Make Money Online & Get Rich: 2007

Well this is a topic that provokes much dissention in the world of SEO and is probably one of the most misunderstood factors in the world of optimisation. In fact every popular forum is guaranteed to have at least one current thread that addresses this subject in one way or another.

Well what is true and what is myth?

It is true that Page rank is important but it is a myth that you should chase it.
It is true that you should pursue the activity that will improve it but false that you can measure it.
It is true that sites that have a good Pagerank will often be well placed in generic searches but false that this is the only factor influencing this placement.

So where does Pagerank come from?
Going back to the start of the evolution of Google it all began with the development of a search engine that could deliver more accurate results than facilities such as Alta Vista and Excite who back then were just two of a variety of dominant search engines.

Google was different, it was different because it ranks on different factors and this started when the founders decided to see if they could crawl the whole of web world and trace every link that could be found.

It is probably not correct at this point to conclude that Larry Page and Sergey Brin were trying to create a new internet search engine. But the concept of tracking and sorting all the links on the Internet was certainly heading that way.

What was even more impressive than just tracking the number of links was the idea of examining the link relationship between different sites and thus determining the concept of rank!

It was March 1996 when Larry pointed his crawler at his homepage at Stamford University and let it lose to explore the world. From the information gathered it was possible to sort sites that were important from sites that were less important according to link quantity, that was just the start and much more was on the agenda.

The concept was that once this site hierarchy is determined then the value of a link can be determined, it was a complex mathematical process but with Sergey the mathematician on board it was deliverable. The goal of course was achieved, Page and Brin were able to develop a system of ranking based on the number of links into a particular site factoring in the number of links to each of the sites that were linking to that particular site.

Once this was done they started to search the data and noticed that many of the results were more relevant to the query than when the same query was entered into the established search engines.

Thus was born the soul of Google and the intrinsic relationship with pagerank, of course this term came from the marriage of the evaluation process: rank, to the surname of Larry Page, hence Pagerank.

Thus another fact is established and that is Pagerank is not named because of a value of a webpage but from the founders surname. The obsession with Pagerank continues and debates rage but at the end of the day it is a mathematical formula and uses quantifiable elements to determine the end product which is rank.

Whilst it is important to understand what builds Pagerank anybody of repute understands that we do not know what the true PR is of any particular site or page. Google have given us an indicator which like any such directive was instantly abused so to the point where we are firmly in the dark as to the true Pagerank and we have to rely on the Google Toolbar indicator which is out of date and totally inaccurate.

Even the backlink indicator is not reliable in Google since this was also abused in the drive to gain position by manipulation, after its release as a command it was quickly dulled down.

Every Pagerank checker uses the Toolbar mechanism in one way or another and so all those so called experts out there offering true PR tracking services are also deluded or deceptive with their claims.

And therein lies the Achilles Heel, once the industry understood the relationship between links and ranking then it was open to abuse in the effort to manipulate the position of any given website. This has led to ever more stringent changes to the system which can have cataclysmic effects on millions of websites as different updates are served to Googles ranking model.

In a modern world the vast majority of linking is now done to try and pass a vote for authority with the aim of adjusting website positions in a positive way. The early days of links passing a natural vote of quality are gone for a huge section of the Internet, where this natural process still occurs is whereby the rank and file still link naturally to facilities such as Microsoft and Adobe and many other Goliaths.

What is certain though is that the average business website has its search engine position in part due to some manipulation of the link process, of course linking can be encouraged by releasing quality information, having a great content rich site and despite the manipulation Google still manages to produce remarkable results for relevancy.

This means that after a decade the system of Pagerank survives as the most relevant and accurate process for delivery search results to people entering their respective search queries.

15 Things I’d Love to See Ad Networks and Affiliate Programs Do to Help Us Earn More Money Blogging

I write quite a lot about what works in the ad networks that I use to make money from my blogs - but sometimes there are some little niggling problems with ad networks and affiliate programs that can be quite annoying.

Today I thought I’d compile a short ‘ProBlogger Wishlist’ of things that I’d love to see specific ad networks and affiliate programs rolling out. I’m not doing this because I don’t like any of the programs mentioned here (in fact most feature in my top earners list) - just because I’d like to see them improve.

Feel free to add your own on these networks (and others) in comments. Hopefully some of them will lead to some positive changes:

1. Direct Deposits for Amazon Associates

AmazonI’d love to see publishers outside of the USA able to be paid via direct deposit. I not only have to wait an extra week or so to get my cheque each month, but because my monthly payments are over $2000 my bank then charges me over $60 to cash them - and they have to send the cheque back to the USA for authentication before they’ll clear the money. This authentication process takes an extra 6 weeks. So if I earn money on the first day of a month it can be around 3 months before I see any money from it. If direct deposits are out of the question payments via PayPal would be another alternative.

2. Direct Deposit Payments at Clickbank

Cb LogoWhile we’re on the subject of payment via cheque - the other group I’d like to see with a direct deposit system (or a PayPal payment) is Clickbank. Come on people - get with the 21st century!

3. Increase Minimum Payouts - Linkshare

Logo-4I don’t even know where I still earn money with Linkshare (I must have promoted something once of theirs and it still earns me a dollar or two a month). The problem is that they send me a cheque for that dollar or two every month or two. Do you know how embaressing it is to go into a bank and try to cash a $2.27 check (considering it’s in US dollars and I have to get it converted I don’t bother any more). It’s time for a minimum amount earned before sending cheques Linkshare.

4. More Customization with ID Tracking at Amazon Associates

AmazonI love the fact that Amazon added the ability to use ‘tracking IDs’ to allow their publishers to track which links are converting best (see how useful this can be in this post analyzing what people buy at Amazon from one post). The problem is that once you add a tracking ID there’s no way to remove it. I have a growing list of them and it’s getting pretty messy. It’s also be great to get more customized reports with tracking IDs that’d allow for more drilling down.

5. Better Reporting at AdSense

Logo Main-1Speaking of drilling down in reports - while I think AdSense has one of the best reporting systems, I think it’s time that they took things to the next level and gave us some more useful tools for analyzing our results. While channels can be handy - unless you use a different channel for each post it’s impossible to tell which pages are converting best unless you use a third party application to track clicks on a page by page basis. Another simple wish for AdSense reports is a cost per click figure (something other networks give). I know this is complicated by impression based ads - but it’d be handy to have more information on this. I’d also love to see more ability to combine data from Google Analytics and Google AdSense.

6. Split Testing at AdSense

Logo Main-1A built in mechanism for split testing might be nice too. It’s now possible to rotate different ads in the one ad unit, but there’s no way to track which combination converts best. Split testing tools might be useful (in fact they’d be good at all the ad networks - not just AdSense).

7. Better Referral Reports at WidgetBucks

Logo3-1Time to look at the newest ad network on the block, WidgetBucks. I’m getting good results with this network but I think there’s plenty of room for improvement. For starters I’d love to see more data on referrals. At this point there’s just a total referrals number and the promise of the total amount earned to be given at some point in the first week of next month. Most other networks give significantly more information on this including a daily breakdown (even if it is audited later). Not having these figures takes some of the incentive for promoting the program away from publishers and will slow the growth of the network.

8. Better Referral Reports at AuctionAds

Auctionads-1The other ad network that I’d like to see improve it’s referral reporting is AuctionAds. At the moment I have no idea what of my income comes from the ad units that I run and what comes from referrals. Again - it doesn’t really inspire me to actively promote it if I can’t see what the results of that promotion are.

9. Channel Names at WidgetBucks

Logo3-1Another pet peeve of WidgetBucks for me is that the name you give different widgets appears in both the reports page and on the widget. While I don’t mind being able to customize the widget in this way - it’s frustrating in the reports page as there’s no actual descriptive way of labeling widgets. For example I’d like to be able to have ‘popular digital cameras’ appear on my widget - but in the back end reports would like to be able to call my widget ‘Digital Photography School Footer’. It’s getting more and more confusing the more widgets I add. In fact the whole reports page probably needs to be reworked. Imagine having 100 different widgets across different sites - the page would be a mess.

10. Less US-centric Testing at AdSense

Logo Main-1Regular readers will know about this one already - but there’s nothing more frustrating for a publisher situated outside of the USA than seeing great new ad units released and not being able to test them. AdSense did this recently with their YouTube Video unit.

