Subscribe Feed (RSS)How to Support Your Fellow Bloggers & Favorite Websites
May 8th, 2007 by Joshua Dorkin | Filed under Ad Networks, Advertising, Blogging, Marketing, Traffic Building.I found an article through Kevin at BloggingTips about how to support your favorite bloggers. This article covered quite a few great points and I thought I’d go into 2 of them with some more detail.
Both of the steps I mention can really make a difference for your favorite sites, and spreading the word about them can make a difference for you as well!
The 2 Best Ways to Support Your Favorite Websites
- Socialize the Blog or Site
If you find a site, blog, article, etc. that you find interesting or helpful, one of the best ways to support it is to “socialize” it. Of course, the original form of socialization is word of mouth, but email works great too! Let your friends and family know about the site and tell them to let their friends and family know about it. Many of the most popular websites have all grown on word of mouth campaigns.In addition, by submitting it to different social networking and social bookmarking sites, you increase the exposure opportunities for that site. Sites like Netscape, Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia, MyBlogLog, MySpace, Facebook, etc. are all wonderful tools for sharing the love. I make it a habit of social bookmarking or Digging any article or site that I think is a great one, because I hope that someone will do the same for me. If we can spread the idea of helping one another out by doing this, I think we’d see lots of great, semi-unknown, sites climb to prominence. There are tons of these sites around, but people don’t realize how easy it is to do their part to help those sites out.
If you like a site, an article, a blog, etc., then Bookmark It! It is that easy!
- Visit the Site’s Advertisers
These days, most websites have some sort of advertising. Many webmasters (like myself) support their work online soley through that advertising. While we all become semi-blind to ads these days, it is extremly important that we do our part to help our fellow webmasters by visiting the advertising on their sites. Imagine if even a small percentage of your users happened to visit the ads on your site (provided they are some kind of PPC ads)? Be careful not to overdo it, though. Clicking too often on a site’s ads can constitute click fraud, something you don’t want to do.Even visiting ads that may not be PPC is helpful to websites. Advertisers always look at the amount of traffic they get from a site when considering whether or not they will extend their campaigns. If you do your part by visiting these ads, you help the sites to retain advertisers and increase revenue. You also help the advertiser by finding their site . . . the more eyeballs, the better!
Remember not to just click on any and all ads. Visit those that look interesting to you.
Like with socializing, if we can build this mentality around the ‘net where people support one another’s advertisers, I think a lot of people would be a lot happier. The advertisers would get increased exposure (which is what they are paying for) and you’d be supporting the owners of your favorite sites, blogs, etc. If only 25% of a site’s visitors supported its advertisers, I’m sure the resulting increases would be beyond remarkable!
If you like a site, an article, a blog, etc., then visit its advertisers! It is that easy!
By following these two simple and EXTREMELY helpful tips, you too can support your fellow bloggers and favorite sites, and hopefully they will do the same for you!
Please bookmark this site and help spread the mentality! (click the Share This link below)
While it is indeed helpful to visit a sites advertisers to support them it is also important to do it the right way. If you see an ad that looks like it may be of interest to you then click on it. Don’t get click happy as this can cause far more harm than good. The reason is many clicks from the same ip address looks like click fraud and may result in the sites owner being banned. I have seen instances where good intentioned visitors have been guilty of this.
Good point. It was not my intention to promote click fraud in any way whatsoever. I’ll add a little note to the article to make this clear.
Good post Josh, I always like to hand out a Stumble or too as I surf.
That makes two of us Chris. Now only if more people were as generous . . .
[...] make it a habit to support my fellow bloggers through both socializing their posts and visiting their advertisers when appropriate. Make sure you [...]
By “socializing,” you could also mean just participating in the blog by leaving comments. I don’t mean the two-word “Good Post!” or “I agree!” type comments. I mean comments that actually add something to the post. By contributing to the blog’s content, you make it more interesting to some readers and get them to keep coming back for more. That could also help build regular readership for a blog. A blogger can help keep visitors involved in a comment thread enabling a “follow this comment” feature (as you have here (although the check box might be better above the ad than below it so visitors don’t have to scroll to see it).
Just my two cents.
Oh, and I almost forgot. Good post! I agree!