Make Money with your Blog

Someone asked on LinkedIn: "If I wanted to have a successful blog that potentially made money, what would I do?"

First thing's first, after figuring out what it is you're going to write about and designing the blog and hosting it somewhere (I would suggest purchasing a keyword-rich domain name rather than hosting it free on Blogger or some other blog site), the most valuable thing you can do is add buttons and links to your blog to allow users to subscribe to it in as many different ways as possible. Some people use services like Bloglines, some people use an RSS app, some people use Firefox live bookmarks, but not all of these people are savvy enough to know how to subscribe to a blog without a specific sub-to-this-blog link for their preferred RSS reader. A great resource to help you make these different links is Feedburner.com. Feedburner also allows you to design email signatures with animated headlines from your blog, and many other different ways to publicize and monetize your blog. Plus, it lets you watch the traffic and subscription trends for your blog's feed.

Next, you want to research keywords to find a keyword that relates to your subject matter that people actually search for, so that if you find yourself in the top ten rankings on Google for said keyword, you will actually get traffic from it. An awesome tool to help you figure this out is Wordtracker GTrends which is here: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends/

Once you find your keyword or key phrase, you want to make sure your blog's code is search engine friendly. You want to make sure your meta tags are within search engine guidelines, that your keyword density is appropriate for your subject matter, and that all of your titles have your keyword or key phrase in it. A good way to get a head start on this is to have your blog's backend hosted by Blogger, while the blog itself is published on your own domain. I say this because Google owns blogger and as such, the new version of blogger features extremely Google-friendly code.

After this, you need to get some links pointing to your site from good, Google recognized sites that relate to your subject matter. The best way to do this is to search on Google for your keywords or key phrase and ask the top ten ranking web sites to link to your blog. You may have to be creative about this, using what we like to call link bait. This can be anything that entices another web site owner to link to your site. Because your site will be new and most top ten ranking sites know a thing or two about search engine optimization, you probably won't be able to just get a link exchange - no one wants to link to a brand new blog for two reasons, one is that new bloggers have a tendency to lose interest after a while and you find yourself linking to a blog that never gets updated, and two is because the site has no Google PageRank. If you offer your potential linkers something else, you may have more success. For example, I once ran a campaign for a client that swapped links for a discount on my client's products. Whatever it is you swap for a link is up to you, be creative.

You want to add your web site to blog directories and blog resources such as Technorati. If you haven't spent literally a week straight doing this, you haven't found nearly all of them. There are so many! Your best bet is to search Google for a list of blog directories.

Ask your friends or colleagues to Digg each of your blog posts using digg.com

Add links to the bottom of every post that will allow readers to add to delicious, post to facebook, myspace, stumble upon, etc. Use as much 2.0 power as you possibly can. Get a Twitter account and tweet as much as you can, follow as many users as you can. Make sure every profile you've ever made for yourself or your business on any site, has a link to your blog. Make sure your blog address is everywhere, when you comment on others' blogs, when you talk in forums, etc.

You want to make sure you have an advertising policy available on your web site for potential advertisers to read, and as many different ways for them to contact you.

When all of this is set up and ready, it's time to send out a Press Release. Make sure it is enticing and boldly underlines how this blog is different and why people will want to read it. Submit your press release to as many press release distributors as possible. Again, just search on Google and you'll find a ton. Some cost money, some are free.

Now it's time to post. Make sure your posts have personality. No one wants to read a dry technical blog. You want to make sure your own personality comes out in each and every post. Also, the more controversy, the better. A controversial post will entice readers to send the link to their friends and family in either horror or pride - both are equally as good! It will also encourage comments and repeat visits when something heated has been posted to the comments and the poster wants to come back to check the responses. It will also encourage repeat commenters and some will be compelled to subscribe to your blog. Make it controversial enough and you may even hit the mainstream news, such as Michelle Malkin did recently when she objected to the scarf Rachael Ray was wearing in a Dunkin' Donuts ad.

Submit all of your article length posts to article databases utilizing the author's bio as a spot for a link back to your blog. Hopefully people will syndicate these on their own sites keeping the bio in tact and thus, creating more links to your blog.

Some people use traffic exchanges such as BlogExplosion or Blog Soldiers and while it does actually increase your traffic, most of that traffic is useless. The only one I have ever found that actually results in real readers, is BlogExplosion.com. These sites are not entirely useless, however, as they do have directories that your blog is submitted to when you join. And there are no obligations after joining, so I would suggest doing so just to get into the directories as they are even more links to your blog.

Make sure you blog regularly, but not too much. Many people subscribe to RSS feeds as a much faster way to get their daily reading in. Blogs with a lot of daily headlines, generally get skimmed and sometimes just deleted when there's no time. But blogs that only have a post a week, can tend to be forgotten about. My suggestion is to keep it to once daily, and at the very least, 3 or 4 times per week. If you are going to be unable to post for a period of time, vacation or something, post and let your readers know so that they don't think it's just another blog gone stale.

In the meantime, add Google Adsense to your blog, perhaps Amazon a-store and any high-quality affiliate programs that can relate to your blog's subject matter.

If you keep all of this up, you will have advertising revenue. The key though, is patience. Keep at it and don't get discouraged. Publicizing any web site can take months upon months before you see results. But once you do, it's highly worth it. You may even want to design and sell your own merchandise for further revenue.