11. Open Up for International Publishers at YPN

Logo PnSpeaking of US exclusive deals - I’d love to see Yahoo’s Publisher Network (YPN) open up to international publishers with international traffic. The YPN beta launched in August 2005 and did so exclusively for US publishers with predominantly US traffic. It struck me this morning that it’s been over 2 years now (26 months to be exact) and there’s been no movement on that. In fact if anything they tightened things up about a year ago by booting out some publishers who had too much non US traffic.

12. Open up RSS Ads at AdSense

Logo Main-1While a 26 month beta test with no expansion seems pretty bad - AdSense have one of their own which has been going longer. In April 2005 they introduced their RSS Advertising system (AdSense for Feeds). The program is still in a beta test according to their help center page and the beta test is full and they don’t anticipate adding any more publishers too it. Still - publishers are encouraged to keep checking back to that page for updates - I wonder how many have been for the last 30 months.

13. Improved Reports at Chitika

Chitika LogoChitika have made some real improvements over the last year or so - but one area I’d like to see them take to the next level is their reports. One aspect of them that I find frustrating is the channels are and a simple improvement would be to make the channel names in reports live links that take publishers to a report for the last month of that channel alone. Also useful would be the ability to group channels together (like AdSense offer). For example to be able to put the multiple channels that you might have on a single blog into one report so you can get a combined report for the full blog. At present if I want to know a blog’s performance with Chitika (I might have as many as 10 channels on a blog) I need to get the calculator out and look at each channel individually to get their totals.

14. Open up to Smaller Publishers - Chitika

Chitika LogoAnother common complaint that I hear from many publishers about Chitika is that smaller publishers are not eligible to join. While I understand that this ads significantly to the workload of an ad network - most (if not all) other ad networks that I’ve mentioned in this post don’t have a minimum traffic limit for publishers. This frustrates many bloggers and could actually hurt Chitika in the long term because publishers that grow might have been put off by their early rejection from Chitika.

15. Better Conversion at AdSense Referrals

Logo Main-1I’ve asked ProBlogger readers a number of times if they’ve had any success with AdSense Referrals - the response was an overwhelming ‘NO’. The exception is those who promote the ‘Google product’s - but outside that I’ve only found a few that have had any luck with it. I’ve actually chatted with a couple of people at AdSense about it and know that they have challenges that they are working on - but I’d really love to see the Referrals program taken up to the next level in the coming 12 months. PS: Jen shares her AdSense Referrals wishlist here with some more good suggestions.

As I mentioned above - I’m certain that there are many other improvements that all of these ad networks and affiliate programs could make. I’d invite you to add your own points to the wish list.

My hope with this post is that it doesn’t become a ‘bitching session’ but a more constructive conversation that might help the ad networks concerned to improve what they have on offer.

Should I bother getting my blog designed?

We all know design counts. Packaging makes a difference. So why are so many bloggers packaging truffles as though they were no-name baked beans?

I’m a huge promoter of blogging for business. But only under appropriate conditions. Blogs can have a huge impact on a brand That impact can be negative.

This is especially true of the hundreds of blog experts who are popping up all over the place. Don’t they realize how poorly their messages come across? How can you be an expert when you’re ignoring one of the prime rules: packaging sells. All the marketing and PR knowledge in the world isn’t going to help you if we pass over your content.

I agree wholeheartedly with his comments.

The funny thing is, some of the blogs I go back to reading time and time again have awful designs. In fact, so awful that I’m only still reading them thanks to the wonders of feed readers. I wonder how many others stop reading or are put off because of the poor design.

On the other hand, all the beautiful designs in the world aren’t enough to redeem your blog if you just don’t write anything of interest, or substance or originality ever. It’s about a combination of the two. Does your blog’s design reflect the type of image you’re wanting to portray in your content? Design matters and so does content.

designer blogs

Welcome to Designer Blogs, a place to be inspired by others' blogs, learn tips and find resources to improve your blog's design.
Warning Signs

Andy Budd has a great post up with warning signs when approached by clients wanting a website.

I’ll reorganise his comments and include additional ones from myself and his commentors:

* Unrealistic (short) timeline.
* Budget, potential client:
o has no idea about budget (either haven’t done their homework or aren’t serious).
o won’t disclose it (doesn’t trust you).
o wants it as cheap as possible or has a very low budget (doesn’t value their web presence, can be demanding).
o expects too much for their budget (difficult to manage expectations).
o limited budget but offers compensation (e.g. exposure, more work to come, contacts, % of the site’s profits).
o unwilling to pay a proportion of the costs upfront.
* Information, potential client:
o hasn’t provided enough initial information or is vague, e.g. hasn’t filled in design questionnaire fully (may not take project seriously or are window shopping).
o hasn’t told you how many other agencies they have contacted about the project (may be shopping for lowest quote).
o wants a design idea for the pitch.
* Communication:
o No central point of contact (can draw you into project management and company politics).

Survey: 46% of Bloggers are in it for Money

Jim Kukral is releasing information from the BlogKits Survey of bloggers that he did a while back over at ReveNews and finds that 36% of blogger maintain blogs primarily because they like to write.

There’s nothing too profound in that - but the other categories show the increasing focus upon money that bloggers have with 28% saying ‘It’s fun and I can maybe earn a buck while I’m at it ‘ and a further 18% saying ‘to make money’. So that’s a grand total of 46% of bloggers who blog with money on their minds.

Of course this survey was done at BlogKits which is a blog advertising program so we should expect that a certain percentage of respondents would be interested in blogging for money. So whilst we probably can’t say 48% of ALL bloggers do so with money as a motivation (although it makes a nice headline) I think the figures do represent an increased focus upon commercial blogging for many.

How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs

How do bloggers make money from blogs?

I’ve been reflecting this week about the amazing diversity of opportunities that are opening up for bloggers to make money from blogging.

I’ve long advised that bloggers seeking to make money from blogging spread their interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all their eggs in one basket.

The wonderful thing is that this is becoming easier and easier to do 2005 has seen many options opening up. I thought I’d take a look at some of the methods that bloggers are currently using to make money through blogs.

Income Streams for Bloggers - How to Make Money Blogging

Advertising Programs - Perhaps the most obvious changes in the past few months have been with the addition of a variety of viable advertising options for bloggers looking to make money from their blogs. The most common way bloggers seem to earn money online is via the contextual ad program from Google - Adsense. Another two popular ones with many is BlogAds. A more recent addition that many are using successfully are Chitika’s eMiniMalls and CrispAds, Text Link Ads.

Adgenta, Azoogle Ads, Intelli Txt, Peak Click, DoubleClickTribal Fusion, Adbrite, Clicksor, Industry Brains, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, AVN, Pheedo, Adknowledge, YesAdvertising, RevenuePilotTextAds, SearchFeed, Target Point, Bidvertiser, Fastclick Value Click and OneMonkey (to name just some of the options - I’m sure I’ve forgotten some) and there is a smorgasbord of options. Of course there is more to come with MSN Adcenter and YPN both in beta testing and with a variety of other advertising system currently in development (so I hear).

RSS Advertising - The past 12 months have seen some advances in RSS Advertising also. I’m yet to hear of any bloggers making big money blogging through it to this point - but as improvements are made to the ad programs exploring this I’m sure we’ll start to see examples of it being profitable.

Sponsorship - In addition to the array of advertising programs that are available to join there is a growing awareness in the business of the value and opportunity that exists for them to advertise directly on blogs. I’m hearing more and more examples of this and have been fortunately to have a couple of ad campaigns of my own in the past month - one with Adobe a couple of weeks ago and another just completed with Ricoh for a new digicam over at my Digital Camera Blog. These are not isolated cases - as I say I know of many blogs exploring sponsorship with advertisers at present and suspect we’ll see more of it in the year ahead. Sponsorship is also happening on a post by post basis with some bloggers being paid to write on certain topics by companies - either in one off or a regular fashion - and they are able to make big money from their blogs doing so.

Affiliate Programs - There are larger affiliate programs like Amazon, Linkshare, Clickbank and Commission Junction but also literally thousands of others from the large to the very small.

Digital Assets - Increasing numbers of bloggers have been developing other digital assets to support and add revenue streams to their blogs. By this I mean that I’m increasingly seeing e-books, courses and tele-seminars being run by bloggers. My recent foray into this with the first series of the six figure blogging course that Andy and I ran a few weeks ago and have just released the study version of. This type of activity will only increase in future - in fact this week I’ve seen numerous examples of bloggers running courses.

