Those mofos at Digg have only gone and banned me. I guess if you try and cheat the system, sometimes the system bites back. Thing is though, I was hardly pushing Digg to its limits, and to be honest, I was abusing the system far more in the past.

The reason for my banning is down to taking part in Digg exchanges. It’s kind of a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” set up. There are forums where you can go and get people to Digg your urls in exchange for Digging theirs. If you do enough, you can potentially generate some serious traffic, and possibly make money.

The irony is that the exchanges I’ve been doing this week are actually weighted to my Stumbleupon account, because what I’ve been doing is offering Diggs or Stumbles in return for people adding me a friend on Stumbleupon.

The theory behind this as I’ve read on several blogs and forums is that the more friends you have (up to a maximum of 200), the more weight your stumbles hold, and the more powerful your account becomes. Then, when you choose to Stumble your own urls in the future, more people will see this and start Stumbling your articles, creating a snowball effect.

I’ve always had more success bending the rules with Stumbleupon than I have with Digg. In the past, participating in Stumble exchanges has generated up to about 400 unique hits in a day. It’s not a great deal, and it’s not the best sort of traffic, but it proves that Stumbleupon is easy to manipulate. Try stumbling a landing page and you might make some referrals and some extra money; drive people to an article laden with PPC ads and you could get some click-throughs and even more money.

It’s not guaranteed, but Stumbleupon are far more lenient with people abusing their system than Digg are. I opened a new Digg account, but haven’t bothered to start using it again.

Speaking of stumbleupon, go ahead and add me as a friend. My url is vanalli.stumbleupon.com

Tags: Blog promotion by Angel
5 Comments »

I was a bit confused when I first visited Blog Curry. I understand the whole link baiting thing, but I think sometimes people take it a bit far and forget that they’re running a blog. When I visit a blog by somebody who is obviously very knowledgeable about the subject he or she writes about, the last thing I was to see is endless reviews.

When coming up with ways to link bait, you should bear in mind that most link-bait posts are quite boring. The two-way exchange between bloggers is healthy, but should not be overused. For the past couple of weeks, Blog Curry has had very little content except reviews that the author has offered to do for sites that review his blog.

His blog is a PR4 blog and so it’s not a bad thing to get a review up there, but with the sheer number of reviews being posted day after day, I doubt that many people are actually paying attention to them any more. I’d rather see multiple reviews bulked into one post and more of the content that the blogger is capable of writing.

This goes for all bloggers who choose to link out to others: if you are going to link out often, you don’t always have to be nice. Most bloggers are actually quite receptive to constructive criticism; and if they’re not, they should be.

Perhaps I’m setting myself up for a fall here, but not every blog is perfect. I find myself ignoring most short, link-baiting blog reviews because they don’t have anything worthwhile to say. That’s all well and good as the links are useful, but if you’re link baiting too much it can make your blog look a little too rosy.

Tags: Blog promotion by Angel
No Comments »

In a follow up to my post about submitting your blog to website directories, I came across a useful bit of kit that can make the whole process a lot easier. This software takes a lot of the hard work out of submitting your blog to directories.

The way it works is simple: you enter the core details of your blog that most website directories use, and then navigate through the software’s list of 350 blog directories, sorted by Page Rank. The Page Ranks range from 0 to 6, with a good number having the higher ranks.

You have to go through each directory manually with the software, but having all the directories accessible from a list and using the software to auto-fill the majority (not all) of the forms makes the whole process a lot quicker than it otherwise would be.

The software is free and I have been using it for the past couple of days with complete success. You can sue the software to add a number of websites. The software is inventively named Directory Submitter. They have an affiliate program, but to benefit from it you need to get people to purchase the upgrade, which offers 1,000 directories instead of the usual 350.

Follow this link to Directory Submitter and try it out for yourself. Let me know what you think. Maybe it’s just a waste of time, but I’m convinced it’s a useful tool.

Tags: Blog promotion, Tips and tricks by Angel
1 Comment »