What’s common between Bloggingfingers, Cashquests, 5xmom, and Blotrepreneur.com?

Yep, you guessed it right. They are all “Make money online” blogs, and that they are all on sale/or sold already!

So, it’s a fact that all are eyeing on the big money and short term goals and dumping all the blame on “personal reasons”. I thought this might be the right time to discuss about things to look into when buying a website.

Honestly, I’m no authority to discuss this. I can probably give you a lecture on SEO aspects one should look into before buying a domain, but I thought it might make more sense to get advices from experts in the domain.

I went around asking all the experts about their opinions on things to watch out for before buying a blog. Let’s see.

1. Chris Garret from ChrisG says -

The main thing I would look for are verifiable details of the traffic and subscriptions. What you don’t want to find is you have bought a site thinking it gets 20k visitors a month only to see that 99% of the traffic is from one or two front page diggs and all the links disappear because they were rented.
Also be cautious of earnings claims, get details. A lot of sales show monthly earnings based on one-off affiliate deals, like new product launches, negotiated commission deals you could not continue yourself, or things Google is clamping down on such as selling links and paid reviews.

2. Daniel from DailyBlogTips says - 

The first thing you need to consider is what kind of content is going on that blog. Blogs that publish too much personal stuff lose a point here. You must make sure that the readers go to that blog because they are looking for the usefulness of the information there contained, and not because they like the opinions or style of the author. If that is the case it would be very hard to keep the momentum of the blog going after the sale.
The second aspect is the monetization one, given that many of these blogs that go on sale claim that they make good money. Make sure that the revenue sources are stable and legit. If they have direct advertisers, for instance, it would be a good idea to confirm that they would stay on board even after the sale (just ask the contacts and talk to them directly). Be careful with blogs that used to generate money via PayPerPost and similar as well, because that source is not stable.

3. Amit Agarwal from Labnol, suggests -

1. Check for any traces in the archive.org database
2. Check if google ads are not banned (through Adsense preview tool)
3. Ask for raw server logs before closing the deal

4. Emma Jean from Blog about your blog says -

If I was to purchase a site I would want to know about the history. How long its been established and if the domain has ever been dropped. If its been dropped and has a PR it could be affected the next update. Therefore the value isn’t as high.
As you can see with the recent sales of blogging fingers and cashquests is the branding and the blog. People know them just by the name.. “Oh Cash Quests ya that blog is about etc.”
The most important thing I would consider is the ability to expand and earn. If you are buying a site and must pay 10 months revenue, you want to be able to earn back your investment. If you can’t it’s essentially a waste.

5. Patrick Altoft from Blogstorm says -

1. I would want access to the sites Google Analytics account. If that wasn’t possible I wouldn’t buy.
2. Also I would check as many pages as possible from archive.org to see if the site sold links or anything in the past.
3. Check every page on the site and every link using Yahoo Site Explorer.

6. Mohsin Naqi from Bloggingbits says -

Essentially, I’ll give top consideration to the blog’s niche and its earning potential before checking domain’s age, its  google and Alexa rank, and other similar factors.

7. Ankesh Kothari from BlogClout says -

 * Current cash flow.  Is the site profitable?  $$ it earns.  Followed with: page views / unique visitors it gets.  Subscribers / members it has. 
 * Future potential.  Whats the current strategy of the website.  Is the seller selling because of some impending legal / technical reasons or maybe because of increasing competition?  Can I improve upon the strategy and the business model?  How much time, effort and money will go into it?  Will the site work without its current owner?
The price I would pay is 6-8 times the current monthly cash flow.  Plus $1-2 per subscriber.
This changes if the site also owns intellectual property (patents / exclusive softwares).  Also if the site sells a tangible product and I have to buy its inventory too.
I don’t look at the site age.  Or the participation on it.  Or its page rank or alexa rank or any such 3rd party ranking that has no effect on the bottom line. 
Google backlash comes under future potential - which I check for (For eg: if a blog whose business model upto this point has been earning via payperpost only - then I would think about buying it.  And go for it only if its price is lower than I would otherwise pay for it.).

