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10 Tips To Boost Your Affiliate Commissions!

"10 Quick Tips To Boost Your Affiliate Commissions!"

Are you having trouble making money from affiliate programs, or are you looking for some *alternative* ways to increase your existing income from them?

Then here is a quick list to get you going:

1. Write your own affiliate program ads. If every other affiliate uses the same ads you do, that does not give you an edge over your competition.

Be different! And let people know WHO you are! This will give yourself an massive advantage over all the other affiliates.

2. Did you ever try to create an ebook? No? Then just do it! It is easier than you think. Then give it away for free to your visitors. They will love you for it!

Put your advertisement and the links to your affiliate programs in it and submit it to some ebook directories.

3. Start your own affiliate program directory. Join a large number of affiliate programs and list them all in a directory format on your web site. Then just advertise your free affiliate program directory.

4. Participate in chat rooms related to the product you're reselling. Start a conversation with a person without trying to sell to them. Later on, while you are chatting, mention the product you're reselling.

5. Use a personal endorsement ad. For sure only use one if you've actually bought and know the product or service for the affiliate program.

Share your own experience and tell people what kind of benefits and results you've received using the product.

6. Use your signature file to advertise the products you're reselling. With an attention grabbing headline and a good reason for them to visit people will come to your affiliate site. But make sure your sig file doesn't go over 5 lines.

7. Join a web ring. It should attract the same type of people that would be interested in buying the product
you're reselling. You could also trade links on your own with other related web sites.

8. Participate on web discussion boards. Post your comments, answer other people's questions, and ask your own questions. Include your affiliate text link in your sig file under each message you post.

9. Create your own free ezine. Then use it to advertise the affiliate programs you've joined. Submit your ezine to online ezine directories and promote it on your web site.

10. If you are more advanced then why not start a private membership site? Use it as a free bonus if people buy the product you resell.

You see, the list is endless and I could go on and on with even more tips...

If you just be creative on your own and think up some other ways I'm sure you will increase your affiliate commissions.

Don't forget that, no matter what you recommend will reflect directly on you. If your recommendation is a good
quality product or service that is reasonably priced, your customers will continue to trust you.

And further on they will be interested in your future recommendations. This way you will easily be able to build a trustful relationship between you and your costumers – which truly is one of the keys to success!

About the author:

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Marcus Schroefel is an Author, Publisher and Success Coach.
Visit: http://www.mindclicking.comYou can get more proven
affiliate marketing tips delivered to your e-mail box just
5 minutes away --- for FREE by sending a blank e-mail to:
affiliatemarketersecrets@robotreply.com
***********************************************************
© 2004 Marcus Schroefel. All rights reserved.

Tips for Creating Keywords

Your prospects type in keywords into search engines to find your web site. Implementing simple keyword strategies can dramatically improve your search engine ranking and web traffic. Many search engines and directories read the information in the META tags of web pages to index and cannot index your site without them. META tags are hidden in your HTML code. The web visitor does not see them. The most important META tags for search engine indexing are the title and description tags. To see what META tags look like go to html http://www.startasecretarialbusiness.com/reprint/meta-tags. Other search engines use the description and site title you provide when registering a site. Some search engines use the text in web pages, especially the first words, sentences, or paragraphs to list web pages. That's why it's vital to place your most relevant keywords in your headline and the first paragraph of each page. Follow these tips to write effective keywords, page titles, and site descriptions. Here are some tips on writing keywords. - Make a list of 5 to 20 keywords and phrases that are relevant to your web site. - Use phrases your prospects may enter into a search engine when searching for your topic, product, or service. Web visitors often enter phrases rather than words when searching for web sites. - List the most important keywords and key phrases first. - Include your name, business name, product names, and the city and state you're conducting business in. - Include common misspellings. - Include the plural form of the word. The following are examples of key phrases related to web design: Web site design, web design, san diego california, web page design, web designer, webmaster, web site development, five star web design. Page titles are very important for search engine placement. The title of a web page appears on top of the page in the title bar of the browser. Web pages that use search terms in the title will rank higher with some search engines than pages that contain them in the text only. Follows these tips to write your page titles. - Write a powerful headline for the title of your site. The site title is often used by the search engines to list you in their directory. Make your title compelling to grab your potential buyers' attention. - Keep the length 20 words or less. Longer titles may be cut off in the search engine listing. - Create a different title for each web page. - Include the most important keywords and phrases. - By starting your page title with a letter toward the beginning of the alphabet (A, B, C) you may increase your chances of appearing near the top of the listing in some search engines. Example of Title - Five Star Web Design in San Diego, California, designs easy-to-navigate web sites to maximize sales. The site description is used by some search engines to list the description of your web site. When providing your own description in the META description tag, your listing may be displayed in the search engine listing as you provide it. If you don't provide a META description tag, the search engines will generate their own description from the content on your page. Follow these guidelines to write your descriptions. - Make your description informative and compelling to attract potential buyers to your site. Provide a benefit or solve a problem. - Include your most important keywords and phrases. - Write descriptions of your web site in various lengths (one to three sentences). Submit the maximum allowable length to the search engines to convey a persuasive message. Example of description - Get your web site noticed and increase online sales with an easy-to-read-and-navigate web site. Spend time writing keywords, descriptions, and page titles. To maintain a high ranking consistently, include keywords in your headlines, first paragraphs of each web page, page titles, and site descriptions. It can make a big difference in your search engine positioning. by Leva Duell Copyright: © 2004 ------------------------------------------------- Resource Box: Looking for typing work at home? Start a secretarial business. The Secretarial-Business-in-a-Box provides instant tools you need to start and run a successful secretarial service. F*ree articles and business start-up newsletter at http://www.startasecretarialbusiness.com. ------------------------------------------------- Read more articles by this author at: http://www.startasecretarialbusiness.com/articles_reprint.html

16 Simple Things To Check Before Joining a "Pay Per Sale" Affiliate Program

One way to make money from blogging is to sign up for an affiliate program. There are many of these around but it is good to keep some of the following guidelines in mind before you sign up.

1. Does the affiliate program offer you a free way to join without buying the product or service?
2. Contact other affiliates already in the program to see if they have had any problems.
3. Is the product or service related to your target audience?
4. Can they notify you by e-mail when a sale is made?
5. Do they offer backend products so you can get repeat sales from the same person?
6. How often will you receive a commission check?
7. Do you get credited for a sale if people come back in month and then make a purchase.
8. Can you get around-the-clock help online or offline?
9. Do you get a large percentage of each sale as commission?
10. Do they provide you with proven sales material? (links, banners, classified ads, sales letters etc)

11. Will they give you the leeway to create promotional ads.
12. Do they offer you access to an online sales stats page?
13. Do they use a reputable system to track your sales?
14. Does the affiliate program pay commission for sales of people who sign up under you?
15. Can they offer customers a lot of different ordering options, so in return you won't lose sales.
16. Will they keep in contact with you on a regular basis by e-mail?

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About the author:
Lisa M Cope - Creator of http://Find-1.com an online directory of information, products and services and http://flipidy.com a premier source for online business information. Contact Lisa@flipidy.com

Generating High Quanitities of Blog Content - Recruit Writers

This is the Fifth post in a series of tips on how to generate higher quantities of content for your blog. Check out the previous posts at Set Targets, News Sites and Aggregators, Start a New Blog, Break Down Your Posts and Ecto.

Get others to write content for you. I've often asked other people to write an article, review, reflection or rant for me on a topic that they have a passion or interest in. I don't pay for content (some people do) but I try to make it worth the writer's while by giving a link back to their site or by promoting them and encouraging them. I've also bought gifts for one or two people who've written me significant amounts of content over time.

Some writers will also allow you to co-publish posts. In this way they their post would appear on both their own blog and yours.

5 free steps to online income

Copyright 2004 Darren Power

If you are new to the online business world and would like to get involved without risking any of your hard earned cash then this article will show you one way to get involved for free.

We are going to discuss ways to promote affiliate programs without your own site and without spending any money.

Best of all if you choose a program related to your interests then it won't even seem like any work is involved.

The 5 steps are aimed at promoting a product while you go about your normal daily surfing activities.

Before we get on to step 1 you need to locate and join an appropriate affiliate program.

This program ideally should be 2 tier, which means you get paid for sales made through your link as well as for the sales made by affiliates that you refer through your link.

To find an affiliate program search at Google for "affiliate directory" then visit the directories and search the directory for a keyword related to your interests.

Once you have joined a program you will receive a link to promote, you may also receive a second link to promote the affiliate program itself which can be used to recruit tier 2 affiliates.

Once you have a link take the following steps to incorporate the affiliate link into your surfing activities:

1. Add a signature to your emails, this will mean that every mail you send will have a tag line at the bottom which, in this case, will promote the service that you are affiliated with. Check the help files in your email program for instructions on how to do this.

2. If you already visit forums related to the product add a signature to your profile. This means that every time you post your link will be added to the end of your post.

Locate more forums where people interested in the product might hang out. Do a search for a keyword followed by forum at Google.

Try and think of all the different related subjects that might have forums and identify as many as possible.

Once you have identified your forums visit them all and join the ones that allow posters to add a signature file to their posts. Then get involved in conversations be useful whenever possible and every time you post an item your affiliate link will be displayed. This will be a lot less like work if you are promoting in a niche that is of interest to you.

3. If you have an eBay account then create an About Me page and include details of the affiliate program there. Click help once logged in to eBay and search for About Me to find instructions on creating your page.

Whenever you list an auction include a line at the top of the description that invites viewers to visit your About Me page.

4. Locate sites that have visitors that might be interested in the product that you are affiliated with especially those that have a mailing list or an ezine. Then contact the site owner and suggest that they join the affiliate program. If they join using your link you will earn a percentage of any commissions that they earn.

5. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat. With so many things success comes down to numbers. The more site owners you contact and the more forums that you post at the more commission you will earn.

Do all of the above and you will earn money for no investment, it may take time and might start slowly but it will happen.

About the Author:

Darren Power is the author of The Money Seed, your quickstart guide to making money online. You can join his affiliate program at http://www.themoneyseed.com/affiliate.

The Inside Story on the Sale of the Ensight Blog

Jeremy C. Wright, the blogger who sold his blog, has been getting a bit of criticism for doing so in the last few days and has decided to give his readers The Inside Story on the Sale. It makes for fascinating reading giving an insight into the thought process that went on in his mind in the lead up to the sale, why someone would be willing to pay for his blog and why 'his blog'.

'Ultimately I still believe blogs need to fall under a different valuation model because you're buying more than just the three Big Ones (brand, content and traffic). You're also buying into a knowledge network, you're getting a writer and (by definition) you are getting staying power.

All blogs grow as long as the writers keep writing. It's what naturally happens in a social networking situation. While I'm not big on social networking sites, per say, I do know that the same rules that apply to real world social networking apply to blog social networking: all active nodes will attract more active nodes.'

I don't know why anyone would criticize Jeremy for selling his blog - I think its something that we'll see more and more of in future and suspect that the reported $15,000 he got (although he seems to be indicating it wasn't this much) is just the tip of the iceberg of what blogs will fetch down the track. Good on him!

Generating High Quanitities of Blog Content - Ecto

This is the Fourth post in a series of tips on how to generate higher quantities of content for your blog. Check out the other posts in this series at Check out the previous posts at Set Targets, News Sites and Aggregators, Start a New Blog, Break Down Your Posts, Ecto and Recruit Writers.

Use a blogging tool like Ecto. I'm a big user of this tool. It is blogging tool that allows you to post offline (ie I can take my laptop to the cafe where there is no wireless net connection and still blog - to upload later).

It also has a nifty two click 'blog this' function that lets you highlight text in an article that you want to quote. With just one key stroke you can import the highlighted text, article title and a link to the article into your blog tool from your browser (in a pre-determined format) to be posted with just another click (some editing is sometimes needed depending upon how the article is formatted). They also have a 'what you see is what you get' editing feature and a drag and drop image uploader.

I use the Mac version (version 2 - still in beta) which has a few extra features than the Windows one but I've heard the Win version is just as helpful. I know that using Ecto during the Olympic games enabled me to post over 100 posts per day on our Olympics Blog.

Generating High Quanitities of Blog Content - Break Posts Down

This is the third post in a series of tips on how to generate higher quantities of content for your blog. Check out the other posts in this series at Check out the previous posts at Set Targets, News Sites and Aggregators, Start a New Blog, Break Down Your Posts, Ecto and Recruit Writers.

Break your longer articles down into smaller bite sized posts on more targeted topics. When I first started blogging I used to write very long rants and reflections on topics. These days I still do occasionally but as I do I always now ask myself - 'can I break this into a series?' There are multiple reasons to write a series of posts rather than a long article including:

1. You're more likely to keep your readers attention with some short sharp bursts of writing than a really long diatribe. I rarely get all the way through reading a long post of someone else unless its compelling reading.
2. You might generate some repeat visits to your site if you post on the same topic over a few days telling your reader to come back tomorrow for the next installment.
3. You'll generate more page views this way which is good if you're running impression based ads on your site and link from one post to the next in the series.
4. You individual pages will rank higher in Google usually with a more targeted post than a long one that has many themes. ie a post with one point is more likely to rank well on that point than an article with ten points.
5. You will probably get better and more relevant ads from contextual advertising like Google.

Of course this is partly personal preference - a lot of people like the long rant and are frustrated by having to navigate numerous pages of a series. Your choice. Let us know what you think in comments below.

Generating High Quanitities of Blog Content - Start a New Blog

This is the third post in a series of tips on how to generate higher quantities of content for your blog. Check out the other posts in this series at Check out the previous posts at Set Targets, News Sites and Aggregators, Start a New Blog, Break Down Your Posts, Ecto and Recruit Writers.

Start a new blog - Many of the successful professional bloggers that I've observed over the past few months have highly targeted topics and themes for their blogs (for example Weblogs Inc's stable of blogs). There are many benefits of having a niche blog both in terms of getting ranked in Google and getting quality contextual ads. However there is only so much that you can blog about each day on most topics.

I realized a few months ago that most days I could find quality material for at least 5-10 posts on my Digital Camera blog but that unless there was a trade show on that I generally had a lot more time to blog each day than it took for those posts. As a result I've diversified my blogs and have started another four blogs (including this one) in the past fortnight. Now rather than just posting 5-10 posts on Digicams each day I can post 5-10 posts on four subjects. I've just quadrupled the amount of content that I could post each day.

Of course you need to be careful that you don't bite off more than you can chew - add a blog and see how it goes. If you find you've still got time to post more add more until you hit a level that doesn't burn you out but that gets you generating an optimum quantity of content each day.

To Outward Link or not to Outward link....

There is a good article from Wayne Hurlbert at SEO Chat about the pros and cons of outward bound links in terms of SEO on your blog.

"Few topics in search engine optimization (SEO) cause as many heated disputes as the concept of linking out to other sites. Whenever the subject of linking to other sites arises in conversation or on and Internet message forum, the sides in the debate are certain to become very polarized....

Most SEO professionals tend to agree that linking out provides no real boost in link popularity. They rightly point to the fact that the search engines, and especially link-obsessed Google, reward incoming links. The search engines provide no weight to the links going to other websites. With that in mind, many website owners are reluctant to link out to other sites....

Outbound links are not all bad, according to many Internet marketing specialists. By linking out to other related sites, a visitor is provided with even more helpful information on the topic. Sending to traffic to other useful websites is especially important for purely informational sites...."

Read more at Linking Out: Finding the Benefits

Affiliate Marketing What Is It And Why Use It?

Affiliate Marketing What Is It And Why Use It?
By Stephen Warren

Affiliate Marketing is having Affiliates do your Marketing for you. What I mean by Affiliate is someone who tells people about your product/service and you pay them for a desired response, such as a purchase.

Affiliate Marketing is one of the best ways to get the word out about your product/service.

The best way to pay Affiliates is pay per sale. This means that you only have to pay your Affiliates when they actually make a sale. This reduces your advertising costs dramatically. your Affiliates take on all the risks so you don't have to worry about wasting your money on advertising which may not produce any results.

Using Affiliate is a very cheap way to advertise, however it is very effective. The software required to start up your own Affiliate program can cost only about $50 per month.

Then after that just wait for people to start promoting your product/service for you.

Please remember that 5% of your Affiliates will do 95% of the selling. What I mean by this is that most of your Affiliates will just sit there and do nothing. This can be countered if you teach them what to do, exactly how to do it and providing everything for them so they have to do as little work as possible.

To find out about teaching your Affiliates please see the "How To Super Charge Your Affiliates" article

You don't have to use this form of advertising just to sell your product or service. You can also use it to grow your opt-in mailing list. This is discussed in another article.

How Much Should You Pay Your Affiliates

How much you pay your Affiliates really depends on how much your product/service costs, its profit margin, how much you're willing to give up and what action you want to take place.

Lets say that your product is priced at $100. Lets also assume that it cost you $10 to make it. This leaves you with $90 profit.

How much of this do you want to give away to the person that made this sale possible?

Personally, I believe that you should give a rather high percentage of the profits back to the affiliate (Depending on how many sales they regularly generate), because without them, you wouldn't have made that particular sale at all, so reward them for it.

A fairly decent reward is about 50% of the revenue generated. Your product is priced at $100 so a $50 commission is quite generous. It really depends on your other costs (such as a mortgage) you have, which would help decide on a fair commission to both you and the Affiliate.

Another factor which plays a part is how much additional advertising you do, such as pay per click. For example, if you rely solely on your Affiliates to Market for you, then you may want to reduce the commission you pay to them to help you survive. However, you may want to pay them more, to encourage them to send more sales you way. It really is a judgment call.

On the other hand, if you advertise in other ways effectively, then you can afford to pay higher commissions, because you're not putting all your eggs in one basket.

In the end it's all down to how greedy or generous you are. The best advice I can give you is to pay the affiliate what you think he/she deserves. Hopefully that way everyone is happy and earning their fair share.

That is the key to a successful affiliate program.

http://www.marketershandbook.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

The Key to a Successful Affiliate Program

The Key to a Successful Affiliate Program
By Michael Southon

Two Christmases ago I tugged on one of those paper crackersand after a small bang, out popped a piece of yellow paperthe size of a credit card.

On one side was a riddle that didn't make much sense, buton the other side was an 'Inspirational Quote' that made alot of sense.

So much so, that I still have it in my wallet.

This is what it said: "The shortest and best way to makeyour fortune is to let people see clearly that it is intheir interests to promote yours".

I'm constantly amazed to see affiliate programs that offer20%, or even as little as 15%, to their affiliates.

It is generally accepted that the production of anyinformation product is only 10 percent of the wholeprocess.

What's the other 90 per cent? Marketing!

My own affiliate program gives 50% commissions, and Iwouldn't dream of offering less. After all, who makes thesale - me or the affiliate?

It may be disappointing to see 50% of your sale price goingto your affiliates. But it's worth remembering this:without your affiliate, that sale simply wouldn't haveoccurred.

Of course, there are many other factors involved inbuilding a successful affiliate program, but this is thefirst and most important: make your affiliates your equalpartners, because they'll be doing 90% of the work.

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Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3
years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to use this
simple technique to build a successful online business. Click
here to find out more: http://EzineWriter.com/
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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

How To Win The Affiliate Game

How To Win The Affiliate Game
By Michael Southon

Are you frustrated with your Affiliate Programs?

I used to be. Very frustrated! One day, in sheerdesperation, I wrote to one of my affiliateprograms and suggested that the market was nowsaturated with their product - it was no longerpossible to sell it.

The next day I received a very nice reply. "TheInternet is HUGE", they said. "We predict it willbe five years before the market is saturated withour product. And long before that, we will haveintroduced our next product." They were right, ofcourse. The problem was not with the market (theInternet is huge). Nor was the problem with theirproduct. The problem was in the way I waspresenting it.

Since then, my affiliate sales have soared. Why?Because I learnt a few secrets to winning theaffiliate game. Here they are:

1. Choose affiliate programs that relate veryclosely to the theme of your website. Let me giveyou an example. Of the three affiliate products Isell from my web site, the one that does best bya long way is an eBook that shows people how togenerate free Ezine advertising. Why does it doso well? Because my website is a directory ofezines and most of my visitors are alreadyinterested in Ezine Advertising before they evenarrive at my website - I don't have to persuadethem very much.

2. Buy the product yourself! Research acrossdozens of affiliate programs shows that at least70% of sales in any affiliate program are made bythe small percentage of affiliates who actuallybuy the product they're selling. It makes sensedoesn't it (how can you recommend somethingyou've never used)?

3. Banners - they don't work anymore, and someexperts believe banners will actually damage youraffiliate sales.

4. Personal recommendation. The human factor isvery important on the Internet - people want toknow that someone else has bought the product andthat it worked for them. But to write aconvincing personal recommendation, you'll haveto buy, read and use the product you're selling.

5. 'Over-selling' - this is the most commonmistake of affiliates. Keep in mind that all youneed to do to succeed with affiliate programs isto get your potential customer to click throughto the affiliate website in an 'open-to-buy'mindset. If the affiliate program is good, theaffiliate website will make the sale. So don'ttry to sell the product from your website - justaim to get a click on your affiliate link.

5. Standard Ads. When you join an affiliateprogram, you'll probably be given some standardads to use. Don't use them! Why? Because yourpotential customer has probably seen those exactsame ads on dozens of websites and in dozens ofEzines. And if that standard ad hasn't led themto buy the product so far, it probably won't now.Something new and original is required.

6. Back-end sales. Once you're succeeding in oneaffiliate program, join another program thatoffers a related product and use the techniquethat marketers call 'back-end' sales. It's a wellknown fact that people are much more likely tobuy from someone they have already bought from.So when someone makes a purchase from youraffiliate link, send them a nice follow-upletter. At the end of the letter, tell them aboutyour other affiliate product and how it can helpthem.

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Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3
years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to use this
simple technique to build a successful online business. Click
here to find out more: http://EzineWriter.com/
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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

The next marketing tool: Design

Design sells. It’s something that all of us know, but few of us consciously acknowledge. There is an age old adage that warns people not to “judge books by their cover.” In other words, we shouldn’t judge people or products by their appearance. But this isn’t true in America. We do judge books by their cover – in fact we spend billions of dollars on products that have prettier “covers.”

Many people are aware how easy it is to create a web page and put your business online, but you have to ask yourself: is it going to be enough? Sure, you can get all the vitals of your business online and available for the whole world to see, but will your visitors remember your site? Will they trust it? More importantly, will your site cause them to contact you after leaving the web site?

iPods, cargo pants and cell phones.

Oh my! What do these three items have in common you might ask? Design, of course.

Back in 2001 Apple Computers unveiled their new offering to the tech world: the iPod. This smart looking little gadget was an MP3 player, one of thousands already on the market. Against all odds, the iPod has risen above its vast competition and become a common household term. What can we attribute to Apple’s success? The iPod did not offer any features that other MP3 players were already offering, except a sleek design, stunning advertising and Apple’s clever branding. Great design has obviously paid off for Apple. In the first quarter since releasing the iPod, Apple more than tripled its net profits and sold nearly 900,000 iPods! Some may even speculate to say that the iPod has taken Apple from a failing company to the leader in portable music.


Old Navy started off as just another value clothing store spawned from the successful Gap Inc. While this company had the advantage of already having a multi-billion dollar brand backing it, it had no incentive for customers to actually buy the clothes. Old Navy has since become one of the leading clothing retailers in America becoming a multi-billion dollar brand on its own feet. Old Navy’s president, Jenny Ming, attributes this success to design. Old Navy has taken a new approach to advertising and clothing style relying on fresh, new design. It seems to have worked, attracting millions of customers to their cargo pants, PJ bottoms and fleece jackets.

Cell phones. They’re everywhere: on the street, in cars, and even the hands of thirteen year old girls. No amount of numbers is needed to prove that cell phones have become an everyday accessory as common as a pair of sunglasses. Back in the early nineties, Nokia realized that cell phones might one day catch on and become something of an accessory. The idea was brought up that cell phones could be made in a variety of colors and in attractive shapes. Shortly after concept, Nokia’s rounded cell phones with changeable plates were introduced into the market. They were an instant success. Since then Nokia has come to be the world leader in cell phones, owning nearly 40% of the world market. Cell phone design hasn’t been the same since.

Taking these ideas to the internet

Okay, so it’s understandable how design sells, but web sites aren’t tangible products like iPods or cell phones. Design of web sites goes beyond designing something that “looks cool” or uses fancy fonts. The design of web sites goes into the realm of usability, information design and graphical appearance. All three of these aspects must come together to create a great web site design.

First off, your web site must be usable. This means that the web site visitor must be able to read, navigate and use the different elements of your site. A web site is no good if visitors cannot find where your nearest office is located. Secondly, the information contained within the web site must be arranged in a way that visitors will naturally find the information they need in the least amount of effort possible. Lastly, your web site has to look great. It has to have a professional look and one that’s both pleasing to the visitor and conveys the image you need your company to portray. Would you expect a criminal defense attorney’s site to be composed of light blue and pink hues? Strong, vibrant colors project authority and power; qualities you would definitely want in a criminal defense lawyer.


Wrapping it up

Design is a major part of modern day business. Making sure your business has a well designed web site ensures you are giving your business the best possible chance. A poorly designed site can be a waste of money and effort. Don’t take the chance; hire a professional to do the job.

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About the author:

Kyle Neath is an experienced web developer, developing dozens of successful web sites across California. See more of his work at www.neathdesign.com

Blogs, like all forms of writing, are an art form

Writing…Blogs…Blogs are on-line journals where people express themselves through writing. Writing…Writing is the process where one puts down words of a language in a format that others can read. This process has not been around very long; to use one of my writing teacher’s favorite sayings: “Writing has only existed for one day in the one year that humanity has existed.” Speaking and thinking come much easier than writing. These processes just flow out naturally like a river of consciousness; sometimes we hardly have to think about doing them. Anyone and everyone can write words down on paper but that doesn’t mean it’s ‘good writing’, myself included. Like most things in life, our society already takes writing for granted which is proving to expose more of our ignorance. Writing is a new form of expression, and if we want to do it in a way that the masses can connect with our ideas, we have to think much more simply and clearly about this art.

Now that was quite a big paragraph, you’ve got to wonder if I really needed to say as much as I just did to introduce this article on the best way to write your blogs on the Web. I didn’t even mention this main idea, and that’s what an introduction paragraph is meant to be for. This is a common mistake in many blogs out there. We try to get too many ideas across in one paragraph, sometimes even in one sentence! The key, as in all things in life-is to keep it simple. Simplicity means that readers won’t get confused about what your journal entry is actually about. Introduce your main general topic at the start, and use the subsequent paragraphs to discuss separate ideas that relate to this topic. Try to tie everything up in the concluding paragraph, your main argument and the reason why you’ve written in the first place.

