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Can You Still Get Traffic By Being Active In Big Blogs?

by Melvin · May 25, 2010

Before, one of the most effective ways to get your new blog noticed is to comment on as many number of big blogs as possible. Back then it’s not just effective, it’s almost considered as a standard. You are basically going to be considered fool if you’re not utilizing this free traffic technique.

But like anything, as time rolls out quickly, things change so drastically. The once so popular blog commenting on big blogs has somehow declined. Not that people aren’t commenting anymore but these days, you’d rather see bloggers do a guest post, run a contest, focus on writing a series post or do more productive stuffs than by being active in their favorite top blogs.

It’s Not as Effective as What It Used To Be

There are really a ton of other things that aren’t as effective as they used to before. One good example is link exchanges. 5-10 years back, it was like the only method that webmasters use both to drive traffic and increase their rankings in the search engines. That’s why people always say that the pace of an online business is much quicker than the real world ones. This day what you’re using may be still effective, the next day you’re not guaranteed it is still gonna work.

As for being active on top blogs, here are some of the reasons that I see why it has somehow declined as not as good as what it used to be.

Poor Quality of Traffic – It doesn’t take a lot to see that most bloggers who comment on those sites do it for the lone sake of commenting. I don’t know but I’m really puzzled why bloggers like Chow allow comments such as “thanks for this interesting post” as it doesn’t really add anything. Most of these bloggers were inferred that they need to comment on 200 blogs a day so they do it as fast as they could.
Happy-go trigger audience – This one relates to the first factor. The good reason why no one will notice your comment is because 98% of bloggers don’t really read comments of other people. They just comment and then leave, comment and then leave. Oftentimes they don’t even recognize who have written the posts. For instance everytime I do a guest post, most commenters would comment and not even think the post was a guest writeup by another blogger and not the author.
Saturation – its plain common sense. Why does one thing work so well before than today? Because before, the method isn’t abused, its used by a reasonable no.of bloggers. But now that everyone uses it, its really hard to see a return.

</end of rant> Anyways as I was writing this post, I just thought it would be interesting to share with you a little case study on what interacting with big blogs bring to the table for me.

For the past month i have been really trying to become active lurker reader on some of the big blogs in our niche. I had observed what ZK has been doing and basically I gave myself a go. And here’s what I found out (in last months period):

From John Chow’s blog

From Shoemoney’s blog

From Carl Ocab’s blog

And from DailyBlogTips

It wasn’t ever massive but it’s a good proof that by being active on other people’s blogs you can still reap some traffic. It would also be interesting to see how different blogs have different visitors and behaviors. For instance Shoemoney’s blog, returned a bounce rate of 39% which is pretty good considering that all audience came from just reading my comment and then clicking my link.

John Chow has sent me the most no.but its hard to determine it since I’ve done a couple of guest post on that site as well. As expected it returned a higher bounce rate since most of the blog’s readers are trigger go-lucky ones.

Carl Ocab’s blog sent me a pretty nice stat to play with. His blog was like in hiatus for three months and to receive that no.of traffic and bounce rate is pretty amazing. DBT on the other hand, had the least new visits % . This means that most of the readers of that site also read my blog as well.

Importance of this

Why am I telling you all of this? You may probably have been scratching your head on whats the importance of this. Two things, first is I love playing with stats. I spend a lot of my free time with Analytics and analyzing my logs and second is that stats can help you a lot in terms of improving the usability of your blog and eventually driving more traffic. As an old adage says,”the number will always speak for itself”. I’m a huge advocate of that.

So to conclude, yes we can still get good traffic from being an active commentator on those big blogs. But it just does not gonna happen right away, you have to be creative and make sure you’re adding good value to the community and not just being spammy. After all, we’re not just concerned about the quantity, we’re all after the quality as well.

