Monday was the biggest traffic day this blog has ever seen.

Take a look at the Google Analytics Graph for my traffic over the past few days.

The first bump is what happened when I first started to use Blogging Zoom.

That last part is Monday.

While I have been adding a reader now and then over the past few weeks it has been very slow growth. I have seen a few traffic bursts from posts that were linked on other blogs.

This is the first time I have had traffic on this scale.

A large part of the traffic came from StumbleUpon with nearly all the rest from Blogging Zoom.

I think the Stumbles also were triggered directly or indirectly from Blogging Zoom. I occasionally get a few Stumbles but never anything like this.

I should also point out that I have only recently put Google Analytics on this site.

I have been using other stats until now. While they were not as accurate or precise and Analytics, I am sure that there has never been traffic close to this on this blog before.

This has been quality traffic as well.

Some have said that StumbleUpon traffic just clicks away. Take a look at the visitor performance from Analytics.

• 293 Unique Visitors
• 684 Pageviews
• 2.29 Pageviews per viewer
• Over 1 minute time on site
• A bounce rate under 30%

Not only did they visit, they looked at more than 1 page and stayed to read.

The bounce rate is lower than most of the Google searches that I get.

This is very good quality traffic.

I am looking forward to seeing what Blogging Zoom is going to be capable of in the future.

It is just getting started. If you are not using Blogging Zoom, sign up now. If not for yourself, to help other bloggers.

One last point about StumbleUpon.

I have made it a new rule not to Stumble my own pages. I'll leave that to others. I also try to find other post to Zoom and Stumble. I am finding the more you give, the more you get.

Of course, if you like this post please Zoom and Stumble it.

What have your results been with social networking sites like Blogging Zoom and StumbleUpon? Any others you find easy to use?

Linkbait done right still makes a happy reader

Linkbait can get you traffic.

Linkbait done right, can turn that traffic into readers. Readers can then make you money.

Linkbait done wrong can get you traffic.

Linkbait done wrong will make potential readers feel cheated. Readers that feel cheated will not return.

Linkbait should never leave your reader feeling like he or she fell hook, line, and sinker for a scam!

It is ok to use linkbait to attract attention.

In this case it should really be called trafficbait. Just like the headline in a newspaper is used to get people to buy a paper and read the story.

If you provide content that does not leave the reader feeling cheated, they will even appreciate the fact that they took the bait. The reader needs to feel they received value for the time they spent.

There are many common uses of linkbait that seem to work well.

Often, the use of a well known Hollywood star in the title can get a lot of traffic. Cashquest's post 6 Lessons Britney Spears Can Teach You About Blogging is a classic example of doing it right. The catchy title draws you in and the good information in the post keeps you entertained and informed.

In some ways it is the old bait and switch.

A title about something that will catch the reader, but the article is really about something totally different. As long as the content can satisfy the reader it will work. If you fail to provide something the reader is looking for, you are looking for trouble.

Examples of terrible linkbaiting are common.

Offten, an outrageous claim is made and nothing but a poor Photoshopped image is given as content. The author's claim's throughout the post about his great discovery and secret fool nobody. Even when the author has no intention of fooling anyone and thinks it is humorous the reader will feel cheated.

The reader feels he had been made to look like a fool.

You fell for my stupid trick.

Ha Ha. I made you look.

 

This is the type of linkbait that will kill a website or blog.

If you have a good reputation, this will hurt it. If you do this twice to your readers and you are going to lose readers.

You have built a new reputation.

You now provide totally unsubstantiated claims. You make empty promises. You provide no value. You are a waste of time to read or pay attention to. Not the reputation you want.

Anyone can claim to have a new secret method of ranking high in the search engines.

But if you do not back it up, you look like an amateur. A joke. A cheap scam.

It is not a PR stunt.

It is just dumb.

I read a post recently that claimed readers should not expect credibility from a blog.

Could not be more wrong.

People will read your blog for information or entertainment. You need credibility for both. Maybe not scientific credibility, but the reader must be able to trust you to provide what they came for.

