Eblogging Tricks

7 Powerful Keyword Marketing Tools

2010-06-23T00:17:00.002+02:00

If you are among those who are trying to earn a full-time online income (or one of the lucky ones who are already doing it) you will probably have noticed that it all comes down to keywords. Actually, it all comes down to obtaining top rankings for your profitable keywords in the search engines, primarily Google.

That statement has to be refined even further: it is all about obtaining top keyword rankings and keeping them at the top. You must consistently keep your keywords in the top spots on that all important first page of search engine results pagaes (SERPs) since your keyword rankings can make or break your online marketing.

If you are targeting extremely competitive and profitable keywords you will have your work cut out for you; unless you have tons of money to buy your way (i.e.: links) into the top spots, expect to spend months, if not years, getting to those coveted top listings. Google does not like link buying and has taken steps to fight it, but this practice is still widespread throughout the web.

Most beginning and honest webmasters want to take the proper route and earn those top rankings by providing good quality content that web users will actually find helpful and useful. They build those links the natural way by offering viral link bait in the form of videos, ebooks, articles, reports...all branded with backlinks to their sites.

Over time, these links will build up and your keyword rankings will go up in the search engines. People will find your content and bookmark it in social bookmark sites like Digg, Facebook, MySpace, StumbleUpon... and your rankings will climb even faster.

However, since keyword marketing has become extremely competitive, you do need a little help with achieving those top rankings. Over the last couple of years I have tested and used many keyword tools and I have listed some of the best ones below. (Just Google to find links to these tools and programs.)

Internet Success Spider

One of the first keyword tools I ever used was The Internet Success Spider by Neil Shearing which is now available for free. The Internet Success Spider is a very simple, yet powerful keyword tool that shows you the major players in your keyword niche. It slowly works in the background to give you valuable information on your keywords. I realized very quickly, with marketing (like most things in life) that information is what separates the losers from the winners. Note: You have to sign up if you want to use this tool.

Keyword Elite

A little later, I tried and am still using Keyword Elite by Brad Callen. It is easy to use and remains one of the best keyword research tools on the market.

Brad Callen simply creates some of the best marketing tools for online webmasters and marketers. Keyword Elite is no exception. It will do some very comprehensive keyword research for you and let you easily arrange that information. Keyword Elite has earned a well deserved reputation as a very useful marketing tool.

Brainstorm It - Site Build It

Another, perhaps even more powerful keyword tool is Brainstorm It! which is offered through the Site Build It marketing/hosting system run by Ken Evoy. This is a powerful keyword analyzer and finder, which is currently in its third version.

Site Build It creates many tools for webmasters, and Brainstorm It Version 3 is simply one of the best. This keyword tool will do both Vertical and Lateral keyword research to give the most comprehensive array of information for your marketing online. Only drawback, you only get so many Wordtracker credits and you have to pay extra when those run out. Actually, Wordtracker should be at the top of any keyword tool list, but most people use it in conjunction with other programs like Brainstorm It.

Google Keyword Tool

Then again, there is Google's very own keyword system run through its AdWords program. Like everything Google does, this keyword tool can be very helpful especially for the novice online marketer.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

MSN Commercial Intention Of Keywords

Not to be outdone, another helpful tool is Microsoft's Online Commercial Intention tool, which tells the probability your chosen keyword has a commercial value to it:

http://adlab.msn.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/Default.aspx

SEOBook Online Keyword Tool

For very quick keyword references, I like using the keyword tool on Aaron Wall's SEOBook site. It is quick and prvides very good stats for your chosen keywords.

SEOQuake

Yet another SEO (sort of related to keywords) is the SeoQuake Toolbar which you can run on Firefox. It will slow down your browser but it will cough up valuable information about your site and more importantly, it will give you valuable information on your competitors' sites. One feature that I find very helpful is the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Rank and SEM Price, which tells you how much your Search Engine keyword traffic is worth.

Plus, you must not ignore your website stats and traffic logs for they can supply you with the most valuable keyword information regarding your site. Closely examine which keyword phrases are bringing in the traffic and/or sales. Develop these keywords with your marketing, especially any “long tail” keyword phrases visitors are using to find your site or products. These longer keyword phrases have proven to be the most profitable because many times consumers using these phrases already have their minds made up on what they are going to buy.

Why Should You Be Using All These Keyword Tools?

Simply because obtaining and keeping top rankings for your chosen keywords makes your livelihood. Unless you can keep that focused traffic coming from these keywords via the search engines, it is game over. Therefore, you should use all the tools and information you can gather in order to keep those keywords at the top.

Google is changing all the time, you really have to stay on your game if you want to keep your keywords at the top. It all boils down to producing quality content web surfers need and want. The SEO pretty much takes care of itself as long as you keep promoting your keywords with good viral branded content like videos, articles, ebooks, PDF reports... and you must mix up your online link building to include links from such places as Facebook, Digg, Google Bookmarks, MySpace... I have always used the free “AddThis” button to all my important content and this has resulted in 100's of free links that your visitors will build for you!

I also believe you have to be careful when using viral articles to vary your anchor text (clickable part of a link) so that you do not have the same keyword phrase repeated 100's of times across the web. Just use different versions of your keyword phrase and if you can, get those keyword links in the body of the article, as near to the top of the page as you can. This will make your link building look much more natural in the eyes of the search engines, especially Google.

Overall, you need to have hundreds, if not thousands of keywords that you aretargeting with your marketing. You must constantly keep building links for those keywords from related sites on the web. Sometimes it is helpful to truly view your keywords as organic, something that keeps growing naturally on its own. But you must first build a solid foundation with good quality content and then keep nurturing those keywords with good quality link bait so that others will bookmark, recommend and link to your keyword content.

Over the years, if there is anything I have learned about keywords which always holds true, it is this: you must be persistent. You must keep at it: building links, building content... it will usually take months, if not years, to get those top rankings for very competitive keywords and it will take some further work to consistently keep those keywords in the top positions. But you will quickly learn keywords are well worth it since they can easily make or break your marketing.

Good luck!

Related articles:

How to Control search Engine Spiders for Improved Rankings

5 Free Google Tools for Researching Your Market

Free Traffic and the 4 Vital Elements of a Successful Business Website

Technorati-Tags: seo,pagerank,keywords,webmaster tools

First Steps in SEO: Sitemaps

2010-06-18T04:44:00.002+02:00

Creating an HTML sitemap and a XML sitemap for your website could be the easiest thing you do to improve your exposure on the web. For those among you who pay close attention to the search engine optimization (SEO) of your site, this could be the one thing that gets you onto the first page of Google´s search results. For those who do not devote a lot of time on the SEO of their site - this is probably the best place to start. By submittíng a sitemap to various search engines, you are telling them that you exist and what pages your site has to offer the World Wide Web.

There are two types of sitemaps: HTML and XML. An HTML sitemap provides a useful directory of all the pages that are in your site. XML sitemaps on the other hand play an important role in helping the search engines “crawl” the various pages of your site. This introductory article discusses the benefit of creating both an HTML sitemap and XML sitemap, and how you can go about creating them using a sitemap generator.

HTML Sitemaps

An HTML sitemap is a single HTML page that contains links to all the pages of your website. Normally, this is accessible via a link in your site footer, where it will be displayed on every page. With large sites, it is easy to get lost and struggle to find the page you are looking for. With a well organized HTML sitemap, visitors to your site will be able to use it to easily find the page they are looking for.

From an SEO perspective, as the search engine's robot (or spider) crawls your site indexing pages, it may find some pages on your site with greater ease using this sitemap, rather than through the general navigation. Therefore, sitemaps can benefit your site visitors and even play a role in enhancing your exposure on the web.

Take a look at WebAssist's sitemap to get an idea of what an HTML sitemap looks like. Notice that each page on the WebAssist website contains a link to this page in the footer.

XML Sitemaps

While HTML sitemaps are designed to benefit your human site visitors, XML sitemaps are created specifically for the search engines. All of the most popular search engines including Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com utilize XML sitemaps as part of their process for indexing the pages of a website. A good XML sitemap will tell the search engine what pages are in your site, how often those pages are updated, and when they were last modified. This way, the search engines know which pages to revisit more regularly, and are likely to do a better job of indexing them. Here is an example of the XML you might include in your XML sitemap:

<url>

<loc>yoursitedomain/index.htm</loc>

<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>

</url>

Notice that for the index.htm page of this website, I have provided details regarding the last modified date (<lastmod>), the frequency of updartes to this page (<changefreq>), and the priority of this page in relation to the other pages of the site (<priority>). By providing this information to the search engine as accurately as possible, they will be better equipped to index your site, and give the most important pages the appropriate attention.

TIP: Be honest about the information you provide in your sitemap(s). If a search engine finds that you are not updating your site as often as your sitemap suggests, they may come back less often.

Creating HTML and XML Sitemaps

Creating HTML sitemaps is as easy as creating a basic HTML page that contains links to all the pages in your site. However, you need to keep in mind that whenever you create new pages in your site, you will want to add those links to the sitemap as well.

Creating XML sitemaps manually can be quite a time consuming process. However, there are many great sitemap generators out there to help you automate this. If you google "sitemap generator" you will find that there are a quite a few free as well as paid sitemap tools that you can use.

How Often Should I Submit My Sitemap?

You should be in the habit of submittíng a sitemap to search engines a number of times a year. This allows you to update the search engine on any new pages in your site. If you create new pages on a regular basis, you may want to submit your sitemap more frequently.

Conclusion

Both HTML sitemaps and XML sitemaps are a good step in the right direction to improve the exposure of your website. You will most likely find a rise inyour search engine rankings after submitting a sitemap for the first time. However, keep in mind that this is only one part of search engine optimization, and there is a lot more you can do to improve how search engines rank the pages on your site and your website's discoverability.

Good luck!

Related articles:

How to Control Search Engine Spiders for Improved Rankings

Criteria for Successful Web Design

Technorati-Tags: seo,sitemaps,html sitemap,xml sitemap,search engine optimization

5 Free Google Tools for Researching Your Market

2010-06-15T04:42:00.002+02:00

Internet marketers, webmasters and online businesses have always had a love / hate relationship with Google. Whatever you may think of them, they do provide website owners with some great market research tools.

No matter what market you are in or plan to be in, you will find the following free tools provided by Google very useful when researching your market. One word of advice: You should be researching your market constantly, NOT just when setting up your site. The internet is ever changing, and if you are not keeping up with those changes you will be left behind.

Market Research Tool 1 - Related Searches and Wonder Wheel

When you start typing in the main Google search box you should see a drop down box appear showing you some alternative search terms related to the word you just typed. Note these phrases down in a Notepad file or write them on a piece of paper. They will be useful as part of your keyword list used in the next tool. You will also see more related search phrases after you click search. Scroll to the bottom of the results page and you will see “searches related to”. Write down any new phrases shown there.

Recently, Google has released Wonder Wheel which is also a related keywords tool but is shown in a mind map format. You can also click on the related phrases to find more useful search terms. To access wonder wheel: enter your keyword in the standard search screen, then at the top of the results on the left you should see a show options link. Select that and it will reveal a menu. Near the bottom of the menu you should see wonder wheel.

Market Research Tool 2 - AdWords Keyword Tool

We all know how important keywords and search phrases are. Let's face it, it is what drives the Internet. Google has provided us with a tool that tells you what keywords and phrases people are using to find what they are looking for. You are able to search an individual country, more than one if you hold down the ctrl key on your keyboard as you select, or all countries.

The AdWords tool is now more valuable due to the fact it shows actual search numbers. Previously you only had a green bar to indicate how much traffic the search term receíved. You can also see how competitive each keyword is amongst AdWords advertisers, showing you which keywords are commercially most viable.

Market Research Tool 3 - Google Trends

Now that you have an idea what keywords and long tailed search phrases your market is using you can use the Trends tool to check the history of that keyword / phrase. Google Trends supplies data for the last 5 years, thereby giving you an idea if the search term is consistent. You can also see if the search term is especially popular at certain times of the year, also known as a seasonal keyword.

Another important function of Trends is the section that tells you the popularity of a keyword by country, city and language - very useful if you are targeting particular countries or even cities.

Market Research Tool 4 - Google Alerts

Alerts is incredibly underused by webmasters. If you want to stay in touch with what is hot in your market, you easily can by using Google Alerts. All you have to do is enter the most popular phrases in your market. Google will then send you links via email depending on what type you select.

The types are news, web, blogs, video and groups. If you would like a mix of all, you can select comprehensive. You can decide how often you want to be updated by selecting either: as it happens, once a day, or once a week. I hope you can see how powerful this is if you want to be seen as an authority in your market.

Market Research Tool 5 - Google Web Search

Finally, we have Google´s standard web search which is not standard in my eyes. It provides a lot of information if you know what to look for. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important part of running a website. By performing a search of your market keywords, Google will tell you what type of content it sees as important.

If you see videos, blogs or images, this gives you another way to reach the top 10 of Google´s search results. If you see Web 2.0 style sites such as Digg, that could be another avenue. If there are AdWords ads on the right side of the screen, that tells you the market is commercially viable and more importantly that the keyword you entered is good enough to pay for, especially if there are 10 ads or more.

As you can see, even if you do not have money to buy the latest tools, there is a way to get some very important information using free tools courtesy of Google. Are you starting to feel alittle love for them now?

Good luck!

Technorati-Tags: market research,google tools,webmaster tools,internet marketing

Criteria for Successful Website Design

2010-06-12T02:04:00.002+02:00

I do not think you should start the design of a new or revised website by sitting down with the designer and coder of the website. Rather, I recommend you review the approaches, ideas, processes and other methods listed in this article to determine if they apply to your situation.

Think about your audience. Are they looking for immediate answers and solutions? I bet they are. Most likely the visitors to your website are very much like you. Chances are you use the Internet more than other types of media to search for information. If a web page does not “grab your interest” within 5 - 10 seconds after landing on it - you move on!

As a “first step” I suggest that you start by reviewing the questions listed below. I am certain that once you get to the last question you will have accumulated a list of action items that will greatly improve the overall quality of your current website. The success or failure of your site and/or business may very well depend upon the decisions you make after reading these questions and giving them a little thought.

What Do You Know About Your Clients´ and Prospects´ State of Mind?

When visitors land on your website they have very little time to read what you want to tell them. They have a need for information or a product and do not want to listen to or read wordy descriptions and comments. You have between 5 - 10 seconds to engage them and get them to take action. What is it that most visitors landing on your website want? Is it:

information,
a “quick fix”,
a bargain,
a large selection,
a telephone call,
or something else?

It is imperative to know the answers to these and many other questions BEFORE you design the pages within your website (or have them designed).

Do You Make Website Visitors Feel Like You Can Satisfy Their Wants and Needs?

Landing on any page within your website (but especially the Homepage) must make your visitors know that you understand their needs, desires, wants, and business. The more you put yourself into the mindse of the prospective visitors to your website, the better your chances of converting their visit into something you want to happen i.e. buy, complete a contact form (opt-in form), bookmark the page, pick up the phone and call you or any other method of measurable conversion.

What Approach Do You Take When Developing Pages Within Your Website?

What do you think you would want from your website if you were the prospective visitor or client? Assume you do not know as much as you want and need to in order to make an informed decision. Talk to your visitors in a language they will understand. If visitors want more insight or information, tell them to click on the more info link or give you a call. But keep in mind that they will follow your direction ONLY if you have built some level of trust or understanding.

What are You "Selling" to the Visitors of Your Website?

Are you focused on telling them about your product or service, or are you making them understand that choosing your firm will deliver that special feeling they are seeking by making the purchase? Are you sure that you communicated to the visitors that you understand their needs, wants, problems, etc.? What techniques did you implement to get your points across?

How are You Going to Get Your Visitors to Stay and Think About Your Service or Product?

Remember - they are ready to pass by your website in a blink of an eye. What are you going to do to engage them? The answer you come up with will be critical to the success you have in gaining their confidence enough to buy your product(s) or call you, etc. Make sure what you say is NOT the same old thing they are used to seeing or reading on every other website. Be boring and you lose! Address the issues that appeal to your visitors and they WILL STAY ON YOUR SITE! This is hard work – but well worth the effort.

What Kind of “Call to Action” Statements are You Placing on Your Website?

Turning a visitor into a prospect or client is one of the most critical actions of your website. How will you engage them? Once they know that you understand their needs and wants, they are more inclined to follow your CTA direction. Call to Action statements are critical to the success of any website's conversion. Guide them in a manner that is more telling, rather than just selling. Do not be afraid to be assertive.

How Does Your Website Address the “Who Are We” Issue?

Again, it is about making the website visitors feel confident that they are choosing a reputable firm or organization with which to do business. They need to read about your success. This can be done by exhibiting your affiliation with associations, awards won, satisfied client statements, client success stories, examples of your work, etc. Show them you are a “player” in your industry/expert in your field.

Are You Prepared to Answer: "What Makes You Different"?

What have clients and prospects said about you and your company? Have they applauded you for your approach to doing business? Did they say you made them feel like you understood their needs and wants? Think back to the reasons clients buy from you. How did you meet their needs and wants? Give your prospective clients reasons to do business with your firm.

A final thought...

Make it your primary goal to understand your potential clients. Look at your website from the client´s perspective. Who are they? What makes them different? What do they individually want and need? Provide information - do more telling than selling. They will “get it” and appreciate that you have made them educated buyers/ well informed visitors. Finally, tell them what you want them to do next. Get them to take the first step and be ready to deliver on the expectations you have set throughout your website!

Finally, do not be afraid to hire Internet marketing professionals to do the job if you feel that you cannot handle it by yourself. Too much is at stake to leave this part of your business to chance!

Related article:

How to Make Your Website Successful

Technorati-Tags: web design,successful website,more traffic,layout

How to Make Your Website Successful

2010-06-09T02:10:00.004+02:00

When trying to make it on the Internet, there are many ways in which you can further your bloog´s or website´s success. Although the look of your website is important, fancy websites do not automatically become successful, nor do they make sales. There is much more to creating a quality blog or website. To make a blog or website successful, you must create content that will be of interest to your target market and make them want to visit your website over and over again. In addition, your website should lead your visitors to take the action you desire, such as joining your mailing list, or making a purchase, or just visiting again.

1. Selecting a Niche

The first step towards making a website successful lies in targeting it for one specific niche. For example, if you are designing a website about cars, everything within your website should relate to cars.

2. Selecting a Keyword Phrase

You must also select the most relevant keyword phrase for each webpage. A keyword phrase consists of two or more words that best describe the specific webpage. For example, if your webpage is about ‘repairing transmissions’, your best keyword phrase would be ‘transmission repair’. You should use your keyword phrase a few times within your webpage (approximately once every 80 – 100 words), as this will enable the search engines to determine what the website is about. This is maybe the most important step on your way to making your blog or website successful.

3. Using HTML Heading Tags

When you begin writing your content, it is very important that you use the HTML H1 heading tag with your main title at the top of your webpage. In addition, use the HTML H2 tags for your sub-titles. This is very important, as some search engines place relevance on the text displayed with heading tags.

As the default text for the H1 heading tag is very large, you may want to use CSS style sheets to display the heading tags in the font style and size you prefer.

4. Using META Tags Within a Webpage

Another step to help make a website successful is to include META tags between the HEAD (<head> and </head> respectively) tags of your webpage. META tags help the search engines to find out what keywords are relevant to the webpage. They are also used to tell the search engines what the webpage is about (description tags). Most search engines will display this description within their search results.

5. Backgrounds and Text

It is always best to display a webpage with a white background and black text, as this will make the text easy to read. Distracting backgrounds will make the text hard to read. A good rule of thumb is to just use common sense and keep your website simple. This alone is a great way to help make a website successful.

6. Animated Graphics

If you are using animated graphics, it is important that you use them sparingly. Graphics that continually flash are VERY annoying and may prevent your visitors from returning to your site in the future.

7. Navigational Links

It is very important to include good navigational links on every page. They should be displayed at the top, bottom, left or right side of your webpage. In addition, your visitors should be able to get to any webpage within your website within four clicks.

8. Webpage Layout

Always be consistent with the design of your website. This is a very important if you want to make your website successful. The layout for each and every page of your website should be the same. If you make it different, your visitors will become confused. In addition, it will make your website appear to be unprofessional. Your website design should include the same layout, logo, and navigation setup on each page.

9. Spelling and Grammar

Always make sure you proof read and spell check your webpages and blog posts for errors before publishing them. It is also very important that your webpage does not have any broken images or links.

10. Important Webpages

When you launch your website, it is very important that you include the following webpages:

About - The ‘About’ page is used to tell your visitors about you and/or your companyand/or the site´s goals.

Privacy - The ‘Privacy’ page is used to let your visitors know what you do with their personal information, such as their email address.

Terms and Conditions - The ‘Terms and Conditions’ page should be displayed on your website for your own protection.

Site Map - A ‘Site Map’ is used to help the search engines index your website more easily as well as more correctly.

You can learn more about all of these pages by doing a little research on the web. They are very important and will help make a website successful.

11. Website Interactivity

Another way to make a website successful is providing interactivity. This can be done by including a targeted forum that complements your website, a form in which your visitors can subscribe to an ezine, a feedback form to enable them to give their opinion, or an informative blog in which visitors can comment.

12. Web Browsers and Screen Resolutions

When you begin designing your webpage, it is HIGHLY recommended that you install the most popular web browsers on your computer. This will enable you to see how your website will display in different browsers. You will find that your website may look great in one browser and horrible in another. It would be wise to design your website to display properly in Internet Explorer, and then it should display properly in Firefox, Opera, etc.

It is also important that you view your website through different screen resolutions. You can either open your webpage in your browser and then change your computer's screen resolution, or there are website's online that you can visit, such as Any Browser, to test your website.

If you follow these simple guidelines, you can make a website successful in no time.

Related articles:

10 Essential Tips for Lauching Your Business Blog

Free Traffic and the 4 Vital Elements of a Successful Business Website

Technorati-Tags: successful website,seo,more traffic,search engine optimization,search engine friendly,website design,layout,meta tags

How to Control Search Engine Spiders for Improved Rankings

2010-06-06T02:09:00.002+02:00

In order to get your blog or website listed at the top of the search engines keyword search rankings you need to gain a deeper understanding of the search engine spiders that crawl over your website. After all, these spiders determine the relevance of your website and decide where your site or web pages will land in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Therefore, by learning how to control the direction of the spiders, you can be certain your website will rise in rankings.

