Blog for Traffic and Traffic for Blogs

Today I want to talk a bit about TRAFFIC and blogging. It's always been interesting to me that people frequently talk about creating a blog in order to drive traffic to your website...

yet that has always left me wondering where is the traffic TO your blog supposed to come from?

Of course, I understand that frequently updated content keeps your blog fresh and increases the chances that someone doing a search for a specific phrase in your area of expertise might find you, yet I thought it might be valuable to share with you some ways to optimize your blog so that the search engines give you a high listing when that search happens... the natural kind of searching by people looking to find out just the kind of information you can provide.

You can find many books, big books, written on the topic and I won't be getting that in-depth but an overview might serve well.

How can SEO (Search Engine Optimization) help you get traffic?
As we've shared before, the goal of any website is to get targeted traffic. And that includes your blog. If your area of interest is pets, someone looking for information about quilting is simply not going to be part of the market you are looking to attract. The search engines role is to help the people looking for information about their pets find the sites about pets! Someone hot to find information or spend money on YOUR niche.

Stop and think about what your blog is about. Actually, what each post of your blog is about. You'll want to set up each post of your blog to be sure to let the search engines know exactly who to send you.

Where to start?
There are two factors that determine how much traffic the search engines will send you. First is the information you have on your own blog. Second is how many other websites and/or blogs are linking to your blog. Those are the two areas you'll want to work on in order to crawl up higher on the search engines for your niche.

On your blog and in each post be sure to use the keywords for your niche. If your blog is about "Marathon Walking" then be sure to use the term "Marathon Walking" as your title and in the body of your posts. Easy and obvious.

Your offsite goals are just as easy. Work on getting other people to link to your blog by writing articles, leaving comments on other subject-related blogs and include a link back to your blog, and even posting on forums.

KEYWORDS
Be sure to include your keywords or key phrases on your posts. You don't want to go overboard but you do want your page title to be very descriptive.

Bad SEO Title: "Why I'm Having a Crummy Day"
Better SEO Title: "The Effects of Acne on Self Esteem"

Assuming these posts were written with the same content, the search engines will understand the "Better SEO Title" more.

We've talked about this before yet I'll reiterate because keywords are so important whether blogging, creating websites, writing articles, building squidoo lenses, etc. There are tools you can use to find keywords that are being searched.

• Overture - A free resource that will give you ideas for keywords. It doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles but it's a good place to start. http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion
  

• Wordtracker - Provides a tool that displays the number of people searching for a term, as well as the competition. Wordtracker offers a free trial so you can test their service. http://www.wordtracker.com

Where to include your keywords
Once you have an idea of which keywords you're using stay consistent. Come up with a title that includes your keyword/s and use that word or phrase at least once in your post.

Off-Site SEO
Search engine optimization is a two-part process so work on optimizing your blog content (on-site) and work on getting many incoming links (off-site).

Think about why the search engines consider incoming links to be important. When you find impressive information on a website or blog what do you do? You link to it. This is not only proven with articles and blogs but other types of websites too. If you find a free piece of software or a really inspirational video, you may mention it on your blog or website and include a link to that website or blog where your visitors can claim it.

That's what people naturally do. The search engines recognized this and realized that the more popular websites like CNN.com or ESPN.com are linked to quite frequently and naturally.

So... how can you "force" other sites to link to you? Of course, I don't recommend any illegal or spammy methods so here are some tried and true ways to get other sites to link to yours:

• Create quality sites with unique, informative and/or entertaining content. Visitors will be more open to linking to you if you have much to offer.

• Do something newsworthy and write a press release. Not only will you have incoming links from the press release distributors but you also stand a chance to get your story picked up by TV, radio and print newspapers.

• Become a columnist for another website. Contact websites or blog owners in your niche and offer to write a regular ongoing column for them -- even provide a weekly tip or idea. You'll get plenty of links - and build a networking relationship by doing so.

• Write and submit articles to article directories. You can even use a blog post, perhaps with a bit of re-working, as an article. Simply write an informative article and let others publish it with your Author Resource box at the end which includes your URL.

These are just a few ways you can increase the number of incoming links to your blog. With a little creativity and a bit of work you'll see more traffic coming through those links in the coming months.

And there you have some thoughts about drawing traffic to YOUR blog!
Have a fabulous weekend... I do appreciate you,

--Mary K

¸..· ´¨¨)) -:¦:-
¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-
-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!

There's SO much more than make money online

When I first jumped into blogging I erroneously assumed the best way to make money online was by blogging about making money online.

I think a lot of people new to making money online and new to blogging think the same thing. In fact, I hear from a lot of people ~ I have this blog on making money online, but I'm not getting any hits, I'm not making any money.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and be BOLD. When you are looking for a topic for your blog DO NOT CHOOSE anything about making money online.

There I've said it, it's out there. Flog me if you must ~ but I think it is true.

Look, there are about, oh I don't know, a gajillion people out there blogging about making money online. Some of them ARE making money online. MOST of them are not. Who do you think people are going to listen to when they want advice about making money online? The person who is making 20,000 a month or the person who is only getting 4 hits to their blog a day ~ themselves, their husband, mom and dad?

I don't mean to be harsh here, but think about it logically. It really is true.

Don't DESPAIR ~ even if you already have one of those how to make money online blogs. (keep working at it, no sense leaving your baby now)

What I want to tell you is this: you have a much better chance of making money online with a blog that has NOTHING to do with making money online.

People come online to look for answers and to solve problems. These include answers and problems for anything and everything your can imagine.

What is it that you love to do, what gets you fired up? Do you think other people get fired up about that thing too? Do you think people have questions about that thing and want answers and solutions? I am SURE they do.

