Get Traffic from A-List Bloggers

Commenting on other blogs helps your search engine rankings and link popularity… being one of the first to comment on high traffic blogs can bring attention to your site!  If you’re interested in increasing:

• Website Traffic
• Search Engine Rankings
• Technorati Authority
• Link Popularity

You need a new free tool called Comment Sniper. 

Comment Sniper allows you to track recent updates to leading blogs within your industry in order to be able to be the first to comment on those updates giving your comments and associated website links more exposure on prime real estate.

Download Comment Sniper Here 

Blog Hosts: Free vs. Subscription

Every blog ‘exists’ somewhere. It may be on a server dedicated to nothing but blogs or it may be on privately-leased space a half a world away from the blogger. But in either case, the blogger needs to create his Blog Empire somewhere, and that somewhere will have implications for your blog as it grows into a household name.

Blog Learning Center recommends that you own your own domain name and use a paid webhost service to ensure that you:

• Have complete control over your content.
• Have a credible and professional image for branding.
• Have freedom to monetize your blog.
• Have freedom to move your domain from one host to another.
• Have access to 24/7 support.
• Have adequate bandwidth, disk space, and data transfer.

Free vs. Subscription

With the popularity of blogs exploding, a large number of blog-specific servers and companies have arisen to meet the demand for fast and easy blog creation. Many of them provide software that allows the blogger to quickly and easily set up a blog, sometimes in mere minutes. They allow certain modification (colors, columns, etc.) and provide tools that can have your blog looking sharp, even if you’ve never typed an entry in your life.

But they have drawbacks as well, especially for blogs that are more than just an online diary. They may not provide statistics. They may not allow you to host your own ads. They may even drop your entries once those entries roll off the front page. The solution, in many cases, is to pay a subscription fee which will free up features you need to make your blog profitable, unique, and professional.

Here’s a list of some of the more popular blog-specific sites:

Blogspot: Blogspot features free blogging and image hosting, and provides a very user-friendly interface. Those who understand HTML will be able to create nearly any layout they desire.

Blog-City: One of the easier blog-specific sites to use, Blog-City offers a wide number of pre-made layouts that do not require HTML knowledge to use. Functionality is limited, however, and some features are only available to those who pay an annual subscription fee.

Blog Drive: Blogdrive offers free blogging with objects such as tagboards, RSS feeds, and ready-made header graphics. Blogspot: Blogspot features free blogging and image hosting, and provides a very user-friendly interface. Those who understand HTML will be able to create nearly any layout they desire.

Xanga: is dedicated toward the “online diary” end of the blogosphere. It offers free but limited image hosting and WYSIWYG editing, but downloadable archives are only available by purchasing a premium subscription.

Each host – and there are many others - has many unique attributes and prices, and before you decide to use one of them, it’s wise to become familiar with what each offers. By the time you’ve finished this course, you’re going to know precisely what features you need to build your Blog Empire.

So review each host carefully; if it turns out they don’t offer what you need, it’s often difficult to take your traffic with you when you move.

If you choose a free host, one of the first issues you’ll deal with is the blog’s URL.If you choose Blogspot, for example, your URL will look something like “elborak.blogspot.com” with “elborak” being your blog’s name. That name must be unique across the host, and with millions of blogs out there, that’s not an easy task. And if your blog is named, “Spackle News,” it’s going to be harder for readers to find your blog at “spacklenews.blogspot.com” than if the name is “SpackleNews.com.” Fortunately, there are a few solutions to that problem.

The first solution is to use a forwarding service. You buy a fitting domain name for a few dollars a year, and the forwarding service will actually will forward your traffic from SpackleNews.com (or whatever your blog name is) to your blog. You can even decide to view your blog within a frame, so the URL appears as SpackleNews.com, while the browser is pulling data from another server. Frames do have the problem, however, of “holding” any document you link to within that same frame unless you do some fancy coding. That makes it harder for the user to escape or find specific data on your blog, a situation which neither of you will appreciate.

A second solution is to choose a host that will allow you to directly assign a URL to your blog even as it remains on their server. Be sure to check the features of any blog host you examine to see if they offer the ability to assign your own URL.

A best and final solution is to simply to purchase a domain name and webhosting. Then install a free application such as Wordpress to manage your blog.

