Hello everyone! I hope you’re having a fabulous summer.

First off, I’m sorry for the lack of updates. Things have been really hectic on my end, and I haven’t been able to check email, reply to comments, or update this blog as often as I used to. But I haven’t forgotten about you! I’m going through a few major life changes at the moment, but I’m hoping to straighten everything out in the next few months so that things can get back on the usual schedule.

Now, I know many of you are eagerly anticipating an update on the Do Something Remarkable contest. As you probably know, the deadline for the contest was June 1st (see here for more details). I’m currently going through the list of participants and will email the three winners by Monday, July 25th (thanks everyone for being so patient with me). Once each winner has accepted his/her gift(s), I’ll announce the winners publicly. Thanks again for your overwhelming support!

For those of you who have emailed me in the last few months, expect a reply in the next couple of weeks. I’ll be going through all of my email and comments in the weeks to follow, so it may take some time to get to you. But I will! Stay tuned for that.

Now for the actual post…

I have good news, and I have bad news.

And while I may be upset, I’m also excited about what the future might have in store for me.

Let’s start at the beginning.

I’m sure many of you are familiar with the changes Demand Media and all associated companies are going through, and I’m guessing that these changes are a direct result of the sudden Google algorithm update back in February (not 100% certain, so don’t take my word for it). But if you’re not familiar, take a look at this screenshot, taken from an email I received May 9th.

Several of you I talked to may know that I was already upset because Demand Media took down my highest earner on eHow – the article that was making the bulk of my income on the old eHow Compensation Program. This resulted in a 67% decrease in income, reducing my monthly eHow income from $400+ a month to $140+ a month.

I first noticed that the article was removed on April 30th. When I saw the decrease in income initially, I had simply assumed that a few of my articles decreased in rankings because of the algorithm update. However, after looking more closely at the matter, I realized that my article count was reduced and eventually discovered that my highest earner was in fact removed. I’ll talk more about this in the next eHow Experiment update (which will most likely be my last update in that series).

But Demand Media didn’t stop there.

In the beginning of May (and as you can see from the above screenshot), Demand Media decided to close down eHow’s Compensation Program as well.

What does this mean? Well, eHow writers can no longer earn money from the articles they’ve written prior to the platform switch and will have to find another platform in which to publish their old articles. That is, if they don’t accept eHow’s “offer,” which is basically a one-time lump sum of money in return for the full rights to their articles. In my case, I was offered over $2k if I chose to sell the rights to all 100+ articles.

So if I accepted eHow’s offer, I not only wouldn’t be able to earn a monthly residual income with eHow’s old Compensation Program, but I would no longer be able to use or do anything more with those 100+ articles already written. These articles would then solely be Demand Media’s to use, earn money from, and do with as they wish.

In other words, the residual income I used to earn on a monthly basis would be almost completely wiped out.

I had a lot to think about.

My main questions were then, “Should I accept the offer, earn a final $2k, and try to build back my residual income from ground 0?” and “Or, should I decline the offer, try to find another platform in which to publish all 100+ articles, and risk the chance of not earning much of an income at all?”

Let me just say that it wasn’t an easy decision. While the first option did look appealing in the short run, both options still left me feeling like my heart was sinking into the pit of my stomach. And both options would require a ton of additional work in order to get things running smoothly again.

In the end, I went with the first. I accepted the offer, received the lump sum as promised, and re-invested most of that money back into my business.

The final result? One long-term goal was taken off of the list.

Long-Term Goals

Like always and as I do in every Goals and Achievements post, I listed my long-term goals in order of the most significant to the least. This list is basically geared to keep me on track and make me accountable of my goals (hence, I get more work done, and I’m less likely to procrastinate).

I encourage everyone to make their own list of long-term goals. Not only are goals an awesome source of motivation, but keeping a list is the first step towards eventually being able to chart your progress, learn where you’re falling behind (tweaking things as you go), and see results.

Here are mine.

