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TypePad AntiSpam Launches Posted: 30 May 2008 06:21 AM CDT After my post a few days back about my love hate relationship with Akismet I was pleased to see Six Apart announce another option for bloggers looking to stem the tide of comment spam - TypePad AntiSpam. While I’m yet to try it the reports coming in about it are good so far. It’s free (Akismet costs for a commercial license, it has plugins for MovableType and WordPress, it’s open source, and it’s compatible with Akismet (so you can run them together). Share This

What 28 of My Blogging Friends Say about How they Build Relationships with Bloggers Posted: 29 May 2008 02:48 PM CDT Image by Michael Sarver Over the last two days I’ve been writing about building relationships with other bloggers including tools and techniques for building blogger relationships as well as general principles of building relationships. Today I want to finish this series on building relationships with bloggers with some tips from some of my own network of blogging friends. A few days back I mentioned on Twitter that I was writing this post and asked those who follow me there to submit their own tips. Here are some of the tips that they mentioned. By the way - my Twitter followers are fantastic and are some of my favorite people to interact with. If you’re looking for a place to start networking why not follow some of these people on Twitter - by responding to this question they’ve proven how willing they are to network - what a great starting place! meanttolive - I’m part of one blog network. I follow bloggers on Twitter. And I read and comment on lots of blogs. galadarling - Be personal, complimentary, offer something, get their attention, be different. Works a charm ;D mattwardman - Ask them questions so they think they can help me … seriously. robbyg - I start with blog comments, move to twitter second, and finish off with regular emails if the relationship is strong. travelrants - networking: commenting on blogs, twitter, blog forums, email / MSN communication, blogger summits, conferences etc. bkajino - I read blogs I like & participate in conversation when I have input miguelpineiro - building relationships, selfish promotion and genuine interest in their success. DebNg - Twitter and Skype mostly though I do belong to a couple of forums as well. profwebs - Leave meaningful comments on their blogs, become active in their “community” when relevant, “reach out and make new friends” StuartL - email, twitter and the phone seem to be working for me at the moment RossMaguire - I have to agree with Stuart about twitter, it is very effective Telemill - simple, social networking sites: twitter, linkedin, mybloglog and blogcatalog. sharrypdx - among other things, I have very few close relationships with a couple of other bloggers. We share insights, leads, tips, etc. shawnfarner - Lately, Twitter :) jakebouma - interact w/comments, establish a relationship, send articles of interest to them via email, connect on other social sites auer1816 - email tends to work well. theotherdrummer - Comments, e-mail and/or Twitter. chrisguillebeau - everything all the others have said is good, but for me i think the slow building of personal relationship is most important rahsheen - Twitter and FriendFeed primarily…in regards to connecting to other bloggers inkedmn - comment on their blogs to start, then casual emailing davidcubed - Twitter, IM, Private Forums, and Blog Comments are my biggest ways of connecting with other bloggers kristarella - Comments are the best networking, subscribe, comment, email. Networking sites are tools: useful, but often fickle, short-liv … genuinechris - It depends on if we’re in sync. I often link first to show up in their dashboard, and then if it’s apropo, exchange guest posts AGoodHusband - I comment on blogs I like, link to blogs that I love, and find something useful for bloggers I admire. jimgoldstein - good old fashion flattery via any communication medium ther person uses regularly. Email is a great standby. briancarter - Twitter with them and help them write their blog posts by answering twitter questions… ;-) davenavarro - Comment on their blog, start conversations that lead to more comments, get noticed :-) Looking fwd to your book va SF jonathanfields - Twitter is a great tool for casual banter/fun, for more important/detailed contact, I still lean on e-mail Share This

Shopzilla Publishing Program - Showing Very Promising Results Posted: 29 May 2008 10:14 AM CDT I’ve been playing around with Shopzilla publishers network for a few months now but it’s only been in the last week that I’ve had time to take it for a full run on my blogs. Today I checked my stats and am kicking myself that I didn’t take this program more seriously sooner! You can read my first impression review of Shopzilla here from when I first started to play with the ad network. This last week I’ve experimented with some more aggressive positioning of the ads and I’m very impressed with the conversions. You can see one such campaign operating on single posts right at the base of Digital Photography School Posts (like at the bottom of this one). Now the positioning of the ad unit on that page is far from prominent (it’s so far below the fold that it’s not funny) but my initial testing is that while the CTR isn’t high, it is higher than the ad unit that I previously had in that position. What makes Shopzilla attractive however is that while CTR isn’t massive the ads are paying a significantly higher amount per click (I’m talking a 500% increase). As usual with this type of ad unit, they work best on product related sites and where the products featured relates strongly to content (I suspect that the higher value the products the better for click value) - but it’s a great program that I have a new found excitement for and plan to start using more and more. Check out the Shopzilla Publisher Program here. Share This

Offline Blog Promotion Techniques Posted: 29 May 2008 07:13 AM CDT In my weekly column over at ScribeFire this week I started a series on Offline Blog Promotion (ie promoting your blog through means that have nothing to do with the internet). You can read part 1 (it’s a 3 part series) here. In this post I introduce why offline blog promotion is worth considering and 4 techniques to get the word out about your blog. Over the coming two weeks I’ll be sharing another 9 techniques. Got some offline blog promotion techniques to share? I’d love to hear about your own experience of how you’ve done it in the comments on that post. Share This

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