Profit from Your Blog Without Google Adsense
By Sujan Patel with 2 Comments
These days there are a wealth of tools at our disposal for making money online through your blog. Yet with all of these options many bloggers tend to place their focus on Google’s Adsense program alone. Although this program is profitable for many people, diversity is the key factor to experiencing increased financial gain from your marketing efforts.
The old saying -Don’t place all of your eggs in one basket†reins true with this topic. Spreading your advertising across multiple channels allows your ads to appeal to a larger audience, therefor increasing your chances for that golden click or affiliate sale. Read More
Technorati, MyBlogLog, and BlogCatalog Explained
By Sujan Patel with 1 Comment
What is Technorati?
Technorati is a search engine that functions in real-time. This means that when bloggers update their blogs Technorati automatically updates. Technorati currently tracks over 104 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media, such as video, news, movies, music and games. Read More
Top 10 SEO Plugins
By Sujan Patel with 1 Comment
Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress v2 Final
This plugin will make an XML-sitemap for your WordPress Blog. Many describe an XML-sitemap as “a Google sitemapâ€, but Yahoo and MSN also want XML sitemaps. Once your sitemap is created you want to make sure to submit it to Google. Read More
Explaining To Your Friends How To Make Money With A Blog
By Sujan Patel with 9 Comments
“But dude, how can you make money with a blog? By the way, what’s a blog? Is that some kind of Internet thing? That sounds so stupid, it’ll never work!â€
What you see above is a probably a common response from your friends and co-workers when you talk about the possibility of someday making enough money from your blog that you won’t have to report to the hellish cubicle you are enslaved in every day.
Sometimes it is hard to explain all the opportunities that a successful blogger can take advantage of to make a viable income from a blog. But when you start dropping numbers, the conversation quickly changes to “how can I do thatâ€! As soon as you tell them about the people that are pulling in several thousand dollars per month from their blogs, then the ears start to perk. It’s so fun to see that. Money gets people listening and motivated, and fast!
The first thing they ask after you go over the very basics is, “how much does it cost to start a blog?â€, and, “is it hard to maintain?â€
Your answers to those questions should be:
1. Little to no cost.
2. Not if you’re passionate about your niche.
It’s best to mention Blogger and Wordpress as their starting points, as they are both very user friendly and there are tons of tutorials and help forums for each platform. So after you get done explaining the “getting a blog started†part, and then prepare for the next barrage of questions which are the most exciting – the ones where they ask you how they can actually make money online with a blog.
Right off the bat, I refer them to the “A-Lister†blogs, which can be very motivating. The best thing to tell them to do whenever they have time, is to research the heck out of the popular blogs, to get a feel for what people want. There is so much valuable information on these blogs, that it’ll keep them busy for a few days. They’ll soon learn to appreciate the hard work, passion, and dedication it will take to make money with their blogs.
After they have their blog up and running, the first thing you should recommend is for them to create some quality posts and content (pillar articles) to sort of “jump start†the blog, and then sign up for a Google Adsense account. A good thing to explain to them is how Google Adsense is an easy entry into the advertising revenue world, and signing up can be done pretty easily in less than five minutes. As most of you know, Google Adsense is one of the most common ways to monetize a website or a blog.
One disclaimer you should always throw at them is that “this is not a get rich quick schemeâ€. You have to be passionate about your writing, and the only way to become successful and gain more traffic is to write creative, informative, interesting and unique writing. Without that, a blog is nothing. They might earn a few bucks here and there, but it won’t even be enough to buy that Mocha Latte that they get every morning at the coffee stand. If they have a decent amount of quality posts that people want to read – rinse and repeat for months on end, then someday they might be lucky enough to brag about their earnings. Making a steady income from their blog won’t happen overnight. It’s taken most successful bloggers at least a year to start bragging about anything. Once they hit that mark, and then once they hit their goals, then its time to push for more!
But it’s not easy. And it takes dedicated, hard work to get the ball rolling. You need to tell them that they’ll need to make a commitment to deliver on promises to their readers every day. Let them know that they’ll need to keep writing until they think it’s a hit, and then drive some more or they’ll quickly fall behind. Research and networking are highly important and should be part of the daily routine. The more people they know the better off they will be! Having quality backlinks from high ranking blogs and websites is one of the key aspects to their traffic and visitor success. Start small and set goals. Tell them to think of it as a game – after each success, pretend that you move to the next level. Then do it again, and again, and again….
Guest Blogging 101
By Sujan Patel with 18 Comments
So you’ve been invited to be a guest blogger on someone else’s blog? Congratulations! Guest Blogging can be a great way to gain exposure, sell yourself, network, and could get you invitations to be a guest blogger on even more blogs. Heck, some writers out there live off of guest blogging alone. To be a successful guest blogger, there are a few things that you need to bring to the table every time, and the tips listed below will give you a great head start. So before you attempt to write your first guest blogging article, check out the advice below to see if all of your bases are covered.
1. Demographics and research. Before you attempt to write for someone else, you need to find out as much about their blog as you possibly can. It’s very important to know who you’re writing for, and what range of topics you can write about. The last thing you want to do as a guest blogger is write something totally irrelevant to the blogs readership and turn people away. Go through their last fifty or so posts, and see which ones were the most popular and widely read. Be unique and write in your own voice, but don’t try and reinvent the wheel. The last thing that the blog owner wants to do is apologize to readers for off topic posts that were written in his or her absence. A good couple of hours of research should do just fine.
2. Stick to your commitment. If you were hired or invited to guest blog while the author of the blog is away for a few days or more, and he/she wants you to write at least three posts per day, then you’d better do it! Put yourself in their shoes. If you were going away and had someone lined up to post three times per day and they didn’t follow the schedule, then you would have a giant mess to clean up when you came back. If you don’t think you can commit to something like this, then you need to politely tell them up front so that they can alter their strategy before they leave. When you guest blog for someone, you are selling your reputation and the blog owner’s reputation at the same time, so you need to bring your “A-game†in every post, and follow the rules to a “Tâ€. Commitment and reliability is half the battle.
3. Readers come first! Sure, guest blogging can be a great way to expose yourself to a brand new audience, but you have to remember that the blogs readers come first in every situation! Don’t plug your latest invention/project/marketing scheme…just write good, helpful content that pertains to the audience at hand. Again, the last thing you want to do is make even one of their loyal readers mad enough to unsubscribe. Being a good guest blogger can bring many benefits to you, the blog owner, and the readers, so when you’re done guest blogging, try to make sure that when you’re done blogging that the blog is in better shape then when you found it. Make a good impression, and you’ll surely be invited to do it again, and possibly for other blogs that see your professionalism.
4. Don’t forget your own blog! While you’re putting all of the monumental effort into creating great guest posts, it behooves you to make an even bigger effort to maintain your own blog. You see, while you are on a guest blogging assignment, you will naturally attract new readers to your own blog from the blog owner’s reader pool. So when those new readers are curious enough to check out your home blog, you want to make sure that it’s up-to-date and ready to read. Since part of the guest blogging experience is selling yourself, the last thing you want to do is turn away any new readers/subscribers that you might gain over the course of your guest blogging experience. Put out some grade A content on your own blog while you’re guest blogging, and that way you’ll keep the new readers interested and coming back. Remember, be creative but be yourself. Don’t try to be someone your not, because new and old readers will see right through it, every time.
Guest blogging can be a great experience for everyone involved. Following the above tips and advice will ensure that you don’t blow it! Remember, first impressions are everything, and if you bring all of your skills and talent to the table while you guest blog, then you’ll reap the rewards for a long time to come.