Blog Network Opportunities - with the rise in popularity of Blog Networks - bloggers are also being presented with more places to earn an income from their blogging - by writing for and with others. While it might be difficult to get a writing gig with one of the bigger networks - there are plenty who are always asking for new bloggers to join and who are willing to pay bloggers using a variety of payment models. While there are distinct advantages of blogging for yourself - blogging for an established network who will handle a lot of the set up/promotion/admin/SEO etc has it’s advantages also. More and more bloggers are combining writing for themselves on their own blogs with taking on blog network blogs as additional income streams.

Business Blog Writing Opportunities - as blogging has risen in it’s profile as a medium more and more businesses are starting blogs. Many of these companies have internal staff take on blogging duties - but an increasing number of them are hiring specialist bloggers to come on and run their blogs. I know of a number of bloggers who in the past month or two have been approached for such paid work. Check out Bloggers for Hire if you’re looking for this type of work.

Non Blogging Writing Opportunities - Also becoming more common are bloggers being hired to write in non blogging mediums. Manolo’s recent coup of a column in the Washington Post is just one example of this as bloggers are increasingly being approached to write for newspapers, magazines and other non blog websites. Along side this is the rise of bloggers as published book authors - this is to the extent that one blogger I spoke with this week complained to me that they were one of the few bloggers than they knew who didn’t have a book deal!

Donations - Tip Jars and donation buttons have been a part of blogging for years now but this last year saw a number of bloggers go full time after fundraising drives. Perhaps the most high profile of these was Jason Kottke of kottke.org who through the generosity of his readership was able to quit his job and become a full time blogger.

Flipping Blogs - Also more common in 2005 was the practice of ‘Blog Flipping’ - or selling of blogs. This has happened both on an individual blog level (I can think of about 20 blogs that sold this year) but also on a network level (the most obvious of these being the 8 figure sale of Weblogs Inc to AOL).

Merchandising - My recent attempt to sell ProBlogger.net T-shirts wasn’t a raging success, but it is an example of how an increasing number of bloggers are attempting to make a few extra dollars from their blogs by selling branded products through programs like Cafepress (although I have to say they’ve lost one of my own orders and are being quite unresponsive to my requests to follow it up at present). While I didn’t have a lot of success with merchandising - quite a few larger blogs are seeing significant sales - especially blogs with a cult following. I’m not at liberty to discuss details - but I know of one largish blog which will see sales over $20,000 in merchandise for the calendar year of 2005.

Consulting and Speaking - While it has been popular for established consultants to add blogs to their businesses we’re also starting to see bloggers with no consulting background able to make money by charging readers for their time in consulting scenarios BECAUSE of the profile that their blogs have built them. Blogging has the ability to establish people as experts on niche topics and we all know the value of being perceived as an expert. I spoke to one blogger last month who charges himself out at over $200 an hour for speaking and consulting work - his area of expertise was something that he knew little about 18 months ago - but through his blog he’s become a leader in his field and a minor celebrity in his industry.

As time rolls on there are more and more ways that bloggers make money from their blogs opening up. Feel free to suggest your own ideas and experiences in comments below.

Update: Looking for more information on how to make money blogging? Here’s a post I wrote talking about my own experience - particularly looking at the top ways that I make money from blogs.

When Good Blogs Go Bad

I was just reading through my RSS feed and I came across a blog that I used to read on a daily basis for it’s interesting and helpful content. The blogger had a good grasp of the topic and provided a wonderful blend of the latest news in their field as well as helpful ‘how to’ type articles blended in with some opinion pieces and the occasional rant.

Today as I saw their latest post and clicked through to read it on their blog I realized that two things had changed about the blog.

1. the posting frequency had dropped significantly from 2-3 posts per day to 1-2 posts per week.
2. the nature of the posts had changed from a blend of mainly ‘news’, ‘opinion’ and ‘tips’ posts to almost 100% posts about affiliate products.

As I reflected upon these changes I realized that as a reader of this blog I was now feeling two emotions quite deeply (one emotion for each of the above changes). In fact the feelings I had surprised me as to their depth.

The first emotion, regarding the change in posting frequency, was disappointment. I used to genuinely enjoy reading the blog and looked forward to hearing the latest thoughts of the blogger. Losing that daily contact with someone else interested in what I was into was sad. I hadn’t realized just how much I’d come to appreciate what they had to say until it was gone.

The second emotion, connected to the change in the nature of posts, was anger. I’d not really noticed the change to posts that were almost 100% linking to affiliate programs but as I looked back over the last couple of months of sporadic posts I realized that the change had definitely taken place. Previously they had written the occasional post with affiliate links in it but they were sporadic and always relevant to the topic. I’d even bought products that they’d recommended in the past because I respected their opinion.

I was surprised by my anger towards this blog. I felt that I’d almost been manipulated or that something underhanded had happened without me actually realizing it. Here was a blogger who had once been known as a thought leader and as someone who had built a reputation by providing useful content who had seemingly sold out and cashed in on his influence.

Perhaps my emotions were overreactions but it reinforced a couple of points to me:

* Blog Readers (like me) buy into the blogs that they read to a point where they almost feel some ownership of the blog. As a result when you make changes (announced or unannounced) people can react very strongly.
* Blogs need to offer something of value to their readers. A blog that simply produces posts that are an obvious grab for cash will end up disillusioning their readers - no matter how much trust or respect the blogger has previously established.

I realize that the blogger concerned probably has legitimate reasons for changing their blogging frequency. Perhaps they got sick, perhaps they changed jobs or perhaps they just got bored with the topic - but as I looked back over the last couple of months I saw no explanation of the change. Perhaps if they’d communicated some reasons I’d have reacted differently - but in the end my assumption was that the blogger just didn’t care about the topic and/or got greedy.

My reaction was to unsubscribe.

Post Frequency - How Many Blog Posts are Too Many?

There’s been a lot of discussion about the results - particularly the almost contrasting most common reasons:

* Too many posts
* Infrequent Posting

The above responses are fairly general and unquantifiable - so two further logical followup questions come to mind:

* how many posts per day are too many?
* how many posts per day are too few?

What is the range of daily posts that you personally prefer from a blog? What would the tipping point be for you at either end for you to unsubscribe?

In some ways this is a difficult question to answer as I suspect it’ll vary form blog to blog and what type of content that they’re producing (ie I suspect blogs with shorter posts would get away with more posts per day).

I’ll also make two more comment on the results of the previous post:

1. These results were not my opinions but those expressed by readership of this blog - a blog for bloggers. I suspect that this skews the results somewhat (although perhaps they give some hints as to what our readers also think).
2. If you look at a lot top blogs going around, they do break many of the reasons that were given for people unsubscribing. This particularly is so for ‘too many posts’. For example - if you look at Technorati’s top 100 list you’ll find that the top 10 post an average of 20+ times per day (I’m taking those averages on what they’ve done so far today - so it’s probably higher). So obviously there’s some disconnect between the reasons that ProBlogger give as a reason to unsubscribe and what’s going on in the blogosphere.

But enough of my thoughts - what’s an acceptable daily post frequency for you from a blog?

34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog

I’ve attempted to categorize them below. Obviously with 103 opinions (and most people giving multiple reasons all in their own words) I’ve had to make some judgement calls in classifying comments left. Some of the categories below have overlap but I think you’ll get a pretty good picture of what motivates people to unsubscribe from RSS feeds.

34 Reasons Why People Unsubscribe from RSS feeds:

* Too many posts (the post levels are too overwhelming) - 37
* Infrequent Posting (or the blog is effectively dead) - 29
* Partial Excerpts Feeds - 25
* Blog Changes Focus (too much off topic posting) - 23
* Too many posts that I see elsewhere (Redundant, Repeated or Recycled News) - 19
* Uninteresting Content - 16
* Irrelevant Content - 13
* The Blogger’s Ego - Too much self promotion - 11
* Low Quality Content - 11
* Too many posts that are too long - 10
* Negative blogging - 7
* Feed Errors - Especially when a Feed Reloads the latest 10-20 posts every time - 7
* Offensive Content/Personal attacks/Discrimination - 6
* ‘infomercials’ (too much selling) - 6
* Blog Titles that Don’t Tell what the post is about - 5
* No or Poor Formatting in posts - 5
* My own interests as a reader change - 5
* No Longer Useful or Valuable - 4
* Too many links in the text and not enough content - 4
* Advertising - 3
* Inconsistent writing (style and focus) - 2
* Too Many Grammatical Errors - 2
* Found other feeds that are better - 2
* Too Narrow a focus - 1
* Too much repetition in topic - 1
* Pushiness of Blogger - 1
* Blogger Doesn’t Respond to Comments - 1
* No Images in the feed - 1
* Lack of Confidence or Opinion - 1
* Lack of a sense of who the blogger is - 1
* Too much clutter/extras at the end of posts - 1
* Talking Down to Readers - 1
* Too many quotes - 1
* Change of Primary blogger - 1

A few brief comments (I wouldn’t want to have a long post now….):

The Frequency of Posting is obviously a big factor with 35% of respondents saying that too many posts was reason for unsubscribing and 28% saying that infrequent posts was reason to delete a feed from their reader. Interestingly, the ‘infrequent posting’ vote was perhaps a little less than last time I asked a group of bloggers this question. I suspect that with advancements in Feed Readers that inactive feeds don’t bother as many people as they did previously (ie Google Reader has a mode where you simply don’t see a feed unless it’s updated).

