Each and every blogger out there does his or her best to increase blog traffic. We learn all about great SEO techniques. We pursue backlinks in order to boost our search engine results. We create great content in order to keep readers coming back.

But how do we increase our readers? Our can we both satisfy our current readership but also reach loads more readers?

Well, here are Five Unique and Creative Blogging Tips to help you increase your readers.

Run Weekly Contests

Keep your readers coming back and entice new readers with the promise of prizes each week. Of course, this option requires that you can afford to give away prizes, but you don’t have to always buy prizes. You could give away a spot of advertising or you could make one prize a guest post or something like that. Be creative with the kinds of prizes you give away, and readers will appreciate both your generosity and the way you interact with them. Soon news will spread of your contests and you’ll attract more readers to your blog. One good contest could be a ‘Great Comment Contest’; pick one comment each week that you felt added great content to your blog and reward that commenter.

Pursue Guerrilla Marketing

One way to increase readers is to create buzz about your blog. You can do this through a variety of Guerrilla marketing techniques. For example, if you’re a tech blogger, consider printing off a bunch of bookmarks with a cool design on them or a quotation from your blog and make sure you have your blog’s name on them. Then go into a bookstore, find the technology books section, and slip those bookmarkers into a bunch of cool tech books. This is just one example of creating buzz. You have to be creative and do things in new and interesting ways. One way is to think outside of the blogosphere.

Hand Over the Key

Well, I don’t mean literally, of course, but one way to create more readers is to allow your readers to participate in the creation of your blog’s content. By offering guest posts specifically to your readers, you make them invest something of themselves into your blog. After they write a guest post, they’ll feel responsible for the health of your blog, so they’ll want to tell all their friends to read their guest post, thus bringing you more readers!

Cause a Controversy!

You’ll want to be careful with this idea, sure, but it could be fun. You don’t have to cause a real big controversy, because you want to watch your reputation. However, if you create a scene, you’ll gather onlookers. You can create a scene all sorts of ways. Find the latest news in your blogging community and take an opinionated stance on it. You don’t have to be mean in order to do this well; write a well-reasoned argument that takes an unpopular stance, and you’ll soon have readers interested in debating you on your points. This could be a great way to also inspire the blogging community to examine certain issues.

Break a Big Story

Finally, if you can break a big story on your blog, you’ll gain a huge following. In order to do this well, you have to monitor all channels related to your blogging niche. This means following specific people on Twitter, having an excellent feed in your RSS reader, and having the authority to ask your readers for tips every now and then.

What are some other creative ways you’ve tried to get new readers on your blog?

It’s time for yet another give-away, our first give-away was of 500 Free Business Cards from uPrinting, after that we had Daniusoft DVD Ripper Giveaway. This time the stakes are higher and chances are even greater. So if you didn’t make it in time for the previous give-away this is your lucky chance as we are now offering 3 Sets of 500 Business Cards to 3 Lucky Winners Courtesy of All Business Cards.

The cards could be single or double sided, printed on thick 16pt card stock, and have a Glossy UV finish, a Matte Finish, or can come uncoated. Only people from US and Canada are able to participate and printing and shipping is included.  This would cost the winners absolutely nothing.

If you’re interested and want to grab them, then please read below on how you can participate.

How to Participate in this Give-Away?

• You must be in USA or Canada to Participate.
• First goto our Facebook Page and Like Us, you can also do so using the box in the sidebar.
• Tweet about this give-away.
• Follow AllBusinessCards from your twitter account (optional but gives you an extra entry).
• Follow eBloggy from your twitter account (optional but gives you an extra entry).
• Finally, post a comment below and also include your twitter/facebook id so we can verify.

Note: Be sure to use your valid email to post the comment, incase you are the winner we will use that email to contact you.

When Does it End?

You can submit an entry until March 25th, 2011. The winners will be announced on the March 26th, 2011.

3 Lucky Winners will be selected using random.org, so adding extra entries using the above method would give you a better chance of being selected.

