Quantcast Top 10|Social media|How to|Blogging & Resources|Guides: August 2010

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Top 10 Ways To Make Money With Twitter In 2010

#1 Sponsored Tweets Earn $2 Per Tweet - This is an online marketplace that allows you to connect directly with advertisers to engage in sponsored conversations through Twitter. Advertisers compensate you with cash in exchange for a sponsored tweet.

#2 Tweetadder - Find and Engage in Like-Minded Twitter Followers & Automate Twitter Posts! 100% Free download, this is a must have!

#3 Tweetomatic Profiteer Tweetomatic Profiteer - If you don’t already know how to go from zero to 1,000’s of targeted traffic in under 1 week, on 100% autopilot without paying a dime, and convert it into instant profit any time you like…

#4 Tweet Tank Tweet Tank - Eight videos that show you exactly how to start making money using twitter right now. Easy to set up and very little work involved.

#5 Turbo Twitter Cash Turbo Cash Generator - This is a brand new plug-and-play software that creates multiple streams of income using twitter. Once these are set up it's almost a fully automated system sending you money like a machine.

#6 Army of Followers Army of Followers - Build an army of thousands of followers to make money with twitter. They teach you how to turn Twitter into a traffic and cash machine.

#7 Twitter Online System Twitter Online System - Proven Turnkey System That Only Requires You To Set Up It ONCE, Forget About It, And Start Making Money Through Twitter Today!

#8 Twitter Money Tree Twitter Money Tree - Stephen has been featured on Fox News, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, CW, Daystar, ION, MyTV, Daytime and dozens of other shows talking to millions about using Twitter to become celebrities and be able to pick the money off of their own “Twitter Money Trees!”

#9 Paid4TweetN Paid4TweetN - We have watched the rise and fall of other so called "Twitter Programs." Here is the reason why they fail: All of the other programs out there only teach you how to get followers. You do not make money by getting followers.

#10 Paid4TweetN Twitter Rockstar - When you use Twitter to build your brand online, you're not relying on random Google searches. You're not relying on expensive PPC methods that bring lukewarm consumers. You are using Twitter to filter out the tire kickers and bring you the people that want to hear your voice.
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Seo Guidelines For Web Content Writers

Content writing is of utmost importance for those who are involved in online marketing businesses. Many companies, now days, offer content writing services. They cater to a varied class of businesses. Webmasters and marketing professionals who are related to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) mostly use these.


SEO is a method to reach out to a larger number of clients using search engines for marketing a website. SEO content can help clients achieve higher search engine rankings.


But there is a difference between regular content writing and SEO content writing. The difference is how you define your writing, and what you need to attain as a professional online copywriter or content writer. All the website owners want higher search engine rankings to increase their visibility on the first result page so that they get more targeted search engine traffic and they know their content can help them achieve that. So they opt for SEO content that can help them improve their search engine rankings. To stand out amongst your competition require SEO content writers. The text below will lay down SEO guidelines for web content writers.


1. Stress On Focused Pages
Search engines prefer focused pages, especially talking about a particular topic or phrase. So, do not try to cover everything under the aegis of a single page. Create pages focusing specific topics. It also provides satisfaction to people who are fussy about keyword density.

2. Page Title

It is the most important part of any webpage. It must appeal to the search engines and attract them towards your page. It must present to the search engines the most compelling reason to blog post it. Preferably, use the entire phrase you are targeting, in the title.

3. Systematize Your Content

Organize your content using right tags wherever required. Search engines specifically look for the right words at particular locations. They look for the keyword you have placed in your entire content.

4. Keyword Density

Keyword density is calculated by (keywords/ total keywords)* 100. Keyword density should range between 2-5%. Use the keywords wherever they fit in appropriately.

5. Fresh Content

Content you post on your web site should be fresh as well as informative so that they do not find your content repetitive and boring. At the same time, it should be meaningful and knowledgeable which is the basic purpose of your content, i.e., to reveal information. Create content which is understandable by the readers as well as search engines.

6. Link Baiting

Topics, which are link baiting, should receive special attention.

7. Number Of Words

Number of words should exceed 400 words. This will ensure that all the aspects are clearly and nicely defined.
Let me know if you want to add something more to this list of guidelines for content writers.
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Sunday, August 29, 2010

101 Ways to Promote a New Blog

Promoting a new blog can be quite daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. As you might expect, breaking down blog promotion into small, actionable tasks eliminates the mental road block you’ve probably experienced when trying to wrap you head around how to get people’s attention. You don’t have to do everything in this list, and some items will have a greater effect then others, but every tactic will at least drive some traffic, and any traffic is better than no traffic.

Content
1. Write a list of over 100+ resources or ideas.
2. Write the definitive guide to something. Spend time making this awesome.
3. Release a manifesto.
4. Release 2 manifestos.
5. Interview cool people. People like talking about cool people.
6. After your articles are indexed in search engines, break them up into smaller articles and submit them to ezinearticles.com (and other article directories).
7. Or just pay someone to submit the articles for you.
8. Write a list of all the cool blogs and people in your niche.
9. Check out the most popular content on high trafficked blogs. Create similar content but applied to your own niche.
Facebook
10. Start a page.
11. Make that page awesome.
12. Start a group.
13. Make that group awesome.
14. Create a Facebook app for your blog.
Fundamentals
15. Wait. After you’ve taken action it can take a short while for traffic to arrive.
16. Be patient. Some bloggers may seem like overnight successes, but if you look back in their archives, they’ve been creating content for a long time.
17. Motivate yourself.
18. Read The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.
19. Have an interesting story and overall purpose.
20. Embrace the Law of Reciprocity. Everything you give will come back exponentially.
21. Make blogging easier.
22. Take action every day. Just get one important thing done every day and eventually you’ll start getting traffic. The more you do each day the faster your blog gets traction.
23. Find people with blogs at a similar level to yours and help each other out.
24. Turn off your computer, do some cool stuff, turn on your computer again and blog about it.
25. Understand the importance of context.
26. Be consistent. You don’t need to blog every day but try to stick to at least some sort of schedule.
27. Make it a numbers game. Decide upon a definite plan of action (eg. 20 blog comments per day, 1 guest post per week etc) and stick with that.
Online Video
28. Create videos and distribute them through tubemogul.com
29. Or for wider video distribution trafficgeyser.com may work for you (expensive though).
30. Respond to YouTube videos with your content.
31. Include your full blog address at the TOP of your video descriptions.
32. Take your time with devising video titles and tags.
33. Convert your video to multiple formats, with slight editing changes, and upload it to video sites multiple times, targeting different keywords. The content remains the same but you can test what videos and titles work the best.
34. Buy the accounts of popular YouTubers and then add your blog address to the descriptions of their videos.
35. Start the first live show in your niche (Ustream, Justin.tv and LiveStream are popular choices). Make sure you record the shows too so they can be distributed as a podcast later on.
Other Blogs
36. Be the first commenter on the posts of popular blogs. But still provide value.
37. If you can’t be the first then comment anyway. But try to be the first.
38. Stumble and Digg cool blog posts you find and let the blogger know via a comment. If you have something worthy on your blog, they’ll probably reciprocate.
39. Use google.com/blogsearch to find fresh blog posts and then leave intelligent comments.
40. Link to blogs of a similar size. They’ll notice and then good stuff may happen.
41. Write a guest post for a large blog. You may not always get published, but when you do the traffic spike will be significant.
42. Write a guest post for a small blog. You’re more likely to get published and build relationships with the next wave of A-List bloggers.
43. Write some more guest posts. Can’t hurt, that’s for sure.
44. Join a blog network.
Paid
45. Start a StumbleUpon Ads campaign.
46. Get reviewed.
47. Buy some ad space.
48. Send out a press release.
People
49. Attend relevant meetups.
50. Tell your friends and family about your blog. Have them tell everyone they know.
Podcasting
51. Start a podcast and submit it to the iTunes directory.
52. Convert audio files to video files (just use Windows Movie Maker or iMovie) and send them out via tubemogul.com
53. Submit it to some other podcast directories.
Search engine optimization
54. Write linkbait.
55. Have any video or audio content transcribed and posted to your blog.
56. Register your domain name for 10 years.
57. Take advantage of sites scraping your blog’s feed by interlinking posts. Simple way to get deep inbound links.
58. Use Thesis.
Social networks
59. Join every social network you can.
60. Or, just join a couple and be really active.
61. Become active in relevant ning.com communities.
62. Convert blog posts to PDF files and submit them to Scribd – include your blog url in the description and document itself.
63. Add your Scribd documents to relevant groups.
64. Submit your best posts to blog carnivals.
65. Join relevant forums, add your blog address to your signature and start posting intelligently.
66. Sign up at ping.fm and use twitterfeed.com to auto post your latest blog content to a bunch of social networks.
67. Create lists on Amazon.com
68. Write reviews on Amazon.com
69. Better yet, create video reviews for Amazon.com
70. Answer relevant questions on Yahoo Answers, leaving your website as the source.
71. Or on Mahalo Answers.
72. Or even through LinkedIn Answers.
73. Start your own Slinkset, and feed your RSS feed into it automatically.
74. Submit your site to alltop.com
75. Write an article aimed at Digg (okay, that article won’t help much).
76. Also, befriend one of the many Digg powerusers.
77. Create a new thread on a forum and write up a really great guide with no self promotion. Simple way to be seen as an authority figure and to elicit comments on your writing (don’t forget that signature link though!).
78. Submit your content to dofollow social bookmarking sites.
79. Or have Bookmarking Demon do it for you (certainly a bend in ethics though).
StumbleUpon
80. Become an active stumbler to understand what stumblers like.
81. Friend people who stumble your content (they may just want to stumble more in the future)..
82. Have other people initially submit content (or “Discover” it as it’s known).
83. Place a Stumble button in your post template.
Su.pr
84. Sign up at su.pr and use it for all your short url needs.
85. Post content to your Facebook and Twitter stream.
86. Install the WordPress plugin to automate the process.
87. Identify the times that result in the most clicks and schedule tweets for them.
88. Setup your blog as a promoted website.
Twitter
89. Include hash tags (#tagname) in your tweets.
90. Search for your niche and answer any questions people have.
91. Place a Retweet button in your post template.
92. Follow relevant, popular, and interesting people.
93. Send @replies to relevant, popular and interesting people.
94. Tweet links to your content at multiple times during the day.
95. Love a product from a company that’s on Twitter? Review it and they may just notice and tweet about the review. It’s happened to me.
96. Sponsor some tweets.
97. Find cool people in your niche who live nearby and organize a tweet up (a meet up where you invite anyone on Twitter).
WordPress
98. Install All In One SEO Pack.
99. Automatically ping lots of ping services.
100. Create a theme, include a link to your blog in the footer, and then release it for free.
101. Create a plugin and release it for free. Add a link to your blog within the admin area. If it’s a good plugin people will love you for it.

