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I’ve had a few queries asking what is going on with my RSS feedcount. As I type this article, my feedcount according to the Feedburner chicklet looks like this -

Yeah, 34,015 readers, not bad considering I was around 6,000 a few days ago, then I jumped to around 17,000 and now it’s doubled that number.

So what’s going on?

As reported in this article where I asked - Will Feedburner Feed Counts Include AWeber Email Subscribers? - the answer is yes, they do.

I had set up my blog blaster (RSS-to-email service) in AWeber a LONG time ago, in fact, before I even used Feedburner and I realized I had my old standard WordPress RSS feed plugged into AWeber, so it wasn’t reporting to Feedburner.

I went into AWeber, switched over to my Feedburner “burned” feed and now my AWeber email subscribers are also included in the feedcount. Here’s how the feedcount breaks down now -

However, something is not quite right with these numbers because I do not have 27,000 AWeber subscribers - not yet anyway. I suspect AWeber and Feedburner haven’t quite got the communication right and no doubt tomorrow or the next day the numbers will settle to a true reflection of reality. I suspect it will fall to around the 22,000 mark, still a nice improvement.

Gobala stated - Aweber/Feedburner Integration is Good News For Marketers - and I have to agree. What will be interesting to see is if some of the Internet marketers out there with email list sizes in the hundreds of thousands begin using Feedburner chicklets on their blogs, thus catapulting them into the top of blog rankings even if the blog itself doesn’t get that much traffic.

Does this mean the Feedcount chicklet will lose its position as the standard measure of blog status, just like PageRank has? I doubt it, people still look to PageRank as a measure of a site’s worth and I suspect Feedburner chicklets will continue to be the social proof tool of choice for blogs, regardless of how accurate a measure it is. Once a standard is adopted, it’s hard to change it.

In the meantime I’m going to go and enjoy the one moment in history where I can pretend I was almost as popular as Darren. Even when the numbers are broken I can’t beat him! (…it’s not a competition Yaro ).

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I was reading a post over at DoshDosh where Maki notes his RSS readership broke the 10,000 subscriber mark and what he did (or really, what he didn’t do) to realize that result. Here’s his post -

Dosh Dosh Reaches 10,000 Subscribers (and the Reason Why People Subscribe to a Blog)

I have to admit to feeling slightly irritated reading the post, or really, wanting to add more to the topic raised by Maki to clarify what I see as a keep point, something top bloggers sometimes forget about, so here goes…

Maki Has Talent

Maki is a great blogger (and writer), everyone knows this and his blog has grown into one of the top in the industry as a result. In his post he outlines a list of what I would call “traditional advice” about what it takes to grow a successful blog and how he didn’t do any of it, including -

• Not displaying his feedcount as a social proof tool until after he broke 10,000 subscribers
• Not submitting guest posts to other blogs
• Not running contents
• No paid advertising to promote his blog
• Not writing a blog post every day

…and the list goes on.

Maki has not done any major promotions with a free report, or video or podcasting either. Essentially he has sat down and week after week put out solid written content, responded to comments and emails from his readers and not been very proactive beyond that to grow his traffic. I don’t think he has an active comment marketing strategy either - in that I mean he’s not commenting on other blogs to bring traffic to his in a strategic and focused manner.

Basically, he has pretty much bucked the trend and not done anything I recommend in Blog Mastermind or countless other bloggers suggest as good practice to grow a successful blog (things even Maki recommends to other bloggers).

So do we have it all wrong? Should we follow in Maki’s footsteps and put out solid content week after week as the only marketing strategy we need to grow a top blog?

Read the rest of this entry >>

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You may have noticed this blog is back to a PageRank 6. Back in October 2007 my site was one of the blogs hit with a PageRank penalty because I had paid links. I dropped from a 6 to a 5 and then later when the big sweep happened, down to a 3.

This article sums up my speculation during the event and lists some of the other blogs hit at the time - Possible Explanations for the PageRank Penalty Sweep.

After some thinking I decided, at least on this blog, to add ‘no follow’ to any paid links and succumb to Google’s wishes. I added the no follows, submitted a review request with Google at their Webmaster Tools and then sat down and wrote this - Frustrating Yes - But I Want Google To Be My Friend.

Nothing happened for a month, but I thought Google might need longer so I let it sit. Little did I know that Google simply doesn’t tell you whether you have successfully adhered to their requests or you still need to do more to have the penalty removed and apparently I hadn’t done enough.