Entrepreneurial Tip: Take Everything With a Grain of Salt

by Melvin · May 22, 2010

In this information-overload era its just so easy to find answers to our questions. I mean when was the last time you searched for something and didn’t find anything? That pretty much sums it. Add the fact that search engines are constantly tweaked to cater to the majority of users so all in all we are in this ‘so useful’ internet era.

But we might as well be cautious a bit though as the information could basically own us. How many times have you heard someone saying they’re suffering from information overload? The information we’re talking here are good and brilliant informations and its so easy to just consume things as much as you could.

Let alone in blogging and making money online that so many people can’t get pass the first stage because they keep on consuming new information after new information. Everyone suffers from this and unfortunately most people mishandle it. I used to think that info overload is just a person’s inability to filter but I was wrong.

Take everything with a grain of salt

According to phrases.org.uk, the statement means we should accept infos but maintain it in a degree of skepticism about its truth. In a more normal description, it’s all about taking each and every information but not completely believe it.

I know most of us, if not all, rely on information to do all the things we need to get done. However, we should always remember that there are certain factors that can affect whether that information can be useful or not. Here are some reasons:

Most information are not timeless – The first thing I do whenever I read a good piece of article related to my business is to check out the date. I think not a lot of people understand that informations or advice that they usually read aren’t gonna last forever. For instance, I could search on something about “wordpress tweaks and stuffs” and could find great lengthy articles on that subject. But the problem is if it the info is too old or outdated, it’s not going to benefit me.
The effect is usually NOT the same for others – Recently I wrote a post about how my blog makes money and I’m sure thousands of people who have read it would exactly copy the ways I mentioned. But does that mean they can reap the same results? probably, probably not! A good friend always likes to tell me that not all MBA students who graduate get a good life even though it is highly perceived that if you take that course, you’re gold.
Things can go wrong with unusual outside factors – Another question, when was the last time that what you planned goes off exactly as its planned? Just the same with informations we consume. One good observation is that when one writes a good walkthrough on how he makes money for example with affiliate marketing, almost no readers get to duplicate that effort. Why is that? Because in every thing we do there are always outside factors that greatly affect things. Demographics, time, and etc., they all play a good role in all of this.
False claims/infos – It’s funny but a lot of people aren’t too keen on spotting wrong and fake informations. A lot just completely gloss into it and completely treat it as it is. That’s why its important to understand that almost all websites have disclaimers and it’s there for a reason.

Do it and see for yourself

The only way to find out is to do it and see for yourself. You can never really conclude something as working unless you get to experience it yourself. It’s also good to test since doing so can make you avoid being a crybaby, taking info and then calling it out a bum if it didn’t work. 😉

A good example is what I do with affiliate marketing. In forums, you oftentimes see bums people who post “hey this offer from this, I tested it in this, and its killing it for me!”. But the truth is doing exactly the same thing wouldn’t certify a success! There might be some factors that hinge on demographics, the PPC slaps, landing page issues and so many things. And in that particular example, the best thing to do is do the offer yourself, test and see if it’s really worth converting (or is just all hype).

I know you guys trust a lot of brands related within your businesses. There’s nothing wrong with that. Besides, these people are experts and credible for a reason. But in the end don’t forget to do your own testing and take all those infos with a grain of salt. After all, they say marketers are liars. 🙂

LogoBee Review – Another Logo Design Company

by Melvin · May 20, 2010

This is a paid review sponsored by LogoBee

Probably right now, it would be overkill for us to open this blog post emphasizing how important a logo is for branding of websites and blogs. Heck, I covered that here and here already. If you’re not contented you can do a Google Search and find so many articles covering why a logo is a must for every business.

That being said, not having a logo is just a mortal mistake for everyone not just doing online business but any type of real offline business as well.

LogoBee Introduction

Here comes another logo design company LogoBee. According to their site, LogoBee is an award winning logo design company that has been in this business for 10 years. Their core focus is creating custom logo designs although they also do some other stuffs like stationary designs, business cards and etc.

