The Shout Dreams Blog

13 Ways for Bloggers to Make Money with Advertising

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 19:01:00 +0530

I’ve had a few people ask for clarification around the Advertising section, and what all the options there mean. Here’s a summary:

1. Ad networks

These are services like AdSense and Chitika but also smaller or more local ones like NuffNang (which operates out of Australia and Asia). They can probably fit in some of the other categories as well, as they use different models to deliver their ads.

2. Cost Per Impression (CMP)

This is where you sell space for an ad and get paid based upon how many times it loads. Usually you get paid per 1000 impressions of the ad. The rate varies a lot, depending upon topic. There are lots of very low, “remnant” ad networks out there that pay you a pittance per impression, but if you have a higher value niche you can get better money. I’ve been paid up to $40 per 1000 impressions.

3. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

These ads pay out only when someone takes some kind of action after clicking the ad. The action might be a sale but could also be them signing up for a service, leaving an email address, etc.

4. Cost Per Click (CPC)

This is what AdSense used to be: every time someone clicked your ad, you’d get a certain amount. Now AdSense do a combination of CPC and CPM ads—they mix them in.

5. Sponsorships

This is what I do on ProBlogger. I sell ad spots on a month-by-month basis to sponsors for a fixed amount per month.

6. Text links

When you sell a text link on your site, the person buying the link is usually doing it for search engine ranking purposes. As a result, Google frowns on these and you could be risking your own search rankings by doing it. I don’t do this, as I see it as a little too risky, but some bloggers still do. Proceed with caution.

7. Pay per post

Also known as sponsored posts (advertorials), this is where you’re paid to review a product or to promote it in a post. Bloggers have varied ethical stances on this. Generally these days you are required to disclose that you’re being paid for the post.

8. Job board/classifieds

If you operate in a niche where people are buying and selling products or there are jobs that people want to advertise this can be a nice source of income. You need to be able to attract both advertisers and those they want to see the ads to make it work, though—so you need traffic and profile.

9. Newsletter advertising

This is a growing area for me. Some advertisers love to have their brand included in emails that you send to readers. We find bundling some onsite sponsorship banner ads with inclusions in our newsletter is a good way to sell space to advertisers.
Some ad networks (like AdSense) have ways of doing this but you can also sell sponsorships in your RSS feed directly. We use a WordPress plugin called RSS Footer to add an advertisement in the RSS feed of ProBlogger.
Here are a few more ideas that I should add to the mindmap…
Ad networks like Kontera offer these, and I think Chitika and a few others do, too. They are ads that appear in your posts, turning certain keywords into little ads (they usually change the color of the word and/or underline it to make it look like a link). When someone hovers over the word a little ad pops up with a description of a product that they can buy. Some bloggers find these ads convert well, but others find them intrusive.

12. Video advertising

If you publish videos, you might be interested in Youtube’s integration with AdSense, which allows you to earn money from ads that appear in your videos.

13. Image ads

Yesterday +Scott Fitzgerald alerted me to ImageSpace Media, who have a system that adds advertisements into your images. These are similar to the ads you might see in Youtube videos that pop up and that can be minimized.
There are of course other typs of ads and ads that fit into multiple categories above. What types do you use, if any?

Why You Can’t Make Money

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 18:58:00 +0530

I was a little surprised this morning when, after I’d given a talk on business blogging, a seminar attendee asked if I’d seen the Newsweek article this week on why it’s impossible to make money with blogs.
“Guess I’ll give it all back, then,” was my off-the-cuff answer.
But out of curiosity, I picked the mag up on the way back to my room. If you haven’t seen it, Daniel Lyons, a talented blogger known for two years as “Fake Steve Jobs,” has an editorial that explains why none of us can make money blogging.

Big traffic, no money

Fake Steve Jobs’ best month came with a traffic spike. His actual identity was revealed in the New York Times, sending more than a half-million people to his site in a single day.
His payout? For that half-million-visitor day, about a hundred dollars in AdSense earnings. For the entire month, he made $1,039.81.
Not quite what he was hoping for when he became a celebrity blogger and earned an impressive amount of attention and notoriety.
So if Fake Steve Jobs can’t monetize a blog, the rest of us are doomed, right? He worked hard, he created quality content, he had a terrific angle that went nicely viral. He was at the pinnacle, and he’s broke. So we will be too.
It must be true, he said it in Newsweek.

I learned the hard way: while blogs can do many wonderful things, making huge amounts of money isn’t one of them.

The expert weighs in

The article then tapped another source for a little expert credibility, Paul Verna, an analyst with eMarketer.
Verna’s take was that the real issue was “the lack of a clear business model that can generate substantial revenues.”
Verna’s on the right track, but we’re still a long way from the core problem.
If your business model is “I want to make money on the Internet,” you’re not going to get very far. The Internet is profoundly indifferent to your desire to make money with it.
Please notice that this does not mean that “there is no possible viable business model for any blog, other than a few fortunate exceptions that prove the rule,” which was the conclusion Lyons reached.
It just means that Fake Steve Jobs didn’t come up with a working business model, so he didn’t make any money.

Blogs are not television

I’ll confess, I have no idea how to monetize Fake Steve Jobs. His readers aren’t coming to his site to solve any kind of real-world problem, other than “how can I kill 10 minutes before my boss gets back from lunch?”
Television networks produce entertainment. They either make money from advertising or, for premium cable channels, from subscriptions.
If you want to watch Lost, you have to watch ads. Tivo dented that model considerably, but it still works well enough for now.
Advertising can work on some content web sites, but it usually works best when the reader is coming to the site to figure out a solution to a problem. If an ad presents a relevant solution to that problem, the ad can be effective.
For a complex bunch of reasons, advertising isn’t especially effective on most blogs. Unless there’s a terrific message-to-market match, ads on blogs tend to underperform wildly.

If you want to make money in the real world, solve real problems

Too bad Lyons wasn’t a Copyblogger reader. He might have seen Brian’s post about the smartest monetization strategies for blogs and content sites, and why advertising is no longer on that list.
It’s not about trends in advertising or trends in the blogosphere. It’s about returning to a fundamental marketing truth.
If you don’t offer customers something they dearly want, whether it’s to gain some great pleasure or escape some great pain, you’re not going to make any money.
People do want entertainment and relief from boredom, but selling pure entertainment online is tricky. Right now the expectation on the web is that entertainment is free. You’ll have to get creative to escape that context, the same way musicians had to get creative to make a living when free music sharing became the norm.

It’s time for online business to grow up

For a long time, we believed that “online was different,” and that we didn’t need to accept any of the normal rules of business. We’d put something on the web and Magic Internet Dust would come along and make up for our total absence of business knowledge.
“Leap, and the net will appear,” was the mantra.
That sort of worked for awhile, but it doesn’t work now. If you don’t have a solid understanding of who your market is, how they’ll find you, and what problems you solve for them, it’s now “Leap, and the floor will appear.”
So focus on what does work now, and has always worked.
Provide value. Solve actual problems. Uncover what’s bugging people and fix it for them.
The real Steve Jobs sells beautiful, easy-to-use, loveable tools that make his customers’ lives better. If Fake Steve Jobs wanted to make money, he would have had to do some work to figure out how he could do the same.

7 Ways to Make Money From Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 18:52:00 +0530

Since I’ve started blogging, I have had more than a few people ask me how they too can make money from blogging.
It’s easy to look at people who have risen to fame and prominence by building a high-profile, money-making blog and think “Hey, I can do that, too.”
You might not become the next Perez Hilton or Dooce, but if you play your cards right, you can start to pull in an income from your blog.

Whether the income is enough to allow you to quit a full-time job depends on a number of different factors. No matter how much you end up making, creating a blog that you find exciting is one of the fun ways to make money online.
There are a few different ways you can make money from blogging. I recommend using a combination of income-generating methods.
Some techniques might work for one type of blog, but not another, so it’s a good idea to try several to see what generates the most revenue for you.

AdSense

When it comes to putting advertisements on your blog to generate income, Google’s AdSense is often the top pick for bloggers. It’s simple to use and doesn’t require you to have a great amount of technical know-how.
To put an AdSense ad on your blog, you pretty much just have to copy and paste the code.
It’s also one of the biggest advertising networks available, so you’ll have a wide range of advertisers to work with. That also means that you can make money from it even if your blog falls into a pretty obscure niche.

Amazon Associates

The Amazon Associates program allows you to earn a portion of sales when people click-through from your blog to Amazon.com and make a purchase.
You only earn money when people buy something from the web giant and the amount you earn varies based on what people order and how many people purchase through your links.
The Associates program works best for people whose blog focuses on products and shopping in someway. You’ll earn more money if people are in a shopping mood when they visit your site.

Other Affiliate Programs

While Amazon’s affiliate marketing program might be one of the biggest out there, it’s definitely not the only one available.
Depending the topic of your blog and the amount of traffic you get, you can participate in any number of other marketing programs. Some marketing programs only want blogs that have a high traffic volume, so you might have to wait and build your audience before signing up.
As your blog grows, fun ways to make money online can include reaching out to small companies whose products you trust and use to see if they would like to set up an affiliate marketing program with you.
You would post a link to their product on your blog and if someone clicks through your blog to their site and orders it, you would get a portion of the sale.

Private Sponsorships

As your blog becomes more established, you can start to find ways to make more money through private ad sales and sponsorships.
Unlike AdSense ads, private ads don’t just come to you. You’ll have to go out and find them, much like the advertising staff of a magazine approaches companies about placing ads in their pages.
To sell private ads, you’ll need to convince the company that your blog has a sufficient amount of traffic. You’ll also need to show the company that your blog’s topic is a good fit for whatever service or product they offer.

E-Books

When you blog, you provide people with information for free. One way to expand on the information you give people and make money doing it is to write an e-book and sell it on your blog.
Ideally, your e-book will connect with the content on your blog and expand on it in some way. People won’t want to pay money for content you’ve previously given away.
For example, if you have a cooking blog, your e-book could be a short cookbook featuring previously unpublished recipes.
The recipes could have been tested by a group of people before publishing and not available anywhere else.

Personal Appearances and Speaking Fees

If your blog really becomes popular, you might be able to expand your income opportunities beyond the web and into the real world.
Some bloggers get paid to appear at conferences or to give readings to the public.
You might not get paid to give a speech at first, but as your blog becomes more well-known and respected, organizations might offer you some money to say a few words.

Offer Exclusivity

Once your blog has an established readership, you can expand your income-generating opportunities further by offering memberships to your website.
People can pay a yearly or monthly amount to gain access to exclusive content on your blog, to participate in forums, or to receive a monthly newsletter from you.
Starting a members-only portion of your blog lets your readers feel special while it makes you some extra money.
The most important thing to remember when starting your blog is that you won’t become a millionaire overnight. Many bloggers are excited to bring in just a few dollars a month.
It takes a considerable amount of focus and dedication to your blog to turn into a project that generates a significant amount of income.

How To Create A Profitable Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 18:49:00 +0530

When I created my first blog, I was able to earn over $5000 in my very first month because I provided value. It was quite simple really, I found a problem on the Internet, I provided the solution on my blog and then I monetized it with affiliate offers.

Blog Basics

1. What’s your niche? What you are passionate about?
Most bloggers will tell you to blog about your passion, this is wrong, you should blog about a Profitable Passion or interest you have. If it was just simply your passion, I would be blogging about something rediculous. Instead I blogged about web design because that is what I enjoyed and knew I could make money from. To give you a good idea of what niches make money, go to ClickBank and click Marketplace and any category they have, are niches that people are selling things in, for example, gaming, health, fitness, design, marketing etc.
2. Choosing the right domain name? How important it is?
There is no hard and fast rules to your choice of domain . The conventional rule is to use a keyword in your domain. For instance, if you write about pets, your choice of domain name should probably include keyphrases such as “pets”, “dog” or “cat”.
However, keep in mind that most good domain names has long been taken so a combination of two or more keywords is recommended here. When working on finding a new domain I use a great FREE tool called Instant Domain Search which will straight away tell you as you type each character if the domain is taken. I currently register all my domain names with GoDaddy which is a very popular service among most website owners.
3. Hosting Your Website On The Internet
Once you’ve registered a domain name you can call your own, the next course of action is buy yourself a reliable hosting provider. We have partnered with one of the best and most reputable hosting provider in the industry – HostGator which gives you the right hosting package with superb support system at the most affordable price.
4. Change your DNS (domain name server)
What comes next is to point your domain to HostGator of which the whole process is actually quite simple and takes only a minute to do.
For the sake of simplicity, please refer to How to Change Your DNS to HostGator.
5. Blog setup is as easy as 1-2-3
Installing WordPress isn’t as difficult as what other make you think otherwise. A neat little script called Fantastico makes setting up a blog as simple as pie. No real technical knowledge of required.
If you think installing WordPress is only for the technical savvy, let me share you “How to Install Your Blog using Fantastico the Easy Way”
6. Tell the world who you are with “About Me” page

Anonymity is the privilege and the fun part of blogging. But your readers deserves the right to know who is talking to them and whom they will be talking to. In such an impersonal world of blogging, a little introduction about you makes it more personal and improve your credibility as a blogger. What you want to reveal is really up to you but just don’t hide behind the mask of your blog.

Blog Optimization

1. Your choice of WordPress theme makes a difference.
I’m subscribed to the notion that “First Impression Counts”. If you can’t convince your visitors to stay engaged in the first one minute or so, you’ll probably not gonna be seeing them again.
Personally, we use a ThemeForest for a few of our sites, they have FREE and Paid Themes, obviously the paid ones are better, setting you back $70 for two themes. We personally use the Headlines Theme for this site and BusyBee for IncomeDiary.com.
Installing your theme is easy, once you have downloaded it from Woothemes, go to your WordPress Admin, click Themes > Upload > Upload Zip File and Activate!

2. What are the top 10 indispensable WordPress plug-ins?
What is a plug-in? In layman term, it’s an external code that add a specific function to expand the functionality of your blog. With plug-ins, you can practically do almost anything you can imagine to your blog.

Though WordPress works right out of the box, a plug-in help to optimize your blog and it’s for this very reason, WordPress has been the preferred choice of blogging platform for most bloggers.

Due to a plethora of plugins, it’s also important to keep in mind that your choice plug-ins should be ones that best serve your blogging needs. Here’s a checklist of 10 post-install plugins you ought to install right after the initial setup.

3. Google tools are your best blogging friends

I can’t say enough how indispensable tools like Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to track the performance of your blog. While the core functions of both tools are primarily to improve your SERP (aka: Search Engine Results Position). Each has its own specific uses you can’t do without. If you don’t please Google

4. Setup RSS & Email subscription
Despite what you are blogging for, your ultimate goal of everything you do is to drive traffic to your site and convince your visitors to subscribe (read: follow) your blog.
The most common approach to facilitate the process is to register your blog with Feedburner which is a 3rd party application designed to easily manage your RSS subscription and simplify the process of subscribing with just “one easy click”.
Nothing can be any easier than that. However, from my own personal blogging experience, you also need to take into account the non-techy visitors who are know little about RSS. Hence an alternative in the form of email subscription may be a good complimentary option. Most internet markets choose to use a service called Aweber so they can have full controle over their email list.
5. Check browser compatibility
Unless you are getting the right premium themes from reputable theme developer i.e. Thesis [insert your affiliate link] theme, some of the code of those freely available themes may not be compatible across major browsers, IE in particular. In fact, why 50% of users are still on IE is still beyond me.

A nifty online tool – IE NetRenderer allows you to check how your site is viewed by Internet Explorer 8, 7, 6 or 5.5 and it’s completely free!

SEO

1. Submit to Google
Despite what others think that it’s no longer necessary, personally I think submitting your blog to Google index is still worth the effort. Google is indexing and updating billion of pages every day, a little knock at its door does not do your blog any harm, does it?
After all, what have you got to lose to submit your site that will only take less than a minute. Here’s where you can do it.

2. Don’t ignore Permalink structure
More often that not, this one of the most important yet overlooked to-do-list right after the initial bog setup. If it’s isn’t in your post install checklist yet, I can begin to say enough that ignoring it has detrimental effect to your search engine visibility.

3. Write for both your readers and search engines
Here I’m referring to your choice of post title. A careful choice of title with the proper keyword research is part and parcel of your SEO (aka; search engine optimization) effort. Speaking of which, not only you should write for both search engine and more important, your readers.
Basically, your post title is what your readers will see while the blog title is what the search engines robots view.

4. Create robot.txt file – What is robot.txt file?
Basically the purpose of creating a robots.txt file is to improve site indexation by telling search engine crawler to only index your content pages and to ignore other pages (i.e. monthly archives, categories folders or your admin files) that you do not want them to appear on the search index lest it leads to the problem of duplicate content.
In layman term, it means that you can’t have two or more pages with the same content words for words. Google will just ignore the duplicate contents and not list them in the index. If your blog is new, the last thing you’ll ever need is not to be in Google whitelist, so to speak.

