I was taking a break from coding today and took a quick peek at TechCrunch. TechCrunch had a nice writeup on AddThis, a new widget that I was starting to see on blogs around the web.

The AddThis widget is a way for your readers to bookmark your website on pretty much any social bookmarking service in existence, as well as being able to save it to the browsers local bookmarks. The widget setup page is easy to use and you can quickly generate code for websites, blogs, MySpace page, and even an ezine or newsletter.

The AddThis widget code generator.

Adding an AddThis widget to a website or blog can help to reduce the clutter on a site, so you don’t see a huge list of social bookmarking icons at the bottom of every page. Your readers can easily bookmark the page using the social bookmarking service of their choice. You can gain some insight into what readers save with the statistics that AddThis gathers, and probably the nicest feature, it is free.

There are some possible draw backs to using an AddThis social bookmarking widget on a site. Not that the drawbacks are huge, but they are something to consider. It does add an extra step for people to save your site in the service they want. The widget relies on javascript, so in the off chance that someone has their javascript turned off, the bookmarking does not work. I was able to get the popup window to open but could not bookmark anything. I also occasionally got a request to download a php file when I clicked on a social bookmarking icon instead of it saving the page to the service. Hopefully that is an error they will correct quickly.

Overall the AddThis social bookmarking widget can save some valuable screen real estate on your website while still giving your readers the benefits of saving the pages they like to the service of their choice. I am sure they will work out any errors that they have soon. They also have an RSS version of the widget as well that could be just as useful.

Trailfire is one of those Web 2.0 applications that makes it possible for people to create custom web tours or trails.

To be able to create a web trail you need to be using Firefox and install a toolbar. The toolbar itself adds a new menu item to Firefox and two new icons on the navigation toolbar.

Trailfire menu and navigation toolbar icons.

Once the toolbar is installed you will be able to create your own web trails for others to follow, discover other peoples trails as you browse around the web and add comments, like post it notes, to any web page. You do not need the Trailfire toolbar installed to be able to follow a web trail that others have made, but it is required to make your own trails, add comments and discover other peoples trails.

Click follow the trail to follow other peoples trails without the toolbar installed.

Once you create a web trail you can make it publicly available on the Trailfire website on your profile page. For an example you can view my profile page and see that I have created one trail titled “Google Adsense Essential Reading”. To follow the trail of web sites I added to the “Google Adsense Essential Reading” trail simply click the “follow the trail” link and you can go through the sites I added one by one. When you are on the trail you will see a little icon on the page () that you can roll over and see where you are on the trail, read comments about the page, and if you have the toolbar installed make comments yourself.

There are a lot of interesting trails available for people to browse on the Trailfire website and a great opportunity for you to create trails that are unique to you and your interests. I plan to create a portfolio trail showing off the websites that I have created or worked on with details. This is also a possibility for increased traffic as people surf trails. While you might not get tens of thousands of new visitors, it does offer another interesting and unique way of promoting your own website.

I was helping a client establish a new blog a little while ago and one of the questions they had in the process was what are those little icons at the bottom of posts? I was not sure what they were talking about at the time, but after a little of back and forth I figured out that they were talking about the social bookmarking icons that are on the bottom of so many posts. They simply did not understand what was the point of having them. I tried to explain that social bookmarking can be a great service to your readers since it allows them to bookmark your post and share it with others.

Social bookmarking sites also have the potential of sending users to your website or blog. I have mentioned StumbleUpon a few times here, that is perhaps my favorite social bookmarking service, but there is also Digg, and lately I have come across a blog focused site called Blogg-Buzz. These services can be a great help in getting your website noticed. They are the digital form of word of mouth advertising.

When adding social bookmarking links the tendency is to add all of the social bookmarking sites. While I can understand peoples desire to do that, I usually recommend that people add no more than 10. Why 10? It is a nice round number, plus by choosing 10 you should be able to get the services that has the majority of users. Almost always Digg is on the list as well, and while Digg has the potential to send you a lot of visitors, I recommend people don’t bother with it since Digg is a very specific niche and they tend to look down on blogs.

It only takes a few extra minutes to add some social bookmarking links to a site to provide users with a quick way of being able to find your website again, and the word of mouth advertising never hurts.

What are your favorite social bookmarking sites to use? What services do you add to your blogs?