The Partial Feeds Vote got off to a slow start but gained momentum as the comment thread grew. 24% of respondents said they unsubscribe from feeds that are partial or just title feeds.

Off Topic Posting and blogs changing direction/focus is an obvious annoyance to many (this one surprised me slightly) with 22% of people giving it as a reason.

Content - I found it interesting that the quality, relevance and nature of content came down the list. Things like the form and frequency of the feed dominated the discussion while the actual content itself came in as secondary importance. Perhaps this was skewed slightly by the way I asked the question and by the first responses (I suspect that some people were swayed by the issues that others already raised).

19 (More) Strategies for Finding Readers

Yaro has already kicked us off on this topic of how to find readers for a new blog but I thought I’d pull together a few ideas on the topic also (with a little overlap with Yaro’s ideas). These points come from a variety of older posts I’ve written on the topic - sort of a ‘best of’ kind of thing. I’ve updated some, others are straight extracts from things I’d said before and a few are new:

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. Content Content Content - I’ve said this over and over again so will keep it brief but unless you have ‘good’ content you’re unlike to build a readership. What is good content - start by thinking about it in terms of usefulness and uniqueness and I think you’ll be on the right track. Other words that come to mind when it comes to good content might be ‘fresh’, ‘variety’, ‘up to date’ and ‘well written’.

3. Link to others - Perhaps one of the central features of blogging is that they are linked. The intricate web of links and relationships was one of the first things that attracted me to blogging and it’s part of the reason it’s got real viral properties that allow ideas to spread so quickly. Participate in the linking to other blogs and you’ll find that many benefits come. For a start you’ll be participating in the conversation, you’ll be getting the attention of others and your readers will appreciate that you’re interested in helping them find the best content out there.

Of course you don’t want to be linking randomly to everyone and anyone - be selective and link to quality content that is relevant to your niche topic. As you engage in linking you’ll find that others will link back (assuming you have something worthwhile to say yourself) and you’ll find the traffic begins to flow - both from their sites and as a result of your increased search engine ranking.

4. Get Links from other Bloggers - I can hear the comments already - ‘Easier said than done Darren!’ This is true - but if you’re smart, genuine, helpful and polite there are ways of increasing the chances of getting links from others.

5. Participate in other people’s conversations - I suspect that a number of my first regular blog 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 spamming my blog I won’t visit them and delete the comment. Make genuine comments on posts that connect with you. You might make a good friend in the process and in the long run will find the flow on effect of this is more interest in you and your own blog.

6. Interact with Readers - When a reader reaches out to you with a comment, email or link from their blog - interact with them. For starters it’s good manners and secondly it’s a good way to increase the chances that they’ll come back again. I get a lot of people telling me that they don’t have enough readers to their blog - while I can related to this frustration I generally encourage them to see what they’ve got as a good starting place. Interact with those who do come to your blog and make it the best experience you can for them and you’ll find that they spread the word for you.

7. 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. This works a lot better on some blogs than others (some topics seem to attract more RSS subscribers than others do). Another side benefit of frequent posting is that search engines like it and many believe that the more you post the more often SE’s will send their spiders out to index your blog. Similarly - the more you post the more you’ll get indexed by blog engines like technorati (and numerous others). Of course I’m not encouraging massive amounts of meaningless content - keep it of a high quality.

8. Add a signature to your outgoing email - This is an oldie but a goodie. Many bloggers do this. Simply add the domain name to your outgoing email. Most email programs will allow you to do this automatically via a signature option. However be careful with automatic signatures if you don’t want your blog to be read by everyone that you email.

9. Promote your RSS Feed - Most blog platforms come with a RSS feeds built in but there are ways of increasing your subscriber list. The most obvious of these is to put it in the sight of your readers by putting your RSS button in a more prominent position. There are a variety of different buttons available that you can make available to readers to help them to subscribe to your blog via their news aggregators with one click that might also be worth investigating. Also, if your topic is not one which many readers seem to use RSS in, you might need to do some education on the topic of RSS feeds. Write a post on how to follow your blog via RSS and you might find more do.

10. List your site on Portals, Blog Indexes, Directories and Search Engines - There are MANY places that you can list your blog to help it get more attention. In fact there are too many and you could probably spend all your time submitting your blog to them all. I’d recommend that you don’t become obsessed by this and work on other factors in this list first and then in your spare time add your blog to some of these types of things as you go. Making sure you get listed on some of the bigger sites like Technorati should probably be a priority (here’s how for Technorati) - but don’t make this the first thing you do. In terms of getting into search engines - you can submit yourself (most have ways of doing this) but most people believe that the best and quickest way to get indexed these days is to get a link from another site that is already indexed.

11. Search Engine Optimization - While some bloggers don’t think much of SEO I think it is well worth knowing some basic SEO principles and keeping them in the back of your mind as you blog. After all SE’s are the place that most people go to when they are searching for information on a topic. Don’t become obsessed by SEO, but don’t ignore it either.

12. Participate in others Blogger’s 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. Some of the more popular things to get involved with these days are Blog Carnivals.

13. Participate 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 blogs. 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. Don’t spam these forums - but be a genuine contributer that adds useful comments and you’ll find people are drawn to your other projects.

14. Explore other formats of communication - Another of the more effective things that I’ve done over the past year in my blogging is worth hard on email newsletters for a few of my blogs. I don’t do it with all of them (mainly due to the time it takes) but here at ProBlogger I’ve grown a list of over 1600 email subscribers who I send weekly information to. These newsletters both are about keeping people in touch with what happened on the blog each week as well as giving extra tips and information to build a sense of community and ownership of the site. Other bloggers use forums similarly.

15. Offline Techniques - Blog Promotion need not only happen online. Consider how you might promote it offline and you could just bring in some new readers also. Such techniques can include putting your URL on business cards, letterhead, using press releases and other assorted methods. Read more on this here.

16. Make it viral - One of the things about infectious diseases that makes them so deadly is that they are very easy to pass on from one person to another. There are a number of things you might want to consider doing to help with this. For instance a lot of bloggers these days are adding links on their posts that allow readers to bookmark the post in social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and digg. Other bloggers have features that allow bloggers to ‘email a friend’ about a particular post. Others (like ProBlogger) allow readers to subscribe to comment threads via email. All of these types of plugins allow your readers to do the work for you in either spreading the word about your site or making it more sticky. Speaking of social bookmarking - there are also ways of writing content that tend to be picked up more in this scene that you might like to explore if that’s a source of traffic that you’re interested in.

17. Advertise - I’ve written a lot over the past year about running advertising on blogs as a form of income - but on the flip side of many advertising platforms that you can run as a publisher are the opportunities to actually advertise your blog in the attempt to find new readers. In the last few months I’ve dabbled a little in this side of things, mainly using AdWords (the advertiser side of AdSense) but also advertising on a few sites using BlogAds. I’ve actually been learning about AdWords using Perry Marshall’s e-book (aff) on the topic and am finding it quite helpful if you’re looking to a good introduction to using it (he has a free 5 day taster too). Of course you’ll need to weigh up the cost of advertising vs the benefits that you think it’ll bring - but I know of quite a few bloggers who run an AdWords campaign in the first month of a new blog to give it a kick start and swear by the method.

18. Link baiting - This is one of the terms that has become quite common among bloggers over the last year. In essence ‘link bait’ is some sort of comment that will attract links to it and in many ways is no different than paragraph 2 above - write good content and people will link up. Of course there are many tactics that many bloggers use to link bait - I’ve explored a few of these here.

