I don’t care about the stats and don’t have any goals, but instead view this as a great way to help you all see how I’m growing my blog and the kind of traffic sources you can use to do the same. Let’s look at the numbers, shall we?

Overall Traffic

• Visits: 49,627
• Pageviews: 84,359
• Avg time on Site: 2 mins 16 seconds

Not only were there an extra 15,000 visitors compared to last month, the people who arrived on the site also spent more time here. I promised that I would write more articles going forward, which I think has helped a lot with resulting traffic increase. The articles written in August, were:

• 2,897 Words on How to Create Viral Content (The Key Element Behind Every Successful Blog)
• What You Don’t Know About Blogging: A Masterclass on the Newsphere
• Living Self-Employed Online: The Manual They Forgot to Give You

Here at ViperChill there are a lot less articles published than most sites, but typically these articles are 2,000-3,000 words and cover topics in massive detail. You could say that we prefer signal over noise.

Top Referring Websites

Here are the top referring traffic sources for the month of August:

1. Direct: 15,253
2. Google (organic): 6,284
3. StumbleUpon: 5,136
4. News.YCombinator.com: 4,858
5. Lifehacker.com: 3,380
6. Google.com: 1,712
7. Twitter.com: 1,328
8. Smartpassiveincome.com: 828
9. Facebook.com: 763
10. Retireat21.com: 731

Top Referring Keywords

There were a total of 6,566 visits via 1,675 keywords this month. The top 10, were:

1. ViperChill: 1,039
2. wordpress seo: 711
3. viral marketing: 579
4. social media strategy: 318
5. viper chill: 297
6. guest blogging: 196
7. seo wordpress: 102
8. glen allsopp: 101
9. cloud living: 81
10. hqhow: 81

While search engine traffic is still a tiny portion of the traffic that arrives at ViperChill, it is growing steadily month on month with the number of referring keywords increasing by another 25%.

Subscriber Stats

Feedburner is so erratic that I just can’t take it that seriously anymore. Despite the current flaws in the system, I will continue to report on the numbers that it gives me. Although I don’t have any goals for the size of the community here, I still think it is an interesting metric to monitor.

• August 1st: 8,174
• August 31st: 8,814
• Change: +640

I picked up about 300 subscribers in the last few days which are yet to register, so expect the count to tip past 9,000 very soon. The number is usually highest the day after you post, so I should see the real figure tomorrow or Friday.

If you’re reading this in a feed reader or inbox, thanks for subscribing!

Personal Update

Last month I told you all I was going to Thailand, and I should have been there for two weeks already. As is my luck these days, my passport was lost in the post and is nowhere to be found. I’ve spent the last week getting all the necessary documents together and reapplied for a new one.

As you can imagine, it was pretty depressing to be in a country you really want to leave, and then find out your passport has gone missing. I think the worst part isn’t that I can’t go to Thailand, but the fact that I can’t go anywhere. Thankfully my girlfriend is letting me stay with her (I had moved out of my apartment already) and I should be back on the road in a couple of weeks.

I’m about two weeks away from releasing my first software product, and I can’t wait to see the reaction in the marketing community. It has a couple of small bugs that need to be fixed, and then it’s ready to go. I guarantee this is something you’re going to want to use — and will make your life as a webmaster a hell of a lot easier.

Yep; that’s my attempt at a teaser

Happy 1st of September. I hope this month is a great one for all of you!

As some people here don’t care about making their living from the internet, I understand that this post will not be for everybody. However, if you’ve just made the leap to working for yourself, currently run your own business, or you’re looking to make your money online in the future, this article may be just what you need.

13 Lessons from 18 Months of Self-Employment

Over the last 18 months of working for myself, I’ve learned a ton of things on my journey. Not every piece of advice I took on board has helped, with many ideas quickly being discarded. From reading dozens of books, speaking with hundreds of entrepreneurs, and living this life myself for a year and a half, there are a few lessons I would like to share.

Write a Mission Statement (But Keep It Private)

If you go to the website of any large company, you’ll usually find a detailed mission statement which cites the main aim of their business operations. They’re usually long, boring, and ignored. THe type of mission statement I’m talking about here is more of an elevator pitch: A sentence or two about why you’re doing what you’re doing, and what you hope to achieve.

This isn’t an elevator pitch you need to tell anyone, or a mission statement you need to share. Instead, the aim of these sentences is to help you stay on track. If someone offers you a partnership in a large project, you simply have to look towards your mission statement to decide whether it’s a good use of your time. If you’ve heard about a new way of doing things, you simply have to look at your mission statement to see if it might be right for you.

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there” – Lewis Carroll

Decide what you want your core focus to be, and write it down somewhere. Internalise it. Anytime a situation arises where you’re not sure what to do, look to your statement to help you with the answer.

Focus On Your Glow

Jerry Sternin, who worked for Save the Children, was sent to Vietnam and asked to “make a difference” with the malnutrition issues the country faced. He was just given just six months to fulfil his task. With problems in the water supply, ignorance towards nutrition, and a countrywide dilemma, he had a big job ahead of him.

Instead of looking to fix one thing, like providing clean water to the country – something he didn’t have the time nor resources to do – he decided instead to look at what was working. Why are there healthy children in areas that are full of children who are starving, who have the same finances and living conditions available to them, and what are they doing differently?

Sternin found some common factors between the healthy children in these rural villages, one being that they spread their food intake throughout the day, rather than just having two large meals like the children who were struggling with health issues. Their bodies couldn’t absorb the nutrients from such a lot of food each meal.

The advice Sternin gave to struggling families from his findings was simple, but he certainly made a big difference.

Instead of just looking to your mistakes and hoping to learn from them or tackling a huge project you want to overcome. Why not look at what is working for you in other areas of life or on other projects, and see how you can apply those factors to other endeavours?

You’re far more likely to have great results.

Identify the Most Important Tasks That Will Grow Your Business

When you have all day to work on whatever you want, it’s very easy to get caught up in things which a) aren’t helping you grow and b) not as effective as other tasks. As early in your own business life as possible, define the most important things you can accomplish each day and give them utmost priority.

For me, my most important tasks vary, but generally include things like:

• Writing a blog post
• Researching niches
• Building out current websites
• Marketing current websites

If I spend most of my day doing something other than these things, then I’m not being as effective as I could be with my time. It will be hard to stick to this rigid schedule at first, but the more you put yourself back on track, the more natural it will become to work on the things which help your business the most.

Just Get Started

I was really not in the mood to write this article today, but I knew that I had to get what I want to say out to the world. I had the idea for the post in mind, and I was excited to see the feedback it was going to bring, but I couldn’t bring myself to put my hands to the keyboard. As I usually do when I’m in this situation, I tell myself I’ll just write around 300 words, and then do the rest another day.

What almost always happens is that I’ll get so into the flow of writing after those 300 words, that I keep going until I’ve written thousands. In fact, I’ve just passed the 2,000 word mark in this article (I have shuffled the order of the points, since writing this) on the same day I wasn’t in the mood to get going.

Whenever you have a big task ahead, just tell yourself that you’ll do a little bit and stop. There’s a good chance that the little bit of effort you exerted to get started, will turn into a strong push of energy which helps you get things done. Even if it doesn’t, at least you did something.

Give Yourself Office Hours

It may seem crazy that I’m suggesting you give yourself office working hours after finally being able to work whenever you want. After all, one of the main benefits of this lifestyle is to get to set your own hours. To take the edge of this idea, I’m not suggesting that you have to pick a 9-5 schedule, but you should pick something.

The reason I say this is simply because when you work from home, there is nothing harder than shutting off. While you’re eating, you may just want to check your email quickly. While you’re in the shower, you may have the idea for a blog post and quickly run to your computer to write it down. The times you start neglecting your normal life for your business surprisingly, yet quickly, add up.

If your aim is to just work for a few hours per day, whenever you want, then you can ignore this. If you find yourself working more than a few hours, or even a lot more than a few hours, then restrict the times you allow yourself to work. The time you allocate to a task is usually how long it takes, so working all day won’t necessarily help you get more done.

Only Spend Money on Essential Items

For all of the people who have no problems making money, many of them have problems keeping it. When you start working for yourself, it’s very easy to start thinking you need this and that, in order to really get going. The reality is that you rarely need as much money or material items as you think you do.

When I built PluginID, my blog which I later sold for a five-figure fee, I did so on a laptop that was five years old and had no hard drive. Every single time I booted it up, I would be presented with a completely fresh operating system. That meant I couldn’t install software or save any files. I saved myself $1,500 by finding workarounds for my problems, rather than just purchasing a new laptop straight away.

Before you go buying every item, eBook or software package you think you need, ask yourself whether you can work without them. The money you save early on helps you to grow bigger, and enables you to adopt an ideal mindset which will be invaluable later on in your business life.

Let Others Down, Before Yourself

One thing I love about being my own boss is that I can spend as much time with my friends and family as I wont (provided that they aren’t at work). If someone plans a long-weekend away or wants me to help them out with something during the day, I don’t have to ask anyone for time off to be able to do that.

Something your friends and family might quickly forget though is that you actually have work to do. Just because you work for yourself (or from home), it doesn’t mean that you can neglect the things you’re working on to spend time with people. Sometimes your business must be your priority.

I found it hard to get this point across to people but it’s important that you do. I quickly had to put an end to people arriving at my house just to chill out or expecting me to be able to make any event just because I set my own hours. Be social, but be serious about your aims as well.

