What are MFA sites?

Do you have AdSense ads on your blog? Have you heard about MFA sites? MFA stands for "Made for AdSense". These sites are generally created with only one purpose in mind; to make money from Google AdSense. At first that seems like a fair way to make some money but there's more to it than that. The problem with MFAs is that the sites are usually useless to vistors. They may have some illegaly scraped content from other sites but the main intent is to trick people into visiting the site so they can click on more AdSense ads.

By doing this they drive up ad costs for legitimate advertisers and hurt the image of AdSense ads which makes people less likely to click them. You would think Google would be more sensitive to this. After all, the guiding principal behind the updates to their Search Engine placement algorithims is that the more accurate and useful the search results are to visitors, the more likely people will stick with Google for their searching.

The reason MFA ads do well is that AdSense uses a system that factors high clickthrough rates (CTR) along with the cost of an ad. So, if an MFA has a more attarctive ad and it gets clicked more often, it will appear before higher cost ads for legitimate sites. Some MFAs will game the system by initially bidding high for their keywords when first running their ads to try to get good placement and then when their CTR is high they lower their bids and, because AdSense factors in CTR, their ads keep their high positions.

There is currently a lot of talk about AdSense publishers blocking MFAs from their sites. Anecdotal evidence suggests that banning MFAs can increase income. This may be due to the fact that MFA ads tend to be low paying but I also get the feeling that if a visitor to your site clicks on an AdSense ad and is sent to a useless site they may decide not to click on anymore of your ads the next time they visit your site.

Google obviously needs to figure out that AdSense and searches do not benefit from the same rules. CTR may be useful in detrmining value in the search arena but it can falsely promote shill sites in the PPC arena. Maybe once Yahoo and MSN get their PPC systems rolled out Google will pay more attention to the problems with AdSense and MFAs and clean up the system.

Blogging shirts

I found this blog entry today with a collection of t-shirts for bloggers. They're a fun way to let everyone know how obsessed you are about your blog.

Check them out here: T-shirts for Bloggers

Driving Traffic to Your Blog

16 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

by Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff
You've got your blog set up and you've started posting pithy, useful information that your niche market would benefit from and enjoy. Days go by, you keep publishing, but no one comments and your traffic stats are barely registering. What do you do?

Like any website you own, you must do some blog promotion to start driving traffic to your site. Here are 16 steps, in no particular order of importance, that you can start doing now to get traffic moving to your blog.

1. Set up a Bloglet subscription form on your blog and invite everyone in your network to subscribe: family, friends, colleagues, clients, associates.

Http://www.bloglet.com

2. Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your site gets regularly spidered by the Yahoo search engine (see tutorial on http://www.biztipsblog.com)

http://www.my.yahoo.com

3. Read and comment on other blogs that are in your target niche. Don't write things like "nice blog" or "great post." Write intelligent, useful comments with a link to your blog.

4. Use Ping-0-matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish.

http://www.pingomatic.com

5. Submit your blog to traditional search engines: http://www.submitfire.com

6. Submit your blog to blog directories. The most comprehensive list of directories is on this site:

http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Tip: Create a form to track your submissions; this can take several hours when you first start so schedule an hour a day for submitting or hire a VA to do it for you.

7. Add a link to your blog in your email signature file.

8. Put a link to your blog on every page of your website.

9. If you publish a newsletter, make sure you have a link to your blog in every issue.

10. Include a link to your blog as a standard part of all outgoing correspondence such as autoresponder sequences, sales letters, reports, white papers, etc.

11. Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures and flyers.

12. Make sure you have an RSS feed URL that people can subscribe to. The acronym RSS means Rich Site Summary, or some may consider its meaning as Really Simple Syndication. It is a document type that lists updates of websites or blogs available for syndication. These RSS documents (also known as 'feeds') may be read using aggregators (news readers). RSS feeds may show headlines only or both headlines and summaries.

To learn how news aggregators/RSS readers work, see this site: http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-readers.htm

13. Post often to keep attracting your subscribers to come back and refer you to others in their networks; include links to other blogs, articles and websites in your posts

14. Use Trackback links when you quote or refer to other blog posts. What is TrackBack? Essentially what this does is send a message from one server to another server letting it know you have posted a reference to their post. The beauty is that a link to your blog is now included on their site.