8. Monika Mundell from Writer’s Manifesto says -

For starters I would look at the following stats:

Alexa ranking
Google page rank
Age of the blog
Active Subscribers
Blog Layout (is it designed to display ads effectively)

If the blog doesn’t qualify through this I will not go further. It would be silly to think that buying a so called established blog with no rankings and no subscribers will be justified. If the blog qualifies, then I will apply some deeper scrutiny, such as looking for income revenue. If the blog currently provides the owner with a monthly income either via adsense, direct advertising, pay per click or anything else, then my first point of evaluation would be how much income there is per month. If the sales price exceeds the blogs monthly earnings x 24, then it would be considered too expensive or over ambitious.
Example: Blog currently earns $400 of monthly revenue.
$400 x 24 months = $ 9,600 then this figure is the maximum I would pay.
Also another important step is to look at the current spending habits of the blog owner to get those $400/month. Naturally if the cost is considerably high, I would keep my fingers from it. One kind of blog I would never buy is a self branded name blog. Buying an established blog can be a great decision for any serious entrepreneur. But we mustn’t forget that the future growth of the blog will only happen if we choose the right niche for us and keep the blog
updated. It is no good spending $10,000 on a dog blog if we intend to write about cats in the future.

9. Kevin from BloggingTips suggests -

1 ) With regards to traffic. You need to see as many stats as possible. Ask for screen prints of analytics, webalizer, awstats and any other stat scripts the current owner is using. You should of course be interested in the current level of traffic however more importantly you need to look at where this traffic is coming from.

   * If a lot of traffic is coming from other sites the owner owns then you need to ask if these links will remain up after the sale and if so, for how long. Likewise, if traffic is coming from an advertising campaign, when does the advertising campaign end?

  * Has a lot of traffic come from social networking - eg. digg. If so, you should bear in mind that these traffic spikes were most likely due to the blog owner working hard to get posts dugg and unless you do something similar yourself you wont receive traffic in this way

  * What sort of search engine presence does the site have? What sort of keywords and search terms are bringing in the most traffic? Can you improve the SE presence the blog has?

2) The most important thing you need to pay attention to is how many subscribers the blog has but I believe it’s also worth checking out the growth of the feed. An easy way to check this is to view the feedburner feed graph. Big jumps in subscribers may have been of a result of an advertising campaign or even a guest post. It’s worth noting how much the feed count grows on a ‘regular day’.

3) Make sure that the income stats the blog owner is giving you are true. Try and get as much proof as you can. Many website owners exaggurate how much money their site makes in order to make more money from the sale. This is something which is unfortunately very common. Another important factor is how is the advertising generated. Does the blog make money from direct ad sales or through a CPM ad network etc?

You should also find out how long the blog has been live and how long the domain has been live on the net (sometimes not the same) and you should think about the design of the blog - are you happy with it? If not, how long would you spend working on a new theme, or, if your not a designer, how much would it cost to get a design which suits the blogs needs.

Finally, it’s worthwhile doing a background check on the seller. Check the previous posts from the seller - is he a trusted member of the forum community? Has he sold before - if so, what did the previous buyer think about them as a seller.

10. Skellie from Skelliewag.org says -

My primary concern would be that the content is transferable or not. Sometimes a blog and its author are virtually inseparable, and people visit and subscribe as much for the author’s experiences, advice, personality and style as they do for other aspects of the content. A blog like that(with strong personal style) may well flounder if it’s handed over to new authors.
Site age wouldn’t matter much to me. Some people take three months to grow as much as another blogger might grow in a year. PPP would actually devalue a site as far as I’m concerned as it’s not something I’d personally want to pursue. As for Google backlash, I’d want to take over a site with high quality inbound links but wouldn’t be bothered about PR and that sort of thing.

So essentially, there are a few things in common that’s interesting.

10 things that you must check in a website/blog before buying it.

1. Traffic is stable or not
2. Had there been a Digg effect recently?
3. Was the blog thriving because of the authors personal branding?
4. Get the detail report of their earnings. Make sure it’s not PPP or any affiliate sales.
5. Contact the existing advertisers to see if they will continue the ads if you buy the site.
6. Make sure the site hadn’t got a backlash from Google because of PPP or text link ad sales.
7. Check if Google ads are banned.
8. Check in archive.org for recent drop in Google ranks (PR drop).
9. Monitor traffic and cash flow for a longer period than specified.
10. Check if you are comfortable with the blog Niche and there’s future potential to it.

Some SEO aspects you must check before buying a blog/website(Just my two cents).

