This is a guest blog post by Dr. Teeth from Blogging Buzz

So you want to make money from your blog, well you are certainly not alone but you are probably finding that to make money, you need traffic and you are also not alone there either. Millions of bloggers want traffic but you need to learn how to get it to your blog and not it let pass you by.

One of the most important things to consider is your content. Your blog content needs to be quality content that is updated regularly. Creating your blog and then leaving it to fade into the background is certainly not going to bring you any traffic. Search engine crawlers are always looking for fresh, quality content. Keywords are important when writing content on your blog and so make sure that you are choosing the right content with the right keywords to attract those crawlers.

Not only will this attract the search engine crawlers to your blog, but it will also encourage your viewers and subscribers to return often to your site, boost your comments and get more referrals to your blog. Your readers want to see dedication to a blog that is regularly updated and is full of quality content.

Next, you need to tag it, make use of the tags on your blog and every time you write a new post remember to use your tags. You can do this manually in your blog or if you are using a platform such as Wordpress then make use of the plug-ins they have available, such as their SimpleTags plug-in. Make sure, that you tag every keyword in your post, by using tags effectively, you will see an increase in quality traffic, very quickly.

As with all things, if you want to make money with your blog and get traffic, you can not just sit back and wait for it to land on your lap, you need to get your blog out there.

Millions of bloggers are writing similar posts and creating similar blogs to yours and so use that to your advantage. Comment on their blog posts and leave a link to your blog, there is a massive community for bloggers and so you need to become a part of that. Not only add your link to other blogs, anywhere and everywhere you possibly can. Whether it is online around various forums or as a signature in your email, also do it offline especially if you have business cards, then add your blog address to them.

Another way to get traffic to your blog and a way that many bloggers are starting to jump on the band wagon with is pinging. Using pinging software such as Ping-O-Matic can benefit your blog no end when it comes to driving traffic to it, pinging is basically sending out a signal to search engines and weblog tracking sites that you have new content on your blog. So, every time you update your blog and add new content, ping it.

There are many other ways to drive traffic to your blog, such as adding your blog to traditional search engines, article directories and social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon are becoming a popular choice for bloggers to drive traffic to their blog.

You may come across offers and various types of software that can increase your traffic, there are many programs that people are offering bloggers at a cost, with a promise to increase their traffic with automated traffic generators. Though many of them can do this and no doubt work effectively for some bloggers, proceed with caution. There is really no need to be parting with your hard earned cash for a promise of traffic when with a little time and effort you can get your own traffic for free.

Thanks Dr. Teeth for providing this article to Balkhis users. Check out his site Blogging Buzz

I wrote a post in the past about Link-baiting but at that time I was still getting adjusted with the blog. After reviewing it, I decided to do a better version of that post. I think I didn’t explain everything correctly. Besides this article will be more in depth.

Definition

Link bait is a powerful technique which consist of having interesting content that attracts users to give you a back link, or as Matt Cutts defines link bait: “interesting enough to catch people’s attention.”

Image credits ToonRefugee - Copyright 2008 James Cook

Advantages of Linkbaiting

There are two major advantages of linkbait which can lead to alot more advantages.

Traffic - Traffic to the website increases tremendously due to linkbait. This traffic is insanely high during the early days of the content. Such as my post about 13 ways I promoted my blog to success recieved over 2500 visitors within the first 24 hours. The sudden rush of traffic means:

• Increase in New Subscribers and Readers.
• Increase in People bookmarking your sites because you got more readers now. (More mouth to mouth advertisement).
• Increase in revenue from advertisers.

Search Engine Ranking Positions (SERPs) - Linkbaiting is getting you alot of backlinks. And you should know by now that tons of backlinks mean higher SERPs and higher PR. Your blog pages will start ranking for long-tailed keywords. Which means more traffic to those pages and more traffic to your blog in general. Balkhis rank well for alot of competitive keywords in the industry (Which I can’t share for obvious reasons). But ranking good for some terms gets you alot of new readers. Also higher backlink count, higher pagerank, higher traffic means your site is now worth more, therefore you can charge more for private advertisement.

Linkbaiting Techniques

Linkbaiting is for people who have vivid imaginations. The techniques are unlimited. You just have to open your mind and see them. There are some that are very commonly used among the webmasters. Feel free to use any/all of them at your own discretion.

