I am not going to make friends with that one for sure. As most of you know, I published an article last week about how you could artificially inflate or fake your Feedburner subscriber count and strongly advised you not to do it for obvious reasons. Now, do you think I would let you guys get away with it that easy? Of course not!

Wake up!

By exposing how easy it was to fake the subscriber count, I guess I wanted to say a little something to every advertiser out there: “Wake up!”. If you think this doesn’t apply to you because you’re not an advertiser you are wrong because the minute you comment on other blogs, you advertise your website. Advertising doesn’t mean paying money for an ad spot: to me it means having your brand displayed elsewhere. What I am about to say does apply to paid advertisement, but I’ll explain why it does apply to you also.

The main reason I think people are faking their RSS Subscriber count is to sell advertisements or reviews for more money. You know, some people will ask 25 or 30$ a month for an ad on their website simply because the feedburner chicklet shows 600 subscribers: it’s a common thing. Of course, you can check out some Alexa stats to make sure that number is real, but ShoeMoney has an Alexa Rank of 101,291 which makes me think Alexa is mostly crap. I also have another blog getting about 50 times more traffic than this blog with a crappy Alexa Rank as well. If we can’t really rely on Alexa Rank  – and I’ve talked about it in the past – it all comes down to the Feedburner subscriber count, right? Well it pisses me off because a lot of bloggers fake it and there is NO, absolutely NO return on investment when advertising on their blogs. It’s important for every advertiser out there to know what the real numbers are and I’m about to show you how (mostly).

I hope advertisers will read this because it will help them maximize their return on investment (ROI). The same applies to you, the average blogger with not so much money to invest in advertisement. I want everybody to make the wisest choice when it comes to advertisement and trusting the Feedburner chicklet is probably the worst decision of all.

I don’t pay for advertising, how does this apply to me?

You comment on blogs, you advertise. Whether or not you pay for it, every single time your link appear on a blog, it’s called advertising. Now, why does it matter? When you comment on blogs showing 600 subscribers, you’re actually making that blog a little more powerful because you’re advertisers more reasons to think the blog is active with real readers.

Can’t we use comments as a metric?

Unfortunately no, a lot of popular blogs out there don’t receive a lot of comments even if they have an impressive REAL number of subscribers. Take John Cow for example, he doesn’t receive 50 comments on every post, but he has a pretty good subscriber count and pretty good traffic. It’s a good indication, but we can’t use it as a very good metric.

Google Reader is the key

Not many people know that with Google Reader, you can get the number of subscribers subscribed via Google Reader for a particular feed! It doesn’t show you the real numbers because it only displays the number of subscribers subscribed using Google Reader, but this can give us a pretty good estimate. Where is that feature? It’s hidden a little bit, but when you select a particular feed in your Google reader, you will see a little “Show details” link and this link is the key! As an example, here’s are feed details for The Net Fool:

How can this help me get the real numbers?

Let’s do some maths here and compare the Google Reader count with the Feedburner chicklet on some blogs I have in my Google Reader:

I tried to include some well known sub 1000 blogs as well as some bigger blogs like Dosh Dosh, ShoeMoney and John Cow. There’s only 7 blogs in the list as I only took some blogs from my Google Reader and didn’t do an extensive search for feeds. While some might say it’s not that much and we can’t really get any statistics out of that, just check your Google Reader and you’ll notice it’s around 25% for a lot of blogs.  So you guys can basically do your own investigation, but you get the big picture and you know where I’m going with this.

What’s a “normal” ratio?

You’re the judge on that one, I don’t want to go out and say “Anybody under 10% is a cheater!”, I just want to raise a flag. I strongly encourage you to go through your list of feeds in Google Reader and check who looks suspicious. I unsubscribed to A LOT of feeds, especially in the MMO niche because of that and trust me, I know who’s faking it out there. I won’t point the finger at anyone as you’re all able to figure it out on your own.

I also want to point out that anybody with 300 Feedburner Subscribers and 15 Google Reader Subscribers is extremely suspicious. But as I said, you’re the judge.

