In the last post, I wrote an extensive guide on how to use blog networking to build solid relationships and skyrocket your traffic. If you haven’t read it yet, I definitely recommend giving it a look (and read it through – it’s worth it).

Because we all know that networking is crucial if you want your business to see amazing growth (I talked about this in my massive networking guide, so I won’t get into it here). But how crucial is networking really?

Photo by Hamed Saber (flickr)

Well get ready to get inspired, because today I have for you four special guests experienced in the networking arena: Tristan from Blogging Bookshelf, Marlee from Metamorphoself, Jk from The Hustler’s Notebook, and Marcus from The Sales Lion. I talked about them briefly in my networking guide, but the fact of the matter is – these people are rocking the blogosphere. They all have large, growing audiences, and they’ve all agreed to share their secrets on how you can increase traffic, better engage with your audience, and build ongoing relationships with the people you interact with.

Are you ready?

I hope you enjoy these interviews. After reading, I encourage you to check each blogger out, read a few posts, and subscribe to the blog. They really write some amazing stuff.

Then when you’re done, get networking!

Here’s what we’re going to talk about.

• The meaning behind networking
• How each blogger managed to create such a tremendous following (including tactics not networking-related)
• The main benefits of maintaining a network
• What each blogger does to network now and which tasks are done more than others
• What bloggers hesitant about reaching out and expanding their network should do and why they should do it

Let’s begin.

Tristan Higbee from Blogging Bookshelf

• When you hear the word “networking,” what comes to mind?

  When I hear the word “networking,” the first thing that comes to mind is a scuzzball pyramid scheme guy trying to take me out to lunch just so he can get me to buy his knives or lotion or magic elixir or whatever crap it is that he’s trying to pawn his soul for.

  Phew. So… Yeah, not a good connotation.

  What I think networking really means is just interacting with people like you normally would (ie, honestly and genuinely) but keeping in the back of your mind if/how the relationship can be mutually beneficial from a business or blogging or whatever standpoint. Real relationships need to come first and if you can benefit from those relationships in another way in the future, awesome.

• From what I understand, you’ve built a growing blog readership because of your willingness to help others. How did you create such a tremendous following?

  My “secret” behind creating a following online is simple, though of course it’s easier said than done. I think there are three components: 1) make sure your personality comes through in your writing and interactions, 2) provide the best content, and 3) be a nice person and interact with people genuinely. Networking falls into that last one, of course.

  I know a lot of people reading this will have just glossed over that “best content” part and nodded, but stop and think hard about it for a second. Are you providing the best content in your niche? Is your content different from the rest of the dreck in the blogosphere? Are you writing about something that isn’t common knowledge and that your readers haven’t heard a bazillion times already?

• If you could pick any one main benefit from networking, what would it be?

  Yeah of course! Networking is an essential part of any success my blog has seen. What’s the one main benefit? Hmmm… Good question. I guess I’d have to say leverage. My potential readership (and potential customer base) is not only the X number of people that read my blog, but it’s also all the people that read the blogs of my online buddies.

  For example, when I launch my first product in the near future, yes, I’ll launch it to those people who read my blog. But then some of the people I’ve established a good relationship online with will also help me launch and promote that product. So my email list of X number of people is in reality a list of thousands of people more than that. THAT is what I mean by leverage.

• How do you network now? Is there anything that you do regularly?

  I regularly comment on other people’s blogs (though I’ve curtailed this a bit recently as I’ve been working hard on product creation). I freely share other bloggers’ content via Twitter or other social media/social bookmarking sites. I regularly guest post on other blogs. And I regularly reply to just about every comment on my blog (I know some slip through the cracks!).

• If you were face-to-face with a blogger hesitant about reaching out and expanding their network, what advice would you give him/her?

  Stop blogging, because you’re just wasting your time. A blog without networking is a blog that will not see the level of success you want.

Marlee Ward from Metamorphoself

• When you hear the word “networking,” what comes to mind?

  I come from a corporate/legal background so I typically associate “networking” as a business card exchange festival. That said, “social networking” is a totally different ballgame and when I think of “social networking” I think of making new friends with similar interests.

• From what I understand, you’ve built a growing blog readership because of your willingness to help others. How did you create such a tremendous following?

  I wouldn’t call it a “following” by any measure, but I’ve definitely acquired an incredible community of supportive readers. I think I was able to establish this readership because I take a sincere interest in learning about my readers and what they are up to. For me, it’s about them. I learn from them and get great ideas for my content from their contributions. I think there is a huge element of reciprocity at play when it comes to my relationship with the Metamorphoself community.

• If you could pick any one main benefit from networking, what would it be?

  If I could pinpoint any one specific benefit from networking it would be getting exposed to other individuals I might not otherwise come in contact with. For example, when I connect with someone online and start to learn about what they do and who they interact with, I’m then exposed to their whole world, which often times is new to me. It’s also great because if there is someone in their world that I’d like an introduction to, I can comfortably ask for one.

• How do you network now? Is there anything that you do regularly?

  In my opinion, networking should be about relationship building and increased Web traffic can be a pleasant side effect. That said, I don’t think networking is an efficient strategy for growing Web traffic. If you are sincere about your networking efforts, then it will take time, and as a result, traffic will grow over time as well. Of course, blog commenting can be an effective blog marketing strategy; however that is also time consuming, so in terms of generating traffic, I wouldn’t recommend it. Personally, I try to comment regularly on my community’s blogs because I enjoy having a presence in what they do. I also make an effort to send a brief and personalized e-mail to someone if I really like what they are doing or have a specific question. Taking the extra effort to write a personalized e-mail is a great way to establish that first solid connection.

• If you were face-to-face with a blogger hesitant about reaching out and expanding their network, what advice would you give him/her?

  Get over it! Seriously. That may sound harsh, but the truth is that you cannot and do not want to blog (or grow your online business) alone. You need support, word-of-mouth recommendations, and a community if you’re going to gain traction online, and that requires establishing relationships online.

  In terms of a practical first step, use Twitter to connect with someone. Find someone you want to connect with and “follow” them. Then, immediately send an @ reply telling them why you “followed” them. Typically, people actively using Twitter notice those things, and you can gradually move towards more “intimate” methods of communication.

  Oh… and really… it’s not a big deal if you get ignored. Don’t take it personally. You never know what’s going on with the person you’re trying to reach. If they don’t respond, don’t spend a minute thinking about it or letting it stop you from making another attempt to connect with someone else. The beauty of connecting via the Web is that you don’t have much to lose – what’s one tweet, e-mail, or comment? Go for it! You can even start with me!

Jk from The Hustler’s Notebook

• When you hear the word “networking,” what comes to mind?

  When I heard the word networking, I immediately think “connection.” I identify it as the concept of working towards building effective and mutually benefiting relationships with other people. Networking as an opportunity to team-up with others to share ideas, strategies, support, and partner towards a common goal.

  Networking requires time and effort to cultivate trust and credibility. It’s not about trying to “get in” with people with a hidden agenda or the sole benefit of one side of the party.

• From what I understand, you’ve built a growing blog readership because of your willingness to help others. How did you create such a tremendous following?

  I think, more than anything, it comes down to the fact that I’m really out to help people.

  I’ve been blogging now for 9 months and I vividly recall how clueless I was when I first started out. I reached out to so many people and rarely did people respond or take the time to extend their hand to me. I saw this as a great opportunity for my brand to shine, because even though my time is extremely limited, I will always make time to help out someone who asks. And honestly, what most would say is that I extend my assistance without being asked first. I truly just like helping others.

  On another level, I help others by not forcing content. I’m not in the numbers game, rather the quality game. I only publish what comes to my heart. My underlying mission with blogging is to offer what I have as value, and hopefully motivate and inspire a few folks along the way. I’m not in this game to have the most posts… I’m in it to help as many people as I can.

• If you could pick any one main benefit from networking, what would it be?

  I have benefited from networking big time. More than anything, it’s been from building solid relationships that have turned into real friendships that I’m confident that I will have forever. Also, I’ve made some great business connections with folks who have my best interests at hand (and I have theirs).

  Beyond the blogging aspect, I’ve benefited even further from my networking efforts. I have some large and significant things on the radar that I can elaborate on in months to come.

• How do you network now? Is there anything that you do regularly?

  For me, networking isn’t for creating blog traffic, but it has been a natural effect. One of the biggest things that contribute to my traffic is forming meaningful relationships with many of my readers; in most cases before they even come to my blog. These relationships have lead to having my articles linked to and other mentions which increased my traffic.

  But on a more consistent basis, hitting the blogoshpere and commenting on other blogs is a great indirect level of networking. I think my style of commenting stands out because it’s consistent and honest… I don’t hold back. I don’t comment for length, but I do try to share a personal experience if I can to add to the discussion.

  Just a few weeks ago, I received 25% of my traffic directly from Marcus Sheridan’s blog: TheSalesLion.com after he mentioned me on one of his articles (which he’s done a number of times and I’m thankful). The traffic increase lasted over a 4 day period.

• If you were face-to-face with a blogger hesitant about reaching out and expanding their network, what advice would you give him/her?

  I would advise that his/her chances of survival are poor if they made the unwise choice to not network… and their chances of being successful are not applicable. From the way I see it, failing to connect with others in the blogoshere is a suicidal play (sorry for the harsh analogy), especially to not connect with folks in the same niche.

  From what I can see, and I don’t wear glasses, the most successful bloggers have the most successful networks. Meaning, that they have figured out how to leverage the power behind key links of their network to help push their cause.

Marcus Sheridan from The Sales Lion

• When you hear the word “networking,” what comes to mind?

  If you’d asked me this question a year ago, I would have thought networking was a silly phrase for when people ‘work together.’ But today, I can honestly say it means everything to me in terms of online success and community. When I think of networking, I think of a group of like-minded persons all working together in an effort to lift up and inspire. I think of unselfishness. And I think of people that are more concerned about helping others than they are themselves.

• From what I understand, you’ve built a growing blog readership because of your willingness to help others. How did you create such a tremendous following?

  Well, it’s not easy, but the fact of the matter is if a blogger wants to have a great readership, they need to constantly think of ways to help and lift up the community. They need to learn to promote others way more than they do themselves. They must learn to give value too through great content, but also understand the power of ‘giving back,’ at every opportunity. In a nutshell, my community rocks because:

  • 1. I promote them
  • 2. We actually have ‘discussion.’
  • 3. I don’t talk down to them.
  • 4. I write like I talk… and keep it loose and fun.
  • 5. I answer every comment.
  • 6. I initiate and invite comments and participation through questions, requests, etc.
  • 7. I see ‘us’ as a ‘team.’
• If you could pick any one main benefit from networking, what would it be?

  This may sound cheesy, but my biggest benefit from networking is forming incredible relationships that are real and genuine with some amazing people – ones that I’ve literally grown to care deeply for.

• How do you network now? Is there anything that you do regularly?
  • I constantly mention and promote other bloggers, especially in my articles.
  • I write from personal experience, so the articles aren’t re-reads and they’re all unique.
  • I have opinions and am not afraid to express them.
  • I don’t regurgitate the latest ‘bestseller.’
• If you were face-to-face with a blogger hesitant about reaching out and expanding their network, what advice would you give him/her?

  The reality is that this person either needs to:

  • A. Quit blogging.
  • B. Keep blogging but accept the fact that their traffic will suck forever.
  • C. Douse their head in water, wake up, and start learning to live the law of reciprocity, karma, and community.

Your Turn

So what do you think? Can you add any advice of your own to the discussion? Do you like any particular networking method better than another? Which methods are you going to try?

Let’s get this conversation started! Look forward to hearing from you.

Related Posts:

1. The Complete Blog Networking Guide: Build Solid Relationships and Skyrocket Your Traffic
2. Do You Read Like an Encyclopedia? What You’re Forgetting and How to Fix It

First, I just wanted to extend a special welcome to the Smart Passive Income visitors coming through here (hello!). If you like this post, feel free to subscribe to the blog so that you can receive more updates when awesome posts like this one are published.

For everyone else, here’s the surprise you’ve been waiting for (video is below). I hope you enjoy!

If you can’t see it, click here to view the post directly (for RSS and email subscribers). To check the video out on YouTube, click here.

In the video, I discuss my take on networking. I also talk about a trend I’ve noticed on other blogs and the major mistake most new bloggers make that ultimately doom their businesses to failure (and how to avoid it). But you have to watch the video if you want to know the awesome networking trend I’ve discovered (I don’t mention it anywhere else). Plus, you’ll have the pleasure of watching me utterly humiliate myself on cam!

Special Note: I recently got a new cam (Logitech 1080p Webcam Pro C910 – ref link), and the quality is seriously incredible! If you’re thinking about video blogging, I totally recommend checking it out! Watch the above video for an example.

