A while ago, I was trying to introduce a few friends to StumbleUpon and I realized something. I was just as confused with the interface of the site as each and every one of my friends were. It is hard to learn how to use all of the different functions (it may not be the case for some of you), and sometimes, my friends would complain that they don't know where to even begin. Obviously, if you’ve been using this for over a week, then you probably won’t find this very helpful. If you are just beginning however, you may find this useful.

Okay, so first of all, ALWAYS have the tool bar downloaded. Make an account as well. Head on over to your preferences and select "my interests". From here you will see a bunch of categories that cover just about anything you can think of. Put a check mark in the subjects you would be interested in reading about.

Now that you’ve got your interests set up, you can learn how the site actually works. Open up a new tab, because you wouldn’t want to leave my blog, and click the ‘Stumble!’ button on your tool bar. This will automatically forward you to a site. The page will almost always be something directly related to one of your interests you selected. So if you selected sports, adult humor, and video games as your only interests, you will always receive pages submitted under one of those three interests. You can find interesting content in most categories quite easily.

Most of you probably already know how the people who use this get views. Now that you know where the views come from, it will make a little bit more sense. Obviously, if you signed up for this because of my blog you are looking to use it for a bit of artificial as well as direct traffic. Just to keep you guys on the right track, I do not approve of spamming StumbleUpon. I am all for adding quality content, so if you think your posts are of quality, then go ahead and submit.

The obvious question is: how does it work? Like all bookmarking sites, the content that is more widely enjoyed by the community is shared with more users. There are two ways in which you can affect an article. Positively, by giving it a thumbs up, or negatively by giving it a thumbs down. You could also not rate it if you prefer. If you recieve more thumbs ups on your content, then it is telling StumbleUpon that your blog content has great quality! In return, it will send more users to that particular post or link. Then if you’d like to take it a step further you could also write a review, good or bad. To test this out, why not go to my home page. Give it a thumbs up and write a good review. :)

Alright, so now you have learned how to rate sites. The last major concept of StumbleUpon would be, of course, submitting your very own content. This doesn't take very much time and it is quite easy to do. Simply go to the post you’d like to submit. Give it a thumbs up. If nobody has yet to submit the site, a pop up will show up. Simply fill in the information and click submit. You should start to receive traffic shortly. The more people who give it a good rating, the more traffic it will bring. Different categories have different success levels. Try submitting blog content into several relevant categories as you go to see which is the best for your blog.

I hope this has helped many of you new Stumblers! If you think I have missed something crucial, then please comment and tell me! Help is definitely appreciated. Questions, comments, and concerns are all welcome. :)

P.S. There's this one technology blog that I hope you guys will check out; if you need some tech tips, news, reviews, etc. then click here.

-Aud

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Most of you know have probably noticed that my blog isn't that old (compared to some others, anyway). My subscriber count isn't very high either, but this is how blogging works. Gaining subscribers quickly is not something most people can do in a day. However, there are some techniques that you guys might want to utilize in in order to boost up your numbers.

If you are an active member of a group or forum, then it is more than likely that you have already established yourself in the community. You have probably made a couple of friends. If you are willing to tell them about your blog, then you might earn yourself some potential subscribers. Some of your friends might enjoy reading what you have to say. If you let them know that you have started a blog, then maybe they will come subscribe to it. Many of us have probably done so already. :) However, I don't want you guys to get the wrong idea. I'm not telling you guys to spam forums and talk to people you've never talked to before. I'm talking about the members that you've grown accustomed to and are familiar with. They probably have a blog of their own! If they are your friends, I have no doubt in my mind that they will at least take some time to look at your blog.

The same goes for your friends in bookmarking sites. If they enjoy some of the same sites you do, then they'll probably enjoy your blog as well. StumbleUpon and Digg are two good examples of places where you can share your blog with your friends. Chances are that they'll probably interested in what you submit, so why not ask some of them to check out your blog? If you don’t have any friends on StumbleUpon or Digg however, then try searching for articles posted in places where you would post your own articles. Since they have the same content, you will get to know some of the people who read the same articles you do. After becoming friends with those people, there's a pretty good chance that they will subscribe to your feed because it has the content that they like to read.

That's all that I could come up with for now. I know it's probably not going to get you a sudden increase of subscribers because more than often, that number is based on the content of your blog. You see bloggers always talking about content, content, and content. They're right, you need to have good content in order to get people to subscribe to your feed. Remember though, there are always other ways to gain more subscribers. I’m always looking out for other ideas that work; if you have other suggestions, feel free to comment. I appreciate any help on this matter. :)

-Aud

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Most popular bloggers will hold contests sooner or later. It's just a method to promote their blogs. At times, the prizes can be expensive, other times it’s a simple, smaller cash prize. The majority of the time they will also require you to somehow spread the word of the contest by posting about it on your blog. However, most of the time they require you to do something that promotes their blog in some way.

Remember though that your readers probably aren’t too interested in which contests you are entering. The occasional contest is fine, but there are some weeks where you will see numerous contests. You need to be able to tell apart the contests that are of no benefit to you.

Prizes usually range from hosting, to domains, to layouts. If you’ve already got your own blog, and on your own hosting, then you probably won’t want to enter these contests. You get a limited time prize or a layout which you don’t really need. Is it really ise telling your readers all about this “great” contest, linking to the blogger's blog about two or three times, and alienating your readers? Obviously not.