Be Open About Your Position

Depending on how you market yourself and make money, this will apply to people in different ways. When I started freelancing at 17, I had a company website and would constantly refer to my “team” and our “enterprise” when I was just a one-man operation. This angle also entered my communications with potential clients, when I would try to write in a professional manner and be as “business like” as possible.

You don’t have to put up a front. You don’t have to pretend you’re behind a huge company. People do business with people. The sooner you realise that, and put yourself into both your work and engagement with customers or clients, the better.

View Anything Public, as Marketing

It used to be that the designers would come up with an idea, the engineers would turn that idea into something physical, and then marketers were set with the task of selling that item. This strategy simply doesn’t work anymore. In the age of not only information overload, but product overload, you need to see that everything you do, in one way or another, is marketing.

When I leave comments on other blogs, that’s marketing. When I write a blog post, I’m marketing. How I respond to emails, is marketing. When I buy ads on other websites and pay for product reviews, that’s also marketing, of course.

Old marketing is still marketing, but now you have to realise that everything else is too. If you don’t recognise this you may be left with a great product that nobody wants, or something that people want, that doesn’t function as it should.

Recognise Your Own Problems

One of the easiest ways to make money is to solve people’s problems. You can see this online in popular products that teaching people how to get rid of anxiety, make money, or even just jump higher so they can slam-dunk. Problems aren’t just a great area to find a market, but they also help you create one.

A software product I’m hoping to launch in the next few weeks, came about by deciding to solve a problem I’ve had for a few years. It has to do with internet marketing, of which there are millions of other people in this space, so I’m sure it’s a problem a lot of other people have as well. Or, simply a better solution to help them do what they’re already doing.

While you’re on your focused path, don’t forget to see if there are hurdles you faced where there wasn’t an ideal way to get over them. You may have just stumbled upon your next big project.

Become a Member of Your Own Market

The best way to learn what people want is to become a member of the market that is likely to want whatever you have to offer. Right now I’m working on software products for internet marketers, because after thousands of interactions and years in the business, these are the people that I understand the most.

Through your involvement in the market where you want to launch something, you’ll learn a lot from your audience. Things like:

• What things they would like in a product
• What they don’t like about other systems / solutions
• How they expect to be treated as a customer
• What makes them buy something

Of course, sometimes you just have to get something out there (ship) and learn these things as you go along. You’ll save yourself a lot of guesswork and marketing strategy alterations though if you get involved in your market, wherever they may be, and find out what makes them tick.

Ship Your Projects

When I worked on Cloud Living, I literally spent two months on the guide in order to get it how I wanted, and out there. With about three weeks worth of work left, I set a launch date for myself, a Monday, which I made sure I would stick to. The guide was finished on Sunday, the day before, after a frantic weekend.

There was one mistake in the guide, which I later fixed, but everything else was perfect. If I had spent a few more days on the eBook, I’m sure I would have spotted the small issue and had everything in order before getting the guide out there, but I was determined to stick to my launch date.

Cloud Living was actually created in response to the hundreds of questions I had received after releasing a 30-page eBook on the same topic, yet with much less detail. I used reader feedback to turn an average product into something I was proud of. If I had never put the freebie out there, even though it wasn’t a “Wow!” product, I would never have completed Cloud Living.

Making sure you ship your projects (just get them out there!) is not about putting in half the effort and releasing something you’re not happy with. It’s getting something to a stage where it’s great, and letting questions and feedback shape the product so it’s both perfect in your eyes, and in those of the end user. Getting a product that is 90% finished out there is better than never producing something with no flaws.

Do Whatever the Hell You Want

This post was with the aim of offering a guideline, rather than something you should follow word for word. The whole point of being your own boss is that you’re in control of how you spend your time, and what you wish to do with it. If you want to try things differently or completely ignore some things I’ve mentioned here, feel free.

Something I noticed recently is that the fun and passion we put into a task can quickly deplete when someone else tells us to do it. Even if we were going to do it anyway, just having someone say “do this” or “have it done by X date” takes away your drive to get things finished.

If you direct your own life, you’ll have a lot more fun on the way, and you’re far more likely to get things done. So, instead of taking this post as rules you must follow, view them as steps you can choose to follow or choose to ignore.

It’s the only way they’ll have any impact on you.

Most of the advice that is being shared, and incessantly repeated, is dated. It’s aimed at a blogosphere where there weren’t millions of blogs in each niche, all working hard to grow an audience. I call this advice aimed at the Oldsphere, whereas you need to be focusing on the Newsphere. Things changed, and you need to know how to deal with them.

Mashable vs Techcrunch

For a long time, TechCrunch was the go-to place for news about startup companies. They’re still one of my favourite blogs, but, in my opinion they failed to capitalise on their brand and position. They remained stagnant in the types of topic they cover and it seems they’re unable to see the conflicting ideas in most of their posts.

With over 4 million RSS subscribers according to Feedburner, it’s clear they’re not struggling. Yet, they are being surpassed. Mashable was the much smaller fish in this market a few years ago, until they adapted what they covered, carved a strong niche for themselves, and focused on a specific audience to help them grow.

Their adaptions, which are helping them to thrive in this Newsphere has taken them past TechCrunch in terms of traffic figures and really put their brand on the global map.

The numbers don’t lie:

We can even look at their social media followers to see a huge difference:

• Mashable Twitter: 2,052,946
• TechCrunch Twitter: 1,417,305
• Mashable Facebook: 254,691
• TechCrunch Facebook: 79,716

The things that helped Mashable experience this growth and dominate their market can also be applied to your endeavours. The rest of this post is totally based on my opinion, but hopefully there are enough examples to help you see that you do need to adapt, if you want your blog to thrive.

Picking a Niche is Pointless

In the Oldsphere, it was very common that the first advice bloggers would pass around is to make sure you choose a niche you are passionate and knowledgeable about. The theory being that if you make your niche very clear in your slogan and the types of places you interact, you’ll attract the right kind of audience for you.

If you agree with this, then let me ask you a question. What niche is ViperChill in? If you believe the tagline I’ve had since the launch of this site, you would say I write about viral marketing. Yet, there’s only one post in over 50 that actually covers viral marketing directly.

Some of you may say blogging; others may say internet marketing or even affiliate marketing. The fact is, it isn’t that clear. Yet, I don’t think it’s hindered me in any way. I haven’t picked a niche, but I have picked an aim: to help people build remarkable websites which other people want to talk about. This is the focus of 95% of the blog posts that I write.

It doesn’t matter what niche I define myself in, it matters what I’m writing content about. This is what will attract a certain audience.

In the Newsphere, people define their own niches. Zen Habits, with over 190,000 feed subscribers, is a blog with emphasis on productivity and minimalism. They were very small niches until the owner, Leo, built a large audience by focusing on them.

You don’t need me to tell you what the blog, The Art of Manliness, is about. With over 70,000 subscribers, author Brett managed to focus on a very small (previously invisible?) niche and dominate it. Even Mashable went away from the typical “blog about startups” angle and defined themselves as the Social Media Guide to the web. Something that clearly worked out well for them.

Trying to put your site in a very common niche is not only a waste of time, but shows that your focus is on the wrong things. Decide what the main thing you want to help people with actually is, and then just focus on writing content about that.

Frequent Posting Doesn’t Matter Anymore

I think I’ve been the biggest advocate of this message and proved that writing more content is not a necessity. My blog grew by almost 700 subscribers last month, and I wrote one single post. I would have wrote more if I had the time – so this wasn’t some sort of tactic – but the results do emphasise my point.

It’s not just happening in the internet marketing niche. Steve Pavlina, the biggest personal development blogger in the world, spent the first 3 and a half years of his blogging life posting 5 times per week, Monday-Friday. Now he writes one or two articles weekly, and it definitely doesn’t seem like his audience has lessened.

Unless you run a news site or you’re in an industry where posting very frequently is crucial (e.g. politics), then you don’t have to post daily. I would be very impressed if people can post 5 killer articles per week in their niche for an ongoing period of time. It’s not only very difficult, but also unnecessary.

To put that into perspective, if I had written five posts per week for ViperChill since I started this site, I would have been able to write the posts I have for a period of eleven weeks, at the most. That’s not even three months, yet this blog has been going for almost eleven.

The reason that posting less has become commonplace is because the web is suffering from a serious case of information overload. Five years ago when the likes of Steve Pavlina and Darren of Problogger were taking off, there were no Facebook, Youtube or Twitter to take up people’s online attention. There were much fewer things to focus on online, so audiences appreciated daily updates.

There is no doubt that there are sites out there which post frequently, that don’t necessarily need to, and do very well. J.D at Get Rich Slowly is a good example of this. Posting just for the sake of posting however, is a total waste of time. If you aren’t writing amazing content for your audience, there will just be someone else who comes along and does.

To test this theory: Next week cut out two of your normal posts and double the amount of time you would spend on one. See if you can make it as detailed, fascinating and helpful as you can. Then, let me know the results. I think I already know what you’re going to say though.

Your Content is Everything

Though the idea of “build it and they will come” does not apply to the internet, great content generally does get attention if you promote it via the right channels. The great thing about building an audience is that the bigger it is, the less you have to do your own effort in terms of marketing, because your readers share the posts for you. Making your content great is the hardest, yet most crucial thing you can do.