They have several packages to choose from. They have Spring Sale Package which does have 3 classifications. The special package worths the cheapest starting at $199 while the Golden Package is priced at $349. After the spring sale, they have 2 more ‘premium’ packages, one is the Express package priced at $499 where you will get a logo design, stationery design, Word template. Their most expensive package is the BundleBee which costs well over a thousand dollar each. It is actually just the same with the express package except for the fact that it is bundled with a free web design into it.

If you’re main concern is just the logo, then I suggest you pick up the Spring Sale Package You can choose from 6 logos, which contains 6 revisions. The only problem here is that they don’t offer a money-back guarantee which actually most logo design companies offer.

The Process

Like any other designing work, LogoBee follows this step by step process which is located in their site as well but for the sake of the readers here I might as well put it here. Here are the step by step process according to them

You can start by visiting the prices section of our web site to find a list of our Logo Design packages.
Select one which best suits your needs and click on it. You will be directed to a secured online logo design order form. The first part is a personal information questionnaire. Please fill in your name, the company’s name, as well as your email and mailing address.
You will then get a chance to process your payment in real time by using Visa , Master Card AMEX, Discover or PayPal. You can also send a check, money order or wait until a representative calls to get all the needed information.
After your payment has been received, we will begin working on your logo design project.
You will be notified by phone or email, and will be given a web address for your own private web page. A team of 2 to 4 designers will collaborate on each logo design project. In 2 -5 business days we will present 6 or 8 initial logo designs (depending on the package).
Your input will be processed accordingly. We will begin working on your revisions immediately. Simple changes will be completed in one business day.You can take your time on viewing the designs – there is no time limit on any of the packages and unlimited changes apply to Silver, Gold and Express packages.
When all the changes have been completed to your satisfaction and you finalized your logo design, a logo kit will be prepared. You may be asked for stationery information, depending on the package you chose. Your stationary design consists of 1 set of business cards, envelope and letterhead designs. Up to 6 names on the cards are included. The layouts will be viewed and approved on the same private web page and unlimited changes can be applied to your stationary design.

Clients

LogoBee boasts wide variety of clients. In their testimonial page, they have about 6 pages of positive feedback from their clients. Aside from that they’ve also done logos for big companies like Heritage Education Funds, Greenpeace and even some prominent people like Kendra Todd, winner of NBC`s hit show “The Apprentice” and Clinton Hart of the San Diego Chargers.

As with any business model, having clients who are prominent figures always help in terms of boosting credibility in a certain field.

Crowdsourcing vs the Traditional Design Process

I am fortunate enough to have my own sets of designers who do this work for me so I really haven’t done any logo contests projects before. But if you’re starting out from scratch, meaning you don’t have any connection, it would be a little bit tough to find a designer willing to do work for you. In fact, most of the designers that you can find through forums are the crappy ones as most of the premium ones aren’t usually available for work.

LogoBee falls into the traditional design process type of company and Im sure they are in an uphill battle against crowdsourcing sites in which a lot of people are more enticed with.

Final Thoughts On LogoBee

Overall LogoBee is a decent custom logo design company. If not, they probably wouldn’t land a review on this blog. They’ve been in this business for long and they have already that good reputation considering they’ve handled more than a thousand clients.

The downside of course is that it is expensive. A lot of small businesses could easily just head out on forums and find equally talented designers for almost half the price. But that would be another thing since in my opinion LogoBee is targeted to a more established and bigger companies which have bigger funding for these types of work.

Now over to you guys? have you ever had any experience with this team from LogoBee? If you do then I would very much like to hear experience from you. If not, then please check them out at LogoBee.com

Definitive Guide to Driving Traffic With Forums

by Melvin · May 17, 2010

This topic has been covered several times but I do feel most articles are just junk ones. Either not really adding anything significant, or not covering the topic properly. With that in mind I decided to write this in-depth article on how to drive traffic to your blog using forums.

