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.

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(Side note: Please note that whenever I refer to one of those kinds of jobs as a “real job”, I do so only because that’s what people who always criticized my decision to work from home would call them. “Why don’t you get a real job?”, they always asked. So I use that term in a sarcastic manner mainly as a jab at them).

Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out that we have the luxury of building up our new business on a part-time basis. Sometimes, people just haven’t gotten around to starting their business while they had a “real job” and now they are faced with the fact that they no longer have that “real job” because they were laid off in the current downsizing trend. Now is the time that each of you - faced with looming bills that you can’t pay - desperately needs to find work!

At this point, you probably need steady income that you can depend upon - even if it’s a cut in pay from your previous job. Of course, you’ll do all the normal things any jobhunter does - scour the Help Wanted ads in your local paper and search the big job boards like Monster.com. When looking for a traditional “real job”, I’d also recommend searching Indeed which enables traditional job board searches across multiple boards. Indeed gives access to millions of job opportunities from thousands of web sites. It includes all the job listings from major job boards, newspapers, associations and company career pages.

While you are searching for one of those “real jobs”, however, you can also be making side money right now. Now is the perfect time to start doing some freelance work from home. This freelance work probably won’t pay all your bills right away, but when you’re desperate, ANY income is a good thing. In addition, by doing freelance work, you’ll begin to gain confidence and experience as you learn how to make money all on your own, using your own skills, initiative, talents, and perseverance. That will make for a very nice transition to having your own full-time business later on.

If you haven’t been laid off yet, yay! In that case, use these references just to dip your toe in the water, or make some side money. Side money can be great for buying those “extras” you don’t normally get a chance to purchase, but side money can be even better as a savings fund - a “just in case” fund…Just in case you ever DO get laid off.

In any case, whether you desperately need cash now or not, the following resources are a great way to get started earning some extra cash, honing some new business skills, and leading the way towards an independent future for yourself. This list is not exhaustive, but it’s a good representative cross-section of resources. Frankly a long list is simply overwhelming. I’d prefer a short list to begin with. You can always search for more if you need to.

Blogger Job Boards
ProBlogger Job Board - Jobs for Bloggers
Performancing Blogger Jobs
Blogger Jobs

Freelance Jobs
Elance
FreelanceMom
FreelanceSwitch
GetAFreelancer
Guru
iFreelance
oDesk
RentACoder
Craigslist

Personally, I prefer to work on my own web sites now, rather than freelance my time out to others, but freelancing was the perfect entry into the world of working from home for me. By freelancing, I was able to secure income that I needed badly after I’d been laid off a few years ago. In addition, I learned what types of work I liked, and what types I didn’t. We all have more than one talent. You can try different types of freelance work, based on your own variety of skills. You’ll find some more rewarding than others, both monetarily and emotionally.

Some people love freelancing and continue with it full-time as their new business. If you discover that you love it too, then great! If so, then I’d recommend visiting Freelanceswitch.com. It’s a great resource for folks who want to be full-time freelancers. But even if you decide that freelancing isn’t what you really want to base your business on, it is still a good idea to dip your toes in the freelancing waters so that you can earn some side income and flex your independence muscles. I encourage you to try it. It could make a difference in your life.

© DazzlinDonna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Now what? Do you just quietly take down the signs, and let your go-get-em attitude deflate like an old balloon? No, I say, No! You channel all that energy and activist ‘tude into a new and more profitable venture - YOUR BUSINESS.

That’s right. You know the drill. You have the energy. You know what it takes to make people WANT what your candidate has to offer. Only this time, your candidate is you! You and your business, that is. If you can devote the same kind of time, energy, focus, and drive towards showing others why YOU ROCK, you’ll have more clients than you can handle.

Sure, I can hear your objections now. “Oh but I can’t talk about MYSELF that way! Oh but I’m just a small fish in a large ocean…” To that I say, blah, blah blah. Don’t let excuses get in your way. Treat yourself and your business with the same enthusiasm as you’d treat your favorite political candidate.

You just spent several months showing people what your favorite candidate could do for them and why they should trust him/her/it. Now do the same thing for you and your business.

• Show people what you can do for them.
• Show them why they should trust YOU.
• Be an activist for yourself.

You’ll have so much fun, you’ll forget that the election is over.

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People and companies still need services and goods during a recession. But now they are looking for “the better deal”. That better deal might come in the form of lower prices - a bargain - or it might come in the form of “getting more bang for the buck”. This is where you step up to the plate and offer added value or bargain pricing. Now is the right time to steal away a new client from an old mega-competitor. Companies pay exorbitant prices for services from companies that love being able to charge “enterprise-level prices”. Often, those “enterprise-level” services aren’t any better than what you can offer for much less.