Grammar and sentence construction are not easy systems to master, especially if you come from a school system that spent more time telling you about historical battles and quadratic equations than on how to read and write. This is a real problem. When we speak we can get messages across to others easily, but if we put these words down on paper, the writing just isn’t interesting and doesn’t connect with people’s curiosities and fascination. When you write you are not talking to a close friend. You can’t use slang and colloquialisms that only your local community can understand. The aim is to connect with all the people in the world, so let’s make it crystal clear and enjoyable to read.

Your computer has spelling and grammar checks, as well as access to a thesaurus. Use them, but remember that the machine can’t decipher all the intricacies of language. Language is a world in itself, and much of its territories are undiscovered by the masses. So, again keep it simple. Short, precise sentences with single ideas are great. Many words in the English language have the same meanings (synonyms). Use the thesaurus so you don’t repeat the same word over and over throughout the text. It keeps the story fresh and doesn’t turn the reader off. There’s nothing more boring than repetition. Using different words can be a lot of fun and a learning experience, just make sure you use a dictionary (also on the computer/Internet) to make absolute sure of the word’s definition.

Readability…Simplicity…Make your blog accessible by all people. You can even take into consideration that many readers will have learned English as a second language. As I’ve said in previous articles, keep to the point-don’t go on tangents. Stick with the article’s topic, and definitely stay within the realms of your blog’s main area. If your blog is entitled “Jazz music”, people who go there don’t want to hear about how your football team won on the weekend! Please be consistent. How irritating is it to visit a blog that hasn’t been written on in months or years?

I hope these little tips will help you on your quest to producing ‘good’ writing that brings new friends and acquaintances of similar outlooks into your world. If you want people to read, the aim is to produce an emotional reaction in your reader. Pretend you are writing to another form of yourself, if it were not readable, interesting and fun…would you stick around?

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About the author:

M6.net
http://www.m6.net
Leaders in Web Hosting, M6.net is a strong company that has pioneered in the web hosting industry since 1997. The company started with nothing more than a few web sites and even fewer clients. It is now hosting over ten thousand web sites across more than one hundred countries around the world.

Ten Free Ways To Promote Your Website

How do you market your product if the public doesn't know your website exist? The odds are you will lack the flow of traffic to survive in the vast ocean called the World Wide Web.

You are shaking your head in agreement. A fancy promoter service is out of the question. It will not fit in with your budget. A viable alternative does exist. FREE PROMOTION HANDLED BY YOU!

By using the following *proven methods* you can effectively promote your site and announce it to the Internet.

Search Engines: Thousands of search engines exist on the Internet. But, you should only be concerned with the top eight or ten. You should manually submit to the top eight: Alta Vista, Excite, Yahoo, Hotbot, Lycos, Northern Light, Infoseek, Webcrawler, and use one of the FREE automatic submission services like *SubmitPlus* to handle the smaller search engines.

Directories: List your site here too. Directories organize sites into categories. Good examples of Directories: Yahoo, Magellan.

Ezine Listings: If you have an e-zine to promote along with your site. Why not list it with one of the many e-zine services on the Internet. E-zine Library is a good one to start with.

Free Classifieds: You will have to submit to a ton of FREE classifieds to get any significant traffic. Why? You are competing with thousands of other Ads. Remember to work on your Ad copy and make it attention grabbing. Go to one of the popular search engines, type in Free Classifieds, and surf to the top 20 classified sites for beginners. Often, these sites will lead you to several other Free Classified Sites. In response you'll get a stack of e-mail thanking you for listing your site while barking their promo. Best to get one of those free email accounts. Hot mail is a good one. So is Yahoo mail.

FFA Pages. Free For All's are worth a try. Be prepared for a avalanche of e-mails from FFA web site owners. If your title is attention grabbing you will get a few clicks. Good Attention grabbing headlines, FREE, Limited Time, Limited Offer, Proven, Secrets, and many more if you brainstorm. Check out the sales literature delivered to you by regular mail. Check and see what headlines grab your attention. And why? Incorporate them into your Online Ads.

Signature File: A short message you include at the end of your e-mail messages. Suppose you publish a gift e-zine list. You might use this sig to promote your e-zine:

re> Jane Smith webmaster@gifts.com http://www.gifts.com Subscribe to our FREE Weekly Gift Ezine, by emailing: gifts@gifts.com

Ad Swaps: Swap Ads with other e-zine owners if you are promoting an e-zine. Best to swap with a zine that has a larger subscribership. Go to one of the e-zine directories and search for zines with a similar theme. Send them a short, polite, e-mail asking if they would like to swap ads. You will certainly increase your traffic flow if you hook up with the right zine.

Write An Article: Write an article promoting your site or product. Write an article on a hot topic many people would like more information on and submit it to various e-zines. How do you find out what's hot? Visit a few of the message boards and see what questions are raised often.

Tell Friends And Family: If your friends, family, acquaintances, have an Internet Connection, e-mail them telling them about your new website, and ask them to visit often. Offer a FREE incentive if they tell a few friends to surf over. Perhaps, a FREE Ad in your e-zine.

Leave Business Cards or Flyers: Leave these promo pieces with small businesses in your community. All relevant contact information; email address, URL, telephone number, should be included. Offer a freebie to anyone who visits your site. A free e-book, report.
Still think you have to spend Big Bucks to promote your site? This short article has disclosed easy, simple, solutions, to promote your site for FREE, and increase the hits on your site. So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and Promote.

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About the author:

Copyright 2001, SmallBiz Publishing.

BB Lee is Editor of SmallBizBits Newsletter. Join Our List Of Informed Subscribers Today! Receive Practical Advice And Homebiz Tips Monthly. Subscribe by emailing: Smallbiz-subscribe@topica.com

Posted by Darren at 09:07 PM

20 Totally Easy Ways To Get People To Link To Your Web Site

1. Offer other web sites free content to post on their web site. Include your link on all of your content. The content should related to your web site because it will be in front of your target audience.


2. When you visit a web site you've enjoyed a lot, write a review for the site. Write about the benefits you gain from the web site. Tell them they can publish it on their web site if they link to your web site.

3. Allow other people to publish your e-zine on their web site. Include your web site's ad and link in each issue you publish. This may also help you increase the number of people that subscribe to your e-zine.

4. Market your web site as a free web book. Design your web site with a title page, table of contents, chapters, etc. Just allow other people to give away the web book by linking to your web site.

5. Give your visitors an instant article directory. Tell your visitors they can instantly add a free article directory to their web site by linking to yours. Just place your ad or banner ad on top of the article directory for your main web site.

6. Allow other web sites to use your discussion board for their web site visitors. Just have them link directly to the discussion board. Include your web sites ad or banner ad at the top of the discussion board.

7. Start a members only web site. Tell visitors what's in your members only site and what it costs to gain access. Offer them a free membership if, in exchange, they link to your web site.

8. Offer your visitors a free sign up to your affiliate program. Pay them commission to sell your products or services. Just give them an affiliate link to track their sales. People will link to your web site to make extra money.

9. Create your own award site for other web sites. Give the winners a graphic or text link to place on their web site when they win. This will link your web site to theirs and draw more traffic to your web site.

10. Are you an expert on a particular subject? Offer people free consulting via e-mail if, in exchange, they either link to your site. People will consider this a huge value because consulting fees can be very expensive.

11. When you purchase a product and it exceeds your expectations e-mail the business a testimonial. Make sure your statement is detailed. Give them permission to publish it on their web site if they link to your site.

12. Create a directory of web sites on a specific topic. Give people the option of adding the directory to their web site by linking to it. Put your business ad at the top of the directory's home page.

13. Exchange content with other web sites. You could trade articles, top ten lists, etc. Both parties could include a resource box at the end of the content.

14. Allow people to download software at no charge from your web site, if they link to your web site. The software could be freeware, shareware or demos.

15. Trade other forms of advertising to people that link to your web site. You could trade e-zine ads, print ads, autoresponder ads, classified ads, ebook ads, etc.

16. Give away web space to people for free. Since you are giving it away for free, request they link to your site by placing your ad or banner to the site.

17. Join or create a web ring. A web ring is a group of web sites on a similar subject agreeing to link together. To find a web ring to join type keywords "web rings" into your search engine of choice.

18. Create an online club or association. Tell your visitors what's included in the membership and what it costs to join. Offer them a free membership if, in exchange, they link to your web site.

19. Allow people to use an online service or utilities from your web site if, in exchange, they link to your web site. The online service could be an e-mail account, search engine submission, web page design, copywriting, proofreading, etc.

20. Offer a free e-book to your web site visitors. The ebook should be related to your target audience. Allow them to give the e-book to their own web site visitors by linking directly to your web site.

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About the author:

Lisa M Cope - Creator of http://Find-1.com an online directory of information, products and services and http://flipidy.com
a premier source for online business information. Contact Lisa@flipidy.com

Domain Names: Do Dashes or Underscores Goose Google Rankings More?

The debate rages.

Some swear dashes in domain names send rankings soaring.

Some have an ongoing love affair with underscores.

Others are sure there is no difference.

While I agree you do get a bit of a bounce in Google if you do this right - it’s only marginal.

Still let’s end this debate once and for all and PROVE which is better. Using Google search results (SERPS) to test if Google treats dashes or underscores the same or differently.

The guinea pig multi-word search term I picked is "affordable search engine placement".

To set a benchmark I first cast the broadest net possible doing a search using

affordable search engine placement

Google returned this:

Searched the web for affordable search engine placement.
Results 1 - 10 of about 78,600

That says 78,600 pages were indexed by Google for ANY of those keywords.

Next I searched on the same phrase only this time I separated the words by dashes like this:

affordable-search-engine-placement

Google turned up these results:

Searched the web for affordable-search-engine-placement.
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,160.

As you can see our term with dashes gave considerably fewer results than the one without.

Then I searched on the same words separated by underscores:

affordable_search_engine_placement

For this one Google didn’t find much:

Searched the web for affordable_search_engine_placement.
Results 1 - 4 of about 6.

Finally I searched for

"affordable search engine placement"

Note the quotes. Using quotes limits the search results to one specific phrase.

In this case Google returned:

Searched the web for "affordable search engine placement".
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,160.

If that looks familiar it’s exactly the same number of pages as the keyword phrase with dashes returned.

Okay so what have we got?

The first search returns what you could say is a free for all of listings with any of the words in the keyword phrase. That’s why there are so many search results.

Next the phrase with underscores produced negligible results. As in next to none.

While the keyword phrase with dashes and the exact phrase search turned up the same number of SERPs.

At this point you should be wondering "Why is that?"

Glad you asked. Even if you didn’t let me explain.

The reason for this apparent match of search results is Google uses the dash to separate the words in the phrase. Programmers call this a "delimiter". In essence Google sees the dash as a separator between the words.

Yet Google obviously does NOT treat the underscore as a delimiter. To Google it’s just another character. Which is proven by the search results. Since if Google treated the dash and underscore alike the number of SERPs returned for

affordable_search_engine_placement

or

affordable-search-engine-placement

would be identical. But as you saw they are not. Not even close.

So the answer as to which is better, dashes or underscores, is obvious now isn’t it? You want to use dashes in your domain names, folder names, files names etc.

That’s because using dashes to separate the words will give you the biggest Google impact - whatever that impact may be. Since Google can parse the different words. While underscores don’t help one iota.

Look. This isn’t theory or speculation. It’s fact. And you can repeat the same searches with any keyword phrase you want and you’ll get the same results.

Yet to keep this real don’t expect some kind of massive boost from this dash trick. Sure it can help a tad as part of an over all optimization scheme. But whether or not you use dashes in a domain, folder or file name is not going to be what gets you top Google listings. Content and links are.

Still this study does settle the debate about dashes and underscores. Giving you yet another little thing you can do to rank well.

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About the author:

John Gergye shares more ideas like this in his just updated
eBook "Traffic From Google in 35 Days". Find out more
here: http://www.traffic-test-tube.com/j/tfg35cl.shtml
Or test your search engine IQ by taking his seo quiz
http://www.traffic-test-tube.com/search-engine-quiz.shtml
and get the free special report "Coming Out On Top".

Nerve Endings Firing Away: Google Adsense makes sense

Nerve Endings Firing Away has a good review of Google Adsene, from a blogger's perspective. "It has been a month since I succumbed to the advertising devil in disguise. But in retrospective Google Adsense is indeed impressive and makes perfect sense for small-time publishers. Regular bloggers have achieved the tag of informal journalists and are publishing czars in their own right. But there is no free lunch in a capitalistic society. I moved to Typepad couple of months ago from Rediff for greater flexibility and customization of my blog. This additional coolness comes at a cost; $8.95 per month to be exact. Google Adsense gave me not only a way to cover the costs, but also superceded my expectations by making some more. In a nutshell, all visitors see the ads on my blog, some click on them, and advertisers are happy to get traffic on their commercial websites, even if the visitors don’t buy anything. They pay Google for customizing the ads, according to the content, for my blog and Google pays me a share. How much is Google paid and the percentage of my share is not clear yet."
Read more at Google Adsense makes sense

Read the first post in our Adsense Tips for Bloggers series.

Is a Blog Right For Your Business?

Is a Blog Right For Your Business?
By Meryl K. Evans

Lemmings are cute, but dumb. If you tell them to jump off a cliff, they will. Just like the people who start blogs because everyone is doing it. Guess what happens after a little while? The blogs die.

In managing a list of many Web sites, most of which are blogs, I deleted countless sites from the list because the sites and blogs no longer existed. The people ran out of steam or had no reason to start them in the first place.

How do you know when a blog is right for your business? Learn why people start blogs, how they find their niche and how blogging tools can be used for more than blogs.

Some people like to read blogs, others like to read newsletters, still others like to rely on feeds and some read a few or all of them. No matter the method the information is distributed, each medium has one thing in common: content. Having a blog connects your newsletter and your business with all of these readers and delivers important content in a particular style.

I've been blogging since June 2000. If you review my early blog entries in meryl's notes, you'll notice they're more personal. When blogs first hit the scene in the late '90s, they were personal diaries and journals. Like the blog business, my blog has transformed from personal to business speak, although I still add personal notes here and there.

A few bloggers tend to talk about their work, their products and their little world. That might work for celebrities where fans want to know everything about them, but it doesn't work for the average business person. Other business people want information on how to succeed and when a blog spends time hawking products offering information of no value, few people will return. The people whose products sell well are the ones who provide valuable information. Readers already know what kind of information they're getting, so they trust that when they buy something, it will be of the same or better quality. This value must be reflected in their blog. It's much like people who only sign up for a newsletter after first seeing an example.

No one wants to be a lemming (I would hope). How do you decide whether or not to set up a blog? The answer isn't black or white (what did you expect?). Ask these questions:

• Can you regularly update it — at least five times a week?
• Do you have something to say other than just linking to others?
• Do you read other blogs or feeds?
• Can you provide information of value to others not just to yourself?
• How large is your newsletter subscriber list?
• How many unique visitors do you get on an average day, week or month?

The big decider is whether or not you can write in the blog almost daily. The people behind the high traffic blogs post multiple times a day. Though resourceful, merely linking to other sites doesn’t give visitors much reason to make the effort to come to yours. Reading other blogs or feeds is a great way to learn how to carry a discussion. Find other blogs covering topics similar to yours and check them out. Disagree with their opinions? Write about it and explain your reasons. Cross-blog discussions are common, and that's where trackback comes in handy.

Trackback is a blog feature. If you decide to comment on another blog posting in your blog instead of in that blog's comments page, then you link to the conversation through the trackback link. Trackback is similar to the permalink, the permanent URL for the blog entry, but it has a different URL for copying and pasting in your blog's trackback box.

Aside from the technical aspects of operating a blog on a daily basis, subscriber list size and Web site traffic are good indicators of what kind of reaction you'll get when opening a blog. Starting from scratch with little traffic means you have a long road ahead and lots of work to do. There is no magic formula anyone can sell you for $97 to make your blog an overnight success. But with some perseverance and ingenuity, your blog can engage many prospects and clients.

Considering there are numerous blogs out there, pick a niche topic when starting a blog for a better shot at attracting and keeping an audience. meryl's notes focuses on three areas: webby, geeky and wordy. In reality, this is too much. What I need to do for my readers is create three separate blog entry points, so those interested in writing, newsletters and Internet marketing get nothing but the wordy entries. Those interested in Web design get the webby stuff and the technophiles receive the geeky content.

I also manage a personal blog separate from meryl's notes. It's about cochlear implants and deafness. This could fall under the geeky category, but it's a personal blog and doesn't belong in meryl's notes. This blog is written for a different audience.

The blogging tools for both of my blogs come with syndication capabilities so those using feed readers or aggregators can read the content through the software. When sending a new issue of a newsletter, comment on it or link to it in the blog, that way the blog and feed readers will get the goods, so all three bases are covered.

Blogging tools aren't just for, well, blogging. Such tools are an excellent way to help you update your Web site more often than you otherwise would. I use it to manage the list of tableless Web sites. Using blogging tools is much easier than the way I managed it before, updating the HTML files by hand. Though using a blog tool, it isn't a blog. In this case, the blog tool has become a content management system (CMS).

Small business owners don't have a need for the fancy and pricey CMSes out there. They find it easier to use blogging software to manage their sites or hire someone to adapt the tool for their site.

Blogs have found a place in businesses and people are finding creative ways to use them. Some companies have a blog on the intranet for communicating project status, jeopardies and metrics. They’re used for knowledge management. With information pouring in, blog tools provide a way to share, organize and process the information.

Being a follower can be good or bad. No one wants to walk off a cliff with the lemmings, but everyone wants to succeed. Best practices won't help, since the decision to blog is based on the organization's mission, needs and goals along with its target market's desires and needs. A blog about lemmings? There is one, sort of. Or maybe you’d like to start your own and talk about dumb business moves.

Meryl K. Evans is the Content Maven behind meryl.net who increases conversion rates by writing and editing content so organization can focus on their core business. She is the editor-in-chief of the eNewsletter Journal and Shavlik's The Remediator Security Digest. Visit her Web site at http://www.meryl.net/blog/.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

How to Speed up Your Web Site

Your web site's loading speed has a significant impact on your visitors' loyalty. A slow web site will cost you sales. Most visitors won't wait more than 10 seconds for your web pages to load. Not everyone has high speed Internet access. If you're targeting the general public and a worldwide market, apply these techniques to speed up your pages, keep potential buyers at your site, and increase sales.

Six tips to speed up your web pages.

1. Give viewers something to read as quickly as possible.

2. Provide a lot of graphics or images only if you know your audience has fast Internet connections. (Your load time will vary depending on your visitors' access speed.)

3. If you're targeting the general public, avoid large and unnecessary graphics, animated graphics, sound, movies, Flash animation, and large banners -- especially on your home page. (Graphics slow your web pages down considerably.)

4. Use graphics and images that support your sales message and illustrate the benefits of your products or services.

5. Keep your pages short. Split up long pages into several pages. Breaking up pages into several pages also allows you to track which pages potential buyers go to.

6. Avoid links to slow-loading pages.

Visitors like pictures without sacrificing speed. Apply these tips to optimize your images.
- Keep images and graphics as small as possible, both in dimensions and file size. The larger the file size, the longer the images take to download.

- Don't make visitors wait for images they're not interested in. If you want to illustrate your products with large images, provide thumbnails (small graphics), and let visitors decide if they want to click on them to view larger images that take time to download. Mention the download time.

- Crop images (cut off extra areas around the images).

- Keep the resolution of your images to 72 dpi, the maximum resolution a computer monitor can read.

- Reduce your file size by saving images in the proper graphic format (GIF or JPEG).

- Reduce the number of colors. Use solid colors rather than gradients. The more color in an image, the bigger the file size is, and the more time it takes to download.

Resource: Paint Shop Pro is a popular, inexpensive graphic program to design and edit your images. You can download a trial version at http://www.jasc.com.

Studies indicate that billions of dollars in online sales may be lost each year in the U.S. due to unacceptable download speeds. Don't lose sales with a slow web site. Apply these techniques now!

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Resource Box:
Looking for typing work at home? Start a secretarial business. The Secretarial-Business-in-a-Box provides instant tools you need to start and run a successful secretarial service. F*ree articles and business start-up newsletter at http://www.startasecretarialbusiness.com.
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Read more articles by this author at: http://www.startasecretarialbusiness.com/articles_reprint.html

Does The Number Of Links On A Page Affect Ranking?

Lots of research has focused on inbound links to a site, but little has focused on the number of links actually on a page (outbound or to other parts of a site). Many SEO gurus have recently been talking about something they call "PR Leak" which seems to be a theory that the more outbound links you have, the more your page rank on Google "leaks" away. That concept isn't found in the academic papers published by the founders of Google, but does seem to be accepted by a majority of SEOs. I decided it was time to take a look at the number of links present on a page and how that number correlates with ranking.

The methodology: I gathered the results of the queries that were naturally performed last month by myself and three associates using the two leading search engines and analyzed them. I counted the number of links on the page (references to "href") and tabulated the results against the ranking of the URL in the search results. The tabulated results were finally converted into a normalized "ranking correlation." The results for each of the two leading search engines were kept separate so that we could discover any differences between the two leading search engines for this factor.

The resulting graphs show the results for groupings of number of links normalized into a number between -100 and +100 showing the likelihood of being ranked higher/lower. A value of +100 shows that all 10 rankings were in the proper order to show that pages of the studied value ALWAYS rank HIGHER than pages of another value. A value of -100 shows that all 10 rankings were in the proper order to show that pages of the studied value ALWAYS rank LOWER than pages of another value. Numbers in between show the varying likelihood of rankings proportionally between -100 and +100.

That is the number you see on the Y-axis. On the X-axis, we have the number of links found. They are grouped into sets of 10 in order to increase the statistical significance with the amount of data we had available to analyze. Here are the graphs for the two leading search engines:

http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com/graphs/dey01.gif
http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com/graphs/deg01.gif

The number of links were grouped in this way in order to increase the number of data points available. Unfortunately it also reduces the precision of the results. One is able to see that 91-100 links rank much higher than 1-10 links, but you are unable to see if 77 links rank differently than 79 links (for example).

The result is very conclusive. Both leading search engines rank pages with more links much higher than pages with fewer links! Once again, it appears that the SEOs touting the "PR Leak" theory are simply wrong. If their theory held any weight at all, we should see the exact opposite. Pages with more links should rank lower on average.

Notes:

1. There was no exercise to attempt to isolate different keywords. I merely took a random sampling of the queries performed by myself and three associates during the month.

2. This is merely a correlation study, so it cannot be determined from this study whether the leading search engines purposefully entertain this factor or not. The actual factors used may be far distant from the factor we studied.

About the author:

Jon Ricerca is one of the leading researchers and authors of the Search Engine Ranking Factor (SERF) reports at
SearchEngineGeek.com For access to the other SERF reports, please visit:
http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com

Secrets of the Super Affiliate

Secrets of Super Affiliates
Most affiliate program owners say 80% of their affiliate sales come from 20% of affiliates. Here is the difference between top 20% affiliates and the rest.

--Normal Affiliate--
Most affiliate program owners tell their affiliates how to "sell," such as providing templates of sales copy and saying where to advertise. Unfortunately, "selling" isn't the best way to promote affiliate programs. You can convince people to buy affiliate products at your site; however, your affiliate link sends people to the affiliate program owner's sales page, where they will get another sales pitch. This is how to send people away.

--Good Affiliate--
Rather than selling the products, write articles related to the products. If your articles are good enough to make people think you know what you are talking about, you can send a lot of people to the affiliate program owner's site by just mentioning the products. (You don't even need to recommend the products.) On top of that, you will have a better conversion rate. Ken Evoy of SiteSell.com calls this "Pre-Selling." You can learn more about Pre-Selling by reading the e-book, "Make Your Content PREsell." You can download it free from http://www.thatswise.com/free/e-books/presell.html

--Super Affiliate--
There is an even more effective way to make money on affiliate programs. Maybe you've already heard about Rosalind Gardner of sage-heart.com. She is probably the most successful affiliate on the Net. She is an affiliate of several dating sites. Instead of selling or recommending any of them, she writes reviews of each site, good and bad. So, visitors can find enough information on which service is the best for them. She is helping visitors to make good decisions, rather than selling. Once people find the service they like, there is nothing to stop them from buying. This is how she gets high conversion rates. Also, because she is an affiliate of all reviewed sites, no matter which site visitors pick, she will get commissions. High demand of dating sites has contributed to her success, but why don't you mimic this winning technique for other products or services?

About the author:

Though his Web site, http://www.thatswise.com Akinori Furukoshi has been providing e-commerce related information since 1998. His unique way of thinking has helped online businesses to improve their performance.

Google AdSense – The text link ad with clout

Webmasters place advertisements on their site to (hopefully!) help their web site visitors find additional information and products that are relevant to their site’s theme and therefore what those visitors came to their website looking for. Of course, it also helps if those advertisements also make money for the webmaster!

Unfortunately, serving advertisements online isn't always easy. Many advertisement companies offering the service of placing ads on our sites have managed to turn the advertisement business into one big mess. Thousands of sites are bogged down with non-relevant pop-ups, pop-unders, pop-ins and banners.

What happens to our sites if these advertisements rarely hit their mark? No matter how many banners and pop-ups we show about herbal remedies to our visitors if we run a website about car parts they will not be interested and they will never click on those ads.

Not only that, but this kind of untargeted advertisement can even have a negative effect on our traffic. Who wants to go to a site that requires us to close pop-ups every minute or for every page we view?

In order to have advertisements that are interesting AND relevant to our visitors there is now a program called ‘Google Adsense'.

Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant, text-based, un-obtrusive Google AdWords ads on our website's content pages and earn money.

Since the ads are actually related to what your users are looking for on your site, you'll have a way to both monetize and enhance your web page content. The program is free, and Google pays you for clicks on the AdWords advertisements on your site.

Google offers their AdSense program to just about all website owners. After signing up for the program with Google you receive code to enter on the pages of your site and Google will dynamically generate ads that are relevant to your own web site’s content.

Whenever a visitor clicks on one of the links in the AdSense ad on your site Google credits you with a percentage of money that was paid by the advertiser for that ad.

AdSense also provides us with the option to be selective in which type of ads we want to display on our websites making it possible to send our visitors towards a certain type of products.

To make it possible for everyone to integrate AdSense into their sites the program offers a wide variety of settings that allow us to alter the ads appearance.

The Google AdSense program is incredibly accurate. By stepping beyond the boundaries of simple keyword matching it has become one of the most prominent tools to display accurate advertisements. A list of keywords is still used as the basis of triggering ads, but complex algorithms now ensure that ads that are not related to your site’s theme no longer show up.

An AdSense service can be set up within minutes from the comforts of your chair and by providing your website's visitors with a certain amount of directed ads you can generate for yourself anything from a small to a sizeable income through the use of AdSense.

To sign up for Adsense just visit Adsense

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About the author:

J. E. Johnson is the owner/operator of www.SponsorDirectory.coma highly respected affiliate program directory and internet marketing website.