First and foremost, forums are always a good source of traffic to your blog because its highly-populated by nature. A lot of people lurk in forums, people want to engage in talks and debate and more importantly they know how to appreciate something good that’s done to them.

Due to the intrinsic nature of forums, a lot of bloggers abuse them badly. I’d like to be honest and would like to share I was one of those. During my early years, I was one of those morons who annoy the members by posting as much as I could without really adding anything of good value. If you feel guilty of doing this, then I highly suggest you read this post more and quit what you’re doing right now.

1. Pick Forums Carefully

It all starts by doing a small research and picking the forums that you would want to join in. Obviously it has to have some relation to your niche. In this niche, I am fortunate to have so many forums related to what I’m talking about.

This is the first step and this is a crucial step. Targeting the wrong demographics is a serious mistake so make sure you pay attention to that a lot.

2. Start By Building Your Identity

This may seem to be a basic one but I bet you a lot of people are doing this completely wrong. When you are just signing up, make sure to pick the appropriate name, a name that people could easily remember. In most forums, my screen name is Melvin and because of that they easily recognize me as a blogger who blogs at this site.

Do make sure to complete as much details as possible. You will be easily surprised on how a lot of forum members actually look at the profile of other members (voyeurism at work eh?). Make sure you add an avatar or a real pic. Lastly carve out a good signature. Do take note that the main goal of the signatures is to make other members engage, not and never for search rankings.

3. Help People Out

The main reason why forums exist is to help people out on certain topics. Yes we want to get traffic but our main goal always, should be helping people out. A lot of people in forums give good quality advice for free and do take note that it is costing them energy, time and other stuffs.

What I like to do is go to the “new posts” section of forums and then respond on those things. Since most of those are basic questions, there’s a good chance that you can help them out and start gaining good karma.

4. Explicit Promotion

I am guilty of this before. Never ever post anything that doesn’t add value and then explicitly put your link there. People don’t need half-baked information, what they need are quick-fix ones. A lot of bloggers make this mistake and not only it annoys the members, but it also does tune you and your blog out.

5. Its Ok to Argue, But not that much!

As I’ve said forums are a good place to debate and share insights. There’s a good chance that you would be encountering instances where someone would disagree with you and criticize you. It’s important to argue and stay competitive yet not have so much negativities. Too much hating will do no good and may even harm your reputation in the end.

We cannot please everyone but it’s good to side with the majority.

6. Write Precisely, Be Cool to them

Whenever you present your answers, make sure you tell it to them in an organized manner. Although forums really aren’t too strict with grammars, spelling and punctuation, do take note that any sentence your write, any help you provide reflects directly to you and the brand of your blog. We don’t want to sound like the most intelligent person but at least we want to look good.

Being cool is just all about helping so you could easily see if you’re being helpful by observing your reputation icon. People on forums aren’t too shabby on hitting the icon especially if they know you’re genuine interest is helping them out.

Final Words

Like in your own blog, you build yourself first before you benefit. If you’re a newbie this may sound a bit overwhelming especially if we are about to combine it with other marketing tactics like commenting, guest posting and etc. What I’d like to do with this is set at least one day in one week where all I would do is build my expertise and credibility on those online forums. I highly suggest you to do the same so that you are highly focused on what you are doing.

By following all the rules I outlined above, you don’t only get to gain additional traffic, you are also presented to a large number of people as an expert. By being cool to them, following rules and just being like a genuine person, its a win-win situation for everyone.

How cool is that?

Upcoming Blog Contest & Call for Sponsors

by Melvin · May 14, 2010

Hey you!

It’s been a while isn’t it?

Times flies really quick and I can’t believe this blog is turning 2 years old already. If you remember, there was a huge contest here in this blog last year in w/c it really got a lot of traction. It also attracted enormous prizes from sponsors which are mostly reputable marketers and bloggers in this space and some of the best affiliate networks.

