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StumbleUpon is a big social site and it has many people who have interest in various topics. There are people who stumble pages about blogging, there are people who stumble pages about soccer, about personality development and many more. Getting friends who are interested in the same topic as yours matters a lot. They will be helpful to you solving your problems or answering your questions when needed. So StumbleUpon is a great site where you can make many friends. But before any reading, I suggest you not to add anyone in the SU unless you have a common interest. Don’t always try to add the top stumblers. Here are a few steps to get new friends in StumbleUpon:

1. Pick The Topic

Pick the topic in which you have most knowledge and you are most interested. There are many topics to choose and you can see a big list here. Find the topic of interest.

Topics

2. Choose The User:

Once you have chosen the topic of interest, you will be leaded to a page where you will see a few stumblers who have stumbled some articles recently. There will be 10 stumblers for any particular topic and you can choose a stumbler from it.

Stumblers

3. Add Them As A Friend

Be careful while doing this. You should not add all the users and send messages to them. Add one or two a day. Go to their profile page and click on “Add Him/Her As A Friend”.

Add As Friend

4. Send Them A Message

This is the most important thing in getting friends. The message you send matters a lot. This message will determine whether the person will be your friend or not. Send a message like this:

Hi, I’m [Your Name] and I’m a [Your Profession]. I visited your profile and found that both of us have the same interests. I just added you now. How are you? Have a great time.

Cheers,

[Your Name]

This message will be good enough and the person you add will most probably add you.

Send Message

5. Tell Them More About You

The next step will be to tell more about you and how much you liked their blog or website (many stumblers have a blog/website). Send them critiques about their latest post. Tell them about their blog design and how well it looks. Stumble a few of their pages.

That’s all you need to do to get a new friend through StumbleUpon. But maintaining the friendship is equally hard. Don’t send requests often to stumble your post unless you have written something of good value. Talk to them often. If you want to add someone right now, then feel free to add me. Also don’t forget to Subscribe to my blog for more posts on StumbleUpon.

P.S:Don’t spam the StumbleUpon community.

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18 Nov, 2007  |  Written by Ramkarthik  |  under General

The past week has been pretty interesting and I enjoyed everyday of blogging like always. Not much actually happened the past week. My article on Blogging Tips yesterday was on “How NOT To Monetize Your Blog“.

1. Blogging Tips, where I do freelance writing, has launched a Market Place. You can register there and do the following things:

* Advertising - For Sale

* Advertising - Wanted

* Link & BlogRoll Exchange

* Writing Positions - Paid

* Writing Positions - Guest

You can enjoy the above services for 30 days at NO cost. Take a look at the market place and register there. Blogging Tips also has a forum in which you can register from here (of course it is free).

2. Mani Karthik of has a post on How To Become A Top Stumbler In Less Than A Week. Though I don’t agree on everything written in that post, I have to say it is a nice written one. Good analysis by Mani. Also visit my StumbleUpon profile and add me as a friend there.

3. Yaro Starak has written a good guide to affiliate marketing.

4. Steve Snell has written a post in Daily Blog Tips on Developing Your Blogging Identity. If you are a blogger in a crowded niche, then you have to be unique in some way.

5. Keith asks if there is something wrong with the niche of your blog.

Here’s few interesting posts that are from other niche. These posts were good and I thought I should link to them.

1. Madhur writes on How To Remove “Orkut Is Banned” Virus.

2. Shankar lists 5 tools to remove junk files from your system.

Hope you liked all the links. Have a nice week ahead.

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As a blogger, you should be able to write well. To get many subscribers to your blog, you should be consistent. With almost every blog writing one post everyday, you should keep up with the blogosphere by writing at least once in two or three days. And when you become a freelance writer, you need to write almost everyday and sometimes even twice a day. To manage at those times, you need to practice from now. Here are few tips which you can follow to have something to write everyday:

 

Writing

Image Source: tnarik

1. Do A Product Review

Select a product from Amazon or any product related to your blog’s niche and write a complete review about the product. This will help you in developing the art of writing as well as reviewing any product. This might also get you an additional income. Add affiliate ID to the product and every product you sell will make you money. When writing a review, make sure you don’t be 100% positive or do a blatant promotion. Write both good and bad of the product.


2. Write A Paid Post

If you have a blog registered at Payperpost or any other paid to post sites, write a review about one of the advertisers. Don’t take opportunities which are not surrounded to your blog’s niche.


3. Write Crap

Yes! Write crap but don’t post it on your blog. Take a writing pad and scribble something in it. To tell the truth, this method has helped me a lot in getting content ideas. When I start scribbling something, I write whatever that comes to my mind and one of them turns to be content for my blog that day.


