Wanted to take a quick second to let everyone know that Site Flip U, is having a Site Flipping contest.  If you aren’t familiar with blog flipping, it’s the act of “buy low, sell high” on web real estate.  Basically you are purchasing junk sites or domains, or building them from scratch and then selling them to others who want a site that’s already “established” rather than building it themselves. It’s a pretty lucrative market, and one can make some real money doing it.

Contestants will be given points based on the following criteria.

• 10 Points for each Feedburner Subscriber
• 2 Points for each unique visitor
• 1 Point for each pageview
• 5 Points for each unique visitor from an ORGANIC source (i.e. Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.)
• 10 Points for listing the auction
• 100 Points for a successful sale (price doesn’t matter)
• 50 Points for having the MOST traffic
• 100 Points for having the most ORGANIC traffic
• 100 Points for having the most Feedburner Subscribers
• 50 points to anyone who opens a new Hostgator account under this affiliate link.  The proceeds will be split with the winner of the contest.  Pretty good deal right? And it’s $10 a month for unlimited domains, and the best host on the market.

Prizes

• 1 Year of free hosting (Value $120)
• 1 Free banner advertisement on Siteflipu for 30 days  (Value $45)
• 1 Free blog review that will be posted on Siteflipu, and completed by me (Value $65)
• 1 Free copy of my Site Flipping Blueprint, (when completed) (Value - Priceless)
• 1 Lifetime membership into my Site Flipping Club, which will be a personal mentor program taught by me, and valued at $47 a month
• 2 Hour free SEO Conultation with a PROFESSIONAL SEO! ($200)
• 1 Free software package including some great tools for Site Flippers ($300)
• 1 Free copy of the Wordpress Dream Theme, Designed by Ben Cope.  Includes installation and customization.  (Value $247)
• 2 Free 125×125 Banner Ad Creations (Value $60) - Thanks To Forest, from The Random Forest
• 1 Free banner ad on The Piss Biscuit
• 1 Free blog re-design (Vaule $900) from The Piss Biscuit
• And lots more to come over the next few days.  I have a few sponsors that have already agreed to donate some fantastic prizes, but we’re working out the details… stay tuned!

Make sure to check out Blog Flipping, for your chance to enter and win some wonderful prizes!

There are a lot of terms that get thrown around when trying to analyze stats on your blog.  Some of these can be quite confusing, so I’ve decided to clear up their meanings here.  If you properly understand what you are looking at, then it makes this part of the job that much easier.

• Unique Visitor - Just what it sounds like.  A unique visitor is ONE person that has found your page for that particular day.  Generally someone is counted as a unique visitor if they haven’t been to your page for more than 30 minutes.  So if they type in http://thatblogsite.com and then come back 5 minutes later, they are still only ONE unique visitor.
• Page View - This is how many pages your visitors have viewed on your blog.  You want this number to be at least double that of your unique visitors.  It’s tough in some blog niches, but it’s always possible.
• Average Time On Site - Just what it sounds like.  You would like the visitor to spend as much time as possible on your blog so that they can check multiple articles, and preferrably take a preferrable action.  A preferrable action would mean signing up for your Rss feed, clicking on your Adsense ads, or signing up through an affiliate banner.  The more time they spend on your site, the more likely they are to take an action that you desire.
• Pages/Visit - This is the average number of pages per visit.  As I said above, you’d like to keep this number above two, but with some niches it’s harder than others.
• % New Visits - This is the percentage of visitors that come to your site who are “new”.  Actually, it’s not that simple… everyone is a new visit eventually because this relies on a tracking cookie to let you know who’s been here and who hasn’t.  If they clear their cookies, they are a new visitor again.
• Bounce Rate - Bounce Rate is the number of people who visit your blog, and then leave without clicking anything.  This means they only see your homepage, and then they are gone.  This number should be less than 50%, but if you get a lot of traffic from StumbleUpon or other social sites… it will be much higher.
• Referrals - This statistic ties in to “referring traffic”.  It’s basically how many people visit your site that come from other sites, and referrals show you how they got here.  Referrals can be from a blog linking to you, or someong Stumbling your page from StumbleUpon.
• Organic - This means that someone found you through a search engine.  Organic rankings are those that are obtained naturally, meaning without compensation.  Organic rankings come from efficient use of SEO.
• Direct Traffic - People who type in your URL in their address bar to get to your site.

