How I Increased Blog Traffic by 53000%

Here's a tweet I made via @Torkona3 a while back.  I've been meaning to explain how I did it.

First, here is the proof (click to enlarge):

This image is from June 20th with 83000+ visitors for this month to bLErg, my offside blog where I test best methods for traffic and adverts.  So, how did I do it?  It is simple and you can do it too.

Set up your blog for StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a fantastic tool for the bored.  I click it whenever I want to find something funny without knowing what I want to laugh at.  It's also used as a search tool for sites that you're interested in.

How it works is a user installs a toolbar on their browser.  This toolbar has a 'stumble' button, which when clicked takes you to a random page of any category you choose.

StumbleUpon is how the bLErg site landed its traffic.  I simply had a fantastically hilarious post (Queens Bohemian Rhapsody in Pictures) that I uploaded to be stumbled.  Whenever someone stumbled upon it, people would rate it.

The more good rates a post gets, the more traffic it can receive.   There are other elements as well, such as being a respectable member of StumbleUpon.  The more followers you have, the more street cred you get in the value of your posts that you upload.  Once you set up a StumbleUpon account, you can add me to your stumble following list and I will add you back to increase your street cred!

I got lucky, and the traffic has started to subside.  It also hasn't landed me a great number of extra followers, as stumbles from the 'Funny' search are fickle. But going from 3000 views an hour down to around 100 an hour for a site that is only my test site for traffic ideas and AdSense placement ain't too shabby, so I'm not too upset by it.

But you really want to use it for your site, even if you might not receive the same high amount of traffic, you'll still get a decent trickle of traffic over the years.  But see if you can get lucky like me!

Add a StumbleUpon button to your site and see how you go.

So, sorry for the delay @kirri_white @ReservoirDad @SameliasMum @Diaryofasahm.  I promised I will let you know how I did it.

- tork

Do you currently use StumbleUpon?  How much traffic does it get you?

Blog Guest Posting

Looking for some exposure for your own blog?

Well, you've clicked yourself upon the right link my friend!  Here's what I'm offering.

Guest Posting on Tork's blog

Looking for exposure? Feeling creative? I'd love for you to guest post on my blog!  But, there are a few guidelines.

1. Your post must be of original content, not copied from anywhere and not previously published.
2. You agree not to publish your post elsewhere.
3. You need to include a short bio of yourself or your blog (30 words or less).
4. You must give credit to any sources of photographs that you may provide.
5. You must provide the URL of your blog (if you have one).
6. If I need to edit your post, I will notify you of the edit prior to posting to my blog for your approval. Please note though, if you don't approve then I wont post it! (Refer #7)
7. I have the right to turn down any post.  If I do so, you may use it however you wish.

Phew! Hehehehe, that'll do.

Posting Content

I am pretty easy on what content you would like to guest post about.  If you are unsure though, simply ask me before starting.


How to Contact for Guest Blogging

You can contact me via here for all your guest posting needs and questions.

I will try to answer every email as quickly as I can.

I look forward to hearing from you!

- tork

How to gain useless traffic to your blog

Do you like traffic?  Do you watch your blog stats hourly?

Well, have I got the deal for you!

You can get traffic to your blog FREE OF CHARGE!!

 How?  It's easy.  It's called Useless Traffic.

That's right, useless traffic.  Hoards and hoards of single clicks to your website that never get you any followers, don't stay for longer than a second and don't click your ads.  Useless traffic, free of charge.

How do you get useless traffic?  Well, I'm glad you asked..

Post your URL in irrelevant places

Have you got a great link you want people to see about puppies?  Well, why not add the URL to a popular forum?  Perhaps a gaming website with the heading "Get a load of these puppies!".  Yep, the gaming nerds would click on that faster than the speed of light!

Don't worry about posting your link on a relevant site about dogs or animals. Mislead people to get that useless traffic you deserve!

Aim for Google Image Search Results

Put only pictures on your blog posts.  Also, name the picture file.  So if it is a picture of those little dogs of yours, call it 'my_big_puppies.jpg' and watch the streams from Google Images come through and only look at your photo, not at your site.

This will give you loads of useless traffic for free!

