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It has been awhile since my last Adtoll Update, but I thought I would write this post for the people who are very interested in trying it, but are still waiting for that last clincher. Well, as of today Adtoll is giving every new customer a free $20 in advertising credit.

Just what can $20 get you? A lot more than you would actually think… Sign up to Adtoll today and you can spend your $20 to advertise on my blog completely free. You can get your 125×125 advertisement for THREE MONTHS completely free, and an entire month of my premium banner spot at the top! If you were considering trying out different ways to monetize your blog, now would be the time.

Join Adtoll and receive your free $20 today.

A lot of people had heard about the news when Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia announced that he was going to use the same methods that created a people powered encyclopedia over to creating a people powered search engine. Sadly enough, the project was over-hyped and a terrible alpha site was released. While I hope after some bug testing that Jimmy’s search engine does well, right now things are looking troubling.

On the other hand, a new startup named Stumpedia has done exactly what Jimmy Wales was planning on doing. Stumpedia is a fully functional people powered search engine. You submit sites for whatever search term you want, and the general population of Stumpedia site users will give a thumbs up, or a thumbs down on how relevant the search is.

While people powered search engines are a great idea, it will have to make quite an impression if a search engine wants to top the Google name brand. Since the site has had its press releases announced today, there are few people who use the site. This means that there is little competition for your keywords.  As it currently stands, I am the only site that ranks for the term make money blogging (See the Stumpedia search page for my keyword here).   If you like playing around with alpha/beta sites, I recommend checking it out.

You can learn more about Stumpedia at their website, or through their press release.

Do you think people powered search engines have a chance at taking over Google’s crown?

This is a guest post by Jason Pereira who blogs over at The University Kid and is currently running an RSS contest with $150.00 in prizes.

Anyone that’s ever tried to run a blog should know just how important readers are… without them, you probably wouldn’t be blogging.

No one likes to blog for empty space, and readers (and comment leavers) can make the difference between you quitting after a couple weeks and you going on to become a blogging mogul. I’d say the readers have the largest impact on a blog apart from the owner – their prods and advice can refine your blogging technique and help develop your blog into a better place to visit.

As your readers are so important to the site you run, you should truly cherish them; give them a reason to visit, and then give them a variety of reasons to keep coming back. Remember, people in today’s world are not just time pressed, but also notoriously fickle… what can you do to ensure your readers have a worthwhile experience on your blog?

Post valuable content

This is the most important thing, but one that is often overlooked by bloggers; they concentrate so much on marketing their blogs that they forget to keep up the level of quality they had when they first started out.

Without informative, interesting and amusing content, your readers won’t become repeat visitors – no matter how much you update or market. Remember, the real thing that makes up a blog is its content; it’s the reason your visitors will keep coming back time and time again (if it’s any good, that is ).

Reply to your readers

Be it their emails or comments, you should reply to readers when prompted – sometimes, you just won’t have the time to do so but when possible you definitely should.

Replying to comments increases interaction in a community and can eventually start off a debate (something that is always good); it also makes your readers feel valued that you took the time to respond to each of them personally. Remember, even if your readers just want to comment on how good a post was, you can thank them for doing so and ask them how they think it could be improved… their tips will turn you into a blogging maestro in the long run

Dealing with emails on the other hand – they help develop a more personal relationship between a blogger and his/her readers. As long as you’re courteous (you should only be so if the person that emailed you is, of course) and reply to them personally, you’ll leave a lasting impression in the eyes of your reader – one whose benefit may not be apparent immediately, but definitely will be in the long run.

If you’ve taken the time to personally reply to a readers’ email sent into you, they’ll remember it… and should someone ask them about you as a blogger, they’ll only be gushing with praise.

Run a contest every so often

Sure, readers can visit and interact on your blog, but why not reward them for doing so? Running a contest not only brings in more readers (especially if the prizes are good) but also creates a buzz in the industry – one that can help leave a lasting impression in the minds of those that have heard about it.

Make sure the prizes that you’re giving away are useful, and relevant – they don’t even have to be costly, as Entrecard credits or free advertising slots are still valuable. Also make the rules fairly simple to follow; remember, your readers are just as lazy as you are

Remember to promote your contest too so that everyone knows about it – there’s no use spending money on one if no one participates!

If you would like your own guest post to be featured on Mixed Market Arts, please email me through the contact form at the top of the blog.

Over the last few days, I have seen many people selling the “secret location” where you can get free PR9 .edu links. The threads on the DigitalPoint forums have had tons of sales ($50 each), and with such a high price you can be sure that people searched every nook and cranny to find if it was legit. Just by using a lot of free “questions” that were brought up in the thread, I did a little research. People in the forum thread were complaining that the site was running SSL (httpS://), stopping the search engines from viewing it.

Sure enough, the location was leaked after the user was banned from DP for spamming. While the pages ARE indexed even though they are HTTPS, Google is only caching the forum topics and not the actual posts.

The million dollar question is, will these links actually pass any pagerank/authority to your links? Only Google knows, but for now it sure doesn’t hurt to spend 5 minutes making a few forum replies.

Enjoy the free “PR9″ links.
https://alum.mit.edu/discuss/index.jspa.

Because I do not believe that these links will provide any long term benefit, I will be excluding this from the link building cookbook series. Feel free to use this method or pass it up and stick to what is guaranteed to work.

*The forum was originally leaked by this post*