Blogirific Blog Directory has a stated mission that differs from most.

A huge part of blogging is engaging with your readers/visitors. We at Blogirific.com want to be a facilitator in this. We aren’t interested in creating our own community, we want our visitors to engage with you, the blogger. Besides, once a community like Twitter, Squidoo or a site like BUMPzee.com gets too big, spammers tend to move in…and boy oh boy do they ever move in! Spammers won’t be a problem here at Blogirific as we have decided we want people to engage with you and other people on your blog(s) rather than here. Therefore, we have closed commenting, registering and other things that may keep traffic here and not on your blog.

To make sure Blogirific only lists great blogs, we intend to only “let in” original blogs. Not everyone will get in. If your blog gets accepted into Blogirific.com, you will be part of an exclusive club.

This goal of sending traffic and conversation back to your blog, rather than trying to keep it on their site is the first thing that gives Blogirific extra value. But it doesn’t end there.

Your profile page goes far beyond the URL/Title/Description of most directories. Your page can include links to your social network profile pages, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Frienfeed, etc.

In addition, you can list 4 125×125 banner ads to affiliate products – using YOUR affiliate code – and display Adsense ads, again using your Adsense ID.

In effect, your profile page is designed to engage visitors directly with YOU, and give you Adsense and affiliate revenue on top of that.

I’ve had some conversations with Rick, one of the owners of Blogirific, and I can tell you that he’s a really nice guy who truly wants to help bloggers. So instead of basing his revenue model on hoarding traffic so he can earn from the traffic, he prefers to turn the model around. Instead he charges a ridiculously low submission fee (how does lifetime inclusion for less than $5 sound?). In return, Blogirific works hard to direct the traffic and traffic revenue back to you! Wow. I love that revenue model!

Below is a screenshot of my profile page, but you can also just go see it for yourself.

Blogirific’s mission of directing traffic to you and making it, in effect, all about YOU rather than them, is one that impresses me more than I can describe. It’s not often I get so impressed by something that I take the time to really dig into it. Who has that kind of time these days, right? But this one was special enough to do just that. I spent time really digging into the site, and came away thinking that this was something I just had to tell you about. I hope you tell others about it as well. We need sites like this who are eager to give back to us, so let’s support them when we find them.

One other thing: This is also a great way to find other bloggers within and related to your niche. Interacting with these bloggers goes a long, long way in creating mutual and beneficial partnerships. So after you submit your site, be sure to spend time (I’d say at least once a week) looking for bloggers and discussions that you can interact and converse with. Each time you make the effort, the value to you adds up. Just sayin’.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blog directory, Blogirific
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1. Do your research. Know your topic. Know what traffic levels are possible.
2. Plan ahead. Outline in broad strokes what the posts will cover over time.
3. Understand the basics of social networking.
4. Attack from all sides. Get traffic from many sources.

5. Be unique
6. Be yourself. Have a voice. Have an opinion.
7. Have a pleasing site design.
8. Post on weekends because most don’t.
9. Post about breaking news before anyone else.
10. Have a noticeable, visible RSS feed icon.
11. Use video or audio occasionally or frequently.

12. Ask questions at end of posts to encourage commenting.
13. Ask your friends to spread the word about your blog or posts.
14. Email commenters, thank them for commenting, and then ask them to return or subscribe.
15. Guest blog on other blogs and invite guest bloggers to blog on yours.
16. Interview other bloggers. They’ll let others know about the interview.
17. Advertise.
18. Use socializer plugins to encourage sharing.
19. Remind people to subscribe at the end of every post.
20. Provide unique content for subscribers only
21. Run polls and ask everyone to take the poll and spread the word.

22. Comment on other blogs and network in social communities
23. Participate in blog carnivals
24. Link to your blog in forum post signatures, if allowed.
25. Link out freely to other bloggers within your posts.
26. Get listed in blog directories
27. Run article series, covering a topic over several posts.
28. Use Feedburner’s promotional widgets.
29. Use social proof by showing subscriber count or traffic numbers in sidebar.

30. Hold a blog contest with subscribing as a requirement. Give away a nice prize.
31. Create widgets that supply others with something cool to display on their blog.

32. Go where they are. You have to find relevant communities.
33. Form friendship pockets to strengthen ties.
34. Use sites like mybloglog and blogcatalog so your avatar is seen visiting other sites.
35. Partner up so you can cross-promote with others.

Note: A reader contacted me wanting know how to increase his blog popularity and traffic. I told him that I would write a post about it so that everyone could benefit from the answer to his question. The problem with writing this post, of course, is that it’s been written many times by others. Writing it myself feels like just a rehash of what others have said elsewhere. Nevertheless, some of you may not have seen the various other permutations across the web, so I think it’ll be okay for me to put my version out there. Hope it helps a few.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: social networking
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

A savvy blogger might take advantage of an upcoming holiday such as Easter, for example, and design a clever little contest, in which she hides Easter eggs throughout her blog. She then invites visitors to find the hidden eggs within her blog to win a cool prize – which just happens to be a product that the blogger is going to be launching soon.

Now let’s analyze this clever contest strategy.

