Make Money Blogging

How to Add Adsense Above the Post Title in Blogger

2008-12-24T09:51:00.010-06:00

Here is a quick tutorial showing you how to add an Adsense block to your blogger blog above the Post title. I have been asked this question frequently as I do this on my main Make Money blog. The reason for doing this is not so obvious - it really comes down to the fact that I have found much higher CTR (click thru rate) with the ads placed above the title rather than the more common position below the title.

The process involves adding "Add a Gadget" boxes to your existing template. Please see How to Add a Page Element (Gadget) to Blogger Header

Rather than re-hashing the steps just follow the instructions in the linked post. This will allow you to add the necessary boxes for adding gadgets above the Post box as well as above the whole main wrapper and the header. See the image above.

Once you have added these boxes you can now add adsense (or anything else you like) above the post title by adding the adsense script in the box above the Post.

I should mention that I never use the Blogger "Add Adsense" gadget. This does not allow you to use channels and is restricting. I always set up my ads in Google Adsense Set Up and then copy/paste the code directly into the "Add a Gadget" box on Blogger. Just select "add HTML/JavaScript" from the options - insert the Adsense code supplied by Google and you are done.

Cheers

Griz

How to Remove the Blogger Navbar

2008-12-11T12:43:00.008-06:00

Removing Blogger's Navbar

I have been asked this question a lot. How do you remove the ugly looking Blogger NavBar from the top of the blog?

It is really simple to do - takes less than a minute.

Start your timer and here we go...

Go to Layout and hit the Edit HTML tab

You will see a screen showing the top of your Blogger Template similar to that shown below.

Just add the text exactly as shown in the circle outlined in the screenshot.

Click image to enlarge

And you are done - I told you it was quick!

If you want the NavBar back - just remove the code.

Cheers,

Griz

Update: An even better option.

Denise was kind enough to point me to this post for a better script that allows you to show or hide the bar without having to keep adding or removing the code.

see How to Hide Blogger NavBar

To see how it works just click the "Show/Hide Navigation" link at the top of the sidebar.

How to Add a Favicon to Blogger

2008-10-13T11:05:00.012-05:00

Favicons on Blogger

This post will show you how to add a favicon to your Blogger blogs.

What is a favicon?

Let me show you.

A favicon is simply a little mini graphic that appears in the tab box of your browser. Does it help you in regards to SEO? Nope but it does make that ugly Blogger image disappear and gives your blog a little uniqueness.

Adding a favicon is actually really simple and any technically challenged person can do it in a matter of a few minutes.

The first thing you will need is a picture to be used and have it uploaded on your computer. Keep the photo under 1MB in size.

Next go to this site. Free Favicon Generator

You will see the tool shown in the image below. (click all images to enlarge)

Hit the browse button and find the photo you want used stored on your computer.

Once you have selected the desired photo just click the upload button. This will create and store a .ico photo on the server used by the tool. An .ico extension is for windows icon.

You will now see the following screen.

Just cut and paste the code in the lower box into your Blogger Template.

In Blogger;

Go to Layout - Edit HTML - Expand Widget Template - You will see a version of the screen below.

Insert code just above the < /head > tag, click Save Template and you are done. Your photo will now show up in the tab on your browser when your site is loaded.

Cheers

Griz

How to Track your Website Stats

2008-09-04T18:05:00.027-05:00

Website Stat Tracking Software - Statcounter.com

How to install Statcounter on Blogger

I use frequent screenshots on my make money online blog and have been asked numerous times how I get the stats that I show.

This is a simple process that involves finding a stat package you like and then inserting the code into your blog. In my case I really like Statcounter.com and recommend that you use their tracking system as well. It is a free package and is easy to use.

Register at Statcounter.com

Once you have registered simply log on and "Add a new Project" under the "My Projects" menu.

Just follow the suggestions in the next screenshot below.

Click image to enlarge.

Hit Next and the following screen should appear if you created your project correctly.

Click the "Configure & Install Code" button.

This page will appear. You can now decide what kind of button you want on your blog or you can choose to make your visit counter invisible. I usually don't show my counter.

If you choose to use an invisible counter then you will skip several of the following steps when you hit the next button. (Go to the step in which you choose your blogging platform below)

If you wish to show your counter on your blog then hit Next and choose between showing "Unique Visits" or "Total Pageloads". Select "Unique" for more accurate stats.

Then choose the type of image you want shown.

Pick the color and font size for the Counter image.

Choose the blog platform you use like "Blogger" or "Wordpress" and you will get a code to install on your blog.

Highlight the code and then cut and paste it into your blog. In my example the code looks like this.

How to Add Statcounter Code to Blogger Blogs

Note: the most recent Blogger update changed the term "Add Page Element" to the current term "Add Gadgets".

Open "Page Elements" in Blogger "Layout".

You will get different stats depending on where you place the code on your page. I have noticed a considerable difference between the number of visitors tracked when the code is at the bottom of the blog. There are always less visitors than when the code is placed on top of the site. For this reason I usually insert the code in the "Add a Gadget" box located above the "Header" Box.

If your template doesn't show this box you can add it by following the step by step instructions here. How to Add Page Elements to Blogger Header (Remember that page elements are now called Gadgets)

Choose HTML/Javascript from the menu inside the Add a Gadget box.

Simply paste the Statcounter code into the content area and click save.

And that is it. You are done.

To see your stats simply log in to statcounter and you will see a list of all the sites you have installed statcounter on. Just pick the site and browse through the various stats offered.

This shows the Summary stats for one of my sites. You can pick various stats from the menu on the left hand column.

Here are the keywords used to find my new make money online blog.

If I click on the keyword link in the stats for "make money with Grizzly" I can see where I rank for the term in the serp's. (Search Engine Results Pages)

And that is how you track the visitors coming to your blog.

Cheers,

Griz

How to Verify your Site to Google

2008-07-19T21:55:00.007-05:00

These directions are for people using a self hosted blog or website. These directions are not for those using Blogger blogs but I can do a post about verifying a blogger blog on Google if requested.

A friend is having trouble verifying his wordpress blog and the simplest way to help him is to just show him.

If you have a self hosted site then this is the fastest and easiest method for verifying your ownership to Google. You have two choices for verification; add a Meta Tag to your site or add a html file. Adding the html file is easier as you don't have to understand code - you just have to know how to upload a file.

Example of a Meta Tag

Example of a html file

How to Verify your site using a html file.

Please click images to enlarge and read the directions. Just follow these steps and your site will be verified in a few minutes.

Cheers,

Griz

How to Remove Date and Author on Blogger Posts

2008-07-16T21:43:00.006-05:00

Just a quick one here. I get asked this a lot - "How can I get rid of the date on my Blogger posts?" and equally "How can I remove my name from Blogger posts".

Both of these tasks can be done at the same time and is simple to do.

Login to Layout and Page Elements.

The Blog Posts Edit button will bring up the following screen. Just select the items you wish to show on your posts by checking the boxes.

I turned off several items and now the post looks like this...

And that is all there is too it.

Cheers

Griz

Privacy Policy

2008-07-16T21:03:00.002-05:00

Update April 2009 - Privacy Policy

This website/blog uses third-party advertising companies to serve ads when visiting this site. These third parties may collect and use information (but not your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, you can visit Google's Advertising and Privacy page.

If you wish to opt out of Advertising companies tracking and tailoring advertisements to your surfing patterns you may do so at Network Advertising Initiative.

Google uses the Doubleclick DART cookie to serve ads across it's Adsense network and you can get further information regarding the DART cookie at Doubleclick as well as opt out options at Google's Privacy Center

Privacy

I respect your privacy and I am committed to safeguarding your privacy while online at this site beginner-blogger-basics.blogspot.com The following discloses how I gather and disseminate information for this Blog.

