The results of MIC competition for January:

1. Ileane (23) – Points for starred comments: 10; Points for voting: 8 (3 times voted at BlogEngage + 1 retweet); Points for submission: 5 (1 digg submission);
2. ppo (20) – Points for starred comments: 20; Points for voting: 0;
3. Jordan Cooper (18) – Points for starred comments: 10; Points for voting: 8 (2 times voted at BlogEngage + 2 retweets);
4. Karl Foxley (14) – Points for starred comments: 10; Points for voting: 4 (2 times voted at BlogEngage);
5. Suresh Khanal (12) – Points for starred comments: 10; Points for voting: 2 (1 digg);
6. Henri Junttila (12) – Points for starred comments: 10; Points for voting: 2 (1 retweet);
7. chandan (10) – Points for starred comments: 10; Points for voting: 0;
8. binit (10) – Points for starred comments: 10; Points for voting: 0;
9. Abdul Akbar Banwa (10) – Points for starred comments: 10; Points for voting: 0;
10. Justin Fiores (10) – Points for starred comments: 10; Points for voting: 0;

Several words

Thanks to everyone for good comments. It’s my great pleasure to read your thoughts and opinions.

I also bet, that some of you didn’t expect te be listed here, but you are :) I hope you don’t mind and looking forward to your future comments, votes and submissions.

Tips to Get More Points

1. Just share you thoughts and opinions in comments – this is the most right way to get your comment starred.
2. If you wish to get points for submissions or voting – just leave you profile names in the end of comments, so I could know, that those were your votes or submissions. Sometimes it’s rather hard to identify you, because your nicknames differ. Demand points – they truly belong to you! :)
3. Submission is counted only if it has unique title, unique description and the right category.
4. Sites (that I count) for submitting posts are now: Digg, BlogEngage, Sphinn and plus 1 more – Mixx; You get 5 points for the submitted post;
5. If you submit one of my posts, just let me know (through the contact form, twitter, or a comment) about the link!
6. Learn more about the MIC competition.

Winners Get…

• Ileane – #1: Gets free 125-125 banner place for a month, review of her blog, highlighted comments during February and #1 position on the home page;
• ppo – #2: Gets #2 position on the home page;
• Jordan Cooper – #3: Gets #3 position on the home page;

More details – on the MIC competition page.

***

As for the prizes.. All of them will be active by tomorrow :)

When is the next MIC competition?

Actually, it has already started :). Remember, that only comments made for the latest post are counted (submissions and votes too). Good luck!

You can participate in the competition described below. All you need is to leave a good comment. “Good” doesn’t mean a long, big, huge comment or else. It only means, that your comment should be relevant and natural. You might need to read the comment policy.

How to Win?

NB! I’ve made the competition easier.

• The better comment you leave, the better chances you have to be noticed by other commenters;
• Little tip: if you reply to other comments, your chances to be noticed increase;
• You should have some nice gravatar assigned to your specified email. It, definitely, plays a role! You can get one here;
• Be natural. Like or dislike other commenters pressing the appropriate buttons (thumb up’s/thumb down’s) under each comment. Everything comes back to you like a boomerang;
• You can comment on any post published within a current month. The easier way is to check the archives;
• By the end of the competition month I make a list of those, who have at least 1 positive vote. Those three commenters, who have the biggest number of votes – win. Here’s the roundup for Jan. 2010. NB! The January roundup has the old terms of MIC competition;

What winners get?

1. All 3 of you get a “do follow” link on iWoodpecker’s home page to your blog, or website, or twitter profile etc. It may include your keywords. And it will look like this :

2. The best commenter can get a free banner, that I will make for him for free. Of course, if you wish :) Look again at the pic above or check the home page of iWoodpecker.

3. The best commenter can use 125×125 ad spot until the end of the next competition. You can send me your own banner or use the one I’ll make for you. Choose it.

4. The best commenter gets a review of his or her blog. Of course, I’ll mention why he or she is worthy being the M.I.C. See the latest review of Ileane Smith, who became MIC #1 in January.

5. The competition begins at the beginning of a month and lasts until the end of the month.

I’m not going to speak about how cool is Sphinn. I’m not going to persuade you to join it. If you know this website, then you’re, probably, already joined it.

Today I’d like to share some of my experience in promoting your website or blog at Sphinn.com . First of all, these essential tips (rules) will help you to avoid the termination of your account on Sphinn. You’ll be able to improve your promotion there. And.. that’s probably it for this topic.

Rule #1

Follow the Sphinn guidelines. The main tip here is that, when you’ve just signed up, do not submit more than once per twenty-four hours. It’s essential.
My first account was terminated, because of this. Sad.. but true. If you violate this rule, don’t panic. You have the second chance.

Rule #2

Do not submit your stuff. That’s crucial one.
Of course you want it. Just like I did at the very beginning. But that’s not smart. Moreover, there is no future for that method as well.

