Tumblr for Newbs
 

For many years, Tumblr was sitting in the background of social media, not making much noise at all. Tumblr started around 2007 in New York City, just one year after the wildly successful ?Twitter? launched. Yet, it didn?t seem to make much noise?at first. Today, Tumblr boasts an enormous 53,200,000+ blog database. Many see Tumblr as just another free host, on par with Blogspot and other free services like it. Tumblr merges the blogosphere with social interactivity, with help of options such as the ?like? and ?reblog? buttons. Users can simply view an entire, aggregated feed of all blogs they follow and comment, photo-reply, like or reblog anything that strikes their fancy.

Tumblr is a wealth of traffic for those who have the patience to learn its behavior, recognize its trends and take advantage. However, you may have to adapt to things. First, tumblr is heavily ridden with ?borrowed? content. Simply put, it is a hotbed of people reposting pictures from private collections or from sites they visit. For examples sake, we'll consider it to be the same as a tube site, but with pics as the main focus. This may anger some of you webmasters and content producers who don?t get along with the tube business model. I won?t tell you to go steal as much content as you can and begin posting rapidly. Instead, find your niche (micro-niches being the best to gain a dedicated audience) and some sponsors or content producers who provide content, or provide your own. Alternatively, you may want to contact the content owner and ask if it is okay to use the content and do the right thing and send a link back, as a sign of good faith. Many tumblr users are not in the adult business and do not care who owns the rights to the content they willingly distribute. This does not mean that you have to do the same. Here are some tips to help get you started:

1. Interesting or different content yields the best results. A picture/video of a model, playing with a dildo may be hot, but the same model playing with a spiked dildo is even hotter to the Tumblr masses. Make sure your content is eye-catching and worth a reblog. Tumblr users are finicky when it comes to pics/videos. The average user will scroll through their dashboard of feeds VERY quickly, often ignoring anything mundane.

2. Be social. Tumblr is a social site, so get out there and make some friends! Any sites that have lots of followers or share the niche you are promoting are the best ones to follow. Don?t expect a follow back too soon. Tumblr?s messaging and alert system is somewhat flawed, sometimes mixing up or losing things in your inbox. Maybe the blog you are following is a sub account (see #5) and the blogger cannot follow you from that account.

3. Tie your sites together. Tumblr is a one-stop ping shop, with several options of distributing your content to many other social media sites, such as; Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and many others. If you?ve made friends on twitter who also have Tumblr pages, you?ve got someone to retweet your posts, giving your blog that much more exposure!

4. SEO the hell out of it. Besides being able to link your many social networks together, Tumblr also gives you the ability to name your permalinks, add tags and even click-though link your picture to wherever you?d like! Try sending to any sponsor or page you wish! Another cool feature that you?ll recognize from other blog software is the ability to schedule your posts to future dates, allowing you to get a bulk of work done on those caffine-fuled nights of posting. Schedule ahead to keep your blog from becoming too ?spammy?. The possibilities are many.

5. Multiple blogs under the same email address vs. different address. Tumblr also gives you the ability to create multiple blogs under the same account. I?m not exactly sure how much of a difference this makes, other than the fact that you cannot follow people back that follow you on any blog but the master. This could possibly hurt you if your Tumblr campaign is heavily social.

There are so many things one can do with tumblr. These days, more and more mainstream websites are moving to tumblr because of the social capabilities. You can get your pic, videos or messages out to a wider, more responsive audience who will freely distribute it. The secret to a successful campaign is build, submit, socialize, comment, reblog, repeat. I?ve given you the basics, now get out there and be somebody!

Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have.

~ Tofu De la Moore

very helpful, thanks

Thank you for replying! Glad I could help! :thumbsup

thanks so much ... I just started using it and I am seeing the increase of traffic

gfelife is the best

Thanks! This will help! ;-)

tumblr is a literally cool stuff to generate traffic :) thank you for sharing your informations

tumblr rocks! we use it to promote our stuff & our affiliates sites as well

Any tips on avoiding getting banned for "spam and affiliate" marketing? I have about 40 tumblr blogs, and every so often one gets banned for spam/affiliate marketing. The sites usually only use a Plugrush widget with a few plugs, and the mobile redirect script. The clickthroughs are only used to link my other tumblrs, not to affiliate sites.