RSS Feeds and Email Updates

If a user wishes to subscribe to my RSS Feeds or Email Updates (powered by Feedburner), I ask for contact information such as name and email address. Users may opt-out of these communications at any time. Your personal information will never be sold or given to a third party. (You will never be spammed by me - ever)

Log Files and Stats

Like most blogging platforms I use log files, in this case Statcounter. This stores information such as internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring, exit and visited pages, platform used, date/time stamp, track user’s movement in the whole, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses etc. are not linked to personally identifiable information.

Cookies

A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user’s computer tied to information about the user. This blog doesn't use cookies. However, some of my business partners use cookies on this site (for example - advertisers). I can't access or control these cookies once the advertisers have set them.

Links

This Blog contains links to other sites. Please be aware that I am not responsible for the privacy practices of these other sites. I suggest my users to be aware of this when they leave this blog and to read the privacy statements of each and every site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this Blog.

Advertisers

I use outside ad companies to display ads on this blog. These ads may contain cookies and are collected by the advertising companies and I do not have access to this information. I work with the following advertising companies: Google Adsense, ROI Rocket, Project Payday. Please check the advertisers websites for respective privacy policies.

Contact Information

If you have any questions or concerns please contact Grizzly Brears at brears@mts.net. This privacy policy updated March 2008

How to Add a No-Follow Tag to Your Links

2008-07-14T08:47:00.017-05:00

Create No-Follow Links, Target Blank Links, Hypertext Links and Quick Links on Blogger

Here is a quick demonstartion of how to add the rel="nofollow" tag to your outbound links. This tag should be added to any links you have on your page that points elsewhere and where you don't want to send any Google juice (pagerank). There are many instances when you don't want to pass Pagerank to other sites; the more links you have passing juice the less authority each link gets. If you assume that you have a total of 1 unit of juice to give and send out 100 links then each link will only have 1/100 of the juice available. If you only send out 1 link then that link will be 100% juice. Keep in mind that the less you link out the better so don't blead excess link juice.

If you are promoting affiliate products (Banners or Text ads) then use the no-follow tag - why give them PR?

If you are selling advertising on your site you must use the no-follow tag - Google does not allow you to sell PR so never put paid links on site without the tag. Google will strip you of your own PR if they catch you selling links without the no-follow attribute.

If you have navigation links to pages like "About", "Contact Us" etc then don't waste juice on these links - use the no-follow.

If you write posts and link elsewhere then decide whether you wish to pass juice on to the sites you link to. Some you will (friends who you wish to help) and some you won't.

How to create a no-follow Link

Here is a standard hypertext link. (Click Image to Enlarge)

and this is what it looks like when the code is added to your blog.

Make Money for Beginners

There are several things we can do to a standard hypertext link;

We can make the Anchor text more useful by changing the keywords to be relevant to the site we are linking to. This is for sending do-follow links to sites that you want to help out. In this case my other site will benefit more if I use "make money online" in the anchor text as that is a term I want to rank well for in the search engines. (Click to Enlarge)

And the result looks like this;

Make Money Online

You will notice that both hypertext links above will take you to the same place - the home page of my MMO blog when clicked. The difference is that Google will count the link as a vote for "make money for beginners" in the first link and count the link as a vote for "make money online" in the second link. Both links pass pagerank to the other blog. The "vote" means that Google will rank me in the serp's (the search engine results pages) for whatever terms are used in the anchor text. I will get ranked for both terms thanks to these two links. The more sites linking to me using these terms the higher I will rank in the serp's. Sites linking to me with higher PR (pagerank) will boost me higher in the rankings.

Now let's say we are promoting a product with an affiliate link. I will use a real example. I am currently promoting a program looking for new publishers in order to give away free magazines among other things. The program will pay me for every free magazine I give away. For the month of July 2008 they will also give $50 to every site that promotes their service. The program is called RevResponse.

In this case I want to link to the site with my affiliate link but I do not want to send them any juice or pagerank.

I do this by adding a no-follow tag to the hypertext link - like so... (Click to Enlarge)

And this is what the link looks like. If you aren't using the Search Status plug in for Firefox then you will see what looks like a normal link - you can't tell if it is a no-follow link or not. If you install the plug in from Search Status then you will see a pink box around all no-follow links.

RevResponse

How to Create a Hypertext Link Quickly on Blogger

1) Highlight the word or words you want in the anchor text.

2) Click the "Link Icon" in the editor.

3) Copy/Paste the url for the site you are linking to in the pop up box that appears.

4) Click OK and the link is created.

5) You will have to do a quick edit on the link if you want it no-followed.

See the screenshots below - click to enlarge.

If you want the hypertext link to open in a new tab then you can add another tag to the link - target="_blank" This is useful if I don't want people leaving my page when they click a link - like the RevResponse link. To do this just add the target="_blank" tag to the code.

Here is the new link to Revresponse - you will find the link above opens in this tab and the link below will open in a new tab.

RevResponse

And that is all there is to creating Hypertext Links.

Cheers,

Griz

How to Add Page Elements to Blogger Header

2008-04-01T16:32:00.009-05:00

Adding page Elements to Blogger Blogs

When you create a Blogger Blog the template comes with a pre-defined number of page elements. If you would like to increase the number the following step by step tutorial will show you how. This lesson will deal with adding more Page Elements to the Header section of your Blogger Template.

Update Oct 2008 - Since this post was written Blogger has changed the name "Element" to "Widget". Don't be confused as "widget" is the same thing as "element".

Always download a backup before making changes.

The screenshot below shows a standard Blogger Minima Template.

Click all images to enlarge.

As you can see there is only one element available for the Header section on top.

This is how you can add more.

Under "layout" click "Edit HTML".

Click the "Expand Widget Template" Box.

Scroll down until you come to the section that looks like this;

As you can see the "maxwidget" is set to 1 - this means that there is only one widget (element) available for use in the Header. You can change this to whatever amount you like. I am going to change it to 3.

After making the change be sure to change the "showaddelement" to "yes" so that you will see the option to add another element on the "layout" page.

Click "Save Template" and you are done.

Your "Layout" - "Page Elements" page should now look like this.

And that is how you can add or modify the page elements in Blogger. I will show you how to do this with the other sections in future posts but you may want to try it on your own. The process is the same for all the sections - Main Wrapper, Sidebar Wrapper and Footer.

Cheers,

Griz

How to Change the Width of Blogger Blogs

2008-03-31T08:30:00.013-05:00

Modifying the Width of Your Blogger Blog

Here is a quick step by step tutorial on how to change the width of your Blogger Blog.

I have provided screenshots of each step - just follow along and you shouldn't have any problems.

Before you start create a backup of your current blog just in case there is a problem.

I will show you how to change the standard template so that the width is the same as this blog. This basically entails 4 things. First you increase the width of the Outer Wrapper and then you increase the width of the Header and then the two columns inside the outer wrapper. This would be the Post column and then the Sidebar column. Lastly you increase the width of your Footer.

You can click on all images to enlarge them.

Step One

Open "Layout" and choose the "Edit HTML" option.

Note: I am using the Minima Template for this demonstration - if you have a different template just find the appropriate section - the steps are the same.

Step Two

Scroll down to the Header section and change the Header Wrapper width to 820px

Step Three

Scroll down to the Outer Wrapper section and change the width to 850px

Step Four

Change the Outer Wrapper "Text-Align" to "left"

Step Five

Change the Main Wrapper width to 550px - this is located right below the Outer Wrapper section. The Main Wrapper is your Post Column.

Step Six

Change the Main Wrapper "float" to "left".

Step Seven

Change the Sidebar Wrapper width to 270px. The Sidebar Wrapper is located right below the Main Wrapper.

