Today’s rant is a pet peeve of mine. RSS subscribers are great and I use a feed reader to follow a lot of blogs. That said I often wonder why so many do not also ask for email subscribers.

It would be a good bet that just about every reader of your blog has an email account. So ask for permission to let them know when you have added new content. I do that here with a delayed pop up.

If you are using a quality autoresponder like Aweber you can add these by adding a single line of code to your theme. Aweber will also automate the delivery of email as it will read your RSS feed and send out on the schedule you set to let your subscribers know about new content.

So all I do is add quality content here and spread the exposure automatically.

As over 25% of my visitors are coming from email notifications it can make a big difference in your traffic stats.

You could use Feedburner to allow this and not get a separate autoresponder (and that is better than not collecting email subscribers) but you won’t have the option of contacting people without posting to your blog.

My guess is that quite a few of your current readers do not understand feed readers or adding an RSS subscription to their feed reader but they do have an email address and are used to checking it. That is why letting people get notified through email of your new content is important.

As always your questions and comments are welcomed. Just leave them below.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: autoresponder, aweber, blog, blogs, email account, email notifications, feed readers, quality content, subscribers, traffic stats

Over the last couple of weeks I have seen quite a few auto blogging products coming out. You see the sales copy telling you to just add the PLR you have on your hard drive and create all these sites.

Now most of these that I have seen work quite well and can create and add the content in an automatic solution. Some are structured better than others but they do what they say. This is not a knock on using them or the people that promote them.

Unfortunately this is not Field Of Dreams. If you build it they will not necessarily come.

The piece that is missing is traffic.

No matter how well they are constructed and how much content you add you will need to get traffic. You will need to build links and get the search engine spiders coming.

Automation can be a good thing. I use it all the time. WordPress is set up to automatically ping to the directories you have set up.

You can automate your blog to tweet your posts.

You can automate your blog to send an email when you add new content to your subscribers using your RSS feed and an autoresponder like Aweber.

Plugins like WP Syndicator can create backlinks for you automatically when you post new items if you have set it up once.

All of these things though work to get traffic and if you just put up a bunch of content and do nothing to create traffic you are not very likely to get the easy results you are looking for.

So automation is a good thing but make sure that you understand all of the things that need to happen and don’t think that if you build it they will come.

There is always an effort needed at some point. A big red easy button would be great and we all are looking for it. Understand the whole process before spending your time and money to create a bunch of content on the web.

That is what I think what about you?

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: automatic solution, automation, autoresponder, blog, field of dreams, plr, search engine spiders, traffic, wordpress, WP Syndicator

Good question today because often the email from your blog when someone registers can end up in spam and the actual email could use some improvement.

Mike, left a question on your previous post about editing the Welcome e-mail when users register on your blog. Specifically, what file and folder is it?

I am not sure where in all the code it is located and a quick look did not bring it to the forefront. The function you would need to find is mp_new_user_notification and my guess is it will be somewhere in one of the files in the wp-admin folder but it is a guess.

It is probably easier to use a plugin that is already developed that will allow you to edit the information.

There is a plugin called SB Welcome Email Editor that will allow you to edit the headers and content from your dashboard. It is in the codex so you can just do a search and install it from your dashboard.

It is intuitive to use after that from the dashboard.

As always your questions and comments are welcomed. Leave them in the comments below.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: blog, codex, dashboard, e mail, registers, welcome email

Sometimes we ignore problems because we are busy.

I noticed a bit ago that I was having trouble with one blog and Comment Luv. It kept coming back to the same post from the end of July.

When it lasted more than a day or two I should have known in fact I did know that I had a problem. It just was not a high priority so I ignored it.

It wasn’t until I saw my traffic had severely decreased that I finally took the time to find it. Seemed it was a problem with the feed.

What made it hard to find was that when I pulled the direct feed it showed up fine for me.

I should have validated the feed and I did not. I finally got around to it and did that but not until quite a bit of time had passed. It wa an easy fix as I had a piece of code misspelled. Got rid of an n and everything worked.