19. 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 and it seems everyone’s experience of growing a blog (or not growing one) is different.

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.

My suspicion is that bloggers who obviously enjoy the blogging process and who are themselves are the type of bloggers that people are drawn to. Bloggers that are uptight and who complain constantly about how their blog isn’t achieving what they want it to achieve probably do quite the opposite and turn people away. Traffic is a good thing for a blog but it’s not the ultimate measure of a good blog in my books. Write it for yourself and have some fun and a lot of the rest will end up looking after itself.

How To Market Your Blog in 2007

It breaks my heart to see blogs with great content languish in utter anonymity, devoid of comments, saddled with a seven-figure alexa traffic ranking, and rotting in pagerank purgatory.

Well, no more, I say!

For those bloggers out there who have decided to start their blogs, or launch their blogging careers, in 2007 I salute you — and present to you with 41 ways to kickstart your marketing efforts. Kick back, grab a cold one, and check it out. And if, in a year’s time, you’ve cracked the Technorati 1000, don’t forget where it all began! :)

Get Your Own House In Order

1. Write well, write consistently, don’t give up: All the marketing in the world won’t help you if you have a lame-duck blog. In your search for more traffic, more promotion, and more publicity, never forget it starts with great content — and needs to continue with great content on a regular schedule. There’s no question that maintaining quality and regularity is difficult while you’re starting out, particularly if you’re time strapped … but hang in there, because if you sacrifice this, all of your marketing efforts will be for naught.
2. Become an expert on something: Develop a keen interest, continue to read and write intelligently, and after a while, your experience will grant you this informal title; bloggers will seek you out, your reknown will grow, and it will be easier to be noticed, linked to, and get cross promoted (see below)
3. Design is more important than you think: Your mother’s right — first impressions count, and they can count for cash money. If you’re serious about blogging, don’t stick with a n unaltered top10 Wordpress theme no matter how cool you think it is. You want to separate and elevate yourself from the blogging masses, and its impossible to do if you look exactly the same as them. Easy to say, hard to do, but absolutely necessary if you don’t have the money to pay for a private ground-up theme: learn CSS and a photoeditor of choice, and learn to tweak your theme yourself, so that your blog looks professional, stands out, and screams “yes, I am worthy of your attention!”.
4. Get Your SEO On: An entire post in and of itself — get your own domain name, host your own blogging software, enable permalinks, create keyword rich headlines, create unique title tags, enable trackback and ping functionality, ensure your blog pings pinging-services.
5. Publish full feeds: A controversial topic. Publishing full feeds puts you at the mercy for content scrapers who will scrape your RSS feeds and repost your content, create traffic, and reap adsense bucks. On the other hand, some data suggests that it can also increase your traffic, and a few pundits swear by it. Feed subscriptions are critical; get your feeds burned through Feedburner so you can track how many are subscribing. People who subscribe to feeds rarely unsubscribe, and every single feed subscriber is a potential source of traffic to your blog.
6. Do interviews with other bloggers: Score interviews with newsworthy individuals (who may be linked to newsworthy content), to create link worthy content, but more importantly, create news on THEIR blog to get back to YOUR blog.
7. Break important stories: See the post on how to find news. Long story short: if you have an interest in an area, it is still possible to do this as long as you’re willing to put in the time and energy to find stuff. Benefit: being picked up by A-list blogs, mainstream news outlets and more.
8. Have a contest: Or, have regular contests, which encourage participation and buzz in your corner of the blogosphere.
9. Publish original research: If you’ve got the time, start with a question, try and figure it out with the data available, and “publish it”. For fun, I asked myself “How many of the Top 30 Diggers actually blog?” And I just went through their profiles and created a table of how many blogged. I then talked about what it meant, and tried to answer the question “why?” [answer: not many do blog, its because being a top 30 digger requires a huge time investment]
10. Put out Press Releases: Particularly if you have something new, unique, or particularly important to say (such as an important story, or research)
11. Work your long tail: A tip based on your SEO efforts; there is a free service called Hit Tail that will analyze the search terms leading to your blog traffic, and yank out high quality key words you should be focusing on that you might not immediately think of. This can help you focus your future posts as you are already getting traffic for those key words.
12. Answer your comments, in your comments, and off blog: Of course you have enabled comments on every post, right? So, when you do get comments, answer as many as humanly possible, and if its an interesting enough issue or question, contact the poster directly for a friendly follow up. Treat every potential poster as a potential subscriber to your feed, and a future friend and contact.
13. Spend time to create links and trackbacks: In every post spend as much time as you can to create outbound links to relevant and high linking blogs; many blogs automatically have trackbacks enabled, so in their comments section they will have a link back to your blog. If its a highly trafficked and ranked blog, this can mean traffic BACK to your blog, and it can draw notice from the author themselves — because, let’s face it, we’re all vain in a fashion, even A-listers, and we’re all interested in who is linking to us.
14. Get Your MyBlogLog widget and work it, work it, work it (in a nice way): MyBlogLog — know it, love it, and embrace it. Since its been acquired by Yahoo, it has the potential to explode all over the blogosphere. The two sentence run down is that it offers a free widget that enables you to build a free community around your blog, and to easily see which other bloggers have been to your blog. You can “add” friends, and generate traffic, but more importantly, your own network of like-minded blogging colleagues in a way that is relatively easy and efficient. Just go easy on the unsolicited messages. I wrote a complete review over here.

Getting the Word Out

1. Join a blog carnival: Where every blogger who joins one blogs about a topic, then each blog gets promoted. Here’s an index of blog carnivals to get you started.
2. Join blog network: Between 9rules, b5media, and others, there is networking potential, income potential, and a link-a-palooza waiting for you (through the linkroll as every member may have to link to every other member) if you’re able to get into one. Goes back to tip #1 — don’t forget to keep up your blog.
3. Participate in forums: Forums with tons of pages, huge lists of members, and a responsive community are an easy way to not only connect with other individuals, but an opportunity to tastefully demonstrate your expertise and a link back to your blog
4. Participate on larger blogs in comments: Like number three, except that by participating directly in another blogger’s comments you a) get their recognition and b) get the recognition of the blogging community. Also, here’s a tip: try and be one of the first few commenters on heavily trafficked sites to get recognized — most people won’t read past the first 10-20 comments. Here’s another tip for traffic: IF (and ONLY IF) you have posted something relevant that is pursuant to the ongoing conversation and IF the blog has a commenting policy that will allow you to do so, post a link back to a post on your own site (”hey guys, I wrote about how we can solve this problem! — check out the link over here, but let me summarize it for you … “). Sometimes you’ll be surprised at how much traffic comes back.
5. Join Blogburst: Blogburst is a type of “blog network”, which syndicates content across American newspaper’s websites, such as USA Today and Reuters. That’s right, you could get a post syndicated on Reuters. Trust me — it can happen . Highly ranked inbound links + traffic + bragging rights to your mom that your post got featured in a newspaper. Not too shabby. Also on the upside, they have a new revenue sharing scheme. The bad: read their terms of service carefully — you give up certain rights when they republish your content, and the revenue sharing works on the top100 publishers only.
6. Participate in Darren’s contests: He has enough of them, and often publishes links to all of the participants.
7. Submit to blog directories: So people can find your blog.
8. Submit to Google sitemaps: Really part of “get your house in order”, but when you do, Google will be able to find you so much easier; translation — more Google juice, more traffic, higher rankings faster. Tip: for Wordpress fans, this plugin is particularly useful.
9. Submit to article directories: You might want to submit your favourite posts to article directories, where they will enable you to have a biobox / blurb with a link back to your own blog. Again, demonstrating your expertise, and moreover, the article might get picked up in a ezine or another blog, leading to more traffic and more inbound links.
10. Get interviewed: If you’ve demonstrated your expertise, or have done something newsworthy, or reported on something newsworthy, try and get interviewed. As long as its done in a fair way (doesn’t need to be a completely puffpiece) by a site or blogger with some reknown, its more traffic for you.
11. Get listed on a news aggregator, or blog aggregator: Like Techmeme for technews, or Tailrank for blogging news. Hint: some news aggregators will actually accept submissions if you ask them nicely; double hint: try and get listed by linking to a top story within your first 100 words.
12. Create free stuff for yourself and give it away: Like ebooks, digests of your favourite posts, pdfs, and so on. Make sure to include a link back in the document, back to your site.
13. Create free stuff for other people: the same, let them distribute it, get a link back.
14. Pay for pub: Efficient means of using your cash is to buy targeted Adwords, or keywords in Yahoo’s advertising network; you could get other bloggers to write about you using PayPerPost or ReviewMe; or you purchase text link ads through Text-Link-Ads.com