Gaining Control with the Help of Robots.txt

You may think that gaining control of search engine spiders is an impossible task, but it is actually quite easy: all you need to do is take advantage of a handy little tool called the robots.txt file. With the robots.txt file, you can give the spiders the direction they need to locate the most important pages on your website while preventing them from wasting time on the more obscure pages such as your About Us and Privacy Policy pages. After all, these pages will not do much to increase your search engine ranking and will not help your target market find your website, so why should the spiders waste their time exploring these pages when in the process of ranking your site?

Another positive aspect of using a robot.txt file is the fact that it prevents the spiders from indexing duplicate pages. This is beneficial because having duplicate content may actually reduce your search engine ranking. So, while you are making changes to your website or working on an area that is not fully developed yet, you can instruct the spiders to leave those pages alone until you are ready to have them crawled. The same is true if you have a blog (or a blog on your website), as a blog post created in WordPress (or on Blogger, Typepad, etc.) will show up in the main post page, in an archive page, in a category page and as a tag page. With the help of the robots.txt tool you can instruct the spiders to look only at the main post page.

In using the robot.txt files, you can tell the search engine spiders which pages they should and should not search through and index. It is important to keep in mind, however, that the robots.txt tool is meant to be used to prevent search engine spiders from searching certain pages. Therefore, you will only need to use it on those pages you do not want the spiders to crawl.

Implementing the Robots.txt Tool

To successfully use the robots.txt tool, you first need to determine which pages you do not want the spiders to search. Then slowly begin making the changes to your site. By using the tool on only a couple of pages at a time, it will be easier for you to identify mistakes that you may have made during the process.

To make your changes, you will need to add the robots.txt file to the root directory of your domain or to your subdomains. Adding it to your subdirectories will not work. For example, you may add the robots.txt file to a url such as

http://domain.com/robots.txt

or to

http://privacypolicy.domain.com/robots.txt

But, adding it to a subdirectory such as

http://www.domain.com/privacypolicy/robots.text

will not work. With just one robots.txt file within your root directory, you can manage your entire site. If you have subdomains, however, you will need a robots.txt file for each one that you need to manage. You will also need separate robots.txt files for your secure (https) and nonsecure (http) pages.

Creating a Robots.txt File

Creating a robots.txt file is relatively easy, as you only need to name your text file robots.txt within any text editor, such as Textpad, NotePad or Apple TextEdit. Your robots.txt file only needs to contain two lines in order to be effective. If you wanted to stop the spiders from searching the archives of the blog on your site, for example, you would add the following to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: * Disallow: /archives/

The “User-agent” line is used to define which search engine spiders you want to have blocked. By placing the asterisk (*) here, you are instructing all search engine spiders to avoid the specified pages. You can, however, target specific search engine spiders by replacing the asterisk with the following codes:

Google – Googlebot

Yahoo – Slurp

Microsoft – msnbot

Ask – Teoma

The “Disallow” line specifies which part of the site you want the spiders to ignore. For instance, if you want the spiders to ignore the categories portion of your blog, you would replace “archives” with “category” and so on. If you wanted to instruct the spiders to ignore multiple sections, you would simply add a new “Disallow” line for each area you want to be ignored. Just as you can name specific areas that you want the spiders to avoid, you can also list specific areas that you want specific spiders to view. For example, while you may want most spiders to avoid a specific area, you may want the MSN mediabot, Google image bot or Google AdWords bot to visit those areas. In this case, you can use the asterisk to instruct all search engines to avoid the area while instructing a specific spider to allow the same area. If you want Google’s AdSense bot to access a folder, for instance, you would create the following command:

User-agent: * Disallow: /folder/

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google Allow: /folder/

You can also use your robots.txt files to prevent dynamic URLs from being indexed by the search engine spiders. You can accomplish this with the following template:

User-agent: * Disallow: /*&

With this command, you are instructing the spiders to index only one of the URLs that matches the parameters you have set. For example, if you had the following dynamic URLs:

* /vintageguitars/details.php?propcode=ANCHORS&SRCH=tr

* /vintageguitars/details.php?propcode=ANCHORS&vr=1

* /vintageguitars/details.php?propcode=ANCHORS

your robots.txt instructions will tell the spiders to list only the third example because it will disallow any URLs that start with a forward slash (/) and contain the & symbol. You can use the same strategy to block any URLs containing a question mark by using the following:

User-agent: * Disallow: /*?

You can block all directories that contain a specific word in the URL as well. For example, you might create a robots.txt file such as the following:

User-agent: * Disallow: /gibson*/

With this command, any page with a URL containing the word “Gibson” will not be crawled by the spiders. It is important to be extra cautious when using these directives, however, as they will cause the spiders to avoid all pages containing the word you specify. As a result, you may accidentally block pages that you do want to be indexed. If you do want to block all but one or two pages with URLs containing a specific word, you need to create a robots.txt file that specifically allows the page you still want to be indexed. In this case, your robots.txt file would look something like this:

User-agent: * Disallow: /gibson*/ Allow: /vintageguitars/gibson andlespaul/details.html

It is also possible for you to instruct the spiders to avoid an entire folder on your website while still allowing it to access specific pages within that folder. To achieve this, you would write something like:

User-agent: * Disallow: /category/ Allow: /category/just-this-page.html

It is important to note that the search engine spiders will ignore general directives if you have one that addresses a specific spider. For example, if you create the following robots.txt:

User-agent: * Disallow: /category/

User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /archives/

the Google spider will still crawl and index the category page because you listed a directive that was specific to the Googlebot, and that overrides the directive that addresses all search engine spiders. So, if you list a specific spider in your robots.txt, you need to individually list all of the things you want that spider to avoid. In our example, you would have to create the following robots.txt file to get the Googlebot to avoid the category and archives sections while telling all other spiders to avoid the category section:

User-agent: * Disallow: /category/

User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /archives/ Disallow: /category/

If you want the spiders to avoid indexing certain types of files, you will need to use the dollar sign symbol ($). To instruct the spiders to avoid GIF files, for instance, you would use the following:

User-agent: * Disallow: /*.gif$

You would use the same pattern for other types of files that you may want to be avoided by the spiders, such as .pdf$, .jpg$ or .jpeg$.

Addressing Other Search Engine Concerns

In addition to blocking certain pages from being indexed by the search engines, there are a number of other concerns you may address with the robots.txt tool. For instance, if the search engine spiders are downloading your pages too quickly and causing difficulties with your server, you can add a crawl-delay directive to your file that will tell the spider how long it should wait between downloads. In general, it is best to set this directive low, such as somewhere between 0.5 and 1, and then to increase it later if necessary. This robots.txt file would look something like:

User-agent: * Crawl-delay: 0.7

Google does not follow the crawl delay directive, however, and it generally is not necessary to add this directive to your robots.txt file.

Another handy aspect of the robots.txt file is that it can help you create a path to your XML sitemap. By adding a line such as:

Sitemap: http://www.yoursitename.com/sitemap.xml

By using your robots.txt file in this way, you can submit your XML sitemap to search engines without registering with a variety of different Webmaster Tools programs. You can also store your XML sitemap anywhere you like with this tool, which can be helpful if you manage several sites and want to keep all of your XML sitemaps in one place.

Finally, it is important to realize that it is still possible for a search engine to index pages that you have included in your robots.txt file. There are a number of reasons why this may happen. For example, if someone created a link to the page, it will still get crawled through that link. To close this opening, you will need to unblock the page from your robots.txt file and then place a meta noindex tag on the page before you put the page back on your robots.txt file.

In this post I have told you how you can use robot.txt files to improve the ranking of your site in the results pages of the major search engines.

Good luck!

Technorati-Tags: seo,pagrank,search engine rankings,sitemap,search engine optimization,indexing

Free Traffic and the 4 Vital Elements of a Successful Business Website

2010-06-03T02:03:00.002+02:00

Anyone can build a website. Countless companies are offering a vast array of web building solutions, some good, some great, and some quite frankly are a complete waste of time! But building a decent looking website is really only part of the story, only part of the process. There are literally millions of web pages that will never be viewed and therefore stand no chance of commercial success. Some of those sites are even quite good; unfortunately their owners have misunderstood the process and have put the cart before the horse...

In the online world no one just happens by your website, credít card in hand! If you have yet to build your website, or are about to create a new site, stop! You need to consider exactly what you wish to achieve with your site before you get started. “Creating a website should follow a process proven to deliver a commercial end result - or run the risk of ending up just another pretty picture in cyberspace!”

Fortunately there is a process, and I highly recommend you take a look at it - maybe you already know it...

Content --> Traffic --> Pre-sell --> Monetize

A time tested 4 step process, proven to produce websites that deliver - commercially! Ok, let us take a brief look at each step and find out why they work in this particular order.

1. Numoro Uno, as always, Content

Very, very, very, very important. Building an information-rich site is crucial. You abolutely must have high quality, unique, relevant content on your site, a) because you want to attract visitors in the first place and b) to generate long term, search engine based free traffic.

Online, people are looking for solutions and/or information that leads to solutions (not to forget entertainment). They use the search engines to hunt for the most relevant facts to reach their end goal - a practicable solution. Your job is therefore easy: Give it to them! But do not make the mistake of just plonking down any old garbage and hoping for the best - take your time, put in the effort, provide good quality information that will over-deliver and keep your visitors interested, satisfy their needs - and you will be rewarded. Over time, gradually add new fresh, useful content and you will be one your way to creating web pages valued by humans and search engines alike. In the online world, high value content is king!

2. Traffic - The Holy Grail...

Much, too much has been written on the subject, and many are making a good living providing (?) this elusive element.

Truth is, (excluding social media) there are but two ways to get it - you either pay for it, or you optimize for it. If you take the time to understand the basics you can easily do both.

Paid search, (PPC – Pay Per Click) such as Google Adwords has its place, and can provide an immediate stream of targeted visitors to your website; it is, however, a study of its own and can, if not fully understood, become very costly very quickly! If you want to go that route learn with small amounts (of money) and do not be tempted to throw good money after bad...

Safer - and arguably better – is going the route of search engine optimization (SEO) for the organic results, as reached via Google or other search engines. This means nothing more and nothing less than intelligent website construction, a process anyone can learn. It is important to note that the optimization should be built in during the creative process, at the time of your site´s construction; you are literally building your website to principles that make it search engine friendly, thus leading to high natural positions in organic search results, hopefully leading to a significant and constant free traffic flow to your site...

3. DO NOT SELL – PRE-SELL

You have created a website with value rich content and fully optimized its pages for indexing by Google (and other search engines). Folks are arriving at your site as directed by their search results. You are keen to have them buy your goods or services, ready with your pitch - but wait! There is another vital step in the process of converting your visitors into customers, and you have done half of the work already...

Pre-selling is a warming up process that allows you to develop trust and confidence in your offering. It is well known that people are more willing to buy from those they like, trust or respect. By over-delivering relevant high value information without appearing to be forcing a sale you will, almost by default, create an atmosphere that inevitably leads to sales. It is that simple!

As far as your visitors are concerned, their needs are being met, their every wish is being fulfilled, you are providing the very information that is the solution to their problem. Pre-selling creates an open-to-buy mindset that smoothly introduces your visitors to your monetization offer.

4. Monetize

Thank you for sticking with me this long, here is the home run: This is where you make your offer enticing by introducing and highlighting the many benefits of your product or service, and detailing exactly how it provides the solution to their predicament. You have paved the way with informative, relevant content and can now look to close with persuasive sales copy.

Your call to action should be strong and concise. Tell your prospective customers exactly what they need to do to order. If you have a good product, and you should, let them know exactly how they will benefit by ordering from you - today!

This is it: A formula simple, yet highly effective. Generate targeted free traffic via your highly optimized website, provide information packed content that offers solutions, warm up or pre-sell your visitors by over-delivering on the quality of that content, then, and only then, monetize by introducing persuasive, benefit focused sales copy to convert pre-sold visitors into enthusiastic customers.

I hope you found this post helpful. Please visit again for more information about promoting your business online.

Good luck!

Technorati-Tags: Seo,search engine optimization,more traffic,free traffic,online business

10 Essential Tips for Launching Your Business Blog

2010-05-30T03:07:00.002+02:00

Are you thinking about launching a blog promoting your business? You are not alone. A recent study by GuideWireGroup revealed that close to 89 percent of businesses polled use blogs as a way to communicate with their customers. In another survey, Burson-Marsteller found that 15% of the companies on the Fortune 500 list have blogs. A successful business blog can generate tens of thousands of dollars in revenue each year, with figures for large corporations typically much higher.

This is proof that business blogging is becoming a mainstream marketing tool. That does not mean, however, that blogging comes easily or naturally for many companies, their owners and employees. Blogging, like any form of content, takes up quite a lot of time and resources - namely, you have to know how to write (or have access to good writers) and you have to update your blogs with fresh, original and insightful new material on a regular basis.

This is should in no way scare you away. It should, however, inspire you to learn the basics of business blogging before you turn your baby loose on the world. Planning your blogging strategy first is a wise move, because it gives your blog a greater chance of success. However, if you do not feel up to the challenge at all, you need not worry – outsourcing is always an option. Anyway, here are 10 tips for launching your business blog:

1. Identify your readers

Before you start writing anything, make sure you understand who your target audience is. This is also known as your “buyer persona”, which marketing guru David Meerman Scott defines as “...a distinct group of potential customers, an archetypal person whom you want your marketing to reach.” Basically, you want to tailor your topics to the group(s) of people who are most interested in your Products and/or services. Otherwise, you are missing the mark and losing out on potential leads and sales. To identify these buyer personas, there are 3 important questions you should ask yourself:

· Where do your customers come from?

· What type of content will be useful to them?

· Where do your customers hang out online?

2. Create social media accounts

If you have not already done so, register accounts with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. Start with these four and expand later. This is important because you need places to post links to each new blog post, so that your groups, fans, and followers can read them. Posting on social media also encourages people to subscribe to your RSS feed, another great way to promote your blog.

3. Establish your social media presence

Lay the groundwork for later blog promotion by establishing relationships with your target audience. One of the best ways to do this is through social media. Now that you have accounts set up, you can join forums, listen to conversations and hear what people are saying about your industry. Add thoughtful and insightful comments whenever possible.(No spamming!) Outsource or hire employees to do this if you do not have enough time, but try to contribute every once in a while if possible.

4. Decide on a place for your blog

You can either put your blog on a page within your website or give it its own domain. Your choice depends largely on your goals. Do you want the blog to be part of your site, and linked to it directly? Or do you have plans to use your blog for other purposes, such as to earn revenue through ads or creating a secondary business from it?

A blog can help your website to rank higher, and it can also rank highly on its own. Therefore, think about your long-term objectives when deciding where to place it.

5. Choose a blogging platform

You have quite a few options here. WordPress is currently the premier choice for professional blogs, but you can also check out Joomla, Blogger, TypePad and others.

6. Use the right keywords

If you are placing your business blog on a page within your site, most likely you will be using the same keywords for your blog that you are already using for your site. If you have done good keyword research, then these are the keywords that best reflect your business. Ideally, they are also the search terms that people are using to find you. If you are placing your blog somewher else, consider if any keyword changes need to be made. You may want to take your blog site in a different direction from your site. Again, this depends on your goals for your blog.

Incidentally, if your blog does have its own domain, you will want the domain name to be brandable, easy for consumers to recognize and search engine friendly.

7. Plan your posts

Think about the direction you want your blog posts to go in. A good way to stay on track is to start with one main topic and draft a few entries in advance. Publish them on a regular schedule (can be automated!) and you will have a supply of targeted blog posts that add fresh content to your site and point back to your business each week. Coming up with topics can be a challenge, but there are a lot of helpful resources on the Web if you should get stuck.

8. Network with opinion-leaders

Once you have got your blog up and running, it is a good idea to check out other bloggers in your industry/field of expertise. See what they are doing, what they have to say, and leave insightful and helpful comments on their blogs. This kind of web networking will help you establish relationships with these people, which in turn will prompt them to help spread the word about your blog and your business. This kind of free advertising is invaluable. It connects you to credible and respected individuals within the blogosphere and markets your business for you.

9. Promote your blog

As mentioned earlier, offering a blog subscription through an RSS feed is an effective way to promote your blog. There are other ways to get the word out, as well. Write an optimized press release (PRWeb.com), submít articles to directories that link to your blog page, submit your blog to social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon and Digg (or set up an account with Ping.fm and have it done automatically). Make sure that you link to your blog posts in your social media posts.

10. Analyse results

If you are going to take the time to blog for marketing purposes, you will want to know how well you are doing, right? Since it relies primarily on the building of human relationships over time, blog ROI (Return Of Investment) can be tricky to measure. But there are many tools at your disposal to help you determine how much or how little your blog is contributing to the bottom line.

Free online tools like Google Analytics and Google Alerts provide you with information about how your customers are finding you online, and can tell you a lot about your blog page, in particular. Facebook Insights is a great way to track activity on your Facebook account. Many more tools are available, so look into them.

Like any project, launching your business blog is all about preparation. If you do your homework and lay a solid foundation, your blog will produce results (although it may take awhile). Keep in mind that blogging is a form of content marketing and, as such, is primarily about building relationships with customers. So, be patient, follow these tips, and watch your business grow!

Good luck!

P.S.: You might want to watch this highly informative video:

How to Get Better Visibility on Google

Related article:

Online Business Myths that are Way Off

Technorati-Tags: online business,make money,more traffic,business blog,marketing

How to Really Make Money with HubPages

2010-05-27T02:07:00.004+02:00

In this post I am going to show you what you can do to really make money with HubPages. You may have to invest quite a bit of time and work but in the end you will be among those who earn a substantial income by publishing successful articles (or hubs) on HubPages.

The obvious answer as to how to make money on HubPages is to actually have something to say. Some value to add. Some information to provide. While it is important to understand how to use keywords, you should not take it too far.

Do not become obsessed with SEO linking schemes and do not stuff your article with keywords. In short, do not overdo it. Provide good, useful information and do it consistently. Yes, I said consistently. The people who publish hubs on HubPages on a regular basis are the people who make the most money.

If you consistently write about a certain subject (which you do not need to do) it will help you establish yourself as an expert in a niche. But more importantly, it will enable more effective link building between your hubs. Write between 10 and 20 hubs on the same topic and interlink them all. It is always helpful to provide links to more pertinent and useful information.

If you write about honey-bees (wow, that is what I call random), write another hub specifically about the nutritional value of honey and another about the American or European honey industry and another about the actual honey making process and another about how bee-keepers go about collecting the honey.

I do not know if there are any honey-hounds among the people who read this article, but hey, it is just an example. I hope you get the point. This kind of coverage will help bounce traffic around between your hubs, will establish some authority, and will build trust from readers and will even help you earn backlinks from thematically related websites.

Notice that I wrote “earn” backlinks. It is important to understand that a natural organic link from someone who genuinely finds your work interesting and helpful and thus wants to share it with their readers is priceless. That is what the game is all about. It is how you succeed with content online. And, yes, it is how you make money as well. One natural link is worth a hundred forced links.

Making money on HubPages also requires doing a little bit of promotion. To be honest, you are not required to do anything, but it will really help you gain exposure for your hubs if you build a few links to them.

One of the best ways to get more traffic to your hubs other than understanding how to write for a specific audience and doing a bit of keyword research, is to create links from article directories. Ezine Articles is probably the most widely known and consistently tops the Google search results pages for thousands of different niches.

You are allowed to include two footer links at the bottom of your articles, which you can use to point to your other work at HubPages. Use keyword-rich anchor text to promote your hubs. Using the honey example, you could write a basic article about the health benefits and the downsides of honey. (Actually, honey, being a 100% natural product, has hardly any downsides.) Make it around 400 - 500 words long and make it worthwhile – the Ezine Articles staff has to approve it. That means you have to meet their quality standards - which can be a little tricky in the beginning. Build at least one link to each of your HubPage hubs.

Write another hub titled something like “My Honey Hubs” or “All You Ever Wanted to Know About Honey” and include links to all of your honey-related hubs. This link post will give people a gereal view of all the content you have written; it is also a great way to build links.

Another way to promote your hubs is by building a blog on one of the free platforms (Blogger or Wordpress.com, for instance) and linking to each of your published hubs with a short description of what it is about. This may help widen your search footprint and drive more traffic to your hubs.

See how each link-building exercise is also providing value at the same time? This is what will work in your favor over time. If you consistently think about your audience and provide valuable information or entertainment, you will succeed in making money online – not just with HubPages, with any blog or website.

So go get started making money on HubPages.

To your success!

Related articles:

How to Make Money with HubPages

How to Make Money with HubPages 2: Backlinks

Technorati-Tags: HubPages,income streams,make money,affiliate programs,article writing,link building

Search Engine Optimization for Your Blog – 5 Tips to Get You Started

2010-05-23T23:00:00.002+02:00

Easy SEO Tips to Make Your Blog More Search Engine Friendly

Making your blog search engine friendly as well as easy to navigate for your visitors is at the core of SEO. Here are a few starter tips that will help you get more traffic and achieve what you want to online.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making a blog or website more easily accessible to search engines and telling everybody - machines as well as people - what your site is about. This is the basic task of SEO. It is about making your website easily understandable and following certain standards and practices.

It is also about getting your blog or website ranked higher in the search engine results pages (SERPS) so that your site gets more traffic and you can more easily achieve your objectives.

Five Basic Tips for Better On-Site SEO

1. Write a Clear and Catchy Title that Includes Your Keyword(s)

This is a smart thing to do for two reasons. One, it clearly tells potential readers what your post or article is about and lets them know what they will get out of it. Two, it makes it clear to search engines that the term you use in the title is a very important one on that particular page. This will help said page rank higher in the search engine result pages for your chosen keyword(s).

2. Link to Your Homepage and Other Related Pages from New Blog Posts or Articles

When you write a new blog post you should link to related pages on the same site. Make sure to use keyword-rich anchor text that explains in a couple of words what the linked-to post is all about. This will help further strengthen the SEO of the page and will give your readers a clear path to information may also be interested in. You can also link to your homepage with the keywords you are focusing on for the site as a whole. Again, this helps your readers navigate the site with greater ease, keeps them on your site longer(hopefully), and will strengthen the SEO qualities of your homepage.

3. Use Your Chosen Keyword or Keyword Phrase in the Body of Your Content

Just like you want to use the keyword phrase in the title of your article, you want to make sure to use it in the body of your blog posts or website content. This will reinforce to search engines and website visitors alike what your content is about. If your blog is about “designer shoes for men”, you want to target that exact phrase and include it in the body of the writing. Studies have shown that you get the best results by using your chosen keyword or keyword phrase once every 80 -100 words, if possible.

4. Write Posts or Articles of Decent Length

Each piece of content you publish should be at least 250 to 500 words long. The more you write, the more material search engine bots have to work with when trying to figure out what your site is about. Longer, informative posts should increase traffic to your site over time, and the better written your work is, the more people will link to it, which will help your content in search rankings. You may also find that terms you have not thought about are bringing people to your site as well because you will have more combinations of words on every single page of your website.