Step Eight

Change the Sidebar Wrapper "float" to "right".

Step Nine

Scroll down to the Footer section and change the width to 850px.

Click "Save Template" and you are done.

This is what you have just done;

You widened the size of your usable blog space to 850px. ( The Outer Wrapper )

Inside the Outer Wrapper you have changed the width of the Three Sections that make up your blog.

1) The Header section - 820px

2) The Main Wrapper section which consists of your two columns;

- The Post Column - 550px
- The Sidebar column - 270px

3) The Footer section - 850px

You will notice the Header section is 30px less than the Outer Wrapper.

The two columns add up to 820px - also 30px less than the Outer Wrapper.

I have made the Footer the same size as the Outer Wrapper.

You can play with different widths but be sure that none of the other wrappers add up to more pixels than what you set the Outer Wrapper at. Your two columns should be at least 30px less than the Outer Wrapper so that they have a space between the two columns. The Header should be a little less as you don't want it bleeding right to the edge. (It just looks better) The Footer can be the same width as the Outer Wrapper.

Cheers,

Griz

Why you Should Conceal Affiliate URLs - and How

2007-09-02T18:01:00.001-05:00

It's a proven fact that many customers will not click on an affiliate URL at your site.

Maybe they resent seeing commission paid to an affiliate, maybe they feel less security when buying from an affiliate.

So, suppose they see a link looking like this in the browser status bar

http://www.abc.com/123

where '123' is your affiliate code.

They may decide to bypass the affiliate code and just type in the home page URL

http://www.abc.com

And that means you lose out on the commission.

Here is how to conceal not only the affiliate code but anything about that URL which may indicate it is an affiliate link. Use some Javascript.

< a href="http://......"
onmouseover=
"window.status='ABC';
return true;"
onmouseout=
"window.status=' ';
return true;" >

(remove the spaces after the first tag "<" and before the last tag ">")

Then 'ABC' will show in the browser status bar instead of the URL.

If you want to learn more Javascript tips and tricks see the ebook

Javascript Magic

How to Blog - August Update

2007-08-10T11:11:00.000-05:00

hawthorn said...

Hi

I dont know who you are, and just got here from a link somewhere on or from Whydowork site, but I have to say Ive just partially read your first lesson on creating a blog and have to compliment you on its simplicity and clarity. i have a blog from which ive made an amazing €1.03 !! But I just threw it together, and Im now going to read carefully your first 3 lessons and amend it, or even start a new one! Will there be more lessons?
Thank you for a great page!
h, ireland

Hi Hawthorn,

Thanks for the comment. I will be doing more posts but have been waiting for the latest Google Page Rank update (every three months) which is occuring right now and will slowly crawl along for the next week or two.

For those of you waiting please be patient as I have several test blogs in the works that have been set up to see which is most effective regarding all the new rules Google imposed after it's latest Google Slap. (Changes to the Google algorithm)

Upon completion of the current Page Rank update I will know which way to proceed with future lessons. The current lessons are still valid as far as how to set up and optimize your blogs. The changes imposed by Google relate to page ranking and traffic generation techniques.

For now continue to set up your blogs as outlined in my lessons but don't link them together. This is blog farming and Google will now penalize sites that do this from the same ip addresses. All blogger blogs are on the same ip address.

Other than this just follow my directions and get your blogs started - I have a number of new techniques that I will share with you but will wait until I have some page rank confirmation.

Grizzly

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re; Hawthorns Blog

http://hawthorns.blogspot.com/

A few tips.

Hawthorn I checked out your blog and you write well. In order to optimize your site for your keywords ( Lets assume your site will be about stage musicals - I realize it is about lots of things which is quite hard to optimize for and I recommend that you create a different blog for different themes. ) you should proceed as follows;

Start over... Ha.

Actually it is extremely important to use your keyword in your blogs name and URL address.

Your url should be something like hawthornsmusicalreviews.blogspot.com or hawthornsmusicalramblings.com anything as long as you get your keyword in there somewhere.

Your page title is Hawthorn's Ramblings. Change it to "Hawthorn's Musical Ramblings.
Even better try "Hawthorn's Musical Reviews".

How many people will search Google for "Hawthorn's Ramblings"? Not Many.

How Many people will search for "Musical Reviews"? Lots. This is why you want Google to know that you do musical reviews. Google will not know what a "Hawthorn's Rambling" is.

Make sure to link your post title to your url.

Your post title is The Best Musicals Of All Time

In the Link section under the Title section insert your URL.(Posting - Create section in menu) This will hypertext your post title. See my post title above and notice that it links to this blog.

One last thing; Use your keyword in the last line of your post.

ie.

Yes people, I couldn't separate....my favourite shows from London’s West End…..

BLOOD BROTHERS and LES MISERABLES.

This is your current ending.

Add one more line like this;

"For more Musical Reviews please check back often."

These few tips will optimize your site for the keywords you want Google to send you traffic for. Simple but extremely important.

Keep up the good work and read through my lessons as they explain most of this in more detail.

Good luck,

Grizzly

How to Blog

Backlinks and Traffic - Directory Submitter

2007-05-17T17:08:00.000-05:00

Hi folks,

I have been a bit busy and haven't spent much time here lately. Sorry.

Just thought I would make you aware of a free tool that Brad Callen of SEO Elite and Keyword Elite fame is offering.

I say free but in reality it has a free version and a Pro version for $47.

The software is called "Directory Submitter" and it basically submits your sites to directories in a few simple and fast steps. It is a huge timesaver.

The more directories you are listed in the more backlinks you will get as well as an increase in traffic.

I bought the Pro version but you certainly don't have to. The difference in the two versions is that the Pro version allows you to submit to more directories. The Free version still allows you to submit to 350 directories with as many sites as you want. This will be sufficient to start with. If you get decent results then you can always get the upgrade later.

He has a video that shows you what this is about and how to use it.

I definately recommend this - Brad's software is among the best in Internet Marketing circles and his support is excellent.

You can see the video here

=> http://directorysubmitter.imwishlist.com/Help_Video1.htm

Back soon,

Grizzly

Make Money Using Blogs - Lesson 5

2007-02-23T13:52:00.002-06:00

How to Find a Niche for your Blog

Hello again and welcome back.

I'm glad your still with me and I hope you have been following along with a blog of your own. In case you are feeling all alone in your endeavors I want to introduce you to one of my readers that has taken the bull by the horns and started his first blog and is proving to be quite prolific. His online nom de plume is Black Hat Jack and I will get back to Jack in a moment.

First I will give you a little glimpse of what I have in store today. I am assuming that everyone now has a blog set up according to my previous lessons. Last lesson I told you to find a niche. I didn't go into much detail about this at the time as I figured I would let you stew over it for a few days. Some of you may have come up with a decent paying niche but I'm sure most of you are still scratching your heads wondering how to find one. My favorite email this week came from Cindy H. (hi Cindy I told you I would mention you - there I did) and all she wrote was

Subject: NICHES

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!

Subtle and effective - I like that. I received several other emails looking for help as well. (by the way there are 33 of you that are corresponding with me over these lessons so you are not alone and anyone I haven't heard from please join in, I would love to check out your site). Anyway, I will cover niches in some depth today so you can all stop fretting over it. I will mention now that I am going to advise you to purchase a program later and yes it will be through an affiliate link - this means I will make a few dineros off of you if you buy it. Before you roll your eyes at me I haven't come this far just to plug a product, in fact I have avoided trying to sell anything as much as possible as I am trying to build up a base of like minded people who can all share and help one another succeed online. There is far more value to having online friends than making the odd one-off sale. (more on this later)

In fact I am just warning you ahead of time that I want to discuss 3 programs that I use a lot and have no qualms about recommending. Having said that I will tell you that two of them are not necessary at this stage of your development but you will need them later if you stick with this. The third program is something you probably should look at now if you are in any way serious about making money online. It has everything to do with finding the right niches. (for those that can not afford it I will help you out using my version until you get up and running - more on this later)

The long and short of it is that if you do end up purchasing these programs then I have used my links because I can't think of a better person for you to give your money to than me. (OK maybe sick kids) The intent of this lesson is not to make sales but to discuss the things you will have to do and the programs that do it. As I said, I don't want your money but if you are giving it away anyway...

