Jun
22
2008
Welcome to the June 22, 2008 edition of Virtual Assistant/Home Business Blog Carnival.
John W. Furst presents Take Action: Save The Internet - We Cannot Afford To Lose It posted at E-Biz Booster Blog, saying, “Your Internet based business might be in great danger. You must support net neutrality… Show that democracy works!”
Jose DeJesus MD presents Successful Business Networking posted at Physician Entrepreneur.
Michel Fortin presents Apply The Law of Contrast to Build Desire posted at The Michel Fortin Blog.
Body For Life Results presents What Is The Real Purpose Of A Business Blog? posted at No More Compromise.
Jennifer Naughton presents Outsourcing your HR department to a VA posted at Jennifer Naughton — Virtual Assistant, saying, “Hi Amanda, here is my submission for this week!”
Janet Barclay presents The Wonderful World of Social Networks posted at From the Desk of Janet Barclay.
Diego Norte presents Your First Product posted at Internet Business 101.
Wilfrid presents What is LiveOps? Work at Home Call Center Company Profile posted at Your Finish Rich Plan.
Heather Johnson presents How to Spice Up a Presentation posted at Corporate Training & e-Learning Blog.
Erek Ostrowski presents Becoming a Smooth Operator (Documenting Operational Protocols for Your Small Business) posted at Verve Coaching, saying, “While the ability to think on your feet is incredibly important for putting out fires and making good short-term decisions, the long-term sustainability of your business depends on consistently and correctly doing the work that needs to be done, and doing it how and when it needs to be done.”
Raymond presents Cheap and Affordable Ways To Create A Virtual Office For Your Small Home Business posted at Money Blue Book.
That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of the Virtual Assistant/Home Business Blog Carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.
Jun
15
2008
Welcome to the June 15, 2008 edition of the Virtual Assistant/Home Business Blog Carnival. We received a ton of entries this week, unfortunately several were unable to be included for various reasons. But, we still have a great carnival for you this week so hopefully you enjoy!
Steve Oliphant presents Free Backlinks! Woo Hoo! posted at Steve Oliphant’s Musings.
Patrick Schwerdtfeger presents How I use Twitter and Utterz posted at Tactical Execution, saying, “This post describes how you can use free micro-blogging platforms like Twitter and Utterz to build a following and push value to your audience, all without leaving home.”
Webmaster_1 presents Avoiding Make Money From Home Scams posted at The Entrepreneurs Online Magazine, saying, “Tips on how to avoid money making schemes”
Diego Norte presents Internet Business 101 posted at Internet Business 101.
Jose DeJesus MD presents Business Startup - Testing Your Idea and Yourself posted at Physician Entrepreneur.
Steve Faber presents The Steps to Starting an Internet Business posted at Home Based Business Success.
Laurie presents Law Practice and Life Balance posted at Halo Secretarial Services.
Fiona Lohrenz presents Why Your Day Care Needs A Website posted at Child Care Only.
Social D presents Social Marketing Traffic Experiment Updated Results Video posted at Social Networking Bookmark Domination.
Jose DeJesus MD presents Business Document Resource posted at Physician Entrepreneur.
Janet Barclay presents Keeping Track of All Those Blogs posted at From the Desk of Janet Barclay.
Tammi Metzler presents My journey from full-time employee to full-time entrepreneur posted at Writeassociate’s Weblog.
Jennifer Naughton presents Day One Of A New Life posted at Jennifer Naughton — Virtual Assistant.
Mary Havlicek presents I’ve Got Spirit, How ‘Bout You? posted at Hours by Design.
Raymond presents Internet Service Is More Important To Me Than Phone or Cable TV posted at Money Blue Book.
Amanda Moore presents 10-Second Must-do SEO for Bloggers posted at AMVA - Amanda Moore Virtual Assistant.
SJ Yee presents On Becoming A Full-Time Blogger/Internet Marketer posted at Personal Development for the Book Smart.
Mark Riffey presents Who has time for marketing? posted at Business is Personal.
Jimmy Sansi presents A Big List For Improving Article Marketing posted at The Kaizen Business.
That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Virtual Assistant/Home Business Blog Carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.
Jun
12
2008
Anyone who wants to participate in this week’s Virtual Assistant/Home Business Blog Carnival needs to submit their post by Saturday afternoon. You can use this link to submit: http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_4185.html. The new Carnival will go up on Sunday.
If you want to participate and ensure a good result it’s *really* helpful if you post a link to the carnival on your blog ASAP after it’s up. The whole point of a carnival is to share traffic with the other participants, so please make sure you’re giving as well as receiving.
Let me know if you have any questions!
Jun
07
2008
Submitting to Carnivals can be time consuming, but if you set up a system, you can do it all in just a few minutes. Here’s my system for Quick and Dirty blog carnival submissions:
- Go to the Blog Carnival website and look at their list of available Carnivals. You’ll notice that there are dozens of Carnivals to choose from. You could theoretically submit to them all, but that would be a waste of time so instead you…
- Sort the list by Latest Edition. This will tell you which Carnivals are actually active. Then, you want to scan down the list for Carnivals that are appropriate for the specific post you’re submitting. If you are submitting a post about SEO and How to Increase Page Rank, you don’t want to submit to the Canine Carnival. That’s just a waste of everyone’s time.
- Open the Carnivals that look like they’re appropriate for your post. The best way to do this is just hold the Ctrl button and click on the link. This will open the page in a new tab. Do this for all of the Carnivals that look interesting and have been published in the last 2 months.
- Re-sort the list by Next Edition. This will catch the carnivals that only publish on a quarterly (or longer) basis. Repeat step 3 above.
