Well… related to my previous post How To Create A Viral Video – I ran into this series called Viral Video Film School. It’s a bit silly and sarcastic at times but he still has a few good points.

Like in this one, he says you should “snap up some animal fights”:

He mentions Battle at Kruger which ranked #6 on my Top 10 Most Viral Videos Of 2007 list and has gotten over 36 million views.

I’ve only watched a couple of videos from the Viral Video Film School series so if you find a video there that you think is cool let me know – I would like to check it out.

And related to my previous post Motivating quotes here is a quote I found interesting:

Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

Well, take care – I’ll post more when I get back from my trip.

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Wondering how you can make the Top 10 Most Viral Videos list? Check out this video I found about how to create a popular viral video:

Mine’s doing great, got over a million hits and it just landed me a job at a hot new media firm.

Specific areas include:

• Filming yourself sitting at your desk
• Hurting yourself
• Hurting others
• Using animals to hurt people…

Very funny parody :) So cheesy… ;) But this parody is fairly viral – it has gotten over 47,000 views (although it’s been more than 1,5 years since it was posted on YouTube – it has probably been posted on a few other places where it’s gotten several thousand additional views).

That’s one way to make your video successfully viral – make it funny. Also, if your video is about something related to the internet and internet culture then it’s likely to be passed around…

Here are a couple more videos/ads from the Viral Learning Center:

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Finally! I was just visiting my blog and noticed something new – a green bar on the Live PageRank extension that I have installed on Firefox. Because I launched this blog just after (or around) the previous PageRank update I hadn’t gotten a public PageRank yet. The front page of this blog is now officially a PageRank 4 web page – which I think is pretty good for a brand new website. I’m sure the My Name In My Domain list helped a little bit ;) Well, this is great news because having a high PageRank blog comes with a lot of benefits – for example; a lot of services use Google’s PageRank (PR) to evaluate your website. Now I can submit my blog to Text Link Ads and Review Me and I’ll be able to make more money than if I only had PR3 or PR2.

But the last PageRank update was a bit shaky – so you might encounter some “bumps”. As an example it doesn’t seem like the public PageRank of Gary Lee’s blog has been updated (probably just because all the data centers haven’t been updated). How about your websites – did your PageRank go up or down? If you have a new website – what PageRank did you get?

If you increased your PageRank you shouldn’t expect a rush of traffic from Google all of a sudden. Because even though Google only updates the public PageRank every 3-4 months I’m pretty sure they update their algorithm calculations every day or so.

Keywords: PageRank, PageRank update, text link ads, review me, reviewme, text-link-ads, PR

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I was in the original “my name is my domain” list so it’s only logical that I make a post to keep the “list train” moving – hopefully this will create a second (or third or fourth…) wave that’ll bring in some additional links for everybody involved.

So, by posting this list on your own blog you can get a lot of new links to your blog if other bloggers pick up the list from there. Another reason why you should post this list on your blog is that you most likely will get the blog owners that you are linking to coming to your blog to check you out. Because a lot of blog owners check their Technorati stats to see what new blogs are linking to them. Especially those that use WordPress because they can see the latest links on the WP dashboard when they log in.

The Rules

As Gary said: the real name of the author must be included in the domain name. It doesn’t have to be your full name – but it can’t be in a subdomain of another domain. So…

Instructions

***Start Copying Here***

1) Write a short introduction paragraph about what how you found the list and include a link to the blog that referred you to the list.

2) COPY the ENTIRE List below and add it to your blog. To avoid duplicate content and increase the amount of keywords your site can accessible for, go ahead and change the titles of the blog. Just don’t change the links of the blog.

3) Take “My Adds” and move them into the “My Originals” list.

4) Add 3 Brand New Narcissistic Bloggers that you know of

My Adds
Gobala Krishnan
Jonathan Leger
I don’t remember any more bloggers with their name in the domain that haven’t already been added to this list by someone else – so I’m only adding 2.