1. Contests / Giveaways - are one of the best linkbaiting techniques I have seen online. If you haven’t seen most contest ask users to write about the contest to get alot of entries in the drawing. I have seen almost all contests do that. Why? Because you are giving away a valuable prize people will write about it. *For instance if you are to give away a Macbook Air which cost $1800. You get 100 people to write about your contest (Permanent Backlinks). Then you get tons of traffic from social media and a big boost in your readers. You get well worth return for your investment*
2. Free Tools - Creative tools are always a good way to get alot of backlinks and exposure in the webworld. Take iWebtool for example. They got tons of exposure for their tools. People writing about them left and right. This is another good way of linkbaiting.
3. Lists - I have seen people who make lists also tend to get alot of backlinks and traffic. For example 45n5. He made a list of top make money online blogs and he gets tons of backlinks for it. Like this one. I was also speaking with Nabil from Enkay Blog who have a list of top 100 Female Bloggers which apparently gets alot of traffic. If you know of a female blogger nominate them at Nabil’s list.
4. Controversy / Attacks - Controversial posts tend to grab alot of attention toward the site. I wrote once about HostGator committing a federal offense which grabbed alot of attention (Sadly they still haven’t fixed it). Also attacking companies and other webmaster/bloggers can also get you alot of backlinks, but I would prefer not to take that route because you burn your bridges that way.
5. Be the First - I have mentioned it numerously that being first in a niche puts you at a big advantage. It also gives you a boost with linkbaiting also. Even if you are the first one to write about a new story, you will get the results. *For Instance if you are the first one to write about an event, most likely than not you will be the one mentioned at other places*
6. Usefulness / Good Content - Like always a useful post and good content will always grab readers. So if you are a blogger and you write a useful post than most likely than not you will get good traffic to your website or that article. Tutorial posts help alot in these sort of things. Such as my Vlogging 101 Guide.
7. Accomplishments - I have seen that listing about your accomplishment also plays a significant role. It will get you more backlinks and more exposure. Like when I was published in the newspaper or sharing the google PR, Alexa, subscriber count, revenue or any other accomplishment your blog made usually will get you backlinks.

My Opinion

Sometimes people ask me whether Linkbaiting is bad? My answer to them is YES and NO. Some techniques such as attacking others are BAD in my opinion. Whereas techniques such as useful content, contests, being first is not always bad. Linkbaiting can be a very effective promotion technique if used wisely. But abusing it can hurt your reputation.

I know I will get comments that will point out the negatives of linkbaiting, and all I will say to that is like everything there is a good use of linkbaiting and a bad use of linkbaiting.

Note: I have some what used all techniques listed above. They are not mentioned in any orderly fashion. Sometimes I have used the techniques just to gain backlinks other times, backlinks were not even my main concerns, it just kind of got the hit. No these are not the only 7 linkbaiting techniques. There are plenty more that are listed online, and more that comes with your imagination.

What do you think about Linkbaiting?
Do you think its good or bad?
Have you used any of the techniques above? If so share how it worked out for you?
Do you have any other technique which I didn’t list? If so share it with all of us.

Alright Balkhis users, this is the second last day of the contest. June 17th 2008. Tommorrow will be the day that contest ends, so make sure you have done all the clues listed on Balkhis ML Contest Official Post. Also to those email subscribers who have subscribed but have not verified their emails. You will not recieve points until you verify, so check your spam folders for feedburner email. From my last post, alot of people have checked and emailed me and it has been sorted out. If you have issues feel free to contact me.

Having that said, let me go on to explain what Clue #9 is all about. Well you guys know about entrecard right. Yeah it is something like dropping your business card on the wind sheild of every car hoping that you will get one customer. Yup, but in this case you are dropping cards on people’s sites and they visit yours and drop their card on your site. So basically it is like a traffic exchange system. You can earn entrecard credits by selling daily adspace on yoru site and such. But I am not going to ask you to drop cards on my site. BTW: If you want some tips about entrecards, then check out this cool article I wrote about Powerdropping entrecard in 30 minutes.

In this clue I want you guys to write a recommendation for Balkhis and add me to your favorites. Your recommendation can be positive, or negative. Basically what you feel about this site.

Here is how you add the recommendation. (Make sure you are registered at entrecard first)

Visit my Profile Page

Then on the top right hand side click write a recommendation.

And that should do the job.

To add favorites … It is also on the right hand side.

By doing this will get you 4 points in the contest.

Join entrecard if you want more exposure for your site. It is not only for blogs because I see alot of other sites using it also.

Stay updated with the contest. Good luck you all.

I see alot of new blogs that are being started, but they lack commentators. Even though Balkhis was launched only two months ago , I have manage to get a fairly decent amount of comments, and as you can see the comments are increasing as my reader base grows. I have put together a list of what I have seen a trend with Balkhis that increases the number of comments on post and in general.

Offer Incentives to commentators

Offering incentives to your commentators will keep them coming back to your blog and post comments daily. One of the most easiest and effective incentive you can offer is listing your top commentators, in your sidebar or some other place (Sitewide) and do-follow. I hate blogs who actually pretend to list the commentators but then you see they are no following all the links. If I come in and post a half comment, ofcourse the blogger won’t like it. Just like I don’t like that happening. Though I will say that when there is nice content, I leave a reply regardless of this top commentator incentive or not. Another effective technique is having a contest. You can give out prizes to your top 3 commentators. This might increase your spam a little, but you will get alot of valuable comments as well.