5. Create a Sitemap – What is a Sitemap?
While Robots.txt instructs search engines which parts of your site to exclude from indexing, a Sitemap tells search engines where you’d like them to go. From a search engine perspective, sitemap is useful for better and faster indexing while a plain HTML sitemap with the use of plug-in provides ease of navigation for your visitors.

For Search Engines – If you are on WordPress, install Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator which will generate XML-Sitemap supported by most of the search engines.
For Your Visitors – Clean Archives Reloaded generates a list of your posts sorted by months for better navigation.

6. Update “Ping” list
What is ‘Ping’? Pinging is a built-in notification system ‘pinging’ the search or directory engines every time you post a new article on your blog to get the search engines to visit your site more often, thus improve indexation.
Below are the list of ping services that I use

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2/
http://pingqueue.com/rpc/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://www.bloglines.com/ping
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

For more details ping services , here’s A Complete List of Ping Services for your reference.

Blog Promotion

1.Blog Commenting
I’m a big proponent of blog commenting. What you basically do here to find any blog that’s is closely relevant too your niche where you can add your constructive opinions on the subject being discussed via commenting.
It’s one of the most powerful yet the least expensive tool to create awareness especially when you are new in the community. No other blog promotion can be as effective as commenting, no question about it.

2. Article Marketing
This is one method that I’ve found great success with. Not only it’s an effective strategy for link building (Google loves more links pointing back to your site), one article of yours will be published in one hundred, if not thousands of other sites, depending on the quality of your article. If writing is in your greatest asset, nothing beats article marketing if you ask me.

3. Guest Blogging

Guest blogging isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s the common practice where bloggers write article to be published on other bloggers’ blogs. If done right with a reputable host, you’ll not only see an increased in your blog traffic and gain a few extra subscribers.
With guest blogging, not only will the host’s blog receive new fresh content from a different perspective, the guest blogger will gain a link and the all important exposure.

4. Use of Social Sites
Well, I’m not fond of social sites but the recent buzz of using Tweeter to promote your product and services deserves a certain degree of recognition and I think it’s pretty fair that I make an effort to promote the use of it to a certain extent.
If you are not into yet, you’ll never know what you’re missing. Mind ya, it can be addictive. The use of it shouldn’t be at the expense of other promotional strategies such as Twitter or Stumble Upon.

5. Forum Marketing
Marketing your site in forums is worthy of a mention too. Though it might take quite a bit of you time to partake and join the forum discussion, it’s still one of the promotional method widely used by the majority of new bloggers.
One common approach is to insert your links in your signature so that whenever you make any post, there is a likelihood of clicks from other forum posters. The success of forum marketing varied and certainly depend on the kind of niche you are in and how eye-catching your link signature is.

Make Money Online

1. Google AdSense
Google Adsense is the bread and butter of most bloggers. It’s the plug-n-play advertising program you can easily run on your new blog without much effort. Though it’s the preferred choice of blog monetization, please keep in mind that without traffic which is usually low in when your blog is new, your earnings from Adsense could be pretty minimal. Its earnings is pretty much relied upon the kind of traffic you can drive to your site.

2. Affiliate Sales
With that being said above, the next best option is learn and explore the art of affiliate marketing. In simple term, affiliate marketing is about promoting someone’s else products where you’ll be paid for every referral sale. Depending on the products, you are referring, the referral commission can be as high as a few hundred dollars.
If you are looking for products and eBooks to sell on commission I would recommended Clickbank and Amazon Associates Program.

3. Sponsored Reviews
To touch upon what I’ve mentioned above earlier, if writing is in your blood and copywriting is your forte, doing a review for someone else’s product or services can be one lucrative source of income. All you need to do is to write an honest review and offer constructive criticism and you’ll get paid for it.

4. Freelance Services
Now those of you who have the skills for say, design, coding or copywriting for that matter, I’d recommend to learn how to leverage your blog to showcase your portfolios. I’ve seen how others are successful using their blog to sell their service and earn a decent income out of it. One notable example of this Jacob Class .
5. Private Advertising
Last but not the least, though it’s one method I’m not advocating when your blog is new is private advertising where usually advertisers are willing to buy an ad space on your blog.
However advertisers are smart of investors who are only willing to spend the kind of money in a blog with a decent traffic and certain rankings. There are various metrics advertisers are concerned about, among them are the no. of your subscribers, PageRank, traffic stats and just to name a few.
If you don’t have any of those yet, this option is certainly one that you shouldn’t think about in the beginning. Instead first focus on building traffic and social networking and advertising opportunities comes naturally thereafter. However if you do have traffic you should definitly get the OIOpublisher plugin which allows you to quickly and easily sell private advertising on your blog.
Final Thought
Setting up a blog is the easy part, what comes next is a different ball game altogether. It takes a lot of commitment, patience, technical know-hows and most importantly, the passion to see you through the ups and downs of blogging.
The above “”How To” guide isn’t the ultimate guide to make money online from the get go but the awareness of the above know-hows is the prerequisites to building a successful blog and bringing you one step closer to your dreams of making money online from your blog.

How to build and monetise a blog

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 18:43:00 +0530

Work for your supper? I thought so. Worried about your job? Quite possibly. And with talk of a double-dip recession, your concern is justifiable. If you are self-employed, like me, you're probably feeling just as edgy as the employed about your future income.

As a freelance journalist and copywriter, I've occasionally wondered whether to start looking for a suitably sized cardboard box to move into. Earning a steady living in this way can be tough and erratic, and to tell you the truth, I'm a bit sick of it.
But there is another way, or so I've heard. And it's called "blogging". Apparently, it can make you money.
I'm no stranger to blogs, and started a few after being introduced to the concept when I met former newspaper journalist Craig McGinty several years ago. McGinty told me he earned his living through "online publishing". That is, writing for himself. I didn't quite get it back then.
After going freelance in 2003, McGinty – who had lived in France and has since moved back – turned his writing skills to his site ThisFrenchLife.com (among others), writing advice for foreigners living in France. "As with many freelance writers I first pitched a few ideas to newspapers, but soon realised I was spending more time doing admin than actually writing and interviewing people," he says.
"So I thought I would spend this time writing my own websites and run them as online publications, with a selection of article types, including guest articles, but also competitions and offering a variety of advertising options."
It wasn't long before McGinty stopped relying on a freelance income altogether, and more recently, he's teamed up with landscaping expert Philip Voice to develop LandscapeJuice.com. According to Voice, the site will turnover about £18,000 in 2011. It receives around 90,000 visitors a month but Voice says he expects to see a "dramatic growth in advertising revenue and revenue from other services in 2012".

How to Make Money from Your Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 18:39:00 +0530

You’re out there blogging with Google Blogger or some other host, bringing many sets of eyes to your Web site. Where’s the harm in making a little money for your efforts? The Web is full of ways to make your blog pay.

Placing ads

One way to stream some revenue is to put contextual, text, and impression ads on your site. The Web sites here pay you to display ads:

Becoming an affiliate

Joining affiliate programs, such as those in this list, let you connect to some cash:

Posting for pay

You can also try paid posting, which these sites can help you set up:

Offering goods

Some Web sites pay you to offer merchandise or link to mini malls. Some of these sites include:

How Bloggers Can Make Money with Affiliate Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:56:00 +0530

Most bloggers know about advertising, sponsored posts and getting paid directly from brands, but many bloggers are not fully monetizing their blogs. Affiliate marketing is a way to earn more money and promote many different brands without having to go out and form a relationship with each. Chances are you are already promoting products and linking to them. With affiliate marketing you can earn a portion of the sales you refer.

There are many ways to be an affiliate. Most bloggers sign up with an affiliate network because it’s a one-stop place to find many programs to join. You apply to the network and then apply to individual programs in the network. They give you special links to use or banner ads that track clicks and sales. You can link to a website or to a specific product. When someone clicks on your link or ad and makes a purchase you make a percent of the sale, usually around 10%. Some programs give you a percent of any sales from their website from someone who came from your link, up to 30 days or longer.

The advantage of joining a network is you manage many different businesses and get paid from the network, rather than getting individual checks and logging onto different sites. You usually get paid once a month and you can log in and see your sales and what you’re making at any time (remind you of The Blogger Network?).

When you apply to be an affiliate, you are called a “publisher”. The brand or business is called the “merchant”. Some of the signup processes are not very user-friendly but they all involve filling out an application and getting approved by the network. Once approved you can search for merchants to promote. Once accepted, the merchant provides links and creative you can use on your blog.

There are many ways to be an affiliate, here are some examples:

Be an Event Affiliate
Many conferences or events have affiliate programs. It can be as simple as a discount code that if someone uses you code, you’ll make money to a more formal setup. Eventbrite makes it easy to set up affiliates because it’s easy to create a signup code and then track when someone uses that code to sign up. Then the conference organizer will pay you a percentage of the total sales.

Earn Money Promoting Free ProductsYou can be an affiliate for free things like free ebooks, downloads, coupons (Coupons.com has an affiliate program) free trials, or even by posting recipes (such as with My Recipe Magic – please note the site is temporarily down). There are also affiliates who get paid when someone fills out a lead form, such as applying for a credit card.

Every blogger can create a page of their favorite resources and use affiliate links in the post (be sure to disclose that they are affiliate links though).

Example: the Lemons for Lulu blog has a post that shows the camera, web hosting, WordPress theme, books and other things she uses and loves. See http://www.lemonsforlulu.com/blogger-resources.

Create Helpful Posts and Use Affiliate LinksYou could do a post about your favorite plugins and include affiliate links to any paid ones. Many affiliate programs will allow you to promote products directly on social media. We’ve seen fashion bloggers directly link to buy pages on Facebook, for example.

Here’s a post with an affiliate link:

Post about how to start a blog in your niche and link to the web hosting company where they buy a domain, link to the paid theme you recommend, etc. This blog post from Pinch of Yum tells how to start a food blog and includes many affiliate links: http://pinchofyum.com/resources/how-to-start-a-food-blog.

Another way to get started is to go see what your most popular posts are and see if there are ways you could use affiliate links in the post. For example, if you have a recipe that goes viral on Pinterest, you could monetize that post. You can create a box that lists all the ingredients or supplies needed and then link to stores that carry those products. You can link to either Walmart, Target or Amazon in most posts. If you’re higher end you might link to Williams Sonoma, Pottery Barn or other retailer. Don’t just think about food, think about the tools, dishes or other parts of your post. If someone ever asks, where did you get that platter, that’s an opportunity for you.

The good news is, you will get paid on the entire order, so if someone buys anything because of your link, you make money.

To get started, look at the major affiliate networks:

Commission Junction www.Cj.com
This is one of the largest affiliate networks. Here is the sign up page:https://signup.cj.com/member/publisherSignUp.do

Linkshare www.Linkshare.com

Amazon – www.Amazon.com (find the associates link in the footer to apply)
Amazon pays less than a lot of programs but it has a huge selection and user-friendly tools. The name of the game here is to sell quantity because the margins are small. Still, there is a lot of brand trust and many people, especially those with Amazon Prime, prefer to order from Amazon.

Share A Sale www.ShareASale.com
This network has many smaller and mid-sized businesses, including niche products and brands you might not already know.

Clickbank www.Clickbank.com
This program carries information products and ebooks. Since there is very little cost once the product is created, you can get very high commissions. Some offer to 75% commissions on products. Commissions are paid weekly, and direct deposit is available to its affiliates.

AvantLink – www.AvantLink.com
This network has cutting edge tools and more advanced features such as data feeds.

We hope that this helps you understand how affiliate marketing works enough so that you can get started. Please let us know if we missed anything! To inspire you, here’s another post from Pinch of Yum that breaks down how much they make from different revenue streams, including affiliate marketing.

Successful Blogs Earning Money Online : Top 50 Earning Blogs

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:55:00 +0530

For today’s post, I wanted to look at some of the most successful and profitable blogs that are currently online. For many people that are just starting blogging, it is hard to know how much you can potentially earn. In the initial stages of setting up a blog, it can be tough to keep motivated to keep going when you’re not making much money, but given time and lots of effort a blog can take off in a big way. The best examples that you can look at are the blogs that are at the top.

It certainly inspired me to learn just how much money some of the top blogs make on a daily basis.

The following list of 50 blogs are considered the best in the business. I often get inspired by these blogs, urging me on to put in the work to make my own site the best that it can be. I hope that this inspires you as well!

	Website	Owner	Daily Income	Value	Main Income
1	The Huffington Post	Arianna Huffington	$29,896	$21.82 Million	Pay Per Click
2	Mashable	Pete Cashmore	$15,781	$11.52 Million	Advertising Banners
3	Techcrunch	Michael Arrington	$14,816	$10.82 Million	Advertising Banners
4	Engadget	Peter Rojas	$9,861	$7.2 Million	Advertising Banners
5	Smashing Magazine	Vitaly Friedman	$6,382	$4.66 Million	Advertising Banners
6	Tuts+	Collis Taeed	$5,068	$3.7 Million	Membership Area
7	Life Hacker	Nick Denton	$4,821	$3.52 Million	Advertising Banners
8	Gizmodo	Attila Talos	$3,918	$2.86 Million	Advertising Banners
9	Perez Hilton	Mario Lavandeira	$3,645	$2.66 Million	Advertising Banners
10	Joystiq	AOL	$1,752	$1.28 Million	CPM Advertising
11	Problogger	Darren Rowse	$1,751	$1.28 Million	Advertising Banners
12	Kotaku	Nick Denton	$1,599	$1.17 Million	Advertising Banners
13	Six Revisions	Jacob Gube	$1,587	$1.16 Million	Advertising Banners
14	Noupe	Noupe	$1,400	$1.02 Million	Advertising Banners
15	Venture Beat	Matt Marshall	$1,251	$913,721	Pay Per Click
16	CopyBlogger	Brian Clark	$1,184	$864,861	Affiliate Sales
17	Abduzeedo	Fabio Sasso	$983	$718,239	Advertising Banners
18	Talking Points Memo	Joshua Marshall	$887	$647,750	Advertising Banners
19	WPBeginner	Syed Balkhi	$692	$505,420	Affiliate Sales
20	Matt Cutts	Matt Cutts	$0*	$488,944	Twitter
21	Steve Pavlina	Steve Pavlina	$664	$485,024	Pay Per Click
22	Slash Gear	Ewdison Then	$621	$453,999	Pay Per Click
23	Smart Passive Income	Pat Flynn	$607	$443,406	Affiliate Sales
24	John Chow	John Chow	$555	$405,242	Affiliate Sales
25	Freelance Switch	Collis Ta’eed	$533	$389,517	Membership Area
26	Shoemoney	Jeremy Schoemaker	$485	$354,112	Private Advertising
27	Gothamist	Jake Dobkin	$452	$330,022	Pay Per Click
28	Entrepreneurs Journey	Yaro Starak	$389	$284,170	Affiliate Sales
29	IncomeDiary	Michael Dunlop	$382	$279,505	Affiliate Sales
30	Chris Brogan	Chris Brogan	$371	$271,147	Affiliate Sales
31	Matts Marketing Blog	Matt Carter	$302	$220,834	Affiliate Sales
32	ClickNewz	Lynn Terry	$239	$174,873	Affiliate Sales
33	Dooce	Heather B Armstrong	$229	$167,580	Pay Per Click
34	Coolest Gadgets	Allan Carlton	$227	$166,069	Advertising Banners
35	Tony Robbins	Tony Robbins	$193	$141,526	Affiliate Sales
36	Just Creative Designs	Jacob Cass	$185	$135,497	Advertising Banners
37	David Risley	David Risley	$137	$100,588	Affiliate Sales
38	Car Advice	Alborz Fallah	$127	$92,886	Advertising Banners
39	Sizlopedia	Saad Hamid	$118	$86,842	Pay Per Click
40	Gary Vaynerchuk	Gary Vaynerchuk	$88	$64,744	Affiliate Sales
41	PC Mech	David Risley	$82	$59,955	Affiliate Sales
42	Timothy Sykes	Timothy Sykes	$81	$59,284	Affiliate Sales
43	Joel Comm	Joel Comm	$75	$55,408	Affiliate Sales
44	Tyler Cruz	Tyler Cruz	$74	$54,736	Affiliate Sales
45	Chris Garrett	Chris Garrett	$67	$49,327	Affiliate Sales
46	Money Dummy	John Paul Aguiar	$65	$48,093	Affiliate Sales
47	Retireat21	Michael Dunlop	$65	$47,487	Affiliate Sales
48	Revenews	ReveNews, LLC	$64	$47,122	Affiliate Sales
49	StandOutBlogger	Thomas Sinfield	$59	$43,633	Affiliate Sales
50	BlogBareFoot	Carrie Wilkerson	$37	$27,390	Affiliate Sales

[* – Matt Cutts has stated (see comments section) that he doesn’t actually earn any money directly via his blog. Instead he utilizes Twitter to promote various products and merchandise to his many followers. Still a viable blog to feature on this list though, as it shows that other methods can be used to make money online.]

