Promote your blog: The power of a review
Posted by Jean-Baptiste Jung on Oct 20, 2008 in Blogging Tips • 19 commentsLast week, following the launch of my new blog WpRecipes.com, I have experimented what a blog review can bring you in terms of traffic and rss suscribers. Here is my report.
Background
One week ago, I decided to launch a new blog, focusing on short and "straight to the essential" WordPress Recipes. Launching a new blog isn't an easy thing due to the fact that no-one even knows that it exists.
To make sure I have enought content before even thinking about promoting my new website, I wrote 10 recipes and published it. Once done, I started to promote my new blog, using Twitter and social bookmarking sites as such as Designfloat and Dzone.
Results from theses sites were nice: I had 157 unique visitors after being featured on Dzone.com front page, and 178 after one of my recipes hitted Designfloat.com homepage.
After being published on theses website homepages, my average rss suscribers was 22. Definitely not bad after less than a week online, but you guessed it, this number have to be increased.
Experimenting with reviews
Happilly, during the last 6 months, Cats Who Code received a decent 2000+ unique visitors per day and have more than 600 people reading the rss feed. So, what about writing here about my new blog?
This is what I've done with my previous article, entitled "6 awesome WordPress hacks that will save your life". This article features 6 of the best recipes I have published on WpRecipes.
A day after publishing the article, I checked out WpRecipes.com stats, and noticied that I had 160 unique visitors for the day I published the Cats Who Code post. But that's not all: I also had 400+ pageviews, which mean that Cats Who Code drove quality traffic to WpRecipes: Visitors were interested by the content, and decided to explore the blog to find more recipes that could interest them.
Due to that quality traffic, I expected some new rss suscribers. I wasn't wrong on that point: The next day, I had 35 rss suscribers.
But the story doesn't end here. As many of you knows, I'm an author on the popular WordPress related blog WP Hacks (Previously Hack WordPress). I decided to write a short announcement to tell WP Hacks readers about a new blog that should interest them. WP Hacks have a strong base of 2200+ rss suscribers, so, only some minutes after the post was published, I started to have a blast of new traffic sended by WP Hacks: This day, 500 unique visitors have visited WpRecipes and I had about 70 new rss suscribers. Great!
Why reviews are good (and better as advertising)
In order to promote WpRecipes, I also put some ads on the websites I own. For exemple, I have put an ad on Cats Who Code.
Even if the traffic WpRecpes receive from the advertisments is good, nothing beats the review.
An ad can be attractive, but it is just an ad. Nothing more than an image saying "Hey mate, visit my website! Is it cool!". On the other hand, a review give you more exposure because it is a full blog post talking about your service or website, explaining pros and cons, etc.
Most of the time, bloggers who writes sponsored reviews give an honest advice about the product they're reviewing, and that's good. If you'd like to be reviewed, but are afraid to have a bad (or not good) review, think about this:
Some months ago, when I launched WpVote, Stephen Cronin wrotes a blog post saying that WpVote needs to enhance its "published news" section.
This wasn't exactly a typical "all is good" review, but it was honest, authentical and it gave me a good feedback to improve the site. In the days following Stephen's review, I received a lot of traffic and many new users registered.
The most important thing to remember is that in order to get real benefits from a review, it must come from a site in your niche. If you wrote an ebook about WordPress, you'll get good traffic if we review it here at Cats Who Code, because our readers loves WordPress. But if a blog which usually talks about cars review it, you can easily imagine that you'll not get any benefits from it.
Cats Who Code now offering paid reviews!
Due to all the good things I received from reviews, I decided that I should enable paid reviews on cats Who Code.
In the past, I reviewed some ebooks as such as Kyle Eslick's "Success With WordPress" and I had a good feedback in terms of affiliate sales. This is why I believe that a review on Cats Who Code can help you to bring targetted traffic to your blog or provide new buyers for your ebook, WordPress theme or whatever.
Of course, I'll never review anything that isn't related to what we usually talk here at Cats Who Code: Web development, Web design, WordPress, blogging tips, making money online...
Reviewing products that aren't in our niche will be a non-sense for us, for the advertiser and for the readers.
Reviews are available for the low price of $40. Contact us for more details.
And you, did you already experimented from being reviewed? Do you plan to pay for a review to promote your projects? Tell us in the comments!
Hi JBJ,
It is great to hear that your posts are converting into a huge amount of traffic. I think the exposure you get on our site helps, but you’ve also developed both a respect and a trust from our readers, so people want to try out all the new stuff you are up to! You’ve earned that through past guest posts, and your support you’ve given to the WordPress community.
I think things like guest posts on established blogs are much better business plans than social networking because you get targeted traffic to your new website. This converts to RSS subscribers, return visitors, etc.
I agree.. upon reading your post I got the idea why a review is better than advertising. I think I will opt for it. Thanks for the advice.
@Kyle Eslick: Thanks a lot for the compliments! I totally agree that a guest post or a review on a popular blog related to your niche is fairly better than being, for exemple, featured on digg.com front page.
I have been on digg frontpage twice, I get a lot of visitors but most of them stayed less than a minute on my blog! WP Hacks readers who came to WPrecipes after reading my article stayed longer, read many posts, and despite the blog youngness, I already have 100 rss suscribers in one week, which is definitely great!
Bloggers needs to provide guest posts to get an extra exposure, I’m surprised by the small number of bloggers actually doing some guest-blogging…I’ll write a post about that, because it is an excellent way to get quality traffic!
I don’t have a budget for paid reviews at the moment (sadly) but I choose to run a contest http://www.thisismyurl.com/contest/win-an-ipod-nano/ to try to generate some reviews.
@Christopher Ross: Indeed, contests are a very good way to have reviews! Good luck with your contest!
Sounds like Cats Who Code is a great source for advertising and traffic. I have a new site http://www.No-Gi-Grappling.com that I will have to experiment with.
Indeed it is! If you’d like to advertise on Cats Who Code, just send me an email. Don’t wait until prices increases
reviews are really good, but the problem is that when you write in a niche that dont have many people to write reviews, as such automotive segment.
I agree that review is good way for blog promoting. Especially, if the review is written by famous blogger or writter.
Without a doubt reviews are extremely effective form of advertising. The little bit I have delved into as been quite profitable.
I’m sold on the underlying theory. I think it’s worth mentioning that swapping reviews can be a good way to get reviews without a cash outlay–if you’re willing to do the writing.
Bookmarked you, some great info here, have just spent a day moving my blog off semiologic pro and on to a Thesis theme.
Reviews are a great way to build a customer base. Many of my clients often comment that they contacted me after reading the testimonials on my website, that are a type of review for the mortgage industry.
Another nice side of reviews is a high quality links from page with “good” content. It’s good for SEO.
I am really interested to promote my site with review. But I haven’t tried paid review. So far, I only do review exchange with other site or blog owner. This promoting tool give a great impact to my site.
I agree this review, The little bit I have delved into as been quite profitable.
It is great to hear that your posts are converting into a huge amount of traffic, but reviews can be a good way to get reviews without a cash outlay–if you’re willing to do the writing
great review, I like this but I don’t have budget for this review to promoting tool give a great impact to my site.
Paid reviews are awesome because you get a bit of the bloggers credibility in it. Whereas with an adspot everyone just passes it off as an ad.