DID YOU KNOW?

How to Increase Online Customer Loyalty By 82%

2012-11-15T21:33:00.002-08:00

You know the facts. Increasing customer loyalty…

yields big profits over the long haul

creates raving fans that promote your products for free

is cheaper than finding new customers

But the question remains. How can you increase customer loyalty online?

How Artificial Advancement Increases Customer Loyalty

Not long ago, in a major metropolitan area, two consumer researchers named Joseph Nunes and Xavier Drèz conducted a customer loyalty experiment at a local car wash.
On two consecutive Saturdays, they gave out a total of 300 customer loyalty cards. Half of those required 8 purchases to earn a free car wash. The other half required 10, but instead of requiring the full 10, the car wash gave 2 car wash head-start as a free bonus.
This means, in both scenarios, customers still needed to make 8 additional purchases before they could redeem a free car wash. The only difference was varying degrees of completeness. On one hand, customers were 0% complete, and on the other, they were 20% complete.
Now the question is, would this “artificial” progress increase customer loyalty?
During the next 9 months, 28 out of 150 people without a head-start earned a free car wash, but 51 out of 150 people with the head-start earned a free car wash. That’s an increase of 82%!
Artificial progress worked. This is big news for customer loyalty. If you give your customers a head-start on completing a loyalty program, they’re much more likely to continue to use your products and services.

Can Endowed Progress Increase Customer Loyalty Online?

Yes, but before we get into details, how do you define customer loyalty?
If you’re a blogger, customer loyalty is represented by how many people buy more than one of your information products. For example, if someone buys 4 of 4 of your products, I would consider that 100% customer loyalty.
However, if you’re a consultant or designer, customer loyalty is represented by how many people continuously use your services for their needs. For example, if I always use the same designer every time I need a blog design, that’s 100% loyalty.
Now let’s get down to business. How can endowed progress help increase customer loyalty online? Follow these three steps and you should have it working for your business in no time.

Step 1: Create A Goal

To take advantage of endowed progress, you need a goal for people to work towards. It could be a free hour of consulting, free ebook download, or a free ebook design. It doesn’t matter. You just need a valuable carrot at the end of the stick.

Step 2: Decide What Your Customers Must Do

What behavior do you want to reward? You could reward customers for each purchase they make. Or, maybe you could reward them for sending you referrals? Since you saw how you can reward purchases, here’s an example of how you can reward referrals:

Imagine you’re running a membership website. You recently released your affiliate program and you want your members to promote it. You come up with a contest to increase membership. Every person who refers 10 customers gets a free pass to a conference.
This is your chance to use endowed progress. Instead of asking them to refer 10 people, you can ask them to refer 12 people, but you’ll give them a 2 person head-start because it’s a brand-new promotion.

Step 3: Pitch the Head-Start as a Bonus

You can’t skip this step. Giving people a head-start without telling them why they got it will adversely affect the results. So how can you present it?
Personally, I think the best way is by offering it as a limited-time bonus. I like this route because you can use it when you just launch a new product or service. It will create hype and get people moving now instead of later.

Who Uses Endowed Progress to Increase Customer Loyalty?

Less than everyone. And that’s a problem.
One of my favorite quotes comes from Dan Pink’s Ted Speech. He said, “there’s a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.”
Well, endowed progress is one of those mismatches. Science proved that it increases customer loyalty, yet most businesses fail to use it.
How do you think you could implement endowed progress in your business? Leave a comment. Or, do you know of someone who uses it online? Share that too!

Customer Satisfaction: How to Increase Customer Satisfaction in 3 Steps

2012-11-15T21:32:00.003-08:00

you should develop a content strategy for customers who already bought one of your products. To summarize, she recommends that you:

Confirm they made the right choice
Tell them what they just bought
Give them something to share
Get there early

I’m sharing this with you because this is a crucial phase in the customer life cycle. If you execute it right, you can minimize returns, prevent buyer’s remorse, and increase customer satisfaction.
What else can you do? How can you create a satisfied customer who will continue to buy more stuff from you?

1. Justify the Sale with Social Proof

When most sales are made, chances are that the buyer will have to justify the purchase to another person – a boss, spouse, or anyone that may pass judgment.
To make this go smoothly, you should arm each one of your customers with testimonials from other people and companies. Or, if you have a low return rate, you might emphasize how few people returned it.
You likely recognize this as social proof. The problem is, many people use it in the selling process, but forget about it in the post purchase phase. It works, so don’t make that mistake.

2. Surprise Customers with a Bonus

When people spend money on a product, the last thing you want them to think is “was this worth it?” To combat this, you should surprise each one of your customers with a little bonus. To elaborate, let me share the fascinating experiment that helped waiters – service professionals – increase their tips by 23%.
Picture a restaurant that offers mints on the way out. Do you think customers will leave a bigger tip if the waiter left a mint with the check? How about 2 mints? Or, what if the waiter left 1 mint, walked away, and then out of no where, went back to the table to leave an additional mint?
As you may have guessed, leaving a mint increased the tip size. However, in each scenario, the increase was different. For 1 mint, the tip was 3% higher. For 2 mints, it was 14% higher. And for the third scenario it was an amazing 23% higher. The surprise triggered the largest tip because customers didn’t expect it.
So think about this. If tips are represenative of customer satisfaction, which I believe they are, you should surprise your customers with a free, valuable bonus. They won’t expect it and it will help them answer “was it worth it?” with an enthuasiastic, head-nodding, “yes!”
Ref: Sweetening the Till: The use of Candy to increase tipping by David Strohmetz.

3. Offer Free Product Training and Support

This is a clear, business-winning decision. Nothing decreases customer satisfaction more than being confused with how to make a product work. And free product training and support will be how you alleviate this customer frustration.
For example, the amazing e-learning software provider, Articulate, provides a free blog, for customers and non-customers, that teaches people how to create more effective e-learning training material. I had the chance to interview Artciulate’s CEO Adam Schwartz and he said this blog helped keep customers happy and bring in new business.
Why does this work? For starters, when people spend money on something, they tend to doubt themselves and their ability to make the product work right. With detailed, free training, you’ll alleviate that self-doubt and win a life-long customer.

The Bottom Line

Just because you made the sale, it doesn’t mean the work is over. Your job is to turn one-time buyers into loyal customers. If you follow these strategies, you should be well on your way. What do you think?

How to Sell More, At Higher Prices, and Keep Customers Coming Back

2012-11-15T21:32:00.000-08:00

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Got a product or service to sell?
Then you probably already know that blogging is one of the smartest ways to get sales online…
…But what else can you do? How can you increase online sales, sell more at higher prices, and keep customers buying your stuff?
The legendary direct marketer Claude Hopkins once said, “The competent advertising man must understand psychology. The more he knows about it the better.”
Well, he was right. Once you know how the human mind works, generating sales online becomes a cinch.

If you’re loving this article series, share it on Twitter by clicking here

Introducing: The 5-Part Series on Increasing Online Sales

Everything you read in this 5-part blog series is backed up by psychological research and case studies.
…But don’t worry. There won’t be any jargon. The articles use plain and simple language, provide detailed examples, and give you action plans that should help you increase your online sales.

How A New Blog Brought In $2,000 in Revenue—and Attracted 800 Readers—In A Single Day (case study)

2012-11-15T21:29:00.000-08:00

The brutal truth of blogging is this:
It’s hard to get readers.
And it’s even harder when you follow some of the fluff marketing advice you see these “experts” put out.
But the fact remains that you need readers—more readers equals more business.
That’s why I want to show you how one entrepreneur used my drafting technique to flood her business with hundreds of new readers in just one day.

But First, What’s the Drafting?

I filmed a video about it last month, and you can see that here: how to land major press with no connections.
It’s a short video. So, go watch it right now, and I’ll wait .
Now that you’ve watched that, let’s talk about this one blogger who used this method to go from 20 hits a day… to more than 800 hits in a day.
And then, how those 800 hits helped her generate $2,000 in revenue.

Here’s How Katrina Padron Used The Drafting Technique To Score Blog Traffic

Let me break this down:
Drafting is about hopping into your competitor’s slipstream. If they get featured somewhere, you try to get featured there too.
Well, Katrina Padron saw that one of her competitors was featured on a blog, a large blog, that was capable of sending a whole lot of traffic.
Most people would have wondered “aww, I wish I could get featured there too…”
And then they would have left the site never to return.
Fail. People who are serious about increasing their blog traffic would NEVER do that.
So what did Katrina do?
She used what I call the Drafting technique, took her success into her own hands, and BAM!
She got featured, and her new blog went from getting 20 hits in a day… to over 800 hits. Here’s the proof:

Not bad
But what’s amazing is this:
That burst in traffic attracted 171 subscribers, and $2,000 in revenue from two new client acquisitions.
And thats’ not all!

It Gets Better…

…Instead of resting on her laurels, she then leveraged her success to land a major interview on a HUGE blog.
How?
She saw one of her competitors get featured for explaining how they saw a massive traffic increase with a unique strategy.
Well, since she did just that… saw a massive traffic spike from my technique… she decided to leverage that success to land an interview.
And she got it! She pitched herself as a potential interviewee, and bam! Now she’s got that too.

Now How Can You Land Media Coverage Too?

By now you know why I share this advice with you.
When I release my premium training course, you won’t wonder “does it work?” Instead, you’ll think “is this right for me?”
(If you run a blog, then it is right for you ).
But that aside, this technique has worked for years, and I’ve personally used to build my email list and my business.
(And I still use it today!)
But if you’re stuck…
…Even after watching the video, then here are step-by-step directions on how to use the drafting technique to land major press coverage.
One note: I can’t guarantee that you’ll see the same results. That would be irresponsible of me. So, just remember, your results are entirely dependent on how you execute this simple 3-step formula.

Step 1: Discover the Perfect People and Businesses to Draft

Before you begin drafting, you’ve got to take inventory on who you’d like to draft. There are two types of people (or businesses) that I’d target:
1. Direct competitors – Find people who offer competing products, services, or yes, even content.
These people are perfect to draft because you offer almost the same thing. If they’re getting coverage, you can too.
2. Indirect competitors – These are companies or people who are in the same vertical as you, but offer something slightly different. For example, they might offer invoicing software for designers whereas you offer invoicing software for freelancer writers.
These people are GREAT to draft because you’ve got a unique angle to approach reporters with, right off the bat.
To be safe, I’d build a list of 10-20 people.
Once you have that, keep an eye on where they’re getting featured. With Google’s new tools for searching by date (within 1 week), it should be easy to check up on each of them.
Then, when you see an opportunity, here’s what you do next:

Step 2: What Incentive Can You Provide Reporters With to Cover Your Company?