5. Write Great Content that is Useful, Informative and Original

The most essential and most difficult of all SEO methods. People sometimes forget that the best way to enhance the success of a site is to write extraordinary articles that people will naturally want to link to, bookmark, and show their friends and family. Making sure your content is really good will help you more than any other search engine optimization methods every will. Focus on creating value for your readers - and you will have a successful site.

If you choose to apply only one of the methods mentioned here, this should be it: Write amazing stuff that people fall in love with.

It is very hard – if not impossible - to create a hugely successful blog overnight. The bloggers who are making a lot of money work harder than most and put in the hours to create great content. That being said, if you write something so useful, so helpful, so entertaining, or –hopefully - all of the above, you could be among the few who become successful almost overnight.

It takes work, dedication, and some promotion, but you can create a successful blog and even make money from your efforts. You can start a blog for free at Blogger.com or Wordpress.com, but you should also consider starting a blog on a private hosting service and with a domain name of your choice right away. The latter kind of blog will be more valuable in the long run since you will own it outright. Of course, you can always transfer a free blog to private hosting later on.

If you are looking for professional hosting, Just Host and Host Gator (and no, I am in no way affiliated with either one of them) are currently two of the best blog/web hosts and their rates are low (starting at around $ 4.95/month). You even get a free domain name for life with some of the plans. Kill two birds with one stone.

But whatever you do, always remember that the more work you put in, the better your blog will be in the long run. It can be very lonely at times when you feel like no one is interested in your work, but one day the flood gates will open and you will have a popular site.

Essential Information:

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

Better SEO leads to more readers, more subscribers, and making more money online.

SEO is the process of making your website more accessible to search engines. Basically, the clearer you are about the content of your site or its function, the easier people will find it and the higher it will rank in search engine result pages (SERPs).

Toyour success!

Related articles:

Great Content is Still the Best SEO Strategy

7 Tips for a Successful Website

Technorati-Tags: seo,search engine optimization,more traffic

7 Tips for a Successful Website

2010-05-20T23:07:00.002+02:00

In this post I am going to give you 7 tips that will help you make your Blog or website better and more successful. Whether you have a personal blog, a niche site, or a blog attached to your online business, these tips will surly help you make it great.

1. Write Longer Posts

A lot of “gurus” recommend writing short posts/ articles because people nowadays have short attention spans (especially online). While this may be true, there still are people who like to read detailed, informative, well-written posts. Furthermore, longer posts tend to have more of your keyword phrases in them which will help with your search engine ranking. Google is especially fond of long articles, whereas other search engines, Bing for instance, prefer articles in teh 250 – 400 word range.

2. Make Your Blog Accessible

Use a two or three column theme which is not too cluttered. And do not make it an obstacle course for people to find out who you are. If readers get to know you better, it is easier for them to get “involved” in your site. They may even become regular visitors or subscribers.

3. Write Strong, Catchy Titles

Try to use strong keywords related to your post in the title. And always deliver what the title promises. Also, create tags (and a tag cloud/list, if possible) that can help your visitors find what they are looking for more easily.

4. Add Images to Your Posts

Pictures are a great means for drawing your readers into the articles you write. If nothing else, they keep the visitor´s eyes fixed on the page for an extra second or two. Do not forget to write a caption and alternate text for the images you add (which may help them get indexed by search engines). Print advertisements tend to have images for the express reason that they attract attention.

5. Promote, Promote, Promote,Promote,…

There is nothing wrong with letting people know what you are doing. There is a key though: You should try to get in touch with people who run similarly themed blogs and websites. In general, people who write about or deal in some other way with similar stuff are more likely to be interested in what you are publishing. Of course, this is not always the case because interesting content gets noticed no matter what, but it is a good way to get started. Engage other site owners by posting comments that add to the discussion brought up by their work.

6. DO NOT QUIT

Quitting has to be the biggest reason why a blog or website fails. It may take six months or even a year before your blog or website takes off. Keep writing good, long, informative pieces and do everything in your power to connect with others. Learn a little about keywords, learn a little about link building, learn a little about internet marketing, and make sure that you enjoy what you are doing. If you are not having fun, then - and only then! - quitting probably is a good option. You can always start a new blog or website.

7. There is no #7

Oops, I just broke the promise of my title. Perhaps you feel somewhat betrayed (see #3 on this list), but I hope you see the point I am making. Always, ALWAYS deliver what you promise so that people will find what they are looking for and will want to come back.

Good luck!

Technorati-Tags: improve blog,internet marketing,make your website better,online business,more traffic,successful blogging

Great Content is Still the Best SEO Strategy

2010-05-18T01:40:00.003+02:00

SEO (search engine optimization) plays a very important part in developing a successful blog, website, or any other kind of online presence. You want the structure of your home to be solid, strong, and well-designed.

The same is true for your website.

When people say that SEO is not important or even a waste of time, they are terribly wrong. Making your site search engine friendly and easily navigable and findable is very important.

But…(yes, there is a “but”)

It is NOT the most important thing.

The CONTENT of your site is the most important thing.

It is easy to find yourself rushing through a blog post or an article so you can get to the promotion and link building part much faster. Successful bloggers know that their job isn’t done after they finish a post. It’s only the beginning–especially with a new blog.

An informative, well-written post can be pretty lonely without anyone to read it. And the truth is, people have a lot of options. There is plenty to read out there, so you have to find readers and traffic for your site. You have to promote your work.

The best thing you can do with regard to the SEO of your site, other than making sure its structure is sound and the site itself highly searchable, is to find high quality, relevant links.

And the best way to find these kinds of links is by writing original as well as useful or entertaining content that people – yes, wait for it – want to link to!

It is a much better use of your time to focus on creating amazing content than surfing the web trying to find people to trade links with. If the content you publish on your site is great, then links will be no problem. And they will all be highly desirable “one-way” links, not reciprocal!

So, when it comes to the actual content of your site, it will pay off to make it as useful, as informative, as amazing, as scandalous, as eye-catching, and as entertaining as possible.

Great content is – and will always be - the best SEO.

Technorati-Tags: seo,more traffic,content,one way links,free links

How to Add 125x125 Ad Spots To Your Blogger Blog

2010-05-14T01:55:00.002+02:00

Currently, 125x125 ad-spots are the most widely used ad dimensions in the blogosphere. For both publishers and advertisers these dimensions are perfect for displaying text and pictures in an attractive way. And these ads do not interfere too much with the blog's content.

So if you are too planning to sell some ad space on your Blogger blog with these 125x125 spots, just follow these simple instructions:

A lot of bloggers place and control this kind of ad-spots through CSS but the ones you can add by following this guide work with standard HTML, so as to keep the process as simple as possible. Furthermore, it allows for easy customization later on.

1. Log in to Blogger, navigate to Layout --> Add a Gadget --> select HTML/JavaScript from the menu.

2. Paste the following code into the HTML/JavaScript box:

Note: The code in green represents "no. of columns" (2 green lines=2 columns) and code in purple represents "no. of rows" (2 purple lines=2 rows).

3. Save the widget.

4. When an advertiser approaches you, replace the links in red in the code above with the code for the new ad.

TIP: Instead of displaying all 4 banners as „Advertise Here”, it is better to use a couple of them to show any affiliate ads you may already have and keep just one or two as „Advertise Here” spots.

You may use any of the following „Advertise Here“ banners (right click on picture and choose “save as”):

In this post I have shown you a simple method for adding 125x125 ad Spots to your Blogger blog. If you are interested in making money you should definitely add a couple of them to the sidebar of your blog.

Good luck!

How to Add an Affiliate Banner to the Header of Your Blogger Blog

How to Add AdSense Ad Units or Affiliate Banners Above the Header of Your Blogger Blog

Technorati-Tags: blogger help,webmaster tools,ad placement,monetize blog,blogger tips

How to Add AdSense Ad Units or Affiliate Banners Above the Header of Your Blogger Blog

2010-05-11T02:06:00.002+02:00

A lot of people who are interested in monetizing their Blogger blog want to know how they can add a Google AdSense ad unit or an affiliate banner above the header of their blog. Therefore I am going to show you in this post how you can place an affiliate banner or Google AdSense banner/ad block right at the top of Blogger blogs.

Setting up Blogger so that ad units can be placed above the header requires the addition of a snippet of code to the template of your Blogger blog. This tutorial is aimed at beginners and newbies to Blogger and blogging. The adjustments can be performed in less than 5 minutes.

How to Add a Google AdSense Ad Unit or an Affiliate Banner Above the Blogger Header

1. Login to Blogger if not already logged in.

2. Navigate to Layout --> Edit HTML.

3. As a precaution back up your template by downloading the full template to your computer.

4. Check the Expand Widget Templates box.

5. Search for the following line of code which in most templates will be directly after the <body> tag (The easiest way to do this is by pressing Ctrl + F and then entering the line into the search box):

6. Paste the following block of code directly after this line to create a new section:

7. Next you need to add some CSS styling to the newly created section. Please note that the banner will be centered by default. If you want to change the alignment for some reason or other you just need to change the CSS styling.

Place the following code in the head section of your template before these lines:

]]></b:skin>
</head>

The code to be inserted:

/* Top Ads
----------------------------------------------- */
#topads-wrapper {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
position: relative;
text-align: center;
width: 100%;
}
#topads {margin: 0; padding: 0;}
#topads .widget {margin: 0; padding: 5px 0;}

8. Click on Save Template.

9. Now go to Layout --> Page Elements.

10. You will find that you can add a gadget to a new section above your header and directly below the navbar.

How to Add a Google AdSense Ad Unit

Click on Add a Gadget and choose your preferred Google AdSense ad unit. The best choices for this position are the 728x90 Leaderboard, the 468x60 Banner, and the 728x15 or 468x15 Horizontal Lines. For best results choose either the Blend Template or Match Template option. Do not forget to save when you are done.

How to Add an Affiliate Banner

If you´d rather add an affiliate banner, click on Add a Gadget and choose the HTML/Javascript widget from the list of gadgets available in the menu. You then need to paste the affiliate banner code into the content box in the popup window and save your changes. Click on View Blog and you will see your new banner displayed above the header of your Blogger blog. For more detailed instructions about adding affiliate banners to a Blogger blog please refer to my article How to Add an Affiliate Banner to the Blogger sidebar.

Tips and Troubleshooting

a) If you wish to add more than one widget to the section above the header you will need to change the template code from:

<b:section class='topads' id='topads' preferred='yes'/>

to:

<b:section class='topads' id='topads' maxwidgets='3'>

This change to the template will allow you to add up to 3 widgets above the Blogger header.

b) If you wish to display your Google AdSense ad unit only on the post page and not the home page then you need to add an <b:if> statement. For instance go to Layout -- > Edit HTML after you have created your ad unit and you will see that the code you inserted is now different. That is because the Adsense widget code has been added. You are likely to have something that looks like this:

<b:section class='topads' id='topads' preferred='yes'/>
<b:widget id='AdSense7' locked='false' title='' type='AdSense'>
<b:includable id='main'>
<div class='widget-content'>
<data:adCode/>
</div>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>
</b:section>

By inserting the code within an <b:if> statement you will be able to control where it appears. To have the Google AdSense ad unit only display on the post page you need to add the following lines of code:

<b:section class='topads' id='topads' preferred='yes'/>
<b:widget id='AdSense7' locked='false' title='' type='AdSense'>
<b:includable id='main'>
<div class='widget-content'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<data:adCode/>
</b:if>
</div>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>
</b:section>

In this tutorial I have shown you how to create a new section above the header of your Blogger blog and how to add a Google AdSense ad unit or an affiliate banner to that spot. In addition I have shown you how to place the aforementioned Google AdSense unit or banner only on the post page rather than on every page of your blog. If you have any questions please leave a comment.

Good luck!

Related articles:

How to Add an Affiliate Banner to the Header of Your Blogger Blog

How to Add an Affiliate Banner to the Sidebar of your Blogger Blog

Better Google AdSense Placement for Blogger

Technorati-Tags: adsense,affiliate marketing,ad placement,adsense above header,monetize blog

How To Add An Affiliate Banner To The Header Of Your Blogger Blog

2010-05-08T01:29:00.003+02:00

If you are interested in making money from your blog, chances are you will want to add an affiliate marketing banner to the header of your Blogger blog. Doubtless you have seen plenty of websites sporting advertising banners which are creating revenue for the author by way of banner clicks. With a small amount of rather simple tweaking to your Blogger template you, too, will be in a position to boost the revenue earning capacity of your Blogger blog.

How to Add an Affiliate Banner to the Header of Your Blogger Blog

There are a number of good places for a banner or an ad block, but the header of a blog is by far the most prominent area. Unfortunately, Blogger does not provide an easy facility for inserting an advertising banner into the header of your blog. To manage this you have two choices:

1. Use a custom template that comes banner ready. (There are a number of templates out there with this feature built in.)

2. Customize your existing standard Blogger template.

This post focuses on choice # 2 and shows you how to go about manually editing your template to add an affiliate banner ad. By the end of this tutorial you will have the necessary knowledge to insert a banner into the header of your Blogger blog. The level of difficulty for the necessary additions is easy to intermediate, so pretty much everybody should be able to get this done in a matter of minutes. You will be adding a few lines of code to your template plus pasting in the affiliate marketing banner code.

For the purposes of this example I will be using a 468x60 banner. This specific method of banner insertion has been tested on the following standard Blogger templates:

Herbert
Rounders
Denim
Thisaway
Son of Moto
Sand Dollar

It will also work on most custom templates that do not already come with an advertising banner in the header built in.

How to Insert an Affliate Marketing Banner into a Blogger Blog

1. Login to Blogger.com and navigate to Layout --> Edit HTML.

2. On the Edit HTML page you will see the option to back up your template by downloading it to your system. I strongly advise that you take this opportunity to backup as you are about to make a change to your template where you may not be able to restore it if anything should go wrong.

3. Once you have backed up your template place a check mark in the Expand Widget Templates box.

4. Search your template and locate the following lines of code within the header section of the template (note you can search by using CTRL + F and entering <b:includable id='main'> into the search box):

<b:includable id='main'>
<b:if cond='data:useImage'>

5. Now insert the following 2 lines of code directly below <b:includable id='main'> and before <b:if cond='data:useImage'>:

6. Place your merchant affiliate code between the lines of code you just inserted. You will need to copy the code from the affiliate program provider to your template (better still, copy it into a program like Word , piece the parts together, and then copy and paste the complete code into your template). If you have not as yet signed up for an advertising program such as Linkshare or Chitika you will need to do so before you proceed. Alternatively, you could use my banner code in the meantime to test this banner and later substitute it for your own.

<div class='ads'>PLACE YOUR BANNER CODE HERE
</div>

7. Review the code you have entered. If you have followed the steps above you will now have code that resembles this (Your affiliate code will of course be different):

<b:includable id='main'>
<div class='ads'>

</div>
<b:if cond='data:useImage'>

8. When you are sure you have correctly inserted the code into the template scroll up until you find this line in your template:

]]></b:skin>

9. Immediately before this line add the following lines:

/* Header Banner
----------------------------------------------- */
#header .ads{width:480px; height:80px; float:right; padding:20px 0px 0px 0px}

10. Click on Save Template.

11. Click on View Blog to view your new banner.

Troubleshooting

If you need to change the alignment or padding around the banner to your own specifications you will need to change the CSS stylesheet code entered in Step 9
You can change the alignment of the banner by changing float:right; to float:left; if you would like your banner to left align.
If you change your template for another standard Blogger template you may need to re-enter the code in Step 9.
Sometimes the code you get from your affiliate may be incomplete. For instance, some of Chitika´s banner codes are missing the specifications for height and width. In this case you will have to enter height=".." and width=".." yourself.
If you change the size of your banner you will have to change the specifications of the code you inserted in step 9 as well.

In this post you have learned how to insert a 468x60 affiliate marketing banner into the header of your Blogger blog and will now be well on your way to earning revenue from multiple income streams.

Good luck!

Technorati-Tags: ad placement,adding affiliate banner,affiliate marketing,make money,monetizing blog,how to

How to Add an Affiliate Banner to the Sidebar of Your Blogger Blog

2010-05-04T02:18:00.003+02:00

Quite a lot of people are interested in making money from their blog(s) and for this reason want to learn how to integrate affiliate banners into their Blogger blog. In this post, which is the first of a series, I shall show you how to place a banner (or, in fact, any number of banners) in the sidebar of your Blogger blog. Although this tutorial is primarily aimed at newbies, but it may offer helpful tips for anyone interested in making money by adding an affiliate banner to the sidebar of their Blogger blog.

How to Add an Affiliate Banner To the Sidebar of Your Blogger Blog

Adding an affiliate banner to the sidebar of your Blogger blog is fairly easy. Just follow these step by step instructions:

1. Join an affiliate marketing program like Clickbank, Commission Junction or Chitika and select your merchant or the products you want to advertise.

2. Decide on the size of the merchant banner or banners you wish to display in your sidebar. Make sure that whatever size you choose will fit into the sidebar space - otherwise your banner ad may not be displayed properly on your blog. Typical sizes suitable for sidebars are:

small rectangular banners 125x90, 125x125 or 150x150
square banners 200x200 (if space allows)
short vertical banners 120x200
column style skyscraper banners 120x600 or 160x600

3. After choosing your banner you will be presented with the merchant code to display the banner. Right click to select all and right click again to copy the code (Ctrl + C) to the clipboard of your computer.

4. In a new tab or window login to Blogger and navigate to Layout --> Page Elements.

5. Click on Add a Gadget in the Sidebar. If you are using a customized template you may have 2 or more different sidebars, so decide which of them you want the banner ad to be displayed in.

6. Select the HTML/Javascript widget from the Add a Gadget menu.

7. Place your mouse in the content box of the Configure HTML/Javascript widget and right click. Choose paste (Ctrl + V) to insert the merchant code of your banner ad into the content box.

8. In the title box add a Title like Sponsored Ads if you wish, otherwise leave it blank.

9. Click on Save.

10. Use Blogger's drag and drop feature to pick up your new HTML/Javascript widget and position it where you want your banner ad to show up in your sidebar.

11. Save the Layout.

12. Click on View Blog to see your new banner ad in action.

How to Add Space Between Your Banner Ads

If you want more space between your banner ad and the previous widget you can add <p> before the code you inserted in the HTML/Javascript widget. If you need even more add another <p>

How To Center Your Advertising Banner

If you want to center your banner ad insert <center> before the merchant code and </center> after it.

How to Add More Than One Banner

If you want to add more than one banner ad to the same widget you can do that by pasting the code for the second banner ad below the first lot of code. If you want some white space between the banners ads insert <p> between each block of code.

In case of trouble

Your Banner Is Not Displayed

Your banner ad should appear right away. If your banner ad is not displayed at all then there is a problem with the widget you have just created. Retrace your steps, making sure you have inserted all of the code.

Only a Placeholder for the Banner Is Displayed

If you see a placeholder but no ad is displayed then the affiliate website may be off line or there may be a problem with the code in some way. Go back and make sure you copied all of the code correctly. (Sometimes the / is missing at the end of the code. Remember: All HTML code commands must be closed with a corresponding command: <a> with </a> and so on. The providers of widget and affiliate codes sometimes forget to do this.)

In this post I have shown you how to add an affiliate marketing banner to the sidebar of your Blogger blog and provided solutions for two of the most common problems that you may encounter. In upcoming posts on banner advertising I´ll show you how to place banners in a variety of other spots on your blog. So why don´t you bookmark this site so you can return easily?

Good luck!

Related article:

How To Add An Affiliate Banner To The Header Of Your Blogger Blog

H2U8RVTZETHA

Technorati-Tags: ad placement,adding affiliate banner,affiliate marketing,make money,monetizing blog,how to

Online Business Myths that are Way Off

2010-05-01T01:22:00.002+02:00

Just like any other occupation, running an online business is burdened with collective beliefs, common knowledge, and myths that are sometimes far from the truth. In this post I am going to tell you about some of these myths.

1. Building a successful online business is easy

A lot of self-styled “gurus” may lead you to believe that starting an online business is as easy as a stroll in the park. Get a website going, put up a few ads and money starts pouring in. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. Starting a business on the internet is just as hard as starting a business in the “real” world, it is just as competitive – if not more so -, and can be just as demoralizing. That being said, if you are an authority in your field or a hard worker with great ideas, then you will climb to the top. But it will take time.

2. An Online business requires a different skills than an “ordinary” business

An online business is just that - business. Almost everyone who has a blog or website talks about “social media” and “web 2.0″ and the amazing opportunities tools like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter create for online businesses. And it is true, these sites do open up new ways to make money – if you know how to use them to stay connected to your audience.

But if you do not know how to connect to people in the first place or do not have a valuable service or product to offer, then these social networks and blogging services are not going to magically help you get your message out and make sales for you.

If you have sales skills or marketing skills or the ability to create a buzz around your blog or website, then you will be able to make a huge impact in the internet business world. Remember, the rules are just the same as in the real world. Create a great product, provide great service, and get as many people as possible interested in what you have to offer. Hit it out of the park for people, and you will win.

The only difference is that instead of having customers come into your store from the street, your store is visiting your target audience via computer screen or mobile phone display in their living rooms. Or any other place that has wifi.

3. Online business is just for nerds

This could not be farther from the truth. Sure, it undeniably helps to know your way around a computer, but internet tools are now so easy to use that you really do not need a lot of technical or design expertise. If you can operate a keyboard and a mouse and are willing to put in a little effort to learn about things you do not as yet know much about, then you will be able to create a viable online business.

You can also make use of existing skills if you are interested in working on the internet. If you are a writer (copy-writer, journalist,..) you can start a freelance writing business, and if you are a web designer or social media pro you can do likewise. You can even become an information entrepreneur and provide information and advice via blogs or websites and monetize your sites in many different ways. For all of you content writers out there, please read my post on how to make money with HubPages.

4. Internet marketing is nothing but spam

Sure, there is a loooot of spam out there, but there are also hundreds of thousands of legitimate companies doing business online. Every single brand name company has (and has to have) an internet presence. If they did not, they simply would not exist. There is nothing shady about doing business online. In fact, I would be surprised if in the foreseeable future you will be able to do any business at all without using the internet.

As people gravitate more and more towards the web to do their shopping, find information, communicate with friends, and plan trips and flights, there will be ever more opportunities for online businesses. If you are not preparing your small business for an all-internet world you may be left behind.

