I don’t like rehashing. Most of the time I wait until I had something to add to a topic before I jump in, whether it be a new technique or some research results or maybe just a point of view, which may be closer to an attitude. I’ll leave that to you to define.

But I also want people who happen upon my blog to get a complete picture of what I am trying to present. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it can only help down the road to know enough about SEO, css, WordPress, and everything else it takes to make money like I do. Plus, if you are starting on a shoestring, you can’t hire anyone. So you can either do it yourself or use "some day". "Some day" never works. And even as I start outsourcing some of the duties, I will know exactly what I want and how I want it done because I could do it myself if I had to. Talking to a developer or designer is about the same as talking to your auto mechanic when you know nothing about cars.

About 90% of what I’ve learned, I’ve learned right here. So I like throwing out links. I think it makes my blog well rounded with some subjects better covered by experts. But throwing a bunch of amorphous links into a delicious account that posts to this blog limits things a little. I literally could bookmark 30 or so pages a day on 10 different topics. I know this seems like a waste of time, but I know where I am going in the future. When I can knock out some of the research before I get to it and have it waiting for me, it helps. One post like that and it could look like superspam, so I don’t bookmark that much any more.

Another option is what you see on my Cre8buzz page. I could put up a OPML widget of all the feeds I subscribe to. Worthless. Not everyone is that much of an information junkie. Wading through those feeds will just stop most people in their tracks. And I haven’t found a filter system that has an element of randomness. Too many filters and you get tunnel vision.

But for a while, I have been thinking about a reblog. This brings up images of scraper sites and MFA sites. But some don’t get the label. So where is the line.

• 45n5 – Many of us know this one.
  TPWire – From Tom Peters

The software I was thinking of using is located here which lists a few more reblog sites. This I would put on a site of it’s own, like Bloglot, which is just hanging out now collecting spam.

Meme trackers do this with an algorithm but I see that akin to following Fortune picks to trade stocks instead of doing your own research. The most popular is not necessarily the most valuable.

Another option I might look into is here.

Tumblr was an option because I can feed it my delicious links one at a time, but there are no categories.

My utopian idea of what I am trying to come up with is that my posts and my projects can run parallel to my research and footnotes for them (i.e. bookmarks and comments on them) so that I can create a more complete whole. That way those who want to can go further.

And this is how I get moving. I see the picture of what I want, then I start looking for tools. If I don’t find the perfect tools, I see what I can start with and jump into the php.

In an effort to provide a complete overview, there are other options for information aggregation that I found while I was writing this and I will be exploring some unique WordPress installations.

So if anybody has an idea, let me know.

The Power of Feeds

I can’t say that I am an expert on getting subscribers. I only have about 160. But I will cross that bridge when I come to it. But I do know a little about feeds. I know that feeds can be useful to a site if you don’t get one subscriber.

Just looking at this chart on Wired will give you an idea of how far a feed can travel. The more distance you get out of your feeds, the bigger the payoff in traffic and backlinks. A link to your site is one thing. A feed provides a new distinct link to your site each time you post. Multiply this by the amount of sites republishing your feed.

A note to Feedburner Users: I started this post and was tracking down some of the sites that pick up my feed when I realized that the links from most of these sites went through Feedburner. Knowing that this could be good or worthless and defeat the whole purpose of this post, I went searching to see if Feedburner links pass rank. It turns out they do and they don’t depending on how they are set up. And mine weren’t currently set up to pass rank. Stupid me. So that now that that is fixed, I can go on my merry way. This supposedly can cause a issue with tracking but Feedburner causes enough of it’s own issues and I will stick with my choice.

I really can’t wait to see what that does. If I look through Google Webmaster Tools, a lot of my old posts have more links to them then those after I switched to Feedburner.

Ping Whatever You Can

This has issues though. Feed directories and aggregators come and go quickly sometimes. Keeping an updated list of sites to ping is a pain in the ass, so sometimes I don’t keep it updated for months at a time.

The alternative is a service to ping all the sites for you. Pingoat pinged the most services the last time I checked and AutoPinger will check your blog at regular intervals and ping only when there are new items.

• Pingoat

Autopinger

• Pingomatic

Feedburner Pingshot

Submit Your Feed to Feed Directories

This is pretty straight forward. Find a directory that will accept your feed. Enter your details and hit submit. Then move onto the next. The way these directories mash up your feeds varies and we can get into details of which would be more valuable, but will only take a minute of your time to submit to a directory anyway.

I didn’t have the foresight to break up my blog and feed directory list into feed directories and regular directories. But if you are starting out with a new blog, I would suggest hitting the feed directories first because they are more worth your while. So here are some lists of purely feed directories:

55 Active RSS Directories to Help Promote Your Feeds!

45 Working Sites to Quickly Submit Your RSS Feeds

Mash Your Feeds

Since some of the sites in this category aren’t exactly feed directories and they aren’t exactly the same, I have listed them here and they can be some of the best places to submit your feeds and then be active in the community. This is an evolving, ever changing category as new sites redefine what can and can’t be done with feeds. I could have put this article off for months and it would have done no good. More on this after the next section.