1. Age of the domain, from Archive.org. If the niche is promising, then you can compromise on the age, but the more the age, the better.
2. Incoming links on Google, Google blog search and Technorati. The more the merrier.
3. Quality of incoming links - Are they bought from link farms or are they genuine from blogger’s review?
4. Recent Google backlash? Google page rank drop?
5. Had the site offered PPP and paid text links?
6. Outgoing links - Does it link to malicious sites(mainly from the sidebar/footer)?
7. Content has duplicate content or not?
8. Has it got supplemental results on the SERPS? The less the better.
9. The frequency of posts to links ratio. An even ratio is better.
10. Spiderability of the site. Test with a spider simulation test to see if the contents are poperly seen by Google, or else you may have to go for a template change.

If you had been knowing the website for too long all this factors won’t really matter, but if you can probably negotiate with the seller if you find something interesting here on the above factors.

So there you have it! All the factors you must check before buying a blog. Hope they are also useful for bloggers who plan to sell their sites. Because you heard it from the experts.

Got a doubt on SEO? Post it to me HERE. I'll try and answer it asap. :) -- Mani

It started off with Blogging Fingers, when Matt Jones decided to sell off his blog for US$ 6000. He made it and today Bloggingfingers has a new owner. Full story here. At the time of sale, Bloggingfingers had around 200 rss feed subscribers and PR3.

Kumiko followed with cashquests, a less than year old blog with 900ish rss feed subscribers and PR5. She managed to sell it off for US$15000 (yummy!!).No official notice yet.

5xmom followed pursuit and is up for sale at US$12,000 with a PR0 (got a backlash from google for selling links) and around 200 rss feed subscribers.

Mark from 45n5 thinks both of these sites had something similar. They had been using pay per post and since they are the (new)enemy of google, they fear the death.

I spoke to Kevin on this and he thinks they are being hasty with it and is underselling their blogs.

I agree to both Kevin and Mark. I don’t think the “Make money online” market is dead. It’s happening even now! But I think the bloggers got the fatigue and lost the game. Well they didn’t really lose after all they made some serious money.

But what should you do at situations like this?

- Hang on..think twice thrice and more if you have to really do it.

- Ask your friends and experts their opinion.

- Drink more coffee, eat more chocolates.

- Go for guest bloggers and take a vacation.

- Put your blog to autopilot mode by roping in a friend of your’s who wants some exposure.

- Forget your blog contents, manage with some link love to other blogs.

- Go for social media optimization, go around hang out in all those social networking sites, give some exposure for your blog.

- Try finding new niches and setting up new blogs while maintaining the current one.

- Spend more time with your family.

- Think of all the gadgets that’s in your wishlist, and start saving for it.

- Plan for a world tour next year, start working towards it.

- Try to buy small upcoming blogs and create a network of blogs.

Enough said.

One way links, the reward you get for great content and creativity at the blogosphere. You’ll do anything for it isn’t it? (The title was only an eye-catcher, so relax..)

Well, an idea just popped into me, while I was reading Michael Martine’s blog. Michael has a list of testimonials written on one of his sidepanels, and it has links to people who wrote it. It is on the homepage and has excellent screen presence. Get the idea??

Yes, writing testimonials about other bloggers would be one great way to get quality incoming one way links. No expense, no trick, nothing evil!

But what you need to be careful about is,

- Whom you are writing for.
Don’t go around writing testimonials for ever tom,*(beep)*, and harry. Write quality ones for the really good guys.

- Do they accept testimonials?
You can write testimonials only if some one is accepting them isn’t it? Find bloggers who accept testimonials, or who are likely to accept a testimonial.

- Don’t flatter them,but write a testimonial
Don’t simply go ahead and flatter them, it would create a negative image for you. Test their services/read their blog and go for a sincere review. I’m sure many of the professional bloggers would accept honest criticism that will help them grow. Anyone can make out flattery from the rest.

- Ask them a link back
If it’s got to be a win-win situation, ask them for a link back. There’s nothing wrong in it. If they are impressed with your testimonial, they’d be happy to link back.

Hey, anybody care to write a testimonial about DailySEOblog? What ? No takers?

I’ve been repeatedly emphasizing the importance of a professional looking theme for your blog in some of my recent posts and I really mean it.

When I see amateur themes on blogspot hosted blogs, it’s very disturbing because they all have great content, but due to their not-so good theme, they fail to attract visitors. ANd very often, they have all the plugins and widgets loaded to the side bars which just stick out and spoil the whole show.

Even if you can’t afford a custom webdesign, using a good looking, no frills, no nonsense theme can do the trick!

And, more than just attracting people, templates can do a lot more to your blog.

