Traffic

An Interesting Guest Post Analysis on FamousBloggers

by Melvin · Jul 14, 2010

We all know that guest posting brings in real traffic if done correctly. As a member of my community, you’re probably also aware on how I’ve been guest posting on a lot of blogs for the past few months for now. I have done a lot of guest post but I realized I haven’t really done any analysis on the effects of this guest posts for my blog. And while it’s impossible to do one posts for all guest posts I’ve done, I think it would make more sense to at least try to pick one and feature it every week. What do you think?

Anyways, I’ve been trying to do 5 guest posts per month and its a level I’m trying to maintain for now. If you can remember I made a commitment to take this blog to the next level but increasing my efforts. However, that took a hit after my current employment. Nevertheless here’s an interesting analysis of my guest post in FamousBloggers.com

What is FamousBloggers?

FamousBloggers is multi-author blog which is blogging in topics related to online business. It’s a relatively *new blog. I said new because it has just been in the blogosphere for less than one year yet it has already made so much strides and it has a good overall community behind it. Hesham and his community is one of the very few teams in the blogosphere who are serious in taking their whole thing to new heights.

If you know me I love testing out different traffic sources and experimenting. You may probably have seen me do couple of guest posts for high traffic blogs like John Chow and also you’ve seen me in smaller blogs as well. Guest posting for FamousBloggers is really intriguing to me for a couple of reasons. First is that its a new source of traffic as I’m sure most of the readers their haven’t heard my blog and second, I want to build a good relationship not just with the blog but with their community.

Guest Post Analysis

I’ve done about three guest posts on FamousBloggers.com for the past few months and there’s really some interesting number I am seeing. Before that, let’s just first analyze how’s the return on a normal John Chow guest post considering that Chow’s blog is one of the most high traffic blogs around in this niche.

The reason I showed you the statistics from Chow’s guest post is because we are going to use his blog as the barometer. John’s blog is always an interesting cover for me in the subject of guest posting first is because he gets so many traffic yet these traffic are mostly trigger-lucky readers who read myriads of content everyday. Usually they end up bouncing up too quickly on most blogs just because of where they’re coming from.

Another thing is that John’s posting frequency is always weird. Sometimes you can get your post in there for more than 24 hours but most of the times, it can be there for less than 6 hours. That’s why stats always fluctuate and with that, you always need to have some sort of perfect timing to maximize your traffic with his blog.

Now as for FamousBloggers, I did start guest posting for that site last May and initially I don’t think there’s that many people in that community that were aware of my blog. Here are the initial stats:

As you can see with the numbers, back then nearly all of his readers don’t know my blog so its a whopping 94% new visits. I got a fairly good amount of traffic with 50 unique hits for that one guest posts and some followup comments throughout the entire month. Another nice return here is the page/visit stat. This is one of my determiner on whether the guest post is worth it or not. As you can see, each user nearly has visited 4 pages of my blog so it’s nearly 200 pageviews for that guest post and for me it’s an always nice indication.

After that one guest post I tried doing some other more to have a bigger picture on what I can really get on that blog in terms of exposure.

Now there’s a weird stuff here as far as this specific stat is concern. I was getting over 5 views per visit yet my bounce rate is 51.61%. Again the discussion between the difference between bounce rate and exit rate has been there for years. Anyways I’m still happy with the turnout of it thus far since I’m not getting a massive traffic yet, it’s targeted. Another thing that you can notice is that the % of new visits has gone down which means the goal of my guest posting campaigns there is already met.

But of course, it still doesn’t stop there. Just late last month up to this month, Hesham launched a $3500 cash contest and obviously I joined that considering the fact I’m obsessed with contest.

However, I was quite curious since if it’s a contest then maybe it could prove my theory that guest blogging contests really differs from normal guest posting campaigns in which not a lot of people really convert mainly because all they care about is the contest and not the intrinsic reasoning behind a guest post. Either way, I booked my spot and wrote a definitive guest post on blog commenting. Here’s how it turned out:

And it turns out I was right. 🙂 I got the most comment and retweet in that post but that’s simply because it’s a community contest and so the whole community was trying to help me out as well. But as far as converting them to click my author bio and go to my blog, not that much.