When you’re looking to get featured on a website, you’ve got to realize one thing:
It’s not about you or your company. It’s about providing the reporter with an incentive to cover your company.
Because remember, reporters are people, and as Levitt and Dubner wrote in Super Freakonomics, “People are people, and they respond to incentives. They can nearly always be manipulated—for good or ill—if only you find the right lever.”
Now I’m not telling you to bribe people. That doesn’t work. But there are other incentives that fire a reporter up. Let’s go through that.
First, what does a reporter do?
They write stories, and their stories cover unique ideas, controversy, and/or new developments to an existing story.
Now if you can make their job easier… and provide them with a story… you’re golden. You made the reporter’s work life easier, and who doesn’t want that?
Yes, I may have over simplified it, but you get the idea.
Keeping that in mind, when you want to draft behind one of your competitors (both direct and indirect), you’ve got to position your company in a way that creates a story for the reporter.
To do that, analyze the story about your competitor. Was there any holes? Concerns? Or was there room for additional commentary?
If so, you’ll want to pitch the story idea, and position your article, product, or service as the focal point of that story. Or you can focus on crafting contagious content.
Now what happens when you have your story idea? Proceed…

Step 3: How to Pitch Your Story to Reporters and Bloggers

This is the final step, but as a fair warning, if you skimped on the prep work and story creation in Step 2, this step is pointless.
That aside, let’s do this.
Most people pitch reporters and bloggers ALL WRONG.
I know you know what I’m talking about too…
If you run a blog, chances are you’ve seen a PR rep send you an email that talks about some new press release and asks you to link them because “they think you’ll be interested.”
Are you ever interested?
Nope .
So what’s the right way to pitch a reporter or blogger?
The trick is to NEVER send a long email with a long pitch. People are busy, and they ignore long emails from people they don’t know.
Instead, you want to write an email that people can’t resist. YOu want to write an email that BECKONS a response.
What’s an email like that look like?
Here:

Hey Name,
I saw you wrote about [insert topic]. Well, I’ve got some [insert unique story angle] that answers the concerns you raised in your original article. Here’s the article:
[insert link to article here].
You’re busy but you’ll find this as the perfect answer to [insert the concern they raised].
- Derek

And that’s it.
That template works great for a three reasons:

You’re drafting behind one of their topics, as shown with the first sentence.
It also works because you’re promisnig a unique angle, which all reporters and bloggers want.
This email works because it opens an information gap.

Note: I don’t recommend you copy this email word for word. Also note how I don’t ask for a link. That’s key. Asking for a link alerts the BS meters .

Getting Press Coverage Is That Easy, But…

…You have to take action on this advice.
When I first shared this tactic a month ago, you had the opportunity to implement it.
Did you?
Katrina did, and she reaped the rewards.
(My content contains no fluff. Just concrete marketing advice)
But how about you?
What’s holding you back?
Remember this:
In the end, building a blog that generates business is possible… even in an overcrowded marketplace.
But you’ve got to take action.
Now leave a comment and tell me how you plan on leveraging the drafting technique

How to Get 2,281 Subscribers—and Increase Traffic by 69%—in 27 Days

2012-11-15T21:24:00.002-08:00

Today I’m going to show you how I slapped a jetpack on my blog’s growth.
And more importantly, I’m going to tell you exactly what I did so you can model it.
What’s better is this:
Even though I used this simple strategy to increase my blog traffic, you can use this framework to grow anything, from raw traffic numbers to loyal customers.
You ready?
Let’s do this.

First, A Little Backstory

Back in early November 2011, I was hanging with Pat Flynn in Los Angeles, and between beers, I heard Pat say “~20% of my readers said they first found me on iTunes.”
I didn’t spit on myself, thank god, but I did have the foresight to DRILL him on that number.
You see, I never ran a podcast before, but with results like that, I knew I had to create one.
But I wasn’t going to rush it…
Instead, I was going to follow what I call the “launch anything” formula.
And here’s what happened:

My Podcast Came Out In Early January…

…and here’s what happened:
It’s January 27th, and Social Triggers has already grown over December’s full month of traffic by 43%—and there’s still 5 days left before month-end!
If this rate continues, Social Triggers will experience 69% growth over December 2011, my previous “best month” for blog traffic.
But let’s not just talk about traffic…
…let’s talk about RSS subscribers.
On January 1st, 2011, Social Triggers had 14,309 subscribers, and on January 27th, 2011, Social Triggers has 16,590 subscribers, meaning my RSS list grew by 16% too!
(I don’t publicly reveal my email list size or my revenue on purpose, so don’t ask ).
Why was the podcast a huge success?
It’s because I used the “launch anything” formula I told you about.
But now you’re likely wondering “how can I pull off the same thing?”
And more importantly, “how can this same strategy work for anything… not just a podcast?”
Keep reading.

The 3-Step Formula to Launching Anything (I Just Happened to Launch a Podcast)

Let’s get one thing straight:
Yes, I used this 3-step formula to launch a podcast, but it can be used to launch anything.
Releasing a new ebook? A product? A training program? A new service? New real estate listings?
It doesn’t matter. This formula works.
Why am I giving it away for free?
That’s simple.
You see, when I give away sure-fire formulas that get you results, that means you know my material works.
That way, when I release my premium training product, you won’t wonder “does it work?” Instead, you’ll think “is this right for me?”
That’s the psychology behind why it’s smart to give away some of your best material.
Makes sense?
Good.
Now let me walk you through this 3-step formula.

Step 1: Discover Your Unique Selling Proposition

Here’s the most important step, and if you plan on skipping it, you might as well stop reading right now.
Whenever you launch something new (a blog, a podcast, anything), you’ve got to fill a need in the market with a solution that doesn’t exist.
I know that sounds complicated, but it’s not.
All you’ve got to do is this:
First, Take a look at your main competitors (look at the biggest and best only) and figure out their core topics and target market.
Second, Write those topics on a piece of paper, and then begin to write other topics that might be related.
Finally, Begin combining 2, 3, or 4 topics together with your personality, and you’re set. You may not have unique ingredients, but you’ve got a unique recipe.
And that unique recipe is all that matters.
I’ll say that one more time…

For a successful launch, you don’t need unique ingredients. You need a unique recipe. – Tweet This

Nothing works better than a real-life example, so here’s mine:
When I decided I want to release a podcast, I knew I had to do something different from Pat Flynn, and the other podcasters out there.
You see, I write about internet marketing, which is one of the most crowded niches. So what did I plan on doing to stand out?
Instead of bringing on the usual suspects, the top social media influencers, I decided to go outside social media to introduce new people into our community.
I began featuring world-class researchers, professors from top universities, New York Times best-selling authors, and anyone else who could talk about the psychology of monetization.
And BAM. I was done.
But having a unique selling proposition wasn’t enough…
Yes, when you’re using the “launch anything” formula, the unique selling proposition is vital, but you also need something more.
And that’s where this next section comes into play.

Step 2: How to Build Anticipation The Right Way

Here’s the deal:
When most people release something new, they often announce it AND release it on the same day…
…And that’s a huge mistake.
No matter what you release… whether it’s a podcast… a new product… a new type of content on your site… you MUST build anticipation.
Why?
1. That anticipation gets people talking about you and your upcoming release.
2. That anticipation gets people to comment on your blog and say “I can’t wait for it.”
(Note: When people commit to something, they like to remain consistent with their publicly declared actions, as originally pointed out by Robert Cialdini’s consistency principle).
3.That anticipation opens what’s known as an information gap, and people can’t wait to fill it.
(When there is a gap between what people know and don’t know, they seek to fill it. This was first discovered by George Loewenstein, and it’s called “information gap theory.“)
How Do You Build That Anticipation?
That’s easy.
You tell people what’s coming, but you’re not too specific about it. You give details, but hold back the real meat.
For example, when I launched Social Triggers Insider, I filmed a short video that said “Introducing Social Triggers Insider.”
In that video, I told people what my podcast was about, but I never told them who I planned to feature. That was going to be a surprise.
And what happened?
That video announcement post attracted well over 300 blog comments… 300 tweets… and thousands of hits.
Just announcing the release of my upcoming podcast generated a huge amount of buzz, but there was an added benefit…
People KNEW I was releasing something new!
The reality is this: Most of your readers don’t read every email or blog post you write.
So, when you break it down into two separate articles (or emails), you get two chances to grab attention instead of one.
To really illustrate this, when I finally released my first Social Triggers Insider master class, that email update had a 75.3% open rate.
Yes, 75.3% open rate… The industry average is often less than 20%, especially when dealing with email lists as large as mine.
Anticipation works .

Step 3: How to Deliver On Your Promises

Here’s where things get sticky…
When you build anticipation, you’ve got to deliver.
I know that sounds simple, but I’ve found that when people just do what they say they’re going to do, they’re light years ahead of everyone else.
Cynical, yes, but still true.
Now if you really want to woo your readers… and ensure that people KNOW you brought the goods… you should over deliver.
Here’s how:
1. Add an unannounced bonus – For example, when I released my podcast, I said it was an audio master class. However, I delivered a transcript, an audio file, and a video.
2. Deliver beautiful packaging – Your design is essential for building trust. So, if you deliver a nicely designed finished product, people will thank you for it. (I’m lucky that I like minimalism )
3.DELIVER RESULTS – You can’t get around this. No matter what you release, you’ve got to make sure you’re delivering results to your readers and customers.
And that’s it.
You’re set.

Now Here’s What I Want You To Do

If you found this article helpful, share it with your friends.
I hope to help as many people as possible with my free content, and I need you to help spread the word. So, thank you.
But now let’s get down to the nitty-gritty:
First, you’ll need to come up with what you’d like to launch. Remember, it can be anything.
But here are some things to consider:

You can introduce a brand-new type of content. If you often write articles, maybe now you can create a video series.
You can release a brand-new, or updated service package. And I suspect that’s self explanatory.
You can release a brand-new series of content. Instead of simply writing a one and done blog post, announce the launch of a blog post series.

And you’re done.
Once you know what you plan to release, just go back through this article and follow the 3-step formula.
Then, when it’s time to get traffic, use what I call “The Drafting Technique.”
Now let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

Increasing CTR

2012-11-04T21:51:00.001-08:00

Making real money using Google’s AdSense program is easy. The key is to increase the AdSense click through rate (CTR) on a site. This means converting traffic to your site into traffic to your advertisers' sites.

Theoretically this is very easy. Making it work in practice, however, requires a some time and effort. But, if you are able to increase the CTR, the results can be quite surprising. In fact, many people who have mastered this to their favor have done wonders for their lives.

Let’s look at some of the ways to achieve this.

Search Engine Optimization. This requires you to increase the concentration of highly used search engine keywords on the website. This works on the principle that if enough people visit your site, some of them will actually click through to the ads. The website content should also be rich in keywords while still offering good information.
Make ads blend in. Another way is to make the adverts look similar to the website content in color schemes, fonts etc.
Reduce outgoing links. By limiting the visitor's option of where to go next, the CTR can be increased very easily.
Try different ad sizes. This is basically a trial-and-error method of experimenting with the size and color schemes of the ads to find out which works best for your site.

The process of increasing the CTR will be slow and hence time consuming, but the effort is well worth the results. The idea is to make a site relevant and enticing enough that visitors will want to click through on the ads to learn more about potential products and services related to the content.

Beware: Repeatedly reloading your page to jack up page impressions can get you banned. Click-through-rate (CTR) is ratio of clicks per impressions. It can range from 0.1% to 30%, but most commonly around 1% to 10%.

