Lessons From State Of The Blogosphere

There is an interesting but long report on Technorati called State of the Blogosphere. If you are interested in all sorts of blogging stats and information you'll most likely find it within the report.

For example, on the subject of How Bloggers Attract Visitors, these are supposedly the most popular methods, though I'm a little suspicious of the number one!

1. List your blog on Technorati - 83% of bloggers do this.
2. Comment on other blogs - 77%
3. List your blog on Google - 73%
4. Tag your blog posts - 68%
5. Link to other blogs and hope for reciprocity - 64%
6. Participate in a blogroll - 54%
7. Get listed in a blog directory - 53%
8. Produce content for other blogs - 24%
9. Pay for online advertising - 4%

Regarding number 4 on the above list, it's interesting that Technorati's Top 100 Bloggers use tags more than two times as much as the next 500 and 19 times more than the next 5000 blogs. This illustrates the importance of using tags for every posts, and using them wisely.

The Top 100 also update their blogs more frequently. The elite 100 have twice as many postings as the next 500 and 12 times more than the next 5000.

There are lessons to be learnt from this State of the Blogosphere Technorati report as it covers a wide aspect of blogging in general.

Regarding making money with blogs: for those with over 100,000 unique visitors per month, in the survey, they produced an average income of $75,000. This, however, was slightly skewed by some top bloggers who have over one million uniques each month and had a considerably higher income. A truer figure for this group of 100,000+ was a median annual income of $22,000.

You can see the full report here.

Good luck,
Mike.

See also: 40 Ways To Get More Blog Traffic

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Dissatisfied Customers Will Make Us Money

Here's some food for thought I read on CacheClosed.com. It's only a small part of an article but it describes how we, as money making bloggers, want dissatisfied customers! This is probably something different from the standard way most of us think.

We normally think that we want satisfied customers but if they are satisfied can we really motivate them to buy something? Here is a snippit from the article.

"Two things motivate all potential customers: a feeling of dissatisfaction and a desire for change. All good advertising creates a focused storyline with a singular message that stirs the emotional dissatisfaction in the audience and offers a solution that will initiate change.

Thank goodness people are insatiable for what's new and improved. We are a species motivated to constantly strive for more: more money, more power, more success, more stuff; and when we have more stuff, we want better stuff. We are in a constant state of desire. The advertisers job is to access that desire and push that motivational button so that the audience takes action.

The job of advertisers is to create dissatisfaction in its audience. If people are happy with how they look, they are not going to buy cosmetics or diet books; if people are happy with their old twenty-inch tube television they are not going to buy a sixty-inch LCD flat screen TV. If people are happy with who they are, where they are in life, and what they got, they just aren't customer-potential, that is, unless you make them unhappy.

Most cosmetic advertisements feature beautiful woman, igniting the promise that you too can look like a drop-dead glorious model if only you use their product. This approach is based on showing an ideal that the audience will undoubtedly be unable to stack-up against. The audience after seeing what they could look like, is no longer happy with what they do look like, and are now motivated to buy into the promise of change."

CacheClosed.com has some interesting stuff on their site - if you are dissatisfied with your lot that is! Go and read the full article.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Five Ways To Get Traffic To A Blog

How to get traffic to a blog is always one of the secrets bloggers want to know.

Fact: Bloggers need traffic to make money.

There are thousands of posts written on the subject so I won't regurgitate what everyone else has already written. Instead today I'm going to show you five places that have sent me a fair amount of referrals for one of my celebrity blogs. (I don't get any commission etc. for recommending these!)

I'm not saying these will definitely work for you. What I will do, however, is to show you the proof that what I'm saying isn't purely theoretical. It's what I have experienced and has worked for me - I can't really say or guarantee any more than this.


The chart above shows my twenty-three highest referrers to Celebrity Insider - Photos & News. The entries circled in green are the ones I want to show you.

These circled entries are from five websites and between them, as you can see for yourself, they have sent Celebrity Insider 42,660 referrals. Actually they have sent a lot more than this but I want to just show the above so that I don't have to bore you with lots of lists.

The five websites, and the number of referrals are:

(1) Buzzfeed - 23579 referrals
(2) Zimbio - 10634 referrals
(3) Wikipedia - 5507 referrals
(4) Mahalo - 1531 referrals
(5) MyBlogLog - 1409 referrals

I'm not going to add a lot more to this post as everything is self evident. But I will mention Wikipedia as this isn't really considered a source of hits by most bloggers. What I've managed to do is to get my celebrity blog listed as a source of information for various celebrities. This gives me a free link on a very high traffic and well thought of website.

I'll also mention MyBlogLog as a lot of people don't seem to see the point of the site. However, as members current blog posts are all entered, there's a good chance that other members may click on them. Plus your blog posts may also at times appear on Google search pages, with the MyBlogLog URL - but clickers in most cases will then go to the actual blog.

