telling this to the author.

When this list fails, I won’t be sad - I’ve predicted it! Monitor the unpopularity!

Posted by Max Miroff | 21 Comments »

Posted by Max Miroff | 3 Comments »