ejcross.com » Social Networking

You Tube Down Again

elliott — Sat, 03 May 2008 14:05:24 +0000

Ok, so it seems that YouTube is down again! I was searching around for some new videos for some issues that I was researching, and guess what, I can’t get there!

I’m not sure what is going on with You Tube, or why You Tube is down again, other than I know there have been a lot of severe storms in the Midwest in the last couple of days. I’m guessing something has been damaged from those storms and it has taken down You Tube.

Or, maybe someone was just asking “Hey, what’s this button do?”.

The bad part about You Tube being down is the fact that if you use You Tube videos on your site, especially the embedded YOu Tube videos, they are not showing now either.

How do I know this? My recent post on Asia’h Epperson used several videos from You Tube and they aren’t showing up now.

Only time will tell what is going on and we’ll see what happens!

Blogoria helps site promotion

elliott — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 01:51:23 +0000

One of the problems we face as bloggers and trying to promote our sites is getting the word out there about our sites. Also trying to find other bloggers in our “field” can be tough at times, unless you’re writing about how to make money online or something huge like that. I have often felt that the more you can put your blog name out in the blogosphere, the better you will be. It helps to create backlinks, spread the word about your site, and drive traffic also from places you wouldn’t think it would. So, I found a new site, at least to me, that is worth checking out.

Blogoria.com is like most of the other social sites, but it is different in a way. The interface is clean and simple, basically allowing you to highlight your blog, add the RSS feed and spread the word about your site.

Blogoria is a Blogger Search resource connecting Bloggers with other Bloggers, Readers and Advertisers.

Take a look at Blogoria.com and sign up, it’s free and a great Blogger Search resource. I’ll catch you on there, look for ejcross under Blogging Resources!

Blogging Zoom and the Sandbox

elliott — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 11:37:54 +0000

If you aren’t using BloggingZoom, then you are really missing out on something HUGE! You might think, well why would I want another social site like Digg?

It’s a pretty simple answer, and let me explain how if you aren’t using BloggingZoom as part of your SEO and site promotion products, you are missing out on something that will really pay off.

I have been using BloggingZoom now for quite sometime, almost since it began. I was a little skeptical at first, but after a few weeks, I was beginning to see results.

It takes a little effort to correctly use BZ to it’s fullest potential and let me explain this part in detail.

Social sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and the rest will not let you submit your own sites. They don’t want you promoting your own stuff, and are only looking for “new” submissions. BZ encourages you to submit your own stuff.

What’s the benefit of doing this? Backlinks.

You see, I have a few sites that are newer domain names and they are in the sandbox right now. They were gaining ground quickly and a couple of them were on page 1 of the SERP’s for about a week or two, then “poof” they disappeared. This is common for the sandbox, your site begins to become popular with a new domain name, and then it’s gone.

Don’t panic! BloggingZoom to the rescue!

Since you have joined BZ (hint…hint…and no I’m not an affiliate) and have been submitting your sites and articles to it, there are now backlinks to your posts that are showing up in the SERP’s. Trust me, this is how I am still getting some traffic to my sandboxed sites.

But, the best part of BZ is this. When you submit your post, the minimum “summary” is 350 letters. Why is this good? Keywords.

Other sites limit how much you can put into the summary, but not BZ. This is where you keyword stuff your summary to let the search engines know what your post is about. People then find the BZ submission, read it, and now visit your site.

I just wanted to pass this along if you are looking for more ways to promote your site without getting banned or canned from Digg or other places. Now, a couple of my post submissions are on page two or three of Google for my keyword terms, and BZ is currently sandboxed. Can you imagine what will happen when it comes out itself?

Head on over to BloggingZoom and sign up!

2007 Bloghology Released

elliott — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:08:24 +0000

The 2007 Bloghology has finally been released! If you aren’t sure what this is, let me explain the reasoning and how it works.

Mert at SeachForBlogging created this idea in order for people to showcase their sites and talents. Since this is the first Bloghology version, it was a great honor for me to be selected amongst so many participants that really stand out.

The 2007 Bloghology is a compilation of different sites and talented individuals along with an interview from Mert, all compiled into one .pdf file. The interview was created using a site called Peopleized.com, which is a really neat site for connecting to other people in the blogging world. It is a really neat way to promote yourself and site. It should also increase traffic as well.

There are already plans for the 2008 Bloghology and possibly one a quarter even, so if you haven’t seen or read SearchforBlogging, stop on over. You can also get a copy of the 2007 Bloghology and see your’s truly!

Social Bookmarking, the Sandbox and Good SEO

elliott — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 19:47:39 +0000

So what do Social Bookmarks, the Google Sandbox and Good SEO have in common? You wouldn’t think that the sandbox is good for a site, and it generally isn’t, but you can help prepare your site if it gets de-indexed by Google and placed in the “Sandbox” by using social bookmarking sites and good SEO practices.