For more informational articles and a listing of thousands of affiliate programs please visit http://www.SponsorDirectory.com

Choosing the right affiliate program

The Internet is a huge forest full of virtual vendors each trying to sell his/her particular product or service. We've all seen the banner and pop-up ads this can result in, but fortunately for us some of those virtual vendors also make use of what is called ‘affiliate programs’.

These affiliate programs allow webmasters to make money by advertising someone else's product or service simply by referring them via a link on our own website.

But picking the right affiliate program from the hundreds of affiliate programs available to us can be an overwhelming task. Identifying what is worth our time is the most critical step in making any sort of money in the affiliate program business and this is where we should spend the most time.

When deciding what affiliate programs to pick there are a few guidelines one should follow that will help you decide whether a particular program is worth while.



The number one rule is to go with the market. Anything that is currently popular will be popular on the Internet as well. A hot spot in the market is easily recognized, the Pokemon card trading game and the general advent of the Pokemon theme hasn't gone by any of us unnoticed. During the beginning stages of the Pokemon hype affiliate programs relating to Pokemon were worth their virtual weight in gold.



The second rule of selection is to never make your life any harder than it has to be. It takes time and effort to set up an affiliate program so that it will make us money and we shouldn't waste our time on programs that offer low commissions compared to other affiliate programs for similar products or services. Pick a program with higher affiliate commissions on average and you will notice that you will have to not work as hard to make a profit.



And finally the type of affiliate program is important. Some affiliate programs are lifetime programs offering their profits to us long after we signed up for a minimum requirement of our attention.



Some affiliate programs even make it possible for us to promote the affiliate program to other webmasters. Finding more affiliates for a particular affiliate program can often be a very good way to create additional, or residual, income. With this method, called 2-tier, each affiliate can have sub-affiliates and receive a referral fee for the efforts of the sub-affiliates.



For those of us having a little trouble with figuring out what is 'hot' and what is not there is always the option of going with affiliate programs for popular brand names. There are a surprising number of well-known companies that offer affiliate programs allowing them to increase their sales online.



Once we know what people look for online it becomes easy to find the right affiliate programs and design the appropriate ads.





About the author:



=======================================================

About the author:



J. E. Johnson is the owner/operator of

www.SponsorDirectory.coma highly respected affiliate

program directory and internet marketing website.



For more informational articles and a listing of thousands

of affiliate programs please visit

http://www.SponsorDirectory.com

=======================================================

Tips for Clickbank Affiliates

Profit Tips for Clickbank Affiliates
Clickbank is the 'BEST' opportunity you can use right now to 'make money on the internet' as an affiliate, with very low start-up costs, it's a great way to get started working from home.

Clickbank marketplace features over 10,000 digital products (INSTANT downloadable files) you can promote within minutes after Signing-Up for an affiliate account. Most merchants associated with clickbank offer you commissions as much as 50% per Sale or even more.

Thousands of people just like you use Clickbank on a regular basis to sell and buy products on the Internet; now it's your time to START profiting from this marketplace and succeed in the affiliate promotion 'game'!

Here are 3 promotion TIPS to succeed promoting Clickbank products as an affiliate:



TIP 1 - Promote in the forums by pre-selling visitors

Visit 3 forums related to the product you're promoting and start answering and posting interesting questions on a regular basis (or when you have time?)



Only provide something useful when answering a question and don't promote anything in the body of your post.



Also, don't ask questions that have been posted already in the same forum.



Where to promote the Clickbank product?



At the end of ALL your postings.



Yes, you're allowed (just read the forum guidelines!) to post a brief description about you, your site, product or anything you want, at the end of your post. This brief advertisment is called a Signature File (SIG file).



TIP 2 - Promote in Your E-mails via your SIG file

I'm sure you talk with lots of people by e-mail (e.g. friends, other affiliates, associates, partners, etc.) on a regular basis.



So, why not using your SIG file in your everyday e-mail correspondence?



It's a waste of time and money if you don't use this opportunity; don't neglect its effectiveness, it can bring YOU a huge BOOST in:



- Web Site traffic;

- Affiliate commissions & sales;

- Opt-In List Sign-Ups, etc.



Make sure you don't SPAM, send out e-mails only to people you know or would like to form a Joint Venture with; promote only in your SIG file and not in the body of your e-mail message.



The key is to visit Search Engines and Forums ... make friends and online contacts; soon you'll be able to BUILD a contact list of a few hundred people who know you and will gladly wait for your e-mails.



Don't abuse this opportunity and send out e-mails to your friends every day or week promoting product after product; they don't want that and most don't have time to check out your promotions.



It's better to contact them once or twice a month and offer some 'Free valuable Information' At the bottom of your e-mail insert your SIG file to promote a Clickbank product you feel it's related to the e-mail you sent.



Never promote something not related to the Subject or CONTENT of your e-mails. You'll have a HARD job converting un-targeted visitors into future buyers.



TIP 3 - Promote in your Web Site

Most Clickbank affiliates have their own Web Site. If you have one yourself why not ADD your SIG file at the bottom of every Web Page on your Site?



Or even better, remove those ugly banners that don't convert into Sales and replace them with a 3-line TEXT to promote your Clickbank products.



However, you can't promote something not related to your Web Site / Page TOPIC, so don't waste your time in this direction. Try to promote something highly targeted to your Web Site / Page CONTENT.



Text CONTENT always converts better than banners!



There are thousands of NEW people on the internet everyday 'looking for information' and Clickbank has the answer to all their needs.



About the author:



Ron Keegan runs his own profitable Clickbank Web Site Pick-up your *FREE* e-course at http://www.Megdis.com/pro.htm to learn more about making-money from home!

Distributed by 1st In Articles

Overview Of Pay Per Click Search Engines

A Fundamental Overview Of Pay Per Click Search Engines
By Kirk Bannerman

Forbes magazine has reported that pay per click ad sales are expected to increase to at least $8 billion by 2008.

The three fundamental core elements that form the basis of a successful pay per click ad program are constant monitoring, analysis, and refinement.

Pay per click search engines offer a way to buy your way to the top of search results for any term you wish. With proper management, and a clear focus, pay per click search engines can offer some of the most well targeted and economical advertising on the Internet.

Pay per click advertising works through a bidding process, and the ads appear prominently on the results pages of search engines such as Google and Yahoo. The highest bidder for a particular word or phrase receives top placement, and depending on the engine, the top three to five bidders also generally also receive placement on the first page of unpaid search results.

Fundamental questions to be addressed when formulating a pay per click search engine strategy include the following:

When is the top pay per click bid necessary for highest conversion, and when will bidding for a second or third place position create a more attractive return on investment (ROI)?

How can you keep your PPC bids from cannibalizing your search efforts on other (non pay per click) search engines?

What percentage of your pay per click budget should go to each search engine?

Does either Google Adwords or Overture work better for your particular product or service? Or, perhaps neither one is appropriate from a return on investment (ROI) perspective.

It is of critical importance to focus sharply on identifying the search terms that convert most frequently for your particular site, eliminating those that don't perform, and most importantly, calculating and maximizing your return on investment.

The cost structure of pay per click is action-driven and each time a user clicks your ad, the pay per click engine deducts the amount of your current bid from your account. Pay per click offers a high level of assurance that your ad is reaching the proper target.

Pay per click campaigns, however, are not perfect. Without CONSTANT monitoring, you sometimes risk incurring advertising costs that can spiral out of control, focusing on terms that don't convert well for your product or services, or falling way down in position during a bidding war.

PPC advertising can be a great help to a site's success, but only with very close supervision and a thorough knowledge of the unique characteristics of each PPC search engine.

Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and coaches others seeking to start their own home based business.
Visit his website at Legitimate Home Based Business for more details.

Generating High Quanitities of Blog Content - News Sites and Aggregators

This is the third post in a series of tips on how to generate higher quantities of content for your blog. Check out the other posts in this series at Check out the previous posts at Set Targets, News Sites and Aggregators, Start a New Blog, Break Down Your Posts, Ecto and Recruit Writers.

Use News Aggregators (like Bloglines), News Services (like Google News, Daily Yahoo News or Topix) or other Blog tools (like Technorati) to follow subjects that you like to write about. The majority of posts on my commercial blogs are links to articles, blog posts and other sites around the web that write on the topics I'm interested in.

Using the above tools I generally know if someone has written something of interest about one of these topics in a newspaper or blog around the world pretty quickly after its been written and then its not too hard to link up to it with a few comments attached or maybe a quote from the relevant article. It's great to be able to follow specific blogs of interest using News Aggregators or to be able to have more general alerts on specific keywords.

The great thing about some of the news services is that they are quite automated and will email you any relevant articles - what could be easier!

What tools do you use to find content for your blog?

Generating High Quanitities of Blog Content - Set a Target

We've been talking about how one strategy in building blog traffic and income is to work hard on posting reasonable Check out the other posts in this series at Check out the other posts in this series at Check out the previous posts at Set Targets, News Sites and Aggregators, Start a New Blog, Break Down Your Posts, Ecto and Recruit Writers.

Set yourself a target of how many pages you'll add to your blog per day or week. I aim for a minimum of 10 pages of good content across my blogs every day including weekends - I see it as a discipline and set time (usually an hour or two) aside most mornings and evenings to complete my task. Some days I set myself bonus targets of 20 or more in a day like yesterday when I did 50 because of the release of some new products on one of my blogs.

10 pages of content per day is 3650 pages in a year! If for instance each page posted were to generate you 2 cents per day 3650 pages would make you $73 per day (7 days a week). 20 posts per day is 7300 pages....you do the sums. Of course some blogs won't generate 2 cents per page per day - others will generate significantly more - the principle remains however. Also its worth remembering that you don't suddenly have 3650 or 7300 pages - it takes time. But if you're willing to take a long term project and see each post as like a deposit in the bank you might just find that down the track you'll have built yourself a nice little earner.

Setting yourself a target and making it a discipline you stick to is just one way of generating quantities of content. How do you do it? I'll share more of my tips shortly.

Blog Tip - Generate a high Quantity of Content

Do you want to generate good traffic on your blog and therefore give yourself a chance at earning an income from it? Quality Content is a good first step - but it is not enough - you need to work on Quantity also.

On virtually every Blog tips article I've ever read I've seen advice about 'Quality Content'. The theory is that if you write interesting, well informed, insightful posts - people will come to your blog. I've written this advice in numerous places on this blog already - and let me say I stand by it as solid advice. I work hard at providing quality content on my sites. After all without it you've got little chance of a repeat visitor to your site.

Having said this I also am a big believer in providing Quantities of Content also.

Someone emailed me recently asking me to take a look at their blog. They had worked very hard on writing some great articles, they'd paid for a designer to design a beautiful site, they had added adsense and affiliate ads and had optimized their pages well for Google (they were in the top 3 for a number of search terms). The only problem was that they were only generating a handful of daily visitors and their revenue was just a few cents (if that) each week.

One of the main reasons I feel that their site was only going to ever go so far was that they spent so much time writing quality content that they only ever posted one post per day at the most (and none on weekends). After over three months of blogging their whole site was only 60 posts/pages. They were good pages but there just wasn't very many of them. Now I'm not wanting to say that a 60 page blog can't earn revenue - if those 60 pages all rank highly in Google on some popular and high paying keywords they could do ok - but at that rate I doubt this blogger will make more than a dollar a week for at least a year or two. They just don't have enough pages.

Having more pages is like having more entry points to your blog. The more posts you do the higher the chance someone will stumble upon your blog through a search engine. I've found that the longer I've blogged (I've been going for close to two years now) the more visitors I get. This of course is partly because more people have linked to me over time - but its also because my blogs now have close to 5500 pages of content out there. One of my friends said to me the other day that it seems that every time they do a search of the internet on any topic that they find one of my sites listed. Everytime I hear something like that I'm encouraged - my discipline of adding pages is paying off with increased traffic and therefor increased revenue from each of my revenue streams.

The other reason that a high quantity of content is useful is that it shows Google that you're a worthwhile site. This pays off in two areas - firstly it helps your page rank - and secondly it will increase your payment per click if you use Adsense. I've noticed that the more pages you have on a particular subject the higher amounts Google is willing to pay you per click. This is anecdotal evidence at this point - Google don't exactly spell it out - but I've heard other Adsense users talk about it too. Google also ranks pages that are updated regularly higher than those that are stagnant and will send its spiders through your site more regularly if you're a prolific updater.

Over the next 24 hours I'll be posting a series of tips to help you increase the quantity of content that you are posting to your blog/s. Remember I'm not saying to sacrifice Quality - it is essential - but alone it is unlikely to bring you the results you may be wanting.

How do you generate a good quantity of content? Leave your tips, experiences and suggestions in comments below - share the knowledge.

Check out the other posts in this series at Check out the previous posts at Set Targets, News Sites and Aggregators, Start a New Blog, Break Down Your Posts, Ecto and Recruit Writers.

Blog Explosion - Blog Traffic Generator

Blog Explosion is a new way to generate traffic for your blog. I'll let them explain:

"The concept is very simple. You read other blog sites and they in return visit your blog. Blogexplosion is the internet's first blog exchange where thousands of bloggers visit each other's blogs in order to receive tons of blog traffic. Imagine how many other people out there could be adding your blog to their blogroller and how many people would be reading your blog every day with this sort of attention. It's free to use! "

Read more at Need more traffic to your BLOG? Join BlogExplosion.com the internet's largest BLOG traffic generator! 100% FREE! - BlogExplosion.com:

Blogging Sells, and Sells Out

"By most accounts, blogs — web logs to the uninitiated — scored a major coup last week when CBS News admitted that it couldn't vouch for the authenticity of memos supposedly written by George W. Bush's commander in the Texas Air National Guard. The conservative bloggers who led the charge against the CBS story were hailed as giant slayers. And yet it's the blogging phenomenon itself that may need the last rites.

That may seem a strange thing to say, given the flattering coverage of blogs triggered by the CBS affair. But the media's infatuation has a distinct odor of the deathbed about it — not for the blogosphere, which has a commercially bright future, but for the idea of blogging as a grass-roots challenge to the increasingly sanitized "content" peddled by the Time Warner-Capital Cities-Disney-General Electric-Viacom-Tribune media oligopoly....

Recently, however, I've watched the commercialization of this culture of dissent with growing unease. When I recently decided to take a long break from blogging, it was for a mix of personal and philosophical reasons. But the direction the blogosphere is going makes me wonder whether I'll ever go back.

Even as it collectively achieves celebrity status for its anti-establishment views, blogging is already being domesticated by its success. What began as a spontaneous eruption of populist creativity is on the verge of being absorbed by the media-industrial complex it claims to despise...."

Read more at Blogging Sells, and Sells Out

Google traffic dropped dramatically for many sites

There is an interesting thread over at Webmaster World's forums that indicates that a significant number of web masters have noticed a drastic reduction in referals from Google in the past few days. Some are reporting decreases in in Google visitors from numbers like 2000 to 350 or 30,000 to 5,000. In checking my stats in the past few days I've not noticed such a decrease - although it would be my worst nightmare as over 90% of my blogs traffic comes from Google at present and such a decrease would result in a similar reduction in advertising revenue. Have others noticed such a decrease in Google's traffic?

SEO Design MistakesTop Five SEO Design Mistakes

Click Z has a very helpful article on common search engine optimization mistakes that web-masters make in designing their sits and blogs. "The biggest design mistake made by Web designers and site owners is to treat search engine optimization (SEO) as an afterthought, rather than a main component of the design process. Bring in a search specialist before a site is created, not after. Site architecture should be based on what the target audience searches for.

The biggest design mistake made by Web designers and site owners is to treat search engine optimization (SEO) as an afterthought, rather than a main component of the design process. Bring in a search specialist before a site is created, not after. Site architecture should be based on what the target audience searches for.

A search specialist can perform keyword research to determine the words and phrases to be used as a site's information architecture; the navigation schemes, categories, breadcrumb links, headings, and cross-links.

If search is an afterthought, it can cost site owners thousands, even millions, of dollars in advertising expenses and sales conversions. People may have a more difficult time finding a site via the major search engines without paid search advertising. Once visitors arrive at a site, they might have difficulty locating the products and services they searched for.

Always bring in a search specialist early in the design process."

Get four other mistakes at Top Five SEO Design Mistakes

Do forum signature links help PageRank and SERPS?

One of the tips I've seen given in many SEO articles is that if you add your blog's URL as a signature in your messages left in forums that you'll increase your Search Engine Ranking. It makes sense, especially if you use the keywords you're targeting - however Search Engine FAQ is running a test on the theory and so far it seems that such a strategy is yet to prove to be helpful in increasing page rank.

Read more about this test at Do forum signature links help PageRank and SERPS?

All is not lost however trolling forums to promote your site in signatures is your strategy because it can still send significant traffic to your site if you choose the right forums and are genuine in your comments.

Mrbizfind.com Offers Pay per Click Advertising

Mrbizfind.com has just sent us a press release announcing the opportunity to advertise your blog or site in their pay per click advertising system for as little as 1 cent per click. Check out the details in their following press release. If you sign up and give it a go let us know how it goes.

Press Release
Finally an Affordable and Reliable Pay per Click Advertising Option

Mrbizfind.com, the newest home base business Search Engine, offers the best price from pay from performance for home base business marketing and advertising available today. The Pay Per Click advertising is as low as 1 cent per click with a reach of over one million viewers per day.

(PRWEB) September 27, 2004 -- Mrbizfind.com, the newest home base business Search Engine, offers the best price from pay from performance for home base business marketing and advertising available today. The Pay Per Click advertising is as low as 1 cent per click with a reach of over one million viewers per day.

Mrbizfind.com in partnership with Jumpat.com is pleased to announce their Pay Per Click advertising network. Due to this partnership, Mrbizfind.com can offer its advertisers, the ability to bid on keywords as low as $.01 per click throughout the network of approved publishers and search engines. This offer gives the advertiser the ability to reach over 1.2 million people a day. They can target audiences by keywords, country and zones offering utmost control of their advertising programs and audience relevancy.

If you are in the home base business you are probably wondering, what is Pay per Click Advertising? It is a method by which advertisers bid on keywords or phrases that relate to the web site they are promoting, that are used to target ads to specific search results web page audiences. The advertiser only has to pay for each click on the ad based on the bid price they specified and control. No longer is the advertiser limited to excessively

Priced keywords, like Overture’s minimum bid of 10 cents a keyword.

Minimum bid is only 1 cent with mrbizfind.com.

Mrbizfind.com is one of 63 search engines powered by jumpat.com, who is the front-runner in integrated search engine traffic. One listing in mrbizfind.com search engine portal will get the advertiser traffic from all the top 30 search engines including Yahoo.com and Google.com via doorway pages.

Mrbizfind.com Pay per Click program is available today. It is 100% free to set up an account. For the small and medium sized business with a limited advertising budget, this is the place to start getting that much needed traffic to their web site.

The following portal is powered by Jumpat.com and advertising is powered by the Jumpat.com JumpLink system. For additional information on our portals please visit http://www.jumpatbiz.com. For investment opportunities please contact Thomas Tsilionis at 888-212-4772 Ext. 85 or tomt@jumpat.com

Creating Content: The Easy Way

There is little doubt that quality content has a number of real benefits for your web site, not least increasing levels of repeat visitors, and valuable revenue streams such as advertising and the sale of products or services related to the content you provide.

The only difficulty is that creating such content can be costly, taking up valuable time and resources. This article examines different ways you can add content to your web site quickly, giving you maximum benefit for the minimum cost.

Syndicated Content Streams
Syndicated content is content provided by others for use on your web site. Certain sites provide 'content streams', where you can simply place a few lines of code on your web page, and forget about it. The content provider then regularly updates the content it provides. The end result is that your site remains fresh and dynamic, at virtually no cost to you.

The content provider either charges a fee for the privilege of using their content, or they prefer to benefit through traffic, such as by placing a link adjacent to or within the content. One provider at interestalert.com even offers to pay you for adding a news feed to your site.

Here are a few examples of some content providers you may wish to try:

1. Free Content for your Site - provides a range of different content types such as news headlines or jokes.

2. Submit your Article - a number of different content feeds you can add to your site, displaying articles relating to internet marketing and online business.

3. Brainy Quote - adds 'quote of the day' to your web site, from a range of different topics and authors.

4. Freeky Stiky - an index of resources you can use to quickly add content to your site, with a wide range of content areas to choose from.

Free Reprint Articles
Free reprint articles are a type of syndicated content, and they are widely available.

The benefit for you is the provision of quality content on your web site, attracting targeted visitors via inbound links from the search engines. The benefit for the author of the article is their name and URL in the resource box (or 'author bylines'), which builds up targeted traffic to their web site, and builds up their 'brand' and online credibility.

Here are just some places where you can find articles to quickly put up at your web site:

1. Article Central
2. Go Articles
3. Idea Marketers

Invite Content
Add a page to your web site where you invite your visitors to submit their content, in return for a link back to their own web sites. This will give you a steady stream of content you can choose from, and save you time in searching for it elsewhere.

As a twist on this, if you create original content on your own site, make it easy for visitors to use it on their own sites - remember, many of your visitors will be actively or passively looking for content for their own web sites. Just make sure they always include a link back to your site in return, so that you stand to benefit too.

Over time, as well as increasing the amount of content on your own site, providing your content to others will gradually but significantly increase your traffic levels, and is far more effective than the more popular 'link swapping' craze, that usually just leaves your link sitting unclicked in an unvisited links page.

The common phrase is that 'content is king' - the Internet is a content-driven medium, and the more successful web sites are those with the best content. By using some of the techniques above, you can increase the amount of quality content on your site with the minimum amount of effort and expense.

About the author:
Steve Shaw creates systems and software for effective e-marketing. His powerful PopUpMaster Pro software creates popups that beat the popup blockers and can significantly increase your conversion rates. For more information: http://www.popupmaster.com

Is It Still Possible To Make Money On The Internet?

Many people are saying that the internet is dead. So is there still money to be made on the internet?

The answer is a definite YES.

Research shows, time and again, that consumers want to spend more online, and that the internet is fast becoming an integral part of their lifestyle and it'll continue to be so. Internet consumers are cautious and they want sites that're credible and worth shopping before they part with their money.

The traditional brick-and-mortar rules of business still apply to internet business. It's prudent to remember that the internet is not your business goal; it's a medium in helping you achieve your business goals.

Adhere to my following Rules and you'll be on your way to building a viable, sustainable and successful internet business.

---------------------------------
1. Develop a viable business plan
---------------------------------

The biggest reason why so many dotcoms failed is an inadequate business plan of how and when they'll achieve profitability. To have a successful and sustainable internet business, developing a viable business plan from the outset is crucial.

Your plan must have a clear and sincere vision that has meaning to you and your business. Your main focus should be to 'plan to profit' within a set period of time, and this would require you to allow time for thoughtful researching, planning, executing and testing. You'll need to test out your business model first and ensure that it's viable and sustainable.

Don't make the same mistakes that many dotcoms made - trying to build a global brand before their business model even worked as it'll lead you into receivership faster.

Regardless of how fanciful and good your website is, if your aim is not to make profit, you'll go out of business.

---------------------------
2. Model someone successful
---------------------------

It's always wise to learn from the mistakes of other people rather than to learn from your own mistakes as this can sometimes be very costly and painful.

Track and learn from benchmarked success stories, be they your competitors or otherwise. Why would you want to spend time re-inventing the wheel when you can learn from those who've already been there and done it successfully. Learn how they design their website, create products, write salescopy, their sales process, etc.

--------------------------
3. Focus on a niche market
--------------------------

Don't be everything to everybody by trying to dominate a huge and general market because you just simply can't do it effectively.

Focus your internet business on a targetable portion of the market or a narrowly defined group of potential customers. Address the need for a product or service that's not being addressed by mainstream providers. The advantage of this is that it's less competitive in such a market as large businesses won't want to be in it.

For this to be effective, the market niche that you're targeting must be fast moving, its customers accessible and there mustn't already be a dominant player in that particular market niche.

The key here is to find a niche market, assess the needs of the market and then offer them your products and/or services that meet their needs.

------------------------------
4. Differentiate your business
------------------------------

To capture a larger market share and be viable, sustainable and profitable, you need to differentiate or distinguish your business from your competitors'; make your business special in the eyes of your customers and/or prospects.

You can do this by creating what's called a Unique Selling Proposition or USP and then effectively convey that USP to your target market via your marketing efforts and business performance.

This's particularly crucial if you're operating in a highly competitive market.

A USP is the one thing or idea that sets your business favourably apart from your competitors'. Think about these questions: "What's the one thing that makes your business unique and distinct? Why should people buy from you and not from your competitors? Do you promise great value, benefit or service?"

Your USP is the focal point around which the success and profitability of your business is built and so you must be able state it and fulfill it honourably and effectively.

---------------------------
5. Spent your funds wisely
---------------------------

Costs is one of the major determinant of your internet business' survivability. You'll need to carefully track and control your costs from the outset and make sure you can start to show a profit soon, as unmindful spending with no thought given to incoming resources will bleed you to death.

Credible websites not only require money to set up but also to maintain; advertisement costs money. Driving traffic to your website where you lose money on sales made is suicidal. Do your sums; consistently refer back to your vision to ascertain whether an expense is warranted or meaningful.

----------------------------
6. Superior customer service
----------------------------

In addition to a viable business plan, a superior customer service will be key to your success.

Superior customer service must be a high priority in your action plan. Build a trusting and long lasting relationship with your customers and prospects, send your staff for customer service training, fulfill your orders promptly, and constantly remind yourself the reason of your very existence.

This's crucial as it costs five times more to win a new customer than it costs to keep an existing customer. Moreover, a dissatisfied customer will tell, on average, five or six people about your bad service. The point I'm driving at here is that looking after your customers saves money and boosts profits.

Learn and apply what I teach you, do it right, and you'll rise above your competition and blow them out of the water in no time.

Copyright Larry Lim, MarketingSphere.

===========
About the author:
Larry Lim is a practising marketing strategist and tactician who dishes out effective marketing strategies and tactics that will enable you to successfully start and grow your business on the Internet.

Check out his website - http://www.marketingsphere.com - that is jam-packed with secret marketing information that will skyrocket your sales, and shoot your profits through the roof.

How Many Words Should A Blog Post Contain?

The following article examines the question of 'How many words should a good blog post contain? It has been written by author George Rusky.

Have you ever thought of how you start reading a new article?
I mean, what do you do first?
Look at a list of pre-things I’d like you to consider before reading articles.
So, what will you start with?
The title?
The author?
The subject?
The short contents of the article?

From my own experience, I always start with the title of the article. If it grabs my attention, I go to the author, and :
1. If the writer is known and authoritative, read the article;
2. If un-known, immediately seek the information about the author.

Suppose, from the information, it’s not clear about the writer’s expertise. Then my next step is - the number of the words. If the number of words exceeds 350-450, most probably the article will be left without reading. Why is that so?

The art of writing articles lies in the ability of an author to advertise her mastery, her business, her mastery to persuade the readers to single out her from her competition, to lead the reader to the Most Wanted Response, which is a click on the link to the article writer’s site, and only this tap of a reader’s point finger is worth writing an article.

