Single Grain

Did that title sum you up in a sentence?  Do you write like a shotgun, do you sit down and give it all you have got without any regard for the outcome?  When you pull the trigger on a shotgun, it goes off, it doesn’t think about whats in front of it or the damage it may cause, it is simply an instant reaction.  Many bloggers perform the same way, they sit down and right without any thought of what they are writing about or where they want to go with the article or the possible repercussion of their words as they spill onto the screen.

Thoughts and ideas need to be developed and built upon to form an article.  Simply slapping text on the screen is not enough.  Readers are often aware when you have given little thought to an article because it reflects in your work.  It often results in a short, poorly written piece with little interest or emotion.  Some commonly seen blog posts that are a result of no thought are “5 links of the day” or a simple paragraph explaining somebody else’s post with a link to that.  These types of posts bring no interest to readers, anyone can develop a list of more than five links, but you chose not to spend the time doing so and it makes you look bad.

Devote Time to Your Blog

Devoting time to your blog is crucial to its success.  Many shotgun bloggers find themselves trying to cram a quickie article in before they go to bed, usually because they neglected to write anything the rest of the day.  Even if you work or attend school you should devote a minimum of an hour to writing every single day.  If you give yourself an hour, you should have ample time to construct an article and respond to comments from the day before.  Create a plan for your blog, give it some direction and things will naturally come easier as you move ahead.  Many blogs that are not given enough time eventually sizzle and die and it is unfortunate because had the blogger worked a little harder and devoted a little more time, they would have had a potential for success.

Think of your blogs as children, they require attention, time and love to grow.  You can’t just leave them off to the side or they will eventually get into trouble.  You have to be passionate about taking care of your blogs or perhaps you should consider doing something else.  Your writing needs time and shouldn’t be rushed, so create a schedule and go by that, your blog and readers will thank you.  If you are unsure if blogging is right for you, take a look at Blogging 101, Introduction to Blogging, for a better understanding.

Whether your horrible at managing your finances or you just don’t have any money to manage, these Facebook applications are probably for you. Who new that a social networking community could not only make you money but stabilize the process at the same time. Thank you Facebook!

Pay Me – This handy little app allows all of your friends to securely send you money through PayPal’s payment service. Maybe your selling something or maybe people just feel like your a good cause, either way this app will get the money in the bank.

BillTrack Bill Reminder – Use this application to manage all of your bills such as rent, internet, gas, cellphone or any others right from your Facebook profile.

Make Money-Cash for Free – Get free cash in exchange for completing surveys and other free activities. There is no purchase or credit card required, just sign-up and make some money.

Cash Cliques – Get paid for clicking on ads and referring friends that click as well. This app also gives out random cash prizes just for using it.

Stocks – Have you considered investing in the stock market? This little application the Forbes.com stock app keeps you up to date on the companies your interested in investing in.

JunkYard – Sell your old stuff to the Facebook community and make some extra dough. Everyone got some sort of junk laying around, so just get rid of it and earn some spending cash.

Debt Manager – Anybody owe you money? Don’t forget and let that debt go unpaid. This app allows you to easily add all of those unpaid debts as a reminder to collect.

Lending Club – Don’t run up your credit cards with those high interest rates. Lending club allows you to borrow money from other members in the Facebook community at low interest rates.

Dneero – Get paid to take social surveys. You will get paid via Paypal when your account hits $25 dollars or more.

Online Coupons – Obviously we all have to make a purchase at some point in time, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get a good deal while we are doing it. This Facebook application lists a bunch of money saving coupons for your favorite stores.

Leave your comments and let me know if any of these have helped you financially. Or maybe you have some great apps you use, share them with everyone.

Unless you’ve been living under a heavy rock for the last few months, I’m sure you’ve heard of the webs newest social networking site called Yuwie. Yuwie is strikingly similar to the bigger sites in the social networking game, with one exception – Yuwie pays you to be a member.

At least, that’s the theory.

You see, Yuwie is still pretty new to the social networking arena, but with so many people joining and a total of nearly 130,000 members, its gaining steam, and fast. Looking at the simple chart they have on their homepage, it looks like they are averaging a few thousand new members per day. I’m sure you could discount some of these numbers due to spam and people trying to “game” them, but never-the-less they’re growing at an impressive rate.

With theoretical promises of upwards of $10,000 per month assuming you refer a certain amount of people, and since the referral levels go ten deep, they are definitely attracting the crowds of people trying to make a quick buck on the internet. A great marketing strategy, even if it’s still in its infancy. The only problem with sites like this that promise to pay big money if all of the stars align, is the heavy dark cloud left over by AGLOCO. AGLOCO had just about every webmaster and blogger in the world promoting their site, but a pending bankruptcy and unfulfilled promises of riches proved otherwise. If a site like Yuwie wants to make it without losing their “you-know-what’s”, then they need to have a sound strategy in place and need to be prepared to shell out some serious dough.