Connect, Connect, Connect

1. Make friends with other bloggers: Ridiculously simple, but its true. Benefits of “networking” (making friends) include more mentions on other blogs, more requests for interviews, more partnerships in future deals, more “adds” into their MyBlogLog network, more “ads” into someone else’s blogroll (and therefore links back to your blog) — it goes on and on.
2. Guest blog: Offer to do it for free, and you’ll be able to demonstrate what you know to an entirely new audience. Gives you great credibility, and of course, most will allow a courtesy link back to your own blog. A free foot-in-the-door to some communities as well.
3. Volunteer, intern, scut-monkey your way into a blogger’s graces: Maintaining a highly trafficked site is a lot of work. Offer to volunteer your time with menial behind the scenes stuff (moderating posts, acting as a bird dog for news) for free and with a smile, and you’ll get a foot-in-the-door with the blogger, their network, and future opportunities.
4. Get hired: You never know which blog organizations are looking to hire new bloggers; again, an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge, meet new bloggers, and open tons of professional “doors” … because now that you’re getting paid? You’re a “pro-blogger”, mate!
5. Network in person: Find other local bloggers using services like Meetup, and see if they’re literally getting together to commiserate about blogging or their topic of blogging. If you’ve got the time, there’s nothing that makes an impression as actually meeting someone in person. Tip: bring a business card; Another tip: if you don’t have any, make some; yet another tip: if important people are going to be there, really — try and go. Remember, you didn’t know me before Problogger, but I met Darren in person at a function in Toronto that played a part in me writing this. Think about that.
6. Join virtual groups: Through Yahoo Groups, Usenet, and more; then bring the conversation off the group with emails and instant messages. Be friendly, be helpful, and it will pay dividends.
7. Cross promote: Once you’ve gotten to know people, you can kindly remind them to promote posts that you’re particularly proud of; or, vote for your submissions on Digg or your social bookmarking site of choice. Reciprocate.

Make Social Media Work For You

1. Facebook: Its a social network that has opened its doors behind its college beginnings. Anyone can sign up. Start connecting with old friends and colleagues, like any other social network. But, unlike other social networks (as far as I know), you can import your own blog’s RSS feed, so that your connections can see what you’re blogging. Who knows where that might lead? Update: Myspace also allows this function, i believe.
2. Join Helium: Helium is a new site that is actively looking people to head new categories of content. Think a paid “about.com” — for its authors. If you have a particular interest that isn’t yet served on Helium you might want to check it out; besides giving you cash for content, it’ll also demonstrate your authority in a topic, and you’ll be able to leverage Helium’s own traffic for your own blog through a linkback on your profile.
3. Yahoo Answers! A similar idea; but this time, you’re answering questions that people are posting. Yahoo! is quite careful about spam, however, and including a “signature” is a dicey proposition at times. There is a fairly sophisticated registry and voting system that tries to prevent “gaming”, but given how much traffic yahoo! answers gets, AND its inclusion as a separate result area in Yahoo SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) it might be something worth looking into.
4. Create a Squidoo Page Lens: On a given related topic to your blog; participate in the Squidoo community; Squidoo has a ton of traffic, and you could funnel traffic and tastefully include links to other relevant sites and perhaps your own blog.
5. Use MySpace Marketing: Far beyond the confines of this post, but in a similar fashion to Squidoo, the idea is to capitalize on the HUGE amount of traffic MySpace gets (some interesting thoughts over here). Create a profile, create relevant content and links back. Start adding friends. Comment on your friends space. Join groups. Start enjoying the trickle back traffic.
6. Get Dugg / Netscaped / Reddited / Stumbled upon: Whole articles (and sites) are written about the intricacies of socially bookmarking. Here’s a tip: focus on creating great content, make friends on these sites if they allow you to, and submit your stories judiciously. ‘Nuff said (for now).

What is a Blog?

So what is a Blog anyway? This is a question I am asked every week via emails, conversation and Instant Messaging chats. If you’re reading this you may well be asking the same question.

There are a number of ways I could answer this question ranging from the broad to the highly technical.

Before I share my answer to the ‘what is a blog’ question - here are a few definitions from other much wiser people to get us started:

‘A weblog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser.’ Source

‘A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.’ Source

‘From “Web log.” A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.”‘ Source

‘A weblog is kind of a continual tour, with a human guide who you get to know. There are many guides to choose from, each develops an audience, and there’s also comraderie and politics between the people who run weblogs, they point to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc.’ Source

‘A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.” Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly.’ Source

‘A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links (to other web pages and to video, audio and other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus on a particular “area of interest”, such as Washington, D.C.’s political goings-on. Some blogs discuss personal experiences.’ Source.

So What is a Blog???

Confused yet? Don’t be - its really quite simple. To put it as simply as possible - a blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent ‘post’ (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom.

Have a look at the main page of my blog at here for an example. for a different example you might like to look at this one (another of mine).

Ok - now you are a seasoned blog reader - you’ve seen two already at least.

Blogs are usually (but not always) written by one person and are updated pretty regularly. Blogs are often (but not always) written on a particular topic - there are blogs on virtually any topic you can think of. From photography, to spirituality, to recipes, to personal diaries to hobbies - blogging has as many applications and varieties as you can imagine. Whole blog communities have sprung up around some of these topics putting people into contact with each other in relationships where they can learn, share ideas, make friends with and even do business with people with similar interests from around the world.

Blogs usually have a few features that are useful to know about if you want to get the most out of them as a reader. Lets examine a couple briefly.

Archives - You might look at the front page of a blog and think that there is not much to them. A few recent entries, some links to other sites and not much else. However its worth knowing that there is a lot more going on under the surface that might initially meet the eye. For example in addition to the main page of this blog - at the time of writing this post there are over 520 other pages or posts below the surface that I’ve written over the past few months.

When I write a post like this one it goes to the top of the front page. As it gets older and as I add more current posts it begins its journey down the page until it disappears from it. This is not the end of its life however, because it goes into the ‘Archives’ of my blog. It sounds like a dusty dark place but its really just like a filing cabinet that is easily accessible in a couple of ways. You can read my ‘archives’ simply by looking on the ’sidebar’ (over on the left of this blog) at the ‘archives’ or ‘categories’ section. There you will see links to all my old posts which you can access either by category. You’ll see a category for ‘Advertising’ - click that link and you’ll see all my old posts on the topic of Advertising with the most recent at the top and the oldest at the bottom.

Comments - Not all blogs use comments - but most do. This blog is not a monologue but a conversation. You can give me feedback on almost everything I write simply by clicking the ‘comments’ link at the bottom of each one of my posts. This will take you to a little form where you leave your name, email and a link to your own blog if you have one as well as your feedback, comment, critique, question, essay on why you love my blog, promise of money…. etc). Try it now. Scroll to the bottom of this page, click ‘comments’ and fill in the blanks with a little introduction to yourself.

A great way to learn about blogs is to read a few. Leave some comments, ask questions and bookmark your favourites. An even better way to learn about blogs is to start your own. Ok - you might be laughing at me now - you think you are not web savy enough to have your own site? You wouldn’t know where to start? You don’t know how?
My Secret

Let me share a secret with you - three years ago I knew nothing about blogs, I had never used the internet for anything more than email, surfing and chatting to friends and I could only barely do any of that! But one day I discovered a blog and after surfing from one to another (blogs tend to link up to other blogs a lot) for a few hours I was hooked and wanted to start my own. I found that there are free blog services that almost anyone could set up in a matter of minutes. Really it is that simple. Literally millions of people blog from around the world. Its not just something for young people, or geeks, or cool folk, or Westerners, or even for people with their own computers - instead its something virtually anyone with access to a computer and the internet once or twice a week can start up.

Are you still confused? Would you like more information? Below are a few helpful articles on the topic - there are many more on the web - just do a search on your favourite search engine. Otherwise shoot me an email using my ‘contact’ button with your question and I’ll do my best to get back to you.