However, you should consider some prizes like free advertising on their site, free reviews, free text links, Entrecard credits, money, and just about anything virtual. If you can put it to use, it may be worth entering simply because it would have a positive effect on your blog (if you were to win it). Contests are usually held in a fashion that benefits the blogger the most. Even so, some contests are worth it.

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If you choose to use Blogger over WordPress (which is what I did), then one of the biggest downsides are the stats. You won’t get the instantly updated stats of WordPress. Like any blogger, you will want to see how many views you are getting, and what keywords you’ve hit it big on. Google Analytics is the solution.

Google Analytics is the accepted ‘universal’ stats system. The ability to set up accounts for potential advertisers to look at the stats is a huge feature. It can be the difference in landing the advertiser, or them being suspicious of fake numbers and passing your blog up.

There are many features that Google Analytics has that the default WordPress stats system doesn’t have. Even if Blogger does not provide you these stats, in some ways, Google Analytics is better. Some of the bigger features I like about it are the different breakdowns they will show you. They will show you which countries are viewing your content, which pages are being viewed, where each and every visitor is coming from (the page they were on before yours), and of course, search engine terms. They also keep track of the unique versus page views, because there really is a difference. WordPress will just show how many pages were loaded. You never know if your visitors are viewing one page and leaving. With all this additional information from Google Analytics, it doesn't matter whether you're using Blogger or Wordpress.

I suggest signing up for a free Google Analytics account right now if you haven't already. Right after you are done setting up that account, click on "My Account" and set up your Google Analytics stats system. It's pretty self explanatory and simple. After you’ve done that, you may also like to add my blog to your iGoogle RSS reader. :)

-Aud

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The reliability of Feedburner in the past month that I've had it is questionable. There are several reasons why I am suggesting either using two or more feed counters to get a better idea as to how many feeds you actually have. I am not an expert in the area of feeds, but it’s really not hard to understand why I am doubting Feedburner.

After tracking certain blogs for a few months, I started noticing the daily rising and falling of their Feedburner subscriber count. On certain days it would drop three or four subscribers, and the next day it would gain a few more. I trust my Google Analytics stats to be 100% accurate. If this is the case, I doubt I have the chance of gaining several subscribers in one day.

Another thing I noticed when observing other people's trends was, who deletes feeds that quickly? I have some feeds that I’ve probably never clicked on sitting right next to the ones I visit everyday. If my content was worth the trouble for a user to subscribe, wouldn’t it be likely that they would give me a chance to bring them some content they enjoyed?

Apparently, people shouldn't rely too much on their feed count. It’s just a number. Instead, focus more on your comments. Comments are worth money, but they should be enough to keep you going. If you have many people commenting on your work, then it will be much more entertaining and fun. It may be better to only check your feed count once every week so you don’t get discouraged by a sudden drop, or get too confident if there happens to be an increase in subscribers. Just something I noticed. :)

-Aud

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I'm really not sure what effect comments will have on a certain blog. I’m just assuming that, other than showing your pages' popularity to others, it also has to have some sort of effect on your keyword density for the page. That, in turn, partially affects your keyword rankings for that page.

I’m sure some people have had posts where people get angry with you for one thing or another. Maybe a debate, maybe not. While you may not want to keep these posts, you really have to differentiate between comments that disagree and the comments that flame (which is what you DON'T want). There are also a few things to keep in mind when editing comments.

WordPress blogs hosted at WordPress make it so that you can edit comments. Not only can you edit the name, URL, and email, but you can also edit the comment itself. Now you can take out that second link people try to include in their comments, or you can edit out personal notes from friends that you don’t want others to see. The same goes for Blogger. Although you cannot edit the comment, you might as well delete it if it's private or unwanted.

Remember: when editing a comment you should always check for three things. The first should be the name. If you’ve seen the name around your blog before, you may just want to delete the comment. If you edit a repeat commenter's comment, you might end up with a not so friendly response and lose a reader. After you’ve looked at the name, go to the URL. Change this to one of your other blogs. Free backlink for you. Third, if the email address appears fake, chances are the person doesn’t want to be known. You can edit these comments as well because chances are they won’t be back. Using these techniques to your advantage can help your blog overall; it'll look cleaner and more friendly.

-Aud

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Hey everyone,

For most people, advertising your blog is crucial to your success. Well, today, you might want to try out some marketing techniques (for free). If you’ve ever wanted to give affiliate marketing a try, or wanted some free advertising for your blog then give Facebook a try. Recently, Facebook has been giving out free advertising coupons for anybody to use. I haven't tried it out myself yet, but I have no doubt that it works seeing as how successful Facebook has become. Here are the coupon codes:

First $50 Coupon Code: T5V6-1JKV-TNH9-2MRH

Second $50 Coupon Code: 2JXY-WTFK-72Y0-VJ6Y

Third $50 Coupon Code R1X5-0NH7-5FXW-5YEC

For the final $100 code, you must sign up for the Visa Small Business Application, which I have provided the link for here.

Just add the application, and check your email. The application will prompt you to fill in a bunch of information about a business. You are not required to do this however, you can delete the application as soon as you get your code.

To credit your account with these codes go to your Facebook advertising page. Click ‘ads manager’, ‘billing’, ‘funding sources’, and then ‘enter coupon code’. The coupon will then show up on your account. They will also show their expiration date. Remember: you must have a valid credit card in order to sign up.

See you guys soon!

-Aud

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