Hey guys.

Just a quick post today. My blog StandOutBlogger.com is a contestant in Blogging Idol, which is a blog contest where the winner is the one who gets the largest RSS feed increase over the month of July.

The winner gets $5000 worth of prizes, and I am currently in 4th place!

I would really appreciate it if you would vote for my website (StandOutBlogger.com) by subscribing to the rss feed. This is really simple. There are two ways to can help me out.

1. Subscribe Via RSS Feed.
   If you use a rss feed reader then all you have to do is subscribe to the StandOutBlogger feed to vote for me!
2. Subscribe Via Email.
   If you don’t have a rss feed reader then you can still vote by subscribing via email. This is so simple and I even have an offer going that if you subscribe via email I will give you a blogroll link at StandOutBlogger.com for the whole month of July.

   Vote By Subscribing Via Email:
   

   Enter your email address:
   

   Delivered by FeedBurner

Wait, I have just decided I will give two free blogroll links if you subscribe via email then leave a comment to let me know you email so I can verify. I will give you a blog roll link on StandOutBlogger.com and ThomasSinfield.com(PR2)

So please vote for me using one of the two options above! I am sure you will love the content - and I have already got 67 rss readers (37 this month already)!

Thanks Everyone!

I have been super busy lately, with my studying and work lately. So I have decided to do the next best thing to posting regularly - give you a list of my favourite bloggers so you can read their blogs til I’m back in action!

1. Tyler Cruz - Internet Entrepreneurship
2. Entrepreneurs Journey - Blogging & Internet Marketing
3. Caroline Middlebrook - Making Money Online
4. Zac Johnson - Affiliate Marketing
5. 45n5 - Make Money Online
6. Jonathon Volk - Affiliate Marketing
7. Blogtrepreneur - Blogging & Online Entrepreneurship
8. Derek Beau - Blogging & Internet Marketing
9. The University Kid - Making Money Online
10. The Blog Entrepreneur - Making Money Online
11. John Cow - Make Money Online
12. Ian Fernando - Internet & Affiliate Marketing
13. Gather Success - Make Money Online & Blogging
14. Winning The Web - Internet Marketing Strategies
15. Viking Blogger - Monetizing The Web
    
16. Blogging Tips - Blogging
17. Yeepage - Blogging Tips and Money Making Journal
18. Creadiv - Design & Development
19. Traffikd - Internet Marketing & Social Media
20. Wayne Liew - Simple Blogging Tips

I hope you will find some new bloggers in that list. I purposely made it of both well known and upcoming bloggers in the hope you will be made aware of some great up and coming bloggers!

Thanks to all the bloggers above for creating such great blogs! And I will be back in the swing of blogging soon.

Is you blog currently treading water and you can’t seem to work out why you are not getting anywhere with it? I mean you are trying out all the latest networking tools, you are dabbling in social media and even bought a few ad spots on other blogs - but still haven’t really made any progress in ages!

This is where I find myself at the moment. Sure I just came from a competition where I gained over 80 new rss readers, but my traffic hasn’t jumped that much, my alexa rating has gone from 105,000 to 130,000 and visitor feedback (comments) have not really improved either.

I tried:

• Contests
• Entrecard
• Social Media

And none made a huge increase in my daily traffic or feedback. Now I am not saying that any of these things are wrong ways to promote your blog, I just believe that we need to simplify things. I am a massive fan of making processes as simple as possible.

So here is what I believe that bloggers (including myself) have to do, if they want their blog to take off, to become talked about in their niche (and outside), the rss count to grow dramatically, and visitor contribution to increase - plus the result of all this will be more people wanting to advertise, paying you more money, people wanting to guest post on your blog - leaving you with more time, you having more influence in your niche. It is this simple:

Go Back To Basics!

What were you told when you first started blogging? This is the tips I was given:

1. Write Quality Unique Content
2. Network by Commenting on Other Blogs, and Forums

I told you I like simple, but think about it. How many of you are even doing this well? I know I’m not.

Why are we constantly looking for new ways to promote and grow our blog, when all we have to do is start with the basics! When we master those then look at other ways to improve our blogs reach and authority, but they should be like the desert - and your quality content and basic networking is your main meal.

How many of you were told as children, “You can’t have any desert until you finish your vege’s.” Why do we try and do it in our lives as adults?

So here is what I’m talking about:

Write Quality Unique Content!

How much time do you spend on your blog posts? I know for me it is probably 10 minutes max! Which I believe is terrible. How do I expect people to want to read something I just whipped together just so people had something to read? It is like your favourite author writing a new book each day - writing what first comes to his (or her) head and not even going back over it to make sure it makes sense.