Why not start a blog about what you love and are passionate about. Do you feel passionate about essential oils? Maybe you even sell essential oils. Do you use your essential oils to care for your animals in a holistic way? Now that's a great blog topic. Holistic Animal Care. Do you think people who are interested in holistic animal care would find you? My guess is there is not a gajillion other blogs on holistic animal care, and chances are people would find you. Do you think if you provided interesting information about how to care for your animals holistically people interested in that subject might keep coming back to see what you else they can learn? Do you think if you wrote an article about how this particular essential oil will manage fleas so you don't have to use chemicals on your pets that people might purchase that essential oil from an ad you have on your blog?

I'm just sayin'.

There is so much more to offer, that is more likely to bring you profit in the world of blogging than just another make money online blog.

If you are short of ideas try this: go to amazon.com. In the top left corner click the button to check out all the categories. Look around and find something that interests you. Dig a little deeper, see what Amazon offers on the topic, if it's something you are interested in, chances are someone else is too, and if Amazon is selling products related to it (especially a lot of products) you can guess they are making money, and so can you.

There are products at clickbank, commission junction, linkshare and a million other affiliate marketplaces that have absolutely nothing to do with making money online. There's plenty of opportunity elsewhere. Take advantage of that. Give yourself the chance to talk about something you love every day!

Jackie Lee :)

Make Life Easy with Must Have Wordpress Plugins

When I first moved my wahm work at home mom blog from a free site and installed it on wordpress and my own hosting I realized there were a couple serious things I would have to take care of that wordpress used to manage for me.

This is where plugins come in. The wonderful world of wordpress plugins. Much like looking for a "perfect" theme you can get lost in the wonderful and seriously expansive world of wordpress plugins.

Instead of leaving you confused and wondering just what plugins you need to install I'm going to make it easy for you and just tell you ~ from my many hours researching this ~ the ones you must have and then the ones that are just fun to have (and also serve a purpose). These are the actual plugins I have installed on all my blogs.

SPAM~ this is one of those things wordpress used to manage for me, now I'm responsible for dealing with all the spam comments that come in. (it is really strange the kind of comments you find) This is the first and in my opinion MOST important plugin and the first one you should install. It is in fact, the same spam management system that wordpress uses. Akismet. This plugin will manage all your spam comments, it will delete them after 30 days, you don't even really need to think about it. (I sometimes look through my captured spam comments just to see what's in there, but I'm kinda weird)It is an excellent plugin, I have never had any spam get through, and I think I've only had 1 or 2 comments that were real end up in the spam folder. This plugin will save you tons of time weeding through spam comments. Download Akismet ~ a must have plugin.

All In One SEO Pack ~ The second most important plugin and definitely the must have plugin for SEO. This will allow you to optimize your posts for searchability. The functions in this one plugin used to be in a couple different ones, but now it's nicely bundled in one place.

Smart Update Pinger ~ This plugin pings your blog each time you add new content. You can add a personal list of sites you want pinged.

Google Sitemap ~ This will build and install a google sitemap for you site. All you have to do is install the plugin and fill in a couple blanks. It does all the work for you.

All in one Adsense and YPN ~ This plugin allows you to easily and effortlessly add adsense or Yahoo ads, or both to your site. It is really easy. I only added this plugin recently because I wasn't using adsense on my sites. However, I started earning money from adsense as soon as I installed it.

Tagalize It ~ This allows you to tag keywords to both technorati and ice rocket.

What Would Seth Godin Do? ~ A funny sounding plugin with an important job. This plugin uses cookies to place a message on your blog reminding new readers to sign up for your RSS feed. You can set the number for how many times readers see the message. After they have visited more than that number they will no longer see the message.

Those are the MUST HAVE plugins ~ here are a few I have on my blog and appreciate the work they do for me.

Viper's Video Quicktags ~ This plugin will be considered a must have for anyone who posts a lot of video on their blog. It allows you to one click add video from a variety of sources. It gives you a button on your blogging task bar.

Wordpress.com Stats ~ I started my blog at wordpress.com. I got used to the little view graph. I love it. I was sad when I moved my blog and didn't think I would be able to get the chart anymore. Then I found this plugin. It's exactly the same as wordpress.com. Of course google analytics has more info, but I love the simple chart. :) You can use both.

Sociable ~ This is a social bookmarking plugin that will put icons to social bookmarking sites at the bottom of your posts. I have tried a couple different social bookmarking plugins and this one is my favorite. You can choose which buttons you want included.

Related Posts ~ I have this installed and have yet to figure out how to make it work right. However, I'm still recommending it because I know all the blogs I read regularly that have it I read waaaay more articles on than the ones that don't.

This is the last one, and may seem a little redundant, but I am really working on getting my RSS subscriber numbers up, so I added it.

Subscribe Remind ~ This plugin adds a little reminder at the end of each post to subscribe to your RSS feed if they enjoyed the post.

There you have it ~ my plugin list, both the must haves, and the just for funs. If you are hosting your own blog you will find these plugins help your SEO as well as make your life much easier.

Jackie :)

Why blog - to earn or not to earn...

I found it interesting that when Jackie wrote a post about monetizing a blog someone left a comment asking, "What if you don't want to monetize your blog?"

Jackie responded with the simple and sensible... "Then don't" ;-)

I find myself still pondering the question. It prompts me to remind myself, as well as others, to be clear about our purpose, passion and pleasure when it comes to blogging. If you're blogging for public viewing you might want to ask yourself to what aim? Are you simply interested in sharing information? Looking to make connections with others who share your interests? Perhaps you simply enjoy writing and find pleasure in drawing an audience to appreciate your talent. Maybe you you want to supplement your current income using a blog. Maybe you want to ramp up your current income and a blog will complement that. Or maybe it's a combination of any or all of these.

At this point, I hope you have an idea of the kind of blog you would like to start as well as the reasons for starting that kind of blog.

Naturally, if you don't want to monetize your blog you would not provide any links in your blog that would connect you to payment for a product or service. And if you DO want to monetize your blog then you DO want to connect through links in your blog with something that pays you directly.

