2007 December | My lucky number 13

Archive for December, 2007

Free traffic requires hard work

Photo by Daniel Y. Go

Free traffic with minimum effort is a fairy tale! In this 3 month of blogging, I’ve learned that free traffic requires hard work. And by this, I mean free traffic requires a lot of time to get it. Of course, there are many people and sites promising a large amount of traffic just by adding, for example, a widget in a sidebar. But this is crap. I fall in this trap at the beginning, with BlogRush. Despite its promises, it brings me 3 visits/month. Yay! A lot of visits

I’ve tried different ways to bring to my blog free traffic. I’ll list here what I’ve tried with some good results.

1. StumbleUpon
It’s no doubt for everyone that StumbleUpon brings more free traffic for a site than anything else. Though, you should know that if you submit (discover) many pages from a single site/blog one after another (nobody knows the exact number), you fall under their anti-spam policy and the further pages from that site will not receive anymore traffic (well, maybe just 5-10 visits/day) even if you have many thumbs up. For this not going to happened, you must discover other sites/pages as well. In order to do that, you must have many friends/fans to stumble through their favorites and more topics to stumble through them.
Writing this article, I’ve searched why is so important to become a Top stumbler, but I cannot find something interesting. Maybe someone will enlighten me . Instead, I’ve found an article who explains why not to bother to become a Top stumbler: How to Become a Top StumbleUpon User (or Why You Really Shouldn’t Bother).
So, I think I’ll not bother to become a top stumbler, but submitting/discovering articles/sites, stumbling other articles/sites and making friends takes time.

For the last 30 days I had from StumbleUpon 3240 visits.

2. BlogCatalog
Even if I’ve sign up to BlogCatalog about 3 month ago, I’ve begin to use it recently. I find a little hard to use it. But it’s really a good source of free traffic. Let’s see why (though many of you probably know all this stuff):
- You can make as many friends you want. About 30-40% will visit your blog to see who you are and what are you writing about and add you as their friends as well.
- To those who added you as friend, you have the possibility to send a broadcast. What is this? Broadcasts allow you to unobtrusively send a mass message to all users who have added you to their BlogCatalog friends list.

So, let’s say you’ve added about 2000 friends (you can reach this number in about a week). About 600-800 of them will add you back as their friends. That’s mean, when you send a broadcast, 600-800 people will receive an email saying that you have posted a new broadcast. About 10% will visit your broadcast and then visit your blog. That’s mean 60-80 visitors. It doesn’t seams too much, but if you send a broadcast with every post you write, it means something.

Another way you can get free traffic is to participate to discussions. There are many groups where you can participate and become an active member.

So, it’s all about creating a big network and to become an active member. That’s requires some time.

For the last 30 days I had from BlogCatalog 500 visits.

3. MyBlogLog
I can’t say how many visits I’ve got from MyBlogLog. Or should I say, because of MyBlogLog. Many MyBlogLog Members have that widget installed, where they can see who visit their blog. Many of them are curious to see who the new visitors are and return the visit. In order to receive a significant amount of traffic from MyBlogLog members, you should visit as many blogs as you can. This takes time.

4. BloggingZoom
I’ve subscribed to BloggingZoom just 4 days ago but I like it until know. You can promote on BloggingZoom all your articles, without any limitations. You can vote for other articles and in exchange, many users will vote for yours. And visit your blog. You need time to vote all upcoming articles which you find interesting; in that way you will get more visits and more votes. You should try it. I’ve found many interesting articles in BloggingZoom.

I had 60 visits from BloggingZoom in 4 days.

5. DigitalPoint Forum
Forums are another source for free traffic. I’ve choose DigitalPoint because there are many members asking for help or answering to your question. So it easy enough to be active on DP. You can put your blog in signature and your last post name is also displayed. But you must be very active in order to receive traffic from DP, because there are many member, as you all know, all are posting something and your own posts are going away from the first page very quickly, and you are harder to be found. Posting often takes time.

I had about 70 visits from DP in the last month, though I wasn’t very active.

6. LinkReferral
I’ve wrote some time ago about Linkreferral as a source of free traffic for your blog. You must make 5 reviews/day, visit 30 blogs/day, 1 post in forum/day in order to increase the rank of your blog and increase its visibility. Many people will return the visit or the review. But this also takes some time.

I had about 200 visits from LinkReferral in the last month, though I wasn’t active at all.

7. Comments
Commenting in other blogs is another source of free traffic. Many people will return to your blog and leave a comment too. But, of course, this means you have to read many articles and to comment on them. And I talk about meaningful comment, not “it’s nice”, “interesting” etc. And this takes time.

