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FriendFeed Explodes RSS Feed Counts in FeedBurner

June 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I…like many bloggers…woke up this morning to find an unusually high subscriber increase in my Feedburner feed counts. Just like any abnormality, I further investigated the root cause to the issue and found out that FeedBurner was now counting the amount of subscribers to my FriendFeed as subscribers to my blogs.

While some of you might enjoy the bump in numbers at this time, this is a dangerous road to walk down for FeedBurner as it completely changes the game when it comes to publishing feed subscriber counts…and not in a good way.

The FriendFeed/Feedburner Issue – And A Big One!

FeedBurner has now drastically dilluted the FeedBurner feed count. Let me paint it out like this. Say you have built up a substantial FriendFeed following (which can be as easy as following everyone on Twitter), and you launch a brand new blog with 2 articles on it. You then aggregate that new blog to your FriendFeed and BAM! You instantly have thousands of RSS feed readers on your chiclet with only two articles! How good are you?!

As you can see…the FeedBurner feed count has become an unreliable number in determining the following of a blog.

Now…if I can figure that out in 5 seconds flat, how long will it be until someone completely exploits the system for their own benefit? Granted, after a certain amount of time, one would hope that you can tell the difference between a fake FriendFeed subscriber number and that of a legitimate blog following, but now there is a whole new variable in the game that has to be dealt with.

Dear FeedBurner,

Thank you for the bump in my subscriber count, but…if you don’t mind…I would like to return it in favor of a more accurate count.

Thank you,

Robb Sutton

Filed Under: Blogging, Social Media, The Web Tagged With: , ,

Blogging: What you can learn from the Hampton Inn

June 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Being a regional sales manager for a number of years required that I travel…a lot! When you are on the road, the last thing you want is to stay in some creepy, roach infested hotel in your quest to make a little extra coin to bring home. When hotels were plagued with the inability to provide consistent sleeping arrangements across the country, Hilton Hotels launched the Hampton Inn chain.

For those of you that don’t travel a lot, a Hampton Inn is the same whether you are in east bumblefuck Kentucky or New York City. No matter where you are traveling, you are almost guaranteed to find a Hampton Inn that you can count on to provide you will sleeping arrangements that will fit your needs away from home. For me…Hampton Inn’s are my home away from home…

What do you get at a Hampton Inn?

  • Reasonable price
  • Super clean rooms
  • The same shampoo, soap, towels, bed, snack and layout at every hotel.
  • Friendly staff that is in the same uniform
  • Free breakfast that is good enough to get the day going
  • The same coffee at every location
  • A decent points program that you can redeem for free nights
  • Thousands of locations so that you are never left stranded in a roach motel

[Read more...]

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Getting Blog Readers To Go Deeper – Aweber Follow-Up Emails

June 12, 2009 By 1 Comment

Over the course of your blogging career, you are going to write some fantastic articles that are going to end up getting lost in the shuffle. As these articles dive deeper into your blog, they do not get the front page traffic gold that you would like. Bloggers often struggle with getting readers to dig deeper into their blog to find these articles and restore them to their former glory. Many times, readers either do not have the time, or do not know how to get to these articles. The blogger now has to find unique ways to feature older articles that provides solutions to their readers issues. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogging, Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: , ,

When Dealing With Review Product, Communication is Key

June 4, 2009 By 2 Comments

Part of the reason for my success with bringing in review product for my blogs is open communication. Keeping the lines of communication between yourself and the review product company is an essential element in maintaining the company/blogger relationship.

As you start to bring in high dollar items from your blog, it is increasingly important to keep the review product company in the loop on the progress on the review, any notes associated with the product and links to related articles to their product. After the initial relationship is started, how do you keep the lines of communication open without being annoying? [Read more...]

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Making Money Online by Filling A Need

June 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Find yourself saying, “you know…someone should do that!”? Why isn’t that person you?!

Everyday, we go throughout life seeing voids that could be filled if someone would just take the initiative to complete the task. These voids could be vastly profitable if done correctly, but it takes just one person that is willing to put the thought and work into doing it right.

At some point in time, there was a man who thought, “I wish there was some way I could keep track of notes on a small piece of paper that stuck to things…” Instead of just waiting for someone else to manufacture his idea into reality, he took the initiative and built a simple product that everyone uses today…the sticky note. Thanks Art Fry!

