Longrich Nigeria: The Smart Business Opportunity

10 Mistakes to Avoid in Affililiate Marketing

2010-04-03T05:28:00.000-07:00

Although anyone can start an affiliate marketing business but not everyone can achieve success in affiliate marketing. What is the reason? Well, below are 10 of the mistakes to avoid, and to succeed, you first need to study them and understand them thoroughly.

1. Believing that visitors would only click on their affiliate links. Although the task of an affiliate is only restricted to pre-selling, pre-selling isn’t just limited to displaying the affiliate links. It also entails enticing visitors to click on them by listing out the benefits of the affiliate products, giving positive recommendations by writing reviews to encourage readers to check out the products.

2. Promoting too many affiliate programs at the same time. If an affiliate markets 8 affiliate programs at the same time, he or she will have 8 affiliate marketing campaigns to handle. Most probably, the affiliate will find difficult to manage all his campaigns and unable to concentrate on each one of his or her affiliate programs in this situation and ends up losing money.

You should begin with one affiliate program; choose a program that you are passionate about. Then put your best effort to market the product. Test different marketing strategies to see which one works best. Once you are making a steady commission with the product, then maybe you can look for second affiliate product to sell.

3. Believing that using a single method of marketing technique is sufficient. There are people actually think that submitting a few articles to article websites will generate the amount of traffic they expected. But this is wrong. Focusing only one marketing technique will limit the number of potential buyers you can send to your affiliate merchant’s website

4. Failing to improve the performance of your marketing campaign. Many affiliates tend to concern on checking their daily commission only and have no interest on studying and analyzing their marketing campaigns performance. When their campaigns don’t work as expected or don’t generate sales, they will fail to make corresponding adjustments because they don’t know which aspects of their campaigns need to be improved. It is essential to learn every aspect of our marketing strategies. Which marketing techniques are attracted most visitors? How many unique and returning visitors generated? How long do they stay in our website? Where they come from? These are the questions that could help us enhance the performance of our affiliate marketing business.

5. Promoting affiliate products that are lacking of demand. Some affiliate programs offer extremely high sale commission to their affiliate. But the products aren’t sellable and thus earning nothing.

6. Failing to find an affiliate program with a proven record of consumer satisfaction. The trustworthiness of a company relies on how people view it. If the affiliate program has established good relationships with their customers, then it has established a brand which is recognizable for its excellent service. You will find easier to pre-selling such an affiliate product.

7. Failing to keep abreast with the latest developments in the industry. There will come a time when the marketing knowledge we know would become obsolete, more so in the field of internet marketing where everything transpires at a rapid pace. You have to constantly update yourself with the newest trends, techniques and news in this field to always keep your competitive edge.

8. Failing to invest on knowledge. Knowledge likewise evolves and you have to evolve with it. Buy noteworthy eBooks, special reports and the likes… those which would teach you the latest tactics to help you conquer your field.

9. Resting on your laurels once a semblance of success is achieved. Success is not eternal. You have to sustain it. If you leave your business alone once it shows the promise of success, you’re just setting it up for failure.

10. Though that affiliate program can help you become rich fast. No, affiliate program isn’t a “get rich quick” scheme. You have to put in a lot of effort and time, and some capital before you can make money in affiliate marketing.

Selecting the Affiliate Programs to Promote

2010-04-03T05:21:00.000-07:00

Your success in affiliate marketing partly depends on the kind of affiliate programs your are marketing. To make your affiliate marketing campaign work, you obviously need to participate in an affiliate program that offers worthy and quality products. Here are some very important TIPS to selecting very good and profitable Affiliate Programs to Promote:

1. Affiliate programs that are associated with many experts in that particular niche usually are in certain level of standard and quality. Joining one of these programs will assure you that the products of the program you will be promoting are in good standard.

2. The program that is catering to a growing target market. This will ensure you that there will be more and continuous demands for your referrals. Ask question. There are forums and discussions you can participate in to get good and reliable feedbacks.

3. A program with a compensation plan that pays out a residual income and a payout of 30% or more would be a great choice. There are some programs offering this kind of compensation. Look closely for one. Do not waste your time with programs that do not reward substantially for your efforts.

4. Be aware of the minimum quotas that you must fulfill or sales target that is too hard to achieve. Some affiliate programs imposes pre-requisites before you get your commissions. Just be sure that you are capable of attaining their requirements.

5. Ask for program recommendations in the community forum of your niche. The experienced marketers who see your question may recommend you the reliable programs they have success with. Other things you can ask about are like is the program offers a real and viable product? Does the program provide a lot of free tools and resources helpful to affiliate? and any other questions you think are essential.

Online Income through Affilliate Programs-Let's get Started

2010-04-03T05:07:00.000-07:00

Like we said in our earlier post, Affiliates make money by referring customers to their merchants. There are many companies and webmasters that offer affiliate programs to promote their online sales. When you sign up for an affiliate program, you will be given an affiliate link with an unique affiliate ID which will be used to market the product. When someone makes a purchase through your affiliate link, you make money (earn affiliate commission). Below are the steps to starting an affiliate marketing business:

Step 1 - Join an Affiliate Program

Clickbank.com is one of the best places to find an affiliate program that interests you as there are a ton of sellers looking for people to promote their e-books and info products. Before you join any affiliate programs, do a little research. Find out which products are most popular, the conversion rate of the products and visit the sellers’ websites to see whether their sales letters are convinced enough to generate sales. A conversion rate of 5% is reasonably good. This means that for every 100 visitors to the website, 5 visitors will buy.

Step 2 – Promote an affiliate program through a website or Blog
You need to have a website to promote your affiliate programs. Creating a website isn’t difficult nowadays. You can use an easy website builder to create a website with little or no technical knowledge. To learn more about how to set up a site with website builder, you can go to Google and enter the search term 'website builder' to find a site builder that is right for you.

