Today Google launched their KNOL (Short for Knowledge) service. A user contributed knowledge base that can take a huge bite out of for instance Wikipedia. But KNOL has a much more interesting aspect.

It is a showcase service for authors, and it has more in common with for instance Digg and Propeller than it does with Wikipedia.

Proprietary Information

On KNOL, the author owns the article. No more moderations where overzealous people nitpick on the smallest details and undo every change that they feel is wrong; regardless of its true merit. On KNOL, the article and author is voted on as wholes. No one but the author can modify it. So in that sense, it is more related to Social Media than it is to Wikipedia. And now we are beginning to see the genius of it.

The Bloggers Dream (or Nightmare)

This creates a very interesting new aspect for online marketers. Especially those that have spearhead knowledge in combination with great writing skills. These authors can now showcase not only their work, but themselves on something that proves to be a very interesting battleground for bloggers. It’s no longer a battle of “who has the most friends on Facebook and Stumble” This one is going to be fought with good old-fashioned writing skills and sweat of the writer’s brow.

The KNOL Effect Is Coming

Now, the best writers, will undoubtedly be able to drive massive amounts of traffic to their blogs, Much like the Digg Effect, a top voted article on any subject is bound to bring traffic in the thousands when KNOL gets established.

The problem here is that KNOL May take over a large part of the referencing capacity from other Social media sites. Especially for “normal” users who are already used to trusting Google with delivering the content they are looking for.

We may see a very large, and quick shift in traffic generation. We will definitely see changes occurring around us when the current big names scramble to counter whatever effect it has on them.

Time is no longer an issue – Were back to Quality

On Digg, you are the flower of the day, here one minute, gone the next.

But because KNOL published works are not going to be time sensitive. It is no longer enough to be the only person that day that posts on a topic. You have to be the best permanent to claim that particular spot. Now quality articles written with the utmost precision will be the best way to create a following.

One Digg - Hold the LinkBait

On many social media sites, Link bait and Flashy headlines combined with funny shtick photos is the mainstay of popularity. KNOL promises something else.

This is a new world, one where being the best social networker may no longer be enough to get anywhere. KNOL may just have cornered the market on quality.

Verification of Authors and SEO

Another interesting thing is how the voting of verified authors may or may not influence the search engine ranking of sites associated with that author in general. THIS may very well be the largest impact KNOL has on the online marketing world.

Google certainly has the power to penalize authors who are viewed as poor writers and translate that into their search algorithms.

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This is not something where “wait and see” will be a good plan. Don’t for a second think that a social media endeavor, launched by Google, and with its sights set so squarely on some of the largest services out there will have anything less than earth shattering effects on the scene.

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Click through rates are about as hard to get solid facts on as the Roswell incident.

Since Google Adsense prohibit anyone from revealing their CTR. Finding out if you are doing something right or wrong is hard if not impossible when you are starting out. No one can (or wants to) share. And the web is filled with Promises of astronomical CTR rates. Well, if you are disappointed in what you are getting, maybe this will help.

What I am going to talk about is how traffic sources affect your CTR.

We know that search engine traffic is better than most other sources for CTR. But what about the rest?

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Since I can’t disclose my clickthrough rates according to the TOS, I’ve converted what is generally accepted as the best source. The Organic Google Search to a benchmark of 100% and proportioned the remainders to it.

50% score means you get half as many clicks from this source as you would from a Google Search.

Exactly how I did this is my little secret. (i can’t give everything away) But here are the results. 

Search Engines

1. Google Organic Searches, - Benchmark 100%

2. Yahoo Organic Searches  86%

3. Other Search Engines  73%

Social Bookmarks

4. StumbleUpon 3%

5. Digg 3%

6. Reddit  2%

7. Mixx  1 %

Trackback Links (others linking to articles)

8. Link lists  13%

9. Articles Referencing 36%

Direct traffic

10. RSS / Atom 24%

11. Unknown 24%

Comments (commenting on other blogs)

12. Short Comments  9%

13. Long Comments  46%

Some Conclusions

Social Networks are the worst for Clickthrough rates. They do make up for this somewhat by the amount of traffic you can get from them. But on average, you need between 30 and 100 times more hits from a social bookmark to get the same amount of hits as you would from a Google organic search.