Online Money making - Myths and remedies

2012-11-04T21:50:00.001-08:00

I have seen many a posts on the internet where people are complaining that they have not made any serious money although they have been religiously posting on their blogs and using site monetizing techniques. People need to understand that earning moneythrough full time blogging is a very difficult and tedious process and not everybody is made for it. I present below some of the associated myths and remedies thereof...

Just setting up a website and thinking that now the money will start falling through the roof is downright stupid - it will never happen.
Similarly, just adding Google Adsense code into your website will not ensure ringing cash register, a lot needs to be done and believe me, its very hard work.
Do not believe in people saying that they are making six-figure incomes just by adding adsense into their website and working two hours a day - Its a white LIE.
Your website needs real content for it to make some money. Small 1-5 page websites can never make the kind of money those emails promised.
Plagiarism is a strict no-no, it will never even be listed on popular search engines.
I have seen many ads delivered to my email, selling 1-2 step websites. Never fall for them, they are lying and you will never make any money buying them... stay away from them.
You need to have passion for the medium if you are serious about setting up an online business. The activity of creating websites that millions go to needs dedication and a lot of tecnical skills.
Before monetizing your website/Blog make it popular. Only about 10% of people click on ads (If you are very lucky). That means if only 100 people are visiting your website every day, then you might get at maximum about 10 clicks - which translates into $1 (again, if you are lucky).
Go for niche interests for which not much information is available online. This ensures more traffic and hence more income.
You must have a working knowledge of HTML, so that you are not dependent on your developers for making small changes in the website.
Post regularly - This is very important. You must post new content on the website/ blog for people to visit it again and again. This builds traffic as also it results in improving your site position on the search results. Ideally you should post everyday, but posting quality content once a week is also very good.
And last but foremost is that you must have a flair for writing. Bad writing skills will not take you far in this field. Grammatical and spelling mistakes are very bad for a budding writing career in the blogosphere.

If you like the above post please do post your comments here so that I can improve on my future posts

Importance of Blog Carnivals

2012-11-04T21:45:00.002-08:00

I can almost hear many groans from my audience complaining about yet another jargon I have just introduced at the blog. This jargon you better pay attention to as this might be the ultimate in traffic building tools that are available to budding bloggers.

Blog carnivals are nothing but communities that show case particular niche blogs on selsected dates and provide links to all the blogs who have shown interest in the event. They are like road shows where even upstarts your truly are given equal opportunities. There are many such carnivals on the internet that cater to this demand of a "Link Fair".

A blog carnival offers a unique captive audience for your blogs and gives a boost to the traffic for flagelling blogs in the beginning of their lives. The best part of such carnivals is that you get so much in-bound traffic and publicity and that too for free. Only thing left for bloggers is to find their niche subjects in the huge collection of categories and sub-categories and post their best posts for the participants to read. Each carnival event can easily fetch hundreds if not thousands of new subscribers for your blog and can go a long way to publicising your blog.

As Steve Pavlina says;

In my early traffic-building days, I’d do carnivals submissions once a week, and it helped a great deal in going from nothing to about 50,000 visitors per month. You still have to produce great content, but carnivals give you a free shot at marketing your unknown blog for free. Carnivals are like an open-mic night at a comedy club - they give amateurs a chance to show off their stuff. I still submit to certain carnivals every once in a while, but now my traffic is so high that relatively speaking, they don’t make much difference anymore.

This is one tool for blog publicity that no blogger worth his salt should ignore.

If you like this post then do leave your comments here and subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog to get intimation for any new posts in the future.

Thanks

Improving PR for maximum Adsense Revenues

2012-11-04T21:44:00.001-08:00

As discussed earlier also the key to maximum adsense revenues is through a high Google Page Rank (PR). This results in a higher traffic for the bog/website which increases the CTR of the adsense ads culminating in a increased revenue. Thus you might say increase PR and everything is taken care of... Yes this might be the case in Utopia but increasing PR is no joke. This has now evolved into an art-form and books are being written on the subject. While this post is no lengthy testament but still here I try to bring to you some of the tips and tricks that will definitely increase your PR on popular search engines.

Keywords: Keywords research is a very important aspect of the quest for higher PR. You must know what your audience is searching for on popular search engines and the search results should have your site/blog in a prominent position. Using common words and phrases for which there might be hundreds of other sites, may prove to be useless as you will end up competing with more well known websites and your PR will never increase. Therefore, try and use uncommon phrases and these should still cover what your audience will use while searching for it. It is confusing, but hell, this is how it works - You must use uncommon words but they must be in most search queries. You can use free online tools to search for what the world is searching for - they can be found here and hereamong others.
Title Tag: Title tag is very important for Google. Google search algorithm looks for Title Tag (Anything between the tags) and considers it to be the most relevant and important part of the web page it spiders. This is the underlined text that appears in the Google search results. The important thing here is to keep it descriptive enough as well as to pack in all the keywords that you have discovered through the tools described above.
Description Tag: This gives the information about the content of the web page and appears immediately below the Title in the search results. This should of course be descriptive in nature and also pack in some of the lesser of the keywords discovered above.
Domain Name: Ideally your domain name must carry the keywords of the website as it gives a definitive boost to the PR of the website. If the keywords are not present in the domain name then the relevancy of your website is lost with respect to the search query (for the search engine)
Content: It cannot be reinforced anymore that the "Content Is King". Your site/blog must have relevant content if you want your site to be successful. Forget PR, if you pack your site with relevant keywords and use many other fringe techniques your PR might increase, but if your site lacks good relevant content then users to the site will never come back. Repeat visitors for the backbone of any website's traffic.
Linking: Your site must be linked with other similar sites or other sites having content of the similar subject. This is very important as Google looks for other sites linked to your site while deciding on the relevancy of your site with respect to others. The links can be of two types - One way and Two way. One way links mean that the other site links to your site but does not ask for a corresponding link to itself on your site. These links are hard to get for startups and for them the second types are more relevant. Here you find sites which are on similar subjects as your site and ask them to feature links to your site on them and in return you feature their links on your site. This is mutually beneficial and very effective in PR as well as general traffic building. You can use this tool to check whether the site your are going to link to has any links to bad sites. This is important because Google penalizes sites which link to bad sites.
There is no Short-Cut: Above all please keep in mind this is no fast food. You will not begin to see results immediately after taking the above steps. The results will only come after sustained eforts by you. It is also possible that the above worked for me but may not work for you, so you must be patient and devise your own strategy for getting that elusive better PR.

Cracking the Google Algorithm

2012-11-04T21:43:00.001-08:00

Understanding the algorithm that determines the index of search results through Google is in fact the hottest topic of interest among the webmasters. This is a vital information as it determines where your website ranks among the search results. The higher the rank, the better chance your site has of getting a visitor.

Another factor here is the popular keywords that users are using to search for their subject of interest. So not only your site should rank high on search results but this should happen for most popular keywords also. This is the most sought after information that SEO companies are after. Every webmaster therefore must be aware what his site rank is and what are the popular keywords his users are using. Here we have been talking about Google results only as it is common knowledge that Google is the major supplier of web traffic among all major search engines in the world. Therefore understanding the "Google Algorithm" is the Holy Grail of Site Optimization.

Today we discuss the major factors that affect the site optimization and result in better search results giving your site a better ranking.

Keywords in the URL: Your domain name or the URL should contain your while the webpage should contain the description. Another key is to add keywords on the webpage enclosed within H1, H2 or H3 tags. This causes the search spiders to index the pages with respect to the keywords.
Keywords in the Title: Placing of keywords on the title tag of the page as well as the body of the page results in better search results coming out of popular search keywords. Another way to call attention to keywords and keyword phrases on the webpage is to enclose them in H1, H2 or H3 tags.
Good Content: The most important of the factors is good and updated content which is relevant to the topic. It is pertinent that the content is regularly updated so that it remains relevant to the users.
Internal Links: The website should have links to all the internal pages of the website and any page should be withing 2 to 3 clicks away from the starting page.
High Quality External Links: Another important factor to make your site popular with search engine spiders is to have links to reputed external sites. Take special care that the linked site is is not spam filled or is a link farm or is generally a "bad neighbourhood" website.
Inbound Links: Care should also be taken that your site is linked by high quality websites. This can be done by submitting articles in online article directories. The articles should have links to various relevant pages of your website. Some experts are of the opinion that you should add new inbound links to your site every month to increase your PR.
Reliable Server: Another very important feature critical to get better result with Google is to have highly reliable web server. If your website is not available when the spider visits, then it will not be indexed at all and your popularity as a result will suffer greatly.
Plagiarim: Plagiarism is detested by the Google spiders and if they find duplicate content on your site copied from somewhere else then is very difficult to get your site in their primary results.

There are many more factors in this but if you keep the above in mind while starting out then your site will go a long way in getting better results with Google.

Maximize Adsense Revenues

2012-11-04T21:42:00.001-08:00

As I have stated over and over again here, that content is KING. Good content will attract traffic to your site and some of those will click on your Adsense Ads giving you revenues. Good content means having multiple pages of content focussing on your chosen niche topic. These topics can be anything like babies, baby photos, pets, automobile tires or Adsense like mine. So the first step obviously is to find out your niche topic and then religiously post information on your website regularly. The benefits of having good content are many, some of them are:

If the visitor likes your content then the probability of him lingering on longer at your site is quite high and in the process he might click on those strategically placed ad units.
Search Engine spiders will crawl your site easily and more visitors will get to reach your pages.
If you have rich content, then most visitors will make it a point to revisit as reading all information in a single visit is not possible. The subsequent visits will also ensure a steady traffic. If your site has more data in the next visit your site might become a regular feature for many netizens.
This loyal set of visitors will then subscribe for the RSS feeds from the website and also recommend your site to their friends.
Other sites or blogs will link to your site to provide good content to their own readers.
Your site will as a consequent of the above will get a prominent rank in most popular search engines and therefore get even bigger traffic.

The key to create good content website is to get the attention of your reader and then provide him with good information in a lucid way to get his undivided attention for as long as possible. The main things to remember here are:

Write medium sized articles which the reader is able to read in about 5 minutes. But keep in mind that it should not be so short that it just gives an overview of the topic and the reader is forced to whet his hunger for knowledge in the field from another source. You will lose an potential regular reader this way every time a new won visits your site.
Create a bunch of articles around a topic covering all the aspects and allied subjects. This will provide information not only on the core subject but also cover allied subjects thereby, attracting even more visitors.
Categorize your articles and place the category list on the first page itself. This will make the job of a potential visitor easier as he does not have to sift through all your articles to search the ones he wants to read.

The content rich site thus created will be able to catch a lot of new visitors, but to get a loyal audience you will need to put up such good content on a regular basis. This will inturn result in a marked increase in your adsense revenues.

If you like the above write up then please do jot down your comments in the comments section and you can also subscribe to this site's RSS feed to get updates whenever a new article is added.

7 Steps to Create Scannable Content

2012-11-04T21:41:00.001-08:00

One thing you must keep in mind while putting up content online is that the online reader is very finicky about what he or she wants to read. If your post is quite lengthy and deals with an arcane subject, then it is quite possible your reader might dump you in between.

This calls for making your content tailor made for such readers. 16% average web users actually go through every word of what you have put down, rest scan your page keywords of interest and only read the relevant sections that are of interest. So I present today some measures to take to keep such readers happy and not lose their interest.