1. Move to California, buy a house, and start a family
2. Make $5,000 a month in passive income
3. Reach 10,000 RSS subscribers here on Cash Campfire
4. ACHIEVED Have an Alienware laptop or desktop computer | It’s not an Alienware but something pretty damn similar, and it will definitely be a MAJOR help for business. Read on for more info (and pics!).
5. NEW! Get into shape (maintain 3-days-a-week workout routine for over a year)
6. Have a 125+ gallon aquarium complete with tropical fish, snails, live plants, and aquatic frogs

Owning an Alienware computer has always been a dream of mine. With its high processing speeds, amazing graphics, and slick design, there is most likely no application around that an Alienware can’t handle. And because of its impressive graphics, the Alienware product line has often been labeled top-of-the-line as far as hardcore gaming is concerned. I mean, sure, there are other gaming computers just as good (HP Envy comes to mind), but I believe that Alienware is the most well known as far as gaming, which is why I’d set my eyes on owning an Alienware system for quite a long time.

The only problem? The outrageous price.

I mean, to max out an Alienware M18x laptop (the most powerful laptop in the Alienware franchise), you’re looking at over $6k. That’s A LOT to spend on a laptop.

And then I saw the XPS 17.

This beauty is almost just as good as an Alienware M17x but at a more affordable price. Both systems have a 17-inch screen display, offer 3D, and can be customized with almost identical settings (with a few small differences). While the Alienware M17x has the option of a slightly better graphics card, the XPS 17 is only 2 inches thick (so it’s easier to carry around than other 17-inch laptops), and you have the option of customizing the laptop cover (I chose the Lovers in Morning design, which you can see in the image to the right), making it look much more professional than the Alienware brand in my opinion. It’s also way cheaper for almost identical settings (and I was even able to reduce the price by over $600 at checkout PLUS get free shipping by using several coupon codes I found around the Net), though I opted not to go with 3D (I felt as though I didn’t need it).

I don’t regret my decision in the least.

My old laptop (a Compaq) couldn’t even handle flash games, was super slow, overheated to the extreme (causing it to occasionally shut itself down, even with a cooling pad equipped), and would freeze up randomly. I think the motherboard was fried, for it definitely didn’t have any viruses (I scanned and re-scanned with multiple anti-virus/spyware programs – Microsoft Security Essentials, Adaware, and AVG to name a few). So I definitely needed a new computer, and a laptop was my preferred choice since I travel often.

In the end, I’m happy that I was finally able to get one major goal out of the way, and working on a computer that doesn’t take forever to start up, freeze, or randomly shut down while working on important projects (resulting in lost work) is nothing short of exciting.

You may also notice that I added a new goal to the list in replacement of the previous one – to get into shape. While I have been trying to stick to my morning exercise routines, sometimes it would slip my mind or I’d wake up a tad late and my whole schedule would go out of whack. As a result, my body isn’t near as fit as I want it to be.

So I’ve decided to make it a commitment and work on improving the overall health of my body (eating a balanced diet) and develop flexibility while strengthening and toning my body. My goal is to exercise three times each week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday), and I’m currently four weeks into the One Hundred Push-ups, Two Hundred Sit-ups, and Two Hundred Squats workout routines (seriously check them out – very motivating!). I plan to go all the way through until I’m able to in fact complete 100 push-ups, 200 squats, and 200 sit-ups.

I also incorporated speed jump roping into my workout routine, following the training programs found in Jump Rope Training Second Edition (definitely worth the read) and the routines in the short DVD that came with the speed jump rope I purchased (aff links).

So far, it’s been pretty intense. Yesterday, for example, I did a total of 140 push-ups separated into 5 sets (avg of 28 push-ups per set), 170 sit-ups (avg of 34 reps per set), 191 squats (avg of 38.2 reps per set), and 200 jumps separated into 10 jump roping sets (avg of 20 jumps per set).

It’s crazy thinking back four weeks ago when I first started out (I could barely do 10 consecutive push-ups, never mind 28!), then looking at now and how much farther I’ve come. And the best thing is, I feel so much healthier since I’ve made this commitment; I definitely feel a lot better about my body than I did before.

