Archive for November, 2008

This weeks featured site

ShamelesslySassy.com

What a funny and busy site to visit, with the top thumbs up score on the active sites list. This is Amanda and she writes some great content! have you seen The Drunk Tampon? hilarious!

I asked Amanda some questions about her blog…

Q1. What, where and why do you blog?
At ShamelesslySassy.com, I blog my daily life as a parent and woman spiced with humor. I’ve always kept journals and diaries. So blogging just came naturally.

Mostly, I blog because I like to express myself with words, and I love to laugh. Who better to laugh at than myself? It’s been a great outlet for me, and it has also lead to many great opportunities and job offers.

Q2. What is your most rewarding aspect of blogging?
I think one of the more rewarding aspects of blogging is the community. There are strong women and men that I can interact with on a daily basis.
I’ve made some really great friends that I wouldn’t have known otherwise. Also, I love being laughed at and with by my readers.

It’s so great when I post something totally bizarre, and I have someone tell me they do it too or they’ve experienced the situation. It makes everything seem so normal and worthwhile.

Q3. You post about a lot of your personal life online, have you ever regretted that?

I have not reached the day where I regret sharing my personal life online. I hope to not regret it. I think there are just some things that I have to express, and I’d much rather do so online than just bottle it up.

I have great friends and family that support my blogging habit. While I do share a lot of myself online, there’s still a lot kept out of the blog. Believe it or not, I do have boundaries.

Q4. If you could go back in time and speak to yourself before you started blogging, what advice would you give?

Advice, advice, Let’s see: Well, when I started my blog, I didn’t really expect anyone to read it. I didn’t expect anyone to want to read it. It was more of a totally personal journal. But readers slowly came.

I would mostly likely tell my preblog self that while the internet seems so spread out, it is still a small world. If you post something about your neighbors, there is always a chance they will read it. If you rant about your Aunt Gladys, she may read it even IF she doesn’t have the internet. But sometimes, it is a chance that you have to take. Blogging is great, and I would recommend it to anyone.

Q5. What do you think about the commentluv plugin and it’s effect on your site?

The commentluv plugin is one of my favorite plugins of all time. I’m not just saying this for this interview, either. I LOVE commentluv. When I started self-hosting, it was one of the first that I downloaded. If someone has a funny or interesting post title and it shows up in my comments via commentluv, I’ll click on it. It is how I find new blogs. Since I don’t do the feed reading thing, it is how I choose which blogs I read. I’m drawn to the post titles that show up in my comments and the comment sections of others via commentluv.
Commentluv is a great plugin that I truly think all bloggers should have.

Top Five Posts:
The Drunk Tampon
I Can Haz Nuggetz: A Fast Food How-to
Outed in a Local Paper
Allie’s Been Drawing Boobies at Preschool
Poop Chills

Thanks Amanda! Your posts are some of the funniest larf out loud I’ve seen in a long time.

If you enjoy using commentluv as a blog owner or comment maker, please consider giving it a vote in the Mashable open web awards. It’s up against some stiff competition so it’ll need every vote it can get!

This weeks featured site

PlayGroupsAreNoPlaceForChildren.com

Regularly at the top of the Active Sites list with upwards of 50 or even 70 comments in a day!

Jennifer is obviously doing a great job as a blogger and building a lively community around wide range of post subjects, I wanted to find out what was going on so I asked her some questions…

Q1. What and why do you blog?
My blog is mainly a personal blog where I write about myself, my children, and anything else that I happen upon that I think is funny. The reason I blog is because it’s where I meet up with my friends everyday, hang out, shoot the breeze…it’s also a great creative and emotional release.

Q2. You get a huge amount of comments on your posts, what’s your secret?
I think that my secret to getting lots of comments is that I try to answer or acknowledge many of the comments I receive. Also, many of my posts ask a question or encourage participation. I’m also very mindful of reciprocating comments, either via leaving a comment on their blog or twittering/stumbling one of their posts. What goes around, comes around!

Q3. What is your most rewarding aspect of blogging?
I love when I get a comment or an email from someone thanking me for describing some aspect of life, motherhood, or marriage in a true light. I also adore when someone tells me that something I’ve written has made them laugh, I mean who doesn’t love to make someone else laugh!

Q4. What are your ambitions for your blog?
I think that as long as I’m writing and enjoying blogging, then my blog goals have been met. I’m very realistic and know that I’m never going to get rich from my blog, nor will I ever get a book deal!

Q5. When did you first discover CommentLuv and how has it made (if any) difference to your blog/comments?
I can’t remember exactly when I discovered CommentLuv, but I do remember that it was one of the first plugins I installed. I definitely think it makes a difference in the number of comments I receive. When I look at my site’s statistics, many of my outclicks are a direct result of CommentLuv.