* Rebecca Blood has written a helpful history of blogging for those who are interested in learning more about the blogging evolution over the past few years.
* Harvard Law has a helpful article titled What makes a Weblog a Weblog
* Trudy Schuett writes a good article title What is a blog and why do we need one?
* WordPress: Introduction to Blogging

Online money making systems using your computer at home

Curious to know about what is under web pages, how to make money online ?
Systems like ClickBank, AdSense and other pay per click can help you make money on the internet. It doesn't matter if you already have a few ideas or starting from scratch. You will learn on this site different ways of making money at home, how advertising works, finding the right keywords, optimizing your web pages, how to improve your Page Rank (PR), how to drive traffic to your site, what are the tools available on the web, Systems like Adsense and AdWords, what ClickBank has to offer and how to start creating a successful website that will help you earn cash and make money online. Do like thousands of people and turn your computer to a money making machine. Now as never been a better time to start an internet business and find free money on the web.

Millions of people are surfing the net every day looking for all kinds of services, videos, business opportunities, music, infos like news, sports stats, celebrities profiles, photos and lot more. There is millions of things that people are looking for on the internet. Anything that you can come up with will attract a type of croud. So, that said, one of the first thing to consider when starting an online business, especially if you want to use systems like AdSense and attract lots of people, is that anyone who is successful on the web and make money online would strongly suggest that you start with something that you like, that you know and even if you know it well, that is easy for you to keep up-to-date with that subject, research about it simply because you like that subject. So your website comes as a whole and it will be way much easier for you to come up with good news and good content because you will enjoy doing it.

One of the misconception of making money online business is that, like all the get rich quick - fast and easy systems, it is really not that easy and you will have to put some time into it, you will have to work hard on it to achieve your goals and to keep up with the rest of the WWW, you will need to do a lot of research and look what others are doing if it's not just to make sure that you are not delivering too old informations that your crowd already knows.

The few following paragraphs are not intended to discourage you but to give you a better understanding of what it is really about and what are the real facts that owners of these systems would never dare to mention. If you haven't noticed yet, I'm not here to sell you anything, the money I make, I make it with people like you coming to my site and clicking on the ads on top and left of my pages, so I am not pitching you and this is why I don't mind sharing my knowledge with you.

Most of the get rich quick systems and make money online quick do not work. They promise you incredible amounts of money within a few days doing nothing or very not much. These systems have been around for a while now, most of them uses the same old ideas but revamped, repackaged and sold by a different guy. There is an old saying in french that says: that guy could sell a freezer to an eskimo. Which simply means that the guy is really good at selling and the key to good sells is the sell pitch.

Anyone on this planet needs money, so that is a good start; add some rich and famous theme pictures, big bold sentences like free money on the internet or free online money making opportunity, a lot of colors and flashing light, and you've just created a copy of Las Vegas and a silly dream of making huge money. The reality is that you were just attracted by the flashing lights and you didn't even notice that you were already thinking of getting your credit card and process. All that started from the simple sell pitch that you will be making huge amount of money within days, with no effort, with no extra money at the same time you were blinded by those lights and fake success stories. The thing is, in most of these systems, the money is good but unfortunetly not for you but for the one who is selling you these books, videos and charts.

I emphasized in an upper paragraph that most get rich quick systems don't work, so some, a few, have some potential and can show you the way to make money online. Always keep in mind that results will vary from person to person and it is a really big sentence that you should keep in mind. It is not because one person was way over successful doing something that you will automatically replicate that success. There are factors to consider on these unique success stories like: people that helped that person, time spent, lots and lots of luck, money invested to help, advertising, etc. Here is a funny comparison you might say but it fits perfect; a guy bought a lottery ticket yesterday and won the 21 million jackpot, now, what are your chances, if you go buy a ticket, to do the same? The facts are that it can happen, you can win too, but it is almost impossible. So these types of success stories about get rich quick systems are sell's pitch and should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Anyways you are here for a reason, you clicked this site because you had that in mind and are willing to give it a try and start your online small business. Hopefully this site will help you in your success to financial freedom. And I'll do my best to give you the real facts and tools for you to achieve your goal and make money online.

Using affiliate programs like AdSense is one of, if not the best, ways to make money online. You make money 24/7 at home, while in front of your computer, away from your computer, sleeping, on vacation, etc. Sounds great!?
The facts are that it is exactly like that! It's almost hard to believe and it sounds even a bit phony and too good to be true. But trust me on this one it is like that. But, what you don't know and the ones selling you E-books and subsciptions definitely don't want you to know, is that it needs a setup before the system runs on its own.
You just don't wake up one morning and there is a E-business or Website there with your name on and with thousands of visitors coming through every day. The process of creating and running a successful money making Website is very hard and time consuming. This is why you should do something that relates to you, that way you will enjoy and have fun in the process. But if you take your time and read anything that can help, you will be waking up one day with a nice money making Website.

Time is very important in the process because lots of things on the to do list to achieve a successful Website will take time on its own and there is nothing you can do about it. There are ways to speed up some of the things, but they will still take time on there own to show significant progress. One of the major time consuming process is the traffic that will eventually be driven to your Website. Before people can come to your Website a few things need to be done and the results will eventually lead to an increase of traffic to your Website. Just getting listed in search engines takes time, but a Website at page 243 of the search results has basically no chances at all of getting visitors. So, increasing your search engine page rank will take time on its own. All these can be implemented to speed the things up, but it does not happen overnight.

So before going too excited, quiting your job and throwing your hard earned money away, keep in mind that it is possible but it is hard, it takes time and you will need to learn a lot of things, software, host interface, search engine optimization and anything you can learn that surrounds that subject.

When you get good at everything related to e-business and Web site design and most importantly that your Web site is generating nice income that can provide you with a decent living, then you can start thinking of leaving your in real life job.

You gotto read this!!!!

You dream of working online from the comfort of your home; at your own time. But a search for work opportunities reveals hard-to-believe offers like 'Turn your Home Computer into a Cash Machine!' or 'Guaranteed Income - You have nothing to lose!'
They come to your inbox, or as pop-up and banner ads on Web sites and paint a marvelous picture of a 'proven internet business plan' that can make you rich without any experience or skills.
What you often end up doing is paying for an e-book with 'foolproof online work ideas' which range from creating a site to hosting zillions of banners, multilevel marketing schemes and online 'order processing' to sending emails using a database you have to purchase.
But not everything online is a scam: There are feasible options for making some money online. And we're not talking about earning $0.05 dollars to read ads or email!
Knowledge or information based services that require you to use your experience or skills are a good way to make money. Some sites hire your services for their clients; others put you in touch with people who need your services.

Rummaging the Web
Online research is emerging as a good opportunity. If you've used search engines to look for specific information, you'd know how tiresome it is to sift through the junk before you arrive at what you want.
Services like Google Answers save surfers the hassle of searching themselves. Surfers post queries on computing, shopping, entertainment or food, and Google's team of online researchers get cracking on the information requested. You can set the price for your answer on the basis of the work involved. Three-fourths of the price goes to the researchers. Responses are rated by the people who request the information, while registered users offer comments.
Companies like ClicknWork and AskDownUnder hire online researchers to offer Web search and information services to their clients.
"There's a growing awareness that the Web is not that easy to navigate and most business executives have other things to do with their time," says Roger Sharpe of ClicknWork, whose team of Web researchers, editors and information specialists located worldwide provide research and writing services to such businesses.
He adds: "We have requirements for different skills like specialist knowledge, business writing etc. But most of our work is based on sourcing quality answers to business questions."
AskDownUnder offers cheaper Web search services for companies in developed countries as they have online researchers from developing counties like India where the cost of living is lower.
Dr Steven Tsitas, managing director, who posted ads for researchers at Naukri.com, says that over 1,600 people in India have signed up.
"There's no fee to join. Anyone can sign up - irrespective of age, sex, nationality or country of residence," says Tsitas. "You have to be intelligent, excellent at researching information online and have an ability to think laterally and find results from imperfect information. Since many things people want are not on the Internet, you have to think of what else would be relevant and draw from life experience and general knowledge to close in on the answer."
Unlike AskDownUnder, ClicknWork requires researchers to take an online test to qualify as part of the team. There's a pre-test and a full test depending on your profile - whether you're an expert Web guide, searcher or business writer. Google also runs researchers though an application process testing their research skills and the quality of their answers.

