The Tail
Because of how a blog works, After only a few months of blogging you end up with a long string of posts on a variety subjects. Sadly, alot of blogs previous posts or tails go to waste never to be seen again. Though hopefully after reading this you’ll show off your tail and use it to increase conversions.

How to use your Tail?
To use your blogs tail it requires a mix of SEO, Comment links, Affiliates and redirects.

1. SEO-On the seo side you should be using a plugin like All-In-One Seo to make WP a bit more seo friendly by noindexing the archives, tags, categories. This will not only rank your homepage a bit better in the google index but will also help to index your previous posts for there keywords as well.

2.Linking- I know this is hard but for each post try to get at least one or two linkbacks to the post page for the keyword(s) it covers. Just linking to your back posts from within other posts will help with this as long as you dont ping your self and have All in one SEO installed correctly.

3. Affiliates- The key to monetizing the tail posts is with a good affiliate program. My favorite is Commision Junction because most of the name brands use them but there are other good networks like azoogle or share-a-sale and to properly monetize your tail you will probally end up using multiple affiliate programs depending on the specific content of the post i.e. if the post is about Apple Computers you would need to use cj to get the affiliate link as thats the network apple uses.

4.Redirects- Alot of blogs focus their monetization efforts primarily on the front page or sidebar, posting ads general to the blogs subject but to make money off your previous posts you will need to place the relevant affiliate links you gained in step 3 into the post itself, more so than you would with the posts on the front page. But because SEO is very important you can’t just place naked affiliate links so mask all your affiliate links with redirects.

Stats
You should of course be using an ad program like Analytics that tells you what keywords people reaching your site are searching for and which posts of yours they are lead to. If you are keeping track of those type of stats you should be able to use the above steps to monetize your tails traffic.

Conclusion:As you see, not much of a secret, but important and profitable just the same. So get to monetizing your tail.

Enter Another Niche

You will not only be amazed at how much easier it is to rank outside of “make money” related keywords but also you aren’t going to have people biting your head off if you post an affiliate link on your knitting blog and the rest of the world actually doesn’t fret too much about a site having ads on it, they expect it too(just dont go crazy) Also its just alot more relaxed blogging out side of the “make money online” niche.

You have an advantage

All you people who have been struggling within the “make money online” niche to get backlinks and rank well in the serps will have a tactical advantage when it comes to less technical blog/site niches. I’m being prejudice but chances are you should be able to get your knitting blog to outrank all the granny’s with their knitting blogs. If you can’t either those are some pretty tech granny’s or you needto learn how to SEO.

SECRET

Not even 10% of my money online comes from this blog. My other 3 sites launched just under a month before this blog and I have managed to get each of them to x,xxx unique/day with almost no work and very little link building. While for this blog I just have recently crossed the xxx uniques/day and have beenspending about 90% of my time online building up this blog. So do the math, 90% of my time for 10% of the profit. I enjoy DigitalORDER more than my other site so its time well spent but from a strictly business standpoint its not a smart thing to do.

Note: I do not knit nor have I ever knitted and hope I have not offended anyone that does.

P.s. Thats not an ad in the upper right, its just an image that fits the post.

Saved by the grace of San Isidro(look it up)

I first found out about BlogRush on saturday and when I first placed the widget on the sidebar all of the blog posts that showed up were from feeds not showing the widget, that were there just so early adopters wouldnt start off with an empty widget. I was fine with this afterall it did just launch a few hours ago. My first disappointment though was when I logged into the blogrush dashboard and saw that it was still under construction but it was just launched and I am pretty patient so I was going to give them 48 of the 24-48 hours before I wrote a negative post on them. 48 hours pass and I started this post going to write about how it was bad form to launch without a ready dashboard but the BlogRush team must have been reading my mind because while I typed the first paragraph they finished the stats portion. Which makes me happy because I am now able to write a decent review on BlogRush.

First Days of Stats

Also Digitalorder got 78 impressions in the network resulting in 4 clicks so thats not that bad of a ctr for free traffic.

Saturate the Temper of the Blogosphere
If you have a rough launch, what its the one thing you can do to appease the tempest monster that is the blogosphere? Offer free stuff to your users. This is exactly what BlogRush is doing, BlogRush built their algorithm so 10% of the impressions created by the combined widgets would remain free so BlogRush could make money by selling off those left over credit. As a thank you for adopting BlogRush early they will be splitting all those credits to any blog that signs up early, At the time of this post this offer was still available so Sign Up and take advantage of the extra credits. If you sign-up with my referall code leave a comment so I can send some linklove your ways.

Make the Most of BlogRush

How succesfull BlogRushworks for you to drive traffic to your blog depends heavily on how good of a post title your write. So here are a few good posts to read to help you write good click causing posts.