Rule #3

Submit others’ stuff. But keep the appropriate measure of it. As your first 7 days let you submit only 7 things, think better. You’re about to make your face on Sphinn. There are good moderators, that whether like you, or not. So be attentive.
Here’s my little example. As my first account was terminated (I’ve submitted more than once per day in the very beginning), I’ve registered another one. Then I’ve submitted my post about RSS directories, which is not bad at all. And guess what.. it was discarded by a moderator for the following reason:
“User was killspammed once, discarding this post, looks to be of little value.”
Wake me up! What was that? Did he remember me or what? Anyways, that’s why I recommend you to follow the rules.

Rule #4

Check the presense of your submission on Sphinn using search. If you duplicate someone’s topic, you have a good chance to be banned for spamming :).

Rule #5

Manage your profile. That’s your weapon. Use it on max. Take some time to get all of your links to your other profiles.
Pick the best photo of you or your website/blog.
Use the feature, that will show your RSS feed. I really think, that this is why you shouldn’t submit your own articles or posts at all. Because, if someone cares about your work, then he or she should discover it by himself or herself.

Rule #6

Comment as much as you can. Since this is the most efficient way to make people care. One by one they’ll start wondering who you are. And you’ll get what you’ve been working for. The promotion. The result.

Rule #7

Remember what is Sphinn about.

Sphinn’s niche is Internet Marketing News and Discussion Forums. Its Google pagerank is 6 and Alexa ranking is 5,926 now.
What’s the most important for your promotion is that Sphinn has no “nofollow” attribute on links. What means “nofollow”?

That’s it for this time. Enjoy your sphinning and meet me there as well :) – iWoodpecker on Sphinn.

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.

Tried YouTube, right? How many views do you have? I bet you have some, though you’re looking for some ways to get more. These tips will help you to know about YouTube possible ways of getting traffic to your channel and then to your website, blog or anything that you promote in Internet.

• Choosing country and language: First of all, scroll all the way down to the bottom of any YouTube page. You’ll see there 2 options: Current Location, Current Language. When you’ve checked the needed options you’ll start seeing those videos, that relate to them. In order to make sure, if this works right, go back to the top of your current page and click “videos” or “channels” links below the search form. From there – choose any video and get right to its channel. You can see then where this video was made from.

  What difference does changing the “Current Language” option? It doesn’t. The only reason is simply to make you feel comfortable.

• Category of video: That’s right. You’ve got to be sure about your video category. That’ll help you in getting targeted traffic. So, be careful. You can always configure that, when you’re uploading a video, or in the settings of your uploaded videos.

• Video response: Promoting feature #1… if you’re lucky. You can find this feature right under the video itself and above comments. All you need is to find someone’s video in your niche with lots of views. If you feel, that you know about this subject better, try making a video response. This will bring you some part of the traffic from that video. That doesn’t work always, because you need the author’s approval, which you won’t get that simple.

  What do you need to get an approval? You’ll have to make your video response cool enough, so that it could be like a continue-thing. You might need to talk to that author. Send him PM (private message), add to your friend-list, or subscribe to his channel.. if that’s needed. Do something to make him believe that you’re a good guy, and your video doesn’t suck. Sometimes authors give their approvals at once.

• Activity: Forget about popularity without your activity and start commenting… everywhere. Yes, everywhere on YouTube. Subscribe to others’ channels, add to your friend-lists those, who, as you think, are not spammers and are active ones.. and belong to your niche. Communicate sendind PMs etc. But be careful not to become a spammer. There is a little difference between a spammer and a super-active user. Your traffic will grow according to the content and appearance of your videos + your activity.

• Title, description, keywords: Search engine stuff. Act with these as if it’s your website. And when your popularity begins growing, you’ll start getting traffic from the YouTube search engine. Until then it’s useless to rely on it.

• Subscribe! Right… ?: It’s almost the same as subscribing on blogs. You like making funny videos? Or.. do you prefer to teach people or show them how to do this or that? Look for those, who are in your niche. Comment them, chat with them, do the “play” kind of stuff… and of course – subscribe to them, if you like. That’s it. People will notice you, don’t doubt!

• Appearance of your video: You can look for some tips on the Youtube handbook page. In addition, I’d advice to configure the preview moment of your video. This can be done in the settings of your uploaded videos’ section. You surely have met some videos, that show very attractive moments as a preview moment. Don’t you want your video to be like one of those? :)

• Partnership: It’s like Google Adword+Adsense, but on YouTube. Your videos get more views and you also are able to earn money. Read these Partner Program Basics.

• So how to direct traffic from YouTube to your website?: It’s not difficult at all. You wether write your website link on the video itself, in the description (at the beginning is preferable) or in the channel. The better way is to add it anywhere that you can, but carefully. Try not to bother, add some piece of your fantasy.