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Six Figure Blogging © 2005 Andy Wibbels and Darren Rowse. All Rights Reserved. http://www.sixfigureblogging.com/ v 1.0 141 Six Figure Blogging Class 5 Transcript Time Warner/Weblogs, Inc. Buyout Andy: Darren, have we done the class since the big AOL Time Warner news, the big AOL Web Blog buy out? Darren: No. I think that happened this week Andy: Yes, that was the big news. I don’t know if anybody has heard but AOL bought the Weblogs, Inc. blog network for how much Darren? Was it twenty million? Darren: The rumor is about twenty-five million. Which I think is not bad for a two year old company. Andy: Not at all. I think they were saying that they have about eighty blogs but really thirty of them are live. Darren: That is right and there was one or two that weren’t included in that deal that is because, it came out yesterday [that those blogs posted] lots of rumors on them and AOL didn’t want to get sued. Andy: Right, with all the liability. I am curious to see how this is all shakes out because I want to see what kind of deals the writers are going to get. Darren: Yes, I think there are no promises at this stage. I saw an email saying that they are not promising any extra payments at this stage but they are changing their conditions of copy write so the bloggers can keep the copyright to what they write Andy: That is surprising.

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Six Figure Blogging Class 5 Transcript Time Warner/Weblogs, Inc. Buyout

Andy: Darren, have we done the class since the big AOL Time Warner

news, the big AOL Web Blog buy out?

Darren: No. I think that happened this week

Andy: Yes, that was the big news. I don’t know if anybody has heard but

AOL bought the Weblogs, Inc. blog network for how much Darren? Was it

twenty million?

Darren: The rumor is about twenty-five million. Which I think is not bad

for a two year old company.

Andy: Not at all. I think they were saying that they have about eighty

blogs but really thirty of them are live.

Darren: That is right and there was one or two that weren’t included in

that deal that is because, it came out yesterday [that those blogs posted]

lots of rumors on them and AOL didn’t want to get sued.

Andy: Right, with all the liability. I am curious to see how this is all

shakes out because I want to see what kind of deals the writers are going

to get.

Darren: Yes, I think there are no promises at this stage. I saw an email

saying that they are not promising any extra payments at this stage but

they are changing their conditions of copy write so the bloggers can keep

the copyright to what they write

Andy: That is surprising.

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Darren: Yes, they can use it in any way that is not online, I think. So they

can write books out of their content or do speaking tours or that kind of

stuff so there are some increased conditions to that regard and there was

allusions to that fact that there would be more money in the network but

haven’t given any specifics to my knowledge yet on that.

Andy: I am so surprised that a large company like AOL would give up

content rights. That really surprises me.

Darren: Yes. I guess AOL is an online company so they just want to [have

the] online rights to it.

Andy: Maybe that is how they can justify not paying people as much

because they say, “You own your content.”

Darren: Yes, exactly.

Google Launches RSS Reader

Andy: The other big blogging news was that Google launched an RSS

reader which you can look at reader.Google.com. I just posted a flash

demo on how to do it over at andywibbels.com. It is in the notes for

tonight and Yahoo just launched a podcast search engine over at

podcast.yahoo.com. So there has been a lot of activity. Darren, there was

some other big money buy out thing. What was that?

Verisign Buys Weblogs.com

Darren: Yes, VeriSign bought out weblogs.com which was a pinging

service.

Andy: Right so if you guys have ever heard of weblogs.com, which is a

pinging service which is a clearing house for updated weblogs all over the

place. That got bought by Verisign who was owned by Dave Winer, right?

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Darren: That is right. It was a multimillion dollar deal. I can’t remember

the exact figures. I think it might have been five or something.

Andy: It is wild because that is really just a pinging server. I mean, yes, it

has a lot of traffic but it is pretty much a one-trick-pony type site.

Darren: That is right.

Andy: I am fascinated to see in a year what we are talking about in

regards to all these buyouts they just have the capacity to.

Darren: That is right. I guess it just goes to show how a simple idea can

actually work out for massive results in an incredibly short time with

blogging.

Andy: Yes, so now they are all saying that this is the blogging bubble. It is

the internet bubble 2.0 and the usual rumor-mongering and the hate-

mongering and gossip is awash over the blogosphere. It is always fun to

tune into that because people get really protective of themselves.

Introduction to Metrics

Andy: Today we really want to get down to brass tacks about metrics and

traffic and writing content. I really love the metrics side of things because

it is something you can hold on to, you can analyze it, you can play with it

if you are obsessed with numbers. You can be a total Microsoft Excel dork

and sit there and run charts and figure out where everything is coming

from. Metrics are really what is going to get you certain about the results

that your blog is getting.

Darren: That is right. I was just thinking this morning, I used to work in

a supermarket and we used to do this thing where we’d follow customers

around and we’d make a little map of where they went in the store, what

shelves they were looking at, what products they compared with other

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products, and those sorts of thing. Then we did an exit poll of them at the

end. That information was then used in the design of that supermarket.

Really I guess what we are talking about today is that type of thing where

we are looking at who our readers are, where they are coming in, and

where they’re looking, what they are doing, and how they leave. In the

same regard, I guess, we actually can use that information to design our

sites and I guess increase the profitability of what we are doing.

Andy: Yes, if you want to read about that behavior study, there is a really

good book out called WhyWe Buy. It is a guy who is an anthropologist

that actually hires people to follow customers in malls, restaurants, and

shops. They do this whole study. It is a fascinating book and he also does

some work online. He just published a new book about people’s attraction

to malls. I forgot the guy’s name but his one book is called Why We Buy.

Traffic as a Stream

Andy: When I think of traffic, I’d like to think of a stream. It is important

to analyze each visitor and where each individual could be going, might be

going, and what they might be looking for. You can get a lot more

information if you think about your traffic as a stream.

You are standing next to a stream and you want to dip your blog in there.

You want to get as much water as possible. Think about when you are at

the ocean and you are trying to catch guppies. You have your half-liter

bottle; you’ve cut it in half and it’s empty. You catch some fish and they

always swim out of the water as you are scooping it up. It is the idea where

you want to get this flow.

