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Have you ever wondered about or been interested in email marketing? Did you know you can read the easy step-by-step system of EmailMarketingAuthority.com to get started, and then sign up for a free 30 day trial of their email marketing program, ViperMailer?

EmailMarketingAuthority walks you through email address collecting, coming up with the email subject line, how often to send an email offer, how to greet your email recipients, knowing what is a successful offering or newsletter, and tracking potential clients.

If any of that sounds interesting to you or you would like to learn more, visit their website. My thoughts are:

Their site layout is decent, the color scheme is nice, and it’s easy to find what you’re looking for. The fact that a free 30 day trial is offered is great too - without a trial, I probably wouldn’t invest my money into something I’d just happened upon.

However, email marketing isn’t for everyone. Most think of it as just another word for SPAM (even though the site claims it’s not). But if you’re interested, then by all means, do visit the site. No one’s stopping you.

This was a sponsored post.

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I have never participated in an event of a series of blog posts before, but now I’m very glad to announce that I can’t say that anymore starting today. Steven Snell contacted me about writing one out of five parts of a series of posts about growth and gaining traffic, and of course I said yes! I’ve been working harder than ever before lately to help my blog grow and to increase its readerbase. Now I’m one of the five bloggers that will share a piece of advice with you and try to help you increase your site’s traffic, too.

To fully gain from this experience, please read all five parts of the traffic and growth series, and consider subscribing to each of the blogs so you can be one of the first to know when they write new tips.

Monday: Vandelay Website Design - Driving Search Engine Traffic to a New Blog
Tuesday: Blogging Tips - Be Selfish and Help Someone
Wednesday: Blogtrepreneur - What’s Your Best Source of Web Traffic?
Thursday: Super Blogging - Be Community Involved to Get More Traffic
Friday: SiteFever - Drive Traffic by Commenting First

Lately I have been doing numerous things to up this blog’s growth, but many of those things are closely related. What I plan to talk about today includes commenting and linking others and joining forums.

Commenting

People love receiving comments and feedback on their blog posts, whether you’re agreeing with them or even if you’re not. Also, if people read a valuable comment on another site, they’re likely to check out who it’s coming from. Therefore, commenting other blogs can help you in numerous ways.

If you comment someone else’s blog, they will appreciate it. They might comment back on your blog or post about what you’ve said in a new post if it’s worthy enough. If you post worthwhile comments and do it often, the blog’s owner of which you’re commenting will feel more loyal to you and link to you more often, sending their readers your way. Commenting and interacting with other bloggers is a fantastic way to strengthen bonds and get new, trusty readers.

Besides having the blog owner on your side, others who read your comment might be interested in who the person behind it is. If they visit your site, then you just might acquire yet another reader - or at least a little more traffic if not. Commenting is great for everyone!

Linking Out

If you see a post someone else has written that really intrigues or inspires you, don’t just sit around. Put your ideas into motion and write a continuation of their post, your thoughts on it, or even why you disagree with it. Be sure and link back to who originally posted the article. Or, if you need to give an example or go into detail into one of your articles, link to someone else’s post that explains what needs to be said.

If you link to someone, they’ll see the trackback or notice and be likely to visit your blog to see why you’re linking to them. There’s also a high chance that they’ll link back to you!

Another great way to link to other bloggers is to have a weekly round-up. Once a week (or bi-weekly, if you will) have a post dedicated to linking to other bloggers’ great posts you’ve read lately. Not only is it important to be community oriented and to give credit where credit is due, but it’s very likely you’ll gain more regular readers and find growth from linking out to other blogs.

Joining Forums

This is something I’ve just begun to do recently. When you join a forum there is just such a huge opportunity to meet and connect with many new people who are interested in the same things you are. Not only can you learn a lot from forums and also share your knowledge, but you can easily refer other people to your blog whether it be through you helping people out and giving information, or from simply showing off your link.

Most forums allow you to link to your site or add its URL to your signature. If this is permitted in any forum you sign up on, don’t hesitate to do it. Many forum-goers will be interested in who you are and what your blog is about, and they’d be likely to check it out. Not only is this traffic, but it’s also almost always targeted!

Some great forums you could join if you are interested in blogging include the Blogging Tips Forums and the Digital Point Forums. There are many more but I definitely recommended those two if you’re just getting started with the forums aspect.

Summing It All Up

All in all, you should be involved in the blogging community. Assign a certain amount of time each day for when you can sit down, read, and comment other blogs. Try to link out to other bloggers and their sites whenever possible. And to connect, create new friendships, and get yourself more exposure, it’s almost mandatory to join forums in your niche.

Not only do all of these things help you to see growth in your blog (they’re definitely working for me!) but each of these tactics are helpful and beneficial for all parties involved. If you want to see more traffic, don’t hide in your shell!