Winners Update

We were suppose to announce 3 winners but unfortunately there weren’t too many participate in this giveaway. The only eligible winner is: Adriana Grillo (Congrats to you), you’ll be receiving an email soon

Good luck to you all

Last time we had a Free Business Cards Contest – Now, recently we received an email from the team at Daniusoft who were willing to sponsor FREE copies of their DVD Ripper software and also a generous discount for our readers. Of course we received a copy of the software too, and we gave it a try to let you know how good and powerful it really is.

Some of you must be wondering, Who is Daniusoft?
Daniusoft Studio is a leading multimedia software provider of digital video and audio conversion solutions. Their product lines range from DRM Converter, DVD Ripper, DVD Copy, Video and Audio Converter for portable media players and smart phones such as iPhone, iPod, Zune, PSP, Apple TV, Xbox 360, PS3, Archos, Creative Zen, PMP, MP4/MP3 Player, Pocket PC, PDA, etc.

Daniusoft DVD Ripper is a very powerful, yet simple to use DVD ripper program which can rip DVD formats (DVD, IFO and ISO) to MPEG, Xvid, AVI, WMV, MP4 and many other popular video formats including SmartPhone, Iphone & Ipad. The conversion rate at which the application processes the files are absolutely stunning with amazing quality.

This powerful DVD Ripper can also extract audio from your DVD files to MP3, WAV, WMA, AAC, AC3, OGG, M4A, MKA, Flac, etc with superb audio quality.

This DVD Rippper application is filled with incredible features which can help you trim DVDs, merge DVD movies, clip video segments, crop DVD movie size, edit special effects for the videos, add and adjust subtitles not only that you can also add your own watermarks to the videos.

You can also customize all the profiles including the iPhone, Ipad and many others which are available with this application. You can fine tune them to your desired configuration, or leave it as they are to use the default configuration provided for you – there a lot of customization you can do to enhance your experience, which are pretty amazing and straight-forward to do so.

Daniusoft DVD Ripper is optimized for NVIDIA® CUDA™ ensuring accelerated video decoding/encoding on a CUDA-enabled graphics card. 5 times faster performance gain means prompt HD and SD video conversion, smooth playback and highest quality for all your favorite movies. CUDA technology saves you time when converting DVD to AVI, FLV, MP4 with H.264 codec and then there is also the multi-core support making this a killer Dvd Ripper.

Daniusoft DVD Ripper Features:

• Rip DVD to MPEG, Xvid, AVI, WMV, MP4, FLV, 3GP, MKV, etc.
• Extract audio from DVD and convert to M4A, MP3, AC3, WMA, WAV, etc.
• Support iPod, iPhone, iPhone 4, iPad, PSP, Zune, and so on.
• Provides powerful Movie editing functions – Split DVD video, crop DVD to watch movie in full screen, add effects to make your video look and sound special, etc.
• Multi-threading process to speed up your DVD conversion.
• 500% conversion speed with NVIDIA® CUDA^TM support.

System Requirements:

• Supported OS: Windows 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, and Windows 7.
• Processor: 1GHz or above Intel or AMD CPU.
• Diskspace: 1GB or above.
• System Memory(RAM): 512MB or above.

We tested this DVD Ripper on both Windows 7 & Windows XP with multi-core processor support, and our experience using this application was simply amazing, the conversion speed was fast and the end result was just what we expected.

Daniusoft Dvd Ripper is originally priced $39.95. But now exclusively for our readers you can get it for $31.95. This is a limited time discount for the readers of our blog. When you’re ready you can take advantage of this discount by using the following discount code DND-45K2D4646T on their website. This will expire on October 31, 2010.

The Giveaway

Do you like Daniusoft’s DVD Ripper? are you interested in a free copy of this software? Daniusoft has been generous enough to provide additional treat for our readers by giving you a chance to win a free copy of their amazing DVD Ripper software.

To participate in this give-away you need to follow the instructions written below.

1. Use your valid email to Subscribe to our feed (if you haven’t already).
2. You will receive an email, inside will be a link which you need to click to verify your email. We will check if the email has been verified, so if you fail to verify your email you will not be qualified.
3. Finally, you need to make a comment here, with the same email as you used above.
4. (optional) Please don’t forget to state if you’re a Windows OR MAC user (You can obtain it for either one) if you don’t state it – we will assume you’re a windows user.