I can’t define what great content is, because you must know what your own readers want. If you stick to the focus of what you want to help people with, then it should be very easy for you to figure out. If you want to make people laugh, then great content may be a picture that spreads virally around the internet. If you want to teach people how to play the guitar, then great content may be a detailed video tutorial for beginners.

The point is that you must figure out what you want to give people, and how to make it great.

If you aren’t giving priority to the content you produce more than anything else, then you need to change that right now. In this age of information overload, there has never been a more important time to write compelling content that people will give their valuable time to read.

Doing Something Different (Consistently) Is Your Best Chance of Success

And offering something different is probably one of the hardest things to do in a sea of 100 million “competitors”. With ViperChill, I believe I was the first blog that teaches you how to make money which has no affiliate links or ads. Mashable focused a large amount of their content around Twitter, which isn’t something I like personally, but appeals to a lot of people and helped them grow.

Leo Babauta of Zen Habits was the first blogger to come out and say that you can use all of his articles in any way that you wish. Many others then followed his Uncopyright movement.

I could list many more examples, but there’s a reason why it won’t help. Giving you too much information on what other bloggers are doing differently narrows your own focus as to what you can do differently. Your difference does not have to be something totally “out there”. It can be as simple as offering the best content in your niche, from your own angle.

The Superficial, a popular gossip blog, does this well by throwing in a lot of humour in their posts. Geekologie, a technology blog which is owned by the same company, does exactly the same. They picked two topics which aren’t always humorous themselves, and made both funny and informative websites which have huge audiences.

Recognise that most blogging advice out there, is dated. Learn to adapt to the Newsphere and your chances of creating a big blog are far greater. “Good luck!”

This not only creates impact, but also allows editors to simply snip off the bottom paragraph of a story if they need space for other articles. As the final paragraph is the least important, their editing does not affect the article too much. I’ve already shared how I personally became a much better writer (though I don’t rate myself that highly) and now I want to get into the specifics of how to create compelling content.

Your Headline

Your headline, in my opinion, is by far the most important element of your article or blog post. It of course matters what you say after the headline, but only if you can actually get people to read your article. The job of your headline is simply to get people to read the first sentence of your post.

Your headline doesn’t just need to be attractive to people who stop by your blog regularly. If you use Google Reader in a list format for example – like I do – then your headline determines whether myself or anyone else using the service will click on your listing to read the post. Similarly, if I see content posted on Facebook or retweeted on Twitter, that same headline will determine whether I click through to your website.

The following advice is my take on how to create a headline that draws your readers in and helps your content go viral.

Don’t tell me something I know: If your headline says something like “Why exercise is good for you” or “How to increase your feed subscribers” then I probably won’t read it. It gives me nothing but the expectation that I already know most of what the article is going to share. If you want someone to keep reading, you need them to feel like they’ll actually get value out of the time they’re going to spend doing so.

Headline example: Printer Cartridges Are Expensive

Challenge someones beliefs: One of my most popular posts on PluginID bore the title ‘Smoking is Good for you’. As everyone knows, there are many reasons why smoking is detrimental to your health, so this caused quite a stir and invoked the desire for people to continue reading. I followed up the title with a good twist in the article, which is important if you’re going to write your headline with such an angle.

If you write an article – with the content to back it up – which tells me why “running is bad for you”, “people don’t read blogs anymore” or “[common tactic] no longer works”, I’m going to read the post. Humans love taking in new information, but we hate holding on to information which is incorrect, so challenging beliefs can be a very powerful to get eyeballs on your content.

Headline example: Why Buying Another Printer is Cheaper Than Buying Ink

Offer a hidden insight: This one is very common in the internet marketing space, with titles offering ‘keys’, ’secrets’ and ‘crucial aspects’ about different topics. I’ve used them myself in posts like this one and my article on ‘The Secret to Growing Your Blog Twice as Fast with Half the Effort‘.

This works so well because the title suggests that by reading the article, we’ll learn something we wouldn’t have known otherwise. A year or two ago I did this for a popular topic – how to increase feed subscribers – but in a way that was new and promised value. The title was ‘How to Increase RSS Subscribers (One Method You Probably Don’t Know About)’. Are you more likely to read that article than an article with the same title, but without the brackets?

Headline example: The Real Reason Behind the High-Cost of Printer Cartridges

Ask a question: If the question you ask is relevant and intriguing, people are going to read your post to see why you feel a certain way about something. Headlines with questions are also one of the best ways to get people to leave comments on your posts. The question automatically gives them something to say in response.

Discussions start from questions, and this is a great way to get a conversation going in your community, especially if you make bold statements on a hot topic. There’s a great example of this kind of post at Copyblogger, where the author asks: Is Commenting on Blogs a Smart Traffic Strategy? [Link]

Headline example: Do You Know Why Printer Ink is so Expensive? We Reveal the Truth

I’ve received a lot of praise for the headlines I use in posts and I’ve been asked numerous times whether headline writing comes naturally to me. The answer is no, it doesn’t. I find inspiration from magazine covers, books, and other bloggers along with my own imagination. I also spend quite a lot of time on each title and it’s never something I just “throw out there.”

Keep these ideas in mind, and you’ll soon be writing headlines which capture the attention of your audience and help your content go viral.

Your Introduction

If the job of your headline is to get people to read your introduction, then the job of your introduction is to get people to read further into the post. I believe that if your introduction is interesting and compelling enough, there’s a better chance that people will read your entire post, rather than just skimming through or ignoring it all together.

I definitely have a lot of work to do on my own introductions, but do have some advice to share which I think can help you.

List some interesting facts: I think the introduction for this post, regarding newspaper journalists, would have been interesting for most people. The information it shares must have some value, simply because I was able to remember this myself and then pass it on to you all. If you’ve naturally remembered a small nugget of information about a topic, there’s a good chance it’s interesting.

If your facts are both interesting and relevant then it’s a great way to keep people hooked on what you’re saying.

Offer a teaser for later in the post: If you could easily work out who the killer was at the start of an episode of CSI or figure out the plot of a movie after the first 5 minutes, we just wouldn’t watch them. Smart television and movie producers “sprinkle” teasers throughout the length of the production to keep you hooked until the end where you find the answers.

Promise your readers the answer to something you know they’ll care about, and make sure you stick to that promise, but only by offering small nuggets of information as they get towards the end of the post.

Ask a question: Though questions can make very effective headlines, I personally don’t like to use them in this way. I prefer to use them in introductions. This way, you can both ask the question and answer it to offer value straight away, or you can use it as a hook.

Similar to the last point, you could answer an intriguing question and then promise to answer it towards the end of the post. A good one from the book Made to Stick is the question, “What are the rings around the planet Saturn made of?” I’ll tell you at the end of the post .

Use Reverse Psychology: I recommend you use this sparingly as too much of this tactic will annoy readers rather than encourage them to read your post. I used this tactic in my ‘most important blog post‘ article when I wrote “This blog post is quite long so you probably shouldn’t read it. To the 50% of visitors who are still with me, I’ll say now that less than 1% of you will get to the end so you may as well leave now.”

I can imagine some people will take this too far and tell their readers in every post that they aren’t going to read it or they won’t enjoy it. Trust me, this tactic only works when you use it very, very sparingly. Think of some unique ways you can apply it and you’ll be on to a winner.

The Middle (The “Meat” of Your Content)

The middle of your post is where you get across your main points, provide value to your readers, and offer lessons you hope that they take away from the article. For example, in my post on How I received over 900,000 visits from Google in 30 days, I began by proving my facts and claims in the headline. The meat of the post was exactly how I was able to do that.

Although I mentioned this earlier, it’s very important that even if you have a great intro and a great headline, the meat of your content must match up to those high standards. If you have extravagant headlines and can’t follow them up with great information, you’re just going to annoy readers and they probably won’t come back.

In other words, if you’re going to offer some “secrets”, make sure they actually aren’t that well known.

Be personal: One of the best ways to get your points across is to speak about personal experiences. On the most basic level, this means that you should be open to sharing both your failures and your successes. In my article about generating more blog post ideas, I was more than willing to share that I had been struggling to come up with things to write about.

The reason that being personal works so well is because people can relate to what you’re saying. And, if people can relate to your content, they’re more likely to take your advice to heart and engage in your site. Don’t be afraid to use personal stories to help get your points across. It’s probably one of the most effective things you can do.

Provide concrete evidence or examples: I’m lucky enough right now to be in an industry where people know enough about what I’ve achieved to trust what I say. However, that wasn’t always the case, especially when I was blogging about personal development. In order to get your point across and have your ideas stick, it’s good to have enough information to backup your points so that they really can’t be disputed.

I often include images of ‘roadmaps’ when I talk about complicated subjects like my SEO strategy in big industries, and always try to include examples to help people create a picture in their mind of what I’m talking about. Evidence and examples might not help your post be more viral, but it will help solidify the ideas you’re trying to share.

List your most important points first: I can’t remember where I first read this, but it makes total sense, and it’s something I’ve tried to implement in all of my posts. If you’re writing a list post or ever just listing points in a certain order, put the most unique and/or valuable at the top of the list.

I believe the simple logic is that if you’re going to share points that are interesting and someone hasn’t heard before, they’re more likely to continue reading than if your initial points are just generic and nothing new.

Keep Your message simple: In most cases, it’s best to keep the message you’re sharing simple. Or, if it is complex, at least keep it to one idea. The best blog posts tell you one thing and they tell it well. Seth Godin is a master at this. If there’s a key message that someone can take from your article that they understand fully, then they’re more likely to pass that message on.