Contests brings the ratio down

BS. While I agree contests are extremely popular and one of the requirements to get entries is to subscribe by email, I don’t think it would impact the count that much. I think most people will unsubscribe after the contest and subscribe to the feed via a reader if they like the blog. Even if people don’t unsubscribe, I’m not sure it can cause the ratio to go THAT down. The Net Fool ran a lot of contests and still has a pretty decent ratio. John Cow ran a lot of contests and has a pretty low ratio, but with 10,000 subscribers it really is a different game. We all know John Cow is getting traffic so there’s no question there.

I’m not saying ShoeMoney is cheating

Some might say, Shoe is at 5%, is he cheating? I don’t think so because if you check ShoeMoney, TechCrunch and big blogs like that the ratio is very low, mostly because the subscriptions come from so many different sources. For sub 1000 subscribers, it seems that the stats are pretty accurate. I also made some research online and it seems to be a well accepted fact that the Google Reader market Share is around 20-25% (That’s what it is on frogstr…)

Feedcompare.com

Another method Chris at chrisguthrie.net mentioned me is to actually have a look at feedcompare.com. It really is a nice website that let you have a look at how Feedburner feeds evolve into time. With it, you can actually see if there’s anything unusual on a feed if the feed in question has the “Awareness API” enabled. Mine isn’t enabled as I don’t like other websites and outside sources to have access to my feed without me knowing, but here is an example of a suspicious feed:

I’m not saying this guy is faking it, but going from 395 to 690 in two days is very suspicious…

You’re the judge

As I said, you’re the judge on this. I’m just saying you should be careful with the Feedburner count and don’t necessarily take it as a very good metric until you confirm the numbers by yourself. Google Reader is a good way to estimate the numbers and I honestly think 10-25% market share is a pretty accurate number. So, be careful when you buy advertisement, the Feedburner subscriber count shouldn’t always justify a higher price.

Prove me wrong

If you’re an honest blogger with 300 subscriptions and something like 15 Google Reader subscriptions It would be great if you could share some detailed stats. I would be more than happy to blog about it and say I was wrong!

Share this

I hope you guys will share this. Not because I want some link love, but because I want the community to know. I personally think the Google Reader subscriber count is a much better metric simply because Google Reader is the most popular reader out there and it’s a lot more harder to fake.

I obviously want each and everyone of you to be better bloggers by reading this blog and for that I want you to think twice before pressing that evil publish button. Too many bloggers just press the publish button without even reading the post they just wrote and I think this is a mistake. If you’re the best writer out there this doesn’t apply to you, but if you’re like most bloggers you’re not in the business because you won the Nobel prize in literature. So, this applies to you.

Review until it flows

It is important to reach a certain level of quality for all your posts if you want to attract subscribers and eventually be an authority in your niche. Nobody writes a perfect post without a review, nobody. How many times do you read your posts and notice there could be some improvements but don’t bother? If you feel like there could be some improvements, then imagine what your readers think. For that reason, read your posts before publishing them and read them as if you were the reader, not the author. Always keep in mind what would make you stop reading and what would make you continue reading a post. Is your post catchy enough? Is the post too boring? Could there be some humor in it to keep the reader hooked? Are some sentences too long? Could there be some crap you could cut?

I think you get the big picture and you understand where I’m going. You know your readers and you know what they like, so offer that.

Stop until it’s too late

Sometimes I write an article and halfway through I realize how the post sucks. I’m sure this happened to you also and I hope you didn’t publish that crap. It’s probably the worst thing to do because if you’re not convinced about what’s you’re writing, your readers will feel it and if you think your post sucks, there are good chances your readers too! In a situation like that, save the post for later, and it might turn into a gem eventually, who knows.

Not every post is worth a Nobel Prize

We’re all writing bad, OK and awesome articles. The key is really just to minimize the bad posts and maximize the good posts as you probably already know. It’s something we have to accept as bloggers: we’re not always going to write the best post out there. Now, imagine if we can cut the “bad posts” part simply by reviewing every single article we write to make sure it’s at least an average post. You know, sometimes it’s not the content, it’s really the way we say things that just makes a post boring. With a little review time, most bad posts can become OK posts and that’s really what we want because nobody wants to write crappy content.

Preview on your blog

It’s important to preview your articles on your blog directly, not in the admin editor. Why? Because you will truly feel like a reader and trust me it works. Sometimes I make a first review in the editor and then read it on the blog to find out there are a lot of improvements to be made. It just feels different when it’s out there on your blog, so use the preview tool!