This list is only an estimate of the true worth of these sites.

It took me quite a bit of time to research this ‘Top 50 Earning Blogs‘ list. I learnt a lot from doing this and found loads of interesting sites and bloggers. I believe that this list helps to illustrate the ladder of success that we all strive to climb up.

OnlineIncomeTeacher.com doesn’t feature on the list YET, however I will strive to work hard to achieve a place amongst these outstanding names. I hope you feel as inspired as I do!

Disclaimer:- The website’s featured in this top 50 list are only estimates and are not 100% accurate! This is just an indication of how well they are doing regarding making money from their blog. All of the ‘Daily Income’ & ‘Value’ statistics were calculated using the free tool ‘SiteWorthChecher.com’ which can be used to estimate the worth of a website.

If you believe that you deserve a place on the ‘top 50 earning blogs’ list, or know of any blogs that should, please comment below!

Useful SEO Tips and Tricks for Blogs Traffic

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:55:00 +0530

The more SEO skills you have, the more likely you are to get into trouble with Google.

Of course that is not always the case, but there are many SEO professionals who still recommend shady practices that Google frown upon. There are also some great SEO professionals and many of them now call themselves content marketers as they realize that great content is the cornerstone of SEO.

If you are employing someone to help you with your SEO, you need to be very careful. Even if they have lots of success with their clients, you need to know if they are deploying tactics that Google will cop onto very soon. You’ve heard about Panda, Penguin and others (Google’s code names for their algorithm changes)? Well, we’ll see Zebra, Koala and Irish Wolfhound soon. Of course I made up those names but there will be more code named algorithm changes coming!

You’ve heard about Panda, Penguin and others (Google’s code names for their algorithm changes)? Well, we’ll see Zebra, Koala and Irish Wolfhound soon. Of course I made up those names but there will be more code named algorithm changes coming!

However, SEO is still important and there are some non-shady tips that can help improve the optimization of your content to drive more traffic to your site.

Here are 7 SEO tips and tricks. I’d love to hear from you if you have any more you’d like to add.

1. Internal Link Building

Do you do enough linking of old content to new content?

Linking old and new content is like creating a paper trail for Google

CLICK TO TWEET

Linking new content to old content

When you write content on your website, find relevant articles that you have already published on your site to link to. As the value of the new post goes up, the value of the link goes up too.

Also, if anyone does copy/republish your content then at least you’ll have at least one link back to your site.

To find relevant articles to link to, go to Google and search your site for relevant articles. For example, if I wanted to find relevant articles about SEO on this site I would type in the following:

SEO site:www.razorsocial.com

Linking old content to new content

It’s great to link to older articles, but what about linking older articles to your new content? This is just as important to consider. You have some older articles that Google has probably already indexed and, if it’s a good article, you will have got links to it. This means their value has gone up.

You can now link from these older articles to your newer posts.

This gives your new article a little boost and it also helps Google to find it. As Google is re-indexing your content, it will follow links within your posts.

Action: Revisit your older posts and find posts you should be cross linking. Consider adding this as an additional item to your checklist for new posts.

2. Resolve Errors in Google Webmaster Tools

Imagine if Google crawled your site and, when it found any issues or problems, it told you about them.

“Hey Guys, I’ve just found some problems on your site and if you don’t fix them it will mean that I’m not going to send you as much traffic as I was going to!”

Of course, you don’t get that personal email from Google, but Google does put any errors/problems into Google Webmaster Tools.

Here is an example. You have duplicate descriptions for some of your posts, which is not helping Google index your content. So you need to resolve issues like this asap.

Resolve issues related to Title and Description tags

Action: This is not something to ignore. Check whether there are any errors in Webmaster Tools and resolve them asap.

3. Review content that is not ranking

What about content you’ve written recently that is not ranking?

Perhaps you thought that you would get a ton of links and you could rank in Google for a competitive term, but then this didn’t happen.

Well, maybe you could go back and tweak the post to try to rank for different keywords? Or you could write a guest post on a high-profile site and link to this content? Or add links from existing content on your website?

Action: On a monthly basis, review your recent posts to see what traffic they are getting. If they are getting very little traffic, take some action to correct this. Don’t always just think about new posts, let’s not neglect our old ones!

4. Consider Related Keywords

When you write a blog post and try to optimize it for keywords, it’s great when you start to get regular ongoing traffic for those keywords. But what also normally happens is that you end up getting even more traffic for keywords that are similar to the ones you tried to rank for.

So, it’s important to consider these related keywords in your posts. I’m not talking about adding keywords for the sake of it, but if Google thinks they are related to your main keyword targets, then consider adding them if they add value to your content.

The best way of finding these keywords is by searching for something in Google, scrolling to the bottom of the page, and looking at the related keywords.

This is available at the bottom of a search results page

Action: Consider related keywords as part of your post.

5. Leverage tools to help with SEO

There are many tools that can help you with different aspects of the optimization of your content, so you really need to have a small collection of them. Here are some examples of tools I use on a regular basis.

SEMRush – This shows the terms your competitor is ranking for, what you are ranking for, helps you with keyword research and much more.

Google Keyword Planner – When you want to do keyword research, this is essential to review. Google will give you an estimate of traffic for the keywords you search for and for associated keywords.

Yoast SEO Plugin – If you’re on WordPress, you need this plugin. It’s the best plugin for optimizing your content for Google. It’s simple to use and very effective.

Opensite Explorer – It’s important to understand about the proprietary website and web page ranking system implemented by Moz. Your website is ranked out of 100 using adomain authority ranking and your pages are ranked out of 100 also. This tool shows you this data so that you can consider it when trying to compete against other websites.

Moz Toolbar – When you do a Google search, this toolbar adds the domain and page authority onto each search result. Consider using two browsers: one for normal searching and one that has Moz toolbar installed. You can use this one when you are doing your SEO work.

Ahrefs – I use this mainly for analyzing the link profiles of our site and our competitors’ sites.

6. Strategic guest posting

If you have a post that is ranking well and getting some traffic, this may be a post that you want to keep topping up with new links.

The new links to the post will help it maintain its standing in Google search results, but you may also push it up the search results if it’s not currently in the number one position.

One way of doing this is through guest posting. Write an article that is relevant to the content you have, and include a link to the article you want to promote. This helps drive traffic to the post but it will also help with the ranking of the post. Because the link is relevant and adds value to the content that you are guest posting about, you’ll generally get away with adding the link!

Action: Read this post on Guest posting (notice the way I’m linking to internal articles!).

7. Write long content

Is this really about optimizing content for SEO? Yes, absolutely. So, why write long content?

If you can write super high-quality short articles, then write them. But typically it’s very difficult to provide a lot of value in a short article, so they don’t tend to get many links or shares. Without these, you won’t have much of a chance of ranking for this content.

I read a recent post from the wonderful Andy Crestodina on the importance of the length of blog posts, tweets, Facebook updates etc. In his article he presented research on the average content length for search results in the top 10.

You can see that most of them are more than 2,000 words!

You can see that Google top search results are generally longer content

Action: Write long posts – this is one of the best optimization techniques you will come across.

Summary

SEO tips and tricks are not about scamming Google. You don’t want to over optimize your content, but some optimization is required and this is ongoing work you need to do.

6 Easy Steps to Make Money Online

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:54:00 +0530

A staggering $2.1 billion in affiliate marketing fees were paid to blog and website owners in 2008. This finding in a recent study by Jupiter Research confirms what many savvy Internet marketers have known for a while: Affiliate marketing has become one of the top business opportunities online because the startup costs are so low and the income you generate can be mind-blowing.

Affiliate marketing involves having your own site and sending your traffic to someone else's site to buy their products or services. For every sale initiated by a link from your site, you earn a percentage--an affiliate sales commission.

Affiliate marketing can be done on a part-time basis, and many are so successful that they've made it their full-time job. Equally exciting, you can get in the game in just a few hours. But how successful you are is based on the amount of time and effort you devote. Here is how you can make money online with these six tips:

1. Create a website or blog

To start as an affiliate marketer, you must have a site on which to place links to the products or services you recommend. There are many inexpensive website services such as Hostgator and GoDaddy. It's also easy to set up a free blog through services such as Google's Blogger blog network. I also use Namecheap for domains and Hostnine (get a reseller account) for hosting.

2. Decide your product/service niche

Affiliate marketers help companies and entrepreneurs sell everything from jewelry and cell phones to website services and how-to e-books. Choose an area you're familiar with or one you're enthusiastic about learning. You'll be more likely to do the work and less likely to get bored before the money starts rolling in.

3. Find products and services to promote

Many affiliate networks exist to connect merchants with affiliate site publishers who can help sell their goods. Companies such as:

Clickbank, E-junkie and PayDotCom lead the pack in connecting the creators of e-books and software with affiliates to help sell their digital download products.
Commission Junction is popular for those who want to sell more traditional wares ranging from travel services to janitorial franchises.
Google AdSense, which doesn't require your involvement to result in a sale. Your income is realized on a pay-per-click basis, just for leading your traffic to click to a merchant's site. PPC affiliate programs pay a lot less than programs where your referral must result in a sale. Keep in mind that a site peppered with ads and no authority or trust can look and feel like spam, and you won't get good results.

4. Affiliate site content

There are two main approaches or business models to choose from when setting up an affiliate marketing site:

Resource Sites These sites are focused on offering lots of how-to articles and posts, and then provide affiliate links or banner ads to click for more details. Frequently adding fresh related content is vital because it gives people a reason to return to your site--and click some of your money-making links.
Review Sites You've tried the products in your niche, now you write them up and rate them to help your site visitors decide what to buy. For each product you review, you provide a link or banner ad that clicks through for sales on your merchant partner's site. Less frequent content updates are necessary--just tweak your site about once a week to let the search engines know your site's still alive, and always try to build links.

5. Affiliate sites must attract lots of targeted traffic to succeed

Most people visiting your website or blog won't click your affiliate links. That's why it's crucial to employ a mix of marketing tactics to increase traffic--highly targeted traffic--to your site.

There are four main ways to get more site exposure and attract more potential customers:

Paid Advertising This is most effective when your ad copy headline, call-to-action message and graphics come together just right to compel people to click through and buy.
Free Advertising Sites like Craigslist and US Free Ads are but two of many popular places that accept links and banner ads for free. These tend to be affiliate marketing sites themselves, earning the owner money whenever you click their ads.
Article Marketing This popular marketing method offers several benefits. You're building credibility as a reliable source in your niche, gaining a higher search engine ranking by increasing the number of links leading to your site, and pulling traffic to your site. Work in an organic manner and don't spam using software engines.Ezinearticles is a great place to begin.
E-mail Marketing Every visitor to your site is valuable, so capturing their names and e-mail addresses to stay in touch is important. Many people might not buy your affiliate products until the third or fourth time they hear from you. So it's crucial to place an opt-in subscription box on your site for people to start receiving a weekly or monthly newsletter from you. My personal favorite is aweber, but many quality ones exist.

6. Learn the ropes in forums

These are online communities of likeminded people who exchange insights and ideas. Join at least one of these free affiliate marketing forums to benefit from advice shared by other newbies, intermediates and gurus alike:

Digital Point Huge, with about 25,000 active members. An excellent place to learn affiliate marketing tips, plus other techniques that impact your success such as link building and SEO.
aBestWeb One of the largest affiliate marketing forums, with nearly 100 sub-forums. Covers the broadest range of affiliate marketing-specific subjects, with heavy participation by numerous go-getter merchants and serious affiliates.
Warrior Forum A killer networking forum for beginners and advanced alike. Set up a profile, start participating, ask questions and promote as well.

To do well, read all you can about the opinions, tool and strategies of both experts and peers. But before you even start, choose a niche about which you're passionate. The more you truly enjoy what you're immersed in, the more likely you are to transform your affiliate marketing and money-making venture into a huge success.

20 Lessons Going from 0 to $100,000 per Month with Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:53:00 +0530

You know everyone thinks we’re fools, right? To most of the world, blogging is a joke. It isn’t a career. It isn’t a way to make money. It isn’t a tool for changing the world. It’s a hobby, a diversion, a fad that’ll come and go. Sure, you can start a blog, but don’t count on it to take you anywhere. That’s just silly.

Try telling your family or friends or coworkers you want to quit your job and make money blogging. They’ll smile politely and ask, “Does anybody really make money from that?”

Yes, they want you to have dreams. Yes, they want you to chase them. Yes, they want you to succeed.

But they also want you to be “realistic.”

If you really want to improve your life, you should get an advanced degree, write a book, or even start your own business, not hang all your hopes and dreams on some stupid little blog. There’s no money in it.

Or is there?

I’m hesitant to say this, but…

This Blog Makes $100,000 per Month

In January and February, we cleared over $100,000 per month in sales. The verdict is still out on March, but if we didn’t make it, we should be close enough.

How?

Well, I’ll tell you. Not because I want to brag (well, maybe a little), but because most of the advice out there about monetizing your blog is complete crap.

For instance, do you see any ads on this site?

No? How about e-books for sale?

None of those either, huh? In fact, you might be hard-pressed to find anything for sale at all.

There’s a reason why.

Over the past six years, I’ve had the good fortune to work with some of the smartest bloggers on the planet. I worked with Brian Clark as he built Copyblogger to a multimillion dollar brand. Neil Patel and Hiten Shah also hired me to help them launch the KISSmetrics blog, and while they’re not big on publishing revenue numbers, they did recently close a $7 million venture capital round.

Combined, I wouldn’t be surprised if both blogs have earned more than $50 million. In comparison, the $100,000 per month I’ve managed to generate is a pittance.

But everyone has to start somewhere, right?

The reason this blog has made so much money so fast is I learned from the best, and then when I left, I kept learning. Every day, I crunch numbers, read books, talk to experts, and spend at least 30 minutes in silence, staring into the distance, doing nothing but thinking.

It’s paid off. If you’ll take some of these lessons to heart, it’ll pay off for you too.

Because here’s the thing:

You’re Not a Fool. You Can Make Money Blogging.

So, you want to make a living teaching other people what you know? Nothing wrong with that.

Professors do it. So do public speakers and best-selling authors.

Hell, consulting is a $415 billion industry, and what are all those consultants doing?

Getting paid to teach.

Blogging is no different. It’s just the same old models with some rocket fuel thrown in, courtesy of social media.

In fact, we might as well call that the first lesson:

Lesson #1: You’re Not Just a Blogger

You’re an expert, a teacher, a mentor, maybe even an entrepreneur. Your blog is simply a launchpad for all those things.

Look around, and you’ll find nearly all “bloggers” who make a decent income have books, courses, a side career as a keynote speaker, or even software. That’s how they make money. Their blog is just the “freebie” they give away to attract customers or clients.

Lesson #2: Don’t Sell Advertising

Selling ads is attractive, because it’s passive income, but you can usually make 3-10X more money using the same “ad space” to sell your own products and services or even promote an affiliate product.

Pat Flynn, for example, makes about $50,000 a month in commissions from promoting Bluehost.

Here at BBT, we mostly promote our own products, but we’re also in the process of creating affiliate sales funnels for LeadPages and Stablehost, both of which offer hefty commissions (and are great products too!)

Lesson #3: Build the Funnel in Reverse

We’ve all experienced sales funnels.

A company entices you with a freebie, then they offer you something cheap but irresistible, and then they gradually sweet talk you into buying more and more expensive stuff. It’s a tried and true marketing tactic, and you should absolutely build a sales funnel for your blog.

What you might not know is you should build it in reverse.

A lot of bloggers launch a cheap e-book as their first product, and then they get frustrated when they don’t make much money. Here’s why: the real profit is at the end of the funnel, not the beginning.

Selling e-books is fine and dandy if you have half a dozen more expensive products to offer your customer afterwards, but it’s downright silly if you don’t. You’re much better off creating and selling the expensive product first, and then gradually create cheaper and cheaper products.

When you do have some less expensive products to sell, you can offer those to new people first, safe in the knowledge that you have something more profitable up your sleeve to sell them later.

Here at BBT, our products cost $9,997, $997, and $591. We’re working our way down the funnel in reverse, releasing the most expensive products first and then gradually getting cheaper and cheaper. It’s been much, much more profitable this way.

Lesson #4: There’s No Such Thing As a “Cheap” Market

“But Jon,” I can hear you spluttering. “I can’t sell a $10,000 product! My customers don’t have that much money.”

My response: you’re 98% right. Unless you’re selling exclusively to multimillionaires, the vast majority of your customer base won’t be able to afford premium products, but what’s interesting is it doesn’t matter. Often times, you can make more money selling to the 2% than you can to the entire 98% combined.