We've talked about how to get ideas and be clear about the kind of blog you want, some of the ways to drive traffic to your blog so that people are actually viewing what you are sharing and we've mentioned some of the ways to make money from your blog.

For those who DO choose to add an income stream through their blog I want to talk a bit more about that.

Text links are advertisements placed on your blog in the form of hyperlinked text. Just in case you're not familiar with the term 'hyperlinked' it means there is a link to a url embedded (hidden) in an advertising message like

"Cl'ck here to get the FREE Report Cash Pulling Blog Tactics Revealed!" or it can simply be a single word like "Toddlers" which will contain a link to a site like Jackie's lens offering activities for toddlers.

Text links like this have become very popular and are quite effective because they show up within the commentary that is only being read by people genuinely interested in the subject... a very likely candidate for your product or service.

Something I'm just learning about are text ads...
I want to share with you something I've discovered through the guys who wrote that report mentioned above:

There are basically two ways to add text ads to a blog:

1) An advertising broker

2) Text link generation software

In exchange for a share of the revenue, the following
brokers will add text links to your blog:

Adbrite.com

Advolcano.com

Blogads.com

Blogkits.com
Chitika.com

FederatedMedia.com

Text link generation software is a really great alternative
to text link brokers because you do not need to be approved
by a broker in order to start running text ads and you have
a lot more control over the both kind and quantity of text
ads appearing on your blog.

Perhaps the best software for generating text ads is called
Click Bank Text Ad Generator. Once installed, this software
will automatically scan all of the content of your blog for
certain keywords and turn those keywords into affiliate
links for products listed on Clickbank.

The products listed on Clickbank are great products to link
to because they tend to have much higher payouts than
physical products. With clickbank, it's not uncommon to
have $97 product with a 75% commission payout ($72.75
payout per sale).

A few text ads with a $72.75 payout can be very lucrative,
even if you only receive a few hundred hits a day.

For example, suppose again that your blog was receiving
just 500 visitors a day.

If 10% of these visitors clicked on one of these high
paying text ads every day and 4% of these visitors
purchased the product you would then earn a whopping
$145.50 every single day!

10% x 500 = 50 clicks

=> 50 x 4% = 2 sales

and 2 x $72.75 = $145.50!!!

And remember that all of this would be done without you
lifting a finger!

....Talk about easy money :-)

Fascinating to me are all the new discoveries to be made... we might not have the time or inspiration to implement them all and that's okay... adding even a couple of new actions periodically will boost your traffic and boost your earnings.

Here's to Prosperity!
Catch ya later...

--Mary K

¸..· ´¨¨)) -:¦:-
¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-
-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!

Hosted Wordpress Blog without Hosting

Today I received an email, that normally I probably would have ignored, however, with this month being a blogging experiment I've been a little more open to random emails about blogging stuff. ;)

Once I clicked the link I was taken to Myccblog.com and pretty quickly I started getting excited! This is exciting news for people who really WANT to host a wordpress blog so they can benefit from all the extras available but just can't swing it right now.



You can now have a hosted wordpress blog ~ with 60 themes to choose from, the most important plugins already plugged in for you (including all in one SEO pack, akismet ~ to manage spam ~ automate pinger, sociable ~ so people can add your post to social bookmarking sites ~ and much more.

All of this ~ plus videos to show you how to make it work for FREE!!

Yeah I was a little skeptical at first myself, so I went over and signed up and sure enough. Everything they said would be there was and it was all for free. You can only have one free blog ~ but you can have more than one for a small fee.

It's a great way to get started. You will be able to get your posts ranked in search engines, your affiliate links are welcomed, there are plenty of themes with customizable headers so you can even put your own header in your blog.

It's definitely worth checking out if you want to host a wordpress blog and just can't swing it right now, you will have the freedom and ease, without the fee.



It's also a great idea for people who already have established wordpress blogs and want another way to get solid backlinks to your site. Start a free blog and with My CC blog and make posts quasi related to your main blog and add a link to your main blog using your keywords in anchor text within the post. (making sure it makes sense to the reader) For example, this blog is about a marketing experiment, I might do another blog about driving traffic, and link back to this blog for more information about marketing strategies. See?

There are a lot of ways you can use a free service like this. I would make sure I had a good idea of where I wanted to go before I got my free account since you can only have one free blog. You can of course purchase additional blogs if you find it's working really well for you. However, remember hosting costs are between 6 and 10 dollars a month, so don't spend more than that on any blogging service. You could be hosting your own blog with the ability to host up to 10 more sites for that price. (depending on your hosting company)

Think a minute about what you want to do, then run over and get your own blog. Don't let the thinking part keep you from the action part. Make a decision and then move. :)

Jackie Lee

Can Blog Content turn into Articles?

Okay... so that's a no-brainer of a question. Of course you can turn Blog content into Articles. In fact, if you're clever you'll do just that!

You see.... Search Engine, Internet Marketers, website owners and ezine publishers are constantly hungry for fresh quality content.

Notice the emphasis on quality. While there is a LOT of content all over the Internet a great percentage of it is mindless babble. I feel confident there will never be an over-saturation of QUALITY fresh content!

Which simply means offering information that informs the reader about a certain topic.

If you can do that you can easily get backlinks and traffic to your website. And if you have a blog, creating quality articles for submission to the major article directories is a simple matter of taking your own quality content and packaging it into 350-500 word articles with catchy headlines.

So gather together a few blog posts on a certain topic and create an article. Once you have the article put together you will want to submit it to a few major article directories. There are many article directories and manual submission can quickly become very time consuming.

I tend to prefer using a submission service or two... one of the newest I've recently discovered is set up to distribute your articles to thousands! It's a free directory submission service with a very long reach.