Then it created a new problem. My autoresponder is set to email when the blog updates. That is why when it was fixed they immediately sent out the last months worth of posts at one time.

Not only had the not sending been responsible for the decline in traffic I got quite a few unsubscribes when it sent out 20 posts at once.

So when you notice a problem don’t be stupid like I was but take the time to get to the bottom of the problem. Yes it takes a bit of time but waiting can be very detrimental to your traffic.

You can check your feed here.

Your comments and questions are welcomed just leave a comment below.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: autoresponder, blog, direct feed, high priority, rant, stupidity, traffic

Have not had many questions asked of late. Today we do even though it snuck in through Twitter and got overlooked for a day or two. I do enjoy answering your questions and you can leave them to be answered in the comments below.

Confused When Using All In One Bookmarking you recommended. Do I need to go to the sites like Digg and register?

All in One Bookmarking ties into Social Marker. I like it for the blog because it allows people to use a wide variety of bookmarking services but with only one outgoing link.

To use it on your blog you do not need to join any of the sites. It will work for allowing your readers to bookmark your content to any of the sites that they belong.

That being said if you are looking to bookmark your and other items that use this them you will need to belong to the sites that you wish to use.

Your questions and comments are welcomed. Just leave them below.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: all in one bookmarking, blog, bookmarking, digg, social marker, twitter

Drive Traffic to Your Blog by Making Top 10 Lists Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Ever wonder why Letterman is always using top 10 lists on his show? It is a regular feature for a reason. The reason is that people are always interested in lists. If they were not it would not have become a signature part of his show.

Now Letterman does it with off the wall jokes but as a blogger you can take advantage of creating lists to get additional traffic.

You know that people like lists. Providing people with weighted lists of the best topics in your niche makes it much more likely that others will share your lists.

It becomes newsworthy. People like to share newsworthy items.

In this age of social networking it is easy for people to share your list with others. (You can make these easier for them too by having your blog set up to allow them to do just that.)

They may tweet it to their followers on Twitter, like it on Facebook or share it on their blog.

Each time that happens your blog can get exposed to new readers. The more people that share your list the more new readers you can get.

Now the key is to take advantage of those new readers and give them a reason to get involved with your blog. This may be an ethical bribe for subscribing to your update list or making it easy for people to subscribe to your feed.

The initial traffic from creating your list and generating back links is great but getting people to become regular readers is the big advantage of using a Top 10 List to generate new visitors.

Take advantage of top 10 lists to get your content shared and then make sure you are set up to convert those one time visitors to regular readers.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: blog, blog traffic, Facebook, initial traffic, social networking, top 10 list, top 10 lists, twitter

Love them or hate them Google is the big fish in the search engines. A high ranking in the Google search engine results can be a great boon to getting traffic to your blog.

There is a lot more to it than just the search engine.

Two tools that they provide that you really need to be using are Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.

Analytics will help you find out exactly what traffic you are getting and how they find you. This is a topic that is written up often here and in other places.

Often though we overlook the webmaster tools. Taking the time to set your blog up here can be quite helpful. Webmaster Tools will allow you to see how Google sees your blog.

You can see if they are having a problem crawling your site. You can see what they think your blog is about.

It is easy to get set up and the information will help you improve your blog. Just click on add site and submit your url.

If the site is already set up with Google Analytics (and it should be) then you are set up. Now take the time to submit your sitemap. This way you will make sure that Google is reading it properly.

Click on the more link under site maps.

Then you need top resubmit it. Just check the box and click resubmit.

Stop back the next day to make sure that it is working.

Analytics is great but there is even more you can get from using Webmaster Tools so take the few minutes to add it and then stop weekly to see exactly how Google sees your site.

As always your questions and comments are welcomed. Leave them below.

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Then you need top resubmit it. Just check the box and click resubmit.

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width=450 height=128/>

Stop back the next day to make sure that it is working.

Analytics is great but there is even more you can get from using Webmaster
Tools so take the few minutes to add it and then stop weekly to see exactly how
Google sees your site.

