Today.com Pays You for Usless Traffic

As many of you know I signed up for a free sub-domain on Today.com. In my short time on the site I have used the domain's juice to rank a number of keywords in decent position in the serp's. Next up - "How to make money with Adsense". This wasn't hard thanks to my friends who graciously supplied me with anchored backlinks. Thanks guys and I'm repaying my debts using the SEO and Adsense page. If you have sent me a link and I have missed you please let me know. (If there is a keyword you would rather have me use then let me know that as well.)

Lissie from How to Make Passive Income Online alerted me to the fact that the blogger's on Today.com were a bit green - and she was correct. If you have been following my advice for any lenght of time - say a week - then you are already an expert compared to the folks plodding about on Today.com. This isn't to demean them - they are truly nice people but they are completely new to the ways and means of internet marketing or even just blogging in general. Moreover the moderators are just as green. Even more astonishing is the fact that the powers that be behind the domain don't seem to have a great deal of knowledge either. And this brings me to the topic at hand.

Today.com encourages people to use social networks to attract traffic. The screenshot below is from the forum and one of the "Administrators" actively encourages people to use Entrecard.

Click image to enlarge



For those of you who don't know - Entrecard is easily the most useless traffic producer online. It consists of wasting an hour or two or your day loading 300 URL's in your browser and then clicking on them in order to visit 300 websites. You never actually look at the websites you visit - you just open it in a tab and by the time it loads you are already 4 tabs away loading another url. By the time you have loaded all the sites you simply close the browser window and wait for 300 other entrecard users to load your url in their browser - none of whom bother to read your posts either. When it is all done you pat yourself on the back because you had 300 unique visitors to your site. None stayed more than 2 seconds but what the heck it makes you feel like you are popular. Oh and gee - look at that - Alexa gives you a ranking.

Most of you learned long ago that you sure don't make any money from entrecard users. This also applies to the stumblers and diggers and redditers and sphinners and twitterers etc. Useless traffic that sucks your bandwidth and leaves without so much as a comment. Traffic that you waste hours trying to garner. One huge time sink if you are trying to make money.

However - and this is the point of this post - a lot of my readers still spend their days courting social traffic. You do it because your site isn't really set up to make money - you still hold onto the fact that maybe you will get famous because of your writing. Maybe targeting the search engines is a bit too much work. Maybe you will get around to doing what Griz says... one day but for now you're just gonna go with what you started with. If that is the case then Today.com is for you.

Why?

Because they will pay you for all that useless traffic. $2 for every 1000 useless unique visitors. It ain't much but I bet it is better than what most of you make right now with your social blogs.

Now some of you are thinking that getting 1000 visitors a day is hard - even useless visitors. Nope - not really. (I can't believe I am going to tell my readers how to get social traffic - lol)

Target Celebrities, Gossip, Tech/Gadgets/Gaming, Politics, humour and hot stories (ie - American Idol is back again)

Use images - lots of properly alt tagged images.

Post photos - tag em', keyword the photo with a short blurb

Post ten times a day - 10 posts per page.

Use Linkvana, Backlink Solutions, RT's ConnectContent, and buy anchored backlinks for all the targeted keywords.

Use my niche support page - it is free.

Use all the social sites to stumble, digg etc but if you use the link networks mentioned Google images will send you a ton of visitors all by itself.

Because you are using a free sub domain you need not worry about G. Just don't link it to any of your real sites.

This is the kind of stuff I did plenty of in the old days and I still have a couple of tropical fish sites that receive in excess of 10,000 visitors a day each - most from Google images. The sites make me nothing - the odd ebook sale but if I was getting $2 for every 1000 visitors I would build more.

If Today.com wants to pay for traffic then give them traffic. You can also set up affiliate links provided by Today.com and if approved by them they will also pay you $1 a post as long as you don't do self promotion posts.

The best thing about this is that you don't need to write much content. Just small keyword optimized blurbs about the photos. This is exactly how I used to use Technorati to drive thousands of people to my hot topic sites before Technorati canned the "what's hot" page. I posted photos with scandalous post titles and short keyword optimized blurbs. Social traffic loves crap and will bounce all over the net looking for it.

Here is the most visited site on Today.com http://whybenormal.today.com/ - 7000 daily visitors. Take a look at it. How much work do you think it takes to do that? (I mean no offense to the owner - good on her I say) $300 a month for posting humorous photos. Nice.

