Alqloop’s chat arab

Darren Rowse, as part of his 31 Days to a Better Blog project, posted about finding a sponsor for your blog, something he has a fair bit of experience with.

He gives some great tips in the post, but one stood out to me more than the others:

If you have a smaller blog and haven’t had a sponsor before don’t aim for the stars straight away. It might be worth starting out by approaching smaller retailers, websites or companies in your niche and see if they’d be interested in some sort of partnership rather than aiming for the very biggest ones right up front. I did this a couple of months after starting my first digital camera blog and emailed 10 online digital camera sites to see if they’d be interested in advertising. 3 of the 10 bought small ads on my site (I think it was for something around $15-$25 a month). It wasn’t a lot of cash (and I didn’t have a lot of traffic to send to them) but I learned so much and made a little money in the process.

With so much competition out there, it can be very difficult to find sponsors for your blog. I have been lucky a few times, and have become friends with most of the people that have sponsored one of my sites. I didn’t make a ton of cash off any sponsorships, but it out performed AdSense, and networking connections are worth much more than pretty much any sponsorship.

Check out the full article on Problogger.net.

Over on Blogging Tips, Kelby Carr has put out a post that gives some details pertaining to the Google Sandbox.

I didn’t realize how many people did not understand the concept of the Sandbox. The Sandbox is basically a zone that a new site sits in until Google decides it is quality, and should be properly listed in their search engine.

I have to be honest though and say that it has been a huge thorn in my side because I love writing, but my weakness is advertising, and as such, I depend greatly on Google to send me some traffic.

Here is a snippet from the article:

How do I get out of the Sandbox?
First of all, don’t panic. Don’t start second-guessing yourself and tinkering with your entire site. The single best thing you can do to get out of the Sandbox is write quality content, optimize your site and pages for search engines, and repeat. You also need to have patience.

Here are musings about that from Big Oak:

The quick answer to this is yes, there is a way out of the sandbox, but you will not like the answer. The answer is to simply wait. The sandbox filter is not a permanent filter and is only intended to reduce search engine spam. It is not intended to hold people back from succeeding. So eventually, if you continue to build your site as it should be built, you will leave the sandbox and join the other established websites.

If Google is filtering you when it comes to highly competitive keywords, try to find other ways to promote your site. You shouldn’t be solely depending on Google anyways as their rankings change constantly, and an article that might get you thousands of visitors one day, may only bring in one visitor the next.

A crazy long title from Darren today with his view on how commenting on other blogs can hurt your blog’s brand.

Most of them have to do with being lazy, or spamming, but they are still great things to keep in mind when you are commenting on someone else’s blog.

2. Excessive Self Linking – The practice of leaving links inside posts is not something that bothers me too much – unless it gets excessive. A well placed link back to something you’ve written (or that someone else has written) previously can really add to a conversation – particularly if what you’ve written else where is too long or detailed for the comment thread itself. What does risk annoying others is when you include lots of links to yourself in every comment you make and/or when the links are irrelevant to the topic and/or when you just leave a link without saying anything else. Keep links relevant and in moderation and you’ll find people respond to them well.

Check out the full post at Problogger.net.

Ryan Imel over at Copyblogger has put up a post asking who would miss your blog if it disappeared? He then goes on to talk about how you can avoid being easily forgotten about or replaced.

He gives tips like targetting your audience, being unique, interacting with your readers, and creating content that can’t be duplicated.

Here is a snippet from the article:

You’re reading CopyBlogger because (hopefully) you recognize that your writing has a lot to do with your blogging. In fact, it’s really the most important part. Dumb Little Man, for example, has a pretty lame design and a silly navigational system. But the writing is quality, and the style is unique. The more unique you are, the greater the chance you’ll be missed if you disappear.

I love these types of articles because they remind the best bloggers why they are blogging. Many bloggers don’t take these points and remember them as they work on posts on their blog, thus being pushed into the noise of the millions of blogs being created every day. If you want to stand out from the crowd, memorize these points and make it part of your blogging routine to follow the mentioned tips.

Adnan of Blogtrepreneur has released a post reporting his July income from his blogging efforts, and while it isn’t a full time pay check yet, it is still a great bit of extra coin.

Here is a snippet:

As I kept writing, so my RSS subscribership kept creeping up, passing milestones along the way: 100…200…500. Traffic too has been on the increase and has been up more so ever since I posted the article on 101 Essential Blogging Resources. But most significantly, online revenues have also been increasing, and I feel that it’s finally time to show my community how far they have helped me come.

This July, I managed to surpass all previous records and earn $506.14 from blogging online at Blogtrepreneur.com.

Another proof that metablogging, being patient and learning from other bloggers is key to making money from blogging.

Check out the full breakdown on Blogtrepreneur.com.

One of the things I hate the most is a newly launched blog with one or two posts. I like to see a fair bit of content on a blog before going there as it lets me know how consistently a blogger publishes, and thus if it is worthy to bookmark or even subscribe to via RSS.

Over on Blog Beat, there is a post about this analyzing it from the writer’s side.

Writer’s Block
10 posts is a good bar to set when evaluating your ability to continue to create more content for the site. If you struggle to get to four or five posts how can you expect to continue to create articles month after month? If you can create 10 quality posts in a short amount of time, you most likely have the writing skills and knowledge to carry your blog for months and years.

Check out the site for more reasons to get some initial seed content on your new blog.