However, one thing I was happy about is that most of the readers of that blog are not anymore new to MelvinBlog. I started out with a new visits percentage of 94% and now its amazingly down to 13% which is really nice thing to have. Again the traffic wasn’t ever massive but conversion is everything and I can get 10 people to subscribe to my blog then its certainly better than 1000 bouncing readers.

How I do and prepare for that

Well most bloggers just do their guest post and leave it up in the air but I always prefer to welcome those new audience in the most polite way I can.

As I have been preaching for a long time, a landing page is a must. It’s because new visitors may not always like your current posts and if you direct them to your best posts instead, then you’re giving them an option to explore more which should be your goal anyways. Here’s a nice screenshot (again) of the my traffic when I direct people to my landing page:

So there ya go. You can see that by getting them to that page, they get to explore more and there’s a high chance that they will subscribe to your blog or follow you for quite a while. Heck even those who came from Google didn’t bounce that quick.

FamousBloggers Guest Post Conclusion

Actually there’s no conclusion yet, since I’m still going to do occassional guest posts on that blog. But for the moment it’s all good. One thing that blog has is an interactive community wherein you’ll expect almost 30+ comments on each and every of your guest posts. So with that, I know that I’m posting articles to real people, not just bots.

Drawbacks is that Hesham and his folks publish articles on an everyday basis so like John Chow’s blog, you get to have a small time in the featured area which is at the top. But even though, you can still get your guest post in their front page for almost a week so that’s still maximum exposure there.

Lesson learned here is to always look for new traffic sources. I mean last year this blog is unknown, and this year it’s one of the most popular blogs in this niche. You’ll never know so you just gotta keep finding that new traffic source and see how you can cater to it.

Now the mic up to you? Have yout tried guest posting on FamousBloggers? or maybe you can share some of your experience with guest posts?

What Type Of Blog Post Can Get You the Most Traffic?

by Melvin · Jun 30, 2010

This is the question that I got from a good friend couple of weeks back. I was about to post it last Monday but I got super busy. Anyways back to the topic. So you’re feeling good to write something you think would crush the blogosphere right? You sit down and wrote it, published it and boom, not much traffic. Where do I get wrong, maybe you’re asking.

Anyways first I’d like to answer the question first on what is the best day to post a good article? The answer (I know you’ll be disappointed) is it depends. Mostly and from my experience the best day is either Monday or Tuesday. This is when I mostly post my “pillar articles” as what Yaro Starak calls it. I was also inferred that Friday and Saturday are good days as well but as I’ve said it depends on the behavior of your readers.

So what type of blog post can get the most traffic? Here’s a list based on my own experience as well as some research. No particular order:

Personal posts

I talked about this in my post about personal posts and voyeurism. Again the reason why this type of post gets so much traffic is because people are always interested to know private things about the author and also add the fact that literally everyone can participate in this type of conversation. Once in a while, it’s nice to let our readers know that ‘hey Im human too and I screw up sometimes’ Here are some examples:

“How To” Type of Posts

Arguably and obviously the best way to get it done during high traffic days. “How to” posts are basically like definitive guides wherein you write an article with a minimum or longer than 1000 words. The reason it works well is obvious, it gets people to read more. And if you do this write, you will not only get a lot of traffic, you will also get a lot of links from other blogs in the blogosphere.