Step 3 – Decide the Content on Your Blog
As you are promoting e-books, you can write a review on each e-book with an affiliate link to the sales website of each e-book. If you do not wish to write reviews, you can create a product recommendation list on your website (e.g., ‘Top 5 SEO e-books,’ ‘Top 3 MP3 music download,’ etc.).

Step 4 – Drive Targeted traffic/visitors to Your Blog
To earn affiliate commission you need to drive targeted traffic to your website. The more traffic your website gets, the more likely you’ll generate more sales. There are several ways to drive targeted traffic to your site in short period of time (2 to 5 days). Here’s how……

Pay-per-click (PPC) Advertising
You can get a lot of targeted traffic using PPC advertising. The two most popular and effective PPC advertising programs are Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing. So how PPC advertising program works? PPC advertising programs allow you to bid for top rankings on the keywords of your choice. When someone enters a search term matches your keyword in the PPC search engine and press the search button, your contextual ad will appear on the sidebar of the search result page. If the visitor clicks through your ad to your website, you’ll be charged base on your bid amount. To learn more about PPC advertising, please click here.

Article Marketing
Writing an article related to your affiliate products with a link to your website in the article’s resource box and submitting it to many article directories can bring some free targeted traffic to your site. To get more and continuous targeted traffic, you need to write more articles. Try to publish a new article every week. Doing this for a year can drive truckload of free traffic to your website.

Post Messages on Forums
Another way to get free traffic is by posting messages on community forums with a link to your site on the signature of each message posted by you. Here’s a technique I learned from an affiliate marketer.

1) Run a search on Google to find out forums and message boards that are related to your affiliate products and try to join as many forums as you can.

2) Make sure that each one of your forums profile is edited to include your website link within the signature option.

3) Spend a few hours navigating the pages of the forums. You can ask questions and post informative and helpful replies to other peoples’ questions or messages to build your status. The more people trust you, the more likely they will click your link.

Online Income through Affilliate Programs

2010-04-03T04:11:00.000-07:00

An affiliate program is a system that pays you a commission when people buy a product having found that product via your blog. Affiliate Programs provide opportunities for online marketers to make money by referring customers to their merchants. Today, affiliate marketing programs is seen as one of the most important methods by online companies and merchants to market their products and services because implementing an affiliate program doesn't cost much money and it helps generate a consistent stream of online profit.

On the other hand, the affiliates see affiliate marketing as a feasible and low cost method to make online online by promoting other people products using a website or without a website (using Google AdWords PPC advertising program).

There are many affiliate programs on the Internet and not all of them are similar. The most basic affiliate programs fall into 3 categories:

* Pay Per Performance
* Pay Per click
* Residual Income Affiliate Marketing Programs

Pay Per Performance

Pay per performance (PPP) affiliate programs are what most companies and online merchants likes to use. The companies only need to pay when an affiliate referral translates into an action. The action can be a purchase or a lead. The affiliates will spend their own money to promote the affiliated company's products, This save a lot of money for the company. PPP affiliate programs can be futher classified into 2 sub-categories:

* Pay Per Sale (PPS) The title says it all. The company only pays the affiliate when a visitor referred by the affiliate make a purchase.
* Pay Per Lead (PPL) PPL is a little different to PPS. PPL affiliate programs usually used by finance and insurance companies. In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate will be paid a fixed commission whenever a visitor referred by him/her to the merchant's website requested a quote or filled up an online application form.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Affiliate Programs

PPC affiliate programs are most popular. You should have heard them a lot. PPC programs are probably the easiest way for web publishers to make money from their websites and blogs. The affiliate gets paid a certain amount ($0.05 to $0.50 usually) whenever a visitor click a banner or text ad displaying on the affiliate's website. PPC typically used by contextual advertising companies like Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Networks and much more.

Residual Income Affiliate Marketing Programs
In this type of programs, the affiliate not only compensated for every customer referred to the merchant's website, the affiliate is also paid whenever the referred customer returns to the site and buy another product.

The different types of affiliate marketing programs would definitely work differently for merchants and affiliates, and each would have their own advantages and drawbacks. To find out which types of programs work best for you, you'll have to know which one of them suit your need and characteristic most. And then start testing them.

Some recommended Affiliate Programs include:

1. Amazon Associates
2. Click Bank
3. Commission Junction
4. Link Share

Check them out, sign up and lets GO>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Setting up a Blog

2010-04-03T01:34:00.000-07:00

Despite all of the hype with "blogs" in recent years, a blog really isn't anything much more complicated than a means for publishing a writer's work on the web in an easy to read and easy to update format. Some blogs are very personal, resembling a diary, while others seem more akin to newspaper or magazine journalism. Basically there isn’t much difficulty involved in creating a blog. Most of the platform today are very user friendly and both easy to use and customize. But of course all of them has their pros & cons. So instead of going into a debate of which one is better and so on, I will simply show you the two most effective & popular blogging platform of today - Wordpress & Blogger. Both of these services are basically FREE, so there is no cost involved for starting a new blog. Let's start with Blogger.

Blogger: Blogger is a simple yet powerful blogging platform by Google. It allows you to set up a blog within 5 minutes with a decent design & fee. Once you register with them you will have a choose your blog URL, currently its in this format -

yourname.blogspot.com [ where yourname can be anything you want as long as its currently available ]

Steps to setting up a Blogger Blog:

Step 1: Go to www.blogger.com and sign up for a blog

Again, it's an easy to use service, but let me give you a few pieces of advice on how to accomplish this:

* At the start page for blogger, click on the orange arrow that says "create your blog now."
* Blogger now is part of Google, so if you have a Google account (which allows for things like gmail) you should use that to set up your new blogger account. If you don't have a Google account, now is a pretty good chance to set one up. Otherwise, it is just a matter of following the instructions on this page.
* Be sure to check the "terms of service" box; of course, you might actually want to read through it a bit first, though the rules are pretty standard for these sorts of services.
* Save your username and password some place. In fact, I would encourage you to write it down some place. Don't lose this!
* When you're done, click on the orange "continue" button, which will take you to another page. If you did something wrong or you supplied a username or password that doesn't work, Blogger will stop you from proceeding until you fix the error.
* The "Blog Title" will be what appears in the title portion of your blog. I recommend you keep it something simple like "My English 328 Blog" or whatever you want.
* For the address of your blog, I'd encourage you to use your username. So, in my case, the blogger blog address would be http://krause328.blogspot.com Unless you know what you're doing with ftp functions, you should use blogspot.com to host your blog.
* The "word verification" section is a security set-up the blogger folks have; simply type in the word you see in the funky font into the provided box. Click "continue" when you're done.
* You can choose any template you want for your blog, and you can also change the template later if you would like. Click continue when you're done.
* After waiting a few moments, you should get a screen that says your blog has been created. Good for you! Click on the "start posting" arrow and get to work!

Step 2: Get posting!

* The posting screen for blogger is pretty straight-forward. Give your entries a title, type in the appropriate window, and use the editing tools for your blog entry as you want. We'll talk about more advanced options for your posting later, but if you know any basic html, you can incorporate most of that code into your blog posts.
* To post or "publish" your post, click the button at the bottom of the screen "Publish Post." If you start writing something but you don't want to post it until later, click where it says "Save as Draft."
* When you publish your post, blogger will process the information and then, if everything worked (and it usually does), it will give you the option to "view blog." Take a look at it; you should notice a couple of things:
o The address for your blog-- something like http://stevendkrause.blogspot.com-- is the address for your blog. Send this URI (web address) to me! I will link to your blog from the class web site.
o Readers should be able to post a comment to your post by clicking on the "comments" link.

Step 3: Do some adjustments to your account

There are a number of different things you might want to do to make your blog a bit more useful. But here are a couple of things you really should do no matter what.

Blocking blog spam. I know, hard to believe, but yes, the world of spamming extends to blogs too. Fortunately, Blogger has a pretty decent security feature that will eliminate almost all spam posts from your blog. Here's what to do:

* If you aren't already logged in, log in to your Blogger account. You did remember your username and password, right?
* From the "Dashboard" screen, click on the name of your blog.
* Click on the tab "Settings."
* Click on the link near the top of that page under the tabs labeled "Comments."
* Set "Who Can Comment?" to "Only Registered Users." It isn't essential that you do this, but I'd recommend it.
* A bit further down, set "Show word verification for comments?" to "Yes." This is a security feature that requires the comment poster to type a specific word that shows up as slightly distorted text in a window.
* Select "Save Settings" at the bottom of the page.

Time zone. It'd be nice if the time was right on your blog, right? Here's how to do that:

* If you aren't already logged in, log in to your Blogger account. You did remember your username and password, right?
* From the "Dashboard" screen, click on the name of your blog.
* Click on the tab "Settings."
* Click on the link near the top of that page under the tabs labeled "Formatting."
* Under "Time Zone," select the right time zone (and if you're reading this as part of one of my classes, that'd be "Detroit." Duh.)
* Select "Save Settings" at the bottom of the page.

Doing things to customize your blogger blog. There's lots of stuff you can do customize your blog. At a minimum, I'd recommend including some links to your classmates' blogs or other blogs you like to read, but there are a lot of other things you can do, too-- include pictures, lists of stuff you like, etc., etc.

* If you aren't already logged in, log in to your Blogger account. You did remember your username and password, right?
* From the "Dashboard" screen, click on the name of your blog.
* Click on the tab "Template."
* Make sure the "Page Elements" tab under this is selected, and click on "Add a Page Element." From here, simply follow the instructions. Be sure to save you page element additions and double-check that it worked.

Step 4: Repeat

This is all you need to do to set up your blogger interface (though, as you can see further down on this page, there are some other things you will probably want to try to do sooner than later). Easy, right?

To post to your blogger blog from now on, here's all you need to do:

* Once again, go to http://www.blogger.com
* Log in with your username and your password (you remembered your username and password, right?) DO NOT click on the "create your blog now" because that will just get you back to step 1.
* After you log in, you should get to your blogger "dashboard," which has a link to your blog. Click the link to manage the blog or click on "New Post" to make a new post to the blog.

Trouble-shooting

"Hey, what should I do if it didn't work?!" Well, blogger really is pretty easy to use, and while it does sometimes have bugs that are of course not your fault, usually if your blog doesn't work, it is is because of something that you did (or didn't) do.

So the first thing you should do is re-trace the steps above: are you sure you did everything I outline here? Really? Are you positive?

If you're confident that you did everything right, here are a couple of other thoughts:

"I tried to enter in my blog address into a web broswer but it didn't work"

Then try this:

* Log in to blogger, using your username and password that you used to sign up for blogger in the first place.
* Get to your blogger "dashboard."
* Click on the link to your blog.
* Click on the tab at the top that says "view blog"
* The web address (or URI) that appears in the window is the address to your blog. It will be something like http://something.blogspot.com Copy this information and paste it into an email message to me.

"I wrote my posts but nothing has shown up yet"

If this is the case, then you probably didn't "Publish" your entry yet but you did a "save as draft." Go back to it and push the "publish" button. This should bring up a window with a time-clock where Blogger indicates it is publishing your entry.

Profiles of Successful Money Making Blogs

2010-04-01T08:43:00.000-07:00

Blogs can be highly profitable as a recent Business Week report on full time bloggers reveal. The ability to make money from the simple act of blogging or writing is an attractive concept to many, particularly when one realizes the amount of income blogs can really generate.

Business Week’s article offers several mini-case studies with income and traffic reports for several websites and I found it a rather interesting read.

Some of the blogs included in Business Week’s list include popular blogs like Boing Boing, Shoemoney, Problogger and Perez Hilton.