Offer helpful advices / tutorials

Offering helpful advices will definately increase comments on your website. How? Well if you follow all the SEO Advices that I have given then you are very well likely to get decent rankings for some good long-tailed keywords. Which will bring new users to your site, and most will say thanks if they like your advice and even stay on the blog to read more. Example of an advice article I wrote was 5 things that can hurt the Search Engine Ranking Positions of your Website. Now always be prepared to get some negative feedback also. Some people might come and put their opinion that might completely disagree with your article which is fine. Also tutorial type articles like How to add a dynamic sidebar in wordpress? will lead people to ask you questions. You can reply to those questions and have an entire conversation.

Interact with your users

Bringing me to my next point which is interacting with your users. Always ask questions in your post that readers can reply to. Answer questions asked in the comments by your users. Such acts lead to a conversation to build up and more people can participate in it, and put their opinion there. For that you need the special comment mod that I have discussed in this post. It is called Brian’s Threaded Comment plugin which allows user to reply to a particular comment.

Controversial Topics

Controversial topics are another comment attractor type posts. I try to stay away from it for the most part, but they do get tons of comments, and alot of people get heated in the comments which is a downside because blogs are friendly places not a place to start a fight. One of my posts which I wrote about Host Gator scamming people with their marketing technique… actually resulted in 34 comments and even got big enough to have the admin of Host Gator visit the blog and reply. Topics of this sort tend to get alot of comments, but due to the fights and anger I try to stay away from those for the most part.

Offer Freebies

Freebies are one of the biggest user/commentator attractor to your website. Everyone love free stuff right. When they are happy with your free products, they will reply, and when they are not happy they will also reply. You are getting more comments either way plus more page views for your website.

Above are some of the things that I have noticed with Balkhis that attracted more commentators to my posts. You can use the same techniques and get more comments on your posts as well because I am sure people don’t like seeing a 0 comments next to their posts.

A few days back I wrote about Balkhis at Entrecard. Now after 5 days of being at entrecard, I have collected a resource for you. This post will show the results I recieved from entrecard (Increase in traffic), Tips on how to power drop, meaning how to drop 300 cards within 30 minutes. Why everyone should entrecard and more.

First of all let me begin by saying, I am very happy with the 30 minutes - 1 hour I spent on Entrecard. My traffic has increased by 200 unique visitors, and I am seeing a trend that the traffic is increasing even more. My entrecard credits are increasing every day because I am dropping 300 cards every day, and it doesn’t take me more than 30 minutes. The other 30 minutes I spent on spending my entrecard credits by advertising on other sites.

How to drop 300 cards in 30 minutes?

Well first thing you need to do is and then you need to login to your entrecard account. Why do I say firefox because it allows faster tab browsing then internet explorer, and doesnot just shut off on you like Internet explorer would if you try to open too many tabs at once.

The next thing you need to do is find your category. Visit all the sites that are related to your site and bookmark them. So now you are bookmarking 300 sites total. The first time will take you long because you are visiting sites and looking to find the right one. Then the next day it will be less than 30 minutes. Ok so now when you are bookmarking sites, don’t bookmark all of them in just one bookmark folder. Split it in 10 bookmark folders and have 30 in each, so when you go onto do this the next day and after you will just click open all in each folder. Give 1 minute for each site to load, and then begin power dropping. Drop your article in all. Now repeat this same thing with the rest 9 of your bookmark folders. You can begin powerdropping with Balkhis

If your blog is webmaster related, then while I was collecting the list for me I have saved it in an html file. Which contains a link to 300 sites. Just use this page and open each link in multiple tabs if you don’t want the lengthy process.

List of 300 sites by Balkhis Powerdrop Entrecard

For those who don’t know how to do this quickly. Get a mouse if you don’t have one. Hold on to the key Ctrl + T and click on all the links and it will open itself in tabs.

Above are two very fast ways that will take you around 30 minutes or less to drop 300 cards every day. (The time will vary if you are on a slower internet connection)

Don’t forget when you drop at Balkhis, I will follow and drop on yours. I try to follow each drop. (So start by dropping at Balkhis).

Why should everyone use Entrecard?

Entrecard increases traffic as I mentioned above because the traffic of Balkhis has increased by 200 uniques every day from entrecard. Entrecard is an unique opportunity for branding your business logo. I don’t know why people use default cards when they can just upload their site’s logo. You can use entrecard to advertise your site on other sites in your niche. By advertising daily, you don’t realize how much you are saving because you might spend 200 entrecards and advertise on about 11 sites. Thats less than 30 minutes of work if you look at the technique above. Also it is great for bloggers who want to advertise on sites like Balkhis, or Problogger, they can use entrecard credits and advertise. If your logo appears on Balkhis or other huge blogs like Problogger then you will get alot of branding for your company.

Advertise on Balkhis using Entrecard

Also Entrecard have a shop that will allow users to buy bunch of other products for entrecard credits. I believe that entrecard credits will become a future currency of Blogosphere, so everyone should join it.