There are many more stats you can check, but these are those that are vital to your blog’s existence.  Check these regularly, and then use your analysis to create a better blog.

Do you know what a writing voice is?

Every blogger has a blogging voice, whether they realize it or not.  It’s important that no matter how stale the topic, you inject a bit of your personality into your writing.  Whether the entire article be written as a So-Cal surfer, or an angry New Yorker… it’s important to be yourself, or at least the yourself you created for your blog.  This is by far the simplest way to differentiate your blog from the crowd, and believe me… it’s crowded.

I once read that the most effective way of establishing a personal connection with your audience was to provide a picture.  The picture doesn’t even have to be of you, or of a person in general.  It can be of your cat… people just want something to relate to.

One of the many tasks you should be taking on as a blogger is networking with your fellow bloggers, your audience, and friends of your audience.  It’s hard to stand out in a world with millions of other blogs, but the easiest way to accomplish this is by being yourself.  Nobody is exactly like you, so why give in to temptation and start writing like the bigger bloggers in your niche?  The truth is, however small you feel in this big blogging world, you are the only you, so it’s important to portray that in your posts.  It’s a simple concept really… why do people read popular blogs daily?  I can guarantee it’s not based on the information, because there are a million other blogs that have the same types of information, yet you keep going to the same one…  it’s you!  In a world where it’s difficult to network with people face to face (the blogging world), this might just be the only bit of “personal” touch you can add to a blog.  Why waste it?

Be yourself… write what you love, and reap the benefits!

I read a statistic that got my attention today.  It stated that only 1 in 76 people worldwide had a blog.  That’s an amazing number.  Let it sink in for a minute.  What’s that mean for you?  Simple… if you have a blog right now, you are ahead of the curve!

Blogging is quickly becoming the new media, and is often cited in traditional media when stories are reported.  Bloggers are making millions, going bankrupt, getting sued, and forming empires.  Sound familiar?  None of us witnessed the television or print media at the same early stages, but I’d have to assume it’s about the same.  Blogs are becoming the source by which the world gets it’s news, and if you aren’t blogging… you’re missing the train my friend.

Whether it be for storing photos, keeping family updated on your life, or reporting on the news or your favorite niche, blogging is for everyone.  However, not everyone is for blogging…  this opens the door for you, and everyone you know to get in on the ground floor.  In the grander scheme of things, the internet is still VERY new, yet it’s overtaking growth records for any other form of media at an astounding rate.  Are you going to keep sitting still while everyone around you cashes in?

For those of you that don’t know what a permalink is, let’s start there. The permalink is the link that is visible in the browser window when you click on the heading of a blog post. This link by default should look something like this.

http://thatblogsite.com/?p=44

Simple right?

As awesome as Wordpress is, they manage to give you a terrible out-of-the-box configuration for permalinks. Not so good. But it’s not hard to change them, and I’ll show you how in just a minute. But first let’s talk about WHY you want to change your permalinks.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The default permalink structure is absolutely terrible, and serves little to no purpose when it comes to SEO. Why? Well, unless someone is searching for “?p=44″, then you are completely missing the boat when it comes to using your keywords in the title. We all know that incoming links are important for SEO, but, what’s even more valuable is a link that has our targeted keywords in it. A permalink is no different. It’s much more valuable to have a permalink with your keywords, rather than the default “ugly links” that Wordpress comes with.

Readability

I’m sure you’ve also been told that you should be writing for people, not search engines. Well, this is true here as well. The default permalink structure gives people absolutely no idea what they are reading. So, for example, let’s say that your friend Joe links to you on his blog, and uses a direct copy and paste of the permalink rather than adding anchor text. Well, people don’t have any clue what - http://thatblogsite.com/?p=44 means. Wouldn’t it be better if your permalinks were a bit more descriptive? Now, let’s say that Joe copy and pasted your permalink after you changed the structure. Doesn’t - http://thatblogsite.com/your-permalinks-are-ugly - look much better? It’s descriptive, great for SEO, and there is no mystery about what the readers are getting ready to read.

Changing Your Permalink Structure

1. Click on the “settings” tab in the upper right corner of your Wordpress dashboard.
2. Find the “permalinks” tab and click it.
3. Click the “custom structure” tab.  It should be set on default when you get there.  Make sure it’s on “custom structure”.
4. In the “custom structure” box, paste this - /%postname%/
5. DONE!

Pretty easy huh?