Never underestimate the power of submitting your blog to directories. It’s something that I knew I should be doing but I was unsure of it’s true value. Derek Beau had this to say about the matter:

Submitting your websites to directories can be a huge source of valuable inbound links. In many cases, this is all you need to do in order for your website to be given a Google PageRank 4. The problem, however, is that the work is very monotonous.

After reading that, I will try to get my blog in as many directories as possible, and then hopefully I can build this up to a PageRank 4 and start making some serious money blogging. Derek’s last point about it being monotonous work is very on the money. One thing that Derek suggests that I had never thought of before is outsourcing your directory submission work.

While it sounds very glamorous, what it entails is just going to a forum and finding somebody who needs a fast buck to add your link(s) to multiple directories. The low fees these guys charge makes me wonder why they do it, but I guess everybody has to make a dime somehow. It’s like working in an office doing data entry – and most of us have done something similar at one time or another.

One forum Derek recommends is the Digital Point “Buy, Sell or Trade” forum. Some people offer automatic submission, while others will do it manually. Derek recommends only using manual services, although he doesn’t say why. I found one guy offering submission to 350 directories for $25. I don’t know anything about automatic submission software, and so I would be more tempted to use someone who offers manual services, like this guy who offers a range of packages, including submission to 1,000 directories for $120. How he has time to do that I don’t know.

I am personally of the disposition that I don’t like to pay for something I can easily do myself, but adding your site to directories is donkey work and after reading Derek’s article I will be investing in some directory submission work in the near future.

For a bit of cash you can get it done easily, but I wouldn’t expect a Page Rank 7 just through directory submissions. Remember that if it only cost $120 to get Page Rank 7, everyone would be doing it, so even submitting your blog to directories has its limits.

The only problem I can envisage if you have already submitted your blog to a number of directories and not kept a list of which ones. There may be some overlap there if you’ve been doing a good job.

Tags: Blog promotion by Angel
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I’ve been looking for ways to improve the promotion of this blog. So far I’ve been spending a bit of time going around commenting on other people’s blogs, but I was starting to get lost. I came across 3 Things to do for a New Blogger over at Daily Tech News. Although it’s only three things, the things were broken down into sub sections. The first thing of interest I saw was this:

Social Book Marking sites can get you a huge number of traffic. You ought to have a great content to hit the front page. If you hit the front page of Digg or Netscape, you will have a good time seeing visitors flow by your site. Stumble and Del.icio.us can get you traffic in long term.

Social bookmarking to boost your traffic

I hadn’t previously given much thought to social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking is a way of sharing sites or pages of a website/blog that you come across with the online community. I was a bit confused how I could use social bookmarking to market promote blog, but it was obvious really. Those Digg, Stumble and Del.icio.us links I have at the bottom of every post could drive huge amounts of traffic to this blog if people come across a post they like.

What this means is that I need to work on more original content that I think people will enjoy reading. To get links and icons for social bookmarking to add to your blog follow this link to 3Spots.

Bookmark yourself

Another side of social bookmarking is adding your own blog posts to the major online bookmarking services. I went over to Pro Blogger to see what Darren had to say:

While I don’t recommend spamming social bookmarking sites I would recommend being aware of them and submitting your best posts from time to time. In this way you put your posts out there for others to find. They may or may not take off so don’t think it’s a guarantee that you’ll get visitors - but you’re at least giving them a chance. If they do get popular the traffic doesn’t last long - but in the process you just might retain some extra new readers and perhaps just as importantly often after being ‘dugg’ you find that other bloggers link to you - giving you all important incoming links to your post which will help with Search Engine Optimization.

Sound advice and noted – I won’t be submitting all my posts. Over at John Chow’s blog, he was recently paid $400 to review a tool that costs $47 and takes care of all your submitting to social bookmarks in one go. The makers of Web 2 Submitter say that they can save you hours with their software, but think about it: Unless you’re submitting every single one of your posts, which you shouldn’t be, why pay $47?

One thing that immediately put me off Web 2 Submitter was the homepage, which is one of those really annoying websites that takes an eternity to scroll down, going past recommendations and testimonials and case studies – honestly, when I see a product marketed like that, it annoys the hell out of me.

Gerard over at Scribble Designs pointed out that Social Poster does all of what Web 2 Submitter does… for free. I tried it out, and sure enough, it’s a damn good utility. You can drag a link to your Firefox toolbar or bookmarks, and then whenever you’re on a page you want to bookmark, you hit the link and can submit it to all the usual bookmarking sites. You need to be registered with all the sites you submit to, but if you aren’t then you can register as you submit. Easy!

So that’s me clued up on social bookmarking. I haven’t reaped the benefits of implementing any of the above yet, but I hope in the near future that something will take off.

Tags: Blog promotion by Angel
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Central to any blog’s success is building up links back to your site. This is no easy task unless you have something that will grab people’s attention and get them linking to you. Most of us don’t have something revolutionary to say, and I certainly haven’t developed any plugins or anything that are going to get people coming here, so I’m starting up by building up links the hard way.

A post on www.DoshDosh.com by Maki lists fifteen ways to starting building up link backs. One of the methods that looked pretty simple for a new blog is submitting to blog directories. Maki linked to a page that listed more than 900 blog directories.

I added my blog to about 25 of these directories before the slow process made me want to cry. I don’t think it’s necessary to add your blog to every directory out there, but if you want free link backs this is a good way to get started. Don’t spend all your time doing this though; better to actually write a few blog posts than spend hours filling out forms on the net.

Some of the directories require that you supply a reciprocal link. I created a reciprocals page for this blog and just stuck all the links in there. My reciprocals page won’t be linked to anywhere on my main blog so other than an abundance of outgoing links, it doesn’t do too much harm.

I’ve had enough blog promotion for one day. This making money online business is hard, slow work. Let’s hope the rewards are there at the end.

Tags: Blog promotion by Angel
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