Blog Analysis: A Blog to Emulate

"There is no way I am going to do this in 15 minutes." Especially since there are FIVE blogs that I am very interested in! My goal at the end of this is to have a list of things I want to include in my blog AND to have ONE blog that I want to emulate, let's say content and positioning-wise.

These questions/criteria come straight from Day 4 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

The blogs I am looking at arecc

Shoemoney
Entrepreneurs Journey
John Chow dot com
Problogger
I Will Teach You to Be Rich (for the look, not the content)

2. Take 15 minutes to do some analysis of the blog in some of the following areas

Content:

• What topics are they covering?
  
• What topics are they ignoring?
• What voice/style do they post in?
• How often are they posting?
• What level are they pitching their posts at (beginners, advanced etc)

Reader Engagement:

• What topics generate most conversation?
• What styles of posts seem to connect with readers best?
• What questions are readers asking in comments?
• What complaints do you see readers making in comments?
• What tools/mediums is the site using (eg: are they using Twitter, forums etc)

Design:

• What first impression does their design give?
• What have they done well? What have they done poorly?
• What Options do they give readers to subscribe?

Monetization:
if you’re attempting to make money from your blog this will be relevant as it will give you hints as to how you might make money:

• what advertisers are targeting this blog?
• what type of affiliate programs are they promoting?

Traffic:
You might also like to head to a site like Alexa or Compete to do some analysis of the blogs traffic levels. Is it growing, plateauing or shrinking. Alexa also gives some stats (not always accurate) on page views, time on site, sites linking in, bounce rate, where the audience is from (geographically), where people go on the site etc.

SEO:
If you have some competence in SEO you might like to check out how they’re doing in some of these areas:

• Who is linking to this blog? (use the link:www.blogurl.com command in Google to find out)
• What does their source code reveal about how they’ve set up their site
• If they have an open or unlocked stats package what can you learn from their stats? What pages are popular? Where does their incoming traffic come from?

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Capitalize on Oprah's Flock of Twitterers

So did you guess? Yep, that's what I've been doing since Wednesday, harvesting and culling at the Winfrey Estate on Twitter. It's simple, it's fun, and if I had two dimes to rub together it would be fully automated.You wanna try?

First (optional), find out the demographics of Oprah's audience OR find out the likes, dislikes and interests of someone YOU know who watches The Oprah Winfrey Show (this helps you create the name and profile and attitude)

Second, create a Twitter account with a name and bio that would be attractive to the demographic slice of Oprah's audience you want to attract (from results of the first step) Since I skipped the first step I just followed people from among Oprah's followers. (period)

Third, find a portrait photograph, a head shot, that goes with the name and bio you just created. I went browsing at deviantart looking for my new persona; I found her. :)

Fourth, start a personal blog in the name of this new Twitter personality. Add value by linking and answering your own questions. And answering questions of your twitter "audience."

Fifth, every day add 200 Oprah followers. After you have reached 1,000 people that YOU follow, delete everyone who did not follow you back. MyTweeple is a Twitter application that will help you do just that

Sixth, repeat the fifth step again and again until you have 5,000 (or 10,000 whatever) mutual reciprocal followers. My target fro May is 5,000+ reciprocal followers on my Sofiia Miller account. I am shooting for at elast 25% retention but initially although growing has not gotton there yet..it's about 16% and climbing. The more I interact, the better it gets. Interacting with people that I've JUST added ASAP is a good tactic for increasing liklihood of a reciprocal follow.

Seventh, After you do your first culling of the "non-mutuals" then automate reciprocal follow with TweetLater. That application will make your Twitter account follow anyone who follows you AND it will send a thank you note to the new follower. Include the link to your personal blog AND make the note feel like a hug, full of enthusiasm and energy. DK's is something like this: "OMG! I like U already! Facebook me http://profile.to/askDKlive and check out my video page."

Eighth, once you have your base of 5,000 then start dropping an affilite link every 8 hours, like clockwork with a Twuffer like you probably already did with your first Twitter account.

Ninth, make sure to send DM's to at least one page of your followers daily. Make sure to promote any blogpost that you write that might be of interest to this crowd. You may, also, continue to grow your list by repeating the 5th step.

Tenth, now really get some stats on Oprah audience member and write up a detailed description/bio/profile for Sopia that is in the ball park of a signgicant segment of oPRAH FANS. i ALREADY GOT THAT i AM NOT GOING TO ATTRACK THE ILITERATE OR THE PROFANE OR LEWD. i AM NOT GOING TO BE LIKE THAT AT ALL.

