Today I’d like to introduce you to the great blogger (or if to say better – the bloggeress), Ileane Smith, who is also known as Ms. Ileane Speaks.

She won the «Most Influential Commenter» competition in January, so it’s time to make a review of her outstanding blogging way and her ways of getting web traffic.

Before I begin, I’d like to add also, that what I’m going to speak about next, is written with all my respect and sincerity. It’s not just because of the prize for the competition, it’s not just because I promised to write a review for the winner. It’s about the reason to write about her. And I’m glad, that the winner is Ileane Smith. So, let’s look at the way Ms. Ileane is blogging and getting visitors to her blogs.

First of all, Ileane Smith is an extraordinary multi-tasker. I hope it doesn’t sound bad, because I think of it, as of a really positive factor.

Where you can find her?

I know 5 main blogs, that she has.

1. msileanesblog.blogspot.com – The one I like the most. The atmosphere of this blog makes you relax.. somehow.. and find the way.

   Oh.. and how she describes it:

   Need help choosing between wordpress.com and blogger for your free blog? I’m MS. Ileane the blog queen with the pros and cons of blogger and wordpress to help solve the mystery.

2. ileane.wordpress.com – This is probably her #1 blog. Ileane shares there everything she learns about blogging and social media, creating interesting podcasts.

   You can find out a little bit more about this blog on her about page.

3. bloggingwire.com/msileanespeaks – Speaking about this blog, I can say, that it was created as symbol of engaging with BlogEngage blogging community, where Ileane takes very important role.

4. bloggingwire.com/podcast – This one’s her latest blog. It’s about Ileane’s favorite topic – podcasts.

5. msileanespeaks.posterous.com – If you want to know about Ms. Ileane a little bit more, you should check this blog. It’s about her achievements and places, where she was mentioned.

Well, not bad, huh? I cannot imagine, where she finds the time for them all, but she definitely does, and all of these blogs bring her very nice amount of traffic!

Why Ms. Ileane differs from other bloggers?

She, actually, absorbs social media trends. What’s so special? Well, you can do that as well for some time. But it will take a huge peace of your energy. Not everyone can handle it. She’s the one, who can. And I really admire her from this point.

By this moment we know, that Ileane is the podcaster and the social media follower. Did I mention, that she comments a lot and engages with other bloggers.. very successfully? It must be like this because of her passion for blogging and for being a part of blogosphere, which is crucial for achieving success. Within the last month she deserved (yes!) several banner spots on various blogs. And it’s not about being lucky. I think people simply love her, because of her openness to everybody.

Did I explain her way of getting web traffic?

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Video Dessert: «Funniest kid ever!»

This kid gets the worst case of stage fright ever. You gotta love him!

From this success story you can learn several very important things. It’s about blogging success and the way people (far not all of them) achieve it with a hard work.

Henri Junttila is a young man, a blogger. His passion is writing helpful stuff for people to inspire them.. well, at least, that’s what he’s doing in his last blog, called Wake Up Cloud.

His success story isn’t about a sudden success, it’s not about some kind of an overnight success neither. It’s about well-thought-out tactics. I love this kind of a success, because it’s about the real truth, that most of you, bloggers and website masters, are looking for.

You will never buy your website’s success. That’s another simple truth. Forget about SEO companies, which guarantee you high rankings for only 39,95$ :D Today most of these companies are more like jokers and comedians, rather than those, who can help you.

There is only one top ten results for a special keyword phrase in Google and other search engines. And if you wish to get there.. follow the example story of Henri Junttila. Learn something new for yourself or revive your memory of what matters.

Life of Henri Junttila

I’m not going to retell it word by word. He’s done it before on his “About page” at Wake Up Cloud. And I don’t have rights to do it, except quoting several key points.

1. My life really started when I got out of school at 18. I had worked a few lousy-paying jobs during the summers, which made me realize that I was not on the right track.

   - Very similar to my own story, and I bet that to some of yours.

2. I do not claim to have all the answers, because I am still learning and trying to figure things out, just like you.

   - And he’s doing it very well. But something still differs his view of how things should be done. Let’s find it out in a moment!

3. Something is not right with how things are done right now, so let’s change it!

   - I think, that each of you can feel, that something’s really wrong in this world. But it’s not just it, when you understand it and do nothing with it.

Have you felt Henri’s strength of will? That’s what helps him and moves him. And this is only one thing, that explains his success. Let’s find the others..

From Pagerank «0» to «4» in 21 days

This is how he’s managed to kick-start his blog “Wake Up Cloud”. It took him only ~4 weeks to jump from PR «0» to «4». His Alexa ranking is already ~113k and “Wake Up Cloud” has 2,500+ external links by Yahoo.

Actually, this is also the reason, why he recieved so much attention.

But let’s take a look at the tactics. This achievement isn’t sudden and unexpected at all. And there’s nothing impossible for you to make the same result on your blog or website.

The tactics Henri uses

Guest posts

I hope you guys know the meaning of guest posting. But do you know the strength of it, when it comes to writing guest posts more than your posts for your own blog? Especially, when you write guest posts for “big” blogs…

This way Henri has written 25 guest posts and 20 posts for his own blog in December.

This is one of the reasons of Henri’s fast success. But that’s not just it. There’s one more important thing. Will speak about it in a few moments. Now let’s take a look at his way of keeping beginning blog.

No annoying ads

Absolutely no ads. This guy perfectly understands, that ads would deter some of his first readers.

It’s very important to try to stay away from putting ads on your blog while your blog is still young and you have no strong and tight audience.

Single-style-design

“Wake Up Cloud” blog’s theme is Thesis, which is rather popular today and it has lots of myths about SEO features. But the only thing, that is true for sure, is that this theme’s code is very simple. And the theme itself looks simple and neutral.

