Sisterly Savings

I’ve received a lot of emails of late pertaining on how to get your Blog to Grow and get more readers. I started off with 5 readers back in December of 2007 and now for this month alone I’ve had 54,000 unique visitors. It was certainly a slow & steady approach but here are the tips I used to get my readership up:

1. Comment,Comment, Comment!
I cannot stress this enough! Visit others blogs and leave a quick small comment. Most Blog owners love to know they are helping someone with their articles/tips, etc. In turn, most blog owners will come to look at your Blog after you’ve commented and you may become a favorite if its in the same niche.

2. Post Often
When readers know that you post information on a daily basis, they keep coming back for more.

“If you build it, they will Come…”

If you post sporadically, your readers may never know when to expect a post so they may just frequent your blog less.

3. List other Blogs on your Site
If you find a blog that you really enjoy, write a post about it or grab their button to display. Or keep a Blogroll added to your sidebar. The blog owner will be thankful for the extra exposure and it will help get your Blog noticed!

4. Contact Popular A List Bloggers
What does it hurt to contact a favorite Blog Owner and ask if they can view your site and offer any tips for you ! I always try to offer help to those who need it and this way it helps me find new up and coming blogs that I may enjoy!

Now not every Blog Owner may respond, when I 1st started out some of the Owners didn’t even respond back but at least I tried! It doesn’t hurt to ask:)

5. Join a Blog Carnival
A blog carnival is pretty much a social networking site where you write a post and submit your article to a carnival that is relevant to your post.

When the carnival goes live, meaning it goes out to the readers, you’ll be listed and will get your blog noticed.

I used this method twice and I signed up at BlogCarnival.com which literally has tons of subjects to participate in!!

6. Participate in MEME’s
Find any and all MEME’s that have Mr. Linky’s to get your blog noticed. MEME’s are Series that are usually posted once a week on a particular subject. You join in on the fun and get some exposure as well, not to mention finding other Blogs that you never knew about!

To name just a few:

Menu Plan Monday

Tackle it Tuesdays

Works for Me Wednesdays

7. Sign up your Blog in Blog Directories
You can find some Sites that offer Free Blog Directories to list your Blog in. The only requirement is to link back to the Home Site. To name a few:

5 Minutes For Mom Blog Directory

The Mom Blogs

Blogher

Frugal Hacks

8. Offer Give Aways
Try to do a small giveaway every once in awhile to get readers over to your site. Then send the give away details to other bloggers so they can list it on their site. Their readers in turn will visit your blog to enter!

9. Join a Social Blogging Network
I just discovered Entrecard which is a Social Blogging Network, its almost like a virtual business card that you drop off at another’s blog to gain more exposure. It took me 1/2 hour to get it figured out, but its been fun and I found a lot of really great blogs!!

Read How to Grow Your Blog with Entrecard here.

10. Be Yourself!!
Just be yourself and do what you do best and your readers will love you for it. Be honest in your posts and try to give your readers more of what they want:)

All of these tips are tried and true on my part, I have used every one listed and they do help in BIG ways:)

Do you have any other ways to Grow Your Blog???

Blog Promotion

This week we have 2 very helpful Tools that you can utilize and are Super Easy!!

First up is the Email Me Generator located here. If you would like to add your own email to your Blog to make it accessible for your readers to contact you, this is 1 way to do it. It also has an encoder that helps you to ‘hide’ your email address from being harvested by spam software!

The instructions are pretty much self explanatory, here is a sample of what I created:

Contact Me Here!

When you click on the above link, you’ll be sending an email to me! Pretty neat! (I used the Encoding one for this one!)

Next up is the Drop Down Menu Generator. If you have a lot of information on your sidebars and want a “cleaner” look, this is a great tool to have.

To use this tool, simply follow the instructions to place your links into the Menu, then Copy & Paste the code into your Sidebar. I tried to place a sample of what I created here, but its not allowing me to. If you want to see the finished product, I have a drop down menu at the top in the upper left sidebar!

Thats all for today.If you would like to see more in this series, you can follow along here.

This is yet another new program for me that I found out about from Carrie @ MoneySavingMethods and right now, for new sign ups, you’ll get a Free $10 Giftcard! I signed up immediately of course and picked the Target GC which will come in handy for Xmas Gifts pretty soon!

Now what exactly is Ebates.com? It’s an online rebate center so to speak where you shop online through them and earn cash back. Its a highly regarded site and they have almost every store listed that you could possibly want to shop. The jist is if you are looking for something online, stop at Ebates 1st to see if its a lower price of course, and if you purchase through their site, you’ll get a percentage back. They pay on a quarterly basis and the payout starts at $5.

They offer coupons and specials and weekly deals to help make it easier to earn cash back.

So to highlight this $10 GC promotion, you sign up as a new member and choose your GC. Then you need to make a qualifying purchase in order to get your GC. If you choose to purchase a Gift Certificate for $10, you’ll earn cash back and get the $10 GC you chose Free! So for about $13 OOP (thats how much I paid for a Bath & Body Works Card- shipping was $2.95 but some giftcards offer Free Shipping) I get 2 GC’s and cash back on my purchase! Not a bad deal at all. And if you refer friends and family to Ebates you’ll earn $5 bonus money for each referral!

So if you would like to sign up under me, click here. I’ll keep you posted on how well I do with this service but so far am liking the Free Money!

To see more Cashing In Series Posts, go here for ways to earn some extra cash.