Explanation of MyTweeple, TweetLater and Twuffer is given in an earlier post "Power Tools" which was Day 18 of my April Challenge

Let the conversations going on amongst your crowd determine what you blog about in yourpersonalblog. Keep the posts short and with some kind of illustration or video.

This pool of reciprocal followers may become the basis of your members only site. This group is going to be your target market. Take it slow. First you build relationship on Twitter, credibility on the blog, and they subscribe.... you are building your subscriber/readership , you post based on their voiced interests...

You can do a lot with this group...A lot. This group is wed to televison and believe everything that Corporate media/advertisers feed them.Take advantage of the preexisting, mental programming.


Guess what? This technique can work with the flock of any celebrity Twitterer.

Self sorting demographics...a beautiful thing.

Reminds me of people lining up, begging for toxin laced vaccines. Anyway I digress...

Original title was: Capitalize on Oprah's Flock of Twits..but that sounded really degrading and disrespectul. Not my style.

Whenever you're ready to start raking in the cash DO use Yaro's masterplan to create a members only site. I listened to it in .mp3 format witin the first 24 hours of it's release and it blew my mind...pleasantly. (you get, free of charge the entire plan in .pdf and .mp3 formats)

oh yeah...
http://twitter.com/Oprah/followers?page=36
such as
http://twitter.com/Oprah/followers?page=10749

just follow profiles with pictures above tthe fold and click onthe refresh/reload button and repeat the porcess of adding followers. This I found was faser than scrolling down the whole page or cahging the page number. Pepole are folloinwg Oprah, still, at such a fast rate that the same page changes every minute.

the bigger the number at the end, the earlier response to Oprah's joining twitter. I believe thos peole are quicker to act in general so I am goin t ostart harvesting near the front of the line. :)

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Twitter: http://twitter.com/NiaNia
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5 Reasons Why I Decided to Become an Affiliate Marketer Period

1. I have no money. I can be an affiliate with no money.
2. I believe in basics to meet basic necessities. As an affiliate
3. I am strictly new school. No in person demonstrations of products--ever.
4. I know I can earn more & faster, though online new school marketing and affiliate sales
5. There are fewer variables outside of my control as an affiliate.

In these economic times it is my belief that faster is better.


Jaime told me the truth...



Well said Jaime. Maybe I am a FUTURE MLMer, but not now. I don't have what it takes to be all that.

I need to start EARNING a minimum of $1500 IMMEDIATELY. I don't have any money I can earmark as my MLM support stash.

I am committed to my success and I have the habits of study and production to prove it.

The idea of recruiting per se turns me off.

I will lead by example. If someone notices what I am doing and likes the results they are welcomed to follow my lead.

I know it is not easy. That's not the issue for me. I don't have the money and time. I only have the time. So, this is NOT for me. Not now anyway.

So, Jaime thank you for making it si plain, for telling me the truth.

John showed me the light...he untriduced me to John Reese:
quote
In this video you’ll learn how to quickly and easily set up an what John calls an “Affiliate Commission Engine.”

You can set up as many of these little ‘engines’ as you want in any market you want and they’ll work for you 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, making affiliate income for you
close quote

That free video was preceeded by a "squeeze page" which required my giving my email address in exchange for the viewing. So...guess what happens I see the video and buy the syystem OR I am subjected to drip marketing until I unsubscribe.

John reccommends auto responder (aweber) that will send emails on days 1,2,3,4,8.12.16.20.24.28 etc. He also wisely recommends tha tyou have 10 emails alerady wwritten and in your autoresponder before you launch your program. Additionally over time notice which products are getting more sales and move THOSE emails to the first 30 days. People will unsubscribe sooner or later. So you want to put your best sellers in that first 30 days but you may not know what those best seller are until you have your own data. This takes time but indeed over time you will have the data and you can make adjustments in the order of the emails (not the frequency) to get even better, faster income.

I've been thinking onlyu of one shot affiliate marketing. Youi kown a landing page and/or a blog post or a tweet or whatever leding directly to the product sales page and people either buy or not. Period. With John Reeses system I will also be building my list and I can market to the list I can send useful information (value) and promote a particular affiliate product related to whatever I'm talking about.

It is only in the last week that I have been eating more than once a day...for three weeks I was eating something once every other day. So...what can I do? NOW?

Find a free auto responder and move both Aaron Wall's SEO Handbook and Rosalind Gardner's Super Affiliate Handbook on Twitter.

Those two have gotton the most clicks. As you may recall I put those two on auto pilot, each tweeting once or twice a month. It's automated.

Humm...let me check to see what the earnings are to date...

