So I have started looking at the Yakezie challenge a lot closer and there does seem to be some merits in participating in that group, as well as the other group I have of fellow bloggers.

The numbers seem to be doing OK, although my number of RSS readers has stalled and actually seems to be dropping. My Alexa ranking is now well below 200K which was the initial goal, however, my Compete numbers continue to stink and don’t look to be getting any better any time in the near future.

A few interesting tid bits I have learned or seen this week:

• You shouldn’t post your own content to StumbleUpon, or you might end up being banned. I hadn’t known that and was merrily posting everything there, so I have stopped doing that.
• Sub.Diggerplus.com is an interesting idea, but there seems to be a lot of bugs in retrieving articles from Digg, and you end up with empty articles you are allegedly reviewing.
• I have created a Facebook ID Theo B. CajunMan, since they wouldn’t let me go with TheBig Cajunman, oh well, I am running a lot of content through there, and luckily HootSuite has an ability to post in a timed fashion on FaceBook as well.
• The biggest post of the week was That is One Big Mortgage about the fact that Canadian now owe more than a Trillion Dollars in Mortgage debt. Written as an afterthought, but lots of folks picked it up, so it has been stuffed into many different Carnivals as well.
• Found an AutoTwitterLetter creation engine, so it pukes one out for me every day around 8:00 PM, not even sure what criteria it uses, and it doesn’t make me any money, so is it worth it?
• Found an interesting way to promote the site on Twitter, every Sunday I put out a list of links to my articles for the week, and it increases my ReTweet numbers too (yes that’s a little stinky, but all is fair).

Slowing down a little in the Social Media Blitz, but attempting to make more specific work directly with other bloggers attempting to create Buzz in different ways. Might look into my HubPages page too and see if it is worth keeping up or not.

ShareThis

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Added the Comment Relish plug in from Justin Shattuck to Canadian Personal Finance Opinions to see whether sending e-mail to first time commenters causes more traffic through the web site. Seems to work just fine, we shall see if this actually causes folks to wander through my site or not.

My Alexa inbound link number continues to be static at 67 as well, which makes no sense any more, given I have many new Carnival entries, so Alexa is on my “What do they actually do?” list now.

Google continues to not really traverse this web site, and the entries in their are completely bogus links to entries that do not exist either, so that is more fun for me to chase down too.

More advertising income this week which is great, and more things to learn about too.

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on Google
• Byline 2.0: The iPhone App For Google Reader Freaks

ShareThis

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

My Alexa rank dropped (i.e. got bigger) a couple of days back, but this article from John Chow explains why , not that it really changed that much, just interesting to watch and see how things change.

Tried out another video link in my Random Thoughts posting for Friday, see if that causes any buzz. Cool video too.

ShareThis

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I am never sure whether my Alexa rating actually translates into anything of value these days, but it has risen from 1,400,000 to now being around 648,000, meteoric, however still a very long way until I am up in the “noticeable” part of their spectrum.

My RSS feed numbers on Canadian Financial Opinions have flattened at around 500 which is good, but I am still unsure as to what exactly may have pushed it that high in the first place. I note that Blogrush has done bugger all difference for this particular site, and their try out will end soon, and if I see no change, their real estate on this site will revert to open air.

Interesting to look at John Chow‘s income of over $20K per month on his web site. That is almost $250K a year on a web site, where he seems to really give out free advice and talk about nice restaurants in Vancouver. Really don’t get it, but it is the Internet, that is for sure.

ShareThis

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

So adding the Alexa toolbar to my Firefox seems to have helped my ranking a great deal which is interesting. I am assuming, I am also helping my other friendly bloggers with this added when I wander over to their sites as well. Interesting to see how quickly my Alexa ranking can jump because of this.

My RSS readers continue to stay up which continues to confuse me, as I did nothing to make this happen, but I am glad to see it.

ShareThis

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

So my Alexa Ranking for Canadian Financial Stuff is dismal, and not really on the charts at all, however, a very good posting talked about how to change your links in your blog to help out your Alexa ranking. Not sure if it will help that much, but I am trying it out for a while to see if it helps me at all.

Google is now not wandering through THIS blog, which is of no great consequence, since I wasn’t trying to make a fortune from this site, this is mostly a “spleen venting” and “notebook of cool tips” for me, that I share with anyone who wishes to drop by and laugh.

I am bound and determined to change to the NEW Blogger set up, so I can take advantage of the hints I am seeing and see if this helps with Google’s rankings and such (I doubt it, but it’s never a bad idea to use the newer software). Stay tuned, you may see something interesting.

ShareThis

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Yes, that is another way to get folks to notice you on the Internet, is by sending articles to one of the many Carnivals that are posted on a regular basis on many different sites.

The first thing is to make sure you have some good content on your blog, that you figure might be carnival worthy. Then you go to this site, or one of the many other sites where lists of carnivals are kept. Using the simple on line forms submit your article and hopefully the editor of the carnival for the week will put you in.

This has worked quite nicely for me on my finance site to build up a readership of folks who seem to enjoy my odd viewpoint on finances in general. The next big step is to actually volunteer to host a Carnival. That will drive up your readership a TON, at least for that week and will also increase your in-link and out-link count, which will in turn help your Google Pagerank as well (as well as your Technorati and Alexa.com rank as well).

Links are really important (incoming more so, but outgoing is pretty important too). We’ll talk more about that soon.

ShareThis

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.