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We’ve all seen them . . . new blogs with ads at every turn, with nothing to say other then “I make money online” and “I blog about my blog.” Typically, when I come across a site like this I leave and do not return. I realize that these sites offer nothing useful to me or anyone else . . . The sad fact is that thanks to different gimmicks out there, sites like these seem to becoming more and more popular every day.

You can’t really go through more than a handful of blogs these days without reading about making money online using Adsense, Chitika, BlogAds, AuctionAds, Text Link Ads, etc. The purpose of these sites is to push affiliate programs and ad networks without offering anything concrete to anyone except how they are becoming more popular by doing nothing. It seems like we’re in some kind of vicious cycle now:

The Vicious Cycle Started by Bloggers who Blog About Nothing But How to Make Money Online

1. Person sees that others are “making money online” with their blog (most fail to provide any proof and likely don’t make any money at all)
2. Person wants to make money with a blog of their own
3. Person sets up blog and claims to be a “money making” blogger
4. Person monetizes their blog as soon as possible, throwing up as many ads as possible
5. Person starts joining every blog train, meme, link exchange, favorite exchange, etc. to start building up their Technorati ranking, PR, feed subscribers, etc.
6. Person starts to blog about the same crap as every other blog about making money online (typically nothing . . . many of these sites just blog about the ads that they just put on their site and then just fill their site with all the crap mentioned in #5)
7. Person sees their site begin to become “popular” and starts to tell all their friends about their “success”. They then encourage their friends to start blogging. Amazed by how easy it sounds, these friends go to #1.

   Note: The site has actually not become popular at all. It is just another site that other sites have used to grow their own useless sites through blogging gimmicks. All the people who have added it as a favorite, as a subscribed feed, or as any other kind of “friend” fail to come back because the site really has nothing to offer, just like their own sites. A network of useless “popular” blogs begin to climb the charts with nothing to contribute to anything but their own existence.

8. Person realizes that they have nothing to offer the world other than a bunch of crap that has been repeated a thousand times before, yet continue to offer that crap because they are now actually making a few bucks a month.
9. Person begins to be seen as an authority by other newbies and actually begins to get real traction, despite having nothing to offer but the popularity of their site that has nothing to offer.
10. Sadly, eventually that person really begins to believe their own hype. Many times, this person still knows nothing about anything, yet offers their advice to others who are too green to know any better.
11. Bad advice follows bad advice and the internet becomes overwhealmed by people following the one guy with nothing to offer but a bunch of bad advice.
12. People who actually do have something to offer others, for some reason, start to follow the path set by these know nothing “authorities” and make their advice even more popular.
13. The entire internet goes down in flames as 1 billion people around the world are all doing the same thing trying to make money by doing nothing but blogging about blogging about making money online by saying a whole lot of nothing!

Pretty Scary, huh?!?

Spreading the word about your latest blog entry is as easy as pinging a few update services. Most blogs allow you to add different update services (ping sites) to notify. I thought it might be userful to put out a list of the update services I’m currently pinging. If you’re interested in adding any or all of these services to your blog, here’s how (I can only explain how using WordPress – my list of sites can be used on any blog, though).

How to Notify New Ping Sites of Your Updated Blog Posts

1. Login to your Control Panel
2. Click on the Options tab, followed by the Writing tab.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and add whatever services you’d like to the Update Services box.

The Mega List of Ping Services

This list includes all the ping services I’ve been able to locate. Feel free to use it as you wish.

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

ttp://rpc.qwikping.com

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.britblog.com

http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://ping.fakapster.com/rpc

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt

http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/

If you have any additional services that you ping, let me know! I’d love to build this into a massive listing of all ping services.

Manual Ping Sites

There are a few good ping sites that will allow you to manually let them know of updates. These are included in the above list, but for those people who need to do things by hand, this should help.

• http://www.pingomatic.com
• http://www.pingoat.com

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!

In a guest assignment for Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger, Alister Cameron writes an incredible post detailing how Google Blogsearch ranks your blog posts. Using the Google Blogsearch patent application, Alister reveals some incredible information about the data Google uses to determine the quality of a blog or blog post.

He mentions how it looks like Big Brother, and it really does. It appears as though Google is taking data from not only their search results, but from blogrolls, from the qualit of a site lnking to you, from feed subscriptions on the Google Feed Reader, from chats on GTalk, from emails on Gmail, etc. They then use their fancy algorithms to determine weight and ranking. I’m not sure about you, but it looks to me like we have to worry less about the government spying on us then we do Google. Orwell was somewhat correct, but in the real future, it is big business, not governments that are truly to be feared (thanks Charles).

That said, there is much to learn from examining the article on Problogger, as the insight it provides is invaluable. If you haven’t done so already, be sure to bookmark the site, as it is one of the top blogs out there about the “sport” of blogging.

Looking to increase traffic for your website? For a little over a year, the use of linkbait has exploded across the net. People have figured out little tricks for building traffic. some of which are very clever, but at some point, doesn’t it dilute the quality of ranking results?

Gaming the Search Engines is Too Easy!
Sure, you can do something inventive to bring a mass of traffic to your site, but if the traffic is not targeted or if the post is unrelated to your site’s purpose, you’re still building up backlinks and authority in the eyes of the search engines. This doesn’t make any sense. In addition, I think it just shows how easily the Search engines can be gamed.

In the “clever” example mentioned earlier, a webmaster posted a political cartoon on a webpage for a cabinetry company. The posting brough him thousands of visitors through social bookmarking and social media sites. He gained at least 40 backlinks from it (according to him), and as a result will score higher in the rankings by the engines.

Does he deserve the traffic that ge gets from the stunt? Sure. Does his carpentry site deserve all the extra buzz it will get as a result? Probably not, but because the SEs allow themselves to be manipulated, he is set. Now all he has to do is duplicate the experiment and he’ll start to see some gaina in search results.

I have nothing against people getting traffic to their sites and being creative, but I just wonder if linkbaiting will get out of hand and really reduce the quality of results from the search providers.