RESOURCE- http://www.dailyblogtips.com/ 
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Saturday, August 28, 2010

10 Ways to Convert Your Blog Visitors Into Dedicated Readers

Do you want your blog to grow, increase your readership and subscriber numbers, have your content constantly spread, and make more money? Then you need to convert your blog visitors into dedicated readers.

Visitors are those that stop by your blog, skim through an article or two, and then leave – never to return. Boo. They’re of no use.
But dedicated readers regularly read your blog, spread your articles, leave high-quality comments, and buy your products. Yay! More of these, please.
Your mission is to convert your blog visitors into dedicated readers.
What good is 1,000 visitors a day if most of them don’t return? Traffic figures alone might make you feel good, but it doesn’t get you any desired results.
It’s all about quality over quantity. 100 dedicated readers beats out 1,000 passer-by visitors.
Here are 10 ways to convert your blog visitors into dedicated readers:


1. Be Yourself
This is slap-in-the-forehead common sense. But some bloggers try to be someone they’re not just because that type of personality is successful.
Just be yourself. Not only is it easy when you don’t have to force an unnatural persona, but you’ll have a 100% genuine and desirable voice.
On my blog Lifebeat, I’m completely myself. And it’s so easy not having to worry about projecting a certain image. I just write how I talk. Very relaxed and informal. I keep it simple and to-the-point. I inject jokes and music references. I constantly share personal examples. And since I’m a huge anime fan, all my articles have anime images rather than Flickr or iStock Photo ones.
Are you funny? Be funny. Serious? Be serious. Angry? Be angry.
Just be yourself.


2. Put the Reader Experience First
What makes you return to a restaurant? Chances are it’s not just the food but the experience.
Great articles alone aren’t enough. You also need a great reader experience. If you want visitors to convert into dedicated readers, you need a website people want to regularly return to.
That means don’t do anything on your blog that’ll compromise the reader experience. Translation: don’t annoy your visitors.

Common offenders: too many popups, ads, social bookmarking buttons, and subscribe links.
Just look at some of the most successful blogs: Daily Blog Tips, Problogger, Copyblogger and so on. No popups, and very light ads, social bookmarking buttons, and subscribe links.
I designed Lifebeat to put the reader experience first. Very clean, very simple, and the content is at the forefront. There’s no popups, no ads, no anything that would detract from enjoying reading one of my articles.
If someone really wants to subscribe or share your article on Twitter, they’ll do it. Don’t annoy and turn them away, losing what could’ve become a dedicated reader.



3. Focus on Benefits to the Reader, Not Your Features
If you want dedicated readers, your blog should focus on what the benefit is to the visitor. Not just your thoughts and ideas but value to a visitor.
Answer the “so what” question for new visitors: what’s in it for them? Why should they care?
Instead of putting the spotlight on what features my blog has, I focus on the benefit to visitors: helping you maximize your life. Ideas and strategies to help you do more of what you love and are passionate about. Not only do I state it in the About page and anywhere else, but that’s the focus I have for each article I write: how can I help and provide value to you, the reader.
Visitors care what you can do for them (benefits), not what thoughts and ideas you have (features). Focus on benefits, not features.


4. Write for Humans, Not Search Engines
Who reads your blog? People. So write for them.
Some bloggers make the mistake of writing articles solely based on highly-searched keywords. That results in nothing-new, unremarkable traffic bait. They might get search engine traffic, but very few visitors will be converted into readers.
The best search engine optimization is amazing content. Not website tweaks. Not a WordPress plugin. Not meta whozawhutsit. But amazing content.
If people like your articles, they’ll share it on social media, blogs, email, and even word of mouth. You’ll get higher-quality links, too, since it’s interested people linking to you. And, as Daniel here or Darren of Problogger and Brian of Copyblogger will tell you, high-quality backlinks are the ultimate SEO.
Now, optimizing for search engines can help with search traffic. And if you find a keyword phrase that happens to fit what you were going to write about anyway, go ahead and use it.
I don’t consider searched keywords when writing an article. Only once I have an idea down, I’d use the Google keywords tool to see if there’s a wording for the topic that people use most often. If not, I don’t worry about it at all. I never once let keywords dictate what I’ll write.
But put your message first – don’t compromise it. Make search engine considerations a distant second to writing what you have to say.
Write for people first, optimize for search engine traffic later.


5. Be Consistent
Choose a posting schedule and stick to it no matter what. Build a cache of articles or schedule your posts if needed.
I clearly state that I post a new article on Lifebeat every Monday and Thursday. I’ve stuck to that schedule ever since I started and haven’t missed a day yet.
Consistent readers need consistent updates to return to. Provide it for them.
They’ll know when to expect a new article, just like how people regularly check in to their favorite webcomics and news sites on certain days.


6. Make It Easy for Visitors to Subscribe
The more you have to work to get something, the less likely you’ll take the time to get it. Right? Don’t even try to deny it. That’s why iTunes is killing it in music sales: it couldn’t be easier to find and download a tune.
Be like iTunes on your blog. Make it clear and simple for visitors to be able to subscribe via email and RSS feed. Remove as many doors for your visitors as possible.

A visitor who subscribes is much more likely to convert into a dedicated reader. This is because your visitors can read your latest articles from the convenience of their email inbox or RSS feed reader. Your stuff is sent to them, so even after they forget about your blog they’ll still get your new articles, increasing the chance of them reading regularly (and maybe even sharing or buying your stuff).
Putting an RSS and mail icon in a sidebar isn’t enough. Make the subscribe option on your blog as non-cryptic and easy as possible.
Only a small percentage of your visitors will actually know what what an RSS or mail icon mean. Spell it out for the rest of your visitors, including why they should subscribe (it saves them time and energy because new content is delivered directly to them).
And people love free stuff, so don’t forget to mention that visitors can subscribe for free. Magazine subscriptions still have some thinking that subscribing to anything means paying.
I have a simple design on Lifebeat, so the subscribe buttons are in plain sight and clearly marked. I also explain in a short sentence what it means to subscribe and why a visitor should do it… and of course I mention that it’s free.