You see, I’ve tried many methods to bring free traffic to my blog, but at one point, I felt overwhelming and depressed, because I thought I never handle all these. So I’ve decided to make a daily schedule. If I spend at least a half an hour for every method, it means up to 4 hours. And if I make this every day, I think I’ll bring a lot of traffic to my blog. And if I’ll write some good articles, maybe I can keep them.

So, I’ll ask you: what method do you use to bring free traffic to your blog? What do you like more? And how do you handle all these stuff? Because I think many of you have also a job/business, kids and daily obligations.

19 comments December 22nd, 2007

Living in a box

Photo by Helgoland

In our daily “gold rush” and our daily duties fulfilling, we often forget about less fortunate people around us. They are all over the place and we meet them every day. Every so often we drop them some bucks and rush away to our routine work.

How many times do we have the patience to stop by and find out what drama are behind the people’s poverty? Why are they in the situation to have no home? Or to live in a poor house? Or to live in a box? How did they manage in the cold days? What did they eat?

Today is Bloggers Unite Day for Acts of Kindness, a campaign hosted by BlogCatalog, trying to put “a human face on bloggers who are responsible for so much good in the world.” So I’ve decided to write about poor people living in a box.

Four years ago we (my husband and I) meet a family who lives on the street. The man’s mother banished him from her home when he was a teenager and she never accepts him back. Now, I don’t want to discuss how kind of mother she was if she was able to do such a thing. I don’t now either what happens in that family or I don’t want to judge anybody. So what could the boy do without any help? He lives on the street. He appeals for help to people who rush everyday near him. He works sometime for people who gave him a little job. The time pass over him and now, they have a little son, about my son’s age and they live in a box, because I cannot call that place a home. Of course they call it their home. But it’s a box made by sheet metal and planking. We often ask them how they managed on cold days. They always say that it’s ok: shock:

The man can work. But nobody is hiring him because he has no stable home. And no address. So he is hired occasionally, for unqualified works. I’ve asked him once, what he’s like to do? I like to cook. And why don’t you try to get a job as a cooker? Nobody is hiring me because I have no home.

Some years ago we gave them a blanket. It was a very cold day and I couldn’t stop thinking about them. We often gave them winter clothes, food, candy for the little boy. Last night I’ve made again a large packet with some winter clothes, meet and something for the child. I’ve never spoken about this but today is a special day so I’ve decided to step over my heart and to write about them.

When you meet poor peoples, try to stop some minutes and talk to them. You will be amazed how many things you can find out and how sad could be someone’s life, just because he/she is less fortunate as we do. When I feel sorry for myself, for one reason or other, I often think to people ho live like the family above and I think that my motifs are really stupid. I should be grateful for my life, for having loving parents, for having a home, for having food, for having…

I’m sure most of you have made an act of kindness at some point. Why not to write about it today? Maybe we can change something. And if you write about this, please leave here a comment with the link to your post. I’ll be glad to make an article with link love for all of you who show your kindness.

24 comments December 17th, 2007

Bad credit offers – A New Consumer Resource

There are many reasons for people to find themselves in debt. Even if it’s a divorce, or a job loss, or medical expenses, or gambling, etc., the situation isn’t good at all and all those people are struggling how to get out of this trouble. So there is no wonder that more and more people are in the situation to have a bad credit. Is there a way to fix this?

BadCreditOffers.com is a new consumer resource for people with bad credit background history. Their staff continuously monitors the online marketplace to bring you the high quality bad credit loans offers available — including credit cards, home loans, auto loans, personal loans, and much more. You can browse for free a wide variety of offers, each offer in each section containing a small review, so you can choose what bad credit is suitable for you.

You can apply online for all these bad credit offers. The steps are easy to follow and the approval process is really quick.

10 comments December 15th, 2007

And the winner is…

Thank you all for your participation in this contest. I’m sure you all want to know who the winner is.

Well, the winner is…. Harmony Lameche from WebMoi.com. Congratulations!

I’ve contacted Harmony and ask her to confirm her PayPal account to send her the prize. If she doesn’t respond me within 7 days, I’ll choose another winner.

How does Harmony win? Well, I’ve made a list with 165 entries; every contester has up to 4 entries based on the methods he/she chose to participate; then random.org has picked the winner. And it picks number 49.
As you can see in the Contest details file, the number 49 is Harmony Lameche.

Note: Harmony Lameche has received her $100 prize