Some simple tips to make more money with your blog.

Nov 24, 2008 in Affiliate Programs, Blogging, Clickbank, Making Money Online

Consider this a primer to making money with a blog.

twitter.com’);”> Image of Affiliate Money from Twitter

Image of Affiliate Money

Blogging can be very profitable. Can we all make as much as Darren Rowse or John Chow? Not likely, $43,485 per month is a lot of dough.

Can we make a fraction of that? You betcha. Would you be happy making just 10% of that?

Think about it, being able to earn $4,348 per month working from home, in your spare time.

Think about being an authority, someone people come to for answers. Imagine attending events related to your topic, so that you can live-blog the event.

Being a professional blogger has many perks.

The key to being a professional blogger is authority. Blogs are about building your brand - your credibility.

What is the number one reason people are coming to your blog? I can guarantee it isn’t because they may find the “adsense ad of their dreams on your site”.

Most people are visiting your blog for the information you provide. Information is the #1 use of the internet. Capitalize on that.

Blogs are ideal spots to find the information that people are looking for. Blogs not only provide fresh content, but through comments they also provide a way for others to share their information on a certain subject.

Search engines love blogs because of their frequent updates, and the more you update your blog, the higher up in the rankings your blog will rise.

Why your readers keep reading your blog:

1. Readers feel catered to rather than regarded as potential customers (unless you alienate your readers by posting faulty content, or misleading articles).

2. Blogs have a more human feel to them over regular websites.

3. People love to share their insights on subjects, and they can do this on most blogs via the comment section.

4. Blogs are easy to keep up with due to RSS feeds. Subscribe to a blog, and all you need to do is follow them in your favorite RSS reader.

Blogs are known to bring in repeat visitors more than any other type of website.

General websites may get bookmarked from time to time, but with a blog they may read your rss feed every couple of days and will come back when they are searching for some information related to your niche.

Regular blog visitors are of a higher caliber than any visitor, so treat them right!

Blog visitors will leave comments, and help improve your blog. Google and other search engines even look at how many comments a blog post has when determining their rankings.
Blog visitors will also suggest your site to their favorite social media sites like: Digg, Stumbleupon, Myspace, Facebook, Propeller, Yahoo Buzz, Mixx, etc…

Blog visitors are also many times bloggers themselves, and many cases if they read a good article on your blog, they may write one similar and link to you as a courtesy.

I recommend trying to look beyond Adsense for your ad revenue when blogging. Adsense is surely a great way to make money, but it’s also a great way to lose money, there’s many who’ve abided by google’s terms of service and just as they were about to get paid got banned from the service.

Don’t lose your hard earned money.

Another reason not to use google ads is because they will take your reader away from your blog. Your visitor probably will be lost for all time, and won’t come back.

What’s the best way to monetize your blog?

Ask any big time blogger where they make most of their money, and they all agree that it’s through affiliate programs like MarketLeverage, Clickbank, or Pepperjam Network.

Many big time bloggers also make a substantial income with their own products, or services. Offer your own ebook, cd, dvd, video tutorial, etc and you can make a lot of money. Just make sure that the product that you offer is related to the topic of your blog.

Another great way to ensure the success of your blog is to build a newsletter and offer freebies for new subscribers. This should be launched from day one. Send your list top notch articles related to the niche, and from time to time add an affiliate advertisement. A good website for hosting your newsletter on is AWeber, or you can use a php program there are many free ones available.

Spread a few affiliate text links around your blog for good measure, and you will make a lot more than if you used google adsense. Just don’t overdo it, give quality content and a few affiliate ads, maybe make 1 in 10 articles be a review for a new e-book or product.

There are literally a million and one ways to make money from your blog - be creative and most importantly offer your readers a high level of value.

The Tragic Side of Web 2.0 / Progress…

Nov 21, 2008 in General News Topics, Social Media

Image by Matthew Stewart (aramisfirefly) via Flickr

New Media can be Bloody at Times

Social media and all encompassing ‘new media’ is a boon of opportunity, it’s a way to socialize without even leaving the home for many. It is a way to build relationships with people in different lands.

Many have also embraced New Media to share the many aspects of their lives. From the birth of a new child as Robert Scoble, and This Guy did, via twitter; to the suffering of people.

To the joys of a nation embracing change, amidst a changing the world (yeah I’m talking about the election, duh!)

As Tony Hung of Deep Jive Interests put it quite poigantly:

The “new” web is more than the spectacle of the crushingly banal or the bruisingly idiotic, and like it or lump it, it will probably catalogue the depth and breadth of the human experience in a way that’s never been done before.

Which brings us to the Tragic Side of Web 2.0.

It was reported today that a young man took his life, while streaming it live on Justin.tv.

Justin.tv being a video service which streams content live. This may be one of the first suicides committed on live internet tv, but I doubt it will be the last.

