Make Money Writing Articles
By admin | January 9, 2009
I’m back and raring to go. Been very caught up learning loads of new stuff on a couple of courses (more later) and I am looking at article marketing which involves writing high-quality articles related to the product being promoted. The articles are then submitted to article directories, social networks, forums, and blogs. The articles contain active links, usually placed within an author or bio box, going back to the original website. Thus, backlinks are increased, which is the objective for most other campaigns. There are in fact hundreds of article directories on the internet, the main one being EzineArticles. Submitting a well written article to lots of different directories can easily pay off.
Article marketing is a commonly used form of online marketing. It enables online businesses to subtly but effectively sell their products and services.
Article marketing plays a vital role in search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns. The generation of backlinks helps boost the ranking of the original websites on major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Keyword research and insertion is also employed by advertisers to increase website visitors and in turn, more buyers and profit.
Good articles build a business’ credibility and establish visitor loyalty. Loyal visitors recommend products they trust and consumers listen to people they trust. When you write a good article, then you have a better chance of making people buy from you in theory.
Article marketing need not be hard, but it does take some work. To start however, if you have a few blog posts on a particular topic, you can combine them, knock them around a bit and produce an article relatively easily. Make a start today, its a good introduction to writing and starting to create backlinks, which as I am finding is the name of the game in internet marketing.
I have been very bad at posting recently due to work and other comittments but I am starting up again and hope you will bear with me as I have loads to report!
Till next time
Jane
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Using Titles Successfully
By admin | November 29, 2008
How do you grab the readers attention once they stumble on your site more by luck than by good management? How do you get them to stay on for longer than the flicker of an eyelid (the average I believe) What makes a good title has to be subjective but what I have found when I have visited other blogs and looked into this can be summarised in the following techniques I think.
- keep it simple. Most of what I have seen suggests that the best are short and sweet and easy to understand. They are also better for search engines.
- Get attention. You could use a variety of techniques here. using shock awe and downright revulsion normally works (joking). Think of ways to grab attention without misleading
- Give a description Its not a cryptic crossword though I have seen some titles that could fall into that category. Nearly everyone wants to know what they are getting before they read further.
- Use keywords. I think this is a biggie and I have been ignoring its importance mainly because I find looking for keywords a bit of a chore although I have found a fab tool for this recently which I am trying out and will report on in a later post. Keywords are important for SEO. It can be challenging to keep thinking of keywords to maximise the usefulness of your posts (unless you want to write like an automaton that is) but there is no doubt that using them can help you go up in the search engine favors!
- Meet a need If you have n effective title then it can draw people in if they think you have got something to say that they want to hear.. “How to” posts are very popular. Many people are looking for information on the internet and if they think you can give it to them when they see your title they might be inclined to read further.
Anyway hope these musings help.
Til next time
jane
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Using Titles On Your Blog
By admin | November 28, 2008
Been researching this recently whilst bogged down in looking at Keywords. The title of this blog probably wont achieve anything as I have not actually thought it through but you could.
Why are titles important? I hadnt given much thought to this at all to be honest. I simply sit down and rattle away paying scant attention to keywords or titles, but I realise that I should.
Why?
Looks like there are a number of very good reasons and some of them are:
- Search Engine Optimisation. Loads of factors apply in how your blog might rise in the search engine rankings,but titles do seem to play quite a part in that by default the blog will include that title tag in the the particular post (this one for example) and it forms part of the URL structure of your page as well. This one is my domain name/using-titles-on-your-blog. Its also the link that others might use to link to you and that will also increase your search engine ranking. Having learnt this, I am going to spend a bit more time on my titles!
- Associated with the above is the fact that you might get attention in the search engines. Anybody typing any word into Google will get a lot of results and there is little for them to go on apart from the title, the URL and a short excerpt. The title could be a way of getting search engine referral visitors
- RSS feeds i havent actually got this on my blog at the moment though it is on my mind… No doubt when I get round to doing it, the titles have to be scannable and grab attention.
- Web 2.0 I suspect the same applies in social bookmarking sites like Digg and Delicious. Yes I know that the latter is typed in a different way and I have failed in my attempts to make this a keyword rich post but what the hell!
In any event, first impressions are important and I guess once your visitor likes the look of your blog, the titles of your posts come next.
Anyway off to do some more research on RSS and delicious now!
Til next time
jane
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Writing Tips For Bloggers
By admin | November 26, 2008
Posting content to your blog really is crucial. I know very little about SEO but I do know that the beauty of a blog as opposed to a traditional website is that the content is regularly updated rather than static and they therefore attract more attention from the search engine spiders, those that crawl all over the place seeking you out (you hope!)