Another victim of a PageRank drop was Wendy Piersall from eMoms at Home. Wendy was relentlessly monitoring what was going on with Google as she attempted to have her PageRank restored to it’s original status and every now and then she updated me with details on what she found.

A couple of weeks ago she finally found what she was looking for - a blog post about people who had submitted requests to remove the PageRank penalty to no avail. The post itself didn’t have the answers, it was the comment stream after it that presented the solution, or should I say it was Matt Cutts, Google’s blogging rep who provided the answer because he was diligently responding to comments to the post.

Matt went so far as to even personally help some of the bloggers who asked for Google to go look at their site because they were certain they had removed or nofollowed all paid links.

The blog post is here - Matt Cutts, Why Am I Still Being Punished? - and kudos to DazzlinDonna from SEO Scoop for asking the question.

I read the comment stream, determined that I hadn’t been liberal enough with no follow tagging and then went into my blog archives to rectify the situation (I’m just glad I haven’t done many paid reviews, I can’t imagine how much of a job this would be for someone who actively does paid reviews). After I submitted another Google request to have the penalty removed and a week or so later it was done.

I owe Wendy a huge thanks for keeping me up to date with this - cheers Wendy!

If you still have not had your PageRank restored and you are prepared to follow Google’s rules, check out the post above, the answers are there.

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This week I’ve never heard the name Frank Kern so often. It’s nuts.

In case you missed it, Frank just launched his Mass Control system and EVERYBODY is promoting it. As a result, the first run sold out in like 53 minutes.

I’m on the receiving end of all the emails from Frank’s affiliates and also, since I am an affiliate, I receive the emails Frank sends to help us promote the launch.

It has been eye opening, especially after watching Rich Schefren do his launch in December and the Stomper boys launch SMARTS in January, all making for a busy couple of months.

Passive Learning

Frank’s launch so far has been an amazing learning experience. Just the emails alone are valuable, since Frank is the email marketing master and Mass Control (the product he is selling) is all about email marketing, he’s showing his finest work in this launch.

It’s not just the emails though. If you haven’t yet gone through all the great free stuff Frank is giving out, you might want to head to this link -

http://masscontrolsite.com/blog/

Once you get there opt-in to his list so you receive notification of new free stuff and then you will be taken to the blog where all the videos are archived, the webinar with Eben Pagan is there in MP3 to download and a bunch of case studies too. It’s great stuff and if you ever plan to do a launch, study this, Frank’s launch was text book solid…and it’s not done yet!

Mass Control Reopens 9AM PST Feb 2

Frank’s last email to affiliates said he is reopening Mass Control at 9:00 AM PST on February 2 USA time for one more run.

If you want a shot at the few spots left, click the link below…

http://www.masscontrolsite.net/

As per usual there is all kinds of scarcity talk about how long the sales page will be up and I have no idea how many spots he is opening, but I do know the competition is fierce based on who is promoting this. Just the last 24 hours I received emails promoting Mass Control from -

• Ed Dale
• StomperNet
• Rich Schefren
• Jim Edwards
• Joel Comm
• Mike Filsaime
• Russell Brunson

All these guys want to top each other in the affiliate standings (and of course make thousands in commissions) so they keep mailing over and over and over again. That means the few remaining spots in Mass Control will be fought over by some few hundred thousand people - all the people on the email lists of the guys above (and more - let’s not forget Eben Pagan and John Reese and all the other affiliates).

It’s doing wonders for Frank. His list is growing and last I heard it was over 50,000 just from this launch alone, plus he is guaranteed to sell out of the product. Of course all of this is just proof of what Frank teaches, but it certainly helps that Frank has worked behind the scenes in launches for most of the names above.

Needless to say, yours truly is one of the only bloggers who is an affiliate for this one. I’m not going to make any top ten affiliate lists, but I would like to disclose to you that the links in this post are my affiliate link.

If you want to get into the inner circle, study Frank’s work and become an email marketing master (in theory anyway!), and meet Frank at the event he is running later in the year for Mass Control clients, then you have a small window to do so on Feb 2 at 9AM PST.

If you decide to buy Mass Control and would like to give me credit for your purchase, please clear your cookies then click the link below to claim your spot -

http://www.masscontrolsite.net/

If buying programs like Mass Control are out of your league, start working towards the day when you can afford to buy these products because you make good money online. Study the free content Frank puts out. Learn from the content itself and also how it fits into Frank’s overall strategy and launch style. It’s compelling stuff if you are into Internet marketing, no matter what niche you operate in.

Yaro Starak
Mass Controlled

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