Well, it seems that my networking is taking much of my time these days. The more contacts I have and the more time I spend on my blog articles, the more I find that I spend on networking.
Working on my latest articles from my two blogs that I've submitted to my networking sites, I find that I am making great contacts by following-up with people (who have left their information, instead of anonymous) who have left comments.
Regardless of the comment, unless there was something extremely offensive involved, I give a simple thank you and try to look at their interests or submitted articles to see if I may add them to one of my networks to help them out. I like this more personal contact and it seems to be creating some great relationships where I have obtained regular subscribers and have subscribed to some of their blogs.
With networking, there always needs to be give and take. If you expect it all to come your direction without giving any back, expect to fail.
Additionally, I was wondering if any of you have tried Amazon.com and their "Partners" affiliate program? I have been giving it a good long try on both my sites and seem to be having zero success. Over twenty-thousand impressions on one of ad widgets, and thousands on others, but no orders, no referral fees paid, etc. I was looking over their discussion board and others seem to be complaining about the same thing, with others commenting that Amazon is just using bloggers to gather their customers for them without paying them.
I don't know if that is true. However, I am looking into other programs to try. I have found two great directories for affiliate-type companies. Be careful, however, because they will seem to be free and then you will be required to pay them to build a web-page and give you a domain, or you'll be required to purchase their tracking/reporting software, etc. Just a word of caution because it seems that every Tom-Dick-and-Harry want to offer an affiliate program.
Here are the two directories. I can't say much about them yet, since I am still exploring them myself. I will give my results once I've played around with it a bit.
Affiliate Scout
Commission Junction
Here are some interesting articles that I found that I thought I'd share regarding blogging, technology, etc. as it is important to always stay on top of the latest news if you want your blog to succeed...which you do, or you wouldn't be putting in the work in the first place.
The Next Social Network: WordPress
"Could open-source blogging platform WordPress serve as your next social networking profile? Chris Messina, co-founder of Citizen Agency, thinks so. He’s started a project called DiSo, for distributed social networking, that aims to “build a social network with its skin inside out.” DiSo will first look to WordPress as its foundation."
SEO Spammers: Leave Social Media Sites Alone!
"They always submit. They never vote/Digg/upmod anyone else’s submissions. Their submissions get 1 or fewer votes (unless they are a MASS - a Multi-Account-SEO-Spammer, in which case they will have more than one, but it will always be the same amount and always voted by the same “people”)."
Increase Earnings By Upto 30% With Google Coop & Adsense
"Here is a way that would allow you to earn higher and even turn a portion of first time visitors who come from search engine and after reading the content just close your site up."
I hope, as always, that this information is helpful and contributes to your blog's success.
Happy Blogging.
