startatnothing.com

As many of our loyal readers may know (ha, like we have many loyal readers), we haven’t updated the site for about a month-and-a-half. And I know I’ve said this before, but you can expect more frequent updates from now on, seriously this time. Anyway, even though we’ve been gone for so long, our Alexa ranking has increased…substantially.

At the beginning of our unplanned month-and-a-half hiatus, our Alexa rank was somewhere between 1 and 2 million. For those of you without the Alexa rank toolbar, today we are ranked 503,199. Pretty weird, huh? Considering we’ve cut our ranking in more than half in a month-and-a-half without writing a single post for people to link to, I’d say it’s pretty weird.

So, we must be magical then, right? It sounds like one of those impossible scam ads that we see all the time about making $40 billion in an hour while doing zero work. Only our ad would say cut your Alexa rank in half in less than 2 months while doing zero work. Except ours is true, and it won’t necessarily make you any money, so I’m sorry about that.

So what is it?

I’m glad you asked. It’s called TheTrafficLink.com. Maybe it’s cheating. Maybe it’s a cheap way of getting links. Say what you want, but I’m alright with it.

It uses a 3-way linking system. First, you sign-up and submit your website. Then, it links your site with other people’s sites that have signed up. TheTrafficLink.com is just like a middle man for links, but it’s cool because they do the dirty work of finding sites to link to. You can read about it in the How it Works section of their site.

If you want to see the whole program in action, just look at the sidebar to your right. Under the “Links” heading you’ll see Random Links. There is a list of links that TheTrafficLink.com has provided. It’s kind of like a link brotherhood. We help those sites out with links on our site, and they do the same for us on their site. Right now, we have 49 out-bound links in that section, and we have 51 links on other sites that link back to us. The best part is, the number of links grows just about every day and it has never gotten smaller, only bigger. And it’s free, for now.

So, if you’re looking to swap links with other sites, TheTrafficLink.com is an easy way to have someone else do it for you. Plus, it increases your Alexa rank, whatever that means (As far as I know it’s just a number, but the lower the better).

So, give it a shot and let us know what you think.

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Updates

In the past month, the busy meter for our real lives outside of SAN.com headquarters has been off the charts. But our semesters are now over, so we have a lot more time to spend staring at a computer screen. Hopefully, we’ll be able to write more posts with greater frequency. So, keep checking back for updates…all three of you who actually read this blog.

Free Link Love

SAN has joined the DoFollow movement…I guess. At least, we have downloaded the plugin for WordPress that removes the NoFollow thing from our links. We don’t really understand how it all works, but we did it.

So, all you have to do is leave a comment for any of our posts, and you’ll get free link love from us. But, before you start giving us your “Great post, thanks!” routine, realize that we still have comment moderation on. To protect ourselves from spam and one-liner comments, make sure that your comments add to whatever the post and comments are discussing. If it doesn’t, we won’t approve it…sorry. We’re all about link love, but at least put a little bit of thought into your comments. It’s really not that hard.

Other Resources

For more information on DoFollow, go to:

RandaClay.com – The I-Follow “Movement”

MetaSpring.com – Pros vs. Cons of DoFollow

TomBrownsword.com – How DoFollow can help you

AndyBeard.eu – Great list of DoFollow plugins

SmartWealthyRich.com – How DoFollow rewards bloggers

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When I read blogs about blogging, there’s one common theme that I see pretty often. People want to know how to write better posts. They want to know how to write posts that people want to read, bookmark, and tell their friends about. I can tell you, with certainty, that I have not figured out how to do that yet. But, looking at the popularity of some posts from this blog, I have figured something out.

People want to be told what to do.

So, in my opinion, the first step to getting better at blogging is to tell people what to do or how to do something. People love “how to” posts. Other sites link to them all the time, because they’re easy to link to.

The alternative, which I’ve figured out that I shouldn’t do anymore, is writing about things. Think about it…in this deep, endless abyss that is the internet, you can find information on just about anything. People don’t want good old fashion info anymore. They want to know what to do with information. On this site, the only posts that people look at are posts that tell people how to do something, like implement AdSense onto their site.

However, if you like writing about things, don’t fret just yet. You can have successful posts that just give information about something, but there’s a catch. You either have to write a post about a really hot topic, like my two Roger Clemens posts, which were popular around the time of his congressional hearing, or you have to write a post about something that people don’t really know about yet, like the Semantic Web.

So, my advice to new bloggers out there is this…before you starting writing a post, ask yourself, “Am I telling people useful information on how to do something successfully, or am I just telling them information that they could find on another, possibly more credible website?” And if you are just simply telling people about something, see if you can find a way to turn it into a how-to type of article. If you’re blogging about something new that you’re doing or a new program you’re using, tell people how you’re using it and ask how others are using it. That way, you do 2 important things…

• Number 1 – you’re generating conversation, which equal comments.
• Number 2 – if you’re using whatever you’re talking about inefficiently or just flat-out wrong, someone can help you and tell you how to do it right.

So, add that to your checklist for writing a better post.

Other Resources

Here are some other web sites that go a little more in-depth about writing better posts…

FrugalMarketing.com – Writing Killer Posts and Compelling Comments

CopyBlogger.com – How to write a How-To post

Skelliewag.org – Good tip for writing better content

Blueverse.com – Better blogging, write even better

Worlofangel.com – Write better posts to make money blogging

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