Many of you may remember a few weeks ago when I talked about the power of networking and why getting personal is crucial for any online business (or offline, for that matter). Well, today I want to take that idea to a whole new level and break down the concept of networking piece-by-piece. After today, you’ll be a blog networking pro, and hopefully you’ll have learned a great deal on how to build solid relationships with other bloggers, reach thousands (and even millions) of potential readers, and skyrocket your subscriber count.

Because, honestly, networking is crucial if you want to get noticed – and get noticed quickly. You need networking to create a profitable, fulfilling business or blog.

Then on Wednesday you’ll get a glimpse of how top bloggers use networking to build a rapid audience and take their blogs to levels they never thought possible (yes, you’ll see interviews from my buddies Tristan of Blogging Bookshelf, Marcus of The Sales Lion, Marlee of Metamorphoself, and Jk of The Hustler’s Notebook).

Let’s dive in.

Blog Networking Defined – What Makes a Network?

In short, networking is all about building connections – or friendships – with other people who will then support you along your blogging journey, share your stuff, link to you, or simply be there when you need a listening ear.

I like to think of networking as establishing a community or family of bloggers who will learn, share, and grow with you as you build a presence and make a difference in the world through your blog or business. In fact, if you really work on growing your network and building sustaining relationships with the people you admire, you can then open the doors to so many other opportunities.

Networking is powerful. It can give your life renewed meaning and purpose (just like it gave mine). It can make you feel so connected with everyone and the community, that every time you drop by your blog and read the new comments awaiting a response (and if you network, you WILL get comments), you’ll feel like you’ve come home.

Networking can make blogging worthwhile and exciting.

And to better understand the true power of networking, read this snippet, taken from my popular post Do You Read Like an Encyclopedia?:

By lending a helping hand, getting to know and engaging with another blogger in your niche, sharing and linking to his (or her) stuff, guest posting on his blog, and showing him that you’re a real human being with thoughts, feelings, and emotions, you build a framework that will later reward you a hundred fold. Maybe it won’t be right away, but the relationships you build and connections you cultivate will help tremendously in the growth of your blog and character. It’s exciting, it really is. And there’s nothing like the feeling of being in a community of like-minded persons – nothing.

You ready to get started? Let’s get more specific about what networking can do for you and the other people involved.

So Why Network Anyway?

Networking has tremendous benefits. And many bloggers probably wouldn’t be where they are today without taking the time to network.

Though there are more, here are a few reasons why you should put networking on your agenda.

You Make a Difference

How would it feel to wake up one morning and know that, at some point today, you’re going to make someone smile?

You see, networking is so much more than just the potential gain you’ll receive from the interaction. By reaching out and helping those around you, you can actively make a difference in the lives of those you contact. Through your support, others will find the confidence to reach their full potential. By showing that you genuinely care and by looking out for those around you, not only will you feel seriously good about yourself but you would have created such an amazing impact on the people involved that they’ll want to thank you a hundred times over.

And there will come a time when you’ll need some looking after, and someone will be there to cushion your fall.

No More Social Neglect

Humans are social creatures. We need to interact with other human beings, and the Internet can be a lonely place without talking to your coworker every day like you would at a 9 to 5 job. While it’s not too bad for us bloggers, it still can get pretty lonely if we have no one cheering us on or lending his support.

A blog network doesn’t just satisfy the human need for social interaction, but it also gives us the opportunity to build strong relationships that will last a lifetime. By networking, we can learn and grow with other like-minded people across the globe; it gives us a sense of community – a sense of being – that even all the money in the world can’t come close to competing with.

And no one wants to be alone; we all want to know that we’re cared for, and we all need someone to care about. That’s why friends exist. And that’s what networking is essentially about – creating friendships.

Build a Massive Following

Finding people who will support you 100% of the way – everyday – can be difficult for some. And that’s why a blog network is critical. Without admirers and people who care about your message, you have no business.

But with a supportive network of people who truly care about what you’re about, you can reach new heights and attract a larger audience. A network of admirers is far more likely to share and link to your stuff, promote your products, and spread your message. Some people even depend on their network for finding new jobs or clients.

As a blogger, you have an advantage. I’m constantly amazed at how supportive this blogging community can be; everyone is so friendly and there will always be people willing to help you out of a tight spot.

Make them Fall in Love

Most people look for social proof when buying a product or visiting a blog for the first time. So what if someone were to visit several blogs in your network of friends and hear nothing but crazy good things about you? What if that same person could then visit your blog and discover over a hundred comments on several different blog posts, all emitting an overwhelming level of support?

Do you think that visitor would stick around?

You bet he would – and that’s what networking will do for you. It will increase your level of authority and popularity in the eyes of the reader, heightening value and making your site worth sticking around.

Unlimited Access to Connections and Contacts

There’s nothing worse than needing something done (like graphic design work, programming, or the occasional article) and not knowing where to look. Lucky for you, with a network you don’t have that problem.

A blog network allows you to expand your reach, and it gives you more access to the people in your community. After all, most of the people in your network will already have a solid network of their own built; so the more people you contact, the more connections you make and the even more opportunities you uncover. And most people in your network will be happy to recommend you over to someone in their own circle of friends when you need a client or project to get done.

There’s Nothing Like Team Work

Struggling on your next blog post? Why not bounce new ideas off of your network?

A network can be a great way to collaborate with other bloggers, learn something new, improve your skills while also acquiring new ones, and simply pick up awesome ideas that you wouldn’t have discovered without talking to someone.

Sometimes, someone in your network may even want to launch a new product with you or coauthor a book – and that’s a whole new level of collaboration that can be well worth the time spent for the money you earn as a result of the the venture.

Engage with New Audiences

Each person that you interact with in your network will have a whole new fan-base unique to them. If that person then mentions you in a blog post, you are exposed to a new set of eyes who can potentially check you out, subscribe to your blog, and buy your stuff. And who doesn’t want more traffic (and more income to boot)?

You can also interact with other blog communities (and attract new readers) by writing comments or guest posts. Comments help you get on another blogger’s radar, and this can be a great starting point for making new connections. But I’ll explain this later.

Unlock More Opportunities

There are many benefits to networking, and one of them is definitely the occasional act of kindness someone in your network will bestow upon you. This act of kindness is often random, and it can be anything from a blog mention to a gift sent to your mailbox.

For example, I’ve known Marlee, the awesome author behind Metamorphoself (check her out – you don’t know what you’re missing!), for a long time now. I met her during my earlier stages of blogging, and ever since, she’s become one of my closest friends in the blogosphere. Not only has she gotten me out of tight spots more than once, but she also actually mailed me a free P90X cardio CD one day because of the awesome friendship we had developed. I didn’t ask for it – so you can definitely imagine how surprised, excited, and utterly happy I was when I realized what she’d done.

As a result, she’s gotten my undying devotion; I mention her every chance I get (such as this one), I’m constantly referring other people to her website, I’ve given her free ebook copies, and I’ll continue to give back long into the future.

That’s the power of networking – helping each other out when it matters.

6 Ways to Network Like a Pro

So you know how important networking is to building a thriving business, but are you ready to start making things happen?

Photo by Yutaka Tsutano (flickr)

I can just see you’re all excited and ready to go. There are different ways you can put networking into practice. Try following these steps in order, and feel free to experiment to get a feel of which tactics you like most.

• Social Media – Some people, when they think of networking, they think of social media – a term describing various networks like Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg, and so on. But while social media can be useful to get your message across, I wouldn’t depend on them alone. Getting active on social media is a good start though, and it’s a nice way to supplement your other networking activities. But don’t be a jack-of-all-trades; it’s more rewarding to master one social network at a time than be a member of several and master of none.
• Tribes – I’m pretty new to the whole concept of tribes, but I must confess that I love the idea behind them. I use a free program called Triberr to manage the people in my network (though not all), and the site can actually be a great starting point to developing a nice network of supporting followers.

  With Triberr, you basically group with a bunch of people you know, admire, and like to promote their content and drive more visitors (Twitter followers) to their site. In other words, once you join a tribe, you’ll automatically start tweeting tribe members’ posts as they get published (and they will do the same for you). So, the more total Twitter followers your tribe has, the more potential traffic you receive after publishing a new post. I’ll be writing a Triberr review soon, but that’s the main idea.

  In order to make this work, you do need a Twitter account though (and I love Twitter – I recommend it to anyone who’s undecided about which social network to work on first). It’s also recommended (and seriously encouraged) to only tribe with people you already have come to know and like (if you don’t know some people in a tribe, visit their site to see if they write valuable content), because you’ll be essentially promoting their stuff and you don’t want to promote content you don’t believe in (or utter crap).

  You also need an invite to join (you can’t just join – though you can submit a tribe request). I own three tribes in the blogging tips, entrepreneurship, and business categories, so if you blog about any of those three topics and you want to tribe, send over an email and I’ll check your site out (keep in mind that I will only tribe with bloggers who write quality, super awesome content; in other words, people who care about their audience and actively work to provide them with value).

• Comments – This includes commenting on other blogs and replying to comments on your blog. Commenting on other blogs is a really good starting point to building an ongoing relationship with another blogger. But don’t end it there! Use comments as a foundation for building that bond, then supplement commenting with more advanced tactics of networking, which I mention in a moment.

  I highly recommend to comment a lot and comment often. By simply spending a few hours (or even just an hour) each day contributing to the discussions on other blogs, you create a sturdy foundation in which to build your networking efforts on. Plus, you’ll also receive valuable readers who will visit your blog simply because of the awesome comments that you leave.

  Tristan Higbee is THE god of commenting. If there’s anyone that can teach you how to leave awesome comments WHILE getting seriously crazy amounts of traffic, it’s him. Check out these freaken amazing posts written by the god himself: 10 Ways to Find TONS of Blogs to Comment On, How to Comment on LOTS of Blogs FAST, and How to Guarantee 100 Comments on a Blog Post.

• Email – Email is an awesome way to get on another blogger’s radar, but only if you use it right. Never SPAM and always keep your emails short (other bloggers have busy lives too you know!). I recommend following Leo’s awesome guide to writing short, effective emails.
• Phone – How often do you get a phone call from another blogger (seriously)?

  If you’re like most people, probably never. While I haven’t tried it, I did hear from the amazingly incredible Mufasa himself that simply picking up the phone to say hi (or, in this case, congratulate a certain person for getting featured on a certain website) is incredibly effective – and it definitely goes the extra mile.

• Awesomeness – Everyone is awesome in my book, but there’s only a certain level of awesomeness that goes way above and beyond awesome – if you get my meaning. Basically, if you really want to catch someone else’s attention, go the extra mile. And I’ll talk more about this in a bit.

Wonderful! So we now know what we should be doing to build up that awesome network of ours. But how do we do it?

Well, never fear – I told you that you’re going to be a networking pro after reading this article, and I meant it. So put on those boots and take out that apron. We’re going to get our hands dirty!

The Step-By-Step Blog Networking Guide

Ready to network like a rock star? In this section, I’ve got you covered!

Here, you’ll learn step-by-step how to put your networking knowledge to use. And there’s no rush! Follow this guide at your own pace.

1. Week 1: Create your network. Who do you want to network with? Do you admire anyone in particular? Does someone with potential need a traffic boost? Make a list, and actively work to reach out to the people on that list.

   I keep what I call a business binder, and what I like to do is make a list of my complete network in the “blogging tribe” section of the binder. In a way, I view my network as a tribe community, where everyone grows together and looks after one another. Here, I’ll keep a record of important networking information – things like the person’s name, blog url, Twitter username (since I’m the most active on Twitter), and how frequently the person posts (every Monday and Thursday?). Then, on my RSS feed reader (I use Google Reader), I’ll have a separate section for my network (usually at the top of list).

   This way, I’m more organized and can set a specific time each day to devote to my tribe. I really recommend that you use a similar model. And if possible, totally pick up a binder – this is the binder I use (aff link).

2. Week 2: Build the Foundation. Once you’ve made your list, you’ll want to first get on the person’s radar. You can do this by following your network on Twitter (or any other social network that you’re active on) and regularly reading/commenting on new blog posts.

   Don’t just comment to comment though (don’t say, “Hi – nice blog” and move on) – add something to the discussion. Write valuable, meaningful stuff that will entice the author to want to learn more about you. Show that you know what you’re talking about and that you actually read the article you’re commenting on.

   And don’t just drop off the edge of the earth after you’ve read and commented on a few posts either; stay consistent. Devote a couple hours each week (or day) to your network. If you need help with writing awesome comments, check out this post.

3. Week 4: Attract his attention. After a few weeks of awesome comments (once you’ve got the hang of it), start responding to comments other people leave on the same posts you comment on. Answer questions, give your two cents, be active in the discussion – show the author that you value his community.