Now, where does the above mentioned 350-450 number of words come from? Simple arithmetic:
- The Title-8-10 words.
- The Lead of the story, the most important paragraph -40-50 words.
- The Body of the article, depending on the business may vary from 250 to 300 words.
- The Ending may include not more then 50-60 words.

And now, probably, the most important part of the whole article:
- The information of the writer and her business, not more then 25-35 words.

So, let’s put these figures together:
a) minimum: 40+250+50+25=365
b) maximum: 50+300+60+35=445

These simple calculations surely do not reflect the whole spectrum of writers’ approaches, and only the authors exactly know what and how they want to write.

But, listen up! The further the writer from tested and proven standards of business writing, the further is she from the Most Wanted Response.

P.S. This article serves as the illustration of the writer’s concept:
The Title- 7words
The Lead- 51words
The Body-242words
The Ending-50words
The Info about the author-27
(The total number of words is-377)

============
About the author:

About the writer: George Rusky is the author of several articles about business communication. He lives and works in Prague. Can be contacted at www.Crochetland.com Or Georgerus@volny.cz

About ProBlogger

Welcome to ProBlogger - the Blog that helps bloggers to add income streams to their blogs.

My name is Darren Rowse and back in 2002 I stumbled upon an article about 'Blogging'. I didn't know it at the time but that moment was changed my life. I know that statements like that belong on those cheesy 'buy my book' sites (don't worry I'm not selling anything) but it is actually true.

Within 24 hours of reading the article I had started my own Blog - a personal blog where I've explored issues of Pop Culture, Spirituality and Blogging ever since. I learnt so much for the experience of that blog that I've since started 16 other sites (and counting) most of which have a commercial nature. They are on a range of topics and include:

• Digital Photography Blog - A blog looking at all things 'Digital Photography' including Digital Camera reviews, tutorials, tips and news. DPB is read daily by 10,000 - 12,000 readers.
• Athens Olympics Blog - A blog about the Athens Olympic games with news, opinion and information on the Olympics in August 2004. Over the two weeks of the games this blog was visited by close to 2 million readers.
• Printer Blog - a new blog covering the latest printer news, reviews and information.
• Camera Phone Zone - a new blog about camera phones, smart phones and the like.
• ProBlogger - a blog about the many ways of adding an income stream to blogs.

Also in my little stable of blogs I am associated with and write for IdolBlog - a fan blog that follows the NZ and Australian 'Idol' reality TV shows that has a massive membership. I'm also a co-founder of Breaking News Blog which is a collective of bloggers working together on their ProBlogging efforts.

As my blogs have grown in popularity and have begun to generate income Blogging has grown from a hobby (some would say an obsession), to a part time job through to a fully fledged business in recent times. I have slowly built my blogging into a income source that has enabled me to dedicate more and more time to the medium to the point where I am currently a full time blogger - a ProBlogger.

This site is dedicated to helping other bloggers learn the skills, share their own experiences and promote the blogging medium. It will work best if you join me in the learning by contributing your experiences, tips and questions either in the comments section at the bottom of each post or by Submitting your own blog tips to be published as a main post (with links back to your blog).

If you would like to get involved or would like more information on ProBlogger please contact me (link takes you to my other blog's contact form) or buzz me on MSN Messenger - my ID is daziii@hotmail.com (do not use this as an email address as it is never checked).

Google AdSense Review

Go4-Webmaster.com has a good review of the Adsense Program from Google. "Google AdSense is for someone who wants a complete solution. It might not fill all of your ad inventory (well, maybe, now that you can have up to 3 units served on a page), but it will do good with what it does fill. It's simple, easy, and all encompassing. With fluxuating EVERYTHING, it's difficult to produce a larger yield then well targeted Sale/Lead affiliate programs. That being said, it's an excellent program for webmasters who rather focus on content. It's potential revenue power is, however, extraordinary."
Read more at Google AdSense Review - Go4-Webmaster.com

I've been using Adsense for close to a year now and find that it is very useful on some blogs but next to useless on others. I've got friends who run niche blogs on highly targeted subjects (sometimes quite localized on particular countries) and they have struggled to have any ads served to their blog. As with any contextual advertising it largely depends on your content as to whether it will work or not.

Get some good Adsense tips in our Adsense for Bloggers tutorials.

Revenue Generation Ideas for your Blog

Oristus has posted a fantastic list of Revenue Generation Ideas for your blog. It is one of the most comprehensive lists I've seen so far on the topic and covers everything from Premium Content Offerings through to Classifieds through to RSS Ads and RSS Premium Feeds. Here is one of the more creative ideas that would definately suit some specialist blogs:

'Help People Online / Consulting: Provide real-time consulting advice to people. Allow people to pay to access the brains behind the web site, newsletter, or forum. Google does something like this with Google Answers. If a web site owner is an expert, that owner can do ad hoc consultation. This can be done via email, forums, IM, blog comments, webcams, or WebEx (disclaimer: I own stock). The idea is to provide help to people via the web and ask them to pay for it.'

Read more at Oristus :: Money Honey: The List of Revenue Generation Ideas Also Check out our Blogging for Dollars post.

Submit your Blogging Tips

Whilst I've been blogging for close to two years now and am fortunate enough to earn a full time (ish) living from my blogging activities I by no means know everything there is to know about Blogging. Whilst I've written over 100 tips so far on this blog there are a lot more areas I'd like to see covered and I believe you and other readers like you could really add to the information I'm collecting here.

I'd love to learn from you and your experience and am always looking for Blog Tips to publish. I'd love to publish and/or link to (on your own blog) your tips on any of the following topics:

- Review a blogging tool or platform
- Share the story of your site in relation to earning revenue
- General blogging tips about writing content
- Tips on Search Engine Optimization or blog promotion
- Tips on Blog design
- Reviews of advertising or affiliate systems that you've tried and tips on how to get the most out of them.

Feel free to pitch any other ideas that you might have. In return for your tips or review I will link back to your blog/s and do all i can to promote you and your site. The posts you submit do not have to be exclusively published on this blog but they must be your original work.

To submit a tip simply email me with your tip or a link to one you've already written using my contact form.

Getting your blog to the top of the Search Engines

Search Engine News Journal has posted 10 great tips to get your blog ranked at the top of the Search Engines. I really like their approach because they acknowledge that it takes time to get your blog high up the rankings. I also like this tip about 'titles':

'Create a killer Title tag. Title tags are critical because they’re given a lot of weight with all of the search engines. You must put your keyword phrases into this tag and not waste space with extra words. Do not use the Title tag to display only your company name, or to simply say “Home Page.” Think of this tag more as a “Title Keyword Tag” and create it accordingly. It should reflect exactly what your page is about, using the keyword phrases people might be using at a search engine to find your company.'

Read more at Search Engine News Journal - Ten Tips to the Top of the Search Engines and read more about how titles are everything.

Tips to Increase CTR on Google Adsense

Webmaster Articles has a good post about increasing your CTR (click through rate) on Adsense. They write some good posts - similar to some of what I've written in my Adsense for Bloggers Tips. Here is one that they write that I've found to work very well for me also. "#2 Blend the background and border to match the page's background.  You don't want to trick visitors into clicking, but you don't want them deadened by banner blindness either."
Read more at Google Adsense: Tips to Increase CTR

Add Categories to your Blogger Blog

With Movabletype and many other platforms categories enable a wonderful way of organizing your blog. Each post in this blog is allocated to a category (or more than one) which means readers only interested in one topic (Adsense for example) can easily find every article on the site focusing upon it. In effect you can end up with many targeted mini blogs within the bounds of your full blog with categories.

One of the frustrating aspects of using the Blogger blogging platform is their lack of a categories feature. It is one of the reasons that I gave Blogger away shortly after starting my first blog.

Spide it Grasp it Enjoy it has just posted a tip/hack on how to add categories to your Blogger blog. I've not tested it but it looks pretty simple to install and could prove to be a very useful feature. Let me know below how you find it if you give it a go.

Blog Referal Statistics as an SEO Tool

SEO Scoop suggests that your blog's log files (or stats package - especially key word referrers) are a great tool for optimizing your site for search engines. This is good news because one of the most useful SEO tools that you have at your disposal is right at your fingertips! They write:

"The log files from your web site traffic can be an important aspect of your SEO research. You can find an amazing amount of information embedded within the logs. For example, today I noticed seven search terms that are doing very well in Yahoo that I was unaware of. These are terms I had not thought of and had not optimized for, but people are flowing into the site using those terms. In addition, Yahoo is outranking Google in terms of traffic for the site I am talking about."

I check my referrals from Google regularly to see how people are finding my site. As written above you can be quite surprised at how people stumble upon your site. I remember about a year ago I noticed that I was getting a lot of hits to my blog from people searching for 'Australian Idol' (an Aussie TV show). I'd written a post about the show and not really thought any more about it until I saw all the hits I was getting to it. As a result I became a regular writer about the show and then this year have been involved with the owners of Idol Blog who watched my success last year.

So the lesson is simply to watch how people are finding your blog and if the opportunity exists write more on the topic!

Advertising in your RSS Feed

One of the disadvantages of RSS reeds and the increasing numbers of people reading blogs via News Aggregators is that those bloggers running advertising on their blogs can only expose their readers to ads when those readers actually surf to the blog in question. Banner ads, amazon individual ads and ads like Google's adsense don't translate too well (at all) through RSS. There has been quite a bit of attention recently given to finding ways to incorporate advertising into RSS feeds in recent times to get around this problem. Moreover Technologies have just announced (see press release below) that they can now deliver such ads through RSS. Of course the revenue from these ads doesn't seem to end up in the hands of the blogger or webmaster running the sites but in Moreover's hands - but maybe one day we'll see a system like Adsense (or maybe Adsense will incorporate it) that will enable contextual ads through RSS. Until then it might be worth considering ways in which you can actually draw your readers to your site from RSS.

Moreover Press Release
Moreover Technologies Announces Intelligent Delivery of Contextual Advertising In Free RSS News Feeds

Delivery to RSS news readers respects users need for high-quality aggregated news while serving relevant advertising

San Francisco, CA – September 21, 2004 - Moreover Technologies, the premier provider of aggregated online current awareness and business information, today announced the availability of free RSS (Rich Site Summary) aggregated news feeds supported by contextual advertising – ideally suited for individuals that rely on RSS news readers to track breaking online news.

Advantages of Aggregation
With the continued explosion of online news, content aggregation is becoming the most popular delivery model because it saves time, compared to manually acquiring content from individual publications, and ensures a comprehensive view into news by topic, not publication. As proof of this, a recent Nielsen//NetRatings report, Top 20 Online Current Events & Global News Destinations, confirmed that Q2 2004 was the first time an aggregated news source, Yahoo! News, was more visited than any individual news publication site such as CNN.com and USAToday.com.

“It’s clear that the aggregated news model is rapidly becoming the preferred method of online consumer news consumption,” said Jim Pitkow, chief executive officer and president of Moreover Technologies. “Moreover is the behind-the-scenes leader in aggregated news delivery, powering billions of aggregated headlines each month through our distribution network.”

By quickly aggregating content from thousands of the most relevant and reliable online sources, Moreover free RSS news feeds provide a convenient view into breaking news and current awareness. News articles are aggregated from an expansive list of publications contained in the consumer version of the Moreover CI-Metabase, including premium international and regional news sites, corporate websites, government press pages, and discussion boards.

Intelligent Advertising Delivery
Delivering contextual advertising through RSS news feeds presents some unique challenges. RSS feeds are most often viewed in a reader program that retrieves articles on a regular time interval and displays them sequentially, much like email. By working closely with the developers of leading RSS readers, Moreover is able to intelligently deliver contextual advertisements through RSS without filling a news folder with advertisements every time a feed is refreshed.

“As a pioneer in utilizing XML and a co-author of the RSS 1.0 standard, we’ve been extremely careful to ensure that the rights of end users are respected,” said Jim Pitkow, chief executive officer and president of Moreover Technologies. “By intelligently understanding how contextual advertising is delivered and displayed in various RSS readers, Moreover is able to provide the highest-quality aggregated news without spamming a feed with useless advertisements.”

Availability
A complete listing of Moreover free RSS news feeds and links to compatible RSS news readers can be found online at www.moreover.com/rss. Moreover also offers free advertising supported news feeds for display on non-commercial websites in JavaScript format at www.FeedDirect.com.

For corporations or users that require more robust news solutions without contextual advertising, Moreover offers the Connected Intelligence™ line of current awareness solutions. More information on Connected Intelligence™ can be found online at: http://www.moreover.com.

GreyMatter Blog Publishing Platform Review

Business Blog Consulting has a good review of the Grey Matter Blog Publishing platform that is really worth a read if you're thinking through which is the best blogging platform for you. Rick describes Grey Matter in this way:

"It's a server-side, PERL-based platform, like Movable Type, which means, among other things, it requires rebuilds of the archives when you make significant changes to the templates. Joni tells how this process early on crashed her then mom-and-pop web host's servers and she was polited asked to take her web site elsewhere. (Bad blogger! Yikes!) Also, GreyMatter is no longer being actively developed by its principal developer, although there remains an active, die-hard community of plug-in and hack makers. It is also not so easy to install for novices. For those reasons, Joni suggests it's better for those who like playing around with the underside of the tools and maybe not ideal for most corporate blog installations."

Joni Mueller then goes on to review Grey Matter in what is one of the most comprehensive reviews I've seen of it. She starts off by writing:

"GreyMatter was one of the first Perl-driven blogging tools out there. That was back when the choices were Livejournal, Blogger and GreyMatter. The difference with GreyMatter was of course its power. At that time, it offered things that the other blog tools did not...."

Read the rest of the review at GreyMatter Blog Publishing Platform Review

Weblogs.about.com also has a good review of GreyMatter and writes:

"If you want a free, Perl-based blogging system, then Greymatter may be something you wish to check out. However, if you start longing for additional features that are not currently supported, you might have to wait a long time to get them - if at all. Otherwise, you'll have to hunt - or beg someone - for hacks and mods.

Pros

• It is opensource (free!) and fully customizable.
• It can be used for personal, business, educational, and organizational purposes.
• It supports several useful features such as multiple authors, bookmarklets, comments, etc.

Cons

• Installation may prove to be challenging for "non-techie" users as technical knowledge is needed.
• Since the system runs on Perl, the "rebuilding" process when you edit or update can be slow.
• There is no existing RSS/Atom support."

Read more of this review of GreyMatter.

CGI Resource also has a number of users mini reviews of GreyMatter that you might like to consider also.

Search Engine Optimization: Site Structure and Popularity

Search Engine Optimization: Site Structure and Popularity
by Milena Sotirova

In the Global Internet era the industry presence is undoubtedly related to the company online presence. Where is the scope of the online presence limitations and does it refer only to the search engine optimization aspect or it broadens into many related components.

Following the user experience line, it is easy to describe what the most important levels of access Internet popularity are and how it can be achieved.

Site organization
Well, the site organization is always the first after choosing a domain name that comes up as a decision in the design process. Organizing of the structure is a basic of the level of importance web promotion means. It requires following of simple and comprehensive rules that have proven results.

Home page is communication center of your site and it presumes availability of the basic structure and content implications. Good example of site navigation is PromotionWorld.com  site with well defined link structure and intersection navigation accessibility. List properly your basic content units, keeping the topic and title structure clear. Golden rule:" Simple is best" is totally applicable here and as you will see in the design. To keep simple means not to overload the home page with unuseful information and links. Structure inner index pages, where you can develop the structure and content and which will allow better search engine optimization and indexing.

The navigation should be clear and to be applied to all the pages. Generally users before going to your site have Internet experience and their expectations will follow the impression from their previous visits to other web sites.  A good example of site structure is the Microsoft's design decision with areas clearly defined and structured by families and content destinations. To find out what your industry competitors do, you can perform a research by your main keywords in the search engines. The site organization for a specific industry is generally kept in well defined frames. 

Design
Following the best examples will allow your site to perform better. If you are trying to change the design, you can set a survey question about the user experience within your site. Use the feedback to learn how your users feel the change and ask specific questions to reach to weak points of the new implementation. The design should keep the industry line and to be a step ahead with following the best examples. Do your search here again to find out how the best industry sites are designed. Developing of your own design concept is very important for your site success. Concept elements are: the small design elements in the headers, table formatting, and link and title styles.

The images can be kept simple and used only where appropriate. The buttons can be replaced with table structure and links where over effect can be presented through style. This will allow you to achieve a double effect: site better indexing and positioning in the search engines and fast loading of the site pages.

Keep the colors easy to perceive without teasing the eyes. The colors should follow one line and to be corresponding in saturation and color schemes. One of the best examples is the Sun's site design where the colors are used only to frame the content areas. The color choice should correspond to your industry sphere and keep the general site concept clear. Using too many effects can cause your users to abandon the site. The styling is also applicable to links and titles. The link font colors should be readable and corresponding to the basic methods of the successful internet marketing.

Generally the best design structure is a step ahead to improving your web presence. Using this powerful means you can achieve better web visibility and user retention.

Milena Sotirova is Editor of DevStart, Inc. She has publications on web promotion, search engine optimization and web hosting industry news coverage and analyses. PromotionWorld.com is one of the most popular sites for web promotion and contains tutorials, tools, articles and search engine news. Subscribe for DevStart Channel http://www.promotionworld.com/informer/ Send your feedback to editor@devstart.com

More Search Engine Optimization tips for your Blog

There is a lot of articles out there about how to optimize your blog for search engines - Google in-particularly - but this one has some pretty handy tips on SEO and promoting your blog. The key one really is to find ways to get others to link to your site - using the keywords you are targeting on your search engine.

Of course this isn't always easy - I get emails every day from people asking me to link to them, sometimes for reciprocal links, but 99% of the time they go straight to the trash bin. People WILL link to you if you write quality content and treat them with respect and genuineness. It is also worth thinking a little creatively about this also - if you can actually provide other sites and bloggers with a service that will benefit their blog whilst still giving you a link (with your targeted wording) you can do quite well. This is why our 'mini medal table' at our recent Olympics Blog was so successful. We provided bloggers with a free medal table that was updated live with medals won - but the table contained around 12 links back to our site using keywords that we'd chosen such as 'Medal Table' which linked to our medal table page. This page was hugely successful during the games - it ranked #1 on google and because it was one of the most searched for terms those weeks we generated hundreds of thousands of visitors.

Anyway - here is the first few tips in the article:

"So do you have a product, or web service? Do you want to find ways to Search Engine Optimize your site? If you didn't already, I suggest you do the following (or hire someone who you trust to do it for you):

Write to active blog authors. Tell them about your product, in a personal manner – to do so, you must spent around 5 minutes per blogmaster to compose a standard, personalized email. Do not spam people, as this will backfire.

Look into newsgroups and answer questions in an area where your product can help. Do not simply advertise your product in a new thread, but re-use existing ones to solve problems. Does someone ask "How can I see where my visitors come from?" and you offer statistic software, answer.

On the web site (the landing page) be straight-forward and honest about your product. Be upfront about the pricing, unless you offer your service for free. Use the inverted pyramid style of writing: most important things first, details later. Prepare a page where one can read for 30 seconds, or 30 minutes, depending on which level of detail one is looking for. Links which lead into a deeper structure are helpful. But make sure you restrict your main navigation to 10 or so important items. (Have you ever been to a product site and clicked on more than a few links?) If necessary, cluster links and break them up into two or three individual sections."

Read more at SEO 2004

eComXpo - Affiliate Marketing Event

eComXpo is an online event for Affiliate Marketers that might be worth ProBloggers participating in. They are planning over 100 presentations spread over 3 days.

"eComXpo is a bunch of folks' attempt to create a "big-tent" event for the affiliate marketing industry: a single, independent venue where all involved in this industry can educate, be educated, meet, and have fun.

Because it's being held completely online, the hassles and costs of physical events are avoided. Besides providing enormous flexibility for attendees and exhibitors, it means that this event can be attended by just about anybody, by any organization, big or small.

We expect to make a formal announcement around the first of October."
Read more at ReveNews: eComXpo

Getting Indexed Through Google AdSense

One of the theories that often goes around forums that discuss the use of Adsense is that site that use it get indexed faster and higher than sites that don't. The theory goes that if you use Adsense - Google will want your site to be more successful (and therefore earn them extra money) and so it will do its best to get your site seen by as many people as possible by giving it a high page ranking. Google denies this to be the case in their promotion of Adsense. I've often thought that it would be interesting to test this theory - but never got around to it. Luckily someone else has. Search Engine Round Table has done a little tester of the theory and believes Google is truly playing fair and not elevating Adsense sites. They write: 'I personally tested this out on a site. I put up a new site, made sure not to put any links to it. Then I put up AdSense ads and waited. Months later it was still not included in the Google index. Only recently has it been indexed, and I believe that is because someone, somewhere put a link to it. I strongly feel that this theory, although logical, is not correct.'
Read more at Getting Indexed Through Google AdSense

Blog Farming - Fatten your Blog up to Sell at Market

Another way of earning revenue from your blog is simply to build it up to sell it. There are not too many examples of blogs that have been sold yet but one that recently went on the market and was sold is Ensight.

I have recently read The E-Myth Revisited and found myself thinking along these lines. In the book it is suggested that one of the best ways to make a profit from a business is to build it up to be sold. He suggested that it is reasonable to expect 10 times the annual profit of a business to be paid for it.

In a sense what we're talking about here is 'blog farming'. Similarly to my grandfather who farmed cattle and sheep - he would breed them, fatten them up and then sell them at market - I wonder if we'll start seeing more bloggers taking a similar approach with their blogs.

I know I'd be willing to consider selling one or two of my blogs for 10 x their annual revenue! Any offers?

You might also be interested to read more about the Ensight sale over at Blog Business World.

Blog Post Formats

Amy at Contentious is writing a series on different types of blog posts which might be of interest to some readers. She's broken blog posts down into 7 formats and is working through each post (only 3 completed so far.)

1. Link-only
2. Link blurb
3. Brief remark
4. List
5. Short article
6. Long article
7. Series

"Why should bloggers understand and care about posting format?…

Bloggers who clearly understand posting formats and consider them consciously are more likely to choose the best format for each posting they publish – one that suits the content as well as the audience and the blogger’s own resources.

Before you start blogging, it helps to envision what your final posting will look like. Remember: your ultimate goal is communication, so it helps to publish in ways that effectively support communication. For text-based blogs, selecting the right format for each posting is a big part of achieving that goal." Read more - Found via Weblogg-ed

Webmaster World - Free Advice for Bloggers on Profitable Blogging

Webmaster World is probably one of the best places that I can suggest you head over to if you're interested in developing a profitable blog. It is on my regular rounds of surfing for ideas and discussion about how to get the best out of your website. Of particular interest to me, as a Google Adsense user, is their forum dedicated to the Adsense program. Whilst the discussion rarely mentions blogs and at times can be a little criptic - I'd say I've learnt more about how to get the most out of the program through digging through the hundreds (if not thousdands) of threads there. Often users of the forum are pretty secretive about the sites they are talking about and don't give everything away (and I don't blame them - tell everyone your secrets and you'll end up with hundreds of new competitors) but if you're willing to dig around and read between the lines you can learn a lot.

I remember one afternoon learning one small thing on those forums that doubled my earnings with a simple change to my approach. So it is well worth visiting and participating in the discussions there.

Also in their Marketing section of forums is one dedicated to Search Engine Promotion and another looking at Advertising Sales and Affiliate Programs - both of which are full of useful information.

Add to that the rest of their forums and you've got hours, if not days, of rich learning about running a successful website (and most of it is easily transferrable to blogs) - and its all free.

10 Ways to Ensure Your Blog Does NOT Get Indexed on Search Engines

10 Ways to Ensure Your Site Does Not Get Indexed on Search Engines is a good starting point for thinking through ways to optimize your blog for a high page ranking in Google.
Search Engines have come a long way since the web's beginnings. Back in the old days it seemed like anything you typed in would ultimately show at least one or more pornographic web site.

Well, luckily those days have passed us and getting indexed on search engines has become a necessity of doing business on the Internet. In my experience with personally working on over 250 business web sites in the last six years (an having them all indexed), I have accumulated a substantial list of techniques that work and don't work. There are literally hundreds of things that will have a negative effect on your ranking. Below is a list of my top ten.

1. Have no html text on your home page.

Because search engine robots are still not able to read images (jpegs, gifs etc), you will be guaranteed to not get indexed - because there is nothing to index.

2. Have a 100% Flash driven web site.

Some search engines are now able to index certain parts of flash, but as a general rule of thumb flash sites do not get indexed.

Read more at 10 Ways to Ensure Your Site Does Not Get Indexed on Search Engines

Fastclick Reviewed - Advertising suitable for high traffic Blogs

Fastclick is a revenue stream that will be suitable for some highly trafficked blogs. We trailed it recently on our Olympics blog and found that with the levels of traffic that we generated at the height of the games that it out performed all other revenue streams on the site including Google.

They offer a range of ads - mainly paying on a per impression basis. Pay outs depend on the ad size, style and content but are generally very very small. As a result a blog with only a small amount of visitors would probably find it more hassle than its worth to register and run with.

They have a good variety of ad formats including:
In Page Formats
- Medium Rectangle (300x250)
- Rectangle (180x150)
- Wide Skyscraper (160x600)
- Skyscraper (120x600)
- Leaderboard (728x90)
- Banner (468x60)
- Half Page (300x600)

Window Formats
- Interstitial (728x600)
- Pop-Under (up to 720x400)
- InVue (250x250)

There are some restrictions with where you are allowed to place the ads - most must appear above the fold of your blog or in the first 500 pixels of the page. This stops people hiding them away at the bottom of your site.

They also have some restrictions on what type of blogs they'll allow to sign up for their advertising program. You need to have a minimum of 3000 impressions per month and have to agree to some conditions which are pretty normal for these types of systems.

Fastclick does not charge any fees to run with the program - instead they take a cut of the earnings (35%).

Ads vary in quality - to be honest some of them are annoying - you've probably seen some of their banner and skyscraper ads for smiley faces in the past - some look quite cheap and nasty and you may consider blocking the most offensive if you're wanting to convey a sense of quality on your blog. I blocked some but found that some ad formats were worse than others.

If they have no ads to serve you they will link to PSAs (public service announcements) unless you specify an alternate ad for them to serve to your blog.

Overall I've found
Fastclick to be a useful revenue stream. Like Adsense its one of those systems that you just set up and let run. There is no imbedding of affiliate links or constantly checking to see if products have changed - you add the code to your site and let them do all the work. Their stats are updated live throughout the day and come with analysis tools that graph your earnings and tell you which ads are performing and which are not.

As I said above - it is not a system that will suit all blogs - but its worth signing up for to test and see how it works for you.

