Why I Finally Decided To Join Blog Engage

Just a couple of days ago I decided to join Blog Engage. Basically, Blog Engage is a paid social network where bloggers can connect, share content, build backlinks, vote for other bloggers’ posts, and much more. It’s a great way to not only increase your blog traffic, but enhance your SEO, make connections, and potentially make more money. I have been reluctant to try Blog Engage because it’s a paid community, but that’s actually one of the reasons I like it. I’m so happy I decided to take the plunge and I’m here to let you know that you should as well.

It’s a Paid Community

Perhaps the only drawback of Blog Engage is the fact that it costs money. The cheapest membership is a $19.99 one-time fee that you have to manually submit your content with. This is a great starter plan, but I opted to get the $9.99 per month plan that has so many more features that will ensure your blog success. Although I’m paying money for this service, that’s actually one of the good things about it. Unlike Facebook or Twitter where anybody can sign up, Blog Engage is full of serious members who are there for the same reason as everyone else – to make connections, share content, and make more money blogging. Being full of serious members is nice because you know that everyone who sees your updates is not only within your target audience, but they will care enough to click on the link and subscribe to your blog. Besides, $9.99 a month is not that much money.

 Content Syndication Over Many Feeds

One spot I fall weak in with blog promotion is my social media presence. For one, it’s really hard to build up a following. Before I joined Blog Engage, the only reason I was getting Facebook fans and Twitter followers was from my giveaways. The problem with these followers is that they are only clicking the “Follow” button because they want whatever you’re giving away. Nothing is stopping them from unfollowing if they don’t win and chances are, they will never click one of your posts anyway. After I joined Blog Engage, I had 7 people like my Omega Web Facebook page within the first few hours. This is significant because I knew that each person that liked my page would click and read at least one of my articles, thus increasing my viewers, building stronger relationships, and potentially making more profit.

Although it’s nice that Blog Engage increased my Facebook following, that’s not really what I’m paying for. The meat of the $9.99 service is what they call “Content Syndication”. Basically, this is a service that reads your blog’s RSS feed and automatically shares your post to their thousands of Twitter followers as well as posting the article on their website for other members of Blog Engage to see. This is where the majority of your traffic will come from. In addition to bringing traffic, the Content Syndication is specially built to bring you PR3+ backlinks to every one of your posts in your RSS feed. This will help the SEO and PageRank of your blog tremendously.

Meeting New People

Looking back, I’ve met so many people in so little time because of my blog. One of the first bloggers that I started talking to was Ehsan Ullah of Guide and News. Ehsan has been good to me over the months and I have learned a lot from his posts. The next blogger I met was Enstine Muki, the developer of Cash Donator and EasyRetweet.com. I met Enstine by buying his Cash Donator plugin that I saw advertised on another website. After I met Enstine, I joined his Facebook blogging group and met up with one of my closest blogging friends – Wade of Bloggers Make Money… The list goes on and on. Each connection led to another and each friendship with these unique bloggers is one more person I have commenting on my posts, recommending plugins to me, and purchasing products from my affiliate links. In fact, the main reason I started thinking about joining Blog Engage was because Wade recommended it to me.

Although I have made some good friends via Facebook and linked blogs, it would be great if there was a service that made it easier – and that’s exactly what Blog Engage does. Basically, all you have to do is select your niche and a whole list of similar bloggers will appear before your eyes. Not only can you easily connect with other people this way, but you can find posts written by those authors to see who’s really worth connecting with. Once you find someone, it works very similar to Facebook – click “Add as Friend” and they will appear in your friend list.

The Community Blog

One of the features that they market with a Blog Engage membership is their community blog. Not only do Blog Engage members have full access to reading it, but we have full privileges to guest post there as well. As of November 5, 2012, Blog Engage is a PR4 website which means you will be getting quality PR4 backlinks for every guest post you write.

In addition to simply guest posting on Blog Engage, they run a contest every year and give bloggers an opportunity to win $500 or more for writing a single post. This is something that I am definitely interested in doing at some point as $500 is more money than I can make from any one post here on this blog.

Rocking Affiliate Program (I Call This Affiliate 2.0)

I really like the fact that Blog Engage has a tiered affiliate program. I normally refer to these as “Affiliate 2.0” programs because they offer more opportunities to make money. Basically, the program is broken down like this: you get 25% of all direct referrals you make and a smaller portion of sales your referred customers make. So if you email your buddy your affiliate link (or he clicks it on your blog), then you will make 25% of what he pays per month. So if he signs up for the $9.99 per month plan, $2.50 will be deposited into your account monthly… Now your buddy sees how much money you are making from this program and places the banner on his own blog. If he makes two sales for the $9.99 plan as well, you will make $0.62 per person per month. All in all, you will be making $3.74 per month for just referring one person. If you could rack up 10 or 15 people, you could be making as much as $56.10 per month just from the Blog Engage affiliate program.

For a full rundown of the possible commissions, see this post on Blog Engage.

In Conclusion

All in all, I’m glad I decided to join Blog Engage. I currently have two blogs set up with their RSS Content Syndication service and I’m hoping that each one will benefit immensely from the platform. I’ve heard nothing bad about Blog Engage and I believe that it will pay for itself very quickly.

Sign Up Now!

If you’re interested in signing up for Blog Engage (remember, it’s only $9.99 – you can’t go wrong), you can do so here.