What is RSS?

What is RSS?

RSS has become a valuable technology for everything from casual web users to webmasters. According to a recent Yahoo survey only 12% of internet users are aware of RSS and a mere 4% have knowingly used RSS. RSS exists as a means to gather and display information quickly and easily. By the end of this article, you should know what RSS is and how to use it to make your life easier.


RSS is a technology that is being used by millions of web users around the world to keep track of their favorite websites. 

In the ‘old days’ of the web to keep track of updates on a website you had to ‘bookmark’ websites in your browser and manually return to them on a regular basis to see what had been added.

The problems with bookmarking

You as the web surfer had to do all the work
It can get complicated when you are trying to track many websites at once
You miss information when you forget to check your bookmarks
You end up seeing the same information over and over again on sites that don’t update very often


RSS Changes Everything

What if you could tell a website to let you know every time that they update? In a sense, this is what RSS does for you.

RSS flips things around a little and is a technology that provides you with a method of getting relevant and up to date information sent to you for you to read in your own time. It saves you time and helps you to get the information you want quickly after it was published. 

RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. Many people describe it as a ‘news feed’ that you subscribe to. 

I find the ’subscription’ description helpful. It’s like subscribing to a magazine that is delivered to you periodically but instead of it coming in your physical mail box each month when the magazine is published it is delivered to your ‘RSS Reader’ every time your favorite website updates. 

How RSS actually technically works is probably a lesson for another day but the key today is for you to understand why it’s good and how to use it. 

Let me say right up front that I’m not the most technically savvy guy going around - but even I can use RSS. At first I found it a little strange to make the change from bookmarking to RSS but I found that when I started that I just couldn’t stop.



How to Use RSS

Get an RSS Reader - The first thing you’ll want to do if you’re getting into reading sites via RSS is to hook yourself up with an RSS Feed Reader. 

There are many feed readers going around with a variety of approaches and features - however a good place to start is with a couple of free and easy to use web based ones like Google Reader and Bloglines. Either one will do if you’re starting out (I use Google’s Reader) - as I say there are many others to choose from but to get started either of these are fairly easy to use and will help you work out the basics of RSS. 

Both of these feed readers work a little like email. As you subscribe to feeds you’ll see that unread entries from the sites you’re tracking will be marked as bold. As you click on them you’ll see the latest update and can read it right there in the feed reader. You are given the option to click through to the actual site or move onto the next unread item - marking the last one as ‘read’. 

The best way to learn how to use either Google Reader or Bloglines is to simply subscribe to some feeds and give it a go. Both have helpful help sections to get you up and running.


Over the last few years you may have noticed a lot of little buttons and widgets appearing on your favorite sites and blogs. Little orange buttons, ‘counters’ with how many ‘readers a blog has, links called RSS, XML, ATOM and many more. 

They come in all shapes and sizes. Here are a few you might have seen:

There are plenty more - but any time you see any of these buttons or anything like them it means that the site you are viewing almost certainly has a feed that you can subscribe to. In most cases it’s as simple as either copying and pasting the link associated with the button into your RSS Reader or clicking the button and following the instructions to subscribe using the feed reader of your choice.

VIDEO - RSS In Plain English

21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky

21 Techniques to Make Your Site Sticky

( This article  taken from problogger )

Does the traffic coming to your site come in a Yo-Yo like cycle of ups and downs that never really seems to go anywhere in the long run?
 

A sticky website is one where a first time reader arrives and finds it difficult to leave.

Not because the site owner captures them in a ‘RickRoll’ or a series of windows asking them if they REALLY want to leave - but because something about the site motivates them to explore it further - and more importantly to make a decision to (and takes some steps to ensure that they) return again to it.
21 Techniques to Make Your Site Sticky

The following 21 techniques are ways that you can make your blog or website more sticky. They come from my own experience of blogging over the last 5 years. As a result of basing this on personal experience I’m going to show you quite a few examples of what I’ve done (after all i know my own sites best). I’d love you to add your tips and show examples of what you’ve done in comments below to make it a more useful resource for readers.

1. Make Your Invitations to Subscribe to your blog Prominent

One of the most important things to do is to have a prominent call to action for readers coming to your blog to subscribe to it.

In fact I’d recommend having more than one invitation - one prominent one above the fold and prominent in your sidebar or navigation area and then a second one below your post. This means that people are triggered to subscribe whether they have just arrived on your blog or if they’ve just finished reading a post (a ‘pause point‘).

This is what I do on my blogs and my tracking shows that both get a fairly even number of people using the two options.

By the way - if you’re not already subscribed to ProBlogger’s RSS feed - here it is!

2. Educate Readers about Your Subscription Methods

One of the most read posts here on ProBlogger is my ‘what is RSS‘ post which I have below my Subscription link. It’s there simply to educate readers on what RSS is and in doing so sell them a way to connect with my blog. Interestingly enough - quite a few other bloggers around the web now link to the page to educate their readers too.

Similarly - I occasionally will write a post on my blogs that invites new readers to subscribe. Sometimes I think we mistakenly assume that all of our readers have been with us for a long time and all know how to use our site - however many of your newer readers might not know the full story.

Here’s one of these posts that I ran on DPS last year. The day after I did this my RSS subscribers jumped considerably. It was just a matter of educating my newer readers of the blog on how they could connect better with it. You’ll also note that at the end of the post I asked readers to let me know how they follow the blog. This was for two reasons:
Firstly I wanted to involve older readers who already knew all the information in the post. It somehow seemed to make the post more relevant for them as it invited them to participate.
Secondly it was about social proof and showing newer readers how others used the site. I think the comments section reflected some of this.

3. Good Blog Design

I’ve always believed that a good blog design is an important part of helping readers to decide whether they’re going to hang around and track with your site over the long haul.

Readers make judgements about your site within seconds of arriving at it - if they see something cluttered and confusing they’ll be less likely to want to return.

Good design highlights your content, helps people navigate your site well and creates a good impression - and first impressions matter!

Keep your design simple, familiar and obvious and you’ll be on the road to a sticky site.

PS: A common mistake that I see bloggers making is to crowd out their content with too many ads above the fold. If a reader arrives at your site and has to scroll to see the content you’ll increase the numbers of people who simply hit the ‘back’ button on their browser.

4. On Site Branding

Work hard at building a brand that is attractive and draws people in.

First time readers should know what your blog is about at a first glance. Use your blog’s title, it’s design, taglines, post titles, about pages, logo and navigational elements to communicate what your blog is about.

Also - do something to differentiate the brand of your blog. It could be a logo, image, color scheme, blog name….

5. Make Your Blog Personal

One thing that I’ve seen a number of bloggers do really well over the last year or two is brand themselves well on their blog. While it’s not essential to have a blog that is centered around your personal brand I find that when you do add a personal touch to your blog that it can connect with readers in a powerful way.

The fact is that some readers are more interested in connecting with a person than a collection of content.

Adding your photo, writing in a personal tone, using video/audio and including personal details and stories of how you engage with your topic can give your blog personality which will draw some of your readers into a relationship with you.

6. When you get a rush of traffic to one particular post….

When the spikes in traffic come along you need to be ready to act (and act fast - because they can be momentary).
Add invitations to subscribe to your feed within your post. Something along the lines of ‘enjoy this post? Get more like it by subscribing to….’ can work really well.
It can also be worthwhile adding links at the end of your post to ‘further reading’ on posts that are getting lots of reader to them.
Sometimes when you get a spike it can even be worth writing a ‘welcome’ post. For example if I get a mention in a mainstream media publication that sends significant traffic I’ll often do a post that welcomes people but also gives them a ‘tour’ of the site (example).
Another clever move is to quickly write up a followup article to the one that is getting all the traffic. For example - if this post suddenly got a burst of traffic I could quickly write a post ‘10 more ways to make your blog sticky’ and then add a link to that post at the end of this one (update: actually I wrote one called 7 more ways to make your blog sticky). This shows readers that you’ve got more to say on your topic than just one post. Every extra page view is a step closer to them subscribing (if the pages they view are good quality).

These ‘hot posts’ are really important to optimize (learn how to optimize popular posts).

7. Get Interactive

Getting someone to DO something on your blog means that they’ve invested something into your blog and increases the likelihood that they’ll return. 

Interactive blogs are often also sticky ones. Interaction could include
Comments
Competitions
Polls
Projects and Memes

As a result it’s worth spending some time Learning how to get readers to comment on your blog - and exploring other ways to make your blog more interactive. Get your readers involved as much as you can!

The other bonus for ‘giveaways’, ’special offers’ and ‘competitions’ is that when you do them regularly some readers will subscribe because they don’t want to miss out on future giveaways. The current competition might not interest them but they sure want to know when you do one in future.

8. Add a ’subscribe to comments’ feature to your blog

This draws those who comment back to continue the conversation and increases the chances of them becoming loyal readers.

You’ll find that only some readers will ever use this - but even if just a few do you’ve had a win.

