Entries Tagged 'Blogging' ↓

I thought I’d wrap things up today by giving you some quick tips you can apply right away to make money blogging:

1. Learn the lingo such as PPC, CPC, CPM, etc. As your blog gets more popular, potential advertisers will contact you, so you’ll need to know the standard jargon.

2. Monetize your RSS feed by putting ads in the RSS footers.

3. Be disciplined and treat blogging like a job and stick to a schedule. Use the auto-posting feature when you are on vacation.

4. Sell a service or your own products on your blog. There’s the potential to make more money from your blog this way because you aren’t sharing revenue with advertisers or earning only commissions as an affiliate.

If you’re just starting out as a blogger, keep focusing on writing posts every day and getting traffic. The more posts, the more traffic.

Once you’re in that position, most any monetization option will work.

And Socrates WordPress theme will be there to help you increase your blog revenue.

Header generator is one of the best things about Socrates. You need no design skills. Choose a header that matches the theme of your blog and upload your own photo if you wish. There are 160 header templates. You can endlessly customize your header with just a few clicks.

Best of luck to you as you start making money from blogging.

As you wait for your blog traffic to grow to the point where ad revenue will be profitable, you might want to consider adding a few affiliate products to your blog.

You can make a quick $25 here and there by promoting an ebook or other affiliate product.

There are several affiliate networks to choose from:

Commission Junction, LinkShare, AdBrite, Chikita, Google Affiliate Network, Kontera, ClickBank, and Amazon.

In time, you’ll find that marketers will approach you to ask you to consider promoting their product as an affiliate. Sometimes these products will be a perfect fit for your blog.

You can place ads for these in the sidebar of your blog.

I also recommend including links to products in your blog posts in a way that is natural.

For example, if you are writing about a book you just read, include an Amazon link that has your Amazon affiliate ID in it so you can earn a commission on any sales.

Socrates WordPress theme makes it easy to add affiliate products to your blog.

It has many other features to quickly optimize your blog for niche marketing.

The great thing about affiliate revenue is that you won’t have any of the hassle of customer service, product creation, etc. You just put up the ad and collect your commissions.

Be sure to pick products that relate closely to your blog topic so that you don’t put off your readers.

Socrates theme will blend your affiliate products seamlessly into your blog.

Socrates is one of the most flexible WordPress themes out there and has 6 different color schemes and everything you need for SEO.

After my last email a reader asked, “How much traffic do I need before I start making $50-100 per day with ads on my blog?”

That’s an excellent question.

It depends on your niche, of course, but generally speaking you will need more than 1000 page views a day before you will make $50-100 per day through ad revenue.

The best way to get that many page views is to write a lot of blog posts.

Take a look at your current traffic. Let’s say you have 1000 page views per month right now with 25 blog posts.

You’ll need 30 times more page views than that to get to 1000 views per day.

Does that mean you’ll need 30 times more posts than you do now? That would mean more than 600 posts!

I know that sounds overwhelming.

If you write one post a day, you’ll be there in two years.

There are 4 ways to shorten this time frame.

1. Look at your most popular posts and write others that are similar to that.
2. Try to get the attention of a prominent blogger. If a high profile blogger links to your blog, the flood of traffic will be enormous, as will the increased page views and number of subscribers.
3. Hold a contest on your blog. If the prize is substantial enough, and you promote the contest well enough, you’ll get many more subscribers and page views.
4. Increase your number of subscribers by creating a subscribe page on your blog that explains how people can sign up for your RSS feed via feed reader or email. Regularly remind your readers to subscribe. The more subscribers you have, the more they will make return visits to your blog and increase your page views.

All of this will be much easier if you use the Socrates Theme:

Give it a try for 60 days. If you don’t like, it you’ll get your money back.

Let me know how it goes as you work your way toward getting $50-100 (and more) per day with your blog.

This topic is known to turn people quake with fear.

Ad writing? Isn’t that for pros who get paid big bucks to create clever ideas?

Nonsense. This is not about fancy splays in Better Homes and Garden Magazine.

We’re talking more about short ads—roughly 10 words or less if you use Google adwords. Ads are an effective way to bring traffic to your site—so I strongly encourage it.

You don’t want to rely exclusively on ads to promote your blog, mind you. You’ll get better results promoting yourself in a variety of ways.

As far as exposure goes, however, ads are a critical part of any online marketing campaign. There’s a lot of information out there, especially at the Google adwords site, for researching appropriate keywords. So I won’t go into that part of it.

Let’s say you have your keywords and are ready to roll.

Now what?

Say you’re blogging about fly fishing.

Find out what search terms people use to find information on fly fishing.

If they’re looking for “fly fishing tips” “ethical fly fishing,” or “best fly fishing locales,” you should run ads that speak to those keywords. For example, you might run an ad with a headline that says “Fly Fishing
Dos and Don’ts.”

In the ad itself, you can include Tip 1: ethical fishing practices.

As you can see, it’s not so much about clever as it is about knowing what people are looking for.

Of course, when you attract people to your blog with well-targeted ads, you want an attractive, professional looking site.

So how do you go about doing that?

One of my favorite things about Socrates Word Press Theme is that it comes with a lifetime of free upgrades. Whenever they add some new feature—which they do regularly—you are privy to it.

That includes new background designs and custom style options. Plus training videos on all aspects of blogging and Internet marketing.

If I have one complaint about hot blogging trends it’s this:  Many bloggers talk about the same thing other bloggers do. Once a  blog concept takes off and becomes popular—others hope to cash in by doing the exact same thing.

The concept becomes saturated and loses its luster.  Things get stale in bloggo world until the next big idea comes along.

Then the same thing happens all over again.

**Yawn**

Well, let’s face it…it’s not easy to come up with spanking new ideas. Especially when we don’t know how well they’ll be received.

So what to do?

In my last email I talked about blogging about  what you know and have passion for.

That’s a good start—and it’s miles ahead of being a copycat blogger.

But what then?

How do you take it to the next level—for example, branch out and create additional blogs?

It’s simple.

Listen to your readers.   As an Internet marketer, your reader comment section is the most powerful marketing research tool you’ve got.

Once you’re up and running–nothing is as honest and spot on  as feedback from REAL people already tuned in to you.

Pay attention to what they say.  Respond to their emails.  Pose questions and ask for feedback.

They’ll tell you what they’re looking for.

Then…when you start to branch out into new topics and niches– you can analyze how well you’re doing with Google Analytics.

It’s free and user-friendly.  And it lets you take an in-depth look at how people are using your site.

It’s a great way to test out different headlines and graphics.   It also lets you know how long readers hang out on a page.

The combination of human feedback and analytics is invaluable.

Ditto for a customized blog template designed with Internet marketers in mind…

By the way, if you’re at a loss for a good domain name—or want to change to a better one– Socrates WordPress Theme has a tool that helps you find a domain name most suitable for your market