Archive | Blog Business

How to Retain Your Blog Readership

How to Retain Your Blog Readership

There are countless articles published on the internet talking about how you can build traffic to your blog and there seems to be an unlimited amount of resources to building your traffic. The only problem is that most of the traffic generation techniques that are being taught don’t send return visitors. I simply mean that you may get traffic by completing certain things like article marketing, social bookmarking and link building but the traffic typically won’t sustain and everyday you’ll need to regain the traffic. The point of blogging is to have a solid readership that comes back to your blog on a daily basis, and this is when you can start making good money with your blog so you need to do your best at retaining visitors. There are some great methods at retaining your visitors and building a readership and I’m going to briefly talk about some of these methods with you right now.

Unique Themes

You should make sure that your blog uses a unique theme, simply because too many people use the free blog themes and they don’t stand out anymore. If you use a unique theme that is attractive you can build your blogs branding while also gaining a solid readership. People are also more inclined to read blogs that are designed nicely according to surveys recently conducted. You can buy a coded WordPress theme for under $200 nowadays on many webmaster forums so the investment isn’t going to make you reach too deeply into your pockets.

Great Content

An attractive theme isn’t going to be the only thing you need in order to stand out from the rest of the blogging world and you’re going to need to put a lot of effort into your content as well. Writing blog posts is an ongoing process that you need to do everyday, but you need to make sure that you do in fact post daily so that when you begin to grow a readership they have content to read that is fresh. The search engines also love content so the more you post on your blog with useful content the more search engine placements you’ll begin ranking for.

RSS Feed Subscriber

You need to make sure you utilize the RSS feed subscriber which allows your readers to read your blog from a number of different blog readers on the internet. The more RSS feed subscribers you have the better because this means that people want to keep your blog nearby so they can continue reading it. You should have a widget in your header or sidebar that allows all of your readers to join your RSS feed and there is also a plug-in that you should use. The plug-in will post a short line at the bottom of each of your blog posts automatically that asks the reader to join your RSS feed and gives them the link to join. This is a great way at reminding people about your RSS feed and can result in more readership.

As you can tell there are quite a few methods that you can use to make your readership stick around and keep coming back to your blog. You should also keep reading the internet for other great sources because there are more ways to retain your blog readership other then the ones I listed above. You should also be trying to make your blog more enjoyable for the readers because after all the success of your blog depends solely on the readers.

0

Promoting your Website through Social Media

Promoting your Website through Social Media

In this day in age you need to utilize social media as a website owner if you want to reach out to the most amounts of people. Social media websites make up the highest visited websites on the internet so if you can reach out to these massive crowds then the potential for making money is endless. There are two forms of social media that every website owner should utilize at one point or another, and the sooner you implement these tactics the quicker you can build your traffic and earnings.

The first form of social media advertising is through social bookmarking websites. These websites are abundant nowadays and there are literally hundreds of them all over the internet. You don’t need to submit to all of these obviously, but you should find a list of the most visited ones and make sure you submit to them often. You’ll always get a rush traffic from them and the more viral your content is the more response you’ll find on the social media websites. The goal is to gain votes and get listed on the high traffic pages of these social media websites, which is a lot easier said then done. With many bots out there that cheat the systems it can be difficult to land a front page listing, but if you ever do then you can expect large amounts of traffic to come from them. You should generally post to social bookmarking websites every time you add a new page to your website. It takes minutes to submit a webpage to a social bookmarking website so the time investment is definitely worth the traffic you’ll receive.

The second form of social media advertising you use is a lot less crowded right now and there is also more potential for finding clients using this method. The method is video advertising and as you know websites like Youtube receive tons of traffic on a daily basis. There are hundreds of video sharing websites out there that you can submit your videos too, and although time consuming it’s worth it. Once your video is live on the video sharing website then it’s generally fine to sit there and receive traffic for months to come without having to worry about doing anything else. The more viral your video is the more traffic you’ll get leaking to your website obviously, but any video is better then no video. A lot of webmasters don’t know how to make videos so if you can do this then you already have an advantage over most webmasters. Most of us need to outsource this type of work and even though it’s costly I still find it worth the money.