I don’t have time to review

If you know you just wrote a gem and it doesn’t need a review, fine. Otherwise, wait until you have some time.

Do you review?

I will end this post by asking you the obvious question: Do you review your posts before pressing the publish button?

You know these days when something really pisses you off for no obvious or particular reasons? I was just getting back from work today when it kind of hit me…I’m not a frickin’ comment bitch.

I started to get a little more involved in the community recently by increasing my amount of comments on blogs and I’m shocked by the amount of bloggers who don’t answer comments. What’s the point of commenting if there’s no feedback at all? I’m not asking every blog owners out there to answer every single comment and I personally don’t even care if these bloggers answer my comments personally or not, I just want them to act like they are a little interested in their readers!

Answering every comment

I answer most of the comments personally on here. I’m surprised when I go to other blogs with like 1,000 rss subscribers and I see things like 1 or 2 comments on each post. You know why? Because the blogger doesn’t care about his readers. Some people will comment for sure, but they’ll get bored eventually. A blog is much more than writing content, it’s about interacting with the community. It’s no surprise if I get at least 10 comments on every post even if the blog is kind of new: I answer comments. That’s my vision as a blogger, but I’m also a reader: don’t expect me to comment on your blog every day if you don’t answer a single comment.

Drop a comment on your readers’ blogs

So you have people commenting on every single post of yours and you’re not even dropping a comment once in a while on their blog? Blogging is a two way business and you have to share a little bit if you want people to stick around.

The big guys don’t answer

Of course the big guys like ShoeMoney or JohnChow don’t answer every single comment. First of all, they have way too many comments to handle and people go completely crazy when they jump in the discussion. Shoe once explained how it feels when he posts on DigitalPoint forums with the name ShoeMoney: people actually start to argue about whether or not it’s the real ShoeMoney instead of talking about what’s important. I can understand how this can get really annoying.

Please answer some comments…

I’m just asking every blogger out there to answer some of their comments. Your readers don’t expect to be answered personally on every comment, but it’s nice for them to see you actually care about what’s going on. So, even if you answer someone else’s comment, it’s good!

I’m still surprised to see the amount of people not using a Gravatar, that little image you see next to a comment in the comment section of a blog. It’s easy to think it’s useless and having one is just a ‘nice to have’, but in fact I think that if you comment a lot on blogs, it is a must to establish your brand out there.

How to create a Gravatar?

I think the main reason people don’t use it is because they don’t know how to have one! But in fact, to have your brand next to every comment you post on blogs like that is pretty simple:

Gravatar comment example

Just head to gravatar.com and create an account! There, you will be able to assiciate an email address with an image you will upload. That is how a blog will be able to retrieve your gravatar image when you comment: with your email address. Of course, you can associate many email addresses with many images, so if you have multiple blogs, simply add an email address to your account with a new image and you’re done!

How will this help me establish my brand?

If you don’t comment on blogs, this won’t help you establish your brand. But, if you write 1,000 thousands comments every month and you have a nice little image next to your comments every time with your website logo or something like that, your brand will be well known across the blogosphere. For instance, my goal with putting the frogstr frog all over the place is that I want people to think: “What’s that damn blue frog I see all over the place?” and then visit the blog and get addicted to it

It takes five minutes

Even if you don’t really comment a lot, the process takes five minutes and it’s really a nice addition to your comments, so create one!

Blog owners like it

Blog owners usually like people to have a Gravatar because it adds a little something to the comments section: personality.

Conclusion, just create a Gravatar.

Technorati released the first part of their annual “state of the blogosphere” report. Technorati describe this report as follows:

Since 2004, our annual study has unearthed and analyzed the trends and themes of blogging, but for the 2008 study, we resolved to go beyond the numbers of the Technorati Index to deliver even deeper insights into the blogging mind. For the first time, we surveyed bloggers directly about the role of blogging in their lives, the tools, time, and resources used to produce their blogs, and how blogging has impacted them personally, professionally, and financially.

We can learn some really interesting things from that report and I strongly suggest you take a quick look. The report shows that two-third of bloggers are male, 50% are between 18-34 years old and they are more affluent and educated than the general population. If you’ve been in the blogging world for more than three months, you’ve probably noticed that in a way or another.

