Adsense Text or Image Ads?

When creating a new AdSense content ad, the first option presented to a publisher is if they would like only text ads, image ads, or both, text and image ads. I’m going to share a little known AdSense secret… ready?

When an image ad appears on your site, it has beat out at least two text ads at auction for a specific keyword phrase or for targeted advertising on your site. What does this mean? Well, obviously, higher CPC and, more money. Bottom line- image ads are not only good- they’re great and you want them on your site. Always opt in for “text and image ads” when creating new AdSense ads for your blog.

Getting More Visitors Through Link Building and Networking

Optimization is the first and most important step to attracting potential customers. But don’t stop there! You should increase traffic and develop links to your site in as many ways as possible. In addition to directly bringing more visitors to your website, these approaches will also increase search engine rankings by improving the assessed relevance of your site. Link building and networking are two ways to generate additional traffic.

Link Building

Building links to your site helps generate visitor traffic. In addition, the number of these links is monitored by search engines and can improve your site’s rankings. The more links detected the more relevant and active your site is assessed to be. Links can be developed in number of ways.

• Directories
There are many directories available online, often dedicated to specific industries or geographical areas.Placing links to your site on relevant directories can help
search engine visibility while increasing your website’s exposure.

• Reciprocal Links
You can increase links to your site by placing your link on another site in exchange for placing their link on your site. When using this strategy it is important for the
links to be relevant to each hosting sites’ content in some way.

• One Way Links
Finding a website willing to place your link on their site without cost or reciprocation can be difficult. However, it is worth the effort because this approach tells search engines that the hosting site places a high value on the
content and relevance of your website.

Networking
As an expert in your field you have valuable information to share. There are many avenues you can utilize to share this information thereby improving interest in your company as well your search engine ranking.

• Blogs
Sharing information on a blog is a great way to establish you and your business as experts in the field. When updated frequently, blogs help direct leads to your website as they search for the type of information relevant to your business.

• Blog Commenting and Forums
You can also share what you know on other blogs or forums related to your business and area of knowledge. You can post comments and answer questions while providing a link back to your blog or website. It is important to focus on sharing information, however, and avoid direct selling on these platforms.

Add your Blogging Tips Here

Here’s what I have so far, please add yours. Thanks!

1. Stay fresh by reading. Keep up-to-date on what is happening in your genre. I use google reader to rss subscribe to many blogs, so I always have something interesting and new to read about everyday.

2. Comment. Interact with others in your blog area. Sometimes my blogs are an expansion of an idea I started in a comment.

3. Check out your audience. Only a percentage of visitors leave comments. Get a good stats program so you can see which blog posts are the most visited. I use http://www.quantcast.com/

4. Credit your sources, and tell them about it. Drop a note to someone you have linked to or quoted in a blog entry and give them its URL. You’d be surprised at how many people then return the favor and include you on their website.

5. Gather the links you use on various topics over the course of time & repost them as a collection every now & then for people that missed them the first time.

How To Verify Technorati Claim Token

When submitting your site to Technorati you must go through a claim token process to prove that you are the true owner of your blog. There seems to be some confusion around how exactly this is done.

After you submit your site Technorati will send you an email that will look something like this:
Thank you for submitting your blog claim on Technorati. Technorati will need to verify that you are an author of the site http://themoneybloggingguide.blogspot.com by looking for a unique code. We have just assigned the claim token 7RGZJJGU7YQA to this claim. Please visit http://technorati.com/account/ for more details.

What you must do next is create a simple post on your blog with any title (ie. "Temporary Post - Please ignore") and the body of the post containing your claim token (7RGZJJGU7YQA for example). This post will be public facing but you'll be able to remove it in a few minutes.

After that is complete follow the link http://technorati.com/account/. At that bottom of your account page click on the Check Claim button for your blog. This next page will then ask if you have already made the temporary post (which you have) so you can simply click the button at the bottom of that page to confirm. After a few minutes you should receive an email saying something like this: Thank you for submitting your blog claim on Technorati. We have successfully crawled your blog and found the claim token, and your claim is now awaiting review.

You are now all set and can delete the temporary post from your blog.

