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Angus Prime Filets – How to Guest Blog Links

Bob Angus — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:12:38 +0000

Writing guest posts on popular blogs is a proven best practice for bloggers or anyone who wants their work published online. This week’s edition of Angus Prime Filets serves up links to guest blogging articles that will help you learn how to successful publish your guest posts on the top blogs. The basic steps to guest blogging are

Why guest blogging? Your benefits
Finding a blog to connect with
Getting your proposal accepted
How to write an exceptional guest post

Why guest blogging?

Ann Smarty is authority on guest blogging and runs the successful MyBlogGuest community. She offer up how you can benefit from publishing a guest post and how not to think of it as a shortcut. Hint: You develop positive brand awareness, reputation and engaged fans… not SEO backlinks and instant traffic.

20+ Reasons Why You Need to Start Guest Blogging

What Guest Blogging is NOT: Getting It Right

Finding a blog to connect with

You need to find blogs who you’d like to work with and make a connection. Here are several excellent articles to help you find blogs that are relevant to the value you offer and are open to guest posts.

My 3-Step System for Finding Guest Post Opportunities – Problogger.net article by Jocelyn Ann

Want Guest Post Links? Find Them Via Twitter – Ethan Lyon created a great tool which he explains on SEOmoz

5 Reasons Why MyBlogGuest Is My Best Find After 5 Years As Webmaster - Daily SEO Tip explains why the aforementioned MyBlogGuest community is the place to make connections.

Getting your proposal accepted

Next you need submit your guest post proposal. Here are some helpful tips on what to do and what not to do. Hint: Put yourself in the blog owner’s shoes. Always remember guest blogging is not a numbers game. If you spam and send half-baked mass proposals, you won’t get the benefit.

12 Ways to Guest Post on the Greatest Group Marketing Blog – MarketingProfs

4 Tips for Pitching Guest Posts Like a Pro – Problogger.net post by Aman Basanti of ageofmarketing.com

The 2 Biggest Guest Blogging Mistakes You Can Make – DailyBlogTips

Write an exceptional guest post

Now it is time to write and publish an excellent post. Here are the fundamental elements to include in your guest post that will help you successfully develop your brand and reputation.

A Quick and Dirty Guide to Your First Guest Post – Neil Patel offers the ultimate guide to writing a guest post on Problogger.net

Creating a Funnel with Your Guest Posts – DailyBlogTips

What additional resources do you recommend to help learn how to guest blog?

Picture of the Week

Image: Two Cows in Pt. Reyes National Seashore in California by AnnaOne

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: angus, blogging, content, how-to guide, Links of the Week, tips, traffic

Launching a New Theme for BobAngus.com

Bob Angus — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 05:14:48 +0000

Welcome to the new BobAngus.com! A complete redesign of my blog theme has been a long time coming. My primary goal is to increase the total amount of time you spend on this site. Great content is the #1 way to achieve that objective, but an excellent theme is incredibly important to properly deliver that content.

The new theme is based on Stephan Miller’s More than Multiple Widgets theme. (...)
Read the rest of Launching a New Theme for BobAngus.com

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2008. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: angus, blogging, plugins, themes, web design, Wordpress

Prime Angus Filets: Links this Week 2-1-2008

Bob Angus — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:34:36 +0000

Demo 08 was held this week in Palm Desert, CA. For those that do not know about DEMO, it is the high powered gathering where startups can demo to venture capitalists, press, and other influential technology elite.

Since my fortunes are used for mundane things like a mortgage and not angel funding, I simply watched the demonstrations online. Here are some of the companies that I will be doing further research on or using this year:(...)
Read the rest of Prime Angus Filets: Links this Week 2-1-2008

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blogging, business models, Links of the Week, social networks, web 2.0

Changing a WordPress theme can be a painâ€¦ not anymore

Bob Angus — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 05:51:41 +0000

I am in the process of a making the switch to a completely new WordPress theme. It feels like changing the tires on a car while the car is moving. Any blogger who has made a complete theme change or who is constantly tweaking their theme knows the feeling. You only get a final visual of the update when you publish it live. Yikes! Your readers are exposed to even the smallest hiccup as the result of your tinkering.

I have created an entirely new, temporary blog to address this issue during my theme overhaul project. I installed the new theme and I am now in the process of tweaking and testing. Even after I launch, I am sure that I will make minor modifications at least twice a week.