An example of this is my post on blogging partners, which was one of the most popular on the site. I said a lot about the subject, and covered it in-depth, but I really just stuck to one idea: If you want to grow your blog faster, find a blogging partner.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” – Leonardo Da Vinci

Your Summary and General Readability

The summary of your post, in my opinion, is the least important aspect of your article. The hardest part of anything you write is to get people to read it, and then continue reading it until the end. Similar to what newspaper journalists learn, your best information should be in the introduction and main sections of the article.

If you rely on the summary for people to “get” what you’re trying to say then you’ve just wasted 80% of your writing, in most cases. Although the summary isn’t as important as the other sections, there are some recommended ways to use it.

End with a powerful statement: The more articles I wrote, the more I found myself trying to end them with a message that left an impact on the reader. Movies do this all the time; if you’ve seen the end of Inception then you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Just because you’ve got your main message out of the way, it doesn’t mean you should get lazy with your article. On two random guest posts that I’ve written, here were two of the endings:

• “Those thousands of subscribers are waiting for you. You’ve just got to be ready for them.” from Copyblogger.
• “Now, can you please promise me you’re going to share your value with the world? Because I can promise you, the world is waiting for it.” from TylerCruz.com

Start a discussion: This will be the third time I’ve mentioned starting discussions and asking questions. I do so because I believe that conversation is really at the heart of blogs, and one of the main things that makes them so different from static sites. Often times, people will want to leave a comment, but they just aren’t quite sure which part of the post to share their thoughts on.

You can use your summary to remind people of the most important points, and ask questions around any of them. This should help to get the comments flowing.

Summarise Your Post: Although very obvious (it is called a summary, after-all), I couldn’t leave this point out of the post. A good suggestion for ending is to pick the most important advice you’ve shared and repeat it in bullet-form. Another option, where relevant, is to give people an action plan as to the steps to take next after reading your advice.

My final suggestion, which is not directly related to making your content viral, would be to offer links to other relevant posts on your site. If people like what they’ve just read (and they probably did, if they made it to the end) then they’re likely going to want to see other articles you’ve written.

Readability

I generally break many rules when it comes to readability, but I still try to include the basics when I can. Even if you write the best posts in your industry, nobody is going to take the time to read them if you just list paragraph after paragraph without any formatting or line-breaks.

There aren’t many things to remember when it comes to making your posts scannable. Here are a few things that I think you should:

• Use Bullet Points: Just like I’m doing here, separate some lists into bullet form which not only breaks your post up into sections, but helps people skim your ideas if necessary
• Use Section Headings: I often use H2 and H3 tags to define different sections of my posts. This way, I have a clear outline of my beginning, middle and end, so visitors can decide to read just one section or all of them combined.
• Bold important sentences: If people are going to skim your posts, make it easier for them to take value from it by highlighting your most important points
• Use clear sentences: Unless you’re trying to appeal to English literature graduates, you don’t need to use fancy words or complex-sentence structures. Keep your sentences simple. And remember: What you say is far more important than how you say it.
• Break things up with images: Another good way to structure your content, without using headings, is to use relevant images to break things up. I like to have one in the introduction, as do many other bloggers, and more throughout the post, depending on the length of it

Many of these suggestions are aimed towards people who aren’t going to take the time to read every word that you write, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The whole point is that they’re reading your content and enjoying it in their own way, and then sharing it if they like it.

Many people will also skim an article first, and if it looks interesting, go back to read the whole thing in detail.

To those of you who read the whole post, and want to know the answer to my question about Saturn, the rings are believed to be made out of dust-covered ice. Are you going to use these tips to make sure that your next article is a hit?

I don’t care about the stats and don’t have any goals, but instead view this as a great way to help you all see how I’m growing my blog and the kind of traffic sources you can use to do the same. Let’s look at the numbers, shall we?

Overall Traffic

• Visits: 34,196
• Pageviews: 57,077
• Avg time on Site: 2 mins 14 seconds

Every time I publish a new article, there’s always a spike in the stats for the site. With that in mind, it’s obvious to see why this month had less traffic than most, although the figures are still rather high for writing so little. The article written in July, was:

• Conquering Big Industries: My Bulletproof SEO Strategy

Here at ViperChill there are a lot less articles published than most sites, but typically these articles are 2,000-3,000 words and cover topics in massive detail. You could say that we prefer signal over noise.

Top Referring Websites

Here are the top referring traffic sources for the month of July:

1. Direct: 10,337
2. StumbleUpon: 9,571
3. Google (organic): 5,337
4. Google.com: 911
5. Twitter.com: 754
6. Socialmouths.com: 686
7. SmartPassiveIncome.com: 551
8. Farbeyondthestars.com: 400
9. Pluginid.com: 340
10. Facebook.com: 335

Top Referring Keywords

There were a total of 5,629 visits via 1,434 keywords this month. The top 10, were:

1. ViperChill: 928
2. wordpress seo: 580
3. viral marketing: 525
4. social media strategy: 248
5. viper chill: 230
6. guest blogging: 138
7. hostgatorestonia.com: 102 (Bug?)
8. viperchill anchor text: 99
9. glen allsopp: 98
10. seo wordpress: 90

While search engine traffic is still a tiny portion of the traffic that arrives at ViperChill, it is growing steadily month on month with the number of referring keywords increasing by another 25%.

Subscriber Stats

Feedburner is so erratic that I just can’t take it that seriously anymore. Despite the current flaws in the system, I will continue to report on the numbers that it gives me.  Although I don’t have any goals for the size of the community here, I still think it is an interesting metric to monitor.

• July 1st: 7,543
• July 31st: 8,174
• Change: +631

For writing so little, and having a lot less traffic than most months, July didn’t turn out too badly at all in terms of feed growth. If I managed to achieve this every month, that would be a growth of 7,200 subscribers in just one year, which I don’t think many people would complain about.

If you’re reading this in a feed reader or inbox, thanks for subscribing!

Personal Update

It feels like there are a lot less things to do and talk about in South Africa now that the World Cup is over. If you read my last post, you will see that I decided to make a big change in my life and move to Thailand. One of my best friends is staying there – though that is not the reason for my move – so that should make the whole experience even better.

I visited Thailand for two weeks in 2007 and loved the place so I’m looking forward to getting back into the Bangkok vibe. As for why I’m leaving South Africa, I really just feel like it’s time to move on. I’ve loved my time here, have tons of awesome friends and a great girlfriend, but if you don’t feel right in a place, no matter what you have around you, you’ll always feel like something is missing.

I’ll be there in less than a fortnight, and I’ll be sure to update you all with pictures on the next monthly report.

Thanks for all of your support and patience for July. The rest of this year is going to rock!

I’ll be the exception to that rule and apologise for my lack of updates over the last few weeks – stating that I’m genuinely back for good – and with a big announcement to make: As of the end of this month, I’ll be living in Thailand. Bangkok, to be specific. Despite that possibly surprising announcement, this post is not going to be very personal. Let’s talk business.

My Change of Strategy

For the last few months, I have been working on some projects with friends that took up the majority of my time. These are projects that needed my full attention because of the amount of money that had been pumped into them, which became the main reason I wasn’t able to update the blog as often as I would like.

The reason for this change now is that as of yesterday I’m no longer involved in anything outside of my own set work – after parting ways amicably with my partners – and I’m back to focusing entirely on my own things. I love the learning experiences of trying something totally different to what you’re used to doing from time to time, mostly because you can apply the lessons you learn to your favourite endeavours.

However, you always have that longing to return to what it is you do best and enjoy the most.

After selling most of my small affiliate sites towards the end of 2009 and ending my partnership on a number of other jobs, I’m now only working on a very small number of websites. This means that for the first time since I re-launched this site, ViperChill is one of my top priorities.

You can expect big things on this site in the near future.

The Business Plan

One of the real reasons I’m writing this post – and the main reason I’m about to be so transparent right now – is because I wish other bloggers did this. Maybe I’m just nosey, but I would love to know how Everett is planning to grow his blog traffic, how Corbett is going to make money and what Adam’s plans are for the next year.

In fact, I would love to know what most bloggers are getting up to.

The business plan for ViperChill is not really a business plan at all. It should be called a strategy plan, because that’s all I have right now. The strategy comes in three parts: monetisation, traffic, and branding.

Over the next few paragraphs I’m going to share what you can expect in terms of me making money with this site and increasing the size of the audience, before I’ve even done it. I think it’s far more enjoyable to watch someone on their journey while it’s happening, rather than look back on it months later.

I hope all 8,200+ of you enjoy following along.

Monetisation

The first thing I want to say is that I have absolutely no plans to write another eBook. I haven’t owned Cloud Living for almost a year now, so it would be nice to have one to my name, but there are just far too many of them on the market for me to take many of them seriously. If I’m feeling overloaded by how many there are, and I rarely buy any, then I can’t imagine how other people must be feeling.

They can be a great source of income – and people have even sent me emails saying they wish I would write another one – but that’s not on the cards anytime soon. My plan, which is quite different to what anyone else is doing – is to focus on software. More specifically, web software for internet marketers.

I have been refining my dev team over the last few months, doing “practice” products such as the reputation management plugin for Wordpress I released, but I’ll soon be ready to take things to the next level. I’m very excited with the first product I’m going to release as it’s going to solve a huge problem I have and there are no other solutions out there. I don’t think there is anything better or more likely to sell than a product which solves your own problems.