This process is a bit cumbersome and I would like to see Technorati streamline it. Having said that I would still recommend that anyone with a blog should submit it to Technorati. It is a great community to share your content and help build your viewer base.

Please feel free to comment on this post with any questions that I may have not covered here.

Top 10 Topics for your Business’s Blog

Knowing what to blog about can make all the difference when blogging for your business. While it may be easy enough to decide what to write about for a personal blog (i.e. ranting is somewhat encouraged), those same approaches may not be appropriate for your business’s blog. Always remember that your business’s blog is a vehicle for that business; as such, it can help you get your business going places, so long as you provide the right fuel.

1. Blog an event. If your business will be featured or is co-sponsoring an event, blog it. Blog about your acceptance of the invitation or sponsorship, blog about the event itself, blog what happens there, etc.

2. Ask a question. Asking a question about the way things are done or presenting a new concept and ask for opinions is a good way to encorage interaction from your readers.

3. Comment on something. Whether you comment on something in the news, another blog post, or a product development, providing your business’s take on it, relative to the industry, involves your readers in a intimate way; it helps them to feel part of a dialogue.

4. Provide information. This type of posting could take the form of a “How-to” or a list (i.e. the top 5 reasons to get a new accountant). Either way, providing useful information is always appreciated.

5. Interview someone. Not only is this a great way to build up your own connections, interviewing someone can provide you with double the traffic (your normal traffic and the traffic attributable to the interviewee).

6. Invite someone else to post. Similar to interviewing someone, you have the chance to amp up the traffic to your site and a guest blogger can put in a different perspective, maybe even one that you may not have thought of.

7. Review something. It could be one of the products you sell or one that is part of your industry, such as accountants and home tax prep software. Just be sure that you provide good and honest information.

8. Answer questions. Businesses will frequently receive emails, Facebook comments, and the like that ask a question about a product or service. Instead of simply replying to the individual, make a post about it. Other people likely have the same question.

9. Talk about your industry. Be it ways the industry could be improved, the legal considerations regarding your industry, or simply an initiative that is gaining ground, you have an opportunity to position your business as an authority in its industry by critiquing it.

10. Write about your experience. As a professional in your industry, you have a plethora of knowledge about what the day is like (i.e. time management) and what makes it easier (i.e. technology). For example, just because your business is engineering, it does not mean that your readers may not be interested in reading about why a smartphone is instrumental to your success.

Get Targeted Traffic Using Facebook

Since Facebook is the biggest and the most popular social networking site nowadays, a lot of online businesses are seeing the potential of Facebook as an online marketing tool and in bringing targeted traffic to web sites.

For online businesses the best way to market their products to people of course is by promoting it online. Internet marketing is the easiest and most effective way to reach millions of people worldwide without spending thousands of dollars in marketing. So as much as possible Internet marketers and business owners eagerly find a site that is visited by millions of people everyday to promote their business. In this way there is a bigger chance to create great traffic to their business’ web site and if this happens, more sales will be made. Business owners can use all the numerous marketing tools Facebook provides, such as your profile, messages, friends, applications, news feeds, groups, market place, networks, events, pages, socials ads, beacon, polls, Facebook platform ad networks, Facebook applications and sponsored groups.

Ready, Set...Blog!

In the time it’s taken you to read this post, you could have set up a blog and published three 300-word posts already. It’s easy, it’s fun, and if you play your cards right, it could make you some money. Not just because you can put ads up or sell products using a blog (though you can do both of those things), but because a blog gives potential employers, clients, and customers a way to find out more about you and to build a relationship with you or your company that’s more human (and humanizing) that the simple exchange of dollars for products. Whatever your line of business, you or your company will be looked up on the Web, and if they don’t find your site, they’ll find other people’s sites about you — or nothing at all. Much better, I think, to take control of your online self, and a blog is an easy and cheap way to get started.

10 Things Every New Blogger Should Know Before Blogging!

I thought I’d add my own top 10 things you need to know before you blog.

* Everyone has an opinion – make yours count with facts, references, and validity.

* Content, content, content, content, links, content, links, content, content, content, content.