I think of this big pipeline. I want to divert it from the internet on to my

blog. Then I want to get those clicks to people on to my site. Every click

tells you something about what that person’s looking for. I really didn’t

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start thinking about traffic like that until a couple of years ago where I was

really trying to read up on how people think of website traffic.

Every click tells you either a person has found something they are looking

for, they got interested in something, they gave up and left, or they got

diverted into a different topic, or they clicked on an ad. Every single click

can tell you a little bit more about what person is doing and what they are

looking for.

It is important to think of traffic as this overall stream that you can

analyze but every once in a while, you can get in there and root around

and see what an individual user is doing.

Darren: That is right. The other thing that I love about metrics and the

statistical packages that we are going to talk about today is that you can

analyze things quite often on a click-by-click basis and on an individual

user basis. When you pull those statistics together, you actually begin to

see some real emerging trends on your blog.

What I’d suggest is that people do go into the micro and do look at

individual behavior of blog readers but take steps back as well and look at

those overarching trends which can reveal some incredible information

and open up real opportunities for you as well.

What is Your Site’s Most Valuable Click?

Andy: The stuff I wanted to add to is the idea of what is your site’s most

valuable click? If somebody goes to your site and clicks on something,

what gets you the most bang for the buck? What is the highest paying best

converting link to an ad? To an affiliate commission? It could be to your

own newsletter or an existing product. Do you put those valuable clicks in

the hot spots of your templates so that each click not only tells you about

the user but can also be an opportunity for income?

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Darren: That is right. That would make a good basis for your field work

this week is asking the question, “What am I trying to get people to click

on? What is that most valuable click?”

For instance, on Problogger, my most valuable click isn’t my AdSense ads.

They are not a big of a deal for me. What I want people to do on

Problogger is one of three things. I want them to sign up for my RSS feed;

I want them to subscribe to my newsletter, and I’d like them to click on

my affiliate links because I know the affiliate links on that page are much

better converting when it comes to income than AdSense ads.

That is my priority for Problogger which is very different from say the

digital camera one where I am much more interested in people clicking on

Chitika ads or AdSense ads because I know that they convert pretty well

on that particular site.

So each blog you have, it is really important to have that in the back of

your mind is, “What am I trying to direct people to? How am I trying to

divert this stream into ways that 1) Helps the readers that are coming into

my site because we want to be creating useful but that 2) that it is helpful

to me in my goals?”

Basic Vocabulary

Andy: Right. Just to do a quick vocabulary, when we talk about

conversion rate, we are talking about what percentage of visits to a

particular page result in clicking on an ad or an affiliate link.

If you say, for example, that my newsletter sign up page usually has about

twenty to twenty-five percent conversion, which means of the people that

land on the sign up page, at least a fourth of them make the trip to the

success page that says, “Thanks for signing up for the newsletter.” Then, I

am also able to tell how many of those people then go to download the

excerpt from my book.

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So the conversion rate is meaning how many of these random readers are

you converting either into a newsletter or a sales pipeline or out to a

product or an ad or an affiliate product.

Darren: That is right. Really for me, it is all about positioning. I think

one of the key positions on your blog to put these things that you want

people to do is at the end of posts. We talked last week about how the top

left hand corner of the heat map and that can be quite optimal to put

something like, “Subscribe for my newsletter for tips like this.” Or

“Subscribe to my RSS feed for more information like this.” Add those

points in your blog where things end whether it be a post or whether it be

a stream of thought that you got going on or whether it be that they just

signed up for something and then they are greeted with an empty page.

You want to be thinking about those dead spots, those spots where people

are stopping and looking for something else to do is to actually be

positioning those sorts of next step activities.

Andy: Right, very good idea. Along with that, if you are going to think of

your clicks in a really cold marketing business school sense, you really

want ideally, a site visitor to click on an ad or a product or often to a

newsletter or go somewhere else on this site that if you are getting into

cold hard marketing terms, you want them to either click out to something

that gives me something or stay on the site until you do.

Use a Flowchart to Map Traffic Patterns

Darren: That is right. I think it is really worthwhile, I haven’t put them in

the notes, but it is worthwhile actually to be making a flowchart up of

what you think a typical reader does on your site. Track them where they

are coming in from and what will they do when they are on my site and

actually begin to develop your idea flow of what would you like them to do

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that can actually give you some steps along the way of actually designing

this flow through in a way that converts for you.

Observe Test Users

Andy: Also if you want to drive yourself crazy, have somebody that

doesn’t know your site and watch them use it. There are a few things more

awaking than watching non-savvy internet users use a website.

So if you ever want to blow your own mind, I use to do interface testing

with an old job. Watch people use your site. You will be amazed at what

they click on, what they skip over, and what they see as important versus

what you or your designer think is important.

Darren: It is one of the funniest things you can ever do is doing that but

it is really useful.

Andy: If you have non-techie parents, get them to use your site because

you will learn so much about where their eyes fall, what they perceive as

something that is free or something that is useful. It will totally blow your

mind. I am telling you; it is really fascinating.

Darren: It is quite depressing too.

Andy: It is quite depressing. If you want a good book on usability, check

out, Don’t Make Me Think. It is a book on web usability. It is really great

reading, very approachable. David Krug, I think is the guy’s name. I

believe if you go to dontmakemethink.com it will tell you what is going on.

That is again outside of the blog realm but knowing some web usability

can often help you understand why things aren’t working on your design.

Traffic and Measuring

Andy: So we covered traffic and measuring and why we measure and how

we measure but now we want to get to really the how and the metrics and

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the measures. What you want to start to notice is where people are coming

from? What is the referring link? How did they get there? Who is sending

you the most traffic? What domain names send you the most traffic?

Where are they going? Once they get to your blog, what do they do next?

Do they stay on the blog, go somewhere else, do they check the archives,

do they run a search, and do they go out to something that interests them?

What were they looking for?

If an incoming user or reader is coming from Google or Yahoo or MSN,

you can usually see what search keywords they were looking for. You can

start to understand what keywords you have to a particular fancy for in

the search engines.