As you're probably aware, a big benefit of writing and submitting articles is receiving traffic from the link you're allowed to include in your 'resource' or 'bio' box. If the readers of your article find value in what you've shared they are likely to click on that link to learn more about you and what you have to offer.

What you may not have thought of is ways to ramp up your traffic from articles in a more high-powered way.

One is by becoming good at writing headlines that tease a readers curiosity and gives them a reason to choose your article over someone else's. Much to my amazement, statistics continue to support the truth that words like, 'secret', 'discover', 'important', 'amazing', 'incredible', 'unbelievable', 'shocking truth', 'how to' -- continue to be part of the catchiest headlines.

It's also very powerful to use your headline to ask a question (which, hopefully, will be answered for the reader by reading your article and continuing on to your website).

"Is it possible to..."
"What you don't know about..."
"When is..."
"Who is..."
"Have you seen..." etc.

Now here's another 'secret' to increasing your traffic from articles...

Instead of giving them the whole article, split the article in 2 and then use your resource box to direct them to your blog or website for "Part 2". Using a tagline like, "Read the rest of this article at www.yourwebsite.com" will force far more click thru's than the usual..."More can be found at..."

There's a bit of an art to split articles at the right point. It's an art you can easily hone with practice and experimentation. You want to split it at a point that will entice readers to read the rest. This doesn't mean you must have an actual 'cliffhanger' (though that is an interesting touch ;-)). You do want to go through the article and find what you believe to be the most interesting or most informative part and retain that portion for your blog or website. One way to approach this is to list the ideas your article shares. Retain the best ideas for your blog and in your resource box you can say something like, "For the Top 3 Incredible Ideas, Please visit www.myblog.com"

Hope this helps you understand the relationship between blogging and articles and how you can drive more traffic to your blog with your blog's content.

Thanks...
I appreciate you...
--Mary K

¸..· ´¨¨)) -:¦:-
¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-
-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!

Hosting your own blog ~ do it ASAP

Ok, let's talk about the difference between hosted and free blogging. I've done and still do both. I do them for different reasons though.

I started out with a free blog, because I didn't think I could afford to pay for hosting. I had about 60 posts on my blog when one day I logged in and there was a big red banner across my blog. It said ~ you are violating terms of service and your blog will be erased if you don't comply ~ or something equally scary.


I freaked out ~ and I actually went back and read the TOS. I was using wordpress.com and soon realized they are NOT make money friendly. In fact you are not allowed to have affiliate links or any type of advertising on your blog.

Considering my blog was about making money from home ha ha. Well I made a quick backup of my blog so I had it in case the worst happened. I still was in denial about being able to afford hosting, so I went through my whole blog, took out all the links and cleaned it up so it fits terms of service.

At that point it was really useless for me to be blogging. I finally started looking around to see how much hosting would cost, and I think more importantly tried to quell my fear of "using hosting". It was a whole new learning curve and I had no idea how complicated it was going to be.

I looked into a few of the often recommended hosting companies and called Lunarpages ~ which is the hosting I finally decided on. I talked to the customer service rep who answered the phone immediately and was very willing to answer my crazy first timer questions and was really nice about it.

I have since called back every time I have had to do something new so someone could walk me through it. :) I'm not sure that's what customer service is really for, but they have happily helped me through it all.

I also have taken advantage of their forum. In fact, I have asked questions and had them answered within 5 minutes, and my replies answered immediately after that. Which is VERY helpful.

All in all, for a year of hosting it cost me 98 dollars, and I have had help at each step along the way. I installed my wordpress blogs with one click. (make sure whatever hosting you choose has fantastico) I have installed a forum with one click. I can now upload reports, images and host them. It's very handy.

But anyway, back to blogging.

A hosted blog allows you ultimate freedom. You can choose from a million themes, you can have a custom theme made. You can make SEO built in with a certain plugin. You can monetize in a million different ways. Your content is your own. No one can ever take it away from you. (except a crazy computer if you forget to back up ~ which you can also put on autopilot with a plugin)

The reasons to have a hosted blog are plenty. If you are trying to make money with your blog I definitely recommend having your own blog on your own hosting.

With that said ~ I also use free blogging sites. I use these to basically have a place to backlink to my "real" blogs. I set up blogs around the internet and write quick articles or link to other articles, but I can always have a link in the post and in the blogroll with my keywords in the anchor text. This lets me get great backlinks for my sites, and helps me drive traffic.

I don't really try to make money on these blogs, I'm just driving more traffic and building backlinks for my other sites, and squidoo lenses.

The last thing I will say about this is if you are going to try to make money on a free blog make sure you choose blogger.com. It is the ONLY free blogging service that allows you to make money from your blog (all hail google). You still have to worry about google randomly pulling the plug one day ~ and if you don't believe it happens stop by the warrior forum and put blogger blog disappeared or something similar in the search feature.

Make sure you back up your blog regularly in case this happens and save the first 100 bucks you make and go to Lunarpages hosting and get hosting for a year then upload wordpress. If you can't figure it out, send me a note and I'll walk you through it. :)

A Professional Looking Blog - inexpensively!

There are tons of free blogs available to use online. With millions of registered users, I've heard that blogger.com is by far the largest provider of free blogs. Also, according to others I've talked with, blogger.com blogs tend to be a little more sophisticated than other comparable free blog services.

Notice... you're at blogger.com right now! ;-)

I can assure you that it's entirely possible to make money using a free blog. Yet you'll hear many people advise you against using a free blog if you intend to monetize. It's important to consider that position.

Here are a few very valid reasons why you will want to secure your own blog (which you have to pay for):

1) With blogger.com, Google owns your content. That's right. They have the authority to shut down your account without warning if they don't like what you're blogging about. (You might want to back up those blog posts you've made. ;-)). This takes away your control over your own blog.

2) You miss out on some options. For instance, Blogger doesn't allow categories so you can't sort your posts into different focuses.