My Originals

Gary Lee
Ed Lau
John Chow
Nate Whitehill
Stephen Fung
Freelance writing
Jeff Kee
Stuart Hannig
Make Money Online
Nomar
Jimi Morrison
Nathan Drach
Saman Sadeghi
***Stop Copying Here***

I think it’s also important to write about the rules of this list if you decide to participate and post this on your own blog – because I’ve noticed a few people posting this list on their blog but their name isn’t in the domain – but I won’t complain, a link is a link ;) — Also, it’s of course very important that you keep all the links in the list active and make sure the code isn’t broken or anything – I’ve seen a few blogs that mess up the list.

As you might have noticed I’ve changed the anchor text for my blog to “Make Money Online” – that just makes sense from an SEO point of view. If you’re on the original list and you want me to edit your listing let me know.

Hey, if you’re on this list and you’re visiting because you noticed a new link to your blog please say hi in the comments ;)

If you’re interested in viral marketing you might want to check out this Mark Joyner eBook. Mark is a legend in the internet marketing field and one of the pioneers of online viral marketing.

Keywords: viral, viral marketing, viral traffic, list, mark joyner, domain, name

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I just checked my RSS stats on the FeedBurner widget and it looks like I have 50 readers now – woohoo! – so I guess I have to give them something to read… I definitely don’t want to fall in the same pit as many new blogs do – be all excited and post regularly the first couple of months but then the blogger loses momentum (or something) and posts less and less frequently until the blog finally just fades away. No siree, not this blog – by the end of this year I want this to be a good resource for bloggers and people interested in making money online – and hopefully I’ll be blogging here for several years. On that note…

One of the points in the Get More People To Read Your Blog post was “Have a contest”. Contests are always fun and if you do it right it can really help your blog (or your normal website) get more website traffic and new readers. You can even use a contest for SEO purposes to get more links to your blog with a specific anchor text to increase your search engine rankings for those particular keywords. That’s what John Chow is doing with his Nintendo Wii contest.

John is trying to climb up the rankings for the highly competitive term make money online and it looks like it’s working for him. Just a few days after launching the contest he ranked #3 for make money online on Google.ca – and now I’m seeing him as #2 on Google.com. In just 2 weeks he managed to beat authority sites like ProBlogger, Squidoo and About.com that have been in the Top 10 for a while – Good job John!

If you reverse engineer what he’s done you can see that his contest post has received 222 comments and trackbanks/pingbacks so far. There are a lot of comments on that post but it looks like the majority is trackbacks from blogs participating in the contest and linking to John with the “make money online” anchor text. Does that mean that you need less than 200 websites linking to your site using “make money online” as anchor text to rank #2 for that key phrase? Maybe, but there are probably several blogs that didn’t ping John’s post which don’t count towards the 222 number. Also, it depends on what kind of sites are linking to you – what’s their PageRank, are they authority sites, is the topic on those websites related to make money online, etc?

Also, John did some other clever on-page SEO tricks to increase his rankings even more – Like changing the title of the front page to “Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com”, renaming the category “Making Money From A Blog” to “Make Money Online” and just stuffing the key phrase anywhere he can ;) He often uses make money online in the title of blog posts and makes sure the keyword density for “make money online” is high.

Oh, I almost forgot – he also changed the rules for his “review my blog for a linkback” scheme – now people that are reviewing his blog must link to him using… what do you think? …you guessed it, “make money online” as anchor text ;) I think he’s already received over 10 batches of reviews since he changed those rules – so that’s an additional 100+ links with that anchor text.

Another thing that I just remembered – John called this the “Root Of All Evil Nintendo Wii contest” because he initially wanted people to link to him using the anchor text root of all evil. So the initial batch of contest participants linked to John using that anchor text and not “make money online”. I guess he realized that he wouldn’t benefit a great deal by having a high ranking for “root of all evil” so he changed the rules.

