Why are some blogs popular and others not? Obviously, the best thing any blogger can do to make their blog a success is to write excellent posts consistently. However, even the best written blogs will languish in obscurity if the blogger does not perform some promotional and marketing tasks to spread the word about their words. Yes, it goes against everything a writer believes in, but it is a necessary evil. If you want to share your craft, then you must learn the craft of promotion and marketing.
Blog/RSS Directories
Here’s some good news. I’ve done a lot of the dirty work for you and compiled a list of the best blog and RSS directories available today, including the brand new BLOGGED. I’ve published Paisano’s Blog Directories List online and made it public for all of you to use. It’s a work in progress so look for it to change often. Some will come and some new ones will go. Feel free to send me any that I’ve missed as I am sure there are many. As a matter of fact, there appears to be thousands of blog/rss directories in existence, but most of them are small obscure indexes that aren’t worth the time or effort to submit your blog to. I’ve chosen about 44 blog/rss services that all seemed to be pretty active and offer easy methods of submitting blog urls or rss feeds to.
Criteria
I avoided those services that required a referential link on your site in order to be listed on their site. While I think it’s fair to ask bloggers to add a badge or widget, it’s an entirely different matter to require it. Also, I selected only free services. There are many services that actually charge bloggers a fee (one-time, monthly or annually) to be listed. Again, it might be a personal choice, but I don’t feel anyone should have to pay to be listed on any service. Of course, that is your decision to make.
Mass Submissions
There are many paid services that claim that they can submit your URL/RSS feed to hundreds or even thousands of directories for you but I stayed away from such solutions. Who knows, they might actually work and be worth whatever the cost. I just don’t know enough about these types of services to include them at this time.
Summation:
The quickest and least expensive way to start spreading the news about your prized blog is to submit it to some blog/RSS directories. Here’s the link to Paisano’s Blog Directories List again. Most of the sites included were found in this excellent resource: TopRankBlog’s BlogRSS Directories. Note: Many of their listings were no longer working or required fees or a commitment to include a referential link back and many just didn’t seem worth the effort. Finally, this is just ONE method to promote your blog. There many other things you can do. By far the best suggestions for promoting your blog come from Darren Rowse, Mr. ProBlogger himself: ProBlogger’s How to market your blog. He delves deep into the fine art of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and many other mysterious practices that appear to work wonders for countless bloggers.