3) You are limited in how you brand yourself - With blogger you can publish to your own domain, but you can't do significant changes to it.

Because of these things there are many that feel if you are interested in making serious money with your blog that the number one recommendation is WORDPRESS. Wordpress has a 100% FREE version that contains no advertisement and has fewer limitations than what you find at Blogger.com though to have all of the options and features available to you the best thing of all would be to host a Wordpress blog yourself.

I have to confess that I haven't taken that plunge yet myself... so I don't have personal experience to compare with. Maybe Jackie will fill us in on the challenges as well as benefits that she has experienced having blogged both ways.

That's enough for today... now go off and have a fun-filled weekend!!!
I appreciate you!
--Mary K

¸..· ´¨¨)) -:¦:-
¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-
-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!

Make Money Blogging ~ 7 Great Ways to Monetize Your Blog

How do I make money blogging?

It's a question I get asked quite frequently ~ especially when people don't want to do a "make money blog". There are numerous ways you can monetize your blog no matter how much traffic you get or how many subscribers you have.

Today I am going to show you 7 Great ways to Monetize your blog. I will add one caveat. I would wait until you have at least a couple weeks worth of content (14 or 15 good quality posts) before you monetize. There are others who will tell you to wait at least a couple months before you start to monetize your blog. I see the benefit in that, but if you need to start making money try one of these ideas at a time, wait a couple weeks in between.

Don't over do your monetization. People come to your blog for information or solutions not to buy things. If you provide your readers with good quality content and help them solve the problem they came to you looking to solve they will be much more likely to purchase a product or click an ad to find out more.

Contextual Ads ~ Everyone knows about at least one of these ~ google adsense. It can be somewhat confusing to the beginner blogger though. Adsense is when you have google put ads on your page. You get paid each time someone clicks on one of the ads on your page. There is no fee to you to do this. All you have to do is set up a google adsense account.

What everyone doesn't know is there are many more of these contextual ad companies including Yahoo. You can google "contextual ad network" and you will find many places that will provide ads for you to show on your blog.

Text Link Ads ~ These are a little different than google ads. These are ads that advertisers pay you to put on your blog. They become an underlined word in your content. Content ads are more frequently clicked on possibly because they look less than advertising than other ads on your page.

Targeted Advertising ~ This is a great way to make money blogging. I think this would be much easier if you have a very targeted niche blog because this is when an advertiser comes to you and asks to pay you a monthly fee for advertising on your blog. This is kind of like the holy grail to bloggers. It can happen! It will only happen if you have good quality information in your blog. It does not necessarily matter how much traffic you are getting if you traffic is very targeted to a specific industry.

Affiliate Links ~ Another great way to make money blogging. It will also cost you nothing. All you have to do is sign up at an affiliate network like clickbank, commission junction, linkshare ~ there are tons of them out there. You find a particular product that fits well with your blog topic and add the link within an article or in the sidebar of your blog. (You can see we use this method on this blog ~ the friend blaster pro banner). The kind of products you can find online with affiliate programs in endless. You can sell digital products like ebooks or you can recommend real world products by creating an affiliate relationship with a store. Did you know Wal Mart has an affiliate program? Anything you can find at Wal Mart you can offer to your blog readers. :) Pretty cool huh?

If you are looking for an affiliate program for a specific product or niche just go to google and search for "your product + affiliate program" this should lead you to a number of affiliate programs for what you are looking for.

Sell Your Own Products ~ This is a huge money maker and beginners generally think they just can't produce their own product. Hogwash. It's really not that hard. In fact if you are blogging on a specific niche topic you could pull out some archived blog post and put them together as an ebook.

Any idea, system, information can be turned into an ebook. Take a look at what you do during your day ~ it may seem mundane and easy to you, but I can bet you there are people out there that could benefit from some of the things you know and do during your day.

An ebook does not have to be a Phd dissertation ~ it can be written in a friendly tone as though you were talking to a friend.

Another great idea for a product is interview someone about your topic. Have the interview transcribed or turn it into a podcast and sell it. If you get over the idea you can't have your own product you will start seeing product ideas around every corner.

The cool thing about having your own product is you get to keep all the profits ~ unless of course you set up an affiliate program so OTHER people can start selling your products for you. (Then you'll have to pay your affiliates) ;)

Sell Niche Related Products ~ You can set up a virtual store at Cafe press where you can make products related to your niche that others can buy. Just put the link to your cafe press store on your website. There are plenty of places online you can do this now, cafepress is not your only choice ~ Zazzle is another choice and I found it much easier to understand and get up and running than cafepress.



You could also build an Astore from Amazon ~ offer books about your niche or topics your niche would be interested in. This is really more of an affiliate topic, but you would be selling real books. :)

Take Donations ~ this one probably won't make you scads of money unless you have a loyal readership. You can do this by putting a "donate" button from paypal on your blog. If you a hosted wordpress blog there is a plugin you can use that will encourage people to "buy you a beer" (or a cup of coffee) at the end of each of your posts.

Within a week or two of installing the "buy me a coffee" plugin in at my Internet Marketing Tips blog I had a women send me a 10 dollar donation. She read and implemented the suggestions in my post on My Story Marketing at Myspace. She said it had already produced more clients for her and she was grateful. So she sent me some money to say thank you ~ that's the kind of thank you most bloggers like best ~ right? It can happen, although it may not happen often, I think it's worth having the reminder there. If you don't ask you don't get.

Those are my top 7 ways to monetize your blog. Believe me there are plenty more, but I don't want to overwhelm you.

If you are thinking about monetizing your blog and don't know how to go about it, leave a comment below and Mary K and I will help you make it happen.

You can also come over to the new Internet Marketing Action Plan community. You can get assistance in setting up your personal action plan and get support and accountability to follow through as well as lots of CELEBRATING when you accomplish your goals. :)

Google's Blog Search Function

Hello fellow blog readers...

