eXtra For Every Publisher

Getting an idea, product or blog noticed can be quite difficult, and things like Digg, Del.icio.us, and others might help you get some attention, but one of the sources I have found to be the best way to launch something is good old fashioned word of mouth.

I keep a pretty extensive friends list on my various e-mail accounts, and instant messaging clients. I also try to keep a few lists of people that I think will like what I am working on, or cover a similar niche.

How you can say things, and the methods you can use to contact various people depend on how developed your relationship is, but from my experience, people respond better to personal messages, than mass e-mailing or putting together a professional sounding press release. Don’t get me wrong, a press release works great if you have little to no relationship with someone you want to inform, but don’t expect a response from those people, no matter how great your release is in your mind.

Conversation

The first people I talk to are family and friends. These are people I see here and there who might know someone that would be interested in the product, service or blog I am working on. I try not to make it the focus of a conversation, but I do bring it up for as long as possible near the end of the conversation. People seem to remember the last few things talked about much better than the first things talked about. I guess we all have pretty spotty memories.

Instant Messaging

For my second round, I like to tell people via an instant message client. I don’t pressure them into going right that second to check out what I am releasing, but instead I only explain the concept and ask them for feedback. People love to give their opinion on things, even if it is something they know nothing about, and they will be more likely to really look at what you have put out if you ask for their feedback.

E-mail

After I have done that with as many people as possible, I move onto e-mailing various people. I write about three different e-mails, each with their own level of formality and tone. I want to make sure I am sending e-mails that have a business tone to people I don’t know well, and e-mails that are friendlier to my friends. I then try to personalize each e-mail with a sentence or two. This takes a fair bit of time, but much less than writing a custom e-mail for every person, but will most likely garner a much better response than mass e-mailing them all.

Blog

The fourth and final step is writing about it on my blog. This is really the least personal step of the whole process as I am just broadcasting. Any feedback I get, I try to respond to, and create a dialog, anything to spread the word of what I am doing farther and faster. This step usually brings back the least feedback, but sometimes the most traffic to whatever I am doing. This step also requires that your blog be a platform for your projects. If you skip this step, try to make sure someone else blogs about what you are doing. A broadcast like this can really help spread your idea, product or blog.

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Early on in my blogging career, I was planning on starting my own blog network. I thought that I knew better, and could do much the same as what Darren Rowse had done by making some niche sites, and writing on them. I was so naive that I thought I could turn a profit on the sites in less than half a year.

I named the network Digital Life News. I set up a bunch of blogs under different sub-domains all with the same main design. I was planning on targeting the Canadian market, a group that hadn’t seen much attention in the blogging world, and I thought I had what it takes. I was quickly proven wrong. I had ideas, a great domain and passion, so what was missing?

Patience

It seems like such an easy thing, but I didn’t think about the long term, and I didn’t have the patience and really the persistence to make something like this work.

Had I really sat down, and thought about each step of the process in greater detail, I would have seen that it could take me a year, maybe more before the network was making more than the cost of hosting the sites, and even then it might take a long time before the network was recognized in the community as worthy of attention. I would have also seen that I should have focused on a few niches, rather than casting a wide net.

Help

I was planning on doing it alone, and as I mentioned before in Starting a Blog Network, no one is an expert at every skill that starting and managing a blog network requires.

I couldn’t write on all the niches I had planned, at least not at the quality level that would help grow the network. I wasn’t very good at monetization nor at managing others. I actually hired a friend of mine that was tech savvy at one point, but I couldn’t pay him enough, nor was he really interested in writing about the news and information that he found, and thus, he stopped after only a month or two.

I should have found great people that were interested in blogging to help me, which leads me to my next two points.

Networking

I didn’t really know anyone in the blogging community. I knew Darren, and a few others, but I wasn’t constantly talking with them, nor was I someone they came to talk to. I didn’t have anyone that could help me get the word out about what I was doing, and without being able to properly network, I could tell early on, that I was quickly losing momentum.

I have learned this skill more and more over the last two years, but I am still no expert. I shift between being someone that likes to stay quiet by myself, to wanting to be the center of attention. This has been something I have always struggled with.

I knew people that were amazing at networking, and I should have found ways to network with them. They could have passed around my name, and what I was doing, making my network much more of a success.

Money

One thing that some networks need is seed money. It was something my blog network needed badly as more than anything else, I needed money to hire writers to create content. I also needed money to create buzz through contests, or advertising on other sites. All of the things I needed to bring my network to the masses required money, and that was something I didn’t have.

Had I more friends interested in writing, or maybe more of a celebrity clout, I could have forgone the money required on writers for the starting phase, and if I had better networking skills, I could have maybe secured some advertising or items to run a contest from other sites or businesses, but alas that wasn’t the case.

Closed Up Shop

So after a few months of running it, and doing the best I could, I closed Digital Life News, as a blog network. I currently use the name as my business name. I learned a lot through the process, and found out that I belonged more as someone one or two steps from the top of the blog network hierarchy, rather than top dog.