All right, that's it for the pre-amble, let's get to the meat.

First let me show you what my new friend Black Hat Jack is up to. After following the lessons Jack sent me an email and asked me to take a look at his new blog. He said he wasn't adverse to me "ripping it to shreds" so here is my review of Jack's blog. You can see it for yourself here: Internet Marketing Rant and I wont be too critical as I think he is on the right track.

Jack's first post was Feb 13, 2007 and he has kept up a pretty stiff daily posting schedule which is impressive. The site is not yet indexed on Google and I would like to throw out a few tips that he could use to tweak the site;

Readability

- at the moment the site is user friendly for people but he might consider using a larger font. I have found that a lot of people can't see very well and have noticed a longer visit length (using my stat reports) on the blogs that I use a larger font on. Blogger lets you customize the fonts in the template section "Fonts and Colors". I find the "Georgia" font enlarged 1x gets the best results for text posts. Try and use one or at most 2 colors on your blog. More than this can be distracting and takes away from the aesthetic look.

- while user friendly for people he has not tweaked it for the search engines yet. By this I mean that his blog is quite broad in the sense of topics and the search engines like to pigeon hole sites by the keywords used. In Jack's case Google will not have a clear idea of what his keyword (niche) is.

From the title "Internet Marketing Rant" we know that "Internet Marketing" is his main keyword but his posts don't back up the title. This is easy to fix. Without changing his post subjects he simply needs to add his keyword at the beginning and end of each post and if possible make one instance in bold.

For example his last post begins

List Of Article Directories Part 2 (The Header)

"It's been a busy week so not had chance to post more of my article directory list. Here is part 2 I will try and post part 3 tomorrow." (the Post)

To optimize his keyword I would make the following change.

Internet Marketing - Article Directories List | Part 2 (for the header)

and at the end of his post I would add a quick recap blurb such as;

"Look for Article Directories List Part 3 on my next post here at Internet Marketing Rant."

By making these additions the search engines will know the blog is about "Internet Marketing" (main Keyword) and also "Article Directory Lists" (secondary Keyword).

Use your keyword at least 5 times for every hundred words you write. In Jack's case the search engines will pick up the keyword "Article Directory" as he uses it a few times but will not register "Internet Marketing" as a keyword.

Note: Do not use your keyword(s) more than 6-7 times per hundred words or your site will be flagged as a spam blog and dropped from the search engines - this is VERY important.

Adsense

Jack has optimized his adsense ads correctly. Always place adsense in the top left corner or top center (these ads always get more clicks than any other location) The next best location is in the side panel and finally at the bottom. Studies have shown that the most viewed area of any site is the top left and decreases as you move down and to the right. In fact the lower right corner of a website or blog is dead man's territory as hardly any one reads this section.

Keep this in mind when designing your blog. People view pages on the internet differently than a magazine or newspaper. They SCAN first and read second. Most people do a quick once over and look for anything interesting when viewing a new page. If you want to get them to read something then make your main points jump out at them in the top left corner by using a bold header. You must grab them immediately or they will leave and never notice that you were offering $1,000,000 free to the first person who emailed you.

When in doubt think about how you read pages on the net. Do you start at the beginning and read every word through to the end? Probably not. Most people check out the headlines - then the index (still looking for headlines). If they haven't found a title that interests them by this point they usually leave. You may well have all the info they want but without an eye catching headline you will lose them.

One last thing I want to talk about before leaving Jack's Blog. Jack is zeroing in on an area that all you beginners can benefit from. He lists the top search queries from several important directories. Jack didn't take long to zero in on one of the most lucrative aspects of blogging - I'm referring to hot niches. If you want some quick ideas on what you can build a blog around then his lists are perfect. Britany Spears is blog fodder. She is always in the news for good or mostly bad reasons and people want to read about her - I of course shake my head in dismay at this aspect of our culture - but know a cash cow when I see it. Everyday thousands of people search out the latest gossip on celebrities or hot products, new music, movies and so on. Build a blog around the hottest trend and "they will come".

Keep in mind that this mostly falls into the spam blogging sphere and you simply milk a subject till it cools off and then move on to another "Hot" subject. I will get into this in more detail in another post so stay tuned.

A few General Tips for getting Indexed

Feedburner

Go to feed burner and set up an account. This service is free and allows you to syndicate your blog to others. It also allows you to add all the little features you see at the bottom of my posts such as "Submit to Netscape | Save to Del.icio.us | Digg This!" etc. These services are very important for getting indexed using the "Tag" system.

For example Google loves Delicious - if someone Tags your post on delicious Google will see it and index you much quicker. You can Tag your own posts (do it) but it is even better if a friend with a separate IP address does it as well. Technorati is also loved by Google and should be Tagged as well.

Once you get one blog indexed you can use it to post links to other blogs and this will speed up the indexing of them as well. Be sure the other blogs are related however as you don't want links that are irrelevant. Very Important - ONLY link related blogs!

Feedburner also provides a stats page for you which will tell you where your traffic is coming from, what pages are popular and more. They also tell you where your traffic goes when leaving. This is important if you are providing links for affiliate products. You want to know how many people click on these links as this will tell you how effective your sales pitch is. If you post an article about how wonderful FeedBurner is then you can follow up by seeing how many of your readers actually click the link and go to FeedBurner. If there are no clicks then you know that you need to work on your pitch. (I'll let you know how many people click the FeedBurner link on this page next time)

Keep this in mind - there are thousands of affiliate products you can sell online and you want to find the ones that convert the best. By using the "outgoing" stats you can eliminate the programs that don't convert and concentrate on the ones that make you money. Let's say that I have two products I want to test. I find that the links for both get clicked 100 times a day. I'll keep the product that shows up in my sales column and ditch the loser. Of course a loser is only a loser if it generates zero sales. If you only get 1 sale every 100 clicks you just have to get more traffic - simple. (OK traffic isn't simple but we will get to that subject in due course.)

Articles.

I've said this before and it's worth repeating over and over again. WRITE some articles and post them on GoArticles.com and ezinearticles.com. Google absolutely loves these two sites and always ranks them high in the searches. Besides getting traffic to your site and backlinks, these two sites will help you get indexed fast. Because Google crawls these sites daily they will find your article and follow your embedded link back to your blog. Voila! You have been found and if you have optimized your site properly you will then be indexed. The more articles the better. The articles I post on GoArticles.com are usually found doing a Google search within a few hours after posting them. That's fast folks. The trick to getting indexed is simple - get your backlink on a site that Google loves and presto! Using these directories is an easy way to do this compared to asking a page rank 5 site to post your link. (They won't unless you pay them, use blackmail or kidnap their kids)

Yahoo Answers

As much as this sounds crazy, since they compete with each other, but Google loves Yahoo Answers. You will regularly find Yahoo high in Googles listings. Go to http://answers.yahoo.com/, register and then start answering questions relevant to your site. Be sure to leave your link at the end of the answer. This will get you three things - traffic (sometimes lots of traffic if it's a popular subject), a great backlink and you will get indexed as Google crawls the site endlessly. Use this technique a lot - answer a ton of questions and you will get a lot of traffic. It is a very popular site.