I love running across new tools and when they cost
nothing it's even more exciting. So I'm dropping by
to share my excitement around today's discovery.

Are you familiar with Google's blog search function?
it's pretty cool. http://blogsearch.google.com

Maybe it's been there awhile...yet if I just discovered it today it may be new
to you too!

The value here is that it makes it so much easier to find others
who are talking to YOUR niche... YOUR target market. Really
helpful if you're affiliated with a variety of products and services
like I am!

Reading good blogs can serve in many ways...
like giving you tips, tricks and tools that you might not have found otherwise.

And leaving a helpful comment on a popular, well-read blog allows
you to serve others, feedback to the blog owner and get yourself
exposed with a backlink to your site...

So there's the cool tool... use it well and may the force be with you!!!
;-)

--Mary K

¸..· ´¨¨)) -:¦:-
¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-
-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!

Blogging ~ Hot to pick a HOT topic for YOU!

Okay...Right up front I'm compelled to share one of the strange things that I love about blogging... it's done on a keyboard!!! When people talk about 'journaling' I cringe because my handwriting is so illegible that even I have to struggle to read it at times...

which makes me really mad cause I'm one of those who not only found myself in daily Palmer penmanship classes with NUNS in the late 50's/early 60's... making those d*mned circles and lines that are supposed to slant a very specific direction on a piece of paper at a very specific angle... add to that I'm a natural lefty and you might understand why I have a few 'issues' with penmanship! LOL (The nuns told me to sit on my left hand... I told them they better consult God about that since 'she' made me this way...end of conversation!)

So, now that I've confessed this I can share with you that I LOVE blogging because I LOVE using a keyboard... it gives me the freedom to write legibly while pretending to play the piano! (Another thing a nun tried to teach me... unsuccessfully, though I have the music in my soul. ;-))

Today I want to talk about 'blog topics' because if you're interested in making money with your blog your topic will have an impact. If you're like me and you simply experience joy in using the keyboard then you might be okay with blogging on a topic that doesn't fully float your cork but is very profitable.

There are several schools of thought -- some bloggers suggest you can only write a blog well if you are truly passionate about the subject. Others claim that if you want to make a lot of money with blogs then you need to create blogs centered around profitable topics.

In other words... topics with a lot of potential traffic. Makes sense?

Personally... I imagine the ideal is something that combines the two. So the slightly less than ideal might be a compromise. After all, if you have absolutely no interest in the subject matter, blogging on a topic will soon feel like drudgery and that will come through in your writing. It's a very unattractive energy that I'd avoid. So obviously it might benefit you to find a topic that is both potentially PROFITABLE and ENJOYABLE... that's a combination bound to win the gold.

Having said that... I do know that anyone can start a blog based on a hot topic they have little interest in if their inspiration to make money is powerful and they are willing to do the necessary research needed to produce fresh, quality content. (And they do little, if any writing themselves... we'll talk about that later)

After all... the hotter your topic the faster it will pull traffic... and lots of traffic = $$$

This means you need to do 4 things --

• Find hot topics or niches with a lot of traffic potential (what are people talking about?)
• Constantly add quality, fresh content to your blog
• Get lots of free traffic to your blog from word-of-mouth and search engines
• Monetize the resulting traffic

Simple enough. Here's a partial list of hot topics you might choose from:

Cars
- Buying
- Insurance
- Loans
- Repair
- Audio Systems
- Car Rims

Dating
- Internet Dating
- Dating Advice
- Attraction
- Seduction

Dogs
- Breeding
- Grooming
- Ownership

Finance
- Student Loans
- Grants
- Home Mortgage/Loans

Food

Gardening

Gambling/Online
- Gaming
- Poker/Texas Hold'Em Home

Remodeling

Home Business Ideas

Interior Design

Medicine
- Alternative Medicine
- Homeopathic Medicine Travel

Las Vegas

Vacation
- Family Vacations
- Hotels Video Games

Weddings
- Dresses
- Planning
- Invitations

Naturally, this is not a comprehensive list. You might want to do some exploring online to find out what people are talking about, asking questions about, interested in learning about. One idea is to go check the list of top lenses in each category over at Squidoo.com. They are typically top because so many people are interested in their topic.

Remember... their are many blogs out there that outrank websites with the same topic and competing for the same keywords just because blogs can consistently deliver fresh, quality content! And CONTENT is KING!

That's it for now... see you in a few days! ;-)
I appreciate you...

--Mary K

¸..· ´¨¨)) -:¦:-
¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-
-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!

Become a Blogger

One of my favorite bloggers Yaro Starak has made a series of videos to help new bloggers Become a Blogger. The whole series is free and Yaro walks you through everything you need to know to set up a wordpress blog and monetize that blog.

You might be asking why do I have to have a wordpress blog when I could just get a free blog at Blogger or wordpress.

Take a sneak peek at the first of Yaro's videos and he will answer that question for you! When you go to Become a Blogger to watch the rest of the videos I encourage you to download his Blog Blueprint Profits. It's my favorite blog ebook!

Blogging ~ It's about Consistency!

Blogging is a LONG TERM marketing strategy. If you are going to choose to start a blog please understand this is your blog for life. It's kind of like adopting a dog or having a kid. There will be days you just don't want to get up and walk the dog in the freezing cold, but you have to because it's yours. There will be days/weeks when you don't want to post but you have to ~ because it's yours. And being CONSISTENT is KEY with blogging.

Nothing irritates me more than finding a really interesting blog only to realize the person is not posting regularly.

Which brings me to the topic of regularly. There's some debate these days about how frequently you should be posting. Here's my opinion. Just DECIDE, based on what works for you. If you can only post 1 time a week, cool. Post 1 time a week, every single week, no matter what. Your readers will expect to hear from you once a week, don't disappoint them or they will leave you for one of the millions other blogs out there that are being posted to regularly.