• It shows how authoritative your blog is.
  With a professional looking, standards based, valid markup theme, any visitor gets an impression in the first look itself, that the blog carries some authority.
• It shows how dependable you are.
  A not so good looking blog cannot convince the reader of it’s information authenticity while a good looking blog can.
• It shows how organized you are.
  In real life you may be a very disorganized person, but when it comes to your blog, your readers would want you to be one, because the information you have presented should make sense. Having a good theme shows how organized you are in terms of the information you have on your blog.
• It shows how much you value your visitors
  A visitor can easily judge form the first visit on your blog, whether you have taken the pain to arrange things for readers benefit or not. If you not have, you might have a bad theme, but if you really think your readers should read the information you have, you probably should use a good theme.
• It brands your blog.
  With that unique design, readers can instantly associate with you visually. Although this is more appropriate for custom design blogs, you can definitely make an impression with a free blog design as well.

I would certainly give more weightage to having a professional looking theme, along with having great content, as the two factors that will decide the success and popularity of your blog to anything else. And I strongly recommend all the blogspot users and wordpress free users to go for a good professional looking theme if they want people to read their blogs regularly and remember them.

I’m not trying to promote custom design themes here at all.  It is not necessary to have a custom design for your blog, you can very well manage to have a good impression with a free blog theme (like this one). You may have to tweak the CSS and styles a little bit to make it distinct, but that little effort will count much, believe me.

Well, if you need any further proof on this. I’m a good example I think. DailySEOblog had the new design implemented on October 27th and see the impact it as made in terms of reach and readership.

Well, some of that hike you see there in Oct start is due to SearchCamp, but the second hike you see is sure due to the new design. I had also seen a huge increase in the number of comments too with the new design. It was almost 200%, and I’m happy with it.

One of the main attracting factors to a blog is it’s consistency and frequency of posts. I’ve subscribed to some “Z-list” blogs because along with good write-ups, the writer seems to take an effort to deliver articles in a routine. I’ll excuse him for not being able to write a 600 words article, if he delivers good quality ideas (not necessarily a long article) daily. I think the effort that goes into it, for being able to meet the reader’s expectations, is something commendable and could be the one factor that attracts me to a blog rather than anything else.

In fact, along with meeting the reader’s expectations, you are being SEO friendly too when delivering articles in a routine. Search Engines love the idea of a blog being consistent. So if you are delivering articles religiously  between set intervals, they are likely to follow that sequence and spider your blog accordingly.

So the more you write the more the spiderability. And if you follow a sequence in delivering articles, the spiders follow the sequence too.

Which means, if you have a daily posting frequency, the search engine spiders also will visit your blog looking for new content daily.

That brings us to another question. Can we really manage to post articles in a particular sequence. Especially if you are an impulsive blogger?

Well planned bloggers write articles preplanned and publish articles in a sequence, manipulating the timestamp feature. But Impulsive bloggers write articles whenever an idea strikes them, and this may not be in a regular fashion at all. So, a little bit of planning has to go in anyway.

When does a blogging idea strike you?

This could be different for each one of us, but yet some similarities could be found as well. 

Honestly, I’m a little embarrassed to let you know when a blogging idea strike to me. Many of the times, I think it happens when I’m at the bathroom. I think the personal space ignites something in me. So, I end up spending too much time in the bathroom. Sometimes, they are brilliant ideas, sometimes they are scrap. But when I’m alone. devoid of all the distractions, a lot of ideas come to me.

It also happens when I’m sleeping. While I’m at bed, about to sleep, a flurry of blogging ideas come to my mind, and honestly, I can’t remember all of them for the next morning.

I’d like to know when a blogging idea hits you.

What do you do when an idea hits you.

So, that’s the next problem. When you have hell lot of ideas in your head, one after another, how do you keep track of them , or how do you manage to remember them?

Some of the common methods are;

- You can write down on a piece of paper.
Here, what happens is that soon after you write it down on a paper, you are under the impression that it is going to stay for ever. So you place the paper in a very safe place. The problem is when you can;t remember where that safe place is.

- You can note it down on your mobile reminders/to-do list.
This is comparatively better option, but you don’t have enough space to write the idea down so you may write something only to misinterpret it later.

- You can carry some sticky notes with you and write down on them.
Very good option, but if you are not very organized person, you may end up with a pile of sticky notes.

- You can memorize it
Hmm..well you know what’s going to happen.