For instance, our $10,000 product is a year-long coaching program for writers – a group that’s not exactly known for their wealth, but I always fill all 10 spots within minutes of opening the program. Here’s why: I notify 40,000 writers about it. 2% of 40,000 is 800 people who might possibly buy a product in that price range. By only accepting 10, I’m creating a situation of extreme scarcity.

You can do the same thing, even if your list is much smaller. If you have 100 subscribers, chances are two of them might be willing to buy premium products or services from you, and those two will often pay you more money than the other 98 combined.

Lesson #5: By Charging Premium Prices, You Can Offer Premium Service

Feel guilty about charging that much money? You shouldn’t.

By charging premium prices, you can offer premium service, doing everything possible to help your customers get results. For example, with my coaching program, I get on the phone with students every week, review their homework, answer their questions, look at their blog, and guide them through every step of the process.

Could I put that same information in a $7 e-book? Sure, but I couldn’t give anyone one-on-one help at that price, and that’s what people who buy premium products and services are paying for.

Lesson #6: Deliberately Delay the Sale

Another big shift in thinking: rather than trying to push everyone to buy your products upfront, smart bloggers delay the sale.

I first heard this idea from Rand Fishkin over at Moz. They offer their blog readers a free trial to their Analytics and SEO software, but after studying the behavior of their customers, they noticed something interesting: people who read several blog posts before signing up for a free trial stayed customers for two or three times longer than people who didn’t.

I’ve noticed the same thing with our customers. Instead of immediately clobbering readers with sales pitches, it’s much better to give them some content first and build trust before you begin talking about your products and services. Yes, you’ll make less money in the short term, but the long-term profits go through the roof.

Lesson #7: You Are the Bottleneck

Without a doubt, time is our biggest problem as bloggers. Not only are we expected to publish a continuous stream of content on our blogs, but we also have to deal with technical issues, read books and articles about our field, create new products to sell, answer questions from readers… the list goes on and on. The further into it you go, the more clear it becomes that you can’t do everything.

So, what’s the answer?

Believe it or not, I found answers from studying manufacturing processes. If one machine is working slower than others in a plant, it can literally cost the company tens of thousands of dollars per hour. To make sure it never happens, smart plant managers are willing to spend any amount of money to eliminate bottlenecks. They have an unlimited budget, because the cost of eliminating the bottleneck never comes anywhere close to the cost of the bottleneck itself.

The same is true for us, except the solutions are often different. Instead of buying a new machine, for example, we might purchase a new type of software that automates some of our business, or we might hire a virtual assistant or programmer. It can be expensive, yes, but it’s worthwhile if it saves you enough time, because then you can dedicate that time to higher value activities.

Lesson #8: Measure The Value of Everything You Do

What are those higher value activities, exactly?

Well, it depends on your goal. If your goal is to increase traffic, for example, start measuring the visitors per hour invested. Let’s say you invest three hours in writing a post, and it brings you 100 visitors, and you invest five hours in writing a guest post that brings you 500 visitors. The first activity has an hourly rate of 33 visitors per hour. The second activity has an hourly rate of 100 visitors per hour. Guest posting, therefore, is a better use of your time than writing content on your own blog.

Granted, it’s a short-term perspective, not taking into account long-term gains, but it’s still extremely useful to start measuring your time this way. Not just for traffic, but also for subscriber growth and revenue.

Lesson #9: In the Beginning, Creating Content for Your Own Blog Is Silly

I tried to sneak this one under lesson #8, but I think it’s important enough to get its own number, even if it does get me labeled a heretic and burned at the stake. Because here’s the deal:

In the beginning, your blog is like an empty classroom. Standing in front and giving a lecture is silly, because sure, it might make you feel important, but there’s nobody listening. You’re all alone, and you can come up with the smartest, most entertaining lecture in the history of mankind, but it won’t matter, because no one else heard it.

When you first start out, writing content for your own blog is one of the least efficient ways of building your audience. You’re far better off serving a little time as a “guest lecturer” first. In other words, write guest posts for someone else’s audience, impress the hell out of them, and siphon off a portion of their readership for your own.

That’s what we did here at BBT, and it resulted in the most successful blog launch in history: 13,000 email subscribers in 60 days, before I even wrote a single blog post. We had nothing but a coming soon page and an invitation to join our email list. Sounds strange, but I can promise you it’s vastly more efficient.

You don’t have to wait until you get to 13,000 subscribers to start, but I’d advise accumulating at least a few hundred. That way, you have an audience to share your content when you start publishing posts.

Lesson #10: Don’t Waste Time on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.

Here’s another shocker: you know your dream of building up a huge following on Facebook or Twitter and then using it to promote your blog? Well, it’s a dumb idea. Out of everything we’ve tested, building our own social media accounts produced the lowest visitor per hour figure. In other words, it’s quite possibly the worst way you can spend your time.

Does that mean having followers in those places is useless?

No. Facebook is nice because you can advertise to your followers. Google+ can help boost your search engine rankings. Even with those benefits though, it shouldn’t be near the top of your list for things to do. In my opinion, you shouldn’t think about them at all until you hit 10,000 subscribers, and then outsource the management of them to someone else. You can use your time more efficiently in other places, such as:

Lesson #11: Webinars Kick Butt

If you’ve been on our list for long, you know that we do a lot of webinars. Here’s why: on average, each webinar generates $40,000 per hour invested. It’s by far the most profitable thing I do. Nothing else even comes close. If you’re wondering how on earth we make that much money, all you have to do is attend one of our webinars to find out. Everything we do is on display, and you can study it, free of charge.

Interestingly, webinars are also the most effective way to build our subscriber base. When doing webinars for other people, we average 500 new email subscribers per hour invested. It’s not uncommon to gain 1,000-2,000 email subscribers from a single webinar. If we’re promoting a product, we usually make at least $10,000 too.

Translation: webinars kick butt.

Lesson #12: Longer Content Gets More Traffic

You know what else works? Long content.

It might seem strange, but on average, longer content gets much more traffic than shorter content. Not just for us, but for our students too, regardless of the niche, and here’s a post where SEO expert Neil Patel came to the same conclusion. The sweet spot seems to be about 2,000–3,000 words per post. That’s why posts here on BBT are much longer than your average blog.

Granted, content of that length also takes longer to produce, but if you measure the visitors per hour invested, longer content still wins by a mile. Assuming you’re promoting it, of course.

Lesson #13: Promote The Crap Out of Your Content

The problem is almost no one promotes their content enough. And by “promotion,” I’m not talking about sharing your own posts on Twitter and Facebook. I’m talking aboutblogger outreach – the process of building relationships with influencers and asking them to share your work.

At a minimum, you should spend just as much time on outreach as you do creating your own content. So, if you’re spending 10 hours a week writing blog posts, you should be spending 10 hours a week on outreach too.

Can’t do that? Then scale back how much content you’re creating. Spend five hours on writing blog posts and five hours on outreach. You’ll get better results.

Lesson #14: Ignore SEO for the First Year

Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not against SEO. Far from it. We now get tons of traffic from Google. I just think most bloggers focus on it way too early.

Again, it all comes down to time. When your blog is new, the most efficient uses of your time fall into three broad categories: building relationships with influencers (including guest blogging), creating content worth linking to, and selling your products and services. If you do those three things well, not only will your blog gain traffic and prominence, but you’ll also start getting search traffic without doing anything.

And then you can focus on other things that matter more, such as…

Lesson #15: Your Email List Is More Important Than Anything Else

In analytics, there is a principle called “the one metric that matters” (OMTM). The idea is that you find a single number that accurately predicts the success or failure of your project.

In the case of blogging, that number is the size of your email list. (Not RSS, mind you – it’s dying a slow but certain death.) In my experience, your email list is the most accurate predictor of how much money you’ll make.

Here at BBT, we make about three dollars per subscriber per month – an impressive feat, due mostly to our skill with marketing. The number isn’t important, though. The point is that I can accurately predict our sales based on the number of subscribers. So can you.

If you’re new to this, I would strive for one dollar per subscriber per month in sales. In other words, an email list of 1,000 subscribers should result in at least $1,000 per month in sales, 10,000 subscribers would result in $10,000 per month in sales, and so on.

The more subscribers you get, the more money you make. Granted, your relationship with your subscribers and the quality of your products or services and dozens of other factors still matter, but to drive revenue, focus on email list growth. To make money blogging, it’s absolutely essential.

Lesson #16: Start Selling from Day One

How long should you wait before you begin selling? 1,000 subscribers? 10,000 subscribers? More?

Nope. Start selling from day one. Here’s why:

One of the biggest factors affecting the speed of your growth is who you can hire to help you. Because you’re the bottleneck, remember? So you want to hire a virtual assistant and someone to handle all of the technical details as soon as you possibly can, but of course, that requires money. Hence the need to start selling immediately.

Now, a caveat: don’t turn your blog into a gigantic sales pitch. Nobody likes that. You should, however, be offering something your audience wants and needs. Don’t push them on it, but do make it available, and do remind them from time to time that they can purchase it.

Lesson #17: Your Product Ideas Suck

You probably have all kinds of ideas for things you can sell, right? E-books, courses, maybe an iPhone app? Or a service?

Well, here’s the bad news:

More than likely, your ideas for products suck. The good news is you’re not alone in this position. Everyone’s ideas for products suck, including mine. Here’s why:

We all tend to create products we can see people need, but they’re not aware of it yet. We think if we show them the magnitude of their problem we can convince them to buy our product or service to solve it.

If you’re Steve Jobs, you can do that, but I have more bad news for you: you’re not Steve Jobs. You’re a beginning marketer, and as a beginner, you should only be selling products that solve problems your customer already knows they have. If you have to convince them the problem exists, you’ve already lost the battle.

Lesson #18: Surveys Are Dangerous

So, how do you find what problems exist in the mind of your customer? Traditionally, the answer is a survey, but I’ll warn you: surveys are dangerous. Ask the wrong question, and you’ll get an extremely misleading answer. Use that answer to guide your venture, and you can waste years of your life, not to mention possibly going bankrupt.

If you’re a beginner, I recommend asking one and only one question: “what’s your biggest frustration with <topic> right now?” So, in my case, it would be “what’s your biggest frustration with blogging right now?” That’s it. Nothing more. Look for patterns in the answers you receive, and you’ll learn a ton about what products or services you need to create.

Lesson #19: Start with Services, Then Expand into Products

Once you find a common problem, start offering a service where you solve the problem for your audience. The reason is simple: you can start offering the service immediately. You don’t have to create a product first. You’ll also learn more about the problem as you attempt to solve it yourself.

When I started, for example, I worked as a blog traffic specialist. I was contracted with a few different advertising agencies, and every time they wanted to increase the traffic for a client’s blog, they called me. I didn’t just advise them. I did the work myself, redesigning the site, creating the content, everything.

It taught me a ton about what worked and what didn’t. It was also immediate revenue. The first month I offered my services, I made something like $5,000.

After working for more than a year as a traffic specialist, I felt I really understood the problem and how to solve it, so I created my first product: a course located atguestblogging.com. The first month, it generated something like $30,000 in sales, and now it brings in more than $250,000 per year.

It’s a wonderful product, but here’s the thing: I don’t think I could’ve created it if I hadn’t worked as a service provider first. I wouldn’t have had the knowledge or the money. Keep that in mind when you’re deciding what to offer first.

Lesson #20: Teach Others What You Learned

Now, we come to the reason for this post.

Why on earth would the CEO of the company (me) work for hours to write a post like this, sharing all our secrets? It’s closing in on 4,000 words, for God sakes!

Simple:

It’s my responsibility. If people are ever going to respect blogging as a legitimate business model, those of us who are successful have to speak up and share what we’ve learned. None of us works in a vacuum. The only way we can advance our field as a whole is to collectively share what we’ve learned.

And it is a field. There are thousands of people around the world making a living from blogging. The problem is, there’s not a repository, a central community where we can all talk and learn from each other. Over the next few months, that’s something we’re going to change.

In the meantime, could you do me a favor?

Share this post. Not just so it’ll get me traffic, but so other people can see that you really can earn a legitimate income from blogging. Maybe reading this will even help them do it.

After all, isn’t that what we’re here to do? Help people?

In the end, that’s what I love most about blogging: every article we publish, every course we create, every coaching call we do can change somebody’s life. Maybe not always in a big way, but we touch thousands upon thousands of people, and we make their lives just a little bit better. We inform them, we inspire them, we give them the roadmap for achieving their dreams.

And the best part?

We get paid for it. It’s our job.

How Much Can I Earn Affiliate Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:53:00 +0530

How much can I earn affiliate marketing is a question I get asked a hundred times a day and although it’s a pretty straight forward question, unfortunately there isn’t really a straight forward answer.

How much you can earn affiliate marketing will depend on a myriad of factors but the two main factors are:

The niche you choose and how hard you are willing to work!

It seems that everyone who starts affiliate marketing wants to conquer the “Make Money Online Niche” because they have listened to all the so-called “Make Money Online Gurus” telling them how much money they make with affiliate marketing.

You know the ones I’m talking about.

They normally have a big flashy sales page with a video that was made on their laptop, sitting on some Caribbean beach whilst sipping a Piña Colada! or they’re talking to you while they’re driving their brand new, bright red Ferrari that they won from some affiliate marketing company for being super affiliate of the year.

Now I’m not saying that they are lying to you or that it’s impossible to make that sort of money online, (I personally know several people who do make that much money) what I’m saying is that the “Make Money Online Niche” is not the best niche for someone just starting to learn affiliate marketing to get into.

The making money online niche is in fact one of the most difficult niches to actually make any money with because of the fierce competition and endless make money online scams that are only interested in taking your money and not giving you any real support or training, so my advice when you first start your affiliate marketing business is to find a niche with less competition where you can start to make some money fairly quickly and not get disillusioned or give up in the first few weeks!

How Hard Are You Willing To Work?

Oops! Did nobody tell you that affiliate marketing is hard work!

You’ve been watching those guru videos with their overnight millionaire instant money sales pitches again haven’t you.

Let me tell you straight, Affiliate Marketing is hard work!

When I first started my affiliate marketing business I was still working full-time and putting in more hours in the evenings after work than I was putting into my full-time job!

I struggled and almost gave up several times during the first couple of months before I started to see any real returns on my efforts. But let me tell you, when that first sale came and I saw my first affiliate commissions arrive in my bank account it was the best feeling I had ever experienced.

All my hard work had paid off and I now enjoy the freedom and financial independence that a lot of people only dream of!

The Answer

The answer to the question; “How much can I earn affiliate marketing” is that there really is no limit to the amount of money you can earn.

In the last ten years more people have become millionaires through affiliate marketing than in any other industry and every day ordinary people just like you and me are learning how to tap into this incredible unlimited income source.

How hard you are willing to work and the niche you choose will determine how quickly you’ll succeed and how much you will earn but remember this…..

Today, somebody somewhere in the world will be giving up their 9 to 5 job and enjoying the freedom and financial independence that affiliate marketing has given them.

Tomorrow it could be you!

11 Highest Paying Affiliate Programs and networks

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:51:00 +0530

Affiliate marketing is all about making money as quickly as possible, in as much volume as possible. Therefore, you want to sign on with the most lucrative networks. Here are a bunch to choose from.

1. MaxBounty First on the list is one of the most highly recommended networks from marketers around. Maxbounty is very widespread and has a quick and easy signup process, with the caveat that they take a while to join and may reject you. They’re surprisingly exclusive, which makes for a good network full of great offers. Sellers don’t have to worry about their products being advertised by low quality sites, so they’re more confident and willing to pay more.

The only downside to Maxbounty is that their personal support isn’t the greatest. They’re serviceable when you’re in need, but they don’t step in with a personal touch unless you’re one of their most valuable affiliates.

2. vCommission vCommission is an interesting network for one reason, and that’s their international presence. Based in India, their low operating costs and wide network make them an ideal network for certain types of marketers, particularly those who are able to focus on international marketing.

They’re also quick to get up and running, with the time from acceptance to first payment measured in days if you’re timed properly.

3. Affiliate.com Affiliate.com is one of the oldest networks around, as evidenced by their domain name. They’re also one of the most successful. They’ve maintained this level of quality over the years by offering a range of added services, including domain parking and stable, regular payments. What’s not to like?

Perhaps the one thing that sets Affiliate.com ahead of the rest is their personnel. They have a very helpful staff that take each case on an individual basis. Many affiliate networks suffer from a disconnect between different departments, leading to contradictory messages. Not so from this network.

4. Peerfly Peerfly has some of the highest paying offers out of any CPA network in the world, and for that reason it’s a very good network to join if you’re looking for single sales of high value. On the other hand, it suffers from being more exclusive than many other networks. It’s hard to get into, particularly if you’re a beginning marketer and don’t have an established history of successful traffic.

That said, if you can get in, you can make a great living through Peerfly alone. While I don’t recommend putting all of your eggs in one basket that way, as long as you stay within the rules and avoid black hat techniques, it’s not the worst plan in the world.