Search Engines, Directories and RSS Agregators to Submit your Blog to

Most Search Engines, Directories and News Aggregators will not find your blog on their own - well not quickly anyway - many need a little help and have ways of suggesting sites to be added to their databases. Big List of Blog Search Engines is just what it says - a big list of Search Engines, directories, and web-based RSS aggregators that you might want to consider submitting your blog to in order to promote it to web users everywhere.

A beginner's guide to setting up an online store

I've noticed a number of blogger recently who are setting up their own online stores to sell products related to their blog's topic. Following is an excerpt from a useful article that might help you to begin to think through what such an approach might entail.

'Online selling is by no means a simple task. To sell products online not only requires making use of high end marketing strategies but also involves lots of planning. This article is meant for those of you who intent to start an online store. It is intended to give you a fair idea of what you would need to do and what you need to avoid while planning an online selling business.

The following are the various steps that you would need to take in order to open a successful online store

The first most important aspect of online selling is to have a professional looking website that is designed to sell. You can go about creating the website from code up using web designers or simply go for readymade website templates. If you are purchasing website templates, be sure to go for templates that are professionally designed and have the option of shopping carts. Buying templates from providers who offer allied services like template customization, web hosting; SEO etc would be even better. Some template providers like 'buytemplates.ne'; offer allied services irrespective of where you actually purchased the template from. To get a rough idea of how your site should be designed you can take hints from successful online discount stores like http://www.ishopage.com and bestbuy.com.'

Read more at A beginner's guide to setting up an online store

Advertisers Beware: Blog-Fortified "Copy Cops" at Your Doorstep

Media Daily News has a fascinating article on the rise of blogging and the implications for Advertisers. They give some interesting tips to marketers and brand managers on how to stay three steps ahead of us blogging types.

'Blog and bloggers have made a huge mark in 2004, and this should give every major marketer and advertiser pause for deep reflection.

Bloggers gave Howard Dean's campaign early, unexpected momentum. They fanned the flames of the Iraqi prison crisis with rapid distribution of photos, especially the most controversial ones. They catapulted into the mainstream Burger King's "Viral Chicken" campaign, as well as the controversial "Swift Boat Veteran for Truth" anti-Kerry video. More recently, blogs have showcased new and promising ways for brands like Microsoft, Nike, Nokia, Sun, and HP to reach out to consumers and other stakeholders.

But let the word go forth - to marketers and agencies alike -that the blog revolution brings with it unmistakable tradeoffs and potent new "rules of engagement." Ignore them at your peril.

New Rules of Accountability
Like it or not, bloggers promise to hold marketers to new levels of accountability, impacting just about everything advertisers do, say, and claim....

"Copy Cops" and Consumer "Shelf Space"
Remember, a blog is basically a diary that logs consumer narratives on a public, non-erasable hard-drive known as the Internet. A good percentage of blog content reflects consumer experiences with "branded" products or services. Because virtually all blog content is indexed on search engines, enabling ready access - dare I say "easy listening" - by other consumers, such narratives take on special meaning and importance....

Looking ahead, brands need to ask harder questions about whether they can meet the new "torture test" established by the newly conscripted (and growing) blog army of product testers and fact-checkers. Brands also need to consider that these truth-soldiers will only get more persuasive as they integrate new "visual" functionality into their blogs, from digital photos, videos (heard of "vlogs"), dynamic links, and more. Indeed, thanks to Steve Job's iMovie, and the millions being spent by wireless players promoting camera phone usage, consumer generated media is moving to the big leagues of multimedia....

Read more at MediaDailyNews Advertisers Beware: Blog-Fortified "Copy Cops" at your Doorstep

Nokia pioneers cellphone blogging

Tools like those Nokia and Six Apart are developing for moblogging will be very useful for pro-bloggers in the future. The technology is constantly improving to allow updating your blog from virtually anywhere.

'E-mails and text messages are passe, if you talk to Nokia's director of multimedia applications Christian Lindholm.

What's in, according to the "godfather" of mobile phone users in Finland, home of Nokia, is instant "life caching" with cellphones.

"The whole of humanity has memories and we are getting into the business of keeping, enjoying and sharing them with others," said Lindholm.

Last week, Nokia announced a collaboration with California-based Six Apart to bring the personal blogging experience to a new level early next year.'

Read more at Nokia pioneers cellphone blogging

Blogging not leading to financial prosperity

This article in the Houston Chronicle is all about how bloggers are NOT getting rich - or anywhere near rich - from blogging. It is an interesting read - but as with so many of these articles (and they are appearing more and more) - they tend to focus upon personal or even political bloggers and not those who are focussing upon niche target markets/topics (which is where I think there is most potential to make some decent money with some commitment, creativity and hard work. I also suspect that we're not hearing too many stories of successful bloggers who are making money partly because such bloggers are not wanting to tell their story for fear of the market being flooded with competitors.

Anyway - here is what they write.

'If you think those Web journals of opinions and obsessions are a way to get rich, consider Jeff Soyer, a self-described "gay gun nut" in Vermont.

Soyer, who runs the journal Alphecca.com, pleaded for donations last month alongside an image of a tip jar topped by gun-toting cartoon character Yosemite Sam. "Ten bucks buys a box of bullets or feeds my cats for a week," he wrote.

Days passed and he received nothing. "By next week this domain could belong to a porno site," he subsequently posted. "Maybe you folks think that would be a better thing. I'm starting to think so, too." Only after other bloggers linked to his request did he receive enough donations to pay the $117 for a domain name and a year of Web hosting fees.

He's not the only blogger not getting rich. Bloggers at this summer's political conventions brought heightened visibility to blogging, but the money, for most bloggers, is still missing.

"There's a very tiny percentage of people who are making anywhere close to a living from blogs," said Sreenath Sreenivasan, professor of new media at Columbia University.

Andrew Sullivan, former editor of The New Republic, has a high-profile blog that takes American Express and PayPal payments and posts an address for checks or money orders. Bloggers point to Sullivan as the blogger most likely to be succeeding.

But Sullivan said in an e-mail he makes his living through freelance writing and speaking. "I've managed to pay all my expenses and an intern and give myself a minuscule salary, thanks to the generosity of my readers," he wrote. "I couldn't live off the blog alone, and I see no prospect of that happening in the near future, despite having one of the biggest audiences."

The money that is in blogland goes to only a few.'
Read more at HoustonChronicle.com - Blogging not leading to financial prosperity

Paid Contextual Advertising Driving Search Towards Personalization

'The Internet is in the midst of another technological revolution, the effect of which will change the ways we will access information and entertainment. Innovation on many core technologies has changed the online marketing environment and the ways commercial information is offered to us. Paid placement based on keyword targeting is a rudimentary example and is currently a major force driving decisions in the industry. The two most successful paid-placement/contextual-delivery programs, Adwords and Overture have been joined by dozens of smaller paid-placement/contextual-delivery engines such as E-Spotting, FindWhat, and Kanoodle. With a market that appears to be growing exponentially, the business potential of providing truly guaranteed listings is enormous. Effectively managing paid marketing efforts is important and tailoring advertising campaigns to maximize revenues will be an artful science.
'
Read More at Paid Contextual Advertising Driving Search Towards Personalization

Page Rank Explained

If you're wondering how Google works out how to rank search results on their search engine - and are also curious about how to climb the rankings with your blog or site then you might like to head over to Page Rank Explained which gives a pretty comprehensive outline of Page Rank.

'PageRank is one of the methods Google uses to determine a page’s relevance or importance. It is only one part of the story when it comes to the Google listing, but the other aspects are discussed elsewhere (and are ever changing) and PageRank is interesting enough to deserve a paper of its own.

PageRank is also displayed on the toolbar of your browser if you’ve installed the Google toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com/). But the Toolbar PageRank only goes from 0 – 10 and seems to be something like a logarithmic scale....

We can’t know the exact details of the scale because, as we’ll see later, the maximum PR of all pages on the web changes every month when Google does its re-indexing! If we presume the scale is logarithmic (although there is only anecdotal evidence for this at the time of writing) then Google could simply give the highest actual PR page a toolbar PR of 10 and scale the rest appropriately.' Read more at Page Rank Explained.

Blogging for Dollars

Will blogging produce millionaires? Can blogging financially provide people with a full time earning capacity? Will we see more and more professional bloggers? Can and should blogs earn money?

An increasing amount of people are writing about making money from Blogging. There is a quite a bit of debate about the legitimacy of doing so.

Megnut wrote an interesting article titled Blogging for Dollars: Giving Rise to the Professional Blogger . She writes:

'Most financial discussions focus on blog content and explore donations, advertising, or some type of sponsorship/patronage model as the means to compensate bloggers. Very little progress has been made towards finding viable economic models because people still think of Weblogs as personal sites. If you aren't Andrew Sullivan (who purportedly makes $6,000 per month on his site through donations), it's hard to imagine how you'd get the traffic and donations to generate such revenue....

By paying great bloggers to produce Weblogs, we remove economic constraints and enable them to devote their energies full-time to producing compelling content and creating outstanding Weblogs.'

Whether you agree with it or not - here are some of the ways bloggers are going earning money from their blogs.

Advertising - An increasing number of bloggers are running advertisements on their blogs. Programs like Blog Ads have popped up around the place which help you find advertisers. Of course these programs generally take a cut of the revenue earned. Other bloggers (often the bigger ones) find their own advertising or use a combination of their own and other programs. Nick Denton from Gawker Media is one person who seems pretty good at doing this on his numerous successful blogs.

Market Banker is another program similar to Blog Ads that lets you sell ads through their system automatically. They allow both banner and text ads. I have used these successfully on my Digital Camera site. You do give up a cut of the revenue to Market Banker, but for ease of use and the receiving of smaller payments this is a good option.

Programs like fastclick.com also offer to serve ads to your site. If you have a lot of traffic this is a great option definately worth considering as many of their ads pay per impression. I've reviewed the fastclick system here.

Adsense - Google Adsense is one advertising tool that many are using (including me). Ads are run depending upon the content of the page. If you flick through my individual archives you'll see that each page has a different focus of ad.

Google pays people who run their ads per click on the ads. Payments vary on the type of ad. I started using this two months ago. Part of the agreement in signing up with the program is that you don't talk about your specific results and figures so I'll refrain from that except to say that I'll never become rich through it - but that I'll continue to go with it. To do well with this program you either need to have very high traffic or blog on topics that pay well. Some of the following links talk about using adsense and other such programs.

- Adsense Tips for Bloggers (a series of posts about maximizing the potential of Adsense on your Blog).
- Blogging for Dollars with Adsense
- How to Boost your Adsense Revenue
- Introducing Google Adsense
- Nick Denton on Adsense

Amazon Associates - Other bloggers are Amazon Associates. In this program bloggers link (either via text, images or actual advertisements) to Amazon products or pages. If people purchase after following these links they take a small comission from Amazon, either for cash or gift vouchers. Blogs liks Blogcritics use this very intentionally. It is a system I've been trialing (mainly on my digital camera blog) recently. I have found it to be a worthwhile move to be an Amazon affiliate - its not my biggest revenue stream, but supplements Adsense nicely and is growing with my blog. I like it because you have complete control over what products you will promote and can tailor ads to fit exactly with your content.

Other Affiliate Programs
By no means is Amazon the only affiliate program available to bloggers. There are many affiliate programs that focus on different regions and products. Some pay a percentage of income generated from those being referred from your site, others pay on a per click basis, others pay for leads. The success of such programs tends to vary depending upon the match between your blog and the type of product your affiliate is offering. I've tried a number of programs but am yet to find them to be overly successful to this point.

Some affiliate programs that you may wish to experiment with include:
- Clix Galore
- Affiliate Sensor (I've found this one works pretty well for me so far).
- LinkShare.com - This one works well for me also.

Business Blogging - An increasing number of people are starting 'business blogs'. These take a variety of forms but generally are blogs about a particular service, product or business/organization. Check out the following articles on the topic.

- Blogs may be the cheapest way to communicate with your customers.
- New biz on the blog
- Business Blogs - The Big List
- The Small Business Blog

Tip Jars - Other bloggers have decided to simply ask their readers for donations. I know of many bloggers that do this through a variety of tools - the most popular of them being 'PayPal'. I surveyed a few this week and most have never or only rarely had donations - but for others like it is a major source of income. Andrew Sullivan is said to have made $80,000 in his last pledge week through donations. Here are some links that talk about it.

- Tip Jars
- Andrew Sullivan - Will Blog for Cash

Other Interesting links that talk about different approaches that you might want to check out might include:

- Gold Blogger - How to Make Money from your Blog
- Blogging Network - get paid to blog
- Blogging for Bucks - an interview with someone who does
- The rise of professional bloggers
- Paid Content
- Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content
- Blogonomics - Making a living from Blogging
- Jeff Jarvis - The Free Me

Different earning methods will suit different blogs depending upon content, readership levels and the goals of the blogger concerned.

Predictions & Observations

Is it possible to make money from blogging? I believe so. Will there ever be 'millionaire bloggers'? I suspect it will happen in the next few years. Will people earning a living from blogging be as common as people earning livings from plumbing, stock brokering or gardening? I'm not so sure.

Blogging has the potential to generate income - but I believe it will only be a select few who will be able to make their fortune (or even earn a full time income) purely through blogging. A few very creative entrepreneurs, good marketers and powerful communicators will make it big but the average joe shouldn't expect to set themselves up for retirement through blogging.

I think we'll see the rise of people who are able to supplement their income through the medium. Personally I would love to be able to get to the stage or earning a day or two a week from it (anyone want to advertise in this space?) to support my other work in the community. I also think that we'll see more and more people earning enough to pay their blogging costs through some of the above means.

I suspect we'll also see more people earning money off blog related tools and products. They may not technically be blogs as such - but if blogging continues to grow at the rate it has been (and as it is predicted to) a 'blogging industry' (of sorts) is likely to emerge. This will include blog consultants, blog tools, blog search engines, blog designers etc. (all of these things already exist - but with increased numbers of bloggers they are likely to start paying off). This will probably distress some blogging purists but it will happen.

Clusters/colonies of bloggers working together in alliances will emerge - not just because they have common interests to blog about - but so that they can work together to market and promote one another.

Dangers - In summing up my thoughts I think it worth saying that there are perhaps some dangers in blogging for dollars. The concern that I share with others is that in the quest to earn money from blogging that content could suffer. Balance is needed to keep advertising from dominating and setting the agenda for content.

Blogging for dollars is here to stay - it will continue to stay on and climb the agenda for bloggers everywhere. Its therefore something that I feel is important to discuss and I'm interested in what others might think about it - please feel free to critique or add to this post in comments - your opinion is highly valued.

Where do your Blog Readers Look?

I just found this fascinating article that has been written about some research into where web page readers eyes go when reading online news sources. I need to digest it a little more yet - however there are some interesting findings in the research that I'm sure would apply to us as bloggers as we consider the layout of our blogs. Here are a couple of snippets from the article.

"The eyes most often fixated first in the upper left of the page, then hovered in that area before going left to right. Only after perusing the top portion of the page for some time did their eyes explore further down the page....

Now also consider another Eyetrack observation: Dominant headlines most often draw the eye first upon entering the page -- especially when they are in the upper left, and most often (but not always) when in the upper right. Photographs, contrary to what you might expect (and contrary to findings of 1990 Poynter eyetracking research on print newspapers), aren't typically the entry point to a homepage. Text rules on the PC screen -- both in order viewed and in overall time spent looking at it."

Read more at Eyetrack III - What You Most Need to Know:

How to Get your Blog Discovered

Scobleizer has a good post on how to get your blog discovered. Most of it is the kind I've stuff I've already got in the Blog tips section but this one was a tad different:

'Hang out with smart (or at least interesting) people. For instance, Alex Mallett is working in Drew Endy's lab at MIT. Now, Drew is the guy who blew us all away at FooCamp last weekend. Just the fact that Alex can hang out with Drew and understand what Drew is asking for makes him far more interesting. Subscribed without even reading another post. Figure out who the "connectors" in your community are and find out how to hang out with them. If they get to know you, chances are they are looking for new people to link to. For instance, if you're a political blogger I'd be trying to figure out how to meet Glenn Reynolds or Andrew Sullivan. These two guys alone have hundreds of thousands of readers per day.'

Scobleizer also links up to Biz Stone's latest post on the topic of Promoting your Blog also. Again its nothing most of us havn't already read and it is targetted mainly at blogs that use Blogger - but its a comprehensive summary of some good tips.

Successful Blogging - Lessons Learned from an Olympic Experiment

A few people have emailed and asked for more information about the Olympic Blog we've run. Phil asked - "what lessons did you learn about running a successful blog through the process." I thought it might make an interesting Blog Tip post.

1. Think Ahead - The whole Olympic Blog experiment emerged in my mind a number of months back when a smaller experiment paid off. Back in February I posted a post titled 'American Idol 3 Winner'. Now that might seem like a crazy post to do back in February when the winner would be announced in May - but the whole point was to post something in advance of the event to let Google index it and rank it highly so that when the day came it would be the first thing people would see when they searched for the term. The experiment paid off - to this day we're still number 1 on that post (which now has up to date relevant news of the winner) and more importantly on the day when one of the biggest search terms on the web was 'American Idol 3 Winner' we had 10s of thousands of visitors.

After this little experiment I began to wonder what other events I could anticipate. One of the looming world events was obviously the Olympics and so we resolved to expand the experiment.

2. Think Search Terms - Our American Idol 3 experiment would never have worked if we'd chosen to call the post virtually anything else. I guessed correctly (it was a no brainer really) what people would be typing into Google the day the winner way announced and optimized the page accordingly with title and keywords repeated throughout the information posted on the site. The same thing was a key to our success with the Olympic blog. What would be key search terms for people seeking Olympic information? Obviously words like 'Athens' and 'Olympics' were good starting points. 'Opening Ceremony' was a good one 'Medal Table' was a better one and 'Jenny Finch' (US soft baller) was a smart bet (even though her name is actually spelt Jennie - we figured people would get it wrong). You get the idea. The key was to be among the highest ranked results on Google for these highly searched for terms. Again its about 'thinking ahead' but its also about getting in the shoes of the potential reader of your site and anticipating their next move.

3. Make your Site Virus-like - I've written previously written about a great book called Unleashing the Idea Virus (by Seth Godin) on this blog. He argues that for any idea to spread that you need to think of it as a virus and make it as easy as possible for other people to spread the virus for you. It is much more effective to let others 'sneeze' (or promote) your site into the web than to do it all yourself. This is not as easy as it sounds but the way we did it was to devise a little mini medal table for bloggers and other web masters to put on their websites. The table had the top 10 medal winning counties listed as well as a link to the main site, to a full medal table and at the time a link for bloggers to get their own free medal table. This could have been the most successful thing that we did.

We are not exactly sure of how many people used the medal table but it numbered over 100 in my guesstimate. This had a twofold benefit for our site. Firstly it brought direct traffic to us. A number of big sites used the medal table on their sites which brought a lot of visitors but secondly it helped our Google ranking also as they saw us suddenly being linked to by 100+ sites with keywords that we'd determined. We also made a lot of bloggers happy in the process by giving them a fun, topical and cool feature for their blog.

4. Get permission to market your site - Another Seth Godin strategy is to get permission from your customers (readers) to promote your product to them. With the advent of SPAM people are not really open to the idea of getting emails promoting your blog - but if you get their permission first then you're onto a good thing. We simply added a link at on every page of the site inviting people to submit their email address to receive a daily update during the games on the latest Olympic news. Thousands of people gave us permission to send them an email each day inviting them to pop by the site to read articles we'd put up in the previous 24 hours. Again - this is about providing people with a useful service that also has some big payoffs for your blog.

5. Content - Quantity of content is important. We worked very hard in the weeks leading up to the Games to have around 3000 pages of relevant content on the site. Over the weeks of competition this built to over 4000 pages. They covered as many keywords as we could think of so that Google could do its job and bring us visitors. I talked to a blogger recently about how to get more visitors to his site and one of the biggest problems he has was that he only had 80 pages of content. It takes time to build your archives up but it is a natural way to build visitors. Of course quantity is not everything - relevant, quality content helps heaps too with building repeat readers and also with Google rankings - but in this case quantity was probably more important. One strategy we used for getting as much content up as quickly as possible was to invite contributions of other people. We were fortunate to have a small number of dedicated bloggers help us out with this - although between Regan and myself we did around 95% of the content added.

5. Work Hard but Have Fun - I guess the last thing I'd say is that the whole process was a lot of work but also heaps of fun. We enjoy sport and so an Olympics blog was a natural blog for us to run. If the topic had been something we had little or no interest in I'm not sure we would have put in all the work that we did. There is no escaping the fact that it took a lot of effort to run the show and some real sacrifice from us and our wives who put up with us pulling all nighters (thanks Rachel and V!) but overall it was really enjoyable and a rewarding experience.

That is just scratching the surface on the lessons learned - I could probably write another 20 but that will have to do for today. Along the way we did make a lot of mistakes but in the process we learned heaps that we would do quite differently next time - bring on Beijing!

Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask about Blogging

Simon World has a good post titled Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask. Its got some great advice on blogging for anyone starting out....or continuing in blogging.

Here is a couple of his tips:

4. Prepare for the reality that the rest of the world may not share your high opinion of yourself and your site. 5. You know that movie where the guy built a baseball field and waited for some dead folks to turn up and play ball? Blogging's like that. Prepare to slog at putting up brilliantly crafted, accurate and to-the-point insights that will proceed to make no difference to anything at all.... 7. The big bloggers (in terms of readership, not size. I'm sure at least some of them are thin) are big for a reason. They fill a niche, they have interesting opinions, they've been doing it for a long time. Whatever it is, you need to realise that overnight success can take years to create.

There is heaps more there to look over.

On a similar blogging theme - Rachel has a great collection of thoughts on Business Blogging.

How to Start a Blog

Jonny Baker has an Idiots Guide to Starting a Blog which is well worth the read if you're thinking of starting one but don't know how. I'm going to add it to my Blog Tips Central Register.

Other good 'How to start a blog' type articles include:

• Weblog Primer
• Choosing a Blog Interface
• Starting a blog (with Moveable Type)
• How to Start a Blog
• Creating a blog with Moveable Type
• How to: Start a Blog
• Introduction to Blogging
• Blogging 101 - An Introduction to Reading and Writing a Blog
• Introduction to Blogs and Blogging
An Introduction to Weblog Terms

If you've written any material that would help a blogger just starting out (or know of any) please feel free to add them in comment below.

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 8 - Miscellaneous Adsense Tips

This is part 8 (and the last) in a series of posts on increasing adsense revenue for bloggers. Also in this series is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7.

We have unpacked our Adsense Equation in detail and have given numerous tips for maximising Adsense Revenue. Whilst there are occasions that Adsense doesn’t perform as well on some websites for no particular reason as others we can safely predict that if you work on each of the four areas you should see an increase in the amount of the cheque that Adsense sends you at the end of each month. Remember though that your revenue will only be as high as your weakest link – work on all elements of the equation – not just one or two.

As well as the proceeding tips there are a number of other things that might be helpful to know in using Adsense that we couldn’t find a place for in previous posts.

Outgoing Links - One theory going around is that pages with fewer outgoing links result in higher click-throughs. Give your readers fewer options of links to click on and they are more likely to click on your ads. This MAY be true, but don't let it determine your content. My Digicam site has many outward links because it is a page that acts as a hub of information from around the web. I've not noticed that this makes my revenue levels suffer – in fact I suspect its because of these helpful links that people come to my site.

Using Frames - If your site uses frames I’m told you should make sure your ads are placed in the frame where you content is or else it will not provide relevant ads for your content. Thanks Greg for this tip.

Don't click your own ads. - It might be an obvious way to get a few click throughs and increase your Adsense revenue - but Google is very clever at working out if your clicks are genuine or not. Its not hard to track IP addresses and to see patterns emerging between where clicks are coming from. It is not worth the risk of being banned from the program for a few cents per click. Especially don't click ads from the same IP address that you check your stats from - this is asking for trouble.

Don't encourage your readers to click on your ads. Its against the agreement that you enter into with Google. Once again they will track you down if you break these rules. I've seen a number of people who have been banned from Adsense for this. Let your ads speak for themselves.

Monitor your Statistics. Many adsense users check their stats all day everyday. Whilst this might be overkill (its like watching grass grow) it is useful to track what is happening at this end of your campaign. Use channels to monitor which pages are doing well and which are not. Tweak pages that are not doing well and make more pages similar to those that do.

Alternative Ads - Use alternative ads for when Adsense cannot serve ads to your page. When they cannot find a suitable ad for your page Adsense will serve you with a ‘Public Service Announcement’ (PSA). These ads may be for a good cause, but they will not relate to the content of your page and will not earn you any money. Instead Adsense allows you to nominated an alternative ad that they will serve into the position instead of the PSA. I use Amazon for this, but also have experimented with affiliate alternative ads Affiliate Sensor which I find works really well as it lets you choose from a wide range of affiliate products and still target them to your site.

That is the end of our Adsense tips for Bloggers series. Feel free to submit your own Adsense tips and strategies in comments below. You also might like to check out some of the following alternative Adsense Tips pages for more tips from around the web.

Adsense Tips from around the Web
- Google's Official Adsense Tips
- Google Adsense Information, hints, tips and examples

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 7 - Well Placed and Designed Ads

This is part 7 in a series of posts on increasing adsense revenue for bloggers. Also in this series is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8.

Revenue = high readership + high paying ads + relevant ads + well placed and designed ads

The forth element of our Adsense Equation is that of having well designed and optimally placed Adsense Ads. I’ve found that ad positioning is incredibly important. I remember shifting the ads on one of my blogs a while back and being over the moon to discover the next morning that the move had doubled the click through rates that I’d had over night! Its worth doing some tweaking.

Adsense Ad placement and design is an issue that is often hotly debated in Adsense discussion forums. It seems that each Adsense user has their own strategy – some like ads that blend in, others like ads that stand out from the rest of the page. Some like ads in banner positions, others in skyscrapers, others like to put them right in the middle of content. In my experience, different strategies work on different blogs at different times. The key tip I’ll give you is to experiment. Try new positions and design and track your results. Having said that, let me share a few other tips that you might like to experiment with.

Skyscraper - One of the most widely used Adsense formats is the skyscraper. The beauty of this format is that as your reader scrolls down your page ads continue to be visible for a longer period of time. In contrast a banner ad at the top of a page is the first thing to disappear.

Go Right - I suspect that ads places on the right hand side of a page (especially skyscraper ads) will do better than ads placed on the left. Why? Simply because the scroll bar is on that side and when it comes time for your reader to scroll down that is where their eyes will go.

Blend - Most successful Adsense users seem to be taking the approach of blending their ads into the overall theme of their page. This often means making the ad’s background (and often border) the same (or similar) colour to the background of the page and making the title and URL the same as links of the rest of the page. In this way the ad does not stand out as being ‘ad-like’. Having said this I know of a few bloggers who take the opposite approach and make their ads as bright and ugly as possible in the hope of attracting the attention of their readers. I don’t subscribe to this because I think it cheapens the overall feel and look of a page.