There are several ways to go about it, but there is no thumb rule for it. I believe each of us have our own preferences and it’s just a matter of how well you combine them and formulate a winning strategy.

I agree that the Internet is an enormous ocean of knowledge and any information is just a click away. But even with such a potential sometime you end up being nothing at one point of time or the other. Have you felt like that? Like having nothing to talk about, nothing to share and nothing to blog. Difficult situation eh?

I’m sure that you’d get over the block one way or the other in no time. But, that triggers one question. How do you manage to write a post? Or what makes you to? I believe it would different for everyone, and it would be interesting to know.

For me, everything happens instantaneously. I mean, I am not the kind who plan about something that I should write the next month and create a draft for it. It never happens for me even if I try. I like being impulsive. But I know there are disadvantages to it. Sometimes you run out of topic and there’s nothing anyone can do to help me. Not even me.In that case the “planners” are at an advantage, even if they have nothing to write about on one day, they would still be publishing what they planned last month. Hmm, pretty smart eh?

Well guess what? I’ve got news for the  “planners”.

- You guys can’t write on a current issue.
- Or even when you plan to, I’d (or some other impulsive blogger) have already blogged about it.
- You guys aren’t up to date, you are one month (or whatever old date you saved the draft) old.
- You miss the “spice” in your articles. I’d gather it form the latest post I read on the RSS reader.

Well, obviously I wouldn’t be talking about the negatives of impulsive blogging here.

But I think, bloggers should be a mix of both. Sometimes impulsive and sometimes planned. The planned ones can be articles like  a “top 10 list of the most infamous seo blogs” while you can be impulsive with the current trends and happenings. What is your opinion? Do you write articles impulsively or plan them well in advance?

UPDATE—-
This article got a thumbs down from one of the very senior SU members. Reason - The article is more focused on getting the numbers and does not really throw light on ensuring quality in your stumbles.
I agree on that , but I’ve taken care to ensure that the tips should not be mis interpreted for evil purposes. Readers, please note that SU is a place where quality weighs over quantity, and do not use any method that you think will corrupt the system. The blog deals with search engine marketing so naturally, I’m inclined towards the numbers part. But that is not an excuse to cut down on quality while stumbling pages.

Taken aback by the title? Well, I mean it. (And mind you, this is not the usual s**** where you get to read what you already knew. This is the untold stuff!)

Stumble Upon is the new social media bug that bit me recently! Ouch! That did hurt but seems like I’m enjoying every bit(e) of it.

Stumble Upon is a great way to boost traffic to your site,in fact, I prefer it to any other social media site.

 The reason - it gets me on a high when I receive 1000plus visitors to my site overnight.

Well, the relevancy of this enormous traffic is doubtful. Out of the 1000 odd visitors, probably only a few of them would actually subscribe to your feed or show interest in visiting your blog the next time. But it’ a good amount of traffic however.

Now, how can you make it to the top on SU? Is it really possible?
Indeed yes. If you see the top stumblers list on SU, each of them have some unique features that will give you some pointers.

(Update- I found out that this page is a mere listing of who stumbled the most on SU, it does not give you an idea of who are the real passionate stumblers who live the SU experience. Here is a better ranking based on the number of stumbles/thumbs, combined with the number of reviews , pics and videos. I think this makes more sense.)

And this is not the “usual stuff” article where you get to read the very same things again and again. Things that everyone knew. No this is not it.
If you do a googling on “How to get to the top of stumble upon”, you’ll probably get a couple of site that will give you ideas like, keep stumbling more pages, get reviewed by people, get connected with all, and stuff like that.

But hey, didn’t you already know it? All of us know that if you stumble maximum number of pages, under various categories, you probably will end up the top list of stumblers.

But is there a shortcut way? You came late to SU. Now, is there something you can do about it?

Let’s see. I’ll take my example.
Three weeks earlier, I was not using SU that frequently and I had stumbles less than 10 sites. Today I have stumbled 1,368 pages, 350 videos, 203 photos and 46 fans. See the difference? Huge isn’t it?

Now, I’m not trying to say that I’ve got into the top 50 stumbler’s list on SU. But it’s an example, to show that even if you came late to stumble, you can still make it big. Provided you know some tips and tricks. Let’s see what they are.

To increase the number of stumbles.

Stumbling is more a enjoyable experience to me and I enjoy every bit of it. It’s the perfect exercise if you are running out of ideas. So rather than seeing this as a method to just increase your number of stumbles, take this as a method to enjoy stumbling more than you ever did.