I have this enabled here at ProBlogger (I don’t have it on by default - those leaving comments have to choose to subscribe because I don’t want to inundate them with comments) and at any given time there are several hundred people subscribed to comments on posts. I use this subscribe to comments plugin to run mine.

PS: just be aware that if you get a lot of unmoderated comment spam it can be a little embarrassing to have this feature - I learned the hard way.

9. Respond to Comments

This is a particularly effective way to draw readers back to your blog - particularly in the early days when you don’t have a lot of readers commenting to follow up.

There are two main ways you can do this:
respond to comments with comments
respond to comments with emails to the comment leaver

Showing those that comment on your blog that you’re interacting with them can make a real impression and will often draw them back time and time again.

10. Offer alternative ways to subscribe

Some readers will respond well to your prominent invitation to subscribe via RSS (see #1 above) but others will be more open to connecting in other ways.

I generally offer three subscription methods:
RSS
Daily email updates (RSS to Email)
Weekly newsletter (summary of the blog from the last week plus some exclusive content)

More recently I’ve also been offering readers the ability to track with my blogs via Twitter and send my latest posts to my Twitter account via TweetBurner.

Why so many options? The answer is simply that each reader has their own systems in place to consume content and connect with websites - so offering a variety of methods increases the chances that you’ll be doing something that they are familiar with.

11. Promote social media connecting points

Similarly - some of your readers will respond very well to your invitations to connect on other social media sites.

For example I have some readers on DPS who are Facebook junkies. They refuse to subscribe via RSS or email but religiously read my blog by following my Facebook profile which pulls in my latest posts.

Another small group of readers here at ProBlogger follow this blog through Technorati’s favorites feature. While I prefer to read blogs using an rss reader like Google Reader - their rhythm of reading content revolves around Technorati. As a result I’m happy that I promoted my Technorati profile (you can favorite ProBlogger here).

While you might not see the sense in people following your blog in some of these social media sites others do and at the very least promoting them can potentially reinforce your brand.

12. Highlight Your Best Content

A great way to convince readers to become loyal is to get them reading more than one of your posts (especially if they are your best posts). You can do this by linking to other posts within your content but also suggesting further reading and ‘best of’ posts around your blog.

For example - here at ProBlogger on my front page the ‘best of ProBlogger’ section is one of the most clicked upon parts of my site. This small section of the site sends people deep within the blog to some of my best work - hopefully resulting in quite a few new loyal readers.

At DPS I have a small section on my sidebar called ‘Digital Photography Tips’ which is a list of ‘sneeze pages‘ (or compilation pages of my best posts in certain categories). Again - these are there simply to draw people deep into the site and get them viewing some of the best the site has to offer (and hopefully to convince them to subscribe).

13. Create Momentum With Your Content

When you give readers a sense that you’re creating more content that they’ll want to read you give them a reason to subscribe.

For example when a reader reads the first part of a series of posts on a topic that they find useful you can count on them wanting to read the rest.

I wrote about this in a post on creating a sense of anticipation on your blog.

14. Consider Removing Dates on Old Posts

This one could be a little controversial but I find that when old posts are not dated that it doesn’t create a ‘oh this is old’ type reaction in your readers.

I’ve seen this numerous times here on ProBlogger where posts written back in 2005 have attracted comments like ‘this is old’ or ‘out of date tips’ - even when the content has been of a ‘timeless’ or evergreen nature.

Personally I think that you should consider the type of blog you have before doing this. For me it works on DPS where I’ve never had dates on posts - but not here at ProBlogger where I have a topic that is more time specific (I’ll write more on this topic in coming days).

15. Give Incentive to Subscribe

Over the last few days I’ve had a small competition going on Digital Photography School where I’m giving 3 subscribers to my newsletter there a copy of a great photography book.

1500 new subscribers later (and counting that small incentive is one of the best $50 I’ve ever spent.

Give away a book, free ebook or report, download or some other incentive to those subscribing to your blog’s feed or newsletter and you could give some readers the little extra incentive to connect that they needed.

It need not be anything expensive (or that costs you anything at all) - just make it a small bonus and see what impact that might have. 

16. Keep Posting Frequency Up

One thing that I do as a blog reader deciding whether I’ll subscribe to a blog or not is to head to the home page and see how often they’ve updated recently.

There’s nothing more frustrating as a reader than to find some great content and be hungry for more only to find that the blogger hasn’t update in 3 months.

I don’t think you need to update every day - but something in the last week shows that your blog is up to date. You can also highlight this by showing your most recent posts somewhere in your sidebar.

17. Create an Engaging About Page

Another thing that I often do when I go to a new blog is to look at it’s ‘about page‘. 

I like to know who is behind a blog, what their goals for it are, how it started and other information about what the blogger is on about. 

This is an opportunity to sell your blog to and make a connection with prospective readers who are going out of their way to find out more about you - so use it to tell your story and draw readers in to journey with you. 

PS: whatever you do - don’t let your about page be the default about page that comes with your blog.

18. Add a Community Area or Forum

One of the best things that I ever did with my photography site was to add a forum. 

I cannot express to you just how sticky that area of DPS is! 

While readers come to the blog once a day to read new content - some of them come to the forum ALL DAY - racking up literally hundreds of page views a week. 

Forums won’t attract all of your readers (I suspect they attract some personality types and not others) - but they will connect with some and help make your site a lot stickier.

19. Social Proof

Does your blog have readers already? If so (and even if it’s just a few) highlight this in any way that you can and you’ll show other first timers that they’re not the only one reading your blog. 

People attract people and a site that is obviously being read by others will draw others into it. 

This can be difficult in the early days of a blog when you don’t have a lot of activity - but as it builds show it off.

Highlight new comments, show subscriber numbers when you have them, quote readers comments, find a way to slip your stats into a post occassionally etc. 

It’s a bit of a snowball effect - once you have readers they’ll bring others in.

One thing that I occassionally do at DPS on my subscribe page (a page dedicated to talking readers through 3 subscription options) is to not only highlight the options but to tell people how many people are using them. In this way those considering subscribing get a sense that they’re actually becoming a part of something that has momentum and thousands of others joining.

20. Target Readers with Specific Messages 

Here are a few tools and plugins out there that enable you to present specific messages to certain readers coming to your blog based upon where they’ve arrived from and if they’ve been to your blog before. 
LandingSites is a WP plugin that shows readers arriving from search engines related posts on the search term that they’ve searched for. 
What Would Seth Godin Do is a plugin that welcomes new readers to your blog with a special message and invitation to subcribe.

Got any other plugins and tools for targeting readers with specific messages? Feel free to share them in comments below.

21. Sticky Content

Lastly (and most importantly in my mind) - the key to sticky sites is sticky content. 

You can have the best designed site in the world with lots of the above features - but unless readers who come to it find something that connects and brings them life in some way - you’re unlikely to get them back tomorrow.

Writing engaging content needs to be your number one Priority.
What Have I Missed?

As I wrote this list the ideas just kept coming (I originally set out to write a list of 10 points… then 20…. then I just had to slip in one more) - but I’m sure there is more to say on the topic of sticky sites.

What would you add? What have you done on your site to add stickiness? 

Looking forward to hearing your ideas in comments below.

Light or Dark Blog Backgrounds? [POLL RESULTS]

Our last poll asked readers whether they preferred light or dark backgrounds in blog design. The results were

The majority like ‘Light’ backgrounds but a fair chunk of readers think it depends upon the blog design.

Should Legal Blogs Be Monetized - If so…. How?

“Should I try to make money on my blog?” is a question I hear a lot from bloggers of many niches and while ultimately the answer will vary from blogger to blogger depending upon their own circumstances and the focus of their blog - there are some topics which present challenges when it comes to monetization.

While I don’t pretend to be an expert in the legal blogging niche I suspect that as a topic it is probably one such niche that is challenging to make money directly from.

Let me share a few disorganized thoughts that perhaps some legal bloggers (and other business bloggers as some of this is relevant to other niches) can expand upon and share their experiences of.
Indirect vs Direct Income

My initial reaction to the question above is that legal blogs are probably better suited for monetization through ‘indirect’ methods than ‘direct’ ones. You can read more on this distinction in my posts on direct and indirect monetization but essentially what I’m thinking is that using direct methods of making money from a blog (like by selling advertising) are probably not going to be as successful as indirect methods. In fact I’d probably steer clear of running ads on a legal blog at all and stick with indirect methods.

Indirect methods that may work might include:
selling your own services (consulting, legal advice, speaking, training, events etc)
writing and selling an ebook, real book or some other kind of resource
membership areas (for example if you had specialized focus that people might be willing to pay to join a community on)
classifieds/job board

Once again, I’m not overly familiar with the niche so perhaps some of the above isn’t quite on the mark and perhaps there are other more obvious indirect earners for legal blogs.
Promoting Competitors with Advertising

I did chat with one legal blogger recently who showed me his blog which he was monetizing with AdSense. While the main point of his blog was to build his profile drive business to himself as a lawyer he told me proudly that he was making reasonable money on a per click level from the AdSense ads which he was excited about - however when I viewed his blog I immediately saw ads for other lawyers and companies offering services that this blogger himself offered.