Copyright

You’ll take a lot more from the Old Media than just lessons on consistency, however. If you have a news blog, you’ll take parts of stories that will set up your own commentary. A technology blog may quote articles and experts speaking in interviews you did not give. In other words, unless you’ll be presenting completely original work on your blog, you’ll have to deal with basic issues of copyright.

This is not a legal guide, and we recommend you familiarize yourself with the basic issues of copyright before you copy another’s material - there are some very good blogs which cover the issue – but there are a few principles that can help you lay the foundations of a safe and legal Blog Empire.

The first issue is attribution. The blog owner must always attribute the work of others to them and not to himself, even by default. That means interviews, passages, and photographs found online are the property of others and their rights should be respected. If you quote a passage of text, make sure you tell whence it originated (either through a link or a description) and be sure not to claim it for your own.

The second issue is “fair use.” Americans may copy and distribute the work of others under the doctrine of “fair use” under certain legally-defined terms. This generally includes short passages, and certainly includes passages that the user is commenting on. For news and technology blogs, copyright is not as much of an issue as for other blogs.

However, if your blog is an art blog, these issues become complex enough that seeking competent legal counsel is a must. Copyright law does not allow you to distribute, for example, .MP3 files from your favorite bands or the photography of your favorite artist just because you have the technical know-how to copy and upload them.

Also remember that copyright laws and issue differ from nation to nation. Many people believe that they can get away with infringing the intellectual and artistic rights of others because the web is international. However, as your blog is meant to been viewed by millions, you should respect copyright and work within your nation’s applicable laws if for no other reason than that your reputation as an honest business will depend upon it.

Consistency

Because your blog shares many attributes of your local newspaper, think for a moment about what the newspaper look like. It has a masthead, headings, and stories. It has a certain number of columns, fonts of a certain size and type, and stories categorized within sections. It looks that way every day. It is consistent.

On the other hand, imagine what you’d think of a newspaper that placed random obituaries in the sports section, put the top story of the day in the classifieds section, or used random fonts and character sizes across an ever-changing number of columns.

You wouldn’t have a lot of respect for that newspaper, would you? It would not be taken seriously by most readers. They would ignore it, even though it may be incredibly informative and insightful once they get past the layout. They will ignore your blog, too, unless you learn a lesson from the papers:

• consistency makes a good first impression.

That means your entries have to look smart and interesting, even before the reader scans a single headline. And your entries must be readable, especially if you are quoting a source and explaining or arguing with that source.

This can be done through the use of bolds, indentations, color (either font or background) or as many ways as you can imagine.

The only limitations are your imagination and a respect for consistency. What works for one entry should be made to work for all. If a specific layout does not work for most entries, keep experimenting until you find one that does. Your readers will appreciate it.

Your blog entries, laying one after the other on a page, will present the same visual opportunity to make a first impression as the consistent fonts and columns of a newspaper. That means your entries should all look similar. They should have the same font in the same size. The headlines and links should be treated the same way all down the page. If you use images, they should appear in the same place in each entry. The entries, at least on the front page, should be the same size, with no entry so large that it takes up the whole front page unless that’s the only story you’re doing for the day – and you do it every day.

But how do you do that, since you’ll not have the same amount to say about every subject or the same number of images to present? Extra commentary should be handled, like newspapers do it, “behind the fold.”

Take a look at a few of the favorite blogs you chose earlier and notice a linked line at the bottom of many stories. It may say, “More behind the fold” or simply, “Read more.” Notice how each of the entries looks the same, with no long entries taking up the entire page. Notice how if a story does not interest you (and not every one will) you can see the next story without paging down. That blog realizes that if a long story does not interest a reader, she will most likely not skip to the next one unless she can see it; she will likely surf away instead. If it does interest the reader, the rest of the story is only a click away.

Whatever blog software you choose (and we’ll review a few types later) should allow you to put data behind the fold, saving your front page for multiple stories, just like a newspaper does.

Remember, the New Media will take the best from the Old Media, and a consistent and serious presentation is one of the best lessons you can learn from them.

Blog Entries, Content, and Commentary

What stories are to a city newspaper, blog entries are to your Blog Empire. And while your layout is important, readers will not return again and again to admire your layout or ruminate over your clever title. They’ll return again and again to read your writing or view your artwork or check the links that you provide. In other words, while they may read because of your layout, they will return because of your entries.