1. So enjoy stumbling, get into it deep and you’ll never regret it. 
2. Stumble using every possible channel like videos, blogs and news. It values more.
3. Rather than just stumbling, write reviews about sites that you stumbled.

Those were anybody’s guesses. Let me discuss with you some of my personal tips and tricks.

How to make it to the top on Stumble Upon in less than a week

1. Short cuts

In the stumble upon toolbar, you have the option to use short cuts to stumble and do the thumbs up.(See screenshot)

Change the shortcut to an easily accessible one, like 1 for stumbling and 2 for thumbs up. By default this is ALT+’ and ALT+1 respectively.

Now with the new short cut, you can quickly stumble a page and thumbs up or thumbs down a page. Earlier you had to do it manually and it becomes a lot easier now. Please don’t mis-use this option.

2. Reviews

Another way to get popular on Stumble upon is to write reviews. Actually, in order to rank high on Stumble upon you have to get reviewed by others. I’ve noticed that many of the top stumblers do have lot of reviews from other stumblers. And the only way to get people review is to review them first. It doesn’t mean that all of the people you have reviewed will review you back, but the more reviews you have the better.

3. Stumble more videos

Another point I noted among top stumblers is that they have lot of videos stumbled. There may not be any thumb rule to it, but yes, I think it makes more sense if you’d stumble more content, like say videos and photos, rather than just use the default option of stumbling whatever comes your way. This way you look more focussed and organized.

4.  Stumble frequently

Stumbling needs to be your daily routine. Just like you’d open your google reader, the first time you logon to the internet, make it a habit to stumble a few pages every day and write honest reviews about it.

5. Connect with the upcoming stumblers

Now, I could’ve easily said - connect with the top stumblers who have a very high stumble rate. But this is not going to help you in anyway. Because, all stumblers have a limit to add friends. After 200 friends (or so I think), you cannot add friends, but they can become your fans. In order to develop your network, you need to add friends. Top stumblers cannot add you as friend so there is no use in you adding them, instead hunt for the upcoming ones.

The upcoming ones are the guys with a good stumble ratio, and who have a good frequency of stumbles. They are most likely looking for friends who are interested in making it to the top, just like you.

6. Third party help

I really am doubtful about this point, but since it makes some sense, I thought I’ll mention it here.

There are third party stumbling helpers like SUexchange.com, which is a service that will list you guys who are interested in exchanging stumble. That is more like a link exchange, if you stumble them, they’ll stumble you.

Now, I am unaware if this is against the SU terms and service, if it is, you know what to do. Get the hell out of there.

I tried it a few times and the sites that are listed there weren’t genuine all the time. But if you need some initial help, this is the place to be.

So there you go. All the tips and tricks you need to make it to the top of stumble list. If you’d like to add me to your network, you can do it here.

Here is the list of 10 must have plugins for bloggers using windows live writer users. These tools will help your blogging experience better. They are all helpful to reduce your blogging time, reduce the number of steps before publishing a post, and reduces the number of applications you have to use to write an article.

Using these plugins to the new windows live writer will help you to do almost all your regular blogging activities from live writer itself and will save your time.

1. Screen Capture tool
   This plugin will help you to take screenshots from your PC, you suggest. Works fine like the “Print Screen” option, but more effective and manageable. Now no need to run Photoshop side by side, when you blog. This is particularly useful when you are reviewing an application and blogging side by side.
2. Screenshot/Thumbnail creator of a website
   This plugin will help you create a thumbnail of another website that you suggest. Just give the URL and it gives you the full page screenshot/thumbnail of that webpage. Now no need to take screen shots and join pieces together.
3. Insert images from Flickr
   Many of the bloggers upload images to flickr and picasa, hotlinking it from there, so that you save on bandwidth ad save from the “Digg Effect”. But it has always been a tedious task to upload the image, copy the URL etc. Now do it all from WLW. Give your user name and this plugin will show all the images from this user name, just like how flock shows it’s media window. Just drag and drop your required image and you are done!
4. Insert your BOX.net files to your post
   Just like the image insertion from flickr, this plugin allows you to insert your Box.net files form a small box to your article. Simple as a drag and drop. No issues and time waste!
5. A simple De.li.cio.us plugin
   That will help you to incorporate delicious tags to your post. A must have if you are a delicious fan.
6. Technorati plugin
   A tiny plugin that will help you to add technorati tags to your articles. Simple and easy to use, but very effective in getting relevant traffic to your blog.
7. Insert Youtube or Google Videos to your post
   Another powerful tool that saves lot of your time by helping you insert a Youtube or Google video into your post.
8. Save typing the same link over and over again
   With this teeny weeny plugin, yo can save a lot of time, as it keeps in memory your previous links and next time when you use the same anchor text, it suggests you a previous link.
9. Save on typing the same text again and again
   Just like the link saver, this plugin helps you same time by not typing the same text over and over again. For example, a subscribe to RSS feed, link or reminder text that you use at the end of every article can be stored in a template file and called up any time during the post. 
10. Picasa Image plugin
    With this plugin you can easily insert images you have in your Picasa Web Albums into your blog. You are able to upload new images into existing albums or create new albums.

