Thank Readers for Good Comments

As your blog content increases, people in your niche will definitely mention you for intelligent or interesting discussions. This is, in a sense, an initiation of an interaction. When people speak of you, you should thank them for the mention and build up the interaction!

Track Your Blog Traffic

When you use a traffic tracking script such as the free statcounter.com, you can see where traffic comes from. If a large number of visitors come from a certain blog, you can be sure they have mentioned you in their latest post or linked to you from their sidebar or links page. What you should do is pay them a visit, leave constructive comments on their posts and build up a conversation!

As you continue doing this, you will start to gather a lot of friends in your niche. This is helpful later on when you decide to do collaborations such as interviews. In fact, when you're out of ideas for writing on your blog, you can interview other blog owners in your niche! Human beings are curious creatures, so naturally they would like to know more about a person whose writings they read so often.

Excellent Bloggers to use are WordPress, Textpattern and MovableType

If you're using WordPress, Textpattern, MovableType or any other advanced blog engines, you can also post trackback links on your posts. This means you can post an article about what other people have posted! Your particular post will then appear as a link on that post you have written about. This is definitely a great way to get traffic if you post brilliant insights about a post on a very famous blog. Since the famous blog already has a per-existing pool of readers, this is like a shortcut to hog their visitors! The only thing you would want to observe is to keep your posts sensible and insightful, or you'll be viewed as a spammer.

Use a Blogger That Lets You Use Trackbacks

On the other hand, if you're using Blogger, you would not be able to use trackback links. However, you can post insightful comments on other people's blogs and subtly include a link back to your blog. You can make it seem like you're pointing to your blog as an extra reference to the subject of discussion. Of course, this technique is not only limited to Blogger users and users of other blog engines can employ this strategy as an additional traffic source.

Article Source:

Barry Smart uses this Blogging Formula to easily profit from online blogging.

Blogging Lesson Part 9

Blogging Lessons Part 1

We've discussed about using Google Adsense program and other merchants' affiliate program to generate profits from your blog. However, we have a lot of other options to monetize your blog, so we're going to look into that today.

The first option we'll be looking at is Chitika (www.chitika.com). Chitika is a very innovative contextual advertising program because it can serve very detailed advertisements. For example, on your technological gadget blog, Chitika will show advertisements for tech gadgets such as iPods. The way they show it is in different tabs: one for "Best deals", another for "details", another for "reviews" and so on. This way, it is more of an informational section for your visitor rather than an advertisement, and naturally the click-through will be higher.

You can apply here: https://chitika.com/application.php?type=mm

You can into affiliate marketing for Amazon.com. Amazon offers a wide range of products but its predominant domain is in books. Whatever your niche is about, you can probably find a book about it on Amazon.com.

Join their Associate program here: https://associates.amazon.com/gp/flex/associates/apply-login.html/

Once you join them, you can refer visitors to them and earn up to 10% commission. It's not a lot but if you can manage to refer big volumes of visitors, Amazon is for you. This program really shines when it comes to the ways you can refer visitors; you can use their predefined templates to pull up recent items that match a certain criteria you set, you can target your ad to show a specific item on sale or you can just simply weave your referral links into your blog posts.

Last but definitely not least, you can sell advertising space on your blog if your blog is truly popular. Just take a look at blogs like http://xiaxue.blogspot.com. That blog receives over 10,000 page views every day and naturally merchants will want to strike a deal with the blog's owner to post their advertisements there. If you manage to pull in huge amounts of traffic like that blog, you can definitely get people to buy ad space on your blog for prices from $150/month upwards, depending on your blog popularity. To gauge how much page views and visitors you get everyday, just use the free tool available at statcounter.com. They have a very detailed setup guide that is very easy there so I won't go into it.

If your blog has not acquired large amount of visitors yet, you can still sell ad space on your blog on a per click or per impression basis. Just visit sites like adbrite.com.

For a complete list of these sites, visit http://performancing.com/node/60.

Hopefully, that will help you maximize earnings and profits from your blog!

Article Source:

Barry Smart uses this Blogging Formula to easily profit from online blogging.