I have done a couple of this post in the past few years but this year I’m trying to do it more and more to provide the best value for my readers. Here’s my portfolio of my own how to posts:

Resource Guide

This is another type of post that seems to rake in instant traffic to a blog. Here in this blog, you really will not find that much but I know for most blogs this is usually there main driver of traffic for their sites. The reason this works so well is because people see it as handy, meaning something that they can bookmark or use for future use. And besides people love lists so no wonder why it does well. Ex:

Interviews With Other Bloggers

Actually this goes well specifically for interviewing high profile bloggers in your niche but for this I would like to use bloggers as a general example. This type of post can attract so much traffic mainly because most bloggers, if not all, love talking about themselves on where they’re up to lately! Instead of just you spreading the word, they help you spread the word and if they’re big enough, let alone their massive number of readers do the job for you. Examples:

Contest Posts

Contest posts are the type of posts that can get it done pretty quick. For obvious reasons, contest posts can very much get massive traffic, comments and attention in just a span of an hour. The cons though is that the long term effect and benefit of it is non-existing since people don’t need to read if it’s already done. In short, it’s time-sensitive. Examples:

Controversial Posts

Controversial posts can get an equally massive traction around if done properly. However, never ever do it for the sake of being controversial. Know what I mean? When you expose something or rant on someone, make sure you back up it up with facts, not just speculations. There’s a good chance that the traffic you will get can only do harm for you if you don’t do it correctly.

My favorite guy in doing is a dude named NickyCakes. Nick has been exposing and calling out on people especially if he thinks they suck. The good thing is he always backs it up with facts. But the one thing that you have to keep in mind when doing controversial posts is that you have to be ready for everything, regardless of you’re doing it right or you’re doing it wrong.

Linkbait Posts

Linkbait type of posts kind of like included in each and every type I mentioned above but the reason I had it seperately is because there are some bloggers out there who use compelling headlines alone to get massive traction.

I’m sure you’ve read intriguing titled posts wherein the content doesn’t really fall into the other type of posts I mentioned above. A good example of this are the April fools posts wherein it’s intriguing and that alone get so many people to read their stuffs.

There’s not much return in it because people are gonna either find it nice or they would get pissed off and it could result to a high percentage of visitors just bouncing off.

Conclusion

Those are the different types of posts that can potentially get the most traffic. So far I think I’ve done most of them and this blog post is more from my experience in blogging.

Also when considering on publishing on any of these posts make sure to spend an ample amount of time and work on them carefully. As I’ve said a lot of times already, it could completely go the other way and more likely just harm your blog if not done correctly.

That’s it for now, how about you do you have any types of guest post that works the most for you? or maybe you would want to share your own reason why some of them work so well?

Image credit to: http://hermawanputra.files.wordpress.com

Things I don’t Like with Guest Blogging Contests

by Melvin · Jun 12, 2010

Every summer it’s noticeable that contests spring up like mushroom as you can almost find them anywhere. In fact, here in this blog there is a current contest running that started this June. That being said, we can conclude that summer is contests season.

Anyways, the days where the contest is all about subscribing to feed, blogging about it, digging, stumbling it are probably gone. What you’d notice today is that a lot of bloggers have become more creative in creating their own contests. What’s in today is guest blogging contests which at the same I’d like to talk about.

The latest is the one that Smartbloggerz is currently running while the other same type of contest can be found here and there. That being said, guest blogging contests is something that will happen more in the future as its becoming the newest trend for contests.

Guest blogging has really exploded for the past 2 years now as evident with the whole scene. In fact some bloggers like Carl Ocab and even Problogger have already let the guest posters post majority of their content. Back to the contests, I can say I’m not really a big fan of those although I participate a lot into it. For me it’s kind of like ruining the whole guest posting strategy and here are my thoughts.

The Goal Becomes Different

People would argue about it since in order to win these contests you have to write good content right? The problem with this is that your focus shifts from reaping the benefits of a guest post featured to winning the contest all out. I mean normally with guest posts what I usually do is make sure the readers of that post will be catered as much as possible to my blog, get replies for their comments and me tracking numbers, optimizing whats working out and what’s not.

With contests, it becomes really different. Instead of doing things I listed above, I would then focus more on writing more and more guest posts for that contest, observe where am I currently standing, do I have a good chance of winning or not and things like that. Nothing really bad about but its like the true essence of doing guest posts diminishes.