   Start tweeting, liking, or stumbling (depending on your desired social network) the posts that you like now too. It’s a good idea to also personalize your tweets (check out Marcus’s post for an awesome guide). While commenting, you may even notice the trend I talked about in the video – feel free to visit those blogs as well, and add them to your network if you like their stuff. Keep at it and stay consistent.

   You should also check out, read, and comment on some of the posts in the blog archives (past posts that were written in previous months). Don’t get too crazy overboard though – go steady and only comment on a few posts a day (on the same blog).

4. Week 6: Make contact. So it’s been a while, and you’re happy with how your network is developing. You’ve probably even gotten a few thank you messages too from people in your network. Now it’s time to send them an email (and maybe even a tweet) telling them how awesome they are (don’t talk to please – say what you really think, and mean what you say).

   A simple message that reads, “Hi. I’ve been following your blog for quite a while, and I’m really impressed with what you’re doing over at (blog name). I think you’re awesome. I’d love to chat sometime,” and some personalizing will do.

   Be genuine, and continue to actively read, tweet, and comment on the person’s blog posts as they get published. And if the people in your network are interested in further communication, start chatting! Get to know them on a more personal level – bounce off ideas. Once you’re comfortable, you can even start talking on the phone.

5. Week 7: Be a valuable contributor. By now you’ve probably created an awesome bond between yourself and your network. It’s time to really contribute to their blogs – and by that I mean guest post. Guest posts are a HUGE help – and, if you can write decently well, your network will thank you for the contributions. Guest posts also help increase traffic to your blog (more subscribers are always good), since most bloggers will allow a link to your blog in the author bio section of the guest post.

   Before making contact though, make sure you have an idea of what you want to write about. In an email, tell the blogger that you want to help out, share your idea, and wait for a response. Most bloggers will have specific requirements for the guest posts that they publish, so don’t feel bad if the blogger asks for a draft of the post first before making the decision. You can even just send over the completed guest post in the first email and simply ask if the blogger has use for it. If not, feel free to edit and send the guest post to another person in your network (make sure niches are relevant).

   But don’t promise to guest post on too many blogs at once – that can quickly burn you out (trust me, I know). Try writing only one guest post a week in the beginning (or even one per month). Then slowly increase your guest posting frequency until you’re comfortable with the pace. Make guest posting a habit (not necessarily on the same blog, but on other blogs in your network). If the people in your network are OK with it, you can even try guest posting for them every 3-6 months.

6. Week 8+: Be amazing. Check out the section “How to Seriously Blow Your Network Away” further down the page for more details on how you can do this (highly recommended!).

In three months, you should be well on your way to building an amazing network of supporters. By week 10, you should be reading other blogs on a regular basis, consistently commenting on blogs in your network, regularly responding to comments on other blogs, tweeting (liking, stumbling, whatever) posts you like, personalizing your tweets (likes, stumbles, whatever), guest posting every now and then, and chatting with your network occasionally.

You should have also built a network of at least 10 awesome peeps, followed everyone with some sort of social network (Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, etc.), sent your first email to everyone in your network, guest posted on the blogs of at least 25-100% of your network, commented on at least 5 archived posts, and did something incredibly amazing (I’ll talk about this soon) for at least 25% of your blog network.

Stuck on Your First Network? Check Out these Awesome People

Since many of you are probably new to blogging (or at least networking), I thought I’d recommend some awesome bloggers in my own network who also value the power of community. Many of them already have a large following (it’s easy to see why), and all of them are amazing in their own rights.

So feel free to browse the list below, check out their blogs, and, if you like what you see (which I’m sure you will), add them to your RSS feeds (or email subscriptions), and start networking! Don’t forget to follow the guide above, and keep reading on after you’re done to learn how you can put the “awesome” into networking and blow your network away.

List isn’t in any particular order.

Marcus Sheridan

Marcus, or who some like to call Mufasa or Aslan, is one of the nicest, most awesome people I know. He runs the blog The Sales Lion, where he teaches all entrepreneurs worldwide how to market their businesses and just be… well… awesome. He also has a passion for public speaking and, when he’s not blogging, he’s rocking the swimming pool industry or up on stage giving everyone a piece of his heart.

Check him out at www.thesaleslion.com or subscribe to his RSS feed.

Marlee Ward

Marlee has a talent for teaching passionate woman entrepreneurs (and men alike) how to kick-start their online businesses and kick ass on her increasingly popular blog Metamorphoself. A former lawyer, she’s long since made the leap into entrepreneur stardom and has taken it upon herself to help others find their entrepreneurial spirit within.

Check her out at www.marleeward.com or subscribe to her RSS feed.

Tristan Higbee

Not only is Tristan (also known as superman ) an avid mountain climber, but he’s blog addicted as well and owns several blogs on the Web – including the crazy popular Blogging Bookshelf where he teaches bloggers how to build a massive following with blogs that rock.

Oh, and did I mention he’s also a comment god? That’s right. He once even commented on 100 blogs in a single day, and he’s literally everywhere in the blogsophere. If you haven’t seen him already – rest assured that he’ll make his rounds on your blog before the year is out.

Check him out at www.bloggingbookshelf.com or subscribe to his RSS feed.

JK

Jk blogs with his soul, and he’s a star at what he does – quickly hustling up the ranks with his blog The Hustler’s Notebook in tow, where he covers everything from productivity tips to creating an awesome brand. He’s also a father of three beautiful kids and devotes much of his life to his family.

Check him out at www.hustlersnotebook.com or subscribe to his RSS feed.

Ingrid Abboud

I’ve only known Ingrid for a short while, but I gotta say – she’s really going places! She blogs about social media on her blog Nitty Griddy and can really give you a good laugh if you stick around. To top that off, she has a heart of gold and is one of the nicest chickas I ever chanced to meet!

Check her out at www.nittygriddy.com or subscribe to her RSS feed.

More Awesomeness

While I can’t possibly mention all of the awesome folks who made an impact in my life (there are far too many to count!), I’ll try my best to list a good majority here. Give them a look and subscribe to their blogs if you dig their stuff.

Awesome peeps include Brian from Chezfat, Howie from Tactical Cash Flow, Eric from My 4-Hour Workweek, Crystal from The Best 50 Years, Stuart from Unlock the Door, Davina from 3Hats Communications, Ileane from Basic Blog Tips, Jens from Sly Marketing, Daniel from Looking to Business, Tia from Biz Chick Blogs, Maria from My Work at Home Mom Blog, Felicia from No Job for Mom, Prerna from The Mom Writes, Ken from The Freelancer Today, Mark from Mark Harai, Lori from Life for Instance, Michele from New Biz Blogger, Brankica from Live Your Love, and many many more.

How to Seriously Blow Your Network Away

Alright, so far you’ve learned why networking is important, several different networking methods to try, and how to put those methods into use. You’ve also browsed through the blogs of over 20 awesome people, and hopefully you’ve even started your networking list.

Now I’m going to get into the goods of networking – how to accelerate your network by being downright amazing.

And here’s the challenge: Try to complete at least 3 of the below tasks. If you do, tell me about it and I’ll feature your name in this blog post (more link juice and traffic for your blog).

But seriously give it a shot. Even if you can only complete one of the below tasks, it will make a significant difference to both your blog and your network. And it will be well worth it; trust me.

• Invest on giving. Is someone in your network struggling with anything in particular? Buy a book on the topic and ship it to their mailbox. Does that product that you’re working on really need to be that expensive? Give a discount or, better yet, give it out for free (even if for only a limited time). Does anyone have a birthday coming up? Why not buy that person a present and send out a card? Spend a little money to make another person’s life a little bit easier, and that person just might return the favor a hundred times over.
• Respond to comments on another blog. Don’t just respond to comments on your blog – reach out and be active in the conversations on other blogs in your network. After giving your two cents, read through the comments left before yours. Does someone have a question that you have the answer to? Can you add to any of the previous discussions? Do you agree or disagree with anyone? Not only does leaving responses to other comments help the blogger out, but it keeps the conversation alive and it shows that you truly care about your network community.
• Write an entire post about a particular blogger in your community. Now, I’m not talking about interviews – those often require some work to put together, and it’s just not the same as surprising someone with a post that basically talks about how awesome he or she is. If you want an example, check out this post featuring Stu from Unlock the Door by Mark Harai. Devoting an entire post to someone you admire can be a wonderful way to show your appreciation, while also strengthening the bond you already share with the person being featured.
• Meet up with someone in your network. Now, this may only work if you live near the person or can make travel arrangements – but I’ve heard that getting to know the person on a more personal level (face-to-face) can really make a difference and tremendously boost your relationship with the person. Be warned though – I’ve never tried this myself, and it’s not recommended if you don’t already have a good relationship with the person already (after all, you don’t want to accidentally meet up with a serial killer ). If this is something that you want to do, try meeting at a coffee shop or another public setting so that you both can feel at ease.
• Recommend your network. Does someone need graphic design work done? Know a graphic designer in your network? Then recommend the person over. Your network will appreciate the help, and if you do it enough times, you may even get their undying devotion.

How to KILL Your Network

By now, you’re probably bursting with knowledge (I know my head is spinning from writing it all!). But while I talked about everything you should do to skyrocket your network and reach a bigger audience, I didn’t yet touch on what NOT to do to your network – and that’s what I’m going to talk about now.

Do any of these 4 things, and I promise you’ll have a dead network by tomorrow (or you can keep your network alive and avoid the below altogether).

• All you do is SPAM. You SPAM comments (write the same comments over and over on different blogs). You SPAM email (copy/paste and mass submit the same email message over and over again). You SPAM tweets (it’s fine to tweet a post twice or so, but don’t tweet it 10 times just to get on the person’s radar). You just SPAM – and no one likes spammers. Not only will you ruin any relationships you’ve started to grow, but you’ll get your comments deleted, you’ll get your email blocked, and you’ll get ignored – or worse, hate mail. Not good.
• You take advantage of your network. Networking is all about giving and helping other people. It’s fine to want to gain something from the interaction, but your main focus should be giving back to your blogging tribe – being genuinely helpful whenever you can. In most cases, you’ll need to give before you can receive.
• You couldn’t care less about your network. Trust me – if you’re simply commenting on posts without even reading them, your network will know. And if that’s what you’re doing, what’s the point? Why network with the person to begin with if you’re not interested in what he or she has to say? That doesn’t make sense to me, and you should be only networking with people you’re interested in to begin with – people you care about. People you can learn from and who inspire, motivate, or brighten up your day.
• You’re not ready to go the extra mile. In order to get someone else’s attention, you really need to go above and beyond what everyone else is doing – and you do this by following the step-by-step blog networking guide that I mentioned earlier. If you want a bigger impact, try focusing on the last step the most.

Well that’s it about networking. I know it was a lot, but I wanted to make this post a super valuable resource for you guys. I hope you enjoyed the read! And feel free to bookmark, share, or link to this post elsewhere. In fact, I’d love it if you’d tweet it out and spread the word – I put a lot of time into it.

And stay tuned for tomorrow. I’ll be featuring interviews from Marlee Ward, Tristan Higbee, Marcus Sheridan, and Jk (which is sure to be exciting!). So don’t forget to check back then!

Lastly…

What Did You Think?

Before reading this article, how did you feel about networking? Now what do you think about it? Is there anything you can add? Have you had any success with it?

I’d love to hear your thoughts, and don’t forget to try the challenge mentioned in the “How to Seriously Blow Your Network Away” section!

And remember – commenting is the first step to building awesome relationships with your network, so don’t forget to leave yours below!

Related Posts:

1. How 4 Top Bloggers Used Networking to Accelerate Traffic and Kick Ass
2. Blog Carnivals Increase Blog Traffic – And Lifetime Readership Too!
3. Do You Read Like an Encyclopedia? What You’re Forgetting and How to Fix It

I first started the Niche Site Duel about 5 months ago after hearing Pat Flynn’s successful story when building a niche site of his own. However, after the first few weeks, I ended up putting the project aside in order to pursue other goals – I just didn’t have a lot of time on my hands to dedicate 100% to the challenge. Now though, I’m ready to kick things up a notch, and my plans are to have Complete Betta Fish Care ranking well (on the first page of Google) by May 13th of next month.

But first, let’s look at how well the niche site is performing with only 4 published posts basically set on autopilot while the project was put on hold. To do that, we’ll take a trip through my Google Analytics account and then through the Market Samurai (ref link) rank tracker data. Once we’ve gotten a feel of how things are going, I’m going to talk about my monetization goals for the site and what I’ll be doing right now to boost income.

Betta Care Niche Site Results

It’s important to see where you stand at the present moment before you start making improvements to your site; this helps to better track growth, and it also gives you a clearer picture of what aspects of your site you need to work on most.

