I recently did a site design and build for a client who had a special request: He wanted to put ads in in the middle of his page content.  Generally my clients ask for ad blocks to be inserted, but they’ve always wanted them either at the top or at the bottom of a post or page.  Placing an ad block at the top or bottom of a page is easy, placing an ad block in the middle, automatically, is a bit more challenging and requires some special coding.

How to put ads in the middle of your page content

While I’m sure the code I’m about to share with you would work with a few changes on any theme, the code as a whole is specific to the Thesis theme.

The easiest way to insert an ad block into the middle of your post or page is to just manually insert it.  This is easily done using the WordPress editor, and literally takes all of a few seconds.  That is not what we’re addressing here.  The code below will automatically insert an ad close to the middle of your article on every single post automatically.  Slick huh?

Code for ads in the middle of page content

Here’s the code:

/**
* Insert ads in the middle of a post - after 3rd paragraph
*/
function inject_ad_text_after_n_chars($content) {
$enable_length = 1500;
$after_character = 1000;
if (is_single() && strlen($content) > $enable_length) {
$before_content = substr($content, 0, $after_character);
$after_content = substr($content, $after_character);
$after_content = explode('</p>', $after_content);
array_splice($after_content, 1, 0, wp_ozh_wsa("AdSense-MidParagraph",false));
$after_content = implode('</p>', $after_content);
return $before_content . $after_content;
} else {
return $content;
}
}
add_filter('the_content', 'inject_ad_text_after_n_chars');

How the code works

• The code first determines if the current page is a single post page or not, if not the ad won’t be shown.  It then determines if the post is more than $enable_length characters long, if not the ad won’t be shown.
• The code then gets all of the post text up to position 1000 ($after_character) and all of the rest after this character position.  The first part is stored in before_content the rest in after_content.
• The next line (explode(‘</p>’, $after_content)) basically breaks the after_content sections using the paragraph tags.
• Next, an array_splice is done to place the ad code right after the first </p> tag found.  This is done so that the ad is placed between paragraphs – meaning the ad won’t be placed at exactly $after_character, but at the end of the paragraph end tag following $after_character.
• Note the ad code is: wp_ozh_wsa(“AdSense-MidParagraph”,false).  This particular example uses a plugin called Who Sees Ads.
• The $before_content is then concatenated with $after_content and returned.

Photo by: christopher.woo

While I would love for this post to be another “best month ever” update, unfortunately it’s not.  In early August, I shared with you that the traffic to one of main income generating niche stores plummeted.  Here’s a screenshot of site visits from Google Analytics from the end of July to early August, the sudden drop is obvious:

As you’ll see below, this significant drop in traffic, about an 80% decrease, had a huge negative impact on my niche store income.  My eBay Partner Network and Adsense income went from around  $1000/month to about $150/month.  Huge hit.  Fortunately in August, I had a good bit of development and design work from my Empty Cabin Media business.

Why the sudden drop?  Well, to be honest, I’m not exactly sure.  I think it’s a combination of a few things: 1) The Google Panda Updates 2) My niche site is summer sports related, and with fall coming, traffic declined.  3) A site with a fairly high page rank had a number of back links to me, this site suddenly disappeared and with it, all of my back links.

I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t miffed about this.  Perhaps I don’t have the right perspective, but I think my site provided value and had a good mix of text and image content.  Frankly, it looked much like any other normal online store.  What I think (and I stress think as there is no way to be sure) is that Google dinged affiliate stores.  Affiliate stores being stores that promote other people’s products.  In my case, that was eBay.  But, regardless of whether I think it’s fair or not, Google controls the internet and thus the traffic sent to our sites.  As a result, I really can’t do much other than move forward.

Income

eBay Partner Network (Niche Stores) – $127.56

Adsense – $56.75

Affiliates – $67.51

Consulting/Hosting (Empty Cabin Media) – $1547.50

Total June Income: $1799.32

Expenses:

Freshbooks (used for invoicing for my consulting work) – $24.48

Media Temple (hosting) – $82.00

iPad AT&T Data Service  - $14.99

MyDomain Domain Registrations: $50.82

Backup Buddy Developer’s Suite (my blog backup package of choice): $112.50

Total Expenses: $284.79

Net Income: (Income – Expenses): $1514.53

Certainly not a bad income by any means, just frustrating that it could have been higher.  I do expect my Empty Cabin Media business to slow down starting in September through the end of the year based on past years experience.  People’s budgets are being reached, and spending gets reduced in preparation for Christmas.  I think my September earnings will show the real negative impact of my niche store earnings.