Now is the time to approach a company that may be paying through the nose for a service you can provide for far less. If feasible, show that your service even offers additional value because you’ll go one step further than the competition by providing an extra service on top of what they’d normally receive.

Reeling in just one new client - especially a corporate account - could leapfrog your business so much that you won’t even notice the recession. The timing couldn’t be better for solo service businesses to jump on stealing away a big client. If you can logistically provide a service to a large client, act soon to land that client. When making your pitch, just be sure to show the benefits of moving from their tired old high-priced service to your new, nimble, value-added service. Then, once you land the big one, get to work!

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So, I’ve created the free Ad Rate Calculator for everyone to use. It doesn’t matter whether you are selling ad spots on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. The time period doesn’t make a difference. You just need to determine the average amount of ad impressions the ad will receive during whatever time period you’re charging for. If you have the ad in your blog’s sidebar, that probably means it will appear on every page and post, so you just need to know the number of page views you average for each time period. Use your stats program (like Google Analytics or Clicky) to determine this information.

That’s the only piece of information you have to supply. The tool uses a default CPM rate*, but you can certainly change it to whatever you think is appropriate. If you are selling 300×250 ads instead of 125×125 ads for instance, you can charge roughly 4 times the rate because it is roughly 4 times the size, so adjust the CPM rate however you wish.

This calculator is only a tool. There is no standard rate out there. You can charge whatever the market will bear. However, for many of us, we don’t have an inkling of where to even begin. I designed this calculator as an easy starting point for you. I hope you like it. If you do, be sure to let others know about it as well. You can link to it, use it on your own site by using the popup code provided at the bottom of the calculator, or just let others know about it via Twitter, etc. Hopefully, by spreading the word, we can make everyone’s ad rate decisions a little easier.

Try the Ad Rate Calculator now.

*Definition of CPM rate here.

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I recently joined a microlending site called Kiva. Microloans are small loans, in amounts as low as $25, that help entrepreneurs in developing areas lift themselves out of poverty. People like you and I, who aren’t rich but who do enjoy some of life’s pleasures that aren’t accessible to many others, can help them find some of the successes we enjoy, by making tiny loans to them. Your tiny loan combined with my tiny loan, within a group of tiny loans, creates a fund that enables someone to realize their dream, doing work that will lift them out of poverty. Many of these budding entrepreneurs only need a few hundred dollars to make that dream come true, so it only takes a few of us to make it happen. And since these are loans, not handouts, the entrepreneurs pay us back in a fairly short amount of time.

You choose who to lend to - whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq - and as they repay the loan, you get your money back.

That’s one way that each of - as individuals - can join together in tackling a massive problem - simply by being one tiny part of a solution.

I encourage you to check out Kiva and see if perhaps you might be interested in becoming a lender. You can sign up as an individual, and you can also join one of the community teams. These teams are merely a social aspect of the site, and aren’t a requirement by any means, but it does allow for some interesting conversations and joining together to make things happen. I joined the Bloggers team. I’d love to see you there as well, but there are lots of other teams that may be more to your liking. It doesn’t matter which team you join. You don’t have to join a team at all, but the team “spirit” seems to help everyone understand that by working together, we can alleviate poverty. Once you’re a part of the team, you can choose to have a future loan on Kiva “count” towards that team’s impact. The loan is still yours, and repayments still come to you - but you can also choose to have the loan show up in the team’s collective portfolio, so the team’s overall impact grows. Again, it’s just a social aspect, so the more important issue is simply being a lender - whether or not you join a team.

So let’s make history together. Let’s make an impact together. Let’s change the world together. Individually, we can make a difference. Together, we can change lives.

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So what is your personality? Rather than describing it in words, try finding a picture, either photo or graphic, abstract or realistic, that represents your personality. Once you find that picture, display it on your computer desktop as wallpaper or print it out and place it on your desk or workspace.

Now think about it for a while. Imagine your business as represented by that picture.

• What do you imagine when you view your business that way?
• Is there a different picture that you wish would represent your business?
• Is it possible that your wish picture could also represent your own personality?
• Why or why not?

These are just some ideas to get you thinking about your own personality and how that affects the “personality” of your business. Play with the idea for a while and see what emerges.

Want to see the picture that I think represents my own personality? Here it is.

© DazzlinDonna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
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With the economy tanking like it is, you may find it to be a little more difficult to add new income, or perhaps you have clients that are cutting back on their expenses, and you became part of that cut. Whatever the case may be, if you need to have a little more cash, you may be able to obtain it just by cutting some current unnecessary costs.