So there you have it folks!  Two methods for getting visitors to your site that are completely useless!

Thank you for not shopping with us!

- tork

fyi - this is intended as a joke and a message to help stop you getting useless traffic.  This sentence is only here for the people google searching "my big puppies".  ;-) Thank you for your time

This is how you write

Twitter this morning is a-buzz with the latest article from Roseanne Barr - And I Should Know.

Wow, what a fantastic piece.  So good, I could not "put it down".  Want to learn how to write fantastic posts?  Take a tip from Roseanne, as this is bloody fantastic.

A excerpt from the article:

“Winning” in Hollywood means not just power, money, and complimentary smoked-salmon pizza, but also that everyone around you fails just as you are peaking. When you become No. 1, you might begin to believe, as Cher once said in an interview, that you are “one of God’s favorite children,” one of the few who made it through the gauntlet and survived. The idea that your ego is not ego at all but submission to the will of the Lord starts to dawn on you as you recognize that only by God’s grace did you make it through the raging attack of idea pirates and woman haters, to ascend to the top of Bigshit Showbiz Mountain.

Genius.  It makes me want to write better.  But the reason why this writing is so good is that Roseanne puts herself into it.  It's as if she is talking it to you as you read it.

That's what you want to try to aim for with your own blogging.  Write as you are.  Roseanne did and the attention she is getting for these few words is amazing.

What are your tips for writing?  What do you think of Roseanne's article? Love to know! :-)

- tork

Social Media Sharebar and reddit.com

Social Media.  As much as I hate its addictiveness, I find it an essential side-kick of a blog.

As I've talked about previously on my major blog killer, how you can avoid it post, you shouldn't spend a lot of time on social sites as a blogger.  But! Why not let folks know you have a recent new post?  I do via my Twitter or Facebook page.

Bloggers need to spend more hours on blogs than social sites, but for the rest of the world, it is often the only sites people visit!  So a blogger needs to utilise a little time on these sites to show others their posts.

One way to let the world know of your post is a tool that I wanted to let everyone know about.  It is a widget that I use called a 'sharebar'.  You can see it on this post to the right. This is the most useful tool that my blog has (if you're reading this via an RSS subscriber, you might like to check it out).

I can hit 'Share to Facebook' to tell my Facebook friends of my new post.  I can also hit 'Retweet' to let all my Twitter followers know of my latest stuff.  There's a Digg button which sometimes I use, but there is my favourite, Reddit.

I'll talk about Reddit a bit later, but firstly, here's the code for this sharebar that you can add as a widget to your own blog! 

<style> #sharebar {position:fixed; bottom:15%; margin-left:230px; float:left; border-radius:5px;-moz-border-radius:5px;-webkit-border-radius:5px;background-color:##ee9ea8;padding:0 0 2px 0;z-index:10;} #sharebar .sbutton {float:left;clear:both;margin:5px 5px 0 5px;} .fb_share_count_top {width:48px !important;} .fb_share_count_top, .fb_share_count_inner {-moz-border-radius:3px;-webkit-border-radius:3px;} .FBConnectButton_Small, .FBConnectButton_RTL_Small {width:49px !important; -moz-border-radius:3px;-webkit-border-radius:3px;} .FBConnectButton_Small .FBConnectButton_Text {padding:2px 2px 3px !important;-moz-border-radius:3px;-webkit-border-radius:3px;font-size:8px;} </style><br /> <div title="Get this at wissamidrissi.com"><div id="sharebar"><div class="sbutton" id="fb"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php" name="fb_share" type="box_count">Share</a><script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"> </script> </div><div class="sbutton" id="rt"><script src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js" type="text/javascript"> </script></div><div class="sbutton" id="su"><script src="http://www.stumbleupon.com/hostedbadge.php?s=5"> </script></div><div class="sbutton" id="digg"><script src="http://widgets.digg.com/buttons.js" type="text/javascript"> </script><br /> <a class="DiggThisButton DiggMedium" href="http://www.blogger.com/"></a></div><div class="sbutton" id="reddit"><script src="http://www.reddit.com/static/button/button2.js" type="text/javascript"> </script></div></div></div>

Add it as a widget or gadget, whatever your blog calls them, to the Design sections of your blog.  This will display as a vertical bar on your blog.