I remember when they had the tsunami, I posted some tsunami pictures

on one of my personal blogs and I was on the second page of tsunami pics

results. I was getting a ton of hits a day.

Darren: You are the expert on this stuff mate. I am really looking

forward to hearing how you actually do it. What tools do you use in your

tracking? I use Site Meter; that is the main thing I use. What do you

recommend?

Andy: I am using a pretty advanced tool that I am not sure if I totally like

it yet or not called Mach5. It actually downloads the traffic blogs from

your web host.

Darren: Ok, so that is a server based thing.

Andy: It runs from Windows. It is a Windows application that goes and

grabs your logs and then it analyses them. Sometimes, I think it may be

too much analysis. I think if you can get where they are coming from and

where they were going and if you got TypePad, your stats packages in

TypePad also tells you what people are looking for.

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If you get a Google link in TypePad in your stats package or in the traffic

area, you can click on that and that will tell you what terms people were

looking for. You can actually see the search page that person saw and see

where you fall on it because often it won’t be the first result.

I’ve gotten good clicks out of being fifth position if the topic is strong

enough.

Darren: I find that the traffic services that cost, I don’t know what that

actually costs, that they are actually really great. You can get most of that

information from Site Meter or a free package as well so if you are wanting

to start out small. The downside of Site Meter is that it tracks down your

last one hundred size of your site. It can give you good information or not.

I find myself logging into Site Meter just everyday. I have a folder on

Firefox which opens every Site Meter on all my blogs in a click and I can

scan through them and just get a feel on what is going on in my blogs just

in a couple of minutes.

One of the most helpful steps on Site Meter that I use is just the last hour

steps. It tells you how many people have been on your site in the last hour.

For me this is vitally important because if you get a big link up from a

particular site. Last week I got a link from Slashdot. I knew about that

within a few minutes of that link coming in just by looking at, “I had a

thousand visitor in the last hour. Something unusual is happening there.”

To know that information is so powerful because it means that you can go

to the page that they are coming in on and actually begin to mold that

page, that post into something that not only helps them, the reader but

actually helps you as well.

I went into that post and I added an affiliate link. I mentioned my RSS

feed, my newsletter and the conversion was great. If I hadn’t been tracking

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those results up to the minute almost, I would have lost the power of

thirty or forty thousand people in a few hours coming into my site.

It really is vital information. It doesn’t have to cost you anything.

Andy: Right and along with what stats can tell you, it can also tell you

where pages aren’t being found. Some stats packages will tell you where

are the broken links on your site. You may have a broken link that you

either move something and it is getting a tone of hits but nobody is able to

get to that resource because you moved it. You could do a forwarding page

or do some other server magic that then harness that traffic to the old link

to where it should be going.

Along with knowing where people are coming from, where they are going,

and what they are looking for, you can also start to track things by IP

address which tell you the geographic location of where that person is in

the world which you can also tell you perhaps what languages you might

try offering your blog in.

I know Darren, we talked about yesterday that Engadget has the gadget

blog in multiple languages right?

Darren: Yes, They’ve got at least two or three languages now. I know the

Gawker News network is going into a lot of European languages at the

moment and I suspect that that is because they noticed that a lot of

visitors coming in from those countries and they want to provide

information that will tap into that market where things are happening for

them already.

Andy: It is also really cool where you can run that report and see that you

are being read all over the world. Besides all the, “Yes, we are making

money, “ it is really cool that you are able to reach out and be read by

people all over the world.

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Darren: That is right. It is essential if you are going to be running private

advertising on your site. I just signed a deal with Ricoh to put some ads on

my site. It is Ricoh Australia that wants to put the ads on and the first

question they asked was, “How many Australian visitors do you have to

your site?”

Unless you are tracking that information, you are pulling figures out of

nowhere. It is all any evidence but to be able to say, “Here is my stat

package. Here are how many Australian visitors are coming in.”

They’ll be able to make an informed decision and it is quite attractive to

advertisers. It is not just the only information but if you want to go into

advertising route, it is essential to be able to have those stats.

A lot of them want demographic stats as well which don’t come from stat

packages. It is very hard to tell where they are male or female coming in or

what age they are. So another thing you might want to consider is running

a survey occasionally just to put a finger on the pulse of your blog of who

is reading it because that information is very attractive to advertisers as

well.

Andy: Along with where people are, it is also useful to know how they are

coming into the sight and what page they are coming on and when they

are leaving. Often, people don’t come to your site through the front page.

Darren: That is right. I was looking at my digital camera one this

morning and I am just looking at it now. Out of the last one hundred

visitors to my site only thirteen hit the front page. So eighty-seven percent

of my visitors are coming in through a back door somewhere. It is really

useful to know which back door that is.

I know just looking at it that about ten percent are coming in by one

particular page on my site on a particular digital camera that is rumored

to be coming out in the next month or so.

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That is valuable information for me as I begin to think about one, what is

on that page already and what opportunities are there on that page? Two,

should I be writing more information on that particular camera at the

moment because that is hot at the moment?

Andy: Right and or should you adjust the ads on that page to maximize

the traffic you are receiving too.

Darren: Yes, for sure. It might be worth for me putting in another

Chitika ad on that.

Andy: Just have that whole page be one Chitika ad!

Along with where people are going and when they are exiting the site, if

there is someplace where people always exit the site, either you are

probably linking to a really good resource or it is a really boring page.

Darren: That is right. One of the interesting thing about knowing where

people are going, in MyBlogLog stats that we kept talking about give you

this is that you actually know what other sites are really benefiting from

you at the moment which is good for pulling in favors later.

I was talking to someone the other day and I said to him, “You know, I

noticed I’ve sent you three to four hundred hits over the last twenty-four

hours.” They were amazed that I knew that. There is a relationship. I am

not going to manipulate them for that information but it is really good to

know who is benefiting from my site and how that might come back for

me later on. It is really interesting.

