The Web Files » Blogging

Internet Marketing And Permission-Based Email Marketing

Tricia — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:15:16 +0000

When you hear the term “internet marketing“, what do you think of?

For many, that term conjures thoughts of websites or spamming or search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. For others, it’s all about graphical design, writing fancy code or even affiliate programs. All of those answers correct, but the essence of internet marketing is much simpler.

At its core, internet marketing is about these things:

* Understanding the target market to which the product/service/cause you’re marketing will appeal
* Determining exactly how your target market interacts with the internet
* Positioning your content on the internet to attract the attention of your target market
* Collecting information about your target market (also known as “leads”) for follow-up and conversion into sales
* Design of offers or incentives to induce the desired actions from your leads

Since there is insufficient space in this article to give all of these topics adequate attention, let’s focus on just one specific topic with the realm of internet marketing: Email Marketing.

My best payoff has always come by focusing on permission-based email marketing. Permission-based email marketing refers to the practice of collecting information (including email addresses) from website visitors and communicating with them via e-mail with their direct consent. The “permission” aspect of permission-based email marketing is what separates legitimate email marketers from the spammers that everyone despises.

My love of email marketing is strong for one reason: It works very well. Email marketing has been much like a never-ending goldmine: It enables us to produce income on demand simply by sending a good offer to our list. When you have thousands of loyal subscribers – as we do – and you put a strong and compatible offer in front of them, income becomes nearly automatic.

However, the key to successful email marketing is the development of a legitimate trust relationship with your subscribers. If you opt to send your subscribers a request for purchases every single day, they will likely tire of your badgering and cease reading your emails altogether.

Alternatively, if you take the time to provide good content to your readers on a regular and frequent basis, you’ll discover that your readers take all of your emails far more seriously, and as a result your emails will be opened, read and acted upon with greater frequency. Essentially, email marketing is really an exercise in trust.

Even though there are more sides to internet marketing than just email marketing (permission based), email has been the foundation that our business sits on.

What Are The Best Ways To Make Money Using A Blog?

Tricia — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:14:16 +0000

There are many ways to make money using a blog.

The flexible nature of a blog has made blogging a widely adopted favorite by many internet marketers who want to create an online income. With the growth of the internet, new concepts are continually realized; and hand in hand with these new concepts, comes fresh ways to make money using a blog.

One of the most popular ways to make money using a blog is the pay-per-click advertisement approach. Those wishing to advertise pay from every.10 to someone clicks on one of their ads time After the code is placed on your blog. it will then automatically check the content of your blog, to ensure the advertisements match your content. that The next major way

affiliate programs to make money using a blog is Affiliate programs operate. as follows you advertise someone’s product on your blog – you get to keep a good portion of the profits, and You can find affiliate products to sell. by browsing centers online affiliate with clickbank being the market leader, An alternative.

by building a list way to make money money using a blog is This refers to the process of. the email addresses of visitors to your blog gathering provides you with the opportunity. This distribute to to information packed emails them will earn their trust that Having earned their trust. you are in a position to, recommend a product can be either your own or those of an affiliate to them, which If you are looking for a way.

carefully consider to make money using a blog, methods the just mentioned Use any. these of today ways to make money using a blog start reaping the benefits, and within the week .[inserttext]

This is a guest post by Matthew Wolfe. He teaches entreprenuers how to create blogs, generate traffic, and make money with his free video tutorials at The Wordpress Classroom. You can also find out more about Matthew, as well as learn more tips and tricks at his personal blog, MatthewWolfe.com.

Monetize Your Blog the Right Way

Tricia — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:21:19 +0000

When most people think of what it means to make money blogging, two words seem to come up almost automatically: “instant cash”. And yet blogging for money isn’t your ticket to quick wealth as it’s often made out to be. The truth is that today’s highest-earning bloggers weren’t even SEO specialists. Instead, they had a great product, a promising idea for a blog topic, and the industriousness to stick to the effort over the years.

One of the first things that you have to do as a professional blogger is to get ready for all the work that lies ahead of you. Keep in mind that your blog won’t be the only one of its kind that’s already up and running, which means that competition for reader’s attention is much stiffer now. Like every other business enterprise, blogging won’t give you a lot of revenue at the start! A blog needs to be paid a lot of attention to, especially during its first year or so. If you already spend most of your day in your full-time job, you have to be prepared to devote around 4 more hours of your time just to maintain and update your site.