As I said though, I’m moving forward.  I’m building a new niche site and rather than being product focused, it will be content focused offering products as a supplement to the content, rather than the content being a supplement to the products.  I’ll be writing about this more in the coming weeks.  I’ll also be doing my best to focus on writing more here on Side Income Blogging and marketing myself a little more to keep my Empty Cabin Media income up.  I’m not alarmed, just frustrated.

For those of you more experienced, any perspectives on this sudden drop?  Have you seen similar things on your sites?  Have a question about anything?  Add a comment below and ask away!

Photo by: kevinamcgill

If you’ve been following my Start a money making blog series, together we have: set-up your blog, consistently published content, and worked to increase your traffic.  If you’re averaging more than 100 visits per day, it’s time to consider placing some advertising on your blog so you can begin earning that side income we’ve been talking about!

A great way to start monetizing your blog is with Google Adsense.  Adsense is an advertising network run by Google and allows publishers (that’s you) to display text, image, and rich media ads on your blog.  What makes Google Adsense so slick, is that the ads are automatically targeted at your site’s content.  Adding Adsense ads to your site is also easy: all you have to do is add some script where you want the ad to be shown or use one of the many available WordPress plugins.

Here’s the catch: Optimization and placement of your ads is key to how well your ads will perform.  One of the biggest mistakes new and inexperienced bloggers make is just slapping Adsense ads on their blog, without giving consideration to who should see them, where they should be placed, what size should be used and how they should look.  No need to be concerned, I’ll help you through all of that.

 How to make a Google Adsense Account

The first thing you’ll need to do is sign-up for Google Adsense.  To sign up:

1. Visit the Google Adsense Page.
2. Click on the Sign-up now button.
3. Complete all of the required information, paying particular attention to your website address.  Make sure this is correct.  This URL cannot contain anything that violates the program policies.  Press submit when you’re done.
4. Next you’ll either link your existing Google Account or you’ll create a new one.
5. The final page will display a summary of the information you’ve submitted and ask that you confirm.

Adsense Placement

One of the key factors to success with Adsense is the placement of ads.  The following diagram from the Google Help pages shows optimal placement using a heat map (dark orange – strongest performance, light yellow – weakest performance):

Note a few things:

• Adsense does better below your nav bar – not above
• The closer Adsense is to your content, the better it performs.  The best placement is right above your content
• If you have a 3 column theme with a left side column, Adsense does well placed in this left side column as well.

How to create your first Adsense ad

Assuming your account has been approved, let’s jump in and create your very first Adsense ad.  As I mentioned, for this article we’ll create an ad above your content.  More specifically, we’ll create a 336×280 (large square ad) and place it below your post title but before your content on each of your articles.  We’ll additionally only show this ad to search engine visitors.  I’ll explain why below.

To create your ad, do the following:

1. Login to your Adsense account.
2. Click on the My ads tab at the top.
3. Press the New ad unit button.  The new ad screen will appear prompting you for information about your new ad.
4. In the Name field, put a name for your ad.  I generally use the name of my blog, followed by the ad size.  For example: Side Income Blogging – Large Square.  The name really doesn’t matter, as long as it is meaningful to you.
5. In the Size field, select: 336 x 280 – Large Rectangle (this tends to be the best performing Adsense ad)
6. For Ad type, use the default: Text & Image / Rich Media Ads.  This will allow a combination of text, image and animated ads.
7. Custom Channels allow you to view and track detailed about your ads, so you’ll definitely want to use a channel.   To create a new custom channel, click on the Create new custom channel link.  In the pop-up, type a name for your channel and press Save.   The new channel will automatically be associated with your ad.
8. Ad style/color Palette will allow you to select the colors for your ad.  Proper color selection is critical to good performance.  The ad should blend with your content and specifically with your link colors.  Here’s how to select your colors: Border – Use the same color as your background.  Generally this will be #FFFFFF (white), you don’t want a border to show.  Title – Same as your link color.  Background – Same color as Border.  Text – #CCCCCC.  URL – #cccccc.  Use the defaults for the remainder of the settings.  These colors are based on testing I’ve done and the experience of other bloggers I’ve talked with.
9. Click Save and get code.
10. Copy the ad code, and save it somewhere handy, as we’ll be using it shortly to show the ad on your site.