Note: You'll notice that I didn't use a hyperlink for yahoo's URL. This is because I try and avoid two way links as much as possible. Yahoo answers has links pointing to this page and I don't want to reciprocate. Remember the search engines value one way links and frown on two way. Always keep this in mind when using links on your pages.

I will give you some more tips in future posts but I want you to concentrate on these for now. You have to get indexed before anything else can happen. To this end I have told those that have emailed me to give me their blog lists and I will Tag them on the directories as well as "Favorite" them on Technorati. I will also give them links from my indexed blogs if they are relevant. This is what I was referring to above about making friends online. Get to know others and you can all help each other out by doing things for each other that speeds things up. ie. Backlinks, "tagging" posts from different IP's, voting for best answer on yahoo, ranking articles on GoArticles.com etc. These are all things that you can't do yourself - if you vote for your own answer on Yahoo they will know - but if 20 other people vote your answer the best then you will get a lot of traffic. (You can also help each other make some money by clicking you know what that G**gle doesn't allow me to say - but I'm sure you have figured that out by now. Just remember don't go overboard - G**gle can spot a recurring trend a mile away.) If any of you want my help just send me an email - I don't and never will spam you. Eventually I want to get all of you introduced to one another and you can begin working with each other. I will always ask your permission before doing anything.

On a personal note I have to say that everyone I have met so far is wonderful - there really are a lot of good people online and I hope you discover this for yourself. Best of all I still find it amazing that people from all over the world can get to know each other so easily and that this was next to impossible prior to the "net". Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has contacted me.

Ok drum roll please...

NICHES

Finally got around to what this post was supposed to be about. Not that I'm long-winded or anything.

First off - the 3 products I use constantly.

Keyword Elite

SEO Elite

Brainstorm Generator

With a few exceptions these are all the tools you really need to get your blogs producing money. Let me start off by saying that there are other comparable products and I don't profess to know which is "better". These are the ones I use and since they provide everything I need I have no need to try the competition out. You can always check out the forums like Warrior or WhyDoWork and get opinions on what others think are the best. I do know that Wordtracker is considered a top notch keyword tool but I didn't like the monthly payment bit. I prefer to pay for something only once.

SEO Elite is probably considered the best tool for optimizing your sites but again there are others that may do most of the same things.

I haven't found another product similar to Brainstorm though. If any one knows of one please let me know and I will post it. Brainstorm finds the best keyword niches.

Note: You do not need any of these tools as you can do everything they do manually. This is fine when you are just starting out with one or two blogs. These tools should only be looked at once you begin to get the hang of this and a little money starts coming in. These tools simply save you an enormous amount of time and that will become very important once your little blog empire starts to take off.

Alright - how the heck do you find a niche and moreover a niche that is likely to produce some income. I am talking about long term profitable blogs and not the spam variety. (Jack's blog will give you plenty of ideas for short term blogs.)

To do this manually you can pick any topic you think might be good and using a free keyword tool (Overture - if it's working again, Good Keywords, Keyword Explorer etc - you can find links for these at Make Money For Beginners) you enter in your main keyword - let's say "Gardening" and run a search. You will get back a list telling you how many searches were done for that term the previous month as well as a list of related terms and their search numbers as well.

This will tell you how popular your term is.

Next you need to find out how many competitors you will be up against. Do this by using Google Search. They will show you a listing of relevant sites and how many pages are listed with your keyword. This is always shown at the top of the page.

A search for "gardening" shows me that there are 60,700,000 pages listed for that term. This is huge and tells you that this may not be a good niche for you to try and tackle right away. I say may not because it might be depending on the R/S factor.

R/S Ratio

This is a ratio of Results (competing pages) divided by the number of Searches done for the keyword. Your keyword tool shows you how many searches were done. Let's say that "gardening" was searched 1 million times last month. This would give an R/S ratio of 60 which is high but not impossible. Think of it this way - everytime someone did a search there were 60 pages of results for it. The more pages the harder it will be for you to compete.

Ideally you want a keyword that returns a R/S of 50 or less. To find these keywords you have to use two and three word keywords or more like "organic gardening" or "how to grow an organic garden". You may find that they only get searched 500 or 600 times a month but this is great if there are only 1000 pages of competition. You can easily beat out 1000 others to rank number 1 on the search list. At number 1 you may get most of the 600 searchers to your site and if you have the right product you will make money. Remember if this generates $100 a month in sales it will keep on doing that over and over again without you doing a thing. 10 sites doing this and suddenly you are making some decent money - recurring money.

The more general your keyword the more competition you will have. The more detailed your keyword the less competition and ironically the more likely you will make a sale. Huh? you say. Hear me out on this as it's important.

People searching for the term gardening are just browsing - they aren't looking to buy "gardening", how could they. They have a vague interest in something about gardening and are just out sunday driving. If someone searches for the term "How to grow bonsai trees" then you know they have a particular interest and are more likely to buy a product like an ebook that tells them "how to grow a bonsai tree". Get the picture. The more refined your keyword the more likely that the people who do find your site will be looking to buy something.

KEI

After figuring out your R/S ratio you want to find the KEI rating. This is a complex formula that kinda tells you how profitable a keyword might be by using a lot of factors that I won't get into right now. Generally the higher the KEI factor the better the keyword. I'm not sure how you can get this figure without a special tool like Keyword Elite aside from Googling "KEI" and copying the formula. Don't get to hung up on it though as most people don't put a lot of stock in KEI. It works better at telling you which keywords won't work as oppossed to which will.

Adsense Ads

Next you need to know how many adwords ads there are for your keyword. Google your keyword and count the ads listed on the right side of the search listings under the column "Sponsored Links". If there are no ads you might want to find a new keyword unless you have a killer product for the term. Generally no ads signifies that there are few searches of the term and probably no products either.

You will also want to know how much money the adwords ads cost the advertiser when clicked. Overture gives this info but as I said I'm not sure it's working. (I'm to lazy to go and find out) Google doesn't release this info.

One more thing - you can find out how profitable your niche is by tracking the adword advertisers. If you see different ads everyday or every week then that means nobody is doing well and they keep changing their ads or they stop advertising completely. If you see the same ads for weeks and months at a time then you know they are making money. Advertising is expensive and why would you keep spending money if you weren't making sales?

Oops... almost forgot. When you start to hone in on a good niche do a Google search using the " (quote) sign before and after the term. This will return a list of competitors that are optimized for the EXACT phrase and not the GENERAL phrase. I will explain.

If you do a search like this - how to grow and care for a bonsai tree - Google will return every page in the universe that has any or all of those terms in it - and they can be in any order. A page that tells you how to grow a big fat pumpkin will show up if they also mention that they quit growing bonsai's to concentrate on pumpkins. What I'm getting at is that the list generated by Google does not give you a good indication of how many REAL competitors you have. The pumpkin site really isn't a competitor of the bonsai site yet it is listed. By using the " symbol you are telling Google to give you a list of sites that only contain your term exactly - the same words in the same order. This will give you a much smaller list - sites that are optimized for your keyword only.

To compare the difference - how to grow a bonsai tree - gives a general list of 536,000 pages

The exact phrase - "how to grow a bonsai tree" - gives a list of 48,000 sites.

See the difference - this will help you in deciding on your keyword as you want to know how many REAL competitors you have. By the way I just picked Bonsai trees out of thin air but seeing these results tells me there is a market here - only two adword ads though which means not a lot of adsense income. If you had an ebook about Bonsai's this could be profitable as 48,000 competitors would be easy to out rank. Using this example I would now do a keyword search and see how many people are searching for the term. I just cheated and used Keyword Elite and this is what I found out. The table below is not how it looks on Keyword Elite - just the result of my quick cut and paste. I really should learn how to do this the right way. That's right - I'm too lazy.