Yuwie pays out based on many different actions of the user, ranging from clicking other profiles, uploading pictures, creating new blog entries, recruiting new members, and many other actionable actions. This pay comes from advertising revenue that Yuwie makes on a monthly basis, and on the 15th of each month, Yuwie decides how much each user gets paid out of their advertising earnings from the previous month. After digging around a bit in the search engines, I found that most average members made a couple of dollars, while some of the more popular bloggers and webmasters were in the $50-$90 range. Not bad, but a far cry from the $10k that users hope to be making in the future as the site grows.

After checking some statistics on smartpagerank.com, Yuwie was registered back in May, making the site close to five months old and it’s reporting around 54,000 pages indexed in Google. Of course, there is no PageRank, but that’s because there hasn’t been a PageRank update for quite some time now. One of the most impressive stats is the Alexa ranking they’ve attained already. For a 5 month old site, they’ve climbed the Alexa ladder to a 3 month ranking of around 5,000. Not too shabby…

Only time will tell if Yuwie is worth signing up for. With so many other social sites out there, unless the money is really rolling in, I can’t imagine juggling another social networking site. Give Yuwie a couple more months to see what happens, and if it’s still going strong as some predict, then it just may be something to check into.

We all know that link building is tedious, frustrating, and for the most part, no fun. On the other hand, we know that building links can bring valuable traffic, exposure, and long term success of your site. Day in and day out, I’m sure you come across articles on link building, and they are usually the same old, boring routine. This article is for those that want to work on building links, but are up to trying out a few new ways to go about doing it. Keep an open mind, as these methods, while not as common as others, are definitely worth your time and effort.

1. Testimonials. When you purchase a service, product, or whatever else from a company online, especially from bigger sites, 99% of them will allow you to send in a testimonial. If you write one compelling and believable enough, there is a good chance that they will publish it. Make sure you add your link into the testimonial, and it may be the cheapest (free) high PR backlink you’ll ever get. This method isn’t guaranteed, but it’s definitely worth a try.

2. Utilize hired help. If you have an advertising budget, and are willing to spend money to ensure the long term survivability of your site, consider hiring a consultant to do the link building for you. Pay a virtual assistant $9/hr (or whatever) and have their main goal be to get you backlinks (directory submission, blogroll exchanges, etc..). This can help you manage your time better and take a break from the dubious link building process. The money spent will be very much worth it in the long run. (Hint – elance.com)

3. Piss off someone that matters. This may sound harsh and unethical, but it’s really not, as long as you don’t cross the legal line. Sink your teeth into a popular blogger or webmaster, post about it, and watch the links pour in. Be careful not to cross the lines of slander or defamation of character. This can, and has been done many, many times throughout history. Always make sure you can justify your reason for slamming them – have sources, witnesses or friends that will back you up. This can be wildly successful.

4. Give away money. Holding a contest is one of the easiest and most effective ways to gain backlinks. Make sure that in order to enter, the webmaster/blogger is required to link to your site, whether it’s a blogroll link or even a short review. Hint – the more money you give away, the more links you’ll get. Giving away $100 will probably get you several hundred, if not a couple thousand dollars worth of backlinks.

5. Be the first on the scene. With the multitude of new web startups, you can usually find out about them right away, and make sure you fire off a pre-made email interview template to them ASAP. Posting the first interview, or best interview, can garner hundreds of incoming links, even from big sites. This is surprisingly easy to accomplish, as most startups are willing to share information to create buzz.

6. Design a plugin for Wordpress. There are a lot of people out there that start blogs or sites that have the technical know how to design useful Wordpress plugins. If this relates to you, then what the heck are you waiting for? Take the chance, and whip up a brand new plugin and order a few paid reviews on it. Even the slightest success can multiply your incoming links by a lot. The funny thing is, even if your plugin just plain sucks, you’ll still have a ton of links from people that like to tell you how bad it is. Strange world, isn’t it?

7. Sponsor a Wordpress theme. With the amount of bloggers that use Wordpress these days, there are always new themes popping up. Visit one of the popular webmaster or design forums, and take a chance at sponsoring a new theme. When you sponsor a theme (it costs anywhere from $5-100), you usually get a link built in to the footer of the theme, so whenever someone uses it, it’s an instant backlink to your site. There are people that have done this and been almost unbelievably successful with it. $5 could land you several thousand links, if not more. If the theme gets super popular, your credibility rating skyrockets.

8. Write an ebook, and give it away for free. Writing an ebook may seem like a dreaded task for some people, but chances are, you are skilled in at least one area. Take this expertise and knowledge, pump it all out in paper, package it up as a .pdf, and distribute it for free. If the ebook is even slightly helpful, you’ll get your moneys worth of backlinks in no time flat. Offer free copies at one of the popular webmaster forums. This method works great, and if written well enough, can lead to even greater opportunities. (Hint – if at all possible, slip at least one relevant affiliate link into your ebook for a nice residual income!)

9. Order up a Press Release. For as little as $20-$50, you can hire someone to write and distribute a professional press release for your site. Press releases have the potential of being picked up by major media outlets (especially if your site is groundbreaking or super creative). At the very least, Google and other search engines love press releases, so natural incoming links are almost guaranteed. A professional press release also gives you an air of credibility that just may convince someone to link to you.