One of the problems of using AdSense as someone trying to ’sell yourself’ in some way from your blog (and in fact many other types of ads) on a blog is that to make money you are sending people away from your blog - quite often to your own competitors. For this reason I’d probably avoid advertising on a blog through a network where you didn’t have much control over who could target ads for your blog.
The Flip Side of AdSense

Of course for every recommendation there is a flipside and as I mentioned in the above example the blogger was reporting healthy earnings on a per click level with his legal blog. He specialized in a focused area of law (a particular type of personal injury) and as a result AdSense earnings were higher than for some other topics.

IF you were not blogging with the motivation of selling yourself (indirect earnings) then perhaps the AdSense thing could in fact be something to explore as you wouldn’t be sending people to competitors.
Affiliate Marketing

If developing their own product or resource to sell isn’t something that a legal blogger has time to do then there could be scope to develop an affiliate relationship with someone else who has got some kind of product. The key would be to find a product that you believed in and that was of a high quality (don’t recommend a shoddy product as it’ll impact your reputation) and then find relevant and genuine ways to promote it to your audience.
Premium Advertising/Sponsorship

The last piece of advice that comes to mind is more aimed at legal blogs who might have built up a fairly substantial readership. It involves running advertising with a limited number of high quality and non competing advertisers.

For example I was recently speaking with a blogger in another business field who had just landed a sponsorship deal to run ads on their blog for the premium conference within their niche. They were proud of the sponsorship and were confident that if anything it would enhance their blogs standing in the eyes of their readers rather than anything else.

In this way you have very limited advertising on your blog but it is of a high level (and good earning potential). It also remains relevant to the audience and topic yet not sending people to your competitors.

Personally - if I were a legal blogger I’d still stick to the indirect methods than running advertising on my blog (unless the ads were highly relevant, on topic and from a reputable advertiser) - what about you?

10 Ways to make your Blog more Attractive to Advertisers

1. Have an “Advertise with Us” Banner on your site

This is the single most important issue. It should click to an Advertising information page and have an easy way to contact you for more information and rates. Key points: Make it a graphical image or a tab. Keep it above the fold. 

2. Keep the ads on your site specific to your site

Don’t have smiley ads and wallpaper ads if your site is site is about mobile phones. 

3. Show them the banners

If you currently have no paid placements on your site, put up house ads or partner ads in the same spot you would run a paid spot. (A house ad refers to banners for other products or sites that you or your company own) 

4. Throw up a free bonus ad.

By putting a free advertisement on your site, you may not only encourage similar ads or competitors to that product, but the company you added for free may decide to advertise with you. Ask for full disclosure of the performance of the campaign in return. (Total clicks, total purchases etc. ) Key points. Put the free bonus up with a direct URL without tracking tags or affiliate tags. 

5. Show your site stats.

You need to show at least the basics for site statical information: Monthly unique visitors and total number of impressions are the 2 key ones. Other less important can be Google PR & Alexa rank. 

6. User demographic information. Know your audience. 

The bare minimum is Male/Female % and average age of your readers. Other potentially useful information includes geographic, HHI, single/married, number of kids. etc. How do you get this info? You can do site polls, survey’s, or get more detailed stats from ComScore or Quantcast.com 

7. Have an ‘About Us’ section. 

Clearly explain who you are and what your site is about. And also why you are an ‘authority’ on what you are writing about, and why anyone should care about what you have to say. 

8. Don’t use Google AdSense on your site. 

OK, this could be the most painful one for most people especially if you are generating a few hundred bucks a month from it already. But Google ad sense devalues your site and makes it look unprofessional. You have to ask yourself, “Do I want some real revenue from my site or Google’s table scraps.” 

9. Keep your blog on topic. 

If you are all over the map in regards to topics about which you talk about, advertisers won’t know if they are a good fit for your site. 

10. Keep your blog professional. 

If you are talking about your cat, (Matt Cutts), ranting about your drive to work, swearing or bashing every product you can think about, it will scare away advertisers.

Find a Sponsor for Your Blog

A few tips for finding a sponsor:

1. Before you go out and start asking companies to sponsor your blog read these two posts - Finding Advertisers for your Blog and 10 Ways to make your Blog more Attractive to Advertisers. A big part of finding an advertiser is to get your blog in order first and to be prepared for what they might ask you. 

2. If you have a smaller blog and haven’t had a sponsor before don’t aim for the stars straight away. It might be worth starting out by approaching smaller retailers, websites or companies in your niche and see if they’d be interested in some sort of partnership rather than aiming for the very biggest ones right up front. I did this a couple of months after starting my first digital camera blog and emailed 10 online digital camera sites to see if they’d be interested in advertising. 3 of the 10 bought small ads on my site (I think it was for something around $15-$25 a month). It wasn’t a lot of cash (and I didn’t have a lot of traffic to send to them) but I learned so much and made a little money in the process. 

3. Target Potential Advertiser Carefully - before you start approaching potential sponsors think carefully about your blog and the topic that you write about and about who might want to reach your readers. Brainstorm a list of companies and websites that might fit the bill. 

4. Wondering who to approach? Why not check out who is advertising on other websites and blogs in your niche. Quite often they’ll also be open to running a similar campaign with you. 

5. If a sponsor isn’t sure whether to go with you or not - give them a discounted or free trial. I’ve done this a number of times and found it beneficial on three levels: 
It gives the sponsor a taste of what your blog can offer
It can help get your readers used to the idea of advertising on your blog
I’ve found that having one advertiser (even if it’s a free one) can actually attract other advertisers (or at least make selling sponsorships easier)
You’ll learn a lot by getting the ad up, finding out how it converts and at a discounted rate you’ll even earn a few dollars

6. Find an Angle and Sell it - don’t just email a potential sponsor asking if they want to advertise with you - sell yourself. If your blog has a loyal community of core readers then sell this, if you get a lot of search engine traffic for certain keywords that the advertiser would want to have, sell it to them on this, if you have an audience who is researching to make purchases - this is a key selling point and if you’ve never had an advertiser before on your blog - turn this into a selling point. You need to give a potential sponsor or advertiser a reason to align their brand with yours. 

7. If you can’t attract anyone - run a campaign of your own. Pick a part of your blog that you want to drive traffic to (perhaps a post, or a category, or a subscribe page) and develop a button or banner ads to drive traffic to it. I’m doing this here at the moment in the 468 x 60 banner position here at ProBlogger at the moment (there’s a number of different campaigns running there including some internal ones). The beauty of this is that you can test your conversion rates on different positions. Run a heat map test and you’ll learn a lot. 

8. If you do manage to sign up a sponsor give sponsors as much value as possible. Do everything you can to over deliver on the campaign. Announce the sponsorship on the blog with a post, mention it any other newsletters or lists that you have, position it high on the page, consider throwing in a bonus text link in another part of your blog etc. The more traffic you can deliver to your sponsor the more chance of getting them to renew.

Ninja Affiliate Plugin for WordPress - Special Price for ProBlogger Readers

I’m about to head out the door for a 10 day vacation but before I do I want to pass on a special offer exclusive to ProBlogger readers (that I’ve just had offered to us) for a cool product that those of you who run affiliate programs on your blog might want to check out.

It is a WordPress plugin called Ninja Affiliate and you can have it for a third off the normal price.

I know some of you use this one already but I’ve only had the opportunity to check it out more recently and I have been quite impressed by it. In short it is a management tool that allows you to manage all of the affiliate links on your blog.

This product has a lot of features built in including:
Easy Affiliate Link Management - You can easily give each affiliate link an easy-to-remember name.
Flexible Link Management - Accepts every affiliate link format out there, so you don’t have to waste time with various affiliate marketing tools..
Create Professional Redirect Links - Use professional looking redirect links that let your prospects know you’re a pro marketer..
Manage Links by Groups - Too many affiliate links? Ninja Affiliate allows you to easily create different groups to manage your links..
Prevent “Affiliate Theft” - Cloak your affiliate links to prevent link theft and affiliate sabotage. No one will ever steal your hard-earned commissions again..
Insert Affiliate Links Directly - Add your affiliate links directly for your Wordpress blog editor - you’ll never have to hunt for links again..
Transform Keywords to Links - Automatically turn keywords in your blog to affiliate links. You can set a limit too, so your posts don’t look like a spam blog!
Advanced Display Options - Ninja Affiliate allows you to display any text you want in your web browser’s status bar..
Use “No-Follow” Links - Control your link juice and escape punishment from Big Daddy Google with ninja precision. In fact, you can control your links any way you want to.

There is a lot more information on the sales page (the videos will show you how to use it and give you a good feel for whether it is for you) for the product and I’m not going to rehash it all here - except to say that I wish I’d had something like this when I started promoting affiliate products.
The special offer for ProBlogger readers…

is this - $30 off the plugin. It’s normally $97 and until midnight on 28th February it’s $67 - a third off. You can install it on as many WP blogs as you own.