The other thing I noticed this morning on my digital camera one is that

the statistics of where people are entering the site and where people are

leaving the site from actually are very similar. So I know that thirteen

percent are hitting my site on the front page and thirteen percent are

leaving my site from the front page.

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Obviously I need to do some work there on retaining visitors because they

are coming in and they are leaving from the same page which could be

good if they are all clicking on ads but it could be that they are not finding

the information that they want. Again, that information is really useful to

have.

Andy: It’s also good to know what times of the day and or days of the

week your site gets more traffic. I was surprised that I get a lot more

traffic on Mondays than other days of the week. I was suspecting it would

be Tuesday or Wednesday because I would think people go to work on

Monday and they spend all day going through emails; maybe that is just

me. What you can start to find out is what days you get the most traffic so

you should have your most featured content début on that particular day.

Darren: Yes, I know on my blog that usually Tuesdays or Wednesdays

are the highest days. You’ll noticed on my other blogs that Tuesdays and

Wednesdays are the days I’ll make announcements so if any are an

importance to me, they are the days where I’ll feature new affiliate

programs that I got coming in. There is no point of putting them on a

Saturday when my stats drop in half. It is great information to have.

Andy: Finally, how much time is being spent on your site? Like Darren

was saying, if you got thirteen percent of the people getting to the front

page and many of those don’t stick around, if he knows how long they

stayed on the page, he is able to see if they theoretically read something,

did they go, “I didn’t like the site,” and then they are gone within a few

seconds. That again can tell you more information about who is reading

the page and how long they are taking and spending time on it. Depending

on how the content is on the page, if they are perusing it or watching a

demo or listening to something, it can tell you more information.

Darren: I find that most people don’t spend time on pages for very long.

We’ll talk a little bit later on that in writing content. You need to write

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with that in mind so don’t get too depressed if people are staying in your

site for forty seconds. That doesn’t sound like much but actually that is not

bad for a lot of sites.

The other thing I would say is don’t worry too much about comparing that

stat with another site because each site will have its own purpose and its

own rhythm.

Forty seconds can be fantastic if at the end of that forty seconds they are

clicking on the link that you want them to click on. Again six minutes

might be great for some sites but they might not be getting any

conversions on that. Again, it is not just about lengths of stay but it is

about what your goal is ultimately.

Traffic Tools

Andy: Right. Now I want to get into some of the tools that we use to track

all this stuff.

Technorati and BlogPulse

The first two that I really enjoy using are Technorati and BlogPulse which

we’ve talked about before. They are places to finds blogs on a certain topic

or a certain keyword or a certain niche.

I use Technorati and BlogPulse because they have watchlists where I am

able to see where I am being linked to in the blogosphere usually within

an hour or so of it happening. So if you want to, you can sign up over at

Technocrati. You’ll have to create a user account and assign your blog and

go through a little process as well as BlogPulse You can take any URL

anywhere and type into BlogPulse and see where that is being linked to in

the blogosphere and how many links it is getting. It will even give you a

trend chart to show you over the past two weeks or four weeks where the

traffic has been spiking and where the interest is.

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Darren: Yes, I use to use them quite a bit but for some reason, I dropped

off. I don’t know if I am getting too busy but it is great information to

have. Does it cost anything to use the search or the watch list?

Andy: No, I think with Technorati, I think you can have up to three watch

lists and the BlogPulse is free right now as well. I know that the BlogPulse

company, they do that Intelliseek product where it is really mega stats for

large corporations. The BlogPulse thing is all free right now.

Darren: Great. I may have to get back into them.

Andy: You can also subscribe to a feed of these updates for your blog. In

my aggregator, I’ve got an Andy Technorati feed so I can see whenever

somebody links to my site I get pop-ups that says, “Hey this is here.” So

they link to me where they are going. If I know them I can say, “Thanks

for sending me traffic.” I can leave a comment on that particular post and

say, “Thanks so much for talking about what I am talking about.” It is

another way to see where you are being talked about and where you are

being mentioned.

Darren: Yes, that is very useful information to know that because for me,

blogging is really about the relationships not only with your readers but

with the source of your readers as well. To know that is quite a powerful

thing.

MyBlogLog

Andy: The next part we want to talk about is MyBlogLog which I just

signed up for it yesterday. It is pretty darn cool. It is what Darren has been

talking about where it tracks not just incoming traffic but outgoing links.

It can tell you where people are coming from but also where they are

going.

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I am able to see that I’ve had in the past day, I’ve had about twelve people

come through my thank you page and my newsletter. I am able to see

where those subscribers are coming from. I can see what links they are

coming from and what links they are going to. If they are adding my feed

to their site, I can see that as well.

Again, it is another way to really start to slice and dice where all this stuff

is coming from. MyBlogLog is twenty-five bucks per year, I think per blog,

Darren?

Darren: Yes, it is per blog which could get a bit expensive if you are

running multiple blogs but I think it is definitely worth that information

just from where they are going point of view alone. The incoming traffic

that it tracks, you can get in any stats package but there is only a few

around that track where people are going.

Like I’ve said, I think last week or the week before, it actually puts the

finger on not only what links are popular but that gives you the power

then to analyze what wording in those links seems to be working. So if

you’ve got a link that is always popular and it says, “Free beer,” you might

have some insight into the fact that your readers are into free beer and the

wording I guess of that is really powerful.

I think, Ellie, in the ecampus, yesterday I mentioned that she has been

using that MyBlogLog and she has realized that most of the outgoing links

are images or image links. She’s noticed that the image ones are much

more powerful than the text ones which I think is a great analyses to have.

Obviously she is going to be using a lot of image links to her affiliate

program in the future because they convert so much better.

You wouldn’t know that without tracking your outgoing links.

Andy: Again, that is all available at mybloglog.com. Once you register,

you can do a free trial but once you are registered, you get a little piece of

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JavaScript that you add to your templates and that sends a little shout-out

to the MyBlogLog server every time there is a page visit or a link clicked

on a page.

Mint

A similar tool is called the Mint. It is at haveamint.com. This also tracks

both incoming and outgoing stats and it is thirty bucks per site. I think

William has been using that tool?