If you are known for information and suddenly only have pranks to show, who is going to continue to look to you for information. You lose the reputation for information and your credibility to provide it.

If you are known for entertaining, your readers trust you to provide entertainment.

You have creditability even then. If no one finds you entertaining and your trying to entertain, you have no credibility to entertain and probably no readers.

It does not matter if your blog is just opinion or even fiction.

You are working to gain credibility in providing a service to your reader. Nearly always that is information or entertainment.

Good linkbait or trafficbait keeps that credibility you have with your readers.

It is not just a cheap trick to raise your page view, but an attempt to lure a new reader that you can build credibility with.

In the long run, any business needs return customers to survive.

Why? Because it is far less expensive to keep a customer you already have than go find a new one. There is a cost either in money or time to get someone to your page. That cost is less if they return.

Bad link bait will get you page views.

But you lose credibility with those readers. Perhaps you will profit if they click an ad as they leave, but don't expect them back. Don't expect them to trust your recommendation for a product or service. You already cheated them.

How do you feel when you find linkbait or traffic bait?

Do you feel like I do when there is still good content? Do you feel cheated of your time when there is nothing of value there? Have you fallen for linkbait that you still found useful? Do you think blogs can be credible?

Has the Google-slap had it's intended effect already?

The Text Link Ads calculator seems to be showing some very interesting results now.

If you were thinking of using TLA on your site, they had a calculator that could tell you what you might expect to make on your site. It would calculate what you would make depending on how many ads you wished to run.

It seems that TLA is now telling us that you won't make any money with them anymore.

The calculator now gives some very odd results.

Where you used to get a $ figure, you will now get one of several results.
While they might have been comical, they show the effect of the Google-slap on it's competition. The paid link market has crashed.

Here are some screenshots from the calculator.

I am not sure when TLA made these changes to the calculator, but it sure shows the market since the Google-slap.

DigitalKeyTo.info's calculation:

How about John Chow's site?

Same result. It is not just my site-it is the paid links.

Here are two more results you will get:

I find it sad to see this.

Text Link Ads has been a favorite advertiser for many blogs. It provided an excellent option to AdSense. It gave a consistent income that could be fairly reliable as long as you had the Alexa ranking needed to attract advertisers.

You can also see for yourself at the Text Link Ads site.

The link ad calculator is here.

It looks like Google has accomplished it's goal of crushing their competitor.

Perhaps TLA's parent company saw this coming when they purchased AuctionAds.com. At the very least, it was a wise decision on their part to add another income stream.

I think having a second plan in line is a good idea for anyone.

The good news is that there are some new alternatives coming up for bloggers and Internet Marketers.

If you find this post useful, why not zoom it at Blogging Zoom? Also, subscribe to my RSS feed. RSS is the best way to keep track of my posts.

I will try to keep this PG but this post does have some references that make me feel uncomfortable.

Is Google Your Pimp?

Are you just a prostitute doing what Google tells you to do?

One of the things that attracted me to making money online was freedom.

Freedom to find something I enjoyed and make money doing it. Seems simple enough. I just had to do something and find someone willing to pay someway for doing it. Freedom. I think this dream is dead. If not dead, it needs some serious help fast.

The recent Google-slap reeks of racketeering.

Google is specifically threatening sites that are using ads that compete against them. Not much better than a gang threatening a local shop. "You will deal with us, or we will drive your customers away." I no lawyer, but that sure seems like what is going on. It seems like racketeering to me.

Reader benefit, my foot.

An AdSense linkbar looks just like a column of Text Link Ads. The linkbar provides no more benefit to the reader. The difference is Google makes the money. You make less.

There have been many bloggers who have stated rumors that the recent pagerank slap was targeted at sites selling links.

In fact, many sites whored themselves and got rid of the links and were given back their PR (at a loss of income to the site). I think it shows how Google owns them.

Just like the relationship between a pimp and a prostitute.

The pimp tells the whore what to do. She has no choice. She disobeys - SLAP! When she does what he tells her, she gives him the money.