Another requirement to participate in the contest is that you must link to 1234pens.com using promotional pens as anchor text. 1234pens.com is the sponsor of this contest – they gave John Chow a Nintendo Wii to give to one lucky winner. Promotional pens is also a pretty competitive key phrase but they’re now ranked #3 on Google – so this contest also worked great for the sponsor. I believe Nintendo Wii costs about $300 so that’s not an expensive way to rank high for a competitive term. Some people spend $100 a month buying links to increase their rankings temporarily – being a contest sponsor might be a smarter move. Perhaps I should try being a sponsor for a contest on a popular blog? Maybe I wouldn’t even have to buy a Wii or an Xbox – cash prizes are probably more appealing since people can just buy whatever they want. What do you think?

One thing though, I think it makes sense for the sponsor to donate something related to his website/business – I’m not sure why 1234pens.com doesn’t also throw in some promotional pens for the winner (and even 5-10 random participants).

I just have one concern with John’s aggressive campaign – Google wants websites to be “natural” – they should build links naturally (with various anchor texts) and add “natural” content (that’s written for the reader, not the search engines). Right now John is almost keyword stuffing his blog with “make money online” (I’m pretty sure Google looks at keyword stuffing as spamming) and Google might look at those hundreds of links using the same anchor text that came out of nowhere as spamming/Google bombing. So there is a possibility that Google will devalue those hundreds of links and decrease John’s rankings – but only time will tell. I think he should maybe be a little more flexible in his “review link exchange” rules and give people the option of 3-5 anchor texts to choose from when linking to him.

An interesting side note: I remember Engadget (one of the most popular blogs in the world – it’s #1 on the Technorati Top 100) launched their sister blog Engadget HD a few months ago. They had a few contests and the prizes were pretty impressive – one of the things they were giving away was a 42-inch plasma HDTV – and all you had to do was leave a comment on that post. It doesn’t get any easier than that… and it was no surprise that they got over 15,000 comments! Just think if they had required a linkback instead? They probably could have gotten Top 5 search engine rankings for any key phrase.

Have you had a contest on your blog? Was it successful? Also, what kind of contests do you like the most? I’m going to come up with a good idea for a contest – not sure if I should have a physical prize or just start with a digital prize…

Well, there you go – a fairly long and (hopefully) interesting/educational post :) Come to think of it, instead of making you wait 12 long days for a new post I probably should have just posted a filler like the bLaugh comic I did a while back – or just post a funny/interesting video. What do you think? Is filler better than nothing?

Keywords: contests, competitions, nintendo, Wii, John Chow, make money online, PageRank, ProBlogger, About.com, Squidoo, Google bombing, keyword stuffing, keywords, key phrase, filler, anchor text, case study, search engine optimization, engadget, spam, spamming, Google

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The most recognizable feature of MyBlogLog is the “recent readers” widget (you can see it on the sidebar if you scroll down a bit). I think that’s what put MyBlogLog on the map – it has a kind of a viral aspect to it. But I realize now that it has been some time since I first saw MyBlogLog in action – It’s probably a year (even more) since I first saw this “7 Clicks Today” (or “3rd Most Popular Outgoing Link”) on some blogs. So, the original purpose of MyBlogLog was, like the name implies, to be a log (web tracker) for blogs.

When you join MyBlogLog you get a 3 day trial of their Pro features. Having a Pro account gives you real time stats of where your visitors are coming from, what page they’re visiting and what links they clicked. After the 3 day trial you are downgraded to a free account and then you’ll only see stats for yesterday and the days before. You’ll also only see the top 10 results for each of the 3 tracking categories (referring link, what is being read and links clicked).

Pro Account

A Pro account is $3 per month or $25 for a whole year – that’s a common price range for web 2.0 websites (like flickr). Having a Pro account would make sense for popular blogs that get hundreds of pageviews a day where it’s vital for the success of your blog to know exactly what your readers are doing right now. But for small blogs where you only need to check your stats every now and then a free account might be enough. Combined with a normal web tracker (like StatCounter) you should get all the stats you need – Just check StatCounter for (close to) real-time stats of where your readers are coming from and what they’re reading and then check MyBlogLog to see what links the readers clicked yesterday (and the days before).