I also plan to eventually incorporate yoga and meditation into my workout routine (I’ve never done yoga, so I’m pretty excited about that as well).

April Goals and Accomplishments

This post has gotten pretty long already, so I’m going to try to keep the rest of these sections short. Basically, since eHow closed their compensation program, my residual income has been seriously suffering as you’ll soon see in the sections to follow.

April Results

1. Earn $800 in residual income – Fell Short

My Lesson Learned

Simply this: When it comes to residual income, don’t depend on revenue sharing sites.

I’ve always been a fan of content sites, simply because of how much easier it is to earn an income working for them as compared to starting your own site from scratch. Most content sites have a high page rank and already have a large audience reading their content. All you have to do is write the articles and you can technically earn an income. Content sites basically take care of the revenue sharing and traffic for you, since they already have a large audience of readers to begin with, as opposed to the 0 visitors you start off with if you were to create a site of your own. Backlinking your articles to improve your page rank and search engine traffic is optional, though it can make a huge impact on how much income you earn (check out my awesome link wheel series for more info). So, not surprisingly, many writers start off writing for content sites.

However, it just isn’t reliable. I know I probably said it before in the past, but I’ll say it again – content sites aren’t reliable. You’re much better off earning an income off of a site you have complete control over (a blog you’ve created in a certain niche) or writing for individual clients (copywriting) than spending all of your time and energy publishing content for massive article publishing companies.

I even saw this coming and was telling my boyfriend several months before the email notice how I wouldn’t be surprised if eHow just stopped sharing revenue with its writers. As much as I didn’t want to realize it (I had tried to convince myself otherwise), eHow has been going downhill ever since I can remember, even when I first started writing for the company (with it’s massive article deletions, switch to a new writing platform, and now the complete closing of their compensation program).

But life moves on. There’s nothing you can do about something that’s already come and passed. All you can do is move forward and keep improving your current situation – so that’s what I’m going to do. There’s no sense in sulking or agonizing over your problems. That would just lead to constant worry and regret. And we all know how I hate going down that road.

On a more friendly (if somewhat random) note, I did come to a realization that I do, in fact, like red wine after years of despising the liquid. Actually, that’s an understatement; I LOVE red wine, almost as much as I love margaritas! Amazing how taste buds can change, isn’t it? But of course, I’m getting ahead of myself…

Back to the topic at hand. The following is a compilation of the income I earned in April, May, and June.

April Earnings Breakdown

Content Income

• eHow: $140.84
• Demand Studios: $18.32
• Triond: $0.08

Content Income Total: $159.24 | -$278.90 difference (64% decrease)

Advertising Revenue

• Infolinks: $4.36
• Chitika: $0.07

Advertising Revenue Total: $4.43 | +$2.62 difference (145% increase)

Affiliate Sales

• Amazon Affiliates: $14.07
• E-Junkie Affiliate Sales: $0

Affiliate Sales Total: $14.07 | -$5.06 difference (26% decrease)

Product Sales

• eBook Sales: $47.67

Product Sales Total: $47.67 | +$23.71 difference (99% increase)

Total Residual Income: $225.41 | -$257.63 difference (53% decrease)

May Earnings Breakdown

In the content income section, I include the amount earned from accepting the eHow offer. The lump sum was paid out in two equal payments (first payment was received in May and second was received in June).

Content Income

• eHow: $25.19 (+$1,163.00 from offer, 1st payment out of 2)
• Demand Studios: $14.55

Content Income Total: $1,202.74 | +$1,043.50 difference (655% increase)

Advertising Revenue

• Infolinks: $0.74
• Chitika: $0.40

Advertising Revenue Total: $1.14 | -$3.29 difference (74% decrease)

Affiliate Sales

• Amazon Affiliates: $7.55
• E-Junkie Affiliate Sales: $4.00

Affiliate Sales Total: $11.55 | -$2.52 difference (18% decrease)

Product Sales

• eBook Sales: $0.0

Product Sales Total: $0.0 | -$47.67 difference (100% decrease)

Total Residual Income: $1,215.43 | +$990.02 difference (439% increase)