1. The contest is centered around a theme – in this case a holiday that many people celebrate
3. The activity is fun and involves the reader in a game that may evoke fond memories of childhood
4. The prize is unique and useful to the readers
5. What a great way to introduce a new product
6. What a neat way to get users to explore your site

This kind of creative thinking works for both the reader and the blogger, and it’s just that kind of creativity that can make you a winner – either as a contestant or as a blogger.

P.S. I’m mainly writing this post so you can learn about an effective and creative strategy, but you might as well enter the contest yourself. The prize would be a good one for anyone interested in making a living online. You have until Tuesday, 3/25/08 to enter this fun little contest. If you need a hint, I found an egg on the 101 CSS Galleries for Backlinks and Traffic post.

Oh, and hope everyone who celebrates Easter has a great one. If you don’t celebrate Easter, then Happy Spring!

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Easter
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© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blog traffic, case study, lesson, video
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

1. Organic search engine traffic – This is the granddaddy of all traffic. Visitors who arrive at your site from a search they’ve conducted are extremely targeted. This is what SEOs live for – high search engine rankings for popular phrases related to your niche. Bonus points if the great rankings are on Google, as that sends far more traffic than others. Don’t make the mistake of concentrating solely on search engine traffic however. If you lose your rankings, and you have no other sources of traffic, your site’s traffic will be devastated.
2. Sponsored search engine traffic (PPC) – Second best is the traffic obtained from visitors clicking on sponsored listings from those same search engines. Essentially, you get all the same benefits as above, but there’s one difference. You have to pay for this traffic. The major search engines have made it a bit more complicated to play the PPC (pay per click) game. No longer is it as simple as “the biggest spenders get the top listings”. You can be very successful with this method, and the fact that you have more control over placement is a big draw. Keep in mind, however, that without experience, you may end up spending a bundle of cash on PPC systems such as Google’s Adwords without reaping any profits.
3. Referrals from other sites – This could come in several forms. Other sites may simply link to you because they like your site, or you may have chosen to purchase advertising (either as a link or a banner ad) on others’ sites. Either way, if a highly-trafficked sites in your niche recommend your site, there’s a good chance that you’ll receive nicely targeted traffic from those sites.
4. Participation in forums/communities – If you participate in forums and communities related to your niche, you can build up an element of trust. That trust helps send others community participants to your site via any links that you’ve listed in your signatures or profile pages. This may not send large quantities of traffic, but it will probably be traffic that has a strong bond with you. Those visitors may then go on to either link to your site or recommend your site in other ways.
5. Guest blogging – Like the community participation above, guest blogging helps build up others’ trust in you, and your name becomes well known. This in turn builds up your personal brand, and you become more recognizable. At some point, people will know who you are, and that almost always translates into more site traffic. Obviously, you should be creating quality posts on others’ blogs if you hope to succeed with this method of traffic generation.
6. Social networking – Traffic from social networks such as Digg and Stumbleupon, or social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, or popular video sites such as Youtube, can be huge. However, the traffic comes in spikes, usually only lasts for a few hours or at most a few days, and the visitors rarely stick around. These visitors may not be very targeted, or they may just not be all that interested in what you have to offer. Nevertheless, you may get some much-needed attention (buzz) or a few nice links, so social networking traffic is worth getting. It’s just not worth as much as the factors mentioned above, in my opinion.
7. Article marketing / Directory submissions – Submitting your site to directories or writing articles that will be syndicated via article marketing sites are both useful for obtaining a few links to your sites, and perhaps a handful of visitors. You won’t see much direct traffic from these sources, so put this a bit lower on your list of things to do. It’s not a bad idea, and it can be useful for link building purposes, but it’s just not highly useful.
8. Purchasing traffic packages and traffic exchange programs – In general, you should avoid these, and I only include this in the list so that I can warn you about them. If you are tempted to “buy millions of visitors for only $99″ or whatever the offer is, ask yourself if you enjoy throwing money away. These types of programs may or may not send you traffic, but the traffic they do send will likely either be fake or it will consist of visitors who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in your site. You will be wasting money. Likewise, traffic exchange packages usually consist of webmasters visiting each others sites, just to obtain more traffic for their own sites. Again, they aren’t interested in your site at all. They only want to increase their own traffic, which won’t be useful traffic for them either.

I’m sure there are other traffic sources, but those are the ones that I receive the most traffic from. If you know of any other great sources, please share in the comments below.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: article marketing, directory submissions, forums, Google, guest blogging, high search engine rankings, Organic search engine traffic, search engine, search engine traffic, search engines, SEOs, social networking, social networking traffic, social networks, sources of site traffic, traffic exchange, Youtube
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

Even one highly successful post can consistently bring you a substantial amount of traffic. The key is to make sure you have at least one of those, and the best way I’ve found is to work hard at creating at least one resource collection. What is a resource collection? It is a collection of “things”, related to your niche, that others want. For example, let’s say your niche is horses. Your visitors are horse-lovers. What collection of things would a horse lover be interested in? A series of high-quality pictures of horses? A collection of videos of a particular race horse? The “family trees” of each of the Kentucky Derby winners from the last 20 years?

My point is that while you are posting daily about your niche, you are creating interesting snippets of content, but not necessarily long-lasting resource collections. If you can create that one outstanding resource collection for your particular niche, I predict that you will have created a traffic attraction to your site that far exceeds your expectations. You’ll always need the daily content snippets, but try to create at least one unique resource collection as well.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Derby
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.