Keyword --------Results---------Searches
grow nursery----1,360,000-------No Keyword Search Results
indoor grow-----1,650,000-------No Keyword Search Results
bonzai pots-----259,000---------No Keyword Search Results
tree soil-------10,100,000------No Keyword Search Results
pine tree-------3,360,000-------22,083.28
ficus bonzai----55,100----------359.08
nursery tree----1,350,000-------7,002.01
tree seeds------2,190,000-------9,066.71
elm tree--------1,640,000-------5,206.63
tree trunk------2,160,000-------4,368.78
pruning tree----1,270,000-------2,304.08
grow pots-------1,270,000-------1,526.08
tree roots------3,840,000-------4,458.55
grow pot--------1,900,000-------1,526.08
tree species----21,400,000------3,471.08
grow seeds------1,590,000-------209.46
grow indoors----1,230,000-------89.77
grow soil-------2,900,000-------149.62
tree types------39,000,000------1,047.31
how to grow a bonzai tree-------N/A-----No Keyword Search Results
how to grow a bonsai tree-------N/A-----No Keyword Search Results

Keyword---------R/S Ratio--Google Campaigns
grow nursery----N/A--------3
indoor grow-----N/A--------10
bonzai pots-----N/A--------10
tree soil-------N/A--------6
pine tree-------152.15-----8
ficus bonzai----153.45-----8
nursery tree----192.8------10
tree seeds------241.54-----10
elm tree--------314.98-----4
tree trunk------494.42-----2
pruning tree----551.2------8
grow pots-------832.2------10
tree roots------861.27-----1
grow pot--------1,245.02---1
tree species----6,165.22---1
grow seeds------7,590.88---6
grow indoors----13,701.77--6
grow soil-------19,382.99--2
tree types------37,238.26--4
how to grow a bonzai tree--N/A--N/A
how to grow a bonsai tree--N/A--N/A

Before knowing these results I would have thought there might be a market for this keyword. These results tell me otherwise. Neither the main keyword nor the associated keywords have low enough R/S ratios for me to look at them further. Too much competition for me. Notice how the keyword tool will find mis-spellings in the list. This is something you will want to pay attention to when selecting keywords. You can rank high for a mis-spelling as well. I'll bet as many people search for a Banzai tree as they do for a Bonsai tree or a Bonsai tree. Words like this guarantee mis-spellings. You will face less competition for the mis-spelling and find it easier to rank high as a result.

Take a site I have on Betta Fish. I optimized on page for "Betta Fish Compatibilty Chart" and another page for "Betta Fish Compatability Chart". Guess what. I get more traffic from Google for the misspelled keyword phrase. (I rank number 1) Traffic I would not get if I hadn't created the second page. If you find a profitable keyword and it has an obvious mis-spelling then create a second blog using the misspelled word.

By now you can see that finding keywords can be a tedious task and can take hours to weed out all the relevant info. This is manageable for one or two blogs but you can now see why you will want a keyword tool eventually. The Bonsai Tree is a good example as I came up with it after doing a few Google searches. At that point it looked promising. Had I continued on manually I would have spent an hour getting all the info just to find out it was a no go. The keyword tool came up with my answer in a couple of minutes.

Keyword Elite is all fine and dandy if you have already got an idea for a keyword. It doesn't find your ideas for you though. And this is the real trick to making money. I'll discuss SEO Elite in another post because I really want to discuss Brainstorm Generator as it will be of the most use to you.

Update: March 2008

Please disregard the following - as of March 2008 Brainstorm Generator has ceased to function properly. I have been led to believe that a fix is in the works but until I can verify that it is once again operating correctly please do not purchase it.

Brainstorm Generator

This program does the guessing for you. You can sit down and start writing out ideas of what you think might work or you can have Brainstorm Generator do it for you. It is a simple little program - actually there is not much too it, just a small screen on your console and nothing much to learn to operate it. Basically you pick a couple of parameters like telling it you only want keywords with a R/S less than ten or a KEI higher than 200 and a few other variables. Then you hit go and it searches the net for keywords that meet your criteria.

This is an example of what it spits out.

Keyword------------Search-Result-----R/S--Adwords--Bid---KEI
asics shoes--------8162---171000-----20---8--------$0.61-389
embroidery machine-23589--1130000----47---8--------$2.35-492
book bag-----------19005--1400000----73---8--------$0.57-257
rain boots---------23128--1350000----58---8--------$0.00-396
glowstick----------20757--317000-----15---8--------$4.41-1359

Each time you use the Generator it will give you 25 keywords just like this - random things that you would probably never think of. I just listed a few of the terms from a list I generated months ago. These results may not be valid now if some of you are thinking of using them. The point is that this tool comes up with ideas that you wouldn't and provides all the info you need to make a decision and does it all in one step.

All of these keywords are likely candidates but the keyword "Glowstick" jumps off the page. 20,000 searches and only 317000 pages of competition - thats not even a hiccup to overcome for top ranking. There is 8 adword ads for adsense income and the clicks will pay you roughly $2 a click. The KEI is very high (1346 it got cut off in my pasting hack job) - anything over 400 is good. Over 1000 screams money to be made. Best of all - Glowsticks are a product that can be sold! This is the ideal kind of Niche - lots of ways to make income, low competition, high click $ and lots of searches. This is why I love this program - it gives me ideas that I would never think of and best of all things that others will never think of. No competition. This my friends is the real secret to making money in amounts worth speaking of.

Anyway this has been an opus and I think it's time to stop for now. You now have an idea of how to track down a niche. For those that can afford it get Brainstorm and you will have 25 fresh ideas in an hour from now. (There is a video on how to use it and it takes about 1/2 an hour for it to generate a list) The instructions are quite simple. By the way it gives a different list each time it runs so that everyone using the program doesn't get the same keywords. (There are many variables you can use to get different lists with it).

For those of you that can't afford it just send me an email and I will send you a fresh list for you only. (If I post the lists on here everyone will use the same keywords) Each of you will get a different set of keywords. This will get you going till you can afford the tool yourself. If you give me your blog I can have it generate a list specific to the kind of blog you already have set up. This is a very cool feature.

Anyhow, get cracking.

Reminder: If you want me to check out your blog, let me know. Don't worry I won't put it on here unless you want me to. Thanks again to Black Hat Jack for his permission to use his site.

I will spend some time showing how to get your backlink building in high gear in the next post so stay tuned.

Later folks.

Make Money Using Blogs - Lesson 4

2007-02-14T09:24:00.000-06:00

Make Money Marketing with Blogs

As of this morning anyone searching for "Project Payday Review" on Google will see a blog I own in the number 1 position on the first page. I wrote the review and posted it on my make money for beginners blog on January 10, 2007 and just over a month later it is number 1 out of 1,270,000 competitors on Googles index. Who knows how long it will stay there but the point is that it IS there now. This is the result of a system I have been tweaking for some time regarding how to set up blogs for optimized traffic.

This is also the system I have been teaching you to do in the 3 previous lessons. I mention my page listing above not to brag, no far from it, but to encourage those of you who just don't want to put the time and effort into this to reconsider. Reaching page 1 on Google is worth the work. Think on this. It doesn't matter what or how you sell something online - you will still need customers, aka Traffic to make money. Getting your site on page 1 of Google gets you traffic - Free traffic. You can spend money and build a website or you can follow my directions and build a blog for free.