In Content - More and more bloggers (and webmasters) are putting their ads inside the main body of their posts. In this way the ads are prominent and more likely to be seen by readers as they read your content. If your text wraps around the ads this can be quite effective. On the flipside of this argument is that you may run the risk of frustrating your readers with dominant ads. People reading content online are a fickle bunch and get easily turned off by blatant advertising.

Above the Fold - it is generally accepted that your Adsense ads should be placed towards the top of your page and be visable without your reader having to scroll down. Studies show that blog visitors stay on average for only 60 or so seconds, many without scrolling down. If you ads are hidden towards the bottom of your page you decrease the likelihood of them ever being seen let alone clicked.

Too Dominent? - The position and design of your Adsense ads needs to be balanced with the overall purposes and design of your blog. What is the priority of your blog – is it to make money or is it something else. I have a number of blogs – and place ads differently on each depending upon their purposes. For example this blog is not a commercial blog – I’m more interested in building relationships, sharing and hearing others ideas and updating those interested in what I’m doing with my life. As a result my Adsense Ads are in a less prominent banner position and are designed to fit with the overall theme of the blog. However on my Digital Photography Blog there is obviously a more commercial intent (as well as it being something of a passion and hobby). As a result I experiment with more prominent Adsense ads (usually skyscraper and within content).

I cannot stress enough how useful it is to experiment. What works on one blog doesn’t always work on another. I’ve also noticed that if you have a blog with regular and loyal readers that it is good to keep things changing as your readers tend to get used to the way your blog is and become blind to things like Adsense Ads. I notice that when I move my ads around that it often creates higher click throughs for a few days – until the blindness kicks in again.

Read the next part in this series - a collection of Miscellaneous Tips

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 6 - Relevant Ads

This is part 6 in a series of posts on increasing adsense revenue for bloggers. Also in this series is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8.

Revenue = high readership + high paying ads + relevant ads + well placed and designed ads

The third element of our Adsense equation is that of relevant Adsense ads. It is all very well to rank high in search engines to generate high levels of traffic, but without relevant ads that relate to the content of your blog you are not likely to generate much in the way of click throughs.

Let me give you an example. Recently I was asked to help a fellow blogger who has struggling with his Adsense ads because whilst his content largely focused upon the topic of ‘health care’ – most of the ads being served to his blog were focused upon ‘blogging’. He was getting quite reasonable traffic levels and had a reasonably high paying topic (there are some good health care ads out there) but as you’d expect, people coming to a blog about health care did not click on ads for blogging software and services at a very high rate. The challenge was to get his ads reflecting the content of his blog.

Another fellow blogger had the problem of not getting ANY ads being served to his site. Instead of paying ads all he was getting was the public service ads that Adsense serves when they couldn’t find any relevant paying ads (these pay nothing).

How do you get relevant ads? Here are a few things to try.

Make sure there are ads available - My friend who didn’t get any paying ads served was focusing on a key word for which there was no or very few ads. A simple way of checking this is to do a search on Google for the key word you are targeting. If they don’t serve ads on their own search results page its an indication that such ads are scarce – if not non existent. They way we got ads on my friends blog was to experiment with other related keywords. He didn’t have to change the focus of his blog – just the way he described his topics. For example if there are no ads for ‘bed linen’ try ‘blankets’, ‘sheets’, ‘quilts’ etc. Experiment with different combinations until you find something that works.

Increase your Keyword density - The more you use your keywords the more likely you are to get ads on those topics. Its not common knowledge exactly how the Adsense bot decides what ads suit your content best (if someone knows feel free to post it in comments below) but it’s a pretty safe bet that if you put you keyword in your title, at least once in your first paragraph and then scatter it throughout the rest of your page that you’ll convince the Adsense bot of what your topic is. It MAY also be helpful to include your keywords in the URL of your page (Moveable type can let you do this – ie look at the URL of this page – it incorporates my title and therefore some keywords). It MAY also be worth putting your keywords in outward links, bold, italics etc. All of these strategies also help optimise yor blog for search engines which won’t hurt either.

Examine your Sidebars, menus, header and footer - It is not just your main content that the Adsense bot searches to find the topic of your page, but also your other areas. When I looked at the healthcare blog that was getting ‘blogging’ ads I noticed that he had the word ‘blog’ in his title, three times on his sidebar and once in his footer. It was also in his URL and he also used the word quite often in his content. My recommendation was to remove the word from as many of those places as possible and to increase his health care keywords. The ads improved their relevancy almost immediately.

Stick to one topic per page - Obviously this may not be feasible on your front page – but attempt to keep each individual blog entry/post as highly targeted as possible. I’ve noticed that some people often include two or three topics in one entry – this will confuse Adsense’s bot so split them up into two entries.

Block irrelevant Ads - Sometimes despite your best intentions Google just gets it wrong and serves your ads that have nothing to do with what you write. If you’re getting some repeating irrelevant ads block them. Adsense lets you do this to quite a few sites and its easy to do. I have a number of ads blocked, some because they are philosophically not consistent with what I write about, but mainly because they just are not relevant to the topic of my blogs.

Ask Adsense - If all else fails notify Google Adsense of your issue. Of course they are busy people – but Google prides itself on being responsive to its users. I’ve emailed with queries a number of times, once on an issue of irrelevant ads, and every time I’ve had positive results from my query. You’ve got nothing to loose – shoot them an email!

If you do all of the above you SHOULD find Adsense serves you with relevant ads. In conjunction with the other elements in our equation this will contribute to increased click throughs and hopefully higher Adsense revenue. Next in this series on maximizing Adsense revenue is a post on Well Placed and Designed Adsense Ads.

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 5 - High Paying Ads

This is part 5 in a series of posts on maximising adsense revenue for bloggers. Also in this series is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8.

Adsense Revenue = Traffic Levels + High Paying Ads + Relevant Ads + Optimally Positioned and Designed Ads

The next element of this Adsense equation to be examined is how to get high paying Adsense Ads running on your site. Obviously in any business one way to get higher profits is to charge more for your product - whilst you have no direct say in how much is charged for ads run on your site - there are ways of targeting types of ads that might bring in a higher return than others.

As we mentioned in our initial explanation of the equation, the PVR Blog is one example of a blog that targets a well paying ad type - ads for PVR technology. Whilst I do not know specifics of earnings I would suspect blogs like Gizmodo who run Adsense ads would also be generating a higher paying ad, due to their focus on technology.

The lesson we can learn from blogs such as these is that they attract specific ads (that presumably are well paying) by keeping their content targeted on the same topics. To over simplify what we're saying - if you want ads about Camera Phones blog about Camera Phones.

Finding High Paying Ads is not as easy as it sounds (is anything?). Do a search for Google on High Paying Adsense Ads and you won't find too many sites listing the best keywords for Adsense. The top Adsense users in Adsense discussion forums tend to be pretty secretive about not only what keywords they focus on, but also what sites they run. I don't blame them either - its good business sense really.

Having said this there are a number of strategies and tools that you might like to employ to help find high paying keywords.

• Trial and Error - I know this will frustrate some of you who want a nice and easy quick fix but overall it is one of the best pieces of advice I can give. Try writing on a topic - track the results - if it pays off do it again....lots. Adsense allows you to track specific pages or sections of your blog using its 'channels' feature - if you're smart you'll watch which sections of your blog are generating the highest ads by dividing your overall earnings by the number of clicks and comparing it to other channels. Keep trying new topics until you strike gold and then dig in like crazy!
• Are there Any Ads? - This is a good first question. Despite the many thousands of advertisers using Adsense there are some topics where the answer to this question is no. A simple way to check is to head to Google and do a search for the key words you're wanting to blog about. The results page will bring up not only a list of other sites writing about that key word (they are you competitors) but on the right hand side there will be a list of ads - these are the same sorts of ads you'll get on your site if you write on the topic. If there are ads there, it is a good sign. If there are not - maybe its worth finding another topic to write on if you're hoping to attract ads.
• 7 Search has a list of the 100 of the top paying keywords (in their advertising program - not Adsense) at the moment. Its a bit depressing actually to see a list like this because you'd have to sell your soul somewhat in order to go with many of them. Its an interesting site to check out though.
• Also from 7 Search (and more useful) is their Keyword Suggestion Tool which gives you an idea of what people are paying per click on different tools (again this is not specifically for Adsense but it will give you an idea of what the going rates are). Find What also has a similar service.
• Google Adsense's biggest competitor are Overture (they run the ads on Yahoo) - they offer a service where you can enter your keywords and they will not only tell you how much advertisers are paying for the words but also how many people are searching for the term. This is a very useful tool.
• Sign up for Adwords - One way of getting a feel for how much people are willing to pay per click is to sign up with Google as an advertiser yourself. It doesn't cost much to start a mini campaign and do some research this way. You'll get a feel for what people are bidding on different words very quickly this way.
• Word Tracker is the best tool I've seen to help in finding keywords that people are searching for in the major search engines. The excellent thing about Word Tracker is that they also tell you how many other sites out there are targeting the same words! This is very handy as it will stop you targeting 'Britney Spears' as a Keyword phrase even though its one of the most searched for keywords on the web because literally hundreds of thousands of other sites have beaten you to the punch. Word Tracker has a free version to trial it and their paying version is even better - well worth the investment.
• I'm told Keyword Sleuth is a similar program to Word Tracker however I am yet to trial it.

Targeting High Paying Adsense Ads is an important aspect of generating an income from Adsense. It is not enough in and of itself however. You can have $10 per click ads (I've not found any of these yet) but without generating any traffic your research into the right ads will be useless. Likewise it is one thing to identify which ads you want to target - but it is another thing to actually get these relevant ads showing on your site. It is to this topic which our next post in this series will head - Finding Relevant Adsense Ads.

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 4 - Increasing Traffic

This is part 4 in a series of posts on maximising adsense revenue for bloggers. Also in this series is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8.

I have argued the case for our equation for increasing Adsense Revenue

Adsense Revenue = Traffic Levels + High Paying Ads + Relevant Ads + Optimally Positioned and Designed Ads

I now will turn my attention to each of the four elements of good Adsense revenue in turn and give some practical easy to implement tips to improve each from my experience.

Increasing Traffic Levels is a key component to increasing Adsense revenue. As I wrote previously, 'The more people that see you Adsense Ads, the more likelihood there is that someone will click on them.'

Increasing the readership of your blog is not as simple as it sounds, it takes time, patience and hard work (and sometimes a bit of luck) Having said that there are many things you can do to get your blog in front of a wider audience and there exposing the adsense messages on your site to more potential 'clickers'. Here are a few tips...

• Quality, Interesting, Useful and Original Content - What are the blogs that you read the most? If you're anything like me they are blogs that have quality content that 'scratches me where I itch'. This is essential to increasing your readership unless you have a pretty amazing 'gimmick' to bring readers in.
• Good Blog Design is really important if you want your blog to create a good first impression. With millions of other blogs and sites out there its worth some effort to make yours stand out. Also worth a read is Good Weblog Design and Layout.
• Link to others - be generous with your links to other bloggers big and small. You'll be surprised how many links come back your way. This not only brings traffic from their sites but doesn't hurt your ranking in Google.
• Comment on others blogs - Some of my most loyal readers came to my blog because I genuinely interacted with them on their blogs through comments. Hear me now, I say genuinely because its easy to spam in comments, but this will have the opposite effect of generating readers to your blog.
• Update Frequently - There is nothing that turns me off a blog faster than seeing that it hasn't been updated for a month or more. Keep it rolling over with interesting content.
• Interact with Readers - Having an interactive blog that invites the involvement of readers is one way of generating repeat visitors. I've written a tip on Interactive Blogging including a number of interactive tools that you can use on your blog. Also check out this tip on using comments effectively to increase interactivity on your blog.
• Optimise for Search Engines - I can't stress enough how important Search Engines are to increasing traffic, especially traffic that will click on your ads. I find that 95% of my traffic comes from Google and have found that anecdotal evidence suggests this traffic clicks through on Adsense ads at a higher rate than traffic from links on other blogs and sites. So work hard at getting listed and highly ranked on Search Engines.
• Add a signature to your outgoing email - Learn a lesson from Hotmail who have used signatures on the bottom of their users emails for years to promote their home page and generate interest in their product. Be careful though if you don't want your worlds to collide!
• Web Rings - There are literally thousands of webrings that you can sign up for. I'm not sure how effective they are these days, but some people still swear by them.
• Add an RSS feed to your blog - more and more people are reading blogs without ever visiting them through News Aggregators that pick up information using RSS. Whilst this does not guarantee those reading through aggregators will visit your blog (and therefore see your Adsense Ads) it certainly increases the chances of them dropping by, especially if you invite comments and have internal links on your posts.
• List your site on Portals - There are a growing number of sites which exclusively list blogs. If you want people to find you its worth submitting your blog to be listed on them. Some focus on specific topics (like Eaton Web and Globe of Blogs). Other portals like BlogShares, Blog Street and BlogTree also list a lot of blogs in different ways which might increase your blogs profile.
• Blog Search Engines and Indexes - Get yourself registered on sites like Blogdex, Popdex and Daypop (they require RSS I think). These sites have features that allow people to search for blog entries via topic and keywords. They also list the most popular recent topics and each have other interesting features which can enhance your blogging experience.
• Start a Newsletter - Offer your readers a newsletter service to keep them up to date with your latest posts. I've found since adding a free weekly newsletter to my digicam blog that hundreds of readers have signed up for regular updates of my latest posts. Think about this - hundreds of people have given me permission to invite them to come back to my blog - every week!
• Get Involved in Blog Projects and Memes - From time to time other bloggers will invite your participation in a blog project of theirs. Get involved, support their project and you might find it pays off. On the flip side start your own blogging project or meme. Do something that is of service to other bloggers. Rachel's Blogger Gallery was a great example of a project that allowed others to get involved. I tried something similar with Underblogs and Blogger Idol.
• Get involved in other web forums - Genuinely participate in web forums and discussion pages on topics related to your blog. Many of these allow you to add a signature to your posts which raise your blogs profile.
• Promote your Posts - If you think you've written something worthwhile spend a few minutes letting others know about it. I regularly shoot other bloggers to notify them of what I've written if I think it will interest them. Think about it before you send the email and don't bombard the same people constantly with every topic you write on - be selective, concise, polite and helpful with your emails but don't be afraid to promote yourself.
• Add a 'Email a Friend' Option to your posts - make it easy for your readers to tell others about what you've written. I know this function gets used regularly on my blog and brings in new readers that I would never otherwise have been able to reach.

These are just some of the ideas that I've used and seen others use to increase the readership of a blog and thereby increase the exposure of Adsense ads to a wider audience.Many of the above tips were taken from my Blog Tips Series including the 'Finding Readers' Series.

What methods have your found to be effective at increasing the readership of your blog? What works for your and what doesn't? What tips would you add to this collection?

Of course increasing traffic alone won't greatly increase your Adsense revenue, but it can help! In our next Adsense Tip for Bloggers we will explore ways to generate High Paying Ads - the second component in our Adsense Revenue Equation.

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 3 - An Equation for Success

This is Part 3 in a series for Bloggers on how to use the Google Adsense Program. Also in this series is Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8.

There are many factors that impact the level of revenue generated from a blog using the Google Adsense program. Books have been written explaining expert strategies for Adsense - However for the purposes of this series we've boiled it all down into four elements that we believe impact your Adsense earning capacity the most. Speaking in general terms here is a simple equation that illustrates how the factors each contribute to Adsense Revenue.

Adsense Revenue = Traffic Levels + High Paying Ads + Relevant Ads + Optimally Positioned and Designed Ads

Its not Rocket Science. Each of the above four elements contribute directly to the total revenue that your Adsense Ads will produce. Don't just work on one of them though because if any one is weak it will hold your potential earnings back. Lets break each factor down....

Traffic Levels - The more people that see you Adsense Ads, the more likelihood there is that someone will click on them. As I examine the statistics provided by Adsense that report my daily earnings I notice that my earnings in the past 8 months have increased considerably as my total page impressions have increased. For example earlier in the week when Slashdot linked up to this post I had an influx of 50,000 visitors in 24 hours to my blog - it doesn't take a genius to work out what this did to my Adsense earnings that day! Work on increasing your traffic levels and you should see an increase in your Adsense Revenue.

High Paying Ads - Once again I'm stating the obvious, but if the content you provide on your blog attracts high paying ads you're going to do significantly better. For example it has been documented that the PVR Blog is doing pretty well when it comes to high Adsense earnings - the secret of its success is partly due to it being served with ads that are high paying. The topic of the PVR blog is, as you'd expect, PVR technology including TiVo, Replay TV etc. This is cutting edge technology and therefore advertisers are willing to pay top dollar to get their products and services out there! In comparison if a person was to start a blog on 'toothpicks' I suspect the ads are not likely to pay very much. It would take very high traffic levels to earn as much from a toothpick blog as it would the PVR blog.

Relevant Ads - A second reason the PVR Blog is successful is that it servers relevant ads. To put it simply people looking for information on PVR technology are confronted by Adsense ads for PVR technology. I recently visited a blog that was having trouble getting relevant ads - they had a blog on Tourist destinations in Australia - but unfortunately they were getting Adsense ads for remote control cars. You can guess what their revenue was like. Increase the relevancy of your Ads to your content and you are one step closer to increasing your Adsense revenue.

Optimally Positioned and Designed Ads - One of the coolest things about the Adsense program is that they give you freedom in choosing the best position and color scheme for your ads. Just like in the wider world of advertising - positioning is a key element to an ads success. A Billboard positioned on a road where no one drives is not likely to get the same results as one positioned on a busy intersection. The position and design of your Adsense Ads is critical - if they are out of site they'll never get clicked on.

Bringing them Together - The above four elements are in many ways pretty obvious when spelt out like this - the challenge comes to improving each to optimize Adsense revenue.

Your revenue will only grow as high as the weakest one of these factors on your blog. For example if you have high paying, relevant, well designed and positioned ads but no traffic you'll not do well. Likewise if you have high traffic, high paying and relevant ads but they are poorly designed an in a position where they'll never be seen - you'll waste all your other hard work. Its not enough to work on one element.

How do we improve each? In the next four posts we'll examine each area in turn and suggest a number of ways that you might try tweaking them to increase your revenue. Read the next post in the series on Increasing Traffic.

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 2 - Is Your Blog Suitable for Adsense?

This is Part 2 in a series on using Adsense on your Blog - Also in this series is Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8.

Is your blog suitable for Adsense? - Before you rush into signing up for Adsense expecting it to earn you a million dollars it is worth asking the question of whether Adsense is the right revenue strategy for your blog. By no means is it the only option - you might like to check out this tip on other ways of making money from blogging.

Whilst there are some amazing success stories about earning big dollars with Adsense out there, it is worth taking a realistic look at some cold hard truths about the Adsense program.

Google does not accept every site that applies to the Adsense program.

• Google Adsense Program Policies indicate that the content of sites must not contain things like excessive profanity, pornography, illicit drugs etc. Basically your blog needs to have content that is reasonably 'family friendly'.
• Also in their policy document is a reference to them not normally accepting pages of a personal nature. This is the topic of discussion in many Adsense forums and is obviously open to different interpretations. Many (if not most) blogs are personal in nature - however to maximize your chances of approval by Adsense a blog should be targeted on a particular topic/s. For example whilst this blog is often personal in nature - most of my individual posts (pages) focus on very specific themes which are repeated throughout the blog. update - this may have changed recently with Blogger now allowing blogger blogs to use Adsense.
• Sites accepted into the Adsense program are also required to be easily navigable, have an adequate quantity of text based content (don't apply if you've been blogging a week) and be written in English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, or Spanish. They may not to have excessive advertising or other contextual/competing advertising.
• Whilst not stated in the Adsense Policy document, many also believe that sites accepted into the program also need to have reasonable levels of traffic. If your blog is new, it may be worth waiting a few weeks or months before applying to build up traffic and content levels. Others speculate that a professionally designed, well-organized and privately hosted blog has a better chance of being accepted. The more professional and successful your blog appears the more likely it is to be accepted by Adsense.

If still in doubt after reading Google Adsense Program Policies you can email Google for clarification or just apply and see how you go.

Of course, acceptance by Google into the Adsense program does not guarantee your success. The fact remains that certain blogs will always be more successful than others at generating income.

Future posts in this series will focus upon strategies and tips for increasing your revenue but it should be stated here that the most successful sites are generally sites with very high traffic levels and/or content that is directly related to a particular product or service (the more targeted and niche-like the better).

It is also worth saying that Adsense works best on pages with lots of text content. It only reads text in determining ads, not images so make sure you have enough relevant content.

The next posts in this series will expand upon these aspects of successful blogging with Adsense with our Adsense Equation.

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 1

How do you make money from the Google Adsense Program?

I have been asked this question so many times in the past few weeks that I thought I should write something on the topic. It seems increasingly bloggers want to try to cover their hosting and ISP costs with some revenue from their blog - and perhaps even make a few dollars on the side. Many are turning to Google's Adsense program.

Covering costs of my Living Room and Digital Photography Blog is why I originally signed up with Google Adsense - blogging can get expensive when you have high levels of traffic and a lot of pages.

Whilst the agreement you sign with Google stresses that you are not allowed to give specific information about your earnings from the program I can say that I'm glad I've signed up because its well and truly covered my costs - and then some. In fact I think its quite feasible to expect that Adsense coupled with other strategies for making money from Blogging could quite easily generate a decent living. It takes time and hard work, but I think its doable.

So how do make money from Google Adsense?

This will be the first in a series of posts on this topic. Let me say up front I'm no expert - there are a lot of people out there making a lot more money than I am using Adsense - however most of them are not telling their secrets - well not for free anyway. I've got no secrets to hide and am willing to share what I've learnt since I signed up for the program 8 months ago.

I know some bloggers are put off or offended by the idea of making money from blogging so I'll try not to let these posts dominate my blog - however if you are not interested in the topic, simply skip over these posts.

I am going to assume a few things in this series to cut down the amount of introductory comments I have to make. Here is what I am assuming:

• You have a blog. Whilst most of the following tips will apply to other types of websites I run Adsense on blogs and will speak from that experience.
• You have (or will) read a basic overview of Adsense and have some understanding of what it is.
• You have(or will) read the program policies as outlined by Google. These give details of site eligibility, ad placements and other requirements for using the system.

Enough introductory comments - lets get stuck into the Adsense Tips for Bloggers! Also in this series is Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8.

Blog Tips - Getting Comments

What is your experience with Blog Comments? Do you use them? How do they enhance or hinder your blogging experience? How do you suggest bloggers starting out approach the issue?

One of our citywide papers has a section on a Thursday dedicated to Media and Technology. One of the writers there has started his own blog - The Bleeding Edge. Its got some good posts on it and as with most new blogs its being updated many times per day.

Today they wrote a post about the lack of comments on their blog. As they put it, its a bit of a 'No Comment Zone'. I decided to leave my thoughts and then after rambling on a bit decided to add them to my Blog Tip Collection.

Here is what I wrote...

No comments eh.... I remember that problem well. Can I make a few observations?

1. Your site is rather difficult to leave a comment on. Its just taken me 5 minutes to go through the process of registering, then finding I couldn't have a space in my login name, re-registering, waiting for the email with my password, finding the post I wanted to comment on again, then after clicking 'comments' having to click another 'post comments' button. Now unless I really wanted to leave a comment and let you know that I'm enjoying your blog I would have given up on leaving my two cents worth long ago. The average person stays on a blog for less than 2 minutes (we found it was 96 seconds in this informal study). So if you want them to interact with you its got to be easy to do. Of course with 'easy' comes issues of spam comments - but I'd rather delete a few comments than not have any. I find sites that make people register to leave a comment generally don't get as many unless their content is very controversial or they get a lot of traffic.

2. Different Content = Different Comment Levels - I've noticed in my own blogs that one gets a lot of comments (an average of 5 per post) and the other gets virtually none (1 comment for every 10 or so posts) despite it getting more traffic. Why? The nature of the content is different and will illicit different responses from readers. The one that gets a lot of comments is more personal, occasionally controversial, talks about 'deeper issues' and asks readers for input. The other one (with few comments) is technical in nature and gives more information that it asks for.

3. Sometimes it is better not to have comments at all. One of the ways a lot of blog readers gauge the value of a blog is to look at how many comments there are. If you blog says '0' comments under each post its not that inspiring for your readers to want to interact.

4. If you're interactive your Readers will be - I've found more people leave comments when they get a personal email or reply comment that engages with their comment. It gets a little hard when you have thousands of visitors coming to your site a day, but if you're seen to be interactive then people will interact with you.

5. Give your readers some incentive to leave a comment. Blogs that let their readers make a comment with a link back to their own site give their readers not only a way to interact but also to do a little self promotion. Again this can lead to spam but there are ways around it if you use Moveable Type which has spam blocking features that don't require registration.

By no means is the above all that can be said about blog comments - you might also want to check out some of my earlier Blog Comments Tips and some other tips on ways of making your blog more interactive. I'd love to get others thoughts on their experience with and tips on getting comments on their blog.

Weblog Primer

François from padawan.info has just written a great Weblog Primer.

'Since I’ve sold the idea of weblogs within my company, I’ve been charged with the task to explain what are weblogs to people who haven’t heard of them yet. I wrote this primer as a starter. This is a work in progress, with probably more to come. I’d love to have your feedback on it.'

Its a great piece that I'm going to add to my blog tips collection. Thanks to Presurfer for the link.

Moveable Type - Individual Archives Titles

This week's Blogger Idol topic was one dear to my heart - Blog Tips. Some of the tips there are excellent (its never too late to submit yours). One in particular has been valuable to me as a Moveable Type user. In fact just one of his tips might have doubled the number of visitors of my blog today. Nicholas submitted Optimizing your MovableType blog for Google.

His post is longish and a tad technical but it is well worth a look if you're using MT. (If you don't use MT you might not find the following that helpful) Most of it I've already incorporated into this blog previously (a lot of it by fluke) but of particular use to me was this short paragraph:

'While I'm on the subject, my recollection is that, by default, the title of an individual entry archive with MovableType is the name of the blog, followed by the name of the entry. Get rid of the blog name part of this - it's dead weight that will drag down your relevancy quotient with Google.'

Before the redesign of this site a few months back I had made this change - ie I had taken my overall blog title 'LivingRoom' out of the title of my individual archives. In the redesign it resorted back to the default without me realizing it. As a result my post titled William Hung - She Bangs was being listed by Google as 'LivingRoom >> A Space for Life >> William Hung - She Bangs'.

As it happens that page already ranked pretty highly for a search for 'William Hung' on Google (36th yesterday).

Nicholas's article reminded me that I needed to get rid of the title from my Individual archives and so I did so two days ago. So now the words 'LivingRoom >> A Space for Life >>' do not appear in the title of any of my individual archives. All the google bot sees and lists when it comes visiting my site is the title I give each post. Today that post is simply called 'William Hung - She Bangs'. It is now a lot let cluttered and more direct.