1. I Can Has Cheezburger?

“If you hit a niche and you can build a community, you might not have a $1 million idea, but you might have a $10,000 or a $100,000 idea,” says Nakagawa, who gave up his job as a software developer to play Cheezburger full-time.”

* Launched: January 2007
* Niche: Humor
* Revenue: Estimated $5,600/mth
* Traffic: 15 million pageviews/mth
* Alexa Rank: 4,996

2. Boing Boing

Advertising costs range from $350 to display a small button ad for one week to between $2,000 and $3,000 for the minimum 170,000 impressions on banner ads, all sold exclusively through Federated Media. Frequent posting—the four authors update the site 20 to 40 times each day—drives high traffic to the blog.

* Launched: January, 2000
* Niche: Humor/Cyberculture
* Revenue: Over $1 million a year
* Traffic: 22 million pageviews/mth
* Alexa Rank: 2,180

3. Mashable

Cashmore says it’s the most-trafficked blog on the subject. But he didn’t expect to make a living from it when he began. “The idea that top bloggers would be making large sums was laughable,” Cashmore says. “The folks who held on, however, are doing pretty well these days.”

* Launched: July, 2005
* Niche: Technology/Web 2.0
* Revenue: Estimated $166,000/mth
* Traffic: 4 million pageviews/mth
* Alexa Rank: 1,493

4. Go Fug Yourself

The mechanics are simple: They take celebrity photos from a wire service, add snarky comments about the getups, and click “publish.” The result? Some 3.5 million unique visitors a month, a book coming out in February, and two full-time jobs.

* Launched: July, 2004
* Niche: Celebrity
* Revenue: Estimated $6,240
* Traffic: 4 million pageviews/mth
* Alexa Rank: 14,237

5. Perez Hilton

He may also be the hardest-working blogger making fun of show business, with 24 posts on an average day—and as many as 40 on a day with talk of a Britney Spears meltdown. “Advertisers come to me because I get a lot of traffic. I get a lot of traffic because I work hard.”

* Launched: September, 2004
* Niche: Celebrity
* Revenue: Estimated $111,000/mth
* Traffic: 4 million pageviews/mth
* Alexa Rank: 929

6. Overheard in New York

Although Overheard brings in cash, he says, “I’ve always approached it more as a community than a business. I want to make enough so we can invest more to grow. I’m not trying to build a Web 2.0 company that I can sell for millions of dollars.”

* Launched: July, 2003
* Niche: Humor/Urban Culture
* Revenue: Estimated $8,100/mth
* Traffic: 6 million pageviews/mth
* Alexa Rank: 30,122

Online Income Through Writing

2010-04-01T07:49:00.000-07:00

There are more ways than you might think to make money by writing online. Whether you are yet to pen your first paid words or are an experienced author, you probably haven't thought of all the ways to exploit your talents.

Here are some tips for paid online writing.

Write for a rev share site

Open an account on an advert-sharing site such as Wikinut - these sites make it easy for you to focus on the writing, as they will sort out the traffic and the advertising. As well as earning money for any new content you write, you be able to generate cash from any existing articles you've written. Plus you'll be able to build up an online portfolio within a community of online authors.

Join a freelancing site

Middlemen such as Elance will allow you to submit a profile to their site, and put you in touch with potential clients. They list a wealth of writing jobs, plus associated work such as translation and copy editing. They will help you to gain contract work with businesses from all over the world, and allow you to earn money by writing from home.

Get in touch with old colleagues

Use professional networking sites such as LinkedIn to re-establish links with past work colleagues. Make sure you write a full profile of your skills and experience, and always add your latest CV. You'd be surprised at how often offers of work arise from your old acquaintances, so if you're just starting out as a writer work those connections.

Write a blog

If you're brave enough to try something a little more technical why not create a blog for yourself? Just like we have explained in earlier posts, you can add targeted adverts using Google Adsense, which will automatically display adverts that are relevant to your content. You'll need to learn promotional skills to acquire traffic, so read up on SEO, guest posting and link building.

Become a guest poster

If you do have a blog or other online content to promote, contact blog owners you respect and send them some example guest posts. Ensure you try to target your writing for their style, and always provide a short bio of yourself that includes a link back to your site. By building relationships with a few high traffic blogs you'll be putting your name before potentially huge audiences.

Darren Rowse's 19 standing points for being a Unique Blogger

2010-03-27T10:06:00.000-07:00

Oh I love this guy. His tips are are so concise, down to earth and straight to the point. Darren Rowse is a blogging champion, a Six figure blogger.
He said "teaching someone to ‘be unique’ is a challenge. Uniqueness by definition isn’t something that I can really tell you how to be – your blogs uniqueness is something that needs to come from your own uniqueness as a person – at least to some extent".
Having said that, here are some of the ways he believes blogs can be made unique and stand out from the crowd often start with:

1. Voice – your style of writing. Manolo the shoe blogger was the first blogger I remember reading with a really unique voice (he writes in the third person).
2. Topic/s – Manolo again an example of uniqueness in this – his two topics when he first started were ‘celebrities’ and their ’shoes’. John Chow perhaps is another example – who ever heard of a make money online blogger who documents his food and talks about cars?
3. Design – the way your blog looks is a great way to make an impression, grab attention and stand out from the crowd.
4. Being First – not easy to do but if you can be one of the first blogs in a niche it can help you stand out. ProBlogger would be my own lucky example of this – at the time no one else was blogging about making a living from blogs.
5. Your Blogs Name – sometimes it is just the name of a blog that makes it stand out whether it be by being confronting, funny or otherwise.
6. Being a ‘Character’ – the Fake Steve Jobs blog comes to mind as one blog that was unique not only by the content being great but by the blogger blogging as Steve Jobs and keeping his real identity secret.
7. Use of Media – some bloggers mashups of different types of media set them apart – clever use of video, imagery, audio and text all together in a post can have a real impact.
8. Depth of Content – a number of bloggers that I follow set themselves apart by producing content that obviously has a lot of thought put into them. Instead of quick and short posts that do nothing much more than link to other sites they carefully and thoughtfully ponder a topic and produce content that is deep and thought provoking.
9. Frequency of Posts – it strikes me that some of the most popular blogs product A LOT of content. Engadget and Gizmodo being two examples. This high frequency of posting makes them prolific and means that if a story is breaking in the gadget space that you’d be certain that they’re covering it. On the flip side some blogs take the opposite approach – their new posts become so rare that people value them highly and share them prolifically.
10. Vaults of Resources – some bloggers become successful because their blogs are just filled with such rich resources. These bloggers might not have as much original thought but they are passionate about gathering information and resources from others and sharing it with their network. People read them because they save them time by researching and gathering the information that the rest of us need but don’t have time to find.
11. Community Focus – some bloggers go above and beyond when it comes to their readers. They put the rest of us to shame by the way that they pay personal attention to everyone, interact with every comment and seemingly know every person who reads by name.
12. Opinion – one of the easiest ways to make your blog is to share your opinion. Your opinions won’t always be unique but the combination of them and the way you express yourself will be and will often set yourself apart from other bloggers who just report news.
13. Usefulness – some blogs are insanely useful. I know we’ve covered this earlier in this series but it needs to be said again – useful blogs build themselves a solid foundation for success.
14. Originality – its amazing how some people just have an ability to explore a topic that everyone else has talked about but put a new spin on it! I sometimes feel this way about Seth Godin’s blog – his ability to make me have light bulb moments around simple concepts is amazing.
15. Personality – I’m finding this one hard to define but some bloggers just ooze personality. Perhaps another way to describe it would be that they have Mojo or are charismatic. They are just infectious with the way that they write and interact.
16. Personal – as you read some blogs you sometimes get a spooky feeling that its almost like the blogger is there in the room with you. They blog in a way where you can almost hear their voice and feel as though you’re in a conversation with them. They share on a level that goes beyond just the transference of information – they share of themselves.
17. Expertise – some bloggers rise to the top of their fields because they are simply authoritative and have real expertise in their field. They are well read, have extensive experience and have forgotten more about their topic than most of us will ever know about it.
18. Connectors – other bloggers are successful because they are so well connected in their niche. They not only know a lot of people but they have a gift in helping others to connect with those in their network.
19. Prolific – some bloggers are unique because… well they’re everywhere. These bloggers seem to have the ability to be in more than one place at a time – they blog, they’re active on multipole social networks, they are at conferences, they are guest posting on other blogs, they’re in forums…. they are everywhere!

Four Secrets Of Making Money With Blogs

2010-03-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

Here are the secrets:

(1) Persistence
So many get enthused at the start of a New Year and decide to make their fortune by blogging. "It's easy," they think, having read a lot of the hype. The reality is, however, that most new bloggers soon give up when the cash doesn't appear as it is supposed to.

Yes, there will always be exceptions but generally it takes a lot of persistence to make good full time money from a blog. Think perhaps years rather than overnight.

Even big six figure bloggers such as Darren Rowse didn't crack the big time straight away.
He made a lot of money in November 2009 but after he had stated this fact he went on to say:

This might sound like another scammy ‘make money fast online’ story - but it’s not. While the money did come in fast in November, it was on the back of over 3 years hard work and gradual growth on that blog.

Not only that - I’d been blogging for 4 years previously on other blogs - learning the medium and experimenting with how blogs could make money.

Take another example. Rhys Wynne for example.

He recently wrote:

Maintaining a blog is hard work, promoting a blog is hard work. However it can be rewarding. Blogging hasn’t bought me – after 7 years – a full time sustainable income yet. However, in the past 7 years I have gained the following from blogging:-

• A full time job as a web marketer.
• A part time job traveling the country working with a British Wrestling company.
• Beer money.
• Weekends away being wined & dined in London.
• A girlfriend for six months.
• Mentioned in the Guardian, Twice
• Two Interviews on BBC Radio Wales.
• A column in The North Wales Weekly News.
• Video Games.
• Professional connections.
• People in strange cities to go with for pints.
• And – dare I say it – Friends.

So, unless you are a 'special one', it may well take a while to build up your blog to reach a good income level. You have to keep on going.

(2) Flexibility
I maintain that you have to be flexible in blogging and with any money making venture. If something isn't working it's no good flogging a dead horse. You have to make some changes. If you keep on doing the same things, you'll get the same results.

So be prepared to try different styles or make improvements if things aren't performing as you would wish - but keep in mind that blogging is long term.

(3) Promotion
You can write the most interesting and perfect copy but, if no one visits or reads your blog, you won't make any money. Full stop.

People won't just arrive at a blog post, you have to learn the business. Read about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and do something every day to promote your blog. You'll find lots of ways to do this if you start looking.

When I started blogging I set myself a target of getting my blog's URL listed somewhere different every day. At the time I didn't fully realise all of the benefits of doing this. It simply made sense to me that if I had the blog listed in lots of places, hopefully I might just get lots of visitors in return.

It didn't actually work out exactly like this but the blog traffic increased gradually week by week. The benefit I eventually saw was that all of the links often got my posts in good positions on Google. Now this does bring visitors.

(4) Traffic
The biggest secret of blogging is traffic. If you have lots of traffic you'll make money.

"Yes, but isn't Content King?," people ask. I think it's more of a Lord or a Duke personally. Good content will keep people re-visiting the blog and they may well become subscribers.

But I feel that all visitors are of equal value. Some visitors will make you some money but lots of visitors will make you lots of visitors. This is regardless of where they came from. Blogging is partly a numbers game.

Summary
For me therefore the Four Secrets Of Making Money With Blogs are: Persistence, Flexibility, Promotion and Traffic.

