Blogging for Dollars
Blogging for dollars might sound like the latest game show or some new drinking game, but it's the latest craze to hit the Internet. Bloggers began blogging for a number of reasons, but as the blog movement has increased in popularity, they have found ways to monetize their blogs and are seeing their commitment pay off.
Whether a blogger's focus is to communicate with customers or just to have fun, they have begun looking at ways to earn revenue from their blogs. The most popular ways for bloggers to earn some added cash for their pet projects are:
1. ) Google Adsense in Blogs
Google AdSense allows webmasters to dynamically serve content-relevant advertisements in blogs. If the visitor clicks one of the AdSense ads served to the blog, the website owner is credited for the referral. Webmasters need only to insert a Google-generated java script into the blog or blog template. Google's spider parses the AdServing blog and serves ads that relate to the blog's content. Google uses a combination of keyword matching and context analysis to determine what ads should be served.
2. ) Affiliate Programs (Product Endorsements)
Affiliate Programs work when an affiliate web site receives income for generating sales, leads, or traffic to a merchant website. Generally, bloggers will mention or endorse specific products and if site visitors purchase the product, bloggers will receive a portion of the sale.
3. ) Product Promotion
Businesses use blogs to detail how specific features or product add-ons can increase functionality and save time. Content-rich product promotion will help with search engine placement.
4.) Banner Ads
While less popular than in the past, websites with high traffic levels can still earn decent revenue by selling banner space.
As the Internet evolves bloggers will continue to seek out ways to monetize their opinions and thoughts. Daily journals and online blogs have become more than just a communication means to many.
About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for the NotePage http://www.notepage.net and FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com product lines. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com , and http://www.small-business-software.net
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Blogging for Dollars
Thursday, December 13, 2007
New Trends In Traffic Generation
New Trends In Traffic Generation
By Jean-Philippe SchoeffelWorried about the next Google slap? Do you only rely on Search Engine traffic? Don't know where to start when you need to drive traffic to your site? If yes, this article is for YOU! Whatever you do on the net, you will always deal with Traffic Generation...the holly grail.To make it short, you have 2 main types of traffic :
1) Search Engine traffic
What is it? : organic traffic coming from search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN
Pros :
- This traffic is free
- Traffic is highly targeted
- Volume of traffic can be very high
Cons :
- you don't control it
- you rely on robots to analyze your site and deliver some traffic
- you need to get indexed...without being de-indexed (once again, you rely on search engines policy and algorithms)
- short term
2) Referred Traffic (I know Search engine traffic is also a sort of referred traffic, but let's put SE traffic apart from this category)
What is it? Traffic coming from third party sites (other than search engines) and is a result of a "manual / human" action.
Examples : article directories, social bookmarking services, forums, partners, text link ads, banners, directories, rss...
Pro :
- you control it
- you have a lot of means to develop it (almost unlimited ; a lot are free)
- it's highly targeted
- You can pay to get better targeting and control over your referred traffic
- Long term
Cons :
- Time & resources consuming
- Repetitive tasks
Now, through my membership, my forum, my readings of other forums, I know that most webmasters mainly rely on search engines traffic, our first category.
The aim of the present article is to throw the light on a different angle of the Traffic Generation big box!
Summary : the right way to get into traffic generation is to forget about search engines.
Focusing on search engine traffic gives a too narrow vision of traffic generation. It does not reveal all the opportunities existing outside of the search engines (understand all the way to generate Referred Traffic).
In addition, as you've seen from the cons above, you accept to rely on something you never control, and this is a HUGE risk in your marketing strategy.
Warning : I do not say, you should not care about search engine traffic. I say that it should not be your priority, and the first door you try to open when dealing with traffic generation. It's a question of point of view.
Now, on the other hand, focusing on developing what we called Referred Traffic is a more positive, constructive and profitable attitude and marketing strategy.
Not only will you build traffic for the long term, but you will also "manually" control your traffic, either by submitting your content, your sites, your feeds, or by exchanging links, content, traffic with partners, being active on forums, blogs...