Despite these challenges, professional blogging can prove to be very fulfilling once your site has gained a foothold in its own niche and readership base. After all, it’s one thing to write about what makes you tick; it’s another thing to do that and get paid for your efforts! Before you put up your blog, however, read up on these golden rules that will help you monetize your blog. Follow these principles, and you’ll find that blogging for money can be as enjoyable as it is profitable:

1. Decide on a niche to specialize in, and plan out your blog accordingly:

Will you be writing about sports? Or will you be running a steady stream of political commentary on your site? Are you considering putting up restaurant reviews? Whatever subject you choose to specialize in, the other elements of your blog should match it quite well. Choose a blog template, for example, that matches your overall theme, and keep your blog posts within the bounds of your chosen niche.

You can afford to create an off-topic blog post every so often, but if you want to gain your readers’ trust and establish yourself as an expert, it’s better to be consistent with your blog entries. If you’re dealing with technology, for example, it wouldn’t exactly serve you well to start talking about relationships or how your visit to the dentist was unsatisfactory.

Most importantly, however, you should choose a topic that you will actually love researching and writing about. It’s hard to fake enthusiasm for a topic that you don’t actually care much about, and it’s a tactic that usually backfires. Don’t start a blog on technology just because it’s a popular subject.

Instead, choose a niche that you feel strongly about, whether it’s food, politics, religion, photography, or even something as esoteric as zoology.

Remember, a good blog is one that’s written with obvious zeal and passion, and dealing with a topic you love ensures that you won’t get sick of writing about it year after year.

2. Update frequently:

Updating your blog regularly can make a big difference in the volume of traffic that your blog receives. Because site traffic usually translates into revenue, you have to ensure that readers are visiting your blog frequently. Encourage them to visit by updating your content as regularly as you can. People don’t want to return to a blog only to find a post that they’d already read before! Make your readers’ visits worth their time by providing them with new content as often as possible.

Frequent updating also ensures that Google and other search engines index your site frequently, making your blog more visible and accessible to others. If you don’t want your blog to fall into obscurity, you have to work at giving your readers a lot of fresh entries.

3. Take advantage of ad networks and affiliate programs:

Once you’ve got your blog up and running, you can look into more direct ways of earning money from your site. A good way to jumpstart this is by signing up for Google Adsense, which rewards you for each click that an advertising link receives from your site.

You can also sign up for an affiliate program such as Amazon.com Associates, Clickbank, or Azoogle. When you become an affiliate partner, you have to put up appropriate links to your blog that direct your readers to a product offer. The affiliate program will then pay you for each visitor from your site who makes a purchase or signs up for a service.

Whether or not you like it, blogging for money will always involve some form of advertising in your blog. Remember, however, that the volume of traffic your site receives will affect the number of clicks that your ad links will receive. No matter how great your affiliate program is, it won’t produce a lot of revenue if your blog doesn’t have a lot of visitors.

4. Write quality posts:

No matter how frequently you update your site, and no matter how many ad networks you’re part of, you can’t earn any long-term revenue unless you offer your readers a lot of quality, credible content. Nobody wants to read something that’s poorly or shabbily written, so do your best to write as well and as accurately as you can.

When your readers realize that they can rely on you to give them solid advice and credible information regarding your niche, they’re bound to return to your blog, as well as create backlinks to your site that will boost your search engine ranking. The moment that your readers see that you’re an expert whgo can share valuable knowledge and information, they’re bound to become loyal visitors who can boost your traffic and create revenue for you.

Although there are different ways through which people make money blogging, the best tactic is still to provide quality content to your readers. After all, your visitors aren’t frequenting your site just to marvel at your blog template! Nonetheless, it’s also important to come up with a blog theme that works well with the niche you’re dealing with, as well as to use advertising networks and affiliate programs wisely. Once you’ve gotten the hang of it, you’re sure to be blogging your way towards a real and sustainable profit!

Make Blogging Part of Your Search Engine Marketing Plan

Tricia — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 21:52:16 +0000

Businesses are beginning to realize that a website isn’t enough to make a powerful online presence. Marketers have started to include blogging as a vital part of their online search engine optimisation and marketing mix. Surpringly there are still many businesses out there that have no idea how blogs can help them.

They simply came up with a blog, not knowing how to make it work to their favor. Blogs are highly versatile tools that are capable of executing the different aspects of marketing—from the basic market researches down to creative guerrilla marketing, blogs offer businesses a lot of breakthrough opportunities.

Below are 5 of the most practical ways in which a blog can help your online business.

1. Writing blogs can create stronger links with your target market
Your brands gets a personality or at least its easier to get one when you publish a blog. Your blog allows people to directly interact with your brand, and they expect some sort of reply or acknowledgement that someone in your company has received and read their messages.