June Earnings Breakdown

Content Income

• eHow: $0.00 (+$1,163.00 from offer, 2nd payment out of 2)
• Demand Studios: $14.61

Content Income Total: $1,177.61 | -$25.13 difference (2% decrease)

Advertising Revenue

• Infolinks: $2.68
• Chitika: $0.0

Advertising Revenue Total: $2.68 | +$1.54 difference (135% increase)

Affiliate Sales

• Amazon Affiliates: $5.84
• E-Junkie Affiliate Sales: $0.0

Affiliate Sales Total: $5.84 | -$5.71 difference (49% decrease)

Product Sales

• eBook Sales: $0.0

Product Sales Total: $0.0 | +$0.00 difference (0% increase)

Total Residual Income: $1,186.13 | -$29.30 difference (2% decrease)

July Goals

I’m going to continue working on my niche sites (for residual income) and get my writing profile together. I’m also going to keep exercising and do a lot more reading (so that I can eventually finish all of the books in my office library; I tend to buy books and let them sit on the shelf gathering dust – horrible habit).

There you have it. Not too long I hope? Again, thanks a bunch for your continuous support. Stay tuned for the contest results, and best of luck with your writing career!

Related Posts:

1. Goals and Achievements – April 2011
2. Goals and Achievements – March 2011
3. Goals and Achievements – February 2011

Happy Wednesday everyone! I hope you all had a happy and relaxing Easter. For those of you who don’t celebrate, I hope your Sunday was just as awesome (or even more so).

Photo by Mike Baird (flickr)

Today is a special day. No, not just because I watched the Authority Rules webinar and chatted with some amazing people on Twitter about it (though, the webinar was awesome; totally check it out!). It’s special because today I’m going to hand over the microphone.

Instead of the usual information-packed article, we’re going to talk about YOU.

If you’ve been a Cash Campfire subscriber for long, you would know that I love giving. I did it in the question/answer series before Cash Campfire’s very first birthday, I did it in my Wake Up Early with Enthusiasm Ultimate Guide, I’m doing it in the Remarkable Contest (you still have over a month left if you want to join in!), I gave a bucket load in the Complete Blog Networking Guide, and now I want to do it again.

I was literally overwhelmed with support from all of you after launching my first video. Not only were you guys great in the comment section, but you even reached out through email and on Twitter as well (thank you!!).

So, as a special thank you, today we’re going to put a little more focus on you (not that we haven’t already). The fact is, everyone struggles with something in their life, whether it is finding the time away from work to spend with family or getting rid of that encyclopedia monotone so that you can make your content more personal and engaging.

Today, I want to hear about your business struggles. Specifically, what problems do you have when building a business around your blog? Are you especially having trouble with anything in particular? Do you want to learn how to do something new? Is a certain obstacle holding you back?

Ask away! And there’s no such thing as a dumb or foolish question, so I want to hear from you even if your question is as basic as, “How do I create a blog?” I want to help you overcome any obstacles you might be facing, no matter how small, so that you can get more results from your writing, engage your audience, and just create an awesome business and brand with your blog.

Simply post your questions in the comment section below, and I’ll go through them one-by-one. For questions that require more in-depth answers, I’ll devote entire posts to your questions on Mondays until I’ve gotten each and every one of them answered.

Have a wonderful afternoon; I look forward to chatting with you! And hey – if you know the answers to any of the questions below, I encourage you to join in the discussion as well!

Let’s show everyone how much the Cash Campfire community rocks!

Related Posts:

1. Ask Me Anything You Want for the New Year
2. 6 Questions, 6 Answers – Happy New Year!
3. A Trip Back in Time: My 7 Link Challenge

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
3. Blog Carnivals Increase Blog Traffic – And Lifetime Readership Too!

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. Do You Read Like an Encyclopedia? What You’re Forgetting and How to Fix It
3. What is a Blog?

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

Happy Tuesday, everyone! It’s the first week of a new month, and we all know what that means; time for another goals and achievements post!

