If you tried to do any googling for black Friday ads over the last week like I did it was no surprise I found a lot of blogs and websites that were just talking and setup to take advantage of the keywords around this madness.  I did some quit keyword research and you can really take advantage of this the only think is these keywords will only be popular for a couple weeks in November.

I found a lot of bad links an stuff that didn’t really give me what I need but I would like to share this site as it pretty much has all your major stores covered for those that are interesting in seeing what is out their.

http://bfads.net/

On the right hand side you will see a bunch of stores listed like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target Home Depot and many many more.  The domain has been around since 2006 but the do a nice job off pulling in all the info and off course within the site they do some Amazon affiliate links to some great deals and then a bunch of adsense.

Anyone else going shopping on Friday.  I done it before I might head to Wal-Mart and pick up itouch for my wife.  They got the best deal I have seen normal price but $50 itunes card with it.  I am not much for the crowds but you can really save some money on some large items if that what your after.  Since I am an early bird it doesn’t bother me to get up so I will probably take advantage of this but I in and out not shopping all day that’s for the crazy people.

Once again I have found myself spending more time with the family and off line which is a good thing personally but the effects of this time off on my blog have not been good.  What I want to talk about in this blog post is what I could have done differently so I would not have had the traffic lose and other side effects.

Most of us in the blogging world are part time bloggers but as we all know blogging can easily require full time attention.  So what happens when you don’t have or can’t make the time to get to you blog.  Your traffic drops your comments go done your progress drops off.  Take a look at my Google Analytics and let this be a lesson that you learn from me vs. trying it yourself.  About middle of October I start spending a lot less time on everything.

My time away from my blog was not planned, I really just lost my motivation and found myself wanting to spend my time doing other things.  I was able to completely remodel my bathroom so it wasn’t time wasted at least.  I think everyone at some point will have this problem so it is important that you plan ahead for it or you might also find yourself in the same situation.  Another part of the problem is getting back in to my routine.  It seems now I can’t find myself getting back at it like I was before lets hope this changes soon.

All of this damage could have been avoid if I had written and stashed a few articles away for a raining day.  So here it tip number one.

Key # 1  Stock Pile Some Blog Posts for Rainy Days

If I would have had a few blog posts saved I could have either spend 5 minutes to just publish them or better yet schedule them so I would have still had fresh and consistent content on my blog in my absence.  Instead I had a content drought which resulted in a drop off of readers and comments.

Moving forward I am going to make sure to start to write in batches again this was something that I was doing about 2-3 months ago which really helped me always have content ready or close to ready so posting something was a so much of a task.  I will also start to build and keep a stash of 5-10 blog posts that way since my goal is 3 post a week I would always have enough content to take a break of 2-3 weeks.

Key #2  Let your readers know what is going on!

I have seen some others like Doug Dillard announce that they are going to be taken some time off.  You can see his announcement here for and example.  This will at least let your audience know what is going on rather then have them coming back everyday to the same blog post.  Of course this only works if you plan to take the time off not my case.  I just go lazy and didn’t put forth the effort that I had been doing.  I did post a few blog post later to let people know I was having some motivational issues and talked a little bit about how I was going to work thought them which help at least with letting everyone know I was ok just facing some personal issue with my blog.

Key #3 Recharge and Come Back Strong

Taking a break is all about giving yourself some much needed time away so you can come back swinging.  Part of my problem with my time off was it was unplanned and I still worried about what I was not doing so I didn’t really recharge.   I still feel a little disappointed with myself that I just stop doing what was working after a couple of good months of hard work and dedication.  Right now I am dealing with the damage control over the last couple months and trying to reestablish my efforts so I can continue to grow this blog.  One of my biggest problems I think is I was spending early hours and late nights working on it which overtime will burn you out.  I need to find some larger chunks of time and be more focus but not spend every day morning and night on things or I will just burn complete out.

So the moral of the story is to make sure you have some extra content ready so it can appear as thought you still actively blogging if your going to be away for awhile.  If you don’t have content and know your going to not be doing something you normally do make sure to let your reads know so they are aware.

Everyone I like to take a minute to tell everyone about the new E-Store that I added to The Money Cult.  I just added a E-Store link above.  You will now see this on every page.  Take a minute to check it out and let me know what you think.

Announcement:

I am pleased to announce The Money Cult now has a store.  Please take some time to check it out.  Here you will find popular blogging tools and gadgets along with some of my hand picked recommendations.  Popular books and special lists from time to time.

Please take a minute to let me know what you think.  This is something I been wanting to add for a while and just figure I should do it and tweak it as I go.

If you would like to learn how you can do something very similar for your blog I am in the process of creating a free e-mail training course and will more then likely include some how to videos video which will show you step by step how I did it.

This is a super easy way to sell some physical produces or anything that Amazon.com sells from your blog.