5. I cannot start an online business because the Internet is too crowded

The internet is crowded and it gets more crowded every day. But guess what, the streets of many town are also crowded with businesses, but new businesses start and established businesses fold every day.

Google and all the other search engines are becoming better at weeding out the fraudulent, worthless, and spam sites, which makes it easier for the high quality online businesses to shine. Search engine traffic is probably the most important factor in becoming a success on the internet, and if you play by the rules and create a great product or offer a valuable service, you will rise to the top, as the best often do.

6. I do not have time to start my own online business

Building an online presence is probably the easiest as well as cheapest way to further the success of almost any business, big or small. Precious few companies will be able to avoid doing business online. A website or an e-commerce store selling your product is virtually a must.

A good and easy way to start is by creating a blog. It is not as time-consuming as you might think – and you can do it for free. Start a free blog at Blogger.com or Wordpress.com, find a custom template online that fits well with the product(s) or service(s) you offer (you want a professional-looking online presence, don´t you? ), and start getting your message out. There are a lot of things you can do with a blog with regard to promoting your company and your brand. Even just getting out there and promoting yourself will help you a great deal.

The people who work the hardest and are willing to try out different ways of doing business in order to find out what works best will be the most successful. The internet just helps by making everthing faster. This means that your business can become successful within a short period of time, but it can go down the drain just as quickly.

One of the best things the internet provides though is free access to your target audience, world-wide. You can find and reach out to your community on so many fronts, it is ridiculous. And you can do most of it for free because all it takes it time and the willingness to work hard. Getting your message across and driving targeted traffic to your blog or website are important aspects of the online game. But having an amazing product or service is the most important thing.

Create an amazing product that fulfills a need or solves a problem in an interesting or new way - and you just might become the next online millionaire.

Good luck!

Related article:

12 Steps to Successful Blogging

Technorati-Tags: internet business,online business,online marketing,online business myths

How to Make Money with HubPages 2: Backlinks

2010-04-28T02:12:00.002+02:00

This post focuses on one very effective strategy you can use to help you make money with HubPages.

HubPages, as you may know from my previous post (if you do not, just follow the link above), is a website where you can publish content and earn money for your work.

You can write just about anything you want and have the option to edit or delete your content anytime you feel like it. One of the best things about making money with HubPages is that it enables you to earn residual income for as long as the website is around, and chances are that it will be around for a long time.

There are many reasons why publishing at HubPages is worthwile if you are trying to make money online, or have a blog you want to create links to, or just want to write content for fun and earn a little pocket-money on the side.

First of all, HubPages is a well-respected site that gets a lot of love from search engines. Writing at HubPages is like having a head start in the search engine wars. This brings up an important point: One of the main factors that will allow you to make money online is traffic. Traffic is the lifeblood of internet marketing and online business.

Look at it just like the owner of a regular store would. The more people you can convince to visit your store, the more sales you will make. This can be translated into AdSense clicks, affiliate sales, or referrals in the online environment. Traffic is a key part of the game. And the more targeted this traffic is, the higher the probability of getting a conversion or having an action (click) occur. Obviously there is a lot more to making money on the internet: copywriting, branding, actually having something of value to provide, or in this case, providing useful, well-written and highly searchable content. But high traffic numbers is how websites become online money-making machines.

One of the strategies to writing on HubPages and earning money from your efforts is to publish several “hub” on the same topic. (In this respect HubPages is different from InfoBarrel, where they do not accept several articles on one subject from a single author.) The more you write about one specific topic, the more likely you will be regarded as an authority on that subject. Obviously, to be able to write a lot of “hubs” about the same thing you probably will have to be an expert on that subject. No need to worry, you can learn as you go. Writing is one of the best ways to learn things and solidify ideas in your mind.

Writing about a single topic will also give you more opportunity to increase the rankings of similar content. Say you have a 900-word authoritative hub about the best diving resorts in Australia. You spent a lot of time researching keywords, reading about the resorts, and clearly presenting the information to your readers. This can be a very good piece of content for you. If you have three, four or more related „hubs”, then you can use them to create anchor text links to give your authority „hub” little bit of a boost and create more traffic to it.

Your “support” pages should be directly related to the main authority page you are looking to link to. In the example about diving resorts I used above, these can be pieces more specific to certain resorts or diving-suits, etc. One could be about the Coral Sea Islands and another could be about the Great Barrier Reef. If the main keyword phrases (and related ones) you are working with are also strong in these pages - and even in the title - then links out from them will be even stronger.

When you create your links you want to create anchor text using the phrases you are focusing on. In the example used here, the phrase you would want to link out to your main hub would be “best diving resorts in Australia”. It is much better to be descriptive in the hotlink you create, rather than just linking with text like “see my other article about this topic here.”

You can do this with several of your hubs to create several relevant links that will give the page you want to promote more direct traffic and relevant keyword links, which in turn will help move it up the in search engine rankings. The more targeted these keywords and links are, the more likely they will be of interest to visitors and the more money you will make online.

Websites as well as web pages that adhere to web standards of copywriting, search engine optimization, and linking practices are more valuable than those that do not. If you keep in mind what potential web surfers might be searching for and do your best to create informative, well-written content that is useful, then you will be successful.

Remember that content is king and high value content will gain more natural links from other websites and more return traffic. The more effort you put into your content on the front end, the easier the entire process will be for you. When writing your hubs, take the time to make them as helpful, informative, and unique as possible.

Related articles:

How to Make Money with InfoBarrel

How to Make Money Online with Squidoo Lenses

Technorati-Tags: make money,hubpages,writing for money,blogging,adsense,backlinks,more traffic

How to Make Money with HubPages

2010-04-26T00:49:00.004+02:00

Hubpages is one of the write-and-get-paid websites where you can write about pretty much anything you want and earn money for your efforts. This is the short explanation of the site - but there is quite a bit more to it.

You earn money when there is traffic to the articles you write and the visitors click on advertisements that are displayed on the page. For this reason, traffic is one of the most important elements that will help you make money online with Hubpages. On thing is certain, making money online is not an easy feat - but there are quite a few ways to do it.

You can obviously provide a service or sell a product. You can also do online copywriting or freelance writing. But that is not for everyone. I have been watching HubPages for a while and I think that if you can learn how to use the site to make money, i.e., you learn how to create so-called “hubs” that generate a lot of traffic, convert traffic to ad clicks or affiliate sales, and rise to the top of the search engine rankings, then you will know a great deal about internet marketing. (Basically, you need to do the same things you would do with your own blog or website.) And this experience will help you a lot in whatever kind of business you plan to get into online.

In the online environment it is all about words. Words are where search engines can really dig in and find relevant information for people surfing the web. Because of this, online marketing or making money online more often than not depends on writing, good writing.

A lot has been published on the subject of writing for humans versus writing for search engines. In my mind, it is important to do both, meaning that you do have a focus on certain keywords, but you do not want to write in such a way that the content is unreadable for a human being. You always want to write for people first, and for search engine bots second. There is a lot of value in enticing people not only to read your content but to come back and read it again and/or more of it.

However, that being said, there is also a lot of value in getting visitors interested in your work in order to encourage a click through on AdSense and affiliate links. There is nothing wrong with doing this, but if you write really hacky articles that are filled only with keywords and nothing else, your work will be weeded out by Google and sent to search results nirvana. If people cannot find your work you will not make any money.

HubPages is a good place to start your writing career because your articles immediately get a boost in search engine rankings since the site is regarded by Google as a network that produces informative and helpful user-generated content. HubPages does a good job of policing itself in terms of eliminating crap or spam content and making sure their advertising networks run smoothly and there is no fraudulent activity going on. As a result, your content will be indexed by search engines a lot faster than if you started posting to a blog of your own. It could take you months to get a few readers to an article on your own blog or website, whereas it may just take a few hours or a day or two to get readers to your hub.

How to Make Money with Hubpages

First, you have to sign up. If you haven’t yet, sign up here. Then return to this article to read the rest – I promise it will help you.

The way you earn money on HubPages is through Google´s AdSense program, Clickbank, and affiliate links through eBay and Amazon. You can also make money using an advertising network called Kontera, but do not worry about it for now because it really does not pay that well. If you are a savvy internet marketer you can also make money on HubPages with your own affiliate links to third party websites.

The revenue is split with HubPages 60/40 in your favor. It works like this: 6 times out of 10 your ID is used in the advertisements, which means you will earn on a click or sale made during this time. The other 4 times HubPages has the potential to earn money for an action taken. People sometimes think that the total revenue is just split 60/40, but that is not the case. Your ID is used randomly 6 times out of 10. It is a generous pay structure that allows quite a few people to make good money by publishing articles on HubPages.

HubPages is a good place to start writing online, and even making money online. I mentioned earlier that you will want to use keywords in your articles in order to be competitive and gain traffic to your work - because that is what you need to do if you are interested in making any money. The best way to do this is by imagining what someone would type into a search engine in order to find the information you are providing.

If you were going to write about “making money online by writing,” then you should choose that phrase as your keyword phrase and use it in your article. The next thing you need to consider is how competitive a term is. You can do this by using the Google Keyword Tool at the following URL: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

This tool will show you how many times your keyword has been searched in the past month and will give you a monthly average. It will also provide you with suggestions of related terms that may be better options for you to use because they are less competitive. It may sound a little confusing at first, but you will get the hang of it after you do keyword research a few times. You also want to look at the price paid per click, which will give you a good idea of how much money ads that will display will be worth. The figure shown is not the total that you will earn because Google keeps some of the money, but you can easily see which terms are “worth” more and which ones are worth less.

In my next post I shall go into more detail about choosing keywords for your internet writing. But for now, write down or copy and paste two or three sets of terms and how often they are searched and what they are worth. Now, type the keyword phrase into Google to see how many pages pop up. This is not an exact science but it will give an idea of how much content on the internet uses the term you are searching. If 100,000,000 pages come up, there are a lot of entries about what you are planning to write about, so it may be a lot more difficult to compete and get to the top of the search engines with your page. However, if only 250,000 pages come up, you have found a niche in which you can compete and that you may even be able to “own” by getting your page to the top. This, in short, is how you make good money in internet marketing with content and Google AdSense.

If you have a specialized skillset - and every single one of us has at least one - I highly recommend you start creating content based on it on the internet. For instance, I notice that I sometimes get a few visitors to this site who are looking for ways to make money while unemployed. HubPages is one such way. Start creating content about stuff you have expertise in. It does not matter if it is plumbing, roofing, gardening, or investing. If you can create content that is useful to people and valuable in one way or another, you will be able to make money.

Once you have signed up, let me know if you need some help figuring out what to write about. I’ll do my best to help you out by giving a push in the right direction in terms of keywords and ideas.

Please read my second post about HubPages called "Make Money with HubPages Part 2: Backlinks".

Good luck!

P.S.: A very nice post on how to make money with HubPages can be found here.

Related articles:

How to Really Make Money with HubPages

How to Make Money Online with Squidoo Lenses

How to Make Money with InfoBarrel

Technorati-Tags: make money,hubpages,writing for money,blogging,affiliate program,adsense

How to Make Money with InfoBarrel

2010-04-25T01:54:00.004+02:00

Recently, after doing quite a bit of reasearch, I decided to sign up for InfoBarrel. Although InfoBarrel is relatively new – it went online in 2008 -, it looks like a good opportunity for making money and and getting valuable backlinks.

InfoBarrel is very similar to HubPages and Squidoo where you write one page topics. But InfoBarrel has one distinctive advantage over the others: You can get up to 3 ‘do-follow’ backlinks right away. You do not have to wait until you get a certain quality score before your backlinks become ‘do-follow’.

Like many others, I first heard about InfoBarrel from Lissie at Passive Income Online. She posted a great article titled “What is InfoBarrel?“ that you might want to read. It is the best discription of InfoBarrel I have been able to find so far.

Will you get paid by InfoBarrel? No. You will receive 75% of the revenue on the AdSense ads that appear on your pages and you can further monetize your content by using eBay and other affiliate programs. I guess this means that you will have to write a great number of articles in order to make a lot of money. I won´t go so far as to say that it is impossible to earn a decent income - it is just that you will have to write a lot of popular articles. And you need to know how to trigger high paying AdSense ads with your articles.

Another similarity to HubPages is that if you refer someone to InfoBarrel you get a percentage of the impressions of advertising on their articles (from InfoBarrel´s share, not the writer’s).

Since the people at InfBarrel are only interested in serious contributors and quality content you probably won´t be able to make money right away. The Terms and Conditions state that the first 10 articles will need an editors´ prior to publication. Fortunately, they work fast and let you know within a few hours if the submitted article meets their criteria. Once you are past your tenth article all further material will be approved instantly. I guess this measure is their way of keeping spammers away.

If you are interested in InfoBarrel visit their home page and sign up at: www.infobarrel.com.

I am pretty sure that I shall be making money on InfoBarrel in the near future. It may not be through the sharing of revenue, but the ‘do-follow’ backlinks are priceless. Moreover, I have noticed that Google seems to like InfoBarrel, therefore it is quite easy to get your page(s) indexed. I hope that Google will continue to treat this site favourably, at least for a while, because it has the potential to become as popular as Squidoo or HubPages.

I’ll be writing some pages over at InfoBarrel and check back from time to time to let you know if it is really worth your while.

Technorati-Tags: make money,hubpages,squidoo,infobarrel,affiliate programs

How to Make Money Online with Squidoo Lenses

2010-04-22T23:18:00.003+02:00

Squidoo has had its growing pains in the past year or so but is still one of the best free ways to make money - for beginners as well as seasoned marketers. And you do not even need a blog or website of your own! There are people making money online full time just by using Squidoo. That´s how powerful Squidoo is.

To be able to make money online with Squidoo you first need to understand some of its qualities. Squidoo is a one page site that is easily monetized just by the way it is designed. Google has always been very fond of Squidoo - and Squidoo tries everything it can to maintain its favor with Google. Because Squidoo ran in a bit of trouble with Google about a year and a half ago a lot of marketers started to leave the site. But now things are running smoothly again and the guys at Squidoo have been optimizing the ability to make money online for their loyal as well as new contributors.

The best way to make money from Squidoo is by making sure that you have fully optimized keyword rich modules. Squidoo now has no-follow tags from Google, therefore your keywords are determined by the content provided. The tags however still produce value to the inner workings of Squidoo - so do not avoid them altogether. Squidoo members can help you with your rankings and backlinks within the site itself. And your „lenses“ (that´s what articcles on the site are called) are found by the tags you choose.

Squidoo runs its own AdSense ads and you are supposed to receive a percentage of the money they make off the clicks. This kind of compensation is widely used among so-called “write-and-earn” sites. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you how high that percentage is. But I do know that it isn’t much - so I don’t even worry about it.

The best way to make money on Squidoo is by either using their monetizing modules or by using your own methods of monetizing your content. For instance, there are a couple of modules like eBay and Amazon that you are supposedly great money-makers. However, the successful marketers do not use their modules for them.

If you are an eBay or Amazon affiliate or partner you can place you own affiliate sources within and around the content you create, thereby receiving a greater percentage of the money earned.

This is what an eBay affiliate ad looks like when inserted into Squidoo:

This will allow you to make money online from eBay for full affiliate pay instead of having to share with Squidoo.

The same holds true for Amazon. Instead of only earning a portion of the money from Amazon by using Squidoo’s Amazon Module you will earn the full commission. Here is another example:

The more of these individual ads you run the more opportunity you will have to earn money.

As I have already stated, Squidoo runs the AdSense Ads and you really do not make money online from these ads, but now Clickbank offers their own ads that you can make money with. These are called HopAds. Go to Clickbank and look for the HopAd Builder.Using it, you can build text ads or tabbed ads.

This is an example of text ads:

Your affiliate id will be integrated within the code of the Clickbank HopAds.

Squidoo stopped allowing iframes some time ago, but now there is a way to ad your opt-in forms into Squidoo. If you are among those who specialize in email marketing the opt-in form is a huge benefit on Squidoo. If you publish great content you will get a lot of traffic from search engines and inside Squidoo itself. Being able to capture these leads is a plus. Just offer a free upload or free information and you are good to go. Everyone likes free stuff!

Here is an example of an email opt-in form:

If you are interested in finding out how to add an opt-in form on your lens just follow the link. Click the following link if you want to know how to ad Clickbank HopAds. You will have to leave your email address to receive the manual for adding Clickbank HopAds. Neither one of these methods cost any money.

There are a few more things you need to know before you get start your money making career on Squidoo. Because Squidoo is a one page site, you will definitely want to be focusing on those longtail keywords. This will help tremendously with your PageRank in Google. The traffic may not be as high, but you will be getting a more targeted traffic (meaning more visitors who are looking to buy). Also, when thinking Squidoo think products. Services do OK but you will make money online faster if you use Squidoo for products.

If you are using Squidoo for link building keep in mind that not all modules have “do follow” tags. The “do follow” list includes these modules:

Introduction
Text/Write
Poll (remember you can hyperlink your answers!)
Featured Lenses
Text/Link Lists
Text/Link Plexos (although I don’t recommend that you use these because
it’s link leakage)

Squidoo has a wide range of possibilities when it comes to making money online free. Along with the ability to make money with your Squidoo lens you can have unlimited lenses. Most people start out having a lot of lenses on one account which is a big mistake. Fortunately, they give the opportunity to move lenses around to other accounts. This one of the options built into Squidoo itself. If you are seriously interested in making money you should take care not to have too many lenses on a single account.

There is another great money-maker available to you with Squidoo: Lense flipping! You cannot only move lenses around between different accounts - you can also sell lenses. Lens flipping is a lot like site flipping, but way easier. All you need to do is change one lens to a different lens account. Squidoo lenses are selling for hundreds of dollars - and they don’t even have to have high PR. You can build a well optimized lens (or 3, or 10) today and sell them tomorrow. You would be surprised at how easy this is and how much money can be made by selling lenses. This is an easy way to make money online fast. And all for free.

Good luck!

Related articles:

How to Find Suitable Affiliate Programs for Your Blog

How to Find the Right Affiliate Products to Promote

Technorati-Tags: squidoo,make money online,blogging for money,affiliate programs

How to Add a PayPal Donate Button to Your Blogger Blog

2010-04-22T02:21:00.003+02:00

If you are interested in receiving a few bucks in exchange for all the hours and the hard work you are putting into your blog, then you might want to consider adding a PayPal donate button to the sidebar of your Blogger blog. Adding a donation button will (hopefully) encourage some of your loyal readers to say a big thank you for helping them out and/or entertaining them. Not everyone will donate, but once in a while a generous soul will voluntarily give you a little financial encouragement.

In this tutorial I shall show you how to add a PayPal donate button to the sidebar of your Blogger blog. There will be no need to change the template, so this should be fairly easy.

1. Sign up if you do not already have a PayPal account.

2. Login to your PayPal account.

3. Click on the Merchant Portal tab.

4. Choose Donations from the list of key features displayed in the right sidebar of the PayPal Website Payments Standard option (the first of 3 payment solutions).

5. From the PayPal Create a Payment Button screen choose Donation from the dropdown menu at Step 1 if it is not already selected.

6. Stick with the default button unless there is a special need to customize it.

7. Choose the currency depending on your needs and location.

8. Choose the Donors enter their own contribution amount radio button unless you want to have a set amount.

9. Make sure that the Secure merchant account ID radio button is selected. This will prevent spammers from getting hold of your email address.

10. At Step 2 it is worth saving your button.

11. At Step 3 customize your checkout page by allowing donors to write a short comment by selecting the Yes radio button to special instructions to seller.

12. Select the No radio button for customer's shipping address.

13. Select the Create Button button.

14. Once PayPal has created the donate button code copy it by right clicking your mouse and choosing copy (Ctrl + C).

15. Log out of PayPal.

16. Login to your Blogger account if you are not already logged in.

17. Go to Layout --> Page Elements.

18. Click on the Add a Gadget link in the sidebar.

19. Choose the HTML/Javascript widget from the list provided.

20. Paste the PayPal donate button code into the Content box of the dialog box that appears by placing the mouse inside the box and right clicking the mouse and then paste (alternatively Ctrl + V).

21. Select a title like "Buy Me a Coffee Today!" or whatever you think works best.

22. Click on the Save button.

23. Drag and drop your new donation gadget into the spot you want it to appear in.

24. Hit the Save button to make sure your changes are saved.

25. Click View Blog to check your new PayPal donate button in the sidebar of your Blogger blog.

26. Try out your new PayPal donate button by clicking on it. You should be be taken to the PayPal Checkout screen.

In this post I have walked you through the steps necessary to add a PayPal donate button to your Blogger blog.

Good luck!

Technorati-Tags: paypal,donate button,add gadget,monetize blog

Better Google AdSense Placement for Blogger

2010-04-21T01:38:00.002+02:00

In this post I´ll show you another way to increase the performance of Google AdSense on your Blogger blog by further extending the choice of placement options of your Google ads. All it takes is just a little adjustment of your Blogger template that will give you one more placement option for your AdSense ad blocks.

You will learn how to place Google AdSense between the header and the first post. This will allow for a huge variety of Google AdSense ads to be added, the 728x90 leaderboard probably being the most suitable. No technical knowledge of Blogger is needed to make the necessary changes.

How to Add Google Adsense Between the Header and First Post

If you are serious about increasing your earnings from your blog you should try to place a full length advertising banner between the header and the first post. For instance, having a 728x90 leaderboard in this prime position can be very effective. (Depending on the template you chose the 336x280 large rectangle might also work well.) To add a Google Adsense unit to this position take the following steps:

1. Sign in, then navigate to Layout --> Edit HTML.

2. You might want to Back up Template as a precaution.

3. Check Expand Widget Templates box.

4. Find the following lines of code:

5. Replace

showaddelement='no'

with

showaddelement='yes'

6. Save template.

7. Navigate to Layout --> Page Elements.

8. Click on the Add a Gadget option that will now have appeared between Blog Posts and the Header.

9. Choose Google AdSense and Add Leaderboard 728x90 (or any other ad format). Save.

10. View your blog. The new Google AdSense Unit should now be showing between header and first post.

Here is an example of a 728x90 Leaderboard between the header and the first post and the top of the sidebar. (NOTE: all examples taken from my German language blog.)

In this post which is part of a series on ad placement in Blogger blogs you have learnt how to add Google AdSense between the header and the first post. As this is a prime position for a 728x90 leaderboard ad unit I have concentrated on showing you how to add this Google AdSense ad unit to your blog.

Good luck!

Related articles:

How to Place AdSense Ads in the Middle of Blogger Posts

Placing AdSense Ads Inside Blogger Posts

Optimizing AdSense

Placing AdSense Ads between Blogger Blog Posts

Technorati-Tags: adsense,ad placement,monetizing blog

How to Place AdSense Ads in the Middle of Blogger Posts

2010-04-20T01:54:00.004+02:00

The method described below will work well with IE, Firefox, Opera, and Safari.