In this section, I’ll talk about where my niche site is standing right now and which areas I need to work on in order to increase overall results.

Visits, Page Views, Bounce Rates

Since my last update here on Cash Campfire (4 months ago), my betta site has received 337 visits (88.13% new), 705 page views, a bounce rate of 58.75%, and an average time spent (where visitors stayed on the site) of 2 minutes and 5 seconds (click the image to enlarge).

All-time (since 5 months ago), this site has received 400 visits, 945 page views, a bounce rate of 57.75%, and an average time of 2 minutes and 55 seconds. In the last month (from March 12th to April 12th), it received 70 visits, 113 page views, a 68.57% bounce rate, and an average time of 1 minute and 22 seconds.

First of all, before I move on, many of you may be wondering why I have a somewhat high bounce rate. Well, there are many factors contributing to this, but I believe the two main reasons are: 1) I don’t have many articles up on the site yet (only 4) and 2) my whole monetization strategy now is to get people off of my betta care niche site and onto affiliate sites like Amazon, ClickBank, and so on. There are also the Chitika ads to consider.

So, with this in mind, I think the site is doing pretty well in terms of page views, bounce rates, and the average time a visitor spends browsing.

Traffic Sources

Out of those 400 all-time visits, the top visitors to my site are: 1) direct traffic (visitors who typed my url in the address bar – most likely Cash Campfire visitors), 2) Google organic traffic (visitors from Google search results – my main focus), 3) Google referral traffic, 4) Squidoo referral traffic, and 5) Yahoo organic traffic (visitors from Yahoo search engine results).

As for why I’m getting referral visits from Google, I have no idea. I neither host the site on Blogger, nor have I posted any links to it from other sites owned by Google (at least, not that I know of). So if anyone can uncover this mystery as to why I’m seeing traffic from this source, I’m all ears.

Keep in mind that “referral” is different from “organic,” which mainly refers to search engine traffic.

Keyword Phrases and Ranking Stats

I have received a total of 137 search engine visits since the site went live. After looking at the keyword phrases visitors searched for to get to my site, I seem to be mainly ranking for long-tail keywords, but the site did see a few hits from several of the main keyword phrases that I’m trying to rank well for.

So far, the top keyword phrases used by search peeps are: 1) betta tank, 2) betta fish, 3) betta fish care, 4) betta discolored patches, and 5) betta disease scales puffed droopsy (sadly, this person will probably have a dead fish on his hands soon – dropsy is lethal).

To recap, the main keyword phrase that I’m trying to rank well for is “betta fish care,” so I think the site is doing pretty well considering that I had the site on hold for all this time while I focused on other projects (I only had 4 articles up with a few backlinks pointing toward each article and the main domain name).

Secondary keywords that I want to rank well for include “betta fish,” “betta tank,” “betta aquariums,” “betta care,” “caring for betta fish,” and “care of betta fish.”

With that in mind, below are my rankings for both my primary keyword phrase (betta fish care) and my secondary keyword phrases when using the Market Samurai tool.

Income – Did I Earn Any Money?

Before moving on, it’s important to note that I haven’t really worked on the site much at all since after a few weeks from when the site went live. So I view any money that I earned up until now as pretty good, even if I only managed to make a little bit.

Below are the various income sources I’ve earned money from since making the site live.

• Chitika: $0.07
• InfoLinks: $0.13
• Amazon Affiliates: $2.70
• Total: $2.90

Key Areas that Need to Be Improved

From the looks of things, I definitely need to work on actually making money with my site (after all – that’s one of the main purposes of launching the niche site). I’ll get to the money aspects in a moment.

I also need to add more content and continue my backlinking strategy (you can view my niche site content strategy here and the actual backlinking strategy here). Above all things though, adding more content will be my main priority, since it will not only help decrease the bounce rate, but it will also give my readers more info for further reading, adding to the value visitors receive.

But, while I have been keeping bettas for a number of years now, there are still tons more that I still need to learn in terms of betta care. So I figured getting more knowledgeable about the subject would be my first step – and you can’t really trust some of the information that you read on the Internet these days. For this reason, I took it upon myself to purchase several books from Amazon on betta care, and I’ll be going through them one-by-one while also writing about what I already know.

Once I’m done reading, I can then recommend the most valuable ones on my site to further my earning potential.

How Waiting Worked in My Favor

While, by waiting, I wasn’t able to get the results that I wanted in the quickest fashion, putting the site on hold did have one major benefit and that was it allowed my domain name to age some. Many SEO gurus believe that an aged domain has a decreased chance of getting sandboxed, simply because of the belief that domain names with the most years (or in this case, months) under their belt have been given a chance to grow and acquire a larger following of people who would then link to your content through other sources. In other words, an aged domain name presumably has more authority in a particular market.

So, if I decided to increase my backlinking efforts, Google wouldn’t view more incoming links as very “odd” behavior and so my chances of being sandboxed would be reduced (I understand a few Niche Site Duel participants were faced with this problem).

Now, I’m not saying I’m going to suddenly go crazy with backlinks (actually, that would be a surefire way to get your site sandboxed); I still plan to add backlinks as I slowly move along. I’m just saying that I can technically view my aged domain name as an advantage, along with the other 2 niche site domains that I have allowed to age.

Betta Care Monetization Strategy

I plan to monetize in a number of ways. First, I’ll be taking advantage of affiliate marketing and selling products (that I’ve used and tried) from several different sources to diversify my income. The major sources will be Amazon, ClickBank, Petco or PetSmart (I’ll contact each one to see if they have an affiliate program), and possibly Commission Junction if they have related products.

I don’t believe in promoting a product or service unless I’ve personally bought or used the product or service myself, so the majority of products that I promote will probably end up being from Amazon, PetSmart, and Petco, since I regularly buy from those stores.

My long-term aims are to eventually write and sell my own ebook on owning and caring for a betta fish – and possibly even raise betta fry to sell when they mature (I’ve heard of many people selling their fish on eBay, so that’s definitely something I’ll look into). Breeding fish and raising the young are also pretty exciting (at least for me), and I have multiple mini tanks (1 gallon and up) just sitting around collecting dust that I can use for keeping fry.

Next Steps

To make this niche site work, I need to put the time into the content creation and initial monetization stages. So, (starting immediately) I’ll be setting aside 1 hour each day to work on the niche site until it sees page 1 of Google for its primary keyword phrase. I’m also seriously considering outsourcing some of the articles for backlinks (most likely content for EzineArticles and GoArticles; I’ll still be writing the content for money sites – like InfoBarrel or Squidoo – myself).

To top that off, I’m thinking about investing money for professional photos to give the site a more professional appeal. I’m still going to go for the occasional Flickr Commons photo, but I’m also going to include iStock in the mix. I really want to make this site useful and the most valuable betta care site out there; having professional photos along with awesome content will help me achieve this aim.

So what do you think? Do you have any suggestions or feedback? Are you currently building a niche site of your own?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section!

Niche Site Duel Series

• Niche Site Duel 01: Will I Rank #1 in Google with My Keywords?
• Niche Site Duel 02: Tackling Content Strategies for All 3 Niche Sites
• Niche Site Duel 03: Betta Care Monetization Strategy

Related Posts:

1. Niche Site Duel 02: Tackling Content Strategies for All 3 Niche Sites
2. Niche Site Duel 01: Will I Rank #1 in Google with My Keywords?
3. Understanding Link Wheels (and Avoiding Sandboxes): The Beginner’s Guide

Hi everyone. I have a special post here for you today, written by a close friend of mine. The question on whether or not you should backlink your content has been a raging debate for years now, especially now with Google’s algorithm change. I asked Brian to write this post because I think that it’s important to understand the other side of marketing and how marketing, the good kind, isn’t bad as some people say. In fact, it’s even necessary.

Give this article a read. You’ll be glad that you did.

This is a guest post by Brian, author of the blogs Residual Income Online with Chezfat and How to Live a Longer Life. If you think this post rocks, I encourage you to check him out.

Photo by Steve Keys (flickr)

Want to know a secret?

Your website or blog is your business.

Whether you make a few dollars a month on that site or thousands, it is still your business. Even if you don’t have it monetized, it is your PR campaign for your own brand; therefore it is your business.

Can you think of any businesses in the offline world that don’t do any marketing?

I can’t think of any.

Let Me Tell You A Personal Story

My wife and I really love fine dining and fine wine. We had our wedding party at a local wine bar, we shop for the fine wines for all special occasions, and we love to hit up the winemakers’ dinners at our local high end restaurants.

Not too long ago, sometime in mid-2010, Restaurant Week hit in our parts and we decided to try out a local bistro with an emphasis on fine dining and fine wine.

We loved it!

After the meal we made sure to spend a bit of time talking with the chef and the proprietor of the bistro, and she told us that they had been in business since the beginning of the Great Recession and had been doing extremely well despite the poor economy over the last few years. She also told me that they don’t rely on marketing. “It’s all word of mouth,” she said.

Being a business savvy person, I was very intrigued. After talking with her for a little bit, touring the rest of the restaurant, and seeing their wine cellar, I happily wrote my name and email address down on her email list as the wife and I left the restaurant that evening.

Looking at my wife on the way home, we talked about how awesome that place was and how we were definitely going to introduce it to our “wine & food” friends and return for a visit with them. In case you are not following along, we are talking about referral traffic and organic growth here.

That Bistro Does Too Participate In Marketing

A few days later, when I received my first email from the wine bistro, I thought wow; they’ve got another awesome looking event coming up. They described the whole thing to me in the email. I was definitely jazzed about it. In the email they described the upcoming event and gave me a full lineup of the 5 course menu and paired wine tasting, then dropped a link in the email for me to click through to their calendar to signup for reservations on the spot.

Unfortunately, the dates didn’t work for us, so I just showed the wife to let her know we should keep these guys in mind for future outings.

Then a few days later I got another email, and then a few days later I got another email, and then another. After the next couple of weeks went by, it became obvious that this little bistro didn’t operate like other restaurants. They didn’t have a big menu to choose from. People didn’t walk in off of the street and choose from 50 options. They had “special events” 3-4 times a week and each event had a special menu… and everyone had a reservation.

They used email marketing to happy, past guests to get them to come back for their events. And not only that, but they don’t rely solely on word-of-mouth traffic (referral traffic) like the proprietor told me, but also on email marketing to get more business from past customers. This, if you are not following along, is the email newsletter that many websites have.

In the business world this is called increasing lifetime customer value. You can do this in two ways; you can speed up the frequency of visits from your current customer base or you can increase the dollar total spent by each customer whenever they use your services or buy your products. In this case, their email marketing to past customers is meant to increase lifetime customer value by speeding up the frequency of their visits.

What their word-of-mouth referral customers bring to the table, however, is different; that is new customer development. In our online world, this is the equivalent of Christina posting a link on her blog saying that Chezfat is great and you should check out his site (editor’s note: he’s speaking the truth; check him out! ) – or of you dropping a link in a forum to someone else’s blog telling your forum friends that this site is worth reading for whatever reason.

In the business world and in the online world, everyone knows it’s easier and cheaper to market to your current customer base. The returns are also generally higher because of the past report built between establishment and client. A blog with 100 subscribers and 10 active commenters today is likely to have 100 subscribers and 10 active commenters tomorrow, but increasing everything by 100 percent is much more difficult.

An existing customer base is valuable because it represents an easy stream of business to tap into – they’re just one email blast or blog post away (or Tweet for that matter).

New customers, on the other hand, are much harder to get, and waiting for referral traffic alone to increase your customer base is a long process.

That Bistro Did Even More Marketing than I First Thought

Not only did I realize that that bistro was involved heavily in email marketing to past clients to increase customer lifetime value… and not only was that bistro dependent on getting referral traffic from past customers to grow their customer base (example: my wife and I telling our friends about it – or you linking organically to another website), but they also were directly involved in marketing to a potential new customer base by participating in Restaurant Week.

My wife and I would never have known about this company if it wasn’t for their participation in Restaurant Week. By planting this seed in front of millions of San Diegans, they were likely to get a few new customers and my wife and I were representative of that.

Their efforts to reach out to new customers, the most costly to get, was how they landed us. This is akin to you reaching out to new customers by writing guest posts on other blogs and building backlinks to your site. It is costly in time and energy but can pay off in a big way when you land new customers because of it.

In a real world way of looking at this, the bistro participated in Restaurant Week, which is usually a very busy week for them and not as profitable either because everything is provided at a discount. Many companies, this bistro excluded, also reach out to new clients by catering events, by getting involved in print advertising (local magazines), TV/Radio spots, and in working special events like fairs and street festivals. Billboards, direct mailers to neighborhoods, purchasing of email lists – all of these are things that regular businesses do to reach out to new clientele.