Technorati Tags: blogs, blogging, seo, search engine optimization

Search Wars! Battle of the Major Search Engines

It's pretty safe to say that anyone who has a computer has at some point or another used a search engine. Search engines are extremely useful creatures. They have had a major impact on our society, I mean its pretty amazing that you can just go type in anything you want into a search box and get back information about it in about two seconds. Before search engines came along you pretty much had to rely on going to the library to get more information. With that being said the popularity of search has created quite a huge market. The advent of paid advertising has sprung search engines into a multi-billion dollar a year industry, thus creating some pretty stiff competition. Right now we are in the midst of a major war on the internet, with the major players being Yahoo, MSN, Google, and an upcoming strong contender in Ask. So you may ask who is winning this war right now? And why? And who will take the lead in the future? One thing is for sure the reward of being the king of the search mountain will reap billions and billions of dollars annually.

So what are these top gun search engines competing over? The answer is clicks, on the paid advertisements they present every time someone uses their search engine. If you notice when you use Google for example that at the very top of the page and on the right hand side it says sponsored sites. This is where people trying to make money online pay to advertise for their company. These prices range from nickels and dimes per click, all the way up to hundreds of dollars per click, depending on the keyword. So the main objective for a search engine is to get as many people as possible using them to search the internet. Just think about it for a second, the more searches they get, the more chance of people clicking on their paid ads, which is where they make their money. Now of course not everyone is going to click on the paid ads, only a small percentage of the searches they receive ever actually make the search engine money. However, with millions of searches a day it only takes a small percentage to really make a big monetary difference.

So who are the warlords going to battle here? And who is in the lead? The three major competitors are MSN, Google, and Yahoo, and Ask is fighting its way back into the mix of things with some pretty sweet search features.

As of right now Google is in the lead, they receive somewhere in the ballpark of 80% of all search queries on the internet. Google is estimated to gross around 3 billion dollars in 2006, all from just paid advertisement. Now you may ask why is it that Google is so far ahead? Well there are a few reasons. First, Google has the most advanced algorithm, which is the mind boggling mathematical equation that ranks and lists sites depending on the keyword. Trying to understand their algorithm is extremely complicated, Google only hires absolute geniuses to work for them. Second, is the brilliance of Google.com itself, which is their homepage.

Take a look at Google's homepage, all you can do is type your keyword in the search box and hit search. There's really nothing else going on it's pretty clean cut and user friendly, with absolutely no distractions from getting people to do what they want. Which is search

Now take a look at MSN, or Yahoo's homepage. It is just jam packed with all sorts of stuff to do from playing games to reading articles about the news. This stuff is great and all, however it does distract people from typing into the search box and inevitably clicking on a paid ad putting money in their pocket. I believe this is a major part in why Google has such a gigantic lead in the volume of searches they receive compared to the other top guns. .

So I firmly believe that in this case the giant will not be taken down. Even though you see commercials for Yahoo and Ask, you know the ones with the cheesy guy screaming Yahoooo and the monkey that Ask is featuring. The bottom line is Google has the best algorithm right now and their site doesn't distract people from searching, which will yield many more search queries. Who knows though just as Google basically came from no where and took over the market, there may be a new kid on the block that will topple them. However as of now though they are the reigning champions.

Author Bio
Search engine specialist Steve Bis, is the author of the free search secrets newsletter and owns a unique web search tool that will help you find anything on the internet in 60 seconds, eliminating your search frustrations.

Do-It-Yourself or Not - SEO for the Small Business

In the vast world of SEO, there is no shortage of opinions on how, why, and when to do what to your site to make it rank better on the search engines. I have been performing SEO for some time now, but in part it's been on my own website and for my own small business. Now that I've started my own SEO company it gives me far more time to research new techniques, try out the latest fads, and above all else discover what the truth is behind this relatively new form of marketing. Yet, there is something to be said for grabbing the bull by the horns and trying the do-it-yourself method for your small business. SEO is not particularly complicated. All you really need is some basic html knowledge, a few commonly used free online SEO tools for keyword research, and most importantly time. This is where I fell short in my do-it-yourself SEO attempts.

In the business world there is one major factor that contributes largely to all others. Sales. Without sales you have little if any operating budget for marketing, but without marketing where are your sales coming from? From my own experience running a small business, I found that my number one problem was having the time to do enough marketing to generate the sales I needed to run my business profitably. If you're a large company with investors, or at least have a large staff and/or marketing department, perhaps the issues of time aren't as dire. However for the small business owner with just a few employee's, or as it was in my case just myself and the volunteer help of a few friends, I found myself wearing lots of different hats. On the one hand I had to run and maintain my business and develop the products I was trying to sell in a very competitive market. This in itself was a full time job and left little time for much else. And yet on the other hand I had to find a way to market my products so potential customers would know about them and know how to buy them.

I began learning about SEO and how it could benefit my bottom line. I talked to people in the industry and discovered that if I had the time I could in fact do it myself. This of course was extremely appealing because I would be saving money on not having to hire a company or staff to do it for me. Pretty simple. The more I learned, the more work piled up and my product development suffered. I wasn't getting the results on the search engines I had hoped for quick enough, and in turn, I wasn't spending enough time working on my product development either. It became a true catch 22 situation. I didn't have the time I needed to spend on product development and marketing at the same time.

My business was in a state of disarray, so I put it on hold and decided to use what I had learned about SEO and offer my marketing services to other small businesses at an affordable rate in an effort to make enough money to save my company. The venture allowed me to spend all of my time learning about SEO and the ins and outs of the Search Engines. I never did go back to my other business. I found that Search Engine Optimization was a better market for me, and I like helping the small businesses compete against the giant corporations. I continue to provide affordable SEO services to small businesses and take a personal approach to each client simply because I know what it's like on that side of the fence too. Business is about one thing. Sales. A slick SEO campaign will generate nothing but sales. The return on investment is exponential and any small based business is a big step ahead of the rest with the right Search Engine Optimization company behind them.

John Simmonds
Affordable SEO Services