Darren: Yes, I don’t know if William is on the call but he said he would

post something on the ecampus about his experiences. He was raving

about it. The thing I love about Have a Mint is that it is just beautifully

designed.

Andy: Yes, it is nice.

Darren: Yes, it is worth thirty dollars for that alone but it is great.

SiteMeter, Hitbox, StatCounter and AWStats

Andy: Other tools to look at are Site Meter. Again, these are normal

things where you get a little piece of code, you put it on your blog, and it

loads a little bitty image that sends out a hit and tracks that particular hit.

Hitbox.com and StatCounter.com and these all operate the same way. You

sign up and you get a little piece of code, you add to your blog, and you

can then check the reports.

Darren: Yes, they are free. You get what you pay for so you won’t be

getting any of the really detailed analysis that Andy was talking about at

the start. I find them good. I also use the AWStats which I think you’ve got

listed down there which is a server based one and that gives a lot more

detailed information. It is almost so overwhelming that I don’t use it on a

daily basis as much as I use the Site Meter.

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Andy: Yes, AWStats is really for large corporate intranets. It is so much, it

really is too much data. It is a really amazing tool but it can give you so

much analysis.

Something to keep in mind is that when you first get your sites up, it is

normal to check your stats every fifteen minute. It’s ok. We’ve all done

that when we first put our site where you just check it constantly and you

are going to lose your mind.

Darren: I don’t know what you are talking about!

Andy: Right. Not me, not here. It is very easy to get seduced by tracking

your traffic all the times. Maybe make it a day of the week that I am going

to check things hourly once a day but I am going to do a more thorough

analysis for a half hour maybe once a week and say, “This Friday

afternoon, traffic analysis” and write down here is where the stats are

coming from, here is where it is going, here is what my comment search

terms are and stuff like that.Your stats can drive you crazy if you let it take

over your life and it certainly can.

Darren: That is right. I tend to do it at the end of each month is the time

where I’ll spend a couple of hours to really going through really solid

analysis. That is when I’ll get out the big package and track from month to

month. I got a bit of a notebook where I keep all my results. I just look at

what is happening between months and months. It is great to have that

big picture analysis too.

Traffic Plugins

Andy: Along with that AWStats tool, there are also plug-ins available

depending on what blog tool you are using and what blog platform,

WordPress, Movable Type both have plug-ins. I think that Textpattern

does. I think that most server based blogs have some interface into a tool

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like AWStats or they have their own states program that it can be graphed

into the blog.

Darren: Yes, I’ve just started using the WordPress ShortStats plug-in.

That is quite good at looking at a glace at what is happening at your site. It

is great. I think it does count the robot visits as unique visits though so

you just need to be aware some of them have a bit of quirks where there

might be some inaccuracies. If you are just comparing it over time, it is a

great tool.

Andy: Yes, another thing to talk about is not just tracking your hits from

your site but you can also use a tool called FeedBurner. This not only takes

your site’s feed and converts it into different feed formats but it can also

tells you the circulation of how many people are checking your feed with

your aggregators, how the traffic is working, and what your click-throughs

are so you can see where the popular headlines. It is exiting to go out into

the FeedBurner and see that you’ve got a couple hundreds of subscribers. I

know Darren, you’ve got a couple of thousand for Problogger.

Darren: Yes, I think there are eleven hundred and the thing I love about

this is that they do tell you which headlines work. We are going to talk

about titles and how important they are later. I was just looking at my

Problogger ones and I know that the most popular headlines on my site

over the last month, I think it is, is “Nick becomes a five figure blogger.” I

know the next one after that is, “The million dollar home page,” and the

one after that is, “Another six figure blogger goes public.”

So I know the ones where I mentioned money get a lot of click-throughs.

So that is useful information to know when I think about my next post.

Should I include some reference towards money? That actually seems to

work so track those things over time and you’ll see some really interesting

patterns.

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Andy: Along with all these stats remember that with most of the affiliate

programs like Google AdSense all have their own reporting systems as

well. It is easy to get buried into all this data but just take the time to go

through it once a week, once a month and pour some coffee or put on a

good movie and root around and see where the traffic is happening and

what is going on.

Darren: Just very really briefly, I know we are over half way in this call

but with the AdSense stats, I’d really recommend setting up channels to

track different ad units on your blog. The way I do it on each of my blog

there is multiple AdSense ads and each one of those ads or each one of

those units have a channel assigned to it.

There are some tutorials on this in the AdSense help pages if you want to

look at them. For instance, it tells me that the ads on the top left hand side

bar doesn’t perform as well as the one on the top left hand side bar. So

those sorts of information. They’ll tell you which units are making money,

which ones are getting high click-through rates, which ones has the

highest cost per thousand impressions, and all those sorts of figures. It is

really useful information.

Again, you can get really bogged down in it and I would recommend you

don’t. But use that especially when you are making changes to your site.

Never make a change to your site unless you are tracking it first otherwise

there is no point in doing that.

I think I mentioned a few weeks ago, I have a change log. I always write

down the changes that I make and then I have something to look back on

as I notice changes in my statistics whether they be traffic changes or

earning changes. It is really important to track those things.

Andy: You also want to talk about what is a good click-through ratio.

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Darren: Right. This is the question I get asked more than anything else.

I’ll start by saying that you can’t talk about exact figures and I am not

going to do that here even though it is a closed forum.

There are so many variables. It is very difficult to compare from one site to

another. I know, even looking at my twenty blogs that the click-through

rate can vary so astronomically depending on what the topic is, depending

upon the relevancy of the ads that Google is serving, depending on the

positioning and the design of the ads, and depending upon the day of the

week.

I noticed that on week days, my click-through rate is lower than on

weekends. More people click on my ads as a percentage on weekends even

though the statistics are lower in terms of how many people are visiting.

Obviously people on the weekends have a bit more time on their hands to

follow ad links.

It can vary depending upon whether your readers are web surfing or not.

On Problogger, for instance, a lot of people just don’t even see those ads

because they know what they are and they are not interested. Whereas

other sites that don’t have as many web surf users, they click on them all.