Your tiny blog in the blogosphere

One thing I want to stress on is how many blogs are considered to be active by Technorati and why blogging is a long term investment. First, let’s take a look at this chart from Technorati:

Chart Technorati authority

It shows the number of blogs per technorati authority segments. The Technorati authority is the number of blogs linking to your blog in the past 6 months. As we can see, most blogs are very isolated from the blogosphere and never receive love from other bloggers. The situation changes when it gets to 20+ authority, but we can see that the number of blogs achieving some sort of success is really small. Only 75,000 out of 5 million bloggers have an authority of 50 or more!

The lesson is that so many people will abandon blogging within the first months or year. If you can keep a good posting rate for more than a year, there’s no reason for your blog not to reach at least the 50 authority mark. With that mark, you can at least claim you are in the top 50,000 bloggers in America. Sounds good heh?

Next part tomorrow

Technorati will release the second part of this report tomorrow so stay tuned. For today, I really just wanted to show how most people don’t succeed blogging and will stop very fast. Take this as an opportunity and see blogging as a long term investment.

We can’t deny the fact that a good social network strategy is almost essential in today’s world. Being part of social networks is all about reaching more people and getting more traffic. You might or might not have a social strategy, but one way or another, I’m sure you’re involved in the community. Are social networks worth it and are you using them effectively?

Chose your battles

You can’t be everywhere at the same time. Are you subscribed to all possible social network and not generating a single visitor a day from these social networks? I used to be subscribed everywhere, but the reality is that it’s impossible while living a normal life to be active in every social network. That’s why it’s important to hand pick one, two or three social networks and build something around them. You will get a lot more by getting involved a lot in a single social network that getting involved a little in 25. I tried a lot of them before finding one that I felt I could use efficiently to drive traffic. You have to remember that to get traffic from a SN, it’s important to know how to exploit every little aspect of it. With million of social network members, not all of them are driving a thousands of visitors each day to their website. Why is that? Because they don’t know how to properly use them to drive traffic.

Do your homework

Analyze how the gurus do it. By joining a social network you can spot the big names out there and learn from what they do. I personally enjoy Blog Catalog and I think it’s a great Social Network. I use it to drive traffic and it’s working very well. I learned by analyzing how the big names out there were driving traffic from it. Some prefer Twitter, Facebook, My Blog Log or whatever other social network. It’s not about what’s the best SN out there or what is your favorite SN, it’s about how you can suck everything out of it.

Share

Don’t hesitate to share you Social Network strategy and your fabourite Social Networks, we can all learn!

It’s hard to find a balance between posting 5 articles a day to fill your blog with content and post an extremely good article once in a while. Both ways will kill your blog/website, so it’s extremely important to keep that balance and give your posts the proper time to live!

The mad blogger

The mad blogger post 5-10 articles a day and while the website looks to be filled with content, that content is usually “filler posts” (Not so unique posts just to fill some space). Why is it bad to do that? Well, I’m not saying it’s totally bad because I guess it might work for some websites. Again, it’s a case of “it depends what your website is about”: if you have a news website, of course you should post 5,10,15 articles a day, it’s your job! But let’s say you own a ‘regular’ blog about a particular subject you have some good knowledge of and that your goal is to spread that knowledge and make some money while you’re doing it. If you write five articles a day about your subject, not only you will run out of ideas eventually, but you are not going to market any article. It’s good to spend 5 hours a day writing tons and tons of articles, but what’s the point if no one’s reading them? You have to spend some of that time marketing these articles. By publishing too much content and not having much traffic, you are killing your ideas.

What’s great about writing a blog is to know people read you and also comment on your blog because they like what you do. When you end up on a blog you don’t know, I’m sure you check the average number of comments on the blog just to estimate the website’s popularity. Popularity is extremely important to a lot of users, they like to be part of something, a community. Posting 5 to 10 articles per day on a website not getting a huge amount of traffic will split your comments into these 5-10 posts, making maybe 10 articles with one comment on each. While you have some readers commenting, it’s not that impressive for a new user.

The lazy blogger

The lazy blogger is the complete opposite. I won’t go into details as I’m sure you get the idea. The main thing to understand is that being lazy and not updating the content is not a better idea. While you may end up with a lot more comments on each of your posts, new users will see you don’t update your website too often and this is usually a turn off. We like fresh content don’t we?