Mike at 20 Steps used a term "nofollow condom" in a comment on Courtney Tuttle's blog.

Mike also mentioned in the comment:

"that if you’re running a link campaign in the New Year without wearing your Big G prophylactic (ribbed for their pleasure, incidentally)"

I think this is a very good description of the situation and the analogy fits the theme of this post so I am including it.

Notice how all the big blogs did what Google told them and now they are happy?

SLAP!

"Please don't hit me again, I do whatever you want."

Owned.

Yeah, after all those posts on how PageRank doesn't really matter. They put the condom on for whoever Google says to put it on.

The trouble is, the rest of us are going to have to bend over and take it from Google also.

We have found ourselves suddenly without anyone to help us get off the street. No one to turn to. Stuck living the life of a prostitute. If the blogs and sites that have a large readership built already cannot stand up to Google, we the smaller siblings that are with them will just be prostituted along with them. Just realize the smaller ones get abused worse. We have no choice.

I really would like to work with Google.

It would be nice to be treated like a partner. To be respected. To have my freedom to find sponsors that will pay me and decide if I want to work with them. It looks like I will be forced to follow the herd into slavery instead.

But.

Google, I resent the fact that you are telling me who to work with and who to link to and how to link. Google, your treatment of both advertisers and publishers has often gotten the term "slap" and for good reason. While it is great to say you are concerned about reader experience, you need to consider the experience of those who deal directly with you also.

Google, I am not your whore.

Don't treat me like one.

Bloggers have a new tool that could bring tons of traffic to your blog.

What is Blogging Zoom?

Blogging Zoom is a new social bookmarking site aimed at just bloggers.

While it may look a bit link Digg, its focus is on blogs and getting traffic to blogs. Bloggers will not have to compete with large media sites on Blogging Zoom like they do on Digg.

Let's face it, your new blog is not going to compete well against a large established site or blog.

Your chances of getting a large amount of traffic from Digg or any other social site are pretty slim until you already have an established readership. That readership also has to have good standing in the social networks. Most likely, no one is going to submit that post that you feel is your best work to Digg and if you submit it, you will probably do more harm than good. Unless you are already a power user at Digg.

Blogging Zoom is your chance for an even playing field.

Blogging Zoom is a place where you are encouraged to show your own posts. Not only will you get exposure to a larger blogging community, but you will get targeted link pointing to your site in the search engines. Courtney Tuttle and Victor Franqui have designed Blogging Zoom to not just send traffic but to give you a highly SEO'ed link to your post. That will also help you in the search engines, something that Digg will never do.

How to use Blogging Zoom to get traffic to your blog.

First, go register at Blogging Zoom.

It is simple. You just need to be a blogger. You just need a user name, email, and to make a password. You can add an avatar.

Next, start submitting your posts to Blogging Zoom.

This is easy. You can use the Blogging Zoom bookmarklet that is in your profile. Just go to a page you want to submit and select the boolmarklet in your bookmarks.

You will need to provide a good description of the post you are submitting.

Blogging Zoom requires you to use at least 350 characters in the description. This will give the search engines something to rank. All it takes is a few sentences. This should also let anyone looking at it what the original post is about.

Start to zoom other posts.

Look for quality zooms. While it can be tempting to go to the front page and zoom leading posts, you will often find extremely good posts in the upcoming post tab. Try to find good posts. When you find good zooms, friend the person who posted it.

Don't submit all your own work or do it all at once.

I do not pay much attention to post after post by the same person in row down the page and I do not think others do either. Space out your submissions.

Submit your better work and the good work of other bloggers.

Develop a reputation for great zooms and others will friend you and zoom your zooms. I have seen a post get zoomed that did not deserve to get zoomed simple because the Zoomer was a well known blog. Good headline, but misleading and if you read the actual post, you would be embarrassed to have promoted it. Your user name is shown with your zooms. Protect your reputation.

Blogging Zoom has the potential to really help the small and mid sized blogs get traffic.

Use it wisely and help others do the same. This is a chance for bloggers to Google-slap proof their blogs and secure their future in the blogosphere.