This is the same thing that we should be doing with our websites or blogs – reaching out to new clients despite the cost.

Marketing Your Website in an Online Environment

In terms of marketing a website, we can still use all of these traditional forms of advertising, but we can also use online forms as well. Links pointing to our website give exposure to our sites in two ways; they drive direct traffic through the link, but they also build exposure to our site in search engines.

Both are worthwhile and both are necessary if we want to see a return on our investment in a reasonable amount of time. The short-term return would be eyeballs clicking on links to our site, and the long-term return is the increased exposure to search traffic.

Do you think Coca-cola really benefits directly from a TV ad they put on your screen? No, it’s rare that you see an ad for a coke and think, “I better head down to the store to buy some coke.”

Rather, they are investing in their brand by keeping their exposure to the masses high. The more often Coca-cola places ads in blanket form, the more likely their products will be purchased later on down the road. If they were to stop this form of advertising, they would continue to sell their products, but the brand would slowly start to slip in market share.

As owners of websites, we need to be investing in the long-term just as big traditional companies do. We need to be putting ourselves in the metaphorical Restaurant Week which is the search engines, and the best way to do that is to build backlinks in an ethical manner. Coke doesn’t just spam everybody’s email box to build brand recognition; they do it ethically by purchasing advertising spots and investing heavily.

For us, as website owners, we need to provide a good product. We need a website that delivers the goods. Whether we are blogging about personal productivity or running a profitable niche website that sells white socks, we need our website to deliver quality content.

We also need to spend some energy investing in the lifetime value of our customers by reaching out to those that currently exist. Newsletters are great for this, but even more importantly, we need to be marketing our brand to new potential customers as a long-term investment.

Again, bringing this back to traditional business, this is the concept of achieving critical mass. Without investing in the long-term, you will be far less likely to achieve enough referrals to become solvent, profitable, or grow to any significant size. A traditional business has to market itself to a certain size before they can ever expect referral traffic to do all of the leg work. Of course, there are some exceptions to this rule, but they are not the norm.

An ethical way of investing in your website for the long-term is to not only create a good website for your target audience, but also to market it with the long-term in mind. For websites, the most efficient way to do this is to build backlinks to increase a search presence.

New customers are out there in the millions (and even billions), and they all have an avenue to your site via the search engines; you just have to get exposure… and the best way to achieve exposure via the search engines is to build backlinks efficiently and responsibly, as this is the most effective way to make headwinds into the search traffic market.

Do I Need To Build Backlinks to My Website?

This post could easily have been titled, “Why Backlinks Matter” or “Traditional Business Marketing for the Internet,” but neither of these titles really relate to questions people have. Many people simply don’t understand why, and the question posed in the title of this blog post is exactly what people ask themselves – and it’s exactly what they ask the search engines too: Do I really need to do this annoying chore?

You need to build backlinks to your website if you have any desire to reach new customers. You can do this by frequenting other blogs where your target audience hangs out or by posting in related forums and gaining trust with the participants of that forum. Or, you can guest post and submit articles for the backlinks.

Each of these things is fine, but they all can be used in bad ways too. It’s easy to spam comments, forums, and article directories. It’s not illegal; it’s just unethical. People do it. I don’t condone it.

It’s also possible to publish good content on other people’s sites in exchange for a link back to your own. This is harder but is more ethical, and it makes you feel better about yourself too. You provide quality material for another platform in exchange for a link back to your site. This is investing in your business with your time and energy. It’s about taking a loss and overworking yourself during Restaurant Week just to find a few new customers. It’s about investing in multi-million dollar ad campaigns on TV to keep a world renowned brand name number one in its industry.

Backlinking a Niche Website

Like Christina, I am participating in the Niche Site Duel. Christina is working on some websites on pet fish. I am working on a site on diabetic shoes. My goal with this site is to be incredibly helpful and to create an excellent resource of information for people looking for diabetic shoes and related products. They not only need information on how and why practicing better diabetic foot care is so important, but they also need help finding the best products for them to buy.

I have invested (and will continue) to invest in building up this website to be better and more helpful (as well as more profitable), but I am also investing in marketing this website to new potential customers. I will obviously invest in customer retention and increase the lifetime value of my customer base as traffic increases, but I will never stop investing in finding new customers. To do that you have to build backlinks and get your product (your website) in front of eyeballs that would never have come across it otherwise.

Someone searching for “what is the best shoe for diabetic neuropathy” has likely never had to deal with this before, and they are likely searching for a resource – I need to have a presence in this person’s life and the best way to do that is to have a presence in the search engines.

Yes, you have to build backlinks to your website – it makes perfect business sense to do so; just try to do it ethically and always try to add value to the end user. Now, where to get those backlinks – that is another post for another day.

I’m a long winded writer, I know (forgive me). I keep a blog: Residual Income Online with Chezfat and am currently building a website on Diabetic Shoes. If you want to learn more about how I conduct business online, stop by my residual income blog and follow along.

I openly tout the fact that I don’t know everything. I learn as I go and build upon past successes and failures. But I am genuine, I work hard, and I always try to help out.

Thanks Christina for letting me address your readership base and good luck to you all out there. Surely you all have websites – make sure you have a business plan for them and then go capture your target market. Make those long-term (and costly) investments today!

Related Posts:

1. Backlinking Strategies: Increase Search Engine Traffic

This is part 2 of a two-part series. In the first part of the series, I talked about Understanding Link Wheels (and Avoiding Sandboxes): The Beginner’s Guide. I highly recommend that you check part 1 out first if you haven’t already done so.

In the last part of this series, I defined link wheels and talked about how to use them in a way that would increase search engine traffic. I also gave you an example of a link wheel that I personally use for my own niche sites.

Well, now in this post I’m going to share with you all of the benefits and drawbacks of link wheel building, how to create a link wheel that works for you, and how to use link wheels without sinking your site into the deadly sandbox, another way to get backlisted by Google. And if you don’t know what a link wheel is, I strongly suggest reading my article Understanding Link Wheels before moving on.

Ready to dive in? I knew you would be. Let’s get started…

Benefits and Drawbacks of Link Wheels

As you might have guessed, there are many advantages to using a link wheel (why else would people use them?). But, while there might be many more benefits than drawbacks, you simply can’t rule out the disadvantages.

And if you are thinking about creating your own link wheel, it’s important that you’re aware of the potential obstacles you might face in the process – particularly how much time you’ll need to devote to your link wheel and why link wheels have such a negative denotation.

So, without further ado, let’s get our hands dirty!

Benefits of Optimizing Your Site with Link Wheels

• Visibility - Without a doubt, the increased exposure and potential traffic (both directly and indirectly) are some of the main reasons why website owners use link wheels. There will always be people looking for fresh, new content. And if your site fulfills a specific need, is useful, and provides quality information, a link wheel can greatly improve your chances of getting seen by hundreds and thousands of visitors. The more places your site appears, the higher the chances that people will visit your site.
• Keyword Juice - Another important aspect of the link wheel, keyword juice or improved search engine rankings can phenomenally impact how successful (in terms of readership, sales, or popularity) your site or business becomes. By ranking well in search engines, you’ll be exposed to more customers, clients, and readers on a daily basis. This will help build awareness to your quality services and products.
• More Customers - Need I say this again? More customers mean more money. And if you sell something of quality (which I hope you are – never put money over the needs of your customers), more customers could mean even more word-of-mouth promotion, and you may even create a buzz in your niche.
• Increased Readership - Boosting traffic with a link wheel can improve your fan-base as well. More fans mean increased loyalty and trust.
• Increased Page Rank - Google views backlinks pointing to your site as “votes” stating that your site is useful and relevant to certain keyword phrases. So, when you backlink your site with quality links (links from other sites with high page ranks), the page rank on your site ultimately increases. This can improve search results.
• A Natural Feel - By building up links from several different sources in the form of a link wheel, each backlink appears more natural because they’re pointing to your site in a unique pattern.
• Potentially More Money - I don’t need to convince you that more traffic could potentially mean more money.
• Potentially More Quality Content - If you continuously strive to provide your readers with quality link-worthy content that is focused on helping and giving rather than the gain (even while posting on other platforms), you’ll be both building a really good name for yourself and helping so many people out there who may need your useful information.

  Remember: Quality, information-rich content is what gets shared, read, and spread. Not weak content pumped out for selfish reasons. Always aim to help, and put the reader before any personal gains whenever you write online (or anywhere in general).

Drawbacks of Link Wheel Building

• Some People Take Advantage - There are some website owners who take advantage of the link wheel system by attempting to spam their links, content, or whatever else that will help them financially. In doing so, they’ve put a bad name on SEO in general. Don’t be the bad guy; you’ll only regret it later (you also won’t make it very far at all). Instead, work to improve, give, and help – that’s the ultimate key to a successful business.
• Increased Time (or Money) Consumption - Building backlinks to your site takes work (and sometimes may even use up money if you’re paying for a program to help you – I advise against it). If you’re considering doing this for the long haul, you must put in the time and effort to make the link wheel worth it, and this includes creating the content that will link back to your site.
• Negative Denotation - Many people view link wheels in the negative light, mainly because they view them as a way to game the system (search engines). I don’t think so – I just think it’s another way to positively promote your quality content, services, or products just like you would by creating advertisements, info-commercials, and so on. In other words, it’s just another way to increase awareness, branding, and credibility – reaching new customers who might benefit from what you have to offer.

  However, link wheels DO become a problem if all you’re doing is spamming the Web with crappy content to improve your own site rankings. This is NOT okay, and chances are good that your site will just be sandboxed.

Link Wheel Varieties

Whew, now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk link wheels.

In part 1 of the series, I gave a detailed introduction of my version of the link wheel. But what if you didn’t want to use my version? Are there other link wheel structures out there?

Well, let’s take a look.

Traditional Link Wheel

My version of the link wheel, seen in part 1, is more or less the traditional link wheel (while sort of combining the link pyramid with the added bookmarking sites on the end). While the traditional link wheel doesn’t get as fancy as the other versions, it’s a lot less complicated (which is why I opted to go traditional, with a small twist of my own).

Below is an example of a traditional link wheel (without any bells or whistles). For more information on how to use the traditional version, see part 1. If you do decide to go with another version of the link wheel, use caution; I haven’t personally tried any of the other versions, so I can’t honestly recommend them.

As always, arrows represent links.

Link Pyramid

The idea behind the link pyramid is that, by backlinking links pointing to your site, you increase the strength of your site’s backlinks. By improving the backlink quality of the links pointing to your site, you ultimately improve your own site rankings (since the more high ranked Web 2.0 sites pointing to yours, the quicker your site will rank in search engines).

What? Sound confusing? Here’s an example:

Notice that Go Articles and Ezine Articles are both pointing to Squidoo, which then points back to your site. Linking this way helps increase the page rank of Squidoo, and this improves the link juice for your own site (so that your page rank increases at a faster rate by being linked to from higher ranked sites).

Link Web

In the link web, each article gets the same amount of link juice, no matter if the article is on your own website or a Web 2.0 site. The idea of a link web is to increase the page rank of multiple pages at the same time. Though honestly, I don’t recommend this method because it might send a red flag to Google if you link to your site with too many Web 2.0 sites at once – but you can experiment with it if you want.

Link Chain

The link chain is pretty interesting, as it’s almost exactly identical to the traditional link wheel, only the last two Web 2.0 sites don’t share links.

And if you look closely, it almost looks like a heart!

Create Your Own

So far you’ve seen some of the most common link wheel structures used on the Internet. You already know my favorite – the traditional link wheel. But what if you want to make up your own?

The best way to discover which link wheel works best for you is to experiment. So play around with them, and choose the structure most comfortable for you. You may also want to add different Web 2.0 sites than the ones I have above to the link mix. That’s completely fine, and I even encourage it.

Do be warned though: I’ve only tried the traditional link wheel, so I don’t know what type of effects the other versions will have on your site. If you’re thinking about playing around with any of the others, do proceed with caution. They were added to this guide only for variety (and to show you that there are other structures to choose from).

If in doubt, I advise to add links slowly so that your site ages a bit more before you tackle too many links. But have fun, and always remember to put quality above quantity.

For further reading, I highly recommend Martin’s article on link wheel building. While this article only gives a brief overview of link wheels, Martin touches the topic more in-depth and even touches on some of his favorite structures based off of his own personal experiences when dealing with link wheels.

7 Ways to NOT Get Your Site Sandboxed

Alright folks. By now you should be pretty informed on the various methods of link building. I know this is a massive guide (it took me almost as long to write this post as it did to write How to Wake Up Early with Enthusiasm: The Ultimate Guide!), but I just wanted to leave off with one last section because I believe that you should always know the do’s and don’ts of any activity you undertake, even if you think you might know it all. So please read this section thoroughly.