What is more interesting is that commenting on other blogs is Great CTR traffic

Making Long pointed comments that add value is by far the most effective traffic you can directly control and get decent CTR from.

Having people link to you is also lucrative.
Link lists (see point 8 ) where people make lists of different sites and blogs are decent for traffic, but bad for CTR. However, if you can get someone to write and reference your article ( see point 9 ) , the clickthrough rate is much better.

Recommendations

SEO Is king for clickthrough rates. You have to focus on your SEO to get more of the best traffic. which still is search engines.

After that we are back to the old "quality first."

If you can get your posts to be reviewed or referenced and linked to, you will get better clickthrough rates, but to get links, you need to write good posts.

The best traffic you can control directly is the comment traffic, but you have to write quality comments adding something on others blogs to get the most out of it.
Short comments get little traffic and the traffic is not good for CTR.

RSS traffic is decent. But to get Rss subscribers, you have to write good quality content.

Method:

Results measured on three blogs with a total of 23.434 hits

- I used three basically static blogs with the same template.
- All blogs were wordpress and self hosted.
- The same article was posted on all three blogs to simplify separation
- Ads had the same location, and were identically formatted
- I never promoted any of the blogs under my own name
- I used friends to submit to social bookmarks, and I never voted
- I commented under pseudonyms. Using normal names
- Submitters were not on my friends lists for any of the social bookmarks

Only sources that averaged 50 hits were counted. Many social networks are therefore not reported. only the ones here averaged over this limit.

Comments were only submitted to large and notable blogs on the topic. With alexa ranking under 100,000

In “The Extinction of Dinosaur Marketers,” I discussed the problems of bringing the old school of hardcore sales and pushy advertising into the new online marketplace. We are starting to see a new trend blooming that is showing exactly this problem.

This morning I read an article by Neal Levitt, who is discussing the shift from online advertising to online promotions; Coupons, Contests, Giveaways etc. and we can see clearly that fear and lack of understanding is the driving force behind this change.

In the article, Rob Enderle states the problem very clearly. “Promotions are typically tied to actual sales; advertising is vastly harder to measure. You may never know for sure whether an advertising program is truly successful, but a promotion’s success or failure tends to be rather obvious,”

Microwave Marketing

So we are back to what I was discussing in the Extinction Series. It’s not about the actual results, it’s about being able to squeeze the results in to an easy to understand and immediately available metric. Instant gratification rules the show still. It’s the microwave society thinking I’ve been warning about.

Problem is, you aren’t dealing with the same ballgame anymore, now that customers are forcing us to accept that they are individuals with which you need to create a functioning and lasting relationship. You can’t measure the single sale result as a measure of success. The easy to understand metric may be a comfortable and familiar feeling. But to rely on single sale as measure of success is suicide in the age of customer interaction.

Thought Exercise

Which would you mention as the top three websites right now?

Yahoo - Google – Youtube – Myspace – Facebook.. You should have had at least one or two of those In your top threes. Now, what do all of these have in common?

They are user driven – and – none of them are focused on you. Yahoo and Google, provides searches, where your customers can find you at their leisure. Youtube, Myspace, and Facebook are communities where your customers can talk about you when they want to. Although you can buy advertising on Google and Yahoo, your ad will only get seen or clicked on when that is what the customer did a search for.

Any and all attempts to circumvent this, and create an artificial ingress point into your customers interactions with eachother will be considered spam.

Experiment

Create a page with a great sales promotion. Something extremely good, and submit it to Digg or any other voter driven system. Then watch how fast you get slammed with negative feedback and your submission gets buried.

If you think this is irrelevant. Maybe you are thinking that this is a problem with the nature of Digg more than a problem with the approach. Think again. Guess who just got annoyed with you? It was a cross section of your customers. And they just let you know what they think about direct advertising and promotional pushes invading their space.