Let’s take a look at what has happened to me recently.

One of my other sites has recently seen an increase in traffic from Google. Now this is a newer site, established around October of 2007, and I haven’t had any problems with it, until recently.

I had been seeing an increase in Google search traffic on this site with around 100 or more unique visitors a day from Google searches for a couple of long tail keywords that I had targeted. I was seeing some good traffic on my affiliate links, and a decent CTR on my Adsense ads.

Until last Thursday morning. I was checking my site stats like I usually do in the morning, when I noticed that my visitor count had all but disappeared. I checked my log for what search terms were bringing me traffic, and none of my long tails were there anymore. Oh, crap! I went to Google and did a search for the long tails that had been bringing me traffic, and I was no longer on the first page!

But, since I had been using good SEO title practices and submitting the individual pages that are now no longer on Google, the bookmarking sites were showing up for the keywords that I had previously ranked for.

Kinda weird! It is amazing that all of a sudden a few pages of mine can disappear from the Google index overnight, but other pages of my site were still listed, and ranked on page 1 for their terms.

This shows that it is always a good practice to use good SEO titles, such as using your keyword in the title, is a great backup plan for an instance like this. Another great method is to bookmark each page on your sites, not in a spammy way, but to help get it promoted.

The social bookmarking sites are still bringing me some traffic, but not like being on page 1 of the SERP’s was doing.

Also, if you are looking for a way to increase your social bookmarking power, I have purchased Bookmarking Demon and can’t say enough about it. It used to take me about 4 hours to go through my list of bookmarking sites and manually put one entry on each one. Even some of the semi-automatic social posting sites still weren’t all that useful. Since beginning to use Bookmarking Demon, it has cut my time down to about 10 minutes, if even that!

Now, BMD does take a little setting up, but not much. Once you get it set up you are ready to go. Now a disclaimer, Bookmarking Demon is not a spamming tool as spamming the social bookmarking sites will get your account banned forever, and maybe even your IP address blocked. But, if you have several or numerous social bookmarking sites that you use, this tool is well worth the money to speed up the process of submissions.

You can find out more information by reading my special reports on Bookmarking Demon entitled Why Social Bookmarking Works and Secret Traffic Report for more great information and introductions to the power of Bookmarking Demon.

In conclusion

Since we are all at the mercy of Google, ranking well has its benefits. But being prepared for the sandbox or getting de-indexed will only help to transition the time that your site is no longer on the SERP’s.

Is Viral Linking Good for your Blog

elliott — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 19:19:55 +0000

photo by tome213

Every blogger is looking to improve their blog. Whether it is to improve their page rank, backlinks or readership, each blogger has a desire to make their blog better and more widely known. So, how do you accomplish this massive task in a world where there are millions, or billions of other sites? Try viral link exchange!

If your not sure if viral link exchange is a good idea or not, let me take a moment to explain what it is, how it works and what some of the benefits of viral linking are for your blog.

Viral linking is not a new idea to the blogosphere. You might even be saying to yourself what is the purpose of it. If you think about how your blog or site works, it is generally composed of content about a topic or product, and most of them have links of some type or another in each post.

Your links in each post point your reader to other areas of your blog, product pages for orders, or other sites for further information. Linking is good from the point that it helps to provide information and options to your readers.

Viral Linking works much the same way as any other post in your blog, with one exception. Generally when someone starts a viral link campaign, the purpose is to get coveted back links from other blogs pointed to them. Back links help to promote your blogs page rank, technorati score and improve readership by promoting your site to other readers that might not know if your blog.

So, I have been tagged to share in a viral linking exchange! Mert from searchforblogging.com has tagged me in his viral link article, so I am going to participate and report in a future article how it has helped or hurt my stats for readership.

Here are the rules for this viral link campaign:

First Rule

If you are tagged, copy the links below and insert your site at the bottom of the list right under the last tagger to make sure you’re included in the succeeding tags.

Second Rule

Tag 5 bloggers from your list. Below are the links included in the tag, feel free to click on the sites that look interesting to you:

Third Rule

Provide 5 other blogs not already tagged for them to participate in the viral link exchange. Not everyone likes this type of thing, so don’t be mad if they don’t participate. One quick note on how to copy the other links provided. Just do a page view and copy the links over. I have modified mine to be in an unordered list.

Here are the blogs that I am tagging:

Fourth Rule

The fourth rule is to answer the question asked by the original person that starts the viral link exchange. The question asked was “What’s the story behind your site’s name?”.

Well, mine is pretty simple. My site name comes from my name, Elliott J. Cross. Pretty simple eh? I couldn’t decide on a blog name when I first started blogging, so that’s how it is what it is.