Maintaining this feedback loop allows you to keep an eye on your market and gives you a better conversion rate of prospects to loyal clients.

2. Blogs attract fresh insights and inform you of new category trends
Keeping communication lines open for your blog visitors, you will undoubtably gain fresh insights and new suggestions. The beauty of this is that you don’t need to pay anyone to talk to the consumers for you, but you still get the information straight from the primary source.

Organize the information you have gathered and make them work to your advantage, only you can do that. Go one step further by cross checking your data. Visit your comptitors blogs and see what their visitors have to say about them. Doing so would definitely give you a better view of your marketplace.

3. Blogs allow you to test your market before a full launch
Before fully launching an ad or any creative promo and campaign, you can execute a mini version of your plan through your blog and see how your audience responds. Suggestions and comments will pour in, giving you ideas on how you can improve and tweak it to better suit your market.

Companies spend a lot of money conducting FGDs and researches. These end up costing as much as—sometimes more than—a full-blown campaign. While blogs cannot replicate the accuracy of professional research groups, they can work well for a lot of market-driven studies.

4. Blogs allow you increased exposure online
The blog network survives on a complex link network. Bloggers are usually fine with linking fellow bloggers that they find interesting. It pays to befriend top-ranking blogs in your category and those that belong in other related categories.

Updated and regualr content ensures a high credibility rating.

5. Blogs allow you more room for creativity
Your blog can be the fun alter-ego of your corporate website. While this doesn’t mean a complete dissent from your brand’s identity, blogs allow you to close the gap between how you define your brand and how your market perceives your brand.

Make Money Online With Google Adsense

Tricia — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:30 +0000

Why wouldn’t you wonder how to start blogging for money. Learning how to really make money using Google Adsense is the first form of online income you must champion. And in reality, the odds are that you have seen screen shots or pictures of people holding up huge checks from Google and have considered are they not telling you something and if not, how can you be just as prosperous. You could even be looking for a way for your current website to do even better.

It’s OK if you have a specific reason for wanting to understand how to make money online with blogs. The fact of the matter is that you would like to make money and do so using the web. Please understand, you have a lot to know and will need to be patient. And know that to make money online you will need to become acquainted with all the tricks and services of the gurus.

The real secret to learning and knowing real ways to make money online blogging is to buy into educational resources that will teach you the true system. Of course, you can always still comprehend how to make money with Adsense, but you still want to keep yourself rounded.

A good method can handle all of the needs. The essential pieces are: keywords, competition, management, potential revenue, and more. You can even sell your method for money if it is good enough. Don’t waste your time with online seminars and spam emails. Be careful, take my word for it.

At the end of the day you need to do whatever you can to stay alive in the tough world of online business. Be happy with yourself for taking the time to comprehend something most do not. Now get out there and make some money! It doesn’t take anything more than a some dedication and open minded experimenting to succeed in this game.

5 Blogging Plugins You Must Use

Tricia — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 04:23:14 +0000

Wordpress plugins can make your blog more useful and friendly for your visitors. You’ll find everything you need to turn your blog into something that is every bit as great as you would have imagined. There are a lot of blog plugins out there are that are good to use, the five that are listed here are at the top of the list.

Akismet

This plugin actually comes standard with your Wordpress installation. You need to get a Wordpress.com API key to activate it, but after that it’s really simple. It virtually eliminates spam commenting! Akismet is smart enough to put suspected spam into a separate folder, and it even learns from you as you go. Always activate this plugin for the best results with your blog. It saves you a lot of time also!

Related Posts

Linking to different pages in your blog from every page is a great search engine optimization tactic. The problem with blogs is that it can be so hard to dig through old posts that are related and manually link them in your new post. Related posts solves that problem! It will automatically insert some relevant posts for your blog. It’s very hands-off and very effective. Both visitors and search engines love this plugin.

All in One SEO Pack

Once again, optimizing your site for the search engines is going to be one of the best ways you can make money with your blog. The higher rankings you achieve, the more traffic your blog recieves. The more traffic your site recieves the more income your site will make! The All In One SEO pack will make things easier because with it you can specify tite, description and keywords.

Wordpress Database Backup

Backing up your blog is crucial if you value your business. There is always a risk that something could happen to your web server, it could be strike a blow if your lost your data. This plugin allows you to easily back everything up by pressing a few simple buttons.