Make Lists: Always try and present your facts and figures in list form. If you have a bunch of things to tell your audience then it is advisable that you list them out in numbers and make headings of each point, much like how I am presenting these points to you right now. Therefore avoid putting your text in lengthy essay form and always favor bulleted lists instead.
Bold and Italized: Wherever you are referring to important points take special care to either italize the text or make it Bold. This grabs the attention of the reader and if the topic of discussion is of interest to him then he wont go anywhere before reading it fully.
Headers: Structure your post body so as to include headings and sub-headings to stress upon key areas of the topic. This will ensure that all points being covered in your article will be seen by the visitors and will not remain unread.
Graphics: It is said that a picture says a thousand words and here too if your article uses an image or a graphic to illustrate a point then it is always better. The picture will attract the attention of the reader and the words will deliver the whole story.
Borders: You can enclose certain key points and sections within borders to stress importance.
White Space: Always leave ample space around your article and do not try to fill up all the page real estate. A fully filled up page gives a feeling of claustrophobia to the reader and the empty space give a feeling of freshness to the reader, give it to him.
Keep it short:Always keep your points short and if required break them up in small parts. Also place these points in separate paragraphs.

I sincerely hope that the above points will sure help you to create such content that will attract readers who are only looking at posts and only reading them if it is of interest.

If you liked this post then please do leave your comments here and also you can subscribe to the RSS feed to this blog to enable you to be informed whenever I am able to update it.

Reduce your Bouce Rate and earn Millions

2012-11-04T21:40:00.001-08:00

I hope you all have installed Google Analytics in your blog. If not then quickly do so. The information and means to do it are available here. If you do not already know then you should know that Google Analytics is a tool that provides vital statistics about your website like how many people are visiting it and what time do they spend there etc. As you see above the Google Analytics gives information such as Visits, Page Views, Bounce Rates, Average time spent on the website, new visitors etc.

The most important parameter given above is the Bounce Rate. This is the percentage of people who come to the website and go back without going to any other page on the website. The higher this number the greater number of customers you are losing everyday. The endeavor on the webmaster's part should be to reduce this to bare minimum. In fact the ideal bounce rate should be 0. Any number more than zero is totally unacceptable.

To reduce the bounce rate the following steps must be taken immediately.

Targeted keywords: If your website is lacking targeted keywords, then the visitors will not find it relevant to their search results and will therefore move out. The website should not waver from the niche topic. Targeted audience is hard to get if the website covers a wide variety of topics. Your keywords should be there in titles, articles, and all other parts of your website.
Get the right look: Make your website look like it should be. If your recipe site looks like an auto review site then the potential audience of chefs will desert it like mice in a drowning ship. The look and feel of the site is therefore, very important. The color scheme and the images used should match the theme of the site.
Images in articles: Always insert images in the articles. Bland articles are not binding enough to catch hold of the visitors. Always insert relevant images, illustrations, diagrams in the articles to get the desired visitors to spend more time at your website.

I hope you will benefit from this article of mine and get a good traffic to your website/blog.

If you liked this post then please do subscribe to the RSS feed and give your valuable comments for the post.

How To Become A Web Design Expert

2012-11-04T21:39:00.001-08:00

Have you ever wanted to take a client by the collar, shake them around vigorously and demand that they take you seriously because you are the expert? If so, you are not alone. Whether you consider yourself an expert and want recognition or are looking to one day become one, you need to step back and ask why being perceived in that way is important.

(Smashing's side note: Have you already pre-ordered the brand new Smashing Mobile Book? The book features everything you need to know as a designer or developer to create beautiful and rich mobile experiences. Get your book today!)

Why We All Want To Be Seen As An Expert

Many of us desire to be seen as experts because we would like our opinions to be taken seriously. Others want to be respected and valued, partly to satisfy our own ego, but largely due to a belief that we know best and that things should be done our way.

However, as we will see later, being an expert is more than about getting people to listen. If that is all you can manage, then they will see through this shallow desire and not give you the status that you believe you deserve.

Respect is not the only thing we expect from being regarded as an expert. Many of us also think that we would be able to charge more and that people will line up to hire us. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. Many experts are largely unknown, even within their field, and do not demand high salaries. Being an unheard-of expert is of little value to your career.

In spite of all this, being perceived as an expert can be helpful when working with clients, and it does create the potential to attract better-quality work.

What, then, does it take to become an expert?

What Does It Take To Become An Expert?

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell suggests that becoming an expert in any particular field takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice. For most full-time Web designers, this equates to almost four years’ worth of work.

I find this figure of 10,000 hours dubious. While I can see how this would apply to something like playing a musical instrument or a sport, I am not sure it applies to a field as diverse as Web design. 10,000 hours of Photoshop experience, for example, would not make you an expert in Web design. At most, you would be a Photoshop expert.

That said, Gladwell’s claim is right in one respect. To become an expert, you need time and experience.

Many people claim to be experts, but only few invest thousands of hours of work to become one. Image byBrett Jordan.

TIME AND EXPERIENCE

There can be no doubt that expertise only comes with time and perseverance. It does not happen overnight, and there are no shortcuts to achieving a high level of expertise. The longer you do the job, the more you’ll see and the less likely you’ll be surprised by new scenarios.

One could argue that things move so quickly in Web design that lessons learned four years ago do not apply today. But I’m not convinced that is the case. In my experience, although technology changes, people do not. The majority of unexpected issues that arise when developing a website relates either to human error or to some element of user experience. Also, years of experience will improve your ability to solve problems. Even if the challenges are new, the fact that you have tackled so many before makes you more proficient at overcoming problems. Your methodologies and processes make you better equipped. Therefore, lessons learned years ago still stand today.

OBSESSIVE PASSION

I’m not suggesting that only experience matters. For instance, I don’t believe you should require a certain number of years of experience when employing somebody. Instead, look for a desire to learn, an ability to work in your company’s culture and, most of all, passion.

I began my career working at IBM and can attest that years served is not a reflection of expertise. Too many of the people I worked with coasted through the years with no passion for their work. Without passion, they had no desire to learn new things or push boundaries.

I believe that an almost obsessive passion for Web design is required to be a true expert.

In addition, my colleagues at IBM never took risks. Experimenting and making mistakes are crucial if experts are to establish their credibility.

The Importance Of Making Mistakes

At the heart of being a true expert lies one universal truth: you need to be willing to make mistakes, and a lot of them.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in a culture that celebrates failure. We want winners, people who succeed. But success comes down not to inspiration, but perspiration. Winston Churchill put it best:

Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.

Succeeding in your chosen career and becoming a true expert requires that you fail not just once or twice, but again and again.

Failure is a crucial part of the journey to becoming an expert. As Charles Willson once said:

The definition of an expert is someone who knows what not to do.

Without failure, we cannot hope to learn the best way to do things. Although learning from the failures of others is possible, nothing beats experiencing failure first-hand.

We need to overcome our aversion of failure. We should go as far as celebrating it. Being willing to fail is a sign of maturity, bravery and a desire to do better.

Most importantly, we need to learn to face our failures. When a project goes wrong, people tend to react in one of two ways. Some of us carry on regardless, denying the issue. We pour good money and effort after bad. Knowing when to let go is so important. The others get rid of the problem as quickly as possible and pretend it never happened. But this route means that you will never learn from your mistakes. We need to take time at the end of a disastrous project to review where things went wrong and learn from it. This path can be a hard, especially when you have to deal with an unhappy client.

Those who are never seen to fail are either too timid to try, for fear of public ridicule, or simply do not desire success enough to endure the sting of failure.

You may be concerned that public failure undermines the perception of you as an expert. Although this is certainly a possibility, the public’s perception of you is shaped by more than whether you succeed or fail at a particular endeavour.

How To Ensure You Are Perceived As An Expert

Being an expert though never being appreciated as such is possible. Being knowledgeable is not enough; one also needs to be recognized for that knowledge.

This is a common problem and one you may be experiencing. You have done your 10,000 hours, made mistakes and learned your lessons. Nevertheless, your clients or boss fail to recognize the knowledge and experience you have accumulated.

How do you convince them that you are an expert and that they should take your opinion seriously?

SHOW SOME HUMILITY

The first step to being recognized as an expert is to stop insisting that you are one. People who are generally regarded as experts are often the last to call themselves one. In fact, they often go to great lengths to point out the limitations of their knowledge and to encourage others not to take their opinion as gospel.

People are suspicious of those who claim to be experts. Allow your knowledge to speak for itself, rather than insisting that people pay attention. But while saying that you are an expert is not wise, you could imply it in a number of ways. One of the most powerful ways is context.

USE CONTEXT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

If you took some modern art out of a gallery and hung it in a primary school, it could be mistaken for children’s painting. This is because context influences how it is perceived. The same is true with expertise.

Witness how managers take the opinions of consultants more seriously than their staff, even if both are saying the same thing. Consultants are paid more, and so their opinions are more highly valued.

You might not have much room to change your rate; nonetheless, you can change your context so that people value you more highly.

Like a work of art in a gallery, your expertise will be recognized if it is experienced in the right context. For example, people will give your comments more weight if you are standing on a conference stage than if you are in a pub. Likewise, your expertise will be taken more seriously if it is read in a book than shared around a conference-room table.

I often get mistaken for an expert simply because I stand on stage. Photo by Marc Thiele.

Getting a speaking engagement or a book deal requires that you first convince someone of your expertise. Conference organizers and publishers act as guardians of quality, and if these guardians have approved you, then people will assume you know what you’re talking about.

Not all of us can secure book deals and speaking slots. In this case, self-publishing, podcasting, blogging and participating in open-source projects are just a few alternatives. Standing out as an expert is easier than you think.

Not that context is everything. It’s also about what you say and how you say it.

STYLE AND SUBSTANCE

Another reason that books, presentations, blogs and podcasts are more effective than mere conversations could be that the arguments in them are better structured and more thoughtful.

How you articulate yourself is critical. While something might seem obvious to you, it is not always clear to others, particularly if the issue is recurring. When a client asks you to make their logo bigger or to fill up white space that you have so carefully crafted, being dismissive and irritable is easy because you have heard the request so many times before. Rather, carefully structure your response so that it is as convincing as possible.

That said, it is not just about substance, but also the style in which you present your arguments. An expert should speak with a quiet confidence. The truly great have little to prove, and so talk with a certain presence and authority. They don’t get flustered when someone disagrees with them. Instead, they seamlessly switch to a different approach.

If you want to be perceived as an expert, know yourself, be relaxed and present with confidence.

Unfortunately, problems will arise if the other party in the relationship already has certain preconceptions.

Overcoming Prejudices

Establishing yourself as an expert with your current boss or client can be a challenge. When you are seen as a junior member of the staff, their opinion won’t change overnight. Fortunately, you can do a couple of things to help shift that perception.

First, present evidence to support your positions. If your boss is worried about content being below the fold, show them a report on scrolling behavior.

Quoting research such as this report on scrolling can increase your credibility.

Secondly, quote established experts who support your case. Jakob Nielsen, for one, has written extensively on the topic of scrolling.