Blogging Lessons Part 10

Blogging Lesson Part 8

How to Monetize Your Blog

You have been working hard to produce good-quality, original content on your blog and you have attracted a decent amount of traffic by doing so. However, money is not going to appear out of thin air just because you have traffic. You have to turn your traffic into money.

There are several ways to generate profits from the visitors of your blog, and Google's Adsense program allows you to do so with ultimate ease. First, visit their website at http://adsense.google.com/. You'll find out more about their advertising program there, but here are some extra bits I'd like to tell you.

First, Google's Adsense program is a really useful way to monetize your blog because when users finish reading your newest post, chances are they want to leave your blog because they have nothing else to do on your blog. If your Adsense advertisement block is visible on your blog, they might see advertisements relevant to them and click on them to exit your blog. Ka-ching! You've just cashed in on your first virtual dollars and cents!

But yes, your profits will only be cents if you don't "do it right". This involves placing your Google ads in the right places and ensuring they blend in to your site so that they appear more like links rather than advertisements to your visitors. Consult the page https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html to see the "heat map" of your blog. The "hotter" a certain area, the greater the chances of someone looking at your blog.

Once you get a Google Adsense account, you can change the color of your advertisement text and links. You will want them to match the colors on your blog. If your blog's text is black and the links are red, do the same for the ad blocks too! It's that simple.

Another way to earn profits from your blog is to recommend products to your readers. When your visitors buy from the merchants you recommend, you get to keep a little commission too. This is known as affiliate marketing and it is very easy to start because you don't have to create your own products or services.

Anyway, let's refer back to our technological gadgets blog example. Let's say you discover this gadget X on a merchant's website, and they offer an affiliate program. What you would do is to create a post in your blog and do a mini-review on this gadget X. Rip it apart and point out its benefits and bad points, if any, and include a link (which is given by the merchant) for the visitor to purchase the gadget X online.

If your visitor clicks and purchases the gadget, the merchant will track from the link that the purchase is referred by you, so they will send you your share of the profits. Imagine if 1 out of every 100 visitors you get purchases this product, and you earn $27.00 commission from each purchase! If you get 10,000 visitors in a month that would be a $2,700.00 paycheck for you just for writing about ONE product.

Now, affiliate programs are very nice ways to generate profit, but how do you find affiliate programs that are related to your blog's theme? Easy, just go to Google and search for "affiliate programs". Another slightly better way is to go to http://www.associateprograms.com/search to look for affiliate programs in your niche.

The two ways mentioned above are basic ways to generate profits from your blog. We'll be discussing other great, profitable ways, so keep your eyes peeled!

Article Source:

Barry Smart uses this Blogging Formula to easily profit from online blogging.

Blogging Lessons Part 9

Blogging Lessons Part 7

Getting links from other websites is not the only way to attract visitors to visit your blog. This time, we are going to explore alternative methods to attract high quality blog traffic with both free and paid methods.

The first thing you can do to generate traffic is to recycle all the content you have written on your blog. What I really mean is to turn your blog posts into little "manuals" or articles that help people solve their problems or offer valuable information and submit them to article directories. These article directories are like aggregators that collect articles of similar themes together in one place, so they receive thousands and thousands of qualified visitors every day.

When you submit your articles to these directories, you are exposing your name to the thousands of pairs of eyes visiting them for free! On most article directories, you are also permitted to include a "resource box" where you can include your contact details, a simple biography and so on. This is where you can truly leverage the traffic of the said article directories.

Some good article directories to get you started:

eZineArticles.com ultimatearticledirectory.com submityourarticle.com

Another excellent way to gain traffic is to join internet forums that is based on your niche. To find these kind of forums, just go to any search engine and enter " forum", without the quotes. You would want the most focused forum with a substantial number of active members, and preferably always bustling with activity. Just check the dates of the threads posted on the forum.

When you join active forums that focus on your field of discussion and post very useful and valuable posts, your peers will start noticing you and paying attention to what you have to say. In most forums, you are also allowed to append a link to your site in the signature line, which is under every post you make on the forums. People will click and visit your blog if they find your posts helpful and informative. This way, your credibility is built even before they land on your blog, so traffic from the forums would be easier to turn into profits if your blog is selling your own products or recommending others' as an affiliate since they are already convinced you're an "expert" in the field.

