This blog post was submitted by Desmond. Check out his blog

Happy Independence Day to all Indians out there, has been a good one. I have around 200 firecrackers I need to get rid of so should be an interesting week. As for the contest, Feedburner screwed up yesterday and took 150~ subscribers off - will do the drawing when it returns to normal (hopefully tomorrow).

It is very important for you to lure in as much comments as possible for every post you written in your blog. With a huge number of comments counts for your post, more and more readers will join the discussions and your post might even end up on Digg’s frontpage. By encouraging discussion, you will also have the possibilities to gain backlinks and improve your blog’s credibility.

So, here are the 8 sure-fire ways that will rake some nice amount of comments for your posts:

1. Ask for it

Sometimes, you have to tell your readers to act. You can beg them or command them to comment on your post. It’s a simple and easy thing to do and it will definitely rake in some comments.

2. Ask Questions

You can ask questions in your blog such as “What do you think about my new blog design?” or “Do you think this really matters to you”. People will definitely reply to your questions by commenting because some of them would love to voice up their opinions. YouTube star, Phillip DeFranco managed to rake in huge numbers of video responses and comments because he asks questions in every of his videos.

3. Top Commentators WordPress Plugin

By simply applying the “Top Commentators plugin” on your WordPress platform blog, you will be able to list up your top commentators and a link back to them. This is like getting a link visible (most people have it on the sidebar) without actually paying for it. Many top bloggers are using this method to bring in good
numbers of comments.

4. DoFollow Comments

It is very important to let your readers know that your blog is dofollow. This will encourage more comments because web owners would be happy to get a free backlink especially if you got high PageRank. Placing a simple image like below could rake in 50% more comments.

5. Writing Up a Controversial Post

Controversy always work best to rake in opinions and debates. Writing up a controversial post is extremely easy when you have the solid ideas and facts. Do not afraid to go against the facts because your main aim here is to stir debate and get your readers to voice up their opinions.

6. Dropping Comments on Blogs

This is a great technique to networking, gain new readers and rake in more comments. People tend to return back to your blog and comment mainly because of “a favor kind of thing” and links of course! You let the blog owner of the blog you commented on aware of your presence and might even be one of your loyal readers!

7. Social Media

Never underestimate the power of social medias. You will have to socialize and network through social medias. By making your blog known to as many people as possible, you will bring in new readers and new commentators who want a linkback or who want to voice up something on your blog. Social media like YouTube, FaceBook and Digg are great website to start on.

8. Comment contest

Everyone loves to get free stuffs and since commenting on blogs don’t cost the readers anything but time, readers will not hesitate to drop a comment. Offer some nice prizes like Entrecard credits or cash prizes. You can even get someone to sponsor some prizes for your contest if you don’t have anything to give away!

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Post contributed by Rajaie of Rajaie Talks.

In order to be taken professionally, you need to present yourself professionally, below are some points, that in my opinion, will make your blog appear unprofessional:

1. You’re Using the Default WordPress About Page
An about page contains general information about the author of a blog, such as: his name, age, country of residence, and a brief summary of his past. It also contains information about the blog, such as: the topics it covers, why it was started, and why you should start reading it.

The first thing I do before subscribing to a blog is read its about page, and if it so happens to be the default WordPress about page, that blog would just have lost itself a reader. The same goes for advertisers, they tend to want to know more about you and your blog before they spend their hard earned money advertising on it. Being greeted with “This is an example of a WordPress page” is not going to be a big help to you!

It takes less than a few minutes to write a simple about page, what fascinates me is that a search on Google for the entire text of the default WordPress about page yields 1,210,00 results, with quotes. Don’t risk damaging your credibility for something that could have easily been avoided with a few minutes of work.

2. Your Post’s Titles Aren’t Capitalized
Capitalized titles like the one used for this post are much more attention grabbing than titles with only the first word capitalized. Not only that, but they also make your posts appear much more professional. You have no excuse for not capitalizing your post’s title, it’s isn’t like it requires any extra work.

3. The Statistics Are a Lie!
Faking your subscribers, traffic, or comments will eventually come back and bite you in the butt! It’s true that you might get yourself a few extra subscribers by faking your blog’s feedcount, but what’s going to happen once those couple of people discover that your blog really sucks? What about the advertisers you trick into spending their money on your blog that coincidentally generates billions of pageviews a month? The minute they find out that you were lying to them, you’re toast!

If I ever stumbled upon a blog with a screenshot of some other blog’s feedcount next to his RSS button, I would immediately leave no matter how good the content was. Not only are you lying to your readers and losing their respect, but you are also wasting valuable time which you could have spent elsewhere.

4. You’re Using The Same Theme 10,000 Other Blogs Are Using
The amount of free WordPress themes has been increasing ever since the first version of WordPress was launched. With a bit of planned searching, you will eventually find the WordPress theme that suits you best and fits your needs. But you’re not done yet, using a theme that 10,000 other blogs are using will not help set your blog apart from the rest. If you know HTML and CSS then customizing the theme won’t be a problem, but if you don’t, you could always pay someone a few dollars on Digital-Point or any other webmaster forum to do it for you.

You don’t need to redo the entire theme, just add or take away a few things to make it different from the original.

5. I Can’t Find Your Content, the Advertisements Are Covering it Up
People visit your blog for a single purpose, to read your posts. Having tons of ads in the sidebar, header, and content section is not going to help make it any easier for them do that. It will also show your visitors that you are desperate for a few bucks, especially if you’re using Google AdSense, but that’s a topic on it’s own

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not telling you to get rid of all the advertisements, but limiting them to a few and making them fit nicely into your blog’s theme will make them look much more professional and attention grabbing.

6. Your Content Rocks, But it’s a Bit Squished Together
If the theme you’re using doesn’t have a custom line height (space between each line, usually 20px), the content will look extremely squashed together. You don’t need to know CSS to implement this modification, just follow these two simple steps: 1. Open the style.css file using the theme editor located in the dashboard 2. add this to the bottom of the file: p { line-height: 20px; } If you didn’t have this already

7. Too Many “Advertise Here” Banners
125×125 Banner advertisements have really spread throughout the blogosphere these past couple of years. Another sign of desperation is having too many “advertise here” banners in your sidebar. This tells advertisers not to come anywhere near your site since nobody else is advertising on it. To solve this problem, you could have a couple of affiliate banners and only one “advertise here” banner, that will give you and your blog some extra credibility and attract much more advertisers.

8. There Are Comments Linking to Loan Sites, What’s That About?
Everyone wants their blog to get more comments, but allowing spam comments for the sake of getting more comments is just stupid. If that’s not the case and you’re simply forgetting to delete the spam comments, install Akismet! If I was to make a comment on one of your posts and saw a spam comment, I would be disgusted at the fact that you don’t bother with your blog, so why should I?

9. There Are Tons of Links in Your Footer to Pharmacy Sites, What’s That About?
Google PageRank is basically how important Google thinks your website is. One of the ways to improve your Google PageRank is to do link exchanges with other relevant websites. What some bloggers fail to understand is that doing link exchanges between their Tech blog and Pharmacy websites is not very helpful nor professional. Once again, this will show your readers how desperate you are in scoring yourself a few inbound links and does you no good in improving your PageRank since the sites you’re linking to are irrelevant.

For tips on how to improve your Google PageRank, check out my post expalining how I got a PageRank 3 in less than 2 months of blogging.

10. Your Post is Just One Big Blob
Formatting your posts is one of the most important things you should remember to do before publishing them. Using images, the bold tags, and having multiple paragraphs will make your posts look much neater instead of one big blob of text. It also helps the reader focus on your content and make your writing appear more professional and formal.

I’m sure there are plenty more things that will make your blog appear unprofessional, but these are the things you should take care first. What are some of the things that you think make a blog look unprofessional?

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This post is by Flimjo. Check out his blog for tips on obtaining passive income for yourself.

Want to learn how to make money as a blogger? Don’t start a “Make Money Online” blog.

There are hundreds of “make money online” blogs, and most of them aren’t any good. The pioneers of the “make money online” niche should blush at the number of people who attempt to copy their business models and attack the niche. However, simply copying what they do isn’t going to breed success.

If you want to blog, here are 5 reasons why your blog should be something other than a “make money online” blog. If you follow these guidelines, you should have no problem achieving success as a blogger.