As always your questions and comments are welcomed. Leave them below.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: blog, google, google search engine, Google webmaster tools, search engine results, site maps, traffic

Twitter and Facebook have long been good traffic sources for me. Interacting with the various social networks and using them can be an excellent source of traffic for your blog.

Now I am finding a third site that has started climbing up the stats for traffic. IM Faceplate is very new (about 6 or 7 weeks) but has started showing up more and more in the tip 5 of referrers for my blog.

There is a reason for it and it is not because I built a huge group of followers. After all I have twice the number on Facebook and many times that number on Twitter.

The reason is that I am active on the network. I add new content and items of interest regularly.

See the key with any social site is to actually be active and taking part in the conversations going on there.

It does not matter if it is the big ones like Twitter and Facebook or newer ones like IM Faceplate. It is being active and having interaction.

The same thing is true of forums too.

Everyone is always looking for the easy traffic sources but just joining and expecting traffic does not happen.

Now you do not need to take a lot of time on any of these networks but it is important that you are interacting and adding to the conversations.

If you are not getting traffic from your social networking look and see how much you are adding to the conversations there. If you are not getting traffic you probably are not taking part in the conversations.

Your comments and questions are always welcomed. Lever them below.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: blog, blog traffic, conversations, Facebook, im faceplate, social networking, social networks, traffic sources, twitter

One of the over looked way to generate more traffic is by paying attention to how people find you that you did not target. I do this but was reminded of it yesterday.

I had a Twitter conversation with a good friend of mine. Long time readers know my good friend Steve Roye. He runs a blog to presell his Killer Standup Comedy System.

We are always bouncing ideas back and forth even though Steve has gone away from internet marketing and is focused on his comedy business.

I saw a post he wrote “Is The Killer Stand-up Comedy System A Scam? Is Steve Roye A Scam Artist? “

So I dropped him a direct message asking if someone had been bad mouthing his course. (They should not be but he teaches a different method so I thought maybe someone had tried to rip him.)

The answer was no that no one had but he was getting traffic from the terms with his course name and scam. So he wrote a very specific blog post to target that topic. It will increase his traffic and it also is a very targeted topic for targeting his buyers. Someone interested enough about his course to be searching about it being a scam is definitely a potential buyer.

He was taking advantage of what people had already been searching for and wanted to rank higher. It is something I do when I go through either my Google Analytics account or MyBlogLog stats and see searches for topics I did not initially target.

This is a great way to get additional traffic and to increase your ranking for terms that people are already searching for and finding you through. Write a blog post targeting those keywords and you will stand a very good chance to rank much higher for those terms.

If you are getting one or two visitors this could easily get you even more traffic.

So pay attention to your stats and if you are getting one or two visitors for a term you never targeted then a blog post can move you up the serps for that term and send you even more traffic.

Your questions and comments are welcomed.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: blog, google analytics, internet marketing, scam artist, serps, stand up comedy, traffic

Google Reader is one of my favorite tools. I use it in many ways. Now it could be another feed reader if you like it better. Feed readers are one of the best ways to keep updated on topics.

Here is how you can us a feed reader to keep current.

When you find a blog you want to keep up with (like hopefully this one) add the feed into your reader. That way you can check your reader and see the latest posts for this blog and any others that you follow.

Go to Google News and add in the topic you want to be current on. Grab the rss feed for that search and add it to your reader. Now every time the Big G finds new content on that topic it will show up in your feed reader.

This is a real easy way to follow a lot of topics quickly.

Here is how you can grab a Google News feed and add it to your reader.

Type in your topic and search news. Once you get the results scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the RSS icon.

This will send you through to the actual feed.

Copy the url and go to your reader.

Click the add subscription button.

Paste in the url and click add.

You can do this for any search or to add any blogs rss feed and now you will have one place where you can go and see all the new things in a few minutes.

Take advantage of the power of feed readers and keep current with what is new without wasting a lot of time going from place to place.

Your questions and comments are welcomed. Use the comment box below.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: big g, blog, blogs, favorite tools, feed reader, feed readers, google, news feed, search news, subscription button, time saver