16 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog By Denise Wakeman & Patsi Krakoff

I don't usually post full articles to my blog - however, I thought this was excellent, useful information... including resources for bloggers to drive traffic to their blog. After all - great content = higher search index = more traffic = return readers and if you host advertisers = revenue! Enjoy!

16 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your BlogBy Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff

You've got your blog set up and you've started posting pithy, useful information that your niche market would benefit from and enjoy. Days go by, you keep publishing, but no one comments and your traffic stats are barely registering. What do you do?

Like any website you own, you must do some blog promotion to start driving traffic to your site. Here are 16 steps, in no particular order of importance, that you can start doing now to get traffic moving to your blog.

1. Set up a Bloglet subscription form on your blog and invite everyone in your network to subscribe: family, friends, colleagues, clients, associates.
Http://www.bloglet.com

2. Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your site gets regularly spidered by the Yahoo search engine (see tutorial on http://www.biztipsblog.com)
http://www.my.yahoo.com

3. Read and comment on other blogs that are in your target niche. Don't write things like "nice blog" or "great post." Write intelligent, useful comments with a link to your blog.

4. Use Ping-0-matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish.
http://www.pingomatic.com

5. Submit your blog to traditional search engines: http://www.submitfire.com

6. Submit your blog to blog directories. The most comprehensive list of directories is on this site: http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
Tip: Create a form to track your submissions; this can take several hours when you first start so schedule an hour a day for submitting or hire a VA to do it for you.

7. Add a link to your blog in your email signature file.

8. Put a link to your blog on every page of your website.

9. If you publish a newsletter, make sure you have a link to your blog in every issue.

10. Include a link to your blog as a standard part of all outgoing correspondence such as autoresponder sequences, sales letters, reports, white papers, etc.

11. Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures and flyers.

12. Make sure you have an RSS feed URL that people can subscribe to. The acronym RSS means Rich Site Summary, or some may consider its meaning as Really Simple Syndication. It is a document type that lists updates of websites or blogs available for syndication. These RSS documents (also known as 'feeds') may be read using aggregators (news readers). RSS feeds may show headlines only or both headlines and summaries.
To learn how news aggregators/RSS readers work, see this site: http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-readers.htm

13. Post often to keep attracting your subscribers to come back and refer you to others in their networks; include links to other blogs, articles and websites in your posts

14. Use Trackback links when you quote or refer to other blog posts. What is TrackBack? Essentially what this does is send a message from one server to another server letting it know you have posted a reference to their post. The beauty is that a link to your blog is now included on their site.

15. Write articles to post around the web in article directories. Include a link to your blog in the author info box (See example in our signature below).

16. Make a commitment to blog everyday. 10 minutes a day can help increase your traffic as new content attracts search engine spiders. Put it on your calendar as a task every day at the same time.
Tip: Use a hit counter to track your visitor stats: how many unique visitors, how many page views, average length of visit. You can get a free hit counter at http://www.sitemeter.com

Denise Wakeman of Next Level Partnership, and Patsi Krakoff of Customized Newsletter Services, have teamed up to create blogging classes and marketing services for independent professionals. You can read and subscribe to their blogs at http://www.biztipsblog.com, http://www.coachezines.com and http://www.bizbooknuggets.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Denise_Wakeman

Making Your Etsy Store Work For You: Tips For Selling on Etsy

When I first started out on Etsy - it was a bit overwhelming. I wasn't sure where to look for the information I needed in order to get my shop set up and actually noticed. There was so much to do -but where to start. I didn't have the time to browse through endless forum topics. The whole purpose of getting a shop set up was to generate traffic to my storefront - thus revenue to my bank account. I have had many people ask me for help in getting their store off the ground - so I decided to compile a few tips so help them out. Mind you - this is what I have found through trial and error - so use them as you like!

Tips for selling on Etsy:
Here are some suggestions to help you on Etsy = making sales!!

1. Have all images bright and crisp (not busy) - always use neutral background and make sure you never display blurry pictures - the first picture should have a full image of your product. Great pictures lead to getting in treasuries and possibly making the front page of Etsy - thus increasing your views/potential customer base (via when a customer "hearts" you - see under "See who hearts this shop" in the Right column of "Your Etsy")

2. Always use 5 pictures and all 14 tags when listing - in 1 of your 14 tags should be your Etsy shop name. So, with tags, try to fit as much in one field as you can. For example I do in one field: seaglass beach - and that takes up an entire field. Don't use commas to separate. It is nice to have many different photo angles of your product. Customers like this because they are purchasing "sight unseen".

3. You need a shop announcement - have a catchy tag to draw people in - but keep it short as well... You want customers to be able to see you items on the front page. Long announcements will push items to the bottom so they won't be seen unless they scroll down.

4. You need to have a complete profile with all you terms and conditions and also break these down under the "Shop Policies" as well: very, very important as it protects you as a seller and the buyer as well. I have increased my prices to include insurance - and I put track and confirm on every package so I know it got to the customer. With items that are less expensive I feel track and confirm will be enough.

5. List as often as you can - and re-list (renew) at least 1 item a day - best time is after 5:30PM. You have views that accumulate next to each of your items - the items with the most views should be "renewed" more often as they have a better chance of selling.