7. Be Remarkable
Be unique. Be great. Amplify yourself.
Don’t try to be the best in some field where you could never dominate. Instead, do what Seth Godin says: create your own category and dominate it. Analyze and figure out your unique traits, then crank them up to a 10.
People aren’t going to be interested in yet another productivity, personal finance, time management, self improvement, or whatever blog that says nothing new. Use #3 (Be Yourself) and amplify your unique traits.
I’m a writer, electronic musician, and adventurer who’s following his unconventional passion in life via non-conforming means. I never followed societal rules and found my own way. I also have child-like curiosity, not limiting myself to how I “should” act – an eternal kid in an adult’s world. I combine all of those traits and more into what I hope is an always-improving remarkable voice that can offer something interesting, something fresh, something game-changing and disruptive.
Would you return to a blog that bores you or doesn’t excite you? Of course not. So be interesting to read, and visitors will start converting into dedicated readers.


8. Talk With Your Visitors
It really is that simple: talk with your visitors. Reply to their comments and emails, send thank-you notes if they leave a comment or subscribe, or whatever else.
Use what works best for you (and doesn’t compromise your personal style – remember, be yourself). Email, comments, Twitter, whatever. But use at least one method of communication, so that visitors can form a relationship with you and feel like they’re reading from someone they know (or know that they can contact, at least).
I’ve never been comfortable on social networks and instant messenger, but blog comments and email have been natural for me. So I focus on posting and responding to comments and sending and replying to emails as my forms of communication with my visitors and readers. I also try to regularly send out thank-you emails.
People regularly return to something that they’ve formed a relationship or connection with. Think about it: you care way more about what your friends are doing than strangers.


9. Be Unconventional
Say something new that gets people thinking, motivated, and/or take action.
If you piss them off, that’s great too – there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and controversy gets visitors interested (just ask Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, or Steve Pavlina).
I’m constantly pushing myself to get out of my comfort zone and become even less self-conscious by writing about unconventional topics (or at least an unconventional perspective on something). Heck, even I would get bored of my own writing if I played it safe.
If your article is no different from the latest blurbs that day, your visitors will treat it at such: a quick skim-through and then move on.
Get visitors thinking and talking and you increase the chance of them coming back for more (and maybe even bringing some friends along).


10. Have Fun
A blog isn’t a cubicle job, so just have fun.
People want to enjoy what they consume. If you have fun writing an article, chances are people will have fun reading it. And people tend to return and consume more of what’s fun and enjoyable.
I have so much fun writing and making music on Lifebeat it should be illegal. Like, I’ll be writing an article or creating a new tune or mix, and an alarm will sound. Woo woo woo! It’s the fun alarm: someone’s having way too much fun.
Have fun, and your blog will be fun – and visitors will start converting into dedicated readers.

 Maximize Your Blog Visitors
Maximize your blog visitors by converting them into dedicated readers using these 10 ways.
Your blog to grow, your readership and subscriber numbers will increase, your content will be constantly spread, and you’ll make more money from more products sold. Now who doesn’t want all that?
Have these 10 ways helped you convert your blog visitors into dedicated readers? What other ways have worked for you?
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Friday, August 27, 2010

20 Quick Ways to Increase Your Alexa Rank

Alexa.com is a subsidiary of Amazon.com and is a website which provides information on traffic levels for websites.The Alexa rank is measured according to the amount of users who’ve visited a website with the Alexa toolbar installed.
What is the Alexa Rank?
Put simply, the Alexa Rank is a ranking system which bases its ranking schema on the level of traffic each website receives from the number of people who visit a website with the Alexa toolbar installed.
Why would you want to increase your Alexa rank?
Webmasters, advertisers and ad networks use your blog’s Alexa rank as a gauge to determine the worth of a link on your website. If you depend on link or site selling as a form of monetization you’ll definitely want to increase your Alexa rank, because it’ll increase your bargaining power when it comes to ad pricing.
ReviewMe, Text Link Ads and Sponsored Reviews are just three of the networks which base your ad selling strength on Alexa Ranks.
20 Ways to Increase your Alexa Rank
Here is a collection of methods you can use to boost your Alexa Rank. Most of these tips are derived from several fellow webmasters I know who claimed to have derived positive results through their experiments with the Alexa Rankings.
Some of the other tips were derived articles and sources, which I have duly referenced at the end of this post.
Do these tips work? According to some, yes they definitely do work. But do note that most of them require active effort of some sort and hence, they will work as long as long as you are consistently performing specific actions.
To increase your Alexa rank in the long run, I would highly recommended that one focus on developing quality content which attracts and maintains a large audience instead of purely focusing on artificially increasing your Alexa Rank.
Great link-worthy content will leads to an natural increase in site traffic and is an excellent way to passively increase your Alexa rank.
It is important to emphasize that you should devote most of your efforts in growing your site audience alongside integrated implementation of any of the following tips below.
  1. Install the Alexa toolbar or Firefox’s SearchStatus extension and set your blog as your homepage. This is the most basic step.
  2. Put up an Alexa rank widget on your website. I did this a few days ago and receive a fair amount of clicks every day. According to some, each click counts as a visit even if the toolbar is not used by the visitor.
  3. Encourage others to use the Alexa toolbar. This includes friends, fellow webmasters as well as site visitors/blog readers. Be sure to link to Alexa’s full explanation of their toolbar and tracking system so your readers know what installing the toolbar or extension entails.
  4. Work in an Office or own a company? Get the Alexa toolbar or SS Firefox extension installed on all computers and set your website as the homepage for all browsers. Perhaps it will be useful to note that this may work only when dynamic or different IPs are used.
  5. Get friends to review and rate your Alexa website profile. Not entirely sure of its impact on rankings but it might help in some way.
  6. Write or Blog about Alexa. Webmaster and bloggers love to hear about ways to increase their Alexa rank. They’ll link to you and send you targeted traffic (i.e. visitors with the toolbar already installed). This gradually has effects on your Alexa ranking.
  7. Flaunt your URL in webmaster forums. Webmasters usually have the toolbar installed. You’ll get webmasters to visit your website and offer useful feedback. It’s also a good way to give back to the community if you have useful articles to share with others.
  8. Write content that is related to webmasters. This can fall in the category of domaining and SEO, two fields in which most webmasters will have the Alexa toolbar installed. Promote your content on social networking websites and webmaster forums.
  9. Use Alexa redirects on your website URL. Try this: http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.doshdosh.com . Replace doshdosh.com with the URL for your website. Leave this redirected URL in blog comments as well as forum signatures. This redirect will count a unique IP address once a day so clicking it multiple times won’t help. There is no official proof that redirects positively benefit your Alexa Rank, so use with caution.
  10. Post in Asian social networking websites or forums. Some webmasters have suggested that East Asian web users are big Alexa toolbar fans, judging by the presence of several Asia-based websites in the Alexa Top 500. I suggest trying this only if you have the time or capacity to do so.
  11. Create a webmaster tools section on your website. This is a magnet for webmasters who will often revisit your website to gain access to the tools. Aaron Wall’s webpage on SEOTools is a very good example.
  12. Get Dugg or Stumbled. This usually brings massive numbers of visitors to your website and the sheer amount will have a positive impact on your Alexa Rank. Naturally, you’ll need to develop link worthy material.
  13. Use PayperClick Campaigns. Buying advertisements on search engines such as Google or Exact Seek will help bring in Traffic. Doubly useful when your ad is highly relevant to webmasters.
  14. Create an Alexa category on your blog and use it to include any articles or news about Alexa. This acts as an easily accessible resource for webmasters or casual search visitors while helping you rank in the search engines.
  15. Optimize your popular posts. Got a popular post that consistently receives traffic from the search engines? Include a widget/graph at the bottom of the post, link to your Alexa post or use Alexa redirection on your internal URLs.
  16. Buy banners and links for traffic from webmaster forums and websites. A prominent and well displayed ad will drive lots of webmaster traffic to your website, which can significantly boost your rank.
  17. Hire forum posters to pimp your website. Either buy signatures in webmaster forums or promote specific articles or material in your website on a regular basis. You can easily find posters for hire in Digital Point and other webmaster forums.
  18. Pay Cybercafe owners to install the Alexa toolbar and set your website as the homepage for all their computers. This might be difficult to arrange and isn’t really a viable solution for most. I’m keeping this one in because some have suggested that it does work.
  19. Use MySpace . This is a little shady so I don’t recommended it unless you’re really interested in artificially inflating your Alexa Rank. Use visually attractive pictures or banners and link them to your redirected Alexa URL. This will be most effective if your website has content that is actually relevant to the MySpace Crowd.
  20. Try Alexa auto-surfs. Do they work? Maybe for brand new sites. I think they are mostly suitable for new websites with a very poor Alexa rank. Note that there be problems when you try to use auto surfs alongside contextual ads like Adsense. They aren’t also long term solutions to improving your Alexa Rank so I suggest using with caution.
YOU CAN READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HEREhttp://www.doshdosh.com/20-quick-ways-to-increase-your-alexa-rank/
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Thursday, August 26, 2010

Powerful Ways To Make Money With Your Blog

Every single day over 8,000 people start a new Internet business and it is said 90% of them fail / never really take off! There are a lot of reasons why a business fails but in the end it comes down to one main thing – it isn’t making money!
It doesn’t matter if you get 100,000 visitors a day, if you can’t monetize your site, then you will lose money and fail like most other people. Most Internet Marketers suggest you put up adverts on your site to make money. OK, that appears an easy option, but if you don’t have much traffic you will fail to sell the advertising and frankly in my experience there are many better ways to make money.
So today I have decided to go through some of my own sites and also some my favorite bookmarks and show you how and why some sites (even with the same traffic) make a lot more money than other sites in their niche. And, I’m not just talking about an extra $1000 a month – in many cases it is significantly more.