These are just too adorable! Found on the FamilyFun Website, here are the instructions to make your own:

RECIPE INGREDIENTS:

Yellow, green, and white frosting
Cupcakes
Red Skittles or M&M’s
Small plastic bag
Rubber band or twist tie
Chocolate-covered graham crackers
White Good & Plenty candies

1. Cover the cupcakes with yellow frosting and allow them to sit for an hour before decorating. Dab each red Skittle or M&M with a bit of green frosting for the apple’s leaf, then set them aside.

2. Put a tablespoon or two of white frosting into a small plastic bag for piping. Cut a very small hole in a corner of the bag, twist the top of the bag closed, and secure it with a rubber band or twist tie. Piping the frosting gently out of the hole, write messages on the chocolate-covered graham crackers. Leave space at the bottom of the cookie, where it’ll be stuck into the cupcake.

3. Cut a groove in the cupcake’s frosting with a knife, then fit a blackboard into the groove. Add one Skittle or M&M apple and a piece of Good & Plenty chalk, as shown.

Ok, this one was pretty fun for me and I thought you would like to learn too! This way you can change your signature whenever you feel like it or want to make a statement! To follow along with this series, you can go here.

Start off by going to The Signature Generator. Follow the instructions on creating your customized signature.

This feature will walk you through the process of making your own signature quickly and its Free ! Not to mention SUPER Easy!! Your really gonna love this tool! The only setback I see is the limited choices of colors but I guess I can work around that.

Voila! You now have a signature. See how easy that was? Ok, now what? Well you’ll want to get it on your posts so here are 2 ways I discovered:

How to Upload to Your Blog:

Watch this video for an easy way:

To get your signature on your Blogger Post, you would go into Photobucket and copy the HTML code directly, then go to Posts in Blogger, then click on Edit HTML and Paste it.

For this way to work, you would have to add the code before each post you write.

For another quick Trick you can try this way (I found this way to be just as Easy):

*Copy the signature’s HTML code
*Log into blogger
*From Dashboard choose “settings”
*Choose “formatting”
*Scroll down to “Post Template Box”
*Paste the code in the box
*Save your settings

By using this technique, it will automatically place your signature for you !

I used the generator to make the bottom signature, it was fun and they do have a lot of cool options, worth checking out! I simply pasted the HTML code to the bottom of this post, easy peasy! Happy Writing!

Each Summer, my daughter has to read 3 or 4 books for the upcoming school year where she will be quizzed about when she goes back to school. In the past, the books have been so hard to get at the library because it seems that the books are on everyone’s reading list so we’ve usually wound up purchasing used books at Amazon.com.

This year, my daughter came across Fullbooks.com which is practically a virtual library that you can read online, the entire book-for FREE! We have 3 out the 4 books that she needed this summer!

When you 1st log in, all you see is a bunch of letters, but the books are arranged in alphabetical order by title. I only wish they had a search bar feature to look for a certain book instead of having to look thruough the pages. But for Free, I think its not that much of an inconvenience,lol!

Today we have a special DIY Blog Treat! Revka (who is a real Web Designer) of RS Designs is posting for us today!! I am so glad too, as she has been so helpful in the past /present with my Blog.

View here to see my review on RS Designs, which I wholeheartedly recommend as I didn’t just get a Web Designer, I got an awesome new friend who is dedicated to her work and making you happy!!

BTW, she recently had a baby and he is the cutest ever!! View pictures of him here and say hi!!! Even with a new baby, she is still hard at work! You can follow the series along here.

————————————————————————– —————-

Welcome to this edition of Blog DIY! I am Revka Stearns of RS Designs, and I am honored that Jennifer asked me to write a post for her series.

Today, I am going to teach you how to create a patterned background for your blog.

1. Locate an image that you would like to use for your background. You can either pay for an image from a site like 123 Royalty Free, Stockxpert, or iStockphoto, or you try a Google search for free backgrounds or free patterns. If you choose the free route, make sure your read any licenses or terms of use to make sure that you are not using the image illegally. (If you know how to use an image editing program, you can create your own background image.)
2. Save the image to your computer.
3. Upload the image to the Web, either into an image account, like Photobucket, or into a post on your blog.
4. Locate and copy the image’s URL.
5. Access your blog’s HTML. In Blogger, this is found by clicking on the Layout tab in your dashboard and then clicking on Edit HTML.
6. Find the code section that begins with body. This is the section that governs how the background of your page will appear.
7. In the body section, find the line of code that begins with background.
8. Insert your cursor before the closing semi-colon (;), add a space, and then type url("http://urlofyourimagegoeshere.com") repeat top left. (Do not type the period; that is just ending the sentence. *smile*)
9. If you blog in Blogger, preview to see if you like your changes. If not, try a different image.
10. Save your changes, and view your new patterned background.

I hope this tutorial has been clear. Please let me know if you have any questions.

In this series are discussing various tips/ways to earn some extra money online that is actually valid and tried and true! If you would like to follow along, you can do so here.

I came across Snapdollars a while back, and while I haven’t really paid much attention to it, I received a check yesterday for $37!

For this site, there is a lot of ways to earn points but the real money comes in the form of referrals. You get $5 for EACH person you refer! I had sent out a dozen emails to friends/family and thats where I earned the bulk of the money for hardly doing anything at all:)

The only thing I did not like was the fact that they charge a $3 fee if you request to be paid by check, so I actually made $40 which is the payout timeline. I think I may switch to another method of payment….And if you sign up now, you’ll get $5 as a sign up bonus and I get $5!! Just click on above link to sign up:) I just love when I can get free money!

Has anyone else signed up with SnapDollars and have had gotten paid? We’d love to hear about it!!