It can vary depending upon where the traffic is coming from. So search

engine traffic tends to bring in more click-throughs than the loyal readers

for instance or people coming in from other sites. All of these are factors

that can increase and decrease your click-through rate and also your

earnings per thousand impressions.

Having said that, probably a normal click-through rate from what I’ve

seen in other people’s stats, not what they tell me what they earn or

anything, is probably around the two to five percent range. I saw someone

yesterday who had twenty-five percent click-through rate.

Andy: My god.

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Darren: Which is just amazing. I wouldn’t recommend their design or

anything like that. I actually think that they are breaking the rules to get

that rate. Again, it can vary quite a bit. So that two to five, I’ve got blogs

that do better than that; I’ve got blogs that do much worse from that as

well. It is not too great to compare between blogs but really use the click-

through rate, use the cost per thousand, earnings per thousand and

impression figure to track things overtime. That is where those stats are

more useful.

Earnings per thousand impressions normal. It is even harder to estimate.

Normal is probably anything between ten cents per thousand impressions

to thirty or forty dollars per thousand of impressions. I’ve seen quite a few

blogs anywhere in that. It really depends upon the click values. If your ads

are worth two cents, your earnings per thousand might not be much. If

your ads are worth thirty dollars, as they can be, you are going to have

pretty high there so it is very hard to estimate that particular figure. Again,

it is better to track it over time.

Andy: Again, let me just reiterate it: Don’t just track your site but track

yourself. Go buy a notebook right now and just keep a track of what

changes you make so when you get a big traffic surge, you can figure out

why it happened and what is going on.

Let’s go ahead and open up for questions before we dwell in the second

half of the call. We covered a lot.

Maryam: Andy?

Andy: Yes, go ahead.

Maryam: This is Maryam, I just want to let you know that I am

completely behind. I am here as I suspect many of us are but this is a lot of

information as you said.

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Andy: It really is, yes.

Maryam: And good information too and I am getting so much out of this

class you wouldn’t believe. But gee-whiz, I am at least a week behind in all

the research so keep your websites coming though. This is filling up my

empty time at sitting with my laptop at Starbucks.

Andy: Yes, our goal is to take over your entire week. Hopefully we will

give you enough content that there will never be a need to think of

anything else besides this ever again!

Darren: I was talking to someone during the week, who is on the call and

they were saying that they are listing to the calls three or four times over

the following weeks and just keeping on going through it. I think we are

going to make these calls available for you for a long time. I encourage you

to keep going into them if you are feeling overwhelmed.

Andy: Yes, I’ll even listen to calls where, I’ll sit here and listen to it and

watch the thing move across the screen on the player or I’ll clean the

house while I’m listening to it. Put it on the background. You’ll never

know what is going to sink in while you are not really paying full attention.

So remember that the calls are going to be out here for you to listen to.

The transcripts are trickling in. I know that there has been some delays on

that but this stuff is going to be out there for you to explore later on.

But if there are no other questions, Darren.

Audri: Actually, I have a comment. This is Audri.

Andy: Yes, go ahead.

Audri: I just wanted to suggest to people if they do continuous testing of

what they are doing because you can really improve your results. When I

was watch, say over the last year of how our results have changed just by

doing little tests and tracking them in the notebook. Everything that

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you’ve been saying, you can like every three or six or so months double

your results. It can be incredibly powerful. You can increase your every

single aspect of it. You can be increasing your click-through rates and so it

just takes your earnings go up and up even with the same traffic. I am a

very big promoter of testing and I just wanted to let people know that you

can really be having enormously effective changes just by slowing

improving it every week, every month and you’ll just see unbelievable

changes.

Andy: Great point. Thank you so much.

Participant: Yes, Andy, I’ve got a quick question about Technorati. Can

you hear me?

Andy: Yes, go ahead.

Participant: Somebody told me that if we put tags at the end of a post,

Technorati tags, they work like keywords. But they look like they are not

there for a real purpose. Have you ever used them?

Andy: I use them on my personal blog and my professional one. I don’t

get a huge amount of traffic from my tags with Technorati or with

BlogPulse that also uses tags but I know some bloggers do. Darren do you

use tags?

Darren: Yes, I’ve used them from time to time and I have noticed when I

do use them that it does bring some traffic. So I’d give them a go. Some

people are now not using categories at all on there blogs and are just using

tags which is interesting. I probably wouldn’t give up on my categories. I

thing Technorati tracks your categories as a tags as well. I am not a big

user of them but I again know some people who do very well out of using

them. So it is probably worth a try just to see whether the tags that you

would use are actually tags the people actually would be using as well.

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John: Hey, Darren, this is John from Scared Monkeys, we are finding

that some of the newer sites we are starting that by using tags will

generate a bit of traffic especially from Technorati which will get you on

the map. It is a pretty good idea if you have a new blog and you don’t have

much Google queues or moving up in the Yahoo yet to really try because

you can move up quickly in Technorati.

Andy: And if people have no idea what we are talking about, tags are

more of a free form way to organize content. So instead of having

categories, I might have a post that is about this course and I’ll tag it with

the words blogs or blogging or AdSense. Those tags, if you go to

Technorati.com and click on tags, you’ll see what the top tags are being

tracked. It is like categorizing but there is no categorization system. It is

whatever people think a piece of content should be kept tagged as, they

are going to be tag it as. It is called a folksonomy, which is a really stupid

term for it. It is the ideal that the people can tag things in a more free form

manner. It is like walking into a library without the dewy decimal system.

People just have thrown books in whatever bookcase they think they

should go in. Instead of doing the dewy decimal system, of whatever the

system is with the index cards.

Darren: Yes, I think tags will get bigger and bigger is my prediction. I

know Google on their latest blog search that their reader allows you to tag

things. If Google is getting into it, it is going to be big. So it is probably

worth getting into it.

Andy: Right so let’s plow ahead because we are trying to pack the content

in and we can always spill over to next week too.

Now we want to talk about getting content. Content really is the life blood

of your blog. The traffic, I guess is the oxygen.