You have 8 weeks to test it and see if it is right for you and then they offer a money back guarantee.

Making Money From a Blog - Moving Past AdSense

Making Money From a Blog - Moving Past AdSense

While it is possible to make some money with a blog of any size - your chances of earning income from a blog do generally increase as you increase your readership numbers.

Many bloggers start out monetizing their blogs using ad networks like AdSense. While ad networks like AdSense can still earn you a nice income as your blog grows (many large blogs use them) - an increased audience will also open new opportunities to you as a blogger.
1. Direct Ad Sales

One thing that becomes possible as your readership grows is that you can begin to attract your own direct advertisers. I’ve written on this topic numerous times before so rather than writing a long tutorial on the topic let me point you to some previous posts:
Find a Sponsor for your Blog 
10 Ways to make your Blog more attractive to advertisers
How to Find Advertisers for Your Blog
Finding Advertisers for Your Blog
How much should I charge for my Advertising Space
5 Ways to Find Direct Advertisers for Your Blog
2. Ad Representation

Many bloggers struggle to sell advertising on their own blogs. Most bloggers are not experienced in the area of ad sales, don’t have contacts in the advertising industry, are unaware of how much to charge or even what technology to use to serve ads. Most of us also are passionate about writing content and building community - the admin of finding and interacting with advertisers can often be a distraction.

One alternative once you have a reasonable amount of traffic is to outsource your ad sales. Some blog networks and ad networks will handle this kind of thing for you once you have enough traffic. Generally you need a fair bit of traffic for them to look at you but in these tough economic times I suspect we’ll see more and more services to do this.
3. Start Your Own Ad Sales Network

One thing that I’ve been hearing more and more bloggers doing is joining together to sell advertising as a collective or network within a niche. You might not have enough traffic to attract a top tier advertiser alone - but what if you joined with 4-5 other medium sized blogs in your niche and approached advertisers together?
4. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing can work on blogs of all sizes but once a blog has an engaged and loyal readership it can really pay off. Readers that have tracked with you for a while are more likely to buy something that you recommend than a one off visitor - so this is a particularly useful strategy if you have built a ‘community’ rather than just a blog that has a lot of search traffic. The key is to find products to promote that are of a high quality that you can genuinely recommend and that have high relevance to your readership.

Further Reading: 5 Tips for Making Money with Affiliate Programs
5. Sell Your Own Product

Another monetization strategy to start thinking about once you start seeing growth in your readership is your own product to sell. 

Whether that product be an e-book, a membership area, a real hard cover book, training (online or real life), consulting, merchandise…. once you’ve got a loyal readership who trusts you and sees you as an expert in your field you’ll find that they are increasingly likely to buy something that you sell. 

You’ll also find it easier to get other blogs in your niche to promote your product once you’ve build a blog with profile. I’m seeing more and more bloggers doing this and suspect that as advertising budgets get smaller in the current economic climate that we’ll see more and more of this type of approach (I’ve previously called it ‘indirect income’) by smart bloggers.

Selling Other People’s Stuff

Selling Other People’s Stuff is one of the quickest and easiest ways of monetizing your website, a method that is quite effective and profitable. This type of monetization is commonly known as Affiliate Marketing, a business that is totally based on marketing other’s products and services.

In a nutshell, you will get paid if you refer visitors and targeted prospects to the merchant’s website that ends up with a sign up or sale. The customer would be happy because of finding the right product, the merchant would be pleased due to making a sale and you would be compensated for making these two parties satisfied. That’s how Affiliate Marketing Works.

While Affiliate Marketing is a very comprehensive topic and takes a lot of efforts to learn and master, it is doable. However, teaching Affiliate Marketing is not something directly related to the topic of this blog and providing a step-by-step blueprint would be out of the scope of this tutorial website.



Basics Of Affiliate Marketing

1. Affiliates are normally referred as people who market other’s products and services while Merchants are companies that own the products and services.

2. There are 2 common types of compensation, revenue-sharing or payment model within Affiliate Marketing industry each of which acts as an agreement between the affiliates and merchants. 
Pay Per Lead that is based on generating qualified Leads (Sign Ups)
Pay Per Sale that is based on generating completed Sales (Purchases)

3. In this industry, Affiliates are known as other terms such as Partners, Publishers, Referrers, Marketers and Promoters. On other side, Merchants are also called Companies, Advertisers, Sellers and Retailers.

4. To become an Affiliate for a particular Merchant, you need to sign up for its Affiliate Program. Some companies have their own in-house Affiliate Programs that you need to sign up whereas many others are enrolled into Affiliate Networks where you need to join once and then apply for each Merchant.

5. Some Merchants offer a Second-Tier or Multi-Tier program based on paying commissions into a hierarchical referral network of sign-ups and sub-affiliates. In other words, you will be paid, even if your sub-affiliate refers a lead or customer. In this case, you will have a Leveraged Income. However, this type of program exists in the minority of affiliate programs and is not as common as One-Tier Affiliate Program.

6. In most cases, many merchants offer one-time payments of commission. Yet, there are other companies offering recurring commissions which means you will get paid more than once. In this model, you will have a Residual Income for months and even years to come.

7. After getting approved by the network or the merchant, you will be given an exclusive and unique Affiliate or Referral Link that will be tracked for you and triggered to report your generated Leads and Sales.

The above-mentioned facts are a fraction of what we call Affiliate Marketing Principles. So far, you have learned how powerful and profitable this monetization method could be. If you educate yourself, you can become a Super Affiliate earning 5 or even 6 figures income just from your own website.

Now, I am going to name some of the most common types of Affiliate Websites that are often classified by merchants and affiliate networks and known for many affiliates and marketers. Hope it can be helpful for you, too.

Types of Affiliate Websites

The following types of websites are just based on what we have seen on the Internet as sources for generating affiliate commissions. However, this list is not a comprehensive list and more types can be added all the time.

1. Product Review Websites:

These are content and niche market websites that review and rate the existing products and services in particular markets and industries and refer their visitors through their affiliate links.

2. Blogs and Blogging Networks:

These websites are commonly maintained by posting news and articles about specific topics and subjects in reverse-chronological order and suggesting affiliate products. Sometimes, the affiliate links are only placed on Blogs as Sponsor Ads and Banners, nothing more.

3. Personal Websites:

These web pages were so well-known before, but now their popularity has been reduced due to irrelevancy. However, many celebrities and famous people can still monetize their Personal Websites with affiliate products.

4. Coupon and Rebate Websites:

These are resources where people can find and redeem coupons and discounts for specific merchants and companies. The bottom line is huge affiliate commissions.

5. Comparison Shopping Websites:

These websites and networks enable the users to compare two or more products and services and read the cons and pros. Then, the interested visitors have the opportunity to visit the merchant official website for more information through the affiliate´s referral link and guess what?! As soon as they buy something or register, the affiliate gets paid.

6. PPC Landing Pages:

These web pages are specifically designed for Pay Per click Advertising particularly from Search Engines and will refer the visitor directly to the merchant website. If the visitor who comes after a query search finds relative content on these landing pages, he/she will take the desired action which is visiting the merchant website and purchasing the searched product. Here, relevancy is the secret key to success.

7. E-Mail Opt-In Pages:

These web pages are especially created for taking the name and e-mail address of targeted visitors and sending them relevant messages containing affiliate recommendations. Once you make people opt-in and subscribe to your mailing list, you will have the opportunity to contact them forever. That way, you can make money from one single subscriber over and over again. That´s why, this model is very profitable.

8. Loyalty Websites:

Although these types of websites don´t work for all of existing products and services, they can bring a lot of affiliate commissions by providing a reward system for purchases via points back, cash back or charitable donations.  

9. Co-Registration Websites:

These types of websites act as a registration path where people have the chance to be exposed by merchant offers during the time they register for the main website. So, not only the main website gets registered users which can contact them later for promotional purposes, but also it has the chance to refer some of those users to a merchant website through an affiliate link and earn good commissions.

10. CPA Networks:

These websites are huge networks combined of two parts: Affiliates and Merchants. They expose Merchant’s offers to a large network of Affiliates which they will in turn promote the offers through their ways and methods. Since the payment model is based on the top-tier affiliates activities, CPA Networks are big money makers because of providing a lot of promoters for merchant offers. In fact, their payment model is commonly known as Cost Per Action or CPA.

Affiliate Marketing models and methods do not end here. There are literally tons of tips and tricks in this kind of monetization method and a lot of trained super affiliates earning extra-ordinary full-time income just by Selling Other People’s Stuff.

How To Make "Serious" Money Online - But Don't Waste My Time

The thing is it is a two way street between the teacher and the student. I can show you how to make some "SERIOUS" money online but all I ask of you is don't waste my time if you are not teachable. You have to have an open mind as well as a willingness to do what it takes to succeed and be successful. A lot of people may say they want to make some serious money but when it comes down to actually making things happen, they are no where to be found. It always seems like "they" are there biggest fear. This is the difference between the losers and the winners. This is the difference between those who are making things happen versus those who are sitting on the side lines watching! In order to score, you have to get in the game and stop procrastinating. 