I was reading a post yesterday (can’t remember where), where they blogger said that they wrote blog posts from 6am -8am each morning! That is two hours of writing a day - you can bet that they have quality content.

I had a think about what my favourite blogs where to read, and I came up with this list:

• Blogtrepreneur
• Entrepreneurs Journey
• Caroline Middlebrook
• Winning With The Web

And one thing I realised was that each one of these had a focus on long and indepth posts, with a preference to quality over quantity. Now I am not going to get into the should we post everyday (these bloggers don’t!) but I will let their feed count and authority speak for itself!

Network by Commenting on Other Blogs, and Forums

Sure there are a heap of ways to get traffic and readers to your blog, but you have to be consistent in your prospecting.Now I’m not saying you should only comment other blogs, and post of forums. The point I’m trying to make is find a proven way of gaining traffic and put some effort into! Don’t change from one method to another - find one that you think works and stick with it. Then when you have mastered that, start looking at other methods - however keep the proven method going.

Personally I like comment on other blogs best. Why? Because I like to know what is happening in my niche, so I read a lot of blogs - why not double task and leave a helpful comment while I’m there?

Forums can be fantastic - Digital Point especially if you are in the make money online niche! I have been pretty slack with this one and really should pick up the ball. I was getting quite a fair bit of traffic from forums but for the last couple of months I haven’t really been active in any.

But I guess the main point of this post is to encourage you all to keep things simples and concentrate of the basics of successful blogging!

What Do You Do When You Want To Give Up?

We all have those moments. You know the ones I’m talking about! The moments when you just want to quit blogging.

Whether it is because of:

• What someone said about your blog
• Lack of traffic
• Your Inability to gain comments
• Your competition that only got one entry

I guess the reason doesn’t really matter. The big question is, how do you get to the other end of the tunnel and back into the light again?

Hard times and challenges always come. The only thing that changes is the way that we respond to those challenges!

Will you step up to the challenge or let it step over you?

Here are 3 Things To Do Before Throwing In The Towel!

So what do you do? When you are having one of those days (weeks or months!!!) and are just ready to quit blogging?

1. Restoke The Passion

Can you remember when you first started blogging? Remember how much fun you had putting each new blog post together? The joy of checking each day to see if anyone had left a comment?

Where did that go?

My bet is that it got lost when you started reading that:

• Readers want consistent posting
• You need to be posting everyday
• etc etc

 And you ended up blogging just so that you had a new post everyday. Not because you had something to write about. Maybe you started to burn out?

Why not consider taking your foot off the gas and slow your blogging own for a bit?

2. Realise You Are Not Alone

I would think that every blogger - yes even John Chow, Shoemoney and Darren Rowse have felt like giving up at one stage.

I could give example after example of bloggers that have just stopped posting for a week or a month just beause the passion dissapears and it becomes to much like hard work.

Talk to your peers!

So if you are feeling like giving up, why not write a post about what’s going through your mind and ask for your readers to give you some advice? And let their comments encourage you to keep blogging!

3. Start Writing What You Love

Or should I say REstart writing what you love!

This is how the blogging cycle usually works:

1. You start a blog because you love a topic
2. You start writing what you think others want to read because you want to gain readers
3. Your passion and personality go from your posts
4. You don’t get any new readers
5. Then you feel like giving up

How do I know this?

Because it is something I have just gone through with this blog. I started the blog with so much passion for blogging and writing about inspiring and motivating other bloggers but I got too caught up in trying to write a post a day and writing posts that I thought my readers wanted to read, when all along I should have been posting about what I love and what I’m thinking about at the time - because that is what I am passionate about.

I have come to realise that the reason people visit your blog over another is because of the voice of the blog, because of YOUR writing style, YOUR knowledge, YOUR passion and/or YOUR humour - they want you, so why give them something else?

So start blogging about what you love and you will soon find yourself loving blogging again!

1. You Have Customers
Your visitors are you walk in traffic, and your subscribers are your regulars. What are you doing to make sure that both of these groups of people are being attended to, and how are you making sure that they will return?

Just like in a bricks and mortar business it is your customers that keep your blog alive and kicking. So you focus should not be on writing writing nice and fluffy posts that get a few ‘Good Posts’ but your focus should be on providing meaty posts that will leave your customers wanting more.