5. Rakuten Affiliate Network Rakuten isn’t a household name for many, but the previous name of the network – LinkShare – was very common. Rakuten is the Japanese company that purchased Buy.com, and brings a lot of legitimacy and support to the affiliate network. If you’ve ever been concerned about the quality of the network you’re using, Rakuten is the way to go.

Their platform is very slick, with a host of great tools and platform options that allow you to find the information you need to optimize your site quickly and easily. Plus, like Amazon and eBay mentioned later, you have access to a huge catalog of potential products to sell.

6. eBay’s Partner Network Most people think of eBay as an auction site, something like craigslist, where a seller posts an item and buyers bid. There seems to be no room for affiliates in this equation, but eBay has found space. What happens is certain types of product sales happen on a storefront basis rather than an auction basis. Sales through these storefronts can earn affiliate bonuses.

eBay has two primary benefits. The first is that their commissions tend to range quite high, particularly compared to other product-based affiliate programs. The second is the new user bonus; referring a first-time buyer earns you double the commission. If you’re great at convincing users to try a new site, eBay can be incredibly lucrative.
7. Matomy Matomy may not be a familiar name to some, but many of the networks they have purchased over the years are more familiar. Part of the power of Matomy comes from having so many previously popular, large networks under their banner.

Matomy also has a lower payout than many of the other networks, only requiring a minimum of $50 to get a deposit, as opposed to the $100 or more of many other networks. For marketers, they offer some great tracking options as well, giving them ad edge over similar affiliate networks.

8. Neverblue Neverblue is a network that strongly polices their affiliate traffic. This makes it a difficult network for black hat marketers, who tend to be very vocal about labeling things “scams” when it was their own mistakes leading to their downfall.

For a legitimate marketer, who doesn’t rely on black hat techniques or referral spoofing, Neverblue can be a fantastic network. It’s entirely possible to earn thousands every month with a decently tuned site and the right choice in products to promote.

9. Clickbank Clickbank is one of the oldest and largest CPA networks out there, and as such is surrounded by as many myths and lies as it is truths and legitimate stories. It’s hard to differentiate one miffed and failed affiliate from a deliberate scammer from a real story. That said, they’ve lasted as long as they have by being legitimate; no scam affiliate would still be alive.

Clickbank has a massive library of potential products to promote, and as such it’s highly variable in performance. You can sell some products with individual commissions above $500, or you can sell thousands of $1 products. Where you find success depends on trial and error.

10. iTunes Affiliates iTunes has a lot of support coming from Apple, and it’s a great little media platform to use as an affiliate. If you want to sell digital products, music, movies, apps and the like, you have a perfect niche through Apple.

Apple’s commissions not only work on apps, but on in-app purchases as well; if you link to Plants vs. Zombies, and the user buys the app and a bunch of in-game perks, you earn a commission from those perks as well. This can be an unexpected benefit to selling otherwise free with in-app purchase apps.

11. Amazon Associates Amazon’s affiliate program allows you to sell anything that Amazon sells, and earn a small commission from those sales. It’s hugely potent because of the massive library and support behind the product catalog. On the other hand, it’s very easy to run into stiff competition with a site that’s not optimized to handle the strain.

Success with Amazon Affiliates requires a highly focused niche site, though you can make quite a bit from secondary sales. Anyone clicking through your link earns you commissions, even if the user didn’t buy what you linked to in the first place. The only downside is the performance-based fee structure; you have to sell in a decent monthly volume to reach the highest tiers of commissions.

5 Tips for Running a Successful Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:51:00 +0530

In my first year of blogging I was read over 4 million times, mostly through a cunning strategy I call "screwing everything up and learning."

Let me save you some time. Here are the 5 most surprising lessons I learned:

1. The world owes you nothing

The cold, unfeeling universe does not give two shits about you or your writing.

Anyone can walk into a bookstore and pick from Shakespeare, Pratchett, JK Rowling and a million more. Tell me (a) is your writing more deserving of attention and (b) how would anyone even know?

This may sound dispiriting, and it's meant to. We live at the center of our own private universes, which can fool us into thinking the world responds to our merits, as we see them. If you believe this, you're in for a lifetime of tear-stained keyboards.

If you acknowledge the truth, you can arm yourself accordingly.

2. Give people a reason to care

You are in competition with every other distraction on the Internet. Your beautifully written sonnet must joust for attention against Miley Cyrus with a kitten.

If you want an audience, don't write for yourself. Forget yourself. Start with:

Who am I writing for?

What can I do for them?

Why should they care?

Let's say you're writing for casual bloggers. It's not hard to think of things that casual bloggers might struggle with ("How to win your first thousand followers"), find entertaining ("My blog cost me my job, wife and kids") or inspiring ("How my blog got me a date with Natalie Portman"). Start there.

3. Hook emotionally

Brilliant intellectuals can appreciate content on a purely intellectual basis. For everyone else, there's urgent news, sex, themselves, gossip and sex.

You know when you feel compelled to click on a link? You don't have time to thinkabout it. Hooks are entirely emotional:

Scary & urgent - "Terrorists will attack your town, tomorrow"

Big names - "A day in the life of Tony Stark"

Self-interest - "How to win your dream girl"

Sex-appeal - "The hottest babes in tennis"

Trendsetting - "The show everyone is talking about"

These emotions can be conveyed in a headline. Your headline is where you will win or lose most of your audience. A title in a tweet is judged and dismissed by 99% of your audience before they see another word; ensure yours punches them in their emotional face.

4. Edit as much as you write

Editing is a superpower which can turn charcoal into diamonds. Most people seem content to shovel coal.

Don't mistake editing for proof reading. Editing is where you take your work apart in a blender, rearrange, rewrite and rethink everything. Everything. At a minimum, you must edit for:

Verbosity. Nothing will kill attention faster than excess words. Like these. For example.

Confusion. Your readers may not speak English as their first language. They may be bouncing a baby on their lap. Don't make them think any harder than they have to.

Predictability. If someone can guess your next sentence from the previous one, you have a delicious unicycling mongoose. Avoid cliche, add sparkle.

I personally spend 2-3x as much time editing as writing. It makes all the difference.

5. Build a platform

If you're searching for an audience, it doesn't take long to realise that the famous get most of the attention. The mistake is to assume this dooms you to failure. You just need to become slightly more famous.

It's slowest at the start, which is where most people give up. My writing did nothing for 4 months; later that year I had 4 million views. Write continuously, and test everything you can think of. Think of it like tuning a radio.

To win in the long term, your platform must efficiently convert readers into followers. Forget likes and tweets; followers are what you're after. Best of all, start a mailing list - it's more work, but you'll have far higher engagement than you'll ever get from Twitter and Facebook.

If you write something and it doesn't clearly encourage people to follow you, you're playing the wrong game.

Some writers may find all of this a bit dirty. Well, yes. Unfortunately, it's also how people work. You must appeal to their nature before you can win them over with your writing. Otherwise, no-one will even know what wonders they're even missing.

Good luck.

Promoting Affiliate Products

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:50:00 +0530

For this column, I am addressing a question that Izak, one of my readers, recently sent me. His question reflects a common problem people have when they're first starting out. Here's what he's currently wrestling with:

"I have designed a website for the sole purpose of advertising affiliate products. I have six affiliate products on different pages on the same website that are in the same category like wellness, health and beauty. However my problem is how to write the sales copy or introduction page with the correct wording to attract visitors and buyers."

First, I'd like to point out that "wellness, health and beauty" are huge markets. After plugging each of those terms into Google, I received the following results:

Health: 1.76 billion results
Wellness: 173 million results
Beauty: 1.06 billion results

You'll never achieve success if you set up a general website promoting products that treat a variety of health, wellness and beauty problems. You're going up against far too many competing sites.

And you'll never be able to write the kind of highly targeted sales copy you need to attract qualified visitors to your site. For example, someone who's looking for organic wrinkle cream isn't in the same market as someone looking for a naturopathic treatment for Crohn's disease--and you can't build a website that effectively sells to both of those people.

So if you want a chance at competing in these incredibly large markets, you need to do three things: focus, focus and focus.

Focus on your individual product pages, not on your main homepage.
Focus on one specific problem that each of those individual products solves.
Focus your pay-per-click and search marketing efforts so that every ad and article you write addresses that one specific problem and takes visitors straight to the landing page for the product that solves that problem.

In other words, you need to divide and conquer. The best way to guarantee your online success is to make sure each of your affiliate product pages appeals to a highly targeted group of people. The more targeted your affiliate product pages, the more easily you'll be able to:

Speak directly to your target market;
Rank in the search engines for your keywords;
Dominate a corner of your market; and
Establish yourself as an expert in your field.

So start off by looking at one product at a time. Look at the different health or beauty problems it claims to solve. Then determine which of these problems a significant number of people are actively trying to solve.

Keep in mind that when people search for solutions online, they enter keywords into the search engines. You can find out exactly what words people are searching with--and how often--using online keyword research tools such as Wordtracker.com and KeywordDiscovery.com.

What problems are people searching for information about? And what specific keyword phrases are they using? Look for problem statement keywords that include query words like "how" or "tips." Keep your eyes open for keyword phrases that are getting a lot of searches, but don't have a lot of strong competition for them.

Follow up on your keyword research by visiting health and beauty-related blogs, forums and groups to see if people are talking about these problems and what they're saying about them. What problems are they having a hard time solving? What do they like about the solutions that are currently available and what do they wish they could find?

Question-and-answer sites like Yahoo! Answers can also provide a goldmine of information. Not only can you find out the specific questions that are being asked, but you can also find out how well those questions are being answered.

Once you have identified a problem that a lot of people are trying to find solutions for, but without any luck, then you'll know the problem that should be the focus of your sales copy and marketing efforts for that particular product.

Once your targeted marketing efforts are generating a steady stream of qualified traffic to that particular product page, it's time to move on to your next affiliate product page and focus it on one specific problem.

I know it's tempting to want to describe your health products as the ultimate cure-all for everything from skin problems to obesity, but people who are searching for skin care products aren't searching for obesity products--and you simply can't create an effective page that appeals to both.

Once again, online success is all about focus. I can't emphasize this enough. You'll make far more money trying to sell to a small but highly targeted group of people than you can ever possibly hope to make selling to everyone.

10 Important Tips for Business Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:49:00 +0530

First a word on what a blog is (and isn’t). A blog is a publishing platform — a rich, multifaceted and very easy one that’s search engine optimized, and easily linked to and from. It’s an easy way for anyone to control their own “press.” But whether that press is used for lengthy diatribes, scholarly analysis, running humor, video, audio, graphics, photos, breaking news, reporting, analysis, links to other things or myriad other possibilities is up to you.

Ways to achieve blogging success — whatever “success” means to you and your business:

1. Know your objective.

What are you trying to do? Brand yourself as an expert? Amuse people? Get a niche audience? Sell ads to a mass audience? Drive subscriptions to a newsletter? As with any editorial product, you’ll want to know what you’re trying to do, target your audience, and give it to them.

2. Be consistent.

Whatever you’ve decided, it’s best to be consistent. If you’re doing a blog about health devices, don’t diverge too often into the habits of your cat — unless the cat is somehow a character you use to make your larger points, a way to bring people into the larger message of the blog. You can even be consistently inconsistent — sometimes scholarly, sometimes goofy, for example — if that’s what you want to have as your blogging “persona.” But you’ll have to sustain it over time.

3. Be focused.

We’re well past the stage when people can get an audience to a blog just because it’s there. Experience and numerous examples show that success in blogging, at least from a business perspective, comes to those who focus on whatever the blog is about. If it’s a niche music blog, stay focused on that niche. If you’re a video blog making fun of Wall Street, keep doing that. If you’re about sex or book publishing or New York celebrity, stay on target. You want your audience to keep coming back, and for new people to find you and then be pleased with what they see, and want to keep coming back as well, and liking what they see time after time.

4. Have the energy.

I was recently speaking to best-selling business humorist Stanley Bing, who’s recently started a blog under the Time Warner umbrella. It’s very successful, with lots of content, and gets great fan participation from all over the country. Stanley’s terribly prolific â€“ while holding down a “day job” in his other life, he continues to write book after book after book, and keeps his magazine column going in Fortune.

But even Stanley was lamenting to me how, once the blog got started, he had to find something to write in it every day. Professor Jay Rosen of New York University, who runs the noted PressThink blog, also recently talked about how it has to be fed again and again and again. I let my blog MediaFlect.com lay fallow for long stretches while working as editorial director at mediabistro.com.

It takes energy. And if you get an audience, they’re doing to want you to sustain it.

You’re going to have to “feed the maw.”

5. Choose your platform. But donâ€™t’ sweat it too much.

There are a lot of good platforms out there â€“ paid, free, ads, no ads, flexible templates, locked in to one design or multiple flexible designs. Any and all of them are valid, depending on your needs. If you’re after ad revenue from third parties, you’ll need a blog that handles those. Or maybe you want to be as simple as possible, and just get a blog up, so people can read it.

But also remember that whatever choice you make, you can change it over time to something else. The change is not without pain, but you can do it. I moved MediaFlect over from Blogsome to Blogspot and may move it again. PaidContent.org moved from MoveableType to a new software, Expression Engine. There are always hitches. And it’s a good idea to have software that will let you export posts en masse. But it can be done.

The main thing is to get going, and then refine it over time.

6. Comments or not?

A lot of publishers sweat over whether to allow comments, whether to allow commenting freely, how much to police them, and so on. Relax. Yes, you may be liable if someone posts something libelous and you do nothing to fix it. But you can easily set you blog to notify you every time a comment is posted, you can take action if you see something untoward, and the chances are that if your blog is a niche type of content without a huge mass audience the biggest annoyance will come from automated commenting software that can be filtered more than from belligerent individuals.

7. Don’t overdo the writing.

Say what you have to say â€“ have your writers say what they have to say â€“ and be done with it. Make your point, and go. Short is, generally sweet.

8. Don’t force yourself into fixed lengths.

Yes, short is sweet, but you may have a blog where something needs to be explained at length. If that’ s the nature of your blog and the nature of what your audience expects, go ahead and write longer. Some blogs, especially ones by academics, can be long and complex discussions of complicated issues, highly nuanced and run on for a long time. You can post long if it’s called. for. And your next post can be three words, if that makes sense, then.

This isn’t a magazine or newspaper where you have a fixed length to which you have to adhere. But you do need to be mindful of when you’re no longer giving value, and figure that over a certain length (200 words? 250?) you’ll start to lose readers unless what you’re writing is gripping.

9. Decide if look and “feel” is important.

Some blogs are very “raw,” pretty much just text on a page. If there are images, they’re pasted somewhat at random, links and bolds and italics are also inserted as the spirit moves. Others are highly composed, with colors balanced, photos uniformly sized with drop shadows, videos placed “just-so,” titles carefully chosen, so it looks magazine-like, carefully composed. Either is fine. But decide what matters to you and the face you’re presenting the audience. Then stick to it. The more composed, of course, the higher the cost, especially in time.

10. Start small, think big.

You can start with a single blog, a string of posts, about something you’re passionate about, the particular niche of your business, a subject that interests you â€¦ but if this is a business you should also from the start carefully make sure to tag and categorize and assume that, if you get an audience, you might launch all kinds of offshoots, niches within niches, related topics, maybe even other languages. You might add video, e-commerce, ads, etc, etc. Don’t let all the thinking keep you from getting started â€“ better to launch than wait. But do, where possible, think of how things will go if you do expand, and how much you’ll save later on by planning from the start

popular ways to make quick extra buck On Internet

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:48:00 +0530

As long as you have the inclination, a little bit of expertise and some free time, you can earn some money on the internet from the comfort of your own home.
Here are some popular ways to make that quick extra buck.

1. Self Publish Books

If you love writing and want to get a book published, Amazon offers a free service called Kindle Direct Publishing. The service allows anyone to self publish books on the Kindle (electronic) bookstore and earn royalties from sales.

There are two plans you can choose from — the 35% royalty works across any book sold in any country) while the 70% royalty plans works if you sell in a few select countries. Indian authors can choose to set prices specifically for the Indian bookstore and receive royalty payments in Indian currency as well.

2. Make & Sell Your Apps

With so many smartphones and tablets, app development can be a very lucrative business. You can learn about developing apps online — there are various tutorials available for free. That's the easy part — the hard part is coming up with an idea that 'clicks'.

Once you make an app, submit it to the respective app store, set a price and choose whether you want to earn from inapp advertising. Your earnings, after deducting the appropriate fees, will be paid monthly.

3. Sell Old Stuff Online

An easy way to earn some money on the internet is by selling old stuff that you have around the house. Websites like olx.in, quickr.com & http:// craigslist.co.in provide a free classifieds platform.

You need to create an account, enter the product details, location, the expected price along with some photographs — listing usually go live within a couple of hours. Interested buyers can directly contact you and finalise the sale.