* Be prepared for time spent 70% blogging and 30% maintenance and updating, though at first it might be 40% blogging and 60% maintenance until you get the knack.

* Reach out to more than just friends and relatives. Speak to the world, or at least a larger audience.

* Want to be found and noticed – think SEO and keywords.

* Spell check. Spell check. Spell check. Grammar check. Spell check.

* Write in complete sentences.

* Don’t assume.

* Don’t read minds or assume others are reading yours.

* Be gracious and thank those who contribute and help you blog.

Getting Backlinks with Blogs in Search Engines

Blogs or web blogs are the most powerful online tools that any entrepreneur can use to build up backlinks pointing to their sites. Blogs are very valuable online tools for helping any webmaster quickly build up their traffic and back links. And what is more, for a writer, blogs can be used in many different ways to accomplish this feat.

Link Bait Articles and Blogs

Creating a link bait article on your blog is one of the effective techniques to use in blogging. It provokes other links to it. You need to be focused on what you want to achieve in order to succeed for there are various techniques and the worst mistake you can make is to try and combine several of them instead of selecting one.

It is the most common technique to target the most popular blogger for a well orchestrated campaign. Contradicting them on a certain controversial issue, is one way to let their create a buzz around the controversy. The more people discuss the issue the more they will want to link to your article as they refer to it.

If you have access to explosive industry news that nobody else has, this is yet another way to create a link bait article or post. It will help if your news item is closely related to a hot topic of debate or discussion that is going on at the moment.

Remember that the objective here is to accumulate a high number of back links as quickly as possible pointing to your site. The effect of this will be to dramatically increase traffic to your site immediately and gradually to help improve your ranking with search engines so that you get even more traffic coming in directly from search engines.

Link to Other Blogs

Linking to other blogs is another strategy that can help a webmaster to get a back links that links to his site. It just like the golden rule that states, “in order to receive, you have to give first”. Making useful blog with plenty of informative and valuable ideas that is linked to other blogs and sites can also give you an opportunity to get a back link to your site. Other site may not link back to your site but if you will just continue with this practice, you can get a huge amount of back links pointing to your site.

Most Popular Options to Monetize a Blog

1) Adsense. After you join and are approved by the program you will need to place some ads on your website. Adsense will pay you a commission each time one of your visitors clicks the ads.

2) Sell advertising. Instead of using adsense you might want to sell advertising by yourself and avoid the middleman commissions. This is a great options for high traffic blogs.

3) Affiliate programs. By using affiliate programs like clickbank and amazon you will be able to earn money from sales of products made from your blog. You just need to join one of these programs, choose the products you want to sell on your blog and place the banners they will give you on your site.

4) Sell your own products. Instead of using affiliate programs and selling someone else’s products you can create, develop and sell your own products. Obviously the product must be relevant to the site.

5) Donations. If your site offers great and very usefull information you might ask for donations.

6) Premium sections. You can also charge your users to get access to premium sections. These special sections should contain good quality resources and information, a download area, ebooks, tutorials, whatever…

7) eBay. If you have an eBay store, you can also promote it on your blog and make more money with it.

5 Steps to Follow to Start Earning Money from Blogging

Probably the most profitable way to earn money online is to create a blog.
Even if you don’t have the money to pay for the hosting and domain, you can use one of the many free option available on the internet, like wordpress.com and blogger.com

These are the steps you need to follow to start earning money from blogging.

1) Choose the niche. You might want to blog about something you are passionate about or chose a very profitable niche like technology for instance.

2) Create the blog. You can use a free blog network like wordpress or blogger, or buy the domain and hosting, there are many cheap hosting and domain providers like godaddy.com

3) Create the content. Obviously you need to add some content to your blog before you try to monetize it.

4) Promote your blog. For starters the best way is to use a free method like link building and offsite seo.

5) Monetize.

The "Blogging" Definition

So, I pulled up Wikipedia (this should help me understand the definition of blogging clearly enough).

The second sentence in Wikipedia (which seems to sum it up nicely) is: “Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.“

That seems to sum it up.

A simple way to define blogging is to say that it is usually done by an individual who posts regular updates (this is something I need to stay on top of). As stated by Wikipedia, the updates can be anything (depending on the topic of the blog) … sports scores, news, politics, electronics, stock updates and in this case, making money through blogging.