All these networks are nothing without the users. These users are showing you exactly what they think of the way you are trying to talk to them, and these users are your customers when they leave that particular site. So to think that this is not a great way to check your customers’ reaction to your particular approach is short-sighted at best.

Advertising or Promoting?

It’s funny how the old school thinkers are turning these against each other, when in the new marketplace, they are completely interdependent. They are doing this because the harder to measure metric of online advertising is branding. And branding just doesn’t translate well into an excel sheet.

You can, and SHOULD offer your customers great value, which can be done with measurable systems like giveaways, coupons etc. And you can use contextual online advertising to drive them to the place where they can see it. But you can’t do either without the other. Advertising without having a conversion in mind is fairly brainless. But to do a sales promotion without driving targeted traffic to it is even worse. Now, the reason advertising works for this is because advertising online (when done right) is contextual.

Lets go Viral – Nope… too late

What the thinking behind online promotions is, is that it hopes to drive a viral market. The promotion is intended to create a buzz on its own and make people talk about it. This is actually not a bad idea at all.. Have you started yet? Oops. You missed it!

Once this becomes the standard way of squeezing the square peg into the round hole, people will stop doing it. Once these promotions become the mainstay of every online venture, no one will want to hear a word about a promotion anymore.

Just by writing this post I’ve educated a couple of bloggers that may stop writing about promotions as a result. So you are either ready to go now, or you are probably too late.

The intermediary step is to try and fake it, With undisclosed pay per post articles for instance. But that time has passed too, the social networks have educated each other and undisclosed promotions are getting a lot of negative feedback now. If you at any point make the mistake of thinking that the customer can’t recognize a sales pitch a mile away, you missed out on the real opportunity. To build a relationship based on their expectations, not your need to make a quick buck.

Natural Recommendation Is the Only Lasting Approach

Your customers will talk about you, when you simply meet their needs and requirements, and do it with their end satisfaction in mind. Satisfaction will drive discussion and recommendations naturally. Honest opinions and reviews from trusted sources will never be out of date.

The forced discussion started dying as soon as it became a marketing idea.

Whatever your thinking is for using promotional activities, interactive systems or contextual advertising online, you have to always step back and consider the value to the customer of not only the promotion, but the way you are advertising the promotion.

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When you meet their needs, they will meet yours. If you do it well enough, they will come back to do it over and over again.

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We know that social networks like Digg, Reddit, and Stumble are great for gross traffic, but often send quick stop visitors who don’t convert well to ad-clicks and sales.

But how are Social Network users at converting to other social networks? Will a Digger Stumble your post and vice versa? Many do use more than one network, so this would appear to be common at first glance. Guess again.

In fact, this is almost as uncommon as ad clicks. Apparently even though many use both Stumble and Digg, there is a definite lack of transition. It appears that the users are "stuck" on the network they arrive on. Even those that like and digg an article when they arrive from Digg, are unlikely to stumble it.

This is of course a shame for the site. But, more importantly it’s a missed opportunity for the Visitor.

Quick Profile Building

The smart Social Media Networker will use one network to build their profile on the others. Building a profile relies on participating in the network, which means submitting and voting for good articles. Finding good articles can be very time consuming, unless you use one to find for the other.

Once your profile becomes better, you will start attracting other people that are actually interested in your submissions. You will get quality followers organically and can stop adding friends in bulk on your lunch breaks.

Use The Resource You Already Have

A page or post that is currently doing well on one network can be a great submission resource for any visitor. If you can find an article that is seeing good feedback on stumble, and it hasn’t been dug yet. Chances are that your submission will translate well into Digg, which will get. Same goes for all the other networks.

Strong profiles gives you more power to influence traffic in the future. Spend 10-20 minutes a day on your social network and leverage one profile against the other. You’ll see both grow to powerful traffic drivers in very short time.