These techniques have benefits beyond just supporting your argument. They also demonstrate how well read you are in your field. Also, by demonstrating that your position is in line with that of other experts, you build your credibility by way of association. Their expertise rubs off on you!

Unfortunately, there is no quick way to overcome biases. This is hard for those who work regularly with the same people. But over time, by consistently demonstrating your expertise and using the techniques mentioned above, you can change their view.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

The focus of this article is on becoming an expert. But before concluding, I want to say a word about what happens when you finally achieve your aim.

Once you gain the respect of your clients, boss or peers, what next? Becoming an expert has to be about more than having an ego trip. Rather, it should always be about serving others. You become an expert so that you can do a better job for your clients, provide more value to your organization and help others establish best practice in your industry. Ultimately, if all you want is to be loved and respected, you will never achieve your aim. People can detect that kind of narcissism a mile away and will dismiss you as vain.

That said, being taken seriously is important in our line of work. If we are not taken seriously, then good websites can go bad. I am sure you will share in the comments stories of how Web projects have gone wrong because people didn’t listen to you. But hearing some experiences of how you convinced bosses and clients to take you seriously would also be nice.

50 Can’t-Fail Techniques for Finding Great Blog Topics

2012-11-04T21:32:00.000-08:00

It’s one thing to know you need to create lots of great content. It’s another to actually know what you’re going to write about this week.

Are you out of ideas for blog posts? Small wonder, if the only place you’re looking is inside your own head. We all need inspiration … and you’re not going to find it banging your head against the desk and hoping an idea falls out.

You need fresh inspiration if you’re going to come up with new ideas.

To help get your inspirational motor running, here are 50 techniques for generating great blog post topics.

Two words: Google alerts. Set an alert with a few industry key words, and ask it to deliver at least 20 stories a day. Read the headlines and throw interesting links into a file for future use. When you get several related stories, you’ve got an instant roundup piece.
Skim national newspapers and magazine stories. How does national news such as the recession affect your readers? Talk about national trends, and your audience will come to rely on you to tailor big news to address their concerns.
Ask yourself, “What’s missing?” or “What will happen next?” Answer the questions those national rags didn’t address. What’s the next domino that will likely fall as a result of this piece of news? Point it out, and your readers will feel you (and they) are ahead of the curve.
Read small publications. If you have an expertise blog, check the experts’ columns in local papers or business weeklies. Few people outside your community will have read these, and their topics are often easily recycled.
Read trade publications. Trade pubs cover every imaginable industry and they’re a great source of trend ideas, from Ad Age to TWICE (This Week in Electronics). They’ll also track new companies and products you might mention (see #39).
Read your competitors. I subscribe to several competing blogs on my iGoogle desktop, for real-time headline scanning. If you write on a similar topic, you can give the other blog link love.
Riff on a popular post. Grab yourself some high-powered linkage by posting your reaction to a big-time blogger’s thoughts.
Try a new medium. Burned out on the blogosphere? Look at YouTube videos, listen to podcasts, or watch good ol’ fashioned TV shows or radio broadcasts.
Think about pain. What are the biggest problems your readers face? Focus on topics that would provide balm to their wounds.
Talk to a friend. That’s right — use your lifeline, just like on the reality TV shows. Jawing about a problem usually helps ideas bubble up.
Tackle a controversy. Weigh in on your industry’s hot topic. This can be especially effective if you have a contrarian viewpoint.
Join a blogger’s group. Knowing your group will ask what you’re posting should help concentrate the mind. Hearing what they’re blogging on will no doubt suggest subjects for you to cover, too.
Scan industry conference schedules. The list of session topics offers a quick guide to your audience’s hot-button issues.
Get a critique. Find a mentor. Have them look over your blog and point out what’s missing.
Mine your hobbies. People love posts that offer an unusual perspective on your topic. For instance, I once did a post called 7 Things I Learned About Business From Playing Bejeweled Blitz.
Do an interview. Do you have a favorite thinker in your space? Get in touch. You’ll be surprised how many authors and thought leaders are game for a quick Q&A.
Review your greatest hits. Read your most popular past blogs. Look for ways to take a slightly different angle and further illuminate the same topic.
Write a sequel. If something has happened recently that puts a new light on a past blog post, update your readers. Write a new entry and link it back to the old one.
Have a debate. Invite someone you strongly disagree with on for a point/counterpoint blog post. Learn from TV dramas — what do we love? Conflict, conflict, conflict!
Stop worrying you’ll look dumb. Buck up and be brave. Try a post idea that you’ve been scared to tackle.
Ask a question. Is there an industry issue that you’re undecided about? Discuss your mixed feelings.
Write something else. Anything. Like, a letter to your mom. A wish list for Santa. Anything that gets you into a completely different mental space. Return to your blog once the writing wheels are turning.
Talk about your mistakes. Folks love to hear about how other people screwed up. Be honest and talk about what you learned.
Make a prediction. Everybody — everybody — wants to know what’s going to happen next. Grab attention with your thoughts on the future of your sector.
Review the past. How has your industry changed in the past 5 years? 10 years? Look for milestones for reflection.
Create a regular feature. For instance, if you do a weekly news wrapup every Saturday, that’s one post you know you have covered.
Where are they now? If you know of an industry bigwig who’s been out of the spotlight but now they’re back, check in with them. Write about their new venture.
Change your view. Go to the park, a (different) coffeeshop, a museum, your backyard deck. Leave your usual writing cave.
Eavesdrop. While you’re out, tune in to other conversations and see where they take you.
Take a hike. Most writers could really stand to exercise more. It stimulates the brain, and topics will come to you naturally. Just make sure you bring something to take a few notes with.
Take a bath. Ideally, after the walk. Ahhhhh. That warm water just seems to release the creativity, doesn’t it?
Take an entire day off — every week. It’s a life-changer. Mine is Saturdays. Hit your own “refresh” button and return ready to rock your blog.
Take a poll. When in doubt, ask readers what they’d like you to write about.
Hold a contest. Provide a provocative fill-in-the-blank line, or give a prize for the best question. Presto: Instant post idea list.
Keep a journal. Ideally, that you write in first or last thing daily, when you’re unfocused and allow uncensored thoughts.
Free associate. Take five minutes and just scribble about your blog. See what percolates up.
Do a mind map. If you’re not familiar, mind mapping is a technique for visualizing how topics are related to each other. Draw a chart with branches for all the main topics you cover, to get a picture of where they might sprout new stems.
Do a book review. Tell readers if the hot new book in your niche is insightful or inane.
Do a product review. Ditto the book reviews, only for stuff. Is it a ripoff, or valuable?
Run your analytics. The most popular keyword phrases that bring people to your site provide a ready-made road map to your next post topics.
Read your comments. See what readers have asked about that you haven’t answered yet.
Read your competitors’ comments. If your blog doesn’t have a lot of comments yet, go mine someone else’s.
Read your social-media group’s questions. What are people chatting about? Answer on your blog, then go back and provide a link.
Tweet about needing ideas. Or post it on your Facebook or LinkedIn status. Let your connections do the work for you.
Hit an industry networking event. As you chat people up, mention your blog. Ask what they like to read about.
Attend a local community event. Compete in a zucchini race, volunteer at a charity auction. Get out of your head and laugh a little.
Think funny. While you’re laughing, consider writing a post that’s satirical or humorous for a change. I know funny bloggers are among my personal favorites.
Take the headline challenge. Tell yourself you need to come up with 50 story ideas today, or else. Jot down anything and everything. (This one helped me write this post.)
Take the one-hour challenge. You must find a post idea in the next hour. Go downtown, stick your head in shops, chat people up.
Recruit a guest. Or two. When all else fails, call for backup. Sometimes you just need to take the pressure off so your post-generator has a little time to recuperate.

Passive Income Strategies For Web Designers

2012-11-04T21:30:00.006-08:00

Finding ways to earn passive income is a growing concern among many freelance designers. I’ve always loved client work, but I have to admit that the pressure of juggling multiple bosses and constant deadlines eventually started to wear me down.

As a result, in the past couple of years I’ve been focusing more and more on personal projects, and thinking about ways to make money from them. I’ve sold themes and templates and written an eBook, and I’m now focusing on launching my ownjob board for designers.

In a previous article for Smashing Magazine, I compared various ways to sell software products online. What I’ll do in this article is not just compare ways in which freelance designers can earn passive income, but speak about my own experience in exploring these avenues.

And, yes, that will include telling you how much money I’ve made!

Disclaimer: This post is about my own personal experience. Just because I have, for example, never made much money from ads does not mean you can’t. So, please take this as a “Here’s what I did,” not as a “Here’s what you should do.”

Themes

I was lucky enough to join ThemeForest (the biggest themes and template marketplace on the Web) in January 2009, shortly after it launched. ThemeForest seemed like the perfect way for an unknown, inexperienced designer to make money: no need for a fancy degree or years of experience — just design something cool and the market will reward you. In fact, that’s exactly what happened. Top designers now gross six-figure annual incomes solely from selling themes, and some do so despite being relative unknowns in the rest of the design world.

So, what was the result of my own venture into theme-making?

Overall, it was very positive. First, it helped me launch my design career, because my first couple of freelance clients were all people who contacted me after seeing my templates. It was also lucrative: in June 2010, my best month ever, I made $1,248. For a year after that, having not even launched new themes, my existing ones still made me around $200 a month, with minimal effort on my part.

The high point of my ThemeForest career.

Altogether, I’ve earned around $12,675 from ThemeForest in two and a half years; nothing to scoff at, especially because I completely stopped supporting my themes about a year ago. So, if selling themes is so great, why did I design the last one more than two years ago? There are a couple reasons for this, the main one being that the market drastically changed, and customer expectations changed with it.

Designing a good-looking theme isn’t enough anymore. If you want your theme to be competitive, you need to support shortcodes, build a custom back end and design multiple layouts, not to mention provide excellent support and build a documentation website.

In other words, in the span of a couple years, building themes went from something that you could do on the side to being a full-time job. Because I didn’t want to become a WordPress guru and spend all of my time creating themes, I decided to put theme design aside.

My most successful theme.

Theme design, then, is one of the best ways a designer can earn passive income, but it’s also one of the hardest. By the way, another important factor to consider is that theme design makes sense only if you’re in it for the long run and can reinvest the time you spend on a theme into subsequent ones (by reusing bits of code, streamlining the process, building a mailing list, etc.).

Pros:

Very lucrative if you’re successful.
No need for experience or education, as long as you have the right skills.
No need to be famous or have a big following.

Cons:

Requires a lot of HTML and CSS coding, and probably familiarity with WordPress or another CMS.
Providing good support is time-consuming.
You will probably need to launch more than one theme before the venture becomes more profitable than regular freelance work.

Icons And Vectors

Note: I have never released any icon packs, brushes or vector resources, so I asked Vincent Le Moign of Webalys for his thoughts on this market.

“I started to create passive income by accident. In 10 years of freelancing, I’ve created a small stock of vector graphic elements that I’ve been using repeatedly for interface design. At first, it was just a few Illustrator files, where I pasted GUI elements, such as buttons and icons, to reuse in future projects.