Doing it this way will give you a lot of power and effectiveness. Those sources of Referred Traffic only vanish...if you decide to let them vanish. Once again, you control everything.
Now, you have some positive side effects :
- By building Referred Traffic, you give a lot of food to search engines to index your site, understand them, and rank them well...
- ...thus developing naturally your Search Engine Traffic!
Try to develop Referred Traffic by submitting your sitemap to Google, and you will understand the difference between the 2 approaches :-)
Google and other search engines tend to change their algorithms quite often to produce more relevant content for users of their engines. Sometimes, your site is getting de-indexed in a day just because of this.
Are you lost, is your site dead? It could if you only relied on Search Engine traffic. It has no impact if you focused on building Referred Traffic.
In one case, you feel bad and like if you had wasted your time. In the other case, you don't even notice it (on the long run ; of course, you can see a fall in traffic coming from a given search engine)
But even then, your site has a lot of chances of being re-indexed when you've build Referred Traffic, simply because the search engines food is still there! And this is a HUGE difference and one of the most valuable asset you can develop.
If you're still with me, you should now understand my point : when dealing with bots, you need to act as a human...which means you should not try to talk to them :-) Give them some "bot food" that you build naturally by developing a Referred Traffic Generation Strategy.
Here are 10 easy "pieces" to do what we described above :
Once you have a site...
1) Find some related blogs, read them, identify trends, and post comments (no stupid comments, no spam of course) with a link back to your site where you're also discussing the topic
2) Do the same with related forums. Use search engines (!) to find relevant forums. Register and start being active on these forums. Use your signature to put a link back to your site
3) Create a blog (if you don't have one) and post on a regular basis on it. Use a service like feedburner to syndicate your content with other webmasters.
4) Submit your feeds, blogs, and site to niche directories
5) Find "authority" sites in your niche, analyze them and contact the webmasters to :
a) propose a link exchange (you should first put a link to their site),
b) if you're selling a report or an ebook, propose them to become an affiliate (give them a fre.e copy of your ebook first), and make it easy for them to manage their promotion
c) if they have a newsletter, read it, understand it, and then ask the webmaster if you can have a sponsored ad into it, or even better a solo ad where you could advertise your site, newsletter, ebook...
d) propose content exchange with link back to each other's website
e) build a relation with them
6) The most effective : write articles and submit them to article directories (some with big traffic, and some niche related ones)
7) Social bookmarking and social networking :
a) build a Squidoo lens (see Squidoo Profits for more details: http://www.squidoo-profits.com). You can find many sites like Squidoo and build pages about your niche on these ones too. You can link them to your main niche sites, you can link back to your blogs, or even to your other "squidoo" like pages, thus creating a "niche social net" all relevant to your niche.
b) build a myspace account and create a profile around your niche, then build your "list" of friends around this profile
c) submit your site to social bookmarking services (digg, technorati, del.icio.us ...)
d) You can also comment on the most popular entries with a link back to your site, blog, or squidoo lens.
8) Use videos and sites like youtube.com (and similar) to drive traffic to your niche site. Produce a short video (2-3 minutes) around your site, your niche and you. Link to your Videos from your "niche social net" (see 7) ) Also, ask webmasters to put a link to this video (once you have build a relation with them) - Or they can upload it to their server and brand it with their affiliate ID, if you have an affiliate program
9) Make it viral : your best source of (new) traffic...is your (current) traffic!
Use some "Tell a friend" features on your site to have them promote your site. You can provide incentives (such as a free report, a coupon for your ebook...)
10) Paid Traffic : yes...all the above techniques do not cost a penny...(unless you pay for advertising on a partner's site)
You can pay to get targeted traffic : you can advertise through text link ads, banners, that will appear on high traffic sites.
You should seriously consider paid traffic. Do not see it as a cost, but rather as an initial investment to boost your site. Also, if your site is correctly monetized, then paid traffic is the easiest way to get some quick metrics about this, and to make it profitable quickly.
