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By admin On April 19, 20091 CommentMonetizing Your Blog by Robert Hutton
What steps can a blogger take to actually turn their blog into a real money maker.
1) The easiest method is to become an Affiliate of a program or product. The advantage of this is enormous. You don’t need to make the product. You don’t need to stock the product. You don’t always have to ship the product if it can be downloaded to your computer. This is especially true with information products. You don’t need to take care of customer service since the merchant will have that responsibility.
Affiliate marketing means you will get a commission for every product sold that you promote. This usually ranges from 50% to 75% in most cases. A great deal since you spent no money developing the product itself. The more popular Affiliate programs are Clickbank, Amazon.com, eBay, Commission Junction, Shareasale, ClixGalore, Performics, HD Publishing, Affiliate Future US, UK and Euro, Implix, Panthera Network and Market Health.
2) If your blog is getting a high number of traffic views you will get offers from Major Companies to advertise on your blog. You can charge them a fixed dollar amount depending on the size of their banner or promotional Video.
3) When you start out commercializing your blog, you can put your own banners, text links and ads to promote your own Affiliate programs. If viewers click on your ad and buy, you get a commission.
4) Adsense is a major income producing way of getting revenue from Google. Google will put ads on your site or blog and when viewers click on the ad you will get paid whether they buy or not.
5) Adwords is another Google product. This is better known as PPC ( Pay Per Click). You advertise on Google about your site or other merchant’s sites and make money when sales are made. Be careful, as it can be costly if you don’t do your research.
6) How about setting up a Review site? This is a sure money maker. Generally, readers want to know more about a product before they make up their mind to purchase. A good review, NOT a sales page, will convert many more sales. Tell the good and bad points. Be honest, reviewers will know.
7) Give away some Free items and build up your opt-in contact list at the same time. You can upsell them later on your products.
Find a niche you like. Chances are you can build a better website or do a better job promoting it. Do the research on your competitor and make your site more enticing.
9) Use RSS ( Really Simple Syndication) feeds to lure traffic and other plugins that are available. Use Comments on other blogs and join the forums to get a feel of what people are talking about and what their needs are.
The money is there, go grab your share.
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By admin On June 25, 2009
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I feel there are so many angles from which I could make a review of Andrew Hansen’s new blogging software Firepow.
I thought I might focus here on one particular element of the program which I consider to be particularly intregal to the success of a blogger, namely, the ability to drive traffic to their blog.
If you’ve ever started a blog, or any form of website trying to earn some cash, you’ll know it’s not exactly a case of “if you build it they will come”.
Even a great blog doesn’t guarantee traffic and a major part of a bloggers focus has to be spreading the word about their blog in a variety of ways in order to continually increase traffic and profits.
Sure, I could have talked about the blog creation and management aspects of Firepow, which I know so many new online marketers and bloggers will find so valuable. But for me, I’m more concerned about how the program can help a user increase traffic and make more money.
Anyway, that said - I thought I’d make a brief mention of some such features of the program in order to open your eyes to the ways this program might be as much a benefit to you as I predict it will be for me.
The first thing I like, or perhaps category of thing I like, is the ability the user has to easily generate backlinks to their blog once it’s up and running.
When you start a new blog, you want enough search engine spider juice to your site to have it able to rank well for long tail uncompetitive keywords, purely by on page optimization, within a few days of being created.
In addition to giving you powerful on page optimization capabilities (like allowing you to set the meta data AND h1h2 tag data for every post or page), it lets you quickly generate the spider juice you need to get indexed and potentially ranking for an uncompetitive term.
For example, as soon as your site is created, you can click a button to have your RSS feed submitted to a bunch of RSS directories. You’ll get some valuable link backs, plus some great spider activity right off the bat. Not to mention the ping from your post.
Furthermore, if you choose to, you could use a tool called BlogLove Builder, to quickly and easily implement a track back to a popular blog post within your own blogs first post - and instantly generate more link juice, and even a few visitors right from the get go too!