Why Typical Blog Monetization Doesn’t Work

The main reason it doesn’t work is because you can only make so much. If you only have 8 advertising spots on your site, that will Net you a total of $600 at an average of $75 per spot. Truth is that in many cases unless you have significant traffic you will struggle to get even $75 per spot.
Now if you use some of the monetization techniques I will cover below, instead of making say $600 for the month you could make $3000 or even more! (I estimate you need around 20000 visitors per month in most niches to achieve this) Banner advertising to some degree isn’t scalable and therefore isn’t a good long term solution. That said, if you are ‘lazy” (as I sometimes am) then the one good thing about banner advertising is it’s guaranteed money most of the time, provided you can keep selling those spots!
But to give you some comparison, if I had decided to go with only offering banner advertising when I launched IncomeDiary, I would of been lucky to earn $300 from advertisers in the first month, instead of the $5000 that I did.

Selling eBooks

This is something that has been increasingly more popular over the last couple years for a bunch of reasons. The main reason obviously is money, selling an eBook to your readers is easier then selling someone else’s product because your readers know who you are, what your about and you should have a good track record for offering good content. One of the big benefits of launching an eBook on your blog is traffic. I have seen blog’s traffic saw once they launch an eBook because they set up an affiliate program, so even if they don’t buy your eBook, they still look around your blog and can make you money in other ways and the best thing, you don’t have to pay the affiliate for it.

How To Sell eBooks On Your Blog

On some levels, most blogs do the whole selling an eBook thing completely wrong. Having a eBook on your blog will mean a lot of leakage because they can go off in a million different directions such as check out your about page, past posts, advertisers etc. Typically sales page give you the option to either buy the eBook or leave the website which keeps the buyer more concentrated as they won’t get distracted by other things on your blog. Here are a few rules I would encourage you to abide by:
  • Have an affiliate program (via E-Junkie)
  • Offer Testimonials from people who have read your eBook. Including names, website URL’s, country and picture will help reinforce the fact that these are real people giving real opinions on your eBook.
  • Offer a sample page or chapter so potential buyers can get a good feel for who you are and what you have to offer.
  • Have a eCover to symbolize some physical value to the product. I recommend either Minisite Studios or searching for someone on Digital Point webmaster forums.
rockablepress Powerful Ways To Make Money With Your Blog

 

Membership Websites

I have seen a lot of blog adding membership areas to their blogs recently, probably because of the demand for even better content and the fact that it’s so easy to set up. Think about it, would you be happy paying $10 a month (or even $100) to have access to content that will change your life or business in some way, of course you would! The real benefit of having a membership website over a eBook is that with a membership website, you don’t just bill them once but you bill them every month. Let me show you the maths then you will get really excited:
Option 1: Sell 1 eBook a day at $40, that will be $1200. Now say you do the same next month, you will make $1200 this month as well. Say you do this for a whole year, you will make $14,600!
Option 2: Sell 1 Membership Website a day for $40, that will be $1200. Now say you do the same next month, you will bring in $1200 of additional membership but you will also have the recurring revenue from last month, making it $2400 that month. Say you do this for a whole year, you will make $105,600! I will leave you to pick which one sounds best to you.
One small thing I should note about my maths above, some people will obviously cancel there membership, the amount of people who cancel depends on the value you provide them. For those who have already went with Option 1, don’t worry, here is what I would do; take your eBook that you are selling for $40 and charge $1 for it, you will now probably sell 20 or 30 copies a day instead of one. Now when they order, add them to a membership program for $39 a month and give them the first 30 days to try it for FREE. This approach will get a lot more people buying and convert more people into staying for your recurring program. For those of you think this is to much work, you could simple change your eBook into a membership program by time releasing the content.
I always find inspiration the best way to start something new on my site, so here are my favourite membership websites that have been added to blogs.
If you would like to know more about recurring revenue and building membership websites, check out the great interview I did with Ryan Lee! He also has just released the videos and audios from his continuity seminar earlier in the year, I went to it and it honestly made a big difference to my online business and I don’t even have my own continuity program (YET!)

 

How To Add A Membership Website To Your Blog

From my research and recommendations from a lot of friends, there are 2 main ways to go about setting up your own membership website for wordpress. Them being:
  1. Wishlist Member – Very customizable plugin with lots of features to make your membership website stand out from the crowd! (My personal recommendation)
  2. aMember with Wordpress Plugin – Gives a simple yet effective membership area allowing users to download and see files easily.
tutsplus Powerful Ways To Make Money With Your Blog

FREE eBooks and eCourses

As I mentioned in a past post, building your list is one of the most important things to do and the best way to attract people to sign up for your list is to offer them something for FREE! Now the benefit of having a good mailing list is, so that you can email out about new content and promotions which could make you more money. I know some people that have such great lists, that when they email out promoting a new online course, they can bring in as much as $300,000! Not bad for writing a few emails. Now this is great but sending emails can become a bit of a pain and some readers will be turned off by them. What I have done is built a really strong eCourse and eBooks sharing lots of great secrets, tips and tools on how I make money online and then monetized it with affiliate links. Now this took me around 2 days to write (partly because I’m dyslexic and writing isn’t my forty) but since then it’s made me tens of thousands of dollars with no additional effort. My advise to you is to create a eBook or course that you could sell and then give it away for free and make your money through affiliate commissions. Remember to check out my past post on making money with email marketing to make sure you approach it using my no leakage rule.

 

Adding an eBook/Course to your Website:

Adding your eBook to your website can be done in a variety of ways, personally I recommend my funnel system to work the best. This is how it works:
  • Offer a sign up on your blog for a FREE eBook. I highly recommend using Aweber for your auto-responder as it’s what I use and most other Internet marketers. The best way to draw attract to your opt-in box is by placing a eCover of your eBook, this also gives it some physical value.
  • Once they sign up for your eBook or Course, send them to a thank you page where you promote a few of your best selling affiliate programs. Also give them a personal thank you and remind them to check there emails and confirm that they want to be on the list.
  • Now automatically dispatch an email using your auto-responder with your first email from your eCourse or a link to your eBook.
  • Now build in several follow up emails promoting content on your blog and affiliate offers.
ebook Powerful Ways To Make Money With Your Blog

 

Web Directories

This method isn’t so common but looking from the examples I could find online, it is one of the most profitable! FreelanceSwitch has one of my favorite examples of a web directory, how it works is web designers who need work can pay monthly to have themselves listed in there web designers directory so people who are looking for web designers, can browse the directory and pick there favorite. What’s great about this approach is they have made the deal even better for web designers, they have included access to the website job board, where they can apply for jobs that are posted which has allowed them to make it free for people to submit jobs.

 

How To Add A Web Directory To Your Blog

Although there are dozens of free web directory plugins for Wordpress, not many let you charge people to submit links to them. The first directory I created was for WebDesignDev which was a directory of all the resources web designers and developers would need such as hosting, scripts, domains, coding etc. I allowed people to submit for free but gave a premium option which for a price they would be posted at the top of the directory with a special border and made to stand out from the crowd. The software I used was PHPLinkDirectory which seems to be bringing out more and more Wordpress friendly additions to it’s software and would be my pick for anyone trying to achieve a successful directory.
directory Powerful Ways To Make Money With Your Blog

Job Board

The great thing about offering a job board is that it’s offering a needed service to your users. Take for example you are visiting a web design blog because you wanted someone to design your blog. Now this blog has a job board and it was free for you submit a job, that’s a great additional service the blog is providing. But where is the money you are probably asking, what you do is you charge the designers who are looking to do the work, possibly a $50 monthly charge to reply to any design jobs. For any designer looking for work, this is a no brainer because these are the best leads you can get, people who are saying they want to give you work. This really is a no brainer and something I really am thinking about adding to IncomeDiary as it will solve the problem of people looking to hire people and the problem that WebDesignDev is over flowing with web designers looking for work.