As you see we could easily expand this list. But, those are, in my opinion, the most important sources of Referred Traffic.
Now, compare the above list with Search Engine traffic, and you will see why your approach should focus on generating Referred Traffic and not Search Engine Traffic. This type of traffic will come naturally anyway...
About the Author: JP Schoeffel is a full time Internet Marketer specialized in Site monetization and Traffic generation. He operates a monthly membership (http://www.Niches-In-A-Box.com) where he provides a complete business to his members, month after month, as well as comprehensive training center.
Source: www.isnare.com
Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=208443&ca=Internet
Do-It-Yourself" Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Ranking high in Google's search results can have a phenomenal impact on the success of your business. You can either engage the expertise of a Search Engine Optimisation company, or if you have the time, there are some changes you can make to your website yourself.
Step 1: Keyword Research What keywords do you think your customers would type in to search for your products or services? A keyword can be one word (e.g. "optimisation"), but multiple keywords or keyword phrases are usually preferred, because they are more specific and more likely to be what your customers are looking for (eg. " Search Engine Optimisation Australia").
Write down as many as you can think of. Brainstorm with your team. Think of alternative words. Consider geographical phrases if they are important to your customer (e.g. "house cleaning Hornsby"). Also, get some ideas from your competitors' websites. Try to make a list of 20-30 keyword phrases.
Choose the two keyword phrases you think would be searched for the most. But also remember, the more competition there is for a keyword, the harder it is to achieve top rankings. If you want to rank high in Google for the keyword "insurance", you have a very long journey ahead. So try your best to select two keyword phrases that are the most relevant to you business but that are not vague nor competitive. It's a good idea to have 2 or 3 words in each phrase (e.g. "wedding catering services")
Once you've selected your two best keyword phrases the next step shows you how to make some improvements to your home page.
Step 2: Web Copy Web copy refers to all the words or text on your website. Because content is king in the world of search engines, your keyword phrases need to be placed strategically on your webpage to convince Google that your content is highly relevant to those keywords. The more prominent they are, the better. (Keep in mind that as important as search engines are, customers come first, so make sure your copy also reads well.) Here's how you can increase each keyword's prominence:
* Place your keywords in headings, preferably at the beginning of the heading;
* Include keywords towards the top of the page;
* Bold or italicise keywords where appropriate;
* Instead of having a link to another page that says "Click here to read more ", reword it to include your keywords, e.g. "Read more about our seo copywriting Services".
An important tip is to also include these keywords in your HTML "title tag". Use your content management system to make these changes yourself, or perhaps ask your web developer to do it if you're unsure how.
Once you have fine-tuned your home page, consider adding new content, such as detailed descriptions of what you offer, FAQs and informative articles about your products and services. (If you don't want to write these yourself, they can be located for free on the internet - do a search for "articles directory").
It's also good to bear in mind that search engines can only read text, not pictures. Often web developers embed words in images to look better for website visitors or use Flash for animation, but this is a major impediment to search engines.
Step 3: Linking Each link from another website to your website (not from your website) is considered by search engines as a vote of popularity for your business and will improve your rankings.
But it is the quality, not quantity, of the links that is crucial. The other websites should be relevant to your industry, and preferably highly regarded themselves. Ten quality links count far more than 500 links from arbitrary websites. In the same way your personal business network can have a significant impact on the success of your business, so too the online network you build on the internet. Brainstorm all the relevant websites that could link to you, such as non-competing companies, and industry bodies and organisations. Write a friendly email to each describing the benefit their visitors would get in knowing about your business, and request them to create a link to your website. Most people will not respond first time round, so a follow-up phone call is usually required.
How do I monitor my results? Monitor your rankings in Google over the next few months by typing your chosen keywords into the search box, and recording your ranking. Also look at your hosting reports to understand what search terms your visitors are using to find your website.
The above process can be also be repeated for each page of your website. Remember to keep updating your content, and continually increase the number of links to your website.