The WordPress RSS Widget

You can see this in action on my WordPress Site.

Zimbio

These backlinks count with Google even with my Feedburner feed messed up. I checked. Zimbio collects your feeds and republishes each item into various webzines with other users feed items.

Twitter

I used to joke that the transition from a blog to Twitter suggest that your posts would eventually become "I am typing words into a text box". I am stupid at times

Tumblr

I forgot I had this account until the other day. With it I can mash all my feeds together along with my delicious bookmarks among other things.

MyBlogLog

Their new dashboard is cool. If you opt for the paid service, they update the feeds on your community page.

BlogCatalog

Their new dashboard is cool. Their community is more community-like than MyBlogLog and more complex.

Bumpzee

I think has the most features in place. Not much activity though.

Squidoo

An experiment I left on the back burner a while back. I’ll let you pick it up if you want. WordPress categories have their own seperate feeds of just posts in that category. Write two or three flagship posts about a category of your blog. Add them to a Squidoo lense. Mash it up a little with a few of the modules they have available. Then add the feed of that category to your lense.

Technorati

Duh!

Facebook

I will let you figure this one out. I have my own opinion.

Let Scrapers Steal Your Feed

I like most scrapers sites. They can be good. They are always around. They can make it a long time without Google noticing them and decreasing their rank. I have seen a few sites with a Pagerank of 4 or 5 that I would consider scraper sites.

One of the first programs I bought when I started affiliate marketing was Traffic Equalizer. Yes, I built a scraper site the hard way. I didn’t know php at the time. And I only built one site with the software.

It worked. I got traffic and started making sales. And then I went back in and slowly replaced all the scraped pages manually.

All Traffic Equalizer did was grab search engine result pages and use them to build keyword based static pages on your site. I noticed a pattern after a while. As my ranking went up in the search engines for specific keywords, other scraper sites picked up my pages from the search engines they were scraping and it increased my rank even more.

Now it is easier with feeds. I even built a couple of these. They are not active now. I was just testing some results. One result: too much traffic for the server.

The scraper site/blog relationship in a symbiotic one. It’s a win/win situation. The owner get’s some spam past the search engines and you get a link most of the time.

Search and Ye Shall Find

If I search for my name in Google, I find sites that pick up my feed. If I search with the titles of my past posts, I find more. You could reverse engineer this on any blog you choose and see how they get some of their link juice. Or you could use Yahoo Webmaster Tools.

This post is far from exhaustive and that’s not my point. It will be outdated by next week because this is a very fluid environment. Bury your head in the sand and your brain will explode when you pull it out with all the changes you have to adjust to. I should know. I have been M.I.A. from current technologies for months at a time. A habit I hope to never repeat. Every next big thing has the potential of being the biggest thing at what it does.

A Snake Swallowing It’s Tail

Your blog has feeds right. So do some of the mash up sites I listed. You submit your blog feed to feed directories. You see where I am going with this. But if you look around, other sites have feeds. Stumbleupon has feeds. This tangent was an attempt to see if I would start chasing my own tail. I stopped it right there.

Duplicate Content from Feeds

I may not be using the term correctly and have be jumped on in comments for doing so before, but I don’t really care as long as you get the point. Terms have no meaning if you don’t get it. Sites that republish your feeds essentially are duplicating the content on your site. But you published it first, so no worry. The worst that could happen is your feed page on the directory won’t pass any rank to you. But mashups can have powerful effects. The more you stir up content, the less duplicate it seems to search engines, at least in my experience. Some of these sites put more than your feed on your feed page. That’s a good thing. It’s all in the percentages.

NoFollow

Does nofollow matter? First answer these questions. How long does submission take? Are there active community members? Does the site get a lot of traffic?

After answering those questions, you should be able to come to your own conclusions on a site by site basis.

Back to Subscribers

I need to research ways to get more subscribers. It’s usually a gradual process and eventually a post like this comes out, but for now, I will refer you to Mert Erkal who has some news about Aweber and feeds. And while you’re there, download the next Bloghology. I’m in it. And I think I will take the day off tomorrow.

Okay, now I know that I could do research and find a spam free contact form or something along those lines. But it involves a lesson that took me a long time to learn. Chasing every bug and plugging every hole as it comes up will send me off track. I have to step back take a breath and look at the whole picture every once in a while, make a list and check it consistently. If I am not doing something on the list, I need to put myself back on course. I will be investigating hiring out soon so that some of these lists won’t be my job.

I put up a contact form so that people could contact me without leaving a comment. I didn’t want to put an email address out there just for it to become a spam magnet. I have an email address for that. I have had it for at least 5 years. I have used it on every form possible. I have signed up for so many things that I never start by registering a site. I start by testing my email address. I just found out I have a tumblr account through Google. I Google myself every once and while. I helps with the ego and it helps to know which sites that pick up my feeds have the most link juice. The end result in that email account is that gets over 1000 messages a day. I filter this down to about 100 messages a day which I only scan the titles of before hitting delete. People I haven’t heard from in 5 years reach me through this address.

