Make Money Blogging

By: Matt Bacak

 
You have created a blog and your blog is dedicated to a niche industry. Have you ever thought that the blog could make money for you? We would look here in this article, ways and means, to make money blogging. Lets first have a look at what are the prerequisites for a blog needed to make money:
1. Blog needs to be dedicated to a niche market.
2. Updated regularly.
3. Enough back links (Don't worry for it. Directory submission would be enough to begin with)
4. Good blog host or application (blogger, Xanga or typepad recommended), and
5. High quality articles or news items supported with images.
Get the above criteria in place and Hurrah... You are ready to make money blogging.
Top 5 Ways to Make Money Blogging
Lets now take a look at top 5 ways using which you could make money blogging:

1. Google Adsense	Google Adsense delivers text and image ads to the authorized websites/blogs depending on the content of the website. Small code is required to be pasted at proper locations on a webpage and Google automatically recognizes the page. Google shares the revenue it gets from the advertisers whenever a visitor clicks on these ads. Google bills advertisers on price per click basis (PPC). Advertisers are required to pay only when any visitor clicks on their ads. They bid against each other for the keywords in order to receive better placement and thus prices for each keyword differ from one another. It is better to choose keywords for your blog which pays high $ per click.
2. Amazon	Amazon Associate program is another important way to make money blogging. The Amazon Associate program gives opportunity to website/blog publishers to promote any product from its inventory by adding a predefined code to their website/blog, which, when clicked by a visitor, takes them to the relevant product page. Once the visitor buys the product, the blog owner will be compensated with a commission.
3. Blogads	You can use Blogads as an effective tool to have a better control over the advertisers in your blogs. You can analyze and compare your profits with any one of your online agencies. Blogads can be simply specified as an advertising service used for the web logs or blogs. From the total money generated by Blogads, it retains 20% of it and the remaining money is paid to you through PayPal or checks. Alternative Services: Crispads is another useful network focused on the blogs. You can put your advertisements in their blogs using Crispads. You can move through their RSS/ATOM feeds that help in generating revenues. Tagword - It is similar to Blogads. It makes you select the ads and their price. Users can place their text-based ads in the site within minutes and the ads will be displayed instantly on the website.
4. Affiliate Programs	Your affiliate programs can help you earn a lot of money for selected products and services. Lot of websites offers you to become affiliate members. These affiliate programs can provide a better reach and an in-depth exposure to the products. The commissions for the sales differ according to the quality of the product, sales and marketing strategy involved. You can gather information related to the commissions by looking into the catalogues of Link Share and Commission junctions.
5. Text Links	Text links has emerged out to be the best form of moneymaking source that you can use instead of cluttering or crowding the page with ads. You don't have to make these text links prominent within your website. This link can act as an extra value to your site and will also help to promote the rankings of other sites. In most of the cases you will find these text links placed in the bottom of the web pages. The best part of this strategy is that the publishers send and accept links as the market continues to grow.

Article Source: http://www.articlegeek.com/

13 Steps to Successful Blogging

By: Ant Onaf

Blogs can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any actual salesmen selling. In this article you will learn the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging.

1) Where to start?You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home. I don't say that because I'm the owner, but a free blog host is very rewarding for a new blog. Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to build an audience and buzz for your blog. It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service, is in the case your blog doesn't become successful you do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your "move". Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has "moved" and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to...but only when you need to!

2) NicheA niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. It does NOT matter if your topic is popular as long as there is a audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog should be successful. Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how large or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger niche market, if there are people who are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family, then you have a niche...you can even choose to build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but first you must build your blog.

3) Update Daily (nothing less)This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. Though, I am seeing a growing trend of successful blogs that are not being updated daily, but they are successful and have a stable audience who continue to visit their blog daily. Regardless, these blogs are still updated weekly with multiple entries. Until you have a steady audience you should try to update your blog everyday with at least 3 or more daily entries. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don't come to work for days or weeks...you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here...if you don't update your blog for days or weeks you'll lose visitors.

4) TrafficIt's no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. You should submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. You should submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger. You should confidently share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com or ArticleCity.com. Once submitted your articles can be picked up and published by others. The trick is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the "About the Author" passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the "About the Author" passage is included with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications across the web. The search engines is bound to find your blog in no time with that many publications and credit you a authority on the topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines. The small effort of writing a well written article is rewarding. You should try to write at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to at least 10 article syndicators.

