Guide To Blogging

Archive for the ‘Make money with blogs’ Category

For many people blogging is just one of many things they try when it comes to earning online, for some there’s success, for many others though there’s no reward at all (monetary that is, many decide blogging for their own reason is reward enough, regardless of whether or not they earn from them)

This post though, is for those that either want to learn how to earn online, have already earnt some income online but are looking for other avenues, or those that may already be successful but want to increase their knowledge.

The Thirty Day Challenge is a way for anyone and everyone to learn how to earn online with absolutely no cost at all (other than your time) Pre-season starts today (June 1st) with the actual challenge starting on August 1st 2008. This is the fourth challenge of its kind and every year there are new success stories.

The Thirty Day Challenge teaches you all you need to know when it comes to earning online offers more free resources than you can poke a stick at to use as well as teaching you how to use them properly. With day by day training and videos etc the challenge teaches you how to earn your first dollar(s) online. All totally FREE

So take the Challenge now  - it’s never too late to learn how to earn online. You can sign up free at any time and either warm up with the Pre-season where you’ll get the chance to learn how to use some of the amazing tools used throughout the challenge.

You can get more information here: Thirty Day Challenge

In every bloggers life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called "traction", which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don”t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger‘’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it’’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com

The best way to make money blogging is to take on as much work as you can in the amount of time you have available. Get started by doing a Google search on writing jobs, blogging or bloggers. There are many companies and individuals looking for freelance bloggers.

There are also a number of freelancer websites such as GetAFreelancer.com and ELance.com where there is a lot of blogging work to be found.

Be sure not to take on more articles than you can do, and be very selective as to who you write for. Many professional bloggers have listings of good and bad employers so be sure to read the comments that everyone has about a particular individual or company.

Blogs can be categorized in different ways. A blog post could consist of 300 words on your thoughts and opinions on a particular subject or it could be a 300 word news article. Several companies are now calling articles blogs.

Whatever you are blogging on, you will need to build up a knowledge of the subject. Of course, it is best to aim for subjects that you are already familiar with. If not, you will have to spend some time on researching what the particular article is about.

You need to be sure that you write only facts about that particular subject and not false statements. Even more important is to avoid plagiarism. Copying other people’s work will ruin your reputation and cause all kinds of trouble for your employer.

In most cases when doing research you can just do a Google search on the exact topic and most likely it will display other articles for use as information. You can read a few of the other articles and before you know it, you will have a lot of ideas in your head as to what to write.

While there is plenty of blogging work out there, it will take some time and effort to build up a decent income. However, once you establish a name for yourself you should be in a position to ask for a reasonable amount per article or post.

It can be a good idea to take on small projects initially so you can feel them out to see if they are legitimate and are going to pay. Once you establish a good relationship with a client or clients, you will be ready to take on bigger projects for them.

It does take a while to make money from freelance blogging but you can do it with enough determination and time. Start your own blog for practice and even see if you can make some extra income from that.

For more information about starting a freelance business, visit FreelanceSprout.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jerret_Turner

I am always looking out for new ways for my readers to make more money online with less effort.

Recently I came across a new innovation that you need to hear about because it may affect the way you earn with your website in the very near future.

As you may know, major television networks are in trouble because their advertising revenue is dropping. They are losing market share at a dramatic pace.

For the first time in history, website owners are sharing in the ad revenue that was formerly spent with the giant TV networks.

Advertisers like Harley Davidson, HBO & Taco Bell are willing to pay you on 100% of your website traffic to make up for the loss of viewers that the big TV networks are experiencing.

Do your online business a huge favour. Stop what you are doing for just a moment and learn how you can earn revenue on 100% of your website traffic.

This is a FREE opportunity that is taking the advertising community by storm.

This is bigger than radio, television and all other forms of media combined!

Get full details here:: Pay Per Play ad

Or for a brief video guide: Pay Per Play Video 

I’ve previously posted about some quick and easy plugins for WordPress blogs that enable you to easily add videos to your bog posts. I’m now going to share another, though this one is a little different.

By joining Revver and then using the Revver Plugin for WordPress you can not only easily add a variety of videos to your posts you also have the chance to earn from them.

You can earn from Revver in a couple of different ways. Taken from the site:

 

How we share revenue

Yeah, you can earn money by making an awesome video and putting it on Revver. But did you know you can also earn just by sharing other people’s videos? Just find a few of your faves and you can send them to friends, embed them in your blog or website, or even make your very own podcast with them — and earn for sharing!

But wait, there’s more! Because it’s so easy to earn money by sharing videos, other Revver members will be knocking down your door trying to share your videos with the world. Every time they earn money for sharing your video, you earn money for creating it!

The video above gives a brief explanation of using the plugin. This plugin and video site might prove very useful to those that set up primarly vlogs (video blogs) or use videos to portray their content rather than text etc.

No Video Responses have been posted yet.

Click here to post a video response.

Would you like to quickly and easily build variety of niche blogs all with the potential to earn you money? How about if they were search engine friendly to help bring you hordes of traffic?

With Blog Matrix Pro it can be as simple as picking a niche then generating your blog.

Blogs are predominantly cost free, your only outlay often being the cost of a domain name and hosting, then in reality it only costs you your time to set up: upload your blog, choose your theme, add your chosen plugins etc; and then do the same again when you’re ready to build your next blog.

Blog Matrix Pro uses only one set of WordPress™ files and plugins (which are included) and one database to deliver as many different blogs as you want. All from one install.
And the best part is, it just takes a click of a button to create your blog(s). You’ll actually spend more time thinking about what to name your blog(s) than it takes to create it.
Just type in one or more blog names or keywords relating to your particular market, scroll down and click the ‘Create Blogs Now’ Button and your blog(s) will automatically be created.

Yes - it is THAT simple!

You can also add other plugins with a quick drag and drop to your control panel so they become available for all your blogs and that’s just the start of what Blog Matrix Pro can do for you.

Take a look now and before you know it you could be building your own empire of income earning blogs.

So you want to be a problogger? You’ve figured that the 8-5 daily crunch doesn’t work for you anymore, and since you’re a reasonably adept blogger you think that you can already make it in the somewhat lucrative world of problogging. You scanned the net and you find that, hey I can probably make a decent enough living writing sponsored posts! You even think that if you get big enough, money would also come rolling in via site ads, Google Adsense and other affiliate programs.

This is all well and good, but before you quit your day job, here are a few things that you really need to think about.

1. Ask yourself this question. Is my decision to go full time blogging borne out of a well thought out decision, or was I just having a difficult time in the office?

Sometimes, just because we had an emotionally charged encounter with the boss we already think of quitting our jobs and try our hand at something else. This is not a very good idea. Making hasty emotional decisions can be very disastrous.

Think about your decision very carefully. Let a few days pass, and when you are no longer emotionally ‘overwhelmed’, ask yourself again; Do you really want to do this? It may also help if you solicit the advice of people who are close to you. Share your thoughts with them and get their honest feedback.

If after doing so you are still convinced that quitting your work and going into full time blogging is a good decision, then we go to the next question;

2. Do you have enough money?

This is a very critical thing to consider. Quitting your job means losing a steady stream of income every month. Without that monthly cashflow, you will have to dig deep into your savings. Also, quitting your job does not mean that the bills will stop coming. You still have to pay the rent, your water consumption bills, your phone bills, and your electricity bills, not to mention you still have to eat. Just to be safe, you would need to have enough cash to tide you over for two years minimum.

Problogging is a very competitive field and there’s no guarantee as to when you can actually live off it. So if you don’t have any ammunition in the form of enough money stashed, you may find yourself staring bankruptcy and starvation in the face. This is not a very pleasant situation.

If you’re still standing after these two questions and you feel that you’ve got these two covered, then we can tackle the harsh realities of problogging.

Reality #1– Problogging demands an awful lot of time.

Contrary to common belief, you just don’t log in for a couple of hours, post something, and then sit back and watch the cash roll in. It doesn’t happen that way. You have to spend hours networking, honing your craft, and keeping abreast of the latest developments on the issues or things that you want to blog about.

Remember, the world doesn’t stop just because you are on your break. Things and events will happen even when you are not looking. As the proverb goes– “Time and tide wait for no man.”

Reality #2– Traffic is the name of the game.

You may be the most talented blogger in the planet and you may have the best blog, but if nobody visits your site, this all counts for nothing. You can hem and haw in your blog until your fingers are raw and still get only a smattering of visitors. Unless of course you have oodles of cash that you can use to buy an existing site that already has a very high PR rating(in which case, one would question your need to go into problogging if you already have that much money).

To get traffic you have to give it a little nudge and a whole lot of arrows pointing to your site’s direction; which leads us to–

Reality #3– If traffic is the name of the game, SEO is its middle name; and it’s a skill that you will need to have.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as defined in Wikipedia “is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.”

Simply put, SEO enables you to position your blog in such a way that when internet users search for the things that you blog about (e.g. via google), your website comes out in the search results preferably in the first few pages. This is not as easy as it sounds. You will have to understand the philosophies of an effective keyword including its strategic placements in your blog, and all the while taking care not to use prohibited SEO techniques otherwise known as blackhat SEO.

A successful SEO campaign means that traffic is diverted your way and your blog gets exposed to the residents of the net.

Reality #4– Getting your website some internet traffic is not enough. You must also have inbound links.

Some search engines, Google for example, ranks pages based on the number and the quality of their inbound links. Inbound links are hyperlinks transiting domains [Wikipedia]. Take note of the term quality. In this case quality pertains to the Page Rank (PR) of the originating linker.

It is not enough therefore that your website has inbound links. These inbound links have to be of good quality as well, if they’re ever going to be of any use to you. Also, the more important links are those that appear to be ‘one-way’ links; those links that point to you, which you do not reciprocate.

This is one thing to remember before you buy yourself the service of those who claim to bring you one-way links, those so called link farms. Better yet, stay away from those linkfarms altogether, a lot of blogs have already been penalized by Google (demoted their page ranks) for availing the services of these organizations.

Reality #5– Content is King!

All blogs will rise and fall because of its contents. The key to making people come back to your site time and time again is regular, consistent, and quality content. As Bob Marley said “you can fool some people sometimes, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.”

Keep cranking out those quality posts and people will continue to flock to your blog.

Reality #6– Be ready for the long haul. This is primarily the reason why you need a lot of cash to support you. Problogging is not an overnight thing. It takes hours and hours of backbreaking work, hunched on your computer, primping your blog, networking, developing your page rank, before you can reap the benefit of your labors.

Problogging is not exactly a walk in the park. It is a daunting task– one that has broken many a strong men who have jumped into its bandwagon halfbaked and expecting a happy joy ride. But no matter how daunting and difficult it is, like most worthy endeavors, if you persevere long enough, you should be able to achieve what a lot of men can only imagine.

__________

Javier writes a daily weblog on popular technology, blogging, and money making on the web. He’s a CPA who has a flair for words. Go, Blog!, http://technojavi.blogspot.com is his first stab at earning money through blogging.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Javier_D