If you haven’t followed the above instructions correctly you will not be qualified for the contest. 2 Lucky winners will be announced 10 days from today, Winners will be chosen randomly.

Recently some while ago, i was contacted by the guys at Uprinting.com with offer for sponsership.

I agreed, but i haven’t been able to use this great opportunity up until now, I just checked and noticed  a few days ago that eBloggy has increased its pagerank now being a PR3 Blog

So to celebrate this, and courtesy of Uprinting we are holding a contest for 500 Absolutely Free Business Cards for 2 (two) Lucky Winners.

• Sizes: 2 x 3.5”, 2 x 3”, 2 x 2” (square card) or 1.5 x 3.5” (skinny card)
• Paper: 14 pt gloss cardstock, 14 pt matte cardstock or 13 pt recycled uncoated cardstock
• Specifications: Full Color Both Sides; Offset Press; 3 Business Day Printing
• Shipping: FREE UPS Ground Shipping
• Eligibility: Limited to US Residents only
• [Winner will be chosen randomly by a script].

You might be thinking if you can print online the business cards but you have a way of  looking at what i’m talking about by looking at their Business Cards Online, checkout their samples while you are there – they are very neat.

How to Enter this Contest?

Its simple, all you have to do is leave a comment on this blog telling why you want these business cards or how you will use them, simple.

Second (Double) Entry (optional)

Yes, you can put a second entry by tweeting, digging or stumbling this post, just let me know in your comment you did it, you may also write a post on your blog about this give-away and post the URL in your comment by putting a second entry you are increasing your chances of becoming the one to take the prize, its not required though.

You must include your real name and email address with your comment, so that you can be contacted if you’re the winner.

When Does it End?

Lets see, this contest will end 13 days from now on Feburary 10th, so hurry up guys and post your comments

Winners Update

The random winners are (drums) dtoker & Jessica, congratulations! both of you will be contacted via email, if either of the 2 doesn’t respond within 24 hours we’ll just have to move onto the next person in the list

About Uprinting

For over 25 years, UPrinting has been a trusted leader in Online Printing, featuring its signature easy-to-use website and the famous free file review, a complimentary proofing service which requires no upfront payment. UPrinting offers convenient marketing support services such as design, lists, and direct mailing to help grow small and medium-size businesses nationwide.

Twitter Services, Tips and Tricks

Twitter, one of the most popular and widely used social service its not just limited to communicate with your fellow colleagues or co-workers, Twitter has become a good platform for people to promote their services.

Today, i would like to share a nice little trick that you can use to promote your blog or website on twitter in-front of large audience.

Do you want your messages tweeted to thousands of Tweetaholics?

If your answer for the above is YES, continue to read further below.

You should be following @guestbook on twitter – if you’re not already do it now because when you follow @guestbook he will follow you back once that happens you are able to send Direct Messages to @guestbook which would broadcast your message to all its followers – This technique can surely help you generate great massive traffic, you might even make some royal followers if you’re promoting something useful or helpful, so use it wisely.

Be sure to Follow Me on twitter while you’re at it (I will follow back)

EntreCard’s users are growing everyday, i didn’t want to stay behind so i signed up I have to admit, it is really superb. I really like the concept.

You get real traffic, you get the power to choose who you want to advertise with and throw out the trashy ones.

You can advertise on others website/blogs by using your Entrecard Credit’s (EC). Entrecard credits can be earned very easily – that’s the best thing about Entrecard!

To be precise there are various ways you can get EntreCard Credits – You can also purchase Entrecard Credits too. You can visit on users website who are member of the Entrecard community and have their widget on their blog/website. When you see a Entrecard Widget on someones site you’ll see the option of dropping your Entrecard Card on it, This can make you a good amount of credits if you take some time and browse through the other Entrecard Members Websites.

Other website owners will most likely start to put their ad on your website via Entrecard Widget.

You have to put the Entrecard Widget as soon as you join so that the settings can take effect as soon as possible.

