Balkhis - Vision For Success

Title – important or not?

Why is the title of this post so obscure. Thats because you will remember this title if you read it. When we are writing posts on our blog, the title can be anything. But whether it is a good title? You need to learn the tactic of attracting users to read the blog post just by reading your post title. Having said that, I have established the point that a Good title is an essential element for the blog post.

A blog which is being operated/managed by my girlfriend Amanda M. Roberts, Word Scrawl has done some amazing jobs with the title of their blog posts. I have the access to the blog’s traffic and such and I analyzed it and see each thing that was done for the blog, and I thought I should share some insights of the blog to give you guys some techniques.

Controversial Titles

A post written by Ms. Roberts called “The Dumbest Generation“. The title itself is so controversial that it started getting attention when she submitted the post to stumbleupon. For the next 7 – 10 days the traffic got 6000 UV increase daily. That sent a crazy buzzz because I was worried about adsense because they can have some serious problems with it. Not only that if you notice the post got alot of comments. 38 !!! That is a whole lot for a new blog. Now this can be something you can take and learn from. Using social bookmarks (Best one Stumbleupon), and taking the controversial title of your blog post, you can significantly increase your traffic, and subscribers because Word Scrawl saw an increase in the subscribers.

Make the title…..

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A step ahead

Staying a step ahead in business is always a good thing because it will make sure everything is done on time. As a blogger I take this as a serious thing because I want to write atleast one blog post a day a minimum. Now, Spring Break at my university started, so I decided to take a trip down south to West Palm Beach to meet family. I knew i won’t be able to work very hard on the blog, but one thing i did ahead of time was wrote and saved articles, so i won’t hold my readers off.

This post is about how you can stay on top of your game. Stay a step ahead. All what you have to do as a blogger is plan everything you do ahead of time. So if you are launching a contest, make sure you have the prizes planned out, and what you want in it organized. It just makes your life easy.

For instance, some family emergency came along, while it is understandable for you to leave the blog and take care of the family, but if you had written extra posts, then you wouldn’t have an inactive blog. This sunday, When I left for my other job in the morning, I knew i won’t be able to post my second post, so i saved it and asked my acquaintence to post it. Also i have saved the entire week’s posts ahead of time just so Balkhis doesn’t seem inactive when I am away.

If anyone is interested in sending guest blog posts, feel free to email me with the content and it must fit one of the categories of the blog, and I will definately consider it.

BTW: it is crazy when you are pulled from so many directions in life.



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Guest Blogging? What to do!




Guest blogging what a great concept it is. You have someone who will write a post on your blog, and it will save you some work and you still make money that day. All for just giving one link to the author. The idea of guest blogging is not what i am criticizing, but i am only arguing about the fact how some of the bloggers are implying it on their blog.

I know there are many bloggers who would not mind getting a link from ProBlogger, John Chow, or Shoemoney’s blog by writing a guest post, and i am sure all these blogging professionals wouldn’t mind a guest post because they can do other things rather than writing a post. While Jeremy of Shoemoney doesn’t do that which is why i am a big fan of him, but i am recently noticing John Chow of Johnchow.com allowing alot of guest posts. Now the blog should be renamed to Guestblog.com rather than john chow. That was just a joke. Alot of the guest posts are quality content, but i saw few of them have minor glitches, and as John Chow is posting it on his blog with a john chow name he should atleast proof-read the post and make editions as he goes along.

Not just John, anyone who allows guest blogging on their blog should atleast read the post and make corrections, and just show the corrections in a different colors. Because then it builds credibility to your blog and makes the reader stay on your blog longer and possibly subscribe because they know that you care about your site, and actually have some interest in your readers as well. If there are not corrections just the bloggers thoughts or opinions at the end of the post perhaps a thank you note for the guest blgoger. It just takes your blog a step higher in my eyes if you do that.

I am always open for guest blog posts, but unfortunately …… (Read more in the full post)



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Who is your audience?


Time to time, i see starters who are trying to fit in with the rest, starts optimizing their sites to rank high in search engines. While they are doing that they neglect their targetted audience which was once users, and loose all the traffic and the SERPs as well. It is a step by step process which happens and many people doesn’t even notice it and they end up watching their own demise and not doing any thing about it. Find out how you can avoid that and stay on top of your game.

First of all you need to ask yourself this question who is your targetted audience? At this point i am hoping it is not Search Engine because if it is then you need to rethink again. If after rethinking it is still search engine you can pay me as i am taking a psychology class and i can help you, and probably convince you into switching if you have serious goals in making money online.

Let me remind you bloggers, or any website owners, Search Engine Bots will not click your ads, and they will not join the webhosting companies or buy other products through your affiliate ads. While they should be in the list of your things to pay attention to, but they definately should not be on the top. The top of your list and your upmost priority should be your targetted audience, real people, such as mine are you guys. Webmasters and starters who have a vision for success online. If i start optimizing this site for search engines, and only post keywords and just try to fill up my posts with hyperlinks to all my other websites then i will loose all the users who come to my website, and my subscribers as well because my content won’t be useful if i add all the irrelevant links.

Second not only i will loose traffic, I will see some really good SERPs results. Wait a minute that is not suppose to be a good thing you know why? Because you will be penaltised on the next update. Yeah are you making funny faces at me? It is true. The moment you start optimizing your site for search engine and make them your targetted audience they will start paying to much attention to you, and TOO Much attention is dangerous because every single activity of yours will be monitored and you will be penaltised for your mistakes. (Abusing Keywords), Useless adverts, Paid Links, and many other reasons the SEs can find for you.

Don’t stop now keep reading in the full post. Make sure you put your comment as well.



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WordPress Plugins to Pimp your Comment area

Comments on your blog is a way to show the freshness and constant activity on your blog. While you might think that the wordpress default comment box does the job, but it can’t hurt to pimp your comment area and give your user different options and reasons to post comment on your blog post.

After going through multiple comment plugins, i have collected a list of some comment plugins that you can use to pimp your comment area in wordpress.

Pimp your Comment Area

Widgets that encourage participation on your blog

- Top Commentators

4null4 Top Commentator
Scott Riley’s Top/Recent Commentator Plugin
PFA’s Top Commentator Plugin

Removing nofollows from trackbacks and comments also increases participation

DoFollow – removes nofollow tags from the comments – Download
Do Follow Trackbacks – removes nofollow tags from the trackbacks. – Download

Now while you are allowing follow links it have one bad side to it. It increases spam, but on the good side the spam can be reduced and monitored.

Akismet Spam Stopper – created by the developers of Wordpress, this usually comes installed in the default copy of wordpress and requires the API key which can be obtained for free from Wordpress.

More of this in the post



To stay updated with the blog, please consider subscribing to my full feed RSS. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox. I hate spam as well, so I promise you that you will not be spammed.
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