As you see your rankings climb you should see a corresponding increase in web traffic and a substantial increase in sales enquiries. Be sure to record the source of your customer enquiries, so you can measure the success of your marketing efforts.
Remember, if you measure it, you can improve it. About the author
Philip Shaw is the Director of CleverClicks, a leading search engine marketing company in Australia provides ethical, result-oriented SEO, PPC and web copywriting services. Contact mail@cleverclicks.com.au or call on +61-2-8003-5664
Improve Link Popularity to Increase Profits
Link popularity is a common representation of the total number of web pages which link to a website (or individual web page). Link popularity is significant because it is a major factor used by search engines in determining a site's position in search results. The essential core elements of link popularity are determined by the quantity, level of agreement, and quality of links that the search engine has found for your web site.
This is used extensively in Google and other major search engines to decide the position of your web site in the search engine rankings. Links are a useful tool for search engines trying to make their way through billions of documents and find ones that are relevant to their users. The key to successful link building is to pay particular notice to the relevancy, page quality, and traffic of the particular websites that are linking to yours. It doesn't help your site visitors if you link to irrelevant, poor quality sites. One hugely essential task that all net marketers must undertake, and undertake effectively, is building a link trail. The best way to build long-term link popularity is to offer fresh quality content and features that provide real value to your audience.
The more relevant the content of the linking page to the receiving page, the better. The more quality, relevant links there are, the better you will rank on the major search engines such as Google and MSN. If your site features numerous relevant links then it shows your popularity which increases your authenticity among search engines. An optimum way to raise your search engine rankings is working to improve your web site's link popularity. Not only can this revitalize your keyword rankings, but it also helps to create a superior experience for your visitors. One of the most potent ways to improve your site's link popularity is by writing articles for publication on other related Web sites and in other related newsletters or Ezines.
Together with optimizing your web pages with targeted search terms, link popularity is one of the most precious marketing techniques designed to bring quality traffic to your site. You'll find that increasing link popularity is a time-consuming and sometimes maddening process. Just keep in mind that it is clearly worth the time and effort when you see a spectacular surge in traffic. That's why link popularity is now one of the most crucial factors for search engines when they rank a Web page.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/link-popularity-articles/improve-link-popularity-to-increase-profits-271662.html
Our Top 5 Tips to Get and Keep Visitors to your Websites
Below are a list of 5 key points that you need to consider and research in relation to drawing more attention to you website.
Search Engine Ranking
Though there are many other means to lure web customers Search Engines remain certainly, for the foreseeable future, the key to a websites popularity. Please take a look at our article entitled ‘Top 10 Search Engine Listing and Ranking Tips.’ for more information on this.
Getting Linked
In the simplest terms the more websites that point/link to yours the more chance surfers have of finding it. ‘Quality links’ are the key here. A link from a website that Google & Yahoo in particular deem ‘important’ or rank highly for example the ‘BBC’ website, will be far more useful to your own sites ‘importance’ than say Dave the builders that has little or no ranking.
Avoid link exchange sites, increasingly the major Search Engines are discounting them.
Quality and Quantity
It cannot be stressed enough how important up to date, relevant content is to attracting and most importantly retaining a web audience. A cleanly designed, easily navigatable website with exciting fresh content will always retain a users attention for the long term, more than a striking Flash website that looks stunning but tells you nothing.
On the same point your front page must be both attractive and informative. You have very little time to gain a users attention, if there is nothing of interest immediately clear to them, or they cannot find what they are looking for why should they stay, let alone return.
Update Frequency
There is nothing worse than finding a website than covers exactly the areas you were looking for, but on return nothing has been added or changed. If you run a website say with a ‘Latest News’ section you must try to update it on a regular basis, otherwise it is useless.
A good idea here might also to be highlight a particular area of your website for say a month, for example an area showcasing a recent addition to your portfolio then focus on a newer project next month and so on.
Updating your content will also let Search Engines know it is worth ‘spidering’ your website regularly, if there has been no changes in 6 months why would they bother to look again?