The strategy we'll discuss is word of mouth. Let's say you already have a daily visitor count of 100. What if you compiled a small report or gift and posted it on your blog, saying that if a certain visitor can refer three of his/her friends to visit your blog the gift will be his/hers for free? If your small report or gift is lucrative enough, it will generate a small buzz among your blog readers and they will surely refer their friends to this blog that they frequent!

You can also utilize the "blog and ping" technique that everyone's talking about. Basically, when you update your blog, you can let blog portals such as technorati.com know by pinging them. You can ping a lot of portals at once by using the free pingomatic.com.

Besides the techniques described here, there are also paid methods like buying links from high-ranking pages or buying banner advertisement space. A thing to keep in mind when buying paid traffic is to always weigh your profits generated from the paid ads. If your profits do no offset the expense, you will end up losing money, so choose wisely.

Article Source:

Barry Smart follows this Blogging Formula to easily profit from online blogging.

Blogging Lessons Part 8

Blogging Lessons Part 6

In the last article, we talked about how getting high quality links from authoritative websites in your field can boost your search engine rankings. This time, we're going to explore further into linking strategies, and how to determine and obtain "high quality" links. We're also going to talk briefly about Google's PageRank.

First, let's examine a regular link. It's a piece of text (or image, but we're going for text) that links to your blog, and some of the factors that matter are:

1) The address which it links to

2) The text of the link

3) The PageRank of the page on which the link resides

Let's analyze this information one by one. First, you'd naturally want the link to link to your blog, but to which page of your blog? To an individual post or to your blog's home page? Since your blog is a constantly updated website, it is always wise to accumulate all the links to point to your main page instead if individual posts because they tend to be very time-sensitive.

The text of the link also affects your rankings for a certain keyword. Let's say your blog is about technological gadgets and another site has a link that says "Barbie dolls" and links to your blog. Doesn't make much sense, right? If a lot of links that link to your site contain the terms "technological" or "gadget", it will greatly boost your rankings for those keywords. Hence, it's essential to put some thoughts when requesting links from other webmasters as you want them to link to your blog with appropriate keywords.

Now, about Google's PageRank. It's basically a scale set by Google to measure the popularity of websites. You can read more about it on http://www.google.com/technology/. What is interesting is that the higher the PageRank of a certain website, the more frequent Google's robots will visit the website to index it. Of course, the PageRank of a page will also help it to rank higher in Google's search engine results. In short, having a high PageRank will bring you many benefits SEO-wise.

Your blog will start with no PageRank (which is different to PageRank 0) because Google has not yet indexed your blog. Once Google's robots find your blog through links on other sites, your blog will show a Page Rank of 0 and depending on the PageRank of the referring page, your blog's PageRank will also rise eventually.

Getting high-quality links to your blog will help direct targeted visitors who are interested in your niche marketing to your blog, enable search engines to find and index your blog and ultimately rank higher in search engine results.

Article Source:

Barry Smart follows this Blogging Formula to easily profit from online blogging.

Bloggong Lessons Part 7

Face the fact - your blog needs to be regularly updated to maintain its readership! Hence, you must always find fresh topics to write about, and we're going to discuss how to brainstorm content for your blog in this article.

We have discussed how to write attractively, so now we are going to discuss what we are going to write on. The very first option that I think a blogger should write on is a topic that he or she feels passionate and interested in. You've chosen to make blogging your career because you want to escape a mundane job - forcing yourself to write about something that you're not interested in is as torturous as as your mundane job!

The other reason I ask you to write about something you're passionate about is because your feelings and emotion shows through your writings! If you feel indifferent to a certain subject but still write about it just for the sake of it, your readers will notice it. Remember the advice about writing with a personality? Forcing yourself to write will not establish a welcoming style at all.