So What? - Ok, so what is the difference? Surely my page's title doesn't make a difference to my ranking on Google!

An hour ago I logged onto my stats page and noticed my last hour's hits were around double what they normally are. I thought I must have gotten a link from a big site. Referral stats showed this was not the case - the increase was largely due to an increase in Google hits on a variety of pages (including the William Hung page).

Google has picked up the change to the way I'm titling my individual pages already (it has only made the change of some pages so far - it takes time for it to filter through the system) and the difference is significant enough to them to increase my page rankings from 36 to 20 on the William Hung post. I can only presume the same thing is true on other individual pages also. It will be interesting to note the changes on other posts over the next few days as Google continues to index the rest of the site.

Google takes notice of the titles of your pages. It treats them as keywords and will archive them accordingly. If the name of your site has keywords in it that relate to every post on your page it might be worth including them in the title of every page (ie if my site was about living room furniture I'd keep it in) - however if your blog's name is more generic or cryptic in the way it relates to your site it might be worth jettisoning it from your individual (and maybe category) archives titles.

Disclaimer - I'm not saying you'll double your readership with this tip - you might, but it takes a lot more than this to find readers. Rather it might be helpful as part of a wider strategy. I once wrote a series of posts on Finding Readers for your blog that might help develop such a wider strategy. Hope it helps.

Related Links
- Titles are Everything
- Getting Listed by Search Engines
- Mention Google often and Prominently And Watch the Google Traffic Arrive! And Other True Myths!

Blog Design - Choosing Colours

One of the most important decisions you can make when it comes to designing your website is to think about your colour scheme. One of the more useful articles I've read on this topic is Choosing Colour for your Website

'For most people, colour is something taken for granted. It is all around us. Yet, when we come to use colour, in paintings, in design, in our furnishings and clothes we often make mistakes because we don't understand what is going on.
     
Some people will say that this colour goes with that colour and that "blue and green should never be seen." They will even try to make up complex tables and formulae for combining colours in pleasing ways. I'm not going to do that!'

Its nice to read a site on the topic that actually uses colour beautifully in their writing. If you want to think more about the colour of your blog you might aslo want to check out some of the following colourful resources.

- Web Accessibility - Part 3 - Type and Colour - a good article that talks about colour from a perspective of colour blindness and visual impairments. - Choosing The Perfect Colors for Your Web Site - Good Advice. - Web Advice 101 - Color suggestions to consider when designing a site - Moregood advice. - Jonas Web Web Design - Colour Wheel - an online tool for choosing colours. - Choosing Colors for a Website - complete with colour wheels and loads of practical advice. - Choosing The Perfect Colors for Your Web Site - 6 simple tips. - How to Choose Website Colors - The Psychology of Color and Internet Marketing. - How to Choose Your Web Site Colors - Perhaps the most colourless website in this collection of useful sites about colour. - Color Scheme Adviser - An interesting online tool that suggests what colour goes with what.

Blogging for Change (6) - Fear to Commitment

This is the last installment of a 6 part series on blogging that brings about lasting change. Before reading on you might like to Read the introduction here.

Stage 5 - Fear to Commitment

Depending upon the gravity of the topic you’re talking about, fear can play a part in asking people to take some action to bring about lasting change. Real and sustained change can be a scary thing for many people.

I even found when I invited people to engage in blogger idol (not really that scary a thing) that a few people emailed me to say that they’d like to participate, but they were worried about implications of doing so.

Your last task in bringing about lasting change is to help your reader move from fear of the change to commitment to it. It is time to 'seal the deal'.

Towards the end of your post you might want to reinforce the positives of what you’re asking people to consider. Give them a picture of what ‘might be’ if they take your words seriously. Reinforce the steps people can to follow to do what you’re asking, keep any processes as simple as possible and give people options to opt in a little bit or a lot. Give them a tangible way to respond - don't just ask for change without giving a way forward.

When people do respond – follow them up with some encouraging words and support - keep them accountable to their decision but do so in a gracious and supportive way. If someone leaves a comment on your site for the first time or shoots you an email in response to a post, try to acknowledge them in some way – even if it is small acknowledgement. It is amazing how just a small acknowledgement of a first time reader can make them into a committed regular reader.

Concluding Words - So there you have it. Five tasks that bloggers might face if they desire to see their blogging bring about lasting change in their readers. As I said at the beginning of the series - this is a process I was taught as a public speaker. I've seen it's effectiveness in that medium but I guess the jury is still out when it comes to blogging. I'm interested in your thoughts, comments, feedback and ideas. I'd like to adapt this if it needs it.

The steps in this process are:

1. Rejection to Attention
2. Indifference to Interest
3. Skepticism to Conviction
4. Procrastination to Desire
5. Fear to Commitment

Blogging for Change (5) - Procrastination to Desire

This is the 5th installment of a 6 part series on blogging that brings about lasting change. Before reading on you might like to Read the introduction here.

Stage 4 - Procrastination to Desire

You have gotten the attention of your readers, they are interested in what you are blogging about, they even see how it relates to them and how they can respond to the it, you are doing great! But now comes the challenge that stops many of us from responding to things that we ‘should’ do….we procrastinate! We say, ‘well yes, that’s something that I should do… one day'.

You next task is breaking the cycle of procrastination and instilling desire in your readers to actually take some action - to make the change. If all you do is convince your reader you are only doing half the job. They will go to the next blog and soon forget what they’ve just been challenged about – your entry will end up just being another long forgotten entry that they once read.

If you want to create change in your readers you have to help create a desire within them to take some action, to make a change, to enter further on into a process. Actions speak louder than words!

Give your reader some way to respond to the issue at hand. This will vary depending upon what you’re writing about. You might ask them to leave a comment, to link up on their blog or to consider some other action. I often find asking a question (even if you know the answer) for people to respond to in comments is a good way of helping people to do something tangible with what you’ve written.

Inspire them, give them an incentive, show them the positive results of taking a hold of your invitation – do whatever you can to get them to take an active part in the process you’re blogging about.

The full steps in this process are:

1. Rejection to Attention
2. Indifference to Interest
3. Skepticism to Conviction
4. Procrastination to Desire
5. Fear to Commitment

Blogging for Change (4) - Scepticism to Conviction

This is the 4th installment of a 6 part series on blogging that brings about lasting change. Before reading on you might like to Read the introduction here.

Stage 3 - Scepticism to Conviction

Having got the attention and peaked the interest of your reader it is now time to help them come to of place of conviction. Scepticism might have set in by now and your reader might be thinking ‘this is interesting – but it doesn’t really apply to me’. This is where you need to convince them that what you are writing is personally relevant for them and that they need to take some action.

This might be the lengthiest part of your post and where you present your main argument or points. Try to keep your key points down in number and make them simple and easy to remember. Consider using lists at this stage which break down your argument into bite sized portions.

In this stage of convincing your reader it may be helpful to:
- provide evidence and facts
- begin to reveal a suggested course of action
- talk about benefits of the course of action that you are suggesting
- give some ‘How to’ points if relevant
- invite readers to begin thinking about how they might respond

You are the lawyer convincing the jury. Show them why your topic is relevant to them (reinforce the need) and show what they can do about it. Lead them to a point where they see that the need you raised earlier is a need that they themselves have and that they feel empowered to do something about it.

I find that in this stage that being personal can be useful. To share something from your own experience gives your reader a sense that they are not alone in the issue. Talk of your own conviction and encourage them to join you in a response. In this way you do not present yourself as an expert but rather as a fellow traveller inviting your readers to journey with you.

The steps in this process are:

1. Rejection to Attention
2. Indifference to Interest
3. Skepticism to Conviction
4. Procrastination to Desire
5. Fear to Commitment

Blogging for Change (3) - Indifference to Interest

This is the third part of a 6 part series on blogging that brings about lasting change. Before reading on you might like to read the introduction here.

Stage 2 - Indifference to Interest

Your witty, controversial, intriguing title and first sentence has grabbed the attention of your reader. They have made a mini commitment to you and are considering reading past the first paragraph. You’ve won the first battle of taking them from 'Rejection to Attention' but their filtering system is still on and your second task is to take them from 'Indifference to Interest'.

At this stage listeners have given you their attention, but are somewhat indifferent to you and what you have to say. They are reading, but things are hanging in the balance, they are waiting to see if what you have to say is going to be of any interest to them. Will it be relevant? Is what you have to say worth them giving the next few minutes of their time to or should they go back to the search engine and find something else more interesting to read.

Give them a need to read more. If you want to bring about lasting change in your reader it is essential that they feel what you are writing about is relevant to them and their world. Think about the websites that have impacted you most over the past few months - more often than not they will be sites that meet some need that you have (whether explicitly or not) - perhaps a need for information, entertainment, community, inspiration etc.

Make it clear early what need your post will meet in your reader and you increase your chances of them reading on and being influenced by what you have to say.

You might do this by:
- Share a need you personally have had - people feel less threatened when someone else opens up about something that they too face. This builds trust between you and your reader.
- Telling a story that your reader will relate to. Better still tell half a story that will be finished later that makes your reader want to know what happens.
- Make a big claim that will, if true, have an impact upon your reader.
- Ask questions that highlight a relevant problem or issue – don’t give all your answers away yet.
- Make your reader a little uncomfortable about the issue you are posting on. There is a fine line here - tread carefully.

This task is about making your reader think ‘I have to read the rest of this’. Bring them to a point of wanting to explore your topic more because it has relevance to their lives in some way.

The steps in this process are:

1. Rejection to Attention
2. Indifference to Interest
3. Skepticism to Conviction
4. Procrastination to Desire
5. Fear to Commitment

Blogging for Change (2) - Rejection to Attention

This is the second part of a 6 part series on blogging that brings about lasting change. Read the introduction here.

Stage 1 - Rejection to Attention

The first task of the blogger wanting to have a lasting influence on readers is to get their attention.

In today’s world the average person is bombarded with thousands of competing messages daily. As a result most people have pretty good internal filtering systems (or crap detectors) to help sift out the junk and find the worthwhile. In a sense most of your potential readers will be in some state of rejection to your blog whether consciously or subconsciously. If you don't work hard to make your post attention grabbing you will not earn the right to say anything that will bring about change.

Keep this in mind as you blog. Put yourself in your reader’s shoes – What would grab your attention when it comes to the topic you are writing about? What would make you want to read more?

Titles and first sentences are important attention grabbers. They act as mini advertisements for your post on the front page of your blog, in search engines and news aggregators. Keep them simple, punchy, informative and get to the point.

Don’t fall for the temptation to trick your readers just for the sake of getting their attention. A title like Sex Tips on a post about your pet rabbit might get attention of your readers but it will not keep it – in fact it is likely to deepen their sense of rejection to your blog.

Some other things to try to gain attention in your title or first sentence or two might be to:

- Be a little controversial (be careful with this – don’t just be controversial for the sake of it unless you are willing to deal with the consequences)
- say something puzzling (but don’t keep your reader in the dark too long or you’ll frustrate them)
- make a claim (tell your reader the answer to a question that they might have)
- talk in terms that your potential readers will relate to (don’t be arrogant – be personable – be relatable)
- use humour (if you make someone smile or laugh you are part way through their filtering system).
- ask a question that draws your reader into your post and makes them want to respond
- intrigue your reader – tempt them by dangling something that will somehow draw them into your world.

Lastly make your entry Scannable and easy to read. If your entry looks like hard work to read you are unlikely to get many readers attention.

Work hard at getting the attention of your reader and you’ll be one step closer to having some lasting impact upon them.

The steps in this process are:

1. Rejection to Attention
2. Indifference to Interest
3. Skepticism to Conviction
4. Procrastination to Desire
5. Fear to Commitment

Blogging for Change

Why do Bloggers Blog? Is there some underlying thread of motivation that we all share? This is the introduction for a 6 part series on how to blog in a way that brings lasting change.

Each blogger writes for their own unique set of reasons and motivations. Some do so as a hobby, others to express their creativity, many to share their views, some as a therapeutic way of getting things off their chest and a few as a means of income. The combinations of reasons for blogging will be as many as their are bloggers. In my opinion this is good - as humans we are each unique and blogging should and does reflect this.

I have a theory that bringing about 'change' is one of the underlying motivations of many (if not most) bloggers. Perhaps a slightly different way of putting it is to say that we seek to bring about 'influence' through blogging. As I reflect upon this I suspect that it is a common thread of motivation that runs through most blogging genres. Lets consider a few:

- Political bloggers often seek to influence their readers minds on particular issues by arguing their points from their own political perspective.
- Business bloggers seek to bring about change in buying habits of their potential customers.
- Religious blogging seek to bring about change in the lives of individuals (and the world) through their posts on their take of spirituality.
- Techie bloggers seek to influence what us gadget obsessed readers spend our dollars on. In reviewing products they help shape our buying habits and bring about change of attitudes towards brands.
- Personal bloggers seek to influence the lives of their readers also - whether it by recommending books, movies or sharing their experiences of life in ways that challenge us to see the world in new ways. Even the jokes, polls and quizzes that permeate most personal blogs seek to bring about small changes as they entertain or make readers have a giggle.

Of course I'm making some gross generalizations here but the list of ways bloggers seek change or influence could go on. The change bloggers ranges from wanting to influence individual readers through to wanting to bring about change on a regional or global level. Some of us, if we're honest, probably even blog because we seek change in ourselves and find the blogging process helps us think through our identity and lives.

For some bloggers the change or influence that they seek to bring about is explicit, spelt out and somewhat self serving, for others its subtle, unconscious and has no strings attatched.

So how can we be more effective influencers or change agents through our blogging? Over the next few days I'll be writing a series of five posts on the topic of blogging that brings about lasting change. It is a simple communication tool that I was taught years ago in a public speaking class, that I have adapted to the medium of blogging, that goes through a process of 5 challenges that a communicator faces when attempting to bring about some sort of lasting change in their reader or listener. It is a tool that I've used extensively in preparation for speaking and teaching but also more recently in my blogging.

In adapting it to blogging it is not the perfect tool that will suddenly make our blogs A-list blogs that change the world - but I hope its of some help. Feel free to add your thoughts, suggestions and comments as we go along.

UpdateThe five tasks in this process are:

1. Rejection to Attention
2. Indifference to Interest
3. Skepticism to Conviction
4. Procrastination to Desire
5. Fear to Commitment

How Blogs Work

How Blogs Work in 7 Easy Pieces is a great little piece that explains in easily understood language the steps of blogging and RSS. It even has pictures!

Blog Tip - Blog/RSS Promotion

So you've got a blog, it is looking good, the design is working and your content is stimulating - now you'd like to spread the word on what you have to offer, after all blogs are designed to be read! How should you get the word out?

Well you've probably already read my Blog Tips series (there is 45 tips listed there) - especially the Finding Readers mini series.

Your next port of call should be RSS Top55 - Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites. This article has 55 (actually they are now 64) places where you can submit your blog's URL and RSS feed. They range from search engine's to blog specific engines, to blog directories, to blog review sites. It is the best collection of resources I've seen collated in the one place to date. Note that you'll have to have an RSS feed for most of them to be of any use to you - if you don't know about RSS check out this article on RSS for a great introduction.

To submit to all of them will take you an hour or so, but in my experience the key to being read is to try a multi-pronged approach - this approach has 64 approaches so it might be an hour well spent. RSS won't guarantee you huge hits, but its an increasingly important part in the puzzle to having your thoughts read by others.

Well Designed Weblogs

Well-Designed Weblogs: An Introduction is a great series of posts about... you guessed it - Well designed Weblogs.

As part of the series are two volumes of well designed weblogs - aptly named Volume 1 and Volume 2 ( I wonder what they might call the third one?!).

Seriously - there are some beautifully designed blogs in the collection and some good advice in the introduction.

10 Ways To Make Money Blogging

10 Ways To Make Money Blogging is an article written by a blogger who is making a bit of money on the side of his hobby. Whilst I probably don't see eye to on a political spectrum with John, he does speak some sense when it comes to blogging. His writing reminds me of my own post on Blogging for Dollars

John takes a look at a variety of methods that people use to make a dollar through blogs - here is his headings (you'll have to head over to Right Wing News to get the meaty bits.

• Amazon
• Banner Ads
• Blog Ads
• Button Ads
• Donations
• Charging for Content
• Freelancing
• Fundraisers
• Popups/Popunders
• Text Ads

How to be a Top Blogger

John Robb posts about how to build a hot/popular weblog. His suggestions of different approaches make some sense. Basically he breaks it down into a number of approaches you might take to become popular.

- Connection machine
- Name dropper
- Ideologue
- Thinker
- Topic Owner
- Voice of outrage/affirmation
- Cool Hunter

You'll have to head to John's to get explanations on each.

Blog Promotion 101

Tristam from Blogopoly has posted an interesting post entitled Blog Promotion 101. His headings are: (there is more information linked to each)

1) Make your Site Visible to Search Engines
2) Exchange Links with Other Bloggers
3) Create an RSS Feed
4) Promote your Blog amongst your own Friends and Contacts
5) Join a Webring and/or text ad network
6) Guest Blogging
7) Get your Users to talk to each other and you by enabling Comments
8) Check your Visitor log to find other Bloggers to exchange Links or Guest Blogging requests with
9) Find out who is linking to other similar Blogs to yours to find more sites to exchange Links or Guest Blogging requests with
10) Use Trackback and enable on your Blog if Possible

How to Write Better Blogs

Dennis A. Mahoney writes a great article entitled How to Write Better that picks up a number of things that he believes bloggers need to be encouraged to do. It focuses mainly on writing. His headings are:

- Professional vs. Amateur
- The Rules
- Offer Something New
- Amuse your Readers
- Beyond Wired
- Successful Weblogging

There are some great things there to keep in mind for any blogger whether experienced or just starting out.

More Accessible Blogs

30 Days to a More Accessible Blog is a great series of posts that really will help bloggers make their blogs more accessible to those that may not be able to use many of our blogs. I'll let the author of the series explain (from his introduction to the series):

'This series is entitled "30 days to a more accessible weblog", and it will answer two questions. The first question is "Why should I make my weblog more accessible?" If you do not have a weblog, this series is not for you. The second question is "How can I make my weblog more accessible?" If you are not convinced by the first answer, you will not be interested in the second.

Over the past five days, I have presented character sketches of five people:Jackie, Michael, Bill, Lillian, and Marcus. These people have several things in common:

They all have a combination of physical, mental, and technological disabilities which make it more difficult to use the Internet.

Although fictitious, they all represent real people with disabilities, and they use the Internet in ways that real people with disabilities use the Internet.

They all have difficulty reading your weblog.

Starting Monday, and over the next five weeks, I will present tips that you can immediately apply to your own weblog template to make it more accessible.'

I'd never considered this before - it is well worth the read - interested in your thoughts on the series.

Beginners Guide to Moveable Typle

Creating a blog with Moveable Type - A beginners guide is one of the best MT tutorials I've ever seen. Seriously - it is so simply set out that even I can understand it.

PART I
- Introduction
- About Movable Type
- About blogs
- Blog components
- Getting started

PART II
6 Steps to setup a blog:
1. Find a host
2. Register a domain name
3. Get FTP
4. Install Movable Type
5. Configure your blog
6. Customize templates

PART III
- Using Movable Type
- Other tips
- Resources

Not only is it very informative tutorial - but it is also beautifully designed - very clean and well laid out. I highly recommend it if you're trying to get your head around Moveable Type.

Sins of Blogging

Caffinated Bliss has a great list of the Cardinal Sins of Blogging. Listed are 10 content sins and 9 design sins.

I don't think I break too many of them - although might come close to the 120 in the blog roll one! Not to mention the eye popping colours in the template one.

Nice work Alison.

Rebecca Blood on Blogging

I've been Reading The Weblog Handbook by Rebecca Blood over the past few days and am really enjoying her relaxed and clear style of writing.

'A weblog is a coffeehouse conversation in text, with references as required.'

She writes with insight and wisdom as a blogging practitioner. I found her history of weblogging in chapter 1 very helpful as a relatively new blogger. Her section on 'why blog' was also insightful. Her thrust was that weblogs build:

- Better writers
- Self awareness
- Critical thinkers
- Reputations
- Connected Business

Her following chapters of advice for bloggers were well presented and contained great information. I didn't learn too many new things from them but would highly recommend them to a new blogger wanting to take their blog to the next level.

How to Translate your Blog into other Languages

Ever wanted to make your blog more accessible to people of other languages? I havn't done it yet - but here is a link on How to set your blog up for Machine Translation Looks like it might be reasonably easy to do.

Viral Blogging

I've been reading Unleashing the Idea Virus by Seth Godin this past week or so. I'm really taking my time over it and whilst it doesn't mention blogging at all I'm finding many applications for thinking about medium.

One of his key themes is that of 'smoothness'....

A virus (of any kind) will not spread to epidemic proportions unless it is easily transferable from person to person. Consider SARS for example - the frightening thing about it was that it was something that was thought to be reasonably easy to transmit from person.

The same thing is true for 'idea viruses'. If you want people to hear, buy into and then sell your idea for you then you need to make it as easy as possible to do so. Seth uses many examples in his book - one of the most powerful being 'Hotmail' which adds to the bottom of every email sent a simple tag/link that says - 'Get Your Private, Free Email from Hotmail at www.hotmail.com'. All people had to do was to click the link, fill in a few details and they had their own account (which of course enabled them to spread the 'Hotmail' message).

So how can this principle be applied to 'blogging'. I can think of many ways of ME speading the word about my own blog - but a viral approach lets the reader spread the news (which is an infinitely more powerful approach).

One suggestion that Seth makes is to use 'email a friend' links on websites. This gives readers an opportunity to shoot a post that interests them to a friend. I've been considering adding this feature to my blog for a while. Having just read the book - I've decided to add it to each post. I'm not sure how effective it will be at this point - but its worth a try - I will let you know of any feedback I get on it.

Apart from the 'Email a friend' option - I'm wondering what other 'viral techniques' people might have seen used or tried themselves when it comes to blogging? Feel free to leave your tips or comments in the feeback section below.

Link unto others - Blog Tip

The following blog tip was submitted by Phil Wolff from blogs such as Don't Blog, Blog Count, emblog and a klog apart.

Links make blogs different than paper. When you see something interesting online, link to it. Something useful, memorable, fascinating? Link, link, link. Each link is a vote. Your body of links represents your interests. Google understands links more than words. So does Technorati. So links become the gravity that attract like-minded people to your blog.

After all, if you write something that provokes thought, changes people's lives, you'd want others to point your way too.

This golden rule of blogging is part of what makes the blogosphere a community.

It also is part of what makes blogging like journalism or science. Good bloggers cite their sources by linking to them. This helps people trust that you've not only done your homework, but that you've made it easy for your visitors to do theirs.

So the next time you write a post, before you hit that publish button, ask yourself "Is it linky enough?"

Blog Cards

Blog Cards are like Business Cards that feature a bloggers blog address to make networking easier.

Ripples and BuzzMachine are both talking about making and using Blog Cards.

David St Lawrence of Ripples writes 'I made up a blogging business card some weeks ago because I got tired of writing my weblog URL on the back of my other business cards. This card has my name and the tagline Online Essays along with this URL and email address of choice.'

I'm not sure that the Average Joe blogger is going to be rushing out to get cards - but I'm sure they will be useful for some.

Blog Design Showcase

Want to know what a good blog design looks like?

Blog Desiger - Rachel Cunliffe has just released the Blog Design Showcase. She writes:

This is a collection of outstanding blog designs, thoughts on what makes a good blog design, and will also be where I announce new blogs that I have designed.

She also invites readers to submit suggestions for inclusions.

Blogging Books

Blogging about Blogging is happening with growing frequency on many weblogs, but writing in hard copy is also becoming more popular. Here are a few of the best selling and most popular books on the topic. (Descriptions are taken from Amazon) I've read most of the first two - both are worth a look. If you've read these or other books on blogging leave your reviews and suggestions in comments.

Blog On: Building Online Communities with Web Logs By Todd Stauffer.

Weblogs -- or blogs -- are taking the Internet by storm! Now you can expand your site using message boards, mailing lists, and numerous other features to maintain and promote community with help from this easy-to-understand guide. Includes practical tips for making tweaks and improvements with HTML, Flash, Web images, and much more.

Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content by Biz Stone.

Turn your home page into a microportal with fresh content that will keep readers coming back. The first hands-on book on building blogs, this is an excellent tutorial for new bloggers, and includes many advanced techniques for veteran bloggers.... This book features hands-on tutorials for building a blog, adding a user based commenting system, adding team members, syndicating with JavaScript, adding searches to a site, and much more. This is the book for creative web-enthusiasts looking for the "next thing" and it's the first book of new ideas and advanced tutorials for bloggers already numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

We've Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture - By Rebecca Blood:

We've Got Blog is a collection of 34 essays that explore this rapidly growing trend. Contributors include such noted bloggers as Joe Clark, Cameron Barrett, and Giles Turnbull. The discussion covers the history and community of weblogs, contrasts weblogs and traditional journalism, and offers advice on starting a weblog.

We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs By Paul Bausch, Matthew Haughey and Meg Hourihan.

Your Complete Guide to Creating and Maintaining Weblogs. Weblogs offer an exciting new way to voice your opinions, share ideas with others, and help your business grow. Written by a team of weblog pioneers-the people who helped create Blogger and the MetaFilter community blog-this book shows you how to build, evolve and automate weblogs for personal and business use.

The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog by Rebecca Blood

Weblogs--frequently updated, independently produced, and curiously addictive--have become some of the most popular sites on the Web today. The Weblog Handbook is the first book to explain how weblogs work and explore their impact on the media landscape....With a clear and engaging voice, Rebecca explains how to choose among the available tools, even walking the beginner through the process of creating their first weblog. Along the way she answers commonly asked questions concerning weblog etiquette, how to attract readers, and the qualities that make a weblog stand out, alerting the novice to considerations--and pitfalls--they didn't know to ask about.

There are others around also including:

- Essential Blogging
- Design for Community: The Art of Connecting Real People in Virtual Places
- Running Weblogs with Slash

Unleashing the Idea Virus By Seth Godin

Whilst not about blogging at all - 'Unleashing the Idea Virus' is a book that taught me a lot about the medium. I'm re-reading it again at present.

Counter to traditional marketing wisdom, which tries to count, measure, and manipulate the spread of information, Seth Godin argues that information can spread most effectively from customer to customer, rather than from business to customer. Godin calls this powerful customer-to-customer dialogue the ideavirus.... In Unleashing the Ideavirus, Godin examines how companies like Napster and Hotmail have successfuly launched ideaviruses. He offers a recipe for creating your own ideavirus, and shows how businesses can use ideavirus marketing to succeed in a world that doesn't want to hear it anymore from traditional marketers. Seth blogs here.

Understanding Trackback And Comment Notification

Dave Pollard writes some great Blog Tips - here is another good one on Understanding Trackback.

'Trackback simply lets another site know that you have a post referring to it on your own site. Read the previous sentence until it makes sense.'

