Earlier this morning Fred Wilson published an interesting comparison of his blog’s traffic sources where upon splitting “the top ten” referrers “into three categories”, he discovered the following breakdown:

• Direct — 50%
• Social — 40% (with nearly 1/2 from StumbleUpon)
• Search — 10%

These numbers amused me to say the least, and I decided to perform a quick analysis my own blog’s traffic sources over the past 30 days.

As expected, my situation is quite different:

• Search — 72%
• Direct — 13.3%
• Social — 8.1%

I suspect most blogs will see a breakdown more similar to mine than the one that Fred is witnessing now. But that’s only my guess, and I would love to hear from other bloggers on this one.

I’ve also analyzed my top social media sources, and here’s what I see:

Top 7 Social Media Referrers

4.5% — t.co
1.6% — facebook.com
0.8% — twitterfeed
0.5% — linkedin.com
0.3% — stumbleupon.com
0.2% — bizsugar.com
0.2% — hootsuite.com

I guess, I should get more active on StumbleUpon. Fred’s figures are truly compelling.

Finally, I’ve decided to measure what role news aggregation sites are playing in my blog’s traffic (I could’ve included these in the “social” category too, but on a number of reasons decided to single them out), and it appears that they are referring just a bit less than 3% of all my visitors. Here’s a breakdown of what I see in my case:

Top 3 News Aggregators Sources

1.7% — affbuzz.com
0.5% — affdaily.com
0.3% — marketingland.com

What are you seeing on your blog(s)? What social channels do you see perform most effectively? And how effective is social in your case?

Comment spam, a common form of spamdexing, has been a longstanding problem for blogs of all kinds. In search of “quick and easy backlinks” some people engage in it themselves, others hire “blog commenters” for as little as a couple hundred of bucks month (many which actually call themselves “SEO experts” and sell their services as “search engine optimization”), but the nature of this annoying tactic doesn’t change. It still has the word SPAM written across it.

For many bloggers — including those of us who use WordPress — Akismet has been a real savior from comment spam. However, no tool is 100% perfect, and every once in a while  a totally kosher comment lands in that “Spam” folder. To whitelist those good comments, it is good to make it your routine to check that spam folder every once in a while. I do it nearly daily. Every time I do I find some pretty entertaining spam comments. Today I thought it’d be fun to show some of them to you.

Here we go:

Puzzling wording:

An interesting dialogue is value comment. I think that it is best to write more on this subject, it may not be a taboo topic however generally people are not sufficient to speak on such topics.

Nothing else to add:

Nice informations for me. Your post has helpful. I wish to has valuable posts like yours in my blog. How do you find these posts?

A “***** enlargement” comment (at least they’re being honest!!)

It’s so hard to get backlinks these days, honestly i need a backlink by comments on your blog / forums or guestbook to make my website appear in search engine. I am getting desperate Now! I know you’ll laugh while reading this comment !!! Here is my website [url here]

No, no… No “mistake” there, baby!

Hi I discovered your webpage by mistake when i was searching Google…

Huh?!

Wonderful web page! I’ve a inquery to all who were born or perhaps expecting August 1 leap years or August 2 common years. What exactly do you think about this specific video: [link here]

What funny ones have you come across while blogging?

Having put together over 500 blog posts since 1 January 2009, I’ve found it especially interesting to monitor which of my posts get most of readers’ attention.

It appears that certain types of blog posts are destined to become more popular than others, even though the content in those “others” can at times be significantly more profound and original. I’ve arrived at 5 types of blog posts that consistently get a lot more attention than others:

1. Lists — This, in my opinion, is by far the most popular type. The main reason for this is that lists are easy to follow and digest. This is precisely why this very post comes in a form of a list as well.
   Examples: 7 Market Research Twitter Accounts to Follow || 20 Affiliate Plugins for WordPress
2. How-Tos — How-tos have always been popular, and blogging (be it text-, video-, or both types of blogging together) is an excellent way to explain how things work, or how to do something.
   Example: Online Guide to Affiliate Marketing
3. Breaking News — These get especially popular when in your blog post you’re not merely bringing the news to your readership, but draw fresh conclusions, providing new perspectives.
   Example: 6pm.com Loses $1.6 Million in 6 Hours, Handling it Gorgeously
4. Contests — These always draw a lot of attention, and some bloggers make a living off contests. I do them for the fun of it, and always get a lot of response.
   Example: 400th Day Contest: Computer & Internet Jokes
5. Interviews — They are great, and provide value to all three parties involved: the interviewee, the interviewer, and the readers.
   Example: Interview with John Ferber, Founder of Video Affiliate Network

Have I missed any of the ones that have been working especially well for you? Feel free to post about them in the “Comments” below.

Interesting survey data has been published by eMarketer.com with a reference to an August research conducted jointly by Internet Retailer and Vovici Corp.:

As look through the above statistics, the two things that I see in it are:

1. Social Media Channels Are Top Priority

While I am not entirely sure why “Blogs” and “Consumer ratings” have been mentioned separately from “Social Marketing” (I would argue that these two represent a Social Medium each; see my Types of Social Media to Use in Marketing post), it appears that the exploration of Social Media is currently the top priority for US online retailers.