How can you write more effectively? It does seem to be the case that the readers’(yes I mean you) attention span is very short (I know you are reading every word but you may be on your own there). Scannable content is the order of the day.
What is scannable content? Well one of the most obvious techniques would have to be writing in
- Lists. Numbered or bulleted lists are scannable, easy to read and statistics appear to show are much more linked to and read
- Format. Use bold, color,,CAPITALS, underlining and any other formatting techniques you like to make it more pleasing to the eye.
- Borders and boxes
- Pictures. Can grab attention and split up the post
- Headings can be used to draw the eye down the post helping them to find important points
- Short paragraphs. If you break it up, it can be much easier to read. I plead guilty to this in past posts and I try hard now to break things down.
- Space can keep the reader from feeling overwhelmed. Again guilty! Keep some white space in there and it helps it the whole thing to be easier on the eye.
It can be hard work but I think if you work hard at writing content that is readily scannable, your readers will appreciate it. Hope you do.
til next time
jane
Topics: Newbies, blogs | No Comments »
Writing Content for Blogs
By admin | November 25, 2008
Have you got a blog? Struggling to find and write content?Blog writing can become a bit of a chore and finding ideas for blog content can get more difficult the longer you have a blog.
I am no expert certainly but I have been looking at ways to get ideas for blogging generally as I am starting another unrelated blog and want to make sure that I have enough in me to keep going!
Article marketing or writing posts on blogs demands perserverance and commitment. I am sure that you will have heard the phrase ” content is King” and I think it is. The more I post and the more articles I write, the more traffic I get to this blog and the more people I get on my list. I cant lie and say that the numbers are overwhelming but they are increasing.
So what do you need to be thinking about?There are a lot of things that have come out of my research and I will be putting all of them into practice in my posts from now on.
Perhaps the most important thing to think about is what you are writing on your blog. One of the rules of marketing that I picked up is that you have to start with the customer, find out what they want and give it to them. Give them something unique and useful.
What is unique and useful is of course somewhat subjective but perhaps you could think about the following;
- Inform
- educate
- entertain
- inflame
- update
You probably cant do them all the time in every post but if you can keep some of those elements in then you may be giving good content. I try and inform and educate by giving information that I have gleaned over the last few months. Hopefully it is usually good content and I do try and inject some humour occasionally if only because I find it difficult to keep a straight face most of the time!
There are a huge number of blogs out there and it can be difficult to distinguish your own. Certainly I am trying to practice what I preach and write good content giving you some of what I have discovered in the last few months.
How do you find ideas for content then?
more on this in my next post
til then
Jane
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Blog Writing
By admin | November 24, 2008
Just returned from a holiday in Lanzarote. Getting my winter sun ( as I am in the UK, that means annual sun!) and raring to go.
If you are a complete novice to blogging then you are only around 6 months behnd me. I have learnt a lot over the last few months (and paid a lot!). I have distilled some of what I have learnt into a short email course that you can see on the right of this page or by clicking the freebie link in the pages above. Its all relevant stuff for someone new to internet marketing and I am in the process of getting a free short ebook together which I will give away to subscribers to my list. I intend to put a lot of what you will need to know to get going in that book so it will be onine before xmas. I will regularly update that with stuff that I have learnt and if I find any free programmes worth having I will pass them on.
I have enrolled on a new programme about IM and will pass on what I learn from that as well. Its costing me over $2000 so it had better be worth it! Anyone on my list will get the benefit of what I learn and put into practice.
Over the next few days, I am going to be looking at the content of this blog and my others and will be writing about how to do it. I have certainly gone through a steep learning curve and am still learning but I want to put some pointers in that might help you if you are starting out, wondering what to write, how to get ideas, and so on. I am no expert but I have made a few mistakes you might want to avoid!
Til next time
Jane
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Finding Blog Readers
By admin | November 21, 2008
This is a subject close to my heart because it is what I am trying to do. You might be interested in some distilled information I gleaned from my readings this week! Just a series of bullet points really. More detail to follow in later posts!
- use a proper domain name
- post at least once day in the early stages. Ok I know I havent done this over the last couple of weeks but I am on holiday!
- Comment on other blogs
- encourage comments on your own blog
- trackback and link to other blogs
- submit articles at least once a week to sites like ezine.com
Thats it for today. Just to get me thinking as well!
Til next time
jane
Topics: Uncategorized, blogs | 1 Comment »
Thinking of Quitting?