Three quick ways to increasing visitors to your blog in a week

Wayne Hurlbert shares Three quick ways to more visitors in one week. It is written more with a business blog in mind but most of it is somewhat transferable.

He also has a good link on Analyzing our visitor counter logs 

Blog Content Tools

Finding good fresh content for your blog will make it more attractive to your readers. There are a number of great online tools that I have used to come up with up to date content that might be useful for others.

Let me say first up that the relevance of these tools will vary from blogger to blogger. Most of them will probably be of less use to those writing Personal Journals than to those writing K-logs or filters. Personal Journals will probably draw more upon the brain of the writer as a tool than anything I share below.

The following tools help you to see what else is happening online - if current up to date information is of relevance to your blogging you might find them interesting. It is not a definitive list so please feel free to add your own tools in comments and if appropriate I'll add them to the following list:

1. YahooBuzz is a useful tool if you want to know what kind of information people are searching for on Yahoo in the last 24 hours. Check out Yahoo's top 20 searches here. They also show you search terms that are on the increase and decrease and and break results down into categories such as TV, Movies, Music etc. Also interesting is their Popular Search by Country page which I check out weekly when updated on a Thursday.

2. Google Press Centre is a similar yet much simplified tool to Yahoo Buzz except that it looks at search terms on Google. I don't find it as helpful as Yahoo - but still check it out from time to time.

3. A great way to keep up to date with the latest news on a particular topic of interest is to get yourself hooked up with a News Aggregator. The one I use is Blog Lines but there are many others available. Basically it helps you to read blogs, newspapers an other frequently updated websites quickly and accurately. If you want more information on RSS and News Aggregators check out News that Comes to You, Bringing the World to Your Desktop and An introduction to RSS news feeds.

4. News Now provides a list of news feeds from around the world.

5. Technorati is a tool I check out daily. It provides readers with Breaking News (which is a collection of news items that have been getting a lot of links in the past 12 hours) and Current Events (which is a list of links (not just news) that are popular in the blogosphere in the last 3 hours.

6. A number of sites are around that provide lists of links that are popular in the Blogosphere. Three of these are BlogDex, Daypop Top 40 and Popdex.

7. Blogosphere also tracks trends on a 4 and 24 hour basis (see its sidebar).

8. Feedster is something I've only just discovered - it is like Google but it searches RSS feeds. So if you are thinking of writing a post on a particular topic plug it into Feedster and see who else is or has been writing on it.

In conclusion it is worth saying that the above tools are unlikely to present you with new original content for your blog. They only point you to what others are writing and reading about online. This is useful - however in my experience the content that tends to get attention is original in nature. Only a small number of blogs successfully rely upon second hand content so put something of your own into the mix!

Leave your own suggestions in comments.

Blog Ethics

Here is a great article on Weblog Ethics.

1. Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true.
2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it.
3. Publicly correct any misinformation.
4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry.
5. Disclose any conflict of interest.
6. Note questionable and biased sources.

Good weblog design and layout

Here is another worthwhile article on weblog design and layout from How to Save the World. His 9 main points are:

- Use Titles
- Abstract Long Posts
- Use a Teaser Paragraph for Long Posts
- Select a Readable Font, Size & Column Width
- If You're a 'Linker', Add Something of Value
- Give Readers Someplace to Go for More
- Use Graphics If They Add Something
- Use Categories Only If They Help Your Readers
- Use Outlining 'Twisties' Cautiously

Each is expanded really well in the original post.

How to be a Top 10 Blogger

The Evangelical Outpost is doing some analysis of the Top 10 Bloggers in the Ecosystem. He has come up with 9 things you can do to become a Top 10 Blogger. Its an interesting post - here are his headings - he writes more on each in the post so head over for a good read.

a) Be a lawyer (preferably a law professor)
b) Be a part of the elite media
c) Attend an Ivy League college
d) Get and Advanced degree at an Ivy League school
e) Write for the New York Times
f) Have your work published
g) Clerk for a (future) Supreme Court justice
h) Be a musician
i) Get lucky

I would add two more suggestions.

j) Be American
k) Be Male

Thoughts anyone?

Martin Roth's Blog Tip

Martin Roth is a legend around some Blogging circles. He's the guy who started collecting links of Christian Bloggers which today is Blogs4God.

Martin responded for my call for people to post their own blog tips.

So here are Martins Blog Tips.

To paraphrase his main points:

1. Tell people that you've arrived.
2. Tell people when you write something about them.
3. Comment on others blogs, reply to those who comment on yours.
4. Survey other bloggers and publish the results.
5. Have something to say and say it well.

He expands each very well so check it out here.

Thanks Martin - If you have a blog tip write about it on your blog and let me know and I'll link up to it.

Getting listed on Search Engines

Since writing the Finding Readers series of blog tips I've had a number of people ask for more information on getting listed on Search Engines - particularly Google.

Patrick Taylor has written a great post on Boosting your Google Ranking. He incorporates most of the tips I've seen written elsewhere in a way that even I (mostly) understand.

His main points include:

- Archive Individual Posts
- Incorporate post title into individual post title tags - I have this and it seems to work very well.
- Link a lot - and try to attract links
- Wrap Hypertext around words - ie don't have links like click here but instead use descriptive terminology that people are likely to do a search on. Eg the best digital photography link on the web.
- Make your blog slim/trim and fast - he provides great resources for this.

Anyway - there is heaps to think about in his article - check it out.

You might also like to check out Google: Is your blog indexed? which also has some good tips on getting your blog indexed on Google.

More on Blog Design

Here an old article written by Biz Stone who has been blogging (and writing books) about blogging for years now. This article is on Designing your blog and it has some good tips. His main points include:

- Create Your Own Limitations
- Think Simple
- Adding On (features)
- Designing Beyond the Blog

Good Blog Design

Taking a short break from the 'Finding Readers mini-series' because I asked fellow blogger and blog designer Rachel Cunliffe to write a post for me on good blog design. The following is what she wrote:

Darren asked me for a post on "what makes a good blog design" in his blog tip series.

I've been making blogs for a while now, will be launching a Blog Design Showcase in January 2004 and I'll be redesigning my blog in the near future as things have got a bit messy here for my liking, so this is also a reminder to myself.

Of course, it's all pretty basic stuff, but it's amazing how many bloggers
get carried away in the excitement of creating a blog and forget or ignore
the basics:

• Easy-to-read
• font size
• colours
• layout
• clean
• good use of white space
• works cross-browser and uses standards-compliant code
• Provide
• Consistent navigation
• Permalinks
• Easy-to-find email address or contact form
• Search facility
• RSS/XML feed
• Fast loading
• Originality
• Just as you would hire an architect to design your house, why not hire a blog designer to create a blog that reflects you and your interests and is memorable visually?

Have I forgotten anything?

Feel free to leave your own ideas on good blog design so we can all learn from the process.

Previous Blog Tips

Comments

Blog Logo Design

Whilst not specifically written about Blog logos, the article - Trends in Logo Design - is a great resource for looking at some recent trends in graphic design which might be useful in considering the design of your blog.

Finding Readers for Your Blog (Part D)

This is the final post of the 'Finding Readers' mini series. See also Part A, Part B and Part C.

12. Blog Search Engines and Indexes - Get yourself registered on sites like Blogdex, Technorati, Popdex and Daypop (they require RSS I think). These sites have features that allow people to search for blog entries via topic and keywords. They also list the most popular recent topics and each have other interesting features which can enhance your blogging experience.

13. Get Involved in others Blog Projects - From time to time other bloggers will invite your participation in a blog project of theirs. Put your hand up, volunteer some time and contribute in some way. Don't just do it to get a link on their site, but take the opportunity to build a relationship with them and their readers. Not only will you make a friend, but over time you build some credibility as a blogger who is not just thinking about themselves.

On the flip side start your own blogging project. Do something that is of service to other bloggers. Rachel's Blogger Gallery was a great example of a project that allowed others to get involved. I tried something similar with Underblogs.

14. Get involved in other web forums - Blogging is not the only vibrant online activity at the moment. I visit a number of other discussion forums and e-zines that explore similar ideas/hobbies/interests to me and my blog. I've found an increasing amount of traffic to my blog is coming as a result of my contributions to these forums as many of them allow you to add your link as a signature to your posts. For example my recent influx of readers on my Australian Idol post came after I left a comment on the Aussie Idol Discussion Forum. Once again - don't troll these forums - genuinely interact with them.

15. Take all advice with a grain of salt - Be yourself and have fun! - The web is full of advice like the above - what I'm saying isn't rocket science. There are no rules of blogging, just people's experiences. I'm sure there are a lot of blogs out there that ignore all or most of the above advice that have a bunch of regular readers and healthy hits. So relax, be yourself and have fun with it. Experiment with new tools, styles of design and writing.

Once again - hits are not everything. For me blogging is about developing quality relationships and networks, mutual learning and bouncing around ideas with others doing similar things to me. Growing a readership can help achieve these goals, but hits in and of themselves are somewhat meaningless. So don't be obsessed by them and enjoy blogging for what it is. Have fun.

Finding Readers for Your Blog (Part C)

Also read Parts A - B and D of this series.

Part C

9. Web Rings - A web ring is a group of blogs with a common interest that refer traffic to one another. There are many of these dedicated to blogging on a variety of topics. I am a member of a Melbourne bloggers ring and an Aussie Blog ring (see my side bar). They don't bring me heaps of hits, but I have found a few great blogs by being a part of them. There are also more general webrings like BlogSnob. Rings generally involve adding some code too your blog template, but once this is done its not something you have to do anything for to upkeep.

There are literally thousands of webrings you can be a part of, take a look at WebRing to find one that suits your blog - or if you can't find one start your own. As per usual, moderation is the key, if you join too many you might clutter your page with them.

10. Add an RSS feed to your blog - This is also known as Syndication and is a little technical. Its not something I fully understand. However I know that my RSS feed is responsible for sending an increasing amount of traffic my way from readers using News Aggregators. I'm not the best person to explain this so I'll refer you to this article about syndication. It is longish and a tad technical, but if you follow the instructions its not that hard and well worth the effort.

11. List your site on Portals - There are a growing number of sites which exclusively list blogs. If you want people to find you its worth submitting your blog to be listed on them. Some focus on specific topics (like Eaton Web and Globe of Blogs). Other portals like BlogShares, Blog Street and BlogTree also list a lot of blogs in different ways which might increase your blogs profile.

Also read Parts A - B and D of this series. As per usual please feel free to add your tips, experiences, helpful links and suggestions to comments.

Finding Readers for Your Blog (Part B)

Also read Parts A - C and D of this series.

Part B

5. Interact with Readers - I've written about how to interact with your readers before so I won't go into it too much except to say that if you interact with your readers they are more likely to put some time aside to come back and engage with you - its just human nature.

6. Update frequently - With the advent of news aggregators people can be notified of your new post in real time. I noticed that when I publish a new post that my stats nearly always go up slightly just afterwards as those readers with aggregators log in to have a quick look at my latest musings. Of course this only works if you have an RSS feed (get one!) and have readers who use aggregators. Update regularly and give your readers a reason to come back regularly. You'll also find that the Search Engine bots will come visiting more often if your site is constantly changing.

Also related to this is the hits that come when you ping sites like weblogs.com, technorati or rootblog. These sites keep track of changes on websites - the more you update the more you will ping them (if your blogging tool enables pinging) and the more they will take notice of you and include you in their lists.

7. Search engines - The longer your blog is active and the more you post the higher the chance of a search engine like Google or Yahoo referring visitors to your site. There are a lot of theories of how to boost your ranking on search engines floating around the web (here is one page of hints) but an obvious starting place is to submit your blog's domain to them so that they'll start listing you.

Getting listed - There are a lot of services out there that will do it for you (for a fee) - but there are also some free services (which claim to submit your site to a smaller amount of search engines). I can't guarantee them but its worth a go. For example - Submit Express. I've used a number of these services and they seem to have worked quite well as I'm listed on all the major search engines.

You can also go directly to many search engines and register for a free listing - for example here is Google's submission page. Most other SE's have them also.

8. Add a signature to your outgoing email - Many bloggers do this. Simply add the domain name to your outgoing email. Most email programs will allow you to do this automatically. However be careful with automatic signatures if you don't want your blog to be read by everyone that you email.

Also read Parts A - C and D of this series.

Finding Readers for Your Blog (Part A)

Also read Parts B - C and D of this series.

A number of new bloggers have recently asked me how to get people to visit their blog. Let me say up front that 'getting hits' isn't everything - there are other reasons to blog than simply to have your thoughts read - for some its more about the process of writing and what is learned along the way, for others its about writing for their family and friends. I guess it comes down to priorities.

Having said that - most bloggers deep down must have some desire to have people read what they write - if not why not just keep a private diary on your computer?

So, hits are not everything, but having people read your blog is part of the deal - so how do you get them there?

There are no hard and fast rules that will guarantee you hoards of readers. However, the following are some ideas that spring to mind that might help you connect with potential readers. (this the first of three parts on this topic).

1. It takes time - It may not be what you want to hear, but it unless you're a genius, extremely lucky or have an amazing new idea, it takes time to build a readership. So settle in for the long haul and muscle up some patience.

2. Quality Content and Good Design - There are millions of blogs out there for your readers to choose from - give them something a little unique and worthwhile to come and read. Original material tends to get more attention than links to news or other blogs (unless you're one of the few metablogs that get attention).

Also try to keep your content up to date and topical. Think ahead so that you are blogging about upcoming events a week or so in advance - this gives search engines a chance to find your page before the day when everyone is searching for info on it. For example I posted my Matrix Revolutions post almost two weeks ago - today (release day for the movie) over half of my search engine referals are going to that post. If I'd posted it yesterday it wouldn't be found by Google til after the initial buzz about the movie had subsided.

3. Link to others - Having said that original material is best - linking to others is a good way to get another bloggers attention. They might notice your link on a tool like Technorati, or in their statistics package referrals or in their trackbacks (if they have it). Don't link randomly to everyone and anyone - be selective and link to quality content.

If you have a collection of blogs that you regularly read put them in a blogroll in a side bar and surf to them through your page. If they check their referrers they'll know you or someone from your site has stopped by.

4. Comment on others blogs - I suspect that a number of my regular readers first came to my blog because I left a comment on theirs. It was not a strategy I thought about - I just found myself quite addicted to reading others blogs and giving feedback. When you leave a comment leave your own blog address. Often people like to know who is reading their blog and will come visiting you. Don't comment just for the sake of it. If someone leaves me a 'hi' comment or is obviously trolling my blog I won't visit them - its just frustrating. Make genuine comments on posts that connect with you. You might make a good friend in the process.

Also read Parts B - C and D of this series. Feel free to leave your thoughts and tips in comments.

How to Start a Weblog

Have you ever tried to explain how to start a blog to someone? Just point them to this post - Introduction to Blogging - its a great introduction including definitions of, tools and some great starting points.

He's also written Part II - Syndication.

Also on the topic of how to start a blog:
- How do I start my own blog?
- The Why and How of Blogging
- Starting a Blog with Moveable Type
- Choosing an Interface when Starting a Blog

Interactive Blog Tools

In the last blog tip we talked about how comments are one way to increase the interactivity of a blog.

Of course not everyone agrees that comments are the way to go. Each to their own.

Having harped on about comments I should also say that there are many other ways to make your blog more interactive.

Interactive Blog Tools

- chat, rooms || Newsletters/mailing Lists || Guest Maps || forums || discussion boards || trackback || Polls (and another) || guest book || Chat Boards

In addition to these tools you might want to consider making yourself contactable by posting your email address - beware of spam if you post it as a link. One way around this is to have a Contact Form. You might also post your instant messenger ID (but again be aware this means you might get anyone messaging you!)

Lastly other people encourage people to comment by featuring 'recent comments' or 'most prolific commenters' in their side bar. This gives some added incentive to post comments.

A word of warning - Be selective in how many of the above tips you implement. A common mistake is to give you readers too many ways to interact with you and have 'bells and whistles' just for the sake of having lots of features. This will clutter your page and confuse your reader.

The level and type of interaction of your blog is up to you. It will depend upon your personality, content and willingness to put time into interacting with your readers. In my opinion the benefits are worth the effort.

A last tip - Don't put any of the above tools on your blog unless you yourself are willing to use them in interacting with your readers. If you don't have the time or energy to talk back - don't advertise the fact that you do. I know a number of bloggers that get a lot of hits and wonder why they don't get many comments - I reckon its because they largely ignore their readers. Thats just my theory.

Using Comments on your Blog

Human beings are relational. We like to be acknowledged. We like too participate and contribute. We like to feel that what we have to say is valuable.

Most of your blog's readers are human beings. So acknowledge and interact with them.

The most common way for interaction on blogs is through comments. A recent study showed 43% of blogs use comments. Not everyone likes them. A lot of bigger bloggers don't use them because they get overwhelmed by too much interaction. Smaller blogs sometimes don't use them because they don't get any.

The Upside to Comments

I personally think commenting is the best part of my blog. You see I'm not that profound or wise, but many of my readers are. Comments add value to my blog. They often take my posts to the next level. They often take my ideas in rewarding new directions. I have learnt a lot from comments left in this blog and have even met some new friends through them.

Comments have the ability to help create a virtual community at your blog. It sounds strange but I've seen a number of blogs where the commenters seem to know each other really well and where I suspect people keep coming back to purely to interact with each other.

Comments bring accountability to bloggers. If you post something that is inaccurate, controversial or not thought through, expect to be told about it in comments.

The Downside Comments

With all good things there is a negative flip side. Comment spam is an increasing problem. I've had more and more ads for Viagra, Penis Enlargements and Jewelry Stores (go figure!) left in my comments over the past months. The key to this is to read every comment as it comes in. (Mine get sent to an email address to help with this) and to delete spam as it arrives.

You'll also receive a lot of comments from people trolling for hits at their own blogs. I personally don't mind these too much, unless they are serial trollers. Flaming in comments can be an issue also. I've had a fair share of comment interactions from people that have gotten too personal. You might want to develop some sort of comments policy to help with this.

My approach to Utilizing Comments

- Ask questions. I will often end a post with a question or invitation to comment.
- Interact with comments left. I read every comment left on my blog. I try to either reply to it via comments or email. (this gets hard when you start to get a lot!) In my opinion a key to whether you will get comments will be your willingness to use them yourself. Don't expect your readers to go to the effort of commenting if you will ignore them.
- Be humble. People will not comment if you write in a way that presumes to know all the answers. Acknowledge that you're on a journey, post honestly about your own failings and show people that you believe in them and they will interact with you.
- Be gracious. You will get angry, nasty and rude comments. Attempt not to take it personally. Don't reply to comments in the heat of the moment when angry. Delete comments when they step over the mark. Attempt to respond to such comments with grace. I know it is hard but you will win the respect of your readers if you do.
- Be controversial? - This is a strategy that I see a lot of bloggers using. I'm not convinced that it is a good one. It is easy to stir people up and get a lot of comments by saying something controversial just for the sake of it- but I wonder if you do more harm than good this way. Do it too much and you'll disillusion your readers. I'm happy to put the cat amongst the pigeons, but don't do it purely for comments or hits - do it because you believe what you're saying.

Comment Tools

Most blog tools will have integrated commenting systems built in. For some reason Blogger still does not so if you're looking to add comments to your blog here are some of the more popular free commenting systems available. Squarkbox, Enetation and Haloscan.

Do I need to even invite you to comment on this post?

Set Boundaries

I found this great page 47 key tips from the World's best Bloggers.

It was interesting to see that most of them talked about establishing boundaries for the content of your blog.

Here is what some of them had to say:

Meg from Megnut - 'Set boundaries. Think about how much of yourself you're comfortable sharing. You don't have to “tell all”. Just decide which parts of your life you're willing to share, and try to find a balance that works for you.'

Fraser from Blogjam - 'Don't write about work, and avoid writing about people you know in general. You'll end up offending someone.'

Glenn from InstaPundit - 'Starting off, pick some topics that you know more about than most other people - your profession, your locality, or whatever - and make those a major part of your blog. '

Robyn from Aint too Proud to Blog - 'Remember that even though you think you're writing to just friends and family, your words will have a global audience. You never know just who is reading your blog, and where they may be located when reading it.'

Hash from iMakeContent - 'The blog should do what you say it's going to do. You want people to come back, to become regular readers, so you need to live up to whatever you promise. If you've set up a tech blog, your readers might be surprised if you start writing long accounts of why your marriage/team/country is going down the drain. Of course, in the process you might pick up some new readers and decide to relaunch the blog. '

Rannie from Photojunkie - 'Before you begin blogging, figure out your boundaries. Decide how much or how little you are comfortable with disclosing. It's easier to change your boundaries once you have started blogging, but harder to put up those boundaries after you have crossed the line and posted something that you didn't think anyone else would see.

I'm not really hearing any of them say don't blog about personal things - rather the message is to consider what you will and will not share on your blog.

Its also useful to define your blog to some extent (at least in your own mind) and keep within the boundaries you've set yourself.

My last word on the topic is be careful. I've heard cases of people loosing jobs because their bosses found their blog - other have had similar experiences of pastors finding comments about sermons. Be prepared for people you know to find what you write.

The Rhythm Method of Blogging

One of the keys to blogging is frequent posting. This is what distinguishes weblogs from from static websites.

The average blogger posts once every 14 days - personally I tend to mainly visit bloggers who update more regularly than that. As a blog reader I get to know the rhythm of the blogs that I read. I don't mind if they are daily, weekly or even fortnightly bloggers - but whatever their rhythm I find myself loosing interest if they disappear for unexplained periods of time. So get into a rhythm of blogging.

I personally blog daily and dedicate 15 minutes most mornings while I drink my coffee to write something. I also often post last thing at night.

I read somewhere recently that if you write for 15 minutes a day you will have written the equivalent of an average book in a year. Set yourself some sort of goal like that - but don't fall into the temptation of writing just because you 'have to' - your content will suffer.

One way to help each 'bloggers block' is to keep a file of ideas to blog about. Rather than posting about everything that interests you in a day, keep a few ideas in reserve so you can post them quickly on a day when you otherwise might have been too busy or unable to post.

Lastly - if you keep forgetting to blog (a common problem) you should check out this amazing new Blogging Reminder System - The NoemicsPad. Its a revolutionary idea that could change the way you blog forever!

Blog Content Tip - Titles are Everything

After slaving away on your latest blog post pause before you hit that 'publish' button and consider your title. What does it convey to your potential reader? Titles can be the difference between having your post read or ignored. Of course there are No Rules that will guarantee your post to get noticed, but you might want to consider some of the following.

Simplify - Studies show that blog readers prefer straightforward, short and simple titles to cute or cryptic ones.

Communicate - In a word or three tell your reader what the post is about in your title. Most people will not take the time to read something unless they know what it is about first.

Key Words - Try to incorporate words in your title that are likely to be searched for by readers in search engines. Get into their shoes — what search term would you use if you were wanting information on this topic? If you're writing about Britney Spears - put her in your title and you'll increase its ranking in the engines.

Grab Attention - A good title draws your readers into your post. Your post is likely to be one of many on the same topic. Your title is an opportunity to distinguish it from others like it. Imagine yourself searching for articles on a search engine or news aggregator — what would make you click your link? Intrigue your reader, draw them into your post, make them want to read more!

Of course Titles are NOT Everything you still need to post something worthwhile under them. But a title is not just the start of your post, it is an invitation for people to engage with your ideas. Put some effort into developing it and you'll find people take that all important step into your virtual space.

Writing Blog Content - Make it Scannable

Only 16% of people read web sites word for word. Source

Most people read online by scanning the page for individual words or phrases, headings and other visual cues. Studies have shown that reading from a screen is more tiring and therefore about 25% slower than reading from paper - hense scanning becomes a technique that most employ.

Good bloggers keep this in mind as they write and will employ the use of simple headings, lists and images or diagrams as they write. Don't hide your main points by burying them deep in your article, but put draw attention to your key points.

If your site and its posts are not easily scannable you run the risk of losing your reader to another blog that is.

Blog Designers

My post Where are the Blog Designers? got a bit of interest yesterday and a number of Blog Designers let us know about themselves and gave examples of their work.

I thought I'd give them a little exposure here:

As previously mentioned Cre8d Design is a personal favorite of mine. She produces clean, fresh and stylish blogs and logos and was recommended by a number of commentators in the previous post.

Dydimustk has designed his own great blog and a number of others. (links in previous comments)

Alan Creech also has a growing portfolio of blogs that he's designed. (links in previous comments). Alan has designed a number of blogs in my own blogroll.

Tim also is offering his services and recommends May Star Designs.

Chad is a web designer who is willing to take on blog designing jobs.

Iggie Krug has been doing blog design and logos for a while now. I've seen a lot of Iggie's work around in my blogroll - good stuff.

Kevin at Sakamuyo is another blogger willing to take on work. He also recommends Sekimori for professional blogs.

Tim from E-Church does freelance design at Turtle + Interactive and is willing to take on blog work.

Jordon Cooper works for a company that does blog design and has developed blogging software. (links to examples of his work in previous comments)

Dan is also happy to do blog design.

So there you have some blog designers - perhaps there are more out there than I thought.

Having read the comments there I have some theories as to why there are so few people specializing in blog design professionally.

- A lot of people feel they can do a reasonable job themselves.
- Most people know someone that knows someone who will do it for free (or very cheap).
- People are not willing to pay much for something that they can get for free and then 'tinker' with.

Feel free to add your own ad for your services below.

Writing Blog Content - Keep it Simple

The average person only comprehends 60% of what they read. How much do you comprehend?.

To ensure your reader 'gets' what you're saying you need to make it clear by using some of the following techniques.

- Use simple language. Avoid technical jargon.

- Don't introduce too many ideas in one post. You can always add another post later.

- Start your entry with your main point in the first paragraph. Better still, incorporate it in your title. (This can also bring more traffic through search engine referrals)

- Find creative ways to reinforce your main point throughout your post.

- Use visual aids like bold, CAPITALS, italics, underlining, teletext and to emphasize points. Don't go overboard as you run the risk of frustrating your reader. Also consider changing font size, color and style to draw your readers eyes to your main points.

- Utilize headings, lists and borders to break down the your post into more manageable chunks.

Keep your postings simple and you have more chance of communicating your main message effectively. Share your tips below.

Get to the Point

The average person reads 200 words per minute - What's Yours? (The speed reading record is 1347 wpm)

In 96 seconds they will read 320 words.

So keep things short and to the point. I know this sounds crazy coming from me - but the stats show my longer posts are often largely are ignored.

EXTENDED ENTRY - If you're going to write a long post - consider writing a punchy introduction that makes your main points so that when your reader gets the 'itch to click' they've grasped your message. After the introduction refer your readers via a 'read more' link to another page for the rest of your post if they want to know the details. (MT's Extended Entry feature is handy way to do this automatically).

MULTIPLE POSTS - consider breaking your long post down into multiple entries to be posted over a period of time - be sure to link them to one another.