This year I am looking to start one, actually its getting closer. I’m sure you’ve been noticing there has been a lot of contests going on right now with exceptional prizes as well. That alone urged me to start a contest for this blog, considering its turning 2 years now so why not celebrate it with a bang?

It’s gonna be a writing contest

The days where a contest is composed of subscribing to feed, following on twitter, doing this thing, blah blah are all long over. I mean those contest don’t really add that much value both the blogosphere and to the sponsors (guilt kill 🙂 )

So I don’t really want to disclose as much details right now but rest assure it’s a writing contest. Nope its not the “in” guest blogging contest thing. Its more of a creative writing contest, or not really creative. 😉

The reason I chose that is because I want to give back to the blogosphere more than I want to get more exposure for this blog. I mean, this blog has almost 5000 comments, 100 some thousand pageviews and made me good money so why not make a contest where everyone is a winner?

Be one of the Sponsors

That being said I’m looking for quality sponsors. I already have a couple of high-profile marketers who generously sponsored something of good value. But I’d like to get as much as I could and so i am reaching out here in my blog.

I’m looking preferably for cash sponsorships via Paypal but if you have a good (reputable) product/tools or service you are offering, I might consider that as well. Again I’m looking for quality ones, I’d like to be fair since some of the sponsors really gave good ones.

There are three sponsorship packages, the gold sponsor, silver and bronze sponsors. The package you are gonna get into would largely depend on the perceived value of the price of the prize you are sponsoring. Let’s say LeBron James sponsored a shoe and D-Wade sponsored an underwear. Definitely the former one would be presented as a gold sponsor while the latter one, a bronze sponsor.

Here in MelvinBlog, I just don’t link back as a main exposure for the sponsors. The blog receives quite a good consistent traffic but I want to reach out more and give better ones. The sponsors are the main and sole reasons why contests happen and if not for them we, small bloggers couldn’t really afford to do it all. Here are the descriptions.

Gold Sponsorships

Better brand awareness by having their company logo’s on the contest page and on the blog’s home page and subpages. The logo would consist of an image of their company/blog/website.
Dofollow link back to the site both on the contest page and on the announcement of the winners page.
Short description of what the product or website is
Inclusion of the logo on Twitter Background

Silver Sponsorships

Inclusion of the logo on Twitter Background
Dofollow link back to the site both on the contest page and on the announcement of the winners page.
Short description of what the product or website is

Bronze Sponsorships

Dofollow link back to the site both on the contest page and on the announcement of the winners page.
Short description of what the product or website is

As you can see, each sponsorship opportunities yields different exposures that you can get from the blog. So the better the prize, the better exposure. 🙂

There ya go! Of course you are my reader, so I would always be open to your questions, suggestions, criticisms and etc. Fire them away!

How MelvinBlog Dot Com Really Makes Money

by Melvin · May 10, 2010

I got this request from two people and although they are only two people (lols), I thought I would share here with you right now how MelvinBlog Dot Com makes money.

First and foremost, I would first like to clarify that this blog makes very little to no money at all. Initially when I started this blog, I had in mind bloggers like Shoemoney and Carl Ocab and basically told myself that I’m really going to monetize this blog as hard as I could. Eventually it did especially the past few years where it makes a steady three-figure income every month which I thought was amazing considering I’m not really selling anything except ad space and also the fact that the blog isn’t a high traffic one.

Anyways enough schmoozing, today I am going to break down to you how this blog makes money in the past recent years. I may not totally give you the exact figures or the precise time period but I’d try to detail it as possible.

This blog is nowhere close to a high-traffic site but it’s enough for me to make some money out of it and take good care of all the bills. I also think it’s interesting to let people see how this blog makes money considering a lot of blogs who have much bigger traffic than this blog has been having difficulties with monetization. Without further ado, here we go.

