Mr Beach Bum.com

This may be considered a bit old school by today’s “web 2.0 ” standards, but the good old fashioned method of swapping links with other websites in your niche (blogs included) is still one of the best ways for you to get your site “out there” in front of people.

A lot of people set up their blog or website and immediately go to town on setting up Adwords and other pay-per-click type solutions and spend a lot of money trying to get the word out. I am not saying you shouldn’t do some of that but you really need to think about how the web really works. Why do we call it a web anyway? The reason is because it is a mesh of links between sites and your true goal should be to become somewhat of a “hub site” that people will come to in order to find not only your wonderful content or service but even more information and services from your niche.

Even if you don’t ever become a true “hub site” you will still benefit greatly by achieving a high number of incoming links from other sites and this should be one of your primary focuses, especially early on in the start of your site.

 The challenge you will have is that there are a lot of big time sites out there that make it very hard to get a link from. They may let you link to them but you might have to pay to get a link back. Don’t just pay every time. Try to be creative instead. What could you offer them now that might be of value. Perhaps a free review or something in exchange for a link to your article?

You will need to have a links section on your site and this will quickly become one of the ugliest pages on your entire site, but it is also one of the most important if done properly.

Also, don’t be afraid to check out your competition from time to time. Look at their Alexa site info. Especially under “sites linking in”. If those sites linking into your competitor have high rankings then you may consider contacting them to do reciprocals with you as well because most of the time these same sites will be somewhat related to your niche just as they are your competitor. Don’t reinvent the wheel here people, there is no shame in using some of the same methods to reach success as those who have come before you. It will be up to you to differentiate yourself in the long run but when you are just starting out, all bets are off.

We will look at this in more detail in a future post but for now, think about who your #1 competitor is and go straight to alexa.com and check them out. See who helped them get where they are now and then you can start sending link exchange requests like mad! Good luck!

Some of you out there with blogs may already be using BlogRush. But I am sure there are a few who may have held off for a bit potentially because there was a lack of customization options. Well your wait is over. Blogrush introduced “flavors” which allow you to choose from a surprisingly diverse palette of colors that are sure to match any theme you can throw at it. These just went live this week and all you have to do is choose your default color scheme in your Blogrush settings page under flavors and you’re done. It’s that simple. I really like the way it looks on my site and I hope you do too.

While we’re on the subject, I have to say that so far I am happy with the number of credits I’ve been getting on the Blogrush account. I have seen some fairly steady incoming traffic too so I can say that if you have a blog, you should definitely consider using it.

If you are already using it, how has your experience with it been up to this point?

I just set up an account with BlogRush to test it out. In case you aren’t familiar with BlogRush, it is a listing of other blog posts that are somewhat related to the content of your own blog. The idea is that you will advertise other blogs on your site but in return, your own blog gets advertised on other blogs too.  This can really get you some exposure you might not have gotten, but we’ll see if it’s really a “Blog rush” in the long run.

It’s free to join, so why not try it out on your blog?

Graham Langdon, a 21 year old student, started a project called The Million Dollar Wiki. The idea behind it is that he will sell Wikipedia style pages on this site for $100 each and, when all the pages are sold, he will have $1,000,000.00 for his efforts. But what do you get if you purchase a page?

When you purchase a page for $100 for the word that you want, you own that page for life. Just imagine taking the 1 keyword that is perfect for your website and owning it in this micro-economy. Anyone who browses the milliondollar wiki will come across your page and since you have full control over your page’s content you can not only link to all of your own sites, but also sell links to others.  Not to mention Google ads, etc.

To think of it another way, look at it as an opportunity to purchase an ad on what has the potential to be a popular website for life at a very low cost. $100 is a drop in the bucket and this will be your page for life! And even if you grow tired of it, you can always resell it - potentially at a profit.

Of course there is a gamble. There is no way to know yet if the million dollar wiki is going to really take off big time. But I can tell you that some of the top pages on there already are seeing traffic in the 50K range so it’s definitely doing well for a recent startup. And the worst case scenario is that you are out $100 which is a low enough gamble to be worth it.