Making "SERIOUS" Money vs. Simply Making Money Online

Making "serious" money online is totally different than from just making money online. Anybody can simply just make money online but how much money do you really want to make? The biggest difference is do you want to make "hundreds" or "thousands" at a time? The real money makers are the ones who are making five to six figures plus online every month consistently. The real money makers are not slackers and in this business of making serious money online, you cannot afford to be one either. I only want to work with individuals who are like me, "hungry". Better yet, "starving"!!! I mean starving to the point where in order to survive, they have to eat. But in order to eat, you have to pay your dues and work. It just doesn't get any simpler than this.

When I was a student before I graduated into an expert in making serious money online, I first had to learn from the best. This is simple common sense. In order to become great at something/anything, you have to first learn and then apply. A lot of people may learn but
there too scared to apply themselves (or vice versa).

If you want to make serious money, then actually get serious about it! I will tell you like someone once told me, its time to "raise the bar" in your life! (Meaning: B.A.R. - Belief, Action, Results) So I will ask you again, how serious are you

Best FREE Advertising Programs For Publishers!

Make Money Online By Putting Advertisements On Your Own Web Pages!

Whether you are a webmaster or a blogger, you are able to monetize your own web pages. In the previous posts, I revealed some of money making methods, such as affiliate marketing. 
Now, in this post, I am going to get through some amazing programs which enable you to put ads on your own web pages and get paid based on different actions such as clicks, impressions and in some cases leads or sales.
In other words, these programs pay you commissions if you generate impressions (normally viewing the ads 1000 times), clicks, sign ups or sales. That´s why the terms such as PPC (Pay Per Click) and CPM (Cost Per Thousands Impressions) are used too much in this field.
Finding the Ad Serving (Advertising) Programs on the web is not that difficult. With a simple search, you can find hundreds of them. But the point is that you don´t need to join every single program on the Internet. You might only sign up for a few of those Advertising Programs.
Best FREE Advertising Programs For Publishers
While the number of these programs are growing everyday, I have decided to show you only the best Ad Serving Programs which are FREE to join. They are proven, reliable and popular. Working with them is quite simple and fairly comfortable.
Note: The following programs are reviewed at the time of writing this post. But remember that they are subject to change.
1. Google AdSense
By far, it is the best and most powerful ad serving program on the planet. It provides two different options for its publishers to earn money: Displaying AdSense ads on the content of your web pages and displaying ads on the search results pages. So, if you have a great content which is updated more frequently and gets a lot of visitors everyday, then this amazing program can bring you a lot of monthly income.
2. AdBrite
This programs is like an Ad Marketplace on the Internet that can help you generate more revenue from your ad space. You are able to customize ads to match your web page and approve or reject ads for your site. It even works alongside other ad programs without any problem. This program offers various types of advertisements such as text ads, banner ads, active interstitial and so on.
3. BidVertiser
It is another pay per click ad serving program which enables the publishers to add some advertisements on their own web pages and get paid for every visitor that clicks on the ads. It is actually the advertisers who select the appropriate sites and bid on them. Then, you are able to display the highest bidders on your web pages, customize the layout of your ads and even block any unwanted ad. 
4. Text Link Ads
It is one of the most reputable ad serving programs on the web with a very large network of advertisers and publishers. You are able to put simple and relevant text ads on your own web pages and get paid by selling the ad space on your site.
5. Clicksor
It is an online contextual advertising program which allows the visitors to enjoy the content of the web page and bring lots of earnings to webmasters at the same time. This program will pay publishers up to 85% of the advertising revenue to place contextual ads on their own websites or blogs. 
6. CrispAds
It is a blog advertising network allowing blog publishers to find the niche topic for ads and choose the text advertisers according to the keyword phrases they want. It enables the publishers to earn 70% revenue share per click displaying text and graphical ads on their own blogs.
7. ClickArea
It is a pay per click affiliate program that gives 70% revenue share of the clicks that referred surfers initiate. It also provides search feed and referral program.
8. Auction Ads
It is an advertising program enabling you to monetize your own web pages by displaying live eBay auctions. When your website's visitors click on an Auction Ad listing and take an action on eBay you make money. That action can be a Winning Bid, a Buy-it-Now or a confirmed user registration. This program pays out a minimum of 100% of eBay commission revenue.
9. LinkWorth
It is one of the Internet's largest and most innovative marketing portals which welcomes both partners and advertisers. You are able to earn up to 70% of ad revenue recurring monthly in most situations just by selling ads, blogging and writing reviews for products & services and much much more! The more web pages you list, the more money you make.
10. Kontera ContentLink
It is a powerful in-text advertising solution for publishers (ContentLink™). In other words, ContentLinks are contextually relevant keywords discovered in real time on a publisher’s website that are automatically turned into a link to the most relevant and highest paying text ad from one of Kontera’s thousands of advertisers. These ads do not compete with the other ad programs running on your web page. But, the most important element is your content. The more content you have, the more money you earn!
11. Profit Peelers
This brand new program is an amazing and unique system which enables publishers to place a PeelerAd on their own web pages and earn cash whenever the site´s visitors click on the ad and complete the offer. It's as simple as that!! Unlike the above-mentioned programs, ProfitPeelers currently provides free trials, pay per sale, E-Mail and zip code offers for promoting. As you may know, this program is 100% FREE to join.
12. Better TextAds
It is another brand new and unique marketing program based on Integration Marketing, meaning that you have the opportunity to create multiple streams of income by integrating various programs. It is a viral text ad service enabling you to display text ads for ClickBank products on your own web pages. You don´t even need to have your own website. You can get your own info-product storefront with ad blocks pre-coded with your account number. With this program, you get a complimentary membership in some other successful opportunities that may build residual income for you.
13. Affiliate Power Ads
It is a viral affiliate marketing program which enables publishers to earn huge monthly residual commissions from the ads shown on your own web pages. Unlike the PPC adverting programs, your earnings from this system are based on pay per sale. It means you get paid, whenever your site´s visitor clicks on the ad and ends up purchasing a product because of your referral.
14. CBClicks
It is another Internet viral ad network which allows you to place the ad code on your web pages integrated with your ClickBank ID. You can build your ad network by simply referring the others to CBClicks system. The more members you refer, the higher ranking you get in the ad network.
OK, I guess it is enough! I hope you enjoy using these amazing programs!
To Your Success!

Selling Advertising Space

Selling Advertising Space is another alternative for monetizing your own website and has been one of the traditional and popular methods for site owners and publishers.

Sometimes, this monetization method is categorized under the Affiliate Marketing model due to its similarity. However, since the payment model is slightly different in this method, I thought it would be best if we put it as a special classification called Selling Advertising Space.

You see, like Affiliate Marketing, you would put other websites’ links and advertisements on your website. But, unlike Affiliate Marketing which is based on a special action such as sign up or purchase, this model is different. You would get paid based on CPC (Cost Per click), CPM (Cost Per Mille:1000 Impressions) or Fixed Pricing.

Selling Advertising Space could be the quickest way of cash flow for your business. Since, your visitors don’t need to buy or join anything, your conversion rate (the ratio of visitors who take the desired action) is much much higher.

Once your visitors view the advertisements (In CPM Model) or click through ads (In CPC Model) on your web pages, you will get paid. No matter what they will do afterwards, you will be rewarded and compensated. Sometimes, your visitors don’t even need to do anything in order to make you money. (In Fixed Pricing Model)

On the other hand, the earned revenue in this method compared with Affiliate Marketing is incredibly insignificant. I am talking about a few cents per click or impressions here and there while there are big affiliate commissions to be made in Selling Other People’s Stuff. That’s why relying only on this method is not recommended. You must have multiple streams of income. As you may know, you should not put all your eggs in one basket.

Like I said before, Selling Advertisement Space on your own website or blog should be regarded as the quickest way of monetization and running the cash flow. However, there are some demands and requirements to make as much money as possible from this model which would not fit any newly-published blog or website.

Two Common Requirements For Selling Advertising Space

1. In order to convince advertisers to buy an advertising space on your site or get approved by Ad Marketplaces and Networks, your website must be a high traffic website getting tons of unique visitors and page views each and every day. That way, your earnings would also boost and accelerate.

2. If you want to gain the confidence of advertisers and make them buy advertisement space on your site, you should increase the popularity of your website and get a higher Google PageRank. That way, many advertisers will be willing to buy an ad space on your site for Link Building and Search Engine Optimization purposes.  

Regardless of which advertising model you want to choose and what requirements your website meet, you need to find Advertisers and Sponsors, have their ads published on your site and get paid.

How To Find & Run Sponsor Ads For Your Website

1. After getting your website up and running and adding high quality content to your web pages, your next job is to search, find and run advertisements on your website. The very first option is to just sign up for an Advertising Network as a Publisher or Webmaster and wait for getting approved. Then, you can whether let the network put ads on your site automatically or you select the advertisements manually.

