I spent last week retooling most of my web properties to include ads. It paid off! I’m quite pleased with my first week earnings, and now I’m thirsty for more. I’m going to start focusing on building my traffic more quickly.

Paul Stamatiou has taken the time to write up his tips to boost blog traffic, and I’m going to be implementing and testing them across the board on all my sites. In summary, they are:

• Usability
  
  The site should have style, according to Paul. This article suggests otherwise, that fast-loading ugly sites sell equally as well. I’m going to have to split-test this. I do plan to make sure that every site has an easy way to contact me and to find out more about me.
• Content
  
  Stay away from reblogging, have a strong sense of your site focus. This article notwithstanding, I think I do a very good job with this already. It is just so boring to add a “me too” voice to every thing, just for the sake of adding posts. Every site of mine is focused on something that interests me. In fact, I think the focus makes it easier to come up with topics, not harder.
• Technorati
  
  Use Technorati to tag posts. I do this on every blog, and it nets a fair number of hits, especially for current hot-button items.
• Blog Rings & Networks
  
  I’ve written about this on my article 5 one time site promotion tips that pay off big. I try to make my sites as easy as possible to find when you are searching for things I’ve written about. Adding myself to such sites as IceRocket makes this ever more straightforward.
• Use FeedBurner
  
  Make it easier for people to subscribe to your feed, and for you to track how many are subscribed.
• Use a dedicated domain name
  
  I already do. I’ve never been tempted by the free services. I’m just too addicted to control. It is so easy to set up a hosting account! Use the signup code “ZEFAMILY25″ and get $25 off any subscription to Dreamhost. Last time I looked that makes the minimum price about $30 per year for the basic fully hosted acount. Dreamhost will even install Wordpress for you.
• Learn about your readers
  
  Use stat tracking packages to do this. Paul likes Mint for this, but I just use AWStats, which I think may be more accurate, since it is server-side. You need a fully-hosted environment for that, of course.
• Try to get linked on popular sites
  
  He suggest trying to get linked on sites like del.icio.us or Digg. Really any a-list link will help immeasurably.

Technorati Tags: blogging, traffic boosting, advice

In my stunning statistic post, I quoted Call To Action’s claim that 70% of the time customers are prevented from buying, even when they want to.

It happened to me this morning. Here’s the situation, I’m trying to use my commuting time to better effect. I’d like to listen to audio books on business and entrepreneurship on my iPod. I did some research and decided to give Audible.com a try.

Bad interface mistakes

First, I can’t understand why the site sometimes shows a “credit” price for some books, but not all the time. As a “gold” member, you get a credit a month, good for a download of a book of your choice. A reasonable question I had was “do some books cost more than one ‘credit’?” The FAQ doesn’t say, and the fact that the books don’t always show a credit price confused the issue even more. In fact, I’m still not sure, even after using the site for an hour.

Second mistake, what the heck are those available formats? The audiobooks show colored numbers below the title, 1,2,3,4. Most have all four numbers, but some only have 2-4. What devices match up with those numbers? Does floating my cursor over the number tell me? No. The faq says that #2 is for iPod. I think. Why not “iPod”, why a number which I’m going to forget immediately?

Third mistake, the biggest yet. What software do I need? I try the FAQ, it tells me to go to the software page. I try, but it tells me I need to register a primary device to use with the system. OK, I think that is odd, since I don’t have an account to associate with, but I try. ERROR. It just sends me in the loop repeatedly, and doesn’t tell me that I can’t do that until I have an account.

BTW, the answer is, on a Mac, with an iPod, you don’t need any special software. Why don’t they trumpet that to the heavens? Isn’t that the biggest market, the iPod? Seriously, I’m a programmer and I had a hard time figuring out whether this site was going to give me an audio file I could use.

Finally, I gritted my teeth, bought an account and crossed my fingers. I used my download credit to get a copy of “Never Eat Alone : And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time” (Keith Ferrazzi, Tahl Raz). After the download, I was given no direction about where I’d find it in iTunes, so I had to search for the file. Grrr, a fourth failure.

Despite all this, it works fine, it is a great book, and plays just fine on my iPod. I wonder how they make any money at all with that series of barriers placed squarely in front of a person who was already sold on their system. Crazy, just crazy.

Technorati Tags: audible, audiobooks, ipod