Tomorrow, this blog, along with thousands of others will be silent in honor of the victims of the Virginia Tech Massacre. Join the Day of Silence and do your part to remember.

Hopefully we can start to spread the word to stop propagating hate and violence.

This is where I jump out there and rant a bit about all the annoying crap going on today online! Care to join in?

On Making Money Online “Experts” . . .
I can’t believe all the “making money online” blogs out there. Most are from people who have never made any real money online. I think that anyone with a blog about making money online needs to prove their salt by showing everone how much they’ve actually made online. How are you going to give advice about making money online when you’ve never even made the bare minimum from any affiliate or ad program to get your first check?

On Website Copycats . . .
I can’t believe how many people think that by copying the strategies, design and content of other sites they will have instant success. People think that by simply stealing somone else’s ideas that they will somehow have a good site. It doesn’t work that way people! It is sad that we’ve become a world of drones, copying the few leaders out there who have the originality and imagination to actually do something individual and unique. Just because you see the top sites in your space doing something doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to see gains from doing it. Even the big boys do it . . . read my recent post on how MySpace has gone from the copied to the copycat with their MySpace News failure.

On Blogging Imitators . . .
I can’t believe the number of blogging imitators out there. It seems that John Chow is a favorite amongst the blogging bootleggers; John is an original, like him or not. It is unbelievable how many people have created blogs that simply copy what he does. I realize that imitation is the highest form of flattery, but re-read my first point on copycats.

On Every One Who Gives Online Advice About Something They Know Nothing About . . .
I was recently reading a blog where someone was trying to tell people how to run a successful forum. When pressed, they admitted that they were not currently and have not ever run any successful forums. How can you give advice on something you have no experience with?

The problem we all face now is that anyone can give advice. Before listening to anyone out there, find out a bit about them. Ask about their experience. Do they really know what the hell they are talking about?

The best is reading many of the websmaster forums out there where people are offering help to others when they are in no position to be doing so . . . e.g. I saw a thread where someone admitted getting only a handful of visitors per day, yet their signature said something like “get tons of website visitors” and their link went to a new, empty directory site.

On People With No Common Sense or Basic Netiquette . . .
This is my finaly rant of the day. I’m shocked that in this day and age people:

• Still think it is okay to POST IN ALL CAPS IN FORUMS

• Still post their link in blog comments
• Still send business emails with no contact information or signature, just their name
• Still think I’m going to do business with them after the send repeated, unsolicited, SPAM
• Still think I’m going to link to their completely unrelated and haphazardly thrown together website
• Still think I’ll do business or ever work with them after they insult me publicly (yes, I have only one person in mind here)
• Still think it is okay to sell CDs or DVDs online and then charge $9.99 for S&H

Ok . . . I’m tired of ranting. I feel much better!

I guess this post is best summed up by the following:

Care to extend the rant? (Is this post meme-worthy?)

Sometimes people ask me why their blog isn’t growing as fast as they’d like it to, and I usually ask what they are doing to build an audience. Most of the time, the answer I get is “I’m writing good posts” and “I try to do it regularly.” While this is important, I’ll venture to say that it is only a small fraction of what is necessary to build traffic to your site. What is the other 50%?

50% of Blogging Success is Connecting with Others

Most of the bloggers out there who are frustrated with their blog’s traffic growth are simply not doing enough to connect with other bloggers outside their sites. That’s why I feel that tools like MyBlogLog are so important. In this day and age, people want nothing more than to connect with others. This explains the growth torrent of blogs, forums, and other social websites.

What Do You Need to Do to Connect?

• You have to get out and see what others are doing, talking about, writing about, etc.
• You have to visit other sites and comment on their posts and get involved in the discussion.
• You have to email other people in your space and get to know them, and more importantly, let them get to know you.
• You have to network outside the virtual world..
• You have to be original and show people that you aren’t just another imitator trying to get your piece of the pie.
• You have to write quality posts about interesting or helpful subjects and you have to show people why it is important to them.
• You have to convey a passion in your writing.
• You have to be opinionated.
• You have to reveal at least a small part of yourself.
• You have to shape the debate in your area of content.

I can go on and on, but I’m getting a bit distracted watching the NBA Playoffs . . . I suppose the main point I’m trying to get across is this:

If you hope to build a thriving blog community (all the top blogs are primarily communities – just look at the amount of comments they get), then make sure you’re spending a good chunk of your time connecting as well as writing!

I was just thinking about how practically everyone these days has a blog. Be it a company or individual, blogs are now an engrained part of our lives. With that in mind, I found myself humming a song from my past, “The Log Song“, from Ren & Stimpy. Wouldn’t it just be a perfect piece of linkbait if someone turned this song & cartoon into a piece about blogs? (Note: if someone does take this idea, don’t forget who came up with it!)