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When I first started blogging, I didn’t know very much. Not very much at all. And to this day, there’s still a lot I don’t know and yes, I will openly admit that. But months ago, when this blog was new and still on Blogspot, I wrote some things that I completely disagree with in today’s time. Opinions change. Here are some of those posts I wrote in the past that I’d never write again today if I could:

• Earn Money using SlashMySeach - I’d never write this again because SlashMySearch is just such a horrid waste of time. It’s time NOT well spent. You could earn more cash doing other things, and their search engine sucks anyway. Go Google!
• Feed my Feed - A link train. Yuck. Fake, unreal, cheating links. If you participate in things like this too often, Google will notice, and WILL penalize you. Besides, why mess around with the system? It’s not worth it.
• I Love the BlogMad.Net Traffic Exchange - Really, I don’t. Maybe months ago, but not anymore. Traffic exchanges are bad, the traffic isn’t targeted, and the visitors don’t stick around. Well, one of mine did. Once. Traffic exchanges create unreal impressions and take up too much valuable time.
• Results of ViralTags and ViraLink Trains - This is, by far, the worst one. But please do be assured that I’m completely against link trains and the like now. I used to think it wasn’t cheating, but now I wish to take back those words, because I think it is. The links aren’t real, they aren’t valuable, AND they can get you in trouble with Google. Stay away from these things.

Those four are entirely stupid. Of course, there are some other posts with stupid aspects, but not 100% idiotic like those above. I am proud to say, however, that a lot of what I’ve written I still approve of.

If you’re wondering what the point of this post is, it’s that I’m trying to get across the fact we all start out somewhere, and we all improve over time (hopefully). Also over time our opinions and views on certain things can change. There are always going to be mistakes to learn from, but if you act like those mistakes never happened, your blogging will never get better. The road starts out very bumpy, but if you travel down it the right way, it will straighten and flatten out.

Wow, where did that cheesy line come from? Maybe that’ll be another thing I’ll go back and read and smack myself on the head for!

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Hi to everyone,

For some reason I’ve been having absolutely zero success with my contest, where you can win a free month of advertising on this blog. In the past, the only way you could enter the contest was by writing a post linking to this blog with our anchor text. I suppose most people didn’t want to do that, so I’ve updated the contest and it made it easier on all of you!

There are now five separate ways you can enter to win a month of free advertising, and each one is assigned a certain credit amount. Commenting gives you one credit. Subscribing gets you five. Writing a post linking to us with our anchor text gets you TEN! The more things you do, the more credits you earn. And the more credits you have, the more likely you are to win that free month of advertising in the top of the sidebar!

So now there are five easy ways to win, so I’d recommended you give the contest a look. After all, this blog has almost broken the Alexa 100k, is under the Technorati 10k, and is getting a predicted PageRank of 3. A free month of advertising with your 125×125 banner at the top of the sidebar is a fantastic deal! You have nothing to lose.

If there’s some other reason you’re hesitating to enter, please let me know. I don’t want anyone to miss out on this. If anyone needs help making a banner in case they win, that could always be arranged. Feel free to comment or use the contact form and I’ll get back to you! Thanks.

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I recently conducted a poll on this blog where you could vote if you thought it was worse to post too much, or too little. Some blogs churn out 4+ posts a day and some even manage to come out with 10, causing their readers’ brains to explode! And yet then there are the blogs that only post once a week or every other week, hardly satisfying their readers with any content. Which type of blogger is worse?

My hypothesis was correct. Overall, most of you think that posting too little is a lot worse than too often. If you’d like the exact number values, 85% of you completed the majority, while just 15% believed that those who post too much are the bad guys. If I had voted, I would have agreed with that 85%.

So what does this tell you? If you’re not posting enough content, you’re probably not making your readers too happy (if they even stick around, that is). But then again, many of us can’t keep up with the blogs that produce too many articles so those are likely to be avoided as well. The one thing you have to do is find the balance in your posting schedule.

Personally, I try to post once a day. On some days I’ll post twice, and perhaps I’ll skip a day every now and then. But all in all, I try to keep fresh content without the overload. If you’re blogging so people will like your site, you’ll get traffic, money, or anything like that, then you need to find the posting balance. Then again, if you’re not blogging for those reasons and you just blog for only you, I don’t see why you’re reading this site anyway.

If you don’t post often enough, promise to yourself to gradually start increasing how often you write new articles, until you’re up to the desired amount of content. If you’re coming up with new content constantly, do try to tone it down a bit. Rearrange your posting schedule if need be, please your readers, and all will be good. Good luck, and thanks for reading!

Also, please do consider voting in the current poll, which can be found in the sidebar. Your opinions and answers are valued here. Thank you!

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