As mentioned in the first part of this series, the deadly sandbox is a filter that Google places on suspicious or spammy sites; this filter prevents sites from receiving search engine rankings on Google. So, if someone were to search for the primary keyword phrase that you’re trying to rank for, your site wouldn’t show up (thanks Dan Cristo). New sites are more likely to get sandboxed, so watch out!

Below are 7 ways to stay on nice terms with Google (and not get pulled under).

1. ALWAYS write to benefit the reader first. As I’ve said repeatedly in this post, put quality over quantity.
2. Don’t overdue it. Too many keywords and backlinks will make Google think you’re deliberately trying to game the system.
3. Avoid the temptation of paid backlinks. This goes hand-in-hand with the above tip – don’t massively backlink, ESPECIALLY if your site is new.
4. Do NOT under ANY circumstances plagiarize. Being a writer myself, I can’t even describe how frustrating and pissed off I get when I see other site owners have bluntly copied my work and posted it as their own. Even if you do give the writer credit for the article, it still isn’t acceptable without permission (you can copy snippets and give credit – not the whole article).

   If you duplicate content, you’re plagiarizing. Just don’t do it; you should be creating useful, unique content anyway.

5. Be extra careful when optimizing a new site. You still don’t have enough credibility or authority yet, so play it slow, (Google is more wary of newer sites) and prove Google that your site is worthy of higher ranks.
6. Let your site age some. The older your site is, the more reliable it is (at least, in the eyes of Google bots).
7. Actively participate in your niche community. Networking and giving away a little piece of yourself to help benefit your blog or niche community is one of the greatest gifts any blogger and writer can experience. Take advantage of it!

There you have it! The 7 ways to make Google happy. But what if you’ve already found yourself in the deadly sandbox?

Don’t stress it – the best thing you can do is wait. Just let Google do its thing. According to Jeffrey Baril over at Source Blogger, a site can stay sandboxed from anywhere between 1 to 6 months, with 3 to 4 months being the norm.

But there still are a few things that you can do while sandboxed. According to Jeffrey, if your site unfortunately sees itself in the sandbox, what you can do is continue to write quality content (I recommend at least 1 or 2 posts a week at minimum) and slowly build backlinks to your site until you start seeing search traffic again. By the time your site is taken out of the sandbox, the new links pointing to your site would have aged, increasing its link strength.

Main Lessons

We’ve learned a lot of things today! Here’s a quick breakdown of the key points in this article.

• Never sacrifice quality for quantity.
• Go easy on links.
• Experiment and have fun.

I hope you enjoyed this two-part series! See you in the comment section.

Your Turn

How do you feel about link wheels? Are they a good way to increase search engine traffic? Do you use link wheels? Why or why not?

Can’t wait to hear your thoughts in the comment section!

Lastly, please spread the love. I put a lot of work into putting this article together, so it would mean tons if you could spread the word by tweeting, sharing, stumbling, or bookmarking this piece.

Related Posts:

1. Understanding Link Wheels (and Avoiding Sandboxes): The Beginner’s Guide
2. Are All Marketers Evil? Why Building Links Can Save Your Business
3. Niche Site Duel 03: Betta Care Monetization Strategy

I originally had another post planned for today, but I decided against publishing for now because something seriously important came up that I thought would be worth mentioning. And without it, your blog is pretty much doomed to failure.

Photo by Andrey (flickr)

Did I get your attention? Good. Because this just might be the very wake-up call you need.

Just this morning I was making my daily blog rounds, reading blog posts and giving everyone my two cents. But today, something happened in the midst of things (a light bulb moment, if you will) that really got me to think about where this so called blogging venture is headed and why, at the rate that blogs are created today, do most blogs slowly die off and fade into dust.

In fact, according to Marcus Sheridan in his guest post over at Blogging Bookshelf, less than 10% of all blogs live to see their first birthday.

Really? Incredible, isn’t it?

And it only gets better. According to Candace Lombardi, staff writer of CNET News, a blog is born every half second. Get that? TWO new blogs are born EVERY SECOND! That means that 7,200 blogs are created every hour.

Going by these statistics and if what Marcus says is true, only 720 blogs out of the 7,200 ocean of blogs per hour ever see the light of day and a whopping 6,480 die before their first birthday!

Ouch!

So, with all these births, how can only 10% of them only make it over a year?

Well, if you look at Marcus’ guest post that I linked to you, he lists a few reasons why most blogs will die before their first birthday. And while passion and motivation are all well and good (I’m a strong believer that you must be passionate about the topics you write about in order for your blog to succeed), there is one thing that he left out that he mentions in his post Relationship Marketing, Emotional Connections, and the Power of YOU – and that is “getting personal” with your readers.

I think that getting personal is the #1 thing you can do to make your blog successful. #2 is networking, but I’ll get into that in a second.

Here, let me explain.

Why Getting Personal Will Save You from Utter Destruction

After quickly reading the above post on relationship marketing, I immediately (with eyebrows crinkled and dangerous daggers of intent in my eyes) typed out a response that went something like this:

Hey Marcus,

I hate reading blogs where the authors continue to be so bland, so unfeeling, that they just fill their blog pages with facts after facts. There’s no emotion involved, I never get to know the author on a more personal level, and reading such posts just make me feel like I’m being recited the dictionary. I mean, if I wanted to read that mumbo jumbo, I would take out an encyclopedia and dive in.

But I don’t. I want to feel as though the author on the other end is just as real as you and me. I want to connect with the author, share memories and experiences, celebrate accomplishments, reminisce over failures, cry when the sky falls down, and laugh when I simply can’t control myself. I want to feel what the author feels, live what the author lives, rejoice when everything goes well, and sulk when there are dark clouds ahead.

And blogs should be personal anyway; that’s what a blog is. It’s a place where readers and the writer can come together and share stories, thoughts, and ideas.

You know, emotion is a powerful thing. People remember emotions. Do you think someone will remember your post 10 minutes later if all you do is drone on monotonously, without a care in the world and a thought of how your readers will find your beautifully written essay?

Eh, nope. And if you think so, you should take a moment to reflect on why you even blog in the first place.

That post touched me so deeply, so powerfully, so emotionally, that I just had to gather my thoughts into one comment. I just had to express what I thought blogging was all about. Marcus touched a personal cord in my being. He made me think, remember, and feel the words on the page, that so often bloggers don’t bother to help you think, remember, or feel. And yes, he made me emotional simply by sharing his story and the stories of other bloggers.

That’s power. And it’s true; if you want your readers to remember what you have to say, make them feel.

And how do you make them feel? Here’s another example, and this time it’s a comment I left on another post that Marcus wrote – Is Your Narrow Niche Killing You, Your Blog, and Your Happiness?

Take my blog for example. I talk about a variety of topics, with the prime focus of educating writers (yes, this topic is immensely broad), no matter who they write for and where they write it. One day I might be talking about entrepreneurship, another day I might be diving into copywriting, and yet another day I might be discussing how to write your first infoproduct.

But in the end, these topics are what I enjoy. I live them everyday, I’m constantly learning something new in my niche, I have a vast ocean of awesome blogging buddies (like good old Marcus here) to converse with about the topic, and it just isn’t going to dry out any time soon. And because I’m constantly living what I write, this blog will still be alive 20 years from now, 50 years from now, 100 years from now, depending on how long I live. And who knows? Maybe someone else will pick up from where I left off.

Share your story.

Just last week, I received a really sweet and thoughtful comment from Venita Burleson (thanks Venita!), a reader here at Cash Campfire.

She wrote:

Christina,

I am so totally impressed with both you and your blog. I have been following your response to comments, and appreciate the time, expertise, concern for others that you convey.

Congrats to you! I love your blog and wish you the life you’ve imagined!!

You see, people notice when you are genuine and willing to help others by your actions – what you say and what you do. That’s how you build relationships, and that’s how your blog grows.

Live what you write. Give your readers a glimpse of your life. Make them emotional by sharing your own emotions. Because the greatest disservice you could ever give to your readers and yourself is not giving your readers a piece of yourself. Make sense?

Now this brings me to the second most powerful way to make your blog successful (and stand out), and it lies with networking.

Networking: A Road to Success

I’m not going to talk about this much here, but I just gotta say – networking is tremendously important to the growth of your blog.

Photo by Wolfgang Staudt (flickr)

Let’s think about networking for a moment. What do you do when you network?

Well, a) you help others out, b) you make others more aware of you and your blog, and c) your contact base grows. You make friends who will later promote your work, share your content, help you out in tough spots, and care about you and your message.

By lending a helping hand, getting to know and engaging with another blogger in your niche, sharing and linking to his (or her) stuff, guesting posting on his blog, and showing him that you’re a real human being with thoughts, feelings, and emotions, you build a framework that will later reward you a hundred fold. Maybe it won’t be right away, but the relationships you build and connections you cultivate will help tremendously in the growth of your blog and character. It’s exciting, it really is. And there’s nothing like the feeling of being in a community of like-minded persons – nothing.

And while I don’t want to get all Christian on you, I thank God everyday for all of the relationships with awesome people I was blessed to know. It’s truly a miraculous thing, and it makes blogging so so so worth it.

Marcus does it. Tristan does it. Marlee does it. Pat does it. Felicia does it. Brian does it. David does it. Heck, even I do it – though I need to do a hella lot more of it.

The best way to start networking is in the community you’ve already built.

So get to know your readers. Visit their blogs. Send them an email. Share their stuff. See how they’re like. And once that’s done, expand your reach. Visit other blogs that you admire. Show them your loyalty. Give them your trust.

Be real.

Your Turn

What do relationships mean to you? How do you get personal? Are you a big fan of networking? Do you disagree with anything here?

I look forward to your comments! And before you think about closing this tab before sharing your two cents, I always reply to comments readers leave here – and I’ll give you a big hug right after you’re done!

And who knows? I just might mention you in my next post (**hint hint).

(long pause…)

Did you comment yet? Yes? No? Then what are you waiting for?!

Related Posts:

1. How 4 Top Bloggers Used Networking to Accelerate Traffic and Kick Ass
2. The Complete Blog Networking Guide: Build Solid Relationships and Skyrocket Your Traffic

This is part 1 of a two-part series. Next week on Wednesday, I’ll publish part 2 in the series – Link Wheels and How to NOT Get Your Site Sandboxed. Stay tuned!

The dreaded sandbox is every blogger’s worst nightmare – that is, if you’re making a living primarily by creating and monetizing niche sites. But don’t worry; I have a way you can put those fears to rest – and it starts with understanding link wheels.

Now, I’m sure some of you are staring at this with wide eyes and opened mouths thinking, “But I loved playing in the sandbox when I was younger! So why should Internet marketers fear boxes of sand?”

Well, just read on.

Boxes of Sand

Think Back to When You Were a Child.

Do you remember going to the beach? Maybe you had your very own sandbox. Like many children, you probably enjoyed building castles in the sand, which really looked like giant ant hills (but nobody ever told you that).

When someone else knocks your cherished castle over and it’s permitted to fall back into a sand mound, you can’t help but cover yourself in it – admire the way each grain of rock works together to hide your little body, as you gather bunches of sand and fling it across your legs.

First you bury your toes, then you bury your thighs, then your stomach, and lastly your shoulders – laughing giddily while your mother tries to find you. Eyes squeezed shut, your high-pitched squeals give yourself away entirely; but you don’t know it, and your mother is more than happy to play along.

Come Back to Where You Are Now.

Many of you are bloggers and entrepreneurs. A lot of you are writers. But most of you own your own website.

And here in the online world, sand is deadly.

No one likes playing in sand – not in the Internet sense of the word. And if you aren’t too careful, that sand can quickly turn into quicksand. It will suck you up. And you’ll get buried.

No matter how much content you write or how high you scream, demanding people to listen to you – no one will pay attention. Because no one will be able to find you. You’ll be too far under, suffocating under the weight of the sand. Every earning potential you once thought existed will too get sucked under.

Destroyed.

You see, too much sand can kill businesses. It can destroy ideas. Sand murders chances.

But What is this Sand We Speak Of?

How can such a warm, fuzzy childhood memory be so dangerous?

To get “sandboxed” in the online sense of the word means to have a site completely disappear from search engines like Google. So, if you focus entirely on search engines as your primary source of traffic, sandboxes are detrimental to the health of your online business.

For those of you who work on getting backlinks naturally and participate in honest (white-hat) methods of increasing traffic to your site, you have nothing to worry about. But if you’re building a niche site and you’re using shady (black-hat) programs to get millions of backlinks to your site in hopes that your niche site will rank higher in search engines (leading to more traffic and potential income, depending on your monetization methods), Google might find your activities suspicious and so will remove you from search results altogether – putting you in the deadly sandbox.

See where this is going?