Here’s a list of my more popular posts…
My kid want to potty all the time, potty all the time, potty all the tiiime
You’ve never heard of this stuff
French Lick sounds kinda dirty
Barely Breathing
Here’s a link to my Blog Tip Sharing Project series, which has been pretty popular….
Blog Tip sharing project

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions Jennifer, I’m really pleased when I see so many comments feeling the luv at your site!

This is a guest post

Article written by Danny Cooper
Danny can be seen at
[Linkers Blog] and [My blog contest]

Link Love

The main reason commentluv has spread so far and is now seen on literally thousands of blogs is because it takes the standard comment section, which offers pretty much no reward to commentators, and offer them a chance to showcase a post of theirs. Although the link is nofollow, it is still a lot more valuable than the usual link from the commentators name.

Some bloggers have gone to the extreme of enabling dofollow on the commentluv links, I will tell you know this is a great oppurtunity to any wannabe link builders. Although regular dofollow comments are good, unfortunatly you are pretty much required to use your name as the anchor text. This is where commentluv starts to shine, it allows you to link to an internal post, with the title as the anchor text!

Which leads my nicely on to..

Title Bait

I don’t know about you, but I spend a good period of time working on creating a catchy title. If you read any blogs of top copywriters such as CopyBlogger you will soon see that the title is an extremely important part of a post, it can be the difference between if someone reads your post or not.

Usually the only people who will see your blog title is your blog readers and rss subscribers. Commentluv exposes your amazing titles to a whole new range of people, anyone who reads your comments on other blogs!

Obviously this is great, especially if your title is really that good. Just as with normal commenting though, the more you put in, the more you get out..

Effort = Reward

I can tell you now that blog commenting on blogs using commentluv is like regular commenting but on steroids! Ultimately it depend on two things, your post title and the amount of people viewing the post you comment on. If you can get both of them right then you are into a traffic boost worth shouting about!

How many click throughs from commenting have you gotten so far? I bet commenting on commentluv blogs will surpass it, but how would you know..

Statistics

One of the latest additions to the commentluv website is the stat tracker, now from an stat addict like me this is a saving grace, you can actually see the results of your work! This allows you to work out what was most effective, so you can decide what to do next time, and ultimatly become more productive.

But what after you publish another (not as good) post?

Choice of post

Andy Bailey is saving the day again, commentluv now also has the option to choose which posts you want to display on your comment, is this amazing or is it just me? If you want to get the most out of this feature then obviously just continously link to the post which you want to direct everyones attention to. I suggest either your best post, a post which promotes subscriptions, or a post which makes you money.

Let’s do this thing!

Come on guys, you know what to do, I’ve told you how to do it, what’s stopping you know? For all you bloggers out there, you better have commentluv installed on your blog!

It’s time to open the contest to all! It’s been a massive effort to get all the pages and scripts together so that every commentluv plugin user (including blogger and typepad) can be part of the excitement.

It will work like this:

Anyone who is a registered member of CommentLuv.com and has their profile description entered and site url registered and verified can be a potential winner just by commenting on the blogs that are part of the contest.

Blog owners that have CommentLuv installed will only have to register their site for the contest and that’s all! (as long as they use the latest version of CommentLuv and have all the options switched on)

Obviously it would be a good idea for them to let their readers know about the contest by making a post about it and encouraging them to register their url and profile at CommentLuv.com but once they have registered their site, their blog commentators are ready to start winning!

A winner is chosen at random by the remote CommentLuv script and instead of their last blog post coming back, it will be a prize winning notification saying they’ve won. They can only claim the prize if their comment gets published. This means NO SPAM!

You can see the “contest” menu link above which will take you to the FAQ, Registration and list of prizes and active sites

Featured Site

This is a regular Saturday spot for sites that use the CommentLuv plugin.
If you would like to be featured here, visit the forum and leave your site details there or contact me through the squillion different ways posted around this blog

Slyvisions.com

This weeks featured site is a go to place for all those searching for ways to make money online, I normally don’t do MMB’s as featured but this one is a corker! I asked Sly Blanco some questions about how he started blogging…

Q1. What got you into blogging?
Well, over a year ago, I wanted to find a way to make money online so I can buy my own stuff (I never even thought of getting a day-job then). I am not really the type of person that would ask my parents for money, so finding a way earn money was something that I needed to do. So one day, I googled the term “how to make money online”. I then discovered ProBlogger. Well, you can probably guess how the rest of the story goes.