Once the widget is up and running, other users who are also a member of Entrecard will have the option of dropping entrecards on your blog – making you credits

Its really great and i recommend all to try it out – it should most probably give you alittle traffic boost.

Checkout my post regarding Entrecard Cards New Toolbar which makes your life as Entrecard Member much easier and also makes it very easy and less time consuming to make more Entrecard Credits.

These are stylish and new Free RSS Feed Icons, which if you can place on your website/blog to indicate that you can supply your visitors with feeds which will make it easy for your regular visitors to stay updated with your news or content.

Here is the download link:
http://rapidshare.com/files/72639978/RSS_Icons.zip

FeedBurner is a web feed management service which has been acquired by the search engine giant Google. FeedBurner provides custom RSS feeds and management tools to bloggers, podcasters, and other web-based content publishers.

I was just looking into my Google’s Feedburner account today, I saw a big decrease in my subscribers i am sorry that i haven’t had the time to keep my blog updated. I also recently caught a problem in the blog software, i was able to fix it by somehow – so i just upgraded it to the latest stable version of WordPress. I think i was using a very old version of WordPress not sure but maybe the (1.x.x Series) version. now i see that WordPress current stable version is (WordPress 2.3.2). Guess i have been way behind…

Now that the blog is up-to date; I thought i would look around to see some things to post about i found so many things i wanted to write about, but i guess today is not the day to do all that.

But still – I found something really cool, its called the “Headline Animator” it’s like a ticker but looks very cool and attractive; It’s purpose is to show headlines of your latest blog entries.

Feedburner Headline Animator is a very handy tool to promote your blogs RSS Feed. It can also be displayed in your feeds too though if you’re wanting to get a hold of these for your own blogs you can do so by going into your Feedburner account then click on Headline Animator it just asks you to choose some formatting options of how you want it to be displayed and then you can easily get the code to put it on your blog, website or even in your favorite social service site such as Myspace, Facebook, etc..

Below is a demonstration of how it looks:

Grab this Headline Animator

The only thing i don’t like about this that there are not many Ad Format to choose from, currently as i speak they only support 2 Ad Formats (468×60 and 234×60). its not that bad but i was having a little trouble installing the code in one of my websites i needed it to be a size of something like (400×60) because the (468×60) format was ruining the look of my website by stretching the tables. so i just had to use the 234×60 format on the site which i really didn’t prefer unless it was the last option.

You should really join Feedburner if you really haven’t yet, its filled with great resources to help your blog and your blogging

I have a post on how to Burn your Blog or Website RSS Feeds using Feedburner, if you would like to read that.

Submitting your website or blog to the top search engines is one of the most crucial steps website owners have to do. it’s a must for every website; although sometimes you might not need to do it like for instance if you already have a decent number of link backs from other website or blogs – which are already indexed by Google or any other search engine.

I’m writing some links to free search engines along with a ADD URL link so that you can add your websites or blogs to the most famous and popular search engines online and for free!

As an added bonus i also be posting some links to Free Web Directories for you to get some back-links for your websites or blogs.

Keep these in mind before submitting your website(s):

1). Your website should be fully index-able.
2). Before you think of submitting your site to the link-directories make sure your sites are ready and none of your page show “Under-Construction”.

OK, well that was all of the top search engines I’m aware of they’re in no particular order.
Now i will post those link directories where you can submit your links for free

• Dmoz.com
• Gimpsy
• New Web Directory
• WebmasterLead – (Requires Reciprocal)
• Bhanvad
• HaaBaa
• World Site Index
• AbiLogic
• Jayde
• WoW Directory
• GetWebList
• Search Sight
• Directory-Free (Requires Reciprocal)
• Dir4x (Requires Reciprocal)
• URLdumps
• URLShack
• BigDirectory (Requires Reciprocal)
• PostDotCom (Requires Reciprocal)

Well – That’s all for the link directories, let me know if you need more as i have bunch but my hand started hurting after typing all these.

Submission Tips:

1). Read all the guide-lines and rules of the search engines / directories before submitting.
2). Check your website links from time to time to make sure they’re valid and working.
3). Use unique META Tags in all your pages.

Let me know if you need more free search engines list or web directories list.

Cheers