There was a really important post at DoshDosh today called “An Essential Marketing Principle: Give Before You Try to Get“. It went over a very basic marketing principle that has somehow gotten turned into a gimmick – the idea that in order to get someone, anyone, to do something for you, that you must first do something for them.
It struck me, reading that article that everyone knows you’re supposed to do that.
Everyone thinks they understand why to do that.
By the time this is published, it will indeed be my birthday on the East coast, where I’m currently located.
And I definitely wanted to take some time out to celebrate that, so I’m planning on not working at all tomorrow. Yay me!
What does that have to do with you? At some point in one of these videos I tell you exactly what you can do on my birthday to make me smile. 
Okay, seriously though, what this has to do with you is that every year, on my birthday, I’ve sent out a special newsletter, blog post, birthday gift to all my pals, something.
This year I’ve decided to be naked.
Some folks have realized that they don’t necessarily have to be bloggers to benefit from blog traffic, and have taken to commenting on blog posts to increase traffic and links.
It’s not the best method out there, but hey, whatever pays your rent.
Seriously though, if you’re incorporating blog commenting into your overall traffic plan (you do have an Overall Traffic Plan don’t you? Mon Dieu…) and you’re new to commenting, here’s …
11 Idiotic Things Commenters Can Do to Guarantee a Pissed Off Blogger.
So, this past weekend, I was filled with joy, and started thanking people who have impacted my life. I wasn’t expecting anything from it but to make great people smile.
I started with Bill and Andy, from MyST and their excellent Blogsite. I started thanking people at random and they naturally came to mind first.
They helped me go from having people see what I could do to help them, to knowing what I could do first hand. And that meant a very comfortable income. That’s a really big deal – without them I’d have had to dramatically raise my prices to entrepreneurs and small business. The larger jobs I do for corporations make my do it yourself guides and smaller consulting jobs possible.
If it wasn’t for them, I’d have never worked with bigger corporate companies with Rodney through Leveraged Promotion.
< rant >
Last time I actually counted, method by method, of my own knowledge, there are about 1991 unique methods you can use to draw traffic to your site.
(I.E. “submit to Digg” and “submit to Sphinn” are not two different traffic methods. They are the same tip, and if you list them that way, you’re a CHEATER. 
They fall under the same heading “Submit to social bookmarking sites.”)
Half of those traffic methods are free.
None of them is “comment on other blogs”.
Checking the box under Options -> Reading that says “WordPress should compress articles (gzip) if browsers ask for them”. I had it unchecked to make my Global Translator plug-in work – which it hasn’t since two months ago.
I finally figured out when something told me to check for an error message in the Feed Validator. I hadn’ previously done this, because the error in FeedBurner was always that the feed had a timeout error. I thought it had something to do with our last server upgrade, because it’s been a problem since that day.
And, of course, the Feed Validator gave me a message stating, in essence, that my site was telling the browsers that the feed was compressed when it wasn’t. Which fixed the error, and explained why I could see the raw feed in my browser and in some feed readers, but not all of them.
Yay Feed Validator! And welcome back Feed Burner subscribers and feed access points!
One of the things I’m going to talk about in today’s Traffic Thursdays is how having an open site, or being an open member of a social community, is a good way to get traffic that yields much better results than attempting to game the systems that exists. To the surprise of many, I’m sure, I’m going to start off with some information about Technorati.
Now, you guys probably know that Technorati, formally among one of my favorite lovers, is pretty much in the dog house with me. Technorati is not a web 2.0 utility per se, as the only true user-generated content in it is in WTF.
However, if you can get Technorati to work for you, there are plenty of good networking, traffic and expert-ization opportunties. Since I am not alone among the people who have on-going problems with Technorati, instead of making a premium guide and charging for it, I’m making a free video series on it that will soon be available through our kyte channel in video.
This is about getting your Blogspot blog off Blogger onto your own server via FTP. This way, if you really love Blogger, but want more traffic opportunities and more control over your site, you can publish it to your own servers.
(We’ll do importing to WordPress another day.) This is actually a simple process, but there are a couple of places that may make it confusing even to people who are used to FTP. Video is approximately 9 minutes – Click on the first show in the channel, Blogging Video Tips #1.
(Some evenings, you can chat with me live if you’re around on this page. I’ll try and post a time…. but I’m probably going to just pop in when I’m feeling well.) Oh, and feel free to share the Channel with your friends. I’m also taking submissions….
6 Reasons Why You Want to Move Your Blogspot Blog to Your Own Server – Even if You Want to Keep Using Blogger
Tinu Abayomi-Paul
I build traffic systems to increase the profitibility of your website. You can implement them yourself with one of our how-to manuals, below, or you can email us at support@asktinu.com for a free consultation, to evaluate your site for a custom solution.
Morgan and Cindy Lighter
Cindy is our organizational whiz. Morgan is the author of our most popular column, Tool Time Fridays.
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