Adsense performs very well for search engine visitors, and not well at all for normal visitors or readers of your site.  On my blogs, I focus on my readers as much as I can and I don’t generally like to show them ads, especially non-affiliate ads.  As a result, I only show Adsense ad to search engine visitors, meaning that only visitors coming from a search engine SERP (Search Engine Result Page) will see my Adsense ads.  Fortunately there is a really great plugin that takes care of this for us called: Ozh’ Who Sees Ads.

Here’s how to set-up the Adsense ad we just created so that it is only shown to search engine visitors:

1. If not already installed, install the Ozh’ Who Sees Ads WordPress plugin and activate it.
2. Now let’s get it configured.   In your WordPress admin menu, navigate to Settings>>Who Sees Ads.  Who See Ads uses something called Contexts.  Context allow you to set-up rules around who will see your ads (or who won’t).  There are a number of rules available (in the Possible Rules section).
3. The first thing you’ll want to do is name the new context we’re creating.  Since we’re only showing our ads to search engine visitors, I’d suggest calling it something like search-engine-only.  Avoid using spaces, and use dashes instead, as it will make it easier to reference your name when we insert the Who Sees Ads code here in a bit.
4. Next, we’ll set-up the rule.  Drag the rule named: “If Visitor comes from a search engine display” to the Active Rules box.  This is generally the only rule I use, but you can add others.  For example, you may want to consider showing adsense on your older posts (usually your normal viewers won’t view older posts).  To do this, drag the rule named: “If Post is older than XX days then display”.  As you can see, there are many rules available, and I would encourage you to try out various rules to see what works best for you for earning revenue.
5. Remember earlier I told you to save off your Adsense code?  Time to pull it up, copy it and paste it into the box named “Ad Code”.
6. Click on Save Context.

If you’ll recall, we’ll be adding your Adsense ad below the post title, but before your post content.  To do this, we’ll insert some code into the Thesis hook named: thesis_hook_after_headline.  Open up your custom_functions.php file and insert the following code:

<pre>/**
 * Insert Adsense
 */
function show_adsense() {
     if (is_single()) {</pre>
<pre>             wp_ozh_wsa("search-engine-only");</pre>
<pre>     }
}
add_action('thesis_hook_after_headline', 'show_adsense');</pre>

Save your changes.  If you are running a caching plugin like W3 Total Cache or Super Cache, you’ll need to delete/purge your cache as well.

At this point, your blog should be showing Adsense ads on your single post pages only if a visitor arrives on your site from a search engine.  Adsense generally takes a few hours to get working, so I would suggest stopping at this point and working on something else for a few hours before proceeding.  I’d suggest reading a few articles from the Side Income Blogging archives, but that’s just me.

Testing your Adsense code

Assuming you’ve waiting a few hours, it’s time to test your changes and make sure everything is working.  Pick your post that ranks highest in the search engines (often the one that gets the most search engine traffic).  You can use Google Analytics to determine this.  Make sure you are logged out of your WordPress administration console, then head over to Google, and search on the title of your post.  When you find it, click on it.  Since you came from a search engine, Who Sees Ads should recognize that, and at the top of your post you should see an Adsense Ad just below your post title and before your post content.

If you navigate to your blog then view the same post (without using Google), you should not see the ad.

If for some reason you don’t see an ad or see an error, double check the code above, and recheck your adsense ad settings.

Tweaking your Adsense ad

Let your adsense ad run for a few weeks and see how your performance does.  Make some notes, then try changing the colors or size of the ad.  To change the colors, all you have to do is go into your Adsense account, edit the ad and save it.  If you want to change sizes, you’ll need to edit the ad and re-paste the code into Who Sees Ads.

As I mentioned, I’ll discuss A/B testing in a future article, but it’s important to try different ad sizes and colors to see what performs the best for you.

—–

Long article, but hopefully it wasn’t too bad.  I do think a big congratulations are in order though for those of you following my Start a Money Making Blog series.  You started with a blank slate, built a website, wrote your content, grew your traffic and now took the first steps toward earning a side income.  That is a huge milestone!  So Congratulations!!  Don’t stop though, continue writing and doing everything you can to grow your traffic.  Remember, the more traffic you have, the more income you make.

