I’ve been playing around a little with some blogs and trying to figure out how to go about making a blog work for me and one of the things that really makes a blog stand out is pictures. I was playing with a blog about lawn mowers and placed a picture in the text and I think it makes it look really nice.

The picture is in black and white and I’m not sure if it’s because of the blog having the black background or if black and white cartoon pictures just look good but it made a big difference when I added the picture. I’m going to play around with the pictures some more but if it helps as much as this one seems to have helped I’m going to hire me an artist to come in and draw pictures for each of my blog post. But before I do that I’m going to play around a little with this blog and see how the pictures look here.

If the black and white cartoon pictures don’t look as good here then I’ll have to figure out something else for the pictures on this blog. At this time I do feel that pictures along with the text is a good thing but I would like to have the pictures uniformed with all the same look and feel to them. Another words if I’m going to use black and white cartoon pictures then I want all the pictures to be black and white cartoon pictures.

I know there is a lot more to a successful blog then a cartoon picture but I’m trying to make my blog work for me and it’s like a giant puzzle and I’m having to put it together one piece at a time.

I’ve decided that I’m not going to get into any more heated discussions on forums, as a matter of fact I think I’ll just stick to making comments about the topics on my blog. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of traffic and sales to be made from these discussions but that was never the reason for my participation.

I see bad information getting spread and it bothers me, because people that are new to the Internet believe these things and end up wasting time and money trying to make something work that has never worked for anyone. It’s not the forums fault, they are there for open discussions and the forum administrators and moderators should allow the topic to be discussed.

Take this topic from WPW the thread starter bhartzer claims;

1. To have started a new website that is only a couple days old.

2. That it is getting 1,000’s of visitors a day and the website is less than a week old.

3. That he is swamped with emails from people that are wanting to advertise on his new site.

4. That 100’s of people are searching for the website under a made up name that no one knew before the launch of his site 5 days ago.

5. That he has spent no money on the site.

6. That it’s all been done by bookmarking the site which only took him 30 seconds to do.

If the above is not crazy enough there is more;

1. Some forum members asked to see the website and he refused saying that he did not want any off topic links going to the site.

2. Members pointed out that he could give the url without making it a link and he refused because, I really don’t know why he refused but he did.

3. He refused to show stats or any proof at all of his claims, including the website.

4. Some members found the site and claimed it was nothing more then a scrapper site pulling press releases from other sites and using that for his content, they posted the link to the site but the website was immediately pulled off line.

Now this is a site getting 1,000’s of visitors a day, it has been branded the best of the best, people are searching for the name on Goolge (which is a made up name), advertisers are going crazy trying to buy ad space to get onto this site but this guy pulls it off line. Seems a bit strange to me but then we have the word of a moderator that goes by the name of Greeneagle (aka Ken) here is a post about him on another forum. Now Ken (aka Greeneagle) knows bhartzer and feels that since he has given his word the information is accurate that’s all we need. I also know bhartzer but I have a problem with some of the information and it does not make sense.

I offer to do some testing and I’m attacked by Greeneagle as someone that is trying to steal the thread. If the claims are true he should be more then happy with my test because this will prove his point but instead the Greeneagle attacks me and I leave the thread to do my testing in another thread. I go far beyond what bhartzer did;

1. I use an old domain name

2. I don’t bookmark the site but bookmark the articles inside the site. Instead of one bookmark I do 3 and 4 per site.

3. I don’t bookmark for one day and stop but continue to bookmark the articles for two days.

4. I don’t take press releases and use for content but write original content to be bookmarked.

The conclusion is that bookmarking sites can be a way to get traffic but the numbers are closer to 100 to 200 per day, unless your able to hit the front page of Digg or one of the other big bookmarking sites and if you stop, the traffic also stops. But this traffic is not going to be easy to convert to sales because the people using these sites are people that are tech savvy and spend a lot of time on the Internet.

They are searching for information and while they may sometimes buy products online, interrupting their search to try and sell them something is not the best way to make a sale. I posted my findings on the forum and I’ll just quote the post below that was posted back to me.

The point is that to get your pages index quickly and to rank you need visitors to your site (new sites need this to get past the “sandbox”). Your pages need links–and you can get fresh eyes and fresh links using social bookmarking. The point here is to get visitors which will help get better search engine rankings. Search engine rankings lead to conversions.

Now it looks like he is saying that he’s doing this for the search engine ranking but he started out telling us not to worry about the search engines and on top of that he’s now trying to say that traffic increases your ranking and I’ve already tested this and feel this is not the truth either. So I question this.

He goes on to say

It’s not traffic alone–there are other factors. But you have to realize that the big GOOG (as greeneagle calls it) uses Google Toolbar data as a part of their algorithm. Your site’s visitors have the Google Toolbar installed. Catch my drift?

It goes on and on like this and we end up talking about the fact that Google uses the Google toolbar to find pages they don’t already know about and it can help you get indexed. For some reason people think that indexed means ranking and it doesn’t but they get all excited about this and then Greeneagle jumps in and says yes and it also keeps up with the time someone spends on the site. If it only helps the page get indexed, another words, all it does is let Google know about a page that they didn’t already know about, then why in the hell does it need to keep up with the time you spend on the site?

And to make it worst you have the jackass that only has 1 post and wants to know why everyone is attacking this guy who is only trying to help. Let me try and help you out.

1. No one is attacking the guy, asking for proof is not an attack

2. The reason we ask for proof is to protect people like yourself that are easily fooled

Now I have a question.