Don't like its position?  You can change it.

What you do is find the code below:


margin-left:230px;


You can change the number from 230 to anything you like.  Increase it slightly and you will move it closer to the right side, decrease it and it will move closer to the left.

Having troubles? Just let me know!  If it helps you I'd love to hear your feedback as well.

reddit.com

Now, about this site.  Reddit is currently one of the internet's most popular sites to waste time on.  It is full of good stuff on absolutely anything.  It also is a good tool to get some traffic to your site.  Albeit the traffic is not often useful, it is kind of cool to see a traffic spike in your stats.  If using reddit correctly, you can achieve thousands of visits to your site.  This can gain you perhaps a bit of GoogleAds benefits or extra subscribers if you're lucky.


Unsure about how to use reddit?  It can be confusing for the new users, I know it was for me.  You also have to be careful as they hate spammers, like everyone does!

It is all about selling the description you give of your links.  The site has helpful features if you're lost, otherwise drop me a line and I am willing to help.

Hope you find this information helpful.

Do you use social media to share your blog?  Are you familiar with Reddit? Love to hear from you!

 - tork

What every blogger needs to know

I've been around a lot of different locations since I starting blogging.  During my 'travels' I've noticed little things that people could change to improve their blogging.

I am no where near what I would call an 'experienced blogger' but I have seen some people with experience do so many simple things wrong.

Don't feel bad if you are doing any of these that I will mention below.  With blogging, you learn something new everyday.

To help out, I thought I would compile a list of the basic things that every single blogger should know.

Join a Blogging Community

To start off with, blogging communities are great.  What better way is there to get help and exposure for your blog than to join a blogging community.  This is helpful in a numbers of ways.

1. You can ask any questions that you may have about blogging
2. You can learn new information
3. You increase exposure for your blog

I highly recommend joining them. There are a lot of blog forums out there, as well as forums that suit your niche.  I recommend using ones that allow you to create your signature so you can add a link to your blog after every post you make.  I will expand further on this why it is important.

Here are some blogging forums that I recommend:

• NuffNang Aussie Bloggers Forum
• Australian Webmaster Forum
• Bloggeries

Learn Simple HTML code

I have a more than basic website coding knowledge and this is seriously helpful when using a site such as blogger.  But you do not need to have advanced knowledge, you just need to know the basics.

What the important thing to know is how to type in HTML language URL links.

Let me show you some basic code:

<a href="http://torkona.blogspot.com">Aussie Dad blog</a>

Every URL link will start with <a href=. Your code will always want to start with this.

Next is the site address that you want people to visit.  This is your URL enclosed in quotation marks. "http://torkona.blogspot.com"> 

Don't forget to include the brackets in the code above (the '<' and '>').  This is what tells your browser whatever is included in these brackets is HTML code.

Next is a description of your link.  Aussie Dad blog

My description is 'Aussie Dad blog'. This is what words I want to have displayed on my site as the link for people to click.  You never want to have your description to be the URL.  You want to have words that describe the link as this increases your Google ranking on these keywords. A lot of the pro's even get this wrong.

Finally, after you have completed your description, end it with </a> to notify the end of your link.

I can't stress how handy this is to know.  The amount of times you see a comment on a forum or post of just a URL without linked as above, I just wanted to let you all know there is a better way.  This is really help your blog, especially with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

If it is too much typing out each time when telling someone a link, simply save it as a Notepad file on your desktop and open it when you need it.


Forum URL Posting
Some forums have the ability to post a URL link as HTML.  Others have an included button that when you press it comes up as per the below:

[URL][/URL]

Took me a while to figure out how to add my URL links properly.  This is how most people will do it:

[URL]http://torkona.blogspot.com[/URL]

This will show your link as the URL on your forum post, but as I have said previously, to increase your search engine ranking, you need to type a descriptive link.  To fix it, this is how you type your link:

[URL=http://torkona.blogspot.com]Aussie Dad blog[/URL]

The time I wasted figuring that out was a bit annoying, so hopefully this will help you out.