On top of that, the worst-case scenario is that you don’t sell any copies, but at least have a solution for yourself.

To start with I’m just going to focus on one core product and make it amazing, rather than be a jack-of-all-trades and have a lot of mediocre things which do a lot of tasks well, but nothing remarkably.

I’ve been involved in selling web software online for years; just not in this industry. Because of that, I know that having amazing customer support is almost as crucial as the product you’re selling. I’m far more likely to buy from someone who has an email address, phone number and live chat option on their website than someone with just a basic contact form. Even if the other product is slightly better.

That’s all I’ll say on the topic for now. I’m working with some people that I know personally in Cape Town which I think is the best way to go about a product of any substance, so expect more information on that over the coming weeks and months.

Traffic

Now that ViperChill has a substantial audience, I don’t really have to do much to continue to receiving a lot of traffic. In July for example, I only wrote one blog post, but consistently had over 1,000 people per day landing on my articles. Over the next few months I’m not going to focus on any traffic source in particular and just rely on that, but focus on something that helps bring traffic over the long-term: networking.

Although I do have one of the biggest blogs in this industry, I literally have no connections with the top bloggers that I would call strong relationships. I’m not like Johnny or Jade or Dave who just seem to become best friends with the A-listers overnight. Thankfully I do have great relationships with people who write content I love, like Pat and Tamar.

Networking in terms of blogger relationships is one thing that I really, really suck at. If there is anything I would like to be better at it’s creating and maintaining these relationships online. I’m not sure how well this will work out, but I will be sure to share with you all the things that actually work for me.

If you don’t know the importance of blogger connections, you may enjoy this article. Of course, it’s a little “risky” writing my plan like this here, because if I get in touch with someone now – who reads the blog – they’re just going to think they’re part of my experiment or strategy.

This won’t be the case. I’m going to try to build closer bonds with people that I’ve spoken to in the past, and perhaps they’ve tried to contact me but I wasn’t available at the time, and put more effort into those connections.

I’m continuing to focus on different SEO efforts as I am a bit of an SEO geek if you haven’t noticed from many of the articles I write here. I like testing a vast array of different ideas – though the basic fundamentals still work the best – so I’ll continue to use ViperChill as a testing ground and see if I can increase this sites rankings for some very popular terms.

I’m not naive enough to think that people should still trust my advice if I can’t even prove that I can get rankings for myself. (Though I think ranking 4th for ‘Viral marketing’ is quite an achievement, so far).

In order to really leverage sites like Facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon, at least for a blog, I think you really just need to focus on writing the best content you can, which is what I will continue to do. This has been my strategy since I started the blog, so I won’t be changing anything in regards to post frequency, length or style. Hopefully the value I provide in posts will be the same or even bigger.

Branding

I believe the brand that I have now, and the one I want to sustain, all depends on how I spend my time. I don’t want to be the blogger who you can expect to post a few times in one month and then none the next. Similarly, when I release products, the last thing I would want them to be known for is being full of bugs and coming with lacklustre support.

These two things, if I’m going to run this blog as a business, are crucial. Now that ViperChill is one of the few projects I run, I can literally spend as much time on it as I want. It would not affect my other websites – which are ran by virtual assistants – if I worked 9-5 on it daily. I won’t do that, as I don’t need to, but it will definitely get a lot more attention from me.

From the beginning of this blog I’ve always stressed something I believe strongly which is spending time on your content is the most important thing you can do. Similarly, I don’t just want to publish a blog post for the sake of having one out there. I want them to be the best articles I can write on a variety of topics. Your blog is nothing without your content, so I don’t think there’s any smarter way to be.

I will then spend time that isn’t directly related to writing content to:

• Come up with post ideas
• Tweak aspects of the blog for testing / analytics purposes
• Continue to write articles for other blogs
• Interact with readers via email, Twitter, Facebook, and the comments here
• Focus on new software launches and customer support

There are probably more things I’ll add to this list over time, but those are the main ones for now.

I’ll continue with the little white men I have going on in each post, as they’re often very relevant to what the article is about, though I see a lot of marketing bloggers now mimicking that idea and using them on their own sites. Sure, I wasn’t the first person to use them, but I would never see them in every post.

I had a unique idea for the other graphics that I include in my articles, that I think would be awesome if a lot of bloggers became involved with. Instead of just choosing random images from Google and Flickr, why not “team up” with a photographer and use only their photos for your blog. They get exposure from your audience, and you get great images where you don’t have to worry about licensing issues.

I think this could really benefit both photographers and bloggers in a big way. I have someone in mind for me so I’m going to approach him today and see how that turns out. I’ll let you all know.

Transparency / Ask Your Questions

I hope I’ve revealed enough information in this post which kept you interested and excited for the future of this blog. To take transparency to the next level, I want to open up the comments to any ViperChill or blog business related questions you want to ask me that you were afraid to before or the question just didn’t seem relevant to the post.

I’ll be as open as possible – though please don’t ask for links to my other sites (I’ve mentioned reasons why on multiple posts) – in income estimations, traffic figures, or anything else you may want to ask me about.

It’s good to be back.

Over the last two years I focused on fairly small industries which I would build minisites for, which received their traffic from search engines, and then monetised them with affiliate offers. These days I’m spending my time focusing on much bigger (and more competitive markets) and having a lot of success.

This isn’t the first time I’ve tackled big markets – I used to have clients in some of the biggest niches out there (casino, mobile phones, etc) – but it’s the first year where I’ve really started to take on these industries for myself. Some success is from sites I purchased which were ranking on the first few pages of Google and I built some great links to get them on the first page. Other success is from sites I built towards the end of 2009 which are now doing very well.

The upside of huge industries is that there’s a lot more money to be made with the downside, of course, being that it’s a lot harder to get rankings.

Ranking Fast: A Unique Keyword Research Strategy

The problem with these huge industries is that you could be waiting over a year to see any results for your hard work in terms of search engine rankings. Because you can make so much money in the large niches there’s a lot more people trying to take a slice of that traffic and many of them are focusing on SEO in order to do so. Health, gambling, forex and gaming industries for example, are very competitive online.

If you’re entering an industry with a brand new site, the last thing you want to do is wait that long for some good search engine traffic. Yet, you want to be building links with the anchor text of the big phrase you’re going for so, in time, they will take effect.

A strategy I use, which I’ve never read online before so you may want to keep this to yourself, is to actually pick two keyphrases which are very similar to work on. One of them should be short and competitive, while the other should be slightly longer and much less competitive.

Some example short and long keyphrases I may pick include:

• Short: mobile phones
• Long: mobile phone recycling
• Short: internet marketing
• Long: internet marketing news
• Short: how to lose weight
• Long: how to lose weight fast

Ideally, your ‘long’ keyphrase is simply a word or two extra on the original keyphrase. The reason I do this is very simple.

Ranking for how to lose weight fast is much easier than how to lose weight because less people are optimising for that term and it will take less links to get on the first page of Google. When you build links for how to lose weight fast you’re not only helping yourself get traffic from search engines quicker, your also building links for the phrase how to lose weight, which is your long-term strategy.

In other words, you want to pick a keyphrase which helps you bring short-term traffic but also helps you get long-term traffic later on. You aren’t going to rank for ‘internet marketing’ within a few months from scratch, but you may rank for a variation on the term fairly easily.

It’s also much more natural to try and optimise for other terms rather than the huge keyphrase right from the get-go.

Utilising the Same Strategy for Your Site Structure

Once you have your main phrases that you’re going to build a site around, you can then do what I do and pick 4-5 more which will make up your main site structure. Generally, these get less search volume and are less competitive than your first two phrases, but are still phrases it would be good to optimise for.

Using cell phones as an example once again, here’s a sample structure:

• Short: mobile phones
• Long: mobile phone recycling
• Phrase 1: recycle nokia mobile phones
• Phrase 2: recycle HTC mobile phones
• Phrase 3: recycle samsung mobile phones
• Phrase 4: recycle motorola mobile phones

Note: Mobile phone recycling refers to trading in your old phone for money to companies who will then resell it for a higher price. This is very popular in the UK. I know a few people making thousands of dollars per month in this niche on autopilot with affiliate offers.

For many sites online, long-tail keyword traffic probably makes up the vast majority of search traffic. As an example, ViperChill gets a few thousand hits per month from terms like ‘viral marketing’ and ‘wordpress seo’, but it also gets thousands of hits per month from all of the longer phrases grouped together such as ‘how to become likeable’.

These long-tail phrases don’t get much traffic individually but combined, based on how much content you have, the figures can quickly become substantial. The phrases in the example above are considered to be long-tail phrases as they contain more words and have a much smaller search volume, but they’re also easier to rank for.

Adding Content to Your Site

As I wrote in my post on How to Dominate Google, search engines generally tend to follow people. If your site is very static, uninteresting and plain then you simply aren’t going to rank in the biggest industries online. Not unless you have a huge link-buying budget and know how to get paid links that still count.

Let’s look at ViperChill as another example here. If the homepage of the site was simply an article that covered a lot of things about viral marketing, do you think I would be able to rank as easily?

In a typical scenario I would have no blog subscribers, no ‘popular posts’ and I would be a total nobody in the space. I would probably struggle to rank this site for anything which gets thousands of searches per month unless there was some amazing service attached to it, it was my brand name, or I was running a blog.