To define blogging is simple, as you can see with the quote from Wikipedia. To master blogging is a whole another story. I am constantly on the path (possibly just like you) of discovering how to blog better.

If you are on the same path, lets take it together.

How?

For starters, leave me a comment introducing yourself. Maybe give me your story (condensed, if you like). I’d love to meet other bloggers not only to share what I know; but to continue my blogging education.

DoFollow Blog Commenting

Building links can be one of the toughest things for a new person to learn how to do. Fortunately, there are free ways to do it. Commenting on other blogs is one of the best ways to get traffic to your site. Besides the fact that you may get a few people from the blog you comment on, the most important part is improving your ranking in Google.

One of the things people think when they are just starting out is that they can get links from anywhere, and they all are the same. This is not true. Google looks at which links have the nofollow attribute on them and discounts these from passing on value. Most of the time you will find that a lot of the blogs you comment on are nofollow blogs. The best way to identify whether the blog is a dofollow or not is to simply download and install a plugin for Firefox called the NoDoFollow extension. It will highlight them both with different colors to easily identify them.

The key is not to leave spammy looking comments, but to really participate in what the blog post is about with a useful comment. It is more likely that when you leave legitimate comments that they will be approved by the blog owner. Look for blogs that have high PR as well as age. This helps to improve the strength and provide authority to your site.

Also important is using the keywords in the name of your comment whenever possible. Anchor text links are the most important factor in the Google ranking algorithm.

Blogs Are Not Like Television

Television networks produce entertainment. They either make money from advertising or, for premium cable channels, from subscriptions.

If you want to watch Lost, you have to watch ads. Tivo dented that model considerably, but it still works well enough for now.

Advertising can work on some content web sites, but it usually works best when the reader is coming to the site to figure out a solution to a problem. If an ad presents a relevant solution to that problem, the ad can be effective.

For a complex bunch of reasons, advertising isn’t especially effective on most blogs. Unless there’s a terrific message-to-market match, ads on blogs tend to under perform wildly.

Blogging Lifestyle

Perhaps the best part of generating income from blogging is the freedom it brings. I work from home and set my own hours. I write whenever I’m inspired to write (which for me is quite often). Plus I get to spend my time doing what I love most — working on personal growth and helping others do the same. There’s nothing I’d rather do than this.

Perhaps it’s true that 99 out of 100 people can’t make a decent living from blogging yet. But maybe you’re among the 1 in 100 who can.

Top 5 Reasons Why Should You Start Blogging

Blogging is becoming an internet phenomenon. There are thousands of reasons associated why people do blogging. It may be personal, promotional or business-oriented reasons. Have you already joined the blogosphere world? If not yet, you may consider looking at these top 5 reasons to start your own blog:

1. To express your thoughts and opinions – blogs are a great way to express yourself.

2. To Build Network with Like-Minded People – blogging connects people with the same interests through sharing of thoughts and opinions.

3. To Promote Your Stuff – blogging is an excellent way to market whatever products, services or business you have.

4. To Make Money – many bloggers bring in big bucks through blogging. With the right methods of advertising and income generating activities as well as consistency and patience, for sure, blogging will give you much comfort.

5. To help others – there are blogs that offers tutorials, guides, advices and other helpful assistance.

The Real Value of Blogging: Relationship

Blogging gives you the opportunity to reach millions of people. The potential audience out there is huge. Fairly enough, blogging is not just writing on what you want to write, but also building a strong connection between you and your readers.

Sometimes, we get so busy with our blogging passion that we hardly forget to pamper our relationship with our readers. I know, it takes time to connect and build trust, but it really pays off in the end. As you begin to attract visitors, your relationships with your readers will determine your blog's future success. If these relationships are positive, the news of your blog will spread through the most powerful means available - "word of mouth" advertising. Having a friend tell you, "Hey, this blog is great... I read it every day, and you should go check it out too" is far more effective than any banner, Pay Per Click (PPC) ad, or inbound link.

So turn your blog into a relationship hub. You’ll see, it will make a big difference!