There Is an Easier Way to Change your Theme

Two recently released WordPress plugins allow you to safely test drive a new theme as the administrator role. Meanwhile, your visitors are still viewing your blog under the old theme. Either of these plugins should be a part of every bloggerâ€™s set of plugins.

Theme Test Drive by Vladimir Prelovac (Special thanks to BlogPerfume where I read about Theme Test Drive.)
User Level Themes by Double Black Design

Both plugins work with WordPress 2.3.2. Both are version 1.0. So I expect some updates will be coming, though I personally did not run into any difficulties with either. The only troubleshooting that you may need to do is to delete your cache or simply turn off WP-Cache entirely.

Wow. Just think how much time I can spend tweaking and testing themes now!

Prime Angus Filets: Links this Week 1-11-2008

Bob Angus — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 14:00:28 +0000

More on Twitter

Sam Harrelson mentions my Twitter post in his daily Affiliate Fortune Cookie podcast and provides some great insight on how he uses Twitter as a communication tool. My takeaway from his recommendations are that Twitter spam and self-promoting broadcasts are the same unwanted communication as the telemarketer that calls you during dinner. Do not do it.

I have also ventured across several other great posts and examples of companies using Twitter to market their products.

Eirik Solheim at eirikso.com provides solid Twitter tips that he has learned in his early days of using Twitter.
Allen Stern at CenterNetworks questions Twitterâ€™s business model, but mentions that companies like IconFactory are using the Twitter APIs to drive revenues.
Check woot and Amazon Gold Box Deals via Twitter or read about it on Read/Write Web.

Entrecard

Entrecard is red hot right now. On the surface, it is yet another social network for bloggers to drive traffic by swapping links. If traffic is Entrecardâ€™s only benefit, it will die out within 4-6 months. However, it is becoming its own financial economy. Here are two great posts on how Entrecard is driving for success:

Darren Rowse has an informative interview with Entrecard founder, Graham Langdon.
Bloggingmix discusses why Entrecard is Winning Over Blogrush.

You are not on Facebook?!

I have my ups and downs with social networking, but I enjoy the connections and believe in its business value. However, many businesses have knowingly ignored or rejected social networking. Here are the biggest objections to social networking and how you can overcome those objections when you come across a social networking naysayer.

Image of the Week

This landscape picture was taken from a hilltop outside of Cortona, Italy by me on my honeymoon.

Check out other pictures and images on my Flickr photos.

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blogging, Links of the Week, social networks

Prime Angus Filets: Links this Week 1-4-2008

Bob Angus — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 14:00:24 +0000

The first week of 2008 has gone in a blur. It took all my will power to not spend too much time this week reviewing the many eye-popping 2007 stats posts. After all, I know that the key to John Chow’s 2007 success has been action, not daydreaming about somebody else’s fortune. Here are some of the articles that I found incredibly useful in taking direct action to hit my own blogging goals.

First, I spent time analyzing where I can improve using basic SEO strategies. I started with keywords. My goal is to maintain a #1 rank for anyone who searches for Bob Angus, but I need to improve significantly across several other sets of keywords. SEO Design Solutions offered a good guide with SEO fundamentals called How to Extend your Keyword Empire in 3 Simple Steps.

Updated: Terry at SuperAff.com posted a good tip on Tracking Hot Keywords For New Blog Subscriptions.

Next, I am addressing link building. I refuse to take the shortcut, blackhat route or just buy links. One should build links that are sustainable, valuable, and trustworthy. One starting point is to analyze the competition and develop an external relevance profile for them. Hamlet Batista unleashed something that you will not find in any ebook with Revealing your Competitor’s FULL External Relevance Profile. Also, Earner’s Blog continues his series on link building with a good reminder to think outside the box in Link Building Guide Part 3 – Aboutus.org

Finally, I am quickly coming to a realization that I need to change my blog design. Skellie of Skelliewag.org delivered a great guest post on Blog Perfume called 8 Clever Ways to Lower the Bounce-Rate on Your Blog. The tips are design-oriented more than content-oriented, but they address a critical issue for low traffic blogs like bobangus.com. Each visitor who â€˜bouncesâ€™ out of your site is a lost opportunity to gain a loyal reader or new subscriber. It is time to change my WordPress theme.

