I was doing my regular visit of my blogs today, to check that everything was going well and received a very welcomed surprise.

Google had passed by and given my new blogs their first Page Ranks.

While StandOutBlogger continues to be a PR3 Blog, I received one new PR2 and two new PR1 blogs.

1. FranchiseBuzz.com.au (PR0-PR2)

   
   Launched in the middle of November, I have spent quite a lot of time working on this Franchise Business Opportunities blog. And While my posting has dropped off over the holidays, I am planning to jump straight back into things coming into the new year.

   The thing I am very excited about is that I also received a lot of internal PR2’s. In fact all of my individual posts, minus 4 of them are PR2. (You can check internal Page Ranks at: http://www.askmie.com/internal/)

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Looking back on 2009 I thought it would be a great idea to posts the most Tweeted articles on StandOutBlogger, as well as listing a few that should have been.

This is a great way to give a couple of posts a second wind, and a few that deserved it but missed out, a first wind. I am not to pleased with the amount of Retweets that my posts got, but considering I didn’t take full advantage of Twitter until later in the year, I will just strive to improve on these results in 2010.

Top 5 Tweeted Posts Of 2009

1. 30 Creative E-Book Covers (25 Tweets)
2. 6 Ways To Take Your Blog Up A Level (22 Tweets)
3. Twitter Backgrounds: Top 10 Bloggers (21 Tweets)
4. Using Alexa To Highly Target Your Blog Posts (14 Tweets)
5. Twitter Marketing: Branding With Unique Backgrounds (11 Tweets)

5 Under Rated Posts Of 2009

1. 5 Things More Important Than Blogging
2. The One Thing Stopping Your Blog From Succeeding
3. Turning Failure Into Success In 3 Easy Steps
4. How To Overcome Procrastination – Tomorrow
5. Unleashing Creativity In 5 Easy Steps

BONUS: Best Post Of 2008

10 Things Climbing A Mountain Taught Me About Goals

I hope these posts will keep you interested enough to to continue to follow me through 2010 – which is set to be a very exciting year!

One of the resolutions that I have made for 2010, is to put much more of a focus on list building. As you may know, StandOutBlogger has an email list, and currently I have almost 450 subscribers. However I know it is no where near as large or effective as it could be.

I have a goal of 2,000 by 2011, which means about 1,500 new subscribers, which equates to just over 4 new subscribers each day!

Looking at those figures,  I could probably reach them if I optimised my email capture and did a little marketing  – but I want to be sure that I make it this year, because looking back on last years goals I didn’t even come close.

Joining Giveaway Events

This is going to be the first strategy that I test. I was reading that people can add up to 3,000 new subscribers EACH MONTH, from this strategy alone – so I thought it would be a good place to start.

What Is A Giveaway Event?

A Giveaway Event is basically where a bunch of marketers get together and offer visitors free gifts in return for signing up to their newsletters.

It is a win/win situation, supposedly, all you have to do is join as a JV Partner (doesn’t cost any money) add your gift (the thing that will convince people to join your list) and then promote their the Giveaway once it starts.

There are usually 4 or 5 of these going around and anyone time, but I didn’t want to get overwhelmed – so I decided to join just one (the biggest of course :D) and become a JV Partner.

The New Year Giveaway

This event is going to be huge. If you visit their contributor signup page, it states that some marketers added up to 20,000 subscribers to their lists.

I would be happy with just 1% of that figure!

Already, they have over 1,500 contributors. That means that even if they launched now, you would have 1,500 people promoting your free product! But I am sure that this number will dramatically increase over the next couple of days before it launches and I am excited to see what results I will achieve.

If the New Year Giveaway is a success for me, I will be signing up for more over the coming year, as I see this as a great way to build subscribers.

Are Giveaway Subscribers Worth Having?

Before signing up for the New Year Giveaway, I stopped and thought about whether these extra subscribers would be worth having, Would they be profitable?

Then I thought anyone who has subscribed to your list can be a profitable asset – AS LONG AS YOU TREAT THEM RIGHT!

I bet that a lot of people on the New Year Giveaway are just going to spam their new subscribers with offer after offer – and they will have a lot of people unsubscribe, but if you are adding value, teach and informing your subscribers, you will build trust and create a highly profitable list.

So, who is going to join me and make 2010 a ‘list building year’?

I know that the Christmas season is a very busy time for most of us, (I have 4 days of Christmas starting today on Christmas Eve, visiting all our family). But I wanted to take the time to with you all a very merry Christmas and to thank you all for the support and encouragement that you all have given me over the last year, by reading and commenting on the many posts here at StandOutBlogger.com.

Having finished up my part time Christmas job (that turned into 44hours a week), I now have more time to invest into this blog, however I am taking a couple of days off to enjoy my friends and family, and to relax and enjoy the current season (and I encourage you to do the same).

We Are Having A Baby!

My wife Fiona and I are happy to announce that she is pregnant, and we are expecting our first child in early July! Fiona had her first scan yesterday and everything seems to be fine – which is great news. Until the baby arrives, we have nicknamed it ‘Pickle’, because it is makes it so much easier and prevents accidental ‘he’ or ’she’ slip ups.

I posted the news on Twitter a couple of days ago, but I really wanted to let you all know as well.

Start Preparing For 2010

2010 is going to be a big year, and probably go as quickly as this year has. So if you have time off coming up to the new year, I encourage you to spend a little time preparing for the year to come, so that you can hit the ground running.

However there are only two things that I want you to take from this post.

1. Merry Christmas!
2. Take Time To Relax and Enjoy!

If you are anything like me, I receive quite a few emails each day. In fact, I probably receive close to 50 emails a day, and close to 300+ spam emails (A DAY).
Which means that if you email me, you need to grab my attention – especially if I am subscribed to your email list.

Being subscribed to close to 40 (I would estimate) internet marketers and bloggers email lists, I only read the occasional ones – and they are the ones that grab my attention.

so how do you grab attention, when you only have a couple of seconds to do so. Before people look at your content, they first see your design and your design will determine whether people will stay long enough to read your content. Now I have always been an advocate of the standard text email -until now.

As more and more people are marketing online, it is getting harder and harder to stand out. Which has been the main factor to why I am making the change to a more HTML based email format. I haev been doing this for a while for StandOutBlogger and for the first time since I started email marketing – I was getting responses from my readers.

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