What is Reddit?
Reddit is a social news site, and bookmarking site, that users can post links to web pages and everyone can vote the articles up or down. (Wikipedia on Reddit). You can join quickly and add bookmarklets to your browser. Once you find a site or article you would like to share you simply click a button in your browser to vote it up / down or save it.

What Does it Look Like?
You will see Reddit buttons on articles like these:

The first thing you will see, before anyone submits is that the Reddit graphic prompts a user to submit this link: , once it is submitted the balance of positive votes vs. negative votes is displayed.

How Can Reddit Help Me?
Many users, myself included, find it a great way to locate content since the top stories, those that have been voted the highest, have already been filtered by thousands of people.

As a blogger and content publisher you can reach a greater audience with your content by having it submitted to sites like Reddit. You can submit the story yourself or let another submit it for you. Once submitted as individuals read your article on your site they can vote it up and more people will find your article via Reddit. Reddit can be a great way to find a broader audience and visitors to your site. An excellent reward for well written/informative content.

Another bonus is that you have additional links in to your site from Reddit and to your article. Also as others find you they may comment and/or link to you. Considering all you have to do is add a simple piece of code to each article, the benefits definitely outweigh the effort.

How to Add The Reddit Voting

Manually. To add the code manually take a look at the Reddit button page which as the three buttons above and code to cut and paste. Simply insert the title of your article and the URL to your article and your done.

Automatically. If you use WordPress, my favorite WordPress plugin is called reddZ-Et and found here at WordPress.org. Simply follow the instructions and the Reddit button, of your choice, will be automatically placed on every article for you.

This is one of many plugins and social bookmarking/news tools to help broaden your reach. Enjoy!

Take a look at Blog Comment Demon, it helps you find relevant sites and posts to your content. Blog comments have never been so easy using this tool, and it helps you save significant time.

This is an interesting tool to assist with adding friends in MySpace with Add New Friends. It helps automate friend requests and more. You will still need to use the captcha etc. as if you were to add by hand.

Update all your networks with this easy tool from Ping.fm, and you will need a beta code: pingofpings. I use it and love it.

As part of the December initiatives I am purchasing a review from the SponsoredReviews site and service. Once the review is posted, at a cost of $77, we will determine after a month how much traffic and other benefits are derived from the review.

Take a look at the Sponsored Reviews site to order your review. You can easily search the sites in their network, many are available. You can choose to search in the topics of the sites to obtain reviews from sites that best match your subject matter.

I used Review Me to purchase reviews of the site. These reviews were obtained in September, and today as of November 3rd looking back here are the goals and the results.

• Goal 1: Reviews
• Goal 2: Site Traffic
• Goal 3: Links Back
• Goal 4: Low Cost

Five articles were obtained, and the results are as follows:

• Goal 1: Reviews [ OBTAINED ] - Obtained 5 well written and thought out reviews
• Goal 2: Site Traffic [ NOT OBTAINED ] - Looking back at statistics, there were only 2 referrals directly from the articles (in one month)
• Goal 3: Links Back [ OBTAINED ] - Each review provided at least one link back to the site and their Alexa rankings ranged from 25,000 to 300,000
• Goal 4: Low Cost [ OBTAINED ] - I offered the lowest allowed per post, $10 per post.

The test showed that for $50 if the goal is obtain traffic this may not be the best, however the articles will not be removed from these sites and therefore traffic will be obtained every month. The largest variable here is that I only offered $10 per post and allowed any site to participate. Another test in which I pick the reviewer and pay substantially more will be attempted to compare results. If one of your goals is to create consistent monthly reviews/posts from third parties this is a cost effective alternative if you do not have the time to create relationships and obtain them organically.

Original posts are here:

• September Article I
• September Article II

Technorati Tags: review me, reviewme, affiliate program

Technorati is a site to track blogs and media through tagging. They currently track 107.3 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media, as of the writing of this article.

Tagging is done by you and as long as you use their required code you will be submitted to their system. You may tag your post with keywords that you believe are relevant to your post. As Technorati is so large now you want to be found in their system. Some sites make their decisions on whether or not you can participate in an advertising campaign or even make your services available in their directory look at Technorati as one of the deciding factors, such as ReviewMe.

Here are the steps to get started:

• join free here
• enter and claim your blog or site so Technorati may validate you own the blog, all you do is create a post with a code they give you. Once you are validated you may then delete your post.
• you will have a main account with a bio and other information, which is about you
• next you will enter general tags for you
• most importantly, you will never be found in Technorati, you need to enter tags for every post you have

Now you will be found in the Technorati directory. Their metrics include a Ranking, Authority and a Favorite metric. To assure you are in the directory you need to use the following code: which they calculate, and a favorite rating.

Tags will assist in bettering your Technorati rank. To place a Technorati keyword on your post, below is the code for tagging your content: vc news

Code for tags:
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/VC%20News" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/technorati.com');" rel="tag">VC News</a>

Favorite buttons such as this, get the code from Technorati, allow users to Favorite your site

Code for favorite button:
<br /> <a href="http://technorati.com/faves?sub=addfavbtn&add=http://www.longest.com" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/technorati.com');"><img src="http://static.technorati.com/pix/fave/tech-fav-1.png" alt="Add to Technorati Favorites" /></a>

Technorati Tags: wordpress, technorati, website traffic

As a test I decided to have a Facebook Application created to promote Agloco (original post is here).