In order to get access the training I have on how to do this you must sign up here.

Traffic is probably the most important thing for you blog.  If you have no traffic or not working to improve traffic then what’s the point.  The Money Cult had a nice steady growth in traffic over the last couple months.  Last month I had my first drop but I am the blame for that I stopped working on this blog/business and took a break.

My Goals for traffic is to get to the point where I have a 100 unique visitors daily before the end of the year.  How can I accomplish that 1st I need to get better get back on track with my posting.  I must post 3 times a week period.  I will continue to use the basic SEO tactics that I published in my 3 part serious on SEO.  These work they help get my on page one and two for targeted keywords overtime which result in a nice stream of continues organic traffic.

Lastly I need to continue with link building.  I have really dropped off with this.  I pretty much have only been bookmarking for the last month and half which is important but really you need to bookmark, submit your articles and build some links back to them via comments.  I was better about leaving comments on other blogs but have really started to drop off on that also so I need to continue this as my referral traffic has suffered.

A few things I would like to explore that haven’t but I would think would help is guest posting.  I would like to make it a habit to start doing some guest posting on some high traffic blogs at least once or twice per month.  I think you can really get some good exposure for yourself and that is really what traffic is all about.  The more you name and link are spread around the net then the more ways you have for people to find your site.

The other thing I haven’t done yes is any kind of article writing and submission.  I would like to here from others on this if they have tried it and had any success or not.  It is often talked about but not sure if it works as I haven’t seen any real world case studies on the topic to make a call on it.  Depending on feedback I am not sure if I will go down this path the other option is to build some TheMoneyCult branded products that I would offer for free with links back to this site or even submit to PLR sites for distribution.

In conclusion I believe I will get to my of 100 visitors a day in time it is just a matter of how much time.  If I follow my own advice here and follow thought I should be able to close in on that target before the end of the year.

Today I am going to talk about the topic of content for The Money Cult.  As part of my re-design and planning process I want to make sure I cover a few things here.  I want to better organize my topics and categories and tags.  I explored this a little bit when I first started but could really come up with a good list so I just start writing and picking and defining them along the way and now I somewhat of a unorganized mess.

It seems that the post that tend to get a lot of attention are interviews and personal ones.  I tend to share some blogging tips also not really sure if that is a good fit for the intent of this blog but I can talk though this and see if I can work it in.  Ideally after I am done with this post I should have a better list of topic’s and categories that I can focus on or make sure I am writing content to fit within that.   I am a big on streamlining processes so I hope to come up with some templates that I can use for posting which should help with creating consistent content faster.

I will first talk about what the purpose of this blog is so lets start with my tag line and some of my statements from my about me page.

A No B.S. Blog about money the tools and people trying to make it..

What’s This Blog About?

The Money Cult’s purpose is to be a bridge between Newbie’s and Guru’s in Internet Marketing.  When I started out I found a lot of crap and lot of good stuff but I really wasn’t sure who to trust.  I post about the good stuff and the good people I come across along my journey.  I also post about my experiences, and progress, case studies and tools I use.  My intent for this site is to provide a ton of value and offer a lot a free stuff so you don’t have to spend any money to learn the fundamentals  of internet marketing.

If you look at my tag line and the paragraph above it seems I should be making sure whatever I am writing fits.  I been pretty on target for the last couple months now that I reread this.  I would like to do more guru reviews and newbie success stories.  I need to make sure I am keeping the balance between my experiences and that stuff.  I think you can really learn a find encouragement from someone that just started and is having some success.  Those stories are the ones I like to tell.  Those stories are the ones I like to read.  If you have one of those stories and would like to share it please contact me and I can help you tell hit here.

What have I been Blogging About?

Now lets take a look thought my archive and see what I publish to date and what type of content I been providing and the response it has received.

If we look at my Categories I have the following Business, Getting Started, Internet Marketing, Personal, Product Reviews, Squidoo free (Needs to go), Tips and Advice.

Now for my Tags I have a larger mess I have a little too much detail here, I used names and details need to make this more generic.

Now I reviewed a few of my favorite blogs and their really doesn’t seem to be any sort of  standard but I will take a look the the ones that from those blogs and the ones here that I think I should keep and come up with my final list for this step of my revamp The Money Cult project.

Blog Posting Frequency

Lastly lets talk about posting frequency.  I know when I don’t post traffic goes down way down.  It seem that 3 times a week is a great goal and keeps a steady flow of traffic coming in.  Once in a while I might have some extra post.  That would mean about 12-16 posts per month.  I have been about to so 10-12 for the last 3 months so should be able to continue that.  Ideally I should or could fine a way to make it easy for others to guess post relevant content this would help cut down of the hours I need to spend on writing.  For some time I also wanted to do some guess post to help get my name out but haven’t made that happen yet.

Open Items

Publish final Categories and Tag list.