The Billevard

The whole premesis of this blog has been to bring you fresh content about “connecting through comments” on other blogs as a traffic building strategy.  I’m proud to announce that the value of this blog has skyrocketed because of what I am about to introduce to you.

“Commenting for traffic can be a difficult task, and as you probably know, it’s the people that comment in the top 7 or so that really benefit from this strategy.”

Things would sure be easier if there were a tool that would help you get that kind of exposure… well… you should know that there is.  The great thing is it doesn’t cost, its free!  I’m giving it away to all of my readers, so be glad you stumbled onto this post because here is where you can download it.

Combine this tool with comment hunter and you have a valuable weapon!

I can’t really say I know a whole lot about squidoo, but I can say I have read a lot about how valuable it is as a traffic building tool. If you read my last post, an unexpected challenge, you know that I was challenged by the owner of Welcometomyisland.com to a competition. The competition starts this week *today), and the objective is to make as much money possible by creating squidoo lenses. How do you make money with squidoo lenses? Well there are a number of ways. The method I plan on using is finding at least 30 niches and promoting affiliate programs on each targeted lense.

I already made one lens, because hey, this is a competition and I’m in it to win. Oh and yes, there will be a weekly report (unlike my non-existent “commenting for traffic” report that I said I would write monthly, eheh) that will come out every Sunday until March 19th, which is the last day of the competition.

Dave Origano, guest author on NetBusinessBlog.com, builds his blog’s traffic by commenting on other peoples blogs as well. He does it before he writes his own posts, usually writing about 10 comments every day on at least 10 different blogs. To read more about Dave Origano’s commenting for traffic strategy, head on over to NetBusinessBlog.com.

So I comment regularly over at www.welcometomyisland.com and found something unexpected in my email. The owner of that blog challenged me to a competition, not sure what kind of competition yet but I am deffinitely in regardless. So, all of you that are commenting for traffic can learn a lesson from this, who knows what kind of opportunities a good comment can bring you (besides traffic). I’ll fill you in on what type of competition we will have later, I’m sure it will deal with something online.

I’m guessing it will have to do with Squidoo.

So far through my commenting efforts to promote this blog I have obtained around 150 links, most of which were picked up by yahoo. If you want to find out who is linking to you and which search engines have noticed, then do a search for your blog at www.wholinkstome.com.

The “Do Follow” campaign is a campaign for blog owners that see the value in getting rid of the nofollow tags from comments. Bloggers that are apart of this campaign are particularly valuable in that if comment on their blog you not only are commenting for traffic, but you also are getting valuable backlinks. So pay particular attention to blogs that have “Do Follow” banners in their sidebar and be sure to include them in your commenting for traffic strategy!

To find blogs that are appart of the “Do Follow” campaign, execute a search on www.commenthunt.com - Be sure to bookmark it!

With a title of “Market Like You Date,” it’s hard to not read the entire post.  I found this post on Tatman’s blog (yeah funny name), and found it to be pretty applicable to internet marketing.

I left him a comment, and showed my support.

I just read an article over at Problogger about how someone was able to get 700 visitors to their blog by commenting on others.  She wrote valuable contributing comments that added to the discussion, which is what everyone should do.

So here I am thinking what a good example this is of how people should comment and being the commenter I am I scrolled down to write a comment only to find repeat after repeat of the comment I was going to post.

It seems to me that people didn’t really understand the article.  See she wrote valuable comments, and comments that are only the regurgitation of everyones comments ahead of you are NOT VALUABLE.

People that write repeat comments are like the people that have to read what you wrote for an answer on a test… and I don’t exactly want to visit those kinds of peoples blogs.

Cheaters.

You can read the full article here to see what I’m talking about.

I am so excited about this new service that I can’t even begin to describe how excited I am except by saying that I am excited.

You don’t need to be a genius to see that online video is huge, but you do need to be smart to think of a way to profit off of it if you are a website owner.  RevLayer did just that, they created an advertising format that allows website publishers (blog owners, website owners, people with a website) to make money by displaying relevant advertisements over embedded videos on your website.  Now average shmoes like me can cash in on the video craze (through my website empire), well that is if people don’t mind watching videos with ad’s that you have to close before you watch it… which could make or break this whole idea… but let’s not get down on this new service just yet, because quite possibly it could be the largest revenue stream for many website owners.  Possibly.

Just think of the possibilities.  People master adsense and make a ton, now we have something that could be bigger, because let’s face it, people watch videos more than they read content (I’m basing this idea on the statistic that roughly 80% of online users are online for entertainment).

I left a nice comment to the article where I found out about this service here.   Join in on the discussion!  Let the writers of VentureBeat know you read it.

Don’t forget to leave trails, build bridges, and connect through comments.

Commenting on other people’s blogs for traffic is definitely a growing traffic strategy, it just hasn’t grown to the level that submitting articles to article directories has…. YET. I think commenting for traffic is 100% better than submitting articles to article directories, why do I think this?

I’ve got a couple of reasons why I think article directories are a waste of time…

• For one thing, real people don’t go to article directories. Think about it… do you spend hours upon hours just reading through articles (not just any articles, but junk articles because most people that submit them to these directories don’t take their time writing something worth reading) on article directory websites? Chances are you don’t, in most cases the only people that ever visit article directory websites are webmasters, and they are there for one reason… to submit their crappy, depth lacking articles. So many “guru’s” claim to high heaven that this is a must do tactic… submit your article to thousands of directories to get thousands of backlinks! Well I have something to say about these guru’s, while THEY may be writing quality articles, all they are doing and all they are promoting is the pollution of the internet with duplicate content. I don’t want to see an internet full of duplicate content, especially one where people take an article and change a couple words in it just so they can claim it as their own… this whole “private label articles” idea is BS. Whoever is supporting this nonsense should be beaten by chimpanzees holding bananas.
• The people that own article directories in most cases don’t care about the content slapped on the site. Now there are a couple of high quality article directories out there that only accept unique content, and those I am ok with, I just don’t see how submitting an article to a place real traffic doesn’t go to can help (real traffic meaning real people, as in not webmasters or lazy affiliate marketers that are trying to advertise a crappy affiliate program).

What does make sense to me is writing a nice in depth response to a blog post. Chances are there is another blog out there that is like yours, or one that has an audience that will appreciate your content. Comments are easier to write too… all you have to do is write a couple of sentences and you have a comment and a backlink, whereas writing an article means you have to think of a topic and write a lot more. Sure, you can use automated article submitters that will “SUBMIT YOUR ARTICLE TO THOUSANDS OF DIRECTORIES ACROSS THE WEB,” but why pollute the web with duplicate content and waste your time on a tactic that search engines don’t pay attention to.

So in short:

• It’s quality not quantity when it comes to search engines
• Go where the real people are
• Private label articles are a joke
• Comment on blogs that have your audience (but never EVER link drop in your comment)

Real people read blogs, they don’t read articles in article directories.