The balance is hard to get

I try to stay on a one post a day routine to keep fresh content coming in but also to maximize the number of comments I get per article. I know sometimes it tends toward a 1 post every two days routine, but that’s simply because I don’t want to write crap: if I don’t have time or ideas to write, I simply don’t write and so far it’s never been a major problem in my blogging experience. I try to write quality, not quantity and I’ve talked about it in a previous post: Don’t write just to write something. I also try to let people know about my new blog posts and I give my them the time to live. This way, the articles get some exposure, you haven’t spent your precious time writing for nothing and you maximize your comments possibility.

I guess the way to go is to write the amount you are able to write every day without feeling like you don’t know what to write about. You also have to keep some time to market your new articles, otherwise you are writing for nothing! If you are filled with ideas and could write 20 articles, spare some ideas and you get yourself almost a month worth of ideas on a one post a day routine.

Bottom line is that the balance is extremely hard to get. The best way is to go with what feels natural for you.

I will share a little trick with you guys today to increase your technorati authority simply by commenting on blogs. It’s simple and works like magic. I’m not bothering too much about Technorati for this blog so I haven’t put that technique to use with SEO Horror, but I did it with other blogs.

1. Technorati introduction

First of all, to understand how to increase your Technorati authority, you have to understand how the Technorati authority is calculated, right?

Technorati Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has.

It is important to note that we measure the number of blogs, rather than the number of links. So, if a blog links to your blog many times, it still only count as +1 toward your authority. Of course, new links mean the +1 will last another 180 days.

All right, so it’s all about getting backlinks again. Damn backlinks. The good news is that it’s easier to get real backlinks with Technorati than with Google. The reason is that technorati don’t care about a link being ‘no follow’ or ‘do follow’: a link is a link! The problem though is that Technorati only takes in consideration backlinks coming from blogs registered with Technorati, but most blogs are so it’s usually not a problem.

2. Comment

Commenting is the easiest way to get backlinks from Technorati, but not by commenting the usual way. A regular comment on a blog won’t give you a backlink from Technorati because when the owner of the blog actually “ping” Technorati to say “Hey, here’s my new post”, there are no comments on the article. So it doesn’t matter if you comment because Technorati won’t go back and check for new links. The question is, how can you get an increase in authority by commenting?

That is fairly simple and it’s called “Top commentator” or “Recent commentator” plugins. You will find these plugins on a lot of blogs and they simply are plugins showing the top commentators for the blog and also the 5-10 most recent comments. I use them on my blog and you can see the “Top commentators” in the footer. How to exploit these plugins? Well, by becoming a top commentator on a blog, you will appear on every single page of the blog. What does that mean? It means that everytime Technorati will visit a blog you are a top commentator on, it will see your link on the blog and that makes a +1 blog reaction for you!

3. Real life examples

Here are some real life examples:

We see that what was picked up by Technorati is the top commentators part of the blog and I was actually a top commentator at the time!

Now, we see that what Technorati picked up was the Recent Comments part of the blog and luckily, my comment was a recent comment at the time!

These two examples actually gave me an increase in authority just by commenting, which is something I do anyway!

Being a top commentator is dead easy

I know you are thinking you don’t have 15 hours a day to become a top commentator on all these blogs! The thing you have to know is that the top commentator plugin usually resets every month. That means everything starts fresh on the first of every month and you can be a top commentator with a single comment! On the first of each month, visit a couple of new blogs and comment as you would normally do. On the next blog post, if you are still a top commentator it means a +1 authority for you!

That’s it, it’s as simple as that. You guys might have other strategies to increase your Technorati authority and feel free to share that with us!

This is the kind of day I had to look at my iPod to figure out what to write (See Always carry notes with you to understand the reference to the iPod!). That’s perfectly fine and that’s why I make note of my ideas, because I forget them. So, here’s a little something I wanted to talk about for some time: short posts. As bloggers, we always feel guilty to write short posts, but short posts are actually OK!