Unfortunately Today.com doesn't accept people worldwide. They don't publicize what countries are acceptable but it appears that N. America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia (Tiawan, Japan) are ok. I'll update this post if people leave comments regarding their own country - pass or fail. If any of my readers that specialize in sneaky tactics have some ideas on circumnavigating the home IP blocking then feel free to leave your ideas below.

If any of you sign up or have an account already send me an email with "Today member" in the subject and I will let you know of another way to drive traffic - a very simple system. I won't respond back until I have everyone included so be patient. Let me know your today.com url in the email.

Today won't make you rich but I suspect a lot of you wouldn't mind a few extra bucks in your pocket given the current recession. Those of you who want to work a little harder can probably make some decent money using the affiliate ads provided if you target your sites to the right traffic.

I know a lot of you aren't making anything with your social sites - you may as well do the same thing you are doing now on a site that will pay you for the visitors.

Note: To all my "I'M In" participants. I haven't forgot you. Just ironing out a few things and will send you all an email shortly. Frank and RT - haven't heard from you but would like to...

Making Money Online with Social Traffic

Can you make money online with social traffic?

This is the million dollar question and believe me people are desperately trying to do just that - make money from traffic generated through social networks like Stumbleupon, Digg, Entrecard etc. So far the general consensus is that social traffic doesn't convert into buyers or at least not very well. In fact, the only meaningful money being made from social traffic is indirect - sites that have managed to attract a large enough audience are able to sell advertising. They make money not from the social traffic but because of the social traffic - advertisers are willing to pay in hopes of attracting the traffic to their product or service.

Most people are familiar with the so called A-List blogs. These blogs for one reason or another have managed to attract tens of thousands of readers or subscribers and are able to sell advertising as a result of their large readership and their blogs subject matter. They post large earnings and this in turn has spawned legions of others trying to duplicate the success of the A List. So is it working? Not really but rather than dissuade people, as I usually do, from following this strategy I want to make a couple of suggestions that can drastically improve your chances of gaining a large enough readership to enable you to make money from advertising.

My regular readers know that I myself do not chase social traffic nor do I promote it. Search engine traffic provides me with a good income without requiring all the work necessary in promoting a social site. However, I am always looking for new ways to make money online and if it can be made from social traffic then so be it.

The blog you are reading is for better or worse, an Adsense blog. My goal with this blog is to rank well in Google for as many "make money online" terms as I can and earn money from the revenue generated from Adsense. All in all I have been quite successful and make a decent buck - about $100 - $125 a day. My serp rankings generate several thousand visitors a day - most from Google.

The funny thing is - I also have a lot of regular readers. Rather astounding in light of the fact that I don't do anything to promote a readership. I don't stumble, digg or bookmark. I avoid forums as much as possible (a huge time sink) and I have never made a YouTube video. In general I DON'T do all the things I see everyone else doing that IS trying to build a readership.

So the question is this - why do I have more readers than most of the sites who are trying to get readers? Am I doing something that they (you) aren't?

Yes. I'll get to it in a moment...

Some of you may think that quality of content has something to do with it and you are right - good content will make people subscribe and keep them coming back. The thing is almost all of you chasing social traffic have quality content. What you are lacking is a means of getting new people to your site. Most of you belong to one or more social groups and are able to build up a few hundred RSS subscribers and even a few hundred links from your friends within the social circles you frequent. Unfortunately you soon run out of new people in the group and everything stalls. No new blood - no new subscribers.

The trick to building large readerships is not found in the social networks - it is found in the search engines. The bulk of my readers haven't found me through social networks - I don't use any. Yes, a lot of readers have been sent this way from my online friends but the vast majority of my readers found me while searching for information on Google. Remember I push thousands of people through this site everyday and a few actually stop and read - some end up subscribing.

Now I know what you are saying - great if you happen to get search traffic but most of you don't. I want to make two suggestions that will drive search traffic to your social blog and both suggestions are easy to do.

I am going to use two blogs as examples. Both these blogs have great content and a small existing fan base. Many of you are in the same position as the sites I am about to look at so apply what I say to your own blog and watch what happens.