Help Followers
I love following blogs.  Although it is hard to always say hello, I still read the majority that I follow.  However, I mainly follow blogs that have  "Follow with Google Friend Connect" widget.

As a blogger, you need to realise that every user that comes to your blog has their own way that they follow blogs.  If you don't provide the most commonly used functionalities on the internet for people to follow, then you are missing the opportunity to gain more readers.  You need to set up an RSS feed, a post emailer and the Google Follow widget. Visit Feedburner for the first two and check your widget list through the Design section of your blogging tool for the Follow widget.

The has been conjecture as to whether RSS feeds are on the decline and more are looking towards email, but I would use both as well as the Google Follow to cover all your bases to never miss a subscriber!


Spring Cleaning
As you blog away, your blog will become full of posts, blog badges and maybe ads. It is always a good idea to do some 'spring cleaning' of your site if things start to feel cluttered.


I am the first to put their hand up to say things are getting cluttered, so make time to freshen up your site occasionally to look professional and well maintained.  Finding time is the hard part, so long as you remember to always chip away at trying to clean up the place.

 

Learn from the best

I would be lost without the help of professional bloggers, or at least those with information that you find easy to understand.

The one blogger that I would recommend above others would be a fellow Aussie. Problogger is helping me daily with very informative information, from himself and numerous guest posters from around the world.

Problogger currently has a great eBook designed to help you revitalize your blog by giving you 31 tasks in 31 days. I highly recommend it. Click here to view more details

I also recommend following bloggers in your own niche.  You learn a lot from others just by visiting and reading their own posts.

You can also follow me, if you must ;-)

Now, this is just a basic list.  Hope this helps.  But there has to be a lot more tips of what every blogger needs to know.  I feel that this is going to be constantly updated, so feel free to bookmark this page and return every now and then.

What tips do you think that every blogger needs to know?

- tork

Times are not kept in updates or hashtags

Do you blog?  Do you write? Do you enjoy reading blogs?

I love it, all of it. With my writing, I like to think "You never know what you are going to get".

Don't know why I enjoy it.  I find it sort of a lost art, especially poetry.

I love poetry, well, most of the time. I've posted a few originals that you might like to read:

Evening Rest
Australia Day Poem

I am a Shakespeare fan.  As the kiddies say, "Big ups to my main man Willy.  I give you props"

..ahem..

Let me quote to you Romeo & Juliet.

What smell through yonder window breaks?
It is the east and Juliet just farted.

I think thats how it goes.

Anyway, what I wanted to say is, write, keep writing or start writing.

Times are not kept in Facebook updates nor Twitter hashtags. Stories are held for our future.

And you can quote me on that.


So write for your future memories. Write to express. Write from the heart.

As my blog help tip of the day, readers/followers can tell when you write for Google. You won't keep folks hitting that follow button if they aren't interested!

That's what I try do. I try to tell my stories, even when writing things that aren't artsy fartsy.

Anyway, I hope it gives at least one person motivation to write something amazing, anything.


If you're lost for ideas, there is always my blog award currently running: The Torkona Award II - Your First Born Birth Story

Have a crack at writing whatever you feel.  In years time, give yourself something to look back on.

- tork 

My major blog killer, how you can avoid it

Share

This is a follow on from Need blogging advice? I'll tell you what I've learnt.

Experts say "To have great traffic to your blog, you need great content".

Yeah, that is pretty much true.  The better your content is, the more people will subscribe or follow you.  But, you could write the world's most fantastic post on 'Why you should never say the name Beetlejuice three times' or 'Why Monkeys are just so damn cute', without the followers/subscribers, no one is going to know about it!


This is how I thought.  So, I would sit on social media outlets to try and get my links out there to create traffic.  Sites like Facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon are great if you have enough friends/followers, otherwise reddit is a very handy source as well.  I would try to write posts that I thought were both hilarious and entertaining.  Look at my post about how I want a hoverboard. Gawd, how embarrassing.



I had fun writing that. I wrote it after an obsessive weekend with the Back to the Future movies.  Anyway, it basically went dead in the water, with hardly any pageviews and zero comments (as of writing this post at least). So, I wanted to try and increase my traffic via social media.