Creating a Community
Our final tip deals primarily with retention of audience, basically offering the visitor a good reason to return to your website.
Offering a forum and or chat area or areas with useful regularly updated information, plus the ability to communicate with other people with similar interests gives a great reason to return to your site and ideally add it to their favourites.
Blogs and Web casts are also great ways to do this though they may require far more input from the webmaster.
Hopefully this has been of interest and use.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/link-popularity-articles/our-top-5-tips-to-get-and-keep-visitors-to-your-websites-273237.html
Blog Optimization
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Quality directory of webmasters actively seeking link exchange. Improve your search engine rankings and link popularity the easy way. Work clever not hard.
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About the natural Earth
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www.toniwhite.net
Author Toni White will soon be releasing her new book Ridge Street Prom. The third book of the Ridge Street series. Join Amanda Anderson in the little town of Somersville.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
A Classified Way to Drive Business to Your Website
A Classified Way to Drive Business to Your Website
There are more than 105 million of them in the United States. Worldwide, there could be at least 250 million of them. Them, according to statistics from the Nielsen/Net Ratings service, is the number of active Web surfers. 250 million in the whole world? The figure is more than the populations of Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and a few non-English speaking countries combined. That's a lot of them!
With so many active surfers around, you would think Webmasters and site owners have an easy time attracting them. Actually, they face an uphill battle to bring visitors and, more importantly, consumers to their Web sites. And a Web site without traffic is like a store built in the middle of the desert. You could have the greatest products and most attractive Web design around, but they're worthless if no one visits them.
There is one way, however, to turn your Web site into an oasis of business, a way to drive as much traffic to your site as your server can handle: a classified ad.
More on that later. First, all Web builders and site owners should know the basic and time-tested ways to attract traffic to their Web site. The key to all of these methods is to attract the right Web surfers. You want what experts call "targeted visitors," or people who are actually interested in what you're selling. To guarantee that this happens, you should follow this checklist of Web traffic golden rules:
Step 1: Optimize your Web pages.
Webmasters in the know take the time to set their meta tags. These tags, or codes, are hidden keywords in the Web page that tell search engines like Google and Yahoo exactly what your site is all about. A meta tag, for instance, could be "designer handbags," "sporting equipment," or whatever else you happen to be selling. These keywords tell the search engine to direct all handbag or sports shoppers to your site.
Step 2: List your site with every search engine out there.
For this step, you simply need to surf over to Google, AltaVista, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines. Click onto their customer service page, where they allow Web builders and site owners to manually submit their site addresses.
Step 3. Spice up your site with interactive features.
With articles, newsletters, offers, promotions, and discounts, you give your targeted visitors a reason to stay at your site once they find it. More importantly, you give them reasons to come back and tell their friends about the site. Word of mouth is one of the best, and cheapest, forms of advertising on the planet.
Step 4. Exchange banner ads with friends and with other companies that you do business with.
Banner ads are those eye-catching designs at the top and bottom of Web pages. They're like the billboards of the Internet superhighway. But with these online billboards, a simple click transports the Web surfer directly to your Web site.
Step 5. Exchange Web links with friends and business associates.
This, Webmasters and site owners, could be the most important way to drive Web traffic to your site. All of the major search engines rank sites by measuring how many links come to and leave from your Web site.
So links are a way to measure how worthwhile and how legitimate your site is. The better this measurement, the better chance your site will have to show up well in Web surfers' searches. In other words, these links could be the difference between your site being listed on page 20 of a Google search results, or on page 1.
Building better Web links and search engine results-that's where classified sites come into play. Some of the most savvy classified sites on the market now offer Web links in their ads. These links lead right to your business' home page.
Not only are these links convenient one-click ways for more customers to reach your site. They also boost your search engine rankings.
Of course, for business owners, classified sites have so many other benefits, too.
- Unparalleled exposure. Classified sites are like online malls. Not only will you get exposure from shoppers coming specifically to find your goods. You get "spill over" attention from shoppers who came for another item but then start browsing through all of the other ads in the classified "mall."