By admin | November 19, 2008
I dont know if you have a blog but whether you have or not, there will come a time when you will think of quitting,I know I have on a number of occasions. Its hard work and there is no getting away from it. It can be tough to keep motivated.
There are huge numbers of blogs out in the blogosphere, many of them fizzle out after a few months,why? I think its a sense of disappointment,.After all there are so many “gurus” out there suggesting that money can be made in a matter of moments and before you have had your breakfast, Iit can be very disenchanting to find it aint like that at all (unless you are very lucky) Like anything else,it requires momentum to get it going and getting to that critical mass can take a while.
I had been getting a bit cheesed off recently so I dug around for some inspiration and then sat back and cogitated (something I am getting pretty good at).This is what I came up with to help me and who knows it might help you.
- Everyone,yes everyone feels like this at some stage or at many stages in their life, whether it be blogging or general life. We can all wake up in a morning and just feel apathetic and lazy but sometimes it can get worse than that, it can be a feeling of futility and being powerless to do anything about it. It can be very easy to think of packing it all in.
- Feelings of despair can strike at any time. So can a lack of motivation, its normal. I am no more able to control those feelings than anyone else and lots of people give up when these feelings threaten to overwhelm them.
- Feelings of jealousy. You may see what others are doing and their successes and feel dejected that, despite all your hard work, you are “failing”. I think it is very difficult to keep upbeat all the time,particularly when you come across others who appear to be getting the success that you think should be yours. I keep going by taking inspiration from this. Yes I can feel p*****d off when I see others succeeding but I have learnt to keep those feelings in check now. If I see someone being successful then I know that I can be too. I just have to keep plugging away.
- the battle with self doubt. This is a biggie! You are trying to get a business going on the internet and have to put up with your own doubts and well to be frank, the pitying looks you might get from friends and possible family. It can be hard to keep going in the face of that.
So what can you do ot overcome these feelings of apathy, despair, jealousy? I think you have to have self belief. I started an offlien business many years ago and the first two years were so hard and so expensive, it pains me even now to think of those meeting with the bank manager, the dimly lit room, the bare lightbulb. I am not joking, the bank manager sat in a half light, behind a desk, barely spoke to me but spoke at me through my accountant, a chap I had taken along for moral support. I was not allowed to take anything but the bare minimum for months, had to chose whether to pay my staff or the taxman (the staff obviously but boy that taxman was vicious!) and had to sack the cleaner which meant that I waited until the staff went home, then I cleaned the toilets. Happy times! But the point I am trying to make is that I was determined to make a go of it, i had had enough of employers, I wanted this for myself. 2 years later I was making considerable amounts of money and that bank manager had been moved by way of demotion. You have to have self belief,know that you are going to make it and work hard to keep moving forward.
What can you do to keep that momentum? If I am feeling as though its all going wrong and I cannot get anywhere, I focus on creating some content. Just writing helps me to focus, even if its gobbledygook.iknow that if I create something and concentrate on getting on with it, it takes me out of my self and any tendency to brood.
It can be difficult but there is no doubt that if you take some action, you will keep moving forward.If you lie in bed all day, you will feel more tired. Taking some action is a bit like taking exercise, if you concentrate on output, you will avoid feelings of negativity. If you give into negativity, then you wont achieve anything. I find that on the days I have been unable to motivate myself to get out of bed, I can feel even more tired and negative as a result.
If you are blogging or thinking of starting, I really do think that you need to have patience and dedication. You have to learn to take enjoyment form every small success and try not to get despondent at your failures.
I read somewhere that it is consistent effort based on a solid belief in an outcome that will get you there. If you continue to take action and dont give up too easily you will succeed and so will I!
til next time
jane
Topics: Internet Marketing, blogs | 1 Comment »
Second of a Couple of Interesting Articles
By admin | November 17, 2008
I thought this was an interesting article and in my last post, I did say that i have been reading around this subject a lot recently. This one appealed to me because I just couldnt get my head around the horseshoe theory!
Is it possible to make money with a blog?
Let me just start with, unless you have horseshoes up your butt, you are not going to make money off your blog right away. I’m not saying it’s not possible, you might find a niche with no competition and high traffic…but the odds are against you.
Most people who start a blog, give up quickly. They either never initally launch it or worse, because it doesn’t make money they give up.
Most successful blogs have been around for two years or more. And when you speak to these bloggers it’s taken them that time to get traffic and a huge readership. They did not start over night as a success.