Most of you will probably be familiar with the famous Google AdSense heat map which shows the areas of your website or blog where you should place advertising in order to maximize your profits. Oddly enough, there is no mention of a placement in the middle of your posts.

Why?

Because by default Blogger, the blogging platform owned by Google, does not offer a way to break a post in the middle (or someplace else) so you can place an ad there. But, if you search the Net thorougly, you will find that quite a lot of webmasters have managed to put ads in that position and report a significant increase in profits.

While I cannot as yet confirm a considerable increase in profits when an ad is placed in the middle of a post, I´ll nevertheless explain in this post how to place Adsense in the middle of Blogger posts.

How to place Adsense in the middle of Blogger posts

The solution to this problem is quite simple: You only need to move the post body around the advertising code, which is easily achieved with a bunch of JavaScript and a couple of DIVs (divisions). Just follow these directions:

1. In your Blogger template: Dashboard –> Layout –> Edit HTML –> Expand Widget Templates

Find the tag <data:post.body/> and replace it with the following code:

<div expr:id='"aim1" + data:post.id'></div>
<div style="clear:both; margin:10px 0">



</div>
<div expr:id='"aim2" + data:post.id'>

<data:post.body/>

</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var obj0=document.getElementById("aim1<data:post.id/>");
var obj1=document.getElementById("aim2<data:post.id/>");
var s=obj1.innerHTML;
var r=s.search(/\x3C!-- adsense --\x3E/igm);
if(r>0) {obj0.innerHTML=s.substr(0,r);obj1.innerHTML=s.substr(r+16);}
</script>

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Do not forget to replace  with the ad code provided by Google Adsense. Also, the ad code needs to be converted before you can insert it.

2. In every blog post:

Place the special comment

in the exact spot you want the Adsense ads to appear.

That´s all!

Frequently Asked Questions:

1. Does this method violate Google´s Terms and Conditions?

Definitely not. Answering a direct support request Google stated this method doesn't violate any of their program policies.

2. What if I forget to put the <!-- adsense –> comment in a post?

Nothing. The advertising block will appear in the traditional position as defined in your template before you implemented this modification (in most cases just below the title).

3. What happens on Blogger home page and archive pages when several posts with the  comment appear together?

Exactly the same thing that happened before this modification: The Google Adsense service automatically inserts up to 3 AdSense blocks per page in your posts. That means only the first 3 posts (in a top-down order) on your home page or archive pages will show ads.

4. Is it possible for me to automate the insertion of AdSense in the middle of my posts without having to manually place the  comment?

Yes, it is. But you will have to replace the JavaScript code listed above with the following one:

<script type="text/javascript">
var obj0=document.getElementById("aim1<data:post.id/>");
var obj1=document.getElementById("aim2<data:post.id/>");
var s=obj1.innerHTML;
var t=s.substr(0,s.length/2);
var r=t.lastIndexOf(" ");
if(r>0) {obj0.innerHTML=s.substr(0,r);obj1.innerHTML=s.substr(r+1);}
</script>

Notes:

You may have heard of a couple of different approaches to solve the stated problem that sound simple but, unfortunately, are not working:

1. Copying the AdSense code directly into the post.

This does not work because Blogger will warn you that it is prohibited to insert JavaScript code inside a post (or show some kind of error warning). Bypassing the error warning by flagging ‘Stop showing HTML errors for this post’ will not get you the desired result.

2. Writing a JavaScript to move the AdSense code block in the middle of your post.

This method is prohibited by the Google Adsense Terms and Conditions because you have to modify the AdSense code itself. If you do it anyway, no ads will be shown (you will get an error information stating the website or service is not available).

The method described above also works with other advertising systems, like Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN), Microsoft adCenter, Chitika, AdBrite, and a host of others.

Thanks to Eblogger Tricks.com.

Technorati-Tags: ad placement,adsense,blogger posts,monetizing blog,adsense inside blogger posts

Placing AdSense Ads Inside Blogger Posts

2010-04-18T23:03:00.003+02:00

Google AdSense is the main source of revenue for the vast majority of bloggers. If you are among those using Blogger to host your blogs as well as using AdSense as your primary ad network, you should blend your ads with your posts so your visitors will focus more on your ads, resulting in more clicks and therefore more revenue for you. Showing Adsense ads between two blogger posts is not really that effective, because people tend to overlook that part. But if you place the ads within the post, they will get noticed and there is a real chance for a better CTR (click through rate: the percentage of visitors to your blog who actually click on one of your ads). You can easily customize your blog to show AdSense ads inside your posts, aligned either to left or right.

For a better click through rate, it is highly recommended that you to blend the ads with your blog’s colour combination. Do not use odd or too deep/light colours. Highlighting your ads means you are manually trying to keep your income low. Check out the screenshot below.

How to Show Adsense Ads inside Blogger posts, wrapped with post text

1. Login to your Blogger Dashboard.

2. Navigate to Layout --> Edit HTML

3. Check the box next to 'Expand Widget Templates’

4. Search for the line <data:post.body> inside your template (Ctrl + F, then enter the line into the search bar).

5. Add one of the following codes just above it.

To show your ads aligned to left:

<div style='float:left; margin-right:5px;'>

YOUR ADSENSE CODE

</div>

To show your ads aligned to right:

<div style='float:right; margin-left:5px;'>

YOUR ADSENSE CODE

</div>

6. Make sure to replace YOUR ADSENSE CODE with your actual AdSense ad code.

7. Save the changes.

8. That´s all!

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

Do not forget to convert your Adsense code here before adding it to the above code. Blogger HTML does not support AdSense ad characters, therefore you need to convert it.

Now all of your blog posts should appear with AdSense ads positioned inside the text. The best ad formats for this location probably are 336x280 or 300x250, but that depends on the template you are using. Just play around with the ad formats until you find something that suits the overall look of your blog.

Good luck!

Related articles:

Optimizing AdSense

Google AdSense Myths Exposed

Technorati-Tags: adsense,adsense inside blogger posts,ad placement,monetizing blog

Optimizing AdSense

2010-04-18T02:04:00.003+02:00

If you are interested in blogging you are without a doubt aware of and maybe even know a little bit about Google AdSense. If not, then here is a chance to find out. Google Adsense is the most widely used advertising method on the internet and a virtual “cash cow” for the Google empire. Advertisers pay Google to publish ads on sites of Adsense members that have topics related to the product or service they themselves are offering. Google gets a majority of the profit, bloggers get a relatively small percentage. It is kind of a take-it-or-leave-it deal. But if you are already a member of one of Google´s many services like Google Mail or Blogger, you might as well take advantage of it and make some money on the side. You have no control over which ads will appear because Google automatically determines and publishes an ad related to the topic of your blog. If you do not like a particular ad, the most you can do is to exclude the URL of the ad from appearing on your site through an option in your Google Adsense account.

How do you get paid for displaying AdSense?

It is very simple. As soon as a visitor clicks on one of the Google ads that are published on your blog you will get some money. Usually just a tiny fraction of what Google is paid by the advertiser. How great your chances are that those ads will be clicked depends on the amount of traffic your blog gets. In short: The higher the number of visitors to your blog, the greater your chances of getting paid.

Is it easy to make money using AdSense?

Yes and No. A resounding yes - if you have very high traffic. Because the more traffic you get the higher the probability that visitors of your blog will click on one of your ads, especially if your blog's topic happens to be one of the high-paying Adwords keywords (* will be explained below). No, if your blog is the exact opposite of what I just mentioned.

Do's and Don't in using AdSense

The major no-no when using AdSense is clicking your own ad. Or having someone clicking the ads for you. It is what they call click fraud. Google has some mysterious high-tech way of determining if you made those clicks yourself or if you had somebody click it for you. Here is a little example: A good friend of mine, who used to have a successful blog, one day received an email from Google informing him that he has just been banned and all his earnings – more than $350 – have been forfeited because Google found the clicks made on his ads to have been made with fraudulent ident. What happend was this: his ex-girlfriend was pissed off and clicked on the ads from her computer which he had previously used on occasion to access his blog. There was no chance of proving to the people at Google that he was in fact innocent.

There are a lot of Google ads tips out there. One trustworthy Google AdSense “guru” is Joel Comm of joelcomm.com. He offers great video tutorials (that can also be found on Youtube) on starting a blog as well as his Google expertise.

On the positioning of ads: the "heat zone" (please read this article as well)

There is an area of the page SEO (search engine optimization) experts call the heat zone. It is the area statistics show to be the most likely visitors to your blog will focus their eyes on. Since this area is where they frequently focus their eyes on, it is only wise to place the items that are most important to you and of the greatest interest for the reader right there. If the attention of your readers is focused on a spot of your page, it is almost for sure that they will click on whatever happens to be in that area. If you are the type of blogger who would want to maximize the earning potential of your blog (and who wouldn´t), what you need to do is position the ads in the "heat zone", the area your visitors will be interested in and look at first, in order to increase the chances that they will click on the ads. Still a mystery? Want to know what this "heat zone" looks like? And where it is?. Okay. The heat zone is shaped like a capital F. What does this mean? It means if you are interested in maximizing your Adsense earnings, you need to position the ads on your blog in the shape of an F. For example, one big leaderboard ad on the top of your homepage either above or below your banner (below is better, so the visitor won´t take your blog for just a page full of ads). Second, one 160x600 vertical banner ad on the left side of your content. And finally, one ad in between you posts or, if you know how to, you can integrate a Google ad within your post. (An instruction on how to do this can be found here.)

Of course, you will need to decide if if this works with the layout of your blog and your content. Remember, this advice is just based on statistical data and everyone is free to decide if they want to monetize their blog or strictly focus on blogging only. If you are interested in monetizing make sure to monitor the performance of your ad. Do not be afraid to experiment a little with the positioning of your ads (all ads, not just Google Adsense) to see what gets you the best results.

Placing anything and everything you want people to notice more inside the capital F-shaped heat zone is always a good choice, be it widgets, links, ads...

The simple rule is: Place your most important stuff in the heat zone because it will get noticed first and more often than any other areas of your blog.

A few additional tips:

1. With Google AdSense, it will take 2 clicks from a visitor to earn you some money. For you to actually earn, whoever clicks your Google ads will have to be interested enough to click on something on the page he was taken to. If he or she does thus, it should make you an amount of around $0.50 or more depending on the cost per click of the specific ad.

2. Following is a list of high-paying keywords or ads that will pay big bucks if clicked on. There are some bloggers out there who blog about these topics for purely monetary reasons. Most combinations of these terms with common words also tend to pay well. If you choose to blog about these topics you are guaranteed to make more money than with other themes, simply because advertisers pay higher prices for ads with a connection to these keywords which in turn means higher pay for publisher and bloggers.

Insurance, mortgages, money, health (also terms like cancer, obesity, etc.)

Other godd topics to blog about are (in no special order): relationships, self-improvement, gossip and/or scandal (especially if you can povide pictures), sports, cars, technical gadgets, fashion, beauty, healthcare.

One tiny problem: many, many people are already blogging about these topics.
Good writing about a not so popular theme might get you more visitors than a badly written blog about a top theme.

3. Blend the colors of your Google ads with the colors of the area where you want to place them. It will look more natural to your visitors and thereby increase the likelihood of them clicking on the ads. Wonder how it should look like? Just take a look at the ads on this page.

Please read the Google AdSense terms and conditions page and program policies to get detailed information.

Related article:

Google AdSense Myths Exposed

Technorati-Tags: adsense,ad placement,monetizing blog,blogging for money

Make Money By Adding Banner Ads to Your Blogger Blogs

2010-04-17T02:20:00.005+02:00

One of the things that makes Blogger such a great blogging platform is the ease with which you can add advertising to your Blogspot.com blog and make money from it. In this post I shall be discussing how banner advertisements on your Blogger blog can create passive income for you. By banner advertising I mean advertising in addition to Google AdSense or AdBrite or other contextual ad services you may have already added to your Blogger blog. For information on adding Google AdSense to your blog please read my articles on Google AdSense.

Banner advertising is FREE - And Banners Do Make Money

It is no secret that you can make quite a bit of money by placing banners on your site provided you choose your merchant program(s) carefully and have enough people accessing your site. In my experience, once you reach around 100 unique visitors a day it is high time time to add a few banner ads to your blog.

How to Make Money from Banners on Your Blogger Blog

Affiliate marketing banners are designed to make money for the publisher – in this case: you. In order to place a banner on your blog the affiliate program provides you with a snippet of code to add to your template which makes the banner display and identifies you as the publisher. When a visitor clicks on a banner on your website that click is recorded as originating from your site and you make money as a result of that click. Depending on the merchant program that you have signed up for you will earn a commission for providing a lead, or receive a percentage of the sale.

An Example of How Banners Work

After having placed a banner ad on your Blogger blog your site gets 100 visitors in a day. Out of that 100 people 5 people (hopefully!) click on a banner which takes them through to the merchant's website. From those 5 people one person makes a purchase of around $50.00. Assuming your commission is 10% of the sale you have just earned $5.00. It really is that easy.

Making the Most of Advertising Banners

To make money from banner ads you need a lot of traffic because only a small percentage of your visitors will take any notice of the advertising on your blog and a still smaller percentage of that pool will actually buy anything once they click. Therefore it is really important that you focus your energies on building site traffic. If you need to grow your traffic read my articles on tips to increase traffic to your Blogger blog.

Of course you do need to choose your affiliate banners carefully as obviously some ads will have more appeal than others. To some extent this is a matter of trial and error, as you can never be completely sure how a banner will perform until you try it. However, you can increase the odds of success by choosing merchant programs that are related to your blog in some way. For instance, if you blog about golfing then advertisers of golfing equipment or golfing vacations would be a good place to start.

How to Add Affiliate Banners to Your Blogger Blog

Adding affiliate banners to your blog is pretty easy. In most cases it is just a matter of copy and paste, and pretty much anyone should be able to do this. Please read my article providing step by step instructions on how to Add Affiliate Banner Ads to the Blogger Sidebar of your Blogger blog if you are unsure. If you want to place a banner in the header of your blog please refer to Add an Affiliate Banner to Blogger Header.

Disadvantages of Banner Ads

Too many banner ads can give your visitors the impression you are just in it for the money. So make sure you do not go overboard with too much advertising that will overshadow or detract from the content of your blog. Keep in mind that less is more - so place your banners ads strategically on your blog. Very good results can be achieved by placing a small cluster of about 4 banner ads (usually 125x125) somewhere fairly close to the top in the sidebar and a 468x60 banner in the header. The header is obviously the prime position for an effective banner advertising campaign. Read more about how to place a banner ad in the header of your Blogger blog in my adding banners to Blogger series of posts.

The other main problem with banner ads is that they encourage visitors to leave your site - and as everyone knows one of the hardest jobs is to attract the visitor in the first place. Do you really want them to leave your site before they have had a chance to look around? I do not think so. Therefore, only place banner ads on your blog that you are confident will reap you some rewards, otherwise forget it. You might actually lose traffic if you provide too many inducements to leave your site.

Banner Ads Make Money

In this post I have told you about banner advertising on Blogger blogs. You have learned a little about how affiliate programs work and how you might use banner ads on your own blog to make extra money. For tutorials on adding banner ads to your Blogger Blogspot blog please refer to Add Affiliate Banner Ads to a Blogger Sidebar and Add an Affiliate Banner to Blogger Header.

Good luck!

Related articles:

8 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on Your Blog

How to Find the Right Affiliate Programs to Promote

Technorati-Tags: blogger tips,blogging for money,affiliate programs,banner ads,affiliate marketing,income streams,monetizing blog

Google AdSense Myths Exposed

2010-04-16T03:00:00.004+02:00

My articles on Google AdSense on Blogger blogs are among the most popular I have written so far. In this post I am going to I discuss the 6 most common myths concerning Google AdSense that, hopefully, will help you get real about monetizing your Blogger blog with AdSense.

Google AdSense Myths Every Bloggers Needs to Know About

There are countless myths concerningGoogle AdSense which may lead new bloggers in particular into believing that all they need to do to become instant internet millionaires is to place a few Google dd units on their blog or website. Unfortunately, the reality is quite different – especially when you consider that 95% of all blogs receive less than 100 visitors per day. Adding Google AdSense to your blog can and will generate some income, but you need to be realistic about what to expect. In the following paragraphs I am going to expose the 6 most common myths about Google AdSense:

1. Google AdSense is a Get Rich Quick Scheme

False. Only a small percentage of bloggers manage to make a living from their blogs. While it is possible to make at least a bit of money from Google AdSense ad units, you have to bear in mind that making money from your blog is dependent on many factors such as types of advertising, placement of ads, quality of blog content, regular posting, number of articles, SEO, backlinks to your site, number of visitors to your blog,… The more articles you write, the more posts will be indexed in search engines like Google,Yahoo and Bing, which may lead to increased traffic and, in turn, to higher income. The bottom line is that for your ads to be effective your blog needs to receive a lot of traffic. Therefore you should concentrate your efforts in this area and make sure that your blog is worth visiting because building a loyal readership is of utmost importance.

Do Your Maths

Google AdSense itself says it is difficult to predict earnings, but there are some general rules to guide you. For instance, if your blog receives 100 visits per day your likely revenue from Google AdSense will probably be about 10 cents per day, assuming that 1 in 100 people click on some form of Google advertising on your site and the page CTR (click-through-rate) is about 0.20%. Over a year that equates to about $36.50. Not a fortune in anyone's book. Likewise, if your blog is fortunate enough to receive 1000 visitors per day you are looking at an annual income from Google AdSense of about $365.00.

100 Visitors per day = Earnings $36.50 per year

1000 Visitors per day = Earnings $365.00 per year

5000 Visitors per day = Earnings $1825.00 per year

10000 Visitors per day = Earnings $3650.00 per year

But be warned - the above figures are an optimistic view. You have to keep in mind that quite a lot of your visitors will be repeats, and the likelihood of a repeat visitor clicking on an ad unit is less than that of a new visitor. Considering this, your earnings could be much less.

Google AdSense and Affiliate Marketing

As stated above, roughly 95% of all bloggers have less than 100 visitors to their blog a day. If your blog falls into this category then Google AdSense alone is not enough for you to quit your job and become a full-time blogger. You will need to display other forms of advertising on your blog as well before your blog work will start to pay off. Check out my article on other forms of advertising that may be suitable for your Blogger blog, including displaying Affiliate Marketing banners.

Affiliate marketing banners are another form of advertising. Consider that if 1 site visitor in 100 actually buys something worth $50.00 you will immediately earn $5.00, assuming you receive a sale commission of 10%. Even if only one in 500 clicks through to the merchant and buys something you will still be ahead of the revenue earned from Google ads for the same number of visitors. ($5.00 from Affiliate Marketing versus 50 cents from Google AdSense.) In many ways Affiliate Marketing is a more profitable marketing strategy than having heaps of Google ads on your blog. However, in my experience a good mix of both is the way to go.

2. Displaying More Ads on a Blog Will Earn More Money

False. Some bloggers mistakenly believe that placing as many Google AdSense units as possible on their blog will yield higher earnings. Sadly, this is NOT the case at all. By putting more ad units on your blog you may actually reduce your earnings. There is a risk that the highest performing Ad units will shift to positions that are less frequently clicked on. For instance, while the top right hand corner is a prime place for an advertising banner because it gets viewed by the most people it is also a spot that tends to get disregarded by savvy visitors who recognise it as an advertising zone and therefore avoid it. At the same time a 336x280 ad unit with a higher CTR is likely to display Google ad units which pay less because the highest CTR has been transferred to the 468x60 or 728x90 ad unit.

3. More Traffic Equals Higher Google AdSense Earnings

Not necessarily. Depending on the content of your blog it might not always be possible to drive a lot of new visitors to your site and you might have to rely more heavily on repeat traffic. However, due to the familiarity of the ad placement on your blog repeat visitors are less likely to click on your ad units than new visitors. While you can expect more clicks on your ad units as traffic increases there is no guarantee that Google AdSense on your blog will deliver the kind of earnings you might expect.

4. The Format of Google AdSense Ads is Not Important

False. The format of the ads you display on your blog is very important. You can earn more from some ad formats than others. For instance, it is generally considered that the wide Google AdSense ads (336x280, 300x250 or 250x250) perform best. I like to position one of these directly above or inside my first post.

Link units can be profitable too – if strategically placed. One of the best locations for link units is in or just below your blog header, as many people are used to looking there for a navigation menu. A 728x15 linked ad unit just below your horizontal navigation menu will very likely yield good results.

5. The Placement of Google AdSense Ad Units Does Not Matter

On the contrary - where you place your Google AdSense ads can be critical to making money from your blog. One of the best places to position AdSense is above what is known as the fold. The fold is the top area of your blog visible to your visitors without them having to scroll down. A 336x280 ad unit in this space works well because on arrival at your blog visitors immediately see what they are looking for and click on it. If your blog is about mountain biking, for instance, then Google AdSense, being the content based advertising program it is, will very likely serve up ads about cycling equipment, cycling tours etc. For your visitors seeing exactly what they are interested in on arrival is a definite bonus which may lead them to click on your ad unit.

6. To Make Money from a Blog You Need to Add Google AdSense

False. While Google AdSense is by far the most popular Advertising Network around it is not the only advertising option. There are some good alternatives like AdBrite and Chitika. Let the type of blog you have govern your decisions about which advertising mix you employ rather than just going for Google AdSense because its the easiest.

In this posts I have discussed 6 common myths about Google AdSense that every Blogger (Blogspot.com) blogger should be aware of when placing Google AdSense on their blog. This article will hopefully help you do a reality check and make you realize that while you may be one of the 5% of bloggers sitting on a goldmine Google AdSense will not transform you into a millionaire overnight.

Good luck!

Technorati-Tags: adsense,affiliate marketing,moentizing blog,make money,blogging for money

12 Great Ways to Get More Inbound Links

2010-04-15T02:14:00.003+02:00

In today’s tough race to the top of the Google SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages), there are a number of factors that can help you earn one of those coveted spots. While certain techniques may get you better results than others (based on your industry and level of competition), there is no questioning the power of links.

There are a number of methods, some common and some yet to be discovered, you can try out to help increase your link density and search rankings. In this post I have tried to outline some of the more common techniques webmasters and bloggers can use to increase their site’s popularity.

1. Reciprocal Links

Reciprocal links used to be a huge asset and played a significant role. Today, fewer and fewer sites are making use of this technique as it is thought by many to have no significant role in the eyes of Google. This is simply not true. While the overall value of reciprocal links may have declined over the years, they can and will still help your rankings - if done correctly.