Turnip of Power is a blog about Social Networking. Turnip's blog is on a mission to find ways to make money from social networks. Using Google's Keyword tool there appears to be about 15k searches a month for the term "social networking" and another 15k or so worth of searches for related terms. Turnip has spent a year building the site and has about 180 RSS readers. The problem is that Turnip doesn't get any of the search traffic looking for social networking sources. If the blog did get search traffic I can guarantee the RSS numbers would be much higher. Turnip can make two little changes in order to rectify this situation - changes I urge all of you to make if you are after readers.

The number 1 mistake - of all time - when it comes to search traffic is...

Most of you don't tell Google what your main keyword is. You tell Google what the name of your blog is but in most cases the name of your blog and the subject matter are totally different.

Here is Turnips Blog Title. (Click images to enlarge)



I'm showing you the title as you see it in a browser window because this is what Google sees. Turnip's blog is about "Turnips" and "Power" as far a Google is concerned. In reality the blog is about social networking and Entrecard. In fact Google can decipher this using the blogs content but when it comes to serp ranking the sites that use "social networking" or "Entrecard" in their Title will far outrank the sites that don't.

Quick fix - Turnip should add "Social Networking" or "Social Networking with Entrecard" to the blog Title. The on-page title can stay the same (In the header) but remove it from the Blog Title tag and only use keywords relevant to the blog content.

Let me show you something. Turnip has 600 links according to SEO Elite and just about every link pointing to the site has "Turnip" or "Turnip of Power" in the anchor text.



As a result Turnip ranks number 1 in Google for the term "Turnip of Power" and probably ranks not bad for "Turnip". This would be great if the blog was about turnips and people were searching for turnips in droves. The thing is no one looking for blogs about "social networking" will ever find Turnip's site. Would you think to type in "Turnip of Power" if you were searching for info about social networking?

Quick fix - I'm sure Turnip knows most of the people linking in. Ask all the friends linking to you to change the anchor text so that the keyword "social networking" is used and not Turnip of Power. I can guarantee that any blog with 600 backlinks using the right keyword would rank on top of the serp's.

I have used Turnip's blog as an example because it is the type of site that contains quality posts and the owner has above average work ethic and most importantly some actual talent. Given a steady stream of new visitors there is no reason that the site couldn't gain a large and loyal following. The problem until now is that Turnip has really only used the Entrecard traffic to build the site and after a year this has only netted 180 readers. A lot of work for little results.

A note to everyone - notice that my link to Turnip's blog above uses the keyword and not the blog name. I have just given Turnip the first Good link in a year. All of you can and should link to each other the same way - use a keyword that is relevant to the site you are linking to and stop using the person's name or blog name.

Another site I want to show you is Kathy's Online Humor blog called The Junk Drawer.

I feel like a total shit as I promised to give Kathy some tips a while ago and just haven't got around to it. Kathy I am sorry but I didn't forget about you - just swamped. I have met a number of exceptionally talented writers online and Kathy is as good as they get. I believe she could become quite well known if only people knew she was there. The two things I just told Turnip to do applies to Kathy as well.

In Kathy's case her blog title is "The Junk Drawer". A cool name but not something that someone will type into the search box when looking for a humor blog. Kathy you can keep the name in the header but change your blog title tag to "Humor" or "Online Humor" or "Humorous Stories Online" or well, anything related to humor.

Secondly, like Turnip, Kathy has a ton of great links but all of them use "The Junk Drawer" or "Kathy" in the anchor text of the links. Kathy I know your fans love you (I do) and if you asked them to change the anchor text to various "humor" related keywords they probably would. Do it - you won't believe how quickly the search traffic will come.

It has taken me ages to convince people that these two SEO tips make all the difference in the world when it comes to getting search engine ranking and the traffic that comes with it.

If you need convincing please drop in on RT's Philippine blog called Untwisted Vortex and ask him what happened when he changed his title from Untwisted Vortex to Philippine.

Or, ask Fiar what happened when he changed the title of his Radioactive Liberty blog to Political Humor.

Or, ask Chanya about what happened when she changed her Blogstruk title to Blogging Tips... oh wait... Chanya you haven't done it yet! Tsk Tsk.

A word of warning - I'm expecting all my friends to get with the program and make these simple little changes and if they don't I will list the whole works of them in my next post and give em' all such a verbal ass kicking that I won't have any readers left. :-)

Do it folks - let the search traffic find you. It is well worth it.

Cheers,