Yes, I know. You’ve all been waiting in anticipation. I’ll be honest with you though – this month wasn’t exactly my best month yet, but I did come to a lot of realizations that will potentially open a lot of new doors and opportunities for me (at least, I hope so). You see, I’m starting to realize what’s important… and what’s not so important in my life, and it’s really making a huge difference in the way I think and go about my daily tasks.

I’m still straightening everything out, but just know that this won’t be your ordinary goals and achievements post. This month, I’m going to try something new. And for that reason, I won’t be getting as detailed as I usually do in the goals section. But I’ll get to that in a second.

Photo by Julian Wylegly (flickr)

Lucky for you, I also have a surprise for you! Yep, another one. Am I not awesome?

Ahem. (Hint: This is your cue to say, “Yes, Christina. You’re very very awesome! No one could be as awesome as you are,” and try to butter me up with excessive compliments; you know, the things I like to hear. )

I won’t give anything away because, well, what good would the surprise be then? But I will say this: In the next few weeks, you’re going to be seeing some awesome things here on Cash Campfire – and Christina is going to be getting out of her comfort zone! The fun and lovable (and somewhat dramatic, while often annoying) Christina is breaking free at last, and you’ll all get front row seats to watch her stuttering, embarrassing show. Now don’t you feel special?

It might get pretty mortifying (at least, for me), so don’t say I didn’t warn you. But you’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?

Anyway, let’s talk goals.

Long-Term Goals

As always, here are my long-term goals to help keep myself on track. If you have your own long-term goals, I encourage you to list them somewhere safe, so that you can go back to them again and again when motivation needs a little boost.

If you don’t already have long-term plans, you need to get on that boat awfully soon! What you do now makes a world of a difference in where you’ll end up in the future. And you don’t want to get off track!

Below are my goals listed in order of importance.

1. Move to California, buy a house, and start a family
2. Make $5,000 a month in passive income
3. Reach 10,000 RSS subscribers here on Cash Campfire
4. Have an Alienware laptop or desktop computer
5. Have a 125+ gallon aquarium complete with tropical fish, snails, live plants, and aquatic frogs

March Goals and Accomplishments

You may notice that I didn’t do as well this month, and my income had actually decreased a little compared to February. This was mainly a result of the Google algorithm change (you may have heard of it, but Google made some changes in their algorithm code, which ended up lowering search results for many of the articles I had on content sites).

While eHow wasn’t affected much by this change (and Demand Studios income actually increased – I’m earning $5 an article per month now with the 5 rev share articles I have published), it did open my eyes to the fact that maybe my writing efforts are better spent elsewhere.

But before I get into that, here are the results from last month.

March Results

1. Earn $800 in residual income – Fell Short

My Lesson Learned

As I mentioned before, my residual income suffered a bit last month, partly because of Google’s algorithm change but also because freebie trading has been a bit slow lately (and I mean seriously slow). I don’t know what it is, but I haven’t been receiving as many referrals as I used to – I used to see at least two referrals a week. Now, I’m barely getting any at all (and it’s not just me), which makes me think that freebie trading might be slowly dying after all (and if you don’t know what freebie trading is, check out the above link).

This sort of makes me sad, because freebie trading did have potential. But, from what I’ve been hearing on the forums and other sources, offers have been getting more pricey and the stream of referrals coming in has been decreasing and decreasing over the past few years. Freebie trading isn’t dead yet, but I think it might be dead in the next couple of years if things don’t pick up.

But I’m getting sidetracked…

Because of the above factors in which I have no control, I did some pretty heavy analyzing the last month (and I’m still working things out as we speak). In the end, I just don’t think writing content for content farms (as much as I hate that phrase) is the best use of my time right now.

I mean, I’m still going to submit an article or so every now and then when I have the free time (and I’m not getting rid of the income stream entirely), but I think it would be better for me and my long-term goals if I focused on the projects that I have the most control over. And, seeing that I have complete control over this blog and what happens to it, Cash Campfire was the natural place to start.