More Traffic

It looks like MyBlogLog can bring you some extra traffic. Just a few minutes after creating my account I already had a few people view my profile and one guy had added my as a contact in their profile – pretty cool :) I think MBL is a great tool for bloggers – it can only help you. Also, on your profile there is a link to your blog and we all want more links, right?

Don’t forget to add your picture to your MyBlogLog profile – Then, when you’re logged into MBL and you’re visiting blogs that have the “recent readers” widget your photo will appear there. Other readers might then click your photo and go to your profile – there they’ll see links to all your blogs.

A good way to get more exposure and more traffic is by joining communities in your niche. You can join my MyBlogLog community here.

Spam

But as with all hot services people are going to abuse them. Because you can leave messages on people’s MyBlogLog profiles with hyperlinks you get a lot of random people with messages like “Hey, like ur site. chk out my site thx…”. I’m already getting spam on the “recent readers” widget. But the MBL team is working on this issue.

Video Review

Just for fun I decided to record a short screen capture of me checking out MyBlogLog and all its features. This is the first video (of many?) that I’ll post on this blog. Enjoy :)

Let me know what you think of this video… (you might need to turn up the volume a little bit to hear me properly)
Update: The video is on: YouTube, Google Video and Revver (better quality).

Keywords: MyBlogLog, Yahoo, review, hannes johnson, videos, viral, web 2.0, web-20, web2.0, analytics, web analytics, stats, web tracking, web traffic, more traffic, link building, links, spam, screen cap, screen capture, blogging

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I just read this great article over at ProBlogger – it’s by guest blogger Tony Hung and he lists a lot of good tips on how to market your blog in 2007.

Tony split the tips into a few categories. Here are some that I liked and/or found interesting – with my comments:

Get Your Own House In Order

• #3 Design is more important than you think – like I said before, standing out is usually good. Although I didn’t get a custom made theme for my blog I don’t think thousands are using this theme right now. But I will definitely modify it later on to make it unique – or start from scratch with my very own.
• #6 Do interviews with other bloggers – yeah, that sounds like a good idea and might be something I’ll be doing in the near future…
• #8 Have a contest – ok, cool idea. That sounds like fun, it could definitely build some buzz and get my readers excited. I’ll have to come up with a good contest :)
• #14 Get Your MyBlogLog widget and work it, work it, work it (in a nice way) – hmm… ok, I guess since Yahoo! thought MyBlogLog was worth paying $10 million for it must be valuable. I’ll have to take a look at that and start building my posse ;)

Getting the Word Out

• #1 Join a blog carnival – ok, I hadn’t heard about a “blog carnival” before. This is one of the things I have to take a better look at.
• #5 Join Blogburst – another service I hadn’t heard about. I guess it wouldn’t so bad if one my blog articles would get syndicated on Reuters :)
• #10 Get interviewed – sounds good… maybe when I’ve blogged some more people would be interested in interviewing me.
• #12 Create free stuff for yourself and give it away – yup, a classic strategy. Later this year I might collect the top 20 posts and offer them as a PDF download.

Connect, Connect, Connect

• #2 Guest blog – Tony Hung is probably getting a lot of traffic because he got a guest blogger spot at ProBlogger. I would be happy to guest blog on some nice blog ;)

Make Social Media Work For You

• #4 Create a Squidoo Page Lens – yeah, I’ve been meaning to set up a lens for some time now. I read Seth’s blog a lot and I think Squidoo is a cool idea. You can probably get a lot of traffic if you build a nice lens related to your niche.
• #5 Use MySpace Marketing – I haven’t yet joined MySpace. A lot of people recommend MySpace as a marketing tool so I guess it’s working for them. But I think it’s silly to go spam MySpace to get as many friends as possible…

Well, that’s just a few things you can do to promote your blog. Tony actually lists 41 things… But you should start with something simple like “Participate on larger blogs in comments” and as you get comfortable you can move into more advanced tactics.

Technorati tags: tips, blog tips, blog promotion, hannes johnson, website promotion, blog marketing, blogs

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