Look at all of the top sites ranking for phrases like internet marketing, car insurance, seo and you’ll find that they aren’t just basic information sites. They usually have some great offering that searchers love and webmasters link to. I actually took a look at the results, rather than offering general analysis and from the first page of Google for the phrase SEO, this is what I get:

• Wikipedia – This one speaks for itself
• SEO.com – brand name
• SEOBook.com – blog
• SEOChat.com – forum
• SEOmoz.org – blog

I get at least a dozen effortless links to ViperChill every week because people talk about me and what I’ve built here. Having other people promote you – and not having to do everything yourself – is crucial to dominating a huge industry online.

Long-tail Automation

To really get a site going I like to add a lot of content to it. I usually build these sites on Wordpress (though they look nothing like your typical blog) and pump out around 25 quality articles to start with, then a couple of articles per week from there on out. I outsource this process and while you certainly don’t have to produce that much content, I do find that it helps.

I would then use my site structure phrases from earlier and make those categories of the blog. If I owned www.losingweightonline.com and my main phrase was how to lose weight I might have pages like:

• How to lose weight fast (www.losingweightonline.com/fast/)
• How to lose weight in a week (www.losingweightonline.com/week/)
• How to lose weight quickly (www.losingweightonline/quickly/)

These would become my blog categories. So, at the top of each of these category pages I would have a lot of unique content related to that topic which is both interesting and static. It doesn’t change. What does change is that everytime I publish an article relating to one of these things, I put it under that category and that page instantly has more information. There is no homepage which collects these posts like a normal blog, just categories which display them.

I believe search engines put more importance on pages which are updated frequently with fresh, original content. If you can write content which you can get links to then even better. The point is that you have a solid structure in place and you can update your main pages very easily from the Wordpress back-end, or whatever CMS solution that you use.

Building Backlinks

Though I have written a guide which covers 15 ways I build backlinks, I only use a few when it comes to conquering big industries so I thought I would cover them here. By default, the homepage of your site is usually the most important in the eyes of search engines, as that is naturally where most of your links will go.

Many people link to individual articles on ViperChill that they like, but far more people talk about the blog as a whole, so they link to the homepage. It’s generally just a way of the web so expect that your homepage is going to have the most link juice and you should use it to target your most competitive phrase (both long and short versions).

You’ll also need to build links to your internal phrase pages, which make up the structure of your site. For the rest of this section I’ll either refer to the links as being good for building home (homepage) or internal (your longer phrase “category” pages).

Guest Blogging

Undoubtedly my favourite way to build backlinks, guest blogging helps you build some of the most valuable links out there. It’s what allowed me to rank top 10 in Google for the phrase ‘personal development’ and it also allows me to rank internal pages very easily. With guest blogging you can write a bio at the end of your posts so you don’t only get to link to your homepage with your desired anchor text, you can link to a chosen internal page with them too.

If you want to learn more about the practice then read my guide on it over here.

Directory Submissions

By nature, directory links are of a very poor quality. If you submit an order of 500 submissions for $10 to some guy on Digitalpoint then the majority of them go to PR0 pages which have tens if not hundreds of other outbound links on them.

Yet, for some reason, they still work quite well for me. They either help me get a site with a very targeted, uncompetitive phrase to rank quickly, or they help me to get links with the anchor text I need for sites that already have a lot of links, but not with the phrase in them that I’m trying to rank the site for.

Sometimes I’ll also pay $100 or so to BOTW.org which is a human-filtered directory which can give me some great link juice. As soon as I’m cached in this directory I find my rankings to increase almost instantly.

Create a Unique Resource (Networking)

As you can see from my examples in the SEO niche, you really need to create something useful for people to build a lot of natural links which are most likely to help you get those big rankings. It could be a script for webmasters, a blog with amazing content, a guide that nobody else has written or something else of that valuable nature.

Thankfully for people like us who want to build quality sites, Google and other search engines can do a fairly good job at keeping out sites that don’t deserve to rank in big industries. This means that you really are going to have to create something useful and valuable if you want thousands of targeted visitors landing on your site from search engines daily.

What you build really depends on whats out there already. Once you have a niche in mind, look at the top search results and see if there’s anything you think is missing. A gap you can fill. If not, then you’ll probably just have to do something better than anyone else. I never said that ranking highly for these big phrases is easy, but it’s definitely possible.

Once you have this unique resource; you have to get it out there. I use networking as a very broad term which chould include creating connections with bloggers, finding companies who can help you to get your offering out there and utilising other areas of social media to get eyeballs on your creation.

Here is the data from this post as a visual representation:

June was quite a quiet month in terms of updates and activity on other sites. I’ve just bought two massive new websites (and I’m arranging assistants to run them) so that has taken up the majority of my time. Plus, I’ve been enjoying quite a few World Cup games while I’m here.

Overall Traffic

• Visits: 38,444
• Pageviews: 67,191
• Avg time on Site: 2 mins 29 seconds

Despite only writing four blog posts – and none at all last week – the site still received just less than 40,000 visits and almost 70,000 pageviews. The only traffic source which dropped was StumbleUpon, so really the site is still growing nicely in channels like search and direct traffic. The time on site also increased slightly so that shows the quality of traffic was higher. The articles written in June, were:

• Mass Engagement: How to Get Hundreds of Tweets & Comments on Your Blog Posts
• How a 3 Month Old Website Received 958,373 Visits from Google
• Getting Mass Traffic from StumbleUpon: A Definitive Guide
• ViperChill Surpasses 10k Subscribers (Or, How I Gained 9,000 Subscribers in 9 Months)

Here at ViperChill there are a lot less articles published than most sites, but typically these articles are 2,000-3,000 words and cover topics in massive detail. You could say that we prefer signal over noise.

Top Referring Websites

Here are the top referring traffic sources for the month of June:

1. Direct: 12,548
2. StumbleUpon: 5,733
3. Google (organic): 5,584
4. Twitter.com: 2,121
5. Sphinn.com: 1,503
6. Google.com: 1,382
7. SmartPassiveIncome.com: 1,053
8. Facebook.com: 517
9. Sweeva.com: 446
10. Mediapost.com: 330

Top Referring Keywords

There were a total of 5,787 visits via 1,519 keywords this month. The top 10, were:

1. ViperChill: 916
2. Viral marketing: 564
3. wordpress seo: 541
4. viper chill: 246
5. social media strategy: 215
6. guest blogging: 203
7. glen allsopp: 162
8. cloud living: 154
9. most important blog post: 132
10. hqhow: 55

While search engine traffic is still a tiny portion of the traffic that arrives at ViperChill, it is growing steadily month on month with the number of referring keywords increasing by another 25%.

Subscriber Stats

I really don’t know if I should continue reporting on Feedburner as the count is just far too erratic. Every day the figure fluctuates by thousands of readers, going as low as 4,000 to as high as 12,000. I now think my post on reaching 10K subscribers was indeed a bug (I did say it might be in the post) and the site is at 7,543 readers. Although I don’t have any goals for the size of the community here, I still think it is an interesting metric to monitor.

• June 1st: 6,866
• May 31st: 7,543
• Change: +677

I really don’t know what is going on (I’m still down over 1,000 Google Reader subscribers compared to usual) so that would suggest I’m at least over 8,500. But with Feedburner, who knows. If you’re also having issues, I urge you to @MattCutts on Twitter and ask him to look into it. It actually has nothing to do with him, but Feedburner aren’t updating their status blog nor answering support questions in Google Groups and he is in a position where I believe he can get someone at Feedburner to look into it.

If you’re reading this in a feed reader or inbox, thanks for subscribing!

Personal Update

We’re coming to the end of the Fifa World Cup which is being held here in South Africa, where I live. I’m staying in Cape Town and managed to go and watch England vs Algeria (awful game) and then I was in the VIP box for Netherlands (my second country) vs Cameroon, which was much more eventful.

I was devastated when Germany beat England but we really played poorly. I spent Friday in my favourite pub, Dubliners, to watch Netherlands to beat Brazil which was a great win for them. As I’ve been there about 8 times in my life, I consider them my second team so I’m hoping they go on to win the trophy.

I’ve attached a few pictures of the games as I always find things like this interesting, so I hope that you do as well. The pictures with the white tables are the VIP area of Cape Town stadium.

When I ran PluginID I wrote a blog post after hitting 5,000 subscribers as that was a huge achievement for me at the time. I decided to refrain from that here at ViperChill until I reached 10,000 subscribers which I think finally puts this blog on the map. I’ve managed to grow this site by over 9,000 subscribers in 9 months which is quite rare in the blogging world. Here’s how.

I first want to say that I never actually reached 10,000 subscribers. My feed jumped from 8,500 to over 11,500 according to Feedburner. At first I assumed it was a bug, but it has stayed this way for over a week so I’ll assume everything is working as it should (Feedburner usually drops, not increases). In the rare case that this is still actually a bug, the message I’m sharing here would still be very much the same, so I’m totally fine with that.

I also must stress that the reason this blog skyrocketed is not rocket science. I’m going to share a number of principles here – some which may or may not be new to you – but there are really no secrets that anyone has been holding back from you. What it takes to grow a blog today is still very much the same as what it took to grow a blog two, three, four or even five years ago.

As always though, I like to think I have my own unique take on things.

Photo Credit

Put Importance on the Things You Don’t Do

In many blogging guides the authors always seem to focus on the things that you should do. Remain consistent, pick a popular niche, have a great looking theme, write remarkable content, and other similar advice is often thrown out there. These aren’t bad suggestions, but you can’t only focus on what you do.