Besides, Henri’s made his blog main color – blue, which is also neutral and calm. And it relates to his niche – self improvement.

Very strong «About Page»

By “very strong” I mean that Henri, probably, knows the importance of “about” blog pages. You can learn about this, I’d say, science from Skelliwag’s post about writing the perfect “about” page. Problogger has also a similar post, but Skelliwag wrote it with more details.

Almost absense of links in the text

This factor makes reading Wake Up Cloud a little bit more pleasant. I’m not sure, if it has some SEO strength, but I think it has the stregnth of keeping a sense of reading a book.

What was Henri’s the most crucial promotional step?

I have to warn you. This will not work unless you have something worthy to show, which is about to attract tons of website traffic.

Achieve what others want, and show how you did it

When Henri’s blog got PR 4 in 21 days, it was the perfect thing to speak about. And he did that, but as a guest post at Blogussion: «Leaping from PR 0 to 4 in 21 days without any connections».

Now think for a second of why he’s writing so many guest posts?

The answer is… If you’re sure, that your content is valuable and helpful, show it to people. Guest posting is the most efficient way, because at the early stage of your blog, search engines are not your friend.

As you’ll start to get unreal traffic from other blogs, where you’ve left guest posts, people naturally would like to know you… “How the hell he did that? Why he’s so special? What’s his secret?” This is what you want. This means, that your tactics did a good promotional job.

***

Sometimes, it’s very useful to analyze tactics of successful people and understand that the deal is not about the success. It’s about a real hard work, which sooner or later supposed to be rewarded.

Thanks to Henri for showing all of us the power of guest posting!

PS. I’ve forgotten to mention, that Henri also comments a lot. He’s got about 100 subscriptions in his Google reader. But.. I hope that this way of promotion isn’t new for you.

***

Video Dessert: «Jeremy Lynch on Britain’s Got Talent 2008»

Jeremy Lynch with his football freestyle audition on Britain’s Got Talent 2008, week 4.

Why Lisa?
She left her 9-to-5 job. She created a website. She made people listen to her and learn. Lisa Irby really deserves to talk about what she did and how she did that.

What has she done that you’re speaking of her?
She’s the author of www.2createawebsite.com and some other sites, that I’m not going to show here, because they aren’t the reasons for this post.

Seems like there’s nothing special about her
Then I should congratulate you, because you know those things, that Lisa shows and explains. But.. not so long ago I was the one, who read her articles and absorbed everything, that she was speaking about. I realized her strength in writing just some time later.

Somehow Lisa inspired me
That’s true. Maybe the reason was her way of making videos and her appearance there. Or maybe her articles, that have so many spaces between paragraphs, which helps you clearly see the general thought of them.
One of her characteristic features is “you have to learn.. if, you need to.. if”. This way she makes you imagine your task and the needed conditions to solve it very clearly.

How she amazes her audience
She really does it. I’ve seen lots of comments, where people simply were thanking her for what she had done. To tell the truth, I didn’t. And I won’t, because from that time I knew, that I’ll write about her.. And watch how I’m doing it.

How much does she earn?
Nobody knows that exactly. But I guess, that much more than 10,000$/per month. You can read about her old earnings on her website. That would give you an approximate thought of what she earns now.

What are her main ways to attract traffic and to keep it?
Her appearance in the videos. Her ability to teach.

Lots of people know that Darren Rowse’s (Problogger’s ) total number of subscribers exceeds now 500,000 (that’s only on problogger.net). But how? How did he come this far? I don’t think he will ever tell the real reasons about it, though… he has lots of posts that shout how and why he did those certain things.

Let me bring some main tips. These are just a few of them.

• On his first steps Darren Rowse spent really much time on commenting and communicating on forums in his niche. He told that several times on his blog.
• There are no advertising blocks from adsense and similar ads on his blog posts which does its content more pleasant for reading. Only some his own ads under the main content.
• Darren Rowse has unique self-discipline. It means that if he’s got some task or a problem – he keeps solving it until it’s done. That’s really impressive and that gives its award.
• He really does lots of stuff. He writes almost about every aspect of blogging. And he does that regularly. To be exact, he publishes everyday a new post at the same time.
• Darren Rowse has been making his name for a long time (about 4-5 years). And now this name works for him. It’s very important to keep your image which you’ve chosen on your way to success. Just keep developing your image and someday another Darren Rowse will be born.
• He doesn’t stop studying in his niche and the main thing is that he wishes to study. Now you probably think that I will tell you that Darren shares all the knowledge he gets with his audience. No, I won’t tell that. His readers receive only some specific piece of knowledge which they can understand. And the sure thing is that Darren decides what piece would that be. Just think of it…
• In spite of the fact that Darren Rowse is financially independent now, he’s created dozens of rules for himself. One of the reason of his success is that he follows the rules.
• Besides, he started his business very early. I mean that when Darren was beggining – he was one of the first ones who had written about making money on Internet. That’s very important to be the first one in your niche.
• Darren Rowse also has 2 other great websites Digital-Photography-School and Twitip. Having those 3 great websites really makes your audience come from almost everywhere.
• He is everywhere! He meets other bloggers from other cities and countries. Now he’s, actually, on the banner.. presenting Chitika Premium! He made several videos for Adsense. And I guess a lot more things, that I just didn’t see. These actions are both useful for him and his advertiser. And I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d knew that they co-operate free.

Update from 25 November – Something isn’t right about Darren:

Today I was listing Darren’s blog and the strange thought came to me. He, actually, teaches how to blog since he’s started blogging. Correct me, please, if I’m wrong! :)