Recently every blog I visited had a MyBlogLog recent readers widget added on to it, so my curiosity was peaked about what this new service that I kept seeing was.

I was pleasantly surprised with the features that MyBlogLog offers. Along with the recent readers widget you can add a Top Links widget and a Stats script. They offer a free version and a pro version that you have to pay for. From what I can tell so far the free version is probably sufficient for most bloggers, unless you just have to have the real-time stats.

The other added feature is a community page for every blog that you own. To see an example of a community page take a look at the LGR Blog community page. On the community page you get a great overview of the readers to the blog, can post comments to the community and view the recent rss feed from the site.

The benefits of MyBlogLog are the possibility of increased traffic, a unique user community for your blog, and it is just basically cool to see who your readers are. There are also some downsides. Spammers did not take long to invade the community. I have already had as many spammers visiting my other blog which meant I had to hide them. Also the comment section of the community pages seems to be a target for spam. Hopefully MyBlogLog will get a better solution to control spam soon.

If you have a blog take a look at adding a MyBlogLog to your site. It adds an additional fun component to your site.

Yesterday I talked about what it is like to be a StumbleUpon user and how it delivers to its users websites and pages that are actually of interest. Today I want to talk about why you as a webmaster should pay attention to StumbleUpon.

The answer is simple really, StumbleUpon can deliver a great deal of traffic to your website. Traffic is one of the most important things every website is after. That traffic can help to get the word out about your website and what it has to offer.

You are probably wondering how much traffic can StumbleUpon send your site. Well, if your site or blog post is voted up enough you can get a great deal of traffic. I had a website get stumbled in December 2006. From December to the end of January 2007 that page alone has received just under 20,000 visits!

The following graphs show the number of referrers from StumbleUpon during those two months. As you can see the number of visitors from StumbleUpon is a considerable amount those two months.

December Visits by Source

January Visits by Source

Whether these visitors become regular visitors, readers or customers is still not certain, but the traffic boost certainly cannot hurt to raise a websites profile.

To quote Kevin Costner from the movie Field of Dreams “Build it and they will come”. This is what people think. Great I have a website, it is done and now all I have to do is sit back and people will come to my site. While it might have been more true back in the 90′s, today this is probably the biggest myth there is.

The reality is that even though you have a website, the odds are people will not find it unless you do some marketing of your site. What kind of marketing you do partly depends on what the goal of your site is. For example if your site caters primarily to local users in your city doing an expensive Adwords campaign across the whole country is probably a waste of money. You might do better by doing a smaller Adwords campaign to target just your city. Add in with that a more traditional print campaign and your website will be off and running getting quality traffic that will be interested in your service or product.

Sometimes there are no easy answers to the best way to promote your website. I have tried Adwords and other forms of online advertising and some campaigns have meet with success, others were total failures. These are some of the things that I often tell clients that want to market their websites in no particular order.

Email Signature

Add your website at the bottom of your email signature. Every time you send out an email you are talking to a potential new client. Let that email lead them back to you.

Print

Similar to the email signature, add your website address to every single print item you have. Business cards, letterhead, posters etc. Every piece of paper that you send out should have your web address on it.

Blog Comments

Most blogs allow comments and allow you to add your website address either in the comment or will link your name. Take advantage of that. Find and take part in blogs that are related to your website and leave quality comments that will contribute to that discussion.

Forums

Similar to the blog comments, find forums that interest you and take part. Most forums allow for signatures at the bottom of posts, a great place to add your website.

Yahoo and DMOZ

I still recommend that people submit their websites to the Yahoo Directory and DMOZ Open Directory Project. While your site may or may not get included it does not hurt. Unless you have a bunch of cash burning a whole in your pocket, don’t bother paying for the Yahoo Directory, just do the free one.

Niche Directories

Many people say that submitting to directories is not going to help build any traffic. While I agree to some extent, I still believe that adding your website to quality directories in the long term will have beneficial effects.

Ask People

Talk to people you know with websites and simply ask them to link to you. You of course can do the same. You can also ask your visitors to link to you by adding a little box on your site or a page giving visitors the link code. This kind of organic linking can do wonders.