What does this mean? Well, basically you’re going to start seeing some amazing things happening here. With 100% of my energy focused on Cash Campfire and this blog community (which is what I should have been doing all along), I’ll be able to do more in terms of creating more awesome free content, ebooks, courses – and I’ll have more time to experiment with certain things and just make everyone’s usability and learning experience a bit better. I also hope to connect with you all on a much higher level.

I won’t get too detailed because I want this to be a pleasant surprise for everyone involved here, but just know that you’re going to start seeing a lot of awesome, free stuff soon – and sometime in the next few weeks, I’m going to have a VERY special surprise for you (that will require a lot of sweat and guts on my part to make happen ). So I hope you like it, and as always – thanks for being a loyal follower here. I can’t appreciate your tremendous support enough! And for everything that you’ve done to make this blog come to life, thank you.

Oh, and my birthday was awesome! Thanks for the lovely birthday wishes everyone. For those of you who missed it, I turned 21 on March 27th.

March Earnings Breakdown

Content Income

• eHow: $392.42 $411.97 (Edit: Received an email from eHow about a glitch in reported income; checked my income stats and, sure enough, I actually earned over $400 for March)
• Demand Studios: $25.72
• Triond: $0.09
• Firehow: $0.36

Content Income Total: $438.14 | -$22.33 difference (5% decrease)

Advertising Revenue

• Infolinks: $1.63
• Chitika: $0.18

Advertising Revenue Total: $1.81 | +$0.49 difference (37% increase)

Affiliate Sales

• Amazon Affiliates: $6.13
• Freebie Trading Profit: $13.00
• E-Junkie Affiliate Sales: $0

Affiliate Sales Total: $19.13 | +$0.01 difference (1% increase)

Product Sales

• eBook Sales: $23.96

Product Sales Total: $23.96 | +$0.00 difference (0% increase)

Total Residual Income: $483.04 | -$21.83 difference (4% decrease)

April Goals

Because I’m still in the planning/experimental phases, I can’t reveal much right now. But bear with me! You’ll like the new changes, I promise.

Until then, I wish everyone a very happy afternoon and an awesome new experience! I’ve never let you down before, right?

So What Do You Think?

Do you have an idea of what I might be planning? Do you have suggestions or feedback? Is there something that you really want to see here on Cash Campfire?

Speak your mind!

I love hearing your thoughts – that’s what makes this a blog community and not a lecture. So please share!

Related Posts:

1. Goals and Achievements – February 2011
2. Goals and Achievements – March 2011
3. Goals and Achievements – January 2011

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. 9 Ways to Sell More Products Online
2. Link Wheels and How to NOT Get Your Site Sandboxed
3. Backlinking Strategies: Increase Search Engine Traffic

If you’ve been following me on Twitter or you’re subscribed to my newsletter, you would know that I extended the contest deadline up a few months (you can now kick butt until June 1, 2011 – more on this later).

Because I received so many questions about the Do Something Remarkable contest, I’ve decided to make a more in-depth guide on what you can expect and the requirements to join. Enjoy!

Update: We have the winners! Congratulations to Jonathan Figaro (1st place), Prerna Malik (2nd place), and Marcus Sheridan (3rd place).

Stay tuned for the next contest!

Photo by Paul (flickr)

As you know, this contest first started on January 10th when I wrote What Can You Do in a Year? for Cash Campfire’s first year anniversary (check it out – might be worth the read!). Since then, this contest has created quite a buzz. I hope that you’ll join us as we all strive to accomplish our goals and reach new milestones together.

I’ll get into the prizes and details in a minute, but for now I want to ask…

What Does “Remarkable” Mean to You?

Can you be remarkable?

Yes. I say you can.

But wait a minute; what does remarkable even mean?

Let’s see what Dictionary.com has to say.

re·mark·a·ble
–adjective

1. notably or conspicuously unusual; extraordinary: a remarkable change.

2. worthy of notice or attention.

That definition looks good, I suppose. But it could use some work. Want to know my definition?

Be Remarkable
-verb

1. Reach above and beyond your usual boundaries; achieve your goals and reach for your dreams.

2. Change the world you live in one step at a time; improve your life while everyone else waits for change.

Yes. I think I like that definition much better. You see, you don’t have to do something so out of this world in order to be remarkable.