5) Track Your Blog How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn't mean your blog isn't growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what "you" have to say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do not comment at all, but are active daily visitors.

Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com or Active Meter will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose.

6) Listen to Your AudienceWhen using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are being used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while keeping the blog legible and interesting.

7) Multiple blogsUse multiple blogging accounts (free) to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with JournalHome.com and others. The more blog accounts the better (be sure to read and adhere to the Terms of Service for each site). You can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords.

8) Short & ConciseAside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help it). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is good to be detailed and provide useful information, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that veer away from your topic. Stay keyword-focused.

9) Digital ArtTry to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much. Once a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.

10) Keep it PersonalA blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write any of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal endeavors.

11) Interact With Your VisitorsYou now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: "Monday Money Tip" or "Picture of the Week" which entices your readers to look forward to each week.

Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and then talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you should state that you "will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech airs. Comments will be appreciated".

Try your best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry about "Paris Hilton Getting Married" then it would be interesting to your readers if you had a actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring. Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will possibly come up with something useful. Your readers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they only can find at your blog.

12) Make MoneyOnce your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You should use contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising such as: BlogAds.com, Amazon.com, MammaMedia, or General Sponsored Advertising.

13) You're a ProfessionalYou're a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then check its availability. Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: Squarespace.com, WordPress.org, MovableType.org, TypePad, etc. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the blog should be a "move" announcement. The title should be "Moved" and the blog entry should state something like "I have a new home for my blog, please bookmark and follow the link: http://www.YourNewBlogDomainName.com". This way all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new blog domain. Plus, search engines can easily index and crawl your new blog, since your old blog should already be popular with the search engines.

At the level of a professional blogger you may want to team up with 1 or more other bloggers. This will create a more interesting and more powerful blog. The old saying "two heads is better than one", more authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in the blog. The idea of a team blog is to make it profitable and rewarding for all authors, while continuing to target the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors.

Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many may think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. As well, growing popularity on the web is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com - Free Website Content

Motivation from my heart. If you have ever felt like giving up....please read.

I tend to start a lot of projects and then not finish them....yes, if you were wondering, I do have A.D.H.D. I often tend to come up with amazing business ideas, and ways to reach consumers in new ways that would have customers poring into your website to get a buy of your great product. So many of these ideas go through my head a day and I scramble through them to see which ones would be of great interest to my attention to follow through with them. While many ideas are likely to fall short of "The Next Big Thing", don't be discouraged and I can't stress enough how important it is to be optimistic in your project idea.

I would like to share a quote with you that I wrote in a moment of inspiration that I believe will set a foundation in your heart of self belief, which in reality is the first step of moving forward.

"Success is not a signed piece of paper, nor something that requires

approval. Success is defined, when you feel in your heart that you have

tried your best, and are proud of the end results" - Zachary Gustafson

How To Make Selling On Craigslist Quick And Profitable

In order to make selling on Craigslist a successful, smooth, easy and beneficial experience you need to understand certain concepts which make Craigslist such a good place to do business. Craigslist allows users to create their own ads and publish them for free. Whether you have a car that you wish to sell or an electronic item in your house or a home appliance in your kitchen, you can very easily expose yourself to those individuals who are looking for what you have to sell.

This in turn gives the users a chance to compete so that they can make a little money in the process. However you must understand that selling something in the real world is equally a challenge on the internet. Many people are not able to sell anything - even for a year. It is not a get rich quick idea if that's what you are thinking! You need to be a professional and use a systematic approach towards selling. The following are a few things that you should consider while selling on Craigslist to make it quick and profitable.

First is to make sure that you come up with a very good price for your product. For that you need to focus on the following things:

1. The condition of the product: The current condition of the product largely decides the price. Even though it has been used if the condition is good it can get sold very quickly. The versatility of the product also plays a very important role. If the product is too cheap and in poor condition, one would prefer buying a new one instead.

2. Quality: People often tend to mix up quality with condition. Quality of the product refers to the ability of the product to remain in working order even after some severe handling - in other words, the ability of the product to remain in good condition even after rough handling is called quality.