Readers’ interaction Differs Considerably

Another thing I don’t like with it is that its really hard to reap the same benefits from it as oppose to writing a guest article for the sole purpose of making a guest post. I was tracking my stats (again my fave hobby, lols) and what I found out is that not a lot of people really read the article and go to your blog. For instance I wrote a guest post before and it gave me like 35% bounce rate to my site which is an exceptional rate. After quite some time I did another guest post with the same blog but this time just got a 69% rate. Of course things could vary depending on other factors but I’m sure the “contest” factor is one of the bigger factors.

When guest blogging becomes a contest, most of the consumers of the post becomes the contestant and oftentimes they are just lurking there to see and track how other contestants are doing.

Lesser Traffic

This is the obvious disadvantage of this. We, as guest posters will receive lesser traffic and obviously lesser bang for our efforts when we guest post more for the contest than for the intrinsic purpose of it. I mean if you see an awesome guest posts and then you saw a note saying “this is an entry to blah blah, join now and get a chance to win $XXXX”. I mean what would you do? Naturally we will participate. There’s really nothing to blame. You can’t blame the owner who hold the contest nor you can blame the sponsors that made that pot got that high. There’s no one to blame because its human nature, you see a contest related to you, odds are high that you’ll join it.

Overall, if guest blogging contests keep on growing more and more, it will definitely have a big impact on how traditional guest blogging works. With things I mentioned, it can be hard to really see the essence of doing guest posts aside from targeting those contest prizes.

But then I don’t have any problem with that (or just a small problem), in fact I’m even one of those who are competing to dominate win it. But still at the end of the day, you’re still gonna wonder where all of these things head into. What say you?

Bloggers, Its Time To Forget those Metrics

by Melvin · Jun 3, 2010

Each and every blogger who is just getting started is usually being taught about the different metrics and how each of those play a certain role on their blog. The metrics I’m pertaining to are: the Google Pagerank, the Alexa rank, the Technorati authority, the feed subscriber count, and even being included in those top 100 lists. From a hindsight, isn’t it exciting to witness each metric of your blog improve and attribute it to your blog’s growth?

Well, we cannot dismiss the fact that these metrics change as our blog’s popularity change but we should always not be too concerned with that or else we are going to harm our blog. I remember when my blog was just getting started. In 2 months I received a pr2 ranking and was like jumping up and down with excitement. I was really really ecstatic back then and thought I was hardcore.

Not too long after that, the blog was slapped back to pr0. I remember I even did a rant post claiming that Google was making a mistake of slapping my rankings. Funny enough the reasoning behind that was simple. I was selling links, doing black hat type of stuffs and just being bad. In short, I was not complying with Google”s guidelines.

Today I no longer care with Metrics

I bet that even people tell they don’t care that much with those ranking stuffs, they are still baffled. That was what I was like back then. I mean I was puzzled why these blogs have good Alexa rank yet they receive very few to no comments at all. Why is mine just in the 200k?

The main reason I actually stopped caring about those things is that its not helping me and my blog at all! I mean instead of focusing on producing good content to my readers, I would instead search ways on how to game Alexa or instead of marketing my blog more, I would research on why my blog is pr0.

Eventually I said “buggy this, I would stop being concerned with all these stuffs, instead I would just do what I would need to do”. And that was like the turning point for me from being an overly-conscious metric guy to being a real blogger.

If you’re still unaware, it’s about building relationships.

I always like to tell newcomers in blogging that its about connecting to your readers, building that relationship. It doesn’t happen overnight but instead on focusing on useless things, we as bloggers have to focus more on making that bond with other bloggers.

The thing about blogging is that it is such a friendly atmosphere. In fact we treat other bloggers as peers when in fact they are our competitors. That doesn’t happen in real world businesses.

So that’s the main point of this post. the metrics are good, sure it can feed our ego well, we can boast it in forums claiming ‘hey I have a better pr than you” or whatever. But at the end of the day, blogging is a person-to person relationship, not technology and script driven activity.