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So the traffic is the oxygen, your content is the life blood of the blog. You

can use tools called news aggregators that can tag the latest updates of any

website or blog or news source or pretty much any news sources and roll

that up into a customized newspaper and the technology is called

Aggregation. If you have heard of RSS, that is what we are talking about

here.

We’ve got links to aggregators on to your blog lines which is at Bloglines.

Google Reader, which I just made a demo for that this morning so you can

check that out which is a flash demo walk through. We’ve got a list of

other aggregators and those can either be loaded on to your own

computer. It is like having a private research assistance. You can sleep at

night, get up in the morning and have content on your blog’s topics from

all sources from all over the world. You can have a group of feeds for a

certain category in your blog. So it is really a great way to have this

reservoir of content that you can turn to when you start writing posts for

the day or for the week.

Darren: Bloglines has changed my life. I know it is probably not the most

technical news aggregator out there or it doesn’t have the best features but

the fact that I can logged in from any computer in the world and see what

is being written on any topic that I am chasing. I’ve got a folder for digital

cameras; I’ve got a folder for blogging. I’ve got a folder for virtually every

blog I have. These contents are ready to go.

Of course I’ll give credit to the places where I’ve got the content but they

are inspiration for, like I wake up in the morning and I’m tracking four

hundred posts. So I know today, I’ve got two thousand possible things I

can write about today. So it takes care of, “What am I going to write about

today,” out of the equation. It is just fantastic. I am constantly on Blog

Line. I am one of their biggest fans, I’d say.

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Everyone’s got their own news aggregators. I really recommend you find

one that suits your system.

Andy: A long with the aggregators, there are of course, the online news

sources like Google News, Yahoo’s News, there is a site called Topix, that

again can track different keywords and different stories and different

categories. PR News Wire is a press release service so you can type in your

particular niche once a week and see what press releases are coming

across their wires as well as their virtual press office.

Darren: That is right and those two last ones can actually subscribe to as

emails so I get emails sent to me every day which has new camera releases

and those sorts of things. They are great. I think with Google News, Yahoo

News, and Topix, you can subscribe to by RSS as well.

Andy: Right.

Darren: So you can search for keywords. The only downside of doing it in

all three is that you’ll see the same articles again and again and again and

you’ll clutter your box. So you might just want to pick one of those unless

you are really are desperate for news on an item.

Andy: Again, Technorati, Feedster, BlogPulse, the usual suspects on

searches can help you keep a constant flow of content coming in. Google

has their Google Alert service. They launched their blog search.

There is digg.com, which is a share a book marking site.

Have you heard of del.icio.us? It is like del.icio.us as well.

PubSub.com is another site that you can track different keywords and

ideas.

So don’t just think of subscribing to your niche, but people in your niche,

brand names, products, events, ideas, and concepts.

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Don’t forget that you can go by phrase. So if you want digital cameras but

you don’t want Sony, you can put quotes around it here and put this

symbol over here and you can get only articles with digital cameras

without Sony in them.

There are so much information and we really have the tools to harness it,

to have this constant flow so we have a traffic flow, and we also have

information flow coming in.

Darren: It is really important not to overwhelm yourself with this.

Andy: And it is so easy to.

Darren: I am tracking four hundred feeds and if I’ve miss two days, I can

log on there and feel quite overwhelmed and feel quite depressed by the

whole thing.

It is probably worth having some system of priorities. I know if I go away

for a week, I just come home and click and I’ll go and read certain folders

just because I know it is just too much to get through them all.

Just work out the system for you. I’d be interested to hear what other

people use in terms of news feeds and those sorts of things as well. Maybe,

we haven’t got time now but maybe if you can leave suggestions on the

ecampus. It would be great to see what other people’s work flows are like.

Maryam: Darren, this is Maryam. I wanted to say along the line of

Bloglines. I just got onto Bloglines but I have been using Yahoo! and I’ve

just today, starting using Gmail, well Google, Google’s which is a link out

of my Gmail account. If you have a Gmail account, look for the link. I have

to echo what you just said in that it is completely transformed my life in

the sense of I was paying on the average of about two hundred dollars a

month to a research assistant that I’ve now more than halved so it is a

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money saver for us. If you are in any business that requires constant

research and I am, it is just awesome.

Darren: I remember, when I first started blogging, it would take me

hours and hours to find the content that I want and I’d book mark all the

sites that I wanted. You had to surf them all individually. Now, I can in

five minutes, have all the information that I need for a full day’s posting. It

is great.

Maryam: Thank you for putting this up because I think it is like, if I can

say a single one thing that I’ve got out of the system, it is worth the price

of admission has been the aggregation stuff and again, for Andy, thanks.

Andy: Sure. Remember just because we can know everything that is on

the internet with these tools it doesn’t mean you are suppose to. So again,

watch for that overwhelm. I know I’ll sit here and star at the walls rather

than check my aggregator if I’ve been gone for a couple of days because I

just don’t want to face all that information.

Along with all the online sources, there are of course newspapers,

magazines, tv, check out shows and newspapers and magazines in your

topic. Go buy a magazine that has nothing to do with your niche and see

what can you apply. I could go buy a copy of Soldier of Fortune and what

is that going to tell me about internet marketing? Go buy Dog Fancy and

see how that fits in with digital cameras.

Go a little crazy and see what pops up because you never know what is

going to wake up your creativity.

Darren: It is so true. Just take that notebook that you’ve got everywhere

with you because ideas come in all kinds of places.

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Writing Quality Content

Andy: Darren, we’ve got five minutes. Do you want to do the writing

quality of content for your blog of stuff?

Darren: Ok, I’ll race through it.

Andy: We don’t have to race through. We can come back to it next week.

Darren: We’ll see how far we’ll get. I’ve got a list there of sixteen things

and really a lot of them are simple and not rocket science. I just think it is

worth reemphasizing, even those who have been blogging for years need a

wake up call every now and again in the way you actually think about the

style that we write it.

Find Your Own Voice

Darren: I’ve written there that I think each blog needs to find it’s own

voice and rhythm and style and readership. Really these sixteen points,

take them in mind, but find your own style. I know bloggers who break

every one of these and do really well. It is about finding what works for

you.