So don’t forget to

And 

101 Reasons Digg is Burying Itself

and

7 Ways To Get Front Paged

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So you want to know why your posts aren’t making Digg’s front page?

I’m guessing it’s because you wrote something original, it had quality, and you didn’t lie or put a number in the headline.

Content is King Crap

To be big on Digg, you should forget quality, and write something that is either half true or just make a list about something. Anything, it doesn’t matter. You’ll get a lot more Diggs if you just put 5 ways to do something than you will by just describing how to do one thing really well and forget about the other 4 ways.  Actually make it 7 or 10, those are apparently better than lists of 6 or 11, Never mind that you’ll have to come up with something brainless to fill the last slots, it’s more important to get the number right.

Forget Content It’s all About the Headline Anyway

You have to write a huge audacious headline. Just like this one, and then somehow stretch the post to the breaking point until you can sort of almost tie it in to the message as a whole.

In this case, it has nothing to do with anything but to prove the absurdity of it. I’m betting that I’ll get someone to Digg this and if it hits the front page, I’ll go drown myself in a bottle of scotch. Then again, since I’m peeing all over Digg here, AND have the audacity to write an original piece, that’s about a snowballs chance in hell anyway.

For Gods sake, DON’T Stay on Topic!

The worst thing for a Digg hungry Blogger is to be on topic and stay there.

If you have a focus and work to stick to your topic you risk having the same people - Your loyal readers - Digg it. And when these same people Digg your site too often, people scream vote gaming, which gets you buried in a heartbeat.

So in other words, you can’t write on the same topic and appeal to a core audience if they happen to be diggers too. Then you are out of the game. Best to write about something completely unrelated. Change your focus everyday, it’s not like you have to know what you are talking about when you write Diggable posts.

WTF is Going on Here?

You want as many WTF comments as possible. WTF is the Nobel Prize of Digg. The Accolade of accolades.

Good writing practise be damned! Write something controversial, let’s make some hair brained claims and as many slippery slope arguments as possible. Don’t worry about accuracy, the less of that commodity you have the more WTF’s you get and the better off you are on Digg.

Re-Hash, Steal, Cheat and Borrow

There is one more thing that works, which is what we see all the time, Re-hashing news that fit the profile to some extent. Have one big news story hit, and you’ll see 200 versions of it in submissions. Now it just a matter of who did the best job of stealing it, and had the best person submitting it for them. Again, screw copyrights, never mind academic honesty. This is Digg! We don’t deal with what’s right, only what gets a couple more WTF’s.

This is by far the best way to get a front page hit, submit news that you just steal off CNN or NY Times with some half baked comment of your own attached to it.

Original content sucks anyway. On Digg it’s all about reading the same news over and over, learning something new or actually hearing an original thought is just too confusing. Canned spam is what you want if you want to be popular.

The Stupefying Algorithm

Now, if you want to have some integrity left in your posts. You need the support of power users to get anywhere on Digg. In other words, you need someone with a fan base that Diggs their stuff. So how did they get there? By promoting as much crap as possible until they earn the right to post good stuff.

The more popular posts they have had in the past, the more chance of getting one to the front page again. In other words, a system that claims to work against vote gaming has bastardized itself to where vote gaming is the only thing that works.

Unless you want to follow the system above, you have to either become a power digger yourself, which means submitting as many posts following the above criteria as possible.  Or get one that has done the same before and now has the power user status behind them.

So the system is set up to become the tabloid of the social media. Unless you are tied in with a power user, you have to submit the “Obama gives birth to own head” post.

Power Diggers Control the only quality submissions, and they are of course tied in together in many ways. So you end up with the biggest vote gamers being supported by the system. (That sentence alone should get this post buried so fast my laptop will explode)

The normal users without connections fight the link bait game where selling your soul for a Digg hit is just about the only way to get noticed.

Just be prepared - when you succumb to the Digg game, your readers will end up being those that think Obama really is Usama’s son and that there really is 7 foolproof ways to make a million in 9 seconds.