And if you get Google angry, you too will be at the mercy of the sandbox, struggling to climb out without enough fuel or traffic to keep your site going – which brings us to our next topic…

Link Wheels

Before we go any further, I’m going to talk about what exactly a link wheel is for those of you confused.

What’s in a Link Wheel?

There are two different ways to optimize your website for search engines – on-page optimization, which focuses on creating content around specific keywords on the actual site, and off-page optimization, which focuses on everything else off the site that you do to optimize your site for search engines. Backlinks play a major role here.

Link wheels are a form of off-page optimization, since the purpose of a link wheel is primarily to increase the number of targeted backlinks to your niche site (off the page). A link wheel is basically a network of Web 2.0 sites (highly ranked sites like HubPages, Squidoo, and InfoBarrel) that link back to your original niche site as well as to other Web 2.0 sites. Link wheels can be a powerful way to increase your search rankings but, if overdone, they can also bury you in the deadly sandbox.

Here’s an example of a link wheel (one I’ve personally created) that I use for my own niche sites. Arrows represent links.

As you see, the link wheel can be a powerful tool if used correctly. Keep in mind that there are many variations of link wheels. This is just the one I created for my own personal use (you can use it too if you’d like). You can start anywhere and add whichever Web 2.0 sites you want to the link wheel. You can even change the direction of your links so that they don’t all point to one site after another.

But creating a link wheel is pointless if you don’t know how to use it. I explain this in the next section.

Using the Link Wheel

As I mentioned before, the link wheel is primarily used to boost your site in search engine rankings. So, if you want a site to rank for a specific keyword, you can use the link wheel to create content on Web 2.0 sites that will link to your niche site using your keyword phrase as anchor text.

For example, I’m currently working on a niche site that I hope to rank highly for the keyword phrase “betta fish care.” Feel free to follow my progress in the Niche Site Duel if you aren’t already doing so.

Often, its good to have a plan or model to go by before taking action. The link wheel acts as that model. Each arrow represents one link and each yellow bubble represents a Web 2.0 site. So, as I add content to each Web 2.0 site, I also include a link back over to my niche site in each article. Of course, I’d then use the keyword phrase I’m trying rank for in the anchor text of each link (the text readers click on to visit a particular link).

Below is an example of what you would do if you were to only write for one Web 2.0 site.

Normally, each Web 2.0 article that you write would include a link to the next Web 2.0 site in the sequence. So, every Ezine article written will link to every Squidoo article that you write. Then, your Squidoo article will link to a Triond article (see the first example).

Linking to each of these articles will increase the strength of the links pointing to your niche site. If you’re following my link wheel model, you’ll bookmark each article you create on various bookmarking sites as well, which will then further increase your link strength. When you complete the wheel, you just write a new article for your niche site and start the wheel all over again, creating new content on Web 2.0 sites and bookmarking your articles.

But What if I Want to Create My Own Link Wheel?

In the next part of this two-part series, I’ll talk about different variations of link wheels and how to reduce your risks of getting sandboxed. Hope to see you there!

In the meantime, tell me what you think. What is your opinion about link wheels? Do you think that they negatively impact the online world for other Internet users, or are they just a good way to manage your content? Would you use a link wheel?

Can’t wait to see your responses in the comment section!

Related Posts:

1. Link Wheels and How to NOT Get Your Site Sandboxed
2. Are All Marketers Evil? Why Building Links Can Save Your Business
3. A Trip Back in Time: My 7 Link Challenge

Photo by Rennett Stowe (flickr)

No one likes the dreaded writer’s block, and let’s face it: If you’ve been blogging for a while, you’re going to get afflicted with writer’s block sooner or later.

But what if I told you that you could write endlessly, without fear of running out of topics or losing interest in what you’re blogging about? Because, yes, it is possible to maintain that same spark of excitement you felt when you first created your blog.

You just need to know the secret how.

If you didn’t have any interest in your blog when you first created it (you just blogged for money), this tactic won’t work – since your blog is probably destined to fail anyway. Harsh – I know. But it’s the sad truth. If you didn’t enjoy writing in your blog from the very beginning, how do you expect to keep torturing yourself 5 years from now and still keep up your money-based enthusiasm? Either you’ll give up in frustration (there is no get-rich-quick method of blogging – your blog takes time to grow), crash and refuse to write in your blog for months (something I once did), or pick up a new profession.

But if you are passionate about your blog topic, but your interest is slowly ebbing and writer’s block is becoming more and more frequent, this tactic just might help you overcome your obstacles by forcing you to try something new.

What is my secret? Well, it’s not really a secret – anyone can take advantage of it, and I’m sure many bloggers have already thought about it before but never really utilized it.

Quite simply: Change it up.

That’s all there is to it.

Change can be a powerful thing. If you aren’t satisfied with how you’re living now, change your daily lifestyle by constantly doing something new, and you’ll open the doors to tons of other opportunities to enjoy your life.

For example, if you’ve been cooped up in your house for over 5 years, only going out occasionally with friends, and you’re miserable the whole while, what can you do to bring more excitement into your everyday lifestyle?

Change.

Set up a time every Friday where you force yourself to do something new with friends, family, or loved ones. This Friday you could go ice skating for an hour or two, while next Friday you’ll go out to eat with your husband. The Friday after that, you can go to the Aquarium with your children. By simply adding a few hours of fun each Friday, you’ll find yourself looking forward to that day while you’re working, and work will become less stressful as a result. Not to mention that your life will be much less “dull” than it was before because you’ll be getting out more.

Well, just how change can affect your own lifestyle for the better, change can also affect how you run your blog. Or, rather, how you and others feel about your blog. But you have to take the initiative and make the change yourself – no one else can do it for you.

Personally, I’m all for change. I’m constantly trying to find ways to change up my everyday routine, try new things, and work differently than anyone else has before. For example, when creating Jump Start Your Freelance Writing Career, I wanted it to be as useful as I could make it, while also different than the average ebook on the market today. So, instead of creating just an ebook, I also wrote up a workbook to go along with it – to further the reader’s learning experience and impact the reader on a more personal level.

Well, it worked! Tons of people responded well to the additional workbook included and some even said that it’s worth purchasing the ebook just for the workbook itself.

But, how can you make a change in your blog so that you never run out of blog post ideas?

Try New Blog Post Formats

Below is a list of some of the most common and uncommon blog post formats around. Some of them I’ve tried and some of them I still have yet to get to.

Don’t be afraid to try each blog post idea one-by-one, for I can guarantee 100% that you and your readers will find the change refreshing. If you and your readers don’t find the change refreshing, I can always give you back the $0 you invested.

• Instructional: Instructional articles consist of how-to posts where you describe how to do something, listing each action step one after the other from the first step to the last. Visit my article How to Write with Enthusiasm – Even if You Don’t Want To for an example.
• Informative: Informative articles are one of the most used post formats. The basic idea is to explain something to the best of your knowledge, whether you’re describing what a topic is, the advantages and disadvantages of the said topic, or why something does what it does. An example of this is my post Are You Ready to Take Your Next Risk?
• Review: Though product reviews are the most common, reviews don’t have to be product-based. You can also review a service, location, person, and so on. Basically, you write down your honest opinion about something so that others can form their own opinions and decide if buying the product, trying the service, going to the location, or finding out more about a person is worth the effort or money involved.
• Face Off: A face off is where you compare two different people based off of whatever qualities you want to compare (character, success, and so on). To do so, you can interview two different people, whether they are bloggers, idols, or celebrities. Once interviewed, your readers can vote to decide who won the face off based off of the answers given in the interview. Make sure to inform the people being interviewed that they’ll be part of your face off series if they agree to the interview, and try to pick two very similar people for the face off (make sure similarities are what your face off is being based on – so, if you’re comparing successful bloggers, make sure the success of both bloggers are similar). The Face Off series on PluginID is a perfect example.
• Interview: An interview is where you ask another person questions, and then post the questions and answers in a blog post.
• Ask the Reader: For this blog post format, you ask the reader a question in one post and then post some of the best answers in a following post, crediting readers as you do so. The idea is to get more reader participation and encourage readers to keep coming back to your site. An example of this is my post Entrepreneurs: How Early Do You Rise Out of Bed?
• Question & Answer: While similar to Ask the Reader, this blog post format is a tad different. Instead of asking the reader one question and then accumulating the answers, the table gets reversed and readers ask you questions. You then post the answers to the questions asked in a following post. Again, the purpose is to engage the readers and encourage participation. A good example of this is Glen’s post You Asked, I Replied on ViperChill.
• Crowdsourcing: To create a crowdsourced post, you have to first ask an audience the same question, whether you’re asking your newsletter, Twitter, Facebook, or specific individuals. Then, you gather all of your answers and put them into one post. Hector Cuevas does a great job in his post 19 Popular Bloggers Go Back In Time To Share Their Wisdom.
• Pillar: A pillar post is one very detailed, condensed post covering a topic in full. Instead of separating a topic into many different posts, a pillar post attempts to combine the information into one article, explaining everything there is to know about a certain topic. Pat Flynn’s The Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Newsletter is the one-stop resource to starting your own blog newsletter – a perfect pillar post.
• Video: Instead of writing an article, a video post is where you embed a video of yourself or someone else explaining a topic or answering a question in a post. Normally, this video is also displayed on YouTube – so you’re attracting visitors from other mediums, increasing your audience and blog traffic.
• Podcast: A podcast is where you use audio to explain a topic. Like a video, you can host the audio file in other mediums, such as iTunes, and increase your blog traffic.
• List: A list post is where you group a number of items or names into a sequence for easier reading, rather than have visitors read a block of text. What you’re reading right now is a list.
• Blog Series: A blog series is where you publish a group of similar posts on a certain topic, one after another. For an example, check out the Become a Successful Demand Studios Writer series.
• Round-Up: Have a collection of posts lost in your blog’s archives that no one ever reads anymore? Round a few of them up into a single post according to a specific theme. So, if you’ve written a bunch of posts on Demand Studios (like I have), you can write a round-up post and link to them in the post so that readers can easily find what they’re looking for. Or, you can go a different route and link to interesting articles outside of your blog that you’ve enjoyed over time. The Simple Dollar does a good job in their weekly round-up.

Just try it, and tell us how you feel about the change in the comment section. What’s your favorite blog post format? Does any particular format get especially good responses? How has the change increased your overall blogging experience?

It’s never too late to try something new. Have any other blog post ideas? Post them below, and I’ll add them to the list (crediting you with a link back to your site, of course).

Related Posts:

1. Why Do You Blog? Be Honest Now…

Photo by Alex Proimos (flickr)

While browsing the Web, I came across the post How to Change Lives with Your Words: A Writer’s Higher Calling by Marcus Sharidan, where he asked one simple question…

Why do you blog?

After stopping to think about it for a moment, I thought about my past and what this blog once was – how it shaped and transformed into what it is today. I thought about my past mistakes, the peak moments in my life, and the people I’ve met along the way in my blogging career. I thought about my goals and what I hoped this blog would become.

Then I thought about all of you and how you helped this blog grow.

You see, it all started back in college. I was a freshman at WCSU – one of those public universities in Connecticut – and I was in the living area heating up a bowl of spicy noodles for dinner. While making my food, I was on the phone talking to my boyfriend (nothing new), and I was agonizing over the fact that I had no job and needed money.

Somehow, blogging came up and he suggested that I start a blog. At the time, blogs were a new concept for me. Strangely, I didn’t know any blogs (didn’t read much of them), and I had no clue what I would write about if I ever did start a blog.

Confusion, Bewilderment, and Chasing My Own Tail

I thought about it as I watched my food circle around and around in the microwave. I was a pretty hardcore gamer at the time, so I thought about maybe blogging about video games. However, Damon didn’t like that idea as he reasoned that there were already many sites on video games, so it would be hard for my blog to get noticed.

I contemplated blogging some more, but eventually pushed the idea aside – after all, why would anyone care about what I had to say? If I did start a blog, no one would read it…

Or so I thought.

Months passed, and I joined a site called eHow near the summer of that year. I started writing eHow articles and ended up writing over 100 before I stopped. Money did trickle in, but I wasn’t very happy with the results – the whole summer I had slaved away, writing article after article, with only $50 a month to show for it. But I was also optimistic (as I always tend to be) and just kept on writing with the hopes that my income would continue to grow. I also liked the idea of earning residual income without any additional work on my end.

Getting sick of how to articles, I stopped writing for eHow then and started looking for other income opportunities – happy that I continued to earn money from the site and amazed that my income seemed to grow and grow month after month without me having to do anything.