The New Lyrics

It’s Blog, Blog, it’s its fun addictive and ‘hood!
It’s Blog, Blog, it’s better than bad, it’s good!
Everyone wants a blog! You’re gonna love it, Blog!
Come on and get your blog! Everyone needs a Blog!”

One of the first things that you’ll need to do when starting a business is to create a logo to represent your company. It seems like this may be a simple thing, but it is often more difficult then you think!

Some Logos Are Timeless

There are certain logos we’ll never forget: Apple, CocaCola, McDonalds, Google, Nike, Target, etc.

I don’t even need to show these, because we all have them imprinted in our minds. Pretty amazing!

I wish I could write a post about what constitutes a great logo. I don’t have any magic formula, but I know one when I see it. Creating a timeless and effective logo is not an easy undertaking. Large corporations often times spend millions of dollars on their brand.

I recently found a great resource to help you out with any logo questions (which actually inspired this post) called the Logo Design Blog. According to the site, the 5 characteristics of a highly successful logo include:

1. Uniqueness
2. Relevancy
3. Appealing
4. Consistency
5. Contrast

For more details, read the post; it goes into detail about each of these characteristics. In another interesting post, the site discusses the various constituents of a logo, which include symbol, sign, emblem, or slogan. It is a great place to start learning more about logos.

What Not to Do in Creating a Logo for Your Company

While I can’t tell you the formula for a great logo, I can talk about what isn’t great. Since I’ve spent a lot of time in the real estate world, I have seen countless logos from companies who are all looking to create a brand for themselves. The interesting thing is that at least 90% of these logos have some kind of roof or home as part of the logo. While this seems logical, and we even played with a roof-esque logo, does it differentiate these companies from one another? No.

They all pretty much have the same theme and in my mind, are simply clones of one another. They do nothing to help people recognize the companies.

The Evolution of a Logo Design

I believe that an effective logo is one that instantly provides brand recognition. Lets compare the various iterations of my company, BiggerPockets, Inc.’s logos over the past several years.

This first version of the logo is nothing but disasterous. I thought that because the site was about making money with real estate, that money should be the central theme. This is nothing but an amateurish slapped together logo that does nothing to further our site’s brand.

Here we are making the mistake most companies make when it comes to designing a logo. They shoot for the obvious. Our little blue roof did nothing to differentiate our brand. We were yet another real estate related site . . . nothing more, nothing less.

In the above logo, we started to realize that the roof shouldn’t play as prominent a role. We wanted people to focus on our name, BiggerPockets, which represented what people would get from our site. This began an evolution towards our differentiation.

This logo actually came from one of my high-school students (I taught school for several years). I wanted something fun and unique involving money and a big ‘ole pocket. While this design certainly stood out and let people know more about who we were, it was a bit amateurish as well. We were going in the right direction, but hadn’t quite done it just right.

This final and current logo of the company, I believe, hits the nail on the head. It is certainly unique, and represents who we are. By itself, the iconic man in the pocket, representing how big your pockets can become, is symbolic of our site. I am extremly pleased with this logo, as I feel that it is clean, unique, and expounds a message. Does it have what it takes to become timeless? I suppose that is up to you and everyone else out there!

A Great Resource for Creating Your Logo Design

After I knew that my student was on to something with our logo, I decided to have some professional graphic artists clean it up for me. To do that, I found a great service that everyone should utilize: SitePoint’s Logo Design Contests. All I did was give the brilliant (and not so brilliant) graphic designers on Sitepoint (a huge and amazing webmaster forum) some ideas of what I was looking for, and let them run with it. There were many wonderful ideas put forward, and I was able help the designers modify and clean their logos up until I had somthing I was happy with. The best part about running one of these contests is that it is affordible and you do get many ideas to choose from.

I just wanted to remind everyone to periodically review all the links they keep on their site. Whether you are a blogger with a blogroll full of links or if you’re just another webmaster who shares resources with others like I do with BiggerPockets® Real Estate Investing Community, you should always do a periodic review of the links on your site.

I realize that this is just another obvious comment, but while the internet will go on “forever,” many websites don’t last even close to that long. I wish I had some cool stat on how often sites disappear, but it happens pretty often. A site you use daily this week may be gone next week.

Keeping dead links on your site does not bring confidence to your users. It shows them that you are not keeping up with your site. This is never a good sign for anyone. If your users believe that you do not care enough to maintain and keep to date your links, then they might just want to find another site that does.

Many times the obvious tip is one of the most important:

Get Rid of those Dead Links on Your Website Today!