- A new arsenal of Web sites. Having online classified ads is like setting up multiple new Web sites across the Internet. Unlike your own original site, these classified ads come with low-cost IT support, security, and advertising.
- Incredible growth opportunities. Businesses and individuals selling on online classified sites pull in more than $1.95 billion a year, according to the statistics firm Kelsey Group. That figure does not even include money from eBay.
- Money for nothing. As valuable as classified sites are, many of the best ones charge very little or absolutely nothing to set up your ads.
Add up all of these numbers-250 million active Web surfers in the world, $1.95 billion in classified sales, and $0 cost-and your Web business is sure to come out in the positive.
Author Bio
Donald Lee is the public relations manager for Buysellcommunity.com. Buysellcommunity provides free classified listing services for individuals and businesses to market their products and services online. For global and localized classifieds, please visit
http://www.buysellcommunity.com - Free Buy & Sell Classifieds
Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com - Free Website Content
Improve Your Websites Performance
Improve Your Websites Performance
How well is your website performing? Are you satisfied with the amount of customers who view your website? Do you get enough business through your website? By reading this article you will be in a position to do something about all three questions.
It's all very well having a nicely designed and appealing website for your business but it's of no use if you don't get the customers to visit it. The number one term you will find associated with this is search engine optimisation. You will find endless sources on the Internet telling you to optimise this and optimise that but what does it all mean?
Search engine optimisation simply means making your website as friendly to search engines as possible. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN provide your business with the ability to reach a huge amount of customer's, they are by far the most successful method to boost sales for your business. If your website is nicely optimised then you will have a greater chance of appearing higher up on the search engines.
Most customers will type in a phrase into the search engine and view the first couple of websites that it finds, they will usually be successful in finding what they were looking for on the first page of results. Statistics show that customers very rarely look further than the first page (90% don't look past the first page) so what good is it if your website was on page 10? This is where search engine optimisation comes in, it will give your business a greater chance of being on that first golden page in the search engines.
There are many methods that all contribute to a higher ranking but some are more influential than others. The first factor is having a well built website. This is a standard feature that all website design companies should offer.
The second method is keywords. Keywords are the words that are associated with your business, the idea is to include these words in your website so when a customer types in a phrase in a search engine, your website is more likely to appear. Keywords should be chosen carefully to target the correct market for your business. It's no good targeting the word "Fruit" if your business sells website design.
The third factor that contributes to a high search engine ranking is back links. This simply means a link from someone else's website to yours. The more links you have to your website the better. Search engines view your back links as a sign of popularity and obviously the more popular you are the more successful you appear.
One of the best methods for this is to submit your website to online directories, not only will you get a back link but you are also likely to get a lot of customers coming to your website from that link. Make sure that you select trusted directories and one's that can relate to your business, there is a chance that you will get penalised by search engines if you sign up to link farms (websites that collect lot's of spam and poor quality links).
Finally, having a website that is constantly updated also gives you a boost in terms of search engines as they like to see fresh content. This is also likely to draw customers back to your website as they know they are likely to see something new. This in turn will boost the amount of traffic you get to your website which will also help in gaining a higher search engine rank.
These are just some of the methods in which you can improve your website performance, there are many other factors that contribute to a high search engine ranking. Most are an on-going process so it is very beneficial to your business to continually try to improve your performance as there is always someone competing against you for that top spot.
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Author Bio
Rob Jones designs and develops custom websites on a daily basis for Blueprint IT (www.BlueprintIT.co.uk).
Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com - Free Website Content
Free Links Exchange
Links4free is a free text link exchange that provides blogs the ability to cross-promote each other. Interessted bloggers can either send a message to the webmaster or by simply posting a comment with the following information:
1. Blog Title
2. Blog Category
3. Your Blog Link
4. the link of links4free in your blog (link set-up instruction below)
Please insert the html code below in your blog. It should look like this:
Free Link Exchange