I won’t say just yet which page I purchased on Milliondollarwiki as I am still waiting for my confirmation for my page, but once I get it up and running, you’ll be the first to know!

A lot of people, especially those who are new to running a website or blog, are intimidated by advertising and the potential costs associated with it. The fact of the matter is, we are all experts in advertising to some extent. We all pretty much grew up with ads in our faces and this gives us the best training we could possibly need from a standpoint of what works and what does not work in advertising. But that doesn’t necessarily help with the costs. And it certainly doesn’t help us get a feel for just how much money we should invest in advertising.

Before you can really set a budget, however, you need to determine what your goals are. If you are looking for slow steady growth then you can generally set a budget that is reasonably priced and targeted to your specific audience. It really isn’t just about how much money you spend. Sure, you could spend a fortune buying the top banner spot on Yahoo and I’m sure you’d get plenty of traffic for it, but how targeted would that traffic be and how long would it last once the ad comes down?

Some may argue with me on this but I really do not believe that you have to spend very much money at all if you’re looking for a slow and steady growth for your site. Blogging happens to be one of the simplest, and cheapest, ways to spread the word about your website or product. With an RSS feed that gets fed out to numerous sites you are sure to quickly get visitors - especially if you post often and keep your posts interesting. The only cost to you is in the time spent in writing your posts, etc.

Link building is another great way to get free advertising. Believe it or not, but there are still plenty of websites out there that are willing to do link exchanges with you. Many even have automated processes for this. The key here, however, is to make sure that you do a link exchange with sites that are related to your content. Google and other search engines like links of this nature. The best way to get going on a link building campaign is to go to Alexa.com and look at the traffic stats for your #1 competitor. When the site info comes up, check out their “Sites Linking In” and you now have your laundry list of sites that you need to contact in order to do a link exchange with. Scan their pages first and look for a link on their site that tells you how you can link exchange with them. If they don’t have that, contact them another way (email, etc) and make sure you personalize the email, it will increase your chance of getting a response.

Another great way to generate some free traffic to your site is by putting your website link in forum posts, blog comments and even in social networking sites such as Myspace, etc. There is no shame in telling your Myspace contacts that you have a new blog or webpage for them to check out and it can really spread. I even showcased MyBlogLog.com in the previous post which is definitely a site you will want to join.

The old adage “it takes money to make money” is not always the case when it comes to advertising. The fact is that in today’s viral marketing world, you have many options that don’t even have to cost you a dime. So use them!

I do not use popup or popunder ads on any of my sites. That is just a preference of mine because I wouldn’t force anything on my visitors that I wouldn’t want forced on myself. However, there are still plenty of successful websites out there that use them and make no apologies for it.

So how about you? Do you use any on your site(s)? If so, do you find that they are successful?

How do you feel about sites that use them?

We’d like to hear from you. Please comment back and let’s discuss this.

There are a lot of blogs out there who like to brag about how evil they are in the way they “do whatever it takes” to make money or to get on top. It’s up to you to decide if this is really how you want to make your blog successful. In my opinion, you should not work with advertisers who you wouldn’t buy from yourself. After all, your readers tend to be people who agree with you, so why should you expect them to purchase a product or service that you yourself would not recommend or use?

With that in mind, I have decided to drop an advertiser from my affiliate program. Given the money I’ve made so far from them this is not an easy decision, but I feel it is important to demonstrate my integrity and I cannot recommend to you, dear readers, a service or product when I myself have had a bad experience with the advertiser.  Allow me to explain…

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If you haven’t heard of Blendtec, don’t worry. I’m sure you’ve probably heard of “Will it Blend?” Well that is the genius (as far as I’m concerned) viral marketing campaign that Blendtec started awhile back. Let’s take a brief look at just how this brilliant little idea has resulted in Blendtec’s success.

I have seen the videos on Youtube. Some of my favorites include Spam and Eggs, the iPod, and who could forget the infamous rake handle,which is one of the first ones I remember seeing. You can’t go on Youtube without seeing a Will it Blend episode - it’s that simple. So how many blenders are they selling, anyway?

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