Increasing Your Blog Traffic

2010-03-27T08:29:00.000-07:00

Below are some tips to to attract more readers to your Blog:

Yahoo Answers: Go to Yahoo answers and search for unanswered questions that are related to your blog’s topic. Give a relevant, quality answer and be sure and include a link to your blog as well. You can even copy and past your answer onto a multitude of similar questions.

Ping-O-Matic: Every time that you write a new blog post, use Ping-O-Matic to submit your fresh content to a large list of search engines. This system makes it so easy to let all of the search engines know that you have new content on your blog.

Guest Posts: Contact the owners of popular blogs in your niche and ask if they would mind if you created a guest post specifically for their blog. If they accept, create a well written post that will attract others to want to learn more about your blog. Guest posting is a sure way of increasing traffic to your blog.

Reply to Every Comment: If someone takes the time to leave a comment or response on your blog and you don’t take the time to respond back, chances are that that person will not be coming back to your blog. Remember that your readers are the lifeblood of your blog and without them you’d be going nowhere fast!

Interview a Big Name: Ask a big name blogger in your niche if you could interview them for your blog. If they accept, they are likely to put a link to their interview on their own blog and in turn you can gain some quality traffic. Be sure and ask interesting questions that will intrigue your reader and keep them coming back for more.

There are many more things that you can do to attract visitors to your blog. Remember that whatever your niche is, you should always act as though you are an expert in your particular arena. Follow this advice and you too can double your blog traffic speedily.

Blogging to the Bank?

2010-03-21T14:17:00.001-07:00

Click Here!

2010-03-21T14:03:00.000-07:00

Boosting Blog Traffic

2010-03-18T08:29:00.000-07:00

Submit Blog To search Engines:

An easy way to give your blog a traffic boost is by letting the popular search engines know your blog exists. Of course, many of them will find your blog eventually, but why not help them along by taking the time to submit your blog's URL to some of the most popular search engines?

Follow the links below to submit your blog's URL to some of the web's most popular search engines:

1. Google

2. Yahoo!

3. Technorati

4. The open directory

5. Msn's Live search

However, submitting your URL to search engines won't suddenly bring an overwhelming amount of traffic. However, it does mean your blog is on the search engines' radar screens and has a chance of being picked up by keyword searches.

Blog Advertising

2010-03-18T08:28:00.001-07:00

Main Types of Blog Advertising Opportunities:

Online advertising offers three primary types of ads bloggers can use to make money from their blogs.

Pay-per-click: The advertiser pays the blogger each time someone clicks on the advertiser's ad.
Pay-per-impression: The advertiser pays the blogger each time the ad appears on the blog's page.
Pay-per-action: The advertiser pays the blogger each time someone clicks on the ad and performs an action such as making a purchase.

Contextual Ads:
Contextual ads are typically pay-per-click ads. The ads are delivered based on the content of the page on the blog where the ads will be displayed. In theory, the ads shown on the page should be relevant to the content of the page thereby increasing the chance that someone will click on them. Google AdSense is an example of a contextual advertising program.Google AdSense and Kontera are examples of contextual advertising oppportunities.

Text Link Ads:
Ads that are not served based on the content of a blog's page but rather are placed based on specific text in the posts of a blog are called text link ads. Text Link Brokers and Text-Link-Ads are examples of text link advertising opportunities.

Impression-Based Ads:
Ads that pay bloggers based on the number of times the ad appears on the blog are called impression-based ads. FastClick and Tribal Fusion are examples of impression-based advertising opportunities.

Affiliate Ads:
Affiliate ads give bloggers a choice of programs to provide links to products. Bloggers are paid when someone purchases the advertised product. Amazon Associates and eBay Affiliates are examples of affiliate advertising programs.

Direct Ads:
Many bloggers offer an option for visitors to purchase advertising space on their blogs. Direct ads are typically shown in the form of banner ads or similar display ads provided directly to the blogger by the advertiser to be uploaded to the blog. Pricing and payment methods vary from blogger to blogger (often dependent on the amount of traffic the blog receives). Direct advertisers on blogs are sometimes called sponsors of that blog.

Reviews:
Reviews (often called sponsored reviews) are an indirect form of advertising on blogs. A company might contact a blogger directly asking them to write a review for a product, business, website, etc. If the blogger is paid to write the review, then it is a form of advertising revenue. Some companies offer forms of review advertising such as PayPerPost.

Monetizing Your Blog

2010-03-18T07:46:00.000-07:00

5 tips to monetize your blog:

1. Advertising
Including advertisements on your blog is the most obvious way to derive an income from your blogging efforts. Ads can come in the form of text links or banner ads, and advertising options are available that you can easily tap into through pay-per-click, pay-per-post and affiliate programs online. Google AdSense, Amazon Associates, eBay Affiliates and Pay-Per-Post are just a few of the most common advertising programs available to bloggers.

2. Merchandise
Another simple way to monetize your blog is by selling merchandise through a service such as CafePress who will work with you to create custom items for you to sell through your blog.

3. Reviews
Bloggers can make money by reviewing products, events, businesses and more through blog posts.

4. Ebooks
A great way to bring in some revenue on your blog is by writing an ebook and offering it for sale through your blog. Ebooks are particularly successful for bloggers who have positioned themselves as experts in their fields and advertise their ebooks as additional or exclusive information just for readers of their blogs.

5. Donations
Many bloggers add a donation button to their blogs asking readers to make a monetary donation to keep the blog alive. Donations are also solicited with clever taglines such as, "If you like this blog, why not buy me a cup of coffee?" The donation link leads the reader to another website such as PayPal where the individual can easily make their donation.

Top 10 Reasons to Start a Blog

2010-03-18T06:26:00.000-07:00

Blogging is becoming more and more popular everyday. Should you join the blogosphere? Take a look at this list to help you make your decision about blogging.

1. To Express Your Thoughts and OpinionsYou have something to say, and blogs provide a place to say it and be heard.

2. To Market or Promote Something
Blogging is a great way to help market or promote yourself or your business, product or service.