2. You Sell A Product
You are your product. What are you doing to sell yourself and your blog?

Let’s have a look at what some offline business’ do to sell their product:

• They Have Promotions
• They Advertise
• They Use Word Of Mouth
• They Have Quality Product

How many of these have you been implementing for your blog? If it isn’t many here is the list again but with a few ideas from a bloggers perspective.

• Have Promotions
  • Hold A Contest
  • Give Something Away
• Advertise
  • On Other Blogs
  • On Comparable Websites
  • Create A Mailing List
• Use Word Of Mouth
  • Get People Talking About Your Blog
  • Be Active In Your Niche
• Have Quality Product
  • Make Your Blogs Information Packed
  • Post Unique Content
  • Post Wanted Content
    

3. Your Reputation Is On The Line
Just like when an offline company creates a bad product that is faulty or when they promote a company or product that turns out to be a flop, it is the same with blogging. If your content is poorly researched, or you start promoting products just because everyone else seems to be and they turn out to be rubbish (not naming names here), you are actually tainting your reputation and lowering your credibility.

4. Your Competitors Do
Take a look at the major players in your niche. Do they just blog sporadically and throw an adsense block in here and there? I bet they have focused on their blogging voice and tested and tried traffic building strategies and monetization ideas. This is why they are the best in your niche - because they treat their blog as a business. And guess what, it probably pays them like a business should too!

5. Why Waste Your Time If You’re Not?
I mean seriously. Why even bother if you are going to post every day for a week, get tired don’t post for a month and then take it back up again (with a never ending vicious cycle)? You can never expect to be successful at blogging if you do not take it seriously. It takes a lot time and effort to run and grow a successful blog and without proper planning and

I thought that with the Federal election here in Australia happening tomorrow I would do a bit of a comparision between voting at an election and commenting on a blog. I hope you enjoy it! 

1. Everyone Has An Opinion - Even If They Have No Idea
Have you ever realised when I comes to election time that everyone seems to be an expert. They have seen the ads on tv (you know they ones with the really fast talking at the end), they have read what the papers want you to know, and now they want to let everyone know what they think. don’t think to argue with them though, because their opinions is right, full stop.

Compare that to the blog commenter who just comes to your blog, rambles on about who knows what (definately now what you wrote about) and leaves you wondering what on earth they were talking about. Or what about the commenter who posts the ‘I agree’ or ‘you have no idea’, try arguing with them!

2. Your thoughts Don’t Count Unless You Voice Them
Have you ever complained about the current government, or thought that things could be better? Or maybe you think the economy is going great and want the current government to stay. Then have your say - if you don’t vote, you can’t complain!

It is the same with blogging, give your feed back on posts and ideas, let the blogger know what you are thinking. This gives him an opportunity to know what his ‘voters’ want.
Well I tried to think of a third similarity but drew a blank, so I will open the floor. Anyone got anymore? 

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers!

 

With my new custom blog design due to be launched in the next couple of days, I thought I woul discuss the 5 things that made me decide it was time to make the switch. 

1. To Stand Out
   If you started an offline business would you want your store to look like 100 others stores? For me it is the same with blogging - I treat it as a business which means I want to create a way for people to remember me. With so many bloggers - especially in my niche, it is important to me that I stand out.
   
   
2. To Create Buzz
   Have you ever noticed that whenever someone gets a new design (and it is good) there is always a lot of attention given to it?It happened with:
   * Tyler Cruz
   * John Cow
   * ProBlogger
   
   I can vividly remember when each of these blogs launched their new theme and they were the talk of the town.
   
   
3. To Brand Myself
   Think of all the big name bloggers, what is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of them?Here is what I think:
   
   John Chow - Fast Car, and That Massive Header
   ProBlogger - His logo, and then his nice clean layout
   Zac Johnson - His cartoon of himself
   John Cow - The guy and his cap, pretty much his whole header
   
   What I realised was that the way I remember each blogger was by their layout, or part of it. So what have I done to brand myself with my new layout? You will have to wait and see, but I will say that I do have a ‘cartoon’ of myself - just a fair bit different to everyone else!What I want is for people to hear my name and automatically associate with who I am - and this is always done by visualisation.
   
   
4. Customised To My Needs
   My current design has served me well for the short while that I have had it, but it just didn’t have the features that I was looking for. With a custom blog design I knew that I could pick and choose the features that I did and didn’t want.Some Features I Have Included In My New Layout:
   
   * Featured Post - Great for Annoucements
   * Most Popular & Most Recent Post - Excellent for new visitors
   * Got Banners Plugin - Allows me to rotate the positions of my ads
   * Live Comment Preview
   * Two Column Layout - Keeps it clutter free leaving heaps of room for content.You will have to wait until I launch it to find out the rest
5. Shows I Am Serious
   I have thrown a fair bit of money into, not only the layout but also the coding because I wanted to make sure it was the best, and I think that visitors will see that is my way of saying that I am here to stay.