4. Start An Online Shop

With some creativity, you can learn to make handicrafts or if you know a wholesale dealer, purchase unique things at low prices. Once you have some stock ready, you can set up an online shop to sell these goods on sites like ebay.in or indiebazaar.com.

Both sites have a simple signup process. After you get verified as a seller, they provide you with a step-by-step wizard to set your online store (how to add photos & details of items you want to sell).

5. Work Online For Money

The internet is full of bogus companies that promise to pay you for work but never will. For instance, all places that offer money to fill surveys or those that require payment up front are scammers.

Two popular & reliable places to find work are odesk.com and elance.com. Both have a similar system: set up a profile and take tests to prove your proficiency in certain areas.

Once done, you’ll be listed as a contractor/ freelancer and people can hire you for an hourly rate. You can get paid more by working hard, getting better at what you do and getting good feedback (ratings) from your clients.

6. Sell Your Photos Online

Numerous stock websites like www.shutterstock. com, shutterpoint.com and istockphoto.com host photographs submitted by members. Depending on the site's policy, you can earn between a 15 to 85% royalty on each sale.

The better the quality of photos and the larger your online portfolio, the more you will sell. Usually, each photograph you want to upload will have to be 'selected' by them first — and they usually have strict requirements of what can or cannot go on sale.

7. E-Tutoring

If you are fluent in any subject and have some tutoring experience, you can sign up on websites like 2tion.netor, tutorvista.com as an online tutor. The sites require you to create a tutor profile with details such as the subjects in which you are fluent, what classes/courses you want to teach, your experience level, preferred timings for tutions and the remuneration expected.

After verification, the site lists your profile on their portal where interested students can connect with you for tuitions. You can opt for virtual workspaces with built in teaching aids like live chat and collaborative whiteboards. Once you get better at tutoring, you can increase your monthly earnings by teaching multiple students simultaneously.

8. Earn From Advertising

A reliable way to earn money is from Google AdSense on your blog/website or ads on your YouTube channel. To get started, create a Google AdSense account at google.com/adsense.

You can use the same account with your blog, website or YouTube channel. To maximise earnings from your blog or website, your objective needs to be to get the maximum number of visitors possible.

Write about what you know and what you’re passionate about. On YouTube, make sure that your videos are original and interesting. Promote your channel to get more views. Apart from views, your objective should also be to get more people to like/ favourite your video and to subscribe to your channel.

The build up will be slow and Google only makes payments once your balance crosses $100, so don’t get disheartened. Persistent efforts pay off in the long run.

Six Effective Strategies to Improve Business Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:47:00 +0530

Using blogs as a business tool is a relatively new concept, but one that is growing exponentially. The truth is that companies are becoming more public and more personal. This is a major step forward for business as a whole, as it allows customers to connect more deeply with their favorite brands. An emotional connection will always trump all others when it comes to making a buying decision.

In his book Descartes Error, Antonio Damasio, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California said that “when we are confronted with a decision, emotions from previous, related experiences affix values to the options we are considering. These emotions create preferences which lead to our decision.” It is this concept that has fueled the need for business blogs as a means of creating those emotions within potential leads and existing customers.

To maximize the effectiveness of your company’s blog, consider the following 6 strategies as a means of improving your content, optimizing your potential, and forging that emotional bond with your customers. These six tips are one of many methods that you can use.

Actionable Strategies to Maximize Your Business Blog

1. Establish Credibility with Qualified Writers

A business blog is authoritative and commands respect. These things only work if the person writing it has the credentials to make claims and back them up with real facts. The tone and quality of your content will always fall back on the person writing it. If someone is well versed in the subject at hand, it will show in the words they use and in the overall power of their message.

Here’s how you address this now and going forward:

Ensure your writers are fully understanding of the subject matter, if not, have them interview experts or perform the necessary research beforehand.
When you enter new territory, consider a guest post from an expert in the field.
Interview transcripts and quotes from experts are also a great way to increase the credibility of your posts.

Useful Resources:

Onblastblog’s Resources
Nine Writing Tips to Improve Business Blogging

2. Include an Overview in Your Introductions

As all of us in the business sphere know, time is most certainly equivalent to money. No one likes to have their time wasted. When you’re writing a post, get down to brass tacks while you’re still in the introduction. Tell your readers what the post will cover and what topic you’re addressing. They will be grateful for the transparency and this will give you an opportunity to shatter their expectations by now only addressing the topic at hand, but going beyond it.

Here are some actionable tips to help you with this strategy:

Keep your introduction short (200 words max) and include your overview here.
Limit any and all fluff, every word should be useful.
Make your overview short and use specific keywords for maximum SEO

3. Make Your Headlines Pop

Crafting an amazing headline is easier said than done. Creating award winning blog headlines is an art, but there are some basic strategies you can abide by to start your posts out on the right foot. Remember, this is the first thing people see when they reach your blog, so it needs to capture their imagination immediately.

If the headline is great, then the person will click on the post and continue reading. If it doesn’t address their concern or answer a question for them, they probably won’t bother to read any further.

Try these tips to form irresistible headlines:

Use a headline that explains the “how” of a topic. Something like “How to Write Captivating Headlines for Your Business Blog”
Address the “why” of a situation. Like this: “Why Business Blogs Succeed or Fail”
Ask a question that forces readers to doubt their opinion on something: “Should all Businesses have Blogs?”
You could also place a phrase before the headline and break it up with a colon. “Growing your Business: Why Your Company Needs a Blog.”

4. Bigger Words Are Not Better

When many business blogs begin their journey, they sometimes think that the only way to establish an authoritative tone and credibility is to drown their readers in enough vocabulary to make the SAT blush. This is absolutely not the case. Plain English is easier to understand and doesn’t alienate any of your readers.

Always strive for an approach that is simple and informative without being needlessly complicated.

Here are some tips to make that happen:

If you need to look up the definition of a word, don’t use it.
Don’t purposefully tone down your writing, but don’t strive to make it needlessly complex either.
Always remember that your content should be easy to understand and informative.

5. Don’t Lose Your Mind over SEO

The ranking that your business blog achieves on search engines like Google and Yahoo is very important. While SEO in the past used to be based on keyword use, these days have changed due to updates in the algorithm of how search engines seek out the best content.

It’s all about the value and relevance of what you’re writing. Keywords and structure are needed, but success is determined by how well your content manages to answer the question at hand. By this logic, if you construct your posts around the strategies above and below this one, you will automatically optimize your content without having to drown yourself in keywords.

Remember these tips:

Write from a reader’s perspective. Answer their questions and expand upon your keywords into other similar topics to broaden the relevancy of your posts.
Make sure everything is laid out logically with small paragraphs, bullet points and numbered lists.
Using experts (as suggested above) will bring about plenty of keywords naturally as they already know the subject.

6. Everything You Publish Should be Valuable

The goal of a business blog is to generate more leads and ultimately more customers to the company. That being said, your content should always provide a value to the reader. If you give them something for free, be it information or advice, you’ve shown them that you care beyond the amount of money or time they represent. This is massively important in building that emotional bond I mentioned earlier.

When readers visit a business’ blog, they are looking for an answer to some kind of question, or perhaps they are trying to seek advice on something. Of all the other blogs out there addressing the same subject, make yours the one that does it best and they will come back to you for all of their needs.

Put these tips into action today:

Understand you readers and their needs. Do your research, offer surveys, find out what they want from your blog.
Apply this knowledge to your content, address hot button topics and commonly asked questions with the above strategies included.
Respond to their questions and comments to provide further value.

The Final Transformation: Five Questions to Ask Yourself

With all of these strategies in mind, the next step is to find out how you're going to implement them into the blog you have now, or the one you’re going to create. Consider these five questions when you begin to redesign and transform your blog. Ask yourself these things and it will help you find the best ways to implement the strategies above.

What is your blog’s role in the company’s marketing strategy
What are your CTAs (Call-to-Actions) asking of your leads?
How can your topics and content styles lead readers to take that next step?
Where can you share (in regard to social media) this content and promote it?
How can you bring your whole team on board with these new strategies?

Final Thoughts

A business blog can do wonders for your company and your lead generation. The secret to success is not a turnkey solution, but it is something you can start accomplishing today. Ask yourself the questions above and take these strategies with you as you forge a new and more powerful blog.

Be sure to share your business blogging strategies and your thoughts on this article in the comments below.

50 top Ideas for Your Business Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:46:00 +0530

Blogging can be a great way to draw new customers to your business website. But if your blog hasn't been updated in months or all your posts are thinly disguised sales pitches, your blog marketing plan could backfire.

A great business blog doesn't sell. Instead, it shows customers why they should do business with you and not your competitors.

Here are 50 types of blog posts that can draw new visitors and help build customer relationships.

Customer success story. When you receive a great testimonial from a customer, ask for permission to turn it into a post. Use the post to solicit more customer stories.
Mention a popular post. If you notice a post by a popular blogger in your niche getting a lot of attention, add your viewpoint and link to the original post. Be sure to let that A-list blogger know about your comment and link.
Disagree with a popular opinion. Get traffic by stirring up controversy and taking a contrary position.
Riff on the news. How are current events affecting your customers? Run a Google Alert on certain keywords related to your business or industry to find relevant news items to discuss.
Compile a link roundup. If you notice several interesting opinions on a topic, you can pull them together into a single post of the best ideas.
Play off the familiar. Mention a celebrity or a pop culture touchstone and your readers will instantly relate.
Answer the questions everyone is asking. An FAQ post shows you're responsive and saves customers time.
Pose your own question. What would you like to know about your customers? Just ask, and let your readers create the content.
Talk about trends. You convey authority when you tell how things are evolving in your industry.
Discuss future plans. Give readers a sneak peek at what you'll do in the coming year to start generating interest.
Review a book. If you've read a book you think customers might like, give it a write-up.
Review a product or service. This shouldn't be one of your own products or services or a direct competitor's offering, but rather a related item your customers might want to learn about.
Comparison test. Provide even more value by comparing two or more related products or services.
Post a video. Create variety with a video post. You can give a sneak preview of a new product or show a promotional event.
Make a podcast. Record a quick interview with an expert, or just give a few of your own useful tips.
Create an infographic. Fact-filled, graphic posts get shared a lot on social networks. This infographic got more than 10,000 retweets.
Report on a conference. Quote inspiring speakers or tell readers about the latest trends and ideas from the conference that you'll be implementing.
Go behind the scenes. Give readers a photo or video tour of your plant, customer service desk or the backroom of your store.
Explain how you do it. Do you have a special way you make your product, handle returns or welcome new customers? Describe your process.
Staff profiles. Give a human face to your company by introducing new or seasoned employees.
Show your charity work. If your business gives back to the community, post a video or photo essay of that park your staff cleaned up.
Gush about your idols. Talk about the blogs you read regularly or the thought leaders who inspire you. Be sure to alert those bloggers and business gurus so they'll spread the word.
Have a debate. Invite someone who disagrees with your views to do a "Point/Counterpoint" post.
Talk about your blunders. Everyone loves to read aboutbusiness failures. End your post by telling how you're fixing the problem.
Create a regular feature. Do a "customer of the week" spotlight or create a monthly collection of the best online articles that match your customers' interests.
Write a series. If you'd like to teach customers something complicated, break the topic into several parts. Series are an effective way to turn casual readers into subscribers.
Make a prediction. Everybody wants to know what may happen in the future, so share your opinion.
Conduct market research. Are you wondering which product name would attract more customers? Hold a virtual focus group on a blog post.
Create a contest. Offer a prize for the most interesting customer suggestion or use of your product.
Take a reader poll. SurveyMonkey makes this easy. Or you can simply set up a poll on your business Facebook page and draw readers to "like" your page.
Share poll or contest results. Don't leave readers hanging; do a follow-up post to announce the results.
Create an award. Giving a "best of" honor is guaranteed to get attention. Readers will want to check out who won, and all the finalists will likely share the news in social media.
Share your customer feedback. If you use customer comment cards or do customer surveys, turn some highlights into a post.
Reveal industry secrets or expose lies. When you promise totell people what others won't, it's sure to be a hit.
Tell the story of your origins. Everybody loves to read aboutother people's dreams and challenges, so write about why and how you started your business.
Share a highlight. What were the big milestones in your company's history? Tell about an important moment and how it changed your business.
Keyword posts. Check your Google Analytics to see which keyword searches bring customers to your site. Then do posts on those topics.
Read your competitors. If you're out of ideas, see what topics are drawing a crowd on your competitors' blogs and give your own take on those subjects. You can even link to your competitor's post. Readers will think that's cool.
Display a sense of humor. Everyone loves business owners who can laugh at themselves when something goes wrong at the office. Consider giving a "how-to" post a funny spin.
Show your passion. What aspect of your business gets you excited? What customer experience was especially gratifying? Tell those personal stories.
Share your vision. If you're different from competitors because of your philosophy, talk about it.
Informational, how-to. Is there more than one way to use your product or service? Describe one of the less common uses in a how-to post.
Tips and tricks. Don't have time for a step-by-step how-to post? Give readers a few random suggestions for how to get more out of your product.
Celebrity Q&A. An interview post can be quick and easy if you simply email questions to an expert of interest to your customers. If you have some dream interview subjects, go ahead and ask if they'll participate. You'll probably be surprised how many say yes.
Be inspiring. Sometimes, customers would just like to feel good. Write about something you found inspiring in the course of your day or how you keep a positive work culture.
Resource list. You could spotlight your vendors, companies you partner with, or a list of good books related to your business.
How you got the idea for your product. This is an opportunity to credit team members and tell an interesting story about product development.
A day in the life. Give customers an hour-by-hour account of a typical day at your company.
Offer something special. Announce a party that gives your best customers a first look at a new product or create a giveaway just for blog subscribers.
Round up the best of your blog. If you think some of your best stuff is buried in the archive, repost your 10 favorite posts from the past year.

The key to a successful business blog is variety -- so mix it up with different types of posts. If every post is "Seven Ways to Use Our Product," it's going to get old fast.

How to make Blog successful - some useful tips

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:46:00 +0530

With so many amazing arts, heritage and creative blogs out there already, how do you make yours stand out? How do you get people returning for more, and how do you increase visitor numbers and build a loyal following?

There are plenty of tips and tricks to get your own creative blog rocking and therefore raising your profile and helping you to win more business. Here's my top 20 tips for a successful creative blog, but if you can think of any more, please comment below and help me make this the best list on the web.

Getting started

Choosing a blogging platform is your first challenge. There are lots of free options out there including Wordpress, Tumblr, TypePad and Blogger. All of them offer free design themes so you can customise your own blog so it's very easy to get started. And if you're not sure how to use them? There's plenty of online video tutorials to be found on the web – for example, Wordpress has its very own lesson list to help get you started.

Consider integration

From an SEO point of view, it's worth getting your blog integrated with your existing website to build content and make the search engines love you even more. After all, SEO (search engine optimisation) is all about content. But if you're not able to do this or can't afford to hire a web developer to sort, then start a free blog and make sure you include links to your main website or other links, for example to your artistic portfolio.

Find a niche

When choosing a creative topic to blog about, try and find a niche. Make your blog about something very specific and you'll please both the search engines and your readers. Try not to be too general and really focus on one specialist topic and stick to it. Find your own niche and go for it – just remember to stay on topic.

Write about what you love

Write about something you love, otherwise you'll show no passion in your writing. And if there's no passion, your content will suffer, so find a topic you are comfortable with and only write about that. For example, if you're a museum curator, talk about the industry, emerging trends and other museums or exhibitions you love. And if you're a theatre director, you could write about industry folk you admire or share your working day with your followers.

Offer value

It goes without saying but if you don't provide something the public wants, your creative blog will never be a success. Give people what they're after and offer real value to their web browsing experience. What do I mean by this? Well, value is demonstrated in the content you publish. If your content isn't valuable people won't read it or return to read more. Really think about what you're putting out there and give the people what they want.

Focus on marketing

You won't get anywhere if you just launch a blog and hope that people will come without any marketing effort. You have to actively market your blog and you can do that through a variety of ways. You can start chatting with other bloggers by leaving valuable comments on other people's blog posts – this will help draw people back to your own site. Or you can make use of the search engines and write about topics that are popular in the searches, like this very feature. Or you could even offer to contribute to influential e-zines or blogs to help raise your profile. Whatever you choose to do, just get out there and market yourself like mad. There's really no excuse not to.

Encourage interaction

Get people talking on your blog. Ask them to add their comments on various articles, like I've done with this post. Encourage interaction wherever possible. Ask for feedback, respond to people's contributions, build a community and be nice. People love to interact, so make sure you're friendly and welcoming.

Make commenting easy

Just be aware that there are many reasons why people might not comment on your blog posts. It could be anything from not providing easy access to log a comment to writing about negative things people don't want to be a part of. Bottom line? Make commenting easily accessible and write about stuff that gets people talking positively. If people can interact on your blog, they'll keep coming back for more.