The key with reciprocal links is very simple - relevance. If you trade links only with highly relevant sites, it will increase your site´s ranking. But there are some things you need to watch out for: ensure that the links returning to you (inbound links) are search engine spider friendly, that they are placed on pages with as few links as possible, that they are contextualized, meaning the content on the page - and preferably the site as a whole - is related to the content of your link and site.

When you contact a relevant site to ask for a link exchange, keep the email personal to help grab the attention of the blogger or webmaster. Most link exchange emails are spammy automated submissions and are deleted without being read. Write the subject as well as the entire email in such a way as to entice the user to read on, but keep it short. Offer to put their link up first, or even better yet, put it up before you contact them.

2. Purchasing Links

Google has been devaluing links, and in extreme cases, even penalizing sites for selling links, but there is no denying that this technique still works as many sites have climbed to the top of the SERP’s by way of buying links.

A lot of high profile sites such as major and local newspaper publications and magazines sell text links, yet nobody seems to be penalized for it as the publications rank well with high PageRank and the sites they link to rank well as a result.

If you choose to purchase links back to your site, check out how they are linking back, how relevant they are, and try to find out how their site is treated by Google as well as other major search engines. If you see other sites that appear to have purchased links from them, check their backlinks and see if the linking site appears (although it may not be displayed as Google offers very little of this information to the public these days).

It is assumed that if penalties will arise from the sale of links, that only the selling site will be penalized. Even if this is the case, Google’s policy could change at any moment, so be warned that this could potentially come back to bite you.

3. Quality Content

Believe it or not - it works. If you fill your site with original, valuable content, you will get some people linking to your site on their own. While you can not base your entire linking strategy around this concept, as it could take forever to get enough links, rest assured knowing that if you follow this strategy, some will link.

4. Start a Blog

Everyone and their dog seem to have a blog these days, and for good reason - they work. Blogs help you create a never ending stream of content, and if updated regularly (at least once a week) and written well, you will find people will link to it. Not only that, others may pick up your blog through your RSS or Atom feed - which can result in an increase in both links and site traffic. Be sure to utilize your Digg, StumbleUpon and other social media accounts within your blog to help gain a little extra attention.

5. Social Media

Promote your site as well as your blog using various social media tools. When someone "Diggs" or "Stumbles" your content you can not only get a link back to your site from the media platform, but you can also see additional traffic generated by this. The more people bookmark or recommend your article, the more traffic you can get, and the higher the value of the link.

Creating company profile pages on platforms such as Squidoo, Facebook, MySpace, and even uploading photos and videos to YouTube and Flickr, can all count as backlinks to your site - so be sure to utilize these platforms to the fullest extent. DO NOT use these networks to spam them full of links, just to inform and entertain. Build unique relevant content and become a member of the community, and you will find your links will become much more valuable.

6. Article Syndication

When you write highly relevant articles, submit them to any known article aggregation websites in your chosen field or major general portals such as ezinearticles.com. When submitted to the right sites you can drive traffic and increase your links. Again, be sure to include a link or two within your article so you get some backlinks (if allowed).

7. Press Releases

Press releases are still doing wonders. Whenever your business hits a milestone, releases a new product, or has anything worthy of a press release, issue one through the services of PRWeb (Unfortunately, not a cheap service. Only think of doing this if you have money to spend.) You will get a link back to your site, and you may also get some targeted traffic from interested parties.

If your press release happens to qualify as significant news, you may also find bloggers and other writers referencing it and linking to it from their articles, providing even more value. Make sure that you include deep links back to your site with every press release. Links from within the bio are helpful, but those integrated into paragraphs of the release itself are worth much more.

8. Comments

I know, I am going to get a lot of flak for this one, but if used wisely, it can help. If, after reading a relevant blog entry, you have something useful, constructive, and worthwhile to say, leave a comment and include your link if the option is provided. A comment like: "Nice post" will not do, but if you have something to add or contribute that others may find interesting then go for it. These links can add up, and they do add a bit of value. Do not stuff your comment with keywords, keep it natural - and use your real name.

9. Forum Posts and Signatures

This is an area where you may be able to grab a few links, but it is also one you need to be careful about as it can backfire quite easily. Going out and wildly posting in random forums and including your link is NOT recommended.

This method can be useful if you establish yourself as a solid contributor to a particular forum directly related to your industry. Once you are established, and people know and trust your name and understand that you are not just one of the spammers, you can consider adding your link to your signature file as well as including the odd link in your forum posts. This will allow you to get the occasional relevant, inbound link. It is advised to check with the terms and conditions of the specific forum before you start. Some do not allow links of any kind.

10. Testimonials

You see them on many sites that offer products or services, and quite often they include a link back to the submitter’s blog or website. If you have used a product or service, do not be afraid to write a testimonial for the company´s website. In many cases online businesses will post your testimonial along with a link. The testimonial helps that business instill confidence in their customers and you get the valuable backlink.

11. Directory Submissions

Yes, it is still a good idea to submit your site to the major directories. While DMOZ can be very difficult to get into, but once you are there, it is like gold and will play a part in your top rankings. Yahoo directory has a very high price ($299), but can also provide you with a valuable inbound link. Consider submitting to the major directories as well as any industry specific directories. These links add up and will contribute to your site’s ranking.

12. Link Bait

Most of us have heard the prase thrown around for a while now, but the technique itself has worked long before the phrase "link bait" was coined. Why all the hype? Because it works.

Take a look at your website, your business, your industry. See if you can think of some way, any way, to attract people to link to your site. You could sponsor a contest, add an elaborate and unique tool, write a controversial article, provide something useful for free (ebooks are always a good choice) - whatever you do, do it well and promote your effort to the max, then people will naturally link to you.

General Rules:

Before you actively seek out a link from a specific site do some investigating to ensure that the site is not spamming or using any black hat techniques. If they are, stay away.

If the link you are seeking is merely an attempt to boost your link density, then do not forget to check out how they are linking to other third party sites.

Does the site use the ‘rel=nofollow’ attribute? Are the pages your link would appear on blocked by the one or all of the search engines, or do they use the robots Meta ‘nofollow’? Are they using other techniques that would not allow a spider to follow them (such as JavaScript, Flash, or frames)? If so you may want to move on.

A note on Google PR (Page Rank) - the PR you see on your toolbar or on a PageRank checker is outdated. While it can give you some insight, just because it says 0, does not mean it is. Also what has a PR of 0 or 1 today, could be a 4 or 5 tomorrow. Do not use the PageRank of a site as your sole means of deciding if you should obtain a link or not.

Summary

Using any or all of these linking methods will help you to increase your link density. There is power in diversification. Use variations on anchor text and descriptions, use inline text links within articles, and gain links in as many different venues as possible. By being diverse, your site will stand the best chance of being around well into the future.

Today, blogs are huge and can be a strong asset, but what would happen if tomorrow Google decided to ban blogs? Highly unlikely, but it could happen. And if it did, would your site survive? By being diverse, your site has the best chance to survive any change.

Good luck!

Technorati-Tags: inbound links,links,free links,backlinks,more traffic,pagerank,seo

6 Free Ways to DOUBLE Your Blog Traffic in Less Than a Week

2010-04-13T23:08:00.002+02:00

What does every blogger want? More traffic.You do your best to set up a blog with great content, but no one is visiting your blog – so why even bother? You need at least a decent amount of traffic if you want your blog to become a success in the long run – and I am not even talking about money here. Wouldn´t it be great if you could get that traffic for FREE?

These are the TOP 6 free ways to get traffic to your blog:

1. Search engines

Yes! Submitting the URL of your blog brings alot of traffic to your blog. Millions upon millions of people use the major search engines like Google,Yahoo,Bing everyday.So,if your blog has many good posts and is well indexed by Google,etc. you will get a fair amount of traffic via search engines.

2. Submitting your blog to blog directories

You may already know this, but submitting your blog to blog directories is also a very good way to attract free traffic. The link below will take you to a good list of blog directories(there are so many directories, but the ones on this list will bring you valuable traffic).Most of these blog directories ask you to register before allowing you to submit your blog. My suggestion: Create a new email account solely for this purpose so your personal emails will not be not flooded with emails sent by blog administrators,etc.

A list of essential blog directories can be found here.

3. Participate in forums, discussion groups, and the like

Just go to Google and enter your [major keyword + fourm] or [keyword+groups] and search. If your blog happens to be about blogging, then search „blogging forum”/„blogging group”. You will find a variety of forums or groups related to your site. Register in the forums and post articles,etc with a link back to your blog (as a signature). Answer questions, help solve problems – and always provide a link to your blog. But, do not SPAM.

4. Social bookmarking

Social bookmarking is another way to build good traffic to your website/blog. If you do not know what Social Bookmarking is, here a short definition: „Social Bookmarking is a practise of saving Bookmarks,tagging the posts with keywords in a website”. Bookmarking means saving a specific website URL(address) in your browser in case you wish to visit it again at a later time.There are many social bookmarking sites offering their services, the most popular probably being Del.icio.us, Digg, Diigo (formerly furl), Technorati, StumbleUpon. One good thing about these Social bookmarking sites is that you will get instant traffic. Just register with them, save your bookmarks,tags,.. and you are done. Traffic will start coming your way pretty soon.

5. Submit articles to article directories

Submitting articles to article directories is another effective way to build more traffic. By submitting to these directories your articles get massive exposure and gain you more traffic. Among the popular article directories are goarticles.com, ezinearticles.com, articlecity.com, etc. There are literally hundreds of article directories you can submit your articles to, just use the search engine of your choice to find a few that suit you. (Submitting one article per week should suffice.)

6. Leaving comments on other blogs

Leaving comments with a link back to your blog is another good thing to do. Make sure to post comments on related blogs for this will bring you targeted traffic - and it will help to increase the PageRank of your website/blog as well. Always leave helpful and relevant comments, do not SPAM.

NOTE: Forum and blog posting got a bad reputation as a link building tactic when it came under huge abuse by unethical webmasters spamming forums with useless garbage just for a link. They even went so far (and still do) as sending out spiders to automatically submit posts.

Good luck!

Related Articles:

62 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Site

5 Great Ways to Get FREE One Way Backlinks to Your Site

Technorati-Tags: more traffic,free traffic,successful blogging,blog directories

21 Essential Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog to

2010-04-13T02:08:00.004+02:00

Gaining exposure for your blog is essential to building a following, readership - and revenue. Besides the basic SEO (search engine optimization) steps of adding compelling and keyword friendly titles, URL structure and descriptions basic link building for blogs begins with listing them in quality blog directories.

Personally, I just love launching a new blog (or adding one to an existing site) and watching the highly coveted links roll in. As everybody knows: BLOG = Better Listings On Google.

There are many paths to consider when building links to your website or blog such as link baiting or blogroll link swapping, but few are as easy to implement as well as cost effective as submitting to blog directories - and good links are essential to a healthy growing blog.

Let us take a look at 21 popular directories worthy of your consideration:

1. Best of the Web Blog Directory is without a doubt the best around. Best of the Web’s Blog Directory is very selective and only lists aged and valuable blogs. A link from here is majestic and well deserved. Submissions will be reviewed within 3 days, but unfortunately this is not a free directory. They charge an annually recurring review fee of $75.00.

2. Blog Hub offers a drop down category and member blog list. With its “most recently added bloggers” list and hot topics, Blog Hub is a great directory to list your site.

3. Bloggeries has the best categories and subcategories home page on the internet. The layout is clear and concise, and readers are able to find what they are looking for in a snap! New submissions will be reviewed within 48 hours. Pricing for a regular link: $39.99 (one-time).

I am really liking the overall look of Bloggeries as well as the fast service. This is bound to become one of the premier Blog Directories on the web.

4. EatonWeb Blog Directory is a real jewel with many aged inbound links and a blog rating system. You may have to pay a fee for your blog to be reviewed, but like Yahoo, the review fee is well worth the few dollars.

5. One of the most selective Blog Directories on the web (and Wordpress powered), Blog Search Engine is owned by Performancing’s parent company and serves search results powered by IceRocket.

6. Blogged.com is an interesting mix of a blog directory and a Google News type site which fuels its news feed from the blogs listed on the site. Blogged.com is very impressive and you can submit your blog for free.

7. Blog Catalog features a vast directory of categories, from arts to technology, while offering the ability to search by language, country, or user. It has a no nonsense design, but offers convenient member access through simple blog registration. And it is free.

8. Globe of Blogs has too many features to list. In order to be listed on the site, the blog must not be commercial. The site may appear to be a bit to busy, but I like the features of being able to search by title, location, topic or author (by name or birthday!). Narrowing the search becomes easy on this blog directory.

9. Blog Universe is the perfect place to promote your video, photo or podcast themed blog. Its layout is easy to navigate. Although the content is limited, it is an all around good directory site worthy of submission. One-time review fee of $4.99.(Blog Universe is one of the few major directories to list adult oriented blogs.)

10. BritBlog - The Original British Blog Directory connotes all things British. It is not directed by location, but by the culture! It is asked that bloggers be genuinely “british.” Being listed in this blog reaches readers in the whole of Britain.

11. Upon visiting Bloggernity, you find a crisp, clean, and easy to navigate site. Scrolling down, you find the last 20 newly listed blogs. As there is little advertising on the home page, it is pleasant to look at and loads fast.

12. Bigger Blogs is one of the newer blog directory with relatively few blogs registered. This has its advantages since the earlier you are accepted on a blog directory, the more exposure your blog will obtain. In addition, a backlink is indeed a backlink, so this can help with your search engine placement.

13. Spillbean is a well-designed blog directory site with categories such as health & fitness, society, internet, regional, and personal webpages. The site is aesthetically pleasing, but there are not many listings yet. The listings display the PageRank of each blog.

14. Blogging Fusion is a blog directory with over sixty categories. These categories include photo blogs and family focused blogs. Blogging Fusion has a good amount of blog listings within the directory, and it also has visitor stats available. It is extremely easy to navigate and currently lists close to 3000 blogs. Listings from $1.99.

15. Bloggapedia has an interesting and eye catching homepage. Readers are easily connected to the top blogs and newest posts. Innovative categories and a colorful design make this blog directory a hit.

16. Blogflux is not only a tool for bloggers, but a directory that has the listings in alphabetic order. The blog listings are organized and clear. It is definitely an effective blog directory in which to be listed. Currently listing over 150,000 blogs.

17. Blogio may be a small blog directory with few listings (31 categories around 150 blogs listed), but it is worthy of a submission. Despite its small size, there are quality blogs and a solid ability to search on this site. You are asked to provide a backlink.

18. The blogs on the top listings of Bloglisting are fun, colourful, and catch the attention of the reader. Bloglisting displays the blogs along with their number of hits, which is a helpful tool when determining with whom you want to exchange links. Rather slow-loading.

19. Blog Explosion claims to be the largest blog promoter on the internet. They have a vast directory but do not seem to have direct links. However, the listing in the directory can still show up in SERP’s, so keep this in mind. You should consider adding a banner along with your listing in order to promote your blog.

20. Topblogging is definitely worth a try. It lists blogs in 25 categories and displays the 50 top ranked ones right on the homepage. Submission is free and blogs tend to get quite a number of hits through this directory.

21. My New Blog is a blogging service as well as a free blog directory. You have to register to submit your blog. Although My New Blog is a relatively new directory it is worth checking out.

The above listings are a glimpse inside the large and vast world of blog directories and the valuable inbound links that your can build for your blog and your business.

There are countless more directories at your disposal, all of which are just a Google, Yahoo, Bing or Ask.com search away.

What is your favorite blog directory? Leave a comment below :)

Good luck!

Related Article:

6 Free Ways to DOUBLE Your Blog Traffic in Less Than a Week

Technorati-Tags: backlinks,blog directories,submit,free traffic,more traffic

12 Steps to Successful Blogging

2010-04-11T23:07:00.003+02:00

A blog can be a very marketable and profitable tool if used correctly. Successful blogging is a matter of grabbing the attention of a possibly worldwide audience and has almost nothing in common with the work of your average salesperson. In this article I shall point out to you the 12 most essential steps to a successful blogging career.

1. Getting Started

You should consider starting your blogging career at a free blog hosting service such as Blogger or Wordpress. This way you you can just jump in and try out blogging without having to worry about knowledge of scripts, hosting, domains and programming. It allows you to focus on creating interesting content and honing your writing skills while leaving the internal maintenance of your blog to professionals. The best thing about starting with a free service is that there is no risk of losing money if your blog does not become successful or you just happen to find out that blogging is not your cup of tea (just make sure to choose a service that lets you export your content whenever you want). A blog is the simplest form of a website and is organized in chronological order; your latest entry will always be displayed first. When your blog traffic grows considerably you should consider upgrading to your own domain. In this case your last blog entry should be the announcement of your "move". Do not forget to provide the URL address of your new site together with a link that will re-direct your visitors to the new site, thereby enabling you to keep your following without causing a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade...but only when you need to!

2. Finding Your Niche

A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interests you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily or at least weekly basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find out what topics people are currently searching for. But keep in mind that it does NOT matter if your topic is popular; as long as there is a audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog should be successful – it just may take a little longer. Anything anyone can think of can become a viable niche - as long as it has a target audience (no matter how large or how small that audience might be). A blog about your cat will obviously be a much smaller niche than a blog about domestic cats in general ...you can even choose to build an audience for a market which as yet does not exist, but first you must build your blog.

3. Update Regularly (2-3 times a week should suffice)

This step is a must, not just a suggestion. Updating your blog regularly not only keeps readers coming back for more, but it also gives your site fresh content on a day to day basis thereby making it more appealing to search engines. It is only understandable that you may not have the time or the inspiration to update your blog daily, but letting days or even weeks pass by without posting anything is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. In order to keep your visitors interested as well as traffic to your blog high it is simply a must to add content to your blog regularly. If possible you should update your blog every day, maybe even try to post a couple of entries daily. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to working on your blog each day. Treat your blog as a job (but as a job you really like!). What happens if you do not come to work for days or weeks...you lose income and/ or get fired! The same applies here...if you do not update your blog regularly you will lose visitors.

4. Generating Traffic

This one is a no-brainer. You have to have traffic to be able to profit from your blog or site. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Advertising (paid as well as free), search engine marketing, feeds (RSS or Atom), viral marketing, usage of social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Digg, etc.), and word-of-mouth. For starters, you should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your emails, forum discussions, message boards, or any other form of online communication. Submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. Also be sure to submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic and Blogdigger. You should confidently share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it relates. If your blog (like so many others) can be described as a collection of articles you should consider submitting your blog entries (only those that are valuable and lengthy) to content syndicators/article directories like GoArticles.com, ArticleCity.com or DropJack.com. Once submitted, your articles can be picked up and published by others. The important thing is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the "About the Author" passage. This creates link popularity and backlinks for your blog. When someone picks up your article from the syndication site and then publishes it on his or her website the "About the Author" passage is included with each publication and the link you included will be followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Just imagine what will happen if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 5.000 or even 10.000 publications across the web. All the search engines are bound to find your site in no time with that many publications and will regard you as an authority on the subject, which will in turn increase your rank on search engines. The relatively small effort of writing an interesting and helpful article can be very rewarding. You should try to write at least one full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to as many article directories as possible.

5. Tracking Your Blog

How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments does not mean your blog is not becoming popular. Many visitors just like to read or watch and do not care about comments – but they still may be returning visitors. Most people following blogs simply are more interested in what "you" have to say! Many readers do not comment till they are quite familiar with a blog, and some will never comment at all although they are devoted fllowers of your blog.

Tracking your blog does not require knowledge in statistics or any other fancy sciences. A simple free page counter like StatCounter, FeeStats, SiteMeter or Active Meter will do the trick. Just install (copy/paste) the code you will be given after registering into the HTML of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. If you really want to use tracking to your advantage you should choose a service that gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Hit counter, unique and returning visitors, visitor path and visit lenght, and keyword analysis should be standard features no matter what page counter service you choose.

6. Listen to Your Audience

When using the proper page counter you should soon be able to see which pages your visitors are coming from and where they are going. If they find your site through search engines then keyword analysis will show you which keywords are being used to find your blog. If your blog should happen to be constantly found by just one or a few select keywords then you should focus your blog around those keywords to generate even more traffic. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while keeping your blog readable and interesting.

7. Branching Out - Multiple Blogs

Use multiple blogs and bloggging accounts to attract more people. You should consider having blogs at a variety of popular blog hosting services like Blogger, Wordpress, LiveJournal, JournalHome, Blog-City, etc. The more blog accounts you are able to manage, the better. You can copy/paste from one blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This will enable you to attract more visitors and increase the chances that one of your blogs will show in the search engine results for the keywords you are focusing on.

8. Short & Concise Posts

Aside from the one lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short and concise (if possible). Sometimes your topic may warrant or even require a wordy blog entry, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Most visitors tend to skim through your entries and like to find what they are looking for on first glance. If you make them read through hundreds or even thousands of words they will not come back for another visit. It is good to provide detailed and useful information, but do not stray from your topic and do not include filler or useless chunks of information to make your entries look more interesting.

9. Pictures & Graphics

Try to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries (if it fits in with the overall content). But do not overdo it. Once in awhile is fine. Graphics can be a suitable tool for bringing your blog to life. Of course, the content has to remain the most important aspect of your blog, and you do not want to overshadow this content with graphics, but displaying graphics and photos can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about the graphics you choose and make sure they fit the topic of your entry. You should always add content along with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art are recommended. But keep in mind that graphics take up more server space than words which in turn means that the loading time for your page or blog will be longer. Therefore you should not use more than 50kb of graphics per page. And always ask the copyright owner for permission before using pictures other than your own.

For copyright-free and copyright-friendly graphics and photos you might want to check out WebQuest.org or Free-Stuff-Me.uk, among others.

10. Keep It Personal

A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences and anecdotes relating to your blog´s topic. Stay away from business style writing. Be courageous and find your personal style - and include first-person narratives whenever they fit in. Do not post anything in the style of sales letters, share product reviews and personal opinions instead.

11. Interact With Your Visitors

You should now have the amount of traffic you deserve. In order to keep traffic up while at the same time trying to attract even more you should now start interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: "Tip of the Week" or "Picture of the Day" which entices your readers to visit your blog regularly.

Give your readers an advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and/or talk about later. If an important football/baseball/baketball game is scheduled to take place then you should state in your blog that you "will discuss the game and give your opinion as soon as the game is over. Comments will be appreciated".