The things you don’t do are also, very, very important.

To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, allow me to cover some of the things I won’t do:

• Write about internet marketing news
• Publish a post before I’ve re-read it 2-3 times
• Link to websites or products with an affiliate link
• Write short posts with little substance
• Claim to be some kind of guru or expert
• Accept guest posts from other writers

The first point is probably the most important because your blog is nothing without your content, so what you don’t publish is just as important as what you do. There are tons of blogs in the marketing space that cover news far better than I could. Similarly, in regards to point four, there are lots of blogs that will write quick tips to help you get the information you want fast.

I believe I could have had success in either of these routes too, if that’s the angle I wanted to take.

I don’t think using affiliate links would have hindered my growth at all, but it is something that makes me stand out in an industry where everyone is looking to get-rich-quick from their audience. The reason I don’t use affiliate links is simply because I want people to be able to trust my suggestions without thinking I’m just doing it for the money. This leads back to my core focus which I mention later in this article.

Is there anything you could stop doing that would help your blog grow? Have a think about that one.

Put Yourself Into Your Work

Every unique feature I implement in a blog design tends to get copied. Do you see the RSS section in the top of the right sidebar here? Those exact images (some of which I made myself) were saved by a blogger and added to their own sidebar without even changing the file-name to make it less obvious. They aren’t just a small blog either; they have over 1,000 subscribers.

My yellow “connect” section at the bottom of all posts – with custom “Tweet?” icon – was also directly copied by someone who regularly comments here and writes about making money online. And, since I started using the “little white men” in my post graphics I have started to see them all over the blogosphere.

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery so I’m not going to hold any grudges. The point I am making with this though – and the point that most bloggers miss – is that these things are not what make me successful. They’re just one example of me putting my ideas and my creativity into the finished result of this blog.

Hopefully for a while I’ll still be the only blogger with an about page titled “What the F***?” .

It’s not just my design where I try to do things a bit differently; there’s a lot about my content that you won’t find on other blogs. It’s fairly obvious that I write very long, in-depth posts so those help me to stand out in the internet marketing space as that’s quite rare. I’ll also only publish something if I’m really happy with it. I’ve deleted numerous 2,000+ word posts because they didn’t meet my quality criteria.

I don’t think that long posts are what make this blog successful; it’s more that I’m doing something different and providing value to people who want information packaged like that. I promise there are more non-readers than readers who would never want to read content this long. The key to my content, in my opinion, is that I write in a very personal style.

My excessive use of “I” and “me” aren’t to satisfy my ego, but because everything on this site is from personal experience. I only blog for one person, and that’s you. The conversational style of writing is very easy for me and I like reading posts in this way, so that’s why I write them. There’s nothing more to it than that.

Although I would love to have this skill, I can’t tell you how to put yourself into your work. That’s because if I did, then it wouldn’t be you. Don’t be afraid to show the real you in your design, your writing style, or the way you connect with your readers and your industry online.

Some people might not like how you express yourself, but you’ll maintain a greater connection with those who do.

Stay Humble, But Think Big

If you read the bullet-points further up you’ll notice that one of them said “Claim I’m a guru or expert.” You won’t be able to find one sentence in the 70,000+ words I’ve written here that even hints at the idea. Other people may think of me as one, and that’s not a bad thing, but when you get to the point where you start thinking of yourself as one then a few things start to happen:

• You’re too worried about taking risks in-case they fail publicly
• You make it much harder for people to connect with your writing
• You put a divider between yourself and your audience, which is never a good thing

I remember reading an interview with actress Jennifer Garner where she was asked how she feels about all of the praise that she gets. Her response was something along the lines of: “I don’t listen to the good stuff because then I’d have to take in all the bad stuff too.”

I try never to put people on a pedestal because at the end of the day, we’re all just humans. It’s this mindset that will help you to never put yourself on a pedestal ether. Nobody is really “better” than somebody else. When I was in Amsterdam I met two of the girls from my favourite TV show in the UK, Hollyoaks (very blurry pic). I just joked around with them like I would any other girls and I could tell they actually appreciated it.

Yet, just because you are “just another human,” it doesn’t mean you can’t achieve very big things. I hid my age online for a few years because I thought it would hinder me from getting internet marketing clients, but I didn’t let my age stop me from thinking I could make thousands of dollars per month helping companies succeed online.

If you’ve been following this journey from the start then you’ll know that ViperChill is just a case study to show you what is possible. I didn’t specifically aim to grow this blog so fast so quickly, but I knew I could do it because I think big and work hard.

“If you think you can or you can’t, you’re right” – Henry Ford

Remember in the intro I mentioned how I was writing that sentence in March? It’s not a lie. I simply had the belief that this site would grow to a large size, even before I was half way there.

I didn’t get lucky on the way or have some famous blogger teacher me the ropes. I simply thunk (thunk should totally be a word) big, knew what I needed to do, and started doing it. We aren’t cut from a different cloth so there’s no reason you can’t do exactly the same.

Photo Credit

Be Selective About How You Spend Your Time

Although ViperChill is now one of the biggest internet marketing blogs in the world, it’s really towards the back of my mind in terms of priorities. I love writing here and I love seeing the audience grow, but I spend only one or two days per week actually doing anything for the site.

My other activities – buying and building niche websites – simply takes up far too much of my time. It’s how I make my living, so I need to dedicate most of my attention to it. Because I only spend a few hours per week working on this site, I have to be very selective about how I do spend my time.

The most important thing I can do, by far, is work on writing an article. That is what keeps the blog going and it is the reason I have almost 12,000 subscribers in the first place. Everything besides this is secondary. I’ve had to make my contact page pretty uninviting because I was spending so much time answering emails that I never had the chance to even write posts.

Besides writing posts, the second most important thing to me is participating in the conversation. I’ll always personally reply to at least 30-40 comments on each post (sometimes 100+) because I believe that if people take the time to comment then they deserve the time for me to give a response.

If I had more time I would be more active on services like Twitter, leave comments on other blogs and try to build better relationships with readers, but right now my schedule just doesn’t allow that.

If I only gave you 5 hours per week to work on your blog, what would you spend it doing? With that question your mind should instantly zone in on the things that you believe are important to your blogs’ growth. If you aren’t spending most of your time doing those things, and instead spending more time on sites like Twitter, then maybe it’s time to change things around.

Have a Clear Focus on How You Want to Help People

As I’ve mentioned in a few posts: I only write on topics I want to read about personally and I will write as much as it takes to really cover a topic in-depth. Although I do only write on subjects that pass my personal interests, I do have a clear focus which helps me dictate the direction my posts go in.

My goal with this website is to help people make money online and build remarkable websites. You can view them as one thing or you can view them separately. Either way, the vast majority of posts are written with this aim in mind. I’m telling you this because I think it’s very important that you have your own focus as well.

• Do you want to make people laugh?
• Do you want to help people get out of debt?
• Do you want to keep people up to date on news in the X industry?
• Are you going to try and give the best stock picks?

Whatever it is that you blog about, it’s very useful to know what it is that you want to help people with. This simple vision will help you flesh out all posts, come up with new ideas, and find the right audience for your blog.

I don’t even think good blogging advice anymore is to “pick the right niche”. I think “know how you want to help people” is far more effective.

Thank You!

The only reason I can say I have over 10,000 subscribers is because you guys took the time out to subscribe (it’s free!) to the RSS feed. I sold PluginID when it reached 6,500 subscribers so I’ve never grown a blog to this level before and therefore I’m really excited about the future.  Although there have been quite a few haters on this journey and I’m sure there will be many more, the support I’ve received from you all has been amazing and it’s the reason I keep coming back with new articles.

I hope I’ve gave something back with the articles I’ve posted recently; especially with this one. I didn’t want to overlap ideas and I think it fits in nicely with the post on growing PluginID to 6,500 readers. Although I simply can’t reply to all emails, I do make sure I read every single comment and will continue to do so, so please keep them coming.

It has been a fun nine months. Thanks for joining me on the ride!

P.S. If you’re reading this in Google reader, could you please click the ‘like’ button just below this sentence? I’m running a test and curious about the results (which I will share here).

Simply put, compared to other traffic sources, StumbleUpon is terrible. However, because the service sends so much traffic, even leveraging just a small percentage can see a decent increase in your comment count and subscriber numbers. Today I’m going to give an in-depth guide to the service and then give my tactics for getting the most out of it.

StumbleUpon Basics

StumbleUpon is a system that allows you to find new and interesting websites based around your favourite subjects. The more you use the service, the more the system “learns” about your interests which in-turn provides you with more relevant, fascinating content.

This is very different to the usual method of finding news by going to your favourite blogs or entering a search query into a major search engine. Here you’ll find content from all over the web which you know other people have enjoyed, so it can lead to some great discoveries. With StumbleUpon, it’s all about the users and the content that the community enjoys.

How to Use the Service

Traditionally, StumbleUpon utilises a toolbar that you install in a browser such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. More recently however, they have came up with a toolbar that you don’t need to install, which shows at the top of the pages you are viewing.

I prefer using the toolbar option as you can customise it and it doesn’t take up any additional screen space. Here’s how it looks (note that my version has been tweaked based on my preferences):

The three main buttons that you should be aware of here are the ‘Stumble’ button and the up and down thumbs. The Stumble button will load a new page in your browser that is based around your interests. The thumbs up button signifies that you like the page and of course the down thumb signifies that you don’t like it.

