Affiliate Marketing and Your Blog.
By admin | October 30, 2008
I looked briefly at affiliate marketing yesterday. Its something you might want to think about whether you already have a blog or are thinking of starting one.
OPPORTUNITIES
So where would you go to start looking for opportunities? If you already have a blog, then you should look for complimentary products. There is no point in blogging about football and trying to get buyers for dog training products! It’s simply a different market. On the other hand it you are going to have an animal centred blog, and then it might work.
CLICKBANK AND COMMISSION JUNCTION
There are loads of digital and physical products to promote. Two of the main sites are Clickbank and Commission Junction. Clickbank is the place to look for digital products ie instantly downloadable once the payment is processed and Commission Junction is more for the physical products. You might also want to look at Amazon.com. I will look at these markets more closely in the next few days posts.
COMPATABILITY
There are a variety of techniques available to connect with a potential product. There is no doubt however that a well focused blog that is reaching a specific target audience should seek to display marketing links directing website traffic to companies which complement the blog without acting as direct competition to the blog. This helps to ensure the blog visitors will not only be interested in the affiliate marketing links and therefore more likely to click on the links but will also help to ensure the blog visitors do not find the affiliate marketing links to be irksome, ie they have at least the potential to be of interest to the visitor.
Why do I say there should not be a direct competition to the blog.Well, you may think at some stage of producing your own product, so you have to be careful.
MONITOR
Once you decide on a product and have got a link to them (more on this later) you should monitor how effective this is. If you have a high traffic site and only a small percentage click on the links then you need to consider why that might be. Make some changes, either in design, size or location.Don’t do them all at once or you wont be able to monitor what has worked and what hasn’t.
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ADDITIONAL TECHNIQUES
You can do a lot to maximize your potential profits from affiliate marketing, joining forums, social networking and article marketing top name but a few. There re a lot of self promotion methods available but like anything else they can take time and effort, not necessarily money although you will undoubtedly want to look at PPC (pay per click or AdWords as it is known) marketing. That means spending money by the way!
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AND FINALLY
You have to be careful that you adhere to the product owners guidelines. Some of them are touchy about trademarks! If you are going to use any of their logs, check that you can before you do.
Lets have a look at Clickbank tomorrow
Til then
jane
Topics: Internet Marketing, blogs, keywords and links | No Comments »
Blogging and Affiliate Marketing
By admin | October 29, 2008
If you are interested in making money from your blog, you will want to check out affiliate marketing. Its something I am looking at at the moment.
You may not even have a blog yet, so why am I suggesting affiliate marketing? Well, if you look to the many affiliate opportunities out there, you may decide to develop a blog that suits that particular market. If you already have a blog, you may think about devoting additional pages to that product.
What is affiliate marketing? It is one of the ways in which a blogger can generate revenue. The amounts can vary significantly depending on the amount of traffic a blog receives as well as the amounts given by the owner of the product.
At its most basic, its a link from your blog to another companys website. That company owns a product, either digital or physical which it markets through you and you get a “cut” of the sale price. Additionally you may get money for the mere fact that a person clicks on the other persons site, or fills out a form.There are various permutations available.
So how do you go about selecting opportunities, how do you maximise those opportunities and where do you get to learn about the requirements associated with affiliate marketing?
Read about it here tomorrow!
Til then
jane
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Blogging for Newbies. 5 Things to Consider Before Setting Up Your Blog
By admin | October 28, 2008
What sort of things should a newbie consider before setting up a blog? Many blogs are doomed to fail from the start;there is a blogging cyber graveyard out there, made up of good intentions. As the saying goes, if you cant stand the heat stay out of the kitchen.
It is hard to start and maintain a blog, so what do you need to consider before you even begin?
CONTENT
Are you going to be able to write interesting informative content on a regular basis? You have to be clear about this and have a supply of research material that you can write about. Don’t fall into the trap of cutting and pasting others content, apart from the obvious copyright problems, Google is adept at picking up on duplicate copy and if you want to have any chance of getting readers and traffic, you need Google on your side! If you cant write articles on a consistent basis you could consider getting freelancers to do it for you. I have to say that you are better off trying to write things yourself for at least a month. This will help you to learn how the blog works, and get you into a routine. You will also develop your own voice which is important. I have to say that my experience of the freelance route is a little jaundiced due to a bad experience with a freelancer and the nonsense that he produced…not that I paid for it,but in my mind it wasn’t useable anyway. Try and write yourself at least initially.
KNOW YOUR SUBJECT
This goes hand in hand with content. If you don’t know much about your subject then research it. If you don’t have an interest in it then dont bother starting it-seriously. You need to be able to write about your subject for some time to come, so if you arent interested,it will be even more difficult for you.