I won't go on any more as all the information is there for you to use if you wish. All I can say is that these five websites have made me money. If you think that even if only 0.5% of these had clicked on any of my ads that would be 2133 chances of making money. If 1% clicked that would be 4266 opportunities to make money and if 2% had clicked ....

As I keep saying some traffic will make some money but lots of traffic will make lots of money.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Making Money While Walking In Austria (Hopefully!)

I'm off on a break tomorrow for about 15 days to Austria where I'll spend my time, with my wife, walking/hiking in the mountains. It's a great way and place to unwind.

Holidays, vacations, or whatever you call them, can be a bit of a problem to overcome for bloggers. They can have an effect on certain blogs.

Okay, it's possible to have guest writers or to even update blogs when away but personally I like to forget everything on holiday - no phones, computers or newspapers.

When I went off to Spain for a couple of weeks in February I wrote that it didn't make much difference to my money making with blogs.

This time I have an added advantage in that, with Blogger, it's now possible to schedule posts for a period ahead. Though I haven't done this with Mike's Money Making Mission, because of a lack of time, I have managed to do so with a few of my other blogs.

For my Celebrity Insider blog, for instance, I have completed posts in advance for fourteen days. I'm hoping this will keep things ticking over. It's not ideal as posts are usually about celeb news, which I can't really anticipate, but at least it shows the blog is up and running.

Where I've scheduled posts I've done this on the blogs which produce the most income. As I have said before I believe it's necessary in any business to play to your strengths.

I know one of the first things I'll do as soon as I return - after a decent cup of tea - will be to check my blogging stats, post box and my PayPal and bank accounts, with fingers crossed.

See you soon.

Good luck,
Mike.

Sensational Secret Revealed About Celebrities

Free Lessons For Bloggers From Celebrities

When thinking about starting a niche blog the advice normally is to choose a subject that really interests you and one you know something about. I ignored this completely when I started my celebrity blogs.

I knew virtually nothing about the celebrity world and celebs in general. This was actually why I picked to write about them - I like to do things the difficult way!

What did interest me was how some of these people, with virtually no talent and often with limited education can make heaps of money. Though with the girls and women sometimes this was obvious by looking at their photos!

What I've learnt is that the celebrity world is simply a game played out by the tabloid newspapers and various other interested parties. It's all about headlines - the truth isn't really relevant or necessary.

Here's a real front page headline from a tabloid, set in very big print.

JAWS STALKS JORDAN
Terror at hol home
Jordan, for those who don't know, is a British 'glamour' model, real name Kate Price. She's made millions. The headline grabs the attention of readers interested in celebrities. My goodness, what's happened to poor old Jordan? And so you buy the newspaper.

With a worried frown you quickly turn to pages 4 and 5 to read the full horror details ... but it's not quite as it all seems ...

There has been a rumour that a shark has been spotted near Cyprus and our glamour girl has just bought a £1.5 million house on the island. Now she hasn't actually lived there as yet, she's not even in Cyprus at the moment. So what's all of this stalking and terror business?

Well a 'source on the island' is quoted as saying, "Everyone is running scared of the shark and when Kate and Peter hear I'm sure they will be too." Peter is Jordan/Kate's husband and tabloids love a good, unnamed, dare I say made up, source.

This is typical tabloid front page news. The newspapers need the celebrities and they in turn need the newspapers. The headlines are often far removed from the true story.

What bloggers can learn from this is ...

(1) The importance of a good headline or title - it creates interest and gets readers.

(2) The post should have some relevance to the title, otherwise the reader will feel cheated and may not return to the blog again. Being sensationalist may get a few extra visitors but they will probably be one hit wonders.

Oh and (3) You don't have to be clever to make money.

Long term blogging success is built on a firm, honest foundation and not tricks, deceit and half truths.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Stop Thief! Someone's Stolen My Money Making Post

I wanted to make a few comments today about copyright and my feelings when other bloggers publish, in full, my posts without having the decency to ask first. I found six instances of this yesterday copied from this and my celebrity blog.

Firstly, articles etc. posted on the web do have copyright protection, even if they do not display the copyright notice. There are exceptions to this, but generally this is the rule.

Plagiarism is paramount to stealing. It is IP Theft i.e. Intellectual Property Theft. I believe that permission should be requested if we want to publish something in full that another person has written. Nothing should be copied in it's entirety without approval.

There is, however, something known as fair use which I am sure we are all happy with. This is whereby other bloggers can use excerpts from a post or article, when it is relative to what they are writing about. Again, it must be stressed, this does not extend to using the whole of a post or article.

When using excerpts bloggers should give credit, where credit is due, and a link should be made to the permalink of the post and not to the blogs's main page.

It's really just a matter of etiquette and good manners.

My Brazilian friend Julio wrote a useful article on this subject, a while back, titled What to do when someone steals your content.

If any bloggers need content, and can't be bothered to write it themselves, there is plenty to be had on such websites as Go Articles and Ezine Articles - but follow the rules.

Think I must have got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning!

Good luck,
Mike.


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Celebrity Insider - Photos & News. Recent posts include Big Brother's Charley Uchea.

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