The only good thing i see coming out of this is the supermarket tabloids starting to look respectable.

I’m sorry i have to run and read the latest shout about how Google and Microsoft have secretly banded together to take over the world.

See you tomorrow.

As much as I love the big sites like MySpace and Facebook for their incredible and innovative impact on the web and social marketing, I also hate them for being such a mess to get anything really useful out of.

If you look at these massive sites, they cater to pretty much everyone. Getting a piece of useful information out of them, you first have to become a wiz at using their filters to get rid of what you don’t want. Even then, you are more often than not presented with a large selection of mostly entertaining but useless information.

But there is hope on the horizon.

The Opposite of Google

Relevance is the basic of why Google is so big. Its strength has always been to give you what you want, when you want it. They do the filtering for you, and you get relevant results immediately.

In a social network, they try to accomplish this by adding subgroups, filters, search functions and other means, but it is still user driven to the nth degree. This means that spammers have free roam of these networks; and will use the broadest possible definition of every keyword to get their information on your screen. As soon as you step outside the boundaries of your personal group of trusted friends you are presented with the exact opposite of Google. Vast amounts of non-relevant information.

The Future - Targeted Social Media Networks

This week we saw GLCzone.com go live. A niche social media site that targets bloggers primarily writing about health and personal growth. I’ve had a lot of contact with the owner of this site over the last few months and I’ve begun to see the genius of it all.

What this does is create not only a gathering place for likeminded bloggers, but a powerful resource for readers. For the reader, a niche site will remove a large amount of the non-relevant information by design. Creating a ‘best of both worlds" aggregate where you get a variety of blogs presented to you, but gathered around a topic that is relevant to your current needs.

Niche social media sites provide the missing link in social media evolution. They are the intermediary between Googles high relevance, and Diggs "whatever goes".

Better for Publishers

Granted, a niche social site will not give you the Digg Effect with 100.000 readers crashing your web server. What it will get you are targeted readers, with a clear intent of looking for what you have to offer. It makes sense for publishers to be part of a targeted network rather than trying to scream over the noise of a major site.

Bloggers and site publishers who participate in niche sites are likely to get much higher rates of visitors converting to loyal readers. Niche sites do the work of filtering out the rest for you.

Although the Digg effect is missing, this is the only drawback, the rest of your metrics should see a significant improvement with niche site traffic. Less bounce, longer stays with more page-views and higher conversions.

Although sites like Digg are never going to go away, they do embody "Quantity over Quality". For bloggers that are only interested in seeing their hit counters go up, that’s great. But it does little for those that are looking for people to actually become loyal readers and commenters or convert through sales or ad clicks.

SEO Opportunities

A Niche social media setting also does something very interesting for SEO. These aggregate sites will undoubtedly have a higher pagerank compared to the participating blogs. And since they are topic focused, they compete on many of the same keywords.

That translates into both an opportunity and a threat. The opportunity is that these sites will be Google front page material, causing more readers to land there after a search. Smaller blogs participating in niche sites will get a second chance to be in front of readers’ eyes.

Threats

For those that don’t participate, these niche sites will function as a very powerful "front page blockers" Hogging much of this attractive real estate.

So with SEO in mind, not participating is basically suicide until you can fight these sites on your own. In a sense this is the self-serving strength of the niche site. For small bloggers, not participating will slow any progress down, while participating makes them capable of competing and outperforming almost all of the larger blogs that are not part of these networks.

If you consider the tourism industry you will see how this is already in effect. When you search for a hotel by name or location, chances are you will find hotel review and travel sites before you find the actual hotel’s own webpage somewhere on page 4 of Google.

Better for Readers

The readers that come to a site like GLCzone.com are looking for exactly what it offers. Blogs and information about physical and mental health, when they get there, they will not be distracted by an information overload or be unable to find relevant information hidden behind the link bait titles.

This quickly translates to readers who are generally interested in certain topic areas will be more likely to visit these networks to find information. Since the aggregate sites will show up high in search terms, they are easy to find and will reduce the non relevant onslaught of sites like Digg. A niche social media site will be the needed step between an organic Google search and a wide open social network.