 

How To Add A Job Board To Your Blog

There are two main Wordpress plugins that will allow you to add a Job Board to your blog, those being WPJobBoard and JobPress. Pricing strategy is most important here, either deciding to charge people to post job or to reply to jobs. Personally I think charging people to post jobs works best because then you can focus on getting people to respond to work, which will be easier when its FREE for them although it seems it seems to be a mixed opinion between bloggers on which way is best to charge.
designjobs Powerful Ways To Make Money With Your Blog

Done For You

Done for you is something new I’m working on but have seen some really great examples of some very clever Internet entrepreneurs using it. “Done For You” is basically a service you offer on your blog that is all done for you, one great example is Done For You Meal Plans, something that I have seen very popular in the fitness niche. So if you want to lose weight you need to create a meal plan but the problem is, you got to spend days researching to make sure you get it right and then put it together. Instead fitness marketers put together the plan for you at a price. Now a lot of the time they can use the same plan for a lot of people so the work is minimal or they could even outsource it to someone else for the fraction of the price.

 

How To Add A Done For You Section To Your Blog

This is one of easiest things to do, find a problem, supply the solution, bill them! All you need to do now is create a page on your blog with your offer, add a PayPal link to purchase and then outsource the work at a very small fraction of the price paid.
chart Powerful Ways To Make Money With Your Blog

 

Affiliate Marketing

All of IncomeDiary’s income comes from affiliate commissions and I’m getting quite good at it, this has actually be my best month ever online by far! Now the best advise I could give you is testing, work as hard as you can to test everything possible. So IncomeDiary has been online for around 6 months and I have a lot of really popular content driving good traffic to affiliate offers but I knew I could do better so what I did was I used Google Analytics to find out which pages got the most visits and then used CrazyEgg to see what parts of a post are seen more and which links they clicked.  To a surprise, my most popular page in two days had no clicks on my affiliate links so what I did was included a green stop sign (something tested by Internet marketers) and I added it to the paragraph with my links. Over night I got a few clicks, although it wasn’t many, comparing it to zero, it meant a big difference.

 

How To Monetize Your Blog Using Affiliate Marketing

A couple tips that I really recommend you take advantage of when doing affiliate marketing are, ask for a better commission rate and also ask for a coupon code to give your readers a discount. Doing these two things will greatly increase your success at making money online with affiliate marketing because you will be able to convert more readers with a coupon code and with a higher payout then other affiliates, you will be able to invest more to get more conversions. The most important thing is how you display your affiliate links, there are a few different ways to offer affiliate links on your website, the ones I suggest are:
  • Comparison charts, this way you make the reader choose which one is the best choice. This works really well because you give them all the options and which ever one they take, you collect a commission on.
  • Recommendations, this converts better for me because the reader gets to see you using the product in action and so know you are not promoting it just to make money but because it actually works!
Simply linking to an affiliate link and hoping people will buy it isn’t enough!




hosting Powerful Ways To Make Money With Your Blog

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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The Ultimate Guide To Building a Successful Blog | Your 30 Day Plan!

Fast Start Blogging Success

Today I wanted to present my own personal plan for Blogging Success – a plan that could be followed and executed in as little as 30 days and one that, new, intermediate and even experienced bloggers can get value out of it. This is pretty well the complete system I used to create IncomeDiary.com.
Special Note: I am calling this a 30 Day Plan and all the steps can be completed in 30 days – but of course if your preference is to take things slower and take longer over it, that is possible also.
My Goal here is to help as many people as possible make their first dollars online in 30 Days or less and remember:

The longer you’re not taking action, the more money you’re losing

I should also say that the ORDER of Tasks is only a suggestion – this is the order that I would suggest but if you are an experienced blogger you may well have accomplished some of the days tasks already.
Additionally this is a post I intend to update on a regular basis. I might even create a book out of this post at some later date. You will note that with some topics I have gone into more detail than others, simply because I had not covered those topics in much detail before. My main goal here is to go beyond what appears on the Blogging eCourse so topics covered on the eCourse will get for the moment slightly less attention here.
I also encourage you to keep with The Plan – for some of you there will be a lot of new material here, stuff you have never come across before even, but a curious mind is a great help with learning and the more you learn about blogging, the more you will make online
This has been a great post to put together, a sort of MASSIVE TOP LIST in some ways. Please don’t be overawed with the amount of tasks – the important thing is to complete the tasks and even if it took you 30 weeks rather than 30 days you will ultimately be a far better blogger for it.
Also in particular note my Day 17 Contest and my offer to all of you who comment on this post before 15th June 2010.
I am also fully aware that sometimes new bloggers think they cannot replicate my success or that of other Pro-Bloggers – but really it is never to late to start. Indeed in some ways today is a better time to start than ever because there is more help available than ever and also remember what I have done with IncomeDiary.com has been accomplished in just over 12 months. Oh, and at the risk of repeating myself – if a 21 year old, dyslexic, college dropout like me can do it — why not you?
UPDATE: Since creating this post, 1000’s of people have taken part and enjoyed the guide, however so people have asked for more. I highly recommend you check out Become a Blogger which has all the tutorials and videos you will need to set up your blog, monetize it and then drive traffic to it. The program was created by Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick who I both know and was able to organize a $1 trial for all IncomeDiary readers so that you can try it with practically no risk!
product buy The Ultimate Guide To Building a Successful Blog | Your 30 Day Plan!
Let me know your thought and comments on this post — and of course your questions about any specific days task. As I said, I will be expanding on this post so your feedback will be a huge help in that respect.
To Our Success
Michael
PS: Before you start, you may want to briefly read my Blogging Start Up Mistakes.

Blog Your Way To Success – 30 Day Plan

Day 1: Getting Your Blog Online

It’s real simple, all you need to do to get your blog online is to buy your domain name, your web hosting, connect them together and then install your blog. If you have not already done so – you should also get my 7 Day Blogging eCourse

I personally recommend you:

Buy your domain from GoDaddy for $8.99/year and you can receive a 10% discount when you use the coupon code: cjcsave10
Buy your webhosting from HostGator for $4.99/month and you can get your first month for 1cent when you use the coupon code: Retireat21
Once you have done this, login to your GoDaddy account and update your nameservers with the ones HostGator gives you. After this all you need to do is the 10 second Wordpress install from your hosting CPanel – as detailed in this Post

Day 2: Editing Your Theme Preferences

Once you have installed your blog you need to choose and install your theme. I personally use and highly recommend Woothemes.com. Choose the theme of your choice and then to install it, log in to your Wordpress Admin and on the sidebar you should see a tab called appearance, then click Add New Theme. Once there, go to the top and click Upload, find your theme file and click Install Now. To set it as your theme, go to Themes and activate it.
If like me you’re using Woothemes then you should now see a button at the bottom of the Admin sidebar with the name of your Theme. Here you are able to play around with all the options of your theme, add advertisers, choose the size of images, featured posts and more. As well as this, you need to go to the Widgets page which is also under Appearance and drag the widgets you want to use for your blog.
Another thing I suggest you do is go down to settings and click discussion and tick the box, Enable threaded comments – this will allow readers to reply to specific comments. Another way to improve the look of your comments is to have a picture of you next to your comment, you can see that I do this on my blog. Most themes come with this already installed, however every user has to set their picture themselves at Gravatar. Once you have set it up, it will update all past comments on every blog with your picture and will include it in any future ones.

Day 3: Customizing Your Blog Design

I have used dozens of designers in the past, a lot come and go and it can be really hard to keep just one. However for those of you who don’t know where to get designers, here’s what I would do.
I would start by visiting TalkFreelance, which is a design forum, they have a few good designers looking for work, click here to see those people. If that didn’t work, I would try other forums such as Sitepoint, Digitalpoint and WarriorForum.
If it was just a header or logo change I needed, I would probably opt for a design competition, either at http://99designs.com or http://logomyway.com where you can sometimes get over 500 entries for your contest.