10. Build How -To lists. This may not seem creative in itself, but think outside of the box. We all know that “101 ways to cheat at World of Warcraft” types of articles are wildly popular, and usually result in massive amounts of backlinks from relevant sites/blogs and social bookmarking sites. So take it a step further and make an unforgettable, maybe even controversial how-to list. Example – “10 Ways To Kill Your In-Laws”. You get the point….

Reddit, as you already know, is one of the huge social bookmarking sites that join the ranks of Digg, Netscape, StumbleUpon and related heavy hitters in the bookmarking arena. Boasting an Alexa rank that usually hovers in the 1k range, getting put on the Reddit front page is quite worthwhile if you’re looking for some quick, heavy traffic to your blog or website.

The best thing about Reddit is the democratic voting system that allows the average blogger or webmaster a significantly better chance of hitting the Reddit homepage as opposed to sites like Digg and others. When a link is submitted, it is simply voted “up” or “down” by the users. The more users that vote it “up”, the more points your link score receives, with an opposite reaction from getting voted “down”. When you submit an article to Reddit, the main thing you need to worry about are headlines, headlines, headlines. Forget having to write a summary like you do with Digg and friends. The key to success for gaining votes on Reddit is having a compelling, click-through worthy headline. Be creative and analyze what works and what doesn’t by checking out the Reddit “Top Links” section. With a little research, you can see which stories made it and how they did it.

Of course, there are other ways to get on the front page of Reddit and leveraging the traffic potential, so here are five techniques to get you started in the right direction (which will hopefully be, up!)

1. Use Reddit regularly. This is one of the easiest ways and should be the beginning of being a Reddit power user. Being active in the community, submitting links, and general networking with other “redditers” is not only fun, but it can build up your “karma” and make you look more reputable than a “one-shot” voter (the types that only register an account to vote for a friends article). Once you have an established voting and submission history in your profile, people will be more likely vote your links up, which if it’s on your blog, means the potential of a front page hit. Make no mistake, Reddit can send massive amounts of traffic to your site if you hit the front page, especially if it’s an interesting story. Reddit plays in the same group of kids as Digg, StumbleUpon, and others. They are definitely not lightweights!

2. Create your own Reddit voting club. This is an obvious, yet highly effective way to get more votes. Why not team up with like-minded friends and associates in your field or niche. By teaming up with people you regularly network with, or even direct competitors, you can form your own voting group and routinely vote each others submissions right to the front page (depending on the size of your voting party). This is a widely known and powerful technique, and you’ll see this across all of the social bookmarking sites (some more controversial than others). If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right? Start forming your voting party by asking readers and fans of your blog or website to join up. Create a forum or a shared blog that everyone can post their links in for getting votes. This is very easy and takes minimal time. The rewards can be fantastic, as well.

3. Leverage your existing blog or website traffic. This is another no-brainer. If you’re submitting stories to Reddit, you probably already have somewhat steady traffic to your blog or website, so by placing voting buttons in easily recognizable places (at the end or beginning of an article), it allows your readers or guests (assuming they have a Reddit account) to quickly vote on your article. The extra votes you can gain from these types of people just may be the extra votes you need to push your story to the front page. Take advantage of what you already have, and as a reminder, make sure you place voting buttons for all of the other bookmarking sites as well. The more the merrier!

4. Leveraging subreddits. Subreddits are subcategories that talk about other topics like web 2.0, technology, and subjects like that. It’s surprisingly easy to gain front page status on the subreddit pages, and by gaining front page status in these areas, you stand a good chance of gaining more votes that could ultimately push your story to the front page. A sound strategy to appearing on the front page of a subreddit is the same as it would be for the front page – headline. It’s absolutely vital to pick a phenomenal headline if you want to enjoy a surge in traffic from front page status on Reddit. Although it’s not recommended and doesn’t quite work like this, your actual story or article could be crap, but you could at least get people to click through with an outstanding headline. (Of course, you don’t want to submit crap stories, because you won’t receive any votes, which in turn won’t get you on the front page, which results in no traffic at all…ah, but I digress!)

5. Create a specific page for Reddit. This one is great, and can work wonders for a site that normally wouldn’t appeal to regular Reddit users. Let’s say you run a generally boring site about stocks, or ophthalmology…you get the point. Generally speaking, these kinds of sites aren’t the kind of sites that Reddit users frequent, but maybe you still want to leverage traffic from Reddit with the intent of exposing your business and name to the masses. No problem! All you need to do is create a sub-domain, or a page that carries the same tone and layout of your regular site, and use it strictly for Reddit worthy material. If you get lucky and submit breaking news first, or an otherwise Reddit worthy story that hits the front page, you’ll garner the massive amount of resulting traffic, and even though the odds of the visitors coming back is low, you at least presented them with your business name and style. Building name recognition can be a long, boring process, but doing it this way will at least put you on the right path. Who knows, one of the users may want to get into stock trading, and they just may remember your site from that funny story you submitted. It’s definitely a possibility.

I hope these tips help you become a better Reddit user, and more importantly, I hope by using these tips that you hit the front page soon. The traffic, even if it’s short lived, can have residual effects that can last a long time.