Don't worry about negativity

Occasionally you may get the odd negative comment on your blog. Don't let it put you off or scare you away from blogging. Any comments you're not happy with can be deleted or responded to positively. Despite what people say, it's very rare that you'll face negativity so don't worry about it too much.

Don't get stage fright and believe in yourself

Once your blog starts to get more than 1,000 visitors per month, it's only natural that you may lose confidence in yourself and your writing. Don't get stage fright and keep at it! There is a reason why you have so many visitors, so believe in yourself and keep writing fantastic content.

Images, images and more images

People love images. Some of the most popular arts and creative blogs in the world include a lot of imagery. This is partly because people love to quickly scan through web pages and they enjoy seeing photographs and pictures that help to break up text and add visual interest. When writing a creative blog, images are essential so provide as many as possible and give your audience lots of things to enjoy.

Provide easy reading

Research suggests that people view and scan web pages rather than read every last bit of copy. Therefore, try and keep your articles as easy, quick reads. Provide lists wherever possible and break up the text. From an SEO point of view, you want to provide at least 250 words of copy. But it's also good to stick to this number for your readers — unless of course you're writing an article such as this one – in which case, add in bullet points or lists because it will hold people's attention more.

Give your posts punchy titles

When thinking about things to blog about, write articles that have punchy titles: ones that people search for through search engines and titles that are appealing and catchy. You want to draw people in and inspire their curiosity.

Keep it regular

A blog is almost like an online journal and suggests a "regular" focus. Try and keep your blog updated with at least two articles a week. Ideally, you need to be blogging every single day, especially if SEO is one of your key priorities. Otherwise, just try and keep things going. And if you go on holiday, make best use of scheduling tools on your blog so you can post articles automatically while you're away from your desk.

Avoid clutter

When designing your blog — either creating one from scratch or using any of the free blogging platforms online — try and keep the layout clean, fresh and uncluttered. Avoid adding lots of unnecessary features. Keep it easy on the eye and you'll please your blog visitors and have them coming back for more.

Get social

Don't neglect social media elsewhere like Twitter and Facebook. Make sure you hook these up to your blog's RSS feed and update your followers and fans with your latest post. Twitterfeed is a great tool that automatic publishes your posts to your Twitter and Facebook accounts — great for Twitter but looks a bit spammy for Facebook at present. Test everything first and make sure you're happy with the automatic updates and tweets you're putting out there.

Keep an eye on analytics

Keep track of how people are landing on your blog and how they're finding you. You can then tailor your blog posts to your readers' needs as well as making best use of those external sources that are really drawing people in. If you invest in any online advertising, your analytics will also help determine your ROI (return of investment) and whether it's working or not. Keep an eye on your web analytics and ensure your blog is working as powerfully as it should be.

Allow easy following

Place "follow" badges on your blog wherever possible. For example, on Blogger you can add a free widget which encourages people to "follow your blog" in their own Google readers. Tumblr has something similar but this is already integrated. Make sure you provide an easy follow option on your own blog, even if it's just clear links to your RSS feed.

Reveal more about who you are in your posts and your audience will love you for it. People want to follow people, not brands. Include an "about" section if possible and a photograph of yourself. By offering a personal slant, you'll be encouraging people to like you and by tapping into their emotions you'll encourage loyalty hence happy, returning visitors.

A really great example is Ana Kinsella, a fashion blogger from Ireland. Her Ripped Knees blog is mixed with lots of fashion news, but the personal slant is when she posts pictures of her own outfits. Stylebubble is very similar and hugely popular. Add a personal touch to your own blog.

Spell checking and proof-reading

Finally, before you hit the "publish" button, it's crucial you check your spelling and proofread your article again and again. Bad spelling will not only ruin your credibility, it will damage your SEO as the search engines won't appreciate poor copy. Make sure you check everything before you go live.

Easy Ways To Make Money using Internet

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:45:00 +0530

So it turns out that the internet is good for more than just porn and video games – you can make money off it too! Think of the internet as a giant country called Imaginationland. By playing your cards right, you can make some easy money online doing things you’re already doing. Here are some lifehacks to start you off:

1. Website Building

If the internet is a country, then websites are like real estates. I’m hoping by now you have a general understanding that real estates are valuable in the physical world – digital real estates work the same way. By building a website, you’re creating your own plot of online “land.”

You can fill this land with whatever you want, but you have to promote it through social media (and anywhere else you can think of) for this to be successful. When you build traffic to your land, you can sell people whatever you have to offer. In order to build a website, you need a host (i.eGoDaddy), a template (i.e WordPress), and content.

The first two parts are easy to find, and content is only as difficult as you make it. You can post blogs, items for sale, pictures, videos, or whatever you want. Opening up your own website gives you the potential to make money from the avenues I’m going to mention.

2. B2B Marketing

An online business model I love is utilized by GetVoiP, an affiliate marketer based in New York. GetVoiP acts as an agent for business communication providers. They maintain updated listings of VoiP providers, including ratings, comparisons, consumer reviews, in-depth knowledge of market and end-user trends, and expert opinions from business professionals on a variety of topics related to business consumers. By not only keeping abreast of news, but providing detailed analysis of products being offered, GetVoiP is able to generate traffic to their site and increase their clout with businesses.

The more online clout you have as a business, the more money you’ll make. If you’re known for making lasting connections (as is the case with GetVoiP above), then you’ll have no issues building your online brand. You’ll be recognized in your community and begin to build a buzz in your industry. Tracking your numbers (how many people view your site, click each ad, and make a purchase from that click) gives you the leverage to expand this part of your business, enabling you to continue building your online rep.

3. Google Adsense

If that sounds like too much technical information for you, there is an easy button – Google’s advertising platform is as simple as signing up, enabling (on Blogger) or pasting a small code on your website, and allowing the advertisements to automatically roll in. The problem with this program is that you don’t get any commissions – and you don’t get to control the ad content. This is useful for some, but powerful users will want something a little more robust.

4. Amazon Associates

Amazon has an Associates program for site owners and bloggers. They offer a search tool to find the right products and services from their site and a variety of ad styles to display on your site, including text-based and banner images (digital billboards) like this:

Each item purchased through your Amazon links give you a commission. It doesn’t take high volume traffic to achieve results, either. I began making money with the program when I only had 1,000 hits per month on my site. They can apply your earnings to your Amazon account balance, issue you a check, or direct deposit into your bank account. If you love Amazon, you’ll love their associate’s program. Click here for another Lifehack dedicated to Amazon Associates.

5. Rakuten Linkshare

Amazon and Google are far from your only options for online advertising. Rakuten Linkshare is a great place to search for other affiliates for your ads. Through their program, you can get customized ad links, email links, and banner ads for Starbucks, Walmart, iTunes, and a slew of other popular brands. With this program, you can also find smaller companies, regional or specialized brands, and more. I run a combination of Google, Amazon, and Rakuten’s programs, and my monthly income is approximately $150 from these programs. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s also not a lot of work for residual (it means recurring…since the ads are permanent…) income.

6. Company Referral Programs

Speaking of the benefits of permanent ads, banners and links aren’t the only ways to earn a little bit of dough off your online endeavors. By having a website, you gain the power of emailing companies to ask them for things. I have no shame in letting the yoga company whose mat I’m looking into purchasing know that I have a blog and write for yoga publications – it sometimes gets me discounts.

Other times, I gain a valuable business contact in PR, advertising, or other aspects of corporate sales. Sometimes I just get a free drink. Either way, money in and of itself is worthless. Ditch the middle man and use the internet to barter what you have and can do for what you need.

7. Klout

If you have a social media account, try out Klout. The company tracks your social media usage, determines how big and what type of audience you draw based on the subject matter of your updates and posts. Using this information, you’re qualified to receive free items, tickets, etc. Check their website often to find ways of earning free stuff by doing what you’re already doing online…boring the rest of us…

8. EBay

If you have anything you want to sell, then EBay is the place you need to seriously consider doing it first. Personally I’m not a fan of the site because of the work it takes to build up a reputation. If you’re willing to grind through that process, you’ll be rewarded with many privileges – people have gotten rich selling books about how they got rich selling everything on EBay: Click here for a few tips from the pros.

9. Amazon

If you start getting too big for EBay or decide you want to try a different flavor, Amazon has a marketplace as well. I prefer using Amazon because I can depend on their shipping, have a Prime account, and trust their reviews (overall, not usually singularly, although occasionally that as well). Learn more about Amazon’s marketplace by clicking on this Lifehack, and delve into the marketplace.

The difference between Amazon and EBay is that EBay (though still filled with new items) is seen as a used marketplace between individual parties, whereas Amazon (which is filled with offers for new and used merchandise from the 3rd parties) is viewed as a Wal-Mart-type superstore. As a consumer, this difference leads me to use Amazon, so it only makes sense to target on my own demographic.

10. Etsy

If you’re crafty (and I mean that in more than one way, wink wink), you’ll enjoy Etsy. Handcrafted items are the bread and butter here. Plenty of people make decent side money on the site, which is basically an EBay for crafters and artists. Set up a sellers account with Etsy, and you’ll be asked to set up your virtual storefront and put up at least 5 goods for sale.

Once you have this down, you’ll be a budding Etsy entrepreneur. Provide great quality to your customers, and they’ll often return. Many people are willing to pay a premium for quality handmade designs. Etsy (like EBay and Amazon) takes a cut off the top for selling items through their site. PayPal takes another cut, and you have to be careful with taxes on all income, so be diligent while building your online business.

11. Craigslist

Craigslist is the modern equivalent of the classified ads that dominated the days of newspapers. These quick ads are easy to navigate and use, and they’re geographically linked. Whether you’re selling something or offering a service, this lifehack is a great place to start learning the intricacies of Craigslist.

Posting ads on Craigslist is technically easy, but people often have fears about posting their personal information on the site. I communicate mostly through email when doing business on Craigslist, and I’ve never run into any issues. I’ve never been ripped off, nor have I been murdered or raped for using the site. It takes common sense, so use your best judgment, but don’t assume someone is a thief just because of their preferred communication method. For an extra bonus, google “funny Craigslist ads” to see some delightful examples of guerilla and grassroots marketing.

12. Indeed

Maybe what you need is a job. It doesn’t matter which job search site you prefer using (even Craigslist) – Indeed tracks them all, and then some. You can find jobs posted on company websites, through temp agencies, and more at Indeed. If money is something you really need, Indeed is most definitely the place you want to visit to browse career opportunities.

13. Elance

Where Indeed excels at finding job postings across the web and acting as a search crawler for employment, maybe a full-fledged career is too big of a commitment at this point in your life. Elance is a site to find freelance work of all types. I’ve used it for quick writing, editing, copywriting, resume building, and other odd jobs and temp gigs. The experience has been great.

Elance offers a wide array of technical, data entry, accounting, and other freelance and temp gigs. If you’re just looking for something short and sweet, log in, input and showcase your marketable skills, and begin searching through their job database, using any parameters you desire. Once you submit a bid, you’ll receive an acceptance or denial – you may get a few rejections, but don’t sweat it. Negotiate the terms of your bid, and get to work. You have money to make.

14. Mturk

If you’ve heard of crowdsourcing (and even if you haven’t), Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program is a great place to get involved. Much like at Elance, you input your info and skills. You then are able to search for different menial tasks ranging from identifying inappropriate web content to transcribing audio recordings to basic data entry work.

Just like at any other job, the more work you do, and the better your quality, the more opportunities you’ll have to make money. The payouts are often small, and your payment is received in Amazon credit, but Mturk is a great place to make mindless money while veg’ing on the couch watching TV.

15. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social media site for professionals. This isn’t a direct way to make money, but it’s a great way to connect to your current and potential peers, customers, clients, vendors, and more here. You’ll build a reputation and get in the loop on important developments in your chosen career path and/or industry. One day an old college buddy may hit you up for a dream job you never considered at the exact moment you are looking for a new vocation. Whether you like it or not, keeping your LinkedIn profile current is a great way to get surprised with new work opportunities out the blue.

16. Care.com

If you’re an experienced nanny or babysitter, Care.com is the place you want to make money. By listing yourself on the Craigslist of Childcare, you’ll broaden your reach and increase your odds of finding the right gig at the right time. You can be pickier with what kids you watch when you have the reputation and traffic to pull in more customers. Join Care.com and start making money by investing in the future of our youth.

17. ThePirateBay

I support bootlegging – I don’t see it as being immoral or unethical in any way. I used to bootleg quite a bit in my youth, and I still do on occasion today (although not yet today in particular, I more meant “in the present”). If you want to hustle for your money, do what you must, baby. Download some software, music, movies, or other assorted digital goodness here and start slangin. It’s not an easy life, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

18. iTunes

If you’re a musician, writer, artist, tech nerd, pundit, or can produce any type of audio, video, or text worth consuming, you may be able to sell some stuff in Apple’s flagship iTunes store. By selling your work here, you’re able to stand next to the marketing clout of big business. You can make a healthy living off the iTunes store, and there’s no better time than now.Learn more about iTunes with this lifehack.

19. Yelp!

If you have a business, you want to get listed on Yelp! You may not use the software, but some people do, and they use it religiously (and I don’t mean they’ll kill you over it). By listing your business on Yelp!, you’re putting yourself on the map. From here, you also need to start using Yelp! Write reviews of places you go. It’ll be worth it in the long run.

Soon, you’ll have a dozen or so reviews under your belt and can hire yourself out as a Yelp! reviewer. There are ethical and moral questions to doing this, but the title of this piece is “ways to make money,” not “ethical ways to make money,” and I am a former Bank of America/Countrywide employee, so what’d you expect?

20. Wikipedia

Another seemingly free site you can make money from is Wikipedia. People who say it’s easy to edit Wikipedia have clearly never tried editing Wikipedia – it’s a pain. Thankfully it’s a pain for companies as well, so many of them are willing to pay editors to assist them in the editing process. You’ll become a bounty hunter in a way, choosing your own lines to cross and keep. If editing is something you like to do, and you’re willing to put in the work it takes to learn Wikipedia’s dispute process, roll up your sleeves and try this one out.

21. Blogging

I make the bulk of my money from blogging. In addition to the advertising revenue streams mentioned above, I also receive flat rate payments for blogging from various blogs throughout the web. I’m paid to write as a whistleblower, financial analyst, reviewer, commentator, and more. Writing for other sites builds traffic to my personal blog. The traffic for this blog gives me clout to present to advertisers.

To create your own blog, you don’t even need a web domain. You can start a completely free blog on either WordPress or Blogger. Each of these sites has its ups and downs, but you can’t beat the price. You generally want to keep blog posts between 150-500 words until you have a few dozen under your belt. Links between your blog posts encourage people to stay on your blog once they find it, increasing traffic. Once your blog is up, promote it on social media for the greatest effect.

22. Kickstarter

If you have a passion project, Kickstarter may be exactly what you need to get it off the ground. Celebs like Zach Braff and Melissa Joan Hart have used this site in attempts to fund their movie projects. Some crack dealers in Canada inspired a “crackstarter” campaign from Gawker for pictures of the Toronto mayor smoking crack with them. All you need is a dream, a goal, a budget, and a great pitch to convince people to come to the site and donate to your Kickstarter campaign. Panhandling isn’t dead – it’s gone digital…

23. Extreme Couponing

If you’ve never heard of extreme couponing, check out this lifehack on the subject. Once you’re versed on the idea, what you have to do is a bit difficult at first, but it’s a great way to both save and make money: go to hip2save.com and get a feel for the types of deals that are out there (both online and in the physical world). Once you’re comfortable with the process, start searching for the best deals in grocery, retail, and online shopping. After a month or two of extreme couponing, you’ll have enough cleaning, hygiene, and food supplies stocked up to save a noticeable amount of money. Now maybe you don’t need to make as much…?

24. Social Media

No matter what you do to make money online, promote it on your social media accounts. You have a base of people who are already interested in you and have a vested interest in your brand – why would you not want to take advantage of that? By promoting yourself and your projects on your social media accounts, you’re greatly increasing the chances of people actually giving you money in exchange for your goods and services. Stop being shy and get out there.

Blogger All in One SEO Meta Tags Package

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:44:00 +0530

Blogger SEO Package Meta Tags Correct settings

Apply these following given instruction; Open Blogger HTML Editor from going to page Template. Locate the Title tag, it will look like this

<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>

Now replace the above mentioned meta tag with this all in one SEO Pack

<b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “item”‘>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title>
<b:else/><title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
</b:if>
<b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “archive”‘>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title>
</b:if>
<b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “label”‘>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title>
</b:if>
<meta expr:content=’data:blog.pageTitle + ” – your blog description“‘ name=’description’/>
<meta expr:content=’data:blog.pageName + “, Keyword 1, Keyword 2, Keyword 3, Keyword 4“‘ name=’keywords’/>
<meta content=’Blogger Author‘ name=’author’/>
<meta content=’index,follow’ name=’robots’/>

Now its time to change the internal entries in the code, the code shown in red color must be changed with your own data.
Like give the description of your blog in the meta description tag according to the niche and need. But it must be not more than 180 characters.
Next step is to change the keywords in the keyword tags shown in red color. Give proper keywords which are related to your blog.
in Author Meta write your Name and save the Template. And now your blog is completely SEO optimized.