I’m sure there will also come a day when serial killers torture, rape, and kill their victims whilst letting the whole world watch.

Let’s pray that it doesn’t get that bad, and lets pray that if that day comes, that we won’t be so base to not even acknowledge it as newsworthy.

New Idea to gain / keep Newsletter Subscribers

Nov 20, 2008 in Blogging

I’m gonna keep this post short and sweet.

I was thinking about ways to build my list larger, so far it’s growing pretty good. Offering a freebie download is always a good start. I’m toying with the idea of writing one free elite PDF e-book weekly, and make it only available to newsletter members.

I believe this technique would work great because it’s a good way to split-test new topics. One ebook may not appeal to your readers, while another might appeal to a larger amount.

Anyone have experience with this type of technique?

Share your Experience and comments!

Blackhat Article Writing Technique!

Nov 19, 2008 in Blogging, Making Money Online, Productivity

Well, this may not be blackhat but it’s definitely gray.

Image via Wikipedia

The key to successful blogging that I’ve been mentioning lately is focused dedication and continually writing new content. You may notice that I don’t always post new content every day to this blog, although I do try to. A lot of the content I create, I use on article sites, squidoo, hubpages, etc.

This is an easy quick way to churn out articles with reckless abandon:

1. Purchase Dragon Naturally Speaking, or find an alternative speech to text program.

2. Google the topic that you want to write about, or visit goarticles.com and search articles there.

3. Launch Dragon NaturallySpeaking and rewrite the article on the fly by putting the article into your own words. Most people can speak faster than they can type and this is a much faster way to write articles.

Please note that the key here is to make the article look different and not duplicate as far as the search engines are aware. It’s also to save you from any copyright issues.

How you make money with this technique:

Well you could post it to your blog and make money off your blog’s advertising, OR you can post your new article to squidoo, hubpages, associated content, helium, or any other site that pays for articles.

If you do it right you could potentially write 5-10 posts in an hour, if you submit these to Associated content as exclusive posts you could earn as much as $5 per post, plus an additional $1.50 per 1000 pageviews. In essence that’s $25-50 for an hour of work!

Let me know if you’ve had success with this technique!

Are you in? Announcing: Inter-National Pillar Article Week - November 24-28th.

Nov 16, 2008 in Announcements, Blogging

Pillar Article Writing Week + Contest + 7 tips to Perfect Pillar Articles.

We all sometimes get stuck in the mode of just writing our thoughts, or small news articles, or informative but small articles daily.

This week I submit a challenge = Write 1 Pillar Article for each weekday for the Week of November 24th - 28th, 2008. You can write them each day, or write them now - and schedule them for that day, either way works. If you miss a day, that’s fine - just try your best.

I suggest working on them this week though, because next week is Thanksgiving, so it may be a bit hectic at times.

I will have a post for each day where you can come and leave comments explaining what your daily pillar article is about, and a link to it. (read to the end for the best part…)

At the end of the week I will be picking the very best Pillar Article, and I will give that author a free one month verbal recommendation advert in the sidebar with a link to the blog, and your pillar article.

I will also write a 500-1000 word review with pictures and the works.

You will also be given 1000 Free Business Cards that you can use as you like courtesy of Business-Cards.com:

Last but not least - the biggest REASON to Participate: I will stumble / digg Every pillar article submitted - and I also am suggesting that everyone else who participates do the same. This could mean each article could get a ton of traffic.

The last bit - please when writing your pillar article, put something like this at the end: “This Article is part of National Pillar Article Week” and please link back to this post so that others will be able to find out about the trend too - the more people who participate, the more stumbles / diggs everyone will get.

If you like, you could also write a blog post about National Pillar Article week, on your blog as well, with a link back to this post.

7 Free Tips for Absolutely Marvelous Pillar Articles:

Lists are a Blogger’s Best Friend. Not all pillar articles are lists, but lists are easy for people to follow, and the human mind just likes them. Lists are easily organized and many times lists, even crappy ones just get a lot of traffic.
Images are like defibrillators for your blog. Good Pillar articles if not lists, contain a lot of images to back up what is being taught or discussed.
Details, Shmetails. Pillar articles are detailed as can be, without fluff. Layout as much info as you can on a subject with as little un-needed info as possible.
Hot Topic - if ain’t hot then it’s just not. If you check out digg, linkbait and pillar articles are always on a hot topic that’s unique. They ar e also exhaustive.
Snappy Titles are better than Snapping Turtles. Well snappy, may be an understatement, but the title has to be exciting and draw in the reader - it must give them a reason to click on it.
Proof-read - Just do it.. Pillar articles are free of blemishes, so to speak. Make sure to use proper grammar and punctuation.
Sub-headings almost as good as Headings. Good Pillar articles also feature good use of sub-headings, and bold fonts. For instance look at this article how I’ve used h2 tags for sub-headings, and bold font for my main points.