Furthermore, if you focus on search engine traffic you’ll know about the importance of link building in locking in long term rankings. Initial spider juice can get you a quick ranking, but for a LASTING ranking, you need an assortment of relevant quality backlinks establishing your page as an authority on that keyword.
Firepow has that more than covered, giving you the ability to obtain links from social networks, blog comments, and in content links from Firepow’s own network of high PageRank blog sites as well.
I stress that even what I’ve mentioned here isn’t close to all of the tools Firepow gives you to drive traffic to your site. And it’s for that reason among many that ‘m recommending all my blog readers to check it out for themselves.
Here’s the link:
http://tinyurl.com/l57e9e
By admin On May 15, 2009
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Commercial Blogging Tips
Commercial Blogging? I can make money you say? Blogs are a way of life on the internet these days, but the majority of bloggers are only announcing themselves, socializing with their friends, or using their blogs to make political opinions. Little do they realize that a blog can be utilized in wonderful ways to enhance their lifestyle by making a good living online.
There are many internet marketers who have done just that. The money is out there and it’s available to anyone who knows how to cultivate it. The internet gurus call it Monetizing your blog. Blogs can look just like a website with all the bells and whistles. However there are pitfalls you need to be aware of if you are going to be successful.
1) The idea of having a “pretty blog” with plenty of graphics is not necessarily a good thing. Too many such designs will slow down the loading time for the viewer and chances are the prospect will click off of your blog and just move on. Patience is NOT a virtue on the internet.
2) The simpler the better. Remember the saying KISS, (“Keep It Simple Stupid”)? This applies big time to blogs. Too much crowding of columns and menu bars and side bars can take away the concentration of the viewers. Confusion results and then frustration follows. You have lost this potential customer.
3) Take care of the fonts you use. Make sure they show up in a few different browsers the same way. Fancy fonts are basically a turn-off. Keep the font looking business like. Ariel, Courier, Times, Verdana, Calibri are easy to read.
4) So many Widgets and not enough time. There are a hundred different widgets and only a few are needed on any website or blog. Can you manage them all? They become clutter and time wasters and are basically unsupervised.
5) Search engines like Google and Yahoo make an effort to collect information from your blog to determine how useful it is to their readers. One of the ways they determine this is to check the Links from other websites and blogs to your blog. The idea is to see how popular your blog is becoming with outside parties. The more links the better. However, a major mistake many bloggers make, is they are not careful with the links. Many links are broken or worse yet misspelled and end up going nowhere.
6) Content is king. This is the heart and soul of all blogs and websites. High rankings can be achieved over time but the content must stay focused. Google’s spiders and robots will read every word and if the content stays on the same subject you will perform better than the majority of bloggers and get more traffic which leads to potentially more sales.
7) A great way to monetize your blog is to use Video and Audio files. Again the Audio needs to be clear and the Video look professional. Sites like You Tube can skyrocket your rankings if done properly.
Keywords are a vital aspect of all information written. This tells the search engines where to go when someone types in a keyword to search for their product or information. Don’t overload the keyword as it will attract the wrong message to Google and you will be penalized for spamming.
9) It is better to have a few short posts than one so long the viewer will get tired of reading it. Say what you want as soon as possible. A reader’s attention span is not long.
10) Do not use duplicate content. You must always be aware of Copyright laws and be careful not to infringe on anyone’s idea or product unlawfully.
11) Coordinate your merchant’s banners, pictures, videos so they express the product you are promoting. The best method for getting readers interested in your product is to Pre-sell the idea. Do not make your blog look like a sales page with links going to all kinds of landing pages with an order form. Prospects do not like to be pressured into buying. It is better to use the soft approach and let them decide after you review the product.
I hope these tips help you. You will find that the money will come if you adhere to the rules and keep focused.
You can read more about Mr. Hutton at: Robert Hutton and also here
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My name is Robert Hutton and thanks for joining me here. We buy every product and test them before we decide. 