3. To Help People
Many blogs are written to help people who may be going through similar situations that the blogger has experienced. Many parenting and health-related blogs are written for this purpose.

4. To Establish Yourself as an Expert
Blogs are wonderful tools to help bloggers establish themselves as experts in a field or topic. For example, if you're trying to get a job in a specific field or hoping to publish a book on a specific topic, blogging can help legitimize your expertise and expand your online presence and platform.

5. To Connect with People Like You
Blogging brings like-minded people together. Starting a blog can help you find those people and share your opinions and thoughts.

6. To Make a Difference
Many blogs are issue-based meaning the blogger is trying to provide information to sway people's thinking in a certain direction. Many political blogs (like Daily Kos, Istanpundit, Think Progress, etc) and social issues blogs are written by bloggers who are trying to make a difference in their own ways.

7. To Stay Active or Knowledgeable in a Field or Topic
Since successful blogging is partially dependent on posting frequency and providing updated, fresh information, it's a perfect way to help a blogger stay abreast of the events in a specific field or topic.

8. To Stay Connected with Friends and Family
The world has shrunk since the Internet has become more accessible. Blogs provide a simple way for family and friends to stay connected from different parts of the world by sharing stories, photos, videos and more.

9. To Make Money
It's important to point out that most bloggers don't make a lot of money blogging, but the potential does exist to generate revenue from your blog with hard work and commitment. There are many bloggers who bring in big bucks. With patience and practice, you can make money through advertising and other income-generating activities on your blog. Examples of these activities include ebay, amazon associates, Google adsense, affiliate progams etc.

10. To Have Fun and Be Creative
Many people start a blog simply for fun. Perhaps a blogger is a fan of a particular actor or loves knitting and wants to share that passion through a blog. One of the most important keys to successful blogging is having a passion about your blog's topic, so you can write prolifically about it. Some of the best and most interesting blogs started out as blogs that were written just for fun and to give the blogger a creative outlet.

What is a Blog?

2010-03-18T06:14:00.000-07:00

A blog (also called a weblog or web log) is a website consisting of entries (also called posts) appearing in reverse chronological order with the most recent entry appearing first (similar in format to a daily journal). Blogs typically include features such as comments and links to increase user interactivity. Blogs are created using specific publishing software.

Variations of the term blog:

Blogging: The act of writing a post for a blog
Blogger: A person who writes content for a blog
Blogosphere: The online community of blogs and bloggers

The World Before Blogging:

There was a time when the Internet was just an informational tool. In the early life of the World Wide Web some 20 years ago, websites were simple and provided a one-sided conversation. As time went on, the Internet became more interactive with the introduction of transaction-based websites and online shopping, but the online world remained one-sided.

That all changed with the evolution of Web 2.0 (the social web) wherein user-generated content became an integral part of the online world. Today, users expect websites to provide a two-way conversation and web logs (or blogs) were born.

The Birth of Blogs:

The earliest blogs started in the late 1990s as online diaries. Individuals posted information on a daily basis about their lives and opinions. The daily posts were listed in reverse date order, so readers viewed the most recent post first and scrolled through previous posts. The format provided an ongoing inner monologue from the writer.

As blogs evolved, interactive features were added to create a two-way conversation. Readers took advantage of features that allowed them to leave comments on blog posts or link to posts on other blogs and websites to further the dialogue.

Blogs Today:

As the Internet has become more social, blogs have gained in popularity. Today, there are over 100 million blogs with more entering the blogosphere everyday. Blogs have become more than online diaries. In fact, blogging has become an important part of the online and offline worlds with popular bloggers impacting the worlds of politics, business and society with their words.

The Future of Blogs:

It seems inevitable that blogging will become even more powerful in the future with more people and businesses recognizing the power of bloggers as online influencers. Anyone can start a blog thanks to the simple (and often free) tools readily available online. The question will likely become not, "Why should I start a blog?" but rather, "Why shouldn't I start a blog?"

Blogging

2010-03-18T05:37:00.000-07:00

You don't have to have your own Web site, or install blogging software, or even figure out how to set up the advertising. At Blogger you can set up a blog for free in less than five minutes without knowing a thing about web design, and Blogger even automates setting up Google AdSense so you can make money off your blog by displaying ads and getting paid when people click on the ads. To make even more money from it, set up an affiliate program (More on that shortly)for books, music, etc., and insert your affiliate links whenever you refer to those items. You'll have to get a lot of traffic to become a six-figure blogger, but pick an interesting topic, write well, tell all your friends, and you're off to a good start.

Living the dream

2010-03-07T14:54:00.000-08:00

Once you achieve a steady income from this passive system, you are going to want to protect it. You can do that by diversifying and expanding.

You want to diversify the ways that you make money from a site. If you only have one way to earn money online, and for some reason that becomes blocked or banned, then you are completely out of luck. If you have several different ways to make money from a site though, then you are protected from this complete disaster.

Likewise, you could lose a whole site. It has happened. For example, Google might decide that you are cheating the system and they will simply deindex your site. If they did this then you would probably lose at least 80 percent of your income, especially if you are following the techniques I outlined here.

So you want to diversify, and make more websites. If you can build up several web properties that are all making money from different sources, then you are well protected from random disasters.

Bottom line: you have to take action to make this stuff happen. It will not just fall into your lap. You have to make an effort in order to reap the rewards…..

Expanding what works

2010-03-07T14:52:00.000-08:00

So let’s say you pick some good keywords, write some articles for those keywords, and now you are building links. You throw on the adsense and eventually you see a trickle of money start to pour in.

What do you do now?

Well, obviously you need to do more. More of what works. But there are a few ways to do that.

One way is to watch your stat logs and build on them. Most people use a stat program to keep track of the visits to their website and give them data about each visit. There are dozens of such programs but 2 good ones are Statcounter and Google Analytics. Both are free.

