Earning Money

A few days ago, I started construction of a new blog. I created the blog because I am big on politics. Daily Politics is a blog that, as you can see, provides the news when it comes to politics. However, when I created the blog, I wanted to try and figure out some ways to really get some traffic to the site. I could do the conventional “buy links” and “sign up for adwords” and all of that. But, then I began to think outside of the box (if you call it that) and I realized that there was a lot of potential traffic in Facebook and that was when it all started.

This blog post is a case study to determine the effectiveness of traffic that comes from Facebook to a blog. I am hoping that the use of Facebook could send me some valuable traffic. Why did I decide to use the blog? With this Presidential election, a lot of younger people are going to vote because they are so tired of President Bush and that is what Facebook is: younger people. However, how exactly can you get Facebook traffic to your blog? One word: group.

Facebook allows you to create groups, but what differentiates them from Myspace is that they allow you to post a link to your site on it. They don’t mind if you link to your site from the group and that is how you can get so much traffic. So, what I did was set up a group that was titled “Daily Politics” and basically said that the group was meant to provide information without bias. But, what I did was I invited all of my friends. Now, I have been building my facebook over time because everyone wants to be friends with everyone. And that is where the success comes in: if you invite all your friends, viral marketing starts.

Viral marketing, for those that don’t know, is word of mouth. Basically, what I did was I invited as many of my friends as I could for two reasons: the first is that anyone that checks their profile will see that they joined a new group. If the group interests them, then they might join as well. And, I added in the description for members to invite all of their friends. So, if I can get even five people to invite all of their friends, the group will really take off. However, I am thinking that more people will invite their friends and that is going to be the success.

This is a case study. I have heard of people using Facebook to get traffic; however, I had tried before and it did not work. Now that I have a topic that is a bit more generic, I think that the group will explode with members. I am going to post in a week and see how the group is doing and also see just how the site is doing in regards to traffic. I’ll give the group a few weeks to really gain viral marketing and we’ll see if Facebook can send me the traffic I really want. So, check back in a week to see the results of the first week of the site. We’ll have to hope for the best!

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It was fun while it lasted, but there are some things that are just not worth it anymore. Sometimes, you have to realize that there are other ways to gain traffic without giving up such large amounts of sidebar real estate. That’s right. I am getting rid of BlogRush because, unfortunately, they have not provided me with the amount of traffic that I should have been getting. I was getting syndicated on a ton of sites, but I was beginning to realize that there was such little traffic coming through, it was not worth it. Maybe it was my titles or maybe it was something else.

Because I got rid of that, I need to try and think of something new that I want to use in that sidebar area. It has brought about a few ideas and I have been thinking of throwing a MyBlogLog up on there to record who my most recent readers are. It’s an amazing way to network, but even then, I wonder if it is doing as great as it used to do. I have to wonder if it is worth the real estate as well. So, this is me pushing a question out to my readers. What do you recommend I put on my left sidebar under the blog roll?

There is something to learn from this. The thing to take from this is that you should never settle. If something is not doing amazing, you need to figure out why and if it’s just not growing the way you want it to, get rid of it. That’s why some bloggers have been getting rid of Adsense. It was not earning like they wanted. Constantly try new things when it comes to promotion and you’ll find that you’re going to have the most success. Sayonara BlogRush. Hello free space!

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