In Conclusion

I hope you enjoy viral linking, and like I had said earlier in this post, I will follow up in a few weeks and pass along how well it is working, or not working for my site.

Swypefile gets better

elliott — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 12:10:52 +0000

Ok, a quick little note about swypefile I thought I would pass along.

The popularity of swypefile is really taking off, and in order to help spread the word and improve user participation of the system, swypefile is running an incentive for user participation until the end of the year.

To quote from the updates section of the site:

While many of you are understandly focused on submitting content and referring people to swypefile, we really need you to vote on stuff you like, start discussions and add comments, and all of that too.

And to give you even more of an incentive to do so, here’s a bribe - between now and the end of the year you can earn “free referrals” based on your usage and participation.

Everything you do here at swypefile (including but not limited to submitting content, voting, commenting, etc.) will add to your “karma” value which you can view in your profile. Based on your karma level we’ll automatically assign a percentage of new users that don’t have a referer to you. How’s that for a deal?!

How’s that for some incentive!

Now for my opinion, not only on swypefile, but all other social bookmarking and networking sites. The one problem I see is when people “blindly” digg, zoom, or swype an article. Are you really adding value to the system or article by doing so?

When you just go through and start clicking without reading an article, do you really know what you are “approving” of as a quality article? I suggest that you take a moment and read the summary, and if you aren’t sure if it is worthy, then take a look at the article.

You might learn something more than what the title or summary is presenting, and you will also help yourself by promoting quality articles.

So, if you haven’t joined swypefile.com yet, why not check it out!

Swypefile - First Thoughts

elliott — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 11:22:25 +0000

In my last post entitled Swypefile.com - Monetize your submissions, I wrote a brief review of how this site works.

Having signed up and gotten the feel on how it works and what the potential is, I can say that I am impressed! I thought I would share in depth a little more about the site and how it is tied into Google Adsense to better explain the process.

When I first started with swypefile, I thought it was just like Digg and bloggingzoom. While there are a few differences, I thought I would highlight two of the main differences that set swypefile apart from Digg and bloggingzoom.

You can start discussions

If you don’t have an article to submit, that is ok. You can start a discussion! A discussion is anything that you want it to be, as long as it falls into the categories given in swypefile and meets their submission guidelines.

All content must be related to online marketing per our categories listed in the sidebar. If the content you want to submit doesn’t fit any of our categories, chances are it’s not appropriate for swypefile.

Use a great title that helps other swypefile users know what the content is about. Like a good headline, a good title can go a long way towards getting the content you submit noticed and read.

Provide a full description. Tell us what you think about what you’re submitting, or why it’s important. This will also help ensure the ads displayed with your content are targeted (which helps you make more money!)

Yes, you can submit your own content. In fact, we prefer that you submit your own content rather than having someone else do it, because no one can provide a better description than you.

Do not submit homepage URLs or ads. All submissions must be about an individual news story, article, blog post, white paper, video or other specific content - not just the main URL of a website or blog.

Ads and spam will be almost instantly deleted by our team of moderators. Repeat offenders will find that their URLs are banned and/or their accounts are deleted.

Don’t make more than 2 submissions in a row. This will help preserve variety on the What’s New page.

How Adsense works with swypefile

I was wondering just how they were able to integrate Adsense into the submissions and when the payment was triggered. I wasn’t real clear on if it was when the article or item was “swyped”, when the title was clicked to read the review, or when the title was clicked that would take you to the article’s site page.

So, I wrote swypefile and asked them some questions. Considering all of the items that they are working on to go live with this, I received prompt and courteous responses to my questions. Kudos to Patrick at swypefile! Here is how it works as described by him in one of the emails.

Hi Elliott,

Ads with the author’s AdSense publisher ID are displayed any time someone clicks the title of the submission on swypefile and is taking to the page that shows the author’s description of the content, comments from other users, etc. Basically the page that looks like this:

http://www.swypefile.com/Blogging/Your_Fellow_Blogger_is_Not_a_Competitor/

On all of these pages, 50% of the time the author’s ID is used, and the other 50% of the time the ID of the person who referred the author is used. If the person who referred the author doesn’t have an AdSense ID then the author’s ID is used 100% of the time.

Our ID is used on the primary homepage and the What’s New page that shows the listings of all of the individual submissions.

Pretty simple!

In conclusion

I think swypefile has lots of potential and I have already seen an increase in my adsense earnings. I like the layout and it has brought some additional traffic to my site so far as well. Why am I telling you this? If you are looking for more traffic to your site or another method to earn some extra income, then why not check out Swypefile.com?