ClicknWork has tutorials to help you research effectively, and there are sites with tips on where to find online databases and tools to help you locate hard-to-find information.
ClicknWork pays about $10 an hour for searchers and $15-50 for expert Web guides, while business writers or editors make about $15-30 for a 90-minute online session. AskDownUnder allows researchers to quote a price per query. Once a client accepts the quote, the researcher is alerted and sets to work.
Says Tsitas: "It's difficult to say exactly how much a person could make, since everyone competes against each other. Researchers are free to quote whatever price they want and the clients decide if they want to accept that quote instead of others from researchers with perhaps higher or lower overall ratings."
He adds that a person in India working full time as a researcher could expect to make a good Indian (not a US) wage: "If a researcher in India tried to quote US prices they would presumably be undercut by others from India. However, good researchers receive high ratings by clients and should be able to command more money for their services."
Expert advice
Most of us have an interest or area of specialisation. If you know a lot on a certain subject, you could make money by giving advice on that topic. Fee-based sites provide advice in particular areas and have teams of paid online experts around the world who are proficient in their fields.
Kasamba.com has a directory of online experts in categories like religion, relationships and travel. You can register and give advice by email, chat or phone. Rates can be set by the minute or the hour.
If you're a computer or Internet expert, supportfreaks.com, a 24X7 help site allows you to answer such queries via chat. Commissions can also be earned by bringing business or clients to the site.
Other services that invite people with some professional expertise are surfbrains.com and bumperbrain.com. All these sites screen their experts and you're required to send in a CV or summary of the experience you have in any area.
Though LiveAdvice and Keen have an online directory of advisors, the phone is their main medium of dispensing advice.
Not all affiliate marketing, referral programmes, pay-to-read-email and pay-to-surf programmes are scams. Some will actually send cheques to different countries. Check out reviews of such sites at European Telework Online and FreeMoneyGuide. But while you may make some money, you'll generally end up spending much more on bandwidth and telephone calls.
Also, setting up a site and hosting banners on it isn't going to make you rich overnight. It only helps if your site has a decent amount of traffic. You can then sign up for referral programmes that you'll find on sites like Commission Junction.
If you're looking for other opportunities, Sharpe recommends trying established e-marketplaces like guru.com and elance.com.
Scam guard!
There are 'work online' scams, and then there are scams that warn you of other scams while claiming to be your one-way ticket to riches. You need to be on your guard to identify the real work opportunities.
Watch out for big promises of easy money. There's no such thing as a free lunch, offline or online. "Look for a track record," says Sharpe, "Never pay for anything and make it clear that the site will not expect payment from you later." Legitimate employers will not ask you for money.
Also check NetScams and ScamFreeZone for listings of genuine work opportunities.

Easy monetizing of your blog with AdSense

Why should I monetize my website?
The more success you have with your blog / website, the more time and money you're going to invest to update it and host it properly.
At some point you may think: wouldn't it just be nice to have my site pay for itself?
Well, that is actually easier to achieve than it sounds! A decent hosting plan should cost you no more than $6.95/month. However, that's quite a low figure here and most people make many many times more than that in ad revenue...
By properly monetizing your blog site it is actually possible to have it pay, not only for the hosting, but also for the time you spend working on it.
Why AdSense?
First, because AdSense is a very simple and proven solution that already pays for hundreds of thousands of blogs/websites accross the world!
Also, AdSense is provided to you by Google which not only makes it reliable but also trustworthy. Once you have earned money from Google, you can actually trust them to pay it to you!
Finally, because the ads will be contexual, i-e they will be relevant to the content of your blog/site. This way, your visitors will not be offended for seeing the ads on your site.
This page cannot display properly because javscript is disabled in your web browser.
Please enable javascript and reload this page.
How do I get started?
It's as simple as that:
Sign up for AdSense.
Enable Javascript in your browser and reload this page in order to sign up.
It's totally free! Then follow the provided instructions to put a little javascript snippet onto your blog skin or any web page you like. You may use our b2evolution AdSense plugin to make this even easier.
When visitors view your site they see contextual text ads that automatically adjust to the contents of each page / blog post so that they are always relevant. No flashing images, just relevant text links! :)
When a visitor clicks on an ad link, Google records the click and you get paid for it. Get ready for a monthly check from Google ;)
Will it ruin my blog design?
You can choose the exact position and colors of the text ad blocks you place on your site.
Below are two examples of blogs that incorporate text ads and successfully pay for themselves. Judge for yourself:
Example 1: Ad links at the end of the blog post.
Example 2: Ad links at the top of the page.Note: as you can see, AdSense is not limited to English!
Mini FAQ
Google has an extensive FAQ about this program. Here's our additional mini FAQ about integrating AdSense with your blog. Feel free to contact François for further information.
How do I integrate AdSense into my blog?
Try the AdSense plugin for b2evolution!
How do I integrate AdSense into my blog without the plugin?
You just copy/paste the AdSense code from Google into your blog template.
The short answer is that the template is located in /skins/skin-name/_main.php (b2evo 1.x) or /skins/skin-name/index.main.php (b2evo 2.x)

Forget Digg: Don’t Underestimate the Money Power of Traditional Media

Magazines

For many, the goal of getting on a social media site like Digg, Reddit or Stumbleupon is the ultimate for their blog or website. I know that it’s an exhilarating feeling when a site that has been getting a few hundred hits a day all of a sudden is swarmed with tens of thousands of people. I’ve been there and it is one of the best feelings in the world the first time one of your articles makes it there.

While getting on social network sites has some alternative benefits (increasing rss readers, getting backlinks, etc), making a lot of money off the traffic isn’t one of them. The people who frequent the social media sites are Internet savvy and rarely click on advertisements. Of the times that my sites have made it onto Digg, I would estimate that the traffic increased my earnings anywhere from $10 to $50 depending on how much further the post traveled from Digg onto regular blogs. If you aren’t making much money, that can be a significant amount of money for a day, but if you really want to make money, you should be looking at other areas to bring in traffic.

One of these areas is traditional media. A lot of bloggers completely ignore offline media, but getting a mention in a traditional media outlet can be extremely profitable for your site. In fact, a single mention in the traditional media can be worth several thousand dollars.

This happened to my Timeshare niche site last month. It’s a site that I haven’t touched for months, but it is one of the better performing niche sites I have created bringing in a couple of hundred dollars a month from search traffic. In June it brought in $258, in July $223 and in August $272, so it had been fairly consistent over an extended period of time.

Then in early September, an article in the AARP magazine began arriving in homes that included a reference to this website. Traffic increased going from about 200 hits a day to 4000 on the busiest day and stayed above 1000 hits a day for over 2 weeks. This may seem like small peanuts compared to the tens of thousands of hits an article that hits the front page of Digg brings in, but the main difference was that these visitors actually clicked on advertisements. The results were that Timeshare Trap earned $3125 in September - and increase of almost $3000 from a single mention in an article.

Whether you have a blog or niche websites, taking the time to get mentions in traditional media should be part of your plan to get word out about your site and increase your income. Here are a few things that you can do to help in this respect:

Make Contacts: It is well worthwhile to make contact with people that write in traditional media outlets. One advantages of blogging is that you often are the first to see trends that are emerging or see stories that attract a lot of attention. Establishing a friendly relationship with traditional media writers and passing them story ideas that you haven’t seen addressed in the traditional media much will establish you as a person that they will contact when they need a quote or opinion for an article in your subject area.

Offer Free Articles: Just like guest writing on larger blogs is a great way to get word out about your blog or site, the same is true writing for traditional media. While it may be more difficult to get your work into larger media outlets, smaller local papers are always looking for quality content to add to their papers.

Set Up A Media Link: Set up a media contact somewhere on your blog or site so that if anyone from the media does come across it, they can easily contact you. While this information is often available under contact information, having a “media” area shows that you are willing to talk to the media and help them (something that not all bloggers are willing to do) and increases your chances of being contacted.

Reply Quickly: If you are ever contacted by the media, get back to them as soon as you can. Most writers are on deadlines and don’t have a lot of time to get the information they need. They have likely contacted others besides yourself and the person that provides them the information they need the quickest is the one that is going to be quoted in the article most of the time. Responding quickly also establishes you as a good contact for future articles.

Sell Yourself: Just like you need to sell your blog online for people to discover you, the process is similar in traditional media. Being mentioned in a few articles will help establish you as a good contact and other writers researching will come across your name. This can lead to even more contacts and media mentions. Take the time to sell yourself to the traditional media as well as online.

if you are like most bloggers I have talked with, you probably haven’t spent much, if any, considering strategies to get mentions in traditional media. if you haven’t, you most definitely should begin thinking about it right now.

Make Money Online & Get Rich

HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND A VERY HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR 2008 TO YOU