An entry is simply a published piece of material, and your readers will have definite expectations for your entries that you will need to meet, again and again, in order to woo them into coming back tomorrow. Luckily, most of those expectations are set by you in prior entries. Those expectations are insight, relevance, timeliness, accuracy, and consistency.

Insightful and Unique Content

Whether your blog provides photographs of the rain forest, reviews of Pacific Northwest restaurants, or the largest collection of ethnic jokes on the planet, your readers expect that every time they come there, they’ll find something new, unique, and worthwhile. They’ll expect to find something they can’t find anywhere else or find by themselves without searching all over.

In short, they’ll expect you to provide insightful and unique content on a certain consistent subject or issue. Your insight and your dedication to providing quality are what will draw them back.

Links and Commentary

On a news blog, for example, your readers expect that your commentary will provide interesting and relevant news, probably with a link to an original story or a source site. They will also expect you to provide expertise that they do not possess, information they have not found elsewhere, and an up-to–the-minute take on relevant trends and rumors.

They want to read the entry and come away feeling they now know more than they did, that they learned something interesting, and that they leave with a reason to return.

A blog that reviews restaurants will meet those same expectations in a different manner. Timeliness is less a factor – restaurants don’t change as quickly as the daily news – but relevance and thoroughness become more important. Your readers are not going to return for your reviews of Portland’s collection of Subway restaurants, nor for your fifth review of Kell’s Irish Pub, even if you think it the best place in the world to eat. They demand an expanding collection of useful content, and they want each entry to tell them everything they need to know to make an enjoyable dining decision. They want you to be clear, honest, and thorough.

Perhaps your blog is a reference blog, collecting and publishing links by subject. While readers may not have expectations for your commentary, they will expect the links to be accurate and present a thorough overview of the subject from all angles – or at least from the angle your readers have come to expect from prior commentary. Consistency and thoroughness are again the watchwords.

• Whatever the theme of your blog, your readers will expect every entry to be timely, relevant, and accurate.

Fonts and Colors

Blogs come in all fonts and colors, and there is no right way to handle them except that they ought to say something about your site whenever possible. Red State, for obvious reasons, goes heavy on the red and light on the blue. Gizmodo, a blog dedicated to gadgets, uses a more “techno” color scheme, with soft blues and oranges. Daring Fireball does the opposite of what you’d expect: there’s not an orange letter on the page; just unadventurous shades of gray. Each of them has a consistent scheme that makes it stand out from others, even while respecting the layout standards readers expect.

Less can be said on fonts, as most blogs use the popular fonts that come with blog software. The only warnings are to be sure your font is of a readable size for most screens (from 800×600 to 1024×768), and to avoid using comical or whimsical fonts on serious material. It’s also a good idea to stick with fonts that most people will have on their machines, because most browsers will default to a popular font anyway if they don’t have yours installed. Unless there’s a good reason not to, you should stick with a font that will not detract attention from your message. That normally means Arial, Times New Roman, Georgia, or the like.

Earning and Protecting Your Reputation

Reputation is Everything! 

Whether or not your brand is relevant to your content, it will quickly develop one relevant attribute: a reputation. Everyone who reads your blog will come away with an impression, either good or bad. They will like it or not.

Surprisingly, that’s not the most important issue for your Blog Empire, because no reader, not even your most loyal, is going to like or agree with everything you say. The important issue is whether that reader believes your blog to be important.

If a reader does not find a blog important, they will probably not return even if they liked a story or two: there are simply too many other blogs to see.

If a reader finds your blog insightful, entertaining, and relevant, they will return even though they may disagree with your commentary or don’t like your layout.

In order to be a serious empire, your blog must exude seriousness.

That doesn’t mean your subject must be serious, but you must be serious about your subject. For political and technology blogs, that means accuracy and timeliness.

Rumors must be noted as such. Opinions must be noted as such. You can be a partisan – in fact, your theme may be a very partisan view of something - but you’ve got to be fair to your readers, who will form an opinion about your subject based on what you say.

• If your blog is an art blog, you’ve got to focus on quality.
• If your blog features model trains, entries about your daughter’s dance recital will lose readers.
• If your blog is a reference or news blog, you’ve got to be thorough.

Once your reputation is established, readers will come to your blog to see what you have to say because they will expect you to know more than them. If you miss the big story or are shown by later events to be completely off-the-wall when you said you were certain, they may not return.

Reputation is everything, so as you build your Blog Empire, remember what you want a reputation for and consistently strive to earn it.

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