Social Media is about to take the leap towards relevancy.

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Browser stats

If you are attempting to monetize your blog. This is one statistic that will tell you quicker than anything if you are getting "good" traffic to your site.

Quite frankly, Firefox users don’t click on ads.

Go check your statistics, Find a day with a lower click through rate than you normally have. I will bet you that your Firefox percentage was higher that day.

Firefox (depending on where you look) make up about 40% of the internet users. If your statistics are showing that you are getting more than that. You are seeing the "wrong" type of traffic for an advertisement funded blog.

Why is this?

1. It’s already well known that some traffic is pretty "useless" for ad conversions. Stumble, Digg, Propeller, and all the other social bookmarks don’t convert well into clickthrough. Google Organic searches and "surf traffic" do.

2. It’s also well known that bloggers, social bookmark users and other "net-savvy" visitors use Firefox to a much greater extent than the average 40%

Since the users that arrive from social bookmark sites are normally "bad clickers" and since they often use Firefox. You can tell that you are getting the wrong type of traffic by simply reviewing your Firefox percentage.

On days where I have a "normal" distribution of about 57% IE users, 40% Firefox users and 3% "other". I get almost a five times higher click through rate than I do on days when I have a Stumble or Digg heavy traffic day which brings 90+% Firefox browsers.

IE Users Surf - Firefox Users Probe

An IE user is more likely to actually surf the web, In other words to follow the links from one page to the next. Going with the natural flow of the net, they are there for enjoyment and recreation as much as information gathering. When one of your ads looks interesting enough, they will follow it.

Firefox users on the other hand, do pokes; they start at their favorite place on the web. Digg, Propeller etc. and they will hit a link only to return to the hub when they are done. The "Back" button is a Firefox user’s greatest friend. He or she will poke and probe only so far, and return to the "safe" surrounding of peer reviewed and recommended reads. Ad clicks are not their game, and this is not going to change anytime soon.

If you are a blogger, you probably started out on IE, and as you got more into social networking, you switched to Firefox because of its lower system requirements and better plug-ins. (like those that completely block ad networks.) You probably were a lot more prone to click ads before you got "wise" and switched to Firefox too. If you are a blogger that have been considering to switch to Firefox, I’m betting that you are fairly new to the game.

Links are Firefox Filters

Since Firefox users are less inclined to venture further out than one click from their preferred social media or bookmark site, getting links to your blog will effectively send much more IE users than Firefox users to your blog. IE users will follow links, Firefox users won’t to nearly the same extent. So getting inbound links to your site is imperative. You need them to get both an increased Page rank and since they will send mostly IE users.

This supports what I’ve been saying in the past articles of "The Blogpreneur." You have to build a strong blog with great content, when you do that, you will get links, which in turn will give you both Google, and referrals from other sites. And those hits will probably be much more IE heavy and thereby more click friendly.

Check your browser stats, it will tell you a lot about whether the hits you are getting are likely to hit an ad or not. If your traffic is Firefox heavy, you are not getting what you are looking for.

Check Firefox Ratio Before You buy Ad Space

If you are going to advertise on a site to drive traffic to your site. Ask them what their Firefox percentage is. If its high, it’s probably better to pay per click than to pay a flat monthly rate based on their traffic.

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Are you running a small business on the side?

Maybe you have a small online store, an affiliate site or a monetized blog? If you are, and it’s not making much money, it could be your mindset that’s slowing you down.

If your business really is mostly for fun, it’s no big deal. If you are looking to do as little actual work as possible, and you are happy with whatever income it generates, then great. Keep up the good work and for goodness sake enjoy it. But, if you ever sat and wondered how to squeeze a little more juice out of it’s time to sit back and take stock.

The problem here is the thought pattern of having a “Hobby Business”. It’s a contradiction in terms.