Don’t feel guilty

Don’t feel guilty everytime you write a short post. Why would we always have to write a 2,000 words article? I don’t know, I guess we feel that short = lack of content. While this can be the case, if what you have to say fits in a couple of lines, then don’t feel bad for that. Look at the well know ShoeMoney blog for instance, the guy posted a single line article last week:

A single line! He just wanted to link to an interesting article, does he have to go through a thousand words article just for that? I must admit it could have been at least 3 or 5 lines, but the outcome is the same. Going straight to the point is good and you don’t have to create content where there’s no possibility to do so.

Don’t make it an habit

Again, it’s like everything in life: don’t abuse the concept. It’s OK to write some short posts once in a while if you can easily fit all your ideas in it, but make sure it’s not lacking of content.

I’m going to make it short

I’m not going to make a long article about short article writing. That’s really what I wanted to point out: writing short posts is ok as long as you don’t make it an habit and as you’ve seen, even the big guys do it!

As bloggers, our main concern is to write good content so we can drive some traffic to our blog, but also build backlinks. One thing you’ve probably noticed is how hard it is to get backlinks from articles. Unless you have a good users base or write an extremely unique and valuable article, people won’t talk about your posts. We all know it’s impossible to write everyday the best post ever and nobody starts a blog with an instant 20,000 readers. So, what can you do?

Think outside articles

If you can’t initially drive thousands of visitors with your posts, you have to think about an alternative way of doing it. Even if you have thousands of visitors, it’s always interesting to increase your traffic and alternatives to articles are still of interest for you.

I know you’re asking “what alternatives can we use?”. Well, there’s nothing specific I can say here but there are a couple of concepts you can learn from. Being a developper, I always think of tools/plugins I could develop to help the community. This can be a WP plugin, a Google gadget or whatever web-based tool. How can you drive traffic with that? Well, if you host the tool on the same domain as your website, people will visit your website and subscribe to it if they like what you do. Many bloggers are doing it and it’s usually working great.

How is that different from an article? Well, it’s really unique and it’s something people can’t copy so they have to link to you. Let’s say you develop a great WordPress plugin, other bloggers will surely talk about it, use it and link to your website to actually download the plugin because it’s not available elsewhere.

One example I can give is a Google gadget I developed for one of my website. The website isn’t a blog, but the concept remains the same: not rely on Google ranking to get traffic. I’m a big fan of the well known Rubik’s Cube, so a couple of months ago I built an online Rubik’s cube timer with statistics so that people could record their best times. I had to find a way to be really different and not only rely on Google search to get some traffic, so I built a Google gadget people could put on their Google home page. I had to do this because at first, I wasn’t ranked very well for the keyword “Rubik’s Cube Timer” (Now I’m #2). While very useful, the gadget is a simple version of the timer and it’s lacking a lot of features so people still have to visit the website. The gadget is on Google directory, has a user base of 380+ users, help me drive additional traffic and is a free advertisement for my website on Google!

The gadget looks like that:

And see how it’s giving me free exposure on Google:

People searching for a timer or something similar for their Google home page ended up using my little timer. Whenever they needed additional features, they ended up on the main website. This was a great way at first to drive some important visitors and get people to talk about the website.

I’m not a developer

Ok, this was just an example to show you how can something you usually wouldn’t think about could drive traffic to your website. I’m a developer so that kind of tools is quite easy to do for me, but not everybody is a developer. There are a lot of other ways to drive traffic and backlinks to your website. Contests are particularly popular among bloggers. Having a contest on your blog will help you drive additional traffic and there are good chances other bloggers will talk about your contest if it’s any good. I’ve seen some contests like 25$ by Paypal for the top commentator of the month and stuff like that. Why not have t-shirts with your website logo and give that away once a week/month? Things like that work and you really just have to be creative.

I’m working on a couple of things outside articles only for SEO Horror and these should be live in the next couple of months. It’s OK if it takes time to develop or to get online because you’re not in short term blogging…Are you?

Be creative

I’ve said it a couple of times in this article: be creative. There aren’t any exact techniques but it’s just important to think about what else outside your articles you can use to drive traffic. One of the most successful blogger John Chow isn’t even ranked in Google for “John Chow” because of aggressive SEO techniques. How does he drives traffic then? Well, he has found numerous ways over the years to do so and he still has one of the most successful blog on the Internet with 27,000+ subscribers, whithout Google. You want to drive traffic from Google, but it’s just to show that Google isn’t everything, you can use alternative ways.