DESIGN
I have written about design of your blog previously. My view as a non website designer is to keep it simple. You need to make a good first impression. Content is important, but if it gets lost in a lousy colour scheme with difficult to read fonts then you have lost before you have started. Keep it simple but appealing.
HTML
I have avoided this as long as I can but unfortunately it is unavoidable. You will need a basic grasp of html. I know this from my owm personal experience. I am learning it in a basic fashion and will pass on what I glean. Its not difficult but it does take;
TIME
In short supply for all of us these days,but especially for a newbie trying to learn all sorts of things at once. Make no mistake about it though, you will have to devote considerable time to this, particularly if you are thinking of trying to make money online. On a part time basis,you should be looking at at least an hour a day and preferably more to devote to blogging, thats maintenance and promotion.
til next time
jane
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Tips For Keeping Your Blog Up To Date
By admin | October 27, 2008
How do you keep your blog up to date? I have written about whether you should blog, what sort of blogging may interest you, design of your blog and some tips on making money from your blog. Part of all of that is keeping it up to date and there is some heavy duty maintenance there!
Keeping a blog up to date is very important. If you post every day then it can be difficult to keep up with that if you blog on a part time basis. Regular blog readers will expect new postings on a regular basis. It may not be every day, but preferably at least once a week. The more times you can post to your blog,the better, not just to satisfy your readers but to increase your visibility on the internet and ultimately to increase your page rankings.
Find Time to Post Daily
You may find it difficult to do this but I would recommend that you post daily. Some bloggers post many times a day.I am not one of them! Nobody is perfect and there will be times when you just cannot do it. Bloggers who allocate a specific block of time each day to research, writing and publishing a blog post are more likely to keep it up to date, than those that plan to do it only when they find time to do so. You may still have days when you dont post but they will be less frequent if you have organised yourself and dedicated a block of time to posting to your blog.
If you cant blog, post a brief entry explaining why.This is better than just leaving the blog “empty” for a few days. Don’t do that too regularly however!
Take Advantage of Publishing Tools
Some blog publishing tools, wordpress in particular enable bloggers to write blog posts ahead of time and specify when each post should be published. This is an excellent feature for bloggers who want to publish new posts daily but are unable to dedicate time each day to writing blog posts. This way the blogger can dedicate a block of time to write blog posts and have the posts published throughout the week.
I have found that this works very well if I am on a “roll”and I can schedule the posts. In Wordpress, its simply just looking at the publish status at the side of the post and editing the time and day you want to publish.Dont forgt to save the post and click on publish after you have edited the publish status fields. That will schedule the post to go out at the alloted time. If you dont click “publish” at this stage, it won’t schedule it. Learn from my mistake!
Hire Guest Bloggers
You might want to consider this if you are really struggling to keep up with your blog. The advantage of having a guest blogger is obvious, its less work for you, but do think carefully before you go down this route. If you havent got the time or inclination to blog in the early stages, then perhaps you should reexamine whether you should have a blog in the first place.
If you are thinking about the guest blogger route,consider whether how your readers might react. They might like you! Consider asking them, do a poll, try it and see how it affects your traffic. Using a guest blogger can be detrimental so examine your statistics carefully if you go down that route.
Theres no easy answer to this so I guess its just down to plain hard work.
Til next time
jane
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Making Money From Blogs
By admin | October 25, 2008
How do you make money online from blogging? Are there any foolproof ways you can work from home making money. The answer has to be no, all the various ways take investigation and effort and in some cases money.
Yesterday I posted about the main ways including adsense, clickbank and amazon. There are some lesser know ways which can attract money. I suppose the answer is to diversify, dont put all your eggs in one basket and experiment at which ones might work best for your blog if you have one.
What other ways are there?Well there are lots of ways of monetizing your blog. You could look at Ad sales and sponsership,particularly if you have an established blog with good traffic volumes.You could leave space for private advertisers in your design, the same as for adsense. Perhaps you could also look at auctionads,feedburner and Kontera amongst others. research and see what is out there. They may not account for huge amounts but every little bit helps.
If you have a little money to devote to it, you could look at adwords. This is paid for advertising and you will have to be careful how you go about this or you could lose your shirt! It may be worth investigating (indeed I am looking at it myself), because quite apart from potential sales,particulary if you are promoting affiliate product, it can also increase the traffic to your site.
I will be posting more on this topic in the coming weeks. I will also report back on thngs that I have tried that have worked and those that havent.