• Common BlogRush Mistakes
• Why Some People Always Write Good Post Titles?
• How to write headlines even the dead will respond too?
• Writing Effective Attention Getting Headlines
  

Is it Legal?

First I think its so funny whenever someone asks me if a certain something is legal when they really mean to ask if it violates Googles Terms of Service, so yes BlogRush is legal, you wont go to jail for using it ;). Second, BlogRush does not violate any term of Googles I know of, it doesnt transfer link juice as its javascript and its not artificially creating impressions because you only get impressions when a user chooses to click through to read your post.

What will happen next with BlogRush?

I dont think the first stats are very comforting because everyone has way more credits than the system is able to serve, plus all the “A-list bloggers” that have thousands of people referred are able to get their posts displayed with out showing others posts which isnt good for “smaller” blogs.   Also John Reese was talking about alot of features and upgrades he has planned with BlogRush such as being able to customize the look of the widget and a sister site called trafficjam.com. Reese has the money to keep BlogRush running and doing well but we’ll see in a week or two how well BlogRush actually ends up working.

The Subjective Viewpoint

It is often times difficult to determine if something one writes is readable, for what makes sense in my head may often make no sense to anyone else when I put it into words. The best solution is to have at least two people read all your writings before you distribute them. A colleague to make sure you have no faults within the actual content and someone not from your field to determine if its easily comprehendable.

The Objective Viewpoint

Of course you don’t always have two people available to review everything you write and reviews from people are often times subjective and while its important to get a subject view on something, it always helps to get the objective stance as well. And that is where Gunning,Fog and Flesch come into play. They are readability algorithims. And with all algorithims there are scripts to easily take advantage of them. The script I use is provided by JuicyStudio and its very easy to use. You just type in your url and press enter.

Click Here to Test your sites readability

Results for DigitalORDER

What Does That All Mean?

The bottom three numbers are the ones you should pay attention to, The Flesch Grade and Fog Index are a rough determination of how many years of school it takes to understand the content. Below is a table of Fog Index’s and what resources should have that index. The Flesch Reading Ease is a 0-100 measure of how easy your content is to read, According to JuicyStudio you should shoot towards at least 60-70 so Im quite proud of having a 72.85.

Fog Index	Resources
6	TV guides, The Bible, Mark Twain
8	Reader’s Digest
8 - 10	Most popular novels
10	Time, Newsweek
11	Wall Street Journal
14	The Times, The Guardian
15 - 20	Academic papers
Over 20	Only government sites can get away with this, because you can’t ignore them.
Over 30	The government is covering something up

Disclaimer: These are mathematical formulae and should be used as tools to help you determine where you are at not tell you how you should write, for if you wrote simply to get a good score ,youd end up with a nonsensical string of text.

What is the one thing you will do when finished typing the comment? You click submit.

The problem lies in that instead of making it simple and allowing you to reach the submit button by pressing tab once and then enter, they make it to where you have to scroll down and click submit with your pointer.

You’re probally thinking this isnt that big of a deal but for those of us with laptops and average resolutions(1024×768) this really is a pain.

Maybe I’m over reacting, what do you think? Should the tab from typing the comment go directly to the submit button or instead to advertising like Shoemoney does or to the search bar like Ben of Bloggingexperiment does?

Update: I looked through the Brians Threaded Plugin code and the bug that caused this annoying little problem is that Brian simply forgot to give the submit button a tab index. Im surprised this has yet to be fixed within the plugin itself, its so easy.

So to solve this problem all you have to do is assign a tab index to the button.

Current:<input onclick=”onAddComment();” name=”addcommentbutton” type=”button” id=”addcommentbutton” value=”Add comment” />

Fix:<input onclick=”onAddComment();” name=”addcommentbutton” type=”button” id=”addcommentbutton” value=”Add comment” tabindex=”5″ />

Digitalpoint-this was the first forum I was an active member of and starting out doing anything online I suggest starting at DP, they have a free Buy/Sell/Trade section and threads about anything you can think of.

SitePoint-this forum is similiar to DP but taken to another level, the B/S/T section is pay only so that weeds out alot of the spam offers, they also have a really good contest section where you can compete for “jobs”. They have a book and kit section where you can buy some pretty good resources, a few are free. Also they have a large collection of videos that cover a variety of webmaster related topics. The content on SP is about one level above DP experience wise so when you start to get tired of the noobs on DP upgrade to SP.

TheBlogginExperiment-this is a pretty new forum started by sara(ses5909) and I am really liking it so far, its entirely blog related and a very good community. If you write a blog definently check it out.

DeviantArt-This is an art “forum” I use forum lightly because the forum is a very small part of it. The main focus is the Galleries where you can showcase all your art. You can also purchas and sell prints of art. Ive been a member of DeviantArt for almost 4years(betcha cant find my profile) and I am really impressed at the quality of most of the art. Also for those not as artistically inclined you can use deviant art to search for premade photoshop icons or for an artist to hire.