Right now, Blogging Zoom is just getting started.

Tell others and help promote it. Zoom other blogs and show them how it can help them. The more you help others, the more it helps you. We need to get the word out about Blogging Zoom to give it it's full potential. You will also find that some of the Blogging Zoom users are users of other social networks. There is also a widget that will put a Blogging Zoom badge on your posts.

And hey, Zoom this post if you find it helpful to you or think it will help others!

It was bright and sunny this morning.

I was not ready for it. I am fortunate to be able to take my wife to work fairly regularly. The past few weeks it has been getting kinda dark. It was helped by the cloudy mornings we have been having.

Yesterday, it was time to turn the clocks back an hour.

The sun got a head start this morning. I stepped out the door and instead of the sun just peeking out, I had so close my eyes it was so bright. I had a brief nearly subliminal urge to go back inside (this is what happens if you spend an entire Sunday in a dark room in front of a computer).

This is all Benjamin Franklin's fault.

He is the one that came up with the idea. I have no idea why it would seem so important 200 years ago when everyone traveled by horse or foot. Things happened much slower back then. Now days, a virus can travel across the world faster than you could tell your relatives you got sick on vacation back then.

I am not really sure that switching clocks is really that good of an idea.

Usually, fall, when you gain an hour is almost nice, but spring, that is a different story. I also notice that it seems to be Easter morning when they want you to get up extra early for church that they also steal that hour of sleep.

I think that shifting the time is hard on the human body.

I do not mean in a sci-fi time traveling way. The readjustment to a new schedule is hard on you physically. I always feel out of whack for days. I know, real scientific choice of words.

Do you think this was one of Benjamin Franklin's better ideas?

Or, should we all just go fly kites made out of metal during thunderstorms?

I am making an upgrade on the blog tonight.

It will look funny, if it works at all, while I am doing the update. I'll be turning off many plugins while I do the upgrade.

After the upgrade, I will be cleaning up nearly all the posts.

There will be code that needs to be changed or deleted in nearly all the posts. This will take some time and I will be turning off pings while I do it.

This is the first part of the updates I am making.

I will have at least one more within the next few weeks. While the look will still be much the same, there will be a lot of difference to the administrative side of the blog.

See you in a few hours… hopefully.

*Update to the update. Everything seems to be working fine. It took a long time to go back through all the posts and clean them up, but it's done.*

If Feedburner was not already a part of Google the following from the Feedburner blog would probably start a lawsuit.

…the reason is that specific subscriber stats from Google Feedfetcher were offline because this service was apparently out late with friends on Friday night, and well, it completely slept through Saturday…

Burning Questions • Saturday Subscriber Count Drop?

I noticed the drop in RSS readers this morning.

I do not have that many RSS subscribers yet, but I was surprised to see a large drop. Not only on this blog, but also at the other sites I have with Feedburner.

It was not until I went to Ed Lau's blog that I found out it was not just my sites.

John Chow also has a post about the RSS numbers.

In John Chow's case, it was a loss of nearly 5000 readers. That would put him back almost to where he was before the contest with Shoemoney.

Fortunately, the Feedburner post says everything should be back to normal shortly.

This would be a good time for you to subscribe to my RSS feed if you are not subscribed already.

I do not post at a regular schedule, and getting updates by RSS is more convenient than trying to check back. You can also get updates by email through Feedburner.

Blogs have advantages.

I recently made a post about switching one of my sites to WordPress from a static site.

If you are not sure if you want a blog or a static site, maybe some of these advantages might change your mind. While I am most familiar with WordPress, other platforms like TypePad and Blogger have many of the same advantages. Some of them can really help you succeed online.

5 advantages of WordPress over a static site.

First, easy addition of new content.

Adding a new article or page to a blog is about as fast and easy as it can get. Using built in features like WordPressIt or using software like Windows Live Writer also make adding a quote from a news site or other source as a base for a page easy.

Second, easy page and text styling.