Simply battling the demons of procrastination when they’ve been haunting you for weeks can be remarkable. Starting that business when you’ve been thinking about doing it for months can be remarkable. Finally writing that book when you’ve been telling yourself to write it for years can be remarkable. Getting that lazy butt off of that chair and actually making things happen is remarkable.

So are you?

I want to help you be remarkable. I want you to achieve your dreams. I want you to change your life. Because, like I mentioned in this previous post, you’ve already changed mine.

The next step is wanting that change – deciding to make a difference. Saying, right here and right now, that you’re going to reach above and beyond to achieve the life you’ve always wanted to live. Making a commitment to change the world you live in one step at a time while everyone else waits for a miracle to happen. Making that miracle come true with hard work, stamina, and determination.

No, I’m not asking you to end world hunger or find a cure for cancer. I’m asking you to move forward, push on, improve your life. I don’t care how, as long as your future tomorrow is even brighter than it was today.

This post is my attempt at motivating you to make this change. Will you take the incentive?

Take Remarkable to a Whole New Level

What does remarkable mean to you? Well, that’s for you to decide. Just be remarkable now. Decide to take this step to change your future. No one else can tell you to take it; you have to believe in yourself and make the initiative.

Are you ready to take that first step?

Then join this contest.

The details are simple. Do something remarkable by June 1st, tell me about it, and win something special.

Sounds easy, right? Maybe because it is.

Can You Do Something Remarkable?

One thing I’m asked quite often is how can one be remarkable. What are the requirements to join this contest?

And so often I say, “You set the boundaries. You decide what remarkable means to you, and then you do it.”

Photo by Paul (flickr)

In a nutshell, whatever you do to reach this remarkable state has to make you better off than you are now. Your life, business, or career has to change for the better – improve and reach new heights.

This change can be slight, or it can be drastic. The goal(s) you achieve can be big, or it can be small. But you need to accomplish something. You have to go beyond what you are doing now and improve your life, set that first brick of the foundation in place and build your future.

Because that’s remarkable and I want you to be remarkable.

Got it? Good. But what’s in it for you (besides being super awesome and making a huge difference in your life)?

If you’re one of the the winners, you’ll get one of these awesome gifts described below.

• 1st Place Prizes: Rework by Jason Fried & David Hansson, $50 Amazon gift card, and a free copy of the ebook Jump Start Your Freelance Writing Career (the revised edition that’s coming soon!)
• 2nd Place Prizes: Rework by Jason Fried & David Hansson, $20 Amazon gift card, and a free copy of the ebook Jump Start Your Freelance Writing Career (the revised edition that’s coming soon!)
• 3rd Place Prizes: Rework by Jason Fried & David Hansson and a free copy of the ebook Jump Start Your Freelance Writing Career (the revised edition that’s coming soon!)

1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners will be randomly drawn using an application that uses complicated – or what I think is complicated – programming code that my boyfriend creates for me. And don’t worry! I’ll make him get off of Minecraft long enough to create the application.

And if you already have the book Rework, you can opt to get an extra $10 added to your Amazon gift card instead of the book if you win. Just let me know if I announce you as the winner!

Also, if you’re not a huge fan of Amazon (I don’t see why – I am! o.o), I can also give you the winnings via PayPal instead. Just let me know (you’ll need to provide me with your PayPal email address)!

Contest Rules (Recap – Shorter Version)

Because I’m not so naive to think that all of you will read this beautiful post from start to finish, here’s the short version of the rules for all of you skimmers out there (yes, you!).

1. Achieve a goal or meet a new milestone by June 1st.
2. Email me and tell me about the goal or milestone reached (or let us know in the comment section).
3. Give proof that you’ve completed the goal or reached the new milestone (I explain more about this below).
4. Optional: Share this post by tweeting, liking, stumbling, bookmarking, or emailing it (thank you!!).
5. Wait until I announce the winners (on June 2nd)

In the above guidelines I mentioned that you had to have proof of your accomplishments. This is just to insure that you have, in fact, accomplished a goal or met a new milestone.