Direct Advertising

It’s no secret and by simple observation you can easily see that majority of the money from this blog comes from selling ad spaces directly to advertisers. I sell several advertising which includes the well-known square banners at the sidebar, I also have text links and the premium spot which is the 468X60 banner space. Initially I wasn’t too keen on selling paid reviews but after realizing it’s totally just fine, I decided to give it a go.

I don’t know but I think I really do well with selling my ad spaces in this blog. I usually get sold out and if not, maybe 1-2 ad spaces were left. One reason is that my ad space is really cheap. I know some bloggers who have the same traffic than me yet they’re selling their spaces for like double of my amount. I’ve talked about it in my how to get that blog advertisers post and it’s all about really letting the marketplace decide for the price tag. Getting 4 $10 placement is always better than one $25 placement.

I’m also keen on giving out discounts especially if it’s on a commitment basis or if it’s a bulk package. Not only I get to be able to get sponsors but also it builds that publisher-advertiser relationship over time which is something that most bloggers don’t do.

And lastly yes I use a very awesome plugin called OIO Publisher. For those who do not know, what it basically does is make selling ad space automated. The advertiser purchases an ad, and then the plugin does everything. You don’t need to upload the banner manually, you don’t need to undergo to those long processes that you usually go into when doing it by yourself.

It also does have some other unique features like geo-targeting and stat-tracking in which it emails the advertisers about all the stats, the clicks, ecpm, and all those geeky number stuffs.

If you don’t have it yet, get your copy now. I know I was like having some pride into myself before and said “I’m not gonna jump into this OIO thing.” I was making good money then but upon purchasing, I almost doubled my advertising income alone because of this plugin. $47 is so cheap since you can use it in as many of your sites as possible.

Direct Ad Sales alone pays for my virtual private network hosting bills and some other couple of outsourcing works so maybe it’s not that dead after all.

Affiliate Marketing

Most of you here know that I’m an affiliate marketer primarily running CPA campaigns through Pay-per click and then Facebook so being an affiliate is usually my bread and butter in terms of making money. But then it’s not really something that is related to this blog so I really don’t count it as part of the revenue.

However, I made some money though with some affiliate products I recommend in this blog. On my earlier days I was promoting affiliate networks like Pepperjam Network and Clickbooth which back then was paying $5 and $10 respectively for every referral. I made a lot of money in that since I leveraged the blog’s traffic and my reputation in forums. Do take note that I was making money as well by promoting affiliate offers within the network so I was not just trying to refer people for the sake of making money.

Most commissions nowadays are from the products that I’ve used and recommend here in this blog. Some of them include the 31 day workbook by Darren Rowse, Elegant Themes, Theme Wars, and of course OIO affiliate program which is one of the lucrative programs out there. Again, I promote products that I use and recommend. I would say stay away from promoting stuffs that you haven’t used yourself.

Affiliate program isn’t really the main driving force of this blog but I know some blogs who do really quite well with this business model. One of them is Michael Dunlop of IncomeDiary.com who doesn’t sell ad space. Instead he leverages his traffic by providing tons of free good stuffs and then recommending products to them afterwards. It’s a great business model as well for the blog so you might as well look at that.

Selling my product

If you can remember I sold a product last year which was called “Make Money Online Blog Monetizer” in which it was my first info product ever. The product was launched for 2 and a half months before pulling it out in the market. I’m not gonna say it’s the best product ever since sliced bread but it did almost raked in a thousand dollars in that period. I know I could’ve done much better had the internship not started killing me back then.

Since then I closed the product down as my goal was really to test the market back then as well as analyze its scalability. Whether I had made $20, $200 or $2000, I would still close the launch for that thing for the same duration of time. Whether it is still going to get launched again or not remains to be seen though.

In the latter part of this year I am looking to release another product so stay tuned for that.