Top Commentators

This plugin is really cool and it encourages a lot of interaction on your blog. It lists the people who have the most comments within your blog. People who comment on your blog really like this because they gain extra exposure. You are happy about it because people will really get into posting to be the one at the top. It also gives social proof. First time visitors to your blog will be more likely to stay awhile if they see other people valueing the sites content. The fact that they can see others participating is a great thing.

There are an incredible number of different plugins out there that are ready for you to use. Install these essentials and you’ll be well-prepared to become the great blogger you’re going to become.

For more blogging tips and information on how to make money with your blog check out http://www.profit-from-blogging.com

How to convert your keywords into higher affiliate sales…

Tricia — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 07:09:53 +0000

You already know that the affiliate with the most clicks gets higher sales, the question is how can you too get more clicks and higher sales.

The answer is simple: turn your blog keywords into affiliate links. With this cool tool you can actually not only do that, but also hide your links [protect yourself from thieves] and even display keyword-rich links at random through your blog post [this feature is truly powerful].

I’ve been using this amazing Wordpress plugin on several of my blogs for months now – take a look through some of the posts on this site and you find several customized affiliate links. I’ve had an over 200% increase in my affiliate commissions since I began using this fantastic tool!

Check it out yourself at:

MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate

Oh and this plugin – Ninja Affiliate is on SALE! You can get $30 off the regular price if you buy before Midnight on Friday August 21st!

Blogging Income

Tricia — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:05:16 +0000

As numerous internet users are evidently conscious of, the internet not only provides a platform to view a wide variety of information on a huge amount of topics, but it also presents for many people the chance to not only make a little money but in point of fact to earn a sufficient amount to earn a living from the internet. Online enterpreneurs will find that there are many ways in which to earn an online living, activities such as selling on eBay, joining affiliate marketing programs and selling resell rights products to mention just a few of the more popular ones. In addition to those however, what about blogging?

Today’s popular online blogging sites such as WordPress and Blogger are now a major tool for discerning Internet entrepreneurs to make online money quickly. Even though there has been some criticism of the “blogosphere” – as certain people will insist on calling it – for being a platform for a whole world of moaning teenagers, quite simply the truth of the matter is that not only are a vast number of blogs a more reliable and informative news source than the more conventional mass media, they also present the developing businessperson with a way to get money coming through the door quickly. All it calls for is a bit of thought, an idea and the motivation to make it happen.

In short, you can run it one of two ways. You can build your blog whichever way you choose, for instance as an information source on a particular topic or as an entertainment site that online surfers will visit regularly for their own enjoyment and for the free information value that it affords. A blog with a positive reputation can attract advertisers, just as any newspaper or magazine can. If your blog achieves a reputation for providing something that a large number of visitors read, potential advertisers may possibly approach you, or you can approach them instead proposing a not-to-be-missed opportunity to obtain their product advertising space in a place where people are quite likely to look. This may be sufficient for an individual to live on, although this is not going to happen straightaway.

As an alternative you can use the blog as a way of promoting a more conventional business. Blogs are not at all difficult to navigate around and in fact are also very easy to update with fresh information when you see the need arise. Therefore it is not vital to have a great deal of technical internet knowledge to keep a blog up and running, and also to use it as a way of bringing customers through the door. And then all you will be required to do is provide something your visitors will be prepared to buy – and that can be just about nearly anything. You will be able to do your own research on what you feel is a saleable product. As an introduction let’s say, you can start out with an affiliate program to advertise something that appeals to you – for example, DVD’s or CD’s of your favourite performing artists, home improvement products, information books, self-help products, collectible items and so forth.

If you want to discover more about blogs and blogging then you should really visit this site. Take a look around the site, it will provide you with plenty of information and ideas. Happy Blogging!!

Why Your Blog is Not Making Money

Tricia — Fri, 29 May 2009 02:04:16 +0000

When it comes to professional blogging, it’s hard to make sweeping generalizations, especially when it’s about the average earnings of a blogger. Some people make money blogging fairly easily, ringing up a thousand dollars in revenue in their third month alone. Some bloggers, however, don’t have as much luck, even if they felt that they did their best with their sites.

If you’ve hit a dead end as far as your blog’s earnings are concerned, there’s bound to be a combination of factors behind that. Below is a list of some fairly common reasons why a blog isn’t earning as much money as it should:

1. You’re asking for money too soon in the game:

Blogs take a long time before they can get recognition and be established as a credible source of information for a particular niche. Because of this, it’s probably going to take a while before you see any rewards from your efforts. Competition is stiff in the blogosphere, and much of the first months (or the first year!) of your blog will be spent in establishing why you’re different from the rest. Until you’ve actually made a name for yourself (and your blog), revenue will be hard to come by.