No need to learn CSS or html when you are just starting. You can find plenty of free templates to use to change the look of your site. You can keep your text well highlighted and correctly marked with CSS just by using the <h1> <h2> <h3> and other CSS tags in the blog text editor. This keeps your content looking consistent and professional.

Third, it is easy to add extras to your site.

Want to take a poll? There is a plugin. Want to add music? There is a plugin. Plugins make adding features to your site fast and easy. Often, trying to do the same thing on a traditional web page takes a lot of hand coding and knowledge. With WordPress, it is fairly painless to find the plugin to do what you want at WordPress.org and simple upload it to your plugin folder. Click activate and it's ready to go.

Fourth, easy internal SEO.

The use of categories for posts gives your site an easy to follow navigation. It also improves the SEO of your internal links. SEO plugins help even further. WordPress is amazingly effective at SEO right from the setup.

Fifth, RSS.

The recent RSS reader contest between John Chow and Shoemoney brought RSS to the forefront. What would happen to your traffic if you lost all your ranking with the search engines? Internet marketers are always talking about building a list. RSS is an easy way to get that list of your readers. Far more people will subscribe to an RSS feed than will ever give you their email address. RSS can make you Google-slap proof.

There are many other advantages to using a blog over a static site.

Do you have any other you would like to share.

Make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed too!

I just converted my How To Take Better Photos site to WordPress.

Originally, I created the site in Dreamweaver.

It was a bit of a chore learning how to do it. Additionally, whenever I wanted to add content, it took a lot of time.

This is what it used to look like.

Clicking on the image will take you to the new page.

With a static site, adding a page has some extra work to it.

Once you write the content, you add it to a page template. Then, you must change the links on the rest of the pages on the site to point to it. For me, this is enough to make me not add much in the way of content since the site was built.

The conversion from static site to WordPress took a while to accomplish.

The first task was to enter the content into the blog. I created a WordPress blog offline on my computer to do this. I used some free software called XAMMPLite to create the server to run WordPress.

The trick was to keep the content and pages with the same addresses they had in the static site.

You do not want to lose any links your site has built up already. You want to take advantage of any traffic you are already getting.

I used the permalinks feature in WordPress to reproduce the link structure of the original site.

One problem I had was I used subfolders for the various articles originally.

This was a problem. I was able to create a permalink structure that gave nearly every page the same URL as it had before. At least I think so. There are a few pages I was not able to keep with the same URL. These pages are not important anyway and should not have any links to them.

Once I had entered the content, it was time to convert the site.

I used the WordPress export feature to export the content and categories to a file.

I deleted the original site on the host.

I created the MYSQL database for WordPress. I edited the wp_config file to show the database, user, and password before I uploaded. I then uploaded the WordPress files to the server. I am using the Semiologic Pro for the theme and content manager on the site, so I had all the files I needed.

Only two major steps left

First, recreate the permalink structure I has used offline. Next, import the content file I had exported. All the pages were there in the right categories. Just a little fine tuning to do.

A few things needed to be fixed.

Links in the content from the static site no longer worked. I needed to find these and point them to the right pages. For a photography site, I have had (still have) very few images, but they needed to be uploaded to WordPress and replaced. Also, I needed to put the ads back on the site.

Semiologic has an ad managing system.

I want to take advantage of this so I did not keep the ads that were on the original pages. The next version of Semiologic has even better ad management that I think will be an asset, not only to me, but to regular readers.

I will be able to show AdSense to search engine traffic and new viewers and show fewer or different ads to regular readers.

I will be updating this site to Semiologic Pro soon also. I think my regular readers here will really appreciate it also. I should be making the switch within the next couple weeks.

In all, I have managed to keep much of the original look of the site.

I now have a 3 column layout. Right now, I have a mostly white theme where it was white and grey. I am planning to change this later.

Most importantly, it is now fast and easy to add content.

I am hoping to get an article up tonight. It will be about ghosts in pictures.

I hope you will check my photography site at http://www.photographybyjet.com.

Let me know what you think about it. If you have any questions about converting to WordPress from a static site, let me know here.