John Reese calls Affiliate Marketing the ultimate online business for thes 2 reasons:

1. - Run Part-Time Or Full-Time
2. - Run From Anywhere
3. - No Inventory To Keep
4. - No Products To Ship
5. - No Payments To Collect
6. - No Customer Support
7. - No Recruiting
8. - HUGE EARNING POTENTIAL

Now that, I could do with what I had from where I was.

BTW, check out Rosalind Gardner's Action Guide


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Problogger's 31 Days to a Better Blog (Part1)

The folloing "1"s cover Days 12 through 9 of the 31 Days for Building a Better Blog

1. Elevator Speech--this became my tagline for the blog and a short quip I could share with people who might be curious as to what I am doing all day and night perched atop my bed with my mini-lap

1. List--I created several list posts in fact: 3 Reasons to Start Enjoying Your Unemployable Hobo Lifestyle in Orlando, 17 Principles of Napoleon Hill etc and I'll post one for THIS blog tomorrow. :) Make sure to leave YOUR "list post" in the comments!

1. Promote--This is what I call seeding the internet. You know put it in my email signatue and leave it in the places where I post and comment. Specifically Darren is speaking to participation in forums. Some places like Warrior Forum allow registered participants to have a signature which is a great place to link to the blog. However, I have not been active on that forum so I will delay creating a signature for a week or so. However I am very active in the NING networks, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon and YouTube. So I am linking to all of those plus I am registering at Blog Catalog and MyBlogLog. Apparently my account exists but I don''t know the email address associated with at MyBlogLog. It was cool to see though...I had a lot going on at one time...two years ago!!
   

1. Analyze a successful blog in your niche and analyze what they are doing. For this I took a look at the places that I read and comment (see sidebar) and selected the blog that I wished to emulate. Then vasically reviewed 4 blogs, not just 1, using Ddarren's guidlines. (See May 7-11 posts)
   

1. Focus on your current readers...well, I guess I am my current reader. lol. When a reader leaves a comment I am to send them an email and leave a comment on their blog if they have left their URL.

1. Learn from the following articles (blog postts)

Seth Godin from Seths Blog

• How to Get Traffic to Your Blog
• How to Send a Personal Email
• First, ten

Rand Fiskin from SEOmoz

• 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic
• Blogging in an Oversaturated Market is Usually a Poor Decision
• 21 Tips to earn links and tweets to your Blog Posts

Skellie from Skelliewag

A Complete Guide to Find

• How to Start or Start Over Building Your Personal Brand
• 25 Paths to an Insanely Popular Blog

Chris Garrett from ChrisG

• Grow your google authority
• Diggbait, Linkbait, Flagship Content and Authority
• The art of getting things wrong

Yaro Starak from Entrepreneurs Journey

• How To Write Great Blog Content - The Pillar Article
• Why Don’t Bloggers Understand Email Marketing?

Jeremy Schoemaker from Shoemoney

• My Top 10 Worst Ideas to Make Money
• Why You Should Embrace Negative Press

Maki from Dosh Dosh

• 6 Fool-Proof Steps to Make More Money With Your Website
• Rethinking Blog Comments: Much More Than Just A Quick Way to Get Web Traffic
• You’re Not Just a Writer, You’re the Editor-in-Chief.

Liz Strauss from Successful Blog

• 10 Reasons Readers Don’t Leave Comments
• The Secret to Massive Digg/StumbleUpon Traffic Without Spamming
• 7 Great Ways to Connect with Other Bloggers While You’re Out Reading Blogs

Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips

• 43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid
• How to Find Advertisers for your Website

Chris Brogan from ChrisBrogan.com

• 50 Ways to Take Your Blog to the Next Level
• 40 Ways to Deliver Killer Blog Content
• 27 Secrets to Power your Community

1. Link to at least one other blog in a post. This is often know as 'giving link love." Well THIS post is linking to TEN other blogs at least 3X each. So that's "link love on fire!

1. Interlink the posts on your blog wheverver appropriate. I have been doing this all along. It's a good reminder though to go back and look for opportunities to interlink.

1. Promote the blog by participating in forums that are likely to have people interestedi the theme of your blog. Warrior forums is fine but maybe I should look a bit more for a smaller forum as well.Build Your Blog With Forum Traffic - a post where Skellie suggests 4 strategies on this topic. How to Use Forums to Drive Hundreds of Thousands of Readers to Your Blog - a story from an anonymous reader who built a successful blog using this technique.

If you've been following me on Twitter maybe you can guess...What did i start doing on Wednesday, May 30th over at Twitter? Check back here in the morning to see if you guessed right. :)

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