There are two aspects of this thumbing up and down that affect the system. The first aspect is that StumbleUpon learns about what type of content you like and what you don’t, and then tries to show you more of what you do like when you click Stumble. The other use of the ‘thumbs up’ button is that StumbleUpon tend to show that page to more people if a lot of people are enjoying the content of that page.

With over 10 million active users on the site there is a lot of potential for certain content to get viewed thousands of times. In fact, I had a blog post I wrote for DumbLittleMan receive over 100,000 views from the service. Instead of trying to explain how the system works in just text, I’ve created this small graphic that should help to clear things up:

Becoming an Active User

If you’ve never used StumbleUpon before, let me warn you now that the service can become very addictive and a huge drain on your time. In fact, images that have said “Stop Using StumbleUpon” and shown up while browsing with the toolbar have become a thing of humour because people know how fun the service can be.

The following points are applicable whether you are just starting out in the service, whether you’ve used it and want to get more out of it or you’re an internet marketer looking for more website traffic. Either way, it’s good to take full advantage of all the features available and become a genuine, helpful user of the community.

Define Your Interests

When you sign-up to StumbleUpon you will be asked what topics you are interested in. Of course, it’s important that you select subjects which you are actually interested in so that you’re shown content that you care about you when using the toolbar. When I signed up I entered ‘web development’, ‘internet’ and ’self improvement’ as my favourite topics.

Although StumbleUpon will “learn” about your interests based on your usage of the service, it’s still good to pick topics that you’re highly interested in so you’re not just shown random content when you start using it.

Choose a Profile Picture

No matter what your reasons for using the service are, I believe everyone should at least take a minute to update their profile with a picture (also known as an avatar). Your profile picture will of course show on your profile, but it will also show on any pages where you have reviewed content and it may show on review pages which show users who ‘thumbed up’ content.

In other words, your avatar is going to be seen in a lot of places on the service so pick something memorable. Here are some examples of popular avatars in the social media space:

It is up to you whether you want to use an ‘avatar’ style picture like this or a picture of your face. Both are acceptable and about as popular as each other.

Fill Out Your Bio

Every user on StumbleUpon gets their own profile page which they can customise. Yours will be located at http://StumbleUpon.com/stumbler/username/ (of course, substituting username for whatever username you chose). Your description is there simply to tell the world a bit about yourself. I recommend that you fill this with relevant, honest information, so if people like your Stumbles then they can find out more about you.

Here is a slightly crazy but very honest bio from one of the top users of the site:

A nice touch in the description section is that you can add a link to other websites so other users may check out the links to see what you are about. I’ve made some great relationships through StumbleUpon and turned many of my ‘friends’ on the site into blog subscribers and Twitter followers.

Add People to Follow

I’ve already mentioned that when you sign-up to StumbleUpon you get to pick your favourite interests which StumbleUpon will use to show you relevant content anytime you click the Stumble button. The Stumble button is not the only way to find great content on the site though. You can also find it via your connections.

When you Stumble upon a page, you will be able to see the user who submitted it via the toolbar like so:

If you like what they are submitting you can both add them as a friend and subscribe to their submissions. This means that when you go to your home page on the site then you will see all the recent reviews by your friends. My own profile has 41 people subscribed to my updates.

Note: I have not used the service as a normal user (at least on the ViperChill account) for a long time, though I am going to get back into it. You don’t need to be an active user of the service in order to get a lot of traffic to your website.

Create Your Own Shortcuts

Once you start really getting into the site, you’ll notice that you want to speed up certain aspects of the features available. My current set-up (for the browser extension) is as follows:

• I let Stumbleupon prefetch the pages it is going to show me
• If I click ‘Thumbs Down’ then it automatically loads a new page
• CTRL + Left Arrow on my keyboard shows a new page (Stumble Button)
• CTRL + Up Arrow on my keyboard gives a page a thumbs up
• CTRL + Down Arrow on my keyboard gives the page a thumbs down

This means that I can browse around and find great new content without having to keep clicking on the toolbar with my mouse. You can change your shortcuts by going to Tools >> Toolbar Options >> Shortcuts. If you like the idea of auto loading a new page when you click the down or up thumb then you can change that in the configuration tab.

Getting Traffic from StumbleUpon

If you are not a webmaster and simply want to find awesome content, then the information above should be more than enough for you to get started. However, this is an internet marketing blog after-all, and StumbleUpon happens to be one of the easiest ways to get thousands of eyeballs on your content.

StumbleUpon is known to have the ability to send a flood of traffic to a page in the span of just a few hours. I remember the days when traffic from the service would only have a 30% bounce rate, and while it’s around 80% now, a percentage of visitors still leave comments and sign-up to your RSS feed which is what most people want them to do.

Though the 12,000 visitors ViperChill received from StumbleUpon last month is tiny compared to months where I’ve received over 100,000+ visitors from the service, I thought I would just show some proof of that traffic:

In the early days of StumbleUpon, being one of their “power users” helped you massively in getting traffic to a page. In fact, I could pretty much guarantee that any page I promoted would receive thousands of visitors. If you had a large network on the site you could also use their ‘Send to’ feature to share a page with all of your friends and get more traffic that way.

Nowadays, the power of your profile has very little (if anything at all) to do with getting traffic from the toolbar. It’s all about the content – which is great for you and me.

Write Creative Titles

Although your content should be good, it isn’t nearly as important as the headline it’s wrapped in. The title of your article or blog post is the first thing people see so if it doesn’t entice them to read on then they aren’t going to review or thumb-up your content which would send you more traffic.

The types of titles that work well on StumbleUpon include:

• List / Resource Posts
• Something that is humorous
• Something that is relevant and fills a need
• Something that is shocking and against the norm

A title like ‘Some snails in London get painted’ is nowhere near as interesting as ‘Graffiti Artist Uses Snails as His Canvas’ which was in fact an article which received thousands of views. Of course, don’t write a great title if you don’t have the relevant content to back it up. Just remember that the title is without a doubt the most important factor of whether people will read your content or not.

Want proof? Look at the top rated pages in any category and they will all have great titles. Or, test it out for yourself. Dragos is a great example of someone who knows exactly what the StumbleUpon audience wants — just check out the post titles in his sidebar.

Create Viral Images or Videos

Text isn’t the only type of content that works well on StumbleUpon. For a while in 2008 I ran a demotivational pictures blog and each day I would receive thousands of visitors from the toolbar. Don’t forget that most StumbleUpon users are just browsing around the web, looking for something interesting. Pictures and videos are great ways to catch their attention.

It’s important to note that while images or videos can be great at getting a surge in traffic from the site, it’s far less likely to convert in a way you want it to compared to text content. Unless of course, you’re trying to increase the view count of your videos.

Enter Relevant Submission Information

It’s important that you do not simply keep submitting your own content to the site as I’ve noticed a lot of people do as this is a fast-track way to get your account banned or have your site banned. Even a huge blog like ProBlogger was removed from the service and while the domain was allowed back into the system after a huge uproar, it does show that nobody is exempt from their heavy hand.

You can submit a new page to the system by simply clicking ‘I like it’ and if the page has not been discovered before, a pop-up box like this one below will appear:

If the title of the current article is catchy then leave it; otherwise you can tweak it to help the page get more views. For a description I sometimes just copy the introduction of the article, or you can write your own short review. It’s important that you pick an appropriate category for the submission. If you choose a sports category for a financial article, nobody who it is shown to is going to like it and it will quickly drop out of the queue.

Send the Page via a Re-Direct

I mentioned earlier that it is no longer effective to send a page to all of your friends and ask them for a Stumble. In the past this kind of activity would guarantee you thousands of visitors but now it is rarely the case. If you do want to share a StumbleUpon link with lots of people I’ve found it to be more effective to use a re-direct like this:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/click_redir.php?t=49e34c6117e3f&src=url&u=YOURURLGOESHERE

This reason this works is that StumbleUpon can tell whether you just landed on a page directly and clicked Stumble or they actually showed you the page via the toolbar (much more natural) and you voted for it that way. However if you go through the re-direct – or keep stumbling and land on a page and vote for it – it looks a lot more natural and like a genuine recommendation.

Clean Up Your Site

One thing many people forget about receiving traffic from any site is that by nature, you’re going to turn people away if your site is overloaded with ads, pop-ups, or anything else that deters from your main content. The design of ViperChill is very minimalist because I either want people to subscribe to the RSS feed here or view the content clearly. That’s it.

The attention span of StumbleUpon users is very short so if they can’t see your headline and your post straight away, there’s a very good chance they’re just going to move on to the next article. Getting StumbleUpon visitors to stick around on your site is hard enough so don’t make things harder for yourself with a cluttered website.

Look at What Is Hot

A good way to get traffic from any social media website is to look at what is hot and is working well in that specific community. It makes sense that if you find out what people on a certain website and send them more of it, they are going to stick around on your site as well.

A good way to check what is hot on StumbleUpon is to check the top rated pages for each category. As an example, ViperChill is in the Internet Marketing niche so I would look at the StumbleUpon “hot” page for internet marketing, which you can find here. I can see articles on this topic that have received thousands of visitors from the site which could possibly give me inspiration for future posts

When I was writing for PluginID, I actually had 3 of the most popular self improvement articles ever written on StumbleUpon, all receiving over 50,000 visitors from the service. The number one thing that worked for me was simply writing great articles with even better headlines.

The rest of the advice here may be secondary to that, but don’t overlook it.