4. Write Guest Posts

When you have written a post for your blog on any specific day, try to write a guest post for a famous blog. Write good content, then send it to any blogger who is in need of guest posts and send it to him/her. This will help to build your profile online. If you are a freelance writer, this will help you to get more opportunities with a little extra pay.

5. Write an e-book

When you have done all the above and still left with extra time, then start writing an e-book about your niche. If you feel the e-book needs to be sold, then sell it at eBay or any other site. If you feel like giving the e-book for free, then give it to your blog subscribers. This can increase your blog’s subscriber count tremendously. You can build an authority for yourself.

Do you write regularly? Have you tried any of the above 5 options? What’s your experience with them? Please share it in comments?

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11 Nov, 2007  |  Written by Ramkarthik  |  under General

The week that just passed had lots of happenings. It had some great news for me. I also found good posts which I will be linking in this post.

My article at Blogging Tips where I do Freelance Writing:

Yesterday, my article got published in blogging tips blog which was titled, “5 ‘Less-Used’ Ways To Get New Subscribers“. In the article, I wrote about the 5 methods of getting new subscribers which most bloggers don’t use. Using forums, videos and other related things can increase your subscriber count well.

My Guest Posts:

I wrote two guest posts which can be seen here:

1. How To Keep Up Blog’s Space When You Are On A Holiday

2. 6 Tips To Make A Good Post Better

3. Being A Blogger blog interviewed me and you can read it here.

These two both got a good number of comments and I’m happy about it. I also look forward for other to make one or two posts for my blog. If you have a post about blogging or making money online, then send me using the contact form and I would be happy to publish it if the post is good.

Last week, my comment form was not working properly. Thanks to Maneesh (for mailing me about it) and Mayank (for telling me in Gtalk) who told me about the problem. Now I have changed back to my old theme. The comment form is now working fine.

In this blog, I wrote 3 posts out of which one was stumbled by few big stumblers and also it went to the hot topics in sphinn. Thanks to Andy for submitting it to Sphinn. You can read that article titled “15 Tips To Boost Your Productivity When Blogging“.

I found some good posts in other blogs which I Stumbled past week.

1. 35 Guaranteed Ways To Increase Your RSS Subscribers - This post is too good that I’m not able to stop myself from linking it. But the post is totally different from the one which i have written for Blogging Tips.

2. 101 Blog Posting Ideas - Very big list of blog posting ideas. Tad indeed has worked a lot for this post.

3. Google AdSense Cracked Due To Security Flaw - This is one of the unbelievable posts I read this week. Ashish has done a good job covering the whole thing in that post.

4. 70 Unique Places To Find ideas- No Metablogs Allowed - Good write up from Skellie. Big list for finding ideas.

Enjoy reading those articles.

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Sphinn is a a site which works in the same way as Digg but the topics that get hot there are not like Digg. You can reach the hot topics list if you write about SEO or Social media or a list post which is about blogging and related things. I’m also a fan of Sphinn although it hasn’t sent me much traffic.

Blogspot Blogs Can Reach The Hot Topics In Sphinn:

People normally have a thought that blogspot blogs cannot reach the front page in any social site. But in Sphinn and Stumbleupon, I have seen few blogspot blogs reaching the front page. Right now, there is a post in the Google Webmaster Central blog which has made to the front page (or the so called ‘hot topics‘).

 

 

Sphinn Hot Topics

 

So if you have got a blogspot blog and if you have written a great post in it, don’t hesitate to push it in Sphinn. You might just hit the front page if the post is really good.

Sphinn Effect:

Although I haven’t reached Sphinn ‘hot topics’ page, I have been near at times. I wrote a post yesterday which is missing the front page of Sphinn now due to lack of a couple of votes. So if you have a sphinn account and if you like the article, please sphinn it here.

A couple of my submits have made to the hot topics page in Sphinn. The traffic that comes from Sphinn is not huge but the quality if traffic is good. I got nearly 50 visits from Sphinn yesterday for my post and many of them cared to stumble the post which in turn got me more traffic. I always like quality over quantity.

The Comments:

The comments you get either in your blog post or in the Sphinn’d article are always encouraging. They tell you the good and bad about the article. You can learn from the people over there. Many expert bloggers have accounts in Sphinn and they are also active. Chances are that they might find your post and even link to it from their blogs.

My Profile:

Whenever you write a post about a social site, you should give the link to your profile so that you can build your profile and also get new friends. So here are profiles of Sphinn and StumbleUpon:

1. Sphinn

2. StumbleUpon

Moral:

If you have a great post in your blogspot blog or even if you find a good post in any other blogspot blog, don’t hesitate to promote it in Sphinn (and also in StumbleUpon). You can reach the ‘hot topics’ page (in the case of sphinn) or the buzz page (in the case of StumbleUpon) easily. Good Luck.

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