Once you have chosen your main theme, start posting to your blog about it and make it a habit to post at least once every day, even if it's only a comment on the newspaper article you read today. Think of yourself as a gigantic train. It takes a lot of effort to get you moving. First, you might just budge an inch, and later trudge slowly on until you finally reach your full speed. Then, it'll take a lot of effort to stop you instead!

However, no matter how well you know your topic, your brain is bound to get exhausted over some time, so here are methods to brainstorm content for your blog.

1) The very best way to brainstorm content for your blog is to see what other bloggers have to say about stuff happening in your field of discussion. And the very best way to find related blogs is to use http://blogsearch.google.com/ or technorati.com. There are other decent search tools too, you just have to look around. From other blogs, you can gather more knowledge on your subject and you can also comment on what others have to say on your own blog!

2) Once you've established contacts with other bloggers in your field, you'll have quite an inexhaustible "conversation" ongoing, so you'll not need to actively search for content to write about. However, if you're still stuck, search for news articles related to your niche in the local newspaper or online through sites like http://news.google.com and http://news.yahoo.com.

3) You can also have conversations with people with the same interest as you in the particular niche you choose, so you will eventually build up a bank of questions and answers and interesting discussions to write about in your blog. To do this, join forums related to your niche, but don't join every forum there is out there. Stick with one or two with the biggest number of members or the one which is most focused on your niche. This will also come in handy much later in gaining traffic and generating profits.

Remember to keep up your momentum of posting at least once per day (or more if you have a lot of content to write about) so that the major search engines will know that your blog has fresh content everyday. This will attract the search engines to spider your page on a more frequent basis, hence gaining you extra traffic.

Don't worry about the paragraph above about generating traffic and search engines, because we're going to talk about that in more detail later. For now, remember to keep a consistent effort everyday and build up momentum like that of a locomotive!

Article Source:

Barry uses this Blogging Formula to easily profit from blogging.

Blogging Lessons Part 4

Blogging Lessons Part 2

You Need a Goal

So, what's your goal for your blog?  Since you're reading this article, I'm going to assume that you'd like to make at least a little money from it.  But money aside, what do you want to get out of your blog?

Quick, grab a piece of paper and white down three things you want to see your blog do.  For example, you might have a money goal, a traffic goal and a "satisfaction" goal.

Got your goals written down?  Let's move to the next step.

Selecting a Blogging Subject

So, what is it that you want to blog about?  Is it about your favorite hobby, something new you're learning, something that you hope makes you some income?  Before you can blog, you need to know what to write about.

You may be asking, "Do I really need a subject?  Why can't I just write about whatever I feel like?"

You can.  But unless you are a celebrity, you're not likely to get much in the way of traffic doing that.  And traffic is the lifeblood of a blog.  So pick a subject also called a "niche" and blog about it to your heart's content.

Free Blogging Sites

If you have never, ever had a blog before, I recommend that you go over to one of the free blogging sites like blogger or wordpress.com.  While I'm partial to the wordpress.com a free blogging site, I have used both and both are good.

Using one of the free blogging platforms lets you experiment and get used to what it's like to blog.  If you like it; great!  You're one step closer to making money with a blog.  If you decide you don't like blogging, you're only out some time.

Hosting Your Blog

Hosting your own blog isn't as terrifying as it first sounds, but it does help a little if you are familiar with how blogs work before you try it for yourself.

I'm going to tell you straight out if you want to have a profitable blog, you need your own domain name and your own blog hosting.  I'll talk in greater detail about this later, but get used to the idea.

The best blogging software available costs nothing it's free!  WordPress.org software is available as a 1-click installation with pretty much all the major web hosting services.  So it doesn't cost you anything extra, and it pays you back a ba-zillion-fold with its power.

How to Start a Blog

If you want the absolute easiest way to start a blog, go to wordpress.com and register for one of their free ones.  It doesn't take long to register and set up your blog; you can be writing within 15 minutes.

I have a wordpress.com blog that I started back in 2007.  I wrote several posts on a specific topic then got busy doing other things and promptly forgot about the blog.  In late 2008 I stumbled on it again, took a look at the traffic statistics and just about fell over.  Wow!

So start a blog today.  Get used to how it works, and decide how much time you have to spend on it.  Pick your topic and get blogging!