Article Submissions

Some people absolutely love article submissions. For those of you who don’t know there are websites where you can submit articles for others to use on their websites. The benefit is that you can include links back to your website. This can build a great deal of links to your site and possibly some traffic. You need a well written article and I recommend that your article be different enough from your website text so they don’t get confused. Write on your topic but stay away from duplicating your website. While some claim it will work with all websites, I have only seen it work well with a few websites. You will have to try it out to see how well it works for you.

News Releases

News releases can boost your site a great deal if the news release is well written. There are sites on the internet like PRWeb that will distribute your news release. It costs a little bit of money, but if you truly have something news worthy to say give it a try. Send it to your local paper(s) as well, it never hurts.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is really nothing more than the latest version of word of mouth advertising. Give people ways of bookmarking your website with some social bookmarking services like del.icio.us, Simpy, StumbleUpon and others. Don’t go to far and list all of them though. Pick some of your favorites and add them.

Video

Lately video sites like YouTube and Google Video can help you with getting people interested in your site. If you have the ability to put together a good video that relates to your site, give it a try. It can help bring in interested people. This will probably only work for some websites. The reason I add this to the list is because of the success of “Will it Blend” videos. They create interesting videos and show off their product at the same time. It has probably boosted their traffic and interest considerably.

Online Advertising

Many people swear by online advertising such as Adwords, Overture etc. It can work for some sites, and not for others. It depends how competitive the keywords are that you are after. If you want to give it a try, look for a coupon to start off with. It can save you some money if things don’t work out.

Word of Mouth

One of the oldest forms of advertising. Talk to people about your website and let others spread the word. It still works.

This post has gotten much longer than I had intended, and I have not talked about the things to avoid doing. I will have to put that into another post. This is probably old hat to those of you who have been building and promoting websites for awhile, but I know I am always repeating many of these things to new clients.

I am sure that there are many other ways to help build links and traffic to your website. What are some that you use?

I wanted to make a quick post about a great blog that I read on a regular basis about contextual advertising like Google Adsense, and Yahoo Publisher Network. JenSense – Making Sense of Contextual Advertising does a great job of keeping an eye on the latest updates in the world of contextual advertising. Very often when Google changes its terms of service you can find easy to understand explanations on JenSense. If you are serious about making money with contextual advertising then make a note of reading JenSense, it is a great resource.

I am always being asked by people how they can make easy money on the internet. My response to them is that they can make money on the internet but like most things in life it is never easy. Making money on the internet is just as hard, if not harder, as it is in other lines of business. There is no easy money to be made, only money that comes from hard work and more hard work. People believe that making money on the internet is easy because they see the get rich quick schemes offered on Ebay or found by doing searches on Google for phrases such as “Easy Money” or they have heard about “The Rich Jerk” and how he made millions.

Well here is the scoop folks. If you want to make money on the internet you will need to work at it. Don’t be fooled by those flashy get rich quick schemes with lots of ad copy and testimonials. They are there to do one thing, make money for themselves, not teach you how to make money. So if you want to make money on the internet here is my advice in plain and simple language.

Find Your Passion

What interests you? What do you enjoy doing as a hobby? What do you love? Everyone has something that they like doing and enjoy. The best place to start making money on the internet is to find out what you like. As my father used to tell me, if you do what you love it is not work. For me it is computers and the internet. What is yours? Movies, books, cats, dogs, people, video games? Find your passion and let others know about it.

Learn, Learn and Learn

There is a lot of great communities out there that can help you learn how to turn your passion into a money making website. Look for forums and communities that are related to your passion, but also look for sound advice from web master forums. One of my favourite web master forums is Digital Point Forums. There are many great people there and some very good advice.

Write, Write and Write

Websites don’t create themselves. Blogs require regular writing. It used to be that you could create a website once and not update it for a year or two. Not anymore! Of course your writing might not be writing. If your passion is playing music, your writing might be adding new music tracks. Podcasters write by creating new audio broadcasts. Photographers add new photos. The key is to add new content on a regular basis.

Monetize

There are many ways to monetize websites. I have a post planned on all the different ways that you can monetize your website, so I will leave this point short because it deserves it own post.

Repeat

Most people have several things they are passionate about. There is no reason you can’t turn more than one of your passions into a money making hobby on the internet.

Enjoy yourself and your site will be a success, and the work you put into the site will not be work, but a joy!