At least once a year, I run through a list of all my expenses to see what can be cut. Doing so is, in effect, giving myself a raise. I remember when I used to work out there in the “real world”, usually in an office cubicle, I’d get all excited when my boss would give me a raise. In most cases, that was usually a twenty-five cent per hour raise, and I’d actually be happy about that. Fifty cents deserved a full-blown celebration, and a dollar raise made me feel wealthy! In reality, though, let’s calculate what I was getting all excited about.

A 25 cent raise, based on a 40-hour week (or 2,080 hours per year), amounts to $520 extra per YEAR, which when broken down per month, is a mere $43 extra per month.

A 50 cent raise would be an extra $86 per month and a 1.00 raise would be an extra $173 per month.

So, using those figures as a guideline, how hard would it be to cut a few expenses so that we could give ourselves a raise between 25 cents and 1 dollar per hour?

I went through my normal living expenses (non-work related) to see what I could do to shave that down. Here’s what I’ve accomplished with that. (All savings calculated as a monthly figure).

Netflix - I’ve been subscribed to the level which allows me to have 3 movies out at one time. Since we only watch one or so a week, I’ve been paying for something I’m really not using. So, I’ve moved down one level, giving us 1 movie out at a time, but still having the ability to rent as many as we can over a month’s time. Savings: $8

Gamefly - Like Netflix (but for games), I’ve been subscribed to the level that gives us the ability to have 2 games out at one time. We only ever play one at a time, so the extra was wasted. Moved down to the lower level. Savings: $7

AT&T Long Distance - I’ve been paying $29.11 extra per month for unlimited long distance. I originally chose this plan back when the kids were living with us and they’d talk for hours to their friends far away. Now there’s just no need for it. We use our cell phones for long distance calls, so I’ve dumped the long distance portion of my landline phone. Savings: $29

Satellite TV NFL package - We like football, so it seemed like a cool thing to have, but we don’t watch all those games even though we could if we wanted to. In reality, we only watch our team play, and maybe one or two that happen to be playing on one of the non-package stations, so I dropped this package from the TV bill. Savings: $13

Magazine Subscriptions - I’ve cut out two subscriptions that no longer really interest any of us. Savings: $6

Groceries - This one is difficult to quantify. I’ve just been making a concerted effort to save at the grocery store as much as possible. I’ll give just one example, but there are many others as well. I used to buy little breakfast burritos from the grocery store and I’d eat them every day for breakfast. They were fast, easy, and tasty. They were also expensive. Now, I’ve switched to mini-bagels w/cream cheese, and I’m saving about eight dollars per month just from this one change. Cutting grocery costs in other ways adds up to quite a bit, but since I don’t have exact figures, let’s just use the breakfast tally for this exercise. Savings: $8

Total Savings Each Month: $71

My Raise - 40 cents per hour - Not too shabby!

Now it’s your turn. Look around and see what you can cut without really sacrificing anything really important to you, and then slash those items from your bills. Give yourself a raise! Then come back here and share with us what you’ve cut and how much of a raise you gave yourself. Who knows…maybe you’ll spark some ideas for us so that we can give ourselves even bigger raises!

© DazzlinDonna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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You can have the use of their shopping cart for a year FREE, with no obligation whatsoever. Simply make a copy or a scan of your termination notice and send that to them via their contact form to get a free subscription to the E-junkie shopping cart service for one year, at the basic $10 per month level. That level allows you to configure up to 20 different products and up to 100 MB of download storage space.

That is an amazingly generous thing for them to do. I already recommend using their service, as I use it myself, but after seeing this gesture, my respect for them grows even more. If you haven’t been laid off, but are looking for a reasonably-priced service, check out E-junkie. But if you’ve been given the boot from your job for any reason, now is a great time to put your own business plan into action - and E-junkie will be there to help you implement it - for free! That rocks.

© DazzlinDonna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
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I like this site, not only because it’s visually appealing to me, but because the information it contains is broad and varied, but still on point. And what is that point? Well, I’ll let Jonathan’s own words explain that:

LightEcho.com is the creation of a long time philosopher, a seasoned economist and an experienced internet engineer. It has been designed to provide insight, practical advice, and a new perspective on the emerging internet and technology that inhabit our everyday lives. By imparting ideas that are both attainable and enlightening, the internet can be understood on a level other than what is offered through mass media.

I haven’t fully explored every post in LightEcho’s engaging repertoire, but of of the ones I’ve read, I’m hooked. I bet you will be too.

If you’ve won a Dazzlin Badge of Excellence Award, you can display the awards badge on your site by pasting the following code into your page. Just highlight it, copy it, and paste it.

<a href="http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/">
<img src="http://www.dazzlindonna.com/images/dazzlinbadge.gif" alt="Dazzlin Badge of Excellence">
</a>

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