1. Post Titles

Darren: Titles, I was talking to someone yesterday and I was saying what

is the one tip you would give someone on how to get into the search

engines. I think titles to your posts and titles to your pages are so

important. They are important in terms of search engine ranking so a little

box that come to visit your site to look at how to rank it, one of the first

thing they look at is the title of that page.

You need to think about what are the words you are using on that page.

Are those words that people will search for on the internet for? If they are

not and are some cryptic thing that alludes to something that just

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intrigues someone, that might help with some of your loyal readers but

that won’t help in the search engines. You need to think about the

keywords that you are putting into your site.

Andy: I think that it is so important. I have to interrupt real quick. I use

to write really clever titles for my posts and that means nothing to a search

engine. When you can go obvious, I’d choose obvious over clever

whenever I can.

If you are making a pun, Google does not know puns, so be obvious at all

times.

Darren: Also consider that your title is one of the few bits of information

that someone will see on a search engine when they go searching for

something. Whatever is in your title is selling your site to them. It is vital

important. The same thing is true in your RSS. The people who subscribe

to your blog, your title is what they’ll scan through all the entries and it is

your titles that is what’s going to set your entry apart from everyone else’s

entry.

I am tracking four hundred different blogs from each four or five posts a

day. I’ve got to scan through thousands of entries there. It is only the

titles, really, that are going to grab my attention.

The titles are important for your loyal readers too. Those who bookmark

your site and log in regularly, even they scan pages. People don’t read in

detail things; they’ll look for titles; they’ll look for things in bold.

Your titles are really important. I encourage people to include keywords,

be as descriptive as you can in your title and keep it simple. Short titles

seem to work better. Grab people’s attention, make it interesting and

intriguing so all those things you want to try and put into your titles.

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It is worth giving it a minute or two to think about the title before you

actually press publish. It is very important.

2. Get to the Point

Darren: Number two is get to the point. People, and we mentioned it

before, people stay on blogs for less than a minute on average. That is

what some of the research I’ve seen. So you’ve got to get their attention

and quickly communicate your message to them in a way that doesn’t bore

them.

Andy: Yes, I want to mention that you put your conclusion first. I should

read the headline and then read first sentence and it should tell me exactly

what you are getting to and then I can read and decide if I want to read

the whole thing or not.

Darren: That is right. People have incredibly short attention spans

online, in life in general, but online and I think it is getting shorter so get

to the point.

3. Don’t Be Too Brief

Darren: Number three, don’t be too short though. You can get to the

point so quickly that it is all over before it started.

You want to aim for about two hundred words, three hundred words if you

want to rank in search engines. They don’t like the one sentence posts that

much. At least have some content. You’ll also get into trouble with

AdSense if your page is just a page full of ads with just a sentence on

them. You need some substantial content there to actually work with

AdSense and search engines.

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4. Make it Scannable

Darren: Number four is make it scannable. This plugs into the short

attention span of people. I saw some statistics the other day. I think

sixteen percent of people read websites word for word. Sixteen percent so

keep that in mind. What are people reading when they go to websites?

They are looking for headings, they are looking for lists. I wrote a post the

other day on eight reasons why lists are good for getting traffic. It is a list

post and it is really a powerful way of writing.

Think about the formatting of your posts. So use bold, capitals, italics,

underlining, other texts, and anything along those lines that will grab

people’s attention. Use heading and subheadings. Start with your main

point and as Andy said, use pictures. Pictures draw your eyes down the

page and break up your page. Use borders and blog quotes. If you look on

Problogger, you’ll see I’ve got little yellow blocks around the quotes that

I’ve used. They draw people’s eyes. Use white space around things so

break up your posts and put space around it. That helps people to draw

their eyes to whatever is inside that white space.

I’ll leave it at that for that point. I think we’ll going to have to continue this

page next week.

Participant: You were talking about a minute ago but throughout the

course, you keep mentioning a website called Engadget. How do you spell

that?

Darren: E-n-g-a-d-g-e-t dot-com.

Participant: That is a very popular website?

Darren: On gadgets.

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Andy: It is like tech toy stuff. It is one of the top blogs. It is about techy

toys and palm pilots, cell phones, and things that require charges and

batteries.

Everybody have a fantastic week.

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Six Figure Blogging Call 5 Worksheets Evaluating Traffic Patterns and Productivity

Evaluation Criteria Blog 1: Blog 2: Blog 3:

My Goals:

What do I want visitors to do when they visit my blog?

What are visitors actually doing when they visit my blog?

What is my most valuable click in terms of affiliate revenue? Where have I physically positioned that “click” on my blog?

Where is my traffic (readers) coming from?

What is my most common entry page for traffic?

What is their IP address / Geographic location?

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Evaluation Criteria Blog 1: Blog 2: Blog 3:

How much time do they spend on my blog?

What day of the week and what time of the day do I receive the most traffic?

Where is my traffic (readers) going? Where are they going when the leave the blog either through a link or other means?

What is my most common exit page for traffic?

What is my conversion rate? What percentage of visits to the blog result in a click on an ad or affiliate link?

Best Resources for Blog Content

Your content is what draws readers to your blog. It’s not always easy or even best to write all original content. In

order to keep up with the latest in your niche, draw upon other resources. There are many different possibilities

when it comes to finding good, quality content. Identify some resources – and even other blogs – which can provide

you with great information for your readers. If you’re pulling your information from various blogs, you’ll want to

obtain a news aggregator like Bloglines in order to track this information more easily. Make sure to consider online

as well as offline resources. When you are looking for information keep these things in mind as they relate to your

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particular niche: keywords, people, brands, products, events, ideas, and concepts. All of these things can be written

about on your blog.

□ I have signed up for a news aggregator (like Bloglines or Google Reader)

Content Resources Blog 1: Blog 2: Blog 3:

My Niche Topic

Resources I can Track for Content for My Blog

News Services, Blogs

Websites

Books

Newspapers

Magazines

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Television programs

Other