2. Affiliate Marketing Includes Most of These

While it is unlikely that any affiliate will happily engage in “Live chat” with customers, and/or do the merchant’s work of “Product personalization”, the top four “applications” on the list are right up the affiliate marketing alley. In addition to a decision to explore these channels on their one, online retailers should realize (but will they if no one explains it to them?!) that affiliates can also effectively promote them through Social Media, distribute their videos, give them excellent exposure in their niche/product-specific blogs, and even help obtain additional ratings and reviews (some put such tools together by themselves, while others could definitely use advertisers’ help with this). With proper attention to the affiliate marketing channel, the employment of the top “applications” can be considerably more efficient, and happen on a much wider scale.

Yes, thanks to Amazon’s new feature, you can now read my blog posts right on your Kindle. I have just added it to the Amazon’s Kindle Store:

The monthly service fee is $1.99 which “includes wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet.”

The first 15 people to subscribe to the Kindle version of my blog via this link (it includes a 14-day free trial too) will be sent one of my books. You get to choose which one: A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing or Online Shopping Through Consumers’ Eyes. To claim your prize upon subscribing, just e-mail me your full address and the choice of title, and I’ll take care of the rest for you.

Jason Rubacky’s “unique content tips” he’s been systematically posting in ShareASale’s blog since April 17 reminded me of an one amazing post made by Rand Fishkin earlier this month. In it Rand listed and discussed 21 tips that every blogger simply must incorporate into their overall blogging strategy if they want that blog to be a success. These are great tips for affiliates to use. Here’s the list:

1. Target Content at Those Who Can Help Spread It
2. Reward Those Who Share
3. Choose a Subject That Readers Can Relate To
4. Write Exceptionally Well
5. Author an Attention-Grabbing Title
6. Use Illustrations/Graphics Above the Fold
7. Don’t Just Present Information; Spark a Discussion
8. Use Bullet Points & Short Paragraphs
9. Don’t Make the Post Too Long
10. Get Your Social Media Comrades to Seed the Story
11. Publish at an Ideal Time
12. Do Your Keyword Research
13. Reference Blogs & Sites You Want to Link to You
14. Keep Your URL Short
15. Be Non-Commercial
16. Provide Easy, Embedded Ways to Share
17. Leverage Your Personal Social Networks
18. Display Credibility with Your Blog/Bio
19. Embrace Tried-and-True Formats
20. Don’t Appropriate Cliches
21. Be Prepared to Fail

Indulge yourself in the details — 21 Tips to Earn Links and Tweets to Your Blog Post — and if you do not have a blogging strategy yet, this is a great foundation to starting building one on.

Earlier today eMarketer has published some interesting data on blogging, bloggers and blog readers. In their report they’ve looked at the US blogging landscape. While many bloggers fo live outside the United States, here are the two main reasons why it is important to know what is going on in the US:

(i) According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the US is currently the world’s #1 country by the Internet diffusion (~73-74% penetration). Here’s how the numbers have been growing from 1995 through 2008:

(ii) According to the Internet World Statistics, North America makes up a total of 16% of the world’s Internet users, and here’s what the country distribution currently looks:

The above-mentioned eMarketer.com’s research has revealed that at the moment, in US only there are close to 28 million bloggers, which represents 14% of the country’s Internet users. This number is expected to continue growing, reaching close to 40 million people in 2013:

The data on blog readers is even more impressive. “eMarketer estimates that in 2009 96.6 million US Internet users will read a blog at least once per month” and by 2013 this number is expected to reach 58% of the US Internet users, or a total of some 130 million people:

Big changes are definitely on the way, and now is the time for marketers to refocus!

Earlier today eMarketer has published some interesting data on blogging, bloggers and blog readers. In their report they’ve looked at the US blogging landscape. While many bloggers fo live outside the United States, here are the two main reasons why it is important to know what is going on in the US:

(i) According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the US is currently the world’s #1 country by the Internet diffusion (~73-74% penetration). Here’s how the numbers have been growing from 1995 through 2008:

(ii) According to the Internet World Statistics, North America makes up a total of 16% of the world’s Internet users, and here’s what the country distribution currently looks:

The above-mentioned eMarketer.com’s research has revealed that at the moment, in US only there are close to 28 million bloggers, which represents 14% of the country’s Internet users. This number is expected to continue growing, reaching close to 40 million people in 2013:

The data on blog readers is even more impressive. “eMarketer estimates that in 2009 96.6 million US Internet users will read a blog at least once per month” and by 2013 this number is expected to reach 58% of the US Internet users, or a total of some 130 million people:

Big changes are definitely on the way, and now is the time for marketers to refocus!

Almost a month has passed since I have made my Blog — Best Friend of An Affiliate post, and today I would like to return to the topic of running blogs once again.

Over the past months I have been noticing a significant growth in traffic of the two blogs that I run: this one, and one for Langbridge. I see my posts grabbing excellent rankings in major search engines (within minutes after posting too!) and this certainly encouraging to see.

The day before yesterday, @MackCollier made an interesting blog post where he talked about the “secrets of the top marketing and social media blogs” [see his full post here]. Has discovered that the top 25 blogs in these categories have some commonalities we can learn from. These are:

1. They publish new posts often
2. Every blog/blogger listed in the Top 25 is on Twitter
3. Most bloggers provide multiple social sites where you can connect with them
4. They create original content [italics mine]
5. They make it easy for you to subscribe to their content, and share it
6. Longevity always wins (i.e. the longer the blog has been around, doing all of the above, the better)

My conclusion: Quality Content + Combination of Social Platforms = Popularity.

Good insight, Mack. Good points to remember for everyone who’s blogging their way to that top 100, 50, or even 25 list.