Day 4: Adding Logos, Favicons and further customizing your theme

OK, so you have had a designer create a logo for you or you have made one yourself. If you are using Woothemes then this next bit is quite easy. Just click on the name of your theme in the LH menu of your Admin area and you should see [Theme] Options. The screenshot below is from my RetireAt21.com site where I use the the Headlines theme from Woothemes
Editing a Wootheme to add Logo etc
Editing a Wootheme to add Logo etc
What is a FAVICON ? — check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon
Again this is a topic that we could make into a much bigger topic — but we are taking little steps here, you can learn more and improve more another day.
You can also of course get a designer to do this work for you – see Day 3 above

Day 5: Installing Plugins and Other Edits

Every blog needs a selection of Wordpress plugins to make it run more smoovely, the ones I use are below, but there are 1000’s to choose from at Wordpress.org
  • Podcasting Plugin which allows me to add a player to blog posts so people can play our audio interviews.
  • WP-ContactForm which is basically a contact form and really simply Plugin that works perfectly. For anyone who has tried to create a contact form on a normal website, you will realize just how hard it can be.
  • Comment Notifier which is basically an RSS feed for comments, alerting people who subscribe when there are new comments.
  • All in One SEO Pack which basically makes optimizing your blog for search engines really easy.
And if you not already done so – get yourself an AWeber account. Having an Aweber is essential when you start building your email list

Day 6: Creating Your Contact and About Page

These are two pages most people forget about but when I checked my stats, these two pages get some of the most traffic. People want to hear your story and what your blog is about, make sure to provide them with the information they are looking for. Secondly with your contact page you want to remember to include a contact form, a possible email, postal address and any social sites you are on. I have an office address as I didn’t want to put my home address up on the site. This proved to be a smart move because I often get sent free things companies and letters from readers.
I have two About Me pages and you can check them out here:
http://www.incomediary.com/about
http://www.incomediary.com/make-money-online-my-personal-story-how-i-created-incomediary-com
To add a page to your blog, go to Pages >> Add New. Once there it is really simple, just add the title of the page, for example “Contact Us” and then put the page details. For those of you who downloaded the contact page plugin I suggested, you can add a form by putting in the code:

Day 7: Styling Blog Posts

There is again much we could cover here — most people use the Visual Editor to create their posts and it works very well but I suggest you look at the code occasionally under the HTML editor.
You don’t need to know every bit of HTML code but knowing a few bits of code gives you a better understanding of web-pages and also of Search Engine Optimization.
A very simple option you can go with is to use H Tags for Headings / Important sections in your blog post. For SEO reasons I won’t explain in detail here it is also handy if you include some of your important keywords within those Tags.
See Screenshot below for example of how I used H2 Tag in this post:
HTML Editor In Wordpress
HTML Editor In Wordpress

This is H1 Heading

/

This is H2 Heading

/

This is H3 Heading

Initially I suggest you just do a dummy post and play around with it – trying different styles and previewing it to see what you like. The great thing about Wordpress is that you can save a draft and preview your changes
Note: I am only going into the simplest of stuff here – but it will I hope inspire you to find out more. (To be curious and learn even more)
If you fancy becoming a bit of an HTML Nerd (not essential) they you will find lots of simple code you can use on this Cheat Sheet
Also check out my Blog Post here for some of the more advanced styling options you may like to consider adding to your blog down the line:
http://www.incomediary.com/make-your-blog-stand-out-from-the-crowd

Day 8: No Leakage Rule

This is something I speak about a lot, in particular in one of my most recent posts ( http://www.incomediary.com/how-i-made-5000-in-the-first-month-with-a-brand-new-blog ). In simple terms, you don’t link out of your site unless it a commission earning link. i.e – you don’t have a blogroll, you have no advertisers and when you do link to someone, it should be an affiliate link. You then focus on funneling them to the pages that convert highest for you such as your squeeze page/optin box and affiliate posts, this way they either clicked to close their browser or they make you money.
Typically when you link to someone else, such as your advertisers and “friends/blogroll” they are competitors.
OK, I am simplifying things a lot here. I am not a fan of selling advertising on this site because when I do that I am accepting a ‘guaranteed’ but relatively low amount from an advertiser when if I did my job correctly I could earn far more on an affiliate commission offer.
That said, as I will mention later you may wish to consider selling advertising (as I do on RetireAt21.com) – but I personally think it limits your earning potential.

Day 9: Finding Affiliate Programs That Work

There are 1000’s of make money online products that I could promote but to make any money from it you have to pick a product that offers great value and converts well. Firstly I wouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket, I would choose at least two, preferably one low price point of around $30 and one higher at around $200.
There isn’t any sole place to find products, my top tip is to find products you like and then visit there site and scroll to the bottom, and usually they will have a link saying affiliates with details on how you promote them. A lot of the products I promote come from ClickBank and Commission Junction (CJ) which is basically a marketplace of affiliate programs.
So once you find your product, what makes it convert well? If we knew that, we would all be a lot more well of, however from my experience this is what works for me:
  • $1 Trial Offers
  • New Products – being the first to promote a new product or service gives you a HUGE advantage.
  • A well known brand – most people in America have heard of the GoDaddy adverts, because of that, they by far out pull any other domain registrar I promote.
  • The Best Product – I promote loads of theme companies but WooThemes converts the best because they are simply the best.
  • Proof It Works – When it comes to the eBooks I promote, the sales page with a real bank cheque in completely destroys the other sales pages.
These days before promoting any offer I always check out the Sales Page – I have come across some great products with lousy sales pages that have ended up earning me very little. Ask yourself – would this sales page convince me? If it doesn’t convince you then it is unlikely it will convince your readers.

Day 10: Creating Your First Affiliate Post

Affiliate posts are really just like this one, you provide great information on something and at the same endorse a product that you use and know that works. A lot of my income these days comes from blog posts that were created months ago. When you first start out you may not see much point in doing a promotion just to make a few bucks here and there – but I promise you after not too long at all, these amounts add up!
Today I want you to create a post with Affiliate links. Here is how I did mine:
  1. Find a product you are promoting that out performs anything else, in my case it’s Market Me Tweet which allows users to easily build a HUGE twitter following.
  2. Write a post on how you use the product to benefit you.
  3. Softly promote the product and give alternatives, this way if they don’t buy the one you suggest, hopefully they will go for another you mention instead of going else where to find one.
  4. Keep referring back to this post when ever someone asks you about Twitter or when you mention Twitter in another post.
I bet you didn’t think it was that simple? It really is, so many people think there is some secret to making money blogging but all you have to do is monetize value.

Day 11: Adding Recommended Products / Becoming an Affiliate

OK this is related to Day 9, but I thought I’d include some additional resources, especially if you are struggling to find affiliate offers to promote.
You know I am amazed the number of people who have started a blog with the idea of making money from it – without fully researching just how they are going to make that money.
Don’t start a blog for fun and profit (as opposed to a fun only blog) unless you have first considered how you will monetize the site.
I cannot possibly know everyone’s Niche but I am going to make a few suggestions that will at the very least get most people started with affiliate marketing.
Clickbank.com
Amazon.com
Ebay.com
Google Adsense
I like Clickbank a lot because the commissions are decent — 50% in normal and even 75% is possible. Additionally you can create your own product to sell on Clickbank and have the Clickbank army of affiliates promote for you.
Note — the only one I give serious consideration to these days is CLICKBANK but if you are in a Niche where you get a large number of visitors but are finding it difficult to monetize the GOOGLE ADSENSE is well worth considering
Of course it is much better if you have your own unique product to offer or you can find more specific offers for your niche. The more specific the offer the better the conversion, so it is worth while searching out some Special Products to recommend.
Another Note: Only promote products you believe in and would genuinely buy yourself. I regularly turn down affiliate offers just because I don’t like the product being offered.

Day 12: Add An Advertising Spot To Your Blog

Most of the time I like to promote affiliate products because I have a better opportunity of making more money, however sometimes it’s good to have guaranteed money. All WooThemes come complete with an advert manager that makes it easy to add/edit/delete advertisers. I suggest that until you find paying advertisers, you promote affiliate products in these Ad Spots and leave one spot for a banner saying Advertise Here. You can see an example of how I do this at RetireAt21.com (Of course it is better still if you are sold out and don’t need to have an “Advertise Here’ banner displaying.
Advertise Now - RetireAt21.com
Advertise Now - RetireAt21.com
TIP: When looking for affiliates adverting banners, I use Google Images and search affiliate product name, followed by 125 x 125, so for example Bloggingtothebank 125 x 125. This usually brings up a great selection of banners.
Another thing you want to do is add a advertise page which you link your banner to and in the header of your site. I would highly recommend copying my advertise page on Retireat21, it has worked very well for me.