Swypefile.com - Monetize your submissions

elliott — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 16:55:08 +0000

If you are an internet marketer looking for additional ways to share your content or find new content and ideas? Have you had success with sites such as Digg or BloggingZoom? Then you need to check out Swypefile.com!

Swypefile.com (not swipefile.com) is a new site that is similar to BloggingZoom and Digg in so far as you can submit content to share and have it voted on by other users. However, there are some big differences between Swypefile and the others.

I was surprised when I visited Swypefile.com just how closely it resembled bloggingzoom and Digg with the layout and submissions feature. There are a few differences to Swypefile.com however, and from their site:

Join the swypefile community and become an active user and each day you’ll …

Discover the latest online marketing news and hot discussions

Learn cutting-edge tactics and strategies to grow your business

Generate exposure for yourself and your products or services

Monetize the content you submit via Google AdSense

Network with other marketers and make valuable contacts

Did you notice the line that says “Monetize the content you submit via Google AdSense”?

When you submit content to Swypefile, they automatically place Adsense ads in the content for you. To quote from Swypefile.com:

Aside from the obvious exposure and traffic potential of submitting content to swypefile, you’ll also earn money directly from submitting content - swypefile automatically monetizes the content you submit with Google AdSense.

It doesn’t even have to be your own content - if you spend some time each day scouring popular online marketing sites and submitting quality content you find, you can earn money from that just the same.

Just add your AdSense ID to your swypefile profile, and any time a swypefile page with content you’ve submitted is viewed your AdSense ID will be used at least 50% of the time.

… and that means when people click on the ads, YOU get paid directly by Google.

And that’s not all! When you refer someone to Swypefile.com, your referrals also earn you income by sharing the income with you from your referrals.

They’ll thank you for it, and so will we … by showing Google ads with YOUR AdSense publisher ID at least 50% of the time on all pages containing content submitted by ALL of your referrals!

So, what are you waiting for? Check out Swypefile.com today as it will officially launch on November 19, 2007. And remember that it is not swipefile.com!

The list of Why we blog

elliott — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 20:11:04 +0000

In an earlier article I wrote about Why I blog and asked for your input into why you blog. I promised to compile the responses into a new article and let you know about other bloggers reasons for blogging.

While I didn’t get many responses, I wanted to share those that I did with you. I have also searched the internet and have brought you a couple of other great articles on why to blog.

Enjoy writing and helping others

So here it is! The first response was from Frank at optempo.com who wrote and said:

I blog because I enjoy writing but I don’t enjoy writing books (I’ve tried). If I can help other people while I’m doing it, it makes me even happier.

Franks response points out two key areas to having a successful blog. One, you need to enjoy writing. It doesn’t matter really about what, just as long as you enjoy writing to an audience. If you enjoy writing, and the content is good, then others will begin to show up and check out your blog.

Secondly, helping other people is what blogs are about. You are knowledgeable in a certain area, or several areas, and the information that you write about can be found useful or inspirational for other people. Whether you write about ways to make money online, or how to fix the kitchen sink, each of us have knowledge that we can share. And by doing so, we all benefit.

Great minds think alike

The second response was from pablopabla at blogsreview.net who wrote:

Gasp! What a coincidence as I wrote more or less and exact post as yours (with the same title) and got it posted yesterday! This is freaky!

Yep, that’s right folks. We both wrote articles on the same thing within two days of each other. While the FBI and CIA are investigating this strange coincidence, Pablo and I can assure you that we are not working together on this. Go and see pablopabla’s article on why he blogs or the additional article about how blogging can be freaky.

You see, pablopabla lives in Malaysia, and I live in Kentucky, just south of Cincinnati. While we both read each others blogs, we hadn’t planned this. Just one of those strange coincidences that shows how small (and big) the blogging world can be! While pablo doesn’t reveal his reason for blogging, he promises he will soon so check back on his article.

Four points that sum it up

Mike Cherim from Green-Beast.com posted an article last year about why he blogs, and I think the four points he brings up are really a good summary for many bloggers.

Sharing technical items and giving insight
Sharing news and information, even personal
Creative outlet, stories, fun stuff for me
Passive advertising, a guy’s gotta eat

Great quotes Mike, I think he really sums up the broad reasons as to why people blog.

Why do you blog site?

One other site I found out there is called whydoyoublog.com. It is an online survey and open discussion thread for finding out the reasons why people blog. There are some really neat answers in the discussion thread, so head over there and check it out.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, I guess the best reason as to why people blog is really your own reason. It is up to you to search deep inside and find why you blog. Are you passionate about the environment and want to share your thoughts? Do you enjoy helping others out of debt? Are you looking for ways to make money online with blogs?

Each reason is as unique as each blogger. I hope you know your reason(s) as it will really help you to keep focused when you don’t feel like writing or blogging.