Til next time
jane
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How Bloggers Make Money From Blogs
By admin | October 24, 2008
You may be thinking about blogging to make money working from home. How would you go about doing this? If you havent already got a blog then you may want to look at how you find a niche, the design of your blog, what other bloggers are blogging about and how they might be monetizing their sites.
So how would you go about monetizing your site, once you had one? There are a number of obvious ways, but I have to be honest, while I know about them, I havent actually done any of them yet, mainly because I dont want to clutter this blog up and make it a marketing exercise (which it isnt, its my thoughts and research written down for anyone to read and take on board if they want. I have spent HUGE amounts of money in the last 12 months and I am finally filtering all the information and beginning to see the wood for the trees. If my thoughts and experience can help you to avoid some of my more costly mistakes then great!)
Lets have a look at the most obvious techniques then,
- Adsense. I wrote a few posts ago about blog design and I mentioned then that you might want to think about having the space to run adsense ads. These are the ads you see on blogs and websites. If anyone clicks on them via your blog then you get a small amount of money from Google. Obviously, the more clicks, the more money and some bloggers talk of making tidy sums from this particular method. The downside could be that the reader leaves your blog and disapppears into the ether but at least you make a few cents! Some blogs are heavily into adsense and it is a matter of personal choice whether you go down that route but historically large sums of money have been made that way.
- Amazon.com. You will probably have seen amazon cropping up via links in blogs and websites. Traffic sent over which converts can earn good money. It apparently works better on product based blogs presumably because Amazon is about physical rather than digital products and there are plenty of products to choose from. The other benefit is that some people who visit Amazon often buy more than one product and you get paid for that. The commisions average 4% which can mount up. You can use banners something like adsense or dirive people via your posts.
- Affiliate Products. Other peoples products, bought via your blog. Digital products ie those that are downloaded onto the purchasers computer are often sourced through Clickbank or Commission Junction for more physical products although there are othee sites as well. As an affiliate, you may be using ads to drive traffic to the product or posting about them. There can be some very good money to be made from this but like anything else on the internet you have to be careful and research the products and markets.
There are many ways of making money from blogging.These are just a few suggestions. Tomorrow I will look at a few more and report back.
til next time
Jane
Topics: Internet Marketing, Newbies, blogs | No Comments »
Finding Blogs to Read
By admin | October 23, 2008
You may be thinking of starting a blog? Have you thought about looking at other blogs to get some ideas? I am reasonably happy with mine as it stands but if I had researched it before I got going, I might have come up with a much better look. You might want to think about looking at other blogs,before you start your own.
Where do you start? There are so many blogs online now that you can be forgiven for sufferinrg from overload. How do you sort out the ones that are relevant to you and provide you with good information and that you might be able to emulate, phew!
Start with the search engines. Type in a few keywords, add blog on the end to filter the results and start searching. You are probably better off searching for collections of blogs rather than searching for them all individually.
Look at message boards and forums in your chosen niche if there are any. People posting to these will often have their own blog and you can have a look at those. You will have to be a bit discriminating because there is often a lot of spam in the forums and message boards. Look for people who post regularly, they are more likely to be genuine.
What about recommendations from family or friends?What are they reading? If you share interests with them then they are likely to be looking at blogs as well. Get some ideas.
I am not suggesting that you spend all your time looking at blogs, but at the early stages,taking some time to research wht blogs are out there in your field, what they look like, what they contain etc, can pay dividends later on.
Til next time
jane
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Design of Your Blog
By admin | October 22, 2008
I am writing this in bed,eating my toast and having a cup of tea (well I am in the UK!). I am also writing it before I go off to my day job. One day I will give up that day job..
I actually spent yeterday with someone who is going to help me with the technical side of all of this. I was surprised how much I have actually learnt over the past few months, some of it at considerable cost it has to be said!
Anyway he actually liked the look of this blog. I realise that blogs are a matter of personal taste and I think of this blog as a way of writing down what I learn and what you might want to read about. I like the uncluttered look.
On that note I have looked at my last few posts which have been about what a blog is and why you my want to have one. I thought I would just put a few thoughts in here about design.
This is a wordpress blog, there are however other software packages available and most of them are free. The great thing about wordpress is the amount of themes or designs available. I personally like clean themes and I dont want to clutter it up, but your personal taste may be different. Have a look at other blogs to get some ideas.
Type something into google and add blog on the end and see what you can find. Have a look at other blogs and get a feel for what your like before you even get a blog up. If you have an idea what you might want, it will be easier to find it.
A blog is essentially a website and it requires the same attention to detail as a website. You will have to make decisions about colours,layouts,fonts and whether you want to advertise or not.There are a variety of templates but if you or anyone you know has some basic programming skills, they can be customised.