15. Write articles to post around the web in article directories. Include a link to your blog in the author info box (See example in our signature below).

16. Make a commitment to blog everyday. 10 minutes a day can help increase your traffic as new content attracts search engine spiders. Put it on your calendar as a task every day at the same time.

Tip: Use a hit counter to track your visitor stats: how many unique visitors, how many page views, average length of visit. You can get a free hit counter* at http://www.sitemeter.com

Denise Wakeman of Next Level Partnership, and Patsi Krakoff of Customized Newsletter Services, have teamed up to create blogging classes and marketing services for independent professionals. You can read and subscribe to their blogs at http://www.biztipsblog.com, http://www.coachezines.com and http://www.bizbooknuggets.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Denise_Wakeman

*Editors note: I personally use StatCounter for free traffic statistics.

Blogging: The New Exhibitionism

by Advice Diva
By now most of you have heard of the new internet superhighway craze called blogging. If you are not the most computer savvy person in the world, don’t worry, you don’t have to be. Everyone is blogging these days from the techno-chic to the cyber-geek, from the carpooling soccer mom to your own children in grade school.

For you first timers out there, a blog is a weblog. A weblog is an online diary or journal in which you may write your daily thoughts and ideas in. You can decide to keep a blog private, announce your name, let whoever you want read it or allow only particular people to view it. There are oodles of websites out there dedicated to servicing blogs and the majority of them are free. You just sign up and voila: you have your very own blog with your own web address where you can feel free to write whenever you want and as much as you want.

Blogs are used for a variety of reasons. Scores of small businesses are now finding blogging to be very useful as a free form of advertising for their own company. Many people use blogging as a convenient way of keeping a diary since they spend so much time on the computer at work. I have bumped into countless cubicle moaning blogs online. Aspiring writers are utilizing weblogs as a way to show off their work and gain free critiques. Perhaps the most interesting use of blogs, and which is by far the most popular, would be the personal blogs of sexual orientation and desire.

Since blogs are normally private in nature, people are rapidly finding out that blogging is a great way to share your dirtiest thoughts and secret fantasies with the rest of the world. This way, people are finding it much easier to find other like minded individuals in a very upfront way.

Most importantly, they have a new venue to express sexual thoughts openly, without being censured and without feeling vulnerable. These weblogs are usually very private with only an email address so that interested viewers can contact them. Some do not even include an email address but have an online chat box installed instead for even more privacy. Most all weblogs have the ability for any reader to post a response to a particular blog entry online. With all of this confidentiality, the once shy and lonely individual feels more willing to come out of the closet and be a shameless exhibitionist of sex and promiscuity. People now have a way to articulate themselves sexually even if they are the sheltered type.

Some webloggers create sites to explain their sexual curiosities. Some dictate their favorite wild and crazy fantasies. Others even go so far as to post nude and erotic pictures of themselves alone or with partners. Much of the time, you come across the usual gratuitous pornography.

Absolutely anything goes on your own online blog. There is no censorship and no mediator telling you what you can and cannot write. I came across a fabulous personal blog recently written by a very young and very beautiful woman. Her blog became a source of power for her. She is a dominating sort of woman who enjoys being a master to her male slaves. In her blog, she assumes the role of a Goddess and encourages very submissive males to beg for her affections and even send her gifts. And with the sexy revealing pictures she likes to post, her response is phenomenal. She might not have been able to express this sexual nature so powerfully without the help of the blog, especially at such a young age.

I can feel you asking now, “Is this a good thing”? The answer is: Absolutely! The more you are able to express yourself (in any sphere of interest), the better you can express yourself to others.

Many people fear expressing their sexual thoughts and ideas to others thereby preventing their own true happiness. The desires stay bottled up with nowhere to go. These blogs provide a way for the inhibited person to say what they really want to say. Once they can get it out somewhere, even if it is written online, they stand a better chance of relating these ideas to other people.

For questions and comments contact The Advice Diva at: thediva@advicediva.com
Please visit http://www.advicediva.com for more articles by the Diva

The Advice Diva has written three self-help guides on relationships and dating which can be found at http://www.advicediva.com She also hosts an online advice column which is completely free of charge. The Diva does not claim to be an expert in any field. However, she has the ability to understand relationhips through past experience and her incredible insight. Aside from her website, the Diva also publishes monthly articles in two magazines and several notable websites.