The second thing you should do is to clean the item. Make sure that you dust it properly and keep it as clean as possible before selling. It should look good while you are taking its picture. A picture is a must when you are selling on Craigslist. Most people would not think of buying a product if they don't know what it looks like.

The third consideration is that your product should be worth buying. Don't try to sell something that is absolutely worthless and expect to make money out of it. In other words, do not try to sell stuff that has been overly used or is in bad condition. You might lose your credibility in the process. Follow these simple tips and you should have no problem making sales on Craigslist.

By: Jeremy C. Winters

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Search Engine Optimisation Techniques That Succeed

Search engine optimisation is to method of achieving a good ranking for websites in search engine results by the selection of the most appropriate keywords for a particular niche after undertaking research for the most searched for keywords that are placed into a search engine on the Internet. Presently, search engine optimisation is essential, as the Internet is such a competitive marketplace. The competition for the best keywords and phrases is tough, as millions of websites are vying for position and have probably chosen identical ones. Therefore, understanding this issue is of fundamental importance in order to achieve high ranking on search engines and once you have mastered this, you should receive good results.

Many companies now use SEO tools in the pursuit of high rankings on search engines. Such tools are able to read the text of a particular page and find the most repeated words and phrases in its content. It is as a result of this, that they are able to discover what the page is about and the message that is being conveyed. Search engines work in precisely this way by identifying the words and phrases that repeat the most within the website’s content.

Initially, a good step to take is by the improvement of a website’s content and there are several steps that can be taken to accomplish this via SEO. The site owner needs to be fairly proficient in respect of the web page’s content. This will result in more useful content as far as Internet searches are concerned and in turn this will result in more traffic to the pages of the site. You should then begin to think about the main keywords, with them being repeated as many times as possible within the text, but without overdoing things, otherwise the page will be regarded as spam. The site needs to be well planned because if it is easy to navigate through the site, it will automatically be more usable. Good planning will give good results.

Try to ensure you have one subject for each page and that the subjects are as unique as you can make them. The page content needs to be entirely relevant to the heading you choose. Care should be taken to develop the content of the pages because this largely determines the usefulness and usability. If the content is good and does not exist on other sites, this will help greatly in terms of the site’s ranking, as well as increasing the visitors.

Links to your site are extremely important. Directories are always a good way in which to begin to build links. A commonly used method is via article writing, as this not only alerts people to the existence of your website, but provides a way of linking back to a site via links either within the article content, or within the author resource box provided by the article directory. Forums are another quick method that can be employed to pull in traffic to a site.

If you employ the tactics mentioned in this article over and over again, you will gradually be able to build up links to your site, but you have to remember that links are not achieved overnight. All of this takes time.

Expert help is often the best way forward, so try contacting an affordable website design agency, who will not only be able to set you on the right path, but provide relatively cheap web design as well.

By: Carol Forrest

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Increase Blog Traffic

It doesn't really matter if your blog is a personal blog that you do just for fun, or if you're a serious online marketer who uses their blog to make money, everyone wants to know how to increase blog traffic. That seems to be the universal question.

The good news is that just by using a blog format for your website you've already done a lot to get more targeted traffic to your blog. The search engines love fresh content and since blogs are updated far more frequently than a static site would be, the search engines view that as a content driven site and will rank it higher.

There are many other things you can do, for free, to increase the amount of traffic you get to your blog. And remember, it's not just about any traffic, it's about getting quality traffic, traffic that consists of people who are actually interested in the topic of your blog.

Here are a few of the simplest and most effective free things you can do to keep the flow of quality traffic to your blog going strong:

1. Post often. The more often you post, the more often your blog will get crawled by the search engines and you will be rewarded with a higher page rank and more free traffic. One word of warning though, as with vitamins, don't fall into thinking that if one is good 15 must be better. If you post too many times in a day, the search engines will think that your not building your site in a 'natural' way and they will penalize you for it.

A very effective rule of thumb is to post one post every single day for 21 days, I don't know why, but that 21 seems to be the magic number. After the first 21 days you can slow down to several posts a week if you want, or you can continue with one a day, it's up to you.