I still believe that anyone can start a blog network, and I think that most can be successful at it, but if you don’t have the proper skills, talents, or friends, then you better have the money to find people that do.

Hopefully, a few of tidbits from my experience will help you avoid your blog network failing.

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Freelance Switch has released “A Guide to Making Passive Income” on their NotByTheHour.com domain. It is separated into four parts, with each part tackling a different thing that people can do to generate an income without any long term work. Things like selling stock photos, writing a book, selling subscriptions, and creating content sites.

From the site:

Getting paid by the hour is pretty neat, but it’s even better when you have income that comes in when you?re taking time off too! Freelancers are uniquely positioned to be able to spend time creating sources of passive income while still getting their main money earning work done.

Streams of passive income can take a bit of work to get started, some even take a little work to maintain, however they are well worth it. Having a steady source of income is particularly useful for a freelancer as it helps mitigate risk and balance out some of the ups and downs of freelancing. Besides who doesn’t want a source of income that keeps generating with or without your input!

The guide’s website is beautiful, and the information, while a bit basic in parts, is really well written. They also give some example websites that can help you on your passive income journey over on the right hand side of the page. Pretty much everyone will find at least one page useful, and worthy of bookmarking.

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Getting your content out into the world can be very difficult, but as the web community grows, everyone is looking for new ways to find the best content on the Internet. To deal with this need, many social sites have been developed that allow users to vote, bookmark, or randomly find the most interesting things posted online.

This article is going to highlight a few of those service based sites, as well as talk about the type of traffic you can expect.

Digg

Digg is still considered the premiere place right now to gain attention for your site. Getting on the front page of Digg will bring so much traffic, that many sites find themselves unable to keep up with the requests, thus succumbing to the Digg effect. If you are lucky, you can get a fair number of new RSS subscribers from Digg related visitors.

That leads me to the biggest issue that I have with Digg is that the traffic doesn’t convert well. Getting on the front page of Digg a few times will use up huge amounts of bandwidth, create a big influx of one time readers, and do very little else. Don’t expect your Google AdSense to be filling up with cash from Digg related visitors.

You can promote news/articles, podcasts, and videos on Digg, but the biggest traffic effect comes from being on the front page of the News section.

Reddit

Reddit is a much simpler looking site when compared to Digg. It has more or less the same basic premise though: voting up moves the story closer and closer to the front page. And just like on Digg, getting on the front page is where you can get most of your traffic.

Where Digg is very technology focused, Reddit seems to do well with more traditional news, including politics, world affairs and “funny news”.

The traffic here, just like Digg, are web savvy users, who know how to avoid advertisements, but they don’t come in the same numbers as with Digg. Also, from what I have seen, Reddit users seem to have a longer attention span, and are more likely to check out other articles on a site once they arrive.

Del.icio.us

Even with its strange domain name, Del.icio.us is the most popular social bookmarking website. There are no votes here, only a system that counts how many people have added the same link. If enough people add your link to their Del.icio.us account, you will find it on the front page.

The Del.icio.us community is very diverse, but technology stories seem to make up its Hotlist more often than not.

The visitors from Del.icio.us are a lot like the ones from Reddit. They are more willing to stick around, though they are still very web savvy and most likely won’t click on any advertising you have.

Netscape

One of the newest “big” players to the social scene is Netscape, and from what I have seen, it is probably one of the most filtered and managed services, with Scouts and Anchors on shift to filter out garbage from the site.

The front page is littered with political stories and news. I have seen topics such as movies, music and science also hit the front page regularly. The users here range from the inexperienced to the very web savvy.

The traffic received from reaching the front page is much smaller than most of its competitors, but I believe that it is of a slightly higher quality, mostly due to the lack of knowledge that some of its users have. This means traffic from Netscape is more likely to click on advertisements than Digg or even Reddit, but just like Digg, they probably won’t stick around to see what you write next.

StumbleUpon

A very different system than all the rest, StumbleUpon is primarily for randomly bringing you to sites and stories you will like. You add StumbleUpon to your browser, and when you click on it, you stumble to the random site that the service chooses.

The service is growing at a viral rate, especially lately as reports have started appearing on sites about the massive amount of quality traffic that StumbleUpon is bringing to their sites.

I haven’t experienced this first hand as of yet, but it seems to be one of the communities worth joining. A word of warning though, one of my friends has spent hours aimlessly stumbling from site to site, saying that the service can be addictive, and a great way to procrastinate.

All The Rest

There are many other social news and bookmark sharing sites, some with a broad focus like most of the sites I have listed above, and some with specific niche focuses, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. My biggest tip would be to cast a wide net, and involve yourself with as many of these communities as you have time for. Over time you will learn which ones work best for you, and focus on those.

The best thing you can do for your site is networking, so give it the time and energy it deserves.

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This video is about eight and a half minutes long, but it is definitely worth watching. I think it points out some very interesting things that people both young and old are dealing with currently, and what trends we can expect over the coming years.

Found via Darren Barefoot

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