My question as well.
:helpme

Hi,

Can we create an adult blog on Tumblr.com?

Please guide.

Well, so helpful one.....thank you for the post....

Great post Tofu. Thank you :thumbsup
Do you have any links to blogs you've set up with Tumblr so we can see?

dont have any real tips, just dont overly post repeat ads.. we post about every day, but with pics, banners, promo stuff & links to our sites. amateur looking, not like your actually just posting ads...:2 cents: good luck & cheers

good news, thank you

Funny time to reply lol, I just had 7 tumblrs banned yesterday -__-
I'm up to 65 now and had no problems in the past 3 months with bans, then got the ban hammer on my main account and 6 others.

One of the accounts even just linked to other tumblrs. There wasn't a single ad on the entire blog. The support team said it was banned for "spam/affiliate advertising"

I think a lot of it is luck too. I've seen Tumblrs that look like complete spam with more ads then content that have been around for years and become really popular.

Sorry to rant, what you said is good advice. I don't post anything other than images linking to my blog, but I do put ads on my blogs themselves. I think I'll just use PlugRush plugs from now on. They look like more content on the blog since the plugs in the amateur category are just pics of other amateurs and not the typical banners/ads.

Thanks for the reply :thumbsup

Thanks for the detailed post Tofu, it's very helpful.
You guys should post your tumblr URL so we know who to follow ;)

Well this is some bullshit.
I just had 76 accounts banned on tumblr, leaving me with 2.

There goes everything I've been working for the past 3 months.

thanks for an informative post.
I started one tumblr for each of my affiliate blogs. I put up a photo with a caption on tumblr every time I update my affiiate blog.
I link the tumblr to my blog.
Am I doing this right? :)

Excellent post/
P.S: are you the same Tofu from other webmaster forums?

this is quite a helpful post....carry on....

The same. :)

I've had a Tumblr for a while. Time to get back and use it right! Thnx bruh.

Just an update: If your tumblr looks and feels like an affilate/porn page, you are likely to attract the wrong kind of attention. I know it sucks because tumblr is largely driven by free porn pics, stolen from content producers (like a pic-tube). How DARE we try to capitalize on what we created, huh?

However, tumblr is a social network. So--like twitter--you have to have a good balance of content & spam vs. socializing with other blogs outside of your own. Otherwise, you just look like another affiliate site. Tone down the banner farms and hide your links WITHIN the content. It may help to purchase a blog template or two. It shows you have actually contributed to their service, where others may not have. Make your blog blend in with all of the freeloaders. Participate, encourage your viewers to submit to you or ask questions (answer them, of course). Participate, participate, participate! I have yet to have one of my tumblr blogs shut down (knock on wood).

I hope this eases your concerns about your blogs being shut down.

Good luck to you. Get your money. :thumbsup

Thanks for the advice, that was one of the first really helpful posts in regards to avoiding being banned. I've been leaning towards less spam / more legitimate looking blogs and haven't been banned in 5 weeks...usually my sites last 1-2 weeks.

I thought this would be a relevant share: [Journey] Make Money on Tumblr - "journey" thread from BHW where dude uses Adult Content + PlugRush to make some $

Ugh I originally posted that method on TBN and he copied it and added a few things to it to jack referral links and sell his bots. His earnings are laughable, $7 / day on a "good" day? :1orglaugh

All he's doing is contributing to spam, the porn-related tags on Tumblr are nothing but shitty autoblogs set up people using his bots. I have my own system that sets up quality blogs with quality pics. I take the time to like posts, follow others, and reblog their pics.

But I digress. The tip about appearing more "social" on Tumblr and less like someone trying to profit has been a huge help. I've had my blogs alive for over a month now which allowed me to pass the $60/day range. Before I was getting banned every week or so and my earnings chart looked like a roller coaster.