I don't really think it matters how often you post as long as you maintain a consistent posting schedule. With that said, it may take you longer to get search engine ranking if you are only posting once a week. I recommend 2 or 3 times a week to post.

Posting at this frequency accomplishes a couple of things. It gives your readers new content on a regular basis. It gives the search engines new content on a regular basis. It also gives your readers a chance to bookmark, Digg, Stumble and otherwise share you posts before they get buried.

If you are concerned about such a long term undertaking and having enough to say about your topic, please stay tuned to my next post which will cover creating content. (It was meant to be this post, but I got sidetracked.) :)

Until Next Time!

Jackie Lee :)

30 Day Marketing Experiment - BLOGGING!

It's time to launch another 30 Day Experiment ~~

For the next 30 Days (or so ;-)) we're going to focus on Blogging!

Whether you feel the whole blogging movement is narcissistic, materialistic, or truly valuable, publishing a Web Log (bLog) is an activity that's here to stay in one fashion or another for a good long while!

Since this is a marketing experiment we will focus on, to borrow a phrase, taking
Blogging to the Bank!

That's the title of a very well written and truly helpful book written by Rob Benwell. Rob makes six figures just with Blogs, only working a few hours a week... which simply tells you that the guy knows what he's talking about. To get all of his tips and tricks you'll have to buy the book...

and if you stick with us for the next 30 Days you'll know how to effortlessly apply those tricks even if you've never written a blog before.

Today I just want to talk with you a bit about blogging and it's role in your overall marketing plan.

The amount of money you can make blogging depends on a variety of things including, which niches you choose, how many blogs you create, what you are promoting, etc.

Some people may only make a few hundred a week or a month... nothing to sneeze at but hardly rock star money... and others will make ten or twenty times that much.

It's like anything else... the more you're willing to put into it, the more you'll get out of it.

In fact, it's my opinion that the more passionate you are about your subject the more fun you'll have blogging... and the more fun it is for you, the more you'll get out of it... tangibly and intangibly!

What is blog marketing?
It's simply using a blog for the purpose of monetizing that traffic.

One of the biggest benefits of blogging for making money online is, of course, FREE TRAFFIC! A good blog is a traffic magnet. Getting courses like Rob's Blogging to the Bank 2.0 really can show you how to automate many of the things that get your blog in front of the people that would most appreciate it... and that, along with sharing valuable and interesting content is the whole game when it comes to blogging!

With or without Rob's course, using a blog to market a product is a lot cheaper than using a website. Mainly because of the availability of free blog services that are in many ways just as good as having a website.

Thanks to both the human and Search Engine demand for quality content, it's truly possible to make serious money from creating, promoting and maintaining blogs... as long as you understand the basics of marketing on the Internet. True... that's an ever-changing thing. And one of the beauties of blogs is that you can get up to speed quickly about new techniques by...

reading Blogs!!! ;-)

Which brings me back to that word about content... quality content.

What is quality content?
It's any content that does not exist anywhere else on the web and actually provides valuable information to the reader. Or... puts information that might be available in different places all in one spot for people...

Just remember... the more meaningful and unique the content is to your readers the more traffic you will receive as word spreads about you.

If you can keep the Search Engines and your human readers happy, you will do very well. Creating fresh and informative content regularly to your blog is relatively easy, even if you're not the biggest fan of writing.

In a day or two I'll be back to chat about picking a topic for your blog.
Until then... go read a blog or two...or three. Pick a topic you're interested in and then enter it, along with the word blog, into your favorite search engine. Have FUN!!!

--Mary K

¸..· ´¨¨)) -:¦:-
¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-
-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!

SQUIDOO ~ A Winner!

You may have noticed that it's now February 1 --

It's 10 pm in my world and I just noticed that myself! Whoops, time to turn the calendar page. ;-)

So we wrap up the Squidoo.com experiment with a big 5 STARS!

Certainly not because I made so much money from my lenses this month (though I DID make some money!! ;-)). It's earned it's stars as a successful 'experiment' because of the wealth of information, tips, tricks and tools that have been discovered in the process of exploration!

That's speaking for me... I certainly hope YOU have found something new for yourself. Whether you were already familiar with squidoo.com or it was brand new to you... I hope you've received some value from tools to various other resources as well as our walk-through of the various aspects of building a squidoo lens!

Hmmm... what will the next 30 Day Marketing Experiment cover?!?

Stay tuned...
--Mary K

¸..· ´¨¨)) -:¦:-
¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-
-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!

p.s. Happy Ground Hog's day tomorrow!!!!

Squidoo Resources

Here it is the last day of the Squidoo Marketing Experiment. I have a couple things I want to do today, in addition to my wrap up.

I have been talking to Mary K about why our lenses might not be doing as well as some of the "Squidoo Greats" like Kelly Stone, Tiffany Dow, Lewis Smile. Today I think I may have found the key. I was reading Lewis' blog and went to check out a lens he recommended. On the lens he was talking about tagging tricks. He happened to show a screen shot of his tags from google for one of his lenses. (It happened to be a lens on myspace) I have a lens on myspace that's doing ok, but not super and I wanted to see what the difference was.

Here take a the two lenses.

Mine: How to Add More Friends at Myspace
Lewis': How to Get a Million Myspace friends (1,000,000) (free download)

OK ~ I just noticed I don't even have myspace in my URL. duh. But I think the bigger difference lays in the lens itself.

You will find my lens is kind of boring by comparison. There really is different energy between the lenses. My lens has fairly large modules of text. Lewis' lens has short sweet modules, with added images and some "feature this" modules. Although by the end of the lens I felt really great and even learned a couple things.

I think this is a key point for ME. I am LONG WINDED ~ as a reader of this blog you know. People who search the internet don't come on to find 4 pages of information on any given topic. They go looking for an answer to a question or problem.