In fact when you talk to people like Darren Rowse at Problogger, he will tell you that he started his blog as a hobby. He also says that you shouldn’t build a blog to make money initially, but as a hobby. If you are expecting to make money, you are going to be disappointed.
I’m not saying you can’t make money on a blog. But the odds are against you. It’s a constant battle of promoting your blog, and getting traffic to it. That and having highly valuable content. If your blog is just filled with google adsense, and ads, but no real content, you may get the traffic, but they won’t come back.
To make money from a blog, you need to build foundation articles; reasons that people want to come to your blog. You add a value that they need, you give your readers hope. You provide them with something they are looking for.
Some bloggers say having pillar articles aren’t important, but I differ. I think it’s important to build a blog with a few strong articles. Hopefully these articles will create some link backs with other sites. Bigger bloggers might see your article and want to put it on their site. By doing this, they will give you a lot more traffic, and a market of readers you might not have gotten.
Another great way to get more traffic is to network. Join forums, groups, comment on other blogs with similar subjects. The more you publish your url on sites, the more linkbacks you create, the more you are increasing your page rank.
I think submitting your link on popular blogs via comments is a great way to go. Even if they have no follows. (No follow means your link is not a trusted source and google won’t trust that link back, which doesn’t help your page rank. Some blogs do have follow, which means when you link to them, your link is treated as a trusted source and helps your page rank.) Why I think commenting on no follow blogs is a good thing, because if 3,000 people are reading that blog article, that’s 3,000 people reading your comment. And lo and behold, you are getting traffic you might not have originally gotten.
Some people actually try to be one of the first comments by a popular blog author, that way everyone who reads that article and wants to comment on it, is going to see that first comment. And the important thing is, to actually read the post you are commenting on, and offer something on value. If your comment is generic and dull, you might not get the traffic you would if your comment added value, or was interesting. The odds that people are going to click on your link are increased when you appear intelligent and informed.
Writing an article and submitting them in free article databases is another great way to get yourself out there. Write 3 or 4, 300-500 word articles and submit them to as many free sites as you can. Just be careful to make your article informative and not a sales letter. If it’s nothing but promotion, your article might be rejected. Also keep in mind when submitting articles, it takes them a bit of time to be published.
Well that’s a few ways to get you started on making money. Remember to never give up, and at least once a day concentrate on promoting your blog. Submit links to everything you can, and always blog. The more blog posts you have, the more important google is going to think you are. How do you think some of the popular blogs got that way? They offer pages and pages of content. For you to build a readership, you need to do the same.
Feel free to publish this article as long as you keep the resource box intact.
Tressa Anderson is an online marketer, promoter, and freelance writer.
Download her free branding yourself online report at http://www.traffic101.org
Check out Tressa’s blog at http://traffic-101.blogspot.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tressa_Anderson
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First of A Couple of Interesting Articles.
By admin | November 15, 2008
I have been reading a number of articles about blogging recently and I thought that I would reproduce a couple of them here so you can have a look as well.The first one is by Steve Pavlina who writes quite long blog posts but they are usually very interesting and give good information. So have a look at this first one. I’m not sure when it was wriiten but I think the information in it holds true for anyone thinking of blogging, just starting out or having been at it for a few months. The moral is , dont give up!
Darren Rowse of Problogger.net recently posted a case study of a blogger who decided to quit blogging after six months due to poor financial results: Blog Case Study – Is it time to Quit?
Darren’s post is a great read for anyone who runs an online business, not just for bloggers.
Interestingly, the points Darren raises in his post are similar to those from an article I wrote in 2002 called Shareware Amateurs vs. Shareware Professionals.
The blogging “mistakes” Darren notes are common to other online businesses.
Three of the most frequent mistakes I’ve seen include:
1. Thinking too short-term
The blogger that Darren mentions gave up after only six months. Many shareware developers give up when their first product isn’t a hit. I’ll tell you that if you can achieve financial success with a one-person, shoestring budget business in only six months, you’re probably superhuman. My first four shareware games were all relative flops — it wasn’t until my fifth release that I was able to produce enough income to live off.
When I think about the personal development business I’m building, six months is nothing. I’ve been at it for 10 months full-time now, and while I’ve made a reasonable dent in my long-term goals, this business is clearly still an infant. But to me that’s perfectly fine and well within my expectations. This business may be an infant, but it’s a healthy infant who will grow up big and strong.
Building a business is a lot like raising a child. It takes time and patience. If you’re going to start a business and you’re only willing to give it six months to prove itself, don’t start a business. That probably isn’t even enough time for a franchise. Would you throw out your child because it can’t fend for itself six months out of the womb?
