PAULA NEAL MOONEY

by Paula Neal Mooney If you're itching to get more people to read your blog, try my method of gaining readers. Sometimes I'll type up a subject that's close to my heart. Other times, I'll do a little research first to make sure it's a topic that will bring me more blog traffic. Here's an example of the method I used to increase my blog traffic: 1 - Check for the most-recent search terms. My favorite up-to-date search term lists are Technorati's Popular and Yahoo's Buzz Log overall movers and shakers list. 2 - Start from the bottom up. Search terms that are at the bottom of the list, like Frenchie Davis in the 20th position right now, are ones that still have time to gain more popularity. Names at the top might already be well-covered on the net. 3 - Use Google's suggestions to find the best keywords... ...for your blog post title and to repeat throughout the post. Once I began typing in the name Frenchie Davis in the Google search box on my Interne...

by Paula Neal Mooney Every day I read a bunch of blogs. Some catch my eye. Some catch my interest. Some catch my heart and win me as a loyal reader. Others don't. Why not? Mostly due to the following blogging sins, some of which I've been guilty of: * No sign-up method Though I prefer email sign-up boxes cause I tend to read the blog posts that are pushed out to me in emails, others prefer to RSS subscribe. If you're a blogger and don't know how to get that little orange button on my sidebar on your blog or at least an email subscribe box, Google it and find out. You're losing would-be loyal readers. * Slow-loading blogs You can't always help this, but studies show that us impatient readers only wait an average of four seconds for a web page to load before we move on. If you're hosting your blog on your own or another slow-loading server, move it! * It's boring Be interesting. * No pics I'm not a guy, but I'm still a visual creature. Give me som...

by Paula Neal Mooney Back when I first heard of the PayPerPost blog ad network that pays approved bloggers money to post, I jumped all over it. My blog already met the 90-day-old requirement, but I hadn't blogged that often. I hurriedly created more than 20 posts and submitted this blog for approval. But I didn't read the fine print and got rejected. "You skipped a whole month!" replied one of the PayPerPost checkers. She was right. I calmed down and kept my nose to the blogging grindstone, and before long, PayPerPost accepted this blog. I've posted 7 perfectly-numbered posts for them (not including this one) thus far and they've accepted each one and paid me for all seven. PayPerPost's New Payment Model Pays Bloggers More And lately, PayPerPost has redesigned their payment model in a smart way. Instead of lumping all bloggers in the same ilk and offering all of us the same payment, PayPerPost's clients are now paying attention to Google Pagerank, Ale...

by Paula Neal Mooney Much thanks to High Paying Keywords for leading me to this InternetBazaar posting about how to get your Google Adsense ads to make you more money by performing better . They are great tips that can translate to getting more money from Google Adsense -- and the thought-process can work for whatever other ads you run as well. You can read the full explanation of the tips over at the above-linked sites, but here's how I'm applying them: 1. Tear Down the Borders Check. I've been removing borders on the Google text ads -- don't think this applies to the image ads that I love. I also remove the borders on all my Amazon ads. 2. Use Matching Fonts Ehh...I can't always match the font of my site's content to my AdSense ads. 3. Use Matching Colors Ditto. But I do try to blend them as much as humanly possible. 4. Use Blue Links Love the blue links! 5. Use Big Ads I love this tip. Yesterday I switched to the Large Rectangle (336x280) that Internet Baza...

by Paula Neal Mooney Over the past three days I've tracked an amazing phenomenon whereby my blog's pageviews have increased dramatically -- more than doubled, in fact -- which I can attribute to only one thing. Outside of that Holy Ghost fire , that is. This was all free . I've yet to invest in the Google Adwords campaign that I plan to launch to drive up blog traffic like John Chow as done. No, I moved up my StatCounter.com VIEW MY STATS button to a more visible location. While the average number of visitors on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of last week remained consistent as shown on this graph, the following Friday, Saturday and Sunday saw my pageviews increase and double on average. Viewers must find it interesting to click on the VIEW MY STATS button then click on features like POPULAR PAGES , which gives a good current breakdown of my most popularly-viewed pages. (Once I actually increase my log size file greater than 100 meg -- I'm assuming -- this will ev...

by Paula Neal Mooney Looks like the big news today is that PayPerPost.com is going to start paying us posties to video-blog about specific products in a different manner than before . Woo hoo! What's interesting is that Eric Berlin writes that PayPerPost will pay for "new video ad products, targeted channels, and payment based upon traffic rankings from Alexa, Google, and Technorati." Man am I thanking God today for all the tips received from Bonnie Calhoun about joining Bloggin' Chicks (see my blogroll in the sidebar and click on that for more info) and that I posted those 2000 Bloggers Projects pics on my blog (don't click that link unless you have a fast connection, cause as Bonnie correctly warned, this can truly slow down your dial-up traffic). My already rising Technorati ranking is 8,400-ish right now! Praying my Google Pagerank will rise as well... Sure, Ted Murphy is targeting the Top 100 bloggers, but let's hope and pray the PayPerPost bigger o...

by Paula Neal Mooney Now that my blog traffic numbers are increasing -- thank You, Jesus! -- I'm getting questions from various folks about how to get people to read your blog. So I figured I'd better start blogging about what I've learned thus far on how to increase blog traffic: * Blog every day, even several times per day. I got this tip from Fred Wilson of A VC , who is quoted in the December 2006 issue of Business 2.0 as saying, "I've found that having something new on the blog every day is the single most important thing to building an audience." * Use sensational headlines... Fred continued, and I agree with him. Yesterday I created a post called Ellen Pompeo Playboy Pics Reveal... that I think will get lots of hits just from that enticing title alone. I'll keep checking Google Analytics, which gives bloggers all sorts of great data analysis about how folks are finding you and what posts they're reading. * Post interesting pics... ... with ...

God bless those folks over at ProBlogger for this post about using AdsBlackList to block "made for adsense" sites created just to pay out pennies per click. I'll let you know when I earn more than the .21 cents my Google Adsense account is sitting at right now. I can just smell the big bucks rolling in! Thanks for reading! Bookmark or blogroll me at http://www.paulamooney.blogspot.com/ and drop back in some day to see what I'm up to next. Blessings and love, Paula Tags: make , money , blogging , earn , more , pay , per , click , addicted , to , a , blog , just blog it , do , it