Stay tuned, as I’ll be addressing affiliate and private advertising soon.

Photo by: borman818

In addition to continually writing on your blog to build up your content, you’ll want to begin building traffic to your blog as well.  Traffic will become the key ingredient in earning a side income from your blog.  The more traffic you get, the more visibility and click throughs your ads and affiliate offers will get.

I’ve already shared a number of traffic tips before here on Side Income Blogging and specifically some strategies you should be doing from the very start.  Given that, I won’t drive into the details again, but here’s a summary of things you should be doing in the early stages of your blogging daily:

1. Comment on articles from other blogs in your niche, making sure that when you do, you include a link back to your blog.
2. Be active on Social Media sites like – Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.  Social Media is becoming more and more critical in today’s blogging environment.  Use it to promote your articles but more importantly use it interact with others in your niche and your readers.
3. Link out to other blogs and blog articles from your articles.  Not only will this help your search engine rankings, but it will help get you noticed by other bloggers, who in turn just may starting linking back to you.  This builds links to your site (giving it more credibility with Google) but can also drive new readers and traffic to your blog.
4. Guest Post – Guest posting is when you write another article to be published on someone else’s blog.  Guest posting is a great way to get visibility and links to your site.  Absolutely something you should be trying to do.
5. Be active in online forums – Find a forum in your blogs niche, register and beginning being active.  Don’t include a link to your blog initially, but do so after you’ve contributed and have gotten to know the members.
6. Join or start a blog network – Blog networks are a grouping of like bloggers who partner together to promote their blogs and help each other out.  I’m a huge advocate, especially for new bloggers just starting out.  Blog networks are a great way to meet people, learn about blogging, and grow your blog.

Income and Traffic

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of traffic to blog revenue.  Click through rates on blog advertisements are relatively low and as a result in order to earn any reasonable amount of money, you generally have to have at least 100+ visitors a month.  Even then, your earnings will be low.

I recently worked with a client that wanted Adsense installed on their blog.  They were getting frustrated that their blog wasn’t earning them any money.  This particular client had a strong reader base, but their overall blog traffic is about 100 – 200 visitors per day.  A few weeks after adding Adsense, they asked that I remove it as it wasn’t earning anything.  I think they said that over a 4 week period, they had only earned about $4.00.  Now, in all fairness, the blog niche is not one easily monitized, so your specific income milage might vary some, but hopefully you get the idea: Low Traffic = Low Income.

Get started

If you aren’t actively doing things almost on a daily basis to grow traffic to your blog, get started today.  Trust me, I fully realize how constrained most people’s time is.  The trick is to block off a set amount of time to do nothing but build traffic.  This could be 15 minutes, 30 minutes or maybe even an hour.  While the time spent will equate to the amount of traffic received, even a small amount helps.  As you do this each day, you’ll slowly see your traffic build over time which I personally find very encouraging.  I’ve found that the more I see my traffic grow, the more encouraged I am to spend time traffic building.

photo by: Design By Zouny

When someone mentions diversity, two things generally come to mind: 1) Diversity as it pertains to corporations – who and how they hire and 2) Investment diversity.  I’m going to give you a third to consider: Diversity and your blog.  Diversity is defined simple as variety.

Side income diversity as a whole

I learned a few years back that having all of your “income eggs” in one basket, just isn’t smart.  With the economy the way it is, and companies watching out for themselves, having only one income source that your livelihood depends on is risky to say the least.  You just may find yourself coming into work one day only to find out you’ve been laid off with no other income.  Not a good situation to be in.  While my side income certainly doesn’t match my primary income, it’s enough to pay the basic bills.

To diversify your side income, make sure that your income comes from as many diverse areas as possible: multiple websites, multiple topics, multiple advertisers, multiple sources, etc.  As an example, here are a few examples of how my side income (and it’s still not as diverse as I would like):

• Website Development and Design through my Empty Cabin Media business
• Blog consulting and hosting through my Empty Cabin Media business
• eBay Niche sites
• Adsense Niche sites
• Blogs on various topics that include various forms of advertising
• Paid writing on other websites or blogs.

Blog Income Diversity

The most common way people associate diversity with their blogs is through income diversity.  Income diversity is the concept of using different advertising and income earning opportunities all at the same time on your blog or website.  By doing so, your blog isn’t dependent on just one income stream, but many.  If one stream declines, perhaps others will pick up.