1) It’s tough to overcome established stalwarts in a niche.

It’s very difficult to succeed in a niche that already has a handful of “big dogs” that control a hefty portion of the market share. Currently, John Chow Dot Com and Problogger are the main attractions in the “make money online” niche. If you intend to start a “make money online” blog, like it or not, you will be competing with those blogs.

Unless you approach the niche with a smart and aggressive plan for succeeding in it (there are, indeed, ways), it will be difficult to pry readers away from other, more established blogs. Those blogs are perceived as the authorities in this field and have valuable brand recognition. You certainly won’t play David to their Goliath, and you will have serious trouble even staying competitive.

If you’re not already a “make money online” expert and can’t offer something new and unique in that niche, it just doesn’t make business sense to start a blog in that niche. It would be like stepping into the ring with Coca-Cola and attempting to sell your own carbonated soft drink.

2) What would you write about that hasn’t already been covered?

The other significant challenge with starting a “make money online” blog is content. I can’t think of anything that the top “make money online” blogs don’t cover. These blogs are exhaustive Bibles on how to make money online (whether it’s through monetizing your blog, affiliate marketing, or other methods). If you’re the new fish in the pond, you will find it difficult not to rehash the same tips and strategies for making money online that those blogs have already covered.

Even if you re-purpose their information and take new angles in your posts, it’s still a tough hill to climb.

3) Be original.

The best reason for steering your blog away from the “make money online” niche is that focusing on that niche most likely doesn’t reflect who YOU are. The key to being successful in any business is finding something that reflects your passion. By doing that, your blog will exude energy, enthusiasm, and pride. That’s what people want to see (i.e., someone writing about a topic they are passionate about), not a passive recitation of information that other bloggers have already written about.

Blogs that are currently enjoying success (The University Kid, etc.) focus on niches and industries that might be related to the general “make money online” market, but are different in their own respect. Some of these areas include business, investing, personal development, and technology. I have even seen blogs about pets and cooking!

The catch is that you can blog about whatever topic you want and still make money as a blogger. There is no rule that says you have to blog about “making money online” in order to attract traffic and, thus, make money online.

Your best bet for success in blogging is to find a passion that you have and put it on display in the form of daily blog posts. If it’s politics, start a blog and write daily about the American presidential race. If it’s real estate, focus on that and write about the current state of the market. Ask yourself the question, “Would I do this for free?” If the answer is yes, then you have found your topic.

4) Originality helps you understand your market.

An indirect benefit of being original and writing passionately about a topic is that you understand the market for that topic. If, for example, you have a passion for search engine optimization, and you keep up with the industry, you understand what people need in that niche. You also understand what trends there are and what people want to read. This understanding helps you match your blog posts to your market. That picture-perfect match-up is like flipping on a light switch. It illuminates your blog and helps you develop a loyal reader base and attract more visitors.

5) It’s better to be the first in something than try to become the best at something.

It’s easier to be one of the first people to start a blog in a unique niche that you love and understand than to jump into a saturated niche (i.e., the “make money online” market) and try to be one of the best in that niche. I am not knocking the willingness and motivation of people who do, indeed, want to compete with the likes of the top blogs in the “make money online” niche. If you want your blog to equal their success, more power to you.

However, if that niche isn’t something in which you’re an expert, it’s easier to identify another niche that you do understand well (e.g., starting your own business, sports, movies) and are passionate about and be a pioneer blogger in that area. In your unique niche, more of the market is up for grabs, and there is a wealth of information that you have that readers will be starving for. The path to making money as a blogger is shorter if you’re the first blogger (or one of the first) in your niche.

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Sent out password to all, if you haven’t gotten it email me with what you’ve done. I used Gmail to mass message but some appear to not have gotten it (check your spam folder!)

Hello all!

This is a guest post by http://www.BlackhatWay.com Check my posts out for some dirty ways of making money and other tips regarding affiliate marketing, blogging and making money online.

Some time ago Jason made a post about making instant niche money by checking out the current events from Yahoo Buzz and Google Trends.

This reminded me of a method I tried in the past. It’s about taking advantage on new hot product launches and social networking sites like Squidoo and Hubpages.