2. The second option is to offer this opportunity to Advertisers and Sponsors on your own website by adding a specific section on your web pages called “Advertise Here”, “Become a Sponsor” or “Get Featured On This Website”. In this case, you will need to explain why people should advertise on your site and how they can do that. Also, you need to set the price and state the payment methods. On top of that, you have to assure the Advertisers which Ad Tracking Software you are going to use and how accurate and reliable it is.  

While there are a large number of Ad Marketplaces and Advertising Networks on the Internet and more websites are added every single day, introducing all of them would be no use. However, for getting started and putting your feet in the water of online advertising, I thought to show you a resource where you can find the top advertising networks on the Internet

Introduction to Trackbacks

Summary: TrackBacks automate the interlinking of blog posts, but often don’t contribute to search engine ranking. 

TrackBacks are notoriously difficult to explain and is an exercise that makes a great judge of the skill of any self-described ‘blogging expert.’ So here I go! 

You get comments right? Easy enough. You write a post on your blog. Someone reads it and thinks you’re either sliced bread or vile ooze and comments accordingly. Just like having a mini-guestbook for each post. 

What if I want to leave a comment about your blog post on my blog? That’s where TrackBacks come in. 

Let’s say I read something pretty fantastic on your blog and so I write up a post about on my blog: “Hey you gotta check this out, here’s a quote from it and here’s the link to it.” And I link to that particular post on your blog. And I click publish. 

Unbeknownst to most, your blog platform - whether it is WordPress or Movable Type or TypePad, scans all the links in a post each time a post is published. It finds my link to your post and then goes out to your blog and checks to see if your post is accepting TrackBacks. If so, my blog sends a little ping! to your blog as if to say, ‘Hey! Andy’s talking about you over on his blog.’ and your blog answers the ping and says ‘Alright, I’ll make a note of it.’ And then your blog makes a little note on that particular post that in effect says, “Besides all these comments under this post, here’s someone talking about this post on their own site - and here’s the link to it.” 

So readers of your blog can see not just what the commenters are saying about it on your blog - but what other bloggers are saying about. I’ve seen a post’s list of TrackBacks described as ‘Other blogs linking to this post.’ Many blog tools, like WordPress, lump comments and TrackBacks into the same list. 


You don’t have to know how TrackBacks work in order to use them, you can simply set a post to be able to receive trackbacks and set your blog to send them when you publish new posts. Your blog platform should do all the heavy lifting and email you when there are new TrackBacks - just like it does when there are new comments to a post. 

TrackBack was first created by Ben and Mena Trott during the early days of Movable Type and has gradually been integrated into the features of most popular blog platforms. A similar technology is pingbacks which has the added security of checking to see if the pinging site actually exists. 

Of course like anything fun or cool online, the evil bastard spammers got busy funneling their sewage into automated TrackBacks pingbots that left everyone’s blogs with dainty messages about mortgages, online poker and Viagra. Most comment spam blockers are now configured to also scan TrackBacks to help stem the tide of spammy TrackBacks. 

One of the best parts about TrackBack is that it helped to increase your blog’s linked-ness and search engine ranking. With the introduction of the ‘no follow’ attribute, links in comments and TrackBacks are usually often not included in the calculation of your blog’s Google PageRank. I presume this applies to the other search engines as well. Still, the findability may not be in the search ranking - but links from other blogs is always a Good Thing. 

In TypePad:

To enable TrackBacks by default in TypePad, go to Weblogs > (Your Blog) > Configure > Preferences > Comment and TrackBack Preferences: Check the checkbox ‘Hold comments and TrackBacks for approval.’ And set Default TrackBack Status set to ‘New posts accept TrackBacks.’ (for receiving TrackBacks) 

In WordPress:

To enable TrackBacks by default in WordPress ,go to Options > Discussion: Check the checkbox ‘Attempt to notify any Weblogs linked to from the article.’ (for sending TrackBacks) Check the check box ‘Allow link notifications from other Weblogs. (for receiving TrackBacks) 

In Movable Type:

To enable TrackBacks by default in Movable Type, go to (Your Blog) > Configuration > Preferences > Publicity/Remote Interfaces/TrackBack: Check the checkbox ‘Allow TrackBack Pings On by Default.’ (for sending TrackBacks) Check the checkbox ‘Email New TrackBack Pings.’ Check the checkbox ‘Enable TrackBack Auto-Discovery.’ (for receiving TrackBacks)

Make Money with Google Adsens

Make Money with Google Adsense
If you have a blog or a website, you can easily earn online money. Google has a power packed scheme that acts two fold. The scheme has been named Google Adsense which is being used by many to make money online. The concept of Google Adsense is that advertisers submit ads to Google. These advertisements are displayed on different websites based on the content of the website or blog. Google Adsense matches the words in the ad with the content of the website or blog to determine which ads to display on the particular website. Once these ads are placed on your blog or website, you get to earn online money from the advertiser whenever somebody clicks on the advertisement. Pretty easy, isn’t it?

Google Adsense: How is it Useful to the Advertisers?
It is useful to earn online money for both the advertisers as well as you as a webmaster or the owner of a good blog. Speaking about the advertisers, they decide the amount they can pay per month or annum. This makes it cheaper for them as their budget is not affected. Google Adsense takes care that the revenue outflow from the advertiser’s pocket is not more than what he intends to pay per month/annum. These ads help him or her to reach out to a worldwide audience. Thus, they too make money online by way of savings on conventional advertisements.

Anyone Can Earn Online Money with Google Adsense
You are the one to benefit most from the Google Adsense program. If you do not have a blog, do not get depressed. There are plenty of platforms that offer creation of free blog sites so that you too can use the Google Adsense program to earn online money. Some examples are Wordpress and Google’s Blogger. There are plenty more if you research online. The ones mentioned are one of the best as they offer you plenty of ways to customize your blog to easily make money online.


Why Google Adsense Shares the Revenue
More and more advertisers trust Google and pay them to display their ads. This money apparently comes to you as Google shares this money with you when anyone clicks on the ads on your website or blog. You may get a doubt as why Google Adsense allows you to place ads on your page – it can keep the entire money for itself! The answer is that Google cannot afford that much space. There are so many advertisers that it needs more space and you offer this space to Google. This is why it shares the revenue allowing you to make money online.

What is Chitika PPC(Pay-per-click) program?

Chitika

Many of you may be well aware of Google adsense affiliate program which is the market-leader in PPC(pay-per-click) affiliate marketing. However, many of you may not be aware of "Chitika" PPC affiliate program which is closely following Google adsense. Google AdSense and Chitika are the current two top players in the PPC advertising market

Started in 2003, Chitika (pronounced as CHIH-tih-ka), is a full-service on-line advertising network serving over 2 billion monthly impressions across more than 30,000 websites.Chitika has been named one of the leading private technology companies in North America by Red Herring. It is also one of the top 100 private companies in North east

Chitika is currently Google adsense's close rival, and their pay per click rate has been considerably higher than that of Google Adsense. Further, their eMiniMall ads are different from Google AdSense text ads in a number of ways


1.Chitika eMinimall ads contain product pictures and hence, they can target specific products
2.Visitors can search for competitive products on your website without leaving the page
3.Publishers have the option to control the context sensitive keywords
4.Unlike Google adsense, new pages with low click-thru rates (CTR) are not penalized 
5. Chitika has a Chitika affiliate program for publishers to recruit new members


Chitika ads can run on the same page as Google adsense

Another significant way of earning money through Chitika is their referral program, through you’ll get 10% of what your referral gets. Chitika outperforms Google Adsense in some cases. The CTR(click-through-rate) is also outstanding . Chitika will make payment 30 days following the end of the month provided that your total revenue has exceeded $10 (for PayPal) 

However, Chitika does have a significant disadvantage. Since Chitika ads look much more like actual advertisements than AdSense ads, the CTR of Chitika eMiniMalls is considerably lower when compared with AdSense

Chitika ads are a wonderful source of income if you are planning to implement them newly on your webpages, or maximize your revenue in addition to Google Adsense

SIGN-UP NOW !

Using AdWords to Promote Your Affiliate Links - What is the Policy?

There have been many rumors about using AdWords to promote your affiliate links. Some people say that it is not allowed, and others say that it is. Some say that there is a specific way to do it, and others say that using AdWords to promote your affiliate links is no different from any other AdWords campaign you would run for your own products or services. Some say it works, others say it doesn't. Are you ready to hear the truth?

The truth is that it is perfectly acceptable using AdWords to promote your affiliate links. That information comes straight from Google AdWords policy. Google only displays one ad per search query for each top-level domain, however. What this means is that if two affiliates are using AdWords to promote your affiliate links, and they are both using the same keywords in their advertising campaigns, only one ad will appear on the page when a person searches for those keywords.

This means that you must set yourself apart from the other affiliates when using AdWords to promote your affiliate links. The best way to do this is to construct a content site, where your affiliate links are used in the content, and banner ads and text ads are also used on the site for the affiliate programs that are related to the topic of your site. Instead of using AdWords to promote your affiliate links, use AdWords to promote your site, using keywords that are specific to the affiliate programs that you are trying to sell.