How to turn Traffic into Money

My make money blog is not set up to market products and as a result the "Project Payday" traffic is not earning me anything. I'm not an affiliate of "Project Payday" so people who read my review and sign up will not benefit me in any way. However my "make Money" blog is set up for other purposes which I will discuss later. I do have several other blogs that are optimized for selling products and I have got most of them listed on page 1 of Google as well. These blogs only do one thing. Sell the product. Google sends the traffic for free. I post 1 article a week to each of them and other than that they are forgotten. I spend my time creating new blogs and repeating the process over and over again. They don't all make money everyday but everyday some of them do. Combined they are averaging $106 a day. This might not seem like much to you but that's $3000 a month and my expenses are ZERO. Think on that before you say that you don't want to do the work.

Now that I have shown you the basics of setting up your blog let's discuss making some money with it.

Step 1.

Find a niche that will make money. This is all important as some niches are ready made for people who want to spend money and other niches won't produce enough cash for a cup of coffee.

Before running a keyword search you have to ask yourself what kinds of things people are willing to spend money on online. Music, electronics, books, travel, how to stuff, get rich quick stuff, personal development products and shoes all come to mind without thinking very hard. There are, of course, a lot more profitable niches than this.

The point is don't pick a niche that doesn't have an associated product or ebook that can be sold on it. You also want to be sure that there are adword advertisers for your niche.

One of the first websites I set up is about Betta Fish. It's a nice site with lots of info related to Bettas. After doing all the work and incurring the expenses involved in a website, I found out that there wasn't a lot of products that could be easily sold on the net for Betta fish. There were lots of adword advertisers though and I thought I would make some money from that at least. Wrong!

One of the ironies of setting up a good informative site is that if you do too good of a job people will stay on your site and read something that they came looking for. Then leave. This is fine if you have something to sell. I, unfortunately don't. This is when I started to think that I was providing to much info. To test this, I set up a series of free blogs on Betta fish but this time I put crap on the sites. (Yes I admit it) I still used all the right keywords so that they are optimized for the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) but now when traffic shows up they depart in a hurry. Usually they just close the page but a number of people click my ads. Bingo - I get more ad revenue from the crappy blogs than I do from the real website. This seems to work rather well with certain niches like pets. People are attached to their pets and when they need info they are determined to find it. The blogs are useless to them but when they see the ads, which appear to have the answers they need, it's easier to click the ad than do another Google search.

I am not saying that this is right or ethical. I am saying that people who make money with adsense use these techniques. As I have said before, no one in the business likes to admit this and they certainly don't divulge this to beginners.

Note: If you have been sucked into enough programs that promise to make you rich you start to realize that most of these programs give you just enough info to get you started but always seem to leave out the key ingredient. All the programs available that promise to show you how to make money with adsense are exactly like this. They tell you how to optimize your site, how to research keywords, how to find traffic and a few other details - everything in fact that you need to know to make money from adsense. And you will - maybe $1 a day. They don't tell you that you will need hundreds of sites to make any real money. Then again maybe they do but it's between the lines. The "lines" in this case would be the software that they flog. Stuff that generates unique content articles, programs that upload content to your sites automatically, automated forum posting, automated directory posting, automated guestbook posting, automated blog builders, automated website builders and the list goes on.

Why do you need automated software for anything? Because it's all about the numbers. To make money you need to create lots and lots of sites and you can't do this manually. Automated programs are spam programs - in the loose sense of the word. Spamming means many things and spam blogs are included in the definition.

I have received a number of emails asking me for info on these programs. I have been reluctant to tell you for a number of reasons. First, you need to know how to set up a "real" blog properly before you start duplicating it. Second I fear you will start down the spam path without knowing what your doing and spend a small fortune in the process. Thirdly, on a personal level, I have corresponded with many of you and realize that there are real people reading this and I like them, hence my conscience is weighing in on this. It's one thing to sell stuff to anonymous people who happen to find your site but it's harder when you know the people on the other end.

A few facts.

- most of the available software - while effective - requires some or a lot of knowledge about various aspects of computers, codes, operating systems, html, php, java script etc. Most beginners don't have the ability to work through this stuff and the producers of this type of software don't tell you about all the "bugs" and "fixes" needed to run the software before you buy it.

- every program I have used to date has "bugs". Most developers will issue fixes and updates as they get them but the fact is all software has bugs (Windows XP had hundreds when released) and this can't be helped as there are so many different computer setups that programmers can't take everyone in to account when building the program. They tend to build it for the most common applications .ie. Windows XP, 32 bit etc. In this instance a Mac user may have problems.

- this stuff is expensive.

- if you don't use the programs properly you will leave a spam footprint a mile wide that Google, among others, will see and at best your sites will get dropped and at worst you will be banned from adsense.

That said I will give you a list of some of the more popular software but without any links. That way I receive no affiliate fees and my conscience is clean if you pursue this avenue.

VooDoo Blogger - this program is designed to create thousands of crappy blogs. Has bugs but there is support given. This is a notorious spam program that doesn't make any bones about what it's for.

RSStoBlog - this is a legitimate program used to post content feeds automatically to your blog. Nothing wrong with this as lots of people use it to keep their sites up to date with fresh content. As with most automated software it can also be used to send content to all the spam blogs as well.

Forum Equalizer - this is simply a spamming program that lets you post messages on thousands of forums in order to leave a backlink to your site(s).

Guest Book Equalizer - same as the forum equalizer but you send posts to guest books instead. (leaving your backlink)

The following are not spamming software per se but can be used in conjunction with these other programs.

Article content generation software. There are too many to mention by name but they all do the same thing. (Google "Article Content Generation" for a list) They take articles that have already been written and change enough words and phrases to make it unique and then produce hundreds or thousands of unique variations of the same article. These can then be posted to thousands of blogs using RsstoBlog or a similar program.

I admit to using one of these programs but I only use articles that I write. This is to be certain that I don't get nailed for copyright infringement. If you don't set enough variables in the content generation program you could effectively produce an article that is only slightly different from the original and be guilty of stealing someone else's work. Be careful of this - I strongly suggest that you write your own articles. By the way there is no program that can create a readable article from scratch so beware any that advertise as such.

Article Submission Software - this allows you to automatically submit your articles to hundreds of directories. (a very time consuming process if done manually) You can Google this phrase for a list of available products. A word of caution - make sure your articles are well written before you submit them as most directories review articles before inclusion. Humans can tell if your article has been produced by spamming software and you won't get them posted.

Before spending a lot of money on this stuff I have put a link on the site to a program called "The OTO GoldMine". I came across this site in my travels and it seemed to be an ideal choice for beginners. You can join for free and make money by selling the products listed on the site with nothing more than an affiliate link. This is no different than other affiliate programs except that the product list here is as huge as any I've seen and has several very useful products. I also want to point out that they will try and sell you all these products when you sign up. The cost is $67. I mention this because a lot of the products in the list do the things I have just been describing - content generation software, blog submission et al. The price is astoundingly cheap for this kind of software that would cost hundreds of $ individually. (dam - that's sounds like a sales pitch and I don't want it to... old habits I guess)

What I am trying to say is that if you are going to invest in this stuff anyway then save yourself a lot of money and get it from this site. You can learn how to use the stuff and see if it is for you for a paltry sum in comparison to what you will spend searching for this separately. Anyway, whether you buy buy the products or not you should join for free and take advantage of the huge collection of products that you can promote on your site(s) and you only need one affiliate link. The nice thing about this is that they do all the selling - you just send them traffic and collect commissions.

This also applies to "The Ultimate Supertip" and "$7 Dollar Secrets" and the other programs I've listed before. These are ideal for beginners as they will sell faster and easier than most products. Why? They are cheap and they are easy to build a blog around. Optimize each blog as I have outlined previously using each program's name as your keyword. Write an article or two about each one and post them on your blog. Create a different set of articles for submission to the article directories like GoArticles.com and then move on to your next blog and product. Remember the more articles you submit the more backlinks you will get and the sooner you will get indexed in Google. It took me a month to get to number 1 for "project payday" and if I was selling that program I would be making money from it already from the free traffic Google is sending to my site. Is one month too long to wait? I am making money from all the sites I use to sell products and everyone of them gets free traffic and cost me nothing to produce.