So there you have it. 10 most powerful plugins for improving your your blogging efficiency. NOw, there’s one plugin I wish was available, the All in One SEO pack.

The last two people I met on the internet, asked me this very same question, which got me thinking.

They were curious and one asked me,

Mani,how did you manage to write up all these content?

Other guy told me that he was curious to know if I copied the content from any other site.

Both very interesting questions. I believe I have a duty to clear these doubts to my readers.

Well, to be honest, very honest - I haven’t copied content from any source (website,newspaper,magazine,) at all. In fact, had it been that way, you would’ve seen at least a few hundred more pages on the site. :) 

All the articles you read here are all written by me and are original in thoughts. Well, on the blogosphere, everybody has their own platform and their own voice. So it’s just about how well you raise it. I have been inspired by many, and I think I’ve expressed my gratitude to all of them in the respective posts.

To be frank, writing articles daily isn’t easy at all. But there are a few things that I learned from my experience that help me make it, even today. I’d like to share it with you.

1 - Consistency
Every blogger who is serious about impressing others should be consistent. Consistency should be maintained in the frequency of posts and the quality of articles. You can take deviations once in a while, like writing a steroid article, like a 101 websites list, that is likely to make it to to Digg pages, but that is just garnishing. The basic course is your articles (whatever your niche is) and the quality of them.

To me, SEO writing SEO articles was more like maintaining a journal entry. I was lucky that I never ran out of topic to write an article. In the old times, while I was an SEO learner, I use to experiment with stuff and whatever the result was, I used to write it all down on the blog. That was a neat trick right? You study and you let others show your work at the same time.

2- Personal style
Even though this is something that I am still confused about, many of my readers tell me that they like the articles because they like the style and the way things are rolled out. So I guess, that forms my personal style.
I always assume that I’m talking to a normal person, who is not keen to  listen to the technical jargons, and write the articles catering to him. This works both for me and the reader. I talk to clients daily and this “jargon less” style is much appreciated by many of them. I adopt the same policy here on the blog.

3- Knowing your audience
Well, honestly, if there is anything that I’ve deliberately done to help me make a better blog, then this is it. There are numerous ways to get this done. You can assume things, try out a trial and error method, ask questions to your readers, and most importantly study from your stats. Use any method, but knowing who your real audience is really important as it lets you know what you should deliver. I get many clues from my organic referrals as to what are the contents that are missing in the blog. So I make it a point to write them up if it’s possible.

3- Communicating with readers
First off, let me say that this isn’t something that’s easy, but I love doing it. I’m not keen to talk to each and every reader at the same time, but may be one at a time. It’s not possible to make all of them happy as well. But what’s important is that you communicate to them. Many people ask me questions on email, and this itself gives me clues on what to write on the blog. People are reading your blog to learn something, so deliver it at the shortest time, in the right manner. It’s a simple concept I follow. To help this, talk to the readers.

5- I’m not a preacher I’m a learner like you
I don’t think that if you believe you are a guru or whatever, (giving advice to everybody), is a good idea. I cannot set myself in that frame of mind, it simply doesn’t work out. I prefer to be working along with my clients or the reader, and sit with them to find a solution, rather than sit on the other side spitting out “gyan”.

This is very much effective, as it helps you and the person you are helping. If it was otherwise, only the person I’m helping would benefit. Which is good, but if you have a better way why not try it?

So everyday, when I face roadblocks and bottlenecks during my work, I research on the topic myself, and record all what I’ve learned. Many of the posts that I’ve featured here are my research topics.

6- Forget who’s listening to you, talk to yourself
Now, this is a worst case scenario, I must admit that when I started off blogging there weren’t too many readers at the blog. Just like any other blogger,  I too struggled to get an audience. But at one point of time, I found that instead of wasting time in looking for readers, it’s better to focus my time in writing good articles. So that if at all someone visited your blog, there was enough content for him to browse. So whenever there was no reader at the blog, I’d talk to myself and write up a post. Adding a little bit of decoration to it, the very same post becomes enjoyable to a reader as well.

So those were some crude tips on how you can write articles on your blog too,and pile them up! Keep in mind, it’s all about quality not quantity, which is why I don’t agree with anyone who’ll say that there are lot of articles on this site and I did a good job in that. It’s a process and it’s going on, it’s  just about making sure that the process is enjoyable, not the final product.

Hope it helped you.

Are you on the 3rd / 5th page on Google for your desired keywords? Like, you blog about “How to make money online” and you don’t show up on the first page on Google? Pretty bad situation isn’t it?

Well if you are worried that you are not on the first page of google for your keyword, whatever that is (make money online, earn money blogging or whatever), there is nothing to worry about yet.

Because if that was the case, only 10 people or websites only would be making money on the Internet. I wish if Google had more pages listed in the first page, but hey those guys did some accessibility research and found that 10 is the right number of websites to be shown on their results page.

So keeping in mind that you have 10 spots to compete, let’s see if you can still make money on the internet.

• Do you check your referrals log for longer keywords?
  I’m sure all of us would get a decent amount of traffic from keywords like “Free windows xp hacks tips india” and the like. These are combination keywords. Now, how do they manage to get you traffic?
  They don’t have heavy amount of traffic - Meaning there aren’t many people who’d search for such a long keyword. May be just one or two. But the point here is that when ever there are one or two searches made, your website would be on the top.
• How much traffic you make from these combination keywords?
  More than how much uniques you get in a month totally, see how much of it has got to do with “combination keywords”? There should be quite a handful for even the non-serious blogger.

Now, focus on these combination keywords. For a starter, these keywords are great options to work on. Especially if you have nothing to invest in blogging but pure content. Write as many articles as possible and generate a good amount of textual content on your blog. Now, this will make sure that when a crawler or a visitor comes to your blog, there would be enough content for him to get a taste of.

How to convert this traffic to money?

Okay so you have a decent amount of traffic from “combination keywords”. And they form 10% of your total organic traffic (from google). Now, watch these referral keywords carefully from your statistics. there could be gold mines like, one particular keyword that is often repeating.

For me I get a decent amount of traffic from the keyword “Wordpress”. Honestly, a huge part of my traffic is from combinations of this keyword others like - wordpress seo, wordpress tips,wordpress seo themes etc.

Now, if you notice, “Wordpress themes” is a much sought after keyword, and there are lot of people working hard to get on top of google for this keyword. But also keep in mind that people don’t search google just with the same keyword. When they try searching once for “wordpress themes”, they get the same 10 results all the time. Getting bored or not finding the right information, they will move the next combinations like “seo wordpress themes” or “wordpress seo friendly themes” etc.

We should pick up these combinations from the stats. So if you noticed that one particular keyword from the combinations in your stats, pick it up and write more articles on it.

Also,make sure that in your template, you have the related posts plugin ready. So that when these combination keyword searchers visit your blog, they find some relevant article on your site and they don’t get disappointed.

If you are on blogger, tweak your template so that links to other articles like the ones dealing with your “keyword” is available for the visitor to refer. You may create a template much lie Amit’s so that, all your best articles are featured on the homepage always.

Also, make sure that on any chosen article page of your’s (single post pages), there are links to other articles that deal with the same keyword (here “wordpress”).

Why do this?

When Google scans your webpages, they pick up all the content information. And when there is a search for these “combination keywords” on google, it looks for matches on your pages.

For example - If there is a search on google for “Wordpress seo themes india” (huh what a combination!!), google looks for pages in your website that has all the words in it (provided the search is not a exact one). So in your article page if these words are scattered all over - one word in article, one word in a link on the sidebar and another word on the title - google still will throw your page on the top search results(since this is a combination keyword, this will not happen for top keywords).

So here the idea is - If you focus your efforts on the “combination keywords” and write articles around it, you can enjoy a decent amount of traffic from them. Now, if you ask me, this is more worthwhile for a starter who may not be able to cash his efforts on the top sought keywords like “earn money online”. So until you get 10k inbound links, work on these “combination keywords” and start getting your momentum. It will put you in good position before reaching the top results.