My First Attempt

I thought of blogging once more… what would I write about? I asked my boyfriend for suggestions but, like me, he had no clue either. Without any ideas, I again pushed the thought aside for another few days until, one morning, I jumped out of bed with a topic idea clear in my mind and registered a blog on blogger.com (after carefully choosing a blog name with my boyfriend’s help). The blog was called Salad Sticks, and it was a health and lifestyle blog.

I decorated Salad Sticks with Adsense ads and continued blogging for several months, writing over 50 posts for the blog before I stopped. The income coming in was only a trickle (about $1 a week), and I managed to make $30 on Adsense when all was said and done.

Gradually, I started moving on to other things until I simply stopped writing for Salad Sticks altogether. My heart wasn’t really into the topic I chose, and it became a chore writing about health when I had no interest in the subject. After realizing the reason for Salad Stick’s downfall, I created another blog – this time about finance – which I hoped would help encourage me to reach my income goals.

Cash Campfire was Ignited

While I’m sure I probably talked about this story before, I want to get this off my chest now because, honestly, in the beginning money was one of the main reasons why I created this blog. Now, I know this will come across badly in some people’s eyes – but I want to be honest. I did write for a profit back in the early months of blogging (but rest assured – I barely made a cent).

The other main reason why I created Cash Campfire was to motivate me to work harder to build an online income by talking about my goals and aspirations here. Honestly, I didn’t think Cash Campfire would grow to be much – I just simply blogged to motivate myself to write and earn more money.

But over time, my view began to change. I always made sure that my posts were useful if anything else. And other people began to appreciate the work that I did here, ask me questions, and contribute to the community in such a way that I thought… what if I was wrong? What if this blog does become something more, and not just a blog where I come here to share my thoughts on financial freedom?

The Transformation

I began to help people via email to get their writing career up and running. After the Demand Studios series, most people came to me for help with getting accepted to write for Demand Studios. What was once a finance blog then became a freelance writing haven – and I loved it. I loved every moment of writing about writing and helping those around me enhance their writing, get accepted for writing gigs, and simply create a lucrative income writing about what they love.

I won’t forget the time I first got an email from a reader thanking me and saying that she took my advice, her resume was accepted, and she was hired as a new writer for Demand Studios. Her excitement in that email glowed.

After reading that message, I just couldn’t help but feel good about myself and what I do. I could almost feel a bright shining light tickling my core, making the entire room several shades brighter than usual. The same thought repeated in my head – my advice worked; I was able to help another writer!

With a giddy feeling in my stomach, I immediately told my boyfriend about it. After all that time searching, I had finally found a purpose – I wanted to help as many aspiring writers as possible achieve their goals and ambitions.

This blog became so much more than it was. It became a community, where writers could share their thoughts, goals, and dreams. It became the center of everything that I held dear. Through this blog, I acquired the keys that would unlock a whole network of opportunities, to achieve my dreams and to help others do the same.

This blog became the foundation for my future. I just needed to keep building, keep sharing, and keep writing. Every morning became a morning of excitement. The growth of the blog itself was slow, but I loved every moment of its growth – every moment of building. There wasn’t anything else I wanted to do. Blogging took a big chunk of my heart – more than I thought possible. I was home when I was here. I knew what I wanted to do, I had a vivid plan on how to get there, and I knew that everything I once thought improbable was now possible.

Why Do You Blog?

I blog to help aspiring writers reach their dreams – to collaborate, share, and enjoy. I blog to watch writers and entrepreneurs succeed, to watch them grow as a result of my advice and guidance – to see their excitement of advancing and the overflowing happiness the results had given them. That’s all I could ever want, and that’s the greatest gift any blogger can receive – just simply knowing that your advice works. That you are making a difference.

I blog because it simply gives me pleasure. I love to write and, if I stop writing for too long, my days turn dark and murky. Writing gives me that fuel I need to keep going. Blogging gives me something to do with my time and puts the fun into my everyday life. Looking back, I never did imagine that I would ever get so far. But now looking forward, I can only imagine how much further this exciting career will take me.

I blog to build a presence. I want to be heard in the crowd, and my blog allows me to do that. By building a presence, I open the doors to tons of opportunities that were otherwise hidden from me. Call it selfish, but it makes me feel like I’m part of the worldwide community – that I’m contributing to the world in a way that matters. This connection is what fuels me to keep going – there’s so many people I have left to meet, so many hidden surprises I have left to discover.

I blog to meet people. Being a writer is a lonely existence – though I don’t complain much. I like the solitude I find in my office. However, through my blog, I also meet so many new individuals each and every day, with different backgrounds, opinions, and thoughts. I love the chance to collaborate with other bloggers, help others through email, and simply read the comments I get every day on my blog.

I blog for the future. One day I’ll be able to move into my own home and start a family. When that day comes, I’ll be able to work close to my kids and husband. I won’t have to worry about daycare or even a baby sitter. I’d be there to watch my children grow, spending as much time as possible with them as I can.

So, those are my reasons. Call them what you will – but they make blogging worth it in the end.

Why do you blog?

And if you don’t have a blog, why not?

Related Posts:

1. Stuck on Your Next Blog Post Idea? Change it Up with 14 Blog Post Formats
2. Blog Carnivals Increase Blog Traffic – And Lifetime Readership Too!

It has been a little over a few weeks since I first started the Niche Site Duel challenge – and, I admit, I haven’t written many posts for it. I’ve been mainly working on design, adding plugins, and writing crucial pages for each blog (about and contact pages, for example). Since I’m dealing with 3 niche sites instead of 1, the process has been starting off a bit slower than I would have liked.

Now that I’ve gotten the necessities out of the way though (with a few tweaks still left, but nothing major), I can spend more time adding content and backlinking my articles.

But before adding any more content, I need to first think about my content strategy. Specifically…

• What will I write about in order to maximize search engine results?
• How will I break down each niche into easy to manage subareas?
• What will I do to maximize returns (increase income) for each article I write?

What Will I Write About?

First off, the content I write has to be relevant to my overall niche and the keyword phrases that I intend to rank for. With that said, I’ll primarily focus on how to care for each species of aquatic pet – betta fish (completebettafishcare.com), goldfish (completegoldfishcare.com), or African dwarf frogs (africandwarffrogcare.com), depending on the niche site I’m working on.

However, there’s also other factors to consider.

• How will my readers get the most value?
• Will I try ranking for other keyword phrases later on down the road?
• How am I going to make money?

How Will My Readers Get the Most Value?

Though the majority of this Niche Site Duel is all about search engines, I don’t want to make search engines my only concern like many other participants. I’m not saying that those who do so are wrong or going about it the wrong way – I just feel that a good website (one that provides value) has to also focus on the reader or consumer. For, without anyone reading your content, you have no sales. There’s no longer an opportunity to generate any income, regardless of how much.

Of course, others will disagree with me. Really, this is mainly a moral decision than anything else. You see: I wouldn’t feel good creating a website just for my own gain – a website that I had no interest in whatsoever besides the profit. Any websites I create I want to be meaningful, both to myself and those who read my content. In my opinion, if you’re going to create a site and expect money in return, you have to first care about the ones pulling out their credit cards. If you don’t care whether your content is valuable or not, why should your readers care?

Most importantly, why should they pay you not to care?

That’s why I believe writing valuable content and getting ranked high on search engines need to compliment with one another in order to generate any revenue. You need to care about your readers before you can care about search engines or yourself if you expect your site to get noticed and make you ongoing income in the months to follow.

With that said, my number one step was to create sites that I cared about personally, had experience in somewhat (so that I could provide value), and I felt that I could really bring something new to the table. That step, as you know, was already taken care of the second I bought my 3 domain names. I already love and enjoy working in all 3 niches and I have years of experience dealing with each topic.

Will I Try Ranking for Other Keyword Phrases Later on Down the Road?

The next step was to decide the keyword phrases I wanted to rank for (which I did). Now, I just have to use each keyword phrase regularly when I write content – without sounding repetitive (as you know, I want my readers to value what I write).

However, I didn’t just want to rank well with the primary keyword phrase I’m using for each niche site. I also wanted to rank for secondary phrases – less important keywords that still relate to my primary keyword phrase.

Now, I can just here you asking, “But Christina – how will you rank for all keyword phrases at once?“

Well, I’m not going to – not at once anyway.

First, I’m going to signal search engine bots to start indexing my categories (instead of tags) by using the ever-popular WordPress plugin All in One SEO Pack, which allows you to turn off tag indexing and instead turn on category indexing (so that you aren’t faced with duplicate content problems later on).

By telling search engine bots to index my categories, I can then research other keyword phrases I want to rank for and use these secondary keywords in my category menu. The secondary keywords I choose will naturally break down my primary keyword into separate mini micro niches that I can add content to while I’m ranking for my primary keyword.

Then, I’m simply going to work on making the #1 spot in Google for my primary keyword by adding the keyword phrase once or twice in each article I write and working on linking back to my articles with the primary keyword as the anchor text (which is the text I use in other sources to link to my articles – I’ve included a few examples in this article already, like this one here).

While I’m trying to rank for my primary keywords, I’m going to leave my secondary ones alone and let them rank naturally (without any additional help besides writing the articles for each secondary keyword category). By the time I’m ranking well for my main keyword phrases, my secondary keywords shouldn’t be that far behind (and if they are, I can just send over a few backlinks – but only after I’m done ranking for my primary keywords).

I’ll describe more about my secondary keywords after the next section.

How Am I Going to Make Money?

While I’m going to dedicate a whole post in this series just to my monetization plan, I figured I’d describe the topic briefly here for any of you interested.

Mainly, I’m going to first earn my income through contextual advertising and affiliate marketing, then through private advertising (where advertisers pay me directly instead of paying a contextual ad company like Google Adwords or Adsense), and lastly through my own informational products – like eBooks or paid forums. When I get my own products out there, I’m going to stop using contextual and private advertising, but I’m still going to use affiliate marketing to compliment my own products.

Stay tuned for more information about my monetization strategy in the next post of the Niche Site Duel.

How Will I Break Down Each Niche?

To start, I want to display a max of 5 main categories for each niche site (with a few subcategories to break any complex categories up further). I’ll be writing a lot of content over the course of several months, so the purpose of each category is to give new readers a way to find what they’re looking for faster (and easier).

So, as I mentioned before, I want each category to be relevant to my niche. To find relevant keyword phrases to use as categories, I’m going to open Market Samurai – an incredible search engine tool (I’ll be writing a review about it within the next few weeks, so stay tuned).

After doing the keyword research on Market Samurai, here’s the results (showing only the keyword phrases I’m going to use for categories).

Complete Goldfish Care

Just by looking at the below 5 keyword phrases, you’ll notice that each keyword has an SEOT of over 100, which is good because that means I’ll be getting over 100 visitors each day if my niche site ranks well with these keywords.

PBR just refers to the percentage of people searching for the phrase match of my keywords rather than the broad match. The higher the percentage, the better since I’ll get more targeted visitors searching for the whole keyword phrase.

The SEOC lists the total number of sites on the Web with the keywords that I’m trying to rank for. In this case, the lower the number the better, since I’ll be facing less competition if the number is lower. So, since some of my keywords have very high competition, it might be a bit tough to rank well for them – but I’m up for the challenge.

Under the trends section, you can see whether the number of searches for my keyword phrases have increased or decreased over time. In my case, it seems that the searches for many of my secondary keywords have stayed the same – which is good. I want keywords with people actively searching for them, after all.

Complete Betta Fish Care

The number of daily visitors (SEOT) for the category keywords of this niche isn’t as big as my goldfish care niche. However, these categories should be easier to rank well for since the competition (SEOC) isn’t as large.

African Dwarf Frog Care

While the number of daily visitors (SEOT) each category keyword would get is low for this niche, I couldn’t find better alternatives, so I’m just hoping that each keyword will help my primary keyword (African dwarf frog care) to rank well.

What Will I Do to Maximize Returns?

As I mentioned earlier, I’m going to discuss this in more length in the next post of the series, but right now I’ll just tell you that I’m going to focus heavily on affiliate marketing.

Well, not too heavy to make it obvious – the last thing I want is my readers to get distracted by links everywhere and ultimately leave the site. However, I am going to point a link or two back to Amazon or ClickBank in each article. These links will be my own recommendations and will point to products I’ve tried before in the past (so that I know they’re valuable for my readers).

I’m also going to do some experiments with ad networks like Infolinks and Chitika to make money with.

Niche Site Duel Series

• Niche Site Duel 01: Will I Rank #1 in Google with My Keywords?
• Niche Site Duel 02: Tackling Content Strategies for All 3 Niche Sites
• Niche Site Duel 03: Betta Care Monetization Strategy

Related Posts:

1. Niche Site Duel 03: Betta Care Monetization Strategy
2. Niche Site Duel 01: Will I Rank #1 in Google with My Keywords?
3. eHow Experiment 01: Keyword Optimization and Backlinking Strategies