Yep, this is officially my 100th post on the Smart Passive Income Blog! It’s come so much faster than I thought it would, and I think that’s because I’m having a lot of fun writing for all of you. Your kind comments and frequent questions keep me motivated to provide you with interesting and helpful posts, so keep ‘em coming!
Since I know most of you are current or future bloggers, I thought I’d give you 5 free and random tips that I’ve learned since I started this blog 100 posts ago. You may know some of these already, but if not – all the better. Enjoy!
Free Tip #1: How to Shorten, Hide and Track Clicks for Your Affiliate Links
My new favorite tool is from a website called Budurl. You may recognize budurl links from other websites or from twitter too.
At budurl, you can shorten any website address AND track how many clicks it gets. You can also create notes for each link, so you can remember where you placed the link. Here’s how this can help you:
Say you have a super long link: http://www.internetbusinessmastery.com/cmd.php?af=866217
With budurl, it turns into this: http://budurl.com/8y8x
You can then keep track on your budurl account homepage, seen here:
If you had another website, you could create another budurl for the same link, put a different note on it, and test to see which one performs better. The power behind this is enourmous – testing different placings and ad copy to help maximize your clickage and earnings. Awesome.
Another cool think about this is that it “hides” the link. Looking at the super long link from above, you can tell it’s an affiliate link from the numbers at the end, and sometimes this turns people off because they think you’re just trying to earn an extra buck from them.
Oh, and it’s free. (There is an option to pay to get more data, which seems interesting too…)
Free Tip #2: See Who Is Linking To Your Website
I’m always curious to see who is linking to my websites, and I’m sure you’re no different. There’s an easy way to check your “backlinks” using a service from Backlinkwatch.com.
Just type in your website url and it spits out every website that links to you. It’s nice because it feeds you urls that you can easily click on so you can check out your link on those pages. Pretty cool!
Backlinks are important because they do help your search engine rankings. This is why it’s vital that you fill out the text field that asks for your website url when you’re commenting on other people’s blogs. They do count as backlinks most of the time, and will show up in your backlinkwatch report.
Again, it’s free.
Free Tip #3: Don’t Be “This” Guy
Who am I talking about? This guy:
…or in the case of this website, this thing:
Where is this found? In the comments section of lots of blogs, including this one. If you leave comments and you’ve never set up a Gravatar, these are the usual default pictures that come up next to your name.
It may not be a big deal to you, but a cool or professional looking Gravatar could earn you some more clicks to your blog and it adds a little more personality to your comments too.
If you don’t have one setup, don’t worry – it’s easy and free. Just go to the Gravatar website, link a picture to your email address, and you’re all set. Everytime you leave a comment that uses Gravatars, you’ll no longer be considered a Newb…hehe!
Free Tip # 4: A Small Thing To Upgrade Your Website, Bigtime
Have you ever heard of a favicon? It’s the little icon that appears on your web browser, sometimes right next to the web address or on the tab of the webpages you have open:
If you don’t have a favicon for your website, it will just look like this:
Having a favicon is a quick and easy way to make your website look much more professional.
So, how do you make one? It’s easy. You can create one by going to my favorite favicon generator, and playing around with the drawing template or by uploading your own picture. It may take a bit of practice before you get one that looks good to you, but just follow the instructions and in no time, your website icon is no longer a blank piece of paper.
Free Tip # 5: Free Pictures!
It’s by personal preference, but I choose to put pictures onto every post on SPI. I use stockphoto from iStockPhoto.com, which you have to pay for, but you can get quality pictures for free by utilizing the creative commons license.
Flickr has a cool section that will show you which pictures you can use freely, based on how you will use them. You can check out the Flickr Creative Commons page to search photos and read about the different licenses, which I’ll show you below. You will have to credit each photo that you use, which is the least you can do as a thanks for using other people’s photos.
Thanks!
I just wanted to say thanks to all of you for your support. Here’s to another 100 posts! Cheers!
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{ 23 comments (Click Here to Leave a Comment Below) }
First congrats on 100 posts! I love hitting milestones– I actually hit 550 posts on DDFD just yesterday (The 550th Post: Top 10 Most Popular Posts http://divorceddadfrugaldad.com/2009/05/20/the-550th-post-top-10-most-popular-posts.aspx).
This is probably your best and most helpful post yet! It hit me at just the right time too. I am trying to add some upgrades and finishing touches to my DDFD blog and launch a new one (a niche blog as opposed to my general frugal lifestyle blog) in the next few days (I was up until 2:00 AM last night working on the new one).
Thanks again, and get on posting!
Those were some helpful tips. I’m going to start using Budurl and I just ran a couple of my sites through Backlinkwatch.
For picutes I like to use the PhotoDropper addon for Wordpress. It is really easy to use which is helpful to me since I’m not very tech-savvy.
Congrats on your 100th post, Pat! Nice set of tips here.
Way to go on the #100 post! I am sure you will be at 1,000 before you know it. All of those points are things that I added (although my favicon is broken right now) to PFI within the last few months. Would have been nice to have this post back then as a reference.
Congrats Pat!!! Just love the content on your Blog especially this post.
Keep up the great work!
…and here’s to another 100 …nah, make it 1000
Thanks for your useful,in-depth and encouraging posts.
take care…
Congratulations on your 100th post! Thanks for the tips. I’m going to take a look at backlinkwatch, I’ve already taken care of the gravatar and favicon for my site.
This site is awesome! Also check out Backtype.com cool tool. Thanks for following me on Twitter, I will be back to this informative blog, worthy of the time to read, learn and act upon.
Congrats Pat, 100 Really interesting, helpful posts. Keep up the good work, passive income is for sure the best income we can have.
Thanks for all the unique information
I really had fun with backlinkwatch. Thanks so much.
Try BackLinkStat.com – detailed backlinks report of your site for FREE!
Congrats on your 100th post Pat! I’m really impressed with your success with this blog. I had never heard of backlinkwatch or favicon, great tips. I’m working on building backlinks now. I try to gain one new backlink each day on my journey to $100 per day in residual income. Once again thanks for the tips, I wish you the best!
Once again, everything I wondered about!
Thank you
Pat,
Perusing your archives to find bits of gold! Thanks for these tips – even though they’re 9 months old (eons in internet time) there are a couple new ones for me.
And the gravitar bit… well, turns out I had signed up God knows when, but never activated it… we’ll see if it works!
Best,
David
Hello, how are you doing today? Thanks for this good stuff. I am looking for some help from your blog as I learn how to earn extra money at home.
Thanks for the tip about the Gravatar Pat. That was one of those things I had always wondered about but never took the time to research.
Thanks for the wonderful post. this trick are needed by most bloggers. i also have to implement some of them on my blog.
Awesome post
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Interesting and really very true. Bookmarked.
Thank you for these great tips! I went and created a Gravatar as soon as I saw this post, and I feel that it makes a difference. I definitely feel like less of a troll, which is good because I’m not one! One issue I found trying to create a favicon is that my computer does not support ico files, is there any way around this? Thank you again, your information is always a great resource.
I like the valuable info you provide in your articles. I’ll bookmark your blog and check again here frequently. I’m quite sure I’ll learn plenty of new stuff right here! Best of luck for the next!
Well, I did not certainly know about this Gravatar thing, I just set it up to see if it works.
Thanks for the tips PAT,
Luis Posselt