Also I just registered for WickedFire after a strong referral so we’ll see about them.

These are just the main forum communities I actively partcipate in, Im a member of a few more but not actively and I really believe their isnt really great benefit to being a member if your not going to be active. If you are an active member of a community that I didnt mention and fell people should know about please leave a comment.

As this is a security update fixing at least one pretty nasy hole, you really should upgrade to 2.2.3.

If you want to know exactly why you should upgrade here are the bugs and problems fixed with this release and which specific files were changed.

I signed up with payperpost about a year ago but I havent done anything with my account because I was and am still against being paid to write about something. Though my qualms with the issue arent as big anymore now that I’ve learned more about how they work and that I can choose to be paid for products I would have written about for free.

Their Affiliate Program just makes Sense

The main reason I’m linking them is their unique referal program, they do have a program where they pay $10 per new referal but the set up I like is their “review my post” program. When someone clicks on this badge and signs up with PayPerPost, a special $7.50 opportunity is created asking them to write a post in their blog, reviewing a post on your blog, and when they complete the post about your post you both get paid $7.50. I dont know of a sweeter set up then getting paid for having others talk about your blog.

On top of their awesome referal program, they have a marketplace in which you can browse offers and get paid to write about them, I didn’t see any open offers that Id want to write about in my category but Im sure there are alot of very relevant offers in some of the entertainment categories, so if you do movie reviews or something similiar, check them out.  They’ll give you $20 just for doing a blog review on them.

Random Requirement

Even though my blog had the stats to get accepted it was denied because I didnt have the standard archive as you can now see in my sidebar so if your going to try them out make sure you have a standard archive otherwise youll have to apply twice.

If you take advantage of one of their offers leave a comment and tell me how it worked out.

I was nervous about putting up the top commentor plugin because I feared it would promote comment spam. In the end though I realized preventing spammers from getting the links is my responsibilty and people who comment regularly should be given the link love that is the Top-Commentor plugin.

For now its set up to give a link to the top 5 commentors of the month, so enjoy.

Heres where you go to download the plugin:Click

If you havent heard, October 15 is Blog Action Day and on that day bloggers will unite to put a single issue on peoples mind, this years issue theme to be covered is the Environment. So on October 15 hopefully every blogger will do one of two things…

1. Publish a post on their blog which relates to an issue of their own choice pertaining to the environment.

Posts do not need to have any specific agenda, they simply need to relate to the larger issue in whatever way suits the blogger and readership. Our aim is not to promote one particular viewpoint, only to push the issue to the table for discussion.

2. Commit to donating their day’s advertising earnings to an environmental charity of their choice. There is a list of “official” Blog Action Day charities on the site, however bloggers are also free to choose an alternate environmental charity to donate to if they wish.

This is a wonderful Idea and I believe it will bring about alot of good change and action, which is why DigitalOrder and all the bloggers I sponsor through PA Publishing ,will be taking part in it. But something about this many people being all gung-ho about blog action day didn’t sit right with me. Why does it have to be a single day? Why can’t bloggers and people in general promote unity and good change in the world everyday?

“It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.” -Albert Einstein

So I got to thinking, I talk the talk when it comes to the bettering the world, I’ve written many essays, articles and debated countless times on issues like “how to better third world nations” or “which alternative energy source is the most feasible”. Other than talk though I have done nothing to put into play any of my ideas to better the world.Wishing to rectify that, I and a few good people I managed to convince are launching a non-profit organization. The name isnt definent yet but are mission statement or goal is clear “To Research and Implement the means to an increased Quality of Life for All”. I have a ton of projects in mind that will help alot of people in the long term not just a one time thing. I’m getting ahead of myself though as I still have a bit of paperwork and fundraising before we can start helping people. I just wanted to share that and see what yall think about it. (I know I haven’t released much.)

Also if you look in the bottom sidebar youll notice a chip-in widget, Im raising money for something extra special for Blog Action Day and to aid with the launch of the Non-Profit (more info to be released closer to October 15.)

If you are a blogger, I strongly recommend signing up and participating in Blog Action Day or emailing me if you’d like to be involved with what I have planned.
If you arent a blogger, stay tuned or email me as you wont need to be a blogger to take part in what I have planned for October 15.

Hopefully you’re thinking “okay I get it Jacob I need to be pinging but what and how should I ping?” and its very simple(at least if you are using wordpress). Open up your Admin Panel>Options>Writing and then scroll down and youll see a section titled update services. In that box you are going to paste the links below. The links are courtesy of the WP codex and are just the most popular sites you should be pinging.

http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

And that is pretty much it for Pinging. See told you its very simple. If you have any comments or your own tips about pinging as always feel free to leave a comment.