That is really awesome man. Wish I knew your method. It's clear that, as of right now, there is an opportunity with Tumblr. the only tough part is dodging the bans as you mentioned, seems to be the common denominator with people trying to promote adult via Tumblr...bans... but you seem to have found a way around this. None of my accounts have been banned either...but why would they? so far I have hardly done anything at all, but even with my minuscule efforts, I've had a lot of followers, reblogs, etc ..and I believe there is something here.

Bob sorry tohear that. Tumblr these days is notoroius to ban people, sometimes without no reason.
Plugrush is a good choice. Also I think text ad would do better for tumbling than sometimes meaningless and easy to catch affiliate program.

Here's how I manage the ban risk on Tumblr. My key insight is that even when a tumblr blog is banned, the stuff that's been reblogged by others remains "out there" on all the blogs where it was reblogged. So, don't focus on links and ads in your own template; bury them in your posts and aim to be re-blogged. So your links should be as low-key as possible. Which (to me) means not so many affiliate links (though I do use a few) and more natural/human/sensible links (with title attributes and good anchor text) to my own off-Tumblr sites.

That way I'm generating traffic and (social!) SEO juice, and will retain much of it even if my Tumblrs get banned. So far, no bans; but I just run one tumblr account with several blogs on it.

I know this was written a while back, but the only thing I would add is that even though you can create multiple accounts under the same e-mail address, you have to "share" your daily posts, so to speak. Meaning that each account doesn't get it's own 50 posts per day, or it's own 300 image queue. Those are shared among all the accounts. At least this is how it was last time I had multiple accounts under one e-mail address. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

You are correct. I neglected to mention that in my OP. Thank you! :thumbsup

Thanks a bunch great stuff

great post, thanks for the info!

Good info, thanks for sharing!

thanks good info

ahh that sucks...

ahh that sucks...how many of them?
sometimes i think of how much work is put in, then tumblr just shuts ya down...

Thank you for all the great information.

How to get more followers
 

Thanks for the post. A quick question. How do you organically encourage and gain more followers? It seems hard to quickly gain any, compared to twitter with friday follows etc

Actually, many of the overly used hashtags on twitter, also apply to tumblr. Be sure to tag all of your posts with relevant keywords. Also, unlike twitter, mass following works (just dont overdo it). Follow a few blogs a day. Some will stick and followback, I assure you.


.

I'm having problems with tumblr.

I've tried by just setting up some blogs with no monetization until I get some followers.

I noticed I wasn't get any followers and wondered why. I've now realised non of my posts are appearing in search. If you search for any of the tags in my posts they don't show up. Also if you type the name of my blog into the search box, it doesn't find it. I've tried searching for my tags while logged into someone elses account, but they don't show. I have it set to show nsfw posts.

Its like tumblr is hiding me?

As far as I can tell I am sticking to all the rules. Has anybody else had any problems like this?

I have exactly the same problem but just signed up today.

I mailed support and got this:

In order to prevent spam and other types of abuse on Tumblr, that feature is locked on new accounts. After you've used the account for a while to do things like Following other blogs, Liking posts, and customizing your blog's appearance, the feature will be unlocked so you can use it. We apologize for the inconvenience.

However I have been using the service for over two weeks, customised my blog, been following, blogging, reblogging, liking and commenting and still the same problem.

Tumblr's new policy
 

This issue you are experiencing has to do with their new policy.
they are no longer indexing adult blogs. :-(

I can't include any links yet but if you Google or look at the link in the Admin settings of your Tumblr blog (besides 'NFSW' option) you'll see it.

Do we know how new the policy is? There's a bunch of information about it here: http://www.erosblog.com/2013/05/15/n...tumblr-search/

But nothing on the timing.

That is a super-interesting article and the comments bring new questions
to the table. I never even noticed that they weren't indexing our blogs. I let
that one slip right past me!

enjoyed the post thanks! :thumbsup

Yahoo have agreed to pay $1.1b for tumblr

Thanks for the info, I am doing like a poster above me said and just posting without any referrals until I get a following. Does using a bot or website to auto que my posts affect me in a negative way? Once again thanks for the info :thumbsup .