Q2. What has been your biggest challenge and how did/will you overcome it?
To be honest with you, the biggest challenge for me is time management. There are so many other activities and hobbies that I do outside of blogging and in the “real world”. It’s even harder when there is only one person who manages the blog, which would be me.

So to overcome this, I plan to slowly get a team of bloggers to be part of a SlyVisions writing-community. There will be 3-5 other bloggers that will help with writing posts, promoting the site, and managing the blog in general. And what are the benefits of these bloggers? Well, they get shared income from the blog.

Q3. When did you first encounter CommentLuv and what was your impression?
I just remember saying to myself: “Finally! Something that will encourage commenting!”

To me, having a great community within a blog is something that is essential. A blog isn’t a blog without any comments from readers. With CommentLuv, readers are encouraged to leave comments. So when I heard about CommentLuv, I just couldn’t get any happier.

Q4. How has CommentLuv benefited your blog?
Simple: more discussions and more links.

Seriously, I think that CommentLuv is the missing piece of the puzzle when it comes to achieving these things. Bloggers always want more comments on their blog and they always want to build links to it. With CommentLuv, both can be achieved effortlessly. It’s no surprise that CommentLuv won the WPMU plugin contest.

Here are 5 of just a few of my popular posts:

• dear reader stop lurking and start commenting
• 10 things to do when you have nothing to blog about
• 6 essential elements every blog must have
• 30 tips for exploding your site traffic
• your blog sucks and i got 20 reasons to back it up

Here’s the screenshot from the Ads page for the 2nd week of displaying your ads.

This weeks featured site has been an avid user of CommentLuv for some time and has a lively community of new and old bloggers exchanging tips and advice freely.

Thoushalblog.com

The articles are beneficial to anyone who blogs because Yan explains how to use and take advantage of the numerous tools available to promote and market your site. All his articles are a joy to read, no over the top technical jargon and a real focus on what’s important.

He’s also a prolific commenter and there’s a high chance you’ll see him on your travels through the blogosphere.

I had the chance to ask Yan some questions about his blogging history, here’s my interview with him.

Q1. How long have you been blogging and where?

To tell you the truth, blogging is a new game for me. It all started with WordPress and I’m pretty sure it will end with it as well. thoushallblog.com was created in May 2008 as my personal journal to document what I have discovered and learned from my blogging journey.

It has been a very rewarding 6-month experience for me and if I have to start all over again, I’d still be blogging as I’ve found a new passion I wouldn’t trade it for anything else.

Q2. What have you found to be the biggest challenge with promoting your blog and how did you overcome it?

I think the biggest challenge for me is to perfect the art of SEO. Getting high search engines ranking is always easier said than done. In fact, in todays’ ever competitive blogosphere, simple SEO is no longer enough. I thought it was but I was wrong.

To be on the first page of Google for your keywords takes a lot of patience and research, great effort of link building and consistency in creating link-baiting articles. I’m not saying that I’m struggling in these areas but I’m just making my point that if you think SEO is all about optimizing your keywords in title and blah, blah, blah……. wait till you are sandboxed by Google and SEO becomes a different ball game all together.

Long story short, as some of my inner pages are still sandboxed by Google, I compensate the loss of organic traffic with probably one of the most, if not the most, effective and direct method of promotion – blog commenting. The fact of the matter is that 70% of my direct source of traffic comes from blog commenting while search engines makes up about 20% and the rest is from social medias.

Q3. What is your most rewarding aspect of blogging?

Nothing is more rewarding than seeing a blog that started off with just one person is now becoming a community of people from around the globe who discuss, share and learn from one another. Blogging indeed makes the world smaller. Relationship is built at the click of a mouse. Isn’t it wonderful?

Q4. When/where did you first see CommentLuv in action and what was your first impression?

My goodness, I don’t have a single recollection at all but if my memory serves me well, the first thing that struck my mind was, “Gee, this is good for link building…”

Q5. How has CommentLuv been a benefit to your blog?

Andy, you have innovated an awesome win-win solution for both the blogger and his/her readers that few plugins could have possibly matched in terms of functionality (link building) and easy of use (excellent technical support).

The fact that you won the WPMU plugin contest has shown that the blogging community at large is giving you all the votes of confidence. Need I say anything more?

In all honesty, it’s one of those plugins I would never take it off from thoushallblog.com.

—————–

Thanks a lot Yan for taking the time to answer my questions, your blog is a real gem and I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks so!

Check out some of Thoushallblog.com popular posts

1. A - Z Blogging Guide for Beginners
2. 15 SEO Tools for Beginners
3. WordPress Post Install Checklist
4. 20 Possible Ways to Optimize Your Blog
5. Free WordPress Setup for Beginners