• Blogging
  • Technology News
  • How To
  • Webmaster Tips

The Web Files

Web site promotion and marketing info, Helpful Tips, Latest Gadgets, News and Webdesign Services

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Archives
  • Links
  • About
  • Contact

You are here: Home / 2009 / Archives for December 2009

Archives for December 2009

Monetize Your Blog the Right Way

December 13, 2009 by Tricia

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 who 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!




Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: blogging for money, make money blogging, Wordpress, WordPress blog, Wordpress Plugins, wordpress theme

10 Squidoo Tips to Enhance Internet Marketing

December 13, 2009 by Tricia

You’re asking why Squidoo? Well, since they launched the site has been an absolute Internet marketing phenomena.

Squidoo is a favorite of Google and it’s absolutely free!

It is still one of the easiest ways to get to the top of the rankings for a long tail keyword quickly and with the minimum of effort. However, it is a good idea to do a little more than just put a page up, so here are my top 10 Squidoo Marketing Tips:

1. Always create your Squidoo page with the keyword as your title.

2. Make sure your content is keyword focused, aside from having good website design. It is a good idea to keep adding fresh content on a regular basis. (But as always, be cognizant of your return on the time invested. It is no good spending hours dominating the search engines for a phase like ‘left handed basket weaving’. Sure you’ll be number 1, however, I’m sure no one would care.

3. The higher your ranking in your Squidoo category the higher you will rank in Google.. (That same principle is being used by Google more and more, for example, videos have to become popular FIRST before being ranked in Google).

4. When you submit articles to the directories, always make sure one of the hyperlinks in your resource box your SQuidoo URL, hyper linked with your targeted keyword.

5. We’ll be talking a lot about Social Bookmarking in the weeks to come, but don’t forget to social bookmark your Squidoo lens too! bumpzee is a great place to start..

6. Always think of your Squidoo lens as another one of your web-sites. So, for example, if you are using any other marketing technique, such as classified ads or forum posting, then don’t forget to include your Squidoo lens as one of the targets.

7. Study squidoo FAQs. You are going to find out just how to tweak the engine under the bonnet. For example, You can check about their Lens Ranks automated algorithm they use to rank the lenses. They look at community ratings, lensmaster reputation, click through rates, frequency of updates, inbound and outbound links, revenue generated, and lots of other factors and give the lens a number.

8. Jump over to the home page of squidoo. Study Squidoo marketing strategy to your heart’s content. Always check out the forums.

9. And while you’re there, make a comment (or six) and add your link to your signature.

10. You might have gathered by now that Squidooing is a whole science by itself. There are people who make a living, just by Squidooing..

Finally you often find the best marketing tips on how to promote a site on the site itself (after all, they have a vested interest).

Here are some advice Squidoo give themselves:

{Email it. To your friends, your mom, your boss. Don’t be shy about bragging, you deserve a little limelight! Email it to your family, friends or even your boss. Don’t be shy about bragging as you deserve a little limelight}.

Blog it. Post your lens to your blog. Try sending a note to someone you admire who runs a blog on your topic, and ask them to check out your lens. Sincere flattery gets you everywhere..

Try linking it to the lens of your Facebook page, LinkedIn and Flickr profile, eBay auctions or email signature. Create your own little traffic network and get discovered in more places. Wouldn’t you like to get found more online?

Group it! Find a Group that’s busy talking about your topic and request to join. Get friendly, get relevant, get feedback, get found. Compete. Stop by the Lens of the Day Group for inspiration from winning lenses. And if your lens is up to snuff, enter it in the contest..

Filed Under: Sales and Marketing Tagged With: internet marketing

Make Blogging Part of Your Search Engine Marketing Plan

December 13, 2009 by Tricia

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. Surprisingly 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 undoubtedly 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 competitors 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 regular 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.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: Blogging, search engine optimisation, seo spain

Connect with Us

  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Categories


Eavestrough Cleaning Toronto

Recent Posts

  • Top Social Media Automation Tools Designed For Marketers
  • Social Selling: The Right Way to Sell Through Social Media
  • When in Doubt Turn to SEO Consulting
  • Considering using Guest Bloggers
  • Can you make money blogging? Yep
  • The World Of Blogging
  • Internet Marketing And Permission-Based Email Marketing

Recent Comments

  • Locked out my own sites by Bad Behavior plugin — The Web Files on The War on Comment Spam
  • AspDotNetStorefront E-commerce shopping cart — The Web Files on What Are The Best Ways To Make Money Using A Blog?
  • I changed my do follow plugin to Lucia’s Linky Love — Tricia's Musings on I’m not against website urls – I’m against comment spam
  • diagnosing comon windows errors on It’s important to backup your data regularly
  • Parol on Social Selling: The Right Way to Sell Through Social Media

Shopping

Gifts, Gadgets, computers and More! At our Amazon store.


Site Stats





Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Archives

Blogroll

  • Eavestrough Cleaning Toronto
  • The Career Strategist

Other Sites

  • Guitar Licks
  • Odd Planet
  • Celebrity Scoop 2
  • Get WebStyle
  • Truly Odd Planet

Search our Site

Pages

  • About
  • Archives
  • Become a Guest Blogger at The WebFiles
  • Blog
  • Canadian Bloggers
  • Contact
  • Disclosure
  • Do Follow Bloggers
  • Links
  • Privacy Policy
  • Toronto Bloggers

Tags

Affiliate article articles blog Blogger Blogging Blogroll blogs business comment comments computer CPU design easy email features Google How To install instructions Internet internet marketing Keyword page rank plugin plugins posts problem resources search engine SEO sites Software tech traffic Video visitors Web web host website Wordpress Wordpress Plugin write writing

Copyright © 2025 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in