To do this method, you need to know about a new, hot product launch as fast as possible. You should subscribe all the possible mailing lists of the biggest names in internet marketing. It’s better to create a new email account for this and check it daily. You can also look for forums like Warrior forum for posts talking about upcoming and current product launches, or you could just spy on new Clickbank products you think might become big.

All the product launches of the big names are hyped up like hell before the official launch so they are that not hard to find.

Last time I did this with a product by Harris Fellman. I didn’t do very well that time because of the few mistakes I made, but I will try to correct those in this post.

So what we are going to do now, we will go to sites like Squidoo.com, Hubpages.com and Wordpress.com. Use all the free, high authority sites you know.

We will create these pages with the services:

product-name.xxx.com

product-name-review.xxx.com

product-name-scam.xxx.com

(With Wordpress you could just take ProductName.wordpress.com)

Create those pages on all of the sites you know, but Squidoo, Hubpages and Wordpress.com are pretty much the best ones.

You can also use other phrases, but scam and review are usually the most searched ones.

As you might know, sites like Squidoo and Hubpages rank very high in search engines. If you have ever searched for “ProductName review” on Google, you have probably found a Squidoo page with that name.

I believe that Squidoo is the best one as they also give you commission for ad clicks and in my experience it ranks the highest, but still create the pages to all the high authority sites you can (or at least those main three.) Last time I thought that Squidoo is enough and I saw good rankings for the first few days, but then my Hubpages one grabbed first place on Google and my other page slowly started to fall down.

What should you write on those pages?

You could write your own review and paste the same one to all of the pages or even create a unique review for each of your pages (BETTER).

Or if you are feeling really lazy, you could just copy some sentences from the official sales page and add some of your own. Just make sure that people want to buy the product after reading the post. Make it sound like a real, honest review. Would you be more likely to buy the product after reading your review?

Of course, don’t forget to use your affiliate link!

Now when you own the Squidoo, Hubpages, Wordpress etc. pages for the main keywords of the product, you have great chances of ranking well on search engines for the searches related to the product. However, you can still optimize the pages a bit…

Link those pages with each other!

I’m not any SEO guru, but there are two ways of linking that might work:

Either just link all of the pages to each other or select some page (I prefer Squidoo) and link from all of the other pages to that.

So there you go! A completely free way to start affiliate marketing. You can use this for pretty much any new product.

Feel free to ask any questions. I will try to answer them here at TUK. Also check out my other posts over at http://www.BlackhatWay.com!

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Thanks Darren for the guest post. To all others, I will not be accepting any more guest posts or paid reviews in the near future; want to work on the bum marketing case study. @ Agent 001, the ad you submitted doesn’t seem to be displaying so please email me the image URL and your link and I’ll put it up.

“If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own” – Henry Ford

I want you to think about something. Think about the last moment when you had an argument with a friend.

Good. Now think what caused the argument. Is it that you couldn’t understand his point of view? Or he couldn’t understand yours?

See, many problems could be easily solved if we just understood other people’s point of view.

This applies in internet marketing. How can you solve a customer’s problem if you didn’t understand his point of view? Some marketers say it in other words: “put into your customer’s shoes”. But I say “be in the same time in your and in your customer’s shoes”. Create a win-win situation.

Let me give you an example. Many marketers, in order to sell their product, just make a pitch about a product they sell and expect that somehow “magically” the interested “zombie prospects” will come and buy without hesitation. Sorry, but you gonna hardly get 100 prospects if you do this. People are not dumb (with some exceptions).

Now, let us take an opposite example. Ed Dale and Dan Raine created the Thirty Day Challenge site, a site where you can download very valuable free videos if you’re marketing beginner or even a veteran. With that, they make YOU want to get more of their stuff, even buy their product or get a paid membership!

This is a very famous concept popularized by Eben Pagan (his penname in the dating industry is David De Angelo) called ‘move the free line’. By moving the free line you create a win-win situation. You give away your best tips and advices on the niche where you market and your customers feel valued and gain trust in you. You win, they win.

So, the next time when you’ll be doing something in your business, ask yourself this question. Look from your customer’s point of view. Although it may sounds obvious, if you don’t get this foundation you’ll never be able to progress further. Often the simplest things are the most powerful ones!

Peace,

Darren

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