Social media marketing and advertising is only becoming popular now, and if you think it’s already popular then wait to see how it is in three years. You need to implement these tactics into your website now before it becomes too late and too many people use them. There will always be room for these mediums of marketing, but once there crowded with webmasters then the potential for profit becomes lower. It’s always better being a leader then follower, so don’t want for everyone to jump on the social media bandwagon and start using the methods now before everyone else.

0

How to Obtain Steady Blog Traffic

How to Obtain Steady Blog Traffic

Blogging is simple but getting steady traffic to your blog can be one of the hardest things you need to do and without traffic then there isn’t much point in even blogging because noone is seeing what you’re writing. If you want to obtain steady traffic then how hard you work the first couple months will determine everything, and basically if you work hard and give your blog time to establish itself then it will. It takes a little while before you’ll begin getting search engine rankings and this is what you’re aiming for as search engine traffic is by far the steadiest stream you’ll find. To rank in the search engines though you’ll need lots of links pointing to your blog and this can be time consuming. One thing that you should do is make sure you try spreading out the links you build by doing different marketing techniques.

In the beginning you do lots of social bookmarking for your blog and also as many Ezine submissions that you possibly can submit. These submissions will help you out tremendously with getting your blog indexed and into the search engine rankings. Usually you’ll need a solid few months before ranking steadily on the first page for any main keywords but longtail keywords can be obtained weeks after starting your blog.

The key is to build constant and natural links to your blog, meaning you shouldn’t submit to 100 directories one day and then none the rest of the week. Instead try submitting to 15 directories daily and it will seem like a lot more natural progression in the eyes of Google.

Social bookmarking will help to get your site indexed also and this also helps bring traffic to your blog. If you post daily and submit it to social bookmarking sites then you’ll have some traffic from there everyday but it won’t be that targeted or profitable of traffic.

The profitable traffic is the search engine traffic and once that starts coming into your blog in full effect then you’ll stand a lot better chance of having good steady profitable traffic on your blog. You need to ensure you offer your visitors valuable content though or else you won’t stand much of a chance when it comes to keeping your readers on your blog.

Return visitors are what keeps blogs alive and running and to have return visitors come to your blog you need to offer information that they are looking for. To do this you need to research your niche and then write content that is valuable to the people reading it. If you have a sports blog don’t write about space travel on it as most likely nobody there is interested in that topic. Instead serve up the hottest sports highlights from around the world everyday and you’ll soon see lots of traffic coming into your blog. The key is knowing your niche and then capitalizing on the information learned.

0

Common Mistakes Webmasters Make When Building Links

Common Mistakes Webmasters Make When Building Links

Every website owner needs to build links on a regular basis in order to compete with the competition, but many webmasters make severe mistakes when building links. If you make any mistakes when building links then it could cause you a massive headache and also ruin your website. You can’t just go out and get links anywhere you want too, instead you need to focus on building relevant natural links. Let’s take a look at some of the common mistakes webmasters make when building links.

Not Using Proper Anchor Text

The whole point of building links is too increase your search engine rankings in the many search engines, and you want to rank for the keywords people are searching for. Your anchor text when building links should be the keywords that you have been targeting on your website. Use different anchor texts when building links as well, but always make sure that the text is relevant to your keyword strategy.

Building No-Follow Links

No-Follow links are no use too anyone and they are only good if they can bring you lots of traffic from direct clicks. If you want to increase your search engine rankings though then you need to build do-follow links as there the only links that count for anything in the search engines. Don’t waste time building no-follow links and when you do build links spend the time to make sure your links are do-follow.

Building Non-Relevant Links

If you have a website that is about training dogs then you don’t need to get links from piano websites as there not even remotely relevant to your website. The search engines look for relevant links and if you build half the amount of links you do now, but make sure there all relevant then you’ll do a lot better in the rankings of the search engines. If you’re trying to increase your page rank then you’ll want to also build a few high page rank relevant links and that should do the trick.