2. Write articles that will direct people to visit your blog. You can use the free Google keyword tool to target the types of keyword phrases people are using to find your blog, than write quality articles around that keyword, then you can submit your article for free to article directories such as EzineArticles.com.

3. Learn a little about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and start using those techniques on your blog. This will make your site stand out to the search engines. Don't worry about knowing everything there is to know about SEO, just a few basic concepts can make a huge difference.

4. Visit other blogs and leave a comment with a link back to your blog. This will not only show people that you are an expert in your field, but they will also be interested in checking out your blog and more about what you have to say, assuming of course that you leave insightful, interesting comments.

These methods are the easiest methods that will help you increase blog traffic, that you will find. Don't waste a ton of money on expensive pay per click campaigns when you can have even better results just by investing a little time.

By: Rachel D Jackson

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Free Traffic Mogul

Each and every write-up you'll ever discover about making your web page or business profitable would continually include the significance of generating traffic.

So, we all know that inside the core of it all, traffic will be the most important thing to a successful world wide web based company enterprise. Aside from ensuring that you've a fantastic item to sell, and you might have your company's internal organization well taken care of, it would be time to get to the nitty gritty of things, generating traffic.

When you already have a web page and you feel that you're not getting the visitors that you are supposed to be obtaining, then its time to reconsider. Should you be contending in very competitive companies, it is best to often be a step ahead of your competition. Growing your visitors flow need to have been completed starting yesterday.

Timing is essential, that's an old adage identified to everyone. But with generating traffic, you ought to constantly be on your toes and be a day ahead of everybody else. By no means feel of today and tomorrow as a starting point for creating your web site traffic laden, it must often have been yesterday.

To help you become a free traffic mogul here are seven surefire approaches to enhance your traffic beginning from yesterday.

1) Invest in excellent advertising with the top search engines

Google's Adwords and Yahoo's Search Advertising provide great advertising schemes which are extremely really well-liked...and if carried out properly with the proper keywords and ads will supply you with excellent visitors.

Despite the fact that, to do this surefire method to boost your traffic will price some dollars. While some would shy away from spending cash to boost traffic, it truly is imperative in this case to do so because Adwords and Yahoo are still the top methods to enhance your visitors along with the quickest.

You could see for yourself the success that these search engine advertising techniques have had for so many firms. A lot of web pages use these advertising systems and quite a few have reaped the positive aspects. Do not be left behind. Each and every penny is worth it with making use of Google and Yahoo's advertising as long as it's carried out properly and not hap hazzardly.

2) Exchange or Trade Links with other web sites

If you are performing link exchanges with other sites, both of you may benefit from the efforts both of you do to enhance your web-sites visitors. When 1 site functions one more web-sites link, they are going to supply 1 an additional with the traffic that each and every of them generate. The efforts are doubly beneficial because it would seem like both of you might be working to generate much more visitors. The much more links traded with far more sites, the far more visitors that each and every could receive. It is a win-win situation.

three) Use Viral Marketing

Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your business and item without having the out of pocket expense. This is a marketing method that will be very sneaky; you can attach your company's name, product or link to a specific media which include a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting write-up or a gossip or buzz. With this method, persons get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they are going to pass it on to a lot of people.

four) Search and use appropriate keywords or keyword phrases for your internet sites content

Search engines search for specific keywords that you have on your webpages and they show you in their outcomes page. In performing so, having the best keyword and keyword phrase is often a high requirement in ranking high in search engine outcomes. You could write your own content or you could hire a person to do it for you.

5) Write Articles that will lead traffic to your website

Submit articles to post directories that contain the very same subject that your site deals in. For those who sell vehicle parts, write press releases and articles about cars and auto parts. Attach your sites description and services at the end of the post too as the link to your internet site.

6) Join forums and form on the web communities

Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. Whenever you construct a good foundation for your web site and have great content, folks will trust you and will pass it on to a lot of people they trust. Either through e-mail, a newsletter post or their blog. Your visitors will certainly enhance, since they know that you can offer what they want.

7) Provide newsletters.

If lots of people know what you might be about and your existence is shared with lots of others, you'll uncover a loyal following of persons that trust and think in you, in the end they can offer you with more traffic by recommendation. In case you arouse the curiosity of your buyers they could be pushed to help you with your traffic.

By: Brenda Carre

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