Last month I wrote an opinion piece on Entrecard as a whole. I am assuming most of you that are reading this know what Entrecard is, if not, look them up. When Entrecard switched to third party advertisers I was very critical and I voiced my opinion on how I thought it was a wrong move and would hurt the network. Since that point I have not spent a single credit buying ads. My rationale is that it was not that effective for me before the switch and after it would be half as effective as before due to the fact that your ad will only be shown half of the time.
This put me in a difficult spot because I am accumulating credits at a rapid pace and I don’t buy advertising and I will not cash them in for the current price of $1. With the rise in popularity of the marketplace, I thought my problem was solved. I could spend my credits on things that would help my blog grow and gain visibility. The first couple of weeks my experiences in the marketplace were positive. I am now going on record as saying the marketplace SUCKS. I am writing this post to simply vent and rant a little bit over my recent experiences. Just this past week, I ordered 18 “services” (diggs) and only 6 of the orders were fulfilled. That means that I paid for 18, the credits were put into escrow, and I only received one third of what I should have. That is very disappointing and not an encouraging sign for the future of the community. Here is the worst part about the whole thing; there is absolutely no way to get your credits back. The system is technically broken and will not allow you to cancel your order or dispute it once it is placed. My numerous emails to support have gone unanswered. Just another example of mismanagement at this company. I hope they wake up soon before they run a good thing into the ground.
I have vented enough and actually feel a little better know. Let me know what your experience with the Market has been like… What frustrates you about Entrecard?
If you are like me, you probably check your Google Analytics daily. I always check the traffic and where it is coming from. The one stat that I always pay attention to is the time on site stat. I get so happy when I see some visitors spending 20-30 minutes on my blog. To me, that tells me that I am doing something right. As bloggers we are always trying to attract new visitors to our blog, but that is only a piece of the puzzle. Once you draw them in, you need to engage them, and then impress them so they will want to return.
Why is the time someone spends on your blog important?
There are several reasons why it is important to increase the time that people spend on your blog. The biggest reason is it helps to establish the connection. The more the reader is engaged, the more they will learn, and the more they will connect with you and your blog. If you deepen the connection with your readers, you greatly increase the likelihood of them taking a positive action like subscribing to your newsletter, buying your product/service, or buying a product/service that you recommend.
Ten Tips to keep them on your blog longer:
Fast Loading Blog
If your blog takes more than a couple of seconds to load you will surely lose visitors and will never have a chance to engage them. To increase the speed of your blog, you can reduce the size of your images, tweak the coding on your theme, cut down on some graphics, and get rid of some of your widgets.
Professional Theme
You do not have to have a premium theme to have a professional looking theme. One of the biggest turnoffs for me when I am visiting a blog is a junky theme. A clean, easy to navigate theme will create a favorable first impression and entice the visitor to stick around and explore your content.
Content
This one is a no brainer, if your content stinks or is nonexistent, the visitor will bolt and never return again. Quality content that educates, entertains, or brings value to the reader will keep them on your blog to read other posts and hopefully subscribe to your blog.
Easy on the Ads
Most people want to make money with their blogs (I do!) and you have to walk the fine line of enough ads without over doing it. I recently eliminated the Google ads in the middle of the post because I decided it was too much. You will have to decide what the right blend is for you and your audience. As a general rule, I would stay away from popup ads. I find them highly annoying and it always leaves me with a bad impression of the blog.
Have links open in a new window
We all have external links and exits on our blogs. It is wise to set them to open up in a new window; this will increase the chances of that person coming back to your blog.
Related Posts
I recommend installing a plugin that will show related posts under your content and right above the comments. This is an easy way to keep that visitor reading your posts. I am using “Microkids Related Posts” and it work great.
Popular Posts
Another great technique is to install a popular post widget. New visitors are likely to check this out as it serves as an example of your best content and probably the posts that provide the most useful information. I have my widget displayed front and center.
Increase Comments
If you takes steps to increase the number and quality of comments this will help make your blog stickier and keep readers around longer. They will spend time reading the comments and also if they write a comment this will increase their time as well. I recently wrote an article on how to get more blog comments if you want to check it out.
Create a “new readers” page
I was in the process of doing this and it actually spurred the idea for this post. I will be making a page and adding a tab in the header that is geared towards first time visitors. It will be kind of like and about page but will focus on the top posts in each of the categories. This will provide a nice overview of the blog and hopefully get your new visitor exposed to dozens of your top articles.