Benefits of Blogger SEO Package

All in one SEO package for Blogger help tips has many benefits. As we know that blogger don’t show meta description tag for every post, but using the above code every post and page of the blog contain a different description tag from other post and pages. Same thing is applied for the different meta tags of the post and pages.

10 ways to boost your social standing online

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:43:00 +0530

These 10 social networking tips and tricks will help you build a stronger network and take your online presence to the next level. All are designed to make you think strategically and take advantage of timesaving tools to boost your effectiveness.

Here are 10 ways to boost your social standing online.

Listen to Your Audience
The three most important factors in social networking are audience, audience, audience. Identify what kind of people you're trying to reach and pay attention to what they're saying.Build RSS feeds and monitor conversations using listening tools like TweetDeck, Social Mention and Seesmic. (Take this 10-step tutorial on how to use Social Mention to monitor many social networks at once.) Learn the basics of social metrics, or what to measure and why.
Participate and Collaborate
Set goals for engaging your contacts and monitor how much activity your efforts generate. How many retweets do you get on Twitter? How many reposts does your blog generate? Use third-party tools like Retweetist and the Retweet iPhone App to measure your social media influence and impact on networks. Klout is one such tool that lets you track your impact on multiple social media networks.
Join Specialized Networks
Whatever your passion, there is aspecialized social network for you. Try Diggif you're a social news hound, Kickstarter for fundraising, Last.fm for music, deviantart.com for artists, fanvibe for sports, or ozmosis for doctors. To find your niche network, run a Google search on "yourtopic and social media."
Use Social Media Dashboards
Save time by using social media management tools like HootSuite to manage your accounts and activity across different social media services, including Twitter, WordPress, Facebook, Foursquare and others. HootSuite lets you post and read messages, track mentions of you, and lets you prepare posts and updates for automatic posting later at pre-scheduled times. Most of the best Twitter clients, for example, also let you manage other social networks.

Ask Lots of Questions
Asking questions is a great way to engage your contacts, attract fresh links and learn new things. When people reply to your questions with comments or posts, it boosts the visibility of your content on that particular network. But take care to read and respond to answers.
Link, Link, Link
Links equal love in social media. So liberally add links to your posts, status updates, tweets and other content. Cross-link to your tweets from your blog and vice versa. On Facebook, you can tag your pals to hyperlink their names. All it takes is adding the "@" symbol at the beginning of your friend's name when you write your status updates. You can also upload files and link to them. Try the TwileShare app, for example.
Time Your Tweets
Noon Eastern Standard Time is a great tweeting time to reach bigger audiences. American West Coasters are showing up for work then, while East Coasters are starting lunch breaks. If you really want to expand your audience, check out this guide to writing good tweets. Timing your posts in other social networks is an art, too, as this guide tosocial media frequency explains.
Use Mobile Helpers
If you have a smart phone, install special helper applications to send and receive information faster on your favorite social networks. Instagram, for example, helps iPhone users spice up their cell-phone photos and share them quickly across different networks -- Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and others. There are plenty of Twitter helpers for cell phones and tablet computers. Trickle, for example, displays tweets on the iPad one at a time.
Create a Visual Identity
Tweak your Twitter profile, Facebook profile and other social network home pages to create a unique visual identity. Create a custom Twitter background to add more bio information and give your Twitter presence personality. Many custom backgrounds are available for free downloading at sites such as MyTweetSpace.com. Users can even create custom header images on their LinkedIn profile, for example.
Back Up Your Virtual Self
Once you've taken time to build a strong social network, don't let your social identity go up in digital smoke. Make use of available tools for backing up your profiles, photos, andstatus updates. Facebook's backup tool is under "download your information" in Account Settings. For Twitter, try a third-party tool like TweetStream or TweetScan. WordPress lets you export your posts to a downloadable XML file, which you can save and import later into a new blog in the event that one of your best social blogs accidentally get zapped into oblivion.

Social Media Marketing Tips and Tricks for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and More

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:43:00 +0530

The world of social media is ever-changing. It’s important to keep current on best practices to ensure that you’re doing all you can to keep your marketing campaigns and initiatives fresh. The team at Vocus has researched the latest and greatest trends in marketing on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Flickr, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Here’s what they found:

Facebook

Facebook users like photos. They upload at least 350 million of them every day. Take advantage of this by sharing photos to drive engagement.

Example: Starbucks posts photos to Facebook from Instagram, and many of the brand’s photos are taken by customers — not the company.

Twitter

Implement Twitter cards so that any tweets of your content include applicable visual media.

Example: Huffington Post includes an image with each tweet and customizes the title tag. You can take this further by attributing content to creators, customizing the snippet, and using images up to 560 x 750 px.

Google+

Cross-post between Google+ Hangouts and your normal YouTube videos — the video and any comments automatically show up in the Google+ news stream.

Example: Toyota uses Google+ Hangouts to create an interactive, visual experience — the Toyota Collaborator enables 5 people to design their dream Toyota and take it on a virtual test drive with Google Maps.

Flickr

On Flickr, the goal is to enjoy high-quality photos in collections, so only post your best ones.

Example: Tyson Robichaud makes photography interactive by setting up challenges. Winning photos are posted o his Flickr page and shared with a larger audience, which drives engagement for him and the featured photographers.

Brand pins with your logo to create visual reminders.

Example: Nordstrom is the most-followed brand on Pinterest. By offering free shipping on the most-pinned items, it drives online engagement and in-store sales.

Instagram

Encourage your customers to use your company’s hashtag and reward them by “regramming” the best ones.

Example: Facilitate conversations that are already happening on Instagram. Chobani uses hashtags created by the community, not the company.

Vine

You only have 6 seconds to work with in a Vine video, so use objects that align with your company’s brand.

Example: Place your product front and center like Oreo. Almost all of their Vines begin with its celebrated cookie in full portrait mode.

Make an interactive resume by adding rich media and detailed descriptions, including photos, presentations, and demos.

Example: Chef Paul Maloney showcases images of his delicious food creations, resulting in more views and job requests.

YouTube

Take advantage of YouTube’s video editor and combine existing videos to create new ones that show your product in action.

How to Using Social Media in Your Business

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:42:00 +0530

Wading into the fast-moving flow of social media can be daunting to a small business owner with very little time on his hands. Here's Inc.'s comprehensive social media cheat sheet for the time-strapped entrepreneur.
1. Offer a peek behind the scenes. Offering a sneak preview of new products, services, or features online can help build demand and provide critical feedback to help smooth the launch. For instance, John Doyle, founder of chocolate company John and Kira's in Philadelphia, posts photos of new products on Flickr and invites comments from customers.

2. Harness your expertise. Chances are your company's white paper won't go viral. But sharing knowledge you've gathered through your trade can go a long way toward boosting your brand. Ford Models, for instance, became a YouTube sensation through a series of videos that featured its models giving beauty and fashion tips.

3. Demonstrate what your company does. Because multimedia is so integral to social media, getting connected allows you to express your company's value proposition beyond words. To show just how powerful his company's blenders were, Blendtec's head of marketing, George Wright, created a series of videos showing the appliances churning up such diverse items as a rotisserie chicken, a Rubik's Cube, and an iPhone. The series' 100 million combined views helped boost Blendtec's sales by 700 percent.

4. Put your website's content to work. Want to draw more traffic to your website? Help spread the word by encouraging visitors to share content they enjoy. GotCast, a website that connects television casting directors with aspiring actors, draws new visitors by posting audition videos on Digg and allowing others to share video links on the site. One way to promote the sharing of your site's content is to install a widget, such as AddThis, that automates linking to popular sites.

5. Be candid. In unsure economic times, transparency goes a long way toward retaining and attracting customers. Giving readers the scoop on your company blog is an easy way to keep the lines of communication open. Giacomo Guilizzoni, the founder of San Francisco software company Balsamiq, even posts sales and profit figures to show that his company is on solid financial footing.

6. But be careful what you say about others. When Leslie Richard, owner of a North Carolina clothing company, described Vision Media Television as a "scam," she was slapped with a $20 million lawsuit. While recounting negative experiences with others won't necessarily lead to a court battle, it's best to steer clear of name-calling.

7. Interact with visitors—really. Just putting up a blog or a Facebook fan page won't do much good if visitors sense the flow of conversation only goes one way. In fact, Matt Mullenweg, founder of blogging platform Wordpress, lists not participating in comments as a surefire way to kill a community. Mullenweg and his team field the many suggestions users have for Wordpress through his blog.

8. Don't try to create a stand-in for yourself. With all the other tasks required within your company, it's tempting to outsource managing your social media or even to try automating the process. That can easily backfire, as Joe Pulizzi, founder of Cleveland marketing firm Junta42, learned when he tried sending automated welcome messages to new followers on Twitter. His online contacts quickly called him out for sending out what they perceived to be spam.

9. Don't pretend to be someone else. Thanks to IP address tracking, observers can also quickly tell when company figureheads adopt fake identities for the sake of fluffing up their reputation. Not only can the practice hurt your company's reputation, it could also land you in legal trouble. The plastic surgery Lifestyle Lift had to pay $300,000 in settlement costs to the state of New York for having its employees post flattering reviews of the company without disclosing their affiliation.

10. Help employees bond. Corporations such as IBM have built in-house networks—even virtual worlds reminiscent of Second Life—to link employees working in different locations. Small and medium-sized businesses can take advantage of readily available tools to facilitate collaboration. The Hoffman Agency, a public relations firm, uses Ning, which enables users to build custom social networks, to connect its U.S. staff with employees in Europe and Asia.

11. Reward customer loyalty. Through social media, companies can not only run promotions more frequently than coupons in the mail will permit but also devise more whimsical and engaging campaigns. Sprinkles Cupcakes, a bakery chain based in Beverly Hills, California, uses Twitter to send out daily promotional offers. The tweets, which ask customers to whisper a "password" to receive a free treat, have helped the company draw more than 17,000 followers.

12. See what people are saying about you. A quick search for mentions of your company on Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp can yield a goldmine of information concerning your reputation. Several users on Yelp, for instance, suggested that employees at Quimby's Bookstore in Chicago were less than welcoming. After reading the comments, owner Eric Kirsammer focused on improving customer service. Applications such as monitter and Trackur can help you keep track of the conversation across the Web.

13. Make amends with dissatisfied customers, quickly. Andy Carlson, owner of an Ace Hardware store in Denver, once came across an angry Twitter update from a customer who had bought a tool that broke after one use. He resolved the issue in a matter of minutes by referring the customer to an area store and notified him of Ace's lifetime guarantee. Best of all, he was able to catch the complaint after store hours—and prevent negative word of mouth.

14. Don't go on the defensive. A harsh rebuke of your business on sites like Yelp can not only bruise your ego but also hurt your livelihood. But resist the temptation to lash out in public. Sarah Dunbar, owner of Oakland vintage boutique Pretty Penny, privately responds to less-than-flattering reviewers and encourages them to visit her in person. And keep in mind that you can't please everyone. After Dunbar wrote to one dissatisfied customer, the reviewer accused her of conducting "shady business" by trying to sway opinions.

15. Keep customers in the loop. Frequently on the go? Twitter can help your customers keep track of your latest destination. Kogi Korean BBQ, which operates a food cart in Los Angeles, keeps its Twitter followers constantly informed of its location on the street. The real-time updates help Kogi keep up demand, as customers line up in advance at the broadcasted locations.

16. Find potential customers. A quick keyword search can help you find prospective customers who may not be aware of your company but could nonetheless benefit from your product or service. Bob Scaglion, a senior managing director at New York real-estate management company Rose Associates, generates 100 leads per month on Twitter for his company simply by replying to users whose tweets include phrases such as "moving to New York City" and "no-fee rentals."

17. Reach more markets. Social media can help your company reach multiple markets at a time. Restaurant chain Boloco focuses most of its advertising on Boston, which houses 13 out of its 16 locations. But as an experiment, CEO John Pepper decided to post a copy of a coupon from a local newspaper on Twitter in order to reach customers in Vermont and New Hampshire. Coupon redemptions increased by more than 150 percent as a result.

18. Target your online advertising. Both Facebook andMySpace allow businesses to run ads that attract specific groups of users based on what information they include in their profiles. By running Facebook ads targeted at students at specific colleges, StorQuest Self Storage, which has locations in Arizona, California, Colorado, and Hawaii, increased its number of rentals by more than half.

19. See where your customers are. A growing number of social networks are designed specifically for users on the go, and some, such as the mobile application Foursquare, offer tools specifically for businesses. Frozen dessert chain Tasti D-Lite, for instance, uses Foursquare to gather data on how many people visit its locations and send promotional offers to frequent customers.

20. Let customers help each other out. Including a customer forum on your website or social network profile can help enhance your customer service while building a sense of community. At Poolcenter.com, a swimming pool equipment retailer based in Arlington, Virginia, customers often field each other's inquiries on swimming pool equipment before they reach customer service reps. Get Satisfaction and Fixya are two sites that offer dedicated spaces for customer service forums.

21. Build a community beyond your business. Photo hosting site SmugMug has established itself as a resource for skilled photographers in part by operating a forum, Digital Grin, where members trade advice on topics such as the best techniques for taking photos at night and capturing wedding scenes. With the exception of a support section at the very bottom, the forum is devoted to photography at large, rather than the company's own services.

22. Let customers contribute. FrontPoint Security, a home security provider in McLean, Virginia, began collecting video testimonials from its customers, who filmed themselves with Flip cameras. The videos are posted on FrontPoint's site and on YouTube, and even some customers' personal blogs. FrontPoint's video efforts have helped the company more than triple its sales leads.

23. Help others promote you. Social media can help you find passionate customers who are more than willing to spread the word about your company. Crafts supplies manufacturer Fiskars reached out to scrapbookers by inviting four avid users to blog. Its crafts community, called Fiskateers, has since attracted 5,000 users who serve as brand evangelists.

24. Cultivate relationships that lead to sales. Soon after he joined Twitter, J.R. Cohen, manager of The Coffee Groundz, a Houston coffee shop, began encouraging his followers to visit him in his shop. He began getting to know customers so well that they not only initiated conversations with him through Twitter—they began tweeting orders through the site as well. Now Cohen periodically fields menu requests through Twitter, though he doesn't use the page primarily for that purpose.

25. But don't promote too aggressively. While social network users have proven to be open to marketing—especially if it involves a discount—they're not flocking to Facebook or MySpace to hear sales pitches. If your profile or blog reads like an ad, it will turn visitors away. Kent Lewis, founder of Portland online marketing firm Anvil Media, encourages Twitter users, for instance, to pass along industry news and retweet interesting items from others along with their own promotions.

26. Find ways to engage visitors offline. In March, Cinda Baxter, a retail consultant in Minneapolis, ended a blog post on local business with one simple idea: choose three businesses to support, and spend a combined amount of $50 per month. The post spurred hundreds of inquiries—enough for Baxter to build a standalone website, which has since attracted the support of more than 12,000 businesses. Baxter has used the publicity to bolster her consulting business: she now travels nationwide to advise retailers on building support within their communities.

27. Find influential people in your industry. In addition to maintaining your blog, make sure to keep your eyes open to what others in the industry are buzzing about online. Reading independent blogs and joining industry groups on Facebook andLinkedIn is a good way to join the larger conversation. Spoonflower, a fabric design site based in Mebane, North Carolina, has built its community of more than 40,000 users primarily through word of mouth on crafts blogs.

28. Boost your credibility by helping others. For service providers, establishing yourself as an expert in the field can bring in a steady stream of business. LinkedIn's Answers feature enables business owners to do just that. Heidi Cool, a Web design consultant in Cleveland, browses LinkedIn Answers for inquiries related to her industry and spends one to two hours per week answering them. In one month, she generated 29 leads for her services directly from her responses.

29. Look for talent off the beaten path. While LinkedIn is specifically geared toward professional use, some companies have found other social networks to be effective recruiting tools as well. Jason Averbrook, CEO of the management-consulting firm Knowledge Infusion, found 19 candidates in two days for an open position simply by writing about his search in status updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Plaxo, which aggregates contact information from social networks.

30. Connect with potential partners. Because LinkedIn is designed specifically for professional networking, businesses can find a host of valuable contacts there. Josh Steinitz, CEO of NileGuide, a trip planning website based in San Francisco, used LinkedIn to find business partners by identifying companies of interest and then asking his existing contacts to provide introductions. A third of the company's inquiries resulted in eventual partnerships.