You can send me proof in a number of ways (it’s easy, I promise!). Here’s a few ideas (though, if you think of any others, don’t hesitate to use them!).

• You can send me a link to your earnings report, a niche site you created, or a post describing your accomplishments (probably the easiest option on the list).
• You can send me a picture that displays your accomplishment in some way (using a camera or clicking the little “print screen” button on your keyboard to take screen shots).
• You can send me a video describing your accomplishment.
• You can send me a text or document file displaying your achievement.
• You can have someone else be a witness (so-to-speak) or basically anything else you fancy.

The options are limitless! The point is that you achieve something that you’re both proud of and that improves your life in some way.

Stuck on How to Be Remarkable? Need Ideas?

I realize that some of you might be staring at the screen completely dumbfounded and confuzzled.

Photo by William Warby (flickr)

If you’re unsure about what to do for this contest (because you still have over 2 months to get the ball rolling – that’s more than enough time to start from scratch), the first place to start would be to write down your long-term goals (sort of like how I do in my Goals of Achievements posts). Make a long list if you want, then break the list down until you have only 3 items.

How will you achieve each goal? Write down the short-term goals (goals that you can achieve in 2 months or less) that will help you reach your long-term goals (use my Goals and Achievements posts as examples if you want).

Once you have a nice long list for all 3 categories, pick one (or two if you’re ambitious) and achieve that goal for this contest.

See – simple! And the best thing is, your goal can be anything! Get creative.

Not creative? There’s still hope for you! Below is a list of example goals that I figured might be useful. Feel free to steal one of the below, achieve it, and tell us about it (you can email me with the details or tell the world in the comment section – you pick!). Don’t forget to show me proof (see previous section for details)!

• Writing and launching your first ebook (or book, course, newsletter, etc.) are remarkable.
• Creating a pillar post (an ultimate guide describing everything there is to know about a certain subject – like this one here) is remarkable.
• Writing more articles than you’ve written in the past 3 months combined is remarkable.
• Receiving 3 times (or even 2 times) more subscribers than you had the previous month is remarkable.
• Increasing your income by a certain percentage or meeting a new income milestone is remarkable.
• Starting a new business for the first time (copywriting, freelance writing, blogging, products-oriented, service-oriented, etc.) is remarkable.
• Deciding now that you’ll pursue your passion, follow your dream, and leave that 9 to 5 lifestyle (and doing something about it) is remarkable.
• Achieving one of your New Years Resolutions goals (and early to boot!) is remarkable.
• Losing weight (no matter how much) and getting fit are remarkable.
• Getting out of debt and increasing savings are remarkable.
• Quitting smoking and eating healthier are remarkable.
• Learning a new skill (cooking, writing, swimming, playing a musical instrument, parenting, etc.) or increasing your knowledge about an old skill are remarkable.
• Making a friend (if it doesn’t come easily) or apologizing to an enemy is remarkable.
• Letting go of regrets, righting a wrong, or getting rid of a weakness is remarkable.
• Anything else I didn’t mention that requires hard work, stamina, and determination is remarkable.

Alright, by now you should have a long list filled with tons of things that you can do in order to be remarkable. And if you still don’t, check out Marlee’s free course on how to create a business with your passion (it’s awesome – trust me). Pick one and let’s start making things happen!

I Challenge You to Try

How can you be remarkable? What are you going to do? How will you succeed? Are you committed? Is it worth the commitment?

Those are only a few questions that you need to ask before you begin. But once you find the answers, you then need to start taking action and achieving those goals.

Do you have what it takes?

Let us know in the comment section! Look forward to seeing you on the list.

I believe in you. Do you believe in yourself?

Related Posts:

1. What Can You Do in a Year? (Or, Do Something Remarkable Special Contest)
2. The Freelance Writing eBook Contest Ends Tomorrow (Thursday)
3. Goals and Achievements – February 2011

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. Backlinking Strategies: Increase Search Engine Traffic
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
3. What is a Blog?