Why is it that you only have 1 post and your very first post on the forum is to take up for this guy

1. Your his friend?

2. Your him?

3. Your just to stupid to understand why spreading bad information is bad?

Your the type of person that I was trying to protect from the bad information but it is apparent that you enjoy the bad information. So why I’m I wasting my valuable time trying to help out someone that does not want my help.

I’ll continue posting in the forums but you can find me in site reviews where people want honest oppinons on there website and posting in my blog about all the stupid stuff that stupid people post.

I’m a bit disappointed in the traffic, I’ll continue doing the bookmarks but I need to look into some other stuff along with it. At this time I have some links from the forums as well as the bookmarks but the traffic is no where near where I would like it to be. This is day two and we are getting a little over 100 visitors per day.

I’m about to try out some other stuff but just not sure which things I’m going to try. I’m thinking that you can safely get between 100 and 200 visitors a day from the bookmarking sites and of course if you take the time to build up a good network of friends you might be able to push that number up between 500 to 1,000 (I’m going to work on that slowly) and then you have the post that makes it to page one on Digg where you can get 10,000 visitors in a day.

The think to remember about a network of friends is that trying to sell to the same people everyday is not going to cut it. You can never stop building your network it needs to get bigger and bigger everyday brining in new people otherwise you might as well sit in front of the coffee house and play checkers.

“Dominating The Market With Social BookMarking”

Bookmarking is nothing new, when you’re out surfing the web and find a site you really like and would like to return to that site later you can use your browser to bookmark that site, so it’s easy to find when your ready to return. But storing those bookmarks so others can see them is new.

There are a number of sites online that will allow you to publicly store your bookmarks so others can see the type of sites you enjoy. If you find someone that enjoys the same types of sites you enjoy, then your able to find many sites you may never know existed otherwise. It’s a craze that seems to be sweeping across the internet and one that marketing experts are starting to take notice of.

Some marketing experts are claiming to be able to dominate a marketing area as well as getting 1,000’s of visitors a day by doing nothing more then bookmarking their sites and writing good content for those sites. The amazing part is they claim to be able to do it in days instead of months.

Members of WPW and WWS, along with myself, decided to put this to the test, so I’m writing this article and will bookmark it on all the bookmarking sites.

Now the marketing expert that claims to be able to dominate the market did it in less then seven days and with a brand new domain name that had never been registered before and had no links going to the site.

I’m using a blog that allows pinging, an older domain name, and a well written header stolen straight from the marketing guy, I’ll not only bookmark the site but will write articles inside the site and bookmark them as well and this site already has links going to it. You want to talk about a stacked deck; this experiment has everything in the favor of the marketing guy.

I want him to be right, I want to be able to take a new site and get 1,000’s of visitors a day and dominate the market in less then a week.

Here we go, this article will be placed on the site and we will start our marketing efforts in dominating the market.

We seem to be getting a little traffic coming in from Technorati they seem to be picking up on all our post about social bookmarking. I’ve signed up with them but have not bookmarked any sites over there yet.

So far most of our traffic is coming from the forums but it’s nice to see a little traffic from a bookmarking site.

I like buddyMarks it’s simple and easy to use and I can understand how you could get traffic from it. The thing that botthers me is that buddymarks is a lot like a directory, so I have to wonder, if I’ll get about as much traffic from it as I would get from a directory?

That would be as clost to zero as you can get.

I’ve registered and set up an account with BackFlip, the service is free and according to their about us page it is run by a group of volunteers. It seems very easy to add pages but I’m not sure how you search and get traffic from the site. I guess only time will tell.

I’ve added all the sites except the bloggin site because I need to add some content to that site first.

Here is how the whole thing works.

When you find a web page you like you can use the Backflip button to save it, then later you can log into your account and place them in any order you like.

Your also able to email the sites you like to friends and family from the Backflip site rather their members or not as well as do searches on the site to view other peoples favorites.

I like the site but feel it’s going to take more then just adding in some sites to get the desired traffic.

To say it can be done quickly is some what misleading, I’ve spent the last hour just registering with all the sites and now I have to go back and figure out how to work the sites and set up my profile. I’m using the list here and it has a lot of sites that allow bookmarking but this is not the full list.

But it is the list the Bill used when he said that he took a brand new site and started getting 1,000’s of visitors a day as well as branded his business and had so many people wanting to advertise on the site that he didn’t know what to do, all in less then 7 days.

So this is the list I’m going to use to start with, if it works like he says then I will be expanding the list to try to get more bookmarking sites.

First step is setting up all the stats so everyone can see them, I’m doing that now and I’m setting them for unique visitors only and keep in mind that forum visitors do not count.

I’m going to use Statcounter so it will take me a couple minutes to get everything set up and posted on the blogs.

Inspired by Bill Hartzer, I have decided to do some testing. I’m going to start by signing up with some of the book marking sites and figuring out how they work. I’ll make a post about each site.

Then I’m going to use those sites to get traffic for 4 other sites including this one. I’m going to make all the stats public so everyone can see them and I’m going to add new post to each site everyday,

I’m using blogs on 3 of the sites and the fourth will be an online mail order bride site that I once owned but have since sold to a really nice guy I would like to try and help out.

The sites are listed below

Lawn Mowers

Social Bookmarking

Politics

Mail Order Brides

I’m using several in different areas to see how each area does.

Ok Let’s get started.