This idea does not have to be some life changing product that sweeps the world. You just have to find something that enough people, like yourself, need and a way to deliver that need to a targeted audience. This can be in the form of information (books, ebooks, blogs), products (sticky note, Kleenex) or even just ideas (public speaking).

For those of us that play in the world wide web and internet marketing, these goods and services are normally in the form of blogs, membership sites and electronically distributed information like eBooks. While affiliate marketing is the leader in online money making, you can make your fortune online by filling an information need. eBooks, eCourses and membership sites that provide useful information are incredible ways to make a living online.

By capitalizing on what you do best, you are able to start an income stream that can last a lifetime. Better yet…it will be the life you want to live and not the life that you have become accustomed to over time.

Do you really want to be that person that says, “I had that idea once” or do you want to be the person that acts on that idea?

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The Secret to Blogging Sanity

May 29, 2009 By 8 Comments

Stop the madness! Stop doing things that you are not good at…it is a waste of your time and you could be doing something else that would be a more effective use of your time. By leveraging your strengths and outsourcing your weaknesses, you can stop those frustrating midnight headaches while on your quest to be a pro blogger. I can’t even begin to tell you how much time I have wasted in my blogging career doing tasks that I should have been outsourcing. Do not make the same beginning mistakes I did and take the advice that I have finally beat into my own head over the past year. [Read more...]

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The Snowball Effect and Blogging

May 28, 2009 By Leave a Comment

As with any business…online or brick and mortar…you are going to see a snowball effect that continues to expound with your growth. I, like many business entrepreneurs – bloggers – affiliate marketers – etc., would love to see immense growth within days of starting a new venture, but this is not reality and if it did happen…could be the start of your demise (I will expand on this in a future post).

The natural progression of any business building is largely defined by the snowball effect. With each small success, you build your business and learn from past mistakes making each new level of success easier to achieve than the last. So…specifically…how does the snowball effect impact my blogging and what should I expect for the future as I continue on this quest to become a top blogger in my niche?

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Engaging Your Blog Readers and Boosting Traffic

May 27, 2009 By 2 Comments

Every blog…regardless of size and popularity…has to realize that every reader counts. The easiest way to show that you are aware of this importance to your blog audience is to engage your readers on a daily basis. The more interactivity you bring to your blog, the more your readers will comment, email and submit guest posts because, in the end, people read blogs to be a part of something.

Why do you think magazines have entire sections to reader letters? This engagement is crucial to continuing growth and development of any publication…print or online. From day one, your readers need to be the most important asset of your blog and by engaging with your readers…you will gain insight on where your blog has been and where it needs to go in the future.

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Is your blog's PR bleeding to death? rel="nofollow" Lifeline…

May 18, 2009 By 3 Comments

Is your Google pagerank bleeding out giving your blog zero support to keep up the weight for the future? Google page rank is continuing to lose its stranglehold on the internet world. As Google continues to mold and shape its algorithm to bring you, the internet searcher, more targeted search engine leads, defined metrics like PR rank are going to continue to lose power as their piece of the pie continues to deteriorate. Does this mean we need to completely lose sight of PR and throw it on the back shelf? Absolutely not. Just like any SEO metric, everything adds together to determine where your blog stands in the world and how you are going to engage with the general web searching public.

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Are you moving forward or standing still?

May 13, 2009 By 2 Comments

With the start of each new day, I ask myself one simple question…

Are you moving forward or standing still?

While it seems like a simple question from the outside, it is really complex in terms of how we spend our days. Many times, we fill our days with activities and events that have zero value to our goals and our life in general. We waste massive amounts of time on things that create no added value to our lives and instead suck the life out of the productivity we could be having in search of the goals we have set for ourselves. Even while we are engaging in these rather worthless activities, we will often think about what we could be doing that would be more productive. Instead of stopping the time sucking, worthless waste, we push off what is productive to a later time or date. It is our mind and laziness that is keeping us from living the life that we have always dreamed of. The truth is…later never comes and it is only now that we can really start to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves.

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Filed Under: Blogging, Lifestyle Design Tagged With: , ,
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