- Read the Carnival Summary. This is important. Sometimes, from the name, you’ll think the Carnival is about one thing when it’s really about something completely different. If it’s not appropriate to your post, don’t submit your article.
- Submit your post to the first Carnival only. If you’ve read the summary and you think that your post is appropriate for the Carnival, go ahead and click on the Submit An Article button on the left side. Now here’s the important part: before you submit any posts, bookmark the submission page. This will make it much easier in the future when you want to submit again. Fill in the information with the appropriate permalink and your contact information and hit submit. Don’t forget to include strong remarks as that’s what will get many people to read your post before others.
- Submit your post to all of the other Carnivals. By completing the entire submission process with the first Carnival, you’ve just decreased your work because now certain information will pre-populate, based on what you posted in the first carnival. Now, to save time, instead of completing each Carnival one at a time, do the following:
- paste your permalink into each carnival and hit tab, then move on to the next submission form. When you’ve placed your permalink into all of the Carnivals, go back to the first and you’ll see the info that has auto populated.
- fill in the missing information but before you hit submit, copy each piece of information and paste it into the appropriate field on each Carnival submission page. Do this with all of the fields and after you’ve filled in the Remarks box on each, hit submit. Doing this cutting and pasting will save you a lot of time rather than re-typing the same information for each Carnival.
Once you’ve gotten your regular Carnival submissions bookmarked as outlined above, any time you want to submit to a Carnival all you have to do is check the site once a week for new Carnivals. Just repeat steps 1-4 above and look for the “new” icon. Be aware that Carnivals are listed as new for a while so make sure it’s not one you already submit to and then just follow the rest of the steps.
By following this process, I can submit to about a dozen different Carnivals in 10 minutes or less. I just go to my bookmarks page and right click on the “Carnivals” folder. Then I click “Open all in Tabs” and the Carnivals automatically go to the submission page. Then I just follow steps 6-7 above.
Blog Carnivals can be an excellent way to gain rank, authority and readers, just don’t expect it all to happen in one day.
Jun
07
2008
I recently received the following question on my post Call For Blog Carnival Posts from Paul at The Business Coaching Blog.
Do you have much success with Blog Carnivals?
I tried it at the start of the year and submitted some of my best articles but never received enough traffic back to justify the time and effort.
The answer is, it depends on how you define success. You can’t just look at traffic because there’s a lot more involved which is actually more important than the traffic you receive.
Participating in Blog Carnivals can offer other things besides traffic.
- By getting listed in a Blog Carnival you’re getting a keyword laden (assuming you use good titles) deep link to a page on your blog. Google *loves* that. It shows that people like specific things you’re saying, not just your blog in general.
- The link from the Carnival gives you a touch more Technorati Authority, which Google is also a fan of.
- Many participants in Carnivals will link back to the Carnival and make a comment about their favorite post(s) which could give you yet another link for #1 and 2 above.
- When your submission is posted, you can go comment on the post to get your name in front of people again. If the host happens to be using do-follow and particularly comment or keyword luv, you’ve just gotten another link-back.
- Your name and blog will get in front of many people who might never have found you otherwise which could result in a new loyal reader or two.
So you see, it’s not all about the traffic. You have to look at the big picture. Traffic is just a small bonus to the big payoff which is page rank and authority. About the traffic though, it’s my experience that even when it’s not a ton, it trickles in forever. On another blog I run, I have an article I posted to a Carnival 2 years ago that I still get hits on.
For tips on how to easily submit your posts to a Carnival, read my Down and Dirty Blog Submission Technique and don’t forget to submit your posts to my Virtual Assistant/Home Business Blog Carnival.
Jun
01
2008
Welcome to the June 1, 2008 edition of Virtual Assistant/Home Business Blog Carnival.
Terry Dean presents Quality Website Traffic posted at Integrity Business Blog by Terry Dean.
Webmaster_1 presents 5 Reasons Why Blogging Is Beneficial posted at The Entrepreneurs Online Magazine, saying, “An article on why blogging is beneficial to any internet business”
Jose DeJesus MD presents Defending Yourself Against Time Thieves posted at Physician Entrepreneur, saying, “Here are some ways to become more effective by avoiding things that steal or waste your time.”
Colleen M. Johnson presents Web Database Management Tools posted at cmjoffice.com Blog, saying, “Discover some information on web-based database options.”
John W. Furst presents Aweber – A Marketing Lesson And Smart Pricing posted at E-Biz Booster Blog, saying, “Are you freaking out? One of the popular Email Marketing Tools provider — AWeber — has new features and new prices. What’s in it for you?”
Jimson Lee presents Free or Cheap Help Desk Support Software posted at CRM Help Desk Software.com, saying, “A quick review of the 2 best free Open Source Help Desk Support Ticket software for your business.”
Cindy King presents How To Use Online Translation Tools posted at Cindy King, saying, “I think free online translation tools are great… for certain tasks. Never use them to write any sales content or sales materials. And think twice about relying on them for any other translations.”
John Crickett presents How To Start A Blogging Business posted at Business Opportunities And Ideas, saying, “A guide to starting a blogging business”
Terry Dean presents From a Sale to An Experience posted at Integrity Business Blog by Terry Dean.
Craig Andrews presents Small Steps for a lot of Traffic Generation posted at Craig S. Andrews.com.
Laurie presents Lawyers and Technological Change posted at Halo Secretarial Services.
Janet Barclay presents Business Lessons Are Everywhere posted at From the Desk of Janet Barclay.
That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of the Virtual Assistant/Home Business Blog Carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.