I make most of my business decisions within a working time frame of 2-5 years… and for the big decisions with far-ranging consequences, I’m thinking 10-20 years out. This is just like the parent who starts saving for their child’s college education before the child can even read and write. If you want to start a real business and not just a hobby, think long-term.
2. Failure to optimize
An online business will have processes that get executed over and over. Some of these are human processes, but many are executed by technology, and in my opinion, it’s the technological processes that are the most important for an online business. Whenever someone loads up your home page in their web browser, that’s a process being executed. Reading a blog entry is a process. Clicking an ad is a process. Finding the site is a process.
Due to the sheer volume of processes an online business executes every day as well as their incredible interconnectedness, it isn’t hard to achieve tremendous performance gains through process optimization. A 10% improvement here, 15% there, 8% there, and pretty soon it begins to add up. As I’m sure some people will recognize, this was the basis of W.E. Deming’s work with the Japanese after WWII. If you can measure it, you can improve it.
If you generate income from Google Adsense, for example, there are plenty of web sites that provide practical optimization tips. Just do a Google search on “adsense optimization” and similar search terms, and you’ll find plenty. By gradually applying Adsense optimization tips easily found on the web, I was able to permanently increase this site’s CPM (i.e. revenue per 1000 page views) by 68%. However, by performing other optimizations (search engine optimization, marketing improvements, posting changes, site tweaks, etc.), I was able to increase this site’s daily Adsense revenue by about 500% in five months. Most of these changes took only minutes to implement, like adding RSS subscription buttons to the sidebar or changing the ad colors. If I’d never made these optimizations, it would mean permanently lower revenue, which would mean much slower growth for this business and more problems for me.
Optimization is generally one of the easiest ways to increase revenue for an online business. Even just one hour spent on intelligent optimization can generate enormous payoffs down the road.
3. Failure to market effectively
How many blogs receive dismal traffic because all the owner does is write posts?
I think that if you dare to be an entrepreneur, you need to learn marketing or have someone in your business who’s skilled at marketing. While you can outsource a lot of different business tasks, I don’t think the core marketing of your business should be one of them.
I never had any formal marketing education (my college degrees are in computer science and mathematics), but when I started my shareware business, I discovered I needed to learn marketing. In addition to reading marketing books and learning from others, I bought audio recordings of several marketing seminars. It took me a full 18 months to get through them (it was about 100 audio tapes total), but by the time I was done, I had a strong understanding of marketing and plenty of ideas for promoting my business.
Marketing doesn’t mean buying advertising, which is arguably the most expensive and least effective form of marketing. I haven’t spent a dime marketing this site, but I have done a lot of marketing work for it. Marketing is really just getting the word out. Don’t keep your site a secret — let as many people know about it as possible. Post comments liberally on other blogs, write articles and allow other sites to use them, swap links with bloggers in the same field, make search-engine friendly pages, and so on. If the content you produce is valuable, then you’re providing even more value by sharing it.
I think the most important realization I had about marketing was this — if you have a product or service you truly believe in, then you’re actually doing people a disservice but not telling them about it. Think about that. By NOT marketing, you’re depriving people of value.
If you aren’t eager to tell people about your site, perhaps it means you’re not offering something you believe in strongly enough. This simple idea contributed to my decision to retire from active shareware development and start this personal development site. I have no qualms about promoting this site because I believe in its value. I don’t feel embarrassed or apologetic when I tell people about it. If you’re providing real value, then your marketing is doing people a favor as opposed to asking for a favor. I wrote more about this philosophy in the article Marketing From Your Conscience.
I think a failure to do marketing for an online business is a form of self-sabotage. If you learn about a fantastic new web site, do you tell other people about it? Of course. Is your web site worth telling people about? If you don’t believe it is, you’re likely to avoid marketing it. Somehow you’ll just never seem to get around to doing any significant marketing work.
If you want to build a sustainable online business, focus most of your energies on providing value and on communicating that value. If you get those two things right (and it’s going to take longer than six months to make a real dent), you’ll be more driven to do everything else right.
Copyright © Steve Pavlina
Steve Pavlina
Personal Development for Smart People
http://www.stevepavlina.com
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog (blog)
http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles (articles)
Steve is intensely growth-oriented. He trained in martial arts, ran the L.A. Marathon, and graduated from college in three semesters with two degrees. He can juggle, count cards at blackjack, and make damn good guacamole. Steve is also a polyphasic sleeper, sleeping just 2-3 hours per day and only 20 minutes at a time. So chances are good that he’s awake right now.
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