My take on Guest Posting~ A Lesson Learned

I've always been in favour to do guest posting on other's site in bid to increase the visibility of my site - Dominique's Desk.  A few months ago I jumped at the opportunity to do a guest post on a fellow high ranking parenting site.
In my haste to get the post settled and handed up on time I neglect to find out in detail the exact details as in when the post would go live and how my bio would be shown in the post.

I did e-mail the blog's administrator and asked her when she will be posting my post but she never did get back to me. A few month's later after I revisited her site looking for the guest posts I was surprised to see that the post went live a few days after I submitted it to her but there was no indication or byline to state that I was the guest blogger and a link back to my site.

Initially I was rather annoyed as it seems like she was "ripping me off" as she seems to be posting the article that I wrote as hers and no indication that it is a guest post besides being filed under the category guest post.

If it was a sponsored guest post then having a byline wouldn't be an issue as she would have then paid to use it but the fact that it wasn't.

It's not the first time that I have guest post for other sites and on all occasions prior to this I had my bio and a link back to my site stated on the article.

I sincerely hope that  it was an oversight on the site's owner's part and not a deliberate attempt to not give me my due credit.

Looking back at this episode. I learned that I should have done the following

1. Clarify with her exactly when the post will go live and how it would be published together with credits for me before actually submitting the post to her.
2. Find out about if it is necessary for me to answer the commenter's who post comments to that article. ( I did answer some of the questions asked in the comments section.
3. Drop direct links to my site within the article and not  just rely on putting the link to my site in the author's bio box. 
4. Write a post on my site to go live on the same day that the guest post is published to state that I'm over at that site with my post today and link to it..

Well... now I know better. 

Building Revenue

As you know my main site is at Dominique's Desk I'm been thinking of how best to build up revenue through  google AdSense. I've been reading about how people are able to cash out $100 a month and it seem like it's so easy to earn from a  CPM network. I'm earning a rather dismissal amount and it's taking like forever to reach the $100 before I can cash out.
I would certainly prefer a more regular income and even get some long term sponsors but am still loss at how to seek them out. I guess for now I'll be sticking to Adsense till something better turns up.

Problems with hosting companies.

Image via WikipediaI have been through 3 different hosting companies and wasted a lot of time and sweat transferring from one hosting company to another throughout my 4 years online.

I first started out  with  Hostpapa where if gave a free domain for life if I hosted with that web server. It was all hunky dory when I started and things started to "breakdown" after a while. I had problems with my website loading up. Their customer service was less than satisfactory. They took ages to reply to my e-mail queries and were less then helpful with their replies. It was simply frustrating!! Before you sign up with them..they promise you 99% uptime and all the perks which after some time becomes simply invisible.

From hostpapa I migrated to lunarpages after getting recommendations from some online acquaintances and seeing that they were quite responsive to all my queries. However after the honeymoon period I was served a huge shock when they suddenly suspended my site for no reason at all due to "so called" high usage.  I find this utter ridiculous as at that time I only had a small personal blog and a static travel website.
It wasn't even harnessing more then 100 views per day..and that's was enough to crash the server?


Since then I've move on to WPwebhost which was a relatively small company at that time. Fast forward 2 years and it too is giving me problem. No doubt their customer service is still top notch but their servers have been failing me with their constant error - not enough memory allocated problem which causes timeout and 500 error messages on my site. It can be very irritating as their server is not equipped to cope with sudden surge in traffic. I'm really contemplating changing to another hosting provider which offers cloud hosting or one which really can meet my needs.

I'm not a fool to change to VPN or other high end hosting and blowing $30-$50 a month just on a blog. I'm also sick of all the unfulfilled promises these hosting companies make just to get more money out from you.

They say you can host unlimited domains or up to 50 domains as according to WPwebhost but this is utter nonsense as after you sign up with them..they  say you are using more then your allocated "space" on their shared server.  I think the problem is that they pack too many people on it therefore definitely there is not enough space.. it's your fault not mine.. and you are making me pay for your inabilities??


I'll be going for a local company this time and hopefully there won't be any more problems.

How to get feedback from your readers

Image via CrunchBaseGetting relevant feedback is something essential for a marketer. Gaining knowledge on how our products or services are performing would help us to improve on existing products or aid the creation of new products.

 You will be able to judge and assess your current performance through the feedback you have gathered.

There are several ways which one can gain feedback from your reader.

1. Conduct a Poll/ Survey
Poll Daddy  is the site that I have used to conduct polls over at Dominique's Desk It is extremely easy to use and you just need to embed the codes which are produced after you have gone through the steps in the survey/poll wizard.

Other Sites for polls/surveys . -zommerangSurveyMonkey -Stapac survey



2. Post a question in your post and ask your readers to comment.

I usually post a question at the end of the post to provoke a response. I find this most effective in gathering your readers opinions. However if you are looking for a consensus it would be better to go with a poll.

How do you gather feedback from your readers?

Creating Search Engine Friendly Posts

Image by lambo via FlickrGetting your post ranked among various different search engines can be a great challenge. Being featured on the 1st page of Google for your chosen key is like striking lottery. It not only raises your visibility  but also your status as an online marketer.

Creating a Search Engine friendly post would involve you doing the following.

1) Search for keywords in your chosen keyword tracker.

2) Use the selected keywords within the title of your posts.

3) Submit your article to various article directories and forums.

4) Build backlinks by dropping comments on related sites and interlinking between relevant posts within your own site.

5) Write related post on sites like Squidoo, Hubpages and Qondio with the link back to your own site it will help to boost your presence online.

With these tips you will be on your way to creating massive traffic to your site.

Do you have other tips to add on?