6. Get involved in the forums and chat - forums first and foremost - take part and also start forum discussions.

7. Find communities outside of Etsy - start a blog, join myspace and indiepublic, we love Etsy, facebook, digg, twitter and so on... promote, promote, promote!

8. Make sure you have a great banner and avatar and that it displays what you do! Make your avatar (the little square pic in the Right column of "Your Etsy") is "clickable". Try different ones until you find what works best. There are a lot of sellers on Etsy who specialize in banners and avatars if you need one made up.

9. Make sure you set up you sections and categorize your items so customers can easily navigate your store without having to go through the pages.

10. Make sure you answer all convos (customer inquires) in a timely fashion.

11. Treasuries - on the main Etsy page click the "Treasury" link in the Left column. You scroll through the pages to find if you are in one. A yellow star means one of your items has been picked for a treasury. A silver star means one of your items has been selected as an alternate in a treasury and if and item sells - your item will then be displayed. A blue star means you are the one that has created a treasury. If possible try to watch when treasuries are going to
expire - when enough do - you will be able to grab one of your own.

There is also a treasury west at: http://www.etsy.com/treasury_west.php. To learn more about the treasury go to:
http://www.etsy.com/storque/section/howTos/article/how-to-make-a-treasury-the-nuts-and-bolts/688/

12. Gift guides: Navigate through the gift guides to see if one of your items has been selected by and Etsy admin to be displayed in a category. I have had 2 of my items displayed and both sold. You get more exposure. These items are selected randomly by admins - but the look for great photography and items.

13. Once you are established on Etsy and feel comfortable join an Etsy Street Team - to learn more about Street Teams: http://team.etsy.com/

14. If you're in the mood to list a bunch of items, but don't want them to appear at the same time in the Etsy time machine (your 5 seconds of fame), then use this technique. Make an Etsy listing as you would normally, up to stage 5, the stage where you select "finish". At that time simply bookmark the page in your web browser (and rename it to something you will recognize - otherwise the default is "Etsy Step 5". When you're ready to have the item "go live" simply return to the page and click through to finish. (This tip is from Colleen of Tactile Baby)

15. Speaking of blogs - visit as many as you can - post comments on them and create back links back to your Etsy store (or your own blog).

How To Make Your Blog Header Background Transparent

When I did my blog redesign and imported a new template, I wanted to give it my own personal touch. I loved my new template design but loathed the big yellow header box. I knew there was a way to maniuplate the HTML in order to make the background transparent to show the image I had added to my blog body background. Thanks to Vin of Beta Blogger for Dummies and the Blogger support group I was able to find the direction I needed. By no means am I advanced at HTML - so here it is in layman's terms!

**It is alway best to dowload a copy of your full template to your computer before making changes to the HTML**

Also, you can select "Preview" to view edits as you make them before "Saving".

Navigate to the following area when editing your blog --> Layout Tab ---> Edit HTML Sub Tab

How to add a new image to your blog body background:
1. Decide on an image you would like to use
2. Add the following code before your: body {
** For what ever reason I am unaware - I had to import this code as an image for you to see as it was not showing up when I typed it in here...

3. Add the following code or change the code to your selected image here: (You will be changing the whole url string in background: to source your own image you are going to use.)

body {
background:#fff url("http://1.bp.blogspot.com/YOUR IMAGE GOES IN THIS SECTION.jpg") no-repeat $endSide bottom;
background-attachment:fixed;
margin:0;
padding:0;
color:$textcolor;
font:x-small Georgia Serif;
font-size/* */:/**/small; font-size: /**/small;
text-align: center;
}

Now that you have done that it is time to make the back ground header transparent so that you can see your blog body image through it.

4. Find the /* Header section in the HTML of your blog

5. Find the header-wrapper section and add the following code for "Opacity". The opacity, filter and -moz-opacity lines must match. So, if you change the opacity to .950 - then you have to change the filter to opacity=95 and the -moz-opacity to .950. I found that .850 gives the blog a great transparency without loosing the ability to read the text.

#header-wrapper {
background-color: #FFFFFF;
opacity:.850;
filter: alpha(opacity=85);
-moz-opacity: 0.850;
width:925px;
margin:15auto 10px;
}

6. Now you need to add the opacity to your outer-wrapper as well. Let's find the section under the outer-wrapper called main-wrapper and make the following additions to the code.

#main-wrapper {
background-color: #FFFFFF;
opacity:.850;
filter: alpha(opacity=85);
-moz-opacity: 0.850;
width: 450px;
float: left;
padding: 0;
margin-right: 10px;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

7. You must also change your side bar wrappers adding the opacity code as follows. Find the section sidebar-wrapper and add the code.

#sidebar-wrapper {
opacity:.850;
filter: alpha(opacity=85);
-moz-opacity: 0.850;
width: 220px;
float: right;
background: $sidebar2bgcolor;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

8. Depending on your blog layout - you may have multiple sidebars - in that case you need to edit each one and add the opacity code as follows in this example:

#right-sidebar-wrapper {
background-color: #FFFFFF;
opacity:.850;
filter: alpha(opacity=85);
-moz-opacity: 0.850;
width: 220px;
float: right;
padding: 0px;
background: $sidebar1bgcolor;
margin-right: 15px;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

Hopefully this has helped anyone that was getting a bit stuck on how to make these changes. Feel free to email me with any questions or if you need additional help - I will help if I can! I will be adding more tips in the future, so keep checking back!