Image of the Week

Rue Pachinko by Renaud Bec is amazing concept art for the Red Steel video game by Ubisoft. For more incredible video game concept art, see the annual collections from IntoThePixel.com.

Check out other pictures and images on my Flickr photos.

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blogging, Links of the Week, SEO, web design

Buying a blog is different than buying a website

Bob Angus — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 01:27:23 +0000

Earlier this year, I did a post on Flipping Website Real Estate for Profit. The market for buying and selling websites is even hotter today. The Sitepoint marketplace and Digital Point marketplace are flowing with buyers and sellers. Buying a website, building it up, and selling it for more is a business model that works. However, I am seeing more pure blogs in the mix. If you are thinking about buying a blog, be careful. The metrics you use and value that you place on them must be different than a standard website.

Hot Topic

I have read three poignant posts this week that have led me to write this post.

Devlounge – The Dangers of Buying a Blog: David gets right to the point â€“ expect to lose approximately 33% of the current traffic right away. Unique visitors are not eyeballs, they are readers. You have to value why those readers are visiting the site and if that readership can be maintained.

Portfolio.com – What’s Drudge Worth? – by way of ProBlogger.Net: Duff estimates that The Drudge Report should be valued between $10-20 million based on eyeballs, ad sales, and his momâ€™s opinion. However, he goes on to say that it is worth zilch if you cannot lock Matt Drudge into a long-term writing contract. I could not agree more.

Dosh Dosh – Building an Online Empire: Of the 16 website types Maki mentions that you can buy/sell, none of them were a pure blog. He lists a product review blog, but that type of site is more dependent on the product than the author.

There are many more helpful articles if you do a Google search. Or I also recommend reading related forum posts on WickedFire, Sitepoint or Digital Point.

The Metrics

Before buying a blog or any website, you need to know the following metrics:

Unique visits per month
Page views per month
Feed subscriptions
Posts per month
Monthly Revenue
Google PageRank
Alexa rank
Date established

Of course, you should ask for the trends and seasonality of these metrics. A snapshot in time or peaks can look great, but they can be pumped up and a single number does not tell the whole story.

Beside statistics, you should also have a clear understanding of the intellectual and technical property you are acquiring. You are not buying a domain. You are buying a website and everything that goes with it, including posts, comments, media, databases, customized themes, etc.

Recommendations

There is no cookie-cutter, rule of thumb for valuation, like $10 per post or 10x monthly revenues. Here is a swag bid estimate calculation that I use:

Your valuation calculation should start by defining a financial benchmark. Estimate the monthly profit (preferred) or revenue per thousand unique visits or subscriber that you are achieving for your current blog properties.
Then use that value and apply it to the same measure for the blog in questionâ€¦ less 50%. Remember David said 33%. I go more conservative when making financial estimations.
Finally, my bid would be approximately 12 months of that estimated profit or 6 months of the estimated revenue. That is my personal valuation rule based on my desire to be rolling full speed with a site within a year.

For example, letâ€™s say your current blogs make $2 profit per thousand unique visits per month and the potential purchase has 20k uniques per month. Then I would expect to make $20 per month ($2 x 20 x 50%). My bid would be in the range of $200-250 (or $20 x 12).

In addition to making a good quantitative decision, you should also be prepared with an action plan to minimize readership erosion and to increase your ramp to profitability. Specifically, make sure you line up engaging writers and content to hit the ground running and get your promotional methods implemented.

Now I am off to see if there is anything on Sitepoint or Digital Point that catches my eye!

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blogging, business models, results, web real estate

Yet Another Social Media Profile… But It’s Google

Bob Angus — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:15:20 +0000

Yesterday I created a new profile that may eventually help to plug me in to the social network of the future. I created Bob’s Google Profile – not to be confused with my Orkut profile. Google has recently deployed and stealthily launched several new features that hint at their long-term social network strategy and that targets Facebook.

Welcome to Google Profile

Google Profile is barebones at this point. I posted my picture, linked to BobAngus.com and added a brief about Bob description. I could not add my favorite music, movies, or munchies. Check it out on the Help page or the Googlesystem blog.

Sepideh Saremi at Searchviews posted on this topic yesterday. She pointed out something very powerful about Googleâ€™s social network strategy. They want to approach social media through the email inbox. This tack makes a lot of sense because email remains the primary communication tool. Google Profile is perfectly in line with my Gmail account and my Google Reader.