If you do not have your own website, and you have no intention of getting one, you can still set yourself apart from the competition by bidding high on the keywords that you have chosen when using AdWords to promote your affiliate links. You will need to literally outbid the competition - and you should know that this can get expensive, depending on what keywords you are using. See what the other affiliates are using in the text of their ads, and try to make your ads better. The more often your ad is clicked on, the more often it will appear - no matter what you are paying for the keywords.

Another option is to use keywords that your competitors are not using at all. These may be less popular keywords, but if you use the keyword selection tools provided by Google, you will be able to determine which alternate keywords will get you the best results. Don't be afraid to use the alternate keywords, as opposed to the most popular keywords - keep in mind that you only pay for the clicks you receive. If you find that you aren't getting any clicks at all for the alternate keywords you have chosen, try different keywords.

Google offers quite a bit of information to advertisers who use AdWords to promote their affiliate links. The best way to succeed with AdWords is to read the information that is provided. Learn as much as you possibly can from that information. The more you know, the better you will do. There are also a variety of ebooks available that will give you additional information about profiting from AdWords. Consider purchasing one of these products, and again, read through the information and learn as much as you possibly can.

Google Adsense – Still The Easiest Online Money?

In recent years, Google Adsense dominated forums, discussions and all opinions on the Internet. Already there are stories about fabulous wealth, and millions of those who work from home. It seems that Google Adsense already dominates the Internet site of sale of businesses and is now still regarded as the most simple money online, in addition others money making online like paid to post, selling link or affiliate marketing.

The key to success with AdSense is to place ads on pages that are in the peak traffic to the high demand keywords. The higher price per click to the advertiser, the more you receive for each click to your site. Of course, it does not pay for low-cost-per-click keywords and pages that do not work. 

With all the people still in line and click every day, it’s no wonder why Google Adsense is an instant success. 

For some, being new in this market, it would be a blow to the pride that their site is buried somewhere in the classified ads of other support services. But if the idea that it makes more money that way, all doubts and skepticism is buried. 

There are two large and is intelligent, success factors of some webmasters and publishers learn, is to make money more easily with AdSense. 

1.

High-alignment with the traffic on your site. If you click on your minutes, you discover that most visitors are taking advantage of the free movement of affiliate marketing and eBooks that you offer on your site. In simple words, your ads are effective, and more clicks. It also means more money for you. 

2.

Placing Adsense links on pages, the production of young, or, better yet, no gain. To place adsense on a page of resources, the amount of potential loss of customers to other websites. Tricky, but effective. 

If learned to function effectively, these two factors are a good source of a minimum income from a high-traffic page. Many people with this strategy, and some money with AdSense. It is also particularly pleasant pages of information, their efforts on providing a powerful affiliate link content to their visitors. Now they can return money on their services. 

With the many techniques, people are now under study, the easiest way of their money from Adsense, it is not surprising that Google is trying everything to update and polish their Adsense for their good image . 

The possibility of adding the AdSense Category 2 is not impossible. With all the people over time in their Adsense now and still in this form of marketing, there is no doubt about the many improvements are made. Make sure the smile on the faces of the webmasters and publishers around the world, if sub-affiliates and double or even triple the amount they deserve.
The convenient, money-is basis, with Adsense now is the capacity, 200 URL filters. This gives webmasters the ability to block the supply of low value of their pages to their web sites. Talk about the only ones that are favorable and discharges which, in my opinion as “useless”. 

With Google AdSense, the possibilities are endless. But there is also the possibility of someone taking advantage of the simple quality that makes Internet sales. If you think more about them, these negative factors force to break Google Adsense and Thrash in the process. If this happens, people have to go back to ancient forms of sale that are not making money online as easy as Adsense. 

For the moment, however, Google AdSense is here to stay. While some people want to make money online with their talent, the future is good. In addition to all the strict guidelines on the implementation of Google Adsense, it is to take some time for AdSense gespammt privileges and even regulated.

How Not to Promote Your Blog: Top 10 Broken Blog Promotion Strategies

  1. Leaving “great post” comments on other blogs.

One of the best ways to get readers to your blog early on is to leave comments on other blogs. Of course, there’s a right and wrong way to go about this. Here is an example of a good and bad comment, using ProBlogger’s comment section as an example.

Patrick O’Keefe recently wrote a guest post on ProBlogger titled “Enhance and Grow Your Online Community Through Appreciation“. Here are two comments from that post:

Shane wrote:

Very good post, thank you for writing it.

Baker Wrote:

I saw this first hand, but really I stumbled into it unintentionally. I put up a bumbling video of myself thanking everyone for allowing me to have over 6400+ visits in my first full month blogging. The video wasn’t great quality or presentation, but people realized it was very genuine and I received several comments and e-mails. Again, I wasn’t out to really benefit like this, but I realized a side benefit from my regular reader’s really connecting with the video. Thanks again for 31DBBB, it helped me so much in having a great start!

Shane, you’re comment is broken. Obviously, you got one of the top 3 spots (which drives a lot of traffic on a successful blog like ProBlogger). But where’s the sincerity? Where’s the realness? It’s a fake comment meant to do one thing, drive traffic. It’s a waste of everyone’s time and it’s a big no no.

Baker did it right.

When you leave comments on other blogs, remember these three things: sincere, relevant, and valuable.

2. Emailing random blog authors and asking them to link to one of your posts.

I made this mistake early in my blogging career. Needless to say, I got a lot of hate mail in return.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression. If your first impression is a spam-looking (no matter how good your intentions are) email to a random blog author trying to get them to link to your posts, you’re not going to make any friends.

Instead, find a way to add value to their blog and engage them with that in mind. They call it “link love” for a reason. Very few time-tested bloggers have sex on the first date. Build relationships slowly over time and you’re in like Flynn.

 3. Asking random blog authors for a link exchange.

This goes along with number 2. Usually new bloggers will write to other bloggers and try to get them to place a link to their site in their blogroll in exchange for a link back. It’s a good way to build pagerank and get recognition, especially if you’re in the blogroll of a highly trafficked site.

But what’s a blogroll for? It’s to help readers find other quality sites on the same topic. Insincere link swapping devalues the goal of a blogroll.

Again, build that relationship. Add value. You get rewarded for being genuine, not for being hyperfocused on getting traffic.

4. Making Twitter all about you and your blog.

Twitter is a great way to drive traffic to your site. Darren recognized that early and started TwiTip, a site that gives you tips on using Twitter effectively. Unfortunately, as Twitter gets more mainstream it’s going to lose value. That’s just the nature of free networking and exposure.

Twitter is my third highest source of traffic and I don’t have all that many followers. What I do have is important followers. Relevant followers. And I only follow relevant people who I actually care to hear from. That’s what Twitter was designed for. That’s what makes Twitter effective.

The people who are breaking Twitter (yes, it’s being torn down in terms of value as we speak) are the ones who use it to promote only themselves and only their blog. They’ll throw a retweet out there every once in a while and join in on a #followfriday session, but that’s about it. Their main goal is to drive traffic without adding any value. And who can blame them? It’s free and easy.

Let me give you a tip. Free and easy asks for abuse. Abuse is a great short term strategy. So is eating donuts for energy. But what happens when you get a big sugar spike? Crash. If you abuse Twitter and Facebook and others you’re going to crash as soon as people catch on to your antics. Shamless self-promotion on Twitter and social networking sites is a horrible long term strategy.

5. Joining forums simply for promotion.

See point number 4.

Forums are a great way to drive traffic to your site if you do it right. Don’t be a broken forum user. Put a tasteful link to your site in your signature and then make it your mission to interact the way the forum was designed. Be on the forum for the benefit of others and to further your own education, not to promote your blog. If you add value (see the trend), you’ll get the traffic.

6. Submitting all your posts to social media sites.

Are you a social media spammer? Do you have 70 social media buttons below your posts? Do you submit every post to most of them? It’s cheesy. Again, things that are free and easy get abused. It’s your job not to abuse them. Write great content and you’ll get recognized in time. If you force it, you’ll get recognized as the spammer you are and you can kiss success bye bye.

Instead, join the three most relevant social media sites and work to build value. Promote 10 times as much of other people’s material as you do your own. And don’t forget: sincere, relevant, and valuable.

7. Writing for search engines.

I want you to achieve the top spot on Google. Really, I do. But as a reader, I’m hungry for good content that’s sincere, smooth, and easily ingestible. Your keyword soup gives me the runs, in like, I run far away very fast.

If you write for the search engines and not for your readers, you’re going to get the top spot in Google. You’re going to get a lot of traffic and your adsense revenue is going to be great. But you’ll never have a great blog. You’ll never have a dedicated tribe of readers. You’ll never be a respected resource.

Search engine spiders aren’t going to give you good word of mouth. Neither are the strangers that find you on google who visit you once, hate your content, and leave.

Good content can and should be keyword dense. The trick is to do it without making my head spin. Copyblogger will teach you how it’s done.