Try everything you can to find and present exclusive information. Do not – ever!! - disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or has the potential to get you into trouble, but try to get the inside scoop before everyone else does. For instance: If your blog was about a famous actress and you had a blog entry about "She (name) Is Getting Married" then it would be of utmost interest to your readers if you could provide an actual picture of the engagement ring on her finger. Give your best effort to dig and search more than just the internet for exclusive information, because if it is on the net a lot of other people will have found the information as well. Your readers will appreciate your zeal and show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals and/or links to your site. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they find at your blog first.

12. Make a Profit

Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning that traffic into profit. The easiest way to do so is by using contextual advertising like Google Adsense or Chitika. Contextual advertising means that these services analyze the content of your blog and then publish ads aimed specifically at your audience. The payout is usually based on some kind of pay-per-click (PPC) model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you will be paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to contextual advertising you also might want to consider using graphical advertising such as: BlogAds, Amazon.com, MammaMedia, etc.. But make sure that the ads do not overshadow your blog´s content. Pop-ups, especially, should be used sparingly. Nobody likes them. They will only increase the loading time of your page and annoy your visitors.

CONGRATULATIONS, You Are a Professional Blogger!

You have done it! You are now a true internet professional! Now may be the time to upgrade from your free blog hosting service to a domain hosted solution. You need to choose a domain name for your blog, check its availability and the find a suitable web host. Select the blogging software you wish to use: WordPress, MovableType (open source), Squarespace, ... When you have your new blog domain set up and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts by posting a "move" announcement as your last entry. The title should be "Moved" and the blog entry should read something like "My Blog has been moved to a new site, please follow and bookmark this link for future reference: http://www.YourNewBlogDomainName.com". This way all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new blog domain.

As a professional blogger you might want to team up with one or more other bloggers. This will enable you to create a more interesting and more powerful blog. More authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in the blog and his or her writing will probably appeal to a different type of reader, thereby creating a larger following for the blog as a whole. The idea of a team blog is to make it profitable and rewarding for all authors, while continuing to target the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors. To spare yourself trouble and headaches later on you should settle important issues like who contributes how much and how to split revenues beforehand.

Applying these simple blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or even a household name, but your effort should at least increase your chances. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many people think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. Likewise, increasing your popularity on the internet is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with enough royalties to make your blog a considerable source of income.

Good luck!

Technorati-Tags: adsense,blogging,make money blogging,monetize blog,start blog,success,more traffic

Things to Consider Before Blogging for Money

2010-04-11T01:23:00.004+02:00

Whenever I mention my blog, people roll their eyes and seem to think: “Big deal. You have a blog, and so do millions of others“. But as soon as I mention the fact that I make money blogging they prick their ears.

The concept of blogging for money seems simple enough. I write about topics that I am interested in, that I enjoy, a lot of people read it (hopefully!), and I make money off advertisement. To those among us who have experience doing this, it is simple. To the novice bloggger, however, it is of the utmost importance to realize what he or she getting into.

If you are new to blogging and interested in doing it for money, here are a few important things to keep in mind before committing yourself.

1. Blogging is easy - Blogging for profit is more difficult - I won’t go as far as to say it is impossible to draw a secondary income from blogging, but it is whole lot harder than most people care to think. Unfortunately, it is not just about producing content and slapping up some ads. It takes good writing, proper templating, intelligent ad placement, developing an audience… there are a lot of skills required to make a blog profitable, and you will have to aquire them.

2. Get into blogging for the long run or not at all - The vast majority of blogs fail within the first few months, being discontinued and eventually forgotten. More to the point, just a tiny minority of blogs see any profit during the first few months. Unless you are prepared to keep writing for at least a year, you will probably never see any return for your effort.

3. Choose a topic you love and stick with it – General purpose blogs and blogs that trying to cover a lot of different topics tend to have difficulty developing a readership. Make a list of the topics you care about, then choose the one that appeals to you the most and blog about it exclusively.

4. Start with just one blog - If you have a long list of possible topics, do not give in to the temptation to start a different blog for each one right away. By dividing your time between several blogs you will only increase the likelihood that all of them will fail. In the beginning, put all of your effort into one blog. Once you get comfortable writing and find out how things work you might consider branching out and creating additional blogs.

5. If you are unsure, test the waters - It is a fact that a lot of people simply do not have the drive or stamina to keep writing until their blog becomes successful. If you are not sure, try a starter blog on one of the many free services such as Blogger or Wordpress.com. (But be sure to choose a service where the content you create is not locked in so you will be able to export it whenever you want.) Feel it out for a few weeks. If, by the end of this time, you have stuck with it and feel like blogging is right for you, go ahead and commit to the effort. The same applies to test driving new topics if you are unsure what to write about.

6. Place ads wisely - Some people recommend not placing ads on a blog until it has matured somewhat. Others recommend putting them up right away. Both approaches have their pros and cons. Just make sure to place your ads tastefully so as not to overwhelm your readers. User experience should be your prior concern.

7. Enjoy your work - This is the real key to successful blogging. If you pick a topic that you love and blog about it with passion for months and years on end, your blog will build a readership, generate income, and be a success on the net. If, however, your blog becomes a chore to maintain, it will fail for sure.

The main point I am trying to get across is that a lot of people get into blogging with high hopes of making a profit – only to fail miserably. If you keep your expectations low in the beginning and invest some time in proper planning you will succeed.

Good luck!

Technorati-Tags: blogging for money,make money blogging,monetizing blog,getting started

How to Find the Right Affiliate Products to Promote

2010-04-10T02:33:00.004+02:00

“How do I find the right kind of affiliate products to promote on my blog?” is one of the most frequently asked questions when it comes to monetizing a blog. And affiliate marketing is indeed a fascinating topic. Many bloggers are struggling with advertising as a means to make money from their blogs and want to branch out and experiment with affiliate promotions on their blog.

However, wanting to get into affiliate marketing and actually doing so are two very different things. There are a number of difficulties to overcome first.

One of these difficulties is finding the right products to promote.

Choosing the right products to promote is crucial for a number of reasons - the two main ones being:

a) Relevant Products Are Key

If your blog draws an audience centered around a particular topic or demographic it is very unlikely that you will be able to sell products that are in no way relevant to the topic of your blog.

b) The Quality of Products Can Have a Huge Impact on the Success of Your Blog or Brand

Promote low quality products and you could seriously hurt the reputation of your blog/brand. Readers remember who they heard about specific products from and their trust in you and your blog will increase or decrease depending on what you recommend to them.

Therefore, choosing the right affiliate product is crucial. Not only has it great impact on conversions and profitability, the success of your blog/brand and the trust of your readers depend on it as well.

Now, how do you find the right affiliate product to promote?

Here are a few tips and thoughts on finding affiliate products and programs to promote:

Google It – It does not take a rocket scientist to figure this one out - but it does work. If you happen to blog about beauty salons and/or products google “Beauty Products Affiliate Program”. Insert your main keywords into the search engine of your choice and you may just find products that are relevant to your niche.
Watch Your Competition - What kinds of products are other people blogging in your niche promoting? Quite often a quick glance down the sidebar of another successful blog in your niche to find out what products and services they are promoting will reveal affiliate products you could (and probably should) promote as well (and it could also point you to some relevant advertisers to promote).
Take a Close Look at AdSense Ads – You can find products that a relevant to your niche by checking out the AdSense ads appearing besides Google search results, on websites, other blogs and even on your own blog. Do not (ever!!) click the ads on your own blog, but checking out what the ads promote can reveal all kinds of potential affiliate partners. The same thing is true for other types of advertising. For instance, the other day a friend of mine was surfing on Facebook and saw an ad relevant to his blog – and by clicking it he found a new product with an affiliate program that he had not heard of before.
Approach Potential Affiliate Partners - This one might not work if you have a new blog with little traffic, but as your blog grows you might find yourself in a position to approach the distributors of a product or the providers of a service to find out if they would be willing to start some kind of affiliate program for you. Some of the most successful bloggers do this regularly - and they make a lot of money this way. The best part of it is that you get a head start on your competition for the promotion as you are most likely to be the only person promoting it.
Search Affiliate Networks - There are quite a few affiliate networks around that list a lot of affiliate programs. The good ones have search functions to allow you to type in keywords and find promotions relevant to your niche. Check out Clickbank, Commission Junction, MarketLeverage, PepperJam Network, and many more.
Search Online Stores for Products – Almost all popular online stores, for instance Amazon, have affiliate programs attached to them. In general the comissions are not huge (Amazon, for example, offers commissions from as low as 4% up to 15% depending upon the type of product and how much you sell) – the profit margins in the retail trade are rather small - but stores like this have a wide variety of products and are probably the best place to start while you build traffic and search for other programs.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Technorati-Tags: affiliate marketing,affiliate programs,monetize blog,make money

What is Affiliate Marketing?

2010-04-09T00:23:00.003+02:00

Affiliate marketing is a cool way of making money online whereby you as a publisher are rewarded for helping a business by promoting their product(s), service(s) or site.

There are many different forms of promotions but in most cases they involve you as a publisher placing banners or links on your website or blog and then earning a commission whenever someone follows one of these links/banners to another site where they then buy something.

In a common variation on this scheme you will be getting paid a specific amount of money for referring a visitor who then takes some kind of action - for example signing up for something and providing an email address, completing a survey, leaving a name and address, etc.

Commissions are very often a percentage of a sale but can also consist of a fixed amount per conversion.

Conversions are generally tracked in a simple and straightforward manner: the publisher (you) is provided with a link containing a special code only given to you that enables the advertiser to track where conversions are coming from (usually by cookies). In some rare instances an advertiser might provide publishers with a ‘coupon code’ for their readers to use that helps to track conversions.

Advertisers often prefer affiliate marketing as a way to promote their products because they know they will only have to pay for the advertising when there is a conversion. They will have to be content with making less money from each sale, but in exchange they will have recourse to a network of affiliates promoting their product which in turn will almost certainly increase overall sales levels.
Publishers often prefer affiliate marketing because if they find a product that is relevant to their niche earnings can and will greatly exceed those of any pay per click or pay per impression advertising campaign.

Is Affiliate Marketing Easy Money?

While affiliate marketing can be an incredibly lucrative source of income it is important to know that it is not necessarily easy money. Most people who try it make fairly little money, for success relies upon a number of factors, including:

traffic (high traffic helps a lot)
finding products relevant to the content of your site or to your readers
finding quality products as well as reliable companies/partners
gaining the trust of your readers
getting your readership into a ‘buying mood’
being able to write good sales copy (and many more)

It has to be mentioned, that there is also some risk associated with affiliate marketing in that if you push too hard or promote products of inferior quality you can actually burn readers and thereby hurt your reputation and brand.

It is also worth noting that affiliate marketing does not work well on all blogs and websites. Some blogs/websites are on topics that make it extremely difficult to find products to promote while others attract audiences who are not in a buying frame of mind and in still other cases affiliate marketing just does not fit with the blogger’s style or approach.

Why Affiliate Marketing Can Work Well on Most Blogs

Affiliate marketing is not the only way to make money from blogs and it definitely will not suit every blog/blogger (see above) but there are a few reasons why it can be profitable in our medium. Perhaps the most important of these reasons is that affiliate marketing can and does seems work very well when there is a trusting relationship between the publisher and his/her readers.

I have found (and many bloggers will confirm this statement) that the more the trust between publisher and readers deepens the more likely the readers will follow the recommendations that are made in a specific blog.

Of course, this fact can also turn against you and your affiliate marketing endeavours - promote the wrong product and you can easily lose the trust of your readers.

Please be sure to read the related post on how to find the right affiliate products to promote.

Technorati-Tags: affiliate marketing,make money,monetize blog,make money blogging

The Truth About Online Income

2010-04-08T03:05:00.002+02:00

Easy money, that is what everybody is dreaming about. The problem in most cases is that people tend to find ways that promise to give them the opportunity to earn money easily – and fast. They pass over the fact that these promises are almost always idle. They tend to overlook the reality behind earning money.

This is the reason why so many people fall for scams and fraudulent activities. They tend to believe that there really is a secret way to "get rich quick" just by doing something online.

There are so many “proven” schemes promising instant riches on the Internet, but unfortunately the only people getting rich are the ones who devise them. All the customers get is a lesson in disapointment. As is the case with any other business, tbeing successful on the Internet requires hard work, persistence, determination, the right skills and a marketing strategy.

However, one fact remains true. There are a lot of fairly easy ways to earn money, but it may take a while to achieve this goal. There is a huge difference between easy and quick, and you should be aware of that.

The "Get Rich Quick" Concept

Whatever people may say about earning money online, there really isn´t a way to earn money quickly. Sorry. You will have to stick with your chosen path for some time before you can expect to achieve financial success, but you will get there eventually.

There are many, many ways to earn money easily. For starters, there is eBay where you can easily dispose of any items that you have not been able to get rid of til now. It still is the best way to earn money while at the same time clearing your garage or basement of unwanted items.

You could join paid online surveys. There are more and more sites focusing on online surveys, the results of which are of benefit for their company or their clients. That is the reason why they are willing to shell out up to a hundred dollar just to get people to answer their surveys.

These methods spell “easy online money” but that does not necessarily mean you will make a lot of money within weeks.

The truth about online income is that you need the same combination of skills and attitude that are necessary for starting a business or devising other ways to earn money in the so-called “real world”.

The main problem is that most people do not know the real concept behind the successful online businesses. They simply do not have the basic knowledge required to make money online. They should know that success in online marketing just like in any other business is not a destination but a process.

Earning money online is a step-by-step process of learning the foundations of what to do and then gradually increasing your knowledge about online income. There are no shortcuts or “high-speed” ways to earning big $$ online.

It is hardly possible to start from scratch when thinking about establishing an online business because in order to be able to do so you have to have knowledge about and employ such necessary details as hard- and software, programming and general computer skills that are essential if you want your business to flourish.

The first step is getting your own website online. You can either invest in good software and create a website yourself (a lot of webhosts offer software as part of a package deal) or employ a webdesigner to do it for you (check out sample sites before hiring one!!). Then you need to register a domain and find a webhost (if you expect to generate a LOT of traffic you might want to consider hosting your site yourself). Once you are online you will have to find ways (link exchange, link purchase, advertisement, etc.) to help your website attract traffic. If you work diligently and have a little luck you should start making money within a few months.

My point is that you will have to put in time and effort in order to get the online income you are dreaming of. Even online there is no such thing as success without effort.

If you are still interested in making money online, here are some facts you need to take by heart in order to have financial success online.

1. Making money online is not possible with scams and frauds (at least not for long!) which means that you will never be able to earn a reasonable income without diligent work and a fair amount of patience.

2. Even fraudulent schemers have to work hard to stay successful: they have to acquire computer skills, they have to devise new scams and start new websites all the time if they do not want to get caught. And they have to live in constant fear of detection because sooner or later they will be traced.

3. The "get rich quick" scam was invented by a loser – and only losers fall for it.

4. Online income is 100% dependent on finding or creating a niche market. No market = no sales and/or advertisement revenue.

5. Making money online is more about having fun than just focusing on fast financial success.

The bottom line is that anyone interested in starting an online business should be aware that while it might just take a few simple clicks and "dot coms" to make your life easier than it ever was you still need to work hard to achieve lasting success and personal gratification.

Good luck!

Technorati-Tags: online money making,making money online,niche market,get rich quick

8 More Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on Your Blog

2010-04-07T03:34:00.002+02:00

9. Combine With Other Streams of Income

Affiliate programs and advertising programs are not mutually exclusive. There are more than a few people who think that affiliate linking will take the focus off their Adsense ads. While there is indeed potential for one to take the focus off the other there is also a real chance for both to work hand in hand as different readers are prone to respond to different approaches. You should consider the impact that your affiliate links have on other streams of income - but do not let that stop you from employing them.

10. Track Results

Most affiliate programs have at least some type of tracking or statistics service that will allow you to watch how effective your links are. Some of these services are better than others but most will at least allow you to see what is selling and what is not. Watching your results will help you plan future affiliate efforts. Keep track of which positions for links work best, which products sell, what wording around links works well, etc. and use all the information that you can get your hands on as you work to plan future affiliate strategies.

11. Build A Network Before You Need It

Probably the most important thing I have learned about affiliate marketing is that it works best the bigger and stronger your network is. As you may recall, in my first list I mentioned that ‘traffic levels are important’ - which is true, but connected to it is your ‘network’.

Whether it be your loyal blog readers and subscribers, your email list, your Twitter connections, your Facebook or MySpace friends or some other social network - the better and bigger your network the better you will do at driving affiliate sales.

It is not just about size – Although important, the size of your network is only part of what I am talking about here. Equally important is the depth of relationship you have with your readers/network and the amount of trust they have in you. If you have consistently helped people and been useful to them over a long time they are generally more inclined to respond favourably to your recommendations.

Relevance/Focus counts - Another key element of your network is its relevance to the topic that you are doing promotions on. For example – you may have heard of or seen some people on Twitter running competitions to build their follower numbers in a way that just brings in any follower they can get. The problem with this is that they end up with a very large but unfocused network. I recommend having a smaller network of people who all share one interest than a larger one comprised of “friends” who just signed up to get a prize.

Finally, a network takes time to build - If you think that you will be doing some sort of affiliate marketing at some point in the future then it would be a good idea to start building your network now, before you need it. This gives you time to build the depth of relationships, the trust and focus of your network, before you begin promoting affiliate products to your online friends.

12. Try Different Media

I have alluded to the fact that promotions work differently on different media above already, but it is worth mentioning once more.

For example: Some affiliate promotions seem to convert best in a blog post, others work best when you send an email to a list you have been building, while still others seem to take off on Twitter, Facebook or other social media sites.

The key is to try different approaches as you go along, to have build up your network before you need it (see 11. above) and to track the results for each promotion so you can check what is and what is not bringing in money.

13. Multiple Promotions Of The Same Product

If you write a single blog post promoting an affiliate product you will have a certain percentage of readers buy the product (the percentage varies a lot). If you are able and willing to follow that up with a different type of post a few days later it can reinforce the promotion.

The following is a good way to achieve this:

Blog Post 1 - a post announcing a new product, giving some benefits, explaining who the product is relevant for,and so on.
Blog Post 2 - a post a few days later in the form of an interview with the person or company behind the product - exploring why it was made, expanding upon what it includes and what accessories are available (if any), who it is intended for, etc., thereby giving the product context. You should try to include some tips or suggestions for readers who do not buy the product as well so that it will become a useful post for everyone.
Email List - later in the week email out the subscriber list, linking to the previous posts and reinforcing the promotion.
Tweets/Followups – You could also include a few Tweets about the promotion throughout the week and should consider a third blog post a week or so later – perhaps including some reader reviews of the product.

It is important not to spam your network but to find interesting and useful ways to draw attention to the product several times over a week or two so in order to reinforce it and give those who need a little more time to make a decision the opportunity to buy the product.

14. Bonuses DO Work

There are a lot of techniques that internet marketers use to increase sales of their products. Some of them may seem a little ‘cheap’, ‘nasty’ even, but many do work. Two of the least offensive and/or manipulative techniques work with the promise of added value. There are two easily manageable ways for adding value to the affiliate promotion: you can make the offer more attractive by adding a bonus of your own or you can ask the person/company behind the product to offer a special bonus or discount just for your readers.

Everyone who has ever tried it can tell you that conversions are significantly higher.

15. It Takes Time

A point I always stess and that may be familiar to you is that making money from blogs (through any method) takes time. While an affiliate program does have the potential to make you a huge amount of money very quickly - it almost always comes only after you have done a lot of work and spent a lot of time and effort on building and maintaining your network.

The early days of building your network may see very little - if any - results. I earned very little from affiliate marketing in my first nine or ten months of blogging but after that it has really begun to take off - partly as a result of getting smarter with the my promotions and partly because my network grew in size and quality.

16. Timing Is Essential

One of the things I have learned over the last couple of months is just how much difference there can be in the rate of sales at different times of the day and week. It can vary depending upon the location of most of a blog’s readers but generally sales will go up significantly during business hours in the region most of your readers reside in and on weekdays. Not really surprising, is it?

This information translates to promoting products: Unless the product happens to focus especially upon the type of people surfing the web on weekends or late at night you will want to time your promotions to those times of the week (and the day) that your target audience is online. And - avoid public holidays.

Please read Part 1 as well.

Technorati-Tags: affiliate programs,make money,monetize blog,blogging for money

8 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on Your Blog

2010-04-06T03:06:00.003+02:00

There are a number of very popular affiliate programs available to bloggers who are interested in monetizing their blog. Amazon Associates Program, Clickbank Affiliate Program, Commission Junction Affiliate Program and Linkshare are probably the most widely known. Today I’d like to give you a few tips that should help you get the best results out of any affiliate program that you choose to run with.

1. Consider Your Audience

This one is a given - but it is worth putting yourself in the shoes of your typical reader and consider what he or she might be looking for as they visit your blog. Are they shopping for specific products? Might they be interested in related products or accessories? What would entice them to purchase? Have your reader in mind rather than the product. If you take this advice by heart you will be doing your readers a favor as well as making a few dollars on the side.

2. Genuine Recommendations and Personal Endorsements Work Best

There are literally hundreds of thousands (perhaps even millions) of products and services for you to choose from to recommend to your blog’s readers but, unfortunately, making money from them is not as easy as randomly adding links to them from your blog. Your blog’s readers come back to your blog time and again because something about your writing resonates with them - they trust and respect you, and perhaps the quickest way to destroy this is to recommend that they buy products that cannot possibly benefit them.

So far, I have had the best results from affiliate programs whenever and wherever I give an open and honest appraisal of the product - including both its strenghts and its weaknesses. People want to know exactly what they are buying first, therefore you should tell them about what possible limitations a product might have - they will be grateful for your honesty and buy it anyway if it meets their particular need.

3. Only Link to Quality Products

We all like to make sure that we are getting the best value for our money - your readers are no different in this respect than anybody else and they are more likely to make a purchase if they can rely on you to find the best products for them. Choose products and companies with good reputations, quality sales pages and safe payment options. There is nothing worse than writing a glowing review of a product only to send your readers to a page that looks cheap and untrustworthy.

4. Contextual Deep Links Work Best

A while ago, when I started using the Amazon Associate Program on one of my blogs I naively thought that all I had to do was put an Amazon banner ad (linking to Amazon’s front page or – alternatively – to special offers) at the top of my blog. I assumed that my readers would see it and surf over to Amazon and buy up big - thereby making me rich and happy. Alas, nothing could have been further from reality.