Colors and Layouts of a Blog
This is the most obvious consideration. You may like clashing colours but they are very difficult to read. Think of the background colour. You can also use blocks of colour, pictures or textures but my personal view is to keep it simple and aesthetically pleasing.
There are a number of different layouts. Have a look at the ones that you like. Try and get a format that is easy to follow. You want to get repeat visitors, the ones who get a headache looking at your blog are unlikely to return!
Fonts Used in a Blog
You will find a huge number of available fonts, text sizes and colours to choose from. Consider choosing a font which works well with the overall design of the layout of the blog and suits the subject matter of the blog but also a common font. I personally like verdana or Tahoma but try a few out.
Also bear in mind the size of the font and your prospective readers. The text size and colours of the text should be carefully considered particularly if your readers are likely to be of an older age group! I was surprised to get an email yesterday from someone offering copywriting services which had pink text on a grey background. Sounds nice but really difficult to decipher, quite apart from the fact that the text size was really small.
Inclusion of Advertisements in Your Blog
Do you think you will want advertising on your blog, hoping to make some money from adsense? Then you need to consider where they are going to go. At the side, at the bottom? At the top? Do you want htem to be discrete or obvious? Will you have enough space for them in the template you are thinking of using?
These are just a few basic thoughts for you to mull over.Hope it helps
Til next time
Jane
Topics: Internet Marketing, Newbies, blogs | 1 Comment »
Blogging With Wordpress
By admin | October 18, 2008
I have posted recently about finding a niche, whether blogging is for you and if you think it might be, how to start looking for successful blogs, the sort that people revisit and want to know more about.
If you have decided that you might like to have a go at blogging whether as a pastime or as a potential business,there are quite a few programmes out there that you can use free of charge (which makes a change!)
Wordpress is one of the many free available software programmes, that allow you to set up a blog relatively quickly.
I think that Wordpress for me has been one of the easiest things to use. I am not itn least technically minded and I do struggle with that side of things (as previous posts have testified!) but for my money- or lack of it , wordpress is pretty easy to at least get going in a fairly basic way.
The only things you need in the short term are an email address and a user name, you get a password and an activation code and can start up practically immediately.
So what are the othere advantages of Wordpress? There are loads of templates which can easily be changed,you can put your posts into catagories, do spell check,post text, audio and video files and follow pretty neat statistical data. There is a facility to keep your blog private which is important to some people as outlined in previous posts and autosave and schedule your posts, which you may find useful if you are on a roll and post a number of entries that you want to come up over a few days.
I have found that the support offered to users is pretty good, important for those of us who are technically challenged and there are a number of active forums in which you can get help pretty much every hour of the day.
If you want a quick, free programme to get a blog up, I dont think you will go far wrong with Wordpress at least on a basic level.Like everything else, there can be a lot to learn to get some of the more advanced features but you can be up and running pretty quick!
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Starting Blogging.Finding a Niche
By admin | October 17, 2008
I have been looking at whether and why you might want to start a blog in my last few posts but how do you even find a niche for your blog? You will need to consider this before you get started
It may be that you already have a subject matter that you are passionate about and you know there are others interested in that same topic because you have done your research, but where do you start if you haven’t got the faintest idea?
You
Start with your own interests. If you are passionate about something, it will be easier to write about it from a place of knowledge and you find it much easier if you have an interest in the subject. Blogs can be on any topic under the sun but if you are looking ot make some money from blogging then you will need to look at topics that have a wider potential audience.
Your Competition
Think of a few potential subjects and then evaluate the competition. Is there any? I think there needs to be some but it shouldn’t be an oversaturated market because you may find it hard to get heard out there. If there isnt any competition, well you might have struck lucky but its more probable that your “passion” isnt shared by many others.
Your Purpose
What is the purpose of your blog? If its going to be a personal blog or even a private one, you may not be interested in volumes of traffic, but if you are promoting a cause or trying to make money online, then traffic will be important. You will need to find a niche that is large enough to allow you in but not so oversaturated that it is impossible to compete.
You need to find a niche area where you have the confidence that you can make regular quality posts that are interesting, informative and or entertaining. If you cant do any of those then look at another niche. You have to have a smidgeon of interest because regular posting is going to be difficult if you don’t.
I just love blogging and writing about it. I try and give good information as I found it difficult to get it from one source when I was starting out. I aim to give the back to basics stuff because there is a lot of advanced stuff out there written by people who have forgotten what it is like when starting out. If you barely know what a blog is, how can you be expected to get one up and running.? Walk before you can run. I ran and I made so many mistakes, I cant even begin to count them. Keep it slow and dont expect too much, too early or you will be disappointed.
Til next time
jane
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