I must admit that this is in no way, shape or form my idea but it was so good I just had to put into action here on SocialPacks.

Fred Peters over at NewestOnTheNet borrowed an idea from Mohsin from BlogginBits and made it better. The idea started as a simple backlink giveaway but Fred added a twist. He decided to make “The Ulitmate List of StumbleUpon Articles” and has had a great response so far.

I’ve decided to add my own spin on the idea so here it is:

We’ve just redesigned the site and would love to add some quality links to our blogroll. So make a comment and add a link to your best Stumble article, one that you feel best represents your site. Then add a link to your favorite Stumble article written by someone else. We are looking for links to sites that mesh with our own so: Personal Improvement, Health, Fitness, Career Advice, Money Advice and other sites in that genre.

As great as some of the articles are, please leave the “Best Way to Get Stumble Results” articles out. We are really looking for sites that we can refer our readers to that are in keeping with our “Feel Better, Be Better” slogan. (so that means no article ABOUT StumbleUpon or any social networking site)

We will go through the comments and choose the two sites that we feel best fit in with ours and add each to our blog roll.

What To Do:

• Add a link to your best StumbleUpon article that fits with our self-improvement theme.
• Add a link to your favorite site you’ve StumbledUpon that fits with our self-improvement theme

Benefits to You:

• A free backlink to your articles and people with the same interests viewing your site.
• A great list of articles that covers topics of interest similar to your own blog
• The potential to have a link on our blogroll.

We will delete any spam posts and any that don’t fit in with the theme of our blog so don’t waste your time posting if you know your blog, no matter how good it may be, isn’t what we are looking for. On Nov 1, 2007 we will make a post with all the links we’ve received to make it easier for you to access them. Feel free to add links after that date but be aware that they won’t be added to the article that will contain only links.

While you’re here be sure to check out links in previous comments and give them a Stumble if you feel they deserve it.

Alright! Let’s get “commenting”!!!

I’ve seen it, not once, not twice, not hundreds but thousands of times. Everyone asks questions how can they monetize their blogs because either their Google Adsense account was closed or it’s not bringing enough cash.

When should you use Adsense?

There is no general answer for that, other than try it and see if it brings anything back. It’s all about the content you are writing, about the niche of your blog. Take “diabetes” for example, high payouts, ads are blending in (content related) extremely well and your click through (CTR) is higher than the general because the visitors are violently asking for more and more information. It’s a win-win situation to add Adsense, rather than trying to find your advertisers directly.

Another example is tech related websites. Let’s look at Gizmodo or Engadget. I am sure at their amounts of traffic (average of 1.38mil daily unique visitors for Gizmodo) they have special deals with Google but still I can bet Adsense is 25% of their income. That is because a lot of people advertise GPS, speedometers, robots, Apple products, PS3 and other things to sell them. So the ads are blending in really well, again.

I am aware that not all of you have websites related to diabetes or get millions of unique visitors daily but Adsense can be for you, too. Adsense is great for those that don’t have great experience with monetizing pages, because you set it up easy, you get guidelines from Google how to blend them in and you don’t have to seek your advertisers because they already have them for you.

When shouldn’t you use Adsense?

My friend Bobby Voicu is a good marketer. He has the needed skills to take a site to the next level, to create great communities, in other words he knows how to get traffic to a website. Recently we had a discussion related to one of his websites in the automotive niche which got him 200-300 clicks a day in Adsense and paid out only $10 or $12. After many tweaks the results were the same. Adsense delivered a value of 3 to 7 cents per click which for such a website is unacceptable.

This is the case, when I don’t advise people to use it anymore and that is because using other money makers would be paying much better. You can use adBrite where you set the click value, Kontera to match the words with ads, and so on. When Adsense is paying very low or when you do not get any conversions because something is up with their algorithms and the ads won’t cover what your site is about, you can take it off for a while and try something else.

Recently I’ve been thinking about one of my blogs, tech related, that I own. It made the Digg front page with a few articles and has been stumbled numerous times. We started as a team of three and I remained the only one that writes, these days. Since I was out of time a lot, for the last weeks, I didn’t have time to write for SocialPacks or for my other blogs but I had a nice surprise. The RSS readers increased and so did the number of unique visitors. This was very weird because usually these two numbers should drop. It came as a surprise to me because I want to tell you what the biggest mistake a good blogger can make and that is stop writing.

What happens when you stop writing?

Your readers are waiting for articles and they are not getting what they are expecting. So this can lead to : stop reading your rss feed, stop reading your blog at all because there’s nothing new or influence other people to stop reading you just because they got disappointed.

Apart from those mentioned above you should think that it’s hard to make a great come back. It’s hard to continue from where you left, because nobody is focused anymore, not to mention that the break can bring in writer’s block which is kind of hard to overcome.

Therefore, blog constantly. Create your own frequency of publishing articles and stick to it!

Being successful on the internet is not easy at all. You need to be very good at what you’re doing, you need to have good connections or at least build them and you need to stand out from the crowd. It seems like more and more people fail to launch a new website these days because visitors/readers need fresh and quality content, they haven’t read somewhere else.

Do not copy what other bloggers say

New bloggers tend to read what other successful bloggers write and comment on them. It’s not a good way for you to build your readership base because they are already devoted readers to the original website.

Be aggressive and offer unique points of view

Though I said you should write your own ideas and not take stories from other bloggers you should inspire from time to time. Take for example John Chow and Problogger that recently had two related articles. John explained why he isn’t using Amazon affiliate links and Darren explained why he does. It was great to see the two sides of a story so that you can decide if you should go for it or not, if it’s good for you or not.

However, if you are just starting up as a blogger, you need to be aggressive. Be it funny or controversial you need to create something that others haven’t so far and wrap it up in a very good box. Your ideas are good but nobody reads what you’re writing? Again, be aggressive. You will get the attention you need.

However, being aggressive is not the only thing you need to make sure you have a successful blog, but staying close to SocialPacks.com will help you in your quest to being big.

Great news for Jane May and John Anthony of CareerRamblings.com because it looks like their Sitepoint auction ended up, and the final price was $20,000. The site where they had all kinds of tips and career advices, managed in just about 7 months to get a PR6 and a heavily targeted audience.

If you ask me, the site was started from the beginning with the idea of being sold in the near future. Jane and John started their project really well and the best argument is the $20,000 price paid by Impulse Communication, also the owner of Bored.com. I don’t think the price is too high since they were making around $1800 with almost 38,000 unique visitors a month.

How CareerRamblings.com achieved success

They hired student (educated) writers for those fancy articles you’ve read on their site which of course they paid. That’s how they managed to offer both quality and quantity. However this is something I’ve read in the Sitepoint auction when they presented the product in details, and Jane May never mentioned it on the blog.

Since this is a niche blog dedicated to people looking for career advices (and they are so many) it was really easy to be picked up by other authority websites, which linked to them. Another way of getting traffic for CareerRamblings.com was guest blogging on JohnChow and other known blogs, which really gave them some respect.

My conclusion is that the deal is great and that these guys got a really nice return on their investment. Congratulations.

“Should a blogger be more or less credible than a reporter for the New York Times?” is the question that is really bugging me for the last few weeks. I saw how Engadget managed to move Apple Inc quotation on the stock exchange, when they released internal news about the company. This is the power of the blog, but should we trust Engadget or any other blogs more or less than an offline magazine because the news turned out to be nothing but fake (how’s that Jason Calacanis? Engadget publishes everything they get in their email, TOO?).

However, my other question is, is the blogger a real journalist? Yes!

Bloggers are the new storytellers

I agree that false alarm stories were published on big blogs, but You have to agree with me that it happens with mainstream magazine, too. For those that think a blogger is someone that won’t fact-check a story I am here to tell you different because I’ve read a survey made by PewInternet which really makes it very clear: bloggers do check their sources! Even if you think at Engadget, the email they’ve got their eyes on, was really from the Apple system. But let’s see what the survey says.

Only one-third of bloggers see blogging as a form of journalism. Yet many check facts and cite original sources.

34% of bloggers consider their blog a form of journalism

57% of bloggers include links to original sources either “sometimes” or “often”.

56% of bloggers spend extra time trying to verify facts they want to include in a post either “sometimes” or “often”.

However, I am aware that many bloggers publish anything hot they get for a little more traffic (yeah I remember Jason Calacanis saying ValleyWag will eat everything you mail them) but it’s not the general trend. Also, if I think, there are mainstream blurry magazines that publish anything just to fill all their pages, I don’t think a journalist from CNN is more credible than Michael Arlington from TechCrunch.

One last thing worth to mention. If the blog wouldn’t have power, believe me not as many journalists would come up with a personal or company blog, so yes, I think blogging is the new face of journalism.

If anyone that’s not a blogger or a mainstream journalist, I would really love to see what you think.

It’s been a while since I haven’t found such a good story on Digg, that it’s not Apple, iPhone, Microsoft sucks or anything like that. It’s the story of two guys that used to work in GoDaddy and managed to create Zenter, the online version of PowerPoint, which was later bought by Google. Now that’s a great story because it only took them 6 months to get bought.

What I am going to do now is a little different from what I did so far. I will re-write these guys’ article but thinking of making money online. After reading it, I realized these ideas work great if you are starting a new blog for example and couldn’t resist.

• Don’t focus on monetizing the site. Their example with the 70y old lady looking for a husband is great. It will happen to you when you least expect it, so why get stressed out thinking of how to increase your earnings.
• Focus instead on your visitors and offer them quality articles, not only ads. Check your comments and establish a relationship with them. If they want certain articles, research and give them what they want. You will increase your RSS readers if you deliver what’s needed.
• Don’t be afraid to tackle the giants. I love this one the most, because even if you are starting-up many of the top bloggers may not be better than you. If you disagree with what the pro bloggers in your niche say, do not hesitate to correct them or make your voice heard.
  ps: usually the dot com moguls enjoy a good debate, so you may take advantage of that.
• Ignoring limitations. Many will think why shouldn’t I set some limits. Well don’t get me wrong but you should. This is however something different. If you ever come up with an issue that you think it’s unsolvable, don’t embrace “NO”, try to find a way around the problem, around limitations. If you don’t think negative you will seek solutions from different angles, and actually find one in the end.
  
• Pay attention to the details. These guys said that if you think your product is 80% done then you have another 80% to go. What a good one. Think if your blog wouldn’t have a “home” button and your visitor would come directly to a post you’ve wrote. Where does he go next? AWAY! So, test your blog theme before you launch and ask your visitors what else, they need added.

The Zenter guys, Wayne Crosby and Robby Walker also mentioned the fact that you should have an understanding spouse. I don’t know what I can say since I am single but I am sure you need one if you have some metal on your finger.

So, for those of you that needed some hints to start a blog (business), keep in mind that the online version of PowerPoint got acquired by Google only after 6 months of work. How good are these guys? Great!

In a recent discussion with someone trying to make money on the internet, he told me something really interesting that made me think if it’s true. The guy is almost sure that Digg.com was created mostly for blogs. The next thing I did was to access the site and to get me some statistics.

Really nice. There were 12 blogs featured on the front page of Digg.com, 7 blogs on the 2nd page, 10 blogs on the 3rd page and finally 10 blogs on the 4th page. I considered that 60 headlines would be a pretty good base to start with. So the math says that : out of 60 news, 39 are blogs which means that 65% of the news on Digg.com are usually from blogs.

Blogs are great resource for everyone because of their fresh content, which is why the search engines love them so much. So, going back to my question, were the social bookmarking websites intended for blogs? NO, I don’t think so, but since there are lots and lots of content on blogs, they cannot be neglected.

Many of the bloggers I get to talk with ask me if they want to make money should they leave their personal blog where they blog for fun and start another one with the idea of monetizing the niche? I don’t have the supreme truth on that matter but I will tell you what I think.

Passion in blogs gets you money

If you are starting a blog so that you have your own space for your thoughts then it’s obvious you’re not thinking of cash from the start. From my point of view this seems to be the best way to make money online. Take as an example, someone that has a passion for every machine that can fly. He starts his blog thinking that he will post his thoughts and someone will comment them, which means he needs to have a dialog with someone that has the same hobby. If he is a good writer and manages to create a community of devoted readers, will address to advertising, sooner or later. I have a passion for gadgets and I own a blog with technology news products. I write because I like writing about it. It is monetized (minimum) but I don’t expect it to earn that much money right now. I am much more pleased to see a 20% increase in RSS subscribers rather than earning a few bucks more that day.

How about blogging only for money?

Many of us/you should understand that blogging for money is not some kind of a felony. If someone won’t like your blog they will leave. No one should accuse a blogger doing it only for money, of anything. Not even someone that starts a new blog with the idea of making money from it, in the near future (or not). It’s the blogger’s choice and if you don’t like that stop reading it. So those of you that start a new blog just to cash in, think that you may get penalized by your readers if they find out you’re only interested in what your blog earn, and not what your readers do.

We all know that men like what women usually say “size doesn’t matter” but we also know that we never believe it and feel frustrated (well, some of us). Having this funny quote in mind, it makes me think : does size matter when you are blogging? Yes.

If you ever need to write a researched article where you need to get references and explain people what you are talking over there, of course you are forced for a big essay. However if it’s too big, your audience may not be that patient to read it all. Therefore bigger articles should be really well structured and concise.

What about those small articles with only 1-2-3 lines? I wouldn’t advise, unless you need to ring the bell with something new and you are waiting content through comments. For example a small article with a link to an article on which you expect your audience to bring in their thoughts might be good from time to time.