In addition to technologies like OpenID, OAuth, and others, I am keeping an eye on what Google Profile is doing here. I think that they more than anyone can create a ubiquitous profile by leveraging their email position. And the timing could not be better. I am quickly heading toward profile and login chaos. I have over 30 different profiles across various social networks, blog networks, forums, and social bookmarking services.

Social Media Fatigue

Do not get me wrong. I am not complaining. I recognize that I am not the normal social media user. I love trying out the latest offering. I also rely heavily on these networks and social bookmarking services to grow readership of this blog and other sites. And most importantly, I have a lot of fun. However, I have moments when I am less than diligent in updating my social media world, which can quickly make me appear stale.

David Recordon at Oâ€™Reilly Radar had a great post this morning on this subject at Battling Social Network Fatigue … By Going Open. I agree that it is easy for the internet marketer, blogger or technology guru to become tired of all the services available. However, I estimate that the average person is likely to only focus their time on 1 or 2 large platforms, like Facebook or MySpace, and maybe another niche network. Regardless, the concern is very valid.

Beside fatigue, I am also seriously hesitant to proactively invite all my friends to every single network. My contacts are valuable relationships that I do not want to compromise. As a result of not spamming my entire contact list when I join each new service, there is some level of fracture across my networks. Updated: I just read a related discussion on Sitepoint’s blog.

Guess what I am going to do next to address fatigue and fracture? Yes, I am going to test some social network aggregator services like Spokeo, Plaxo Pulse, FriendFeedâ€¦ which likely requires me to create yet another profile.

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2007. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blogging, social bookmarking, social networks

Community love with MyBlogLog and BUMPzee

Bob Angus — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 06:56:06 +0000

I have been incredibly slow to build out my community connections and social bookmarking here on my blog. If you are going to have a successful blog, you must actively participate in a relevant, engaged community. So I’ve been joining everyone of the many social networking sites and social bookmarking services. Soon I will be updating the Marketing page with a complete list of these sites. For now, I am making several posts reviewing my favorites. First up are two popular communities for bloggers: MyBlogLog and BUMPzee.

Know what your visitors want with MyBlogLog

Yahooâ€™s recently acquired MyBlogLog is one of the most widely used community for bloggers. I have simply added their widget into the sidebar here and have done the basics within the account setup. The community participation is huge. I instantly had 5 truly relevant groups where I knew I would be a daily participant. However, MyBlogLog offers a lot more than just community. The biggest benefit is that I know what my visitors are interested in and where they went after leaving my site. Armed with that information, I can focus on making more posts on what you want to read. Great concept, huh?

My traffic numbers are getting a BUMP

BUMPzee takes a lot of what MyBlogLog does well in building communities and then adds the powerful element of social bookmarking. Iâ€™ve not only added the sidebar widget that shows who has visited bobangus.com recently, but Iâ€™ve added their “BUMP it” bookmarking widget for all of my posts. Plus, this bookmarking is perfectly integrated in with the sidebar widget by promoting the top bumped articles in addition to who has recently visited. BUMPzee is a the perfect blend of networking and relevant bookmarking.

Of course, my personal desire for the added traffic and the stickiness of participating in an active community (especially in affiliate marketing groups) is my biggest benefit. I just had my highest traffic day yesterday thanks to direct traffic from BUMPzee and getting 3 Bumps for my CJ Product User Group Post.

Join these communities and add me as a friend

I’ve already seen an instant boost in traffic coming from both Bumpzee and MyBlogLog, even though my number of connections is still pretty low. I really am looking forward to see what happens as I build out my friend lists. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend that you setup an account and take the extra steps of adding a ton of related tags, joining some related communities, and reaching out to make contacts. In fact, make sure to let me know who you are and Iâ€™ll add you to my connections.

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blogging, social networks, traffic, web 2.0

Great content sources to boost your viral traffic

Bob Angus — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 20:38:25 +0000

Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz posted an article that is a great reminder for anyone who has gotten into a rut with content. When data Repositories Open Up, So Do Possibilities for Viral Content provides information on finding great content and how to effectively use that content in the viral marketing world of Digg, Reddit, and others. For me, the post is a good kick in the pants to dig deeper to find and leverage the vast sources of free data that is available.(...)
Read the rest of Great content sources to boost your viral traffic

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Post tags: affiliate marketing, blogging, content, traffic