The application was launched on 9/14/07, as of 9/26/07 there have been a total of 256 installations in 13 days, an average of 20 installations a day. An installation means that someone has added the application to their profile. Through this application there have been an additional 33 Agloco signups.

To market this application we spent $170 on the three different Facebook advertising networks, see our article on the Facebook Advertising Networks. The application has the ability for users to refer their friends, therefore obtaining more installations without having to pay for them.

Here are the statistics as of 9/26/07:

• 256 Installations
• 20 Installations per day (average)
• 33 Agloco signups
• $170 spent
• Cost Per Installation: $.66
• Cost Per Referral: $5.15

As time goes on the cost per installation will go down as more installations occur daily, referrals will increase and the cost per referral will also decrease.

Install the Agloco Application for Facebook allows you to install with the click of a button. You may either go to my Facebook Page Here and click the “Add Widget” button, or go directly to the application page here.

First: Join Agloco Here
Second: Install Facebook Application for Agloco Here

Technorati Tags: facebook application, facebook agloco, agloco, affiliate program, network marketing, marketing test

In a previous post Site Traffic Test : ReviewMe, we set up an advertising test with ReviewMe. Here is the background:

For this test I chose to create a campaign using the Advertiser Offer Reviews. My campaign was for 5 reviews at $10 for a total of $50 on September 6th. I was able to write a small description of my site and what I wanted them to focus on. ……. I started the campaign on September 6th and the offer lasts for 30 days, to end October 7th. As of today September 17th I had 3 bloggers decide to take me up on the offer and write posts.

The Reviews are complete, I ordered 5 and all have been completed. Below is an update results table with all reviews:

Getting started and setting up the campaign was extremely easy. Once a review had been written I received an email with a link that logged me into their site and provided me with the reviewer, a link to the review on their page, and allowed me to rank/vote 1 to 5 on the value of the review.

There are various ways to evaluate the campaign to know if it is useful.

First, determine how many visits/clicks you have received from the sites. You can do this by looking in your sites statistics package which analyzes your log files. In this case I spent $50 and received 5 clicks so far, for a cost per click (CPC) of $10 which taken by itself as the sole metric is horrible. What is interesting is that these are articles are never deleted and therefore additional clicks can continue to drive down the CPC price.

Second, links to your site are valuable since search engines may rank you in their results higher for more links into your site showing popularity. Even better is to use the same anchor text. Anchor text are the words that are used for the link back to your site. In this case I chose Make Money Online, therefore search engines may rank me higher in their results for make money online. The popularity of the site that wrote your review and linked to you is also taken into account in search engine algorithms. When you set up a campaign you may choose the popularity of those reviewing you. I use Alexa rank above to show the varying popularity of the sites writing reviews.

To determine when the links to your site are relevant and assist in your search engine rankings you use the following search on Google link:longest.com

Currently we have received 5 clicks and the articles are not yet being found in Google linking back to us. We will review the results periodically.

You may sign up to use ReviewMe here.

I decided to test the ReviewMe system for advertisers. To get started you first sign up with ReviewMe (Join Here), then order a review and choose either Blog Marketplace Reviews, Advertiser Offer Reviews or Advertorials.

Blog Marketplace Reviews allow you to choose which blogs you would like to write a review about you. You choose the site and if the site accepts your offer they write a review.

Advertiser Offer Reviews allows you to create a campaign and an offer open to all, with some parameters, that bloggers may choose to accept.

Advertorials allow you to write the review and have others post the review “as is”. You maintain control over the article.

For this test I chose to create a campaign using the Advertiser Offer Reviews. My campaign was for 5 reviews at $10 for a total of $50 on September 6th. I was able to write a small description of my site and what I wanted them to focus on. You are also able to provide the hyperlink (URL and Anchor text) for the blogger to use. Most importantly you can choose the quality of site that is allowed to accept your offer to write a review.

I started the campaign on September 6th and the offer lasts for 30 days, to end October 7th. As of today September 17th I had 3 bloggers decide to take me up on the offer and write posts.

Results

There are two more posts available, I will update as they come in. One of the articles was clearly better than the other two, however both provided the URL and Anchor Text I requested. Each review has multiple components you can control and benefit your site.

• Static Page - unlike a banner advertisement or contextual advertisement, the post having a link back to your site lives forever and is not removed.
• Linking In - By providing the anchor text and URL that links back to your site the search engines may take into account the text of the link thereby increasing your rankings on that keyword search. In other words if you choose to have the text of the link say “dog houses” and all the reviews use this text back to you then you may increase your search engine rankings for that keyword phrase “dog houses”.
• Anchor Text - you provide the link title that appears in your article.
• URL - you choose the URL that links back to your site, it can be to any page on your site.
• Site Traffic - as these links will last forever you will always receive additional website traffic.

As one type of cost benefit analysis you could average the number of click-throughs to the site from the article, knowing that you spent $10 on the article, and determine a cost per click which will continuously decrease over time as you receive more clicks.

Overall the process was simple and once I set up the campaign I was emailed as each post was written. I will continue to use Review Me for reviews and post updates.