Add video, audio,etc..
This is an area I am still working on but the reality is that providing video and multimedia is an easy and effective tool to use to help you connect with your readers. There are very few bloggers who do this well. I see that the Problogger finally just updated his video of the week. Prior to this update he had the same video displayed for two months.
There you have it, 10 tips to make your blog stickier and keep your readers reading.
What do you do to increase the amount of time visitors spend on your blog?
While you are here, you may want to subscribe to my blog:
My top commenter (Lee from MyBlog2Day.com) is having a blog contest to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of his blog. I am hoping that all my readers will pay his blog a visit and join the contest. There are cash and prizes totaling over $345. It is real simple to enter, you just need to own a blog and write a post (like I am doing) and send a tweet and the subscribe to his feed. You will probably want to do this anyway as there are loads of great tips on how to make money online. Obviously, a good way to make money online is to enter many blog contests. You can’t win if you don’t play, right?
For those of you who want a sneak peek at the prizes, here they are:
1 winner will win the Grand Prize
1) $50 Cash -sponsored by Liew from Make Money Online.
2) Blog Consultation (3 hours for free) sponsored by Adam at The 42nd Estate. The value is $100 on this prize, but in my opinion, is worth much more than that.
1 winner will take second
1) A great premium theme from Carl Ocab from Make Money Online.
2) “Quit Being A Wage Slave Using 10 Easy Steps” ebook from Peter at Work At Home Blog.
1 winner will take third
1) $17 Cash from the blog owner Lee at Make Money Online.
2) 1 Domain, 1GB space, 10GB monthly transfer, 25 email. Stretsh from Blogging Notes.
and 1 winner each will take home a consolaton prize
1) SEO Analysis For your main page from Nicolas Prudhon from SEO Help.
2) Kelly at Money Making Mommy will send out an email ad to her 30,000+ subscribers.
3) 468×60 banner spot for 30 days from Simon at Home Based Business
4) 1000 Entrecard points from Lee at Make Money Online
To enter you can follow this link…
Blog Contest
Beware of Tweepme.com. I am sure you have seen their ads, they are all over the place as they must be spending thousands of dollars per month on Adwords. The basic pitch of the service is that you sign up for $10.95 and you will receive 4,000 new followers. The way they explain the service is you fork over the money and they will do the rest. Well, the rest is supposed to be connecting you with the other 4,000 members. The premise being that you follow them and they will follow you back. It sounded like a very straight forward service and I thought that it was a good deal, 4000 followers for $10 bucks. I decided to sign up with my second (test) Twitter account. Like most things on the Internet, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Here is what I got for my $10.95, 162 new followers. I signed up on May 5th and there is nothing happening as a result of the service, it is like they moved on to some other suckers already.
It is the not the end of the world, as $10 will not make or break me, but I simply hate being taken for a ride. Hopefully, I helped someone not get scammed by this service.
If you are looking for more Twitter followers – I personally recommend TweetAdder – click on the banner below to learn more:
When you first start a blog, one of the first decisions you will have to make is choosing a theme. This can be overwhelming, as there are literally thousands of free themes to choose from. When I first started this blog, I was using the Moneymaker theme from Unique Blog Designs. This is a great theme and it makes it really easy to add adsense to your blog posts. However, I got sick and tired of seeing that same theme on dozens of blogs that I visited. I was looking for a premium theme but I did not want to pay a lot of money for it. That is when I discovered Elegant Themes . Elegant Themes is a premium WordPress theme club that costs less than $20 a month. They currently have 23 different themes in the collection. If you do the math, that is less than a buck per theme. If you have multiple blogs this option will be a no brainer. I have four different themes running on four different blogs so far.
We all know that content is king and the quality of your content will determine if you sink or swim as a blogger. However, I do think that the design and look and feel of your blog is important as well. First impressions matter and if you have a cool or unique blog design you will increase the likelihood of that visitor actually reading your stuff.
I am using the PureType theme, with a customized header. Here are some of the features that are included with my theme:
Opera compatible
Netscape compatible
Safari compatible
WordPress 2.7 compatible
Three Color Schemes
Threaded Comments
Optional Blog-style Layout
Gravatar ready
Firefox compatible
IE7 + IE6 compatible
Advertisement Ready
Widget ready sidebars
Theme Option Pages
Custom thumbnail images
PSD files
Valid XHTML + CSS
Smooth tabless design
So what do you think, does having a premium theme matter or are free themes good enough?