“In June 2010, I decided to make it comprehensive and consistent, and then release it for free. Inspired by Web application frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, the User Interface Design Framework was based on the concept of modularity, productivity and fast wireframing.”

Statistics from the launch of the User Interface Design Framework. Large preview.

“It took me a few weeks to create it, without making any money on it, but the feedback was impressive: in two months, 52 000 unique visitors, more than 1000 tweets, dozen of blog posts. Even the godfather of Web design, Jeffrey Zeldman, reviewed it. I was high on a cloud!

“Looking at it now, I have no idea why I invested so much time doing it — probably because of passion, and I felt the urge to fill a gap: this kind of tool was missing. I didn’t make any conscious plan, but this is how my new career started. Seeing this steady traffic, I thought I could build a premium version on top of it. A few month later, I launched a commercial pack filled with 750 vector icons. Then the magic happened.”

The Minicons icon pack.

“Money started to add up in my PayPal account. I remember checking my inbox compulsively to see if the latest emails announced sales. It wasn’t a lot of sales yet, just a few hundreds dollars, but it showed me the way: that making a living from passive income was possible. In the past two years, the sales gradually went up and reached the point where I could stop working for customers and spend 100% of my time on my own products. In 2011, I launched one more resource: a vintage vector ornaments pack, which was successful, too. Having two different products guaranteed a more regular income flow.

“I currently earn a few thousands dollars each month from sales. My income is the same as what it was when I was a freelancer, but I have the satisfaction of developing my own products. But designing quality content is not enough to make sales. I actually spend most of my time on other tasks:

Creating the sales pages, writing the text, polishing the product websites.
Setting up the e-commerce solution. In two years I’ve wasted a lot of time building the sales process. I switched e-commerce solutions four times until I found the perfect one (DPD — almost unknown but highly recommended).
Advertising and promoting. I spent a lot of time and money finding the best sources of traffic.
Improving marketing and SEO, and setting up and learning how to use products such as MailChimp, Google Analytics, GetClicky, SEOmoz, Curebit.
Optimizing the conversion rate by setting up A/B tests with Google Optimizer.
To be honest, I don’t provide a lot of support (a few minutes a day), but I commit to responding as soon as possible. And I spent a lot of time writing the documentation (with screenshots) to avoid answering the same questions over and over again.

“So if you’re considering creating premium resources, the answer is yes, you can live off of it. But your creativity and designs skills are not the keys elements of success. You’ll need to invest a lot of time in learning and practicing all areas of business: marketing, promotion, copywriting, SEO, analytics, etc.

“Actually, this is the beauty of launching your own products: you will become a better designer not by creating better graphics, but because you will have a full view of the business and will master a full range of skills. You will see your customer with new eyes and focus on the efficiency of your designs more than their outer beauty. And believe me, your customer will love that and will pay you more if you increase their sales.

“On the downside, the market is becoming highly competitive. The same shift that is taking place with templates is happening in my market. Competition is becoming fierce, and not a week goes by without a few more icon packs getting released. I mean, which designer hasn’t launched their own set by now?

“I’ve counted more than 50 competitors who sell icons, and the number and quality is improving constantly.”

A sample of the Vectorian vector pack.

“Also, the growing trend of discounted bundles (like on Dealotto and MightyDeals), where you get a ton of resources for a few bucks, risks drying up the market. I’m still not sure if this will convince more designers to add these resources in their workflow, thus expanding the market, or stop them from buying these packs at the current prices.

“This tougher competition has forced me to spend months this year doubling the number of my icons, from 750 to 1500, and adding variations for different software, such as PowerPoint and Keynote. Also, I’ve improved my other product, the vector ornaments, and paid another freelancer to fix a few problems. And I recently paid a great calligrapher to create a logo for Vectorian and improve the branding. Expenses and time investment are going up.

“Another problem: I don’t think my designs are as creative or as good as before. I’m so focused on creating the content, marketing it and thinking like a business owner that I sometimes have less passion for design and less creativity.”

Pros:

You already have the skills to create the content.

If you use marketplaces such as iStockphoto and GraphicRiver, you don’t need to build a website or promote your products.

Almost no support is required (if you write good documentation).

You will expand your skills and become more business-oriented.

You don’t need to write in English (this was a big advantage for me because I’m French and a poor English writer).

Cons:

It’s time-consuming.

The expectations of quality and quantity are rising. And more and more free content is becoming available.

The market is competitive; you need not only great content, but great marketing.

Advertising

I can still remember when Carbon first accepted one of my websites into its advertising network. I was overjoyed! At last, I would be able to dip into the river of money that flows into Internet advertising! Of course, I didn’t expect to earn a salary from ads alone, but I thought it might be a nice supplement — say, a couple of hundred dollars a month.

If you’ve ever run any kind of ads on a website, you know what’s coming: my first payment must’ve been for something like $5. So, yes, Internet ads are no fun — unless you bring in a massive amount of traffic (or if you plaster your website with a massive number of ads).

My first ever ad spot.

Since then, I’ve joined Fusion Ads for my blog and joined Yoggrt for The Toolbox (both ad networks belong to BuySellAds). To give you some numbers, The Toolbox gets about 20,000 uniques a month, which is not huge but still decent. This converts to $30 to 60 per month. My blog is a little more successful (probably due to the higher click-through rate), and I’ve succeeded in pulling in $100 or $200 in extremely good months when a couple of my posts went viral. But the average has been around $50 to $100.

Altogether, the total from advertising comes in at around $600 over six months. So, as far as I’m concerned, ads are a good way to pay for a meal to celebrate the weekend, but not much more unless you decide to become a full-time blogger.

Pros:

Does not require any work.
Joining a respected ad network will give your website cachet.

Cons:

Pays for a meal, if you’re lucky.
Did I mention that you probably won’t earn anything?

Books

Writing an eBook (or plain old book) might seem relatively easy. After all, we all know how to write, right? In fact, I’d say that actually writing the book is not the hardest part. Sure, developing a good writing style takes years of practice, but the truth is that people will forgive clumsy writing if you have something valuable to say. No, the real work in writing eBooks is in what comes before and after the writing.

Before writing the first word, you need to come up with a good topic and, more importantly, develop the skills necessary to make you an authority on the topic. Simply compiling existing knowledge might work for a blog post, but it won’t fly when you ask people to hand out their hard-earned cash.

Consider writing an eBook only if you have a couple of years of experience under your belt and feel ready to distill it into a book. And please don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s over once you’re done writing. That’s actually when the real battle begins: selling your book.

My eBook’s landing page.

How will people find out about your book? What reason will they have to buy it? Why should they buy yours instead of competing books? These are the kinds of questions you’ll have to face.

If you want to rest your chances on a personal website, take a page from Jarrod Drysdale’s book (pun intended), Bootstrapping Design. Drysdale not only set up a website for his book, but also used a mailing list before and after the launch to promote it by sending out sample chapters and asking his audience various questions. I did my best to promote my eBook by setting up a landing page, writing guest posts about it and holding giveaways.

Another good strategy is to target a niche. This is what I did by focusing specifically on user interface design for startups, and Matthew Butterick also did it with his Typography for Lawyers book.

Last but not least, I strongly recommend partnering up with websites such as AppSumo and Hyperink to open up distributions channels for your book and to create new revenue streams.

Sales started strong but have slowed to a couple per week.

Writing an eBook turned out to be great for me. I had a great launch, making about $8,000 in the first two weeks alone. Since then, sales have slowed considerably, but I did manage to make another $6,000 in the four months since the launch. In my case, the key to earning more was partnering up with AppSumo and Dealotto, which both brought in a couple of thousand dollars in extra revenue after the initial boost from the launch faded away.

Pros:

Almost no support needed.
No technical skills required.

Cons:

You need to have something to say.
A lot of promotion is required.
The market is competitive and crowded.
Sales will quickly dry out after launch.

Software As A Service

Building a business requires a ton of work and commitment, but unlike freelance design or, say, mowing lawns, building a software-based service of some kind takes away the 1:1 relationship between your efforts and your income. Some services charge only once, as is the case with job boards such as Authentic Jobs and my own Folyo. But, of course, the cash cow of passive income is subscription services because they enable you to anticipate your cash flow and build a steady income stream.

The obvious challenge in building a software service is that it requires technical skill, which you might not have if you’ve got a design background. It’s not the end of the world, though. You could find a cofounder, outsource the project or even learn the skills yourself. And you don’t need to go all out right away. When I speak with non-technical founders, I often notice that a preliminary version of their idea could very well have been achieved with a simple WordPress blog.

If you explore a little deeper, you’ll realize that opportunities for monetization are everywhere. For example, WordPress has numerous membership subscription plugins. Even MailChimp lets you charge for newsletter subscriptions. By thinking outside the box and combining existing services, even a moderately technical person can get a minimum viable product out the door.

I launched Folyo (a website that helps startups find great, vetted freelance designers) about a year ago:

Folyo, a private job board for freelance design projects.

For the first couple months, I ran it as a simple newsletter of job offers, with a Wufoo form for submitting projects. There was no back end, no database and no user accounts! This was enough to validate the concept and to motivate me to build a real app. So, I found a Ruby on Rails developer through a Hacker News jobs thread and paid him about $3,000 to create a working app (a process I cover in more detail on my blog).

Meanwhile, I had been learning Ruby on Rails myself, so I’ve since taken on part of the development myself, outsourcing the remainder to a friend in exchange for some design work. Was it worth it? While I have no doubt I would be earning more if I was focusing on freelance work rather than Folyo, I’m still very happy that I decided to launch my own project.

I currently make about $1,000 a month from Folyo, which is good enough for one person with minimal costs after one year. More importantly, each day spent working on Folyo makes it a little better and increases the website’s value (unlike with client work, where working on one project doesn’t help you with the next).

Of course, when I’m working on Folyo, I do very little actual designing. In fact, my time breaks down something like this:

Email and support: 20%
Blogging: 20%
Coding: 40%
Miscellaneous tasks: 10%
Design: 10%

So, if you’re thinking of launching your own service, consider that it probably means spending much less time designing.

Pros:

Theoretically, it can be lucrative and even get you bought out by Google or Facebook.
The work is very motivating.
You have the freedom to build anything you want.

Cons:

You will need to step way outside of your comfort zone.
The chance of failure is high.
At the end of the day, relatively little designing is involved.

Lessons Learned

What did I learn from all this? And what would I do differently if I could start over? Well, one thing I realized is the importance of building a network. You need to find a way to get connected, whether it’s by becoming a famous designer, writing a blog, building a Twitter following or, ideally, doing all that and more.

Of course, a lot of great designers focus simply on doing a great job and don’t concern themselves too much with the rest. But maybe these designers went to a great art school and kept in touch with their classmates. Or maybe they attend design meetups regularly. One way or another, you can bet that most successful designers maintain a network, even if they don’t realize it.

Blogs and Twitter are simply the digital equivalent of this. Making it entirely on your own is very hard, so the earlier you start cultivating these relationships, the better.

Related to this, have a strong identity. Try to stand out from the crowd, and make sure people know who you are. You can achieve this by cultivating your own style, being involved in high-profile or viral projects or, what I think is the best way, launching your own projects.

Visual Idiot’s humor at work.