A Hobby COSTS money - A Business MAKES money

You shouldn’t have a Hobby Business, but you can have a Business Hobby. It’s all about the mindset in how you approach it.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have a small operation on the side, with the intent of earning some pocket money, what I AM saying is; the way you use the time allotted, will determine the outcome. Treating it like just a hobby, will result in it becoming one – which means it will probably cost more than it generates.

Even the Small Should Think Big

Whenever you deal with your business, you should think like a mogul. Make solid decisions, stick to them, and see your plans through. How long it takes will depend on how much time and energy you spend, just avoid sitting down on Saturday morning to “see what’s going on.” You’ll flounder around and probably end up fixing what isn’t broken. Approach each and every decision with the clear intent of being Rockefeller. Even if this is your hobby, its more fun to have a hobby that you are successful at.

Set your goal – Make the plan

First step to any successful business is to have a goal, and a plan on how to get there. If you have a side business that you want to do because you think it’s fun, then by all means, set those goals low. But set measurable goals. It’s the single most important way to ensure that you are in fact doing things right.
Once you have your goals, figure out what to do to get there. Pick your plan of attack, and sketch out what the steps are. This way, you can spend the time you have on your side business the most effectively. Not having a plan of attack figured out is the best way to end up wasting your time.

Make your Schedule

Take your steps, and set a schedule on when you want it done. If you don’t want to spend a lot of time every day or week, then spend a little time - But follow your schedule.
When you are running a business as an extracurricular activity the big risk is that you keep getting off track. Having a plan and schedule keeps you from running around in circles.

Measure and Correct

If something isn’t working right, find out why and make the adjustment. Just don’t adjust every time you sit down and do some work. Try to consider that the less time you put in, the longer it will take to get anywhere. So allow things to level out a little before you decide that it isn’t working.

Success is Fun – Having fun Breeds Success

If you break down your overall goals to smaller steps, little things that can be reached on the way, you’ll find yourself being more motivated to get to the next one.

When you reach a goal, celebrate your success. Even if it’s just coffee and donuts with your friends or significant other, allow yourself to be proud of your successes and reached milestones. Sharing your enthusiasm will make those around you enthusiastic about it, and that will be a great motivator.

Give it a Try

Running a business on the side is rewarding in so many ways. It can generate a little – or a lot – of income. It will however with certainty be a growing and educational experience that few other hobbies can measure up to.

If you run it right, it might even become your new career

Good Luck!

Read the rest of the Blogpreneur Series

So you want to go Viral?

Are you sure you haven’t?

When one person spreads your blog or site to another without your direct involvement, you just went viral. When enough people do it at once, you have an epidemic.

What about those 294 hits from Stumble that got you 3 links to your blog? That is the true viral effect of good blogging; the steady spread of good quality posts that will bring a growing flow of readers, which will bring more hits, more readers, more links. The never ending and creeping exponential growth that builds on itself perpetually. This is true viral marketing.

As soon as you realize what viral marketing really is, you’ll realize that what you probably  associated with it, is merely the sensational viral infection. The Ebola level of viral.

Although the Ebola effect is going to be great for your ego the day it hits, it’s going to hit, and disappear. And the traffic you get is probably not going to be based on what you are really about, but more on one single article. If you can’t keep that level, they won’t be coming back for long. The problem here is that the Ebola level isn’t what the smart blogger wants. A blogger wants something that hits, sticks, and keeps spreading.

You Don’t Want to be Ebola, You Want to Be Herpes

Ebola is sensational, it’s a once off event that is hard - if not impossible - to maintain. And since so many are misinterpreting the true value of the “lesser infection” they are all shooting for the sensationalism. Link Bait headlines that are a stretch at best to fit into the article. Fabricating entire stories the list of tricks is long. And it works sometimes, but even when it does, it doesn’t translate to what you want.

You want to target the right people. 100 targeted visitors are better than 1000 random ones any day. Why? because if they are targeted, chances are that you have something they want to see more of. You will get return visits, and referrals, links and comments. As you get those, you’ll get more readers, more people that can spread you to others. That’s viral marketing!