It might do me well to learn to get to the point. If you notice on Lewis' lens he asks a question in his title and url. Within his lens he uses the modules as a numbered list of answers to the question. Each of his modules is only a couple sentences long ~ with another piece of the answer to the question. This ends up providing an interesting and informative lens, but small enough pieces the person doesn't get bored and never get to the bottom.

This is really a brilliant idea and from the screen shot of his traffic it's working. I started looking around at his lenses and he employs this technique on many of his lenses.

That's going to be my last tip of the Squidoo Marketing Experiment. If you want to continue to learn about Squidoo I am going to give you some of my favorite Squidoo Blogs. I subscribe to all these RSS feeds and learn quite a bit from them.

Lewis' Blog: SquidooCool.com
Tiffany Dow's Blog: SocialMarketing101.com
Jennifer aka Pot Pie Girl's Blog: PotPieGirl.com

Those are my three favorites and I'm sure you will learn a lot from them.

So now for the wrap up. I did some good research on some new niche ideas. I set up a couple new lenses this month and they are building traffic. I have tweaked some of my old lenses and I am getting even more traffic now. I am making a sale every few days from one of my lenses which is a marked improvement.

I am still wrestling with the ideas of building lenses on what you love vs. doing research and building lenses about what other people love.

I think I have settled on doing lenses on things that interest me, but doing some research to find keywords others are looking for related to that topic. It turns into the best of both worlds.

I imagine if I am interested in something there must be other people interested in it as well. Having some interest and passion around a topic will give a better energy to the lens as I build it. People can feel whether you do something just for the money or for the love.

It never hurts to do some testing though. Build a couple lenses on topics you love, and build some you think will be big hits from your research. Watch your stats and see what happens!!

I look forward to working with you all next month with a new marketing experiment. If you have any questions regarding Squidoo, please don't hesitate to give us a shout and we'll do what we can to get your questions answered.

Jackie Lee

Some Squidoo Freebies

What a fun month it's been. I've learned a lot and hope we've given you a good start to start making money with Squidoo.

Today I thought I'd share some Squidoo Freebies with you.

First is a pdf explaining how to build your list with Squidoo. (we all know how important the all mighty list is right?)

The second is a step by step guide to making money with Squidoo.

The third is a great guide to using Ezine Articles.com to choose keywords for your Squidoo Lenses.

I hope you enjoy the freebies and learn even more than you have throughout this month. :)

Here you go ~

List Building with Squidoo

Squidoo Profits with EzineArticles.com

Squidoo Profits Plan

Enjoy!

Jackie Lee :)

Groups on Squidoo

Squidoo is more than simply a site filled with lenses...

In other words, it's actually quite a bit more than that 'encyclopedia' analogy I gave a few days ago. One of the things you won't find in an encyclopedia is a sense of community with others who also use the encyclopedia. At Squidoo.com -- you WILL!!!!

You won't find the same kind of socializing that you can experience at online communities that provide forums for people to get into conversation at. Yet the GROUPS over at Squidoo are something you want to be aware of and participate in.

After you create a lens you might consider searching for a group or groups that are on your topic and add your lens to that group. Your lens is likely to get more views, plus, if the group page is set up well it will contain related key words that can improve your lens ranking in the search engines (as well as that of all the lenses in the group).

AND...

You can start a GROUP of your own, invite your friends to create lenses for your group. Plus if a friend is a new lens-builder and makes $15... you both receive a $5 bonus! Pretty sweet!

There are plenty of groups to choose from... and new ones being created all the time so why not yours? Here are ten of the NEWEST GROUPS just to give you a small idea - I just know you'll think of something even better! ;-)

1. My travel pages by MarkBentley
2. Caribbean Travel by ZachG
3. advertising queries by ford2008
4. Biggest Coin Tower in the World...on a website! by ford2008
5. Marketing Theater - Help Sell Those Empty Seats by CharlesSeymourJr
6. Health Is Wealth by silverfox51937
7. South Pacific Everything! by pureliveliness
8. NoNAISWA by Elisheva
9. Free Tips To Lose Weight Add Comments by Kavita
10. Mister Rogers Neighborhood by JDWheeler

What's YOUR lens about?!?
--Mary K

¸..· ´¨¨)) -:¦:-
¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-
-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!

8 Great New Modules

I talked recently about all the money making modules, today I want to talk about the new get your attention modules.

What the . . ?

Squidoo has implemented some really fun modules that are designed to accent something or grab your reader's attention.

They include ~

• The talk bubble
• The sticky note
• The black box
• the polaroid
• the big arrow
• the most important thing
• the duel
• and the countdown

Sounds pretty cool huh? Like most anything there's a great lens that shows just how fun these 8 new modules can be!

Stop by and check it out, then see how you can put one in your next lens!

Until tomorrow,

Jackie Lee :)

Get More Link Love with TaggZilla

Do your lenses need more link love? Do you want more people add your lenses to social bookmarking sites, and give you some diggs?

Taggzilla's your place then. Taggzilla is a free networking community based on link love! Members join the community and then join a "group". Once you are in a group you can post links you'd like to have other group members take a look at, favorite, digg, rate ~ whatever you need them to do.

You can also specify what keywords you want them to use in links and a ton of other stuff.

There's a groups specifically for lenses. I joined. If you head over to Taggzilla look me up. My username's Jackielee and I'm on Ivan's team. I'd be glad to send some link love your way.

Taggzilla is still in Beta, and came out of the 30 Day Challenge. Although they are not connected to the 30 Day Challenge, it was members of this year's challenge who saw the benefits of forming a community such as this and put it all together.

There are tons of other features in the community, link love is just one (big) aspect. I think you'll find it beneficial to be a member. I'm looking forward to watching my traffic climb!!

Until tomorrow,

Jackie Lee :)