If you want to see how it’s done, look no further than Visual Idiot, who converted his great design skills and weird sense of humor into a job at GoSquared, despite no one on the Internet even knowing his real name.

This may sound obvious, but the reality is that projects that help build your network or identity are not often the most lucrative ones (actually, they usually don’t make you any money). So, it’s tempting to take that high-paying contract to design a pharmaceutical company’s intranet, rather than spend a couple days building a silly JavaScript that replaces stuff with pictures of cats.

But guess what? Nobody outside of Big Pharma will ever see that intranet’s beautifully crafted pixels, but that cat website might go viral and lead to thousands of people suddenly becoming aware of your existence.

To summarize, the main lesson I’ve learned over the last couple of years is to have a long-term view and invest in yourself, not chase a quick buck.

The plan is rather simple, then: build a network, cultivate a strong identity to ensure the network knows who you are, and then come up with a product you can market to it.

Why You Can’t Make Money Blogging

2012-11-04T21:23:00.001-08:00

I was a little surprised this morning when, after I’d given a talk on business blogging, a seminar attendee asked if I’d seen the Newsweek article this week on why it’s impossible to make money with blogs.

“Guess I’ll give it all back, then,” was my off-the-cuff answer.

But out of curiosity, I picked the mag up on the way back to my room. If you haven’t seen it, Daniel Lyons, a talented blogger known for two years as “Fake Steve Jobs,” has an editorial that explains why none of us can make money blogging.

Big traffic, no money

Fake Steve Jobs’ best month came with a traffic spike. His actual identity was revealed in the New York Times, sending more than a half-million people to his site in a single day.

His payout? For that half-million-visitor day, about a hundred dollars in AdSense earnings. For the entire month, he made $1,039.81.

Not quite what he was hoping for when he became a celebrity blogger and earned an impressive amount of attention and notoriety.

So if Fake Steve Jobs can’t monetize a blog, the rest of us are doomed, right? He worked hard, he created quality content, he had a terrific angle that went nicely viral. He was at the pinnacle, and he’s broke. So we will be too.

It must be true, he said it in Newsweek.

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

The expert weighs in

The article then tapped another source for a little expert credibility, Paul Verna, an analyst with eMarketer.

Verna’s take was that the real issue was “the lack of a clear business model that can generate substantial revenues.”

Verna’s on the right track, but we’re still a long way from the core problem.

If your business model is “I want to make money on the Internet,” you’re not going to get very far. The Internet is profoundly indifferent to your desire to make money with it.

Please notice that this does not mean that “there is no possible viable business model for any blog, other than a few fortunate exceptions that prove the rule,” which was the conclusion Lyons reached.

It just means that Fake Steve Jobs didn’t come up with a working business model, so he didn’t make any money.

Blogs are not television

I’ll confess, I have no idea how to monetize Fake Steve Jobs. His readers aren’t coming to his site to solve any kind of real-world problem, other than “how can I kill 10 minutes before my boss gets back from lunch?”

Television networks produce entertainment. They either make money from advertising or, for premium cable channels, from subscriptions.

If you want to watch Lost, you have to watch ads. Tivo dented that model considerably, but it still works well enough for now.

Advertising can work on some content web sites, but it usually works best when the reader is coming to the site to figure out a solution to a problem. If an ad presents a relevant solution to that problem, the ad can be effective.

For a complex bunch of reasons, advertising isn’t especially effective on most blogs. Unless there’s a terrific message-to-market match, ads on blogs tend to underperform wildly.

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

Too bad Lyons wasn’t a Copyblogger reader. He might have seen Brian’s post about the smartest monetization strategies for blogs and content sites, and why advertising is no longer on that list.

It’s not about trends in advertising or trends in the blogosphere. It’s about returning to a fundamental marketing truth.

If you don’t offer customers something they dearly want, whether it’s to gain some great pleasure or escape some great pain, you’re not going to make any money.

People do want entertainment and relief from boredom, but selling pure entertainment online is tricky. Right now the expectation on the web is that entertainment is free. You’ll have to get creative to escape that context, the same way musicians had to get creative to make a living when free music sharing became the norm.

It’s time for online business to grow up

For a long time, we believed that “online was different,” and that we didn’t need to accept any of the normal rules of business. We’d put something on the web and Magic Internet Dust would come along and make up for our total absence of business knowledge.

“Leap, and the net will appear,” was the mantra.

That sort of worked for awhile, but it doesn’t work now. If you don’t have a solid understanding of who your market is, how they’ll find you, and what problems you solve for them, it’s now “Leap, and the floor will appear.”

So focus on what does work now, and has always worked.

Provide value. Solve actual problems. Uncover what’s bugging people and fix it for them.

The real Steve Jobs sells beautiful, easy-to-use, loveable tools that make his customers’ lives better. If Fake Steve Jobs wanted to make money, he would have had to do some work to figure out how he could do the same.

100% Google AdSense: Tools, Tips and Resources

2012-11-04T21:21:00.003-08:00

Google AdSense is a simple and low-risk way for publishers to quickly monetize their content. The pay-per-click ad system has created an opportunity for anyone to instantly have advertising on their website, without the hassle of having to actively sell ad space. AdSense makes up a good portion of the advertising revenue for many websites, and other websites may use AdSense to earn the bulk of their revenues. Either way, AdSense is an excellent system for monetizing your content.

In this post we present an ultimate collection of resources, tools and tips to help you make the most out of Google AdSense. Among other things, this post covers various Google AdSense tools, Firefox-extensions, WordPress-plugins and related resources.

Please feel free to suggest related tools in the comments to this post. You may also be interested in our post Google AdSense: Facts, FAQs and Tools that was published two years ago.

1. Google AdSense Tools

iPhone AdSense Statistics Application
SenseApp is a program that lets you track your Google Adsense earnings on your Apple iPhone.

AdSense Earnings Tool
Free and fast tool to monitor adsense earnings in realtime. This tool posts all the correct post fields to Googles universal Account Services login and collects information about your earnings. You’ll able to see today, yesterday, this month and since last payment earnings. You don’t need to log in to Google anymore.

Google AdSense Toolbox
Type any web page URL (e.g. cnn.com) or keywords (e.g. web development), select a country (optional) and hit Enter to see the latest Google Ads that are contextual and geo-targeted.

Google AdSense Preview Tool
an addition to the right-click menu for Windows Internet Explorer 6.x, allowing you to preview the ads that may show on any webpage. With just a few clicks, you can see what ads may appear on your new webpages, or make an educated decision on whether to add AdSense to your existing site pages.

Google Search-Based Keyword Tool
The search-based keyword tool allows you to find high-paying keywords to target, based on the domain name you specify.

Google Traffic Estimator
The Google Traffic Estimator is an easy way to determine the search volume of certain keywords, and it shows related keywords and their volumes as well.

SpyFu
SpyFu allows you to look up any website and see how much it is spending on AdSense, how it ranks for each keyword, and which keywords it buys. The tool is quite useful for researching competitors.

adsblacklist
Identify and block low-paying advertisers and increase ROI with AdSense.

2. Google AdSense Online Tools

Contextual Ads Preview/Comparison Tool
This comparison tools comes in handy when you compare AdSense ads to those of other advertisement services (Chitika, Yahoo). You also have the ability to customize the colors and view what ads a certain URL would be likely to display.

Google AdSense Calculator
This AdSense Calculator is designed to help you to predict changes in your earnings depending on improvement (or deterioration) of Page Impressions, Click Through Rate and Cost Per Click. You can download further calculators here.

WordTracker
During the search, people use different keywords. Using this tool, you can find the most effective words before deciding what content to include on your page. Not free, but the free trial is available.

Traffic Estimator Sandbox
To use this tool, you need an AdWords account. This traffic estimator helps you to figure out what keywords result in the highest paying AdSense ads (more details on uphook).

Pubmatic
While Pubmatic isn’t strictly an AdSense tool, it will definitely help you earn more money from your website by optimizing your ads. With each page view, Pubmatic determines whether showing an AdSense ad or an ad from a different network would be best, based on the CPM.

AlterNut Ad
Instead of earning nothing from the PSA ads that Google fills the page with when it has no ads to show, earn a set fee by giving AlterNut Ad your unused PSA ads.

3. Google AdSense Firefox Extensions

AdSense Notifier
This extension displays your AdSense earnings in the status bar.

AdSense Preview
Check what Google ads would be displayed if they were shown on a particular page with this preview tool.

Money Quake
Money Quake allows you to see your real-time earnings for many popular advertising programs, including AdSense.

GraphSense
GraphSense gives you a visual look at your AdSense reports by adding graphs to the interface. As of this post, the extension is still classified as “experimental,” so you’ll have to log in to Mozilla to install it.

4. Official AdSense Resources

Google has provided some official tools and resources to help publishers get started with AdSense.

Google AdSense Help Center
A database of questions and answers about the AdSense program.

Inside AdSense Blog
The official AdSense blog. Find news, tips and other features about the ad system here.

AdSense Community Forum
Have an AdSense question? Ask a community of publishers and the AdSense team.

Official Optimization Tips
A collection of tips provided by the AdSense team.

Official AdSense Channel on YouTube
Instructional videos and interviews by successful AdSense publishers.

Interest-based advertising with Google AdSense
Just recently Google announced the launch of interest-based advertising. This help section addresses the new mechanism and explains how you can benefit from it.

5. Getting Started with AdSense

Because of the popularity of AdSense, many so-called “experts” out there try to give “inside information” or sell their secrets in the form of ebooks. If you’re truly a beginner to AdSense, use the official AdSense help database that Google provides.

Here are some “getting started” articles by a few trusted authors.

Problogger’s AdSense Tips for Bloggers
Darren Rowse’s excellent eight-part series will get you well on your way to making money from AdSense.

The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Effective AdSense Link Units Optimization
A great rundown of the different types of link units and how they’re best used in a website layout.

Where Should I Place Google Ads on my Page?
The Google AdSense team has made a helpful map showing the different regions of a website layout where AdSense units perform the best.

6. Optimization Tips

Like any ad system, AdSense can be optimized to generate more clicks and revenue. Here are some tips to help boost AdSense performance.

Adsense Success Stories
Several examples of websites that increased their earnings significantly with Adsense. The success stories talk a lot about ad optimization, etc.

Google AdSense Tips
Google Blogscoped provides an excellent collection of AdSense tips based on its experience with implementing Google ads.

My top 5 tips for increasing adsense earnings (without increasing traffic)
Experiment with color and position, use different adverts for different dates, use content targeting, referrals and take care of the SEO.

Eye-Tracking Studies by Jakob Nielsen
Great eye-tracking examples that show where users’ eyes start and end up on a page.

Adsense Tips, Layout Optimization Tricks for Higher CTR
A collection of excellent do’s and don’ts for new publishers, as well as advice for more advanced AdSense users.

Rotate Google AdSense Ad Colors : Reduce Ad Blindness
One of the many enemies of publishers who rely on ads is banner blindness. Rotating ad colors is a good way to combat banner blindness, resulting in more clicks on ads.

Google AdSense Tips, Tricks and Secrets
Popular SEO blogger Michael Gray has an extensive post on various AdSense tips and performance boosters.

