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I thought I would do something different. In 2003, Problogger did something very similar to this in another blog he had. He recently gave some tips on doing some fun, interactive things on your blog and I loved this idea and thought it was time for an Underblog reincarnation.

The Search for the Underblogs

This is not a contest. There are a lot of quality blogs out there that get little recognition, so I thought I’d start a campaign to uncover some of these ‘Underblogs’. Tell me what your favorite blogs are … particularly if it’s a little known blog that you’ve discovered and love to read. Please don’t include blogs that are considered A-list, Technorati 100 or other popular blogs. Leave your nominations in the comments (obvious spam will be deleted). To enter a blog, please follow the instructions below

- Mention up to 5 blogs that you want to tell people about in the comments section below. Please include the name and its url. Tell us why you love this blog.

- You can leave a link to your own blog if you think it fits the category of ‘underblog’.

After all the submissions are in (by March 8 - 3 weeks from now), I will do an Underblog Update post with a poll and everyone can vote their favorites. Pass the word around so we can get a lot of participation and give some air time to the well-deserved Underblogs.

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I found these two shops for blogs … PrestoGifto and PopShops. PrestoGifto integrates CafePress products in your blog and PopShops integrates products from Commission Junction, Linkshare, ShareASale, LinkConnector, Performics and Red Galoshes, so you will need to be a member of these networks to utilize these shops.

If you look at the links in my nav bar, you’ll see Blogger’s Shop. That is a PrestoGifto shop. The one that says Books and Stuff is the PopShop. So far, I’m getting a lot more clicks on the PrestoGifto (CafePress) products, but I just installed these yesterday so it’s too soon to tell how either of these will work out.

Both shops are easy to install and integrate. PopShops takes a bit longer to set up since you can choose up to 100 products. Both of these shops are still in Beta but seem to function beautifully. PopShops has a feature you can install that will put a little pop button in your “write post” bar and you can pop a product in the post. I’ll pop one in here to show you … lol. They do have a much larger selection of products to choose from so if you aren’t pushing “blogging thongs” not to worry. You can choose your products by keywords. Very simple to add an ad to your post with PopShops. Read the rest of this entry »

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Blogging Ads blog is having a One Heck of a Giveaway Contest. I was asked through Entrecards if I would like to be a sponsor and said sure. Just taking a look at it, there are going to be 12 different groups of prizes, which means there are going to be a total of 12 different winners with a prize value of approximately $1,000. While you’re in the Contest mood, don’t forget to enter my contest for your chance at a review on this blog and a 1 month 125 x 125 ad.

Here’s the post from Blogging Ads and how to enter the contest and what you can win. Suffice it to say, I’ve entered the contest as well as being a sponsor. Read the rest of this entry »

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I’m always looking for ways to make this blog more informative to readers. While reading one of my favorite blogs, Cash Tactics, I ran across a blog post about 9 Sure-Fire Tips to Continually Improve Your Blog and one of the nine ideas was to add a Best of the Week post. I read a lot of blogs so that should be easy enough to keep a list of my favorite posts from other blogs each week. Sounds like a good weekend thing to do, so I’ll begin a Best of the Week today with the following being my favorites from last week:

1. 9 Sure-Fire Tips to Continually Improve Your Blog

2. Using Images to Take Your Posts to a New Level

3. 18 Tips For Writing Better Pay-Per-Click Ads

4. This free plugin is a moneymaker

5. Long tail vs fat head optimization strategies – Part 1

6. Long tail vs fat head optimization strategies – Part 2

7. Long tail vs fat head optimization strategies – Part 3

8. All Marketers are Spammers

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In addition to monetizing your own blog with advertising spots, paid reviews, affiliate marketing, etc., there are many opportunities on the Net for getting paid to blog.

ProBlogger has a list of blogging opportunities on it’s site.

Sign up at Helium. “Where publishers and freelancers meet.” At Helium’s Marketplace, publishers post the titles they need articles for right now. Publishers are paying from $20 to $200 for each selected article.

B5 Media. They normally post their job openings for bloggers at ProBlogger.

Blogger Jobs.biz. Career blogging listings. Read the rest of this entry »

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Found this site recently and can’t believe it, but it’s free to use. Sketchcast. Just record your sketch with or without voice and get the code to embed the sketch in your blog or anywhere on the web. Very much the same concept as whiteboarding. Get creative and create your own sketchcast … embed it all over the place and let it go viral. Sketchcast

For more tips on making money online, visit Million Dollar Dame

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A friend in a forum that I’m a member of ran across This article by DotSauce with at least 55 active RSS directories that accept your RSS Feed link. I spent a relatively small amount of time submitting this blog to all of them and have noted a big increase in traffic pretty much immediately. If you’re into domaining, DotSauce is a great online resource in addition to the very useful RSS Feed list that he posted.