Day 13: Creating a Affiliate Comparison Page

This is a technique I see nearly no one doing and has proven to work well for me. The first time I tried it was on Retireat21, I was earning around $1000 a month at the time just from banner adverts, adding this page doubled my income over night. The idea behind it is really simple, for whatever niche you are in, you have tried and tested lots of products, for me it was Wordpress themes, domains, hosting and the list continues. Now telling your readers just to go buy these and take your word for it, typically isn’t good enough. What I did was compared them to the other products in a table, so they could see clearly which offer to go for but even if they didn’t pick the one I recommend, I would still make money from the other product they went for instead. Check out one of my comparison pages here: http://www.incomediary.com/blogging-resources

Day 14: Adding Your Funnel System / building your mailing list

This is covered very nicely in other posts and it is such a huge topic I would be doing a disservice by only skimming over it here – so please check out the following post: Making Money with Email Marketing and an Autoresponder Series
and this Video:

My Biggest Tip Here: sign up for the AWeber and get their email marketing software to help you automate email follow up / newsletter delivery.

Day 15: Promoting a Product Launch

Once your funnel system is up and you’re getting optins, you now have another way of monetizing apart from the auto-responder. Sometimes when I see a product I like and think it’s provides value, then I will email my list, mentioning why they should buy it. This is a value of thousands of dollars every time I send it out, so say you just did it once a week, that’s an extra $4000 of monthly income. I would also like to point out that you don’t need a huge list, it’s the quality of the list.

Day 16: Create a Blog Post Plan

What I did when I started this site was put together as many post ideas as I could and then picked all the best ones. I still do this, usually on a flight when I can’t do anything else but it’s vital because it gives you enough work to do for at least the next 3 months.
For those who are thinking it, yes I did come up with this post on a flight ;-)

Day 17: Have a Blog Launch Contest

Setting Up A Contest – The Basics
To get the most interest and interaction keep the following in mind;
a) Simple Tasks (eg commenting) get the best response
b) As few rules as possible – but do make sure to have rules
c) The deadline to end the contest should not be too far in the future – no more than one month (but no less than a week)
d) Don’t just announce it on the blog – email your list, tweet it, Facebook it, get friends to mention it etc
e) Finally and MOST IMPORTANTLY — make your contest EXCITING – with strong copy and excitement and value that will encourage people to get involved.
When I first launched RetireAt21.com back in 2007 I ran a launch contest to build up Buzz and awareness for the site – it cost me and my sponsors a little money but it was well worth it.
But it does not have to cost very much at all – you can find sponsors or you can put some simple prizes for example your Top Commenter (Simple prizes – e.g. Amazon.com vouchers)
If funds are limited a contest need not cost you more than $100 in Total Price Fund – but if you can attract some good sponsorship the perceived value can be $1000’s
For more Competition ideas — Check out this Contest Ideas Post by Liz Strauss at Successfuf-Blog.com
Some of Liz’s ideas that I like for competition ideas are:
If they made a movie of my blog, it would be called ____ and ___ would play the main characters.
The theme song of this blog should be ____.
The official rock band of this blog should be ____.
Something Important – you can if you wish have launched your Blog before launching the Blog Launch Contest. Indeed, I would actually recommend that, as hopefully if you have been doing all the other things I have been suggesting, you will already have some following and traffic.
In other words launch a Beta Version of the blog first and then follow that up in a Full Launch and a Launch Contest.
More Help:
Darren Rowse over at Problogger.net has written an excellent article on How To Run A Blog Competition – well worth checking out for additional ideas.
TOP TIP
You can run a contest anytime – it doesn’t just have to be at Launch. For example if you are doing a BIG POST or a series of posts you can for example offer some sort of prize or bonus to everyone who makes a comment on your post. And the more comments you get the more interaction you have and the quicker you build up a sense of community.
Indeed – I am planning to shortly convert this Blog Post into a PDF report – adding some additional resources and information and I shall Offer everyone who comments on this post before 15th June 2010 – a copy of my new report as soon as it becomes available – Blogging To Success – The 30 Day Plan, just for commenting.

Day 18: Requesting Interviews

When I first got started this was my main way of getting noticed by other bloggers. I conducted 100’s of interviews at RetireAt21.com – mainly just using email. Later I moved to recording calls over Skype and Video (always getting the recordings transcribed – which is very important for good search engine content)
I get a lot of people asking me about interviewing and worrying that the people they request interviews of may refuse. Well everyone you don’t ask is going to refuse – that is for sure. It is a numbers game – once you land your first big interviews it becomes much easier to get more interviews. I discuss interviews in some detail along with Tips for creating great blog content in the video below:

Also well worth checking out is another post over at ProBlogger.net:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/06/11/how-to-land-big-interviews-when-your-blog-is-still-small/

Day 19: Conducting Your Interviews

I have conducted 100’s of interviews and the key to a successful interview is asking the right questions. Make sure you do your research before you ask the questions and if you are doing it over the phone or Skype, make sure you leave room to ask questions depending on the responses you get back from the interviewee.

Day 20: Optimizing Your Blog For Search Engines

Another BIG Subject, worthy of an extended post. Such an important subject that all I am going to do here is FOCUS on one element of it, which is the importance of using the most search engine friendly TITLE (Title Tag) you can for your blog post.
The Title Tag of your web-page or blog post is what you see at the very top of Your Browser and also almost always what the search engine uses to display and rang your page in its search result. See example of a search for ‘young entrepreneur’ below to see how the Top Results each include the Key Term searched for in the TITLE. Indeed I would go as far as to say it is almost impossible to rank TOPS for a significant keyword without that Keyword appearing in you Title.
title tag seo The Ultimate Guide To Building a Successful Blog | Your 30 Day Plan!
In Wordpress the Title of your Blog Post is usually also the TITLE TAG. There are ways around this for example by installing the All in One SEO Pack which allows the TITLE of your post to be different from that which is displayed at the top of the Browser (as the Title Tag).
This is a good thing if for example you want to use a Fun / Catchy Title for the blog post (which doesn’t include many keywords) but want to have a powerful TITLE TAG that includes KEYWORDS.
Now, I know this is confusing – so I am going to stop now – put simply it is best you remember to use KEYWORDS and likely search terms your visitors may use to find you when deciding to name (Title) your blog post – unless you have installed the All in One SEO Pack
Also highly recommended on this deep subject (and allow yourself sometime to read and understand) is this excellent at Yoast.com
Wordpress SEO

Day 21: Create Your First Top List

It’s no big secret that I love creating top lists, they just bring so damn much traffic, I can’t resist. Today I want you to create one of your own, here are a few suggestions:
  • Top Earning Women in Sport
  • 10 Reasons It’s Great To Be a Guy
  • 30 Most Influential People In Design
  • Top 30 Golf Blogs
You will notice that all of these examples could be used in any niche and if for some reason you don’t think it will work, then post below and I will give you a example of one for your niche.
Lists work because 1) They get visitors attention, 2) They are easy to scan, 3) Easy to read, 4) very easy to understand and above all EASY TO REMEMBER and pass on / re-tweet to friends.

Day 22: Create an Educational Post

It surprises me how many people – who claim to be experts in their niche, who seem reluctant to share what they know in real depth. It is almost like they want to be recognized as an EXPERT but they don’t want to share their KNOWLEDGE.
Folks that is not how this blogging thing works. Today, more than ever you must first GIVE in order to RECEIVE.
Failure to SHARE is in my opinion an example of Poverty Consciousness. I have people who ask me for advice about blogging openly saying they don’t want to let out the really good stuff in public. If you are in a niche where there is little FREE Info you may get away with that – and you can charge for what you know, but really those types of niches are becoming fewer and fewer.
Imagine where I’d be today if I had not been prepared to share what I know?
If you check IncomeDiary.com over you will see that a high number of my posts are EDUCATIONAL / HOW TO posts. But the interesting thing I have found is that the more info I put out there the more requests I get for speaking, workshops, private coaching and mentoring.
Think of your Educational Post as a SALES TOOL – a way to connect with potential clients who will in turn buy your more in-depth services because they are impressed with what you are giving away.
Check out some of my educational posts:
www.incomediary.com/my-6-figure-blog-content-strategy
www.incomediary.com/unusual-cheeky-and-fun-ways-to-get-inspiration-for-your-blog-posts
In summary – to be considered a real expert and an authority in your niche you have to demonstrate what you know. That is what Educational Posts are about.
What do you know? What problems can you help people solve? Answer those questions and you have an educational post.
And of course your educational posts can earn you affiliate commissions as well – as well as providing a useful service to your readers.

