I've added the digg button to show up in all posts. I want to credit the source at:

http://testing-blogger-beta.blogspot.com/2007/04/testing-adding-digg-vote-button-to.html

Positive: Easy way for readers to digg your articles.

Negative: They navigate away from your page. Also, when I test on some pages, it just brings me to the digg page, but not necessarily my article linked back (even if I've submitted). Trying to iron out. I guess if readers like your content, they'll come back anyway, right?

My first Prosper Referral!

On the Everyday Finance site, I'd been touting the benefits of Lending and Borrowing through Prosper.com and my personal experience with the site. Recently, they launched an affiliate advertiser program whereby members could receive $25 bonus checks for referring new members. I simply have an affiliate ad prominently displayed on the site. This is not a pay-per-post type entry, as I'm currently a member and genuinely believe in the system, so I have no ethical quandaries promoting it (I was doing so well before the referral program was launched last week for free because I love the diversification and potential to exceed market returns on a risk-adjusted basis). Regardless, I got an email this morning highlighting my first success, the $25 was deposited in my account immediately.

There are plenty of other great affiliate programs out there. You can see some of them on my site. I've also listed a link to one of the ones I use to the left, Linkshare. Feel free to click through and sign up. If you have a blog and want to advertise for anything from credit cards to web hosting, click through and check it out. It's easy to set up (and I'll get like a buck or something if you do so through here!).

You're not allowed to ask folks to click on Google ads, but affiliate programs want users to click through since content owners are ONLY paid when an actionable event occurs - i.e. purchase, sign up for free trial, etc.

So, after a few months of generating content and attracting visitors through word of mouth and some link exchanges with relevant sites for the everydayfinance site, I decided to research some new ways to garner additional traffic. There are several legitimate outlets that will drive interested viewers to your site. I've listed a few below along with my experience and how significant the traffic generation has been for me:

EZINEs:
There are several online magazines out there. I heard about these from another blogger and decided to check them out. Essentially, if your posts are somewhat general and not too specific to you personally, you can submit posts to ezines for publishing after you publish on your own site. Depending on the ezine you choose, you relinquish certain rights to your material, but in general, other publishers pick up on your content and publish it elsewhere. If you embed your blog or site in your signature, interested readers will come to your site for more content.

Results: I submitted about a dozen of my previous posts to an ezine publisher a few weeks ago and right around submission time, I had a lot of visitors coming through at the same time. That's likely because my articles were appearing on the front search page as newest. I haven't submitted any articles in the past week or so as a control, to see how the traffic is when no active submissions are occurring. As measured by my sitemeter, I still get a couple visits a day. That's encouraging because it means people are finding my articles there later in time, presumably through searching keywords. Ideally, if I submit 10 times the content over the next year, I'll have perhaps 5 times the visitors on a residual basis from the ezines (I don't predict a linear trend since there are only so many readers interested in finance in particular). Here's a link to a particular post I did on the ezine I've tried out. If you use other ezines you're pleased with, feel free to post comments here.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Futures-Plays-for-Regular-Investors---Banking-on-Takeovers-and-Hedging-Your-Real-Estate&id=588677

Submittal to Relevant Popular Outlets
Just about all Blogger and content generators have heard of Digg.com. By submitting your content there, readers can search for it or submission is excellent and well liked by readers, it can make it to the front page which can totally alter the fortunes of a particular blog, propelling it from obscurity into the ranks of a highly publicized, high traffic site. There are other outlets in your relevant field to submit your content to though. In the world of finance, a popular investing outlet is seekingalpha. They review content submitted for accuracy, vet the writers, their website, and then occasionally publish content from specific writers on a routine basis. Over the past several weeks, I've had several posts published at seekingalpha and am now undergoing the process of becoming a certified contributor.

Results: Again, my content is now appearing on their site and presumably generating some income for them. But I'm getting a fair amount of traffic from their site as more readers are exposed to my research/analysis and style of writing. As is the case with blogging in general, a lot depends on continued, consistent posting. If you go cold turkey for a couple weeks, readers will start to forget about you, other posts will appear further up on the search list and before you know it, no more visitors. Here's an example of one of my posts at seekingalpha and how readers track back to my site by clicking on my name or profile:

http://biotech.seekingalpha.com/article/38329