So the contact form is set up on my Gmail account and it has been fun to watch what comes in through it.

For one, there must be spam software out there that can’t tell the difference between the contact form and the comment form. I get about 4 or 5 of these a day. Long lists of urls.

But sometimes I get long lists of keywords that seem to be people thinking it’s a keyword tool like the one I just got as I was typing this sentence:

handbag
gucci
gucci
sunglasses
with
handbag
watches
gucci
gucci
vuitton
gucci
gucci
replica
gucci
gucci
gucci
replica
gucci
bags
lyrics
gucci
handbags
gucci
wallets
gucci
perfume
watches
eyeglasses
2008
gucci
1
designer
gucci
air
boots
mens
layouts
cologne
gucci
gucci
gucci
original
gucci
gucci
medium
gucci
lunette
envy
gucci
wholesale
watches
wholesale
watch
waist
glasses
belts
gucci
gucci
gucci
eclipse
jewellery
location
glasses
designer
gucci
gucci
gucci
gucci
prada
gucci
timberland
the
custom
watches
handbags
gucci
nobile
mens
gucci
frames
sun
the
gucci
gucci
hats
gucci
gucci
mane
kong
gucci
paolo
gucci
discount
gucci
gucci
gucci
storess
gucci
hangbags
watch
italy
speedy
gucci
handbag
gucci
vintage
totes
one
bags
cologn
what
handbags
gucci
hologram
gucci
about
gucci
eyeglass
rss
baseball
icy
cruise
abput
of
cellphone
belt
handbags
watch
black
stallion
women
and
outlet
handbag
frames
gucci
gucci
prada
discounted
gucci
baldinini
pony
scully
for
gucci
belt
shoes
bags
gucci
gucci
vintage
girl
gucci
necklace
logo
gucci
discounted
guccio
evening
loafer
black
and
gucci
city
watch
tag
gucci
dress
locations
gucci
diamond
titus
gucci
kong
gucci
cap
gucci
jolicoeur
gucci
gucci
shoes
indy
gucci
knockoffs
2548
signature
gucci
wallet
1900l
gucci
watch
gucci
bags
gucci
paolo
gucci
belt
7200
gucci
shirts
gucci
gucci
gucci
same
bowling
cheap
saddle
prescription
gucci
mens
gucci
gucci
gucci
gucci
gucci
gucci
clothes
fragrances
heels
sun
saddle
gucci
clothes
gucci
gucci
repair
watches
zealand
hobo
gucci
collection
gucci
group
diaper
gucci
gucci

Yes, that’s the complete message.

Sometimes I get messages that need a translator.

But for the most part I am not sure how to say no or have a problem gauging how much I have on plate. One way to tell if an advertiser contacting is legit is to take a line from the email and search for it in Google. This has saved me 3 or 4 times so far. You usually will find someone posting about it if it’s spam.

I don’t know if I am taking the term "legit" too far, but the way I see it: If you use a form letter, you don’t give a crap if your ad is on my site or someone else’s site. Please go elsewhere.

Another, I have pretty much taken paid reviews off the plate. I don’t like them. Too many rules. If I was going to be someone’s bitch, I wouldn’t be attempting to completely and totally work for myself. I like affiliate programs and I usually can find more than one good product that does similar things. I like giving choices and I like products with trial periods. Devoting a post to a product would have to mean it was the "God" of that niche. Which is why I recommend Fruitful Time Manager, because you have time to see for yourself if it will work for you and I promise to get to a post on software that helps with productivity.

I don’t think I have the depth of knowledge on blogging yet to give an adequate site review. I can throw out a few pointers. I can recognize intensity and transparency like Mirjam, a great analytical mind in Tim but I want to learn more about applying SEO tactics to WordPress from Andy Beard before I even think I have the right. Plus I have gaping holes in this blog that would only make me a hyprocrite. But I would love to do it once I myself consider this site bullet proof, because I have found a few diamonds in the rough that will give me a run for the money if given the right direction. Not that I am that quick at building traffic. I am slow but stable. I was waiting for my old knack at putting ideas to words to lubricate a little.

And this has had side effects. Yesterday I had the epiphany that I am a complete idiot. I have been looking for ways to get things done quicker. One way is to pry the padlock off of my wallet or at least redirect some advertising dollars to things that will make my job easier like paying for a theme. But I will be turning that into a new twist on a contest. Speaking of contest, check out Tim’s site. The list of prizes is longer than this post and has more variety than it’s sharp tangents.

Outsourcing will help a lot I think. I told the only client I ever had to try ScriptLance. I never tried it, but I heard good things. He would come back with complete sites built for $500. It would take months, but it took me months to create the theme for this site. Speaking of that, he is looking for a Drupal developer to finish up a social network. If you are one, leave a comment. It will probably be worth your while.

A post like this is what happens when your to do box explodes all over the place. It’s not that I have a problem with organization. The problem is with "no". On one side, I can be a push over. On the other, I just want to see if I can pull it all off.

A few things done that I wanted to get to in one fail swoop and too finish off with the last curse of a comment box: this is normal for me. The post isn’t but the things I have in lists everywhere is.