Unorthodox Monetization Ways

I always take blog monetization as a big challenge so I did some unorthodox ways to squeeze money from this blog as well. One of them is through the “put the banner and make money program”. During the past couple of years it was really kicking. I mean you don’t need traffic, don’t need page rank, all you need is to sign up, and then put those ugly looking banners that are made of frames and tables and then receive your 10 Euros (they were usually paying Euros). Some are on a recurring basis and most are on a one time basis.

I really didn’t get the other side of it, all I knew was it’s another way to make money. I even wrote a post about it on how you can money without any sweat at all.

I also did some paid text links in posts thing where I basically was approached by advertisers saying they want this keyword in this specific post to link on their site or whatnot. Probably it’s an evil tactic but is definitely another good way to make money. The buy sell text links forum in digital point was where I was getting most of my clients.

Finally I also tried my luck with CPM-based advertising where I get paid a dollar or more for a thousand impressions. I was a smart ass so all I did was to leverage social media traffic, setup some rotating IP addresses to view my blog and buy cheap traffic. It was a little profitable thing but then I stopped doing it when I switched with this magazine template.

I still have a couple at the back of my mind but I don’t think it’s good to share those things as well as it may probably harm your blog if you implement it. Anyways do take note too that this is what I’d like to call as “desperate monetization measures”. Like I’ve said, it’s always a challenge for me to make money and so even when people see me as trying too hard to make money, I really don’t mind.

Future Plan

As I’ve said I’m going to release a couple of products down the road this year and test the market for it. Since I started list-building last year, I would try to get something from it as well, try to build relationships and then leverage it by recommending some stuffs to them.

The direct advertising model is going to be here in my blog for at least this year since its making me some really good money although I would try to shy away from it probably starting next year once I start getting a more consistent stream of income from other sources

An interesting note to take as well is on how I myself have turned the focus of this blog from making as much money as possible to actually starting to work more on its personal brand and focusing with relationships instead. Although the blog still makes decent money, most of the goals that I’ve set this year aren’t really on the financial side, rather more on building a larger community towards it and bigger readability all throughout the blogosphere. Money is good, but I’d take growing credibility and expertise any time of the day.

Long post huh? What say you?

Enhance Your Search Functionalities With Lijit

by Melvin · May 7, 2010

One thing a lot of my readers notice since the start of this year was the different looks of the search functionality here in my blog. It’s not the built-in WordPress Search nor is it the one from Google, it is from a third party website called Lijit

What is Lijit?

First and foremost I’d like to clear that this is no way a sponsored review. In fact this post was in my drafts for like four months already so i might as well just work on this one.

Anyways one problem always with the search is that the built-in WordPress search isn’t as comprehensive and accurate as many of us want. Top bloggers like Darren Rowse and Jeremy Schoemaker agreed that it’s not really the best blog search engine available. On the other side of the fence, Google’s Search for blog may be a perfect alternative but making it work perfectly is quite a challenge since you need to tweak a lot of the algorithms and do all those geeky stuffs.

Lijit is MY best solution since its been very newbie-friendly while still having that robust functionality. It sports that web 2.0ish look while really not cluttering nor slowing down your blog.

You can get started by heading up to lijit website and basically signing up, its free anyways! Once done you’d do all the basic stuffs like putting up your blog’s name, feed and etc. The one unique feature with Lijit though is they incorporate your other social media accounts within their social platform. For instance, the search could return any article I’ve submitted through digg or stumbleupon etc. It can also fetch some of the posts from the blogs in the blogroll. Overall the add-on features are just exceptional.

Personalization is also as easy as hell. You can basically match the color schemes of the widget to your blog, modify the elements, use your own size and etc. There’s also an option wherein you could make your search results either on a light-box effect or have it on a different page instead.

Overall I really like Lijit and heck I wouldn’t write this long ass post if Im not recommending this one for you. 🙂 It’s not the perfect search but absolutely the ideal one for bloggers. It’s widely used by popular websites like the lolcats network and other famous sites like Problogger, Lamebook and etc. How about you? What do you think about Lijit? Have you had any bad experience with them?