Here’s another list I found of directories to submit your blog to and in some cases, your RSS Feed. Some of them are redundant, but some are new.

My Top Five Recommended Blog Directories:

1. Best of the Web Blogs

2. Blog Catalog

3. Blog Hub

4. Blog Flux

5. Blog Wise

Other Blog Directories To Consider:

Blogarama

Globe of Blogs

Blogbib (paid or reciprocal required)

Blog Dex

Blog Directory Submit (reciprocal required)

Blog Intro (no PageRank)

Blog Search

Blogtastic (paid)

Blog Universe

Bulletize

EatonWeb

FeedCat

FeedDirectory

Feeds4All

Finding Blog (redirects links)

AddUrlBlog- (closed for submission until years end)

RSS Mad

Miscellaneous Topical Blog Directories:

Blog Burst (adds your blog post to major media website)

Blogdir - (Spanish blog community)

Blog Street (India Directory)

BritBlog (British Directory)

Boing Boing (submit blog posts for review)

iBlogBusiness (adds business blogs only)

Blog Search Engines That You Can Submit Your RSS Feed

Blog Hop

Blo.gs

Bloogz

Blog Lines

Blog Digger

Blogz

Blog Pulse

Feed Map

Read A Blog

IceRocket

RSS Network

Syndic8

DayPop

Technorati

Postami

2RSS

News Mob

More Over

Ping-O-Matic (submits to multiple rss feed submissions websites at once)

FeedFarm

RSSFeeds

Search4RSS

Feed Directory

FeedPlex

Feeds4All

Plazoo

Feed24

Feeds 2 Read

JordoMedia

Feed Bomb

nFeeds

Feedooyoo

Feed Age

Golden Feed

RSS Micro

Octora RSS Feeds

Feed Fury

FindRSS

Day Time News

Miscellaneous Topical Blog Search Engines:

Edu RSS (educational only)

Educational Feeds

Feeds.com.br (Brasil only)

Finance Investing Feeds

Realty Feeds

Medical Feeds

Science Port

Sports Feeds

Political Feeds

Government Feeds

RSS Verzeichnis

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Here are some other things that I do to get traffic and search engine links. I’ll start with No. 1

USFreeads.com: buy a premium account with USFreeads and place ads/articles about your products. I can’t tell you how much traffic I get from USFreeAds. It’s a lot. In addition, Google spiders the ads and indexes them.

Squidoo: Some people think Squidoo is not as effective as it once was since it’s crackdown on SPAM lenses. I haven’t found that to be true. The only thing really different is you have to build a better lense. More content, less spammy. I just built a lense on getting paid for social networking at Yuwie and FriendsWin, and it ended up on the first page results of Google.

Blogging: Google seems to love Wordpress blogs. Frequent updates to your Wordpress blogs is a great way to drive traffic to your sites or to market from directly. Again, you need to take the time to make informational posts … posts that people actually want to read rather than just a bunch of affiliate banners. Give your readers a reason to return to your blog over and over again. In addition, I think it’s better to get a domain name for your blog, install it using Fantastico from the control panel of your hosting company rather than having it hosted by Wordpress. I had a blog hosted by Wordpress and they banned it, so all that work down the drain. Host it yourself and that’s not going to happen.

Backlinks: Backlinks are crucial for getting sites indexed and getting good ranking from Google. I’m fortunate enough to have purchased the Trackback Generator, a really handy bit of software that was sold by Ruck (limited quantities sold, no longer available), but you can leave comments on blogs, make posts in forums, etc. to get backlinks to your site.

Yahoo Answers: Another great way to market is Yahoo Answers. Look for unanswered questions in your niche or you can even make two Yahoo accounts … one for questions and one for answers and answer your own questions. Answer as many questions a day as you can. You get backlinks and the opportunity to market a product. You do have to be careful … make it sound like spam and you will be banned in short order. Try to make posts that sound helpful.

Social Bookmarking: This is one I use a lot and it gets excellent results, both in direct traffic from the social networks and in backlinks to your site. Traffic coming from the social bookmarking sites is nothing short of phenomenal. If you’re not using social bookmarks for your sites, you’re missing out on a goldmine. Absolutely one of the most reliable and useful products I’ve bought is Bookmarking Demon. It really rocks. Completely automates the social bookmarking process and you can do a bit of blackhatting and create multiple accounts if you’re so inclined.

New version, new features!

* Create Accounts Automatically At Sites Running The Scuttle Script

* Bookmark Your URLs Automatically

For more tips on making money online, visit Million Dollar Dame

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