That is the reason why I always stress that bloggers should learn a little bit from contextual advertising when it comes to affiliate programs. The secret of contextual ads like AdSense is that when visitors are reading a post on a particular topic on your blog they will be shown an advertisement for a product that is closely related to that topic so they are more likely to click it than if they saw an ad for something else. The same is true for all affiliate programs. A banner to a general page on every page on your site will not be anywhere near as effective as multiple links throughout your blog that advertise products that are relevant to readers reading a particular part of your blog.

So if you are writing a blog about digital cameras and have a review for a particular product - the most effective affiliate program that you could link to from within the content of that page would be one that sends your readers directly to a page selling that specific model of digital camera. This is how I use the Amazon program today. It is more work than AdSense-style contextual advertising because you’re not just putting one piece of code into a template but rather need to place individual links on many pages - but it is worth the effort.

5. Consider the Positioning of Links

The key factor in AdSense optimization is the positioning of ads. I keep telling fellow bloggers to position their ads in the hotspots on pages (like the top of a left hand side bar - or inside content - or at the end of posts above comments – directly below the header, etc). The same principles should be applied to affiliate advertising.

6. Traffic Levels are Important

While they are not the sole factor - traffic levels are obviously key when it comes to making money from almost any online activity. The more people see your carefully placed, relevant and well designed affiliate links the more likely it is that one of them will click on them and go on to make a purchase. So do not just work on your affiliate links - work on building a readership. Not just this, consider as well how you might direct traffic on your blog toward pages where people are more likely to see your affiliate links.

7. Diversify without Cluttering

Don’t put all your affiliate efforts into one basket. There are plenty of products out there to link to so there is no need to just work on one. But do not clutter up your blog with too many affiliate program links. If you do so you run the serious risk of diluting the effectiveness of your links and annoying your readership.

8. Transparency

Do not try to trick your readers into clicking links that could make you money. While it may not always be feasible to label each and every affiliate link I think at least some attempt should be made to let people know what type of link they are clicking on. Consistency is important with this so readers of your blog will always know what to expect. You could, for instance, put a note beside or under affiliate links to let readers know that this is what they are (unless the wording of a link makes it obvious that the reader will be taken to some sort of shop, ie a link my say ‘buy the XXX product’ or ‘get the latest product on XXX’). But the best and easiest way to go about this is to use side-wide diclaimers to inform your readers that you are using affiliate links.

Please read Part 2 as well.

Technorati-Tags: affiliate program,amazon,links,make money,monetize blog,product links,monetizing blog,endorsement,advertising

How to Find Suitable Affiliate Programs for Your Blog

2010-04-06T02:46:00.002+02:00

Blogs provide a lot of different opportunities for bloggers to earn money. Advertising revenue, direct sales as well as contextual links are some of the most popular money-makers. One of the best ways for you to earn money with a blog, however, is to find a suitable affiliate program. An affiliate program that fits the content of your blog has a far greater potential for earning you money than most of the other options.

How to find Suitable Affiliate Programs

1. Step 1

Identify categories of products relevant to the topic or niche of your blog. For instance, if you blog about photography look for anything a photographer could need. Seek out products like digital cameras, special lenses, lens cleaners, filters, tripods and books about photography.

2. Step 2

Check with your preferred product vendor to see if they have an affiliate program you can use on your blog or website. Many companies participate in affiliate programs, either directly to you or through affiliate websites like Commission Junction or Link Share.

3. Step 3

Choose products that are relevant to your blog's target demographic. Even if your blog is about parachuting and you can't find a good parachuting affiliate program, chances are you can find products that are relevant to your average reader based on their age, gender, hobbys.

4. Step 4

Re-evaluate the affiliate programs you employ on a regular basis. Some affiliate programs may end without notifying you, and you will end up with a dead link on your blog. Some affiliate programs will make you more money than others, too. Be prepared to make changes and find new affiliate programs for your blog if need should be.

Good luck!

Technorati-Tags: affiliate program,monetize blog,make money blogging,blogging for money

62 Ways To Get More Traffic To Your Blog - Part 3

2010-04-05T01:36:00.004+02:00

The third installment offers advice primarily to people who are willing to spend a little money to make their website or blog more widely known.

41. Post free classified ads on your niche topic, just google “your keyword" free ads site.

42. Make use of PPC (pay per click) search engine advertising as offered by Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, or even some social networking sites like Facebook.

43. Purchase misspellings or variations of your domain name.

44. Purchase text link ads on similar-themed sites or blogs.

45. Buy an expired domain name related to your niche that is already receiving a lot of traffic, redirect that traffic to your site.

46. Sell or place classified ads on eBay with a direct link to your blog (eBay allows a direct link to your blog or home page but not your product page).

47. Buy and use an easy to remember domain name that makes it instantly clear what your site is about, e.g. WeightLoss.com., carsales.com, etc.

48. Purchase a small advertising block on a popular blog or website.

49. Create your own Wikipedia page.

50. Start an affiliate program and let your affiliates send you visitors.

51. Work with a few joint venture partners to promote your blog.

52. Ask other bloggers and webmasters to review your products and send them a free sample of your product.

53. Create and sell a product with resell or giveaway rights and include a backlink to your blog.

54. Advertise your blog on other people´s “thank you” pages.

55. Create your own podcast or videocast.

56. Interview other (renowned) bloggers and ask them to send traffic to your blog or website.

57. Create blog themes (templates) and make them available for free download.

58. Use MyBlogLog to drive social traffic.

59. Join Yedda or a similar community and answer questions in your field of expertise. Add their widget to your blog or website and let people ask questions right on your site. (Questions asked on your site will be posted with a link back to your site.)

60. Add a backlink widget to your blog or website. By showing who is linking to you will increase their and your exposure and get more backlinks.

61. Sum up your blog or website on AboutUs.

62. If you happen to have more than one blog and are prepared to shell out some money you should check out Article Underground. They are not cheap ($ 97 per month, at the time of writing), but they provide you with 400 keyword phrase optimized articles each month and offer a traffic system that allows you to announce the URL´s of these articles. Again, this tip is aimed primarily at professional bloggers and people interested in marketing their business through blogs.

Please make sure to check out part 1 and part 2 as well.

Technorati-Tags: backlinks,pagerank,advertising,links,ads,seo,more traffic,free traffic,getting started

62 Ways To Get More Traffic To Your Blog - Part 2

2010-04-04T02:04:00.005+02:00

21. Get a Twitter account and let the community know about every new posting to your blog/additin to your website. Place a “Follow me on Twitter” widget on your blog/website.

22. This one is for the diligent among you. Give away a freebie ebook, report or e-course to encourage people to come and download (To make it easier, you can set up an opt-in form to build your list).

23. Create a free ebook (a “how to”-guide for example) and get it listed on “free ebook” sites.

24. Offer photos, graphics or banners to download for free. Use your web address as watermark (small and somewhere in a corner please). People love free stuff and tend to come back for more.

25. Use a real traffic exchange like EasyHits4U.

26. Have business cards printed with the address of your blog or website on them and distibute them freely.

27. Create a lens on Squidoo.com.

28. Create your own newsletter or ezine to send to subscribers.

29. Use an autoresponder or email marketing software to email your blog readers on new contents.

30. Use 3 way links ( a > b, b > c, c > a) to automate your link exchange with other related blogs / websites. If you have multiple websites or blogs yourself, send visitors from one to the other by posting related articles on different blogs. (Google may or may not search for and detect 3 way links. If you´re not sure about this, google “3 way links” and read current opinions on the subject.)

31. Look for blogs / websites that offer link exchanges.

32. Network with other people at seminars and other live events, promote your blog and tell them about its merits.

33. Review other people´s blog posts and link back to the original post.

34. Create an Amazon profile, submit reviews of books, movies and other products you have read, watched or used.

35. Get referrals from similar but non-competing blogs or websites.

36. Answer people’s questions on Yahoo Answers.

37. Submit your blog open blog directories like DMOZ.

38. Conduct and publish surveys regarding themes you write about in your blog.

39. Create an eyecatching sticker and stick it on your car's windscreen or bumper. Give stickers to your friend and relatives and ask them to do the same.

40. Review your own sites/blogs on review sites like Shvoong. Be sure to use a different penname from the one you chose for your blog(s) or website(s).

You have reached the end of part 2. You´ll find even more tips in part 1 and part 3.

Technorati-Tags: pagerank,seo,free traffic,more traffic,backlinks,advertisement,3 way links,ads

62 Ways to Get More Traffic To Your Blog - Part 1

2010-04-04T00:27:00.005+02:00

The following is part one of "61 Ways To Get More Traffic To Your Blog". In this series of posts I shall introduce you, dear reader to a number of easy ways to attract more traffic to your blog(s). most of them won´t cost you a penny. Without further ado, here is the first batch of tips:

1. Submit your blog to the major search engines.

2. Submit your blog to the 100’s of free blog directories, preferably those that do not require you to place a backlink on your blog.

3. Leave useful comments on other people’s blogs with a link back to your blog or website.

4. Submit some of the articles you write to article directories. Again, include a backlink to your blog or website.

5. Add RSS and Atom feeds to your blog and encourage your readers to subscribe to them. Don´t forget to submit the address of your feeds to blog directories.

6. Add an “Add This” or “Share This” button to your blog.

7. Optimize each page of your website/each blog post for a particular keyword or search phrase.

8. Participate in banner or link exchange programs (better suited for websites, where you can add a whole banner page).

9. Advertise your blog on free advertising sites such as CraigsList.org, FreeAds and so on.

10. Submit a press release to PRWeb.com. Unfortunately, rather expensive.

11. Buy a few backlinks for a fixed price (no pay per click).

12. Submit testimonials to product/service websites in exchange for a backlink to your blog.

13. Submit videos to platforms such as YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, Dailymotion and a host of others.

14. Include a backlink to your blog/website in your email signature, attach it to all the emails that you send. It’s a free and easy way to get a little more traffic.

15. Make a custom 404 error page for your blog redirecting people to your blog´s main page.

16. Join forums related to your niche. Participate in discussions and always include a link back to your blog in your contributions. Do not spam, write useful comments.

17. Submit articles to ezine publishers sites.

18. Write a controversial review on other people´s products and create a debate for it.

19. Submit your blog to every related niche directory you can find.

20. Create a profile on social bookmarking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Hi5.

This is the end of part one of "61 Ways To Get More Traffic To Your Blog".

Don´t miss part 2!

Technorati-Tags: pagerank,seo,backlinks,feeds,addthis,share this,free traffic,more traffic

The 10 Commandments of Marketing Your Site on Digg

2010-04-03T04:26:00.003+02:00

1. Never (ever!!) submit pages from your own sites. Never Digg anything from your own sites. This is the most important rule of all, for this it is on top of the list. If you plan on following just one rule on this list, this has to be it. It is single most important rule, and not following it will make yoou very unpopular with the guys at Digg.

2. Create a proper and complete profile with an image as well as links to your websites and profiles on all the other social networks you are registered at. Your profile is a very important part of your site activities. It allows people to get to know you a little better and maybe even identify with you and/or your ideas. The default image provided by Digg doesn't make a good impression on anyone. A properly filled out profile, on the other hand, invites social interaction. Digg is a social site, so it is very important to be social. Most of the traffic I get directly from Digg is people visiting my blogs and websites through links on my profile. (And it is probably the same for most everyone else.)

3. Avoid using Digg´s shout system whenever possible, and be careful what you share with the public via the Facebook connection. Even if you keep your shouts private, people and search engines can (and will) still see and find them. These shouts can hurt you. Some people as well as search engines may view them as a sort of spamming.

4. Take the time to make friends with your Digg contacts on other social sites that offer a private message system in which private messages are never made public and accessible to search engines and strangers. Or better still, use instant messaging and email.

5. Invite your Digg friends to submit your content for you, and do not use the same person too frequently…get a rotary system going. (Make use of the private message system on other sites to suggest what to submit and get Dugg) Not every page on your site is a worthy candidate for submission. Be selective and only offer them links to the best content you have on your website or blog. Be very critical of your own work. With time, you will know what will have mass appeal and what won't. Don't act like you are naïve or stupid. Don't submit things that will most likely only get a few Diggs. Submitting your content to Digg and getting a low number of Diggs will hurt the reputation of your website or blog in the long run. Google rates your content in part by the number of Diggs it receives. So, choose wisely.

6. Ask real life friends who are also members of Digg to submit and/or Digg your stuff. (Same thing…contact them on other sites or via email) Make 100% sure those friends are not connected to your Digg profile in any way.

7. Digg a huge variety of content submitted by others (and not just by your friends), from the upcoming section, but don’t Digg anything lame. Always think mass appeal. Ask yourself: "What would the majority of people assume about me if they were to see this in my Digg history?" If it's not something good, just don't Digg it, even if you really like it.

8. Make sure you comment and say something intelligent and useful that will not get voted down on at least 50% of what you Digg. Commenting and interacting with others is the essence of being social. You have to be social on a social network, or it just won't work. You should try to be among the first to comment on new stuff as frequently as possible, and try not to give the impression that you are some sort of idiot. Also, vote up intelligent comments that you like, made by others. The more frequently you are amongst the early commenters with something intelligent to say, and the more social you are, the more likely it will be that you will catch the eye of more powerful Diggers who like you for what you have to say as well as what you Digg, and they will be more inclined to check out the other things you Digg, and in time possibly Digg things that you Digg. More powerful Diggers have the crowd appeal that you don’t have (for now). Their followers are what you are after, and the only way to get to them is through those powerful Diggers.

9. Do not try to friend the top Diggers until you have established a very strong profile and have a lot of experience. They are not going to friend you back if they don't know who you are and have never seen you around the site. It would be best to wait for them to friend you, first.

10. Never friend anyone on Digg who breaks one or more of the above rules. Just remember the old saying "Birds of a feather flock together". Don't become "guilty by association". Anyone who breaks the above rules is a poor quality Digger and his or her activities can and will get you marked as a spammer or poor quality Digger yourself, which will result in your account getting banned or, if you´re lucky, people just not Digging your stuff. If that happens, then you will be of no further use to your mutual Digg friends, and they will not be willing to help you that much. They may even stop following you altogether. Leave the poor quality Diggers who break the above rules as just followers and do not friend them. Don’t follow them - or you will be following them to failure. Associate yourself only with responsible and honest Diggers.

Now, what kinds of things should you submit and Digg besides the obvious stuff that has mass appeal and quality content from your friends? Submit and Digg high quality pages that link to yours. Your aim should be indirect traffic coming from those sites to yours and not from Digg to yours. This is one easy way how you can reward people who are kind enough to write about you. You give those pages more traffic and a boost in pagerank and have more links pointing to you in the search engines´ top 10 results.

Your goal is not to get a lot of traffic from Digg. The goal is not to increase the pagerank of your own site(s) (this will happen anyway if you follow these suggestions). The goal is not for your site to make the front page of Digg.

Your main goal is to take over the entire front page of the search engine results so all links will point to you, directly or indirectly, when someone searches for something.
Most people never go to page 2 of the results. They usually find what they are looking for on page 1. If every article on page 1 sends them to you, you WIN BIG TIME, even if your site happens to be buried on page 8 or 10 of the search results, which it will not be if you are paying attention and learning from what you read here.

The higher the page rank of the sites that link to you, the higher your page rank will be. Why have a bunch of PageRank 0 sites linking to you when you can actively do something about it and help promote them to PR3 or higher? This is one of the few cases where being nice can really pay off. Being nice can (and in time will) help you to get right to the top.

Technorati-Tags: digg,facebook,backlinks,links,pagerank,social network,generate traffic,friends

10 Reasons for Becoming an Amazon Associate

2010-04-03T02:06:00.003+02:00

First, the single best reason for not becoming an Amazon Associate: Amazon and its products do not ‘fit’ with your blog or website. If you feel that way, no problem. There are hosts of affiliate programs available, so you will certainly be able to find one that fits better with the content of your blog or website than Amazon.

However, the Amazon Associates Program is well worth considering for most bloggers. I use it on some of my blogs, and it has provided me with a reliable income stream so far - not my biggest, but definitely more than the ‘pennies and dimes’ that some say it has the potential to earn.

Following are some of the best reasons for becoming an Amazon Associate:

1. Amazon is a widely recognized and trusted brand – Amazon is frequently on top of the list of online stores that people make purchases from ans one of the most popular shopping destinations worldwide. Readers know Amazon, are familiar with it ans many are already customers - they trust it and do spend significant money there.

2. Commissions – Some may not be satisfied with a 4% commission. They are right in some ways, for 4% is not that much when you are selling a $10 book or DVD - however when you’re selling a $2000 Camera or a $3,500 Lawn Tractor (I know a guy who does quite well out of ride on mowers and tractors) it certainly adds up. But not just that, the 4% rate is their base rate for general products. Unfortunately it is as high as it goes on consumer electronics - however on most other products there is a sliding scale where depending on the number of items you sell your referral fee will go up to 8.50%. Sell more than 6 items in a month and your commission rises to 6% - sell over 630 and you’re up to 8% .. See for yourself:

3. People tend to buy more than one item - The great thing about Amazon is that you do not just earn a commission on the product that you direct people to, but on anything that they buy once they are at Amazon. The sales of other products that people make once they get to Amazon are most of the time much greater than the sales of the actual product you link to – and you will earn a commission on each one of them. You´ll be pleasantly surprised by this passive income. You earn a commission on anything that a person buys within a couple of hours of you sending them to Amazon (if they do not leave the shop´s site).

4. It is easy to integrate - There are more and more plugins and tools that offer Amazon Affiliate integration built to help you place links in your blog posts with the greatest of ease. Ecto for Mac has a tool that searches for products and lets you link them in with just a couple of clicks. Wordpress has some nice plugins also. Affiliate links usually take just seconds to integrate.

5. Mulktiple payment options - Amazon offers a number of payment options to its affiliates. One of the things that I especially like is that they give you the option to be paid in products instead of cash. They also send out checks or deposit transferal fees directly into your bank account.

6. Small payments do add up – In the early days of making money from blogs most bloggers do not have the luxury of picking and choosing their income streams as much as they (hopefully) do later on. They need to earn money somewhere and even the small amounts that the Amazon Associates Program brings in at the beginning are better than nothing. Over time these payments will begin to add up for sure. In the early days you probably won´t earn enough to make the minimum payment amount every month and will have to wait a few months before getting paid - but those first pay outs will be milestones to be duly celebrated.

7. It is an investment that matures over time – It is a good approach to treat the Amazon Associates Program a little like a savings account or a long-term investment that you put a little into each week and which matures in its earnings over time. What does this mean? I add links to Amazon over time and find that in doing so I am steadily creating more and more doorways into the Amazon online store. With every link I add I increase the chances of sending someone to Amazon and seeing returns on those visits.

8. The holidays are pay time - While you will be making money as an Amazon Associate year in, year out it is worth noting that things generally fire up in the lead up to Christmas and the holiday season. Over the years I have noticed significant jumps in Amazon earnings in December (as much as 150%). The key to achieving this is to plan ahead (make sure your links are all up to date a couple of months beforehand) and run a couple of Christmas specific posts in the lead up to the Holiday rush (start to prepare as early as September/October).

9. Wide array of products - What attracted me to using Amazon’s Associate program in the first place was the huge variety of products that they have on offer. This is a great thing if you’re niche is narrow or quite obscure, as a lot of bloggers have trouble finding affiliate programs to match their blog’s focus. Some widely read blogs do have an array of options for affiliate programs (that´s why you generally won´t find a lot of Amazon links on them), but many bloggers simply do not have the luxury of being able to choose high paying affiliate programs because they simply don’t relate to the topics of their blog. In these cases Amazon becomes one of the most attractive options.

10. Amazon is an easy way into the world of affiliate programs – If you are not sure about affiliate programs and just want to try one out, then Amazon´s Associate program is a good starting point. They provide you with everything you need to get started, they offer instructions and help and, most importantly, are a reliable partner. I started out with Amazon – and I am glad I did, because this first positive experience encouraged me to search for other affiliate programs and helped me a lot on my way to becoming a professional blogger.

So is the Amazon Associate Program for you?

You will have to answer that question for yourself - I won’t pretend that it works brilliantly on every blog, but I know quite a few bloggers who make significant earnings from the program. Blogs with a strong focus on products tend to do quite well through the program if links to Amazon are well integrated into posts (see some of my other posts for tips). Moderation in using the program is advisable - don’t place them in every post you write unless they are relevant. Links placed in genuinely helpful reviews obviously do better than links and banners in sidebars.

Good luck!

Related Article:

How to Become an Amazon Associate

Technorati-Tags: amazon,affiliate program,amazon associates,links,montezing blog,make money,commission,referral fee

How to Become an Amazon Associate

2010-04-03T01:52:00.002+02:00

Becoming an Amazon associate is a very fast and easy as well as convenient way for you make money off your blog or website by allowing your visitors to order specific products from Amazon.com in exchange for a referral fee.

Here is how:

1. If you want to become an Amazon Associate, you must have a functional blog or website.

2. Go to the Amazon.com site and click on the "Join Associates" link at the bottom of the home page.

3. Fill out the online application to become an Amazon associate. Provide your blog or site address and its purpose, contact name, etc.

4. When you are done, submit the application and wait for Amazon´s response. They will send you an e-mail (usually within 24 hours), either confirming or denying your request.

5. If your request is approved, Amazon will then provide you with the necessary links to place on your blog or website so that your visitors can start ordering products from Amazon´s huge inventory.

6. Now it is time to choose the products you would like to offer to the visitors to your blog or website from Amazon's inventory .

7. Submit the information about your choices to Amazon, place the links you get from Amazon on your homepage and you are ready to reap affiliate rewards! (you can also choose from a number of widgets if you think that would work or look better on your site).

8. Amazon will send you regular reports of activity from your blog or website. Retain these e-mails to track your affiliate earnings.

Good Luck!

Tips & Warnings

You can also make money by referring visitors to buy books of their own choosing at Amazon.
If you have any difficulties, ask the support staff at Amazon to help you.
You do not receive a referral fee for every product your customers purchase from Amazon - only for those products which you have chosen as recommended. (If you use widgets, then you receive a referral fee for products or product categories appearing in them).
If you want to maximize your earnings choose products or categories of products that sell in reasonable quantities and are in a higher price range, like Ipods, digital cameras, etc. (The 15% referral fee is for products from Endless.com only).
If visitors referred through your blog or website do not make a purchase within a couple of hours, you will not get a referral fee.
If people visiting the Amazon store via your site have chosen to disable cookies in their browser you WILL NOT RECEIVE A REFERRAL FEE.

P.S.: If you have a website you can embed an aStore, a self-contained online store, within the site. There you can feature any Amazon products you like. This is probably the best choice if you plan on making serious money as an Amazon associate.

Technorati-Tags: amazon,amazon associates,links,widget,monetize blog,montezing website,make money with blog