Ebola levels of Viral Marketing are most commonly achieved by creating something amazing that isn’t necessarily well targeted. It’s often funny, shocking, and widely appealing. Which is why it takes off like it does. People like the advertising, but couldn’t care less about the product. Which means that for you to do it again, you have to repeat the feat that didn’t bring you the right people to begin with.

If you shoot for the lower levels, constantly repeating small successes, you will eventually see your spread increasing. When this happens, your chances of hitting those epidemic levels increase every time you post a good article. It goes back to the one percent rule. It’s always better to slowly progress than to have spikes of traffic that quickly disappear.

Instant Gratification - Or Long Term Success?

If you are looking for an ego boost, then it’s great. If you are looking to grown over the long term. It’s better to aim for solid, repeatable quality. When you can bring one person back over and over, you will eventually get passed on to someone else. Repeat readers like RSS Subscribers are your best bet for achieving this.

A company that got it right never had Diggs front page to rely on, for them it was a matter of getting their name out there one person at a time. Every time that person used their service, it spread a little further. No real fireworks, no goofy guy’s home movie to sell them over YouTube.

You might have heard of Hotmail once or twice yourself. They did it by adding their link to the bottom of every email sent from one of their accounts. One at a time, they spread the word.

If you constantly shoot for the Epidemics, you’ll constantly be disappointed. If you aim for a silent spreading infection that perpetuates with every post you make. You are going to see some amazing results.

(Yes, the title of this post is Viral in itself - I’ll let you know how it went)

Can You Do ONE PERCENT Better?

Slow and steady wins the race, but this is a little mental trick to achieve that faster than you think.

It’s the one percent rule. It works because compounding that 1% makes it incredibly powerful. The one percent mindset breaks down those major goals into very manageable concepts.

Each time you do something, do it with the intention of making it one percent better.

-        Writing a post, make it one percent better than your best post

-        Make it one percent better Keyword targeted

-        Increase your subscriptions with one percent

-        Make your comments on other blogs 1% better, giving you 1% more visitors

-        Make 1% better comments in forums

-        Participate 1% more in Social Media

So how effective is this?
Compounding daily over a year. 1% turns into 3854%

Applied on several levels, that compounding will impact every other level as well, resulting in some pretty serious numbers.

Let’s do the math on this

Start with your best day. On this day let’s assume you made a great post that got you:

200 total hits
2 new RSS subscribers
1 Trackback link

If you work every day on being one percent better, you will have 7,540 NEW readers on your post this time next year. That’s over 7000 NEW readers in that one day one year from today.

Total unique visitors in that one year… hold on. 740,000+

Say that you convert +1% of your new readers into RSS subscriptions every day. Which means that your subscriptions go up 1% (Win some-Lose some)
(My conversion rate is 3.4% so this is actually aiming low.)

That’s a total of 7584 new subscribers in a year.

You will have amassed about 3600 links in that year to your blog.

Now apply that to the value of your blog in terms of:

Pricing for advertising.
Number of clicks you are getting on your ads,
Total value of your blog

And you will see that in a year, your blog could be earning a decent income.

Is This Really Possible?

Well you are reading the proof. This blog has been online now exactly 85 days, and the numbers I am seeing are proving the theory. On average, my stats are up 1.1% per day. Yesterday was the first day my Alexa ranking went under 100,000 (62,215) to be exact. Yes it’s a spike, the average fluctuates. But the average increase holds true.

I’ve had horrific days too, when i couldn’t figure out what the…. happened. It’s all part of the daily grind of running a business

I am convinced that the determined, focused, and driven can make a living doing this. Use the tips and tricks I’ve given in the previous Blogpreneur Posts, and you should be able to make a very decent living without doubt. Just remember that it won’t be tomorrow.

You’ll have great days, and not so great ones. But the sooner you pick your start date, and plot the one percent rule on a chart, the sooner you will be able to focus on what really matters.  - Steady improvement.

Go out there and get your 1% today