There are plenty other common mistakes that webmasters make when building links on their website, and you should make sure you don’t fall into any of these. If you do then you need to correct the mistakes immediately as it could be the difference between ruining and saving your website. If you build links in link farms or spammy areas then you’ll need to deal with the risk of having your website de-indexed from the search engines.

0

How to Make Money by Blogging

How to Make Money byBlogging Millions

 

of people around the world have started blogging, most of them unsuccessful but there are still tons of people who have been successful in making money through blogging. Some bloggers have earned millions of dollars already and we’re only getting into the beginning of blogging which is the scary part. If you want to earn money online then you should take up blogging immediately, it’s not difficult at all and you can earn tons of sustainable income. Blogging is simply writing about a topic you have interests or expertise in and can write on it daily. Typically you need to write daily so the topic should be broad enough to write content on it for years, but then again not to broad that it doesn’t fit into a niche market. With millions of blogs on the internet you need to make sure you niche your blog enough that it fits into a niche market and not a general market. There are already enough authority blogs in the general market and if you plan on making money

 

then you’ll need to do something better then anyone else has done to date. Now with millions of dollars being spent on blogging by some companies you can expect that some niches aren’t going to make you any money at all because they’ve already been owned by a big company. You should look for something you have expertise in and that fits into a niche, meaning if you like sports don’t make a general sports blog because it won’t make any serious money for you. Instead choose the sport you like the most and then become an authority for that sport, or better yet narrow it down to your favourite sports team and keep the world updated on how they do. If you can narrow your blog range down like we have just down above with sports then you’ll have a much better chance of making money through blogging. Once you have your topic you should then get the domain and hosting to set-up your blog and then begin setting it up. There isn’t much to do in set-up except for choosing plug-ins and a theme basically. Once you have done your set-up process and are happy with the looks of your blog then you should begin posting once a day. If you’ve narrowed your blog down for instance to the Toronto Blue Jays then you’d write a game recap on the days they play and on the days they don’t you’d write about a player or something going on with the team. It’s simple to think up topics for a niche such as your favourite sports team and you shouldn’t face problem with the content as it’s the least of your worries. Once you’ve been adding content for about a month and traffic is starting to become steady then you can start implementing the techniques to earn money. The first thing you should do is sign-up for

Google Adsense

and then implement some of there ads onto your blog. They pay on a cost-per-click basis which means you get paid generally $.XX amount per click. Depending on your blogs topic you might get paid as little as $.0X per click or as much as $XX.XX per click, this number is strictly based on the topic of your blog. For instance a celebrity blog receives low amount per click but a lot of people click the ads whereas a medical blog will receive higher amount per click but a lot less amount of clicks generally. You should focus more on what you expertise in though and less on the amount per click, because without good content you won’t have traffic, and without traffic you won’t make any money. Once you’ve added your Adsense ads you can begin looking at the other possible monetization methods of your blog. Usually the second step to making money on your blog is to implement some affiliate leads or products. Generally if you write a review for the product and post your affiliate link it can earn some sales for you depending on how targeted your traffic is. You can also sell banners and links on your blogs, either through the sidebar or in your blog posts. If you sell the links in blog posts it’d better for the SEO of your blog because you don’t want many outgoing links on your homepage. You can also join review sites which pay you to write a review on your blog. You can earn quite bit money by adding reviews to your blogs from sites like Payu2Blog. There are literally tons of methods you can utilize to monetize your blog and the more you use the better chance you have of making money. You need to ensure that you don’t overdo the ads and affiliate links though because many visitors are turned off by excessive monetizing. People understand you need to make an income, but when you make it obvious they aren’t usually impressed, so you should try camouflaging your ads into your blog posts. The most important to making money through blogging is through good content and promotion. If you don’t have content that makes people stick around then you don’t stand a chance, but if you take the time to write good content then you’ll stand a good chance. Blogging takes months before it begins earning substantial income and you should make sure you allow your blog time to earn you money before giving up on it. It doesn’t take long to write a post each day and if you can do this then the money will come.

0

Of WordPress and Widgets

Of WordPress and Widgets

One of the world’s largest blog hosting sites, WordPress, achieved its status by offering users with loads of features, apparently more than its competitors do. However, one feature that truly sets them apart from the rest is WordPress Widgets which is quite simply, the use of widgets on WordPress blogs.

Widgets are basically plugins or tiny applications which can be placed on your blog’s sidebar. In WordPress, the most convenient aspect of putting up widgets is it is easily done without the need of html or web page editing expertise. With the ability to add and arrange widgets at your fingertips, it’s you can get your blog to look the way you want it to be making it a personalized one indeed in no time at all.

There are also huge amounts of widgets available online apart from those available in WordPress and can be obtained from websites such as www.widgetbox.com. Other than providing you with widgets of all sorts, they provide you guides on creating your own widgets to truly add a touch of personality and originality. These guides are even handy for the really tech-savvy individuals like developers and theme and plugin authors. Widget creating is important for them who work for WordPress as they have to keep tabs on the thousands of people from over 130000 blogs many of whom are constantly downloading WordPress programs each day.

With the use of Javascripts as well as Ajax, widgets are quite simply little boxes which represent content elements located within the sidebar of your theme. One downside to this is that once the widget is what it is, its look and the way it works can’t be modified. Among the elements which come as standard are;

Archives – A collection of links for older posts sorted by month.

Blogstats – A display of statcounter as well as a record of the amount of traffic coming into your blog.

Calendar – A calendar which dates can be used as links if there were any entries posted on that date.

Categories – A list of categories for post sorting and searching purposes.

Links – Quite simply, a blogroll arranged according to their respective categories.

Pages – A list of links to every page.

Most Recent Posts & Comments – A list of the most recent posts as well as comments that have been approved.

Meta/admin – A collection of links directing you to meta functions such as logging in and logging out, entries and comments RSS, Site Admin and WordPress’ homepage.

Search – A search tool to search within your blog.

Text – A feature allowing the insertion of HTML, Javascript or simply any form of plain text and can open up possibilities for miscellaneous text widgets.

Another interesting thing is the ability to add RSS feeds sourced from elsewhere using the new widgets available. With functions like these, the uses of widgets encompass almost every thinkable thing where only your imagination is the limit. However, too many widgets may not only cause your blog to slow down, but may end up spoiling the look of your blog as it is never advisable to have too much of a thing and this includes widgets.

0

How to Make Money Off Of Affiliates

How to Make Money Off Of Affiliates

Most bloggers who are blogging to make money already have some experience with affiliates most likely but for those of you who don’t an affiliate is simply someone who sells a product for someone and receives a commission. You can also get leads that pay money too and this can actually be easier in the beginning and I would recommend that if you’re new you work with getting leads rather then sales. People are more inclined to join something free then to buy something, especially off of a new blog which doesn’t have too much reputation so for the first while stick with leads. I actually wouldn’t even introduce affiliate sales or leads into your blog until at least one month after you begin it. Also it’s only one month if you post everyday if you post less frequently then give it a couple months before introducing affiliates. The last thing you want to do is bombard all your new readers with affiliate ads, instead you want to first build up a readership and then move forward with affiliate ads.

Once you’ve decided to start working with affiliates you need to decide how you’ll go about the task. Some people will make a separate page for affiliates and list them all on one page so that it’s somewhat tucked away and then only people interested in the offers will have to look through them. Other people will add banners or links into their sidebar pointing to the affiliate and then others will make a new blog post with the affiliate lead or product. I find that creating a new post for the product or lead is the best way to go about getting sales, because this way you can write a review of the product and let people know a bit about what there buying. You’ll notice you get more sales from the products and leads that you offer some guidance or knowledge on rather then just posting a banner or link.

When you’re placing links on your blog that point to affiliate URL’s you should use a cloaking plug-in so that you can make friendlier URL’s. A lot of people won’t click links if they know it’s an affiliate link and it’s easy to tell because most affiliate networks use there URL to forward you to the affiliate product. There are plug-ins for WordPress which make this simple though and a quick Google search will do the trick for finding the right plug-in. I’ve noticed on blogs where I cloak my affiliate links up to 30% more action on the links then when I simply use the affiliate link normally and when you’re dealing with money 30% is a fairly large percentage.

That’s about all you need to do in order to display your affiliate links properly so that you can maximize your profits and apart from that all you should be concerned about is making sure the affiliate banners and links you use on your blog fit in the blog. Meanings don’t promote a shoe affiliate on a hat blog, only choose affiliate leads or products that are directly involved with your niche. Also ensure you don’t overdo any affiliate ads because people will quickly become turned off from your blog if everything is an affiliate ad. You should use them sparsely throughout the blog posts to make sure you don’t come off as someone just trying to make a quick buck. People are far more inclined to buy something off of someone who has taught them stuff through the content on the blog, so make sure you continue writing solid content and mix in the affiliate ads as you go.

0

What You Need to Successfully Run a Blog Network

What You Need to Successfully Run a Blog Network

A lot of bloggers who run either one or a few blogs have been looking into expanding their reach and creating what’s known as a blog network. There are lots of companies who own blog networks nowadays and more are created each day, but only a select few of them are well known and profitable. You can’t expect too be able too run a blog network on your own and that’s the main mistake a lot of bloggers are doing. They think that they can do everything, but the fact is there is only so much time in a day and you won’t be able to do everything needed by yourself if you want too become successful. The one thing all the profitable and well known blog networks have in common is that they outsource a lot of the tedious work and capitalize on cheap outsourcing rates around the web.

Outsourcing too international countries has become a popular way for webmasters too get work done for the lowest possible rates and it’s vital to a blog network. If you want to run a blog network you’ll need an entire team of people working for you, and you’ll basically need to spend your time managing the workers and also working on the small details.

To have any success with a blog network it will take a lot of time as you need to establish each one of the blogs in their market. This isn’t an easy task for one blog let alone multiple blogs so make sure you’re ready to put in the time and work. The first thing you’ll need to purchase is a server in which you can purchase C-Class IP’s with because you’ll need quite a few of these. You should put each blog on there own C-Class IP as it will only cost you roughly $1 per month per IP which is definitely worth it. You don’t want the blogs on the same IP because then Google might see them as a link farm and could punish them severely without any notice. You’ll also need to purchase all of the domains you want to use and set them up on WordPress each on there own IP. Once this is done you’ll need to begin outsourcing too get the blogs going.

At first you’ll only need to be concerned about content and should you hire a couple freelance writers to complete some article packs for you on the niches you’ve chosen for your blog network. Add the articles to post on the blogs once daily and timestamp each article accordingly so that you don’t need to go to each blog each day to make the post. In these early stages you’ll want to make sure you install all your stat counters so that everything is ready to be tracked. Once the content begins too compile on the blogs and they start getting indexed in Google then you’ll need to start finding link builders to build some links. You won’t need too many links in the beginning and should only get a few of them so that you gain some SE recognition. A lot of links can be built down the road for free once you become popular so don’t spend too much money on link building. The most important part to spend money on is the content and you should make sure you have lots of it.

There is a lot more to running a blog network, but this guide should give you a brief outline of what you’re thinking about getting into. Unless you have a fairly nice budget then don’t even consider doing it because you won’t stand a chance. You’ll just burn yourself out quickly and then become bored with blogging in general. You can’t do something that isn’t possible so realize early that if you want to run a blog network you’ll need to outsource most of the work. This means you’ll be running in the negatives for the first few months and then you may start moving into the green. There is a chance you won’t even move into the profits though and this is the risk you take when starting a blog network.

0