Can you sell your own product just because you have a high Alexa and pagerank? Does it mean you’re credible just because you’re in the top 500 list of some random guy? Naah! But when you build those relationships with your readers w/c are your potential customers, you don’t even need a thousand of people a day. All you need is a fraction of that. Believe me.

MelvinBlog’s Best Blog Marketing Tip Contest

by Melvin · May 31, 2010

Update: This contest has been extended up to July 25. For more info, read here:

It has finally come. Today I am bringing you probably the largest contest in the history of MelvinBlog Dot Com. This contest commemorates the second year of this blog (funny how I thought its 3 years) and as I’ve planned, we’ll celebrate it with a big bang!

I have been preparing this contest since early last month and I want to make sure that my contest is going to be different. Different in the sense that first, it will add a HUGE value to the blogosphere and second, that every blogger, big or small has an equal chance of winning. I’m very proud to have had this contest finally polished.

Introducing the MelvinBlog’s Best Blog Marketing Tip Contest

This contest says it all. The contest will be about blog marketing which is part of what this blog tackles on an everyday basis. The idea of the contest came after I witnessed (and won) the same type of contest held by Market Leverage w/c is entitled Affiliate Marketing Secrets Contest. I’d like to first and foremost thank and introduce to you guys my media partner slash sponsor for this one. It is Fergal Crawley of the Business Advice Forum who will be handling all the promotions and stuffs for this contest. By the way Business Advice Forum is a good community forum giving out free business advice both to online and offline business forums. Its a nice forum so I highly suggest for you to check it out.

And to the sponsors. I can’t believe we were able to get this much prize for the contest. Compared to last year’s contest, we basically doubled the amount of the prizes and Im really thankful for the sponsors for that. As you know me, I just don’t get every Dick and Harry as sponsors. We got reputable and popular internet marketers as well as established companies that backed us up in this contest and again I’m giving them my biggest appreciation for helping out.

Contest Mechanics

So this contest like I’ve said is a creative writing contest. In order to gain an entry, the blogger/contestant has to write a blog post on his blog about his best blog marketing tip. That certain blog post accounts for 1 entry. Each blogger can submit up to 5 entries all throughout the duration of the contest. There is no rule aside from that the post has to be original, must never have been copied somewhere.

Each entry has to link back to this contest post so I can track all the entries. The link bank can either be in the beginning or at the end of the post. To be uniform with everyone, you can just copy and paste this line:

This post is an entry to MelvinBlog’s Best Blog Marketing Tip contest where there are $2000 worth of prizes at stake.

There will be 3 winners overall and they are gonna get determined by two factors: quality of posts, and popularity. In terms of quality, I have hired 4 judges who are gonna gracefully judge all the entries. I really like to disclose their names but I was told its better not to. Popularity on the other hand, is just about the no.of retweets and comments. So to increase your entries’ popularity, you have to at least give maximum exposure to it (letting it in front for more days means better). Lastly, the criteria is 70 to 30, the higher one goes for quality while the latter is for the popularity.

The popularity factor which is 30% hinges on few metrics which include the no.of retweets of that certain post and amount of comments. I’d like to point out that the popularity criteria is just 30% because I want to give a fair chance of winning especially to those smaller bloggers.

Just for this mechanics alone, I have created a sample entry located of course on my personal blog. (this is just a sample). You can use it as a reference.

