Tips On Blogging For Dollars

By: Seth Willis Jr.

After you’ve made the decision to set up and create an ongoing blog for your AdSense revenue, make sure you stay up to date on trends and articles that will drive traffic to your site. It’s easy to fall into the trap of reporting and blogging on outdated material, and today’s readers need timely and newsworthy information so that they can stay excited and eager to read your work! AdSense advertising will be effective only when it is attached to a worthwhile blog or site. Make sure that when you’re blogging for dollars, it’s worth your effort and time.
Some key things to remember when you are blogging for dollars include:
Choose the right keywords. Make use of Google’s and Yahoo!’s keyword selector tools and get comfortable with the scope and subjects that are popular. Blogging is much easier when you are knowledgeable and confident about a particular subject.
Target your site to a single topic, and branch out. It’s easy to start to take in too many different subjects, and this will only confuse your readers. Choose an industry that interests you, and slowly evolve and develop the site to introduce additional and relevant information.
Don’t click your own ads! This is a big mistake for your budget, revenue goals, and analysis of how well your site is doing. Spend time promoting your site and driving traffic in other effective ways.
Don’t include popup ads on your site. Web visitors find this a nuisance, and they may even leave right away if your popup ad appears more often than not!
Don’t pull any ad-clicking tricks. There’s no need for hiding an ad, or making sneaky requests when providing information. Keep it clean, direct, and open; your visitors will appreciate it!
Use RSS feeds. This is a great way to encourage people to keep reading your blog, and will help you drive traffic with much less effort.
Promote and submit to multiple sites. Make sure your blog topics and content are available to others; try e-mailing them to people you know, promoting it on discussion boards that are topic-relevant (make sure to stick to the moderator’s rules), and send it to the major search engine directories if you can.
Use metatags. These are becoming more popular with the increase of social networking sites that aggregate information online simply by using tags to describe the Website, blog, or piece of information. By making sure you have many metatags included in your blog’s description and header, you can increase the chances of exposure.
Use free tools, such as Keyword Digger (http://keyworddigger.com/ ) and Google’s Traffic Estimator (http://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox) to calculate specific keyword costs and popularity.
Analyze your results! It’s important to make a process or system to calculate and analyze how well your keywords and specific blog sites are doing. Try doing this on a weekly or even two to three-day basis. Use Google Analytics to help you create your best reports and features that you may need (http://google.com/analytics/). The site is particularly tailored for Google advertising campaigns.

Three Blogging Tips

By: Peter Nisbet

This article is not intended to provide you with a host of blogging tips, but simply to guide those of you who have either just started or have been blogging for a while but have some bad habits.
Bad blogging habits are easy to get into, and one of the worst is to leave your ‘About’ page unchanged. You know the page: it is provided by Wordpress as standard and a whole host of bloggers leave it unchanged. Why they do this is known only to them, because this is the first page that a large number of first-time visitors to a blog check out, and the reason why many of them leave without looking further.
All you have to do is to say a little about yourself, who you are, and what your blog is about, why you feel qualified to write a blog about this topic and how you can be contacted. If your blog covers a particular niche, rather than being simply a log of personal comments, then your potential readers will want to know why they should believe what you say by reading your credentials on the subject.
There is nothing wrong with having a personal blog about your personal thoughts on things, but if you are presenting yourself as a form of expert on a specific topic, then you will have to persuade readers that you have a right to do so. You should use your ‘About’ page to do that.
Another tip you should take is to claim your blog with Technorati. This registers it as yours with Technorati, and you can get a whole load more visitors. Since joining Technorati most of my blogs’ traffic rocketed. It takes a while for new blogs to get going, but it’s a lot easier if you make use of sites such as Technorati. The same is true of most of the social bookmarking sites if traffic is important to you. If you are using a blog to promote a product, then this is essential.
If you have a website then don’t get lazy and be content to run your blog from a hosting site such as wordpress.com. It is better to download the software from wordpress.org, and host your own blog. You have much more control over the look and feel of it, and can use any of the thousands of plugins that are available online. You can also use any template you want, or even design your own. That way you get total customization of your blog pages, and can make it more distinctive than the majority hosted on Wordpress or Blogger’s site. If you have tried and had problems downloading and installing it then send me an email. If needed I can take you through it online, or by telephone.
These are the two main tips that any blogger should take if they intend to blog seriously. However, was I to provide the third most important tip for anybody interested in blogging, then it would be to monetize your blog. Don’t blog for nothing. If your blog concerns a specific niche subject you can likely throw up one or two affiliate programs on your sidebar so that they appear with your new posts. A three column blog is useful for this, since your regular sidebar will generally be full of permanent links.
If you monetize using Adsense, a three column layout is even more essential, since you will want a vertical block down one of the columns, in addition to some at the bottom and the middle. A good Adsense layout would be a column to the left or right of the main text column containing a vertical ad unit, a horizontal link unit at the bottom of the blog, and also a horizontal ad unit at the bottom of the latest post. You could also include a search box at the top or bottom of your main sidebar that allows a search either on Google, from which you get income, or on your blog.
You could also include one of your websites as a second search option, providing three altogether. The income might not be a lot, but most blogs with a few hundred visitors a day should be able to make from $10 to $20 daily minimum, depending on the niche. All you need are a few blogs like that.
These are my three main blogging tips. Yours would likely be different, since blogging is a very personal thing, but if you take these three on board you will likely find that you will get more visitors, have more fun and also be able to put a bit put aside for the holidays or that unexpected bill that always comes at the wrong time.

Beginners bloging five tips

Tip #1 - Blog about Something you’re Passionate About

If you are not passionate about your topic, you are not going to stick to it. The best way to decide what to blog about is to ask you, “Would I do this for free?” If the answer is yes, then you have found your topic. People who blog only for money seldom succeed.

Tip #2 - Get Your Own Domain Name

While it certainly is possible to start a blog for nothing by using a free service like Blogger.com or Wordpress.com, I recommend every blogger starting out to get their own domain name. The cost is next to nothing and you can still host it for free if you want (Blogger allows that).
Having your own domain makes you look more professional. While it may not make you a pro-blogger, the ad networks will take you a lot more seriously. Some ad networks will not accept a site unless it has its own domain name. If you do it right, having your own domain and web hosting won’t cost you anything because the income the blog generates will more than offset the cost.
It’s better to get the domain name at the start than down the road. The last thing you want to do is build up a blog with Blogspot, get a ton of back links, Page Rank, Alexa and Technorati rankings, and then have to move it to its own domain and start over. I’m sure Kumiko can relate.

Tip #3 - Update the Blog Often

A non-updated blog is a dead blog. If you cannot commit to a consistent blogging schedule, then it’s best not to blog until you can. This is where blogging about your passion comes in. If you’re passionate about the topic, then chances are you’ll keep blogging about it. Ideally, you should update the blog everyday.

Tip #4 - Get To Know Your Readers

Blogging is a two-way street. You cannot exist without readers (well you can, but what’s the point?), and readers don’t exist unless they have something to read. Blogging is about forming relationships. There’s the relationship between you and the readers and relationship between you and other blogs in your niche. It is up to you to get to know them and form this relationship. Many readers have stated that when they’re reading my blog, it’s like a one-on-one conversion. That was not done by accident. It’s all part of relationship blogging.

Tip #5 - Monetize the Blog with Multiple Sources

When the time comes to monetize your blog, don’t stick with just One money makers. There are now tons of ways to make money from blogging. Check out my recommended moneymakers list.