Do you see the benefit of a custom blog design? Why do you have one, or why are you considering getting one?

 

There are over 100,000,000 blogs in the world. That’s right over 100 million! That is a lot of bloggers and I bet less than .001 percent of them are making over $100 a month from their blog. And here is 5 reasons why you are one of the 99.99%.

1. You ‘re A Quitter!
It will all get to hard for you. When your traffic doesn’t grow as fast as you want and your subscriber count drops, when you get tired of making $0.10 a day of from your adsense ads (if you even make that much), you will chuck in the towel and quit thinking that there is no way you can make good money from blogging.

2. You’re a Copycat!
You are to lazy to spend even 15 minutes thinking up a creative blog post that will actually give your visitors a reason to stay and your subscribers a reason not to leave that you just join with the 100’s of other lazy bloggers and just post about whatever John Chow or Darren Rowse post about. Why? Cause it is easy and doesn’t take effort, and making money online is supposed to be easy right?

3. You are Just Plain Greedy!
I bet you are one of those bloggers that started the blogging journey by installing wordpress and then adding adsense and a plethera of other advertising widgets and affiliate links - before you even changed from the standard theme. You don’t care about providing quality content for your visitors and subscribers because it is all about making a quick buck.

4. Your Content Sucks!
Finally you have written a unique post. You are getting all excited because of all the traffic you are going to get from it - but you get one visitor from your signature link in a forum and even your 2 subscribers don’t even bother reading. Why? Because your post was boring. Ever thought that people subscribe to your blog because they want your opinion  not a review that looks at things from boths sides and is just a wishy washy piece of trash?

5. You Are Too Cool For School!
You don’t need to network, right? You can be a success on your own so why waste time getting to know your fellow bloggers and building relationships? I mean you are much to busy filling your posts with affiliate links to bother about building relationships that could open up opportunies. You are too busy tweaking your adsense so people accidently click it instead of reading other blogs and learning more about your niche - from someone who may actually know more about it than you.

If you liked this post then please subscribe to my full rss feed. You can also subscribe via email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

How often do you check the stats of your blog?

do you know:

• how many visitors a day you are getting?
• How long they stay?
• What they look at?
• Or where they come from?

It has only been over the last week or so that I have actually started really looking, AND ANALYSING my stats.

Before that I would just randomly check how many visitors I was getting every couple of weeks, notice there was no improvement and feel a bit dejected.
The biggest thing that I got from analysing my traffic is finding out that I get a very substancial chunk of my traffic (almost 50%) from one source - Digital Point Forum.

Why was I getting That Much Traffic From A Forum

The next thing I needed to do was figure out why I was getting all this traffic from Digital Point, because it wasn’t like I was posting like crazy, and the link in my signature just says ‘Entrepreneur Blog’ and links to here.

What I worked out was the key was the rss feed that showed my latest blog post with every comment that I made on the forum, and the more intriguing the post title the more visitors I got.

Now What Do I Do?

Make the most of it of course. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to go and spam the forum just so people read my post title and want to click through and visit my blog.

What I have been doing for the last couple of days is:

• posting questions that I would usually just ask a friend, or search the internet for - ones that start a discussion.
• posting a replying more frequently than usual
• Making sure I have interesting post titles to capture their interests

So What Happened?

In the last two days I not only see my daily unique traffic double, with 92 unique views from DigitalPoint yesterday alone, but my rss count has also doubled as well. And if you look at the picture above that is my alexa ranking over the last
It was just one simple thing that has improved the traffic to my blog so much, it makes me think what other little things I could be doing to improve my blog.

If you liked this post, I would appreciate it if you subscribed to my rss feed!

I know I havn’t been blogging here as recent as I would like to, but as you know I have just launched my latest blog, and to be honest - It just seems so much easier to write about acne.

I know it is said a lot, probably even too much, but my tip for you is:

Blog about what you are passionate about!
Im not saying I am not passionate about making money online, cause I am. But the thing with the topic my new blog is that:

1. I live with it
2. It is something I think about constantly
3. I am constantly researching it
4. It is a part of me

Can you say that about the subject of your blog?

If you can, then you will have no problems coming up with the next post, how to attract more visitors. You just you - because you are passionate about the subject and it drives you.