The reason I bring the topic up again today is because I received an email from a lady requesting that I write/blog about her site, Travel Babees.com.

While I don’t normally promote or write about websites because the site owner sends me an email requesting me to do so, I decided to write about this one only because of the earnest way in which she approached me. It was quite obvious that she spent a little time on both my website and my blog. Her earnest approach earned her a two-fold website mention. I wrote about her on my A Few Cool Products blog and mentioned her website here.

I write about this not to show how I’m such a real great gal and love to help people (while I am and I do, but that’s not why I did it). I’m sharing this because sending well thought out e-mails to blog owners and/or webmasters might prove to be a great, free way to generate backlinks and traffic to your site/blog.

We all seem to know how to get traffic by using Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit or the social networking service du jour, but how many of us have thought about targeting website/blog owners and request a review, post or article be written about your site? This is not a new idea, just one that isn’t used very often.

What’s the worst that could happen? The blog owner can say no. Or, as in the case with Travel Babees, you just might get a backlink or two. The choice is yours.

I’ve always been amazed by the response, or lack thereof to certain articles. I recently submitted the same blog post to Digg, Reddit and Mixx. On the day I submitted the post, I received 1 or 2 hits from Digg, none from Mixx and over 1,000 hits from Reddit. Other times I submit to the same three and more with no visible results. Go figure.

The big picture

The one thing to keep in mind when submitting to social networking sites is that it’s more than just generating traffic. It’s about backlinks; Google indexing (I find that by submitting posts to social networking sites, they get indexed quicker) and there is always the potential to increase traffic.

Speeding up the process

I’ve stumbled across a social networking submission website called SocialMarker.com. Social Marker, a free service, streamlines the submission process by automatically taking you through 47 social networking sites to submit your links (you can select or de-select which sites you want to submit to).

In essence, you insert the bookmark details once, and then they take you through the sites. All you have to do is drag and drop the details into the appropriate sections of each site. I selected 15 sites and it took me about 15 minutes to submit to the group of them.

By using Social Marker, I found that I remained focused. In the past I would submit my articles to social networking sites and then spend untold amounts of time socially networking. Now when its time to submit links, that’s just what I do. I submit links. I save my social networking kibitzing for when I have time to kibitz, not when I should be working.

Is it worth it?

Even though I have yet to master the social networking scene, I think allocating a little time each day or each week for link submission is worth it. The more you advertise your links, the better the chances of increasing your traffic and backlinks.

Shameless Plug

While you’re investigating Social Marker, why not see how well it works by bookmarking this page?

Commentluv

The latest plugin I came across is one called Commentluv . With Commentluv installed, folks who leave approved comments on this blog receive a link back to the latest comment on their blog. Commentluv accesses the commenter’s RSS feed and displays, beneath the post, the latest comment from the blog.

Link Love

In conjunction with Commentluv, I’ve also installed Lucia’s Linky Love . What Lucia’s Linky Love does is it makes the comment author’s link ‘do follow.’ For you newbies out there, ‘do follow’ links means that No Job For Mom will share it’s link juice to qualified and approved commenter’s.

In the internet world, page rank, popularity, and good SERP placement is important. (SERP means search engine results placement). The higher your page rank and popularity, the better the SERP and the better the traffic. Getting backlinks from decent sites, especially those with a good page ranking helps to boost your blog’s popularity and ranking.

Sharing the Love

Although as of this writing No Job for Mom’s home page has a ranking of 3 (which may change because Google gives and takes away), I’m willing to share my tiny pitcher of link juice with my supportive commenter’s. It’s my way of giving back to those who help my blog to become successful.

Lucia’s Linky-Love has a feature that sets a minimum number of blog comments a visitor must comment on before the commenter’s author can partake of the link juice. This helps to prevent a flurry of comment spam.

No Spam Love

In a perfect world, these two plugins are a great way to thank my readers. In this imperfect world, however, I’ll see how it works. If No Job For Mom is suddenly bombarded with spammy comments, I’ll have to reconsider this move. In the meanwhile, Commentluv and Lucia’s Linky Love is fully activated. Linky Love becomes enabled after 5 approved posts.

Don’t get me wrong, page rank will definitely improve one’s money making ability with Pay Per Post, but it won’t stop you from making money if you don’t have a page rank.

Having said that, if you want to improve your money making potential with your blog, don’t wait until the last minute to try to improve your page rank. Start getting backlinks early. Getting quality backlinks helps to improve your blog’s page rank.

Early on in the life of your blog, you can submit your blog to social networking sites such as Digg, Reddit, Mixx and others. There are hundreds of social networking sites out there. Here’s a list of social networking sites I came across on the internet. Choose a few and submit your blog posts to them. For more exposure, you should submit individual blog posts, not just the blog’s main domain. You want as many free backlinks as possible.

The submission process may be a little time consuming, but in the long run it will be worth it. The quicker your rankings increase, the more advertising opportunities you’ll have with PPP.

Once you’ve got a few blog posts under your belt, you can seek other blogs that have similar interest and add useful informative comments. Be sure to include your blog’s link in your comment if allowed. Don’t spam other blogs, contribute.

Do the same thing with forums. Use your blog in your signature tag and contribute thoughtful helpful comments in forums.

Spend a little time marketing your site. The more you get the word out, the better your page rank. In the meanwhile, be sure to get the minimum of 10 posts within 30 days on your new blog so that your blog will be approved by Pay Per Post.