8. Loading your site up with badges to all the social media communities you joined overnight.

Have you ever been to a blog that has a sidebar full of social media and social networking profile links? They’re on just about everything. On top of that, they throw in a big mybloglog widget and an entrecard widget.

You can be a jack of all social media sites, but you’ll end up being a master of none. Besides that, it’s just a bunch of clutter to your readers. Google beat out Yahoo because Google was simple and Yahoo was hectic. Do you want your readers to focus on the content or to focus on everything BUT the content?

Zen Habits is the master of simple. You have no choice but to read his content because there’s nothing else to do. And look at his subscriber count. Take a hint. There’s no way you can add value to a hundred social media profiles. Be selective and go for clean.

9. Copying someone else’s style or idea.

The easiest way to look creative is to not be creative at all. There’s enough creative out there that you can just copy and paste and people will probably never be the wiser.

And I’m not talking about lifting content from other blogs. That should be an obvious no-no. What I’m talking about is finding a successful blog and copying their overall style and even parts of their design. If I look like them, I’ll have their success. No, you won’t. You can never be more original than the original. Think about how that affects readers…

If they like the original, they’ll stick with the original. If they don’t like the original, they’re not going to go for a copy cat. You lose both ways. When you copy what your competitors are doing, you ensure that you’ll never pick up any market share.

If you want to be the best, you have to stand out. Figure out what everyone in your niche is doing and do the opposite.

10. Using search engine auto-submitters.

Have you seen these things? Get your site indexed on 50000000000000 search engines instantly!

This isn’t particularly bad, it’s just a waste of time and money. It’s not necessary. The only search enginge you need to target is Google and getting your site indexed is free and easy.

Use Google’s Webmaster Tools, get a sitemap plugin, write great titles and great content, and get “link love” by building relationships and adding value to other people’s projects. That’s all you have to do to own Google search. Throw the gimmicks out the window and focus on sincere, relevant, and valuable.

AdSense Announce ‘Google Ad Planner’ - Showcase Your Site

 If you run AdSense on your blog and are looking to attract advertisers to target it specific with their ads then you’ll want to check out a new tool that AdSense have just announced on their blog - Google AdPlanner’s Publisher Center.

Ad Planner is a tool that advertisers use to find sites related to their ads and this new publisher center you can have some say over what they see when they’re looking for sites to advertise on.

First you need to claim your site (there are two methods either through Webmaster Tools or if you’re a DoubleClick Directory User) and then you can customize the description for your site, highlight the ad types that you run, share Google Analytics data (if you wish - this will replace the estimated traffic numbers that Ad Planner currently gives advertisers), choose categories for your site etc.
 

Internet Entrepreneurs cashing in on Swine Flu

You'll be interested (and probably not surprised) to know that the Swine Flu (aka H1N1)is paying off for some.

Internet marketers and entrepreneurs are cashing in on the swine flu outbreak, with online games and merchandise. I have even read that people are offering 'swine flu kits' for about $60, containing
flu mask, 'hygiene gel' etc.

You may be interested in the following articles:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/web/swinefighter-net-cashes-in-on-flu-scare/2009/05/01/1240982386499.html

http://www.tamingthebeast.net/blog/ecommerce/swine-flu-and-ecommerce.htm

I guess its cashing in on panic levels. Good on you for making a go of it, just hope people do it in not-so-rorty way....

I must admit, i'm not that concerned about infection, living here in Australia, i feel (naively) its too far away too worry about. No doubt,unfortunately - we will see an increase in Australians (and people worldwide) infected, as these numbers increase i may get worried then.

The same thing happened several years ago with the avian (bird) flu. Sales of Tamiflu and Relenza sky-rocketed, as well as the share price for Biota Holdings, the company that produces Tamiflu.

Anyway getting back to the topic, there are 318,000,000 records for 'swine flu' in the Google SERPS.

The average CPC for the following keywords:

pandemic $2.02
swine flu $0.52
flu vaccine $1.82

There is definitely potential to cash in (if you like), though i think you can probably do it in other ways, information sites, selling masks that work (apparently the masks aren't that effective anyway, as with any breathing you gather moisture, which renders the mask ineffective).



Try finding a decent swine, flu related domain name - the best ones have all been taken.

Apparently there were reports of this infection, as early as last year (November).

On a serious note, my sympathies do go out to the families of those seriously affected by this flu. Be safe, especially anyone travelling on airplanes or in/out of Mexico or southwest US states

Tips for Building a Website Suited for Affiliate Marketing

Even though many affiliate marketers have made money online without a website, you should realize that having one increases your potential to earn huge amounts of money. It will help you build a professional reputation as well as brand your affiliate marketing business. Apart from that, having a website will give you a venue for building a community of like-minded people that will form your customer base. Keep in mind that having a community within your website means encouraging repeat visits. Repeat visits will then translate to an increased potential to make money.

If you study affiliate marketing websites that have proven to be successful, you can get an idea of what elements, in terms of content, design, and user-participation, are crucial.

Content

To make your affiliate marketing website interesting and useful to your target market, you need to publish tons of unique and relevant content on a regular basis. What works best is publishing reviews for affiliate products. This would allow you to pre-sell them and entice your visitors to make a purchase. Other than product reviews, you can publish information on other things that are relevant to your offerings as well as to your target audience.

User-Participation

Apart from the content that you publish yourself, you need to provide space for your readers to publish their own content. You need to allow them to participate in your site so that they will keep visiting it and spend more time there. What you can do is create a forum and encourage your visitors to discuss issues that are relevant to your offerings. This way, you can get more of your visitors to build interest in your business and gain insights from what they have to say at the same time.

Design

A website suited for affiliate marketing is not only pleasing to the eyes and easy to use. To make your website successful in getting leads, you need to make sure that the most important information is easily visible to your visitors. Apart from that, you need to make your affiliate links accessible no matter where in your site a visitor is. Just be sure that you don't overdo it or you might just end up annoying your readers.

Keep these things in mind when developing a website suited for affiliate marketing and you can be sure to have a website that generates and converts leads

What’s the best way to make money online?

If someone were to ask you how to make fast money online for beginners, how would you advise this person? Given the vast amount of information and hundreds of online money making options available, does determining the best way to make money online depend on what you are good at or is it simply a matter of selecting the most effective method to follow for positive results.

Dosh Dosh is conducting a survey to find out what’s the best way to make money online, meaning the method that is practical, cost-effective and do-able, with the greatest amount of potential income - the method that I “personally think, feel or know” is the best method to make money online.

What Is The Best Way To Make Money Online For Me

I use both skills and non-skills based methods to explore online money making opportunities. Skills would include blogging, internet marketing and anything that requires a personal know-how. Non-skills would be everything else including making money using AdSense and other “get paid to” programmes.

However, I would have to say the best way for me is to make money online selling images - photos and illustrations - in microstock agencies. Since my background is graphic design, this method works for me as it uses my existing skillset to allow me to make my own “products” for sale with a recurring income which is an added plus point.

Why Making Money Online Selling Images Is Best

1. Need to create image just once for repeat sales.
2. Ready buying market at microstock agencies.
3. Many sales points without incurring extra cost by selling at multiple microstock agencies.
3. Indefinite recurring income.

Downside To Selling Images

1. Creating an image takes time.
2. Not all images submitted sell.
3. Initial cost of acquiring equipment and software comparatively high.

How To Make Money Online Selling Images

You do need some artistic inclination to be able to either create illustrations or shoot photos that have commercial potential. However it is not the most important aspect. This method is not for aspiring artists to try and sell their art pieces. Having work experience in the design industry definitely helps me have a good idea of what sells commercially. A simple example is the upcoming Christmas season. This period probably sees one of the highest sales seasons of the year, so it makes sense to create images that are Christmas themed.

You can either sell photos exclusively if you can’t see yourself creating images or vice versa. It’s a bonus if you can do both but if you are an outstanding and hardworking photographer, you can make even more money than someone who sells both photos and illustrations. There are prolific photographers who make several thousand dollars every month selling only photos. I guess that most will prefer to sell photos since creating illustrations has a steeper learning curve which involves learning to use a drawing software.

What You Need To Start Selling Images

There are some basics you need to get started.
1. Photo editing software eg. Photoshop.
2. Minimum 4MP digital camera.
3. To create illustrations, you need a drawing software eg. Illustrator, Freehand.

These are just the very basics needed to get started selling images at microstock agencies. There are lots more to know about creating images that sell. Perhaps I will do a more detailed post covering various aspects of image creation and microstock agencies. Ultimately, each individual will have their preferred method to make money online. This method is most likely related on their own skills and interest although it is not inconceivable to learn the required skills if a particular method has the potential to become a main source of online income.

Sign up with the main microstock agencies and browse through popular images to get an idea of what sells and create images with similar themes. You will also find lots of information regarding the technical and aesthetic requirements of submissions. Main microstock agencies include Shutterstock, Fotolia, Dreamstime, BigStockPhoto and StockXpert.