If you use one or both of these on your website then you can glance through the stat logs each day and find new keywords to write about. For example, say your site is about Cookie dough and you notice that someone found your site through a search engine after typing in “low calorie cookie dough.” You might not have an article about that yet, so you could write one and probably rank a lot higher for that term and get even more traffic for it. This method works really well because the search engines are already ranking your site for the term, you are just going to rank even higher for it by targeting a whole post at the new keyword.

If you go through and do this every day and write new posts for new keywords then it will expand the reach of your site and you will pull in more and more traffic as time goes on.

Obviously, aside from this technique, you can simply research related keywords for your niche and keep creating new posts for those words and then building more links to those new posts. If you keep doing this over and over again then eventually you will have a large authority site that is getting lots and lots of traffic every day and if you run ads on this site you will make a bunch of money.

It really is that simple but you do have to put in the work and also give it some time to age. But once you are successful at it, the money just rolls in.

Creating content

2010-03-07T14:42:00.000-08:00

Now once you have a list of keywords that you want to target in order to build up this income, you have to create the content itself and publish it on your website. The idea is to create relevant content that does not read like a keyword stuffing robot wrote it. It should be naturally and flow nicely. I always shoot for 400 words or more.

As far as seo goes, I keep things pretty simple. I use the keyword I am targeting once in the post title, and once in the post itself. That is it. I would not stuff it into a post more than once, nor would I bother to bold the keyword or anything like that. Keep it simple and then build your links. That is how you are going to rank well anyway.

If you try to over-do the seo stuff you run the risk of penalty. It is not worth it. Write naturally and do not produce crap content.

Many people try to write horrible stuff that does not really answer the searchers question in the hopes that they will click on your advertisements instead. I discourage this technique and I think it is important to provide quality content over the long run. If you are building up a sustainable business then you want to have a nice website that provides genuine value and can pass visual inspection easily. Also, decent quality will gather more natural links over the long run, which is hugely important as we are about to see.

Building Links for Traffic

2010-03-07T14:25:00.000-08:00

Now if you pick awesome keywords and write incredibly good articles, this will do nothing for you unless you build links. No one will show up and find you without the backlinks in place.

What I mean by links is that other websites have to link out to yours. You need incoming links.

Now if your keyword that you are trying to rank for is “cookie dough” then you could go and google that term. The top sites that are returned for that phrase are the best possible places that you could get links from for that keyword. These are the authority sites in your niche for this keyword. If you got links from the top 5 results then you would quickly rank very high for that term, probably number 1 in fact.

How to do this? You have to beg, borrow, steal, plead, be creative, be outrageous, sell yourself, sell your site to others, write awesome content and promote it, and so on. Getting links is actually easy, but getting excellent links is very, very difficult. If you can find ways to get the best links out there then you will make a ton of money. It is that simple.

So you can start with lower quality links. For example, you can write an article and publish it at ezinearticles or goarticles and get a link back to your site from them. This is actually not a bad link at all but it is not as good as the top authority sites in your niche.

Building links is tough and takes time. You don’t want to build them too fast anyway or you can be penalized for that too. If you devote 90 percent of your time to building links, and 10 percent to writing new articles for your website, then you will probably make a ton of money. Most people do the exact opposite and they make nothing.

You need links to make money this way. What I’ve said here just scratches the surface as far as link building. Remember, this is what 90 percent of your effort will consist of. It is that important. So obviously there is going to be additional resources here for building links.

Building A Site

2010-03-07T14:13:00.000-08:00

This is the easy part if you're already web savvy. If you aren't, the learning curve isn't that steep. Get yourself some web hosting, learn how to install Wordpress, and you're off. Alternatively, you can can use the free Blogger platform (which this site runs on) to host your sites. Both can work well, and I use both myself.

Then, start writing content. I write about 5-10 posts focused on whatever my main topic is. For post titles, I use sub-keywords of my main topic. For example, if I have a site about hardwood flooring, I would have posts called things like "Installing Hardwood Flooring" or "How to Choose A Wood Floor." This makes your site complete, and the title keywords will help your site to rank well for your chosen term. Once I've got the basic site fleshed out, it's on to getting links!

Finding Keywords

2010-03-07T13:42:00.000-08:00

Finding the right keywords is probably the hardest thing about getting started in making money with niche sites. You need a keyword that people are searching for, that advertisers are willing to pay for, and that you can reasonably expect to rank in the search engines for. You might ask how it is possible to know all this ahead of time, and the answer is that you really can't. However, there are some tools out there to help you out.

The biggest of these tools is the Google AdWords keyword tool. I use this all the time for researching potential sites. I plan on covering its use more later on, but basically you enter in keywords and it will tell you how many people are searching for certain terms, and how much advertisers are willing to pay to have their ads appear in the sponsored search results.

Once I've used the Google tool to get some potential niche site ideas, I try to see which ones have reasonable competition, and this is the real key. See, it isn't really that hard to find a popular term that pays a boatload from advertising (i.e., credit cards). However, there is no way you are ever going to rank number #1 in Google for the term "credit cards." There is just too much competition.

So, instead you find terms that hit a sweet spot in terms of monthly search traffic, earning potential, and lack of competition. I like terms that get more than 6000 visits a month, have a listed cost per click in Google of over $1, and has a number #1 ranking site in Google that I think I can beat.

There is a lot more to all of this, but that will come in other posts later on. For now, understand that selecting the right keywords is essential to making a good niche site.

Building Niche Sites

2010-03-07T10:46:00.000-08:00

Heres my basic formula for building Niche Sites:

1. Identify keywords that:
a. Get search traffic
Have advertisers willing to pay for said traffic
Have a reasonably level of competition (i.e., can I rank #1 in Google for it?)
2. Build a site based around this keyword topic
3. Build links to this site to get traffic
4. Add monetization once I have decent traffic

5. Repeat

It's a fairly simple process, really, but it takes some learning and getting used to.
We'll take closer look at these steps at subsequent posts.