I wrote about using MyBlogLog a few weeks ago (networking with social media sites) for networking purposes. I now want to tell you exactly how to build massive traffic using the MyBlogLog community.

MyBlogLog is an extremely important tool for getting a blog off the ground and for building exposure to your site. Many people don’t realize how powerful it really is! This post will help you get a jump start in building traffic to your blog / website, and will also help you find new, interesting sites you never knew about before.

How to Set Up MyBlogLog on Your Blog or Website

1. Create an account with MyBlogLog. This hould take less than a minute. All you’ll need is to pick out your username, email, password, and the URL of your blog. Once you’ve created an account, be sure to upload an image of yourself as your avatar. Photos are just more personal and make things a bit more inviting.
   
   

2. To bring more interest to your profile, or simply to help users get to know a bit about you, be sure to fill out some personal information in your profile. Again, it really just helps people to connect with you.
3. You will then want to claim your blog or website. To do this, you’ll need to place a snippet of code that MBL provides you within your blog’s template. Now, when you look at your profile page, you’ll see your website.
   
   

   Both you and your website now have “communities.” Personally, you have the ability to add friends and chat with them. People must join your website’s community, but they can also chat with you through the site’s community.

4. The last major technical step in getting going is installing the MyBlogLog Widget on your blog or website. If you look in your personal profile, you’ll see a link underneath your website’s community “Get Widgets.” The one you are concerned with is the “Recent Readers” widget. This allows you and your other readers to see who has been on your site recently. Layout the widget to your liking and add it to your blog’s sidebar.

Congratulations! You’re Ready.
Here’s where the traffic building begins!

8 Steps To Successfully Building Blog Traffic Using MyBlogLog

1. Make sure you are logged into MyBlogLog. This seems obvious, but if you’re not signed in, then people on the site can’t see you when you’re surfing around.
2. Surf your favorite blogs! Start visiting the sites you’d normally visit and see if they have MyBlogLog widget installed. If they do, click on the View Reader Community link at the bottom. This will bring you to their website’s community.
3. Join the communty and also add the user as a friend/contact. This shows the user in both their personal profile and their website’s community profile that you are interested. It also gives you more exposure so others can find you more easily.
   

   (Note: When you add a user as a friend, you are sent back to your profile, not that user’s. I think this is a glaring problem with the site, as I then have to go back to the blog – to the community – to the user to find their profile again. I hope Eric and others at MBL consider changing this. It will just make things that much easier for users)

4. This is one of the most important steps: Leave a comment on either their personal profile or their website’s community profile. Make sure it is not simply “Nice site” or “Great Blog.” Be sure to leave a relevant comment so the user can tell that you’ve actually visited their site.

   As a result of your comment, the odds are that the user will go and visit your profile (by clicking on your avatar). They will then see your blog / websites and if they have any curiousity in the topic, will check them out. You’ve just exposed your site to another new person!

5. Wash, Rinse, Repeat! After a while, you’ll have targeted all the sites that you are a fan of. Don’t fret, you have much more work ahead!
6. Now that you’ve gone and let your favorite sites know about your interest, it is time to start finding new sites. There are a many ways to do this:
   

   How to find New Websites of Interest

   a) Visit your favorite site’s community pages and look at who else is commenting. Visit their site / blog and return to step 2.
   b) Visit your favorite site’s community pages and look at who else is a member. Visit their site / blog and return to step 2.
   c) Return to your personal profile page and see who “Viewed this Page Recently.” Visit their site / blog and return to step 2.
   d) Go to the “My Admirers” section of your profile. Visit their site / blog and return to step 2.
   e) See who is leaving you comments on your personal community profile or your site’s community. Visit their site / blog and return to step 2.
   f) Visit the profiles of other users you’ve found and see what communities they are a part of. Odds are they will likely be related to their interests. You now have a slew of other communities and sites to visit.

7. Watch the traffic begin! You’ll start to notice traffic slowly start to come from MyBlogLog. Keep people interested by continung to write quality posts.
8. Set aside some time every day to expand your MyBlogLog contacts, visit new sites, comment, and get yourself out there. Remember, every time you visit another site with the MBL Recent Readers widget, you have another opportunity for exposure for yourself. The more you’re seen around, the more likely people will want to connect with you.

Don’t forget that in addition to using MyBlogLog for traffic that there are other important methods. Commenting on other, related blogs with thoughtful messages is hugely important. This should also become a part of your daily routine.

In case you’d like to start somewhere, you can do so with me!
My Personal Profile: BigP (my username)
This Blog’s Profile: TimeForBlogging

Join up and get involved in MyBlogLog today to build your blog’s traffic!