Day 23: Getting the most out of a blog post

Today I want you to ‘rest’ for a few moments and think about “How do I get the most out of a Blog Post?”
The obvious answer for some would be how do I place more affiliate links in the post – or find associated related resources (and products) that I can recommend to my reader.
Well, that would only be part of the answer because I would like to challenge you to think like THE VISITOR.
How could the visitor get more out of your post? How can you improve your post for your visitors benefit? That really should be the only question you ask, because when you do that,the rest (including additional products to promote) will take care of itself.
How can you deliver your reader more value?

Day 24: Driving Traffic From Twitter

There is no real logic in having this under day 24 – because of course if you have been following my videos such as 1000 Visitors A Day – Blog Traffic Secrets you will know how important I consider Twitter. So consider this a reminder – especially if you have been neglecting Twitter recently.
Check out my specific Twitter Post at
http://www.incomediary.com/twitter-tips-and-tricks-to-drive-traffic-to-your-sites and make sure to BUY MarketMeTweet (essential for TWITTER)
Talking of Twitter and email lists and such things I just got the following message from Mark – a long time subscriber:
I’ve been subscribed to one of your lists now for ages, probably going on 2 years I reckon, and I’ll be honest, I never really paid much attention to your emails. Anyway… recently I’ve been tuning in a bit more (glad I did too!) and I’ve actually started my own blog now! – One of the videos you did on Traffic seemed to completely simplify the process – I’ve just got hold of that Tweet Adder software, and I’m already getting a load of followers and it’s day 1. LOL!
Mark proves a great point here – one I have been aware of for sometime – People don’t always act straight away, even when it appears in their best interest to. The important thing is that Mark has now taken action and I am sure you will find many of your own subscribers are similar.

Day 25: Creating Posts Search Engines Will Find

OK, on Day 20 we went over Optimizing Your Blog For Search Engines (SEO) but this is such an important subject that it deserves your attention on at least 2 days out of this 30 Day Plan. Actually you should be thinking SEO all the time with every blog post you write.
Anyway – here is some additional help via Nathan Rice – well worth a read
http://www.nathanrice.net/blog/ultimate-guide-to-wordpress-seo-optimized-heading-tags
I will admit that I am a little concerned that not all that I am covering in this 30 Days is being understood by everyone, especially with regards to SEO so I encourage you to email me Your Questions. I cannot promise to answer every question individually but your feedback will be used to improve on this Guide, the PDF Report and the book I may eventually write.

Day 26: Making Your Blog More “Sticky”

If you have been blogging for a while you are bound to have heard the terms’ “Make your blog sticky”
But what does sticky mean? Well for me it means the following:
a) Producing content that interests and intrigues my visitors so that they ’stick around’ to see more of what I have to offer
and
b) Most importantly having strategies to bring those visitors back.
It is often said that you only have one chance to make a good impression – and I am afraid the same is also true on a website.
It is difficult for us as website owners to view our websites as a NEW VISITOR – but it is something I regularly try to do. Pick and page on your website and ask yourself: What is intriguing about this webpage? What makes me want to click on the links and navigate the site? How are visitors able to interact with you? (Opt-in, join mailing list, subscribe to RSS etc)
Making your website sticky is perhaps one of the biggest and most important topics in blogging and I do at a later date plan to do an extended post on this topic.
For now I will just highlight a few key points:
1) Have multiple ways for people to connect with you – by offering free reports, Tips of The Week, RSS subscribe options etc. This is vital if you don’t want that first time visitor to become a one time only visitor.
These days I get a lot of traffic from the search engines – often taking visitors to posts I wrote some time ago. If I am to connect with these visitors and get them to STICK around so they see more of what I have to offer then there needs to be multiple ways to connect – and not just some obscure subscribe link hidden away at the bottom of the page.
Have a look at my current design to see the ways I encourage people to connect with me.
Encourage Your Visitors To Connect With You
Encourage Your Visitors To Connect With You
2) Make your website interactive – encourage comments, have competitions, polls etc
3) Have and ANGLE and be YOURSELF – add personality to your website by being authentic and genuine and caring. OK, for some of us we may have to ‘exaggerate’
Today we don’t have to be PERFECT in order to be considered an AUTHORITY or a GURU — I actually make a big point of some of my limitations and it appears people like what I say all the more for it.
I present myself as being a:
Dyslexic,Young Entrepreneur, Internet Marketer, Adventurer and Blogger who invites you to start making an additional income online today, full-time or part-time
Day 27: Connecting With Readers
Readers like to feel special! They like to be recognized and remembered. When I visited Gary Vaynerchuk in New York he showed me that when people commented on his blog, he would sometimes personally reply to their comment via email, thanking them for reading and reached out to them. Gary is also very good I have discovered in responding to comments in other blog posts that feature him.
To be honest – I don’t know were he gets the time – but then he hustles more than just about anyone else I know.
You can bet your dollar that if you had that experience with the author of a great blog that you would return often and would make sure to comment again.
We don’t always get the time to respond and I struggle myself from time to time, but responding to blog comments is one of the best ways I have found to connect more directly with my readership.

Day 28: Connecting With Other Bloggers

Not sure why this appears as a Day 28 task – because frankly it is so easy to do.
Many bloggers live a lonely existence working at home – but online I find most of them are very sociable, welcoming email and interaction.
We have already mentioned interviews. That is my favorite way to connect with bloggers I don’t already know in person.
Even just dropping an email to say ‘Hi, I enjoyed your site’ along with a quick comment is a nice way to start the conversation going. But please don’t draft up some ’standard email’ that you shoot of to everyone – it is so obvious and I get them all the time (and they get deleted) – make your email stand out. Use clever subject lines (‘Hi’ is not a clever subject line). Explain what you liked about their site.
You can later follow up with an interview request if you wish. But first concentrate on building a relationship.
Chances are very high that is you interview someone they will blog about it or they will Re-Tweet about it. Or if you have become friends they will mention you in posts, link to your content (and you vice versa)
If you have a product to sell then they chances are good you can JV together / they can become an affiliate for you (and again vice versa)
TOP TIPS:
a) Sometimes people at the very top of their niche are difficult to connect with directly (harder for them to see what is in it for them) An alternative approach is to just write and say how much you enjoy their work and ask if there is anyway you can assist them? (Explain your talents, how you are just getting started etc)
And if it is practical for you – there is always the option of offering to work for free – just so you can learn and develop your own skills
b) Don’t forget FORUMS – great place to connect with other website owners and bloggers. Forums are also great places for getting ideas for future blog posts etc

Day 29: Perform Blog Testing

Testing is vital to the success I have had. When I first started online I admit I didn’t give it much thought but these days I am always looking for ways to tweak things.
It is such a huge subject and again one I will return to that for now I am just going to give you a couple of resources to check out
a) CrazyEgg.com – This is my friend Neil Patel’s website and it offers a very simple and easy way to find out where people click. Check out a Demo here — https://www.crazyegg.com/demo#overlay
If you know where people click then you are better placed to decide where to place your most valuable content / opt-ins
b) Install Google Analytics
Google Analytics gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness.
Testing is vital to the success I have had, before testing I wasn’t making half of what I make today.

Day 30: Edit Your Blog Depending On The Results From Testing

If you are using products like Google Analytics and CrazyEgg.com you will have discovered lots of information about your blog which will allow you improve it even further.
To give you a quick example I noticed recently in Google Analytics that I was appearing on the second page of Google search results for a fairly decent keyword and knowing what I know about SEO and using All in One SEO PackI have tweaked my TITLE Tag so that I can further on my search result. (Not yet on page 1 but I am hopeful)
Below is an excellent video which compliments the last two days in particular. Testing can appear boring and it can even be quite frustrating at times – but it is what separates the amateurs from the professionals in my opinion.

Blogging can be as simple or as complicated as you wish to make it. Much of what I have explained over these 30 tasks will appear complicated to some but I should emphasis that thanks to the power of WORDPRESS as long as you are a decent writer and have worthwhile information to share there is an excellent chance you can achieve much success without even implementing 50% of what I have explained here.
That said – clearly somethings are more important than others so I will leave you with some homework – 5 Topics that will make a huge difference to your online success:

Top Lists, Twitter, Search Engine Optimisation (Especially your choice of Title Tag), Installing Google Analytics and Interviews

Congratulations – You Have Made It To The End Of Day 30!

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