Once you have enough sites up and running the money will start adding up. You may only make a few dollars at first but you will be surprised at how it will multiply in six months from now.

Get to it.

That's it for today. Next post I will look at several "tweaks" that you can use to increase your backlinks and a few other novel treats.

Later folks.

Make Money Using Blogs - Lesson 3

2007-02-10T09:42:00.001-06:00

For those of you just joining us you can find Lesson 1 and lesson 2 at these links.

Make Money Using Blogs - Lesson 1

Make Money Using Blogs - Lesson 2

The point of these lessons are to enable beginners to set up and run a successful online money making venture and to do it with out spending a lot of money. Blogs have become the online marketers best friend and new secret weapon for making money. As we continue with these lessons you will find out why this is so.

At this point you should have set up a new blog at Google's blogspot.com and completed two posts on it. The first post was your welcome message and the second post was your first article on your chosen keyword (topic/niche).

As well you should have joined GoArticles.com and posted a second article in their directory. The second article should have been a re-write of your blog posting - enough changes in it to avoid the duplicate content rules of the search engines.

This lesson is fast and easy and no, you don't have to write any more articles.

Getting your new site indexed.

If you have followed my instructions your site is already optimized on-page for Google when it gets around to crawling you. There are a few things (known as off-page optimization) that we can do to speed up the process.

You'll be happy to know that you have already completed one of these techniques.

Writing Articles.

There is no better way to get your site indexed and ranked by Google than writing articles. While providing traffic to your site, articles also get you back links which gets you page ranking and ultimately a high placement in Google's search listings.

Here's a list of the most popular Article Submission Directories. The more articles and more directories you use the faster you will get ranked and indexed by Google. This is not a secret, just a well know fact that all the successful marketers know. It is very effective because 95% of would be competitors either don't like to write articles or don't want to pay for unique articles and most of them resort to duplicate content when filling up their pages. Content, I might add, that comes from the 5% of us who write the articles embedded with our back links. Your competition is one of your best allies as they are the ones sending you back links.

Here is the list.

http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.ezinearticles.com/
http://www.articlecity.com/
http://www.certificate.net/wwio/
http://www.amazines.com/
http://www.articledashboard.com/
http://www.article-directory.net/
http://www.submityourarticle.com/articles/
http://www.magportal.com/
http://www.isnare.com/
http://pubs.acs.org/hotartcl/
http://www.article-hangout.com/
http://www.webarticles.com/
http://www.articlecube.com/
http://articles4content.com/
http://www.article-buzz.com/
http://www.free-articles-zone.com/
http://www.newarticlesonline.com/
http://www.articletogo.com/
http://www.articleworld.net/
http://www.impactarticles.com/
http://www.articlealley.com/
http://www.directorygold.com/
http://dir.salon.com/
http://www.articlefever.com/
http://www.content-articles.com/
http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/marketing-article-directory.html
http://www.niche-article-directory.com/
http://www.jogena.com/articles/articleform.htm
http://news.collectors.org/
http://article-niche.com/
http://blogtelecast.com
http://superpublisher.com/
http://www.articlecentral.com
http://www.article-directory.net
http://www.article-emporium.com
http://www.ebooksnbytes.com
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.internethomebusinessarticles.com
http://www.site-reference.com
http://www.stickysauce.com

Technorati

Go to Technorati and create an account. Log in and "Claim your Blog". Later you will ping technorati each time you post something and they will come and crawl your site for the new content.

Technorati is the "Google" of the Blogoshpere and you want to get indexed in it's directory. The more directories and search engines that you get indexed in the better but Google, Yahoo, Msn, Technorati and Digg are all you really need and must be indexed in.

Technorati will get you traffic but you have to give the proper "Tags" (keywords) for your site. Lot's of people search technorati using tags or keywords to find articles on various subjects. The nice thing about technorati is that it gives users a list of articles based on how recent they were posted. If you are looking for posts using the tag "make money" you will get a list of articles starting with those posted a few minutes ago and working back in time. This is very important and you can generate your own traffic because of this. Note: The Labels in Blogger serve as Technorati "Tags".

Update: March 2008

The following traffic trick is no longer working as Technorati has changed it's system since this was originally posted. I have left it here simply because it is content that brings in traffic but please disregard it.

Griz.

How?

Let me tell you about a little traffic generating trick. This is strictly for making some quick money with adsense. If you go to technorati you will see a list of "Top Tags". This list is really just a list of what people are searching for the most at any given period of time. You are no doubt aware that Anna Nicole Smith died recently. For the last few days the top searched tag at technorati has been her name. If you were to write an article about her and ping technorati you will get 40 - 50 people to your site about 15 minutes after posting and pinging. Here is the best part - you don't have to post a unique article. You can use other articles (as long as you provide the credit and link back to the original author). This is simply a way to make some quick adsense money and you don't care about Google indexing your site.

I'll explain this in full if I have confused you.

I mentioned back at the beginning of these lessons that you want to create a few decent blogs for ranking in the search engines. These blogs will be for the long term and eventually you can use them to sell products as well as use them for adsense revenue. I also mentioned that you will set up hundreds or thousands of "crappy" blogs. These will be used to generate back links for your good blogs but can also be used to generate adsense revenue.

This is a scenario for a crappy blog. For instance, I have a whole group of what I call "My Celebrity Blogs". When ever a celebrity does something to get themselves on the front pages of the news I quickly post articles about them and ping Technorati. I just use the headline and a few sentences of someone else's article and then include a link back to the original article if people want to read the rest of it. I will post a half dozen of these snippets on my blog. Ping technorati and then wait 15 minutes and sure enough the traffic rolls in from Technorati users looking for info on the celebrity. For this to work you must Tag your post with the celeb's name. As soon as someone searches for articles using that Tag the most recent articles are displayed for them - not the most relevant or the best written - simply the most recent. Technorati is not like Google - they don't care about your content or backlinks or anything else that Google deems important. They simply list articles in order of posting - the most recent gets top listing.

Timing.

To get the most visitors you have to time your posts. To get the largest audience of English speaking people you should post your articles between 7:00 and 9:00am, between 11:00am and 1:00pm and between 5:00 and 7:00pm all central standard time in the USA. These are the peek hours of readership in North America. You can also work out the best times in the UK and Australia as well.

If you have 10 Celeb blogs you can post the same snippets in all ten blogs. Simply post each one 15 minutes apart during these peek times. This will keep your blogs at the top of the listings for 2 hours or more during the peek readership times.

Is this ethical. Hell no. But it makes fast cash. When Mel Gibson ran into trouble my 10 little blogs got more than 10,000 hits in four days on technorati. I made just under $200.00 for my efforts. I never wrote a single article. Ethical... well that's for your own conscience. I took the money.

That's it for this lesson. Go and get acquainted with Technorati. Claim your blog and play around with TAG searches. Get to know what this directory does as they will make you some decent money once you understand how to use it. As always if you have questions just send me an email.

Later folks.

PS The next lesson will show you how to start marketing programs like The Ultimate SuperTip, $7 Dollar Secrets and several others. If you haven't downloaded the free ebook yet you can get it here. The Ultimate SuperTip or 7 Dollar Secrets.

Blogger Basics for Beginners

2007-02-06T11:52:00.000-06:00

Welcome to Blogger Basics for Beginners. This site provides tips and techniques for beginning bloggers in order to make money online. If you have questions not covered in Blogger Basics please feel free to email your question to info@oneworldinternetcafe.com