Prizes

A little side note: Like in the previous year’s contest, I don’t want to boast just the value of the prizes based on its financial worth. I’m sure there are a lot of eBooks out there thrown for $1000 and by giving 5 copies, it would already be $5000 worth of prizes in a contest, lols. Fortunately, this is not. Like last year, I tried to gather the best prizes from the best people in this space. So just by looking on who they are you will know what I mean. 😉

1st Place – Total at stake = $877

6 months free for the standard package of CrazyEgg valued at $19 a month – $114 value
1 character design courtesy of LogoNerds – $97 value
1 multi-use package of Themewars premium theme – $70 value
WordPress SEO service courtesy of ShoutMeLoud.com – $250 value
1 First Class Package of Ultimate Blogging Theme 3.0 – $147 value
1 license of OIO Publisher – $47 value
$20 cash from FamousBloggers.com – $20
6 months free Web hosting courtesy of MelvinBlog.com – $45 value
1 copy of Killer Domains eBook by Daniel Scocco – $17 value
Premium Interview featured here in MelvinBlog.com – $70 value

2nd Place – Total at stake = $504

$50 cash and one year PRO membership for MyBlogGuest – $170 value
1 copy of Blogussion Thesis theme package – $46 value
1 character design courtesy of LogoNerds – $97 value
1 license of OIO Publisher – $47 value
1 copy of Crowbar Content courtesy of Buzz Marketing guru Dean Hunt – $97
1 copy of Killer Domains eBook by Daniel Scocco – $17 value
$15 cash from BlogTactic
1 copy of 70 Posting Ideas courtesy of Liane – $15

3rd Place – $302

1 copy of Gab Fire Theme – $59 value
1 year membership for ElegantThemes -$19
$15 cash, one advertising space and one copy of Facebook ad coupon eBook valued at $15 courtesy of Smartbloggerz.com – $54 total value
1 copy of Easy Blog Traffic worth $59, Insider SEO Revealed at $39 and Twitter Marketing Power worth $57 courtesy of WebTrafficROI.com
1 copy of Thirtyday blog eBook by Jimvesting – $15 value
1 copy of 70 Posting Ideas courtesy of Liane – $15

Retweet Contest

Due to some demands and also taking this advice from some of my blogger friends’, I would be running a totally separate contest on Twitter which is all about marketing this contest through Twitter. So in order to enter the retweet contest all you have to do is retweet this post using the tweetmeme button above or copying this text and pasting it directly to your twitter:

“RT @melvinblog, Best Blog Marketing Contest, win over $2000+ in REAL prizes http://bit.ly/bestblogcontest pls RT “

You can modify the text or do it your own way, just make sure you append the @melvinblog reply so I can easily track all the entries. This small contest would run the same as the main contest and would end after one and a half months so do keep on tweeting. At the end of the duration, 10 lucky entries will be drawn and will receive each of the following:

1 copy of Blogussion Thesis theme package – $46 value
1 copy of Gab Fire Theme – $59 value
1 multi-use package of Themewars premium theme – $70 value
3 copy of Killer Domains eBook by Daniel Scocco – $51 value
1 copy of Social Media Marketing Book & Youtube Made Simple Video Series courtesy of WebTrafficROI
3 copy of Thirtyday blog eBook by Jimvesting – $60 value

Some Secret Contests

To add another layer of excitement (or confusion, whichever you prefer), I’d like to include some other contests that may go live along the way. Not really secret, but more of short contests within the main contests, that can make this whole thing more exciting and the best is that it gives more opportunity for the participants to win.

So lets say, you don’t have a tip. Still you can join the retweet contest and some secret contests that I am going to throw as well. So what’s the best way not to miss these other exciting hidden contests? Well make sure you’re subscribed to the blog, so you don’t miss anything out. 😉

Duration & Other Rules

The contest would run for one a half months and it will end on July 15th 12 am ET. After that date, no more entries will get accepted so make sure you start working on your entries right now. Also please give us 5-7 days max to compute all the stats and announce the winners (patience is virtue my friend).

Questions, Clarifications, Suggestions?

No contest is perfect, most are faulty especially at the start. If you have anything to ask, clarify, suggest or criticize, feel free to do so in the comment form. Remember that good contests are good not mainly because of the prizes, but also with the participation from the audience like you. 😉

I will reserve this space for other rules which I dont have at the moment. But Im sure this comment box will get populated as soon as possible. And that would only be probable, if you start asking questions now. 😉

Note: An update and clarification on contest was published here. It also contains the official FAQ

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.

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?