How to Display Ads Only to Search Visitors
Click-through ratios are much higher if you show your AdSense units only to visitors who were referred by search engines. Here’s an article on how to implement that functionality on your website.

Using the Competitive Ad Filter to Increase AdSense Earnings
Learn how to block made-for-AdSense websites as competitors, allowing only the best and most relevant ads to show on your units.

100 Google AdSense Tips
While this article is a few years old, it still has some very valuable tips on how to optimize Google AdSense. Perfect for the beginner.

20+ Practical and Ethical Tips to Earn More Revenue from Google AdSense
eTechBuzz shows us some useful and ethical AdSense tips.

Blogmitize!
The Official AdSense Blog has a post on how to make the most money from your blog layout.

Little Known ‘Boring’ Websites that Make Incredible Money with AdSense
An article highlighting that nearly anyone with a niche website can make money from AdSense.

7. AdSense WordPress Themes

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform, so it’s no surprise that a few themes come AdSense-ready, with ad placements already determined.

8. AdSense WordPress Plug-Ins

If you want to integrate AdSense in your existing website, here are some plug-ins to help display your ads.

AdSense Manager
The AdSense Manager widget allows for the automatic creation of AdSense ad zones on your WordPress blog. The plug-in also supports other ad networks, such as YPN, AdBrite andCommission Junction.

Easy AdSenser
Easy AdSenser is a feature-filled plug-in that allows you to easily insert AdSense into your posts and layout. It has an extremely user-friendly interface, with lots of features that make adding AdSense much easier than it is with other plug-ins.

AdSense Revenue Sharing
Share AdSense earnings with co-authors using the AdSense Revenue Sharing plug-in.

All in One AdSense and YPN
Use the All in One AdSense and YPN plug-in to automatically insert YPN and AdSense ads into your existing blog posts.

AdSense Under Image
If a post has an image, this plug-in automatically inserts an AdSense block under the image.

AdSense Deluxe 2
Another plug-in to automatically insert AdSense ad units into blog posts.

Google AdSense for Feeds
A simple plug-in that places AdSense in your blog’s feed.

Ozh’ Who Sees Ads
Determines what type of visitor will see ads on your website. This plug-in allows publishers to hide ads from regular visitors and show them only to search visitors.

9. AdSense Books

If you’re looking for an entire collection of tips and advice on making the most out of AdSense, you might want to try a print book instead. Plenty of excellent AdSense articles are available online, but on the whole, it is easier to find more accurate information in print media. Here are some of the most popular books on AdSense.

The Best Damn Google AdSense Book

Google Advertising Tools: Cashing in with AdSense, AdWords and the Google APIs

The AdSense Code

Google AdSense Secrets

The Google AdSense Millionaire

10. AdSense Forums and Communities

Webmaster World AdSense Forum
The WMW forum is by far the best forum for getting expert advice on AdSense. A member of the Google AdSense team actually reviews all the threads and answers questions, so the information is legitimate.

Digital Point AdSense Forum
Digital Point’s AdSense forum isn’t as strict as the Webmaster World forum, so there is a lot of engagement but less experienced users and less informed advice.

Jowl Comm’s AdSense Chat

SEOChat
SEOChat doesn’t have an entire forum dedicated to Google AdSense, but it does have a thriving forum for affiliate marketing in which many AdSense topics come up on a regular basis.

11. Those Against AdSense

It’s always a good practice to hear the other side of the story when rounding up resources on a topic, especially one as controversial as AdSense. Many experts argue that AdSense isn’t the best choice for publishers to monetize their content. Here are a few articles that criticize AdSense.

Dear AdSense, You Broke My Heart
Problogger Darren Rowse’s open letter to AdSense about why he was disappointed in its decision to change the referral policy for publishers outside the US.

Have You Weaned Your Blog from AdSense Yet?
A convincing argument for moving from AdSense’s cost-per-click structure to CPM ads and other affiliate programs.

Why You Can’t Make Money Blogging
Copyblogger’s Brian Clark provides some compelling reasons to ditch AdSense and sell products that solve real-world problems.

10 Reasons Why People Hate Google AdSense
A round-up of thought-provoking reasons as to why Google ads repel publishers. Some of the reasons include: the ads are ugly, Adsense is everywhere, poor email support with the Google team and many others.

How to Mass Monetize Your YouTube Channel

2012-09-21T01:02:00.002-07:00

If you have a YouTube channel, you may not know that you can make money from your videos (if they are yours) through revenue sharing.
You used to have to be a YouTube Partner in order to be able to monetize your videos, however, this is no longer the case. All you need now is a YouTube account that has videos on it and an Adsense account.
If you sign into your account and go to Video Manager, more than likely you’ll see a notification letting you know that you can now monetize your videos. So if you don’t have an Adsense account set up, you will want to do that.
Then, you’ll need to follow these steps to connect the two, and monetize your videos.

Setting ad preferences

Log into YouTube, go to Video Manager, and you’ll see a dollar sign that may or may not be colored in. For videos that are not yet monetized, the dollar sign is not colored in. For videos that are monetized, the dollar sign is colored green.
Those already monetized, of course, can be skipped. The ones with a dollar sign button on a white background are the ones to select and update.
As of April 2012, YouTube made mass monetizing your videos easier than before. If you go to Settings, you’ll see they’ve added a new entry in the left-hand column, near Monetization, called Ad Defaults. Select all the ones you want (partner accounts will have three options; non-partners just two) and click on Save.
You can apply these preferences to all new uploads, but they won’t affect movies you’ve already monetized.

Mass monetize your movies

To mass monetize your videos, select ten movies at a time and use the Action drop-down to bulk monetize them using the default preferences you have just saved. If you go through all your movies you can update the ad types in bulk like this.
If you’ve already set those preferences for a movie, then setting it again will make no difference. If a video only had some of the new preferences set, they will be updated to the full range of options when you have selected them and applied your new preferences.
To mass monetize after you have set your monetization preferences, go to Video Manager, where you’ll see your uploaded videos listed. Select the videos that you want to monetize, as below, then go to Actions and select Monetize.
A new window will pop up to confirm your preferences. Click on the blue Monetize button, and voila! All of those videos are monetized to your preferences!
You’ll also see a confirmation that the videos previously selected have been monetized.

If you have not monetized your videos, if you have only monetized some of them, or even if you just don’t remember, I encourage you to go into your YouTube account and check everything out.
Update your preferences and more likely than not, in a few weeks time you will see your YouTube revenues climb. Thanks to Michael’s advice, I have had fantastic results from this tip, which has even given me a little debt relief!

At What Age is Someone Considered an Adult in the World?

2011-07-11T07:56:00.001-07:00

Hi blogger's,

The age at which a person is considered an adult varies significantly in the different countries of the world. Much depends upon what constitutes being an adult. Most look to an age at which children can legally work, marry, vote, buy alcohol, be drafted, or be charged with a crime, as the adult age.
Great variance exists as to the age when one can work in different countries. When this is a factor of considering one an adult, the age can range from no laws at all, as in countries like Papua New Guinea, Yemen and Liberia.
Other countries set minimum age requirements for child labor. The lowest exist in countries like Syria, Paraguay, or Bangladesh, where minimum age is 12. Many work in developing countries begin work prior to reaching the minimum legal age, however. Most countries set minimum age at 15-16 years old. In a few cases, the minimum age may be 14. This compares to US figures where minimum age ranges from 15-16, and generally, one must have permission from parents to work prior to being 18 and being considered an adult.
For example, in many African countries, such as Niger, Mozambique, and Mali, over 50% of girls are married prior to turning 18. In Yemen, 64% of girls are married before 18, and in Bangladesh, 81% of girls marry before 18. These figures often coincide with child labor laws that allow children to work at a young age. In these cases, many girls marry just after menarche (their first menstruation), and some marry prior to puberty. A married person, is for most intents and purposes, considered an adult.
In most countries, legal voting age is also set at 18 and defines who is an adult. A few countries espouse an earlier or later voting age. Some countries like Austria and Germany allow 16 year olds to vote in municipal elections. In Italy, however, one cannot vote to elect a senator, unless one is 25. Liechtenstein voters must wait until they are 30 to vote.
Another common litmus test for determining when one is an adult is the age at which one can purchase alcohol. The US figure of 21 is actually quite high. In some countries, alcohol can be purchased by anyone, but it is not treated with the same “rite of passage” reverence given by countries with a minimum drinking age. In the majority of countries, drinking age is 18. A few countries, including Spain, France, Austria, and Germany set drinking age at 16. Some countries allow children under the drinking age to consume alcohol but not purchase it.
Age can affect when children are considered criminally responsible, or an adult in the eyes of the law. It is perhaps not surprising that countries with low age for marriage, drinking or child labor assess criminal responsibility as early as seven. Yet, the United States also considers seven year olds as criminally responsible, and possibly able to be charged as an adult. This is rare, but not impossible. Frequently, age of criminal responsibility rests at around 7-14 years old.
A person may also be considered an adult if he or she is drafted or volunteers for military service. In most countries this age is 18, though a few countries set the age at 16 or 17.
In different countries, cultures may also determine that someone is an adult before legal ages for adulthood apply. For example coming of age ceremonies for Jewish children, bat or bar mitzvahs occur when a child is 13. As well, many families of Mexican descent have coming of age parties for their 15 year old daughters, called quinceaneras. Many local traditions consider a child an adult long before a child is legally considered an adult.

DID YOU KNOW?: The best blogging advice you’ve ever received

2011-07-11T07:37:00.000-07:00

DID YOU KNOW?: The best blogging advice you’ve ever received: "Hi Bloggers, We've set out to learn more about blogging from the people who know it best -- our users. I’ve really enjoyed your responses..."

The best blogging advice you’ve ever received

2011-07-11T07:35:00.000-07:00

Hi Bloggers,

We've set out to learn more about blogging from the people who know it best -- our users. I’ve really enjoyed your responses to our #bloggerasks tweets over the past two weeks, and spent a good amount of time reading through the blogs and posts that you’ve sent us.

Something that always astounds me about blogging is how the core experience of sharing stories pulls together an incredibly diverse group of people. The emphasis you all put on connecting with each other really speaks to the power of community among bloggers.

Here are some of my favorite responses to the question, What’s the best blogging advice you’ve ever received?

“Write to build community; link to others and participate in the conversation” (@LisaSpangenberg)
“To blog consistently, respond to comments, and to read and comment on other people's blogs (especially those who read mine).” (@kelblogg)
“To not only be active within your own blog but on others' as well - leave comments, but don't spam!” (@OnceBittenBlog)

Although it’s important to keep your readers in mind, most of you tweeted about staying true to yourself, and writing about what you love. @Mistylovesvamps said it best: “don't be a slave to stats & followers.”

The balance between writing for yourself and becoming part of a community can be difficult at first - even a little scary - but it’s worth it. And if you’re still on the fence, consider the best blogging advice @Shakestweetz received: “Hey, you should start a blog.”

Missed our #bloggerasks? Keep an eye out for future tweets, and for my posts on your responses. Have even more blogging advice? Let us know - leave a comment!
cheers,
JASKARAN

How to become rich?

2011-07-11T06:58:00.000-07:00

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