Every post of mine to this day is sprayed across the social media land, via twitter or facebook especially.  This is fine (and highly recommended), but the overall time I used to spend on these social media sites was eating into my creativity.  I had become ...a consumer...


I was a consumer, much like how a cow spends it's day chewing grass over and over, I would spend 1-2 hours chatting on twitter,  reading reddit funnies, stumbling random pages, sitting there watching my website stats for new traffic.  I was just that fat cow not ..producing.. the beautiful cream people would love.


But just like a cow, you can't produce your cream of the crop posts without a bit of help.  Someone has to help you to produce the goods.  Like I said previously in My biggest blogging mistake in my first 3 months.  By following and subscribing to bloggers with experience that have been through what I was experiencing, I learnt that producing quality content is the vital key.  I know social media is essential to spreading the word of your posts, but keeping a limit of no more than 20-30 minutes is the best advice I can give bloggers when using social sites.


To summarize:

• Produce, dont consume!
• Follow experienced bloggers
• Ooh, and take you time to review before publishing that post of yours.

Just don't forget, 20-30 minutes at the most on social sites.  After that, you can write your great posts until the cows come home! Then, watch the traffic flow in when word spreads that you have the best cream in town!


(No analogies or puns where hurt in the making of this post)


- tork

My biggest blogging mistake in my first 3 months

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This is a follow on from Need blogging advice? I'll tell you what I've learnt.

The biggest mistake I've made so far is thinking that I am the bees knees.  Thinking that I am top dog.  Having the nerve to think that I can just jump into this blogging game and maybe make a few dollars out of Google's Adsense program.

I wanted to make a extra bit of dollars after my normal working hours to provide for my soon to be born firstborn. Living on one salary and providing for three is going to be tough!  But simply just typing out a bunch of posts that really have no depth to them, hoping they might get google hits or something like that, it just doesn't work.

You need to inspire your readers, teach your readers.

My first step towards a post should have been:

DON'T write a post just to try to gain traffic and cash

DO write a post that has warmth as well as teaches

I am no where near the experienced blogger, but I sure as hell know what does and doesn't work. I've wasted time thinking solely of traffic without learning first. What I can advise is follow experienced blogs, people that can help you along the way. Take your time with your posts and give a little love in what you do!  This is what I am trying to turn around with my own posts.

"If you build it, they will come".  Building a foundation on mud won't stick forever.  Building a foundation with quality and strong support holds much much better.  And it keeps the rain out :-)

So, read, listen and learn, my first bit of advice for new bloggers.

What is your biggest blogging mistake?


- tork

Need blog advice? I'll tell you what I've learnt

Share

I've been blogging for just over three months and I am proud to say I broke the blog barrier! WooHoo! Three months is the average length of time that people quit blogging at.  I've got to say, I've come close.

So I want to share with you what I've learnt.  There has been blog tricks that I've tried and failed, but there are others that have succeeded. This can give you ideas if you are a new blogger on the scene and traps for even the experienced blogger.

So, I will be compiling posts with things that I've learnt over these three months, so stay tuned.  One big thing I've learnt, especially since starting my Adelaide and South Australia blog, is that my current blog layout sucks, so I will be undertaking a massive overhaul. (ooh, exciting!)

But the reason why I am posting this, is in the meantime, I'd love for you to ask me any questions that you might have to help you.  You can leave a comment or email via tork.southaust@gmail.com.

Yikes, now I've got to start putting down some posts!  Lord, this may be an endless series of tips and tricks about blogging.  I just hope that I can help at least one person.


We shall see. Look forward to hearing from you!

- tork

Bing! You've got traffic

Share

Hey there.. so I'm kind of floggin' my bloggin' here, but for a specific reason.

See, I have this seperate blog of funny stuff.  Basically it was born as I didn't want to post joke after joke in my personal blog.  (fyi, bLErg is a sock puppet, hehehe, yeah I'm a bit weird).  So if it's a few funnies you're after, I highly recommend it :-)

Anyway, I posted a funny photo about Lady Gaga Egg Costume at Grammys.

