Open call for bloggers and writers
May 29, 2008
Hello everyone, it is that time again to open our doors for new bloggers to become our guest bloggers.
But there is a twist this time!
Unlike our last open call, we are changing the requirements and rules to join the team. Due to a very high demands and over 50 bloggers responded to our announcements and updates, we had to up the requirements.
Now, due to recent blogs merging into one, this blog is not about marketing only, instead you can blog about these major subjects:
- Online Marketing
- Blogging Tips
- Web 2.0
- Social Networking
- New services
- eBay
- New electronics and gadgets
- Global warming issues
- Living green
- More… (Check available categories)
There are 2 levels to blog with us now:
First level is as a guest blogger you will not receive any payments for your posts until you qualify for the next level. The only requirement for this level is that all your posts will have to be approved first and we might edit some posts.
Of course you can add any links (Affiliate links allowed, but no ads links), you will also benefit from the great exposure this blog has and more links to your own blog or business.
At this level we will only work through email. For more details and to apply please contact us through the contact form from the menu on top of this blog.
To qualify for the next level, here is the requirements:
We will need your commitment of at least 5 blog posts a week (More is better), the second requirement is to reach 100 posts before we start sending you payments for each post.
Benefits for the second level are:
- Access to our admin area to post instantly.
- Payments per each post are between $25 to $250 depending on the quality of the post and some other factors that we will discuss in details with you. (Payments sent within 24 hours by PayPal).
- An all exclusive discounts to advertising on our blog (Advertise your own business or sell advertising and keep your profit).
- Depending on your location, we will send you and fully cover all expenses to trade shows around the world for your own reviews.
- Occasionally we will send you gadgets and new cool tools, yours to keep from big names. (We will only ask for a good review).
- Exclusive free pass to upcoming Guru Of Sales program/school (To be announced later this year).
- Monthly meetings with our entire team, locally in person or live video.
Even more to come soon.
For both levels above, all we ask is that your article to be of good quality and a minimum of 150 words each.
Keep in mind any link you will provide in your article will be a No-Follow link.
To apply or if you have any questions please go to the contact form through the menu on top of this page. Make sure the subject line contains the words “Guest Blogging”
I am personally looking forward to work with you.
10 Blog Traffic Tips From Yaro Starak
May 24, 2008
This is from the desk of Yaro Starak ( The reason I started blogging as a business):
In every bloggers life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.
Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.
It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.
Top 10 Tips
10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.
9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.
You don”t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.
8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).
7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.
Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.
6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it’’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.
This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.
5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.
4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.
To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.
3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!
2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.
How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.
1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.
I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.
This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and the reason I started blogging. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.
To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:
ScribeFire released 2.0.2
April 25, 2008
One of my favorite blogging tools and top firefox addons is Scribefire, Although if I am not on firefox, I will be using my other favorite tool (Windows live writer), but I can tell you that this tool is a blogger’s dream, if you are a blogger and you do a lot of online research like me, then you will love using this tool.
ScribeFire is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser that integrates with your browser to let you easily post to your blog: you can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog.
I think that says it all. I often get a lot of RSS feeds through firefox that I want to blog about. With ScribeFire I don’t have to leave that page, I can actually have a split screen and browse to any page I like and write my post all in the same time.
ScribeFire has just released version 2.0.2 and it is worth checking out at www.scribefire.com
Jon Stewart Daily show BAD Jerry Seinfeld
April 16, 2008
Although I liked the comedy (That was about nothing) but Jerry used to be one of my favorites, until bee movie came out and he had to promote it.
Back in November of 2007, one of the places he had to promote on another favorite of mine: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Every thing was fine until the end when Jerry made fun of blogs acting like it’s a bad word or something!!! That’s a big no no Jerry!
Too bad it was a day before the writer’s strike, so the show was on repeat for quite a while. But even after the show started again when the strike was over, Jerry never came back or talked about his close to an insult comment. Only thing he did was to cut that ridicules looking hair cut of his 
On the other hand, Last Sunday, April 14th was declared by the famous Darren from ProBlogger.net as bloggers appreciation day.
Thank you Darren for thinking of all of us.
Quick: WordPress 2.5 Sneak Peek
March 18, 2008
Less than 4 hours ago I heard the great news that might change my life as a blogger:
WordPress 2.5 is almost here
As a reminder (I have been waiting to discover 3.0) But I am showing some love for 2.5
A customizable dashboard, multi-file upload, built-in galleries, one-click plugin upgrades, tag management, built-in Gravatars, full text feeds, and faster load times sound interesting? Then WordPress 2.5 might be the release for you. It’s been in the oven for a while, and we’re finally ready to open the doors a bit to give you a taste.
For more great options and some nice screen shots go here:
