Linkbaiting and the great outdoors

Tuesday, December 25th, 2007

First and foremost let me wish each and everyone of you a very merry Christmas. I hope and pray you are all enjoying the day with family and friends and that the true reason we even have this day to celebrate is not lost on you.

With the greetings and salutations out of the way let’s get down to business. I wanted to talk a little bit about what makes a good linkbait and what doesn’t. I figured I’d talk about it in terms that make sense to me. Hunting and fishing. Hopefully it’ll make sense to you as well.

What is linkbait?

Linkbait is the ability to goad another website into linking to something you’ve put on your website. No doubt someone could come up with a much more technical explanation, but I think that captures the essense of what a linkbait is well enough for my purposes. Also it isn’t required that it be a website. For instance you could goad the local radio show into mentioning your website. Linkbait comes in all shapes and sizes.

Why should I try linkbaiting?

Primarily for traffic and recognition, but there’s also an element of good clean fun to it. It is a challenge to get someone to link to your site. And the more popular they are the hard it will be to get them to link to you. Mainly for the fact that they are getting linkbait tossed in front of their faces all the time. But if you get them to take the bait you’ll enjoy the rewards of increased traffic, sales, recognition, or whatever else it happens to be you are trying to accomplish.

Finally without disregarding what I said before you should try linkbaiting for the challenge. It’s not easy. Even the most carefully crafted linkbait schemes can backfire or utterly fail. At best they won’t get noticed and at best they’ll be noticed and not appreciated as you intended them to be.

How do I linkbait? (or How do I hunt?)

The only limit you have when it comes to how is your imagination. Literally. Of course skill and finances may or may not play a part in it depending on what you are trying to do. I find the following method one of the best for linkbaiting.

Select a target

The most important thing isn’t the bait itself, but the person(s) you want to bait. Consider your options carefully and what each potential baiting target can offer you if you pull it off succesfully. Take into account how much work you’ll need to put into the bait and how much of a return you’ll get on your investment.

Think of it as Bull Elk hunt. The yearling bulls and even two year olds are relatively easy to take compared to their wiser elder brothers. They also yield much less meat than the older elk. Then there are the “elderly” elk that it’s pointless to even go after. Aside from a nice rack they don’t give you anything other than tough, bad tasting meat. In other words go after a linkbait opportunity that will give you a decent amount of “meat” but won’t leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth.

Observe your target

Not every fish will rise to the same exact bait, but every fish has a favorite bait they’ll rise to time and time again. If you go fly fishing you might fish a stretch of river dry using hand-tied caddisflies but twenty feet from that spot another school of fish won’t touch a caddisfly. Such is the way with people. What attracts the attention of one will repel another. Take the time to observe what works and what doesn’t. How crappy would it be to spend 2 weeks developing the perfect linkbait only to discover that your “fish” simply isn’t interested in?

From personal experience I can attest to the fact that it is VERY crappy when this happens. What makes it really bad is the fact that for the most part the only person I have to blame is myself. If I had only spent a little time looking at linkbaits others had tried and failed with I would have saved myself a lot of hassle. It’s the same with fishing. You talk to the other fishermen and ask what bait they’re using and if they’re having any luck. When it comes to linkbaiting you don’t need to ask you just need to pay attention.

Make it the best shot you are capable of

This is where we differ from hunting and fishing. Animals are dumb. Very dumb. They’ll let you shoot at them again and again and again before they’ll wander off. People won’t give you that opportunity. Make the first shot count by not only making it good, but also making it obvious that you were the one who did it. If you don’t make it clear who did it then there is no point as they won’t have anything to “link” to.

Reap the harvest

Assuming you’ve done what you needed to do you’ll soon be reaping the rewards of a well placed, nicely timed linkbait. Enjoy yourself for a while. Have some fun, say “hi” to your new fans and friends. A tradition in some hunting camps is to eat the heart and liver of the animal. It’s a celebratory time to commemoratore your accomplishments. Well in this case DO NOT eat the heart and liver of your linkbait target, but do celebrate! At least for a short while as your new found supply of internet “go-go juice” won’t last forever and you’ll need to find another target. Which brings us to the final point.

Save some for leaner times

Do not use all of your linkbait tricks all at once. Don’t try over and over and over again to target the same person. If they aren’t taking the bait wait a while and switch tactics. Hunting for a linkbait opportunity takes patience and practice. Eventually you’ll figure out the right bait for the right people. In the meanwhile you’d not drop scatter bombs on a deer to kill it so why do it with linkbait opportunities. In simpler terms don’t just throw stuff until something sticks.

What if I fail?

That just means you’re normal like the rest of the world who has ever tried linkbaiting. Everyone has failed at one point or another. If you fail figure out why you failed (wrong bait, bad timing, wrong target, etc) and move on and don’t fail the next time. I wish I had more sage advise to offer, but honestly that’s what you do. Press on and learn from your mistakes.

I hope that helps you with your endeavor to figure out a linkbait that works well for you. If anyone has any outstanding linkbaits they’ve pulled off in recent memory I’m sure we’d all like to hear about them. And before we go let’s review real quick.

• Select a target
• Observe your target
• Make the best shot your are capable of
• Reap the harvest
• Save some for leaner times

Posted in Blogging | 7 Comments »

Resurrecting old articles

Wednesday, December 19th, 2007

“Sometimes they come back” Do you remember that infamous Stephen King short story from the Night Shift compilation? Well this article has nothing whatsoever to do with that story, but the title is fitting so I thought I would open with it. Anyhow onto what we’re here to discuss, breathing new life into old blog posts.

Why you would want to resurrect old articles

There are any number of reasons you might want to bring old articles into the forefront again. Some of them might include:

• The topic has become “newsworthy” to the major media and you’d like to capitalize
• You pushed the article before you had the “proper” audience to receive it well
• You’ve had an influx of new readers who will benefit from reading it
• It would rank well on a newly discovered social bookmarking site which would grow your audience
• It has begun generating discussion in your archives
• You’re in a slump and not producing much new content

As you can tell there is no shortage of reasons why you’d want to resuse your old articles.

How to do it

The best way I’ve found to get old articles off the ground a second time around is using social bookmarking sites. By that I mean submitting the articles to sites they haven’t been submitted too yet. Put it out there in front of fresh eyes. They’ll pass it along to their friends and family (if it is worth their while).

Another tactic I’ve used to good effect is to link the old article to my comments on other blogs. Instead of being taken to a front page the person is taken to a specific article. This alone will usually get a few eyes new eyes on the article. It’s really effective because you can target your audience. For instance on a blog talking about the stock market I might highlight an article I’ve written about floor trading. On the other hand on a blog about camping I can link it to an article about arctic expeditions. You get the idea.

What to look out for

Don’t just throw the article out there and hope people will come. At some point they will and you won’t like it. Unless you’ve taken time to put everything in order. Get into your favorite editor and give the article a through thrashing.

• Spelling and grammar - Yep these still matter. Double check that you’re original posting didn’t have these errors.
• Layout change - If your theme has changed since you original posted the article you might find things are “off” in the article. Take some time and fix them.
• Advertising - If you have advertising make sure it is up to date so you can capitalize on it
• Position - We all change out minds on things from time to time. Be sure the article accurately reflects your position.

Do you ever “resurrect” old articles in order to try and capitalize on them a second, third, or even fourth time around?

Posted in Blogging | 5 Comments »

Stupidity and a Mysql database

Sunday, December 16th, 2007

This morning I woke up and decided to be stupid. I’d like to share that experience with you just incase you too would like to one day “be stupid” in the same way I have. I’ve tried to break down the overall steps into bite sized chunks so they are easier to digest.

Step 1: Get online

In order for this to work you need to be online. So pull a chair up to your computer, and get yourself logged in.

Step 2: Log into CPanel

Go to your website administration page and log in. If your site doesn’t use CPanel log into whatever flavor it uses

Step 3: Proceed immediately to the mysql databases

Make sure you go there right away and have in your mind that “Hey, there’s no need to worry. I know what I’m doing!”

Step 4: Prove you know what you are doing in mysql

The easiest and quickest way to do this is to start manipulating tables, and deleting databases. Once you get done everything should be nice and tidy if not a little sparse! If it’s not you haven’t done it right. Please go back and try again.

Step 5: Realize you’re a dumb ass

This is the best part of the whole experience. Doing all that work in the mysql databases and then clicking your bookmark to take you to your blogs administrative login page only to be greeted by:

Error establishing a database connection

This either means that the username and password information in your wp-config.php file is incorrect or we can’t contact the database server at localhost. This could mean your host’s database server is down.

Are you sure you have the correct username and password?

Are you sure that you have typed the correct hostname?

Are you sure that the database server is running?

If you’re unsure what these terms mean you should probably contact your host. If you still need help you can always visit the WordPress Support Forums.

Step 6: Panic

What good is realizing how dumb you really are if you don’t take advantage of it with a good old fashioned panic session? Unfortunately I didn’t have the benefit of an audience (aside from the dog) to witness my panicing, but if you do be sure to express to everyone the depths of your dispair. It makes for good effect, and it lets everyone know that you mean business!

Step 7: Come to your senses

Panic is good, but keep it on a tight leash and come to your senses in due time so you can actually start sorting the problem out. All told step one through step six should only take at the most about 10 minutes. It’s only natural that you dedicate the vast majority of that 10 minutes to panic. Once you’ve burned up your time get to work and fix it!

Now that you’ve had a taste of “being stupid” the time has come to fix the mistake. Please not this is all about fixing a particular Wordpress blog related stupidity. I in no way make any claims about how this will or will not perform in the sorting out of other types of inanity you might be prone to.

Those backups

Remember the wordpress backups you’re so diligent about keeping? The ones you have emailed to you on a daily basis using the Wordpress Database Backup plugin? Now is a real good time to download them from your email.

What about your weekly FTP backup you keep on your local computer? Now’s a great time to get that out as well. If for some reason you don’t backup your Wordpress files and folders on a regular basis, start. Don’t ever depend on your host to have backed it up for you. If you’re not sure where to begin with FTP backup Wordpress.org has a good guide to get you started using FTP

Turn back time

A backup is essentially a snapshot of what your data looked like at a previous time. It’s a like a picture, except with a backup you can take things back to what they were. In other words you can turn the clock back and fix any screwups you might be responsible for. At least to a certain extent. Some things to keep in mind about restoring a backup:

• The backup only covers from the time it was performed back. Any changes made since then aren’t part of the restoration. Meaning any posts, comments, or whatnot done since the backup was created will be lost when you restore it
• It may take the interaction of your host’s support team to restore the backup. For some reason it wouldn’t allow me to upload the backed up database and the support staff had to do it for me (another reason Hostgator rules)
• Once your database backup is restored you may very well still need to go in and add the db_username and db_password fields and ensure that it matches what you have in your wp-config.php file
• Verify you’re data has been backed up several times a week! I can’t stress this enough. Verify, verify, verify.
• Make sure you know what to do. Having all the backups in the world won’t help you a bit if you don’t know what to do with them. In otherwords practice to make sure you don’t come across any surprises. Trust me there’s nothing like going back into panic mode because you’re clueless about what you’re doing.

Write an article about your stupidity

This is where the rubber meets the road! It is almost obligatory to write an article about your experience. To entertain others? To educate others? A little of both? Who knows, but if you’ve just had a good old episode of “Sometimes I’m too stupid to breath” why not capitalize on it by writing an article?!

Posted in Blogging | 4 Comments »

I’d like to offer YOU $100!!

Saturday, December 15th, 2007

But instead I’ll tell you about my soon to be “opened” blog and offer ONE lucky winner $100.00. I know you can’t wait to hear about the new blog so we’ll talk about that for a few moments first and then I’ll tell you how you might have a chance of winning $100.00 from me.

I’ve been resisting blogging in a niche, enjoying the freedom a nicheless blog affords. That however is about to change. That’s right I have decided to go into a niche. I’ll answer some questions I expect to receive about this change.

What niche?

The topic of the niche will be snakes in general, Ball Pythons in particular.

Why that topic?

There are a few reasons I’ve chosen this topic, but taken as a whole it really goes to the heart of how you should choose your niche, whatever that might be. My process was as follows:

I considered various topics

I started by asking myself a few questions:

• What topics do I know enough about to teach other people about?
• What topics interest me enough to keep talking about them?
• What topics aren’t saturated in the blogging world?
• What topics will I enjoy learning more about as I go?
• What topics will benefit others by virtue of more education?

I narrowed the topics down

Once I had decided on the topics I then had to narrow it down to just one particular topic. That process looked something like this:

• What topic do I just not understand enough to write about? Biblical studies
• What topic do I know about, but I know I won’t stick with it? Pit Bulls
• What topic am I just not interested in at this point? Make money blogging

I narrowed my focus

By now I had decided I would be blogging about snakes. The next step was to dial in the niche microscope and decide exactly what snake species I would blog about. This led me to asking myself even more questions.

• What snakes do I have hands on experience with? Burmese pythons, Reticulated pythons, Columbian boas, Ball pythons, King snakes, Corn snakes, and a few others
• What snake can I get my hands on on short order without breaking the bank? Corn, Kings, Boas, and Balls
• What snake can I support in terms of housing and food? Balls,Corns, and Kings
• Which snake out of those do I prefer? Ball pythons

By now I had decided the general topic (snakes) and a targted niche (Ball pythons). I had even considered further focusing my niche to the breeding and husbandry of Ball pythons, but decided I would rather not limit my options by getting that tightly focused.

That in a nutshell is why I decided to start my new blog about Ball pythons. Nothing fancy, just some educated consideration. The moral is to blog about what you know, blog about what you’ll stick with, and blog about what someone will read.

What about this blog?

This blog will remain largely unchanged. I will continue posting 3 to 5 articles per week on this blog as I have been doing. And here’s a special announcement for everyone to makes sure you’re paying attention: Be the 150th person to subscribe to this blog via email rss (link in upper right corner) and I’ll send you a $35.00 Amazon dot com gift certificate. I’ll let everyone know a winner next Thursday (and this time I’ll be kind and gentle about it…) If it hasn’t reached 150 by then we’ll keep going until it does. Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging. You’ll notice a lot more guest posts here. If you’d like to submit a guest post for consideration please feel free to email it to me in full and I will review it. If I like what I see I will post it on this blog.

When will your new blog be up and running?

I plan to have it up and running by January 1. It might be up before that depending on how long it takes me to finish up writing the pillar posts

What’s this I hear about $100?

Back here again are we? Ok here’s how it will work. On the day that the new blog opens I will write an article with about 20 questions (give or take 5 or so) pertaining to information found in the pillar posts on the new blog. Answer the questions by sending an email to the address supplied in the contest article and one of two things will happen. Either you will qualify, or not (meaning you’ll either get ALL the questions right, or you won’t). If no one qualifies for the prize by answering the questions correctly the contest ends and noone wins the money (or in my case loses it). On the other hand if only one person answers the questions right they’ll be sent $100.00. If multiple people answer properly I’ll assign each person a number and choose the winner using random.org. Think about it all you need to do is answer some questions and you might be able to win $100.00! Think how nice that extra $100.00 will come in after your spending sprees over Christmas!

Will you tell us when the new blog is open?

Sure can. I’ll announce it on this blog among other places

Do you think the new blog will succeed or fail? Why? Will $100.00 encourage you to read the articles? You answers won’t matter the offer is on the table (so to speak) and you’re eligible to enter regardless of what your answers are.

Posted in Blogging | 7 Comments »

The trouble with Blogging Zoom

Monday, December 10th, 2007

I’m not one to complain. By that I mean I’m not one to complain when things are going my way, but sometimes I just have to pipe up when I shouldn’t. This is one of those instances where I should probably keep my mouth shut and just enjoy the benefits that I am reaping. I feel however I will do more of a service by saying something.

I’m not sure how to say this to everyone so I’ll just blurt it out. Blogging Zoom is broken!(I think…). Ok so clearly I’m not 100% positive that it is broken, but I’ll tell you why I’m pretty confident it is. You can be the judge of if I am right or wrong. Before I begin laying my case out let me make it clear I am not an expert in the things of social bookmarking. No, I am simply a casual user.

Too many zooms allowed

From what I can tell there are unlimited zooms allowed in a 24 hour time period. I know because in the early days of BZ I tested the system. Not so much tested as “abused” it by zooming anything and everything. Literally.

Why did I do such a thing? Because I could. Because there is no incentive to conserve my zooms for those posts which truly deserve it. Meaning I could zoom through the “Upcoming Posts” without giving it a moments thought.

No reason to read (or at least view) the articles

I’m not a website expert, but somehow this seems like a reasonable feature to add. Make it so a person has to at least open the page they are giving a zoom to before the zoom will count. Again this goes back to just mass zooming for no reason aside from “because I can”

Too many of my posts have gone “hot”

This is the part where I should keep my mouth shut…

Notice I’ve submitted 34 posts (at the time of writing this article) and 34 of them have gone “hot”? I like to think I can write a decent article, but I’m batting 1000 (perfect for you non-baseball types) which seems a bit, um… far fetched to me. Am I the only one experiencing this phenomenon?

So you must be wondering why I’d complain about something like this? Because:

1. I needed a topic
2. I want to sabbotage BZ
3. Court and Vic (the creators of BZ) pissed me off
4. I like Blogging Zoom but believe these issues dilute its true potential

That’s right my complaint is all about number 4! Does anyone else share my concerns regarding Blogging Zoom in regards to this issue I have raised?

But what solutions can I offer? Like I said I’m just a “lay person” when it comes to things like this, but it seems to me if you…

• Limit the amount of zooms from a particular user
• Require the actual page being zoomed to be opened (if that is even possible)

it would help take care of too many posts going hot when/if they don’t deserve to.

Posted in Blogging | 28 Comments »