Recently I've made a killing via the image search engine of bing.com.  My traffic spiked for a short time, but then it went down again.  Got about 120 hits in 5 hours, but thats about it.

Weird, I'm trying to start a discussion if other people have suddenly noticed the same thing.  Perhaps we can help each other out!

Have you been binged? Does image search traffic peeve you off like it does me?

I don't get it. Damn you Internet!!

- tork

My life, the Amatuer Blogger

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I think I have done everything a blogger shouldn't do.

I always read twitter, I read facebook, I jump into reddit, I fart about on StumbleUpon.

I've posted drivel for the sake of posting.


I watch my blog stats and constantly hit refresh.

If I get a view then I see if they commented.

Ooh, and I've used the word "I" 10 times so far! :-)

If you are an experienced blogger (a year or longer) you are more than likely nodding your head saying "Yeah, I've done all of those when I was first starting out".


The problem is, yes, I admit it.  I.. am a consumer.


I'm addicted to social media and my blog stats. I pace around my keyboard just watching, hoping, that people like my blog and follow or subscribe to it.


Spending time on social media is starting to eat into my time of typing away a killer post that will bring me to my goal of a guzillion followers. 


I need to spend less time consuming and more time producing cracker content for my people! :-)


If I just try to limit my Twitter(s), Torkona3, funnybLErg and Adelaide_SA (*sigh*) and other social media to say 30 mins at night, I could become a better blogger.


The first step to overcome an addiction is to admit to it though, right? :-)

I think I'm slowly getting there with my latest blogspot Adelaide and South Australia blog. But I'm still slipping into bad habits.


Are you a social media addict? How do you fight the urge to consume?


- tork


 

Increase blog traffic with social media links

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social links here

Want to increase traffic to a site or blog? You need to learn how to add a Facebook share link and a Twitter tweetme retweet link to your page!  See the two links that I have got above for facebook and twitter? Click them to see how they work! They are great, don't worry about all this SEO nonsense!!

I want people to see my blog and these social media links are a must have to increase your traffic.  I have had them for 2 days and I have already doubled my daily traffic. So, I thought i'd tell everyone about how I did it! I was unable to align the facebook and twitter icons horizontally but I eventually came up with the code to align them via the TABLE HTML code (fyi - they only align once people post them to facebook).

Now, to add both these links to your site or blog, simply copy and paste the code below into your HTML code of your site or your HTML editor of your blog.

<table width="30%">
    <tr>
        <td><a name="fb_share" type="box_count" share_url="PUT URL HERE">Share
<script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share"
        type="text/javascript">
</script></a></td>
        <td><script type="text/javascript">
tweetmeme_url = 'PUT URL HERE';
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"  align="absmiddle"></script><br><br></td>
    <td><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://torkona.blogspot.com/">social<br>links<br>
here</a></span></td></tr></table>

Put the URL of the page that you want people to share or tweet wherever it says "PUT URL HERE".

If you have any problems, drop a comment below.  Have fun and good luck!

- tork

How to change your blogger background

How to change your blogger blogspot background

So, I've only had my blogspot for an hour, and I was already unhappy with my background.

I wanted to change it but couldn't figure out!  Well, here's how I did it, and it worked fine

1. Find a background photo that you wish to make as your background.  You can get this from anywhere (eg. Google Images) or you may already have it. 

2. Upload the image to an image sharing site (eg. photobucket.com) 

3. Follow image sharing site instructions to upload. Make sure you copy the URL of the picture

4. In Blogger, go to Design > Edit HTML

5. Be careful what you change from here.  In the text box, you need to find the section of coding which relates to the "body".  It will be nearby a section which will say "Content" that would look something along the lines as this:

/* Content
----------------------------------------------- */

body {

  font: $(body.font);
  color: $(body.text.color);
  background: $(body.background)
}

6. Where it says "background: $(body.background)"  replace those words as below where the word "LINK" is your URL to your picture:

/* Content
----------------------------------------------- */

body {

  font: $(body.font);
  color: $(body.text.color);
  background: url(LINK)
}

There you have it.  Hopefully I have explained myself correctly here.  I wanted to help other people as I had this problem.  If you're still confused, please let me know and I am glad to help.

- tork