Monetizing with multiple income streams can not only increase your overall earnings, but can insulate you from the often unexplainable income declines from various sources, which as I referenced above can and do occur.  This is even more true as Google continues to tweak and modify their search engine algorithms.

In order to maintain income diversity on your blogs or websites, you have to utilize different sources of income.  Here are just a few examples of possible options:

• Google Adsense – Google Adsense performs very well for search engine traffic, especially if you’re getting a decent amount of it.  If you aren’t showing Adsense ads on your blog or website to your search engine visitors, you’re missing out.
• Affiliate Offers – Affiliate offers provide a way for you to promote a product to your readers and if the reader purchases the product, you earn money.  Generally this is either a % of the sale or a fixed amount.  Affiliate offers are commonly promoted via banners in your sidebar or above or below your posts.  A more effective strategy  though it to include them as text links in articles.  I often do this through review articles or product comparison articles.  These types of articles not only provide potential income for you, but value to your readers as well.
• Paid Advertising – As your blog grows and begins to get more traffic, advertisers will approach you to place ads on your site.  This is absolutely something you should consider.  Private advertising income can often become one of your main sources of income.  One word of caution: Beware of companies offering text link advertising.  While it can certainly generate a decent income stream, Google frowns heavily on paid text links.  As a result, if they detect your selling paid text links, Google can and will negatively impact your search engine traffic.
• Consulting – Once you establish yourself as an expert or authority in your niche, you can often provide consulting services to your readers.  I do that through my Empty Cabin Media business, but offering these services through your blog can work well too.  One of my friends and clients Christopher Foster recently started offering writing consulting for bloggers.  What Chris is doing is a perfect example of what I’m referring to here.
• Speaking Engagements – Also, as your blog grows and you become a little more well known, you can often earn money from speaking engagements.  This can include: TV spots, radio spots, and speaking at conferences in your niche.  While not all of these are always paid engagements, some of them are.  Even the ones that aren’t can benefit your bottom line through increased traffic.

Writing Diversity

Another key area where diversity plays an important role in your blog is writing, and specifically I mean your topics.  The concept here is to stay within your niche, but write on various topics within that niche.  For example, here on Side Income Blogging I write on: Thesis Theme Tips, Blogging Tips, and Traffic Tips just to name a few.  Keeping your topics varied but still honed in on your niche is key to keeping people coming back to your blog and key to rating successfully on Google for your various articles.  I mean who wants to come back to the same blog day after day just to read about the exact same thing?  Certainly not me.

In addition to writing on different topics, try different writing techniques as well.  Be controversial, tell a story, ask questions, take a stand on a topic, or even disagree with another blogger (and link to them).  All of these are ways to keep your articles interesting for your readers, and frankly make it more enjoyable for you when writing as well.

Wrapping up

I’m quit sure I’m just touching the surface of this topic, and am confident there are many other areas where diversity is an important aspect of your blog.  As you continue to write, build traffic and ad income earning opportunities, I would encourage you to focus on and think about diversity and look for opportunities as often as you can.

What are your thoughts on diversity in blogging?  Did I miss something?  Have you found an area where diversity is important?  If so, please add a comment and add value to the article!

photo by: david.nikonvscanon

Most of us know the importance of links and link building when it comes to getting search engine traffic.  Incoming links to our blog or website from other credible websites are critically important to the ranking of your site on Google search engine result pages and on other search engines.  Personally, I’ve known this for some time and link building, while a constantly changing strategy has been a key focus for me on this blog and my niche stores.

While I knew the importance of links, I never really experienced first hand until this weekend.

The impact of losing a valuable link

I logged in on Saturday to check Google Analytics for my various websites.  I checked my number one niche store, as it has been the main income source for for the past few months.  Right after I pulled it up, I said “WHAT?”  I noticed that I jumped from 400 visits on Thursday to 141 visits on Friday.  I tried to convince myself that maybe it was just one of those things where you’ll sometimes see unexplainable traffic hits.  I also wondered if maybe the Google Panda updates had negatively impacted me finally.  In any case I was shocked and confused.

Fortunately I have all of my sites registered in Google Webmaster tools, and headed over there to check things out, thinking maybe my site was down or something was messed up.  Everything looked fine.  I’m not really sure what caused me to do this, but I decided to check out the top 5 sites that had incoming links to me to see if they were up.  I pulled up the first one, the one with 63 incoming links: Website is not available.  What?  Ok, so maybe it’s just down.  I watched it all weekend and it’s still down.  I emailed the owner a couple of times, the email bounced back.

So far, it looks like the site doesn’t exist anymore, thus removing all 63 of my incoming links.  The site was a blog in a similar niche as my store.  The owner and I had done a link exchange sometime back.  I had no idea how important those links were to my search engine traffic.  Losing those links resulted in a 65% drop in search engine traffic to my site.  Here’s the screen shot from Google Analytics:

As I’ve told you before, search engine traffic is directly proportional to income and losing that much traffic from search engines definitely hit my bottom line.  This particular niche store’s primary income earner is eBay Partner network.  Here is the impact to my eBay sales:

The blue line is traffic, yellow line is earnings

What to do when you lose a valuable link

While I’m still pretty upset about losing the link, this is just an example of some of the hardships you have to deal with on the internet.  Google changes their search engine algorithms, keyword values fluctuate, links appear and disappear, etc, etc.  The trick is to just move on and adjust.  For me, I have to reclaim some of that link juice.  Here’s what I’ve done so far:

1. Sent out a few emails to site owners introducing myself and seeing if they would interested in doing a link exchange.
2. Sent out some emails asking for guest posts along with sending a few ideas for topics I could write on and why I’m a credible source to do so.
3. I’ve been reading up on some of the newer strategies for link building and planning on implementing these soon.  I’ll share these with you along with my results.
4. I plan to write and publish more content on that niche stores blog, just in case part of this was a result of the panda changes.  In a nutshell, Panda is putting less focus on sites with low amounts of text content.

Seems August is here along with preparations for school and football.  I have 6 kids so this time of year is always very busy (and expensive) for us.  We have to buy schools supplies and new clothes for our kids.  Additionally, all of my kids are involved in football.  Our 5 boys play football and our daughter is a cheerleader.  The picture above was taken from the high school football field during practice.  Beautiful huh?

Speaking of expenses, it’s time for another Side Income Report where I share all of the earnings from my various online ventures with you.   Here’s my income and expenses for July:

Income:

eBay Partner Network (Niche Stores) – $1110.18

Adsense – $186.57

Affiliates – $168.20

Consulting/Hosting (Empty Cabin Media) – $817.50

Total June Income: $2282.45

Expenses:

Freshbooks (used for invoicing for my consulting work) – $24.48

Media Temple (hosting) – $82.00

Total Expenses: $106.48

Net Income: (Income – Expenses): $2175.97

I’m incredibly happy to share that July was my biggest income month ever!!  There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. I had a large amount of Empty Cabin Media work in July.  While this did distract me a bit from making the progress I wanted here on Side Income Blogging and on my niche stores, the extra income was really nice.  I enjoyed the work I did as well.
2. My eBay niche stores, and in particular one that is focused on a summer sport continued to do very well and accounted for more than 95% of my niche store income.  I’m expecting to see this drop either this month (August) or in September as we move into winter.

Overall another awesome month for my side income.  As with last month, I still have lots of work I’d like to get done:

1. Writing and selling a few eBook ideas I have – To be honest, I haven’t even started on this yet as I’m really having trouble coming up with ideas.
2. Increasing my traffic and income here on Side Income Blogging
3. Getting more traffic to my other eBay based niche stores
4. Writing more on the other two blogs I’ve created (sorry, not sharing these just yet, but maybe down the road).
5. Creating a new more niche sites targeted at Adsense income instead of eBay.  This is to diversify my income more.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments.  Certainly willing to answer anything I can.

Photo by: Me

At this point in our Start a Money Making Blog series, you should have your blog up and running, looking great and have at least 10 high quality articles published.  A common mistake many bloggers make is to think that their blog will just suddenly get picked up by Google and a rush of traffic will arrive. Unfortunately, this is not the case.  Unless your blog is linked from another credible blog or website, Google won’t find you right away, if at all.  In lieu of getting a link from a credible site, one way to get your site on Google’s radar is to register your blog with Google.

Register your blog with Google

To register your blog with Google, we’ll use a site Google provides for webmasters (yes that’s you) called Google Webmaster Tools.  Just login using your Google account (if you don’t have one, create one) and you’ll be presented with the main home page.  Follow these steps to add your site:

1. Click the Add a Site… button
2. Enter the URL of your site and press Continue.  One note here, it’s very important that you use the right URL.  If your site is set-up to be preceeded by www, than enter the www, otherwise leave it off.  If you aren’t sure how your site is set-up, login to your hosting account and see how you set it up.  Most sites have the www.
3. Now we’ll have to verify your site.  I recommend using Google’s recommended method which involves downloading an HTML file and uploading it to your server.  Just follow the instructions Google provides.  If you need a refresher on how to upload a file to your server, read over my What is FTP article.
4. Once your HTML file is uploaded, click the verify button.
5. That’s it, your site is now registered with Google.

Submit a Sitemap

Next you’ll want to submit a sitemap so that Google can easily find and index all that great content you’ve been writing.  A sitemap is a special file that is placed on your website that contains a listing of all the URLs to each of your websites pages.  So instead of Google having to find your content, the sitemap actually maps out all of your content for Google so that it can easily find it.  If you’re curious, you can view the sitemap for Side Income Blogging here.

The easiest way to do this is to install the Google XML Sitemaps plugin.  Once installed and activated, head over to the settings page (Settings>>XML-Sitemap).  At the top will be text that says “The sitemap wasn’t built yet. Click here to build it the first time.”  Click the “Click here” link to generate your sitemap for the first time.  From that point on, the plugin will automatically update your sitemap and notify Google of your new content.

Now that we have a sitemap, we need to return to Google Webmaster tools and tell it about your new sitemap.  To do this, do the following:

1. Login to Google Webmaster Tools
2. From the home page, select your site.  You’ll be presented with the Dashboard for your site.
3. Open the Site configuration menu to left by clicking on the + sign.  Select Sitemaps.
4. Click on Submit a Sitemap.  When prompted for the location, your domain name will already be populated.  All you have to type is: sitmap.xml.
5. Click on Submit Sitemap.

A little help

While registering your site and sitemap with Google Webmaster tools certainly doesn’t guarantee it will help your site, in my personal experience it has proven to get my sites indexed much quicker and results in seeing search engine traffic much sooner.  As we’ll explore soon, getting search engine traffic is critical for earning money from advertisements.  Getting search engine traffic is the key strategy we’ll explore to earn a side income blogging.  So stay tuned.

Those of you with experience has registering your site with Webmaster tools and submitting a sitemap helped your site?  Any cons that you can think of?  Join in, add a comment!

I’ve spent a decent amount of time this week hanging out on Google+ along with 10 million other people.  I’m still learning all the ins and outs and still struggling with exactly how to set up my circles, but so far I really like it.  For me, it’s like the perfect blend of Twitter and Facebook.  Most of my friends and family aren’t on there yet, but many if not all of my blogging friends are.  Of course all of A-list bloggers are as well.

Google+ still has a few growing pains, but it’s definitely my social media site of choice right now.  The interface is great and it seems to solve all of the beefs I’ve had for sometime now with Facebook.  The concept of circles is just amazing, and the more I think about it, the more I find ways to use them.  I really like how they handle the display and management of photos as well. Now if iPhoto will just add a Google+ share feature…

If you haven’t tried it out yet, head over and give it a try, I think you’ll really like it.  Oh, and make sure you add me to one of your circles.

The Friday Most Excellent

In the spirit of Google+, below are just a few of the best articles,tips and tutorials I’ve read from my circles about it this week:

• Google+ 101 and Google+ 201 - Tips shared by Nancy Bain
• Your Google+ Guide: 15 Tips for Newbies shared by Craig Kanalley
• Stop treatingGoogle+ like Facebook shared by Christina Trapolino - Christina has had a ton of great write-ups on G+ this week
• Google Plus Privacy Settings That You May Want To Consider Changing
• Why Bloggers Should Consider Engaging on Google+ shared by Darren Rowse

Let’s face it, blogging is a very social activity.  For those of you that might think you can just write a blog, hit publish everyday and nothing more, your blog will in all likelihood not be successful.  Sure, you’ll get some traffic eventually and maybe even a few comments, but your blog won’t foster.

Look at people like Darren Rowse of Problogger, Leo Babauta of Zen Habits, and Trent Hamm of The Simple Dollar just to name a few.  These bloggers have very successful blogs and thousands of readers everyday.  Sure they are all very talented, but one of the key things you’ll note is that they have have a very passionate reader following.  How did this occur?  They built community on and off their blogs. We’ll hit on building community off your blog in another article, for this article, let’s focus on building community on your blog.

Building Community on your blog

One my clients and friends, Christopher Foster blogs at The Happy Seeker.  I really enjoy reading Chris’ articles.  While I generally read articles in Google Reader, I always read Chris’ on his site.  Why?  Because of his comments. Given the amount of traffic Chris’ blog receives his comment numbers are very high.   What this means is that the readers Chris has a are very engaged and active in his blog.

Take a look at a recent article Chris published: How to listen to your hunches.  If you scroll below the article and look at the comments and read them, you’ll note three things:

1. Chris’ commentators back up and support Chris’ content.  This helps Chris with authority.  Almost every comment on Chris’ content is positive, helpful and supportive.  His commentators support what he is writing about, support him and add value by sharing their own related stories and perspectives.
2. Chris responds to almost every single comment.  Not only does he respond, but he responds with a thoughtful and meaningful reply and not just a “thanks for the comment” many bloggers use.  Chris does this because he is sincere, he sincerely appreciates his readers and them taking the time to comment on his articles.  Do you sincerely appreciate your readers comments?  Do you really?
3. The whole air of his blog is positive and at the point of being cheesy, his site seems “Happy”.  Why?  Well, number one because of Chris, but also because Chris is building a community on his blog and Chris and his community set that tone.  That community will help him go far.

When I wrote on my personal finance blog, I built a community as well, a strong one.  I’d love to be able to tell you I did this with intention, but I was too new to blogging to claim that.  Frankly I had no clue early on.  In hindsight, now that I have a great deal more knowledge of blogging, I built a community there by:

1. Being sincere and being real.  I put a piece of myself into every article.  I shared my personal experiences with my readers.  I told them about my wife, my kids, our trips, our home and lots more.  I always tied this back to a personal finance message.  I allowed my readers to know me and relate to me.  Again, at the time I didn’t do this intentionally, but it worked.  Allow your readers to know you.
2. I responded sincerely to all comments.  Like Chris, I responded to all comments.  Being a new blogger, I was really excited when I got a comment.  I’d always respond, thanking them and commenting about their comment or answering their question.  Some comment questions even resulted in me writing an article to answer.  When I wrote the article, I always referenced the commentator and thanked them.  Your readers like to be recognized.
3. I paid attention to readers that had blogs.  When readers would comment and they had a blog, I would always visit their blog and make a comment.  I would often add their blogs to my Google Reader list and highlight their blog post on my blog if I enjoyed reading it.
4. I posed questions at the end of almost every article to encourage my readers to comment.  I made it very clear that I wanted their feedback, thoughts and perspective and that when they added a comment, their comment increased the value of my article as a whole.  I still believe to this day that comments can often be as valuable if not more so than the original article.

The power of community

I wrote an article one time that I knew would be a bit controversial, it involved credit cards (I am very much against them).  The article was linked by a number of other blogs and those readers came over and started attacking my article hard.  I didn’t get to see the comments until later in the day and when I went out to respond, I saw that my reader community had already defended me and where fighting for my thoughts and my beliefs.  I was in awe.  My readers were linking to other articles I had written, arguing to defend my position and defending me personally.  I couldn’t thank them enough.  I realized then the power of community and the power of what myself and my readers had built together.  From then on, I told them often that they were the best community on the Internet.

Tip: Lady Gaga might be a bit different, but she has two key things going for her 1) She makes great music 2) She named her fans.  Yep, her fans are called Little Monsters.  Giving them a name is a trival but powerful thing.  The name gives it the essence of an exclusive club that people want to be part of.  Everyone wants to claim they are a Little Monster.  How about naming your community?  Instead of saying subscribe, say “Become a Little Monster” or maybe “Join the hundreds of other Little Monsters”.  See the difference?

When you have a strong community, new visitors arriving on your blog will pick up your community and want to be part of it.   A strong community can make your blog and take it to levels you never thought possible.  Don’t ever forgot your community, because without them (your readers), your blog is just a bunch of text.   Your community will promote your blog, defend your blog, link to your blog, and even write on your blog (I often had readers write guest posts for me).  Don’t neglect them, cherish each of them and do so sincerely.

What are you doing to build community on your blog?  Did I miss anything?  Share your thoughts on the importance of community and strategies for building on by adding a comment.

photo by: eddiehosa