For some people, it takes only three months before the cash starts rolling in. For others, however, it can take longer than a year before any rewards seem apparent. Be patient, work hard at your blog, and your efforts will pay off sooner or later – exactly when that will happen is still a mystery.

2. Ads have taken over your blog:

You put up your blog in the hopes of getting some extra cash, and one of the first things you do is plaster your blog with Google Adsense in the hopes that your blog will be a revenue market. Smart idea? Absolutely not. When you’re first starting out, the last thing you want to do is drive away readers, which is exactly what you’ll end up doing if you cover your blog with ads at the get go. Keep advertising to the barest minimum if your blog is still new, and work on building your reputation through the quality of your blog posts.

3. You’re not updating as often as you should:

Some bloggers work under the assumption that 3 or 4 blog posts in a week is a good posting rate if they want to monetize their blogs. Unfortunately, bloggers have to work much harder than that, especially if they’re just starting out. By delivering fresh content at a regular pace, you’re giving off the message that you can be relied on to provide new and valuable information every time. Regular updates also prod Google and other major search engines to index your blog frequently, which can positively affect your search engine rankings in the long-term.

4. Money is your primary concern:
This is one of the most fundamental mistakes that bloggers commit: blogging only for the sake of money and nothing else. While it’s okay to want to make money blogging – who doesn’t? – what’s more important is for you to actually be passionate about what you’re writing and to be devoted to your blog and its progress. Bloggers who are in it only for the money tend to flood their sites with marketing gimmickry that don’t yield long term benefits. More dedicated and substantial blogs, however, are the winners in the long run.

If any of these common traps are exactly the sort you’ve fallen into, it’s not too late! Just make a few key adjustments and changes to your blogging strategy, cultivate some patience and tenacity with your blog, and the rewards will come to you in due time.

WP_Posts database crashed – HELP!

Tricia — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 21:52:37 +0000

If you see this post a few times it’s because I really need help and I’m posting it on three of my blogs – sorry for the repeat, but if you can help, please do!

I need some help fixing my husbands blog – Guitar Licks. Today when he visited the site (while I was still sleeping) the blog had error messages stating that the WP_posts database had crashed.

When you visit his site it loads with the WP theme and sidebars, but there’s error messages at the top and a “post cannot be found” message where current posts should be listed on the index page.

Some of the errors state:

ALTER TABLE wp_posts ADD FULLTEXT `yarpp_title` ( `post_title`)

ALTER TABLE wp_posts ADD FULLTEXT `yarpp_content` ( `post_content`)

So I’m assuming this error has something to do with the Yet another related post plugin that I’m using on most of my blogs. This blog is using the plugin version 2.16 and is using WP 2.62.

In the Yet another related posts plugin admin area there was a message that said:

YARPP’s “consider titles” and “consider bodies” relatedness criteria require your wp_posts table to use the MyISAM storage engine, but the table seems to be using the engine. These two options have been disabled.
To restore these features, please update your wp_posts table by executing the following SQL directive: ALTER TABLE `wp_posts` ENGINE = MyISAM; . No data will be erased by altering the table’s engine, although there are performance implications.
If, despite this check, you are sure that wp_posts is using the MyISAM engine, press this magic button:

I clicked on the “magic button” as the plugin seems to be working just fine in all of my other blogs and I ended up with even more errors!

Help!

I’ve looked at the WP database for this blog and the WP_posts table says “in use” and I can’t browse it. I also can’t use the backup plugin in Guitar licks – it’s there and functioning but just hung when I tried to do a back up.

I’ve backed up the whole database using PHPmyAdmin so I have a copy in case something goes terribley wrong. Now I just need to know how to fix it.

Should I just place a check mark on WP_posts and then click the repair function at the bottom of the structure screen in PHPmyAdmin and see if that repairs the problem?

I’m nervous about attempting to fix this as I’ve never had to try to repair a database error before. Any help would be appreciated.

The Web Files » Blogging

Internet Marketing And Permission-Based Email Marketing

Related Reading:

What Are The Best Ways To Make Money Using A Blog?

Related Reading:

Monetize Your Blog the Right Way

Related Reading:

Make Blogging Part of Your Search Engine Marketing Plan

Related Reading:

Make Money Online With Google Adsense

Related Reading:

5 Blogging Plugins You Must Use

Related Reading:

How to convert your keywords into higher affiliate sales…

Related Reading:

Blogging Income

Related Reading:

Why Your Blog is Not Making Money

Related Reading:

WP_Posts database crashed – HELP!

Related Reading: